Tony Schaefer
speaker
51 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Tony Schaefer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Someone going into CIA, and I'm getting this from Jim Woolsey, our friend Jim. Jim has said from his own experience, you need to have been a serving line intelligence officer to fully understand and run CIA. That's from Jim Woolsey, who's not an intelligence officer. So I'm just going with what Jim is saying. So I think there were better, more adequate and effective choices.
Maybe Mike Baker would have been one just saying. Uh, because I think that guy, I'm just, I'm just telling you to be effective. Look, I'm, I'm, I'm trained by you guys. I went through the farm. Uh, I'm just saying that if you're, you need to have the respect of the DO you come on, Mike, you know, if you don't have the DO, you don't run the eights.
Uh, and I know a lot of folks who've never really gained, uh, the respect to the DO. And if you don't have that, you're not really running CIA, just saying. So I'm skeptical, and I'm going to give it a B at this point, based on a little bit of skepticism, since he's not an intelligence.
And so... Jim Woolsey, I love Jim Woolsey. Jim Woolsey, I thought was a great director. I worked with him when he was director himself. Yeah.
All right, Tulsi and I are friends. Full disclosure, I just posted a congratulations photo of she and I in her office when she was a Democrat when I was advising her. So Tulsi's been on a long journey of... Both. And I, you know, it's been said, Mike, by several of my Democrat friends, I didn't leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me. I think Tulsi is of that mind.
Having been an advisor of Tulsi Gabbard, someone who knows her, I think it's a great choice. Now, while she was not on the Intelligence Committee, while she was in Congress, she was on armed services, as you and I both know. I'm a military case officer. DOD has a significant intelligence holding, if you will. NSA is actually DOD. NRO has, you know, NGA. CIA and DOD jointly man NGA.
So there's, you know. So I think based on her experience within Congress, being a lieutenant colonel in the reserves, which I still respect and obviously I think it's a good thing.
based on her being targeted and on the terrorist watch list, which I did get confirmation from a separate DHS source, I think she is going to go in there and be willing to do some things that other DNIs would not have necessarily been willing to do because they were afraid of upsetting the status quo. So based on that alone, I think I give it an A for what I see is coming. Okay.
No, that's very interesting.
Well, I don't know. I called Lloyd Austin on. I know Lloyd Austin and I called him the ultimate DEI hire yesterday. So I don't know. I think I'm pretty blunt.
They do not have budgetary control. Yeah. To your point, Mike, they have no budgetary control. Each entity still has their own budget that they have to justify to Congress. So that was one of the big things. I actually met with Negroponte on this when they formed it.
Ambassador Negroponte was the first DNI, and he and John Layman, my friend, former Secretary of the Navy, they were going back and forth, as this was based on a recommendation from the 9-11 Commission to create this warehousing, if you will, of requirements. And so one of the issues was, and still is, Without budgetary control, you have a hard time being director.
Well, considering I just badmouthed the current guy, I can only go up from here, Mike. So knowing both men. Now, so this is great. You know, this is great. I know both men. I have served with Lloyd Austin. It's documented in my book, Operation Dark Heart, so people can read about that if they want. And I know Pete Hengstead. I've been, you know, friends with Pete for a long time.
Again, full disclosure, I'm friends with Pete. So people just make that with a grain of salt as part of my assessment. He has several things going for him. He's actually got a good degree. He went to Princeton. He went to Harvard. So he's got some education, good education, Ivy League. He's a combat veteran, two Bronze Stars, major.
I don't know if he's still in or not, but he made it to major in the Guard. And he wrote a book, War on Warriors, which he actually was very clear on what he wanted would be willing to do or want to do if he was given a position of power, which now he is. What he doesn't have is links and obligations to the military-industrial complex. This is huge.
General Eisenhower warned us in his exit briefing, I think it was either 1959 or 60, about the military-industrial complex. That is what has largely influenced the thinking of senior Pentagon leadership regarding any number of things, especially weapons systems. So Lloyd Austin, for example, came out of, I think, Raytheon or something like that. Most of these guys have a revolving door.
Well, he's not in that boys club. He's not in that revolving door. He owes nothing to anybody except President Trump, which means he's going to be loyal to Trump. I give this a solid eight. And I know that may be controversial, but, you know, I think it's an eight. Yeah. So.
I don't know whether you can diversify it to that degree, but the management issue... But the thing is, we don't want to run out of those weapons in three weeks if we have to go to war with China. And I think it's one thing Pete has said. It's one thing to say, hey, we know the Chinese are bad and they made challenges. Okay, we made the right selection of weapons and the amount we need.
That's what I think, I agree with you, but that's what he's got to look at is how do we overcome that, prevent loss.
That's what he should be doing. Right. Well, remember, you've got the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. You've got several assistant undersecretaries. He can't do it alone. So I've learned personnel is policy. So it's going to be he's got to pick a really good team who can either complement his strengths or help him overcome his weaknesses.
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