The Team House - Chief of Ops for the CIA | Jack Devine | Ep. 277

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jack is a 32-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”). Mr. Devine served as both Acting Director and Associate Director of CIA’s operations outside the United States from 1993-1995, where he had supervisory authority over thousands of CIA employees involved in sensitive missions throughout the world. In addition, he served as Chief of the Latin American Division from 1992-1993 and was the principal manager of the CIA’s sensitive projects in Latin America.Between 1990 and 1992, Mr. Devine headed the CIA’s Counternarcotics Center, which was responsible for coordinating and building close cooperation between all major U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies in tracking worldwide narcotics and crime organizations. From 1985-1987, Mr. Devine headed the CIA’s Afghan Task Force, which successfully countered Soviet aggression in the region. In 1987, he was awarded the CIA’s Meritorious Officer Award for this accomplishment.Mr. Devine’s international experience with the U.S. government included postings to Latin America and Europe. During his more than 30 years with the CIA, Mr. Devine was involved in organizing, planning and executing countless sensitive projects in virtually all areas of intelligence, including analysis, operations, technology and management.Jack Devine's books:https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jack-Devine/author/B00J24RIY6?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true——————————————————————-Today’s Sponsor ⬇️AEROPRESS COFFEE MAKERFor 20% off go to⬇️https://aeropress.com/teamhouse——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#cia #covertoperationsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the team has. channel and podcast if you'd like to and we really appreciate that so go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your host jack murphy and david park everybody welcome to episode 277 of the team house i'm Dave Park. We're with Jack Murphy and our guest again tonight, Jack Devine. If you haven't seen Jack's first episode, please check out 260. CIA legend, and we really appreciate you joining us again tonight. Well, I'm glad to be back. I'm a little more tense this time because last time I got some feedback right away saying you were doing well at the beginning. But when you reach for

the brass knuckles, it brought back bad numbers. From two CIA, you. guys and I'm thinking, wait a minute. Was that my management spy? I don't know it, but I'm sitting here and my left hand wants to grab it, but I'm folding my hand so I don't touch it. So we're getting a little, we're getting a little tea from the past. Maybe your next book. Also, Jack has written Good Hunting and the Spy Master's Prism. Check them both out. But maybe your next book should be interviewing people who worked for you and getting that feedback on the brass knuckles. Well, we did interview for the first book, Good Hunting, about 80 people. Yeah.

Because I asked a couple people my staff because I think it's awkward for you to call, right? Right. And one of the things you worry about when you're a good man of a large unit, and that is, at least I think it's common among CEOs. Was I strong enough, right? So they came back and said, Jack, don't worry about that one. So I don't know what they meant, but the second one I'm not going to go into because it was sort of deprecating. Guys, well, I'm going to have that one of your bourbons later.

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ditch the drive-through, toss the French press, and say yes to better mornings fueled by better coffee. Arrow Press ships to the USA in over 60 countries around the world. and we thank you AeroPress for sponsoring this show. I might try one of those later. Although the office, my assistant refuses to serve me caffeinated coffee. She thinks I get too hyper. Yeah. She won't take my calls after she's heard of having to stress off.

So, you know, our name's Stephanie, by the time. I better do a shout out there. I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble taking her name in me. Stephanie, you're the best. I didn't say that We added that She's better than that

She's better than that She's better than that So you know The last time you were on We covered I don't know Maybe a third of the book Good Hunting It's kind of a chronological

Story of your life Your time in the agency There were a lot of things We didn't get to Some of them we want to touch on tonight But some we also Want to ask You know just your opinion

On different aspects of espionage different takes on what's going on in the world today. And I think the first take that Jack and I are most interested in because we're both kind of movie buffs is like your take on the movie industry, which movies get it right, what movies get it wrong, about the CIA,

yeah, things like that. Well, growing up in the agency, I almost refused to watch a James Bond movie. I thought it trivialized it, right? and it's silly, right? I also met Sean Connery. I'll tell you about that. We and I had dinner once.

And then one day I woke up, what are you doing? James Bond is dashing, right? The world thinks he goes out and solves all their problems. The queen loves them. And you're going around, no, I'm not like that. I'm really kind of a dull bureaucrat. Wait a minute. So that's the plus side.

There is a downside because, there's an impression in some policy circles that, yes, CIA can do everything. And therefore, you have to approach that covert action business we talked about with some restraint. But there's lessons in a lot of movies. The James Bourne, I enjoy them immensely. The first one, I looked at, this is really a lot of fun, right? They have the technology. But it wasn't integrated like the movies.

But if you go to the James Born Reborn, it was. So Hollywood has a tendency sometimes to think out more creatively about the future. So I think that was another. And you stop me where you're one. But one of the things, you know, trying during the Afghan War to get a media campaign against the Russians and all of it, you'd have to go around and get 50 people with signs, right? Today was social media. I mean, it's a totally different game.

Right. But the most powerful impact was, I think was Rambo 3, with Thais Salon, where he's hanging out of the single-handedly defeating the Russian army. We're a wide movie. And it changed the view. Well, not change. It had tremendous impact. Yeah.

So, you know, I kid about it. And then you get into some serious movies, which John Lickray's, books. So there, because he was in the business, he gets the texture of the betrayal and the darker side. And he does, Pinker Taylor is one of my favorite because it's really the Philby, Kim Filby's story, one of the great, not from our perspective, but one of the great traders of the British service. And the interaction and it is really quite, quite realistic. So I've come around on it. In fact, I'm going to do a series on it because I'm interested in it because a lot of life lessons that come out of it.

Yeah. And what's behind Detroit? I have to ask then, Jack, because you have direct involvement. What did you think of Charlie Wilson's war with Tom Hanks? Is there assignments? Well, I guess I didn't discuss it, but Charlie was a very interesting guy to travel with. he was an important face of the program, a great ambassador, if you will, of it, but he didn't have hands-on in the running of the program.

He didn't decide what weapons, where they went, how they went, the training, but he was a great ally. So he invited me to dinner with his wife after he retired from Congress, and he wanted to go to Spark Steakhouse. and smart steakhouses where Paul Castiano the Mafia Don was killed on the stuff

he didn't want to go to Smith and Wollinskies he wanted something with pizzazz that was Charlie but at the dinner he reached across and put his hand of it and you know something's coming right he said Jack

you didn't like the book you're going to hate the movie and the reason is you could laugh about it because it was when you can get a ward named after you and you weren't the real key in this program. That's quite an accomplishment, and he knew that. And he was due credit for sure, but it wasn't his war.

The war was really made up of hundreds of people, the mule skinner that made the saddles for the mules, the trainers of the Stinger missile, the people that rounded the mules and drove them across China, the people that helped build the weapons trained. So when Milton Bearden, who was the chief in Islamabad, when it came to an end, sent out a cable saying we won. And I think it's better for history. It's a lousy movie, but it's better for history to realize it takes organization, planning, plumbing, a lot of logistics.

It's Ulysses as Grant building an army. And it should never be Ulysses as Grants' War. So, but Charlie, I almost give him a pass. But I don't want anyone to think that you get a congressman and a couple CIA guys and you whip together a war. So that's a part where, and I understand why Hollywood went down that way. But Charlie, for example, one of the things that he had in his office was a Stinger missile hanging over the door. Charlie was opposed to putting the Stinger in to Afghanistan because I think he was told by those in power, so to speak, going to cause World War III.

And he was a company guy and said we don't need the Stinger and the people at the agency said they did as well. And so that was a critical aspect of the war. And I think Charlie wasn't on board. He quickly, once it was used, couldn't be more supportive. Sure. So Charlie had a role for sure, but it wasn't his war. I have to ask to you before we move on to the next thing, but tell us about this dinner with Sean Connery.

How did that come about and what was that like, you know, James Bond meeting a real spy? So I was invited to give a talk. A friend of mine has property in the Bahamas and Sean Connery lives there. So he was one of the stars of the club, right? So he was in the audience, we knew he knew he was going to be there. and the host invited me, and Sean Connery sat beside me through dinner. So the first time I came across Sean Connery, I was sitting in a restaurant in London. I happened to be in London at that time, and Pat was with me, my wife,

and the head of the British service was there with his wife, and Sean Connery came in. You have to see somebody like that come into a restaurant. The whole place flutters, right? Everybody's giggling, including our wives. Now, I didn't do it. The Brit did it. I'm standing by that story to this day. He said, why are you so enthused?

We're the real thing. I would never say that, right? They start giggling and laughing, and turn it said, there's the real thing. So when I went down to the Bahamas, I thought it was a great story. I told that story, he didn't laugh.

But afterwards, it was really a delightful. But what's funny is, in the movies, he's a Brit through and through, and the Queen's servant, right? He's a Scotsman. He's opposed to the monarchy. He was part of the Scottish independence movie. Oh, I know. I raised it.

That's what I learned what the real story was, because he was pushing back on it about Scotland. Oh, okay, Sean. But it was a delightful actor. And he was self-contained by that. I mean, he saw himself as another person, and there was no pretensions about him, and it was really a treat to be with him. So I don't mind being identified with Sean Connery.

Was he at all, you know, curious about the CIA, about your time, the CIA, about how, you know, the Sean Conner, or the James Bond story matched with what, you know. No one ever asked me that. Yeah. And I didn't dawn at me at the time. We didn't talk about it.

We talked about his movies. Which one did you like best? Not because he was trying to go anywhere with it. And I'm now hesitating thinking, why not? And I think because maybe he wasn't interested in actually the La Curee, George Smiley part. Right. Although we could have had, in retrospect, because I was more interested in hearing from him than him from me,

just because, well, I don't know why, because he's a star. and objective. So it would have been an interesting, interesting discussion because I was involved in a lot of covert action, which rubs up against the type of activities. Bond was involved in as opposed to the espionage of George Smiley, which I was involved in as well. So I wish we had a second dinner because that would have been really interesting, but I was sort of excited, not like people in the restaurant.

I think he played that, no offense to any other. I thought he was for me the James Bond. Yeah, me too. If you wanted to look, I mean, just very classy, natural class, like Carrie Grant. They just had that ability to carry themselves in a way that, you got respect from it. I'm curious, you know, this is just kind of hypothetical on my end, but I'm curious if the reason that you were, you were curious about him and he wasn't that curious about you

is the reason he was a movie star and you were an intelligence officer. So you like to analyze things. Yeah, sometimes. But, you know, like being curious about other people obviously helps you in your line of work.

No, I think, but I want to be clear, it wasn't because of an ego issue with him. He would have gone wherever we wanted to go. And I would have as well. It was actually a bit like the kind of conversation we're having tonight. I pretend that he wasn't Sean Connery and I pretended I wasn't jacked the line. So it was, but the reason I didn't think about it because I didn't think about it in that context. There's kind of a fun moment. It was a fun moment. It wasn't a substance

of a moment. But it's an interesting, I think I agree with your analysis in that regard. Yeah. Do you feel as though, because the CIA is often portrayed as the, you know, the CIA is often portrayed as the sort of big bad in a lot of movies you know this this organization or people within an organization behind the scenes pulling strings or conducting

these off the book ops do you feel as though that hurts the CIA at all? No I think it adds to the mystique I mean I would be honest with you I mean there's spy power now you can convert that into real power

and by that I mean that image is very helpful abroad. You're representing, you're working for the CIA. They're assuming way, way too much. Right. You guys can do backflips over barbed wire fences. Yeah, you have hit teams in every European city. When you mix it up with I would call the day-to-day people to make this country run,

if you pull them aside, they say, you know, go do more. In other words, they have no idea that I've 15 lawyers holding me, back. But in America, I understand what you're saying. There's a new period now. I'm going to leave, I'm leaving the last 15 years aside for a moment. But I think there was great support for the agency. Despite the critiques, and frankly, I told you at the beginning, I joined CIA because there was a scandalous book and I read it and had the opposite reaction. I think American They know CIA is helping defend this. They really get it. Yeah. And they know that tough things have to be done and it has to be done and so they're there.

Now, does the intelligentsia sign up to it and it's a good mix? So I don't think it's tarnished it. I think in the recent years, and I don't want to get into the politics of it, we can more like much of TV can be boring. and that is the politicalization of intelligence is started to turn people, okay, I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican and therefore I'm with or not the CIA. The CIA must remain independent. It has to be nonpartisan.

It can't function because its only job is to look at things concretely. So I think we've had some rough times lately, and so there may be some tarnishing of it, but I still think you're, I don't want to pick it on Kansas. You go out to Kansas and sit down in the bar and say, what do you think of the CIA? Hey, I'd like to join. Yeah.

I'm going to tell you a story for a second. Sure. So a 9-11 came. I have a great doctor. A great doctor. Best degrees, head of the department. And I didn't, I hardly knew him at that time. And he had looked at

the orthopedic area, and he was looking at my knee. And Pat said, see the fellow there? I think that's your doctor. Well, I didn't see him. Pat's always on the lookout. To protect me. And, known and behold, it was my doctor. And he came over and said, Jack, I think you can use me. I said, what do you mean he could use you?

I think I could be a sniper. Now, this is his mother must have spent every penny she had to make him not a doctor, a big-time doctor, and at age 50, he's going to get up in a tree. Right. That's a different part of America. Yeah. Yeah. And 9-11 brought a lot of that out.

Yeah. And so it's there. And so, and I'm kind of proud, I mean, fortunately, I said to it, I think the window of opportunity close. I'm trying to help his mother the best I can. Right. I don't want to call me up and say, what did you do? So, but I thought the sentiment was interesting.

I mean, that God and country, our country was attacked. No ambiguity about that, right? Count me in. And a lot of people were drawn to the agency. I think they probably you'd spike in talent at that time. Yeah. Do you want to jump into the... Yeah, absolutely. Well, one other question, just while we're on Hollywood, is when we had John Barker on the Chief of Disguise, like we talked of...

Jonah Mendez. Oh, I'm sorry, Jonah Mendez. I'm so sorry. Yeah, Jonah Mendez, the Chief of the Skyes. she talked about the agency and how they worked with Hollywood at times for special effects for things like that

but you had mentioned that there have been times when the agency in Hollywood have had a relation to some sort of relationship I think that's a matter of record I think the classic example I'm not sure how deep it is I defer to her on that because she was in charge of that program

I'm only thinking disguise. I mean, he can't do a lot with me. No. Joanne would say, well, we'll do something with you. But I remember one of my colleagues was trying out the mustache. He didn't go to her, right? And he actually went out and had soup, and it was

the steam. It was sliding off, but it was a training program, right? But what happened in the Iran Contrafer, they wanted to sneak people out of the country, right? And there's a lot you can do. And so the issue was they went to

Hollywood, who were masters today. Look at Hollywood and its ability to change. Someone who looks like they're 14 years old, and they show you at the end of the movie at 85, right? And they're able to transfer them through the magic of it. They weren't as far as they are far advanced today as they are in 85 or so. So I think they went out to Hollywood, and again, someone would say, well, Hollywood actors don't like CIA.

They couldn't have been more helpful. My experience with actors, Sean Connery is the other one. It's not like I hang out with Hollywood people, but you just run into them. And they also are very supportive. They might be opposed to policies, but if we can help, they did everything they could to make. In fact, much of American business and CIA is very fortunate. It's a good ticket. You go out and say, can you help me, you know, tell me this about your trip to China

or can you help me with a device or can you give me the skies capabilities? And, you know, the agency, if it was on its own, it didn't have that support, it'd be a much tougher hoe. At the beginning of the CIA for the first 30 years, they did everything inside. It would be impossible. Technology, we made our own devices and down in the basement. The world has moved so quickly that you need external help and not just Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating.

I mean, you know, even talking about like DSNT, it's fascinating how, you know, they at one point in time were creating everything. And now, like, technology moves so fast that... You need, you need the private sector. You need the business. Yeah. So, in terms of the book Good Hunting, which, you know, is your autobiography, basically, or at least your time in the agency, we got up to, like, like, said a third way through. And I kind of wanted to pick up on some of the pieces

that we didn't have an opportunity to get to. You eventually became head of counter-narcotics. Can you tell us about that time and the agencies were on drugs, America's War on Drugs, basically? I was in Rome at the time, and I'd been there two years, I wanted to stay three.

But the head of the counter-narcotics unit, it was set up. When it was set up, it was a fellow named Howard Hart. And they just started to develop these centers, and not to get too bureaucratic with the audience. The agency was many stow fights, right? But because of terrorism and narcotics, they were international. So you had to build organizations that had analysts, operators, different skills. You do the same thing on task force like Afghanistan, but when you get these international problems, you make them bigger.

So it was a very exciting thing. and what had happened at that point, the Cold War had come to an end. I mean, it was virtually at the end. It was 19, when I took over 90, 1991, 92, I took over. 90. So at that point, it was Judge Webster, the director's number one task. I mean, it was built the Cold War was over. Yeah, 89, the wall came down.

The wall came down. Yeah. But Gorbitrope was still in power. So to my mind, it came to an end in 90, the just not to spit hairs, but when it fell in August of 91. So the, no, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So the war on drugs and how did these? It was the number of three target, I think. I wanted to say that. And Nancy Reagan came up and said no. and you know everyone said well that was too simple but it was a slogan and what had happened

is the drugs had moved into suburban and it was a nationwide problem so there's a long story if you want to ask a lot of other aspects of it but it became a target and when I was in Rome they asked me to come back and take it over because Howard Hart had said to Rome and said I think you should go and I said okay Howard if they wanted to let me know what's the CIA's role in counter of drugs because obviously we have the Drug Enforcement Agency and all these other bureaucracies that deal with this particular issue, whereas the agency has sort of a different mandate, right? Well, if you go back to the beginning, the CIA and the FBI did not want to do drugs.

Both had the same reason that when you get in close, there's a possibility that your officers will become suborned, right? so there's a risk in it. And for the CIA, it's criminal activity as opposed to political, military, so it was not an easy mix. So because they were so slow at it, they created a new agency,

D.A, and they drafted people from FBI and CIA. And, you know, that's rather drastic. But the budgets hadn't caught up. But once the budgets, the money, because it became so important, we're flowing. All of a sudden the Army, the Navy, decided we'd chase the submarines speedboats with 50 pounds of marijuana on it. So every agency then got involved in it. And then I think the CIA for its part, the CIA for its part, thought, well, we'll bring the intelligence business into it.

And the reason, I can't say I was honestly excited about the idea for the same reason, it doesn't feel like espionage, it doesn't feel like covert action. It was covert action, big-time covert action, but I couldn't see that. I didn't see the magic of the intelligence revolution that was in it. What does that all mean? When I came there, I saw all this energy of mixing analysts and operators, people from other, It's not only that I have both a mixture of people from CIA, I had a community of 20 or 30 people from other agencies who were sitting there right with me doing a community piece. And then, as you said, there were 17 agencies.

But nobody wanted, in the Director of Operations PCs in those states, they didn't want a computer. Right. And because the risk, right, the security risk. The people that needed the most resisted, right? So they resisted secure phones because, you know, internationally, who would keep a record of the bad things you're doing? But what I found was if you're doing a target like narcotics and having the ability to do linkage analysis through computers,

counting all the integrating information, bringing that computer working for instead of index cards, we began to develop a really good understanding of all, the different narcotic traffickers and they could say on the phone I'm bringing three oranges you know it's three something but you're mixing up with the travel it became a powerful tool and it was infancy and then the second thing was a strategic there are two other aspects of cut me off whenever you know there's there are two other strategic aspect uh two other aspects of this one is the strategic one because of the 17 so uh I like to approach things

strategically and I wanted to do it on this one. They have an executive dining room and that was for people that were flag rank officers and you could go there and have lunch and it was subsidized so you could have a restaurant type lunch and you'd be at a very low price. And you're wondering why I'm getting into that. I invited 17 different people to come eat lunch and I couldn't afford it with my family. I really couldn't because I had five kids at the time. So, It's not like a businessman in fighting area, but it was an opportunity to bring them out. And one by one, I tried to get them to buy into a single strategy, which was instead of going after one country, we would go up and down the chain. It became known as sort of the linear approach to it.

And Judge Bonner, who I got along very well with DEA, bought on to it. There would not have been a program without him. But he also wanted the kingpins. And so we brought the two together. one was how we were going to attack it and go after the kingpin, Pablo Escobar, the collie cartel. The other thing, which is revolutionary, and again, this may be inside baseball, but in the intelligence world, up until that time, you were minimalist.

You gave liaison, your foreign counterparts the least you needed to give them and keep them happy. And powerful countries today would have to come to say, we need actuators. You probably don't know what it is, but it's a way that. the tap phones the old days, right? They couldn't buy it anywhere. Today they can get satellites, right? And they can buy the information.

So there was a reluctance to give. You cannot do counter-terrorism. You can't do counter-narcotics. You can't do proliferation without foreigners. There were many people in CIA for a generation's felt, let's do it on our own. We'll have liaison just to keep everybody happy, but we'll do it our own.

You can't. And that you shouldn't. So it became, we're going to give counter-narcotics people tools to do it. We're going to give them training. Instead of minimalist, we're going to bring them as much as we can. So in the counter-narcotics program, there was an officer who came up with the idea of calling them scenics. They would develop units in each country. Once you run the police force, it's very likely someone would come up and say,

you either look the other way or you're not going to be around and we'll give you $200 a week. that. So you're corrupted. So they would pull units out of the academy, give them computer training, signals training, make them really quality intelligence collectors, integrators, and tie it into our capabilities. That was revolutionary. And the same thing was happening in terrorism. Terrorism probably actually started earlier in this. So when I was sitting there, I was looking at it as a narcotics problem, but I was also looking at the revolution in the intelligence business, how it was going to look everywhere 10 years out. The big problem, again, stop, but on the counter-narcotics program, I remember the deputy

director, his name is Richard Kerr, and we were talking one day, and he said, Jack, you have to remember, the counter-narcotics program is a criminal program. It's never going to go away. You just take a stick and you beat it and you try and keep it off the front steps, but it's coming back. And I think that's what you have to realize and it's frustrating. So Pablo Escobar in the book, some of the people helped do the calling for me with people in the agency, called the chief who was going down to Columbia, and they interviewed him about me.

And he said, well, what I know is when I was walking out the door, he said, you know, any last advice? and I said, get Pablo Escobo. So he did. I mean, when I say he did, it's like Charlie Wilson, right? Right. A big effort. And at that time, people didn't think you could get him

because they put him in jail and he would, you know, he had cocktail parties at night and went out whatever he did on the wild, out through the tunnel. But, you know, those units that I'm talking about allowed you to actually find him, and he was on the phone too long, with his son and they got him. They found him and then he ran off the roof

and we ran across the roof and they found him and that was the end of Pablo Escobar. But it was, they would never have been able to do that without more sophisticated intelligence capabilities. How, what was the relation? Because the CIA is set up in like divisions, right? Area, like area divisions or generally that's how, when you talk about the stove pipes, how does a center that reaches across those divisions,

was there any rough times like working with the different divisions as a center? Well, I think as you go through the process, you need to anticipate that. I had two experiences on this and creating one. When was the Afghan Task Force? And I was more junior. And I was called up to talk to Casey one-on-one, and what did I need? because we were going to build the program, right? And I thought, I have to get this out of the rest of the divisions.

Do I want to the rest of my life be the most hated guy here? Right. Because you couldn't send me, you weren't allowed to send a D officer, D-level. You had to send a B plus or an A. You weren't allowed to do that. So you're going into divisions where that's hard, and you have to kick in people. That's not a popular road. So I tried to figure, what could I do within the?

what was the right number right so let's say for math's sake I said a hundred and never forget it Casey being there you sure that's all you need it was a really good question because of the businessman he was to give me 250 and I'll make this thing but I'm trying to what can I get without having a revolution and having people to participate and I think we didn't get the 250 we've got up quite a bit fast forward when I I got to the counter-narcotics program when I came in, we developed a new plan, bigger budget. Things are coming. And Bob Gates was the director at the time.

And I remember this. I know it wasn't trying to be like Angleton because he was quite different. It was open and everywhere. But he was sitting. We sat for a while because he was downtown. But we came in. There was a room with just one light and Bob sat down. and my deputy who was the strategic planner in terms of what we needed.

So Bob came in and sat down and you have to understand the management of time at that level. In other words, he's not going to ask me about how the kid's doing. You can with Bob when you're traveling, but when he's just come from the hill and he's gone somewhere, he's got this meeting every second count. So Bob's sitting there. We give what we think is a great briefing. He said, thank you. We walked out, looked at each other.

Oh, God. All that work. we got a call from the staff chief the next day. You've got the numbers. So that dynamic, then you have to pull it together, and there is tension. I worry a bit, I'm being a little more kind that I might want to be. We've now gone to centerizing so many things.

Yeah. So when you have a crisis, when you're pulling everybody together, further. So I think we've now, there's a reason to have specialists of a Russian and African, and you really need that depth. And when you start to homogenize, and then they had this expression when I was in mid-career, you have to have an out-of-body experience. And that meant, let's say you're a linguist in Spanish or French, and they would say, well, you have to go to Indonesia for a year, Indonesian.

It's like, yeah, that's interesting, but you really need me as a real linguist and expert. And I remember talking to a fellow

who had flew in French and they just came out the training, I said, well, they're going to send me to Spain.

Why are you going to send you to Spain? Well, because they want me to be more diverse because you have the Spanish and it was, someone's missing the point.

Right, right. That is, there's a lot to be said for being identified I am at this type of expert. So I think we have to be careful. And I think the terrorism, there was no choice. This is not a critique.

This is an observation. When we were fighting wars for 20 years and your intelligence is supporting it, you need to bring targeters. You need to be focusing in on, you know, how do you attack targets? So your information is collected differently. Right.

And you have to, in that process, need to make sure that you keep those identities of area geopolitical understanding. I don't want to tell good hunting, but I'm pleased with where I ended the book, which is terrorism is, as we know, with al-Qaeda, they're still around. Right. And I knew they would be around, and it's like criminality. And we've had it, I faced it in the 70s, and Latin, it was pretty big in Europe. Nowhere near as scary.

It's scary enough, trust me. But that we were looking at a phase where we were heading south with terrorism, but was coming back was a nation-state. And that meant we were going to be with Russia, China. And I think there was a lot of skepticism about that. And our budgets weren't matching what I was asking for, because at that point, the investment of the funds for Russia was, or the Soviet Union, was 70%. And by the time you were writing the book, it's 10% of our...

Uh-huh. And then when I wrote Spymaster's Prism, as I said, I wrote it a year too early. And my best critiques from the agency folks that I know is, oh, it's all about China, right? So, you know, my point is you've gone from not having nation states where today it's Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. yes, terrorism, but it's terrorism, Hamas, almost from a nation-state basis. Right, yes, right. And we're in a new world.

We're heading into another direction, which we'll touch on later. Do you, I know that during, for instance, the Iraq War, the station in Baghdad was very big, and a lot of agency personnel were not happy with their, with, like, their, role in the war. They didn't feel like that was where the CIA should be active, that that was a military and a military intelligence war. And the CIA was getting the emphasis wrong. What are your

opinions on that, or if you have any? I have an opinion and everything. It doesn't mean wisdom or anything else, but I've got an opinion. Sure. But that's a long time. And I feel, that's why I write the book. I mean, it's not, trust me, I'm not making a living off of this. I wouldn't have been able to take the Uber over time. You know, they have to thumb a ride. So there's been a, through the early years, the formative years of the agency. And this goes back to the movies.

It's the Foreign Intelligence Collection versus Covert Action. And at the beginning, the emphasis was on covert action. They're coming out of World War II. OSAS fighting the rush, a lot of covert action. And then as you moved on, became the predominance of foreign intelligence. When you would hit into the 80s, late 80s, I would say 90% of the officers would prefer, if not more. Just give me FI. Don't give me, it all blows up. And I actually spent more time because I was interested in one of the reason

I got into the agency was the action part. But there is a price because you will read about it. You better love what you're doing because you're going to read about it and you're going you're writing about talking about for years to come and hopefully it's right but it's that one clause in the the charter the CIA you will carry out those special activities directed by the president of the state what I'm saying is there was a reaction against getting involved and many people there's actually a group as late as 1990 we're talking about let's go out to West Virginia and we'll be just spying and I said goodbye I, no one's ever, the Senate's ever going to go, the president's not going to go, you're

out there talking to yourself if you're just going to do FI, foreign intelligence. You have to have the action part. So when you get to Iraq, the targeting that support, that intelligence support needed to be done. So what happened, I think a career service, a new group of people had to be trained and brought into it, had to be done. Yeah. Right. But the natural pull is I went to develop and recruit that spy and so I understand.

understand it, but I'm sure people didn't want to go to Vietnam. Right. So it's, many people didn't want to participate in Central America. But fortunately there were enough. And the agency, you know, had two expressions, you know, can do, and yes, sir. In other words, you were never, you should never ask for an assignment. You will be told where they go. I was well served by that.

I think you should if you're asked to go. And everybody I knew in the agency expected to respond to that. And the world demanded that. So yes, that happens. Now, would I have put an army in Iraq? I was not where I was. You know this from our last discussion. It was not for putting an army in Afghanistan.

If you can't get it done with covert action and the people supporting you, I'm an advocate for covert action. actually but it's more for peace and keeping our troops out there until we actually you know we're being hit straight on straight on so but once there then you then you're gonna carry out the mission you know in the last show we talked about your involvement in covert action you've been involved in so many and you just mentioned how if somebody's going to write about if you know guarantee yeah you also in the book which we

didn't talk about last time, talked about both the Carter administration and the Clinton administration in terms of ethics and, you know, and how that sometimes went up against, like, the CIA's pragmatism when it came to their needs for covert action. Can you talk about, can you talk about that a little bit? Well, I think there, actually, you know, when you were looking at the Carter years, there were swings and budgets, right? And I remember what the slogan was. It was, do more with less. All the chiefs would say, we're going to do just as well with less. Well, okay, but you're going to be less, okay? But you know, if you've been around long enough, you're soon going to be called back the duty because there's a mission that has to be done.

So I remember going through the orientation program, and I'm not going to pick a, a lieutenant colonel came He was as detailed from the military. It was a very good briefing. But he said, listen, you have to understand Latin America. I was headed to Latin America. He said, well, only dictatorships work. He didn't say only, but he said, look at this, all these dictatorships, stability. And coming to your point, it was pragmatic.

So we didn't necessarily want them, but they were there. They were your counterparts, and there was containing the enemy. So this was a communist and so on. But what Jimmy Carter came in, and there are a lot of things that I wasn't happy with Carter, just like any other president. Do you have things you like and dislike? But what he pushed was human rights. And the issue was you better not be dealing with foreign government, intelligence business,

and if they're violating human rights. So as a young person, wow, that's going to be really hard to do. So I was talking to a chief of a man I have great respect for, Ray Warren, and he said, Jack, I think if Jimmy Carter says this, it's going to revolutionize the business, and it's probably a positive thing. Now, what did he mean? It was absolutely true. If you look 10 years later, we were still in liaison with every country in Latin America, but none of them were run by dictators. Right. Now you've got a mix of autocrats and so on, but it wasn't predestined. But what we ended up doing, and the first round people weren't happy about it. You went into the head of the service and said, look, we're not doing it with you, but you know you're doing bad things down in the basement.

And, you know, we're not going to be able to give you this and help you. And we're going to provide help. You'd be surprised how positive that was. I mean, that wasn't welcomed warmly. Sure. But everybody adjusted. I mean, America's influence is really certain in that time frame, overwhelming in the sense that, okay, if that's what it takes to have a relationship,

we'll put these away, right? So I think it had a very positive impact. Most of the A.P. People do not want to have to be dealing, you know, most of them are really, but almost all of them are idealistic and want to see a better world and people treat it, you know, no one's going out there to be part of taking people down the basement. That's not, you know, that's not intelligence collection. Right.

So if that was the issue, I would say there was tension, but sometimes you have to have tension to move forward. Yeah. Now, today we've got a lot of autocrats out there. We still, at the national level, forget CIA, have to still deal with some unsavory countries that are using, violating human rights. You still need to get along with them. You keep saying to them, you know, we're on comfort with this. We can't do this with you. We can do that, but we're not going to do this.

So it's part of the practicality of doing business. And it's a gray area. Yeah. You know, you probably don't belong in the state department or the Defense Department because it's impossible to function without some of them. Try and keep it to the minimum. Try to change it. Preach the gospel.

Do you think that the media, not like, I'm not talking about some kind of conspiracy media, but just, you know, the United States deals with a lot of countries that violate human rights, but sometimes if the media, like, starts reporting on one, even though their abuses may not be more than 15 others that we're dealing with, but if the media picks up one, does that have a tendency to change maybe the administration or the agency's stance towards that country? Well, reluctantly, I got to give this media.

I mean, they're out there trying to make a living. They're trying to collect information. I mean, if they weren't, you know, the old days, everything went under the board. It depends on the quality of the journalism, the quality of the seriousness of it, right?

But if they find it, then I think you have to address it. Right. But I don't think anybody sits around and says, well, over here, right? I think the point is when stories developed, you're not going to have a choice anyway. So you might as well make peace with the fact you're going to deal with it.

But if it's a legitimate issue, then you should deal with it. Yeah. One of the things I had an experience, which is a very good lesson for me, when I was running the Latin American division in Salvador, the Human Rights Commission wanted to talk to us. The first reaction of the director, we're never going to talk to them ever, no way, no how. But, Fortuny had a very smart fellow who's a friend of mine who is a top-quality analyst, and he was my deputy as an analytical person.

Jack, I think this is manageable. If you go in there and tell them the story because we aren't doing this or not any other, if you show even a little ankle, you might be surprised with you. Instead of a big blast and story. And actually, he was dead right. showing a little ankle there about talking to them about it, not trying to work out, we ended up with a favorable relationship, not relation, we never had a relationship with him, but the commission was reasonable.

And I'm not saying you can do that everywhere, but he had sized this up. So you can't have a knee-jerk reaction against that interaction with doing right. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, it's fascinating to me sometimes. that even if the media knows that there's stuff going on, like what they focus. And again, I'm not putting blame on them. It's just, and it's not just the media sometimes,

it's just sort of a zeitgeist, what people think is important at one particular moment when, you know, we may know that the China is like doing this to the Uyghurs, and we may know that these things are going on, but those aren't that important. Here's my issue. And I've known a lot of journalists over the years. Yeah.

Okay. They too have become pilots. politicized. When they're writing the news, I think they're pretty good. Yeah, I think they're very good. In other words, I think they're looking at the news and they're going after and collecting it. Where we're having today, when it rubs up against politics, then it gets, to my view, if you're reporting about an incident in Yemen, in Yemen, you will have a good story. You're going to have an accurate reporting story. If it ends up being an issue with the Congress and this and the

that, then the reporting is substandard by my view of what the reporting was like years ago. And then maybe it's every aspect of life in the politicalization. But newspaper people are very close to CIA people. They don't like to hear that. But what are they doing? Who, what, when, where, and how? Go out there and meet somebody. Stick your neck out.

I mean, look at the journalists that have been killed, kidnapped. it's a it's very close to being a CIA mission ours is our state national security and theirs is there is there are friction but I've had good experiences with them when you bring them in to a story and you try and you know don't do this most of these national respected will will go along with that so My concern today is that overlay the politics now that is in the national security arena. In other words, before it wasn't so bipolar, right? Yeah.

But that's true in Congress, it's true in every aspect of it. It was so much easier for me to do covert action. And in my book, I say, here are the old theoretical theological arguments for a just war. I've added a couple, bipartisan. If you don't have bipartisan support, don't do it. If you look at it today, it sounds like I'm saying, don't do it. Never fighting again, yeah. And that's not a good place to be.

Yeah. You had an interesting story about when you were at CNC, about actually going to the KGB headquarters. Can you talk about that? See, that was sort of a hidden dream. You know, we go in the entity's dent, you know, walk out alive. It was, I backed into it because I'd actually, you know, I ran the Afghan program and it was, you know, their war and it was a war that ended not well for them and contributed to the downfall. So you would think I'd be the last person after Milk Bearden maybe that would be welcome.

So when I came back, when I was in the head of the counter narcotics, Milk Bearden, who was in Islamabad as the chief and good friends. and he was the head of Russia division, you know, and he called me one day. I always know when I get a call for Mill. There's a deal of it. So, Bill said, look, Jack, I'd like it if you could come to Russia with me. And I said, why would I do that? Why would we go there together? He said, well, we're trying to warm things up,

and the only thing we can talk about is narcotics. And I said, look, I wasn't on high on my list. Now, if he said that you're going to meet the chairman, then I would start to be tempted, but then I'd have to think we're getting out a lot. But he said, I've got a deal for you. I said, okay, Mel, what's the deal? And he said, the poppy fields are right by the Friendship Bridge

where the Russians left Afghanistan that we were so heavily involved. They, if you come, they'll take us down to the Poppy Fields, but they will stand on Friendship Bridge with us, the KGB, Milton. I have a picture. I mean, I think it's in the book. This one in the book, if I'm not mistaken. where we're on the bridge with the and a 7th.

Now, this is where terrorism and intelligence interaction is different. They knew I had a job. I knew they had a job. You don't say, well, you're a terrorist and you have a job, and I understand it. You never understand that. So they couldn't have been more hospitable. and part of the drill was I was supposed to go see the chairman of the KGB.

Now, he's the head of powerful service. I was in the upper echelon, but there was a layer well above me here with the director. So I really shouldn't have able to see the head of the KGB, but I saw the deputy, and I wasn't put off. They said, look, he's busy. What he didn't know, he was busy. This was in June of 91 that we went. I didn't realize he was being busy organizing the coup against Yelsohn that came down in August 91. Now, I'm going to stick with a story.

Yeah, right. But I thought it was incredibly standing in the building with the KGB. Lenin's head behind you. Now, what they had is interesting. We walked down a carter and they had black curtains over certain photos, right? So you know what they were. Their photos of their success against some CIA person that they arrested or whatever, but they pulled them down.

So that was all very interesting, and we were with the head of the counterintelligence group, and there was a general and a colonel. And they said, look, we got one more thing we want to show you, and we come around behind the headquarters, and there's a wall on the gate, and there's a corporal. I didn't know it was a corporal. We had a Russian speaker with him.

and the KGB walked up to the gate and he said I'd like to bring our guest in no I didn't say like I want to bring the guest in and that rough Russian matter so the Corvill looks at his watch Little looks at it's 10 after 5 it closes at 5 now this is a corporal

turning to her currently said you don't understand I'm here with General and said well it's still quarter after 5 and he wouldn't move we went away. Now, they were humiliated and humbled by that. When I went back, I said, I wrote a memo, but it wasn't something you circulated. Wow, look at this memo.

But it was my trip report, and I said, the people have lost the fear of the KGV. The system is in serious trouble. I didn't know it was that serious than two months later. But to me, it was like the whole trip, that two-minute discussion, they called the next day and said to the, or, representative with it. He's not there anymore. My bet is they didn't move him either. Yeah.

So, that was, you know, it was one heck of a, a heck of a trip that I'll remember for a long time. I think in your book, I think the title was the beginning of the end. Like,

you knew at that moment that... Yeah, well, I don't want to say, I would have ran up to the director so as I'd have to tell you, I just suddenly found the secret that it's going to go. Right.

But I left there feeling this is not going the right way. I know what happened in Afghanistan. I could see the political dynamics of it. In my wildest dreams, you know, I never, as the CIA person, the whole thing was going to collapse. Right. And then the wall and then were we going to get as far as we did? Yeah.

And it was from a life experience, my view, incredible to watch that. And walk away with what are the 3,000. lessons you learn from them. Yeah. You mentioned Philby. Can we talk a little bit about AIMS because you knew AIMS and sort of how that came about in your view and then also a comparison with like AIMS and Philby? Just for chronology, let me hit Philby.

Yeah, sure. The audience may not know. Sure. But Kim Filby was a very senior member of MI6. who joined the Communist Party as a young person, ideologically oriented and rose up into the highest ranks. He represented MI6 in Washington. He was the liaison, the interface with CIA, FBI,

went to the cocktail parties, the legendary two and three martini lunch. In the book, and I was talking to an official from that time who, in fact, maybe one of the Philby books. They'd have two martinis to go out the club to drink. I mean, I don't know how you function, but or you even recognize you were a spy. But it was a betrayal, a huge betrayal.

And what was fascinating about it when you look at it and compare it with Ames, they had the Cambridge Five. They all went to Cambridge. Five people that became very senior. One was the Queen's art historian. Another was a senior person in the embassy. in Washington.

Two of them. One was, he was a true drunkard and walked around town and sort of telling people it was a spy, but they were so drunken to know what he was talking about.

They, by the way, defected why Philby was in Washington. The one that was the drunkard lived with Philby. You would have thought the bell might have gone, maybe there's something

not right here, right? So the fact that he betrayed his country, And this is why when you look at all the LeCarray books are all about that type of betrayal within the highest levels. In other words, it's the top. When you look at Pinker-Taylor, it's around the table, right? Each chess piece represents one of the most senior people in the service. And the head of the service at that time gets smiley to help find out which one of the top five.

And let me say one more thing about Philby, otherwise I could spend hours, two things I'll say. about one his wife he's his first wife was a communist and she introduced him to a woman who was very active who then introduced him to a KGB officer and he thought he was when to come an activist in support of communism and the KGB over the you got to get out of that you've got these great credentials you're part of the club you're the governing class you have to go back right so what he did is he shed it his communist background and became one of the club. And the British system is very much a class system and the club system.

And once you're in, the view is nobody in this club would ever betray their country. It's what you are. You are Her Majesty's government. I mean, it's inconceivable. So you're blinded. No one went back to about his communist roots. Later on, and when the investigation started, there was a woman. that said, you know, he was an active member of the Communist Party.

Right. But that was, oh, everybody was in the 20s and 30s. So it got in the way. Yeah. Exactly got in the way. Jack, could you expand on that a little bit? I think, like, the notion of ideological recruitment is particularly interesting. And what do you think it was about Kim Filby that drew him towards communism

or that pushed him away from the British system that led him to betraying his country? So I think, again, bear with me because I'm guessing in some parts. But what you'll see in the number of the defect is a relationship with the father. Okay, now not... Interesting. And it's problematic. It doesn't mean abuse. It just means that there's a...

It isn't... A split, yeah. There's something like... His father was in the intelligence service. The father was... So, some reason, the idea of the system. And whether it was father, and as you remember, I gave, the father conflated with the system itself, yeah.

He gave me a book about espionage, the coffin for Demetrius, right? And I gave him one, the psychopathology of leadership. You're predestined, you know, if you look at it, in some ways Philby, they had a choice, don't get me wrong, but they were more psychologically tuned for retrial. because of wherever they were with visa v. either father and the system, even though Philby was in the system, there was some tension in that area.

But the world was different. 1917, there were a million communists in the United States. You know, New World, the workers will prevail, the Adelig lifestyle. Well, when Stalin got in, that changed. Yeah. changed but Philby's 1929 or 28 and then he was in that that Naloo in in in Cambridge as were the others and I'm not saying they all had father's issues right but in Philby's case whatever reason he became a true believer an ideological

believer when he later defects that we're jumping ahead in the story but we're not going to spend all night on Philby because we could his wife what happened is he thought he was going to become a senior figure in the KGB and they didn't trust them because he betrays his country

once you betray, will you betray again? Right. But they treated him and he would come in for a briefing but they gave him an apartment that's not a luxurious one for sure never learned Russian only read papers in English from the cricket scores, two-fisted drinker,

kind of a miserable life. Yeah. His wife separated. She went with him, due to wife in this case, left. And she said, even to the end, he had misgivings about Russia and its lifestyle, but he was still a committed ideological communist, which is, right? You're laughing again, as we go further in the Cold War, the Russians had a really, hard. They couldn't sell that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, we can sell democracy, and that's

really many people work with this because we had a better product. They had a hot product for a while. Remember, we had the depression there. There was a lot of forces saying change this world. The other side was fascism was growing because you had the same frustrations, but people were coming out of the other end of the two with radical approaches to things. So I think when we look at Philby, he's the ideological one. Right. The other second part is that he was part of a group that makes him different. And the third thing, he was part of the class.

And he was a senior person, a real player at the top of the British service. Right. So if we fast forward, well, I should say one thing. I gave a talk at one of the clubs in town. New York City. And we spent a lot of the night talking about this, and they sold some books, and one lady came up, and then another, what about Kim Filby? He lives on. I mean, lives on as people that follow this. It was such an intricate story. And I tried to figure out, as you just asked me, how is he not like Ames? Right? Now, Philby did a lot of damage because

he was sitting at the top and had a lot of information about what was going. going on and could add he almost became C he got that close so until there was rumors about him and even when sources started to report that he was a you know a traitor the services split about 50 percent and then he farmed him off the Beirut and we'll leave it again we can go on and on on the philby but if we fast forward to AIMSso I did know and he was about to go into training and I was coming into an office behind him several months and he was a diehard, loyal American committed, loved espionage, Russia. That was where he was going to be, came to me once and somewhere along the line said,

you have to understand counterintelligence is the ace of spades. I guess the ace of clubs and diamonds, right, don't matter as much. But very from the beginning, he was into this framework. One of his drinking incidents, even further in his career, which I read about later, was a fight or argument, a heated argument when he was drunk with a Cuban. In other words, he wasn't sympathetic to the Cuban. Right. Now, he had, I think he was liberal socially, if you will,

but from an intelligence point of view, he was very conservative. at this time. And as his career prospered, and we look at Ames, he was the equivalent of a major. Nothing wrong with the major, right? But Philby was a genuine three-star contender, I mean, three-star general and a contender for the top job. He was part of the boys at the top in those days, right? Yeah. Ames was not. He was a middle, and he wasn't a manager. He was, you know, sort of, especially he was doing rush. He had some skills in. He wasn't fluent, fluent, but he could speak it.

Very few people did. So he was often involved in the sensitive cases. I don't know if Philby ever had the access. It's a smaller service, so he may have, but AIMS sat where the crown jewels were. Right. So you could have been the cleanup crew. If you had access to the safe, you would do great damage to our country. Right. So Ames was just because he was there didn't mean that he didn't have access to some of the most powerful and damaging secrets.

And as a result of it, 10 of our best spies inside the Kremlin and lost their lives, thank to Rick Ames turning over their names. Yeah. But Rick's motivation, I looked at it differently, and I said I knew him. well. I mean, I went to his wedding and so on, and he worked for me for a while. He was supposed to leave. I wish he had left before I got there. His wife was pregnant, so they extended him. In retrospect, I'd got to see him later in his life. But earlier in his life, he could care less about how he looked. He smoked. His teeth were brown and missing,

and clothes wore the same shirt, and he couldn't care less. But if he gave him a good buck and a glass of bourbon and a cigarette. I mean, he was happy in life. Yeah. It wasn't like he needed Gucci shoes, but he married, he fell in love with a Colombian diplomat in Mexico who had come from money but lost it. But she had financial knees.

When she was arrested, she had 500 pairs of shoes. There was like the Milda, Yeah, Melba Marcos, yeah. And she had designed her dresses that had never been taken out of the bag. It was like buying. Yeah. And she was sending a lot of money to her parents because she didn't have it. Unfortunately, when the CIA started to investigate Ames,

because they had several investigations looking for them all. They knew there was one in there. The report came back. She came for money, so he's a kept man. Today, there's so much information. You wouldn't have to leave your computer to figure out what kind of money she had or didn't have. But that was his story. But she, then next thing you know, he's dressing better, his teeth are all things.

But it wasn't because he felt a need to dress that way, looked that way. But he had tremendous financial pressure. And he had a drinking problem. And again, whether you're an alcoholic or just drink too much constantly is a different issue. But he could lay off of, the difference was he could lay off of it from time to time. But he needed money to keep that going. But I think it was a convergence. The psychological part, so I would say money now enters that.

That's not an issue with Phil D. But it becomes an issue with Ames and a number of them, Hansen. But Hansen also, I would say both of them have a psychology. And that was Ames thought he was smarter than everything. about it. Now, a lot of smart people in the agency. I never met anyone that was not smart. Now, that doesn't mean they were right, doesn't mean they agreed with them. But by and law, decent IQ, you don't want to be a genius because then you're dysfunctional, so we can all pass off as they were just a little below genius. I made me further to that. But he really

had a big ego. And one of mistakes I consistently have made in life is I don't recognize the size of your ego because I'd like to say, well, why would he have an ego? Right. And I don't need to find out it's massive. Right. So it's deceiving. So he thought he was really God's gift to the intelligence world and we just didn't appreciate him. But he was lazy. So he never looked in the mirror. Well, Rick, you only do the things you like and you only do them well when you like them. And you don't do your accountants. You don't do reports. You don't hustle. Yeah. So no, you're not going to get further it. Right. So yes, people are passing you by, Rick.

But that's on how he's looking. He's looking at the system is bad. Right. They're denying me my rifle role as this intelligence. And this happens in many defectors. It's the system that they're going against. It's not, it's not, it's not Philby. I want to be a communist.

He didn't want to be a communist. He wanted money, and he wanted satisfaction. He wanted respect. So sitting across from the Russian embassy, I'm surprised they didn't have three martinias, but I think it was like three gin and tonics, right? But it's enough if you get double shots of triple. So he sat there thinking about it.

Because he had a big ego, I can go in and hustle the Russians. So he goes into the guy that's handling Hansen. So you're walking into somebody that knows something about how to handle this type of ego. And they played the violins for him and they gave him that, right? And, you know, the camaraderie and all of this. The interesting thing about Hansen, though, is from what I've read at least, is the KGB never actually knew who he was.

No, they had no idea. Never met him. And they were paying him in diamonds, right? No. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, I'm sorry if I'm mistaken on that. I don't know about that. But bags of cash. He got back to cash. that because I think I would have heard that, you know, you just don't get a bag of diamonds and

go down the jewelers row and it all works out. Right. You've got to know how to do that. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't see that or read that. I think there was plain. Hanson's an interesting case, too, to juxtapose with Ames. Well, if you want, we'll just roll right.

Yeah, we do. Yeah. But going back to Ames, he walked in and he was going to give them some junk, right? But the second meeting he gave, he coughed up the whole tent. Okay. And there was an interesting, not interesting, there was a tension between the KGB and the Politburo, the political government. They did not want to kill the spies.

They wanted to keep them, in other words, they wanted to handle from a counterintelligence point of view, and they also wanted to protect aims. Now, would you wrap up these 10? You're going to find aims. Right. You're going to find handsome. But the polybure was so annoyed, not annoyed, that doesn't get it. Yeah. Kill them. You know, so they were all executed.

Two of them were already the other day were shot in the back of the head. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, let's say, I don't know how you die nicely, but... Humane euthanasia, right? I don't know how, but it wasn't, it's a traitor sort of exit, right? It doesn't have any, you know, you're not shot in a face or shot in a firing, so. So it was devastating. And there was a journalist, and I don't recall which one, but she was at an interview with him. There aren't many of them, interviews with Ains. And it was in the early years after he was arrested.

Interviews going along, it's interesting. Ames, you know, sort of telling his story. And she said, well, do you have any remorse or regret about it? And it's not like he stopped and said, well, let me think about that. Instantaneously said, no, I didn't have any remorse. Oh, my God. One of them, which again, I was reading something on this the other day. He actually became friends with one.

I mean, he was, he actually thought they, he thought, he says, he was my friend. We became friends. And, but if I didn't throw him under the bus, you know, I was going to be, I would be at risk. So I gave him up too. Wow. I want to go into this. This is the psychological and the financial part of it. So in the end, again, there's so many aspects of these cases.

Yeah. But Ames was the, there's a number of people. They built a team. We knew we had a mole. Right. There were a couple, there were years that went by where we were like the Brits. We could not accept that we had a mole. therefore it must have been Longtree when he broke into the, when he had a party inside the embassy, right?

Longtree was a security guard, Marine Guard. That must have been it. Oh, it must have been technology. They're bouncing beams also. Now, everything was technical because they couldn't accept it. Eventually, you couldn't run away from it. We had somebody. So, Milt had this interesting anecdote about when there was a Soviet defective.

and he arrived in the United States that Aldrich Ames like immediately like snuggles up to this guy in the car on the ride from the airport to wherever they were at the safe house that they were going to and he's trying to figure out if the defector knows about him that he's a traitor. Was that motorboat?

No, that's me. This is built. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, okay. So motorboat, the same thing with less happy ending. Like that guy went on to live. so when I was in Rome we had a Bulgarian again the CIA's not going to come and drag me out of here in the middle of this interview because this is all in the public domain that I've been told you any secret and I want to assure everybody this is not gin this is Poland spring we did not do shots before the show I'm just saying we did not do shots oh you're really helping me a lot so so so So, you know, coming back to the story with Motorboat, he walked in to the embassy and, well, it was going to be met over the weekend debriefed and polygraphed, right?

And Rick spoke Russian. This guy spoke Russian, so they were going to make sense. And so when I was coming in the morning, I ran into the polygraph operator. And I said, well, how did he go? He said, we did it seven times. And I said, you did what? Because once you start doing polygraphs, you degraded a polygraph. But Ames was concerned that motorboat might have been able to identify it.

So you ended up with an inconclusive polygraph. Now, he never came back. I didn't know he was never coming back. But I'd like to think I'd like to think I'm cool and composed. at times, but I really was upset. And he was in a different part of the building, so it wasn't as though he was within reach. But there was a corridor, and I saw him coming down the corridor,

and it was just one of those ugly situations. And I really, I'm glad I did it to him, but I probably would be embarrassed if I tried it with either of you, or worse. But I really said, how can you do this? How can you be so stupid? I mean, it was not nice. and normally there's two reactions.

One is, well, let me explain myself, right? Yeah, yeah. You explain myself because of Bivu. Or the other is, you don't know, I know more than you do, and I did, you know, that there's two things. What I got was stone silence. It was like, wow, that was really odd. You know, you're bleeding the death, but you're just standing there.

Yeah. And there's, in Spanish the word, oho, which means look out, watch out. That little piece of something wrong with Ames. What the hell is it? But that doesn't mean you're a spy. That doesn't mean a spy if you're fall down drunk. Now, they dried him out because we had a system trying to bring him in. So you leave that aside.

And the team, the team that was put together, and by the way, their first vote, when they had looking at the list, Ames did not make the top slot. I think he made it on Gene and Sandy. Grimes as they were on the team list, but they, Ames did not look like the person that was going to be fingered for this. And then it dissolved. I have no idea why it dissolved. And Gene was about to retire and winters, let me give another shot and start looking for it. And so they came to me not too late in, very late in the game when they're getting to the end part. They called

said, Jack, we can't meet you in our office. Can we meet you somewhere like where it looks like we're having a cup of coffee and just, you know, it doesn't look business. So they came and said, Jack, we have one question. We're closing in on Ames. I mean, this is a very, you know, they're not asking a lot of people that question. You said, do you think he could be a spy? Now, like Ames, I responded immediately.

I do. Now, he said, well, Jack, who's the second? person in the entire building who you think could be a spy. I'd be stuck. It was that one moment. Now, I didn't know what it was. There was something wrong.

So when they said it, of course he could be. Right. I knew about the ego and all these other things, but I saw him and remembered him as such an anti-communist that it wasn't clicking. But at that moment, I said, yes, he could. So my point is

the psychology of him. Ames and who he was and how his behavior is quite different than Philby. Philby. And Hanson gets closer to Ames than Philby. And Ames was not part. In other words, Philby was a highly respected person. Ames was not. You go to Hansen, and again, we haven't introduced him yet,

but are some of these same conditions apply with Hansen. You wrote about the fallout from Ames where I don't remember if it was a new director or whom it was, but they called, you know, 10 people basically at a carpet. A lot of people in the auditorium, and people thought that these 10 people who had worked with Ames or failed to identify aims were going to get fired. And really, they just got, they got reprimanded, right? Bill Studeman was the Admiral Studeman. He was a good friend of mine. I haven't seen one in a long time because I live in New York. But I remember him saying, this was our best day.

We caught him. All the people before us didn't catch it. Sandy says the same thing. It's your best day and your worst day, right? We got them. We really did a great job. But now there's hell to pay. But there's so much pain the institutions of somebody has to hang.

The outside world was really wanted people to hang. However, they did an investigation. And what happens in a lot of these things, there's like 50 people that may have, they should have done the polygraph, they should have seen it on the polygraph, someone should have checked his finances, somebody. So what you had was 50 people had different roles. But Woolsey was a lawyer. So his explanation, I looked at as a lawyer.

I'm looking at, do I want to prosecute anybody? from that point of view. And so he saw it as 50 people, so he had to grade it. And I think there were, the couple were not getting promotions, and they weren't going to get an award and this and, but I was in the auditorium,

and I could feel, no, that's not the right answer. So, throw him to the wolf, get somebody, right? And I thought, Wolsey was just going to stand this ground. and I think it was painful. People underestimate just, I mean, it's betrayal and it's detrimental effect. I will point out I was not on the 10. But coming back, and I think it may be more than that,

but it's a very, very, very painful experience. But one of the things that happened, and I think I told you this, At the time, the executive director decided we're going to fix things. We're going to have new CI training. We're going to have this. All that's good. I'm not saying you don't do it. Be able to look at financial things, right?

Anyone that gets a drink will be set off. So we're going to have all these things. But then they handed out never again, right, badges. I refuse to wear one. Some people probably say, well, he's, there's a communist. We've found one. The other people that thought I might be betrayed, I'll get to that in a minute, but when Hansen. But the point is you can't say never again.

We're penetrating countries. That's our job. Get sources. And if you go back over history, we've had sources. They've been in there. They're always. You have to work on the assumption. They're always there.

It wasn't that I was arrogant. I already was told that we had one. Right. Hanson and CIA now it turns out and the FBI was they won't like me saying that they were absolutely convinced it was ours why they had the blinders on

it can't be us got to be you and turned out in the end and I had 20 FBI people helping to find Hanson and so I how can I put it never never again when we had somebody sitting right in the midst of us

and the flip side of that because with the Hanson story with the flip side of that. Where everybody thinks, you know, you're either the FBI or the CIA, you should be able to find these people. You have Kelly, right? Who wasn't he the first person, like, identified, but it was a wrong identification? There was a fellow that Brian Kelly, and it's a, I knew Brian.

Brian actually were for me. I thought he was an excellent officer, very dedicated. I'll leave Brian aside. for us. Okay. When we started looking for Hansen, because of the experience of aimed, I called the team that was looking at them and I said, I want to see who's on the list. I want to see whether there was anybody I had a feeling about, right? Yeah. And they refused to give it to me. Right? At that point, I was the acting director of all operations, right? So you're several left, but you're not going to give it to me.

So they were really terrific people. I mean, they were protecting their country. They don't let anybody know this. So I have to know. So they came up, and I think they probably went back and opened a file. But none of them felt right to me. And I didn't know every one, but it didn't feel right. But that doesn't mean there wasn't somebody on that list.

But it's so hard because you're looking and you get a report, oh, he served in Berlin. Oh, no. He also was in Columbia. He's 35. He's 62. So what you're getting is your matrix is matrix yet, but who's the one person? So it's not as easy as it sounds.

But little by little, there were, you know, one of the women that was on the team, Diane, worked with Rosario or New Rosario very well. And she knew she didn't have money, so I think she went to the team, and it was her breakthrough. She doesn't have any money. How does Rick have the money? Now you've got the makings of a case. Where is the money? How did you get the money?

And then there was a – I have a chapter. It takes a spy to catch a spy. If nothing else, you need to have spies over there, so they tell you how they find your spy. So just like Ames was a spy that helped catch all their spies. Someone on the end said not provided enough identifying data from the KGB that there wasn't any doubt that Ames was the guilty party. But because we know you're a spy, we can't arrest you. You have to prove it in court. So then begins a big FBI operation.

They bought the apartment next to them, dozens of officers following them. I mean, despite Rick's training, he probably never spotted it. I don't know. But he was lazy. So the FBI pulling his trash every day. It's a specialty in some business. Be surprised what goes out in the trash. But he was lazy.

So he on a post-it wrote down clandestine contact instructions that he got from the KGB. They had that and they got him. And there was this laziness, his lack of operational, as eubris again, they're not going to catch me. I'm smarter than all of these people. Yeah. The same, again, just to we transition to Hansen, because we talked about him, but people in the audience may not know, was an FBI officer. And he betrayed his country.

But he actually had a longer run, I think, over 20 years. Rick had about 15. And you mentioned to me earlier, the KGB never met him. Right. He established a relationship with him over in McLean, if you're familiar with his. Virginia, there's right in the middle line, there's a park, Foxstone, I think, and he would put a trash bag of documents there. KGBs, I mean, CIA people lived up and down the street.

No one knew what was going on. He would leave the documents, they'd leave the money. He would take the money, and they worked for the KGB, the GRU, passing periods where he wasn't working, but they never met him. But he'd have his fingerprints on the trash bags. So like Ames, not quite as smart as he thinks he is. But the second thing is he made one call during his entire time to the case, not identifying himself, but they taped his voice.

So when they were closing in on handsend, again, the spy of ours, let me put it as a vector came to us and said, there's a trash back and I think it must have been a heartbreaking thing because I think the head of the FBI was Louis Free and the top officers sat there and listened to the recording and they knew exactly who it was

not your best best day but again he thought he was gifted smart but he had a personality disorder was kind of a creepy guy you know wow that to say that we can get into his lifestyle

that were super creepy. He had some kinks, yeah. Kinks is, yes. So, but he had issues. He had an issue with his father, was a policeman in Chicago, and there was tension, but again, it was this big ego and trying to prove himself somehow in this process. But he was a techie when it wasn't as common as everyone's a techie today, but so he was able to

to get into different places in the, just like Ames, where there was very sensitive information and did huge damage to agency. But like Philby, because we really didn't get a tip on AIMS, Hanson's brother-in-law was an FBI officer and went to his superior and said, I think Hansen is involved in espionage because his wife found a drawer of money, and it didn't go anywhere. And then there was a case that got wrapped up, and he was involved in it. Edwin Pitts was an FBI officer and reported to his superior, I think, Hans it is. And again, you're going back to the British service.

There's this reluctance that you can't underestimate. It can't be. it can't be not one of us and so he lingered over there working even though there were lips on the screen so

you have the psychology he needed money as well for his lifestyle well we'll leave that side I mean that's a whole different story the kinky side but how he used the money but he was also a I don't say

with personality but he was deeply religious. And then the other side, he was the devil's mate. He was an Opus Day member, wasn't he? Yeah, yes, and Alton McLean. But at the same time, you know, he spent a lot of money on an exotic dancer. Yeah.

Which she says they never consummated a relationship, if you will. So I don't know. But, well, the worst part. I mean, this isn't the record of them. This is, again, not something that came up. but, you know, he videos his wife. They're having sex, and he sent it over to his neighbor.

I mean, it's like, what planet are you on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like there's things rolling around on that head that, I mean, I think I'll defer to psychiatry. So when you get into espionage cases, there's really, really, there's not diverse, they fall in these pockets. Well, the last category is coercion. Right. And despite the movies, and now I'll wait, some CIA person will correct me on it. If so, I want to hear more about their story. And that is, that wasn't CIA style. I can't remember a case where they came and said, we're going to go blackmail this guy.

We didn't have to. We had people that wanted to come to us, or how we'd like to have a college fund set up for you. right? Right. You know, the honey pots weren't really... It's a hostile ass. Yeah. So, but on the other side, I mean, the most famous case,

again, come back to the novels, as you were saying, sometimes you can look out. But in the career, Carla is Marcus Wolfe. Marcus Wolfe was the head of East German service during the Cold War. And by the way,

Putin was in East Germany at the same time. I'm not saying he met him, but it probably, you know, it was formative in his own thinking. But there was a book and a movie called, I think, I hope I'm right, Red Sparrows. So in there, first of all, Marcus Wolf had 100,000 spies. I mean, I don't know how you keep track of them. That's well above the U.S. average.

I just want to tell you that. He was patting the books a bit. Well, I don't know who he's patting the books, but he, I'll leave it at that. Well, there's agents of agents, probably every doorman. Right. In other words, he had a network. It was a domestic thing. He wasn't working in a foreign country with 100,000.

Right. But he had 100,000 domestically. But they used honey traps. Yeah. And we went to school. We'll learn how to seduce people. Yeah. So why?

Because we would like to show you the gulags in Russia. We want to show you, we're going to try and sell you this product of an decrepit economy, right? They didn't have that. Right. So they did resort more to coercion. They had volunteers, and we were just talking about some of them. But I just, it just seemed not to be the American. It wasn't necessary. And I think you'd have a hard time passing a smell test.

You go down to Congress and let me show you all these pictures. Right. It's like, yeah, okay, bud. Right. I have to go back to my constituents. You know, I know one of the things, I mean, we're, We're already at like an hour and 40 minutes. And we don't, like, we don't want to.

Well, maybe we could beat last time. Maybe we go to five. I'm happy to go to five. I'm not, but I know we wanted to kind of talk about, like, the DGI, but one of the things I want to ask you about, because we've talked about the espionage game and these, these double agents or these traitors. But I want to ask you about the present and the future of. espionage and along like what keeps you awake at night and along with that idea are you worried about sort of ideological influence in like are young people now them growing up in the intelligence world do you think that plays into the future of espionage yeah so i think you've got three

questions yes yeah which should take us to three hours so if i remember all three but let's let's Let's start with the, maybe we'll start, I'm afraid if I do the first one because what keeps me awake of night is a big story and then we have what will influence. I will let you answer any of those in any order you want, the priority that you'd like to give them. Let's just do the first, which is the middle. The intelligence world has changed so much. The speed of it is breathtaking.

I'm not 100 years old. them getting there. But when I first joined the agency, there were people abroad. What you did is you wrote a long message because you couldn't write a short message because you didn't have bandwidth. You'd write your message, cut it in half, mail one half in one week. You would have funny words to take out your name, Dave. They'd say X1, right? And then they'd send the next one in the following week, you glue it together. That's the speed of which intelligence was moving. right in the 70 you got bandwidth and then you got cables where were 22 pages long in the middle of it they said the office car was dropped in the river and by then you didn't bother reading it so

you were able to get the information but the idea of having the magic of an iPhone and be able to click GP chat and say tell me about this tell me about that the the world abroad they're called chief of station commander in the British service one Why? You have to make the decisions because there's no time for Washington to get back to you. The power was, so social media, technology, digital intelligence, starts with the Sputnik and the satellite. So the speed and AI. And so, and even the targeting. So you have to move fast. And it's changing so rapidly. The one saving grace that I want to bring from the past, we have to. to be careful that you don't outrun human because, and we talked about this the last time,

and I won't go back over it too much, other than with all that information, you also get conventional wisdom, and you're not really using primary sources. And sometimes decisions are made like Hamas going into Israel, was dismissed because they didn't have the human sources. I think in the private sector, I'm starting to feel a renewal interest because there's so much confusing confusion. They're asking for ground truth more in terms of investing. I think the agency is being driven that way as well. The problem is you can't operate the way you used to operate because I'll be able to, you can't tell me. Here's a card.

Call this number. Or I'm going to tell you I'm going to Chicago. when I'm going to, the drone's on top of you, go practice your surveilling training all your one. You won't even see it coming. Right. So how are you going to operate? So there's this radical movement and that has to take place, but I'm saying hold on to the field I know best, the things we're talking about today. Those sources can save you a lot of time and trouble. Okay. I wouldn't take the young and the ideology. The edge we still have With what I'm going to talk about keeps the awake,

we need to preserve, as I said earlier on, if you go out in this country, you'll still find a lot of support for CIA. You're going to find a lot of support for America and so on. We, with the young people, we hope we imbued them with us, and that is just how valuable, precious democracy is. And I lived in Chile, and it was as a young man, and I watched a communist system in the process of being developed and taking over lands. And, you know, again, people being fearful and leaving. And then I saw a right-wing fascist, or, and if you like, the boot-step system.

And I landed in Miami, and the cab driver started ripping into Richard Dixon. and I'm sitting there laughing inside. It wasn't about Richard Nixon. That that cab driver thought he could talk to a stranger that way about the President of the United States. He'd be dead. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I'm saying, I was in fact vaccinated with what we take for granted our liberties and freedoms.

And people don't understand we need to go back and study civics. The Constitution, separation of powers, what it is that's underneath the flag. So coming back to the ideology, there's no counter ideology, right? Right. So I think, I'm hoping that somehow we rally around this. I think we will. There's been periods where this has been challenged in the United States. We've had civil wars.

I mean, it's not as though it's been one smooth ride. So I'm not losing too much sleep about it. I do worry about what they're getting in school. and again, I taught school for four years in high school. And I can honestly tell you, I wasn't politicized. In other words, I didn't get it, I was teaching history. Here's history, right? And I wasn't trying to let me pass on on this is what I believe, right?

So I think there's a little too much of that as I understand. The other side isn't really selling the theology, but she and the others, they have a new world vision. And let's see if they can sell it, which is, you know, we're going to give you order. You know, you're going to a lot of order. And trains are going to run on time. You won't have any disturbances. Right.

But your whole family might be in exile. Right. So, but they are trying to come up with a new order, which is my segue into what keeps me awake at now. Yeah. So for many years, I thought, well, Where would be the flashpoint? Where would be something that would rock the earth? So India and Pakistan, I always kept an eye on Indian Pakistan

because they have the equal amount of nuclear weapons, powerful in almost matching ways. They've been to war three times since World War II. So there's been longstanding divisions from the day they were separated. So would there be a misjudgment and a nuclear weapon could go off? So I was concerned not because Korea doesn't have exactly that same North Korea, it doesn't have that same challenge. So that was where I thought of that. And I think as both of those societies moved on, I think those prospects are lower.

Need to keep an eye on it. Right now it doesn't bother me. I don't wake up in the middle of the night. What I do find that's really troubling me at the moment is that it's really troubling me at the moment. is I think we're being challenged one more time. I'm a cold warrior. I saw it. Grew up in a generation where there was a communist bloc,

opposed to the Democratic West. There was a real struggle about who was going to, which system was going to prevail. And we did prevail. And there was a poxamary cana for a while where we actually were the big, we could be the big, force in the world and hopefully for good.

I'm not saying without flaws, right? And it looked like an opportunity. And, you know, if you go to the Clinton administration, and he looked at, well, what were the big challenges? Well, Haiti, we were going to invade Haiti. Ireland was an issue, I mean, and it did have the Eastern Europe. So, but by today's standard, that's not mind-boggling. Right, okay?

Right. And as I said in the book, what I've anticipated is with me. It was not that I wanted to see that happen. You have a very strong China. You have a very aggressive and well-armed Iran. You have North Korea, and you had Russia. Now, they were all sort of in that same area. The war with Ukraine has certainly.

rock the system. This isn't about Ukraine and Russia. It's not Israel and Hamas. There is a reshuffling of the deck that's happening now. These countries are working together. North Korea is providing

missile technology that's helping Russia. The Iranians are providing the drones. The biggest trading partner now with Russia is China. people are

Russians are studying Mandarin right they're not coming to you Russia is no longer looking to Europe we need to wake up we're thinking that somehow they we bring them back this was my view bring them back to Europe right no they're this is

now a block and they're friends that are autocratic so we're not we're looking I don't know what the policy strategy is in the back room but I think we tend to look at these as if this is all very one-to-one ad hoc.

I believe when I told you, when I went to China to buy weapon, they gave me a discount because we were fighting the Russians. And I said at the time, I think there's longstanding tension there. I would tell you today they'd raise it $2. There was that relationship is getting more and more important to both of them. The struggle with Russia was often about Iran. Who could control Iran? If you remember the Shah and all of this, the Russians always had their eye on Iran. We're looking at a block that is least the size and

dimension with much more deadly force. Right. My view, and I was on record when Putin went into Ukraine, and that was he had sowed the seeds of his own demise. He was a lot of his own demise. He was weak country. He had just shown it. Then he put his army in there, which was an unanticipated rag-tag operations. Things aren't constant.

My assumption, hope, was that we would stay the course. We're now two years into. They went to fly Zelensky out and we thought that they were, Russians would roll them over. The Ukrainians stood up tall as I go into my second book saying they would. but we've had a long delay.

We were not providing. I wasn't critical of what we were providing because I understood there was again this let's not cause World War III where I'm coming back saying you're not going to cause World War III. You better start moving faster, better with everything you can possibly be put into it.

Right. Because what has happened with Russia, that rag type army, those tanks that were broken down, they went on a war footing. Putin has changed this country into a war fighting machine aligned with Russia. They are now producing new equipment

and with the help of our technology we've been stolen so much from the West, right? So that that old army is getting stronger and we were slow and this is the dysfunctionality of our political system here

that we weren't able to see this. We're not able to see that we have to take care of the border and we have this looming, looming crisis. This country should be able to take care of both of those. My concern now is we've passed $61 billion. That is not trivial. They won't be able to spend half of this year. Why? Because the things they need are not viable. There's not enough $150.00. Right. Right. So we are not in this, the way that the opposition is. Right. What keeps me awake at night is I see loom.

I'm an article coming out in a, it's a book, in the one of 50, it's not of my book, where I see this as the new Cold War. This is actually a block that's getting strong. Yeah. It's more cohesive. And we're here thinking that somehow, as Ukraine, is it relevant or not, we've always had an isolationist stream. Right. But, boy, our times have passed. If you think you can sit here and watch this group get stronger and stronger.

and are not going to have to confront it. So I understand the reluctance, but we have to look beyond. My view is if we could hold long enough, Putin would go because he doesn't have a party like she. He doesn't have any ideology. And his own people would say, let's walk him out the door. We blew wind back into his sails

because he was saying, you won't stay, you won't stay. that was his key argument. And so we put the $61 million. It's like, do you think they're going to still stay? I mean, in other words, it wasn't enough to bring back the argument so that he'd be weaker inside. The clock on his demise does not start until we get a stalemate. And we're not going to get a stalemate.

Now, there's a lot of people say, well, come the middle of 25, the Ukrainians will be tired and ready for concessions and Putin's going to agree to them. and my Ukrainian friends, I say to them, that's what you think may happen. Putin's going to say, Zelensky steps down, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this. He will come out with looking so much stronger. And he will have an industrialized part of Russia. And we have helped create this problem.

And I understand it, how we got there. But I wanted to put the fire alarm on. This is moving faster, and we are soon going to be confronted where the gap is going to be huge. And I don't feel like, you know, there was an article by a woman who said, look, I think I see the problems, not this, but see, why doesn't everyone understand this? And I have trouble because I really feel this coming, and I'm convinced of it. And, yes, I could be wrong. but the details of what I'm reading day in and day out

suggest that we have a real dangerous situation. Let me just one last thing. Yeah, yeah. The fact that we're not doing this, she's timetable for taking Taiwan is different. His calculation is different. Putin's is different.

And that is they're not coming. They're not coming. They're not going to stay the course. and they're going to get more aggressive, not less aggressive. And so will North Korea and so are the Iranians. There's a stream, and we can talk about this the next time that QCAA, the stream within our governing class that somehow thinks that we can make a deal with Iran. I'm just here this, we're looking at something formidable,

and I believe we're up to it, but it starts with recognizing the problem. And I don't think the issue has been joined as soon. We've really treated them with kid gloves over the years, haven't we? Or like an unreturned faith, I guess, or idealism? I don't know what you would call it. I'm trying to think of labels, and I'm going to be careful that I'm going to be careful. Yeah. But to some degree, Russia, I would say maybe there was benign neglect.

What was that? The government fell. There was an opportunity to move. in for whatever reason, private sector government. It wasn't that we tried to undermine it. There might have been an opportunity in Putin year by year. You're not worried about us or Europe. They've all found ways to work around it.

None of them are suffering from the sanctioned the way that it makes a difference in this type of struggle. China wasn't benign neglect. We invested heavily. We made their own. And I understand how we got there. It was a hypothesis that once they had all these goodies, they would then become a democratic state.

You have the strongest communist party, strongest leader of the Communist Party, and a united bloc there, and hard line. Both of them, all of them, believe we are the enemy. Their propaganda message is an integrated one. They're all saying the same thing. and that is we are the enemy but I think I think they smell weakness and it's not I'm not

talking about the ministry I'm talking about our body politic and how we view the world and I think we're thinking that somehow you know life when the United States can go on and leave it be as it is Europe is very worried because they've been invaded over and over again. Their problem is they don't have an army. In other words, what are they going to do? They're starting to build up and they're building up NATO. So they're building, but it's not going to match what we're looking at in this other group. It's not nearly as aggressive or war-oriented. So that's what keeps me awake at night. And a lot of times during the day, I sort of twinge with and it's not, I usually say it's my grandkids that keep me awake at night.

And it is, but it's because this isn't necessarily your problem. This has a long leg. Right. And we have to get... This is the next 50 to 200 years. This is not a five-year problem. We're looking at a shift, a big shift that we're going to be dealing with, so we have to construct and build our army accordingly.

We have to have our body politic united about what this is, which are Republican Democrats, if they agreed, sit down and say, this is the problem. Let's cut the BS out and let's just sit down and start to figure out how we're going to deal with. Do you see this jack as like the new Axis powers, Iran, Russia, China, maybe dovetailing with North Korea. Is this really, I mean, the way you're talking about it sounds like we're already in a global war that's recalibrating power. That's where I am. It's a balance of power. It's team democracy, team autocrat. Now, it's not just them. They have friends.

A lot of autographs, a lot of government. And they're looking at the United States, and they're making a calculation. Do I bet that they're going to be there? Yeah. Right? So look at what China is doing around around. Look what the Russians are there. They're trying to build this.

This is the old containment. We fought them everywhere where they tried to make an encroachment and sell communism. It's not as blatant. In other words, it's not communism. What are they selling? Their new view, new world view. We're losing market share. Right.

Whatever you want to, however you want to look at it. And they're in cahoots together in a way that is going to those who think that somehow the China, I used to be among those until we have gone, this crossing the border, February 22nd, 22, was a game changer. But it's not about Ukraine. It's vitally important for the people. There's suffering so much. But it's really this new structure, and that's a big deal.

You have to organize accordingly around that. How is it going to differ this time? Like I made the allusion to World War II. We've talked a lot about the Cold War. How is this one different? It perhaps isn't different, except it's more dangerous. Yeah. In other words, we have a much bigger, we can, if you,

One of the things is very scary when you look at the, well, the war going on between Russia and Ukraine. There's a new war. I saw a video the other day of some Russians, different pictures of Russian soldiers on the ground running, running down the basement, hiding here, hiding there. And next thing, you know, they disappear. The drone just, I don't know, $500. Right? Boom. Yeah.

I mean, the Economist magazine did a cover. once. I want to say 10 years ago. It was instead of like the movie Hitchcock with birds, all drone. But that's what we're doing. Warfighting is different. And there are so many scary aspects of this and how much damage

we can do to each other. Yeah, it's interesting because you know, a lot of people... I didn't mean to get on my high horse. No, no, no. But you ask me what case you were like, this is really strong business for me. You know, a lot of people laughed at Bush when he talked about the axis of evil, right?

But we're really not, like we're seeing sort of the fruition of that now. Whether you call them evil, whether you call it evil, it's evil in the terms of, it's the antithesis of the American view. But I think he was talking about relatively weak states at the time. Now you're talking, this is where the transition from the terrorist target. Right, which also will go back in history and look at all of that. But right now, this is more similar to 1950. Sure, absolutely.

Than it is to 1990. Yeah, and absolutely. And I just mean in the sense of the countries that he named are the countries that were concerned about now. They just weren't so much of a concern at that time, right? Because I thought, wasn't he talking about? No, you're talking about, maybe I'm missing the point here. But with Reagan, it was the, oh, access. No, but then the Bush was talking about Iraq and terrorism.

I thought he talked about Iran. I couldn't be way off. No, Iran, for sure. Yeah, Iran, North Korea. But Iran, Iraq, they're not in the same league. Yeah. And it's not just China and Russia. It's China and Russia in tandem.

Right. It's Iran-Russia China in tandem. It's North Korea. Right. And they're friends. Right. That's different. Right.

That's really. That is an axis. Yeah. That is a counterweight. And I think I start out in like the first part of the book with the defector of 2001 who came out and said when he joined the KGB, number one target was the CIA, number two was NATO, number three was China, right? This was the KGV, now that they may be China is a top one.

But when he left, it was the same. We're the main enemy. Putin, whatever, I don't think he ever really thought. He always felt a deep grudge because of what happened to his service as KGB in the country. He was going to reconstitute it. He's on a mission. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of conviction here. Yeah.

We have, so here's the thing. We have to have you back. Did we get to fourth chapter? At least once. At least one more shot. Yeah. Yeah, we're about halfway through the book now. We didn't do Haiti.

We didn't do Haiti. We didn't do the DGS. Yeah, we didn't do the DGI. We didn't talk about, about, like, the espionage with the French. Like, there is so much we have to talk about. Listen, I'm telling everybody what a great job you're doing. You're not getting half of it done. We're horrible.

We'll get there. We'll get there. It's the booze. It throws us off our game. I know. I feel like the man left out, like the woods of the group. But I do, okay, so we have a couple questions. And unfortunately, one of them is about the Cuban DGA.

And that's like a whole, that's like a whole episode on itself. But so first of, Wang Wang, thank you very much. Ask if he can give some insight on the Office of Global Access. Tell me about the Office of Global. Okay, so he can't give you any insight on the Office of Global Access. No, I'm just saying this, I really am not familiar. Yeah, I'm neither. am I? I'm not either. So sorry about that one way. Thanks for that. But I'd be glad to end this.

You know, let me, I'll look into it. Um, KX, uh, thank you very much. And this is, so we, we did want to get to this and we will next time you come on because this is a large topic. But if you want to answer this as, you know, your opinion, please ask if you has an opinion about the Cuban DGI and their total penetration of U.S. Cuban intelligence. Great show. So there was a Cuban agent who was arrested several years ago, right? But what I found interesting, I think it was Annabella Morales. And she was in DIA, a very senior person in the Cuba business, very respected. Good score.

She was an ideological recruit. The DGI recruited her. But what I found fascinating is somewhere in her debriefing after she was apprehended was, oh, the DGI has a lot of sources in the government, right? I have a lot of respect for the DGI and a couple of reasons. They had the fire. When the Soviet Union was basically stale, the Cubans were selling in Latin America revolution, chains,

down, they had a message. And they spoke the language. They swam in the water. They weren't afraid to go to the university. She was recruited, by the way, at John Hopkins. I want to go look at some point and figure out where the Cuban DGI guy made the connection with her.

We're talking about Annabelle and Montez? Montez. Yeah, okay. So she was the real thing. And she was illogical. She thought that she did. identified so much with Cuba that she wanted to help them. Right.

And she provided very valuable information. But that was a good recruitment. Yeah. It's an intelligence source covering you. You get her and you get her through the old-fashioned recruitment. Right. And then more recently, we had Ambassador Roka, American Ambassador to Bolivia, you know, 25 years. But he was a little logical recruitment as well.

These are not trivial recruitment. Right. And their longstanding ones. Right. So I would say that the Russians weren't nearly as good as recruiting. And we have a large, you know, we had the Cuban population, and so there was water for them to swim in. Right.

And so I think because the island of Cuba has never measured up, just like the Soviet Union didn't measure up. China did because we provided this investment. there. But what I'm saying, don't underestimate their intelligence service. And they clearly have good sources. Agee. Remember we were going to talk about Phil Aegee at some point because he's in the book. That's a Cuban recruit. He actually walked into the Russians and they didn't trust them. So they went to the Cubans and they ran him and had very deleterious effects. So I know we can't talk a lot about it. But just because Cuba

is where it is and Castro's gone. They're a formidable adversary. And, you know, I'm hoping the FBI is spending a lot of time because there's so much distraction, rightfully so, and what's going on in the Middle East and Iran. It's really, you know, Cuba is not attacking us militarily, so sometimes your resources are, you know, proportion, proportion accordingly. I thought I read that one of the things about Montes was that she did, like, openly talk about, like, poorly about America and positively about, like, socialism or communism. I thought that that was... That's why they found her. Right.

She was in the university speaking that way. Now, my sense is she went through the Philby experience, it down. Okay. So in other words, I don't think she was walking the hall of the DIA. If so, let's talk to the security office, what they're doing. In other words, my point is, just like Philby, there was a history. If they'd gone back at the university. It's a tell because they're a hardcore ideologue and then all of a sudden.

And then it just stops. Now, that does happen in life. Right. because this is Whittaker Chamber case back in the McCarthy era. But sometimes you have an ideological break. Sure. But better prove it to me. Right.

Prove it to me. First of all, I'd like to know that you had that. You know, I wouldn't not like to not know that you had that conversion. Like not know you were a communist, right? But once I know that, you better really prove it before you walk through the halls of the intelligence community. So with, you know, obviously kids are kids and people. Well, you know, the old saying, if you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative, when you're old, you have no brain.

You know, like there are these ideas. I'm not signing up to any of this. You're not dragging me. Yeah, no, but there are these ideas that, you know, like, you know, kids, young people are often influenced, you know, by whatever. That when the intelligence agencies, when the FBI, when they're looking to hire, especially with social media being so prevalent now, You know, there used to be that question on the security clearance. I don't know if it's still there, but have you ever been or are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party, right?

Like, do you think that agencies should, like, go back through people's social media, back? Well, I hope they are. I mean, I do it my business. In other words, if you come to me and say, listen, I'm about to make an acquisition of a company in this country or wherever it is, you go into that social media, you pull everything to pull apart the background because you don't want to make a mistake. Right.

I mean, so much money's riding on it. Right. is even higher stakes. So my assumption is that we're using all the tools you can to assess people. I don't think we're going to have the problems with Monta. I mean, I'm hoping that doesn't happen because I think there's flaws, right? If someone misses the paper, they lost the paper. Sure. But it's systemically, I think that's less likely. I think with AI, you're going to reduce that. Yeah.

The more likely thing is you're going through your career like AG and then you switch to the other side rather than you were a communist and you get a KGB guy to go. That's on the lower end of the equation. Let me, I was talking last night at dinner after the speech about, you know, what's missing with some of the young people. And again, there's a young person across the table. They say, you know, we need, it's not just their fault.

It's not just their fault. Sure. Right. To take responsibility. But I'm not going to talk about whether Jack Kennedy was a good president and not a good president. But the one thing I can tell you for sure is he was a charismatic one. In other words, in the 1950s, you know, politicians were smoking cigar.

and back room and precinct captains, you buy the boat, and you get your sister on the, guy, works in the bank, and she can go, when Kennedy ran you just started the media age, and he brought this bizazze with him, okay? And what happened in American politics, people went into the Democratic Party, but they went into the Republican Party.

Young people went in because working in the government, how inspiring can it be? Right. So I went back to my old high school, they wanted me to talk about it. about the book. Hardest audience, much easier than this audience, a much harder, 14 to 18-year-old kids trying to convince them to say, pay attention where you find you interesting. But when I talked to them afterwards, it wasn't that they didn't want to go into the CA, not wanting to

go into the U.S. government. They brought like the 20 of the best students. They don't call them that, but that's what you know. Not one of them are going in anything in public service, period. Military, police, teaching, doctors. They did want, I mean, doctors they did. Lawyers, weren't on the list either. It was all either technology or investment banking. In other words, there's, I think we're running, that generation that came in with Kennedy in both parties. I'm not saying it affected the, just like Watergate made a lot of journalists, right? But it was even more pervasive with Kennedy, has run its course because all those people that came in of public service. So what we've been into is a drought, not that there weren't good precedence.

Right. But you haven't had a charisma around politics and public service that young people could say, wouldn't it be today there was such a blow up in the House of Representatives? I mean, it was my, you know, I don't care who's right or wrong. It's like, you're a kid, you're watching, wow, why am I going to get into that? Yeah. It's not aspiring. Yeah, yeah.

And I think, you know, coming back to it, there's a, there's, I mean, we need. you need inspiration. How do you change things? Now, was he an influencer? Jack Kennedy completely ruined the hat industry. With a single, the inauguration, he didn't wear a hat, and that was the end of it. So that ability to influence society is really high. Yeah.

There's an obligation of leadership in every walk of life. So coming back to a number of the things we're talking about, there's some inspiration, some vision about where we are and how we get back to the level of civility and cooperation and national security jointness. I mean, when I went down to Congress on Afghanistan and it wasn't Republican and Democrats, what more can we do? How can we get this done? Right. I mean, and they would come and visit, not me, but they'd come the countries that I'd be with. They would eat and drink together and talk together,

disagreed. But on national security, there was a lot more rhythm. Charlie Wilson, you know, it's just, it was, and we have to get, we have to find our way back. We have to find leadership. And I think it's every walk of life, whether it's the media, the politics. But we're up against an adversary. I want to keep coming back to that block.

They've got a message. It's very clear. I mean, there's no, there's very, specific about what they're accomplished and what they're selling and that they're united and who's the enemy and how they're going to address it I don't think they're as good as salesmen let me put it that way because I think the product still right so we can beat we can win this one but we're not going to win it with wobbly leys and lack of you know who's on first base and you're going to

be here you're not uncertainty the worst thing that creates weakness is uncertainty what what's going to happen are we going to be with them not be with them so I don't mean to this out but it's I think it's very I think we're the crisis I mean every you know we're having a good time tonight my children are having a good time there's a crisis of what in the national security arena let's uh get through these questions with that's it if you have any patreon that oh that's all of them okay yeah uh yeah we do have a couple uh the first one uh from m corbin he asks, there seems to be nothing new under the sun when it comes to the world's second oldest

profession. You had mentioned last episode that the Directorate of Science and Technology was your original goal. Where do you think your career would have taken you within the directorate if you had gone that route? Well, let me correct the record because I must, I promise I didn't have one of your bourbon. It was really at the end of my career. In other words, I went in and my DNA somehow fit. I loved what I'd really belonged in that, the operational part. But I was also seized at the end of my career because of the counter-narcotic experience and technology and all the things.

I actually was a little bit of a pest early in my career. They needed to do more. So I thought I would like to take a shot at that. But it was at the end, not at the beginning. So what would have happened at the end of my career? it was almost like a post, though, was I'd run the course. I'd run the cards on it, so I was in London,

and, you know, okay, you want me to stay, if you wanted me to stay around, why don't I do the technology case? Because I sort of, don't go back and do the same thing you did before at the top of the operational thing. So, but, all the engineers looked at,

I said, I said, I said, I said, what's this guy doing? But it wasn't about engineering, right? So, I can't answer, I mean, the answer is, it wasn't, It was at the end of the cycle. Well, they didn't need me because look how far the world has moved in intelligence in terms of technology.

Duncan Idaho asks, enjoyed both your books? Oh, wow, he's a fan. I'm a big fan. I've got an hour for him. Do you think the ODNI has been successful in increasing collaboration between intelligence agencies? If you were DNI under the current framework, what changes would you make? across the agencies. This is so bad. This question is, this is dynamite.

We're sitting on a keg of dynamite. So if you go back, you'll find there was an op-ed written shortly after the D&I was created, right? And I was invited by the Washington Post to write an op-ed and said, why am I invited to do an op-ed? Well, they had directors, they had 10 top people saying the D&I was a good thing. The DNI was a good thing. Well, I'm saying it's the worst idea. So why?

They probably couldn't find anybody to say that. And my point was at the time, to me, I think the founding fathers got it right. In other words, you have an institution, you structure it, and you keep it tight. And the DNI, because it was a reaction at the time, and they had a plan that they've had for years in the basement. They did a really good job on the commission in terms of diagnosing what happened in 9-11. But they didn't have a plan and they slapped that on the end. That's my view of it. But it was meant to be advisory.

But being the government what it is, we decided we would make it a big agency. Why you need an agency of the scope? I think there may be a few thousand people in it. And you're wondering, why do you have that when you already have this? It doesn't make any sense. You've got competing. If you're sitting in Paris and the head of the DNI comes out and then the head of the CIA comes out

and they're trying to figure it out. I don't understand, and again, I don't want to, everybody working and I'm sure is a well-deserving government employee and doing something great. I think we have built a very major structure. The intelligence is so big that we're going to get lost in the woods. And I've talked to a couple

of directors, I don't know nameless, and I've expressed this. And they have the same response. Jack, they're doing better. And we can't do this. We can't undo this.

Congress, you have to understand. I do understand all this, right? And it's too hard, but they know it's not the right answer. They know in a heart or heart is not the right. and they know if they get into it, you're in a pit bull fight, right?

And why do I do this? I'm only going to have the job for two years and I'm going to spend all the time and it's nothing but headaches. I will, the morale, and they pass on it. So this is going on. No one's going to address it. I mean, I think we're going to be in really hot trouble.

But I mean, it's time to face up to what type of intelligence world are we going to have to face up to the challenges. The one thing I can promise anybody that steps does do it, they will never be rewarded for it. You have to do it because you're a public servant, you believe in it. Yeah. And it's not like, oh, it's too hard and we'll work around the edge. They're working around the edges. It's just, what happens? You work around the edges as you keep building out things. Well, exactly that. I mean, it's a little bit ironic that from what I've read the CIA when it was created, the intent was that they would be a coordinator. of intelligence. I talked to two of the key people that were on the panel, two of them, okay?

And they designed it, they did not think this, they did not think this would happen. They don't, they should know better than I know. When you start moving money and you do this structure, what are you going to do with it? Well, we'll build another office. Right, right, we'll hire more people. Right. Oh, we have to give them a role. Well, we have a lot more agencies too than we did 50 years ago.

I don't understand it. Now, the Brits and their service are leaning in mean, and that is, if you're an ops officer, you do your own reporting. In other words, you don't have, we build these blocks, and I wonder, you know, we build a support structure that sits on the top of relatively small number of agents, spies, and a small amount of money, and we have a big structure to support that.

And I wonder, not wonder, I don't think we have that right. Yeah. Well, last question from Alan. No one will ever speak to me again. We will, Jack. Has the intensity of the Ukraine support in terms of dollars put the dollar itself somewhat at risk in terms of the more complex environment it has to operate regarding volume of borrowing and sanction hurdles for international trade? If not, would a China Sea conflict induce manifestation of the same risk?

That's a big monetary question there. Well, when you actually look at what $61 billion is in terms of the budget, and it's a lot of money, to me, it's a, you know, but you look about what it's cost to build a couple of planes and a couple ships, but look what's happening. And originally, we were paying that to weaken one of our biggest enemies. That's a pretty good deal. anytime you can use

and it's not used that's the wrong one whenever you're lying with surrogate again I don't like these words because I see it more as a partnership and they are out there because they want to do it they're defending their country

that stops us from actually putting boots on the ground blood on now Morcona's saying but isn't any troops to send right so I think we have to recognize that they're part of our team, and by sticking with them, we would have weakened Russia, which would have weakened this axis that I'm talking about.

So what I would say to the writer, this is a really good investment. And remember, a lot of it comes out of our stock, which is then really replenished. Yeah, it goes into the American economy. I forget where it is in the budget, but in terms of real expenditure, I don't think it's really the money that's the problem in Congress. Now, are there a lot of other things that ought to be cut out of the budget? And should we, yeah, I would cut out a lot of stuff. But I think this is one of the best investments, you know. Yeah. And I think the problem that we discussed earlier is too small. Yes. It needs to be bigger and it needs to be

more direct. In other words, you don't send it to the check so they can send their secondhand and you have to up the ante on the level. And I learned this from the Stinger. This is a technology battle. This is a new war. Putin's new forces are bringing new technology. They're not holding back. They're putting their best in there.

If we give second best, what we're counting on is Ukrainian termination. Why don't you give them determination? Why don't you give them everything that you can give them? if you want to really stop if you stop Putin just hold him you don't have to win why we decided to do a counteroffensive I don't understand

if you just hold him he will be a failure and we stop that we looked like he was a failure we have made him alive again he's strutting you can't even see it you can see it on the stage

why because if we had held him now he looks like he's winning so his people are well who's going to try and you know be any resistance if he's winning Let it go. Let it roll. We'll get an industrial base out of the Ukraine.

I get excited sometimes. I'm more relaxed about old espionage. I just want to let folks know that on Tuesday we're going to be back with Matt Stevens, former Navy SEAL. And then on Friday, we're going to be here with Robert Young Pelton, who's a war journalist. But turn it over to you guys to wrap it up. I mean, final thoughts? Please buy and read good hunting and the spy master's prism. I promise you will enjoy them both. We have to have you back because we need one more. This looks like a lifetime enterprise.

We would love to have you as many times. See, we were doing two pages of time. Now we're doing one page at a time. Jack, we didn't have time or we didn't really get into it in depth. We'll have to next time. but for folks who are out there listening to this, could you tell them about the Arkin group and what you're doing today and where they can find you?

So when I left the agency, I went to stay close to information. Again, a lot of things are surreidipitous. And there was a top lawyer, a defense lawyer in town, and he thought he was the best lawyer, and I'll have to say he was the best lawyer in the country. I thought it was one of the best, but I mean, I usually don't say the best

because you don't want to get too over the charge. but he asked me if I'm going to business with him, we've created a business, and it was provide intelligence to the private sector, right? And, you know, it's, I'm not in covert action, which was, you know, so half my career, all my career is now devoted to collecting information, and basically in that consulting faction, which is, a factor, which is bringing the intelligence and this is what I think about this situation. There's a bigger demand now for geopolitical, and there's so much already out there analytically the customers I'm now getting

yeah I got that I really want to know ground truth so I've suddenly have gotten a new market so most of our clients many of them come through law firms because that's where companies people that have problems our specialty is international

and that is looking at companies people we're making investments But now a lot of it is every, all the investment companies were looking at risk in geopolitical, but it was number four on the list, and they felt comfortable because they had models that would work. Now people are coming to me more in the geopolitical arena. We're a small boutique, and, you know, we don't have hats, and they were not at conferences. Most of our work is referral. Yeah.

And we have a website. We're putting a new snazzy one off. What's your website? Well, it's the Arkin Group. Thearkin Group.com. The Arkin, thank you. My partner was Stanley Arkin. And when I started, I had 14%.

I never owned anything. And six months into it, I think, he said, I don't think this is working. So I was about to say something, good thing once in a while you hold your time. He said, I think we should be 50-50 partners. but he didn't want the company to be named after him because, and he was right, it's too personalized. So what I didn't know is truly one of the great lawyers, but he was so successful.

There's a lot of people that don't like him because he was successful. He brought down the CEO of American Express, so I don't get a lot of business from American Express. But it's the Arkin Group, and sadly, we were in business 20 years, but he was not a partner, it was a real friend. We were really quite different, but there was a core there that was very similar, and it was a big loss on a personal basis with Stanley.

So we've held onto the name, and we've been known in the marketplace, and sometimes it's called tagged, just because it's simply that we write that in. So you can find this, and, you know, my door is, I was about to say open, but you've got too many people. Disminating.

Yeah. So, yeah, it's, and we have a podcast and a newsletter that goes out, and you can see that. I'm having some fun. Actually, we did some of it tonight. I mean, it's really, mine is going to be about spy cases and try and bring some of it into the business community, like insider threat. When you look at the aims in the private sector, a lot of these same conditions. And someone said it's the oldest profession. Some of the ingredients in the human side are indeed constant.

The psychology and all those things are still very much part of it. Yeah. Well, Jack, thank you so much for sharing some of your experiences with us. And like Dave said, we're going to have to do this at least one more time, I think, to really finish them out. Honestly, I think we should just do it like every three months. We would just put it on the book as a recurring, you know. I think it's endless, you know. I do too.

So my granddaughter gave me a for a present, like the writer family story, which sounds great until you start to do it. So then it's like, wow, I can write something quickly about today. Right. But if I have to go back in the book, you're only up to, you're halfway through. I'm only up to 1974, and I've got 20,000 words. So, I mean, so we can go on. I don't know if I can catch up to you.

We're here for it. I mean, we're here for it. I think the audience that needs a break once in a while. We have a lot of great guests. I mean, some terrific guests. We'll get back to it in the fall. Yeah, I think, you know, let it sink in, let's some more problems because tonight's problem is not the problem we were talking about the last time.

Yeah. So this world is moving so fast, I'd like to take some of my experience. And fast forward into, if we're three months or, now. We'll be talking a different way about this. Jack, see what you said? Now they're all broken apart. I'm betting. I'm betting. That's not the case. But I think we'll be

I think, you know, to the degree that you want to do it, I enjoy it. Yeah. You are the best interviewers because if anything else, the audience they know that you know what you're talking about. You know you've read this book. And I said, the one fellow

invited me and held up the wrong book. We're having any discussions because you know what you're talking about, and it's in an area that I feel comfortable with. So that's why I come here. Oh, thank you. I mean, I've done a lot of one-timers, but I don't come back twice. If you don't know who I am and call me Billy, it's like, okay, it's not going to work.

But I feel like we are in this living room here, and I feel like in a real camaraderie here. We really appreciate it. Like, we feel blessed to have you and people like you willing to come on. and share your life with us and your, you know, your experience, your wisdom. Do you make sure you clip that part? Where he says how great we are? Yeah, that's important.

Every once in a while exaggerate. The rest of it was straight, but they said they're not going to help me get an Uber unless I say something like that. Delete that part. No, but no, but we feel really blessed. We got to get Pat in here. She was here last time. Yeah, she was great. Well, she has her crutches, so she's more lethal.

But she's coming back fast. She's coming back fast. That's good here. You actually, well, I don't know if she'll agree. She has real high demands on her contract. But some of the things she's done in behalf of the intelligence. She's more than welcome, you know, like, we don't like try to exclude the spouses, be they male or female, they're like welcome to come on the show.

We're going to have ground rules, though. Well, that's between you and her. Yeah. I can't do that. We can't enforce that contract. have to, yeah. I'll just tell you, we were taking Italian together because we were going to Rome and the spouses can take the course and we were going down Route 95 and I had the audacity to suggest that she wasn't using the subjunctive, right? The window goes down, 95, out goes the Italian

book. We didn't have, we went to class, there was only three of us in class and we going there not knowing her stuff. So you've got to be careful what push lucky I didn't get hit with the book that I was right. So we'll bring her back she's been a big big big part of

keeping me afloat. We appreciate it and our church upstairs it sounds like they've gotten started it's time to worship so we will see all of you on Tuesday and then again on Friday please check out our friends at Casa Carabao Cigars

Brassocarbeo.com and it can't be. It can't be 10.30. This is it. Sorry, Joe. We kept you out. Wait, right. I know. Apolly's to your misses. Get off that couch. I got to roll over. We're hitting the bars after this. I'm here for the night. All right, guys. We'll see you on.