The Team House - Chief Of The Directorate Of Operations For CIA | Jack Devine | Ep. 260

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

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=truehttp://thearkingroup.com------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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 #irancontraBecome 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. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do 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 House channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go in 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. Welcome to episode 260 of the Team House.

I'm Jack Murphy, you're with Dave Park, and we're very happy tonight to have in studio our guest, Jack Devine. Jack spent 32 years at the CIA, postings all over the world and finished up his career as the head of the Directorate of Operations or the National Condescentine Service. He's the author of a memoir, Good Hunting, and his most recent book is Spymaster's PRISM. Jack, thank you very much for joining us. It's a pleasure. It's fun. So, Jack, one of the ways we like to begin these stories is to ask you about your story, about your origin story.

How did you grow up and what led you to the CIA? Well, growing up is a good question. I was born in southwest Philadelphia, and it was a very parochial environment. my cousins, everybody with same background, Irish Americans, thought we'd live in Philadelphia forever. My father was in the plumbing and heating business, superintendent of plumbing. As a son, I probably should have joined Union 690, right? Now, I had, I did some, I was going to use a word, we won't say that, dirty jobs, right, in plumbing. Yeah. My father thought it would be good to get exposed to that. But, you know, when I was

a senior and getting ready to graduate he said oh look here's here's a school that when you apply and become a teacher I mean you could be a teacher said that sounds like a good idea it was as simple as that right yeah and I went out and went to Westchester State and then later Villanova University but at the time I was planning of becoming a teacher and was a teacher I graduated thought school in suburban Philadelphia two days different schools. And along the way, I met Pat Devine and got married. And she gave me for, I think it was birthday, a book by David Wise called The Invisible Government. And it was a

scandalous book about CIA, the deep state, they call it today, right? The deep state and how they're ever throwing governments around the world and fighting the communist. And when I was in school, and I was taught by nuns and priests, but it was the atheist communism and we're going to save the world. So it was a sense of mission. I read the book and said, wow, this is fascinating.

I always thought about teaching. Here are practitioners of foreign policy. So Pat said, why don't you write? So I did. I wrote a letter. And Penn and Inc. And it went in. After a while, I got an invitation to go down,

I think it was 12th in Chestnut in Philadelphia for an interview. And the fellow, like what I thought a spy should look like. You know, tweed suit, windtip shoes, hair-backed pipe, right? That was held Alan Dulles' look like. That's the spot. So I left and I thought, I thought that won reasonably well. And I got a letter saying, welcome, come to Washington. Let me fast forward for one second if you can tolerate it. So a few years ago, I'm talking the last five years, I was doing something with the agency,

and they said, Jack, you know, we have a present for you. I said, you do it? We have two letters, the one you wrote. Wow. And they gave me a copy of it. I read, I thought, I would never have hired this guy. He can't write. He can't write.

I mean, he doesn't even know where you do. It was like, why that letter got sent on to the next place? So the second one was by the fellow who interviewed him. It turned out that he wasn't a spy. Never been abroad. Never met an agent. He was an HR guy. So the letter instead of saying, look, he really knocked the ball out of the park, we have to have the guy.

It had a tone like, yeah, not bad. I thought they were doing me a favor. But it did get to the point, how did Jack Devine get in there? What is he doing in here? None of his relatives are in State Department or not defense at his chaise. He's never been out of the United States. I have no idea to this day. All I can tell you is because one of the things about writing a book,

you do a lot of introspection, how did I get here? And it has more cohesiveness than you think when you're living it. But I think at the end, I would say somehow I had a DNA that fit that particular job. That I really, as serendipitous as it sounds, what they saw, what I didn't see worked beautifully. and I thought I had a very fortunate career. That's what's very interesting about it, I think, is that you weren't recruited, it sounds like,

on the basis of an application or an exam, but rather a face-to-face meeting with a recruiter who was like, yeah, that guy has something we'll be able to use. Right, and I think today this is a problem because we're in technology. So your first hurdle is you have to apply. And you have to identify the job and know what job to apply for.

Now, there's more books that might help. you sort it out. But they miss the opportunity because some people look really good in paper. Right. And you're missing the person that has entrepreneurial energy. When I say entrepreneur, I don't mean about how they create a business, but they create things. Right. They build. It's not that they do their work well. You can test doing work well. So I think that process, I was lucky. I think that was helpful to me, the personal interview. And I'm grateful. So today when you want to apply, you simply go online and submit your resume and fill out whatever they have on the CIA.com website.

When you wrote this letter, what did you put in it? Like, what did you think was going to capture the eye of the CIA? I wish I had thought of something. It just said, you got an interesting organization. I'd like to join. It was really light. I mean, it was a page. It was a pen and pencil.

And they must have said, look, we feel sorry. Give him an interview. Give this guy an interview, right? But, I mean, I have no idea why that letter, because I'm not exaggerating. This thing, I would not hire this guy. I would not hire him based on the letter. Now, I've written it since then 10,000 cables,

so my writing, I could put verbs and subjects and objects together. But, you know, it just wasn't, like, I really didn't know exactly what the CIA did. Right. And I was interested in we were talking earlier about the covert action part, the action part of the agency. And again, not to dwell on this, but we can talk about the, not the org chart, but you have in the operational side, people that run spies, people that run covert action, and people that do both. Right. The last one's a pretty narrow ban.

Most people in the CIA that are operators want nothing to do with covert action. Even the experienced ones don't want to do it because it's trouble. He can end up in a crossfire, political crossfire. Others joined because they wanted to be in the espionage collection business. I think where it was a little different is I was interested from the beginning and the covert, but you really start doing your operation spy by spy. In my case, I leapfrogged out of my first assignment by being in Chile, which became a huge covert operation, which has influenced my development through the years in CIA. So can you, since we're here, can you sort of tell people like what the difference is in terms of the agency when it comes to espionage and covert action, how they're executed by individuals and by the organization?

In CIA, CIA, you never use the word spy. It's elegant. It's case officer, agent, right? But when you're communicating with the outside world, spy means someone that's working inside a foreign government, a foreigner. And the second book is titled Spymaster's Prism. I was a spy master, not the spy. I was the person that was managing those spies. Right. So that's in the espionage area.

The subset of that is counterintelligence. Keep an eye out who's doing that to us. But the other part, when CIA was being created in 1947, covert action actually sat in the State Department. They were responsible for it. And when it was organized, they brought the State Department element and dropped it in. The early days, they fought among themselves. the spying part and the action part. So, if we say action, it's political action. In Italy, 48, stopped the communists from taking over.

The coup in Iran, the coup in Guatemala, the Bay of the... All those are covert action pieces, as opposed to the spy. For Hollywood, covert action is James Bond, and the spy who came in from the cold La Couré, that you're spying. So you have those divisions, but even when I did a history, I read history on each of the stations before I went to Italy, when it was first form, had two stations, two bosses, one for covert action and one for spying. But they became integrated, and it became a single discipline. There was, you were going to be a case, you were going to be an operator, and you will do both.

but I would say instinctively many people, most vast majority, are more comfortable on the operational collection side than the armed action. Congresses, everybody, except the President of the United States. Whoever once in a while, and I should note this, when they created the CIA in the creation of it, there's only one clause. And I'm not quoting it directly, but it's something like, and you shall carry out those special activities directed by the President of the States. So, you're spying, you're collecting, you're producing finished fine intelligence for decision makers. But by the way, if the president calls you and when something done, you're going to do that.

That became the covert action charter. So, and again, not to get into this, but as one go through history, the covert action part often grabs your headlines and whether we're talking about Afghanistan or Iran-Contra, Chile, all those things involved action. The one thing that many people don't understand, it's a key, key point. And some of the folks that I don't want to talk about because I don't want to promote their books because they disagree with them. But one of the key things I know of no operation during my tenure, and I've also studied it. In other words, I've made a study of covert action and that is there's been no covert action that wasn't approved

by the President of the United States that I'm aware of. And in 75, it could be off by a year, it was in writing. In other words, if you see something in the press, if someone's reading it, it's not the rogue CIA. There is no rogue CIA. It's more bureaucratic than people would like the thing, less romantic. And there's real oversight. to it. So if you have a problem, you need to understand, despite everything else you read,

that the President of the United States has approved that. So do you think that one of the reasons that there's this mythos of this rogue CIA or factions within the CIA that go rogue is because the CIA is there to carry out these COVID actions and then they're the president's plausible deniability, right? The CIA, nobody from the CIA ever come out and say, well, the president told us to do that. It's just, hey, guess what the CIA did? And that's it. Right.

And I think at the very beginning, plausible denial was a key part of it. The problem is, when you look at the reality, Afghanistan, you're supporting 125 fighters. Right. Right. And 225,000 fighters. Possible deniability is low. I would say it's really designed so you're not rubbing your hand in the face of somebody and you're provoking it so they have to respond.

It's below the radar. Now, some covert action never publicized, never known about. And there's plausible denial. But the big ones, you know, it's a stretch to say, oh, we're going to say that we're not helping in Ukraine today. I mean, it's not just credible. Yeah. You have, I guess maybe we'll talk about it when we get to the part about Afghanistan.

Well, actually, let's talk about it now because you talk about in the beginning of the book, because like you said, your chapters aren't necessarily chronological, but kind of thematic. And you talk about these ideas you have about covert action and what it takes for covert action to be successful. And I thought that was really insightful because I've never seen sort of these tenets, I guess, like summarized and look if you want a covert action to work these things have to be in line and um let's see here do so you talk about viable partners in place so I think it's really important as I said I was a teacher so both books are meant to be learning let me tell you from my right my view my perspective of having been involved in

how these things unfold. I think policymakers, and the president, before he signs it, there's a thought process, before the agency executed. You have to think about why are we doing it.

And I think, I'd like to think I was an original thinker, but this is the just war theory from the 13th century, right? Right. And it means, first of all, you have to have an intrinsically evil enemy.

People don't like using the word evil, although Putin itself bring it back. and so a few others out there. But, so you have to have a real enemy. This has to be threatening to your, in other words, you don't meddle in covert action to annoy some democratic government that's not, you know, sharing your banana ratios

and export to import. It has to be an enemy that is, the plackable enemy that is coming at you. You really should try every other thing. You know, you should try diplomacy, economic sanctions, whatever, before you get to your covert action. The same thing is true, the military.

You want to hold your military back as long as you can. But there's a step in between where it's the covert action where you're taking quasi-military or taking political action. So having an intrinsic, trying everything, you have to have a reasonable chance of success. Don't do this. Well, let's give it the old college try. That's what happened in Chile. The President of the United said, give it the old college try because the

Field Station was saying, this won't, this can't get done. We'll give it a try. You have to have a reasonable sense of success. You have to minimize the loss of innocence. That's what they said in those days. That's how they talked. So today, it's civilian losses. You have to limit the bloodshed.

There has to be proportionality. You can't kill 50,000 people to save free. There's something, you know, you have to have a sense of proportionality. And then Jack Devine has his own. I've added. So the theologians are, I'm challenging them. And I said, well, you have the bipartisan support. If you can't get a consensus around that this is something to do,

then you should not enter into it. It has to be something that the American people, when they read about it, are comfortable with. And the only way they are is if they know they're representative that's going through the due process. you also have to have fighters. You have to have people on the ground that want what you're selling. I'm totally opposed to force-feeding democracy.

It won't work, and a lot of people are going to get hurt. Or if you want to fight against the common enemy, you have to have people that really want to fight, or you will leave the battlefield a loser. So, again, you have to have a team on the ground. And I think that the principal considerations, there may be one other that will go on in the middle of the night. But if you apply those, every time you're going to use force, the military, CIA, you need to be thinking about the outcomes and why and how. And there's a process.

And I believe in covert action, I'm advocating. But by my criteria, you narrow the number of ventures. You don't do it for the hell of it. Right. And because you're just might work. how good do you think Americans have been at gauging secondary and tertiary, like, effects of covert actions? Like, I think, I mean, I know Iraq, for instance, wasn't a covert action.

It was a, it was very overt action. But we really administratively misgaged what would replace Saddam. And so in these other places where we do, you know, conduct these covert actions, Do you think that the people have a good idea of what will be the end result when it's completed? I think we'd have to run through history with all the different examples, but I think there's some policymakers that don't necessarily go through the steps, but they have like in their head, how will this look when I read the Washington Post tomorrow? I remember Bob Gates used that.

If it doesn't feel good, you might not, might not. not wanting to do it. So I'm not sure everyone sits back and says, what happens if? Right. Usually there's so much momentum, we want to get rid of it. We want to fix this problem. We want to get it done. And frankly, even with the best of brains, you ought to go through the exercise. It's hard to anticipate what's going to happen. I will tell you, for example, in the Chile experience, which we'll get to some point, the desire would to get rid of But there was an assumption that he would go and there'd be an interim a year and the military would settle it down and the politicians would come back.

They had no idea that the next regime was going to be a dictatorship for 19 years, right? So even when you're thinking about it, you know, you'll have reactive things, and this comes back to the discussion we had era about conventional wisdom, even when you're thinking about it, it's a soft science. Right. But I think it should be done. I just haven't found it as the coin of the realm that everybody says, well, now let's talk about the downside because you have to be very careful.

A number of people make a career or government say, no, that's not going to work. Right. So you've got to keep them, you invite them in once in a while, but they can really slow the train down. Let's jump right into Chile, since it sounds like that was your first station. Well, actually, if we can talk about, because before, you were at headquarters, and I think it's important to talk about that because that was your first exposure to somebody who became quite famous from the CIA, right?

You were working as an analyst with AIMS then? Oh, no. Well, yes, when I first started with Rick Ains, but that was waiting to get into the training program. So it was, we'll get the AIMS for sure. Yeah. But my first experience, well, actually was on the checkdown. desk in interim and that it's in the spring, the spring, Prague spring, if you will, which was fascinating. As a defense secretary come out and affected.

But the first overseas, the first real headquarters job I had was, I mean, the permanent job was as the, it doesn't sound very interesting, but in Latin America they had a covert action guy and a foreign intelligence guy. And I was doing the, I'd come in early, read all the traffic and decide what was important for the chief of covert action to read. Sadly, at the same time, the fellow that worked, the FI was a guy named Dick Welsh. So every day I saw, Saul Dick, great man, and he was assassinated in Athens. But that was the first job.

But I was on the covert action chief of operations. one day he said, Jack, come with me, and he brought me down to the head of the Chile operation. He said, Larry, this is how the careers go. Larry, I think you should have Jack. So I thought, well, maybe it's getting rid of me, right? But it was to put me in the middle of what was then created the Chile Task Force. And they brought their best people, not me. I mean, I was the no-taker again. We'll get to that. But they brought the best officers that they thought could do covert action and put them in there. And their job was to execute the policy of stopping Iyendi from taking office.

So I went from that covert action studious reading and studying to being involved in the task force. And part of my job was to read all the traffic. So I have a good sense of what happened. And I learned a lot. And again, we could go point by point, but I learned a lot. And then that naturally led to me going to Chile. Right.

But in going covert action, there was a little bit of... was a little bit was it a different training pipeline after the farm because in a because you went to the forum and then jungle warfare uh like demo school where well let's talk about jump training yeah jump training so jump training they i was married had three kids at the time right they're a little older than normal but i had been teaching five six years as chairman department and you know so uh if you didn't jump you had two weeks off so i thought what the hell I'll take two weeks and go to the beach. And Pat said, oh, Jack, you're going to miss the camaraderie.

And I said, yeah, it's true. It is. And it actually was more true than I thought. And I said, I'll take a pass. And then the base commander came over and said, look, I see you're not jumping. You know, you should jump. It's better than sex. So I said, well, and I looked at it.

I thought, maybe what he has in mind. And I'm still not signing up. I want this two weeks. I need a break here. So I go back to headquarters, and my first interview is with the Chief of Covert Action Operations. Now, I thought that's where all the action. It actually was the media piece, right? I wanted to be, and I didn't realize about Chile,

but I thought that. So I walked in and he had parachute paraphernalia around the room. The name was Yutovar, and I walked in, and before I said anything, he said, Jackie, if you jumped yet? and I said, no, but I'm looking forward to it. So I didn't jump for camaraderie. I didn't jump for sex.

I jumped for career, but I made five jumps. But it was the right thing to do, but I ended up not going to covert action. This is a really important vignette because my counselor was a guy named Jerry Droller, Alias was Bender I can say this because it's out in the public and he was not even about the Bay of Pigs he jumped behind the lines and putting the resistance together in France

but he's sitting there with a cigar when you could smoke a cigar in the building and it's Alasad you're too big to go to the Russia division because I said I want to go to Russia that's where the spies that's the operation. The truth is that isn't where the action is

because you're running very dark operations the middle of the night to find a place where you can put a note in a tree, right? That isn't what I was thinking of. You're too tall to be a spy. Come with me. So he took me over the Chief of Latin America. And he said, Bill, I think you need Jack. Jack, you belong over here.

So, yeah, you're here. That's how the applying process went. And then I sat there that, wait a minute. I'm too tall for Russia, but somehow I'm going to blend in in Latin America? Then what I find out is he was recruiting for Latin America. I was his next hit. He brought me ever, but it couldn't have been a better thing. Because I think, and let me just put a footnote,

spying isn't about being seen. The whole trick is to be operate invisible. Now, it was not good enough to be four foot three. You can't be seen, so it doesn't matter whether you're five, six, or six, five. But it was fortuitous. And when I get back to the book again, when I look at it, I wonder if it was fortuitive. I wonder whether there was cosmic energy pulling me somewhere and them pulling me because it had more of a pattern than just hopping around.

But that unscientific, because I had a fellow to work, I got a five-year plan. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. That's not what's going to happen to. I don't know what's going to happen to. But you can have all the five-year plans you want. the system is going to bring you along. So I would say

it was interesting how the invisible hand virtuously I end up doing something I really belong doing, in my view. So you, I mean that theme, like a fiction writer could have written this book

because it's a story the way you're saying it is that it's seen like it's threaded even if it's not you know the the people who you work with the how things keep coming back it's amazing but you go to Chile and we're talking about you know there's Nixon wants a coup in Chile right so it actually starts before I go when I'm on the task force okay I know what took place there is I know again remember I'm a lieutenant maybe right that's the

rank so I'm not I'm not the big policy general chiefest I mean no I'm a lieutenant, second lieutenant. But what I was doing is reading the traffic. So I could see the correspondence down to the chief of station saying, Yundi had been elected by a plurality, 39%. It wasn't a majority. There were two other parties. And it was unanticipated.

And he was going to be put in office with approval of Congress, 60 days later. So they did very little to block them from getting elected. So they missed a better opportunity to do covert action. But President Nixon was very concerned about the red sandwich. Chile on one end, Cuba and the other. Castro is coming down. They're visiting in Chile.

And people have to realize, back then the idea that Latin America could go communist was a reality. So his decision was stop it from happening. And the chief of station was an old-timer, European OSS fell. And he said, look, we don't have enough time. We don't have the infrastructure. It's going to be bloodshed.

And I don't think we can get it done. Sounds like some of my issues. And the answer was two things. Give it a try. And if you're not prepared to do it, I won't use his name. Well, it's used first name. Ken will be down on the next plane with a ticket for you to come back. Now, Ken is the fellow that I worked for in the covert action. So I know this story well. And his advice to Washington was accurate. And the decision made by policymakers. Now, this comes to me later as I begin to reflect on it. It's not like I was sitting there understanding all of this.

and in the end, it turned out to be a fiasco. They tried several different silly things, and none of it worked. But unbeknownst to the station, there was a retired colonel, Cudorne, and he initiated kidnapping of the Commander Chief of the Armed Forces who was killed in the process. Oh, my God. And the entire country said, that's enough. And Iyndi came in on a wave of popularity.

That's the coup to fail. We were not part of that, but we were trying. There was very specific. I'm not, again, not talking out of school. I'm very careful with what I said. But the Senate did an investigation. And at the time, I thought it was outrageous that the Senate would investigate what I did on my tour.

And then I read it years later, and I realized it did a really good job. So you can have all the theories and this, but they did a good job. And what happened is you pass forward, but we get to 73, I'm now very experienced in that station and know a good deal about what's going on. The real coup came. The U.S. was not involved in the coup. And the record will show that. Now, there's people that will die believing that that's the case.

I'm just here to tell you I was there. I saw it. I know what happened. I know exactly what happened. and the military moved on its own for its own reasons. And I can elaborate, but I don't want to do the whole chilly story in one answer for it. Are you allowed to elaborate on what the agency's plan was? You know, it sounds like events overtook that plan?

You mean in the first, the... Yeah. No, it's the remove I ending. It was called Track 2. It's documented. The other thing that was stupid, well, I don't want to be so crouched. but I think it's unwise to cut out the ambassador. And I know of no other case, I'm sure there are others.

But in this particular case, the ambassador didn't know that that was the agency's policy. Oh, wow. And he was unhappy when he found out. Sure. How are the relationships between ambassadors and station chiefs or ambassadors and the agency? Are they often contentious, or is it buried? Well, they were very problematic after the war, because many countries, the most powerful person in the country, was the chief of station

because he had brought the, in Italy, the government that brought the power was thankful to the CIA because they provided the funding and support. So, and you can get in people's head, the ambassadors, the president's representative. So there was tension. But in 75, there was an agreement. The president said the ambassador is in charge. So then it becomes an issue of every chief going out and state the same thing. If you have a problem, you bring it back to us, right?

Well, when I was speaking before the chief's going out, I would say, listen, they'll tell you that. But don't come back with that message because we're going to send you one saying you fix it out there. So there's an incentive for people to make it work in the field. And the better ones, the best of the lot, their job is to find and wise ambassadors. This is an arm. This is an arm that can be very helpful to you, and your responsibility is to make sure the ambassadors fully brief. So I don't think there's big problems. It's not one of the key issues.

If you go down a list, it probably doesn't meet number 20. I can't even, I don't even think it's an issue of any merit. Yeah. Now, in Chile, because one of the things you mentioned in your book is that you were not necessarily a natural case officer. You weren't really an extrovert. I hope I didn't dwell too much on that. No, no. But it is the truth.

But it's interesting because when you mention your wife's like sort of her ability to be a social lubricant in a lot of those situations. It's worth, down at the farm, you have events where you pretend you're at a cocktail party. But I was never at a cocktail party in my life. I've been in the basement with 20 aunts and uncles singing. That was not socializing in a diplomatic setting. I'd never been in a setting like that. I've never been in a country. Well, I was in a country club once.

A friend of mine had money, and we went to the country club one. But my point was, I wasn't used to that and socializing out of your... out of your clan. But I'm not even thinking this way. I just thought everybody's the same in. I just not really zeroed in on that. So foreign embassy, you arrive and Pat goes over to the ambassador's wife and you have white gloves and you put the card down.

This is not Jack. This isn't my world. So you go to a cocktail party, Jack is the wallflower on there. Right. But then the white tornado comes in and whirls around the room and grabs everybody, talks to everybody, and then says, Jack, give this guy your card, invite him the lunch. So after a while, you know, I adapt and people adapt, and I got the rhythm. I understand the drill. But it didn't come naturally. Neither did the first recruitment. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about your first recruitment because I thought it was, I thought it was a great lesson of how. you know people can be they get better things but you know well i think there's two sides i mean it's just you get better but you have to get started yeah right right and there's another

thing when i did the book that i felt bad about and that is we interviewed a lot of people my staff did because i thought they'd be more comfortable i would set it up called the person and then staff would interview and and we can talk about some of the bizarre answers that that came came back. But what was really interesting when I went back through the book, every time I left, I said,

thanks, boss, it was a good tour, right? Appreciate it. Learned a lot. But when I started during the book, I began to realize that I had been mentored job after job after job after job.

Very different people. And they call a tradecraft. In there words, people don't it's a trade it's like you're a goldsmith your plumber you know as you learn a trade you get your you get out of your apprenticeship and then you go work with the journal men and then you become a master and your craft and that was what was happening to me so when you get to the first recruitment the deputy i was slow out of the starting box i was meeting people but i wasn't closing any deals so uh he was a very experienced officer he'd go to guy and he said jack

I want you to meet our agent. We had a number for him, but I won't say X. We'd meet X because he thinks he might have a recruitment out there that if you could just handle that. So I meet the guy and we have a lunch together. It's X and Y. Why is a senior member in the Communist Party? So we're having lunch.

And the lunch is going on, and I'm talking about the political dynamics of the world and this, and they're serving a RISOs, which if you have them raw, you got a, this is a real test of man. So I would have another glass of wine and have another risos. And finally, X says to me, Jack, just tell the guy you'll give him $1,000 and he'll agree that works for you.

So I said, would you mind working for a good idea? So the point was it was a setup. Right. But then after what you, realized was when you get to these situations you almost have you have to create the dynamic that you already have the recruitment in place right and it's like selling any product there a lot of people that can do that they can't close a deal right so I was taught how to close the deal after you do that you want to close deals

yeah okay so again it's part of the the training and maturation of a professional and but when you look back on it you laugh yeah you have to laugh but then you realize people are going out of their way to make you better, make you a professional. And that was a different generation. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I certainly hope it happens today. I believe in it. I tried to do it myself, but it is so valuable to have people in a service who are looking at you.

And they cut me a lot of slack. That's the other thing. I wouldn't have put up with me as much. They were understanding. I thought I knew more than I did, right? But actually there's one report, and I'll leave it aside. So it was in Mexico, and the fitness report said he has a smidgen of arrogance, right? So if you had that, you should be crestfallen, right?

Oh, yeah, that's good. That's how arrogant I was. I thought that was good. But I got away with it. But he put smidgett, fairness, he put smidgen in it. Then I thought, you know, I had second tour. I really knew how to do that. Right.

I had so much to learn. I mean, it was, but that role is so critical when you have services. I'm sure it's true in the military and it's special groups. You just have to have that. It's interesting in a way, in a testament to like the people who didn't mentor you in a way, though, because in the military you have mentors, but they are mentoring their direct team members that they are going to work with where, where I think, the agency a lot of time, even though you're the same team, it is also a very individual effort

in a lot of ways. So it is people really taking their time out to ensure that you become better at your job. I think that's absolutely right that it was a conscious effort to make me better and they could have done something else. Or some people don't even want to see you succeed. Right. I mean, it's like, I got my own thing. You're here. You're a hot shot. you go do your thing. Yeah. So when we would interview people, you know, it gave me a chance when I made the first call. I know I said thank you, but, you know, what you did mean, so I meant a lot to me.

So I felt like I was somehow closed and deal, but some of them had passed on. But let me tell you one story about one guy. So he was a good boy from Iowa or someone out in a farm somewhere. He retired. He was my deputy in Iran, and he was a seasoned Iranian expert. and I was new from Latin America and he was really helped sustain me

to make sure I didn't step on a landline so I hadn't spoken to them years because I had moved on, he had moved on, he moved out that I was, so the wife is there and she said, it's Jack Devine on the phone, I literally heard him go ah!

He got on the phone and he said Jack, what's up? And I said, look, I just want to talk to you about our time in Iran. God, I thought we were getting another big investigation. He said anything he touched was going to be trouble. So I was thinking, you know, it was going to be a treat to talk to me. His was like, oh, my God, he's back. So the book allowed me to do some of them.

To reach out. Yeah, and to, like, connect a lot of that. So, you know, we talked about your first recruitment or one of your first recruitment. You also mentioned one of your first meets and how that didn't quite, go when you were in the vehicle and the source just handed you a bunch of stuff you oh god I forgot that story yeah well I had there's a couple rough first ones so I was very conscientious coming out of training I had introduced in my operations high tech and all this stuff you know clean yourself before the operation and you have everything

worked out and it was going to be a car pickup you know I was picking a guy up that certain precise it was it was beautiful right the only problem is he got the he got the car and he had a pile of documents and I was what am I going to do with these documents we've got a hostile government if I get stopped with these documents but I had them right and as far as he was concerned here they're yours so um we uh we drove and I got out of the car and I forgot what triggered it but as i was going down the street i was attacked by a pack of wild dogs right think of the movie right here's your

big spy chasing being chased down the street by these wild dogs and i was the first tour of it so i happened to see that was going to be passing the gs 14 out we got a i guess a light colonel and i'm knocking on his door and uh... the door opens so i said look i'm being attacked by a pack of wild dogs did okay jack come down now

You have to imagine what that guy must have felt like. Here's our guy being chased by. I said, look, you've got to get me back to my car, right? Because I couldn't get in the vehicle. And so we go back and thank God there's a dog like literally on each side of the car. So he gets out of the car and walks everywhere. And the dog licks his hand. So he turns to me and he said, listen, I bet you have cats.

Well, let's say I didn't hear them laughing. But I'm sure in the office said, boy, we have a hot shot with us, right? So what I was, there's the lesson in it is you can prepare your plans and your operations. And the flukiest thing can happen. You've got to be prepared. So I think there's a moment before you complete the operation. Okay, I've got all the X and Y's put in place. But you have to think, going to your earlier question, you know, be ready.

What happens if things fall apart? And I think later in the book I talk about picking up an agent who we thought might have been under hostile surveillance and he'd just, he'd been tortured and so on. And that turned out to be quite... That's still in Shulay because that's after Pinochet takes over, correct? Yeah, so can you tell us about... So, Ashley, you received the call about the coup from your wife, correct?

Is that right? It's close. Okay. I was in a fine Italian restaurant in Chile. They had great restaurants, right? And I was developing somebody that I thought could be of interest, not a clandestine spy, but somebody who would be useful in the government as a witting contact. And I thought the lunch was going well.

And all of a sudden I looked up and there's a guy from the office standing over my shoulder. And thank goodness because what had happened, he said, listen, you have to go home. So I'm thinking, you know, a medical emergency, right? So I excuse myself and left and said, yeah, Pat's called and said, you've got to get home, she's got something for you. So what had happened, it was shortly before the, three or four days before the co, and I had an agent who was very well placed and had the first report of an organized co. But he couldn't find me, so he knew where the fine pad, and he went over,

and I'm leaving, and I'm heading to the airport. Right. So here's what's going to happen. The Navy's going to start in Valparaiso. There's going to be a radio announcement on radio, Gertrude, 7, it turned out to be 8, and then this will happen, and that'll happen. It wasn't very long. It might be a paragraph.

It's still a matter of history because it's in the Senate's intelligence investigation. So Pat got it and knew how to reach this fellow. And fortunately, she couldn't go into it, but he had enough energy to say, listen, this sounds important, went and got me. I got the report. brought it in, talked to the chief, we sent it out as a critic message, which, again, not to get in the categories of priorities and the medias, but the critic oversees everything. In other words, it stops, all communicates, and just flies through and goes right into the White House, and other places. And if you send a normal cable, even with some high precedent on it, it goes through the, and rightfully so through the analytical process. This went right in.

So the first news of the coup came from Pat, not made. but vicariously I valued it. Washington didn't believe it, and the analysts particularly because there hadn't been, they've had democracy 150 years, that wasn't going to happen, Iendi's going to weather the storm, and so it was, they didn't disseminate it through the normal channels, but it didn't matter in the end because everything over-seated.

But that was the first message. I was in the embassy, the chief and I, and there was a communicator, because you couldn't bring everyone in. And we were waiting for the announcement on the radio. And I think the announcement I said was an hour late, and nothing was happening. It was out of a hug. The analysts were right. Right. You know, and then, you know, the tanks literally rolled.

I could see the tanks coming down the street. And I did have a TDI, a temporary phone. and I sent him over across the street to the Carrera Hotel, and he could see the palace. We were a block from the palace, a big block, there was a plaza there, but he could see out to win the report minute by minute. So there was another report that came in.

This was not an official report, but shortly before, maybe 46 hours or even less, a person that we had met years ago said they were going to tell us that something happened, called their guy, and this was the official. A couple pages of exactly what was. So they wanted the United States government to know ahead of time. But the United States government was not involved in the planning. This is where people confused the first incident and this incident. The track two with this. Yes. And people just don't believe CIA was not involved with the military. But I'm here to tell you. I know differently. Were we involved in so?

supporting the parties and the media. Yes, it's all a matter of record. We're not trying to hide that. And we were trying to resist IANDI, trying to crush the elements that we thought were aligned with us and so on. But with the military, we had no real ties with the coup plotters.

So when Nixon was pushing for track two to overthrow IANDA, was there a plan of who to replace him with? were well let me tell you how it actually came down because it was the way it started is the Navy was the initiator they were the most aggressive so the head of the Navy Admiral Marino wrote a note to this wasn't it was days before the coup or a week before the coup actually and it went to the Air Force commander who was the second most outspoken about the need to do something General Lee and then it went to the

the Cabinary, which was the police force, the security, national police. And it went to Pinochet last. The conventional wisdom in the U.S. government that Pinochet did not have what it took Politico. That was the official line. Right. People who knew him, madame, they decide it up. And so when it got to him, he said, okay, I'm in, but I'm in charge.

The Army is the biggest service. We're in charge. I'm the boss. And so that's how that came down. And we didn't know they had agreed. We did not have a report that they had agreed. It actually started, again, I don't want to go on, but there was something that triggered that we could talk about at some point.

Well, we can talk about it now. Okay. I mean, this is fascinating. We never talked about. So what happened is in the summer, you could feel the tension in the country, right? but just because you have tension and instability and demonstrations and food doesn't mean you're going to have a coup. It means you have a very unstable environment.

But there were a group of tank commanders that felt so outraged by the end of the government. They were drinking too much, and they drove half a dozen tanks right up to the front door of the palace, right? They were going to have, it was called a tank casso. Now there was a tank revolt because they thought they would start it. and everybody would follow in. But the commander in the chief of the armed forces, Carlos Pratt, went out and talked them back in, and said, listen, boys, you had a nice night, you go take the tanks out.

So our reaction, my reaction was, IANDI just stood down the coup. That's it. The military stood with him. You now know that. Now, this is where your conventional wisdom gets you in trouble. That was not the reaction to the military leader. They went back and said, we are losing discipline in our armed forces.

So it wasn't the democracy. It wasn't the economy. It was the military was falling apart. And if we're going to have our troops' mutiny, we're going to do this ourselves and we're going to do it right. That's when the coup. So the coup must have started the planning somewhere between June and July. No, there wasn't long in the making, but it took place on September. 11th. So I think the sense of the country at the time was where people were not anticipating,

we're not thinking about, well, whoever comes in, they'll be the leader. And there was a general sentiment among our side, but all the people we were dealing with, this is a democratic country. This is just a temporary interlude. And the military commitments, stabilize the country, get the economy up running again, maybe a year, maybe 18 months, and then we'll have elections again. And finish saying, so now that's not how that's going to go. And the problem was we knew the political side of the country, we knew the economic side, we knew the business people.

The Chileans knew each other in the economic, political, cultural, right? The military was outside of Chilean life. So we really didn't know how military people, people thought and did not know how they were going to respond to the mindset. So I don't think there was any predictive, for your point earlier, repercussions. I don't think there was an awareness at that time of how this was going to play out. Right. And, you know, because you mentioned it, you didn't, initially the Americans didn't understand what the Pinochet regime was like until you, like for you, like meeting

with that source, right, was your first sort of introduction to that? No, by then I knew. Oh, you knew my end. What happened in the very early days. First of all, there was a curfew, and everything was shut down. You couldn't move around town. And I was in the embassy with three or four officers because they lifted the curfew temporarily and people were allowed to leave because we thought we were going to, it was going to stay.

I volunteered to stay behind, chief, and maybe one other person. And the problem was a couple hours later, we had a curfew, and I couldn't get home for three or four days, and the country was really shut down. Pat, we had to have an emergency pickup for Pat because we learned that there was going to be attack on the house next to us where there were Cubans and Cubans were, you know, enemies of the military. So I was able to go to radio one of my friends with helicopters flying above not knowing whose friend info and through Pat and family dog and five kids in the car and, you know, they were guests of my friend for a week. So, you know, in that environment,

it was very hard to look over the horizon and see what's coming ahead. Was there, you know, the Cubans were the enemy and Ayanne was the enemy. But did Pinochet, did you feel safe like with Pinochet running things? Well, that was actually going to be the end of that common, because when did we figure it out? once the curfew started we knew there was bad things happening

in the city right right you didn't know how bad what they were doing they had a list they were rounding up people and there was a stadium and one of my friends was one of the two people that working in the consulate went to the stadium

they were looking for two Americans that had been kidnapped Tarugi and I'm trying to remember the other fellow's name but Jack Lemon was in a movie missing, but I forget the name of the title, but with BVAC, but in the, what happened when he went to the stadium,

I mean, it was visible that you had rounded up a lot of people and bad things were happening, and a lot of people were killed. So we knew that this was not that gentleman's coup were, okay, everyone go back to their quarters, and, you know, this became, They really were determined to destroy the communist and people that they thought were communists, and that included a lot of people, those that they thought were. So we were days when we realized we had this was not, this was not what was foreseen,

and we were going to have a problematic relationship with the government. And so what happened with the American president? Did they, like, did you guys get pulled out, or did you guys remain there? remain in place and try to establish relationships with... Well, the embassy stayed. You had normal relations, business communities came back, and... But you were living in an autocratic government.

But if you're carrying a black passport, if you're a diplomat, it's rare that anyone's going to... In Latin America, I don't know of any country where they'd harass you other than Cuba, maybe now, Nicaragua. But back then, you were... safe. I don't think you felt where there was the terror was during the immediate hours of the coup. And as I said, Pat, I was personally in some jeopardy. So, but after that, you were, you're

just dealing with a dictatorship, which, you know, you don't say anything, you don't do anything. Right. But life goes on. So the U.S. government maintained its official relationship. And I fortunately left six months thereafter. I had actually written that we should, this is where covert action taken to a little bit over the top, the new chief said, well, you're leaving, but you know a lot,

tell me your best thoughts, and mine was, we ought to start working on getting rid of Pinochet. That's not how it works. If you go back to my principles, that was not realistic. It would not be achievable. So there was a person who was not happy with what he saw. I was hoping we'd get back to the democratic process. I had no idea when I left that it would be years before they returned to some normal political life.

There was also an incident in Chile, though, since it's sort of your formative years, because you wanted to write the letter on, like, the socialist. And I think this is a really good example about the ideas about the agency going rogue, but you being basically kind of, you know, stopped by a supervisor for something that was outside of... Today we live with disinformation.

We could spend hours. My last podcast, which I did is on disinformation, which Americans really didn't invest in it. We used the white story that we'll tell you about Russia. That's all you need to know. Right. So we weren't really a lot of tricky disinformation. But you always thought that that would be a good idea.

And so many of them were developed, but no one ever put a stamp and mailed up. I thought I had my moment. Right. I thought I had one of the great covert action of it. So I had the typewriter and Communist Party material. So I thought, well, we could have, you know, one of our Communist Party sources, write a letter, you know, something that's derogatory and, you know, make it the coup look better.

Right. So I thought I was helping the cause and, you know, had my ass at all set. and then I went in to see the chief and he was a great guy he had another one of my men he was crazy this has to be approved by the president you can't be doing this

because if that gets out there you're going to change history you get out there and get that back so you go back and beg hey listen I you know that type right we found a flaw yeah something

but that almost went it almost went into the policymakers and it almost ended up in the UN but it gets stopped. Yeah. But it was also going to be tied to a rumor which was not correct that Iyndi was going to have his own code. There was no information to support that.

But it became folklore, and is even folklore today. Right. By those that, you know, want to find happier, those that felt that the decision with Pinochet was, you know, had positive inevitable outcomes. So I just, I saw nothing to support it that, but I was maybe working with the Communist Party to help it and, you know, thank God I'm not part of history. Right.

And my book would be much shorter. That might have been the last chapter in the book. But that's what happens when you're in your first tour. And you need, you know, you need real pros watching. Yeah. And you can get, it was a great idea. There's no question about it. It just didn't have policy approval.

Right. Binder little detail. Right. So you leave Chile, and what's your next assignment then? Well, it's interesting because I know this, because I knew the people involved years later when I was a little more scene. But basically, they had a chief of station conference, and they bartered. I'll give you two red ones for one green one, right? So I was bartered.

They were bartering people to go to Argentina. But what they said in the bartering is, look, well, we're going to take jackets from a covert action, put him in a traditional... Foreign intelligence. Foreign intelligence. So that's how that came about. So you went to Argentina as... No, I went to Mexico. Mexico as a more traditional case officer.

Right. And how was that for you? How was that... And how was it different than Chile? Well, I think it accomplished its purpose, which is you go back into the espionage part. Right. But I would be disingenuous if I said, you know, I suddenly had this high about that. In other words, we came off of arguably the two biggest covert action operations.

One was Vietnam. The other one was Chile. I mean, that's what the President of the United States was focused on in terms of covert action. So to go to any station, whether it be Paris or New Guinea, whatever, it was going to be, you're taking down your tempo of activity. Right. Or you're going to make meetings at night. You're going to look more normal.

So I mean, I was enthused for sure, but it took a while to work it through. And this is true when you get in these covert action operations. is it's harder to wind them down, and it's also the higher, it's harder to wind down individuals to get back to it. Right, right. So how does it happen? Do you naturally wind down,

or do you have all these great ideas at a new station where they're not actually needed and people need to, you know, like people need to say, hey, like, this isn't Chile or this isn't, like. No, I don't, well, I don't, well, I think you don't even bother with the covert action because you know there's no finding. Right. There's no.

Right. So when you arrive, you'll be given, okay, here's the Cuba target, the Russia target, and you will be doing those things that you learned and working with people. But now, once you're over that first tour, in fact, when you're in the end of year one, you're supposed to be able to stand on your own. Yeah. That doesn't mean the mentoring stop, but it's not like how you tie your shoes mentoring. So when you get to your second assignment, you're now.

a seasoned officer. I would say you were a journeyman. You're not a master, right, but you're a journeyman. And do you find that to be true for you? Did you feel more comfortable with your recruitment and your meets? Oh, right. I felt, because there was enough of that. It was all covert action. Right. Because I was maybe making clandestine meetings. Right. With sources that were action-oriented. So by then, you know, we were, we weren't spending time on running operations against the Russians in Chile. That wasn't the biggest investment was trying to stop the government from crushing the Democratic opposition.

And then was there anything else really notable for you in Mexico? This is your problem in telling stories because once you get to the espionage part, there's not a lot I can say. Right. So when you read the book, it really is a book that I can write a lot. many of my colleagues can't write anything and they've done wonderful things, but they can't write about it because it's all in the espionage world. Then you have others that have done one assignment, right? But the novelty of mine, this comes back to the magnet pulling me, or I was running towards it,

and that is, I can read a lot because I touched a lot of covert action. Right, right. But when you're touching covertnesses, you're also running clandest and ops. It's not like you're still making clandestine meetings and you're paying opposition. You have to use the same skills. And what people don't realize, that some of our very best sources came from running covert action operation. Let's say you have Colonel X and you're running some operation.

You go away, you come back five years later, he's chief of military intelligence, right? Or he's commander chief of an important unit. covert action, many of the people then become prime ministers. And so it is a feeding ground for some of the higher quality. Recrued. So it is the intelligence. The Brits actually do this. I think they combine an officer all three, a couple different traits.

You have to be FI and covert, but you also have to be reports writer, where we have a cone where people just give them the raw stuff, they turned in the reports. And I think the early days they didn't have that cone. And I think the British, they're a little bit leaner in terms of their resources. So there's no reason why you can't do all three. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about how the finding process happens?

Does the president just kind of come up with them? Or does the CIA sometimes say, hey, we'd like a finding for this so we can achieve this? So the etched in stone sort of position of CIA is we do not form policy. Uh-huh. Okay. We're not the policymaker. You make it. So this is up to state, president, defense, to look at a problem and say, okay, we're going to call CIA.

Now, that is the structure. But when you're at the table and you're talking about. talking about, look, we have a problem in Haiti, and the government is, you know, they just throughout the Democratic government and the military there. So the question, well, who has any ideas, right? Right. So it's not that you're in the policymaking, but when you get in those meetings, you're making contributions about, it's often the CIA person briefs. Right. And that's supposed to be the end of it, but if the president looks down the hall and says, well, what do you think? Do you think we could make some progress over here?

So you answer the president, you said, well, listen, I don't talk to you about that. Right, right. You're engaged in it. But I don't think it's, what I'm trying to make clear, though, it's not like the CIA goes to, hey, look, we got this great idea. Right. I don't know, I don't personally know of a case where we went to them saying you should do this. I've been told that the findings also have, like, when the president signs them, a whole slew of different things, all the way from, you know, black propaganda to lethal operations.

but there's this caveat in there that the agency has to go back to get special permission even though it's in the finding for that particular activity. Well, I think they were simpler at the beginning. Everything becomes more legalistic with the hardening of the arteries. So the findings should be very specific. You're authorized to do X, Y, and sometimes it'll be spelled out. You can do this part of code. you could do media, but you can't do political action, right?

And if it's not in the finding, because people don't realize I had a lawyer for about the last 10 years of my headquarters life at my elbow reading everything to say, we can't do that. But the point is, if it's not there, you have to seek approval for it. And one of the issues later on would fast forward to Iran is the chief of the division insisted on seeing it. And he said, the reason I want to do that is because I want to follow it to the letter. What we wanted to do is see that piece of paper.

That it exists. But I mean, having said that, you still need this. It's a limiting document. But if it says you want to overthrow a government, that's pretty profound. Right. So a few words can cause a lot of trouble. Sure. Or be very beneficial.

I mean, if the president gave a finding, would there ever be a case where a senior level member of the CIA would say, hey, if you want this done, we actually need the finding to be worded more like this? I think that would be inappropriate. I mean, I think the president, you were for me, hopefully there's a coordination process. So it isn't the president. It goes to Justice Department, State. People have to sign up to, and when you don't do that, you have a good chance of having a flap.

Right. Because state will say, look, we've got equities over here. You're not even thinking about these equities or defensive. Look, if I do that, I have to move. So there's a coordination. process around the finding. It doesn't have to be. There wasn't any on the Chile one. That was straight right out of the White House in the Santiago station. The lesson from Chile was get the ambassador involved, make sure Congress is on board, you know, make sure you have the lawyers.

If you can't get it by it, why are you filling with you're going to pay a price at the end? Yeah. And there's a reason why they do it. So they're not, you know, not everybody gets the table generally, not generally, I just haven't been the table where they didn't have the U.S. interest at heart. In other words, it wasn't curious. I mean, people, at least in my experience, come to the table serious about the mission. That doesn't mean they have to agree.

They just point out, well, the short-fold, that doesn't mean they're not being part of the team. Right. But the finding process is critical for people to understand that. And so then after Mexico, what year do you leave Mexico, roughly, do you remember? Yeah, sure.

76. And then after Mexico, where do you go from there? I went back to Washington, and I had a series of branch chief jobs. That means you could be. I had a, like, maybe I couldn't keep the job for a while. I did the Andes, right? And then I did the Southern Cone. So I think what I was getting was experience.

it's the face that deals directly day in and day out with the field station. Right. So I was going back, and I enjoyed it because I was getting to know. I'm not a Latin American expert. As I said, I just, oh, you're too tall, so my credentials, would I fit in in Latin America? So I didn't have the expertise. Some people who study it for years.

I had to go to school in Spanish. I mean, so it was an opportunity to understand Latin America and become more expertise in it. But I wouldn't, I mean, over time I became my view an expert, but not in the way that the scholar might. Right. Although I shouldn't say that either. You really get into it after a while.

Did you mention the Andy's? Like, what are some of the interests of the agency outside of what I think people would traditionally think the interests of the agency are? When we're looking at maybe smaller countries or countries where there's not as much political action? This is my personal view. And there's been times in history where we've condensed our presence abroad.

I think we should have the flag everywhere. Because you don't know whether the Yemenis are going to do it or the hate. Next thing, big issues for Clinton, his first issue was Haiti. I mean, who, you know, you have to. We tend to go back to these places more than once also. Right. So you have to have people that know it, someone's there. But what you have in every country, it isn't that Haiti may not be interesting.

But the people that are there, there may be a UN group where the Iranians are there and you can't get to them in the North Korean. So in other words, there's a reason to be everywhere, but you should keep your, you should be country knowledgeable. Right. You really, because you can put your hand up and say, it's not going to work, or let me tell you something's going to happen, or, you know, you need something done. You need to get somebody out of the country that the Russians is just defective from Russia. You need contacts and relationships. So I'm for the flag everywhere. I did an op-ed, which I'm pleased with.

Some were I'm pleased than others. But it was about the Hamas attack in Israel. And my argument is human intelligence. I'm all for AI. As I said, my first assignment had gadgets that no one else wanted to use. But coming out of training, I've always tried to apply technology.

At one point, I actually wanted to run the Directorate of Technology. But there was a passing moment, and they didn't think it was a good idea. But I've always been intrigued by it. Having said that, we've grown so accustomed to using all the technology and two wars led us into targeting, which is it's collecting information

so you take out the terrorists. That's not collecting intelligence. on Russia's infrastructure. Right. So what I'm saying is human sources, we're underinvested. They say, Jackie, when somebody in 170 countries or whatever, yeah? Yes. So what I did in the article, which I don't think some of my friends will like, I'm saying we're underinvested.

And why? Because in Hamas, 200 people must have known what was going on. I mean, not the full thing, but enough that you've got a tip that something's coming down. Let's get, you know, we've got to get ready. That's my rough estimate. But I think, you know, the Israelis got caught out, but we got caught out because, you know, we should know Iran. We should know what's going on.

Right. That everybody misses this. And what I was saying is if you took all the spies, not the spy man, but the people that are actually spies, human sources. Of NATO, Israel, the United States, you couldn't staff an aircraft carrier. You know, to say you're going to staff people in every country, that's a small investment.

Right. In other words, out of, if you're a multi-billion dollar operation in the U.S. business world or a billion dollar, you don't say, well, you know, I've got 2,000 people. That's what I've got running Amazon. right right you don't do that and then the price how much money do you spend on spying and I put in the article they published it that what it costs for the two teams have played in the Super Bowl not the game but how do you fund those two

teams I said it's it's where we pay all the spies in the world now I was there's a much less than that but when you think about the investment and what's your human collection how much you really putting it how many people on sight and so I've been arguing, I'm not arguing, I've been an advocate for bringing back, not bringing back, resetting and investing in human sources. So coming back to you say, well, there's a sleepy country, yeah, sleepy country, learn how to do, learn how to, learn how they operate, right? It's considered a training program.

So this is going to take us a little bit out of order, but because we're here, I have to ask you because you mentioned Dewey Clerage and we've had other people on before who have talked about about Claridge and you know he's he's kind of legendary in the fact that he basically after he got he's not only legendary for what he did but he got out and built a almost a secondary intelligence agency right or had assets and resources um do you feel as though that the united states should leverage that type of like private interest to maintain you know, sources, assets, things like that around the world? Well, should we talk about Dewey a little bit?

Sure, please. Please tell us who Dewey was and, you know. I just, I will just touch on a couple points. So Dewey wasn't flamboyant. In fact, he talked about legend. You know, the importance of folk, in other words, you have to have some besides. Now, I came out of Italy, and he had silk handkerchief.

Right. And I have this feeling that, you know, CAA, like all the government, they follow the leaders, right? So when Jimmy Carter came in, everyone was wearing the quarter of sweaters, right? Then Reagan comes in as a suit and tie and even a brown suit, right? So Dewey came in with a handkerchief, right? Next meeting, you got five chiefs, five of the wearing hanker, you're in the handkerchief. So Dewey, he'll deny this, but I swear by it.

So we're up in the executive dining room when he put a monicle in. now that's what i did i said i'm not going to use the exact language because uh... we have other company here that it might be barrens but i said i'm i might put a so but i'm rather died than put a monocle and he got very huffy right i'm convinced that he started wearing a monicle five or six people will be wearing monocles before you know i would not be one of them i put the handkerchief it so the point was i think he had really good leadership skills and the dynamic about it. And he, I agreed until we didn't agree.

And part of that was how we were going to handle Central American, that sort of thing. But I think one thing you'd have to say about Dewey was he exuded leadership skills. And we've talked about management leadership and they're interesting discussion. Your business proposition is a really interesting one. you know we've outsourced wars I mean we've outsourced is that the right answer I don't know I don't know how I want to call this one other than you know is it finances is it slots but I would have preferred if we had a world where we didn't have to outsource so much okay so that your institutions did it I don't think you should outsource covert action now we do

succumb people from that's different than outsourcing. In other words, you have a relatively small paramilitary group, but when something happens, you need younger people. You get, like in Afghanistan, you have 50 people. The difference is CIA has commanding control. Right. Right. I thought the government should have commanding control. And I think the military should have commanding control over protecting their sites and not hiring a company that then hires Ugandans. Right. So, and I don't know the dollar cost, I'm not going to do it. I'm just saying I'm not a big advocate of that.

And covert action is so tricky, I would not outsource it. Right. Okay. Now, but when you're going to know where you're actually running a war with covert action, that's not a great idea in my view, right? Then you might as well just go all the way. Right. Now, the beauty of the Afghan program, right, was what we did is we had a small group,

less than a 200, but the Afghans wanted to fight, and our job was to provide the wherewithal. It wasn't to go in shoulder-the-shoulder fighting with them, right? If you have to do that, maybe you don't go in. So I think there's probably some practicalities about it that have never been clear to me, why we went so big in outsourcing. technology. You did it in the building. You can't do it. There's so much being done that's more sophisticated, faster, better, so you outsource technology. So on the people side, I don't think that's a good idea. I also think there's a dilemma on the human side. And that dilemma is

we can't operate the way we did. It isn't whether Jack Devine is too tall. If I walk out of any embassy. I won't be invisible. Because there will be a drone, there'll be sensors. In other words, how do you get clean? How do you assure you, how can you can't assure yourself something? So the structure there were

uses, so how do you build your human networks? So my view is I would now source the work, I would learn how to do the work and I would build a new career service. Now this is radical conversation that

I'm sure someone will object to it. So my first supposition, because I'm a human source, that's my career, that's in service, but I believe you need those sources, and Hamas is a good example. There's several in Russia. We were outstanding and predicting the war in Ukraine, but we did not have a good fix on the state of the Army. We didn't have a good, because we thought Zelensky would have to be flown out, you know. Right.

And, you know, I don't want to get into the 2016 election too much. But we have a Mueller investigation. The Miller investigation spends $32 million. They established the Russians are doing intelligence. Of course they're doing it. They've been doing it since I was a kid. And they've been doing it since 1917. And hopefully we're doing it.

The outrageous thing was they went into our political system. And we had an understanding not to do that. But why, where was the source that said, why you're doing, let me tell you exactly what we did and why we did it. So I worry about, we might have great sources that tell us where the sun, but are we missing big things because we're not invested in human in the same way? Human is, technology is hard, but human is hard human interaction. Right. That's real hard. You were talking about my early struggles and how to learn how to do it.

How do you interact with you? How do you get, and it's untidy. Right. You know, you don't worry about ethical. In other, all these other issues, oh, they cause headaches. Let's not do that. We'll just put a sensor there. And when you do targeting, you're collecting information with a kinetic ending.

You're not developing a relation with somebody that you're going to run for a long time. So if you have a generation of a large percentage of your workforce there, I have to worry. So my message is a love letter. I don't know if they received it as a lot. Is, you know, great, you know, a great institution. But human, I believe humans coming back in many walks of life because I think people are unsure about the reality and now I need my own network resources. So your point is about outsourcing.

I'm saying, give them the money, but you need to figure out how to do it different than you're doing, but you need to cover every country and you have to have, it has to be broader. They'll come back, I'll tell you, I'm not identified, they'll come back and say, we have the best, or say, yeah, you do, but they're in these channels. Do you, can you cover the world

and all the pieces moving at it and the policy? Not so much, it would be my studied guess. And not even like out of the way places. Like, you know, we'll get to Afghanistan where you were, you know, where you were quite involved. And then, you know, 20, 30 years later, we have nobody there and we have to completely reestablish Afghanistan. In, you know. Completely. The bottom of the same.

Right, right. A little older, a little older than two. But your point is right. Right. We pull up. Yeah. And we start all over. Every time we start a covert action, it's like we're starting.

We've never done one before. Right. Yeah. And it's like, oh, and you were just saying earlier, well, we've been here before. Right. So there's, and that's why I write and kind of remind people that there are things. There's a segment, I think it's in good hunting. One of the guys I worked for was Tom Polgar.

Tom was the last chief in Vietnam, last helicopter out of there. He was my boss at one point. And, you know, Tom, Tom was a great. writer and it was second language but he wrote better than anybody knew in English but he was writing all these messages to Washington every week telling them how they ought to do their job I'm not sure that was the best thing but he did say something to me once and I'll get the Vietnam in a second I said Tom why are you writing all these things I mean you're just annoying everybody

said Jack when you get this certain position it's not that you have a responsibility to speak out. You have an obligation. I mean, that's powerful language. So there's the famous cable, which is quoted in the book. When he left Vietnam, he said, you know, we don't learn from history. We're going to repeat it. And to some degree, part of how Iraq played out was not learning the lessons of Vietnam. Right. And I feel like, you know, throughout the book, you show that you sort of took Polgar's message to heart also, because you were, you were, you were when you disagree with like

Dewey Clarege or or you know was a gay like when you disagreed with people who were senior to you you spoke out and I think that people

they generally respect like other people may have missed it but they generally respected you for sticking to your guns I think this is something that people don't understand it's more advantageous

to speak out but you have to be careful yeah most senior people are desperate for truth tell me when I took over the accaper, I knew so little about how to run or where to get mules. I couldn't tell a Tennessee mule from a. You had to know that.

You had to have people around you. So, you know, I think that experience is really important in sort of your formation. When you get a job, you have to have people speaking out to you. Yeah. And I found that, I mean, you have to. that you can't say, look, you're a jerk, and I don't believe, you know, and I'm here to tell you what I really think. But if you speak out, I think it helps you.

Now, one of the examples that stuck in my mind, late in my career, I was on my way to Rome, and they have a advanced COS course. Actually, it seemed to me like the old one, but I don't know. And I saw that ADEO was gutting in the course, and he was on his way to London. And the question was, why is he going into it? So I thought, well, I better get in this course.

So we're going on, and the chief of worldwide operations comes in, and he says, this is an administrative thing. I think your evaluation of employees should take place six months after they leave. And I put my hand up, and I said, Dick, I think you have to look them in the eye. And so left the room, I got three or four calls. There's only 10 people in the room saying, Jack, you know, you're treading on thin ice here that you're challenging the DTO. I didn't look at it as challenging him at all, and it wasn't an aggressive tone and anything else. I just making an observation.

And I actually think Dick thought, well, he's got a point. Right. But that they would think that made me concerned about their unwillingness to speak up. Right. Because it was not dangerous. Right. They saw something dangerous. Like, I'm not a wild man.

Right. But I appreciated when people speak to me. I had a square desk, you know, the traditional G of 15, you get this square desk. I threw it out and had a circle, a round table, because when I was doing, I needed help. There wasn't going to be you on one side of the table, me and the other. You bring your maps in and we'll sit down because I needed it. I mean, I desperately, so if you were slow rolling me with, yeah, Jack, great idea. You know, it would be lethal to me. So I'm working in supposition to the town

that people you're working for are receptive to it. So I didn't think it was as brash as some think that behavior is. And I would recommend if you're thinking your career slow, maybe you want to think about how you're, are you leaning in? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it never, obviously, you know, it's the book, it never comes across as brash. It just comes across as you, from either a logical or principled position, disagreeing with, you know, a person or a point. And obviously, throughout your career, getting to where you finally got to, you don't seem to have suffered too much from... I think they also, this is Jack Devine, so he's going to say this. In other words, you then earn yourself a little tolerance.

Right. Then my guess is there's probably some guys said, I don't want them. I'm going to take two green, not one orange, right? Right. So I didn't know it, but whatever, I would rather not work for that person. So fine. You know, I'm good with that. So I think, you know, just have to decide why you're in the business.

And Polgar's words are dynamite. You have an oblob. That's why I still write today. That's the ghost of Polgar. and people said, Jack, stop, you've done enough. But I'm not done enough because when you see something, you say it. And I think the tone of my ops eds are not, I hope they're not, they don't have the same tone that you have on mass media.

It's like, let me explain why I think this and maybe I'm giving myself too much credit, but I've designated myself the defender of the fate of the CIA. I've designated. I've anointed myself. There was a Jack. No one annoys you. Nobody puts you around. But I really feel deep commitment to the business and the necessity to

speak out. I don't think it's dangerous at all. Actually, it's kind of fun. It makes you feel good and then you worry about, gee, oh, wow. Can I get that op-ed back? But they're

with a purpose. It's not just the... You don't see me on TV. or I mean, this is a podcast because I think a long conversation is a special thing that you don't get a chance to do often, tease it out. But I'm not trying to get on TV so I have something to say today. You'll see me when I, there's some issue that I feel like I want to put two cents in. I could walk up and down the whole CIA. They don't let you in, but, you know, I'm confident I probably go in and tell them what I think. And you say, yeah, Jack, great.

Okay, anyway, for tea, you know. But he right one op. they've got to, well, someone's going to call it from Congress, you've got to read it, you've got to read it, you've got to pretend you. So there's a reason behind there's a method to the madness but it all comes back

to taking Polgar's responsibility. You don't want to be too too, maybe too much in your first assignment although the smidgen of arrogance was touches on this, but it was tolerable and numerous. But I think at a certain point

when you have command positions I would say kernel level something like that whatever it translates to you got to call them the way you see then let the chip

you'll feel better yeah it's in yeah it's very interesting did you I think you said that you would start

a new a new career field or a new career I was hoping you didn't pick up on that yeah that's dynamite because every say

oh what are they going to do they're going to do my job They're going to do away with it. Every year's again, you know, cause a trouble. A nuclear service, yeah. Yeah, but I think, you know, I described to you the embassy. You can't put people abroad that way.

Right. So how are you going to put it? What are you going to create that allows you to swim in the water? And it's there, people, again, your audience may not know, but unofficial cover. That's for a specialized handling of certain cases, right? But how, Jack, you're saying you want to increase our workforce by a couple thousand people. How do you think we can array them? Yes.

Yes, you need a, you know, it's a bigger issue. You need the, and my point is you have to do natural work, natural positions abroad in a different setting. It is a knock is you have to have real jobs doing real things out there where you are swimming in that water. That's hard. Yeah. That's easy for me in three sentences today. But every once in a while, I had to build a new career service. When the satellite went up, there was no technology division, I mean the directorate in CIA.

They created one of science and technology. And I'm saying, new world, new career service. Yeah. They don't do away with Olweth. You still need the liaison. You still need reports. You need to handle your training. A lot of room for, you can be any agencies around the world.

But there's a whole world. If you're going to swim in all those countries and do all, really get to know them, then you have to have not some constructed credit will fall apart because someone's two Google checks and they're blown out of water. Right. Let alone AI. Yeah. So that's, this is easy said, big task.

But you've got to start at some point because you're going to suddenly find out that nobody can move. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel as though then that, because you, you're not talking about a non-official cover position, but do you feel that the not field was effective for what it was for, or do you feel that it was kind of, like, that it didn't quite achieve what its aim was?

Well, I would tell you one of the yin-yang in it, right? So you want to bury someone so deep that they're, you know, they can handle the most sensitive. But they're at the most risk. Right. So do you put your most sensitive asset with them? So how do you match those two up? And my view would be that you match them up.

But it wasn't always, that's a real problem. Yeah. You're worried about the risk and a knock potentially being thrown in prison for the rest of their life. So, and then this is a question. You say, well, what about Russia? What about China? And, you know, this may sound cavalier, but when I read, well, this is open Pandora's box,

but when I read about, we'll go nameless, how we do operations that did them in Russia, it was we would fly out, fly back, all this stuff and working at the embassy. Why do we just have somebody in Russia? you know and you say well if you get caught and the question is when you have the Marine battalion you're going to take the hill you're going to get you know some so right does it become part of you remember when they sign up you have to say this is voluntary right this is not mandatory or I mean if you're in the military it isn't voluntary but my point is why did we get to a position where we felt we couldn't take that risk.

It was early on, and I don't mean, again, to be cavalier. Right. But if you want to cover the world, but that means you really have to have a different, a totally different way of doing it. And it's most senior officials, let's say come from the outside and take over the agency for two years. This is so big.

But don't give me this. Right. I don't want this. It's a good idea, but we can't, you know, we can't make it change. So it's almost, you don't get paid off for years. Right. This is not, I did this and now, wasn't that wonderful? No, there'll be a lot of heartburn on this one.

It's hard to justify to bureaucrats that are looking at metrics and everything, realize like, no, this is a long-term project. You'll see the dividends in 20 years. Yeah. So that's, I think that. that's a real hurdle in some ways. Well, where's their production? I need to have my numbers. Well, no, you understand? They have to be working there, but they're going to be collecting a lot of information. But, you know, you actually will get better information, but you have to

look at information differently. And that is how does the private sector collected as opposed to the public? The public sector, okay, we've vetted this and then the other. Private sector, I don't care where you got it. That better be true because I'm betting on this. said, guess what? You're fired tomorrow. Right, right. So there is this tension between, do you really have to know exactly where a repeat comes from, or can it be a lot of elicitation? But can you, but you have to be able to measure the value of that information.

I'm in a private sector business and information. And my evaluation is about the information itself. I don't get the first source from the first person and disseminate it. But after five years of them, right, that information, all my work is based on referral from someone else. If you're not producing it, it's not like the U.S. government move on to another job. You're fired. They just stop hiring you and they tell their friends. So information as a test is underweighted and too much emphasis on, I need to be eyeball to eyeball.

Now, you mentioned curveball. You have to be eyeballed. Eyeball with some of them. But if you grow up with the person and they're producing information and you're able to evaluate and evaluated and it's all panning out, then you can have a greater sense of reliability, particularly if you have multiple streams. So the reason I said is dynamite.

This is a head-crushing thing to do. And everyone was going to say, I'm going to be on the Paris next. give me a break. But I think we've reached a critical point in time where you have to start. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right, Jack, and that's like something we probably should have started on 10 or 20 years ago. And unfortunately, it's probably going to take our government another 10 or 20 years to come to the conclusion you have. If they, and I, you know, you really bring up an interesting point that I've never, that I've never really thought about, is it why is an intelligence officer,

life valued so much higher than that young Marines like that the Marines like you say the Marines will be told to like take that hill or go do this because it's with it's for our tactical or strategic objectives yeah I I don't think I want to undervalue that Marine as I said I've got right grandsons that are right active duty armed forces each one's precious every right every captain every sergeant everybody knows that precious right and CIA should look at it's precious. Right. Not that it's valued more, that it's precious.

Right. And how you manage them. Look, you're the operate here. He's going to take the hill. In other words, it's the same criteria. Right. But I just don't want, there's a nuance of what you're saying. I'm not trying to ever do it.

I'm just saying they're equal. Right. Right. And they have to be handled that way. Right. But there shouldn't be a stumbling block from taking risk on one. Right. It's not the value. Right. Yeah. I apologize. I was, yeah. But I agree with, I agree with your sentiment is that, you know, there, there is this idea of, you know, a real,

I think, sometimes lack of risk in the intelligence community in general, or maybe not how to that. Well, I think, there's a funny aspect of that. I think we have the bravest people in our armed forces and in our intelligence. In other words, you tell CIA person, I want to do this and you're going to get trouble. They're going to say, yes. Right. I'm going to do it. I'm going to talk about one person in a second. But the same person, God, the IG's coming.

I got a right report. I've got to go down the hill. It's like, that's where there's perhaps more concern than, you know. And I'm not saying there's where the risk become different. It's not the physical risk. Right. Because you know it. You've rubbed up.

against and they rubbed up against you but let me give you just one example because I go into the book and it's very much part of the whole Iran story so the the the when Beirut became such a hot violent place we sent James Buckley out so Casey went to him and said listen James this is a voluntary assignment you're going your single guy but this is your call he took He said, I'm gone. And they kidnapped them, tortured him, and they sent the tapes back to CIA in case he could see the torturing of the guy he sent and Reagan. And their heart was into the hostage deal.

Now, I opposed it. In other words, they were going to get him out no matter what. And that was the right sentiment. But trading hostages for missiles, that's where we had the problem. so but i can understand the heart part but then it got it did it cause policy problems that then uh... became of a national national issue

and even today i'd the podcast before dissemination i did you'll be a regular listener to mine is on hostage and the history of it and how so on but my point was say people do take the risk they do go out but uh...

uh... uh... and So that's part of the game, and not the game, it's part of the deal. But I just don't understand, you know, why we put some limitations on it. Right. And, yeah, like, and I 100% agree with you in terms of the individual bravery. But I just, I think, because I thought that you were sort of saying from an administrative point of view,

why wouldn't the agency be willing to put somebody, like, deep into Russia? And because. I would not want to be the chief of Russian ops, right? But if you proper in other words you have to send them in right you've got to you have to be I've done everything I can This is this is not this is not dropping people with parachutes behind the lines in World War II There is if you could set that criteria high enough and get to the comfort level that this is acceptable risk Right there was I've got it so low that I can sleep at night that he's not going to get caught right All right

So my point is is yes we should take we should assign people the new world we're going to have to put people around the world at a higher risk right because the world is less friendly to us so that everyone out there's going to be in a higher risk therefore you need a service that is so well disciplined that the prospects of somebody actually get you or down to the bare minimum right and if you lose like losing buckley you had someone out there and it's painful but you know that there are decisions you make and when you're in combat and whether CIA's in combat or military, there are risk and heartache. It's interesting because I think that what you're talking about

is one of the things that most civilians think that the CIA is already doing. Well, it is, but it's not doing it in certain places. Right. And the risk are high and it may be, maybe we've decided looking at it that we can't get it down to that acceptable risk. That's a different. If you can't get it down, you don't have the mechanism, then you should not do it. Right. In other words, you can't do it.

Oh, we're going to be right. Let's send Bill out and let's hope the best. So if you're not doing it because of that, I get it. But I would say in the new world, we need to be reevaluating the criteria to see, are we good enough to get people? in the North Korea and Iran that are walking around there and could be arrested. Right.

And that is an unpleasant outcome. Do you think we're good enough? Do you think that we have the potential to be good enough to do that? I think we do. Yeah. Look, you start with that assumption, but you don't get arrogant and say, you know, you have to complete the mission. I think Americans.

I'm a real, I think Americans can get American, you can get it done. I think the agency, when they put their mind to it, we're really good. So it doesn't mean there aren't failures, shortcomings, not everybody's. But that's part of the drill. Yeah. So you mentioned Afghanistan. your introduction to Afghanistan and the Afghanistan program? So I was working in the Middle East on Iranian operations.

One day, I think it was the DDO said to me, you can either be chief of Southeast Asia, that's Pakistan, or we have this office doing Afghanistan. I said, well, Afghanistan, I remember reading as a kid. had very no experience in international things as a young kid but I remember reading caravans it was a by I'm trying to remember the author's name but it was about Afghanistan and I had just intriguing sense of Afghanistan but I had no idea what the size of the scope of the operation so I said you know I've run big branches before I think this Afghanistan thing sounds good so I walked behind the red door and all of a sudden it's like wow we're in a war room

And guess what? We need 9,000 wheels. We've got to get over there. And by the way, we went to go over the fence and tell them we want stingers. So what I didn't realize was behind the red door. So it was an eye open. That's what I was describing earlier, why I felt I needed the chief of logistics. I mean, it was a big logistic reward. I needed quality people. I had quality people. Milt's team. I mean, we, so it was.

It was, well, I went to a shipbuilding conference because my business recently. And what had dawned on me, in the middle of this, I was negotiating contract with ship, not shipbuilders, shippers. How do the weapons get there? They all had to be Soviet-style weapons. They were made. They were bought. This is all in the public record.

How do you get this stuff? How do you do it? I was out there testing weapons and the 120 more. If you read about it, I'm the first one that I'm aware of that used GPS in combat. Right. That my Afghan forces it. And, you know, so that's all, that was all new to make. Yeah.

So, but I needed people and how I, in the case of the 120 mortar, was I had a captain mortar in the task force and he said, they got this thing down at, I think it was AP Hill or wherever. I want to show it to it. and he said see this captain show well okay well you put this GPS system and see this the mortimer said you can never hit anything you know you have to keep

he said look at this it goes right through it I said great so I should have bought all the stock I should have sold my house you know so everything and put it of course I didn't right because it was just another operation right so I mean it's my job was a really hands on management logistical making things happen

Yeah, but negotiating at a very high level, foreign governments, getting weapons. I have to tell you, it's like you've suddenly been put in some advanced training. Probably felt I was learning every day. So you're blessed when you get those assignments. You shouldn't run away from them. You know, you should seek those. I mean, I'm not telling everybody what to do in life, but I think when you come out of it, you know a lot more about the political dynamics,

the military forces, the considerations, blood sweat and tears. I mean, I learn so much in a very short period of time. Well, I thought one of the interesting things and something that you don't hear talked about a lot was actually the Chinese involvement, in terms of their cooperation with you guys, because they weren't happy about Russia being there. So what was happening?

There's two points I'd make. Charlie Wilson, we haven't discussed. Charlie was a character. Dewey, Charlie could run circles around exotic behavior, right? But Charlie, it wasn't his war. It was a real logistical U.S. government war, and it doesn't make a good movie. But Charlie was very useful and important. I'm trying to remember how I got one before Charlie.

The Chinese. Yeah. So with the armament, we were buying approximately 60% from the Egyptians, which again is in the public record, 40% for the Chinese. But as I got into it, the Chinese were producing better or faster quality. So I switched it. I just arbitrarily switched it to 6040. I mean, that's what you do.

You're going to task force, no one has time to stay on top of everything that's happening. So you really end up running this thing. I mean, it's one of those ideal jobs, you know, the director once in a while, you know, but it's no one wants to have to deal with all the different things. And they're just, they're counting on you to tell me if the house is on, you know, on fire. So I switched it. It was one of the few calls where Charlie called me was a little tested at the beginning.

He said, Jack, what hell are you doing? You're switching. I'm good friends with the Egyptians. It's easy, Charlie. You know, faster, better. He said, yeah, okay, okay. Okay, right. So we switched it. So when I would go out there and, you know, you go through a kabuki dance, not just the Japanese, but you'd go through a dance, friendship and rea, the back and forth, and then you get around to how much you're going to pay, how much, how much you're going to pay for the weapons. And we was really startling one time. They said, okay, it's 160, let's say 160, right? And we're going to give it to 158. And I said, well, the Chinese giving $158 because you're fighting the Russians.

And that spoke volumes. Now, today, they're together. Right. But I suspect deep down inside the Chinese, nor the Russians, are really happy as Russians and Chinese. Doesn't mean they're not going to cooperate, but it's not a natural marriage. Right. At all.

Yeah. And so we'll see with the test of the time. I'm not sure how thrilled she is with, you know, what's going on in Russia. and so it's not making his life easier because he's being he lumped himself but i think the alliance of russia china iran north korea and their allies you know i'm not sure he's going to feel that he's benefiting economically by being tied into that balance of power as i would say that's where he is and he's suffered he's going to suffer for that and i think he is i think their economy, I think people investing.

If you want to hang in that club, you know, but at the same time, if Putin were the, we hold the line and he leaves office, then that alliance breaks. Yeah.

Do you, what, like, tell us about the stingers coming online. That's a great story. Yeah, please. So we tried everything under the sun, you know, Sam, blow pipes, Sweden,

nothing was working. The war, the people don't understand this, in 1985, Washington sentiment, I mean, everybody in town, the Mujahideen is losing,

the Russians are winning. Sounds familiar with the Ukraine today. And there was the case because the arms were stockpiled up on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan because the hind helicopters

had suppressed the ability to move it across the border. Nine million pounds of wordness. rolling up there, getting backed up. So I didn't know there was a discussion about the stinger in the government, right? So they have a, it's almost like a deputies mean, where everybody in Afghanistan comes in the one room in the White House. And one day, well, we have this demonstration, so they showed a video of a mock-up helicopter coming across. You see a guy fired a missile in the opposite direction.

It makes a right turn. And so very dramatically, I found on the table saying, we have to have this now. Everybody in the room wanted this to ask for months, right? Oh, Jack, great idea. But I didn't know that the director wasn't thrilled with this. This wasn't his plan. So fortunately, I think the director moved in time,

but the White House wanted it, right? So the issue was, I was to go over the, I know his name, so I was not going to mention, but a great general, was head of logistics, and a very competent general, but I went and said, look, I've been sent here. I need X number of missiles.

And he said, look, coming off the assembly line now, the boys don't have them yet. So you can't have them. If I were him, I'd said the same thing. I mean, I get it. So I called the White House. So you go back tomorrow. Because President Reagan had, like,

they approached him and convinced him that, like, we needed the stingers. That was the big impetus, right, coming down with the general coming well coming down from the white house level no i think what happened at the meeting was they've been wanting it for a long time but the agency said agency was saying was going to cause

world war three right right and i'd made the calculation it wasn't good but i was doing that unknowingly right this is like that communist party thing but it worked out for the best so when i went back he wasn't happy with me even personally i think he was unhappy but that's how the missiles

came to be. And what happened the estimates and testing was you'd have a 25% hit rate. It turned out to be 75. And the first time it was fired, I think, was September 26, 86. And

there's a video. In fact, there's actually a painting in CIA. If you go down the walls where they have paintings of historic moments, they have the actual picture, it's a painting now, a formal portrait type painting. where the Mujahideen shooter stands up. He doesn't want to hide me trying to rock

because that's not manly or whatever. He fires it. And it knocked down three helicopters. Boom, boom, boom. And we had the pictures the next day, and I went up to read Casey on it. And I have varied memories of the moment, but the more vivid one is however we got there,

we agreed that this could be, this would change the war. Yeah. Why? Because it wasn't going to shoot down every heli. People don't understand that. They flew high. Yeah.

The minute they started fluent. Changed their behavior. We poured across. And I believe that day, that week, the Russians said, we're out of here. And if I remember right for that book. One system changed the history. If I remember right from the book, though, those, you were getting pushback about those pictures from the Russian specialists, right?

Or from somebody. I thought somebody in the agency wasn't, like, didn't believe the pictures were, like, legitimate. No, they were, they were, no, they were, they were undeniable. There was also video. It was just, it was, it was, I think it's really interesting that, you know, when we talk about covert action in plausible deniability, that, you know, we want to deny that we're participating in this action, but it becomes evident at a certain point. We brought American weapon. In order to win the war, I mean, Stingers in Afghanistan, we put toe missile. into Syria, javelins in Ukraine.

But remember, plausible, by the time you get there, it's plausible the knowledge going, right? Charlie Wilson's running over the hills with his alph-and-and. And is that why you calculated that the introduction of Stingers was not? It was a more serious calculation that I'm making a tiny bit glib. The Russians, the concern was would the technology be lost? We had sources that told us they already had the technology. So that was one of the arguments against it. And the second is plausible denial.

You've got to be kidding me. Right. At this point, if the read every newspaper. So at that point, the fundamental issue is what would Russia's reaction? This is how I feel about Ukraine, by the way. So, you know, when you stop and say the F-15s or whatever, we're going to fly in. So when I said that, the Russians are not, what are they going to do? Yeah.

What are they going to do? Where are they going to escalate to? Where are you going? What's the next play? Now, if you had something that would destroy the stinger, it's, okay, that's your next play. But if you don't have it, what's your next play? So to me, you can always, Soleimani. I mean, I think that was a very important critical move by the decision in our U.S. government

take out Soleimani. But I know the discussion was, oh, that, you know, that's going to cause. Right. So you have that in the room. Sure. And that's when things don't get done. Right. But you can't be a cavalier.

And you have to sit there and say, is it going to cause, what's Putin going to do? I mean, is he going to get a new army? Because he already has it out there. Right. I mean, what is he going to do? Right. You know, bump someone else off. I mean, it's so the name of the game should be really up the inning.

Right. And as I said earlier on the side that I thought we got off a good start. But, you know, we need to be provided. the way we were in Afghanistan, boom, keep keeping that pressure building faster, faster, more. 185, the sense of the opinion in Washington we were losing, the decision by President Reagan was we're going to give it one more year. I don't think anybody knows this.

The Russians mustn't have good sources. They all the only had to do is hang in for another year. And the budget went up, triple. In other words, there was a huge push, but the agreement was, you got a year. Now, you know, might have drifted in the year and a half, but they were looking at getting out. Yeah. And I thought that would have been a terrible mistake. But the point was how long are we going to go on and where is it going and it were losing?

It sounds familiar to Ukraine. And my view is, you know, you need to push the pedal to the floor. Get this thing done, right? And then it'll drag it out. Out of curiosity, because, you know, Jack mentioned the stingers and any of these other things. curiosity is there when something starts out as a covert action and it has its you know its own budget or it has its things if it moves out of what we would technically call the covert realm does it need to get reclassified or does it stay in that same place that it started

well it has to stay there because if it goes to the army then you have the u.s. army is now involved right on the ground now you have a war you're an army presence the unplausible denial Right. You don't force that issue. Right. There is, we're not, in my view, would be to the extent possible you should always have the indigenous people. If we're attacked directly, then we respond.

Right. Otherwise, our job is to support them, train them, equip them, you know, give them the intelligence they need. And if they're not doing it, and if they're corrupt, I mean, corrupt in a sense that they're not fighting and taking the money. then you don't do it. Right. You just say, okay, this is not doable.

Do we put the army in? Okay, let's take a look at what that means. So I think covert action is a great tool. You know, again, I know a lot of your listeners, well, I don't like this, but I wish we had stayed with the covert action effort in Afghanistan and not going in militarily. Right. And Iraq, the same thing.

Because at the end of the day, you have to make an assessment. of, you know, are the people going to stay and fight? And once we're in, it changed the entire complexion of it. Plus, the amount of human, how many people you need to run a covert action, it's much smaller than any military one. And the cost are relatively, it's really very inexpensive covert action. Just like spying is, you know, our budget was small, but, I mean, I think it's up around a billion dollars.

but at the high point. You put that in the budget, and if you're saying this is the one place to the world where you're fighting the Russians. And you're spending hundreds of billions of dollars. I mean, that's a kind of reasonable investment. Ukraine. I mean, you're looking at that investment

where your adversary is getting increasingly aggressive vis-à-vis Europe, and you want to prevent a war, you stop them at the first place. If he just stole long enough, his own system, today Navali died, but it's not going to be a number-rising, but his own system, he's going to become a liability to the system. And the system will figure out how to deal with that.

But, you know, we're breathing wind back into his sales by, you know, our impasse in Congress and our wavering on getting, I mean, we're going to get, we're going to improve the, prospects of the war will go on and his departure will be pushed out further. So coming back to Afghanistan, there's lessons to be learned. There's going back here. There's history. We have to, you know, you have to look at history and these things, you know, look what

happened when the Russians went in there and the British before them. Right. And when we handled it, and now we're going to go in and do it. It's like, right, did you read history? Yeah, there was, I don't remember if this was during the, the first engagement in Afghanistan, second thing, I remember a quote that you,

that you quoted from somebody that, that something about the Afghans don't, like the Afghans don't, the Afghans don't get conquered, or the Afghans don't, like you, something along those lines, I don't know if you remember that. I can't remember where it was.

There's a couple of quotes in it, one plaque that I have in my office from Charlie Wilson, and it says a quote from the first Democratic leader in, in Afghanistan and says, my son, my son, never trust. My last words here, never trust the Russia. The other is one from Kipling,

and that is, you know, when you're, you die in, when you're shot in a field in Afghanistan, roll over and shoot yourself. I mean, it's like, I mean, Charlie had a dark sense of humor. It wasn't, I mean, it wasn't at all humorous, but it was,

that's the type of play. Why? What's going to happen to? If you don't shoot yourself, you're going to be cut into 100 pieces and, you know. Jack, I think we should probably get to some viewer questions. Maybe like one more topic before we go to some questions, if that's okay.

I'm with you. Sticking with the same time frame, if you want to, your thoughts about Iran-Contra, and I know that you knew some of the main players, Poindexter, C-Cord, Oliver North. What was your intersection with the Iran program? Now, this requires a bit of a rollout. Yeah, sure. So I told you the Jim Buckley story of him being kidnapped.

That was the impetus for we're going to do something. And one of the problems from the very beginning with the Iran-Contra affair, it was an operation run out of the White House. The White House should never run operations that I'm. trained in it, the risk to the White House, it's just bad. So the first thing that you set in mind is the real motivation was well placed. But when I was Chief of the Iranian Operations, you said the head of the NSC was Admiral John Poindexter, and he called me down. I would say I was like a colonel, colonel, something like that. You're not called down to the White House one in one with the NSC director of a private meeting. We had a private

meaning. He said, Jack, I called you down because I want to talk about the moderates. But I said, what moderates? There are any moderates there? You either have extremists or real extreme, you know, super extremist. And I left, but what I didn't realize was that was at the time that they were thought that there were moderates and that they were dealing with them. Because the White House, a contractor, had brought in an Iranian who named Gobani Far. And he said he good arranged training hostages, getting relief for the hostages. And I remember getting a call. Dewey called me.

And Dewey called me. He was Chief of Europe, but he knew Casey well. So he called, said, Jack, the director is going to call you, say yes. Okay, Dewey, got that one. So the director called, and I went upstairs, and there was a group in the room. And he said, look, this guy go back. Bonnie for and we think he has information about the hostages and all of that. And I said, look, this is the fellow in Iowa that's out on the tractor.

Before I went up, he handed me a folder saying, see this, we got two burn artists. He's a fabricator, liar. Right. So I went up and said that. They said, well, you know, maybe you should go out and talk to him anyway because it's the hostages. So I did, and I met Ali and Kobanifar and the contract. And the meeting was interesting.

It starts off with him bringing four cans of caviar. He passes a can of caviar six inches. I push it back. I said, I don't take anything from anybody. Now, he knew that was a message. He knows, okay, they remember me, right? They know me, right? So he's going to decide he's going to do his charm.

I'm going to fast forward a little bit with him. I remember later on I'm standing in the men's room, right, going to the bathroom. And he'd standing beside me. And he said, Jack, you know, if you ever need money for like special things you want to do, I mean, I can probably be helpful. I'm sitting there, who the hell is this guy? You know, it felt like turning around and, you know, so it didn't make any sense. Why?

Because I didn't know what he was talking about. What he was talking about was what he was eventually going to do with the money in Central America. Nicaragua, right? So this doesn't mean anything to me. So I get back and I briefed, the director said, you don't realize this, but there's already been a shipment that was made. And we've got Gwani for it.

And he said, well, you know, the hostage are really important. This is, again, this. So I thought I was a brilliant stroke. I said, well, I think we need a polygraph. Because I knew he polygraphed being flung twice. Right. So I did. I took them to Georgetown Hotel and security.

I set it up. but I was there and we did the polygraph. I didn't do it because that's a technical job, but I was there. And he flunked all the relevant questions, and he couldn't do this. He didn't do it and lying. But the White House person handling him said, Jack, you call me when it's over. I felt like laughing. He said, I could have called you?

You're kidding me? I got two layers above me that get to me before you hear from me. And I met him in alias, so he didn't know my true name. I think today the rules would say he would have to know your. true names, but that day he didn't know. So I get a frantic call from the DDO's office. The secretary says he's cutting on the line, Claire George, he is steaming mad.

And I said, well, let's see what happened. So you get said, Jack, what the hell are you doing? This guy's been calling saying you beat up Gobani Far. So I said, I wish I did. Yeah. I wish I did. But I said, look, he flanks all the question. said okay the hell with it the end of it and we're out of it we're not going to do it well what

I didn't realize is we didn't get out of it the director handed it off on the analytical side they went ahead with the meeting him and trying to collect information so the only thing I would say is and that was in December holiday time in February the chief of the Middle East a great guy Tom Threaton who went on to be the DDO but a very sound operator in many ways. But you call me and said, you're not going to like this. But I've got a finding in my, you know, I've seen the finding and the finding says, you know, we need to help make those shipments take place. And I know you won't deal with Gabani for it, but can you make the flights go? So, so I dealt with Seekord and we made the flights. Now, I'm sitting

there thinking, this is never going to happen. It's too stupid. going to happen. That's sending missiles out. We don't even know who they're going to. We don't know where they're going. Now, I would say, in fairness, Ali, North and everybody got that plane, we're very brave. McFarland, they had no idea where they were going to go. They didn't know who they were doing with. I mean, it was the plane taking off. It was a lesson. Violates a few of your rules about covert action, I think. Like all of them. But then there's a quote by George Schultz's sticks in my head. No bad idea dies in Washington. So that's a lesson. This was if I had to learn the lesson, I had to learn the

and this was it. Yeah. So the, it didn't die. It went forward. So I made those shipments happen in the logistical part of it. And there were a couple people

were released, but then a couple more were kidnapped, right? And I wasn't thinking much about it until I was at home several months later or months later. I can't remember the sequence. And I'm watching the Attorney General get on TV to announce that announcing that we, that when we did the arms

for hostages, but money that was supposed, the money that came for the missiles I got, but an equal amount went into Central America to support the war in Central America, which was against the law. Because they were upselling the missiles. Well, they were upsell them. Govanifar being the good money. When he said to me, I can help you with money, God knows what plan he had. But the point was, Congress had passed the rule.

No money can come into the U.S. Treasury. So that was a crime. The hostage was the policy. The president has the right. That's it. He can decide. I didn't think it was the right move because he'd end up more hostages and the Iranians you can't trust. He didn't know.

So I didn't like it. I can understand why they did it. Right. and have compassion for that as well. But the money going to Central America was a violation of law. Right. That's where the operation. Congress had pumped the brakes on the Contras. What was this like 86, 87?

This was 86. Yeah, they are. It was, excuse me, I can't remember, let's see, whether it was December of 85. It might have been December of 85. So then it almost brought the Reagan administration down. I mean, this is, you know, who knew what, when, then you have the courts, and I had to testify in court on this thing, which I don't want to get into that. I mean, I can, but my point was. At the hearings, you mean?

Yeah. Yeah. So, but the issue is covert action again. I mean, where are we looking, you know, did we take all the right steps here and were we dealing with the right people? And so it was bad covert action. The inexcusable part was the money going to the country. Right. And the agency was not involved as an agency.

People get confused. Some of the officers worked with Ali North off the book. They were good officers, many of them really fine operators, but they were so committed to the cause that they didn't, they were kind of blinded by, okay, we have to help them. They believed Ali when he said, this is coming directly from the president. resident, you need to fall in line with this.

But you can't tell the agents. Right, you can't tell the chief station. It's like chilly. Don't tell the ambassador. Once you get into those boxes and you're anywhere around that, you know you have trouble. Troubles in Riverside. It's coming tomorrow next week, but it's coming. So I feel bad

about the folks that got wrapped up in it. But again, there's a part in, I think, the spy master's prison. You've got to stay within the line. Yeah. No, there's a really good chapter about all this and this books and spy master's it breaks down

I mean if you can't have a bureaucracy you can't run at something and because of your dedication and commitment work off the books that's only in the movie yeah yeah yeah and I I abhor it because it isn't because

it isn't a wild great thing no you have to do that you're going to have chaos right everybody will decide for themselves oh I think this is patriotic so I'm going to run my own up over here so you have to have really tight discipline and the interesting thing about it's the only case I know of this I've done a pretty thorough review of all covert action.

I don't know of another where we worked off the books. Anybody worked off the books to and was ever became an issue. If someone did it, it remained a secret forever, I guess. I thought you, like, because you mentioned that Casey, you know, called everybody in when it was first reported. He said, this will all blow over by tomorrow, right? And everybody's like, yeah, and you're like, no. Oh, I was in that, you forgot about that moment.

I forget. That was a stunning moment. I won't mention who else was in the room because many that went on in the very senior positions. It was, I'd forgotten that moment. Thank you for reminding me because it all blow over and I'm sitting there. Are you kidding me? Yeah. I'm a, I'm a colonel. You're a five-star general and you think this is going to blow over? Yeah. And everybody else is agreeing with him. It wasn't agreeing. It was different. It's different. Nobody moved a muscle. nobody moved a muscle and I was like wow wow I know we're taking up a lot of your

time jack so let's jump into some of the questions here we got one from Bill Gage he asks this is a historical question Stalin was widely viewed as evil incarnate in the 20s and 30s

yet we partnered with him to defeat the Nazis do you foresee any potential partnership with Putin similar to the Stalin one, for example, there's another terror attack in Israel or against the major Western country that engulfs the entire world and pits the U.S. or the West against the Middle Eastern countries and the West had to ally with Putin to defeat our adversaries. I think World War II was different. In other words, you were talking about Germany going to attack Russia and attacking UK, right? I'm not sure we would need him in Israel.

In other words, these were big European land war, okay? I could see where there is even cooperation now. In other words, in fact, it was reported the other day, and I'm trying to remember the exact circumstance. We were obligate to alert. I mean, even with... To inform. Even with hostile countries, we will share information and work together. Right.

Okay. Against a terrorist thing. So even in all this mess, maybe there's something we would do with the Russians that would be of mutual interest. It's hard for me to concoct what that might be, but it could be in a terrorist event of some sort. But that is an ephemeral event, one that, okay, but it's not we're going to, no way we can join arms. You can't trust Stalin either. But so, and his rush is not the Soviet Union. It's a much smaller proposition.

I don't see where they could help us. He can't even handle so far Ukraine. Sean asks, I've heard Cuds Force described as CIA that operates like the Green Berets. Is that accurate? What sort of team structure do they use and do they have major capabilities that they've been holding back? Well, my experience with the agency is that they have a core cadre of experienced seasoned military officers. And in a crisis, then you detail to the government, people for those operations, right?

But I think when we're looking at much of what we do today is often providing support like training to other elements. And therefore you're not actually doing the operations, although sometimes it's pretty close in, but you're providing the training for others. But it's not as if CIA is sitting on some hidden stormtrooping groups that are ready to. But they could be. I mean, one of the beauties of the agency is how quickly can they expand. And the U.S. Special Forces and stuff. They like working together. That's my understanding.

Why? Because you don't have this much red tape. You can actually get on a plane and get going, and someday you'll worry about the accounting. Yeah. So, and they work very well, I think, bringing down to the Taliban. It's a class example. You know, CA got in there. The military was waiting at the airport.

They couldn't get the approval. They were there the next week together, clandestinely, covertly, they did a beautiful job. So I'm saying, I don't think there's anything special sitting there. If we needed it, there'll be some joint effort. There's more likely to be some jointness than in, say, my time where we would do it with, they would detail them in, they're totally under my control. We might have joint ops. And that's, to me, sensible people sit in the room and figure what's the most,

to fish your way to do this. Right. I think there's more of that today. M. Corbyn, thank you very much. Thanks for coming on. Any nonfiction, non-Western origin readings related to the gamier side of espionage or specifically anything to do with propaganda

that you could suggest? And he says, hit that like button, so hit it. But yeah, is there any non-Western authors that you've read in the intelligence field or propaganda? Well, I think there's two different things. One is reading people that are under the business, right? I would say I enjoyed le Corre, right? I mean, and that's not because of the techniques.

It's the psychology of espionage, right? And the sort of the gray area and the struggles that you mentioned. How do you come to peace with it? That's quite interesting, I think, from a novel point of view. I think long enough, there's probably some, well, the Brits have done some, Christopher said his first name or last name. But there's several books the Brits have written that are good documentaries, Gordievsky case and so on.

There's some good British materials. think it would take much. I'm not being evasive. It's just that nothing pop out. But there's several good books there. But I don't know of any particular foreign books. You should read Russian books about their own strategy that'll help a lot. So I think that's true. Propaganda is a big subject. I think it's one that, you know, I don't know if you want to tackle it now, but I think it's the hottest NASS security issue right now. It's what do we do with this information and the Russians' ability, because I think it's far superior to the Chinese.

The Chinese have capabilities, but they really haven't been into disinformation business until recently. The Russians have been in it since the forming of the Communist Party, and they have a lot of experience on disinformation. As I said, we're at a disadvantage. It doesn't come to us naturally. But now, it's one thing when you put an ad in it

you put something in a newspaper around the world, quite another when you go into our system. Right. With the Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. I mean, you start the amount of things they did in 2016, which are relatively limited. But when you look at it, you're talking millions of people were snowed by information that they were putting in our election,

which I found outrageous. So I think this information, I mean, Tucker Cross, I'm picking on Tucker, but that was, you know, two hours of disinformation, right? Tailored, everything's fitting an image, you know. So they're very good at it, but the social media provides, it was so hard for us to do in close propaganda to that degree. Right. That you could hit a button and hit 100,000 people and be in your inbox. Right.

And disguise it and the way that the techniques can be disguised. I think, you know, our biggest strength is we should keep telling the Russia's story. What happened to the Lolley today? What do the Russians really do? I think, why worry about this information? We should just hammering them as we did before. Yeah, yeah. The problem for us is the defensive side.

How do we stop? And I just noticed the FBI had a success this last couple days with shutting down a Russian banking operation in this field. So I think we've, and again, there's a recent announcement saying we're making a national security priority. That doesn't mean that the words will then follow. But I think they will because I think it's a real problem. Yeah. That our country is so divided, it's ripe for disinformation with so many isolated groups that are around certain set of particular interest to pit us against each other. And it is part coming back to reading books.

It's part of the Russian orthodoxy that you will use disinformation in your campaigns and all around the world he's doing it. So I think it's a big issue for us and as I said, fortunately we're sitting on a good white story but it doesn't help defend us. So I think the best brains in the technology area

are going to have to really get together with the best intelligence people and try and figure out how we get in front of it. Yeah. And then M. Corbyn, thank you very much. Could U.S. policy towards Massoud in the late 80s, 90s, have been more accommodating? Would it have prevented rise of the Taliban AQ? Well, let me, when I was running it, the program came to an end, right?

And Charlie Wilson and I thought we should stay in there. And I had almost like a, U.S. aid program mentality. We'll keep, they'll do wells, we'll win the minds, minds of hearts of people. But the decision was, we won, get out of there, it's never going to get better. So Charlie was particularly upset. But, you know, fast forward 20 years, I sat down to myself and I said, you were wrong, Jack. It was, there was no reason to stay. You couldn't, you couldn't change.

it. So we left. Again, this comes back to self-determinations. The Afghans have to decide. Now, what people don't realize, you know, bin Laden was in, as a Saudi, was in Sudan, if I remember, but then he went out there as a fighter. But no U.S. aid ever went to him. He was a fighter out there, but he received it from other Arab states. but I once had a discussion with Milp. You ever hear this guy? He's out there with you. This guy, we might have been two skirmishes, but this guy's a nobody. I mean, so he wasn't a player in the war.

So there's a difference between the Mujahideen and al-Qaeda and that group. So when we left, as far as U.S. policy was concerned, you know, it was over. The Taliban didn't become powerful until years later. And the Taliban leaders are not the ex-Afghan fighters. And that's why we were able to go back in and use them. So I don't feel we created the Taliban. Right, that idea. The real Mujah team, the best fighters were not part of the Taliban.

Right. So I think there's a connection there that isn't accurate. To the best of my knowledge, no aid ever went to the Arab country fighters there from the U.S. It came from other Arab states. And that is it for the questions that we have. Oh wait. Gerard Lehman, thank you very much. Is the CIA director being used as a negotiator common?

An example, Burns with Taliban, now Israel, Hamas. I recognize Bernard's background, but interested in points of view on the pros and cons. It's an interesting question. The DCI. Yeah. So I would say, first of all, it has extraordinary credentials. If you look at his experience in Russia, his language, and, you know, he's a State Department product, written a book about his experiences.

So there's a lot of ways you could use a director. In the early days, they'd barely travel. everybody traveled to them. So they didn't travel. Also, there was more cover, and I remember Casey wanted to visit me in Argentina, they didn't want him to come because of all the political part

that he was annoyed in some other countries, so he didn't come to anybody, he was unhappy with everybody. But I think it's that clause. I'm not saying it's covert action because you're reading about it every day, but it says,

carry out those special activities. So one of the activities of the CIA is its relationship with foreign liaison. It's a force bottlefire. And in many countries, the president is the former minister of interior. And unlike CIA, the heads of foreign intelligence often sit in all the meetings. They are really part of the political structure. We have segregated, it, rightfully, I would point out. So Director Burns is the face for Mossad, for the French service, the British. In other words, so when you have the world in turmoil, you know, you have chiefs of stations that are really good. Right.

But there's nothing like having the director. So if you're trying to mobilize, I mean, I think this is a very proper. function. But I think I read recently one of his own statement, I think he's been in 50 countries. I mean, 50, there's something where it's almost on the road all the time. It's brutal to your body. Yeah. And I don't care who you are. So he's doing guys where yours is going to have a great book when he's done. But I think it's a natural role for it. But you have a deputy director. You have chiefs of operations. You have people that run the different part of the world. The DCI really shouldn't be running the day-to-day operations of spying and so on. So it seems to me that they're putting good use to them.

Now, not all directors are diplomats. Right. They wouldn't lend themselves to this. But when you have someone of that experience in training, or skill, then you apply them. But if you had someone that was a queer spy and didn't like interacting with, other people or whatever, well, they wouldn't be asked to do it. Jack, we will have you on again to talk about everything else and your post-service life, but I want to give you an opportunity to tell our viewers about the arcing group

and the work you do now and where people can go to find you. Well, I think that's a very kind of. First, don't forget to read the books. Yes. The books are Good Hunting. Spy Master's Prison. There we go. Jack Devine, please check them out. They're both phenomenal. I mean, it's history in the... Every page is just a part of history. It's incredible. Well, thank you. From you, both of you, I think that's a real compliment. I appreciate your audience, and that's why we're here. But the Arkin Group, what's really interesting is I'm an intelligence junkie.

You figured that out. I said I designated myself to the defender of everybody's intelligence. Right. But what I went into is private sector intelligence, and that is, instead of supporting the U.S. government, it's law firms, corporations, public relations firms. And usually it's because people are in, they're either investing in a company or they invested in something went wrong or they're in competition with somebody. They need to know what the government's doing vis-sivis their products. So it's more of the, it is an intelligence collecting. The Justice Department has not altered me to engaging COVID action. So they took that fun away.

But the difference is in the private sector, as I said, there's nuances about the collection process, and we can get into this different point in time. But it's bringing to them information that they can act on, all right? They want granted information and act on it. And it's a high bar. I mean, I tried to produce the same style, same writing, same objectivity that I do in the public sector. And you either hit the mark, satisfy the customer, or you're not going to be a business law.

We've been in business over 20 years. So I think we're doing it right. I'm happy because I'm looking at countries around the world and looking at them through the business sector. But the business sector is heavily involved in collecting intelligence. They don't call themselves a collector. But they're in covert action. They're meeting people. So I'm swimming in that water and trying to organize and focus in a way in which, you know,

I can bring the skill set that I have. People assume that Jack brought all the CIA friends and he calls the director and everything. That isn't how it worked. The only thing I left, I didn't leave with a single piece of paper. They had to give me those two pieces of paper about my volunteering to work for them. But what I did know is how you find sources around the world and how you. There's people out there who are very good, very professional, train their own world.

There's hundreds of them out there collecting information. And over time, I think we've gotten really good. We have a very robust network. So if someone comes in, it's almost any country in the world, and they need, you know, they're about to make a big bid, they want to make sure there's nothing that's going to bite them in. They're proverbial. So I think we're a good insurance policy.

And I don't think there's a lot of firms, but when you talk about, a lot of firms that collect the United States, there's a lot of open source. Collecting abroad is a real challenge for people, and everybody says they can do it. But there's only really you get around there and a handful of people who do it well. I think we're one of those. Have you found any niches for your company, things that you guys really specialize in? I think it is the part, first of all, you do a lot of basic blocking and tackling. or if you're a sports league and you want to know whether the owners you do, that's pretty vanilla, right?

Very important. Where we're really good, I think, is looking at an adversary company so that you can protect yourself and be able to ascertain how are they operating in a foreign setting. And are they behaving by the rules or they undermining you? What's going on with the government? So it's that high end. It's really, it's very similar to our intelligence other than, as I said, is for financial insurance where in the federal government is national security protection.

Right. But the same techniques and skill sets are needed. Right. You mentioned that you also read a newsletter. So where can people go and sign up? Well, the newsletter, you'll have the right to us. They can, you know, we have a website, go to the website, and reach out to us. And if you want to be on the newsletter, let us know.

But I don't, it's very expensive, basically free. But it's a very, I think it's a very good one. We have, you know, about a thousand regular readers, but there are people that are interested. And what I try to do, I really try to keep it nonpartisan. I'm telling you the way. I think I could be wrong for sure. But you're going to get, for me, in fact, the podcast is called Straight From the Shoulder. And I didn't realize not everybody ever heard that expression, but it's like a boxer.

Yeah. You get your maximum. So you call it the way you see it. And that's where I think the newsletter has picked up discerning readers. And if one of your folks are interested, we'd like to make them a discerning reader. We will put a link down in the description. That'd be great. For people that are interested.

That'd be super. Yeah. And I also want to let people know that we also have a page. If people want to go and support this webcast or this live stream, $5 a month gets you access to these episodes ad-free. And we really appreciate it. And pictures of Jack's feet. I don't know. Oh, wait.

I'm saying this, Jack. I'm not volunteering you for anything unless you want to throw yourself in there. No, I meant this, Jack. I would never... No, let me tell you where the hearing was off. I thought you said it's Jack's feet. I thought, where's... Where is what?

You're talking fee. Now we're really talking about this here. So, no, listen, I mean, look, I'm glad to be here. It's our pleasure. And I'm sorry that, you know. We covered half of the book. We covered, like, a little bit less than half the book. But I kind of knew this going in because, you know, your story isn't just your story,

but it's a story about, like, so many pivotal moments in the CIA. And I think that it's such, for a lot of people, it's such a mysterious organization. and you're able to shed so much light on what it really is. The purpose of the books, really, isn't about know me. It's meant to be an educational book. I'm happy that the agency has it on its reading this. New people come in. I'm hoping that I explain things,

and how does it really, really work? What are the pitfalls and what are the considerations? So I really worked hard, and I'm glad you find, the way. But that's, you know, I've read some critics of it. Oh, it's not like James Bond's book. No, it isn't James Bond's book. Yeah. It's better. Yeah. So, but thank you for the time. And it was a very good one more came in. One more question. Oh, okay. Last question. And then, and then we have to let Jack Go because it's getting late. What are your thoughts on the famous Benzimov's speech about Russian strategy of subversion via academia and other sources?

I think Putin's ambitions are robust. I think Stalin's were not in the same league because Stalin did not have the capabilities. But guess what? In academia resides highly sensitive information, science, technology. And again, I believe the Chinese are very good, but they started out in both. But I think the Russians' effort is they're going after, they know what they're going after. And it's getting to, now again, I don't think it's an attempt in the case of academia. I think it's to get the information to get the data that resides there.

And the Chinese, it's to get all data. Right. But in theirs, it's like, let me find that weapon system. And lo and behold, there's research done at this place and so on. I don't think it's to try and change the influence of the educational system. It's too big. We're doing that to ourselves, so we don't need any help in messing up our educational system. I think his propaganda is really through social media.

I don't think he singles out universities. But I think if you're a university professor and you're in any of the sciences, You've got to worry about your computer system. You really have, you know, all that. I mean, I think it's not just the Russians. I mean, the Chinese, the Iranians, the North Koreans, the North Koreans, friendly nations are doing it, right? And I would hope we're as ambitious with our adversary.

Right. But, and I think we're pretty good at it, I believe. Before we go, I need to ask Mrs. Devine, Any rebuttals or corrections before? No, we... Yeah. All right, wait a minute. Let me stop.

When Pat says I did a pretty good job, that means outstanding. That's high praise indeed, right? So can I finish with one's story? Yes, of course. So you understand. Absolutely. Understand. So there's two.

I'll give two. Well, okay, one story. So I'm on a stage in Paris, and I'm on with... Palestinians, this is before October, and the French, right? And I'm carrying the flag. No one invited me to carry the flag, but it's instinctive, right? So I actually thought I'd have a good job holding it for it, right? So I come down and there's Pat at the bottom of the steps.

So I know better, I know better. And I said, how did I do? And she said, well, you mean your big, fat Irish legs sticking out above your socks? It's like, boom, the air, you know, and it's, you know. actually a good reminder, like, a big guy, you know, get your feet back under ground, you know, don't beam like you, but then she'll give me a notch. But there's another, well, there's so many great Pat stories in the book. Yes.

Our marriage survived take an Italian class. Yes. In a high-speed car, if I remember. Going down 95 and we had spent the day, but there were only three of us in the class. My deputy, he stayed out of the way, right? He tried to make us look good. So we're going down the road, and I had the temerity to say, well, I think you have to use the subjunctive.

The car window went down in the Italian book. So Monday morning, we were totally unprepared for it. So I don't tangle. I don't tangle with that. Oh, excuse me. You didn't hear a pat. She gave me a half a second to apologize for critiquing her subjunct. And how dare you not jump on that?

Half a second? So, but, you know, you'll read about Pat the here in a book. I mean, I mean, really. Jack, well, I'd love, if you don't use those brass knuckles on me, I'd love to schedule you again to come in and do a second interview. Next, coming up this Monday, we're going to have Alejandro Villanueva in studio, right, Dee? Villanueva. On Zoom.

On Zoom. Okay. He was a Army Ranger, and then he was an NFL player. So, hey, excited to have him on the show. He also championed Alan Cash getting the congressional model of honor. So that's one day. I'll tune in. Yeah.

I'll tune in. Well, let's hope your audience enjoyed it as much as I did. I'm sure they did. It was incredible. Also, we have a new podcast. style called Eyes On, hosted by Andy Milburn and Jason Lyons. Check that out. It's on the same feet as the team house, both audio and video. So it should be very easy to get to it.

Yeah, and you'll love it because it's topical. Like a fungal cream. But also, don't forget, I have straight from the shoulder pocket. Just starting, and I'm now going to try and model it on. Where can people find straight from the shoulder? Well, it's in Spotify, YouTube. It's out there in that. that world. If you get the newsletter,

it's audio, it's about 15, 20 minutes. It's a glimpse of, it's a glimpse of an issue. And I'm interviewed by, you know, a woman who's a very talented international specialist in my office. And, you know, we talk about some of the current issues. Yeah. And brief snippets. And that's great. Like 15, 20 minutes is a very, like, is very digestible. unlike our show.

No, but I think it serves different purposes. Yeah. As I said earlier, if I go on Bloomberg News, God bless them. I'm delighted to be on, particularly for the line of the work. But five minutes, seven minutes is a lot of time. And the problem is, like, tonight we've actually talked through, like if we were in someone's living room and having, you know, an adult discussion about issues and people can take it for what it's worth,

but we can tease it out. Yeah. I think that's not an easily, not a, a readily available commodity in my view. So I came from all the way Manhattan to Brooklyn. We need to appreciate it. And we honestly, we want you back. We want to finish the rest of this.

Because teasing this out and having these deep conversations. It's awesome. I don't know about if we're deep. Jack's probably deep. But having these conversations and allowing you to talk about these is really why we're here. It's a formative. Yeah. And again, there's a world of.

of misunderstanding because it's classified the world. I was able to touch so much to became public that I can put the public stuff in perspective. So the deep spy cases are going to have to... But we didn't touch on the counterintelligence spies, which will do... We'll get it up next time. What makes people betray their country?

Yeah. I think, yeah, for your upcoming episode, whenever we schedule it, like, you knew... You knew Ames. I went to his wedding. No, no, I've got what I believe, one of the problems I knew a real spy, a real mole inside a CIA. That's the worst thing they can happen to as a professional. As a human being, it may not be so bad because in my life, as I start to think about the business, I actually know.

I actually ran up against somebody. It's not me just writing about something in the abstract and whatever. made him tick. So there's a, I mean, you have to really look for silver lining. Right. But treachery is a real blow. One of the problems here, they never thought somebody like that would do it. Right. Conventional wisdom. And we could talk a lot about it because it's core of the business. What makes people betray their country? And I think it will surprise you some. maybe it's in the book, but for those who haven't read it, and maybe I've developed it more since then,

what makes people like that tick? So they're going to be in suspense until we come back. All right. Well, we'll definitely get into it next time. Again, appreciate both of you coming out here. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Jack. And everyone out there will see you on Monday.

So thank you. Thanks, Your Ready.