How many people have CIA killed? | Annie Jacobsen and Lex Fridman

in your book surprise kill vanish you write about the CIA and the uh so-called president's third option it turns out so first of all First Option being diplomacy and uh second option being War so when diplomacy is inadequate and war is a terrible idea would go to the third option and uh this third option is about covert action and and it's about assassination so how much of that does the CIA do that is open to debate we know from the historical record that the CIA was heavily involved in assassination during the Cold War that's non-negotiable you know even the names of the programs that were assigned to perform assassinations are fascinating and now Declassified like Eisenhower's for example was the health alteration committee well they have a sense of humor to this dark topic you know then the more modern names are targeted killing right executive action targeted killing right I mean drone striking is essentially assassination and you know people jump up and down and say that's not true well I spent quite a long time interviewing the cia's lead counil John Rizzo he died recently but Rizzo was very forthcoming with me of course never sharing classified information but going up to the edge of what can legally be known Rizzo was thrown under the bus by sort of the general public for he was the Fall Guy for the torture campaign the CIA calls it enhanced interrogation and so Rizzo had this long career you know he began working under the Carter Administration right and was responsible for the torture memos was responsible for legally making sure the president's ass was covered um and then got thrown under the bus and so he was very forthcoming not in a bitter way but in a very Earnest way about a lot of how these programs are made to be legal because if the president of the United States says they're legal they're legal executive order 12333 you know it says we don't assassinate but it can be overwritten by another order that's straight out of Rizzo's mouth right um also really important to keep in mind is that the military operates under what's called title 50 it's part of the national security code that gives like sort of you know rules and Etc how you must behave in a war theater well the CIA is under no such rules it operates under what's called title 50 and you know it's interesting to me as a reporter because before I wrote the book and reported openly about title 50 it was not really discussed and now you even see operators themselves on podcast talking about title 50 which is kind of great because it's like the cat's out of the bag guys that's what it's called and that's how it works it means what we say goes can you elaborate on what title 50 so it basically says assassination is allowed it says what the president wants the president gets right and so I mean the best example is the killing of Bin Laden right we were not at war with Pakistan so title 50 doesn't apply you can't have a military operation in country you're not at war with I mean the lines my God now they've really blurred but even then they were a little more honored right and so what do you do well Leon Panetta was the CIA director um and you work out a scenario whereby the seals and by the way it wasn't the seal it was there was a rotational on that um killer capture Mission which was really just a kill Mission seals were practicing Delta was practicing and special activities division was practicing they were all prac iing at a secret facility in North Carolina right and it was just like you know they're ready to till they get the go order and it just happened to be the seals okay so the seals operate under title 10 so they had to get what I call sheep dip because that's what the Insiders call it right and that is a term that comes from interestingly Area 51 the U2 Pilots were Air Force pilots they needed to be sheep dipped over to the CIA so they could do things that defied the law okay so you can see how these all entwine and you become more and more informed and you go aha right so that's how title 50 worked so the night of that mission it was a CIA Mission because the CIA is allowed to go into Pakistan and kill someone and the military can't that's fascinating so people talk about the Navy Seals doing it but it's really legally speaking to get the permission to do it within the whole legal framework of the United States it was the CIA and if you look at their uniforms that they were wearing and now that you know this you'll see there's no nomenclature on them there's no right so those are they're just meant to be completely untraceable were that were they to be shot down and captured it's like wait who are these guys oh a bunch of Rogue guys okay and this goes back the origin story of all that is in Vietnam with MC V SOG and these crossb operations that I Chronicle in Surprise kill vanish which still amazed me to this day right I mean SOG missions they called it suicide on the ground cuz that's what it was and these guys had no identifiable nothing I mean they're they were essentially in pajamas right even their weapons were specially designed by the CIA to have no serial numbers no nothing so if they were captured and they became p ps I don't know who these guys are what do you think and how much do they think uh at the highest levels of power about the ethics of assassination and and about the role of that in geopolitics and military operations like to you maybe also does assassination make sense as a as a good it's a good methodology of War I mean again I try to remain agnostic on the policy part of it and just report the operators perspective right because this is what people do and this is what people are asked to do um and it and it it depends on the individual I mean Billy W went on a lot of those missions I mean the the saying is like Oh Billy W he killed more people than cancer right uh did Billy W ever tell me about direct assassinations no because they're all classified right did he tell me about some failed ones yes I'll give you an example it's really interesting um he would he would show me these power points that were just fantastic you know late in in his life he was constantly being asked to go up to Fort Brag and lecture to the young soldiers and everybody loved him you know and he would um he would drive all night to get there and he would create these Powerpoints and then he would show me the Powerpoints and he would um all unclassified but at one point when Hugo Chavez was in power Billy W was kind of asked that's how it works of like if you had to think about doing something what would it look like let's just say hypothetically so he took me through this PowerPoint that never happened whereby he and a group of operators agency operators were going to Halo jump in to the palace and grab Chavez and probably kill him because he wouldn't allow himself to be captured and uh you know what Billy and by the way Halo jumping for those of listeners who don't know high altitude low opening right so you jump out of an aircraft and you go down like a pencil until you're really low to the deck like a th000 feet you pull your parachute cord and that way you're not picked up on radar and you're also not traceable when you get to the ground because it's so fast Billy W took the second HALO jump in history into a war theater in La during the Vietnam war right so he's like this famous Halo jumper right so he he and the team were going to go in grab shavez and and he said to me a very interesting thing that was kind of a one moment in time where I saw a different side of Billy wall where he said I'm so glad we didn't do that even though I really wanted to at the time because can you know can you imagine that country's problems where it is now can you imagine how we would have been blamed and it was a an interesting rare moment for Billy W to comment on the bigger picture that you're asking me about right yeah I think pretty much the operators I know they just stick to the mission so on the technical difficulty of those missions just your big sense how hard is it to do to assassinate uh to assassinate a Target on the soil of that Nation I suppose that just depends right I here's another insightful Bill thing Billy wall said to me and I'm answering the question around because I don't know because again you know I never had anyone say to me here's how it went down right because you can't that would be first of all those are classified so I'm never going to receive classified information I did hear a lot about reconnaissance missions what people would be in charge of you have to be able to what's called make book on the target before right and making book on the target means um photographing them to really then that gets run up the chain of command to make sure this is really imod mugia we about to kill right um but I once asked Billy when I was trying to get the question you know and he wouldn't answer it and I said so there's another person in my book named Rick Prada who's also like a legendary agency guy and um and so you know he's like 20 years younger than Billy and I said um Billy if you and Rick had to kill each other like who would win right I was trying to imagine this like hypothetical like how would that work who would win right and I I POS the question to each of them yeah right and and of course each of them said me right but Billy then I went back to them and they and I Billy said let me tell you how I would win okay right and he said I'd cheat mhm I'd show up before the duel and I'd kill him yeah there such such a uh like uh you know I have a lot of friends who in Navy Seals this is Guy conversation uh well you would be amazed at what the women do let me just tell you that women are part of the special activities division a big part of it can you comment on that I can women can get a hell of a lot closer to a Target and I mean that literally the Special Operations do you mean is this part of the CIA the special activities division now it's called the special Activity Center um but originally that's the that's the umbrella agency that has the different paramilitary organizations under it right so the most lethal one is ground Branch um and that's what I reported on in Surprise Kil vanish and its Origins go way back to the Guerilla Warfare core that was started uh in 1947 for the president so women are also uh a part of the alleged assassination absolutely and you're saying they can at times be more effective I'm just going to leave that pause there the reason I ask of how difficult the assassinations are you know with Bin Laden it took a long time mhm so I guess the reconnaissance the intelligence for finding the target I imagine with mad maybe this a now the leadership of Hamas the military branch of Hamas is much wanted from a assassination perspective so to me as an outside Observer it seems like it's more difficult than you would imagine mhm mhm but perhaps that's the intelligence aspect of it not the actual assassination of locating the person well I think most it's because mostly from what I understand it's a really it's a really dirty game and people are covering for people right and I'll give I'll give you the example of Billy W and imod mugia if I may right so imod mugia was the most Wanted terrorist in the world before Bin Laden you know hezbollah's chief of operations and he was wanted by every and you know mad John down but no one could find him he was missing for 20 years there wasn't even a photograph of him MH and then he resurfaced and of all places he resurfaced in Saudi Arabia okay so what that's when I say it's a dirty game right Hezbollah Iran Hezbollah Iran enemies with Saudi Arabia why on Earth was imod mugia in Saudi Arabia well that's where he was there was a Navy SEAL who was doing reconnaissance on him this is according to Billy W and this is around 200 five so Billy's in his 80s at this point right late 70s ' 80s and he gets word that the seal who's been tracking mugia to get photographs of him to give the photographs to mad and CIA so they can do a joint operation to kill him which they did with a car bomb in Damascus that's the end of the story right but how we got there was we needed you know the CIA needed confirmation you can't kill the wrong person so the seal panicked according to to Billy wall and was just like I'm out of here this is too dangerous and I do not want to wind up in a Saudi prison so who do you send in Billy wall right he shows up he's there for 24 hours he finds he knows where mugia lives from the seal he positions himself in a cafe across the street which is run by sudin men and of course W speaks some sudin because he operated in Sudan right and he's shooting the with him by his own words he had the most foul mouth it was just absolutely delightful to listen to and then in between him and Mia's house is a dumpster and Billy W being Billy W who will go to any lengths to do the job decides to conduct reconnaissance from inside the dumpster and that is where he is when he takes the picture of imod mugia living so comfortably in Saudi that mugia CA according to Billy came out of his apartment building with dry cleaner plastic bag hangers over his shoulder that's how comfortable he lived there it was his neighborhood click click click Billy W takes the photographs runs them to the CIA headquarters in Saudi at the embassy oh my God it's mugia get the hell out of here he gets to the airport he leaves those photographs get sent to the agency and then they do the operation with mad and mug is dead now that the truth about that being a co- CIA mission was not reported for many years after the fact it was originally mad took credit as the CIA often likes to just give other people credit they just want the job done well speaking of Assad what in your understanding of all the intelligence agencies what are the strengths and weaknesses of of the different intelligence agencies out there CIA Assad MI6 um svr and FSB and Chinese intelligence all this kind of stuff is there some interesting differences insights that you have from all your studying of CIA that's a really interesting question I I don't know and here's why is because I've never interviewed any intelligence officer with those other agencies right I've interviewed a couple people with shinb in in Israel but um until you until I speak to an actual Source whose job it was I don't know and so the information that I'm getting is based on perception of others which one would think would be deeply clouded by the idea that America is the greatest right right right right we're better than them you know yes uh well actually the fascinating thing is because you've spoken to a lot of people about the sayia how do you know they're telling the truth like how do you and this actually probably applies generally to your uh interviews with very secretive people how do you get past the like well that's just like multiple sourcing right so so you find the story out and then you have to you go to the National Archives and you find the operation and then you learn all about this and then you interview other people who were there and you put the story together to the best of your ability and you make very specific choices with you know quote so and so said end quote said so and so right and very rarely do I report on a single source as I did in the end of Area 51 and then it says essentially look the look dear reader this is what the source told me I have no way of corroborating it this is legit and here it is so that's a an area to make make your reader comfortable with the information that they're being given and then in all of my books whether they are three or 400 Pages there's always a hundred pages of notes at the end so you can see all the sourcing and you can begin to get an understanding of how journalism in the National Security World works and also great opportunity for me to say I'm often standing on the shoulders of journalists before me who did an incredible job digging into something and being able to report what they knew often the books are 10 20 30 years old and so much more has come to light since and I also would just like to say that I I appreciate that you said great question I don't know uh not enough people say I don't know and that's a sign of a great journalist for

Channel: Lex Clips

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Keywords: ai, ai clips, ai podcast, ai podcast clips, annie jacobsen, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence podcast, computer science, consciousness, deep learning, einstein, elon musk, engineering, friedman, joe rogan, lex ai, lex clips, lex fridman, lex fridman podcast, lex friedman, lex mit, lex podcast, machine learning, math, math podcast, mathematics, mit ai, philosophy, physics, physics podcast, science, tech, tech podcast, technology, turing

Id: jmbEfGlWckU

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2024