S1 · E127Apr 23, 2025 · 1 hr 18 min
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Ralph Pezzullo was born in New York City. When he was five years old his father joined the Foreign Service of the State Department. His job took them to Mexico, South Vietnam, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay and Nicaragua. They lived in Saigon during the Tonkin Gulf Incident, the overthrow of Diem, a number of other coup d'etats and almost daily Vietcong terrorist attacks against Americans. After that, they survived three years gasping for air at 13,000 feet in La Paz, Bolivia during the time that Che Guevarra was trying to build a guerrilla base in that country. By 1980 his father was the US Ambassador to Nicaragua, and Ralph was there witnessing the first days of the Sandinista Revolution.
These experiences molded him. He saw how political instability could throw peoples’ lives into chaos and test their character. In his teenage years he became a sounding board for his father’s opinions on how to best formulate and carry out US foreign policy. Many of his friends were other diplomats, CIA agents, and military attaches. Through observing them, Ralph developed an appreciation of the unique kinds of challenges US representatives faced in nations where our interests and cultural perspective often sharply differed from theirs.
In 2004, shortly after moving his family to Los Angeles, he received an email from a gentleman who said he was a clandestine US intelligence operative and wanted to collaborate with him. The book they wrote together about the CIA-led operation to overthrow the Taliban in late 2001, called Jawbreaker, was published in 2005 and appeared on numerous bestseller lists.
Following Jawbreaker, he started to receive calls and emails from other former government officials – DEA and FBI agents, police detectives, Special Forces soldiers, and Navy SEALs – who had interesting stories to tell. He helped turn some of them into bestselling books, including Most Evil and Inside SEAL Team Six.
All of these courageous individuals had experienced conflict and human suffering first hand, and had their core beliefs tested. Their views often clashed with policy makers, who saw the same conflicts through the lens of bureaucratic politics. Many of his co-authors had experienced the same phenomena – how time after time our political and culture myopia, or inability to fully grasp the importance of local history, language, and culture, had led to bad decision-making and caused us to be ineffective.
His new book is called Stolen Elections: The Plot to Destroy Democracy
Based on a four-year investigation into election fraud by two top government whistleblowers, including CIA hero Gary Berntsen.
Their conclusion: Enemies of the United States including Venezuela, Cuba, China and Serbia have been determining the results of elections in the U.S. since 2006 through the use of electronic systems that they have developed. Using these systems, they now manipulate the results of elections in 72 countries around the world.
We discuss Ralph's unique upbringing in various war-torn countries, which shaped his worldview and understanding of U.S. foreign policy. The conversation delves into the importance of cultural understanding in international relations, the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the implications of the military-industrial complex.
He is also the host of the popular podcast Heroes Behind Headlines.
Find out more at http://ralphpezzulloauthor.com/
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