RE: LeoThread 2025-08-16 03:50

What's up everybody? I'm taking the next couple of weeks off and my release schedule for the end of August and the beginning of September is going to be a little irregular. I've already recorded another episode that I hope to release sometime in the next two weeks and I've got recordings lined up with all sorts of super interesting people including the former chairman of North America for Louis Vuitton, the co-founder of Kickstarter. John Meerschmeier is also coming on the show, which is great because I'm a huge fan of John's and it's always great to have a brainiac on foreign policy on the podcast. Who else? Michael Casey of Crypto Acclaim is coming on as is my good friend Mike Maloney who is long overdue for his hidden forces christening. It's going to be a baptism by fire. We're going to talk about gold, crypto, economic philosophy, and Tesla I'm sure because Mike and I have some friendly disagreements on Mr Musk. So that's going to be a lot of fun and there are a bunch of other (1/31)

great guests who I can't even recall off the top of my head but it's going to be awesome and it's a lot to look forward to. So what you're about to hear now is the overtime to my episode with Senator Bob Carey that was recorded in December of 2018 and it was the very first overtime segment that I released to our subscribers. I've chosen it for a number of reasons. First of all, I really liked it. I also really like Bob Carey. He's a really nice guy. It was a jovial conversation. He's a charming person. He's good-natured and I think that it is the type of conversation that's missing in politics today. I don't think every conversation should be like this but I think it would be nice if we had more of them where we could talk about politics in a way that was also just not necessary adversarial because I don't think that Bob Carey and I agree about everything. So it was fun. He's so funny and I think in that sense it'll be a joy to listen to but I also think it's informative. Bob Carey was (2/31)

one of the 10 9-11 commissioners and he actually gives his opinion about what he thinks the role of the Saudi government was in the 9-11 attacks which I think is a really big deal. It's something that Senator Bob Graham has spoken about. In fact, I asked him specifically about Bob Graham's work in this area. So in some sense the most remarkable thing about Bob Carey's admissions is how unremarkable they are. But of course if we had heard these statements back in 2001, 2002, the world may be a very different place today and certainly Saudi Arabia would have lost its single biggest ally and protector in the United States. So before I toss it to the episode guys, it is the end of August. I am going to take a little bit of time off. Don't expect anything next week. If there is something it'll be a surprise but we're going to pick back up in the beginning of September. I hope you all have a great end to your August and that you have some fun plans and in the meanwhile please enjoy My (3/31)

Overtime with Senator Bob Carey. All right, we're back. That was a nice break. That was a great break. So the one thing I want to ask you before we get to this at your experience in the commission, I asked you about Khashoggi and all this stuff now with the Saudis, we were talking about Elizabeth Warren 2020. What do you think is going to happen in 2020? Now we have now Donald Trump who's a phenomenon. I've never seen anything like him. Certainly Andrew Jackson could qualify maybe, right? But he was also at a different time. No, no, my God Andrew Jackson. Well they had to resuscitate him in the White House so he drank out his enigaration. He was pretty bad. Yeah, he drank big deal but he didn't lie every five minutes. But don't politicians all lie. It's just the way he... No, no, no, no, no. He's taking offense to that. Well, no, first of all, all of us lie. You find me a human being lying and he's the guy in the street corner saying the world's going to come to an end. So there isn't (4/31)

anybody that it's true that politicians probably lied 20% more than everybody else but we've never seen anything like Donald Trump. We've never seen anybody that covers his observations of what's going on in the world with things that are factually incorrect. So it's way beyond anything we've seen before. Well is it just about his lying or his facts or is it more about, to me, like... It's not just lying. It's taking credit for everything. There's a boastfulness that I find to be offensive because I don't think it's the way you get things done. I don't think you get things done by saying, I, I, I all the time. I agree. But for me now, it's not about the lying. What makes him so unique in that sense is the temperament. It's his temperament. Yeah, two reports that came out yesterday that were ordered by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, run by a Republican. It's a bipartisan group. He nanops vote to authorize those two reports. They provided these two organizations with all (5/31)

the stuff they had from Facebook, Google, all the other social media stuff that they had been provided, Twitter. Tell us what happened. That's what they said. First of all, they said what happened is these companies came before you and they didn't tell you the truth. But the most important thing is Vladimir Putin made a decision. He wanted Donald Trump to win the Republican primary. He wanted Donald Trump to win the general election and he contributed to that victory. And he's continuing through social media, through trolls, to try to deliver supporting messages that are consistent with what Trump is saying. Mueller's bad and Trump is good. It's fake news. It's big witch hunt and hoax. So I think overwhelmingly persuasive argument that he won because of Vladimir Putin. That doesn't mean he colluded with him. That doesn't mean he violated the law. But what it means is a foreign power decided to have a major impact and use our own... You think you had that big of an impact? Absolutely. (6/31)

Really? Oh my God. All you have to do is suppress the voters of 70,000 people in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and you've got 270 electoral votes. Okay. So let's say that's true. Let's say... Well, it is true. We've got two lengthy reports that draw absolute positive conclusion that it's true and that it continues. Well, what I'm saying is we don't know whether ultimately it swung the election or not. But what I'm saying is... We do know that it swung the election. We know that... Absolutely know it swung the election. Okay. Hi, look, I don't know enough. Why are you laughing? You yielded so quickly. You're so funny. You didn't want to. You didn't want to. I figured this out. Look, I don't know enough to argue with you on that. It's funny that I told you this is what I saw when I watched you with Mira Carusa, Cabrera and CNBC. This is why I could tell that there are a lot of things, probably debates, that you... You probably enjoyed debates. Did you enjoy debating in politics? (7/31)

Were you just enjoying debating people like me who didn't know what they were talking about? No, no. I like a good argument. You do. Okay. So where I was going with that was... I'm going to use the word shit again. Was it because Hillary Clinton was such a shitty candidate for the Democratic Party and so many people didn't like her. She ran against Barack Obama in 2008, lost. If she had gotten 270 electoral votes, she'd be a genius. And were it not for Comey's two press conferences and the Russians, she would have got 270 electoral votes. Did she make a mistake? She didn't wow anybody though. Couldn't the Democrats have found a better candidate? I don't know. I mean... You don't have to say. A lot of people didn't like the Clintons and she lost in 2008 to Barack Obama and she still got the nomination and she railed out Bernie Sanders. She didn't rail Bernie Sanders? My God. Look at the facts and answer this question. Who has done more for the Democratic Party? Hillary Clinton or Bernie (8/31)

Sanders declares he's not even a Democrat. He wasn't independent up until now. Hillary and Bill Clinton have been out helping Democrats for the last 40 years. It's not surprising that people who they helped are saying, yes, we'll help you win. That means that the Democratic Party was representing itself, its own interest, and not the interests of the American people. No. First of all, it means that there's a human side to politics. I'm not doing something bad if I help somebody who helped me. We typically think that's a good thing for somebody to help somebody else who's been helpful to them. That's what Hillary was. She was a very good thing. But I think it's a little different when it comes to politics for the American people. Political parties are hard. Among the reasons I've burned it, probably pretty smart not joining the Democratic Party because you don't have to go to the conventions. You don't have to argue the policies. You don't have to put together a platform. You don't have (9/31)

to walk out with people mad at me because you supported a woman's right to choose and you had an argument with somebody who don't and you won and they didn't or vice versa. These arguments, you can end a friendship as a consequence of working in either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. They're hard work. That's an interesting point you brought up. It's a rough thing. I've actually definitely lost two friendships as a result of this recent electoral cycle. I find myself, and the reason why is because I've become really aversive to ideological extremism. I often find myself getting in trouble with people who I'm friendly with or friends with or even the audience on the right. I've had people in the audience criticize me for sounding bias, being biased against the right wing and also the same thing, bias towards the left wing. I feel like people are so ideological and not willing to meet somewhere down the middle. To see the other side as a human being. I completely agree with (10/31)

that. It's hard. By the way, you asked me earlier, I like getting arguments. There are times I get in ferocious arguments that people get up and walk out of the dinner. It happens. Then you got to apologize and move on. When was the last time that happened to you? Last night. That actually happened to me a few months ago. It doesn't happen to me often. I didn't walk out. I didn't mind it. My sister, who was in the legislature for a while in Nebraska, and she's at least as good as I am, but people that know both of us, she thinks she's better. We once went to a restaurant, we're having dinner with our families and it's crowded and it was like, you know what a Petri dish is? In a Petri dish, you can see the bacteria is spreading. In our case, we're sitting there and also we look around and everybody had been close to us and left because we're screaming at each other. That's how my family is. That's very funny that you guys are like that. I'm also a Greek family. We yell. Let me ask you (11/31)

one more question before we get to the 9-11 commission. Do you have any guesses about what's going to happen in 2020? Who the Democrats are going to run? What's going to happen with Trump? Is he going to be impeached? What's going to come out of the Russian investigation? Any predictions? Well, I don't know if I could keep it short enough to be done by midnight. The 20 election, I think the odds favor whoever is the Democratic nominee winning the general election. There are way too many people who are Republicans who are saying, I'll vote for anybody other than Donald Trump. Do you think the Democrats have it in the bag? No, I don't think anything is in the bag. That's the thing with politics. If you get it in the bag, then you don't. It's a shit show. No, you just don't know. I mean, I think the likelihood of President Trump winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and he's got to win all three of those. The election comes down to that. If you win all three of those, you're (12/31)

going to have two and a seven electoral votes. Either candidate. I think it's much more likely this time around that all three of those states wear, by the way, we now have three Democratic governors. So I think it's much more likely that happens, and it certainly is going to be true that who of the Democratic nominee is, they know that that's the case. They know they cannot afford to lose those three states. Oh my God. Do you think he'll be impeached? Do you think there's any chance of that? What do you think will come out of this investigation, and why has it taken so long? Relative to every other special prosecutor. It's a fast-moving operation. How long did the Nixon Watergate stuff take? Like two years ago? Almost three years. Yeah. I mean, Clinton's went on from just after he came into, I mean, like seven years or something like that. So they take a while. Mueller's actually moving relatively fast. He's an extraordinary guy. I mean, Washington is a town where everything leaks, (13/31)

and he hasn't leaked anything. No one's been here. Trump's scared? Oh my God. He's terrified. He's going to send Cohen to jail. Yeah, he's going to jail. He's got three years. Right. For lying. Not for lying, but for violent. And Trump is a part of that transaction. It's not persuasive. Just say, well, he's my lawyer. He's going to do it. No, you tell your lawyer what to do, especially Trump. That's his whole modus operandi. Sue him. He tells the lawyer. But that's the thing that's so crazy about Trump. No. What I mean is the fact that he'd be on Air Force One, and he would tell people, no, I didn't know about it. And the next day, yeah, I did know about it. That's crazy. You can sue another human being and intimidate him. You can't sue the Department of Justice and intimidate him. So the big question is, if he doesn't win in 2020, will the Southern District bring a charge against him? And I think it's way better than 50-50 that they will. Yeah. Well, that's for sure. I think it's way (14/31)

better than 50-50 if they go into a court of law, he's going to have to have a pretty serious plea bargain to avoid jail time. He's in trouble if he's not president, that's for sure. It is challenging to impeach him if he's president. These two reports that came out of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, those two reports are devastating. And because they provide a background that if, and I don't know what Mueller's going to have, I mean, whether Mueller, he actually is finishing his work as he goes. This is in a situation where he gets all the way done, like Ken Starr, here's the report, and you got to do something with it. But he's got 17 people, he's already indicted or sent to jail, and he's seriously going through this thing. That's scary. And the next one is probably Donald Jr. And then he's going to take the question as the president himself. Do you think Donald Jr. is going to jail? I don't know. I don't know. But I... You don't have the answers? I don't. I don't. I (15/31)

mean, that's a really good thing about Mueller's done is he's kept it very, very confidential. I actually don't know. But I do know is he's been very successful. So sticking on conundrums, on Trump conundrums, let's use the case of Khashoggi and Muhammad bin Salman. By the way, is it just me or are we obsessed with using acronyms for everything today? Now, everyone calls Muhammad bin Salman MBS. And this is like a thing. Have you noticed this? Everyone refers to people by acronyms. They used to call people by their real names. Now, they call them by their initials. It's easier. It's more... Sure, it's easier, but you know... It's certainly a lot easier with an Arab name. So... Yeah, for sure. Anyway, so Trump has... And by the way, that's what he likes. He prefers being called MBS. So it's not... Does he really? That's interesting. So this is a peculiar case, peculiar beginning with Trump and the fact that he has been so adamant about not holding MBS accountable. Why do you think that (16/31)

is? Well, I think I've got a lot of stake. Financially and... No, no, I mean... In Saudi Arabia. No, I wouldn't be surprised... Politically. I wouldn't be surprised if they come in as partners in a real estate deal after he's out of office. But no, I think Jared Kushner was given the responsibility for coming up with a plan from the Middle East. I think rationally thought, well, if I can get UAE and Saudi together with Israel, we ought to be able to come up with something... How big is an Israel in this, in other words? Like, an Idaho in Israel. I do think the Palestinian issue is a big deal. And I think if you can get something that is coming out of Saudi Arabia and UAE with Israel on board, I think it's going to be easier to sell. I mean, I think it kind of makes sense on that level. So they have a lot of stake there. And I think they have a lot of stake in the military. I mean, Trump is... You've got to give them credit for being honest on that. He said, I'm doing it for oil. I'm (17/31)

doing it for weapons contracts. So I think they've made a big bet on Saudi. And they're not the only ones. I mean, a lot of people getting money from the Vision Fund right now. That's 75% of that is Saudi money. And by the way, I think it is important that we help Saudi make this transition from, you know, basically an autocratic kingdom to something that has a more liberal foundation. I am not confident that MBS is the guy to get it done. And what Khashoggi has done, the Khashoggi case has done, has done, for me, a couple of things. It's shown how massively incompetent these guys are. I mean, 12 guys with a bone saw flying in and then flying back out. How hard was that to figure out? 100 and nothing vote in the Senate saying Khashoggi did it. But the president continued to say, well, we're not sure about it. But I think it's going to lead to a significant change in our policy towards the war in Yemen. I think that's going to be a good thing. But I'm not confident that MBS is going to (18/31)

pull this off. I mean, he announces women can drive cars. And what else does he do? He puts the women who are advocating for women drive cars in jail. So don't put me down on the camp of people that are optimistic about the transition to a more modern society and a more modern economy in Saudi Arabia. 15 years ago, we never would have heard any negative comments about Saudi Arabia. The criticism of Saudi Arabia began really with the Barack Obama administration. And I think a big part of that ultimately was about oil, right? And fracking and energy. 15 and 19 hijackers were Saudis. Right. So well, they were, you're right, they were. And you know a lot about that. And we put one of the 10, 9, 11, 11. Yeah, the first two planes that left the United States were carrying Saudis out of the United States. So exactly. The bin Laden family. Right. But that was totally swept under the rub by the media. That was not discussed. That wasn't something that we weren't told. I don't think I'm correct (19/31)

and say it was not totally swept under the rub. But you're right. It wasn't the major media story. Why wasn't it? Was it because the Bush family was so connected to the Saudis? No, I think it's genuinely a complicated story. I mean, one of the problems that the 9, 11 Commission had in addition to the running on a limited time frame, which limited our capacity to do all the things that you'd like to be able to do. And why was that? Because they just wanted to get it over with? Republican Congress would extend our timeline and the Republican administration didn't want to extend the timeline. Why? It was such an important investigation. It was an important investigation. And part of it is it's impossible for any but myself, including because I was there in the 1990s as well. I was there when the first attack, the 93 attack on the World Trade Center. Yeah, the 93 attack. Right. I mean, that was the same guys. And we were making fun of them. We called them nose here in Salami, you know, (20/31)

because they would try to get their deposit back on the right or truck. And we didn't size it correctly. We had supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan all the way through the 1980s. The Russians leave in December of 1988. And what do we do? We basically say, well, that's done. And well, it wasn't done. Right. And you said you were on the Intelligence Committee when we were in the Senate, right? So you were getting a lot of these reports. Getting a lot of the reports. And so you were not caught by surprise that Ben Laden was involved. No, I was not surprised at all. I mean, we were first the 93 attack. We didn't put him on the 93 attack, but we knew it was coming from a group of Islamic individuals who believe that we're a threat to their vision for the world. So they regarded us as an enemy. And they guarded us as apostates. And they regarded us as a good thing if they could kill Americans. So that's what they were doing with the World Trade Center. And then the big one was the 98 (21/31)

attacks on our embassy in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. And the coal. Well, the coal was 2000. But the Nairobi attack was a really sophisticated operation. That wasn't just a couple of guys, you know, lighting up a room with automatic weapons. I mean, that was a very sophisticated operation and a very successful operation. And we were 98 percent certain it was al-Qaeda that did it. And we were 100 percent certain that it was a coal. We just didn't respond. We let them keep their sanctuary in Afghanistan. We threw a couple of cruise missiles in there right after Bill Clinton said I did have sex with that woman after all. That was a wagged-a-dog accusation he's made against him. And we didn't do enough. We just didn't. We didn't warn the airports after we had information. The walls that were created between the FBI and the CIA were made it difficult. It is true the leadership was concerned about it. But we just didn't have a coordinated effort. And we certainly didn't have a global effort. (22/31)

And after 9-11 we did. And certainly after the reforms that Congress enacted. And the problem the Bush people had is that no matter what you do, the focus is going to be on them because they had the power. They're in office. And it can be uncomfortable. It can inhibit their capacity to plan and do additional things. And one of the maybe the most important contributions I made in 9-11 commission was to argue that we should not have minority reports, that we need to be unanimous. Because if we weren't unanimous, the public could- Was there a minority report? No. I was. But one of the few times in my life where I successfully argued for something and got it. So we didn't have minority reports. There were five Democrats and five Republicans. And they were selected in an extremely partisan environment. And thanks to Tom Cain and Lee Hamilton, it wasn't partisan. We didn't attack Bill Clinton. We didn't attack George Bush. Many of the criticism came from Republicans that thought we ought to (23/31)

attack Bill Clinton. And a lot of Democrats that thought we ought to attack President Bush. And that was among the reasons why it was difficult to extend the timeline. But the central problem was it was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy going back. You've heard you say 30 years. Yeah. I mean, quite a long time. I mean- But when you say it was a conspiracy, you mean it was a conspiracy by the Mujahideen and by Al Qaeda. By factions. Yes. Yes. Yes. There wasn't a- What about factions of the Saudi government? At the highest levels of- That's quoting Bob Graham. He said that this goes up to the highest levels of the Saudi government. And he refers to the 28 pages that I referred to at the beginning of our interview that 60 Minutes has published a piece on. I think we're part of a joint congressional inquiry into the 9-11 attack that happened right after you guys released your- Yeah. Look at it. The world on looking at 9-11 oftentimes divides into different camps. And this camp, I can't (24/31)

imagine. I don't think it's credible that 15 Saudis could participate in an attack on the United States of America without somebody at the senior level knowing about it. So what does that mean? What does that mean in a word? They've got blood on their hands. But why would they do that? Why would senior members of the Saudi government want to be involved in an attack against the United States? Because the family made a decision. We're going to support the Wahhabis. We're going to support people who are- have really seriously radical beliefs about the world and that everybody ought to be like completely pure and follow our rules and we get to decide what the rules are. It's a radical form of Islam. But the family owed their existence to the Bush family. Their existence to HW Bush. No. They owed their survival. To the- That's what I mean. No. They owed their survival to the support of the Wahhabis. And it wasn't until they got to attack until Al Qaeda starts going after them in 2003 or (25/31)

2004 they said, oh my god, we better be a part of trying to beat back radical Islam or we're not going to survive. But I'm talking about 1991 where the United States came into the defense of Kuwait and station troops in Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis were concerned that Saddam Hussein would invade into Saudi Arabia. And they were grateful to have American troops in Saudi Arabia, weren't they? And they paid for it. Yeah, but what I'm saying is that they- Were they grateful? Yes. Yes, they were grateful and they didn't trust that bin Laden- and bin Laden wanted to do it himself. And he regarded it as an offense to Islam that we were on the holy soil where Mecca Medina are and that we invited a posthit. So what you're saying basically is that the Saudi regime is so unpopular and so corrupt that on the one hand they needed the United States to protect them against a state actor in Saddam Hussein with his army, but at the same time had to appease the radical Wahhabis. And so they were doing (26/31)

this balancing act. Right. And that their involvement in 9-11 was a result of their need to appease these terrorists that were- That's correct. That's correct. Threatening their own regime. That's correct. Now, I need to be clear about something that I wasn't clear about. The 9-11 commission did not conclude that the Saudis were responsible for 9-11. On the other hand, it did not conclude, as the Saudis have been saying in court, that we vindicated them. We did not vindicate them. We did not say they didn't do it and we didn't say that they did. So what I expressed earlier was my own opinion based upon my own reading of the- both of the documents that we had as well as some of the documents that we didn't have. What I find confusing in this is how this would sit with George W. Bush and the Bush administration, knowing this as I'm sure they did, how that sat with them and why they would ship the family members out. Was that- Do you think something just had a blind loyalty? I don't (27/31)

really have any answer to the question. I don't- I don't know. All I know is that they were allowed to leave and I think part of it was they were afraid for their lives. They wanted to get out of here because they knew- Well, they were. The families were, but why would the Bush administration allow them out? You can take a benign point of view. My benign point of view would be I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and say, look, they knew with 15 Saudi hijackers on there that Americans might be saying, we want to punish anybody who's still here because I don't have any evidence that there was any other motivation behind that. Okay. So then why then did the Bush administration not call out the Saudis? Given what we're talking about here, I mean if Bush- I mean he was on the rubble in 9-11. He bombed Afghanistan, invaded Iraq. Why wouldn't he have put the Saudis on notice? What do you think? I mean, you've been in politics- Well, I think the Saudis were put on notice. I mean, they (28/31)

certainly knew that they- They fucked up. Well, yeah, when 15-year-old people were on those planes, they could hardly say that the Saudis weren't involved. So they were put on notice, but they didn't really, I would say, get religion until all of a sudden radical Islamic groups started to attack them. But they knew it. I mean, they had to know what the Wahhabis were doing. The Wahhabis were moving all over the world, the worst and relatively close area for them to go. They were in Mumbai, setting up schools and- Right. I do understand why the Kings did that, why the royal family did it, but I think it created major problems both for them and for us. Well, I think it raises questions that will never be answered for the American public because the Bush administration was Machiavellian in the extreme. We're living now in a time where the- What's his name? Is playing- Christian Bales playing Dick Cheney. Looks pretty good. Looks pretty good. It reminds me, I forgot how scary Dick Cheney (29/31)

was. Look, here's the thing. When you start off with the presumption that it's a conspiracy. Of course. Alternatives conspiracies are relatively easy to put in the storyline. It just is. I mean, I still get people to come up and say those Jews did it. The government did it. It was an inside job. Couldn't possibly have knocked those planes down. They were holograms. Yeah, they couldn't possibly have knocked those buildings down to the plane. I mean, there are alternative storylines that go on about 9-11, but I don't have any doubt about who organized it. I don't have any doubt it began with Ben Laden's desire to attack the United States. It was a series of events that led up to the attack on us on our own ground. I don't have any doubt about that at all. I know what Kaili Sheikh Mohammed's role was in this thing. I know- 93. Yeah, but not only 93, but again in 2001. It doesn't have anyone. Right. So I don't have any doubt about that. That's where it came from, but there's a lot of (30/31)

moving parts beyond that that you're right. We probably never will know. Yeah. Senator Kerry, thank you for spending so much time with me between two bathroom breaks. Yeah. Thank you for putting the bathroom so close. I had a great time having you on the program. Thank you. You're welcome. Nice to be with you. (31/31)