Joe Rogan Experience #2447 - Mike Benz

1. SPSpeaker0:00

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2. JRJoe Rogan0:12

   ... All right, Mike Benz. What a day to have you in here, buddy. [laughing]

3. MBMike Benz0:17

   [laughing] Kid in a candy shop. We hacked the government. We hacked the government's files, evidently. I mean, this is-- we have three and a half million files that it feels like we should not have. It would've been great to have had seven years ago, in 2019, when this was being litigated, but it's an incredible moment of transparency for how the world works, how governments interact with the private sector and funds, and it's just really cool to be a part of it.

4. JRJoe Rogan0:43

   What was the hold-up? What was the-- because it seemed like there was a lot of people that did not want these files released.

5. MBMike Benz0:50

   Yeah. I've thought about this a lot. What we have access to now are internal documents from the Justice Department and the FBI that are normally, even though they're not classified, they are part of a criminal investigation, and so they're not normally disclosable to the public. Um, it could be the case that it kind of required a congressional bill to force this out. Like, when you-- if, if there's a internal investigation, and it's not a part of a court document that's entered into evidence, you can't just FOIA the Justice Department to get dirt on your political enemies because you think that they might be involved in something. Now, I don't know if it could've been done through an executive order around Epstein transparency, around the time of the first binders. Certainly, it looked like there was friction between the president and Thomas Massey over this issue. Um, but I don't, I don't know the details of what went down there, but the fact is, the bill passed four hundred and twenty-seven to one in the House.

6. JRJoe Rogan1:59

   Who's the one?

7. MBMike Benz2:02

   [sighs] My recollection is that it was Randy Fine, but I might be wrong on that, so I don't want to smear-

8. JRJoe Rogan2:09

   There was one person-

9. MBMike Benz2:10

   Or imply anything unduly

10. JRJoe Rogan2:11

    ... didn't want it released because they thought it would compromise the victims, right?

11. MBMike Benz2:14

    [clears throat] Uh-

12. JRJoe Rogan2:16

    At one point in time, at least.

13. MBMike Benz2:18

    Yeah, I, I don't know what the, what the rationale, you know, is, and because I don't recall offhand who the one is, uh, I don't want to lean on that too much. But, uh, the fact is, is nobody wanted to be on the other side of this. I can't think of anything that both Republicans and Democrats voted on four hundred and twenty-seven to one and... Oh, I'm sorry, Clay Higgins. Sorry. Apologies to Randy Fine. Uh, yeah, so, um, there was the... I mean, there was obviously friction because this implicates everybody, Republicans and Democrats, uh, Americans and a dozen different foreign countries, uh, heads of major hedge funds and multinational corporations, donors to all political parties, major university and science institutions. Uh, I mean, almost every major player in world affairs was, in some way, either, either involved in or adjacent to this network, or the network tried to reach out to them because they were influential. And so, you know, there was kind of a mutually assured destruction around the Epstein hot potato for a decade now, which is that, [chuckles] out of power, the Republicans said, "Oh, the Democrats are-- don't want to disclose this because of the Clintons." And then the Trump administration gets into power, and there's a very slow, you know, reaction to the kind of disclosures that culminated in what happened this week. And so you had the Democrats saying: "Oh, they're not disclosing it because of, you know, Trump world and his associates." Meanwhile, they controlled the Justice Department and the FBI for four years and didn't release any. Uh, so, you know, it, it took an, a moment like this, and what's, what's really interesting about it is, this bill only compelled the disclosure, this law that passed in Congress, only compelled the disclosure of Justice Department r- originated files. Justice Department, by extension, FBI is the investigative arm of the Justice Department. It does not compel CIA-originated files. And, uh, one of the coolest moments of transparency we had last year in 2025, was when Tulsi Gabbard, as the, you know, ODNI, as the head of-- Director of Cen-- of National Intelligence, in charge of the whole intelligence community, spearheaded the, uh, JFK Files release, and we got basically fully unredacted documents. Now, I know there's a contest over how complete they are, but the fact is, is it was hundreds of thousands of files that had never been seen before, or unredacted versions of documents that had been fully or partially redacted for decades. The only reason that we have JFK, JFK files at all, is because in 1992, Congress passed a bill to force the CIA to start turning over documents. The law, I believe, was called the JFK Records Collection Act, and it forced, by law, the, uh, the CIA to establish this independent presidential assassination review board, that would review documents for declassification and compel, uh, you know, on the basis of that independent body. Given all of the intelligence intrigue around Epstein-... and the fact that it is, in my view, physically impossible over Epstein's 40-year career in intelligence adjacent work, that there was, that there's not Epstein files that are CIA originated. And we actually , you know, I, I saw this in the files that were just released. Jeffrey Epstein himself, twice FOIA'd, that's the Freedom of Information Act, uh, which, which is a law that I think came around in 1966, which allows any US citizen to ask a- any government agency for all public records that it has about anything. There are certain things that get blocked in that. This is-- There were a lot of FOIA fights about COVID. Uh, you know, Fauci famously, there's this exchange where, um, you know, one of the folks in Fauci world says that, uh, they learned cool tricks from the FOIA lady about how to get around requests. But the fact is, you can FOIA the CIA for records, uh, because it, that FOIA forces the CIA to give you decl- declassified or unclassified records, and if it's classified, it'll issue a Glomar. A "We cannot confirm or deny-

14. JRJoe Rogan7:20

    Right.

15. MBMike Benz7:20

    ... " the, you know, and the existence or non-existence of, you know, the classified information.

16. JRJoe Rogan7:25

    Can we-- Before we get any further, the JFK stuff, I never heard anything about it. I mean, I know the files came out, but there was no big revelations. There was no... N- Was, was there anything that came out of that, that was significant?

17. MBMike Benz7:38

    I thought it was huge. I, I learned... I guess people are looking at the JFK files, most people are looking at it for clues as to who killed JFK.

18. JRJoe Rogan7:51

    Right.

19. MBMike Benz7:51

    And I know that there are many researchers who specialize in the JFK assassination, um, that have sharpened their theories, I suppose, on the basis of it in a useful way, for, for whatever it's worth. Uh, for me, I, you know, was never expecting to see a CIA document saying, uh, you know, [chuckles] "I, James Jesus Angleton, authorized the assassination of, of, uh-

20. JRJoe Rogan8:19

    Of course

21. MBMike Benz8:19

    ... the president of the United States." Uh, but the fact is, is what it revealed were all of these tangential and ancillary documents that showed the structure of intelligence work at a very fine and detailed level, the kind of revelations that really only come around once in a generation. There's a, there's a video online by Michael Parenti, who's a CIA whistleblower, around the time of the Iran-Contra hearings in the 1980s, and he says, "Pay attention to these hearings. This may be the last time for another 20, 30, 40 years that you ever get an inside look at the, at the detailed, like, you know, minutiae of a covert operation," because all this was being blasted on a congressional jumbotron with hearings, and formal congressional investigations, and public testimony. And there's-- I sort of look at the JFK files release like that. We got a very detailed look at everything that was happening around, effectively, Operation Mongoose, uh, it... th- because-

22. JRJoe Rogan9:31

    Can you refresh my memory? What was Mongoose again?

23. MBMike Benz9:33

    Yeah. So, so we ha-- So there was Operation Mongoose and Operation Condor, which were, which were related to the... Nominally, what you'll read is that they were related to the attempts by the CIA to, for Mongoose, for example, to, uh, destabilize the government of Cuba in order to induce a regime change. But because those efforts proved unsuccessful, they regionalized the conflict to, uh, do counter-communism work effectively, uh, throughout all of Latin America, the Caribbean, South America. And, uh, Operation Condor was effectively a kind of counter, counterinsurgency strategy to stop the rise of left-wing Marxist groups who were trying to throw off the yoke of American imperialism, so to speak, as they put it. And so you had a, a massive CIA operation to try to tilt the internal politics of basically every country south of the border, and we got incredibly just detail... I'll, I'll give you an example of one declassified document that's really wild. Uh, there, there's one document that, uh, is a CIA file with instructions to, uh, delete all physical copies of the document at the end, that describes how the agency had internally authorized an attempt to assassinate, you know, Castro by working through the Meyer Lansky syndicate and hiring two hitmen, uh, that were in Miami and then ha- but had contacts with the Cuban exile community liaisons within Cuba. And so this was a, this was a formal agency file that described how a CIA case officer made contact with people from the mob, organized crime, uh, with offers of pay- payoffs, with very detailed logistics. You can find this. I did a whole video on it, on my, the, like, ex sub- subscriber thing. I'll, I'll, I'll, you know, uh, put it on, on the top of my social media. But the... But it also describes a really interesting-... Jeffrey Epstein-like, uh, figure. Uh, Robert Mayhew was a CIA asset. The J- the JFK files, they describe how they got, uh, [exhales] they sponsored a, a movie to simulate, I believe it was the president of Indonesia, uh, having an affair with a blonde woman. They filmed a basically like a porno that would, uh, and cr- and cr- to create a tape, and they had very... They describe how they set up the, the room to make it look like it was, I think, in, in the presidential palace or some hotel room that was-- would have been in, in, uh, in that country, in order to create what's ef- effectively a sexual blackmail tape that c- could then be, uh, leaked to the press in order to discredit the president. And, you know, you look at these informal agency files, and on the one hand, you go, "Okay, that was the 1960s. That was the, that was the early 1960s. That was before there was any oversight on the CIA at all." It wasn't until the Church Committee hearings in 1975, 1976, that we even had congressional oversight of the CIA. There was no Senate Intelligence Committee. There was no House Intelligence Committee at the time. And at that point, assassinations had not been outlawed. I mean, the CIA was allowed to assassinate people. There, there's since been a ban on that. So you go, "Okay, that's 60 years ago." Uh, but the fact is, they did it. The fact is, is that is within the array of options that folks in covert operations saw as on the table.

24. JRJoe Rogan13:54

    Working with the mob.

25. MBMike Benz13:55

    Working with the mob. Now, but that goes back a long time. I, I found it totally unsurprising. It's one of these things, it's just kind of the general theme. It's shocked but not surprised. You know, it's like, "Holy crap, they, they put this in writing? Well, what are we doing here, guys?" [chuckles] And then... But you're like, "But I'm not surprised they did it because I know they were doing all these other things." The fact is, is the CIA was working with the mob before there was CIA. It-- Before it was done by the CIA, uh, work with, for example, the, the Italian mob was, was done through the Department of War in the nine-- really starting in the 1930s, and then especially in the 1940s, because they were the Central Intelligence Agency. Well, at the time, it was the OSS in the 1940s, but it would become the CIA. Their... One of their main logistical points of contact and allies for the resistance against Mussolini in Italy. Mussolini was cracking down both on the Vatican Church and on the Italian Mafia. And so, uh, there were strange bedfellows. There's a great book on this by Paul Williams. I think it was published in 2017. It's called Operation Gladio: The CIA, the Vatican, and the Mob. And it's... I, I recommend this book to everyone because it's a really, really detailed academic deep dive on this nexus between a religious institution, an intelligence agency, uh, an illegal organized crime syndicate that does all manner of black ops, and it especially focuses on the funding relationship. In fact, this just came out, and this sort of gets to the utility of these documents. There's an incredible document that just was released this week, where Larry Summers, who was the head of the US Treasury... So not only was he the head of Harvard University and the, and the head of the American money system, um, but he, [chuckles] he says to... He's trying to explain to Jeffrey Epstein kind of the, the politics of what's happening in the Vatican. And what he says to him is that what's, what's actually most important going on right now is what's happening with the Vatican Bank, which is kind of the, uh, the deep politics of the Vatican. And, uh, you know, I saw this email, and I just, you know, laughed and did a little, you know, twirly thing in my, in my chair because it's, it's totally unsurprising if you read, you know, that book, Operation Gladio, that I, that I mentioned. It, it traces 80 years of this because the, the Vatican Bank was the first offshore bank before offshore banking even existed. It was util-- There was an alliance with the Vatican Bank during World War II itself, with our Department of War and with organized crime outfits, at least according to the evidence that I find persuasive in this book and that, uh, appears to be validated by Italian court documents in the 1990s when all of this was litigated. Incidentally, that was when the mob was really prosecuted for the first time. But effectively, what happened was, is you had strange bedfellows. You had the United States, who wanted to get rid of Mussolini. You had the Vatican, who wanted to get rid of Mussolini, and you had organized crime, who wanted to get rid of Mussolini. And because organized crime is very deep in the logistics and unions, they control the ports, they control the s- the streets, they control safe houses. Um, and if they have allies in a bank, they are able to launder money effectively in order to do black market, you know, type trade. And if you have, for example, the support of the US government to facilitate that, that'll-- and there's protection offered to those organized crime groups, what, what you end up havening, having is effectively state-sponsored as-... a state-sponsored mafia with an untouchable bank. And at the time, the Vat-- because, and [chuckles] Larry Summers explains this to, to Jeffrey Epstein in very simple terms, which is, which is-- Yeah, here you go. "The most important change in the Vatican may not be Pope Benedict's sudden retirement, but change in leadership of the Institute for Works of Religion, the bank, the Vatican's bank. Because of the Vatican's status as a sovereign country, it's exempt from transparency rules of not only Italy, but of the European Union. This status allows its elite clients to evade any scrutiny in their money transfers. Last May, Vatican Bank president was fired after Italian authorities opened an investigation into a far-flung bri- bribery scheme." And he goes through this, but what's, what's important here is th- the British... W- when we think of offshore banking now, it's, it's usually associated with-

26. JRJoe Rogan19:02

    Cayman Islands.

27. MBMike Benz19:03

    Cayman Islands, you know, Jersey, Man, uh, Panama, uh, you know, the-- but... Well, Panama's sort of a different story. But it, it's usually associated with these kind of small island countries that are formally, you know, kind of their own territory, their own sort of sovereign territory. You also see this within the United States in Indian-- Native American reservations, with these kind of autonomous zones that can be shielded from certain kinds of, um, you know, public disclosures that in a typical finance institution. Typ-

28. JRJoe Rogan19:36

    That ha- that's going on with Native American banks?

29. MBMike Benz19:38

    Well, yeah, this, this was actually part of-

30. JRJoe Rogan19:40

    Is that connected to the casinos? 'Cause they have a lot of money from the casinos.

Episode duration: 2:39:19