introduce it? >> people are ready to see something come forward from us on the issues of privacy and on data security. and certainly now we're beginning to have not only states but cities look at privacy regulation. and they're doing it because the federal government, because congress has not taken an action. and now that the privacy issue will not have two regulators, which is a good thing, we're going to have one. and the ftc has historicically been the the regulator of privacy in both the physical space and the virtual space. and we think it's important to have one set of rules for the the entire eco system and one regulator for the entire eco system.

♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," former counterterrorism and intelligence officer malcolm nance talks about his career and his most recent book "the plot to hack america: how putin cyberspies and wikileaks tried to steal the 2016 election." and "hacking isis: how to destroy the cyber jihad." brian: former senior chief petty officer malcolm nance, what is the story of the nance family in the military? malcolm: i love being called senior chief. long while very

since i served in the navy. i come from a very old u.s. military family. for african americans, it is sort of an achievement. my family started it. my first person to serve was my great-great-grandfather. his brother also joined the 111 u.s. color troops. they guarded the tennessee valley during the offensive and he got bored with it, so he joined the u.s. navy. he transitioned from the u.s. army to the u.s. navy and became a landsman aboard a rivering

warfare craft on the tennessee river. predominantly navy, but we accept the army a little. brian: where did they live in those days? malcolm: they came from a slave family in northern alabama. it is interesting because the original nance's started in south carolina. but my father's side came from western georgia. there is a small place called nanceville. at the time of the civil war, that is where virtually all african-american nance's originated. brian: when did you decide to become a navy man? malcolm: my father was a master chief in the navy and i was born in a naval hospital, philadelphia naval hospital. you know, it was destined that i was going to go into the family business and his father had served in the army, world war i and world war ii. his father had served in the indian wars, and his father had served in the civil war. and him and so it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that i would join not only my father, but my five other brothers who also served in the u.s. navy. brian: why did you go to school to learn arabic? malcolm: you know, it is funny, because from a very earliest age, i had studied, you know, i was fascinated with the middle east and the arab-israeli war.

-- i must have7 been seven years old at that time. and then, when the war came up in the munich olympics, i was at that age where these things became fascinating to me, so it is interesting because i did not come into the military to study arabic. i studied spanish, french, chinese, and russian. when i got recruited, the recruiter said you speak russian, we will send you to the defense language institute, so i did not speak that much russian. when i got there, they said you are going to arabic. we think that is better suited for you. and when i went in to arabic, i tried to quit in my first couple of months, but you know, the middle east is a very different place from russia. the russian instructors would drop you in a heartbeat. the arabic instructors said "listen, you want to quit, no

problem. but come back in six weeks." i forgot to come back in six weeks. i went on to start my career includes a logic intelligence. brian: what was the first year you were in the navy? malcolm: the first year i was in the navy was 1981. brian: when did you get out? malcolm: 2001. brian: when you turn on television, most of the time you see former lieutenant colonel in the u.s. army, former admiral in the u.s. navy. it is rare that you see former chief petty officer. [laughter] brian: how is it that you -- disagree with me if you want -- but how is it that being a former chief, senior chief petty officer, got to be in this intellectual world? that's not a putdown, i just want to know how it happened. malcolm: john mccain says the

greatest event that ever happened in his life was being educated by a navy chief. he has great respect for navy chiefs. we are the lifeblood and backbone. leadership of the united states navy. i am not unique. there are many, many people who are involved in government and in the intelligence community, who are senior enlisted. i can point out that our two national mission forces, delta force and seal team six, everyone of them is a navy chief petty officer. there are very few officers. same thing with delta force. they are all master sergeant and above. we are the people who actually do the work. we do not have to sign off on it. that gives me a very deep grounding and many different parts of the intelligence community, not just cryptology and, you know, foreign language operations. i got to work on many different platforms, but it also showed me a very broad view of how military power and intelligence power is used throughout government. brian: so what is a chief petty officer and how does that relate to an admiral? malcolm: well, he is god. [laughter] malcolm: the u.s. navy is the only one of the three services that has three different branches of the service.

you know, the army, air force, marine corps, have officer and enlisted. the navy is the only one with officer enlisted and chiefs. chiefs are the middle management, and when you become a chief petty officer, you go through an elaborate ceremony to discard yourself from your junior enlisted ways and to take on the leadership of actually running things. that is opposed to managing things. but to run things correctly, you had to actually have done that job. and the navy, back in the days when they formed the chiefs, it was highly mechanized. it was a lot more sophisticated, so they created a core country -- core cadre of experts. since then, they have gone on to create war officers, which are people who are senior listed, who came on and became junior officers, but i had a chance to do that. there had already been one master chief nance in the navy,

and i would retire and move on to other parts of the intelligence community. brian: your father was one more. malcolm: i literally turned that down. i did not want to become the second master chief nance. brian: why? malcolm: because he had already made his mark. he was one of the first african americans in the ship's engineering, one of the first black instructors in the united states navy. very proud of his legacy. brian: where do you live today? malcolm: between philadelphia, pennsylvania, and upstate new york. today, i do many different things besides speak on msnbc. i run a think tank on strategy tactics and radical ideologies. it is a very small group of former intelligence officers who have a minimum of 10 years field experience, and one of the things we noted in a lot of academic groups and think tanks is they have academics, but they do not have anyone with field experience. so we have former cia, military intelligence officers, who all

have direct field and operational experiences and speak from that perspective. brian: here you are testifying in 2007 at the u.s. helsinki hearing. [begin video clip] malcolm: waterboarding is a professional process when done in the hands of a confident team. it is an inhumane, cruel, degrading torture that was used by the most evil people including nazis and north vietnamese. eo clip]o

himere you wa terboarded? malcolm: i was waterboarded as part of the on boarding process as a new instructor coming into the school. that was in 1996, if i am not mistaken. as a new instructor, and worse, the senior enlisted amongst a group of trainees in that course, i got maximum everything. it was a great experience, because soon i would be doing this same thing. there are techniques used. people without any belief in human rights, who see the human spirit as something to be broken, we had to be subjected to that to the maximum, and there were written maximums. they do not do it anymore. brian: why not? malcolm: after the cia program became public, the department of defense decided that they were not going to be validating some of the techniques that were being considered now globally as torture. brian: when you were waterboarded in training, explain what it felt like. malcolm: it was a unique experience, because as an old

chief, we go through chief initiation. there was a fake simulation where they put you through a series of stresses and test, and when i got strapped to the waterboard, thinking that this is part of my on boarding process, i thought it would be a joke to it i thought it was just going to be a short simulation, and boom, get off and insult me, but it was not at all. it was an extremely professional, highly regimented process, where i was strapped down in a matter of seconds, i was systems tested. they talk to you, say "breathe. we are going to ask you questions and you are going to give us answers." before i knew it, water was being poured onto my face, flowing into my nostrils, and then you can feel it. you can feel it well up at the bottom of your throat and start forcing its way down in the esophagus, and it is a horrible feeling. my first thought -- it was very clear -- was "i am being tortured." nothing more. and then i started to kick and thrash and try to force myself off it, but there was no way.

and there are actually other techniques they can do to make it worse. but you know, they had to give me the maximum amount of water that a person is required to take at the school so that i understood just met the enemy does have a way to make you talk, but our program is designed to show you what to say, and the first thing you should say is "i was tortured," and that way you spoil the enemy's ability to exploit you. we do not and do not teach or condone torture. we gave a demonstrator tool to show that the enemy does far worse, far worse examples. john mccain went through the ropes, which is where they tie your elbows behind you and

pop your shoulders out of the shoulder blade. then, drag you up onto the ceiling. you're going to say something to the question is, how to say it, when to say it, the demise the damage, and defeat the enemy, and force them to have to work harder. brian: what is the most difficult situation you ever found yourself in in the navy? danger, not personal interaction. [laughter] malcolm: i have a career reputation of being a bullet magnet. i started off in beirut in 1983, which was horrific. but personal danger, i think when i was in kuwait in 1991, during the first gulf war and i was helping eod mobile unit 16 -- explosive ordnance disposal mobile unit 16. i went ashore as head of the guy who was in charge of intelligence ashore, and they were clearing sea mines that had been floated into the ocean. to get there, you had to go through a firing pit that was

along the kuwaiti coast and had to go through a mixed minefield and you got to the barbed wire, and there were lgm sea mines with the big spiky ones would float and the eod had to go out and defuse those for one day, they asked me and said could you check out these markings? i said, sure. i will check out those markings. i went out, and while i was looking at the markings, one of the explosive ordnance disposal men said "chief, do not move." i said "why?" he said "i think your foot is on a mine." it was near a bounding line. he said "i'm going to go back to the pit." he gave me instructions to move my legs. he said "move back to the firing pit." and then he said "how you feeling?" i said "ok." he said "do you have to pee?" i said "i do." [laughter]

malcolm: it is a can about this big, four spikes on the top. if i had actually stepped on the mine, it would have shot out of the ground and exploded like a shotgun shell. brian: two questions. you can take them both. have you ever seen a person killed? malcolm: yeah. brian: secondly, have you ever killed a person? malcolm: i have seen a person killed. i was in beirut in 1983. i was in the subsequent naval combat and took part in the libyan air raid and many other operations. the first gulf war, i was on a ship when we hit a sea mine. ast wasn't half as bad being near a mine. i guided drones to shell iraqi positions. once i went ashore with eod and the saudi forces, there were a lot of dead. that is just up to the first gulf war. and then after that, you know, i

have been in iraq and afghanistan as well, so there's lots and lots of death there. i had a friend's with a six man security team that i had built together and sent to the airport. it took three weeks to separate them all. war is not a game, not a funny thing. have i directly fired on individuals? yes, i have. now, there is a big difference between what you use a rifle in a defensive purpose, half the time you are not aiming. you are trying not to, but the enemy moves about, and i was doing mainly suppressive fires in the first gulf war. but you know, many times, i put my fingers on a map in bosnia. we did an airstrike where we were working with intelligence staff. we knew we would kill 56 people. i was on the uss wainwright when we were in a naval missile battle, the battle of ciri island. anwent toe-to-toe with

and thatissile boat killed 60 people. everyone in the intelligence community is an intelligence warrior. some guys are further on the spear tip. we have guys on seal platoons. we have people in the rear who, like the famous captain rochefort of world war ii, who broke the japanese codes and won the battle of midway, that man killed more japanese than anyone -- any one individual in the world just by doing that. we have a different perspective on how people are harmed by what we do. brian: when you said vaporized, explain what that means and how does it happen? malcolm: at that time, i was the head of security for a coalition group that was operating out of the republican palace in baghdad. i have solid rules on how to get from camp victory, the airport, to the green zone. those rules were very simple.

minimum speed was 100 miles per hour in a straight line for our two-man security vehicle. it is about five miles, not far. not far from the green zone, but the most dangerous part is that there is this sort of figure eight area called spaghetti junction, and spaghetti junction is where isis or al qaeda was doing all of their suicide bombing attacks. they would look for a team, offramp, and do that for hours until a u.s. convoy or security detail would come by, and they would blow up. and i had a team who broke that rule, and they went behind a u.s. army convoy, got slowed down to 30 miles per hour, and then once they got up to spaghetti junction, a suicide bomber came literally on side of them and vaporized them. they were blown to pieces and blown off the overpass, and just turned into, you know, a seating

-- steaming pile of burning humanity. it affected me greatly because i knew that there is a place and time for having strict, strict rules, and that was one place that those rules should not have been violated. if they had not, granted, the u.s. army convoy might have been attached, but we would have kept seven people alive. brian: how much of what you have done in your career is top secret and cannot be talked about? malcolm: 100%. i started out in cryptologic intelligence as signals intelligence. that was the overwhelming amount of what i have done. i was seconded to other agencies. i am not allowed to discuss those operations. but for the bulk of that, until i became a survival instruction, it was 100%. brian: what would the american whate think if they knew you know?

malcolm: there are thousands of people right now, my brothers and sisters, in the intelligence community, who every day, i am just surprised at how little the american public appreciated how and what they do. you know, there is a statue of nathan hale at the cia. they live by that. they really regret that they have but one life to live for their country. i have friends on the wall. they really enjoy being the spear tip. it hurts when we have failures like 9/11. i am retired, but i am still in the community and i speak for the community. that is the best thing i do publicly at all is that i can help people understand that this is not like it is in the movies. some technological behemoth. these are thousands upon thousands of individuals who only want to serve in silence and make sure that we stay safe. brian: you have got quite a story about 9/11. where were you?

malcolm: that was horrible. at that time, i had an office in georgetown. i started a consulting company where i was supporting special operations command. and we were preparing, interestingly enough, for a very large anti-ship terrorism exercise in san diego. and that morning, i had a new office worker, a new chief of staff, and i took her to capitol hill and i was going to show her around where the house intelligence committee officers were, and we stopped behind capitol hill and pennsylvania avenue. there used to be a coffee house there. they had a tv camera of course, because of the vote calls. when i came in, we got coffee and someone said something about the television. i look at the television and the first fire was burning up the world trade center. and it struck me as all wrong. the air was clear. i thought about that be 25 that

crashed into the empire state building in the 1940's, and they said it might have been a small airplane. we watched until the second airplane flew right into it, and then i knew completely who it was, what it was, why it was. it was al qaeda, it was then them using aircraft as cruise missiles in retaliation for our attack on the training center where we killed several dozen al qaeda members and tried to kill bin laden. they used our own laws and technology against us. i jumped into a car. i started jotting down -- driving down independence avenue, i think it was independence avenue. to the left of the lincoln memorial, i stopped at the light and was listening to the news, and i saw an airplane flying over where the sheraton across arlington, where the marine corps headquarters are, near the pentagon. i said, "oh, look, they rerouted the airplanes." normally, they are right over your head.

to landown the potomac in reagan. then the plane glided right into the building and blew up. my first thought was "we are under nationwide attack." new york, this one, there has got to be more. i drove over memorial bridge, right almost to the crash site, jumped out, and ran over to help people, and at this point, people were starting to stream out of the north side of the west part of the building, and i ran up to one navy admiral, if you might draw and i said "admiral, i know what is going on. we have got to get these people mobilized." she had no idea what happened. i ran towards the hilo pad where the impact was, and i saw to the side, my favorite person in the world, a young army lieutenant colonel who was a nurse. i didn't know it at the time, i

doctor.she was a she was setting up a triage. secretary rumsfeld was moving a stretcher. i learned that she had directed him and his staff to help because he came out to see the crash site. i said "look, what do you need?" she said "i need you to help me get these people mobilized." with the help of a marine sergeant and marine corporal, we got about 300 people stacked up and got been structures and went into the pentagon and removed people out of there. but the most amazing thing has nothing to do with me. this colonel is the single greatest person i ever saw in my life. i saw -- i looked down and she had took her shoes off to run faster, and i said "colonel, get your shoes on. we cannot afford to lose you."

when we got the call there was coming, before anyone could leave the site, she had everyone pick up every stretcher, bandage, everything. she was the last person out of the crash site. we got the all-clear. first person back. i had read about that in military dissertations. last person out, first person in. i had never seen it. it is utterly amazing. we worked the crash site all day. i helped with some of the, you know, some of the removal later on that day. and then i went home and like the rest of the nation, broke down in shock. but for me, that is the single greatest thing i did in my day, was to witness the bravery and heroism at the pentagon. the best part is, that person, colonel patricia, went on to become general patricia, surgeon general of the u.s. army. brian: i heard you have adopted -- this is way off the subject -- you adopted three russian kids?

malcolm: yeah. brian: when, why, and what time, and how does that fit into your life? malcolm: my wife adopted them. my wife, she is an american citizen, but she was born and raised in indiana, born in indiana and raised in montreal. she adopted those three children from moscow and i took over at the crucial part when they were, you know, preteen, tweens, and then became teenagers. i thought i had experienced. dealing with sailors, but nothing like raising a teenager or someone who is becoming a teenager. brian: how were they at 9/11? malcolm: they were 8, 10, and 11. brian: what did you tell them? malcolm: for a couple of years, 9/11 would only affect me on 9/11.

the second year after 9/11, in 2003, when i was in iraq, and then came home, that is when it really, you know, everybody -- you have to manage that trauma at some point. i called my wife and they were all there and i said my desk is spinning and i cannot make it stop. and that he had to come and talk and say what you saw, what you did, and my kids, they appreciate that. that i did something that was selfless, and it was selfless. there is nothing to get out of 9/11 other than pain and suffering and understand that there are many people in this country who have honor and service to this country who 9/11 is their crux point in their career. everything after that has been a response to that. and my kids, my family, they have done very well. they really support me. brian: how have you avoided ptsd, or have you? malcolm: no one avoids ptsd.

[laughter] brian: explain what it does to you. malcolm: what it really does -- i think it is a defensive system that your mind does to manage events. my mind want to understand what happened in beirut. i am a beirut veteran. just the comprehension of 243 guys being blown up and crushed. i was at the national security agency at that time, and i met a guy at a bookstore called kramer books, and i met an old vietnam that who was a combat medic in one of the major battles, and he was pinned down for a week. he had no medicine. and he, you know, i used to

joke, old vets, you guys have ptsd, sit around and tell war stories all day. he said "sounds like you." and i realized "am i doing that?" he said "when you come and talk to me, this is your therapy. so, tell me what stretched you the most. what stressed you the most? what traumatized you the most?" vfw and the american legions were that after world war i and world war ii, places for veterans to go and decompress and manage the stress of what they saw. those retellings of stories -- you always see these stories are hard veterans not telling stories. they do, to each other.

they tell them all the time. you do not want to try to drink. you don't want to manage it with drugs or alcohol. being amongst the camaraderie of our fellow veterans, no matter what war, is the best methodology. that is what therapy is, right? sitting together. brian: are your three children carrying the nance name in the military? malcolm: nope, not at all. i have a niece who is. surprisingly, she just came back from her first combat action off of yemen. she was attacked by anti-shipping missiles fired at their ship in yemen. so we have another combat action winner in our long family history. brian: have you ever met somebody who is an al qaeda member? malcolm: yes. brian: have you talked to them? malcolm: yes. in iraq, it was easy to come upon members of al qaeda that had been rolled up. where i worked in the republican palace, i only worked with iraqis. i did not work mainly with u.s. forces, and you know, every once in a while, they would say come here, this guy is over here, before they were taken to interrogation.

we had a safe house that was just south of a district near an area called palestine street, which was a hard, hard al qaeda in iraq and iraqi insurgent headquarters for downtown baghdad. palestine street, i remember rolling down there, and we had a soft vehicles, not armored vehicles. there was a burning u.s. bradley infantry fighting vehicle that had been destroyed that night. we had a police post right next door. one night, they said, here is one of your friends. i'm like, not my friend. this guy was what they called a knights of the assassins, and al qaeda group that went around at night and had silenced former regime pistols and would execute people. as a matter of fact, i had one of those pistols. there is a famous photograph of me with the knights of the assassin beretta model 92 that

these guys would come up out of the shadows, shoot and iraqi policeman in the head, and a step back in the shadows. iraqi is treated them pretty horribly, and it was important for the u.s. army to gain control of those guys because the iraqis were far worse than we were. brian: i have got books all around me you have written. here is one called "hacking isis," the newest one. there is one called "defeating isis." when was this done? malcolm: i'd started that in and we got it done 2016.ber that is the encyclopedia of isis. that is everything there ever could be written about isis while they existed. it started off -- its original name was "the isis battle manual: how they fight." it was designed to show every field of battle that isis was on

-- afghanistan, libya, syria, yemen, somalia, indonesia, subgroups in boko haram in nigeria, isis in tunisia -- every one of those, including europe and united states and the caribbean, is broken out according to organization, missions, personnel who have been captured or killed. it was designed as an all-encompassing encyclopedia of isis. but in the end, i also had to put in a strategy on, what do you do with this? how do you defeat isis? at that time, i saw some of the things missing from the u.s. strategy was a more aggressive special operations component. i created a thing i called "operation dark matter," where i recommended joint raids between u.s. and syrian kurd, iraqi peshmerga and special forces raids, into syria and into the lines of communications between isis's city for 10 to 12 hours, maraud, and fly out.

and interestingly enught, in the last few months, that has been implemented in syria and iraq. brian: this book looks to be somewhat political. malcolm: [chuckling] brian: does this represent your politics, "the plot to hack america"? malcolm: that came out of "hacking isis." while we were writing that, we found there were two hacks done against a television company in france, and the other against germany's parliament which were attributed to isis. while we were studying that, we learned the methodologies and malware introduced and the place where the servers terminated that were stealing the information were certainly not isis. they were what is now known as atp28, cozy bear.

and "cozy bear," that was the name crowdstrike, this cyber security company, gave for their interpretation of the malware package that belonged to russian military intelligence, the gru. the gru, they had done two false flag operations. isis has hackers, had hackers, some of whom we recently killed, and a giant propaganda machine. but these particular instances were russia pretending to be isis to get into two sensitive servers. one was propaganda, the other governmental. when the dnc was hacked, it became very clear that it was the exact same cyber entity -- russia's military intelligence service, the gru. crowdstrike did an analysis and said there were two of them, advanced persistent threat 28 and 29, which was fancy bear, which is russia's secret

intelligence service, their version of the cia. the svr or the ssb, the follow-along to the kgb. those groups hacked the dnc and carried out a perfect watergate. they did exactly what was not done in the original watergate. they broke in, stole information for almost a year. they took that information, and they weaponized it and introduced it into the political process. most of my career, i was republican. i'm from the colin powell school of republicanism, which is honor and country first, right? my politics have absolutely nothing to do with that book. that book is an intelligence analysis of what we saw with regards to that operation. there has to be a logical terminus for an operation. you don't just do it for fun.

the risk of doing this against the dnc, literally carrying out watergate, means it would have to be approved at the highest level of russia, which is the former kgb director, vladimir putin. career kgb officer, became an autocrat. now runs russia and has made his fsb the hero supposed to open soviet union. -- the heroes of the supposed union. post-soviets of the union, now the republic of russia. that means he had to have done this to affect a result, and he wasn't just going to do it to damage hillary clinton.

there is evidence that that is why he did it, but there is two parties to this, and no information whatsoever was stolen or used against his opponent. when you extrapolate that and boil it down and when you tie it to some of the connections the trump campaign had, that operation was done to affect donald trump to become the president of the united states. brian: in the back of this book -- i want to take advantage of you being here -- is the u.s. government report on russia today, the network that some people in this country have been watching online. i want to show you two ads they ran on russia today. before people see it, who owns russia today? malcolm: government of russia. [chuckling] malcolm: vladimir putin owns and operates russia today. brian: they have a channel, i can watch it in my home. malcolm: if you remember the old pravda and other news agencies in the soviet union, they have changed their name. brian: it is a public organization, american taxpayer dollars somehow get into this. they ran two ads, part of their promotion, one for donald trump and one for hillary clinton, back to back. [video clip] ms. clinton: why aren't i 50

points ahead? we came, we saw, we died. every time i think about trump, i get allergic. nobody can be fooled. [indiscernible] [laughter] mr. trump: when do we beat mexico at the border? they are laughing at us. nobody builds walls better than me. the press are lying. they are terrible people. we use people that are soft and weak. when you say we, we are stupid. the american dream is dead. bing bing bing, bong bong. nobody does that. because you would be in jail. [end video clip] brian: do they have any clout? malcolm: they do now. there was a recent poll where, amongst republican voters and trump voters, four or five years ago, russia had a 16% approval rating, vladimir putin in russia had a 16% approval rating and was viewed as an enemy of the united states. now vladimir putin and russia

have a 56% approval rating amongst republican voters. propaganda works. brian: let me be more precise. is russia today -- they took russia out of the title, they call themselves "rt" -- totally funded by the russian government? do they have any impact, do you think? that network, in this country? malcolm: yes, absolutely they do. if you look at the cia report and hearings we have been having in the house and senate, the information they put out works in almost a complete circle through the fake media process. there are many, many, many organizations who call themselves news organizations in the united states. i'm going to focus on the conservative side because i don't see many on the liberal side, and there is a reason for that. they understand they operate and are in an echo chamber which can go full circle from a russia

today broadcast to an organization, i won't name a specific organization, that is not a news agency, through various bloggers and other people, and these reports will go completely around and end up in breitbart and impact the white house. from breitbart, that report will be reported by rt, almost as if the white house had come up with it and rt is just reporting on it. but if you read it back, it will come full circle from rt. a good example -- you might recall that donald trump said on july 27, russia, if you are listening, please release hillary clinton's 30,000 emails. well, when we did the analysis for "plot to hack america," the origin of that came from a fox news broadcast where someone

said that they had read somewhere that russia had all of hillary clinton's emails and was having a debate within the kremlin to release those emails. for anyone to know that, for someone in the intelligence community, that means the keys to the kingdom. you know things that are occurring within the kremlin's closed doors. that is the highest level intelligence that could possibly exist. so we did a study. we tried to figure out where it originated. it originated with a blogger in the united states, who got it from a small article that came off of sputnik news, which was russia. that is the origin of where we have the hillary clinton emails came from. i am sure it was just passed anecdotally from person to person and got to donald trump, because if it wasn't anecdotal, that means at some point, there was some collusion. and someone who knew. but there is no way anyone could know what vladimir putin and the head of the foreign ministry were debating within vladimir putin's office. therefore, it had to have been introduced into the media at some point, and it was

introduced by a russian source four months before donald trump made that statement. brian: in the report you have in your book, rt spends about $200 million a year. here is a promo that has americans in it that work for rt. i want to ask you, why do you think these folks work for this propaganda network of the russians? [video clip] >> for decades, the american middle class has been railroaded by washington politics. big-money corporate interests have drowned out voices. that is how it is in the news culture. that is where i come in. >> most people think to stand out in this business, you need to be first or have the loudest voice and biggest ratings. in truth, to stand out in the news business, you just need to ask the right questions and demand the right answers. >> sometimes you see a story and

is seem so whole, you think you understand it. then you glimpse something else, you hear or see some other part, and realize everything you thought you knew, you don't know. i'm tom hartman. welcome to the big picture. >> we are a frightened society today, who turns to our government and says, make us safe. who is the real wizard of oz behind the curtain? stay vigilant and question more. question more. question more. [end video clip] brian: larry king, ed schultz, thom hartmann, jesse ventura. and the slogan from rt -- question more. malcolm: this is what is brilliant about vladimir putin. i am on the board of the international spy museum here in d.c. we have an ex-kgb general on the board.

fascinating character. he lives under the motto of vladimir putin, once kgb, always kgb. you are seeing an extremely sophisticated, modern take on what the old soviet union used to do when they would co-opt communist party newspapers, various voices on the left, even some on the right, and get them to act as mouthpieces to discredit american democracy. that used to be a goal of the soviet union. vladimir putin still has that exact same goal, only he has money, he has national-level resources, and for a period of time, russia was going through a democratization process. in the early 1990's, right up into boris yeltsin being prime minister, russia was a fledgling democracy. they had joined nato's partnership for peace, the first step to joining nato. and then corruption set in.

when vladimir putin took over, it became an autocracy led by an oligarchy of the superrich. brian: why do you think the americans work for rt? malcolm: because they don't know that rt and russia is still executing the strategic plan to discredit american liberal democracy. brian: why don't they? malcolm: they see it as a benign foreign news entity that allows them to speak what they view as the truth. brian: these folks have been around forever, they are professionals. malcolm: yeah, ed schulz, jesse ventura, larry king. they view these as new media sources. if you view it as a new media source -- like al jazeera english, great news, still owned by the government of qatar. you are going to have a point of view that will be shaped. brian: but they didn't work. malcolm: al jazeera america didn't work. al jazeera english works brilliantly. i go on there from time to time. but russia's use of propaganda, whether it is cyber warfare on

social media, broadcast propaganda with russia today, is a component of their hybrid warfare structure. that is where they wage counter-ideology warfare against the west. and the ideology they are against his american liberal democracy. you don't have to believe me. i mean, vladimir putin's own personal philosopher, alexander dugin, who puts it on twitter, believes american democracy is a failure and that the u.s. election is an example of that failure. brian: he used to be a kgb general. he says, once a kgb member, always. is he still a kgb member? malcolm: no, he is american citizen, and he fears for his life. because interestingly, vladimir putin himself, when the kgb

transitioned to the fsb -- all they did was remove the border guards -- same headquarters, lots more money, intense quantities of more money. the use of cyber warfare, theft and management of criminals in the world as subcontractors to their intelligence agency, they used cyber warfare like we butter bread. right? the national security agency might craft one weapon for launch once every 10 years again something very specific. the kgb use it like it is sunrise. sorry, the fsb. there is no difference in the organization. they are just younger, faster, stronger, and they understand their job is to discredit the american political system and this attack on the american electorate was a gross example of how they decided they were going to put their hand on the thumb of democracy, on the scale of democracy. brian: there is a lot more in these books. here is another segment. because you point to this. i want to explain, because

anybody that gets online, youtube, and listens to isis videos will hear this. there is a reference that it sounds like a gregorian chant in the roman catholic church. this is called the clanging of the swords. you say this is the greatest hit. i want to run a little bit. [audio clip] >> ♪ [singing in foreign language] [end audio clip] brian: what role does this play in the recruiting of isis members, and what were they saying?

you speak arabic. malcolm: those little songs are religious chants, like gregorian chants. they are the only authorized music in isis's little cult-like version of islam. isis and al qaeda are not a muslim group. i always clarify this when i speak to groups. group,e not a muslim they are a muslim cult. there have been five other cults like them in islamic history. they are identical to the first cult, who believed mass murdering women and children, killing any muslim who was not part of their group, was the way you spread yourself. these songs like you heard, where they were talking about going out and striking dead the

enemy, and in between all of our operations, we pray to god, we are more devout. they emphasize using religious -- how can i put it? -- framing that is super, ultra orthodox muslim. to say anyone who has less than -- is less than us is not a muslim, and if you want to be the best muslim, you have to be like us. they model themselves on the immediate friends of the -- they call themselves the companions of the prophet mohammed. it would be like a group in let's say, idaho, dressing like the 12 apostles, only walking around like the 12 apostles in sandals but raiding a national guard armory, killing anyone that dares call themselves a christian unless they are in that group. they are a cult, and they view the muslim world as their number one target. brian: i want to ask you how to rate their ability to use video and all that. here is one of their recruiting videos with music. it is only about 50 seconds. [begin video clip]

>> 12 years ago, a nine-tailed hawk suddenly appeared. >> ♪ if you believe it >> ♪ naruto naruto naruto believe it believe it believe it ♪ >> ♪ ninja clan here we stand naruto i'm on my way naruto i'll be ok getting ready to fight with my best friends at my side naruto ♪ [end video clip] brian: what is the audience for that? malcolm: kids.

young kids. any disaffected, mentally affected young person or individual around the world. we have a lot of people who joined isis over the last three years who were christian, who were not 17-18 years old, who suddenly watched these videos and believed they could be part of something bigger than themselves, take a weapon, and self-start. what we call self starting jihad. zero-dollar jihad, the guy who murdered the people in london by driving the vehicle down westminster bridge and stabbing a policeman, the individual who took the truck and murder the truck driver in nice. we call these zero-dollar attacks. they are inspired by isis. isis will take the credit as soon as you finish the attack. they don't have to direct you, they don't have to guide you.

i call this the ghost jihad in my book, "hacking isis." isis is in their moment. they are about to die, to a man, in syria and iraq. they will not get out of there alive. all these 30,000-40,000 men who went over there, their children and wives might survive, and that is another thing we have to be concerned about. brian: do they care if they die? malcolm: they don't care if they die. i try to show why isis is not a muslim extremist group. or islamist extremist. hezbollah, hamas, those groups have political goals to their extremism. isis is a death cult. they have no goal but to die in jihad and spread their version of their cultic view of islam. until that is eliminated, they are going to continue to spread. we are killing them on two particular battlefields, but so long as their ideology exists in the world, they are as virulent as the first day they rolled into mosul.

brian: you are against waterboarding. what is the difference between waterboarding and dropping a bomb on somebody's head from a drone? malcolm: waterboarding is a war crime. there is a way to fight this war without violating our ethics. i'm a big champion of ethics and intelligence. i know where the lines are. we all, as professionals, understand where our war fighters should and could push their selves up to that line. but it is legitimate and it is honorable to carry oneself within war and carry it in such a way that the enemy understands your force and impact. also, there is the force and impact of your morals that are even more. they are a force multiplier. they have none. they kill women, children with impunity. but we do not have to descend to their level in order to be

competent war fighters. brian: what do you think when we are taking out somebody from isis or al qaeda and we kill civilians? we have admitted we do that. malcolm: there is no war that is ever going to be fought where civilians aren't killed. i know for a fact we take great care in targeteering. brian: back to the waterboarding, i don't understand why that is so bad when we are dropping bombs and killing civilians. malcolm: there is a difference when you are killing individuals on the battlefield, whether shooting them or bulldozering trenches over like in the first gulf war.

once they have surrendered or been captured, we, the united states, believe that an individual is no longer a combatant on the battlefield, and that applies even to individuals who are nonstate actors who may act as terrorists. we help develop the geneva conventions. we are signatories to the geneva conventions. we should live as an honorable nation according to those. i view this as a standing order. general george washington, when giving standing orders for the expedition campaign into quebec, told his commanders, there will be no mistreatment of prisoners, there will be no summary executions like that happened to revolutionary forces when the british were just mass murdering officers and his own men. he said he would push that to enforce the ultimate level of the rules of war, which means u.s. generals would have to punish up to death u.s. service members that did that. those are viewed as standing orders for the u.s. army, and only recently were they violated. brian: last question. we talked about it a little bit earlier. if the american people knew what you know, would they be surprised about how much activity there is around the

world that is being conducted by americans, whether it is seal team or delta force or any of that? malcolm: i think they would be surprised at the level of intensity and the dispersal of the operations. let me tell you, there are operations that go on that i am not even read into anymore, and i know they are occurring. there are things where we need to maintain continuity of intelligence knowledge. there are people sitting at nsa and the national signal operation center and the cia's national counter operation center and operation centers all around this nation, who stand watch day and night to keep the nation safe. and i think it is like the helicopter we used in the raid to get osama bin laden. people say, did you know about that helicopter? no, i don't want to know about

that helicopter. i want to know about it when i'm a hostage and seal team six kicks down the door and throws me into it. that is the only time i want to know, to know the nation is prepared to handle threats and there are great people devoting their lives to keeping you safe. malcolm: the latest book from our guest is called "hacking isis," and our guest has been senior chief petty officer of the united states navy, retired, malcolm nance. thank you very much. malcolm: you are welcome. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ announcer: for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪

announcer: if you enjoyed this week's "q&a" interview, here are some other programs you might like. an author talks about her tv program on the russian government-funded media network. author jessica stern on isis, the state of terror, which he co-authored. and an antiwar activist talks about u.s. foreign policies since the 9/11 terror attacks. watch these anytime or search our entire video library at c-span.org. ♪

live with your calls and comments on washington journal. >> and talking about the fcc vote to change internet privacy rules. she is reported by tech telecom reporter lydia. >> d browser act, can you tell us a little bit about the bill and what drove you to introduce it? >> people are ready to see something come forward from us on the issues of privacy and data security. and now we are beginning to of not only states but cities look and theyy regulation

are doing it because the federal government, congress, has not taken an action. now that the privacy issue will is have two regulators which a good thing, we're going to of one and the ftc has historically been the regulator of privacy in both the physical space and the virtual space. and we think it is important to have one set of rules for the entire ecosystem and one regulator for the entire ecosystem. announcer: watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. announcer: at this morning, taking calls from veterans about issues affecting them. congressional fund-raising

and later stephen rothstein of the congressional library foundation on the centennial of the former president's birth and the policy. as always, we will take your calls on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" is next. >> good morning. it is the day once known as decoration day. more than a half-century later we honor men and women who put thise uniform to defend country. this is a live view from the memorial. president trump