Episode 571: Drugs and Thugs

**Liz Franczak** (0:00)
This episode of True Anon is presented by the Center for ADHD Equality with funding provided by the Randy Fine Twix Foundation. We hope you enjoy the show.

**Brace Belden** (0:35)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. My name is Brace Belden.

**Liz Franczak** (0:41)
I'm Liz.

**Brace Belden** (0:42)
And I'm producer Yung Chomsky.

**Liz Franczak** (0:44)
And this is True Anon. Hello, everyone.

**Brace Belden** (0:46)
Hello.

**Liz Franczak** (0:47)
Hello. How are you doing, Brace?

**Brace Belden** (0:50)
You know what? I've had terrific acid reflux the past couple of days. But I want to talk about something that...
It's... And we don't have to dwell on it or anything, but every few years, I go to some kind of event with a lot of food stalls in a fair type environment, and I buy a turkey leg.

**Liz Franczak** (1:11)
I'm going to say, you texted the picture of this turkey leg, and I saw the future already. I knew what was happening before it happened, and I was like, you dumb motherfucker, what are you doing with that turkey leg?

**Brace Belden** (1:23)
I did not say anything.

**Liz Franczak** (1:25)
I did not say, yeah, Dom, Dame Nostradamus over here.
I didn't say anything because I'm not rude. But it was the next morning that another text arrived via post, iPost, about someone not sleeping well due to acid reflux. And I said, ah, the turkey leg, it did arrive.

**Brace Belden** (1:50)
You'd be wrong, Liz. It wasn't the turkey leg that caused the acid reflux because unbeknownst to you, I ate about four bites of that turkey leg before I remembered, as I have remembered so many times yet forgotten so many more, that turkey legs fucking suck, that turkey is not good, that turkey is eaten at Thanksgiving as a way to punish Americans for the sins of the colonial past. And I actually got rid of the turkey leg. I foisted it off onto somebody else, and I bought what I believed was another festival food, a Bloomin Onion.
Now, I've never had a Bloomin Onion before, but I thought, hey, when in the ancient past, because that's precisely where I was, I was at a Renaissance fair, guess what? It tasted just as bad as the turkey leg.

**Liz Franczak** (2:40)
It's probably cooked in the same thing.

**Brace Belden** (2:42)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

**Liz Franczak** (2:44)
Yeah.

**Brace Belden** (2:45)
No, no, no, no. How could you cook a turkey leg and a Bloomin Onion in the same, as you put it, the same thing?

**Liz Franczak** (2:53)
Have you ever worked in a kitchen?

**Brace Belden** (2:55)
No.

**Liz Franczak** (2:56)
There you go.

**Brace Belden** (2:58)
That's fair.

**Liz Franczak** (2:58)
Yeah.

**Brace Belden** (2:59)
That's fair.
But I got a lot to say about Renaissance Fairs, but people, I guess, will have to see in this next newsletter we got because that's not for airing. We have an exciting episode today.

**Liz Franczak** (3:15)
We do. I was going to say something, but now I'm not.

**Brace Belden** (3:17)
Oh, no, no. Say it.

**Liz Franczak** (3:18)
Say it. Say it.

**Brace Belden** (3:19)
No.

**Liz Franczak** (3:19)
I'll say it for later.

**Brace Belden** (3:20)
No, please.
No. Please.

**Liz Franczak** (3:24)
You don't even ask.

**Brace Belden** (3:28)
Can you please tell me?

**Liz Franczak** (3:30)
No.
We have Jack Poulson here to talk to us about this super secret, non-secret organization, part of the US bureaucratic spider's web called the INL and kind of, I don't know, what would you say, Brace? The permeability between, what, narcotics enforcement, law enforcement, international law enforcement and covert operations?

**Brace Belden** (3:59)
The intersection between those. The four-way, three-way intersection between those.

**Liz Franczak** (4:04)
Yeah. And understanding modern statecraft.

**Brace Belden** (4:25)
Ladies and gentlemen, many of you are familiar with the term open source intelligence. There's also, of course, human intelligence. The more elusive divine intelligence. And, of course, mysterious intelligence.
Combining all of those into one is investigative journalist and national security resorcher, resorcher, resorcerer, of course, because that's how you get to the divine intelligence. Jack Poulson, author of the sub stack, or as I like to call it, the blog, All Source Intelligence, here to talk to us about, we're going to be talking about a lot of things today, but specifically, we're going to be talking about a little subset of the State Department. But first of all, Jack, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.

**Jack Poulson** (5:13)
Doing great. I don't know how I could possibly live up to that intro, but we'll see.

**Liz Franczak** (5:18)
It's great to have you back on.