The Assassination Attempt on Ex-CIA Cody Snodgres and Why Some Sources Must Remain Confidential
By Dave Hodges
TheCommonSenseShow.com
December 24th, 2017
One of the most common questions I receive from my audience is “How did you know about ____? Prying out government secrets is a relatively easy thing to do if one has adhere to a set of protocols. I am hopeful that our audience will understand why we sometimes must use unnamed sources. And Cody Snodgres should have remained unnamed.
Open Source Information
The easiest way to obtain classified information is through the Internet. The government stores an estimated 80% of its secrets online. However, the information is stored in multiple places and each location is usually incomplete and one has to know how to connect the dots of information that arises out of multiple sources. Modesty aside, connecting the dots is something that I do well. In fact, I was recruited to follow in my father’s footsteps and enter intelligence work and the Naval Academy was the selected venue. I turned it down as I did an offer that came from the CIA after I graduated from college and it was a case of the fruit does not fall very far from the tree.
Compiling open source data is burdensome but an effective means of figuring out what the more nefarious parts of the government are up to.
The Art of Obtaining Sensitive Information: Getting Sources to Talk
In order to go beyond the normal release of contrived information that is distributed to the MSM from intelligence sources (ie mostly boldfaced lies), one has to have a counter-balance and a strategy that includes developing the ability to obtain accurate information from deep cover sources who are in a position to know what can’t be obtained by FOIA requests background checks or from government-based data websites. Although as an aside, I could make a living just writing books on what I can obtain from government websites that would contradict many of the major stories released by the MSM which I refer to as factories of misinformation.
A related question that I get asked by people is how do you obtain your inside sources? First, many in the Independent Media (IM) will get contacted by an individual with a story to tell, but the IM person has the wrong demeanor and the source will back away. Reporters are sometimes too blunt and try to rush the story. One has to remember that a confidential source’s biggest fear is that they will be discovered. In fact, a common trick used by informants is to have a trusted personal source make first contact with the IM just to see if the reporter can be trusted. This strategy also prevents the NSA from identifying a source through things like voice recognition software. Also, one has to have the right demeanor to interact with a source, or most often a proxy source, which is very common.
Given that my father possessed some of the nation’s top military and technology secrets put me in a unique position to know many people who had access to similar information and I was raised in an environment where one had to adopt the proper demeanor and part of that included learning not to ask embarrassing questions. Additionally, I developed the demeanor on knowing how to talk to informant by merely facilitating the conversation as would a mental health therapist, of which I used to be in that line of work. One of my most effective questions that has yielded good results is “What do you want to tell me that you are afraid to let me know”. Or, “How much can you tell me without putting my life in jeopardy”? These types of questions can reveal some very petinent information.
Once one “taps into a sensitive area”, with a good source, it attracts like-minded insiders who want to get something off of their chest, especially if the revleation is incomplete. I call this the “echo effect”. I have put out stories only to have more damning information come my way because of the desire of most people to tell the entire story. I have learned that many of the people who work in our maligned organizations (eg DEA, FBI, and even the CIA) are actually good people who care about the country and want to come forward because unfolding events can negatively impact their children. This is why operatives will often tell you that they don’t fear dying themselves, however, by the time that many of these people reach me, they have already been generally told if they talk, their families will be killed, or even that their children will be put into horrific sex-slavery rings (very common) after their parents die in a car accident (eg Boston Brakes). Among intelligence operatives, this is a very common threat and a legitimate fear. Also, the threat of being framed and implicated in sex crimes against children is another popular threat designed to enforce complicit silence.
By the time a legitimaate and sensitive source approaches me, they have already developed “dead man switches” in which key information has already been distributed to an untold number of sources which will be released upon their demise. This is their insurance policy. I recently interviewed ex-CIA/Black Ops asset, Cody Snodgres and his revelations were stunning, dangerously so. He appeared on my show last Sunday and was on the Hagmann Report the next evening. Shortly after that, he was nearly killed in what I feel was a staged automobile accident designed to kill him. I can guarantee you that Cody does not fear what they will do to him, he is now thinking of his family members as he recovers from his injuries. I thought that he was almost too forthcoming in our interview and I asked him about retribution and he sloughed off the question. My instincts were good as he nearly died. The point of this story is that if a reporter is not willing to maintain confidentialty at all costs, they will never receive inside information. Some people write to me and are upset that I will not reveal the identity of a source and they claim that this practice hurts my credibility. Cody’s case is typical of the dangers a source faces. After the attempted assassination attempt on Cody, I made a video about Cody and the reasons IM reporters have to maintain the confidentiality of a source (see below). In fact, I was so concerned about Cody’s safety, I did not publish the interview on Youtube or on my website until 3 days after the interview, in case Cody changed his mind about having the information go viral. However, when I learned that he had appeared on the Hagmann show, I released the interview for all to hear.
The Rest…HERE
