Useful Idiots
Politics • Comedy
CIA Agent-Turned-Novelist Reveals Secret Government Plots + Ben & Jerry's Founder Arrested over Israel
Barry Eisler on his journey as a CIA agent-turned-spy-novelist. Ice cream maker Ben Cohen on getting arrested for protesting in Congress
June 06, 2025
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On this week’s show, you’re getting two scoops.

It’s a Useful Idiots double header, with former CIA Agent Barry Eisler, who left the CIA to become a spy-thriller novelist (get his latest book The System at barryeisler.com), and Ben & Jerry’s Cofounder Ben Cohen, who was arrested recently for interrupting RFK Jr.’s congressional testimony to protest US funding of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

First, Barry Eisler explains his role as a covert operative in the CIA, and the truth it taught him about American tribalist politics.

I spent three years in a covert position in the CIA. It taught me a lot about the culture and machinations of the U.S. government and what some call the deep state. And it became great fodder for a guy who then went on to become a full-time thriller writer.

What I found there is in some ways a microcosm of tribalism politics in America. And it's this.

A lot of people think, ‘oh, is it a bunch of liberals there? Or is it a bunch of conservatives?’ But the fundamental, underlying, and much more meaningful political culture in the CIA is the belief that ‘Hey, America is a force for good in the world. And everything we do, whether it's traditional espionage or shading off into coups or even invasions and occupations, that's all just to make the world a better place.’

It's that more fundamental thing where they really believe that America is a force for good in the world and that our mistakes are just innocent mistakes, rather than something much more nefarious.

Subscribe for the full interview with Barry Eisler, where we discuss Russiagate from a CIA perspective, watch Palantir’s Alex Karp let slip that his AI kills people, and the connection Barry’s spy thrillers have to Aaron’s nonfiction writing.

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Next we talk to Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s.

After disrupting a Senate testimony from RFK Jr. to protest US funding of weapons for Israel’s mass assault on Gaza, he was hauled out by police and arrested. He explains why he did it:

Everybody has their breaking point. I was reading about the slaughter of all these innocent children in Gaza. And then I read another article in the paper about another outbreak of lead poisoning in Milwaukee. Lead poisoning creates irreversible brain damage and there's nothing you can do about it.

And we know how to prevent it! It's chipping lead paint and lead in plumbing pipes and we could fix it, for a minuscule five percent of the Pentagon budget!

And so those two things: we’re making a conscious decision to provide the bombs as a gift to Israel that they use to kill kids in Gaza. And we're kicking kids off Medicaid and not preventing lead poisoning, an easily preventable permanent disease.

So I said, I’ve got to make my voice heard. I’ve got to take the most serious action that a citizen can take, which is an act of civil disobedience. And so that's what I did.

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Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Ukraine Proxy Warriors Have Second Thoughts about WWIII

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"Shameful" New York Times Changes Headline to Protect Sanctions

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

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Stephen Miller Says What He'd Do With Pete Hegseth's Children
Plus, Hillary Clinton mocks her students for believing "propaganda" footage of slaughtered Palestinian children

If you thought the Fox News banter between Jesse Watters and Stephen Miller couldn’t get any slimier than we’ve shown on past Useful Idiots episodes, then you’re in for, well, a lot of slime.

This week, Pete Hegseth went on Stephen Miller’s wife Katie Miller’s podcast. (Yes, we know Hegseth did other things this week, mainly war crimes that are getting him in trouble with the military and all that, and we’ll get to that, but first we’ve gotta talk about this.) She asked him which members of the Trump administration he would let babysit his kids.

His response: “Oh, I mean, not your husband or Marco.”

So when Stephen Miller was asked about this by Jesse Watters, you could see the thinly-veiled seething rage lurking in Miller’s eyes. And his response only made it creepier:

“He’s worried that if I babysat his kids, he’d come back after a couple of hours and they would say, ‘Daddy, why don’t you send the military into Minnesota to help us with the Somali refugees?’” It’s the first time we’ve seen Miller genuinely smile and it’s somehow creepier than his usual gaze.

To watch Katie and Aaron play ‘Would you rather have Stephen Miller or Pete Hegseth babysit your kids,’ subscribe to watch the full Friday Free-For-All.

You’ll also see: Hillary Clinton mocking her own students for opposing genocide, Republicans openly pushing to steal oil from Venezuela, and the new gambling site that’s turning opinions into “tradable assets.”

It’s all as bad as it sounds! Support independent media by subscribing to watch the full Free-For-All (or get it free here).

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Fmr Obama Speechwriter: "Genocide is Bad" Is WRONG Takeaway of the Holocaust
Plus, Katie and Aaron analyze Zohran Mamdani's upcoming meeting with Trump

If you haven’t seen this video yet, you’re in for a wild ride:

“It used to be that the media in America was American media,” begins former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz in a speech to the Jewish Federation that is about as antisemitic as anything you’d find on the dark corners of the internet. “It generally didn’t express extreme anti-Israel views. But today we have social media. So you have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza.”

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“Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism. Because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews. So when on TikTok all day long they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people.’”

………………

Yes!

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JD Vance Can't Stop Laughing at Trump's al-Qaeda Joke
The Useful Idiots Friday Free-For-All

This week Trump met with Syrian President al-Sharaa, formerly known as Mohammad al-Jolani, the former leader of al-Qaeda in Syria. And he treated the former US-labeled terrorist in the most American way: literally showering him in perfume and laughing at jokes together.

Because if you implement US regime change and support Israel in the Middle East, beheadings and 9/11s are just water under the bridge.

Also in this week’s Friday Free-For-All: Bari Weiss and John Fetterman accidentally spill the truth about antisemitism, Eric Trump says the least-relatable thing you’ve ever heard, and a reporter gets breathless interviewing the latest Kennedy boy.

Subscribe to watch it all here in our Friday Free-For-All:

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