“The American people saved me. They saved my family and me. If there’s anything that moves me, it’s this.” General Flynn said.
In this exclusive interview, the first of a two-part interview, we first hear from Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn about his experiences over the past four years when, as he puts it, “the deep government buried me under six feet of yellow water”; we talk about how he was attracted to then-candidate Donald Trump, why he felt he was targeted, and his views on the current political situation in the United States.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
Why Targeted by Deep Government
Jan Jekielek: General Michael Flynn, it’s a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders!
Flynn: Thank you for having me! Jan, it’s great to see you and finally meet you in person. I really appreciate what you (the media) have done for the voices of America that have been silenced for so many years, and you have brought those voices to light. So thank you, Epoch Times, for all you’ve done for this country.
JACKIE YOUNG: We couldn’t be more honored.
Flynn: I mean it, I mean it, and I mean it sincerely. There are organizations in the media that, as I’ve said before, are undermining not only your media industry, are undermining journalism, but are undermining, in fact, the whole idea of free speech.
So (given) the censorship that’s being experienced in all kinds of social media, and the fake news that, frankly, exists, I really want to commend The Epoch Times in this environment for the bravery that it’s showing in today’s media world, because in the past, including, of course, some of the other big media organizations, they’ve been silencing the American voice.
JACKIE YOUNG: You know, I want to be bold and say that I think we’re one of the few media outlets that has done a good job of covering your experience. And I think that’s one of the reasons we’re sitting together today. Before we go any further into the media and the current situation, which I know you have a lot of thoughts about, I want us to look back.
A lot of our viewers are interested in your story and what happened, and there are some key moments that I’ve been particularly interested in exploring. There was a time in the past when the FBI was interested in you; they came to the White House and had that famous, or should I call it infamous, meeting where they did a verbal review of you. When, at what point, did you realize that what the FBI was doing was not above board?
Flynn: I remember a couple of years before that (note: Flynn was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from July 2012-August 2014), you started to see the top brass at the FBI, arrogant attitudes toward other agencies in the government. They had the kind of rudeness and rudeness, cultural rudeness, that seeped in from the top. You know, the kind of organizations and large organizations, whatever the culture is at the top, it permeates all the way through to the broader organization.
In the case of the FBI, it’s a huge organization that’s spread all over the United States, I think, all over the world in 83, maybe 90 countries, so there’s a kind of – I think I use that word very kindly, maybe I could use a stronger word – But there’s a cultural rudeness and arrogance at the top of the FBI. I encountered this during my military career and have seen it rarely since.
I always knew there were a few people there who we knew were not just “hostile guys,” but “bad, bad guys,” and they were the ones who got me in trouble. For all sorts of different reasons within the FBI, and then, of course, because I went into the transition administration to start a sort of political career (note: Trump’s national security advisor), not only helped a certain candidate running against Hillary Clinton, but also joined Donald Trump’s team. And then you start to see this larger (persecution of me) effort that includes not only the FBI, but for all we know, probably some elements within the Department of Justice, and certainly certainly the national intelligence system (Intelligence Community, note: a joint organization of 16 independent agencies within the U.S. government that conduct all kinds of intelligence activities) Some of the people within that, particularly the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency.
So, all of these people, these are people who are at the top, at the top of our country, and they don’t act alone, they don’t act without being directed to do so, they don’t act without coordination. And from that, we learned that the situation was, certainly from my case, that this operation went all the way to the top.
So this directly involves the Obama administration, involves that very famous meeting in the Oval Office with former President Obama and Vice President Biden, and others in attendance. And maybe you know who those people were who attended the meeting, because there were others who attended the meeting. All of these stories go back probably a year (at the time of the incident), at least a year ago. So we’re in – I’m talking about probably in the era or time frame of early January of (at the time of the incident) 2017, so this goes back to the time frame of early January of 2016. And it actually permeated all the way down, probably, a year or two further back.
One thing that hasn’t been discussed too much – although this is something that I’ve been involved in – is related to the Iran nuclear deal. I was asked to testify as an expert in a specialized area to the House of Representatives and to a committee within the House of Representatives. I went in and testified about the progress of the Iran nuclear deal. I think, if I remember correctly, that hearing was in June of 2015.
The parties signed the deal within the July timeframe. And then we learned about tens of billions of dollars in total that were shipped there (to Iran) in the dark of night (Note: From January 2014 to July 2015, the Obama administration received $700 million a month on the Iranian side during the time it was finalizing the final details of the Iran nuclear deal, according to the Washington Free Beacon website on September 8, 2016). If you go back and read my testimony, just look at the opening statement. (Because of this) they put Mike Flynn on the board and then started writing down all the things they didn’t like about him, and that was probably the first time (for me) that they crossed (a tick).
Because this is the only foreign policy move, disastrous move, that the Obama administration has made against the number one sponsor of terrorism (Iran), and that country is in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing our men and women in uniform, mostly in Iraq, but also in other parts of the world. That was sort of the first time (to me) that the checkmark was drawn.
Then there were other people, I believe, that started taking me out. I think the surveillance of me went well beyond the surveillance of the campaign.
JACKIE YOUNG: If that was the first tick (for you), what were the other ticks?
Flynn: The other checkmarks (against me) came from the people in uniform at the public hearings every year, and every year we do a threat assessment of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is a public hearing. There’s a very famous picture that I remember of me (Director of Defense Intelligence, term July 2012-August 2014), Clapper (Director of National Intelligence, term August 2010-January 2017), Brennan (Director of CIA. term March 2013-January 2017), Comey (Comey, Obama’s nominee for FBI Director, term September 2013-May 2017), and a gentleman whose name escapes me, but who at the time was the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
All of us lined up for all the senators to ask questions, right. All the cameras, all the (news) agencies were there because it was public and it was an annual threat assessment. I remember that was in 2014. They went down this queue roughly, and I don’t know if it was Ted Cruz (R-Texas) or some senator who asked the same question to everybody, “What do you think of ISIS?” and “What do you think of ISIS?” “What do you think of ISIS?”, and I was the last one to be asked.
All these people basically said, “They’re defeated,” “They’re on the run,” “We’ve really got them bending the knee and begging for mercy”… …they asked me about it, and I said, “It’s expanding, and it’s getting worse.” That’s basically it. I said that because that’s what I believed, and that’s what I saw at the time as a senior military intelligence officer in the Department of Defense and as the director of one of the world’s largest intelligence agencies, the Defense Intelligence Agency.
I spent almost five years fighting these guys. I know how they operate and what they’re up to. I think – no, I don’t think – I do know the Obama administration, and they want to act as if we’re winning the war against ISIS, or winning the war against radical Islamic terrorism. The truth is we’re not winning. Every little piece, every single thing we did, actually caused the expansion of ISIS.
I remember, at the time – and I may be a little bit off if my numbers are correct, but it was public, the information was public – I think ISIS or al Qaeda had members in 45 countries at the time. That (my words) is like saying, “And wait ……”
And these people in the Senate hearing, those national intelligence chiefs, were there saying, “They’re on the run, there’s nothing here, let’s move on.”
They (senators) asked me, and I told them my judgment at the time. It was certainly my judgment and what the military intelligence system said, and it was right and correct from the battlefield and from my own experience.
In a liberal democracy, different opinions should be valued
JACKIE YOUNG: It’s intriguing. That’s the potential cost of holding a different opinion. We see a lot of that these days, don’t we?
FLYNN: Yes, in a free system, in a democracy, in our constitutional republic, dissenting opinions should be valued. You don’t have to agree, you don’t have to agree, you can get a whole bunch of other points of view. You’re going to get points of view from other people that may be 180 degrees different, but in our institutions then and now, that should be cherished. I’m going to describe, when I was with President Trump, how he conducted business.
But during the Obama administration, you had to play by the rules and do what you were told, and if you held an opposing view …… as a (supposed) three or four star general, you became a victim of political appointments and you ended up with a promotion of just two stars in the Army. Most people don’t even understand that after that point, all appointments are politically motivated.
Barack Obama had to appoint me, twice, to two different positions, both of which had to be confirmed by the Senate, one as assistant director of national intelligence and the next as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. So you put me in this job, you put me in this job because you think I’m going to kiss your ass, and that’s not my style, that’s not my style.
There are serious consequences for not seeking an opposing view, and I’ll relate it to what we’re experiencing today: we’re going to have an assessment of the U.S. intelligence system. I see that John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, is going to present an assessment of the intelligence agencies this Friday, December 18, and I think he’s a wonderful, organized, thoughtful, and decent person.
If he were in front of me, I would tell him: if he hadn’t asked people outside the intelligence system who might have a different view, to do an independent assessment, if a lot of the reports that they do, they just go around inside the circle, the same report comes out, you read it, he reads it, and everybody says, “Did you see that report?” Next thing you know, everybody’s reporting the same thing. It’s a complete waste of resources and time, and it’s wrong. That assessment could be wrong.
I would be very, very interested to know if John Ratcliffe, not only gives the U.S. intelligence community’s own assessment, but would give an outside, independent assessment of foreign influence in this presidential election that we just went through. That’s where I get offended, because they don’t want that assessment.
It seems to me that it (an assessment of ISIS) would require the participation of about 20,000 people, plus a group of soldiers, Air Force, Marines, Navy personnel, the intelligence system, the military intelligence system, people from different countries around the world. I’d say there’s 45 countries, there’s probably more, probably more. This will be a thorough test of what we know to be true, our experience, our judgment, and our analysis. As for the sentence that cuts right to the heart of the subject, for me it’s, “General Flynn, what do you think about this issue?”
And I can tell you that that probably sparked a conversation, and I’m sure someone in the (White House) Oval Office said, “Get rid of that guy, we can’t have him because we’re trying to take over this country.” Remember, Barack Obama has said he wants to fundamentally change America. So I would ask you and your viewers: what do you think that means?
How were you attracted to Trump, who was a candidate at the time
JACKIE YOUNG: You initially supported President Trump because you wanted to support the person who could beat Hillary. Did I understand that correctly?
Flynn: Yes, I think I liked Donald Trump the first time I met him. It would have been a brief one-on-one meeting, and I forget the exact reason his people approached me, but I went to New York and met him, met him, and I liked him. I liked him a lot because he was like a table-setter, no-nonsense, tough guy.
If you were in the room with him and there were other people around, and he made a decision, even if it was the secretary, or the chef who was about to go make a burger, if you were in that room and the discussion was going on, he would say (to everyone), “What do you think of all this?” “What do you think of it all?” “What do you think of it all?” I like that because he wants to hear everyone’s opinion. He’ll make decisions, but he wants to hear from everybody.
He and I started dating in the summer of 2015. I think it was August. I’m going to tell you a little story about him because it made such an impression on me later, but I remember it was the first time I was with him, going to these big campaign stops.
It was pouring rain in New York, and we were leaving Trump Tower, where we were all meeting. The rain was pouring down in torrents, pouring down in torrents. The couple of black SUVs we were in (at the airfield) pulled up. I sat in the car, right next to him. The others, you could see them rushing to get on the plane so they wouldn’t get their hair wet.
There were two guys who looked like tarmac workers who were working on the airfield to pull the wheel blocks off the plane so it would be ready to take off. They were soaked to the bone and it was cold. Trump got out of the car (we were in) – everyone reminded him not to get his hair wet – and he got out of that car and walked over to those two men in the pouring rain. I was right near the corner, because to me it’s just rain, you don’t melt off.
I stood there watching the scene as he walked up to the two men and talked to them for about 15-20 seconds. He probably said “Hey, thanks for your service!” I saw him take out a roll of bills and give each of them some, maybe $20, maybe $100. I don’t know how much he gave them, but I saw him tip the guys in the pouring rain. He could have stepped out of his car, walked up the ladder and gotten inside (the plane) and someone would have held an umbrella for him, but he didn’t do that.
I’m telling you this story because it’s an unconscious flash of Donald Trump’s rich human side – there are all kinds of crazy stories (in the media) about him – but when I look at this scene, at this moment I see him as an honorable man, because it seems to me that Those people were his employees, or employees of the airfield. But he took a minute to say “thank you” and then slipped them a $20 tip or something, and I think that showed his heartfelt appreciation for them and a genuine respect for the working man, and I think that’s what Donald Trump had in mind.
That’s what I see, and there are other examples, because I’m always looking for those things because I grew up with, “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” “Yes, sir “, “No sir”, “Thank you”, that kind of world, in a respectful family. So I wondered if he had that kind of character, and this is one of those scenarios.
Now, I’m talking to you about this, and I could have said all kinds of bad things about Donald Trump, and really, I could have been the person who wanted to get back at him the most if I wanted to, because I went through what I just went through, but I don’t, because he didn’t cause it. I don’t blame him. He’s not responsible for some of the things that are happening that he doesn’t know about. (These things) now, I think I know, now we all know. Now we all know.
It’s a very dangerous thing for this experiment in democracy that we’re still trying to conduct, that we’re going through another moment in history that our nation’s founding fathers once foresaw. They had incredible foresight, Adams, Jefferson, Locke, people who were involved in creating this great document that has endured many tests, and we are in the midst of another major test. I am confident that we will get through it, but not without greater sacrifice.
Buried by deep government, rescued by the American people.
Jacky Young: It’s a fascinating situation. On the one hand, it’s really interesting how a small act clearly reflects the heart of a person. It’s interesting what you just described. On the other hand, you seem to have just come out of a great (personal) suffering, only to walk into another (worrying) suffering. Maybe not everyone can understand why you acted the way you did.
Flynn: You mean, should I just find a beach house and go away? The American people saved me. They saved my family and me. If there’s anything that moves me, it’s this. I don’t know why, they prayed (for me) and trusted (me). Have you ever been scuba diving with an autobreather?
Jaycee Young: Yes, I have.
Flynn: Have you ever done buddy breathing (a rescue technique used in scuba diving emergencies when divers work in pairs and share a rebreather)?
Jacky Yang: Yes.
Flynn: For four years, the American people have been “buddy breathing” with me. To put it another way, the deep government buried me six feet under the ground and tried to put me to death, but, in the dark, someone put a wheat pipe up there, or tacitly agreed to put a wheat pipe up in the air, and I lay there for four years breathing through that wheat pipe. But as time went on, that wheat pipe became bigger and bigger and bigger as the American people reached out to my family.
One day I’ll tell that story, because it’s an amazing story about people who had nothing, but were willing to give me everything they had because they believed in me, believed in my family, believed in something more important than what we were trying to do. And thank God they did.
I’ve been a companion breath for four years in a difficult situation, and it was the American people who gave me the oxygen to survive and get through it all, so I feel like I have a responsibility now that I know that has to go. It’s hard to understand, but I just feel like I have a responsibility to them, and I’m not going to let them down. I have children, I have grandchildren, and if I can see the future through the eyes of my mother who has passed away, who lived 90 years, who had a wonderful life, who was an amazing woman who had a wonderful life and passed it on to us; then I look forward to when looking into the future through the eyes of my granddaughter, I can see at least 90 years.
So, I think about this next (21st) century, and we’re twenty years into it, and we’ve been going through wars from 9-11-2001 until now. I know world history, American history, so what might we experience in the next 90 years or 80 years? If my granddaughter lives to be my mother’s age, she will live until the turn of the next century. So, what kind of world do I want to give her? It is my responsibility to do something about it.
So if I have a platform, and I think the American people have given it to me, I’m going to fight here because I don’t want this country to go the way of the wolf (wolf, note: extreme poverty, hunger), that is, I don’t want that to happen.
Thoughts on the current political situation in the United States
Flynn: I always say that when someone says, “That thing is Byzantine.” Like that tie that you’re wearing, the Byzantine tie, I’m just making a joke about your tie, is some kind of Byzantine thing. What does that mean to you?
JACKIE YOUNG: As you said.
Flynn: It’s too old.
JACKIE YOUNG: Yeah!
Flynn: It means it’s very old. It’s Byzantine, what’s Byzantine? What is it? It was an empire. It was one of the oldest empires that ever existed. Have you ever seen the Spartans? Have you met the Athenians? Maybe you’ve met the Romans, the people from Rome, yeah, listen to me.
There were these (Byzantine-like) empires that rose first and then declining nation-states that had existed throughout history, and they don’t exist anymore. Because everyone is working toward the perfect system (of the United States), regardless of its ideology. The ideology we have on the planet today is communism, with a little bit of imperialism, democratic ideology, and Islamism is another one, I think, of those “isms.
In the last century, we defeated Nazism, thank God, otherwise (if the Nazis had won) – I think I heard a little bit of your (Polish ancestry) life story – we would all be kneeling at the altar of Adolf Hitler, if not for. frankly, because of America. But the world recognizes that we don’t want those “isms”, right? So we’re in an era of Americanism, if you want to call it that. We have to accept, and some of us, they at least think – and I think a lot of people don’t see it this way, which is good – that this country is not going to be around forever.
So how do we do, what do we do, to move it forward while we’re still living on this planet, while we’re still living in this country? To keep it alive, to send back fresh air from time to time, to renew it? Many of the great leaders in our nation’s history have said that it can sometimes be renewed for other reasons or other things. We can be renewed through war. Some of our founding fathers left some great quotes, and certainly other leaders of our time, of our nation’s history.
These have a bit of a philosophical flavor, but they are all true. If we have threats, or rivals, or competitors, and we do, on the world stage, in Russia, in China, in parts of Europe and other parts of the world; if we have these enemies, or rivals, or threats, they don’t sit still and say, “I think I’ll just sit, wait, watch, do nothing, and not fight. ” (They don’t sit still,) because they don’t like our system.
There are systems that are going to compete with us, including, of course, communism, and they think their system is better than ours, so there will be competition. A moral structure that our country has, but is being torn apart, through the destruction of the family, through a massive cultural shift in academic institutions, including from elementary school all the way through high school, and of course undergraduate and graduate school. (Although the U.S.) is looking pretty good at the moment.
But in the last 20 years, there’s been a huge shift in attitudes toward America. I mean, you’ve seen it, you’ve reported on a lot of these things, and they’ve been great.
The rest of the world looks at us and says, “That’s a moral society because they take care of people, they allow everything that’s human, that’s in our genetic makeup, which is the desire for freedom.” We have it, it exists in our culture, in the fabric of our American society. It is being tampered with, stripped away, attacked. Education is being attacked, families are being destroyed, and in other ways, and of course our government institutions are being inflated.
Let me give you an example, in rough numbers. I took over one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world, a large agency under the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency. when I took over in 2012, there were about 17,000 employees and several thousand contractors, let’s say 20,000.
The day before 9-11, September 10, 2001, that agency had about 3,000 to 3,500 people, six or seven times that in a dozen years. That’s one branch of the government. The federal government has swelled incredibly. What that bloat has done, what the bureaucracy has done, is suffocate itself to death. Right? When it suffocated itself to death, it suffocated the entire country to death.
As for the coronavirus that we’re experiencing, if the recovery rate is 99.99%, why is our counterpart shutting down the lifeline of America, the lifeline of the world? And that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We live in Washington, DC. Now, all you have to do is walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and you can see the beautiful restaurants and stores that used to be closed off with plywood in what used to be a bustling area and one of the wealthiest areas in the country. There is another question that the American public will believe but may be frustrated by: Why is this area the richest county in the country, while the rest of America is suffering?
Are there government employees who have lost their paychecks when they are told, “Right now, because of the coronavirus, you have to stay home and work online from home”? How many salon employees, restaurant employees have lost their paychecks? Because they didn’t get money from the government, so the government had to respond, and I remember their first check was for $3 trillion, and then they distributed the checks while the government employees continued to get paid. Now they will say their job is critical and their mission is vital. Anyway, I’m getting a little off topic, but in this country we have a moral fabric that cannot be ignored.
We can look back through history and observe periods of time and find signs of decline. Suppose we were not growing, but declining, what would we do? Would we continue to attack such a president? Frankly, he could have gone on to do many other things, but gave up the good life for the love of country.
What we, the public, are doing is attacking him and crushing him. Why? Is it because we want America to be crushed too? I think the answer is yes. I think there are people in this country, and certainly competitors, enemies and threats, who want to see that happen.
You only need to study a little bit of Chinese (CCP) history and you know what their 100-year (note: from the founding of the CCP in 1921 to 2021 is 100 years) plan is. I’m sure all the Chinese (CCP) leaders will see this program and say, “He’s right, but we still beat him.” I hope I’m wrong. The hypocrite congressman (Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell) who recently sparked outrage, and I won’t name him, was caught having an affair with a Chinese spy.
If you’re going to scrape a window glass because there’s little ice cubes on it and you scrape it, the temperature of your finger will start (to form a halo) and that circle will get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. How many other people are in such a position (colluding with the Chinese Communist Party)? How many others are in such a position? And how many congressmen? How many people work in government and other institutions? How many in academia?
We know the head of the Harvard biology program (involved in the CCP’s 1,000-member program), and that was a year ago. You can show his picture because it’s true, it’s real, it’s not fiction. The media would say something like conspiracy theories or something like that. It’s true.
My life, for whatever reason, it’s what I choose to do. I can accept myself (I can live with myself). I can accept myself and live with my mistakes. I can accept myself for not being perfect. I can accept myself that I feel good and feel good. I’m involved because I think I can understand, I think I can see what’s going on, I have a very beautiful family, I have a real circle of close friends. In the midst of what’s been going on, especially in the last four years, there are still friendships and friendships that haven’t been cut off, and that’s amazing! It’s really remarkable.
Speaking of Trump, there’s a video of him being interviewed by Charlie Rose about what would happen if you lost everything, and Trump said, “I would lose everything because then I would really understand who my real friends are.” I learned what real friends are, not just who they are, because a lot of people I’ve never met have come to my house as friends, and that’s very positive.
In terms of me and my family as a whole, we’ve turned family into a very, very positive factor. Anyway, as I described, I’ve been surviving for the last four years by tying my breath, and now I’m back in the water and I’m a good swimmer, so I think I’ll be fine.
Jay Kay Young: I remember you were talking about the head of nanotechnology at Harvard, right?
Flynn: Right.
JACKIE YOUNG: There’s a lot of things I want to talk to you about. I think we have to make this the “first part” of the interview. The whole idea, frankly, is that there may be some people within the United States who are willing to accept the decline of the United States and, of course, abroad, who we know are plotting.
Flynn: It’s not a decline, it’s not a decline, and it’s not hard to perceive. It’s a shift in the direction of our country. This is a fundamental change in America. It’s a fundamental shift. It’s something that some people want to do because America is rich and has a lot to offer to people who don’t have their own best interests and have interests in other areas.
I want to say something else, because you reminded me, this is in England. So they found that it was an article, a news article, albeit breaking news. As soon as I read it, I understood that it talked about Chinese (Communist) agents basically working in the British (China) embassy and consulate because they were given British citizenship and therefore they were employed.
The world of espionage is not a fun game, it’s real, it exists. Frankly, the other side, and there are many other sides, they don’t care if they get caught, they don’t care. They have a different moral structure than we do, including the way they act and the way they think. And as I said, on the other side, it’s like you see a series of countries, in some cases, non-nation-state identity actors.
Yang Jiekai: The database that you describe (1.95 million Shanghai CCP members’ identity files), the database that this report from the UK is talking about. We’ve started investigating this database, which has records not only on places like consulates and embassies, but also on companies, on the development of CCP organizations in those places, and of course on academia. We will absolutely look into that.
General Flynn, I’m really looking forward to part two, where we’ll delve into many of the incredible questions that you’ve raised today.
Flynn: All right! Thank you very much!
Recent Comments