The State of the American Deep State | Rick de la Torre

Transcript:

Rebecca Weber: Hello, everyone. I’m Rebecca Weber. Welcome back to better for America, where we dive deep into the issues and stories that really do shape our world. Now, today we have a truly fascinating guest, someone who has spent years operating in the shadows, navigating the complexities of intelligence, national security, and global operations.

Joining us is former CIA operations officer Rick De La Torre. Now with a career steeped in high stakes decision making, strategic intelligence, and firsthand experience in some of the world’s most critical regions, Rick brings a unique perspective on geopolitics, security, and the ever evolving threats that we face today.

Rick, welcome to Better for America. I’m delighted to have you with me today.

Rick de la Torre: Thank you for having me.

Rebecca Weber: it’s no secret that the deep state has grown more powerful than ever. the CIA, this is an agency originally built to safeguard national security. Today, it faces accusations of being weaponized against political enemies instead of focusing on real threats like China, terrorism, and the growing influence of global, globalist elites.

For years now, the left has tried to dismiss the idea of a deep state as a conspiracy theory. yet we’re continuing to see intelligence agencies and government, regulators, unelected bureaucrats, really working against the will of the American people. So from your experience inside the CIA, how real is the deep state?

Rick de la Torre: Sure. that’s a great question. I think, what you’ll find is, first of all, the rank and file. operations officers, reports, officers, analysts, the rank and file is nothing more than 100 percent committed to, to, to carrying out the day to day activities of the agency. And they do that fearlessly, bravely all over the world, bringing the actionable intelligence that policymakers and the military needs to make the correct, decisions, in, in, day to day matters, the challenge becomes, though, with the leadership and that’s, really where, I think the focus ought to be on if you, look at, if you look at the agency over the last 20, 30 years, we’ve gotten away from the original intent of when it was created back in, 75 years ago, back in 1947, with the Central Intelligence Agency Act and the, And the National Security Act, which, established the CIA as a civilian, and a premier intelligence, collection, organization, for the U.S. government away from military intelligence, right? back then, when it was created, the saying was, what the best, the best CIA spy is a, a someone with a Ph. D. Who could win a bar fight? And that used to be like the mantra of looking for bright, exceptional individuals who are willing to take risk and operate out in the field with, very little supervision and have the correct judgment.

Unfortunately, what’s happened is over the years. especially after the Cold War, the agency started to change and it started to focus on other things than just defending, our borders, defending, threats against the homeland, and focusing on what was happening in, in Europe and elsewhere.

And that really brought about, I think back, it dates back to George Tenet, really, if you think about it, George Tenet was a holdover from the Clinton administration. So when the second Bush, when George W. Bush. came in 2001. He allowed George Stennett to stay as a leftover from the Clinton years.

So if you look at the folks that were recruited, that were growing up, Within the agency at that time, all of them came pre nine 11. Then when nine 11 hit, you had a seismic shift in what the agency. Was really focusing on and that was hard chargers who just had one thing that they wanted to do and that was kill terrorists Prior to 9 11, you know You had a whole world of folks who wanted to do all kinds of things right focus on all kinds of issues and all you know, very altruistic, but not really what was driving the world at post 9 11 So if you fast forward then, at the end of eight years of bush, then we have the return of the Democrats with Obama, and now those folks that were working under George Tenet have now raised in the ranks and now are in senior leadership with, Obama, Brennan and others, and that becomes now much more entrenched, and that changes the hiring policies, that changes the focus, that changes the type of individual that we’re really hiring. and then now you fast forward again, we had Four years of Trump 1. 0 and then Biden, obviously with his DEIA policies, just really, put the final nail in the coffin.

And what you have is really a very outspoken, very left of center. ideology that, that is focused on, the, what I like to say, the, all the universities that have the name George in it and very little along the lines of focusing on, on, a wide, spread of, Americans.

So if you continue to recruit, pockets in, the New England States and New York and, definitely here in DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, you’re, just going to get. Not the kind of diversity of thought that we need. You may get diversity in skin color or in, gender or, or background.

But you’re getting the same kind of mental, knowledge and focus on pretty liberal ideas. there is now this frustration of those that, that came in post 9 11 who, are now. pushing up against senior leadership. The senior leadership is entrenched. this is, this includes like the 51 who wrote that, that, that, that letter, retired agency officers, they never saw Hunter’s laptop, they opined that obviously it must have been Russian misinformation without any lineage whatsoever of anything. And then, they’re shocked when their security clearances are yanked,

I’m excited with, with, Trump and what he’s doing now. And I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to start to see, hopefully, that, that entrenched, thinking, those entrenched leaders start to move and, really give away to that next generation of folks who did join post nine 11, who have one thing in mind and that’s defending the United States.

Rebecca Weber: Yeah, and I think what you what’s so important really that you hit on very well here is the leadership. It’s really about the leadership. And here we’ve got people with extreme ideologies that talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, when in fact, what you’re saying is that, it seems that real diversity, that’s based on merit, and that takes into consideration, if you have the ability to make these decisions, if you have a moral compass, so to speak, those things have eroded away and it’s become more centered on, hiring people that think alike, over the years.

And so here we are today, with a CIA that has really influenced, has a lot of influence, has a lot of controlling influence, can control, Indirectly in a sense, how things are being handled. So all very important to know. And for our listeners to really understand that what Trump is looking to do is to really clean house, so to speak.

He’s looking for the right people in leadership, to increase transparency because American people ought to trust these institutions. They were put in place for good reason. We need to get back to the basics here. and, what’s on top of so many AMAC members minds, today is, the recent investigations, what we see happening under DOJ.

And we see that it’s been revealed that the USAID programs, which were funded, Or are funded by American taxpayers have operated with very little oversight, and this raises concerns about where the money is actually going, whether it’s serving U. S. interests from your experience in intelligence and global operations, sir.

How do agencies like the CIA view the risks and potential exploitation of foreign aid programs?

Rick de la Torre: I, don’t think it’s just, focused on, on the intelligence community, really, it, it goes against, a lot of the activities that USAID has been conducting over the years. goes against just the basic rules of U.S. foreign policy, writ large, right? So that affects not just, the intelligence community, but it affects State Department and law enforcement and the Defense Department. what you had here, when USAID was created under the Kennedy administration, it was really designed to, to counter Soviet influence in lesser developed countries.

USAID would, build bridges and desalination plants and provide clean water to communities and show the goodwill of the United States. And it was designed to be that fast on the ground kind of counterpart, to maybe like a Peace Corps or something where we would spread, American generosity and counter for it.

The Soviets, however, what’s happened over the years is like most government programs, right? they grow, they become bloated and the way USAID was structured because it was brought into existence, not, by congressional law or an act, right? It was brought into existence by an executive order.

Under the Kennedy administration, it so it always operated independently of the State Department, it could just do whatever it wanted to do. And the dirty little secret was that if, you, retire from, the State Department. with your whatever advanced degree and in African tribal native studies and you see yourself not unemployable in the real world, you just create an NGO and then you call up your buddies at USAID and then you get Funding, for whatever pet project you have.

And it, it doesn’t matter how it fits into the greater scope of US foreign policy. So you’d have instances obviously, which, I’m, I’m excited that, doge and Musk have, gone ahead and shine a light on. you’ve had these instances of US taxpayer money going to ridiculous things, trans comic books in Peru.

I’ve been to Peru. I can tell you right now that Peru has a lot of problems, and one of them is not more trans superheroes in comic books, and that’s something that maybe the U. S. taxpayer shouldn’t really be involved in funding, Now, the challenge then came with USAID and its unresponsiveness over and over again, different, whoever was in charge always tried to audit them, and they would just disregard it, or they would follow very strict IG rules when it came to auditing that, Quite frankly, it makes no sense from an accounting perspective. You really need someone to look at outflows and inflows to, to understand that, they get caught up in the CBO kind of, dictionary definitions of things.

So there’s, there’s no general ledger there that was ever open to inspection. And then, on January 20th, president Trump issues, his executive orders regarding. policies that he wants to see changed writ large throughout the federal agency and USAID decided to ignore them and you ignored them and now it’s time to pay the piper on that.

They came in and they said, okay, if you’re not going to follow executive orders, then this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to pause everything. We’re going to stop everything. You are now officially reporting to the state department, which makes perfectly good sense. And let’s take a look at where all this money has been going.

And the more they look, the more horrific it is. kudos to the president on this one and the steps he’s taking. I’m excited that, to see that kind of change. And I hope and pray that this will continue. Across large swaths of the federal budget.

Rebecca Weber: Absolutely.

It’s unbelievable for learning that they are pushing radical left wing ideologies overseas. this is really turning foreign aid into a tool, I think, for cultural and political manipulation. it is such good work that we see happening and we will be following that and watching that closely.

I want to shift and talk a little bit about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This was originally designed to prevent bribery and corruption in international business, but some argue it’s now being weaponized against U. S. companies, putting them at a disadvantage, while foreign competitors operate with fewer restrictions.

So again, from your perspective, have you seen this law being used in ways that harm American interests and what should be done to ensure that it serves its original purpose?

Rick de la Torre: Oh, absolutely. That’s part of my current work now and what I do, helping, helping folks who’ve unfortunately, come under a very politicized DOJ, a very politicized state department, and now, are restricted in a lot of ways from accessing U.S. markets or conducting business. And when you investigate these things and when you look into them, and it was, I’ve got to tell you, it was horrific under the last four years. the, game was basically this, right? if you were overseas and let’s say you’re an overseas businessman and your competitor in that foreign market just happens to enjoy really good relationships with the United States for whatever reason, right? Political, long established trade. One way to undercut your competition is simply to, gin up some accusations. They don’t even have to be really investigated. They could be completely made up out of whole cloth. Gin up some investigations. maybe, pay a reporter to publish it in the local press or something.

Then, get those news kibblings. take out the U. S. ambassador or the, the U. S. chargee, whoever’s in charge in that country, take them out for a couple drinks, show them the articles, and then say, hey, you’re doing business with someone who’s corrupt or someone who’s accused of working, in the narco state or, or whatever it is, right?

And then with no due process, with no nothing, these folks are then put on sanctions lists. or, or they’re charged with something, and then that’s the end of it. So, that’s the sanctions part, and that has a lot less threshold than the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. On the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it’s even worse because here, it was never envisioned that a CEO, say, in New York, that runs a multi billion dollar organization with offices throughout the world, can’t be responsible for the shipping clerk in his Lugano office who may have looked the other way or failed to file some paperwork, incorrect, correctly, and now they’re looking at jail time and, if you look at what the, what the DOJ under Biden and others have done is they’ve gone after these multinational, corporations, extracted huge multibillion dollar in some cases settlements, right? And to just, get them, to pay up this money when there’s no real evidence that the executive officers involved in these corporations know anything about what’s happening again in some third world country thousands of miles away from them so that actually has a real strong chilling effect on foreign direct investment. And lesser developed countries. The thing that exactly is what they need.

They need U. S. Trade. They need U. S. Investment. now, hopefully, that part of the D. O. J. Has been, minimized, to a large extent. I suspect what you’ll see is you’ll start seeing now U.S. Investment Start to, look at those variables and their equations and start saying that, Hey, okay, maybe this is attractive again. Now we don’t have to worry about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and, its abuse, from our government. Look, it makes perfectly good sense to export all the good things about rule of law that the United States has.

I have no doubt about that. and I have to say, a good example is the story that broke a few years ago, as you recall, it was called the Panama Papers, which showed, all, you know, all this foreign money that was evading taxes. There were no Americans on that list, right?

There was no corporate CEOs. They all paid their taxes. They all did everything right. Surprisingly, most of the people on that list were European politicians, from the left, who have no problem passing taxes on others. But when it comes to them, they’ll hide their money. So China doesn’t play by these rules, right?

And our enemies don’t play by these rules. I’m not saying that. U. S. Businesses need to, need to get in the dirty business of briberies or paying someone off or anything like that. That’s not what I’m saying at all. what I am saying, though, is that when if you make the playing field equal U.S. Manufacturers, U. S. Investors, Definitely are much better partners than the alternative.

Rebecca Weber: Yeah, certainly it makes, a lot of sense to, that we do, export our practices, business practices. That is, as, as much as we can, as much as we can. I just wanna talk a little bit about artificial intelligence.

There’s so many rapid advancements happening there. cyber warfare, surveillance technology. America’s adversaries are finding new ways to really challenge our national security. From your experience, what emerging technologies do you think pose the greatest threats to this, to the us and what technologies do you think can help strengthen?

And protect the United States.

Rick de la Torre: If you look at since 9 11, the, amount of threats that we’ve had besides counterterrorism have grown exponentially, especially in the realm of cyber, right? the opportunity, the interconnectedness of the world, our financial institutions, all our critical infrastructure, our military, All of those things obviously rely on networks of computers and servers and routers and individuals that access those systems on a day-to-day basis.

The biggest threat I think we’re facing right now is the AI race that we’re having with the rest of the world. the, and I would throw quantum computing into that too. it, it is a moonshot thi this is, this is. The splitting the atom. This is developing the nuclear bomb, right?

It’s that kind of an event. This isn’t just a simple processor speed on your computer. you’ll be able to work faster. No, This revolutionizes everything we know about computing and data. and that means that we need to now shift. are our mindset and get in that game? Because if we don’t, if we, seed this to our enemies, then democracy itself is pretty much at stake.

In my opinion. the ability to look at data, the ability to look at that data, large complex data sets and be able to extract from that data very quickly. Solutions and answers is going to be the future. An example of this, right? An everyday example of this, let’s say in a military application, is being able to control that, that battlefield and know all the different things that are going on so that you could target your systems and your weapons appropriately.

If that would have taken a few minutes, but now you have a computer that could do that in a fraction of a second. who’s going to win that battle? It’s whoever has that computing power and is able to do that. And that extends to just about everything. I’ve expensed a complex financial markets that extends to, food safety that extends to the day to day processing of the internet, transportation, air traffic control systems, whoever has that capability to provide those solutions to complex data problems, the most efficient and, most accurate way possible, they’re going to, they’re going to run the future. It’s, just, that simple. So the good news is that most of that technology is invented and manufactured right here in the United States.

The bad news is though, that our enemies are actively trying to get to it. And if we don’t, put in the proper safeguards to make sure that those technologies aren’t exported, just willy nilly, and that we have some control as to where they go and who uses them and how they’re used, we’re going to have, those kinds of problems moving forward so I’m, and one way I’m optimistic that, we lead the way in, in that technology, whether it’s quantum computing, whether it’s energy, whether it’s, AI and it’s algorithms and chipsets. I do worry though that, that countries like China and in this case, really particularly China, are going to, either steal the, that IP from us or make the investments in that technology, in military applications and in defense applications.

And then we’re going to have some real problems catching up.

Rebecca Weber: I find AI just so fascinating to really understand that we’re at a whole new place today, just from even a decade ago, let alone say 50 years ago. This is so important. These emerging technologies that we keep our eye on them and that we have the right leadership as you have said a few times here today, we need good, strong leadership that’s ensuring that Americans and America is protected.

I want to thank you, Rick. This has really been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate you because your insights into intelligence. National security and really all of the challenges that America faces, is eye-opening. So we truly appreciate you sharing your ex expertise and giving us a glimpse into the realities of, the world.

Thank you again.

Rick de la Torre: No, thank you for having me.

Rebecca Weber: This is really terrific. And for all of you out there listening, if you found this discussion as compelling as I did, please be sure to subscribe. Leave a review, share this up episode. We’re so appreciative. Rick de la Torre, again, thank you for joining us. It’s been an honor having you on the show.

Until next time, everyone, I’m Rebecca Weber. Have a blessed day. Thank you.