The Bureau Podcast

Sam Cooper
  • 5.0 (2)
  • POLITICS
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Investigative Journalism. Anti-Corruption. Counter-Disinformation. Whistleblowers. Sunlight. Connecting the dots on The Bureau's big stories with Sam Cooper and guests. www.thebureau.news

  1. Before Michael Ma’s Cross-Examination of a China Expert, The Bureau Warned Ottawa That Foreign Interference Witnesses Could Be Targeted

    APR 8

    Before Michael Ma’s Cross-Examination of a China Expert, The Bureau Warned Ottawa That Foreign Interference Witnesses Could Be Targeted

    OTTAWA — In this discussion with Jason James, I break down the stunning rise of Liberal floor-crosser Michael Ma — a story The Bureau has led Canadian media on with at least 10 investigative reports since mid-December 2025, culminating in our coverage of his suspicious cross-examination of expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston. This is a wide-ranging conversation. I explain the earlier rise of Markham-area Liberal figure Mary Ng, who was selected to run in a by-election after Liberal heavyweight John McCallum left Parliament to become ambassador to China. Ng had quickly risen from an Ontario Liberal government staffer, to a powerful member of Justin Trudeau’s office, to a new member of Parliament in a safe Liberal riding heavily influenced by Chinese diaspora pressure groups, and ultimately to cabinet as trade minister. I tell Jason that Michael Ma’s trajectory — from elected Conservative, to floor-crosser helping give Mark Carney a near-majority, to joining Carney’s inner circle, to appearing to echo Beijing talking points denying Uyghur forced labour — could follow a similarly strategic path that raises questions about possible community pressure group chess moves. None of this has been proven. But I explain why I believe there are mounting signs that deserve serious scrutiny. I also tell Jason that what happened to Margaret McCuaig-Johnston struck me as similar to some of my own experiences in committee hearings. In the interview, I disclose that after a recent request to appear before committee, regarding implementation of the proposed foreign interference registry, I sent a formal letter expressing concern that some questioning directed at witnesses on foreign interference could be inappropriate or reputationally damaging. Because I discuss that letter centrally in the podcast, and because I later received an official response addressing parliamentary privilege and the sub judice convention, I am posting an excerpted copy of my November 2025 letter and part of the government’s response below, for public-interest reasons, so readers can assess it for themselves. As it turned out, I decided last November not to attend the committee hearing on Canada’s proposed foreign interference registry, and I have not since attended Canada’s parliamentary committee hearings as a witness. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Letter to PROC Chair: November, 2025 To: PROC ChairVia: Committee ClerksRe: Request for assurances regarding protections for witnesses on foreign interference and the registry Dear Chair, I believe I have important evidence and relevant expertise regarding the registry and its implementation. I would like to ask the clerks to please convey this message to you and provide me with an official response. Depending on that response, I would be prepared to accept this request for testimony, provided that my concerns are adequately addressed. I have decided to include the media addresses of the RCMP and CSIS in this official note, as their representatives would also be able to testify to the facts I set out below, including the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) providing me with a judicially authorized notification shortly after my first testimony on foreign interference threats to Canadian politicians. In three prior instances of testimony, I have put myself forward to assist various Committees. In 2023, several days after one of my appearances—regarding PRC threats against Canadian politicians—an RCMP national security unit informed me that I was the subject of a serious safety threat related to my reporting on interference activities of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). During some of my appearances, certain elected members have questioned me about civil lawsuits I face as a result of my reporting, even after I explicitly stated that I would not comment on such matters. I am increasingly concerned that certain questions directed at me may be inappropriate, and even designed to discredit my reporting on foreign interference and Canada’s present lack of capacity to counter it. As the Chair is, I am sure, aware, the NSICOP 2024 report found that some members of Parliament may be involved in foreign threat activities, including clandestine or opaque financial activities that could be contrary to the public interest and might even be unlawful—if Canada had modern regulatory structures and laws in place to address and prosecute such activities. Further to my concern about nefarious forces, I would note the publicly reported targeting of former MP Kenny Chiu after he raised the idea of a foreign influence transparency registry. My concern is that the same types of tactics used to discredit or punish elected officials who raise concerns about the PRC and a transparency registry could also be deployed against journalists who testify on these issues. For example, the 2019 NSICOP report documents intelligence indicating that: “A provincial Cabinet Minister responsible for the province’s dealings with PRC officials appeared to favor China’s interests in many of his activities. This individual provided political information to the PRC Consulate and offered to verbally attack other members of the Provincial Assembly who raised Chinese human rights issues.” (See my report: China clandestinely targeting First Nations and Parliament — https://www.thebureau.news/p/china-clandestinely-targeting-first.) [Excerpted for relevance.] After appearing three times before Committees, I continue to perceive that some questions I face are not relevant to the stated purpose of my testimony and may present various personal and professional risks. I therefore believe it is necessary to formally raise this concern with you and request that you consider how individuals called to provide evidence on foreign interference could themselves become targets of such interference through their testimony. Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. I respectfully await a response. Sincerely,Sam Cooper Committee Response The response confirmed: “Witnesses are also protected by parliamentary privilege during parliamentary proceedings and may speak freely without risk of prosecution or civil liability. The subjudice convention limits Members from making reference to matters before the Courts (pp. 632-636). This restriction exists to protect an accused person or another party from prejudice that would result from the public discussion of the judicial matter.” The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    1h 5m
  2. The Bureau Podcast: Floor-Crosser, Alleged United Front Ties, and a Beijing Propaganda Blitz — Was Michael Ma's Attack on a Canadian China Expert Coordinated?

    MAR 27

    The Bureau Podcast: Floor-Crosser, Alleged United Front Ties, and a Beijing Propaganda Blitz — Was Michael Ma's Attack on a Canadian China Expert Coordinated?

    CALGARY — In this episode, I sit down with Brian Lilley to break down one of the most troubling moments in recent Canadian parliamentary history — Liberal floor-crosser Michael Ma’s attempt to discredit University of Ottawa China expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston during a Commons industry committee hearing, and what happened in Beijing hours after the cameras stopped rolling. Chinese state-linked media didn’t just celebrate Ma’s performance. Within hours they published a detailed biographical attack on McCuaig-Johnston with a level of institutional knowledge about her career that raises an uncomfortable question: was this a coordinated operation, and does it trace back to Beijing? I also walk Brian through my prior reporting linking Ma to a political organization identified by the Jamestown Foundation as one of 575 United Front Work Department-affiliated groups operating in Canada — a group with a history of targeting Conservative leaders Erin O’Toole and Pierre Poilievre. To be clear: Ma’s connections to that group are not illegal, and they are not proof of wrongdoing. But when you set those connections alongside his stunning assault on one of Canada’s most prominent China scholars — and the speed with which Chinese propaganda apparatus amplified and weaponized that assault — you are left with very significant questions about whether Michael Ma is acting in Canada’s interest. That conversation is next. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    20 min
  3. The Fog of War: Does Trump's Iran Campaign Deter Xi Jinping's Taiwan Invasion Threat — or Increase the Danger?

    MAR 11

    The Fog of War: Does Trump's Iran Campaign Deter Xi Jinping's Taiwan Invasion Threat — or Increase the Danger?

    OTTAWA — In this conversation with BNN's Jason James, I wrestle with the central confusion surrounding the United States-Israel campaign in Iran. Is the objective regime change, the retrieval of enriched uranium, Israel's own objectives, or something deeper and more indirect — the culmination of a pivot from the Middle East, and a strategic warning to Xi Jinping and his axis partners in Russia and North Korea? My view is that the United States military would not have launched this campaign without a rigorous analysis of what it means for Taiwan. I open by recounting a reporting trip to Taiwan in 2023 — the same year, we now know, that the Central Intelligence Agency director privately warned Silicon Valley executives that Xi could move on Taiwan by 2027. I left that trip with several firm convictions. Xi Jinping was not a popular leader among his Red princeling cohort, and has vulnerabilities little understood in the West, including a coup-like challenge from within, prior to 2020. The current military upheaval under Xi has only deepened that assessment. And in 2023, I gathered that the United States, likely supported by Japan, Taiwan, and Australia, will not allow Beijing to blockade or invade Taiwan — and the U.S.-led coalition believes it can defeat China’s military, a conviction that holds regardless of who occupies the White House. The conversation ranges widely, from confusion surrounding Prime Minister Mark Carney’s position on Iran, to a potential trade resolution between Washington and Ottawa. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    1h 5m
  4. What Money Couldn't Buy: The Intelligence Logic Behind the Epstein Cover-Up

    MAR 9

    What Money Couldn't Buy: The Intelligence Logic Behind the Epstein Cover-Up

    LONDON — Jason Pack has spent his career advising Western governments and corporations on the Middle East, running a Libya oil-and-gas consulting firm, and briefing United Nations bureaucrats. Now a fellow at RUSI, the storied British defense and security think tank, his career has sometimes crossed paths with actors in the Western intelligence alliance. That background provides solid fundamentals for understanding the world Jeffrey Epstein operated in — and the known knowns and known unknowns surrounding the recent US government disclosures. While the disclosures have led to new revelations, such as Bloomberg’s scoop on a DEA investigation into allegations that Epstein laundered money for organized crime while trafficking in synthetic narcotics and Eastern European women, Epstein’s sex crimes were an open secret covered up for too long, according to Pack. “There has been a cover-up both at the governmental level and at the media level,” Pack told The Bureau podcast. “The media one outrages me even more.” Pack’s explanation of Epstein’s origin story and accumulation of power is logical and grounded in the available evidence. A secular, middle-class kid from Long Island, Epstein got a teaching job at Dalton, the elite Manhattan private school, and used those connections to land at Bear Stearns. From Bear Stearns, he reached powerful clients. From powerful clients, he reached billionaires. At each rung, he found leverage — insider trading networks, offshore tax schemes, then something no amount of money could buy. “He was a provider of non-monetary assets,” Pack said. “You can’t buy underage women. You can’t buy tax evasion. You can’t purchase, ‘I want to be invited to this party where there are models and media elites.’ That instantly crosses over into intelligence.” The sex trafficking, Pack argues, was not primarily about gratification. It was about domination and psychological manipulation — a tool Epstein wielded over the powerful the same way he wielded it over teenagers. Pack calls it a revision of his own theory of power. Lord Acton’s famous formulation — power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely — may have it backwards. “What if people sought power because they were already twisted?” On why Epstein was never reined in, Pack offered a framework he calls “too big to fail.” Once Epstein held compromising material on enough Democratic donors and Republican elites alike, prosecution became politically suicidal. “Biden couldn’t release information on Epstein because so many Democratic donors would be made to look bad,” he said. Neither political party could deploy the material as a weapon without the collateral damage destroying its own base. Intelligence agencies, Pack argues, had their own calculus. He pointed to “The Rest is Classified” podcast’s reporting that CIA director William Burns helped rent an apartment for Epstein’s brother, at which young women were brought to associates — suggesting Epstein represented a collection asset too valuable to burn. “Every side thought it was beneficial for the guy to exist so long as they were in on it.” Jason Pack hosts the Disorder Podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    56 min
  5. Five Days Into War With Iran, Normalcy In Tel Aviv

    MAR 5

    Five Days Into War With Iran, Normalcy In Tel Aviv

    The Bureau has been covering the war against Iran’s Islamic regime largely through American political and military sources — the strategic calculus, the intelligence assessments, the geopolitical reverberations reaching from Beijing to Moscow. But there is a different angle that comes from standing in a city under bombardment, and that is what Adam Zivo has been delivering from Tel Aviv. We last talked when he was in Israel during the 12-day war last June. He returned to Tel Aviv roughly a week before this current campaign began, because his sources — political and journalistic — told him that what was coming would be severe. What he has found since arriving is something that might surprise people who have never spent time in Israel, much less during a war. People at the beach. People at the cafes. An entire society that had made its psychological peace with the fact that conflict with an Islamic regime that has pledged to eradicate the state of Israel is inevitable, a matter of when, not if. Adam walks us through the first day of incoming bomb warnings, to an increasing sense of normalcy and expectation of complete military victory for Israel and the United States. What comes next for the people of Iran is the big unknown. He also walks us through the information war running parallel to the kinetic one — artificial intelligence-generated footage of a bomb-ravaged Tel Aviv that wildly distorts reality, the bot farms, the monetization structures on social media that reward emotions over accuracy, and the specific role of Qatar, a state that has long tried to play both sides of the civilizational divide and is now discovering what it means to be bombed by the regime it has been financing. And we get into the deeper question — the one that will define the next decade of Middle Eastern politics: what comes after? Is there a democratic Iran on the other side of this? What is the role of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi? And where does China fit in an alliance of authoritarian states that Israel and the United States are now, whether Washington says it plainly or not, confronting as a unified bloc? Adam Zivo reports from Tel Aviv. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    30 min
  6. How Canada Birthed a Sinaloa Cartel Boss: A Veteran Mountie With 50 Years of Experience Explains the Unthinkable Rise of Ryan Wedding

    MAR 4

    How Canada Birthed a Sinaloa Cartel Boss: A Veteran Mountie With 50 Years of Experience Explains the Unthinkable Rise of Ryan Wedding

    OTTAWA — In this episode, former senior Mountie Garry Clement joins Sam Cooper to answer a question that should unsettle every Canadian: how does a figure like Ryan Wedding — an Olympic athlete from Coquitlam — end up becoming one of the most feared Sinaloa Cartel operatives in North America? The answer, Clement argues, has less to do with Wedding himself than with the country that made his rise possible. Clement spent 34 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including deep-cover undercover operations in British Columbia and an extraordinary posting to Hong Kong in the early 1990s, where he and immigration control officer Brian McAdam came face to face with the top tier of Chinese transnational crime — Stanley Ho, 14K Triad leadership and elite businessmen like Li Ka Shing, whose shipping entities were recently barred from the Panama Canal under US pressure — while watching Canadian diplomatic officials accept red envelopes of casino cash and look the other way. Clement watched a system designed to stop dirty money instead absorb it. He is now watching history repeat itself, at industrial scale. On Wedding specifically, Clement is blunt: the former Olympian had the profile of every major trafficker he ever investigated — the ego, the drive, the early dabbling with no consequences, a prison stint that functioned as a graduate seminar in criminal networking. Wedding’s athletic psychology, Cooper suggests, may have been an accelerant rather than an anomaly — the same ruthless focus that puts an athlete on a podium, possibly the unbound ego of a sociopath that never faced correction while pushing boundaries in pot-permissive British Columbia at a young age, now applied without correction to a criminal enterprise. One of the episode’s most arresting moments comes when Clement, a veteran of hundreds of undercover operations, describes buying three kilos of cocaine in the 1970s from a young woman who had rescheduled their meeting because she was singing in a church choir. She drove up alone, no protection, product on the front seat. “That’s how people that are really egotistical believe they’re untouchable,” he says. “Ryan Wedding was that magnified by a thousand.” Cooper connects Wedding’s rise to a longer arc of institutional failure that Clement traces back decades: the dismantling of port policing in Vancouver in the early 1980s, which he says opened the door to Chinese-linked criminal control of the docks; the penetration of government databases by organized crime through corrupt officers; and an immigration system in Hong Kong that, Clement alleges, effectively sold Canadian passports to figures including Stanley Ho — who Jeffrey Epstein’s files, Cooper notes, identified as the boss of the Chinese mob. Clement says he was personally forbidden from interviewing Ho. Shortly afterward, Ho received what Clement flatly calls “a passport of convenience.” The conversation turns to North Toronto — Willowdale, Thornhill, the corridor above Highway 401 — which Cooper identifies as a node of Iranian Revolutionary Guard money laundering, a claim he says has now been punctuated by recent shootings at a boxing gym and a synagogue. Clement recalls walking that stretch with Iranian currency trader sources in the 1990s, watching unregistered traders transfer money directly to Iranian banks while enforcement looked the other way. The thread running through all of it, Clement argues, is the same: a country that repeatedly chose not to look. Not at the casinos. Not at the ports. Not at the politicians photographed beside organized crime figures — including, he says, a then-mayor of Vancouver standing with the father of the head of the Sun Yee On Triad Society, a photo that ran on the front page of the South China Morning Post the next morning. “They don’t do this because they want to be seen as in the hands of the politician,” Clement says. “They’re doing it because they want to earn credibility.” The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    59 min

  7. FEB 13

    “The Control Grid”: Digging Deeper into the Revelations of Epstein’s Network, Elites Operating Without Regard for Morality, Borders, and Democracy

    OTTAWA — In this episode, I dug deeper into the Epstein network revelations with Jason James. Building on our earlier conversation in the Christmas special—where we explored the global networks that can bridge Western leaders and bankers, including Mark Carney, with Chinese Communist Party–linked investment funds—I said the late-2025 and early 2026 picture of Jeffrey Epstein had come into sharper focus: not only as a potential intelligence asset of any single nation, but as a fixer and facilitator moving among elites worldwide. I will develop this thread in the coming days, as additional evidence emerges suggesting Epstein had been introduced into the orbit of CITIC Group—described as a Chinese military- and intelligence-connected global investment ecosystem with deep ties to Canadian Liberal Party business backers and former prime minister Jean Chrétien—and tentacles that reached back into the 1990s-era “Clintongate” Chinese influence scandal. On the China theme, we also dug deeper into turmoil inside General Secretary Xi Jinping’s domain. We discussed how a purge or potential counter-coup involving respected PLA leader Zhang Youxia appeared to be unfolding in recent weeks, and what that kind of internal instability could signal for Beijing’s decision-making and external posture. All of it, I told Jason, pointed to a simple conclusion: over the past month as Mark Carney and Keir Starmer traveled to Beijing—with photo-op diplomacy projecting the wisdom of leadership and solidity of statesmanship—there were mounting signs that something more volatile could have been boiling underneath. I said that, in that environment, the most plausible explanation was not that these leaders lacked good intelligence and advice as they dove deeper into relationships with a fragile superpower, but, more likely, that they disregarded notes of caution from CSIS and MI6 respectively. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    1h 9m
  8. The Bureau Podcast: How United Front Networks Build Access—And Why Canada Is a Prime Target

    FEB 12

    The Bureau Podcast: How United Front Networks Build Access—And Why Canada Is a Prime Target

    OTTAWA — I sat down with author and researcher Cheryl Yu to unpack her groundbreaking new report on the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department—a sweeping mapping project that identifies more than 2,000 linked organizations operating across democratic societies, with a focus on the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Yu’s work helps explain what The Bureau has been reporting through a series of explosive investigations: that United Front networks are not an academic concern, but a practical system for building access—inside politics, business, diaspora organizations, and civic institutions—while preserving the appearance of community leadership. The Bureau’s analysis of Jamestown’s findings suggests Canada has become a strategic platform for Beijing’s efforts to penetrate U.S. technology sectors, supply chains, and influence networks—exploiting Canada’s deep, yet comparatively less secure, integration into North America’s economic architecture. In our conversation, I also ask Yu about Canada’s “saturation”—what it means, how it manifests, and why the patterns she identifies in the Linda Sun case appear to echo inside Canadian political ecosystems as well—potentially deeper, higher, and more structurally embedded. We drill into the Linda Sun case in New York, where only two people are charged, but Yu’s research points to a much wider constellation of relationships—involving more than 20 potential access agents with documented United Front ties in New York political circles. Yu also traces how similar characteristics appear in Canadian cities including Vancouver and Toronto—where individuals tied to United Front-linked agencies simultaneously cultivate relationships with elected officials and, in some cases, seek office themselves. Her methodology focuses on what the Party values: identifying who United Front organs treat as important, and then tracking how those relationships intersect with democratic institutions. As Yu tells it, the Party can patiently cultivate United Front groups and leaders, waiting until trusted insiders secure critical access. At that point, clandestine intelligence handlers can operationalize United Front assets—tasking them to advance objectives, whether political goals, criminal activity, or sophisticated influence campaigns. The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe

    35 min
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About

Investigative Journalism. Anti-Corruption. Counter-Disinformation. Whistleblowers. Sunlight. Connecting the dots on The Bureau's big stories with Sam Cooper and guests. www.thebureau.news

Information

  • Creator
    Sam Cooper
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    85
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Sam Cooper
  • Show Website
    The Bureau Podcast

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