EverydaySpy Podcast - Ex-CIA Officer Explains What’s MISSING From the Epstein Files

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

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You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. I've seen enough classified documents to understand that first, really damning classified documents can easily be destroyed.

Easily, right? Sue Helms, who was the acting director at CIA during the Obama, I think it was Obama's years. I'm pretty sure it was Obama's years. When he was digging into Guantanamo Bay, she received an order to destroy classified documents pertaining to CIA torture in Guantanamo Bay. and there's a document documenting the order that she got and there's a separate document documenting her confirmation that she has destroyed the documents she was ordered to destroy. So we already know even in the modern day classified documents are not safe. They can easily be destroyed.

When they're destroyed, fun fact, they're destroyed in something called a burn bag, which is funny because a burn bag isn't actually burned. Burned bags are actually bags of printed documents, of original documents, that are dropped. down a chute into a termination chamber. And in that termination chamber, they're moved into a vat of liquid that dissolves paper. So they can never be reconstructed. They're not shred. They're not burned.

It's much better for the environment. They're dropped into like a vat of liquid that dissolves them. And they're gone forever. So if there were damning documents, they would have received an order to be liquidated, to be totally destroyed so that even when that president leaves office, no future president can come in and find anything. And that's just the way the world works.

The people who get to make the rules make the rules. Hmm. Yes, I am uncomfortable with your analysis, but I do respect your perspective. And I think that there's a lot of rational truth that exists within it. And I will also tell you dead honest and I say this all the time, I am happy to be wrong. I would love it if I'm wrong. I would love it if justice came. I would love it if somebody showed the files and we had them and nobody destroyed

them and and presidents get kicked out of office and senators go to jail and our whole fucking government gets turned upside down and and we actually stand for what we say we believe in in the America. I would love to be wrong. But the chances are I'm not. Right. And you're not saying it's right. Oh, for sure.

It's not. Oh, yeah. You're saying this is just what I think will happen. Correct. Do you think Galane gets pardoned? Who? Galane Maxwell. Oh, I don't know.

I'm curious, like, obviously people are seeing now that, you know, she's meeting with, you high up Trump officials and she's giving information and the general consensus is like, oh, there's going to be info passed over that's going to basically vindicate Trump. He had no involvement and she's going to name some other names just to give some more meat to the base and then random people get caught up in it and then Trump at the very end will pardon her and she'll get out and everything will be gravy. I don't know. Like I said, I don't follow it enough because I really don't care that much. whatever's going to happen is going to happen. And I promise you that whatever you hear about what happened is not all of it.

That's fair. So there's one more thing that I want to make sure I communicate because we talk about the emotional distance that comes from people who have antisocial personality disorder and the borderline sociopathy at CIA. So the logical question here is, what I feel the same way about the Epstein case if it was my daughter? Right? That is a great question. I would feel the same way about how I expect the government to respond. That wouldn't change my conclusions, my logical conclusions, if it was my own daughter who was part of what happened there.

What would change is my personal actions. Because if my child is molested, if my child becomes the victim of some sort of abuse, it becomes very personal. And I'm an angry person. And I already feel like I don't have to follow social. norms or social rules. I am almost certain.

I would go on the hunt and I would kill every person or harm every person or be vengeful about every person in the process thereof. Breaking laws, violating ethics, doing all sorts of horrible things. Full taken mode. Yeah. Well, except there wouldn't be nearly as good

as Liam Neeson is. But I would that, that's most likely. I have reflected on this and I have thought about it. That is the direction I would go. And then if and when I was arrested, if and when I was brought to trial, if and when whatever else, I would most likely try to kill myself after I was taken because the person I love so much who has been hurt is already dead. That person is not, my daughter's gone.

The person that I have raised, the moment that happens, that person can't be brought back. I've seen it too many times. And the last thing I'm going to do is hurt her more by being the dad who's in jail rotting. somewhere, right? It'd be better off to be the dad who tried to take vengeance and then killed himself in prison. That sounds fucked up to most people, probably. Pretty radical. But, I mean, if you haven't asked yourself the question, what would you do? If you haven't discovered your natural-born spy skills, then somebody else might be using theirs against you. CIA teaches us that there are only three types of people in the world, those who motivate, those who manipulate,

and those who are being controlled by one of the other two. I'm not. I created a three-minute CIA-style quiz to help you unlock your secret psychological advantage and identify your hidden blind spot. This test was developed to help you weaponize your natural-born gifts and use them to get ahead of 99% of people in power, wealth, and purpose. It was also designed to make sure that you can protect yourself against those who would use their skills against you. All you have to do is click on the first link in the description below or scan the QR code

on your screen to start your spy quiz now. I want you to discover your secret spy superpower and use it for good before somebody else uses their power against you. If what you would do is hire an attorney and take it to court, good luck, buddy. Good luck. You would probably better off taking it into your own hands and just being one of the people who went crazy and everybody laughed at and whatever else. Now, for the sake of my legal standing, we're not condoning this, okay? There are many victims out there with fathers, so don't do that.

But with that said, it is... And don't take this video down YouTube. Let me translate what you just said. I mean, it is a helpful thought exercise. So, I mean, maybe it's sick, maybe it's not. I often think about what I would do if my children were hurt, like especially while they're under my care and protection. If there's a car accident on the way to school, if they get kidnapped, if they're, whatever,

sometimes if they're playing on a playground and they break an arm and I'm sitting there on the bench versus if I'm at work. Like I have these thoughts and I wonder what would I do? How would I feel about it, et cetera, et cetera? And by and large, just because of my experience in government, where it boils down for me is if somebody takes criminal action against my kids, I will try, depending on the situation, to follow the court of law first. But I don't have a lot of faith in our courts.

And I definitely don't have a lot of faith in the speed of our judicial process. And I thirdly have almost no faith once. larger elements start to get involved, right? So if you've seen any of the massive cases lately, I would hope that you'd kind of realize that there's a kink in the armor, maybe a few kinks in the armor, right? Did he walked away, largely unscathed? There's a reason for that, right?

Clinton is a hero, largely unscathed. There's a reason for that. Donald Trump is a convicted felon, president of the United States. There's a few kinks in the armor here, folks. And if you want to continue to move forward, hoping that those kinks don't affect you. The best way to do it is to just keep everybody safe, protect everybody, and don't let the government have to step in to protect you or your kids or your family.

Because if they do, those armor kinks might affect you. Right. Do you think it's possible that Diddy was an informant in some capacity? I mean, the thing is, once you start reaching a certain level of wealth and celebrity, there's only a few people who have that kind of reach and they're all going to be targets of some sort of government effort one way or the other. If not for foreign intelligence,

then for internal intelligence behavior or domestic intelligence. You can't really avoid it. Once you get to be, I promise you all the, if you can think of a celebrity name, they have been approached by somebody to offer intelligence.

Zuckerberg, almost guaranteed. Peter Thiel, almost guaranteed. Pete Diddy, almost guaranteed. Like, you just name it, right? I wouldn't be surprised

if Tom Hanks was fucking approached and was like, hey, do you think you'd support the United States and some intelligence effort? Because there's such a small pool of those people, and they can literally go anywhere in the world and be welcomed.

They're getting phone calls from all sorts of people. I mean, I'm not even a celebrity. And I get phone calls from people who just want to talk to me just to, like, just to say, hey, I saw you on that podcast and it was so interesting

and I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Like, holy shit. And that's, that is an intelligence dream to have somebody call you. Somebody from Russia, somebody from Belarus, somebody from Italy, somebody from whatever. Somebody from a criminal family, some millionaire, who's just like, hey, can I have 15 minutes of your time?

I'll pay you. And you're like, well, shit. Yeah. Because usually it would take years to try to bump into you in public. So what is the intelligence that can be gathered from, you know, like a high power pop star. You know what I mean?

Obviously, there's some obvious things with Diddy doing these parties and, you know, he's connecting with very wealthy, successful people that want to be cool. And so they're coming to his, you know, functions and he's having private dinners and he's meeting all sorts of people traveling the world. There's going to be some intelligence stuff there. So you don't, this is great because the movies will make you think that the intelligence comes from what they say, right? Like, Diddy is somehow going to sit down with like an oligarch in Russia and they're going

to have a conversation about a drug deal or a weapons shipment. that's not the value. The value is when Diddy's private plane lands in Belarus. On the back tail fin of that plane is a little piece of technology that's been installed by NSA that sucks up all the cellular signals in a five square mile radius. And now that little piece of technology sucks up all of the cell phone data for the private cell phones of the oligarchs that otherwise couldn't be reached. And now when that private plane flies back to L.A.

NSA comes and pulls that little device off the back tail wing of the airplane, downloads all the data, and now we have protected information, correlations, connections, maybe even text messages, transmission signals that we otherwise didn't have. That's why that stuff is so valuable. Hypothetically, Dennis Rodman is going to go meet with North Korean leaders. North Korean leader. That seemed like a pretty helpful. Hey, Dennis, can I see your laptop?

And then let's upgrade your laptop. Even better. Dennis, I said that you're using a five-year-old Windows. laptop, can we give you a current one, a new one, and it's going to carry a little something on it that helps us? Does he know? Oh, yeah. As an American citizen, as an American citizen, they have to be briefed on what they're doing because they're putting themselves in harm's way. Interestingly enough, when the book that I have coming out, Shadow Cell, the reason that book is being published is because CIA put my wife and I in harm's way without fully disclosing that that's what they were doing to us.

And as a result of that, there's a First Amendment lawsuit. There's a First Amendment right to tell the story. So if they didn't tell Dennis Rodman, if they didn't tell P. Diddy that they were being used in intelligence operation, if they were to ever find out that they were being used, they would have a First Amendment right to disclose everything about the scenario, classified or not. You violated my right. So now whatever. I have the right to say what happened. And that's effectively what the book is. For us.

Right. I mean, for our book, that was the reason it got published. The content that's therein is content that we believe still preserves the operation, the operational security of active operations. Because Shadow Cell, the book that my wife and I wrote together that's currently being published, is the most contemporary, most modern, most detailed CIA memoir to have ever been written. There has never been something that was written this close to when the operations occurred.

There's never been something written where the operations are still active. And that is a very sensitive thing. That's why CIA tried to block the publication. Because we went to bat threatening a First Amendment lawsuit, a First Amendment lawsuit would have meant the book was getting published, period, and all the press attention that would have come from a First Amendment lawsuit. CIA didn't want that. So as a result, they released the book, knowing that we had still done everything responsible and prudent to protect sources and methods. So you can basically go to them and say, hey, my rights were violated. We're doing this book.

We can either do it with you or without you. Correct. With you would be much more beneficial. Without you, this whole thing is going to blow up. It's going to be massive news and the book's going to do way better. You almost have a personal interest in being like, I hope you do it without us. That's exactly. I mean, that's exactly what it was.

And you've got the argument down to a, down to a T. The only reason that we didn't pursue the lawsuit was because at our core, my wife and I both very much still believe CIA has an important mission and they're doing their very best that they can do. but there's a certain level of incompetence, there's a certain level of bureaucratic wrangling, there's a certain level of ridiculousness, but for us, it's not worth making CIA look bad. We don't think CIA should look bad. They look bad enough because they have to keep so many secrets.

We're trying to show people that CIA has a logic behind what they do, that they serve the American people in the way that they serve the American people. And you don't have to like the way that they serve you, but you have to understand that they serve you. Mm-hmm. Now, we spoke about Legacy of Ashes before, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that basically is like an anthology of all the CIA's ineptitude for the past 70 years or something like that. Yeah. And, you know, there's certainly truth to it. I don't think there's anything in there that is like outright lie. It is painting a very negative picture about how these operations are done and, you know, highlights corruption and, you know, ethical problems as well as just ineptitude. Right.

Which is the case with every bureaucratic, you know, system. There's going to be all of these problems. I mean, as you know firsthand, right? You were the victim of, you know, perhaps, you know, malice or ineptitude. In your case specifically, do you detail in the book the danger that you were in and was it intentional? Yes. So we do detail the danger that we were in to the actual almost step-by-step process where when I was discovered in a hostile country by a hostile surveillance team, how I went about evading and identifying that surveillance team, which this is one of the most sensitive. parts of the book, particularly in CIA's point of view, because they, they didn't want anyone to know how a trained field officer counters a trained surveillance team. And it makes sense. I understand

why they don't want people to know that, but at the same time, people know that. Like, hostile surveillance already knows how CIA counters them. So why not let the American people know how CIA counters a hostile surveillance team? Because it's not like you see in the movies. So there's all these elements of the book that describe modern day tradecraft that the American public could know if they were able to understand what they were reading, but that they don't get to know because it's just, it's buried on the fifth page of the newspaper, not the front page of the newspaper, right? Were there any major moments in the story that you really wanted to include that got a ton of

of pushback, like this specific case? Where there other things in that vein were, you know, the main organizational board or whoever approves these things out of Langley was like, this cannot be in it. Yeah. So there's several, actually. So the long story short is that we wrote the book in 2021, fully written manuscript in 2021.

At the end of 2021, we submitted to CIA for review. That's part of our mandate or requirement as former CIA officers. They're supposed to take 30 days to review it, but we always know they're going to take closer to 90 days to review it. Well, by March of 20, The whole fucking world had changed. And if you just think about what happened in the first few months of 2022, you'll put it together for yourself. The whole geopolitical landscape had changed.

So because of the context of our story, by the time that CIA had reviewed it, they came back and they told us the entire book, the manuscript from beginning to end, was considered a classified document. This is considered classified. It will never see the light of day. It cannot be published. You must respond to this email and confirm your understanding that what you, you must respond to this email and confirm your understanding that what you, you have written is classified and should be immediately destroyed. Wow. We didn't, we knew what we had written.

We knew the geopolitical landscape. So when we responded, we said, we do not agree. We plan to, uh, there's another important word here, fancy legal term that I'm not thinking of, but whenever you, whenever you push back or you escalate, whatever, we're like, we're going to push back on this and we're going to find a way to do it that fits within the legal confines of our rights, right? So then CIA is like, you have 30 days to decide how you're going to do this and the end. A lot of what CIA does to its former officers is bullying because we signed two contracts. People don't talk about that, but we sign two contracts when we join CIA. We sign a civil contract, which basically says that we will not disclose anything without CIA's permission. And then we sign a legislative or policy contract that says that we are sworn intelligence officer. and we will not violate classification. Two contracts.

So that means if we're trying to tell classified information, it falls under the first contact. That's criminally liable. If I try to tell you something that's classified, I can go to jail. But if I try to tell you something that they simply said you're not allowed to say, that's civil court.

So in civil court, they can take all your money. In criminal court, they can take your job, right? So that's why they have assigned two different agreements. Which kind of covers everything possible. Correct. And it's super shitty. The only kind of loophole is if they give you permission, now you can publish.

If you kind of dance to whatever they want you to dance to, they give you permission. Or if you have a legal right that supersedes either one of the contracts, then you also have the ability to move forward. So for my wife and I, at first, we went in trying to just not piss them off and trying to create something that they would acknowledge is not a violation of either contract. But when they came back and said, fully classified from end to end, this will never see the light of day, now all of a sudden, that was them overreaching. So that started a three-year process where we went back and forth. We engaged them professionally. We engaged them personally.

We must have gone back and forth to Langley, Virginia, three times, to meet with them in person to try to walk through what they were thinking, what was classified, what wasn't classified, is there a path to publish this book that still takes out the stuff that you care about? And there were three primary things that made it into the final book that they did not want disclosed. The first is that the book is a story about a mole at CIA that has never publicly been acknowledged. CIA has never acknowledged the existence of this mole at CIA. It has been acknowledged in Department of Justice records because the mole was ultimately captured, prosecuted, and all those criminal, just like we saw with Epstein, all those documents are public record. even though their public records CIA has never gone out to the public and said this happened to us it's just what's in the court records so our book is the first time that CIA is ever publicly acknowledging that second there's the detailed operation where I was identified by a hostile country in that hostile country and then I was surveilled they really didn't want that to leak they didn't want to know they didn't want people to know how surveillance happens they didn't want people to know how we react they didn't want to know the operational flow or tempo so those two things they didn't want to have to

have exposed. And then the third thing that they didn't want released was that at the, at the onset of our operation, we were given instruction that we couldn't use traditional CIA methodology. We couldn't collect intelligence the way that's always been collected. They wanted us to invent a new way to collect intelligence. So what my wife and I did is that we borrowed tactics from terrorists and we started using those tactics to collect intelligence. And CIA really did. didn't want the American people knowing that they approved and funded terrorist-style tactics in pursuit of foreign intelligence collection. Even though it was against our biggest adversaries in the world, they didn't want that

to be acknowledged. So there were three major areas where CIA was pushing back and they were like, this is why you can never tell the story. Because the whole story is about you guys creating terrorist-style operations that flushed out a mole in a super hostile geopolitical rival. That then led to you being surveilled. how you fought back. Right.

So the entire thing, they're like, yeah, there's no way. No way. And we, not only did we get that officially, but we got that message unofficially, too, from, because CIA always have kind of,

we call them ambassadors. They're people who are not affiliated directly with CIA anymore, but they still have a foot in the building. So they have different roles in companies or corporations or advisory ships or whatever else. And they can come to you and literally tap you on the shoulder and be like,

hey, So I had two ambassadors come up to me be like, just give this up. That book's never going to get published. I mean, that is a wild battle. It's a crazy battle. And the only reason I want it isn't because I'm smart, right? So for everybody who's listening who's like, this guy's foolish shit, this guy's an asshole, I completely agree with you.

It's because my wife is really fucking smart. And when CIA came in in 2002 and they were like, this book is classified. My wife was like, our hands are tied. There's nothing we can do. She's a rule follower. She's a sad. She's a sad person. She's like, well, we tried her best.

and we're just going to have to accept their decision. And of course, I was angry. And I was like, fuck that. We're going to fight back. So for two and a half years, I fought like a dumb ass banging my head against a wall, trying to talk it out. And then after two and a half years,

they came back and they were like, if you don't abandon this, if you don't let this thing go or whatever, we're coming after your business. And then my wife was like, we have a First Amendment right. I know exactly what we're going to do. And then boom, boom, boom.

Wow. We threatened with a First Amendment lawsuit with one of the best attorneys that is in Washington, D.C., a guy named Mark Zaid, who is like, he is the name for anybody who's trying to get a classified memoir published. And I have no problem supporting and promoting Mark because he is so fucking good at what he does.

But my wife and Mark had a conversation. He went on our behalf to CIA, and he was like, these two are going to pursue a First Amendment lawsuit, and here are the five reasons why they're going to win. And then all of a sudden the next email we got was like, your manuscript is approved for publication. Let's work it out, right? That is really interesting.

Now, I think this is a, when does the book come out? September 9th. Basically, this is three years ago a classified document that is now available for anyone to read. Absolutely. That is really, really interesting. According to the rules of like the formal like documentation, this, what you can read on September 9th was classified by CIA as unpublishable three years ago. This must make you one popular. Among CIA, I am not a popular person, which is why I also laugh at all the people who think I'm some kind of closet fed.

Right. I was like, I have completely destroyed my reputation at CIA in pursuit of trying to explain why CIA is not as bad as people think it is. Right. It sucks, but it's what I believe. And I also believe most people at CIA are fucking sellouts who are going to spend the next 20 years getting their asses handed to them by a government bureaucracy that doesn't care. But there are some people who recognize that is true. and they do support me. So I do have a mixed bag of support there.

Yeah, I mean, that would be how, based off just like our interaction, my read on you, where it's like you value the CIA's work in certain capacities. They do some things excellently and they need to exist. There's also a ton of bureaucracy and a ton of people in there that are corrupt and doing bad things. And for you on a personal level, I would say you probably value your freedom above all. And for whatever reason, based off your personality, life experience, skill set, your role there.

You know, you like some of the work. You also hated some of it, but above all, you liked freedom. Yeah, I like freedom. And there are, I think we all understand what this feels like. You've met a few people in your life that you would move heaven and earth for. And maybe you can explain why, or maybe you can't. Maybe you just love that person. Like, that person is just such a good heart, such a good soul.

I met people at CIA that were unlike anybody I've ever met before or after. And I would move heaven and earth. earth for them. But I already know that if I don't try to share their existence, nobody will ever know they exist. There are people who are there who have sacrificed everything, people who have sacrificed marriages, people who are separated from their kids, people who have lost their health, all in pursuit of national security, all in pursuit of serving the American people, serving a dream that they swore to on their first day of agency employment, that they they know now still is corrupted and bureaucratized and broken,

but they have the opportunity to serve and they're going to keep serving. And for those one or two or five or 50 people, I have to tell their story because they can't defend themselves. Well, I'm excited for the record. I appreciate the advanced copy of the book, which I will be greeting prior to September 9th, you know, just that way I can be ahead of everyone else. And I mean, even just this idea of like, oh, this is,

you know, genuine classified documents that sure were maybe, you know, changed in a way in order to preserve all the operations, which you didn't need to do necessarily, but because of the way things went and there was a little bit of, you know, communication. That is how it went. But even getting access to this kind of information is like very enticing to me. And I'm really excited to jump into the book to go through everything. And then, I mean, even in addition to that, just like your perspective on Epstein and everything else and how that case in the current days affecting American politics and then even just the beginning of our combo, just how, how you see the world, I have greater appreciation for your perspective.

Thanks, man. I think for a lot of people, there is a knee-jerk feeling to be like, this guy's a fed, he's going to do all the stuff we were talking about. And I think this conversation contextualizes a lot where it's like, this is the way you are, how you see things. Here's a case study with the Epstein issue, whether you like it or not. This is just my, my critical callous take of how I think things will go. And I think the book will kind of give the lived experience probably that leads you to

you know, a real life example working within the, you know, the agency. Probably that informed your opinion of how things go, but also, you know, your skill set to achieve, you know, survival in those situations. Yeah, and it's important because my wife and I wrote the book together. And I say that

because one of the things I've always hated about CIA memoirs specifically is that most CIA memoirs are about some officer and how awesome he was. Right. And I say he because I don't know of many female memoirs. I know there are a few, but I don't know. I haven't read them to know whether or not they do the same thing the men do.

I'm so awesome. I'm so smart. I was the top of my class. I was a fuck up at CIA. I was, I'm not popular and there's a reason I wasn't super successful there. The book is not about just how awesome my wife and I are. The book is actually about how ridiculous my career was and how my wife is just fundamentally flawed as a person with anxiety and how the two of us together would have not done dick all had

it's just been us. It's about the incredible people who came to support us through this operation who did amazing things, who are still fucking there for all we know, still doing amazing things, still serving American people every day while my wife and I had the opportunity to leave. And we reflect every day that we left CIA, we built a multi-million dollar business, we have a beautiful family that we homeschool, we get to live anywhere in the world that we choose to live, and we're viral on the internet. And we got all of that because we stopped serving the American people.

And all the men and women in that book who still serve the American people, they're not making millions of dollars a year. They're not going viral on the internet. They have most likely sacrificed a lot of late nights, a lot of loved family members, a lot of hugs, a lot of anniversaries, a lot of birthday kisses just to keep us safe.

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