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For nearly 40 years, journalist Tim Weiner has closely covered the CIA, finding his way inside crucial meetings, speaking with retired officials, and gaining the trust of people with classified information. And his latest book, The Mission, does something we’ve never seen before:

It gives an in-depth history of the CIA without any anonymous sources. Everyone’s on the record. We don’t know how Tim did it, but he joins Useful Idiots to share what he’s learned from 40 years of digging.

Useful Idiots: You spoke to former CIA Director Richard Helms, and you wrote: “He wanted me to understand that the agency hadn't dreamed up the idea of overthrowing Iran or killing Fidel Castro. Every president since Truman had commanded the CIA to intervene with guns and money to control the fate of nations when sending in the Marines was not an option.” Did you get the sense that the CIA was always just unquestioningly following orders?

Tim Weiner: It took me a while to understand this simple but important point: the CIA is an executor of American foreign policy. It doesn't dream up coups and plots and other nefarious covert activities. With rare exceptions, it does what the president tells it to do.

It's not like a couple of CI officers were sitting around drinking martinis in 1960 saying, ‘Hey, I got a good idea. Let's go kill Fidel Castro.’ Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and President Kennedy's brother, Bobby, wanted Castro gone.

When it came time to investigate the first twenty five years of the CIA, the Church Committee in the 1970s dove deep into this: Frank Church, the senator who ran them, wondered aloud if “the CIA has become a rogue elephant trampling people and nations.”

But, we later find out, after the hearings, Church amended his statement: “When the elephant tramples people and nations, it's not the elephant's fault. It is the fault of the mahout, the elephant driver.” And that was the President of the United States.

The Church Committee, and even the torture report about CIA secret prisons that the Senate finally released ten years ago, really tiptoes around this question of presidential authority for violations of the laws of God and man and the Geneva Convention by the CIA. It's the president's outfit. And it is a unique expression of presidential power to order the CIA to go and kill people or torture them or throw them in secret prisons for the rest of their lives, never to see the light of day.

Useful Idiots: Your book tells the story of the great lengths to which the CIA went to cover up for torture. You have this controversy over an attempt to destroy videotapes of torture at a CIA secret prison in Thailand. And then you also have the CIA spying on the Senate as the Senate is investigating the CIA's torture program.

Tim Weiner: Two unhappy stories. The first is rather dramatic.

The CIA set up this base in Thailand where two of its first so-called high value prisoners were taken and tortured. Present at the base for one of those prisoner tortures was

The sleaziest man in media is back! It’s Bill Maher, the man who got his name as the anti-woke, anti-religion, anti-cancel-culture warrior, who mocks anyone weak enough to complain that their feelings were hurt over mere words.

UNLESS: those words are against Israel. In which case you should be swiftly censored and all complaining is fair game.

This week, Maher stepped up his game, shilling out for Israel with such immense propaganda that it exposed a dirty secret he does not want getting out:

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This week continued the mass tumult in Palestine, with IDF soldiers killing and kidnapping hundreds more Gazans, and terrorist Israeli settlers raiding the West Bank, all while bought-out media like The New York Times stays silent.

We spoke with three guests to break through the propaganda and find out what’s really going on behind the Israeli siege: Jasper Nathaniel, a journalist who has traveled in and out of the West Bank during the genocide, and Freedom Flotilla activists Huwaida Arraf and Bob Suberi, who were captured and imprisoned by Israel as they tried to sail food and aid into Gaza.

Jasper tells us about Yinon Levi, a violent serial killer settler in the West Bank who was personally sanctioned by the Biden administration for his repeated violence against civilians. Trump, in a move that has become now characteristically subservient to Israel, lifted the sanctions, setting Levi loose on the West Bank once again.

This week Yinon Levi murdered Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and teacher who helped create the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

And after a short house arrest, Jasper tells us, Levi was let free. Bob Suberi, who has been living with Hathaleen’s community in the West Bank, said that while Hathaleen’s friends and family gathered to mourn his death, Yinon Levi returned with more settlers to attack them, throwing concussion grenades and kidnapping mourners.

Once again, he faces no repercussions.

We then change focus to the unhinged Zionists in the US, specifically disgraced former Columbia Professor Shai Davidai, who left the school after harassing and doxxing pro-Palestinian students, and is now suing