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Eric Levai:
Welcome to counterintelligence. This is Eric Levai.. Today, we're joined by former FBI undercover operative Eric O'Neill, who brought down the most famous spy in American history, Robert Hanssen. Forensic news Thanks. Our patrons Angela Jackson. Sasha Millstone. Zacharias. Zee Score. Kaminsky, Craig Pierce. Jim Rice and Greg Schneider. Support Forensic News and Counter Intelligence on Patreon. Without further ado, here's the show.
Eric Levai:
Eric O'Neill, welcome to counterintelligence.
Eric O'Neill:
It's great to be on the show.
Eric Levai:
Eric, it's great to talk to you. So you're the author of the new book Grey Day. And of course, while you have a very good career as a security expert and a lawyer. Of course, you're best known as the person who took down Robert Hanssen, the worst spy in American history. So I was just wondering if briefly, you could just tell us a little bit about about you and, you know, how you took down Hanssen.
Of course. Well, I had been in the FBI for five years when I was assigned to the Hanssen case. So those who have watched the movie Breach, which is a story about me, the breach makes it look like I was this novice undercover and suddenly was stern into the case. I actually had been chasing terrorists and spies for years before I was thrown in a room with Robert Hanssen. So my background is as an FBI ghost, the official term was investigative specialists. I was a fully undercover operative who was trained in counterintelligence and counterterrorism and counterterrorism just as a nuanced way of saying counterintelligence. The same theory except for going after terrorists instead of spies. And I was also trained in photography, an expert driving in how to follow along without being seen, disguises, all sorts of things that would allow me to clandestinely follow a target, investigate that target and never let them know I was there.
So being assigned to the Hanssen case was completely and utterly different than anything I had done before in the FBI because the FBI was asking me not to follow a target using disguises in distance and telephoto lenses, but to in fact share an office with my target working over job of the information assurance section for the FBI, which had been built just to trap Hanssen. And then at the same time work a covert job of investigating him and learning whether he was the spy that we had been after for over two decades. So it's a pretty difficult job.
Yeah. And, you know, it's it's funny. I mean, even me having a background in originally in comedy, I re watch Breach. And then of course, I read your book and there's there's just so much I don't think it's just my brain. There's so much like unintentional comedy in this very important story. I mean. Yeah. I have a feeling you felt the same way, too.
Well, here's the thing. I before I was ever an author and I had written and wanted to be published since I was in seventh grade, I wrote my first story and then, you know, I'm gonna be an author.
But knowing that that takes time, I, you know, established a number of other careers before I finally got a big book published, which is great day. But before I was ever an author, I became a public speaker, a keynote speaker. And one thing I learned really quickly, especially in speaking about things like cybersecurity, which is the primary thing I get engaged to speak about, is never to bore your audience. It's really important to perform when you're on stage, which means you have to make the audience laugh, even if you're talking about the next horrible Iranian cyber attack that might cripple our infrastructure and shut up our life life and make sure that the kids can't use their iPods and you have to teach them to play board games. And so the point is, you know, humor is important. And even when you're talking about something that heady and critical and sometimes scary and so great day reflects a lot of that humor that I've developed over the years as a keynote speaker.
And of course, that served you well in what I can what I know from reading your book was a very stressful and I know I'm not gonna pretend I know what that's like, that type of stuff. So I'm sure that that's served you pretty well in that type of experience.
But certainly you have to keep a sense of humor, otherwise you can go nuts. I've always felt that my ability to handle and address stress comes from this, I guess in a way fatalistic sense that there's nothing I can do about this stress right now. So there's no reason to give into it. I need move on and I need to tackle the next problem that comes up and then the next problem that comes up.
The problem is, of course, that that works in the moment. But you turn that stress will come back at some point.
And that tends to happen when you feel safe. And when you feel secure and you're away from your target. Unfortunately, that's usually when you're at home with those. Love you. Which is why people who spend their time working undercover don't tend to stay in their marriages, which during the case was my biggest concern.
It was actually more of a concern to me that my wife might decide that she's had enough of me. Then Hanson would find me out and put a hole in my head.
It's sort of and by the way, I'm I'm the same way in terms of stress. Like I if something's out of my control, I think that people who know me best would. I don't I I don't fold easily under any type of circumstance. And I Sy. But you're right. I mean, it it's the after effects for people like us can sometimes it can take a while. But if you don't talk about these things, it can really that can be an issue. Yeah.
And it's a it's a major issue, especially for people who work across the whole series of different jobs and special operations, whether it's the civilian world like the FBI or the NSA or the CIA or military world. PTSD can be part of it, but it can also just be stress related anxiety and problems that follow you into life. That's all part of counterintelligence work.
Yeah. And it's by the way, it's just great to actually even though we've done about 10 episodes, I think and we've had I mean, we we had like John Sipher a, who, you know, was like the head of Russia operations. But you, I think are the first really weird counterintelligence was really like your job. That's what you did. Yes.
So I was a field operative. Yeah, I was. It was the analysts would find out information that people who spent their time getting chubby in an office like and Goss with with the with the goal.
And then we would make that information actionable by going out into the field and catching the bad guys.
Yeah. And just one more thing about the funny you. You ended up making the decision that really for your life, it was more important to do as you said. You made a decision that really seem to be based on quality of life rather than just a career without. Would that be correct? Yeah, that's true.
I mean, I thought it was funny after the Hanson. So just to back up a Tonya Hansen case. Right. Robert Hansen, it turns out, is the most damaging spy in U.S. history, certainly the most damaging spying, FBI Sy history. There's an FBI agent who very early in his career, within a few years, he volunteered himself, which is a technical term. And in Intelligence. work, that means that he volunteered his services to Russia, then the Soviet Union in return for money. Now, there's a whole series of reasons why he did it. But at the end of day, he did it and then became the most damaging spy by giving up information that included our nuclear secrets, our of contingency of government plan, undercover operative operations and operatives.
And our biggest spies who were working for us in Russia, who were flown back to Russia and two were executed and one was in prison for a very long time. So we lost all of our intelligence coming out of Russia during the the middle the most important period of the Cold War. Turns out that the Russians, thanks to Hanssen, also knew the secrets about our nuclear arsenal and where we'd fire and what we do. So there were a lot of there was a lot of damage that he did. We've been after this guy that we called gray suit. So every every target gets a codename when you don't know who they are. We didn't know where he was, whether he was in the CIA, the FBI, the NSA. We only knew there was a mole in the intelligence community. We knew we know if it was a he could have just as easily been a she. So we're going after Grace and and sort of fast forward 20 years at the very end of his career. A source gives us the information that points right to Hanssen. And so we give Hanssen the code name Great Day, which is where I got the title, my book. That was the last thing I had to ask the FBI to declassify. And they they had a problem. And the problem was I said he was about to retire.
They learned about him in December of 2000. He was going to retire mandatory 25 year retirement in August of 2001. So they gave him his dream job. They built a new section called the Information Information Assurance Section. They put him in charge of it and tasked him with analyzing the FBI. Then it was called information assurance. But today, it's called cybersecurity and determining how we could build a better cyber structure for the FBI to prevent outside attack, hacking attacks and inside trusted insider attacks. So he he was the one fascinated by it because he'd been pounding drums that the FBI needed this forever. And to knew that in that position, he would have unfettered access to intelligence that he could steal. And to the Russians and one final bang. And that's what we hope to do, because we didn't have enough information to convict him for espionage, which is what we needed. We only had enough for maybe conspiracy to commit and we had to tie.
Hansen that we learned about from the source to the Hansen who had done all the damage in the 80s. So where do I come in? Well, the FBI looked very hard to find an agent, a trained special agent who knew how to do this face to face undercover investigation, to serve the role of sitting in that office with Hanssen. And they couldn't find anybody who knew how to use a computer or do the role of cyber security. So they found a ghost who is you know, I was a pretty good field operative by I had caught different spies before, but never in this manner. The other thing was that growing up, I was a hacker and mostly just because and in the 80s. Growing up the 80s with the early computer systems, if you wanted your games to work, you had to learn to code. I got very interested in security and coding and I always you know, Betty White had never did anything damaging or wrong or criminal. Sure. But but I could write a program. And so that sold the role to Hanson. I was also in law school at the time and his his older son was in law school. I am Catholic and Catholicism was incredibly and somewhat ironically important to him. So we have things to talk about computers, Catholicism, law school, all these connections. And when you have connections, you're able to get a spider talk. And that's what I had to do. And that's what he had to do, because in order to find out if he was safe or not, he had to make me fail. So it was an agony of of a series of months in that in this undercover operation. And it really burned me out for the FBI in a way that being on the street as a ghost did not. So I chose to leave. That's probably the most long winded answer you've ever go.
No, but you.
But at the end of the day, that punished me in a way and punished my relationship with my wife. And I felt that it was time to step out of the FBI, not work undercover anymore. Save her from that, because my future in the FBI was going to be entirely undercover and see what I could do with this little career that I'd invested, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No, I actually thought that was one of the more fascinating parts of your story. It's not. I mean, typically, as you know, it's like the opposite. People get their law degree and then apply to the FBI. And. Right. And as you said yourself, you basically went out on top.
I mean, yeah, I was told by I was, you know, told by an agent that I very much respected who was on the squad. And he said it in a in a way that hit me a little hard.
He said, you know, most FBI employees spend an entire career in counterintelligence hoping to be even the smallest part of an operation like this. And it never came. And you were right in the middle of it.
How do you feel knowing you'll never have this kind of light on you again? And I said, wow. You put it that way. I think it's a good idea to leave because I'm gonna go out on top.
How much do you think the FBI knew and fit you for this job? And how much do you think was just fortune that it worked out?
Well, I know the answer to that, because I had a long car talk with Dean McFarland, who is my supervisor in the Ghost Squad where I work in writing great day. And it turns out that he knew a lot about my ability with computer systems. I had written a number of programs for the squad. I'd written for databases that did analysis time and location on our targets. And we were able to predict which, of course, if, you know, counterintelligence or the goal of counterintelligence is to hunt threats, not just defensively wait for them to come by. So by being able to predict where they will be in the future, be able to hunt them. It was very successful. So he you know, it turned out back then not a lot of people in the FBI knew much about computers, that I was the computer guy. And I'm putting air quotes around those two words. So if they're going to bring Hanssen back, who was who was a real hacker? I mean, Hanssen had penetrated the FBI computer systems for decades by hacking them. And that's what that's why he was so successful. They needed their own hacker to be in that office with them. Otherwise, you know, if I didn't understand what he was doing, how could I know that he was doing something wrong? So, yes, it was. It wasn't just that. Of course, that's how they sold it to me. They would never say until much later. But the fact that I was Catholic was real important. You wouldn't have respected me if I wasn't of the same religion as he was. It was so integral to his personality. And also, I'm a male. Yeah. Yeah. He did not have a lot of respect for women as professionals. So yeah.
No, I never worked. I want to highlight it because I know you. You know you do. And you're gonna do a million interviews. And I always I always want what we do on this show to be unique. And I just want to because I don't know how much you'll get into this. I want to highlight what I said at the beginning for the audience. When you read Grey Day or if you go back and watch Breach, which is a great movie. Every single person in the world has worked with like a creep or. And there were so many. Yeah. I mean, I was just there were times where I almost fell over laughing, just like he's just staring at you from his office or you turn around and his hands are on your back like this. Yeah, well, you know what, Eric?
That is exactly how breech came about it really. I was having this conversation with my brother David, who at that point was a writer and actor in L.A.. That is right after I left the FBI and. I couldn't tell them anything about the case. I couldn't tell him about that this was the biggest. You know, I could. You didn't hit the media at that point. So he knew as a spy. But I couldn't tell him anything about the mechanics of the case or what Hanssen did or anything that was still classified. So what I told him about was those things that he was a creepy boss.
He was always in my face that he would call me an idiot and a moron.
And, you know, in that that escalating scale. Right. And you know that he then there were other things he did that I didn't even put in the book, because it's just so, you know, I wanted to save this family. And my brother looked at me and said, are you telling me that you've not only had the creepiest, weirdest, worst, most horrible boss in history?
And it turns out he was the biggest spy in U.S. history. We have to make a movie. And that breach came about.
Hey, we're in L.A., too. That's so fantastic to hear that your brothers and I know I mean, I knew he was an actor from your book, but that's that's a great story.
Yeah. And that's that's really I never thought it would happen. I thought that it would be good for my brother that he would get in rooms with producers and make contact and meet people. And and and it it's just like a snowball going downhill and picking up Sy momentum. It just started to happen. And suddenly it was real. And I and I expected it to happen. And I was a little nervous because while right now you can find out pretty much anything you want about me. I mean, I just wrote what's essentially a memoir that reads like a spy thriller, of course. So that's what I wanted to do. You. I have a LinkedIn page and a Web page, and I'm a public speaker and stand up in front of crowds all over the world. I used to be a very quiet person who no one knew about. Any presence I had online was using fake names. I didn't want to be known. That was that was how I was trained. That's how I live to be cover and breach really catapulted me into the world in a way that I wasn't ready for.
And they did a great job. I mean, just another movie has been out for some years. But I when I watched it again, obviously, Chris Cooper was phenomenal. And Ryan Filippi, they they did a smart thing in that movie. And I know, of course, you know, you had a lot of input and I'm sure your brother, too. But the. There wasn't too much on the outside lives, which I think. Well, that was the dynamic really was about the two of you. And it was just what's sad and what's not said. And I just thought when I read your book that they really it was very well captured in the movie.
Yeah. I think that the way Billy Ray put it is this and it's sort of an allegory to the the two men in a boat that is that picture that is there, right. That it's two men in a room. It really is. And what the story was about, when you boil it down, was only one of these two guys is coming out of that room. Okay. No one was going to get arrested or and the other, you know, or not. And the other is gonna get shot or not. But but in in any way, one of their lives was going to be utterly destroyed. At the end of this case. So who was going to win? You know, the old season grizzled guy or the young? The young upstart. Yeah. And I think that that's how rich portrayed it.
Yeah. You didn't I don't think you ever brought this up. And I hadn't thought about it till right now. But I really wonder if a lot of his his abusive, just absurd Adeline behavior was also started from the minute he saw you when you realized that.
I mean, obviously you've looked you do in the FBI, you have a law degree. You're very successful. I wonder from the first moment he saw you as someone who's good at reading things, he said this guy's everything that maybe I'm not. And that pissed him off.
Yeah, I don't I think it was more about control and power. So control and power was very important to him and it was important that he exert his dominance on him, on me. But he also he also only had one point of attack. There was no one else he had access to that he could attack to find out whether this was an undercover operation to catch him or he was actually given his dream job in the twilight of his career. His hubris wanted him to believe that the FBI has finally recognized me from my brilliance. Right. And he he was such a narcissist that he allowed himself to be susceptible to that. But on the other hand, of course, he had to thought he had to be suspicious. Right. Coming into the case. This was a trap and the only person he had to attack to find out whether he was safe or not was me. And so he did. And his, you know, the weird sexual stuff, the new things he'd say, the way he'd act. It was all to put me off balance. And it continued until there was a point where everything clicked and he felt that he could trust me. And then for the most part, it stopped. And then once once, of course, he felt he could trust me. He started to recruit me, and the squad was very interested in getting me to to push that as much as I could to get him to recruit me, to take over for him. And I think he really wanted to do that. He had some play. I think I use superhero analogies all the time. It makes my audience groan. But I really think he wanted a bad Robin to his Batman, right. He wanted someone who could learn from him because he felt like he was the master who had him, who was the greatest spy in U.S. history. He'd done this for so long and there was no one he could show his genius to.
I think you're absolutely right. And that's by the way, superhero analogies are great. I don't know who doesn't that. I mean, that's like that's you.
You should see some faces when people ask about supermax penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, where Hanssen will spend the rest of his life. It's one of the most miserable prisons on earth. But I always compare it to Arkham Asylum, which, of course, another Batman reference course. And I get a lot of smiles, but I also get some blank stares. You usually have to explain it, you know.
Well, I mean, I would say from your perspective, I was given a speech and I got a little cold response. I would just say, you know. Excuse me. Did you catch the greatest spy in history? Because if not, let me do my thing here. I just move on. That's a you're like you're performing. Must be something. I mean, you said your brother's an actor. I guess that is something maybe that you share in your family.
You know, it's funny you said that because I was actually thinking about this earlier today and that when you know someone who is providing the keynote for someone who is providing who is a public speaker, would you think of that person as something like an academic? But that's not really the same as being a teacher. You are a performer. You stand up on a stage. You have an audience. And audiences can be everything from 500 CEOs to like a massive industry conference of 3000 people. And often it's also livestream to tens of thousands of people at the same time. Right. I have to perform to every one of those people. So I have to I have to figure out my crowd. I have to learn them. I have to give them in, you know, interesting things that they want. I have to make sure they stay engaged, which is why I use humor. But at the end of the day, I can't just stand there behind the podium with PowerPoint. Expect that I'm going to do well.
And I also wanted to highlight something you said, which I found interesting in the book, which was it's in the movie, I think to from the from almost day one.
He like he asked you to steal a painting. And he it's just seem like I mean, that's a very big deal. Like you could get kicked out of the FBI for anything like that. Right.
Because he asked me to steal three pieces of art from an assistant director's conference room. Yes.
That's a huge deal. We don't do that. I mean, first of all, I had no business being on the seventh floor where the director was and all the brass. Right. Sy had to go do it late at night when no one was around. And then, of course, I had to talk to Rich Garcia, who ran off. You know, like you need to do something about the cameras or something that the older guys are. I hung the pictures in the office, you know, in hell. But I felt kind of cool, too. I felt the same way doing that, that I felt, you know, when I went lights and sirens around the capital beltway in order to catch up to a bad guy, you know, kind of like I'm allowed to break these rules. And there's something kind of awesome about that. The fact that he asked me to deal that art, I think was a challenge to see if I do it. You know, it's kind of like the criminal world where you do this little thing and then, OK, you now I can trust you and maybe you will move into something bigger. So it was it titillated everybody that I did it. I also asked that the assistant director not be told about it because I just wanted to see his face when he walked in the office and saw the art.
I was like I was just blown away. Oh, that was so clear what he was doing. It's like and I was like on day. I mean, it was right in the beginning. It was very clear, look, I'm going to corrupt this guy. I mean, if that had been a legitimate thing and you did it, you could have obviously lost your job and gone to jail probably if you weren't certainly undercover.
Yeah. I feel like Hanson was doing his best to give me all sorts of things. All sorts of chapters were a great book.
Later in my life, I know. I know that you requested permission to. You've never talked to him since that day. I mean, since you worked. Since you went undercover, right?
I haven't. I've requested permission twice. And the first time I was denied. Because he was he was still they were still trying to get him to plead guilty and they were afraid, and what they told me was if this is a quote, we're afraid that if he learns that it was you who betrayed him, he will rattle the bars of his cage. Clam up. Lawyer up and won't work with us anymore. And we're very close to a guilty plea. So unfortunately, that first request was denied. And that would have been easy because he was just in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. The second time was was during while I was writing Great Day. I wanted that last chapter, which, by the way, I love my epilogue. It's a conversation with my brother. And it's basically that conversation that led to deciding to make a movie, although, you know, we talk about something else in that conversation. But I wanted that conversation to be that final conversation with Handsome or even the attempt to try to get in and see him, because I truly thought that he would I would fly away to Florence, Colorado. And then at the last minute he would say, I don't want to see him.
I don't want to see him jerk me around for a few days. That's because I could. You know, it's power. He just needs it. That would give him something he doesn't have right now, a little bit of power. But I couldn't it wasn't that they denied me. The FBI said this isn't our business. You know, you'd have to, I guess, check with the Bureau of Prisons or something. I tried as attorney, as attorney laughed at me. And I just I just had too much work to do to get the book done. I will. I will get in there, though. I have found the former head of the Bureau of Prisons and I'm fucking with him. And I want to get over there. And I can tell you, Eric, that the thought of sitting down in front of Hanson as scares the living daylights out of me. I even even now, 20 some years later, I worry about sitting down in front of them, feeling like that 26 year old hoo hoo hoo is really lost in that big case that he wasn't ready for.
Desperate to win at all costs.
That's fascinating. How do you think he would feel in that moment?
I don't know. I don't know what his mental sanity is right now. Yeah, he's been he's been isolated for so long. There might not be much left of his brain and my mush so big because it does drive you into psychosis when you have no human contact. So I don't know, a I'm kind of hoping to get in there before there is anything left.
Yeah. I mean, it's it's. Look, the man is a traitor of the worst kind. So many people were killed because of what he did. And at the same time, not to get off on a tangent about our prison system, but that I don't know. That seems wrong even for some. I would react.
I would certainly rather be dead. But he he did it to himself. You chose to not cooperate anymore and did it pretty forcefully.
And so the threat was, well, then you're gonna be dumped here because we can't have you in a population where you can give information to people because he could recruit someone he still knows a lot. Yeah. There was another spy, Jim Nicholson or the CIA spy we caught before Hanssen. He he was in a prison. I think that same federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania. You know, lower security. He could have visitors and he had, I think, 25 years for conspiracy to commit espionage. We caught him at an airport with a bunch of secrets. He was trying to leave the country. He recruited a son who started visiting them and then a son started taking trips to Moscow. I mean, the FBI pays attention to these things.
And he was sending his son to Moscow to connect with his former contacts in Intelligence. and try to recover his Moscow fund, which every spy who works for Russia, actually every spy who works for and any foreign intelligence service, you get your money here. But you also get money that they say they're depositing in an account for you, you know, which is your slush fund in case you have to run and live the rest of your life in that country. Right. So, you know, they all have millions. I mean, Hanssen has millions of dollars in a Moscow account. Right. That he. That he'll never access. He was trying to send his son to go get it. Of course, the FBI investigated. Then his son ended up in the cell right next to him for conspiracy to give an estimate. Right. And then the son was pled against the father. And now he's gone from twenty five years for a conspiracy to life imprisonment.
I had no idea that spies had their own type of, you know, like Social Security over there.
Yeah, exactly. When you know, the foreign intelligence services, we do it here, too. I'll do it. When you recruit a spy, I'll say, okay, we're giving you this money. Here's your cash, you know. But if you know, just you know, your account in the United States is now up to X amount. Russians do it, everybody does it. All this old Spygate.
That's that's so the money is well, probably Putin probably stole it by now. Oh, you'll know.
Everyone laughed at it cause it's not like you'll ever see that, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I was what I wanted to turn to. I wonder if we could get your expertise, son. So sort of some current events, I'm sure, in regards to the Mueller investigation. We know that. I mean, this in a non-political sense, I'm purely from your your expertise as a counter-intelligence. We we know that the FBI had a an active counterintelligence investigation into the Trump administration. And we know that also that if I understood Mr. Mueller correctly, that is ongoing. My question to you, as someone who was a part of is the most sensitive type of thing, how does how do you conduct that type of investigation?
Well, yes, so, too. And I appreciate that we're keeping politics out. Yeah. I always try to stay out of politics because that is a quick dive into a well of lunacy. Specially today as an investigator. Yes. Lifelong investigator, a trained investigator. I like to stick with the facts. Sure. And avoid conspiracies. Although sometimes in kind of intelligence., you have to attack a conspiracy just to find the facts and destroy the conspiracy. You know, it's interesting. I think what is happening right now in the Justice Department and what Mueller alluded to isn't what most people think what is happening right now. And I think this is what may have backfired a bit for the Democrats.
And, you know, pulling Mueller up and making such a big thing of the of the investigation is now there is another investigation by the Justice Department to look into how all of this came about. The problem is that it appears that the FBI, Comey, the FBI relied on the deal dossier, which Mueller didn't want to talk about. And I understand why it's very toxic. I have read the dossier. It is absolutely horrible. There is a reason that that still Christopher Steele went into hiding after it came out, after BuzzFeed released it, because it it reads like a textbook Russian, what we call compromise that starts with a K, a fake stories the Russians put together to spread disinformation, literally what they were doing in our social media during the 2016 election to cause so much chaos. You know, it looks like it was force fed to him and then he passed it off as opposition research. Investigators have to deal in facts. There are now a lot of facts in there. Of course, it was paid for by the Clinton campaign. It became part a part of the basis for a lot of the investigation.
There was a certain rupture was started by Republicans not to.
It was started by. And then quickly dropped and then picked up and paid for. Exactly. Yes. But, you know, it's that it's those connections that are troublesome. You know, a counterintelligence investigation can do the thing about a counterintelligence investigation as you can really go very deeply and far when you have that warrant to investigate, you can destroy a person's life without them actually even knowing, which is amazing.
So I was always very wary when everything that I did when I was undercover was a Title 3 investigation.
But when it was an American, I was extremely concerned because you have to give that person the benefit of the doubt or you will find them guilty.
Everybody everybody has done bad things and bias can completely destroy an investigation.
So I think what Mueller is talking about is that that kind of counter investigation that's happening now, which is obviously being pushed by the Trump administration, was partisan on the other side. Right. So so we might have more to drop there, you know, looking at the whole thing. I think I said even before great day, even before Mueller started, that we would not find collusion. The reason for that is the Russians had no there was no point. You always look for the simplest explanation, right. Dawson's had no reason to collude with anybody because what they were doing is trying to completely. So chaos and widen a political divide that we created ourselves here in the United States. And if we're fighting with each other, we're not projecting our democracy across the rest of the world. And then Putin has an opportunity to move in and push his form of government and and control as an investigator.
Let me ask you this, though. The behavior displayed by, you know, not to go on and on about this, but I'm interested because this is what you do. The behavior displayed by all those people in his campaign. And wouldn't that strike your. Like Paul Manafort, you know, giving polling data to a a known a probable Russian intelligence operative, wouldn't that kind of set your alarms off if you were an a agent?
Certainly. I think that yeah. As the investigation. So there's a reason the investigation didn't just look at its just start start and then stutter and fail. Nick Mueller kept his team, kept uncovering information that would that was worrisome. And it is very concerning.
But does that mean that anyone in the campaign asked the Russians for help? You know, in in specifically colluded in order to try to get to try to get the Trump campaign to win over the Hillary Clinton campaign. Well, we know that that's not true, because that report all four, 400, some pages of the report, it states unequivocally that that was not what happened or that he was cleared. There was insufficient evidence to prosecute. Right. Because that's what a prosecutor does.
They look for whether there is evidence that could lead to a prosecution. But what's really important about that report? What's critical about the report?
What I wish that everyone would put the politics aside and realize is important, pressing and we need to deal with now is the fact that Russia interfered to an extraordinary amount in our election. I mean, they really interfere in every facet of the election and and was able to be most successful by exploiting this this insane dependence on social media that we have and this belief and trust in everything that we see.
It's clever espionage and it shows a lot of what I write about in great day. Espionage has completely evolved and changed and we're just not ready for it. The American people. Turns out the government is getting better. I mean, our FBI and CIA and NSA and our spy. But. But we were completely fooled. We being the American people during that election. And we have to stop the Russians because they're they're just, you know, like the evil guy with the mustache is rubbing his hands together in front of his face waiting for 2020.
I completely agree. And I'm actually really just have one more question as an attorney. The you know, you told me what you think that my my confusion is that as someone who's pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, the the the hundreds of just strange in and just unusual contacts with shady characters from Russia that seem to be at odds with there seem to be a standard set. There was did they collude with the Russian government? That seemed to be. And if it wasn't like it seemed like short of a signed contract, that the answer was no. I mean, is that kind of the unreasonable standard?
Well, I just I don't know. I think that there are plenty of secondary and tertiary contacts with the Trump campaign colluding. I think a lot. I think people that work with Trump had Russian contacts. And what happened was a number of them lied about them and, you know, and were convicted of perjury, which is where you where you saw all of the Americans who were indicted out of that out of that investigation was mostly for perjury. You know, and it does concern me. We do need to be concerned about it. And it's the reason that the that the investigation had to continue to go forward. Because you have to. I mean, once you start, you have to find out whether whether we have a serious problem. And if we did find up at a sitting president was on the phone with Putin saying, hey, look, you need me to win because and this would be collusion, right? You need me to win because I'll be nicer to you then than she will. And Hillary will do everything you can. I mean, if we had found out, that would have been real serious. But it turned out that didn't happen.
Yeah, I just I lied. I do have one more question, because you keep her door. You've inspired me to see him as a as a investigator and a lawyer. What? Why would someone lie about those contacts if there was not something very wrong there?
Well, yeah, either, you know. You never know. Lying. You never know whether they lied or they just did and didn't stated on a form or they were a question and they didn't think about it or they they thought no one would know about it. And this would make me look bad whether they had the best intentions. A lot of people were dealing with business relations with Russia. And then there was, of course, the great meeting at Trump Tower, which I think had that not happened. This investigation wouldn't have had the same footing that it that it did where people who should have known better.
We're sitting down with Russian operatives who who really trapped them. And I sometimes wonder whether they're Russian intelligence in sitting down with Trump's son. And, you know, we're just trying to trap the campaign into something that would be very. Amazing. Later, in case Trump won, because that's what they really want to do.
You know, it's not just what they stole from the DNC and the Hillary campaign, I think couldn't truly believe Hillary will win. I mean, the entire world thought she was her life. We sat there that night watching the election results come in and everyone was shocked. I think even Trump was shocked. And oh, yeah, I mean, I and and Putin must have been like, what just happened?
We spent all this time collecting all this intelligence. on Hillary's campaign so that we could undermine her during the next four to eight years. And now we throw that all out because this guy just won. But he probably also said, well, Bob might be nicer if he won. So, you know, it's sort of a win win for him.
But it's not just what they stole and dumped on WikiLeaks because that certainly happened, showing you that WikiLeaks, which I called the fast food of spying, is certainly not a journalistic enterprise. Right. They're working with the Russians. They might even be a Russian front. Yeah. To weaponize the information that the Russians stole. Right. You know, it's also we have to wonder, why did they keep in their pocket for later? Which which now, of course, they're not going to be able to use.
You know, you interviewed Rob Goldstone, who, to his misfortune, set up that Trump Tower meeting in those days. Actually, one of my fair. Yeah. The guy who doesn't use e-mail to this day. Yeah.
You know, it's funny. If they had somebody who who had even an inkling of counterintelligence, who knew? I mean, that campaign was so disorganized. Right. You know, Trump just sort of grabbed on to a a a Sy case in the United States that that that gave him momentum and got him going and use social media in a way that I don't think a Republican ever has before.
But here's his campaign was pretty disorganized.
And I don't think they had the people who you know, if I had been if I'd been on on a campaign, I would've said, whoa, everybody don't take that meeting. What's the matter with you right now? This is not going to look good. Not only are you taking this meeting, you're taking it in the middle of Trump Tower, where there are cameras on the door 24/7 and they're identifying every single person who walks in and out because this is your New York White House. Yes. I mean, the Russians must have known this, right? Yeah. Which is the biggest suggestion to me that they did this to set him up. They know that they're going to they know they're going to be identified. They're no everyone's going to know about the meeting. Everyone's gonna learn about the meeting. It's going to look really bad. And these dopes took the meeting, you know, and they never should have.
Yeah. No. Well, I mean, but you're an ethical person. You would never be within 100 miles of something like that. Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no.
That I mean, that these kind of things, these sort of sneaky things, they come back to bite you. Nothing stays hidden. I mean, I was a spy hunter. My whole job was uncovering these things that people want to hide. Now, I'm an investigator. I do the same thing. Nothing. Stay hidden. It's better to be on the side of the angels and then try to take a shortcut.
I'll just stay for the record. And then I want to ask you about election security and stuff. But I. To this day, I don't. Just for our audience, I don't understand why the behavior displayed in the context did not constitute a conspiracy. I guess some of that is maybe things I don't know. Maybe we'll find out someday. I it just seemed like the standard of a cunt short of, like I said, a signed contract or video was there was not enough. I don't I don't get it. But that's.
Yeah. Well, collusion is collusion is a very high bar. Legally, yes. I knew no one was ever going to find collusion because that's very. That would be very difficult. You would need something very definitive conspiracy. Well, I mean, there are a million conspiracies out there. Each one created that. Then the next then anyone and everyone does. I mean, late night is just just lives off conspiracy theory. Trump himself loves conspiracy theories. Right. You know, you can't really prosecute someone for a conspiracy theory. You must have hard facts. And there's a good thing behind that. Right. We want a prosecutors like to be hard. We don't want to prosecute someone because then you destroy someone's life. You know, there are plenty of countries out there that, for example, Russia, where, you know, you get prosecuted for nothing. I ask that poor ex Marine Martin, who's just sitting in a Russian prison because they planted a of a thumb drive on him and said he's a spy. I mean, that's just that that's just Putin angry that we rolled up one of their spies. We're Bettina. Yeah. And so they grabbed some poor guy that's over there in Russia as a tourist that, you know, used to be a Marine. And so he looks like someone who could be working with the CIA and they they trump up these charges. We why do we want the system of law to be difficult? Otherwise, we get what you have in Russia, which as an aside, I had to tell my wife, who speaks Russian and has been to St. Petersburg and Moscow and whatever, that I will never set foot in that country because I don't want to deal with the shenanigans that will probably happen.
Oh, from your perspective and yeah, the whole thing with Emma. I don't. It's been a while since I read about that case, but it was fairly obvious he's not. I mean, he. I don't want to get this wrong, but there was definitely some might have been some legal issues in his past. He didn't seem like a spy.
No. No. No. Never. Not pretty typical. Right.
I yeah. You know, you've been very generous with your time. I really want to ask you about security, because that's what you do. I mean. Sure. How can we safeguard the next election? How do you how would you do it if you're in charge?
Well, I think that there there is a lot of steps. There's there's a long answer to that question. But I will try to keep it brief. Just a few points. One, we have to get a hold of our elections security.
So what I mean by that is the Senate report just came out that there were there were attempts to investigate how you could compromise the election systems in all 50 states. This, by the way, isn't anything new. We've known this since 2016. During the election, there were there were plenty plenty of will be called probing attacks.
These are just to try to figure out if there is a way to get in and out and alter votes or or cause chaos, which is what the Russians love to do. By the way, the Iranians were also very involved in that election. That kind of went under the radar. And they certainly hate the heck out of us right now. So we can expect that they will be involved in 2020. We need to do a lot more to secure the cyber security of the state run elections systems, especially when those systems are using computer systems, are connected to the Internet. And that's where it gets scary. The good news for the United States is that we are still a extraordinarily decentralized election system, which is why it always takes forever to get all the votes counted.
Every different state, every different jurisdiction in every state uses different voting systems. So it would be very hard for a Russia to to actually cause major changes that would that could possibly change a vote. It's just it's just very difficult.
I would concentrate on the battleground states. I know they were very active in Florida, which was which which was a pretty important state during that election.
I would concentrate a lot of additional cyber security in those locations. But we also have to really analyze how what voting systems we're using them, whether they're vulnerable and do that threat hunting to find out whether someone is coming after them. Second, we gotta get ahead of the mess that the Russians made with our social media. And I mentioned this earlier button dummy accounts and troll farms, their Internet research agency, which, by the way, ha ha, 2018 during a midterm election. Our cyber command shut them off the Internet. That is, by the way. Awesome. We need to do a lot more of that cyber attack, cyber warfare that we're fighting right now, but we need to get ahead of that somehow. I think that the populace has to be a better informed that everything you read on Facebook and everything you see on Twitter is probably not true. You know, find better places to get your news. And then finally, our campaigns really have to do better in their cyber security. You know, one of the reasons that the Hillary Clinton campaign was attacked to such an extent is their cyber security was pathetic. Yeah. You know, they're the the chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign was using a G mail account now. I love Gmail. I do. I use emails for my for my public speaking.
I you know, it's easy count. It's very well respected. Gmail is taking great steps for security within their own platform, but should have been used using an encrypted Hillary Clinton dot com. Right. Campaign email address. He wasn't he was using a Gmail account that had all of his email stored. Going back to like 2003, which all were handed over to the Russians when they attacked his account and he did not have to factor authentication turned on because he wanted his chief of staff and one of his assistants have access to his email for God knows what reason. I guess get really important people like their systems have access to their email. I've never understood that. So he couldn't have it if he had had two factor authentication turned on then. We wouldn't, you know. Sixty thousand of his e-mails, whether the dumped on WikiLeaks. So, you know, we got to get better at that, these campaigns. Anyone who wants to protect information has to spend the investment on good cyber security and have people who are trained in cyber security to continue will be hunting threats. So it's what I've been saying all along. We need more counterintelligence and cybersecurity, otherwise we're not going to get ahead of the spies. We're now launching the cyber attacks.
Yeah, I mean, you're right on the money. I mean, my my recollection is that there was at least one FBI agent who was calling her campaign for weeks and not even getting a callback like about. Hey, you you've been hacked.
Yeah. They were warned. Well, first they were warned. All of the campaigns were warned that Russia and perhaps others is going to be coming after the campaigns. So please be be wary and step up your security. And then, you know, the FBI probably through, you know, different means to the FBI, but they learned that the that information was leaving the campaign to a server and they called. They tried to call and say, hey, guys, something's wrong. And finally, someone paid attention, the colony. And then they looked and they found out that they had been just losing information.
Yeah, I just don't get it to this day. I'm you know, it's like when I read your book and you're reading some of the like, some of the information security issues, you know, the FBI, even before you worked or even while you were there, you just kind of shake your head. How could how could such smart people make such mistakes?
You know, we we always take, you know, even those of us who do security and not me personally, but there are companies that do security. You take security, their own security. It tends to be lax. Right.
I think that people in generally don't general, don't think about their security, whether it's personal security. Right. I mean, you could boil this all the way down to people just walking into traffic because they're looking at their phone. Right. Or, you know, with earbuds in there. They're here. I mean, what happened to knowing about who's around you and your surroundings? Right. I mean, I spent a lifetime learning martial arts. And part of that right in self-defense is, though, who's near you don't let people get too close. People who are close can touch you. And if they can touch you, they get hurt you. Cybersecurity is something that is so archaic that people that they don't even think about it or it's too hard for them to think about it. But there are very basic things that people can do. And it's something that I try to bring into all of my keynotes just to just to get get the message out that we need to worry about what happens online, because it's not this happy little place that we go and Google Spirit Things. It's more like the Old West, where if you're not careful, you will step on a rattlesnake and it will bite you and you will lose that limb.
You've seen it yourself. I know. I know you have. And so I'm sure. I really just want to ask you one more question, which is which nation is going to be the greatest threat to counterintelligence intelligence. to ask what nation is or is it China or Russia? What do you think?
Hey, I get this question a lot and it changes every time I answer based on based on the intelligence that I'm looking at and the threats as I see it. You know, I've called for a long time.
I have called China and Russia the one A and one B, you know, they're both up there and they flip flop sometimes. Russia is the one I chance sometimes. China is the one be. I think if we're looking long term as a threat, as a true systemic threat to the United States, to our to our security, to our technology, to our innovation, I think it's China. I think that they just are pushing not only a a massive theft of U.S. innovation and brainpower and to steal. I think that they are also trying to do it as a means of improving their economy and as a as a secondary attack on our economy. So I worry much about I worry a lot about that. I think that China, unlike Russia, who who can be very much a smash and grab operation in Intelligence., China, takes the long term look at things. The Chinese are interesting. They're different than we are and that we all think of what we can do in our lifetime. I mean, hell, in the US, we we tend to think of what's going to happen in the next four years of whatever term of president we have. Right. We we don't think long term. I mean, some of us do like like those who are trying to get us to Mars.
Right. But for the most part, we try and tend to think what happens in just our lifetime. Because if we thought down the road to what's going to happen in our children's lifetime or our grandchildren's lifetime, we would be worried about things like the collapse of Social Security and Medicare and those sort of things they're about to happen. Right. Nobody cares. We just signed these massive bills and increased the deficit and nobody thinks about it. The Chinese, they don't think in terms of their lifetime. They think in terms of the state and that it continues for hundreds of years. So they might steal Intelligence. thinking they'll use it 10 years down the road. You know, they might instead of a weapon. I think intelligence. that we learn there's a breach. They may have penetrated systems where they're just quietly continuing to collect things and never using it. So that we never know it's there. So I do worry about that and I worry about that because the future of warfare will not be fought with tanks and guns. It's going to be fought in cyberspace. We're already fighting it. I mean, the cyber command just attacked Iran well and was able to shut down their military command and control systems.
I mean, good for us. You know, that's like the movie Top Gun happened five seconds. Right? So, you know, we do have to worry about that. Russia, on the other hand, is the more immediate threat. So if I was going to say in the next five years, Russia, you know, long term China, I think Russia right now is preparing to really mess with us in the two thousand 20 election. And, you know, it's interesting. People think that Russia is such a friend to Trump. But Trump, you know, as much as he likes the buddy buddy up with Putin when they're together, he has not his his the Trump administration has not been very nice to Russia. They've done a lot of things that have really pissed off. And if he really wanted to sow chaos, he would try to push the presidency into somebody on the other side. And we'd have a complete flip flop of administration and uncertain economy. You know, you never know what they're going to do. And that's what's really confusing and difficult for counterintelligence, because we have to try to predict these things, because if you can't predict them, you can't stop them.
But what I can say for sure is that they're coming after us. And between you know, it started in the 2016 election and they have not stopped working to try to figure out how to get it. And they're going to try. So we need to stop them.
Yeah. And I'll say just just on that. And then again, I really want to thank you so much for coming in. And again, everybody. The book is called Grey Day. You wouldn't believe it was true, except it is true. And the movie Breach, of course, which came out some years ago. Get both of them. Oh, and Eric, you run, of course, a private firm, right? I mean, that's what you do for security.
Yes. So I run a company called the Georgetown Group, which is an investigative services company in a Washington, D.C.. Hello. We work internationally, mostly in spy hunting and trust and diligence work. And you can always find me on Twitter at E. O'Neill. I'm not like social media, but I use it. I'm good at answering questions there if anybody would like to ask me.
And I'll just say closing. Just going back to what you said. What what I saw at the Helsinki summit visually told me, in my opinion, what happened and what would I think the threat, the real threat is. And I'll just that that was terrifying to me. But I certainly hope you're right that that it's not what I think it is. But again, I really want to thank you for coming on. And I hope we can do this again, maybe sometime out in L.A..
Thank you for listening. Follow forensic news on Twitter at forensic NEWSNIGHT. Counterintelligence is an intel pod. My personal account is Eric Levai. support forensic news on Patriot subscribed to counterintelligence. Everywhere you listen to podcasts, this is Eric Levai.. And this is counterintelligence.
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