Insights from a Former Member of the CIA

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. Now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Well, it was yesterday that my new book came out, Has God Failed You?

Finding Faith When You're Not Even Sure God Is Real. We were talking about it in previous weeks and just with everything we're focused on yesterday, didn't even announce it on the radio, but of course we did post online. It's now available as a paperback, as an e-book, as an Audible book. In fact, I've been listening to the Audible, the audio version of it, just to see how it sounds being read and to hear from the perspective of someone listening to the book.

I think you need to get a hardcover copy, so check wherever you order your books. They're on our website AskDrBrown.org. I want to give you some practical thoughts from that. At the bottom of the hour, I'm going to be joined by former CIA agent and counter-terrorism expert.

We met online, began interacting, and said, man, I've got to get you on the air to talk, so we'll be doing that starting at the bottom of the hour. Here's the number to call if you've got questions, comments, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. You might question the title of my book, Has God Failed You?, because if God is who He declares Himself to be, if the God of the Bible is who the Bible says He is, then He can't fail, right? So why title the book, Has God Failed You? Well, because to many people, it feels to them as if you failed them. It feels, in their experience, as if He's not really there, or if He is there, He's indifferent, or if He is there, they're doing something wrong, or He's got something against them, or there's just more to the story than what we're being told.

But it feels to people as if He failed, as if something is fundamentally wrong, or some have concluded He's obviously not there. When I recently recorded a debate with an atheist, a debate that should start airing on awakening TV probably next month, I don't know exactly when this one will will air, but this atheist said, look at all these promises to prayer. You just ask and you'll get it, and obviously it doesn't happen.

Well, of course, it's easy to respond to that. There are many qualifications, asking according to God's will, and persisting in prayer, and even the Bible telling us that many times prayers were delayed and being answered, but sometimes it seems like, well, it never happened. Where was God?

And there are Christians, some of you I'm speaking to right now, you're in church, or you've been faithfully attending, you might even be in ministry, but deep down doubt gnaws at you. Deep down questions rise in you. Deep down you're not really sure, but you feel trapped because you can't talk about it to anybody, because if you talk about it, maybe your spouse on fire and you're just, yeah, praise the Lord, but you've got questions. You're not really there. You're going through the motions, but you can't tell your spouse. They're like, what?

You? I know, honey, that can't be. Or, you know, if you're in ministry, who are you going to tell?

The congregation? I'm not even sure if God's real. I'm not even sure if the Bible I'm preaching out of is true.

How are you going to do that? Or, you know, what if all your friends are, you know, they're strong. You're not strong. They don't have questions. You have questions. Who do you talk to? And there's who you talk to.

And there's this trap. Where do you go with your doubts? Where do you go with your questions? And that's one reason I wrote Has God Failed You to say we've got to be honest about these things. You've got to be honest before God, before people. Even if you used to believe and you're convinced there is no God, but still you're not like angry dogmatic about it.

You're open to be wrong, but you're just convinced that you're right. I wrote this book for you as well. And I want to show you a fascinating verse in the book of Jude. I have a whole chapter dealing with this in the book Has God Failed You. But it's just one verse, and it says this in verse 22, And have mercy on those who are wavering, or as others would translate it, and have mercy on those who doubt. Save them by snatching them out of the fire, but on others have mercy with fear, hitting even the garment defiled by the flesh. Notice those words, have mercy on those who are wavering, or have mercy on those who doubt.

All right, let's stop and think about that for a minute. Elsewhere in the New Testament, and really throughout the Bible, unbelief is rebuked. Doubt is rebuked. When the disciples are fearful and Jesus is on the boat during the storm and he calms the storm and they're shocked, he goes, why'd you doubt?

Why'd you have so little faith? Jesus instructs his disciples and says, when you pray, don't doubt. James, Jacob, rebukes his readers and says that those who doubt are double-minded, they're unstable. And yet this says, have mercy on those who doubt.

So how do we sort these things out? There is an unbelief that's sinful because it is tied in with disobedience. There's an unbelief that is sinful because it refuses to trust when there's reason to trust. There's an unbelief that is sinful because we should have known better. If our eyes were open, if we were accountable for what God had shown us and done, we shouldn't be walking in unbelief. You know, I've been in the Lord almost 50 years now.

I have ample reason to believe. What if I was just walking around and rank unbelief? God could rebuke me for that because at this stage in life, with all I've seen God do, the many things he's done through me and for me and his gracious displays through others, that it would be a sin for me to walk in unbelief. And yet there were times over the decades, for example, dealing with rabbis when I was a new believer and getting challenged by ultra-Orthodox Jews that were brilliant in Scripture and knew Hebrew and I didn't. It's challenging.

And I get hit with questions. And I wonder, is what I believe true or not? And I determine, I've just got to follow the truth wherever it leads. I can't just put this in a box where I only believe. No, I've got to pursue the truth wherever it leads.

However costly, however consequential. I have to follow the truth. So, what happened was that, I had periods of doubt, rest struggle. But some of you have had seasons of doubt that you've wrestled with for years and years and years.

Some of you are on the outside looking in like, I tried the thing out. I went to church. I read the Bible. I prayed the prayers. Nothing happened. It didn't work for me.

I was just sitting there and I was just sitting there and I was just reading the prayers. Nothing happened. It didn't work for me.

I didn't experience God or my life wasn't changed. I don't know. I don't know if it's true. I don't think it's true.

I don't know. This verse in Jude says, have mercy on those who doubt. That's not sinful doubt. Sinful doubt is when you have every reason to believe and don't. Sinful doubt is when you refuse to go through the steps God tells you to go through and if you go through them, you'll come out strong. That's sinful. That's being double-minded.

Believe one day and then sin the next day and so on. But to struggle to have questions, that's perfectly fine. And God wants us as a church body to be merciful to those who doubt. Parents, don't get mad at your kids because they have questions. I don't know if this thing's true.

I don't know. My friends think the Bible's like crazy. Should I believe it? What do you mean what should I believe? You're raising a Christian.

You're raising a godly hope. How could you question? No, no, no.

Don't react. It's like, well, you know, so what are some of the questions you have? Maybe I had some of those too. Or let's look at them together because you know the amazing thing is the Bible's been here all these thousands of years and it's still the best-selling book around the world. I wonder why. Why are people finding truth in it?

Some of the smartest people on the planet believe in the God of the Bible. What do you think that is? What are the questions?

What are the questions? Or someone else, you know, you prayed. You believed. You were sure. You were sure. You were sure that your child was going to be healed. As surely as you knew God, you knew your child would be healed and they died.

Well, what's the logical question that comes up now? Maybe the rest of what I believe is not true. Maybe the rest of the things that I believe are not true. If I was so sure about this. If I was as sure about this as I was about my own relationship with God and now everything crumbles all around me.

Now everything caves in. Maybe the whole thing's false. I remember in, let's see, 1987. We prayed for a man about my age.

So it was, you know, early 30s. Prayed for this man. Met him at a conference. They said he had an inoperable terminal brain tumor and I thought, no, no, it can't be. This young man's like our age.

He and his wife, daughters about the same age as our daughters and thought, no, it can't be. Jewish believer. So I prayed for him and really felt like the Spirit came on me to pray for him and seeing the power God really touched him. And then we get word he's out riding his bike, exercising, and feeling better than he's felt in ages and praise God.

Good report. That's amazing. I felt something happen when I prayed for him. And I prayed for people in the past and there had been miracles. So I don't have the gift of healing.

It was never a major thing in my life but prayed for enough people, seen outright miracles. I thought this was another one. And then I remember as we were in the process of moving from Maryland to, excuse me, from New York to Maryland and it was late at night and get a call from California where this couple lived and it's the wife that the husband had gone off his anti-seizure medication because he felt so good and just his mind was clear and all this and he had a terrible seizure and of course we never told him to go off the medication. He just thought, hey, I don't need this now.

And I remember when she told me what happened. It got hit. It's like bolt of doubt, unbelief just went through my soul. And instantly it went to he's not healed to there is no God.

Boom! Just like that. And I've never wrestled with the existence of God.

I've never wrestled with atheism or agnosticism in any deep way. Just like a bolt went through my soul. And it passed quickly.

And then, okay, how can we minister and pray and how are we going to move forward on this? And obviously it was a great challenge. And ultimately after some miracles with doctors saying we have no explanation for his condition and why he's able to do this, this, this, we ultimately lost him after several years of prayer. He died. It was a loss.

But I'm saying at that moment I got hit. Well, there's some of you say, Mike, that's how I live. That's how I that's how I live. I live with that torment. I live with that pain. I never recovered from that blow.

What do I do? I've been going through the motions. I just dropped out of church. That's where I wrote, has God failed you to try to reach you where you are and to work through the issues honestly with scripture and look at the goodness of God and look at why, why things are broken in the world today and look at what we can expect and not expect and look at even some of the tension that we deal with in this world. We don't give cheap answers because cheap answers aren't going to help you. We give weighty answers, difficult answers. And as I wrote the book, literally as I was writing, I was seeing faces.

These are the people I'm speaking to. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us, friends. I'm going to take a couple of calls and then bottom of the hour transition over to our guest, former CIA agent and counter-terrorism expert, Kevin Shipp. We have a very interesting conversation.

We've just interacted via intranet and this will be the first time I'll actually get to chat and talk. So it'll be an interesting conversation. Just another moment about my book, Has God Failed You? Finding faith you're not even sure God is real. There are intellectual questions that we have that stymie us. In other words, if I question the inspiration of scripture, if I question the relationship between science and the Bible, if I have intellectual questions about the existence of God, if I have intellectual questions about whether Jesus is the prophesied Messiah, those are going to stymie me. I might have a great experience with God that's been life changing. That's the foundation of everything, experiencing him for yourself, not what someone else says, your parents or grandparents, but experiencing him for yourself. Nonetheless, along with that, we're to love God with our hearts and our minds. So along the way, you've got serious questions. Well, let's get answers to your questions. That's good.

That's fine. God made us like this. He doesn't want us to turn our brains off. You know, a book like Job is a masterpiece for the greatest intellects on the planet to wrestle with or the reasoning of Romans.

These are brilliantly written by the inspiration of God and through brilliant human authors, Paul and we don't know who wrote Job, but in point of fact, God wants us to search and seek and ask. Then you may have experiential questions where your experience didn't line up with the Bible or your experience didn't line up with what others told you to expect or your experience didn't line up with what you've read in history. So you can have intellectual questions, you can have experiential questions, but if you don't get answers to them, either you'll just be a religious hypocrite, just going through the motions, but your heart distant from God, or you'll start to get cold, you'll gradually drop out of your observance, or you'll switch maybe to a more liberal experience, religious experience that doesn't really take the Bible so seriously, or you'll just fall away completely, or maybe even become an atheist, or maybe even become a hostile atheist. So friends, I want to welcome you to come with questions and be honest. I want to encourage you to get along with God and if you're not even sure it's real, say, God, I don't know if you're there. I don't know if you're there. If you are there, I'm upset because I don't like you. I don't like, be honest. Well, he knows what's in your heart anyway.

I feel like you let me down or I don't get it. You know, it's this in the Bible and my experience is this and something's not lining up. Be honest with God and if you're determined, okay, I've got to find out truth. If he's really there, there's nothing more important than knowing that. If he put us here, created us, put us here for a purpose, there's nothing more important than knowing that. That's preeminent.

So I've got to find out. Hebrews 11 says he's a rewarder of those who diligently seek him and I think you'll find the book Has God Failed You to be super helpful both spiritually, experientially, as well as intellectually. I think it'll really help you.

So pick up a copy or maybe it's for a friend, someone you love, a family member, and then let us know how the book helps you or helps them. All right, let's go to the phones. We'll go to Maryland. Andrew, welcome to The Line of Fire. Thanks for calling. Thank you for having me on, Dr. Brown. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, go ahead. All right, Dr. Brown.

Hi, Dr. Brown. I'm glad you brought up this topic because there was something that's been bothering me lately about the exodus of people from the church. And one of the things that I've noticed is that according to a popular, according to somebody that I know about, they said that almost a lot of people, and I'm a millennial, so I kind of am aware of this, acutely aware, but some of them have been shipwrecked in one way to describe it, but they've been kind of turned off by how Christianity has been politicized, and sometimes they're even turned off by how the church seemed a bit apathetic or just hostile to efforts of stopping social injustice and all that. And some people even say that it's not because of Marxism, liberalism, or atheism, but just because the church has been too colorized and they've been kind of apathetic towards racial injustice.

Yeah. So there is some truth to that. In other words, there has been a failing in certain levels in the church. Look, when I came to faith in 1971, I don't ever remember hearing anything about politics, about who was president, about elections.

I mean, literally nothing. Now, it was also to the point that Roe v. Wade, 1973, that decision, I don't remember hearing anything about that in the church either. So I mean, we were so spiritually focused, we didn't even talk at all about the world around us, but Andrew, there's a happy medium. And there's no question that many of us got way too caught up with politics in recent years, and then many evangelicals, especially white evangelicals, became especially known as the Trump people more than the Jesus people.

So that's going to be a turnoff. You go to a church service, and even if your local church was really not heavily political, because I don't think most local churches were, but it was more national leaders and people on major platforms talking about things. So suddenly, let's say Donald Trump gets up and makes some speech and really insults people and is really nasty and crude towards people, and you think, okay, well, you really like Trump, you voted for Trump, you're defending Trump, and now you want to tell me about Jesus, but I don't like Trump. It's like, okay, I don't want to have to defend anybody except tell you about Jesus, you know?

So that definitely happened. The other thing, and it's a failing, and we've got to make sure that people know what's first and foremost with us. That's one reason I wrote the book, Donald Trump is Not My Savior. As a Trump voter, to say the message I'm shouting to the world, it's not Trump, it's Jesus.

I only have one savior. Here's the other thing, Andrew. When it comes to social justice issues, there really was a mix and is a mix. Your average local church is involved in the community and is often working across racial bounds, and then you have an extremist movement like BLM.

Yes, every black life matters. We need to shout that from the rooftops. Amen.

Absolutely. And work together to see that proclaimed and lived out. But you have extremist organization like BLM, you join in the Antifa's, you have critical race theory intersectionality, a lot of things that do more harm than good. And a lot of church is going to oppose that. So it's like, if you don't kneel down here and make our statement of faith here, I'm talking about social justice, then you're not with us.

So the church has been between a rock and a hard place there. But what I would say, Andrew, is that in many cases, the church in local areas has been leading the way in seeking to help the poor, address education issues, bring together people from different races and ethnicities. So what we have to do, Andrew, is simple. We have to lead the way. We have to show. We have to show.

We have to say, hey, I'm not going to do this. We have to say, hey, watch us. Watch what we do in our communities. Watch how we stand for those who are subjects of injustice and watch how we're all about Jesus.

Let's not worry about politics right now. That's what we have to do. And as we do that, I believe young people can flock in. One last thing, where Jesus is really preached and the Holy Spirit's moving, people of all ages are flocking. I'm talking to pastors around America that are growing dynamically.

And that's because they're preaching and ministering without compromise. Hey, Andrew, thank you. It's important subject. And it's something we address in the book as well, Has God Failed You, about the younger generation's perceptions about the church and the Bible. Thanks for the call. Yeah, we've got time. So let's go to Zach.

No, I was going to go to Zach in Honolulu, but I guess we won't. So here's one of the biggest issues that comes up today and a reason that a lot of young people are turned off with church. Church hates gays. Church hates gays. Why should I go to your church?

You're so full of hate. And I don't look at that as just a totally negative attitude. I look at that as a caring attitude, but misguided. I look at that as young people saying, look, my best friends are gay.

You know, what's the big deal? It's everybody's the same. This one likes men.

This one likes women. It's whatever. You know, it's love. You have families and you care about each other.

You work your jobs. You're normal people. You make it like there's sexual predators and evil homosexuals in the Bible.

The Bible says they're going to burn forever. It's like, I can't relate to that religion. I don't just dismiss that as like, well, you're a pervert.

You're no. I look at that and say, yeah, well, you care about people and you care about equality, about justice. And I agree with your concerns. God cares about equality and justice. Throughout the Bible, these are major themes of scripture, justice, justice, fairness, righteousness, major themes of scripture. But see, the reason, and this is in my book, Has God Failed You? The reason that God opposes homosexual practice is because of his goodness and his beauty and the way he designed us and his care and the implications of what happens when you shift the meaning of marriage and things like that. So it's not a hateful thing. It's a thing based on God's highest concerns. I want to meet that young person with their concern, with their love, with their desire to see justice, and then say, hey, let's get a bigger picture and go back to the God who made us. And from there, see why he cares about these things and why we should also. It's got nothing to do with hate.

It's got nothing to do with hate. Again, all in my book, Has God Failed You? Would you pray with me that God will really use this to bring many people into strong faith and many people back to God. We'll be right back.

I don't know. I don't know if we had time zone issue or something happened with my guest that was going to be joining us, but both numbers we have, we're getting voicemail. So tell you what, I'm going to open up the phone lines 866-3-4-TRUTH, 866-348-784, anything on your mind of any kind, any subject you want to raise whatsoever. By all means, give us a call. If we can't get my guest on, then I'll just take calls on any imaginable subject and share some more things with you.

But there's a question I just saw posted on Facebook, and if I could go back there. From Carson, what bad does CRT and intersectionality do? Thank you, sir, for posting that. Number one, I want to land clearly and strongly and say that if you follow the God of the Bible, then you must have a heart for justice. If you follow the God of the Bible, then you must stand against injustice, and you must stand against moral evil, and you must stand against societal evil if you have God's heart. Obviously, that is a must, but the question is intersectionality, does it get us in that direction? Does CRT get us in that direction? Turns out we have connected with our guests, but Carson, I'll get back to that, all right? I'll discuss that in more depth, and I will absolutely get back to that, explain where I'm coming from.

So this is not an excuse for inaction, it's a call to godly action. Okay, with that, I want to connect with Kevin Shipp. Hey, first let me just read this bio, because this is kind of amazing. Former Central Intelligence Agency officer and intelligence counter-terrorism expert, Kevin held several high-level positions in the CIA. His assignments included protective agent for the director of the CIA, counterintelligence investigator searching for moles inside the CIA, overseas counter-terrorism operations team leader, anti-terrorism assault team member, internal security investigator, chief of training for the CIA federal police force, and polygraph examiner.

This is one of the coolest bios I've read. Kevin was the senior program manager for the Department of State, Diplomatic Security, anti-terrorism assistant global policy, excuse me, police training program. He's the recipient of two CIA meritorious unit citations and on and on other awards, author of the best-selling book From the Company of Shadows, which is an expose on CIA operations and the abuse of government secrecy, currently hosts the SHIP intelligence report, and as a boy, his kidneys burst, he was bleeding to death, should have been dead, what, in a matter of six weeks? His mother in a charismatic prayer group cried out to God, he was miraculously healed, and how long ago was that?

Oh, let's see, over 50 years ago, so quite a story. Hey, Kevin, welcome to The Line of Fire, thanks so much for joining us today. Hey, Dr. Brown, it's great to be with you. Yeah, so we've connected via Twitter, started interacting, going back and forth, saw some of what you're doing on YouTube, looked into your book and background, and I thought, oh, yeah, this is a conversation we should have. You've been following me, so you know what I believe in things, but let me ask you this general question. As someone who's been there and done that, right, I mean, to most of us, this is behind closed doors stuff we see in the movies and all the secretive stuff. As someone who's been there and done that, what perspective does that give you that I don't have as I look at America today? Well, Dr. Brannett, having come from the belly of the beast, as some would call it, I call myself a recovering CIA officer. A lot that we did was noble, and of course there's things that the CIA does that are not constitutional, and that's something that our country needs to work through, but I understand how the entire secrecy and clearance system works in all 17 agencies, and having been on the seventh floor and multiple embassies and stations around the world, I know how, what some people would call the deep state or shadow government, I know how it functions, how it works, how the good, the bad, and the ugly that it does, and it does all three, and so I was a believer when I went in there, thank God, and now I've come out, and I want to respect my government, but at the same time, I want to make sure that he's a minister, the government is, as the scriptures wrote, minister to us for good, so we've got to keep an eye on government, as the founding fathers wrote, because government puts too much power in the hands of mortal men and women. So Kevin, when you speak about, quote, deep state, what do you mean by it?

What do you think actually exists, and what do you think is an exaggeration or a myth? Yeah, that's a great question, and in the speeches I've done, the shadow government and deep state are not the same thing. The shadow government is this massive apparatus of secrecy that includes the NSA, the CIA, some sectors of the FBI, and this mammoth, multi-trillion dollar industry that functions in secrecy much without the knowledge of Congress. That's the shadow government.

It influences presidents, it influences our Congress, it even influences the Supreme Court, and I write about that in my book. Then you have the deep state, and that's the administrative state, that's the monolith behind our government, the Department of State, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency that founded Google Earth, and all of the lobbyists and the military industrial complex and the Pentagon, all of that falls under the deep state, which functions by the power of money, whereas the shadow government functions through the power of secrecy. All right, so when you say the deep state functions by the power of money, you know Jerome Corsi has a whole book on deep state and tries to define it. For a lot of people it's this nebulous thing, or you know the Obama administration still had tentacles in during the time of Trump, and now you know how do these things work, you have lifelong political people entrenched secretly. So unpack this a little bit more, not just philosophically but concretely, in your mind, who was part of the deep state during the Trump administration, or what organization, how does it work? Well, I have to say this too, under the Trump administration, Donald Trump was the first president that I have seen since JFK that actually confronted the deep state and the intelligence apparatus, and you can see what they tried to do to him because of that, went after him with a vengeance with two false hoaxes and coups.

I was on Fox News defending him about the fake whistleblower in the impeachment hearing. So the deep state, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI, they all went after Trump, which was an unbelievable abuse of authority. But the deep state is, it is, I say it's the money that runs the deep state in that you've got the military industrial complex that is lobbying congressmen and senators. I think senators make about $700,000 a year in contributions from Lockheed Martin and others. So the deep state has bought politicians, they bought Congress, they influence presidential decisions, they send us into wars, obviously, that we shouldn't have gone into in the first place.

And it is this trillions of dollars that flow throughout Washington and essentially control our Congress and our Senate. All right. So in light of this, and again, friends, I'm asking a former CIA agent, decorated CIA agent, I read some of his bio, some of his background, again, find out more in his book from the Company of Shadows. And we'll talk about that in a moment where he was a CIA whistleblower. I'm asking for his opinion. I'm asking for his viewpoint.

And you can take this data and sort of that. It's not something I talk about a lot on the air, as you know, but I thought Kevin would be the right person to talk us through these things. So from your perspective, your average American sitting here, should they feel paranoid? Should they feel like they have no power, that their vote doesn't matter, that these people, like the Illuminati kind of thing, are just running everything? Where do you, you yourself land, because you talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly, are these all nefarious organizations working to hurt us or just carry out their own empire? Is it all out of control or their checks and balances?

What's your perspective as you live as a Christian American right now, and you're just one of 337 million people? Yeah, yeah. No, Dr. Brandt, I don't think people should be paranoid or fear this.

Obviously, that's a big mistake. What did Thomas Jefferson say? When people fear their government, it's tyranny, but when the government fears the people, there's liberty. So the last thing we want to do is fear this system and fear our own government. What we want to do, especially as believers, is expect work, act, and vote to push our government back underneath the Constitution.

I mean, essentially, right now, we're under a post-constitutional government. And a few months ago, I would have said, no, your average person out there, they're taking it to extremes in terms of paranoia. But lately, with the DHS redefining what domestic terrorism and the intelligence community, the DNI, Director of National Intelligence, redefining domestic terrorism, which could include conservatives and even Trump supporters, yes, we have a serious problem in this country. You combine that together with the woke takeover of our government and critical race theory and the other brainwashing things that are put in our schools, I have to say, at least for me personally, Dr. Brown, especially as a Christian, this is the most concerning chapter in U.S. history that I've seen in my lifetime. And then tie in the vaccine, COVID, with all this. We don't have to get into massive detail in terms of your own view of the origins of COVID-19 and the pros and cons of the vaccine. But we know this has been something where the government, Trump, Biden, there have been lockdowns, there's been varying information, what's good, what's not.

Some states just opening up, other states continuing to close down. From your perspective, is this another opportunity for the government to gain more power over the American people? I absolutely do. Whenever given the opportunity, the government will gain more power over the people. That's why the founders came up with the Bill of Rights. Absolutely, the government will do that and will do that every single time. And it is using COVID to do that with lockdowns and what they're doing, what the federal government is doing and actually trying to control the state, which is clearly against the Constitution. Yes, the government will use this to control the people. How much of it is nefarious? How much of it is just the blundering government?

I think it's a little bit of both. But the government wants to control the population, including the state. And it's using right now, especially the current administration, is using COVID-19 to do that. And you see other governments in other parts of the world doing the same thing, naturally? Well, yeah, Israel's cracked down quite extensively regarding COVID-19.

And, you know, I'm a big supporter of Israel, but they're handling it in a lot stricter way than we are. So, you know, nothing is ever black and white, government good, government bad. You know, the truth is usually more complex and a little mixture of both.

And it's the case, too. I mean, COVID is a very serious virus. And all the indications, including from a personal friend who's a physician, indicate that it was genetically engineered. It's a man-made virus. There's almost most experts in the exception of Dr. Fauci agree that this thing was engineered in a laboratory, probably in Wuhan. Intentionally, we don't know.

By accident, we don't know. But pretty clearly, it's three different versions of viruses put together to make one lethal, very... All right, I got to jump in. We hear the music now. We've got a break. I'm speaking with Kevin Shipp, his whistleblower book from the company of shadows that's shipped with two Ps. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Hey, friends. I'm speaking with Kevin Shipp, former CIA officer and counterterrorism expert. And something that he said right before the break I think is really important that you're not just dealing with outright evil or just outright good or just inefficiency. It tends to be a mix of all different things. I have no question that many government leaders, say just here in America, really care about the population and really think that lockdowns and masks and vaccines are the only way to keep us safe.

And then there are others that look at this as a way to make a lot of money, vaccines or whatever, and others look at this as a way to just exert more control over the populace. And there's going to be a mix because you're dealing with human beings. Kevin, when you wrote your book from the company of shadows, you wrote it basically as a whistleblower. So as someone who served so loyally for so many years, what turned, what caused you to question some of the aspects of the agency that you supported so zealously? Yeah, and the agency was my love.

Of course, it was my career. And I was placed on a classified base in the U.S., moved in there with my family as the second in command to help run the place, which had a lot of problems and a pretty dark past. And apparently there was a mustard gas shell percolated up through the ground. And anyway, my family got desperately ill. My wife lost her short-term memory, was on morphine.

My son's immune system was so shot, the doctor that I took him to said it looked like he'd been exposed to a burst of radiation. I tried to get the CIA to help and they refused because of the nature of the base and what it had been doing. So I collected samples, sent those samples to Washington, just pleading for somebody to come out and do an environmental test. Well, what happened instead was they broke into our house and painted a chemical on the ceiling and started following our family around the base. And I was shocked that not only would the CIA do this inside the United States, but they do it to one of their own. And I had ultimately to stand up for my family and for my wife and kids, which I did, and eventually filed suit. The CIA was ordered to a mediated settlement. The CIA settled with our family, signed the agreement, and then three days later turned around and said, no, no, if Mr. Shipp doesn't accept a fraction of the settlement, we're going to invoke the state's secrets privilege, seal all of his evidence, and it'll be illegal for he or his attorneys to talk about it with anyone. So obviously after agonizing prayer, and trying to maintain my family and provide for them, I had to make a decision to either let them get away with this or just go ahead and go full bore public. And I think the truth is best out in the open. And so I just revealed, I revealed the documents, I went on several programs that explained the false gag orders and what they did and how they abused state secret privilege, which they use on Congress routinely, and how that whole system works to silence anybody that is trying to expose a cover-up or something like this. And that was sadly my defining moment. I had to stand for my family really against my own agency.

That's got to be agonizing, and then all the consequences of what you were exposed to physically and the toll that took on your family. Again, friends, that book, From the Company of Shadows, Kevin, what's your view on QAnon and the various conspiracy theories associated with that? Do you think there's any reality to that, or do you dismiss that the same way I do? Well, I did my own personal investigation on QAnon as I would a counterintelligence case, just gathering all the facts without any bias and putting all the facts together. I even interviewed one of the QAnon's biggest former fans and experts, and I compiled it all together. I knew that QAnon was false in the beginning, because anybody that has a Q clearance, which is a Department of Energy top-secret clearance, anybody that has a Q clearance and was dumping stuff on the dark web, we would have found that person in two weeks and identified them. So it has never been what they claim. It has never been a classic QAnon if they claim it. It's never been a classified, cleared, top-secret Q-cleared insider. That was false from the beginning. And then, of course, Q has reached, and let me caveat this by saying, there's a lot of very, very good people and Christians that have been kind of captured into this thing, and it's almost a delusion where, you know, just even recently, I mean, Hillary was going to be arrested. They were all going to be flown to Guantanamo and locked up.

Mueller was working for Trump, and on and on and on, all these false posts go. And QAnon, because it's portrayed like a complex video game, these people read things into these drops that just aren't there. So I'll tell you, Dr. Brown, I am very concerned about QAnon, because it has ensnared a lot of good Americans and a lot of people who are Christians, and it is a delusion. Yeah, and Kevin, what I discovered was when I had my friend James Beverly on, research professor who wrote a book on the QAnon deception, when I had him on to talk about it, I was shocked by the level of attack that we came under on our social media pages. I mean, the level of people flipping out and outraged, and how dare I do? You know, I'll have you on, and I'll get some people saying, you know, I don't agree with that guy, or maybe you should have someone on from another perspective, from another perspective, and I'll give my perspective on something, and people post, Dr. Brown, I think you're wrong here. That happens every day. But this was militant, rabid, and we're never going to follow you again.

How dare you do this? And it was gospel to them. And I thought, wow, this is like a cult. It has cult-like power for people. And then what I saw quickly was that when I'm talking about a great awakening and a spiritual awakening in America, and God bringing the church to repentance and the nation to repentance, they're talking about a very different great awakening. They're talking about God's going to expose all this, and Biden and Obama will be arrested as pedophiles, and Clinton's running the ring, and the military putting Trump in power. That's the great awakening. So here, I mean, you are well-qualified to separate myth from fact because of your own background. You know where there's conspiracy, and you know where there's just, you know. Right.

Exactly, Dr. Brown. I've got to tell you the same thing. I've put out a very kind of balanced analysis on Q, stating that Q was a fraud based on what I found, and I got hundreds of attacks. Brutal, ruthless attacks from people. How dare you question Q? You're a traitor. One CIA, always CIA. You're controlled opposition. Deep State. Yeah, yeah. Deep State.

Yeah, yeah. You're actually Deep State, and it was shocking, frankly. Yeah, and Kevin, these are from people that are regularly following us that we thought were in Lord's part agreement. When I started looking at comments that day, and instantly, we always knew you were Deep State, yet you're a flaming liberal. You're a communist.

Think, what in the world provoked that? So here, you, a whistleblower who really had to take on the power of the CIA at massive personal and family cost, that you're actually doing that secretly because you're part of the shadow government. I mean, it's scary to see this.

Go ahead. I had my retirement destroyed, my family injured and almost terminally ill, and yeah, I did all that because I'm part of these things. You know, that's why it's such a delusion, and you're so right. It is like a cult. When someone's involved in a cult, they're so deep into it, they will not listen to the reason, they will not listen to the facts, and they will attack anybody that goes after their oracle. Yeah, and the interesting thing is that Trump, with all of his flaws and shortcomings, really did challenge the larger political system in ways that others hadn't before because he came in as an outsider, and he wasn't beholden to the funding of the system or the power structure of the system.

He just went into disruption. So there's truth there, and that's what then opens the door for the conspiracy errors and things like that. Hey, Kevin, you do regular reports on your YouTube channel. What's the best way that folks could follow your report, hear what you have to say, so both as a Christian, as a former CIA agent, as a patriot, as a kingdom-minded person? So what's the best way for folks to follow your reports on a regular basis?

Well, thanks, Dr. Brown. I have really what keeps the lights on. I have a Patreon channel at patreon.com slash Kevin underscore ship. And that's where I have the ship intelligence report. And I put out specialized updates on everything that's going on, for example, the administration and the woke culture now. And then some of those I will migrate over to my YouTube channel.

And there's there's a lot of content that's been there for a couple years now. And yet to find me, you got to go to YouTube and search Kevin ship. And then those will come out of my personal testimonies in there and some other things. And that's the two best ways people can track you down. All right, so patreon.com forward slash Kevin, that underscore, so it's the lower underline, ship with two p's.

Or if you just want to check out general content first, search for Kevin ship with two p's again on YouTube. Hey, Kevin, we've got one minute. Are you hopeful that God's doing something in America in the midst of this shaking, or are you basically throwing in the towel? Well, I think I have to tell you know, Ruth Graham said it this way, if God doesn't judge America because of abortion and things like that he's gonna have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know, we have been killed our country has been killing children, unborn children for decades now. And now the entire administration is taken over by what what is completely opposite and even twisted ways of thinking and they're passing laws of broadening hatred. So so we're in a very I sometimes think Dr. Brown that the Lord is lifting the hedge of protection around the US, because we haven't nationally repented of our sins. Yeah, America at large, I kind of I mean, that's the way it's kind of looking to me. Yeah, certainly we're in an urgent moment. And as I was saying, the book that comes out in October, it's it's revival, or we die.

Either we find mercy, or America as we know it is massive trouble. Hey, Kevin, thanks for being on the front lines. Thanks for your courage.

And you're seeking to be balanced and honest in all that you do. And I'm sure we'll stay in touch. Thanks for joining us today. Dr. Brown, thank you. All right. Appreciate it. God bless you. All right. We are out of time. Another program powered by the Truth Network.