Find out more about that. Tonight our guest author is going to be interviewed by gawrt, a distinguished magazine journalist. He covers politics, technology and [inaudible] contributes to wired and the author of multiple books including the Number One National best seller the only plane in the sky an oral history of 9 11. Inside Robert Muellers fbi and often rock about the governments [inaudible] hes also and memorably did a great interview there back in february in the manchester north sure we could do things like that. And hopefully, well do that again when we can. And i am so pleased to welcome tim wiener back to northshire. He was saying hes done events in vermont for his last four books, and we are lucky enough to host him in our store back in 2016 when his wonderful Richard Nixon boy owe came out bio came out. I remember it very, very fondly. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book awar for his reporting and writing on National Security and intelligence. He covered the cia, the war in afghanistan and crises and conflict in 14 nations for the New York Times. Hes with us tonight to talk about husband brand new book, the folly and the quarry. Please join me in welcoming tim and garrett. Thank you, everybody. The history of the last 75 years of warfare between america and russia, its Political Warfare. And Political Warfare is [inaudible] its the full spectrum from diplomacy to covert operations. From friend lu persuasion friendly persuasion to sabotage and subversion are. And the story of the book is that we won the 20th century, and theyre winning the 21st. Thats it in a nutshell. You can see Political Warfare against the american political system, against american democracy, against the american body politic every day. Were going to see whether they win the next battle on election day. Garrett, over to you. Well, tim, its great to have a chance to talk with you about this, and thank you, northshire and yado for hosting us tonight. I know that i speak for tim when i say were sorry that we cant be there in person at the Manchester Store or even the share toe georgia store. Saratoga store. It would be a lot more fun to be there in person, but im excited to have a chance to talk with tim from the comfort of his home and my home here in burlington the, vermont. So, tim, one of the things i think i want to start by asking you about this, you know, and just im obligated to start for the participants with a plug for just what a good book this is. And i had the opportunity to read it in galleys. My endorsement of it is on the back cover of the finished book, so i come into this a fully biased observer that this is an excellent book. But part of what surprised me in reading this was how much of this story i didnt actually know. That, you know, im someone who i wouldnt have told you well, i have covered these topics for years. I would have told you i was well versed in this, and there were entire chapters of this book that the i just knew nothing about. And so, tim, youve written the definitive history of the cu cia, one of the great histories of the fbi, youve done, you know, tons of National Security reporting on all manner of topics over the years. What made you think there was actually something more to say about the cold war and russia and the u. S. . Where does this book come from and how, how did this concept come together in your mind . Well, garrett, i first walked into the cia headquarters in 1987, and i called them up and said, hey, im going to afghanistan. This was as we were running a secret operation shipping hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to the afghan knew ya that dean mujahideen holy warriors who were fighting the red army. I said you guys do country briefings, dont you, for reporters going strange places . How about it . And the Public Information officer at the cia scoffed and said, absolutely not, hung up on me. So i went to afghanistan. Three months ofjihad and came back with my new beard, and i hadnt been back at my desk in washington a day when the phone rang. Tim, how are you . Guess who . The c ia public spokesman. Howd you like to come in for that briefing now . I said, thatd be great. So off i go to the cia. Seven miles outside of washington, in lang lu, virginia. Through the checkpoints, through the lobby beautiful lob but. Marble, soaring atrium, and up on the lefthand wall as you walk in is an inscription from the gospel of john that says and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. So i go up, talk to the four afghan analysts in the cia, and they want to know whats it like. Theyve never been within a country mile of afghanistan, and yet theyre analyzing the progress of jihad. So i go down, walk back through the lobby, look over my right shoulder and [inaudible] this is what im going to do. Five years later at the end of the cold war,ring the director, bob gates, said were going to declassify our cold war history, warts and all. The Service Members of the cia did not like that because there are a lot of warts. It took 15 years to move through the declassification, and there would be a Critical Mass declassified information about the cia so i could write my history about the cia. On the record. Twelve years have passed since then. And slowly the declassified history of the cia is revealed, you know, like a glacier melting and revealing the rock underunderneath. Theres a chapter in the book about poland about two disastrous operations well, a disastrous operation and a Successful Operation 30 years apart. The Successful Operation was the trade Union Movement in poland are. Kept them alive in the 80s, solidarity, wound up being the domino that overturned the soviet empire. When, you know, the nightmare of the soviet system was revealed in the revolt of the proletariat against [inaudible] there are 20th century stories in this book that nobodys ever heard of. Not just you, garrett. Theres a story of cia support for the dictator of the congo. Theres a story of how the United States tried to fight back against soviet disinformation in the 80s. The disinformation of the soviets was really the brain child of the head of the kgb who ran the kgb in the 60s, 70s and into the 80s and then became the leader of the soviet union. Kgb disinformation then and now have three goals. Undermine americans faith in their National Security institutions, the fbi. And the cu e a. Ever hear that the cia killed john kennedy or the fbi killed Martin Luther king . Thats can kgb disinformation. Fort deet rubbing, maryland, millions of people still believe that to this day. Kgb disinformation. Vladimir putin is the heir to uri andropov both as the head of russian intelligence and as the strongman leader of russia. And, garrett, theres a Straight Line that runs through these stories from the end of world war ii to today. People think the cold war was then in the 20 century, and this nightmare were going through now with russia attacking our democracy, thats a whole different story. Theyre one story. So one of the things about the book that struck me was that, or you know, you have written so much about the cia before creates a lot of its successes and myriad failures. Im not spoiling the thesis of a book called legacy of ashes, but your sort of general belief has been that there are more failures on the cias books than successes. Im curious how this project and looking at this 12 years later changed your perception of the cia, changed your belief in how in the role that it played in the cold war and sort of what should we make of the legacy of the cia in this particular fight . Covert action is a drug for president s, secretaries of defense, secretaries of state. They have a problem that they cant solve through duh diplomacy or through the military, they send in the cia. The cia just got born in 1947. They didnt know the first thing about covert action. The russians have been at this since peter the great. Theyve been at it for centuries. So our lack of knowledge of how to do these sorts of things and then a distaste because of the secrecy of the cia, coordinating things with policymakers secretaries of state, secretaries of defense led to a series of cascading failures. What the cia had in the 20th century e in the cold war that the kgb did not was money. Lots and lots of lovely money. If it wanted to sway an election as it dud in its very first as it did in it very first covert operation ever to steal the italian election in 1948, suitcases full of cash. If it wanted to reverse the results of an election as it did in chile in 1970, it could create the conditions for a coup. If it wanted to buy the allegiances of entire political parties, create entire political parties, it created the ruling party in japan in the 1950s, the liberal Democratic Party which is neither liberal nor democratic nor a party but still runs japan to this day. When the cold war ended, the successes of the cia were not only its ability to outspend. There were, we learned the cu e a learned, the United States learned through bitter experience and failure that if you dud things on a small scale, the butterfly effect was more effective than sending billions of dollars of weapons to the mujahideen. We did that with shortterm success. The afghan rebels drove out the soviet army. But the country awash in weapons without any followup from the United States was the incubator of alqaeda. An unforeseen consequence of the cias support for the afghans. Economics support and intelligence operations. We dont do it anymore. For good oriole we are out of the game. The war on terror subsumed everything. Counterterrorism was the first and last goal of the cia and fbi. We took our eye off of traditional espionage. Created conditions for the russians to launch the political equivalent of 9 11, attack on our democracy. Nobody died but american democracy received a grievous wounds, unexpected attack from an unexpected direction and that is where we stand. My experience in tempering intelligence, there are two things that stood out to me in your book that ring true to me from covering intelligence, one, maybe this has to do with the money reason you mentioned, the us is technical collection and Technical Intelligence wizardry and the soviet union, black russia, is generally better at human operations, human intelligence. The second thing that stands out in this book which is something that stood out to me in covering russia and the us, russia has a strategic patience of the us never had that you watch russias soviet union, russias ability carried out operations over decades. The clearest example of that being the illegals program, operation ghost stories and inspiration for the americans where you had the deep cover of part of living inside the United States for decades and the us watched for decades, what was fascinating we are seeing and learning this fall. Peter stzrok talked in his memoir this fall how on 9 11 he was already assigned one of the surveillance teams tracking the illegals coupled in boston, operation these illegals were not arrested until 2010. My question for you, how does the us learn patience in Political Warfare or is democracy such a different system of that we will never possess the patience necessary to carry out these operations . Secrecy and deception are not our strongest suits. It is easier for Hostile Intelligence Service like kgb and its successors to penetrate an open society than it is for the cia to propose authoritarian society. Penetration by russian and soviet intelligence, American Government has been deep and longstanding going back to the 1930s. The United States congressman on payroll in the 1930s, and this guy selling soviet spies Fake Passports and Holding Public hearings. That is an agent of influence, very specific definition. Someone in a position of power or authority can sway public opinion, in russias favor. You can think of many others, alger his at the state department, in the Justice Departments for an Agency Registration position, the treasury, they had spies at the wartime civilian intelligence, in the 70s, 80s and 90s running soviet counterintelligence at the fbi and the cia, they cleaned our clock. And they distorted american perception of what was going on in russia, the number of successful cia penetrations, soviet russia and presentday russia, you will have something left over. Without that kind of intelligence gathering we will be surprised as we were surprised by the russian attack on the 2016 election as we will be surprised, in the next five weeks. I want people to read this book, how it operates to understand a threat to our democracy. The most stunning chapter in this book which you and i discussed on multiple occasions, which you mentioned a few the book talk version of the craziness that unfolded in the middle of the Twentieth Century. They were captive under colonialism. The largest of these nations controlled brutally. And selected leaders invited to brussels and elected prime ministers, and and strategic metals. With the help of the cia he was overthrown. There later assassinated by indulgent paratrooper. In his place was a bot and paid for cia agent. He had been a kernel and ruler of the congo. Supports straight Cash Payments to help him run the government, the leaders who supported him, was approved personally by president kennedy and amounted to millions of dollars approved by president johnson after that and approved by president nixon after that. Was unremitting. American support for this dictator became a kleptocratic who robbed this country blind, stole 5 billion in gold, diamonds, natural resources, a murderous to radical, our bulwark against communism. Why did americans support this man until he was toppled from power 33 years after the cia helped cement the power, the cold war was over. A conflagration that emerged from collapse of the congo, unnoticed in america was an african reward to save 5 million lives. This is the consequence of pragmatic decisions by president s in the cold war. Present day a little bit, one of the things you lay out in chapter after chapter, the way that the us, cia meddled in other nations elections successfully and unsuccessfully across decades in the cold war. You have the number in the book, Something Like 117, 137 elections. Between washington and moscow, election interference in 117 elections in other countries in the second half of the Twentieth Century. You hear donald trump and mike pompeo, sort of right off what russia did to the United States in 2016, this is more of the same, we do it to them all the time. What do you think of that, does 2016 stand out to you as something fundamentally different from the legacy you lay out in election interference . I am doing this podcast, a number of former cia directors, had a talk with general hayden who ran the cia, george w. Bush, former director of the National Security agency spent his entire life in the National Security movement. General hayden said what the russians did to us in 2016 is what they are continuing to do today, the most successful covert operation in the history of modern intelligence and it succeeded in part because Vladimir Putin has in donald trump an agent of influence. Trump amplifies russian propaganda pretty much every day, trump distorts american foreignpolicy, cows house to Vladimir Putin, that is no secret, the question is why. I mentioned before, the american congressman who was an agent of influence for moscow and the 30s. Donald trump is an agent of influence for the Russian Federation in the white house. It is no secret that he kisses Vladimir Putins ring. The question is why. That question, which is the great counterintelligence question of the 21st century, has never been addressed, never been investigated. The fbi started an investigation and vanished into thin air. It is possible it is going on in the greatest secrecy as we speak, but i really doubt it. I think the Trump Justice Department strangled it in its crib, put it in a u. S. Postal service sack and threw it in the potomac. We see reporting from your old employer over the last couple days about the president s tax returns, pretty good too. The question of these 421 million debt the president has coming do over the next four years, without any sense of who owns that, who owns the people who own that. Have any theories . Host i wrote a piece for wired, two years ago, looking at the question of whether the Trump Organization was effectively a massive moneylaundering scheme for russian wealth. I think you were onto something. I have no Knowledge Beyond what i have read in the New York Times the last couple days but it continues to be a puzzle that the president is thinking an enormous amount of cash into his scottish golf courses that appear to both cash that doesnt appear to come from anywhere nor go anywhere, the scottish golf courses contin