Last year, Waller accurately predicted that there will be “over 100 pieces of litigation that will file suit in federal courts as soon as Trump takes offices.” We interviewed Michael Waller, who had once worked as an asset for the CIA, on the latest anti-Trump movements.

Interviewer: Satoshi Nishihata

 

Battle Is Ongoing – No Winners Yet

Interviewer: Thank you for taking our interview again. Last time, you defined deep state as “the permanent bureaucracy of the government with their merger with big data that has an oligopoly of information.” How much progress has Mr. Trump made in dismantling the deep state since taking office?

Waller: A big battle is taking place right now. Nobody has won the battle yet.

Certainly, an entrenched special interest—whether it’s the government, something in the establishment or an organized criminal syndicate—are all going to fight back with everything they have.

There are elements in there who want to do the right thing. Many can’t because they’ll be personally or politically penalized. It’s impossible for them to do so or they don’t have confidence that they will be joining the winning side, because presidential administrations come and go. This is where coherent leadership matters.

There’s a big fight taking place now. It’s too early to say what’s going to happen.

Interviewer: Just as you predicted, many lawsuits have been filed against Mr. Trump. What are the current, primary efforts of the deep state to sabotage the Trump administration?

Waller: Let’s talk about a simple, obvious one, and that’s the FBI.

As a country, we need most of the services that the FBI provides. It’s legitimate, lawful activity.

We have two men who have gone in under the president’s direction, the director, Kash Patel, and the deputy director Dan Bongino, to take over a 37,000-person organization—just two men.

It’s unlike a private company where the CEO can come in and direct everybody to do as he says. You have some people in there who are doing what the law requires them to do because the FBI is not supposed to be under political direction. You have others who are going to fight for not just their jobs, but their positions in society.

They are going to do one of two things: either passively resist and slow everything down, or pretend to go along but still resist – and even sabotage – so they end up keeping control of the organization.

For the past half-century or more, the number two position in the FBI has almost always been a permanent FBI special agent. That deputy director has been the one to enable the Bureau to run the presidentially appointed director instead of the director running the Bureau. Deputy directors are helpful and can get the answers that the director needs. The director relies on them to execute his instructions, so he depends on them. They operate on that system of dependency.

However, now, Trump appointed a number two in the FBI on his own, who is not a career FBI agent. This has broken the FBI deep state’s ability to direct the director, even though they still depend heavily on that bureaucracy to do their legitimate job.

 

FBI Must Be Cautious of Internal Enemies and Leaks

There’s also another part. This part will do damage. They will try to damage the director publicly through leaks from within the FBI to the media.

We must be cautious because the guilty parties have not all been identified. In addition, many of the ones who have been identified have not been removed or legally held liable. Some have, but not all. We must be very careful of this.

The FBI will be the easiest to watch because of all the discoveries that Director Patel has made to uncover many of the wrongdoings. I’m not so worried about the FBI because of this, but I am very worried about the CIA and other elements of the intelligence community where there are changes but no real transformations.

Interviewer: What kind of obstacles are the FBI facing specifically?

Waller: Any director is going to face obstacles in any bureaucracy just because that’s how bureaucracies work.

Within the FBI, however, there are a lot of people who are true professionals who want to do their jobs. They’ll do as they are told to do by their leadership. If the leadership tells them to do things that they don’t want to do, but they still believe them to be legal orders, they will follow through. That’s their job and the law mandates that.

The problem is when the orders violate professional ethics, violate court decisions or violate federal law. There has been too much of a mentality within the FBI, as the nation’s chief law enforcement organization, to break the law if a director says so. This was how it was under James Comey and Christopher Wray.

Kash Patel is not telling anybody to break the law. He’s telling people to expose lawbreaking.

The issue is that there are so many federal law enforcement officials who have either been involved with breaking the law or facilitating the breaking of the law at the senior federal level, so they have a lot to hide. There isn’t really amnesty for them. That’s why there will be resistance inside the machinery to get the lawful things done, because they are protecting each other.

Interviewer: Do you know of any bureaucrat resistance against FBI’s efforts to reveal the JFK or Epstein file documents?

 

Problems Behind JFK and Epstein Files

Waller: There are a few.

First of all, the FBI leadership is committed to doing this. They did bring out the JFK files, but in the process, they found other files that were not in the official indexes, meaning that if you search for those files, you wouldn’t find them.

The fact that they discovered these files means that they have people inside the system who are being very helpful. This also means there is no central way of finding out what the FBI does and doesn’t know.

Patel’s revelations are positive in that he’s building public confidence that the new FBI leadership is trying to make things right, and that they have institutional obstacles to overcome. It also makes the public wonder, “What other secrets do they have that they’re not being truthful about?”

Now, the Epstein files are a very different question. You would think that since Epstein is dead, you’re not violating his civil rights by revealing what’s in the files. So just get the files out there.

The problem is, from a legal standpoint, just because your name is in the files, it doesn’t mean that you are guilty. It just means he had your name in the files. Who is the FBI harming unjustly by exposing everything in the files then? At the same time, how do you know that someone is innocent unless you do some kind of investigation? With all the people in the files, the FBI simply doesn’t know.

There’s also another point that a lot of people have raised. Who is in the files, who is guilty, who has been compromised, whose political profile is so high, or judicial profile, or media profile, that somebody inside doesn’t dare to ever make it public?

This is the problem, and this is what’s driving suspicion not just of the FBI, but the rest of the government: that they’re covering up for the powerful people.

There’s yet another complicating factor. Think of all the young women in those files who were exploited. There are huge amounts of documents and electronic media that need to be gone through because those girls’ and women’s names, contact information, etc. are also in those files. Given the size of the files, it’s going to take a lot of people to redact those documents to protect the identities of these victims.

The recent conclusive statement from FBI and the Department of Justice about the Epstein records is troubling. They state that Epstein’s client list does not exist. I find this impossible to believe. Epstein had phones. He had computers. He had communication records. He had to communicate somehow with his clients. Somebody has that material. So I simply do not believe those recent official statements. It speaks poorly of the FBI and provokes more questions than it answers.

Interviewer: How much do you think the so-called deep state has infiltrated FBI or other intelligence communities?

Waller: That’s impossible to tell. Again, let’s draw the distinction between the intelligence services including the FBI, which are legitimate, necessary and lawful, and the deep state—entities of unaccountable permanent bureaucrats tied with big data and others with agendas of their own to stay in power behind the scenes. We don’t know the depth of it.

 

CIA Poses Concern: They Currently Do Not Threaten Deep States

What we do know is that the transformative figures within the national security community are the two leaders in the FBI who are working very hard despite obstacles. They are being as transparent as possible while still not revealing everything so that they can accomplish their mission.

However, we don’t have those transformational figures running the CIA. In fact, we see very few hostile media leaks against the CIA director or his deputy coming from inside the deep state to discredit them. That leads me to conclude that any changes that the CIA leadership makes are not going to hurt these deep state elements at all. This is a big worry.

Secondly, we have Tulsi Gabbard at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is the central coordinator of the 17 different intelligence agencies we have. She’s a wonderful politician. She’s a good loyal supporter of the president. She’s not a transformational figure.

I think that she – as well-meaning as she is – is not going to be a threat to deep-state elements beyond the occasional revelations that make some good headlines.

It is all a matter of personality and temperament. Some people are good at working quietly behind the scenes. Some people are good at smashing things in public. Some are very discreet. Some are skilled administrators. Some are simply politicians or communicators. What we need is skilled, aggressive administrators with a lot of administrative background, with an excellent public affairs team to keep the people as informed as possible without tipping off our adversaries.

Tulsi Gabbard was a lieutenant colonel in the army. She has held positions where she did manage people. However, I don’t see the management team around her at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence forcing out those changes. It seems like a lot of her revelations, while important, have been superficial in hitting the organization with necessary fixes. This is where another entity – the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, or PIAB – is important. PIAB is drawing up a plan to transform the intelligence community, and is run by a very sharp man with experience, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes.

Interviewer: Why do you think Kash Patel is relocating the FBI headquarters and personnel? Do you think this is effective in dismantling the bureaucracy in the FBI?

Waller: It all depends on how he executes it.

First of all, let’s think of the FBI as a fat, bloated, flabby entity with many unnecessary people as well as people who simply do not have the qualifications to be in the FBI. Objectively speaking, this is the case, regardless of what one thinks of it as an organization.

If you have 37,000 people inside the FBI, there’s probably a good 30% of waste like any other bureaucracy. Probably more. That waste is the people who can’t be hired elsewhere. However, they have really good government salaries and hold prestigious positions. They will fight for everything they have. About 7,300 are stationed at FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover headquarters in Washington.

What Kash Patel has tried to do so far is to decentralize the FBI by moving hundreds of agents and other personnel down to Alabama and other parts of the country. While this is important, it’s not cutting the fat out of the FBI.

However, it is important to remove them from Washington DC, because that gives them political power. They have access to political power including physical, personal access to different media organizations to which they leak information—this will be much more difficult to access from Alabama.

The headquarters building, if you have ever been, is disgusting. It is not only ugly, it is obsolete. The quality of the construction was so poor that it is coming apart just after 50 years of it being built. It needs to be taken down symbolically. The headquarter just needs to go. We can’t have an FBI that is 50 years obsolete.

Second, we do not need a giant headquarter that is located right in downtown. So the recent announcement that headquarters is moving to the palatial Ronald Reagan Building is troubling.

Third, we do not need one that houses so many people. During the Biden administration, Congress went along to fund the acquisition of a property that is twice the size of the Pentagon building for a new FBI headquarters in the suburban parts outside of DC. The FBI was planning on getting bigger.

The Trump Administration has effectively canceled that plan, but ambiguity about the permanence of FBI headquarters at the Reagan Building has caused confusion.

I have yet to hear Director Patel say, “We’re going to cut down the FBI’s unnecessary units as well as unnecessary personnel. That’s why we only need a very tiny headquarters.” When you think about it, J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI for almost 50 years from a few small offices inside the present Justice Department building, and with no computers.

Interviewer: Can you elaborate on the history of the deep roots of the FBI and other communities?

 

History of the FBI – It Was Never Created by Law

Waller: The U.S. was designed to be decentralized, meaning central power is very weak in comparison to most other countries, because we had fought a revolution for people to be able to govern themselves.

The best way for self-government is through the small local towns, then states. The states are united as states under a central government, and Congress was supposed to be weak. The president was supposed to be weak in terms of being able to control what happens in the individual states and communities. This was a great way for the people to control how they are governed and who governs them.

Once that decentralized systems of government deteriorates, we have central power coming in and asserting itself over the states and towns. Centralization of power, according to the American tradition, is a danger.

Of course, being human beings, people tend to abuse things, especially power, once they get it. That is why we need checks and balances.

There was a period in the early 20th century of anarchist and communist violence, mostly by immigrants from Europe who were radicals, such as violent anarchists and communists, radical socialists and Bolsheviks. This was before the Bolshevik Revolution. The U.S. needed to deal with this.

Because the government was decentralized then, there was no federal apparatus to go after these extremists. Anarchists assassinated President McKinley in 1901. Authorities could not go after these extremists from state to state because there were no federal laws dealing with it and no special agents outside the Treasury Department, so President Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded McKinley, was left with agents with limited powers and practically no authority.

Centralization crept in. President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Wait. We need a Bureau of Investigation within the Justice Department to investigate these terrorist crimes and figure out who is doing them.”

Congress did not want this because they feared a central national police apparatus. Thus, President Roosevelt went around Congress with a one-page memorandum to establish the bureau of special agents for the Justice Department. This 1908 memorandum is what the FBI considers its founding document.

The FBI, our chief law enforcement agency, was never created by law. It does not exist under any federal statute. It has no charter. It is just there.

The danger of the FBI from the start was that it was a powerful entity with no real limitations on it, apart from being part of the Justice Department. It continued to grow.

That was Theodore Roosevelt. His cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, became president in 1932 and expanded the FBI. It turned from the Bureau of Investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It got a lot more power and it used that to fight crimes and to a lesser degree, foreign spies.

The Bureau of Investigation became politicized almost from the start. In the 1920s it began spying on its own people and even their senators and congressmen, which is illegal, at the behest of the president.

Interviewer: How have the communist activists historically infiltrated the FBI and other institutions?

Waller: There are communist agents and then there are communist activists and their allies. Agents are under someone else’s control. Activists are not under someone’s control; they are independents with communist beliefs. Their allies are usually not communists at all, but what the communists called “fellow travelers” and “useful idiots.”

There is a combination of both always targeting the federal government agencies. They targeted the CIA as well as its predecessor.

Richard Sorge, for example, was a very active Soviet agent against both Japan and the United States. He was with the Japanese Communist Party and worked to infiltrate American institutions around the same timeframe through the State Department.

A lot of the World War II-era experts, especially in Europe and China, who were communist agents, went into the State Department after World War II. Some of them got into the CIA.

The FBI was impervious to this because J. Edgar Hoover, its longtime director, was so aggressively vigilant against them. He had a solid system to protect the FBI from such infiltration for as long as he was alive.

 

Communist Ideologies Infiltrated the FBI

However, once the FBI decentralized from Hoover’s personality, it changed its hiring standards. Although he was a Presbyterian and a Freemason, Hoover favored Catholics and Mormons as special agents, as he believed they had stronger values.

The change in standards was brought about by American education. Communists would go into universities to teach and indoctrinate students, many of whom went into law. The FBI mainly hired law and accounting school graduates, which would naturally include them.

They got a gradual recruitment of American lawyers and those with legal training to go into the FBI, but these people had been indoctrinated in their law schools in critical law theory. Critical theory was an outgrowth of a Soviet active measures strategy. It stated that the lawyers should use the law as an instrument of subversion to achieve a preordained political outcome.

People like this come into the bureau. They are not deployed there by foreign hands. They did not even go in as revolutionaries who knew what they were doing. It’s purely the mindset they brought in from their education. Critical law theory was taking over most law schools by the 1980s.

It has been 45 years since then, longer than people’s careers nowadays. Two or three generations of people now have been inculcated in this doctrine and have been hired by the FBI to be our premier law enforcement and investigative service.

In that sense, our ideological enemies have triumphed, at least for the moment. Even after the communist regimes have collapsed, their active measures campaign, that they launched many decades ago, succeeded. It outlived its Soviet sponsors and Moscow’s agents and now has a life of its own.

Interviewer: My understanding is that President Trump was trying to dismantle the deep state during his first administration. How does Trump plan on doing this now in his second administration, and what might be the differences?

Waller: I would say that almost none of his work in that area succeeded in his first administration.

He didn’t understand the depth of the problem. Few did. On advice of a political ally, he appointed Christopher Wray as the FBI director, and Wray made things worse by letting the FBI run him instead of the other way around. He appointed the CIA Director Gina Haspel, a careerist. He appointed the CIA to oversee itself. How could he have any reforms if he put these agencies in charge of themselves?

 

Optimism for Trump’s Second Administration in Dismantling Deep States

It was a failure, and I think the president recognizes those failures now. He’s spoken a lot about it by denouncing those officials. Now, he came in with a team not just to try, but to actually move in with an aggressive plan to attack the rotten and dangerous elements of the deep state.

By not appointing transformation figures as the director of national intelligence and CIA, some of those promises will not be fulfilled. However, I have a little more optimism for the FBI. Not much, but a little.

There are exceptions. For example, the Department of Homeland Security, which most of us don’t think of as the deep state, is laden with deep state elements. However, we do see a lot of personnel action, especially in parts of the Department of Homeland Security that concerns immigration. The people in there have always wanted to enforce immigration laws and keep illegal aliens out of the country. Now, they have been freed and even mandated to do so, so they’ve been doing a great job. Congress recently provided massive new funding for immigration enforcement and deportation of illegal aliens and other undesirable foreigners. This is a narrow issue area to address a national crisis.

This is what the second Trump administration is focused on. That, and the FBI’s return to its role of fighting violent federal crimes and helping local law enforcement, even though it has not yet structurally transformed to present itself from becoming a threat again. I am not optimistic yet, but am less pessimistic.

A very hopeful sign is Trump’s appointment of Ed Martin to run a new federal task force at the Justice Department to de-weaponize the government. The real architecture of reform should come from PIAB and from Martin’s office.

 

Trump Weakens Deep State Tied Mainstream Media

Interviewer: Can you tell us in detail about the liberal media’s efforts to sabotage the Trump administration?

Waller: There are a lot. The media has an ideological mission of their own. A lot of journalists are bright, but many are not. Both are dangerous in their own ways. Add to that the symbiotic relationship between elements of the deep state and prominent journalists in the mainstream media.

The president’s spokesmen and spokeswomen in the administration’s different offices have significantly cut down on the liberal press. Some of this nations and the world’s most prestigious media outlets are being denied access to some events with the defense secretary and the White House.

The media is being denied privilege that they take as a right. Many of these organizations have moderated their misbehavior, likely in hopes of getting their press credentials back.

Meanwhile, the president, the secretary of defense and the FBI director among others have gone to alternative media—independent news organizations outside of the so-called prestige establishment press. These outlets like Daily Caller, Breitbart and Newsmax are getting exclusives from these government officials because the officials are able to tell their story without it getting misshapen by the liberal lens. Although the White House has credentialed liberal alternative media, too, that is not tied to deep staters.

This is a key action that the Trump administration has taken across the government. It was directed by the White House because the president himself realized how the big media distorts stories.

This is a huge, important step that weakens the deep state. The malignant elements inside the systems have built the careers of many establishment journalists by illegally leaking classified information to them, making the journalists famous and improving the corporate value of the news organizations through its exclusive contents.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is giving access to a diverse group of journalists. While there are leaks, they are also cracking down and doing criminal investigations against the leakers. This has led to far fewer leaks from the deep staters than before, because leakers face prosecution and jail now.

Interviewer: Many of the international media is siding with the mainstream legacy U.S. media. What is the mechanism by which this international anti-Trump resonance movement is occurring?

Waller: They seem to be in retreat. They remain aggressive and coordinated, but not in total lockstep like they were before. They are in confusion and disarray. Apart from that, their business models are in a state of collapse.

We are now discovering, as the Trump administration did with DOGE early on, that the U.S. Agency for International Development has been funding a lot of NGOs and media organizations globally to build the narrative and preserve the power of the U.S. deep states, as well as deep states in other countries.

 

International Deep State Funding Cut Off

This funding has been cut off completely and abruptly. This is a terrible shock to them. A lot of these people are unemployed.

Many organizations are in a holding pattern with lawsuits to try to force the Trump administration to release money. It’s all about them and the cash coming to them.

What will they do now that their money is cut off? The Trump administration made a brilliant move here.

It was almost accidental because the U.S. Agency for International Development was initially not a big target for the administration. The young DOGE people who came in made these discoveries.

This will change the climate of news coverage worldwide. The budget of USAID was three times the official budget of the CIA, and it paid for subversion all over the world.

Interviewer: Do you think China will take action to gain geopolitical advantage in this trade war?

Waller: Absolutely. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not build its economy as a consumer economy. It built it as an export economy.

Unlike the U.S., Japan or Europe which have flexible economies, the CCP cannot take shocks because it’s driven from the top down. The people at the top always need to look good. They can’t lose face.

In this Trump-style trade war, we are not firing any bullets, nor are we being physically aggressive. We are simply being tough on trade. This turns CCP’s asymmetrical warfare against itself. I would like to think we are doing this for more than simple trading purposes. As a strategy of going after the CCP, it’s incredibly efficient.

Now, what do we expect from the CCP? I would expect the Chinese regime to fight back in any way possible.

Part of that involves continuing to compromise politicians, statemen, professors, businessmen, journalists, etc. They will compromise with money and trade opportunities like they’ve always have. This is how the CCP bought their influence.

In a way, the CCP is invading all our countries by subverting us from within and corrupting our people in every part of the system. This will still happen.

However, I think they will get even more aggressive.

There has been controversy in the U.S. about CCP entities and people buying farmland near our military bases. People are wondering, “Why?” Some say, “They’re just buying farmland. You can’t put offensive weapons there. What’s the big deal?” Others are saying, “The CCP isn’t doing this by accident. It’s a coordinated, strategic effort. It’s clear if we map it out.”

Now, let’s take a look at what Ukraine just did in Russia with the drones, and what Israel did in Iran. Simply building prefabricated wooden housing, sending them by truck all across Russia and parking them at a gas station along the side of the road in harmless locations have wiped out a huge number of Russia’s strategic military aircraft. And building an Israeli drone factory in the heart of Iran.

Think of how easy that would be for an enemy in a place like the U.S. Because we have property rights, authorities cannot come up to our properties without a probable cause. A lot of people have shipping containers sitting on their properties as storage. What if they are armed with drones?

I expect China to become more brash in its asymmetric efforts to not only threaten us but actually harm us militarily. This affects our abilities to defend all our allies.

It’s unimaginable what they can do. Any ordinary citizen can come up with ways to take a piece of technology and weaponize it. They can think of it like a video game or use Grok or ChatGPT or many other technologies that have yet to become common names to come up with ideas. There are infinite ways for the CCP to subvert and wage asymmetrical warfare against all of us, let alone using simple tactics like compromising people financially.

Interviewer: What do you think Trump’s plan is with China and the CCP?

Waller: This question drives us crazy because we cannot predict that either. If we cannot predict, we cannot understand the policy. If we cannot understand the policy, we cannot be supportive or find vulnerabilities in the policy that need to be addressed.

Is this just who Trump is? He goes back and forth on different things and keeps his adversaries off balance. Is this deliberate or accidental? If we cannot even understand him, the CCP will have trouble understanding him as well. So it ends up being a major net-plus for the United States.

 

Trump’s Chaotic Personality Is His Strength

Take Trump’s favorite sports, for example. A person’s behavior reveals a lot. His favorite sport is golf, which is a businessman’s sport. It’s a politician’s sport. He can be calm, relaxed and social for several hours at a time to achieve his political or business objective. He gave the final orders for the B2 strike on Iran while at his Bedminster golf club. Then he went out to play a round of golf.

Trump’s other favorite sports are wrestling, boxing and mixed martial arts. These sports use their opponents’ velocity and mass against them. They can knock down a larger, more powerful person with one single move of the foot.

These sports are a form of business and entertainment, but they are among his favorite spectator sports.

There is a lot going on inside Trump’s head that is methodical but also chaotic. This chaotic personality can keep others off balance. It’s a wonderful weapon.

The way he does it is not subtle. He is not a diplomat. He is destroying every rule that has ever been made in international relations and creating something completely new. In many ways, this is a great revolutionary approach.

On the other hand, it is extremely unsettling. It’s keeping us and our allies unsettled and upset, but I still think it’s much worse for adversaries like the CCP.

Interviewer: How do you view the feud between Elon Musk and President Trump?

Waller: They are both very powerful men who do not take no for an answer. They are both very proud. They are both very accomplished. People know Trump’s personality, and they have started to see Elon’s especially in recent years at a large scale.

Elon is an engineer, a mathematician. His brain works in ones and zeros, true and false. Meanwhile, Trump is a politician; a businessman; a people’s person. Trump is okay with ambiguity, Elon is not. Elon has built the world’s biggest AI company, is building a fleet of self-driving automobiles and is running an expedition to Mars. He must be precise.

We were going to see a clash because conflict is inevitable between two men with very powerful egos and personalities, and millions of followers. It was expected in my opinion, though how dramatic this all went was still a surprise.

Trump is more flexible because he allows for human flexibility, whereas the engineer cannot allow for that uncertainty.

Musk is locked into the problem. “Our debt is so high. Our spending is so irresponsible. If we don’t make cuts now, we will go bankrupt as a country.” When Trump doesn’t ask for the cuts from Congress, Elon says, “I’ve lost billions and billions of dollars in net worth because I came to help you. I’ve ruined my brand. My team and I have all worked hard because we love this country. How can you not do this?”

They are both made for the media as well. They both own their own social media companies, so they have radical levels of expressing things in public. This is very new.

There’s also the art of the deal. Trump makes extreme demands to get more of what he wants. He is brutal in his criticisms of other people. He has called Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, a loser and a wimp. Now, Rubio is one of the most important and trusted people simultaneously holding some of the most sensitive posts in the administration. Trump can forgive, but we remain to know what Elon can do.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.