Ep 223 | What Nuclear War Under Joe Biden Would Look Like | Annie Jacobsen | The Glenn Beck Podcast

This episode delves into the potential scenarios and implications of nuclear warfare under the Biden administration, featuring insights from Pulitzer Prize finalist and investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen.

1. Deterrence Theory's Limitations: The concept of deterrence may be inadequate in preventing nuclear war as tensions escalate globally.
2. Leaders' Unpreparedness: Many leaders are not fully prepared for the swift decisions required in nuclear conflict scenarios.
3. Rapid Decision-making Required: A president might have only minutes to decide on nuclear responses, which emphasizes the need for better preparatory measures.
4. Potential Global Impact: Jacobsen discusses the catastrophic global effects of a nuclear winter, which could last for years and lead to widespread devastation.
5. Historical Lessons Ignored: There's a critical reflection on past lessons from Reagan and Gorbachev’s realization that nuclear war cannot be won.

1. Introduction

Glenn Beck introduces the topic and guest Annie Jacobsen, setting the stage for a discussion on nuclear war scenarios under Joe Biden. Glenn Beck: "If there were a nuclear attack, the fate of humanity would change in a second."

2. The Reality of Nuclear War

Jacobsen explains the immediate consequences of nuclear war and the historical context of nuclear deterrence. Annie Jacobsen: "Deterrence is merely a psychological phenomenon without a real promise of protection."

3. Insights from Jacobsen’s Book

Detailed exploration of scenarios from Jacobsen's book about what happens during and after a nuclear launch. Annie Jacobsen: "I describe it second by second, minute by minute, going into things that only a few people have ever talked about."

4. Leadership and Decision-making

Discussion on how leaders are unprepared for the realities of nuclear war and the rapid decisions they must make. Annie Jacobsen: "Leaders are unaware of the realities of nuclear war."

5. Concluding Thoughts

Beck and Jacobsen discuss the moral and psychological implications of nuclear warfare and the need for informed leadership. Glenn Beck: "For the first time since Reagan and Gorbachev, we’re talking about nuclear war as if it could be won."

1. Stay informed about global politics and nuclear policies.
2. Support policies and leaders who promote nuclear disarmament.
3. Educate others about the realities and risks of nuclear war.
4. Advocate for diplomatic solutions to international conflicts.
5. Prepare personally and communally for emergencies.

“Nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought,” declared Reagan and Gorbachev at their summit in Geneva in 1985. Yet nuclear war, says journalist Annie Jacobsen, is an “existential threat that still looms over us all.” From the nuclear “football” to the “black book of death,” Annie sheds light on what former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says the American people “need to know.” When nations like Russia and China have a stockpile of nuclear weapons, Annie advises that it’s time to remember how to differentiate between enemies and adversaries in order to avoid nuclear winter and a potential return to the lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer. Glenn and Annie also discuss the covert Operation Paperclip that brought Nazi scientists to America, including “Hitler's favorite chemist,” and the CIA’s top-secret paramilitary operations. “No one knows who to trust,” says Glenn, and the scariest part is that we are all forced to put our trust in the one man who can launch American nuclear weapons any time he wants – President Joe Biden.


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People

Annie Jacobsen, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev

Companies

None

Books

"Nuclear War" by Annie Jacobsen

Guest Name(s):

Annie Jacobsen

Content Warnings:

Discussions of nuclear war and its catastrophic effects

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Glenn Beck
And now a Blaze media podcast. If there were a nuclear attack on the United States, the fate of humanity would change in a second.

Within minutes, mutually assured destruction would demand global wreckage. And within just a few minutes, we could be facing a nuclear winter that would last years.

Does deterrence protect us from this?

Its a pretty dark future.

As my next guest suggests, its merely a psychological phenomena. Without any real promise of protection.

Can American Americans and America trust other nations with nuclear weapons? Can we even trust ourselves?

My guest today is one of my favorite people, a world class journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling authorization. She is fascinated, strangely, in the same things I am.

She goes in depth, in investigation, takes her sometimes years to do into the most secret crevices of american history. She's here to talk to us about a couple of things. But first, what really happens in a nuclear war?

Please welcome today's guest on the podcast, Annie Jacobson.

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Glenn Beck
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They've rescued over 280,000 babies and moms through love, compassion and free ultrasounds. And every day they rescue 200 more. They also offer assistance for the mom up to two years after that baby is born, putting a lie to the left's claim that conservatives don't care after birth. I'm proud every day to partner with Preborn. They're helping change the world in a, in the best possible way. One ultrasound is $28. Please donate securely. Dial pound 250. Say the key word baby. That's 250. Keyword baby, or go to preborn.com. glenn. That's preborn.com. glenna Annie, I am so thrilled to have you on the show. You are, you don't know this, but you are greatly affecting my thinking on a few things. And I have been really struggling with a few topics. And I don't know, you just seem to be interested in many of the same things that I am. And I'm trying to figure out how we got here.

And I want to talk about three books that you have written.

Operation Paperclip is one of them. Then surprise kill vanished. But I want to start with your latest book, Nuclear War, which, quite honestly, it did not make me popular with my wife because I would be reading and go, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And she's what? What? Stop reading these books about nuclear annihilation.

It's fascinating and terrifying.

Why did you get into this? The first thing? How did you, and why did you select this topic?

Annie Jacobsen
First of all, thank you for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to speak with you. And if you're familiar with my other books, as you are, as you mentioned, two of them that we might get into.

You know, that I write about war and weapons and national security and secrets. And in every one of the previous six books I have written that covers the Pentagon, the CIA, various military operators, all the wars America has fought since and including World War Two, a hundred or more sources per book. Imagine all the sources ive spoken to. How many of them have said to me with kind of a sense of pride, national pride, Annie. I have done what I have done to prevent nuclear World War III.

And so during the previous administration, fire and fury rhetoric Covid a little bit of extra time, I began to wonder, wait a minute, what would happen if deterrence, that idea of prevention that all of these sources had been telling me about going back 15 years now, what would happen if deterrence failed? I wanted to specifically demonstrate for readers what happens not how it happens, not why it happens, but what happens.

Glenn Beck
It is one of the most terrifying journeys. And so well written. You know, you're writing it second by second, minute by minute, and you're going into things that, I mean, there's a couple of things in there you say, like, only one person has talked about that. And it's a, it's, with me, you're revealing some things in there that are truly remarkable.

Gorbachev and Reagan, they're both gone now, and that's a lost era. But I think they both came to the same conclusion. You talk about it, they both came to the same conclusion, that this is madness and it can never, ever be fought.

But for the first time in my lifetime since that discovery from Reagan and Gorbachev, we're now talking about it as if it could be one.

What are the world leaders thinking?

Annie Jacobsen
Well, you've hit upon an important point, certainly for me, when I was really doing the heavy reporting on this book, doing these intense interviews with people like former secretaries of defense, former stratcom director, former commander of the us nuclear sub forces.

This was during COVID when people had a little more time on their hands, perhaps to do zooms with someone like me.

And what was often said to me by many of these individuals who are cold war warriors, so who sort of were in the highest ranking positions you're talking about in the eighties and the nineties and the early two thousands some later, they said to me that part of the reason why they were willing to speak to me about the horrors of what it would look like if nuclear war happened was because people had forgotten. Former SecDef Leon Panetta said to me that it was good that I was doing this because the american people needed to know, as if wed all forgotten. And youre absolutely right. Who would have possibly imagined in the worst way that when the book would publish it, published four months ago, we would be in the middle of this rising rhetoric and also presidential insecurity, world leader insecurity, people not behaving like they are in command and control.

And so that reveals, I believe, an even more perilous nature of this premise of deterrence that we spoke about earlier, this idea that, oh, deterrence will hold. We'll just have a bunch of nuclear weapons pointed at everyone and no one would be insane enough to use them.

Glenn Beck
I think I got this from you, but I can't remember the idea that everyone's back is up against a wall now. Putin can't lose.

We can't back out.

Ukraine can't back out. So all of these major countries, China, the same.

None of them can walk away a loser.

And that just ratchets this kind of stuff up to beyond reason.

But do these players, do these players actually believe that they can win?

Annie Jacobsen
One of the most remarkable reveals that I learned in reporting the book was how unaware world leaders are as to the realities of nuclear war. And at least that can be said about individuals, presidents of the United States. And that is based on their closest advisors, by the way, meaning, you know, I think it was Bill Perry, another former secretary of defense, who said to me, you know, most come into office unprepared. They don't want to know.

So, again, it reinforces this idea that we'll never have a nuclear war. I have so many other things to worry about at home and abroad. So let me just focus on those things, including my popularity at the expense of this existential threat that looms over all of us. And so for that specific reason, in reporting the book, I wanted to take the reader from nuclear launch to nuclear winter.

Take them in seconds and minutes, as you say, not bring them, not offer up my opinion or even the opinion of wise analysts about how this could happen or how leaders might feel squeezed, as you say, or feel what?

Just what's going to happen. And I hope that all of the leaders around the world read this book and realize that's the. You've hit upon the most important quote, by the way, Reagan and Gorbachev. Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

Glenn Beck
In reading this, I have shared it with so many people and the people that I take seriously and the people that I think are up to speed and are awake on what we might be facing, I'll say, have you read Annie J. And they'll stop me. Yes. It is absolutely terrifying, isn't it?

But there's so many people that haven't read it that should. And it goes to the point, you know, when I saw the moment in the debate where Joe Biden, and I do not say this as a partisan, everybody came out of that worried about, oh, my gosh, how can he run for, you know, and win against Donald Trump? He's not gonna win. And all I heard in my head was, most presidents are not prepared. And when I'm listening to that section of when they're bringing the black book of death out and the decisions that he and he alone has to make, I thought I wouldn't be prepared for. Nobody would be prepared for that. Okay. This guy cannot be the man with the football.

Can you explain what the president has to decide and how he really cannot get advice from, from the Pentagon leaders.

Annie Jacobsen
Absolutely. And you know, Glenn, it's like a few basics are really important, I think, for listeners to know. And you and I know this. You know, me having reported the book, you read it. You learn really quickly.

One of the most significant hallmarks of nuclear war is that when the missile launches, it is called an ICBM.

And when it launches, it takes approximately 30 minutes to get from one continent to the other, and the ICBM cannot be redirected or cannot be recalled. 30 minutes. Then you also have to consider that built into the rubric of nuclear war planning is the concept that we must launch our nuclear weapons before they hit the United States.

That is fundamental, and that is why a policy called launch on warning exists, which is exactly like it sounds. The president must launch when he gets a warning that a strategic ballistic missile is en route to the United States.

And now you see, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Glenn Beck
Annie, how could. Because you talk about this in the book.

North Korea launches. We don't know for sure it's coming for us. We have no idea if it even has a nuclear warhead in it.

I mean, it may be heading for Canada.

It may just be a dud that never had. If we launch, then we're first strike.

How do you make that decision to launch before it hits a city?

Annie Jacobsen
Couple clarifications there that are important.

For starters, we do know where the missile is coming from because we have satellite systems overhead.

Glenn Beck
We can see it launch. Yes.

Annie Jacobsen
So we can see it launch in under 1 second.

We have satellites parked over our nuclear armed adversaries. So the system is set up to be alerted immediately. And then what I learned from reporting the book and speaking to individuals in the military who are inside those bunkers that are receiving the data as it comes from the satellite system down to earth in these bunkers across the United States as part of nuclear command and control. Within 100 seconds, they know the trajectory of the ballistic missile. They know if it's coming at the United States. They can tell within 15 seconds, oh, it's not going to Moscow. Oh, it's not going to Guam. And so imagine those hundred seconds in that command and control bunker. Once they know, once they know it's coming to the. And then they discern San Francisco versus east coast, rather, west Coast. East coast. Once they know it's coming to the East coast, the president is being notified immediately. And then you begin to see that this is a system of systems. It is a sequence of events that is pre programmed to occur. And that is why, to answer your question, the president has six minutes to decide because once hes notified that youre already, you know, lets say between five and eight minutes into the 30 minutes delivery of that nuclear weapon. But what is, you also raise another important point, which is whats in the warhead.

And you are absolutely right. And that is another flaw that we do not know. We will not know. We being the Defense Department, will not know whats in that warhead until it strikes the United States. But as one advisor tells the president, no one would be insane enough to send a ballistic missile to the United States if they did not assume they were going to be counter attacked with a motherload of nuclear weapons. This gets us into that paradox of deterrence, which is madness.

Glenn Beck
She is fascinating. More in just a minute.

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Who is with the football. Besides the president.

Annie Jacobsen
The president of the United States has what is called sole presidential authority. That means he asks permission of no one to launch nuclear weapons, which he is required to do. He doesn't ask permission of the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, certainly not the Congress.

And so he may turn to his secdef.

He may turn to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would almost certainly be on comms. And he may ask them, what do I do? But they are there to advise, not to instruct. It is up to the president. And that is why the decisions handbook inside the nuclear football is so important. It comes down to one man.

You hope he has his marbles and a list in front of him of counter strike options that have been pared down by a group of individuals at the Defense Department.

For him to make this choice that he is being pressured to make in the next six minutes.

Glenn Beck
They can advise, but they cannot.

They cannot. He can't say, what should I do?

Right. They're bound constitutionally not to tell him what he should do.

Annie Jacobsen
Yes, they cannot order him what to do, which is really remarkable. And so on the flip side of that, he can just, he has what's called authority, but he can and will lean on his secdef, almost certainly. And that was conveyed to me by two secretaries of defense. They are the sage counsel. So another important thing to consider when you're considering who the president is choosing as his secdef. But no, the responsibility is his alone.

Glenn Beck
So who stops a president that just goes nuts and says, you know what? I want to take out China today.

Give me the football.

Who has the authority to stop him if that would happen?

Annie Jacobsen
No one, officially. There are stories that exist. Theres a story of Richard Nixon sort of drunk in the last days of office, threatening nuclear weapons against, you know, Southeast Asia. And theres a story of Henry Kissinger calling up the Pentagon and saying, no one take orders from the president without talking to me first. Those are stories I didn't hear, that Henry Kissinger himself. But what we do know is that this decision must be made with this incredible pressure cooker of time and that a situation happens called jamming the president, which is when most of the military is really pressuring the president to make a decision about the number of weapons he is going to use in the counter strike, which targets to hit. This will kill millions, if not tens of millions of people. The president can barely be aware of this because he's reading what was described as a denny's menu like list of options.

Glenn Beck
So is this called the black book of Death? Isn't that what it's called?

Annie Jacobsen
It is called the decisions Handbook.

Its nickname is the Black Book.

Doctor Glenn McDuff, who's a weapons designer at Los Alamos and also the historian at the classified museum there, told me the reason it was called the black book was because it involves so much death.

Glenn Beck
And he has to look at it. And then who plays like the actuary role that when he picks everything from the menu, then in your book you describe that somebody has to now calculate how many people will die and if that crosses over into anybody's border, who does that?

Annie Jacobsen
Yes, those are all decisions that are happening really fast. What we learn is that at the same time that the president has that decisions handbook, the black book he's looking at with the mill aid holding it in front of him, there is an identical copy of that book at the Stratcom bunker in Nebraska. So for listeners really quick, there are three bunkers that are going to be at play. There's the military bunker beneath the Pentagon.

There's one beneath Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska. That's the stratcom bunker, us strategic command. And then there's the bunker inside of Cheyenne Mountain.

They were referred to me as like the brain is the Cheyenne Mountain, the muscle is the stratcom bunker. And that what happens at the Pentagon is the beating heart of nuclear war. And those three command centers are all working together on comms to get this order from the president because then the weapons must be launched by the StratcOm commander out of that bunker in StrAtCOM. And by the way, Glenn, you and I both know we're only in the first few minutes of the scenario unfolding. This is where the decision trees start to go bananas because you have the secret service with a different plan. They want to move the president out of Washington DC. And you have the stratcom commenter that has to get on the doomsday plane because hes got to get up into the air so that he can order further nuclear strikes as America is above obliterated by incoming nuclear missiles.

Glenn Beck
So the scene that you paint of the, I don't know if I would call it chaos, the orchestrated or controlled chaos that it would be is phenomenal. And then when he picks certain targets, it might kill so many Chinese over the border. And will China see this as a threat?

If we are going to send missiles, we have to send them over the polar cap, which means they go over Russia. Have we talked to Russia? In your book, they never get a hold of Russia.

The right people don't get in touch with each other.

Why did we get rid of the hotline and why don't we have that system now with all countries that have nuclear weapons?

Annie Jacobsen
And of course you're asking basic questions that I myself wonder and I hope every person who reads the book wonders when you move through the second by second and the minute by minute reporting this, as I did, learning from different individuals who are inside the nuclear command and control, who can answer those questions that you really cant even comprehend until you start doing what I did, which is following the decision tree process.

It was remarkable as I was learning this to realize that there is an egregious problem every second and minute of the way, literally, and you just spoke of a couple of them. I mean imagine as the president makes his decision from the decisions book, I'm going to go with this counterattack. Somebody has to quickly brief him. If he asks on how many people it might kill, there's also a weather officer involved who may pipe up and say it would, you know, the fallout would be this. Again, these are decisions that are fluid, they are not specific. Certainly if the president asks, let's say there's a national security adviser in the room who's really knowledgeable about China, who's concerned how China might react if the counterattack is to North Korea, we begin to see all the errors. But you have pointed out one of the most important ones that is just astonishing to everyone, which is that US ICBM's do not have enough range to target North Korea without overflying Russia.

And so imagine, just think about where we are today. The president of the United States has not spoken to president of Russia in more than two years.

General Milley couldnt get his counterpart on the phone, General Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when it was erroneously reported by the AP back in the early days of the Ukraine war, an erroneous report that a missile, a russian missile had struck Poland. Thats an article five NATO conflagration potential.

Milley couldnt get his russian counterpart on the phone for at least 24 hours.

And so this is not like imaginary scenarios. This is real world problems. The ability for a leader to just pick up the phone and get his counterpart is in 2024 fantasy.

Glenn Beck
How is that possible when I can see what's happening on the other side of the world? How is it that the rational nations have not said, I'm gonna hire one guy, one team that will rotate out, be with him with the football or whatever, 24 hours a day. And with that is a phone where I can call China, Russia, North Korea, America, anybody, Israel, anybody who has them, Pakistan. I need to get them on the phone. How could we possibly have this system in today's world with our technology and not be able to get the leader of the country that we think is bombing us or that we have to fly over or that we're about to bomb on the phone?

Annie Jacobsen
And this is where we come to the, like, sort of the, we really have to talk about concepts of, like, rationality, because technically, you could, you and I, I could skype someone in Moscow in a moment with or without the, you know, technical problems that I sometimes have. I could.

But what we're talking, the reason why these leaders can't communicate with one another has to do with enmity, has to do with hostility.

It's a purely human emotion. It has to do with pride and false pride. And it has to do with seeing someone else as the enemy as opposed to the adversary. Which brings us back to the only ray of hope in all of this, which is the Reagan Gorbachev denouement that was experienced in the eighties when you saw two world leaders whose countries had for decades seen one another as the arch rival, you know, the twirling, mustache bad guy.

And then suddenly there was a moment of sanity where the two parties came together as adversaries or as opponents.

Thats so much more realistic and far less dangerous in the world in which we live is to be able to see people in opposition as opposed to an enemy you need to kill. Thats why they cant communicate.

Glenn Beck
I talked to an expert on nuclear war, supposedly right after 911. And I was living in New York, and I said, what could these missiles do? And I didn't get the same kind of answer that your book gave me. What I got was, most people will be surprised that they live through it.

That, because I see, I don't want to live through that. If it's an all out nuclear war, there's nothing left. Can you describe what that's like?

Annie Jacobsen
Yes.

Just a quick thought on what other people tell you. I have noticed recently so many false positives of what people say can happen coming from really high ranking individuals on both sides of the presidential candidates, shall we say? And one comes to mind. I saw one of Trumps former national security advisers doing a big conference. This is after there was the whole uproar about President Bidens cognition, and he was talking about how he had wargamed through nuclear war scenarios that take place.

He was talking about how, you know, the president has to make a decision in hours. And, you know, from my book, that's not true.

That's so true. And I've also, you know, I cannot tell you how many people have said to me before the book published, and these are knowledgeable people that are not specifically in command and control have said, oh, Annie, we have an interceptor program that would take care of that. Or you hear now we have an iron dome.

This is not accurate. We have 44 interceptor missiles.

Glenn Beck
The Russians have that part of your book is.

That part of your book is so terrifying, because there's two things that we have, and we don't have any hardening to speak of for EMP, and we don't have. We have, what'd you say? 41 interceptors. When you take the reader through that part of the book, you're like, I mean, I've been living inside of a lie to make me. To make it possible for me to sleep at night. But none of this is happening. Nobody's taking this seriously.

So take us back again to what happens at the end, because I want to move on to a couple of other books, and we're going to run out of time.

Annie Jacobsen
So nuclear winter is what happens. And like everything in the book, readers can be reading about what I'm writing, and then they can go back into the notes section if they want to understand.

Where did she get this information? Because it's not from Annie Jacobson's imagination. Tragically, this is science fact, not science fiction.

For the nuclear winter section, I was able to interview Professor Brian Toon, who is one of the original five authors on the nuclear winter theory that Carl Sagan is so famous for. But in fact, there were five of them. Toon was the young student of Sagan at the time, and he spent decades since.

Interestingly so, nuclear winter is exactly like it sounds.

The sun blots out from 330 billion pounds of soot that gets lofted into the atmosphere from the result of all the nuclear weapons and the mega fires and the cyclones of fire that they produce and the forests burning and the nuclear power plants melting and the peat bogs on fire, the pyrotoxins, the cities, it just all lofts into the troposphere, and it blots out the sun.

And the original idea, because the computer modeling was not anything near what it is today. When the paper came out in 1983, the original idea was this could last for a year or so. And now state of the art climate modeling shows it could last for seven eight, maybe even ten years, 70% reduction in some.

The temperature of the earth falls something like 37 degrees.

Large bodies of water from Iowa to Ukraine in the mid latitudes of the globe just get frozen over. And that is the death of agriculture. And without food, 5 billion people will die in total according to these models.

Never mind. We haven't gotten into the radiation poisoning and the pathogens and the return of plague. And so man returns to his hunter gatherer state. And you know, the most haunting quote in all of this, when I think about nuclear winter and you think about the survivors, is the quote from Nikita Khrushchev. And he wrote to Kennedy, and he said after a nuclear war, the survivors would envy the dead.

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Glenn Beck
Okay, final moments with Eddie Jacobson in just a second. 1st, let me tell you about burna by rna. Most self defense situations can be handled with a gun, but that doesn't mean they all should be handled with a gun. I believe wholeheartedly in the second amendment, but I also believe in the power of having options, because I know I'll be held responsible not just on this citizenship, but my first citizenship as well. I got them. They have to be threatening my life and the life of my family or my children.

And sometimes it doesn't take lethal force. That's where the Burna launcher comes in. I have it. My team has it. It's a great compliment to our firearms because there are situations where less lethal is the way to go. And Burna is the best alternative to deadly force. It fires powerful deterrents like tear gas in kinetic rounds, all the things that could incapacitate an attacker for up to 40 minutes. Governments and agencies and police are all using this. Now they're getting rid of their taser, and they're replacing it with a Burna launcher. Have a choice? I want you to go to burna.com right now. Burna.com. glenn. Get a 10% discount right now. Burna.com glenna, thank you for all of your hard work on this subject. It was very eye opening, and I have urged over and over again my listeners to read your book because it's a get sober quick kind of call on what we're dealing with. So let me switch topics, and we're probably only going to have a chance to talk about one more thing.

Annie. I have, I've always strangely, and maybe it's because my name is Beck, that ever since I was a kid, I wondered what the Becks did in Germany. My line came over here back in the 18 hundreds, but I know there's family members over in and I don't even want to look. You know what I mean? I kind of hang my hat, and I know I'm not related to them. I'm pretty sure I'm nothing, but I kind of hang my hat on. Well, General Beck tried to kill Hitler, so maybe I'm from that line because of the cowardice and the decisions that were made. Sometimes just the decisions that were made. People turned into monsters, absolute monsters.

And I've been fascinated by it, and I've done a lot of research on the Holocaust and the roots of it. I mean, it's happened 18 times. There's something in the water that I think it's an actual evil that has been trying to kill the Jews over and over and over again. And it keeps jumping from one place to another.

And I look at the sickness in our own country.

We are early progressives, the eugenics progressives here in America that we're doing, you know, sterilization, everything else.

We sent that over there. We helped them perfect it, then they took it a whole, you know, a whole nother football field or six down the road, and.

And then instead of stopping it, we reintroduced the poison back into our system.

And I've really struggled as I worked on Wernher von Braun, and I read something in your book that I didn't know I always thought it was, well, we not sure.

But you say that Wernher von Braun, who got us to the moon, actually was hand picking the jewish slaves from Buchenwald to help him work on his rockets.

Everywhere else says, well, he may not have known. He didn't know. I've always thought that was impossible. But you say for sure he did know. He handpicked them.

Is this guy that we look at a total monster?

Annie Jacobsen
You know, your intro to that is very interesting because you're asking people to think about the psychological, the psychology behind becoming evil. And, you know, you're asking at least what I'm hearing is, is it a slippery slope? You know, we are not born evil. Is it a slippery slope? And in looking at, you're absolutely right. We know from the documents in the Bundes archives that I visited in Germany to report the book with a german PhD who is translating for me in real time. Okay.

That von Braun was at Buchenwald with Colonel Pister, who was the commandant, and was handpicking people who looked healthy enough to be able to build his rockets as part of the slave labor teams in the Nordhausen death factory, the rocket factory.

And so when you are able to get that kind of specificity, you can pin, I believe, a culpability on someone that may be different than he wore a nazi suit. Still, if you wear a nazi suit, as far as my eye, you're a Nazi. But once there's documentation about that, you know, von Braun is peculiar because like all the nazi scientists who came to America after the war, not a single one of them ever in my research, and there were 1600 of them that came. I focused on 23 specifically in Operation Paperclip. These were people who were very close to Himmler, Hitler, Goering. I mean, we're talking top nazis.

Not in one place, anywhere, ever.

Did any of them ever ask forgiveness.

They glossed over what they had done and just went pro America, pro democracy, pro science.

So, to my eye, that says something about the man, because if you cannot admit what you participated in, dot, dot, dot.

Glenn Beck
You talk about, and I don't remember the names, but you talk about a. Yeah, a gas. I think it was a gas that was made into bombs that we had no idea, nobody had any idea that Hitler never used that could have changed the course of the war, and the people who designed that and were involved in that, that came over here. Talk about that.

Mm hmm.

Annie Jacobsen
You're referring to Otto Ambrose, who is one of the most odious human beings I've ever researched and reported on, the a in Ambrose is the a in sarin. Gas sarin. And Ambrose was Hitler's favorite chemist.

He was also in charge of the buna, which is synthetic rubber, the buna slave labor factory at Auschwitz.

He was a cruel and murderous human being. He was tried and convicted at Nuremberg, and we got him out of prison so he could consult for operation paperclip.

I found in the National Archives in a dusty file with a rusty piece of paperclip on it that I don't think had been read in decades, an award that Hitler gave Otto Ambrose, which was a 1 million Reichsmarks bonus for having invented synthetic rubber for the Reich. They needed treads for the tanks. And, you know, once we got him out of prison and made him a paperclip, we restored his money to his family.

And so you're talking about.

You ask the question why? Well, the United States decided that the new enemy was Russia, which kind of loops us back to the nuclear war concept. As early as 1945, when you really drill down on it, you can see how the War department. Now, the Defense Department, predicted that it was going to have an I all out total war with the Soviet Union. And the idea was we needed to get those odious nazi scientists on our side to develop our weapons, because they did have weapons that were advanced beyond what the United States had developed by ten or so years. So we got the nazi scientists with the idea of, if we don't get them, the Russians will.

Glenn Beck
Well, there is another option.

We introduce them to Jesus.

I mean, honestly, I'm reading it and I'm thinking, shoot the guy in the head. He doesn't then go to Russia.

He doesn't continue to develop for anyone else. I really am struggling with this portion of history of thinking.

Did we poison ourselves by bringing them in? Wouldn't it have been better to say, sorry, justice trumps everything?

But I know most scholars would disagree with that because they brought so much to us. But that's fruit from a really bad tree.

Was it a mistake?

Annie Jacobsen
You know, a section of operation paperclip deals with the Nuremberg trials and specifically the doctors trials, because the nazi doctors experimented on humans to make, you know, pilots fly faster, further and farther, and they experimented on humans to perfect biological weapons and chemical weapons.

And those doctors were particularly odious to my eye. And I looked at that the hardest. And so, yes, I had an experience as I was writing that book and reporting it, which was, why weren't they hung?

And that is a question that I take the reader through in the book. You know, on balance, the other idea about it, and certainly this is my role in history, if you will, is to write books about it, because I believe, like Eisenhower once said, that an alert and knowledgeable citizenry is the balance to national security. Because, Glenn, you and I both know the world is a really antagonistic place. There are sinister forces, you know, and there are people intending on doing harm and war everywhere. And so you must have a strong national security idea. Never worked.

But the alert and knowledgeable citizenry is what will balance out these bananas ideas that the president, you know, is barely capable of making decisions, these ridiculous ideas that his national security advisors don't really know how fast everything would happen if it happened. This idea, that sort of popularity and politics is more important than national security, that, to me, is the danger. And it's why I don't write about politics, because I can speak freely to people on every side of the aisle about this. The big takeaway is, no one's for nuclear war.

Let's advance forward. Let's evolve into people who can balance these ideas that we're talking about, understand that, you know, the desire for power and land, shall we say, is perhaps part of the human condition.

But let's move in a direction where we evolve one way, not the other.

Glenn Beck
Annie, just your opinion on a few things.

You know, the world just doesn't seem. The elites just don't seem to want to ever look for the truth. They don't seem to want to find a few answers, and that always makes me very suspicious.

Nordstream. Nobody really wants to know the truth on that, and there's only a few of us that could do something like that.

Does your gut tell you? Do you have an opinion on that, or care to share an opinion on that? Did we do that?

Annie Jacobsen
I'm going to withhold my opinion on that simply because I'm not educated enough on it. Like, I may have a very strong opinion, but I would have to really drill down on learning about that. First. What I can tell you from writing, what I can tell you from writing prize, kill, vanish about the CIA's paramilitary is an important basic concept that, you know, listeners may value, which is that the president has three options, always dealing with hostile enemies, hostile nations. One is diplomacy.

Two is war, and three is covert action. What is covert action? Sabotage, subversion. The top of the list is assassination.

Those are actions that the Central Intelligence Agency has taken since its inception in 1947. I write about it in surprise, kill, vanish from the people who actually participated in these operations. Again, always in the name of national security, to prevent nuclear World War III.

Glenn Beck
So readers believe that it leads us into such dark places. If that is your golden calf, national security, it leads you to things, and I don't know what's true and what's nothing.

The idea that in the war, we would put people in compromising positions so we could blackmail them and work. Well, I mean, isn't that what happened with the man who hung himself in prison? Was that an operation, Jeffrey Epstein?

Or was he just.

I don't know, just the luckiest really bad guy to live? That nobody caught on to that for such a long time?

I mean, it just. We are making.

We're dismissing George Washington and we're dismissing Eisenhower.

And if we would have listened to their farewell addresses and done what those two presidents just that's all you have to just do what those two presidents said. Never forget these things.

We wouldn't have these problems, but we're in the name of national security. We have compromised our values over and over and over again.

And I don't think it's going to end well if we don't wake up. And how does this end up with the shooting of Donald Trump?

I don't know who to trust. Americans don't know who to trust because there are other operators that America's always felt she was the good guy, because I think the american public is generally good. They want to help other people. They want to save other people. They want to do these things.

But under the surface, in the name of the american people, our secret services have bastardized everything we stand for and think we stand for and shown it to the rest of the world without us really even seeing it.

And I don't know what to do about it.

How do we solve that?

Annie Jacobsen
I think. I mean, I am an optimist at heart. I'm also a pragmatist. So how do you do that? I mean, you having a podcast is absolutely part and parcel to what Eisenhower was talking to about when he said, an alert and knowledgeable citizenry. Me writing books, people reading things, I'm all about information and knowledge.

The phrase that comes to mind is, you can't fix what you can't face.

And so, armed with knowledge, you begin to have a better idea about, hmm, what is it that I might be ignoring? And then a person gets to ask that question in their own self, in their own families, in their own communities, and I think then the conversation becomes even more interesting and valuable, because you're absolutely right. You can say, wait a minute. The CIA has been doing all these things for decades. Okay, maybe they are doing. And then you can make a decision, as corny as it is. You know, you just go to the voting booth. That's really where the power lies.

Glenn Beck
Yeah.

Annie, thank you so much. And I hope we can talk again, even if once in a while I could call you offline, because I'm struggling with many of the things that you have written about and trying to find. I think all Americans are just trying to find their way to some sort of sanity, and it's hard to find. And your books are very, very clear, well researched, well written.

I love listening to you read them because you're just so good at it. And I can't thank you enough as an american citizen for what you do. Thank you.

Annie Jacobsen
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Glenn Beck
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