Quick housekeeping note a literal one. Matt and I were so into the thunderstorms that we're happening while we were recording that, as we mentioned on air, we left us doors and some windows open. Uh. So that is why you're hearing some fuzz for the first few minutes on my end. Oh no, it's on my end too, And just to be clear, I was the one who suggested it, and and I am sorry everybody. As we use the software called isotope, which gets rid of you know, background noise and stuff. Uh I wasn't thinking, so sorry, So please welcome our special guests is there for the first twelve minutes, the rain from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Brading. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel is on an adventure, but he'll be back very soon. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh, Matt it is. Let's let's paint a little bit of a audio picture here. It is a wonderful, wonderfully stormy dark afternoon here and our fair metropolis of Atlanta. Uh you and I have survived a tornado to come come to record today. Oh yeah, man, we we fought through that tornado. I had my shield, I had. It was a bastard sword. It was a little a little large to wheel from one hand. But we fought through it. Now, but we really are. We were under a tornado warning as of just a little while ago, and it is still storming like mad out here and before warned. You may hear the sounds of said storm in this recording as well as my dog Penny as she hyperventilates below my chair. Yes, and uh yeah, We've both got little parts of our recorded areas open so that you can you can get the full ambiance of what happened. And you know that is it is true, Matt. When I say we survived the storm. It's kind of like how when people are in the same room as a celebrity, they say they met them, you know what I mean. So we could say we were in the same sort of room as a tornado but luckily, to our knowledge, there hasn't been a ton of serious destruction yet. We'll see what happens at the end of this episode, because just like us in Atlanta today, you might be surprised by how many people and how many places in the world are very close to destruction utter destruction, and it's something that is existential. It's dreadful, and we don't talk about it all the time because it is scary stuff and it should be. In an earlier episode, though, Matt, we talked about a guy named a Q Khan who is one of the most influential individuals in the recent history of nuclear warfare. He Uh. He is the guy who was terrified that India would be able to take over his adoptive country of Pakistan when they gained nuclear ability. So he began a one man Mission UH to give Pakistan the bomb, and then somewhere along the way he experienced mission creep and started selling nuclear tech to the highest bidder. He cast a shadow that's going be with us long after many of the folks listening to this recording today have passed away. It's just true. And when we talked about that, we talked about what we called an often invisible war that countries wage on one another to prevent other countries from getting nuclear weapons. And the long story short is it's it's very much a do as I say, not as I do kind of deal. It's very much um some rules for these some rules for me. I'm loving this thunder U. Nations that have nuclear weapons in general do not want other countries to have them, even if they're quote unquote friends. I guarantee you they will do anything within their power to prevent other countries from having this world ending ability. And so if you're a country that unfortunately does not have a nuke, you're gonna feel threatened by these nuclear capable adversaries. And if you're a sational actor, which we always assumed, then you are going to You're going to conspire to get some kind of safety. Whether that's working in secret to meet your own bomb, or whether that is buddying up as much as you can with an ally that already has nuclear capability. You've got to do something. And today's story is about a little known example of the lengths countries go to in this invisible war. Uh So we hope that you have had a chance to check out our earlier episode on a Q Cohn uh, and it's you know, it's pretty good. The main criticism we get is there's a lack of Matt Frederick, which I you know, I agree with on that one. Have you seen the hate mail? I have not, But as a listener of that episode, I did not feel a lack of Matt Frederick. It was really good and the back and forth was was perfect to kept me engaged. So hey, I loved that episode. We cut out all the parts were like, where's man? But don't believe you for a second. It was perfect. Well. Anyhow, to to establish the roots of this conspiracy, today's conspiracy, we have to start, uh, really like at the end of World War two is usually when these stories start. So here are the facts. Yes, we will be describing to you this cat and mouse game a little bit further of the struggle to attain a nuclear force. And here's the deal. There the the desire of countries that already have nuclear capability to prevent those who don't have it from gaining it. There's it is so high. There's so much incentive behind that that often these countries, whether it's the United States, whether it's Israel, name your country with nuclear capability, they will often play on the edges of the law, if not break the own law of their land in order to to stop it from happening. It's it's often an argument of national security for whichever country you're talking about, and a play for the quote greater good. Yeah. When we think in terms of analogies, it's like, imagine that your neighbor owns a gun. Their neighbor owns a couple of guns, and you think, well, I get along okay with my neighbor. We're not celebrating each other's birthdays or whatever, but we say hi if we both happen to get the mail at the same time. Still, I would kind of like a gun too. And and in the US, where guns are pretty easy to get, that's a very simple series of steps. But imagine if you were in a situation where your neighbor said, no, I don't know, bro, I've got a gun, so we're pretty much fine, and I should you know, if there's a problem, just come to me, man. Don't do something crazy like try to buy a gun because I might have to show up to your house. Yeah, and especially don't make a gun like if you're going to construct a gun from some steel and other parts. You've got maybe some black powder, you've got Uh, we're gonna have a real problem. Oh and spoiler alert, Matt making guns at home comes up in an episode down the line that we're going to delve into later today for us. But in a few days everyone listening because of the magic timey wymy stuff about podcasting. You're absolutely right, dude. There is a pattern of play, and it's a pattern that a lot of people pay attention to because some countries that were on the path toward creating nuclear weapons, although they might never say they're creating nuclear weapons, they later made international agreements to stop pursuing nuclear tech at all, and in return they were obliterated. Libya is a great example of this, uh well, a horrific example of what happens. And of course, as we said previously, the main Western reason for the Libyan intervention was not human rights related at all. France wanted to maintain control of the regional currency. It is a conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. Do check it out if you are thinking, I wonder if I could be more depressed today. I was recently visiting with some in laws. One of whom let's he was in various intelligence fields, one of them dealt directly with Libya, where he had a need to know on a lot of stuff occurring there. And we had a whole discussion about Libya, and what you just said been very much holds up from personal experience somebody I spoke with, Yeah, it's better to know the truth even when it's ugly. Do not mistake this as a defense of Mumar Gadaffi. It most certainly is not. Just feel like, when we talk about the billions of dollars spent and the millions of lives are reparably affected, we should be honest about why it happened. So with the nukes, Let's say you're the ruler of North Korea, right, you're the Ayatolla of Iran. Uh, any number of countries that have been considered antagonistic to the Western order of the world or the way the Western world wants everything to work. Uh. If you see what happened in Libya, it's pretty easy to connect the dots. Watching that, and you're the leader of North Korea, you're thinking, I will absolutely never give up nuclear weapons. I know the score. I saw what happened you cannot trust these people, which is reasonable whether or not you agree, the logic is there. And then if you say the Ayatollah or if you are in a leadership position in Iran, then you might think, and very validly think, this is what will happen to us if we don't get across that nuclear finished line. So they're regional hotspots around the world. UH. Leaders are playing some variation of this game all the time. And you know, like we said earlier, there are a lot of countries Europe at Western Europe's a great example. There are a lot of countries that have been up to now satisfy to UH, to posse, up to vultron, up with existing nuclear powers under agreements like NATO and stuff like that. UH, and they're agreeing not to pursue their own nuclear warheads. In exchange, they're saying, you, this country i'm agreeing with will step in, and you will you will save me if something, You'll have my back at least if something goes sideways. But we can't assume this is a sustainable situation. Very few things are no. So you know, when when we're talking about the places in the world where these kinds of conflicts are occurring. We really look at the Middle East, it's by far the region that has let's say that is in the most danger of experiencing some kind of nuclear warfare, actual hot war with a nuke, and a lot of it just has to do with the number of countries in the region that want to have nuclear weapons versus the number that don't. There's only one country in the Middle East currently that officially has nuclear capability, although it's it's official unofficial, but that's Israel. And we've talked about it before, how it's kind of a it's a weird situation to talk about nuclearly capable Israel because it's a bit of a weird situation. Yeah, you know what, let's modify our analogy a little. Let's go back to your neighbor, who's begetting really weird for a while. Okay, so your neighbor has a garage. Everybody knows they have a garage. Your neighbor, it looks like a big garage. Uh, your neighbor may have a car, but they get super sketchy whenever you bring it up. They say, I maybe I have a car, Maybe I don't. I've never seen a cargo in or out of the garage. They've never actually seen it. Tell you what, though, man, you don't keep an eye on those trash cans. You might have to find out. I want to find out if I have a car, do you? You don't. You don't have a car, right, you're not even thinking about getting a car, right, you shouldn't. The bus works fine, buddy, Right, we can agree because we, you know, do not have a car. It's really shrouding Jer's car over here. But if you ever need one, we can find a way. Anyway, it would be better for you and I to agree that you and none of our other neighbors need a car. Let's just end it there. So like, that's that's a really weird in this analogy. On an individual level, this sounds really intense and weird. Right, But car is not the same thing as a nuclear weapon. And Israel's position is itself by design, uh, someone like conspiratorial. They have never the government is never officially confirmed or denied that it has nukes. It absolutely does, but they they have a policy that's somewhat euphemistically called deliberate ambiguity. So they'll issue statements that are incredibly like weirdly worded like the closest the official government has come to admitting this is saying stuff like Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East, and that statement hinges on the word introduce, introduced, I think means use so this uh so you can see how it's weird. And also, you know, compounded by the act that over the years, various leaders of this country have essentially said, yeah, we have nuclear weapons. But that's just them speaking in elusive political tones. The other piece of the puzzle here, if we're gonna pepe A Sylvia, this a bit is that Israel has also refused to sign the Treaty on the Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Meaning they're saying, look, we're not saying we do or we don't have them, but it's it wouldn't be good for our national security if we signed you guys agreement. So, I mean, there's a car in the garage. I'm just saying, I feel like I'm not in a good spot where I would sign something saying that I'm not gonna have as many cars as I mean, who's to say I may not want or need a car at some point. We have this garage I think we're just gonna We're just gonna stay for a while and you know, maybe we'll take action later. That kind of what's happening, because it really is, it's kind of silly. And look, I can't confirm this personally, but it is kind of just an open secret slash just everybody is aware that Israel does have nuclear capability. It's more of a question of how powerful are the individual warheads. How many of those warheads do they actually have, how many are deployable like readily deployable, how many are just sitting somewhere in a garage hand or and or just large military facility. Um, I don't know. It's it's a it's a weird situation. It is, and it's something that's understandable because secrecy for two reasons. First, secrecy is key to a lot of operations like this because it also allows for plausible deniability. But then secondly, there may be a bit of a long term in a way, a long term greater good argument because as we'll see, for or that country in that part of the world, to go official with this, I could very likely set off or exacerbate the nuclear arms race because being able to lie to yourself and say, oh, it's not the official. That's a very easy and somewhat stable position to take. But I love that you use the word silly, Matt. This is one of the silliest open secrets in the region, if not the world. Sure okay, sure, you have a garage and don't have a car, fine, whatever, just don't drive into my house. And the reason they're doing this is because we think about it. Remember that game Jenga. Do you ever play Jenga? Yeah, dude, there's a great version of it. It's like the human size Jenga. Yeah, stacks up your head or right at your head. I've never I've never played that one, but I've I've seen it. I think we're on a work trip or something and hella, bougie bowling alley that had one. That's all I remember. That's true. Maybe we could go back and give it a try one day and then just be super cool people and say this is like an analogy for nuclear weapons in the Middle East because we're great at parties. Just put up a little sign next to it. Yes, yes, and now it's performance art. We need a grant for this, So yeah, it's it's a good comparison, because the situation with nukes in the Middle East, well, the situation in the Middle East in general is like a carefully stacked, very precarious tower of radioactive Jenga pieces, because some countries, did you know, to one level or another, they act close to chasey nukes, only to have for an intervention arrived in a very brutal way because a Rock, for instance, was um it was definitely trying to get nuclear capability and may have done so if it weren't for the US invasion. Other countries have done something a little trickier. They play specific conditions on their position in the nuclear game, and these may change um in the very near near future. Actually, yeah, a couple of countries to talk about here. Turkey has signaled it might be looking into getting some nuclear weapons, and it's specifically in response to some actions that are being put forth by the Biden administration. You know, hopefully that doesn't actually occur, but Turkeys at least saying it's possible. In Saudi Arabia just over and over and over has done the same signaling that it will it will bring itself up to match any capability of any other group in the in the Middle Eastern country or actor in the Middle East that has nuclear capability. So it's like we will see you and call uh, well, well we will call your whatever you're playing. That is interesting. I didn't even think about Saudi Arabia. And when we're discussing how Israel is the only nuclear capable actor is I genuinely don't know, but I always assumed Saudi Arabia was, or at least was close to it. But it's just a lack or maybe it's just a hole in my knowledge. Yeah. There, they signed the Non Proliferation Treaty and they've they've been accused of working on nuclear programs. Their their official position is that, uh, they right now have plans to create a domestic nuclear energy industry. But again, if you have if you have the enter, if you have the setup to you know, be a nuclear energy capable country, then you have the set up to become a nuclear weapons capable country. And their specific trigger is a rod. It's like, I think we've said this before in a very oversimplified way. The best way to imagine international affairs are the way these countries interact with each other across the world is let's say a hundred nineties something. People show up to a house party and they learned that you know, uh, there's enough beer for maybe fifty people, there's enough like pizza for uh for sixty people. But somewhere in this house there's all this stuff you need to build a gun, and tensions are running high over the pizza and beer, and Saudi Arabia is basically one corner hanging out with its buddies, keeping an eye on that Iran guy they don't like. And they say, well, like, look, if this guy gets let's stock Holm guns party favors, if this guy grabs some party favors that I am, I'm you, guys, can't stop me. I'm gonna get all of the party favors because I hate that guy. Yeah, oh yeah, I don't like that. Also, I'm gonna go so far as to dig a little hole in the basement level, make a second sub basement, and then start making party favors down there. And you'll never know because I'm telling you I dislike that dude. So that's that's I mean, that's what's happening. This this in an overly simple way. Again, but the important part here is that we are in a system with any number of opportunities for to go horribly horribly wrong very quickly, and one one change in domestic policy in one country can have massive ripple effects across this region, and stuff that happens in the Middle East can have massive ripple effects across the world. No matter no matter how you personally feel, no matter how your government feels. Uh, everybody knows, based on clear examples of previous proven conspiracies, that Israel will not hesitate to do anything it can't by hook or by crook to prevent other countries in the region from gaining the same capabilities. This is not the government and the lawmakers of this country purposely just being like jerks for the sake of it. They consider they considered nuclear armed countries in the Middle East other than them, an existential threat. So how far would they go? I'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, and we're back and prepare yourselves because we're going outside of the box in an operation that's titled the same way. Yeah. So this is it's a bit of storytelling here. It's it's kind of exciting. So here we go. So on September six seven, imagine you're hanging out somewhere in Syria. Let's say it's just after midnight local time. The Israeli Air Force is thinking about Syria's growing possibility for nuclear ability. That was kind of weird. It's like the same word twice, but not really because you added a thing to the beginning. Sorry, um, But Israel is thinking about doing something, like physically doing something about this, and the way they're imagining going about it is going to get around some of the negotiations that are happening on an international level to prevent things from happening like this, to um prevent attacks from happening, to prevent countries from developing nuclear capabilities. There's all kinds of discussion, dialogue, there's red tape from all of the associations that all of these countries have in the things like NATO. As you've mentioned, there have been oh what do they what do they call these things? These things that prevent you from doing something? Oh? Laws, there are laws that are preventing this kind of action from occurring. But it doesn't matter. Israel says we're going to do something, and we have to do something, so they launch an air strike on this, uh, this one small little area in Syria. It was a suspected nuclear reactor in this place called the al Kibar site all Kidbar k I b a r um and this thing, this area, it was called the cube. Okay, and it's really Can we call out the Heretts article already just at the top of this or we can do that later. There is an article you can read if you want to get some of the storytelling of this and see the cube. It's called no Longer a Secret. They just type that in I will give you the whole thing type in no longer a secret on Herrett's Seeing the cube made a difference for me. Yeah. Yeah, So to fill in a bit of the picture here, it's in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nowhere, there's rubble around it. It looks kind of abandoned. It's a weird place for a factory to be, and officially it's a factory. Uh. There doesn't seem to be a ton of traffic to or from the place. And where's all the infrastructure for you know, sending electricity or power generation and stuff like that. Marry Tom waits, what's the building in there? And this air strike? What we're gonna do is We're going to examine how the Israeli government came to its conclusions and why they also felt that hot escalation was necessary, and why why they also felt it was necessary to hide this from the public and never admit it for the better part of a decade. This is a little bit of levity here, fellow conspiracy realist. It's something I don't know if we if we mentioned often enough, But this conspiracy started like many government conspiracies, and be surprised how many of them start this way. It all began because someone somewhere screwed up. Yeah, it's not like some crazy Monty Burns master plan. It almost never is. Soon made a mistake, and then other people scrambled to fix that or address it, and then try. While trying to fix it, things just like more and more wrong. It's like if you're moving, but like you, if you're one of those people who um when you get groceries, you try to carry as many possible from the car, right you want to like maximize your load or whatever, and then you like one, I don't know what what do people eat, Matt, Mandarin oranges? Okay, so one one like mandarin orange falls out of the bag, you got both of your handsfully like dang it, and trying to like wiggle your way down to pick up that orange to fix that mistake, and all sorts of other stuff starts falling out of the bag, and the next thing you know, you know, you're you're You've got like half of your junk out there on your on your driveway, and your neighbor drops Viven's like, just to be clear, I never said whether or not I have a car, And You're like, now is not the time, Neil, or whatever, And Neil's like, why did you put your junk on the driveway? I thought we were just talking about groceries. Yes, well, Neil is asking the real questions in this in this scenario. So it's true, though, you know, like a lot of times, it might surprise people, I think because in the world of fiction, conspiracies are often presented as the as escalations on the part of a very powerful, very competent group, and that is not always the case. The people at the top are human beings too for the most parts. So sometimes there's a mastermind. Sometimes not, well, there are a ton of people who want to be masterminds, you know what I mean. But there are very few actual effective ones, and they're not all good either, by the way, Like you could argue, you know, you could argue various despots and dictators are quote unquote good at their jobs, but being good at their jobs is not necessarily good for other people. Uh okay, alright, well, let's let's move on. Alright, Yeah, you're right. Let's let's talk about this cube. It's a big, wait for cubical building that was at the time it was still under construction in the middle of the desert. It's it has an area of more than seventeen thousand, two hundred square feet, so it's really really big. It's close to sixties six ft high. Here's how this got to this point. The Israeli Defense Establishment had been paying attention to this mysterious factory looking structure since at least the end of two thousand six. If you think the nickname the Cube is sort of uncreative, well that that falls on that they coined the term. That's fine. They're the you know, they're the defense Establishment, not the nickname squad. So hey, I kind of dig it because it reminds me of that the film series The Cube. I was thinking of that too. What is the point of that, what's like the ultimate What was the motivation for sticking those folks in the cube? Mostly psychological torture of an audience. I think of an audience forced to watch it. Oh boy, no, the so for anyone who's unaware. So the It's just cube I think the first one came out in the late nineties, and the ideas that these people wake up and they don't know one another from Adam or a Canna paint, and they have to progress through these series of cubes that are rigged with traps, not all of them, but some of them are rigged with traps to the lethal traps, and I think at some point it goes to several films. Don't spoil it, Yeah, don't spoil it. I would just say from an indie filmmaker's perspective, it is a brilliant concept because you have one set, you just change that set a little bit and ope you're in a new cube. Oh is it look the same even though we're switching from one cube to the next part of the cube, same room, same set. Wow, this is perfect and it's supposed to be that way too for the story. That's what they're tough. All right, that's a really good point. Um, yeah, don't uh. Probably a lot of us in the crowd remember it today. I without going back, I'm I don't remember the entirety of why those people ended up there, but I think they get to it one of the films. They get to it. Okay, I'll have to check it out too, but let us know what you all think about the cube. So it's the end of two thousand and six. The months are going by, we're getting into two thousand seven. The Israeli government grows increasingly suspicious and later certain that the cube is not just some weird industrial flex in the middle of the desert, that it is actually President Bashar al Assad's secret flagship passion project. There they are telling their superiors, we believe that this is in fact a nuclear reactor. They got it from North Korea. Syria is working on the bomb. This is important because if that happened and one fell swoop, no matter what you think about who should or should not have the quote unquote right to nuclear power, no matter what would happen in that case, Uh, Syria with this program would fundamentally change the playing field. It would remove a huge part of Israel's military technological edge, and so if you are the Israeli government, you are thinking this could open the door too terrible terrible things, and it's a door we might not be able to close if we don't act now. And this has been brewing for a long time, right, they had known this for decades or they been keeping an eye on it for decades, and we're having a tough time getting accurate info. It goes back to I think at least the early early nineties, So that's when the the regime there in Syria it was known that there was an interest in procuring at least not only weapons themselves, by the ability to create weapons, especially through research facilities. Kind so kind of have that cover, right, we're doing this for energy, um. And that's that's when the Western world, well the United States, Israel, probably UH, England and a couple other powers, the UK, they were just really paying attention to Syria in particular, and Israel really then started paying attention again because of just proximity and because how much it would shift the playing field if if it were to occur um. But this was only after there was a serious intelligence gap in Libya. That's when that's when Israel is like, oh, if we didn't know this specific thing about Libya, maybe we don't know some specifics about Syria, and we're missing some info here. And what could they be doing in that garage if there's no way for us to peek in exactly? Yeah, So there's there's something really interesting that comes from uh. The guy who was the head of the intelligence division at Massad in two thousand three, and his name's am Non Suffrin, and you can hear his surprise, frustration and no small amount of fury when he talks about how he how he figured this out. He says, on December nineteenth, two thousand three, a Saturday morning, I turned on the radio and heard on a news broadcast that the Americans and the British have persuaded Libya to dismantle its nuclear program. The next morning, I assembled by people and I said, we had to experience two total failures here. We had absolutely no idea that such a program, meaning in Libya even existed. In second, we didn't know that the negotiations to dismantle it have been going on for eight months. We started to back analyze the Libyan program and try to figure out where else in the region, similar pro Grahams could be hiding. So imagine that your entire job is to know as much as possible about stuff like this, and you hear it, you know, on like MPR, what I'm sorry, Uh wow, I'm not hungry anymore. Let's get to work exactly. You know, That's that's the thing that gets me, because it's like hearing that kind of stuff for an industry professional through the news and having to be the first time you've heard this is is a recipe for a heart attack. That's not only is that highly unusual, but it means that you need you have hundreds of things you need to have done by yesterday. And we're gonna take a pause for a word from our sponsor or turn to explore a little bit more about what Suffering did once he realized he had been like scooped by CNN. It's crazy and we are back, So Ben, what's uh, Let's jump back to Massad. Let's see what they're doing. Yeah, so about a month of invest month's worth of investigations in Sue Suffrin and the research teams over at MASSAD say, okay, Libya surprised us in a way that we did not care for and it looks like the problem is much closer to home than we imagine. Syria at some point has entered the race to build the bomb. They're not at drawing board stage. It's not a series of like back room conversations Davos or whatever. They're doing this uh, and it caught us unaware because reasonably most of our investigations focus on a rod instead of our neighbor to the north. And then this is where Suffrin talks a little bit more about their discovery. He says, the Koreans and the Syrians built a camouflage structure on top of the reactor that made it look like a factory. From the outside. You don't see what's happening inside. It is far from any settlement. There is no reason for anyone to be in this area except for herdsman. We began to suspect that there, in broad daylight, a reactor was hiding, and in January two thousand seven, satellite photos revealed that there was a pipeline leading directly from the Cube to the Euphrates. This is important because if your researcher, you know, you have to be very carefully. Don't want to read tea leaves. You know what I mean. You want to have real proof. So they started to think, okay, middle of nowhere, nobody really has any business being here except for shepherds, hurt hurting professionals. Uh so this is a cooling system and that's one of the big things you need for a reactor. So even at that point, they're not saying this definitely a reactor. They're saying, ah, quacks like a duck. I want to be too conclusive, but there's some there's a definite quacking going on. And then massaw it or someone excuse me, had a breakthrough. This is this is a little dicey. So at this point I'm trying to think of the correct way to say this. This is an event that occurs in Vienna in early March of two thousand seven, and what we know about it is based on the work of an American journalist, that's right, journalist named David Mkowski, who was writing in the New York in two thousand and twelve. A man named Ibraheim Othman, who was head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, had gone to Austria and he was participating and he's doing this to participate in these deliberations of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and of course Israel wants to know what's going on. So with Selo Massad, agents from the Cachette unit broke into the place where he was staying. It was an apartment, it's where Offman was staying, and within less than an hour they quote vacuumed up the information that was on the personal computer that this this man was using. He's a Syrian official. And it is so funny, like this is this is how it works, right, He leaves the apartment for just a little bit, for just a brief period of time, however long it was, and like special agents from an intelligence agency break into the apartment, access to the computer and then get out of there. It's just crazy to him, sagined that can happen and probably does happen all the time. Can you imagine that's very common. Well, this is at least according to the reporting from David Mukowski in the New Yorker, that's what this is what happened. Because Israel never officially acknowledged that this occurred, that their intelligence agency had anything to do with it, or even accepted responsibility for anything occurring in that apartment, and then we see another series of uh, a series of missteps, right, someone screws up and that leads to this kind of situation. There. Their hack found that Athman's computer usage definitely left something to be desired. He had thirty five photographs at least from inside this building in the Syrian desert, and in the pictures everything the more uh paranoid folks in Massad and intelligence were saying, is confirmed. There's a visible photograph of this reactor, their fusion cylinders and their bars, and there are clearly non Syrian people working who are later identified as experts from North Korea, from the Korean Peninsula. And so they say, okay, well, game on. We were right in the worst way. Can we just say point out here, even in two thousand seven, it was possible to doctor some images, and it was possible to plant images onto a machine, especially if you are an elite intelligence agency that has broken into someone's apartment. You could ostensibly place images or any files onto a machine's hard drives or you know, even virtually onto some accessible virtual drive. It's possible. We just have to put that out there. Doesn't mean that that's what happened. Yeah, that's a really good observation, you know, because the technology available might surprise a lot of people. So there's two thousands seven, But consider that stooks Net, which disabled a lot of Iranian nuclear research. It's an Israeli US system that was first uncovered in two thousand and ten, but people have been working on it since two thousand and five. So things are a little bit further along behind the curtain, and they might appear to the public it is possible. That's a very important point. But to the non intelligence not calling them dumb, I'm saying they don't work in intelligence. To the non intelligence UH members and leaders of the Israeli government, this is a smoking gun. And so o mayor makes the decision. Who may makes the decision to share this information with the US. And he was hoping, apparently that he could show these documents, these photographs to the George W. Bush administration, which was the administration in power at the time, and that they would say, holy smokes, you know, hold my hold my beer. We're gonna go destroy this on our own. We cannot have this happen. But instead what they found was that after they met with President Bush, with W. Bush, with Vice President Dick Cheney with the top people, the CIA, the NSC, the National Security Council. The US wasn't super on board with this, the kind of pro war hawks where had one idea. Their idea was let's do it now, let's bomb it, let no stones stand on another, Let's do it publicly so we can set an example. And then other folks were saying, well, I don't know, there's enough proof for us, And then reportedly the President at the time himself said, you know, I'm not persuaded. Uh, we need a lot more than this to justify taking unilateral action on a sovereign state, because that's what we would be doing. We can tell the rest of the world whatever we want, but the fact of the matter is we would just be deciding to fly over there and bomb something. And that's usually you know, there are channels for that, right, their international mechanisms and other steps. But this is the ticking time bomb argument. It is the ticking time bomb argument. And we have to keep in mind that the Bush administration and American intelligence agencies had learned a lot of well maybe they hadn't learned a lot of hard lessons. They'd gone through a lot of trials and tribulations because of actions they had taken in the Middle East over the past, you know, four or five years prior to that, just in you know, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and some of the other actions that were taken right like for instance, I mean the big badger in the bag here is the false reports of w m d s or you know, according to some listeners, some people, some of you have written in that fully believe, especially some of you who are deployed, believe that w m d s were found and they were just hidden from the public for some reason. It's a murky world, uh, And in some of the discoveries or things that didn't exist out there in a rock. I still wonder about that story about that palette of a like a billion dollars in cash. It's just gone somewhere, that one palette. All them palettes, man telling you stuff. We're never in the right time, at the right place for there's kind of giveaways. It's just do you ever think about that? I don't know. Well, just make sure there's lots and lots of natural resources directly beneath your feet, and they may just fall from the sky. I really should have checked the lithium content that property about, but they were not unified. The US government its leaders were not unified on what action should occur. So apparently after his last, the last attempt at a pitch didn't work, o'myre told the US President, look, if you don't do it, we will. And what was George Bush's reply, that's so weird. Well, man's got to do what a man's gotta do, which is what I get it. Trust me, I get it. There's a cube out of the desert. It take it out. He's saying, you know, the US is not leading this, so a man's got to do what a man's gotta do. Is is a weird, weird answer. I mean, shout out to Dr Horrible. Do you guys remember that when Horrible the singalong blog? Yes, yeah, yeah, it's so good still holds up. Anyway, this all leads. I just want to make sure I was speaking as that came in, so we can really get the full brunt of that thunder strike. Oh yeah, so so we um So, I think we've done an okay job outlining the concerns that led to this conspiracy, this decision to unilaterally strike this structure. Despite the serious risk of Syrian retaliation. And it came from the rationalization came from something called UH to begin doctrine, which is this term for the Israeli government's position that UH it's okay to make preventative strikes, preemptive strikes, so long as in doing so, you're preventing one of your enemies from gaining access to any kind of w m D, but nuclear weapons especially. And they had already done stuff supported by this doctrine early year in Iraq, Operation Opera, Operation Outside the Boxes another another iteration of this. But Operation Opera got a lot of bad press. Operation Outside the Box did not. It is quite plausible that unless you have lived in some aspect of this world geographically or in your profession, you would have not heard of this. But they they sent, they sent some major stuff, and they did some pretty impressive, just objectively impressive electronic jamming and signal signal intelligence work like they had. They had ten F fifteens or F fifteen eyes fly along with an escort of F sixteen jets and then signal intelligence aircraft. Three of those fighter jets get ordered back, seven continue into Syria, and then Israel just doesn't say anything, yeah, just silence. And one of the main reasons that the entire thing was kept so quiet is because Syria did a an excellent job at covering its tracks, covering up its activities of what we were actually going down at the cube and um. They also didn't cooperate with that Atomic Energy Group. So, I don't know, it's weird. It's almost like on Sirius behalf. It's almost like, oh, okay, you got us. Hey, no fair play, you got us. Okay, we'll we'll just we'll just be quiet. We'll just go over here, we understand. I don't know, that's not exactly what happened, but at least at least they knew that they had been caught, that their clandestine nuclear program had been caught. If that's in fact what was happening there, well, they also they made kind of a bet, which was an interesting bet. I think they said, based on what we know about how secret this is, how limited information about this is, if we attack in this way, we are going to force the president and government of Syria into what they called the denial space. The denial space is interesting because they're saying, if this attack avoids embarrassing and publicly humiliating assade. There's a non zero chance that he'll decide to hold back and that he won't respond by going to war because it's an event with a small footprint, it's quiet, it's so far away from where a lot of civilians are living. Israel doesn't take responsibility for it. And if we don't crow or call too loudly in the aftermath, then that gives aside this space, this denial space, this opportunity to downplay the event. So we're going to launch this surprise attack, and the trick is UH not to take responsibility immediately afterwards and then just push ahead. And we have like this diplomatic effort while we're sitting and while we're not publicly saying we did it behind closed doors, we're gonna go to other countries and we're gonna be like, check out these photos, bro, you know what I mean, Like I told you so. So this led to their calculation and and their bet did work because there were signals that Syria was obviously on high alert after this. They put long range missiles armed with chemical warfare warheads rather UH into play, but they didn't retaliate because they were worried about that car that may or may not be in the garage, and they thought, you know, if we deploy something, this may be the excuse Israel needs to take these weapons of mass destruction for a ride around the block, which is a very real possibility and very dangerous. It So fast forward more than ten years of March one, Israel officially acknowledged the operation and they were and when they did so, they released more material to justify what they've done, to say like, hey, played fast and loosed with some laws, but we've been pretty clear that we we felt like we had a good reason to do it. And depending on what you believe, this may have prevented a much larger conflict in the future. This was a conspiracy, Was it successful? I mean maybe for a while. And also, you know, it leads to the question Matt, that we were asking before, like this is this is clearly the shadow of a q Khan. You can trace the knowledge that he gained, knowledge that he earned in the knowledge that he disseminated throughout the world. Uh. But who should have the right to possess nuclear weapons? I mean, we see a spectrum of answers um A lot of countries that have them, now take the flying car approach, like, it's really cool if I have a flying car, as long as no one else has one, otherwise there might be accidents. But then there are other you know, like nonprofits that say, oh, I've got the answer for you, no one, no one should have this. Oh yeah, and some some really are the the answer for some people really is everyone Like literally, the only way to stop it now is if everybody has nukes, because you can't. You can never confirm that any country has zero nukes. You're it's it would be very difficult to fully confirm that anyone country, no matter what their capabilities outside of nuclear weapons, to confirm that they don't have them, right, Yeah, that's that's the problem. It's tough to prove that it's not around. And if you think about it, logically, the fewer countries that have nuclear weapons, the more valuable they become. So if everybody officially agreed that let's let's say over a period of I don't know, ten twenty years, it would reduce the world's population of nuclear warheads down to zero immediately. What would happen or somewhere between those two decades there would be this huge program very well funded by any country that could afford it, to keep some in secret, you know, just just for us, just for later, just hide all their news nukes across Iowa in the heartland. Uh So, put them on subs, put them on subs that are hard to track and could be anywhere in the world's oceans. How about this, everybody gets one. Everybody gets just the one every You have to bring enough for class folks. Uh that's I mean, that's a question, and it's it's a tough question to answer. You can make the argument. So you've stated before that there are some groups that might be better suited to have them and not do destructive things. But nuclear weapons are designed to do destructive things. You know. They don't detonate and produce flowers. Honestly, they produce arguably one mushroom, and it's a deadly one. But the this is an idea the world still whirls with, and the conversation is very much um, very much led and run by the countries that are currently nuclear powers, and those countries are at a standoff that's been going on for a long time, and neither especially Russia in the US, neither are going to back down because they envision a world where they may be in the position in some ways that Libya was. It's it's something that doesn't really have an answer. And so for folks who agree with the policy of preemptive unilateral strikes, you know, there's a clear argument for the greater good. For folks who disagree with it, uh, there's the idea that this may have been despite the official lines, despite the later declassified stuff. There's a gulf of tonk in argument like maybe this was just politically convenient. Maybe this was an opportunity more than an accident or an attempt to repair a cover up. I'm imagining a scenario where representatives from the DPRK like struck a deal to start a factory somewhere in Syria and then secretly just they were building nuclear weapons, are starting to build the capabilities to have nuclear weapons created in that facility, and this, you know, series had no idea. That's the thing. No one ever has any idea until it benefits them, right, Like I no idea. Of course I knew that, and then I knew it all along. Yeah, uh, and that you know that happens to everybody in the personal life too. But uh, but this is Uh, you hit on a crucial point, Matt. I don't know if I told you this, but I spoke with diplomatic representatives in the DPRK a number of years ago for not something sketchy. Are you sure it was for school? Come on, man? And they It was strange because I was surprised by how openly antagonistic the U. S forces escorting them were. And I was surprised by how openly the DPRK representatives spoke about nuclear weaponry or nuclear power or hydro electric power, to the point where some of the U. S. State Department folks cut the lecture short. Uh. They did not want the Q and A to continue. So we have to be careful when we hear these varying narratives and perspectives. Um. Of course, these kind of things are things that later historians have to suss out the truth of. But we want to pass the torch to you, folks, or we want to pass the warhead to you. What do you think was this the right or wrong action to take? Uh? And perhaps even more importantly, what other countries might be secretly working towards the creation of a bomb today? And if you believe those countries exist then how should they be handled? Let us know. We try to be easy to find online. Um, got my eye squarely on Jamaica looking at you guys making making nukes out there, and I know it. No, I'm just shoking. I'm thinking Macedonia. Yeah, classic Macedonians. No, I think we're joking. We're joking. We are joking. Sorry, apologies to Macedonia and Jamaica. That's right, but please let us know what you think. We'd love to hear your reasoning, you know, but behind your opinions, we we'd love to just understand. And you can tell us those opinions in all kinds of different ways. You can find us on social media where we are conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook. We are conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. If you don't want to do those things, hey, you can tell us how you feel in a review on iTunes. 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