Mission Implausible

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.

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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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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?

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Former CIA and NSA attorney Jim Petrila explains the legal decisions about covert action, presidential power, and the legal guardrails surrounding America’s intelligence agencies. He argues that the Trump-era expansion of executive power, combined with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and the dismantling of institutional oversight, represents a fundamental threat to the rule of law. 

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Award-winning author Ilana Berry explores the gap between how espionage is portrayed and how it actually works. Drawing on her experience in the CIA, the Department of Defense, and er firsthand view of the Arab Spring in Bahrain. She explains why secrecy fuels conspiracy theories, and why even insiders often struggle to separate truth from manipulation.

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Real government secrecy, intelligence failures, and historic scandals created the conditions for today’s conspiracy culture. Pearl Harbor, The Red Scare, JFK, 9/11, QAnon - a small truth can explode into a dangerous paranoid belief in hidden power and control. Genuine conspiracies often make it harder—not easier—to separate fact from fiction. How do democracies survive when citizens no longer agree on what’s...

Comedian Ben Palmer (Palmer Trolls) does sort-of-pranks that have evolved from satire to social experiment. Using aliases, fake websites and a “deportation hotline,” Palmer reveals how easily ordinary people are drawn into exposing their own bad behavior and unabashed racism (he would make a terrific CIA case officer). Watch his video about pretending to be the social media person for three months for Republican Congres...

 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 Stee...

We continue to look at Havana Syndrome and Russian intelligence operations. Investigative journalist Michael Weiss expands on evidence suggesting that a covert unit within Russian military intelligence may have targeted Western operatives, particularly those involved in countering Russian activities in Ukraine and other strategic regions. We discuss geopolitical miscalculations, including U.S. responses to Russian aggression, the w...

Havana Syndrome wasn’t a mystery. It was a coverup. And it wasn’t just Havana. Investigative journalist Michael Weiss (The Insider) returns to the show to break down his explosive reporting on the unexplained brain injuries suffered by U.S. diplomats, CIA officers, and military personnel around the world. Weiss lays out compelling evidence linking these incidents to a covert Russian intelligence unit and a new kind of d...