Mission Implausible
Do you want to know the truth behind the world’s wildest conspiracy theories? Former CIA officers John Sipher & Jerry O’Shea try to determine where misinformation is coming from, when we’re being lied to and when a conspiracy theory is an actual real conspiracy. In the world of espionage, they were part of creating conspiracies. Now they and their circle of experts probe what’s true and when we’re being manipulated. New episodes every week. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod Executive Producers: Adam Davidson, John Sipher, Jerry O'Shea & Jonathan Stern. Producer: Rachel Harner A production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures
Episodes
October 4, 2026 • 46 mins
The author of The United States of Paranoia and the editor of Reason sees the enemies within, outside, above and below. The true believers and the manipulators. Every religion and political affiliation in American is uniquely credulous. But maybe there’s good reason to be.
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Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
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September 27, 2026 • 41 mins
Former Science of Identity Foundation insider Rebecca Saltzburg, a source for the Washington Post's investigation into Tulsi Gabbard, goes deeper into how its guru Chris Butler shaped Gabbard's political career. Then, as Director of National Intelligence, who was she working for? Why was the deal with her and Syria, China and Russia?
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Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
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September 20, 2026 • 35 mins
Rebecca Saltzburg spent years living with Tulsi Gabbard’s family, inside the Science of Identity Foundation, and in the inner circle of Chris Butler, the leader of its Hawaiian sect, of which Tulsi and her parents were long-time members. Years after leaving, Saltzburg took here archives - emails, encrypted memoranda, internal communications - and gave more than 25,000 pages to the Washington Post, which published its investig...
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September 13, 2026 • 51 mins
In March 1944, three American OSS officers parachuted into Hungary on a mission to be taken prisoner. A story that was classified for decades, the team — a Dartmouth graduate, a World War I fighter pilot and a former New York Giants lineman who became an advertising executive — planned to get caught, tortured by The Gestapo, and “confess” to an Allied invasion that was a complete fiction. The OSS (the precur...
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September 6, 2026 • 45 mins
Our summer holiday is over. All new episodes coming soon.
We didn't always assume the government was hiding aliens. The Manhattan Project was a crash course in how to run a secret program. Some secrets were real and necessary. Some were real and needing exposure - The Vietnam War, The Pentagon Papers, Watergate. So now people distrust everything the government tells us -- from UFO's to 9/11. Bestselling author and historian ...
We didn't always assume the government was hiding aliens. The Manhattan Project was a crash course in how to run a secret program. Some secrets were real and necessary. Some were real and needing exposure - The Vietnam War, The Pentagon Papers, Watergate. So now people distrust everything the government tells us -- from UFO's to 9/11. Bestselling author and historian ...
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August 29, 2026 • 62 mins
In 2016, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele produced a series of intelligence memos that were leaked and widely called “The Steel Dossier” containing allegations about Russia's interference in the US election and links between Trumpworld and the Kremlin. In a highly unique conversation, Steele and John & Jerry look into the many hot-button conspiracy theories and real conspiracies that Steele has...
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August 17, 2026 • 49 mins
Investigative journalist and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Richard Kerbaj discusses The Defector, his book on Oleg Lyalin — the KGB officer who walked into a North London police station in 1971 and exposed over 200 Soviet spies in Britain, partly to escape his marriage. He and the hosts trace how MI5's decision to withhold him from the CIA broke James Angleton's decade of paranoia, then take apart the Five Eyes: its origins, its bu...
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August 9, 2026 • 37 mins
Now that Adam Davidson is a national expert on AI, he worries about how it will change worldwide politics, military power and international economic structures. Not just the AI itself, but all its underlying physical infrastructure. When it comes to spycraft, it can help sort through the millions of pages of data collected every day, but it also makes it impossible to keep a secret.
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August 2, 2026 • 32 mins
What's been done to American intelligence and what it costs: the 35 declassified documents that don't say what the president claims they say, analysts fired for accurate assessments, clearances stripped as punishment, rumored loyalty oaths, and the question of how any future administration cleans this up without another round of retribution. Looking outward — what Beijing is taking faway rom the Iran war, whether Taiwan is wa...
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July 26, 2026 • 32 mins
Stephen Miller runs National Security now. Julia Curlee spent over 20 years as a CIA analyst, rising to being Acting Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC. When Trump 2 began, she stayed on, as is custom, to help transition. Her team was fired on Day 3, and Curlee on Day 69, leaving The White House woefully uninformed to this day. But maybe that was the point.“Vulnerability isn't really a foreign adversary, but...
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July 19, 2026 • 33 mins
Two of John & Jerry’s old friends and agency colleagues swap war stories and tall tales, starting with their training at The Farm and including their time in Moscow. Some of the characters in their anecdotes: Nazi Bob, Steven Seagal and the CIA mermaids.
Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImpl...
Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImpl...
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July 12, 2026 • 29 mins
More on Trump's $2 billion is new money in the past year -- Financial investigative journalist (and Mission Implausible producer) Adam Davidson illuminates Trump's business model: money-laundering, ass-kissing and rent-seeking. His zero-sum view of how things work doesn't just enrich himself, it damages overall world economic growth. He's more a post-Soviet oligarch than a Western capitalist. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: h...
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- Journalist Gabriel Gatehouse returns to Mission Implausible with the strange premise behind his podcast Foul Play: the claim that the CIA poisoned England goalkeeper Gordon Banks before the 1970 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico in order to help the Brazil to support Brazil’s government. It turns out that international sporting events are hotbeds of attempted subterfuge and quasi-governmental manipulation. Watch...
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Journalist Gabriel Gatehouse returns to Mission Implausible with the strange premise behind his podcast Foul Play: the claim that the CIA poisoned England goalkeeper Gordon Banks before the 1970 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico in order to help the Brazil to support Brazil’s government. It turns out that international sporting events are hotbeds of attempted subterfuge and quasi-governmental manipulation. ...
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June 21, 2026 • 44 mins
Former OSCE ambassador and Pentagon and NSC official Michael Carpenter argues Russia is weaker than it appears yet keeps being rescued by a West gripped by fear of escalation. And that the newly transactional, alliance-busting American foreign policy undermines the remarkable success of NATO. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
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June 14, 2026 • 52 mins
Former CIA Iran ops officer Mark Fowler joins Jerry and John to explain why Iran is one of the hardest targets on earth. From running agents and sources, Fowler has insight into the Iranian worldview: a persecuted Shia minority that sees walls behind every wall, craves American attention while calling us the Great Satan, and negotiates by treating signed contracts as opening bids. He separates the educated, reform-minded Iranian pe...
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June 7, 2026 • 53 mins
In 2003, a single Iraqi refugee — codenamed Curveball — fabricated stories about Iraqi weapons. The U.S. intelligence community, desperate for sources after 9/11, laundered his claims into a National Intelligence Estimate produced in under three weeks. Bob Drogin, the award-winning journalist who broke the story and wrote the definitive book on it, joins John & Jerry to examine how political will, institutional grou...
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May 31, 2026 • 41 mins
ENCORE EPISODE - Gabriel Gatehouse is a journalist and broadcaster and author of “The Coming Storm” that looks at Q Anon and the January 6th conspiracies. And he’s British! Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod
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May 24, 2026 • 37 mins
In light of this week's resignation of Tulsi Gabbard, we're re-running our recent very illuminating episode about her. Also, check out John Sipher's timely piece on her in The Bullwark on May 19. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-office-shouldnt-exist-director-national-intelligence-9-11 Our current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was born into The Science of Identity Foundation, a secretive, authoritarian r...
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May 17, 2026 • 42 mins
Nuclear weapons-usable uranium, biolabs for biological warfare, secret chemical facilities -- In Operation Sapphire, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Andy Weber found and disposed of them. Where are the current threats? What does Iran still have? Biological threats may ultimately prove even more dangerous than nuclear ones. How do we control them? https://thesteadystate.org Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.you...
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