Julian Dorey Podcast - #239 - Intel Bin Laden Spy on Hunting "The Ghost" | Shawnee Delaney

Starting point is 00:00:00 But over the course of months and spent literally our meetings were like nine hours. They were these marathon meetings. They were exhausting. What would he talk about? His motivations had changed. He was pro-Al Qaeda. He had things happen in his life where his motivations changed. He saw the light. After September 11th, he was like, oh my God, what are we doing? He had family influence that was like, what are you doing? This is not okay. This is a guy who, I'm just using an example I just gave, who, you know, wanted stuff like Sharia law and he's talking to an American woman case officer, probably not wearing a hijab. Yes. No, wasn't. There was, there was one point because it was

Starting point is 00:00:34 like eating me up. Why? Like he talked to my friend. My friend was a dude and I straight up asked him, why are you talking to me? I am a white Western woman. I am the antithesis of everything that you believe in. So I asked him and he kind of just sat back and he kind of got this little smirk and went, why not? Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please take a second to hit that button and leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. And you can also follow me on Instagram and on X by using the links in my description. Thank you. We finally got one of the famous Bin Laden hunters in the studio. One of the many. One of the many, but that was an interesting mission.

Starting point is 00:01:18 It was an interesting mission. Yeah. We're going to talk about it. Yeah, it was a good one. Don't worry. We're going to get into it. But I'm really excited to talk with you, Shani, because you were a spy in an agency that almost no one out there thinks about but is like an enormous – I mean it's essentially like a sister of the CIA. Is that fair to say? We do training together. So everyone gets training. Well, when you're a case officer and you go through the training, you go down to the farm, which is a CIA facility, but it's DIA and CIA instructors. And DIA stands for Defense Intelligence Agency? Defense Intelligence Agency. I lovingly call it the Discount Intelligence Agency. Well, you made a hell of a career out of it. So we'll get into it. I loved it, yeah. But did you always want to be a spy when you were growing up?

Starting point is 00:02:08 I did. You did? I did. I was a total nerd, yes. When I was really young, I was influenced by the news and what was happening in the world. And I don't remember what age I was when I found out what espionage was. But whatever happened, like I joke, like angels, like the heavens opened up and angels started singing.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Like that's literally what happened. And I was like, okay, that is what I was born to do. I mean, was it the kind of thing where like your childhood made you feel like there were skills you had to develop that you felt cool doing? No, like I said said i was a total nerd i had no friends i had imaginary friends i probably shouldn't admit that but yeah um that movie if i really like that i related to that a lot it's about imaginary friends um yeah no i had no skills i was super super shy i was taught by my parents, like, you do as you're told.

Starting point is 00:03:05 You respect your elders. You do not argue. That's how I was raised. I'm a rule follower, which is really weird for someone who used to work in espionage. I do not like breaking rules. To this day? To this day. I don't believe you.

Starting point is 00:03:18 Swear. Really? Yeah, if you're like, don't touch that cup, I will not touch that cup. You broke rules for a living. I did. But it's okay in other countries maybe. Okay. All right, so just within our borders.

Starting point is 00:03:27 Right, right. Well, that is what it says in the Constitution or in what they wrote up about these agencies. Thy will not spy on their own citizens, which, you know. Yes, yes. I don't know about that one. Depends. Where did you grow up, though? So I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California.

Starting point is 00:03:45 Yes, yes. Where did you grow up, though? So I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. Yes. Alessi, how many people do we get in here from Santa Cruz and you're from Santa Cruz? Well, we do have a lot. Luis didn't grow up there, but he did some cartel stuff. And sold coke there. You know, there's probably very good business there. I'm not going to lie. So he's a good entrepreneur.

Starting point is 00:04:02 Yes. What were you saying? There was something about you found out your dad was doing shit too like later yeah um several years ago but like in recent history i found out that my father was one of the major kingpins um when it came at least to marijuana lord knows what else he dabbled in but But I think him and all of his brothers were pretty legit. And you didn't know this at all growing up? I had no clue.

Starting point is 00:04:29 I had no clue. And as I got older, like family members started making jokes or comments. And I was like, what are you talking about? You know? I'm so innocent. Yeah. And then I asked family like straight up. I asked my mom who had one version.

Starting point is 00:04:44 I asked my dad who definitely had a different version. But yeah, I'm only half joking when I say I'm the black sheep of my family. Yeah, I mean, but see, he's doing something that had to be under the radar. I see it's in the blood a little bit. Yes, but he was breaking the rules. I did not want to break the rules. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

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Starting point is 00:05:35 were way older and somehow when you were like do you remember him like sneaking in and out when you were a kid and wondering like what the fuck is he doing no but he had some weird friends and um yeah and he he used to travel to brazil a lot i think he was kind of i'll use the word entrepreneur right i think he he dabbled in a lot of different businesses um so i remember him coming home with these huge ziploc bags full of loose emeralds and as as a little girl, I was like, sparkly, you know, still, it was my favorite stone, if anyone wants to know. But I didn't get any. He didn't leave me any. But he always had some business up his sleeve. He was importing art from Czechoslovakia before it became a Czech Republic. That's how you hide money, Alessi. That's how it's done.

Starting point is 00:06:21 Oh, really? No. That's an interesting childhood. It was a very interesting childhood to find out about later. Yes. Yes. Yeah. A bit of a surprise. Maybe, maybe actually, maybe not so much of a surprise. But you wanted to be a spy. You were like, as you said, it hit you and you're like, ah, I'm going to do it. So did you even know like what DIA is? Because everyone knows CIA. No. But – I had no clue.

Starting point is 00:06:48 So what happened was I tried to get hired by the CIA multiple times. The first time I think I was 18 or 19 years old. 18. Mm-hmm. I knew the world. I had – like my – one thing about my dad is he traveled a lot, right? So probably for business now that I think about it. But we traveled all over the world and I was just a very worldly young person, I guess.

Starting point is 00:07:13 I studied Spanish. I thought that made me super special. It did not at all. So I pivoted and studied Arabic instead. Yeah, but I applied when I was in college, and I made it to the first interview. And I'll never forget, the guy interviewed me, and I was in deep. Like, I knew every question he was asking. I knew the world leader, and I knew what was going on in the world, and I was, like, really proud of myself. And he goes, how old are you again? And I got kind of

Starting point is 00:07:39 quiet, and I was like, 18, sir, 19, whatever it was. And he just kind of looked, like, this look on his face was like, you've got to be shitting me. Just wasted my time. You've got to be like, I'm however old you want me to be. I know. How old do I look? Yeah, so he was like, just call us in a few years. Okay, so he said you can do a callback.

Starting point is 00:07:59 Yeah, which I did. He wasn't, like, cutting you. Yeah, no, which I did. And then I did again. And then when I was outside uh I want to say gosh maybe 2003 2004 ish ballparking my my mind is a blur when we talk about years I interviewed I went through the whole thing they brought me out to DC I sat through all the tests the psychological tests and all the I mean it was like a week of testing. And I was sitting in a waiting room and there was another redhead.

Starting point is 00:08:28 I know her full name. I'll only say Sarah if she's out there. I hope she's succeeding. But she was in the waiting room and we were talking and like lamenting and like, what happens if you don't get hired? And what's our, I always need a plan. I need B, C, D, E, like many plans. And I was like, I don't know if they don't hire me, maybe I'll go NSA. Maybe I'll try C, D, E, like many plans. And I was like, I don't know. If they don't hire me, maybe I'll go NSA. Maybe I'll try FBI, like get in the law enforcement way. I was trying to pivot. And she goes, if I don't get picked up, I'm going to go DIA because DIA is the same thing. It's the same job. It's trained at the same facility with CIA. And I was like, huh, maybe I need to look into that. Like so nonchalant. I know.

Starting point is 00:09:05 Okay. So I researched it and different mission, right? We're supporting the warfighter at DIA. It's the Department of Defense Organization. Yeah. Can you explain that? Expand upon that a little bit? Because I think we blend it together and assume the CIA is doing that.

Starting point is 00:09:21 So how, what is that difference? And they are. They are to a degree. So our primary mission is to support the warfighter. So think about just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the stuff that we've been dealing with all these years when politics and and elections were coming up and things like that but we were heavily focused on where the ieds where our soldiers going to get blown up we were trying to save lives so our primary mission was protecting those warfighters as they were out there in the war zones. But obviously you end up doing more than that because when you, when you go to get that information, you're getting all kinds of other information. So maybe I, let's table that as far as like what the process is there. Cause we got to get through

Starting point is 00:10:19 how you were getting there. But you mentioned before you were sitting in the, in the waiting room with the other girl, Sarah, that you had gone through all the different testing at CIA, including the psychological testing. And I'm just, you know, you're like, what, 20 at this point? I was pretty young. Yeah, like 20, 21. Like, what is that? What are you allowed to talk about? Like, what does that consist of? They want to make sure that you have a good head on your shoulders. You're suitable,

Starting point is 00:10:46 right? They don't want anyone that's going to wear a tinfoil hat 24-7 and, you know, their hair is going to be on fire if anyone looks at them wrong. You can't be paranoid. There's a fine line between paranoia and a healthy sense of security, you know, awareness, if you will. They want worldly people. They want people who are level-headed and even-keeled, especially in high-pressure situations. I mean, if you think about it, the people that I was meeting, their lives were on the line. Their families' lives were on the line. So you can't have some douche going and running assets. It's just not going to work. Yeah. It's, it's such a delicate dance. I mean, forget like even starting to get to know people or introducing yourself to people and how difficult that is to, you know, not like raise the alarm bells, especially I'm thinking in the middle East, you know, you're a fair skin American girl, right? Like that's, that's definitely a little different than what they're used to. It's funny you say that actually. Um, I was just, I just met with somebody

Starting point is 00:11:42 who I haven't seen in many, many years, probably more than 20 years. And her father was one of my instructors. And I didn't know it when I met her. And she casually dropped like, oh, my father was so-and-so. And I went, oh, my God. First of all, I loved him. But you need to tell him something for me. And she's like, what? And I said, he pulled me aside, as well as multiple other old white men. They pulled me aside one by one and were like, look, you're going to have trouble. Those people in the Middle East, they're not going to want to talk to you. Those men, they're not going to want to talk to you. It's going to be hard, you know, blah, blah, blah, uphill battle. Like they really set me up for failure

Starting point is 00:12:15 because their perception was no one would talk to me. And then you drop me in the Middle East and it was like pushing people away because I could talk to women. I could go sit in a kitchen on the floor and pick – I have photos – pick cherry stems off of cherries and help the women and the wives and the aunts and the grandmothers and everyone make dinner. Carry it into the room where all the men were sitting playing games on the floor, drinking whiskey. And then I would go join. Oh, you'd join them? I would join the men. So I straddled both worlds and it was incredibly successful. And so I told her to tell her father he was wrong.

Starting point is 00:12:50 Mad Dog wasn't one of those guys. No, no, no. No, Mad Dog has always been an amazing supporter. Yeah, Jim Lawler was episode 129 in here. Yeah. We love Jim, even if he's still in the CIA. No. He says he's not.

Starting point is 00:13:03 He is. He's amazing. My kids call him Mr. Law he's not. He is. He's amazing. My kids call him Mr. Lawler. Mr. Lawler. Oh, boy. Did he tell you about the gold bars? I don't think so. Okay.

Starting point is 00:13:12 I shouldn't tell his own story. Well, tell it. Ask him next time you talk to him. He has a photo, and he's sitting on top of a pile of gold bars holding a cigar. I have not heard about this. Yeah, but, well, I told my kids about it. He has a whole story. I have not heard about this. Yeah, but well, I told my kids about it. He has a whole story. I'll let him tell you.

Starting point is 00:13:30 But I told my kids he has this photo. I've seen it. And we went and spent Easter with him and his wife, Ellen, and they hid Easter eggs around the house. It was so sweet. And my kids are finding things and they found the photo. And they were like, it's real. So he's a legend.

Starting point is 00:13:46 I'm just picturing like the Joker in front of that money pile. Be like, everything burns. Just like Jim fucking lighting the gold bar. He just, he looks super cool too. He's just like, yeah. How did you know him though? Was he like one of the original instructors you had? So he was, he had started this special series of courses that he called the scientist recruitment courses. So this

Starting point is 00:14:11 is, this is, I think, super interesting. And when I talk to private sector now, I tell them about this. So the US government, as well as other countries, we focus and we train on how to target certain types of individuals, right? Scientists, nuclear physicists, mathematicians. I have nothing in common with a mathematician. I hate math more than anything on the planet, right? But I am trained now on how to have a conversation with these like 20-pound brain people through him and his courses. So he had four courses. I took all of them. And the first time I met him, actually, he would tell you the story, too, because he remembers. He reminded me. I had dislocated my wrist, and I was in a cast, and it was upside down.

Starting point is 00:14:52 And, like, the first comment he made was about the cast and my name. And, you know, everyone always comments on my name because it's weird. Shawnee, how are you? Yeah. And I was like, my parents were hippies. Thanks. And he remembers that. And we just became really fast friends. He became, like, my parents were hippies. Thanks. And he remembers that. And we just became really fast friends.

Starting point is 00:15:05 He became like a mentor. And then after I got out and he retired, we've just stayed super, super close. That's cool. That dude's a sharp guy. I love that man. I mean, he really, when he was talking to me, he was like hypnotizing me. But you can feel it, right? Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:19 Yeah. What did I say? I'm like, I feel like you're eye fucking me into my soul. So he just kept going. So him and I have a thing, and I'm probably going to get hammered for this, but we talk about the metaphysics a lot. We're starting to talk about it more in public. But he and I years and years ago have started talking about like how do you feel like when you're in a source meeting, like sometimes you can make them say things you want them to say. And I'm like, yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:44 So we're talking about this over the years and it sounds stupid but it's kind of like jedi mind oh yeah you know like he and i and other people can actually manipulate conversations to go exactly where we want to go and have people say what we want them to say so 100 we call the metaphysics no i i think 100 i know for a fact he can do that yes because i could feel like i do this you feel the energy and i can feel him doing it to me i'm like you son of a hundred, I know for a fact he can do that. Yes. Because I could feel it. Like I do this for a living. You feel the energy. And I can feel him doing it to me. I'm like, you son of a bitch.

Starting point is 00:16:08 Yeah. You know, but like even when I have Bustamante in here, like I go way back with him and I've probably edited him more than anyone on planet, I definitely have edited him more than anyone on planet earth. So I know every mannerism or whatever, but I can see like, oh my God, that son of a bitch. Like this is why he was good at his job because he can change the conversation. And in my case, I even know he's doing it sometimes. But you still go with it.

Starting point is 00:16:33 And it still happens. I'm like, whatever. Yep. It's an amazing skill. Yeah. But you were saying he would teach you to talk to all these different types of people. So like you use the mathematician example because that's not something that's like in your wheelhouse not fun so how would you go talk to kurt jamungle

Starting point is 00:16:49 do we know a mathematician yeah yeah kurt jamungle is just in here he's a mathematical physicist that sounds horrifying genius i'm sure he's a brilliant a brilliant guy um i'll show you his youtube afterwards so just different things like you have to appeal to ego a lot, right? When you're dealing with really smart people, they know they're really smart. And they want to be complimented. They want their ego complimented. If you are interested in what they are saying, they're going to keep talking, right? So they would teach us even like little sayings like ask this question.

Starting point is 00:17:20 I don't know, something about a prime number. Like do prime numbers go on forever? I don't know. Things like that. And I'm like, okay, I'll write that down and keep that in my book. But I'll never forget one of the courses, I don't remember which one, they had like a panel and they had all these, you know, brilliant people on the panel and they were sitting on this little stage. And somebody asked, you know, about personalities and quirks and how do we really get in the mind of you, your type of people. And I'll never forget this guy. He goes, well, if you really want to get into our mind, go watch The Big Bang Theory.

Starting point is 00:17:55 It's totally accurate. So I very proudly did my homework. Oh, you went and watched The Big Bang Theory? There you go. You can talk like a nerd walk like a nerd that kind of thing yeah but you so you talked to this girl sarah and then i guess because you were still so young i guess cia was still like no you're too young or whatever so i actually got offered a job oh you did yes this is like one one of my biggest personal failures if you will oh so

Starting point is 00:18:22 i got offered a job and the recruiter who I was talking to, this woman, she was like, look, it's in D.C. You're going to need a car. I was like, okay. I had an old, like, my first car was a very, very old Mercedes diesel. It would not have done well in D.C. winters. Mine caught on fire on the parkway a couple years ago. So I went out and I bought a new Jetta wagon, black.

Starting point is 00:18:43 It had heated seats. I was very proud of myself. And then about two – probably two or three weeks before I was supposed to actually move to D.C. to take this job as like a clandestine service trainee, I got a call. And she's like, I'm sorry. They've decremented the billet. They've what? They got rid of the job. They got rid of the billet.

Starting point is 00:19:01 I don't know if it was a budget issue or what, but they were just slashing incoming people. It sounded like this was going to be more of a desk job, though, in D.C. No. So it was actually a clandestine service trainee. So it was bringing people – they bring people in to start the cycle of learning how to be a spy, how to be human intelligence. OK. Yeah. Gotcha.

Starting point is 00:19:20 So they just X'd it. They were like, hey. I guess the budget was low. Yeah. I don't know what it was. What year is this? Oh, my my gosh i don't even know this is early it's like oh three oh four yeah our budget i mean dick cheney was in office what the fuck is this i don't know but i cried for weeks yeah weeks and then i ended up going to graduate school and I thought, okay, I told you I studied Arabic. Okay, I need to be more marketable, right?

Starting point is 00:19:48 This is like you're going to see a theme here. I constantly need to be better and smarter. I like that you don't take no for an answer. No, hell no. Never. That's impressive. Never. One of my mottos is find a way to get to yes.

Starting point is 00:19:59 Yes. Period. There you go. So I went and studied Arabic. I moved to Egypt and studied studied arabic there yeah by myself um luckily bumped into a couple people i went to school with pure coincidence i was like coming down the steps of the egyptian museum and i was like hey i know them you move you just completely alone yeah not knowing anyone moved to egypt yes yes to study arabic good for you or stupid one of

Starting point is 00:20:23 the two listen can't say you're not about it. No. Yeah. No, I throw myself in head first. Where'd you live in Egypt? Cairo? Yeah. In Cairo, in a little place called Zimalik. I mean, I've been to Cairo like once, but I don't know the neighborhoods or whatever, but it's kind of weird because there's, there's some areas that are like very, I guess like Western influence there. And then there's areas that are like very i guess like western influence there and then there's areas that are like very egypt and it's like they're right next to each other that's egypt as they say yes um i was kind of in in between so i wasn't living where all the expats live i was living more in a normal neighborhood it was a nice neighborhood zamalek's a very nice neighborhood um what's that famous um

Starting point is 00:21:03 egyptian actor, Omar Sharif. Oh, yeah, yeah. Lived right down the street. Yeah. So I thought I was like riding high. Yeah, you're bougie. Yeah, totally, totally. But yeah, I bumped into these two guys I went to school with.

Starting point is 00:21:15 I was living in a hostel. And they're like, hey, we just got an apartment and we have room for one more. You want to live with us? And I was like, well, I'm probably going to get beaten for being a woman living with men. But yes, yes, i will live with you so i live with these two two classmates and studied arabic and if i understood this correctly this was like a supplement to your master's degree you were

Starting point is 00:21:34 getting so it's not like you were getting the master's degree in egypt you just went there for how long was it three months okay so like a summer yeah something like that okay so you're like buttressing up your resume you're pissed off that the CIA said fuck it to this job I'm gonna be good enough for them you're gonna be good enough yes when does DIA come back into the picture so uh as I was getting my master's degree some recruiters from DIA came there was a guy named Craig and then a wonderful wonderful human Sharon Hoy who is now retired. She lives in California again. And they came and they were talking, and I – so let me backtrack real quick.

Starting point is 00:22:10 I used to work at Disneyland. This is related because this is how I got my job at Disneyland. I auditioned to be a character. Who doesn't want to be a princess, right? Yeah. They were not looking for me. So – Couldn't pass as Ariel or something? Right. I tried, but Mulan had just come out, and they were only looking for me um so so passes ariel or something right i tried but mulan had

Starting point is 00:22:27 just come out and they were only looking for mulan and i'm not yeah like fuck the mermaids yeah i know i was like put hair no um so so anyway i had i had reached out to them and and i walked up and just suddenly grew balls and i was like disneyland needs me and here's 10 reasons why and the guy just looked at me like I was crazy and I just started rattling off these are all the reasons why I don't remember anything it just like in the second just started talking and he goes great you're hired and I went that works and so when I met with these recruiters I was like full Disney like well I didn't say Disneyland. DIA needs me, and here's why. And it just started rattling off reasons why.

Starting point is 00:23:09 And then Craig, the recruiter, he was like, let's go get a beer. So we went down. We were in Monterey, California. Went downtown and had a beer in a local pub. And I think he was trying to recruit me, but I was trying to recruit him, you know, at the same time. And then I applied, and Sharon, she went to my graduate school. So she was an alum. And then I just hit her up every now and then. And she would say, oh, it's still in the process, blah, blah, blah. But when I got hired, finally, which took like over a year, when I got hired, she, she was

Starting point is 00:23:41 awesome. She was a huge supporter. And I spent my first Thanksgiving in D.C. with her and her family. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, just really, really kind person. Did they tell – when they have those first conversations with you and take you out to the bar, did they get at all somewhat personal about what their jobs had been within DIA or the things they had accomplished without revealing actually clandestine intelligence stuff? Yeah. So Sharon was on the analysis side and I did not want to go analysis. I did not want to sit at a desk. I wanted the human intelligence side.

Starting point is 00:24:14 And the recruiter, Craig, he was a case officer. So I just wanted to hear every story that he had ever lived, you know, as we're sitting there over the beer. And I think just personality wise, I think he could see like, I could talk to him. Yeah, I don't know. It worked. Yeah. So anyone listening, like 10 reasons why you need me works.

Starting point is 00:24:35 Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty good opener. It's like, all right, you have the balls to like, go at your strengths right away. Yeah. But it was that was very outside of my norm. So. But good for away. Yeah. But it was, that was very outside of my norm. So, but good for you. Yeah. So in that conversation though, did he start to go over, you know, here's maybe here's what makes us different at DIA versus CIA and what you were looking at, like some of the stuff you explained earlier in this conversation?

Starting point is 00:24:59 No, not really. I mean, he did talk about the mission and I think it was very important for anyone coming in to understand that it was different it was a different mission but i was all about it i'm a very mission driven person give me a mission and i'm all over it um so i i was good with that yeah it's an interesting time too yeah when he's when he's recruiting you yeah because like shit we just went into ira that point. Afghanistan had popped off. This is right after 9-11, a couple years. So it's like you're getting in there at a time where intelligence has probably never been more busy in the history of our country. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:25:37 Did you have any grasp of that concept? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So my master's was counterterrorism, counterproliferation. Say that five times fast. That's an actual master's? I created it. So wait, are you teaching yourself? Like what's going on here?

Starting point is 00:25:56 So my master's was international policy studies, and you could get a specialization. And it took me two years to convince the dean that counterterrorism and counterproliferation went together. Because at that time, if you think back like September 11th, there were a lot of reports of Al Qaeda. They were gassing dogs and they were playing with WMD and there was Saddam and blah, blah, blah. And I was just super fascinated. And so what I saw was the future was they were going to go hand in hand, right? Malicious actors, terrorists were going to start trying to use big, bad, scary things as propaganda for attacks, whatever. So we didn't have enough classes.

Starting point is 00:26:32 So I actually ended up taking a class at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to supplement all the Miss Monterey Institute. Well, they changed the name now. It's Middlebury Institute of International Studies. But to supplement those classes. And when I proved to the dean that everything fit and it made sense, right after I graduated, they created a program. So there's a program now because I was like doggedly telling them this should go together. Yeah, you were hitting it at the right time. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:56 So you have every box checked in that way. And after a year, what was your name? Sharon. Craig and Sharon. So Sharon gets back to you and says, all right, you can have the job. And you wanted to be in the espionage side, not on the desk side.

Starting point is 00:27:10 No. So what's day one like? Is it, you said the training happened side by side at CIA, at the farm? Yeah, you don't start out just, they don't just toss you into the farm. They still need to vet you to a degree. So day one, I was terrified. I remember getting off a bus and meeting, they gave us mentors. And my mentor was a horrible human being. She was

Starting point is 00:27:34 terrible. Kind of haunted me throughout my career for a while. But I got off the bus and she was one of those women that like do the elevator eyes, like oh i don't like you automatically kind of thing it was one of those yeah yeah um her and her buddy were pretty horrible to me throughout the years so that first day i was like well this is gonna be fun but they but they assigned me to a desk i think where did i start i started in the iraq task force and then later was moved to the Afghan task force. So the cool thing about and I could they could have put me anywhere in the world. Right. Literally desk wise.

Starting point is 00:28:12 But I had lived in Egypt and I had studied Arabic and I had this background. And so that's why I got put there. And the cool thing was on that desk, you're supporting the people that are out on deployment. So you're still supporting the mission. When they wanted to recruit somebody, that packet would come across my desk. I would staff it, make sure everyone signed it, make sure it got sent where it needed to get sent, things like that. So I learned a lot on the desk. However, nobody likes working at headquarters.

Starting point is 00:28:37 I mean, come on. Yeah. So I went through several trainings while I was there, like lower-level human trainings. And then in – Human intelligence. Yes. Obviously for people out there. Obviously.

Starting point is 00:28:50 It's got to make sure. Some people will be like, what is human? I don't know. Sound it out. So, yeah, we had different types of training. And then in, I think, December of 07, I had come back from my first tour in Iraq as a human intelligence, like a collection officer. Oh, so you got to go do one. I got to go do one, but not as a case officer. It was like a case officer light.

Starting point is 00:29:20 We called it. Can you explain that? Yeah. How do I do it? So you go through specialized training. You learn the human intelligence recruitment cycle. You can recruit like in war zones, but there are certain types of people you can't recruit. Like I would – if you were a case officer, I'd have to bring you in, pitch you with the case officer with me, and then that person would leave.

Starting point is 00:29:40 Like just – We give ourselves lots of rules. Some of them are very stupid. But you follow. But of them are very stupid. But you follow. But I follow them. So it's called a field collection officer, FCO. So I did that my first tour.

Starting point is 00:29:57 Then I went and went to the farm. Right. Okay. So I'm trying to put the time. The new BMO VI Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights.

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Starting point is 00:30:50 No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. I'm lying together in my head because you're getting recruited by Sharon and Craig in like 03, 04. You find out maybe 05. You go to the desk outside of DC, I guess, in 05, 06. And then maybe it's like a year, 18 months there. Then they give you this case officer light type mission. How long was that in Iraq?

Starting point is 00:31:22 So I spent my first tour was six months in Iraq. And where? Mosul. Both times I was in Mosul. Oh, that's awesome. I hear that's right up there with like Rome and London. I would love to buy a summer home. If you look at a timeline, and I've seen it, but if you look at a timeline of violence in the world, but in Iraq, Mosul, both times. So I was there 06, 07, and 09. And then I was in Afghanistan 11 and 13. If you look at the, like, spikes in violence, both times I was there, it was like these crazy spikes.

Starting point is 00:31:57 You brought the rain down to hell. Yeah. Mosul was very, very interesting. But yeah, so I did that FCO until January of 08 is when I went down to the farm. But let's talk about this though because that's a long time to be in the play. And as you said, the shit was popping off there. Yes. So you've never – like you had traveled the world. You had put yourself into uncomfortable situations.

Starting point is 00:32:21 Very well. Very. Like I bet a lot of people in your position hadn't done that. I got into Syria by dancing like Shakira, just FYI. While you were on the Mosul? No, before I got into the IA. So yeah, I was used to like these very weird situations. How'd you, I gotta hear that story, come on.

Starting point is 00:32:37 Well, I'm not a good dancer. I'm a wiggler. I can wiggle. Okay. Yeah, so when I was living in Egypt, we, another, I like red like redheads i guess another redheaded girl and i named nicole we traveled around the middle east and so we went lebanon syria and jordan and um when we traveled from lebanon into syria like a lot of it was just kind of half-assed

Starting point is 00:32:59 like we're just gonna wing it yeah i hitchhiked with hezbollah, which really affected my security clearance. With Hezbollah. Our bus broke down in Lebanon in Zahle, which is near Baalbek, which is Hezbollah controlled. Listen, it all sounds bad. Just keep going.

Starting point is 00:33:19 The bus broke down and here are these two white redhead chicks with our big backpacks like, you know, anyone? Were you wearing? The keffiyeh or anything? No, hijab? No, no, no. And then this old beat up, oh, God, I wish I had a photo.

Starting point is 00:33:36 This old beat up four-door Mercedes with bullet holes in the side and in the windshield pulls over and her and i look at each other and i just said we're from canada eh there's a lot more to that story anyway so yeah i want i want to hear it though you can't just say there's a lot more to that story and then not give me the well she put me there was this really creepy dude in the back seat and then she put me in the middle and she was so i'm sitting next to this terrorist anyway they drove us to our our little hostel in balbeck which is where these incredible ruins are it was beautiful so these were nice terrorists they were very nice that's cool but people can be nice when you play ignorant too right but there's a hosbill of flags everywhere and when we got to the the ruins I mean these massive I mean picture like Greek columns and you know there's this little uh museum I have pictures

Starting point is 00:34:34 there's this little museum and it looked like it was like if that's the wall of the ruins it was like built out from the wall and so we walked in and I'll never forget. So it's this long room and on the left hand side were like tables with like Hezbollah key chains and Hezbollah t-shirts and Hezbollah flags. And my master's thesis was on Hezbollah. So I was like, I could bring this back for my, you know, advisor. Like how cool is this? On the right side of the room were like computer paper, really horrible printouts of like bombs. And like it was like U.S. and Israeli atrocities. And I was like, oh, shit.

Starting point is 00:35:11 And then there were three dudes sitting here. There's like a hallway in between. There were three dudes sitting there. And I looked at her again. I said, Canada, eh? Like just a reminder. She's like, uh-huh. And we didn't want to back out because these dudes were like you know who yeah who are you

Starting point is 00:35:25 what do you want and so we're like oh you know and she spoke arabic much better than me she's like maybe look around they're like and we're like okay and so we walked in the next room was do you know what you know the diorama you remember when we were kids like those dioramas that you'd have to make like in a shoebox yes it was like a giant diorama oh my god they had like a cardboard tank with like a hand with like a huge rifle sticking out like it was stupid but i was like great this is so cool and there was one more room and we're like okay we're in now and the one guy got up and followed us and i remember like maybe this is my practice spy days but this before digital cameras so i had like the old like point shoot camera I had it around my neck here.

Starting point is 00:36:05 And we walked into the room and it was, like I said, it was a very long room. And I have a picture of this. There were probably about this high these glass cases. And each case had three shelves. And they were probably about this wide, right, just these glass cases. And they lined all the way around the room. And in each case were the remains of a suicide bomber there were mangled wedding rings and glasses and photos and and all of the like literally

Starting point is 00:36:32 you just walked in and when we realized what it was like started i started shaking like oh my oh my god like the death that these people have caused it was crazy. And there was a TV right there in the room and Hassan Nasrallah, who was the leader of Hezbollah, was, you know, brah, brah, brah, brah, brah. And I just looked at her and I took a picture, quietly, because why not? We're tourists. And we bugged out of there as fast as we could.

Starting point is 00:36:59 You just got, you left. Yeah, we were like, thank you. Thank you so much. Chukran, Chukran, yeah. All right, goodbye. Bye, Salama. Let's get the fuck out of here and they just let you walk they just let us walk these weren't these were very

Starting point is 00:37:08 tame terrorists yeah i mean we were very sweet more borat type terrorists rather than you know a little bit a little bit just saying yeah all right so that but that fucked up your security clearance later because you took a ride one time well it, it did. Well, maybe a couple other things. That was an issue. And because I was studying Hezbollah, again, well, you can't be an expert if you don't actually see things and learn them. Yeah, what's wrong with that? Well, so I went to the tri-border area in South America, which is where Hezbollah is very active also. It's where Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil meet, where Iguazu Falls is. What's the name of the – oh, wait.

Starting point is 00:37:46 I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was thinking of something else. The TBA? No. There's a – I'm thinking of the wrong area. There's another thing down there where like everyone dies. What the fuck is it called, Alessi?

Starting point is 00:37:55 That jungle? It's like where the – The Amazon? No. I was just there. But the – where North America meets South America starts with a D. Oh, like the Darien Gap? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:06 Yes. That's not where you're talking. No, no. This is why. We were in Iguazu Falls where the three countries meet. It's called the tri-border area. Okay. And Hezbollah.

Starting point is 00:38:14 Hezbollah and Paraguay is very, very, very active. And I knew this. I was studying it. And again, you know, I went and was a tourist and went to the waterfalls and then crossed the border into Paraguay. And in Ciudad del Este, there's these shopping malls. You can see it on the left. There are these shopping malls and Hezbollah ran some of the shopping malls and some of the stores within different shopping malls. And so I was with an ex-boyfriend at the time.

Starting point is 00:38:40 And we went and we're like exploring. And I was just trying to gather information. i wanted to be an expert right and so we went and there was there was a camera store we went into because i like photography was actually one of my covers for a lot of yeah my operational work and so i was looking at cameras and the guy comes up and there's hassan nasrallah on the tv behind him and i was like cool cool okay you know where we are we love hassan yeah what's up and we're talking so i was like playing cool okay know where we are we love hasan yeah what's up and we're talking so i was like playing innocent and like asking about the cameras and he goes oh i can give you a great deal and i said where do you get these they're such a great deal and he goes

Starting point is 00:39:13 they just they fall off ships going from miami i was like wow they just fall off it's amazing you're like keep going yeah anyway so he invited me to uh lebanon and to hang out with his family and i was like we're good um i don't need more friends but those stories obviously like the background of the polygraph they were like not happy but but like your heart's in the right place on those things maybe half stupid but yeah you know it's like it's like guys i was practicing for you you know what i mean i can talk to anybody that's it right that's it but you would cut off though because you you broke down and then they took you to balbeck and then you ended up having to escape this place and it was in lebanon but you then it started off you were saying you had to dance your

Starting point is 00:40:01 way into syria like yeah sorry i told you i'd talk for two weeks if you let me. I have more stories than anyone. Listen, that's a good thing. So when we left Lebanon and we were crossing into Syria, we were told you could just walk across. That was not true. You had to dance across. Oh, you had to dance. So they let everyone in but me.

Starting point is 00:40:20 So me and my friend Nicole. You didn't dance well enough? I don't know. But they wouldn't let us in. They were just kind of being hard asses like you're american like what do you you know why blah blah blah and we were like playing dumb and no we just really want to see syria and and then i just i think it was either on the radio or tv i do not remember but there was shakira came on right and i went oh shakira she's from lebanon like being lubnan right and they're like like columbia lebanon like right the heritage and so i was like

Starting point is 00:40:53 trying to be like you know cutesy which i am not a cutesy person and uh the guy cracked a smile and i was like we're in and so i just started like talking to him about music and shakira and then like did a little hip thing which was probably my hips lie my hips were terrible oh my god i can see the guy like yes yes welcome to our country and we walked right in that is probably a story that not many people have. No, and I will never tell my kids. Okay. Well, guess what? Your kids are going to have the internet.

Starting point is 00:41:29 So they'll be able to see this. Yeah. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you. All right. So we got on that tangent because we were talking about your first trip though to mosul in 07 so you touched down in mosul for what's going to be six months as

Starting point is 00:41:51 secondary case officer right you already laid some of that out but you're getting there during a crazy fucking time obviously but what's that like now that you're you're not you know a tourist fucking around having a good time you're actually in the game dropping into a major war zone. Yeah. You know, can you even be prepared for that? No. Yeah. No.

Starting point is 00:42:12 I think, I mean, I've never been in the military. I don't know how they mentally prepare for it. But I was not mentally prepared for it. I knew people that had been. I had gone through all the training. I had studied as much as I could. But there is nothing like, well, first of all, I think on that flight landing, in my memory, I was the only civilian. So everyone's in uniform.

Starting point is 00:42:37 And then there's me, jeans and a T-shirt. What are you on, like a military? Yeah. So we got off the plane. And this is a whole new world, right? We got off the plane and and this is a whole new world right we got off the plane we were in qatar because you transfer from there into iraq and so when we got off the plane there were these military guys like on the tarmac like screaming at everyone as they're getting off the plane like all right amnesty box blah blah blah blah and i was like what's an amnesty box you know if you got porn if you got this you got that like put it in the box

Starting point is 00:43:10 because we're going to search you and i was like and so everyone was just lining up in these formations and i was like where do i go what do i do what do i do so i'm kind of standing there just trying not to look stupid and they're all right we're going to search you and so they put everyone in these lines and you're marching in these two lines into this tent where they're like, right, we're going to search you. And so they put everyone in these lines, and you're marching in these two lines into this tent where they're going to, like, go through all your stuff. And I was like, this is a different world. They don't do this in airports at home. So I think that was, like, my first welcome,

Starting point is 00:43:39 like this shock of, like, the rules are out the window. This is a totally different ballgame than what you're used to. And when you say, like, you're the only civilian on there, I mean you're technically not a civilian. You're just not in the military so to speak, right? But you're coming there to support the military. So you're a part of the mission. Yes. Well, I was a DOD civilian.

Starting point is 00:43:59 So I had a CAT card. I was on military orders. I fell under general order number one, whatever it's called, like no drinking, basically your straight edge, right? Yeah. So I fell under all of those. But still, like I'm not in a uniform and I don't know all their stuff. Got it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:44:20 So whoever you were going to be reporting to wasn't coming with you. I guess you were meeting them there. Yeah. You show up at your office. All right. So once you cross the border from Qatar – by the way, is it Qatar or is it Qatar? I say Qatar. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:35 I say Qatar too. I think there was some like journalist many years ago that said Qatar – gutter. It was gutter, right? They said gutter and then it just took off and everyone said that. Okay. All right. We're going to say Qatar. So you cross from Qatar into Iraq. They said gutter, and then it just took off, and everyone said that. Okay. All right. We're going to say Qatar now.

Starting point is 00:44:45 So you crossed from Qatar into Iraq. Did you go straight into Mosul at that point? Nope. Flew into Baghdad. Okay. Had to go down Route Irish, you know, where everyone was getting blown up. Yeah. So again, like welcome to Iraq.

Starting point is 00:44:58 You're just like, oh, God, I can't just like show up and then get blown up right away. Were you scared? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. like show up and then get blown up right away like yeah absolutely absolutely and then from stayed in we had a house there um like a headquarters for dia stayed there for a few days and then they got me a flight they called a rotator up to mosul and going from baghdad which is a big city to mosul which is a big city but it looks like a dust bowl like it's not a big city like people think um was terrifying and then we and i in the beginning i joked about discount intelligence

Starting point is 00:45:31 agency but this is where it all really form formulated for me is that the cia was there right dia was there we were both running operations but cia had really strong guys you know former navy seals the ground branch guys. They'd go out in their up-armored G-wagons and they'd bring back the source and the case officer would debrief on base. Yeah, you're talking about the GRS guys. Yeah, the GRS. I was given cars and trucks that were taken from raids. Like special forces would raid. They'd get this beat-up truck and then we would get it somehow so bad that um one of the trucks i was

Starting point is 00:46:13 actually in kurdistan one of the trucks the front axle fell out of the car we were driving and then like and everyone thought we got hit we we thought we got hit by an id and it was like are you okay are you everyone like body parts everyone good ever good yeah and we got hit. We thought we got hit by an ID and it was like, are you okay? Are you okay? Everyone, like body parts, everyone good? Everyone good? Yeah. And we got out because it was Kurdistan, so it was safer. We got out and the whole front axle was like laying on the ground. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:34 So like that's the stuff we worked with. We weren't given radios. We had to use local cell phones that did not work. We weren't given the things that CIA was given to operate in this environment. Why do you think that is? I don't know. I have a lot of theories. Budgets.

Starting point is 00:46:49 Let's fire away. Come on. I mean, just budgets. I don't know. I don't know if DIA has ever really been taken as seriously as CIA. And so money doesn't get funneled there. Or the money that got funneled there, whoever was in charge, put it in the wrong place because we had operators in the field

Starting point is 00:47:07 who had nothing. We had nothing. And going, I did Mosul twice. So the second time I went back, at least I knew that. So it wasn't a shock. And I was able to basically form relationships with military units.

Starting point is 00:47:22 There was a helicopter unit. So the second tour, I saw that we got hemmed up. We had trouble at checkpoints a lot in Mosul because we were running our own surveillance detection routes. We were picking up people and then we were bringing them back to base. Me as mission commander, right? It's my mission. But we had a lot of problems. And so like my second tour, I went and befriended somebody who ran the helicopter, the unit that was there with air support. And I basically said, look, this is who I am. Obviously not Shawnee, but whatever my alias was.

Starting point is 00:47:53 This is who I am. This is our mission. We're here to keep you safe, but we have nothing. Is there any way you could support us so that we can support you? What was your cover? In a war zone? Yeah. Didn't really have one i mean everyone

Starting point is 00:48:06 just had a fake name and that's it yeah but if they said where do you work state department no we never i never said state department it was dia or dod everyone knew like when you're in a you're in a military base in a war zone and everyone's in a uniform except for like a few people in jeans and a t-shirt you're like like, eh, spies. Right, right. Yeah. Okay. Can we go back for one second though? Because I want to stay on this because this is like the trial by fire in the first one. Even though you're not full-fledged allowed to go do everything, like you're on there for six months and you're at least – this is your first experience where you're told and for certain people you're allowed to go make a source and stuff. Yeah, yeah. for certain people you're allowed to go make a source and stuff. Yeah. So how, I mean, you talked about it earlier with the fact that it actually played to your advantage that you were a fair skin American girl, right?

Starting point is 00:48:52 But you didn't know that until you actually did it. So when you got on the ground, you know, first of all, did your commander say, hey, here's our, did they identify like a clear problem and say, this is what we want intel on. And here's the places we want you to go. Maybe here's some targets we already have for you. How did it come together? A little bit of everything. So, for example, if there are a lot of IEDs, that's going to be primary mission.

Starting point is 00:49:15 Like we need to get these weapons cache, all these locations where the weapons are, and we need to destroy them. We need to arrest the people. We need to kill the people, whatever we need to do. So that would be priority. But there's also intelligence requirements so requirements come down through the ic the intelligence community right saying hey we want there's elections coming up in iraq we want to know what does this party think what does this person think what are they right so depending on the sources that you have or the assets the recruited assets that you have

Starting point is 00:49:42 maybe someone could answer some of those so you might pivot that relationship to start moving in that direction. War zones finding sources leads much more difficult than it is in the real world. I can't pull up LinkedIn and be like, who wants to spy for me today? So we had a lot of walk-ins. So I formed a really good relationship with one of the CI, counterintelligence agents that was on that base. And when he – I told him our mission. And so when he got a good walk-in, he would pass them to me so that maybe we would have a new lead. What made people walk in?

Starting point is 00:50:19 What were the key things? Money, number one. Motivations for everyone is different when you're talking about espionage, and it can change. Your motivations can change from one day to the next. So financial motivations was primary, followed by ideological or political, right? They didn't like what was happening to their country. They didn't like the politicians. They didn't like the terrorists beheading everyone in their city, things like that fear also they're motivated by fear they want to fix it uh it's sad when you're you're driving on and off base and there are these little kids running around and you're like all these kids know is war yeah that's crazy to me

Starting point is 00:50:59 my kids don't know war at all so sad and that And that's their whole life. Yeah. You know? So yeah. So that's kind of how we do it. And then also like relationships with other units. Sometimes they would know someone who knew somebody who wanted to talk and things like that. Because they're going off base and obviously. Yeah. Absolutely. Did you – you know, you're also – I'm just thinking of the timeline.

Starting point is 00:51:19 You're getting there within a year since Al-Zaqawi was killed, who was essentially the founder of what became ISIS. But we're in that period now where I think – I want to say al-Baghdadi got out of prison a couple years later. But either way, we're in that 2007 to 2013, 14-year period where that insurgency is starting to organize into ISIS itself. Did you guys, obviously you didn't have the name ISIS on it yet, but did you see like, oh shit, all right, we got Zikawi, but this is going to get way worse. Yeah. There was a lot of intel coming in about the formation of the groups. I think part of it was, I'm going to sound like a dick for saying this, but part of it is a lot of people when they get the intel, like you're my source. You're telling me stuff. I don't change it.

Starting point is 00:52:14 I write what you say. I'm assessing if you're suitable and all those things. I write it up and then I pass it to the analysts. And a lot of times I feel like analysts would be like very dismissive, like, no, it's impossible. They couldn't do it. We're here. We're there. Like we're in the country. How could they organize this? You know, I just feel like there was a lot of, a lot of dismissing in a lot of cases. I think that's because they're just sitting at a desk. It's easy. Probably. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you were – bottom line is though a lot of what you were developing during this time, those six months was people were walking in and you had relationships on base so that it would get passed to you. And then you would start to put this together, make note files, get it to those analysts and try to develop leads from that to help the primary goal being the safety of U.S. soldiers.

Starting point is 00:53:07 Yes. Okay. Fair enough. So your six-month period ends. You get sent back to America. What are you doing in America now? I bought a Mercedes. Oh, you bought a Mercedes.

Starting point is 00:53:17 A good one this time? Yes. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, when you think you're going to die, your priorities change a little bit. I was single, no kids. I was like, I'm buying myself a Mercedes. Good for you. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:28 So I went back and worked on a desk. I think I went back to the Iraq task force until my next deployment. Well, then I went to the farm and then deployed again right after that. Oh, that's right. You went to the farm. By the way, though, real real quick the desk for for dia i think you said this earlier is that literally in dc or is it in one of the towns outside in dc okay yeah all right so you go to the farm in 08 yep now this is it's just crazy to me they sent

Starting point is 00:53:56 you to mosul for six months and then afterwards oh you can go to the farm you can do it yeah so what in mosul did you carry a gun around oh yeah yeah. Yeah. I did not go anywhere without a gun. All right. So you're already a good shot at that point. Yeah. Yeah. But what are you doing at the farm? So, I mean, you've had a lot of people on, I'm sure, talking about it, but you're learning trade craft, right? You're learning how to recruit assets. You're learning how to keep them safe, how to teach them trade craft, comms, stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:54:23 So any key highlight memories from that? That I can talk about? Yeah. I'll tell you. I was very proud of myself. I'll tell you something I was very proud of. First of all, my class was the largest class, like, in the history of the farm. They had surged, and there were a lot, a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:54:42 I felt very, very smart because in the very beginning, I actually naturally I'll talk to anyone. I love talking to people. Probably why I was good at my job. But at the very entrance, there's a gate and I befriended the gate guards. And so later on in the course, when they started really screwing with us, the gate guards are like, hey, you might want to hide your stuff or you might want to, you know, they'd give me tips. And I was like, oh, that was so smart of me. I didn't do it on purpose. But I was the only nerd. So when you are going through the course, you can go back to DC, you can go home for weekends, you can do stuff like that.

Starting point is 00:55:19 I was the only nerd. I stayed every weekend and worked and cased and learned and studied because it's all I ever wanted to do. And failure was not an option at all. Well, clearly. Yeah. And like you got that in you. But like when you're – so people are leaving for the weekends and stuff. It's not like – I guess there's no class going on during that. Are you like in the library just studying?

Starting point is 00:55:42 No. I would be casing, a lot of casing in the area. What do you mean casing? So area familiarization driving around kind of like criminals do if they're gonna hit you know they're gonna rob somebody's house or something just case in mclean virginia it wasn't in mclean but we're driving around we're learning the roads we're learning that the areas it's area familiarization i want to know when the stores are open and closed what stores open late because you might need to do a quick stop things like like that. So I just drove and drove and drove and you're drawing maps of places and like, okay, you entered this way and you exit this way. People don't think of espionage as like very admin, but it's very admin heavy.

Starting point is 00:56:17 Yeah. Very admin heavy. Yeah. I've had people talk about how it's like, God, some people have worded this way better than i remember it but essentially they're like great spying is boredom boredom boredom boredom boredom boredom boredom boredom firework yeah like and you're all that boredom time the job is to not fall asleep because when you get to that firework it's like oh baby here we are and then after that paperwork yeah i'll bet i'll bet yeah I'll bet. Yeah, the note. I mean, how does that even work though too?

Starting point is 00:56:47 Because when you're doing like a post-case report, what do they call it? What? The intel? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there's reports you write with the intelligence, but there's reports you write saying like, Julian was very nice. He took a nap.

Starting point is 00:57:03 And you're writing up about that person. Right. But is it like – you know how when you look at the legal system, like everything has to be written in a specific way? Is it they have their own system like that too? Or are you more or less just like dumping all the information you have in as organized a way as possible however you want to do it? So it's supposed to be like there's a format. There's a way you do it. I like telling stories if you can't tell

Starting point is 00:57:26 yeah and so i tended to get beat up a little bit because i put too much detail and i was told so for example in one of my reports i met with a female i can't say where but during the meeting like she had a ton of jewelry on like very very Gladys Got Rocks kind of thing. My grandpa used to call my grandma that. And she had this chaise lounge. And the whole meeting, she was laying on her side with her feet out like a princess. Like Rose in the Titanic. Yes, exactly.

Starting point is 00:58:02 Thank God her clothes were on. Right. But I wrote up in the report because for me, it really described her personality, right? If I get hit by a bus, I always looked at like if I get hit by a bus and someone's going to come in and take this case, I want them to know all the nuances about this person, all the buttons to push, their their vulnerabilities right and so i wrote up like i said she she acted like she was the queen of sheba right with all the jewelry and lounging and the thing and like her just her demeanor was very regal which i thought was important and people gave me so much shit for it they were like that's not relevant so my reports were probably a little long yeah but still i, I agree with your mindset there. Like, you have to think like that. If I were dead tomorrow, right? And I'm the

Starting point is 00:58:52 intelligence asset, right? Like, you can't download my brain. So to me, intelligence would be, it's not necessarily this, and this does not apply to a lot of things in life, but with this, less is not more when it comes to actually- Information. Yeah. Yeah. You would think. And I've had, and I think I started doing that because I had cases where people, I took over a case and the folder's empty.

Starting point is 00:59:16 It's like, I know nothing about this person. What do they like? Do they like food? Like, how do I give them food for a meeting? I don't know what they're allergic to. I don't know, you know, do they have kids? Like I, how do I give them food for a meeting? I don't know what they're allergic to. I don't know what, you know, do they have kids? Can I talk to them about kids? And so after having like multiple bad turnovers like that, I was like, I would never do that to someone. So I'm just going to put extra in. Good for you. How long were you at the farm?

Starting point is 00:59:39 It's about six months. Okay. And you, and you said it was the biggest class of all time, but it was both CIA and DIA. Was there anyone else from any other agencies there? Yes. Are you allowed to say? Probably not. Okay. All right. Yeah, you're allowed to say. And you can't say how big the class was, I assume, right? Very big.

Starting point is 00:59:58 But it was big. And a lot of people didn't make it either. Yeah. How did people get – what kinds of things would people get cut for? I heard stories like there are people that get cut for integrity, like getting caught in lies. That's a big one for them. Just sucking in general at certain things like be it building rapport or map tracking or surveillance detection. You can't be bad at really any of those because everything is really so integral to everything else. Okay.

Starting point is 01:00:28 You weren't there when Snowden was there. No. Okay. He went to the farm, pretty sure. Do you have an opinion on him? Yes. Feel free to share it. I think what he did was wrong.

Starting point is 01:00:41 I think there are different ways that you could have gone about that, and it hurt a lot of people. I think anybody that did was wrong. I think there are different ways that you could have gone about that. And it hurt a lot of people. I think anybody that reveals secrets like that, I don't care who you are, what your motivation is, there's always another way to do it. And leaking things to WikiLeaks is not the way to do it. So it's a con. It's truck month at GMC. Tackle the open road with added confidence in the 2025 Sierra 1500 Pro Graphite at 0% financing for up to 72 months. With an available 5.3 liter V8 engine, 20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels, off-road suspension with available

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Starting point is 01:01:44 Need help? WordPress experts respond in under two minutes and will migrate so your pages load instantly. Need help? WordPress experts respond in under two minutes and will migrate to your site for free. Try it yourself. First month free at Kinsta.com. That's K-I-N-S-T-A dot com. Kinsta. Simply better hosting. Complicated one for me because I've heard both arguments in here and i there's a lot i like about ed snowden i also look at it like that's the ultimate stuck between a shit and a fart because he had a slippery slope in my opinion on both sides and i struggle with this all the time and i kind of go back and forth on it but it's like on the one hand it it's like what are you supposed to do? Go up the chain of command, right?

Starting point is 01:02:26 And then get it to a place where there can be some sort of organizational agreement on we need to change things or go to internal affairs and figure out what we're doing here. He did try to do that a bunch and they told him to fuck off because they wanted to keep doing this shit. So on the one slippery slope, you have the constitution and it's going like this on the other slippery slope and i understand this perspective and this is probably where you're coming from but don't let me put words in your mouth on the other slippery slope you have the now someone has broken the chain of command of intelligence to reveal things that they signed in their life that they're not going to reveal, which could put assets of ours in danger in doing that. Also a slippery slope because you can then have someone like Edward Snowden, let's say it's something extremely serious, which I think his situation was extremely serious, what he leaked there. The next person could be just a little

Starting point is 01:03:22 less serious. Be like, yeah yeah but let snowden do it and then you keep going down and down and down and eventually you know someone's leaking basic information that really doesn't matter and they're fucking over a lot of people so i get that but at the same time as someone who you know love the intelligence world that that you worked in and obviously saw a lot of great work that happens around the world. I'm not one of these people that like, you know, let's rain in all the ages. Like, listen, it's got to exist. Like, it's a shitty world out there, this stuff that happens. But I am one of the people that says, wait a minute,

Starting point is 01:03:55 you're not supposed to be spying on American citizens and shit like that. And a guy like Ed Snowden at least gave us that information. Like, bro, they were looking at all of you. They could have all your information. How do you face that as someone who's from that community? I think, I hate to say it, but the intelligence community, the government as a whole, can do better. When I was there, there were a lot of situations I was in that were very bad. I mean, if Me Too existed back then, I'd have about 10 lawsuits, right, if I were litigious. There are a lot of wrongs that I saw done.

Starting point is 01:04:30 I had to turn in my best friend at the time for doing a lot of really wrong things. Really? And there was no confidential reporting. There was retaliation was rampant. It was career destroying but it's choosing like you're saying like something is wrong and i need to do the right thing integrity versus i'm turning my friend in for a lot of really bad stuff right yeah what i'm saying that is because there were a lot of different processes and a lot of things that they could have done to support both of us and they didn't right um regardless of who you are what the

Starting point is 01:05:12 situation is the government needs to do better i mean we could get into a whole i mean talk about havana syndrome and what they're doing for the people that are hit by havana syndrome what's going on there oh my god don't even get me started. Let's get started. That's what you're here for. Yeah, I actually just lost one of my closest oldest friends. She was hit in Vienna with Havana syndrome. About a year later, developed some stage four mystery, weird cancer out of the blue, fluke that they caught it, and she just passed away about two months ago. Yeah, so, but the government needs to do better. You know, with her, for example, her name is Zoe. With her, she's this amazing human who, she was class 11.

Starting point is 01:05:54 She joined the CIA, you know, September 11th. Oh, wow. She was class 11. She worked for 21 years all around the world working on some incredible operations, was quiet. Nobody knew she existed, never got married, never had kids, sacrificed everything for her country, right? And then she gets hit with this while she's in Vienna. She's stationed in Vienna. And the support that she received was not as good as it should have been yeah in fact there's a campaign right now to put

Starting point is 01:06:25 a star on the wall for her at cia headquarters because we and jim lawler's one of them we believe that without this havana syndrome whatever this you know rf or microwave radiation energy weapon or whatever was used on her we believe that that contributed to her demise and we think that she needs to be honored on that wall because if she wasn't in vienna if she wasn't doing her job that wouldn't have happened to her where do you think this stuff is coming from because and and also this is such a strange conversation like to me when i first read about it i'm like unfortunately i'm like makes sense like like these are the kinds of things people are working on but there's literally this whole thing where people are like, oh, it doesn't exist or whatever.

Starting point is 01:07:09 It seems to me like it exists. It exists. Yeah. So where is it coming from? I don't know. I'm clearly a nation state, right? This is not fake. I know the news has come out and said Russia.

Starting point is 01:07:23 Surprising? Not at all. Are they in collusion with anyone else? I don't know. But the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of people, including family members, who have gotten zapped with this, we need to do better. I mean, it was in front of the White House. Like, it happened in front of the White House. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I didn't hear about that one. A couple years ago. Like this is very, very real. And when Zoe came back, I remember her talking about like when it happened.

Starting point is 01:07:51 And she described like her bedroom, like there was a wall, like windows in front of her bed. Her bed was facing the windows. And she said she was getting ready for bed. And you know when you're like just get in that comfy position and you're like that's it. You're going to fall asleep in that position. She said she had just gotten like in the position. And she said, you know when you go through a train or in a tunnel or something and you hear this like in your head? She said she felt that, heard that, and then had this excruciating pain in her brain.

Starting point is 01:08:19 And she grabbed her phone. Her phone was on the nightstand. She grabbed her phone. She said she screamed and ran out of the bedroom. And she said as soon as she left that bedroom, it stopped, right? They can only get you with the windows or whatever the parameters are. So as soon as she got off the X, so to speak, it was over with. But when she came back, they were doing all these crazy brain scans and all this stuff.

Starting point is 01:08:40 And she had like blindness in one eye. She had like lasting issues that did not exist before this happened so but when it when she left the room and it stopped like that sound and that feeling stopped but then when she like came to she was jacked up yeah yeah right away this stuff is very real yeah it's scary because it's like okay right now it's something where the x is focused on one you know that can get into one room or something. But how close are we to where you just put off a pipe bomb? But think about all of the people that work for the State Department or the CIA or the DIA or what have you.

Starting point is 01:09:16 And they're bringing their families overseas just to do their job, right? And these people – the little kids are getting hit. Those kids didn't do anything. Stuff like that, that's what makes me mad. Like we can do better. And they're not. And as you said, and I've heard the story, I think even, I hope I get this right because it's been a while, but I think even Mark Polymeropoulos, who has it, who loved working at CIA and loves the agency and all that. Like he, I believe he even has a huge issue with the lack of support that he's gotten because that ended his career.

Starting point is 01:09:52 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Very true. He knew Zoe too. Yeah. See that, that's,

Starting point is 01:09:58 that's something there smells. No, absolutely. I, I just get really angry because i know what i gave up right and i left so that i could have kids i left so i could build my own little family especially as a woman and it's different men and women in this field it's very very different what you're what you put up with what you deal with what the all of that and so for people like zoe

Starting point is 01:10:20 to give up your whole life and dedicate your whole life to your country into your government and then to just be dropped yeah right and told like it's in your head it's not real like that's what makes me mad that's not you also have like all these different people from all different ends of the intelligence spectrum who are getting hit with it and reporting it. These aren't, no disrespect, these aren't people who slipped and fell on a crack and are trying to sue someone for a million with the fucking accident attorney. It's not hot coffee in the lap.

Starting point is 01:10:55 Yeah, this is real. They're getting really fucked up by it. I'm really sorry you lost your friend. Thank you. That sucks. God damn. Oh wait, do we have something up on the screen yeah this just came out literally today new report reveals havana syndrome case

Starting point is 01:11:11 numbers more than 300 americans treat oh can we click that miami herald yeah let's try that all right go down uh fuck this always happens go back oh that came out yesterday yeah let's see two minutes ago yeah yeah let's do this one that came out yesterday. Yeah, let's see. This one's two minutes ago. Yeah, yeah, let's do this one. How funny. Report, what was that headline? Let's see. Report reveals 300 plus people, including children, affected by mysterious Havana syndrome. Now let's go down. Sorry.

Starting point is 01:11:34 All right. A new report to Congress revealed that more than 300 people, including children, are facing an invisible enemy once known as Havana syndrome. Who the fuck changed their name? Now I think they're calling it something else. Oh, God. I think it's like AHI. Anomalous Health Issues.

Starting point is 01:11:48 What are we like? Oh yeah. Anomalous Health Incidents. What's the Havana-phobia or something? They're probably going to make that up. The report issued by the Government Accountability Office said 334 U.S. government employees and family members, including 15 children, suffer from Anomalous Health health incidents or AHI, often categorized by severe headaches, blurred vision, and vertigo.

Starting point is 01:12:11 The exact source of the ailments is unknown. In 2016, Department of State staff at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, began experiencing a sudden onset of symptoms, usually following a loud sound. One of the affected, Kate Husband, who served as a State Department Consular Officer in Havana until her diagnosis led her to retire on medical disability, spoke exclusively to NBC News in 2021. Quote, it was persistent, the same level, all the time, very, very loud. It's nothing you could sit with, she said. On our right was another embassy family, and then the people on our left and across the streets from us were both canadian embassy employees and in the end all four households were diagnosed she has been diagnosed with quote acquired brain injury related to a direct directional phenomenon exposure unquote although it was dubbed havana syndrome cases have been reported around the globe

Starting point is 01:12:59 according to a new report americans affected by the mysterious symptoms may struggle to get care but laws do require the department of defense to treat those diagnosed with the poorly understood condition those affected often face challenges getting care at home the report details they are unsure who to contact have limited benefit information and experience difficulty scheduling appointments and say they lack communication from the department of defense wow that's fresh off the press but notice how they're starting to even change the name right instead of ufo now it's and say they lack communication from the Department of Defense. Wow, that's fresh off the press. But notice how they're starting to even change the name, right? Instead of UFO, now it's UAP or whatever.

Starting point is 01:13:31 Why do we do this? Why do we make it more complicated? But I think what's frustrating for those of us who knew Zoe especially is that I recently found out that the CIA is paying people who were hit with this. So you're getting payments like a benefit, but they're still not acknowledging that, you know, that it's real or that it is what it is. They're not coming out with information. So that's what's frustrating us. Yeah. Look, it's something to pay attention to because whether we like it or not, I mean, you talked thinking about this in 0304 like oh the size of weaponry that they could now do on mass scale was scaring you

Starting point is 01:14:10 that's 20 years ago now you're talking about an age of ai you're talking about an age of fucking microwave weapons and shit like the more i look around now the more i am appreciate i don't know if that's the right word but you'll understand what i mean the more i am – I don't know if that's the right word, but you'll understand what I mean. The more I am appreciative of just how fucking fragile society is and how many things – like the number of ways we could end the world right now without even using the word nuclear is scary. Yeah, which is why I got into cybersecurity. Ooh. But it's true. It's true. I mean they make all these doom and gloom movies, but when you watch them're like oh my god that could really happen yeah you know yeah that's what's scary

Starting point is 01:14:48 yeah i mean that like though even if you look at like the alien stuff they'll talk about well where'd they get that yeah movies what were they right yeah i don't know it makes me want to be a prepper i'll say that yes yes there's a lot more of that going on. When I had Sean in here, he was like, you ready? I'm like, for what? And he's like, you got a go bag? I'm like, should I? Where's your water? He's like, oh, my God.

Starting point is 01:15:15 All right, we're going to make a list for you. And his, I mean, it's no joke. I'm sure. And he's been ready. This is not like a year ago. This is like, this dude's been thinking about this for a decade. So he's like, if the world ends like that, man, shout out to Sean. I think you'll be good.

Starting point is 01:15:29 Yeah, we're all going to his house. That's where I'm going. I wasn't invited, but I'm going. I'm going to show up and cash my check and be like, hey, you told me I could come down and visit. Remember me? I'm here. Anyway, so we got on this tangent, though. When we were going in between your tours, we got through the farm.

Starting point is 01:15:45 What was going on there? You left the farm after six months. Did you go directly to Mosul again after that? No. I PCS'd to another location in the U.S. PCS'd? I moved on military orders. They moved me to another location for my new assignment.

Starting point is 01:16:04 So I worked there and then I wasn't there very long before I went back. Okay. So now this time you're going back as a full-blown case officer. You have gone through the whole farm training and everything. And now the way I understand it is, if you explained this earlier and I got it right, you're able to go out there and based on what you're told they want to get and make decisions, talk to anyone you want to. Pretty much. Well, to a degree.

Starting point is 01:16:32 Okay. There's a lot of mother may I with, hey, I want to approach this person. The agency, CIA, we had to run things through them too, even for recruitment. Oh, you're running it through CIA? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We were the redheaded stepchild. Yeah, we had to ask things through them too, even for recruitment. Oh, you're running it through CIA. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We were the redheaded stepchild. Yeah, we had to ask, may we please?

Starting point is 01:16:49 And look, I love the agency. I love all my agency friends. But man, they stole some of my good leads. Oh, they did? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Yeah. So it gets old.

Starting point is 01:16:59 You know, like I – and this is not war zone. This is like real world where I had a lead who – how do I describe it? He had access to like a country of interest who was developing a nuclear weapons program. And he had some access that was really cool. And I found him and I developed him and it was going really good. And then I got a cable from the agency saying, stand down. I was actually going to go meet him in Prague. I was, it was a really cool hotel.

Starting point is 01:17:32 So I was really excited. And agency's like, nope, sorry, we're going to take this. Thank you. But you're the one who developed the relationship. Doesn't matter. But is that guy just going to like see someone else walk up and be like, yeah, okay, I'll deal with you. I'm sure they had a different approach, right? Maybe that guy had a kid and they put him in Cub Scouts together or something.

Starting point is 01:17:53 But yeah, they were like, thank you very much. Suddenly the kid needed a surgery. Right. Something like that. Like, oh, look, he broke both of his legs. I know. We don't know how it happened. Fuck.

Starting point is 01:18:04 Hey, hey, get the bat so you're so sometimes they would steal stuff but when you were in the that one was not in the war zone as you said obviously you're meeting my problem but like when you're in the war zone in mosul and you're doing the whole mother may i thing and then you go out you're doing it alone so i would there's some details you obviously can't give because you don't want to give away like whose sources were. But can you describe the first one you did alone on a broad level, like what kinds of things they were into and maybe where you had to go get them?

Starting point is 01:18:41 Yeah, I have a lot. All right, let's go through the list. I'll tell you the first one first one remember i had all those men telling me that i wasn't going to succeed and no one would talk to me so that was in my head and the first meeting i had was a turnover so the case officer that was running this person was supposed to do like a warm and friendly this is shawnee whatever my name was yeah this is she's so great you're gonna love her like talk me up yay and then they're gonna leave and then i do that to the next person when i leave right well this dude did not do that he was like peace out this shawnee bye it's happened to me twice by

Starting point is 01:19:15 the way in my career and it pissed me off both times so i'm sitting there staring at this person like oh my god they're not gonna talk to me That person, that outgoing CO did not talk me up. Like, but it was fine. We got along fine. And that op, this person had access to a computer network that terrorists were using. Basically that ISIS, before there were ISIS, all those groups, they were using. And so on that op, we had to get in, we had to get access to that network. And so I was able to work with CIA and they helped outfit basically just a really special thumb drive, right?

Starting point is 01:19:54 And this person just had to go into, use any computer that was connected to that network, plug that in, and then the intelligence community probably owns that for perpetuity. Oh, yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah, that's crazy. That's a lot of good intelligence for sure. Did you – I mean you said there were a lot there, so we can go through some of them, I'm sure. Like how long a list are we talking?

Starting point is 01:20:16 How much time do you have? Like are we talking – on this second Mosul engagement, are we talking like 100 people? No. No, no. Okay. I was going to say that would seem like kind of high. But either way – I would never sleep. talking like 100 people? No. Okay. I was going to say, that would seem like kind of high. But either way.

Starting point is 01:20:28 I would never sleep. It's not one or two. Yeah. No, there's a lot more. Okay. There's a lot more. So did you ever lose a source? No.

Starting point is 01:20:39 I don't know why I knocked on wood. I don't have sources now, but I'm still knocking on wood. I don't know. That was not a towel. That was not a towel. i don't know about that what'd you say you work for merc now no no i own my own company i know but like you did some work for yes all right okay now he's watching my hands okay all right all right but so you never lost did you have close calls no no i i was lucky. What makes a good – because these people are agents, right? They're not case officers.

Starting point is 01:21:11 They're people that you recruit to say work for Team America now. Yeah, yeah. As Jim would say. But what – I would imagine a lot of them are like your first one where they're – the reason you're getting them as a source is because they're constantly in what will now be an extremely dangerous environment for them because if they're caught their their head's going to get chopped especially this person yeah right and probably and probably their whole family what makes it what makes you say to yourself this person not only is a good source with information but they're going to be all right because they can do they can do the job.

Starting point is 01:21:51 I don't know that I ever was that confident with people because people change, right? You could wake up one day and think, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm scared. My next door neighbor just got beheaded. And that was the situation, right? There were literally bodies littering the streets constantly. It was really, really bad. And so for any of these people to have the balls to walk around some neighborhood for some team of Americans, you know, I had a driver. I couldn't drive. I'm a woman. I don't blend in. You know, I'd wear a hijab in the back, but I'd have a driver and an interpreter. And then I'd be sitting in the back. That's a group of Americans, right? So we would do a surveillance detection route. We would go pick up that person at a predetermined location. We'd have safe signals and, you know, like, you know, if I've got to drive by or if you're late or all those things.

Starting point is 01:22:33 But that person is absolutely, literally putting their life on the line just to get in that car with us, right? And then we've got to drop them off somewhere, right? So I was never fully confident that i could trust anybody and still to this day i probably have that problem you know um that person could wake up and just decide i'm done but not even just the true i mean that's that's that's an important point because you're constantly dealing with someone who they have to go do it and and they're in the middle of it not to say your job isn't dangerous

Starting point is 01:23:05 but like they're literally living in it but like also you know for the people that maybe aren't gonna waffle or that's less your concern they still have to be able to do it and you don't want to lose them right so like if you have someone who's not maybe i'm just using a hypothetical they're not gonna waffle like they're all about it they they're gung ho we want to do this but you're like oh shit they're going to make a terrible spy right because they think they're James Bond yeah probably yeah that's that's another extreme like you want people you can control which makes us sound super creepy right but we need to be able to control you if I If I say, do not display, I don't know, something in your window, if X happens, you do not do that. And we're testing. We're constantly operationally testing.

Starting point is 01:23:52 Oh, you're testing. Oh, yeah. I need to make sure you're actually following directions. Because if you're not, that's a big problem. That's going straight in the report. And we're going to assess, do we continue this relationship? It's that serious. Did you ever fire anybody?

Starting point is 01:24:03 Oh, yeah. Like sources? Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. So what was one you fired? Very nicely. Very nicely. Right? this relationship it's that serious did you ever fire anybody oh yeah like sources oh yeah yeah all right so what was one you fired very nicely very nicely right you don't want to work with you at cia anymore thank you for coming it's not a survey it's me yeah so why'd you fire somebody well one in particular um was just kind of trying to be nice. He was very, very smart. One of those people I described in the beginning.

Starting point is 01:24:32 He was very, very smart. He had incredible access. He was totally willing to play ball. He did everything I asked him to do. But he started straying and like coming up with his own ideas. Number one, that's dangerous number two and this is when um phishing emails and stuff were just kind of starting i had a special email account just for him and i started getting emails from his account that were not from him um things

Starting point is 01:25:02 like hey i've traveled to spain and someone stole my wallet and I need money. Now everyone's like, yeah, yeah, we've seen that 25 times. But at the time I was like, this dude doesn't travel to Spain. What is this? So that account had been compromised. To what degree, we don't know. So with some of his suitability issues and that, I had to break up with him.

Starting point is 01:25:22 Terminate, as we say. I know, but are you worried that they're going to be pissed off and suddenly? No, no, because you do it like you're nice. Like you do it nicely, just like a breakup, right? You don't want the person you're breaking up with like hate you forever. Am I wrong? No. That's usually how it goes, though.

Starting point is 01:25:36 Well, that's because people don't like being dumped. So you're doing it where it's the benefit to them. The benefit to you is you're not going to die, right? We're going to keep you safe because you're not working with us anymore yeah okay but that means you know you said if you're paying them that stops the payments and stuff too so they can't be happy about that yeah yeah most of your sources are is it i mean you said money is a huge influence like are you are you paying pretty much all of them? Yeah, you have to. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:26:05 You can't recruit someone if they won't take money. And that happened with the Mula that I told you about. Oh. Yeah, he wouldn't take money. The Mula guy. We're going to get there. Yeah, yeah. Coming up on that.

Starting point is 01:26:14 Yeah. What are we in, like 09 now in Mosul? 06, 07, 09, yes. Okay. Second one, 09. So you're living like on the base, you're going you still get walk-ins obviously right yeah they walk into the base through like that ci shop i was telling you and then that ci shop would filter down right yep wait when you say cia shop you did mention that earlier is that like

Starting point is 01:26:39 a so it's like a cover store or something like that. Oh, no, no. Sorry. The CI, the counterintelligence officer, basically he was hired to screen people who were walking in and to help with investigations. So like there are local nationals that work on bases. Everyone knows that, right? And so maybe if someone's – something's not right, then he would investigate to make sure it's not really a bad guy trying to infiltrate and and blow up a dining facility or something like that like the dude in 09 in in was that in pakistan or was that again el bellowey the jordanian that was in uh afghanistan that was in afghanistan blew up all kinds of cia officers and stuff so that yeah because like i've seen it i've read about it in books you, the walk-ins.

Starting point is 01:27:26 And then obviously we've seen it in some of the Hollywood movies. But that I'm always questioning a little more. But like some of the actual historical books, they'll talk about this. And a lot of times it sounds like or sometimes I think they've just straight up said it. Like, oh, so-and-so actually literally walked into the embassy or walked into this. And I'm always thinking to myself, oh, of these guys though, like what if they got seen doing that? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:49 You know? So when you say CIA shop, my head goes to like, you know, is there like a- Like a store. Like a fabric store or something and you walk in and order- Come buy a scarf and tell us your secrets. Yeah. Like something like that. Like did you guys have anything like that?

Starting point is 01:28:02 No. No, no, no. So it's literally there- Yeah. You get them in the back door or something? Yeah.'m kidding i i do want to say though you had asked about money and motivations right i think i still think this is funny it still tickles me so after money in in iraq and afghanistan specifically the number two and number three things i was asked for was viagra and johnny walker black label they were partying man what a combo right yeah i thought i yeah you know what

Starting point is 01:28:33 there's some stuff i can't say on there i talk with one guy off air who i had in here spent a lot of time in afghanistan and some of the shit he told me yeah about what they're into i was like yeah okay it's interesting interesting intel for sure yep so they needed viagra yes and they thought you were like the viagra lady evidently what can i give you here's my dispensary just like opening up your sleeves what do you want what do you want pain pills viagra oh you don't like viagra you like cialis we've got that too we got that we got you covered it's blue or pink It's from a gas station too. You wouldn't know.

Starting point is 01:29:11 So how long was the second Mosul engagement? Six months also. All right. Now this is like, again, we're farther along the line. So again, what's going to become ISIS is forming. It's getting worse than it was in 07. Yeah. So Mosul at this point, it's already, like you said, like a dust bowl. Is bad.

Starting point is 01:29:28 Right. Because once ISIS was done with it in like 14 or 15, it was even worse. Yeah. Which makes me sad because if anyone's been there, there's like the Mosul Museum. They have incredible history and there's a big Assyrian population and just the winged bull, if anyone's ever seen that. It's a bull with like wings and I don't know. They just have some really amazing history. And there were places like I would like hop a helicopter and try to fly places to go beg for help and support.

Starting point is 01:29:58 And I remember on one flight, we flew over these ruins that were just incredible. Those are toppled. You know what I mean? Like all these cool things were just incredible. Those are toppled. You know what I mean? Like all these cool things they just destroyed. Yeah. I had – my friend Matt LaCroix has been on the podcast a bunch. He's one of these ancient civilization historians. He goes deep.

Starting point is 01:30:16 I mean he goes – sometimes I'm like, all right, slow down. But he and I disagree on some stuff vis-a-vis the Iraq War as it pertains to some of the history that was destroyed and stuff. But he makes a good point about how much ancient history exists in that region in particularly and how much of it is gone. It's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Just like in Syria. I mean, I'm so glad that I secured my way into Syria because I saw Palmyra, Tadmor.

Starting point is 01:30:47 I saw these things again that ISIS has destroyed since. Yeah, and now like in the wake of ISIS in all these different countries, there's these residual messes. Like when I had Joby in here recently, Joby Warwick, who's been on 134 and 198 in here. But when I had him in, he was talking about how – what was the name of that drug, Alessi? Not Trank. It's like the freaking E. What the hell is it? It's like E.

Starting point is 01:31:18 Yeah, it's like Ecstasy, but it's called something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What the fuck is it called? I forget. He was describing it like he was trying it all the time like oh joe he's like i haven't tried this i'm like my friend told me my friend told me yeah it doesn't sound like it he's like this is what people have said but he was at the border of syria i guess on the israel side or something back in the fall and it's basically turned into a narco

Starting point is 01:31:43 state where they're just they're just bringing this shit at will i don't know if it's basically turned into a narco state where they're just they're just bringing this shit at will i don't know if it's israel i forget what border it was but one of the they're just bringing it at will across the border because the whole southern half of the state already like with syria it's not even yeah it's borders are on a map but it's not even there yeah you know so it's like the the number of intelligence failures that can happen in a space like that. I can't even imagine. Yeah. It's pretty messy. It's pretty messy. And it's sad. Again, seeing all that before when it was really cool and existed and there weren't terrorists and we could walk around and it was safe, reasonably safe. It's just heartbreaking. I'm a big history

Starting point is 01:32:23 buff. It's very heartbreaking for me. Is there any type of history you like better than others? Yeah, I told you I'm a nerd. I like political history. So I am fascinated. Maybe it's because of my past, but I am fascinated with the psychology of cult of personality. So I've got some old, and I'm not a communist,

Starting point is 01:32:42 but I have. I say that because I'm scared to hang these because people are going to be like, she's a communist. Oh, the US, the comments are just going to start flowing in now. I have – I've collected – my dad got them for me actually in China, but these original posters from the Cultural Revolution in China. I have four. I have an original Little Red Book from Mao Zedong. Oh, wow. I have whole, like, the fighter helmet, like, the leather fighter helmet, fighter pilot helmet with the goggles from Russia when it was Soviet Union. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:33:16 I've got rank, like, a full set of Russian rank. Like, just cool. I don't know. I just like political history. That's cool. Yeah. What's wrong with that? I don't know. I don't know. I like political history that's cool yeah what's wrong with that i don't know i don't know but i think i'm not like your average girl definitely not

Starting point is 01:33:30 that's okay like i'm i'm into that too i mean i think you know especially now i can't help but study when you look around the world at all the different world leaders and the back and forth we see like boom like the like the divide it will go from hard left to hard right and hard right back to hard left. It's impossible to not look at some of the patterns in history where different people, different types of situations, but same themes occurring. That's a little scary for me. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree.

Starting point is 01:34:00 And you look at what has happened with like Pol Pot in Cambodia or even the Cultural Revolution in China. Like millions of people were killed. Families were turning against each other, friends against each other. Like it just blows my mind that that's possible. Yeah. So that's why I'm so interested in it. I mean Xi Jinping's origin story is insane. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:19 I mean I try – I want to be clear. I don't have empathy for terrorists and stuff like that. But I want to – when I see like a hardcore dictator or a hardcore terrorist, I do try to understand from my piece of the pie here or whatever that is to say like – to figure out how did they get there? Because how can we figure out one less of them in the next generation, right? Yes, same. figure out one less of them in the next generation right and you see xi jinping like the shortened story his father was in the communist party pissed off the communist party with something right he got kicked out and then xi jinping who was like five or six was forced to wear a sign in the middle of town that basically said my father is a traitor to the communist party i'm scum and his mom had to walk by and i believe spit on him at one point and so this guy who you know he

Starting point is 01:35:11 is a very smart guy i have to give him that you know bad guy but smart guy his whole life was like oh i'll fucking show you yeah oh oh oh you're gonna spit on me you're gonna make my mom spit on me i'll be in charge of this shit. And that's how the sociopath is born. Yeah. People's childhood shapes them so much into adulthood. I mean, if you look at Bruce Ivins, for example. Bruce Ivins was the suspected anthrax letter guy. Yes, yes.

Starting point is 01:35:38 Right? He committed suicide. Yep. There's a book. I think it's called Mirage Man. It's a fabulous book. I highly recommend it. It's so well written.

Starting point is 01:35:46 I'm an insider threat, like, I don't know, expert devotee. I love all things insider threat. I used to recruit the insiders. But reading his story shows you all the red flags from childhood, like the abuse that he suffered from his parents. Can you expand upon this? Yeah, yeah. So he had just really horribly abusive parents. He went through, as he was younger and went into college, I mean, he had all kinds of other issues, but went into college and started like stalking sorority girls,

Starting point is 01:36:14 broke into the sorority house, stole their little, I don't know, like Bible, sorority Bible thing. I don't know what you call it. I was clearly not in a sorority. Stole that uh harassed and stalked other women throughout his career when the anthrax letters were sent he was initially they were like what about this guy and he he was dismissed as this like bumbling weird yeah bumbling weird dude but then he goes the fbi is like asking questions like let me help i want to help with the investigation but they're investigating him like just these crazy history right and so when you look at someone, it's called the critical pathway. Doctors Eric Shaw and Laura Sellers wrote this back in 2015. But basically, you have personal predispositions. So whatever his were, I mean, we all have them. Narcissism, by the way,

Starting point is 01:36:59 is like highest risk for insider threat. So personal predispositions doesn't mean you're a bad guy yet, but then you add in stressors, personal, professional, external, financial, right? Business, maybe you're not getting promoted, maybe you got a divorce, all those things. When you compound the predispositions with the stressors, that's when you start to see someone's pattern of behavior change, those red flags, right? And that, Bruce, I haven't seen red flag, red flag, red flag, and nobody caught on i haven't seen red flag red flag red flag and nobody caught on to it he even had therapists psychiatrists try to report him to the army for having all kinds of issues and they were ignored right so if no one intervenes if there's

Starting point is 01:37:38 no investigation if there's no intervention of any kind that person is essentially allowed to walk down that critical pathway until they conduct a malicious act, which is what he did. Yeah. No, I haven't critical pathway. Critical pathway. That's interesting. Sean Sellers. Yeah. It's funny you said that there was a documentary on Netflix I watched a few months ago that was on Bruce Ivins and the anthrax thing. And I was thinking about getting someone in here for that because that's like a forgotten little yeah but it was such an interesting case yeah yeah yeah and there's still some as much as he clearly was a weird guy there's still some question like was it him or wasn't like he was a weirdo but like there's there's an open door

Starting point is 01:38:19 there yeah if you will but he was like taking the anthrax sample like he had read the book if anyone's bored read the book it's so so good i gotta check that mirage man it seemed it personally it seemed to me like he did it that was just i i'd agree right yeah but i i had gotten into this because we were talking about how fucked up syria was in in the southern part of it and how open that is and you had mentioned earlier this is something that has come up on several podcasts I've done at this point, but I always like to talk about it. You had mentioned you spent some time with the Peshmerga, the Kurds. They're so fascinating to me.

Starting point is 01:38:55 People have heard me say this before on podcasts, but I'll never stop saying it. It's a group of like 35 million people or something like that. The Kurds. Don't have a country. Yeah. But they do. Because like if we go to a map. Kurdistan. million people or something like that the kurds don't have a country yeah but they do because like they if we go to a map kurdistan they don't but they have kurdistan where essentially northern

Starting point is 01:39:12 iraq southern syria and that whole carter land yeah the peshmerga runs and as it's like they don't as far as i know they don't even pay taxes to Syria or Iraq or whatever. They had their own intelligence unit too, the Ashaish. Yeah. So what the hell is going on there? All I know is like when I was in Mosul and I had source meetings or we were doing area familiarization up in Kurdistan, there was a line, an invisible line. And when we crossed it, everyone went, oh, okay. Yeah. This is funny so i i did a lot of work up in kurdistan and um i had i

Starting point is 01:39:49 had a lot of sources there and i mean i could tell you a lot of stories but my second tour when i found out when i landed in mosul i found out that they weren't doing anything in kurdistan that the people that were in my office at the time and i was like why and they're like oh we just we don't know it i was like i will take everyone on a trip. I'm going to teach you all about lay of the land, where you can meet, everything. So we went up and we did this mission where everyone went up and we explored.

Starting point is 01:40:14 We went to like the Dahook Zoo and stuff like that, which is very depressing. Why is the zoo depressing? Oh my God, it was the most depressing. Because they're like locked in really tight? Yeah, it's like abused, abandoned animals, like monkeys with cigarettes? Oh, my God. It was the most depressing. Because they were, like, locked in really tight? It's, like, abused, abandoned animals, like monkeys with cigarettes. Oh, God. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:40:31 Like, they've got, like, a dog with, like, a lot of hair, and they say it's a lion. Like, you're just, like, these poor animals. I'm not. I feel bad for the animals. That's kind of funny. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I think the snake was dead.

Starting point is 01:40:47 So we drive up. We pass the last checkpoint for Mosul, and we're now into Kurdistan. And there's like a big thing over the road, you know, with the Kurdish flag and blah, blah, blah. And we drive in, and we had driven in. We were in less than five minutes, just driving north. Doot, doot, do to do and my interpreter gets a phone call and he looks at me like oh my god and he just kind of stares at me and i was like what what is it and he goes they know you're here they want you to come meet them so the kurds have intel

Starting point is 01:41:20 tight at every checkpoint they have all kinds of plainclothes people that are reporting back so as soon as this you know non-blending in redhead chick drives through they knew who i was and then they called the people that i used to meet with who called my interpreter and said hey come on come say hi whoa within less than five minutes yeah yeah i mean i'll hear a lot of special forces guys talk about the peshmerga like and you And you know, these guys aren't just going to say, they'll tell you if someone sucks. They're like, dude, no. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:41:50 No, we'll be in a foxhole with them any day. Oh, absolutely. That's the Kurdish flag, by the way. Yeah. Shana by Shana, shoulder to shoulder. I created a coin even for them. Oh. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:42:00 Yeah, see, look at where it is. Yeah. It's like, so that east, I had it wrong on the Syrian map, people. I'm sorry. I always think of this wrong in my head. But you can see I had it right with Iraq. Like they have that whole north area of Iraq. They got the east part of Syria.

Starting point is 01:42:14 And geographically, there's all kinds of like ranging mountains and prairies there, right? Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Yeah. And then they go all the way up. And this is why like Turkey has a problem, right? Because they're on their territory at some point. And there's different factions of the Kurds too.

Starting point is 01:42:30 So there's more militarized factions and nicer, more gentler factions and things like that. So the people in Turkey are dealing with kind of a more militarized faction, if you will. Yeah. So, I mean, the whole region, region i don't know it is very interesting especially like see you can see they go into iran um there when i was when i was there that second time there were a couple hikers i think there are two maybe three idiots hikers who were hiking through kurdistan and hiked into iran oh no right there yeah and then obviously got captured but it's kurdistan that's in iran yeah like kurdistan as you see like meaning they're okay when you're on kurdistan

Starting point is 01:43:13 yeah they just walked but like you said it's like mountainous and so that's why the security doesn't come up and like it's beautiful people up yeah you you would just never think like iran would let would let that happen no but walk right in my friend eric zolliger who was on episodes 163 and 164 he claims he's not a spy but but he he was on a train in turkey going through turkey his whole thing is he's lived in all these unrecognized territories. Like he at one point ended up, got on a jet ski with a random dude and became the ambassador from Liberland to Somaliland. Oh.

Starting point is 01:43:52 Which, yeah. I mean, again. I mean, that makes sense. Definitely. That's why. But like he was on a train through Turkey and he got banned from Turkey for life because when they went to take his ticket, they asked him where he was from and he said, Kurdistan. Oh, no. And they're like, sir kurdistan oh no like sir get off like that's not the country wrong answer he's like wait but

Starting point is 01:44:13 i was just there and they're like you can't come here again oh he's like banned and i'm like i feel like i feel like there's more there probably a little bit i feel like they had some info on you or something like i don't know about this guy oh that's funny but it's just so strange that something like that today exists because there aren't there's no groups that large around the world who don't have a country there's no groups of like 35 million people that's a good point who don't have a country yeah but they do yeah in a way yeah i mean they Yeah. I mean, they've got their own flag. They've got their own boundaries marked out. You know when you're entering Kurdistan. Why does the U.S. not, I mean, you know, we're supposed to be like the big swinging dick.

Starting point is 01:44:54 We use them as an asset in fucking everything we do. We absolutely, yeah. So why doesn't, what's the whole hold up with going to the U.N.? Like, all right, come on. I don't know. I'm sure that's probably low on the priority list for what we're dealing with. But I would think it's, I'm not going to say it's at the top of the list, but I would think it's not at the lowest because again, these people are being used in active military. You know what I mean? Like throw them a bone.

Starting point is 01:45:19 I know. I know. And there's so much history there too. Yeah. I got to get a Kurdistan historian in here. Yeah. Oh, you totally should. That's something I've been meaning to do. You totally should. Alessia, remind me. We got to scout some people on that. Yeah. I haven't done that.

Starting point is 01:45:31 But anyway, so you were in Mosul 2009. Mm-hmm. And then any other cool stories, sources in Mosul in 2009? Yes. All right. I'm sure. No, I don't know. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:45:44 No, you can move on. No, no, no. I don't know i don't know no you can move on no no no i need one or two um okay do you know who muhammad let me see if i remember his name right muhammad is it is that alduri can you google the um the playing cards I think he was the ace of... No. He was one of the top playing cards. Remember when we issued those playing cards in the war for people that we wanted to capture? Like Saddam Hussein was ace of spades or whatever. Al-Dhuri was one of them. Okay.

Starting point is 01:46:22 So Mohammed Hamzaza Zerandi? No, not him. We want Alduri. Is there a way we can do all Muhammad, the playing cards, or Rak? Alduri, D-U-R-I? D-U-R-I, yeah. All right, let's try this. Oh, wait, there's a picture of all the ones.

Starting point is 01:46:39 See the fifth one? This one right here? Well, actually, stay on this. Can we see that? I feel really old. I can't see. Let's assume that. No, that's really small.

Starting point is 01:46:47 Don't worry about it. Well, so, as you look for him, I had a source who was not recruited who had him, who knew him. He was one of the top...

Starting point is 01:47:00 Oh, there we go. Okay. That's a great... Qusay Saddam Hussein is his son. Muhammad says... It's all the way to the left. Is that it? oh there we go okay that's a crazy who say saddam hussein oh there's a son uh muhammad all the way to the left is that it is that ibrahim aldari yeah yeah yeah okay so king of clubs so him um so i had a source who knew him had him uh talk to him regularly and we were trying to capture him actually i've never told the story and uh i tried to get permission to like pass it to the special forces guys that we were working

Starting point is 01:47:36 with to see if they could go but he was in syria they were like nope we can't um and dia just kept shutting it down shutting it down i was like down. I was like, but look, like requirement, like playing card, like big deal. And I just got shot down, shot down, shot down. And, um, I ended up just very quietly passing it over to some, another unit to see if they could just action it themselves because DIA wouldn't do it. So that was kind of a bummer. Did they action it themselves? I don't know.

Starting point is 01:48:02 I don't know. What was his role again? RCC vice chairman. What's the RCC? I don't know. I don't know. What was his role again? RCC vice chairman? What's the RCC? I don't know. I'm going to guess that's Republic of something, but I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:48:13 I just remember he was— SSO and RCC. Yeah, that was kind of a bummer. Yeah, it says, like, Kamal Mustafa Abdullah Sultan Al-Tranidi. It says Secretary of the Republican Guard and special Republican Guard. So I wonder if that – I mean he looks serious. He's wearing a beret. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:32 I mean berets make everybody more tough. Yeah, more badass for sure. It's got to be frustrating though when you have a fish right on the hook and they say throw it back. It was super, super frustrating. Yeah. the hook and they say throw it back it was super super frustrating yeah and i i even tried to get permission to like pass this agency and like all the and i don't know what was going on back home but people were like nope nope it was like a hard no so here you go someone else please go take it i wonder if maybe that guy was a source double agent i don't know do you know i will never know yeah yeah did you i mean

Starting point is 01:49:08 because you're there when we're knocking out all the former regime and everything but was there ever a thought in your head like yeah we're taking out bad guys for sure no one's arguing that it's not almost bad guys guys are bad dudes but like the people who are going to replace them are as bad and might be even worse yeah yeah it's like the saying like you cut off the head of the serpent and a bunch more grow back yeah absolutely it's gotta be frustrating yeah yeah it is there's a lot in intel in general a lot of it is very frustrating especially like you like i said like you throw on the layer of politics and you throw it like all there's just so many moving pieces that you have no control over. Yes.

Starting point is 01:49:47 That for a type A person is very frustrating. Oh, yeah. I mean, I got to think that during this era, you're there when the experiment is going the wrong way. Right. The insurgency, as we've highlighted all day today, is growing into what will become ISIS. I guess you got out right when ISIS was popping off. Yeah. So, you know, also we're going to get to Afghanistan in a minute.

Starting point is 01:50:12 Afghanistan, it's like I talk about this all the time with people on the podcast. It's like unbelievable military operation for the first year, year and a half. Then we went to Iraq to borrow Obama's line. I think he said this very well. Took our eye off the ball there. We see how that ends up and everything because you start fighting two – one and a half wars in a way if you really want to say it with the resources. But it's like you're knocking people out at a time where shit is getting way worse and the United states is there to quote-unquote spread democracy and this is where my question is i've had other people in here andrew bustamante comes to mind

Starting point is 01:50:52 talking about this with the with the idea where they talk about the idea of like how spreading democracy in certain places doesn't work but the alternative is you have some sort of totalitarian rule which in America, we don't like hearing that or whatever. But do you think that, you know, maybe with like collegiate culture, there's a reality that some countries, they just are going to turn to that. And so maybe it's better to have the strong man with an arm that's not holding a machine gun versus, you know, the one that is, and it's the best of two evils. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense, right? You could come up with any analogy, dating, right? There are going to be people that are not going to be a good fit. They're not going to like you,

Starting point is 01:51:33 right? It's the same thing. Like we, we value democracy. That's not going to be a good fit everywhere. It's just not. So sometimes the lesser of two evils is what we have to go with. Yeah. Yeah. That's your point. Yeah. I mean, you hear guys talk about like being there for the first election in Iraq and how, you know, people were like holding, I think it was like the pink sticker or whatever. Yeah. And were so excited for it. So it's not like there's not an appetite for that among some people, but there's just factions that will turn to, you know what? This is what we know.

Starting point is 01:52:02 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at any country that looks like it's on the verge of revolution. Or look at the Arab Spring, right? Look at Iran. Look what's been going on there. How you've got these populations, probably North Korea and China too. Like you've got these populations, especially of the younger generation,

Starting point is 01:52:18 who know or suspect what's out in the world, right? Maybe they have social media lockdown. Maybe they don't have free access to internet, et cetera. But information gets there somehow. And you can see that they have an appetite for change, but it hasn't happened yet in any of these places, right? They've tried, but I think culturally sometimes, I don't know. You're just fighting history, generations of history.

Starting point is 01:52:46 That's a good way to put it. Right? That's a really good way to put it because it's like in America, our history is like 250 years. I know. Ours is like this big. We're missing a zero on the end or like two zeros. A couple, yeah. Yeah, with some of these places.

Starting point is 01:52:59 It's like, oh, you're just going to go in and change it. It's not just ingrained in culture it's almost you know scientists are gonna yell at me for saying this because this isn't technically true but in a way it's literally like in the dna in some ways it's just that's what's known it's a lot of it also learned behavior like if that's all you see just like those poor kids i was talking about yeah if that's all you see and all you know that's your culture that's that's all you see, just like those poor kids I was talking about. Yeah. If that's all you see and all you know, that's your culture. That's what your normal is. And if someone comes in and says, change it, it's just like going into a company, right?

Starting point is 01:53:33 I go into a company and I'm like, okay, we need to change this, this, and this. It's not that easy. You have a culture to deal with, no matter who you're talking to, if it's a country or a company. It's the same thing. You have a culture. My family, we have our own little culture, right own traditions it's all the same thing just on a much bigger scale right you talked about those kids you gave that visual yeah 20 30 minutes ago the kids that would line up walk by and you're like all they know is war yeah again not to

Starting point is 01:54:01 empathize with the terrorists or something, but to understand, like, isn't it easy to see how some of these kids, you know, their whole childhood is filled with U.S. armed forces knocking down their door and checking everyone? Isn't it easy to see how they turn to terrorism? Yeah. I mean, hearts and minds is a real thing. Yeah. There's a reason you want to win hearts and minds. We could do better. Again. We could do better. Again,

Starting point is 01:54:27 we could do better. What do you think held us back from doing that? Politics, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean,

Starting point is 01:54:33 look, if you have a pot of money and you need to put it, you've got a war, two wars. Are you going to put your pot of money

Starting point is 01:54:42 in hearts and minds or are you going to put it in trying to kill the bad guys and try to get the war over with faster when you look at the priorities it's just not high on the priority list should it be yes absolutely but how do you go about doing that right and not be just a cost center yeah right it's hard to prove the roi of something like that hey we're gonna we're gonna be cool with these kids, and they're not going to blow us up when they grow up. How do you prove that? Yep.

Starting point is 01:55:08 But actually, I had a source meeting. Fast forwarding to Afghanistan. 2011? Yeah, yeah. I had this source meeting with somebody pretty well-known, and they had children and one of their children was a teenager and this kid came in and we were chatting just bullshitting and I will never forget she was telling a story about she was going somewhere and she said in like her best valley girl accent I don't know how she got a valley girl accent but she was like oh my god and then there was a rocket attack and i was like oh not

Starting point is 01:55:50 today but the way she said it was so like nonchalant it was her norm yeah and it just hit me so hard you know it's just so annoying like another rocket attack. Rocket attack. Right? That is wild. And for me, I'm like, I can't sleep when there's a rocket attack and you're just annoyed. Yeah. Yeah, that's all she knew. Well, that's the thing. That's the environment you grow up in. It becomes a norm. Death becomes something that's more, I mean, I hate to say it like this, it's more of a

Starting point is 01:56:20 commodity around you. That's a horrible way to put it. But, you know, like us, that's a luxury we have. We get to live in the luxury of, like, someone dies from something tragic. It's the worst thing ever. And statistically it's happening. Something tragic is happening as a normal thing every day in places like that. Yeah. I feel like for me, like, the hearts and minds thing is really big.

Starting point is 01:56:50 Every deployment that I had, I would find a local orphanage. And maybe I had secretly tried to adopt a kid. That never worked. In Afghanistan, I had a source, a really high ranking. Somebody say like, I can get you a kid if you want i was like no no not illegally i'm good um but i would always find an orphanage and then i would have people from home send i would ask them what they needed and we would send like vans full of stuff to them and then when i worked with sources i really when i had the opportunity

Starting point is 01:57:22 to spend time with their families, excuse me, I spent as much time as I could with those kids and with those families. And if I could leave an imprint, a positive imprint somehow of what being an American or working with Americans was, I really tried to do that. So there's the mission, right? And I wanted to debrief the person and and teach them trade graft and do whatever I needed to do for that op but on the same hand like I I just loved spending time with their families and their kids there was one gentleman who um he had a bunch of kids and he kept every time I met with him he would say like they loved art and they just really loved art they didn't have money and blah blah and he just kind of he wasn't asking for anything he was just in conversation and so one time i ordered a whole bunch of art supplies from amazon had it delivered and in one meeting i gave him a ton a ton of art supplies and it wasn't

Starting point is 01:58:22 anything that was gonna like id him or what like the way i did it was smart people can be quiet and i'm not i wasn't gonna kill him anyway so i gave him these two boxes of like art supplies but again local art supplies it wasn't from america anyway he cried which made me cry because he was so excited how his kids were going to like receive it and then the next time he came he brought and i still have it he brought me they had made me a book of art that they drew for me with all the art supplies that i had given them and it's like one of my most treasured things because it's those memories and touching those people those little people who are now big people right that I just hoped that I could influence somehow.

Starting point is 01:59:08 It comes across when I was talking to you off camera before doing this and in talking to you today. I don't say this is a shot to other spies I've had in here or whatever, but like it's a dangerous job. And there's highest stakes and there's things to be done and that involves manipulation, coercion, all this stuff. It's not to say you didn't still have to do some of that in your job. I get that. But like it's very clear to me that you have the gene of like genuinely gives a fuck. Yeah. And that's not really – like – and I'll put – like Andrew Bustamamante who's a friend of mine and you know

Starting point is 01:59:46 says he's former andy's there to do the job yeah i'm not saying andy doesn't feel it if like some kids die and stuff but andy is very much like world's a shitty place you seem to be much more of in in your role of an empath yes feeling everything that happens around you and i would imagine that just like he has skills that played well for him to be able to get people into his orbit it's very clear these skills played well to people they they they wanted you around they wanted you like a member of the family in some of these cases absolutely absolutely without a doubt yeah and you mentioned empathyathy and respect are two of the keys to building trust, right? If you feel trust, your brain is releasing oxytocin, that feel-good chemical, right? So if I can tap into that and make you trust me,

Starting point is 02:00:39 genuinely, like I'm not going to, you know, screw you over, but if I can make you and your family trust me, we're building that rapport, we're building that trust, we're building that friendship that much faster. So that relationship will be that much stronger. So when I tell you do this or don't do this, you will listen. Because I have your best interest at heart and your kids and they can see it. It's interesting, like, reading your psychology with it all, too. Because, I mean, that's what I do in my job with anyone who's in here. But it's doubly fascinating when people were operating at like the highest levels of national security.

Starting point is 02:01:09 And it's like, again, juxtaposing you and Andy. Like you talked about you grew up, you didn't fit in, you didn't have any friends or whatever. You wanted friends though. Yes. Right? Yes. And you got really good at making friends like you were a late bloomer when – and then it was as a part of your career because you started so young. You made friends with everyone.

Starting point is 02:01:28 Andy didn't have many friends, had a really difficult time as a child and everything, had a seminal event that really ended up fucking him over and everything. And then he became the opposite. He's the fuck that. I don't need friends. I got I got my wife i got my kids that's all he needs and it's like honestly he's got like me and danny jones right because like i guess we understand him in a way but it's interesting to see how you guys did similar jobs in different ways from a similar origin story but had the opposite reaction to the origin story to do the

Starting point is 02:02:06 job in the opposite way that's just really yeah yeah i'm just i mean i didn't know that before i was talking with you so i'm just like kind of like processing that it's like a therapy session yeah a little bit um yeah do you have a couch i can lay on i i literally don't know what's with that where's your furniture the money goes to him that's what i do i gotta i got mouths to feed you know listen don't say i don't put it all into my business it's true but like you you mentioned like i was a very lonely kid growing up i i was very very lonely as well the job with dia i was very lonely and now i'm a single mom of three i'm very lonely like my i am constantly still very very lonely um but i think i've just kind of

Starting point is 02:02:55 figured out how to embrace it and i don't want other people to feel that way so yeah to your point like empathy it's my my biggest demise. Absolutely. It's going to kill me one day. Yeah, no, it'll be all right. I think you're hanging around. But you mentioned obviously several times now that it was 2011 when you went into Afghanistan. So you finished the six months in Mosul in 2009, 2010. You come back to America as a similar type middle between. I mean you went to the farm after the first one.

Starting point is 02:03:24 This time you're not going to the farm but you're working the desk in America. Sort of. Yeah. No, this time when I came back, I was, um, operational. So I was doing clandestine operations in other places. So not war zone, like real world type stuff. Are you allowed to talk about that at all? Not really. Okay. So you get the assignment to go to afghanistan now we kind of talked about this broadly but this is when we're coming up on 10 years in to this war we're like nine years in probably when you're gone we still don't have osama bin laden again it started off very well but then took the eye off the ball. And now, like when I've talked to people who were in Afghanistan in the late 2000s going into 2010,

Starting point is 02:04:12 2011, it's like you could start to see the shift happening. Before you went, did you already kind of, did you have information that that's where it's going? Yeah, because I had been working the Afghan desk as well. I had time there. So I could see it from the desk point of view too. But you could also see like priority shifting with requirements and things like that. Why do you think the Taliban at that point, not 2021, but at that point was starting to have success, let's say winning over some hearts and minds?

Starting point is 02:04:55 I have a few theories. One thing especially that interested me about Hezbollah was that they actually had a branch for hearts and minds, right? They built hospitals. They had – you know, they supported their people. So there's a militarized, a political, and then there's like the do-good branch. I think – I mean, Afghan history is so, so different, right? And the groups are so, so different. But I think there was a bit of that as well. I don't know.

Starting point is 02:05:33 I don't know because the people that I worked with, the source I met, even the locals that worked at our house where we were, like everyone was like staunchly opposed and really afraid. So I don't know if it's that. I don't know if maybe it's again that, like I mentioned before, that fear, you know, you just, you fall in line because you're just trying to preserve yourself, your livelihood, your family, you know. I think a lot of people act out of fear in ways that they normally wouldn't just for self-preservation. Yeah. Now, when you were assigned to go there again for DIA's purposes, I'd imagine the main mission was for the protection of the assets, our military on the ground, right? Yeah. So similar kind of thing to Iraq as far as like, oh, where are the IEDs? Where's Taliban headquartered? where do we got to stay away

Starting point is 02:06:25 from that kind of stuff yeah there was a lot of that there was a little bit of strategic as well what do you mean so when you're i mean the afghan government was newly formed there were a lot of big personalities um former warlords like general dostum for example yeah um just people and players that we're still trying to figure out. What's their motivation? What's their end goal? Who are they in with? So that kind of intel was also very helpful.

Starting point is 02:06:53 Okay. Had you had any involvement or look through or anything in the years before you were in Afghanistan? Had you had any involvement in the Osama bin Laden investigation? No. How did you get involved? Luck. So there was a walk, I think it was a walk-in actually, that a friend of mine had met with.

Starting point is 02:07:20 I think he met with him once or twice. And I remember my friend was leaving. He was with a different unit, but he was DIA. And he said, this guy can talk. He talks so much. He talks so much. And I was like, yeah, yeah, all right, yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 02:07:38 And he's like, but he claims that he knows where Osama is. Like, I can't get anything out of him. Like, we just sit there for hours and I don't know what he's saying. Like, he's just talking okay so i had uh the meeting a first meeting first meeting i was like oh my god this guy talked so much like please stop talking um who do you say it was uh i'm so with this story i've got people have have some people have heard the story and they think i'm burning my source but i change things okay okay um so he he was very close with osama um he had known him forever like just i don't know they had been friends forever he was kind

Starting point is 02:08:23 of his right hand for a while. He knew about the attacks of September 11th before they happened, which if you step back, the attacks on September 11th were pivotal for me, for me, for my career. I was actually, side note, I was working at Stanford University at the time, and I was driving to work listening to the radio when the planes hit the towers and I remember them breaking in and explaining and I remember them saying bodies are falling out of the sky yeah right visceral memory one mile away from here right that I when I got to work I quit and I applied to grad school because I was angry at myself because I knew I

Starting point is 02:09:05 wanted to do it and I was killing time. I wasn't actually fighting the good fight. I wasn't helping our country. And I was really angry at myself. Like it was a personal failure. So when he brought up September 11th and we talked about it and we talked about his history, we talked about his, we talked about everything. It was a very difficult for me, especially initially, like you're sitting across the table from someone who you hate, right? I hated everything that he stood for. I hated everything that he knew about. It was a really, really difficult, but I'm not going to recruit someone if I hate them. Right?

Starting point is 02:09:48 You can tell when someone doesn't like you. Oh, yeah. And I was really frustrated because he did talk way too much. But over the course of months and spent literally our meetings were like nine hours. They were these marathon meetings. They were exhausting. What would he talk about? Oh, my God.

Starting point is 02:10:04 He just blathered on and on. He was a very nice person. His motivations had changed, right? He was pro-Al Qaeda. He had things happen in his life where his motivations changed. He saw the light. After September 11th, he was like, oh, my God, what are we doing? He had family influence that was like, what are we doing he had family influence that

Starting point is 02:10:25 was like what are you doing this is not okay and he just kind of stepped back and realized yeah i might want sharia i might want all this stuff but this is not the way to do it okay so it took me a long time to just see him as a person now not as his past past, and try to respect him and try to have empathy and try to empathize with him in his situation and be in his shoes in his life that day, if that makes sense. This is a guy who, I'm just using an example you just gave, who wanted stuff like Sharia law, and he's talking to an American woman case officer, probably not wearing a hijab. Yes. No, wasn't. Nope.

Starting point is 02:11:06 Interesting. And we talked about that. There was one point because it was like eating me up. Why? Like he talked to my friend. My friend was a dude. Yeah. And I straight up asked him, why are you talking to me?

Starting point is 02:11:18 I am a white Western woman. I am the antithesis of everything that you believe in. I straight up asked him. And of course, you know, there's an interpreter. So he would talk for four hours. The poor interpreter's like, wait, wait. Oh, so no English. No English.

Starting point is 02:11:35 And my interpreter and him were from very different parts of the world. This comes in later. Okay. So I asked him and he kind of just sat back. I'll do this. He just sat back and he kind of got this little smirk and went why not and i was like okay right but we ended up building a really good rapport now remember i didn't have kids at the time i had really wanted kids he had 5 000 kids he had a lot of kids he had a lot of kids like what kind of number are

Starting point is 02:12:05 we actually talking i don't know probably in the dozens he had a lot of kids he's busy yeah he was very lady yeah or ladies yeah doing that over there yeah um he's probably exhausted that's why he looks so tired all the time yeah um it really, this operation pushed me outside of my comfort zone more than any other. Because I had worked with terrorists before. But this was different to me. Yes. Right? And so I just spent a lot of time getting to know him, getting in his head, understanding the motivations, his vulnerabilities, his suitability, all of that.

Starting point is 02:12:43 Just listening. He just wanted to be listened to in large a lot of people you want to get him talking they just want to talk right this is what you do for a living so remember we had talked about money and every at the end of every meeting i had a little envelope and i would slide the envelope over and thank you pay that to your 7 000 kids i know thank you so much you're gonna have to feed a lot of people and he would always very graciously push it back and say no thank you i don't want your money oh and every time i was like damn it because i can't recruit him if he's not taking money you were saying so i checked all the other boxes but that and it was

Starting point is 02:13:20 killing me it was killing me and i was brainstorming with people and we could not come up with a solution i tried everything i could think of and finally it just hit me so i had gone side note there was there's a very there's a world famous evidently maybe it's a kabul famous palm reader he's probably gone he was very very old he's probably dead by now he was very old but one of my sources had taken me and a couple of people from my team to go meet this palm reader. And this palm reader, when I sit down, I give him my palm and he has a ruler and he's measuring and he goes, you will have 12 kids. And I was like, what? We got to go.

Starting point is 02:13:58 So that was kind of a running joke with my team and I. And I had told this guy about the palm reader and that I was going to have 12 kids and we started bonding over kids that I wanted kids and that he had a bunch and I realized this guy is a religious scholar right education is super important to him and he has all these kids and so the next meeting we did the meeting and I had my envelope and I started to slide it over and I stopped when he went to like touch it to push it back I kind of stopped him and I was like stop don't touch it and he looked at me and I said look after this meeting I want you to go down to the local bank and I want you to open a bank account in your eldest son's name the cultural

Starting point is 02:14:42 thing right open it in his name and i want you to put this money in that bank account but you are not allowed to touch it this money is for your kids and every time we meet i'm going to give you money for your kids college education not for you oh he took it he took it and i recruited him the next meeting so when you say, this is where I get a little confused with the gray area, because you're having all these meetings with him, he's spilling for nine hours,

Starting point is 02:15:11 maybe three of it is actually important, six of it is whatever, TMZ for Afghanistan. Right. But, you know, isn't that, he already kind of is recruited. So I can't task him if he's not recruited. Okay. So he knows where Osama is. I can't say, go take pictures.

Starting point is 02:15:29 Understood. Or tell me the house number. Or I can't task him. Was it the first meeting that he told you I know where he is? Mm-mm. No. Do you remember that moment you did? No.

Starting point is 02:15:39 And, you know, a lot of people say stuff like that. And you're like, all right, buddy. Yeah, me too. Is he in the room with us right now? Right. So when people say stuff like that, you're like, okay, we'll figure that out. You know, so it's kind of like we'll table that. Sure.

Starting point is 02:15:56 But he had to volunteer stuff. So it was like he had to know what I wanted to ask. So I could guide, you know, here are the requirements. Do you know anything about this? No. It would be great if he did. know i'm not tasking but next time if you do that would be super helpful yeah so yeah there's a fine balance but there are there are benefits to being recruited too plus i could teach him tradecraft to protect himself from when he's sneaking around yeah yeah

Starting point is 02:16:21 okay so you but you don't you would you said you would dance around it and stuff. What, what months is this by the way? Is this like January, February, March kind of deal? Let me think back. Yeah. Yeah. So six months and I came home. When did you get there?

Starting point is 02:16:40 January 2011? I want to say February. It might've been February or March when I left. When I went, when I got there so yeah okay so you're there when we get them on may 1 all right so yeah i was i was there and i just had meetings with him where he was telling me yeah he's here he's in abadabad ab Abbottabad. Abbottabad. When did he say Abbottabad for the first time? Do you remember?

Starting point is 02:17:08 Yeah. It was probably three or four meetings before they caught Osama. How often were these meetings with him? Weekly. He just gets away for like nine hours? Yeah. No one asks any questions? Yeah. And I can't tell you why, but he had very good cover for doing it.

Starting point is 02:17:28 Oh, okay. And he didn't live there. He lived somewhere else. So when you first realized, whatever meeting it was, how close he was in proximity to Osama, we hear that we've everyone's seen Zero Dark Thirty which composites a lot of characters to be honest but there were there were different people working on this at all the different agencies and then there were like three women I think who were at CIA who had been all over it for years who ended up you know being there with the Navy SEALs and getting it done but

Starting point is 02:18:05 like where did you take that information and how much of the chain of command of that investigation did you get read in on none so everything in intel is very compartmentalized which is very handy for your own for your own brain um so nothing everyone just had the requirements and anyone that got, we would put it in our intelligence report and feed it into the ether and hope to God somebody who needed it read it. Really. So analysts would give you feedback. So analysts who are tracking, obviously, they say, oh, they're pulling in the reports that are relevant. But they would grade you. So they would say, OK, this report is a B.

Starting point is 02:18:46 We don't really believe your source. Maybe could you ask him this and this? Or you get an A, and A was always really good. Like literally like getting an A. You're like, yes, I got an A. It means it was good intel. They used it. Sometimes they would tell you where they used it.

Starting point is 02:18:59 It went to the presidential daily brief, things like that. But the problem was with this guy is that and again remember i told you biggest success and biggest failure at the same time because my interpreter and him were from totally different regions of the world their language and their slang and their tone and their everything was different so when this guy i heard abadabad i wrote down abadabad with quite like three question marks abadabad i had never heard of it before right my interpreter was like i don't know what he's saying and by the way this guy mumbled he was a big mumbler he would talk forever

Starting point is 02:19:36 and mumble and you couldn't understand the mumbles a lot of times he was like he's mumbling again i can't understand him and i was like but i have I have – I heard a bada-bada. And we'd ask clarifying questions. We did map tracking. We asked for pictures, like everything you're supposed to do. But nobody believed us. They kept saying he was making it up. The feedback I got is he's making it up.

Starting point is 02:19:57 And so we went – I worked with NGA, National Geospatial Agency. We had an NSA person embedded. We took it to CI like we I shopped it around trying to get someone to like is there an analyst that can give me questions for him that you want to know like are we on the right track like and people it was almost like half disbelief and then just miscommunication we don't know what he's saying it was so frustrating and so I woke up one morning and turn on the news as i'm getting dressed and there it is like we captured osama bin laden blah blah blah and i was like

Starting point is 02:20:30 in a bod a bod he was in a bod a bod like literally exactly how i'd spelled it in my notes and i had a meeting with that guy it was like a day or two later and he came in he was like ear to ear he's like grinning and he goes we got him we got him see see i told you and i was like yes you did you did so that i so you putting that report even though you're not getting looked through and whatever you putting in that report in maybe march something like that you're one of the people that then it zeros in like oh shit we got this from multiple angles that he's there yeah so those analysts are compiling and if they're having multiple source reporting he's got to be there yeah so you're like one of the four so it can true i'm sure it contributed

Starting point is 02:21:14 but i got zero feedback and zero so in my head i'm like i failed it wasn't me well it worked whatever yeah whatever happened worked and kudos to the the teams that got him. What was the – again, I'm not going off Zero Dark Thirty. I'm trying to go off of some of the other stuff where I've seen people around it who were interviewed on it. Who was the guy that they got to? His courier, was that it? The courier. Yeah. What was the story there again?

Starting point is 02:21:42 Do you remember that? I think they arrested – isn't he still in Gitmo? Probably. But they were like tracking him't he still in Gitmo? Probably. Yeah. But they were like tracking him or they were able to follow him there. They had – and they had to have multiple avenues to get this guy. So you're having multiple sources reporting. There was also the vaccination thing if you heard about.

Starting point is 02:21:58 What was that? Where they had somebody offering free vaccinations in the area. Oh, for the kids for yeah and they could test like dna and stuff there's all kinds of cool stuff um and then like my dude was like taking pictures of i mean we had photos oh you wait okay hold on a minute you sent him to a body bot no he went this was before he was recruited. He went. And he took pictures?

Starting point is 02:22:28 And he took pictures. And he brought that into the meeting? And he brought that in. He had pictures along the drive. He's like, and here's an overpass. Here's this tree. Turn right at the tree. So you saw the building that he ended up. You had the whole thing.

Starting point is 02:22:38 I didn't have the house. I didn't have the house. I had pictures of the area and getting there. He was showing us where to go. Was he hitting camera kind of stuff? No, they're so blatant. They all have those little like Nokia. Yeah, so he's like, oh.

Starting point is 02:22:53 Yeah. Just showing like he's a tourist. And yes, and there are pictures where he's standing, you know, and someone took his picture, but he did it. He's like, oh, I had someone take my picture or, you know, like. With this in the background. Like, yeah, get a little to the left, please. Yeah. Can you see the building? Whoa. Yeah. yeah now was he meeting with osama no no he'd already had a falling out so he wasn't he wasn't tight with him anymore

Starting point is 02:23:14 are you able to say why they fell out yeah i kind of figured but it's someone who knew him for a very long time very long knew him very well for a very long time what did he say about osama like like what obviously you said after 9-11 he was like wait this isn't the way yeah but what did he say about him as a guy like why were they other than believing in maybe sharia and stuff like that like what made him so magnetic? You know, I never asked. But he, he, it was interesting talking to him because it was like someone he revered and respected, but also didn't agree with anymore.

Starting point is 02:23:57 So you could see conflict, like internal conflict. I don't know how to describe it. But because of that conflict conflict i never went deep in that because i didn't want to upset him um also i was still very very cautious the male female relationship and for him especially being a religious scholar like there's a big no-no right so i was really careful what i asked him and how i asked him things I didn't ever want to offend him you know wait actually I'm a little confused on that I can understand like some of the personal questions and things like that because of the male-female relationship but what makes a difference between you or a dude sitting in your

Starting point is 02:24:41 seat asking a question about his relationship with Osama? Yeah, I just didn't feel like it was right. For example, like because he was a mullah and I am not a Muslim, like I gave him as a gift this beautiful, beautiful Quran. It had like hand-painted artwork in it and stuff like that. I couldn't touch it. So when we bought it, my interpreter bought it, we wrapped it up. And so when I gave it my interpreter bought it we wrapped it up and so when i gave it to him i was like this gift is for me but i know i can't touch it as a non-believer or whatever so here so-and-so is gonna hand that to you and he appreciated that so there was just like

Starting point is 02:25:15 religious and culturally i just felt like i had to walk a really careful line sure you know he might have been happy to give me intel but that doesn't mean he was happy to like really let me get in on his head and some of that stuff. So I was just very, very cautious. Well, you were saying that before you got to Afghanistan and this guy became a source, you hadn't been involved in the Osama bin Laden investigation. But had you – I mean he was the ghost for almost – especially almost a decade there, longer than that technically, but at least since 9-11, almost a especially almost a decade there longer than that technically but at least since 9-11 almost a decade and it's like the most wanted man in the world had you studied up on him or oh yeah okay oh i mean remember i got my master's in counterterrorism right so but you did a lot of focus on him specifically in his whole history and everything yeah in. In fact, when I was, how old was I? 19, 18 or 19, I sailed around the world on a small cruise ship called Semester at Sea when I was in college. It's called the

Starting point is 02:26:12 Semester of Sex. It was awesome. I wasn't going to say it. Not for me. I didn't have sex. I just thought about it. But yeah, so going on that even, one of our stops was Kenya. And right before that is when the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed. Yes. And I don't remember this at all, but my friend reminded me. So I was heavy into, I was always fascinated by terrorism and the why. Why are people doing this? And when September 11th happened, my friend Susie, she lives in New York,

Starting point is 02:26:48 Susie either emailed me or texted me or something, and she said, you were right, you were right. And I was like, what was I right about? And she said, Osama bin Laden. When we were in Kenya, because we went and we saw the embassy, it was all blown up, like the stuff, like paid your respects, you know. We saw it. She goes, you told me all about Osama bin Laden and you told me they were going to hit us in the home. Like you told me. And I was like, oh, shit, I didn't. You said that in like 98 99 i'm good i mean i didn't say they're gonna fly a plane in the world

Starting point is 02:27:08 trade center but i was evidently i was telling her that you know if anyone could do it they would attack here in the u.s and she was like you were totally right and for me like because i didn't remember it it was validating it was like okay i am good at this. I, you know, it just kind of egged me on to keep doing it. Yeah. I mean, the whole history, I mean, he's one of like 57 kids or something. Yeah. And Mohammed bin Laden, his father, fascinating, a lot of money, but fascinating guy espionage-wise.

Starting point is 02:27:39 Like, you know, I don't know that he was like a full-blown spy or something, but he was an asset for probably a lot of different places. Mm-hmm. Very— He had good access. Yeah. He had a lot of good access. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 02:27:54 It's just very strange where Osama came from and then—I mean, obviously the Mujahideen in the 80s shaped him. Big influence, yeah. Yeah, that's huge. But like the family he came from, you wouldn't expect that. No. Because he had access to a lot of wealth. Yeah, and you would think you'd grow up wanting for nothing. What would his grievances be, you know?

Starting point is 02:28:19 It's like an American rich kid. Like, what's wrong with you? You have everything you want. Yeah. You know? I mean, you look at – it's interesting. You were saying – telling your friends in 98, 99 about this guy and what he was going to do. When you look at the history of it and as the people who were there discuss it, they're always talking about how it took a while for the Clinton administration to get it.

Starting point is 02:28:41 But then they got it, right? Like when those bombings were happening, they're like, okay, all right. It's real. This guy's a problem. Yeah. And then you have a whole new administration come in and they're like, what's this? But that happens every four years for everything. Like pick a topic, Russia, Ukraine, China.

Starting point is 02:28:58 Like it's the same cycle. And I see the intelligence community feels it. You're supposed to be impartial and you are. But man, those politics, the pressure to produce on whatever their priority is, is palpable no matter where you are. It absolutely, absolutely impacts missions. The other side of it though, not that I like politicians because I don't at all. But it's two to tango in this kind of relationship. And this gets talked about a lot.

Starting point is 02:29:27 I'd love your thoughts on this. You have the politicians who are there to get elected. Well, let's separate them into categories for a second. You have the House of Representatives and the Senates who, you know, they don't have any fucking term limits. So they can be like 90 with their teeth falling out and still be there but they still have to at least do things on the basis of trying to get elected on some upcoming tuesday in november which causes problems then in the in the executive branch where the where the intelligence community has daily direct back and forth this is where decisions are being made every four years or at the very least every eight years an entire new

Starting point is 02:30:05 administration comes in entire new ideas whatever and there's the old thought that like well the espionage community is the most powerful tool there is because they have dirt on everyone and the guy who comes in there the new president the people who go and give him the first pdb yeah yep they were there before he got there they're gonna be there after he leaves right so the question is like who really does run the country and i'm i just look at it as like a psychological experiment of like well what do you expect these people gotta exist and they they know they're gonna exist after this guy's there so that's just a they've got to play the game. Yeah, they play the game.

Starting point is 02:30:48 But like they have their hands on all the triggers. The president doesn't have anything without the intelligence from those people. So effectively, if they don't like a guy or in the future if there's a woman in there, if they don't like her, don't like him, they can be like, I don't know. We're not going to tell them about this thing. We're going to steer clear of that. I'm sure stuff gets communicated different ways or different channels. Yeah. But I think anybody who's doing that job, they're mission-oriented too, and they want to do the right thing.

Starting point is 02:31:18 But it's funny, like you talk about like the PDB, when each president comes in, they have to adjust how they brief it. One president wants only visuals. One president wants metrics. One president wants paragraph summaries. One president doesn't want anything. He just wants you to tell me what's important. So you're adjusting how you write these up and how you present it depending on that personality.

Starting point is 02:31:41 Yeah. It's a hard job. It's a hard job. I wouldn't want it. For sure. No way. But do you remember where you were exactly when, well, I think you said it actually, when, when you found out about the Osama thing, you were watching the news. I was half naked,

Starting point is 02:31:54 getting dressed, watching CNN and half crying, half cheering. It's gotta be a pretty good feeling. Yeah. Yeah. It was good. I kind of wonder today if the reaction of that like we had would be the same it was a very uniting moment when that happened people were in america that was a special night it was september 11th in general too i can't think i mean maybe world wars but when else has the u.s been so united right agreed it's But it's sad that it takes travesty and horrible loss of life in any capacity for the country to get together and be one. United we stand, right? Yeah. I say this all the time and I hate it, but like you have the terrorist attacks like September 11th in Pearl Harbor, which, you know, are horrible. But like outside of the war, 1812,

Starting point is 02:32:47 this country has never been invaded. And it really fucking shows because people, the problems that we spend so much time fighting about, when you look at the patterns of our society, those bullshit problems, whatever they may be in a given era happen the most when we are the farthest away yeah from tragedy or like major in-your-face war yeah and it's so sad to me that it takes something like that like you turn on the news the shit we're fighting over it god forbid if something happened to that skyline tomorrow gone yeah no i agree it's gone. I agree. Yeah. It was really hard coming home from a deployment. You've seen a lot. Maybe you've had near-death experiences.

Starting point is 02:33:31 I've had a few. You've done things that you know saved lives. And then you come home and, like, I would come home and you're walking around and you see people, like, chit-chatting at Starbucks. And, like, girls, like girls like oh my god you know like yeah I would get mad that these people did not know what others were doing for their country and for them to be able to go sit at Starbucks and gossip yep you know um it was a very hard adjustment each time and it never got easier I'd come home you know fourth one I'm like all right I'm gonna be fine you know and it wouldn't it would just still hit you you know and then when we withdrew from afghanistan like all of that stuff like it's you get these reminders yes because you know what

Starting point is 02:34:15 you know you can't change that yeah you've seen it yeah and sadly that's just a human psychological thing as old as time yeah when what you don't see not even blaming people it's just how it is yeah they're ignorant yeah yeah yeah and i see it in in other situations that aren't warfare but it's other problems around the world i have friends like my friend paul rosalie in the amazon finally now like he's blowing up online and it's like a celebrity but for the first 17 years he'd be screaming at people with videos of everything burning yeah saying here's what's happening real here's what we got to do stop it and people are like oh that's so terrible anyway i'll take a medium um and he'll take a large you know it's because it doesn't affect them it doesn't impact them immediately yeah yeah it's hard but when you you said you met with the guy and he was

Starting point is 02:35:01 like oh we got him yeah I felt like such an asshole. I'm like, yes, you did. Thank you for that. But like you were using him as a source I would imagine for other things too, right? Yeah. So he still had a lot of use after that. Is that someone that – I mean you're not involved anymore allegedly. But is that someone that you think probably is still a source today i doubt it honestly just knowing what i know about him and his location and i don't know that

Starting point is 02:35:33 i don't know that he would have the access anymore that they needed or if he's still alive honestly oh you don't even know that no so you don't have any contact i have no contact that's a hard thing too i don't know if anyone's ever talked about that but like sometimes you get close to these people and it's not like you're falling in love with your sources right but you respect people and after spending time with their family and their kids and hanging out like you care about them and their well-being right that's your job to make sure that they're safe and then when you leave you you shut off contact you cannot contact them again. Always?

Starting point is 02:36:06 Not always. It's gone. It's gone. So when ISIS came in, for example, I had a source who was recruited. I spent a lot of time with him and his family. And when ISIS came in, he was absolutely without a doubt, he was killed. I have zero question just based on what he did for a living, where he went. And knowing his wife and his two boys, it's still – if I think about it, I'll probably tear up. I still feel guilty and I still feel bad.

Starting point is 02:36:33 But I know that he made a big difference. It's really hard to see people talk about – the one recently that we saw was the Afghanistan thing and you see how many U.S. servicemen, U.S. intelligence, U.S. defense department, whatever it is, people were so horrified at the fact that so many great people who had entrusted us were now left behind there so much so that you know i had safi ralph in here who actually is afghani and and came here and then worked with the special forces like joined the military and everything and now has been rescuing people out of there but like you know we were able to get some people out but there's so many people it's like oh they probably got beheaded yeah by taliban yeah 100 and excuse me there's there's a there's something there's a project i'm working on now, actually. If anyone's ever heard of the Hacking Games, it's a fabulous initiative, if you will. So tying back to Afghanistan, there's this guy who worked for the Afghan government when the Taliban took over again, when we departed. And he had access to these files that was a database of all the Afghans who had cooperated with coalition forces.

Starting point is 02:37:47 Excuse me. Sorry. Yeah, you're good. Biometric data, everything. So millions and millions of Afghanis were in this database. And this guy risked his life to go back and wipe out that database. The Taliban's been hunting him for three years. He's still in Afghanistan. He's alive. And we're trying to get him out. But Taliban's been hunting him for three years. He's still in Afghanistan.

Starting point is 02:38:05 He's alive. We're trying to get him out. But it's stories like that. Like, this is a modern-day Schindler. Like, this guy saved millions of lives. That's amazing. Right? And we haven't gotten him out yet.

Starting point is 02:38:17 It's stuff like that that doesn't sit right with me. There are people that maybe they weren't giving me intel, maybe they weren't saving lives, but there are people that worked with us that cooked my eggs or washed people's laundry or kept the garden nice, right? Those people still helped us. They helped us in support capacity, and they're still there too. So stuff like that really bothers me.

Starting point is 02:38:44 And any help that's given could be viewed as you're the enemy. You're done. But it's also – so we were talking about Sean – do you know Sean? Mm-mm. Never met him. Okay. So great guy. And you had said you saw him on my show.

Starting point is 02:38:57 Like he's just a really good dude who has an amazing show and covers all kinds of things that are directly related to what he did, you know, does it from his point of view. But he's been tracking a story that I think started with some lady he had on who I believe was in CIA. I don't remember her name, but she was saying, what was it, Alessi, like 60 to 80 million a month is going to the Taliban from the US? Something like that? I don't know. Can we look that up?

Starting point is 02:39:28 A lot. Sean Ryan, money to Taliban. I'd love to get the number right, but people Google that so you can check it at least. And he just went and talked to Massoud's son in Europe. And he was saying that this is happening too. And so when I hear, I'm just relating this back. When I hear stories like we're still trying to get X out or this person out, obviously the Taliban's awful. Yeah, that was the first guy, this guy legend who wasn't, he wasn't allowed to put his face on, but he was the first guy to talk about it. And then I think

Starting point is 02:40:03 Sarah, that's her name, Sarah Adams, the CIA lady. She confirmed it. And then Massoud confirmed it. So when I hear that we can't get this person out or that person out, not that the Taliban is not still horrible. They are. But unlike in 2001 where they were unreachable sending us the voicemail. Now there's a conversation with these scumbags at least there's money potentially going to them so i don't understand why they you know it's the reason

Starting point is 02:40:30 they're going to kill these people is because they don't want them there anyway right so why if especially with people that are like extra importance why are we not like you give us that person motherfucker yeah why is that not happening well we definitely don't want them to know where this guy is number one so they can't give him to us because they would not give him to us they would kill him and his family even with the money going even with the money yeah accidents happen yeah that's why it's you just can't deal with terror groups i don't know i don't know what the strategy was there and that's been multiple administrations looking at this strategy it's like what are we doing it's very frustrating it's very frustrating it It's very frustrating.

Starting point is 02:41:05 It's disheartening. I mean, you go and you do all this good work and you think you're like fighting the good fight. And then at the end, you're like, well, shit. Yeah. We're back to square one. Yeah. I mean, what did you think when you saw the image? I mean, the imagery was as bad as the actual result, if not even worse when you look at it.

Starting point is 02:41:22 But when you see the imagery from august 15 2001 in afghanistan falls this is a place where you spent time you did missions you had intel apps you've laid out some of them on this show today like what's going through your head when you see 20 years the circle the ring goes right back to the beginning i've been through that gate i've been to that airport a million times it was very surreal and i cry i'm not gonna lie i cried i went to bossy there's no crying and spying but i cried yeah i mean it's very very emotional for me to see to see those images you know we failed plain and simple yeah we could do better yeah i'm glad to hear someone say that yeah i mean i think that's part of the issue

Starting point is 02:42:05 there's been like a especially in afghanistan there's been a real lack of accountability there yeah i'm not one of these people a lot of this yeah a lot of this exactly yeah i'm not one of these people that likes to say we we need a head on the stake no matter what but i am saying like organizationally right who fucked up just in general don't put a name on it just put the name of the agency or the place or the desk or whatever let's fix that well and like can we make sure we don't do this again yes please did anyone do a tabletop exercise did anyone do an aar right do we know where we screwed up so we don't do it again that that's the question yeah because i feel like we do keep making similar mistakes over and over again

Starting point is 02:42:51 absolutely and you were also as as we laid out you were in iraq a bunch and you got out at dia late 2013 is that right uh 2014 2014 february 2014 whoa so you get out yeah right before there's literally heads coming off of necks yeah good timing right yeah did you see that coming at that point no that bad no no i didn't i mean you knew it was bad but i don't think anyone could predict how horrible it really was did you have an itch to get back in? Yes. Yeah, I still, look, I still talk about it, right? This is something that was such a huge, it was my life. Yes. It was all I had.

Starting point is 02:43:34 And so leaving it was really, really hard to walk away. I missed the job. I don't miss the paperwork. I don't miss the admin. I don't miss some of the assholes I worked with. I miss the job tremendously. I miss working with people that wanted to make a difference. I miss the admin. I don't miss some of the assholes I worked with. I miss the job tremendously. I miss working with people that wanted to make a difference. I miss saving lives.

Starting point is 02:43:50 And when I left and I started with Merck, like you mentioned, it was really hard shifting from I save lives for a living to I save this company money. It was very, very hard, very tough pill to swallow. Yeah. Everyone wants to make more money in their career and stuff, but there's a real – like how you make money too is important to a lot of people. And it's like the adrenaline of the stakes being high seems to be a big part of it for people like you. Yeah, adrenaline, power. You could argue power. Any of us who are case officers, there's a degree of power. You're in control. Yes. Right. But also being in the know,

Starting point is 02:44:34 right? Knowing what's going on in the world, knowing what's behind the curtain, all of that. There's a sense of loss for that too. All your security clearances are gone when you left? No, i've still got clearance you still have clearances but on new stuff coming in you don't have no no one calls me like let's tell sean right no one cares about me when i say that that's what i mean yeah okay yeah there's so even if you focus it because i'm trying to think. There's places you said you can't talk about, so I don't want to go there. But it's fair to say on a general global scale, you're a geopolitical expert because you spent time outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. You did a lot of analysis on a lot of other places, maybe a good, I,

Starting point is 02:45:27 there's somewhere I want to go with this, but a good place to start would be, are there places besides the ones that already came up that you said you can't talk about? Are there other places you can talk about that you either spent time on or spent significant analytical time on in support for? Yeah. Um, so I did operations in europe um asia africa picture me like walking around um the gambia do you even know where that is i know most people don't know we had a thing in high school power up the gambia yeah or whatever yeah i i did clan ops and the gambia you did what clandestine operations oh sorry okay i thought you were throwing a hood on herself bad place to do it with the c not with a k so what's going on in gambia um well i uh so i i was stationed in in europe for a while

Starting point is 02:46:20 and supporting africom and so from europe from europe are you allowed to say where in europe stuttgart fuck is that in germany you know where the gambia is you don't know where stuttgart is stuttgart now um yes so i'm still world war ii is a tough one for me i'm still like a little i don't really look at that map too much i used to live in world war ii barracks actually military barracks um yeah so we supported africom and so we had a lot of operations around um but i had stuff like i had to go to senegal or the gambia and stuff but just me alone and here's kind of a funny story i don't know if many people know this about the gambia i did not know this until i got there but there there are people there they call bumsters so these men young men basically act as male prostitutes for white western women from europe who come down and get a boyfriend

Starting point is 02:47:16 and then they try they basically dupe them into thinking they're in a relationship so the woman goes home and then will mail money home to her boyfriend oh my god right so i didn't know this um i got approved remember we mother may i i got approval to go um agency told me where i could stay where i couldn't stay so i stayed there uh and i had to do you know surveillance detection routes and all these things and this country is unlike any other country i've been to. It is different. Why? It is a third world country in like every way, shape, and form, really. There was a Hezbollah presence. Is that why you were there?

Starting point is 02:47:54 No. Okay. No. But I was – just because I had studied it, I was aware. But like everything that could go wrong did go wrong in the Gambia. Like, for example, I got followed. I was doing, I was casing trying to find where I could do good routes to pick up my source. And, um, a police officer started following me and I was like, I'm either going to get arrested or like one of these two things is going to happen. And he asked me to follow him and I went in and

Starting point is 02:48:23 he took me into some like police station that wasn't really a police station. I don't know what it was. And then hit on me and gave me his – he's like, here, I'm on Facebook. Are you on Facebook? Like here's – and I was like, I would love to reach out to you. Yes, we will be friends. Absolutely. Go away.

Starting point is 02:48:40 And then when I actually had to do the surveillance detection route to pick up the source like what people don't realize is this is timed and very like you have a set time i can be in this shop for this amount of time i need to purchase something then i'm going to take this route either walking or train or bike or car taxi whatever really it's very very exact and what if things happen though oh things happen yeah so i had to take because i didn't have a car i had to walk part of it and i had to take a taxi for part of it and i get in the cat random cab get in the cab and the guy is very nice and we're chit-chatting and then he pulls over and he picks up another guy and the other guy gets in the front i was like i'm gonna get now great like okay so i

Starting point is 02:49:25 was like you know where where are we going because he deviated i had already known i knew my route i knew we were going and he went a different way and he starts driving towards this lake and i was like oh my god this is it um okay how am i you know i'm thinking like your mind's going like what what can i use for a weapon like what how am i gonna get out and he pulls up and pulls up basically onto the shore of this lake. We are down like a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. And him and the dude are just talking. I can't understand them.

Starting point is 02:49:50 And they're laughing. And I was like, oh, my God, they're talking about how they're going to kill me. What's going to happen? And then he turns off the car and he reaches in and he has a joint, like a massive monster blunt. And he goes, do you want any uh i'm good i'm good thanks you didn't take it so you two are here just to get high in the middle of my cab ride yes cool i'll just wait you got a second hand i got a little hot box maybe a little bit it was a good meeting yeah um yeah they finished their joint he backtracked and then took me where i needed to go but the whole time i'm like crap now i have to write this up in a report oh my god like so stuff like that

Starting point is 02:50:35 yeah murphy's everywhere if you weren't there for hezbollah i don't know if you can say exactly why you were there but is it did it have anything to do with terrorism or was it entirely different? Entirely different. Because there's a lot of shit on those West African countries. A lot of shit happening that somehow can then tie back to terrorist groups that may be in funding of stuff. Yeah. There was some big story – and don't – I'm not filling in your blanks. You don't have to confirm or deny.

Starting point is 02:51:02 But there was some big story I've cited a bunch that Politico put out probably like eight, nine years ago talking about – I believe it was actually Hezbollah. They are using cocaine and used cars in a funnel through America, Mexico, South America, and back through like the used car bills of the western African countries to like smuggle and sell and launder money to fund themselves and their operations that's accurate and before that it was cigarettes oh they were big into cigarettes using that for laundering money whoa yeah god why is it so easy for them to do shit like and cameras falling off ships from miami evidently yeah not america what but something like that why is it so easy for them to do that? They're smart. They're very smart.

Starting point is 02:51:49 And they're backed by Iran. It's like a cat spa for Iran. Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about next. Yeah. What the fuck is going on with Iran? I don't know. I have no idea. Is that about to blow up?

Starting point is 02:52:03 I don't know. It would be nice, I guess. I mean, we do need a little regime change here and there, right? Yeah, but not... We haven't done too well with regime changes and then ongoing wars that happen afterwards. And I'm not saying that, like, their regime doesn't suck. It does. But, like, goddamn, do I not want another Iraq. I don't suck it does but like god damn do i not want another iraq i don't think anybody does

Starting point is 02:52:29 i don't think anybody does so how do you do that without doing that you don't do it yeah you let them do it you let the iranian people do it you want change you gotta change i like how you think yeah do you think that's realistic? Do you think that will happen? It depends. I mean, look, sadly for them, they just lost some leadership in a helicopter crash, right? Stuff happens. Maybe more leadership change. Maybe that extremist or very staunch view, maybe that gets watered down a little bit with more fresh blood coming in. I think just looking again, Arab Spring, it's really interesting to me the hunger that you saw from the younger generations for change. That's something that they need to keep pushing.

Starting point is 02:53:23 Why didn't that work? I mean, you mentioned it earlier about how a lot of that didn't work pushing. Why didn't that work? I mean, you mentioned it earlier about how a lot of that didn't work, but why didn't that work? Because it was happening in so many places at once in 2011. I don't know. I don't know, but it got ugly. And you were there during that time. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:53:38 You were in Mosul? No, you were in Afghanistan in 2011. Afghanistan in 2011. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have to go anywhere else based on that? Because of Arab Spring? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:53:50 No. It's such a weird time. It was really weird. It was really strange. It's like, oh, no, no. Fuck. So close. All right.

Starting point is 02:54:03 Let's just wait. Call us when you're ready. And what was the 500-pound elephant in the room in the middle of the Iran thing is Israel, which, hey, look, I understand their position. Iran does not like them, and they're fucking almost right next to them. And there's obviously tete-a-tetes going back and forth. That's not new. Right.

Starting point is 02:54:26 It's been that way for a while. Generationally. Do you think that Iran has never tried to pull off some sort of insanely large-scale attack on Israel because they know what would happen next? Meaning they're crazy, out of their minds, the regime, but they're smart enough to understand their own mortality. Like deterrence basically yeah yeah you only poke the bear so much before that bear is going to turn around and swat you right like i i think yeah deterrence is a huge factor so again understanding the position that like israel may have because of their geographic proximity. But when you have Netanyahu come here, ring the war bells for Iran, which I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of a foreign leader coming in front of...

Starting point is 02:55:14 And it happens in a lot of different countries. Yeah, it happens a lot. But if you're a U.S. senator or you're the president, you think you pretty much got to tell them, like, look, if they're not sending some form of fucking large pipe bomb or something that's killing tens of thousands of people or, like, God forbid, a nuke or something like that, there's nothing to be done here other than you got to let them handle it themselves. You got to sit back and wait, I guess. Right? I mean. it's hard they understand their culture they understand their history their politics their nuances they understand that better than anyone else who who are we to direct agreed right it's interesting though because there's two camps

Starting point is 02:56:02 that kind of form today there's like the isolationist camp and there's the, yay, military-aggressive complex camp. And I sit right here. I'm in the middle. Right? I'm in the middle. I'm right there. I see both sides. I see pros and cons to both sides.

Starting point is 02:56:14 Depending on the situation too, right? Yes, absolutely. Because I don't think it's good for America, who's like the leader of the free world, to – And it always will be. And I hope it always will. Yeah, I like your attitude but like i think it's horrible to say we're just gonna stay away from everything that can't we can't we can't but the alternative of war everywhere baby business a booming i don't like that either

Starting point is 02:56:39 right there's a fine there's a fine balance between what you get involved with and all the politics and all the strategy and stuff. That's another reason, though, why I loved being a case officer. And people don't recognize this, is those reports that I'm writing, that intel that I'm collecting, that's shaping policy. Our policymakers have access to those reports, those analysts, right? And they're making better decisions on to war or not to war, et cetera, based on that information that we are providing to them. So that's a really powerful feeling. Absolutely. Because a lot of them need more information.

Starting point is 02:57:15 They're not – You don't say. What do you make of the two wars right now that we are not involved in but that we are continuing to send a lot of money to i'm not saying that at the beginning there weren't reasons to send money or whatever that's an argument to be had on a different day but you know ukraine for example we're two and a half years in we're still sending billions israel it's coming up on a year in we're sending a lot of money there seems like there's a lot of indiscriminate things going on in that entire territory. How do you wind something like that down? I don't have a good answer. I don't know that anybody does, honestly, or we would have

Starting point is 02:57:54 done better in Afghanistan. But we're there. These are proxies. Yes. I feel like we just need smarter people in the rooms telling our leadership different things. Presidents are surrounded by groups of smart people, right? All of their advisors and everybody. I'm afraid that some politicians only listen to what they want to hear. They don't hear the other arguments. So we need better information and better people to make sure they hear, if that makes sense. And they got to want to, though. That's a great point you make. But some of them don't.

Starting point is 02:58:34 They don't because it's – look, it's politics. Like you've been saying all day. Like, oh, well, this is what's going to win me the election if I say this. Right. That's – I hate that. Right. win me the election if i say this right that's i i hate that right but like i don't know other than we could definitely help with term limits in senate or the house that would be a start but there's still always going to be another election right you know even if it's just one while someone's

Starting point is 02:58:58 you know enough people are going to have to win an election right that it's going to affect how they vote right and then they make these bills with a million other things in it too yeah which yeah that's annoying that's just annoying to me yeah like just put forth what you want to put forth and quit hiding stuff in like your 90 page or 500 page bills like come on i wish steve jobs had lived like another at least three years and had resigned from apple and given the consultant job to go into DC and tell them how they can write a bill. Oh gosh. Oh my God. We were solved every time. It also would have been very pretty. Like we have a good like user experience. There wouldn't be a bill longer than one page. Could you imagine? Oh my God. It'd be incredible. You know, they're giving

Starting point is 02:59:37 them all these stacks and she'd be like, they're not reading that. They're not reading that stuff. And, and to, you know know to defend some of those politicians they'll get a bill they got to vote on at four o'clock that's this thick at 12 o'clock that's not their fault but we got to do better yeah yeah yet again we do what what made you want to finally get out i think you mentioned this earlier like you wanted to have kids but was there more to it it was a combination of things. So I had enough near-death experiences to recognize I don't get paid enough for this shit. I never wanted kids.

Starting point is 03:00:14 In fact, I swore allegiance to DIA and promised I would never have kids and get married and everything like that. I just wanted to be a case officer. But that changed. After living through everything I did, I wanted to be a case officer but that that changed after living through everything i did um i i wanted to have children also i work with some real assholes and the bullying and retaliation and just douchery in general it just got to me like i couldn't handle anymore i thought i was a lifer i thought i was going to be there forever in In fact, other people are like, you are leaving? Like, we thought you were going to be a lifer.

Starting point is 03:00:47 But there's just so much toxic culture and environment and people you can take, and then it just breaks you. That and I was having a lot of health issues, and I had zero time to actually take care of them. So, like, you get injured or you're sick, and they're like, come see a doctor. Well, I can't. I'm going to be in the Gambia. Well, when can you come back? I don't know. You know, how do you make a doctor's appointment?

Starting point is 03:01:10 How do you, I couldn't even physically take care of myself. So all of that combined. And then a friend of mine reached out and said, hey, Merck, Merck is standing up this intellectual property and trade secret protection program, and you'd be great. Are you interested? It was like the door opened and the angel sung again like, oh, I have an exit strategy, right? So yeah. And now you have your own companies today, right? Five years ago, I started my own company. And what do you do? I do all things human risk. So human risk management, consulting, insider threat, insider risk, human trust. You're going to hear all these terms. It's all the same thing.

Starting point is 03:01:50 So basically organizations hire people. And if they hire people, they have human risk because people are stupid. We make mistakes. We take shortcuts. We email things we shouldn't, et cetera. But people can also be malicious and they can be compromised. So external threat actors can leverage a negligent employee, for example, to steal their credentials and access their networks.

Starting point is 03:02:15 Or you have someone who's disgruntled, they become malicious, and they sabotage something or commit fraud or espionage or things like that. So I consult companies and help them build insider threat programs. I do human risk assessments and then I do training awareness and a metric ton of keynotes speaking and things like that. Are things a lot harder in that department now, like post-COVID with so many people not working at the office? And so people have an access to remote technology, being able to take trade secrets with them and stuff like that? Yeah, the risks have changed definitely because of COVID and the work from home. I mean, people are working behind unmanaged home routers and they don't know a VPN and all this stuff. Yes, you could take your phone and take photographs of the screen. I've seen cases, I've investigated cases where people did that and then tried to sell that data to competitors. So those threats are very, very real. But there are a lot of steps

Starting point is 03:03:04 that organizations can do to mitigate those risks that they're not doing. And so I feel like it took me a while to figure it out. But going from the person that recruits the vulnerable insider, and then standing up insider threat programs for companies, I did it for Uber, I did it for Merck, etc. And clients of mine, being an investigator, I look at things differently, especially from that espionage angle, because I used to leverage those motivations and vulnerabilities. And so I help companies understand how their people are susceptible or vulnerable to stuff like that and help them basically beef up those mitigations. Sounds important.

Starting point is 03:03:42 I think it is. Sounds like a lot of people could use it. Yeah. Is there a link we can also put in the description for your business as well? Viance Group. Yeah. W-W-W. Viance.

Starting point is 03:03:53 V-A-I-L-L-A-N-C-E. Group.com. Let's make sure we put that down below. Last question for you. This has been awesome today, by the way. Yeah. It's a really, really compelling story and great analysis. But do you have any regrets, like major regrets about your career? Oh, that's a good one. Yes. So there are a couple of things I didn't get to do

Starting point is 03:04:15 that I wish that I would have done. I wanted to work in embassies, like as an attache or something like that, a defense attache. I never got to do that. I wanted to be an instructor down at the farm, which I can still do. So I'm not taking that off the table yet. Talk to old Jim about that. Right. But for me, like shaping and motivating the younger generation, you've heard me say probably 50 times now, we can do better. We can do better with recruiting people

Starting point is 03:04:46 to get into the intelligence community we can do better with training and teaching empathy and respect because there's a lot of case officers who like you mentioned it's like don't give a fuck you're not going to recruit really good people if you don't give a fuck um so i do regret not being able to do those things i don't know that i regret leaving i think i left at the right time. And I feel like now, remember I told you I'm mission focused. I feel like I figured out my new mission and I am still helping U.S. national security by helping the companies and the organizations within it because we're getting our lunch eaten by China and Russia and Iran and North

Starting point is 03:05:21 Korea. And they're stealing our IP and they're posing as employees when they're not, you know, all of these things. So I feel like I can actually help contribute again by doing what I'm doing. That's a whole separate podcast right there. It would be very interesting to have you in here with some of the people I've had in. I was telling you that before, but like, I want to think on that. Like you and Evie would be an incredible podcast because you did very different things. But I don't know if you're getting this on the camera

Starting point is 03:05:48 but the mannerisms and some of the communication is identical, right? Something there. She must be awesome then. Yeah, she's great. Love Evie. Shout out to Evie. But Shawnee, thank you so much

Starting point is 03:05:59 for coming into town to do this. We'll have your link down in the description for people. What was it? Viance Group. Viance Group. And we'll have to do this again sometime. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Of course you did. Awesome. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button

Starting point is 03:06:19 on the video. It's a huge help. And also if you're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory Podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory Podcast playlist link in the description below. Thank you.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - #239 - Intel Bin Laden Spy on Hunting "The Ghost" | Shawnee Delaney

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Julian Dorey Podcast - #239 - Intel Bin Laden Spy on Hunting "The Ghost" | Shawnee Delaney

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