Podcast: The French Connection

TRANSCRIPT: The French Connection

Mary Louise Kelly:

I don't think American foreign policy is being conducted through the State Department at this moment in history. It's all being done through military and intelligence covert channels.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm host of the weekly show, "GZERO World" on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with Mary Louise Kelly, previous Pentagon correspondent for NPR and now co-host of its news program, "All Things Considered." As a national security correspondent, she covered everything from wars and terrorism to the CIA and other agencies that go bump in the night. Today, I'll ask her about US defense and the intelligence communities challenges around the world, including North Korea, the Middle East, Russia, and in the United States itself. Let's get to it.

Announcer:

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Ian Bremmer:

And I'm here with Mary Louise Kelly. She is co-host of NPR's "All Things Considered," which we all listen to. Also, the contributing editor for The Atlantic magazine, and she started the Intelligence Beat and has been national security correspondent for NPR. Mary Louise, wonderful to be with you today.

Mary Louise Kelly:

Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

I thought I'd start really big picture on intelligence. How capable are the Americans of actually running intelligence these days? How far ahead are we from people? Where do you see the big challenges?

Mary Louise Kelly:

The big trend lines we watch are, will the CIA continue with its original core mission of espionage, human intelligence, stealing secrets? Which is something of a controversial term among CIA directors, but that's been what the CIA has traditionally done. After 9/11, they moved in some very different directions toward becoming more of a paramilitary force, toward targeted killings, toward drone strikes and the push and pull between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon and where that's going to land, and how the different personalities running those agencies envision deploying their resources. And then of course, the shift to more electronic intelligence. Does it matter if you're at the diplomatic cocktail circuits sipping your champagne and eating canapés with your foreign intelligence counterparts and capitals around the world? Is that still the way we get intelligence?

Mary Louise Kelly:

I interviewed John Brennan at CIA headquarters when he was still running the agency, and I was pushing him on this question. We had just been talking about the direction the CIA is going. And did he want to reorient the agency more toward its traditional roots and traditional role, like stealing secrets? And he bristled and sat up and said, "We don't steal secrets. We elicit secrets. We investigate things..."

Ian Bremmer:

Appropriate from him, perhaps.

Mary Louise Kelly:

"We do all this. We're within the law. We don't steal secrets." And when Mike Pompeo came in, President Trump's CIA director, at least for the moment. In a session on the seventh floor at Langley, he weighed in on that comment and said, "I want you to know we are back in the business of stealing secrets. I'm going to reorganize and reorient this agency and we're going to be way more aggressive than we have been in recent years."

Ian Bremmer:

Well, how's morale in the intelligence community today, those actively serving?

Mary Louise Kelly:

Like any huge community of... There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people, we don't know the exact number, that it's classified that work at the CIA and other spy agencies, but it's impossible of course to describe the monolithic mood.

Ian Bremmer:

We know that State's been unhappy.

Mary Louise Kelly:

Pompeo was an... My assessment remains a little bit of a question mark in terms of how his tenure has played at the agency. He has done something every CIA director says they're going to come in and do, which is get the agency off the front pages. CIA has not been on the front pages. It's been all about the FBI of late, and they're very happy with that. John Brennan has been extremely outspoken. He has not minced words in criticizing President Trump, that has been super controversial. It's not just him. Another former director, Michael Hayden, has been very critical of President Trump. If you're President Trump and you came in with this deep-seeded suspicion of the deep state and thought that US intelligence agencies were out to get you, and then you see all these former heads of US intelligence making extremely critical remarks, does it reinforce your view that maybe they are allowed to get me?

Ian Bremmer:

So let's talk about a few issues and go first to North Korea, your views on how, so far, preparations for the summit are going?

Mary Louise Kelly:

I feel like it's becoming more real. There was this surreal moment that night at the White House when this was announced that this was in the cards, and it took everybody by surprise. Really? The leader of the United States is going to sit down with the North Korean leader for the first time in history. The groundwork being laid in terms of Pompeo going, as we've now had confirmed, going and meeting with Kim Jong Un, developments starting to come out, which again we'll see how real they are. But North Korea being open to talking about de-nuclearization, we'll see how they define de-nuclearization, but what that looks like.

Mary Louise Kelly:

The latest twist that we're hearing via South Korea, which is of course playing an intermediary role here, but that maybe North Korea is open to US troops staying in South Korea. There's something like 28,000 US troops in South Korea. It has always been a position non-negotiable for North Korea that before they can even think about reconsidering their nuclear ambitions, those troops need to go. But the fact that there are talks at all, and it's starting to look a little bit more real is fascinating.

Ian Bremmer:

So let's move to Moscow, where you just were.

Mary Louise Kelly:

I was.

Ian Bremmer:

During Russian elections. I think you were there election night as well.

Mary Louise Kelly:

March 18th.

Ian Bremmer:

What surprised you? I mean, we knew who was going to win.

Mary Louise Kelly:

The outcome did not surprise me.

Ian Bremmer:

Yes.

Mary Louise Kelly:

They see a very different leader in government from the way that we in America consume news about Russia. I know one of my editors was pressing me when I filed saying, you're filing tape from three different Putin voters. Did it feel like they were just saying what they thought you wanted to hear? Or were they scared to be on camera and on tape saying anything other than voting for Putin? I said, no, they seem to actually really like him. They seem to be believers. And my editor was pressing saying, but when you ask him about Putin's Syria policy, aren't they upset about [it]? And I said, they're not voting based on Putin's Syria policy any more than most Americans are going to the polls voting for Trump or Hillary Clinton or whoever comes next based on Syria policy. They're voting because life for a lot of people in Russia is better now than it was 18 years ago.

Ian Bremmer:

So maybe this explains Trump. Maybe Putin's just a role model for him. He didn't have a proper father figure.

Mary Louise Kelly:

I don't know how you explain it. I will say the electorate in Russia has some really interesting similarities. Putin's support was lowest in the big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. He has a big rural demographic who are on board. And Putin has very successfully seized on that, this narrative of us against them, Russia against the world. That Russia is under siege with all of these false accusations, whether it's poisoning spies or hacking the DNC computer databases or continuing to try to interfere in American politics through Facebook or other platforms. They all think it's crazy.

Ian Bremmer:

One final place, Middle East.

Mary Louise Kelly:

Big question marks over Iran and what may happen with the nuclear deal there. Mike Pompeo if confirmed, is incoming secretary of state, is on record as saying it's a terrible deal and that he looks forward to dismantling that. That was when he was a congressman. He said nothing that seemed to indicate his mind has changed in his last year plus tenure as head of the CIA. And then the other wild card is the president's new national security advisor, John Bolton, known as a hawk among hawks on all kinds of issues from Iran to Russia to the Middle East writ large. Who has the presidency here? Who's determining policy on these things?

Ian Bremmer:

When's the last time the United States has had a Middle East strategy?

Mary Louise Kelly:

What strikes me about the Trump administration is... I'll throw the question back at you. Can you think of any country, any issue where it's clear what the Trump administration policy is, on foreign policy? They want to eradicate ISIS as did the Obama administration, but that's about as big a picture frame as we have for the Middle Easterns...

Ian Bremmer:

They want the Europeans to contribute more for NATO... Jerusalem is another one.

Mary Louise Kelly:

They're going to move the embassy where that's coming up in Jerusalem. That's going to happen. So there again, you can point to individual things, but how it fits into a big overarching goal, how that goal is tied with US interests, how we're defining US interests today in America. Are human rights as important as they were a decade ago, two decades ago, a generation ago, in terms of the way the US is allocating resources and people in the world?

Ian Bremmer:

You'd say not.

Mary Louise Kelly:

Based on the available evidence, I would say not.

Ian Bremmer:

Mary Louise, thank you very much.

Mary Louise Kelly:

It's been my pleasure. Thank you, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

That's your show this week. Next week come back, I'm bringing you 'The Mooch.' Did I say that? Yes, I did. 'The Mooch.' You don't want to miss it. We'll talk about the world. Be here.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company, understands the value of surface, safety and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more.