(Edited version.) Brad Johnson appears on the show to give an update on the current state of the CIA and how it’s been decimated over the years. As a former CIA Operative and Chief of Station, Brad traces how we got to where we are no longer as effective as needed. He is the President of Americans for Intelligence Reform.
https://youtu.be/3D5-b_lakK8
[expander_maker id=”8″ more=”Click for entire transcript” less=”Read less”]
[Music]
00:24
i i guess you call it democratic states
00:26
or
00:27
or or peaceful states that
00:30
really should begin to play more of a
00:32
role rather than the united nations
00:35
i believe it’s always good to have a
00:36
place for nations even the bad guys
00:39
to come and talk it out but in terms
00:42
of the governance of an international
00:44
organization
00:45
when you allow the wrongdoers to play
00:47
such a significant role
00:49
then i think you’ve got a problem
00:52
exactly that’s the problem that we’re
00:54
facing with the united nations
00:56
and i think hold on a second i think
00:57
we’ve got bread bread are you there
01:00
i am i hope you can hear me well we can
01:04
welcome back we’re glad to have you brad
01:07
you have extraordinary experience in
01:10
international affairs and
01:11
one of the things that derry and i have
01:13
found remarkable
01:15
is that over the past few years
01:18
as china has violated every instance of
01:21
international norms
01:23
has defied basically every treaty
01:26
there has not been in the west the type
01:29
of
01:30
outrage one would expect um the covet 19
01:34
which was spread throughout the world by
01:35
chinese negligence or malfeasance
01:38
take your pick um you would have
01:40
expected the u.s
01:41
press to react harshly to that to put
01:44
blame on china
01:46
uh and yet that has been totally muted
01:50
why well i think it’s a simple enough
01:52
thing you do we have to
01:54
chalk it up to uh the overall chinese
01:56
intelligence operations that are
01:58
fabulously successful
02:00
and you can just take off the number of
02:02
things they’ve done the inroads they’ve
02:03
made with
02:04
mainstream media the inroads they’ve
02:07
made with the university system where
02:09
there’s people being
02:10
arrested or thrown out or uh fired
02:14
uh almost daily out of the university
02:16
and research centers
02:17
uh and with the politicians we have
02:20
several politicians uh still sitting in
02:22
congress
02:23
that have made in some cases hundreds of
02:25
millions of dollars by doing business
02:27
with
02:28
the chinese so you have a lot of people
02:30
very favorably disposed
02:32
that would normally be a spokesperson
02:34
for these type of problems uh
02:36
remain quite muted as you say and just
02:38
on the basic
02:39
intelligence successes they’ve had the
02:41
cia
02:42
operations in china were completely torn
02:45
apart in it they they took out something
02:47
like 19 people
02:48
in front of the buildings where they had
02:51
worked and shot them by firing squad in
02:53
front of all their
02:54
workmates to uh to send a message to
02:57
everyone
02:57
and for you know they they the justin uh
03:00
late last year they arrested the head of
03:03
the canadian intelligence service
03:06
now they’re structured different than we
03:07
are here and their intelligence service
03:10
resides within the rcmp the royal
03:12
canadian mounted
03:13
police so it’s much like the
03:15
counterintelligence division of the fbi
03:17
except for that’s their whole
03:19
uh intelligence system that the head of
03:21
that whole thing was arrested for spying
03:23
for the chinese
03:24
and it looks like he’d been working for
03:26
the chinese for at least
03:28
seven years so i mean their successes
03:30
and
03:31
and of course canada as many people
03:32
would be aware as one of the members of
03:34
the five eyes
03:35
intelligence sharing organization which
03:38
is made up of
03:39
canada united uh kingdom uh new zealand
03:43
australia and the united states of
03:45
course so
03:46
uh that’s it’s it was extraordinarily
03:49
damaging so
03:51
they have been running roughshod over
03:53
the entire world
03:55
with their very aggressive intelligence
03:57
program
03:58
and as something i often talk about
04:00
where while
04:01
the united states on during the obama
04:04
years was
04:05
just completely gutting and destroying
04:07
the uh
04:08
the intelligence operations that
04:10
particularly at the cia but
04:12
here during this period where all of
04:13
this was taking place
04:16
uh the former director of the cia john
04:18
brennan under president obama
04:20
dissolved the operations cadre he
04:23
dissolved the operations which is where
04:25
the
04:26
human operations take place where we
04:28
would defend
04:29
against precisely these operations that
04:32
china is running so successfully
04:34
he disbanded that now it’s sort of this
04:37
one
04:38
weird one-size-fits-all sort of
04:40
operation now that’s completely
04:41
ineffective you cannot
04:43
create operations officers like from my
04:46
generation
04:47
who know what they’re doing and know how
04:48
to run counter operations and defeat
04:50
these guys
04:51
by uh with without that professional
04:54
pipeline where
04:56
you have dedicated operations cadre who
05:00
only do operations
05:01
specialize in operations and they learn
05:04
from the older people all the way
05:05
up the line so that all that expertise
05:07
that’s been gathered
05:08
since and including world war ii uh gets
05:11
passed down to them
05:12
and that’s all dead and gone and it’s
05:14
it’s only going to get worse
05:16
until somebody has the gumption to stand
05:18
up and
05:19
and address these problems uh you know
05:22
head on and uh even even now a lot of
05:24
that sort of
05:25
those repairs are being made but even uh
05:27
even trump has not yet been willing to
05:29
to face just how deep this problem is
05:31
within the intelligence community
05:34
given your background brad
05:37
would you say that the us the russians
05:40
or the chinese as far as not military
05:44
but
05:44
intelligence goes who’s ahead
05:47
have we lost if you want to say a lead
05:50
in the sense militarily we were always
05:52
generations ahead in technology
05:54
but what about the intelligence
05:56
community we have a lot of restrictions
05:58
on our people that obviously the
05:59
russians and the chinese don’t follow
06:03
yes i would say uh traditionally
06:06
we were we probably at the cia
06:11
right up until say bill clinton
06:14
maybe uh uh you know you could argue
06:16
that what
06:17
jimmy carter did kind of destroyed that
06:20
lead but
06:21
somewhere in that period between jimmy
06:23
carter and
06:24
and uh and bill clinton we probably
06:27
had about the equivalent of the
06:29
intelligence capability
06:31
on our own with pretty much the rest of
06:33
the world we were on par with pretty
06:35
much everybody else just
06:36
ourselves now uh better to have
06:39
alliances and people working with you
06:41
and of course that’s what we did
06:43
but that was all started to deteriorate
06:46
particularly
06:47
under bill clinton and the operations
06:49
cadre that was
06:51
finally completely and utterly destroyed
06:53
by
06:55
the obama administration was long under
06:57
assault and attack
06:58
under under the clinton administration
07:02
and so it was greatly degraded during
07:03
that period and the decline continued
07:06
with the
07:07
with the logic that they began to
07:09
impress on it now
07:10
traditionally and this is one of the
07:12
things i always argue for
07:14
the operations the espionage
07:17
arm needs to be completely separate from
07:20
everyone else and the reason is because
07:24
you need to go collect the information
07:26
and not have it be tainted by u.s
07:28
politics
07:30
so that you’re just passing pure truth
07:32
and information to leadership
07:33
let them do with it what they wish but
07:36
you need to stay
07:36
uninvolved and so
07:40
there needs to be a definite firewall
07:42
between the operations collection end of
07:44
things
07:45
and the analysis end of things and so
07:48
that analysis also does not become
07:51
wed to certain sources where they give
07:53
greater
07:54
priority to those sources they’re
07:56
involved with which is a natural
07:58
human tendency i know that guy he told
08:02
me this
08:02
i trust him therefore i’m going with his
08:05
analysis
08:06
versus these versus these three other
08:07
guys over here that tell me something
08:09
completely different
08:10
and that is one of the just first
08:13
you know real problems with how
08:16
intelligence
08:17
and the intelligence community was run
08:18
and that was implemented back during
08:20
clinton days
08:21
where all were co-located and started to
08:23
work together and share
08:25
assets and all of that stuff that was
08:27
the beginning of the end
08:28
for humans and it was like i said it was
08:31
completely disbanded and destroyed under
08:33
uh
08:34
under obama and uh bragged about by john
08:37
brennan on in an npr
08:39
interview which is stunning to me first
08:42
of all that he was so stupid that he
08:43
thought it was a good idea
08:44
and then he was doubly so stupid that he
08:46
thought he should brag about it on
08:48
on a national radio program i mean if
08:50
you’re gonna be that stupid
08:51
cover it up for god’s sake
08:54
right let me ask you a very difficult
08:56
and uncomfortable question
08:58
while certainly the assault on human end
09:02
predated john brennan and the obama
09:05
administration
09:06
the degree to which it was executed
09:09
during that time period
09:10
was as you said stunning
09:14
is it your belief that this was simply
09:17
stupidity as you say or was there a
09:20
deeper feeling
09:21
by brennan as there was apparently by
09:24
former president
09:24
obama that somehow the u.s was not a
09:27
good presence in the world
09:29
and that anything that weakened the
09:31
ability of the united states to operate
09:33
behind the scenes
09:34
getting rid of that was somehow a good
09:37
policy goal somehow a humane policy goal
09:40
insane as it sounds but when you read
09:43
the extent when you review the extent of
09:46
obama’s foreign policy
09:48
you can’t with any kind of educated view
09:51
get past the impression
09:53
that somehow obama thought it was good
09:54
for the world to weaken
09:56
the united states well i think that’s
09:59
clearly the case
10:00
and president obama would often say
10:04
uh that uh the united states needs to be
10:07
fundamentally transformed and that was
10:09
sort of his catch phrase
10:10
and by the way no one ever asked him
10:12
what we’re trying to fundamentally
10:13
transform into
10:14
right yeah yeah and that again now that
10:17
one actually that that gets right into
10:19
that stupidity care
10:20
uh category of on the part of the press
10:22
who would just never really follow up
10:23
with something
10:24
so basic and say well what precisely are
10:26
you are you trying to
10:27
transform us into but i think the answer
10:30
to that
10:31
is now clear what we’re seeing in
10:33
seattle and these
10:34
of the antifa and black lives matters
10:36
that is what uh
10:38
of what president obama had in mind for
10:40
us and it was to create a
10:42
a marxist leninist socialist type
10:44
environment in the united states
10:46
and and we’re seeing this play out in
10:48
front of us now
10:49
one of the things you also asked earlier
10:51
was about
10:52
john brennan was he that stupid or was
10:54
it something else and
10:55
the serious answer is it was clearly
10:58
something else
10:59
and it’s uh not a secret that john
11:01
brennan was
11:02
uh essentially somebody that was of
11:05
marxist
11:06
a type philosophy in his mind and it’s
11:08
certainly clear from the things he said
11:10
and done
11:11
and he famously voted for the communist
11:14
candidate for president uh as a younger
11:16
man
11:17
but that carries over and is is
11:20
widespread
11:21
in government it’s not an isolated thing
11:24
and in fact now here’s something most
11:26
people don’t know
11:27
james comey former director of the fbi
11:29
also voted for the communist party
11:31
candidate too now people don’t really
11:33
focus on that but
11:35
look at who president obama brought in
11:37
to be head of the cia
11:39
and head of the fbi arguably two of the
11:42
most powerful men
11:43
within the administration to accomplish
11:46
things
11:47
within the us government and those two
11:50
had both previously voted communists
11:52
now i think it’s you know stretches any
11:54
credibility to think that that was just
11:56
like
11:57
pure coincidence and they had completely
11:59
reformed themselves and didn’t believe
12:00
in those things any longer
12:02
that was who they were that’s who they
12:04
are
12:05
and this this really is a problem and
12:09
i’ll just really quickly go off on a
12:10
little tangent
12:11
and the way that we got there and that
12:13
is the way that
12:15
the left determines uh
12:18
you know who is a person of of trust to
12:20
bring into positions
12:22
and when you look at how the left fills
12:24
slots
12:25
you have to be a a loyal party member
12:28
type person uh an apparat chick
12:32
for them to consider you of value it
12:34
doesn’t matter if you’re incompetent
12:36
like john grenin john brennan was
12:39
politically trustworthy
12:41
james comey was politically trustworthy
12:44
that’s why they were put in those
12:45
positions
12:46
not because of confidence which they
12:48
clearly lacked
12:49
so that’s how the left does it now what
12:51
happens on that is
12:53
that’s how the pipeline to leadership is
12:55
filled
12:56
and that’s how it is at nsa cia
12:59
fbi doj all of these federal
13:03
agencies this pipeline to leadership
13:06
has only been filled with those sorts of
13:09
people
13:09
who can who are loyal left-wing
13:13
party-type people because that’s who the
13:15
left
13:16
judge is competent they they base their
13:19
judgment
13:20
of competence on that party loyalty
13:22
where people
13:23
like normal people like ourselves would
13:26
look at it and go
13:27
well we want somebody in charge of the
13:29
cia who knows what the heck they’re
13:31
doing with regards to intelligence
13:33
operations
13:34
and intelligence analysis but that’s not
13:36
how
13:37
the left selects people and that is what
13:40
led us to the problem we’re in today
13:43
that took place following world war ii
13:45
at the state department
13:46
which is a radical left-wing
13:48
organization and it has slowly spread to
13:50
the other
13:51
almost all of the federal agencies and
13:53
that is why we find ourselves
13:55
in this position that we’re in today
13:57
that is why you would see the offices of
13:59
nsa cia fbi doj
14:02
all be used through political corruption
14:06
to target a sitting president of the
14:08
united states and
14:10
a candidate for president united states
14:12
to try and get rid of him
14:14
and it was because of their personal
14:15
political beliefs what they thought was
14:17
important
14:18
i’ll point out one last little thing on
14:19
that the fbi
14:21
today in their hiring practices if you
14:23
don’t say
14:24
basically any questions and answers
14:27
something to the effect that you want to
14:28
be a social justice warrior
14:30
you’re not considered worthy of being
14:32
hired by the fbi
14:33
well look at what that means to be a
14:36
political
14:36
a justice warrior means you don’t care
14:39
what the law says
14:41
you’re not going in to enforce the law
14:43
you’re going
14:44
in to enforce your political beliefs and
14:47
that’s who we’re hiring in the fbi today
14:49
now of course they’re not all like that
14:50
there’s a lot of very good people in the
14:51
fbi
14:52
but those are the people they’re trying
14:54
to get and those are the people that end
14:56
up in that pipeline to leadership
14:58
and that’s why that’s that’s our problem
15:00
today we need to clean house
15:02
get it done it needs to be drastic and
15:05
very far-reaching
15:06
and i am afraid we don’t want to have
15:08
the political will so i’m afraid these
15:10
riots we’re seeing in the street
15:12
are here to stay for a long time can i
15:14
just ask one day i know derry wants to
15:15
jump in but i just wanted
15:17
couldn’t resist asking you a question
15:19
certainly in the aftermath of the
15:20
incidents in minneapolis
15:23
with george floyd one would have
15:25
expected reasonably there to be some
15:27
disorder some protest and so forth
15:29
but the extent and apparent organization
15:33
of the protest and riots across the
15:35
country
15:36
is rather stunning in fact you almost
15:38
have to admire the military
15:40
precision of it where the folks are
15:42
wearing the same types of clothing
15:44
carrying similar signs um do you believe
15:48
to any extent that perhaps china
15:51
has financed or somehow assisted in the
15:55
coordination of some of these events
15:57
as a way of distracting what they are
16:00
doing currently in hong kong
16:04
and yeah that’s an interesting question
16:06
i would say chinese involvement
16:08
in these things is probably uh
16:12
there but to a relatively smaller degree
16:16
they could be doing some financing on it
16:19
but as a kind of a minor investor if
16:21
you’ll allow me to use that term
16:22
the major investors are like the
16:24
rothschilds george soros types
16:26
they’re really pouring the money into it
16:28
and there’s financial reasons behind the
16:30
scenes of where they all think they’re
16:31
going to make billions of dollars
16:33
and so that’s part of the reason why
16:34
they’re doing this it’s the age-old
16:36
adage you know follow the money and they
16:38
think they’re going to make money and
16:39
that’s part of why we
16:40
see people like bill gates get involved
16:42
and things like that they’re
16:44
these people are all looking at it such
16:45
that they can increase their fortune
16:47
uh so now china uh
16:50
i where i would put my money as far as
16:52
china dissimulating to be able to get
16:55
away with what they’ve done in hong kong
16:57
which is
16:57
basically over now uh i would say
17:01
this is part of the reason of or part of
17:03
how they manipulated
17:05
kovid 19. if you’ll notice uh
17:08
back when this all started up all the
17:11
protests were shut down in hong kong
17:13
right away
17:14
and this was leading into a period of
17:16
time where china was talking about
17:17
implementing
17:18
certain laws well that all took place
17:21
while the kovid 19 made everybody stay
17:23
indoors in hong kong
17:25
the new laws were all passed in hong
17:28
kong
17:29
and now those draconian control laws
17:31
were implemented
17:32
as of july 1st today’s july 2nd so
17:36
yesterday these were all implemented
17:38
july 1st is a very important date
17:40
because that’s the anniversary of the
17:42
day
17:43
that hong kong was turned over from the
17:45
british back to the chinese
17:47
and every july first the hong kong
17:50
people have
17:51
demonstrations about that and those laws
17:54
were implemented on the first
17:56
and on the first they immediately went
17:58
out the chinese authorities
18:00
immediately went out rounded up and
18:01
arrested a lot of the leadership of the
18:03
protests
18:04
and that on the first when the protests
18:06
were taking place they arrested
18:08
350 370 people there’s numbers various
18:11
numbers coming out
18:12
but the laws are implemented the police
18:14
have long ago been taken over
18:16
the troops are all there resistance in
18:18
hong kong is over
18:19
they’re going to kill a few of those
18:21
people they’re going to arrest a bunch
18:22
more of those people
18:23
but the protesters in hong kong are
18:25
finished already
18:27
a number of the leaders have escaped to
18:28
taiwan and the united kingdom has
18:30
uh set aside i it was several thousands
18:33
uh
18:34
invitations for these protesters to
18:36
escape from hong kong and go to the
18:38
united kingdom to live
18:39
yeah now it’s unlimited now it’s
18:42
unlimited okay yeah that’s that’s an
18:43
update then
18:44
yeah so i mean everyone recognizes it’s
18:46
over in hong kong it’s done
18:48
next is taiwan sorry i apologize you’re
18:52
up next
18:53
well you know what i know we’re gonna
18:54
have to go in a minute there’s so many
18:56
things brad we’re gonna have to have you
18:57
back again
18:58
uh i guess when i heard you say words
19:01
like sustainability or social justice or
19:04
things like that i’ve noticed that a lot
19:06
more
19:06
coming out of our intelligence community
19:09
matter what the agencies
19:11
when we get you back on next time i
19:13
would love to talk
19:14
also about russia and what’s happening
19:18
with some of the
19:19
russian agents and what they are doing
19:21
uh
19:22
it just seems to me that we’ve got a lot
19:24
more intelligence activity going on now
19:27
and i don’t know how capable we are
19:29
of being proactive given the laws that
19:32
we have here
19:33
can we really fend off all these attacks
19:36
no we cannot that’s the simple answer to
19:39
all of that and and
19:40
uh one of the i mean there’s a whole
19:42
list it’s it’s layers to this problem
19:45
law is part of it because one of the
19:48
things that they’ve gotten to
19:49
is the point where they they don’t want
19:52
the cia
19:53
to break any laws of any country
19:56
anywhere
19:57
and this is what led john brennan to do
19:59
away with operations
20:01
is because espionage is illegal for
20:04
those
20:04
other countries and we conduct espionage
20:08
in those countries
20:09
and that’s what led him to get rid of
20:11
that was that philosophy of the extreme
20:13
left
20:14
that’s part of what made him get rid of
20:16
operations well
20:17
you know boys and girls it’s a tough
20:20
world out there
20:21
sometimes and you need some people that
20:24
are going to be out there that can take
20:25
care of this
20:26
and the two areas for overseas
20:29
operations that you need are the cia
20:32
to be able to go out there and you know
20:34
kick rear end and take names and also
20:36
the military they need to be able to go
20:38
out there and function
20:39
as needed to keep the united states of
20:42
america and our allies
20:43
safe so we’ve done away with all of that
20:45
and the problem is now
20:47
you can’t fix the cia with who’s there
20:50
you know everybody good is gone
20:52
and most of the people that have been in
20:54
positions of authority there over the
20:55
last couple of decades
20:57
are extreme left-wing
21:00
and brett i i have no doubt that the
21:03
next target of the hard left after
21:04
decimating the central intelligence
21:06
agency
21:07
will of course be the military already
21:10
there are substantial moves to defund it
21:12
uh we know what obama did to the
21:14
military heaven help us if
21:16
joe biden gets in and i think we’ll see
21:18
the same thing again
21:19
these conversations are always so far
21:22
too short
21:23
we need to get you on as quickly as
21:24
possible thank you so much brad
21:27
my pleasure i hope to speak with you
21:28
again soon as well indeed
21:31
thank you fascinating conversation
21:35
um you know it is frightening when you
21:38
see
21:38
the extent of what occurred during the
21:42
obama administration and how decimated
21:44
the intelligence services of the united
21:46
states were
21:47
let’s go to our next question i’m so
21:48
eager to speak to him
21:50
judge john wilson thank you so much for
21:52
being on the program
21:54
hello it’s very nice to be here with the
21:56
both of you as always
21:58
john in the state of virginia
22:02
a law or is being proposed which will
22:06
state that it is no longer a
22:08
felony to assault a police officer
22:11
how far down the rabbit hole are we
22:14
going
22:15
and as
[/expander_maker]
