Newt talks with former FBI counterintelligence special agent Wayne Barnes, whose 29-year career included working KGB espionage, running double agents, recruiting hostile intelligence officers, and debriefing Cold War defectors before becoming a private investigator, signature expert, and specialist in recovering stolen impressionist paintings. Barnes recounts his path from inner-city Philadelphia through Penn State and Villanova Law into the FBI, where high scores on a language aptitude test led to Romanian training in Monterey and a Washington Field Office posting focused on Eastern Bloc counterintelligence. Barnes’ book, “A Traitor in the FBI: The Hunt for a Russian Mole,” documents his investigation to uncover an internal FBI spy for the Russians, Robert Hanssen. After he wrote the book, it was a seven-year struggle to get it through FBI pre-publication review. An initial submission in 2016 was returned almost entirely redacted except for half a page, leading to multiple trips to Washington, wording changes, and securing permission from 32 named individuals before final clearance.

Episode 1051: The End of a Fair Price — Lindsay Owens on How Companies Use Your Data to Charge You More
40:28

Episode 1050: The Midterms, 27 Days Out — McLaughlin and Sosnik on Who Will Control Congress
41:35

Episode 1049: The Exhausted Majority — Who Independents Really Are and Why They'll Decide 2026
35:24