Joe Rogan | The Morality of CIA Assassins w/Annie Jacobsen

Morality. I want to talk about morality. I want to talk about why we can't talk about certain things. Well, while what you were saying before about being a competitor, the United States is competitive, obviously, and when you're playing the ultimate game, which is war, you have to be very careful about what you reveal and what you don't reveal. And this is where the conversation about Surprise Kill Vanish comes in because the CIA, using these covert operations to assassinate people and whether or not that should be allowed or not allowed, whether it's good or bad, whether it's necessary, whether it's like if you want people to be safe over here, there's certain people you got to take out and sometimes you just can't follow the rules. And why? Why are we not supposed to know about that? Should we know about that? The way the story started for me, I'm at my house in 2009. A source calls me up. He says, I'm on my way back from the Middle East. I'm going to pop by the house and say hi. He brings me a challenge coin that says Kabul, Afghanistan State Department. I'm thinking, okay, he is not a diplomat. I mean, he's weapons trained. At the time, my boys were young. There were lots of GI Joes in the garden and they had little weapons, right? And the source is showing them about the weapons and they're like so into it because they know he's military trained. And then he says, if it's okay with your mom and dad, I'll show you some weapons. The boys are like, please. So he sets up this sniper rifle in the living room and I live up in the hills and you can look across the canyon through this scope he set up and I can see the veins on a leaf across the canyon. And I thought, okay, so now I know what he was doing in Kabul, Afghanistan. He's taking out Al Qaeda with this. There's another case on the ground that he never opens. And when the boys go off, I say to him, what's in that? And he said, he opens it up and inside there's a knife and it's serrated. And I said, what's that for? Immediately realizing, you know, my naivete. And he says to me, sometimes a job requires quiet. So why that became interesting to me was because of my own thoughts and perceptions about what he had told me. In other words, I could deal with him with a sniper rifle. I could be like, okay, that's what he does. But the knife gave me pause. I was like, is he slitting someone's throat? Is it in the ribs? And I thought, why is it that I am willing to accept sort of the clinical nature of a sniper rifle, but I can't, I'm uncomfortable with that close up hand to hand killing. And that led me to surprise KillVanish because that was the motto of the precursor agency of the CIA. It was called the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. Their motto was surprise KillVanish because they would jump out of aircraft, land, work with their French partners and kill Nazis with a knife to the throat. And I thought, okay, that's considered okay because they were Nazis, right? But we can't, we're not supposed to do that anymore in this world we live in. Why? And I spent the whole, this whole book researching and reporting is about that sort of conundrum, if you will, that moral puzzle, you know, why do we, why do we differentiate? Yeah. And who are they willing to do that to? Where do they draw that line? Like, I'm sure you're aware of the story of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was assassinated by someone, some group of people and that they, he entered into the Turkish embassy and they, they whacked him and chopped him up and carried him out in boxes. And it's an international, well, it's a huge incident, right? This supposedly was ordered by, who was it supposed to be ordered by? The head of Saudi Arabia? Yeah, MBS, Mohammed bin Salman. I mean, that's the ideas that their head of state wanted him killed because he was a threat, because he was a reporter, because he was writing. Because he was saying some things. Yeah. And that they, this is how they did it. Yeah. I mean, and there's, that's a great question because what you're saying is like, okay, so, but we all think of that as reprehensible, right? Right. Why? You know, cause. Cause he's a journalist and he's on our side. He's delivering information to people, but the government of Saudi Arabia disagreed. They're like, that information is our information. He's a threat by releasing it. Yes. He's a threat to our livelihood. Yes. Yeah. And who decides who's a threat? I mean, a lot of this book is about who's on the kill list and why. I mean, there is an actual kill list. There always has been. And the euphemisms involved. I mean, I write history, as I said. So, Eisenhower called his assassination program, health alteration. I mean, literally in the classified documents, you see that. That's hilarious. Health alteration. He had a health alteration committee. Whoa. Kennedy had an executive action committee. Right. That sounds cleaner. Right. Guess what Reagan's was called? Super wonder boy power up. Close. Pre-emptive neutralization. Pre-emptive neutralization. Wow. Why do they keep switching the names for it? They're burying the information. Right. And they keep switching around the, they switch around who has authority to, you know, say, yes, let's go ahead and put this guy on the kill list. I mean, that was fascinating. I mean, I interviewed a guy named John Rizzo, who's a decades long CIA attorney. I was stunned that he was willing to talk to me. And he explained to me how a presidential finding, also called a memorandum of notification works that gives the president the authority to put an individual on the kill list. That job is then given to the CIA's paramilitary army, an operator or their assassins, because the CIA works under a code called title 50 of, so it makes it legal. Whereas the defense department works under what's called title 10. So in other words, and they can't, their rules of engagement are totally different. So the misnomer is like, Oh, the seals killed Bin Laden. Well, they were seals trained, but that was a CIA mission because Pakistan is a sovereign nation and the military can't kill people in countries we're not at war with. So those guys all became essentially CIA operators for the night. Whoa. Right. And if you look at photographs, as I have seen, you'll notice that they have no markings on their outfits. So that if the job went south, it'd be like, I don't know who these guys are. And if you look back at Vietnam photos of the Mac V SOG teams, which I also write about in surprise kill vanish, cause that's the precursor of that. You see no markings, right? That's that way you can go into, you can go behind enemy lines. You can go into Laos, you know, in the Vietnam war, you can go now you can go into Pakistan. What I learned reporting this book is we're in 134 countries doing title 50 operations. Think about that. Government wants that to be kept secret. So in all those countries, they're doing things that don't fall under the normal letter of the law. Not, yes, not under the rules of engagement of the military, but the CIA works at the president's behest. That, that was one thing that really blew my mind to report, to research, to understand. I talked to 42 guys who have direct access to this, who are in this world, you know, from the knuckle draggers on the ground, as they call themselves to the lawyer at CIA, senior intelligence staff. That's the equivalent of a general at the CIA. Those guys explaining to me, Annie, this is how it works, and again, to your question, well, why, why does someone get to know that? And why does the government want, why do they allow that information out is super interesting. And I believe that has to do with a certain climate we're in right now about military might, right? In other words, what the CIA does is called tertia optio. It's the third option. You've got the first option is diplomacy. Second option is war. So if diplomacy is not working, and war is unwise, you go to the third option, which is the CIA is paramilitary. And they're in 100 in how many countries? 134. Well, if you wonder why the military budget so big, that's what it is, folks, you gotta feed those folks. A lot of work. I mean, a lot happening. And you as a competitor would be fascinated by the kind of training they do and what they do. I mean, so many of these infiltration techniques are mind boggling, you know, they've got halo jumping, which you know about, right? Where they could high altitude, low opening. So they jump out, they, you know, free fall down, terminal velocity, pull the rip cord really low, so they're not detected by radar. And then they meet up with the team on the ground and go do what they do. And they also have heigh ho, which is high altitude, high opening. And that way you can fly over airspace where we're allowed and float into, let's say a country like Iran and land, gather your team and do what you have to do. But like so much of what I report, I get information like that. And then I ask a million questions like you've asking me and it's like, can't talk about that. That's classified. Hmm. You don't, you're, you're a journalist, so you're trying not to judge. But is it your belief that this is a good thing for America? Meaning the president having a third option? Well, I mean, I write in the book that that's in the prologue after I tell that story about the source with a knife, I say, I wanted to know. And that exact question, like, is this a good thing? And my answer at the end, after it's complex, not to be vague, but it is really complex, is also that, well, if you're going to take that pole position, you must accept rivalry, right? And also, do I think it's a good thing after talking to a lot of 20 year old soldiers who come back from the war theater, missing a limb or with intense PTSD and who essentially serve as cannon fodder, I would say my opinion, right? For the Pentagon. That's the second option or the 42 guys that I interviewed, you know, they're like, send me, they are professional, they are tier one operators, they're green berets, they're seals, they're Delta, they retire, they joined the CIA. So they're like professionals at what they do. And they're saying, I want someone has to do this job. We've been doing this since the end of World War Two, I want to do it. So do I think it's better? I mean, I think that that concept speaks to choice, right? Because I'm not so sure that the 20 year olds know what they're in for. And the 40 year olds know what they're in for and are willing to do it. So the well, also the difference between a specialized trained individual with a very specific task versus someone who is sort of following orders and at the front of the line. Right? I mean, and also has a, you know, a lot of times I talk to these young kids who go to war and they tell me one of the fascinating detail is that they talk about movies that they see and whether it's Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down even, right? Where the outcome is not necessarily great, but they talk about the romanticization of war and of camaraderie and of brotherhood that comes from that. And then they have their experience and some of that does give them that sense, but not always. Whereas the operators are much more about, you know, getting the job done. That's what I was fascinated by. I mean, these guys are really clear. They're competitors. They're like top tier competitors. They have a job. They do it. They get it done. And they ask for the next job. So is the oversight when it comes to choosing whether or not this operation takes place or not? Is it, do they have moral guidelines? Do they have ethical or moral guidelines where they say like, this is the president is requesting that this person get taken out the chiefs of staff, whoever it is, that do they have to make an ethical distinction? You mean are they like kill him nicely? Like don't make it hurt? Do they decide like, does this make sense? Or like, what if the president is like, Rosie O'Donnell, she's been talking shit, take her out? Like, you know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, that's, you know, that's a big issue. But what I try to write in support, what I try to report in Surprise Kill Vanish is the idea that the people we take out, maybe are bad guys, right? One guy I write about is Che Guevara. Okay, because Che is often portrayed in the press as, you know, this amazing hero and that he, and we, you know, I don't know if you know, but he was, he was killed by the Bolivian Rangers, but it was a CIA operation. And I interview the man in charge of that operation in Surprise Kill Vanish. His name was Felix Rodriguez. Okay. Long serving CIA paramilitary officer. So, but I also report why the president, to your question, wanted Che Guevara dead, you know, he was really advocating for nuclear war. And I, and I show that. Che Guevara was. Yes. I mean, he spoke publicly about, you know, if, if we have to have an atomic war, the Cuban paraphrasing, the Cuban people will be happy to have sacrificed themselves for that. I mean, Che was also, Che killed anyone who betrayed him. He killed, he writes about it in his diaries as I write in the book. Right. So, but on the morality question, who decides? I don't have that answer, but I will tell you what I did. I went with my main source, Billy Waugh, who he's 89 now. And he was, he's been with the CIA for 60 years. Okay. I mean, he went, and he and I went to Cuba for him to do a halo jump with Che Guevara's son. So we were a guest of the man whose father was killed by the CIA. Okay. And we had this really interesting discussion in the cigar club where Che and Castro, you know, smoked cigars and plotted the downfall of the United States. And that's what I try to give readers a sense of the long lens of history, how time changes all things and maybe leave with them, them with this idea, which they can come to their own conclusions about what you asked me of, is it right or is it wrong? Because really what you might ask is, is it necessary? Right? I mean, I could moralize right, wrong, but it would just be my opinion. But when you see, I went, Billy Waugh and I also travel to Vietnam because he was supposed to kill, he was tasked to kill the top commander of the North Vietnamese army, a guy named General Jap. And Waugh didn't kill Jap. And we had this incredibly, this terrible mission that went awry that I write about in the book in the Vietnam war. So 50 years later, Waugh and I go to visit the son of General Jap, or sitting there in Jap's home talking about these same issues. Right. And my conclusion of that, again, is not, is it right or wrong, but is it necessary? I mean, we have these wars, we keep having these wars. Is it necessary? Yeah. What do you think? Well, I mean, my opinion is that the Defense Department is far too concerned with vast weapon systems of the future, which is its mission statement of its science department. And so you create what some at the Pentagon call a self-licking ice cream cone, or the military industrial complex. And there's a lot built into that. And there's a lot to be said about that.