The Broken Whistle

I spoke with Pedro Israel Orta, former CIA analyst and operative, author (and victim) of "The Broken Whistle" a book that documents the failure of the government to protect whistleblowers.

Whistleblowers are the last defense against a corrupt government.

Pedro also Executive produced the documentary "Deep State Gangsters". 

You can listen here: Your American Heritage 5 10 2025 with Pedro Orta

or here:

 

Ed Bonderenka (01:00):

Well, good afternoon and welcome to your American Heritage, baby. My name is Ed Bonderenka, And I am a

Woman (01:07):

white, Christian, cisgender Male.

Ed Bonderenka (01:10):

Yeah,

Sean Todd (01:12):

Not your normal, fluffy insurrectionist.

Ed Bonderenka (01:14):

And producing the show is the guy that answers the phones, warns me commercials are coming, puts guests online and finds answers to the questions we ask. Tells me when my microphone is muted. That's Derek Stone, the radio man of mystery. Derek Stone hosts Stone Cold Sports Truth Sunday's at noon 30 right after my friend Sean Todd hosts the intersection at noon. The intersection is

Sean Todd (01:35):

Not your normal fluffy Christian show,

Ed Bonderenka (01:38):

So just listen to everything here on WAAM. That sums it up. Everything, that means all the Saturday shows, Saturday evening shows, Sunday shows, and your American Heritage is on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you can could subscribe, boost Signal, you Paul Revere. Get the word out. Now I'm going to repeat this for new listeners. There's a war going on for control of America and you and it's spiritual warfare. It's a struggle to enslave mankind and it's been going on for quite a while now. I'd say like before we arrived on this planet and how do we fight back? We get organized, preferably in a good church. We go to court, we educate our neighbors, we support those who take the battle to the enemy and we support those who are running for office that support Godly values. And then we hold their feet to the fire and make sure they do.

(02:25):

Then we arm ourselves.

We arm ourselves intellectually. We learn the facts for ourselves so we can make wise decisions and explain them to others. And we do that by listening to shows like this and guests like ours and other shows and reading books and the like.

And then we arm ourselves physically, we get a gun and learn to use it, and we'd be prepared to defend ourselves, our families, and our nation.

And then we arm ourselves spiritually once again. Find a good church, join with others in prayer for our nation.

Hey, that's an idea. Let's pray. Psalm 1 44 says, blessed be the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. Please clasp those hands and your fingers. Let's pray. Let's go to war.

Father, please lead us and guide us as we seek to protect this nation. Please help us to protect our heritage and the rights that you have given us from evil, conspirators, thieves, traitors, and tyrants. Please bring these enemies of good and sound morals to a place of repentance. And if they will not repent, please remove them utterly from our presence. Amen. So joining us today is Pedro Israel Orta. He's the author of a book called The Broken Whistle. He's also a producer of a video movie on demand called Deep State Gangsters and Deep State gangsters features a number of whistleblowers and their treatment by the swamp. And you have your hand up. Did you want to say something, Pedro?

Pedro Orta (03:48):

Well, I had the privilege of serving our country in the CIA for 18 and a half years, and as a Christian with Christian values of righteousness, justice, mercy, what is right? What is wrong? I found myself in a position where I had to speak up, speak truth to power, and it led to reprisals. And unfortunately the system is geared towards destroying anyone who speaks up. So long story short, yes, I was fired as a whistleblower, turned it into a book, the Broken Whistle. And my story is not the only story out there. There are many other stories out there. So consequently followed it up with the documentary Deep State Gangsters, which brought along the John Car, another CIA whistleblower and two FBI whistleblowers, Garrett O'Boyle and Nate Cain. And we had two color commentators, journalists, veteran journalist Lee Smith and Jay Michael Waller, who is more of a policy analyst to provide some perspective what it all means. So by the grace of God, I've been able to get this book out there and the documentary and the chief aim is really to inform and enlighten and generate activism to hold our government accountable to return to godly values in government.

Ed Bonderenka (05:17):

Yes. Amen. Amen. And J., Michael Wallers, he may be familiar to our listeners. He was here as a guest. He is the author of Big Intel and we had a nice conversation with him. You can find that on Spotify if you like. And you had, like I said, you had Lee Smith on there. Hey, can I play an audio clip from Lee Smith from your show, from the documentary? Would that be violating copyright?

Pedro Orta (05:46):

No, no, you can certainly do it. I have old a copyright to it and there's no violation if by All Means, please Lee Smith,

Lee Smith (05:55):

The Obama administration. And when Joe Biden was Obama's vice president, now he continues to do the same. Yes, they use the government, they weaponize the government not only against Republicans, not only against their political opponents, but against ordinary US citizens as well. But I think that once you understand again the role that the media plays, a lot of people misunderstand this, A lot of people just complain about the media. It's biased. It's totally in the bag for the liberals and the Democrats, right? We're past that. Again, I grew up in the media. My father's a journalist, I know the history of the media extremely well. We're not looking at a liberal left-wing media right now, but we're talking about as a platform for serial information operations targeting the public. That's who covered up what Barack Obama was doing. Not left wing press, not liberal press. People are confused. Gee, I don't understand. I didn't know that liberals wanted to protect dirty FBI agents. It has nothing to do with left and right anymore. Right. That's what I mean when I say we have to figure out where we are. It's nothing to do with that. The media is a platform for information operations devised by the intelligence services.

Ed Bonderenka (07:09):

That sounds like Project Mockingbird, if I'm remembering my projects correctly here or not, my deep state conspiracies. Yeah, and there's a lot of really good commentary. There's the stories that each individual, including yourself tells in that. And deep state gangsters available to rent or purchase on Amazon like I did, I bought, I think it was 12 bucks, nine bucks. Instead of renting it for six bucks, it was like three bucks more. I can have it forever. Yeah. I think I want it forever. I want to watch it again and I don't mean in the next 48 hours. So I highly recommend this. My wife and I watch it. She liked it too. And so Pedro, actually, we were talking before the show and you said you had run into Mr. Wallers in the green room at Tucker Carlson's as you were going in for your interview, he was coming up, but you really didn't talk, but that then you had him in your documentary, like I said, his guest on this show, and there's all kinds of great commentary in your documentary like Smiths, like Wallers, and then you tell your story.

(08:23):

The other guys tell their stories about basically how the whistle is broken. But then you also wrote the book to, well, let's see, you wrote the book first and then you expanded on that in the documentary, I believe you said. But I want to go back to the Tucker Carlson. I subscribed to Tucker on Spotify. I had been subscribed to him before. I thought I had heard your interview about a year ago, and I couldn't find it on Spotify and it was driving me nuts. So I went back to Tucker Carlson network, found it there, and I resubscribed to Tucker Carlson just for the purpose of listening to your interview, which was very, very good. And I hope this one turns out nearly as well. But what I'd like to do is I'd like to have you tell us where are you from, what's your background, where were you raised and how were you raised? First off,

Pedro Orta (09:16):

I was born and raised in Miami, Florida first generation American, American citizen, born in Miami. But my father, mother, grandparents, grand aunts, aunts, uncles, all of them basically were born in Cuba and they had to flee Cuba because of the Fidel Castro revolution in 1959. My grandfather's side of the family, they were very anti-Castro. They were activists, politically involved. And it led to political persecution where I had one grand uncle that was imprisoned for 20 years as a political prisoner in Cuban jails. My grandfather also was in prison, but he was able to get out and that caused him having to flee Cuba. So that caused basically his family, his wife, sons and daughter, to eventually flee Cuba. So I grew up in a environment in Miami that knew firsthand the impact of a tyrannical government, families separated, the families, shredded apart, the losing everything, having to start a new country with nothing, leaving behind relatives that they would not see for 10, 20, 30 years if they ever saw him again.

(10:50):

I remember my grandmother one time crying hysterically, and I asked her what's going on? And she tells me my mom died and she's in Cuba and I can't even go to her funeral. One of my cousins, her mother having to flee the tyranny of Cuba left when my cousin was six months pregnant and they would not allow her husband to depart because her husband was an electrical engineer and he was deemed too valuable for Cuba. So this cousin of mine basically grew up without never seeing her father. And stories like that abound. So I know firsthand the tyranny of a form of government that oppresses its people and seeks to control its people through political, economic, societal norms. And one of the reasons why I wrote my book is because our government to a degree has become and too powerful where it has become weaponized against Americans. And if we continue down this path, we're basically going down into a tyrannical form of government that will impose its ways upon us. And we saw basically a, you can call it a precursor, you can call it a warning, what we saw with covid in 2020 and even with the Biden presidency. And if we do not hold our government accountable and begin to see significant reforms to reign in these abuses, undoubtedly it's going to be worse in the future.

Ed Bonderenka (12:35):

I'm going to give you an analogy that it only now occurred to me because as you were talking and I was listening, but I was also thinking, I have a habit of doing that. And I was thinking about what you were saying, which is even better. And one way of holding governments accountable is to find out what's going on in the government. And if you never know what's going on in the government, then you can't deal with it. And one way of having that information come out is by whistleblowers. And I remember being an advocate for the draft back in the seventies, even though I was a victim, so to speak of the draft, I think it actually benefited my life quite tremendously. And I've gone in the military and I probably would not have done it, had not been for the draft, but one thing that draft did was it put a lot of non-career civilians through the military to see how it works, and then they get exposed to what's going on in the military and they can take those stories out and they can take 'em to legislatures and in a sense become whistleblowers.

(13:36):

They're not in anymore, but they can come out and say, I saw this. This is not right, this was wrong. And now you take a career individual like yourself who went into the CIA and you see things that are being done wrong or some of the people in your documentary as far as the FBI is concerned, they see wrongs being committed and there's a process, there's a legal process for you to report these to Congress and to the authorities so that changes might be made, but that whistle's broken, isn't it?

Pedro Orta (14:07):

There are laws on the books that first of all requires for any federal employee or contractor or affiliated individual to report what they reasonably believed evidence is waste, fraud, abusive authority, significant and specific, endangerment to public safety, equal employment, opportunity violations, sexual harassment, age discrimination, so forth. You are required to report it and if you are in a supervisory capacity, the legal requirement is even a higher standard, particularly when we're talking about EEO issues. The agency is liable if an individual in a managerial position does not report it and even if they report it, but now it's just basically pretty letters on paper that are worthless because for the most part, they are totally unenforceable and you're basically having a situation where the government mafia is trying to investigate itself. It's like going to a criminal organization like the Mafia and telling them the FBI comes to the mafia, knock, knock, knock, knock.

(15:20):

We hear that you've got some fools in there committing some illegal activities. We need you to investigate these matters and get back to us. Three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago, 18 months ago, 24 months ago, you try to follow up, you hear nothing. Eventually, maybe 36 months later you get a response. Yeah, we found some things but there really nothing. We took care of it. We got nothing to report to you. That's basically what happens if you go through a whistleblower reprisal type situation where you reported reprisals and you're expecting to get some kind of investigation, it's a sham investigation, it's biased. They refuse to look at all the evidence. They refuse to look at all the individuals involved. They may ask yes, no type questions. They don't get to the bottom of the facts. It's even worse with EEO, the chances of a whistleblower alleging reprisal,

Ed Bonderenka (16:19):

Pedro, explain EEO

Pedro Orta (16:22):

Equal employment opportunity,

Ed Bonderenka (16:24):

Thank you,

Pedro Orta (16:24):

Is supposed to protect employees from the biggest scenario. It would be sexual harassment type cases where there are inappropriate advances or inappropriate activities between, for example, supervisor and a subordinate, which sadly it does happen that the law protects against that, particularly in the federal government. At the same time, there are also other categories of equal employment opportunity such as age, the age protections, 50 years and above, so forth. I found myself in a situation where as a supervisor, I had a subordinate who was 58 years old and another one who was about 28 years old, and our superior, the chief of base who I reported to, created a hostile work environment where she literally called the younger officer. An adopted son went out of her way to make his work environment conducive to whatever he wanted to do to the point that it made it a hostile work environment for the older 58-year-old man where he was called a cranky old man.

(17:38):

All the work got dumped on him, a lot of disrespect. It created a lot of tension and hostility and eventually there was a spat between the younger and the older one. And I had to speak up and tell her and tell our superiors in Kabul, this was in Afghanistan, what was going on here? The chief of base created a hostile work environment, so there were EEO issues in this particular base that I reported, but what happened was the older officer was basically maligned shipped out of the base. I got shipped out of the base, I got kicked out of Afghanistan, and then they went into full coverup mode.

Ed Bonderenka (18:22):

Well, you know what, let's back up a little bit. How did you, not even, how did you get to Afghanistan? How did you get into the CIA a I'm sure people are interested in that.

Pedro Orta (18:35):

I ended up completing my college studies a little late in life, early thirties. Long story short, where I came from, family didn't have the means to send me to college. So I worked in Miami, worked in the business world 14 years, distinguished myself, finally got back to school at night. As I'm going through my studies at night, the CIA sends recruiters to universities, so I was able to meet with some of the recruiters for the director of intelligence, which is the analytical ranks of the CIA had a good interview and they offered me a graduate fellowship. So I moved from Miami to Washington DC to continue my studies as a graduate student and at the same time worked at the CIA as a temporary, not a full status employee, but as a temporary graduate fellow type employee. And I was able to convert that into full-time employment with the CIA.

Ed Bonderenka (19:36):

Was that a paid position? I'm curious, was that a step above intern? I'm just curious how it works.

Pedro Orta (19:40):

It was a full federal position with all the federal benefits that came with it. I just did not have the tenure of being an actual federal employee, but I received pay for it.

Ed Bonderenka (19:55):

And you were doing analyst work? So with analyst work, I'm thinking of a couple of fictional characters. One is Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, but you didn't have a bunch of people trying to kill you for what you found. And then there's Jack Ryan who quickly went from analyst to ops. Right.

Pedro Orta (20:14):

That's my story. If there was a real life Jack Ryan, I probably would fit the description and I'm not to brag on myself and make something more of myself because I started as an analyst. I was trained as an analyst. I went through the career analyst program, so I got my analyst certifications and as an analyst I was very proficient writing, doing briefings, wrote precedent's, daily briefs, wrote papers for the executive branch of government, and eventually I would find my way into operations, get the operational training, do operations officer type work, work on covert action, work on counter-terrorism, work on counterintelligence, then eventually do technical type work, technical targeting. Spend two years in Iraq, a year in Afghanistan, seven months out in the Middle East. I did another two year tour in another semi war zone type environment for doing a lot of field deployments and overt action and then eventually found my way back to

Ed Bonderenka (21:24):

Afghanistan. Were you speaking of “Carmenia” there?

Pedro Orta (21:29):

I called the country Carmenia because they wouldn't allow me to give the real name, but if you read between the lines, you can figure out what country it is.

Ed Bonderenka (21:39):

Yeah, that's pretty cute. Yeah. So basically you went to school and you got out and you got recruited. You found that they were actually coming on campus looking for people. I've seen that at U of M also, you find it kind of, if you haven't been exposed to it, it's kind of funny to see a job fair for the CIA, the spooks.

Pedro Orta (22:00):

There's a lot of jobs that are basically overt. So I started as an overt employee where my affiliation was clearly CIA, but at a certain point in time I transitioned over to covert undercover. So my affiliation was another government agency

Ed Bonderenka (22:20):

And there's actually, there's more promotion opportunities in covert than analysis directorate, right?

Pedro Orta (22:26):

The advantage of being in operations is that whereas the analytical is predominantly based in CIA headquarters or the Washington DC area, I mean they do have analysts that now deploy out to the field, but if you were to do operational work, there are a lot of jobs overseas. So the opportunities to go out and work in different parts of the world being at the tip of the spear as they say, for someone who likes to be more involved and you'll have better opportunities.

Ed Bonderenka (23:00):

So yeah, I'm thinking of another example. A fictional example is Zero Dark 30, where the lady in question there found Bin Laden all analysis talking to people and she had went out in the field, talked to ops people, found out what they need, what they knew. It was very interesting. I've been, I dunno, interested in the inner workings of the CIA for quite some time, and so I've kind of dug into it. I've read books like Prouty,Tthe Secret Team and oh, what's the other one? The Old Boys by Burton Hirsch, the formation of the CIA and how we actually got a CIA out of the OSS and neither of those books will give you a good smell.

Pedro Orta (23:44):

There, honestly, a few books and movies out there that can give you an accurate rendering of what it's really like working for the CIA. So that's where I try to bring in a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense of the administrative stuff of what it's really like having to deal with CIA headquarters or just the politics out in the field. That's one angle of the book that some people will knock it down for. They'd rather have the sensational Saia stuff of operations.

Ed Bonderenka (24:21):

Okay, well we're going to come back after the break and we're going to talk more about the specific case and your whistle blowing activities and how you were treated from that. And so we're talking to Pedro Israel Orta, author of the Broken Whistle. Come on back after the break

Ed Bonderenka (25:12):

Well, welcome back to Your American Heritage. My guest this hour is Pedro Israel Orta, the author of the Broken whistle, producer of Deep State Gangsters. Yes, boy, I almost got it scrambled there for a second. And we've been talking about his career in the CIA and how he got there and now we want to talk about exactly what happened where he discovered the broken whistle. So Pedro, there were some instances that happened. Why don't you just start talking?

Pedro Orta (25:49):

Yeah. I was a manager in Afghanistan at the 14, 15 year mark of my time at the CIA. We were trained as far as what to do, what not to do. We had explicit guidelines of what's permissible, what's not permissible, what's expected, what's not expected. On top of that, I had already had about six years of warzone experiences trained by chiefs of station, deputy chief of stations, chief of operations, who were senior leaders at the CIA. So I find myself in this war zone in Afghanistan in a base as a deputy chief of base working for a chief of base, working for a really nice lady, but she had no war zone experience. She had only like four years of overseas experience and way out of her element not being able to handle the hardships of the separation from family, the dangers she was of the rockets that were impacting around us and started making a hostile work environment for one of our subordinates and more importantly, literally endangering lives with reckless moves, reckless behavior for food, yoga classes where we didn't have to go far to find food, but she would have us go far to find food to basically in her motherly instincts to feed us well, going through areas where rockets would impact.

(27:17):

And in one of those instances, actually a rocket did impact immediately after we had passed by there unnecessarily. The situation degraded. And I did speak up to the psychologist who visited the base who told me, you need to report this to the superior in Kabul, which I did. And the superior in Kabul didn't want to hear about it. Eventually I had no choice but to bring it up to her despite the fact that the psychologist says she wouldn't get it, she wouldn't understand it, she was in distress.

(27:54):

I had to because the situation happened between the harassed officer and another officer, and at that point in time is when all hell broke loose in that base. Immediately she started accusing the older officer of drawing a weapon one time calling him a cranky old man, initiated an investigation against him from cobble. Cobble calls me and starts basically threatening me that I need to line up and go with them to fire this older man. And as a Christian who has integrity, I stood up and I said, I cannot take negative actions against a man who has done no wrong because the problems here are the way this lady has been managing this space. And that led to basically I getting kicked out of Afghanistan with all sorts of personal actions taken against me. But this is important here because we were in Afghanistan to help fight a war and instead we were in a base that had been turned into a basically social club on steroids for this woman neglecting to meet with the military lives being endangered personnel, being harassed.

(29:08):

And this kind of mimicked what happened in 2009 in another CIA based called coast where similarly they had put another woman in charge there who didn't have the qualifications for that job in her lack of qualifications, decisions were made that she made that cost her life and the life of six other officers. Unfortunately, I got caught in the crossfire of that diversity, equity and inclusion push by John Brennan. So I mean they did everything they can to up for this woman, kept her in her job for the full year and it caused me my job and destroyed my career and it caused all sorts of mayhem leading to a lack of any willingness from anyone at the CIA to fully investigate. Or actually I made it real easy for them, just let me have a follow on job where I can continue my career. They refused to even do that. The inspector general was supposed to investigate reprisals. They basically refused to investigate equal employment opportunity, was trying to kill EEO cases, doing nothing to help human resources, nothing to help. So I end up literally being chased out of the CIA and take what's known as a joint duty assignment where I got loaned out to another government agency, the director of National Intelligence working for the Office of Inspector General for the intelligence community. And that's another long story I can go on, but I'll turn that over to you.

Ed Bonderenka (30:44):

Yeah, I just want to go back. You mentioned the Khost incident, that was Camp Chapman, right?

Pedro Orta (30:49):

Yes, that is correct. Camp Chapman.

Ed Bonderenka (30:52):

Yes. And that basically had nothing to do with you in the sense of your story doesn't involve that, but that's where a woman was in charge of that facility and a suicide bomb. She made some decisions that allowed a suicide bomber to enter the camp, and a whole series of mistakes were made and she and others died because of it. He blew himself up in the camp. Right?

Pedro Orta (31:15):

Well, what happened here was the woman in charge of the CIA base in Khost  that allowed the suicide bomber to meet an entire party of CIA officers, I don't remember if it was 15 or so. It was basically like reportedly the suicide bomber…. It was his birthday, so they were going to celebrate his birthday and out of respect and honor for the suicide bomber, she had violations of all types of security protocols they were supposed to have had this suicide bomber patted down, checked out by the security officers ahead of time before they would even get near any other CIA officer. So she violated those security protocols against the advice given to her by the security personnel and correct, it led to a disaster.

Ed Bonderenka (32:16):

And so in the case of the woman that you were, I don't want to say involved with that, was involved in your incident, basically she was there just add time just to fill a slot so that she could get a notch on her belt towards her retirement. It wasn't any out of gungho, let's do the job, I'm the best person fit for this. It was just a career move, is that correct?

Pedro Orta (32:46):

A career move to get five years overseas to switch over to first special, which would allow her to retire after 20 years of service after age 50. And she was in survival mode the entire time.

Ed Bonderenka (33:00):

Okay. So that's basically what led to the situation that you had to report on because she just wasn't up to the work and she was endangering other personnel similar to the coast event, not the coast cima, but similar to it endangering personnel with decisions she was making unsuitable. But unfortunately you blowing the whistle on that. The whistle got pointed at you. Right,

Pedro Orta (33:27):

Exactly. What happened there was is I was the bad guy. They falsely accused me of so many things that it was just beyond ridiculous all to make a statement that we're going to keep this woman here and we're going to destroy you. And in trying to destroy me, they basically were trying to get me to quit and leave the CIA, but I was undercover. I would have to roll back my CIA cover and that's a process. And they may or may not do it. You never know if they will. And even if they did, I would still have significant challenges in trying to find a job outside of the CIA given the sensitive nature of the type of jobs you have in the operational environment.

Ed Bonderenka (34:11):

Gotcha. So then you took this joint job under Brennan, and how did that go? What happened there?

Pedro Orta (34:19):

Well, I find myself in the office of Inspector General for the intelligence community at the tail end of the IG Charles McCullough who

Ed Bonderenka (34:29):

Stop, wait, wait, wait. You were in the IG and if anything you were trying to get the IGs attention or this is the thing that fascinated me when you were telling this story before and I've just been dying to ask you this. Nobody else seems to have. So yeah, I mean, whistle blowing is an IG activity, right? And so consequently now you're in the IGs office.

Pedro Orta (34:59):

Yeah, this is just fascinating how I got the IG job with the Office of Inspector Joint Intelligence Community. Long story short, I was basically forced to find a safe place to work and I couldn't find any safe places to work inside the CIA, so I was able to meet with a recruiting event within the intelligence community. Basically they had like a fair where you had N-G-A-N-S-A-D-N-I and I met officers from the office of the inspector General from the intelligence community. So I really was very impressed with what I saw and I visited them and I had peace in my heart that this would be a good job doing inter-agency type work, working with good people, which I did. And I started working there. But now you're right. The IGs are supposed to be the office that does the whistleblower investigations. In my case, it was supposed to be the CIA IG doing an investigation.

(36:06):

So the ICIG had no rule at all looking into my whistleblower allegations. But on that note, it was a very difficult time when I went in, that was September of 2015, and Charles McCullough, the IG for the ICIG was under a lot of pressure because they were doing the Hillary Clinton email investigation and literally clapper, Senator Feinstein and others wanted to hear nothing about the Hillary shenanigans. And literally he found out Chuck McCullough that had Hillary won the presidency, her first step or her first action would've been to fire Charles McCullough. So he ended up basically checking out and allowed another individual to come in as the principal deputy IG. And between this other individual, the principal deputy IG and the general counsel, they literally did like a coup to take over. And we were working on an evaluation to determine whether or not certain elements of the intelligence community, the CIA and G-A-D-I-A-N-S-A and the DNI were implementing whistleblower reprisal protections. And despite the fact that we had very clear guidance as far as what we would do, and I was part of that team, eventually what would happen is they would accuse me of having an independence issue and kick me out of the ICIG and send me back to the CIA. Basically what happened here is they did not like what we found and they were looking for ways to crush and not publish the report that we had found.

Ed Bonderenka (38:06):

Wow, so you were kind of a hot potato there for a bit.

Pedro Orta (38:14):

Yeah, I mean, I just got put in from one frying pan to the next frying pan, just tossed like a hot potato from one hand to the next hand,

Ed Bonderenka (38:25):

I'm reminded as you tell this story, and when the other gentleman in your documentary deep state gangsters tell their of how the whistle was broken for them also IGs are mentioned and not responding so well. And so then Trump in the late January when he was after his inauguration this year, he famously fired a number of inspector generals and there was quite an outcry about that in the liberal press, but I never saw anybody really explain that. And I suspected at the time that yeah, these were corrupt IGs or they weren't functioning well. People had blown the whistle on these IGs and they were being replaced with people. They may even been DEI issues involved there.

Pedro Orta (39:23):

Yeah, it really hasn't been explained well as far as the rationale of who got fired and why they got fired. I mean, the IGs on paper, the theory and design is supposed to work, but the reality is that, I'll put it to you this way, okay, let's take a look. For example, the CIA, John Brennan was a very powerful director. He was so powerful that not even DIG can rule against him. And eventually some of the things that Brennan did with Spine on Congress, as they call it, was basically just washed over as if Brennan did no wrong. The IGs just lack the power to really hold these agencies accountable. And the way this process works is it's up to the agency head to implement or not implement whatever the IGs find. If the agency head doesn't want to implement, they're not implemented, the ability of an IG also to conduct any evaluation, any inspection, any investigation or audit is going to be dependent on their ability to get the information required. And what we find is that in many instances, there are issues of which these IGs do not get all the information.

(40:54):

They have special provisions in the IG law that they can literally go to Congress and demand that they get the information that's required, but there's no way of enforcing it because what has happened here is the real root cause is we have a very powerful executive branch that can literally defy presidents and defy Congress. And as long as these executive branch departments can defy presidents in Congress, there's no way an IG can do any oversight effectively because call it what it is, we have Congress failing to do oversight over the executive branch. And that congressional failure of oversight over the executive branch perpetuates itself with lackluster IGs.

Ed Bonderenka (41:45):

This is something we've talked about before in this show going back to Obama and his pen and a phone and just doing what he wants through executive orders. And at the time I wondered why doesn't Congress step up and protect its own turf? And there's so many things that I'm a fan of watching Spy and espionage books, movies, TV series. I remember this series back in the original, the Equalizer with Edward Woodward, and there was a recurring theme there where his ex-boss in the CIA is played by Robert Lansing, and Lansing would always be talking to him, I got to go before Congress and I've got to explain this and they're going to cut my budget. And you got the impression that there was some serious congressional control over the intelligence agencies, but you're finding that is not the case, correct?

Pedro Orta (42:38):

That is correct. I mean, Congress has been failing in their oversight duties, particularly Republicans for the most part. I mean, historically, if you look at any particular instances of strong robust oversight over the intelligence community, it was actually led by Democrats, Frank Church, the Senator Church Committee, the Senator Feinstein holding the CA accountable over the torture rendition program. And the Republicans obstructing every effort of Feinstein trying to hold the CIA accountable for these torture and rendition violations. There were some egregious violations, some people that should never have been captured and rendered and tortured should never have been, and they were. But basically the ccia A was covering it up and the Republican Congress was covering it up for them. So there's been a lack of congressional oversight, and that lack of congressional oversight just empowers these agencies to violate the laws and take advantage of their activities with, look what happened with Russia. Crossfire. Hurricane, the biggest failure of Russia crossfire hurricane was the Republican controlled Senate and house during the first Trump administration. There's only one Republican really who did anything. Devon Nunes, the Chairman for the House, permanent Select Committee of Intelligence. That's about it. I mean, Senator Burr and all the other Republican senators were part of the problem that basically neutralized Trump and Trump's personnel,

Ed Bonderenka (44:16):

Each state and swamp. And I'm often reminded of a scene from this Marvel Comics universe movie, one of the Avengers movies where these two characters are high in intelligence and Congress and one turns the other on the steps of the Capitol, whispers in his ear and says, Hail Hydra. And I said that to Michael Waller and he got a laugh out of it too. He knew exactly what I was talking about. These are the insiders. They know they've got the same mindset. They don't know they're doing the same work, but they are. They're on the same team. That's the swamp. It's the deep state. Hey, I've got this term. We could coin for them. Deep state gangsters. What do you think?

Pedro Orta (44:58):

I heard that that's what they are. I mean, these are mafia like tactics. That's why deep state gangsters and by deep state staying away from conspiratorial nonsense because there's some conspiratorial nonsense out there. But what we mean by deep state, we defined it basically as rogue bureaucrats, rogue political appointees that defy presidents defy Congress and violate laws.

Ed Bonderenka (45:25):

Okay, so now you're out of the CIA basically. Did you hit a retirement?

Pedro Orta (45:32):

I was fired a year shy of my hard earned first special retirement. My official notification of my last appeal was January 21st, 2019, which puts me at just about a year shy of my first special retirement with my CIA time and the six months of time I had with the US military, because that gets credited for federal retirement purposes.

Ed Bonderenka (46:04):

And so what about a private security gig, obviously, or commenting on CNN or something else? Brennan, a guy who voted for, I forget the communist candidate's name in the seventies, voted for him, for President Brennan, who until recently still had a security clearance and he could go and talk and say whatever he wants, security analysts, gigs like that. You can't, right?

Pedro Orta (46:34):

I mean, there are issues involved here. First of all, despite the fact that I am out of the CIA, I'm still bound by a non-disclosure agreement, secrecy agreement. So you have to be very careful what you say, what you don't say. I was also under,

Ed Bonderenka (46:53):

I want to stop right there as we're almost out of time. What are you doing now? I want you to speak to that very quickly.

Pedro Orta (46:58):

I am an ordained minister of the gospel, preach and teach, and at the same time I've been working the movie in the book. So I'm doing a combination of the movie and the book on one end, warning people as far as the perils of weaponized government and looking for open doors to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Ed Bonderenka (47:20):

Good combination. I like that. And folks, once again, the movie, the documentary is available. It's called Deep State Gangsters. It's very, very informative. And then there's the book, which is the broken whistle, which tells his story in much greater depth. Now, Derek, what are we looking at time-wise here, buddy? One minute. So like I said, we've been speaking with Pedro Israel Orta, and it's been a great conversation. I hope you enjoyed it. Pedro, close us in prayer.

Pedro Orta (47:52):

Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus, father God, we thank you, father God, the you, as the Father of glory, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given Jesus your son to die, be buried, and to be resurrected as our Lord and our Savior. And we believe Father, that only through your power, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through the power of the gospel being preached, father, that this nation will see salvation Father. So we ask for you, father God, to give us wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, to be able to preach your gospel boldly through every corner of society. We ask for the power of your spirit upon us in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Ed Bonderenka (48:32):

Amen. Just under the wire, we got 30 seconds left. The music's playing. Pedro, thanks for joining us today. Perhaps we'll have you again. We can have another discussion and on your next book. And thanks for joining us folks. Thanks for joining us, and come on back for more of your American heritage.