The CIA’s "Secret" Moscow Trip & Putin’s Growing Problems | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

**David Parke** (0:00)
Hey, everybody, we are back. Another episode of Eyes On Geopolitics. I'm here with Jonathan Hackett, Mick Mulroy dressed up for us today. Thank you, Mick. And Andy just got off a workout looking pumped as ever.
Lot happening as usual. Iran's kind of like in a standstill, you know. The Shrader Hormuz is open. No, it's not. It's open, no, it's not. Like, it's hilarious what's going on, I guess, in the headlines between both sides. I think today we're gonna focus on, obviously, everybody saw CIA directors. Ratcliffe's secret, and I'm saying that in air quotes for the people that are listening, trip to Moscow that was basically fucking telegraphed the whole time, like all the OSIN accounts that follow, you know, plane data and transponders were following this guy when he hit Riga and then when he hit Moscow. So I don't know if you could really technically call it secret because like after it happened, there was like a spin cycle that was going on for like the last week. A lot of speculation as to what they were talking about. He met the head of the FSB and SVR. Putin wasn't there, but he's briefed right after.
So yeah, I mean, there's a ton of speculation. Like I'll throw it off to you guys. I mean, I'm sure you guys have been paying attention to this really tightly. Andy, let's go.

**Jack Murphy** (1:20)
All right, so on the, I got nothing on it really on the Ratcliffe, is it?

**David Parke** (1:27)
So I picked the wrong guy to go first.

**Jack Murphy** (1:30)
Well, yeah, let's, I mean, let's talk about that first. But I would, I would deflect that to Mick and then I will chime in with some useless comments in the tail end of that. And then I thought we could talk about the, that excellent article you afforded at D by the head of of Estonia's intelligence service in the wake of the Ratcliffe.

**David Parke** (1:54)
Right. Yeah.

**Michael Patrick Mulroy** (1:54)
And that's a good segue. Yeah, we talked about a lot on ABC this week. So to your point, I mean, there's other ways to get the director of the CIA in that's much less obvious than going on a military transport plane. We have very nondescript jets, for example, that can do that. It's not perfectly flandestine, of course, but this, I think, to your point, D, I think it was meant to be known. Right? They wanted this to be something that, historically, they could go back and say, remember that time? Because one, you could also do a phone call rather than take a 14, 15-hour flight for a two-hour meeting.
So I think if you look at it that way, so they wanted it to be known. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but they sent the CIA director, so it probably was about intelligence, although the CIA is often used for sensitive diplomacy, with terrorist groups and stuff like that, where you don't want to get our state departments' hands dirty, so to speak. But I think if you look at most of the reporting, New York Times, it was likely about the intelligence they had, specific to the potential challenge to a NATO country. That's my take. Why? You don't need to fly all the way out there to tell them they're not doing well against Ukraine.
Like, why? You don't need to fly all the way out there to ask them to stop helping Iran.
They know that. They know that we don't want them to help Iran. We're in a war with Iran. I'm not saying they didn't address it, but there had to be something that spurred, one, them wanting to put a marker down that we did this, and, two, sending them all the way out there to the little over it. I think the sensitivity of telling them that we know that they have… Obviously, we think they're going to do a major escalation in Ukraine, and it might potentially be a challenge to a NATO country, and that we know it, I think, is probably the most likely… Maybe they talked about all of it, but I think that's probably the reason why they got Director Ratcliffe on an aircraft to fly all the way there. So what does it mean? Well, I think it's a point to point out that we actually are, just from looking at it from public reporting, good intelligence on what Russia intends to do. I mean, how we were talking about before the war in Ukraine, like, we know they're going to do this, it's going to happen. They denied it, and then they did it, right? So I think we must have good intelligence, and I think the point is, hey, what element of surprise do you think you have? You don't. So now the whole world is talking about it. See what I mean? And hopefully, it spurs the countries in Europe to start really amping up their own personal, or their own national security, defense and preparedness, because it's one thing just to make them a lot of fancy new weapon systems. It's another thing to be prepared to use them. So I'll stop there, but I think that's likely the cause, and it's certainly, if something like that happened, that's all we're going to be talking about, right?