Podcasts about Intelligence Committee

"I'm often asked, as the Chair of the Intelligence Committee, if the threat from China is as bad as it seems. And my answer is always no, it's much worse." Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) joins Trey to discuss how spending over a decade in the Senate has led him to see just how critical of an economic and military threat China is to the United States. He shares why informing the American people of this threat is so important and ultimately drove him to write his new book, 'Seven Things You Can't Say About China,' which further explores why China's rapid military buildup, growing nuclear arsenal, and cyber capabilities should not be ignored. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

RAW and UNCENSORED:Mike Rogers joins me ahead of his U.S. Senate announcement.We confront his past on the Intelligence Committee, his support for CISPA, and the growing conservative battle to defend civil liberties.No holds barred.#GrassrootsArmy #PatriotsRisingFit, Healthy & Happy Podcast Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

On this episode of the podcast, Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry breaks down the latest from inside the Intelligence Committee hearing, calling out the media for ignoring the Trump Administration's achievements — like resolving 80% of FEMA cases in North Carolina within 45 days of being on the job. He goes on to make the case as to why FEMA should be decentralized in order to enhance disaster response. The Congressman sounds the alarm on China's land purchases near sensitive U.S. sites, including a Bitcoin mining operation near a nuclear missile facility.The Keystone Republican also pushes for transparency in government investigations, slams media bias, and discusses legislation that he has reintroduced in the U.S. House that defunds National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) due to their left-wing propaganda. Furthermore, the retired Brigadier General who served in our military for nearly four decades highlights United States military advancements, including the F-47.You can follow the Congressman on social media by searching for his handle: @RepScottPerry.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On Episode 79, we discuss why the NSICOP Act limits what Pierre Poilievre can say after he gets a security briefing, we tell you about the curious constitutional challenge to closing some of Ontario's safe injection sites, and we consider the constitutionality of an export tax on oil.Stories and cases discussed in this week's episode:Carney refuses to rule out export taxes on Alberta oil or Sask uranium and potash against US (Western Standard)Protecting Vulnerable Social Infrastructure By-law (City of Vaughan)CSIS alleges India organized support for Poilievre's 2022 Conservative leadership bidRe: Exported Natural Gas Tax, 1982 CanLII 189 (SCC), [1982] 1 SCR 1004 (CanLii)Ontario consumption sites free to relocate, court hears, contrary to past statements (CP24)Supreme Court to hear challenge of law that curbs spy watchdog members (CBC News)National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, SC 2017, c 15 (CanLii)Not Reserving Judgment is a podcast about Canadian constitutional law hosted by Josh Dehaas, Joanna Baron, and Christine Van Geyn.The show is brought to you by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a non-partisan legal charity dedicated to defending rights and freedoms. To support our work, visit theccf.ca/donate.

An annual Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats took place but it was a Signal chatgroup among several of the president's national-security leaders that topped the headlines. Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat that was discussing plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee grilled Trump administration officials on why it happened, Republicans downplayed the leak, but it is still yet to be seen if the fallout from the leak will continue. FOX's John Saucier speaks with Chad Pergram, Senior Congressional Correspondent for FOX News Channel, who attended the hearing and tells us what both parties are saying about the leak of military information. Click Here To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An annual Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats took place but it was a Signal chatgroup among several of the president's national-security leaders that topped the headlines. Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat that was discussing plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee grilled Trump administration officials on why it happened, Republicans downplayed the leak, but it is still yet to be seen if the fallout from the leak will continue. FOX's John Saucier speaks with Chad Pergram, Senior Congressional Correspondent for FOX News Channel, who attended the hearing and tells us what both parties are saying about the leak of military information. Click Here To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An annual Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats took place but it was a Signal chatgroup among several of the president's national-security leaders that topped the headlines. Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat that was discussing plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee grilled Trump administration officials on why it happened, Republicans downplayed the leak, but it is still yet to be seen if the fallout from the leak will continue. FOX's John Saucier speaks with Chad Pergram, Senior Congressional Correspondent for FOX News Channel, who attended the hearing and tells us what both parties are saying about the leak of military information. Click Here To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. Heather Wilson, a 1982 Air Force Academy graduate, formerly the 24th Secretary of the Air Force, and first USAFA graduate to hold the position, discusses her unexpected journey to the role, emphasizing the importance of integrity, service, and leadership. ----more---- SUMMARY Dr. Wilson shares her unexpected journey into leadership, the importance of integrity, and the lessons learned from both successes and failures. She reflects on her family legacy, the influence of mentors, and how her military background shaped her leadership style. Dr. Wilson emphasizes the value of collecting tools for leadership and adapting to different environments while maintaining core values. In this conversation, she discusses the importance of finding purpose in one's mission and the value of relationships, particularly family support. She reflects on her journey as a woman in leadership, the significance of legacy in public service, and her unexpected path to serving in Congress. Dr. Wilson emphasizes the lessons learned in collaboration and the importance of humor in leadership, ultimately encouraging future leaders to uphold high standards and not to shame their families.   SHARE THIS EPISODE LINKEDIN | FACEBOOK   TAKEAWAYS Dr. Wilson's journey to becoming Secretary of the Air Force was unexpected and transformative. Leadership often requires owning failures and focusing on solutions. Integrity is foundational to effective leadership and builds trust. Adapting leadership styles to different cultures is essential for success. Mentorship and influences from family play a significant role in shaping leaders. Collecting tools and knowledge is crucial for effective leadership. Quality management principles can be applied to various fields, including education and social services. Leadership is not linear; it involves navigating different paths and chapters. Building strong teams and hiring the right people is vital for organizational success. Direct communication and honesty are key components of effective leadership. Doing things that matter with people you like is essential. The most important decision in life can be personal, like choosing a partner. Family support enriches life and provides joy. Women in leadership often face unique challenges but can pave the way for others. Legacy is about making lasting changes in systems and strategies. Unexpected opportunities can lead to significant career changes. Collaboration and giving credit to others is key in leadership roles. Humor can help create a relaxed atmosphere in serious environments. Education is crucial for transforming lives and communities. Leadership is not always a straight path; adaptability is important.   EPISODE CHAPTERS 00:00  Introduction to Long Blue Leadership 01:25  Unexpected Call to Leadership 03:16  Lessons from Leadership Challenges 08:28  The Importance of Integrity 10:07  Adapting Leadership Styles 12:23  Influences and Mentorship 15:25  Family Legacy and Influence 17:41  Learning from Team Members 21:29  Applying Quality Management Principles 24:07  Navigating Non-Linear Leadership Paths 24:20  Finding Purpose in Mission and Relationships 28:06  The Importance of Family Support 30:08  Navigating Leadership as a Woman 34:30  Legacy and Impact in Public Service 36:29  Unexpected Paths: Serving in Congress 41:03  Lessons in Collaboration and Leadership   ABOUT DR. WILSON - IMAGES AND BIO COURTESY OF UTEP BIO Dr. Heather Wilson became the 11th President of The University of Texas at El Paso in 2019 after serving as Secretary of the United States Air Force. She is the former president of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and she represented New Mexico in the United States Congress for 10 years.  Active in community and national affairs, she is a member of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, and serves as a board member of the Texas Space Commission. She was the inaugural Chair of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities, and is a member of the board of directors of Lockheed Martin Corporation. Dr. Wilson is the granddaughter of immigrants and was the first person in her family to go to college. She graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in the third class to admit women and earned her master's and doctoral degrees from Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar. UTEP is located on the U.S.-Mexico border – in the fifth largest manufacturing region in North America – and serves over 24,000 students with 170 bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs in nine colleges and schools. In the top 5% of public universities in the United States for research and designated a community-engaged university by the Carnegie Foundation, UTEP is America's leading Hispanic-serving university. It is the fourth largest research university in Texas and serves a student body that is 84% Hispanic. President Wilson is an instrument rated private pilot. She and her husband, Jay Hone, have two adult children and two granddaughters. Dr. Heather Wilson served as the 24th Secretary of the Air Force and was responsible for the affairs of the Department of the Air Force, including the organizing, training and equipping and providing for the welfare of 660,000 Active-Duty, Guard, Reserve and civilian forces their families. She provided oversight of the Air Force's annual budget of more than $132 billion and directs strategy and policy development, risk management, weapons acquisition, technology investments and human resource management across a global enterprise. Dr. Wilson has more than 35 years of professional experience in a range of leadership and management roles in the military, higher education, government and private industry. Before assuming her current position, Dr. Wilson was president of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, an engineering and science research university. From 1998 to 2009, Dr. Wilson was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served on the House Armed Services Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Before being elected to Congress, Dr. Wilson was a cabinet secretary in New Mexico's state government responsible for foster care, adoption, juvenile delinquency, children's mental health and early childhood education. From 1989 to 1991 Wilson served on the National Security Council staff as director for defense policy and arms control for President George H.W. Bush during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. From 1991 to1995 and again from 2009 to 2013 Wilson was in the private sector. In 1991, she founded Keystone International, Inc., a company that did business development and program planning work for defense and scientific industry. She served as a senior advisor to several national laboratories on matters related to nuclear weapons, non-proliferation, arms control verification, intelligence and the defense industrial base. Wilson also served on the boards of two publicly traded corporations as well as numerous advisory and non-profit boards.   CONNECT WITH DR. WILSON LINKEDIN  |  UTEP     ALL PAST LBL EPISODES  |  ALL LBLPN PRODUCTIONS AVAILABLE ON ALL MAJOR PODCAST PLATFORMS     FULL TRANSCRIPT SPEAKERS Guest:  Dr. Heather Wilson '82  |  Hosts:  Lt. Col. (Ret.) Naviere Walkewicz '99   Naviere Walkewicz  00:00 Welcome to Long Blue Leadership, the podcast where we share insights on leadership through the lives and experiences of Air Force Academy graduates. I'm Naviere Walkowicz, Class of '99. Our story is about a leader who reached heights fellow Air Force Academy graduates had not reached before her, and this was at a time when opportunities to do so were still new. My guest is Dr. Heather Wilson, Class of '82. As you heard, she served as the 24th secretary of the Air Force, but there is a unique distinction attached to that. Dr Wilson, welcome to Long Blue Leadership; we have much to discuss. Let's start with you becoming the secretary of the Air Force, our 24th.   Dr. Heather Wilson  00:37 Yeah, that wasn't part of my life's plan. Secretary Designate Mattis did call me. I was in South Dakota as the president of the South Dakota School of Mines and my cell phone rang and he said, “This is Jim Mattis, and I want to talk to you about becoming secretary of the Air Force.” And honest to goodness, my initial answer was, “Sir, you do know that being a college president is like the best job in America, right?” And he said, “Yeah, I know. I just came from Stanford.” And I said, “I didn't apply for any job. I mean, I like it out... I'm a gal of the West. I like the mountains. I like hiking and biking and fly fishing.” And he said, “Yeah, I know. I grew up on the Columbia River in Washington.” And I thought, “This isn't working,” but we talked several more times, and it was pretty clear that I was being called to serve in a way that I didn't anticipate, but that was what I was supposed to do.   Naviere Walkewicz  01:35 What a transformative moment in your life, I'm sure.   Dr. Heather Wilson  01:38 Well, it was. Again, my entire life, I think, is a diversion from its planned course. But I turned out — I didn't anticipate that, and it meant — my husband doesn't really much like big East Coast cities that rain a lot and have a lot of traffic, and so from a family point of view, it wasn't what we personally wanted to do, but you're called to serve. And we've been called to serve in different ways in our lives and sometimes, even if it feels inconvenient, you're still called to serve. It turned out to be wonderful and I really enjoyed the experience, both of working with Sec. Mattis, but also getting back to spending time with airmen. And so it turned out to be wonderful, but it wasn't what I expected.   Naviere Walkewicz  02:25 Well, you said it, ma'am. As we know, service and leadership aren't linear, and so we're really excited to dive into some of those experiences today. Maybe share, as secretary of the Air Force, some of those moments in leadership that stuck with you. Let's just kind of start there.   Dr. Heather Wilson  02:42 Certainly. There were good days and not so good days. I think one of the things that I really benefited from was that I had a partner in the chief of staff, Dave Goldfein, who was absolutely fantastic. And we've remained very close friends. We started at the Academy the same day and he would joke and tell people that we didn't graduate on the same day because he went stop-out for a year. But we didn't know each other well as cadets, but we were formed by some of the same experiences and I think that helped tremendously. I didn't really understand that in our system of government, the civilian secretary has almost all the authority, but the chief of staff has almost all of the influence. And if you can figure out how to work together, you can get a heck of a lot done. And Dave and I both had that same approach, and it turned out to be a great partnership.   Naviere Walkewicz  03:42 That's pretty incredible. In fact, the time of your service in that role, I was actually working under your umbrella at U.S. STRATCOM. I was at Strategic Command there as a government civilian and as a reservist. And so, I can certainly speak to, I think, some of the amazing things that you did. Can you share a little — you talked about some ups and downs. What was maybe one of the failures as secretary of the Air Force that you learned from that helped you throughout your life?   Dr. Heather Wilson  04:11 Well, I know the day. I think it was Nov. 5, 2017, and it was a Sunday, late morning or early afternoon, and my phone rang. I was upstairs in the study in my row house in Virginia and it was the inspector general, Gen. Syed. And that morning, a young man had walked into a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and opened fire and killed a lot of people, and it turned out he had been an airman, and the general said, “You know, we're not sure yet, but he may have been convicted of a crime that would have required us to tell the FBI and the national criminal records check system that he had committed a crime that would not allow him to purchase a weapon, but we may have failed to notify.” We didn't know, we wouldn't know that afternoon but I talked to the chief and we all got together on Monday morning at 9 a.m. and Gen. Syed confirmed that he was an airman, he had been convicted of a domestic violence-related crime, and we had not properly notified the FBI, and as a result, he had been able to buy a weapon. Um, that was not a good day. And we talked about what we should do next, and our general counsel wasn't there — he was traveling that morning, but a more junior lawyer was there, who suggested kind of — and, you know, other people said, well — it actually got worse because there was an IG investigation, an internal audit from several years before, that showed that all of the services were not properly reporting to the national criminal records system. So we hadn't fixed the problem. We knew; we had been informed there was a problem and hadn't fixed it. And some people said, “Well, you weren't here at the time.” That doesn't matter. You wear the uniform, or you wear the cloak of office, and you have to take responsibility for the institution. And of course, the lawyers would say, “Well, you know, maybe you want to fuzz this and not take — you know, there's investigation going on,” or something. But we knew enough of the facts that morning, Monday morning, and Dave Goldfein and I decided to own it, to own the failure and focus on fixing the problem. And we did. And in the short term that was very uncomfortable. We sat in front of the Pentagon press corps and took their questions, and we went to Capitol Hill and informed the members of Congress on what had been done and not been done and why. But in the long term, by owning failure, we were able to focus on fixing the problem rather than just trying to manage responsibility and accountability, and it turned out to be a much better approach. So, sometimes the most important lesson is to own failure.   Naviere Walkewicz 07:09 I'm so glad you shared that, ma'am, because I think some people have a fear of failure, but there are many times when failure is inevitable, and to your point, owning it is the right approach. Something you said when you're sharing that, it made me think about us as cadets and our core values: integrity first. And that really resonated with how your approach was. Would you say that was born for you at the Academy and kind of through your career that's where it stayed, or has that always been part of your fabric?   Dr. Heather Wilson  07:36 I think the Academy was absolutely formative in that way, in the Honor Code. And, you know, integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do, now replaces what was there when I was a cadet, over the archway there. But I think that's woven into the fabric for airmen, and it's part of our culture, and it drives you. And I think — you know now we look at, how do we evaluate officers? It's the same way I now evaluate leaders — any leaders that work with me — and it's the way I evaluate myself: accomplish the mission, lead people, manage resources and make your unit better, all on a foundation of values. But it's that last part of it: all on a foundation of values. If you don't have that, the rest of it almost doesn't matter. You can try to make your unit better, but if you're lying about it, nobody's going to trust you. If you're leading people and managing resources, but you don't have integrity, it doesn't matter. So, integrity first, and that commitment to trying to be honest and direct with people builds those relationships of trust, which lasts for decades throughout a career.   Naviere Walkewicz  08:53 Absolutely. And the key word, I think, that foundation you talked about — how has that foundation served you in leadership as you've explored other areas outside of the military, amazing roles leading UTEP, also at the South Dakota School of Mines, in higher education? I'm sure that there's a translation of what that looks like. Can you share maybe an example of how that came into play?   Dr. Heather Wilson  09:15 Sure, it happens all the time. I think in any leadership position, whether you're in corporate life, in community life and a nonprofit, or in higher education, leading with a foundation of values, being honest, complying with the law, following the rules or changing the rules. It doesn't mean — that's one of the things that I think is probably important for leaders. You get to a point as a leader where your job is not just to follow the rules, but to look at the systems and identify the rules that need to be changed, but to be direct and honest about that too. Where it's not “Well, I think this rule doesn't make any sense, so I'm going to skirt it,” or “I'm not going to tell people that I've complied with something and I haven't.” In fact, you know that happened to me this morning. I got a disclosure that I was supposed to sign for a report that was published yesterday to the director of National Intelligence on a committee that I serve on, and they sent this kind of notification on what you can talk about publicly, and all of those things, and I hadn't given up my right to speak publicly about unclassified matters, and I responded, “I understand what you've said. I want to let you know that this is how I interpret this, and this is the way I'm going to act.” I was very direct about it. “I didn't give up my First Amendment rights as a citizen because I worked on your task force.” So, very direct. And I think that directness is something that — not all cultures are that way, including higher education culture. I have to be a little bit careful about that sometimes — the airman's tendency to have a frank debrief isn't always the way other cultures and work cultures are. They're just not always like that, so, I have to be a little bit careful sometimes that I don't crush people's will to live or something.   Naviere Walkewicz  11:13 I was actually thinking about that as you were speaking how, if you have the foundation, especially from the military, we kind of understand that directive approach and certainly those core values that we know of. And I'm curious, how do you adapt as a leader to those who maybe don't have that foundation? How do you bring them up to speed and kind of help them establish that?   Dr. Heather Wilson  11:32 Well, it's a two-way street. It means that I have to understand the culture that I'm in and the way in which I talk with senior faculty may be slightly different than the way I might talk to somebody who just got off a flight line and was too low and slow on final or something, you know? But at the same time with both a sense of humor and a little bit of grace… It was really funny when I was at South Dakota Mines, my provost was a long-time academic. And of course, I had served in Congress for 10 years as well. And he once said something to me that just made me crack up. He said, “You know, you are the least political president I've ever worked with. And the funny thing is, you're the only one that was really a politician.” And he said, “You remind me more of a military officer.” And I thought, “Yeah, that's probably true.” But I was fairly direct as a member of Congress as well. And so, I've just found that that works better for me in life, I guess.   Naviere Walkewicz  12:37 You were sharing how, you know, I think it was the provost that said that you really didn't remind him as someone that was very political, even though you're the only politician he's known. And so what was your time like serving in Congress? I mean, that's 10 years you did, I think, correct?   Dr. Heather Wilson  12:52 I did. And again, I didn't expect to serve in Congress. My predecessor became very seriously ill shortly before the filing deadline for the election that happened in 1998, and my phone rang. It was a Thursday night. This happens to me. I don't know why, but it was a Thursday night, and my phone rang. I was working in Santa Fe, cabinet secretary for Child Welfare, and it was Sen. Pete Domenici, the senior senator for the state of New Mexico. And he said, “You don't know anything about this, but I'm coming to New Mexico this weekend, and I want to talk to you about running for Congress.” Well, that's a quiz; that's not a question. Because a quiz has a right answer, which is, “Sir, I'd be happy to talk to you about whatever you want to talk about.” He's a United States senator. So, we talked about all kinds of things, and he called me from the airport when he was heading back to Washington that Sunday night, and he said, “Look, if you will run, I will help you.” And I decided to run. It was eight days before the filing deadline. I talked to my predecessor — he was fighting skin cancer — and said, “Look, why don't you just focus on fighting cancer? Two years from now, if you want to run again, you can have this seat back. I'll try to do my best for the next two years.” And then 30 days later, he died. I mean, you're not supposed to die of skin cancer. And so, I ended up serving for 10 years in the Congress in a very difficult swing district that I probably shouldn't have won in the first place. But I enjoyed the service part of it. I enjoyed the policy work part of it — intellectually challenging. Some of the partisan silliness I didn't like very much. And then when I left the Congress, ran on successfully for the Senate and became a university president. One of the great things — I tell people now that I was released from Congress early for good behavior. But it was nice to be in a town where people were waving at me with all five fingers. I mean, it was wonderful. So, I enjoyed the service, and I enjoyed a lot helping people — doing casework and things. But it was also a little bit less of a partisan time where you could try to listen and learn and serve well and try to serve your constituents without just being under attack mercilessly and in social media, or something. It was maybe perhaps a different age.   Naviere Walkewicz  15:25 Well, I chuckled when you said waving with all five fingers. That got a good one out of me. I thought about when you're in that, because that wasn't something you were looking to do, and this seems to be a bit of a theme in your leadership trajectory as well. You've kind of been tapped on the shoulder, and you know, for the ones that you didn't apply for or run for, plan for, have been such transformative positions in your life.   Dr. Heather Wilson  15:50 Yeah, and I think maybe that happens to people more than we might acknowledge, because when we're planning our lives, we think we know what's going to happen, but in reality, we adapt to situations that develop and opportunities open that you didn't know were there or someone asked you to take on a special project and that leads you in a direction that you didn't anticipate. So while mine seem particularly unusual in these very different chapters of my life, I don't think it's all that unusual. We just look forward and project in straight lines, and when we look backward, we tell a story in a narrative and it's not always a straight line. But I've been blessed to be asked to do some things. And perhaps in our relationship, my husband and I, he doesn't like change. I love it, and so in our relationship, he's kind of the keel and I'm kind of the sail, and together, we go places.   Naviere Walkewicz  16:56 That's awesome. And I think that particular time and journey in your career serving in Congress was probably one that you established new tools in your leadership toolbox. Were there any that particularly stood out — moments, either when you were having to, you know, forge new policy or achieve things that you hadn't prior? Because Congress is a kind of different machine.   Dr. Heather Wilson  17:21 Yeah, it's a very big committee, and it's not executive leadership. And so I'm probably more predisposed to executive leadership than just being on committees. It takes a very long time to get anything done in Congress, and our government is intentionally designed that way to protect us from tyranny. So you have to take that philosophical approach to it, even if you're frustrated day to day. I did learn how to get things done by giving other people credit. And there were several times — the changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is probably one example — where I had sponsored legislation in the House. It had taken quite a bit of time — changing Congress. There were continued problems, and I went to others and tried to put them in positions of leadership and support them. And ultimately, it was a Senate bill that passed, but which had been shaped in the background by multiple people, including me, and I was OK with that. And the same thing happened on pieces of legislation about public lands in New Mexico. I remember I came out in favor of doing something in northern New Mexico with respect to some public lands, and I got out ahead of Pete Domenici and he was not happy about that. He was very clear about not being happy about getting a little bit ahead of him on it. But in the end, the piece of legislation there that was signed, and another one on Zia Pueblo were Senate bills. They weren't House bills. But I had moved things forward on the House side, and it didn't matter to me that that it said “S” rather than “H” in front of the name of the bill. So as long as you don't really care about who gets the credit, you can get a lot done in the Congress.   Naviere Walkewicz  19:11 That is a powerful lesson. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I think there's a Contrails quote, and I can't remember all of it, but I remember the end of it is, “…if you don't care who gets the credit.”   Dr. Heather Wilson  19:11 Yeah, that was probably one of the short ones. Schofield's quote was — we all did pushups for those.   Naviere Walkewicz  19:30 Yes, I had a starting moment. I was about to get down…   Dr. Heather Wilson  19:35 … and start to sweat…   Naviere Walkewicz  19:37 … and take my punishment. That was wonderful, ma'am. I'm glad we actually went back and did that journey.   Dr. Heather Wilson  19:42 When I think about my service in the Congress, where I made the most difference, it was in committee work, and particularly on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where I served for a significant amount of time, including post-9/11. And I think that work, because the Intelligence Committee, most of it is in private, it's dealing with really hard, really important issues, and you don't bring your staff there. You have to do the work. And I think probably that's where I did some of my most important work as a member of Congress, was in Intelligence.   Naviere Walkewicz  20:18 Thank you for sharing that. Who are some other influencers, some key influencers in your life, that have maybe walked alongside you or helped you in these different roles that you've carried in your amazing career.   Dr. Heather Wilson  20:31 Oh, they're different people at different times, but certainly as a young person, my grandfather was very important to me. My grandfather had been one of the first flyers in the RAF in World War I, and then came to America in 1922 and flew in the Second World War for what became the Civil Air Patrol. So he did sub search off the Atlantic coast, and varied parts, around to bases, in New England. So, he was important to me as a child. My dad died when I was young. My dad also had been enlisted in the Air Force. He was a crew chief and also a pilot, commercial pilot, after he got out of the service. So I grew up around airplanes and my grandfather was very important to me, and there were other people along the way. When I was a cadet, there was a group commander, Lieutenant Colonel — it's funny, you still remember… anyone who remembers my middle initial, I know it's like, “Oh, this may not be good,” but Robert L. Rame, Lt. Col. Robert L. Rame was the 4th Group commander and my first Air Officer Commanding. General — sorry, Maj. William S. Reeder. He was an Army officer and had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Really, I was terrified of disappointing him. It's funny, I just got a Christmas card from him. Life's long, right?   Naviere Walkewicz  21:53 Wow. What connections. I'd like to kind of go back a little bit to your grandfather. You said he was really important to you in your life. Can you share maybe some of the ways he influenced you? Obviously, you're third-generation aviator in your family. Is that how you knew you're going to go into service?   Dr. Heather Wilson  22:08 Well, the Academy wasn't an option until I was a junior in high school, and so I knew I was going to college, but I didn't really think about where. And then they opened the Air Force Academy to women when I was a junior in high school. So, my grandfather had two sons, and he had five grandsons, and me. But he was pretty — I would say — the way he might say it is he was pretty sweet on me; he and I were very close. We used to play chess after school when I was in high school, and I remember once we just finished playing chess, and I was a senior in high school — so, my grandfather was an aviator; he was also a mechanic. He could use any tool, I mean, he was just amazing with his hands. And I had learned a new tool in school, and I took out a piece of graph paper and I drew a drew a curve, and I said, “Grandpa, do you think you could find the area under this curve?” And he said, “Well, I'd probably count up the squares and estimate from there on the graph paper.” And I then I showed him something new and it was called calculus, and it was the first time in my life that I realized I had a tool that my grandfather didn't have. He had a high school education and had gone into the RAF during the First World War, and he was a great mechanic and a really good man, but I realized that there were opportunities for me that maybe my grandfather never had.   Naviere Walkewicz  23:56 I actually got chill bumps when you shared that. Pretty powerful. Thank you so much. Can you talk about, throughout your career — you said if people remember your middle initial, and I'm sure that many on the military side would, because you're amazing… Have you learned from anyone maybe that is not a mentor of you, but someone that has kind of come under your wing? Can you share some leadership lessons that you've learned from those serving alongside and under you?   Dr. Heather Wilson  24:24 Oh my gosh, I learn stuff every day from the people whom I'm privileged to work with. And one of the things that I learned over time was, and as you get more senior, the most important thing you do as a senior leader is hire good people who know things that you don't know, because it's not possible to know everything you need to know to lead a large organization. So, you have to organize yourself well and then get great people and let them do their job. So, I learn things every day. I was interviewing somebody yesterday that we're trying to attract to come to the university who is on the communication side of things — marketing and communication and branding. And you know that creative, visual side of my brain, if you did a brain scan, it would be like a dark hole. That's not a strength of mine. And so those kinds of things are — you have to realize what your strengths are, and then to fill in the team and put together a team, which together can accomplish the mission.   Naviere Walkewicz  25:34 I'd say your grandfather is still kind of, you know, influencing that. It's almost like you're filling your toolbox with all those areas.   Dr. Heather Wilson  25:43 That's funny you use that word. I've told this story before, but my father was both a pilot and a mechanic, and he built an experimental aircraft in our house, and we lived on this, kind of the last house that they would plow to on the end of the road in the winter, right? So, in a very small town, and at that time, there were still traveling salesmen, and the Snap-on tools guy would come probably every six weeks or so, and he had this, like red truck with an accordion thing on the back that looked just like the toolbox in the corner of the garage, right? And we knew that when the Snap-on tools guy came, do not go out. I mean, it was like Christmas for my dad. Do not interfere when the Snap-on tools guy is there. And so he'd go out and lean against the truck, and we could see him laughing and stuff. And eventually my dad would reach in his pocket and pull out his billfold and give the guy a bill, and he'd go back, and he'd lift up the back of the accordion thing and reach in there and give my dad a tool. And my dad would — then the truck would back out, and go on to his next stop. But my dad would take that tool and we'd scramble into the garage to see what he got and stuff. And my dad would usually put that tool in the box in the corner and then go back to what he was doing that day, working on his car or whatever he was doing. And it occurred to me that my dad didn't need that tool that day, but he collected tools, and someday he'd need that tool. And I think great leaders collect tools even when they don't need them today, because they're going to be times when you bring everybody to — you know, there's that great scene in Apollo 13, but it happens around the staff and Cabinet table, and it'll happen in your planning room as a pilot where you've got a new problem, and everybody brings in their tools and says, “OK, how can we make a carbon monoxide filter, or carbon dioxide filter, out of what we've got here on the table?” So, collect tools. And I think that's one of the things I learned from my dad.     Naviere Walkewicz  28:00 Oh, that is an amazing story. Can you share maybe a tool that you've had in your toolbox, that you learned way back when, maybe at the Academy, or as a young girl, that you've recently pulled out and used?   Dr. Heather Wilson 28:12 Well, one of them — I'm not so sure it's recent, but when I was a small business owner, there was a group in New Mexico called Quality New Mexico, and they taught small business owners the Baldrige Principles for quality management. And then I ended up being the Cabinet secretary for child welfare in New Mexico. So, I took over a foster care system, which was under a federal consent decree for not getting kids forever homes and an overly crowded juvenile justice system. I mean, every intractable social problem was — I realized after a while why I became Cabinet secretary for child welfare, because nobody else wanted that job. I mean it was a really difficult job, but I had these tools on quality management. I thought, “I think we can apply these same principles to improving foster care, to improving the juvenile justice system.” And so we did, and there's some things I was proud of there, but one of my last acts as Cabinet secretary before I ended up leaving and running for Congress was to sign the end of the federal consent decree that had been in place for 18 years that said that the state was not getting foster kids forever homes. We changed the system, but we did it using those quality management principles, which I had learned as a small business owner almost as a lark. So, there's one example. But, you know, we just went through a global pandemic. It was very much a pickup game. Nobody had ever been through that. So, we all got together and figured out how we could use the tools we had, including the research capability on my campus to be able to sequence DNA so that we could do testing on campus and get the results, ultimately, within six hours and then feed that back so we could detect disease before someone was symptomatic, so you could suppress disease on campus for those who had to be on campus. There's some things you can't do remotely. And so, we had our own testing system on campus, which was remarkable. Well, why'd we have that? Because we had some tools in the box.   Naviere Walkewicz  30:37 Well, you've used those tools amazingly as you've navigated your career. How would you say that — because yours is… we talked about not being linear. It's kind of been multiple paths and…   Dr. Heather Wilson 30:50 Different chapters.   Naviere Walkewicz 30:51 Yes, I love that. Different chapters. How would you say that you've navigated leadership through that? And has there been a thread that's been common through all those different chapters that you've…   Dr. Heather Wilson  31:04 Yeah, we talked a little about integrity, and that certainly is there. But I when, when people say things like, you know, “Why are you at UTEP?” Or, “Why did you shift to higher ed?” Or, “Why did…” The mission matters so developing people matters. Defending the country matters. So, a mission that matters with people I like. And I realized that when you get down to it, you should do things that matter with people you like and if that's your filter, as long as you can put food on the table, there's a lot of different things you can do, but it should be something that matters with people you like. Otherwise, that time between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. can seem forever unless you're doing something you like.   Naviere Walkewicz  31:49 That is a powerful thread. Mission matters with people you like. How has your family supported you through this?   Dr. Heather Wilson  31:56 I live a blessed life. I tell this to students, and probably, as a younger woman, I wouldn't have said these things because I was so focused on being taken seriously, I suppose. But, I lightened up after time and realized, OK, I'm probably too serious. But the most important decision I've made in my life is not to go to the Academy or to run for Congress or to become a college president — none of those things are the most important decision I've made in my life. The most important decision I made in my life was to marry the guy I married. I married a guy who's actually retired Air Force now, but he was a lawyer. Despite that, he's a nice guy and sometimes, I think, particularly for women, there's always that fear that you're going to sit down when you're in a getting into a serious relationship, and it's going to be one of those conversations that says, “OK, we're thinking about making this permanent. Who's going to give up her career?” And it's not really a conversation, or at least maybe it wasn't in my era, but Jay never had that conversation with me. It was always we could do more together than either of us could do alone, and he has been so supportive of me. And, yeah, vice versa. But I had to go back east for something last week, and I knew that even in this big reception that I was in with all these people, that he wasn't going to be there, and if he was, he'd still be the most interesting guy in the room. So, I married well, and my family always — we're a very close family. And I think while my obligations to my family didn't end at the front porch, my family gave richness and dimension to my life that I never really anticipated as a young woman, and it's given me joy. Success seemed possible to achieve; joy always seemed like a gift from God, and I have had joy because of my family.   Naviere Walkewicz  34:18 Thank you for sharing that. You talk about when you're hiring, you choose people that kind of fill gaps, but it sounds like, also on your personal team, you want to make sure that you're choosing it, you know...   Dr. Heather Wilson  34:30 Yeah, you're going to be roommates for a long time. That matters. And there's the things that you just kind of have to get over. You know, I'm not going to clean around his sink, and he's not going to be bothered about the fact that my closet's color coordinated. I mean, we just live with that, right?   Naviere Walkewicz  34:49 I appreciate that about you so much. You talked a minute ago about some things you learned about yourself as a leader. You know, “Not take myself too seriously.” Can you share a little bit more about that journey on your own, like that personal leadership journey that you've made?   Dr. Heather Wilson  35:07 Yeah, and I think it's easier as you go on. And honestly, very early on, I was very often the only woman in the room, and so I wanted to be taken seriously. I was also very often the youngest person in the room. And so those two things made me want to be taken seriously. As I went on and got more responsibility, I realized that the truth is I am a very serious and successful woman. My husband would say that I was raised in the home for the humor impaired, and that I've been in therapy with him for over 30 years. So, I gradually learned to see the humor in life. I still am not one that stands up and tells jokes or something, but I see the humor in life and I don't take myself too seriously. The person that I watched who used self-deprecating humor better than any leader I've ever seen was actually Dave Goldfein. Everyone knew when he walked into a room, or if he stood up on a stage at a town hall meeting with a bunch of airmen or something — everybody knew that they were gonna laugh. At some point in that meeting we're gonna laugh, and not at someone else's expense, but at his. And it made people relax around him. He was very, very good at it. But I also knew that his self-deprecating humor was really a cover for exceptional competence, and I never underestimated that, but it made people relax and brought a little bit of joy to whatever intractable problem we were looking at.   Naviere Walkewicz  36:51 Well, you shared about sometimes when you're coming up through your leadership, you were often the only woman in the room and sometimes the youngest in the room. What would you like to share on your thoughts of what has that impact been, and what do you see as your legacy?   Dr. Heather Wilson  37:07 Well, there were some times, particularly early on, when women flying or women in positions of command was new, where you just had to do the job and realize that you were probably changing attitudes as you went and that it would be easier for those who came after you, and that's OK. I don't see that as much anymore. Although, when I was elected to Congress, I think probably 10% to 15% of the House was women. Now it's more than that, and once it gets to be more than 30% in any room, it doesn't sound — it's almost like you walk into a restaurant where it's all guys or all women, and you notice the difference in the room, the tones of the voices and things. Once you get to about a third, it feels like it's comfortable, but early on, I always was very conscious of it and conscious of the obligation to do well, because I was being judged not only for myself, but for an entire group of people. And so, I was sensitive to that, and wanted to make sure that I didn't, like — “Don't shame the family,” right? So make sure that you keep the doors open. As far as legacy is concerned, and I think back in my time as Air Force secretary, I would say there's two things that I hope linger, and they have so far. One is a change to the promotion system to make sure that we have the right kind of talent to choose from at all levels in the organization, and so that, I think, has continued to persist. And the other one that will be changed over time and has to be changed over time, had to do with the science and technology strategy of the Air Force and the need to stay ahead of adversaries. I think this is a completely separate conversation, but I actually think that that we are at greater risk of scientific and technical surprise today than at any time since the end of the Second World War. And if you go back and read books about engineers of victory, or there's a whole lot of books about how science and technology was brought to bear in prevailing in the Second World War. I think we're at risk now in a way that we've kind of become complacent about. So, science and technology strategy is something that I hope is a legacy.   Naviere Walkewicz  39:36 That's amazing, ma'am. And I think not only for our military, but you're able to influence that in the spaces that you are now.   Dr. Heather Wilson  39:43 Yeah, engaging the next generation, which is a heck of a lot of fun. You know, the University of Texas at El Paso is a wonderful institution — 25,000 students, half of them are the first in their families to go to college. About 70% or so come from families making less than about $45,000 a year. So, this is a university that transforms lives, and it's a university that — of my 25,000 students, over 5,000 are studying engineering. Another couple thousand are studying science, College of Nursing, College of Education. This has a tremendous impact on the region and on the lives of those who choose to educate themselves. And so it's a wonderful mission to be part of, and I think it's important for the nation. I think regions of the world who choose to educate their people in the 21st century will thrive, and those that don't are going to be left behind, and that's why I do what I do.   Naviere Walkewicz  40:44 Well, it clearly aligns with your foundation and your mission, ma'am, and I think that's outstanding. We're going to ask for Dr. Wilson's final thoughts next, but before we do, I'd like to take a moment and thank you for listening to Long Blue Leadership. The podcast publishes Tuesdays in both video and audio and is available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Be sure to watch, listen and subscribe to all episodes of Long Blue Leadership at longblueleadership.org. So, Dr. Wilson, I would love to take a moment to gather some of your final thoughts, what you'd like to share today.   Dr. Heather Wilson  41:21 Well, assuming that most of the folks who listen to this are either cadets or young officers or grads, I leave them with one thought, and that is, don't shame the family. Don't shame the family. People will look up to you because you are an Air Force Academy graduate, or you are an Air Force cadet. The standard is higher, so live up to the standard.   Naviere Walkewicz  41:50 Ma'am, we started with you being direct. You ended direct. I think that is amazing. Thank you very much. Thanks for being on Long Blue Leadership.   Dr. Heather Wilson  41:58 My pleasure.     KEYWORDS leadership, Air Force Academy, integrity, mentorship, quality management, Dr. Heather Wilson, military service, personal growth, career journey, unexpected opportunities, leadership, integrity, family support, women in leadership, public service, legacy, mission-driven, personal growth, collaboration, Congress     The Long Blue Line Podcast Network is presented by the U.S. Air Force Academy Association and Foundation    

The fate of two of Trump's most controversial cabinet picks, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, could come down to just a few votes. Here's Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana grilling RFK Jr. during his confirmation: "Convince me that you will become the public health advocate, but not just churn old information so that there's never a conclusion." As a doctor, he's concerned about his long history of pushing vaccine conspiracy theories. But could a vote against RFK cost him his own seat? On the Intelligence Committee, Senators Todd Young and Jerry Moran are holding out on Gabbard's nomination. They're concerned about her past support for pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and her controversial foreign policy stances. A few Republican no-votes could block Kennedy and Gabbard entirely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy Podcast for our especially special Daily Special, Smothered Benedict New Year's Day Wednesday, is now available on the Spreaker Player!Starting off in the Bistro Cafe, former Republican Member of Congress and January 6 Intelligence Committee advisor Denver Riggleman has the receipts Trump wants to hide.Then, on the rest of the menu, the Justice Department accused six major landlords of colluding to keep rents high; a lawsuit alleges racial and gender discrimination led to an Air Force contractor's death; and, Virginia Democrats kept control of the Statehouse in the first elections after Trump's win.After the break, we move to the Chef's Table where the now pro-Putin Austrian far right has a mandate to try to lead a government for the first time since World War II; and, self-exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González, who defeated Maduro in last year's presidential election, said his son-in-law was kidnapped in Caracas.All that and more, on West Coast Cookbook & Speakeasy with Chef de Cuisine Justice Putnam.Bon Appétit!The Netroots Radio Live Player​Keep Your Resistance Radio Beaming 24/7/365!“It may be safely averred that good cookery is the best and truest economy, turning to full account every wholesome article of food, and converting into palatable meals what the ignorant either render uneatable or throw away in disdain.” - Eliza Acton ‘Modern Cookery for Private Families' (1845)Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/west-coast-cookbook-speakeasy--2802999/support.

From Marco Rubio to Elise Stefanik: who are the nominations that President-elect Trump has announced, and what does their selection say about how the administration may take shape? Julie Fishman Rayman, AJC Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs reviews the names announced thus far, how, if confirmed, they could impact efforts to counter antisemitism, support Israel, and uphold democratic values, and how AJC is advocating to advance these critical issues.  Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: with Hen Mazzig, Einat Admony, and more. People of the Pod:  What the Election Results Mean for Israel and the Jewish People The Jewish Vote in Pennsylvania: What You Need to Know Sinwar Eliminated: What Does This Mean for the 101 Hostages Still Held by Hamas? Go Deeper – AJC Analysis: Explainer: What to Know About President-elect Trump on Antisemitism, Israel, and Iran Policy AJC Briefing — Post-Election Analysis: What to Expect Under the New U.S. Administration | Tuesday, November 19 | 1:30 p.m. Eastern | Register Here Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of Conversation with Julie Fishman Rayman: Manya Brachear Pashman:   President Elect Donald Trump has named and nominated eight of the 24 officials, including his chief of staff, most of whom would make up his cabinet. Returning to discuss the nominees so far and where they stand on AJC missions of fighting antisemitism, defending Israel and safeguarding democracy, is AJC Managing Director of Policy and Political Affairs, Julie Fishman Rayman. Julie, welcome back to People of the Pod. Julie Fishman Rayman:   Thanks for having me, Manya, glad to be here. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So you have worked with some of these nominees, and you know their track record on these issues. First of all, from a 30,000-40,000 foot view, what is your overall take on the slate so far? Julie Fishman Rayman:   I feel like if you had asked me that yesterday, I would have had a totally different answer. And so I imagine even by the time People of the {od airs, my answer maybe would have even changed, so I will answer, but I want everyone, including our listeners, to take it with a grain of salt that I am speaking from a very specific moment in tim while the clock is rapidly changing and the situation is rapidly changing. So I think the initial slate of potential nominees that were announced gave a lot of folks, especially in sort of the foreign policy world, a good deal of comfort, right?  So people like Representative Mike Waltz, people like Senator Marco Rubio, those types of folks. Even Governor Huckabee, are sort of these, these names of traditional conservatives who we say, Oh, they have a record. They have governed. They have a voting record. We know exactly where they stand and what they believe, and that it's not vastly dissimilar from any other previous Republican administration.  Then, of course, there was the news about the potential coming in of Matt Gaetz, representative, Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida and Tulsi Gabbard. And I think those names and what they represent put everyone in a bit of a tailspin. Not simply because of who they are, although they come with a lot of really interesting backstory that we can unpack, if you want to, but not just because of who they are, but because they represent a really different part of the Republican Party. A really different part of the right wing world view that had not theretofore been represented in Trump's cabinet picks, definitely less of the traditional conservative mindset and much more in line with a, dare I say, like populist kind of perspective. And so there's tension now that people are trying to sort of understand and unravel. Manya Brachear Pashman:   So let's talk about each individual. And you mentioned Marco Rubio, who is Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, the Florida Senator. He currently serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. He's the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. And I mean, he and the President Elect seem to agree on America's approach to Iran and Ukraine, but not NATO, right? I mean, where do he and Mr. Trump agree and disagree? Julie Fishman Rayman:   You're asking a question as though we have a full sense of what incoming president, former President Trump believes, which I think is a bit of an assumption. They're certainly deeply aligned on sort of big picture principles as they relate to support for Israel, no question. A tough, tough approach to whether it's an actor like Iran or China, you know, sort of these nefarious global players that seek to disrupt our world order, they're aligned there. There is a potential disconnect on Ukraine. Right? We've heard statements from Senator Rubio recently where you almost see him trying to channel the former president, the president-elect, and say, like, what would Trump say? What would Trump do?  You can like, see the wheels spinning in his mind as he talks about how we have been funding a stalemate and how something needs to change. But I'm not sure that if you put them both in a room and ask them blindfolded, apart from each other, what to do about Ukraine, if you would get the same answer, I think there would probably be a good deal of daylight.  And I think the same could be said about the future of NATO and others. But it all remains to be seen. And then, of course, also will have to be balanced with other forces that are coming into the administration, not least of which Senator JD Vance, colleague of Marco Rubio, who definitely comes with a different sort of world view. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And next on the list, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York, she has been nominated for the role of UN ambassador. We kind of know her as an outspoken supporter of Israel, given her high profile role in the congressional hearings about anti-Israel protests on college campuses after the Hamas terror attacks on October 7. Those hearings actually led to the resignation of a couple of university presidents. How do you foresee that outspoken support playing out in the UN arena, or maybe even in the Trump administration's approach to higher education? Julie Fishman Rayman:   In terms of the UN and antisemitism, there will be a lot of very vocal, very strident affirmations that antisemitism is not something that the US will abide. That same sort of force that Congresswoman Stefanik brought to the Education Committee, she will bring to the UN and she won't take any bones about it, and she's not going to sit down to anybody.  Of that we can be sure what that looks like, though, beyond pontification, beyond promulgations of support for the Jewish community across the globe, remains to be seen. Right? How will she engage in a UN that she certainly will perceive to be at least biased towards Israel and possibly antisemitic at its core. Right? We can make that assumption on her world view.  How will she seek to engage with a system that she presumably views as fundamentally flawed? We know that a Republican House and Senate are already sort of gearing up towards cutting funding of major UN institutions, if not the UN across the board. So what does that mean for her role? What does that mean for the voice that the United States will have and the ability for her very strong voice, to even be at the table, and that's sort of where some of that tension arrives is also, do you get in the room? Do you get the seat at the table? Or are you on the menu? Right? The United States is never going to be on the menu, but are we going to, by virtue of our own sort of principles, going to push our seat back in and stand in the hallway. There's a lot of calculi that she's going to have to make there. In terms of the Department of Education and Congress and how they're dealing with these really important issues that that Congresswoman Stefanik has put at the fore for so long, there's no question that the threat of pulling federal funding that we've heard from the Biden administration repeatedly will be more believed under a future Trump administration. I think there are universities all over the country that already are saying, oh, like, what do we have to do? We don't want to get caught in these crosshairs. What do we need to do to make sure that we are not either under fire with the light shining on us or on the chopping block for federal funding?  So if you're an educational institution that really believes that there is a true threat that you're to your federal funding, you're reconsidering a lot of steps. And if in fact, federal funding is leveraged or cut, I think we have to be really mindful of three things. One, we have to make sure that it doesn't look as though the Jews are behind this crushing blow, because that's scapegoating. And we have to make sure that shuttering these major academic institutions doesn't foreclose the creation, the necessary creation, of future American doctors and engineers and others. And finally, we have to make sure that we're not creating a void in funding that could really easily be filled by foreign actors that are already known to use university funding to advance a particular ideology, to advance their own interests. Manya Brachear Pashman:   I want to go back to another name you mentioned at the top, and that is the Florida congressman, Michael Waltz. He has been named as National Security Advisor to head up the National Security Council, and he has been a huge champion of the Abraham accords. So what can we expect to see from him if he indeed does take this post. Julie Fishman Rayman:   So one of the things that I think is really interesting about, you know, looking back on the last trump administration, while we sort of forecast for the next, is that the National Security Council, this body that Mike Waltz will lead, was always the brain trust for him in the previous administration. Of course, there was the State Department. It was filled, it was supported. But generally, I think he thought of the State Department as a place of a foreign policy bureaucracy, where passports got stamped, that kind of, step by step, day by day, keeping the wheels turning, but not where real change happened.  So if we're, you know, we're talking about Marco Rubio at State, we're talking about Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, I think we really need to sort of dig into what's Waltz gonna bring. And of course, like, as you said, Manya deeply supportive of Abraham Accords, very hawkish when it comes to China, and very, very embedded in the military establishment himself, right? He's not the DoD pick, but he's a Green Beret vet. He served in Afghanistan, he served in the Middle East. He served in Africa. In addition to being on the foreign affairs committee and Congress, he was on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, if there are, if there's a trifecta of committees that someone could serve on to be as informed and at sort of the pinnacle of information about what's going on in this world, it's those three committees. Ukraine is the big question mark here. He's criticized aid to Ukraine, and has talked about getting Putin to the negotiating table, getting a diplomatic solution, or some sort of settlement to this war. And that I think remains this major looming question for a lot of folks about, as we're looking at these various picks whose voice is going to win here. Or, you know, if we're channeling the last Trump administration again, who's going to be the last person in his ear before he goes and makes a major announcement. Manya Brachear Pashman:   You mentioned DoD. Let's talk about President Elect Trump's DoD pick. Fox News anchor Pete hegseth, he is a retired US Army Major. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a surprising pick to head the Department of Defense.  Julie Fishman Rayman:   It's interesting that you asked that question, because I think for folks who just think of him as a, you know, the guy on the Fox News couch, everyone who I've talked to who really knows Pete Hegseth and really is engaged with him for a long time, they they're not surprised, and they say, Oh, that does make sense. I don't know how much we can anticipate his fox views translating into a DoD cabinet pick. I don't really know how to manage that, right? He's talked about, like the Joint Chiefs, for example, in sort of a disparaging way.  So, he's definitely one of these picks that you know shows the future President's desire to be at the vanguard, right? He wants to shake things up. He wants to keep people on their toes.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Okay, so now let's move on to some of the names you mentioned that are curious, curious choice. Other curious choices. Former Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, she has been nominated to serve as Trump's chief intelligence advisor, the Director of National Intelligence. That would mean she would be responsible for overseeing 18 spy agencies and keeping the President informed of the nation's international intelligence as anti semitism rises around the world, incidents like what we saw in Amsterdam this past weekend continue to flare up. Do you foresee her prioritizing that kind of news for the president elect? Julie Fishman Rayman:   This is a position that has to be confirmed by the Senate, and it's not, I think, a slam dunk in a lot of ways. She's not always been a Republican. She certainly hasn't always been a Trumpist Republican. She had a major leadership role in the Democratic Party for quite some time. She was the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and not rank and file, she resigned from that position to endorse Bernie Sanders in 2016 she supported the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran deal that many Democrats broke with the administration to oppose that. AJC opposed, I think that there's a lot of baggage that she brings, and not personal baggage, but policy baggage that might make it very, very difficult for her to make the step through that confirmation process, and someone very smart said that'll be the test. Maybe I'll give him credit. Josh Kraushauer, the editor of Jewish insider, said this will be the test for how Senate leadership is going to respond to the calls from President Trump. You know, if they're able to just sort of if Senator Thune, in this new role that he has just received is able to push through the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard, then we can expect a lot of confirmations legislation Trump desires to move through the Senate. If she gets a little bit held up. If it's not as easy, then we can anticipate just a little bit more gridlock, as much gridlock as one could expect from one party control of the House, Senate and the White House. But a little bit more of a pushback. It'll be a real test. Manya Brachear Pashman:   She is nominated to be his chief intelligence advisor, and yet she has posted blatantly false propaganda on her social media channels. And people know that, people have called her out for that. Is that concerning? Julie Fishman Rayman:   I think it's deeply concerning whenever anyone puts out blatantly false propaganda, particularly that which emanates from Russia, that is problematic at any level of elected official, appointed official, period. We need to constantly, as a society and as a nation, be on fierce guard against that, because it is real and it is pervasive. I anticipate that, you know, when the confirmation hearings are up, there's going to be a lot of questions about, you know, what has she posted, where is she getting her information, and from whom does she rely on for real, authoritative information that is truthful? Manya Brachear Pashman:   So another name that you mentioned at the top of the conversation, and that is Congressman, well now former Congressman Matt Gaetz from Florida, since he resigned immediately after his nomination for attorney general. He was one of, I think, 21 republicans who voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act in May, saying he couldn't support a definition of antisemitism that labeled claims of Jews killing Jesus as antisemitic. I think Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel might have had some choice words for him, if he is indeed, if he indeed progresses through this process toward Attorney General, what could we see from him? What can we see, period, of this whole process? Julie Fishman Rayman:   So first off, I just, I want to speak a little bit about it was sort of him in his record, because I think that it's important for our community to to be refreshed about exactly who Matt Gaetz is it there were a number of Republicans who voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act because they did not think that it was appropriate for there to be a law that says the Jews didn't kill Jesus. This is, of course, like a sort of gross mischaracterization of what the international Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of anti semitism says and purports to do. But he wasn't alone. And it was, it was very interesting to see how this, this sort of trope that I think a lot of us thought was over about the Jews killing Jesus. You know, Nostra Aetate was in the 70s, right? So we thought that this was done and behind us. But to hear, particularly from the evangelical set, that, okay, like, maybe the Jews didn't kill Jesus, or maybe they did.  He also invited a Holocaust denier and a white supremacist to be his guest at the State of the Union later, he said, like, Oh, I didn't really know. But either he got terrible staffing or he knew, and he just didn't want to get caught. He's deeply, deeply scandal ridden, without question. And he, you know, is constantly defending Marjorie Taylor Green, who, you know, compared the COVID mask laws to, you know, the Holocaust and things like that. He called the ADL racist. He is not representative of any stream, really, within the Republican Party. He is emblematic of the most populist of the populace, the most MAGA of the MAGA. So we should remember who he is, first and foremost.  Beyond that, I cannot imagine an America that would confirm him as Attorney General. I'm a congressist by heart. I believe that Congress does the right things, if given enough time to do so, and I cannot believe that they'll let this one go through. So forgive my rant. I think it needs to be said about him. But in terms of, you know, who are we watching, and what do we think is going to happen in the long term? I don't think there's a long term there. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Let's talk about another pick, and that is his pick for Homeland Security, who I don't think is so outlandish, and that is South Dakota Governor Christie gnomes. She could play a really vital role in his immigration the proposal that he's made for the immigration system. She has been a strong ally of AJC in the past.  Julie Fishman Rayman:   Yes, she has. When she signed North South Dakota's bill, um on the international Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, working definition of antisemitism, when she signed into law, AJC was there. She's been outspoken about anti semitism, and has consistently, sort of done, she's done the right things there. That being said, South Dakota has a very small Jewish population. So it's not, the same as if she were the governor of New York or Florida or even California that has major Jewish populations that are constantly calling with various, you know, security needs or something like that. So she's been there when she's needed to be there. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And I know South Dakota is not a border state, but didn't she send army reserves to the border to help Texas Governor Greg Abbott, at one point? Julie Fishman Rayman:   She has. A lot of Republican governors sort of backed Abbott in that way. I think that her crew in the governors, in the Republican Governors Association, etc, will be much aligned with the incoming administration. And of course, you know, that's why she's picked. Manya Brachear Pashman:   We also have the choice of John Ratliff, who Trump has named as a potential CIA director. And you know, technically, CIA director is the person who's nominated as head of intelligence is the CIA director's boss, and so he was the former director or chief intelligence advisor. So in a way, it's kind of a demotion. However, what I've read is President elect Trump believes that the CIA director is actually more important. So what are we looking at here? Are we looking at a smoother confirmation process for the CIA director, perhaps, and are we looking at kind of an elevation of that job?  Julie Fishman Rayman:   I think we can probably assume it's an elevation, and in the same way that we talked about the previous Trump administration prioritizing the National Security Council almost above the State Department, I think we'll see that sort of shift in alignment, the CIA being sort of the new center of gravity, if it wasn't already within the the intelligence community. So I think that we probably will see him playing a much more dominant role. That being said, I think America has always held this deep fascination with CIA directors, FBI directors. They always, because of the really interesting and critical roles they play, they always sort of punch above their weight in terms of, you know, how much are they on TV? How much are people watching what they're saying and what they're doing? So I think that we can absolutely anticipate that. And you know, he has some skeletons in his closet, but I don't think that there's anything that will prohibit or impede his nomination for that role. Manya Brachear Pashman:   And as a religion reporter, I found the naming of former Governor Mike Huckabee as the ambassador, a potential ambassador to Israel, to be very interesting, given that he is an evangelical Christian, a Baptist pastor. Aren't too many non-Jewish ambassadors to Israel. There have been some, but not too many. And I thought that this was a really interesting selection. What can we see or expect to see from that choice? Julie Fishman Rayman:   You know, part of me kind of loves this for America. I think there's, Governor Huckabee has always been a stalwart supporter of Israel, without question, deeply, deeply supportive. There are questions about, what is he going to do with regard to like, the question of settlements or annexation and things like that. And and I think we're going to have to be watching that very, very closely.  But if we're looking sort of at the macro level, the issue of Israel and America has become so polarized and in some ways so toxic, that this reminder that it's not just the Jews that care about Israel, I think, couldn't come at a better time.  I do think that it's really interesting to now have someone going to sit at the embassy that President Trump moved to Jerusalem, who is not representing the Jewish community there, but representing the massive Evangelical community in the United States and even frankly, around the world. Manya Brachear Pashman:   Well, Julie, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives. As these names keep trickling out each day, many things are said, some important, some not so important. So I'm glad I appreciate you kind of focusing our audience on what matters to AJC, what matters to the Jewish community and for those who support Israel. So thank you so much.  Julie Fishman Rayman:   It's been my pleasure and many and if I can just say, as we conclude that the personalities take up a lot of space, they take up a lot of oxygen. But for AJC, we're always singularly focused on the policies, and we'll continue doing what we've been doing already for months, and that's reaching everyone who will have influence in this next administration, to advance our policy perspective, to share our agenda and to talk about what we think needs to form the policy priorities of the next administration.  Manya Brachear Pashman:   Thank you so much, Julie. Julie Fishman Rayman:   Thank you.  

United States Senate candidate for Michigan, Mike Rogers, served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 until 2015. In 2011, Mike was named Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In 2012, just one year after assuming this role, Mike warned that Chinese technology companies Huawei and ZTE posed a national security threat.The Intelligence Committee's report concluded that these tech companies were serving as arms of the Chinese government, had stolen trade secrets from American corporations, and could potentially spy on American citizens. It's worth noting other findings remain classified out of national security concerns.What were these technology based threats and do they exist today? Is America prepared for an onslaught of international cyber attacks? How can U.S. ingenuity lead us towards victory in the world's AI war?In this insightful episode, host Marc interviews Senate candidate Mike Rogers to discuss various issues impacting American society today. They explore the significance of family as the foundation of society, Michigan families' economic struggles, and the critical state of public education. Rogers emphasizes the importance of helping individuals achieve literacy to empower themselves economically and socially.The conversation shifts to national security, diving into Rogers' investigations into Chinese tech companies' threats during his time as House Intelligence Committee Chair. The discussion also covers the current and future role of AI in cybersecurity, military applications, and the impact of overregulation on innovation. Sign up for the Some Future Day Newsletter here: https://marcbeckman.substack.com/Episode Links:Mike Rogers: https://www.rogersforsenate.com/To join the conversation follow Marc Beckman here: YoutubeLinkedInTwitterInstagramTikTok

Former Congressman Peter Roskam, who leads BakerHostetler's Federal Policy team, provides listeners with a front-row seat to the most important policy debates in Congress. In this episode of “The Cloakroom with Peter Roskam,” Peter interviews Congressman Darin LaHood, who is a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. LaHood also serves on the Intelligence Committee and the committee examining U.S. competition with China. Peter's discussion with LaHood focuses on the expiration in 2025 of key provisions of the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which would trigger more than $4 trillion in tax increases, and the link to next year's tax issue to the nation's current $34 trillion national debt.Congressman LaHood also had insightful comments on how U.S. companies should be thinking about their investments and supply chains in China as well as other strategic threats to the United States from malign actor states.Questions & Comments: proskam@bakerlaw.com

Crazy claims of the week: Hunter Biden's prosecution was a red herring; Cheap Fakes; and Emmanuel Macron's wife is a man. Plus The Epoch Times and new congressional Republicans put on Intelligence Committee.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed concerns about the findings of a foreign interference report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), though he did not specify the concerns. Guest: Dan Stanton, Director of the National Security Program at the University of Ottawa and Former Executive Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seg 1: Do elephants call each other by name? A recent study suggests that elephants may address each other by individual names, demonstrating a new aspect of their intelligence. Guest: Dr. Mickey Pardo, Post-Doctoral Fellow and Behavioural Ecologist at Colorado State University Seg 2: Scott's Thoughts: Do you “PRE-crastinate”? We all know how bad it can be to procrastinate, but do you know what it is to PRE-Crastinate? It could be just as bad, or worse! Guest: Scott Shantz, CKNW Contributor Seg 3: View From Victoria: Where will ICBC go now? Getting a preview of the ICBC announcement with the premier and transportation minister this morning and taking a look back at ICBC's decision to leave the North Vancouver headquarters building. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of Rob Shaw, Political Correspondent for CHEK News. Seg 4: Are ‘eye witnesses' reliable? Researchers have found that witnesses who are confident in their identification, particularly when making quick decisions, tend to be more accurate. Guest: Dr. Gary Wells, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Iowa State University and Scholar in  Eyewitness Memory Research Seg 5: How can travel companies insure against weather? We love to talk about how our data is constantly being collected online, and how that is usually a bad thing, but the power of Data Collection can be used to improve our quality of life. Guest: Nick Cavanaugh, CEO of Sensible Weather Seg 6: What would happen if two satellites collided? An American NASA spacecraft and a defunct Russian surveillance satellite nearly collided while orbiting Earth. But what happens if space debris actually does make an impact? Guest: Dr. Darren McKnight, Senior Technical Fellow for LeoLabs Seg 7: Monday Morning Quarterbacks for Jun 17, 2024 It was a 26-17 win over Calgary but the coach says “always room for improvement.” The BC Lions did not allow any quarterback sacks or commit any turnovers during the game. Guest: Rick Campbell, Head Coach of the BC Lions Seg 8: Is the Federal Government concerned about foreign interference? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed concerns about the findings of a foreign interference report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP), though he did not specify the concerns. Guest: Dan Stanton, Director of the National Security Program at the University of Ottawa and Former Executive Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Seg 9: How does alcohol impact your mortality risk? New research has revealed that many studies involving alcohol and health risks, had misleading variables, such as including ex-drinkers in the abstainer category, which falsely suggested that moderate drinking was beneficial. Guest: Dr. Tim Stockwell, Scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The spring sitting on Parliament Hill is coming to a close. There's been a lot to keep track of — the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the introduction of a pharmacare bill, a federal budget that brought big changes to taxes on capital gains — not to mention intelligence reports of foreign interference. On June 3, a report from the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) revealed that some elected officials were either unwitting or witting participants in foreign interference. Naturally, all this left listeners with a lot of questions. In the season finale of “It's Political,” Toronto Star journalists and David Coletto of Abacus Data join to break down questions from listeners and readers. In this episode: CEO of Abacus Data David Coletto, Toronto Star Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief Stephanie Levitz, Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau Chief Tonda MacCharles. Hosted by Althia Raj. Clips this week were sourced from the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery, CPAC, BNN, CBC, CTV, BBC, Sky News, and City News, Nate Erskine-Smith's Uncommons podcast.  This episode of “It's Political” was produced by Althia Raj and Michal Stein. Kevin Sexton mixed the program. Joy SpearChief-Morris assisted with production. Our theme music is by Isaac Joel.

TUNE INTO THE TOWN: OTTAWA JUST HIRED A NIGHTLIFE MAYOR Tasha Kheiriddin is filling in for Libby Znaimer today. She is joined by Alex Blumenstein, co-founder of The Peak, Karen Stintz, CEO of Variety Village, and Toronto Councillor Stephen Holyday, Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre. Ottawa just hired its first ever nightlife commissioner as part of its strategy to wake the city up from its reputation as a sleepy town. And, some Toronto residents are complaining about the Ontario Line construction. When will that all be over? OTTAWA AND THE ONGOING CONCERNS AROUND FOREIGN INTERFERENCE Tasha is now joined by Stephanie Carvin, Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Carleton University and an expert on national security issues. Tensions continue to persist in Ottawa over a report by the The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) alleging some MPs "wittingly assisting" foreign state actors after being elected. We still don't know the names of those MPs involved. BEER STORES AND LOTTERY TICKETS Tasha is now joined by Kenny Shim, President of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, and Mike Schreiner, Ontario Green Party leader. The Beer Store is going to be permitted by the province to sell lottery tickets down the line when convenience stores can start selling alcohol. But not everyone is happy about it...

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) revealed troubling intelligence that some politicians are knowingly or unknowingly aiding foreign states in interfering with Canadian politics. Guest: Wesley Wark, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation and Leading Expert on National Security and Intelligence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seg 1: Why do celebrities commit crimes? What is the relationship between celebrity and criminality? What are the circumstances and reasons for this connection? Guest: Ruth Penfold-Mounce, Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of York and Author of “Celebrity Culture and Crime: The Joys of Transmission” Seg 2: View From Victoria: Drama in the Cariboo There is always drama in politics and these days the drama is in the Cariboo-Chilcotin riding and the promise of revenge by Jackie Tegart. We get a local look at the top political stories with the help of Rob Shaw, Political Correspondent for CHEK News. Seg 3: The Weekly Cecchini Check-in for Jun 07, 2024 We hear more Trump verdict fallout, and how NYC might be the only trial we see before the election Guest: Reggie Cecchini, Washington Correspondent for Global News Seg 4: What's causing this year's cicada surge? A rare event is occurring in the U.S. as two broods of periodical cicadas emerge simultaneously, a phenomenon that happens once every 200 years. Guest: Dr. Jonathan Larson, Extension Entomologist and Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of Kentucky Seg 5: Are MPs knowingly participating in foreign interference? The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) revealed troubling intelligence that some politicians are knowingly or unknowingly aiding foreign states in interfering with Canadian politics. Guest: Wesley Wark, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation and Leading Expert on National Security and Intelligence Seg 6: What's fuelling Canada's fentanyl crisis? Since the public health emergency was declared eight years ago, 14,582 people have died from toxic drugs, including 763 in the first four months of 2024. Guest: Victoria Dittmar, Researcher and Project Manager at InSight Crime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians released a heavily redacted document this week. Alleging some parliamentarians have actively helped foreign governments meddle in Canadian politics. How concerned are you by the findings? News panelists with Michelle McQuigge and Joeita Gupta share their opinions. From the June 7, 2024, episode.

June 3, 2024 - The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians issued a scathing report Monday about the Liberal government's efforts to address foreign interference in Canadian elections. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc joins Power & Politics to respond to the report's findings. Plus, Nobel Prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk urges Canada to send more weapons to Ukraine. 

This week, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan, K.C., announced on CNN that he will seek arrest warrants for Israel's democratically elected Prime Minister and Defense Minister, as well as three members of Hamas leadership because of “crimes against humanity” related to October 7 and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war. Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute that underpins the ICC, which therefore has no legal jurisdiction in Israel. The ICC has admitted a “State of Palestine,” which theoretically grants jurisdiction over actions in “Palestine” and over Hamas figures. How should Washington respond to the ICC's extrajudicial investigation? And how will the ICC's announcement affect its global standing?Tom Cotton is a United States Senator from Arkansas. Senator Cotton's committees include the Judiciary Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, the Intelligence Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member of the Air Land Power Subcommittee. Before joining the Senate, Senator Cotton was a member of the House of Representatives and served on active duty in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.Read the transcript here. Sign up for the Substack here.

Trump hush money trial gets underway. Trump tried to ‘corrupt' the 2016 election, prosecutor alleges as hush money trial gets underway Donald Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election by preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public, a prosecutor told jurors Monday at the start of the former president's historic hush money trial. “This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election — to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior, using doctored corporate records and bank forms to conceal those payments along the way,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.” President Joe Biden has officially signed the bill that will ban TikTok unless ByteDance sells it off in the next nine months. The bill also contains funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and will introduce a series of sanctions on foreign adversaries. The Senate voted 79 to 18 in favor of the bill late Tuesday. “For years we've allowed the Chinese Communist party to control one of the most popular apps in America that was dangerously shortsighted,” said Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee. “A new law is going to require its Chinese owner to sell the app. This is a good move for America.” Only 18 percent of teens support a TikTok ban. Additionally, Republicans are more likely to support a TikTok bank—although this number declined from 60 percent in March to 50 percent in October. Only 29 percent of registered Democrats said they would support a ban as of October. The app is officially banned from US government phones due to its ability to collect data and potentially send it to the Chinese government. National security concerns about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) collecting data is the primary reason behind the bill, which was originally named “the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hugo-alvarez/message

*) UN warns 576,000 people in Gaza are 'one step away' from famine A senior United Nations aid official revealed to the Security Council that approximately 576,000 people in Gaza, constituting a quarter of the population, are on the brink of famine. The World Food Programme (WFP) heightened concerns by declaring that famine is "imminent" in northern Gaza amidst Israel's ongoing war on the besieged enclave. WFP's deputy executive director urgently addressed the UN Security Council, emphasising the critical need for intervention, while an official from the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, warned of the "almost inevitable" prospect of widespread starvation if the current conditions persist. *) No UN aid convoys reached northern Gaza since Jan 23 The United Nations (UN) highlighted that no humanitarian aid convoys have reached northern Gaza since January 23 as the humanitarian situation in the enclave worsens due to Israel's blockade. Spokesperson of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres revealed that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) currently has food supplies positioned at the Gaza border, capable of catering to the needs of up to 2.2 million people throughout the region. The spokesperson stated that approximately 1,000 trucks, loaded with 15,000 metric tonnes of food, are stationed in Egypt and ready for deployment. *) US says Israel has not presented plan to protect civilians in case of Rafah invasion The White House has confirmed that the United States has not received any Israeli proposal outlining plans to ensure the safety of civilians in Gaza in the event of a potential military invasion of Rafah. Speaking at a press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stated that he "can't speak for the Israelis and to what degree their planning has progressed and what that looks like.” *) Ukraine intel committee warns of bid to overthrow Zelenskyy Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's legitimacy may be questioned and a coup may be attempted in the spring, according to a high-ranking committee. The Intelligence Committee under the President of Ukraine said in a statement published on the Telegram channel of the Main Directorate of Intelligence under the Ukranian Ministry of Defense that Russia's "Maidan-3 special operation will reach its climax in March-May 2024.” According to the committee, in the coming weeks, there will be "attempts to foment conflicts both inside Ukraine and in other parts of the world," and Zelenskyy's legitimacy may be questioned after May 20. *) Texas wildfires force evacuations and shut down nuclear facility Wildfires spreading rapidly across the Texas Panhandle have triggered evacuations in small towns and forced the closure of a key US nuclear facility. Fueled by strong winds, dry conditions, and unseasonably warm temperatures, the blazes have become a major concern for the state. Governor Greg Abbott declared the wildfires a disaster for 60 counties, as the largest fire grew to nearly 1,040 square kilometres. The critical Pantex Plant, responsible for assembling and disassembling US nuclear weapons, also shut down its operations Tuesday night due to the proximity of the fires.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd   TRANSCRIPT: Speaker 2 (00:14): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand and to truly appreciate the broader historical context in which most of these events occur. During each episode of this program, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the questions are why are American neocons hell bent on starting a conflict with Russia? What's going on in Ukraine? Who was Alexi Naval? And is NATO really still relevant? For insight into all of this let's turn to my guest. He's a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. (01:31) His most recent book is entitled Disarmament In the Time of Perestroika, he is Scott Ritter. Scott, welcome. Thanks for joining me and let's connect some dots. Well, thanks for having me. And first of all, I have to say I love the name of your show in the intelligence business, connecting the dots is what we do. You never get the full picture. You get little pieces of information, and the question is, how do you connect them to get a proper narrative? So I like the idea. Well, thank you, Scott. I appreciate that. So the answers to each of these questions I think could be a show of their own, but let's start with in 2024, why are neocons so afraid of Russia? I mean, when we go back to this nauseating ongoing narrative, Hillary Clinton blamed Russia for hacking into the DNC server. No evidence was presented, but the narrative held and continues to hold in spite of scientific empiric evidence. (02:39) To the contrary, the whole Russiagate fiasco, even now, representative Mike Turner from Ohio, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he warns that Russia may be developing a space-based weapon that can target US satellites, NBC reported on the 19th of this month, alarming new warnings about Russia held zapper erosion. Nuclear power plant may be on the verge of explosion. These are just a few examples and we'll get to the specifics of each of these in a few, but just these are just some overarching examples of example, this Russia phobia. Why? Well, I mean, let's just look at historic examples. At the end of the Second World War, we had built up this economy that was a lot of people forget that before the Second World War happened, we had a thing called the Great Depression, and our economy was not the healthiest in the world, and we used global war as a way to mobilize our economy, to get it up to war footing. (03:48) And there was a recognition that with 12 million guys coming home, we needed jobs. And if we tried to transition back to a civilian economy, we ran the danger of going backwards instead of forward. So we had to keep this military industrial complex up and running. But to do that, you need an enemy, you need a bad guy. Therefore, we have the Iron Curtain, Winston Churchill's, Fulton, Missouri speech in, I think 1946, the creation of nato and then the Red Scare. I mean, Russia has always been communism back then. Not just Russia, but communist China was always the perfect boogeyman to say, Ooh, danger lurks. We therefore now have a justification to militarize our economy and back this up politically by pointing to this threat. Back in the fifties, we had the bomber gap. You remember that? (04:52) Read about it little before my time, but I got you. Yeah, I mean, we weren't around back. We're old Wilber, but we're not that old. But yeah, the idea of, I think the Russians took, had like a dozen bombers, but on a military parade, they just flew them over and over and over again in a circle over Moscow, and the people on the ground looked up and said, oh my goodness, there's a whole bunch of bombers. And so the CIA used this, the Congress used this to justify building more American bombers, even though once we got our satellites up, we went, there's only 12. There's not that many, but we never told the truth. Then there was the missile gap. John F. Kennedy was responsible for that one too. The Russians have missiles. We have to build missiles, missiles, missiles until we found out that they didn't have the missiles. (05:40) But it didn't matter. We continued to build them anyways, and this led to the Cuban missiles crisis, which scared the live and you know what out of everybody and got us on the path of arms control, at least trying to contain, but we still called them the threat. That's all that's happening here. I can guarantee you this Wilmer, the neocons aren't looking for a war with Russia because as politically biased as they are, as fear mongers are, they're not suicidal and they know what the consequences of a war with Russia would be, but what they're doing is they're pushing it right up to the cusp of conflict, especially now when you have an American society that's sort of waking up to the fact that we're spending a lot of money over there when we need to be spending a lot of money back here at home, and people are starting to ask questions. (06:30) So the way that you avoid answering these questions is to create that straw man that threat, the Russian threat. The Russians are evil. You said it perfectly. They interfered with our election. They're doing this, that and the other thing, and therefore we must spend 64 billion in Ukraine even though we can't spend $64 million in Flint, Michigan. I mean, it's this sort of argument that's going on, and this may seem as a somo or a juvenile question, but how dangerous is this? World War? I was to a great degree, started on a fluke. It is in many instances or in many minds attributable to the assassination of Archduke Fran Ferdinand. But that in and of itself isn't what started the war. There were a number of skirmishes and a number of tensions that were going on in Europe, and this was really just the spark that led to World War I. (07:33) If my understanding of history is accurate. So do we find ourselves now, whether it be Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, I mean the United States, what's going on in Venezuela as the United States is interfering in the Venezuelan elections? There are a number, of course, we've got Gaza in the Middle East, so we've got our hands, we're smoking at the gas station and smoking at a lot of gas stations. I'm going to steal that, by the way. I like that analogy. Just letting everybody know I'm using that from now on. Look, first of all, there's no such thing as a sophomore question. The one thing I learned, and I learned this from guys who are 20 times smarter than me, that the only stupid questions, the one you don't ask, you don't ask, but you're a hundred percent right. Barbara Tuckman wrote a book, the Guns of August, I think it was a PO prize winning book about how we got to World War I. (08:38) And one of the key aspects to that wasn't just the different crises that were taking place, but how people responded to that and the thing that made World War I inevitable, even though everybody, if you read the book, everybody in the summer of 1914, nobody wanted war. Everybody believed it would be avoided, it was just suicidal. But then they got into this cycle of mobilization, mobilizing their societies economically and militarily for conflict because that's just what you did when you had a crisis. But it's okay, we're just mobilizing and we're not really going to war. What scares me about today is there's a recognition on the part of everybody that war would be suicidal, that we don't want this, but look at what we've done. We built up the Ukrainian military from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and got it equipped, organized, trained to go to war against Russia. (09:44) What do you think we were doing in Ukraine from 2015 to 2022 when we were training a battalion of Ukrainian soldiers every 55 days for the sole purpose of fighting Russians? This helped trigger a conflict. It got Russia to respond. Then we poured more money into Ukraine. What did Russia do? Mobilize People need to put on their hats and go, wait a minute, that's a word we don't want to hear. Russia mobilized not just the 300,000, but the process of mobilization continued to where they trained 450,000 volunteers since January 1st, just for everybody who's wondering what's going on in Ukraine, I know that's going to be later on question. Russia mobilized 53,000 volunteers. This is at a time when Ukraine's thumping people on the head and takes 'em to the front because nobody wants to fight. 53,000 Russians volunteered to go fight in the war since January 1st. (10:42) They're coming in at 1000, 1,500 a day. And let me reiterate, that's not press gangs like they're using in Russia. G roaming the villages taking the men and now women from the streets and putting them into the military. That's not conscription, that's volunteer. And let me make this following point, it's even more interesting than that. It's not a bunch of 22-year-old red meat eating young men who are looking for adventure and romance. The average age of the Russian volunteer going in is about 35 years old. He's married, he has a family, and he has a job. It's the last person in the world that you'd expect to volunteer to go to a war zone. And yet they're doing it because they love their country, because they say we have to do that. What's going on right now is an existential struggle for the survival of Russia against the collective West, which again speaks to the danger of mobilization because Russia is a nation that is mobilizing and has the potential to mobilize even more if necessary. (11:55) And this should scare the heck out of everybody in nato because right now you have nato. What's NATO talking about doing Wilmer mobilizing. They're talking about mobilizing. You have everybody in NATO saying, well, they never say, well, since we kicked this hornets nest and the hornets are now coming out and stinging us, maybe we should stop kicking the hornet's nest. They don't acknowledge the role they played in building the Ukrainian army to trigger this, but what they're saying now is, oh, because Russia now has mobilized and is defeating the proxy army that we built. We have to mobilize in turn. And you have Brits talking about general mobilization, Germans, and what this does. Now, you're a Russian. You're sitting there going, huh? They're talking about mobilizing. Well, if they do that, what do we have to do? I mean, Finland just joined nato. We really don't care until they put on Russia's border, pardon on Russia's border, on Russia's border until they put NATO troops there. (12:50) Now Russia has to say, well, we didn't want to do this. But to give you an example, we keep the determinants mobilized. Wil Russia was compelled to create a new military district, the St. Petersburg military District, because Finland joined nato. There wasn't a St. Petersburg military district. Russia didn't have 70,000 combat troops on the finished border until Finland joined nato. Now, Russia has built mobilized Wilmer. They've put in 70,000 frontline troops divisions ready to march on Helsinki. Not because they wanted to, but because they were compelled to by the mobilization. Bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO is a form of mobilization. What we have here is we are moving in the wrong direction. We are accumulating military power in Europe, and at some point in time you're smoking at the gas station and it's going to go, I'm going to have to use that one, Scott. That's pretty good. (13:51) Feel free. So this time last year, Ukraine was on the front page of every newspaper as of the morning of that we're taping this conversation. I don't see Ukraine referenced. And let me suggest folks, Reid, I don't know if you've read Nikolai Petro and Ted Snyder's piece to end the war in Ukraine expose its core lie. Let me read two quick paragraphs. This is how it opens. The essential argument used to avoid negotiation and continue support for the war in Ukraine is based on a falsehood. That falsehood repeated by President Biden is that when Putin decided to invade, which we can debate that word, he intended to conquer all of Ukraine and annihilated its falsity, has been exposed multiple times by military experts who have pointed out both before and after the invasion, that Russia could not have intended to conquer all of Ukraine because it did not invade with sufficient forces to do so. Scott Ritter, well, look, that was my argument all along. I kept saying they're only going in with around 200,000. Ukraine at the start of the war had around 770,000, and I went, the normal attack defender ratio is supposed to be three to one in favor of the attacker. And Russia's going in with a one to three disadvantage. (15:21) Why? And the answer was because they weren't trying to occupy Ukraine. They were trying to, oh no, it's because Russians can't do math. Well, that too, I mean, I must be Russian because I'm not very good at math either. But my military math was like, this isn't adding up. But Russia's goal is to get 'em to a negotiating table. But I also then when Russia mobilized, because I basically said that Russia's going to have to get 500, 600,000 men to stabilize the frontline just to stabilize the frontline. And they mobilized to do that. And then people said, well, they're going to go on to Odessa. And I went, if they go on to Odessa, they're going to need around 900,000 guys to go on to Odessa and take those things. Russia's got about 900,000 guys there now. So they have enough troops to do that. (16:09) But to go on to Poland, they're going to need about 1.5 million guys. They don't have that. And to go from Poland to Germany, they're going to need around 3 million guys. It's just basic military math. I mean, I could bore you all day about how I come up with these numbers, but it's the logistics of war. It's the scope and scale of the fronts, how to protect flanks, how to sustain offensive operations. The math doesn't lie. I'm pretty good with those numbers and Russia doesn't have it. And here's the thing. We know this. I mean, there's, look, I was a major and I only was a major for a little while. The main part of my military life was spent as a captain. Now, captains are pretty cool, but we're not seniors. We're not the most senior people in the world. So I admit that my perspective was a captain's perspective at senior headquarters. (17:01) I saw the big picture, but I know enough to know what it takes to move troops. I was part of moving 750,000 troops into the Middle East. I know what a tip fiddle is, time phase deployment list, how to surge things in. I planned a core sized operation and had to plan on the logistics sustainability of that. I'm pretty good with the numbers. And so are the people in the Pentagon who are more senior than I am. People who see the bigger picture in more detail. They know what I'm talking about too. And they know no matter how much you talk up somebody, you're only as good as your logistics. I mean, you can have the Lamborghini, but if you ain't got the gasoline, you don't have anything. You have a piece of metal sitting in your driveway, but you got to have the gas and you got to have the gas sustained. (17:53) You got to be able to maintain it, fix it. Lamborghini's brake. You got to have people trained to drive the Lamborghini. We can talk the Russians up all we want to about this, that and the other thing. But the bottom line is they're only human and they can only do that which is physically possible to do. And they don't have the troops to invade NATO to drive on nato. It's a 100% fabrication on the part of these people to justify their own mobilization. But everybody knows that Russia can't. Right now, Russia has sufficient troops to take Odessa to take cargo, to take Nikola, to take nepa, Petros, that's it. They can't do anything more than that. If they want to drive on Kiev, they're going to need another 300,000 troops up in Belarus that they don't have right now. So people just have to put on their thinking caps and think rationally. (18:46) But right now, rational thought isn't in the cards. Apparently, you know a hell of a lot more about this than I do. You speak the language, you listen to the broadcast, I listen to you and other folks, but when I keep hearing statements about what Russia is going to do, the one thing that I never hear following that is evidence to support the position Russia wants to take over Europe. Europe, I've never heard President Putin say that. I've never read anything coming out of Russia that says that. All I hear is Nikki Haley and Joe Biden and Kamala there. There's a litany of folks that'll tell me that, but I haven't seen them present one video of President Putin standing at a podium or taking off his shoe like Stalin and pounding on the podium saying, I'm kicking your, and the other point is, 80% of what I see is defensive, not offensive. Here's another one you might want to use. Don't start nothing, won't be nothing. And it seems as Joe Biden would just shut the up. (20:14) You using my language? I want to be a Marine. Marine. So, okay, you get my point, Scott. Well, here's the thing. If we go back to the January, December, 2021, January 22 timeframe, the US government's running, going, Russia is going to invade, Russia is going to invade. Now, they may have had some intelligence about Russia moving up, logistics and all that stuff, but I said, Russia won't invade right now. They said, why? And I said, because Russia is a nation and the Russian government is ruled by law. Believe it or not. It's their law. It ain't our law, but it's their law. And there are things that have to happen before you can talk about an invasion. I spelled it out. I said, first of all, Russia will not operate in violation of the United Nations charter. So they will have to come up with a cognizable case for invasion. (21:12) And right now, the only one they have is preemptive self-defense. But to get preemptive self-defense, Russia will have to form a security relationship with the Doba, a formal security relationship, which will require the doba to not only declare their independence, but for Russia to recognize that independence. And then once Russia recognizes that independence, then Russia will have to go through, the President will have to go to the Duma, the Duma will have to approve something, go to the Senate, and then the Senate takes it back to the President, who then signs it. And then, and only then can we talk about military intervention. Now, this can take place in a short period of time, but I can promise you guarantee you that Russia ain't crossing the border until that happens. And if we're not seeing that happen, then there will be no military intervention and everybody's like, oh, scout up. Well, everything I said is 100. That's what happened in February. Russia began the process. Now, they did it in a very compact period of time, but every step that I said had to be taken was taken. Why? The rule of law. Putin is not a dictator. Putin is governed by the rule of law. He is not permitted to do things on a whim, and it's the same thing. If he wants to. (22:30) Russian troops cannot operate outside of the border of Russia without the permission of the Duma. He would have to go to them constitutionally, say, Hey, I'd like to send troops to Poland because he can't just send troops to Poland. And then the Duma would say, why are we doing this? What is the threat? And normally, the only reason to justify it is Poland attacked us, so we have to wait for that one. And that's the thing. In order for him to do anything to begin mobilizing, he can't just, why didn't he have 300,000 troops already mobilized to go into Ukraine? Because to justify the mobilization, you need legal justification. He didn't have it, didn't have it, couldn't go to the Duma, couldn't justify it. None of the steps that would be required for Russia to attack Europe are in place. First of all, it's not in Russia's doctrine, their entire approach, and you hit it on the head, their defense. (23:33) Now, the Russians are very good at the counter offensive, so if we attack them, Russian defensive doctors is to receive the attack, to destroy the attack and then to counter attack, and you counter attack to destroy the political center of the beast that attacked you. So yeah, if you want Russian troops in Warsaw, if you want Russian troops in Berlin, attack Russia. But otherwise, don't worry about it because it isn't going to happen. Don't start nothing. It won't be nothing. Won't be nothing. I like it. Alexi Navalny described as, and this is the description, the dominant Western narrative described as Russian President Putin's most formidable domestic opponent fell unconscious and died at polar wolf, Arctic penal colony. Biden described him as a powerful voice for the truth. What has happened to Navali is yet more proof of Putin's brutality. No one should be fooled. Well, the first thing is, if that was true, then what does this say about Biden's unyielding support for genocide in Gaza? What does that say about his brutality looking at the thousands, tens of thousands that people have fought, but that's not the point. If you could quickly unpack the myth of Alexi Navalny and the alleged poisoning and all of that stuff to kind of dispel this myth that Putin has assassinated his most formidable domestic opponent. (25:25) Okay, first of all, we have to understand that the United States government has been in the business of trying to control Russian politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The decade of the 1990s was premised on an American policy of promoting democratic reform inside Russia. But what it means by that is by creating institutions that are controlled by the United States and banking and well, money is everything. And what we did in the 1990s is we started using non-governmental organizations. We'd set up these civic societies, these groups for furtherance of democracy, and then we would fund them through various fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy, which in 1983 was created to take over the covert political action functions of the CIA and make it more overt. The US Congress created it, funneled money to it. There's a democratic branch, there's a Republican branch they filter money in. (26:28) The whole idea is again, to create fund, so-called democratic institutions that will lead to the restructuring of a society the way we want it to be restructured. The United States did that in Ukraine in 2014 with the, well, well, we did it before that. If you remember back in the early two thousands, we did a color revolution in Serbia. It was a very successful color revolution, and so we use that as a template that would then repeat it in Georgia, and then we repeated in Ukraine, remember 2004, 2005, the Orange Revolution. What a lot of people don't realize is that we were actively trying to do a color revolution in Russia in 2007, 2008. Why that time period? Again, I don't want to bore people, but this is very important. Vladimir Putin became president end of 1999. He won an election in March of 2000 constitutionally. (27:24) He got to run for two terms, those two terms. It became clear that he was not going to continue the Yeltsin policy of doing whatever the United States wanted to be done, that he was going to try to reform Russia in a Russian image, which we didn't like. So we were pouring money into Russia through these non-governmental organizations for the purpose of carrying out a color revolution in 2007, 2008. The way we were going to do it is in 2007 was the parliamentary elections. The idea of that 2007, 2008 period was that Putin couldn't stand a third term as president, so he was going to do a swap with Dmitri Veev, who at that time was the prime Minister. So Putin was going to become prime minister. Veev would become president, but for this to happen, United Russia, which was Putin's party, had to win the parliamentary election. (28:10) If the opposition could deny United Russia the majority, then Putin couldn't become Prime Minister, and if Putin couldn't become Prime Minister, then vie was vulnerable as president and you could pick him off and suddenly you've swept Putin out of power. This is literally the stated objective of the United States, and we started pouring money into Russia to promote this. One of the guys that got caught up in this was a young lawyer named Alex Navalny. He started working, it's CIA all the way. Look, the CIA trained some people. One of them was this Y Guinea albo. She's a journalist, but she went to Harvard, got groomed by the CIA, whether she knew it or not, but she left the balling, went to Yale. Well, later on, yes, he went to Yale in 2010, but Allach comes in in 2004 and she sets up this political parlor. (29:05) Now she comes from Harvard, she got her PhD. She comes to Russia. The first thing she does is sets up this political parlor funded by British money coming from oligarchs funneled to her through British intelligence. And this parlor attracts these young people, including Navalny, and their job is to create a youth movement that can lead to a color revolution. That's his whole thing. Bottom line is it failed. It failed miserably. But Navalny was identified at that point in time as somebody with potentially started this anti-corruption campaign when mid became the president mid said, I'm against corruption. Naval went good. Let me help you. And he jumped on this thing. He got picked to go to Yale in 2010 where he was groomed by the CIA for what purpose. The next target was, okay, we couldn't stop Putin from doing the swap in 2007, 2008. What we can do now is keep mid in power. (30:01) We can prevent Putin from coming back into office in the 2012 presidential election. Remember Hillary Clinton working the opposition, Michael McFall going in there. It's a big deal. And the volume, he became the front man for this. He went to Yale. He got dipped in, greased by the CIA and he got sent back to Russia. He's a CIA asset, straight up funded by British intelligence trying to overthrow or prevent Putin from coming back in power. Well, what's that thing? If you don't start nothing, there won't be nothing. Don't start nothing. Won't be nothing. Well, Navalny, I mean, before he went to Yale, he spent a summer in Kiro, which is a province about 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow. He got involved in restructuring the timber business, and it looked like he might've done some things that weren't so good. Normally that would be ignored, but he comes back and he immediately starts attacking the interest, the economic interest behind United Russia and Putin. (31:04) And so you started something, okay? So they opened up a criminal case against him, and now you have this situation where Navalny is trying to make himself relevant. And look, he had some traction early on. He ran for Mayor of Moscow and he got 27% of the vote. That ain't bad, but he didn't have any traction outside of Moscow. He couldn't get the kind of numbers necessary to win, but he was a pain in Putin's side. So they started legal, this legal stuff against him, and it ended up in him being convicted of a fraud and embezzlement, some people call it politically motivated. There's no doubt it was politically motivated, but that doesn't mean that the crime didn't take place. He got a suspended sentence. He's on parole. Basically, they did this to keep him from running. They said, because you're convicted, you can't run for office. (31:52) Something needed to happen. And so in 2020, he was poisoned, but he wasn't. Again, I don't want to get too much down the conspiracy track, but let me just put it this way. His medical records clearly show that he wasn't poisoned by Novak. This was a setup to get him out of Russia where he had been effectively neutered over into a safe area, and we know that he landed in Germany, he was flown into Germany, had a miraculous recovery by December. He wait a minute, had a miraculous recovery from Nova Chuck, which from my understanding is one of the most dangerous nerve agents created. I've read. It's so dangerous. It really can't even be used. The story was that he was poisoned at the airport. They poisoned his tea before he got on the plane. No, no. They poisoned his underwear in his hotel room. (32:45) No, no. But wasn't that afterwards, because the story changed. The story changed a couple of times. That's my point that they said that they poisoned his tea in the airport. If I understand it, if you were to put Nova chuck in a cup of tea damn near everybody, at least in that area of the airport would be dead. Then they said, oh, they poisoned his water bottle on the plane. Nobach is so toxic that if they had done that, everybody including the pilot would be dead. Then they poisoned his underwear. The story kept, and this is also interesting to me, is that during all of these changing of the stories, Russia kept saying, send us the toxicology report so that we can investigate this. No toxicology report was ever presented. Yeah, again, I'm not a big conspiracy guy. I don't like it. I am Hamm's razor kind of person. (33:48) But the problem is, CCAM razor points to this because we did get the toxicology, not the ones that the Germans and everybody were saying prove Novare, Wilma, you're a hundred percent right. This is the most deadly substance on the planet, but apparently it can't kill anybody. And by the way, whatever the new name of the kgp is, they're pretty good at assassinating folks as is the ccia. A, if they want you done, cancel your distance and cancel your five bullets. Five bullets in the front of your body tends to do it. You don't have to mess around with Novak. Okay? Yeah. I mean, just look. A Ukrainian pilot, a Russian pilot defected earlier this year to Ukraine and had two of his crew members killed as a result. I mean, he's a murderous traitor in the eyes of the Russians. They just found his body in Spain with five bullets pumped into the front of it. (34:45) That's how the Russians get you. They don't go around doing this Novak stuff. But the point is this Nozek was a manufactured event. It didn't happen. What the German doctors who treated him released the blood work and everything. It showed that Navalny had a whole bunch of different health issues, some serious health issues, and he was also, they found evidence of antidepressants, which is okay. I'm not attacking him, it's not a problem, but it looks like he deliberately overdosed on antidepressants to generate the result that happened so he could be flown out. This was a pre-planned event. I just want everybody to understand that, that Navalny deliberately overdosed on antidepressants to generate a medical crisis that then got him flown out of Russia, because remember, he's on house arrest. He can't leave, but they got him out. What's the first thing that happens after his miraculous recovery? (35:42) They fly him to Germany to a CIA safe house where a film crew comes in and they produce two feature length documentaries in one month, one month, including elaborate computer generated graphics, the whole thing. He claims that he came up with the idea while he was recovering from his and wrote it in a feverish in October, November. Wilmer, I've made a documentary and I'm making one right now. I can guarantee you they didn't get it done in a month. This was prepackaged by the CIA and British intelligence. And then he was, everybody's saying, stay in Germany. And he went, no, I'm going back. Why? Again? In 2021, these election cycles matter. In 2021, Putin was going to change the Constitution so that he could continue to run for office, and he changed the length of the term from four years to six years. He was restructuring the government and everybody who was anybody, including myself, looked at it and went, he's basically guaranteeing that the West will never subvert Russian democracy by doing this. (36:49) He's iron proofing it, bulletproofing it. So the last chance to get rid of Vladimir Putin was to disrupt this effort. Navalny was picked as the guy to do it. Navalny job was to go back to Russia stand trial, and while he's standing trial, they're going to release these documentaries. The first one was called Putin's Palace, which was supposed to expose the corruption of Putin and everything, and the idea that it would generate so much unrest inside Russia that Navalny would be acquitted, put in, become the presidential candidate to oppose Putin. That was the dream. The problem is the people coming up with that didn't understand that Navalny had no support in Russia, never could never get it outside of Moscow. You couldn't get 5%. You might get 12% in Cabo, but that's it. You're not going to win election with 12% support. The numbers I saw for him was about somewhere between two and 5%, more on the 2% side. (37:44) Nationwide, like I said, there's certain bubbles in there where you could get support, but nationwide, he wasn't going anywhere on this. So he goes back and the Russians, what's that? Don't want nothing. Don't start nothing. The Russians know exactly what's going on. I mean, look, Pesco, who's the pre spokesperson in October of 2020, he said, we know what's going on. Navalny is working with the CIA. We know this. We know everything. So they brought him back and they knew what his plan was. They knew what he was supposed to do. So they quickly turned just really quickly because that's what President Putin said to Tucker Carlson when he talked about it's good that you applied to the CIA and that they did not accept you. He was sending a message. I know who you are. I know what you do. Yeah, well, so here's the deal. (38:39) The Russians said, we're not playing this game anymore. We've letting Navali do this stupid stupidity because he's irrelevant. But now you're playing, playing a serious game of messing around with our democracy. So we're just going to end it. The vol, the hammer's coming down, boom, nine years, boom, 30 years, you're in jail for life. Goodbye. Get out of here. Now they did that, and then a lot of people just came out and Bill. Then the Russians turned around and said, okay, we know he's your spy. Do you want him back? We'll trade him for a guy that we want back from Germany. Now, here's the part that gets conspiratorial two days before he died, minute before you get there. Isn't there also footage of Navalny or one of his representatives, but I think it's him talking Tom, I six, about money, about how much money he's going to need to sustain this democracy movement in Russia. (39:38) 2012, Navalny deputy met with a member of MI six in Moscow. Again, how did they get the video? Because the Russians know everything. I mean, when people are sitting there going, Evan Sitz isn't a CIA spy. He couldn't be. I just want to tell you right now, ladies and gentlemen, the Russians have him on film talking about this, about receiving the documents. It's conspiratorial. Putin was very clear about it. He's a CIA spy and Navalny, the Russians know who was paying for him. They know this. So they're sitting there going, we want to give them back. But that's the last thing. The ccia A wants. Why? Because then they have to admit that we're messing around in Russian politics politic. They can't. So this is the part that, this is what I firmly believe, because I believe that Navalny was induced by his handlers to deliberately overdose on depressants in 2020 to get him out, to get involved in the CIA operation to come back in and disrupt the election. (40:37) That is clear. Two days before he died, he was visited by his lawyer. Some people say that his wife was there as well, and they brought medication that's documented. Have you seen Godfather two so many times? I can't tell you how many Freddy five fingers. Freddy. Five fingers. Okay, so Tom goes to talk to Freddie five fingers. You just take a nice warm bath, you slit your words, nice warm bath, open up your veins with the woman. The family will be taken care of, throws the cigar away, shakes his hand, and it's understood. Navalny daughter got a free ride to Stanford courtesy of Michael McFall. Navalny wife now has been appointed. I mean, she was at the Munich Security Conference ready to step in before he died. He died. The script comes in, boom. She's now the new figure of the opposition. She's not tainted by crime. (41:32) She's at Navalny. That's a headline in the Washington Post today. Yeah, she's the new face of the opposition because Navalny had been neutered by the Russians, but as long as he was alive, he was a problem for the CIA. So Freddy five fingers, that's all I'm going to say. He was told Your family will be taken care of. All they have to do is lie in the tub and open up my veins, and it's a quiet, painful day. He overdosed on the drugs they gave him. He went for a walk and he died, didn't come back. His family's taken care of, and that's what I believe happened. I believe that the CIA knocked this guy off in prison. He took a long walk on a very short pier. Yeah. (42:20) So you've got Alexander the Butcher, sarky Ky, the commander of Ukraine's Ground forces. Since the start of the military operation, he is now the new military chief after Emir, Zelensky replaced zany in this leadership shakeup. What does that tell us at this stage of the game? What does that type of move tell us? Are they transitioning now to another phase of this process, recognizing that the war is lost? Again, everything has to have a setup because nothing happens in a vacuum. Ukraine is called the greatest democracy in the world. We know that's not true, but it's called the greatest democracy in the world by America. We overthrew it in 2014. Yes, we would know. But the key aspect of democracies is civil military relations, meaning that the civilian is the commander in chief, and the military always obeys the orders. Let's look at American history. (43:32) George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln McClellan was the commander of the army of the Potomac, and he thought he knew how to win this war, and Abraham Lincoln disagreed and fired him. And McClellan said, sir, yes sir. And he resigned because civil military relations, that's what you do. McClellan went on to challenge Lincoln in the elections and lost, but he didn't launch a coup. That's not what you do. Douglas MacArthur, during the Korean War thought he knew how to win the war, wanted to drop atomic bombs on China. Harry Truman said, Nope, that's not how we're going to do it. And they met in Midway, and Truman fired him, and MacArthur went, sir, yes sir. And he resigned. That's what civil military relations supposed to be in a democracy. Zelensky met with zany, who's the commander of the Ukrainian Armed forces, and he said, I don't like the fact that you're articulating policy that goes against what I want. (44:31) I want to be more aggressive. I have to go out and sell this conflict to the West, and I have to sell it, that we're going to regain all the lost territory. And you, as the general is supposed to say, sir, yes, sir, but you've gone out and given interviews behind my back saying it's a frozen conflict, a stalemate. I can't do that. You're fired and solution. He said, no, I'm not. And Zelensky went. Zany said, not only am I not fired, but here, let me show you this. Here's my picture. Given a medal to a right sector, Nazi from the organization, said, they're going to hang you from the deck, and if you ever go against this, and behind me is a picture of step on Bandera and the right sector flag. Go ahead and fire me now. Zelensky, you're a dead man walking. (45:14) And when Zelensky started calling people up saying Aslu saying no, one of the people he called up was Ky, who said, I just want to tell you right now, Mr. President, myself and the entire Ukrainian general staff support slu, you fire 'em. We come marching, it's over. And now Victoria Newland, and everybody's back there going, can't do this, guys. We're supposed to be giving 64 billion to the world's greatest democracy. We're against coups, and you're getting ready to launch a coup. She flies in panic, and so she cuts a deal. She explains to everybody, if you do this coup, we can't support you. It's over, and then you're all going to die. And the generals realized that, and they went, yeah, we understand that. Zelensky realized that. So zany stepped aside, Zeki took over, but understand what happened. It's a coup. There's one man in charge of Ukraine today, and his name is not Mir Zelinsky. (46:07) His name is Ky. He's the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and they're calling the shots. How do we know this? Because within days of him coming in, he said, we're going over to the general defensive. He's calling the shots. Zelinsky said, we'll never leave at vca. KY came and said, get 'em out. Pull 'em out, red, destroy the line. We're going to be pulling back the military's in charge. And now you have some interesting things because the coup we didn't want to happen may happen because the nationalists are all upset. And there's talk about driving on Kiev right now. The Nazi nationalists are you're talking about, yeah, the Nazis, the N right sector guys who became Ovv, who now have renamed themselves. They're the third assault brigade, and everybody's going, there's no Nazis in Ukraine because there's nothing called the Azov, except the Nazis are so stupid. (47:03) They say, nah, third of assault brigade we're azo. And they do it right on camera, seeling all this kind of stuff in the West, everywhere. Oh, no, we don't want to see this guy's just calling himself the third assault brigade. But no, the Nazis are there. They're upset. It's a mess right now. But America, I'm just telling everybody's this, right? There was a coup deta in Ukraine. The generals are in charge. Zelinsky is a figurehead right now, but the people calling the shot is the military. Now, that's a new reality. I just want to quickly take a step back and to the point you were making about Navalny, to those that think what you're saying is fanciful and crazy, the United States did a similar action. They didn't kill him, but they did a similar action in Venezuela with Juan Gudo. The United States told the world that Juan Gudo was the president of Venezuela, even though Nicholas Maduro is the democratically elected president. (48:11) And when Gudo failed, now the United States is trying to do the same thing with a woman named Marina Machado, and she has been convicted by the Venezuelan Supreme Court as having worked with, I think it's Peru, against the interests of Venezuela. So the Venezuelan Supreme Court said, because you've gone outside the country and tried to overthrow this government, you are no longer qualified to be a candidate for president. The United States is trying to ignore the, dictate the decision of the Venezuelan Supreme Court and put this woman in place. Anyway, I bring that up just to show that what you have talked about in terms of, now I forgot the guy's name, Naval, Naval, Navalny, the United States is doing this in doing this, a number of places, and Venezuela is the most recent. But yeah. How about President Diem in Vietnam? Well, we can go for people going, well, this is fanciful. (49:19) This is out of a guys. We do it all the time. All the time. When leaders become inconvenient to the Sharan, the Sharan, the Sha Saddam Hussein. I just want to remind people, one of the more interesting, I was involved with a lot of defectors, Iraqi defectors in my time as a UN weapons inspector, and one guy that I interviewed many, many times was Wafi Samara. He was the head of military intelligence for Saddam. He ended up being in London and run by the Brits. So I'd go there and the MI six would take you to a safe house, and Wafi would come in and we'd have long conversations, and I tried to extract information from him that could lead to good inspections. But he just sat there and he talked about how the US intelligence would fly in, because the place I wanted to inspect was a specific office with a specific safe. (50:13) And he said, Hey, when you're in that safe, if you go down to this drawer, boom, you might find some photographs that you recognize. And I said, whatcha talking about? He goes, that's where we kept the American Spy satellite photographs that were given to us by American Intelligence officers who came in and sat in that conference room right next to it. You'll see it when you go in there. I did. And we met there, and they would brief us on the spy satellites, give us the newest signals, intelligence laying out the Iranian ground forces, and they helped us plan the chemical weapons attacks against the Iranians in 1988 and afa. We had this wonderful relationship. He gave me the names of all the guys that he worked with. What I'm trying to say is, ladies and gentlemen, there was a time in 19 88, 19 89, where Saddam was our boy. (50:58) US intelligence was there. Then Saddam became inconvenient. He fired scud missiles at Israel, which is a capital crime, and we ended up going to war removing them and having him hung by the neck until dead because his continued survival would've been inconvenient for America. Let me just make it as clear as this. Navalny had become inconvenient because the Russians were sitting on, the Russians never go public about anything, and their words mean everything. And when Pesco said, in October of 2020, we know what the CIA is doing, the cia, we know who he's working with. We know what's happening. It meant they know. They know everything. They have all the financials, they have all the videotapes, they have everything. And the US knew it too. That interview with Tucker is very telling. He said, I'm not going to talk to Biden. There's really nothing for me to say, but he says, our special services are talking. (51:58) They're talking the language of the special services. Having been in the special services and engaged in those kinds of conversations, they're very frank, because we don't have to play games. When you sit down with somebody and they know what your background is, we don't have to pretend. We talk about human recruitment, we talk about technical surveillance, we talk about the tools of the trade, we talk about the language that we know is going on. And so when the special services of Russia sit down with the special services of the CI and say, we know exactly what you guys did. You met here, boom, boom, boom. We got the goods. He's your boy. Do you want him back? And the CIA went, Nope, we don't want him back. We're going to have a lawyer visit him. And again, it may sound something like that, a movie. (52:40) But remember, Hollywood gets its greatest cues from reality. Frank Pan, angel, Freddy, five Fingers, Freddy, five Fingers baby. Favorite scene in the world. And it's real. I mean, I'm giving away my article, but I'm writing an article that this is going to be explained in great detail, and I talk about Freddy Five Fingers. So the next point here that I want to get to with you quickly is Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He's warning that Russia may be developing a space-based weapon that could target US satellites. And a lot of the narrative that's surrounding what he said over last weekend is that now Russia has violated, there were some treaties I think signed in the mid eighties that the countries agreed that they would not militarize space. But what seems to be left out of this conversation is that I think when the United States announced the Space Force that was militarization of space, therefore the treaty that they now want to wrap themselves in and call foul based upon, really the United States has already violated it. (54:00) So go ahead. Well, the treaty is the 1967 treaty, the outer space Treaty 67. Okay? And it talks about, it doesn't say demilitarization. What it says is that space should be used for exclusively peaceful purposes and that nobody should deploy nuclear weapons in the space. Now, what Turner has to show the stupidity of Mike Turner and these people. Apparently there's raw intelligence. That's the term that's used, and that's an important phrase. Finished intelligence is when I collect information, I corroborate it with different sources. You connect the dots, I connect the dots. That's right. Bingo. Good job, Wilmer. And you connect the dots, and then you write up an assessment that it's fact-based. But here's the important thing. You disguise the sources of information because if you're going to release finished intelligence to a congressman or Congress, they do what politicians do. They talk. They bring in somebody, Hey, read this. (55:05) You're not supposed to write about it, but wink, wink, read this. And they go, oh my God, the Russians are going to put a nuclear weapon in space. What are we going to do about it? Okay, finished. Intelligence gets leaked all the time. Everybody does it. The president on down. It's just the name of the game in Washington dc. Raw intelligence though, is almost never leaked. Why? Because raw intelligence means we haven't protected the source. So Turner released raw intelligence. He released a raw intelligence report to Congress. He put it in the reading room and said, everybody needs to come and read this thing. Now, a lot of people did, a lot of people didn't, but it created a storm because he issued a public statement, which means the media now, because he knows how the game's played. Now, every reporter worked their salt in Washington. (55:55) Dcs found their congressional sourcing. What the hell is on that report? And people started talking. So what we do know now is that the Russians are developing an anti-satellite capability that incorporates a nuclear device designed to generate an electromagnetic pulse that can shut down all of our satellites in outer space. Now, why is this important? Understand this. Turner released his report on Wednesday, knowing that on Thursday, the gang of eight, four senators, four Republicans from the Intelligence Committee, the leadership was going to meet with the White House National Security Council about this very report and talk about it. So why would you release it when they're already going to talk about it? What are you trying to do? (56:42) On Wednesday, the day he released his report, SpaceX sent up a Falcon Nine rocket with two satellites. These satellites were experimental missile monitoring satellites, part of a constellation of satellites that the United States started deploying last year. We deployed 28 of them last year. It's going to be a constellation of hundreds. It's sort of like a militarized starlink. And the purpose of this constellation is give America total control over the informational domain. That means that we communicate faster, we navigate, we can target, we can collect. We've militarized space. And the Russians have said, they've written reports to Secretary General saying, Hey, this is a violation of the outer space treaty. You're militarizing space. You're creating an advantage at a time when you say you want to strategically defeat Russia, remember, that's the American objective. And the Russians are saying, if you do this, you could launch a first strike against us, and we might not be able to respond. (57:45) You're getting a unilateral advantage here, and if we do go to war, you're going to have this total control over intelligence, collection, communications, et cetera, that gives you an operational and tactical advantage. We can't allow this to happen. So what the Russians did is they developed a weapon. They haven't deployed it yet, but it's a weapon that it will go up. And in one winding flash of a moment, that doesn't threaten any life here in America. It's not like they're going up there with a giant dirty bomb. It's going to be a neutron type device, a small device that's geared towards emitting radiation, the pulse, and it's going to blind the entire in an instant shut down this entire satellite network. But here's the important thing. From Turner's perspective, the entire American military approach to war depends on this. If we don't have this satellite thing, we put talk about putting all the eggs in one basket, we have literally put all the eggs in one basket. (58:44) Everything we do depends on this. If you shut that satellite network down, ladies and gentlemen, we can't go to war. We can't go to war. It's over. And Turner knows it. So what Turner's trying to do is say, guys, why are we investing all this money? This is going to go on for years when we know the Russians can undo it. This is stupid. We need to either get involved in arms control to prevent this from happening, or we need to come up with a backup plan because these satellites ain't going to work the way you want 'em to work when you want 'em to work. That's noble. But here's the problem. He released raw intelligence, which means the Russians now know how we collected it, and at a time when we need to have continued access to this stream of reporting. Now more than ever, let's imagine that the president says, Hey, what are the Russians up to today on that satellite thing, the thing we've been monitoring, you guys came to me and you said, Hey, boss, we put a, I don't know how they did it. (59:49) We tapped a cable and now we're listening to the conversations of these guys. Oh, wow, that's cool. Okay, but boss, we can't talk about, we can't mention the following words because if we mention the following words, the Russians will know what conversation we listen to, and then they'll stop communicating. Well, raw intelligence gives you those words. It wasn't finished product. Mike Turner compromised his source. We will never listen to them again at a time when we actually need to be monitoring this to come up with a strategy. Remember, let's say we want to do the right thing for once in our pathetic lives as Americans, and we say, maybe it's time we do engage in meaningful arms control. This is when we need to know what Russian intent is. How far along are they? Are they going to deploy this? Is this something that the Russians are doing to get to the negotiating table, or is this something that the Russians are going to keep, no matter what, what's going on, it affects our negotiating strategy. (01:00:44) We don't know now because Mike Turner released the raw intelligence to do an honorable thing to get people, he knew that they were going to sweep it under the rug. He knew that the Gang of eight and the White House were just go, Nope, we're not going to worry about this. We're going to keep deploying the satellites. And he's going, that's stupid. But now we are blind. And that's why I call it Turner's folly. I mean, trying to do the right thing. He did the absolute wrong thing. And now at a time when we need to have this intelligence, it's not there. I know there's a lot of people out there that thinks intelligence is a bad word, and it's been misused throughout history. There's no doubt about that. But I'm here to tell you right now that collecting information of this nature is absolutely essential to the national security of the United States because you want our leaders to be informed about the potential threats that exist around the world. (01:01:32) And there's a need for intelligence, not Iris. I'm not talking about violating American constitutional rights. I'm not talking about, I'm saying there's a need for people like me who did it honorably. It's a tough job. It's a dangerous job. Sometimes you have to do things that you wouldn't want to talk about at the PTA, but it's the reality of the world that you have to go out there and you have to get this information so that your leaders are informed so they can make the right decisions. And Mike Turner has cost us that information at a time when we desperately need it. Final question for you. And that surrounds nato and Donald Trump's comments about nato, and there seems to be an awful lot of furor about his talking about defunding NATO and all this kind of stuff, when all that I can read and understand is that NATO is now really obsolete and that it's a money laundering scheme. (01:02:26) Yeah, let me put it this way. There's a foreign minister of Lithuania Landsburg out there, and he's, I mean, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, they're making a lot of noise right now about Article five and how it's essential that NATO must come to the collective defense. But Lithuania is talking about, for instance, blockading Coing grad, the Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea. They're talking about sanctions. They're talking about a whole bunch of stuff that could lead to a war with Russia. And they're saying, that's okay because we're nato, and NATO will protect us. (01:03:05) The American people need to understand that Lithuania has a population of 2.8 million. The greater East Coast megapolis from Boston to Washington DC is 50 million people. Do you really think that we're going to sacrifice 50 million people to defend 2.8 million people who are kicking a hornet's nest right now? The answer is no. And that's the bottom line about nato. The American people are waking up to the fact that NATO is not about defending Europe from the evil Russians, NATO's a suicide pill. Because you have nations like Poland, you have nations like Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, that think that because they have this NATO shield behind them, they can behave aggressively to Russian and not have any consequence to it. If they start a war against Russia and a blockade of Coing, grad is an act of war, Russia will respond militarily. And now if you're Joe Biden, it's a sacred thing. (01:04:04) Every inch of NATO soil is sacred. Article five is a sacred, no, it's a suicide pill. It's a trap having poodles trying to get the rottweilers to fight. NATO is an organization that has outlived its usefulness. Donald Trump, he's not the most eloquent person or the most articulate person. And there's a lot about him that just cannot be supported 100%. But I'll tell you right now, he's speaking the mind of many Americans when he says, we ain't doing this anymore. We're not paying your bills. We're not going to be there for you. When you want to kick a hornet's nest. We don't want to get stung. So you're on your own, and that's what's going to happen. I am predicting that nato, it may not last 10 years. It's out. It's on its way out because it's, here's the thing. Remember we talked about mobilization at the beginning? (01:04:56) We talked about mobilization. It's funny to watch the schizophrenia that exists in people like Jan Stoltenberg who stutters his way through everything. Russia is evil, and we must must stand up through Russia. NATO must do, but we cannot afford to mobilize right now. We have no money. Our industry is no longer working, and we don't, but America will pay for it because NATO is a, I mean, it's going back and forth. NATO can't mobilize right now because they don't have the industrial base to mobilize. Not only that, nobody wants to be part the British who are out there. Boris Johnson doing that ridiculous thing. Lance Corporal Johnson reporting, sir, we're going to mobilize the people. First of all, Britain has two aircraft carriers. They built for, I forget how many billions of dollars they can't get out of port because they don't work. They build a whole bunch of new frigates, brand new modern frigates to defend these aircraft carriers, but they don't have enough sailors. (01:05:51) So in order to get the sailors on these new frigates, they have to retire frigates that are still good. So they're military. We're going to fight the Russians. I mean, you hear this British general, we're going to be on the front lines of the next war with Russia, with what? Your military's 72,000. Right now, you can't fill up a soccer stadium, and in five years it's going to be 56,000. Nobody wants to join the British military anymore. Nobody's joining the Navy. Nobody's joining anything because the youth of Europe don't believe in Europe. They don't believe they're not willing to give their lives for this pathetic little enterprise called Europe or nato. So all this talk about 300,000, this, that mobilize. It's all talk. And that's the good news is it's all talk. The better news is I think NATO's done because you used a word that's very important. And normally, as I said, I shy against conspiracies, but NATO's a money laundering scheme, that's all it is. It's an employment vehicle. I mean, I have to be careful. I have relatives that work for nato. They're not Americans, and thank God, I mean, one's married to my sister. So I like the fact that he has a paycheck. It keeps my sister fed and a roof overhead. (01:07:07) But the jobs not a real job. None of NATO's a real job. It's just an employment vehicle for a political economic elite that automatically fallen on these ES because that's what NATO is. It's a sinecure for people just to sit there and collect a paycheck doing nothing. If I have the chance to speak to President Biden, and I know he watches the show regularly, I would have to ask him about the sanctity of NATO that he holds so near and dear, if you believe in NATO to the degree that you do, Mr. President, why did you engage in an act of war as in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline? Why did you engage in an act of war against a NATO country that being Germany? Because by doing so, article five, the other NATO countries are supposed to respond to Germany's defense in a manner in which they see fit. (01:08:10) So I guess the fact that they didn't respond means they didn't see a manner that they see fit. But I don't hear anybody asking that question. Why? If NATO is NATO and it's sacrosanct as it is, why did you engage in an act of war against a NATO member? That's my final question, Scott Ritter. Well, I mean, it's a great question, but here's even an equally relevant one. Why did the German chancellor stay silent at the press conference in February when the president said that if Russian and invade Ukraine, I'll take out Nord stream. And when he was asked the question, but it's German, how could you do that? It'll get done, I promise you. And Olaf Schultz is sitting there going, not saying a word, not saying a word. So how can you, I mean, the thing about Article five is it has to be invoked by the person attacked. (01:09:05) And Germany never once said, we've been attacked because they were there when it was designed. Olaf Schultz knew all along that this was going to happen because Germany's not a sovereign state. And that's the thing about NATO that people need to understand. It exists only for the United States. It's the exclusive tool of the United States. It exists to promote American national security interests. And this is why when you have Latvia and Poland now believing that NATO's there for their interest, no, it's not. NATO doesn't exist for anybody's interest, but our own. And as Europe wakes up to this reality, they're going to realize that we don't need to be part of NATO anymore because it doesn't benefit us. And there's a lot of talk now about a European security agency and things of that nature. Yeah, and President Putin asked, I thought, a very relevant as we look at, so people say, well, why did the United States blow up nato? (01:10:05) Well, I mean, blow up Nord Stream basically to de-industrialized Germany de-industrialized Europe, and have the Europeans start buying natural gas from the United States and other things. Putin during his speech said, well, you realize they didn't destroy the entire Nord stream pipeline. There is one pipe that can still transmit gas. Why don't you open that up? He said, there's the ability to send gas through Ukraine. Why don't you open that up? There's the ability to send gas through Poland. Why don't you open that up and haven't heard an answer? But that's, you want the best answer. Go ahead. I'll just say this. I grew up in Germany and the car that I loved, I was in love with the Porsche nine 11 SC Turbo, rough modified, and well, guess what's happening. Wilmer Porsche is moving its production to the United States. Michelin, the French Tire company. Michelin has shut down, I think two tire plants in Germany, and they're moving them. (01:11:15) I don't know where they're moving, but they're moving 'em out of Germany. I know that. Can you imagine a Porsche plant and a Michelin plant? I tell you what, there's going to be a new car in my driveway pretty soon. It's going to stay made in the USA on it, but that's what's going on. We've de-industrialized Europe to our benefit. And again, we come b

Rod Arquette Show Daily Rundown – Monday, January 29, 20244:20 pm: Derek Hunter, a columnist with Townhall, joins the program to discuss why he says now is the time for the GOP to hit Joe Biden even harder about the crisis on the nation's southern border.4:38 pm: Matt Boyle, Washington Political Editor for Breitbart, joins the show to discuss his piece about a radical left network that has hijacked the Democrats in an effort to stop Donald Trump at any cost.5:05 pm: Nationally syndicated radio host Kevin McCullough, a contributor to Townhall, joins Rod to discuss his piece about how Joe Biden hates making America great.6:05 pm: Representative Colin Jack joins the show to discuss Utah's risk of energy shortfalls and a bill he's working on to ensure coal-fired power plants aren't closed before the resource is fully replaced.6:20 pm: Former Utah Congressman Chris Stewart, who served on the Intelligence Committee during his time as a member of the House of Representatives, joins Rod to give us his impressions of how the U.S. should react to the Iranian drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers.6:38 pm: Mark Hemingway of The Federalist joins Rod for a conversation about his piece about how the immigration crisis has highlighted the American establishment's contempt for democracy.

The UK merger control system provides for voluntary filings but that does not mean parties to deals can hide from the regulator, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). But how does the CMA's Mergers Intelligence Committee (MIC) identify deals to ask about and review the informal briefing papers which can be submitted by parties hoping to avoid a full filing? Eleni Gouliou, a Director of Mergers at the CMA, who has chaired MIC, joins Anora Wang and Matthew Hall to discuss the work of MIC and its place within the CMA's merger review processes. Listen to this episode to learn more about this area of the CMA's merger control work, which is increasingly important now that the UK is outside the EU merger control regime. With special guest: Eleni Gouliou, Director of Mergers, UK Competition and Markets Authority Related Links: UK Competition and Markets Authority "Guidance on the CMA's mergers intelligence function" (December 2020) UK Competition and Markets Authority merger inquiry outcome statistics Hosted by: Anora Wang, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP and Matthew Hall, McGuireWoods London LLP  

Israel is extending its ground operations in Gaza. What will this mean for the region's future and the well-being of those held hostage by Hamas? Joining us on the show we have US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and insights from Intelligence Committee Republican Sen. James Lankford. A blackout occurred as Israel's barrage intensified, causing communication services in Gaza to be disrupted. With communication now getting restored, we provide an update on the latest developments from inside Gaza. The US House chooses a Speaker, and Mike Pence drops out. More signs of the Republican Party's embrace of former President Donald Trump. GOP Candidate Chris Christie offers his perspective on the situation. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, the Intelligence Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, he went to Harvard Law School and was a practicing private practice attorney. He is better served to discuss these issues than most of the people calling for the resignation of Menendez. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today's show opens with an admission that I did not watch the second round of the GOP debates. I think they no longer serve to provide any meaningful content. Next we discuss some of the information Rep. James Comer (R-KY) had released the day prior to the first day of the Impeachment Inquiry that took place today. From wire transfers to Joe Biden's home to more text messages, it's clear we have direct ties to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's business dealings. It's also clear Joe Biden has been lying about it and is both corrupt and compromised. But, in typical Leftist lunacy, they still see nothing. I'm getting pretty tired of the mountain of “no evidence” that continues to tower over the Biden Crime Family. The Left wanted direct links and once they are shown them, they still pull a Sergeant Schultz, “I know nut-ting!” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) did masterful jobs of opening the discussion of the inquiry and laying the foundation of Joe Biden's criminality and culpability. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez provided an example of everything the Democrats tried today. AOC asked if a crack addict could be a reliable witness. That's all they had folks. They want you think that because Hunter was on drugs, nothing he said or did is reliable and therefore can be dismissed. That's their only play. While this was taking place, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) was in a briefing regarding the classified documents taken out of Joe Biden's garage. He is quoted as saying, “I've seen some of these documents as the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee and I can tell you they are of the highest level of concern and a threat to national security. We have to get to the bottom of why was he [Joe Biden] taking these [classified materials] and what was he doing with them.” By the way, you UAW workers and other blue collar types, if you think Joe Biden is on your side, you are sadly mistaken. To remind you, I play a confrontation that took place between a hard-hat laborer and Joe Biden. Senate Minority Leader Mitch “long stare” McConnell wants us all to believe that sending more money to Ukraine is the highest priority for the United States right now. There is nothing more urgent or pressing than to support Zelenskyy. On a closing note, why was the Arizona State Treasurer asked to be Acting Governor for a day? And ABC News wants us to believe that half the country wants to take the latest mRNA C-19 vaccine for the fall. So far, in a poll I have on X, I just don't see that at all. Take a moment to rate and review the show and then share the episode on social media. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, GETTR and TRUTH Social by searching for The Alan Sanders Show. You can also support the show by visiting my Patreon page!

SERIES 2 EPISODE 34: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Judge Aileen Cannon! You have unsuspected depth! Trump's novice judicial appointee has shocked Trump World by issuing a gag order not only limiting what he can say and when he can say it during his prosecution and trial for stealing top secret documents, but also limiting when he and his lawyers can see the war plans and other classified information he stole. Cannon's ruling is almost everything Smith asked for. Any evidence marked classified? Trump can't discuss it publicly. The evidence marked classified that Trump has lied about and said he DE-classified? Trump can't discuss THAT publicly. The evidence marked classified that has become public knowledge without being officially de-classified? Trump can't discuss THAT publicly. If he wants to listen to any of the classified audio it has to be on a hardline headset on a computer that has no internet or network connection! And she also has ruled co-defendant Walt Nauta cannot have access to any of the material, so that's one less chance of a pro-Trump leak. It's stunning. Also, the Illegal Impeachment Inquiry Trump is stage-managing from behind the scenes is going shockingly badly. It's morphed into the GOP-In-Crisis; in fact, into the GOP in Open Revolt. McCarthy accused Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida of conspiring with Democrat Eric Swalwell of California to get Swalwell placed back on the Intelligence Committee. McCarthy even posits that THAT is a front for something else, saying of Gaetz quote “this is really about an ethics complaint.” Gaetz came back last night and said “This is an abject lie from a sad and pathetic man who lies to hold on to power,” and Congressman you'll have to be more SPECIFIC than that and USE McCarthy's name in that statement because otherwise it could be about anybody in your party. Also: the McCarthy FBI whistleblower about Hunter Biden? A DIFFERENT FBI whistleblower has implied that the other one is lying. And Hunter Biden just sued a former Trump aide for illegally accessing the laptop. And then there's the other media shoe dropping. A month ago Kristen Welker was one of a dozen reporters who took a meal with three Trump goons. Today, Welker will pre-destroy her career as host of "Meet The Press" to get a sit-down with Trump. The Executive Producer of her show - who didn't make the cut to join the Countdown staff 20 years ago - actually says of this garish soulless nonjournalistic stunt “We are in the business of covering politics. It's not our job to pick and choose the leaders. The American people get to do that. And so our job is to make sure that the American people understand who the people in power are, what they stand for, and what they plan to do.” It's not our job to STOP the arsonists, it's just our job to give equal coverage to the firefighters AND the arsonists. B-Block (26:54) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Mitt Romney's going to retire at the end of his Senate term. I wonder if anyone will notice. My GOD they're treating this like Daniel Webster leaving the Senate in 1850. In fact, Mitt Romney is one of the dumbest, least perceptive people ever in public service - a man so dim that it wasn't until after January 6th that he realized smart colleagues like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley might not actually think Trump had won but were just LYING FOR PERSONAL GAIN AT AMERICA'S COST. And for me, nothing will erase from my memory the day I awoke to find that Mitt had tweeted about me, complained about me, and as Tommy Vietor replied "It's long past time to break ground on a Both Sides museum in Washington, DC. This comparison of the President of the United States to Keith Olbermann MUST be preserved for future generations." But it what Mitt was complaining ABOUT that will always resonate: that I had despoiled American politics by calling Trump a terrorist. Three months later Mitt was a virtual hostage inside the Capitol, pinned there by... Trump's terrorists.  C-Block (38:43) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCKSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is a lot these days to discuss with a US official who is an expert on China and has major influence over US-China policy. But today we take a longer view of the Cold War (II) we are in with China by looking at a historical comparison in Cold War I. Congressman Gallagher just wrapped up teaching a history class on one such historical comp – the Korean War. Rep. Gallagher served for seven years on active duty in the United States Marine Corps, including two deployments to Iraq. He was a national security aide on Capitol HIll. He's also a warrior scholar, having earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University, a master's degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University, a second in Strategic Intelligence from National Intelligence University, and a PhD in International Relations from Georgetown. He has served on the House Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, and he is chairman of the newly created House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, At the end of this episode, we take a detour to discuss what Congress is doing on the topic of UFOs, an issue on which Rep. Gallagher has been active. Items discussed in this episode: "Why America Forgets -- and China Remembers -- the Korean War" https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/why-america-forgets-and-china-remembers-korean-war The Hertog Foundation https://hertogfoundation.org/

On June 21st, the House of Representatives censured Rep. Adam Schiff of California. The House has censured members just 24 times in our nation's history, making Schiff the 25th. In this episode, we'll detail the actions outlined in the censure and let you decide for yourself: Is it a serious abuse of power? Is it a waste of time? Is it a deserved punishment? Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via Support Congressional Dish via (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes The History of Censure U.S. House of Representatives Office of History, Art and Archives. July 22, 2023. Wikipedia. The Durham Report John Durham. May 12, 2023. U.S. Department of Justice. FISA Warrants Rebecca Beitsch. July 21, 2023. The Hill. Andrew Prokop. February 24, 2018. Vox. February 5, 2018. U.S. House of Representatives The Whistleblower Julian E. Barnes et al. October 2, 2019. The New York Times. Julian E. Barnes and Nicholas Fandos. September 17, 2019. The New York Times. Kyle Cheney. September 13, 2019. Politico. Republicans Who Blocked the First Censure Jared Gans. June 16, 2023. The Hill. Senate Campaign Fundraising Jamie Dupree. July 17, 2023. Regular Order. Impeachment Mania Don Wolfensberger. July 10, 2023. The Hill. Alex Gangitano and Brett Samuels. July 1, 2023. The Hill. Rebecca Beitsch and Emily Brooks. June 29, 2023. The Hill. The Resolution Audio Sources June 21, 2023 House Floor June 21, 2023 House Floor Clips 1:15 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL): With access to sensitive information unavailable to most Members of Congress, and certainly not accessible to the American people, Representative SCHIFF abused his privileges, claiming to know the truth, while leaving Americans in the dark about this web of lies. These were lies so severe that they altered the course of the country forever: the lie that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 Presidential election revealed to be completely false by numerous investigations, including the Durham report; the lie that the Steele dossier—a folder of falsified and since completely debunked collusion accusations funded by the Democratic Party—had any shred of credibility, yet Representative SCHIFF read it into the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD as fact; the lies concocted and compiled in a false memo that was used to lie to the FISA court, to precipitate domestic spying on U.S. citizen, Carter Page, violating American civil liberties. 12:20 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Mr. Speaker, to my Republican colleagues who introduced this resolution, I thank you. You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this falsehood. You, who are the authors of a big lie about the last election, must condemn the truthtellers, and I stand proudly before you. Your words tell me that I have been effective in the defense of our democracy, and I am grateful. 13:15 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Donald Trump is under indictment for actions that jeopardize our national security, and MCCARTHY would spend the Nation's time on petty political payback, thinking he can censure or fine Trump's opposition into submission. But I will not yield, not one inch. The cost of the Speaker's delinquency is high, but the cost to Congress of this frivolous and yet dangerous resolution may be even higher, as it represents another serious abuse of power. 14:50 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): This resolution attacks me for initiating an investigation into the Trump campaign's solicitation and acceptance of Russian help in the 2016 election, even though the investigation was first led not by me but by a Republican chairman. 15:10 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): It would hold that when you give internal campaign polling data to a Russian intelligence operative while Russian intelligence is helping your campaign, as Trump's campaign chairman did, that you must not call that collusion, though that is its proper name, as the country well knows. 15:30 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): It would fine me for the costs of the critically important Mueller investigation into Trump's misconduct, even though the special counsel was appointed by Trump's own Attorney General. 16:00 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): It would reprimand me over a flawed FISA application, as if I were its author or I were the Director of the FBI, and over flaws only discovered years later and by the inspector general, not Mr. Durham. In short, it would accuse me of omnipotence, the leader of some vast deep state conspiracy. Of course, it is nonsense. 16:50 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): My colleagues, if there is cause for censure in this House, and there is, it should be directed at those in this body who sought to overturn a free and fair Election. 19:05 Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL): Representative SCHIFF used his position as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to mislead the American people by falsely claiming that there was classified evidence of Russia colluding with President Trump, which was not true. 22:15 Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): SCHIFF repeatedly used the authority he was afforded in his position as chairman to lie to the American people to support his political agenda. Even after the Durham report discredited the Russia hoax, he continued to knowingly lie and peddle this false narrative. 24:45 Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): ADAM SCHIFF has done nothing wrong. ADAM SCHIFF is a good man. ADAM SCHIFF has served this country with distinction. ADAM SCHIFF served this country well as a Federal prosecutor, fighting to keep communities safe. ADAM SCHIFF served this country well as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, investigating people without fear or favor, including those at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because he believes in the Constitution and his oath of office. ADAM SCHIFF served his country well as the lead impeachment manager during the first impeachment trial of the former President of the United States, prosecuting his corrupt abuse of power. Yes, ADAM SCHIFF served this country well in the aftermath of the violent insurrection. He pushed back against the big lie told by the puppet master in chief and participated as a prominent member of the January 6th Committee to defend our democracy. ADAM SCHIFF has done nothing wrong. He has worked hard to do right by the American people. The extreme MAGA Republicans have no vision, no agenda, and no plan to make life better for the American people, so we have this phony, fake, and fraudulent censure resolution. A DAM SCHIFF will not be silenced. We will not be silenced. House Democrats will not be silenced today. We will not be silenced tomorrow. We will not be silenced next week. We will not be silenced next month. We will not be silenced next year. We will not be silenced this decade. We will not be silenced this century. You will never ever silence us. We will always do what is right. We will always fight for the Constitution, fight to defend democracy, fight for freedom, expose extremism, and continue America's long, necessary, and majestic march toward a more perfect Union. 29:10 Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC): Not only did he spread falsehoods that abused his power, he went after a man, Carter Page, who was completely innocent. Inspector General Horowitz found 17 major mistakes. 31:20 Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL): What really gnaws on the majority and what really bothers them is that Mr. SCHIFF was way better than anybody on their team at debate, at leadership, at messaging, and at legal knowledge. He kicked their ass. He was better, he was more effective, and that still bothers them. 35:40 Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA): Mr. Speaker, I opposed the original version of this resolution, not to defend Mr. SCHIFF's lies, but to defend the process that exposed those lies. We must never punish speech in this House, only acts. The only way to separate truth from falsehoods or wisdom from folly is free and open debate. We must never impose excessive fines that would effectively replace the constitutional two-thirds vote for expulsion with a simple majority. This new version removes the fine and focuses instead on specific acts, most particularly the abuse of his position as Intelligence Committee chairman by implying he had access to classified information that did not exist and his placement into the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD of the Steele dossier that he knew or should have known was false. 42:35 Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT): The most important thing I can say is that I sat next to ADAM SCHIFF for years. He is a man of integrity and dignity. 49:45 Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX): ADAM SCHIFF is tough. ADAM SCHIFF is smart. ADAM SCHIFF gets the job done. ADAM SCHIFF holds the powerful accountable. 56:35 Rep. André Carson (D-IN): Mr. Speaker, what I do know is that ADAM SCHIFF defended the U.S. Constitution. He led an impartial investigation which followed the facts and led to the first of two impeachments of a former President. 1:00:20 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Today, we are voting on a joke of a measure to censure ADAM SCHIFF, a true public servant and patriot. I urge a strong ‘‘no'' against this resolution targeting a true American hero. 1:08:30 Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): The only advantage to all of this is that instead of reversing what we did on the IRA to save the planet or reversing what we did to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, we are wasting time. September 26, 2019 CNN Clips 9:05 Wolf Blitzer: As you know, Mr. Chairman, you're being severely criticized by a lot of Republicans for mocking the president during your opening remarks today at the committee. Was it a mistake to make light of the situation? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Well, I don't think it's making light of a situation. And I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that there's anything comical about this. But I do think it's all too accurate, that this President, in his conversations with the President of Ukraine, was speaking like an organized crime boss. And the fact that these words are so suggestive that the President used of what we have seen of organized crime harkens back to me of what, for example, James Comey said when he was asked by the President if he could let this matter involving Flynn go, when Michael Cohen testified about how the President speaks in a certain code where you understand exactly what's required here. The point is that the President was using exactly that kind of language. And the President of Ukraine fully understood what he was talking about. Wolf Blitzer: Do you regret the, what you call the parody, the use of those phrases during the course of your opening statement? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): No, I think everyone understood -- and my GOP colleagues may feign otherwise -- that when I said, suggested that it was as if the President said, "listen carefully, because I'm only going to tell you seven more times" that I was mocking the President's conduct. But make no mistake about this, what the President did is of the utmost gravity and the utmost seriousness, because it involves such a fundamental betrayal of his oath. September 26, 2019 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Witnesses: Joseph Maguire, Acting Director of National Intelligence, Office of the Director of National Intelligence Clips 6:54 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): President Zelensky, eager to establish himself at home as the friend of the president of the most powerful nation on earth, had at least two objectives: get a meeting with the president and get more military help. And so what happened on that call? Zelensky begins by ingratiating himself, and he tries to enlist the support of the president. He expresses his interest in meeting with the president, and says his country wants to acquire more weapons from us to defend itself. 7:30 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): And what is the President's response? Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates. We've been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don't see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I'm going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent. Understand? Lots of it, on this and on that. I'm gonna put you in touch with people, not just any people, I'm going to put you in touch with Attorney General of the United States, my attorney general, Bill Barr. He's got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I'm gonna put you in touch with Rudy, you're going to love Him, trust me. You know what I'm asking. And so I'm only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways. And by the way, don't call me again, I'll call you when you've done what I asked. This is, in some in character, what the President was trying to communicate with the President of Ukraine. It would be funny if it wasn't such a graphic betrayal of the President's oath of office. But as it does represent a real betrayal, there's nothing the President says here that is in America's interest, after all. 1:14:40 Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH): While the chairman was speaking I actually had someone text me, "Is he just making this up?" And yes, yes he was. Because sometimes fiction is better than the actual words or the texts. But luckily the American public are smart and they have the transcript, they've read the conversation, they know when someone's just making it up. 1:19:45 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): In my summary, the President's call was meant to be at least part in parody. The fact that that's not clear is a separate problem in and of itself. Of course, the president never said, "If you don't understand me, I'm gonna say seven more times." My point is, that's the message that the Ukraine president was receiving, in not so many words. September 17, 2019 Morning Joe on MSNBC Clips Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. We would like to. But I'm sure the whistleblower has concerns that he has not been advised as the law requires by the Inspector General or the Director of National Intelligence, just as to how he is to communicate with Congress. And so the risk of the whistleblower is retaliation. Will the whistleblower be protected under the statute if the offices that are supposed to come to his assistance and provide the mechanism are unwilling to do so? But yes, we would love to talk directly with the whistleblower. March 28, 2019 CNN with Chris Cuomo Clips Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): One, there's ample evidence of collusion in plain sight and that is true. And second, that is not the same thing as whether Bob Muller would be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the crime of conspiracy. There's a difference between there being evidence of collusion and proof beyond reasonable doubt of a crime. March 24, 2019 This Week with George Stephanopoulos Clips George Stephenopolous: You have said though in the past there is significant evidence of collusion. How do you square that with Robert Muller's decision not to indict anyone. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): There is significant evidence of collusion, and we've set that out time and time again, from the secret meetings in Trump Tower to the conversations between Flynn and the Russian ambassador, to the providing of polling data to someone linked to Russian intelligence, and Stone's conversation with WikiLeaks and the GRU through -- George Stephenopolous: None of it prosecuted. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Well that's true. And as I pointed out on your show many times, there's a difference between compelling evidence of collusion and whether the Special Counsel concludes that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt the criminal charge of conspiracy. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): We need to be able to see any evidence that this President, or people around him, may be compromised by a foreign power. We've of course seen all kinds of disturbing indications that this President has a relationship with Putin that is very difficult to justify or explain. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): It's our responsibility to tell the American people, "These are the facts. This is what your president has done. This is what his key campaign and appointees have done. These are the issues that we need to take action on." This is potential compromise. There is evidence, for example, quite in the public realm that the President sought to make money from the Russians, sought the Kremlin's help to make money during the presidential campaign, while denying business ties with the Russians. February 17, 2019 CNN with Dana Bash Clips Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Look, you can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion, pretty compelling evidence. Now, there's a difference between seeing evidence of collusion and being able to prove a criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. August 5, 2018 Face the Nation Clips Margaret Brennan: Can you agree that there has been no evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy that has been presented thus far between the Trump campaign and Russia? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): No, I don't agree with that at all. I think there's plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy in plain sight. December 10, 2017 CNN Clips Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): But we do know this: the Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help. The Russians gave help and the President made full use of that help, and that is pretty damning whether it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiracy or not. November 1, 2017 MSNBC Clips Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): What is clear as this: the Kremlin repeatedly told the campaign it had dirt on Clinton and offered to help it and at least one top Trump official, the President's own son, accepted. Rachel Maddow: The Kremlin offered dirt to the Trump campaign. The President's campaign said yes to that offer. That's no longer an open question. All that stuff has now been proven and admitted to. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee today, using his time today, using his opening statement today to walk through -- ding ding ding, point by point -- what we've already learned in black and white, in written correspondence and public statements and in freaking court filings, about all the times the Trump campaign was offered helped by Russia to influence our election and all the times the Trump campaign said "Yes, please." March 23, 2017 The View Clips Jedediah Bila: Congressman, you made yesterday what some are deeming a provocative statement by saying that there is more than circumstantial evidence now that the Trump camp colluded with Russia. Senator John McCain was critical of that, others have been critical of that. Can you defend that statement? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Yes. And I, you know, I don't view it as the same bombshell that apparently they did. Look, I've said that I thought there was circumstantial evidence of collusion or coordination, and that there was direct evidence of deception. And no one had an issue with that. And I don't think anyone really contested that, on the basis of the information we keep getting, I can say, in my opinion, it's now not purely circumstantial. We had the FBI Director testify in open session about this, acknowledge an FBI investigation. Obviously, this is now public. And I think it's fair to say that that FBI investigation is justified, that that wouldn't be done on the basis of not credible allegations. And so I think it's appropriate to talk in general terms about the evidence, but I don't think it's appropriate for us to go into specifics and say, "This is what we know from this piece of classified information," or "this what we know from this witness." But I do think, in this investigation where the public is hungry for information, it is important that we try to keep the public in the loop. That's why we're having public hearings. March 22, 2017 MSNBC Clips Chuck Todd: You have seen direct evidence of collusion? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): I don't want to go into specifics, but I will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial. March 19, 2017 Meet the Press Clips Chuck Todd: Collusion is sort of what hasn't been proven here between whatever the Russians did and the Trump campaign. In fact, the former Acting Director of the CIA, who was Mike Morell, who was a supporter of Hillary Clinton, he essentially reminded people and took Director Clapper at his word on this show who said, there has been no evidence that has been found of collusion. Are we at the point of -- at what point do you start to wonder if there is a fire to all this smoke? Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Well, first of all, I was surprised to see Director Clapper say that because I don't think you can make that claim categorically as he did. I would characterize it this way at the outset of the investigation: there is circumstantial evidence of collusion. There is direct evidence, I think, of deception. Executive Producer Recommended Sources Music by (found on by mevio) Editing Production Assistance

We have contact! No, not that kind. Ross has made contact with Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, head of The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Ross shares his email exchange with Kirkpatrick, including the Latin motto on his email signature. Ross and Bryce talk about what may, or should, be the next level of Congressional hearings (maybe the full Intelligence Committee, not just a sub-committee). Ross really wants the intelligence community's Inspector General at that next hearing to answer one important question. And both have advice for nudging your lawmaker about the UAP issue: forget email, write a real letter! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since May 2022, Congress has held three hearings looking into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and the possibility of non-human intelligent life flying aircraft on Earth. In this episode, hear testimony from three Defense Department officials and three credible whistleblowers, whose testimony is often as contradictory as it is shocking. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via Support Congressional Dish via (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Background Sources Whistleblower Protections Clayton E. Wire. 2020. Ogborn Mihm LLP. Security Classifications Security Classification of Information, Volume 2. Principles for Classification of Information. Arvin S. Quist. Oak Ridge National Laboratory: 1993. UAP Background Brian Entin. June 6, 2023. NewsNation. Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal. June 5, 2023. The Debrief. May 16, 2021. 60 Minutes. Ralph Blumenthal. December 18, 2017. The New York Times. Helene Cooper et al. December 16, 2017. The New York Times. Independent Research and Development National Defense Industrial Association. SCIFs Derek Hawkins et al. April 26, 2023. The Washington Post. Kirkpatrick Response Letter D. Dean Johnson (@ddeanjohnson). Twitter. Audio Sources July 26, 2023 House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs Witnesses: , Former Commanding Officer, United States Navy Ryan Graves, Executive Director, Americans for Safe Aerospace David Grusch, Former National Reconnaissance Office Representative, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, Department of Defense Clips timestamps reflect C-SPAN video 4:30 Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): The National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office or AARO to conduct or to coordinate efforts across the Department of Defense and other federal agencies to detect, identify and investigate UAPs. However, AARO's budget remains classified, prohibiting meaningful oversight from Congress. 19:50 Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA): We know the Senate is taking up an amendment to their defense authorization bill which will create a commission with broad declassification authority and we should all agree that that is an important step. 27:40 Ryan Graves: Excessive classification practices keep crucial information hidden. Since 2021, all UAP videos are classified as secret or above. This level of secrecy not only impedes our understanding, but fuels speculation and mistrust. 27:55 Ryan Graves: In 2014, I was an F-18 Foxtrot pilot in the Navy fighter attack Squadron 11, the Red Rippers, and I was stationed at NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach. After upgrades were made to our jet's radar systems, we began detecting unknown objects operating in our airspace. At first, we assumed they were radar errors. But soon we began to correlate the radar tracks with multiple onboard sensors, including infrared systems, and eventually through visual ID. During a training mission in Warning Area W-72, 10 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. Two F/A-18F Super Hornets were split by a UAP. The object, described as a dark gray or a black cube inside of a clear sphere, came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft and was estimated to be five to 15 feet in diameter. The mission commander terminated the flight immediately and returned to base. Our squadron submitted a safety report, but there was no official acknowledgement of the incident and no further mechanism to report the sightings. Soon these encounters became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular pre-flight briefs. 29:00 Ryan Graves: Recognising the need for action and answers, I founded Americans for Safe Aerospace. The organization has since become a haven for UAP witnesses who were previously unspoken due to the absence of a safe intake process. More than 30 witnesses have come forward and almost 5000 Americans have joined us in the fight for transparency at safeaerospace.org 29:20 Ryan Graves: The majority of witnesses are commercial pilots at major airlines. Often, they are veterans with decades of flying experience. Pilots are reporting UAP at altitudes that appear above them at 40,000 feet potentially in low Earth orbit or in the gray zone below the Karman Line, making unexplainable maneuvers like right hand turns and retrograde orbits or J hooks. Sometimes these reports are reoccurring with numerous recent sightings north of y and in the North Atlantic. Other veterans are also coming forward to us regarding UAP encounters in our airspace and oceans. The most compelling involve observations of UAP by multiple witnesses and sensor systems. I believe these accounts are only scratching the surface and more will share their experiences once it is safe to do so. 31:30 David Grusch: I became a whistleblower through a PPD 19 urgent concern filing in May 2022 with the intelligence community Inspector General following concerning reports from multiple esteemed and credentialed current and former military and intelligence community individuals that the US government is operating with secrecy above congressional oversight with regards to UAPs. My testimony is based on information I've been given by individuals with a long standing track record of legitimacy and service to this country, many of whom also have shared compelling evidence in the form of photography, official documentation, and classified oral testimony to myself and my various colleagues. I have taken every step I can to corroborate this evidence over a period of four years while I was with the UAP Task Force and do my due diligence on the individual sharing it. Because of these steps. I believe strongly in the importance of bringing this information before you. 33:30 David Grusch: In 2019, the UAP Task Force director asked me to identify all Special Access Programs and Controlled Access Programs, also known as SAPS and CAPS. We needed to satisfy our congressionally mandated mission and we were direct report at the time to the [Deputy Secretary of Defense]. At the time, due to my extensive executive level intelligence support duties, I was cleared to literally all relevant compartments and in a position of extreme trust both in my military and civilian capacities. I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access to those additional read-ons when I requested it. I made the decision based on the data I collected to report this information to my superiors and multiple Inspectors General and, in effect, becoming a whistleblower. 35:20 Cmdr. David Fravor: We were attached to carrier 11, stationed onboard USS Nimitz and began a two month workup cycle off the coast of California. On this day, we were scheduled for a two v two air-to-air training with the USS Princeton as our control. When we launched off Nimitz, my wingman was joining out, we were told that the training was going to be suspended and we're going to proceed with real world tasking. As we proceeded to the West, the air controller was counting down the range to an object that we were going to and we were unaware of what we're going to see when we arrived. There, the controller told us that these objects had been observed for over two weeks coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours and then going straight back up. For those who don't realize, above 80,000 feet is space. We arrived at the location at approximately 20,000 feet and the controller called the merge plot, which means that our radar blip was now in the same resolution cell as a contact. As we looked around, we noticed that we saw some whitewater off our right side. It's important to note the weather on this day was as close to perfect as you could ask for off the coast of San Diego: clear skies, light winds, calm seas, no white caps from waves. So the whitewater stood out in a large blue ocean. All four of us, because we were in an F/A-18F F, so we had pilots and WSO in the backseat, looked down and saw a white tic tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north-south and moving very abruptly over the water, like a ping pong ball. There were no rotors, no rotor wash, or any sign of visible control surfaces like wings. As we started clockwise towards the object, my WSO I decided to go down and take a closer look with the other aircraft staying in high cover to observe both us and the tic tac. We proceeded around the circle about 90 degrees from the start of our descent, and the object suddenly shifted its longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft and began to climb. We continued down another 270 degrees, and we went nose low to where the tic tac would have been. Our altitude at this point is about 15,000 feet and the tic tac was about 12,000. As we pulled nose-on to the object within about a half mile of it, it rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared. Our wingmen, roughly 8000 feet above us, lost contact also. We immediately turned back to see where the whitewater was at and it was gone also. So as you started to turn back towards the east the controller came up and said "Sir you're not going to believe this but that thing is that your cat point roughly 60 miles away in less than a minute." You can calculate the speed. We returned to Nimitz. We were taking off our gear, we were talking to one of my crews that was getting ready to launch, we mentioned it to them and they went out and luckily got the video that you see, that 90 second video. What you don't see is the radar tape that was never released, and we don't know where it's at. 37:55 Cmdr. David Fravor: What is shocking to us is that the incident was never investigated. None of my crew ever questioned and tapes were never taken and after a couple days it turned into a great story with friends. It wasn't until 2009 until J. Stratton had contacted me to investigate. Unbeknownst to all, he was part of the AATIP program at the Pentagon led by Lue Elizondo. There was an unofficial official report that came out it's now in the internet. Years later, I was contacted by the other pilot Alex Dietrich and asked if I'd been contacted and I said "No, but I'm willing to talk." I was contacted by Mr. Elizondo, and we talked for a short period of time, he said we'd be in contact. A few weeks after that I was made aware that Lue had left the Pentagon in protest and joined forces with Tom DeLonge and Chris Mellon, Steve Justice, and others to form To the Stars Academy, an organization that pressed the issue with leading industry experts and US government officials. They worked with Leslie Kean, who is present today, Ralph Blumenthal, and Helene Cooper to publish the articles in the New York Times in 2017. It removed the stigma on the topic of UFOs, which is why we're here today. Those articles opened the door for the government and public that cannot be closed. It has led to an interest from our elected officials, who are not focused on Little Green Men, but figuring out where these craft are, where they are from, the technology they possess, how do they operate. It also led to the Whistleblower Protection Act in the NDAA. 39:45 Cmdr. David Fravor: In closing, I would like to say that the tic tac object we engaged in 2004 was far superior to anything that we had on time, have today, or are looking to develop in the next 10 years. If we, in fact, have programs that possess this technology and needs to have oversight from those people, that the citizens of this great country elected in office to represent what is best for the United States and best for the citizens. I thank you for your time. 40:20 Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Are your pilots, or pilots that you interact with as part of your organization, do you feel adequately trained and briefed on how to handle encounters with UAPs? Ryan Graves: No. Right now, military witnesses to UAP have limited options for reporting UAP. But more more concerning is that the commercial aviation sector has not adapted to the lessons that the military has implemented. The military and Department of Defense have stated that UAP represent a critical aviation safety risk. We have not seen that same language being used in the commercial markets, they are not acknowledging this. 41:05 Ryan Graves: Right now we need a system where pilots can report without fear of losing their jobs. There's a fear that the stigma associated with this topic is going to lead to professional repercussions either through management or perhaps through their yearly physical check. So having a secure system, reducing the stigma, and making this information available through the public is going to reduce the concerns that aircrew have. 41:30 Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Can you just give me a little idea the degree to which reports in the past are not made public right now? Ryan Graves: Well, I don't think there has been a proper reporting system to gather those reports and thus not report them. So to answer your question, I think there is a dearth of data due to the fact that the reporting has been limited up to this time. 41:45 Ryan Graves: There's certainly some national security concerns when we use our advanced sensors and our tactical jets to be able to identify these objects. However, there's no reason that the objects themselves would be classified. I would be curious to see how the security classification guideline actually spells out the different nuances of how this topic is classified from the perspective of UAP, not national security. 43:00 Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Mr. Fravor, the tic tac incident that you were engaged [in] occurred in 2004. What kind of reporting took place after that incident? Ryan Graves: None. We had a standard debrief where the back-seaters went down to our carrier intel center and briefed what had happened, and that was it. No one else talked to us. And I was in the top 20 in the battle group, no one came that the Captain was aware, the of Admiral was aware, nothing was done. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Did your commanding officers provide any sort of justification? Ryan Graves: No, because I was the commanding officer of the quadron. So no. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Was this incident the only UAP event that you encountered while you were a pilot? Ryan Graves: Yes, it was. 43:50 Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Do you believe UAPs pose a potential threat to our national security? Ryan Graves: Yes, and here's why: the technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had, and you could put that anywhere. If you had one, you captured one, you reverse engineered it, you got it to work, you're talking something that can go into space, go someplace, dropped down in a matter of seconds, do whatever it wants and leave. And there's nothing we can do about it. Nothing. 44:20 Ryan Graves: I would also like to add from a commercial aviation and military aviation perspective, we deal with uncertainty in our operating space as a matter of our professional actions. Identifying friend from foe is very important to us. And so when we have identified targets and we continue to ignore those due to a stigma or fear of what it could be, that's an opening that our adversaries can take advantage of. 44:55 Ryan Graves: There needs to be a location where this information is centralized for processing and there needs to be a two-way communication loop so the operators on the front end have feedback and can get best practices on how to process information, what to do, and to ensure that their reporting is being listened to. Right now there is not a lot of back and forth. 46:25 Ryan Graves: When we were first experiencing these objects off the eastern seaboard in the 2014 to 2015 time period, anyone that had upgraded their radar systems were seeing these objects. So there was a large number of my colleagues that were detecting these objects off the eastern seaboard. They were further correlating that information with the other onboard sensors. And many of them also had their own eyesightings, as well, of these objects. Now, that was our personal, firsthand experience at the time. Since then, as I've engaged this topic, others have reached out to me to share their experiences both on the military side as well as the commercial aviation side. On the military aviation side, veterans that have recently got out have shared their stories and have expressed how the objects we are seeing in 2014 and 2015 continued all the way to 2019, 2020, and beyond. And so it became a generational issue for naval aviators on the Eastern Seaboard. This was something we were briefing to new students. This is something that was included in the notice to airmen to ensure that there was no accidents. And now with commercial aviators, they are reaching out because they're having somewhat similar experiences as our military brothers and sisters, but they do not have any reporting system that they can send this to. 47:55 Cmdr. David Fravor: It's actually, it's a travesty that we don't have a system to correlate this and actually investigate. You know, so if you took the east coast, there's coastal radars out there that monitor our air defense identification zone. Out to 200 miles, they can track these. So when you see them, they could actually go and pull that data and get maneuvering. And instead of just having the airplanes, there's other data sources out there. And I've talked to other government officials on this. You need a centrally located repository that these reports go to. So if you just stuck it in DOD, you wouldn't get anything out of the Intelligence Committee because they have a tendency not to talk. But if you had a central location where these reports are coming in, not just military, but also commercial aviation, because there's a lot of that going on, especially if you talk to anyone that flies from here to Hawaii, over the Pacific they see odd lights. So I think you need to develop something that allows you a central point to collect the data in order to investigate. 51:20 Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA): Mr. Grusch, finally, do you believe that our government is in possession of UAPs? David Grusch: Absolutely, based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA): And where? David Grusch: I know the exact locations and those locations were provided to the Inspector General, and some of which to the intelligence committees, I actually had the people with the firsthand knowledge provide a protected disclosure to the Inspector General 52:15 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Mr. Graves. Again, I'd like to know, how do you know that these were not our aircraft? Ryan Graves: Some of the behaviors that we saw in a working area. We would see these objects being at 0.0 Mach, that's zero airspeed over certain pieces of the ground. So what that means, just like a river, if you throw a bobber in, it's gonna float downstream. These objects were staying completely stationary in category four hurricane winds. The same objects would then accelerate to supersonic speeds 1.1-1.2 Mach, and they would do so in very erratic and quick behaviors that we don't -- I don't -- have an explanation for. 55:50 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Mr. Fravor, do you believe that you witnessed an additional object under the water in relation to your encounter? Cmdr. David Fravor: I will say we did not see an object. There was something there to cause the whitewater and when we turned around, it was gone. So there was something there that obviously moved. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Okay, it was not the same object, though, that you were looking at, correct? Cmdr. David Fravor: No, we actually joked that the tic tac was communicating with something when we came back, because the whitewater disappeared. 56:15 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): We were, in another instance, told about the capabilities of jamming when there were some people chasing some of these objects. Did you experience any of that jamming, or interrupting your radar or weapon system? Cmdr. David Fravor: My crew that launched, after we landed, experienced significant jamming to the APG 73 radar, which was what we had on board, which is a mechanically scan, very high end system, prior to APG 79. And yes, it did pretty much everything you could do range, velocity, aspect, and then it hit the lock and the targeting pod is passive. That's when we're able to get the video on. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): I'm about to run out of time, but are you aware of any of our enemies that have that capability? Cmdr. David Fravor: No, no. 57:40 Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): You've identified these as taking place on the East Coast. Is it just on the East Coast where these encounters have been reported? Ryan Graves: No. Since the events initially occurred, I've learned that the objects have been detected, essentially where all Navy operations are being conducted across the world. And that's from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office reporting. 58:50 Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): Are there common characteristics to the UAPs that have been sighted by different pilots? And can you describe what the convergence of descriptions is? Ryan Graves: Certainly. We were primarily seeing dark gray or black cubes inside of a clear sphere. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): I'm sorry, dark gray or black cubes? Ryan Graves: Yes, inside of a clear sphere where the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of that sphere. And that was primarily what was being reported when we were able to gain a visual tally of these objects. That occurred over almost eight years, and as far as I know, is still occurring. 59:45 Ryan Graves: I think we need both transparency and the reporting. We have the reporting, but we need to make sure that information can be propagated to commercial aviation as well as the rest of the populace. 1:05:00 Ryan Graves: In the 2003 timeframe, a large group of Boeing contractors were operating near one of the launch facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base when they observed a very large, 100-yard-sided red square approach the base from the ocean and hover at low altitude over one of the launch facilities. This object remained for about 45 seconds or so before darting off over the mountains. There was a similar event within 24 hours later in the evening. This was a morning event, I believe, 8:45 in the morning. Later in the evening, post sunset, there were reports of other sightings on base including some aggressive behaviors. These objects were approaching some of the security guards at rapid speeds before darting off, and this is information that was received through one of the witnesses that have approached me at Americans for Safe Aerospace. 1:06:15 Ryan Graves: I have not seen what they've described. This object was estimated to be almost the size of a football field, and I have not seen anything personally that large. 1:07:05 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL): With the FAA, to your understanding, pilots that are seeing this, commercial airline pilots, are they receiving cease and desist letters from corporations for coming forward with information in regards to safety for potential air airline passengers? Ryan Graves: I have been made privy to conversations with commercial aviators who have received cease and desist orders. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL): So the American public should know that corporations are putting their own reputations ahead of the safety of the American people. Would you agree with that statement? Ryan Graves: It appears so. 1:08:15 Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): So what about G forces? Let's talk about G forces in those vehicles. Could a human survive those G forces with known technology today? Cmdr. David Fravor: No, not for the acceleration rates that we observed. 1:08:45 Cmdr. David Fravor: So we got within a half mile of the tic tac, which people say that's pretty far, but in airplanes that's actually relatively close. Now it was perfectly white, smooth, no windows, although when we did take the original FLIR video that is out there, when you put it on a big screen it actually had two little objects that came out of the bottom of it. But other than that, no windows, no seams, no nothing. 1:09:05 Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): Mr. Grusch, as a result of your previous government work have you met with people with direct knowledge or have direct knowledge yourself of non-human origin craft? David Grusch: Yes, I personally interviewed those individuals. 1:09:40 Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): Do you have knowledge or do you have reason to believe that there are programs in the advanced tech space that are unsanctioned? David Grusch: Yes, I do. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): Okay. And when you say that they're above congressional oversight, what do you mean? David Grusch: Complicated question. So there's some, I would call it abuse here. So congressional oversight of conventional Special Special Access Programs, and I'll use Title X, so DOD, as an example. So 10 US Code section 119 discusses congressional oversight of SAPS, discusses the Deputy Secretary of Defense's ability to waive congressional reporting. However, the Gang of Eight is at least supposed to be notified if a waived or waived bigoted unacknowledged SAP is created. That's Public Law. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): I don't want to cut you off, but how does a program like that get funded? David Grusch: I will give you generalities. I can get very specific in a closed session, but misappropriation of funds. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): Does that mean that there is money in the budget that is set to go to a program but it doesn't and it goes to something else? David Grusch: Yes, have specific knowledge of that. Yep. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL): Do you think US corporations are overcharging for certain tech they're selling to the US government and that additional money is going to programs? David Grusch: Correct, through something called IRAD. 1:12:45 Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-VA): Mr. Grusch, in your sworn testimony you state that the United States government has retrieved supposedly extraterrestrial spacecraft and other UAP related artifacts. You go so far as to state that the US is in possession of "non human spacecraft" and that some of these artifacts have circulated with defense contractors. Several other former military and intelligence officials have come forward with similar allegations albeit in non-public setting. However, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the Director of AARO, previously testified before Congress that there has been and I quote, "no credible evidence" thus far of extraterrestrial act activity or "off world technology" brought to the attention of the office. To your knowledge, is that statement correct? David Grusch: It's not accurate. I believe Dr. Kirkpatrick mentioned he had about 30 individuals that have come to AARO thus far. A few of those individuals have also come to AARO that I also interviewed and I know what they provided Dr. Kirkpatrick and their team. I was able to evaluate -- Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-VA): Okay, I need to go on. David Grusch: Sure. 1:21:25 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Has the US government become aware of actual evidence of extraterrestrial or otherwise unexplained forms of intelligence? And if so, when do you think this first occurred? David Grusch: I like to use the term non-human, I don't like to denote origin, it keeps the aperture open scientifically. Certainly, like I've just discussed publicly, previously, the 1930s. 1:21:45 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Okay, can you give me the names and titles of the people with direct, first-hand knowledge and access to some of these crash retrieval programs and maybe which facilities, military bases that the recovered material would be in? And I know a lot of Congress talked about, we're gonna go to area 51. And, you know, there's nothing there anymore anyway, it's just you know, we move like a glacier. And as soon as we announce it, I'm sure the moving vans would pull up, but please. David Grusch: I can't discuss that publicly. But I did provide that information both to the Intel committees and the Inspector General. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): And we could get that in the SCIF, if we were allowed to get in a SCIF with you? Would that be probably what you would think? David Grusch: Sure, if you had the appropriate accesses, yeah. 1:22:30 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): What Special Access Programs cover this information? And how is it possible that they have evaded oversight for so long? David Grusch: I do know the names, once again, I can't discuss that publicly. And how they've evaded oversight in a closed setting I could tell you this specific tradecraft used. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Alright. 1:22:50 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): When did you think those programs began and who authorized them? David Grusch: I do know a lot of that information, but that's something I can't discuss publicly because of sensitivities Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Alright. 1:24:05 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Title 10 and title 50 authorization, they seem to say they're inefficient. So who gets to decide this, in your opinion, in the past? David Grusch: It's a group of career senior executive officials. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Okay. Are they government officials? David Grusch: Both in and out of government and that's about as far I'll go there. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Well, that leads to my next question, which private corporations are directly involved in this program? How much taxpayer money has been invested in these programs? David Grusch: Yeah, I don't know the specific metrics towards the end of your question. The specific corporations I did provide to the committees in specific divisions, and I spent 11 and a half hours with both Intel committees. 1:25:30 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Has there been an active US government disinformation campaign to deny the existence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena? And if so, why? David Grusch: I can't go beyond what I've already exposed publicly about that. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Okay, I've been told to ask you what that is and how to get it in the record. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL): What have you stated publicly in your interviews, for the Congressional Record? David Grusch: If you reference my NewsNation interview, I talk about a multi-decade campaign to disenfranchise public interest basically. 1:28:00 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): When it comes to notification that you had mentioned about IRAD programs, we have seen defense contractors abuse their contracts before through this committee. I have seen it personally, and I have also seen the notification requirements to Congress abused. I am wondering, one of the loopholes that we see in the law is that there is, at least from my vantage point, depending on what we're seeing, is that there are no actual definitions or requirements for notification, are there? What methods of notification did you observe? When they say they notified Congress, how did they do that? Do you have insight into that? David Grusch: For certain IRAD activities....I can only think of ones conventional in nature. Sometimes they flow through certain out of say SAP programs that have cognisant authority over the Air Force or something. And those are congressionally reported compartments, but IRAD is literally internal to the contractor. So as long as it's money, either profits, private investment, etc, they can do whatever they want. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): To put a finer point on it, when there is a requirement for any agency or company to notify Congress, do they contact the chairman of a committee, do they get them on the phone specifically, is this through an email to hypothetically a dead email box? David Grusch: A lot of it comes through what they call the PPR, Periodic Program Review process. If it's a SAP or Controlled Access Program equity, and then those go to the specific committees. 1:30:40 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): For the record, if you were me, where would you look? Titles, programs, departments, regions? If you could just name anything. And I put that as an open question to the three of you. David Grusch: I'd be happy to give you that in a closed environment. I can tell you specifically. 1:35:40 Cmdr. David Fravor: Things are over-classified. I know for a fact the video or the pictures that came out in the 2020 report that had the stuff off the east coast, they were taken with an iPhone, off the east coast. A buddy of mine was one of the senior people there and he said they originally classified a TSS CI, and my question to him was what's TSS CI about these? They're an iPhone, right, literally off the vacates, that's not TSS CI. So they're over classified, and as soon as they do that, they go into the vault, and then you all have to look for them. 1:37:20 Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): Has any of the activity been aggressive, been hostile in your reports? David Grusch: I know of multiple colleagues of mine that got physically injured. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): By UAPs, or by people within the federal government? So there has been activity by alien or non-human technology and or beings that has caused harm to humans? David Grusch: I can't get into the specifics in an open environment, but at least the activity that I personally witnessed, and I have to be very careful here, because they tell you never to acknowledge tradecraft, right. So what I personally witnessed, myself and my wife, was very disturbing. 1:38:20 Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): You've said that the US has intact spacecraft. You said that the government has alien bodies or alien species. Have you seen the spacecraft? David Grusch: I have to be careful to describe what I've seen firsthand and not in this environment. But I could answer that question behind closed doors. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): Have you seen any of the bodies? David Grusch: That's something I've not witnessed myself. 1:40:45 Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): These aircraft, have they been identified that they are being produced by domestic military contractors? Is there any evidence that that's what's being recovered? David Grusch: Not to my knowledge. Plus the recoveries predate a lot of our advanced programs. 1:48:05 David Grusch: I've actually never seen anything personal, believe it or not. 1:51:00 Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): If you believe we have crashed craft, stated earlier, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft? David Grusch: As I've stated publicly already in my NewsNation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries. 1:51:15 Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): Were they human or non human biologics? David Grusch: Non human and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): And was this documentary evidence video, photos, eyewitness like how would that be determined? David Grusch: The specific documentation, I would have to talk to you in a SCIF about that. 1:53:10 Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Commander Fravor, we've all seen the floating tic tac video that you engage with on November 14, 2004. Can you briefly talk about why you were off the coast of San Diego that day? Cmdr. David Fravor: Yeah, we were at a work up with all the battle groups. So we integrate the ships with the carrier, the airway with the carrier and we start working. So we were doing an air-to-air defense to hone not only our skills, but those of the USS Princeton, and when they had been tracking him for two weeks. The problem was, there were never manned aircraft airborne when they were tracking them. And this was the first day and unfortunately, we were the ones airborne and went and saw it. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Do you remember the weather that day? It was a cloudy or windy or anything out of the ordinary on the Pacific coast. Cmdr. David Fravor: If you're familiar with San Diego, it was a perfect day. Light winds, no whitecaps, clear skies, not a cloud. For flying, it was the best. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Now, is it true that you saw, in your words, a 40 foot flying tic tac shaped object? Cmdr. David Fravor: That's correct. Or for some people that can't know what a Tic Tac is, it's a giant flying propane tank. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Did this object come up on radar or interfere with your radar or the USS Princeton? Cmdr. David Fravor: The Princeton tracked it, the Nimitz tracked it, the E2 tracked it. We never saw it on our radars, our fire control radars never picked it up. The other airplane that took the video did get it on a radar as soon as it tried to lock in to jam the radar, spit the lock and he's rapidly switched over to the targeting pod which you can do in the F/A 18 Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): From what you saw that day and what you've seen on video. Did you see any source of propulsion from the flying object including on any potential thermal scans from your aircraft? Cmdr. David Fravor: No, there is none. There is no IR plume coming out. And Chad who took the video went through all the EO, which is black and white TV and the IR modes, and there's no visible signs of reflection. It's just sitting in space at 20,000 feet. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): In your career. Have you ever seen a propulsion system that creates no thermal exhaust? Cmdr. David Fravor: No. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Can you describe how the aircraft maneuvered? Cmdr. David Fravor: Abruptly, very determinant. It knew exactly what it was doing. It was aware of our presence. And it had acceleration rates, I mean, it went from zero to matching our speed and no time at all. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Now if the fastest plane on Earth was trained to do these maneuvers that you saw, would it be capable of doing that? Cmdr. David Fravor: No, not even close Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Just to confirm, this object had no wings, correct? Cmdr. David Fravor: No wings. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): Now the aircraft that you were flying, was it armed? Cmdr. David Fravor: No, never felt threatened at all. Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY): If the aircraft was armed, do you believe that your aircraft or any aircraft in possession of the United States could have shot the tic tac down? Cmdr. David Fravor: I'd say no. Just on the performance, it would have just left in a split second. 1:58:10 Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN): Is there any indication that these UAPs could be essentially collecting reconnaissance information? Mr. Graves? Ryan Graves: Yes. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN): Mr. Grusch? David Grusch: Fair assessment. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN): Mr. Fravor? Cmdr. David Fravor: Very possible. 1:59:05 Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN): Mr. Graves and Fravor, in the event that your encounters had become hostile, would you have had the capability to defend yourself, your crew, your aircraft? Ryan Graves: Absolutely not. Cmdr. David Fravor: No. 2:00:55 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): I might have asked this before, but I want to make sure. Do you have any personal knowledge of someone who's possibly been injured working on legacy UAP reverse engineering? David Grusch: Yes. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Okay. How were they injured? Was it something like a radioactive type situation or something we didn't understand? I've heard people talk about Havana syndrome type incidences. What what was your recollection of that? David Grusch: I can't get into specifics, but you could imagine assessing an unknown unknown, there's a lot of potentialities you can't fully prepare for. 2:02:10 Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Are you aware of any individuals that are participating in reverse engineering programs for non terrestrial craft? David Grusch: Personally, yes. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): Do you know any that would be willing to testify if there were protections for them? David Grusch: Certainly closed door, and assurances that breaking their NDA, they're not going to get administratively punished. 2:03:45 Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL): Referring to your news nation interview, you had referenced specific treaties between governments. Article III of the nuclear arms treaty with Russia identifies UAPs. It specifically mentions them. To your knowledge. Are there safety measures in place with foreign governments or other superpowers to avoid an escalatory situation in the event that a UAP malevolent event occurs? David Grusch: Yeah, you're referring to an actual public treaty in the UN register. It's funny you mentioned that, the agreement on measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of a nuclear war signed in 1971, unclassified treaty publicly available. And if you cite the George Washington University national security archives, you will find the declassified, in 2013, specific provisions in this specific Red Line Flass message traffic with the specific codes pursuant to Article Three and also situation two, which is in the the previously classified NSA archive. What I would recommend and I tried to get access, but I got a wall of silence at the White House, was the specific incidents when those message traffic was used, I think some scholarship on that would open the door to a further investigation using those publicly available information. 2:05:20 David Grusch: I have concerns, based on the interviews I conducted under my official duties, of potential violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, the FAR. 2:06:10 Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): What was your general attitude or perspective on the UFO discussion before that happened? Cmdr. David Fravor: I never felt that we were alone with all the planets out there. But I wasn't a UFO person. I wasn't, I wasn't watching History Channel and MUFON and all that. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): And have you had any experiences or encounters since that happened? Cmdr. David Fravor: No. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): And so, have you formed any general conclusions about what you think you experienced then? Cmdr. David Fravor: Yes, I think what we experienced was, like I said, well beyond the material science and the capabilities that we had at the time, that we have currently, or that we're going to have in the next 10 to 20 years. 2:06:55 Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): You've been able to answer in great detail on certain questions, and then other things you say you're not able to respond to. Can you just explain where you're drawing the line? What's the basis for that? David Grusch: Yeah, based on my DOPSR security review and what they've determined that is unclassified. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): I see, so you're answering any questions that just call upon your knowledge of unclassified questions, but anything that relates to classified matters you're not commenting on in this context? David Grusch: In an open session, but happy to participate in a closed session at the right level. 2:08:15 Ryan Graves: Certainly I think the most vivid sighting of that would have been near mid air that we had at the entrance to our working area. One of these objects was completely stationary at the exact entrance to our working areas, not only geographically but also at altitude. So it was right where all the jets are going, essentially, on the Eastern Seaboard. The two aircraft flew within about 50 feet of the object and that was a very close visual sighting. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): And you were in one of the aircraft. Ryan Graves: I was not. I was there when the pilot landed. He canceled the mission after. I was there. He was in the ready room with all his gear on with his mouth open. And I asked him what the problem was and he said he almost hit one of those darn things. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): He said he was 50 feet away from it? Ryan Graves: Yes, sir. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): And his description of the object was consistent with the description you gave us before? Ryan Graves: A dark gray or black cube inside of a clear sphere. Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD): Inside of a clear sphere. With no self evident propulsion system. Ryan Graves:: No wings, no IR energy coming off of the vehicle, nothing tethering it to the ground. And that was primarily what we're experiencing out there. April 19, 2023 Senate Committee on Armed Services Witnesses: , Director, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Clips 2:00:50 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: The AARO team of more than three dozen experts is organized around four functional areas: operations, scientific research, integrated analysis, and strategic communications. 2:01:25 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: Consistent with legislative direction, AARO is also carefully reviewing and researching the US government's UAP-related historical record. 2:02:05 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: AARO is the culmination of decades of DOD, intelligence community, and congressionally directed efforts to successfully resolve UAP encountered first and foremost by US military personnel, specifically navy and air force pilots. 2:03:15 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: However, it would be naive to believe that the resolution of all UAP can be solely accomplished by the DOD and IC alone. We will need to prioritize collection and leverage authorities for monitoring all domains within the continental United States. AARO's ultimate success will require partnerships with the inner agency, industry partners, academia and the scientific community, as well as the public. 2:04:15 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: I want to underscore today that only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as anomalous. The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, unmanned aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena, or other readily explainable sources. While a large number of cases in our holdings remain technically unresolved, this is primarily due to a lack of data associated with those cases. Without sufficient data, we are unable to reach defendable conclusions that meet the high scientific standards we set for resolution, and I will not close a case that I cannot defend the conclusions of. 2:06:00 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: AARO is a member of the department's support to the administration's Tiger Team effort to deal with stratospheric objects such as the PRC high altitude balloon. When previously unknown objects are successfully identified, it is AARO's role to quickly and efficiently hand off such readily explainable objects to the intelligence, law enforcement, or operational safety communities for further analysis and appropriate action. In other words, AARO's mission is to turn UAP into SEP, Somebody Else's Problem. 2:07:30 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: I should also state clearly for the record that in our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, offworld technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics. In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform [the] U.S. government's leadership of its findings. For those few cases that have leaked to the public previously and subsequently commented on by the US government, I encourage those who hold alternative theories or views to submit your research to credible peer reviewed scientific journals. AARO is working very hard to do the same. That is how science works, not by blog or social media. 2:13:20 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: How are we going to get more data? We are working with the joint staff to issue guidance to all the services and commands that will then establish what are the reporting requirements, the timeliness, and all of the data that is required to be delivered to us and retained from all of the associated sensors. That historically hasn't been the case and it's been happenstance that data has been collected. 2:17:20 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: As of this week we are tracking over a total of 650 cases. 2:17:45 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: Let me walk everyone through what our analytic process looks like. We have essentially a five step process. We get our cases in with all the data, we create a case for that event. My team does a preliminary scrub of all of those cases as they come in, just to sort out, do we have any information that says this is in one of those likely categories? It's likely a balloon, it's likely a bird, it's likely some other object, or we don't know. Then we prioritize those based off of where they are. Are they attached to a national security area? Does it show some anomalous phenomenology that is of interest? If it's just a spherical thing that's floating around with the wind and it has no payload on it, that's going to be less important than something that has a payload on it, which will be less important than something that's maneuvering. So there's sort of a hierarchy of just binning the priorities, because we can't do all of them at once. Once we do that and we prioritize them, we take that package of data in that case and I have set up two teams, think of this as a Red Team Blue Team, or competitive analysis. I have an intelligence community team made up of intelligence analysts and I have an S&T team made up of scientists and engineers, and the people that actually build a lot of these sensors are physicists, because you know, if you're a physicist, you can do anything. But they're not associated with the intel community, they're not intel officers. So they they look at this through the lens of the sensor, of what the data says. We give that package to both teams. The intelligence community is going to look at it through the lens of the intelligence record, and what they assess, and their intel tradecraft, which they have very specific rules and regulations on how they do that. The scientific community, the technical community is going to look at it through the lens of "What is the data telling me? What is the sensor doing? What would I expect a sensor response to be?" and back that out. Those two groups give us their answers. We then adjudicate. If they agree, then I am more likely to close that case, if they agree on what it is. If they disagree, we will have an adjudication. We'll bring them together, we'll take a look at the differences, we'll adjudicate. Why do you say one thing and you say another? We will then come to a case recommendation that will get written up by my team. That then goes to a Senior Technical Advisory Group, which is outside of all of those people, made up of senior technical folks and intel analysts and operators retired out of the community. And they essentially peer review what that case recommendation is. They write their recommendations, that comes back to me, I review it, we make a determination, and I'll sign off one way or the other, and then that will go out as the case determination. Once we have an approved web portal to hang the unclassified stuff, we will downgrade and declassify things and put it out there. In the meantime, we're putting a lot of these on our classified web portal where we can then collaborate with the rest of the community so they can see what's going on. In a nutshell, that is the process. 2:27:10 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: There are emerging capabilities out there that in many instances, Russia and China, China in particular, are on par or ahead of us in some areas. So previously, I used to be the Defense Department's intelligence officer for science and technical intelligence. That was our job to look for, what does all that look like? And then my last several years of course, in Space Command, doing space. The adversary is not waiting. They are advancing and they're advancing quickly. If I were to put on some of my old hats, I would tell you, they are less risk averse at technical advancement than we are. They are just willing to try things and see if it works. Are there capabilities that could be employed against us in both an ISR and a weapons fashion? Absolutely. Do I have evidence that they're doing it in these cases? No, but I have concerning indicators. 2:43:45 Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick: So the vision is, at one point, at some point in the future, you should not need an AARO. If I'm successful in what I'm doing, we should be able to normalize everything that we're doing into existing processes, functions, agencies and organizations, and make that part of their mission and their role. Right now the niche that we form is really going after the unknowns. I think you articulated it early on, this is a hunt mission for what might somebody be doing in our backyard that we don't know about? That is what we are doing, but at some point, we should be able to normalize that. That's why it's so important the work we're doing with joint staff to normalize that into DoD policy and guidance. We are bringing in all of our interagency partners. So NASA is providing a liaison for us, I have FBI liaison, I have OSI liaison, I have service liaisons, half of my staff come from the [Intelligence Community], half of my staff come from other scientific and technical backgrounds, I have DOE. So what we're trying to do is ensure, again, as I make UAP into SEP they get handed off to the people that that is their mission to go do, so that we aren't duplicating that. I'm not going to go chase the Chinese high altitude balloon, for example. That's not my job. It's not an unknown, and it's not anomalous anymore. Now it goes over to them. May 17, 2022 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Witnesses: , Deputy Director, Office of Naval Intelligence , Under Secretary of Defense Intelligence and Security, Department of Defense Clips 10:00 Ronald Moultrie: The NDAA for fiscal year 2022 has helped us to establish a dedicated office to oversee processes and procedures for the timely collection, processing, analysis, and reporting of UAP related data. 10:15 Ronald Moultrie: What are UAP? Put simply, UAP are airborne objects that, when encountered, cannot be immediately identified. 10:25 Ronald Moultrie: It is the department's contention that by combining appropriately structured, collected data with rigorous scientific analysis, any object that we encounter can likely be isolated, characterized, identified and if necessary, mitigated. 10:40 Ronald Moultrie: We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomenon. And because UAPs pose potential flight safety and general security risks, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins. Our effort will include the thorough examination of adversarial platforms and potential breakthrough technologies, US government or commercial platforms, Allied or partner systems, and other natural phenomena. 11:15 Ronald Moultrie: We also understand that there has been a cultural stigma surrounding UAP. Our goal is to eliminate the stigma by fully incorporating our operators and mission personnel into a standardized data gathering process. We believe that making UAP reporting a mission imperative will be instrumental to the effort's success. 11:45 Ronald Moultrie: To optimize the department's UAP work, we are establishing an office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. That office's function is clear: to facilitate the identification of previously unknown or unidentified airborne objects in a methodical, logical, and standardized manner. 13:50 Scott Bray: Since the early 2000s, we have seen an increasing number of unauthorized and or unidentified aircraft or objects in military controlled training areas and training ranges and other designated airspace. Reports of sightings are frequent and continuing. We attribute this increase in reporting to a number of factors, including our work to destigmatize reporting, an increase in the number of new systems such as quad copters and unmanned aerial systems that are in our airspace, identification of what we can classify as clutter (mylar balloons and other types of of air trash), and improvements in the capabilities of our various sensors to detect things in our airspace. 14:50 Scott Bray: The basic issues, then and now, are twofold. First, incursions in our training ranges by unidentified objects represent serious hazards to safety of flight. In every aspect of naval aviation, safety of our air crews is paramount. Second, intrusions by unknown aircraft or objects pose potential threats to the security of our operations. Our aviators train as they would fight, so any intrusions that may compromise the security of our operations by revealing our capabilities, our tactics, techniques or procedures are of great concern to the Navy and Department of Defense. 16:40 Scott Bray: The direct result of those efforts has been increased reporting with increased opportunities to focus a number of sensors on any objects. The message is now clear: if you see something, you need to report it. And the message has been received. 18:55 Scott Bray: As detailed in the ODNI report, if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved, they likely fall into one of five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, US government or US industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, or another bin that allows for a holding bin of difficult cases, and for the possibility of surprise and potential scientific discovery. 22:20 Scott Bray: If UAP do indeed represent a potential threat to our security then the capabilities, systems, processes and sources we use to observe, record, study, or analyze these phenomena need to be classified at appropriate levels. We do not want, we do not want potential adversaries to know exactly what we're able to see or understand or how we come to the conclusions we make. Therefore, public disclosures must be carefully considered on a case by case basis. 23:35 Rep André Carson (D-IN): This is the third version of this task force and, to be frank, one of Congress's concerns is that the executive branch, in administrations of both parties, has been sweeping concerns about UAPs under the rug by focusing on events that can be explained and avoiding events that cannot be explained. What can you say to give the American people confidence that you aren't just focusing our attention on low hanging fruit with easy explanations? Ronald Moultrie: Congressman, I'll start and then Mr. Bray, please feel free to weigh in. So the way that we're approaching it is with a more thorough, standardized methodology than what we have in the past. First and foremost, the Secretary Defense is chartering this effort, this is not someone lower in the Department of Defense, and he is assigned that task to the Office of Secretary of Defense's Under Secretary for Intelligence Security, that's me, because I'm responsible for looking at intelligence matters, I'm responsible for security matters, and this is potentially both. So we're concerning ourselves with the safety of our personnel, the safety of our installations and bases. There's no other higher power than what we have in actually getting after this. And as you have stated, we have been assigned that task to actually stand up an office, the AOIMSG, which I believe the name server will likely change, but we have moved forward in terms of moving to establish that office. We have, as of this week, picked the director for that effort, a very established and accomplished individual. 42:00 Scott Bray: I would say that we're not aware of any adversary that can move an object without discernible means of propulsion. The question then becomes, in many of these cases where we don't have a discernible means of propulsion in the data that we have, in some cases, there are likely sensor artifacts that that may be hiding some of that, there's certainly some degree of something that looks like signature management that we have seen from some of these UAP. But I would caution, I would simply say that there are a number of other events in which we do not have an explanation. There are a small handful in which there are flight characteristics or signature management that we can't explain with the data that we have. 43:40 Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): With respect to the second two videos showing the small triangles, the hypothesis is that those are commercial drones that because of the use of night vision goggles appear like triangles, is that the operating assessment? Scott Bray: Some type of drone, some type of unmanned aerial system, and it is simply that that light source resolves itself through the night vision goggles onto the SLR camera as a triangle. 47:55 Scott Bray: Allies have seen these, China has established its own version of the UAP task force. So clearly a number of countries have observations of things in the airspace that they can identify. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH): And do we share data with some, with all? Are they sharing with us? Scott Bray: We share data with some and some share data with us. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH): But not necessarily all that have publicly reported something? Scott Bray: That's correct. 52:25 Scott Bray: When I say we can't explain, I mean, exactly as you describe there, that there's a lot of information, like the video that we showed, in which there's simply too little data to create a reasonable explanation. There are a small handful of cases in which we have more data that our analysis simply hasn't been able to fully pull together a picture of what happened. Those are the cases where we talked about where we see some indications of flight characteristics or signature management that are not what we had expected. When it comes to material that we have, we have no material. We have detected no emanations within the UAP task force that would suggest it's anything non-terrestrial in origin. 59:35 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): There have been no collisions between any US assets and one of these UAPs, correct? Scott Bray: We have not had a collision, we've had at least 11 near misses though. 59:55 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): And there's been no attempt, there's no communications, or any kind of communication signals that emanate from those objects that we've detected, correct? Scott Bray: That's correct. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): And have we attempted to communicate with those objects? Scott Bray: No. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): So we don't we don't even put out an alert saying, you know, "U.S., identify yourself, you are within our flight path," or something like that? Scott Bray: We haven't said anything like that. We've not put anything out like that, generally speaking. For example, in the video that we showed earlier, it appears to be something that is unmanned, appears to be something that may or may not be in controlled flight, and so we've not attempted any communication with that. 1:00:55 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): And I assume we've never discharged any armaments against a UAP, correct? Scott Bray: That's correct. 1:01:05 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): How about wreckage? Have we come across any wreckage of any kind of object that has now been examined by you? Scott Bray: The UAP task force doesn't have any wreckage that isn't explainable, that isn't consistent with being of terrestrial origin. 1:01:20 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Do we have any sensors underwater to detect on submerged UAPs, anything that is in the ocean or in the seas? Ronald Moultrie: So I think that would be more properly addressed in a closed session. 1:05:30 Ronald Moultrie: So one of the concerns that we have is that there are a lot of individuals and groups that are putting information out there that that could be considered to be somewhat self serving. We're trying to do what's in the best interests of, one, the Department of Defense, and then two, what's in the best interest of the public, to ensure that we can put factually based information back into the mainstream and back into the bloodstream of the reporting media that we have, so people understand what's there. It's important because we are attempting, as this hearing has drawn out to understand, one, what may just be natural phenomenon, two, what may be sensor phenomenology or things that were happening with sensors, three, what may be legitimate counterintelligence threats to places that we have or bases or installations, or security threats to our platforms. And anything that diverts us off of what we have with the resources that have been allocated to us, sends us off in the spurious chases and hunts that are just not helpful. They also contribute to the undermining of the confidence that the Congress and the American people have that we are trying to get to the root cause of what's happening here, report on that, and then feed that back into our national security apparatus so we are able to protect the American people and our allies. So it is harmful, it is hurtful, but hopefully, if we get more information out there, w

RFK, Jr., Covid & “anti-semitism” - Of course China is building DNA specific bio-weapons. Do you think Fauci wasn't doing the same? When Rep. Jason Crowe spoke at the Aspen Security Forum, he said bio-weapons are being developed to target races and individuals, no one called him anti-semitic. But, when RFK, Jr. talked about a peer reviewed study showing Covid (very likely human-created with your tax dollars), effects Jewish, Chinese and Norwegian people less than others and factors like that could be weaponized in biowarfare, RFK, Jr. was a Jew--hater. Robert Kennedy has responded and he's absolutely correct about ethnically targeted bio-weapons as a threat. Is Ron DeSantis able to take down the Deep State? He and Tucker Carlson get deep into that discussion. What does God's Word say? 2 Timothy 4:4 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.Episode 966 Links: People say @RobertKennedyJr fueled an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, but he didn't. China has indeed been researching ethnically-targeted bioweapons. What's more, Kennedy triggered a long-overdue debate about how to rein in the dual-use research that has spiraled out of control.RFK, Jr. responds to the NY Post's allegation that he is anti-semitic“There's a new kind of censorship called targeted propaganda” - Presidential Candidate, @RobertKennedyJr, provides context on the viral video yesterday with @RabbiShmuleyTucker: "Maybe January 6th wasn't an insurrection."@VivekGRamaswamy: "You want to know what caused J6? Pervasive censorship in this country in the lead up to J6. We were told you could not question where the virus came from. We were told that you could not send a private message to someone on the eve of an election that Hunter Biden's laptop story was true. You were told you had to be locked down, you had to take a vaccine that was mandated while Antifa and BLM roam and burn the streets. That's what caused J6. A cycle of censorship."Intelligence Committee members warn US of bioweapons targeting DNA of individual Americans; Congressman Jason Crow says young Americans are too willing to give up their DNA infoThe Brevard County, FL Leadership Committee Adopted a Resolution Calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis to Make COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Illegal. "The pharmaceutical companies committed crimes and pushed fraud on the public about the effectiveness of the vaccines and downplayed the risks and side effects, they argued. The Brevard Republican party's controversial letter will be sent to DeSantis and other state leaders asking to outlaw the vaccines in the Sunshine State."Tucker asks DeSantis about fighting the deep state and pardoning Assange: "My goal is to end the weaponization of government. Part of what you need to do if you have a two-tiered system of justice, you need to make sure if there are some people that got away that shouldn't have, they need to face the music. And if there are other people that are being targeted, then there needs to be use of the pardon power." 4Patriots https://4patriots.com Protect your family with Food kits, solar generators and more at 4Patriots. Use code TODD for 10% off your first purchase. Alan's Soaps https://alanssoaps.com/TODD Use coupon code ‘TODD' to save an additional 10% off the bundle price. BiOptimizers https://magbreakthrough.com/todd Use promo code TODD for 10% off your order. Bonefrog https://bonefrog.us Enter promo code TODD at checkout to receive 10% off your subscription. Bulwark Capital http://KnowYourRiskRadio.com Find out how Bulwark Capital Actively Manages risk. Call 866-779-RISK or visit KnowYourRiskRadio.com Patriot Mobile https://patriotmobile.com/herman Get free activation today with offer code HERMAN. Visit or call 878-PATRIOT. RuffGreens https://ruffgreens.com/todd Get your FREE Jumpstart Trial Bag of Ruff Greens, simply cover shipping. Visit or call 877-MYDOG-64. SOTA Weight Loss https://sotaweightloss.com SOTA Weight Loss is, say it with me now, STATE OF THE ART! Sound of Freedom https://angel.com/freedom Join the two million and see Sound of Freedom in theaters July 4th. GreenHaven Interactive https://greenhaveninteractive.com Digital Marketing including search engine optimization and website design.

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California is a man with a virtual target on his back from MAGA Republicans. He was thrown off the Intelligence Committee by Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Which kind of works for him, because it gives him more time to campaign for the Senate to replace Dianne Feinstein when her term ends at the beginning of 2025. Congressman Schiff was a major player in efforts by the Congress to hold Donald Trump accountable including being Impeachment Manager on Trump's first impeachment and as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He is a close ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. One of his main issues right now is the “ethics' of the Supreme Court. And he's introduced legislation to provide a binding ethics regime on the Court.Today's Bill Press Pod is supported by the Iron Workers Union: the men and women who have built and are rebuilding America. More information at Ironworkers.org.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Former Vice President Mike Pence says he will not appeal a judge's ruling to testify in the special counsel's January 6th investigation. Pence is now poised to recount for the first time under oath his conversations with Donald Trump leading up to the January insurrection. Also, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers hold a historic meeting with Taiwan's president on American soil. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of the Intelligence Committee joins to discuss the talks.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

First, Jake asks Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner whether he's concerned about Trump warning about "potential death and destruction” if he's indicted in the Manhattan DA's hush money probe. They also discuss the risk of military escalation in Syria following last week's drone attack on US personnel, as well as Russia' plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Next, Jake presses Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer about his efforts to intervene in the Trump hush money probe in New York and his demand for Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to answer Congress' questions about his investigation.Then, Jake goes one-on-one with Rep. Ro Khanna, who responds to Republicans' efforts to intervene in the New York investigation and makes an announcement about whether he will run for Senate in California. Jake also speaks with Committee Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who led Congress' TikTok hearing last week, on why she thinks the app should be banned in the United States. Finally, the panel discusses Trump's attacks on potential 2024 rival Gov. Ron Desantis and whether the Florida governor can maintain his popularity within his party of he decides to formally run against Trump.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Four times in eights flying objects have been shot down over North American skies by the U.S. military. Sen. Kirsten Gilibrand of the Intelligence Committee joins to answer if the objects were a threat and to discuss recent laws passed which address reporting unidentified aerial phenomena in the United States. The White House insists there is no indication extraterrestrials are affiliated with these flying objects. Plus, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes joins to discuss winning Super Bowl LVII.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Episode 2497: The Manipulation Of The Intelligence Committee

Photo: No known restrictions on publication. Washington DC 1920 @Batchelorshow #Russiagate: Kevin McCarthy removes Schiff and Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee for the falsehoods of 2016-2020 that they continue to promote.   Devin Nunes #TruthSocial #FriendsofHistoryDebatingSociety https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/schiff-swalwell-and-omar-condemn-gop-bid-to-remove-them-from-committees/ar-AA16RVM0

The Rich Zeoli Show- Hour 3: While appearing on Fox5 in New York City, Madison Square Garden Entertainment CEO James Dolan defended his arena's utilization of controversial facial recognition software to prevent lawyers who have sued MSG or Dolan from entering. Is it legal? Pastor Bill Devlin—CEO of Extreme Faith—joins The Rich Zeoli Show to offer us an update in the trial of Mark Houck, a pro-life father charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for protesting outside of an abortion clinic. Houck was notably arrested at his home during an FBI-conducted raid. The Philadelphia Inquirer has accused Pennsylvania State Representative Amen Brown of leaving a “trail of debt, lawsuits” in business and real estate dealings. Brown is a moderate Democrat running for Philadelphia Mayor. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia media continues to gush over super-progressive John Fetterman and his wife Gisele… After being removed from the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) posted his first TikTok complaining about it. 

Newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has begun flexing his muscle, making good on his promise to kick prominent Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off of the House Intelligence Committee. And for good measure McCarthy also took the opportunity to smack down a PBS reporter who asked why the two Democrats were being excised from this committee while noted fabulist Republican George Santos was being placed on other committees. Jimmy and Pushback host Aaron Maté discuss the more than legitimate reasons why Schiff has no business anywhere near the Intelligence Committee. Plus segments on a psychopath former Pentagon official in the Obama administration calling for "many more body bags" to bring down Putin and "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams' less-than-contrite apology for being wrong about the COVID vaccine. Also featuring Stef Zamorano, Kurt Metzger and Mike MacRae! And phone calls from Vince Vaughn and the duo of Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelensky!

With the sudden about-face of the US and Germany on sending heavy tanks to Ukraine, the world finds itself bizarrely transported back in time to WWI or WWII. German tanks with iron crosses returning to the very ground they were expelled from in 1945. History repeats itself. First as tragedy, then as farce. Also today: GOP kicks two Dems off of Intelligence Committee - do they have a point? And...does anyone in government NOT have classified documents at home?

On today's Daily Signal Top News, we break down:   Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries asks Democrat Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California be added to the Intelligence Committee. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces the state has decided against offering a high school advanced placement course on African American Studies. DirectTV is […]

On today's Daily Signal Top News, we break down: Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries asks Democrat Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California be added to the Intelligence Committee. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces the state has decided against offering a high school advanced placement course on African American Studies. DirectTV is considering cutting ties with NewsmaxMonterey Park, California shooter may have been targeting his wife.A group called Our Rights DC organized a protest outside the Maryland home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Read more about the protests outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home here: https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/22/far-left-activists-continue-demonstrations-at-justice-kavanaugh-home/ Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcastsSign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's comforting to believe our politicians and their bosses are just bumbling and stupid and the result is chaos from incompetence. But, that's not true. Simple regression analysis and pattern recognition indicate that we are not seeing chaos, we are watching a well laid plan. I have mentioned this from time to time, in this episode, I fully explain it using current news as examples. We have not forgotten how to secure a border, in fact, we just promised to pay to enhance them for other countries; our border is open to flood our country with people who need access to our treasury. The schools are not in chaos, everything the unions are pushing are about tearing down families and faith. The FBI isn't incapable of seeking to arrest the actual January 6 breach team, they don't want to arrest them and that tells us the FBI is protecting them. What does God say? The Lord places things in order. He is the furthest thing from chaotic. Consider the order in His creation of all things. Genesis 1:1-9 The Beginning 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. Satan creates chaos and disorder Genesis 3: 1-4 The Fall 3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” [AUDIO] - I asked Gov Abbott why he decided to greet Biden in El Paso today. Here's what he said: [AUDIO] - Kevin McCarthy @SpeakerMcCarthy told Breitbart News that as SOTH he will Strip Ilhan Omar off Foreign Affairs, Eric Swalwell & Adam Schiff off Intelligence Committee. Let's see if he will deliver on his promises![AUDIO] - Did Nancy Mace just call Matt Gaetz a “fraud” for leading a group of courageous Patriots to drastically change a corrupt House for the better?[AUDIO] - MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart: "McCarthy's protracted fight over the Speaker's gavel...was a continuation of that insurrection. Am I wrong?" Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA): "No. You're not going too far."[AUDIO] - PREMIERE: Beattie stuns Glenn Beck in barnburner Jan 6 interview… “if his identity is revealed, it will be the biggest scandal in the country”…

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily Newsbrief for Wednesday, January 11th, 2023. It’s hump day everyone! How’s everyone’s week been thus far… good? Good! Rowdy Christian Merch Plug: If you’re a fan of CrossPolitic, or the Fight Laugh Feast Network, then surely, you know we have a merch store right? Rowdy Christian Merch is your one-stop-shop for everything CrossPolitc merchandise. We’ve got T-Shirts, hoodies, hats, but we’ve also got specialty items like backpacks, mugs, coffee, even airpod cases! Visit Rowdy Christian Merch at rowdychristian.com, and buy that next gift, or a little something for yourself. Again, that’s rowdychristian.com. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-republican-files-articles-impeachment-dhs-sec-mayorkas House Republican files articles of impeachment against DHS Sec. Mayorkas Texas Republican Rep. Pat Fallon has filed impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, delivering on a promise he made last week before the 118th Congress was officially sworn in. The articles of impeachment against Mayorkas for "high crimes and misdemeanors," known as House Resolution 8, were introduced by Fallon in the House on Monday and have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Last week, Fallon vowed to file impeachment articles against Mayorkas after the Congress was sworn in. The effort from Republicans in the House is one of many that the new GOP majority will take as it works to fight the Biden administration on issues related to immigration and the southern border crisis. While there is currently no text available for the impeachment articles filed against Mayorkas, Fox News reported last week that Fallon's first article alleges that Mayorkas has failed to faithfully execute the "Secure the Fence Act of 2006." The article says that law requires the secretary of Homeland Security to "maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States." The second article alleges that Mayorkas, "in violation of his constitutional oath, willfully provided perjurious, false, and misleading testimony to Congress." To back up that charge, the article quotes Mayorkas' testimony during April 26 and Nov. 15 congressional hearings in which he said the border was secure. The final of the three articles charges that Mayorkas "publicly and falsely slandered" border agents who were accused – but later cleared – of whipping Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas, in 2021. Mayorkas on Sunday said he will not resign over his handling of the border crisis and insisted he will be ready for future investigations by House Republicans while continuing to fulfill his daily responsibilities. https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/10/kevin-mccarthy-adam-schiff-eric-swalwell-ilhan-omar-committees/ Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Ilhan Omar To Officially Be Kicked Off Intelligence, Foreign Affairs Committees Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy confirmed Monday night that Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell will be removed from the House Intelligence Committee and the House will vote on the removal of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee. In February, McCarthy told the Daily Caller that if he is elected Speaker that he intends to strip Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Swalwell and Schiff from the Intelligence Committee. On Monday, McCarthy confirmed to The Associated Press (AP) that he would be moving forward with that decision, saying both Swalwell and Schiff should not have seats on the committee. McCarthy has said Swalwell’s reported relationship with a Chinese spy and Schiff’s defense of the Steele dossier are some of the reasons they should be removed from the committee. McCarthy has said Omar’s anti-Semitism is a reason she should be removed from Foreign Affairs. “Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector. I’m not going to give him a government security clearance. Schiff has lied to the American public…,” McCarthy told The AP. The Daily Caller contacted Swalwell, Schiff, and Omar’s offices about McCarthy’s decision to move forward and have them removed from committee assignments to which they did not immediately respond. https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-andrew-tate-to-remain-in-romanian-jail-after-losing-appeal?utm_campaign=64487 Andrew Tate to remain in Romanian jail after losing appeal Former kickboxer and controversial social media personality Andrew Tate lost his appeal against not being held for 30 days at a Romanian detention center. Andrew, along with his brother Tristan, were detained last month pending a criminal investigation into alleged human trafficking and organizing a crime group. A document from the judge who instated the 30-day detention wrote that "the possibility of them evading investigations cannot be ignored" and the suspects could "leave Romania and settle in countries that do not allow extradition," reports Mirror. "In this sense, I would like to point out, at least from this point of view, I am also somehow amazed, there is not a single piece of evidence apart from the victim's statement that leads to the idea that a crime of rape was committed. In my view, there is no evidence to the formation of an opinion of reasonable suspicion regarding the commission of offenses provided for and punishable by criminal law. In this case we are talking about human trafficking and organized crime," said the Tate brothers' lawyer Eugen Vidineac. https://thepostmillennial.com/oregon-pledges-to-affirm-sex-changes-for-kids-as-reading-proficiency-plummets?utm_campaign=64487 Oregon pledges to affirm sex changes for kids as reading proficiency plummets On Thursday, the Oregon Department of Education released guidance for schools to better support "Gender Expansive Students" that include bathroom and pronoun policies aligned with radical gender ideology and include links for minors to seek "gender-affirming healthcare" LibsofTikTok posted "Oregon Dept of Education released new guidelines on affirming LGBTQ+ students. They promote the use of pronouns, using bathrooms based on gender identity, and support 'gender affirming care' for minors. It also provides links to kids with info on 'tucking' & 'chest binding'." Oregon Department of Education Director Colt Gill said, "It is our responsibility to move beyond mere tolerance and inclusion toward respectful, affirming, and celebratory school communities where all students belong and succeed." The new guidance comes as a growing number of Oregon students are falling behind in their reading proficiency. According to Oregon Live, "A staggering 61 percent of third graders and 54 percent of seventh graders aren’t fully proficient at reading, including 30 percent of seventh-graders found to be substantially below grade level" in the Beaver State. The measures of success according to the guidance include telling students, "You have the ability to change your first name in your school record and student information system, without legal documentation" and "You have the ability to change your sex/gender marker in your school record and student information system." "You have the ability to use school restrooms and changing rooms that align with your gender identity or safety needs," according to the guidance. The guidance also includes informing students they can "date who you want, if you want" and can form student groups focused on LGBTQ2SIA+. The plan offers textbooks and guidance to students so they can learn "inclusive and affirming information about the LGBTQ2SIA+" community and inform the students they can participate in "sports, PE, and school activities according to your gender identity." "If you are 15 or older, you have the ability to seek gender-affirming healthcare from an Oregon medical provider," according to the list of resources, which also remind students they can seek mental health resources if they are 14 or over and get birth control if they are "any age." The guidance provides a detailed list instructing students where they can receive "gender affirming care" that includes details on "tucking" and "chest binding." The recent guidance release is part of Oregon's larger LGBTQ2SIA+ Student Success Plan that was developed in 2020 "amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic." Classical Conversations Classical Conversations supports homeschooling parents by cultivating the love of learning through a Christian worldview in fellowship with other families. They provide a classical Christ-centered curriculum, local like-minded communities across the United States and in several countries, and they train parents who are striving to be great classical educators in the home. For more information and to get connected, please visit their website at ClassicalConversations.com. Again that’s ClassicalConversations.com.