The Team House - CIA biological weapons expert Tracy Walder: The Unexpected Spy, Ep. 34

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

Tracy Walder went from sorority girl to a CIA Staff Operations Officer putting a stop to biological terror plots worldwide. Her book, the Unexpected Spy tells that story but she joins The Team House to discuss her career at the CIA, becoming a FBI Special Agent, and the bio-weapon terror threat. We will also discuss the coronavirus and get her thoughts as a professional that worked to counter biological terrorism. Her book is The Unexpected Spy found here: https://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Spy-Secret-Notorious-Terrorists/dp/1250230985Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Hello, everyone. We're streaming. Welcome to the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. I was going to be for you to introduce me.

Dave, uh, didn't, we wasn't here last week because he had the snibbles. We, uh, we thought by coronavirus. I wish it was the coronavirus, actually. I wish I was done with it. But he's done with it. But he's back. He's okay. Uh, and we are here with our guest tonight.

Tracy Walder. Tracy is, uh, probably one of, uh, few people out there who served as a CIA officer. She was a staff operations officer, worked at CTC, the counterterrorism center. And then she made the jump and went to the FBI. Academy at Quantico and serves as an FBI special agent. And now today she works as a teacher in a girls' school. So there's a lot to talk about here. We were going to talk about, we've got to show off the book here, her new book, The Unexpected Spy. I read it. I really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, very insightful. Some of the stuff, I mean, we were talking

about earlier, Tracy. I mean, it's surprising what made it through the CIA's public review board. I mean, there's some really fascinating stuff in here. But beyond that, Tracy also worked countering biological terrorism at the CIA's counterterrorism center. So that was kind of her background, one of her specialties. She was deeply engrossed in all of that. And we had talked previously actually for an article I wrote about effort here today. And we would absolutely be remiss to not hear your thoughts about that, Tracy. And I'm sorry to give this extended monologue. I just have one more announcement to do, and then we'll get through it. We have a sponsor here at the team house. Slowly but surely, we're growing. So I just wanted to talk about them for one

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All right. So without further ado, Tracy, thanks so much for joining us tonight. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to talk to you. Yeah, absolutely. And we're excited to talk to you too. This book was great. It definitely offers a different perspective. when I reached out to you, that was a joke when I mentioned that we have a bro quota on the show. That's not actually true. You can come and raid the boy's secret tree fort. You know, we make little fortresses out of couch cushions and shoot each other with Nerf guns. There is not actually a bro quota.

But that said, what I'm getting at is that this was a fun book because it's from a totally different perspective. And it's not the typical bro army guy book. like Dave and I are usually familiar with. I mean, I would know I wrote one of them, right? So, you know, it starts off. I mean, you were a sorority girl. And the story about your recruitment into the CIA, on one hand, looking back on it, I think we can say it was rather pedestrian and uninteresting, right?

And I'll let you talk about it. But what came through in the book, it's just like our recruitment into the Army. It's like you were a 21-year-old sorority girl at the time. This is the most exciting thing in the world. I mean, this is the coolest thing that could ever happen to you. And that really came through in the book. It was really fun to read. I just wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that experience.

I think we need to caveat because often it's funny because, you know, when we've had people from the CIA on before, one of the biggest questions people always ask in the chat is, how do I get the CIA? It's the travel and, you know, the foreign languages or, you know, and all these different things. But like Jack said, it's like, you are

everybody here is how you get at the CIA yeah please so well we have first the first thing is first you know what we have to remember is this was the late 90s-ish so you know we're in a super different time frame than you know we are now even with pop culture right you know now we have homeland Quantico all all these shows that I don't know sort of make it seem sexy right and you I think then give some

one expectations of what these organizations are, whether they're realistic or not as a whole another ballgame. But, you know, at that time, the only show that was on was the X-Files, which everyone knew that wasn't really the FBI. It was sort of ridiculous. Even James Bond had sort of a hiatus between, you know, the 1960s James Bond and then like Pierce Brosnan in like the 2000s. And so there weren't these expectations that I had of, you know, like what the CIA was. What I did know is that I was interested in counterterrorism. I had sort of decided by that point, it was my junior year, that I wanted to do something first with my history degree that wasn't teaching. And then I knew that I really liked to travel. So those were three things that I knew were

sort of constants. You know, for me, it was as simple as going to a career fair and giving them my resume. I think, and I know your listeners aren't going to like this because I don't have sort of this formula, right, that I think everyone wants, right? How did you get in? I don't, I don't think the CIA works like that. FBI is a bit more quantifiable, in my opinion, but the CIA is not necessarily quantifiable. And those that are trying to make it so are usually the candidates that they're not looking for. That's what I have sort of found in my time there. Although, could have changed, but that's what I found. So you said, sorry, you mentioned like counterterrorism

with your interest. Now, being in the 90s, what did counterterrorism look at then? Because it's very different than what we think about, right? Right. That's a great question. So I kind of had a two-fold interest in it. I remember being in high school, I'm in my 40s now, so I guess, you know, kind of that time frame being in high school when Oklahoma City happened. I think I was a senior. I don't remember what year I was, but

I remember thinking, how could someone do this? How could someone hate America so much? So I think that was sort of one that, you know, I grew up with Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City. That was my high school experience. So that was sort of in my face. But then when it became really real to me personally was, you know, I was like 19, I think, at this point. And when you're 19, the world sort of revolves around you. If it doesn't affect you, it's not real.

And so when I watched Peter Arnett and Peter Bergen interview Osama bin Laden in that cave in 1997 in my sorority house, it became about me. Because he issued his fatwa against Americans then, but he also talked about his hatred of Jews, and I'm Jewish. And I think for me, that really sparked my interest in thinking, well, who is this guy? Why does he hate us so much? Where is he from? So that's what sort of got me on the, I would say, more foreign terrorism interest. if you will, because it became, I guess, selfishly about me, which is terrible to say, but that was the truth. Sure.

Well, it starts from a personal place. Yeah, of course. Institutional. Was, you know, now if you talk about counterterrorism, everybody knows what you're talking about it. You know, or there's this thing. Were you sort of, I mean, kind of a rare person in that time and space? A hundred percent. So at that time, the CIA was also struck.

like really differently. Centers were new, were like a newer thing, sort of late 90s. You started getting, well, counterintelligence center had sort of always been there, but you started getting a counterproliferation center, a counter-narcotic center, counterterrorism center, because I think they started realizing that these are, you know, what we call transnational issues. Rather than your, what we use to call it, you know, like the Russia house or, you know, the North Korea house, right, like organized by, countries. They started realizing that things, things are a little bit more fluid. And so when I got there, you know, the counterterrorism center was actually rather new, which I know is very strange

to think about, right, because of our kind of frame of reference now. But back at that time, it wasn't sort of, I don't want to diminish the people that are there, but, you know, it wasn't like the place to be. Because really the people that had all the credit, I don't say credibility, but who had worked there for decades and were well respected, were sort of, even though Russia, wasn't a thing really anymore, but we're in, you know, the Russian group or in the Latin America group because that's sort of where the big issues were. And the newer folks were in the counterterrorism center. Because it kind of, I mean, terrorism at that time is like, one thing. No, I mean, we had had, you know, Black Hawk down was, you know, in Somalia. We'd

have the first attempt at the World Trade Center. And then I think when I was there, the first, like, big attack was the bombing of the coal. But even then, I don't really think everyday Americans really took notice of that, you know, with the coal. It was unfortunately servicemen who passed away. And so I think, you know, people are like, oh, that's the military. They're fighting a battle force. It was like more palatable, I guess, for people. But really, I would say that was the extent of the international terrorism world at that point.

And there's one thing that I was hoping you could help me out a little bit. because I was a little confused when I was reading it in the book. You get recruited, you go through your whole interview process, and I thought it was so awesome that your mom was on board for the whole thing. I was really, I was only 20, so I think some people, it's funny that you mentioned that some people have really made fun of me for that and said that, you know, if you have to have your mom with you, how could you have possibly done this?

But I didn't, it's not that I used her as a crutch. I think I was 20 years old. she thought that it was probably a good idea to come with me. I don't know. I didn't really think of that so much. I just thought it was cool that your mom was so like gung-ho about it. Like, yeah, this is what you should do. Yeah.

But what had confused me a little bit was that you get recruited, go through that process. And then it seemed like the next step you had jumped right into like some sort of imagery analysis. what was that? Because you said you didn't go to the farm immediately because I guess 9-11 was popping off. So we didn't go to the farm immediately because I think there's also a misconception that you go straight to the farm.

Well, it might be different now. I can't. I honestly can't speak for how they're arranged now. I can only speak for how things were, obviously, at my time there. But actually, most folks on the operation side, kind of much to their chagrin. It's not something they usually enjoy. have to do what they call desk desk work. And sometimes that can take up to a year before they're

cycled into the farm. And that's exactly what I was doing. That was the norm at my time. Again, now people may go straight into the farm. FBI, you go straight into Quantico. But that's just not at the agency how it worked. So we, you know, it was pretty normal for us to have this pretty heavy rotation. I think in the one chapter I get in a screaming match with another individual in the middle of the street. And, you know, he was pretty pissy because he had been waiting a really long time to go to the farm. And he was in my, rotated into my office. And so that was actually pretty normal at that time. So I'm sorry if that was confusing, but that's, that's how that works. And so I was doing analysis of terrorist training camps, basically.

That's the group I was working with in the Counterterrorism Center. And you wrote pretty extensively about, and because of redactions and having to beat around the bush a little bit, it's not 100% clear what you were doing, but it appeared to me or it read to me that you were watching some sort of real-time video feed of some major battles in Afghanistan, and Torabora and some pretty interesting stuff. And I mean, whatever you were doing in that room was so important that you got visited by George Tenet, who was the DCI at the time. You got visited by President Bush.

So there was something important happening there. I feel like you could probably figure out what it is. The CIA is not technically declassified the program, but it is definitely out in the press. I have to say that was one chapter. My whole thing with the publications review board was I'm just going to write it and y'all can decide which you want to take out. But I went ahead and read every single book by every single person that I knew that had gone

through the publications review board. And then I went ahead and footnoted everything for them. So that way it was sort of in their face, right? Like you're going to have to provide a really good reason as to why this person could have it in their book. and you declassified it for them, but they're not for me. And so that was sort of my tactic, I guess. And that chapter, I have to say, out of all of them,

was the one that I was the most shocked that they let through, particularly even the details about Torah Bora as well. The battle is out there, obviously, but some of the details of watching it firsthand. And I was just very surprised that they allowed those in there. And yes, I started on that program before September 11th and then worked on it through September 11th. And I was kind of the first group of people to work on that program. Now it's a huge office, I think, within the agency.

But at that time, it was just a group of maybe four people in sort of a very teeny, tiny room. Yeah, yeah. There's a just a little baby program. Yeah, for it, blossom, grew into something bigger. Yes. But it would it be fair to say that your job was doing some sort of a battle damage assessment as these battles were unfolding and outgrowth of studying terrorist training camps? No.

No, that's not accurate. Sorry. I don't know. I'm trying to sort of talk around. A lot of terrorists disappear doing what I was doing. So I wasn't necessarily at that time. I think they probably do now, but at that time we,

Torabora was really the only time, at least during my tenure on the program, that we were providing, I guess, air support, if you will. But the other times, no, we were not providing any kind of battlefield assistance to the military. I look forward to reading this. I'm sorry. No, no, I understand.

And there was another funnery anecdote that came out of that book, out of your book, The Unexpected Spy, once again, if you guys are just joining us. There's this funny story in there about, you know, your boyfriend at the time was also in the CIA. And you were read onto some of these very classified programs that you still can't really talk too much about. But he was not read onto. And so it turned into this sort of like weird sort of jealousy. Yes. That's not unusual at the CIA. You know, I was read into programs or clearances that some of my friends didn't have

and they had clearances that I didn't have. That's quite normal. That's actually 99.9% of everyone there. I think some people just can't handle that. That I couldn't talk to him about it. But it really wasn't any different. and what I think even my best friends and I had between us. We just didn't talk about it.

It was fine. He's the one that had the problem, I guess. Right. I don't know what your thoughts are, Dave, but if my girlfriend was like, see you later, I got to go do some black ops now. It's like, all right. He did not appreciate.

I think his ego, perhaps, got in the way. Yeah. Don't put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. No, before we move on, is there anything else you want to say about that period of your career? I know you're kind of like we mentioned, you're kind of limited, but it was a very fascinating part of the book to read. You know, it was a life-changing part.

I think of my career. I was sad when they made us rotate off of it. And I understand why they did because the work became very... Intense. Yeah. And so they realized we have to take shifts through it. But I guess on one hand, it was a way, I've started to think about it differently now. You know, a lot of people, right, you know, on the day of September 11th, they're right after,

thought about, you know, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? But for me, like, I got to do something. And that's pretty powerful to be able to do that and to say that. So it was an amazing experience. I learned a lot about leadership. Tenet was in that room with us pretty much every day.

and I came to respect him a lot as a leader. I worked a little bit with the Air Force as well. Tommy Franks and they were really, it was a great sort of way for those different groups to be together, which was kind of nice. Normally they're not. I mean, obviously your office at that point then I attracted a lot more attention.

Like it became, you know, refer to the bell of the ball, right? And I mean, it kind of went from maybe nothing or, you know, I don't mean nothing, but you know what I mean? It wasn't Russia. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't one of the, one of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, pre-Madonna's or whatever. Did you, like, walk in the cafeteria, like, after you guys, first big thing go, suck out losers? Um, you know, it's interesting. I think I have a part in my book where I say this, and I had to tread carefully because this person is, it's actually a dear friend,

still. But when September 11th happened and you know we're sort of buzzing about what are we doing, what are we doing? You know, our higher-ups were in their office with the door shut, right? You know, trying to figure it out. You know, she was in a corner saying, okay, it's our turn, it's our turn, and kind of gleefully clapping. Oh, shit.

And it's in my book. And she's not a bad person. Right. But the thing is, she started working there about four years before I did. And I think for her, it was this displaced. It didn't come out the right way, but I think what she was saying is, finally, we're going to get the resources and attention that we need. And, like, it will be our turn to actually show the world what we can do, you know, about that. But I think it came out as misplaced, I guess.

Well, I mean, I can tell you that probably every guy in special operations thought that same thing. Nobody is saying that, like, 9-11 is a good thing. Well. No, you know, but what it is is for something that you've worked for, trained for, whatever, now you can do your job. Exactly. That's a perfect way to put it. And it's very hard to express that without making it sound like you think it was a good thing. Right. Right.

You know, but anyway. And then you mentioned in your book going to something called Poison School, which, I mean, it sounds so anachronistic, you know, you know, You know, the CIA has a poison school. We still do that. But could you explain what is poison school? What was that? Why did you get sent there? So that's another chapter that I was also surprised.

I mean, there's parts of it that are redacted. But I was very surprised that I could, first of all, title it that and that it made it through. So I was assigned. So the counterterrorism center was also kind of scrambling to organize itself differently. It sort of was just the group that looked for bin Laden. But then they had to organize themselves into sort of like a tech group, a finance group, a Bin Laden group, right? Like all these different groups. And so I was placed into the WMD group, which they were trying to find out kind of, they had two prongs, I guess, two tasks.

One was to figure out if they were trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And then the other side was where they looking to acquire sort of crude biological weapons and toxins. And so because I didn't have a degree in nuclear physics, which a lot of the people in the nukes I did, I was placed in the poisons and toxins side. I guess they assumed, oh, that's easier to teach you. And at that point, an al-Qaeda manual had been found in a house in the United Kingdom. And a pretty hefty portion of the manual was dedicated to making poisons and toxins. So I think, you know, there was some concern around that. And so the CIA felt, you know, if this is what you're going to do, we need to give you, I guess, like a primer on it.

And so they sent us to a school where we had folks that came from Maryland, which is where, you know, kind of the level five facility is. And they taught us all about the manufacturing of mostly biological ones, not too much of the sort of chemical stuff. I don't really know why they didn't focus on it. It was mostly anthrax, botulinum, ricin, you know, sort of those what we would call organic compounds. Also, we talked a little bit about smallpox, things that were already manufactured by other countries that perhaps terrorists were trying to get their hands on. So less about sort of like sarin and nerve gas and more about sort of the procuring of like organic materials. And it was pretty fascinating, but also disturbing. I mean, we have the whole, you know, petri dish going on with the medium in it and all of that growing things.

And it was just very disturbing to see how easy it is to make these things and that you don't need all that much to do it. Yeah. That actually brings up a question that somebody asked. And thank you, Andrew. He says, can Tracy talk about the 1989 California Medfly attack at all? You know, the weird ecoterrorist attack from the 80s? Do you know anything about that? Um, no, I know more about the, um, salad bar attack in, um, I don't know if you guys, you didn't know about the salad bar attack at the Cisler, the cult that was trying to.

Oh, I remember. I vaguely remember. Yeah. Yeah. That was the one that I had known about. That was a samanella outbreak. Right. Mm-hmm. I remember that. I remember being a cult. Yes, it was a cult. I don't know much about that attack. I apologize, Andrew. Yikes. And so, I mean, bottom line, I mean, they had to teach you how to, you know, essentially engage in biological terrorism so you would know how to counter it. Is that more or less accurate? I think so that we would know how to counter it.

But also, I think, to drive the point home to us about how cheap and easy it was to do these things. So David is asking, since we started talking about. biological terrorism. Has the only one ever noticed the first three letters of bioterrorism is the same as the first three letters of biology. Tracy, would you care to comment on it? So it is just short for biological terrorism. You know, anything that would be considered organic or out in nature is biological. That's, you know, there is a difference between a biological terrorism and then chemical terrorism. Chemical terrorism is what you, I guess you saw with Amshamrikio, you know, in Japan. I don't know.

if you remember that with the umbrella that had the sarin gas in it. And so that was a chemical attack. Those are sometimes easier to track just because when people buy those things, it sort of sends up red flags. But no, bioterrorism is a biological terrorist attack. So, I mean, is it any type of, I guess, just something that would be grown, basically. Is that what we're talking about? For the most part, or something that's already found, you know, within the human body. Okay. You know, some, everybody's biology, I guess, is different. And so, you know, there are things that your body produces that if, I guess, like, sent to different parts of a structure would cause different types of reactions. But, I mean, the reality is, is botulin. People don't realize that botulina is an organic material. All of these, ricin is just castor.

you know, all of these things for the most part. Like anthrax, you can like dig up a dead animal and get it, right? Yep. Mm-hmm. And then you went into the world. You actually went out and were, you know, deploying, doing these different liaison jobs for the agency to try to run down potential threats. And there's one chapter in your book.

There are multiple chapters about this. But the one that really caught my eye, I was actually like really, you know, kicked back. I was shocked when I read this. And I can only think maybe I'm reading it wrong. Okay. This is page 83. You were doing this liaison with other intelligence services, and you write at the end of this chapter after the attack had been interdicted. As news of the plane attack emerged, a liquor company canceled its ad campaign that was to include billboards that would wait the smell of almonds.

Rice in is odorless. But cyanide smells like almonds. being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parents. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Ads were a clever idea that I knew would never again be possible to execute. Am I reading this right?

Are you saying that they were going to load some sort of weapon into scented ads? Mm-hmm. So cyanide is, yeah, I mean, yeah. I don't know any other way to say that. I can't like, obviously. It was a scented an ad campaign that would have a scent. It would have a smell. omitting from the billboards, and the bad guys were going to put some sort of weapon in it, a biological weapon.

I think you'd be very surprised by some of the things that I've seen. I can't, you know, I always can't talk about a lot of the attacks that I thwarted because you, I mean, the CIA, I guess, some of the good things we do never really get talked about, right? It's only, like, our failures that get discussed. But I think you would be very disturbed. Yeah, I am disturbed. In fact, I am. And as I was reading, I'm shocked that nobody else picked up on this and reported this, because, I mean, this is a big story. I think you would be very surprised by, like, the things in the book that people have sort of glommed on to or not, right?

Everyone's sort of, I think you're also a very observant person based on your career path, to be honest with you. And so I think you're picking up on things that I'm glad you're picking up on. but I don't know that everyone else is chosen to focus on that. Yeah, I think they should. Agreed. Yeah, it's like, holy shit, there's no way I must be reading this wrong. Again, I was just shocked that no one else reading this book picked up on that and realized what it was that you were saying there. I mean, that's pretty incredible.

I wish I could have a reason for you, but I'm. I don't know why. Yeah. Do you think, I mean, from what you've seen and you say, you know, the attacks that have been thwarted by your efforts, CIA efforts, things like that. Do you feel that especially in America, that we are generally very placid and not really understanding of the threats that we face on a global level? Because of the work of people that pretty much get drug through the mud whenever there was an opportunity. I 100% agree with you. It's also very frustrating to me.

You know, we focus on... I think I've been very frustrated by the way that, you know, our cybersecurity has played out. I think I was talking to someone about that. And one of the things they were saying to me was that congressmen and senators and policymakers don't have time to fully understand these. issues. And that's actually not a slam on them. That makes sense. They're serving a really large

constituency. And so if we can't find a way to deliver potential threats to them in sort of a clear and concise manner in a way that they can understand it, you know, in five minutes, this is going to be a huge problem. We don't, I mean, what have you heard in our media about, you know, bio attacks and things like that? Nothing. And that's a huge problem. And I don't think Congress is focusing on them, or our lawmakers, I guess, are focusing on them. Cyber security or like it frustrates you, what specifically frustrates you about the way we handle cybersecurity or about the talk around cybersecurity? Oh, I didn't mean to just focus on that.

It was just sort of an example I was giving of a multitude of things that frustrating. But what I will say is I do think, I think I just read, I tweeted it out that, was it, our health, something was hacked in regards to the coronavirus. And like things like that shouldn't be happening, period. I mean, we know other countries have hacked into the Pentagon. Things like, it's just, I don't understand why this is acceptable and this also doesn't, like it'll make the media, but you really have to comb through it to find that.

And that's really disturbing to me. So while we're on this topic before, we get sidetracked with other stuff. I think that since we have you here tonight, I really do need to ask you about the coronavirus and everything that's happening. And I'm sure you've seen all sorts of assessments and contingency plans behind the scenes that would probably scare the living hell out of name. But that aside, before even front-loading the question, I mean, what's your take on what's going on right now with the coronavirus and where do you think this thing is going? So let me kind of start off with saying what I don't think it is because I've seen this

get picked up a little bit and it is frustrating me. I do not think that this is something that the Chinese manufactured. And the reason that I don't think that is because of the things that I've seen, a country is going to manufacture something on this large. of a scale, it's going to have a much higher kill rate. And it's going to be something that is really difficult to find a vaccine for. And I know people push back to me about that. They're like, well, they're trying to destroy our economy. And I get that. But I actually did that at the FBI, and that's not the way they're trying to destroy our economy. And so I want to first kind of start off with that if that's okay with you. And then my second piece is, you know,

the coronavirus is going to affect, it's going to infect a lot of people. We know this. This is not, shouldn't be shocking to anyone. I think some of the things though that we need to keep in mind about it is that of the people that it infects, 80 to 85% of those folks are going to either be asymptomatic, so have no symptoms whatsoever or present with mild symptoms that don't warrant like what we would call a hospital visit or, you know, a call to the doctor. And actually, in all honesty, those are the people that are the most problematic and that's not what we're focusing on. You know, we're sort of, and I'm not saying, oh my gosh, we should not not be focusing on folks who are dying and, you know, in the hospital, is obviously extremely upsetting. But the fact

is if you have 80 to 85% of a population who either thinks they have a cold or has no symptoms at all, and we don't even have enough tests to test them, I mean, people need to realize those are the folks spreading the disease. And that's what you should be more worried about. Instead, all we're talking about is that, you're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to die. And yes, people will die. And that is horrible. But we're not, it's just this like panic. being created. And look, I think quarantines do work and they probably will help mitigate the spread of the disease. I'm not an anti-quarantine kind of person. But we're not even talking about the fact that we do not have enough tests. That to me is the base of like this whole problem. Had we had enough tests to begin with and could just start testing people like how I took my daughter to get a

flu test, you know, three months ago, that really would have helped mitigate a lot of our issues because folks that were asymptomatic would have had access. And even now, people can't even get tested unless they're really, really showing symptoms or have been in contact with someone who has tested positive. And that's a problem. Your point is that if we had enough test kits early on, we could find out who has it and quarantine them individually so they're not the carriers spreading it around to everyone else. Well, that is who ultimately spread it because if you are really sick and in the hospital,

you're not spreading the disease out to the public. But, I mean, I'll be honest. I go out when I have colds. I'm sure a lot of people do. And if I wasn't, you know, I guess on my ass, you know, from a cold, I would be proceeding as normal with my life, which I should admit, but I do. Most people do.

And I think that is the problem because that's why it's being spread. what would that look like though so if everybody gets tested and it's like okay jack you test negative go sit in your room by yourself do not move but then he goes

he goes and gets food he goes you know whatever he takes a subway to work then does he get tested again the next day or like how how does that balance out if we did have enough tests well I think the problem is

so no that would be I would think physically impossible to do. I think more the problem was is when people were coming here on airplanes and things like that. We didn't have test kits to test them until they were already like hospital-ridden, which is a huge problem. I think we should have been testing people immediately who are coming off of planes from whatever infected country it was. Because to be honest with you, that is what we did with Ebola. and it worked. I know Dallas, we were hit actually by it with someone at a hospital here, but it was contained

easily. Obviously, Ebola spreads very differently than corona, and I get that. But I think we had plenty of Ebola tests available because Ebola had happened before, right? And so we had ways to sort of mitigate that. So what do you think, and I know there's a real danger in this question. question, of course, but if you were to project, are we overreacting, are we underreacting? What do you think this is going to look like over the next coming months? I'm worried people are going to really be upset with me. So I think I'm kind of in the middle.

This whole panic buying of toilet paper and, you know, household necessities, that, to be honest with you, just really upsetting deeply, like as a member of humankind. that people are doing that. It's unnecessary. No, and I think that behavior is very upsetting to me, and I think that is an overreaction. Now, the idea of asking people to sort of stay away from heavily populated areas and things like that,

I think that makes some sense, given how this thing is spread, you know, it's airborne. So I'm sort of, I guess, in this middle ground. Yeah, yeah, it's not that, it's not the end of the world, but there are some pretty grave repercussions. Yes. Right. Yeah, I'm not, you know, unfortunately, I have to be on social media for the show and stuff like that.

And, you know, a lot of people like, oh, is now, when do we panic or is now as a time panic? It's like, well, I don't think panic is ever the right answer. No, I agree. It makes everything worse, to be honest with you. Yeah. Do you think that, you know, it's, because I watch the numbers every day. of those infected and those who have died. And they are escalating quite rapidly as we kind of go.

Because we have more tests. Right, right. But the dead are also, we bumped up to like 100 by 100 over the last like 24 hours. I mean, do you think we're going to head into this sort of situation? Italy is in right now where in North Italy it is, I don't want to say catastrophic, but if you're 70 or older, I mean, this thing is deadly. Oh, I don't disagree with you. Absolutely.

because of the way that it attacks the respiratory system. I mean, for sure. I've definitely never said Corona's not deadly. It is. But I think we are in a different health care situation than Italy is. I'm not saying we're better. We're not. We have some things we do right and some things that we definitely do wrong.

But the whole point of the quarantine is to keep the hospitals free so that folks who are 70 and above and who need respiratory assistance in a hospital. can get it. So to me, the fact that we're doing that right now, that's all the reason, I guess, to do the quarantine. It's not really for me, you know, or someone that most likely, if I get it, would have minimal symptoms.

We're doing this for the folks that would need that help and to stay out of the hospitals for them. And that's what Italy sort of didn't do soon enough, if that makes any sense. And so they just became overrun. And do you think that's what we need to do right now is going to like a nationwide quarantine for? That's a good question. So I'm very torn on that because sometimes and I think I had told you earlier, maybe I'm too, I just try to be as logical as possible. What I'm not understanding is, you know,

you're canceling, you know, big events and things like that, sports games, all of that. Why are airplanes still flying then? That's sort of where I'm a little confused. So it's hard to take for me a lot of this seriously when like rational decisions are not being made you know if you if you want to shut down the NBA or all that I understand that there's close proximity of a lot of people I get it but then why are we still allowing air travel does it makes absolutely no sense to me unless it's obviously for emergency some you know something but why are people still able to get on airplanes um it it doesn't make sense um also with the idea of a well so are you talking about a national quarantine or like a national shelter in place because I view that as kind of two different things.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. You're the expert. I'm here to listen. I just don't understand. Well, you guys are actually the military expert.

So I do not understand how you would enforce a national. shelter in place. Like, where... Unfortunately, California, is it in Los Angeles? Unfortunately, their mayor, I think it was Los Angeles. Mayor talked about

arming government officials and making them... No. Like clerks and stuff down at the mayor's office? That's where my parents live, so that's very scary. That's where I'm from.

So that's very scary to me to think about that. Like, you know, the thing is when we talk about this, and you talk about the hoarding, like the toilet paper, you watch these people walk out with all this toilet paper. And it's sort of like, it's sort of like, you know, when people prep for a flood, you prep for a flood because you might be out of water, you know, the electricity might go down. There are things you do.

People are treating this like that in a way. And also the toilet paper. I don't know where the whole idea of dysentery came. I don't know what it was about put. This is not a disease that's associated with dysentery. That's what I'm not understanding. Again, it goes back to my logic thing. Yeah.

You know, if you want to stock up on Bixapel rub, have at it because it does affect your lungs. Right. But no one's like, we're not thinking about this. The shelter in place to me is that's for an active shooter. That's for a bomb threat. That's for everything. Like there's a threat. stay where you are for the time being.

I mean, yeah, how do you enforce a quarantine? Well, on the military side, I'll tell you that the National Guard in many states has been told to prepare for a 30-day deployment. And I don't know if that's been widely reported, but like warning orders have gone out. And I mean, as far as enforcement, the National Guard where? National Guard. Yeah, but where? Everywhere or?

At least a number of different states. from people I've talked to. So, I mean, between the National Guard and the police and then potentially the military, but I mean, I'm also sure they're hoping that they don't have to have that much enforcement that people will more or less do the right thing. But I don't know. What do you think, Tracy? It's really hard to say.

I think part of the problem is we're not getting clear messaging right now. It's kind of all over the place. I think that's really aiding a lot of people's fear as well, too, you know, when you kind of don't get this sort of clear message about what's going on, you know, I felt like Bush did a good job with that during Katrina and during September 11th. Clinton did a really good job of that during Oklahoma City. And so we're not getting sort of this clear messaging. And that's a problem and that stokes a lot of people's fears.

And it makes it hard for me to predict, too, sort of what we're going to do and how we're going to proceed. I mean, yes, I think today the president said that there would not be a national quarantine. I think he said that either it was today or yesterday. But things seem to change very quickly, very suddenly. And so it's really difficult for me to say what's going to happen. One of the things you had mentioned to me when we talked was that if it wasn't clear what a week ago, two, a week and a half ago when we talked, I mean, it's perfectly evident now. You were making the point that what this is doing, what the coronavirus is doing in our reaction to it, it really shows bad actors out there how susceptible our culture and our society is to the introduction of a biological

age. Absolutely. A hundred percent. That's sort of always been my worry. But again, I don't want to, I don't want to get back confused with the fact that I think, you know, trying to just sort of like drop this on us, but I do think that the reaction to this shows how poorly we are prepared. You know, I think about smallpox, for example, you know, my, I'm Gen X, my generation is not necessarily vaccinated for smallpox because it was eradicated theoretically by the time, you know, we were up for vaccines. The Russians have a ton of it and have a ton of the vaccine for it. We only have enough for about 20% of our population. That's really disturbing and it really should upset people that we kind of shows the cracks in how we

test people, how we organize in a situation like that. And if it was a weapon, or if a weapon was introduced into society, what would that look like as opposed to what we're seeing now? So I've always been taught sort of about, you know, I'm just going off of what I've been taught and what I've learned about like the introduction of biological weapons because that's really the only place I can sort of go from a couple different things. One, it would have to be something that doctors couldn't figure out right away what it was, meaning because it would take months and months to figure it out, people would die and die and die and die, which is why I don't think Corona is that because we knew what it was when it came here. I think it would have to be something that had a very, very quick kill rate, meaning within three to five days, you're dead. And had, I personally think it would have to be something that was like aerosolize. I feel like I'm giving people ideas right now, which is very disturbing. But, you know, aerosolized, in my opinion, I guess you're getting your most bang for your buck

because people would inhale the spores with some things, you know, it's more like a loatheas. that would sink into your skin, and that's not as effective. But I think it would be something like that. You know, you want to kill as many people as possible, as quick as possible, with sort of making doctors sort of scratch their heads and figure out what is this. How do we combat it? And something that we don't necessarily have a vaccine or a cure for.

I read somewhere that maybe that's what you were talking about three to five days, that if a biological weapon is too effective and it kills people too quickly, it won't work because it burns out and they don't have time to spread it to other people. Right. Three to five days is like kind of your sweet spot because in that first 24 hour period, people might be either asymptomatic or lightly symptomatic, right? So I guess kind of like me with a cold, right? So going out, still doing things, still able to. And then by the time they realize that they're sick, they've already infected, you know, sort of these larger groups around them. So that's really why you wouldn't, want something that, you know, you introduce it, boom, it kills everyone, you know, five minutes later.

And what's the capacity for a non-state actor to be able to produce a biological weapon like that? I think pretty easy. I mean, I have my own theories, but I don't know that I want to share them on here because I don't want to give people ideas, right? You know, of, I mean, I can definitely talk to you offline about it, but I have what I think is going to be the easiest thing for people to. to do, but I hesitate to talk about it in a public forum because then I worry if I'm going to give someone this bright idea, right? But I mean, I guess the answer to the question that is that it would be fairly easy if they had that, the knowledge, the background knowledge.

And it's really, you just Google, it's really not that hard. And being that you have, like, in your mind you have this idea, do you also have a strategy to combat it, or is it just kind of like that happens? Which is actually super funny. It's funny that you mentioned that. I used to have my students every year, and they hated me for it, but they ended up liking it. In my class that I teach on terrorism and national security, they would have to conduct a CIA threat assessment on a specific terrorist group's biological attack capability. And in that assessment, they have to provide solutions.

And then, you know, each one was like 10 to 12 pages, so we put those in a huge. huge bound sort of book, and we would send those out to our local politicians who never really seem to care. But yes, I have bookfuls of solutions from very gifted young ladies of how to combat this. Are those available anywhere? I can mail you some. I have some. Yeah, I mean, can you share with us? What should our government be doing to protect us from biological weapons in your view? It's a hard thing to answer because it's kind of the same way that I answer when people ask how to stop ISIS.

Those are two things that are really difficult. You know, ISIS likes that whole lone ranger. How are you supposed to track that? Same thing with biological weapons. You know, now we have limits on like fertilizer purchases and things like that because of Timothy McVeigh and purchasing ammonium nitrate. But, you know, acquisition of castor beans here and there over a period of time. isn't going to, so it's not that I don't know what our government can do. I don't want to seem

hopeless, but I think our government just doesn't even understand that this is a problem and what the problem is. So I think that starts there, right? The sort of education piece. But then I also think, too, we need to look at securing things where people are in closed spaces all the time and sort of their air filtering systems and their air conditioning systems would be super easy. But we're not necessarily thinking about that. But again, Americans don't want to live. sort of in a police state. So it's this weird line that you have to sort of walk.

Is it also, do you think, kind of a vegetarian issue and that it's a possibility, but like the government, state government, local government, federal government doesn't want to fork over the money for a potential threat? I don't disagree with that at all.

I think that's how even terrorism was treated in its infancy, right? With this potential, this potential, this potential. Well, the Russians already did something. So we'll give you money for that. But this potential, this potential, this potential. And then they do something, oh, okay, we'll give you money for that. So no, I think part of it is budgetary as well. And also, I think you had mentioned to me that it's also a question of like what Americans are willing to put up with. Like, if you wanted to put America into quarantine two months ago, probably when it would have

been the right time to do that, they would have been like, hell no. Like, this is draconian or government can't do this. Now they're willing to do it because they see the threat, but now it's also kind of too late, right? Well, and it's funny because, I mean, obviously, you guys grew up and as I grew up in, what it was like to go through, we didn't even have TSA, but airport security, right, prior to September 11th. We all remember that. But one thing I do make my students do, because even my seniors, right, who are 18, they don't have that, like, knowledge, right? I make them watch, unfortunately, on YouTube, you can watch. the September 11th hijackers on CCTV actually go through the metal detectors. And I make

them watch that because I think they need to understand because a lot of them are like, oh, Bush sort of made airport security more. Bush, like, you know, that's so easy to play Monday morning quarterback. Well, when you see how easy airport security was, no, we wouldn't have been okay with that. I don't even know if I would have been okay with that, you know, the kind of rigid security that we have now. And so I try to show them that as sort of like a platform of of what we have now. And there's, I mean, before we move on from all the biological weapons and all this stuff, there was one other one other moment in your book that I wanted to ask you about for two reasons.

The first being that a number of people at the CIA have spoken out over the years about how people from Chinese office were coming down and harassing you guys about Iraq. But then also that relates to Ansar al-Islam and northern Iraq. And that ties into our next guest next week, Sam Fattis, who was on the ground in 2002 for the paramilitary operation. They were sent in before the invasion to take out Ansar al-Islam. And I think he's pretty pissed about some of the decisions that were made. And I think you can speak directly to that, can't you? I think he would probably agree with me, I think.

I don't know. I think so, too. Yeah. You know, it was pretty horrifying to see sort of what was going on. and sort of being hounded for connections to the Hussein regime, I guess, by terrorists. We have no evidence of that whatsoever. And I think it's what allowed ISIS to ultimately form the decisions that were made by that administration. To watch Colin Powell with our chart, you know, on the floor of the UN was just for me.

It was your chart, right? It was on your computer. came and plucked it off. No, it was, so what we did, even though we were on operation side, this is something we did a lot, and it seems very elementary, I guess, but there's a lot of people involved what we were doing, and sometimes it's just easier to have eyes on them. And so we would create these big charts with all the people who was at the top, who were the, you know, kind of henchmen, and we got a super fancy printer that we thought we had at

the time that would print them out in these massive sort of poster sizes, and we would, we And we'd put them on our, we called it our bullpen, but, you know, our cubicle pen, I guess, on the wall, like kind of the wall of that. And it was someone from the Bush administration who had come down, saw that and wanted it. And that's what ended up being misused by Powell, I guess, on the floor of the one. How was it misconstrued from what you guys had created versus what got presented to the world? Right. So for us, that chart was simply, we had identified. identified a person who later becomes the father of al-Qaeda in Iraq, but he's forgotten that he

existed before that. And his name was Abu Masabal-Zar Kawi. He and Bin Laden hated each other, but, you know, he's a member of al-Qaeda, so yay. And bin Laden was like, dude, go procure me biological weapons then. Like, that's your job. And so we identified him sort of as at the top. And so that he was at the top of our chart. And then we had different people who were the heads of different cells who were acquiring them sort of all over the world. And so all it said was Al-Qaeda poison chart. It was just who was where and why. That then was used and it even said Iraq's terrorist connection chart. It was even, the title was changed. You can Google it. It's fascinating. And it was identified that Zarkawi lived in Iraq for all this time. But we never had

any evidence of that whatsoever. And it was really made as one of the reasons for going into Iraq because everyone, you know, terrorism, tears, it was so front of mind for many people. It was really upsetting to us because a lot of those guys disappeared, obviously, if their faces are on national TV, and we weren't able to track them

again. And you said in the book that that's probably why Fattis and the Special Forces guys weren't allowed to go and take these dudes out when they had the chance. 100% because they wanted to make that case.

It was all, I think, contrived. As if Ansar al-Islam and Zarqawi were synonymous with the Iraqi regime, with Saddam Hussein's regime. And they were not. We never had any evidence of that. You know, Saddam Hussein

wanted nothing to do with Ansar Islam. If anything, they were a giant, peated his ass. And, you know, the same with Sarkawi as well. So a dictator is not someone who's going to want those folks in his, I guess,

fiefdom, if you will. So I 100% think that that was the reason. It's... It was interesting because when we had Scott Witteron, who was the Chief UNESCO Weapons Inspector, he was there also during, I think, the Clinton administration, right? And even then, so from Bush, the first through the Clinton to the second Bush, there was

there was this push for Iraq like within you know it didn't matter who the president like somewhere at some

administrative or some level bordering on a rationality yeah I agree with you because at least from my perspective in what I was doing

the bigger problem of the eyes I guess was Iran always that was always our pain and so Iraq was Iraq

whatever I mean Saddam Hussein is not great please don't get me wrong. He murdered lots of people, but from a terrorism, I was just looking at it from a terrorism lens. He was not someone that was, I viewed as problematic for my, I guess, assignments. Right. You're right here in your book. The CIA did not betray the White House. The White House betrayed the CIA. Well, they did. And the White House really can't defend themselves, I guess.

But I tried to. Excuse me, the CIA can't offend themselves, but I tried to in that book. I didn't think they'd let that chapter in, but then I thought, well, they did probably because it makes them look good. I don't know. Yeah, and I think enough former agency employees have come forward with these very similar stories that there were people from the Bush administration who came down demanding raw intelligence and they essentially cherry picked what they wanted to hear and took it back

to the White House with them. And Cole and Powell, I think, admitted in his. his book that that chart was misused. I think I remember footnoting that in my book. So I think he's actually talked about that as well. So then there, I mean, there is much more to your time in the CIA. And people can go and read the book. Again, if you're just joining us, the unexpected spy by our guest here, Tracy Walder. Go pick it up. Lots more in here about your time at the CIA. But I wanted to ask you, why didn't you make the decision then to leave the agency, a very, not very common career track for someone who is a staff operations officer in the CIA

to then go to the Academy of Quantico and become a badged FBI special agent. So for me, I didn't, you know, leave the CIA on bad terms. If you read my book, it's very clear the amount of love and respect that I have for everyone there that I'm still friends with people there. I got a lot of awards and commendations during my time there. So I left on very good terms, but the reason I left was the overseas mission of the CIA was never going to change. And I think because I was there during September 11th in such a crazy time, I had become

very burnt out, I guess, on what I was doing. I didn't want to live overseas anymore. I knew that's not what I wanted for my life. So I thought, okay, I could work at the FBI, stay in one place, you know, in the nation, and maybe I could work counterterrorism there. And so that was why I left. And unfortunately, you didn't really find the positive work environment that you felt you had at the CIA. You know, you're right about, I don't know, at Quantico, which, I mean, everyone I've known in the FBI,

I've been like super professional people. But, I mean, what you're describing Aquanico is kind of shocking. It's like, you know, junior high hazing. So I thought about. that because I really thought long and hard about putting all that stuff in the book. I was actually thinking I wouldn't do it. But the more and more I thought, because I don't want people to think everyone at the FBI is like that. Just as I'm sure there are plenty of CIA officers that did not have good experiences at the CIA, right? This is just my, but if I always just caveat is this is my lived

experience. There are other men there who are wonderful and women there who are wonderful. This book is simply my lived experience. And so, yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, It was pretty bad and pretty shocking for me because I had never had any problems whatsoever when I was at the CIA, and I guess I just expected FBI to be the same. And I recently found out that there is a lawsuit moving through the Equal Opportunity Office of 17 women for gender discrimination at the FBI. So it is still going on. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what you experienced, you know, in terms of,

I guess it was gender discrimination. nation, a lot of it. So, I would say from day one, it was a problem. You kind of stand up and say where you used to work. And so I said CIA, and everyone sort of rolled their eyes and laughed at me, you know, like I was lying. And again, I guess this goes back to leadership, right? My head instructor, instead of being a leader, decided to just start a rumor that I was lying about working there, which is fascinating, given that they had to come to CIA headquarters to conduct my interview to be able to work this. It was just very shocking to me. And so obviously that kind of started from day one. Then a guy in my class asked me out and I said no. And so he started sort of rumors

about me. And then my roommate originally at the academy, she ended up leaving. She let me know that she was a lesbian, which I had no issues with. But, you know, her wife may be calling or something. So she wanted me to know. And I guess because I took it. it okay. She told everyone else. They didn't take it okay. And so, you know, they started spreading rumors about us. She eventually had to leave because it was so bad. You know, for her. It was just, it just got to be more. And my trainers would give me hands down always the hardest assignment. Always, always, always. It was just like I knew I was going to get it. So why bother? And I think it was just to try to get me to wash out, I guess. But I didn't. And then up. Yeah.

Do you think that there was, especially from like your head trick, do you think that there was some professional jealousy there? Do you think that there are certain members of the FBI? Like there are people there who are true blue law enforcement. I wouldn't be law enforcement. And there are other people that are like, I wish I could be jealous because Tracy got mad drone kills and they were just. No, I think there was two, it was maybe two prongs. I think one of it was professional issues. The FBI and CIA don't like each other. But like here's the thing. It was disturbing that as a 26-year-old, I didn't carry that kind of animosity. I thought both organizations were good and they both existed for different purposes. And maybe I'm just naive. But like we're talking about national security and law enforcement here. Like, why would you be that petty?

I just couldn't understand that. It was mind-boggling to me. I think the other part is you may not see it like here now, but I am very, very, very feminine. wear makeup. I do my hair. I wear pink. And no one at CIA had any issues with that. They're like, you or know what you're doing. So like, I don't really care. But everyone there had serious issues with it. And that was also really disturbing because it was never affecting my ability. I never was recycled or washed out to any other class. It was kind of one of those situations where I'm like, hello, I just passed that test just like you did. So I don't really understand. That was interesting.

Again, that's another thing that you'll get out of your book that you won't get out of, you know, the bro Navy Seal book. And you talk about it. You know, you're in a Middle East country. I don't know if it was Iraq or Afghanistan or where you were. But you talk about like, you know, wanting to get your hair done and wearing lipstick. Like, and how it was important for you to hold on to the woman inside of you. But even the sorority girl inside of you was like something that you felt it was important to hold on to and not lose sight of. And I think that's maybe one of the biggest reasons that women sometimes will have problems is that they're not seeing themselves in womenly roles necessarily in these careers.

And so if that's not what we're seeing, I mean, even if you look at pop culture right now, which is really disturbing, you know, Carrie and Homeland, everyone's like, but that's so great. But if you really look at her, she is deeply flawed, like, deeply flawed. To the point of that, it becomes a narrative of like, she's crazy. that's why she does this. And that's not okay either. And so I think, yeah. Yeah, like you have to be some sort of broken human being to be able to do this job. Yes.

And then, I mean, you did, of course, make it through Quantico as much as they wanted you to wash out. And, you know, you have the horrible story about, you know, missing your grandfather's funeral because you're from a Jewish family. So he has to be buried immediately. and they just would not let you go home. Right. Even though I had passed my PT test and was allowed to go home at the FBI Academy,

if you don't pass your PT tests, you're not allowed to leave. But I had passed all of my PT tests, and so, yeah. And then the more humorous story was how they made you wear like a big man suit when you graduated. Yeah, so I had to apologize to the interviewer,

I guess, because my suit made him uncomfortable. So I had to go buy a larger suit. And it's funny, it's since my book's been out, the meet. Yeah, the media has asked me for pictures. And I have my picture of graduation at Quantico, and my parents are standing on either side of me. And my mom, she saw it on like, Good Morning America or something. She's like, that suit was really big.

I was. And now you know why. And then you get assigned to, you know, a field office. and you're not a great experience there. I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about, you know, you felt like there was also some discrimination there and they were kind of giving you the shit jobs? I think that what had happened and it was funny.

The day I left the bureau, so I stayed for another year in my squad, but the day I left the bureau, I got a text message from a man who was in my office, not on my squad, but in my office. And he sent a text saying, I totally apologize. Please come back. I'll tell them everything. And I never texted him back, ever.

And I remember his name. I'm not going to name him now. And he admitted to, he was at the academy. I want to say he was maybe eight weeks ahead of me or six weeks ahead of me, like in the class, and knew all the stuff that people were, like, saying about me. So he took it upon himself to when he came to my resident agency, which was a very small office, tell ever. So no one ever had a chance to sort of like meet me.

And I think he ultimately blamed himself, you know, for the way that I was treated. So you were like the bitch the second you showed up. Yes, that's correct, which is really unfortunate. And I'm glad that he eventually apologized. But I wasn't going to give him the respect of texting him back. I'll never forget getting that text. In one way, it vindicated me, right? I guess. But on the other hand, it was just, I sort of wish I had gotten a fresh start because I think

there are really great people that are there and I wish I had had the opportunity to just be me, right. From your experience, in terms of culture, why do you think the FBI and the CIA were so different? So that's a really great question. And I've come, the only reason, I can think of is one is intelligence gathering. So even, you know, the paramilitary folks at the agency, the bottom line is they are gathering intelligence, even SEAL Team 6, right? And they are gathering intelligence. That's really what they're doing. And so that's why I had no problems with those groups or those entities. I think, you know, the FBI is a law enforcement organization. And there are people that are there men and women who simply are there because they want to be able

to have a gun and have power over people. And I think that's a problem. There are other people that are not. There are legitimately people who are there who are looking to do a lot of good. But I think there's also people there who are not. Yeah, that's like Stanley Mildrum experiment type stuff. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. I also think like especially with the epa, I don't know, I've told you before, like, you know, if you go on an op and the DEA's are like, hey, bro, hey, bro, you know, whatever. You go on an op and, you know, somebody else says, hey, hey, what's up, what's up? You go on an op and the FBI's there, it feels like you're driving down the road with a cop behind you, like, doing anything wrong. You know, it's like, I don't know.

You know, it's just... That's funny. I never thought about it that way, but I guess you're right. Yeah. You know what? To come to think of it, I had to deal a lot with, like, some marshals. And at that time, it was INS, not ICE, who we had. And I never had any issues with a Marshall.

They were actually great guys to work with. I really enjoyed them. And, you know, INS, they're fine. I mean, never had an issue. But you're right. Now that I think about it, like, they were the biggest problem. And I don't, I'm not sure I'm ever going to know the reason why. Yeah.

But it's a culture. And like you say, there are great people. It's not that, it's not their amazing special agents and amazing people in the FBI. It's not about the FBI, but it's just something about the culture from what little experience I had with him. It's just like, you know, just. Well, I think, well, the FBI, obviously, they're cops. My impression just from meeting, you know, people who worked at the agency is that that organization is just like super pragmatic, which is great, but also kind of horrible sometimes. Like, when they want something from you, they're your best friend.

But the second they don't have a use for you, you're like, who the fuck is going to check? Get out of here. No, that's a good point. I mean, that is how they operate. They're not perfect. I mean, no entity is, you know. Sure. But, yeah.

And probably it goes the opposite direction if because it is so individualistic and so even interpersonally competitive in some ways and stuff like that. And because it's not law enforcement. and a lot of times you're operating in foreign countries outside in the U.S. laws or whatever, where the FBI might be a little too, you know, anal or whatever, the state is not regulated can go off the rails or individual elements of it can go off the rails. Right, and I don't think, I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with that as well. I think rules are good.

Yeah. And they're there for a reason and that they keep people honest. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. But you did mention, and I mean, you worked a Chinese counterterrorism investigation, or I'm sorry, counterintelligence investigation while you're with the FBI. And your college degree was Chinese history? No, just history. Wasn't there something that you did your thesis on the Chinese?

No. Oh, I know why you're asking me that question. Okay. When I started at the CIA, when I started, when I was interviewing at the CIA, they ask you whether you're going to operate, whatever, they want you to write. Like, they just want to see how you, like, write something. And they wanted a sample. And so one of the samples that I gave them was a sample of something I had done in a government class of why communism worked best as a political system for China. And that's why I started interrogating you like, so you're a communist, Tracy. Well, I can't, I remember my dad being like you did what. why did you give it in that?

You know, but I would think, but it's different. And maybe they like that about me, right? That I was like kind of ballsy like that. I don't know. But yes, that's why I think you were asking you that. Okay, okay. So could you tell us a little bit about that investigation? Like you had even referenced before like, yeah, I know how the Chinese are fucking over our economy.

I mean, this is an important subject. You know, the rise of China is the issue of this century. So I was wondering if we could get into that a little bit with you. I hope to hear your perspective. So I think a lot of people will tell me, well, weren't you mad that you weren't working counterterrorism? Weren't you mad? Weren't you mad? You know, I think for a second I was bummed, you know, because I really liked counterterrorism.

But now looking back at it, I'm glad that the FBI didn't have me work it because I got to sort of explore another threat, I guess, that our country has. And I found out that the reason they put me there was because they needed my security. clearance. I had to work in a small skiff that was within our resident agency, if that makes any sense. It wasn't. TSS and all that good stuff from. Right. And most FBI agents don't have all of that. And so they just took my clearance over from the agency, which is fine. But what was really cool and I came to see is that CI cases like that are very rare at the FBI. And it's rare to be able to kind of see them, you know, all the way through. And so, you know, that was interesting. And I learned a lot about sort of their motivation for doing what they did. This is Tai and Chi Mack. And we found out that, you know,

he had been working at a defense contracting company for decades, actually. Been in the U.S., I think 28 years, became a naturalized citizen and was taking our radar cloaking technology for submarines and giving it to China. And we realized that. We realized that. he was living in squalor, extremely frugal, even though he made like six figures, you know, what his defense contracting from now. It's Southern California, so I understand, but you should be able to live decently there on that. We found out that he's a Maoist. He was a staunch Maoist, and he believed in the communist government and the supremacy of China, and he was not being paid for doing what he was doing. He was doing it purely for the government, and I got to do,

I thought really cool things. I got to dumpster dive in the back of trash trucks. And I know some people think that's gross, but I liked that kind of stuff. I wasn't beneath me. I thought it was really interesting. You know, we did surreptitious entries into his house and things like that,

which, you know, that was, I don't want to say cool. That's not the right word for that, but it was such an... It's cool. It was a great thing, excuse me, to be able to be a part of. And the reason I can talk about it is because he had been, brought to trial and all of that.

And I think CNN did a whole show on him as well. I saw in an interview. You were talking about how, you know, a very frugal couple, as you mentioned, that the FBI concocted this scheme to, like, send them on a cruise so that they would leave town and you guys could go, you know, you can tell us the story about how you did that. Yeah.

So they sent him on a cruise to Alaska. And, you know, because he won it, right? It's free. why wouldn't you do that? So a bureau couple, we had a couple actually that worked in our office. They weren't on my squad, but they were a couple that was in our office. So they sent the two of them with them. And I was like, that's really nice.

You were able to go on like a free cruise without your kids. Like, you know, wow. And so they sent them to sort of like watch over them, I guess, make sure they weren't doing any thing shady. And then we were able to go into their house. install listening devices, cameras, those kinds of things. So, I mean, can you describe how that works? Like, this is the FBI black bag office that goes in with a locksmith. And, I mean, no, really.

I mean, how does that work? So, well, but there's a lot of stuff that's in the lead up to it, right? I mean, you have to observe their neighborhood patterns because they have lived in that same house, I think, for 15, 16 years. So, you know, the neighborhood, like, knew them, even though they kept to themselves, the neighborhood knew them. They knew what time their lights came on. They knew what time.

And so, I mean, you have to sit on that neighborhood, like, all hours of the day for a really long time. Like, you have to know what time their next door neighbor wakes up to pee in the middle of the night, right? Because you wouldn't want that to be the time that you're, like, making a lot of noise entering into that house. So I think those are sort of the things that I guess don't get talked about a lot that are obviously super boring. it's not fun to sit there for 12 hours and watch what they're doing. The meticulous planning that goes into it. Yes. In a movie where like one person might go in and pick the lock and go in and plan all the bugs and everything,

is that sort of how it works or do they bring in like a technical specialist for each type of thing? Exactly. It's a tech, wow, they may have changed. I don't, you know, I don't know. Sure. But it was a technical specialist for each type of thing. It wasn't, you know, you see in the movies just one person who's like, like breaking into the house and like doing all that.

And I think the only movie I've seen that actually does a really good job of showing that is actually Zero Dark 30. It does an excellent job of showing that there's like a technical team that's on the terrorist phone. There's like, you know, there's all these different, it's not just one person who's like getting involved in all of this stuff. But yes, it wasn't. Trying to maintain all these specialties all at once. Right. No.

No. You want to get some questions real quick? Yeah. Let me, we'll get into some questions. I just want to give my little sales pitch to people who are watching, people who are joining us halfway through. I'm Jack. This is Dave. Welcome to the team house.

If you're just joining us, we're here with our guest tonight, Tracy Walder. Tracy is the author of the, just trying to frame it right here. The Unexpected Spy. It's a great book. We've been discussing it here for almost an hour and a half already. Tracy was a CIA officer and an FBI special agent, specialized in interdicting biological weapons, biological weapon plots. And then we were just talking about counterintelligence operation that she was a part of in the FBI.

So otherwise, again, thanks for joining us. Please hit the subscribe button below, subscribe to the channel, get notified whenever we go live, give us a little thumbs up, leave a comment, all that stuff helps, you know, spin up the algorithm. them and, you know, share this thing far and wide. There's also a link down there to Tracy's book on Amazon. You can go down and hit that up. And there's also a link to our Patreon page if you like what we're doing here and you want to support the stream.

And also, just because of what's going on, unfortunately, Tracy, your book tour is canceled, right? I mean, or is it? Yeah, I did get lucky. And I was able to make it to some of my events. but all of my speaking engagements have been canceled and book fairs have been canceled. And I'm trying not to be upset about that because a lot of people have a lot worse than I do right now. So guys, if we could ask you, our viewers, if you like Jack and I were, I mean, even if you hate us and you, but you like Tracy and, you know, please share this video.

Make this her book tour, you know, so that other people get a chance to see this and, you know, maybe come across. the book that they wouldn't normally pick up. But it's like Jack said, it's not the normal sort of vet bro or, you know, there was knee-deep in hand grenades and all the chicks want on me. But that's going to be my autobiography. All false. All right. Questions?

Yes. Questions for the board. Okay, Andy, Andrew Dunbarra. So basically, oh, going back to the almond scent attack. Oh, okay. So basically, every Amber Combie and Fitch store is equipped to be the epicenter of a terror attack. Yes, I guess so, with them spraying their perfume bottles, I guess, at you every time you, I guess the same could be said for, you know, department store fragrance officials as well. So, yes, very good point.

Andrew, somebody should hire you, man. David Maynor, and thank you. Are there any movies or TV shows that accurately depict the bioterror threat? That is a really, really good question. Part of this is my fault. I don't watch too many shows like that, to be totally honest with you, because I'll end up getting frustrated or just think it's, like, ridiculous. So off the top of my head, I cannot think of, like, one right now,

but most of that is my fault because I just don't. watch those kinds of shows because I get irritated. Yeah. What irritates you? Is it how they miss everything or how it's obvious? Yeah. And how it's just, it's made so silly and trivial. And, and it, I mean, like Quantico, for example,

Quantico, look, I don't have a problem if you want to put sex in the equation, but like, it is like all they talk about all the time 24-7. And like, if you really are at Quantico, that's truly the last thing that you have on your mind. And so it's just, it frustrates me and it irritates me. And so I'm just like, I don't want to watch it. Sorry.

No, no, no, no. Very good answer. Perfect. Thank you. Andrew, did Breaking Bad portray... Did Breaking Bad portray Risen accurately? Never have watched Breaking Bad. I know, you guys.

I'm terrible. I'm not into pop culture at all. Guys, watch it with pop culture. Actually, I never finished breaking that. I've never seen it either. Sorry.

You know what? My husband loves it. He thinks it's like amazing. And he also likes Homeland, but I don't watch either of them. I've never seen Home Land. The first season of Homeland is amazing, really great,

but after that, it just liked tape. Boo! No. Okay. Horrible. Let's see. Anything else in there?

Anything in the chat? Oh, oh, oh. Andrew is asking, does Tracy have thoughts about the September 2019 explosion at the Russian Vector Lab, which is one of the only smallpox repositories? Oh, yes. My students had a lot of thoughts about that as well.

So what is he asking? Does he want to know if I think they were doing something nefarious there necessarily? I probably just thoughts in general. I think they were 100% doing something nefarious. I think they got kind of I guess you can say caught with their

proverbial pants down, if you will. I don't think they, you know, purposely made that explosion. I think someone made a mistake and an explosion occurred and as a result the world sort of found out, I guess, about what they were doing.

No, I 100% think that the Russians are trying to weaponize smallpox for sure. And I think they just got caught. Why do you think the Russians are still pursuing a WMD program? I mean, we have those programs. They have those programs. I mean, I guess it's still the residuals of the Cold War. But I mean, in this day and age, why the hell are they trying to weaponize smallpox? What the hell for? To mess with us. I mean, have we not seen what the coronavirus? And I, again, do not think this is something that the Chinese started. But have we not seen what this has done to the

American psyche, like what this has done to the economy, what this has done to, I mean, I think it's less about killing people, although smallpox will, but it's less about, you know, dropping a nuclear bomb on us. I think really those days are sort of over. And I think it's more about this sciops, I guess, if you will, or, you know, psychological operation. Speaking of, like, psychological operations and the coronavirus, do you feel the the coronavirus itself specifically is response for eroding the economy, or do you feel that it's more sort of the reaction from both sides, fed by the media on both sides, that is creating something 100%. 100%. But I think, again, we've just showed the world what our media will do

in a situation like this. Does that make sense? And so I think... If there was a tap, they know it has this force multiplier. Right. That just makes it even bigger than it ever was. Because when you have media on both sides, I'm not trying to politicize the issue at all. Stoking mass hysteria. But look, I get it too. I mean, if people are on quarantine and if businesses are not open, people aren't buying things, right? Because they don't have certainty in their employment, in their paycheck, and their job.

And I get that. That's natural. That's going to happen in a situation like this. But kind of the other stuff. No. Right. And it's funny because, you know, we talk about these troll farms or, you know, bot farms and things like that. And it's like, what's the point?

We don't need them because our media will do that job for them. You know, some of it. Exactly. I agree with you 100%. So, Ian Hutchinson, is there a, thank you very much, is there a strategic vaccine, strategic vaccine manufacturing capability or reserve manufacturing capacity? for what? Well, there wasn't anything specific here.

Well, maybe we're talking about what I had said about smallpox, how we have not. So with the smallpox vaccine, yes, could we start like pumping it out very quickly? Yeah, we did that with Ebola. I don't know if people remember back to that. We actually, I mean, is anyone surprised by how quickly we came up with a vaccine for a very complicated virus? I know I am, but that is because we do have the strategic capability to be able to do it. But one thing I guess we have to kind of pray for is something like smallpox hits or whatever that not everyone gets infected that quickly so that we can actually like make enough of the vaccine.

Interesting. And then let's see here. Thank you. Do you feel that we should restart a smallpox the vaccination program? I do. I do. But, I don't want to get into a pro-vax, anti-vax, like, you know, debate. I don't, again, I'm not going to tell people what to do. But, you know, like we have a chickenpox vaccine. I had chicken pox. I'm guessing you guys probably grew up at a time when you had chicken pox too. But, like, my daughter has never had chicken pox and won't ever have chicken pox.

And, like, I'm glad we eradicated smallpox. I think that's great and that's important. But now we have an entire generation of people. that are, I don't know what, 45-ish or 40, you know, who, and under, who have no immunity towards it whatsoever. And eventually, you know, the baby boomers will die off. And then you're left with like kind of the Gen Xers. And then everyone else doesn't have, I think we need to be starting it back up. But that might be an unpopular point of view. The crucible of childhood just isn't what it used to be. No. Well, I think that my view, you know,

might be unpopular with some folks because, you know, people think a little too many vaccines are given. And so I just, I don't want to debate vaccines, but I think it'd be something smart to think of. Right. Well, and if, let's say we weren't even, we weren't talking about what, what vaccine, anti-vaccers and vaccines, not that argument, but just in terms of public health and the potential of smallpox being turned against us intentionally, that it might be a good idea. I personally think so, especially because, like, we know smallpox, and I am not saying that it's okay that the coronavirus is just really, really, it's affecting everyone, but obviously it's proving to be more fatal in the elderly. But with smallpox, it's fatal in like literally every scope of age group, right? Little's, middle, and, you know, elderly.

And I just don't, I don't know why we're not protecting ourselves against it. Excellent. And I think that's... If you have any more questions, get them in. Let me go. Let me go. Tracy, I want to talk then again about what led you to leaving the FBI and, you know, kind of coming full circle in some ways and going into teaching.

So I left the FBI because I just couldn't take the harassment anymore. Part of me feels like a failure, you know, for not staying. But I know I stayed long enough to try. And so I decided, you know what, now is as good as time as any. I have some really cool experiences now to bring into teaching. And so I left to go get my master's in education. And so I taught for about 14 years, both at public school and then for about 10 years at the largest all girls school in the U.S. And I taught mostly juniors and seniors.

And the girls really have this thirst for understanding the world. So I created a class on national security, terrorism, and foreign policy for girls only. And as a result, a lot of my, it was funny, I did a talk at the spy museum a couple weeks ago. And like 25 of my students, my former students came because they're now working at, you know, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, the military. And it made me so happy, obviously, you know, to like see them in the audience that like my class had that effect on them. but I left teaching actually just in January because of my book. I couldn't sustain it anymore. And so now I sit on the board of directors for,

it's a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization called Girl Security. And I write curriculum and we bring it out to nationwide now to schools on these issues. And they do war games with a group called the Dames of War Games, which is pretty great. So, I mean, how does that work? you're essentially like writing, you know, student doctrine, if you will. How does that get floated into the educational curriculum? So one of the things that we do is I sit on the board.

I think I'm one of the only members on the board that's been a teacher as well. And so because I taught in the social studies, I help align it, the curriculum to, I use the standards of like California and Texas, which are the two largest sort of consumers of education. So I align it to their sort of social studies. study standards. So that way when we couch it's teachers, they're much more likely to like use it in a classroom if they know that it fulfills the educational standards that they know their kids are going to be tested on.

There's something else that I wanted to ask you. I don't know. I hope you won't take this the wrong way or really as some sort of direct challenge. But it's just that I, you know, you went into teaching. You wanted to teach, you know, the female empowerment and show young women that they can go into these positions in government, which is important. But as I'm reading this and I'm thinking about it, that you're teaching in a girls school. And the girls or women, young women are going off into all kinds of wild things all over now doing things that you probably would not associate women doing 10 or 20 years ago even. When as I was reading your book, I thought, you know, the thing is, you're teaching in a girls school. And isn't it the guys that kind of need to

get that message even more so than girls? But don't they need to realize that Tracy Walder can work in their office? I think so. So at the girls school I teach out, we do have a boys' school equivalent. And I think that I'm not saying that men shouldn't have access to this curriculum. I don't think that's the problem. But I think the reality is it's that simple that people need to see more women in these careers. And women need, like, curriculum like this because they need to know that these are

careers that are attainable for them. Men sort of already know that. Maybe not. I don't know. Look, I'm not, I'm not anti-male. I've worked with amazing males, and I think we need men and we need women in both of these careers. But for me, the reason I've decided to focus on educating women on these careers is there really hasn't been a focus on getting women in these careers. I mean, The FBI just started allowing women agents in 1972. I was born in the 70s. It's not that long ago. And so I think, you know, and, you know, the CIA had the petticoat panel in 1955.

And, like, you know, we're just sort of making these strides, but it's going to take time. And that's why I've kind of chosen to focus on women. Yeah. That's a good question. I don't take it the wrong way. It's a really good question. No, I just had this thought because it's, I agree, absolutely. I was just thinking about some of the moments we've gone through in recent history, the Me Too movement and everything.

Like, it's not really the women who are broken. It's actually a problem with the men that kind of like need a little bit of help in these areas. I think that I don't know. I'm not going to sit here and I guess shit on men because that's not, you know, it's my, I have a pretty incredible dad and a pretty incredible brother who have done nothing but incredible. encourage me to sort of, you know, pursue these careers. So the men I've had in my life have been really awesome role models. So I don't know. I don't think men are 100% the problem all the time. Just sometimes. Just sometimes. You expressed earlier that, you know, you always held on, and you always held on to your feminine. That was something that was important to you.

So when you go to an office like an NPI or something like that or when a woman goes there and does her job, kicks ass is professional, but still wants to wear pink, you know, still wants to do her hair and do makeup. And then she gets treated a certain way. Do you think that discourages other women from sort of being themselves? Being themselves. And it's like, okay, look, if I'm going to be in a man's world, I have to conform to some form of masculinity. Which is why the women in my class, even though there were only six of us, out of 34, which is why the women were just as bad to me as the men.

Because for them it was either sort of join the gang or not. Right. Yeah. So women can be pretty terrible too. Right. I had a conversation or a very similar conversation with a friend of mine, and he was telling me about the women that they brought into J-Sach to, you know, initially back back and maybe it's changed a little bit but it's called the

Advon troop and Delta Force and they brought in women in the 1990s to break up the profile of male operators who were doing reconnaissance and my friend he ran the selection or he helped run the selection course for the male operators and then at one point he was involved in the selection course for the female soldiers who were involved as well and he said the the women who did the screening and selection were just absolutely ruthless and actively trying to weed out all the female candidates who came into the courts. This is the problem. This is why women will not succeed if they don't get it together.

You know, stop doing that because you're clearly, you're jealous. And, you know, there's all these different things that come into play. Like, men don't do that to each other for the most part. It's really a woman thing. And until we stop that, we're not going to get ahead or achieve equality. and that's a big problem. I totally agree with that. Yeah, I thought that was kind of like shocking to me

where like they instead of like behind the scenes rooting them on like yeah my girl's gonna make it it was like man fuck her, she doesn't belong here we don't want her here and he was like hey you know that's like really destructive like we have this program we need women in this unit. It's really destructive to have that attitude that we don't want any of them here

and like oh we don't care whatever. And you think from a little bit from a lot leadership perspective, if you see that type of behavior going on, and you're like, well, how is she going to operate with other women out in the field? I mean, because we can't have that type of disharmony amongst teammates, you know? I agree with you 100%. It's a huge problem. And, you know, the F, I would say at CIA, we were pretty encouraging of each other. We didn't have sort of this, I mean, like I said, still my, one of my, two of my closest friends were bridesmaids and my wedding. Like, you know, I'm still like very good friends with a lot of them. And so it was

weird to see that at the FBI because we really didn't have, at least I did not experience a lot of that when I was there. God. I, you know, Tracy, I want to give you the opportunity to talk about anything else you wanted to before we finish up here. I guess the last question I had, and a lot of people I think don't realize this is that there are a ton of women in the CIA. Yes. A lot of people just don't realize it. They do have that image that you talked about, that it is a totally male-dominated organization,

even though, you know, the DCI today is a woman. Well, and I think now that's changing. I think the DCI is a woman, but I also think, and I could be wrong, virtually all of the major directorates are also headed by women. I could be wrong, but I thought I had read that somewhere. And so that's great.

And yes, the CIA obviously doesn't publish their gender profile numbers, but I will say that there were no shortage of women when I was there. And I think maybe that's why men didn't act like assholes, because like they're everywhere. You know, there's not just a few of them. They were sort of everywhere. And even, but even where there weren't really women in places like sort of the ground branch or air branch, they never treated women badly. And they always respected the information that we were giving them or, you know, the operatives that we were showing them or exposing them to. Like, I never had any problems because I think they were just so used to the fact that, like,

or they're also just decent humans. I don't know, but like, we never had these issues. And there are a ton of what my group, for some reason, did have more men than women, but a lot of the other groups had more women than men. So. I mean, maybe, I don't know. You know, if you go to the FBI, you're a special agent. there's there's a cookie cutter there there's if you think special agent there there's a special agent right there

there's a cookie cutter model of what's yeah no i agree um and from my understanding like at the cia you know you have analysts you have you know ops officers you have all these different people and so it's there's not really a thing you might have you know somebody is you know a short tall heavy whatever as long as they're competent if they're delivering the type of information that other people want or doing the thing, that is how they're measured. Is that? Well, and we all work together.

Like, so in the counterterrorism center, like my little kind of bullpen area, yeah, we were all on the operation side. But then the next one over that I shared a wall with, those were the enlists. And then, you know, over there were the reports officers. And over there, like, we all work together. And if I had a question, I just walked over there.

And so you're not sort of segregated, I guess, either. and then you develop like mutual respect for each other. And it was just sort of the norm that we all work together where you're right. Special agents, that's for special agents where our analysts were physically in another office that was like down the hall. I don't know if they're all structured like that, but at least that was just our structure. Yeah. I want to read, I mean, this isn't to close it out unless, oh, here's the question. Thank you, Andrew.

Are there any cultural differences clash of cultures between the public health sector and the intelligence community sector? None that I experienced at all. The folks that, you know, did my poison school training and all of that, I had zero issues. They were from NIH. No, I had no issues. So I just want to read some of the, because we had so many comments. It's been a great conversation and people really, really liked you and really responded well. But just in the little section I can see here, which is new.

The FBI doesn't deserve you, Tracy. I want my daughter to meet you. So cool. Okay, that's going to make me cry because I have a daughter of my own soon. Thank you. And then Wayrider came on and said, because Nick said that, and Way group said, Nick staying here. So two who want their daughter to meet you.

Then right underneath that, you are an insurer. inspiration to the young generation Tracy and then ever thought about these are all right in a world ever thought about writing a book directed towards girls kind of like Jocko's warrior kid series for girls and that's what makes America great value in women so I'm like shocked I didn't I didn't think that I would be well I didn't I don't know I didn't think people would have comments like that so that makes me that made my day or my week probably Tracy what you're the people's champion oh they love me okay I told my daughter about you also I said yeah Tracy was a spy oh my daughter

says it's not fancy enough no so what great what in her mind what would have been what would have been the dream? Pink, sparkles, sequins, and diamonds. That would be the dream. While taking down, while taking down Zarcali? Yeah, it's not fancy enough. It's the age group, Tracy. She's, she's, oh, I know. I'm not at all offended. I just thought it was really funny. My daughter is at the age where I get hit with all these questions, like, so what did you do in the army? Like, where do you sleep when you're in the army? See, now she thinks you're cool What kind of food do you eat when you're in the Army?

She asked me yesterday She's like, what's that food you eat in the Army? Can you get me that so I can try it? Knock yourself out. Is she talking about like MREs? Is that what she's talking about? I think that's what she was getting at, yeah. Oh, okay.

The last ones, and then we'll plug the book in. Just how will the U.S. medical system be different, differently able to counteract the virus versus other systems worldwide. If you had a magic wand, what would you do? Like if you could change anything about the US system, right? Is that right? I don't necessarily think our medical system is flawed. It's kind of one of those things where, you know,

the CIA gets like this bad rap, but because the people in charge are acting like, I guess, incompetent. I don't necessarily think that our medical system is the problem. I think our problem are the people running the country. But I think the bigger issue to fix is to probably, and this sounds so like a PC beauty pageant answer, and I don't mean it to be. But we need to have better dialogue with other countries and what diseases that they're facing. I don't know kind of how that system's working.

And maybe it was working really well. And our administration just decided to do nothing about it. I don't know. but that's the only way we're going to get ahead of things and other countries are going to get ahead of things is if we have sort of these open dialogues with them about what they're seeing in terms of trends. And China's not the most transparent country, obviously, in the world.

But if I had a magic wand, I mean, there would be reports every season about, you know, what are we seeing, you know, in these countries? They would compile it all together and be having, I know, you know, we have summits through the UN about these things, but I think we need something different and something that's actually more enforceable I guess about this. All right.

She is the bio rock. Thank you. With Rock's cooking, right? Totally spies 2.0. Yeah, the people champion. I'm glad somebody understood the reference. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely totally spies. Ph.P. John, Christina, Thank you very much for the donations. I'm not even sure what the currency is, but I think it's a very generous donation, so thank you. Thank you. And, oh, buy a rock to the brain. Anyway, moving on, moving on.

The book is The Unexpected Spy by our guest, Tracy Walder. From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life, Taking Down Some of the World's Most most notorious terrorists. Tracy, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Any final words before we get going? Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I have to say, too, to kind of your last point about, you know, men and exposing them to

this. I think men like you two are actually really important and that you're supporting women like us. Like, we need allies like you guys. And so I just, I really appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, you know, my jokes about the first. quota earlier aside. I mean, there

is no quota I don't like set out to find people for like some sort of like weird diversity diversity quota. No, I really don't. I just want to find people who are professionals and I think when you have them out here to speak for themselves it does speak for itself. It just

comes through on its own and it doesn't got to be ham-handed. Yeah, we don't have to like, we don't have to be allies. Oh, we have to invite professional people on and you know what I mean? Like, I know, but you are. So just take it. like that and I appreciate that. So, thank you.

This is on Kendall also correct? Yes, it is. Yes. Kindle, Apple, you know, all those. Yeah, so if you're in guys and girls, folks, so if you're in quarantine right now, you don't even have to, you have to worry about it from Amazon, you want to go get it,

just download it on your, on your Kindle. And you've gotten it, you've got it. And again, since her book tour was canceled, if you, you know, if you enjoyed it, and even if you didn't just be a mch, and share this video so that she can have a book tour, you know. Yeah, virtual book tour. This is it. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, Tracy. We will do the bonus segment after this for people who support the stream. If you're interested in seeing all those bonus segments we do, there's hours and hours of them. There's a link to our Patreon site down the description. And there's also a link to Tracy's book. If you want to go and check it out, it's right there. $1 a month. $1 a month helps us out.

Yeah. And thank you so much for your time this evening, Tracy. And we will be back next Friday if the world doesn't end with Sam Fas talking about his new book and the paramilitary operation where, you know, he led a CIA paramilitary team in the northern Iraq prior to the invasion with some 10th special forces group guys. So, and that will tie in to portions of Tracy's story. Thank you for having me. Of course. Thank you, Tracy. I will do the video and thank you everybody.

Great seeing you guys. Thanks for joining us. Ciao. Bye.