1/27/23 James Bamford on the Many Failures of American Counterintelligence

Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

Scott Horton

News, Politics

4.8 • 902 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Scott interviews James Bamford about some of the stories he collected for his new book about the collapse of America’s counterintelligence apparatus. They start with Russiagate and talk about how, while the government and media were screeching about imaginary Trump-Russia collusion, the UAE had two spies in the Clinton Campaign. They also talk about how the NSA lost half a billion classified documents containing methods later used for the WannaCry ransomware attacks of 2017, the former FBI counterintelligence agent who is now facing charges for working with the Russians, a group of former CIA and FBI guys who were accidentally hired to help a Russian coup attempt, the lack of accountability for the intelligence failures of Iraq War II, the framing of Maria Butina and the mole in the FBI who spent two decades transferring documents to the Chinese government in the most blatant fashion imaginable. Discussed on the show: “The American intelligence community has no accountability — so how can it keep us safe?” (New York Post) Spyfail by James Bamford The Interview (IMDb) “How an Oligarch May Have Recruited the F.B.I. Agent Who Investigated Him” (New York Times) A Pretext for War by James Bamford “How China planted an FBI mole who was discovered only after gutting the CIA's vast spy network” (Business Insider) “These Shady UAE Donors Gave Millions to Clinton and Trump While the Feds Dozed” (Daily Beast) James Bamford is a journalist, professor, documentary filmmaker, and the author of Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency and A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies. Find him on Twitter @WashAuthor. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	All right, y'all welcome to the Scott Horton's Show. I'm the Director of the Libertarian Institute,
0:16.2	Editorial Director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Pools Arran, Time to End the War in in Afghanistan and the brand new enough already.
0:25.0	Time to end the war on terrorism.
0:27.0	And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at
0:35.6	Scott Horton.org. You can sign up the podcast feed there and the full
0:40.0	interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton Show.
0:45.0	All right you guys special treat for us. Today on the show we've got the great James Bamford, author of the puzzle palace, body of
0:58.2	secrets, the Shadow Factory, and the brand new book out called Spy Fail.
1:09.0	And I'm sure it has a subtitle, I'm clicking on it,
1:11.7	it's Spy Fail, spies moles saboteurs and the collapse of America's
1:18.5	counter intelligence wow welcome to the show how you doing Jim?
1:23.0	Great. Great to talk to you again Scott.
1:25.0	Great man. Happy to have you on the show here.
1:28.0	So the book is in the mail.
1:30.0	So we're going to follow up and do this same interview again in a few weeks here, hopefully, if I can ever get around reading it. I have a pile of books I'm trying to read right now, but you do have this great one in the New York Post. The American
1:45.1	Intelligence Community has no accountability, so how can it keep us safe?
1:49.6	Eh, good question. I wasn't really counting on them in the first place, but boy you really got some
1:56.9	bangers here when it comes to massive failures in intelligence and counterintelligence, but can we start with
2:06.9	Russia Gate here? I know that there are a whole lot, a hell of a lot of different
2:11.8	aspects to it, but it looks to me now I'm pretty sure I'm right
2:16.4	that the whole thing was a put on in the first place in other words popadopoulos was set
2:20.8	up by the FBI in the first place and then of course they lied about
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scott Horton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scott Horton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.