The Steady State Sentinel is produced by the
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security professionals who spent their careers
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Today, we continue that mission by staying true
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Join our expert hosts as they interview field
-tested guests whose unique experiences shed
light on the crises and challenges facing our
nation. Hello, you're listening to the Steady
State Sentinel from the Steady State. I'm Jim
Lawler, a former senior CIA operations officer,
and I've worked some of the most sensitive counterproliferation
and espionage cases at CIA. Today, we're talking
with Tim Weiner. Tim is an American national
security reporter and an author of six excellent
books. and co -author of a seventh. He's been
a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National
Book Award, and he has covered national security
for 40 years, and I really am looking forward
to this discussion. First, I'd just like to ask
you, Tim, why did you decide to cover national
security issues as a journalist? My first assignment
overseas, I was 29, was the stolen election and
the fall of Ferdinand Marcos. in February of
86. And of course, that's 40 years ago as we
speak. We didn't know it then, but we can see
now that that was the beginning of the end of
the Cold War, a people power revolution that
overthrew a dictator supported by a superpower.
Next, I went to Afghanistan. It was under Soviet
domination. This was the fall of 87. Before I
left, I called up the public information office
at the CIA and said, hey, I'm going to Afghanistan.
How about a briefing? And the fellow, Pete Ernest,
later ran the spy museum. I said, oh, absolutely
not, hung up. Off I went to Afghanistan. And
I got what I, you know, I ran with the Mujahideen,
saw Stinger fired in anger against a Soviet fighter
jet. And I got back to Washington, hadn't been
back for more than a day. The phone rings, and
guess who? It's my new best friend from the CIA,
Peter. And he says, hey, Tim, how was your trip?
And I said, it was amazing. He said, how would
you like to come in for that briefing now? And
I did. And I walked into CIA headquarters, and
most of you know that on the left -hand wall
as you walk in is the Gospel of John on 832,
and you shall know the truth. And the truth will
make you free. And at that point, I was hooked.
I decided I was going to try and cover CIA like
I had covered the cops or the courts when I was
a cub reporter. So you've covered these national
security issues for four decades, as you've said.
How's the current national security posture different
today than in previous years? Well, the president
of the United States has swung a wrecking ball
through the architectures of American national
security that were established after World War
II 80 years ago to protect and defend the U .S.
and its allies against, among other things, Russian
imperialism. The national security establishment
of the U .S. is in great disarray. It is being
run by, in my opinion, amateurs and toadies.
And I believe that creates a very dangerous and
difficult situation for our national security.
When the instruments of the orchestra are in
the hands of people who can't play, you get cacophony
and that ain't good. I'd have to agree. In fact,
your friend and mine, David Ignatius, wrote in
the Washington Post a while back. that Tulsi
Gabbard, our current Director of National Intelligence,
she could do one great service to the country.
And that's to help us abolish her agency, the
DNI. Her job is to oversee the 18 sometimes very
fractious intelligence units that in theory report
to her. But because she has no experience in
intelligence before taking the job, expectations
were low. But she has even managed to underperform
those expectations. Would you care to comment
on David's analysis here? Well, David Ignatius,
being a polite. man a gentleman uh uh didn't
say what i think is obvious to any observer of
uh the national security establishment uh and
that is that kelsey gabbard uh is a uh crackpot
uh a conspiracy theorist uh and a danger to herself
and others uh she's now um become the pointed
spear of Donald Trump's conspiracy theory that
the 2020 election was stolen from him, there
is no possible justification for a national security
or intelligence officer to be meddling in American
elections. She's a threat to our democracy. Sometimes
I wonder if it's a choice between her or Laura
Loomer, who would be worse? But I won't comment
on that. I've always had the impression in years
past that the FBI had a lot of positive press
and the CIA a heck of a lot of negative press.
But today it seems to be a toss -up or even the
opposite. What do you think has changed? Well,
one thing that's changed is that you have another
conspiracy theorist, the right -wing podcaster
Kash Patel running the FBI, and at Donald Trump's
behest, damaging or even dismantling the national
security and intelligence divisions of the bureau.
He's doing this because Trump believes that those
people who are some of our foremost experts in
national security and counterintelligence are
deep state agents who are trying to overthrow
him at the FBI and at CIA. At Trump's behest,
there is an ideological purge going on. And if
you are not a Trump loyalist, you're going to
be out of a job. I think that's a pretty good
assessment, Tim. Let's turn to some foreign affairs.
I know certainly Iran has been in the headlines
lately. What should our U .S. intelligence community
be doing about the unrest in Iran? Should we
just observe from the sidelines and shout encouragement?
What do you think we should be doing? If you
were the director of CIA, what would you be urging
us to do? Well, American political warfare in
Iran has, as you know, an unhappy history at
the behest of Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower,
the CIA and British intelligence, overthrew the
Shah in 1953. And that worked until it didn't
work. When the Shah fell, he was supplanted by
the religious zealots who still run Iran. And
any attempt by the United States, I think, to
undertake political warfare or covert action
would be, how can I put this politely, counterproductive.
If the United States, and I doubt this, still
stands as a beacon of democracy and freedom in
the world. It should do what it can to support
the people working for democracy in Iran among
exiles. But it proceeds on two tracks, the U
.S. and Iran, for decades now, including through
covert action by the CIA. The United States and
its allies have disrupted and in some cases dismantled
the Iranian nuclear program through cyber warfare
and other techniques. Dropping a bomb on its
plant, that damage can be repaired. If you screw
with their centrifuges, that's a harder hurdle
for them to overcome. You know, I don't have
any great policy prescriptions that the president
administration would be likely to follow. Well,
I think you nailed it when you said if the United
States were still a beacon of democracy and freedom,
just by setting an example, we might give people
in Iran some hope. But I agree with you that
messing in politics, if the people themselves
don't want to do it, it has really been a sad
history, something that is currently constantly
bitterness. And you know what? What are your
thoughts about Ukraine and what should our national
security strategy be there? Well, Jim, as you
know better than I, following the 2014 Russian
attack on Ukraine in which Russians seized the
Crimea and the eastern Donbass, CIA was on the
ground. And CIA officers in Kyiv and in surrounding
countries have been essential to the survival
of Ukraine as the Russians tried. to crush it
um it was uh a uh an amazing coup of espionage
by cia uh under the leadership uh uh the initial
leadership of uh uh a ddo the clandestine services
chief named tom racusan whose roots are czech
and he was nine years old when russian tanks
rolled into czechoslovakia to crush the prague
spring in 1968 that the CIA revamped espionage
against Russia, stole Vladimir Putin's war plans
in 2021. And while the revelation of those plans
of attack did not stop the war, they did have
an immediate galvanizing effect on the nations
of NATO. And CIA operations and American intelligence
have been vital to Ukraine, but Ukraine cannot
survive. a president who aims to strangle it.
And Donald Trump has all but cut off military
support to Ukraine. At one point last spring,
he cut off intelligence support to Ukraine. And
this is a betrayal. The United States, the president
of the United States is betraying the people
of Ukraine. And Jim, if Putin is allowed to keep
one square kilometer of Ukraine, By conquest.
Do you think he's going to stop there? He's waging
covert war, political warfare throughout the
nations of Europe through sabotage, subterfuge,
propaganda, cyber warfare. He wants to restore
the empire of Peter the Great. And with Trump
having damaged or destroyed our alliances across
the Atlantic, the... what we used to call the
free world, is in a weaker position to oppose
Russian imperialism than it has been since the
end of World War II. This is a startling replay
of 1938 in a certain part of Czechoslovakia that
was called the Sudetenland, and certain dictators
that wanted to reabsorb Germany. It's, you know,
like... Mark Twain said maybe history doesn't
repeat itself, but it rhymes. And I think that
we're seeing that now. Let's turn to Cuba and
Venezuela. Any comments on those two? My sense
is that what the United States has done in seizing
Venezuela's oil, which seems to have been the
only. tangible result of the kidnapping of Nicolas
Maduro is to strangle Cuba. I think the goal
of both military and covert action in Venezuela
has been to cripple or topple the government
of Cuba. Now, presidents since Dwight Eisenhower
have tried to do that. through covert action,
through all forms of political warfare, economic
sanctions. And I think nothing would make Secretary
of State Marco Rubio happier than to go marching
into Havana, waving the American flag. Doing
this through covert action or through political
warfare is complicated by the fact that the Cuban
intelligence service, pound for pound, is probably
the best in the world. I would you know, I would
agree on a I guess the only other one on a pound
for pound basis might be Mossad of Israel. But
they really mean they they see that as an existential
threat to their regime. And it is. And so they're
highly focused and they have had incredible intelligence
victories against us just in the last five, six
years. So what do you think about China? Well,
I have a. kind of a narrow soda straw view of
the problem of China and great power conflict
with it. We're not doing pound for pound here.
We're doing volume. The Chinese intelligence
service, the Ministry of State Security, is,
in terms of personnel, about 20 times bigger
than the CIA, roughly 400 ,000 people. And I
think what the Chinese are doing, and they're
playing a long game here, is to extend the all
-pervasive surveillance state that they have
created in China, where there are somewhere upwards
of 600 million closed -circuit TV cameras staring
down at people, to extend that surveillance state
into the United States. to have information dominance
over the United States. As Xi said shortly after
he took power 14 years ago, data is the new oil.
The Chinese have stolen through espionage and
through cyber espionage. The personnel files
of everybody who works for the United States,
including everybody who's worked in the U .S.
intelligence community, everybody's... everybody's
health insurance records. They have penetrated
all the major telecoms. And if conflict or crisis
or, God forbid, war comes, they will have information
dominance. They will have mapped the battlefield.
They know the human terrain of the United States,
and that could be an existential danger. I agree.
In fact, my brother, Bill Lawler, who lives down
on Gulfport, Mississippi, He told me that the
Chinese are installing the latest state -of -the
-art cranes at Gulfport and also on the West
Coast and in a lot of our port facilities. Now,
you think to yourself, now, what could go wrong
if the Chinese, in fact, are installing cranes
at all of our major ports? So you've been an
observer now of the national security community
for those four decades. often a critic and sometimes
a booster. And in fact, when people accuse you
of being a critic, I say, as long as the criticism
is fair and well -researched, I'm perfectly willing
to accept the criticism because by that, hopefully
we get better. But anyways, if you were in charge,
what would you be doing differently to strengthen
our national security and also protecting our
civil liberties and democracy? Well, all throughout
our history, there is an eternal tug of war between
national security and civil liberties. We want
to be safe and we want to be free. And what we
are witnessing here, we're now 13, 14 months
into the second Trump administration. What we
are seeing is an attack on the rule of law. What
we are seeing is an attack on free speech, on
the free press, on the right of the people to
peaceably assemble. And, you know, I believe,
and I've been saying this for a long time now,
the greatest danger to the national security
of the United States today is the president of
the United States. Our national security depends
on extremely talented People with years of expertise
who know how to look over the horizon by gathering
intelligence and to, and this is a great challenge
of intelligence, to anticipate surprise, to see
what might be coming. You now have an ideologue
in charge of the CIA, and ideology is the enemy
of intelligence. You have conspiracy theorists
running. the FBI, and the Directorate of National
Intelligence, and you have an unabashed white
Christian nationalist running the Pentagon and
firing everybody who's a two or three or four
star who's not a white guy. We are engaging in
what the former CIA director, Bill Burns, who
was the greatest diplomat of his generation,
in what he calls strategic self -immolation.
We are not shooting ourselves in the foot. We
are shooting ourselves in the head. And I'll
give you an example of what John Ratcliffe has
done. In fact, I'll give you three at the CIA.
As soon as he came in, ideological purity tests
were imposed on people of high rank or seeking
higher rank. You had to swear allegiance to Donald
Trump. in addition to the Constitution. Radcliffe
then fired everyone the CIA had trained to be
an operations officer and graduated from the
farm, the School for Spies, in 2023 and 24. He
fired them because they were Biden hires. He
then sent an unclassified email in their true
names, first name and first initial, to the White
House. and to Elon Musk. I guarantee you that
the Chinese can read the unclassified email systems
of the White House, and a lot of these people
are training up to spy on China. Strategic self
-immolation. Then he abolished the CIA's diversity
policies. Again, ideology. Why does the CIA have
a diversity policy in hiring and has had one
since the 1980s? Because it is not a great idea
to send an all -white cadre of spies into China
or Pakistan or Somalia. Diversity, as one of
your old colleagues, Mark Polymeropoulos, has
said, diversity was the CIA's superpower. It's
how you don't get caught. To take these... destructive,
self -destructive actions in the name of ideology
is counterproductive at best and dangerous at
worst. Let's imagine a miracle happening and
you are turned into the director of CIA, a new
administration, and you become, yes, yes, you,
Tim, you become director of CIA. What would be
some of your programs, some of your moves in
the first 90 to 120 days? What would you do?
Well, the first thing I would do is hire back
Tom Sylvester. Tom was the DDO, the chief of
the clandestine service. After the normal two
-year stint, he was set to take the traditional
last post of the DDO, the last onward assignment,
which is chief of station London. Radcliffe canceled
that appointment. Sylvester resigned in protest,
and he canceled it, I believe, in part because
Tom had given me an on -the -record interview
at CIA headquarters, approved and vetted by the
CIA itself, in which he spoke in the strongest
possible terms about the need to support Ukraine.
This ran counter. to the foreign policy of the
president of the United States. And that was
the end of Tom's career. So I would hire him
back to teach suite. I would reverse the action
of firing everybody the CIA had trained up to
be an operations officer in 2023. That's mortgaging
your future when you get rid of those people.
And that's not a handful of people either. And
finally, I would talk to the lawyers. and re
-examine the wisdom of the CIA's support for
what has been a campaign of murder in the Caribbean.
There is a moral hazard here, as well as a legal
risk. You know, blowing civilians, whether or
not they are drug dealers, blowing civilians
out of the water is a war crime. It is murder,
and the CIA should not be party to that. It certainly
brought back memories to me of the air bridge
in Peru that was a disaster where a plane load
of missionaries was shot down and at least two
or three of them were killed. You know, mistakes
happen. Well, that was a bad one. And, of course,
I also got very sick when I read about the two
survivors that were then destroyed by a Hellfire
missile. you know, a few weeks ago. And I was
thinking that's a violation, you know, of the
rules of war. I thought we were better. We are
better than that. We should be better than that.
And yet that really sickened me. Recently, I
had Dr. Ruth Ben -Ghiad, who is a professor at
New York University. She's an expert on authoritarianism.
She wrote the book Strong Men, which I've read
and which is absolutely chilling. I'd like to
say I enjoyed it, but I didn't. And in that interview
with her. I told Ruth, I said, I'm sure you're
familiar with the doomsday clock of the Federation
of American Scientists. And periodically they
speculate how close to nuclear Armageddon we
are. So I said, if we had an authoritarian doomsday
clock, meaning how close we are to midnight with
an authoritarian takeover and a collapse of democracy,
where would you put the men at hand? So I'll
ask you that, Tim. And I know you're a strong
believer in our democracy, and this must frighten
the heck out of you. One minute to midnight,
Jim. That close. We are in danger of losing our
democracy. We have a president who cares not
a whit for the rule of law, who cares not a whit
for the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, who
is interested only in grabbing things or destroying
things. And just as he has destroyed the east
wing of the White House, which is the people's
house. It's not his house. Just as he's run a
wrecking ball through the White House, he is
running a wrecking ball through not only the
architectures of American national security,
but of our civil liberties, our rights as an
American. And, you know, both my parents were
refugees from Hitler's Europe. I do not want
my daughters to grow up in a dictatorship. And
I am an optimist. I believe that the tide will
turn. But I want to quote Thomas Jefferson here.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that
God is just and that his justice cannot sleep
forever. So let me ask you this. How can we turn
that minute hand back? How can we, the people,
we, the American people, how can we turn that
minute hand back? What are you urging your friends,
your daughters to do? Well, to quote Joe Hill,
don't mourn organize. I think you're seeing the
glimmerings of a tidal wave of... newly engaged
and enraged American voters who do not like the
hate that the people in power in Congress and
the White House are spewing, who love their neighbors
and respect them, and who believe, as the scoreboard
at the Super Bowl said during halftime, that
love is stronger than hate. Absolutely. The only
thing stronger than hate is love. That is who
we are, and that's who we will be again. The
one organization we didn't really discuss during
this interview is that of ICE. Have you got any
comments about that and their actions? I started
to say that's not a national security issue,
but in fact it is. thugs would murder American
citizens in the street, would take American citizens
and legal residents of the United States and
warehouse them in what are turning into a nationwide
network of concentration camps. It is an offense.
against the Constitution. It is a violation of
the civil liberties of people. And whether you
are a citizen or whether you are an immigrant
here, legally, you have inalienable rights. The
courts are trying to push back, most of them.
But the crisis in democracy, that has been created
by the president and his minions in Congress
is an existential one, and I believe we have
until the November elections to turn the tide
back. Are you optimistic about the November elections?
I am an inveterate optimist. I will not live
in despair. And I learned that from my parents.
And I teach that to my daughters. We live in
hope, Jim. That's all we have is hope. And when
you were talking about these concentration camps
and these raids, it brought back echoes of Kristallnacht
back in the 30s, when the Sturmabteilung, the
stormtroopers, were beating up Jewish people
and anybody they didn't agree with. It's so sad.
Jim, my mother lived through that. Yeah. She
was born in the Jewish enclave of Nuremberg.
And she fled with her family. She and her mother
were trapped in Paris when Paris fell. They made
it through great effort from Paris to Marseille
to Casablanca. They got the second to last boat
that ever crossed the Atlantic with German refugees.
She was two years in a refugee camp in Havana.
And then she heard about a program for young
women like herself. And she was given a scholarship
to Smith University, the most prestigious women's
college in the country. And she became a very
distinguished history professor. We live in hope.
That's what America is. And I believe that's
what America will be again. Absolutely. But,
you know, the sad thing is, if it were if she
were coming today in 2026, she probably wouldn't
be admitted to the United States. That is correct.
And that's tragic. Well, Tim, before we part
here, I'd like to put in a an endorsement of
your book, The Mission, which was published last
summer. Excellent book. You know, Tim, that's
his second book. on CIA exclusively. He's also
written about the FBI and some other national
security issues. But I heartily endorse the mission
by Tim Weiner. It's available on Amazon or in
your favorite bookstore. So thank you, Tim, for
joining us today. If you like what you heard
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