Transcript Episode 18: From Iran to Ukraine: Inside America’s National Security Breakdown

From Iran to Ukraine: Inside America’s National Security Breakdown

Strategic Failures, Intelligence Erosion, and the New Global Threat Landscape

In the latest episode of the Sentinel podcast, Jim Lawler hosts investigative journalist Seth Hettena to discuss the U.S. war with Iran, domestic security, and global policy challenges. Domestically, they discuss the weakened state of our institutions, loss of expertise, and politicization of decision-making. Globally, they highlight strained credibility, particularly regarding Ukraine, and the declining trust in the U.S. of our allies. The conversation also raises concerns about expanding government surveillance capabilities enabled by modern technology.

About: Seth Hettena is a veteran national security reporter covering intelligence and special operations. He is currently writing “The IceMan,” a book about a 2003 incident in Iraq in which a Navy SEAL Platoon was blamed for the death of a CIA detainee under torture. The victim, Manadel Aljamadi, was referred to as “The Iceman.” You can find Seth on Substack.

Join us each Tuesday for the latest episode everywhere you get podcasts and in video on YouTube.

Transcript – assisted by AI

Jim Lawler (00:01.92)
Hello, you’re listening to the Steady State Sentinel from the Steady State. I’m Jim Lawler, a former senior CIA operations officer, and I’ve worked on some of the most sensitive counterproliferation and espionage cases in recent history. Today, we’re talking with Seth Hatena. Seth is an investigative journalist and author who has spent decades covering national security, organized crime, and the intersection of politics and power. He’s the author of Trump, Russia.

a definitive history, a long time AP correspondent, and he’s currently working on a book about a Navy SEAL platoon set up to take the fall for a CIA torture death in Iraq. He writes the substack newsletter, The Iceman, which I read religiously. And so I’m very interested in chatting with Seth today. Welcome to the steady state Sentinel, Seth.

Seth Hettena (00:54.318)
Hey Jim, thanks for having me on.

Jim Lawler (00:56.382)
Absolutely. So of course everybody is thinking about Operation Epic Fury, the US strikes on Iran. Everybody saw it coming. It was basically telegraphed by the president and all of his senior advisors. Is that that type of strategic signaling or is something else going on? What’s your opinion on that?

Seth Hettena (01:17.838)
I mean, the communication about this has been shambolic. It’s an embarrassment how poor it’s been. I think you need to hold two thoughts in your head about Iran. Iran has been a global menace for almost 50 years. Iran has blown up our

embassies and Marine base in Iraq. It’s contributed to the IEDs in, I’m sorry, not Iraq, in Beirut, excuse me. it’s built, it helped, you know, build IEDs that killed American soldiers. I mean, it’s been waging a campaign of war and terror against us for 50 years.

You know, so I, know, changing that regime or reforming that place would be of worthy gold, but I have no confidence that Trump and his people are at all capable of doing that. You know, you listen to Pete Hegseth for 30 seconds and it’s clear this is a guy who has no idea who shouldn’t be where he is. So, you know, the communication is a symptom of that.

We don’t know what the objective of the war is. Trump has given aims that conflict with his own team. And, you know, he’s done this like an authoritarian. There’s been no process, no preparing the American people, no kind of thought really given to the consequences that we’re now seeing.

Jim Lawler (02:54.582)
In fact, think I’ve heard at least six or more supposed actual objectives here.

for those war. mean, first we talked about, well, the nuclear weapons threat, although supposedly they had obliterated that last summer. Then we talk about the possible regime change, let’s save the Iranian people. Then we talk about the terrorism conducted against Americans and our allies all over the world. And all of these are laudable goals, but I don’t think we have any one of these pinned down as the real objective here. And if it is, if these are the objectives,

My question is, are these achievable objectives?

Seth Hettena (03:34.732)
Well, yeah, mean, regime change, you know, I know what I’ve read, and I know what I’ve observed from watching history for years, we’ve dropped bombs on multiple countries throughout our history, in the hopes of changing regimes. And it’s never and it really has never worked. It didn’t work in Vietnam. It didn’t work in. It didn’t work in the Balkans.

You it didn’t work the first time around in Iraq. But somehow we keep falling for this fallacy that just we can change a regime from the air. What I think changes regimes and what history shows is that regimes fall when insiders defect. Otherwise, it just kind of hunkers down. And in some ways, it can be counterproductive because now

instead of the enemy being the regime itself for the people, now that we’re inflicting all kinds of suffering on them by bombing their gasoline supplies, and I even saw there’s an attack on a water desalination plant. So we’re causing major disruption, and that may actually help the regime in the end.

Jim Lawler (04:56.277)
I agree with you. In fact, that attack on the desalination plant that I know of even a few months ago, the mayor of Tehran was saying we’re to have to ration water. And that was long before this conflict started. So we’re exacerbating their water shortages there. And of course, I’m sure the regime, the IRGC, the Basij, people in the Supreme Council, all of these, the Council of Experts, they’ve all got plenty of water, plenty of everything else. In all your talks with

Seth Hettena (05:09.206)
Right.

Seth Hettena (05:21.975)
Sure.

Jim Lawler (05:25.671)
military and intelligence officers in recent weeks. Has anybody said that they’re seeing cracks in the regime? You you mentioned that a regime might fall once people start to defect, but are we seeing any of that?

Seth Hettena (05:38.126)
I haven’t heard anything like that. you know, that’s another problem is, is a loss of expertise here is that, you know, are there people in government now who would know, could recognize that there are cracks in the regime, people who studied the, you know, the theocracy there and know how it works and know how to detect the, you know, the slightest rumblings and can read it. I, you know,

That’s a question for you really, is there’s been a tremendous loss of expertise and I’m wondering if we even know how to read the signals anymore.

Jim Lawler (06:16.681)
Yeah, know one of my dear friends, Lauren Anderson, who’s a former senior FBI special agent, she’s very concerned about the counterintelligence and national security ramifications domestically, especially right now when the director, Patel, has been firing so many very talented and very experienced FBI agents. And I can’t help but think that this is making us much more vulnerable to, perhaps a very spectacular act of terrorism.

Seth Hettena (06:46.529)
Yeah, I mean, that’s a huge concern. You know, I was talking to a seal officer who said, you know, I live in San Diego. Miramar Air Station is right here. It’s where Top Gun used to be. It’s a military, now it’s a Marine base. And, you know, he was asking, well, why isn’t somebody just set up on, you you can almost access the base just very close by.

their targets, right? That, you know, we are very vulnerable to an insider attack like that. And, yeah, it’s a very dangerous situation. And, you know, to come back just to that desalination issue, if we’re blowing up their desalination plants, you know, Saudi Arabia, as far as I know, runs on desalinated water. I think other countries there do too. So is that now a fair target for

Iranian drones, you know, is that where is that where we’re headed here? I mean, we’re looking at a really combustible situation there.

Jim Lawler (07:52.32)
So getting back to say domestic terrorism, I was shocked a couple of days ago when I read that the White House had stopped a Department of Homeland Security bulletin out to police forces and things about the increased chance of terrorism. And supposedly the White House said, no, we’re not going to put this out. And I thought, wait a moment. You’re saying that we’re not in a state of alert here? That really bothered me.

Seth Hettena (08:21.471)
Yeah, I mean, as it should. mean, this is the problem with Trump is that he everything becomes a a everything is about his ego and becomes a personal insult to him. I mean, this reminds me of the early days of covid when he wouldn’t let a ship with member with sick passengers land because it would make his numbers look bad, you know. So, yeah, he’s concerned. He’s like he’s a showman. He’s he’s he’s managing this.

He’s managing for everything for appearances. Everything is being run. And this really bothers me. Everything is being run for social media, including our military attacks are being produced as little, I don’t if you’ve seen this, little snippets of war porn, of bombing and rock music. you know, we proudly show off the boats we’re blowing up in the Caribbean. And it’s just, you know, it’s all a stage managed show, but, you know, we are

When we crossed a major bridge when we attacked Iran and, you know, yeah.

Jim Lawler (09:25.791)
So you talk to a lot of either current or former military officers and intelligence officers. What’s their general feeling about this? Is anybody saying gung-ho, let’s go in, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? What’s the feeling among our men and women in uniform?

Seth Hettena (09:43.694)
I think it’s great apprehension. think there’s nobody in the intelligence community who’s pro-Iran. Iran is a regime everybody wanted to see gone for a long time. it’s just the way, it’s the process that is gone now. I’m not even sure we have a National Security Council at this point.

who’s producing, who’s advising on actions. you know, there’s just a great big question mark and apprehension about where we are and where we’re heading now. Trump, you know, from my view, seems to be a victim of his own success. know, to his credit, he attacked Iran’s nuclear sites in June, I think it was. You know, and this is something I…

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. You know, for years, the national security community was saying, we can’t do that. We’ll risk World War III. And we did it and we didn’t, know, and it, it seemed to be a victory, a proof that Trump, at least in that case was right. And, you know, he managed to release the hostages from, from, from Gaza and he pulled off a stunning raid in Venezuela. And I just think he’s become.

convinced that he can do no wrong at this point. And so we’re in a bad place here.

Jim Lawler (11:17.31)
So if you had to predict how, and I know this is impossible, but I’m going to put you on the spot here. If you had to predict how this war in Iran is going to end, what would be your prediction?

Seth Hettena (11:30.221)
Sorry about that.

Seth Hettena (11:36.469)
I don’t know how to turn this off.

Seth Hettena (11:45.517)
Sorry, can you bear with me? I’m not sure how to silence this. I turned off all my notifications.

Seth Hettena (11:54.29)
all right, whatever it was. Yeah, thank you, Andrew. Sorry about that.

Jim Lawler (11:59.549)
Okay, let me ask my question again. Okay, Seth, if you had a crystal ball and you were able to look into it, how would you predict that this conflict in the Middle East ends and what’s your time frame, your best estimate?

Seth Hettena (12:11.981)
I mean, this is Trump, so prediction is a very dangerous business with him because he consistently defies predictions.

Jim Lawler (12:23.58)
I suspect I could ask him the same question. He couldn’t give me an answer either, but…

Seth Hettena (12:26.189)
Exactly. That is part of the problem is that nobody knows. I wouldn’t be surprised, you know, if we continue on this track with, he’s very sensitive to economic pressures. If oil prices, oil prices are very close to 100, I think they spiked well above it. think they dropped down. Gas prices are a real barometer of, know, strangely, gas prices are really associated with presidential popularity.

And if both of those are climbing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump in a week or so just say, declare victory and walk away and leave this mess to the Iranian people. I just, I don’t think he’s a serious, there’s any serious thought here. I think he’s, it’s being run on vibes. At the same time, Iran could get lucky, its drones could get through and it could make this a more, a broader conflict. It could hit Saudi desalination site. I mean,

You know, we’ve just taken the whole strategic playing board and thrown it up in the air here.

Jim Lawler (13:30.142)
Well, if we extrapolate and look at broader national security issues, what do you think our current national security posture looks like today and how it’s different from, a year or two years ago? Any thoughts on that?

Seth Hettena (13:43.394)
Wow. Yeah. I mean, I have thought about that. I mean, I think the major difference is that there’s no, there’s a lack of process that, that decisions are, you know, decisions for the presidency used to be kind of shaped and focused by the national security community, by the, by the NSC, by, you know, by advisors. I’m not sure how Trump is getting his information anymore. And

You know, process isn’t that the NSC process, maybe it wasn’t perfect, but a process can be fixed. You know, you can, if your intelligence judgments are wrong, you can put in a process to correct those. But how do you correct a process where Trump is just kind of deciding like a king to invade? And that’s the biggest difference I see is that it’s, this is an, this is an authoritarian move here. And.

There is no process. There’s no real thought being given to consequences. know, the fact that they’re evacuating people after the war begins, I mean, isn’t that something you do before? You know, it just seems everything is kind of, there just seems to be a lack of thought and lack of focus. And again, to come back to that very simple thing they could do of communicate the objectives, if they can’t even do that, which is, I mean…

even an idiot like me could do that. You could stick to a coherent objective. And if you can’t do that, then you’re going to get a lot of other things wrong.

Jim Lawler (15:22.824)
I mean, for me, the significant question is how does this end and when? And like you and like probably 99.9 % of Americans, I shed no tears at the death of Kamenei or any of his thugs, know, the Majlis or in the IRGC or in the Basij. These people are human scum. But I mean, you could have said the same thing about Saddam Hussein and his Baathist thugs.

Seth Hettena (15:27.243)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Lawler (15:51.393)
But I’m not so convinced that this is the smartest thing to do. I’m not going to take any pot shots at our brave men and women who are putting their lives on the line overseas right now, doing their best for America, for our allies. But it troubles me greatly. I don’t see any real coherency to these national security postures.

Seth Hettena (16:01.773)
Exactly.

Jim Lawler (16:17.298)
I mean, what would you do if you were in charge, Seth, let’s say we elect you, King, what would you do differently to strengthen our national security and also protect our civil liberty and democracy?

Seth Hettena (16:20.983)
boy.

Seth Hettena (16:30.509)
boy, mean, well, you know, think recognizing your limit, know, the line I always love to quote is from Clint Eastwood, which is a man’s got to know his limitations. You know, I know what I know enough to know that I don’t know enough. And so in some way, you know, that means I would have to rely on advice and consent and, and, discussions and competing opinions. So I, you know, I would re-institute

a process to get experts back in, to get planners back in, to have people talking again, to beg and plead our experts who we’ve lost to please come back and hopefully piece back this broken puzzle here. But that’s something that also worries me. I’m jumping ahead here. But in four years, let’s just say hypothetically, we do have a sane

Democrat or a sane Republican, let’s say a sane Democrat elected, you know, how do you clean up this mess? Because anything you do is going to be perceived as in our hyperpartisan lens as, you know, bringing back the deep state. So, you know, we’re, I don’t know how you get out. I don’t know. I don’t know how you get out of this where we are now.

Jim Lawler (17:55.272)
mean, one of my questions is, will any good come out of this for America, for Iran, or for our allies?

And I don’t know. I I would hope so. I’m normally an optimist. I like to say the glass is half full, but I’m getting awfully thirsty here. And I really am starting to have some severe doubts. I’m glad our son was a Marine Corps infantryman in Iraq for a year, and I’m glad he’s no longer in the Marines, but it troubles me a lot.

Seth Hettena (18:11.298)
Yeah.

Seth Hettena (18:27.137)
Yeah, you know, we’ve broken the trust. I mean, this is something I kind of am very sensitive to, is that, you know, what we did in Iraq, especially, and to Afghanistan as well, but really Iraq, really broke a generation of patriotic Americans who were serving in the military to do good in the world, who believed

that America was a force for good. You know, I’ve talked to many, many people, so we’re still patriots, you know, but that destroyed faith in government for a generation. And I wonder whether we would have Trump as president today if, you know, if, that faith had not been so badly broken. there’s not the only factor there. There’s many, but,

You know, that’s something I think about a lot. you know, and that even makes this more amazing that Trump did this because he knows why, he knows how his base feels about foreign conflicts. And to just jump in here like this is real insanity. Yeah.

Jim Lawler (19:45.368)
Do you think that’s going to affect the November elections?

Seth Hettena (19:49.228)
Yeah, I do. I do. I don’t see how it can’t at this point. I think we’ve kind of unleashed some global forces here that are going to take some time to work through the economic system. if we pull out in a week, know, have countries are right now shutting down oil production. I think Kuwait has or, you know, I think some other countries have.

that the Straits of Hormuz, the nightmare scenario that everybody’s been fearing for years would be shut down as happened. And if you look at oil shocks, I mean, they are extremely disruptive. I’m sure you remember the gas lines from the 70s and what that did to America and how unstable things here were for years as a result.

We may be reaping the whirlwind here, you know, and the longer it goes on the worse it’ll be.

Jim Lawler (20:52.017)
was amused to read recently that Ukraine has actually sent us some support drone support in the Middle East. It’s kind of coming back. They’re coming back. They’re faithful to us and they’re helping us to defeat these Iranian drones that are hunting down our ships and our people. And I was very pleased to read that they’re reciprocating out of their

Seth Hettena (20:59.297)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jim Lawler (21:14.897)
gratitude for our support. How do you think this situation in the Middle East will affect the Ukraine conflict with Russia?

Seth Hettena (21:22.677)
I mean, I think we behave shamefully towards Ukraine. The way I see it is Ukraine was doing a great service for us and for the world by really smashing the Russian army and just grinding, turning that war into a grinding slog that was driving Putin and another

brutal regime towards annihilation. Now we’ve kind of breathed hope back into Putin. We’ve given him life again. I think, yeah, I’m really disturbed by the way we’ve handled Ukraine. You know, we’ve really betrayed them. And yeah, you know, I know people who are, you Ukraine could, know, we’ve…

The American military right now is behind in the drone war. Drones are the future of military conflict. Ukraine was able to hold off a vastly larger army and is still able to hold them off with very cheap, simple technology that they have mastered. And we’re behind them now. if any country, should be helping, they should certainly be helping.

you know, helping, you know, in Iran, but they should be helping us. We, you know, I know people who are trying to bring Ukrainian experts into the American system and the drones we’re making now are being produced by Anduril and, you know, Lockheed Martin and they’re producing these expense, what defense contractors always do, these overpriced, you know, too fancy pieces of technology.

when it should be simple mass production. Iran may teach us some lessons in that as well. They’re able to field large numbers of drones and it gets increasingly more expensive for us to shoot them down. We’re shooting a $1,000 or $10,000 drone down with a million dollar missile. That is a war of attrition that we will lose.

Jim Lawler (23:42.419)
Clearly the Ukrainians out of necessity have made some light-year jumps in technology. guess it’s the old saying, you know, if somebody’s shooting at you, it focuses your mind. And they are focused. This is truly an existential challenge for Ukraine. And they have really responded to it amazingly.

Seth Hettena (23:52.876)
Yes.

Jim Lawler (24:03.314)
I’d like to turn shortly to you telling us about this new book you’re writing. If you could give us a summary of this. I read about the fact that this was a Navy SEAL platoon. It’s set up to take a fall for the CIA torture death. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Seth Hettena (24:21.74)
Sure. So this is a story. It’s a really an old story, but it’s one I’ve been following for 20 years or so. There was a Navy SEAL platoon in Iraq that was working on with the CIA on direct action missions to capture insurgents and terror suspects. And this was in the early days of the Iraq war. was a two, this happened in November, 2003. The platoon,

identified an insurgent, a cell leader. They went and they grabbed him and there were some problems with intelligence. there was a struggle with the scene and they subdued the guy, captured him, brought him back to their base. He was questioned by the agency at their base. then the agency drove him off to Albuquerque prison.

and he died a few hours later in Abu Ghraib in this torture position with his arms handcuffed behind his back and his hands were behind his back chained to the wall above him and he fell forward and his arms rotated out of his sockets and he basically suffocated to death. And the only people ever brought to justice for this was the seal platoon and it ruined careers, it altered lives.

and it was part of the Abu Ghraib scandal and, and, you know, when that happened, the defense department cleaned house and they, they found these guys, the seal platoon and, you know, they’ve been living with ever since. So yeah, my, my book looks at, you know, the whole history of the torture program of seal missions of, of the relationship between special forces and the CIA and, and.

When that works well, as in the Bin Laden raid, it’s a credit to both. But when it goes badly, as it did in this case, it’s not the CIA that usually takes the fault here. It’s the special forces who do.

Jim Lawler (26:29.702)
And you have evidence that there were CIA officers involved in this, in the torture positions and things like that.

Seth Hettena (26:35.496)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there was a prosecution of some of the seals here in Coronado, right outside where I live in San Diego. And yeah, there were CIA officers testifying. It was a, they testified behind a blue curtain, but they were CIA. Yeah, it was a CIA operation for sure. yeah, it’s real.

Jim Lawler (27:00.028)
Do you have a working title for your book?

Seth Hettena (27:02.464)
Well, that’s where the Ice Man comes from, because the guy who died, his name was Manadal Al-Jamadi, but no one in Abu Ghraib could pronounce that name. So he died, and his photos wound up surfacing in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and he was a corpse packed in ice. And so the soldiers there called him the Ice Man. So that’s where that comes from.

Jim Lawler (27:28.53)
Okay, and that’s also the name of your your substack, isn’t it? After action, I’m sorry, after action report. where where can we find that? Is it just to subscribe newsletter?

Seth Hettena (27:31.87)
Well, it’s after action report is really the yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seth Hettena (27:41.268)
Yeah, yeah, if you go to sub stack and type in the after action reporter, my name’s Hachena, you’ll find both find me through that. And yeah, welcome any new readers from your podcast.

Jim Lawler (27:53.587)
Okay, so Seth, do you have any last thoughts or comments that you want to make about what you’re working on or what we’re facing as a nation?

Seth Hettena (28:05.456)
Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of concern. mean, there’s a lot we could talk about here. I’m deeply concerned. I think things are happening now that we won’t find out about for years. But something I think people should pay close attention to is this fight between Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI agent, and the Pentagon.

That is a fight really about domestic surveillance of Americans. That’s what that boils down to. And the Pentagon is doing something right now under these new, maybe under these new authorities that Trump has granted to, you know, this national security memo seven, which targets, you know, extremists in America supposedly, domestic terrorism and

I don’t know what’s going on, but the Pentagon is involved and that’s very worrisome for me. And they are doing bulk surveillance of Americans and the way that’s happening is it’s perfectly legal. So, you know, the digital economy has created a perfect storm for a nightmare for intelligence and also a gold mine. If you’re a spy,

Like if you’re you and you’re carrying a cell phone, I mean, you’re leaving a trail of digital exhaust that can follow you throughout the world without a team of KGB agents following you around in a car or a team of surveillance. You can be followed from your desk. the American government is using that information to track Americans now.

I don’t know the details, but I think people really need to pay attention to what’s happening.

Jim Lawler (30:09.507)
As a journalist, Seth, are you concerned about them tracking you? If you said something unfavorable or, you know, unpolitical, something that you suddenly are on an enemy’s list, how much does that concern you?

Seth Hettena (30:23.616)
Well, you know, I always think about what Seymour Hersh used to say. Seymour Hersh wrote stories that are far more, you know, he got far deeper than I ever have. And his response was, look, if the government is following some jerk like me, they’ve got bigger problems, you know, and I think that’s true. I think if the government is wasting its time and resources surveilling journalists, you know,

That’s the canary in the coal mine for something else that’s much worse is happening.

Jim Lawler (30:58.585)
Well, we’ve already seen an example of that. raided a Washington Post reporter’s home and confiscated a lot of her equipment. That shocked a lot of people in the, well, it shocked me and I’m not a journalist, but I mean, this is really a strike against the free press.

Seth Hettena (31:06.977)
Yeah.

Seth Hettena (31:14.898)
It is. It is. But you know Obama was, you know, he was pretty aggressive against journalists too. There were a lot of leak investigations back in the Obama era that we tend to forget about. It’s been going on for a long time.

Jim Lawler (31:29.743)
Now that’s a fair statement, but anytime we threaten the First Amendment rights, it always bothers me as I know it bothers you. Well, I’m going to wrap this up, Seth, and I just want to say thank you so much for coming on our program today. Everybody, please subscribe to his after action report, and we’re going to look forward to his book, The Iceman. And if you like what you heard on today’s show, please subscribe to the Steady State Sentinel.

Seth Hettena (31:37.856)
Yeah, does.

Jim Lawler (31:55.333)
wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star review on Google. These subscriptions and five-star reviews help us get this important content to the widest audience possible. The Steady State Sentinel is for you, our listeners, and we want to hear from you. So stay informed, stay engaged, and join us next week for another episode of the Steady State Sentinel. For the Steady State Sentinel, I’m Jim Lawler, Still Standing Watch.

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