YouSaid · the spoken record

Annie Jacobsen

lines on the record: 192
first: 2024-03-22
most recent: 2024-03-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And my husband, and so what inspires me is like this idea of legacy. I think that you always want to have your eye on being a good example to the best that you can. And so and passing on what you know and believing kind of in the next generation. And again, that's a sentiment echoed by all these Cold Warriors I've been talking to because they also share that idea that wow, look at what we have done as a civilization and look where we're going, whether it's interplanet exoplanetary travel or AI. It's just that the human factor of the desire to fight, the desire to have conflict. Needs to be reconfigured because with all these new technologies that we have, the peril is growing at an accelerating pace perhaps faster than the average human can keep up with.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I am fundamentally optimistic person. I must have come out of the chute that way because I just am, right? Even though I write about really grim things, I get inspired by them because I do always believe in evolution, right? I also have like the greatest family ever, two kids, Jet and Finley. Shout out to them, they're Lex Friedman fans.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As they say, it's time to come back from the brink, right? And it's time to have that discussion while we're still talking.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the optimistic answer of that would be that we could evolve beyond that, right? Because certainly if we look at our ancestors, they had not developed their consciousness. As we have, to be able to build the tools that we have. And so the hopeful answer is we will evolve beyond this kind of brute force, kill the other guy attitude. Certainly, you know, these are questions that will become more obvious over time. I just want To play my little part in this world that I live in, as the storyteller who brings information to people so that they can Have these kind of questions. With themselves, with their friends, with their families, and I think in asking that very question, what you're really saying is why don't we? Evolve beyond warfighting.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's an interesting thing. My thought goes to this idea that like of more, right? That everybody always wants more. It's a very dangerous, it's like more power, literally, not just figure, more power, right? And what is more confounding to me beyond the fact that we dropped to atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the war ended is that this decision was then made to develop the thermonuclear bomb. A force that is such the degree of magnitude of that power is mind boggling. I mean, even projects within the Manhattan Project defined thermonuclear weapon, the thermonuclear weapon as the evil thing. Like it was evil. It's a weapon of genocide. Atomic weapons destroy cities. Thermonuclear weapons destroy civilizations.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I've interviewed all kinds of people with different opinions, most of them that it ended the war. The best interview and most meaningful perhaps that I ever did was with Al O'Donnell, who was a participant in the Battle of Okinawa, which was like this insane. Just to read stories about Okinawa, it makes your hair stand on end. And O'Donnell, like so many others, was slated to. Inveyed mainland Japan. His almost certain death, right? So, somebody like that, it makes sense right from the get-go why he would be pro nuclear weapons. It saved his own personal life and it saved everyone that he knew that he was fighting with, and it ended the war.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When at what point do the ends justify the means? But in looking at those programs, and we acquired Hitler's favorite weapons designers, and I'm talking about weapons of mass destruction like chemical weapons and biological weapons. But of course, America was ahead in the nuclear program and an interesting detail reading Albert Spear's memoirs was Spear referring to a conversation he had with Hitler where Hitler said, no, I don't want to do that. That's Jewish science. And so, because of Hitler's own racial, ethnic prejudices, they didn't develop the bomb, right? As far as should we have dropped the bombs on Hiroshim”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's called a drone strike. Find, find them with the biometric fix him, meaning fix his position. We know he's moving in a car, that's him, that's him. Finish him. Drone strike, boom.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God, it's Big Brother. Well, one of the lead engineers on that, Pat Bilkin is someone I talk to regularly because we talk about surveillance a lot because he thinks about it a lot because he has kids now. And he has given so much thoughtful, you know, really thinks about this issue because he believes, just like you stated, that what we are turning over about ourselves actually exceeds anything that Argus is could do from above because we're doing it willfully. And so what it's doing is it's creating an ability for if someone wants to know about you, if someone, let's say in government wants to know about Lex Friedman, they can find out everything about you. And then that gets used for tagging tracking. And ultimately, in the war theater, it was called Find Fix Finish. Well, what do you think the finish is in that statement?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, during the war on terror, people were just like incensed to learn that there is a drone that's flying at something like 20,000 feet. It's called Argus is, right? And it can capture It's not a license plate. It's like it can basically capture what's written on a golf ball from 17,000 feet, 20,000 feet up, okay? And people went crazy over this.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Massive surveillance. And Chief Whelen, when I posed this question to him, said to me, Annie, let me show you something. And he had Clearwater AI, the recognition software on his phone. And this was still when it was like quasi-not supposed to have to have that for law enforcement. And he said, I want you to go down the block and I want you to just turn the corner and come back toward me, right? Which I did. And he just didn't even hold up his phone. He just kind of looked like his hand and his phone was on me. And he went back down. It was like the tiniest movement. And when I came back to him, he went like this and he showed me there I was, everything about me. Everything about me, facts and figures and all images, and he knew who I was before I even got to him.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Track and locate people. Okay. And what has happened in the five years since this question was first on everybody's minds about NSA surveillance is that the civilian sector companies have essentially done all the defense departments biometric surveillance job for them by all of us sharing our facially recognizable images on Instagram and Facebook and everywhere else X by sharing information, by writing up narratives about ourselves. This information has become part of the database. Five years ago when I was reporting first platoon, I was interviewing the police chief of El Segundo, which is kind of like on the outskirts of LA. It's right near the airport. And why it's important is because it's like defense contractor haven. So they have like, you know.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so, but the real problem, what has happened, and I write about this in my book, First Platoon, which is about a group of young soldiers who goes to Afghanistan and unwittingly becomes part of the defense departments biome efforts to capture biometrics on 85% of the population of Afghanistan, which, by the way, China then emulated in their own biometric surveillance program, right? And I think this is a terrible idea. But what has happened, these biometric systems that have been created and biometrics are, of course, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans that allow you to tag”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'd ask me five years ago, I would have a very different answer, right? Because first of all, you can't, they're looking for a needle in the haystack. They're looking for the bin Laden and they can't find the needle in the haystack, but they continue to create the haystack and survey the haystack. So, right?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, my feeling on that is always that. There's a thread somewhere in declassified documentation about these programs of America working in To maintain a semblance of democratic ideals, however surprising that may be, right? In other words, Always trying to I don't want to say fight fair because killing people isn't fair, but Versus a certain ruthlessness. A real sinister totalitarian type ruthlessness, certainly from Soviet Russia. I'm far less familiar with modern day. Russian assassination activities, although we certainly know on the record, you know, that they exist. Some people have done great reporting on that. But there seems to be a kind of Almost sadism about the Russian programs that I personally have not seen. the American programs.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Looks like Russia is acting in the same vein that it has always acted. Taking care of dissidents that go against Mother Russia.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Defected to the United States. He knocks on the door, and the guy answers the door, and instead of killing him, he has this moment of conscious of crisis or crisis of conscience and says, like, I can't kill you, even though that's what I'm supposed to do. And then sits down with the guy and together decides, okay, we're going to defect, you know, we're going to let the Western intelligence agencies know what we're doing here. And the CIA got involved. Russian assassins were able to poison Kolkov with polonium. What happens to him is insane and it's a miracle he didn't die. But he doesn't. And then he defects to the West and he writes these books. And he tells lots of incredible secrets about the Russian assassination programs and their poison labs. And they're really, really, really interesting. And so to answer that question, I mean, to my eye, of course, I don't know, but it's certainly...”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For that I looked directly to the historical record, right? Having written about Russian assassination campaigns and programs since the earliest days of the Cold War, right? And Russia has a long history of assassinating, murdering, dissidents And in surprise, Kilvanish, I tell the story of an actual KGB assassin named Kolkov, who knocked on the door. Of his of the man he was assigned to kill. And by the way, this all comes from a book that Kolkov wrote later, right?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 ten, twenty, thirty years old, and so much more has come to light since.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's just like multiple sourcing, right? 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? Very rarely do I report on a single source as I did in the end of Area 51. And then it says, essentially, 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 an area to make your reader comfortable with the information that they're being given. And then in all of my books, whether there are three or four hundred pages, there's”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a really interesting question. 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 Shinbet in Israel. But 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.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Click, click, click, Billy Wa takes the photographs, runs them to the CIA headquarters in Saudi at the embassy. Oh my God, it's Mugnia, 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 Massad and Mugnia's dead. Now, the truth about that being a co-CIA mission was not reported for many years after the fact. It was originally Massad took credit, as the CIA often likes to just give other people credit. They just want the job done.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then in between him and Mugnia's house is a dumpster, and Billy Wah being Billy Wah who will go to any length to do the job, decides to conduct reconnaissance from inside the dumpster. And that is where he is when he takes the picture. Of Imaud Mugnia living so comfortably in Saudi that Mugnia, 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.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is according to Billy Wah. And this is around 2005. So Billy is in his 80s at this point, right? Late 70s, 80s. He gets word that the seal who's been tracking Mugnia to get photographs of him to give the photographs to Massad 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 Billy Wa, 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 Wah, right? He shows up. He's there for 24 hours. He finds, he knows where Mukhnia lives from the seal. He positions himself in a cafe across the street which is run by Sudanese men and of course Wa speaks some Sudanese because he operated in Sudan, right? And he's shooting the shit with him by his own words he had the most foul mouth. It was just absolutely delightful to listen to.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think most it's because mostly from what I understand, it's a really dirty game. And people are covering for people, right? And I'll give you the example of Billy Wah and Emod Mugnia, if I may, right? So Emod Mugnia was the most wanted terrorist in the world before bin Laden, you know, Hezbollah's chief of operations. And he was wanted by every Masad John Down. But no one could find him. He was missing for 20 years. There wasn't even a photograph of him. And then he resurfaced. And of all places he resurfaced in Saudi Arabia. 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 Imad Mugnia in Saudi Arabia? Well, that's where he was. There was a Navy SEAL who was doing reconnaissance.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But originally, that's the umbrella agency that has the different paramilitary organizations under it, right? So the most lethal one is ground branch. And that's what I reported on in Surprise Kill Vanish. And its origins go way back to the guerrilla warfare corps that was started in 1947 for the president.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While 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”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Billy, if you and Rick had to kill each other, like who would win, right? I was trying to imagine this hypothetical, like, how would that work? Who would win? Right. And I posed the question to each of them. And of course Each of them said me, right? But Billy then I went back to them and Billy said, let me tell you how I would win. Okay, right. And he said, I'd cheat. I'd show up before the duel, and I'd kill him.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suppose that just depends, right? Here's another insightful thing Billy Wah said to me, and I'm answering the question around because I don't know. Because again, 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 when 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 photographing them to really then that gets run up the chain of command to make sure this is really Imad Mugnia we're about to kill, right? 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 Prado who's also like a legendary agency guy. And so he's like 20 years younger than Billy. And I said,”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Laos during the Vietnam War, right? So he's like this famous halo jumper, right? So he and a team were going to go in, grab Chave as an, 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 Wah, where he said I'm so glad we didn't do that, even though I really wanted to at the time Can you imagine that country's problems where it is now? Can you imagine how we would have been blamed? And it was an interesting, rare moment for Billy Watt to comment on the bigger picture that you're asking me about, right? I think pretty much the operators I know, they just stick to the mission.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unclassified. But at one point when Hugo Chavez was in power, Billy Wah 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, 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 thousand 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. Bill took the second halo jump in history into a war theater.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, again, I try to remain agnostic on the policy part of it and just report the operator's perspective, right? Because this is what people do. And this is what people are asked to do. And it depends on the individual. I mean, Billy Wah went on a lot of those missions. I mean, the saying is like, oh, Billy Wah, he killed more people than cancer, right? Did Billy Wa 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. He would show me these PowerPoints that were just fantastic. Late in his life, he was constantly being asked to go up to Fort Bragg and lecture to the young soldiers. And everybody loved him, you know. And 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 all.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you look at their uniforms that they were wearing, and now that you know this, you'll be like, oh, 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 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 Mac V Sog. And these cross-border operations that I chronicle in Surprise Kill Vanish, which still amaze me to this day, right? I mean, SOG missions, they called it suicide on the ground, because that's what it was. And these guys had no identifiable nothing. I mean, 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 POWs,”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the seals operate under Title X. So they had to get what I call sheeped dip because that's what the insiders call it, right? And that is a term that comes from, interestingly, Area 51, the U-2 pilots were Air Force pilots. They needed to be sheep dipped over to the CIA so they could do things that defied the law. 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.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 a country you're not at war with. I mean, the lions, 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. And you work out a scenario whereby the seals, and by the way, it wasn't the seal, there was a rotational on that 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 practicing at a secret facility in North Carolina, right? And it was just like, you know, they're ready until they get the go order. And it just happened to be the seals, okay?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“how you must behave in a war theater. Well, the CIA is under no such rules. It operates under what's called Title fifty. And, you know, it's interesting to me as reporter because before I wrote the book and reported openly about Title fifty, 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 bad guys. That's what it's called. And that's how it works. Goes”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, 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 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, you know, it says we don't assassinate, but it can be overwritten by another order that's straight out of Rizzo's mouth. 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 sort of, you know, rules and etc.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 counsel, 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.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you know of closing the loop on that, right? Because I do think it's important for people to know that sources, um, Have revelations”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the source is extraordinarily credible, right? If you wanted to take the position, well, that person isn't very reliable, then you have to ask yourself, why did they have top secret clearances that are higher than any in the United States whatsoever? Because he was responsible for arming nuclear bombs. He was called the trigger man. And by the way, he told me that I could tell the world who he was. There's a lot of details that are really dark involving that program. And when is it appropriate, right? Well, it feels appropriate now, first of all, because you and I have been talking for several hours. This is what is truly a long form conversation. And it's the outcome of a very long time of my reporting and also being judicious about”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Now that source is Al, who is the nuclear weapons engineer who armed, wired, and fired one hundred eighty six nuclear weapons. Okay, so if you want to talk about You're the first person I've told that on the record, but it's kind of about time.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Told me this as a confession, right? A real tearful confession because what he said is he was involved in the American program to do the same thing. And people died because there were human experiments that went on. And I write about this in the last 12 pages of Area 51, and it was explosive, you know, revelation. And I felt very confident in writing this because the source wanted it written. Why? Because he said, I'm dedicated to my country. I know about being committed to national security and this kind of thing must never happen. And if you give people too much power, they would take advantage of it. And he wanted it on the record. And his wife of 60 years did not know until after the book published, nor did his children, okay? So after the book published, I was called to his house and sat there with his family. And they said, tell us this isn't true. And he said, it is true.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it sounds preposterous. And if it was just someone saying, you might say, well, it's ridiculous. Tell me and get them onto another subject. But the difference was this source, who is very well placed and friends with all of the other 75 people.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was the plan. And Stalin was also messing with the United States, messing with Truman, who sort of, you know, turned his back on him, right, at Potsdam. And so this idea was, and the reason that the source is important, and unlike a lot of people I saw, I saw this, I saw that, I learned that, was according to the source. Once it was determined that this was a hoax and that Stalin was able to get a craft over the United States and it crashed. And it had people inside of it. Sort of deformed and meant surgically altered to look like. The United States government decided that it needed to know what on earth that was all about and if it was possible for us to have the same program. This according to the source, right?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, predicated on the narrative of the war of the worlds, right? And the war of the worlds when it was a radio program in the United States made people go crazy. Oh my God, we're being invaded by aliens. Well, the government was always interested in this story and Joseph Stalin was too. We know that from declassified documents, right? And so the source told me that the reason for this program and that the real Roswell crash remains, where in fact it was a black propaganda hoax infiltrated, you know, or rather predicated at this idea that you were going to overwhelm America's early warning air defenses.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, before I say anything on that, let me speak to the The question that you asked, right? You asked me, what's the probability that that is still standing as an idea? fourteen, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years later, right? So I continue to work with that source for years afterwards. We talked about this. Look, I mean, his whole family Knew it was him. And I knew his family because I was an integral part of, you know, I was at his house, met all his kids, grandkids. And”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my interviews with Jacques Valet, who is the kind of grandfather of all ufology, and he's such an interesting person and has such a really unique origin story about how he came into all of this, and he's such a scientist, right? And he is profoundly dedicated to this issue and stands completely on the opposite end of the spectrum for me and knows a lot more and has studied this for decades more. But what he said to me is the most interesting thing, which is that it's not a military problem, it's an intelligence problem, because Jacques believes that this is some kind of intelligence, right? Which really, the closest I can do to wrapping my head around that takes me to consciousness, right? The idea of what is consciousness. And I think that's where it becomes very interesting. I think the government is hiding bodies and crafts is very Paul Benowitz. Read it. Google do it, right?”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't imagine That kind of exciting situation not becoming public information, right? And the counter to that is this, right, which is this is a very strong argument for why this is a big strategic deception campaign, right? Think about the Defense Department and the Air Think about how jealously they guard its airspace, right? I mean, you had a Chinese balloon flying over, and the whole world went crazy, right? It was front-page news. So the fact that one element or a couple people in the Defense Department have made this statement, we've lost control of our airspace over this UFO alleged UFO craft that they can't explain. I don't buy that at all.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then you have the Thomas theorem that becomes applicable there too. If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences, right? So this idea of like UFOs and we're being lied to. It becomes real. Many people. And then that creates a whole subset of problems to the point where things are spiraling out of control. And there is no center anymore, right? So a lot of people that are briefed on programs maybe don't even, aren't even aware of their position within a greater campaign. Or I'm wrong, and there are aliens among us.”
2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source