Tom Winter with Col. Steve O'Donnell

Tom Winters, National Law Enforcement and Intelligent Correspondence for NBC News and a friend to a lot of people in the New England area. Tom, welcome to the Tara Granahan Show. Good morning, Steve. Always great to be on with you and best to Bill and everybody there at WPRO. Tom, let's... I know we could talk for these topics for hours and hours and hours relating to it, but I just had General Sentrakio on a little bit earlier talking about some of the things that happened in Iran. So just talk quickly about the extraction of pilots and, you know, the coverage that your NBC is covering it and how you see that in the scope of what's happening on a daily basis. As a time I look up at the TV, we're talking right now currently. There's a... proposal for a 45-day ceasefire that Iran is rejecting in the threats to bond the infrastructure of civilian instructors at inside of Iran. That's right, Steve. And actually, just as you were speaking there, alert popped up from one of our internal systems indicating that according to the IDF in Israel, 10 people have been killed as a result of a missile attack in that country. So this is just a kind of a constant situation. I think you mentioned our reporting. My colleagues at Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kuby, have a story up on NBC. and my colleague Dan DeLuse, who I cover some of the intelligence agencies with me. And basically, what you're seeing is to speak specifically to the operation, an effort to make sure that Iran for the safety of that second... And apparently is the person that runs the armament's part of the F-15 aircraft to make sure that they didn't capture that person for that, for that colonel's safety. That's who was captured. And so they were able, obviously, to get him out of there. He was hiding in a mountain crevice, was able to transmit part of their emergency systems to be able to get out of location, able to communicate. And the CIA, which operates in a number of countries, many of whom are hostile to us, apparently put out quite a disinformation campaign within the country of Iran to try to confuse the Iranians as to whether or not this person was actually out there where they could be, where this F-15 pilot was, or F-15 crew member was. just trying to make sure that they could keep the Iranians away from him as long as possible while they put together this plan. They executed an effort to land and set up a temporary airfield near Ishvan, which is where the Iranians hold most of their, or believed to hold most of their enriched uranium. The U.S. heads of Black Hawk helicopters have been hit as a result of some of these efforts, C-130, also damaged and destroyed.

loss of equipment, but obviously equipment can be replaced. No loss of life is pretty incredible. So this is the special operations groups of the U.S. military working hand in hand with the CIA, and you're seeing an effort that they've developed, frankly, over the last 20, 25 years following 9-11, the ability to operate in the Middle East and get in and get out and do these extraction efforts. High risk, high danger, but obviously high reward in returning this person back safely into our own hands. So that's that operation. You're talking about the, and I mentioned the deaths of a number of Israelis, it's just constant warfare. I mean, you imagine you're sitting there in East Providence, and in the middle of the broadcast, a siren goes off, and you've got a broadcast from the basement. or from a hardened, hardened room within, you know, 1502 Wampanog Trail. I mean, that's... That's the daily life that everybody is. People could be listening to us in their offices right now in their cars, and imagine driving along 95 sitting in traffic on the bridge, and you see missiles coming in overhead or in the middle of the night seeing missile defense system in the form of Iron Dome active in Israel. That's the life that everybody's living in the Middle East. On top of that, you've got the Strait of Hormuz, which is very clearly... almost entirely closed, except for a handful of countries. So do we start to have some oil shortages? This is an issue that impacts Asia tremendously. And then, you know, Iran's threat here in the United States. I think over the years, they've always had the ability to kind of operate a little bit within the United States. They have two, obviously, state-sponsored terrorist arms in the form of Hamas and Hezbollah. Hamas has been decimated following their deadly attack on Israel and Israel's response. Israel is also tremendously wounded Hezbollah. But we know from an incident that happened about 20 minutes from where I'm talking to you in New York City traffic. So about a mile, mile and a half, Iran tried to, it did, in fact, actually hire members of Russian organized crime to try and kill an Iranian journalist and activists here in New York City, Maso Linajad, and the OIPD pulled over that car. just a few blocks from her house that was filled with semi-automatic rifles. So it's a conflict that impacts everywhere, which is, I think, what your question is, and it's a long-winded way to say that, you know, this is going to be a complicated situation. And when you start a war, it takes one person to start it. It takes two people to end it. And that's, I think, a little bit of the challenge the administration has right now. Scrolling with Haley, join Haley Caronea as she scrolls through the biggest headlines. If you haven't watched this show before, we do blind reactions. I have not seen these videos, so I am seeing them for the first time with all of you. We're going to implement the tinfoil hat time segments and all the stuff you know and love. And I'm going to finish the show and answer some of your questions. Someone asked me, what made you get into podcasting, and I was producing podcasts for other people. And I was like, I could do this for myself. And here I am. Scrolling with Haley, follow and listen on your favorite platform.

Well, you touched on a couple, you know, super points. So add on the Houthis to that in Yemen, you know, another state-sponsored terrorism that is jumping into it. And then you talked a little bit about sleeper cells. And it's fascinating that, you know, obviously people should understand that state-sponsors terrorism like Iran utilizing organized criminal groups. So you said Russian organized crime, no different for using cartels or... any type of traditional organized crime that might be able to help them execute their mission. So if, you know, it's, so we're not always looking for that particular boogeyman. But those, there are criminal organizations that do things for money. And that's what I ran his. It's just not something new. It's across the board. So talk a little bit about we hear sleeper cells. I think that's kind of the sexy word that's out there. But there's been things that have happened here. You know, as recently is last month, you know, ISIS-inspired, domestic terrorism, those who get radicalized because what they're reading and the fascination when you read social media, what's true, what's not true. And you have to reconfirm and reconfirm to make sure what you're getting is true. But how that radicalizes some people who may not fully understand and get so angry and frustrated that commit terror events on our soil. Yeah, I think you kind of laid it out perfectly. And the challenge, Steve, that you know so well and some of the people that are currently in law enforcement know well and what I'm trying to convey to you to everybody who's listening to us today. And every time we broadcast, look, we had two terrorist attacks on one day a couple of weeks ago. And that's something that would have really rattled the country sometime back. You had the incident, Old Dominion University. I'll get back to that in a second because that was extremely troubling. You had the incident just outside of Detroit at Temple Israel, and that was an incident that could have been so much worse. There was a preschool there, and if it wasn't for the security guards shooting at that. Suspect. That would have been a problem. Now, that person was influenced by Hezbollah. You've got the person at Old Dominion likely influenced by ISIS. This is somebody who had been arrested previously charged with material support for ISIS gets out. And I think it's going to be a big challenge going forward. It's a big challenge for the FBI. I hope they're on top of it where there's been a number of individuals who were arrested and sentenced when ISIS was really putting out a lot of propaganda and actually directly communicating with some people in the United States in a case that has now been sentenced. And one I know you know as well as anybody, which is the Rovinsky case in Rhode Island tied to a terrorism case in Boston that led the FBI.

to shoot somebody who had pulled out a knife who was going to try to kill a police officer that day. A lot of people that were jammed up in those cases are going to be getting out of jail because they're arrested on material support. They didn't actually do anything, but they supported ISIS, and ISIS is a foreign terrorist organization, so they could be arrested and charged federally. That's not a life sentence, and so there's going to be a challenge as those individuals come out, some of whom may have turned their lives around. some of whom may not or maybe are further watching. So that's going to be a challenge. But yeah, on social media, look, you've got a lot of people that don't like what's happening in the world. They get motivated for all sorts of different reasons. And it's a real, you know, really easy to access this extremist material, whether it's ISIS, whether it's, you know, some of the more traditional things we've seen terrorists get radicalized by Hezbollah. just seeing what is being put out in Lebanon. And then, you know, there's all sorts of other forms of extremism, nihilistic violent extremism, which is going to be something I'm sure we'll be talking about a lot more in the next two to three years. All sorts of things that are out there. Social media makes it easy to pipe that in. And I liken it to, you know, kind of one of those old CD or record jukeboxes. It's just whatever music kind of speaks to you. People start to listen to it, and then they act out in dangerous ways. Well, even people that are fairly informed when you have conversations with them, it gets confusing. And you don't really get into arguments. I don't with people that I talk to about it. But they hear so much, see so much. Some of it's true. Some of it's not true. There's so much dialogue out there. It's, it's... I tell everybody you got to get it right. So, you know, listen to multiple media outlets, find the ones that you believe are credible. You know, I've had conversation with many people all the time about this happened, that happened. Even in the pilot being recovered, you know, there's videos of... airplanes being destroyed when they were actually videos from when they were in Afghanistan. So there's so much disinformation out there, it's really difficult for the regular person to figure out what's true. Same with radicalizing people. So Tom, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep you on. I have to break in 10 seconds anyhow. So I'm going to take a quick break, and I'll come back to you. We'll close out with you in the last seven or eight minutes. I want to take a quick break. Scrolling with Haley. I'm Haley Karenia. I scroll with the homies here in the live chat because there's a lot to scroll through on X, on Instagram, on TikTok. Cutting through the clutter, one hot take at a time. Love seeing you all in the chat before the show. I tried to jump in just a few minutes before to say hello. I love the chat interaction. Thank you for helping. But I do it to get all of the videos and all of the content that you won't find anywhere else. Scrolling with Haley. Just search that up and I will be there. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Welcome back to the Tara Granahan Show, Steve O'Donnell, filling in for Tara. On with Tom Winter from NBC. Tom, again, is a national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent. Tom, let's keep talking about what's happening in the world.

here actually on the radio that, you know, you have prosecutors, career prosecutors, career cops. No one's going to fudge something that doesn't exist. If you take something to grand jury, you present facts. And if those facts don't lead to probable cause to indict someone, then they're not there. If they are there, then they're there. So I think that's a really important point to make that these practitioners on the street who will be here later than lawyers that, you know, want to maintain their... credibility and their by license, it's important that they do it right. And 99% of all those professions do so. That's right. That's my experience. Yeah, I think there's always outliers. There's always people that that do the wrong thing. But that's same in every profession. And, you know, you've seen that. And how an organization deals with those individuals is another matter. I just, you know, the FBI's had a lot of people with a lot of experience leave. Same with the Justice Department, whether they've been fired or whether they've left on their own accord. And I do worry about a brain drain. We'll have to watch that. I think here as we... That's a big thing to watch here in 2026. The experience level at a federal level, I think on the local level, it remains strong for all the reasons that you mentioned. No, you have good young people coming up, but the historic perspective is really important across the board. So anything to close out with time before we run? No, just always a pleasure to be with you all. I think the world is an incredibly dangerous place at the moment. And, you know, I think your advice to people to be cautious about what you're seeing online, particularly in the artificial intelligence era and the videos that we're seeing being made by machines and not human beings, that's definitely something that's always top of my list. Tom Winter, thank you as always. Appreciate it. Thanks, pal. Scrolling with Haley. I'm Haley Karenia. I scroll with the homies here in the live chat because there's a lot to scroll through on X, on Instagram, on TikTok. Cutting through the clutter, one hot take at a time. Love seeing you all in the chat before the show. I tried to jump in just a few minutes before to say hello. I love the chat interaction. Thank you for helping. But I do it to get all of the videos and all of the content that you won't find anywhere else. Scrolling with Haley. Just search that up and I will be there. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.