In this edition of Scheer Intelligence, host Robert Scheer dives into a critical discussion with Dr. Charles LeBaron, a distinguished physician and CDC veteran, who has authored a compelling and essential book, Greed to Do Good: The Untold Story of CDC’s Disastrous War on Opioids. Dr. LeBaron offers a unique perspective on the opioid crisis, drawing from his extensive experience and personal encounters. Through his well-crafted narrative, he sheds light on the complexities of pain management, the challenges of public health policies, and the human stories behind addiction.

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Host:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

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This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guest and no question in this case, somebody here who went to Princeton and Harvard Medical School and published 50 scientific articles. And I’m building up his credibility because he’s written a really important, mercifully short book, I want to say, as somebody who reads books all the time.

And that is not getting the attention I think it deserves. And I read his book at my producer Josh Scheer’s suggestion. I’m happy for it. Because it’s about time I thought about not only the opioid crisis, but thinking about the CDC where Dr. Charles LeBaron, I hope I got it right, worked for 28 years.

And his view of the official medical agency and what it does and how it sets out guidelines is really powerful. But what adds force to it is at one point where I got really hooked on this book, one of the requirements at the CDC is you had to do some real life experience out there and he worked in a jail prison.

And that I found is a very moving part of the book. And then you worked on an Indian reservation where you actually functioned as a doctor there, not just as the epidemiologist studying these things as you had done, I shouldn’t say not just, but getting into the field. And what I found fascinating about this book is, first of all, it’s a page turner. Usually I think of doctors as people can hardly write a prescription, legibly.

And it’s very well written. But what really makes it so important is you really care about the outcome, know, not the statistics, but the pain, the health, does it work? Don’t kill the patient, don’t harm the patient, and so forth. And I don’t want to put words in your mouth. The title is Greed to Do Good. What is the subtitle again?

Well, I wrote it down before. The Untold Story of CDC’s Disastrous War on Opioids. Tell me about the greed to do good, this overview that you bring to it.

Charles LeBaron

Well, it’s a sort of tale of good intentions gone wrong twice, actually, the way the good intentions went wrong back in the late 90s and early 2000s, was everybody decided that nobody should be in pain. No one should have any pain whatsoever. And there were pain scales going around. And the idea is you walked into a doctor’s office and you experienced any pain, it would be basically criminal of the doctor not to prescribe something to relieve you of your pain.

Which is a little curious because in medicine you’re supposed to go after the cause of the pain rather than the effect. However, that was promoted very actively by a bunch of folks who make money off selling opioids. And that story is relatively well known that opioids were overprescribed and they were prescribed to the point where 80% of opioids

were being consumed by the US in a global sense where we only have about 5% of the population. You’re getting opioids at a rate of about 90% for operations where in Europe, for instance, only 5% people got opioids. And the result of this, you might call well-intentioned on some people’s part to reduce the number of people who are in pain, resulted in a large population of people who became, in essence, legally addicted to opioids, whereupon, as you might imagine, the number of overdoses also increased in parallel to the amount of prescriptions of opioids that are going on.

And people finally scratched their head at CDC and said, what are we going to do about this? So they slammed the door shut on people getting legal opioids. Well, you can imagine what happens if you’re opioid addicted to legal versions of opioids and they slam the door shut on that. There are a bunch of entrepreneurs south of the border who said maybe there’s a market share we can grab here.

And they said we can construct some really powerful opioids with some materials coming from China and they start importing fentanyl and other comparably lethal drugs, whereupon, as soon as CDC had decided to slam the door on legal opioids, there was an explosion of overdoses to the point where it quadrupled in about seven years, reaching to the point where there are 100,000 deaths per year.

And over the course of the first two decades of the 20th century, a million people had died of overdoses. And so again, these were two in a sense, well-meaning, but misguided interventions. One was to reduce the amount of pain in existence to zero. Well-intentioned, but misguided. And the second was, we’re going to eliminate addiction and overdoses by slamming the door on safe versions of opioids.

And in each case, matters went south. And here we are.

Robert Scheer

Well, as you point out in your book, there wasn’t only and maybe with the CDC, it was agreed to do good, but also there was a greed to make profit by pharmaceutical companies. And obviously, when you get into the illegal, even greater profit, perhaps. But I want to start with the pain, because actually I found that the book is divided into four sections. And I like that way of treating you because you put yourself in the position of the patient.

And the first part was about your back pain and your illness and so forth. And it’s really compelling because you’re getting it not from a doctor saying suck it up and live with it. You don’t want to make the cure worse than the illness. But you experience the pain. You write about it very movingly, trying to struggle with it, the temptation to take more and so forth. But you gained a lot of wisdom about it and having to manage pain.

So why don’t we begin with chapter one and then we’ll go through, I mean, section one and then go through the four themes of the book. Because I think there’s, I want to tell people, this is like 150, think 140 page book. Then there’s about another 60 pages of citation, good information. It’s very solid. But I just found it about the best way you could spend part of an afternoon reading it, you know. And on this show I reviewed books and things that take me up a week or two weeks to read. So I was grateful for that. But you, as I say, you have a real gift, I think, with the writing. And I haven’t read another book I saw by you on your first year at Harvard Medical School, but I’m going to get a hold of it after we’re done here. I’d like to know what that was like.

Charles LeBaron

Also short, also in that zone where an afternoon will do it for you.

Robert Scheer

With tariffs on China reaching comical numbers, the instability in Donald Trump’s economic strategy continues to grow. Geopolitical Economy Report editor and journalist Ben Norton, who lives in China, joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to make sense of the developments and why the U.S.’s typical economic bullying tactics will not work this time around and inevitably backfire.

Trump, according to Norton, “had a rude awakening realizing that China has been preparing for a decade now for this kind of trade war and that China actually can withstand this economic pain much longer than the U.S. can.” Norton also explains, “It’s a kind of economic game of chicken. And Trump thought he could force China to sign this deal, but it’s looking very unlikely, which is why he’s taking a few steps back.”

While the big idea behind Trump’s tariffs is to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., Norton explains that the sort of infrastructure necessary for this takes years to establish, something China has already mastered and people like Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledge and reference when it comes to their choice of country for manufacturing.

Norton tells Scheer, “[The Chinese government] has invested in all of this education and technical training. And [Cook] pointed out that China could fill many football stadiums with these skilled workers who know how to use all this equipment. Whereas in the U.S., Tim Cook pointed out, the U.S. couldn’t even fill a room with the people who know how to use all of this equipment. So that’s part of why China is still so competitive.”

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Credits

Host:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

Introduction:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence where the intelligence comes from my guests and there’s no question, one of the really most well-informed people I know about China, a journalist, is actually living in China, working there and is getting his PhD. He converts it with the language, which is not always true of people who claim expertise about China. He’s got vast experience and he is the editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report and check it out. Let me just begin. We’re here. It’s now Thursday evening in California time with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has just made comments as he was signing one of his executive orders talking about, we’ll have a deal with China.

He said maybe in the next three for weeks, which I took as a good sign. I’d rather we have a deal with China than go to war with China or destroy each other’s economy. But I’ll leave it to you to tell me, where are we in this whole… And he keeps professing respect for the leader of China, Xi [Jinping]. So what’s going on?

Ben Norton

Yeah, well, my guess is as good as anyone’s. It’s really hard to know what Trump’s doing. He’s kind of pursuing this madman theory that was pursued by Nixon. But in the case of China, I think this is a clear sign, as some analysts have said, that Trump is blinking, right? That essentially he’s acknowledging that his trade war on China has backfired very significantly. And Trump has already made several steps back.

So while he keeps raising the tariffs on China to cartoonish levels, they’re now at 245%, which is mostly symbolic because once you get over like 100%, you’re going to limit basically all trade, the vast majority of trade between the two countries, which is why China was responding to Trump’s tariffs. Every time he raised them, China would impose reciprocal tariffs, actual reciprocal tariffs. And after 125% or something, China said they’re not gonna increase them anymore because after this point, it’s meaningless.

Now, after Trump did that, he also issued an exemption for the most important products that China exports to the US, which are cell phones, computers, and semiconductors, as well as several other electronics goods. Now, electronics make up more than one third of China’s exports to the US. Trump exempted them from his sky-high tariffs.

Which also raises the question, I mean, if he thinks that the US is going to re-industrialize with tariffs, then why is he exempting the most important electronics goods that he says he wants to make in the US? I’m very skeptical. I don’t think he’s actually going to re-industrialize. In fact, the evidence suggests that these tariffs may lead to further de-industrialization, de-industrialization of the US.

But as for this most recent comment he made about making China sign a deal, I don’t think that’s going to be nearly as easy as he expects. In China people have been preparing for a US trade war for years. Trump started a US trade war on China in 2018 during his first term. And then Biden continued those policies. This was bipartisan. Biden imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, semiconductors, batteries, and solar panels. So China has been preparing for nearly a decade now.

And they didn’t expect 245% tariffs, but essentially they expected that the US would try to economically decouple. This has been a term that’s been popular in Washington, decoupling from China. Many think tanks have been calling for this. And China essentially rerouted many of its exports and increased its trade with other regions of the world. So China’s largest trading partner is no longer the US. That was true a decade ago.

Now its largest trading partner is Southeast Asia, the ASEAN countries. And if you look at China’s exports, in 2018, 19% went to the US. And as of 2024, a bit over 14% went to the US. So that’s a pretty significant decline in just a few years. And that number continues to decline further. Another point about China’s economy that’s important to keep in mind is that there’s this idea that China is so dependent on exports and without exporting, its economy would collapse.

But if you look at exports as a share of GDP in China, it’s about 20 percent of Chinese GDP. But the world average is 30 percent of GDP. So, in fact, China’s economy is less dependent on exports than South Korea, than many European countries, certainly than Germany. And over time, China has been massively expanding domestic consumption because it has 1.4 billion people.

So there’s an enormous internal market. So if they don’t export something, they can sell many of those products locally. So Trump thinks, and not just Trump, the people around him. So his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who’s a billionaire hedge fund manager from Wall Street, and also his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, who’s another billionaire from Wall Street. Both of them have constantly claimed in their interviews that the US holds all these cards. As Bessent claimed, China only has a pair of twos.

Vijay Prashad joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss the emergence of a multipolar world and how the Trump administration, although domestically threatening, appears to be shifting from the traditional adversary world force seen in previous administrations. The two discuss China’s rise in technological advancement and how the world, especially the Global South, has responded by shifting away from US domination. Trump’s recent foreign policy actions and staff picks, Prashad points out, also signal a potential embrace of a multipolar world order that strays from conflict.

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Host:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

Introduction:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence where the intelligence comes from my guest, in this case, Vijay Prashad and no question about his record. I can’t even believe it, he’s written 40 books. I’ve only done, I don’t know what, 10 or something. So I mean, hats off to you. And I should mention, the reason I wanted to have him here is he just writes incredibly effectively. He’s the director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is chief correspondent for Globetrotter, chief editor of Leftworld. He wrote a book with Noam Chomsky. But what I really like about his writing is that it’s incredibly densely informed, knowledgeable. And the one article that really got my attention recently was about China and the whole question of rare metals and exploiting them in Greenland and Trump’s idea of taking over Greenland and then also taking over the Panama Canal, all in the effort to stop China.

And he wrote what I thought was the clearest article about what the real threat from China is, which is not a military threat, it’s not an expansionist, is that they actually do capitalism maybe better, not maybe, they clearly do capitalism better than the world’s dominant so-called capitalist powers, which have seemed to have lost the whole competitive edge. They lost it first in the car industry with Japan and then even South Korea coming along and wiping them out. We can’t even produce a decent electric car in this country. And in that respect, it seems to me we’re picking a fight, not just with China, but India, with Brazil, with South Africa. And it really goes to the question of do we believe in international trade comparative advantage?

The value of it or do we want a cartel capitalism where already nine of the top 10 billionaires live in the United States, where we control the action through our financial community and so forth. So I’m also going to bring up some other issues, but I want to start there. I’m doing this from California where the article I read by you about China showed bullet trains. And statistically in China, 95% of the people who live near a moderate city or a big city can take a bullet train, a rapid train, and go anywhere. I can’t go from Los Angeles to San Francisco by any kind of train without getting off, changing, and so forth, but it’s certainly not going to be a bullet train. Instead of taking two and a half hours, it’s probably going to take 12 hours. So what happened to capitalism? And are they really going to go to war with China because China is a better economy or this excuse that China is some kind of global military threat?

Vijay Prashad

Well, first Bob, it’s a real pleasure to be with you, you know, and to hear you talk about my work makes me want to hide or cry or something like that. You’re so generous. The first thing is between Los Angeles and San Francisco, it’s about 550 kilometers, 340 miles, something like that. If there was a Chinese train, a normal average Chinese high-speed train, between San Francisco and Los Angeles, you could make that journey in an hour and a half. Because the trains between, say, Beijing and Shanghai, the very best of the high-speed rail, although you see them all across the country, run at an average speed of 300 kilometers an hour. This is about three times faster than Amtrak’s Acela service.

And I have to say that Amtrak’s Acela service between Boston and Washington DC doesn’t really ever get to 100 kilometers an hour. And the reason is the lines are just not good enough. The engine is pretty good, but the tracks aren’t good enough. So the Chinese trains not only run three times as fast as the fastest US train, but they actually maintain that speed. They don’t just do it theoretically. The Chinese are now developing a train which would go at 600 kilometers an hour. If it ran at say 80% of its speed, which is understandable, you’d be able to get from the center of Los Angeles to the center of San Francisco in an hour. That would make your life a lot easier. Now, Bob, to think about your question, we have to also think about the evidence. I just spoke about trains.

It’s not sufficient to use the train as a metaphor for everything, right? Also, I spend a lot of my time reading reports not written by the Chinese government because I would find that an audience, say in the United States, may not believe it. They’ll say, well, it’s propaganda and so on. So I try to look for other evidence. Recently, I discovered that the Australian government, its defense sector, in other words, its military funds a think tank in Australia called the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Very interesting mainstream think tank. Well, this think tank released a report early this year in January. In fact, the full report was available last year itself. This report is a 20 year study of what they call 64 critical technologies.

So in the year 2000, they picked 64 critical technologies and they found a mechanism to start grading which country is the leader in which of these 64 technologies, who’s second, who’s third, who’s fourth and so on. These include artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials, quantum technology and so on. The top things that were there 20 years ago. And then they snapshotted this every year for 20 years, including last year, 2024. Well, interestingly, in the year 2000, the early years of their study from 2003 to 2007, the United States led in 60, six zero, out of 64 of these critical technologies. At the time, China was only in the lead in three of the 64 key technologies. This is in the early 2000s.

The most recent numbers that they have are the exact opposite. China leads in 57 of 64 key technologies and the United States merely in seven. Now, this is interesting. This is not, again, the Chinese government’s view. It’s not my view. It’s the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. They argue that in the leading critical technologies, the new qualitatively advanced productive forces are better in China than they are in the United States, which means that the United States, which had an enormous advantage in intellectual property rights, no longer has that advantage. China has overtaken the United States in that. Now, there is a way you can deal with this.

The recent United Nations vote to condemn Russia for the war in Ukraine saw unlikely allies in Russia and the United States, which both voted against the resolution. On this episode of the ScheerPost podcast, Ray McGovern joins host Robert Scheer to discuss what this vote means and how a potential new peace with Russia is reminiscent of the days of John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union. Ray pays tribute to Aaron Bushnell, the Air Force serviceman who set himself on fire in protest of the genocide in Gaza and points out how Trump’s peace in Europe sets up a glaring contradiction for his attitude in the Middle East.

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Credits

Host:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

Introduction:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer

Hi, this is Robert Scheer with the new series on ScheerPost podcasts, because we’re still going to keep Scheer Intelligence and other channels. But here I’m going to do a weekly show with Ray McGovern and maybe other people. But right now it’s set for the Ray McGovern show or the odd couple from the Bronx. I’m not sure how to describe our relationship but it’s a trajectory. We both grew up in the Bronx around the same time after World War II. Ray went off to join the armed forces and then the CIA for 27 years where he was the Russia expert and briefed three presidents—[Richard] Nixon, [Gerald] Ford and Ronald Reagan.

I went off into journalism. I was a critic of the CIA’s secrecy and their overthrowing governments. And I wrote quite a bit about that for Ramparts and right up through my 29 years at the LA Times and elsewhere. And so we are just different trajectories for two guys in the Bronx. But oddly enough, we’ve ended up seeing things in pretty similar fashion, particularly regards the deep state. And what I want to talk about today, I’m going to let Ray take over the whole show. But really, I want to talk about this historic moment where Donald Trump seems to be bringing in far more sweeping changes than even Richard Nixon did when he did the opening to Red China. We learned we could live at peace with China. We didn’t have to be at constant war. It basically ended up ending the Cold War.

Now we’re in a situation where, and I’ll let Ray tell the story, but the US and Russia voted the same way in the UN. I’ll let him talk about that, but the whole attitude towards the Ukrainian war now has shifted radically. So tell us, Ray, is this a historic moment? What does it mean? What’s happening? And you are the guy who had the inside government view for all those years and thinking about Russia. How did it happen that Donald Trump is somehow now, what is he, going for the Nobel Peace Prize?

Ray McGovern

Some people are suggesting that. Can I be heard? Can you hear me, Bob? Yeah, you can. You know, I’d like to start out on a really serious note, at least for me. Today is the first anniversary of the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. He was aghast at what was happening in Gaza. I have his final remarks here. As he was setting fire to himself, he said, I will no longer be complicit in genocide in Gaza. I am about to engage in extreme act of protest. And then as he lit himself a light, he screamed several times, “free Palestine.”

Now that’s one thing, but the day before he did that, he put a Facebook entry. And this is what I’d like to just suggest is really important to me and perhaps important to others. This is what he said, quote, “Many of us like to ask ourselves. What would I do if I were alive during slavery or Jim Crow South or apartheid? Well, what would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is you’re doing it now. You’re doing it right now.” End quote.

Now, I start out on that note because in my view, and this was not shared by everyone, we’re about to reinstitute the genocide operation within the next week or so. I believe that [Benjamin] Netanyahu is going to thumb his nose at our president and our president will not object, but rather acquiesce. The end of phase one ceasefire is on Saturday, March 1st. Now, we thought that there might be an extension for phase one of the ceasefire. And actually, the terms of the agreement allow for that. And what’s his name? Steve Witkoff was tearing his hair out this Sunday on TV saying, we’ve got to get an extension. We’ve got an extension. Why do we have to get an extension? Because the Israelis reneged at the end of last week, that is last Saturday, when four Israeli hostages were released, one of them actually kissed her Hamas captor on both sides of the cheek, thanking him for good treatment.

And then Netanyahu said, we’re not going to release the, what is it, 620 Palestinian people who were all set up to be released that same day. And his objection was the way in which Hamas released those hostages. That was an artificial explanation. That’s where we are right now. Now, Witkoff, the tough real estate guy, he was going to go to Tel Aviv tomorrow. OK. And you know what he does. He reads the right like, sit down, Bibi. Sit down, Netanyahu. This is the way it’s going to be. What happened? Today he canceled his trip. Now, Witkoff is a smart operator. He’s not going to go unless he knows he’s going to be successful. Now, meanwhile, back at the ranch, the U.S. National Security Advisor has said, we support anything at all that Netanyahu will do. And for Netanyahu’s part, he says, you know, we have a secret agreement, a secret agreement.

We had it with Biden as well as Trump now. At the end, when we created the ceasefire, the secret agreement says that I can resume the attack on Gaza anytime that I consider it—the ceasefire—to be untenable. Bottom line here is that as much as this sea change in relations with Russia and with Europe, how important that is, this is my immediate concern. What’s going to happen? Well, Trump’s going to, in my view, now again, not everybody agrees. Everybody thinks that a lot of people think Trump, he’ll send Witkoff and Witkoff will do the same thing. I don’t think so. I think Bibi is twice as clever as even Trump. And I see a renewal of the carnage of the genocide in Gaza starting next week.

And that’s why I thought it was appropriate to cite Aaron Bushnell’s parting words. What are you doing about it, you Americans? Well, you asked what you do about it. That’s what you’re doing. You’re doing about it right now. And most Americans are doing nothing. And there’s no more excuse about not knowing about it. It’s out there if you care to look. Sorry for the little, I’m sorry, no, I’m not sorry, Bob. I just hear really strongly about this. And I think we need to think about what we as a nation have become if we not only tolerate but acquiesce in and arm with 2,000 pound bombs, genocide don’t blanche before the word.

Robert Scheer

Former CIA Russia expert, Ray McGovern, discusses with Robert Scheer the historic significance of President Trump’s latest efforts to end the war in Ukraine. McGovern compares the meeting that took place today between Russian and US representatives in Saudi Arabia to Nixon’s historic opening of negotiations with China which led to the end of the Cold War.

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Host:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

Introduction:

Talia Mullin

Transcript:

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer and I’m here in my weekly Tuesday session with Ray McGovern and it couldn’t happen at a more urgent, relevant news moment. Ray McGovern, I’m sure many people watching this know, was the CIA Russia expert, briefer to three American presidents, and that was Nixon, Ford and Reagan.

And we are at a moment, I think, comparable to when the president he briefed, Nixon, was dealing with going to China and changed the whole Cold War. Maybe ended the Cold War, not chronologically, but certainly took the emphasis out of the Cold War, which was this crusade or need to stop international communism.

Suddenly, Nixon had gone over there, had a meeting with what was the most fearsome communist in the world, Mao Zedong and everything changed. Even though we continued fighting in Vietnam in the name of stopping communism, still, once you go there and you drink with Mao, you can’t have the Cold War based on confronting Mao.

And as I read the news coming out of Saudi Arabia today in the meeting with our secretary of state, Rubio, and two other top people. And they invoked Donald Trump, they say this is what Donald Trump campaigned on. This is what he wants. We don’t have all the details. And his Russian counterpart said something very similar. He said, we are moving into a new era here. We want to stop these wars. We’re going to have to work out something where all the parties are satisfied with it.

We can’t just force them into this. He was very clear. But we’re entering a new era. And it is an era that alarms people who were used to the old era, even though, as he pointed out, Rubio, that hundreds of thousands of people have died. This is three and a half years of slaughter. so I love the idea that we have Ray McGovern here now, who probably I think is as familiar with the history as anyone alive and on the highest level. So tell us, is this like the Nixon going to China moment? Does this have the potential at least to change everything.

Ray McGovern: It does, Bob. And that’s the right question. This is a benchmark. This is the start of a revolution. We used to call it detente or rapprochement, where after a period of great hostility between Russia or the Soviet Union and the United States, there was a fall.

The ice broke and good things happened. Now, when you mentioned Nixon going to China, We were in on that. was chief of the Soviet foreign policy branch at the time at CIA and Nixon was going to play China off against Russia. And he asked, “Are Russians interested in strategic arms limitations? “

And we said, “Well, yeah, they don’t want to be outspent by you, you all. They’re afraid of them. And besides Mr. Kissinger, they’re afraid of your opening to China.” Now, Nixon and Kissinger played that to the hilt. Nixon went to China in January of 1971, and the SALT talks, the Strategic Arms Limitation talks, started to show real progress. Progress all over the place.

There was an agreement on Berlin, for God’s sake, that had been iced for decades.That happened after Nixon’s visit to China. We could say that the Russians were really interested not only in limiting arms, but preventing the Chinese from stealing a march from them in relations with the US.

So long story short, we had— my branch had three people dedicated to the talks, whether in Helsinki or Vienna or in headquarters. And I got to go to the final signing in May 1972 of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which gave solid, solid assurance that there could be no nuclear war for 30 years. I was elated.

I’m of the age where I hid behind my desk, right? I was just, I was, it was not only a professional, big deal, but personally I felt, well, wow, not only have we created a new stable environment strategically, but I had a small role in this. My God, you know!

Okay, that’s number one. Now, number two, when Reagan came in, we’re talking now the eighties, right? I used to brief Reagan’s people one-on-one in the morning from ‘81 to ‘85. When Reagan came in, he had all these troglodytes.

And they told him to say, “Russia’s got to be defeated, you know, Russia is a menace. Russia is the evil empire.” And so he said those things. He said them in 1983. What happens next? Whoa! KAL 007, the Korean airliner that wandered several hundred miles over Siberia is shot down.

Long story short. Did the Soviets shoot that down deliberately? Yes, they did. We know that from the intercepts, pilot to control tower. Did the Soviets know? Did the Soviets know that that was a passenger plane? No, we know that because we have those intercepts. Why is that important? Because we lied about that at the United Nations.

So if there was anything more irritating to the Russians, here they saw that we knew that they didn’t know it was a civilian aircraft. A military aircraft had been there just a couple hours before. They mistook it. It was dark. Anyhow, the Russians knew that we were just about to put them out of business. That’s September, early September 1983.

What happens next? A major strategic nuclear exercise called Able Archer. In which head people in these various countries, including the vice president of the United States were involved. The Russians thought it was the real thing. And it was due largely to one of my colleagues, Mel Goodman, who went to Bill Casey, head of the CIA and said, “Look, the Russians think this is the real thing. They’re warming up their nuclear armed fighter bombers in East Germany. Tell the White House to knock it off!”

And the White House knocked it off. Now that was 1983. We kept telling him — that’s the honest analysts in the CIA — kept telling Reagan, “Look, these people are serious, Gorbachev is not just a clever commie like Bobby Gates and Bill Casey tell you.” And Schultz and Vice President Bush, listen, they persuaded, they persuaded Reagan, “Look, we can deal with this guy.”

Long story short, 1987, the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces, which was even better than the SALT Treaty, the ABM Treaty, because this destroyed in place a whole class of intermediate and medium-range ballistic missiles on both sides, Russia SS-20s, Pershing IIs in Europe, okay? And it was verifiable.

My friend Scott Ritter was the first American inspector on the ground at a godawful place called Votkinsk, where he stayed for two years to make sure that the damn thing was verified. So all of a sudden, what happens to that? Well, Trump, in his wisdom in 2019, gets out of that treaty.

That treaty had been in place for 32 years, not just 30 as the ABM treaty. So does Trump recognize the error of his ways now? Does he give less credence to the military industrial complex and its power?