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Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Hafetz, and welcome to Law on Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films. Film and turn tells us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll examine a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What legal issues does a film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

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Jonathan Hafetz

How is law important to understanding the film? And what does the film teach us about the law and about the larger context in which it operates? This episode we look at Syriana, a 2005 geopolitical thriller written and directed by Stephen Gagan, based loosely on former CIA case officer Robert Baer's memoir See No Evil. The film weaves together multiple storylines that involve a CIA agent, a US energy analyst, a major transnational law firm, and an oil rich Persian Gulf kingdom.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Syriana tackles complex themes of corruption, power, and terrorism from a distinctly post 9/11 vantage point. It also suggests how law operates in a transnational setting and how it seeks, but often fails to tame the forces of ambition, greed and power that drive the oil industry and America's role in it. With me to talk about Syriana is Margaret Peggy McGinnis, a professor at Saint John's University School of Law and co-director of Saint John Center on Comparative and International Law.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Peggy is a leading scholar of international law and has published numerous articles and books on international human rights law, international security, and the resolution of armed conflict, and the role and influence of international law in the United States. Peggy also serves currently as chair of the Council on International Affairs at the New York City Bar Association. In addition to her scholarship, Peggy has significant international experience, including work as a special assistant to former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and in the private sector.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Welcome to law and film, Peggy. Great to have you back on the podcast.

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Peggy McGuinness

Thanks, Jonathan. I'm so happy to be back. It was so fun talking about, my favorite movie about civil litigation, Michael Clayton. And now we get to talk about my favorite globalization movie.

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Jonathan Hafetz

I guess one of the common themes there are many others I think, but one of the common themes is George Clooney.

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Peggy McGuinness

That's right, that's right, George Clooney. Maybe we can think about at the height of his sort of I'm making serious films on serious topics, while I'm also making you know, Ocean's 11. But at the height of his, his acting career. But also he was doing good night and good luck around this time and really just digging into a lot of themes about US power in different ways.

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Jonathan Hafetz

And he gained some he gained some weight for the movie, for Syriana. So kind of doing the Robert DeNiro Raging Bull commitment to acting. Right? So that's why Brad, this is.

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Peggy McGuinness

Not the this is not the glamorous George Clooney. This is the hardscrabble, aging CIA operative George Clooney.

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Jonathan Hafetz

So let's put the film in context. What was it trying to do? What was going on at the time? What's happening?

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Peggy McGuinness

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that it was loosely based on Robert Baer's, memoir, which I have to admit I haven't read, but I am familiar from my time at the State Department about how, the Central Intelligence Agency operates overseas and, and you know, what it does in the context of protecting American power and, countering, what the United States sees as its strategic competitors and enemies.

00;03;26;24 - 00;03;58;21

Peggy McGuinness

And this is someone who the depiction here is someone who's deep into Middle East politics of the era of the turn of the 20th century. So Iran, as the sort of looming large enemy of the United States, in every respect, by the year 2000 and allies with the Arab monarchies in the Gulf. And, of course, you know, we can talk about Beirut, and it's always sort of the, its role as sort of, you know, this the Switzerland slash Paris slash, you know, playground of all of these different powers, in the Middle East.

00;03;58;21 - 00;04;23;11

Peggy McGuinness

But he speaks Arabic, he speaks Farsi. And we get we learned that right away, that he is comfortable in this milieu of working with, you know, corrupt Iranian Intel officers in one scene and, you know, Arabic speaking assassins who work for Hezbollah in another scene, you know, so that's an interesting sort of sort of setting. But I do think it's important to think about we're almost 20 years past this film being made, and we're definitely 20 years past 911.

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Peggy McGuinness

And I always thought of this film, I when I saw it, when it came out at the time, I thought, this is the film that best captures what's going on in this post 9/11 world. What is it the US has been, you know, what did we do for the last 60 years leading up to 9/11? Why are we in the Middle East in the first place?

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Peggy McGuinness

And where where are we going with all things Middle East? And I thought it it did a pretty good job of bringing some complicated strands of, globalization, as you say, corruption, terrorism and the power of multinationals and U.S., you know, geostrategic interests.

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Jonathan Hafetz

And as you had, Steven Gagan apparently went with Robert Baer. Bob Baer on a sort of tour of various countries before and sort of doing his research for the movie. So I guess he got kind of immersed. And, you know, it seems to come across, as far as I can tell. Obviously, I'm not a, I have no experience working in the CIA or, but, you know, some of it seemed pretty real to me, but that was sort of I thought that was kind of interesting, too.

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Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. We can talk more about sort of what it gets right about the National security bureaucracy, but, you know, it has it has these other strands. So maybe it would be useful to kind of talk about, you know, it's one of the critiques of the films is that it uses this multi narrative structure which for me I just loved it.

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Peggy McGuinness

But I will tell you, I'm just going to tell you a funny story from around this time. I'd seen the film and I was at a family event, and there was someone who's an actress was at this event and guess sort of a, you know, mid-level B-list kind of, you know, her name. So I won't mention it. But, you know, we were talking about films we liked and TV shows and things like that.

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Peggy McGuinness

And I mentioned, I've just seen this film, you know, Syrian, it's it's brilliant. And she said, I don't understand what happened in it. Do you, can you explain it? And I thought, this is super interesting, right. Somebody from Hollywood was like, yeah, I didn't get it. And then I realized, oh, if I had to explain it, it would take a really long time because it kind of, you know, it's a smart film and smart films don't they don't spoon feed you on, you know what a Gulf monarchy is, or you know who Hezbollah is, or you know, who are the Iranian clerics.

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Peggy McGuinness

And anyway, so there was a lot of things going on there, which if you had no context, you just see the camera saying, you know, we're now in Tehran now we're in Beirut, now we're in Geneva. And not having any background at all. That would be a pretty confusing narrative. So I understand that critique is sort of like from a, you know, the general public filmmaker.

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Peggy McGuinness

But for those of us who are steeped in these issues, it comes across as like brilliant and brings it all together in a way that I think is quite helpful to explaining, you know, where we were then and we can talk about you know, like, does it still? I think it holds up. I think there's a lot of things about this film that hold up 20 years later.

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Peggy McGuinness

There's still some things that we keep doing. We, the United States, are we the West? Are we lawyers working for transnational corporations that keep doing over and over again that we haven't sort of gotten out of some of these larger? I'll just call them to be fancy academic here. Systemic challenges of the neoliberal, you know, global economic and legal order.

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Peggy McGuinness

I mean, this is the stuff we talk about at conferences. And you could literally I think, you know, you mentioned earlier, maybe thinking about this is an issue spotter for students. You know, you could take out seeds here and talk about human rights. You could talk about migration. You can talk about corruption. You can talk about the role of the oil companies and climate change.

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Peggy McGuinness

You know, there's just so many things going on in this movie that, you know, it is an issue spotter in a way, for all the things that are contributing to both the problems in the world, but also in some ways, some of the, you know, opportunities for change. Right, you know, is a system so broken that we need this sort of what we're going through now, which is this, you know, populist, you know, sort of uprising around the globe against these, these forces of neoliberalism, or do we need some other approach?

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Peggy McGuinness

So I think, you know, these are big questions that you and I are not going to solve today. But certainly I think it holds up in that way, sort of asking the important questions.

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Jonathan Hafetz

And so yes, we talk about those multiple storylines. So let's try to zoom in more. We can talk about the four main ones I mean yeah on each one and talk about them. We have there's a CIA subplot. There's the capital markets and energy derivatives trader line. And then we have the corporate law and power, transnational corporations. And then lastly, we also have the sort of Persian Gulf Kingdom storyline.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Well, why don't we start with the CIA subplot? We've got George Clooney modeled roughly on former CIA agent Bob Baer. What's going on with this subplot?

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Peggy McGuinness

So, you know, I always feel like this, and I having rewatched it recently, I think, you know, the George Clooney character is the one that is the most interesting in some ways because he just seems like an interesting, you know, hey, who's this? Like, you know, he can kill people, he can sell missiles, he can speak Farsi in Arabic and party with bad boys in Tehran.

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Peggy McGuinness

You know, that's pretty like, that's a pretty interesting skill set, right? That's why I spy movies are popular. But it's not your typical. It's not James Bond. He's sort of the antihero, right? The opposite of the James Bond character. He's tired. You can sort of see his physical decay and he seems lost, right? He seems lost in terms of what he's doing.

00;09;07;26 - 00;09;31;03

Peggy McGuinness

And I think that is, I think that's reflective of kind of the post-Cold War, you know, national security apparatus of the United States, people trying to find the sort of, you know, central purpose. It was very easy during the Cold War. You know, we all those of us who were trained to go into U.S. government service or wanted to go into U.S. government service, you studied international relations, you read George Kennan, you understood the founding pillars of containment.

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Peggy McGuinness

And I entered the United States State Department literally the last year of the Cold War. So everything was like, we know what we're doing. We know what the general plan is. We know what we're for, what we're against. And then everything kind of melts away. And you have, between 1990 and the attacks on 911, this sort of like real chaos in terms of realignments and thinking about, you know, who are our strategic partners.

00;09;54;05 - 00;10;19;12

Peggy McGuinness

You know, what is the point of the Saudi partnership absent the Soviet Union? What is the point of the relationship with an emerging Russia and so on? Did you see this in this sort of a lot of back conversations, in the scenes that involve the George Clooney character, including one where he's dragged up to the hilt for what looks like a select committee on intelligence briefing, and you hear one of the senators or congresspeople, and it's not clear which chamber and say, you know, well, we're friends with the Russians now.

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Peggy McGuinness

We're friends with the Chinese now, you know, Iran will be liberalized soon. And he's the Clooney characters. Like, would you talk? You know, he's sort of look on his face, like, what are you talking about? You know, that's not how I see things. But he realizes he can't say it exactly that way. And his bluntness about, you know, the bad dudes that he deals with on the day to day is not welcome in those policy discussions.

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Peggy McGuinness

And that's where he's kind of now, like, where do I stand? And the plot line is, of course, one of the opening scenes with Bob is he's in Tehran and he's quote unquote, selling these missiles to some guys. We don't know who they are. We learn later they're Iranian intelligence operatives, and he sells some of these two sophisticated missiles, one of which they take, the other of which they sort of slide behind a curtain to these Arabic speaking guys.

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Peggy McGuinness

Who? And Bob's like, wait, what? Who are those dudes? I wasn't I didn't think I was selling it to those people. Where were they from? It's not until much later that we see that that missile ends up in the hands of that little terrorist cell in Syria on it, right? So it's much, much later in the movie, we find out that it's been diverted, but it's clear that Langley.

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Peggy McGuinness

Right, CIA headquarters doesn't want him to make any noise or fuss about what happened to this, quote unquote, other missile. And so that leaves a big open question as to, you know, who knew what when he was kept in the dark? Did they know about it in advance? Was it just carelessness? You don't really get an answer to that question, but it's clear that he's on to something that is part of a bigger plot line, which then connects his plot line right to the the Christopher Plummer plot line, which is, you know, the sort of the cat's paw, as they call him in the movie.

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Peggy McGuinness

I love that expression. This sort of power broker of Washington, DC played just, you know, what must have been one of his last roles. I'm a big fan of Christopher Plummer. It's a brilliant actor, but he plays it so deftly and sort of in an understated way, but he knows he's got his finger in every single plot line.

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Peggy McGuinness

That guy, which we find, you know, it sort of all comes together at the end, but it's, Bob is in really a really profound sense, just a bit player in this sort of larger story.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. I really like how you kind of talked about him as an outsider. He does feel actually a little bit kind of like a 1970s era as an anti-hero. He's sort of outside and you kind of see he's done his job, he's done as well, but he's kind of been, I mean, he's thought he was serving his country in some ways.

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Jonathan Hafetz

But as comes out in that scene towards the end with Christopher Plummer, he's sort of being like kind of used as a tool to some extent. And, you know, we can see at the end a couple things. One, in that scene with Christopher Plummer, we also see that although he seems a bit, you know, maybe he's lost a step or a little bit off his fastball, so to speak.

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Jonathan Hafetz

He is still, you know, dangerous the way he kind of threatens Christopher Plummer when he wants his passports back after the agent. I marginalized him right. Yeah.

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Peggy McGuinness

He still knows how to do that. Dead of night. Break in, undetected. Break in? Yeah.

00;13;11;27 - 00;13;29;13

Jonathan Hafetz

And then he, you know, he does that and try to, you know, kind of turn his power to try to do right at the end and, you know, you know, talk about when the plots merge, when he tries to prevent the CIA, U.S. assassination of the disliked or disfavored contestant to the leadership of Syriana.

00;13;29;16 - 00;13;52;23

Peggy McGuinness

The other thing that the depiction of Bob and there's a scene with, you know, the cast of this movie, it's like. It's like a deep cut of, you know, 80s and 90s stars. William Hurt showing up in the bar in the suburb across from, you know, like the Ikea in wherever in rural, you know, exurban Virginia, which is, you know, pretty accurate depiction of kind of the, the middle class lives that most national security U.S. government officials.

00;13;52;23 - 00;14;10;17

Peggy McGuinness

Right. These are people who are working for very relatively small salaries compared to, you know, the Dean Whiting's and the managing partners of the law firm, and certainly nothing like the princes of the golf. The levels of money are sort of interestingly portrayed here, the sort of Uber Uber wealth and then the mere wealth and then the sort of global affluent.

00;14;10;17 - 00;14;30;29

Peggy McGuinness

And then at the bottom of that are these guys who spent 20, 30 years doing incredibly dangerous things on behalf of their government. And the big news is his friend who left the CIA and is now a consultant, can afford to renovate his kitchen. George Clooney can't afford to pay private tuition for his kid to finish high school, and is encouraging him to apply to the University of Maryland so they get in-state tuition.

00;14;31;02 - 00;14;46;26

Peggy McGuinness

I just love that scene because, you know, it shows he's been worn out. His marriage has been destroyed. His kid thinks he's a, you know, congenital liar because he's lived this covert life. And yet he can't even afford, you know, now that his kids are getting ready to apply to college to cover the tuition. A lot happened in that scene.

00;14;46;26 - 00;15;11;03

Peggy McGuinness

Set how we in the United States still fail to. I think balance like the right approach to compensation for people who do these incredibly difficult jobs. And we can talk about in the context of DOJ, too, right. How much are the regulated being compensated versus the regulators? And so I think that's also a problem that's laid bare in, sort of Jeffrey Wright DOJ discussions that we can talk about.

00;15;11;05 - 00;15;28;15

Jonathan Hafetz

I love it that the scene with William Hurt, right? He goes when Bob Barnes, the George Clooney character, is, sent in, he sent back to carry out an assassination of the Prince Nasir, right, of the U.S. doesn't lie because it's going to, you know, possibly going to not give them the oil contract or getting their way of the oil that they want.

00;15;28;19 - 00;15;37;03

Jonathan Hafetz

And before he goes into Lebanon, he consults with William, her character, and William, her character, tells him, you know, if you're going to go in, you you got to clear it with Hezbollah.

00;15;37;05 - 00;15;59;25

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. I mean, that's sort of ripped from the headlines. Well, though, you know, so it's interesting that and so that introduces us to Beirut and it's sort of centrality is sort of like the crossroads of all of the various non-state actors in the Middle East, which is still true, although here we are talking about this after Nasrallah has been killed by the current Israeli onslaught against Hezbollah in Israel, after Hezbollah has been, you know, nonstop launching rockets into Israel.

00;15;59;27 - 00;16;17;22

Peggy McGuinness

So Hezbollah is significantly denuded. But, man, they are an organization that has survived for very long time in a very tough area because of, you know, the support from Iran. And, but it's interesting to see that, right? You sort of get that vibe of, you know, Clooney being driven through the streets to a neighborhood that's controlled by nuns.

00;16;17;25 - 00;16;34;28

Peggy McGuinness

They don't tell you that it's Nasrallah, but it kind of looks like it's from, and, you know, they have that conversation about he's got a little operation he wants to do, and they're going to clear it, although then it's sort of like, did they not clear it? And that's where it gets really get into sort of the murkiness of like who's that guy Jimmy slash Moussaoui?

00;16;35;01 - 00;16;49;12

Peggy McGuinness

And I think, you know, first of all, Mark strong is like so good at playing baddies. I don't know, he's just sort of like the king of the bad guys. And he plays this, you know, it's a small but devastating role. And I think the part of the film that I, you know, sort of, if there's a trigger warning, there's a torture scene, right?

00;16;49;12 - 00;17;11;16

Peggy McGuinness

And it turns out that it's, it's Clooney who suffers in the torture scene, and it's this guy who sounds American, but now he's going by this Muslim name, Assad. We, you know, is he with, you know, Hezbollah or is he operating for someone else? But with Hezbollah as permission? It's never clear. Right. What are his motives for turning on Bob, who we think he's we think he's the subcontractor.

00;17;11;21 - 00;17;29;20

Peggy McGuinness

Right. And then the script gets flipped. And who ordered that and for what purposes? And that? I think there's no clear answer to that question. I think, again, just leaves that open. But it's just this murky world of like, oh my goodness. You know, people can switch sides at a moment's notice and everyone is everyone's in danger and everyone's disposable.

00;17;29;23 - 00;17;42;25

Jonathan Hafetz

And then Clooney gets, you know, after he's tortured, right when he comes, he then becomes a liability for that. Yeah, yeah. Which wants to disown the incident. And they sort of take his passwords. They freeze them out. So he's after all his servants. He's sort of become persona non grata.

00;17;42;28 - 00;17;58;12

Peggy McGuinness

Right. And my understanding is and again, I haven't read the source material, but I saw a couple of interviews with Bob Baer. I think that's sort of ripped from his own experience. Right. So you you do something that you think is on orders and then there's some confusion about, you know, did the people at the top order or did they not?

00;17;58;12 - 00;18;14;26

Peggy McGuinness

Or they're trying to now distance themselves from it. And you can then find yourself at the back end of, you know, the wrong end of an investigation. Right. And I have seen this happen with State Department people as well. And so it's again, it's one of these things where how do we, you know, how do we regulate the behavior?

00;18;14;26 - 00;18;34;28

Peggy McGuinness

I mean, the CIA's in the special case, right? We're all Intel, which is what they do is illegal. What they do is lawful under US statutory authority or should be. But what they do when they're the things that they do are breaches of the law where they do them right, they break into places and they hurt people, and they bribe people and they and they get people to break the law, right?

00;18;34;28 - 00;18;54;22

Peggy McGuinness

Steal things, betray their commitments to their home, governments and so on for our benefit. That's the whole point of Intel operations. You know, I'm going to set aside covert military ops, and that's a dangerous place to be, right? If your government abandons you. Right. That's an incredibly dangerous place to base. They don't pay you very well. And then there's a chance that they might change their mind about whether they support you in the end.

00;18;54;22 - 00;19;11;26

Peggy McGuinness

And I think that's the that's sort of the the tragedy of the Bob story. You don't get some sort of interesting, happy story about what motivates him. Right? It's kind of like people fall into these things. Maybe they think it's an interesting job. I'm really good at languages. And next thing you know, I'm 30 years of lying about what I do for a living.

00;19;11;28 - 00;19;22;25

Peggy McGuinness

And I think that can happen. Right? And, Yeah. So I thought it's a really I thought it was a sympathetic portrayal and also left a lot of ambiguities and in a way that I think is appropriate.

00;19;22;27 - 00;19;38;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Let's move on to the capital markets. An energy derivatives trader plot. This is sort of the one center around Matt Damon as, Brian Woodman. So this is another important plot which intersects in various ways with the Clooney plot. On the other lines, what was your take on this story line?

00;19;38;28 - 00;19;58;06

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah, I thought it captured like, exactly right. The vibes of the 90s and early aughts. Right. Which, and I'm sure you know, you have friends who, you know, took these jobs in Europe and, you know, they're in consulting or they're in some sort of financial institution, and they live in Geneva. And, you know, it's a big expat town, and it's quite lovely.

00;19;58;06 - 00;20;24;27

Peggy McGuinness

And it's also super boring, but it's very nice place to raise a family. And, you know, and it's this is sort of easy affluence. What I loved is, you know, there's a sort of economy, the way Keegan puts the story together, but showing the showing the Matt Damon character doing that talking head thing on, you know, Sky news business or CNN business or whatever it is, you know, you travel around the world, you stay at the Hyatt or the Hilton or the Sheraton and you turn on the TV and there's at least three different business channels, right.

00;20;24;27 - 00;20;56;12

Peggy McGuinness

And the only place you know where you are is like, what index market? You know, they tell you what's happening on the Singapore Exchange. Are they telling you what's happening in Frankfurt? Are they telling you what's happening in New York? Like that's how you know where you are, right? What is the what is the nearest stock market? And, you know, what are the sort of local economic conditions that prevail, but that's like such a, such a great sort of encapsulation of that the global, what we call them, sort of the, you know, the financial markets, transnational class, you know, the I got my MBA from Penn, I did a couple of years at McKinsey.

00;20;56;12 - 00;21;13;09

Peggy McGuinness

You know, I went into derivatives trading, you know, with a couple of buddies from college and then another friend who was at Harvard with them, who lives in Frankfurt, and we put together this firm and we're super smart, and we're going to like, we're going to solve the world through financial structures. And we're going to create market efficiencies.

00;21;13;09 - 00;21;33;27

Peggy McGuinness

And we'll get we're going to be smarter than everyone else, and we're going to know how to do it. And we got to see the big picture. And we're going to you just we're just we're going to fix everything for you. So there was a great scene where he does that, you know, where Matt Damon does that very quick pitch at the Emir's party in Spain, at the big villa in Spain, where he's given a few minutes to pitch what it is that his firm can do for the kingdom of Syriana.

00;21;33;27 - 00;21;37;28

Peggy McGuinness

And I think it perfectly encapsulates this sort of era.

00;21;38;01 - 00;21;58;16

Movie Clip

Our position is that, the real world for you guys is, is another year of, record pricing. There are no more elephant fields, not even a natural gas. And, structural alternatives become more fully realized. You need new strategies to maximize every penny of your existing resources, and particularly in a climate of falling prices.

00;21;58;18 - 00;22;07;19

Movie Clip

And that's what, you know, our firm is prepared to to down problem solve with, you know, foreseeable and and unforeseeable, problems.

00;22;07;21 - 00;22;43;25

Jonathan Hafetz

You can and in a way, Matt Damon. Right. That's where he well, the two important things that happened, one is it's going to lead to the party at the Emir's state or whatever it is, where his young son, tragically, is electrocuted in the pool. And then second, the opportunity it creates for Matt Damon, who does seem to have some extra ordinary and I don't know if it's extraordinary, is the right word, but he he does seem to have a larger vision about what Nasir, the more progressive prince who's struggling, is trying to, you know, fight for this leadership in the country could do to improve it and to prevent it from continuing to be sort

00;22;43;25 - 00;22;46;06

Jonathan Hafetz

of, a vassal state, if you will.

00;22;46;06 - 00;23;06;00

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. I, you know, that's a succession battle story is quite interesting because it does pit it. It gives us an opportunity to sort of see what, you know, the quote unquote options might be. And it reflects probably some thinking about what was going on in Saudi Arabia at the time with the succession battle that MBS and his many, many, many siblings were involved in at the time.

00;23;06;03 - 00;23;34;06

Peggy McGuinness

And again, it's sort of this, you know, there's the torture scene is very hard to watch. I mean, the scene of the child dying is incredibly difficult, but that's the turning point for his character as well, because I do think there's something about, you know, he understands that maybe, you know, in the in the earlier scene that we just listened to where it's sort of all corporate speak, he sees this opportunity, even though he understands that he's getting this opportunity because the family is essentially paying blood money, which is a very normal Arab tradition.

00;23;34;06 - 00;23;56;25

Peggy McGuinness

You know, it's almost like, you know, tort damages. Right? We're responsible for the death of your son. We're going to give you our derivatives for $75 million. But there's a scene in the desert where you see this nice depiction there of like, how, you know, these sort of traditional societies with monarchies resolve disputes. Right. You have some someone coming to the prince to discuss a property matter, I think.

00;23;56;28 - 00;24;20;06

Peggy McGuinness

And he's sort of doing that, resolving that matter. And then he's having the conversation with Matt Damon. And Matt Damon sort of lays out his vision for Syrian, of which connects a couple of storylines. Right. Because it connects this issue of Prince Nazir has denied the American oil company its concession on this natural gas field, and he's given it to the Chinese company that was, quote unquote, the highest bidder.

00;24;20;06 - 00;24;39;02

Peggy McGuinness

So this is a this is like the rise of China in the early aughts. Right. So China's looming large as a competitor to Big Oil, and Big oil is Houston, big oil, it's America. Big oil is, you know, Konnex, I guess is sort of a standard for like Exxon. You know, we've been in the Gulf since the 30s and, you know, FDR wrote all those concession agreements, right?

00;24;39;05 - 00;24;54;27

Peggy McGuinness

The United States oil business has been and it's it's basically been, you know, Texas and the Gulf. Right? That's that's sort of the main story. I mean, it was also, we should be clear, it was also Iran, right? Pre-Revolution Iran. And so part of the story is like Big Oils Week does chomping at the bit to get back into Iran.

00;24;54;27 - 00;25;19;04

Peggy McGuinness

They've been out since they were kicked out in 79. They're chomping at the bit to get back in. And they're very pissed off at Prince Nasser, who made the decision apparently on this, giving the Chinese this oil concession. But you see, Brian sort of connecting the dots on the macroeconomic issues there, that what everybody really needs is to get a pipeline that would bring stuff directly overland into eastern Europe.

00;25;19;06 - 00;25;34;15

Peggy McGuinness

I'm trying to figure out the map and the geography there and that sort of drawing in the desert. But we'll we'll set that aside for now. But there's sort of a big picture there. I think it gets a lot of things right. But what's interesting, I just want to insert this to our conversation, because watching the film again recently was like, man, that got that totally wrong, right?

00;25;34;15 - 00;25;57;04

Peggy McGuinness

Which is two things are going on. One is that the Gulf is dominating oil production still in the early aughts. And, you know, protecting Gulf oil production was the the rationale that was publicly given by James Baker, the third, when he was, you know, a Houston, you know, the bushes and and the bakers of the world who came out of the Houston oil mill, so to speak.

00;25;57;04 - 00;26;14;09

Peggy McGuinness

Right. Big law firms that represent all the big oil companies, some of them, some of the bushes, direct investors in these oil operations. But the first Gulf War, the justification was, in James Baker's words, jobs, right. The reason we had to push Iraq back out of Kuwait was jobs. American jobs, because American jobs are dependent on Gulf oil.

00;26;14;11 - 00;26;30;24

Peggy McGuinness

Therefore, you know, we will protect Gulf oil at all costs. And our allies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia fast forward post nine over 11. That's still the case. But, you know, in the last 20 years, the United States has taken over. We're now the number one oil producer, and we haven't put the brakes on any of the global oil production.

00;26;30;27 - 00;26;51;02

Peggy McGuinness

In preparing for this, I decided to take a look. And it's incredibly depressing to look at the production charts. It's just a straight line up. Productions up in the United States, significantly, North America, United States and Canada. It's still up in the Middle East as well. You know, it's up in Latin America. So oil and gas is still the number one way that we're trying to energize our global economy.

00;26;51;05 - 00;27;10;19

Peggy McGuinness

And you know what's completely missing from the film is any discussion of the consequences on the environment. You could have had a fifth storyline about climate change, maybe. Although I do think the migrant story, you could directly connect the migrant story because these are South Asians. These are Pakistani migrant laborers, which is a very accurate depiction of how the Gulf runs its economy.

00;27;10;19 - 00;27;29;17

Peggy McGuinness

Right? The people who wear the pristine white outfits are not doing the jobs. It's the migrant laborers. So I think that's a pretty accurate depiction. And they're very much at the margins, right? Very subject to the whims of what happens with these big contracts. Are they going to keep their jobs? They're not going to keep their jobs. They can be deported, are going to be beaten up by local security.

00;27;29;17 - 00;27;39;12

Peggy McGuinness

I mean, those scenes really are hard to watch, but I think a very accurate sort of capture a vibe about South Asian migrant laborers in the Gulf.

00;27;39;14 - 00;28;09;22

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. It's interesting to take the climate change layer perspective and put it on what's happening. I mean, yeah, you could have a there could be a short scene where, you know, they have to leave their village in Pakistan, however, because of climate change, and now they're working there and you would have had it so now but you know, and then line about the jobs in Texas, I mean, that's an explicit reference, right, by Prince Nasir in the movie when he thinks we're talking about the Matt Damon character being like, and then, you know, we do something and then, you know, your president calls up and says, you know, we've got jobs in Texas.

00;28;09;22 - 00;28;11;00

Jonathan Hafetz

We've got to worry about.

00;28;11;02 - 00;28;33;20

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah, I think that's right. That's a good exchange to think about. And the other one is where there's an exchange a bit later in terms of the succession battle. Well, there's a few. And I maybe we should talk about in the context of the Whiting Sloan law firm, because I think that so, you know, we've sort of talked about around the margins, but I think the story for me, that the story that leapt out to me when I first watched it as a lawyer is the Jeffrey Wright storyline, right?

00;28;33;24 - 00;28;55;08

Peggy McGuinness

He's sort of the, in a way, that sort of mirror image. Well, it's sort of not quite mirror image to the the Bob Barnes character, but we see the world through the eyes of this character, Bennett Holliday. Right. And he's the mid-level to senior associate at a fancy DC firm. Obviously, he's you know, there's a scene where he goes to visit the client, and he's the only black person in the room.

00;28;55;08 - 00;29;13;28

Peggy McGuinness

He is also male. There are no women in the room. Right. So that these scenes are, like incredibly accurate and also incredibly depressing. But there's a sort of I mean, Jeffrey Wright is so understated and so great as an actor in conveying so much in his face when he doesn't have lines that there's not like a clip that we can, like, play that sort of convey.

00;29;14;00 - 00;29;33;06

Peggy McGuinness

But what you can see them, you can almost like see through his eyes and his facial expressions. The gears are turning. What are the compromises he's willing to make to get to the top? And I think it's set out right at the beginning of the film, where Dean Whiting, played by Christopher Plummer, is literally pruning his rosebushes and then it holiday comes.

00;29;33;06 - 00;29;38;25

Peggy McGuinness

He's been summoned to come talk to the senior partner at the firm about this forthcoming merger.

00;29;38;27 - 00;30;08;21

Movie Clip

A very big company connects our client, loses a huge natural gas contract in the Persian. Go to the Chinese at the same time, smaller company Killeen somehow gets the rights to Kazakhstan, one of the largest untapped oil fields in the world. Big company. Our client, merges with Clean Justice. Wants to know how Karim got those rights.

00;30;08;23 - 00;30;32;06

Movie Clip

You've been scrutinizing exactly these types of deals. So if there's something to find, I expect you to get it before they do and come straight to me. Brennan. So at my firm, I have a flock of sheep who think they're lions. Maybe you're a lion. Everyone thinks is a sheep.

00;30;32;09 - 00;30;55;22

Peggy McGuinness

So I think this sets up the moral. Like this resonated for me, and I would be super curious to know if it resonated for you. But if you've ever been in big law and you've ever been entrusted to do something for some very senior people at the firm where, you know, there's a lot at stake, it's, you know, sort of heart in your throat moment and there are spaces where the ethics are gray.

00;30;55;25 - 00;31;15;15

Peggy McGuinness

Right? There's a lot of spaces in the law where the ethics are gray. And so he's put down the marker to, Bennett, he being Dean Whiting. Right. This cool patrician powerbroker. I just when I saw the film, I immediately thought of Clark Clifford. I just think physically, you know, Christopher Plummer sort of. And folks who don't know who Clark Clifford was, you have to Google him.

00;31;15;17 - 00;31;34;05

Peggy McGuinness

But, you know, advisor to LBJ and to many, many, many presidents thereafter. And just sort of this eminence Griese of the of the DC bar slash power circles and all the power lunch spots in town and the power breakfast spots and all of that, and of course, beautiful mansion in Georgetown just sort of sets it up for kind of like who this character is.

00;31;34;07 - 00;32;01;16

Peggy McGuinness

And his challenge to there's the sort of the central purpose, which is we need this merger to go through, right. Context is this massive US oil company that's recently lost the bid for this project in Syriana, and they've now decided to merge with a smaller, more nimble. You know, I'm going to put in the air quotes originally a Wildcat hour kind of operation that's now become a BMF because it won this massive development agreement on an oil field in Kazakhstan.

00;32;01;19 - 00;32;23;26

Peggy McGuinness

The ten guys, they talk about the ten guys oil field. And so now the big player wants to merge with this little player to make the biggest player in the world. So you know, think when Exxon merged with Mobil right. You know you create this balance of oil and gas production and distribution around the globe. So the legal question here is, you know, we talked about this in our last podcast, which is how many films depict law practice as it really is in big law.

00;32;24;01 - 00;32;43;12

Peggy McGuinness

And this is the other aspect of big law, which is due diligence. Right. And internal investigations, like someone came to you and said, I've got a script idea, and it's about a bunch of associates sitting in a big warehouse, going through old documents, trying to figure out, if there's any, like, shenanigans have gone on in the past that might like, you know, scuttle this big merger deal, you'd be like, yeah, that's not a story there.

00;32;43;15 - 00;33;03;23

Peggy McGuinness

But that really is what the Jeffrey Wright character has been tasked to do, right? He is the senior associate in charge of this. You can call it due diligence or an internal investigation, depending on whether you think it's litigation oriented to challenges from DOJ or whether it's just compliance. Right. Compliance with what the US government does in merger and large mergers, which is you've got to get approval from DOJ.

00;33;03;23 - 00;33;26;27

Peggy McGuinness

And if there's national security issues involved, it might be as if he to review, which is the National Security Review of Mergers and acquisitions. And so he's been given this marker. And the challenge that Dean Whiting gives him is, are you a sheep or are you a lion? And what does that mean, right. To a mid-level associate, are you going to go along with like the easy way out, or are you going to take the risks and really like go for the big prey?

00;33;26;27 - 00;33;44;15

Peggy McGuinness

Now, when you first see that scene, you can't predict that the prey that he goes for ends up being its boss. Right? So that's spoiler alert. Sorry, but that was I think when I remember seeing the film for the first time and just kind of gasping because that's like, oh, you've got okay, so what do we we should talk in between about what DOJ was doing?

00;33;44;15 - 00;34;01;22

Peggy McGuinness

Because I do think there's a couple of key scenes. And I have to say, David Clement is one of my favorite character actors of all time. And I don't do this too at the last podcast. But we can do it again, because he's my favorite movie about human rights diplomacy, which is an area of my scholarship. Is the Costa Gravis film missing?

00;34;01;28 - 00;34;17;18

Peggy McGuinness

And I don't know if you've done one on missing, but we can put a marker down and do missing because I think it's one of the most important films about human rights in the history of film. So. But David Gordon plays a State Department official here. He's playing a DOJ guy who doesn't even get a last name. It's kind of funny in the movie, he's just Donald over in the DOJ build it.

00;34;17;18 - 00;34;31;15

Peggy McGuinness

You know, he's a Maine justice, but there might also be a U.S. attorney. And it's all very sort of like, you know, these people at justice who, you know, he obviously knows Ben at Holiday and their first meeting, but maybe we should talk. Maybe we should play that clip and talk about it on the other side.

00;34;31;17 - 00;34;54;01

Movie Clip

There is no way a company like Ilene pulled off a deal like this without paying somebody off. Why don't you tell me what you have so I can respond? I used to think there was something wrong. Now I know there's something wrong here. Either you don't find anything because you don't know how to look, or you do, and they carve you out and like you on fire.

00;34;54;03 - 00;35;10;29

Movie Clip

That's got to be the play here, right? Then it's a holiday, Sidney. You. It's new boy. How many of those have I seen? Six. Seven. They're all gone. He's still Sidney fucking Hewitt.

00;35;11;01 - 00;35;30;07

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. So I'd be. I'd be curious cause you've done some litigating as well. And I'm going to be clear here. I never was in the U.S. Attorney's office. I never was in Ada. I only once was in the big room with the regulator. And so it reminded me of that. And it happened to be a meeting with the SEC enforcement division with a big client, and I was the most junior person in the room.

00;35;30;12 - 00;35;51;18

Peggy McGuinness

And you sort of see how there's a bit of a delicate dance, right? They want to find out. Are you going to really act in good faith because all the resources are on your side, your side being the big firm, right? You've got the huge client that has endless deep pockets that can pay millions of millions of dollars to do the work that, frankly, the government can't do.

00;35;51;19 - 00;36;12;05

Peggy McGuinness

Like, we need you to cooperate and produce the documents that are relevant in order for us to do our jobs. We can't just, you know, Willy nilly convene grand juries and slow down the gears of American capitalism by investigating every merger and acquisition. Right. That's not how it works. It's we depend on you to do your internal investigation to assist us in approving this merger.

00;36;12;10 - 00;36;30;13

Peggy McGuinness

Right. And so that's a very all of a sudden, like, again, it just shows the asymmetry of resources. I mean, they do a nice job of kind of again, David Klein is like he's just very good at this. It's like you already have a picture of him. He's on the phone with the Volvo dealer. Okay. So he's a he's sort of a left of center, really smart lawyer.

00;36;30;13 - 00;36;47;26

Peggy McGuinness

Went to one of the top schools. He drives a Volvo. There's a picture of Clinton. Must be the president at the time in the background. You know, it's sort of like all comes together. And he's probably been at a big firm as a litigator. Now. He's got a really senior job at DOJ, and he likes to play that power, but he doesn't really have the power in the room, you know.

00;36;47;26 - 00;37;14;09

Peggy McGuinness

And so there's that. You know that line about now I think that I think there really is something now you've got he asks, you know Jeff what do you got. Well, you know, now I think I've got something. But then this leads us to the next conversation, which is a little bit more ominous, right? And a little bit more troubling in terms of the DOJ ethics, which is when he pulls up in his car while Bennett's out for a run, they've already revealed that there's a problem, which is to say the law firm has already talked to God about, hey, we found something.

00;37;14;15 - 00;37;39;13

Peggy McGuinness

And that thing that they found, and I used to show this clip in when I taught international business transactions because it's I think it's the only mention in the film that I'm aware of, of the foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Right. And that is a real thing. And that is a real statute that has real enforcement teeth. And I'm old enough to remember when there were fights about its implementation in the 90s, at a time when the United States and I, we should explain to the audience, right.

00;37;39;13 - 00;37;58;18

Peggy McGuinness

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it illegal for Americans and American companies to bribe foreign officials. And it's not intuitive that there should be such a statute because the old view was, well, bribery is illegal here because, you know, we're democracy and we have the rule of law and all that. But, you know, hey, if you're doing business, you know, the places.

00;37;58;18 - 00;38;11;27

Peggy McGuinness

It's just kind of, you know, to rigor, it's what you do. You got to pay off the the guys in the customs house. You got to pay off the judges if you want to get your case heard, you got to, you know, pay off the officials in the Ministry of Commerce if you want to get your contracts. And so that's just normal.

00;38;11;29 - 00;38;37;01

Peggy McGuinness

And then, you know, there was a move in the late 70s to enact, sort of more regulations in the space. And FCPA was one of them. But for a long time the U.S. had it and France and Germany didn't, you know, was when I was serving for the State Department in Europe, U.S. companies would complain all the time about the asymmetry, because German companies could not only pay bribes to get contracts for their big companies, but they could, you know, the companies that paid them could deducted on their taxes.

00;38;37;03 - 00;38;54;05

Peggy McGuinness

So there's a lot of multilateralism around these issues that, you know, OSCE, you know, the places over the over time, or I should say OECD. So by the time this film comes along, you know, it's a real thing and DOJ enforces it and the SEC enforces it. And, you know, Bennet Holiday finds some pay offs that were made in Kazakhstan by the clean company.

00;38;54;08 - 00;38;58;08

Peggy McGuinness

So maybe we could play the clip where he confronts Danny Dalton. Right.

00;38;58;13 - 00;39;00;14

Jonathan Hafetz

The Tim Blake Nelson character, where he.

00;39;00;17 - 00;39;01;00

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah, he's.

00;39;01;00 - 00;39;05;26

Jonathan Hafetz

The operative in Tim Blake Nelson. But we got let's play this clip because he gives this kind of stirring defense.

00;39;05;26 - 00;39;09;27

Peggy McGuinness

During defensive production. Yeah. And I think yeah it's great.

00;39;10;00 - 00;39;36;28

Movie Clip

Some trust fund prosecutor got off message at Yale. Thinks he's going to run this up the flagpole, make a name for himself. Now you get elected. Some congressmen from nowhere with the result that China or Russia can suddenly start having at our expense all the advantages we enjoy here. No, I tell you, no, sir. Corruption charges. Corruption. Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiency is the form of regulation.

00;39;37;01 - 00;39;58;05

Movie Clip

That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it. Precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps. I mean, out in the street. Corruption is why we win.

00;39;58;07 - 00;40;21;11

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah, I just love this clip because, you know, he you know, there's Milton Friedman, there's a clip earlier in the movie where you see his character testifying before Congress about, you know, like the dangers of overregulation and the need to have the free market and sort of plaza. Right. That's always the sort of right of center, pro-business, you know, all of this money that goes into like deregulation, get the government off our backs.

00;40;21;18 - 00;40;39;00

Peggy McGuinness

And then he just has this like blatant defense of of course, this is what Friedman's talking about. Like everything, it should all be laissez faire. You do what you do. The chips fall where they may, you know, they make it illegal just so we can do it right. That's the kind of boy, oh, boy. That's a sort of way of thinking about.

00;40;39;04 - 00;40;53;20

Peggy McGuinness

Well, they put these regulations in place so we know what to do to to do what we need to do and cover up what we need to do and so that we can still dominate economically. I mean, this sort of a lot going on there. But he's such a colorful character. What are your thoughts on this? The negotiation there.

00;40;53;20 - 00;41;00;09

Peggy McGuinness

And then, you know, when he pulls up in the car in that other scene, it's like he's not enough, right? The Danny Dalton characters not enough.

00;41;00;11 - 00;41;17;19

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. So Jeffrey Wright Jeffrey Wright character better. Holiday is in this position he's navigating. Right. He's got the direction from Christopher Plummer, the eminent Greece right to, you know, to be an ally. I know sheep. And then from the advice from his boss. Right. The partners supervising him, Sydney Hewett.

00;41;17;21 - 00;41;18;12

Peggy McGuinness

Oh, that scene on the.

00;41;18;12 - 00;41;21;25

Jonathan Hafetz

Plane, right on the plane was a great. Yeah, a great little scene here.

00;41;21;27 - 00;41;47;25

Movie Clip

You've just visited what? Someday soon could be the most profitable corporation in America. Provided the government approves the merger. Provided we don't start running automobiles on water, provided there's still chaos in the middle East. Now the job is find the problem, fix the problem. And if you do not find a problem, then there is no problem. And when the government approves this merger, it's going to buy a lot of houses up in the vineyard maybe than yours.

00;41;47;28 - 00;42;05;03

Jonathan Hafetz

So he says, if you don't find a problem, there is no problem. If you find the problem, fix the problem, right? So you've got to clear everything up. You know, you've got the pressure from DOJ because of, as you said, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, saying basically, you know, you're going to not let the merger go through and you've got to give something up.

00;42;05;06 - 00;42;24;11

Jonathan Hafetz

And so the second scene, second conversation between Donald, the DOJ attorney, and the Jeffrey Wright character, when he says he's going to need more, right? He needs more than, Danny Dog. And then Bennett comes back and says, well, you know, his counter is he's significant. And also, this is the best you're going to get. It's going to be scorched earth.

00;42;24;11 - 00;42;30;27

Jonathan Hafetz

You know, this firm has all the resources. But you know, well, I mean, this is my experience. You know, DOJ also has vast resources.

00;42;31;01 - 00;42;32;12

Peggy McGuinness

Has the power to subpoena.

00;42;32;14 - 00;42;40;17

Jonathan Hafetz

Know. Yeah. Yeah. So as we said, we need more. And then that's when they come up with the idea. Well that's what he tells me. He's more. And then he comes to that.

00;42;40;17 - 00;43;06;14

Peggy McGuinness

Barbecue scene with the with the Chris Cooper character who runs clean because he's, he knows where all the bodies are buried. So the, you know, the Danny Dalton character had some, you know, improper LLC that paid off somebody's private school tuition in Switzerland. You know it was significant, but not like big time. And it's clear that the CEO of Clean is willing to tip Bennett off to bigger fish in that scene.

00;43;06;16 - 00;43;39;09

Movie Clip

They need another body to go. What if what if it involves somebody at your firm? Someone way the hell of both you. We'd have to have, an understanding. Well, just if he's as big as I say. And when he goes down, the merger will be approved. Just like that. We're looking for the illusion of due diligence, Mr. Pope.

00;43;39;12 - 00;43;47;29

Movie Clip

To the successful, persecuted. It gives us that illusion. Call me Jimmy.

00;43;48;01 - 00;43;59;25

Jonathan Hafetz

I love that scene. On one of the lines I really like is the Jeffrey Wright character says, we don't need due diligence. We just need the illusion of due diligence. And if we give this up right, it will go through.

00;43;59;25 - 00;44;16;09

Peggy McGuinness

And yeah, I mean, it's clear, like the Chris Cooper character, Jimmy Pope, right? I think his name is he's he's also like such a great type because he's, he's up from his bootstraps. He has that you know, he gives a little sort of biographical background in one of the scenes, you know, wild card or no one gave me anything.

00;44;16;09 - 00;44;32;19

Peggy McGuinness

I worked my ass off for 30 years to get where I'm at. But it's clear he got this huge contract in Kazakhstan because of, like, major. You know, there's gonna be major corruption involved there. I mean, you know, it's sort of you don't have to be that careful. A reader of, like, global politics to understand how terrible the notes are by of regimes mean.

00;44;32;19 - 00;44;58;15

Peggy McGuinness

So, you know, it's clear that everybody is tainted. Right. Danny's just, you know, left some, like, obvious paper trail about this was boarding school. And so this is where Bennett becomes the lion, I guess is in this scene because he talks to the CEO and not to his boss, Sidney Hewett, who really starting to look like a little bit too complacent, fat and happy with his house and Martha's Vineyard and, you know, his squash games and all of that.

00;44;58;15 - 00;45;15;19

Peggy McGuinness

But this is when he makes the deal and he shows his cards about his ethics. Right? And I mean, it's it's Yeah. So I think that's quite interesting. I mean, in some ways, I think the film does a really good job of portraying the absolute contempt that a lot of business people have for regulation. I mean, it's depressing, right?

00;45;15;19 - 00;45;36;05

Peggy McGuinness

It's a sad statement that there's no there's no sort of appreciation of everything, every single thing that the rule of law did to create this oil mess in the United States, that it was the United States government and the lives of people like Bob bear and, military interventions in the Gulf that keep them going. There's no there's no appreciation for the social benefits they get to use.

00;45;36;05 - 00;45;51;16

Peggy McGuinness

Kind of the Elizabeth Warren kind of, you know, we built those roads like we built those air bases, you know, U.S. taxpayers fund those air bases that protect your interests in the Middle East. You know, we pay for these CIA officers to ruin their personal lives and, and put themselves at personal risk to protect your interests in the Middle East.

00;45;51;20 - 00;46;14;27

Peggy McGuinness

There's no appreciation for that at all. It's just get off my back with this freakin Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bullshit, you know? And, just really, just kind of terrifyingly ruthless group in that sense. There's nothing sort of interesting or redeeming about the oil men of the year who are gathered at that banquet. You know, you just sort of it's like a parade of horribles, and you just think, yuck, these are all kind of gross people.

00;46;14;29 - 00;46;31;22

Peggy McGuinness

That's at least how I think about it. And I should I should be careful here. My father was a that was a geophysicist who made most of his living working for Big oil and, including for Aramco for many years. So, you know, I sort of know, you know, the scientists are, all these lovely people who are scientists who don't go into sort of the, the C-suite.

00;46;31;22 - 00;46;46;06

Peggy McGuinness

But yeah, it's, it's the thing that built America, right? I mean, we wouldn't be the power that we are today were it not for the oil business. What was that? What was the, Daniel Day-Lewis film there Will Be Blood? I mean, I sort of like it's almost like a bookend. Like, how did it start with, you know, like, what's that or that meme?

00;46;46;06 - 00;46;50;14

Peggy McGuinness

Like how it started, you know, how it looks now. Kind of. That's the that's,

00;46;50;21 - 00;46;51;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Most straight line, right?

00;46;52;00 - 00;47;15;05

Peggy McGuinness

Right. Yeah. Ruthlessness and ruthlessness out kind of a thing. So I think that's where we know you don't yet know exactly what Bennet has up his sleeve, but that's where he takes the turn, so to speak. And and, of course, you know, the merger is going to go through after he sets up his boss, who's been engaged in, like, the thing that he did wrong was not just to sort of pay for private school, but like, took a cut of the deal, which is going to piss off the people in the oil companies too.

00;47;15;05 - 00;47;26;07

Peggy McGuinness

So they have no they have now no interest in protecting this outside counsel who set up his own little stream of income off of the deal. And, and that's the end of the end of the line for Hewitt.

00;47;26;09 - 00;47;35;11

Jonathan Hafetz

There's a great also little connection with the paying for the school because, as you said before, that's exactly what George Clooney, the lifelong servant, you know, U.S. government official can't do, right, is.

00;47;35;11 - 00;47;37;10

Peggy McGuinness

That the faculty? Yeah. Yeah.

00;47;37;11 - 00;47;52;06

Jonathan Hafetz

Okay. Yeah. You know, so let's talk about the, the fourth line, right. With the a little more about we touched you on the Pakistan. Yeah. Migrant laborers. And there's a character. Waseem Khan becomes radicalized. And his friend Farooq, what was your kind of view of this storyline?

00;47;52;07 - 00;48;15;16

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah, I you know, I remember it from my first watching and rewatching it again recently. I was really taken by how lovely this portrayal is. I really love these characters. I think they are. First of all, the actors are great in it. They're very sweet and I think there is a real connection between the kind of radicalization that happened to them and the radicalization that we've been talking about in the United States, about the bro sphere.

00;48;15;16 - 00;48;33;29

Peggy McGuinness

And, you know, the sort of radicalization of the extreme right in the United States. And it reminded me also of a fantastic scene in that play, The Ferryman, which is about the IRA. I saw it a few years ago on Broadway. It's a brilliant play about Fermanagh in the 1980s, and the backstory is the disappearance of a bunch of Irishmen who were murdered.

00;48;34;02 - 00;48;52;06

Peggy McGuinness

And it turns out they were killed by the IRA because they were viewed as double agents of the Brits and there's a scene in that play and just a bunch of teenagers drinking beer. And, you know, one of them hasn't had much beer yet, and they sort of. And one of the teenagers who's drinking beer is bragging that he's been doing a side job as a lookout person for the IRA and how cool it is.

00;48;52;08 - 00;49;13;13

Peggy McGuinness

And that's that scene when they're back in their barracks and the guy is talking about going to the religious school, the madrassa, and he says, hold the madrassa. They've got like lamb kebabs and they've got this and that, and they've got all this cool stuff and they're like, okay, you know what? Check it out. And then there. Then there's this really sweet scene where they're just being teenagers, kind of like trying to be cool, like climbing up that radio tower and like, mocking each other.

00;49;13;13 - 00;49;30;23

Peggy McGuinness

They play little soccer here and there and ribbing each other about girls and who's cute and who they'd sleep with. And, you know, it's sort of like trying to figure out their masculinity and their place in the world. And then the Imam comes along. It turns out he's a cool guy, like, he's he plays soccer and he's like, it's okay to be a virgin.

00;49;30;23 - 00;49;49;20

Peggy McGuinness

In fact, it's good to be a virgin. They're like, oh, okay, we're cool. Like, that's good. And then they go to the madrassa, right? There's this wonderful scene of the of the imam at the madrassa who does this critique of the liberal global order. Now his answer is the Koran, right? He keeps saying, oh, Koran, you know the answer to it's not it's not a matter of changing politics.

00;49;49;20 - 00;50;10;29

Peggy McGuinness

It's the Koran. It's not a matter of changing neoliberal trade. Even mentions like trade law, like it's crazy. Like he's really into, like, thinking about these issues. The Koran is the answer. Right? So all the answers to these things that have led to the misery at this migrant labor camp where we are subject to the whims of this host government that doesn't give us any visa status, the transnational companies that employers who give us no job security.

00;50;11;06 - 00;50;26;10

Peggy McGuinness

The answer is the Koran. Like that's where they find their purpose. But he's giving this speech and there's just this, like, delicious meal in front of them, like they've been eating crap back in the trailers at the migrant camp. And they go to the madrassa and it's like, oh, this is where the cool kids are. This is where the good food is.

00;50;26;16 - 00;50;45;10

Peggy McGuinness

This person is explaining my misery in a way that is totally accessible to me and is totally understandable. And then they get shown the missile and it's like this cool secret thing, like, I'm going to show you something that's like, really, really cool. And that's when your heart sinks. You know that these boys are boys, right? They just want a girlfriend.

00;50;45;10 - 00;51;00;24

Peggy McGuinness

They just want to, like, start their lives and have like, a chance at, like, living somewhere and like, you know, Waseem, I think it's the Waseem character to bring his mom over. You know, he's been separated from his mom. He and his dad are working as migrant laborers. It's just so sad. And it really tugged at my heartstrings a little bit.

00;51;00;27 - 00;51;23;05

Peggy McGuinness

But it's also, I think, a really it's universal. There's no distinction, really, these acts of radicalization that happen in all cultures, all religions, many different points historically. And it's that, you know, and we're seeing it this sort of what we call the gender gap today, I think, in the United States is a similar kind of development where there's just a crisis of figuring out your role as a, as a young man in the world.

00;51;23;05 - 00;51;27;14

Peggy McGuinness

And, and that's what leads them into the, into the terrorist cell.

00;51;27;16 - 00;51;49;10

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. It is the kind of explicit critique of the neoliberal order. Right? The pain of living in the modern world will never be solved by a liberal society. Liberal society has failed. Christian theology has failed, the West has failed. And I think for the reasons you said, you know, Waseem is perfectly sort of primed to hear this. He's also, and there's also that scene they show where he's beaten by one of the security guards.

00;51;49;10 - 00;51;51;10

Jonathan Hafetz

Right. And so he's sort of.

00;51;51;12 - 00;52;07;13

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. And that made me think of the southern border. I mean, there's just that sort of scene where those workers are at their most vulnerable. They're told, the Chinese are taking over your visas are no longer valid. There's like a scores of them standing there with their hard hats. They've been working their butts off, working in these, like, oil refineries, like doing incredibly dangerous work.

00;52;07;20 - 00;52;26;05

Peggy McGuinness

And then they're told, like, you're here at the sort of discretion of this royal family that has pretty rough security guards. Right. And then they're trying to figure out next jobs and status, and they get pulled out of line and beaten up in a way that was just completely arbitrary. And as you know, that there's no mechanism for them to to remedy that abuse.

00;52;26;08 - 00;52;35;09

Jonathan Hafetz

And then you have the moving video to the martyr video that Waseem had made, and he brings the, you know, drives that missile into the into the oil tanker.

00;52;35;12 - 00;52;55;13

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. No. And they show that there's a couple of scenes early where they, they get to see other people's martyr videos. And so they're sort of get programed into like this is that, you know, you, you two can have the chance to be this, to have a video and to be able to tell, you know, your family what to do with your body and how you want them to live their lives and even just maybe, that video's the most you'll have.

00;52;55;14 - 00;53;12;20

Peggy McGuinness

You'll have this deep central purpose in your life for your family if you do this, if you do this act. And I think that's yeah, I think that's a pretty accurate description of the process. But that also brings us to maybe we want to talk a little bit about the monarchs themselves, because I think, you know, you've got the succession battle.

00;53;12;20 - 00;53;36;26

Peggy McGuinness

And that's where I think there's sort of a bigger critique here of the United States picking and choosing, right, picking and choosing who gets to win these succession battles. And the younger brother is just such a horrific, you know, spoiled human with his perfect Oxbridge accent on his yacht, off of Cop Down TV, does a great scene where we see the younger princeling who, you know, wants the throne over his older brother Waseem, right.

00;53;36;26 - 00;53;56;26

Peggy McGuinness

Who's the foreign minister? And he's already the guy who's doing the job and his sort of Playboy younger brother is like, no, no, no, I want the job. But we then see Dean Whiting aka you know, Christopher Plummer is sitting on the yacht, and I think that scene is kind of Christopher Plummer is sort of embodying the US government.

00;53;56;28 - 00;54;22;20

Movie Clip

Prince, is there anything that we can do for you Americans always happy to drill holes in other people's countries. I've heard of you used to waiting for Cat's Paw of the Saudi princes. I know your brother, the foreign minister. He's very bright. I know your father, too. He threw the second creepiest party I've ever been to in Washington.

00;54;22;22 - 00;54;49;04

Movie Clip

And as far as I can see, you could probably use a bit of a cat's paw yourself. Second born son. So be down by his family. He can't even tell me what he wants when he's asked. Straight out, a grown up baby who's afraid of his brother. And maybe he wants to be king. Maybe. Well, Prince, are you a king?

00;54;49;07 - 00;54;51;27

Movie Clip

Can you tell me what you want?

00;54;51;29 - 00;55;10;14

Peggy McGuinness

I mean, this is, you know, it's a literal scene because he's a little like. We use that expression a lot. Oh, that person has so much power. They're a real kingmaker. Like, he's literally making the king, right? He's choosing who's going to take over when the king retires, who's, you know, we see from a couple of scenes is like aging and has some sort of chronic health problems.

00;55;10;16 - 00;55;35;02

Peggy McGuinness

And what we don't know, I think at that time is how this ties in with Baba's story and how critical it is to get Prince Nasir out of the picture. Right. And so that that, I think, is the thing that's probably the most confusing. And I feel like it made more sense to me on the second watching. Like, why does Bob Baer end up at the scene, the sort of penultimate scene of the demise of Prince Nasir?

00;55;35;04 - 00;56;00;21

Peggy McGuinness

And, you know, Bob put everything together, you know, and sort of well, he knew that they wanted Nasser out because he'd been told to assassinate him, and then he kind of has a change of heart and decides he's going to go to Syriana to warn Prince Nasir that something bad is happening and it's happening. I guess it's sort of the sort of immediate backstory is there's like a coup, there's some sort of decision making is happening, and there's going to be a sort of struggle, and whoever gets there first is going to win the prize.

00;56;00;21 - 00;56;20;12

Peggy McGuinness

But unbeknownst to Prince Nasir at the United States, is actually targeting him for targeted assassinate. And they've already set that up because there's an earlier scene where they talk about when Bob Baer is told that he should go assassinate him or rearrange his assassination. Moussaoui. In Beirut, they give him a portfolio that says, oh, he's the guy who's supporting the terrorist cells.

00;56;20;14 - 00;56;38;08

Peggy McGuinness

So he's the guy we've got to take out. He's the bad actor. And you can read into this like, you know, who in the Saudi, who in the Gulf monarchies was supporting al-Qaida directly versus indirectly. And so there are some sort of attempts to kind of put it together with the 911 story, I think, there. But it was it wasn't so clearly delineated in the storyline.

00;56;38;08 - 00;56;56;04

Peggy McGuinness

I think it's confusing for a watcher to sort of figure that out, that Nasser wasn't funding terrorist cells. At least we don't think he is. But the CIA is telling Bob Baer that he is, and they've got now a paper trail that will justify them using what the United States did use and still continues to use, which is targeted assassination for those that are leading.

00;56;56;07 - 00;57;07;20

Peggy McGuinness

As one of my friends in the government, there's always someone at the top of the list. You kill the person who's number one, and then the person who's number two goes to the top of the list right into the kill list for al Qaeda. It was like a, you know, a running running list. People keep moving up the queue.

00;57;07;22 - 00;57;10;15

Peggy McGuinness

That's that horrific drone strike scene.

00;57;10;17 - 00;57;30;03

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, I thought the merger of the lines was really effective. Right. And in a way, like it's kind of looking back towards 911, but also kind of looking forward to what would be kind of the drone war period that, the film, the beginning of where you have the drone strike on Prince Nasir, by the way, played brilliantly by Alexander Siddig or, you know, a bunch of I'm saying.

00;57;30;08 - 00;57;33;19

Peggy McGuinness

I love him. He's in Peaky Blinders, one of my favorite shows.

00;57;33;25 - 00;57;48;12

Jonathan Hafetz

It's actually really good, really good. So the drone strike on him and the US views as a threat to their geopolitical strategic interests and then at the same time intersected with the terrorist attack by the alienated Waseem on the tanker. Right.

00;57;48;12 - 00;57;49;15

Peggy McGuinness

And tanker.

00;57;49;17 - 00;57;57;11

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you have like the kind of, you know, sort of spiraling towards us getting to more terrorism in its own way.

00;57;57;14 - 00;58;24;13

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. And connects being, it's a multinational corporations private entity, but it is the United States, for want of any better symbols of the United States, metaphorically. And then, you know, Trump becomes president in 2016 and appoints the CEO of ExxonMobil to be his secretary of state. Like taking the metaphorical to the literal, which is, you know, I feel like Trump world is always something that you thought was a metaphor is going to become literal, like, you know, United States foreign policy is run by big oil.

00;58;24;13 - 00;58;40;23

Peggy McGuinness

I will therefore appoint the CEO of Big Oil to run the US foreign policy. Right. Climate change. You know, the world is on fire. The world will literally be on fire. And we're okay with that because it's going to destroy, you know, all the things that we don't value. So yeah, I, I do feel like there's some things here that are definitely, foreshadowing.

00;58;40;23 - 00;58;56;16

Peggy McGuinness

I think you're right about thinking about the drone strikes as a tool as well, and how the antiseptic ness of it and how it's just, you know, mid-level bureaucrats who go home and then, you know, shuttle their kids to soccer, practice that scene with the CIA mid-level manager pulling up with the minivan, and Bob wants to talk to him about, like, why am I being investigated?

00;58;56;16 - 00;59;11;21

Peggy McGuinness

Why? And it's like he's just getting his kids out of the car from, you know, trip to the 711 or whatever, or just normal, you know, suburban life in DC. And that's and that's who runs, you know, the national security agencies, this regular, regular people who got these jobs.

00;59;11;24 - 00;59;19;02

Jonathan Hafetz

I feel like in the new Trump era, Trump, that it's not the head of kind of it's not even the head of clean. It'll be Danny Dalton, who's, Danny.

00;59;19;07 - 00;59;46;04

Peggy McGuinness

Exactly. Danny Dalton, fun project 2025. And that's that sort of, you know, the Danny Dalton character. And we didn't talk about this yet, but that committee to liberate Iran. I thought about that in the context of project 2025 and heritage. And so there are, you know, it's a great stand in for all these kinds of groups where you have, you know, and I was I was listening to NPR this morning where Leonard Leo's talking about the Teneo Project, where the Federalist Society is taking their winning business model for, you know, domination of the courts.

00;59;46;04 - 01;00;08;04

Peggy McGuinness

They're going to take it to all aspects of American society, including movie making. So, you know, stay tuned for season four of your podcast will be all about right wing movies that have been funded by Teneo. But yeah, I mean, that's that was an interesting little. There's like a scene of them hunting and I felt like it almost looked like a picture of, you know, Justice Thomas hunting with, some of the billionaire funders of these groups.

01;00;08;04 - 01;00;38;28

Peggy McGuinness

And that has not gotten better. That has gotten only worse. Right? In terms of the concentrate of wealth going into these projects, which are definite thumbs on the scale for deregulation and global laissez faire capitalism in its most destructive form, particularly on the issue of climate. So I think there's two there's two big themes, right, which I, I was at a conference last week speaking to the issue of human rights and migration, and I got a question from one of the brilliant students in the audience at NYU asking me, do you think you know that the United States should do more to address the causes of migration?

01;00;38;28 - 01;01;11;04

Peggy McGuinness

And my answer was what the causes are corruption and climate change. Those are the two central causes, right? The inability of governments to fairly produce governmental benefits for their people, and the absolutely devastating environmental effects, particularly, you know, all over the world. But for the hemispheric migration problem in the United States, it's the Southern Cone. And those are the two things that this reaction to neoliberalism, those are the two things that they are least concerned with, right, that they're most enthusiastic about continuing for big Oil to continue business as usual and for corruption to reflect the Danny Dalton's of the world.

01;01;11;06 - 01;01;30;25

Peggy McGuinness

Right. Milton Friedman won a goddamn Nobel Prize for it. The one other thing I'll say that didn't hold it up. I was thinking about this. If you were to make a film today, right, I think you'd have the Brian Watson character would have to be some sort of artificial intelligence guru. Maybe from Silicon Valley. Could be in Europe, but would be definitely tech, right.

01;01;30;25 - 01;01;56;07

Peggy McGuinness

And I was sort of curious to see what the top market cap corporations were in 2005, 2006 versus today. So today, the top ten globally, it's just a who's who of tech, right? Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft Amazon, alphabet, meta, TSMC and Tesla. You know that's seven eight of the top ten Saudi Aramco is in the top ten. But that's only because they went public in 2019.

01;01;56;07 - 01;02;18;17

Peggy McGuinness

So you can measure their market cap. In 2006 Exxon Mobil was number one. GE was number two Microsoft was on the list. They went to three Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG. So finance groups so it's oil finance and then retail Walmart Procter Gamble you know consumer goods Pfizer Pharma. But it's amazing how much tech Berkshire Hathaway's in the top ten.

01;02;18;17 - 01;02;36;18

Peggy McGuinness

But I think only by dint of the fact that he's got a huge chunk of Apple. But it's amazing at today it's tech. And then you see Elon Musk, you know, right there in the transition. And so there's been a shift right. Trump one was I'm going to put Rex Tillerson in as the secretary of state. And now it's Trump two is tech.

01;02;36;18 - 01;02;52;11

Peggy McGuinness

And fittingly the richest man in the world in charge of my reform of the government. And it's deeply, deeply troubling. But that would be the next movie, Steven gig it should make. Right. It's about about AI tech. I don't know how they would do it, but man, it's a lot that needs to be discussed and digested now.

01;02;52;11 - 01;03;16;23

Jonathan Hafetz

Absolutely. And I on the storylines. And so I mean, we talked about the Bob Barnes of Wrap event, the assassination. We see Prince Nasir assassinated, Bob Barnes is killed. Waseem, the radicalized youth is the martyr and terrorist act. And then the deal goes through and then we see, you know, Matt Damon only survives because he had offered to switch cars he was riding in, allow a Princess Years wife to ride with him.

01;03;16;23 - 01;03;33;24

Jonathan Hafetz

So he survived, but very shaken up. He goes back home. He had, you know, split with his wife because he wanted to pursue his dreams of being an advisor to Nazir in this new reformist Amir. But he kind of goes back home disillusioned. And then Jeffrey Wright, you know, he's now, you know, basically resolve the issue.

01;03;33;24 - 01;03;35;23

Peggy McGuinness

He's on track to be partner.

01;03;35;26 - 01;03;40;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Exactly right. And he goes home and he has his, you know, alcoholic.

01;03;40;04 - 01;04;10;04

Peggy McGuinness

I think it's supposed to be his dad, but yeah, that's sort of, you know, it's interesting the way that the film, I think the film does a good job of showing people's motivations without being too in your face. And, you know, we sort of have to impose maybe some assumptions on the Jeffrey Wright character. But clearly his troubled relationship with his alcoholic father or uncle, whatever, it's some sort of someone who'd been a caregiver to him, and now he's a caregiver and he's financially responsible, and he's working his way up through big law, and he sees the chance to grab the brass ring and be, you know, Dean Whiting's line.

01;04;10;04 - 01;04;26;19

Peggy McGuinness

And he takes it and we see the Matt Damon character. You know, he you know, he's had this deep tragedy like this incredible tragedy in his his lovely wife and other child and back in the States. And he's now become a victim himself, like he's now sort of a victim of the system that he was, he thought would work.

01;04;26;22 - 01;04;43;03

Peggy McGuinness

There's a lot of bodies like, you know, the body count goes up, right? You know, what I thought about at the end was that line from F Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby about, you know, there were careless people and you just get the sense of the people at the oil man's the oil man of the year dinner.

01;04;43;03 - 01;04;59;19

Peggy McGuinness

It's just I, you know, I mentioned it earlier, but just like a great way to sort of think about the fact that there's an oil man of the year. Right. Okay. So every industry has something like this, right? Even academics do it. But it's like, who are you? Who are their friends? And what is it that they're celebrating?

01;04;59;19 - 01;05;20;03

Peggy McGuinness

And it's you then see the new the new Amir is the younger brother gets to stand up and wave. And, Jeffrey Wright is there, having just basically turned in his bar, Sidney Huot, like, turned him over to DOJ for full investigation of criminal prosecution with Dean Whiting. Right. And so those are the winners right along with the conics clean merger.

01;05;20;03 - 01;05;38;14

Peggy McGuinness

And everybody else has had literal losses that they're suffering here. And the world continues to turn. So I think in that sense, Jake, it's not telling us what to conclude about any of this. It's I think it's an accurate portrayal of the power and the money and the government. I mean, there's a lot that's missing besides tech, right?

01;05;38;14 - 01;06;02;12

Peggy McGuinness

I mean, we don't hear about we don't hear about diplomats, right? They feel like they're marginalized. Maybe accurately, maybe not so accurately, I don't know. The CIA is presented as completely lawless. I'm not sure that's completely accurate. I know many people who've been lawyers in national security field and would say that's not exactly you know, it makes it better and cleaner storyline to show those mid-level people as kind of like, you know, they're just ordering assassinations willy nilly.

01;06;02;12 - 01;06;21;22

Peggy McGuinness

Whatever. But I do think it gets at some problems that we still can't figure out. We still FCPA is still on the books, is still a huge amount of corruption. We have government oversight of big mergers. We still have mergers that are probably too big. But from an antitrust point of view and from all other points of view, and Iran did not liberalize.

01;06;21;28 - 01;06;37;06

Peggy McGuinness

And now we're, you know, at best in a proxy war with Iran, if not more direct war with Russia. And of course, Russia, right, did not turn out the way some people thought it would turn out in the early aughts. And so we we've got a whole new set of geostrategic challenges, but it definitely gets some of these, these vibes.

01;06;37;06 - 01;06;51;07

Peggy McGuinness

I think the migration story probably holds up the most. That is still one of the great the central tragedies, I think. And of course, the more we have wars and drone attacks, the more migration is caused. And, you know, so it's sort of a vicious circle right now.

01;06;51;09 - 01;07;04;07

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. No, it's all I feel. It does. Yeah. Besides some things that have changed, it really does hold up. And the cynical, the vibe, as you said, the cynical vibe and the different threads. So feel pretty, pretty relevant. And as you said, I think supremely well done.

01;07;04;10 - 01;07;18;18

Peggy McGuinness

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I read somewhere that he might have had another storyline that had to be like dropped out. I think it's a challenging watch. You have to sort of pay close attention to the skipping timelines. I mean, they filmed it all over the world. I think in that way it also captures this vibe of the global era.

01;07;18;18 - 01;07;35;05

Peggy McGuinness

Right? The sort of globalization era that like, oh, I'm in, you know, I'm in a meeting in Dubai, but I'll see you in Geneva tomorrow, and then I'll be in DC for some meetings. And, you know, it's all pretty seamless for those who have access to it. And then there's the what seems and the farook's of the world who are just who are stuck, you know, corrupt, ineffective government at home.

01;07;35;07 - 01;07;50;01

Peggy McGuinness

Not many job prospects going overseas to find work being completely exploited and vulnerable. And that's where, you know, sort of you could do it like a human rights critique of the whole thing and a sort of the absence of concern for the humans at the heart of it.

01;07;50;03 - 01;07;58;15

Jonathan Hafetz

Thank you. I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast again. It's always great to have you on and on. So thanks for coming on.

01;07;58;18 - 01;07;59;23

Peggy McGuinness

You're welcome. Thank you.