# Former CIA Officer Breaks Down Source Operations in Afghanistan | Delbert Roll

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 6 Jun 2026, 1 h 58 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72376416/del.mp3

Former Army officer and CIA operations officer Delbert Roll joins us to discuss his path from Third Special Forces Group to the Agency, including joining CIA just before 9/11 and working counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. He breaks down CIA training, running sources, building targeting packages against al-Qaeda, working with JSOC and indigenous forces, and the realities of protecting assets in the field. The episode also covers covert action, counterintelligence, counter-WMD work, teaching at the Farm, CIA bureaucracy, writing after retirement, and the bizarre CIA gold bar scandal. Today's Sponsors: GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Blue Chew ⬇️ https://bluechew.com/ Get 1 month free when you buy 2 of BlueChew Gold with code "HOUSECALL" For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ PRE ORDER JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 — Start / Delbert Roll joins The Team House 01:10 — Growing up in Pennsylvania and joining the Army 07:06 — Third Special Forces Group, Africa missions, and comms work in the 1990s 15:09 — Leaving the Army and trying to join the FBI before the CIA 16:04 — Joining CIA three weeks before 9/11 21:09 — The day after 9/11 and CIA’s shift toward counterterrorism 23:46 — Moving from analyst to operations officer 25:20 — CIA training and “Ranger School for your brain” 30:42 — First Afghanistan tour and arriving at a forward operating base 33:22 — Running a source operation against a senior al-Qaeda target 39:13 — Building a targeting package without GPS coordinates 44:40 — Airstrike decision, protecting assets, and the target slipping away 48:54 — Working with JSOC and indigenous forces to shut down rat lines 52:47 — CIA support to conventional Army units in Afghanistan 56:17 — Language training, European posting, and traditional case officer work 01:04:25 — Covert action, liaison partners, and gathering intelligence through proxies 01:05:05 — Counterintelligence, recruiting foreign officers, and disrupting Russian operations 01:09:07 — Counter-WMD work and handling sources without being the technical expert 01:12:50 — Teaching at the Farm and training future CIA officers 01:22:29 — CIA bureaucracy, NSA comparisons, and publication review problems 01:27:58 — Recruiting, technology, and learning how to talk around classified subjects 01:28:57 — From CIA officer to fantasy, spy, and horror novelist 01:43:42 — CIA gold bars, non-traditional payments, and final thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I want to tell you tonight about my
[0:03] Speaker 1: new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June ninth.
[0:07] Speaker 1: I think, like a lot of you, I read in
[0:10] Speaker 1: high school the short story The Greatest Game, which is
[0:14] Speaker 1: almost a century old at this point, but it's the
[0:17] Speaker 1: classic premise of man hunting man for sport. This book
[0:22] Speaker 1: is based off of that a little bit, but also
[0:26] Speaker 1: on stories that I have heard over the years about
[0:29] Speaker 1: Safari guides that have actually taken hunting parties, wealthy people
[0:33] Speaker 1: hunting poachers in West Africa. That idea kind of cooked
[0:38] Speaker 1: off in my mind when I was asked to write
[0:41] Speaker 1: a novel and get back into writing fiction again. And
[0:44] Speaker 1: this book is about a ranger with the Ranger Reconnaissance
[0:47] Speaker 1: Company who's on a mission in West Africa and gets
[0:50] Speaker 1: kidnapped and hunted for sport by a group of wealthy
[0:53] Speaker 1: tech billionaires. I had a lot of fun writ in
[0:56] Speaker 1: this book, and I think you'll have a good time
[0:58] Speaker 1: reading it. It's quick, fast and furious, fast paced action
[1:04] Speaker 1: action novel, and I hope you all check it out.
[1:07] Speaker 1: It's up there. You can find it wherever books are sold,
[1:10] Speaker 1: the hard copy, the hardback, the soft cover, and also
[1:14] Speaker 1: the kindle ebook edition. Then we'll have some links down
[1:17] Speaker 1: in the description for you. The book comes out June ninth,
[1:21] Speaker 1: and I hope you all let me know what you
[1:23] Speaker 1: think of it. Hey, folks, welcome to the team house.
[1:36] Speaker 1: I'm Jack Murphy here with our guest Tonight, Delbert Roll.
[1:40] Speaker 1: Delbert served as a signals officer and an Army Infantry
[1:45] Speaker 1: officer in third Special Forces Group. He was a como
[1:50] Speaker 1: guy and then he made the jump over to the CIA.
[1:54] Speaker 1: For a short period of time he was an analyst
[1:56] Speaker 1: and then transferred over and became an operations officer and
[2:00] Speaker 1: a whole twenty years career there are doing a lot
[2:02] Speaker 1: of CT work in places like Afghanistan, but also covert action, counterintelligence, countering,
[2:09] Speaker 1: weapons of mass destruction, and many other things that we'll
[2:13] Speaker 1: get into in this interview. Dell, thank you for joining us.
[2:17] Speaker 2: My pleasure, man, pleasure to be here.
[2:20] Speaker 1: So, I mean, the first question I always ask folks
[2:23] Speaker 1: is about their origin. If you tell us a little
[2:25] Speaker 1: bit about like where you grew up, and you know
[2:27] Speaker 1: what your upbringing was like.
[2:30] Speaker 2: So, yeah, I was born in Pennsylvania. I grew up
[2:35] Speaker 2: on a small farm outside of a small town in
[2:38] Speaker 2: rural Pennsylvania, not so small, not so rural anymore. But yeah,
[2:44] Speaker 2: I grew up on a farm, pretty normal upbringing. Basically
[2:51] Speaker 2: joined the army really as kind of a way to,
[2:54] Speaker 2: you know, see the world if you will. You know,
[2:58] Speaker 2: a lot of my free time when it was a kid,
[3:00] Speaker 2: I would be was a fororacious reader only because it
[3:04] Speaker 2: really gave you the opportunity to see the rest of
[3:06] Speaker 2: the world. So, yeah, joined the army, enlisted as a
[3:11] Speaker 2: military police soldier initially while I was in the reserves
[3:15] Speaker 2: in college. Graduated from college, commissioned regular Army infantry. Basically
[3:22] Speaker 2: spent the next eleven years. Ten eleven years in the
[3:28] Speaker 2: army kind of got to that point where, you know,
[3:33] Speaker 2: and you know, because you were active duty army ten
[3:38] Speaker 2: year mark, is that point where you're like, well, what
[3:41] Speaker 2: am I going to do? Right? Am I going to
[3:42] Speaker 2: stay at winning and we're going to do something different.
[3:45] Speaker 2: At the time, I was married at the time, and literally,
[3:50] Speaker 2: you know, I was stationed in Fort Bragg, she lived
[3:53] Speaker 2: in another state. We rarely saw each other just because
[3:56] Speaker 2: you were gone all the time and you had a
[3:59] Speaker 2: serious workload, and I wanted to do some different, wanted
[4:03] Speaker 2: to still continue to serve the country. So initially I
[4:09] Speaker 2: wanted to be an FBI agent, right. I was fascinated
[4:14] Speaker 2: by the FBI. Read lots of books on it, saw
[4:17] Speaker 2: lots of movies, watch all the TV shows. Had been
[4:20] Speaker 2: really interested in the work of John Douglas. Really Uh.
[4:24] Speaker 2: He was not the pioneer of profiling, but like one
[4:29] Speaker 2: of one of the early guys, found that fascinating. Uh.
[4:34] Speaker 2: And uh, I probably had an unhealthy fascination with Danis Scully,
[4:39] Speaker 2: but you know, you get that. So I initially put
[4:44] Speaker 2: in my package, uh to go to the FBI and
[4:47] Speaker 2: for your for your viewers. Back in the day before
[4:52] Speaker 2: we had computers and we had to like type everything
[4:55] Speaker 2: you would get, like you had to type out literally
[4:58] Speaker 2: this application for and I remember getting getting a copy
[5:03] Speaker 2: and then recruiter is saying, oh, here's five, Take five
[5:07] Speaker 2: because you are going to screw this up. So go ahead,
[5:12] Speaker 2: you type that out, you submit it. That's going fine.
[5:15] Speaker 2: You start with some initial interviews, you go through some testing.
[5:20] Speaker 2: It's moving along and it's looking pretty good. And then
[5:23] Speaker 2: one day I get out a letter in the mail
[5:25] Speaker 2: and it says your file has been basically put on pause.
[5:32] Speaker 2: Call your recruiter for more information. So I called my
[5:36] Speaker 2: recruiter and the guy tells me, he goes, listen, there's
[5:39] Speaker 2: a hiring freeze. So yes, your stuff is on pause.
[5:44] Speaker 2: And I'm like, well, how long is that going to take?
[5:45] Speaker 2: And he's like, well, it could be three months, could
[5:47] Speaker 2: be three years, could be six months, could be six years.
[5:50] Speaker 2: Who knows. And I, ironically I have served with enough
[5:55] Speaker 2: FBI personnel since then to know that in the nineteen
[5:58] Speaker 2: nineties that was a they would have just hiring reasons
[6:02] Speaker 2: for no apparent reasons. In any case, started looking at
[6:08] Speaker 2: a couple of other things, uh Marshall service, uh DA,
[6:13] Speaker 2: a couple other things. It was around that time that
[6:16] Speaker 2: a friend of a friend who had left the army
[6:19] Speaker 2: to join the agency, I was put in contact with
[6:21] Speaker 2: him and he kind of talked to me, talk to
[6:23] Speaker 2: me about it. He goes, so, is this something you'd
[6:26] Speaker 2: be interested in? And yes, he made that hand, yes, sir,
[6:30] Speaker 2: but it sounded like sounded like a pretty cool thing.
[6:33] Speaker 2: So again went through the process of typing up my application,
[6:36] Speaker 2: submitted that similar thing to what you've you've had other
[6:42] Speaker 2: guests tell you about where you you go to a
[6:45] Speaker 2: hotel in Northern Virginia then a bus shows up and
[6:47] Speaker 2: takes you a nondescript location, and you have a series
[6:53] Speaker 2: of interviews and some tests and they I don't remember
[6:57] Speaker 2: exactly when they gave me the polly, but they did
[6:59] Speaker 2: give me the at some point. Anyway, that goes well,
[7:03] Speaker 2: and eventually you get this provisional letter of acceptance. Well,
[7:10] Speaker 2: they're still doing your background shack because they still got
[7:12] Speaker 2: to give you a TSSI. This goes on for like
[7:17] Speaker 2: a year, and I'm coming down on the point where
[7:19] Speaker 2: it's like, listen, I have already told the Army that
[7:22] Speaker 2: I intend to leave, I've submitted to paperwork to resigning
[7:26] Speaker 2: my commission. What the heck's going on? And I remember
[7:31] Speaker 2: calling the adjudicator and they're like, well, hold type. More
[7:36] Speaker 2: time goes by. I ended up talking to a friend,
[7:41] Speaker 2: my father's best friend from like growing up, who had
[7:46] Speaker 2: been a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who knew a couple
[7:49] Speaker 2: of people, who got me in touch with somebody whose
[7:52] Speaker 2: real name I have no idea what it was, but
[7:54] Speaker 2: I kind of walked him through, Hey, this is the
[7:56] Speaker 2: situation we're in. I'm coming down to the wire. And
[7:58] Speaker 2: he's like, all right, hold tight, let me make a
[8:01] Speaker 2: couple of phone calls. Literally three hours later, I get
[8:05] Speaker 2: a call from the adjudicator. I explained the situations like listen,
[8:08] Speaker 2: I cannot extend my resignation again. I need this knocked
[8:13] Speaker 2: out right, And and then like a week later, Boom's done.
[8:20] Speaker 2: So yeah, then left for Bragg, went to Northern Virginia Dell.
[8:27] Speaker 1: Before before we jump into the agency training, I want
[8:30] Speaker 1: to ask you a bit more about your time in
[8:33] Speaker 1: the Signal Corps with Third Group. This is in the
[8:36] Speaker 1: nineteen nineties at this point, right, yeah, and what was
[8:40] Speaker 1: sort of the mission profile, Like what was your job
[8:42] Speaker 1: at that time?
[8:44] Speaker 2: So my job as the commo guy was basically to
[8:51] Speaker 2: do whatever the hell that the tank commander XO and
[8:55] Speaker 2: S three told me to do. But as far as
[8:59] Speaker 2: like the mission pro file, that was a weird time
[9:03] Speaker 2: because and some people make cringes when I say this,
[9:07] Speaker 2: but at the same time, folks that were there will
[9:10] Speaker 2: know this is true. It had essentially become kind of
[9:15] Speaker 2: like the Peace Corps with guns, right, Like Third Group
[9:22] Speaker 2: is Africa facing right and h third Battalion is sub
[9:26] Speaker 2: Saharan Africa. We spent a lot of time doing a
[9:31] Speaker 2: lot of food missions, right, So we did a lot
[9:33] Speaker 2: of food missions, but we also did a lot of
[9:37] Speaker 2: de mining operations. So you'd send an ODA to a
[9:42] Speaker 2: given country and they'd be working with contractors, but they
[9:45] Speaker 2: would be leading the effort to de mine the area.
[9:49] Speaker 2: Because Africa, especially back in the nineties was just the nineties,
[9:53] Speaker 2: was utterly littered with land mines. So that was a
[9:57] Speaker 2: big That was a big effort. I know, it could
[10:00] Speaker 2: be deeply, deeply rewarding, but at the same time deeply frustrating.
[10:06] Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is guy in ODA
[10:09] Speaker 2: would go down right and they'd set up the infrastructure
[10:11] Speaker 2: for d D mining operation, and that might include you
[10:15] Speaker 2: know building, you know, like the shack that you're going
[10:18] Speaker 2: to store equipment in, or fences or specifically radio type stuff.
[10:25] Speaker 2: And this is where I would fit into this stuff,
[10:27] Speaker 2: is they go out and they set up a series
[10:29] Speaker 2: of repeaters for the motorole radios that they were going
[10:32] Speaker 2: to be using with the locals who you know, orchestraight
[10:36] Speaker 2: and manage the d mining process. And then they would
[10:39] Speaker 2: rotate home and they'd come back like a month later
[10:42] Speaker 2: and all the repeater towers have been torn down, the
[10:45] Speaker 2: wires have been stripped out, the wires are then fashioned
[10:49] Speaker 2: into you know, little elephants and helicopters and motorcycles and
[10:55] Speaker 2: they try and sell them back to the SF guys,
[10:57] Speaker 2: who you know, spend like a month putting up this
[11:01] Speaker 2: repeater network. But that was that was an interesting That
[11:05] Speaker 2: was an interesting period of time because yeah, we had
[11:08] Speaker 2: setllite communications at the time, right, but that was really
[11:13] Speaker 2: kind of space available and it was not a frequently
[11:18] Speaker 2: available resource. So a lot of our guys we were
[11:20] Speaker 2: making regular communications between Brag and say Botswana, Zimbabwe, what
[11:26] Speaker 2: have you, with HF radio shots. And it's a crazy
[11:32] Speaker 2: thing because when you stop and you think about it,
[11:34] Speaker 2: HF radio it's that really long wave radio signal and
[11:39] Speaker 2: making a shot from Fort Bragg, North Carolina all the
[11:42] Speaker 2: way to say the southern part of Africa. It takes
[11:47] Speaker 2: it takes skill. It takes skill, it dates technical acumen
[11:51] Speaker 2: to make that sort of thing happen. And that was
[11:54] Speaker 2: also back in the time of the day where you
[11:55] Speaker 2: had communications windows. You couldn't just call at any time.
[11:59] Speaker 2: Yet this sort of calm windows and that was not
[12:03] Speaker 2: merely just administrative purposes. It's also like the how you're
[12:09] Speaker 2: going to make that shot depending on the various elements
[12:16] Speaker 2: of the stratosphere that are going to affect that signal
[12:19] Speaker 2: wave that factors into it as well. But yeah, really
[12:24] Speaker 2: really cool experience. And honestly it's the sort of thing
[12:28] Speaker 2: that I think helped me on, helped me later on
[12:31] Speaker 2: down the road when you are because I think you know,
[12:35] Speaker 2: that's the reality, is that you take your cumulative experience
[12:38] Speaker 2: and apply it to new things. So like when you're
[12:41] Speaker 2: trying to figure out how do I make a good
[12:44] Speaker 2: robust coke com plan for my asset? Right, so as
[12:50] Speaker 2: you're well aware when you're planning a COMMS plan for
[12:54] Speaker 2: in special operations, it's based off that Pats methodology, So primary, alternate, contingency, emergency,
[13:02] Speaker 2: and we used the same planning methodology, you know, when
[13:06] Speaker 2: we were planning similar you know, common strategies with assets.
[13:10] Speaker 2: You know, you get your primary means, your alternate means,
[13:13] Speaker 2: you've got contingency and emergency and kind of like a
[13:16] Speaker 2: universal fallback, and that's designed so that regardless of what happens,
[13:23] Speaker 2: you're going to be able to establish or re establish
[13:26] Speaker 2: communication with that asset. So last thing I would say
[13:32] Speaker 2: it was interesting because at that point in time, you know,
[13:37] Speaker 2: deployable computers were pretty nascent. I mean, we've had deployable
[13:43] Speaker 2: computers like since World War Two, but in terms of
[13:46] Speaker 2: the modern era, I remember one day the the S
[13:50] Speaker 2: three coming to me and saying, I want a paperless
[13:54] Speaker 2: ice effect and I'm like, okay, how the hell am
[13:59] Speaker 2: I going to do that? And essentially, and this was
[14:02] Speaker 2: this was before Wi Fi, but we built a deployable
[14:05] Speaker 2: local area network where you had you know, laptop computers
[14:10] Speaker 2: spread out across the ice effect, all of which were
[14:12] Speaker 2: connected with No it wasn't fiber, but you know, we
[14:18] Speaker 2: yeah CAT five and you know, we we build a server.
[14:22] Speaker 2: The funny thing was, I remember the boss saying, make
[14:26] Speaker 2: it happen. I'm like, well, how much money? How much
[14:29] Speaker 2: money do we have for this? You know, like what's
[14:31] Speaker 2: the scope of this project? I'll find youself, right and
[14:34] Speaker 2: I think we got like two thousand dollars or something
[14:38] Speaker 2: like that.
[14:38] Speaker 1: It was like, just so you get to go down
[14:39] Speaker 1: to radio shack and.
[14:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and we eventually we we we made it happen.
[14:47] Speaker 2: We built like, you know, one of the first deployable
[14:49] Speaker 2: local area networks and uh and that was that was cool.
[14:53] Speaker 2: That was a you know, you felt like you accomplished something.
[14:56] Speaker 2: After that, I went on to the one twelfth and
[14:59] Speaker 2: a company command there, and it was great. You know,
[15:02] Speaker 2: they're all great Americans, but you know, I just wanted
[15:05] Speaker 2: to do something kind of different.
[15:07] Speaker 1: What what is that? What is the one twelfth? Is
[15:10] Speaker 1: that like the predecessor to like the Joint Communications Unit.
[15:14] Speaker 2: No, it's a it's a slightly different sort of thing.
[15:18] Speaker 2: So it used to be, like, I want to say,
[15:22] Speaker 2: thirty forty years ago, that each Special Forces battalion had
[15:28] Speaker 2: a sigetically attachment rate. So sometime in the early nineteen nineties,
[15:34] Speaker 2: the decision was made to ensure that technologically speaking, that
[15:40] Speaker 2: they were advancing and bringing the best, you know, to
[15:43] Speaker 2: the fight. He was brought all together to establish the
[15:47] Speaker 2: one twelve. So the Joint Communications Unit that you're talking
[15:52] Speaker 2: about down in Tampa, that is that is a bit
[15:55] Speaker 2: more of a strategic element and it really exists to support,
[15:59] Speaker 2: you know, the much more senior elements, whereas one twelve
[16:02] Speaker 2: is is really a more tactical, tactical communications element. So basically,
[16:10] Speaker 2: and when I think back to when I was there,
[16:13] Speaker 2: the tech level of technology was, you know, comparatively what
[16:18] Speaker 2: they have now we're talking about cave paiments. Really, I mean,
[16:22] Speaker 2: I mean it was it was the best we had
[16:24] Speaker 2: at the time, but it doesn't even begin to compare
[16:28] Speaker 2: to what they do now, right, right.
[16:31] Speaker 1: And so you did your company command there, and uh
[16:35] Speaker 1: that was when you started really planning to make that
[16:37] Speaker 1: jump over to the agency.
[16:40] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And like I was saying, and looked at
[16:44] Speaker 2: the FBI, looked at the Marshall Service, looked at h
[16:48] Speaker 2: looked at a couple of different things, but then really
[16:51] Speaker 2: kind of got hooked by the idea of going to
[16:53] Speaker 2: work at the agency. And and I realized that's kind
[16:56] Speaker 2: of vague and whatnot. But I will tell you that
[16:59] Speaker 2: my career management has been a lot very similar to
[17:03] Speaker 2: that feather in the beginning of Forrestco. There's never really
[17:08] Speaker 2: a plan Jack. It would be easier to uh, you know,
[17:14] Speaker 2: predict a strict trajectory of a ping pong ball being
[17:17] Speaker 2: throned out down a sewer system. Yeah, I just kind
[17:21] Speaker 2: of he if this sounds awesome, so let's go do it. Yeah,
[17:26] Speaker 2: so join the agency. Like I said, three weeks before
[17:31] Speaker 2: the attacks, that was that was a crazy day. The
[17:37] Speaker 2: great irony of it was about a week before it
[17:41] Speaker 2: happened we were all sitting in the bullpen, and somebody
[17:46] Speaker 2: had made the comment that how easy it would be
[17:49] Speaker 2: to hijack an aircraft taking off Reagan, you know, basically
[17:54] Speaker 2: get into the cockpit and then just drive it into
[17:58] Speaker 2: the White House or whatever. And nobody really thought anything
[18:01] Speaker 2: about it. But a week later, I'm sitting at my
[18:04] Speaker 2: desk and I'm going through, uh, basically a target deck,
[18:08] Speaker 2: looking at collection this plan for the next seventy two hours,
[18:12] Speaker 2: you know, kind of organizing my thoughts as to what
[18:14] Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to do in the days ahead. And
[18:16] Speaker 2: I get a coke phone call from my wife at
[18:19] Speaker 2: the time and she's like, did you hear what happened?
[18:22] Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know what. And you know, one
[18:25] Speaker 2: of a plane instruct the World Trade Center and I'm like,
[18:30] Speaker 2: that can't be right. So in the call, get up,
[18:33] Speaker 2: walk out of the bullpen, down to the next bullpen
[18:35] Speaker 2: where I know there's the TV, and I get there
[18:38] Speaker 2: just as you see the second aircraft hitting the second tower,
[18:42] Speaker 2: and in that moment you kind of know, well, the
[18:45] Speaker 2: world just changed. We're going to war. We're already at war,
[18:50] Speaker 2: you know, now what. So lots of confusion and that day.
[18:56] Speaker 2: That day was so maddeningly confusing because people were reporting
[19:02] Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy stuff that they thought they There
[19:05] Speaker 2: was a report of a car bomb going off at
[19:07] Speaker 2: State Department. There was a report of a DC helicopter
[19:12] Speaker 2: that had gone missing and possibly be hijacked, none of
[19:15] Speaker 2: which turned out to be true. Eventually, the decisions made,
[19:19] Speaker 2: we need to evacuate the agency. Right, So I'm working
[19:25] Speaker 2: in an analytical cell at this point, people are just
[19:29] Speaker 2: running for the doors, and I'm like, where are we
[19:32] Speaker 2: supposed to go? Because we're at war and apparently the
[19:35] Speaker 2: enemy is here. So I just kind of sat at
[19:39] Speaker 2: my desk for a while and eventually spoke. A security
[19:44] Speaker 2: police officer comes through and he's like, sir, you can't stay,
[19:47] Speaker 2: You've got to go home. And so I'm like all right,
[19:51] Speaker 2: So I'm walking down, you know, downstairs. At this point,
[19:55] Speaker 2: like the agency is like an abandon and it strikes
[19:58] Speaker 2: me it's like there's gotta be something like do. And
[20:02] Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, we gave a bunch of Stinger
[20:05] Speaker 2: missiles to the movie to Dean, like a little over
[20:08] Speaker 2: a decade ago. I wonder if we have any left over? Right?
[20:12] Speaker 2: And so I go to find the closest foe and
[20:15] Speaker 2: the security office, and I'm like, hey, you know, I
[20:17] Speaker 2: just get out of the army. You know, technically I'm
[20:19] Speaker 2: still in the army. If you got any singers lad
[20:22] Speaker 2: around as one does wall hanger, Yeah, And and of
[20:31] Speaker 2: course the guy looks at me like you're you're a
[20:34] Speaker 2: sad little man and you need to leave. So I
[20:37] Speaker 2: was told no.
[20:40] Speaker 1: So that reminds me of, uh, well, a couple of stories.
[20:45] Speaker 2: You know.
[20:45] Speaker 1: Did you ever cross paths with Justin Sapp.
[20:50] Speaker 2: I know of him. I don't know him, as.
[20:53] Speaker 1: I recall he was at I may be misremembering, but
[20:58] Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he was at Key West at the
[21:00] Speaker 1: dive school and they call all the students out to
[21:03] Speaker 1: pull like security duty after the attacks happened, and they're
[21:07] Speaker 1: all kind of wondering, like, what are we guarding against here?
[21:09] Speaker 1: Scuba bin Laden, what's this about? Or Another story was
[21:14] Speaker 1: and it wasn't immediately after the attacks. It was I
[21:17] Speaker 1: think the first State of the Union address after nine
[21:20] Speaker 1: to eleven, and Bill Gage, secret Service agent, was doing
[21:26] Speaker 1: security planning for it, and goes up on the rooftop
[21:28] Speaker 1: of one of the buildings there in DC and there's
[21:31] Speaker 1: like a marine unit or something with stinger missiles up there,
[21:35] Speaker 1: and they had been instructed to shoot down commercial airliners
[21:38] Speaker 1: that are like coming down on the Capitol. And he
[21:41] Speaker 1: was like, who gave you orders to do this? Like
[21:42] Speaker 1: who authorized this? And it was just some unit that
[21:45] Speaker 1: just decided on their own, like contingency.
[21:47] Speaker 2: Planning, bravely showing initiative.
[21:50] Speaker 1: But I guess for like the listeners that just point
[21:52] Speaker 1: out like this was such a super chaotic time for
[21:55] Speaker 1: some of the younger folks out there who maybe don't
[21:58] Speaker 1: understand what it was like in the immediate aftermath, it was.
[22:02] Speaker 2: Super chaotic because there was no clarity of what exactly
[22:06] Speaker 2: was going on. There was lots of people who were
[22:08] Speaker 2: trying to do the right thing report what they were seeing.
[22:11] Speaker 2: You know, people were confused and freaked out. And at
[22:15] Speaker 2: the same time, you know, you've got recently separated from
[22:19] Speaker 2: the army knuckleheads who are like, I want to do something,
[22:21] Speaker 2: I don't know what band in my position. So yeah,
[22:25] Speaker 2: all kinds of all kinds of confusion. Absolutely nuts.
[22:30] Speaker 1: What happened next for you? I mean, what was what
[22:32] Speaker 1: was the next day?
[22:32] Speaker 2: Like?
[22:33] Speaker 1: At work, a lot of.
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[25:30] Speaker 2: You know. The weird thing was I got back like
[25:35] Speaker 2: the next day, right, and it was like stun silence.
[25:39] Speaker 2: You know, if you were in this, if you were
[25:41] Speaker 2: in the counter terrorism center, you know, they never left.
[25:44] Speaker 2: They just worked all night long, right, everyone else was
[25:48] Speaker 2: kind of like, what can we do, how can we help?
[25:52] Speaker 2: Over the weeks that would come like literally everything started
[25:56] Speaker 2: shifting to counter charism, right, literally everything that is that
[26:05] Speaker 2: is something that the agency gets criticized about that over
[26:10] Speaker 2: the course of the Twenty Years War, we basically focused
[26:13] Speaker 2: way too much on CT I don't agree with that.
[26:17] Speaker 2: I also don't disagree with it. I think it's like, yeah,
[26:20] Speaker 2: we did, but that's what we were told to do.
[26:23] Speaker 1: You had to prioritize with with limited resources too.
[26:27] Speaker 2: Oh for sure. And at some point we can talk
[26:29] Speaker 2: about like limited resources of the agency and why that
[26:34] Speaker 2: kind of makes us a pain in the butt to everyone.
[26:36] Speaker 2: But but like literally, you know, I was being asked
[26:41] Speaker 2: to look at imagery for various islands in the Philippines,
[26:47] Speaker 2: just like looking for any evidence of you know, strange
[26:50] Speaker 2: or anomalist activity, you know. And I was supposed to
[26:54] Speaker 2: be focused on the WMD program of a specific country
[26:59] Speaker 2: and it wasn't the Phillipy. But yeah, there was a
[27:01] Speaker 2: constant shift. But the other thing I would say is,
[27:05] Speaker 2: you know, if you were in the agency in the sixties,
[27:07] Speaker 2: seventies and eighties and you didn't work against the Soviet
[27:10] Speaker 2: target at all, I would ask, well, what were you doing?
[27:15] Speaker 2: Because that was the primary, you know issue. Now that's
[27:20] Speaker 2: not to say that you're not going to work against
[27:21] Speaker 2: other stuff as well, and those things kind of fed
[27:24] Speaker 2: into it. But yeah, that was the primary threat of
[27:26] Speaker 2: the day, whereas countery terrorism was the primary threat of
[27:30] Speaker 2: the twenty years that I was there. And yeah, you
[27:33] Speaker 2: always hope somebody was thinking about Russia and China and
[27:35] Speaker 2: everything else. But yeah, argumentally that that was the case.
[27:41] Speaker 2: But getting back to your original question, what was it like?
[27:43] Speaker 2: It was a lot of stune silence. You know, people
[27:46] Speaker 2: were just kind of like, what the heck just happened?
[27:49] Speaker 2: It was honestly, it was kind of length to day
[27:51] Speaker 2: after pet Laden's character, right, you know, you basically got out,
[27:56] Speaker 2: walked around to your underwear, not knowing what the hell
[27:58] Speaker 2: you were going to do for the rest of your
[27:59] Speaker 2: career because all of a sudden. But I remember going
[28:04] Speaker 2: to my supervisor and just being blunt. I wanted an
[28:09] Speaker 2: immediate transfer to the director of operations and start training,
[28:13] Speaker 2: and and he was like, yeah, that's that's that's good
[28:16] Speaker 2: to one things. You know, good to have Asper my friend,
[28:21] Speaker 2: because you know, when you join you have a contract. Right,
[28:24] Speaker 2: so they made me do a year as an analytics.
[28:27] Speaker 1: Why why did you sign up as an analyst rather
[28:29] Speaker 1: than going to ops?
[28:31] Speaker 2: Didn't I tell you before that My my professional plan
[28:35] Speaker 2: was always like a feather floating around in the air. Honestly,
[28:39] Speaker 2: it just didn't occur to me, but I think but honestly,
[28:42] Speaker 2: if I go back and think about it, the reason
[28:45] Speaker 2: why I left the military was I wanted to have
[28:49] Speaker 2: a family. I wanted to put down roots, wanted to
[28:50] Speaker 2: have kids. I did eventually, you know. I'm I'm a
[28:54] Speaker 2: father of two sons, both of which were in college.
[28:58] Speaker 2: One just finished his plea year at West Point. He's
[29:02] Speaker 2: currently out in the field, learning patrolling, loving it. But yeah,
[29:08] Speaker 2: that was that was kind of why I was like,
[29:11] Speaker 2: I want to contribute, but I want to do something
[29:13] Speaker 2: where I can have a family. But then the war
[29:16] Speaker 2: happens and.
[29:17] Speaker 1: You're like, there goes that idea.
[29:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like, you know, kind of
[29:22] Speaker 2: going back to the movie Patent, you really want to tell,
[29:25] Speaker 2: you know, your grandkids that you were shoveling shit in
[29:27] Speaker 2: Louisiana when we were at war, you know. No, So,
[29:34] Speaker 2: but eventually did my time as an analyst made it over.
[29:37] Speaker 2: Started going through the pipeline that that took about a
[29:43] Speaker 2: year because you have some initial training in the Northern
[29:47] Speaker 2: Virginia area and then you go down to the schoolhouse
[29:50] Speaker 2: and that's uh, you know, six months of of high intensity. Uh,
[29:57] Speaker 2: it's funny. Sometimes people call it, you know, it's rain
[30:00] Speaker 2: your school for your brain because it just doesn't stop.
[30:04] Speaker 2: But I think I had advantage in that I was
[30:07] Speaker 2: a little bit older. I was in my early to
[30:10] Speaker 2: mid thirties at the time, And I say that was
[30:15] Speaker 2: an advantage because most of the folks who had a
[30:18] Speaker 2: little bit more life experience, right, they knew they had
[30:22] Speaker 2: a job to do. Right, It's like, okay, you know,
[30:24] Speaker 2: I'm going to do whatever training during the day, and
[30:26] Speaker 2: then at night you usually go back to your homeroom
[30:30] Speaker 2: and you're writing reports, right, You're from your notional exercise
[30:34] Speaker 2: related you know, Clindestine meetings and intelligence you've acquired and
[30:39] Speaker 2: all this stuff. Well, us older guys would going, we'd
[30:43] Speaker 2: sit down, we'd write our reports, submit them, and head
[30:48] Speaker 2: back to the barracks by like nine o'clock, right, Whereas
[30:52] Speaker 2: the younger folks who were just out of college with
[30:55] Speaker 2: gibber jabberta chat and they would be up till like
[30:58] Speaker 2: midnight or later and doing that every once in a while.
[31:01] Speaker 2: It is fine, but you need to understand you're going
[31:04] Speaker 2: to do this day after day after day after day
[31:06] Speaker 2: for months. And months.
[31:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, being a soldier taught you that, Oh yeah.
[31:11] Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. And the funny thing is, like
[31:14] Speaker 2: years later, when I came back and I was an instructor,
[31:17] Speaker 2: you'd see the same exact stuff. You're like watching these
[31:21] Speaker 2: like youthful young people in their you know, mid twenties,
[31:24] Speaker 2: just out of college, and over a period of a
[31:27] Speaker 2: couple of weeks, you see them just get beef the
[31:30] Speaker 2: hell down because they're getting like no sleep trying to write.
[31:36] Speaker 2: And that's another thing is don't let perfect be the
[31:42] Speaker 2: enemy of good, right, because I would see colleagues when
[31:47] Speaker 2: I was a student, but then also see students was
[31:49] Speaker 2: when I was an instructor who would stay up insanely
[31:53] Speaker 2: late to try and write the perfect missive, the perfect
[31:57] Speaker 2: intelligence report. And you're like, listen, you're going to run
[32:01] Speaker 2: yourself into the ground and you might physically harm yourself
[32:06] Speaker 2: or others if that happens. You know, you've got to
[32:09] Speaker 2: like provide the role intelligence in your operational cable and
[32:15] Speaker 2: get the hell to bed. That's what you need to do,
[32:17] Speaker 2: because you're gonna do this tomorrow, in the day after
[32:19] Speaker 2: that and the day after that. So that's why it
[32:24] Speaker 2: sometimes it's called read your school for your brain just
[32:26] Speaker 2: because it just doesn't freaking end. But you know, the
[32:33] Speaker 2: one thing I'll tag you about the farm experience, and
[32:37] Speaker 2: you're gonna make friends that are going to be your
[32:39] Speaker 2: friends for the rest of your life. Right Ironically, Alana,
[32:44] Speaker 2: Alana and I went through the same farm course together
[32:48] Speaker 2: a bunch of other cats. Brian Hoak, who is like
[32:53] Speaker 2: dear friend, one of my best friends. He he's in
[32:57] Speaker 2: the class with us, as well as a bunch of
[32:59] Speaker 2: other folks. Ironically, Brian was killed in action almost ten
[33:08] Speaker 2: years ago this fall, and several of us got together
[33:13] Speaker 2: on Memorial Day or the day before Memorial Day to
[33:16] Speaker 2: go see him in Arlington. So you know, it's just
[33:19] Speaker 2: really really tight bonding experience and just some great people.
[33:27] Speaker 2: So yeah, I went through the farm, then I got
[33:29] Speaker 2: Mode per year, did that, came back and then started
[33:35] Speaker 2: into a series of overseas gigs. I ended up going
[33:38] Speaker 2: to Afghanistan a couple of times. Then through a language program,
[33:45] Speaker 2: got to go to a nice clean European assignment, you
[33:51] Speaker 2: know where you can drink the water out of the tap,
[33:53] Speaker 2: which which was awesome, did some good work there, came
[33:59] Speaker 2: back and then went on to uh do a time
[34:03] Speaker 2: stint in the in the schoolhouse, and then on to
[34:10] Speaker 2: another overseas warson tour, and then went on to my
[34:14] Speaker 2: final gig, which was running that uh that kind of
[34:20] Speaker 2: a It was not the farm, It was a training
[34:24] Speaker 2: platform for the for the whole of the intelligence community.
[34:29] Speaker 2: And basically I went that route to do that simply
[34:33] Speaker 2: because by that point in time the marriage had failed.
[34:38] Speaker 2: I had ended up with primary custody of my sons,
[34:42] Speaker 2: and you know, I promised them, Hey, I'm not going
[34:44] Speaker 2: to move you around. Yeah, and eventually retired again because
[34:51] Speaker 2: you know, my son was like, Dad, I want to
[34:53] Speaker 2: I want to graduate from high school here, and and
[34:55] Speaker 2: I'm like.
[34:56] Speaker 1: Okay, So tell us about that first overseas assignment. Sounds
[35:02] Speaker 1: like it was Afghanistan.
[35:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a crazy It was
[35:10] Speaker 2: a crazy thing, right. So you you fly over there
[35:16] Speaker 2: in this contracted aircraft. You get there, you spend like
[35:19] Speaker 2: a day or two at station learning what's what, getting
[35:24] Speaker 2: some in breeze, getting right onto a couple of things.
[35:26] Speaker 2: And I will note that Talabar was a real thing.
[35:30] Speaker 2: It was real, not there anymore obviously, and then you
[35:36] Speaker 2: fly out on an m I seventeen in the middle
[35:38] Speaker 2: of the night to your your four operating base where
[35:42] Speaker 2: you're going to be and you get there middle of
[35:45] Speaker 2: the night, you're tired, as helle, You go in, you
[35:49] Speaker 2: meet the chief, he tells you go to bed, and
[35:51] Speaker 2: you you get on it the next day. But it
[35:55] Speaker 2: was really I think this is going to be the
[35:58] Speaker 2: case for any one. Any type assignment is the most
[36:03] Speaker 2: really awesome, crazy robust experiences, and you're gonna have is
[36:07] Speaker 2: going to be on your first store because you're fresh
[36:10] Speaker 2: off the farm. It's time for you to earn your
[36:14] Speaker 2: stripes and get after it. And that would be That
[36:17] Speaker 2: would be the same whether or not you were at
[36:20] Speaker 2: in a war zone, a semi permissive environment or permissive environment.
[36:24] Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. The expectation is once you get there
[36:28] Speaker 2: on the ground and you immediately take your training and
[36:30] Speaker 2: experience start applying it and spotting, assessing and recruiting, developing
[36:35] Speaker 2: and handling sources. That one, I want to say, within
[36:41] Speaker 2: within a couple of weeks I ended up taking. It
[36:45] Speaker 2: was kind of a an overnight trip, if you will.
[36:50] Speaker 2: Actually it was like a week long deployment up deep
[36:53] Speaker 2: up in the Indu cush. That was pretty crazy, great
[36:57] Speaker 2: experience line stuff, there with some military folks as well
[37:00] Speaker 2: as some of our indigenous personnel. Really an amazing experience. Uh,
[37:07] Speaker 2: within about a month and a half though it was
[37:11] Speaker 2: probably one of the more what's the word I'm looking for,
[37:16] Speaker 2: one of one of the biggest operations of my career.
[37:19] Speaker 2: You know that you directly run yourself, right because you're
[37:23] Speaker 2: gonna do You're going to continually to do bigger things
[37:27] Speaker 2: and things you are going to have more responsibility for.
[37:30] Speaker 2: But you know, it's during that first tour when you
[37:33] Speaker 2: you run an operation and it's like, no, you are
[37:36] Speaker 2: the man, You are the one doing this, make it happen.
[37:40] Speaker 2: I was having a regular scheduled meeting with a a
[37:44] Speaker 2: source that I had just picked up that have been
[37:45] Speaker 2: turned over to me from another officer and uh, good individual,
[37:51] Speaker 2: well vetted well meaning really like working with us. Well,
[37:56] Speaker 2: one day we're having a we're having a meeting and
[38:00] Speaker 2: it's getting towards the end of the meeting and I
[38:02] Speaker 2: want to say, this is like mid to late December timeframe,
[38:06] Speaker 2: and he says to me, he goes, it's the end meeting.
[38:10] Speaker 2: And I'm like, you got anything else, man, is there
[38:12] Speaker 2: anything else you want to tell me about? And for
[38:17] Speaker 2: contexts I had before the meeting, reached out to one
[38:21] Speaker 2: of the targeters that was supporting our operations at that
[38:25] Speaker 2: specific base, and it was ironically Elizabeth Hanson, who was
[38:30] Speaker 2: later killed in Coast in two thousand and nine, and
[38:35] Speaker 2: she took me on a couple of things that were
[38:37] Speaker 2: coming up, like there was some Pacstini military activity that
[38:40] Speaker 2: it was planned in a given region, and essentially, you know,
[38:46] Speaker 2: kind of focused on you know, taskings and requirements for
[38:49] Speaker 2: this individual based off of that, because what we were
[38:53] Speaker 2: expecting was if there was military action, that there would
[38:56] Speaker 2: be kind of a reflexive movement of a and teleban personnel.
[39:03] Speaker 2: So the meeting goes well, given tasking, and as we're
[39:07] Speaker 2: wrapping up, I asked him, Hey, do you got anything else,
[39:09] Speaker 2: anything else you want to mention? And he goes, yes, sir,
[39:15] Speaker 2: do you know these two people? And he pulls out
[39:17] Speaker 2: of his pocket these two paper photographs that he cut
[39:21] Speaker 2: out of the newspaper of two individuals and he lays
[39:25] Speaker 2: them on the desk and I'm like, yeah, I know
[39:29] Speaker 2: who they are. Do you know who they are? And
[39:32] Speaker 2: he goes, I don't know who they are, but they
[39:34] Speaker 2: have been in my village before. So without getting into
[39:40] Speaker 2: specific details, one was a mid level kind of individual
[39:45] Speaker 2: and one was a very senior, very senior kind of individual.
[39:50] Speaker 2: And don't really want to get into specifically whom, but
[39:54] Speaker 2: you get the picture. So this individual, this kid, the
[39:58] Speaker 2: source really had no idea who these folks were. And
[40:02] Speaker 2: I'm like, I get it. And and one might ask
[40:04] Speaker 2: the questions like, how could you not know who this
[40:06] Speaker 2: person is? It's like, hey, you know, we live. We
[40:11] Speaker 2: live in a world where you know, not always, not
[40:14] Speaker 2: always does everybody know what's going on? So in any case,
[40:21] Speaker 2: take the information right up the report of historical travel
[40:24] Speaker 2: to this, uh, this general area. But I put it
[40:29] Speaker 2: in Everything's fine, what's Ramadan? Right? And at the end
[40:32] Speaker 2: of Ramanan there's need, which is kind of a celebratory
[40:38] Speaker 2: period where essentially, you know, people are celebrating the end
[40:44] Speaker 2: of the fascinting period of Ramadan. And I get a
[40:48] Speaker 2: phone call from it and it's late in the evening
[40:53] Speaker 2: and he said, you remember those that individual that I
[40:57] Speaker 2: showed you the picture of. I go, yeah, he goes,
[41:00] Speaker 2: he's I don't remember if he was here or if
[41:03] Speaker 2: he was coming here. I want to say that he
[41:05] Speaker 2: was there, okay that he was there in the village,
[41:08] Speaker 2: and I'm like, really, huh, go Vidge. This basically kicks off,
[41:16] Speaker 2: like I want to say, the longest four days of
[41:19] Speaker 2: my life. Really, for the next four days, we're running
[41:24] Speaker 2: constant operations, connecting.
[41:26] Speaker 4: With him via a technical means, commercial technical means to
[41:34] Speaker 4: leave it at that, getting reports as to what's going on.
[41:39] Speaker 2: So who the individual. You know, we'll keep that discreet
[41:43] Speaker 2: for the time being, but you know, basically national command
[41:47] Speaker 2: authority is eventually notified, probably within about twelve hours. You've
[41:52] Speaker 2: got various elements of the military that are requesting or, IFIs.
[41:58] Speaker 1: Point out for folks, national command authorities as the President
[42:01] Speaker 1: and the Secretary of Defense.
[42:05] Speaker 2: Yes, sorry about that, and sorry question for information or
[42:09] Speaker 2: intelligence depending on who's asking the question. But you know,
[42:12] Speaker 2: we start just this constant cadence of communicating with him,
[42:19] Speaker 2: providing with taskings, taking his reporting, and we're getting really
[42:23] Speaker 2: good stuff or identifying who are the key individuals that
[42:26] Speaker 2: are visiting the village in question, what compounds are in
[42:33] Speaker 2: you know, really solid stuff, and kind of building the
[42:35] Speaker 2: targeting package that this individual of high interest is in
[42:40] Speaker 2: this village. We don't know how long he's going to
[42:43] Speaker 2: be in the village, but you can assume that he
[42:45] Speaker 2: will probably be leaving after this religious period is over with.
[42:50] Speaker 2: So you know, like when I say it's the longest
[42:54] Speaker 2: four days of my life, I mean it was because
[42:57] Speaker 2: I would just be at my desk reports, taking phone
[43:02] Speaker 2: calls from the agent, doing all this stuff. One of
[43:06] Speaker 2: the at one point we we got to this challenge
[43:11] Speaker 2: of he would report that so and so is in
[43:14] Speaker 2: such and such a compound within this village, and the
[43:20] Speaker 2: challenge there was, well, that's not really helpful. What we're
[43:24] Speaker 2: looking for is you know, ten digit grid coordinates, right,
[43:27] Speaker 2: So at one point we contemplated how could we get
[43:29] Speaker 2: him at GPS, and we looked at a couple of
[43:32] Speaker 2: different options, to include having one of our indigenous paramilitary
[43:38] Speaker 2: types infiltrate into Pakistan to hand off the device, but
[43:44] Speaker 2: that had all kinds of risk associated with it. But
[43:47] Speaker 2: what we eventually remembered was that we had a high
[43:51] Speaker 2: resolution plot or print out of overhead imagery of that village, right,
[43:59] Speaker 2: and so a plotter is just a really big printer,
[44:02] Speaker 2: So you're talking like a sheet of imagery that's like
[44:06] Speaker 2: three feet by six feet. What have you? Now, the
[44:10] Speaker 2: thing about imagery taken from a satellite is that is
[44:15] Speaker 2: mens rated at an even greater degree of accuracy than
[44:18] Speaker 2: a tendon usic grid cord. Right, So if you can
[44:21] Speaker 2: identify what specific compounds, then they have all of the
[44:26] Speaker 2: targeting information they need in terms of like where it
[44:29] Speaker 2: is on the on the planet Earth. So we went
[44:32] Speaker 2: through basically a process of and this took hours of
[44:37] Speaker 2: basically doing a verbal map trapping map tracking exercise with
[44:43] Speaker 2: him over over the phone, Like you know, I would
[44:47] Speaker 2: ask in things like, Okay, if you're in this compound
[44:51] Speaker 2: and you're looking north, when you're right outside of it
[44:54] Speaker 2: and you're looking north, what do you see? And he's like,
[44:57] Speaker 2: I don't know what this north does you speak of?
[45:01] Speaker 2: And that would be you know, something that would come
[45:04] Speaker 2: up more often, you know, or frequently throughout time in
[45:07] Speaker 2: Afghanistan was that's certain concepts that are elementary to you
[45:11] Speaker 2: and me don't necessarily translate. It's not part of the world.
[45:15] Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Dell, Like, you know, a lot
[45:17] Speaker 1: of people don't understand, Like if you had taken that
[45:20] Speaker 1: guy and had him in your office and we're showing
[45:23] Speaker 1: him that you know, classified high resolution imagery, say here's
[45:27] Speaker 1: your village, show us what building it is. He would
[45:30] Speaker 1: not recognize it or even know what the hell he's
[45:32] Speaker 1: looking at because he's never in his life seen an
[45:35] Speaker 1: overhead representation of his village, and probably not any other
[45:40] Speaker 1: village either.
[45:42] Speaker 2: Yep, yep, No, it's totally true, because like they've never
[45:44] Speaker 2: been in airplanes, right, they just don't have that visual
[45:50] Speaker 2: understanding of looking at the world in two dimensional concepts.
[45:55] Speaker 2: And the other reality is there's certain things that you
[45:58] Speaker 2: and I take for granted that people in the developing
[46:01] Speaker 2: world like, they don't. It's outside of their scope of exposure.
[46:06] Speaker 2: At one point I was and this is completely we'll
[46:10] Speaker 2: get back to this story, but completely different operations. At
[46:14] Speaker 2: a walking come in and we were debriefing them in Afghanistan,
[46:19] Speaker 2: especially in the Hindu Kush area. You know, you get
[46:22] Speaker 2: quakes all the time. Just happens all the time. So
[46:26] Speaker 2: we're sitting in this cargo container debriefing him and we
[46:29] Speaker 2: have a minor quake, right, and Guy's eyes just get
[46:33] Speaker 2: like plates ah, come on, man, this happens all the time.
[46:37] Speaker 2: He goes, why does that happen? And you know, he
[46:41] Speaker 2: asked me through the translator. I go back without even
[46:44] Speaker 2: thinking of who I'm talking to. I start to explain
[46:48] Speaker 2: in plate tectonics theory and how the Hindu cush because
[46:51] Speaker 2: it's part of the you know, uh yeah, you get
[46:55] Speaker 2: the idea. I'm just like, it just.
[46:56] Speaker 1: Rolls off my You should have just said allah, wills
[46:59] Speaker 1: it leave it right there?
[47:00] Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing was my my interpreter like looks
[47:05] Speaker 2: at me, like I will try and interpret what you
[47:09] Speaker 2: just said. He tries, and then the source looks at
[47:13] Speaker 2: him like there's something growing out of my head and
[47:18] Speaker 2: comes back to me egos so that it doesn't make
[47:20] Speaker 2: any sense. I'm like, alla, Wilson, and then he's like,
[47:24] Speaker 2: oh yes, And you know the crazy thing is these
[47:29] Speaker 2: are they're not dung people.
[47:31] Speaker 1: No, they're not.
[47:32] Speaker 2: No, they're very intelligent. But when you don't have access, yeah,
[47:38] Speaker 2: to certain things, it's like, you know, it's it's just outside.
[47:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, they're they're they're they're uneducated, but at the same
[47:46] Speaker 1: time they have this tremendous local experience and like as
[47:49] Speaker 1: far as like like them doing ad hoc repairs to
[47:53] Speaker 1: a Toyota High looks like they can do things to
[47:55] Speaker 1: those vehicles you didn't think was possible.
[47:58] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, absolutely, And they can literally make a
[48:03] Speaker 2: broken down vehicle operate full, fully operational with like bubblegum
[48:09] Speaker 2: five fifty cores andcake. Right, and you, you and me
[48:14] Speaker 2: that that ain't happening. That dead highlux is just gonna
[48:17] Speaker 2: sit there. But they're amazing, beautiful, wonderful people. I remember
[48:22] Speaker 2: on my first tour, some of the locals got together
[48:26] Speaker 2: and made me a birthday cake. Yeah, and birthdays are
[48:30] Speaker 2: really not a big thing there, honestly. That's why everybody's
[48:34] Speaker 2: birthday is the first of January any given year. And
[48:38] Speaker 2: the birthday cake was it was like really a really
[48:41] Speaker 2: big scone. It had the density of a tile off
[48:46] Speaker 2: a space shuttle, like you could strap at your feet
[48:49] Speaker 2: re enter the Earth's atmosphere. But you know, that was
[48:52] Speaker 2: the point was they're just beautiful people and they recognized that. Yeah,
[48:56] Speaker 2: they're just wonderful. But getting back to the original story,
[48:59] Speaker 2: so we were able to basically identify key compounds where
[49:07] Speaker 2: you know, the target is entourage, where people were located.
[49:11] Speaker 2: This is being reported up to the National Command Authority.
[49:14] Speaker 2: Eventually the decisions made big strike and at the end
[49:20] Speaker 2: of it, he wasn't.
[49:22] Speaker 1: There air striker, air strike or a ground rate.
[49:30] Speaker 2: Air strike. Because it was a cross border there was
[49:33] Speaker 2: there was some debate of sending in a Tier one
[49:38] Speaker 2: element to go across the border. There was some discussion
[49:42] Speaker 2: of it, but that was the point where they were asking,
[49:46] Speaker 2: there were requesting information that there was just no way
[49:49] Speaker 2: my guy could possibly you know, things like well, you know,
[49:55] Speaker 2: disposition of you know, weapon systems, caliber, weapon systems frequency
[50:00] Speaker 2: is that the cute and the enemy QRF might be using.
[50:04] Speaker 2: And I totally understand as a former soldier that you
[50:07] Speaker 2: want that kind of intelligence, but there's no way at
[50:11] Speaker 2: hell I'm going to ask him to go get that
[50:13] Speaker 2: because he will utterly be fingered and he'll be dead
[50:17] Speaker 2: and it won't just be him, it'll be his family too,
[50:21] Speaker 2: which is something that you know, I'm glad we're talking
[50:24] Speaker 2: about it because it's something a lot of times gets missed.
[50:27] Speaker 2: Is besides collecting intelligence for the good of the nation,
[50:33] Speaker 2: job one of an operations officer is the safety and
[50:37] Speaker 2: security of that asset, their asset, their family. We take
[50:41] Speaker 2: it very very seriously. So yeah, there's just like I'm
[50:45] Speaker 2: not I'm not gonna ask him that. So there you
[50:49] Speaker 2: have it. But at the end of the day, when
[50:53] Speaker 2: the strike occurred, it was unclear where he had gone,
[50:58] Speaker 2: but I think in the aftermath after he was either
[51:01] Speaker 2: either departed like an hour before or earlier that day.
[51:05] Speaker 1: This is like HVT number two or three.
[51:09] Speaker 2: Something like that. Yeah, i've sen' senior target, right, But
[51:14] Speaker 2: there was a couple of things here that I personally
[51:16] Speaker 2: don't doubt. The individual question was there for a couple
[51:20] Speaker 2: of reasons, because there's never been any definitive reporting that
[51:23] Speaker 2: said he was somewhere else at that day in that time, right,
[51:27] Speaker 2: So you know, that's one of those things that an
[51:29] Speaker 2: absence of evidence is not evidence in and of itself.
[51:33] Speaker 2: So there you go. The other thing was about six
[51:37] Speaker 2: years later, I was in another location again overseas, and
[51:43] Speaker 2: uh there was a newspaper report about how Pakstan military
[51:50] Speaker 2: moved into a certain area, certain village. They seized it, rested,
[51:55] Speaker 2: arrested control of it from uh oh kind of Taliban
[51:59] Speaker 2: pushed those folks out. And part of it was they
[52:02] Speaker 2: discovered this kind of a cave complex in the mountain
[52:07] Speaker 2: above the village. And they start describing the cave complex
[52:11] Speaker 2: and they showed some sketches of it, and I'm reading
[52:14] Speaker 2: this and this is years later, and I'm like, God,
[52:16] Speaker 2: this looks so familiar, Like why does this feel so familiar?
[52:21] Speaker 2: And then it eventually I remembered that I had written
[52:26] Speaker 2: a report based off for reporting from that asset about
[52:30] Speaker 2: that compound, how it was laid out, where approximately was
[52:34] Speaker 2: how many people could be fitting it. And the point
[52:37] Speaker 2: here is that his reporting and what was eventually an
[52:41] Speaker 2: open source kind of married up. So even though that
[52:47] Speaker 2: high value individual was not at the target at the
[52:52] Speaker 2: time of the attack, no one's ever been able to
[52:55] Speaker 2: say that it was somewhere else, And everything else that
[52:58] Speaker 2: the source provided was was spot on, authenticated and authoritative.
[53:04] Speaker 2: So so yeah, that was probably one of the bigger,
[53:08] Speaker 2: bigger operations I got to do. Did some other good
[53:12] Speaker 2: stuff that year. For a while, was working closely with
[53:17] Speaker 2: Jaysak elements and our UH basically our indigenous troops to
[53:25] Speaker 2: basically shut down rat lines that were moving troops out
[53:28] Speaker 2: of Pakistan and to Afghanistan. So I would basically work
[53:34] Speaker 2: with my guys to develop source networks that could articulate
[53:37] Speaker 2: everything we needed to know about the facilitator who was
[53:40] Speaker 2: moving troops in and out, basically set up a targeting
[53:45] Speaker 2: package for the facilitator's compound. And then when we go
[53:50] Speaker 2: move on it, I would go with the paramilitary force
[53:55] Speaker 2: basically to manage and handle that source because we wanted
[53:59] Speaker 2: to get him eyes on hours before the actual hit,
[54:03] Speaker 2: and then I would take control of them when you know,
[54:06] Speaker 2: once the blocking forces in place, the assault forces move agin.
[54:10] Speaker 2: Because after we got the guy, our source needed to
[54:14] Speaker 2: positively identify as like, yes, this is him, and we
[54:18] Speaker 2: would we basically put the source in you know, uh
[54:22] Speaker 2: fatigues balla clav overstaid to obscure who he was. And
[54:29] Speaker 2: that was a pretty pretty productive effort. But the thing was,
[54:35] Speaker 2: you you go, you hit a target, you remove the facilitator,
[54:40] Speaker 2: you shut down the rat line for a week, and
[54:42] Speaker 2: then another facilitator moves in and the whole thing starts
[54:45] Speaker 2: over again. Uh. And we did that a few times
[54:48] Speaker 2: that summer and uh but yeah, that was the that
[54:50] Speaker 2: was the first door. And then ended up coming back. Well,
[54:57] Speaker 2: I went home for a period of time because my
[55:00] Speaker 2: and son was being born, so I wanted to be
[55:03] Speaker 2: around a little bit for that. Went back out again
[55:07] Speaker 2: then as a deputy chief of base. That was a
[55:12] Speaker 2: that was a good year, but not as not as
[55:14] Speaker 2: exciting because by that point movement was being far more
[55:19] Speaker 2: restricted lake for example, during my first tour, and the
[55:25] Speaker 2: first tour was just best not best moment, a bad way,
[55:28] Speaker 2: but you just got to do so much right. During
[55:31] Speaker 2: the first tour, Tenth Mountain went into the Peshe River
[55:36] Speaker 2: Valley and basically seized control of it. Re established a
[55:42] Speaker 2: number of bases in the area, and we were able
[55:45] Speaker 2: to go out with Tenth Mountain. We could go out
[55:47] Speaker 2: on the infield. We had to wait like twenty four
[55:49] Speaker 2: hours so things calmed down. But yeah, we went in
[55:53] Speaker 2: and spent two weeks on the ground with Tenth Mountain.
[55:56] Speaker 2: An amazing experience. I remember working closely with Lieutenant Colonel Cavelli,
[56:03] Speaker 2: great guy. So we insert on this mountain top about
[56:08] Speaker 2: scar and me with him and he's like, okay, here's
[56:12] Speaker 2: the patrol base moved there, and uh, you know, be safe.
[56:17] Speaker 2: So I'll look at the map, but it's like a
[56:19] Speaker 2: one mile straight line distance on the map. Like okay,
[56:22] Speaker 2: it's now we're on movement, No big deal. It took
[56:25] Speaker 2: four hours, and of those four hours, it was three
[56:29] Speaker 2: hours of sliding down the side of the mountain, such
[56:33] Speaker 2: that when I finally did get to the patrol base,
[56:36] Speaker 2: I was exposed from like my right ankle all the
[56:40] Speaker 2: way up to my right hip. BDUs were totally shredded. Yeah,
[56:45] Speaker 2: it was awesome. It was awesome. But but then yeah,
[56:49] Speaker 2: on later tour when I went back into as a
[56:52] Speaker 2: deputy keep a base, you know, not as exciting movement,
[56:56] Speaker 2: much more restricted, you know, and more you know, management role.
[57:01] Speaker 2: So you're not doing is I was?
[57:03] Speaker 1: I was going to ask Dell, what's it like supporting
[57:06] Speaker 1: a conventional army infantry unit as a CIA officer? Like
[57:10] Speaker 1: this is a far a far cry from doing a
[57:13] Speaker 1: brush passes and Bucharest or something like that. I mean,
[57:16] Speaker 1: this is a whole different sort of thing, and it's
[57:18] Speaker 1: something that for except for maybe some of the sad
[57:22] Speaker 1: guys that were active in Central America, it's kind of
[57:24] Speaker 1: a new thing for the CIA, isn't it?
[57:27] Speaker 2: Absolutely? And it's challenging because for a couple of reasons,
[57:32] Speaker 2: like US Commission Conventional US military was in Afghanistan to
[57:38] Speaker 2: essentially conduct counterinsurgency against the Taliban, right right, that's their job.
[57:44] Speaker 2: We're there to be running crushboarder operations into Pakistan to find,
[57:49] Speaker 2: fix and facilitate the finish of El KAITA senior leadership. Right,
[57:55] Speaker 2: So our job, our mandate are authorities, and what we've
[57:59] Speaker 2: been told to do is run crossboarder operations, not conducting
[58:04] Speaker 2: intelligence collection inside of Afghanistan. Now that being said, if
[58:10] Speaker 2: we if we run into it, great, we will share
[58:15] Speaker 2: it immediately. And that and that was the normal process.
[58:18] Speaker 2: Like whenever I got any intel that you know, could
[58:23] Speaker 2: be of use to them, I shared it with them immediately. Right.
[58:25] Speaker 2: We didn't even you know, get to the point of,
[58:29] Speaker 2: well it depending. If it was something that could wait
[58:32] Speaker 2: a day for it to be pushed up the States
[58:34] Speaker 2: and and formally published and released, we wait. But if
[58:38] Speaker 2: it was like Shorter, you know, this is going to
[58:40] Speaker 2: happen in the next twelve hours, then I would like
[58:43] Speaker 2: take my notes, go find Colonel Cavelli or god, I'm
[58:48] Speaker 2: blanking on some of the other guys I worked with.
[58:50] Speaker 2: But you would go straight to them, tell them, hey,
[58:53] Speaker 2: this is what I got, this is where I got
[58:55] Speaker 2: it from, this is what we assess the credibility of
[58:57] Speaker 2: it to be, you know, so you simply share that thing.
[59:01] Speaker 2: But that was also by two thousand and five, two
[59:06] Speaker 2: thousand and six, or really when I was a deputy
[59:09] Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, I will also say that we
[59:13] Speaker 2: learned as an organization over time. Like Seawan Westwtzer, I
[59:18] Speaker 2: know you interviewed him a couple of weeks ago. Seawan
[59:21] Speaker 2: is a good friend. He had served in a chief
[59:25] Speaker 2: of base position earlier on in the war, and he
[59:29] Speaker 2: will also tell you that he was hesitant to share
[59:34] Speaker 2: information until basically there was a meeting of a mind
[59:37] Speaker 2: meeting of the minds between him and the ODA team
[59:42] Speaker 2: leader and Warrant that kind of like they had a
[59:44] Speaker 2: robust discussion. I'll leave it at that because it's his story,
[59:46] Speaker 2: not mine. But at least for us, I could totally
[59:50] Speaker 2: understand there was a hesitancy to share information. But also,
[59:54] Speaker 2: being a former Army officer, I also know that these
[59:59] Speaker 2: guys need this stuff. Right. The challenge really became and
[1:00:03] Speaker 2: I think most of military leadership understood. It's like, listen,
[1:00:08] Speaker 2: I'm here for this mission. You're here for this mission, right,
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: this is all in the greater good of national security.
[1:00:18] Speaker 2: But yeah, there were there are always going to be individuals,
[1:00:22] Speaker 2: and a lot of times it comes down personality that yeah,
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: why don't you share this, you know, because this is
[1:00:27] Speaker 2: secret stuff, and like, yeah, we're all on the seeing team.
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: Man so.
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: Uh, and in between these tours, you got to do
[1:00:37] Speaker 1: some language training also.
[1:00:40] Speaker 2: I did. I did go through a language program. I
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: will tell you that it was frigging intense. It was
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: as intense as going through the farm, because that is
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: your day job, right, eight hours a day in language training,
[1:01:03] Speaker 2: Plus there's an expectation you're gonna do five hours for
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: a study, you know, in addition to that, and the
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: expectation is for the language I had, I had to
[1:01:12] Speaker 2: learn it in nine months, right, and that's like from
[1:01:16] Speaker 2: zero to at least level three for you to go
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: out there.
[1:01:20] Speaker 1: What was the language?
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: It was Spanish?
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: Come on, that gave you an easy one?
[1:01:28] Speaker 2: They did? They did, and you know, yeah, I probably
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: shouldn't have said that, but anyway, not that important. You know.
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: What I feel bad for was like, you know, my
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: friend Brian, he had Greek, right because he was going
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: to do happens. And what I remember him telling me
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: about Greek was there were eighteen different forms of conjugation
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: for verbs, and I'm like, brother, how in the hell
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: do you do that? But then like you have folks
[1:01:59] Speaker 2: who go through learning Russia learn Chinese, it's like that's
[1:02:03] Speaker 2: usually like two years something like.
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: That, Yeah, Chinese or Mandarin has something like nine different
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: intonations or something like that.
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but even even so, like I am not
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: going to train tell you that Spanish is as hard
[1:02:22] Speaker 2: as say, you know, Chinese. Obviously it's not.
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: But why the hell did they haven't you learn Spanish
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: when they're deploying you to Afghanistan?
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: Well this was after my Afghan tours, right, so this
[1:02:35] Speaker 2: was I was going to a place where they spoke that.
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: Okay, okay, gotcha.
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: But you know, for other things like like Urdu Pashtu,
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: that sort of thing. Did they send people through those
[1:02:47] Speaker 2: training courses, Yeah, they did, but they didn't really push
[1:02:50] Speaker 2: it as a priority because let's face it, where are
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: you going to use Pashtu? Yeah you're gonna use it,
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: you know, it's reality, and you end up picking up
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: like a little bit of the language while you're there.
[1:03:03] Speaker 2: So it would be the equivalent of like kitchen Pashtu
[1:03:07] Speaker 2: or kitchen or do where you know, very very basic
[1:03:11] Speaker 2: stuff where you could like ask them, hey, how are
[1:03:13] Speaker 2: you doing, how's your family? Isn't the weather nice to day?
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: You know? That sort of thing, but not a you know,
[1:03:21] Speaker 2: high level, not a high level at all. But you know, honestly,
[1:03:26] Speaker 2: do you worally want to spend the next the x
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: twenty years of your career in Afghanistan.
[1:03:32] Speaker 1: So that the next tour was somewhere a little bit
[1:03:35] Speaker 1: more inhabitable.
[1:03:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, and honestly the nicest assignment of my entire professional career.
[1:03:44] Speaker 2: Like I had done a tour in South Korea when
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: I was in the army in the mid nineties, and
[1:03:50] Speaker 2: South Korea is nice, but back in the mid nineties,
[1:03:53] Speaker 2: the pollution was insane, Like every time you go out
[1:03:56] Speaker 2: and go for a run, it was like smoking entire
[1:03:58] Speaker 2: package cigarettes. It was just it was crazy. I hear
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: it's much nicer now, but yeah, it was a European posting,
[1:04:08] Speaker 2: very nice, and it was a good change for the family.
[1:04:13] Speaker 2: Still working various uh, you know, challenging and interesting target sets.
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: So uh, that was a great experience. And then after
[1:04:25] Speaker 2: that went down to went down to the farm to
[1:04:29] Speaker 2: uh to be an instructor. So that was that was
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: pretty cool.
[1:04:34] Speaker 1: So they wanted you to get like a traditional case
[1:04:36] Speaker 1: officer tour.
[1:04:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, and and the beauty of it is so you know,
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: first tour, you know, a line officer just doing the job.
[1:04:47] Speaker 2: Second tour, dew Kiva base in a war zone. Third
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: tour go back to being more of a more of
[1:04:54] Speaker 2: a line officer, but at the same time you're you know,
[1:04:57] Speaker 2: a referant for this and you're refront for that. But
[1:05:02] Speaker 2: it's great because then it gives you the opportunity to
[1:05:04] Speaker 2: do things like brush passes and signals and signal sites
[1:05:08] Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So you know, at the same
[1:05:11] Speaker 2: time you're working you know, lotter activities, you're also working
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: with liaison. So it's a it's it's a it's a
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: good rounding experience, right, because you don't want individuals to
[1:05:23] Speaker 2: be nothing but war zone type stuff. That's not good
[1:05:27] Speaker 2: for them, it's not good for their career. And even
[1:05:30] Speaker 2: paramilitary operations officers at certain points in their career they're
[1:05:34] Speaker 2: going to be pulled out of the cycle of going
[1:05:36] Speaker 2: and doing paramilitary stuff and be sent to a traditional
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: tour so they can get that exposure. You know, that's
[1:05:44] Speaker 2: that's one of those any you know, I am not
[1:05:46] Speaker 2: a paramilitary operations officer. However, many of them are very
[1:05:52] Speaker 2: very good, not simply at the paramilitary stuff, but the operational, uh,
[1:05:56] Speaker 2: the traditional operational stuff as well. So but yeah, that's
[1:06:00] Speaker 2: very normal. But then, of course, you get promoted to
[1:06:06] Speaker 2: a point where it's like all right, now they're making
[1:06:09] Speaker 2: you management. So then you're managing like a you know,
[1:06:16] Speaker 2: a global codd Action program from h Q. I tried
[1:06:22] Speaker 2: to approach it from the perspective of, yeah, I'm an HQ,
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: but I'm going to go out and try and visit
[1:06:29] Speaker 2: every platform at least once if I can. Did I
[1:06:33] Speaker 2: get to all of them? No? I didn't get to
[1:06:35] Speaker 2: every one of them, but we try to go out
[1:06:39] Speaker 2: and sometimes it would be just like a site survey
[1:06:42] Speaker 2: check on things. Sometimes it was to deliver, you know,
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: some variant of training. So and the beauty of that
[1:06:49] Speaker 2: was you're you're if you do and you're giving them
[1:06:52] Speaker 2: a training course, you get to spend several days with
[1:06:55] Speaker 2: them one on one. You actually get to see who
[1:06:58] Speaker 2: they are, how will they perform? So did that for
[1:07:02] Speaker 2: a couple of years, this.
[1:07:04] Speaker 1: Is like eight liaison type operations.
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. And And here's what I would say,
[1:07:11] Speaker 2: without going into details that I can get into, it's
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: really the sort of thing that I think the American
[1:07:18] Speaker 2: people would expect, Right, So what do I mean by that?
[1:07:23] Speaker 2: There's going to be certain targets, certain issues that we
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: can't go after for a variety of reasons, Like you
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: me all right, even if we spoke level five your
[1:07:38] Speaker 2: native multiple dialects of Arabic, neither one of us looks Arabic,
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: neither one of us looks Middle Eastern. And the same
[1:07:51] Speaker 2: thing if you're talking about the Balkans, or if you're
[1:07:53] Speaker 2: talking about South America, if you're talking about wherever language
[1:07:58] Speaker 2: is important, it's absolutely critical little bit. It's more than that.
[1:08:01] Speaker 2: It's understanding the culture. It's understanding the nuances. It's understanding
[1:08:05] Speaker 2: the fabric of that society at a level that an
[1:08:07] Speaker 2: outsider is never going to get right. So depending on
[1:08:11] Speaker 2: what the issue is, and we do this for counter terrorism,
[1:08:15] Speaker 2: we do this for counter arcotics, we do this for
[1:08:17] Speaker 2: a bunch of different things, and we've done it for decades.
[1:08:20] Speaker 2: You partner with the local of the local liaison because
[1:08:23] Speaker 2: they have people who it's more than just speaking the language.
[1:08:27] Speaker 2: They know the culture, they know the history, and we
[1:08:31] Speaker 2: work with them and basically we run them as proxies,
[1:08:33] Speaker 2: as a proxy force to gather information that we can.
[1:08:37] Speaker 2: And that's that's a critical point. Co reaction is a
[1:08:42] Speaker 2: lot of things, and sometimes it does have a kinetic
[1:08:46] Speaker 2: or lethal component. But ninety percent of the time, it's
[1:08:49] Speaker 2: about gathering information for other things to happen, whether it's
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: for a policy maker to make an informed decision, or
[1:08:58] Speaker 2: maybe you're working closely with the Lisi government they're going
[1:09:00] Speaker 2: to do take action on something. But yeah, most often
[1:09:05] Speaker 2: it's about it's about gathering information. And I think I
[1:09:09] Speaker 2: honestly think that's what the American people would expect of us,
[1:09:12] Speaker 2: to figure out a way to get jobs done. Yeah,
[1:09:19] Speaker 2: so there you go talking a lot.
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: No, No, it's great. You also got involved in the
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: counterintelligence side of things at one point, Yeah.
[1:09:29] Speaker 2: A little bit. I really can't get into detail at
[1:09:32] Speaker 2: all about that, but you know, think of it in
[1:09:35] Speaker 2: terms of potentially recruiting intelligence officers of another service. So
[1:09:41] Speaker 2: but yeah, I really can't get into that.
[1:09:44] Speaker 1: That's like a pretty high stakes, isn't it.
[1:09:47] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for sure, for sure, definitely, because they're like
[1:09:52] Speaker 2: very much taking significant risk in terms of you know,
[1:09:58] Speaker 2: if they get caught there, they're they're all kinds of screwed.
[1:10:02] Speaker 2: But I like, there there's yeah, I remember, this has
[1:10:08] Speaker 2: nothing to do with me, but it's an example of
[1:10:11] Speaker 2: where things and you know, Harvey side of sideways for
[1:10:15] Speaker 2: like foreign intelligence officers. There was this occurred roughly with
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: the time I was over in Europe. There was a
[1:10:25] Speaker 2: Russian foreign intelligence officer who was basically working a series
[1:10:31] Speaker 2: of penetrations of a given service, or not a service
[1:10:34] Speaker 2: per se, but really a uh a government. So he
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: made a mistake. And this is this is funny because
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: it kind of harkens back to Seawan's book about kind
[1:10:49] Speaker 2: of highlighting that, you know, the Russian intelligences. Russian intelligence
[1:10:54] Speaker 2: services are plagued with corruption and a lot of times
[1:10:57] Speaker 2: they make correndous mistakes. In this case, the Russian intelligence
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: officer had been basically running penetrations that government, and what
[1:11:12] Speaker 2: he would do is he would pick him up in
[1:11:13] Speaker 2: his vehicle and he would go to a certain place
[1:11:16] Speaker 2: and he park and they have a meeting in the
[1:11:18] Speaker 2: car and then they'd drive away. Where the guy made
[1:11:22] Speaker 2: mistake was one he parked his vehicle in the same
[1:11:27] Speaker 2: place literally every meeting with this agent, right literally the
[1:11:33] Speaker 2: same place. Problem number two was what he didn't realize
[1:11:38] Speaker 2: was where he was parking was immediately next to an
[1:11:42] Speaker 2: apartment building where a senior member of the National Police
[1:11:46] Speaker 2: Force lived. So this senior liaison officer would be coming
[1:11:51] Speaker 2: home at night and he would see this diplomatic plated
[1:11:56] Speaker 2: vehicle in the same location every three weeks and that
[1:12:01] Speaker 2: only takes you know, a couple of times to happen,
[1:12:04] Speaker 2: and he's like, ah, something's happening here. Without getting into details, basically,
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: they immediately put that individual under surveillance, both human and technical,
[1:12:16] Speaker 2: basically watched him for an extended period somewhere between six
[1:12:21] Speaker 2: and twelve months, and then in the course of a
[1:12:24] Speaker 2: weekend basically wrapped every penetration he had of that government
[1:12:31] Speaker 2: was wrapped up and arrested, and then probably like a
[1:12:35] Speaker 2: day or two later, he was identified as first Son
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: and Ungrad And and how.
[1:12:40] Speaker 1: Wow, are those the types of operations that like the
[1:12:47] Speaker 1: CIA would engage in, like disrupting Russian intelligence abroad or here?
[1:12:52] Speaker 2: Maybe? Oh, absolutely absolutely, We're absolutely going to work with
[1:12:57] Speaker 2: our foreign partners to disrupt you know, brushing intelligence operations
[1:13:04] Speaker 2: when it's you know, a huan traditional human operation, or
[1:13:07] Speaker 2: if it's you know, COVID influence whenever we can, wherever
[1:13:12] Speaker 2: we can, we're gonna work against them. So and the uh,
[1:13:20] Speaker 2: it's pollen season.
[1:13:23] Speaker 1: And when did the counter w m D stuff come in?
[1:13:28] Speaker 2: Probably around mid career. That's also something that I really
[1:13:32] Speaker 2: don't want to get into uh detail with what I
[1:13:36] Speaker 2: will tell you is and it kind of goes back
[1:13:39] Speaker 2: to UH kind of speaks to how we'll approach things
[1:13:42] Speaker 2: like that in in at least in one of those instances,
[1:13:49] Speaker 2: I had recruited the individual. And and to be clear,
[1:13:55] Speaker 2: all right, I have a degree in humanities, right, I
[1:13:57] Speaker 2: do not have a deep scientific background, right. But my
[1:14:01] Speaker 2: job as an operations officer is literally to handle the operation, right,
[1:14:08] Speaker 2: So I'm focused on things like training the individual, ensuring
[1:14:12] Speaker 2: their communications are robust and secure, the security the overall operation,
[1:14:19] Speaker 2: making sure that he remains committed to the cause, committed
[1:14:22] Speaker 2: to THESIP, relationship with CIA, all of that traditional operation stuff, right.
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: But when it came to having subsident understanding of the
[1:14:34] Speaker 2: science around what this individual had access to, that way
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: over my head. So what we did in that case
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: was we worked with elements back at HQ and we
[1:14:47] Speaker 2: were able to meet in a third country location where
[1:14:50] Speaker 2: we could bring in not getting PhD to be part
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: of the debriefing. So because at the end of the day,
[1:14:58] Speaker 2: like I just cannot, I just don't know, you know.
[1:15:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, I can think. Jim Waller talks about this about,
[1:15:05] Speaker 1: you know, training the intelligence officer to you know, speak
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: about nuclear fission and things like this.
[1:15:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And ironically, again later on in
[1:15:18] Speaker 2: my career when I was running that community platform, one
[1:15:21] Speaker 2: of the things we focused on was developing a course
[1:15:27] Speaker 2: that was focused on emerging and disrupted technologies for that
[1:15:32] Speaker 2: exact reason, because overwhelmingly when you look at like who
[1:15:38] Speaker 2: becomes operations officers, and there's a lot of finance individuals
[1:15:42] Speaker 2: at there's a lot of lawyers, accountants, the sort of
[1:15:44] Speaker 2: things you'd find at the FBI, having people with deep
[1:15:48] Speaker 2: scientific background doesn't I'm not saying that they're not there,
[1:15:52] Speaker 2: because I've actually known to operations officers who had degrees
[1:15:56] Speaker 2: in physics and advanced degrees. But most of us don't
[1:16:01] Speaker 2: have that background. So what we'll do is we'll partner
[1:16:04] Speaker 2: with the Directorate of Analysis back at HQ, and we'll
[1:16:09] Speaker 2: bring you know, a no kidding PhD to whatever country
[1:16:14] Speaker 2: we need to bring them to so they can sit
[1:16:15] Speaker 2: in the room and have a robust discussion about something
[1:16:19] Speaker 2: that's just going to go over my head. Now I'm
[1:16:21] Speaker 2: still I'm still there. I'm still participating but my part
[1:16:25] Speaker 2: is the management of the meeting, management of security for communications.
[1:16:29] Speaker 2: I'm making sure of the room and the means secure.
[1:16:33] Speaker 2: If I've had to bring in some kind of surveillance
[1:16:36] Speaker 2: team to put a bubble around the safe house or
[1:16:39] Speaker 2: the hotel or whatever, I'm managing that component as well.
[1:16:42] Speaker 2: But then I'm going to literally use the analyst from
[1:16:47] Speaker 2: back at HQ to help debrief this guy and make
[1:16:50] Speaker 2: sense of it because I'm not going to be able
[1:16:52] Speaker 2: to do. You know, Jim. Jim's a great guy. I
[1:16:56] Speaker 2: would love to call him a mentor, but we never
[1:16:58] Speaker 2: got to work together and in the agency, but he is.
[1:17:01] Speaker 2: He's an amazing man and a true national treasure.
[1:17:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, and going back and being a instructor at the farm,
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: you kind of touched upon that a little bit already,
[1:17:15] Speaker 1: But what were you You were you just uh, one
[1:17:18] Speaker 1: of the instructors that kind of like does the source
[1:17:21] Speaker 1: meets and stuff with the students, Like how did that work?
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: So yeah, like any sort of thing like this, you
[1:17:30] Speaker 2: can approach it where you're just going to do, you know,
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: the bare minimum, and kind of it becomes a low
[1:17:37] Speaker 2: key break assignment because the reality is when you live
[1:17:41] Speaker 2: in when you work for the agency. There is really
[1:17:44] Speaker 2: no such thing as work life balance, right. That's why
[1:17:48] Speaker 2: I kind of like my post retirement career as a
[1:17:52] Speaker 2: consultant is I have work life balance that I never
[1:17:55] Speaker 2: had before ever. So to answer your question directly, there
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: are going to be folks who will use it as
[1:18:03] Speaker 2: a break from the grind of their career. And I
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: totally understand that, I truly do, and those individuals will
[1:18:08] Speaker 2: They'll be instructors, they'll maybe do some role playing, but
[1:18:12] Speaker 2: they're not going to request to be a reference for anything.
[1:18:15] Speaker 2: They're not going to request to be, you know, chief
[1:18:18] Speaker 2: of a training element. And that's fine, you know, but
[1:18:23] Speaker 2: then there's gonna be some of us who are going
[1:18:26] Speaker 2: to get more involved in different elements of it. So
[1:18:29] Speaker 2: you know, you're going to teach classes on you know,
[1:18:33] Speaker 2: everything from the ASCID recruitment cycle or the Asian recruitment cycle,
[1:18:38] Speaker 2: depending on you know, however you want to phrase it
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: to maybe you want to focus on counterintelligence methodologies or
[1:18:46] Speaker 2: defense against counterintelligence methodology, so you know, makes it sound
[1:18:51] Speaker 2: a little bit like Hogwarts, but you know, it's things
[1:18:54] Speaker 2: like teaching a student. What do you do when you
[1:18:59] Speaker 2: are are driving down a dark road in the middle
[1:19:02] Speaker 2: of the night after an asset meeting and you run
[1:19:05] Speaker 2: into a roadblock. How do you deal with that? How
[1:19:11] Speaker 2: do you deal with your your meeting an agent, you know,
[1:19:14] Speaker 2: hotel room and suddenly there's a knock on the door
[1:19:17] Speaker 2: and they say, and there's there's general tips and procedures
[1:19:21] Speaker 2: ato how we handle that sort of thing. And the
[1:19:25] Speaker 2: reason is they work. And I would tell you that
[1:19:27] Speaker 2: one of the one of the most rewarding emails I
[1:19:32] Speaker 2: got from a student years after he had been a student,
[1:19:37] Speaker 2: he sent me an email one day he goes, hey,
[1:19:39] Speaker 2: you remember that thing you taught us to do in
[1:19:42] Speaker 2: this circumstance, Well, it happened to me and I did
[1:19:46] Speaker 2: what you told me to do and it worked. And
[1:19:50] Speaker 2: I'm like, yes, that is why I told you to
[1:19:54] Speaker 2: do it. But yeah, it's it's that's incredibly rewarding. So
[1:20:00] Speaker 2: you may have you may have officers that specialize in
[1:20:04] Speaker 2: commercial operations, right who are kind of leave the curriculum
[1:20:09] Speaker 2: in that direction. Yeah, there's just so many different things.
[1:20:14] Speaker 2: There's and there's definitely curriculum reference for things like surmail's
[1:20:18] Speaker 2: detection routes, high threat meetings basically covering the gamut and
[1:20:26] Speaker 2: then of course, you know, maybe you've become the chief
[1:20:29] Speaker 2: of the Operational Training Base, which is essentially being you know,
[1:20:33] Speaker 2: chief of the home room.
[1:20:37] Speaker 1: I think we also got to mention kind of blew
[1:20:39] Speaker 1: past this dell. But during this time, while you're or
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: maybe the first half of your career at the agency,
[1:20:46] Speaker 1: you're still a reserve officer in the Army.
[1:20:49] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for anyone who might be considering that, I
[1:20:54] Speaker 2: would highly recommend it, especially during a period where the
[1:20:59] Speaker 2: nations had war, and the reason being is you're trying
[1:21:03] Speaker 2: to battle both things. That argumentaly should be a full
[1:21:08] Speaker 2: time career. So there's things like, you know, the Army
[1:21:15] Speaker 2: wants you to do something called IL which is intermediate
[1:21:17] Speaker 2: level education, which is kind of the equivalent of getting
[1:21:20] Speaker 2: a master's kind of sort of, and you're trying to
[1:21:24] Speaker 2: do that while you're a full time CIA operations officer.
[1:21:31] Speaker 2: Kind of hard to do. The worst for it for
[1:21:35] Speaker 2: me was when I was doing Afghan tours. What I
[1:21:40] Speaker 2: would do is I would come home on a one
[1:21:44] Speaker 2: like an R and R for a couple of weeks,
[1:21:46] Speaker 2: and I was like, all, I'm going to pick up
[1:21:48] Speaker 2: a week's worth of military duty while on R and R.
[1:21:53] Speaker 2: Doing military duty on R and R is just dumb.
[1:21:57] Speaker 2: But that's what I did. And one time I got
[1:22:01] Speaker 2: off the aircraft the next day reported to support like
[1:22:06] Speaker 2: a week long surveillance training exercise, and I made it
[1:22:11] Speaker 2: through the week and collapsed and ended up in the hospital.
[1:22:17] Speaker 2: And basically I collapsed and they just didn't know what
[1:22:21] Speaker 2: the hell was wrong with me. And they're like, he's exhausted,
[1:22:24] Speaker 2: you know, he's he's getting he's getting through the he's
[1:22:27] Speaker 2: getting through the week, you know, chewing stimulants and consuming
[1:22:33] Speaker 2: coffee because he hasn't freaking slept. So after that experience,
[1:22:38] Speaker 2: I basically would attempt to front load as much military
[1:22:42] Speaker 2: duty before I deployed and then pick up the rest
[1:22:45] Speaker 2: of it when I got back. But yeah, you mentioned
[1:22:49] Speaker 2: that it's like trying to do both of them at
[1:22:51] Speaker 2: the same time. It's just it's just nice.
[1:22:53] Speaker 1: The Army did find a way to utilize your newfound
[1:22:57] Speaker 1: civilian skills as an intelligence officer, though, which is interesting.
[1:23:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's it's one Basically, it's something that I think
[1:23:08] Speaker 2: most of us would expect or once the military to do,
[1:23:14] Speaker 2: and that is basically there's a memory or agreement between
[1:23:20] Speaker 2: to the you know, Department of Defense and the agency.
[1:23:23] Speaker 2: That essentially allows you to continue your military career as
[1:23:28] Speaker 2: a reservist while you're working for the agency. With the
[1:23:31] Speaker 2: understanding and the agreement, if you should be mobilized, you
[1:23:34] Speaker 2: are going to be used in a capacity that is
[1:23:37] Speaker 2: commensurate with your your agency official specialty. So you know,
[1:23:46] Speaker 2: you could be you know, maybe you're a logistician in
[1:23:49] Speaker 2: the military, and that's great, we need we need logistitions,
[1:23:52] Speaker 2: but then you're, you know, an analyst at the agency.
[1:23:57] Speaker 2: If you get mob they're going to use you as
[1:23:58] Speaker 2: an analyst, not as a legistiction and so and so forth,
[1:24:02] Speaker 2: unless it's something you know, cool, like you're an aviator, right,
[1:24:07] Speaker 2: So so yeah, I was able to do that and
[1:24:11] Speaker 2: basically was used as a operations officer with a Jaysack
[1:24:17] Speaker 2: element for a year. Tremendous, tremendous opportunity. Uh, just really
[1:24:24] Speaker 2: super impressed with everybody I got the opportunity to work with.
[1:24:29] Speaker 2: That was fantastic. And then basically it's data attached to
[1:24:32] Speaker 2: them and I was a unit member for for that
[1:24:36] Speaker 2: that mobilization tour, but was able to stay associated with
[1:24:40] Speaker 2: them for the rest of my career, basically facilitating training
[1:24:45] Speaker 2: operations and things of that nature.
[1:24:47] Speaker 1: I'd love to ask you know, because you have this
[1:24:50] Speaker 1: like really unique insight. The difference between how j Sock
[1:24:54] Speaker 1: and the c I A go about collecting intelligence is
[1:24:57] Speaker 1: that everything I hear you correct me if I'm wrong,
[1:25:00] Speaker 1: is that the CIA kind of is like long term
[1:25:02] Speaker 1: strategic intelligence, where Jaysok is more like short term targeting intelligence.
[1:25:09] Speaker 2: In general terms, Yeah, that's accurate. However, it really depends
[1:25:15] Speaker 2: on what element you're talking about. Like so CAAG for example,
[1:25:19] Speaker 2: has its own internal collection capability for something like that.
[1:25:24] Speaker 2: For TAG, for Debrew, it's going to be very short term,
[1:25:28] Speaker 2: tactically focused. You know, I think if if if your
[1:25:33] Speaker 2: ears wondering for rears, if your viewers were wondering, well,
[1:25:36] Speaker 2: what would that look like? If you remember in the
[1:25:40] Speaker 2: movie Blackhawk Down, there's that scene early on in the
[1:25:43] Speaker 2: movie where Eric is kind of like hanging out downtown
[1:25:46] Speaker 2: in Mogi d Shu and he gets on his bicycle
[1:25:48] Speaker 2: rides away. That's what we're talking about. Jaysock operators that
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: are doing close WREKI reconnaissance for something. So it's very
[1:25:58] Speaker 2: tactical nature. It's high risk, to be sure. So yeah,
[1:26:04] Speaker 2: a lot of JAYSK is going to do that agency
[1:26:07] Speaker 2: tends to be much more long term. That being said,
[1:26:10] Speaker 2: there's also certain organizations within Jaysock that we'll be looking
[1:26:15] Speaker 2: at what they refer to as the third Regilne, So
[1:26:18] Speaker 2: they're looking at things that might be an issue at
[1:26:22] Speaker 2: some point in the next decade or two, and they're
[1:26:26] Speaker 2: basically establishing, you know, a pattern of activity that will
[1:26:31] Speaker 2: facilitate either commercial operations or something like that, because sometimes
[1:26:35] Speaker 2: they're commercially covered, sometimes they're doing some other thing. Most
[1:26:40] Speaker 2: of it, yes, is going to be very short fused,
[1:26:44] Speaker 2: tactically focused, but you know, I assure you there are
[1:26:49] Speaker 2: deeply experienced professionals there that do look at that third
[1:26:53] Speaker 2: original line.
[1:26:55] Speaker 1: My understanding also is that JAYSOK is sometimes the more
[1:26:58] Speaker 1: aggressive of the two, where the CIA is a little
[1:27:01] Speaker 1: more risk adverse, where the military being the military is
[1:27:05] Speaker 1: more like there's a bit more of that move fast
[1:27:08] Speaker 1: and break things mentality.
[1:27:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's true, but it is true. But I
[1:27:14] Speaker 2: think it really just depends on the situation, and it
[1:27:16] Speaker 2: depends on a bunch of things. It depends on like
[1:27:19] Speaker 2: what is the purpose of the organization, right, you know,
[1:27:23] Speaker 2: the military's purpose is to you know, conduct warfare and
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: that usually involves breaking shit, right, And if JASA comes in,
[1:27:32] Speaker 2: they're going to be there for a relatively short period
[1:27:34] Speaker 2: of time and they're probably not coming back, or maybe
[1:27:36] Speaker 2: they will be, but it's also very short duration and
[1:27:39] Speaker 2: their specific focus is to execute whatever that mission is,
[1:27:44] Speaker 2: you know, whereas the agency and actually, glad you brought
[1:27:49] Speaker 2: this up, it does take a longer optic in terms
[1:27:53] Speaker 2: of what is it trying to do. It's trying to
[1:27:55] Speaker 2: go in a little bit softer. They've got to maintained
[1:27:58] Speaker 2: the president, their presence there is you know, there is
[1:28:01] Speaker 2: concern about equities, right because ultimately, if you piss off
[1:28:06] Speaker 2: the local service, right, if you do something to upset them,
[1:28:13] Speaker 2: they can make your life a living hell. They can
[1:28:15] Speaker 2: lock you down, they can surround your entire you know,
[1:28:21] Speaker 2: station embassy, follow your people home, bump or lock you
[1:28:25] Speaker 2: to the point where you cannot accomplish anything. So we
[1:28:29] Speaker 2: have to look at it from the perspective of being
[1:28:33] Speaker 2: able to do the job, run the and run the
[1:28:36] Speaker 2: operations and do the mission not just in the next
[1:28:40] Speaker 2: evy two hours, but you know, for the next twenty
[1:28:43] Speaker 2: four months. Because the thing is and Sean actually has
[1:28:48] Speaker 2: a couple of good stories about times where liaison, you know,
[1:28:54] Speaker 2: got upset with us for something they perceived that we did,
[1:28:59] Speaker 2: and you know, they just made it very, very hard
[1:29:02] Speaker 2: to operate for the duration of the time that used
[1:29:04] Speaker 2: in that assignment. But again that's his story, not mine.
[1:29:08] Speaker 2: But yeah, they can. They can absolutely make life very difficult.
[1:29:11] Speaker 2: And I'm glad you bring it up because you know,
[1:29:14] Speaker 2: one of the things people don't get is how small
[1:29:20] Speaker 2: the agency is. Right, I'm not going to confirm or
[1:29:24] Speaker 2: deny numbers, but like, let's just say for argument sake,
[1:29:27] Speaker 2: that the whole the agency is roughly somewhere between one
[1:29:31] Speaker 2: and two infantry divisions. Right. I've heard numbers out there,
[1:29:35] Speaker 2: and truthfully, I don't know if those numbers are accurate
[1:29:37] Speaker 2: because I never knew and didn't care to know, how
[1:29:40] Speaker 2: big the agency was. But let's just pick a number
[1:29:43] Speaker 2: of say twenty thousand. That twenty thousand includes everyone from
[1:29:48] Speaker 2: the director to that brand new officer that just you
[1:29:52] Speaker 2: know started duty yesterday, right, everything in between. But that's
[1:29:57] Speaker 2: also all five directors, So director of Operations, director of Analysis,
[1:30:02] Speaker 2: Director to support Science and Technology and digital innovation, that's
[1:30:07] Speaker 2: all five directorates. When you get down to operations, right,
[1:30:13] Speaker 2: you're really looking at maybe less than a regiment, maybe
[1:30:18] Speaker 2: two battalions. It's not a big number. And then you
[1:30:22] Speaker 2: take that number and you break down all of the
[1:30:25] Speaker 2: different you know, occupational specialties. When you've got so operations
[1:30:33] Speaker 2: officers or case officers, you've got paramilitary operations officers, you
[1:30:36] Speaker 2: had case management officers, who are reports officers. Now those
[1:30:39] Speaker 2: three categories they are trained and certified and authorized to
[1:30:43] Speaker 2: conduct operations. But then you've also got staff operations officers,
[1:30:50] Speaker 2: you get targeters, and more often than not, those got
[1:30:52] Speaker 2: those individuals are not operationally certified and they don't conduct operations.
[1:30:59] Speaker 2: The absolutely support and they're critical to our success. But
[1:31:02] Speaker 2: my point here is you keep refining this number down
[1:31:05] Speaker 2: into the number of individuals who can actually run operations
[1:31:10] Speaker 2: is very, very small. We used to say things like
[1:31:16] Speaker 2: there was more FBI agents assigned to Manhattan Island than
[1:31:20] Speaker 2: there were agency officers covering the globes. I think that's
[1:31:24] Speaker 2: a slight exaggeration.
[1:31:25] Speaker 1: I think I think I was reading Tim Weiner's book
[1:31:28] Speaker 1: and he was saying how some politician was shocked to
[1:31:32] Speaker 1: find out that the CIA's budget for COVID action was
[1:31:35] Speaker 1: under a billion dollars. DD has like billions and billions
[1:31:40] Speaker 1: and billions, and it was just kind of shocking how
[1:31:43] Speaker 1: little they actually had to play with.
[1:31:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we can get more if we need it.
[1:31:49] Speaker 2: But the point I'm driving at here is it's a
[1:31:52] Speaker 2: very limited resource. You you have a real limited resource.
[1:31:58] Speaker 2: You have a limited number of officers to cover an
[1:32:01] Speaker 2: entire country wherever you are overseas, and we just cannot
[1:32:05] Speaker 2: afford to not play the long game. We can't afford
[1:32:09] Speaker 2: to break stuff and enrage the local service and potentially
[1:32:16] Speaker 2: make our jobs impossible to execute. It's a really long
[1:32:20] Speaker 2: winded answer.
[1:32:21] Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's good. I mean people need to
[1:32:24] Speaker 1: hear some of these things because, like I've had conversations
[1:32:27] Speaker 1: with people here in Brooklyn, you know, normal normal people,
[1:32:31] Speaker 1: and you know, they find out I'm a journalist, I
[1:32:33] Speaker 1: cover this and that, blah blah blah, and they start
[1:32:36] Speaker 1: telling me that, you know, the CIA installs all of
[1:32:40] Speaker 1: the presidents in Central in South America. Did you know that?
[1:32:43] Speaker 1: You know? Like, and I'm trying I try to explain
[1:32:45] Speaker 1: to him, like they couldn't do that if they had
[1:32:47] Speaker 1: ten times the resources that they actually have. And then
[1:32:51] Speaker 1: the other uncomfortable. Part of the conversation is, I hate
[1:32:54] Speaker 1: to break it to you, but America doesn't really give
[1:32:56] Speaker 1: a fuck about your country as much as you think
[1:32:59] Speaker 1: it does.
[1:33:00] Speaker 2: Uh.
[1:33:00] Speaker 1: And that's kind of a difficult conversation to have with
[1:33:03] Speaker 1: some people.
[1:33:05] Speaker 2: No, it's it's true because you know, we have this
[1:33:08] Speaker 2: thing called the Nippith National Intelligence Priorities Framework, right, and
[1:33:13] Speaker 2: the reason why we have that is to articulate and
[1:33:16] Speaker 2: make crystal clear to operators in the field, chiefs the station,
[1:33:20] Speaker 2: this is what you need to focus on, and it
[1:33:23] Speaker 2: breaks out by country category but also like themes. So
[1:33:28] Speaker 2: the top of the stack is something like counter terrorism.
[1:33:31] Speaker 2: Then it's like probably Web's and masters. Then it's like China, Russia,
[1:33:37] Speaker 2: North Korea and Iran. Right there are there are a
[1:33:41] Speaker 2: long list of things after that. But you know what,
[1:33:45] Speaker 2: basically what we're focused on more often than not is
[1:33:48] Speaker 2: counter terrorism because you've got to do it. Weapons and
[1:33:51] Speaker 2: mass destruction because it is a nokiating existential threat if
[1:33:55] Speaker 2: they're used. And then the you know, China, Russia, in
[1:34:00] Speaker 2: North Korea, in Iran, and there's plenty of other horrible
[1:34:04] Speaker 2: things that happened there. Really are you know, human trafficking,
[1:34:09] Speaker 2: is is, you know, a stain on humanity, but we
[1:34:16] Speaker 2: don't have the bandwidth to do to address that. It's
[1:34:20] Speaker 2: not a national security threat. We just can't there. It's
[1:34:26] Speaker 2: it's just not there. So yeah, just kind of elaborating
[1:34:31] Speaker 2: and unpacking what you're saying. You're right, we don't really
[1:34:34] Speaker 2: care about your country. It's nothing personal.
[1:34:36] Speaker 1: Yeah. I and then you finished out your career was
[1:34:43] Speaker 1: a community intelligence.
[1:34:45] Speaker 2: Uh so it basically it was it was ah, it
[1:34:49] Speaker 2: falls underneath the director of Operations or it's managed by
[1:34:53] Speaker 2: the director of Operations on behalf of directors c I
[1:34:56] Speaker 2: A blah blah blah blah blah. But it's what they
[1:35:00] Speaker 2: all community human And basically it was a training platform
[1:35:04] Speaker 2: that was ironically mandated by the nine to eleven Commission
[1:35:09] Speaker 2: report to basically enhance interoperability between various members of the IC.
[1:35:17] Speaker 2: So sometimes that was really educating folks on who everybody
[1:35:22] Speaker 2: else is once they bring on the table, which is
[1:35:26] Speaker 2: a critical and important thing, right because so much of
[1:35:30] Speaker 2: our ability to work together and collaborate effectively is inhibited
[1:35:36] Speaker 2: by not fully understanding what is important or understanding the
[1:35:41] Speaker 2: culture of other groups. Right. So, like I'll give you
[1:35:46] Speaker 2: an example operations officers, right, you're going to get promoted
[1:35:52] Speaker 2: because there's a requirement for you to recruit an asset
[1:35:56] Speaker 2: in every assignment. Right for the most part, that's something
[1:36:00] Speaker 2: that if you don't do that, if you can't do that,
[1:36:02] Speaker 2: your career is going to flat line and eventually you'll leave.
[1:36:06] Speaker 2: And I've known officers who good people, charming can handle
[1:36:11] Speaker 2: very well, they could not pull the trigger on recruitment
[1:36:16] Speaker 2: to save their lives. They just couldn't. It was not
[1:36:18] Speaker 2: in their character, and their career is flat lined and
[1:36:21] Speaker 2: they eventually left. But that applies to lots of other
[1:36:26] Speaker 2: organizations as well. So I don't remember if it was
[1:36:30] Speaker 2: DEA or it might have been the Marshalls, but I
[1:36:33] Speaker 2: think it was probably DEA. Where in order for a
[1:36:39] Speaker 2: special agent to be promoted, they've got to have x
[1:36:41] Speaker 2: number of cases with a wire tame, they've got to
[1:36:45] Speaker 2: close x number of cases in every calendar year. The
[1:36:49] Speaker 2: point here is that every organization is going to have
[1:36:53] Speaker 2: metrics and KPIs, and that's not just you know, bureaucratic
[1:36:58] Speaker 2: tom foolery that literally had an impact on individuals' personal lives.
[1:37:04] Speaker 2: So when you have a better understanding of that of
[1:37:08] Speaker 2: what is you know what's weighing on the individual across
[1:37:11] Speaker 2: the table view, it's more you get more productive collaboration, right,
[1:37:16] Speaker 2: and and that the ironic, the irony of it. We
[1:37:19] Speaker 2: will spend so much time training you too, you know,
[1:37:23] Speaker 2: to leverage empathy and to focus on understanding what motivates
[1:37:28] Speaker 2: a source that you want to recruit, the penetration, and
[1:37:31] Speaker 2: yet a lot of times we struggle to apply that
[1:37:34] Speaker 2: same mindset to the people that we work with. So
[1:37:37] Speaker 2: there was a lot of that. We also did some
[1:37:40] Speaker 2: specialty courses. We did one that was focused on emerging,
[1:37:45] Speaker 2: merging and destructive technology, which was incredibly you know, eye opening.
[1:37:53] Speaker 2: I remember when we initially did that course, we were
[1:37:56] Speaker 2: talking about quantum computing. Quantum computing was theoretical all that time.
[1:38:01] Speaker 2: And then like a couple of years later, when I
[1:38:04] Speaker 2: was taking my son to visit universities and we were
[1:38:07] Speaker 2: at our rit up in New York and it's like, oh,
[1:38:12] Speaker 2: here's our quantum computer. I'm like, what you have? And
[1:38:18] Speaker 2: they're not commonplace at this point, but there's a lot
[1:38:21] Speaker 2: of so but yeah, that whole thing was to at
[1:38:26] Speaker 2: least give an operations officer or other core collector a
[1:38:30] Speaker 2: baseline understanding of a given technology such that they could
[1:38:35] Speaker 2: at least begin the process of connecting with and assessing
[1:38:40] Speaker 2: and evaluating somebody for potential.
[1:38:42] Speaker 1: Recruit Yeah, I could see it. I just recently finished
[1:38:47] Speaker 1: this book written by a defactor. I think he was
[1:38:51] Speaker 1: the deputy head of the Russian bioweapons program and Ken
[1:38:56] Speaker 1: Alabeck is his name, and he, oh you know that ude.
[1:39:01] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't know what personally, but I like,
[1:39:03] Speaker 2: I've read, like, I think all of it.
[1:39:05] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, So, I mean it's interesting the way
[1:39:09] Speaker 1: he like, right, I mean, the book it's called bio Hazard,
[1:39:12] Speaker 1: is really fascinating. But then also when he gets to
[1:39:14] Speaker 1: the United States and he's being deep briefed every day,
[1:39:17] Speaker 1: and he's like, you know, a lot of these people
[1:39:19] Speaker 1: have no idea what I'm talking about, Like they don't
[1:39:21] Speaker 1: really understand the dangers of what we were working on.
[1:39:26] Speaker 2: Oh, oh for sure, for sure. Yeah. When earlier on
[1:39:32] Speaker 2: in my career, when I was when I was on
[1:39:34] Speaker 2: the analytical side and I handled some things in a
[1:39:38] Speaker 2: certain countries at WND Portfolio, But yeah, Albeck was required reading.
[1:39:45] Speaker 2: There was also like familiarization training, and you know, the
[1:39:50] Speaker 2: irony of it was when the pandemic kicked off. I'm
[1:39:56] Speaker 2: looking at it with all of that stuff in my head, right,
[1:40:01] Speaker 2: you know, because people were committing about, like, you know,
[1:40:03] Speaker 2: their movement being restricted and not having school and not
[1:40:06] Speaker 2: being able to play sports. And I'm like, if if
[1:40:09] Speaker 2: this was like smallpox or weaponized tou lamia, we would
[1:40:15] Speaker 2: be stacking bodies in the streets. It would fucking overwhelm
[1:40:20] Speaker 2: our ability to deal with it. So, yeah, al back,
[1:40:25] Speaker 2: its books are. I'm not going to say they're good reading,
[1:40:27] Speaker 2: because they're horrifying. But once that knowledge is in your head,
[1:40:32] Speaker 2: you will see the world in a different in a
[1:40:34] Speaker 2: different way.
[1:40:38] Speaker 1: And so you cycle out of the reserves in two
[1:40:41] Speaker 1: thousand and nine and then you retire five years ago,
[1:40:44] Speaker 1: so I guess kind of on the tail end of
[1:40:46] Speaker 1: the pandemic.
[1:40:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, how retirement. It was one of those things that,
[1:40:53] Speaker 2: to be brutally honest with you and with your viewers,
[1:40:58] Speaker 2: I would still be doing the job because I loved it.
[1:41:02] Speaker 2: I love the mission, I love the people. You don't
[1:41:05] Speaker 2: always love the agency. I mean, it's kint a great,
[1:41:09] Speaker 2: it's got a great cafeteria, an amazing you know, gift shop,
[1:41:12] Speaker 2: but uh no, really, you do you do it for
[1:41:15] Speaker 2: the mission and the people, right, But my son was like, Dad,
[1:41:20] Speaker 2: I really want to finish school here. And at that
[1:41:23] Speaker 2: point in time, basically I was being told by h Q,
[1:41:26] Speaker 2: it's like, listen, it's either time for you to come
[1:41:28] Speaker 2: back and take a management degree or a management position
[1:41:32] Speaker 2: you know in headquarters, or go back out overseas and
[1:41:36] Speaker 2: take a field community. And I was just like, I
[1:41:40] Speaker 2: can't do that. So it was trying to wrap it up.
[1:41:45] Speaker 2: And I don't regret it. I mean, I missed the job.
[1:41:48] Speaker 2: I missed the mission and the people every day. But
[1:41:52] Speaker 2: you know, my son and my son finished out of
[1:41:56] Speaker 2: high school with as captain of the football team, captain
[1:42:00] Speaker 2: of the wrestling team, captain of his club rugby team.
[1:42:05] Speaker 2: He's a pleaved West Point. He made the varsity squad,
[1:42:10] Speaker 2: you know, first semester as a pleague. He's doing fantastic.
[1:42:16] Speaker 2: My older son, he's going to graduate from a really
[1:42:20] Speaker 2: good school, uh in Virginia. You know, at the end
[1:42:24] Speaker 2: of the year, at the end of the day, it's
[1:42:26] Speaker 2: like at a certain point, you can't make this stuff
[1:42:31] Speaker 2: work as yeah, and there it is.
[1:42:35] Speaker 1: Yeah, Uh, you want to set your kids up for success,
[1:42:38] Speaker 1: and it sounds like they're doing pretty well.
[1:42:40] Speaker 2: Now, oh yeah, oh yeah.
[1:42:43] Speaker 1: And how has retirement been treating you, you know, personally
[1:42:46] Speaker 1: and professionally. What have you been up to the last
[1:42:48] Speaker 1: couple of years.
[1:42:50] Speaker 2: So, so my day job is I worked as a
[1:42:53] Speaker 2: strategic implementation consultant. So it's a lot of project management,
[1:42:58] Speaker 2: change management, process improvement. It's with a company called Greencastle.
[1:43:04] Speaker 2: Green Castle. It's a good it's a good outfit. What's
[1:43:07] Speaker 2: interesting about it is it's on veteran owner and operated,
[1:43:12] Speaker 2: so they literally will not look at your resume if
[1:43:16] Speaker 2: you're not a veteran. So that that's been a really
[1:43:19] Speaker 2: interesting experience because you know, like you spent your career
[1:43:25] Speaker 2: your ragers and SF right, you you have an optic
[1:43:28] Speaker 2: of this is what the army is, what the military is,
[1:43:31] Speaker 2: you know, and I had my career, so I look
[1:43:33] Speaker 2: at it, this is what your you know, life of services.
[1:43:37] Speaker 2: And then you start meeting every other member of the
[1:43:40] Speaker 2: of the military and you're like, oh wow, it's a
[1:43:42] Speaker 2: much bigger universe than I thought. But separate from that,
[1:43:49] Speaker 2: I've been writing kind of writing military espionage type stuff
[1:43:55] Speaker 2: for really more espionizes. If I were just sscribe it
[1:43:59] Speaker 2: and We describe it as if Jean Lecer wrote Sacario,
[1:44:06] Speaker 2: So looking for that that gritty realism, but at the
[1:44:10] Speaker 2: same time want to be able to write something that
[1:44:12] Speaker 2: if one of my former colleagues picked it up and
[1:44:14] Speaker 2: looked at it, there would be like, you know, yeah,
[1:44:16] Speaker 2: that's good stuff. You know, you don't want them to
[1:44:20] Speaker 2: say this is garbage, but also with a healthy dose
[1:44:24] Speaker 2: of kind of Kurt fan and get esque humor. You know,
[1:44:28] Speaker 2: you and I were talking earlier today about you know,
[1:44:31] Speaker 2: there's that reality of when you're in the service, whether
[1:44:35] Speaker 2: it's the military or the agency, there's a distinct tendency
[1:44:40] Speaker 2: to have that to mess with your your teammates, to
[1:44:46] Speaker 2: get under their skin, to screw with them. And I
[1:44:50] Speaker 2: personally like brother brotherwise into the conversation, it's like, you
[1:44:53] Speaker 2: know what the woman you refer to as your sweet
[1:44:56] Speaker 2: boo boo, she lets you leave the house wearing that
[1:44:59] Speaker 2: what the hell is she got vision problems? Yeah, you know,
[1:45:03] Speaker 2: and and Gallows humor. Uh, you know, it's it's part
[1:45:06] Speaker 2: of it, but I think it also offsets, you know,
[1:45:10] Speaker 2: the other elements, the darker elements of those types of stories.
[1:45:14] Speaker 2: But yeah, it's uh, it's coming along been working with
[1:45:18] Speaker 2: a great agent, have the interest of a significant Uh.
[1:45:25] Speaker 2: Let me rewind that a second been working with a
[1:45:27] Speaker 2: great editor, have the attention of a really important agent.
[1:45:34] Speaker 2: And hopefully we will be getting something in front of
[1:45:38] Speaker 2: a publisher later on this year.
[1:45:41] Speaker 1: So that's awesome.
[1:45:43] Speaker 2: And I know that's vague. But you being a soon
[1:45:46] Speaker 2: to be public well, no you are. You are a
[1:45:49] Speaker 2: published author, but you're about to be a published fiction author. Yes,
[1:45:55] Speaker 2: you know that. The whole thing about the industry is
[1:45:57] Speaker 2: it's it's it's like they treat that stuff like it's
[1:46:01] Speaker 2: top secret, special compartmentalized information. You cannot you know, Yeah,
[1:46:07] Speaker 2: it's it's just bad.
[1:46:08] Speaker 1: But published publishing is a harsh mistress.
[1:46:12] Speaker 2: Uh.
[1:46:13] Speaker 1: I could say, they've never really asked me. I think,
[1:46:16] Speaker 1: you know, if I can be honest, I think the
[1:46:17] Speaker 1: whole reason why I was given a book deal was
[1:46:20] Speaker 1: because they knew I would be a labmouth and talk
[1:46:22] Speaker 1: about it a lot on podcasts.
[1:46:28] Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited about for for a couple of reasons. One,
[1:46:32] Speaker 2: I read your first book and that was very cool because,
[1:46:37] Speaker 2: you know, being assigned to Fort Bragg for five years,
[1:46:40] Speaker 2: you know, I totally remember certain physical places at Fort
[1:46:46] Speaker 2: Bragg that you kind of spoke about in your stories,
[1:46:49] Speaker 2: Like when one of the things you you talked about
[1:46:52] Speaker 2: in the first book was you know, haho insertions with
[1:46:56] Speaker 2: uh uh manportable tactical news. And I remember the place
[1:47:01] Speaker 2: where those were supposedly stored.
[1:47:04] Speaker 1: Oh yeah, on main Post.
[1:47:06] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. And I remember being out for a run
[1:47:11] Speaker 2: with a couple of my guys and they're like, hey,
[1:47:14] Speaker 2: you know these zoo over that building right, No, and yeah,
[1:47:19] Speaker 2: that's where they kept the nukes. Like, oh wow, it's
[1:47:22] Speaker 2: kind of cool. But yeah, I'm excited because you know
[1:47:25] Speaker 2: kind of what you kind of shared about, you know,
[1:47:29] Speaker 2: Most Dangerous Man, about how it kind of it's going
[1:47:32] Speaker 2: to focus on a character protagonist more representational of the
[1:47:36] Speaker 2: Ranger regimen. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool.
[1:47:40] Speaker 1: Thanks man. I'm looking forward to seeing your book when
[1:47:42] Speaker 1: it gets out there. Sounds like, you know, we're a
[1:47:44] Speaker 1: little ways out, but uh, we'll have you back when
[1:47:47] Speaker 1: it's closer.
[1:47:49] Speaker 2: Oh for sure, for sure, brother, and I will I
[1:47:51] Speaker 2: will definitely let you know when that's you know, comes
[1:47:55] Speaker 2: is closer to being reality.
[1:47:57] Speaker 1: And so a few things as we kind of wrap
[1:48:01] Speaker 1: things up here, some recent controversies involving the CIA. I
[1:48:07] Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about this cat that had, uh,
[1:48:10] Speaker 1: you know, however, many dozens of gold bars in his
[1:48:13] Speaker 1: home that he liberated from the CIA's coughers.
[1:48:19] Speaker 2: Well, so a little bit about that. What that is
[1:48:24] Speaker 2: is basically non traditional remuneration. Right. So obviously we pay assets,
[1:48:30] Speaker 2: and more often than now, you're going to pay them
[1:48:32] Speaker 2: in cash, right and you either it's going to be
[1:48:35] Speaker 2: the cash that's native to that country or maybe a
[1:48:38] Speaker 2: regional currency. Sometimes maybe you pay them in euros, potentially
[1:48:44] Speaker 2: in dollars, but you there's problems with that, right because
[1:48:47] Speaker 2: they can be traceable. Even if you go through the
[1:48:51] Speaker 2: process of cleaning that money, you know, you're you're still
[1:48:56] Speaker 2: taking a degree of risk. In some cases, we may
[1:48:59] Speaker 2: depending on the amount of you know, remuneration facilitated through
[1:49:05] Speaker 2: other means. So in this case, they're talking about diamonds
[1:49:07] Speaker 2: and gold and luxury watches. But I would say that
[1:49:12] Speaker 2: more often that non traditional remuneration is going to be
[1:49:15] Speaker 2: things like getting them access to healthcare that they need
[1:49:19] Speaker 2: that they can't get in their country. Maybe it's for them,
[1:49:23] Speaker 2: maybe it's for their their mother or spouse or what
[1:49:26] Speaker 2: have you. It could be you know, you know, facilitating
[1:49:30] Speaker 2: some kind of scholarship, if you will, so their children
[1:49:33] Speaker 2: can go to the school that they want them to
[1:49:36] Speaker 2: go to. The thing I would say about this situation
[1:49:41] Speaker 2: is it's interesting because you know, the first thing people
[1:49:45] Speaker 2: ask is like, was the agency had like a warehouse
[1:49:47] Speaker 2: of diamonds and gold? I literally don't know and never
[1:49:52] Speaker 2: cared because if I needed something like that, I would
[1:49:55] Speaker 2: just say I would send in a requisition report saying
[1:49:58] Speaker 2: I needed to get me this, and they'd figure it out.
[1:50:02] Speaker 2: Here's the thing, though, if it was acquired from the agency,
[1:50:08] Speaker 2: it's not a good thing, but it could be worse.
[1:50:11] Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is my understanding, and
[1:50:15] Speaker 2: what's been in the news is that this was the
[1:50:17] Speaker 2: result of counter counter intelligence investigation. Right, So if this
[1:50:24] Speaker 2: had been discovered in his house and it couldn't be
[1:50:26] Speaker 2: traced back to the agency, then I would be terrified
[1:50:29] Speaker 2: because that is a lot of remuneration and I'd want
[1:50:33] Speaker 2: to know was he working for the Russians, the Chinese
[1:50:36] Speaker 2: or who and whatever. So that's actually a good thing
[1:50:41] Speaker 2: that it's not that, But I think the bigger issue
[1:50:45] Speaker 2: becomes apparently this was acquired in like a period of
[1:50:50] Speaker 2: like a year to a year and a half. So
[1:50:54] Speaker 2: I've got to wonder if he's the only person involved.
[1:50:58] Speaker 2: And when I say that, it would be one thing
[1:51:01] Speaker 2: if you you have a situation with an acid or
[1:51:03] Speaker 2: some kind of entity where you know you're you're paying them,
[1:51:08] Speaker 2: you know, three bars of gold a month, right, that's
[1:51:11] Speaker 2: a ridiculous amount of money, but whatever, and you're gonna
[1:51:14] Speaker 2: actually give him only two and you're gonna hold onto
[1:51:17] Speaker 2: what right, even with that, that would take a really
[1:51:21] Speaker 2: long time to pilfer the amount that you know supposedly
[1:51:27] Speaker 2: is in the news. So it kind of leads me
[1:51:30] Speaker 2: to believe that one, you know, all of this is alleged,
[1:51:34] Speaker 2: it's eventually gonna come out in the wash. But it
[1:51:38] Speaker 2: just strikes me that it just doesn't seem realistic that
[1:51:42] Speaker 2: he did this on his own.
[1:51:43] Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a lot of cheddar to
[1:51:46] Speaker 1: walk out the door with, for sure, But I mean,
[1:51:49] Speaker 1: are you what you're alluding to is that there are
[1:51:51] Speaker 1: some checks and balances in even covert you know, accounting
[1:51:54] Speaker 1: or finance so to speak, that you, as a CIA
[1:51:58] Speaker 1: officer can't just like walk in then take the gold
[1:52:00] Speaker 1: barts out but without signing for them or whatever. The
[1:52:04] Speaker 1: accountability mechanisms.
[1:52:05] Speaker 2: Are there's a requisition process, uh you know that you
[1:52:10] Speaker 2: have to go through. There's regular accountings, like every month
[1:52:13] Speaker 2: you have to account for what you spent on your
[1:52:17] Speaker 2: evolving fund. Right, so you get a revolving fund, it's
[1:52:19] Speaker 2: you know, X amount of money depending on where you
[1:52:21] Speaker 2: are to take contacts out for dinner and cocktails or whatever.
[1:52:27] Speaker 2: You know, if you're going to pay an asset, that
[1:52:30] Speaker 2: may be a separate account, but you have to record
[1:52:32] Speaker 2: all of it. And like literally, when you pay an asset,
[1:52:36] Speaker 2: they're going to sign a piece of paperwork. They're gonna
[1:52:39] Speaker 2: you know, it's gonna say Mickey Mouse or you know,
[1:52:42] Speaker 2: Mickey Rooney, or it's not gonna be their name. But
[1:52:46] Speaker 2: like literally, I am required to provide receipts. Wow show. Yeah,
[1:52:53] Speaker 2: that's real and that's what you'd expect. So how in
[1:52:57] Speaker 2: the devil he walked out with all of that money
[1:53:00] Speaker 2: and diamonds and watches is mind boggling. So either the
[1:53:05] Speaker 2: system utterly failed or other people could potentially be involved.
[1:53:09] Speaker 2: But again I don't know, but it is deeply concerning.
[1:53:13] Speaker 1: So what a heist? Yeah, no kidding, Well, Dell anything
[1:53:22] Speaker 1: else you want to hit up before we get going tonight.
[1:53:26] Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. I think it's a great interview.
[1:53:29] Speaker 2: Hey, I loved it great. I think you know, one
[1:53:32] Speaker 2: of the one of the reasons why I love doing
[1:53:35] Speaker 2: these things is, you know, the agency is it is
[1:53:41] Speaker 2: a secret intelligence organization operating in an open society, right, right,
[1:53:47] Speaker 2: And unfortunately we don't we can't really do We can't
[1:53:53] Speaker 2: really do press conferences, right. I mean, we've done a couple, right,
[1:53:57] Speaker 2: but those are outliers. One of the things I work
[1:54:01] Speaker 2: I learned from working with the Bureau periodically was what
[1:54:05] Speaker 2: is the Bureau's center of gravity? Right? It's the faith
[1:54:10] Speaker 2: and confidence of the American people. That's why they do
[1:54:16] Speaker 2: press conferences, right, It's not you know, for the glory
[1:54:19] Speaker 2: all that they need to be transparent as best they can,
[1:54:23] Speaker 2: and they've got to maintain the commitment of the United
[1:54:26] Speaker 2: States people so that the people of the United States
[1:54:31] Speaker 2: have full faith and confidence in them, because if they
[1:54:34] Speaker 2: ever lose that, they're dead in the water. We have
[1:54:37] Speaker 2: the Agency, on the other hand, really can't do that
[1:54:41] Speaker 2: because the moment you step in front of a camera,
[1:54:44] Speaker 2: your cover is burned. And it's not it's like losing
[1:54:49] Speaker 2: I'm not going to say that, but it's just gone.
[1:54:52] Speaker 2: It's just gone. It's over. And so all the time,
[1:54:55] Speaker 2: all the effort, all the resources that went into building
[1:54:57] Speaker 2: that cover, you know, as a role, we some do
[1:55:00] Speaker 2: it well. So an opportunity like this to kind of
[1:55:04] Speaker 2: get out there and talk about the agency, I think
[1:55:08] Speaker 2: it's important. It's an honor and bluntly, the one thing
[1:55:12] Speaker 2: I've let people, what I'd like people to leave with
[1:55:15] Speaker 2: is the understanding that this the people that join the
[1:55:18] Speaker 2: agency are the same people that serve in uniform. They're
[1:55:23] Speaker 2: the same people that join the FBI and the Marshall
[1:55:26] Speaker 2: Service and are local police and firefighters and first responders.
[1:55:33] Speaker 2: They're all the same people. They're people that have chosen
[1:55:37] Speaker 2: to serve something greater than themselves. Do we sometimes make mistakes,
[1:55:43] Speaker 2: do we sometimes cause more problems, Yeah, But for the
[1:55:47] Speaker 2: most part, we're people that just want to serve something
[1:55:51] Speaker 2: greater than themselves, and I think we're blessed and incredibly
[1:55:56] Speaker 2: fortunate to have folks like that.
[1:55:57] Speaker 1: So absolutely, well, Dell, thank you for doing this, man,
[1:56:04] Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, And thank you everyone who joined
[1:56:07] Speaker 1: us tonight, and we will see you next week. Take
[1:56:10] Speaker 1: care well, Hey guys, I want to take a moment
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