Mission Implausible

In the 1970's, L. Ron Hubbard and his inner circle of Scientology used espionage tacticts that would be the envy of the KGB. Their purpose: To discredit investigations, to hide their finances and to force the IRS to classify them as a religion.  Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

The Oscar-winning producer turns the tables on John & Jerry and interviews them about their early life in CIA, from recruitment to training to assignment. With a digression into the moral components of their job. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

Jerry & John’s thoughts on the latest malfeasance (Ilhan Omar’s home raid, intel on the U.S. airbase attack in England, James Talarico, the Germany spy scandal, Russian bots, etc.) and their predictions of what will come next, including potential October Surprises. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

The former Royal Navy officer, war correspondent for the Telegraph and the Sunday Times, and author of the Orwell Prize-winning Dead Men Risen and First Casualty — joins to discuss his new book, his covering of Northern Ireland, and the recent history of America’s time in Afghanistan. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

The author of The United States of Paranoia and the editor of Reason sees the enemies within, outside, above and below. The true believers and the manipulators. Every religion and political affiliation in American is uniquely credulous. But maybe there’s good reason to be. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

Former Science of Identity Foundation insider Rebecca Saltzburg, a source for the Washington Post's investigation into Tulsi Gabbard, goes deeper into how its guru Chris Butler shaped Gabbard's political career. Then, as Director of National Intelligence, who was she working for? Why was the deal with her and Syria, China and Russia? Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@M...

Rebecca Saltzburg spent years living with Tulsi Gabbard’s family, inside the Science of Identity Foundation, and in the inner circle of Chris Butler, the leader of its Hawaiian sect, of which Tulsi and her parents were long-time members. Years after leaving, Saltzburg took here archives - emails, encrypted memoranda, internal communications - and gave more than 25,000 pages to the Washington Post,...

In March 1944, three American OSS officers parachuted into Hungary on a mission to be taken prisoner. A story that was classified for decades, the team — a Dartmouth graduate, a World War I fighter pilot and a former New York Giants lineman who became an advertising executive — planned to get caught, tortured by The Gestapo, and “confess” to an Allied invasion that was a complete fiction. The OSS...

Investigative journalist and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Richard Kerbaj discusses The Defector, his book on Oleg Lyalin — the KGB officer who walked into a North London police station in 1971 and exposed over 200 Soviet spies in Britain, partly to escape his marriage. He and the hosts trace how MI5's decision to withhold him from the CIA broke James Angleton's decade of paranoia, then take apart the F...

Now that Adam Davidson is a national expert on AI, he worries about how it will change worldwide politics, military power and international economic structures. Not just the AI itself, but all its underlying physical infrastructure. When it comes to spycraft, it can help sort through the millions of pages of data collected every day, but it also makes it impossible to keep a secret. Watch Mission...

What's been done to American intelligence and what it costs: the 35 declassified documents that don't say what the president claims they say, analysts fired for accurate assessments, clearances stripped as punishment, rumored loyalty oaths, and the question of how any future administration cleans this up without another round of retribution. Looking outward — what Beijing is taking faway rom the I...

Stephen Miller runs National Security now. Julia Curlee spent over 20 years as a CIA analyst, rising to being Acting Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the NSC. When Trump 2 began, she stayed on, as is custom, to help transition. Her team was fired on Day 3, and Curlee on Day 69, leaving The White House woefully uninformed to this day. But maybe that was the point.“Vulnerability isn't re...

Two of John & Jerry’s old friends and agency colleagues swap war stories and tall tales, starting with their training at The Farm and including their time in Moscow. Some of the characters in their anecdotes: Nazi Bob, Steven Seagal and the CIA mermaids. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtub...

More on Trump's $2 billion is new money in the past year -- Financial investigative journalist (and Mission Implausible producer) Adam Davidson illuminates Trump's business model: money-laundering, ass-kissing and rent-seeking. His zero-sum view of how things work doesn't just enrich himself, it damages overall world economic growth. He's more a post-Soviet oligarch than a Western capitalist. Watc...

- Journalist Gabriel Gatehouse returns to Mission Implausible with the strange premise behind his podcast Foul Play: the claim that the CIA poisoned England goalkeeper Gordon Banks before the 1970 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico in order to help the  Brazil to support Brazil’s government. It turns out that international sporting events are hotbeds of attempted  subterfuge and qua...

Journalist Gabriel Gatehouse returns to Mission Implausible with the strange premise behind his podcast Foul Play: the claim that the CIA poisoned England goalkeeper Gordon Banks before the 1970 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico in order to help the  Brazil to support Brazil’s government. It turns out that international sporting events are hotbeds of attempted  subterfuge and quasi...

Former OSCE ambassador and Pentagon and NSC official Michael Carpenter argues Russia is weaker than it appears yet keeps being rescued by a West gripped by fear of escalation. And that the newly transactional, alliance-busting American foreign policy undermines the remarkable success of NATO. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

Former CIA Iran ops officer Mark Fowler joins Jerry and John to explain why Iran is one of the hardest targets on earth. From running agents and sources, Fowler has insight into the Iranian worldview: a persecuted Shia minority that sees walls behind every wall, craves American attention while calling us the Great Satan, and negotiates by treating signed contracts as opening bids. He separates the...

In 2003, a single Iraqi refugee — codenamed Curveball — fabricated stories about Iraqi weapons. The U.S. intelligence community, desperate for sources after 9/11, laundered his claims into a National Intelligence Estimate produced in under three weeks. Bob Drogin, the award-winning journalist who broke the story and wrote the definitive book on it, joins John & Jerry to examine how...

ENCORE EPISODE - Gabriel Gatehouse is a journalist and broadcaster and author of “The Coming Storm” that looks at Q Anon and the January 6th conspiracies. And he’s British! Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

In light of this week's resignation of Tulsi Gabbard, we're re-running our recent very illuminating episode about her. Also, check out John Sipher's timely piece on her in The Bullwark on May 19. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-office-shouldnt-exist-director-national-intelligence-9-11 Our current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was born into The Science of Identity Found...

Nuclear weapons-usable uranium, biolabs for biological warfare, secret chemical facilities -- In Operation Sapphire, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Andy Weber found and disposed of them. Where are the current threats? What does Iran still have? Biological threats may ultimately prove even more dangerous than nuclear ones. How do we control them? https://thesteadystate.org Watch Mission Impl...

Former CIA and NSA attorney Jim Petrila explains the legal decisions about covert action, presidential power, and the legal guardrails surrounding America’s intelligence agencies. He argues that the Trump-era expansion of executive power, combined with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and the dismantling of institutional oversight, represents a fundamental threat to the rule of law....

Forget hotel rooms and presidential merch, this time around, the Trumps are making untraceable billions with ventures like World Liberty Financial and a Trump-backed stablecoin. It’s a new world of buying influence and access. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MissionImplausiblePod

Award-winning author Ilana Berry explores the gap between how espionage is portrayed and how it actually works. Drawing on her experience in the CIA, the Department of Defense, and er firsthand view of the Arab Spring in Bahrain. She explains why secrecy fuels conspiracy theories, and why even insiders often struggle to separate truth from manipulation. Watch Mission Implausible on YouTube: https:...