[0:00]May I tell you a story? I hope you will. When I was the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 2009 to 2011, end of 2011. Uh, I told the then chairman John Kerry, I wanted to go to Afghanistan to do a formal Senate study on the heroin poppy crop, right? Afghanistan at the time was producing 93% of the world's heroin. And so I flew to Afghanistan, went to Bagram Airbase. I told them I needed to fly to Kandahar and then to Lashkargah, which is the capital of Helman Province and I was doing this study. Now, as a as a senior congressional staff member, I had the rank of Brigadier General. This is the only time in my life I ever pulled rank on somebody. And I said, they they wouldn't take me down there, and I said, I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, you are going to fly me to Kandahar, and then we will fly to Lashkargah and then we'll fly back to Bagram. So they they relented. We went to Kandahar, did some meetings. When we got to Lashkargah, as you're landing, for as far as the eye could see, all you see is heroin poppy. And so I said, I want to go into the Poppy Fields and I want to find a farmer and I want to talk to him. So I had security, I had a translator, Pashto translator. We just drive out into the fields and sure enough, we stumble on a poppy farmer. And I asked him a very naive question. I said, instead of Poppy, why don't you grow things that have two growing seasons, like tomatoes, or onions or pomegranates? Right? And he goes like this, the Americans told me in 2001 that if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow all the poppy I wanted. I said, what Americans told you you could grow poppy? And just as I said the question, my military handler pulls me by the arm and he says, we're under threat, we have to go back to the base. I never got an answer. We got back into the Jeep and they took me back to the helicopter. I flew back to Bagram. Actually, actually, like out of a movie. So I come back to Washington and I said to to the chief investigator, I said, I'm I'm on to something here. This is not good. So I wrote it all up just as I collected it. Well, I had a friend at DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. And I I called him. I said, listen, I'm going to send you a paper, eyes only. I just want your thoughts on it before I send it to John Kerry. So he calls me back a couple days later and he says, buddy, you know you're not going to get this paper published, right? I said, why not? He said, Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's heroin. Almost all of that heroin goes to Iran and Russia. And we want them to be addicted to heroin. It weakens their societies. And I never got it published. Well, fast forward, years later. That's disgusting. We've got a Fentanyl epidemic in this country. That Fentanyl is coming from China and Mexico. They want us to be addicted to Fentanyl because it weakens our society. And that's why we're in the predicament that we're in. So you believe that the US government allowed poppy production in Afghanistan in order to weaken Iran and Russia. I do, and the reason I have come to that conclusion is not because I'm any smarter than anybody else, but do you know how much of the world's heroin was produced in Afghanistan in the last year of Taliban rule, 2000? Not too much. Zero. None. They didn't grow any, not only did they not grow any heroin poppy in 2000, they were a net food exporter to Iran and to Pakistan. And as soon as we took over, it was all about the heroin. That's disgusting. That is quite amazing. That is quite amazing statistic. Terrible. Does anyone in a meeting where these plans were formulated say, you know, we're the United States. Like, we can't flood other people's countries with heroin. That's just so immoral. I never sat in a meeting like that. The meetings were all about how do we win? How do we get a leg up? How do we implement the policy that we want whatever country to follow? That was it. But if you intentionally flood other people's countries with heroin, it's kind of hard to tell yourself you're the good guy. Like, that's Oh, Tucker, that was something that I struggled with for at least half of my career at the CIA. We're supposed to be the good guys. So why are we doing so much of this? I just never understood it. And what was, what do you think the answer is? The answer was that I uh had stars in my eyes that that I just I was not fully understanding of Real Politique. Do you a liberal? Mm-hmm. Well, I'm not a liberal at all. And I find that disgusting. I find it disgusting. I don't want my government to be involved in any way in heroin trafficking. No. Nor do I. And I also don't know why Russia is our enemy, but big picture, but even if it there was a good reason to have Russia as an enemy, I still wouldn't be for flooding their cities with heroin. Right after the uh, the Russians invaded Ukraine, um, I was one of seven uh journalists, independent journalists, who were invited to lunch with the Russian ambassador in Washington. And what he wanted was our ideas on how the U.S. and uh Russia could continue to cooperate diplomatically even during a time of war. And I said I was actually proud of what I said. I I went prepared. And I said, the U.S. and Russia have identical interests in counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counter narcotics. Yeah. We should never stop cooperating on those three issues.
[6:03]And um, and I said, and you know what, there's a fourth thing. I said, your excellency, when you arrest an American, a a female American basketball player and give her a Draconian ten-year sentence for having a little bit of of weed oil, it's a bad look. That was the only time he got angry. And he said, do you have any idea how many Russians are in American prisons? 1500. I know that it's 1500 because I have to send my staff out to visit them. So if you want to talk about not arresting people, talk to your own government about it. Well, frankly, I would see that as an opportunity. Yeah. That's yet another thing on which we should be engaged with the Russian government. And we're not. And it doesn't matter who's in the White House, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican. We just have this idea that the Russians are bad, bad, bad, and we shouldn't be cooperating with them. I'll I'll tell you another thing. My um, my former wife was also a senior CIA officer. And as as recently as like 2017, she said to me, the Russians are the gravest threat that the United States has ever faced. And I'm like, what newspapers are you reading? Because I know these people and they want to work with us. They're not going to roll over for us, but they want to be engaged diplomatically. And we just don't do it. The gravest threat in what way? In what way? I I would be far more worried about the Chinese. Yeah. Than about the Russians. I'm far more worried about the Mexicans. I mean. And the Mexicans. I'll tell you another thing, too. You know, I I actually left the Democratic Party years ago because I thought that it moved too far to the right. Uh, the truth is that the ideological spectrum is not a straight line from left to right. It's a circle. And there are a lot of issues on which the right and the left can can meet and agree. Yes. That's where I am. I'm at the point where the circle meets. So some of my friends, some of my former friends won't speak to me because they say I'm far too conservative. That I've gone over to maga and they just don't want to be friends anymore. And that's fine. I don't care because then they they weren't real friends anyway. But but the issue is, I agreed with Donald Trump's policy about building the wall. I lost a lot of friends because of that. And I said, you know, you have to look at it this way. I read the Greek press every single day. I'm a recently, relatively recently, a dual US-Greek citizen now. And um, Turkey takes something like a billion and a half euros every year to hold economic refugees in camps in uh, in Turkey until they can be processed and resettled in places like Germany and Sweden and France, etc.. But what the Turks really do is they put them on little boats and they send them to Greece in the middle of the night. To destroy Greece. Right. The purpose being to crash the Greek economy. So what the Greeks did is, they built a wall. And all of a sudden, nobody can cross the border where the wall is. So the Greeks now focus on the islands and have the coast guard intercept these these boats that are coming in almost every night. The wall worked. Of course. That's why Israel has them. Yeah. We've got a new partner. It's a company called Cowboy Colostrum. It's a brand that is serious about actual health. And the product is designed to work with your body, not against your body. It is a pure and simple product, all natural. Unlike other brands, Cowboy Colostrum is never diluted. It always comes directly from American grass-fed cows. There's no filler, there's no junk. It's all good. It tastes good, believe it or not. So before you reach for more pills for every problem that pills can't solve, we recommend you give this product Cowboy Colostrum a try. It's got everything your body needs to heal and thrive. It's like the original superfood, loaded with nutrients, antibodies, proteins, help build a strong immune system, stronger hair, skin and nails. I threw my wig away, I'm right back to my natural hair after using this product. You just take a scoop of it every morning in your beverage, coffee or a smoothie and you will feel the difference every time. For a limited time, people listen to our show get 25% off the entire order. So go to Cowboy Colostrum.com, use the code Tucker at checkout, 25% off when you use that code Tucker at Cowboy Colostrum.com. Remember you mentioned, you heard it here first. Thanks for watching our YouTube channel. We hope you'll subscribe to it. And by the way, you can hit the little bell on there and get notifications every time we produce a video. We hope you'll do that also.
