Tangle - Reader Interview, Part 1: Jamie

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Jamie Costello is a 39-year-old American woman from Maryville, Tennessee, who feels politically homeless. She is also a disabled combat veteran who served in the Army for five years as a HUMINT collector/interrogator, and then as a defense contractor doing the same work for a little over five years. Today, we discuss her upbringing, what she experienced when deployed, and what she's doing now.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And this is our first installment of the Tangle People Reader Series, which I am super pumped about. We are going to be sitting down with five different Tangle readers from across the country

of all different backgrounds and political persuasions and geographical locations, and just exploring how they got here, why they're reading Tangle, what their life's about, all that good stuff that makes up what I think is a pretty interesting and diverse country that we have. Today, I am really excited to be sitting down with Jamie Costello to start us off. Jamie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm excited for this for all sorts of different reasons, but obviously we've met for the first time about two minutes ago on this Zoom. I love this because I don't really know

anything about you yet, and I don't know anything about a lot of the people who are reading our newsletter, listening to our podcast every day. But I do have in front of me what you filled out on the little forum where we submitted everybody's, you know, the 900 entries and we pulled out five people like a little digital lottery. And so I feel like it's fair, only fair, to share that with our listeners first. So everybody's sort of starting at the same place. You wrote in and said that you were a 39-year-old American who was living in Maryville, Tennessee,

and described yourself as feeling politically homeless. You said that you were a disabled combat veteran who served in the Army for five years as a human collector and interrogator, and then as a defense contractor doing the same work for a lot of money for a little more than five years. And now you are performing some soul level penance as a senior IT project manager for a San Francisco nonprofit. Super interesting story. I mean, just in that, those three sentences alone, I have a million questions for you. But I'm curious, you know, why you filled out the Tangle Forum in the first place. I mean, I was so interested when I did this. I was like, I don't know if people are actually going to want to talk to me or get on a podcast

or whatever, you know, it's like I do it for a living. But I was interested what motivated you to kind of throw your hat in the ring to sit down for a chat. I think one of the things I've always been most impressed with your newsletters and podcasts But I was interested what motivated you to kind of throw your hat in the ring to sit down for a chat. I think one of the things I've always been most impressed with your newsletters and podcasts is, like you say, you really do try to see both sides and then take all the hysteria out of it, which is awesome. And not enough people do that. So I figured I had no idea how many people would submit it, which is awesome. I mean, that's almost like a thousand submitters you had to go through.

I don't know. I really thought it'd be interesting if I could get chosen to talk with you and just kind of, I don't know, I guess in a way your style of journalism is rare. And speaking with anyone who does that for a living and is consistently lengthy as you do, just takes a lot of skill and a lot of research. I really respect that. Always nice to talk to people that you respect. I love it. I appreciate that. I don't know where else to start but the beginning, but I'm really interested to hear a little bit about where you grew up and how you grew up. I think the obvious kind of contact point is I mentioned your career in the army. This is a

politics newsletter, so there's some natural kind of synergy there, but let's start before that and we'll get into it. I mean, where are you from and what led up to you, I guess, deciding to enlist? I'm from a podunk town in South Carolina called Lugoff. It's like halfway between the capital of Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina. Literally the, you know, my parents' road is still unpaved. It's kind of like a lot of people, I guess, out in that area. It's just really rural. I grew up with a very large family. My mom is one of nine and my dad is one of 12. And so, yeah, big, big, happy Catholic families. They're very loud and incredibly confrontational. Yeah, I had a really tiny school. I mean, the only thing to do was, I mean, honestly, all they do is to pick mushrooms with a cat field. So I probably,

you know, still, I don't know, like 12, because what else are you literally going to do? The town kind of, like I said, it's really tiny. DuPont used to be there when I was growing, I think until I was probably 12 or 13 or so. And then they left and that was kind of like the big industry in town. And mills had closed down because it's on a very polluted river in that area. So everything just left and there wasn't a lot to do. People were starting to commute to Columbia and stuff, but not anyone I really knew. My dad had a pretty good job at Westinghouse. So he kind of kept everything afloat. Yeah, it's just really rural. I grew up, my parents still have their 30 acres in the woods. I don't visit often. I don't really like South Carolina at all. It's just the land, the sand,

and pine. So upstate's pretty. Yeah, just, I didn't really know what else I was going to do. I definitely wasn't going down a great path. I was way too involved with drugs and stuff. I didn't have a lot of structure growing up. There was a lot of rules, but everyone was working. So there wasn't really anybody there to enforce that. And I could see it get out of hand pretty quick and just went to an enlistment office and was like, I need to do this. And could pass all the checks and the backgrounds and the tests and all of that. And they're like, great, we need people. So yeah. Wow. Did you have siblings growing up? I do. I have a younger brother. He's two years younger than me. He's really awesome. We didn't speak for a long time, kind of that small town thing,

like the opioid crisis came through. And he definitely got caught up in that for the better part of 15, I think 12 or 15 years. So we were really close growing up. I've always kind of been very defensive of my brother. He's a wonderful, very tenderhearted kid who didn't do well in a really confrontation heavy family. Pretty sure it's part of the reason he went the way he did. We're very close now. He comes regularly up here to the mountains and we kayak and that kind of thing together and hike. And yeah, it's the only sibling that I have. It's interesting. I mean, I was in a Philadelphia suburb, but I know we were statistically the county I was in was hit hardest by the opioid epidemic in the state and certainly one of the worst in the country.

And it's so I mean, I know you're 39. I'm a little bit younger than you, but I for people of our generation, I feel like that's sort of becoming like this, like unifying crisis that we all live through. like this like unifying crisis that we all live through. It's just like, no, there's nobody in that 10 or 15 year span who I know that wasn't touched by it and like a pretty profound way, which is really interesting just to hear about you being in this kind of podunk, no paved roads town. That sounds a lot different than where I grew up, but there's still this sort of one common thing there that's, you know, it doesn't really matter where you were in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. My boyfriend's from this area, born and raised, and he lost his oldest stepson, I think it'd be seven years in January, to an OD. Yeah. I actually don't have a single friend at this time that's not affected currently with

either a parent, sibling, or close friend that is either caught up in it on the other side or dead. But everyone has somebody that has something. So a lot of people I went to school with, every time I go back home, I will ask about a certain individual and they're like, yeah, they're dead. And I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I saw that coming. But it doesn't make it any less sad. I mean, it's beyond a crisis at this point, but it's just so, it's so acute in certain areas. You mentioned the, I guess, kind of the rough geography of where you grew up and I don't want to make any assumptions, but do you remember, or were you involved at all politically back then? Like, do you remember

what the politics were like or how it felt growing up? Oh yeah. It's all religious. I hated it. I guess I've always had an issue with authority, which is strange. Went into the military, but yeah, I was raised in the church and it was Pentecostal. So there was, you know, incredibly, I mean, my mother who still has a lot of issues, like one year, you know, they were like burning like my Nine Inch Nails CDs and my, you know, Marilyn Manson t-shirts and like all these things are awful. And then like the next summer, she's teaching me how to like roll a split with one hand. And so it was like very inconsistent and back and forth like that. But when she was in her religious phases, it was, I mean, the town is still very much like that. It's nothing. If you

go through it, there are more churches than fast food restaurants even, which isn't how it is even here right outside of the Smokies. There was a lot of that. Kids were seen and not heard from, very popular then. I remember the Procter and Gamble or something. I remember them doing boycotts and there was like the satanic panic and all of that. And so everything was very right, very far right. Because that was what was going to save you. It was like, what was his name? The Tammy Faye Baker and those types that would do the big tent revival. You would travel to that. That was part of a vacation in the summer was going to a tent revival somewhere. Yeah, it was awful. I just wasn't that kid. Yeah, it never impressed me. I had a lot of questions. And my granny that

died in 03, she's an awesome lady. She used to always tell me when I was little, just look up to the mountains. If you want to wear gottas, just look at the mountains. I didn't live anywhere near them, but she was always really cool. As a kid, I didn't like to imagine six-pack ab Jesus on a cross kind of thing. It was my head. Jesus was like a purple unicorn. And I was real young and she was the only one in my life who didn't discourage me from that. And my dad's actually like, well, my granny's a Mexican immigrant, like over the Rio Grande kind of thing and picked cherries in Texas for years until she had my father and they came to South Carolina. And so she had, I think, just a very different view and really enforced upon my dad that you're kind of dark brown and these are not people who are cool

with that. So just fit in however you can. And he very much did and still does. That was just part of it. It was like, if you wanted to fit in, then that's what you did. You went with that evangelical Bible belt thing and it didn't like any of my music or art or books. So I wasn't a fan. So your dad was a half Mexican evangelical living in Podunk, South Carolina. Yes, still is, yeah. I think if anything encapsulates America, I think that's a pretty good slice of it. Yeah, he's still ardently very much that way. At this point, it's funny, their church, which we've had this around here a lot,

is I guess a very growing evangelical ethnicity is just like, you know, Hispanic and Latin people in general. And so their church, who was deteriorating, the church I was raised in was deteriorating, their congregation was waiting, and because they got a female pastor. And like everybody left, but my parents, because actually, I don't know why they stayed, but everyone left but them really. And then finally, she left to go somewhere with her child, I believe. And my parents were upset because the church doesn't actually own the land. It's the, whatever the Pentecostal convention is, a conference like owns the land and the church. And a Hispanic group came in and started using their church. My parents are all pissed about that. And I was like, seriously, you don't see the issue with

that, but okay. And they don't, they genuinely don't understand. Yeah, it's been a lot. We're topics we just don't touch. That was all understand. Yeah, it's been a lot. We're topics we just don't touch. That was all Thanksgiving was actually, was just topics we don't touch. I had a horrible time and never hosting it again. Yeah. I mean, the political side of stuff, especially on the Thanksgiving, I will say, interestingly, one of the things that I was surprised about related to Tangle that has kind of happened is I've heard from a lot of people have said it sort of made it easier a little bit to deal with some family members with whom they have pretty strong political disagreements, which has been cool that it's like

a touchstone for them to jump off on. But for some, for whatever reason, Thanksgiving, I guess you get everybody in the same room and throw like a little bit of booze and turkey in the mix. And it seems to be a pretty good recipe for the political fights. I would not allow alcohol. My grandmother started doing that at her Christmases before I could even drink and good on her, smart. And I wouldn't let it either. My mom, I don't know if she still does. Again, we don't talk because she got to a level of crazy when I joined the military, became very anti-Muslim. And I'm like, you guys don't talk because she got to a level of crazy when I joined the military, came very anti-Muslim. And I'm like, you guys don't have a single Muslim in your entire, I know you've never met one.

There's like no way you, it doesn't happen. And so then she went really crazy and then went to QAnon when it, I don't know, maybe several years ago. I don't know if she still is into that kind of crazy. Yeah, she has her time. So we just don't talk. It's about like the oak tree infestation that's killing the oak trees in their neighborhood or something like that. Once she went a level of crazy that I couldn't deal with anymore. I was like, we have safe topics and that's like, that's

it. I just don't feel a need to argue. And so you don't touch, you don't touch the politics because you're worried about hitting the third rail stuff. No, she's older at this point. And it's just, some people have a willingness to be open. And I appreciate that even if they can still tow whatever their line is, they're still willing to be relatively open. Maybe a lot of people just feel like everything has just really passed them by, whether it's economically or just ideologically, they're no longer in the same place. And she's the kind of person which I think a lot of people know that person in their life who just watch Hallmark Channel or whatever that channel is that reruns the Waltons time

and time again, because that's where they feel really safe because they just can't handle everything going on out there and they need some kind of big, grand explanation. It's like, no, the world just gives zero fucks about you. It's literally not personal. There's so many horrible things that happen. It's not, sometimes it is, but it's really not personal. And so she clings very heavy to the only thing she reads is her Bible. She's very proud of that. It underpins everything in her beliefs. So it would be a real gut-wrenching task to make her change or make her see a different view. She softened on some things,

which is nice. My boyfriend's brother is rapidly progressive and his girlfriend is even more so. So that was interesting to have those individuals at Thanksgiving and hear all that talk and she didn't comment at all. So I'll give her, that's the first time in my life I've ever witnessed that. It was somewhat of a success that she didn't comment. I wasn't really happy with the rapidly progressive stuff either. It was just kind of like, I'm just going to go eat an edible and just hang out over here. Yeah. It takes some gumption to host all those people in the same room, knowing that that's the stakes are there for that kind of thing to happen. So I give you some a lot of kudos for for not running away from that potential responsibility, even if you may never do it again.

You did it once, which is impressive. I just want to know it was possible. You did it once, which is impressive. I just want to know it was possible. Yeah. That's all I want to know was that it was possible, that it could be done. And I couldn't react, that she wouldn't react, and that we could coexist peacefully and everyone eat turkey and be happy. And we had that.

And I only need to have it once. I don't need it again. So I know it's possible. And that's all I really needed, was just to know that was possible. What did you sense, you know, going into the army? I mean, it's funny, the kind of childhood in the story that you're describing, I think, at least in my mind, I have a lot of friends who served from where I grew up. from where I grew up. And the story that you're describing was one that I think is pretty common, where it was sort of like some estrangement from home,

some rebellious nature, some like not totally sure what they wanted to do. And we're like, here's this thing that's a path, it's open. There are things about it that I really like. And they just sort of went and did it. I'm interested like in your experience in the army, if that was like, you ran into that a lot, where a lot of the people you served with had a similar background or upbringing as you. Yeah, a lot of them. It fell

in two areas where it was rural or urban. Just in my experience, I didn't meet a lot of suburban folks who came in. It was rural people or urban people. Yeah, not that I was close, but I don't remember a lot of suburbanites, but definitely a lot of rural and a lot of urban, just people who didn't feel like they had opportunities or didn't know what they wanted to do and paying for education is expensive. And it was like, yeah, I just, I have no idea what to do. Because you can spend two years, I think in any service, but I certainly know with the Army, you need a two-year enlistment and still get a free education. So two years isn't that bad, depending on what unit you go to, that's like maybe one, maybe two deployments, but usually it's certainly one. And that's enough. I mean,

for a lot of people. So I met a whole lot of those that were like two and three year enlistments, just coming in, usually infantry or like some kind of like that kind of jobs. And just to get the education and the many kind of benefits that they could from that. Tell me about like what happened in the beginning for you. I mean, you leave your hometown, you're feeling like I'm going to try this thing. I'm sure like most people, you didn't really know totally what to expect. How did those first six months or a year go and how did you end up? I mean, I'm very curious to hear about the human intelligence side of it because I think that's a really interesting place to land in the army. And I know there's a lot of really interesting work happening there. After the first like nine weeks in basic, I mean, that is its own weird thing when you don't,

I'm used to people yelling and screaming constantly, but directed at you, a drill sergeant is a whole different level. There's certainly a reason that you go by bus. Like I went to Portland and Wood and then Missouri. And so that's like a bus ride, you know, going from like South Carolina. I swear they get you there in the middle of the night on purpose so the drill starters can come on. Because the bus driver knows and they're like, hey, kids, you might want to wake up. You don't want to wake up to that. And a lot of us are just, you know, pissed off kids. And we're like, yeah, whatever.

Fuck you. We're going to continue sleeping. That's a really horrible thing to be woke up to. I'm sure they're all well aware of that. And that's why you get there at like midnight or two in the morning. It's all very disorienting as it's certainly intended to be. And then they break down your individualism and build up you as a team. There's some better ways to do that. And others, they certainly, if you don't know how to run, when you get there, they don't care. You will, I have shin splints that will never heal because they're just fractures from not

knowing how to run properly. The whole goal is to get you to like nine miles within so much time. That's a lot of mileage in nine weeks for someone to learn to run. But other than that, I mean, it's really learning if you're a kid who's not really very big on authority that you just have to learn to shut your mouth and do whatever it is that makes you expendable. I think that's the one thing I took away from my entire time in the military. That's the reason I love being a human intelligence collector, is if you can make yourself expendable, or sorry, inexpendable, then you're always going to get preferential treatment.

If you're just willing to be able to bring your own angle. And I don't really like taking the credit, even if I've done things. If you've got, I mean, you're commanders. If you're a human intelligence collector, it doesn't matter what it is you do. There's someone higher than you until you tell you the president. If you're like a junior enlisted person doing something like human intelligence collections, then your commander has whatever his set of priorities are. And if you and you have to make those yours for the most part anyway. If you can pay extra special attention to whatever his little pet scenario is overseas or whatever group of terrorism or just things that he dislikes, if you can focus on that, then they're going to give you a lot more leeway.

Other than the actual interrogations themselves, your downtime, I got a lot of autonomy. I think I had more autonomy than a lot of people I worked with in the military for that reason. I delivered and I listened to what was said. And then if I get everything done, just like people wanted it, you have your intel, you have your bad guy. I'm going to go out of here for like a day and a half and I'm going to go drink with so-and-so and just leave me alone. And they would. There's a lot of things you could get away with because you did what they asked you to, or you actually went above what they've asked you to do. It was interesting. Human intelligence collections, I mean, basically it's running sources. So sometimes when you go to a new place, you fall in on existing sources. If someone did what I did before and they do handoffs,

that wasn't the case where I went. We had not had any US personnel there for, I think, over two years at that point. So there was no one there to do a handoff with. Where were you serving? That was in Iraq. In Afghanistan, I got formal handoffs and everything. Well, actually every time after the first time I got formal handoffs. But for the most part, 70% of that job is reporting. It is writing reports. You are an alphanumeric value and you write your reports. Enough people read your reports or find them necessary. It's kind of like citations and scientific reporting. If enough people are citing what you're doing, it's helpful enough, then other people, agencies and other special people want to meet you or usually to take your

sources, which the big army gets really pissed about that because they don't want agencies or special forces to take their sources. But I always thought that was great. That means I did a really good job. They have more money and assets than I do. Hand them over. You can go do great things with people. I had some sources that people really liked that didn't want to work with other people. I had one that was a Hillary Clinton supporter. It was so hilarious. He was a very interesting little man. I say little because he was like, I'm 5'2". He was not much taller than me. He was a badass. There's really interesting stuff in the bath party. None of it good. I mean, all human rights violations, but was a wonderful person

to work with. That was one of the things, because when you have sources, you give them things, you give them money or you give them food, you give them whatever it is they want and scale on that based on the veracity of their information and what it turns around and the timeline you've known them. And all he wanted was a Hillary Clinton hat, like whenever she was running in 20, no, who's that? When did she run? I guess Obama, right? So, oh, wait, that's all he wanted was like a Hillary Clinton hat. I found that so funny. And I was like, okay, sure. I'll donate to the campaign to get you that. We had one, you know, we called him Johnny Walker because it's supposed to be a dry country, but it's not. All he wanted was like scotch. And it was like, yeah, that's easy. So it just, it depended,

you know, I ran women that were prostitutes and just all, all walks of life of people. It's kind of, you describe some of the people, it's kind of, you describe some of the people, people like, oh, those are horrible people. It's like, yeah, you don't go buy weed from like the really good kid on the corner. Like you have to go to someone who's not great. So, well, at least back in the day, now there's dispensaries. But yeah, like they were good people. I don't think I was probably a good person then either.

I mean, your whole job is to try to get someone to sell out their country or their family or their child or, you know, all kinds of things for you and for your safety. And you tell them it's also their safety. But after so many years, you realize it's not about their safety at all. It's weird. You know, you have different levels of priorities. So, you know, whatever is on the ground in your little town or city or your block in the city, because something like Baghdad, you know, split up into like 14 or 15 different districts. And then, you know, you may only run one district and you might run Shias, you might run Sunnis, you might get to work with Kurds. I never ran one, but I got to work with them and they were wonderful people. So everyone's got something different they want to view because

they think you can pursue their, for their pursuits, whatever those might be politically and vice versa. So you have what, you know what is on the ground tactical levels and those go all the way up to very strategic geopolitical goals. I never worked on the really high ones. I never got that senior. The level of puppet mastery that's required to be that high, it's very strange. The individuals who make long-term careers, I only met one woman and she was great and she was on her third marriage. And every man that I'd met that was doing the same thing private or for an agency was like on their fourth, fifth marriage, kids all over the world. It's just not something that lends itself to being with someone because you can't really say what you're doing, where you're going. You just leave in the middle of the night. Most

people aren't very cool with that. It brings out a lot because you're in a war zone for some of the places. Well, with Afghanistan and Iraq, you're in an active war zone. So, you know, your safety is kind of first and foremost. If you have like a personal security detail, I had a 12 man one and their security is certainly, you know, top of your mind whenever you have to go meet people. Cause you have to call people and be like, Hey, are you going to be here? Like you said you were, but when you're in places where bombs are set off by phones, like remotely, a lot of times they want to send out things to stop that from happening. But if they stop that from happening, then they stop your phone call. So you have to make a very quick decision of like, okay, we could be killed by an IED. But also,

we really want to talk to that guy and make sure he's there because he's going to take us to this guy's house that have all the bombs. There's a lot of decisions that have to be made. And the military, if they think you know what they're doing, and there's some captain somewhere who will kind of act as your case manager, sometimes they just throw you out there. And I had no idea what the fuck I was doing at all. And I was young. And well, I went up and down the ranks from E1 to E6 a lot. I was a horrible soldier. I was really good at what I did, but I was a bad soldier. So if I went at what I did, but I was a bad soldier. So if I went home, I'd usually get in trouble and get demoted for usually something drinking related. You have a lot of decisions that you end up making kind of in the moment, you and a squad

leader or a platoon sergeant who's senior to you, and in my case, would have been older than me. And a lot of them, though, just really like the adrenaline rush. And everybody does. It's not like you're putting 11 people in danger and you're just talking to one guy. You're on a radio. Everyone can hear it. Everyone doesn't necessarily get an equal vote. But you don't put anyone in danger without everyone being very aware of the level of danger. field just, I mean, that's what they joined it for. They wanted to go to war. A lot of people who that's what, you know, they play the video games. They want to go see what it's like. And it's not the only video game. But everyone, I guess, yeah, kind of went for that. Yeah. So human intelligence collections for certain areas, it's very different. It depends on if you're

working for like the Joint Special Operations Command, or you're working with agencies, or what we call like Big Army, which is like your, you know, your 10th ID, third ID, like your 82nd airborne, 101st. Those two are a little different than the rest, but just your big unit. They're just focused on different priorities, whether it's securing land and not seeding any of it, or it's rooting out specific terror cells, those kinds of things. And then after, I don't know, trying to think, we'd surged in 06. And so 06 and 07 were pretty crazy. And then after that, it was just, I think at that point, it started kind of turning more towards like nation building.

And things were just very different. Your priorities, the questions you were getting asked to get answered, like, because they see your alphanumeric identifier and they're like, well, you write reports on this. So maybe you know about these things. Ask this guy about these things. And it's like, that guy doesn't know anything about those things. Yeah, but he might ask him. And it's like, okay. And they don't. And not everybody reads all the reports very clearly. Several of us kind of had games. We try to get as much of the, what is it? Like Anchorman, just exact sentences

from Anchorman into report. So one of my sources was a jazz flute virtuoso. And it was kind of a joke. And then you get this request from on high that was like a jazz flute virtuoso. And it was kind of a joke. And then you get this request from on high that was like, where did he learn to play the jazz flute? It's like, oh shit, no, that was a lie. I have to write the next report. That was a mistake. Because you keep extensive files on everyone that you run as sources. So you know all the things that make them good. Well, you should as much as you can, however, how they have access to their information and what's motivating them and those kinds of things. And you try to make that as intangible as possible, but depending on your rotation and how long you're actually able to work with someone, it's really hard to get someone to be intangibly

motivated to work for you if they're only going to see you for six months, or if they're really poor, they don't, they don't give a shit about doing necessarily the right thing. They care about feeding their kids. All kinds of people want to talk to you. Some with, all of them with ulterior motives of some sort. Some of it ranged, some of it was really great stuff. Some people would literally bring you the severed heads of Iranians in their trunk and be like, is this cool? And you're like, no, no, it's not cool. No, it's not cool. And then you, I mean, you have a lot of them killed too. So there, it gets, it gets weird. Yeah.

You have a, I'm sensing a certain level of cynicism about your experience there. I guess I'm curious about fleshing that out a little. I mean, you're clearly like, you know, I, it sounds like, or it seems to me like the, the retrospective for you is that maybe some of the stuff you were doing was not exactly what you thought you were doing when you were doing was not exactly what you thought you were doing when you were doing it. I'd be interested in that. Yeah. Yes. It's taken like four years in therapy, I think, to get through the bulk of that. I think initially anyone who does, and I'd imagine it's the same way for cops. I don't know. I

haven't, I don't think I have any friends. Yeah. I never had friends that were cops. I guess cops may have the same thing if they run sources and that kind of stuff is like, you initially do it for a good reason. Like you have these set of things that you want to know and that'll make your community safer or whatever your objective is. And then over time, it's never enough because that funding is going to stop, you know, whether you're a cop in, I don't know, LA or New York or even here, you know, Maryville to the sea, like you have a certain objective and once it's met, then funding's cut for that. So if it's just never met, then funding is never cut. And literally the good times just keep rolling.

You know what? $10,000 weighs when it's... Because whenever you're given money to give to people, it's a massive pallet and it's weight. And so if you remove 10 grand or 100 grand or 400 from that, that's a's weight. And so if you remove 10 grand or a hundred grand or 400 from that, that's a specific weight. And when you get to the point where enough money's coming in, that you can just like weigh it and just leave with it. And you're like, why would you trust me with this much money? And all the, I think there's a lot of reportings come out from Iraq and Afghanistan, something similar. There's like no accounting for it. I mean, we have,

we had receipts, like everyone had to write receipts. You really did have to keep track of it, but somehow it just, parts of it just went missing. It seems. I think a lot of it is just, the objectives just continued to get more vague. And then there was a noticeable continuance of certain levels of violence. And you're like, if we, this person is a person, you know, responsible for these bombings or for whatever. And it's like a multi-headed hydra. I understand that when people say that you cut the head off or someone who pops up to take it over. Sometimes if you're dealing with like really formal terror cells, yeah. But also there are some people that just traffic and weapons from certain countries and we can pull them over and

they can hand you a card to someone who sits in DC and you're like, how the fuck do you have this? I caught you in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road. Like, how do you have this card? And then you see like enough of that. And you're like, oh, you know, it's common knowledge in the US where it's just, you watch like certain agencies create and fund smaller subgroups to try to battle some kind of whatever they feel is a threat at the moment. It's really easy to create your own mini militia. Like when you have a lot of money, you have things that you can or can't do. And you just get around that by having other people do it for you. And you can never ask anyone directly because that's illegal. You can't pay them directly to do it because that's illegal. But that's about it. Those are your only rules. It's just, you can't do this thing and you can't

ask for it to be done. You can't pay for it to be done. It's like, okay, but these people want to please you. They want your money. They want whatever safety or whatever status you can confer on them for some of them. where status of forces agreement went into a place in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, I think it was like four or five years later. And then at that point, you're like, what are we doing? All this stuff is still happening. We aren't out there anymore, but it's all still happening. And you just recognize there's not, you didn't really make a difference in an individual's lives. You can say you did for sure. I can think of, you know, some women that, well, girls that, you know, we made sure they could go to school safely. Certainly for some children who had insanely abusive, just torturously abusive parents, different things like that. You can say you made real difference. On a whole, like you, things just don't change. And you've been somewhere for a decade and things don't change. And like the one constant is us. And I ran a really awesome

shake for a long time. When I first met him, he threw a shoe at me and told me it was older than I was and told me to sit the fuck down. And he had one of these, I don't know what they are. They're issued in Uganda in their, one of their military branches. And it still had blood on it from when he was in the bath party and went to Uganda to help train soldiers or something. And he became my favorite guy. He was like 68 or 70 when I met him. I guess you wouldn't call him a good person, but he was a really fun source to run. And he would always just tell me, he's just like, I wish you would just leave so we could just have our civil war and just give it over with. He's like, you complicate everything with your money. And I was like, yeah, it does make you

stop taking it, but he wasn't wrong. So it was just uh yeah and after a while I couldn't really put on the uniform and look in the mirror when I had to wear because I didn't have to wear a uniform through most of my career and um but you always did when you went to go home and stuff and uh I just really couldn't look in the mirror because like what the fuck have we been doing you know you lose a lot of sources like you have like heads turn up on your your like your bases like you know, you lose a lot of sources. Like you have like heads turn up on your, your, like your bases, like, you know, doorstep basically, you know, or the head of their oldest son or things like that. And after a while, like you can only get so numb to that where you have to decide if that's what you want your life to be. Cause it's really, uh, it's incredibly exciting. It's

good money. There are people who do that all over the world. Um, but they're not happy people and you can't have normal relationships and you can really only be friends with other people who do that all over the world, but they're not happy people. And you can't have normal relationships and you can really only be friends with other people that do what you do. Or you can't talk about anything, really. You have to just have a whole other world because you already have a whole other name. So it's not that hard just to slide full that way if you really want to. And I didn't really want to. I thought I did, but I didn't really want to. want to. And I didn't really want to. I thought I did, but I didn't really want to. So you experienced some of that firsthand, the watching, seeing sources get killed, having their body parts turn up in front of you, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All of that for sure. And, or having to deal with them when they maybe did something stupid especially if you have to give them money, when you have give people that level

of poverty money they just throw it around. They're just so happy to have it. They want to buy for everybody. And it's like, where the hell did you get money from? And then they come to you inconsolable because their oldest son has been executed. And it's like, yeah, what did you think was going to happen? And it's, yeah. So you have to learn to empathize. I'm working on that in therapy now. It's like learning to find empathy again, because you have to bury the shit out of that. Like you cannot, I didn't feel like you could have that

and be successfully navigate like just all the personalities. Because you're, you know, you're dealing with US personnel of different backgrounds and ranks. And then you're dealing with like a host nation and people and you're dealing with your sources and and then other countries and what they need of you and it didn't seem to pay off really to have any like emotions for any of them. what was it like for you to watch the withdrawal from afghanistan this past you know a year or two ago it was really hard it was really hard for a lot of reasons. It could have been done earlier and probably better. It could have been done better just all around. There's so many things I don't know. And I have, and I have purposely not really

reached out to friends to know. It's really hard to know how many people we left behind. Like, not like, well, I mean, some of the people, but just a lot of people that helped us. Because, you know, it's just death. Like, that's, and, oh, it's not, I mean, not even death. Death isn't that bad. Like, there are so many things worse going to happen to their families. Because, you know, if you want to drive a lesson home, you don't kill the person who did it. You just kill every single thing they love.

And just leave them alive. And they have to live with that for the rest of their lives. That is so much worse. Just thinking of all the people who risk so much, who a lot of times really did believe in what we were doing, even when we cynically went about our business. It is painful. It is painful that everything worked out in such a way that it did, that so many people had to basically stop seeing humanity for that day. Like you had to take care of, you had Americans had to get out. You had your military personnel. They had to get out. You had whoever they can bring in who were on whatever list to get them out.

But then everyone has to save the people who are left behind to clean up when that plane leaves and everything like, and that they also have to get out. That's a terrifying thing. And when you think of the size of that crowd and that it's all, you know, it's just a massive crowd all in one area. Not, I mean, they're just the general like stampede. Like that's certainly an issue,

but just like, you could just shoot into that crowd. Like you just, when you get so many people together, like the ability for like the Taliban and those kinds of bad actors just shoot, because they all want to go to the US. They want to leave. Like those are not people the Taliban cares about at that point um it's it's devastating like it's uh you're so sad for the people that have to close that door and have and have to be like no we can't

we can't accept anymore and that what that has to do to them on a soul level to close that door um or to hold that gun and be like no no, you really can't come forward anymore. And it's a woman with a baby. And it's like, you really have to tell her, no, you know exactly what you, and you aren't doing them to that. It's all governments. Like you as a soldier or as a Marine, you're not doing that woman and her baby, but you know, in your heart that you were doing that woman and her baby, even though you can't let them in, and that you really have to shoot if she keeps coming forward. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

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average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. Yeah, and there's a part of you that has to go dead inside to do that. And you don't just like get to reanimate that part of yourself later. I mean, which is why, you know, you have the suicide levels you do in veterans and the drinking, so much drinking. Yeah. You can't

ever just turn that part of you back on. Like Once you're in a position where that's a decision you have to make, that's a long way back to feeling like a human again. How long did you end up serving and when did you reenter, as they say? So I ended up doing in the Army five years and then for a couple of different defense contractors another five years. So I got my official, like, I'm out of the army on christmas day 2010 it was like the best thing they ever gave me and my education that's that's good and uh came out formally i moved down to knoxville tennessee with my ex-husband in like march ish 2015 and then was doing like a 10 day back and forth, like 10 days in DC,

10 days here, 10 days there. And then overseas as necessary for like a year. And then just was just really disillusioned with everything, just the state of what the US had become in 2015. I never saw any of that feed over into my military service, which I was pretty happy about. It was, on the whole, pretty apolitical. But yeah, it's just at that point, there just wasn't. It was just really hard to find anyone or any mission to work on that you felt really good about that I was qualified to do. I should say that, yeah, I just couldn't really deal with it anymore. And my ex wanted to move here to be close to her family. And it's so much cheaper to live here. So much cheaper than DC. So we, I agreed. And then after

being here for a while, everyone was just so nice. Like I remember moving here. I was like, you know, what the hell do they want? Like, do I need to tip them more? And he's just like, no, it's public. They pay him enough money. Like you don't have to tip them. I was like, they're just being that nice for no reason. They don even know me and it's just genuine like this is a really uh a really nice place to be and it was just hard to continue to have that incongruous um life that i get to come back to this you know living well not here but living where i did and the life that i had and but then going overseas and um and even just going back to dc just to work um and to work in all the insane maneuvering to pay for defense slots and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I just couldn't deal with it anymore. The incongruence

was like, it's been like a pretty driving force, I think, in my life for change. It's just like when things get really incongruent, I'm just like, I can't. I have to do something about this. I don't sleep well. If my sleep'sruent, I'm just like, I can't, I have to, I have to do something about this. I don't sleep well. If my sleep's messed with, I'm pretty awful. So yeah, I think that's true for all of us. Yes. So as you know, through your career arc, I guess in the, in the military, you had this, the human intelligence side, you also did interrogation work, which I know is a whole

other kind of can of worms to open, I guess. But I guess I'm two part about that. I mean, I'm curious, A, how you sort of learn that. I mean, how you train for that and B, what it was like actually implementing some of that stuff. I mean, there's a huge range of what that looks like, obviously, in the military, but it seems like a pretty important piece of, of the puzzle in terms of, uh, the kind of work that you were doing over there. Um, so before I joined like, right, or no, actually it was, Bob was still in training. Um, they split those two jobs, uh, human or no, they combined them. Sorry. Human intelligence and interrogations used to be like

two distinct jobs. Um, I had their own like, uh, African-American identifier for, for jobs in the army. Um, actually I think, well, I can only speak 100% for the army. Those were two distinct jobs and they had them together. So you had, you got to learn both. Interrogations, there, so there are different, I did technical interrogations primarily. I did a few in facilities, which facilities, I mean, like, you know, famous ivory grave, that those are different types of, and well we all do the same training it's like out at port huachuca in arizona and the most beautiful like desert high mountains like it's really pretty out there um really close to a cool like hippie artsy area busy like you're like 45

minutes away from there it's very strange but yeah so uh my fort chuca i think is like we're almost the intel training for the army is done in a lot of other countries. And we had like actually all the branches came to that training as well. So I think the Army, maybe at least at that time, was the only one you could come in and do that training, which is a horrible idea. You should have some kind of damn life experience because you have a 17-year-old learning to be an interrogator. Yeah, they're not very effective. They just they don't have anything to base a lot of people's reactions off of. They haven't really lived a lot. We're 18-year-olds. So yeah, you literally go through training and there are different levels to that. There are certain kinds of

styles or I guess approaches is what the formal term is called of ways that you interrogate. Some of those you are not allowed to do without certain types of training or some of those need clearance from like commanders or some of them the white house and there's all kinds of different ways you were taught to interrogate I only did facility interrogations when whoever was in there I may have had a lot more knowledge than someone else because of other sources that I ran and there's like really specific information I needed to know. And I would get flown wherever I needed to go to do those interrogations and get your information and you leave. Facilities are, I mean, for Americans or whoever runs them, they're not that, I mean, it's weird. It's like a massive prison. I mean, you know, well, not massive, not like our, I mean, they're nowhere near the size of like our federal

like prisons or anything, but it's a pretty sizable like county jail like size. And people are, you know, in prison cells and you walk and you get yours or you don't, it depends whether you show your face before they see you the first time. That's part of the way you're going to run your approach is like, you know, how much they need to know of you, what kind of, you know, how you arrange the chairs even or the room or which translator you, or interpreter you use. Uh, some of them, um, a lot of, uh, like Arab Muslims were not a big fan of like, if you had like, um, a Congolese like interrogator, they would not talk to them. They would rather talk to you in English. Um, or if you had a female interpreter, they were not a fan of that. So how you set the stage for that individual to walk in and be interrogated really was very

personalized to them. When I did it, yeah, that was like the most thing is it depends on who I was talking to and what I needed to get from them. And I'm 5'2", I'm a female, so I'm not very intimidating. But to also have a woman yell at you and say certain things, especially if it's in Arabic to them, it definitely puts them off their game. And so, I mean, it's a lot of, I think, interrogations depending on what it is. You want someone on the defensive. It's really hard to lie if you're on the defensive because your mind is just extending really quick. And so if you can kind of pin someone with that verbally, then sometimes you can get of pin someone with that verbally,

then sometimes you can get better information. It just, it really depends on the person. Sometimes you get like really hard people who, you know, have been in Iran in prison or were imprisoned by Saddam or, or whoever. And those are not people that I'm ever going to break. It's just, that takes a whole level of effort that I was not legally allowed to do. And, and again, as five foot two female, it's like, they've been through a lot. Like how, how bad are we really going to make it? You're not going to be worse than Saddam. give them to the Kurds and be like, well, good luck. Otherwise you're going to go up there. And they're like, oh, well, okay. I can talk to you. It's like, okay, that's cool. But I'm not going to be able to do anything that's going to be worse for certain people. So, but most of my interrogations, the bulk of them were done like tactically. So you hit a house, there's like, you know, eight people in there, whatever you bring out all the military age males, you interrogate them all. It was long, long nights because you spend,

you know, you try to all day, you plan it, and then you go and execute your mission at, you know, whatever time of the day or night you go, and then you spend all night long interrogating people. And some of it's just nothing. It's really a wrong place, wrong time. It's kind of like everybody you can hear, you know, first-person eyewitnesses is incredibly not something you can rely on. So someone may have seen someone doing something and they're going to deny it, but they swore to you. That's what they saw. You know, what are you going to do? You don't, you don't may not understand a lot of the context. And there's some people you can, I actually still have a picture. You can show them a picture of them with a gun and a certain area. And you're like, this is you. It's like, that's not me.

It's like, no, no, this is you. Like this, this is, this totally, it's not me. And you'll sit there for an hour. This is you, this is not me. And then sometimes it's amazing what people will do for just creature comforts of like, you know, cereal and a pillow. So it really depends on, interrogation is so much dependent on what that person's experience is and what, I guess, really what they hold dear. I mean, if someone's going to sell out, selling out an ideology is really hard, really hard. I mean, it's like, I think of it with my mother and her religion, like someone's going to sell out, selling out an ideology is really hard, really hard. I mean, it's like I think it was my mother and her religion, like to get her to sell out Christianity.

Like, what would that take? You probably could torture her. She wouldn't do it. It really depends on what it is that motivates them and trying to figure out a way to make it reasonable to them to want to speak to you about something. Because they may go, you know, 50 percent of information, but maybe not the whole thing. And then they can, you know, they're willing to go 50% and still be okay with themselves. Um, but they wouldn't be okay with a hundred percent and they feel like they fully sold out their friend, family or whatever. And there's a lot of, um, I mean, I think, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's like that everywhere. There's a lot of mothers that they're not going to tell you anything about their son, no matter how horrible it is, no matter if you show them the pictures and the videos,

or I'll let them meet the person in person that they've done horrible things to like, they're just they're not going to do it. Their son is their baby. And he is he's a wonderful, wonderful human being. So it just, it really depends. And so the way I'm going to approach it really depends, you know, did I apprehend you doing something that's, you know, a key giveaway that you were definitely there or, you know, how did the whole thing happen? And so, yeah, it's all very situationally dependent. We have rules and plans because you're supposed to write a plan. And before you go in, you have this whole plan you write up, even if you quickly jot it out. I'm like, OK, this is what I want to do.

This is the person. This is the place. This is the thing I'm going to ask about. And then you submit it to someone and you go on and do your interrogations. And sometimes they have questions. Sometimes you have people who observe and they're like, hey, you need to ask them about this. And it's like, it's not a good time because they don't know anything about it. They're just, especially like commanders or senior personnel in the military or officers who just really just are so gung ho for war.

There are so many of those guys and they're good in some places. They're like, yeah, you need to ask of this. It's like, I just got started. That's, that's not what you ask at the beginning. Like this is no, let me handle this. And then you have some of them that just go off and do it themselves and doesn't often go great. So it, it really depends who's present and that kind of thing. And then also who you have

present with you. Like do I, if I have two or three guards with me, they're gonna be like, oh, she thinks I'm a badass. But I kind of need one nearby because I am five too. Even if they're zip tied, depending on how they're dealt with, I still don't necessarily want to be alone. So yeah, just it's a real set and setting kind of thing. You mentioned, you know, when you filled out the Tangle form, you described yourself as being a disabled combat veteran. I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about that. Well, the bulk of the ratings PTSD, but also hearing loss, pretty, at this point, pretty significant hearing loss in my right ear. And yeah, those were kind of in my right shoulder was which I've had surgery on a couple times.

And my arches fell, but they rated me 0% for that. So I was a little, a little frustrated with that because I still have plantar fasciitis issues, but at this point just shoes with zero drop are helping. Yeah. So those are the three issues, like shoulder, hearing, and PTSD. How did you feel that, you know, I guess coming out of that, like we talked a little bit about the re-entry. I know you had this time period where you were working in D.C. and, you know, you've mentioned sort of offhandedly going to therapy and stuff like that. I mean, what's your experience been like trying to have that addressed as a disability and trying to find support for that as a former soldier? I actually took me two years after I came out to even apply.

I felt weird applying for it because Um, cause I signed up, I did all the things, no one ever twisted my arm and told me to, you know, go and do any of the things that I did in the military. Um, so I felt really weird, um, doing it and yeah. And I had a, I had a really great program manager that I worked for in DC who really encouraged me to do it, mostly because I drank a lot, like a whole lot. When I was in the office, like when we actually had to come into offices or go to trainings or give trainings, like, you know, it was almost like immediately as soon as five or whenever we were done, there was a group of us who were just like head off and go drink. And he, I i think is maybe a daughter's my age he may have

felt more like he could talk to me um yeah a lot of it was the drinking and the drinking was just to forget i mean i was able to work like in godly hours and uh go to school full time like as pretty much a very high functioning alcoholic but it was still really clearly apparent and um i drank i didn't i never drank like that as a kid at home. Not that much, at least. But the military, you certainly learn how to drink. And so that was a big reason is that he thought if I could get rated for PTSD, then I would have like the VA ability to go to a therapist. And I did. I went and got rated for it.

You know, it's really weird when you go and you apply for disability. Like a PTSD is one of them. You have to get like these three incidents of like, why would, why did you have PTSD? But they also can't be classified examples because this is going like a medical review board. So you can give so many details and then you go and you meet with people and they ask you questions about it and you try to give them all the details you can. And so I'm not sure if it makes you look like you're lying. I feel like they think like, oh, they're probably lying. It's like, no, this, that part's classified. I can't really explain this or tell you who exactly was there or where exactly it

happened. It took almost 18 months for it to work its way through the system, which is pretty, pretty quick at that time. That would have been like 2012 or so I would have submitted it. And they gave me 80%. And I was like, wow, that is more than I expected. And I was like, that's awesome. And walked away from it. And it feels weird to get paid money for that. Yeah, I have a lot of friends who are like, you know, thank you for your service.

It's like, what the fuck are you actually begging me for? Like, I'm always genuinely interested in people to say that. It's like, well, what do you think we did in your name that you'd be thankful for? But it feels weird to get disability or i mean the hearing loss i kind of get in the shoulder sure but um even the ptsd i mean i i understand it rationally but uh it's just uh it was hard to apply for it and it's uh yeah it's still weird to get it um i don't want to give it back but yeah it's uh it's something that you wrestle with pretty i wrestle with at least regularly you because you feel guilty yeah yeah because it's like no one twisted your arm to do any of that like you signed up for all

that like you especially so uh when you do interrogations like when you very first well for the whole overall training for human intelligence interrogations like you have this whole huge thing that you sign and it very clearly states you were going to do some unethical shit. You were going to lie. You were going to, I mean, it's a whole very long document. That my battle buddy I had at that time, she, she was a sweet kid from Florida. My gosh, she would decorate our barracks room like in Tinkerbell stuff.

Like she was obsessed with Tinkerbell. She was just way too nice for it. I thankfully helped her get out on a, I forget what it's called, but pretty much like you don't fit for the military. And she definitely didn't fit for that job. Anyway. Yeah. I helped her get out of the military because I didn't think it would do well for her. And it seems she's doing well now. It's a good choice. But so they're very clearly tell you, like, you're going to do a lot of unethical stuff and, you know, in all of your training, everything that you train for physically in an actual like school and stuff, you know, that you're going to do bad shit. And then you go and do the bad shit. And of course, it makes you feel like a bad person. And you have, you know, all kinds of plenty of people

have all kinds of reasons they can justify it, but it doesn't make it any less bad. It'll keep you up, you know, any less at night. So I just, I felt, you know, I signed up for that. Like I very willingly signed that paper. So I, yeah, it was hard to feel like I deserved it or still deserve it. Yeah. I mean, I can certainly understand that. I think like, not that my opinion matters much, but from an outsider perspective, it seems like the number one thing we should be doing is taking care of the soldiers and the veterans who come home and, you know, just having a 45 hour long conversation with you where you're describing some of the stuff you witnessed firsthand. I think it's, I'd be worried if someone didn't have PTSD coming back from that. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's not a lot of that work. I don't,

I think is like so far outside of human nature and what you're supposed to experience and what we're like prepared to experience. Yeah. Cause they'll tell you, but you don't know until you do. And you're like, Oh, Oh, that's what that is. That's horrible. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's a, anyway, I mean, when I think about where my tax dollars go, I think funding programs like that is something I'm actually pretty keen on. So in that regard, I hope to absolve you from some of your guilt because I certainly don't think you should have it. I guess related to that, I mean, it's funny for all the things that we've sort of talked about. I mean, again, I know from my friends

who have gone through the military and gotten out that the kind of re-entry to normal civilian life is also hard for a lot of reasons, you know, related to stuff like PTSD, but also people miss the action and the excitement and miss elements of the army. And I'm curious, like what it's been like for you. I mean, tell me a little bit about, I guess, your life now. And also, you know, do you miss some of it? I mean, do you have any of those feelings too, along with, I guess, the stuff that sort of produced a more cynical and attitude about some of the time you had there? I do miss it. Well, so there are massive databases full of all these reports from people all over the world who do the same thing in some capacity. And depending on your level of access, you can see different ones in maybe different countries.

I do miss seeing that because you'll see certain headlines in places. You're like, that could have been everything. And then if you could read behind the details and you'd find out, no, it wasn't everything. So a lot of that I miss a lot, just knowing what would actually happen. I miss that. I wonder a lot about certain sources I had. Some of them I'd be terrified if I ever saw again, but I do. I wonder about a lot of those people and I hope that they're okay and alive and that their kids are well. So yeah, there's certainly an element of that. Reentering the civilian world, I had a stint in between the nonprofit I'm at now and coming out. And I worked for, at the time,

it was called Scripps. They owned like a HGTV and a food network and all that stuff. And in Knoxville, we always, we joke, they were like one of the three golden handcuffs companies. Like they paid you really well for this area and you couldn't get paid anywhere else. So if you actually live to your means on that paycheck, then you were stuck because there was only like two other places to go to and they weren't any better. And I worked in it in there and it was weird. You had,

you're very used to talking to people a certain way. You don't talk to normal civilians. It's a lot of cursing that they're not comfortable with, but I still curse a fair bit, but not, not like, I mean, I think I curse less now because I have a very young nieces that don't talk to normal civilians that way. It's a lot of cursing that they're not comfortable with, but I still curse a fair bit, but not like, I mean, I think I curse less now because I have very young nieces that don't, I don't want to hear a four-year-old say fuck a million times. It doesn't sound like any fun. Yeah. So I had to definitely learn to talk a different way. Depending on where I got to work in the military and with the people I got to work with in agencies and other countries, there was a level of professionalism and competency that was just outstanding.

It was it was really good. Everyone could be counted on. It was not that way at all in the civilian world. You had so many inept and competent people. And I mean, the military is not exceptional from or any different than like a lot of your big corporation. People fell upward all the time, but they usually fell upward. They were kind of a really weird title that, you know, they just, you know, they didn't know what else to do with them. So they kind of put them over here, even though they may have gotten promoted, they're not in any chain of command and they can't, they have no decision-making power.

That was not the case in civilian world at all. So that was a big, like corporate world was a very big jarring moment for me, was just the level of incompetency and the passive aggressiveness. It's the one thing about the military, very direct. You kind of need to be, you know, you need to say things as clearly and as directly as you can. Time is of the essence always. And that was just not the case. Decision makers were, if you could get them in the meetings, you know, very mealy mouthed in there, whether they wanted to fund a project or continue with a project or, and there was just a very unwillingness to, just a deference to seniority,

whether that, whether people had any technical, well, not what I did, technical ability or communication skill. And I was really genuinely surprised by that. And it did not help me to slow down drinking because I didn't know how to interact in that world. And I worked with all men for the most part in the military. So I had like two women that I regularly, like actively always worked with. Well, not always, but for a time regularly worked with. So I wasn't used to so many women. And you know, stereotypes about women in offices. Sometimes though, especially in tech, I kind of had thought that it was really cool that there were like, you know, female managers in tech. And I was like, yeah, that's awesome. Except for they all wanted to kick the ladder down behind them and not let anyone

else climb up. And I didn't see that level of in with the men. So yeah, I didn't know how to deal with that. It took me three years, I think, to actually make female friends and competent people. And now my very small friend group of 10 or so is seven women. But it took me a while to get used to it because that passive aggressiveness was just not something I was used to. So it was really hard at first. I was not well liked at all. My team that I got put on, they liked me because I got things done for them and I cleared obstacles for them because people would just kind of pussyfoot around how they wanted something done. And it's like, all right, they'll let me know. And I'm like, no, we have a deadline. We need to make this thing. That matters. So I'll go to talk to these three people, and we'll get this thing moving.

You get working. And people don't like when you do that. So I had to learn office politics. And I wasn't good. I mean, there was, I'm sure, there certainly were political games in the military, and I didn't play those well either. I was doubly bad in an office. So yeah, I stayed there for five years because it was easy money, easy gig.

And I could really just do other kind of training on the side that I pay for myself to try to learn more about the IT world. And I did. Yeah, I just kind of used that as a place to just kind of chill out and I guess reintegrate back into life. They really hated to fire people. I don't know why. They really hated to fire people though. So you could really just goof off and they wouldn't care. So I didn't goof off but um i certainly didn't contribute as much as i should have um i did do a lot more like just focusing on me yeah and it worked out relatively well but it was strange and there's there's a lot of like veteran groups um especially i mean the people in tennessee like to think of themselves in the south but i i brought up in south carolina i don't think this is the south

so there's a lot of veteran group and stuff and they always want you to participate. And they're so proud of their veterans. And I'm like, what the fuck did you do? Like, I don't, okay. You must have had a way better time than me. And if you go to BFWs, you know, it's just a lot of drinking and rehashing, like the good old times. And it's like, I didn't actually have, in retrospect, I didn't, I don't really want to talk about this. There was can't sometimes, but also don't with a lot of it, talk about it affectionately.

So it was kind of like doubly alienating is everyone was just like, oh yeah, you started used to the military. It's like, yeah, I do other things though. So it was weird. My ex-husband was Air Force guard and never got to deploy while he was in on active duty. He got to go to Portugal and Iceland, which I was super jealous of, but didn't get to go to war. So it was always a point of contention with us. I used to be a lot meaner and very emasculating. So for therapy in 2018, I was

a whole lot meaner. And so, yeah, it was just weird. I didn't feel like there were any safe places. I guess I didn't work with a lot of women at all. So the men that I did work with, few, I still talk to to this day, but a lot of them are remarried or were married at that time. And, um, wives are not a big fan of like you knowing their husband and that level, because it's a side they're never going to know of them. So a lot of times I couldn't remain friends. So like, I don't really have a lot of veteran friends. Like I have one female friend still in Texas and like one in Chicago, a male and another friend in Virginia. And that's like, that's it. So it's kind of, I don't know, it's a weird part of my history, but it's, it's weird. People really like to play it up. Like, especially, I mean, around Veterans

Day or July 4th, they're just like, yeah. And it's like, what are you so patriotic about? Like, what do you think we're doing overseas in your name? You know, they don't really see that. They just see the, you know, stars and bars and I get it. You know, you're, a lot of this, I guess, is playing into sort of my last line of inquiry, which I found really interesting about the forum that you filled out, which was just that you said

that you felt politically homeless, you know, and I get some of that from some of your answers here. But I'd be interested to just hear you flesh that out a little bit about like, you know, why you think of yourself that way and sort of what the what the conflict is for you that makes you feel politically homeless. One of the big reasons I got out of military and did not stay was the money like aspect of like funding, whether it's actual like like companies like KBR or one of those things like that funding was just ridiculous with no compete bids and stuff also just the sheer amount of money being spent and it's all taxpayer dollars and so you start feeling really weird when you think about that you're just like oh what are we what are we doing with this i mean it just flows like water and you're like what are we what are we getting for it like what am i getting for it like that's my taxpayer dollars too but like what am i getting for this and what are we, what are we getting for it? Like, what am I getting for it? Like, that's my taxpayer dollars too. But like, what am I getting for this? And what are these people?

What are the Iraqis? What are the Afghanis? What are, you know, depending on what other country you might be in, like, what are they getting from this? And you're not seeing a tangible change. Like you're not, I mean, there's some schools built for sure. There are hospitals built. But those hospitals, you know, it's like eight, nine times the amount of money.

And not just because you have the grease hands, because sure you do. You do it in a lot of places in the world, but way above and beyond that. And like I said, to go be a defense contractor, to do like similar work, it's like, you know, you could in the military making like $36,000 a year to do the exact same job for $360,000 a year. And the only thing changed is your reporting structure. So just things like that. And then being in that world, just seeing just how contracts were assigned really bothered me, like in the military, the procurements in general, well, entire DOD,

like just how those are done. It's just software even, like a lot of that's specifically built not to be interoperable because then it keeps whoever builds it with that contract forever you know a lot of it's built so a general layperson can never run it because that keeps that contract going forever and just seeing how that worked because when you work with certain systems you're like oh I want to be able to do this thing I don't want to have to call a tech support guy to update this and do that and no like I want to do this they're like like, Oh no, that's not built for that. It's like, well, why the hell not? Like you tell me it's a tactical system. I can't use it. Yeah. Well, we have a maintenance support contract and you're like, Oh, okay. And people's kids, you know, go to, go to college based on

that. And you know, an entire, all of DC runs on that. And, um, when I left, uh, DC, the program manager I have there that I love to death told me he was just like, you know, some people see behind the mask and they're OK with it. He's like, some people see behind the mask or not. He's like, that's OK that you're not. And I was like, but it's still not OK this happened. And then I as I go back out in the civilian world, I think it's just realizing that it's just captured every. that it's just captured every, I don't want to say everything that that's absolute, but it's captured a lot. Whether that's, you know, the way higher education is done or you're running for a local office, like the person who ran undisputed or unopposed here. I mean, like the money he spent on a campaign when like no one's opposing him, like, where do you get this money? And, you know, and so you'd have to have more than that to run against them and just even little things like that it's just uh it's very disconcerting because i certainly

went to the military with like an ideal of uh of what america was and i know we never live up to our aspirations like nobody does but i hope we would have tried harder than that and i was so much wanting it just to be like on the right or kind of thing, but it's really not. I can't tell a large difference between the parties, even the extremes or the, you know, very corporate center part of them. It bothers me really deeply. And I think that's where like the politically homeless comes from is just, you know, I have to mark off like, you know, disabled combat veteran, and whether I put female or not, it doesn't matter. My name's Jamie. So it's spelled with an IE. So people aren't really sure. But you know, if you write that, depending on how you phrase that, and whether I put in that, like, you know, I'm also

Mexican, like, depends on who, like from a political office, you may want to talk to, like who will speak, who will take time to speak with you? Because like, how many boxes do you check? And, you know, how much money can you possibly donate or bring in? And just really disillusioning. And I don't like to feel hopeless, but sometimes it takes a lot to feel like there's hope. You talk about priorities that could win you over in a politician or a political party. What do you find now as the attractive talking points and angles and stuff when it comes to not just maybe the military, but generally speaking, the kinds of rhetoric from politicians that you're looking for, interested in, given all the experiences you've had? I really miss Justin Amash and I wish he was still in politics. I used to love that guy because he'd make a vote. He'd give some very long, multi-threaded tweet about the justification.

Even if I didn't agree with it, I appreciate pointing out all the precedent for it. I miss politicians like that. I guess I've been more focused on more local things. Well, that's not true. I mean, you can't get away from all the national stuff. I i think on a presidential there's nothing i've heard up there that i'm like yeah that's great i keep wondering how much things cost ultimately and who you're pandering to i'm trying to think of what i could say would actually speak to me i think someone who's just willing to just face down like political money was anyone who wants and there aren't a lot of people who want to take that stance i always i, I don't remember who said it, maybe it was George Carlin, that politicians need to wear suits like the NASCAR does, like for all their sponsors all on them. I'd be okay with it then. At least we'd know, you know, where things are coming from, or who is talking for you. reform that actually cuts across both because at this point some of the uh more authoritarian leaning like you wrote uh on the newsletter on with uh twitter and like the certainly there was

no new information uh revealed by matt taibbi and i'm a huge fan of his like you know almost his sub stack and most of the useful idiots and stuff and but i think just the fact that that happened and that there's just so much that we're willing to just kind of give away. I mean, whether it's the EULA agreement or what is it? Those crazy AI avatars that everybody has right now, you pay $7 and it goes through your, whatever your social media account is and creates all these avatars for you. It's like, yeah, what's being done with the, you signed all that away.

It now has, you know, it now has all of your social media data and your, your, any location data and contacts, all this stuff associated. When share that. And just that no one cares that it's supposed to come, who cares at this point? It's like a lot of people. Um, so I think anyone who's willing to tackle maybe that privacy angle, um, because there's no shortage of very interesting capabilities, even when I was in the military or after working with them, like a lot of the stuff like the Israelis have, but like their Pegasus system, like there's a lot of really cool things that in war are interesting, but then when they bring it home domestically, because where else is that money going to go? A lot of money was made fighting

wars. We don't have big wars anymore, but now we have something, we'll find a boogeyman at home to fight and spend money on that. So anyone who wants to take on that kind of privacy or data rights, getting money out of politics as best as it can, like that really speaks to me, is just trying to just bring accountability and transparency, like just really basic fundamental tenets, just accountability and transparency. There's no, I don't can't think, and I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't hear anyone on a national level speaking on that inconsistently.

They might for one particular thing, or they might, if it hurts, whatever the opposing party is, like almost with the railway workers and their strike that you had, like Republicans supporting that made me laugh so hard. It was the right thing for the wrong reason,

kind of, but not kind of certainly. But that it's like, you know, can we do something where it's not all optics? And I just haven't finally found a lot of people who still do reality. Yeah, I certainly appreciate that perspective. And I think like the money out of politics is something that's big for me. And I see it in my work a lot, how,

how insidious it can be. Well, listen, Jamie Costello, we're way over an hour here, but I love the it's I, you know, it's, it's, um, I didn't really know what to expect and I'm, I'm glad you were the first, the first tangle reader in the hot seat. I appreciate your vulnerability and a lot of the honesty about your experiences. I think this will be a really interesting thing for a lot of people to hear. And yeah, you're just, you know, you were lucky. Number one, the first one out of the hat on the 900 people who we drew. Yeah, I've literally never won anything. Well, it was cool. When I got that

email, I was like, Oh my gosh, I was also pumped to, uh, click into, you know, the email address and see that I had somebody who was like, I'm a disabled combat veteran who did human intelligence in the army. I mean, that's pretty much, uh, in terms of interesting people to chat with, that's, that's basically a jackpot from my perspective because I'm fascinated by this stuff. And you've had a lot of really profound and difficult and unique experiences, I think. So I appreciate you sharing them with us. And yeah, I hope you keep reading Tangle and stick around. It'll be fun to drop this into a collage of our readers going forward. So thank you so much for giving

me some of your time. Absolutely. Thank you for all your time you put into all of your content. It is much appreciated and much shared by me. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. All right. Well, I appreciate it. We'll be back, I guess, with our next person in the hot seat. It'll be tomorrow for those of you listening to this, though, for me, I think the recording's happening next week. So thank you guys for tuning in and you'll be hearing from me soon. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager,

Magdalena Bokova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. Thanks for watching! book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on

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