How U.S. Intelligence Missed Putin and the Takeover of Russia by the Security Services

We begin with the shocking revelations from a former CIA operations officer that explain why U.S. intelligence missed Vladimir Putin and because of betrayals by KGB spies in the CIA and FBI, had no assets left in Russia to grasp the takeover of the country by the siloviiki, the men of force in Russia’s intelligence services, who now run the country opening having previously operated from behind the scenes. Joining us is Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished officers in CIA history, and a bestselling author who over several decades, served everywhere from Iraq to New Delhi and was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal for his efforts. Baer is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including his first book, See No Evil, the basis for the Academy Award-winning film Syriana. He is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Middle East and is an intelligence and national security affairs analyst for CNN and his latest book, just out, is The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin’s Russia.

 

Oil continues to rise as MBS and MBZ collude with Putin to turn American voters against Biden to bring back Donald Trump

Then with oil prices having risen by a third in the first two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and continue to rise as our so-called allies the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, MBS and MBZ, collude with Putin to turn American voters against Biden to bring back their criminal cohort Donald Trump, we investigate the complex intersections of oil, money, and democracy since energy and finance are at the heart of geopolitics. Joining us is Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University whose research concentrates on the political economy of energy and the long history of the democratic, economic, and geopolitical disruptions of the twenty-first century. She is the author of a number of books including Oil and the Western Economic Crisis, China and the Mortgaging of America, and Might, Right, Prosperity and Consent: Representative Democracy and the International Economy. She is a regular contributor to the podcast Talking Politics and has written articles for the London Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Financial Times, and we discuss her latest book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.