From Rodney King to Minneapolis

Tracking the history of civil rights protests. A former Police Chief of Ferguson, MO and a former St. Louis police officer discuss the current protest events on John Solomon Reports.

 

Full transcript:

John Solomon:

Hello, America. Welcome to a new edition of John Solomon Reports, the podcast from Just the News where today we're going to tackle two big issues. Tomorrow morning, Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, the man who gave us Robert Mueller special investigation and who signed the fourth and perhaps most flawed of the FISA warrants, targeting the Trump campaign, is going to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm going to give you an overview and take a look at the body of evidence that has emerged in the last week or two, extraordinary evidence that really gives us some sense of the number of times the FBI, the Justice Department could have stopped, should have stopped and ended the investigation for a lack of evidence for an abundance of warnings that what was going on was a political operation, not a counterintelligence or criminal investigation.

John Solomon:

We're going to take a look at those pieces of evidence we think that's important and walk through six instances where the FBI and DOJ blew past a stop sign and should have ended the investigation. On the front of what's going on with Minneapolis and around the country with the rioting, the insurgency and the violent protests that are occurring, we're going to talk to two people who've done a lot of thinking, who have tracked these protests, these riots, the civil disobedience and unrest from Rodney King all the way to the present moment in Minneapolis, and that will be the former chief of Ferguson, Missouri, Chief Tom Jackson and a former St. Louis County police officer who later went on to work for the CIA, Del Wilber.

John Solomon:

They have an interesting perspective, which is that the future of American police law enforcement particularly dealing with these type of episodes where a tragedy like what how in Minneapolis, with George Floyd results in civil unrest and rioting and criminal activity. Both of these men think it's time for police departments and the intelligence apparatus of these police law enforcement units to start to treat these protests like insurgencies and we're going to talk to both of them, adopting the military's mindset with a social media and a communication standpoint, a security provisioning.

John Solomon:

It's a fascinating conversation by two men who have done a lot of thinking to look back at the past moments in our history where civil unrest was unleashed and what we can do to change it going forward. We're going to have both of those when we come back from the commercial break. First up, Rod Rosenstein, Russia. Guess what? It's time to talk about all the times the FBI should have stopped the investigation. We'll be right back after this commercial break.

John Solomon:

All right, folks, welcome back from the commercial break. One thing that people ask me all the time, "How can we help Just the News succeed? How can we help do more like a podcast like John Solomon Reports or get more investigative reporters out there to do accountability reporting?" The question is, one way you can do it is by going to the brand new Just the News store we created. It's called jtnshop.com. That's J-T-N for Just the News, jtnshop.com. We have all sorts of gadgets, great gifts for dad for Father's Day.

John Solomon:

If you buy something there, some of those proceeds will come back to support the Just the News reporting team and the Just the News podcast team. A very simple quick way to help us out. We have lots of great gifts. My favorite one is the Clean Phone Pro. Just stick your cellphone, your germy cellphone after a long day's work in just a little device and UV rays disinfecting. It comes out clean and charged. You can put it to your face and not worry about whether there's a bacteria, a virus or germ on it. Earbuds for your favorite devices, all sorts of amazing products that I'm very proud of them. They're good products for you. We have good prices, we think. If you buy something, you'll be helping us at JTN Shop. You'll be helping us do more journalism at justthenews.com I just want to mention that.

John Solomon:

Now I'm going to turn my attention to, well, reporting like I promised. Tomorrow, the man who appointed the Russian special prosecutor Bob Muller and who signed the last and likely most flawed of the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting Trump campaign during the Russia probe is going to take the witness stand. Yup, Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is going to be on the hotseat tomorrow. What's interesting is as a prelude to his appearing, he's already issued a statement in hints at where I think he's going to end up tomorrow, which is portraying himself as a victim of an incompetent or corrupt FBI.

John Solomon:

He actually issued this statement, listen to this, "Even the best law enforcement officers make mistakes and some engage in willful misconduct." Let's see if tomorrow he actually acknowledges what mistakes where the FBI's, what willful misconduct was the FBI's and whether he takes any of the blame himself. As I look at this, he's got some very important questions to answer including, did he participate in the 25th amendment scheme, the idea that Andy McCabe apparently discussed with him about wearing a wire on the president to build a case that the president should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment and whether he would today appoint Robert Mueller given all that he learned about the FBI's misconduct and whether he would have signed the fourth FISA warrant given all that he's learned about the flaws in the FBI investigation?

John Solomon:

Those are some of the most important questions, but we had Matt Gaetz on the show last week and he said something very profoundly which was, "Throughout the course of the Russia investigation, there were several opportunities, several moments where the investigation should have stopped, should have paused, should have said, 'You know what? We got nothing. Let's shut it down,' and each time, the FBI and the Justice Department fail to do so." I wanted to pull those moments out briefly for you and just talk about some of them because I think they're going to come up tomorrow in the larger context of the Rosenstein hearing, but let's start with the first time the FBI might have wanted to consider shutting down the Russia probe.

John Solomon:

I say it's the day it started July 31, 2016. Why is that? Well, last month, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch got a hold of the unredacted, original FBI electronic communication that opened up Crossfire Hurricane, the Russia investigation. What it showed was that the Pete Strzok, the FBI agent running the case believed that George Papadopoulos violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act governing foreign lobbying because he had a discussion with foreigners about whether Russia had some dirt like emails on Hillary Clinton that they could release and help Donald Trump.

John Solomon:

Well, the memo shows that the information was, at best, a thirdhand suggestion. It wasn't probable cause information. It wasn't reasonable evidence. It was a thirdhand suggestion of a suggestion in fact and that the memo failed to identify a specific violation of the FARA Act, the law that they were claiming they were investigating. Normally, when you predicate an investigation at the FBI, you're supposed to identify the specific violations. This memo didn't do so. Then, it further expressed doubt about what the Russians really were up to and whether Trump would even consider accepting any help from them.

John Solomon:

That level of uncertainty, that level of noncompliance with the FBI regulations, according to the experts I talked and met, the FBI should have never opened up the investigation to start. It should have been shut down the moment the memo came in. Listen to Kevin Brock, the former chief intelligence officer for the FBI. He said, "There is nothing in the electronic communication that meets the traditional thresholds for opening up a FARA or a counterintelligence investigation." In other words, the probe should never have even started. That's the first time it should have shut down. Time number one, opportunity number one missed.

John Solomon:

Now, the second time the FBI should have shut it down based on all the reporting I've done is in the late summer of 2016, they had already run informants, confidential human sources up against two of the key players, Papadopoulos and Carter Page. We know them both well. We talk about them often on the show. Well, during those conversations, both men made exculpatory statements, extremely important exculpatory statements, unwittingly to the undercover informants and those statements undercut the very concerns, the very core allegations the FBI claimed it was investigating.

John Solomon:

You know what? That, according to a lot of the experts I talked to, should have been the second moment they shut things down. If they didn't shut it down, they should have at least divulged to the FISA Court, "Hey, we have these series, but these guys have been run up against informants and they've denied it unwittingly to the informants," and neither of those happened. Let's take even a more recent thing we learned about just to show at that second moment after the intercept, what the FBI had in its possession, significant evidence of innocence without shutting down the case.

John Solomon:

Andy McCabe, the former FBI director, said that on the court issue that they opened the entire investigation and that George Papadopoulos might be conspiring with Russians to get dirt on Hillary Clinton, McCabe told Congress in late 2017 that almost from the start, the FBI did not believe Papadopoulos had the sort of contacts with the Russians to carry out a plan. In other words, they didn't think he was in a commission of a crime because he didn't have the ability to commit the crime. When those intercepts came in, with that perception that the FBI had, that was a second opportunity missed to shut down the investigation.

John Solomon:

Now, third time is when the first derogatory information starts coming in about Christopher Steele because remember, Christopher Steele and his dossier are the primary basis for the FISA warrant in October 2016, the permission to spy on a Trump campaign in the final weeks of the election that the FBI obtained. Well, let's remember that by October, by the time they did that the FBI knew that Steele was leaking to the news medium, that he had a political bias, that he was desperate, according to Bruce Ohr to defeat Trump in the election, that he had passed suspect information to the State Department that the Delta control file that the US Intelligence community had on Steele had a red flag going back to 2015 that he was susceptible to Russian disinformation.

John Solomon:

They have all of this red flag warnings, all of this derogatory information, and instead of stopping the investigation and saying, "Whoa, slow down. Let's not do this," they went ahead anyways and they falsely represented to the FISA Court. They had no derogatory information on Steele. Simply not true. The FBI files were filled with derogatory information, red flags, concerns about Steele. That was a third moment when we should have shut the investigation down and then we failed.

John Solomon:

Now, the fourth moment when they go beyond derogatory information, things that weigh against the credibility of Steele, they actually get proof that some of the information, much of the information in the Steele dossier is either [inaudible 00:11:42], meaning they can't prove it or it has been directly disproven and traced to Russian disinformation. Remember those documents we talked about a few weeks ago? When they found out that the Steele dossier, the under core, the underpinnings, the core information supporting the FISA warrant was Russian disinformation and that Steele's primary sub source had disowned, denied saying some of the things that were attributed to him.

John Solomon:

The FBI should have put that case on a spike and called it over. The fourth time we missed an opportunity under the FBI's normal rules, the way they would normally conduct investigation. They would have shut it down except this was no normal investigation. It was being run by the higher ups in the seventh floor of the FBI. Once again, they kept the investigation going. They kept the FISA Court in the dark about the extraordinary revelations and problems with the Steele dossier and that's how we ended up with a three-year investigation into a big nothing burger.

John Solomon:

All right, the fifth time that the FBI had an obligation to stop, to pause, maybe to shut the whole thing down, well, how about August of 2016 and then many times after that when the CIA said, "Hey, fellas, that guy Carter Page that you're investigating as a possible Russian spy, he's not a Russian spy. He's one of us. He's an operative working for the CIA"? August 17, 2016, the Crossfire Hurricane team, Pete Strzok, he was told and the whole team was told that Carter page had been approved as an operational contact for the CIA starting in 2008.

John Solomon:

In other words, they were investigating a good guy. There was no reason to believe he was a spy. What did the FBI do again? No, they didn't shut it down. They kept it going and they hid the CIA's information from the court. How do they do that? An FBI lawyer actually falsified a document that was used to support the court application, a criminal act, when you falsify a document before a court proceeding, obstruction of justice. That is the fifth time that the FBI should pump the brakes and shut this thing down and they did.

John Solomon:

All right, the last in sixth time is one that we've talked a lot about the last couple of weeks. It deals with the whole Mike Flynn arm of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. It had its own code name Crossfire Razor, meaning a more sub slice, subsize to the Crossfire Hurricane. Well, on January 4th, 2017, that's two weeks before Trump took office, five months before we get Bob Mueller named a special prosecutor, the FBI agents who looked at Michael Flynn for five months looking for possible ties to Russia, listed counterintelligence threats, criminality, well, they concluded there was none and that they wanted to shut the case down.

John Solomon:

Once again, shut the case down was the actual recommendation of the career agents, but did it happen? Nope. The FBI, once again, Pete Strzok, the seventh floor, James Comey, Andy McCabe, they all intervened and they kept the case open and they pivoted to the idea that we're going to interview Mike Flynn about something for which they had no concern. It's that interview and the conversations leading up to that interview that created the famous handwritten notes by the former assistant director William Priestap, Bill Priestap, in which he wondered aloud to himself, "Are we playing games with Mike Flynn? Are we simply trying to get them to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"

John Solomon:

By the way, that's not the job of the FBI. That's a policy dispute, a personnel dispute, not a law enforcement and counterintelligence matter. Once again, career FBI official says, "Shut it down." The FBI leadership keeps it going and that is the sixth and perhaps most egregious of all the examples of when the FBI should have shut this probe down and failed to do so. When we talked to Matt Gaetz last week, he said something profound and I think I want to leave you with this thought as we go to the commercial break.

John Solomon:

When we come back, the former chief of Ferguson, Missouri, Tom Jackson, former law enforcement officer and CIA operative, Del Wilber are going to talk to us about how we're going to deal with these riots. What lessons police have learned in the past? Who are the instigators behind this likely in the future? We're going to talk about that, but I'm going to leave you with this one quote from Matt Gaetz about the six blown stop signs that the FBI had, the six times the FBI should have shut the Russia investigation down before Robert Muller was even named a special prosecutor.

John Solomon:

Here's what Matt had to say, Congressman Gaetz, "There were continued renewals and there were continued affirmations of the legitimacy of this investigation long after the FBI knew it had corrupt origins and political ambitions," corrupt origins and political ambitions overruled the legitimate rules, the law and order reasons why an investigation should be shut or closed down. That's something we all should expect Rod Rosenstein tomorrow to be questioned about and to answer because in his world, he signed the fourth and most flawed of the FISA warrants and he appointed a special prosecutor after nine months of an investigation whereby Pete Strzok's own text messages at the time, we know what he said, "There's no big they're there." In other words, it was a nothing burger. It should have been shut down.

John Solomon:

Tomorrow, let's see what Rod Rosenstein has to say, and when we come back from the commercial break, we're going to pivot to the violence in Minneapolis and across the country, the riots. What tactics can we use and can we learn something from the counterinsurgency strategies of the Pentagon and Iraq and Afghanistan to apply here in America? It's almost a scary thought to say that, but that's some of the things professional law enforcement people are talking about today, creating a counterinsurgency strategy for America's cops. Right when we come back from the commercial break.

John Solomon:

All right, folks, welcome back from the commercial break, and as promised, a very special guest, Chief Tom Jackson, the former police chief in Ferguson, Missouri, who lived through the riots and then later wrote a very important book called Policing Ferguson, Policing America: What Really Happened and What the Country Can Learn from it. Chief Jackson, welcome to the show.

Tom Jackson:

Well, thanks for having me, John.

John Solomon:

I greatly appreciate you taking the time because you have a lot of experience in what we're now witnessing in American communities coast to coast. I wonder if you could first just give us your topline assessment of what you've seen in the last four or five days and how it's maybe evolved since 2014 in the Ferguson crisis?

Tom Jackson:

Well, what we're seeing right now is just total anarchy. We had that in Ferguson. It wasn't as widespread as it is here. We did have riots and protests in other parts of the country, but right now, what seems like is organized anarchy. These folks seem to be well coordinated and well-funded. I think there's some logistics support going on here. This has really evolved into somewhat of an insurgency, really, that's hiding behind protesters and people exercising their rights. I'm not sure exactly what happened here, but I know that the whole protests and the anarchy movement evolved during the months of riots in Ferguson.

Tom Jackson:

I don't know if people realize it, but we had gunfire pretty much every night in Ferguson, and what the press was calling peaceful protests. Now, what we're seeing seems very well organized and with an attempt to tear down our major cities.

John Solomon:

Unreal, it really is. It does seem as though outsiders are the instigator. There may be people in the community that have a legitimate grievance or legitimate reason to protest, but they get infiltrated and then the violence starts. Is that the pattern that you see?

Tom Jackson:

Yeah, and that was the pattern in Ferguson. Even as the tactics and so forth of the violent people evolved, what we would have is people who legitimately believed that an injustice was done to Michael Brown. They were out there protesting. They had sign demanding certain things, but there were people I could just walk up to and talk to them and have discussions about the process and things like that. Sometimes, it'd be small crowds. Sometimes, it'd be big, but I could just stand in front of them or among them and talk to them.

Tom Jackson:

As the days go on, more people would show up that clearly had nefarious intent. As darkness came, then the rocks would start flying and the bottles, and after a while, we hear gunfire. Then, that seems to be more or less what's happening today.

John Solomon:

Yeah, there's no doubt and it does seem to be the pattern. Last night, it starts peacefully, and then as the night gets on, the bricks start coming in and the Molotov cocktails and other horrible devices that really destroy the city. Before you left Ferguson, did you have any visibility into who these outsiders were, who were these instigators? Do they have names? Do they have groups? Do they have command centers? What did you learn about the insurgency?

Tom Jackson:

Yeah, so there were lots of different groups. Some of them were created in Ferguson. There was just a whole bunch of different groups that had their own names. Black Lives Matter pretty much about. I know it started in Florida, but it really became what it is now in Ferguson and it was a very violent antipolice group which was advocating violence against police, but there was also several other groups, small groups that had names that escaped me for the moment. One investigative reporter did a story about the funding. A lot of these folks were actually being paid to come to Ferguson and protest. They were being paid by different social justice organizations. They were, in turn, funded by George Soros' organization.

Tom Jackson:

You had these groups that were hiring protesters. Matter of fact, I remember, this was funny, at one point, a couple of people came into the police station and asked where they signed up for the protest to get paid. Of course, we told them that they were in the wrong place.

John Solomon:

I would imagine they were. Wow. Literally, it was a small business.

Tom Jackson:

It was and we had infighting between protesters who were just there to be part of the moment and the ones who were getting paid. That's one of the reasons why they didn't stop, even in poor weather. There'd be 20 people out in front of the station at 10:00 at night. I'd go out there and ask them, "Why are you guys still here?" They said, "We're getting paid $15 bucks an hour." They never stopped. That's what's going on, I think, here. Not the majority of the people. A lot of them are just young, idealistic kids that are out there.

Tom Jackson:

Of course, as in Ferguson, as the protests went on, it became like Woodstock. Everybody wanted to come and be part of the history that was Ferguson. Now, there's a lot of people that just want to go out and be part of the history, that's the George Floyd protests, but behind that is what seems like a very targeted, organized, funded group of insurgent sitter now shooting police officers. We had actually four police officers shot here in St. Louis last night and one retired police captain was murdered.

John Solomon:

I know there was an officer struck by a car in Buffalo and officer shot in New York. I think another one on the West Coast too. It was a very violent night targeting the men and women in blue which is never a good night. There's no doubt that this is going to keep escalating. I'm struck as I read your book about how much the media portrayed one story early on, and then when all the facts come out, which often emerge very slowly in an investigation like this, how the story evolves? What did you learn through that process?

John Solomon:

There's the Flashpoint of the shooting and the immediate aftermath. Then, there's the Justice Department investigation report that was very incendiary. Then, the FBI comes in at the end of the day and determines that it's a justified shooting. Walk through how facts evolve so slowly and how that can change the story as time goes on.

Tom Jackson:

Well, when it first all broke, when the shooting first happened, I was on the scene within an hour or so and it was very chaotic. There was gunfire going on which made it hard to process the scene. A couple of times shots rang out, but while all this was going on and while I was there at the scene, working the scene, talking to the crowd, the press was back behind it all. They were interviewing Dorian Johnson, who was telling the story that Michael Brown had his hands in the air surrendering, saying, "Don't shoot, don't shoot," and he was shot in cold blood right there in the middle of the street in broad daylight which was completely untrue.

Tom Jackson:

What we learned from that is because of social media, that story didn't just go out locally over the local press, but it went worldwide immediately. Up until then, social media to us was letting people know what time the parade starts and when the party in the park is going to happen and what the hours are at city hall and stuff like that, just keeping the public informed. We didn't realize the power that social media had to put out false stories, lies. This particular lie, we were never able to get in front of it.

Tom Jackson:

First of all, we couldn't really talk about the case because it was being investigated. It was in grand jury and all the testimony was going to come out. We didn't know exactly what happened or how it went down other than what was told us by our officers. We had to wait it out. The whole time, I kept trying to talk to the public through the press as much as I could and basically what I was trying to do is say what the process was, "This is what's going on right now and this is how we're going to find out what actually happened. We have to be patient. We have to wait."

Tom Jackson:

Well, meantime, the press and a lot of the national media too, was just camped out in town and they're putting out images of, say, police in riot gear and then take a picture of somebody with their kid in the street. They're protesting and saying, "How can this happen in America?" when they knew that the police were in riot gear because sometime in the next couple of hours, they're going to be descended upon by hundreds of people who are going to be violent. They knew that, but they kept going with peaceful protests with a few, terrible people.

Tom Jackson:

Politicians turned on us right away when Senator Claire McCaskill called us the militarized police and then our tactics were deplorable. The thing is, when you're faced with a violent mob like what's going on now, there's really two ways you can break that up. You can break it up with physical force or you can use tear gas which is safe. Nobody's ever died from the tear gas that we used. What we were doing was safely breaking up violent protests on a pretty much nightly basis and the thing about it is during all that time, during four months of violent protests, we never critically injured anyone. We never really heard anyone of those protests. If we really wanted to do violence against the people, we had the perfect opportunity, but we didn't.

John Solomon:

Sure. Just the opposite showed enormous restraints.

Tom Jackson:

Absolutely did, but got no credit for that whatsoever because the narrative was already out there, "Police were bad. Protesters were good," and that was all there is to it.

John Solomon:

One of the learning lessons that you mentioned in the book is the, when I read it, I sometimes think of the early days of David Petraeus starting to develop the counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, that police have to have a multifaceted ... If an incident like this happens, you have to have a multifaceted response that includes a communications component, a social media component, a safety component. Has law enforcement changed that much now that in these incidents that we almost have to develop the same strategy that our military did?

Tom Jackson:

Well, they absolutely do. Like I said, we had no idea of the power of social media. We do now. It's how these folks are communicating in these riots. The lessons were out there. They were learned through Ferguson and lots of people who were in Ferguson or studied Ferguson are going out and talking about it, but the thing is, it doesn't seem like that those lessons are being applied right now. This has gotten way, way out of hand. Of course, this is so much different too and that the Michael Brown shooting was justified and the end was found to be, but prior to that, nobody knew for sure. They just went with the narrative that it was horrible shooting.

Tom Jackson:

With this one, the whole country saw this. The whole world saw it. Everybody pretty much agreed that they saw a man die in police custody, watched it. There was a unified sadness over what happened and a whole stretch of emotions by pretty much everybody. Then, they turned to these violent tactics, and now, we're in a place really where I don't think we've ever been.

John Solomon:

I think if not, certainly not since 1968. The level of violence is unheralded and the fervor doesn't seem to be dying down as it often can after a few weeks. It's going to be a challenge. I'm struck by another part of your book too because I think there's a lot of thought that you put into this about the future of community policing and how communities are going to have to get past these issues, how they build that trust. I wonder if you could share a few minutes of wisdom or just as you look back now with 2020 vision, what things police leaders, community leaders can do to ease these tensions, build that trust, build the respect that police officers should and used to get in these communities?

Tom Jackson:

Well, one of the main things that I think I pointed out is that police officers are expected to do way too much of social construction. They have specific jobs and they are supposed to enforce the law and protect the public, but we're not supposed to be parents to kids and raise them and teach them social skills, things like that. That's a parenting responsibility. What I think leaders in the community have to look at what's broken down in some of the poor communities and address those issues directly and not expect the police department to address it.

Tom Jackson:

Ferguson, we had the largest concentration of public housing in the state, I think, right there in that little corner of Ferguson. It's absolutely impossible for [inaudible 00:32:30] a small town and a small police department to be completely responsible for everything that's going on in there. There's so much violent crime in there and so many calls for service. It's just concentrated poverty and it's just got to be addressed and the police departments alone can address concentrated poverty. We've got to educate our way out of this. We've got to get back to strong families or family-type structures that mentor and teach kids. Again, the police can be part of that, but they can't be responsible for all of that.

John Solomon:

That's a big thing, the officer becomes everything to the lost child, looking for their parent, their temporary parent figure, their marriage counselor between a domestic violence incident. It's the incredible circumstances that our officers are put into every day and those who haven't worked the job don't understand the constant struggle they have. One of the things that's come up recently that I've heard a lot about and it came up actually, believe it or not, in Minnesota shortly before this event, was that officers themselves feel under constant assault now that they have a hypervigilance. Some of them are taking more time training to prepare them to be more hypervigilant.

John Solomon:

How do we relieve some of the stress for the officers on the job too? We know the communities are stressed and they have their issues, but these officers are in a pressure cooker 24/7 every time they get in the car. What sort of things, as you look back, do you think officers need to get through this stressful environment that we've created for them?

Tom Jackson:

Well, it's a very difficult and complex question because they are under so much scrutiny and everything that they do now is being recorded. Law enforcement sometimes is ugly and it doesn't look good on tape even though it's been being done correctly. Part of what's going to have to happen is for really the press and for government and for elected officials to be pro-law enforcement, to talk up the good stuff that the police are doing and highlight good actions that they see when the officers do a good thing, which is all of the time, most of the time.

Tom Jackson:

We need to have more of the median, more of elected officials really talking well to their constituents about the police, talk about them as a positive thing. "We support our police department. We support our police officers," but the distrust that they're under is just going to continue because, as long as you're being hyper scrutinized, it's just going to continue to be a more and more stressful job. Ultimately, what you're going to have is officers doing less of the direct contact, less proactive policing, which then in turn gives you a less safe environment.

John Solomon:

That really is the consequence. You just shut down and you try to avoid any episode that you can because that's the only way to survive and that's not going to be good for law enforcement under any circumstance. I want to wrap up with one question because I obviously consider myself part of the media profession, but I'm often a critic of watching some of my colleagues in action and the lack of balance and the incredible intrusion of opinion and emotion that reporters sometimes bring to covering events where they should be neutral. How big an impact did the news media have in inflaming or affecting the Ferguson story?

Tom Jackson:

They had a huge effect because as you know, you're in the business, it's a 24-hour news cycle. There has to be news going on 24/7. This became something easy for them because we had protesters in the street or hiding out in churches or other places that were sheltering them while they were waiting to go out and do their damage, but they didn't really have to do any work. They could just walk out into the street with a camera, film something, interview some protester and get his grievance and just air it.

Tom Jackson:

We were getting raw footage of people saying, how terribly they were treated by the police, and then in turn, putting dramatic images of what looked like over-policing and what it really was very, very good policing that was going on. They had a huge impact, not as much as social media though.

John Solomon:

That was the inflamer, right? You really walk away with that impression. I've walked away from that impression profoundly after reading your book it. Social media is the new fuel, isn't it?

Tom Jackson:

Yeah. Big part of the reason is that they there's no rules. Like you, if you go out and do a story, you can probably have an editor that's going to prove it and you're going to have to fact check it and all that stuff. There's no rules for these guys. They can create whatever they want, film whatever they want and it's going out over the air as they're creating it. A lot of the mainstream and cable media was playing catch up with the social media warriors.

John Solomon:

Fascinating and as you look out, will police departments even as small as Ferguson and as big as the NYPD, are they going to have to have a counter-messaging strategy on social media in order to survive in this world?

Tom Jackson:

Yes, absolutely. That's one of the things that, as I was going around the country talking to various groups, I was trying to advocate that no police department, Ferguson size or even much bigger can just staff a social media group that can just be on hand in case something like this happens and then aggressively counter it. Places like New York City can, LAPD and so forth, but what I was recommending is having like a major case squad of social media people who could be called up, either volunteers and attack the social media texts on the police, so that for everything that the streamers are putting out, the police department is putting out the truth and its own storyline, so that you can at least fight back.

John Solomon:

That is remarkable. We've reached that stage in our law enforcement, law and order society that we have to have that operation, but it seems almost [inaudible 00:39:42]. I see it at the White House where reporters report wrong things and then the White House Press Secretary has to come out and correct the record and shame the reporters and get the actual facts out. I think that's going to become an important part of public communications in the law enforcement room for sure. That's one of the big takeaways I had from your book.

Tom Jackson:

Thank you very much.

John Solomon:

Well, sir, I know you've been through a lot and you have a lot of wisdom because you took a lot of time afterwards to reflect and try to take lessons and learnings from it and then share that with the public and I'm so grateful you came today, Chief, and shared it with us at the John Solomon Reports. Thank you very much.

Tom Jackson:

Thank you very much. I really appreciate talking too.

John Solomon:

You too. Folks, we'll be right back after this commercial break.

John Solomon:

All right, folks, welcome back from the commercial break. Just a few minutes ago, you heard from Chief Tom Jackson, the former chief in Ferguson in Missouri. Now, we're going to bring you to St. Louis and a former St. Louis police officer, Del Wilber, who later went on to work for the CIA. Del, welcome to the show.

Del Wilber:

Thank you. I was a St. Louis County police officer, actually worked with Tom Jackson when he was a St. Louis County police officer before he went on to bigger and better things.

John Solomon:

How about that? What a small world. You've been watching a lot of what has transpired the last few weeks or at least last week since the incident in Minnesota. What do you see and what has evolved about the tactics of the protesters, the rioters from Ferguson?

Del Wilber:

Well, one thing that is certain is that there was a plan in place for the civil unrest that we're seeing right now. I'm convinced that probably lessons learned on the part of the protesters, not the protesters, the rioters, let's differentiate between the two because certainly, everyone has the right to peacefully protest and certainly there's reason to in this particular case. I think the situation that occurred in Ferguson and then compared to now is that there was a plan in place. I think the rioters, the people that are in those organizations learn their lessons from Ferguson and they established a working plan that they were going to implement in anticipation of some event occurring that would give them the opportunity to implement it and move things forward.

John Solomon:

There's no doubt when we talked to the frontline officers and the intel departments at NYPD, DC. There's currently a command and control structure and a plan that was developed long before these days to create this civil unrest. When I was talking to Chief Jackson, he had some profound comments about how police departments going forward are going to have to address this and that includes treating them much like the military treats insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. That includes sort of a multifaceted approach including a social media component and a communications program, and then of course, the security components that we're seeing play out.

John Solomon:

You've been on both sides of this as a law enforcement officer and then as a CIA asset, an operative. Can you talk a little bit about the similarities of the insurgencies?

Del Wilber:

Well, yeah, they're certainly operating from the same playbook in a sense. One thing to look at is there's definitely a logistical aspect to this. When you see reports of days before a planned protest, stacks of bricks being delivered to key locations across cities, that tells you right there that somebody somewhere has, again, had a plan in place on what they're going to do in the event the opportunity presents itself to riot and then how they're going to support those riots by providing the materials that are going to be needed.

Del Wilber:

That's exactly what happened in this case. We've seen report after report, photographs of stacks of large stones or bricks or whatever that have been strategically placed in probably the preplanned routes that protesters are going to take or to set up in. There's a logistical aspect of this that certainly needs to be looked into and could provide some very useful intelligence as to how this is being coordinated and choreographed.

John Solomon:

That's been one of the keys when we learned when General Petraeus started to develop the counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the primary topics beyond communications and PSYOPs and community relations was choking off the logistical facilitators of violence. Are police departments going to have to be in a position now to be thinking about that at the frontend which is, "An incident happened. We may have protests. Let's look for those right away. Look for those logistical organizers and try to choke them off"?

Del Wilber:

Yeah, absolutely. As Chief Jackson probably mentioned, the social media obviously is an important part of their operations in that to quickly be able to rally people to a location or to an incident. I am certain that there may be in each city key individuals who are on a phone chain who are able to receive calls from whomever the ultimate authority is, and then, a follow up to make their phone calls to lower ranking individuals in their structure. That I think is certainly going on.

John Solomon:

In your work, have you been able to identify since the Ferguson tragedy the players, the infrastructures, the groups that are the facilitators? Is there any clarity among police agencies about who the likely outside external organizers are of these events?

Del Wilber:

Well, I can't speak to what the law enforcement intelligence people have been able to uncover in the intervening years, but I can just offer my opinion. Certainly, obviously, Antifa has been a problem for quite a few years now. I would equate that. I'm a child of the '60s. I grew up during the Vietnam protests, everything and when the SDS and the Weather Underground where creating havoc across the United States. I think probably some of those old radicals are certainly providing encouragement and inspiration to some of the new group of rioters that we have out there now.

John Solomon:

As you look at from a strategic lens, what are the tactics going for that police departments and law enforcement and prosecutors are going to have to be prepared to use, not just in crowd control and violence, but in the intelligence capacity that I helps unravel these mazes that you're trying to navigate in the middle of violence? Are there certain tactics, certain approaches that you think are going to become more regular in the police department regiment?

Del Wilber:

Well, I'm sure they're already doing it, but they need to increase their intelligence capabilities. When you talk about this, then all of a sudden, the civil libertarians start throwing up red flags and everything, but there is a place for intelligence capabilities within law enforcement. You're going to have to use the capabilities that are out there, which are ... There are technical capabilities that certainly would require a warrant and a judge signing off on their application somewhere, but you're going to have to infiltrate some of these networks and that you're going to identify who are members and start to be able to take action, to take them down when they're in the planning stages before they actually hit the streets, after an incident happens or whatever.

Del Wilber:

Intelligence is going to be, "What is going to drive this effort to try to bring these situations under control and hopefully prevent them in the future?"

John Solomon:

When I talked to Chief Jackson, that was one of the big learnings he took away from Ferguson which is having a proactive intelligence game plan. Then, he talked about two other forces that distort and disrupt the ability of the police to react to this and that is social media and then the news media. As you look out, how big a problem is the news media in the way they cover these riots?

Del Wilber:

Well, certainly it's been a problem at least in my estimation with the news media for many years now is the sensationalism factor. Sometimes it seems that they try to outdo each other with how they portray an event to generate more viewers. If you can throw in a little bit more action and a little bit more sensationalism, people may switch over to your channel instead of watching the other one. I think that's something that people in the media are going to have to take a look at themselves and do a real self-search on that.

Del Wilber:

The other thing is that people, I think, are not really aware of is our adversaries in the world are certainly supportive of what's taking place because it distracts us as a nation from perhaps other things that we do in the ... I can tell you from experience that one of the things that the agency has done over the years, for decades, and has been done against us and that is cohort influence operations, trying to get new stories or develop a rumor campaign or something of that nature which will help inflame a situation and create problems for your enemies. We've done it in other parts of the world and they certainly are doing it to us.

John Solomon:

That's a great point. All the work you've seen, is there any link between foreign adversaries and some of these revolutionary anarchist groups that are now behind some of these protests over the last few years? In your CIA experience, in your law enforcement experience, did you ever find any connection between them?

Del Wilber:

Well, I can only speak from historically is that we did, certainly back during the Vietnam era, we knew there was direct links between some of the activists and what was taking place back in that era and the former Soviet Union, they were, if not, actively supporting then through third parties. They were providing support to the rioting. I would certainly believe that that's going on right now, that there are links. They may be false flag operations. That is a tactic that is used so, that could be very well going on right now. I would be surprised if it's not.

John Solomon:

As you look at the issue of the battle between the need for police to keep people safe and the perceived grievances in these communities with their law enforcement agencies, what tactics going forward are going to be important for healing and getting past some of the issues of distrust and on the other side disrespect because officers often feel disrespected? How do we start to make some inroads on this dynamic of distress and disrespect?

Del Wilber:

Boy, that's a tough nut to crack. I'm sure Chief Jackson and many other police administrators around the country are scratching their heads right now because if you think about, if you recall back after Ferguson, after the Baltimore riots, a lot of police agencies started implementing a warm and fuzzy approach, where police officers were doing things truthfully that they had been doing all along, but it never received any publicity. They started actively promoting how police officers were helping people in the community, doing, I guess, these warm and fuzzy things. I don't say that's been any disrespect, but it obviously hasn't worked. All of that effort has gone right out the window when there's an incident such as what happened with George Floyd.

Del Wilber:

All of the best intentions can certainly disappear when you have a bad situation. Community outreach, yeah, it's a great outreach. Yeah, it's a great thing, but it's not going to overcome one of these tragic situations.

John Solomon:

Particularly when there are external influences that are trying to inflame the motions beyond the facts which is, I guess, what the anarchists are focused on. Well, I want to thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us. You've got some great experience, both in the intelligence world and the law enforcement world which brings a really great perspective. I hope as we learn more about what happened in Minnesota, we can get back to you and maybe have you on the show again.

Del Wilber:

That sounds fine. Take care.

John Solomon:

Very good, sir. Thank you. All right, folks, that wraps up another edition of John Solomon Reports. We'll be back with you on Thursday.