All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our first guest on the show today is Philip Giraldi, former CIA and DIA counterterrorism officer.
He's now the executive director of the council for the national interest foundation.
And he's a contributing editor at the American conservative and a regular writer at antiwar.com as well.
Welcome to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How about you?
I'm doing good.
Appreciate you joining us here.
I want to talk with you about this important thing that you wrote, May the 2nd, 2012 at the American conservative magazine.
That's the American conservative.com on the blog there.
Iran's tactical strength.
You start off reminding us about this New York times story from March 19th, which was sort of a part of the deluge of New York times articles by James Risen and a couple of others with a very anti-Iran war slant on them, seeming to come from the, pretty much from the top down there.
And this was the story that, geez, if there was ever an Israeli war with Iran, it would drag us into it and it would be really bad.
And we really don't want that basically is what it said, right?
Yeah, that's correct.
I think, I think the mainstream media is coming around to the point of view that, that a war with Iran would not be a very good thing, no matter how it's sold.
And as you are noting, I mean, it's interesting to see how, how this, this shift has taken place.
And people like rising, you know, who, who before would have, would probably taken a more politically neutral position are now saying, you know, this is something to worry about.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, to me, and I'm just guessing here, a lot of this is just, you know, speculation, but I sort of, you know, think about it like it's a TV show or something, and basically somebody here made a call from the government to the times and said, listen, we really want to put a whole anti-Iran war slant on the next few weeks where the stories about this, how about we send over some spooks to talk to James Risen about the lack of a nuclear weapons program, for example, that this was a, that the, the, the pieces.
And I think the post too, but especially the rising pieces in the times there in March seemed to me like that was the news story itself that, wow, there's somebody changed gears here, whether it was in the white house or just in the media, I guess we really don't know for sure.
Yeah.
And, and bear in mind, yeah, it's not just, it's not just the white house.
There's a, there's a, a clear back channel going from Israel too, on this issue that, uh, you know, we've seen a number of leading, uh, former intelligence and security types, uh, former generals and now let's say Livni, uh, former prime minister, uh, all these people are sending a very strong message that they, they consider the, uh, the, uh, Netanyahu, uh, position of war being inevitable with Iran as, uh, as kind of an extremist position.
Yeah.
Well, and I'm not exactly sure what was supposed to be the effect of Netanyahu calling for early elections, but now apparently that's off anyway.
And they made a new deal with Kadima and, and still the elections are going to be next year.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm not sure what the deal is all about either, but obviously, uh, Netanyahu must've, well, he did the reason for calling the election was because he figured he was going to, uh, get to come back into office with an increased But, uh, somehow he seems to have reevaluated that calculation and is, is coming with a different result.
So, you know, we'll see how it plays out.
All right now.
So, um, apparently you got some sources here that told you a little bit more about these war games, uh, than we were able to read in the New York times.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Well, you know, the, the popular wisdom is that, uh, Iran, uh, given it's a third world status, pretty much militarily, uh, would roll over before the United States juggernaut, but the, but there are, you know, there are geographical and other factors that play in favor of Iran.
And, uh, there've been a number of war games going back even, I think the 2003, uh, in which the results have been a bit dicey, uh, in, in one war game in particular, a few years back, the, uh, the Iranians, uh, uh, actually won and they had to cancel the game where they stopped the game, uh, before the Iranians could, the Iranians could sink a couple of us aircraft carriers.
So it's, uh, uh, Iran has a number of things playing in its favor.
And, uh, uh, that apparently was the, the backstory to what was going on in terms of this, uh, this, uh, this story about how war would be inadvisable.
The backstory being that, uh, it would not quite be the cakewalk that, uh, has been represented by a number of people.
So in other words, the New York times story was saying that, well, it would be a big war and it would drag us in.
But what you're telling us is your sources are telling you that it would drag us in and it would be really bad for us that they would get some strikes with their supersonic missiles.
They would get some strikes with their suicide boats and we would not just be in the war, but we would have a real problem.
Uh, that's the potential issue.
Yeah.
The, uh, the fact is, I mean, once you start a war, you don't know how it's going to play out.
And it could very well be that, uh, most of the, the, uh, the propaganda being put out by the neoconservatives, uh, could turn out to be correct.
Either Iran would, would roll over immediately and there would be regime change, all the things that they want.
But the likelihood is of course, that it's not going to go that way.
And the, the Iranians are going to pull out every stop using terrorism resources, using unconventional warfare, using suicide attacks, all kinds of things that are very difficult to defend against.
Yeah.
Well, and, uh, you say in here, they have more than 5,000 mines available.
Many of modern design and exceedingly difficult to detect, sweep and disarm.
Yeah, that's right.
The, uh, uh, modern mines, uh, rely on, uh, on advanced technologies that, that don't, uh, you know, the traditional mine sweep or what they do is basically they look for mines because mines are, have metal in them.
And of course the modern mines are, are basically plastics and that sort of thing and composites.
And as a result, they're much more difficult to detect.
And Iran has certainly enough of them to close the entire Straits of Hormuz in both directions for about 20 miles, uh, and also has cruise missiles that has, uh, these, these little speed boats that they use as, as suicide vessels, uh, you know, they're, they, they have a lot of options that are, are not conventional warfare.
Now, if you watch, uh, you know, the military history channel or whatever, you know, Viacom Discovery Channel offshoot or whatever on TV, they have it that, you know what, we got really great Gatlin guns and Aegis radar, and we can blast any incoming, uh, sea skimming missile, nobody can sink an American ship.
Yeah.
Well, that's what they say.
But the fact is that, you know, if you fire that, uh, let's face it, the Straits of Hormuz are what?
20 miles wide at, at the narrowest point.
And if you're firing that missile from a couple of miles away, your systems might not pick it up before it's actually there, uh, that, that would be the danger and, uh, and, and plus there, you know, there are other dangers in the Straits of Hormuz.
The waters are very shallow.
Uh, it wouldn't take, uh, much to hit a mine and for a U S, uh, vessel to go aground, you know, they, they, they, you know, the, the, I, after I wrote that article, somebody came back on one of the military sites and said, yeah, but the U S actually would stand off, uh, in the, uh, in much, in much deeper waters, uh, and to stage attacks from there.
Now that may be true, but the fact is that, you know, it doesn't change the existential dynamic that Iran then would be capable of closing the Straits.
Well, and it's still, I mean, that's coming from a different premise to the premise of this argument is more, if Israel starts the war, then this could happen to us, which means our ships are going to be wherever they are the day Netanyahu starts it, not, uh, you know, preplanned a thing between both of us.
Yeah, that's right too.
I mean, we're, they're not taking into account the, the, uh, how the war starts factor.
I mean, that could be anything.
And obviously if Israel decides to start it without giving us any advanced warning, which they said they won't do, uh, then, then basically all options are on the table.
Well, and, uh, you know, Spencer Ackerman had this thing, I guess a month or so ago at wired about how they are just escalating and escalating in the Gulf over there.
They just keep sending ship after ship and all different kinds, and they're building up the fifth fleet in every way that they can, which just, you know, even if they don't want a war, it's still increases the likelihood of, you know, an incident or an accident getting blown out of proportion, either by commanders on scene on either side or by the politicians in any of the three countries in question here.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, that's part of the problem with, uh, Netanyahu, uh, with not with Netanyahu, with Obama, Obama, maybe the same man, actually.
Uh, Obama basically, you know, talks one way, but on the other side, he's just, he's constantly escalating the tension, uh, that, that is, is the fundamental problem in the region.
And, uh, we, we keep increasing forces.
I mean, this is ostensibly to put pressure on Iran, but of course the, the, the actual result is the opposite of that.
It makes, uh, Iran even more paranoid.
You know, there was the thing last week about they're sending all these F15s and F22s, then a Marine at the same time, the pilots are afraid to even fly in that 22s.
I wonder whether that whole article was a publicity stunt for Lockheed rather than an actual report about we're sending planes to the region, but maybe they would send planes that the pilots are afraid to fly, to go fight a war with Iran.
Why not?
Well, we once created, we once, uh, had the F105, which was called the flying coffin.
Right.
Yeah.
There you go.
They sold a bunch of those too.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Phil Giraldi after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Wharton and I'm talking with Phil Giraldi.
Former CIA and DIA officer, runs the council for the National Interest Foundation, writes for the American conservative magazine and antiwar.com.
And we're talking about, um, well, the kind of sub story.
The big story is the mainstream media is talking about this and this is the very likely, very horrible consequences of any war with Iran.
Um, and, uh, so, uh, yeah, it does seem like, uh, it's no longer just you and me on this show talking about, Hey, let's think ahead about what might be some of the consequences of a war with Iran, which is the same conversation we've been having for quite a while here.
Apparently, uh, this is getting through the thick skulls of some of the people who run things around here, Phil.
Yeah.
That, that, as I say, there's been a definite shift in that the, uh, mainstream media and the Israeli establishment both are, are coming out against, um, the prospect of a war with Iran.
And, uh, there was also, was there a, um, David Ignatius story about, uh, how there's, uh, according to him, uh, already a done deal with Iran and it just hasn't been quite pulled together yet, but the, uh, he's claiming that, uh, in fact, that the negotiations are much farther advanced than people have suggested and that, uh, actually the, some kind of agreement with Iran is, is in the offing.
Yeah.
Well, I'm not sure if I believe that.
I forget if it was Garrett or who was on the show said, well, that's just a, a leak so that later if the talks don't work out, uh, or even the Americans can sabotage them and blame them on Iran and say, man, see, we had a deal and then they screwed up, I'm always, you know, take the most cynical approach, but I don't know.
Do you think there's hope for these talks that we could actually, I mean, obviously the basis for a deal is right there.
Look, we'll stop threatening you.
We'll list some sanctions.
You allow snap inspections and re adopt the additional protocol and go ahead and ratify it or whatever.
And we'll have a deal.
Well, that's certainly what they're suggesting.
I mean, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a cynical as you are on most of these issues.
I think that, uh, certainly that we've seen over the past 10 years that the tendency is to not make a deal.
And even when a deal is being offered, so, uh, I'm cynical too, but at the same time, a guy like Ignatius is very well plugged in and he's not only plugged in in the U S he's plugged in in Israel.
And, and obviously if he's floating this, unless he's floating it for very cynical reasons, then it is certainly something that people are talking about.
Right.
Well, yeah.
I mean, and it makes sense that it could be true too, right?
Since it's so obvious what the deal could be, where all sides get what they want, except maybe Netanyahu doesn't get to have a war, but at least he gets his, uh, you know, even pretended reason to be concerned, neutralized.
Uh, if we have, you know, snap inspections all the time, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, it's a 20% enrichment.
Yeah.
Part of the deal would undoubtedly being, it'd be the, that enrichment would be carried out in a third country.
Uh, that seemed to be what Ignatius was suggesting.
So, uh, yeah, I mean, everybody kind of wins on the deal around, retains its program, retains its technology, uh, but has to, uh, essentially, uh, outsource its, its uranium, uh, something which it could always, you know, stop doing and start enriching, enriching itself.
And, uh, and everybody would seem to win on the deal, but then the question becomes to what extent, um, are certain parties, and I would obviously be thinking of the neoconservatives in the United States, uh, wanting a war, no matter what Iran does, no matter what anyone does.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, those guys will never get over it.
I just, you know, I mean, I guess really what it comes down to is domestic politics, just Barack Obama, or maybe even better to his, uh, pollsters, his Karl Rove's, do they think that if he goes into the election saying I made a deal with the Iranians, that that'll be good or bad?
For his, you know, reelection, you know, cause that's the real question, right?
The rest doesn't really matter.
Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct.
It's, it has nothing to do with reality.
It's a, it's a question of perception and, uh, but the, the really dangerous thing of course, is that Mitt Romney's, uh, uh, foreign policy team is, is almost completely neocon and, uh, these people are, want a war and Romney has been very explicit, uh, in, in saying that he's willing to go to war with Iran.
So I, I think there are certain dangers still lurking out there.
I don't personally think that Romney can beat Obama.
Uh, but I think this is, uh, the man is, is quite dangerous in that he's, he seems to have a certain, uh, naivete about, uh, foreign policy and, uh, yeah, you can tell he doesn't really know anything about it, right?
No, he doesn't.
He doesn't.
And that's why he's taken on people that are, are George W.
Bush recycles and he, uh, only an idiot would take on people like that.
Right.
But at least they claim to have an answer to everything that you're wondering and that's the thing.
You know, and the answer is always do more and assume more authority to do it.
And politicians like that.
Did you see in today's paper that the Democrats, the Republicans are intent on increasing the defense budget and, uh, they're also going to give another billion dollars to Israel in 2013 for its, uh, it's a strategic defense program.
So we have, we have the same old nonsense, you know, playing out again and again.
And, uh, without any kind of, you know, evaluation of do they need it?
Do we, can we afford it?
Uh, can we afford a bigger defense budget?
Um, these questions are never asked.
Right.
Okay.
Now you wrote this article called the disappearing terrorists about a neoconservative war party talking point that, uh, Iran has a secret Hezbollah terrorist sleeper cells hiding all across America, just ready to kill us at a moment's notice if American Israel attack Iran, which I would think would be a reason to not attack them if it was true.
But anyway, as you write, this is obviously just helps to demonize Iran more, it just helps to make Iran seem like, you know, it reinforces that narrative of Iran backer of international terrorism, even here in our homeland and all that kind of thing.
But so all that being said, tell us about what any kernel of truth there actually is to this at all.
Is there Hezbollah in America?
Are they raising money?
Are there any terrorists at all?
What does the CIA say or know about this, please?
Well, my understanding is that, um, they, you know, right after nine 11, when I was still working for CIA, uh, I heard a number of times, uh, reports coming from the FBI.
Oh yes.
That there are sleeper cells of Hezbollah.
We have to find them and so on and so forth.
And, uh, they've never found any, uh, it's, uh, I think if you go back and you, you, you know, you Google your Google, I Google like crazy and, and look at Hezbollah and look at, uh, Hezbollah, Canada, United States, Mexico, Venezuela.
You won't find any real confirmed cases of, of Hezbollah militants coming into the United States or either as a sleeper cell or, or even as, as just trying to get into a presumably carry out some kind of action.
So it's just kind of a myth.
And it's been, this has been floating for about 11 years now.
Uh, and, and, but Hezbollah and, and the whole issue of Hezbollah of course is part of a bigger issue, which is that the whole terrorism issue has been inflated to a point where we don't have any realistic view of it anymore.
The story today, yesterday about the, uh, the new underwear bomber, uh, I, I heard this morning that, uh, that basically this, uh, uh, the first assessment of this underwear bomb was essentially that it couldn't possibly work, but there's an article in the Washington Post saying, oh, we're going to need new security precautions.
We're going to Peter King, uh, Congress, Peter King.
Yes.
Saying we have to have more security at the airports and at our borders.
That's funny.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the, the AP version had it where, oh, this was a very impressive bomb, but then it quotes anonymous sources who claimed that they were briefed by other anonymous sources about the real story here.
Yeah.
So the, the, the real story we probably never will hear, but it's just going to be another boondoggle to pump money out of our pockets and into the pockets of somebody else.
Yeah.
I mean, they say, and they don't, they don't give any kind of compelling narrative for this in any media.
I saw that.
Well, the CIA swooped in and seized the underwear in question.
We're having this serious conversation right now.
Are you digging that?
Um, yeah, yeah.
The CIA swooped in and seized the underwear, but from where they broke into Al Qaeda's house and stole it or what?
Well, apparently it's again, one of these cases where actually it was a local service.
I was told that it's a, it's a service, either the Saudis or the Yemenis themselves that actually cracked the case.
And CIA was involved, but as a, you know, as kind of a, of a side player.
And, uh, but the fact is this thing was never going to necessarily go anywhere.
Uh, and it may not have even worked and yet now we have another, you know, terrorist scare.
So it's a, this is, this just happens all the time.
And, and the whole tone of it, right.
When the, when the white house says there was never any danger of an airplane being bombed, you know, that that means it's another one of these setups where they got some poor schmuck and they, you know, and he was talking to his cousin and he was explaining how he was going to bomb an airplane.
Right.
And they, and they, they set up the, you know, an informant and they set up this and they set up that, then they arrest him.
That's what it sounds like to me too.
And, you know, it was that package bomb plot involved.
All the information came right from a veteran of Guantanamo Bay who'd been released, uh, to go to Saudi Arabia.
Then he went to Yemen.
Then he came back to Saudi Arabia just in time to try to warn us or something like that, or just in time, maybe not just in time, but just after the fact to tell us who it was that was behind it.
Something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something very sketchy.
Yeah.
Well, there's always that kind of narrative behind these things.
And they're usually, you know, in two weeks it'll be forgotten, except there will be some kind of new shakedown at, uh, at the nation's airports when you try to get on a plane.
Yep.
Hey, can I keep you one more segment?
Cause I still want to ask you about terrorism some more.
We got all this new news about bin Laden and everything else.
Yeah, sure.
All right.
Good deal.
Well, it's a long break, so, um, just hang tight right there.
We won't be back till six after and go take a walk around the block, get a drink of water, uh, whatever.
Uh, we'll be back at six after with Phil Giraldi on anti-war radio.
Uh, he's from the council for the national interest foundation, the American conservative magazine and antiwar.com.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
It's anti-war radio.
We got Phil Giraldi on the line, former DIA and CIA officer, now executive director of the council for the national interest.
That's council for the national interest.org.
He also writes for the American conservative magazine and antiwar.com.
And now, uh, so, you know, from the time they let bin Laden go, which I still think, you know, I guess, I don't know if I can prove it, but I still think it was deliberate decision by Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush to let him go to serve as an Emanuel Goldstein type, a scary figure, um, for the American people to justify further interventions in places where bin Laden didn't necessarily have anything to do with it, like Iraq, uh, that kind of thing, uh, ever since then, as you said, they've tried to, um, kind of refuse to define in, in, uh, you know, accurate terms, just exactly what is the nature of the terrorist threat against the United States?
How many terrorist enemies do we have in the world anyway?
How big is Al Qaeda anyway?
And how hell bent on targeting us are they anyway?
And now we have this very selective collection of leaks, uh, from the white house or from, you know, the military, whatever about, uh, you know, bin Laden's, uh, selected quotations or whatever from the papers that they found at his house a year ago.
Um, and, uh, I only give it any credibility at all, cause it tends to coincide with what Gareth Porter and Shaukat Qadir are writing about, that bin Laden at the time of his death was basically a loser, that he was ridiculed by his men, um, that, uh, he was not in charge, uh, and hadn't been for quite a long time at the time he died.
On the other hand, uh, they say, and this is where I'm getting to my question, Phil, they say that Al Qaeda, man, they're spreading in North Africa.
You could even blame Barack Obama for regime change in, uh, Libya in favor of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars where these guys had fought against our side in the last decade.
Um, but, uh, you know, Al Shabaab, I heard that they got on a boat and went across the Red Sea to Yemen and met Al Qaeda guys.
Now they're linked to Al Qaeda in Somalia and, uh, Boko Haram, they're Muslims and they have guns in Nigeria.
So that's also linked to Al Qaeda.
And so on one hand, bin Laden's Islamo-fascist caliphate was the third floor of this one house in the suburbs of Islamabad, and on the other hand, uh, it's a network of terrorist groups all around the world and the way that, and it's of course the government that's selling both, uh, narratives here.
They seem contradictory to me, but I was just wondering if maybe you can put this in perspective for us and explain to us exactly, uh, well, if I could refine it a little bit, what is the terrorist threat to the United States, if there is one at all?
Well, I think actually it's, it's, it's, uh, there's quite a simple answer to that.
Um, you have to basically go to definitions and you have to say, what is a terrorist?
And, uh, I would say for the United States, a terrorist is somebody who basically is a, uh, an individual who's stateless.
He doesn't belong to a state organization who is a ready, willing and able and able being the operative word to carry out a terrorist attack inside the United States or against us very clearly defined us interests overseas.
Now that the, the issue becomes, uh, the terrorism label is used to describe just about anybody who's a militant and particularly if there are a Muslim, uh, anywhere in the world who's opposing their own government or, or, uh, or trying to, uh, attack the authorities in, in some kind of context.
And so the fact is the only terrorist we as Americans should be worried about are the ones that, that are capable of attacking us.
And that's a very, very small number.
How many people do you think in Yemen, uh, actually can get on an airplane, blow it up, or come over the United States and, and put together a bomb and stage an attack inside, uh, uh, an American city that there's almost no one.
And so basically when we're, we're talking about people who are opposing their own governments or fighting a political system in another country, uh, you want, you might want to label them a terrorist for convenience, but the fact is in terms of the terrorism being a threat against the United States is just not so.
Now, according to Jeremy Scahill's reporting about Yemen and you know, he certainly, uh, it's, uh, the, the title is about the backfiring of American foreign policy there, but he's saying there is such a thing as Al Qaeda in Yemen.
And of course, what we do, uh, you know, killing innocent people with our drones, uh, is just making them a bigger and bigger issue.
Um, and of course, a lot of the, what we give the Yemen government to fight them with, of course, just goes to serve the Yemeni government's interests, whether it has anything to do with fighting them or not.
But so if there's, I don't know, dozens of these guys, maybe even a hundred or two, Phil, um, does that mean that, uh, we can just ignore them or we do have to do something about it?
Or, you know, if you're on the national security council and you're just taken over from these goofballs who've made Al Qaeda in Yemen, whatever level of problem they actually are, what do you say we got to do about it?
Well, I would say that the proper, the appropriate role for the United States in dealing with, with terrorist groups or what we call terrorist groups overseas is to work with friendly governments by, by sharing intelligence, by sharing technology and that kind of thing to help defeat them.
We don't have any particular reason for being involved in Yemen.
Uh, this, uh, these underwear bombers that we see coming out of Yemen, uh, every time they are staging an attack on us is because we've been staging attacks on them.
And, uh, this is the Ron Paul formula.
I mean, they're over here or if they're over here, they're over here because we're over there.
And, and, uh, uh, you know, if we weren't involved in all these places in such an active way, actually killing these people, then they probably would not even think that, uh, we're worth bothering with because their, their real agenda is to change their own government.
That's what they're all about.
Right.
Well, and I guess that was the thing too, that one of the things anyway, that in the selective leak about bin Laden, that he was complaining about was that everybody was going back to fighting their local jihads when the whole point was to try to take it all out on America.
Yeah, that's right.
And, and of course he was not able to do that.
And the fact was, I think the accurate assessments of the bin Laden papers, and I didn't, I haven't looked at too many of them, but I have looked at a bunch of them.
It's clear that this was a dysfunctional organization in which, uh, Osama bin Laden was no longer in control of anything.
And, uh, and yet the way it was reported in a lot of the U S media was that, wow, they're still dangerous.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
How, how many ways do you want to have it?
I mean, this guy is, is hiding in a, in a, in an attic somewhere.
And, uh, and it's clear from these papers that he's, uh, he's being disobeyed by his followers.
I mean, so how is this guy a major danger because he said, gee, it would be nice to kill the president of the United States.
I mean, he had no capability of doing it.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the whole thing is, and they just say over and over, it ain't so, but that may be only because they know how true it is.
We're protected by our oceans.
That's the whole thing.
We're safe over here in the new world.
No.
Yeah.
Well, we're, we're certainly, uh, safer than the politicians would like to have us think that's for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, what are they going to do?
Get in Saddam Hussein's balsa wood drone and, and glide on over the Atlantic ocean or something.
Yeah.
Well, exactly.
I mean, well, I mean, didn't Saddam Hussein have those gliders that were capable of going all the way across the Atlantic?
Yeah, of course.
Well, they'd have to cross Jordan and Israel in the Mediterranean sea first, but then the Atlantic, yeah.
And then spray us all germs.
Yeah, that's right.
In your hometown.
Yeah, I believe it.
Yeah.
Thank goodness.
They preempted that exactly.
All right.
Now, see, here's the thing about it.
I think that a lot of Americans know that this whole thing about Al Qaeda is just a big excuse that it never was more than a couple of few hundred guys that they got the help bombed out of them back in 2001.
Uh, there never were that many to fear, whatever.
But the novelty is you're a former CIA counter-terrorism guy and you're saying to them, yeah, that's right.
It's a bunch of crap.
Well, I, you know, I think, uh, there are a lot of people in the security business, both, you know, agency FBI that have seen the way things work in the government who would agree that it's a load of crap.
All right.
Now, what about here's a, if I can think of one, a possible credible wrinkle in this, what about a Salim Shahzad's thesis that because of the continued war and continued war in the tribal areas of Pakistan, that we made all those local insurgent groups come to depend on the Saudis and Egyptians, uh, who still live there, the few dozen of them, but that they really became the Al Qaeda guys became, uh, sort of the masterminds of all these different insurgencies and are actually playing them, working toward their own goals.
The Al Qaedaization of, um, the, the, uh, you know, armed militants in that region of Pakistan, uh, for the longterm, you take that very seriously.
Yeah.
I would say in many cases, we've become the enablers of the, of what we call terrorist groups and that we give them something to rally around and we give them a cause to fight.
Yeah.
We, we sort of deny any differences between them and then we make it that way.
Right.
With self-fulfilling prophecy.
Right.
Yep.
Now, so even that being the case, you still wouldn't consider them much of a threat to the United States though?
No, I mean, again, the question becomes, you know, if it's a threat against the United States, how do you manifest it?
And you manifest the threat against the United States by coming over here, like, uh, presumably, or allegedly happened on 9 11 and you do something awful or you find, you identify a U S interest overseas and you do something awful there.
But how much of that has happened in the last 10 years?
Yeah.
Nobody can hijack a plane anymore.
Cause now we all know what it's about and we'll just choke you to death.
Right.
We'll just, well, nobody's allowed to hijack a plane anymore.
No one would believe, Oh, maybe if we're quiet, they'll just take us to Cuba and we'll get to be home for dinner.
Yeah, that's right.
That's, that's, that's no longer the theory.
Yeah.
So it, yeah, of course all these things have changed.
And, and the fact is that, uh, you know, terrorism is, is, is a useful tool for politicians to create uncertainty, to, to, uh, to give people reasons to vote for them.
Right.
Well, there you go.
Uh, I'm terribly afraid.
Now, how skeptical are you about the 9 11 hijackers?
Like you just referred to there?
You know, I don't know.
I, one of the things I, as you know, I was on a cruise recently and I just got back and one of the things I was able to do was read a lot of books and I read a lot of books about 9 11, uh, including the 9 11 official report.
And, uh, I'm not convinced.
I, I, I see this evidence that at least five of the hijackers were using, uh, identity theft names.
Uh, so do we know who these people were?
Do we know really anything about them?
Um, how much do we know?
I mean, I think that, I think that the whole 9 11 story deserves reexamination from bottom up, looking at every fact that we know and questioning everything else that's assumed.
Well, now, did you read a bunch of Peter Lance in there?
Cause he, to me is the most, he's the guy who's, he's willing to, you know, uh, entertain all theories and examine them.
Seriously.
He's not afraid of being called a conspiracy theorist or whatever.
But then again, he's done, you know, really solid journalism on a decade worth of Al Qaeda in America, a thousand years for revenge is the one I read.
No, I haven't.
I didn't read his book.
No, I read some interesting books by someone named Griffin.
Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with them.
Yeah.
But he's the whole missile hit the Pentagon and all of that crap.
Well, actually, I think that's a pretty compelling argument.
Nah, come on.
No, I, well, I cannot believe that the seven 57 just disappeared somewhere, but the fact is that, uh, uh, I remember, you know, back when I was still in the agency in 2002, uh, getting reports that day saying that it was a small plane that had struck the Pentagon.
And then there were reports from the, uh, uh, the firemen who were the first responders to the Pentagon from Arlington County, uh, who were saying there's no plane debris here.
There's no plane here at all.
So I know, yeah.
But think of the planes that hit the towers.
They didn't leave a bunch of debris on the front lawn.
No, I'm not talking about those planes.
I'm talking about the one that hit the Pentagon.
I know, but I'm saying the same difference.
They went into the, it went into the building.
That's why it's not all over the lawn.
It didn't crash into the lawn.
It crashed into the building.
I'd wreck, I'd turn you on to a ride Dawson at anti neocons for the missile hit the Pentagon thing.
I think he's done the, but anyway, you know, my thing was this, and in fact, I'm still very disgruntled, Phil, about the worst of the nine 11 truth or crap, because I always thought that, you know, if there's an angle to follow here, really it's did Dick Cheney and James Baker, somebody along those lines call and make a deal with Saudi and or Pakistani intelligence to make sure that this thing happened, uh, that kind of thing, uh, deliberate blind eye turned and, uh, whatever.
But, um, it seems like those angles weren't ever properly investigated by real journalists because the water got so muddy with all this other nonsense.
Well, you know, that dissident FBI guy, what was it?
Ali Sufani.
Have you read his book?
I mean, he, he claims, he claims that there were warnings from the Saudis and the Pakistanis and from the Israelis, uh, shortly before nine 11 took place and they were fairly specific.
So I don't know how true that is.
Now this, again, my, my belief is that we have to go back and, and, and double check all these alleged facts about nine 11.
But that's fair enough.
You know, the day it happened, I assume that, I mean, I just did the math.
Okay.
If you have hijackers, they gotta be Arabs and whoever they're working for, they gotta think that they're doing it on purpose, that they're willing to sacrifice themselves for this thing, whoever's interest they're actually serving.
Um, and for there to be a, you know, more than a dozen, uh, hide suicide, hijacker terrorists in the country, the FBI would have to know who they are, have some inkling.
Of course, there's the whole thing about Rich Blee and the guys that did basically the sequel to press for truth is that whole thing about, um, the guys that were staying with Al Bayou, me, the guys from the Malaysia meeting that were staying with Al Bayou me in San Diego.
And he was of course, the FBI informant, um, and how the CIA refused to pass that information on to the FBI until the very end.
And in fact, I'm trying to remember now, but I think it was Christopher Ketchum said, you know, the whole thing about the Israelis didn't share.
Well, they finally did share in August of oh one.
And it was only then that the FBI actually went looking for these guys.
It wasn't because the CIA had told him it was because the Israelis finally had.
Yeah.
Although see, I don't know.
Again, this it's, it's such a mess.
It's such a frigging mess.
And, and there's so many ridiculous, bogus conspiracy theory, red herring type trails that it's like the Kennedy thing.
It makes me not even want to get into it.
You know?
Yeah.
I know how you feel.
I mean, cause you know, certainly, uh, you could drive yourself crazy with conspiracy theories, but I think that, I think all we have to accept is that the nine 11 narrative, the conventional narrative is, is phony and it's a cover up and, and the question is how big a coverup is it and how much complicity is there on the part of senior government officials in, in making it happen?
So, I mean, you know, there are legitimate questions to be raised here.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, what's funny, I'll go ahead as long as we're getting funny on it, I'll get funny.
Um, I was a big fan of the X-Files and they had a spinoff that in the spring of 2001, the, the pilot episode of the spinoff of the X-Files, it was called the Lone Gunman and it was Mulder and Scully's three conspiracy theorist friends that they hung out with from time to time as special guest stars or whatever, and they got their own series.
And in the pilot episode, they're on a plane that is hijacked by remote control by an officer in a dark back hallway at the Pentagon who is attempting to fly it into the world trade center.
And, uh, then the authoritative character at the end, who knows what's going on here, I think it's one of their fathers explains, well, they're going to blame it on terrorists because the military industrial complex needs a war on terrorism and looking back on that, I thought that, you know, if there was a source that leaked that plot to the writers of that show, which I don't have any evidence of that, but if that is true, then that seemed like maybe it was a leak and attempt to stop it.
Like you can't do it now because we put it on TV, but it still didn't stop it anyway.
What do you think of that?
You're seeing that?
That's kind of interesting.
And I think, you know, there, there certainly are, have been some theories that, that, uh, there were attempts made to, um, to forestall it by people who may have been in the know about what might be coming up.
I don't know.
I mean, I just, uh, you know, having been in the government, I have, I have two things to say, having been in the government.
The first thing I would say is that it's almost impossible to conceive that a secret of this magnitude could be kept in the government as long as I don't believe the people who say, oh yeah, but if anybody opened their mouth, they send around a hit team and shoot them.
No, that's not the way it works.
And I cannot believe that a secret of this magnitude could be kept so that that's the one thing.
But on the other hand, I believe that almost anything is possible given some of the lunatics that I've seen at senior levels of the U S government, particularly in places like CIA.
And there were people that were certifiably insane there that should have been locked up, but they were, they were senior officers instead, and they were doing goofy stuff.
So it's, uh, anything is possible.
Well, you know what too, and this was going to be part of my rant about what I imagined that very day was that, um, that sort of the story, the whisper inside the administration was we're going to let one through something like that.
That was just my intuition about it.
And then there's that thing from Ron Susskind about the day that the CIA gave Bush his presidential daily brief that said Al Qaeda determined to attack inside the United States on August 6th, 2001.
And according to Susskind, Bush turned to the CIA briefer and said, okay, you've covered your ass, which to me, and I'm, I'm, I have to speculate here, but it seems like, come on, I mean, between the lines, what he's saying is, you know, and I know, and you and I both know that each other knows that we're letting the next one through, but I see how you are CIA briefer.
You want to come here and pretend like you tried to warn me, huh?
Okay, fine.
That's what he's saying there, right?
Could be, could be.
All right.
Well, now I'm a damn truther.
I'm a self-hating truther.
Phil is what I am.
All right.
Uh, thank you very much for your time on the show, Phil.
Okay, Scott.
Take care.
All right.
Bye-bye.
