The Team House - CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos, Part 2: Ep. 98

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

Marc joins us for a second episode to answer your questions, discuss agency employees being hit with some type of directed beam weapon, how he got the CIA to start treating people for it, and much more. Today’s Sponsors:👇👇 https://www.MANSCAPED.COM Use the promo code “TEAM20” for 20% off! Get your balls ready for summer! https://www.BLUECHEW.COM Use the promo code “TEAMHOUSE” for a free first month! Thanks for supporting the companies that support us! Pick up Marc’s book “Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA” here: https://www.amazon.com/Clarity-Crisis-Leadership-Lessons-CIA/dp/1400223865 Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Podcast version of this show can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/user-796052562/5th-special-forces-group-w-caleb-phillips-round-2-ep-97 Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why 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 build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support 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 parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Special operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murph. and David Park. Hey guys, welcome to the team house. This is episode 98.

I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park. And our guest tonight is Mark Palomaropolis coming at us for a second episode. We did episode 67 with Mark talking about his extensive career in the CIA, deploying to Afghanistan, Iraq, really all over the world. Now we're having them back for round two. We're going to talk about a number of different things, including his new book. Clarity in Crisis. This just came out. It's out in bookstores right now.

You guys want to go and check it out. Mark, thank you so much for joining us again tonight. It's awesome to be back. I'm sorry I couldn't do it live with you in New York, but we'll do that next time. But thanks for having me again. I love the show and excited to be here. Show us what you're drinking tonight. You got something from Greece?

Yeah, so this is an honor of your producer, Dee. And so it's just a little Uzo here. Okay. You know, my home, like my hometown drink, and it's something with, you know, every Greek kid, you know, thinks he's drinking milk at two or three years old. And he grabs a cup from his, you know, his dad or mom's, you know, from the dinner table. And he takes a swig of it, think it's milk and it's Uzo. So that's your first introduction when you're about two. And then it just becomes kind of like water.

And what is, what does Uzo taste like for those of us who haven't tried it? It's black liquorish. It's an anis-based drink. Oh, wow. And there's, you know, you have Uzo. in Greece, you have, what, you have Arac in the Arab world, you have Rocky, in Turkey, and then you have Sambuca and in Italy. So it's pretty common, but it's good stuff.

And it's, again, it might as well be, I could brush my teeth with it. And it's Serbia, yeah, it's like Raqa, isn't it? It's made out of like mums or something like that. Yep. It's all the same thing. Now, apparently, you know, the legend has it. You don't get a hangover from drinking a lot of it, which I can attest is not actually accurate. Yeah.

I can too. Mark, I think to, well, let's just kick it off with a brief introduction overview for people who haven't seen episode 67. If you haven't, you should go back and check it out. But briefly in a couple minutes, could you tell us a little bit about your career in the agency and now retirement? Sure. So I served for 26 years at CIA. It was, you know, it's pretty scary the only job I ever had coming out of college. So now I'm retired and I'm doing a lot of writing.

That's been really fun. But I spent 26 years, you know, mostly as an operations officer, as a case officer. I started, I was recruited out of college as an analyst. I spent two years as an analyst. And I don't know if I told you this last time. I actually wrote one of the first papers or how I co-wrote one of the first papers on the Afghan Arabs and a young financier named Usama bin Laden. That came out in 2003.

Wow. But then I decided I wanted to become a case officer. and then that kind of launched my career. And I spent, you know, a lot of time living overseas in the Middle East, you know, maybe almost three years in war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. And then I finished up in my career, a really interesting job because they took a whole bunch of us in the Senior Intelligence Service. And they put us, you know, working on Russia because this was, you know, after 2016 election interference. And they thought that because we had this kind of ethos of kind of covert action and taking it to the enemy in the war zone,

we could kind of do this, you know, sort of the same thing when it comes to the Russians, a little bit obviously lighter touch, but really pushing back on their malign influence. And so I did that until I retired in July 2019 with some health issues, which I think are been pretty public, but we can talk a little bit about that if you wanted to. Yeah, yeah, I would because it's a bit controversial. But I mean, fascinating at the same time that you and members of the State Department other members of the Central Intelligence Agency appear to have been hit with some sort of exotic weapon,

directed beam weapon. I mean, first off, I'd like to hear if any more information about that has come to light. I mean, there's a lot of unanswered questions here. Have you heard or have the doctors been able to gain any deeper understanding of what's really going on here? Yeah, so I can't recall how much I got into this last time because, you know, it's taken me a while to kind of come out and talk publicly about it.

But, you know, I eventually went to Walter Reed's National Intrepid Center of Excellence, which is their traumatic brain injury program. It's very well known in the military, particularly in the special operations world. And when I went there, it was really interesting to me after having, you know, not a lot of luck, certainly not with the CIA doctors who, you know, were frankly, you know, not too helpful. But even with my private doctors, but I get to Walter Reed and they immediately diagnosed me with a mild TBI, which if you know TBI, mild TBI can still be pretty debilitating. And they said it was based on an external exposure event.

And so, you know, you're kind of starting to, you know, put pieces together. These are the best doctors in the world on TBI. And then someone from the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford doctor by the name of David Relman, came out with a report and said that, you know, that the symptoms of those affected were consistent with, you know, likely directed energy weapon. And so you start putting pieces together. finally, even after I retired, there's been a slew of cases. And these are people I know. And so,

you know, these are CIA officers and some diplomats as well, mostly CIA officers who you have been really severely affected in various parts of the world. And so, you know, something bad is happening. And so I think we've moved past the idea or the question of, you know, is this, you know, psychosomatic, or we all making this up. Right. Right. And that's crazy. Now, Now, what has happened is, you know, is still in question. And, you know, I think time will tell, you know, eventually we're going to get to the bottom of this. I think, you know, the new CIA director of Bill Burns is putting a ton of resources into it. He believes us that something happened.

And eventually we're going to get to the bottom of it because in the end, you know, you can't have our personnel, whether it's CIA officer, State Department, or if you, if you listen to, you know, former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, this was happening to DOD as well. Right. And so something's going on and we got to make sure it stops. because in essence, it's really, it's an act of war against our personnel. Can you tell us what some of the possible, when you say a directed energy weapon, for those of us who don't have any, you know, we know what guns are, grenades and Carl Gustavs yet,

can you tell us what a directed energy weapon might be? Like, what are the possibilities? Sure. So, look, I'm not a technical expert. So I'm going to, I'll box this totally. But it's, you know, so for example, there's technology that today, there's companies, there's US companies that are selling these types of weapons to the U.S. military to take out drones. So it's basically it's a directed energy weapon which will, you know, incapacitate a drone

and cause a small drone to drop from the sky. So it's kind of, you know, the idea would be, you know, you could redirect that at a, at a human. And we know, you know, there was a document that was declassified, it was FOIA, you know, several years ago because there was an NSA officer who served in Moscow who really has crippling syndrome, crippling symptoms. now. And NSA, you know, admitted in this document that is now unclassified saying that, yeah, Russia had such a weapon, a directed energy weapon to use against personnel, which in essence just incapacitates you. And so, you know, the, you know, the technical aspects of it, I got to leave to others. But I think that, you know, there's no doubt that this technology exists. I think it's

more of a question of, you know, why, how, and to what extent an adversary would use this. Right. Because, I mean, strategically, it's interesting. that it's debilitating. It's not lethal. So, I mean, if they were to assassinate a CIA officer, a State Department Foreign Service officer, someone like, there's serious international repercussions. But in this case, they're hitting you with something that doesn't kill, but it's debilitating enough that you're taken off the board, so to speak.

You're sent home. You're not able to do your job anymore. And so it serves, if this is what's happening, it serves their interest because, you know, look, Mark is not doing counter-Russia operations anymore. he's back home in the hospital. So look, there's, there's, you know, we're stacking up officers getting medical care now. So what does that do? It takes them off the battlefield.

So, you know, when you think about it, it's an insidious weapon, but it's pretty, when I say brilliant, I mean, that's, that doesn't sound too hot, especially since what happened to me. But, but, you know, we're having a very difficult time, you know, finding attribution. Certainly there's a difficult time countering this, but, but our people are being incapacitated. And when, you know, when you have that, you know, it's, it's a, it's a pretty, you know, pretty brilliant weapon to utilize. And so, you know, at some point we're going to find out what happened, just like everything else in life.

You know, this is going to come to light. Now, whether it's from, you know, a defector who comes off, you know, comes across with the blueprints or we catch someone in the act or, you know, our technical folks, you know, devised means that we can, you know, detect this real time, you know, we'll get to the bottom of this. It's just like, you know, I'm confident to that. But in the meantime, I think that, you know, Director, Director Burns and Secretary of Defense Austin and Secretary of State Blinken, you know, they have a big challenge on their hand because

our personnel are getting injured. And, you know, if this wasn't me sitting here and I was watching this, you know, I might sit there kind of with an eyebrow raise, but all I can tell you is is people are stacking up at Walter Reed. And, and when those doctors there, believe it, you know, I went in there for PT. You know, it's a really humbling experience to go to Walter Reed because, you know, you go to NICO, the TBI Center, then you go across the street to their physical therapy part. And I'm the only one there with a limb. I mean, there's double amputees and And I stopped feeling sorry for myself. But I was talking to a doc there and I said, hey, I'm one of the, you guys know what this.

I'm one of the OGA guys, the other government agency guys. And she goes, I know all about you. And, you know, and I know your case. And, you know, I've treated a whole bunch of DOD folks with the same thing. And I was like, really? You know, that's kind of interesting. And so it's, you know, it's something that's going to be dealt with. I think, you know, thank God for two things.

And it's ironic as a CI officer. I'm saying this. Thank God for the press. You know, I went public on this with GQ and a couple and a whole bunch of other. press outlets have really run with this, whether it's, you know, it's CBS News or New York Times or NBC or Fox or anybody. And because it really put a lot of pressure on the government to make sure people got health care. So, you know, the, what is the press is called the fourth estate. And, you know, coming from a CI officer, it's pretty crazy to say it.

But they've been, you know, the press has been amazingly helpful in really helping people who were hurting. Were you not prior to the press getting involved, were you not getting the attention that you needed? Oh, yeah. No. for health care. You know, I had a splitting headache. It wasn't going away. And I was like, just get me to get me to, you know, first I wanted to get any kind of health care. And the agency rejected that. Then, excuse me, after I went public, it was to get me to Walter Reed because they had started sending people there in ones, you know, in just single digits. And still there

was a reluctance. And so, you know, look, there's a long, you know, short of history, whether it's Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome or even going to like the NFL with CTE, with head injuries. It takes organizations a long time to get to the right place. Eventually they do, but it just took, you know, a lot of pressure to do it. And I tell you, I go down on the hill and I will meet with the staff or the members such as, you know, Senator Warner and Senator Rubio. That's two different sides, you know, of the aisle on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And then, then I go meet with the staffs of Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes. Do you think they agree on anything in life? They actually do on this one issue. It's incredible. And so, you know,

they're really passionate about people trying to get, you know, get cared for because, you know, they have access to all the classified information. I don't, I do not anymore, but, you know, they want to see people getting the healthcare they deserve. It's, no, it's awesome that, you know, that happened. And it felt like for a little while they were throwing all you guys to the wolves. And they were kind of treating it the way our government treated Agent Orange, Gulf War syndrome, things like this. Even PTSD and TBI itself to some extent, pretending these things aren't really, happening when they are and when you're not treating it, it gets worse and worse and worse. Once you did get to Walter Reed, could you tell us about what the TBI Clinic is like,

what that treatment is, what the processes that you have gone through? Sure. So this is a really, it's an emotional subject for me because they saved me. And I can talk about this for hours. But I'll say a couple things. First, you go there and you don't feel alone. And so traumatic brain injury is something that the military has. has come to terms with, but NICO has seen this, you know, in the, you know, the two decades of

this kind of never-ending war. And so you go there and it's a, it's this integrated, you know, one-month program called the intensive outpatient program where for 10 hours a day, you see 18 different specialists. You go there with a, with a cohort with several people with you. I was there with someone from, you know, from, from Naval Special Warfare, Naval EOD, and then Air Force, with a combat controller from AFSOC. And you're there for a month together and you see everyone from, obviously you get imaging, you know, MRIs and CT scans, but you also do a lot of alternative therapy. And that, to me, and that's where they're brilliant.

And that's what really worked. It's art therapy. It's meditation. It's yoga. It's nutrition. You know, it was, you know, total wellness training. And it was pretty incredible. And all else, you know, so people, you know, if people who know me, it would be like,

are you kidding me? Like, you're sitting around doing yoga and deep breathing? Well, I'll tell you one thing. That has actually been embraced by the. special operations community much more than than people would think because it works. And so I left there with two things. I left there probably feeling 20% better. The sleep study part is a huge thing.

You know, 50% of TBI victims develop sleep apnea. And sleep apnea is a deadly condition, but that's 50% of TBI victims. So I have this, you know, I look like a B1 pilot. I sleep now with this machine called a CPAP. I felt amazingly better after that. So I walked out of there feeling about 20% better, but it also gave me two things, as tools and hope because they believe you. And I still go back now as I was telling you guys, you know,

kind of in the pregame session, I went there for some acupuncture treatment today. I mean, you know, the U.S. military has developed incredible acupuncture techniques that, you know, the guy I get acupuncture for has done this in MRAPs in Afghanistan and Iraq. And so, you know, it calls a battlefield acupuncture. And so there's ways to ultimately because they want you to feel better. And so, you know, when you go to a place every day, they ask you, you know, did you want to hurt yourself last night? In my case, that was not the case, but that's the level of seriousness of that institution.

And, you know, God bless those, you know, the men and women there. You know, I have enormous respect for them. I've talked about it really openly. You know, you know, who would have thought that I turned into after 26-year career at CIA? I turned into a big time, you know, advocate of this alternative, you know, wellness training. But it works. Yeah. And I really believe in it.

I wonder if there's a combat acupuncture bad and what the qualification is right. There should be. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why 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 build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support 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 is there of someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. You know what they did? You guys might have seen this before. So they were doing these like staples in my ears. Oh really?

And so that's apparently very common that they've done this, you know, because I ran into someone who was a, Force Recon Marine. And, you know, he said, you know, he walked out one day and he saw all these guys with, like, this glittery stuff in their ear. But it's all based on chronic pain, you know, the relief of chronic pain. That's fascinating. And I tell you that the one thing is after two decades of this, there's a lot of people who are broken. Yeah. And so, you know, it's a really serious issue.

And so, you know, God bless the folks at Walter Reed. I have nothing but respect for them. On that note, Mark, you know, you recently penned this op-ed. I think it was today, actually. I read in the Washington Times about a recently retired seal who took his own life. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that article and sort of what happens when guys don't get some of the treatment that they really need. Sure.

So I got to say it was the Washington Examiner. Oh, thank you. I don't want to get in trouble for that. But no, so the article is about an individual named Bill Mulder. And Bill Mulder was a member of Siel Team 6. He had served for two decades and 127 days after he separated and retired. He took his own life. And I found the story pretty dramatic.

And he had actually gone to NICO as well. He had gone to the TBI Center. And so I did, you know, in this kind of new journey I'm on and doing some writing, you know, I ended up talking to, you know, Bill's widow, Sydney and Bill's brother-in-law, you know, William Negley. And it was just, it was an incredible really, really, you know, heart-wrenching story because there actually was care for him at NICO. And he did it for a little bit, but then he chose not to.

And Sidney kind of then talked to me about his, how he was kind of crumbling in front of her eyes. Ironically enough, and I didn't even realize it until after I wrote the article, I had actually worked with Bill Mulder in the past. And so now I kind of think back and I remember him. But one of the things that was most remarkable about kind of this whole issue, is that Bill Mulder's, you know, a brother-in-law, this guy, William Negley, then founded, or even before he was killed, he founded a company called Sound Off.

And Sound Off, in essence, it's an application on your phone. Because the whole premise is that, you know, that, you know, not only veterans, but active duty as well, or even intelligence officers, you know, need a way to communicate with a mental health care professional or a buddy. They need to do it anonymously because of the stigma. And there's an enormous stigma in this crazy type A, you know, alpha-man. female, female, whatever world that we all live in, you know, if there's an invisible wound, you know, you can't take a knee. There's no gunshot. And so, so William Negley founded this,

this app called Soundoff and I was really taken by it. He actually has gone and he's, he's, he's ran this by, you know, all the soft foundations, special operations foundations. And they're, they've kind of bought not physically, not not monetarily, but they bought into it. Because ultimately you need kind of that, um, a mechanism in which someone in need is going to try to get health care. You know, there's all sorts, you know, 17 veterans, you know, commit suicide every day. That's a, that's a horrific number. Um, you know, I think 43% of the, you know, not post-9-11, you know, veterans actually have PTSD, you know, or those that have PTSD, they don't get treated for it. So we got to get people the help they need. And so, you know,

I wrote this story to honor Bill Mulder, you know, perhaps his finest contribution and his death will be that, you know, there's a tool that, that people can use, you know, certainly in the, in the veterans community, but also in the intelligence community. that's going to help them out. And so these are things that I'm really passionate about. Thank you for raising that. I really appreciate that. Can you, for people who might be interested,

is that app is available in the various app stores? Yeah, it's Sound Off. And so I think, you know, I'll get you more on that too. Maybe we can kind of tweet it out because I know it was launched in Texas. That's where Will In Neckley is from. But I know that they're expanding their technology. And it is live right now. So if you go online, you Google Sound Off, you know,

you'll find that application. I thought that one part of the article that it mentions that this SEAL Team 6 operator felt like he couldn't go and get help because he'd be kicked off the teams. I mean, obviously being a SEAL is like the most important thing to this dude's life, invested everything in it, understandably. And the fear, of course, is you're going to get kicked off your team if you go and try to get help. I worked on a story about a Delta Force operator, Billy Levine. He had his own demons.

He shot and killed his best friend a couple years later. He himself was murdered, apparently, on Fort Bragg, still under investigation. Amazing story, I know, yeah. He made comments to Mark Leshikar's sister, his buddy's sister, about how many guys didn't come out directly and say it, about how many guys in the unit are hurting and need help, but they can't get it or they feel that they can't get it because they will be kicked off of their team. And this is a real, real problem that we have with our most elite guys. So, Jack, you're 100% right. So Sidney

told me that her husband told her, like, if you report me that I'm hurting so much, I'm going to get shit can from the command. That's the exact quote. And what's so interesting in this kind of new world that I'm in now advocating for health care, I actually have gotten to know and be friends with the former command psychologist at CL Team 6. And so I've had this incredible conversations with her because I was so interested in how, you know, we could help the intelligence community as well. But this is a really serious issue. And I'll tell you that, you know, whether it's, whether, you know, you're a Green Beret or a Navy SEAL or a CIA officer, you know, if you don't have a visible wound, it's pretty tough to take a knee when you know your brothers and sisters are out there doing

and stuff. And I'll leave you with a, you know, with a pretty amazing vignette. So in Walter Reed, you do something it's called, you know, it's called art therapy. And this is something that everybody embraces. There's a wall at NICO for SEAL Team 6. There's a wall for Delta. There's a wall for the different combat controller, you know, elements. And now there's a CIA wall because so many of us are going there. But one of my colleagues from the agency's current active, you know, he's a senior intelligence service officer. He's this very senior guy. And he has been hit by this directed energy issue much worse than me, and he's in some pain. He put this painting together. It's a black canvas. It's huge. It's probably, you know, six feet by six feet. It's pure black.

And then he took a, took some paint and he just threw it on the canvas. And it looks like a, you know, it looks like a splatter. And he called it the gunshot because that's what he said he felt that he wished we all had. We wished we had a visible wound. And that's what TBI is all about, whether you're, you know, you're, you're a U.S. military veteran or an agency officer. And so, you know, because then people would believe you. All right, hey, Mark, Mark got shot. You know, he's got to retire. That's fine.

Mark got hit by some kind of, you know, screwed up wacky weapon. He's probably making it up to get disability. And I'll tell you, you know, a little inside baseball here for you and all the viewers, is that that painting, the gunshot, has been seen by the CIA director, and it's been seen by White House officials as well, because it was so poignant. And they came to Walter Reed and they saw that. And that was really important. And I think that started the trend of saying, okay, we have a problem here.

Like this is not, you know, something really is going on. Because if you meet a victim or if you see kind of the stuff they do in our therapy, you have a little bit of a different view. Mark, I'm really curious to know a little bit more about this dynamic as it applies to CIA officers. I mean, of course, we do have CIA officers who are in combat and in combat zones around the world. but also I have to imagine that there's a certain maybe a different type of post-traumatic stress that can develop people operating in high-pressure environments

in places like Moscow, Beijing. I don't know, but you know better than I do, Mark, the kind of pressure that builds up in someone who has to work in an environment like that. So, you know, I came back from one post in which was a, and I can't obviously, I apologize, you know, it was in the Middle East, was one of our critical counterintelligence firements.

I was there for almost three years. And I developed, you know, high blood pressure, like, like, 170 over 100. And the doctors are like, what the hell? You know, where have you been? And I was like, hey, okay, that kind of makes sense. Because you are under that pressure. But, you know, look, there's no doubt, you know, you sound a lot like, you know, so we see all sorts of therapists at Walter Reed, whether it's our therapists or even the folks who do the acupuncture or actually psychiatrists.

and so, you know, I love telling them that. Look, hey, I'm not like one of, you know, I don't have this kind of intense 20-year combat experience. You know, I spent some time in Afghanistan, Iraq, certainly, you know, one of the, you know, one of our protective officers has an intelligence star for saving my life in Iraq. And so certainly there were times where my life is at risk. But I said, it wasn't that bad. And the psychiatrist just are like, sit down, Mark.

Yeah. Actually, it was. Because the one thing about a CIA officer, it's actually pretty interesting if you, when you kind of, when you kind of, you know, kind of peel away the onion is we work alone all the time. So as an operations officer, you know, my job is to spot assess, develop, recruit, and handle an agent. And when you do that in some of the denied area environments or in a place where, you know, the sanction for getting caught is the death of an agent, there's, that's an enormous responsibility you have. Right. And so, you know, you know, for me over the years, I was, you know, and I talk a lot

about this in the book, about dealing with adversity, you know, I lost agents. You know, these were people who trusted their life to me. And, and I made mistakes. or they made mistakes or, you know, you know, just, you know, fate kind of hit us and they died. And so cumulatively, over the years, after 26 years, I think I'm fine. But when I sit down and I talk to, you know, the psychiatrist of Walter Reed, I think that they love me because I think they could, like, sit with me for like several years. Like, I'm a, I'm a great project of theirs because you're exactly right. It's not a combat veteran of multiple tours have been shot at. It's someone who's dealt with a lot different pressures.

I have my injury from this, you know, this, you know, these mysterious direct energy attacks. But there's a lot of other stuff I dealt with over the years, including deaths of officers that I led, deaths of agents, and just kind of, you know, the pressure of kind of, you know, you know, running these, these, these operations. And so, you know, I think, I think you're right. I think it's a different kind of pressure. But it's also something that's, well, here, it's never talked about. Yeah.

I sent, let me tell you one quick, I sent that article to one of the senior most, operations officials at the CIA the other day. And his response was, hey, you know, maybe we should kind of take a look at this. You know, maybe we got a problem. And I was like, yeah, good. That's the right answer. I think, you know, it's interesting because I think that people often equate post-traumatic stress with, you know, shell shock, right? And, you know, the idea of there was a traumatic event, you know, my best friend died in my arms or whatever.

there was a traumatic event. And, you know, like a shrink at the VA told me, like, there are multiple, like, trauma is trauma. And sometimes trauma can be this low-grade trauma, you know, just, it's like having one foot on the gas and one foot on the break for an extended period of time that just wears your adrenal, just wears you down. It doesn't have to be a single significant event that causes like these night terrors or, you know. Dave, you're 100% right. And, you know, it's funny because the psychiatrist today, you know, you actually, he told me, said, look, you know, there, he's actually wasn't happy with me. He goes, you know, you wrote this article, you know, kind of, you know, trying to honor the legacy

of Bill Mulder in the four-year anniversary of his passing. You know, you wrote your book and he's like, but you were doing nothing to take care of yourself. Because their contention is, you know, there's a lot going on, you know, in me after all these years, you know, because you sit down with, you know, with, with, you know, with, with, with, with, with mental health professionals, and they want to know about you. So you tell them everything. And, you know, they want to talk about, you know, my parents divorced when I was 10.

Right. And then losing an officer in Afghanistan and then losing an agent in Iraq. And, you know, you know, having a car bomb hit, you know, embassy in the Middle East and, you know, being my whole family almost like, there's so much stuff that's happened over the years. And then including kind of the, you know, what I call the moral injury of when I came out and kind of pleaded for health care, you know, the agency really kind of shunned me for a while. Now, they're not now. Right.

You know, Dr. R. R.combearns has taken a much different tack, but there's a lot of kind of shit that's gone on in my head. And so I agree with you. Trauma can manifest itself in a lot of different situations. So even the stuff I'm doing now in retirement, they're like, you've got to stop. Right. Next week I'm going down the Outer Banks. I'm taking my son and a whole bunch of his college buddies. I'm the chaperone.

So, you know, and so I'm doing nothing. I'm tuning out. No media stuff, no book stuff. And I'll have four days of trying to have them not burn the house down. Yeah. Yeah. no it's it's very interesting I you know and it's like you said

well I didn't do what these guys did or whatever and it and even I mean on the civilian side like sometimes I've had like my civilian friends tell me when times yeah I have post-traumatic stress but I don't like I don't want to tell you about it because you were in the military all these years I'm like look that doesn't

post-traumatic stress is post-traumatic stress like it doesn't it doesn't have a requirement as to how you got it or like or um but there's no glorious way to get it. You know, there's, you know. So, let me, if you don't mind, you know, I love the, yeah, please. I think you're, you know, you're, you know, the, the viewers like it as well.

So, you know, here's a, here's a great example. So, you know, I came back from Iraq and I think I made me to tell you this story before. You know, I went in with Naval Special Warfare into Baghdad for the HVT hunt. So we're rounding up the deck of 55. We're running and gunning every night. I don't even remember. I didn't shower for six weeks. And then finally, we're going to be.

done and I come out of there, but I'd seen a lot of bad stuff, you know, dead bodies and disembowl. I mean, it was just, it was terrible, you know, and, and when I got home after, after six months there, I started having just like horrendous nightmares. I was, I was seeing, you know, dead people. Like, it was really, it was, there was no doubt it was PTSD. I go to the agency shrinks, you know, for, for my kind of, you know, reintegration thing and someone's sitting behind a keyboard, how you feel and what do I say? I'm good. Yeah. You have any, not I'm good. And they cleared right away. So I'm clear to go right back in. Yet, at home, my wife thinks is scared.

I'm going to do something crazy in the middle of the night. And so, you know, it's a perfect example of, you know, as a CIA case officer, I wasn't the trigger puller on stuff. You know, you know, I was running agents that led to HVT takedowns, but I also saw a lot of bad stuff. And clearly that messed me up. And so, you know, it's what you see, not even what you actually do. You can have PTSD from, you know, seeing a terrible car.

accident. Right. You know, there's a civilian. And so, you know, that, that's really stuck by me a lot, you know, in, you know, years later. And, and, look, there's, there's, I remember, I remember seeing studies, people kind of mocked it. There is, there's PTSD amongst drone pilots and sensor operators. Yep. And so people, you know, my Air Force buddies, I have a great buddy who's a B1 pilot. He's like, I'm like, well, hold on a second. You know, so, so this is real. These people are actually really suffering. And so, you know, again, it comes in all different forms. Yeah, no, I'm

probably one of the first people that would have laughed at the whole notion of a drone operator having PTSD, but now having talked to many of them, like, I get it. Like, they're watching people and dropping bombs on them. And then watching the aftermath, the body

parts, and so it's horrible. It's horrible. shit. And, you know, it's funny. You say that one of my good buddies is a, you know, former. He was a F-16 pilot. Then he flew, you know, flew reapers, you know, MQ-9s. And he's retired now. He called me. He's around out in the Midwest. And he bought this giant ranch and he's really happy with his family. And I think he doesn't miss any of that stuff. He's kind of come to

peace with a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah, you can't, don't, you know, don't mock anyone if, you know, who says they're having some issues with PTSD. It can come in all forms. Right. We got a couple questions here. Mark, can Mark explain the difference between ground branch contractors and Blue Badger PMO's. Additionally, how competitive is it to become the latter is the recruitment pool mostly limited to former J-Soc operators? Great question. So first of all, I was a regular case officer. I wasn't a paramilitary case officer. I did work with my special activities, brethren all over the world. And I was a base chief, and I ran a paramilitary base. Very often you see that. They'll take a kind of more senior, you know, a case officer run the PM base. But

The difference is a paramilitary officer, it's a CIA staff officer. They've come into the agency. They will have gone through what we call the farm, so they have case officer training. Some of the contractors are a little different. Sometimes they're taken from the special operations world. And so, you know, they don't have the same skills as a case officer would. It doesn't diminish anything. In fact, out of the 137, you know, stars on the wall, there's a lot of PMOOs on there.

I'm sorry, PMO contractors on there. And so God bless them. They were great friends of mine. One of the great things about the contract cadres, I'd see them all over the world and keep running into them. And they are kind of the backbone of some of our kind of our special activities, you know, operations. In terms of getting, you know, recruited into the PMO world as a staff officer,

look, that's a bit of a misnomer that you have to come from the special operations world. You know, there's a lot of, there is certainly conventional army and Marines as well. who go there. And I think, you know, obviously you have to have some, you know, some, some, some unique skills. But the other part, too, is that, you know, what CIA is always looking for is, is, you know, having this, you know, a different, you know, take on the world. And so you come into the organization and look, you want to certainly, you want to live and work overseas, but, you know, a lot of times we're going to ask you to learn a language. A lot of times, you know, you're going to, you know, and even the PMOOs will do sometimes regular kind of case officer assignments. And so it's this

kind of wanderlust. It's this desire to be interested in other, you know, languages and cultures. So you don't have to necessarily come from the special operations community. Some of them do. Clearly, on the contractor side, a lot of them do. But I know a lot of them who do not as well. And so, you know, it's, you know, folks are interested in it. It's a heck of a job. I think, you know, one of the things that, this is, this is not to dissuade anybody from being interested in this. But, you know, I, so I sent that Washington Examiner article today to, um, to some former senior officers of CIA and their immediate response, because we're talking about the Navy SEAL community, their immediate response is, hey, you know, how are we doing this kind of stuff,

like taking care of, of ground ranch? Because it's been 20 years of the same kind of incessant, never-ending deployments. And, and I love these, I love these guys. I get calls all the time. You know, there's a local bordering hole here called the Vienna Inn, Diaboard. are in Virginia, I meet them all the time when they come through. But I think we've got to take a, you know, a really strong look at kind of mental health situation of some of our ground branch officers and contractors as well, who, you know, it's a relentless pace for two decades. D, what's up first? Oh, okay. So, Mark, when you first went to the CIA and said, hey, man, I got this health problem. I need to get treatment. Would you say that their response was

rather flaccid. Yes. So would I. And we have something to help with that. Dave, what do you got for us? Hey guys. So COVID's been a bitch, right?

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All right. So we got some more questions here. How do I follow that up? Yeah, I know. I know. It's a hard act to follow, Mark. I'm sorry, man. All right. Let's go. Another G.B question. From your perspective, how did GB differ from other soft

SMUs in terms of missions, culture, capabilities? Are they really as elite as they're made out to be? like more elite than Seal Team 6 or Delta. Oh, God. How do I answer that question? Look, they're putting you on the spot. Right.

Every one of these, you know, organizations is certainly different. So, so, you know, and I got to be careful in terms of, you know, exceeding my brief here. But ultimately, look, the U.S. is the U.S. I see for the CIA's paramilitary capability is a intelligence gathering function. So just, you know, you have to really understand that. It's not a direct action function. So, you know, we are not still team six. The agency's units are not Steel Team 6.

They're not Delta. And so ultimately, at the end of the day, you know, what the paramilitary capabilities of the CIA, you know, need to be, should be an RB, it is it is a, you know, a forward deployed unit that in a combat zone can collect intelligence. And so never forget that the primary goal of the special activities officers of the CIA is to collect intelligence. It's not to kick down doors. And so I think that's kind of the best way to differentiate between, you know, the units that you see all sorts of, you know, of lore about, the direct action units and what CIA does. And it's pretty important to understand that. And within the agency, it's very obvious. Mark, you are a Greek American, as is our producer, D.

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20% off. Anyway, it's- Balls and winners. We got you covered. Mark, another hard act to follow. I'm sorry, man. Sorry, Mark. Okay, Mark, another question for you.

You mentioned last time you worked with FBI H-R-T was wondering what you made of them as operators and how well do they work in an OGA environment? So, you know, it's, that's a, it's a great question. So FBAHRT, you know, for, you know, reasons I don't know, and it doesn't really matter, you know, did deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know if they were trying to just, you know, get in the fight or, or get some experience, but or, and there were reasons, of course, to go into Iraq because we certainly were looking for, for example, the files of the, you know, Iraqi intelligence service. And so there are specific locations we're going to, but the HRT folks I work with were fantastic. You know, you know, super

dedicated, you know, in terms of, in terms of their, you know, capabilities are, you know, as good as any. I think that, you know, for me, one of the most interesting things was, look, I'll never forget we were, and maybe some people, you know, who are listening or watching, will remember there There was a, you know, this was in, I think it was March or April of 2003. There was a massive sandstorm. And, you know, that, and we were stuck in kind of a, it was a J-Soc basin in Saudi, but everything was kind of socked in. And so I was two or three days in a tent.

So I was stuck with these FBI HRT guys. So what do you think I ask them? Hey, tell me about Waco. Like, tell me about all this stuff that I've heard. And so, you know, I mean, you know, why not? And so it was, it was really interesting for me to kind of just, you know, kind of get a sense. of some, you know, what their view on some of the controversial things that had happened in the past. But, you know, there's no doubt that they're, you know, they're technically incredibly proficient.

You know, they worked well with us. You know, they integrated in with our teams. They integrated in with the J-SAC folks. You know, I didn't see them ever, you know, engage in any kind of combat missions. It was certainly more of trying to go after things like, you know, the files of the Iraqi intelligence service, which we just, you know, which I think we were always looking for, you know, for example, you know, their files, you know, what U.S. agents they had recruited. Yeah.

So that was, you know, why FBI was kind of, you know, with us. And, you know, kind of to this day now, you know, I have some friends who, you know, retired from there. But like, you know, my view of kind of their active duty folks, I'm not, I'm not familiar anymore. Well, Mark, if you want to know more about Waco and Ruby Ridge, check us out next week. Oh, yeah. Danny Colson's founding, basically the founder of FBI HART.

We're going to have them on next week. Yeah, he'll be on next week to talk about specific about those two issues. Yeah, it's, you know, fascinating stuff. And, you know, I think that, you know, for better or worse, I don't know if it's if that, you know, health or tarnished their image. But these are incredible professionals. I'll tell you one thing. If someone, you know, if, you know, one of the bad guys in my past comes to my house and somehow has got me and my family locked up there, that's who I want to come save me. Yeah.

And they're down the road in Quantico. So I would have no problem with them, you know, kind of kind of being the QRF for. for me, that's for sure. That's awesome. A quick question from Andrew. Ask Mark if he is a pirate enthusiast. Okay, so the pirate right behind me right there. What an awesome question. I made that mask. Now we're going to get serious. I made that mask in art therapy. And that signified, I'm sorry, art therapy at NICO at Walter Reed. That signified all of us from the CIA who had battled the agency's medical staff and senior staff to get treatment. And we were this kind of rogue band of brothers. So I made that match. I got you. That's awesome. It's meaningful.

And because, you know, in essence, you know, I'm not going to say that we won because that's, that's silly. All we were trying to do is get get health care. But, but that was kind of, that was really meaningful. So that's why that little guy is in the back right there. Mark, I know you don't want to, like, project onto people that you may not know their actual intentions. But did you get a sense of why it was being shut down, like the whole idea? So what a great question because, you know, so ultimately, if, you know, there's a lot of people in the media, and I'm not going to, I don't want to get into the kind of fight between the right and the left or anything like that. But there's some people in media who want me to say, so ultimately we didn't want to, you know, to attribute this to the Russians because the CI director didn't want to go to Trump, who is a Russian sympathized.

And I said, I don't think it, it never even went that far. Right. This was just basic incompetence by our senior medical staff and some senior officials at CIA who fundamentally kind of broke the trust. So look, I had this amazing career at CIA. I think I was involved, like many others, I'm no different than the kind of the heroes that I serve with. But I was involved in every covert action program in the Middle East. You know, every time someone, some bad shit happened, I raised my hand and I went. But I always did so with understanding there's a pact that if I got jammed up, someone's going to help me.

Right. period. And that means medical care. Right. And so and and and and and they just fundamentally failed in that. And that to me was is kind of is pretty egregious. And so, you know, what is the so the senior medical staff at CIA are they there to help our institution or they're there to treat patients? And I'm not so sure what the answer is. Right. And so I don't I don't go down kind of that political rattle. It's going to get any. It's not going to get anybody anywhere. I think it's just and look, you know, it's the government. And God bless, you know, the CIA is an indispensable national security. institution. But it's still the government. And so I think this is this bit goes down to kind of basic government incompetence that was unable to deal with, you know, people who were injured with this kind of silent wound. Right. That's interesting. Do you, did you ever get a sense if it was happening sort of at the provider level at the like the chief medical officer level? It's the senior level. So here's the, here's the amazing thing about it. The junior medical

doctors in our office of medical services were amazing. And they looked on in horror. what they were seeing when when when I was like please for fuck's sake get me to health care right you know and the answer was no and literally people at senior levels were saying things like you're making it up for workers comp workers comp I retired in the senior intelligence service right it'll screw everything up in my life and so you know or that I'm trying to do this to get publicity like I was hurting right so you know that's the thing that is that is kind of so it's a stab in the back yeah to show a fundamental leadership failure because these people were not leaders now you too if someone came to you and said hey someone you know someone who's working for you was hurting you're not going to say like okay if you're a

police officer or i'm sorry if you're in a car accident and and and you know and you know and you're going okay so so my people are in a car accident i got to get them i got to get him to get him to the hospital but let's wait for the police investigation to see who's at fault like nobody does that right right right and so it just it you know it's the same thing you know it's the question that people ask me all the time, you know, why did the CIA buggle this so much? I don't know the answer. And it's it's either, you know, it's basic incompetence. You know, perhaps they're worried about liability as well. But, you know, what I did, I hired a lawyer. I hired a lawyer very specifically. And I paid my lawyer money with a simple instruction that was communicated to the CIA. Get me to

Walter Reed. I'm not going to sue the agency for anything. I don't care. I, you know, we socked away a lot of money. I was in the senior intelligence service. My wife was in the senior executive service of the government. She's got a private sector job. I don't need anything. Just get me to Walter Reed. I have no interest in anything else. But they kept, you know, that, you know, they thought otherwise. And so that was really disheartening. I mean, you know, I'm pretty open about kind of my struggles with this. And it caused me tremendous anxiety because I just couldn't understand why they wouldn't just do the right thing. Tim just wants to say much respect and things. And Thank you for your service, all of you.

And before we get on any other questions, I just want to take a moment to ask you, Mark, your new book here, Clarity and Crisis, that's just out. Do you tell us about the book, what it's about, how this came about? Why did you write it? So this is my baby now. And so it was really, it was an amazing journey as kind of this cathartic experience. Because of the headaches that I suffered, you know, after the events in Moscow, I was able to, you know, after retiring, I could work two or three hours a day.

But, you know, if you're writing a book, that's perfect. And so by the end of my CIA career, you know, and after after a ton of kind of failure and kind of dealing with a lot of humility and, you know, I realized that I was actually a pretty good leader, but it took a long time to get there. And so one of the things I thought about is, you know, what are some of these leadership principles that allowed me to succeed? And most importantly, in the reason why the book is called Clarity and Crisis, it's how to succeed in times of ambiguity. you know, you want to be the one, you know, to deal with, you know, situations with there's a lack of situational awareness. You know, you want to be that person there to kind of live in the gray. And a lot of people are not comfortable about that.

And so what I thought about, you know, I thought about nine principles, nine key things I did, which in essence was building a team and not only building team, but also, you know, mentoring and teaching officers under me, you know, teaching them about things like, you know, how to deal with adversity or fostering competition. but ultimately when kind of the shit hits the fan, you're sitting there and you're in your happy place. And I really remember being in that by the end of my career where I really could handle those situations, you know, in fine fashion.

So I decided to write a book about it because I thought two things. One, it would be really interesting kind of, you know, for the American people, even for the private sector to see how we did this. And number two is also it's also kind of an homage to the agency and just, you know, to the profession of intelligence operations. You know, despite kind of the agency, you know, the medical staff and the senior officials not treating me so well, it's still an institution that I love. You know, my, you know, if you're talking about my shrinks at Walter Reed, you know, think that's, there's something off on that. But it still is true.

So I wrote this book and, you know, it's a, you know, it's getting a lot of, you know, some really, really positive reviews because I think a lot of people are going to enjoy not only the war stories, but also what I'm trying to teach. Yeah. And so I'm really excited about it. And, I mean, you let, you were in some really challenging locations. Yeah. You know, I mean, we talked about that on the last show, some of the places that you were at. And, you know, I think people in general don't like ambiguity, and they want a certain amount, you know, a certain amount of certainty. And if they can't have that certainty in the situation, then maybe they start micromanaging more so they feel control even when they don't have it.

And so you address that. Yeah. So, you know, that's the amazing thing. When you build the kind of correct type of team and you teach these leadership principles, you actually micromanage much less. And so, you know, I mean, you know, there's so many different principles we can talk about. You know, we have some time tonight. But, you know, one of my principles I talked about was being a people developer.

Now that sounds really kind of, you know, you know, it's commonplace. But it's really important. And I'll give you the exact example on why. So I'm a base chief in eastern Afghanistan. fan. We're getting rocketed every day. It's incredibly dangerous. We're calling in strikes. We're killing Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. And I got to go to Kabul Station is calling me because they're probably pissed that I'm being too aggressive. True story. So a heel comes in and I got to kind of hop over to coast and from coast to finally get to Kabul. And so I leave and my deputy was on

R&R. So there's a line GS-13 case officer sitting right there. And he said, hey boss, you're going to be gone for three days. I'm going to hold down the fort. Don't worry. I won't do anything. I'm like, oh, no, that's not what I want to hear. You're running this base. You're running everything about it. I want you to be, you know, not hyper-aggressive, but do everything that we've taught each other to do because this is your turn to lead. You are now the acting chief of base. I'm not telling Kabul that you're the acting chief of base. I'm still in country, so there's no, you know, there's no formal turnover. But you're running this show, and I expect you to push forward. And, you know, these eyes are bugged out.

and off I go. So you teach people the confidence to lead like that. So I talk about that story because later on, we're dealing with this crazy operation where, you know, the weather's socked out. There's no ISR. We have an HVT on the X. And I talk about it in the book.

And people at headquarters, I was actually not there again. I was back home. And senior official at headquarters is like, we can't do this. I'm like, no, actually we can. Because I know I had people on the ground who are ready to leave. Right.

You know, they've been involved in this. And so, and so, you know, let's go. Let's do this. thing. And the senior official actually said to me, said, hey, if this goes south, it's your career. I was like, sure, I'm good. I got no problem with this. Because we've developed our people and we've gone through these stages of these leadership principles. And I've total confidence in my team. And ultimately it was a success. But I love talking about stuff like that because you know, that's how you get to a place where you operate in the gray and you're comfortable.

You know, it's fascinating talking to experienced leaders like yourself because we've had so many people on this show, like say, say those exact same things. Like, Mike Perry was on and he said, you know, I went from thinking that a soldier was a five-year investment or a 10-year investment to a lifetime investment. You know, and that the really effective leaders such as yourself are really about empowering their, and that's, I don't know, I don't know if that's easy for a lot of leaders to do because I think that sometimes are worried. Especially nowadays. Yeah, that their juniors will steal the spotlight

or that their juniors. Or they'll fuck it up and it's all on you. It'll reflect on me or, you know. So let me get, there's a principle I always talk about. I call it, you know, and all in my book is talking about dealing with adversity and humility. And so, you know, this is not a book about someone who's thumping their chest that we're going to charge the hill. And I always joke with my friends who are seals and they get really pissed to me. It was like, hey, when you

go through Bud's training, don't you get a book deal? They get really pissed when I say that, and I'll probably mad at me now when they hear this. But my book is about humility and dealing with adversity. And one of the principles I talk about is, you know, humility is best served warm. And I'll give you a great example on this. Because it's about taking responsibility and taking accountability. So I was running a unit. It was back at headquarters, but it was still, it was a unit that was designed to take our enemy off the battlefield and just kind of leave it at that.

And we had an errant strike, you know, and some civilians were hurt. and that's really bad. And so, you know, so everything you see in the media about, you know, the CIA in the U.S. well, CIA in particular about kind of, you know, collateral, civilian collateral, like that happens, but we do everything possible. You know, we cannot go through with any kind of kinetic activity without kind of almost a zero certainty for zero collateral call.

And, you know, obviously that some things go awry. So we made a mistake. Something happened. And we sat there, we kind of did a quick after action. I went up to our seventh floor and I talked about it in the book. I go in a room and it's the director of the CIA, the deputy director of 40 leaders of the agency. And they're like, what happened? The White House was pissed.

Something went wrong in the strike. And I went in there, but it was very deliberate. I said, this is my fault. You know, I run this unit. These are the three things that went wrong and we fixed it. These are the three things that we've done to fix this. Any questions? And it went on a little longer than that.

But ultimately, there was no questions. And I walked out and there was a very senior paramilitary officer. It's kind of a legend in the place. I can't say his name, but he comes up to me. And he says, hey, that was great. And I said, shit, you know, am I going to get fired from this? He's like, no, there's no questions. He said, I said, why?

He took responsibility. You protected your people and you fixed things. And so when I went back down to kind of our little unit, you know, they're expecting me to kind of, you know, start saying everyone's fired. No, I said, I got your back. And so, you know, but that kind of stuff is really important because, so what does it do? So my superiors are like, all right, Mark fucked up, but he took responsibility. There was no doubt about it.

said this is on me, done. The people who work for me are like, hey, we fucked up and Mark, you know, Mark has our back. And then we make the changes because, you know, mistakes happen all the time. There is no such thing as kind of, you know, you know, zero fail operations. And so I love talking about that. And then, but as we as CIA officers, particularly in the counterterrorism field, you know, a lot of times we have some great successes. And so you can't really walk around thinking, you know, your shit don't stink.

You got to have that sense of humility because, you know, you know, Murphy, he's going to bite you at some point. But I love talking about that principle. So, okay, so I built a team like that. And then so later on, when the shit hits the fan and people are like, what's happening here? What's going on? We don't have the situational awareness.

I'm like, you know, my guys and gals are good. Yeah, they got it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the kind of stuff that I talk about. And I think, look, the one that someone told me something, a great piece of advice. They said, don't write this book for your friends. And, you know, from, you know, from the agency or from J-Soc.

Like, you have to write this book. book for a, you know, from a librarian who's reading this. Right. I have to identify with this. And so that's what I tried to do and try to make it kind of real. But the biggest part about it is just, you know, like life is hard. Like I failed a lot. I was, you know, and I was a really good offer, you know, officer of the CIA.

But man, it's like, it's like playing baseball. You know, you hit 300. That means you're, you know, you make it, you know, seven out of ten times you're making an out. Right. Yeah. Mark, Jim has a, has an interesting question, I think, for you. he wants to know about your opinion of the conviction of John Kyriaku

did he deserve to go to prison a fellow Greek American served in the Central Intelligence Agency and if you could explain a little bit about what happened to him for people who don't know that he went to prison look I think you know so I knew John in the past actually way before you know when he got you got it kind of jammed up and I think you know what John apparently what he did incorrectly was kind of, you know, talk out of school. And so, you know, you sign a secrecy agreement with the

agency. And look, everything I'm talking about right now in the book was cleared by the agency's publication review board, which is incredible because they clear a ton. My book is chock full of operational stories, but all of it has been cleared. I think John went a little too far and did some things that he probably should not have. And it was at a time where, you know, where I believe was even under the Obama administration where, you know, they were going after folks who kind of divulge classified information. So he got, he got jammed up. I knew John a long time ago. I have not talked to him since. I will tell you just kind of as an aside, you know, I went back to Greece right before the pandemic. I gave a speech at this, you know, I was in the private sector, obviously,

and I gave a speech at some keynote speech at some Greek security conference. And boy, did the Greeks know every single Greek-American CIA officer? Like, they will talk to you about everybody. I was treated like this conquering hero. I was really I was worried like 17 November was going to come back and representing the empire. You know, anarchist group. But you know, John Curiacu is a, you know,

it's a, you know, he obviously served time in prison. But, but, you know, it's clear that he kind of he said some things that he should not have and he probably regrets that to this day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would like to have John on

the show actually to tell you the truth. You know, I think like his, his qualms were, he had some moral objections to enhance interrogation. And maybe he said some things that were inappropriate, not for me to say, but ended up, he did the time, you know, manned up to that. So, you know, what I will say, though, on this, and actually it is important is, you know, there are other outlets. And so, for example, you know, so I went public with my, with, with the issues I had with the agency. and trust me, and that was a different administration. So I had heard a lot of things kind of behind the scenes that they were trying to come after me and stuff. But in essence, I didn't violate my secrecy agreement.

But what I have done is I spent a lot of time on the hill with Hipsy, with the House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. We call it Hipsy and Sissy. Those are the oversight bodies fully read into everything, you know, into classified, you know, they have all the, all the readings. So I can talk to them about, you know, classified information. That's the right avenue. That's the avenue I chose. And so while the agency now probably is not thrilled that I do this, it's a hell of a lot better than kind of talking in public about things.

And so, you know, there are channels that one can use. Right. And that's what I, you know, that's what I have elected to do to try to kind of stay sound and abide by my secrecy agreement. Mark, could you talk to us a little bit more in depth about the so-called Greek mafia at the CIA? That there's a group of you guys up there. okay so so one of the one of the amazing things so look there's so much i could talk about so first of all let me just say overall being a greek american has been enormously helpful to me nothing to do with you know kind of the the the mafia that d thinks exists but it's more so look i was i was a case officer in the near east and so you know the greeks and the arabs were always really close and so what

i was able to do is it was pretty remarkable you know when i went and served overseas uh you know i'm an American official. But I have this Greek last name and the Arabs kind of gravitated towards me because they're like, okay, you know, you might be, you know, with the U.S. government, but you're really one of us. So it was a huge advantage. And so I'll just, I kind of throw that out there. Plus, you know, they drink Iraq and we drink Uzo.

Yeah. So the same thing. Okay. As far as the Greek, there's a long line of Greek officials in the agency. And, you know, George Tenet, I think is the most famous. You know, I think his dad owned a diner in Queens. there's Gus Afrikados. Gus Afriados is this famous figure.

You know, if you see the movie Charlie Wilson's War, you know, he was, you know, one of the individuals who kind of, you know, helped kind of, you know, run and create the Afghan program to fund the Mujahideen. And so there's always this kind of funny lore of Greek Americans, but I'm going to tell you a great story on this. This is awesome because it goes back and everything plugs my book now. Sorry.

You plug this kind of, you know, the Manscape stuff. I'm plugging my book. book. Do it. And so, so one of my principles I call, in my book, I call family values. And again, you know, you know, obviously, you know, a very common, common theme. But here's what it means to me. It means that you have to build teams that have a lot of love and respect and care for each other because that really matters when times are tough. So I'll tell you this story that it has to do with Greeks. And I think I told this to D as well. So I came back from Iraq. And it was so, you know, this was probably, you know, and like everything else in life, you know, there's, whether it's military,

special operations or intelligence, there's an award ceremony. So I got a really big award. I was lucky to receive the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. It's the agency's second highest award. And I came back. So my dad is Greek. He's not a Greek, and he's Greek American, but he's a Greek. He's solid Greek. And he remembers the days of the Greek junta, where, you know, there's a lot of abuses that happened with the right-wing government in Greece, frankly, you know, aided by the United States government and the CIA. So he's hated my career choice forever. But I'm getting this big intelligence medal in probably late 2003. And so, so I, you know, he's invited, I invite my dad to the ceremony, but of course I know George Tennant because all the Greeks and CIA know each other.

And he's the CIA director. So I go to George and I say, look, can you take my dad aside and talk to him? And so we're at the ceremony and I see George take my dad aside and they're speaking Greek together for like 15 minutes. And I come back and my dad has tears in his eyes. And I said, you know, what did the director say? He goes, nothing. nothing people thought nothing that's what he says and then and then and i see i know a couple days later i asked george ten i said what did you tell my dad and he said i told him you were a hero and wow and i'm all choked up and so i say this in terms of family values so so you know whatever you think of george tenet and he you know and of course the wmd issue is always going to haunt him but

he got it you know he understood that and so how can i not have this affinity for an organization that does that for me like he knew my dad hated the c i Right. And my dad to this day, like, and he'll, if he watches this or he reads the book because the story's in it, it'll be like, I still don't, I don't like to see. I don't get a good. Very bad organization. But, but ultimately, what George Tenet did for me really was meaningful. Right.

And he, because he did it, it was personal. So, you know, I love that story. And, but my father, you know, to this day, says, don't think I don't, it changed my mind on your organization. Right. That's funny. She's an 83 years old now. And so, you know, it's still, he's, so. So one of the funny stories, and Dee will like this, I was in Greece with him last year.

It was a father-son trip. We went down to a place called Esachia. Exarchia in Athens is the place where the Polytechnic was located. That was where 17 November was born. And so I went down there with him, and I walked the streets of him, you know, with him there. And he's like, we're going to get killed here. You're a CIA officer. But it never happened. And so, you know, we're doing okay. Yeah. We actually had a love star. Thank you very much for the very genocidation. Sorry that our moderator accidentally deleted it. He said, did, and I think he's asking both of you this, the smart guys in the room, did the fundamental cultural divide make the traditional Western material analysis null? Cue Adam Curtis. Music. That's a tough question to answer. Okay. Jack, okay. I missed that, sorry.

Here's, all right, actually, a love star reposted. For Jack, and please chime in also. America is powerful. Why wouldn't you invade us? That's in quotes. How did your lived experiences in war relate to the political education you received at home? I think what he's talking about is I had the Iraqi partner force I worked with in Iraq,

made that comment to me once. Oh, okay. And he's, you know, when the subject of the 2003 invasion came up and I said something to them like, you know, maybe it wasn't the best decision we ever made, you know, but we're here now. And, you know, we got to make the best of it, work together, you know, that kind of thing. And I'll never forget this. He remarked to me, this was the leader of the Iraqi SWAT team. He said, well, you're a powerful country.

Why wouldn't you invade us? and it's just the disparity between like how we see it as Americans and how they see it that like we have this sort of like touchy-feely kind of like we go and do all of these horrible things but then we feel bad about it afterwards we're like oh we kind of like look inward there's all this naval gazing that happens like yeah we did that but we hate ourselves for it but we're going to do it again anyway because fuck it we're a global power whereas the Iraqis, or at least that Iraqi that I knew, had this perception of like, look, the strong conquers the weak. This is the way of the world. This is how it works. And I'm not saying that's right and that America made the right decision or that like might makes right. But the disparity between the two worldviews was just incredible to hear. And it was also interesting that I thought that many Iraqis supported. the invasion and us getting rid of Saddam. They didn't have a problem with that. They hated Saddam. They were

like maybe like 80% of them were like, that was great. You got rid of them. But now the question remains, why the hell are you still here? What are you doing in our country? So it was just interesting that the sort of internal conversations we have in the United States about how we look at these conflicts are not the same internal conversations that are happening in these countries that we have invaded. And I just thought that was fascinating. That is really interesting. Well, look, I mean, I spent the majority of my career in the Middle East. And of course, you know, look, you know, this is not the disparage the Arabs. Actually, I fell in love with the region. I mean, I did so, you know, when I was a kid, and I ended up, you know, my whole career was, was there and

dedicated to kind of understanding and dealing with the Arab world. But, you know, you know, they have not been brought up with the same kind of values and norms that we have in terms of democracy. No. And that's okay. And power. And, you know, you just have to kind of, you know, understand that and, and acknowledge that.

Yeah. Let me, let me tell you a great story about, this is, it's, it's a bit similar because it has to do with Iraq. And, you know, I wrote a piece a while back in the examiner, right? And there's a guy by the name of Charlie Seidel. Charlie Seidel was our chiefest station in Baghdad during the invasion. And I call him the last great American Arabist because he really was the last great CIA officer who understood the Arab world. He spoke beautiful Arabic.

He actually, his dad was a CIA officer. He went to high school in Iran. He grew up in Pakistan in Egypt. He went to He in Beirut as well. And he spoke beautiful Arabic. And he was my chief of station in numerous places. But he was there in Baghdad at the time. And, you know, he was beloved in the Arab world.

I mean, here's someone who was it, you know, he was a gentle figure, understood the Arabs, but he also understood kind of the, you know, the power and the might of America. And I was with him, and I, and I, and I, I've thought deeply about kind of what happened in Iraq. And there's something in this in me to write a book or a screenplay, you know, somewhere down the line. But I'll never forget because we were there when, if you remember, Paul Bremer first arrived on scene. Paul Brammer was the, what was the, what was the call the coalition provincial of the CPA. Like the envoy, yeah.

He was the grand, what's the, this Roy, you know, whatever. Yeah, the vizier. And so he arrived there. And meanwhile, what Charlie and I had been doing, Charlie and I had been meeting under the table in Baghdad with senior Iraqi officials

saying, we got you. Like, we want to get rid of Saddam. But we're not going to get rid of the whole government. We understand that there are certainly people here who are war criminals, Saddam and Uday and Cusay and others, the Deca 55, for example. But the deputy minister of health, come on. You know, we need the technocrats for a future Iraqi government, and we had that place

wired. And Paul Bremer flew in and basically told Charlie to pound sand that we were going to fire the entire Iraqi military. We're going to debath, we're going to do this deep application, which in essence means we're going to, we're going to destroy the entire. Iraqi technocratic class in government. Right. And I remember the look of horror on Charlie's face saying we've lost.

And that was, that's, that's in April, that's in May of 2003, where we and the CIA said, we just made, the U.S. government just made a catastrophic error because it didn't have to go, you know, this way. And so, you know, people make mistakes, you know, countries make mistakes. And, you know, over the years, you know, sometimes good intentions. But, but boy, that was something that I think will never live down. And there's a story in that somewhere because a lot of us in the agency who knew Iraq, but I had worked in Iraq operations for a long time.

Charlie, my boss, I mean, he'd been in Iraq in 1990. Yeah. You know, during the, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. And so a lot of us were not listened to. And, you know, Bremer knew what he was doing. He's wearing desert boots with a suit. I mean, a man like that is keen on. He rolls into the country and tells someone like Charlie.

that you're describing who speaks perfect Arabic who's lived around Arabs his entire life just tells the guy to fuck off. That's exactly what happened. Charlie was devastated by that. And look what's happened after that. So this is not to kind of debate the whole kind of WMD

intelligence community fiasco. But I actually, I'm one of those who think that Iraq didn't have to end the way it did despite the WMD mess that we could have actually gotten out of there much quicker and done things a lot differently. And you know, it just, you know, I think, you know,

George W. Bush, who for all intents and purposes, is a really good person, you know, you know, there was some terrible decisions made. Yeah. That, you know, even, you know, affect us to this day. I mean, even prior to the whole deep bathification, if they would have just leafleted all these areas and told the soldiers remain in place

were taken over your payroll. Right, right. You still have a job. Just stay where you are. Put down your weapons. We're going to drive by you. But you still have jobs. Then you wouldn't have had all those disaffected people with no money turn into these.

You work for Saddam? Now you're going to work for America Light. Yeah. No worries. Okay. So I'm going to throw the show into a little tailspin. Now let's move to Afghanistan with the same issue. Yeah.

So here I am in Eastern Afghanistan in 2011. I'm sorry. Yeah, 2011. And I'm talking to someone who's helping us. And he's, you know, he's someone, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, local tribal chief in eastern Afghanistan. I said, tell me about yourself. And he said, well, you know, I was part of the Mujahideen against the Soviet invasion.

But then, you know, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He said, I was a communist under Najibullah. Remember the old Najibullah, the old, you know, the Soviet-backed ruler of Afghanistan, communist. And then, you know, he wasn't, it wasn't going so well. So I switched to the Mujahideen. This is a senior trouble shake. and the moves were there.

And then, you know, the Taliban took over and it was kind of chaotic, but then you guys came, so I'm switching over to you right now. And so I said to him, I said, what are you going to do when we leave? He goes, I'll switch right to the Taliban. Right? Yeah. All politics is local. Yep.

Andrew says, fun fact, flaccid is one of the most commonly mispronounced words in the English language. the correct pronunciation is flak, Sid. Listen, Andrew, no one likes a smart ass, all right? Metalhead says, I've got the whole manscape set at home. They're great. Jamison says, okay, here we go. Can you mention how Delta integrates into CIA? So, okay, so I think, you know, look, like, ultimately, J-Soc and CIA,

it's a really interesting, interesting relationship, and I've written a lot about this. And so, you know, it's a relationship that, was born, not born, it's been going on for a long time, but certainly has flourished after 9-11. And so, so, you know, what has happened, and one of the things that I find most interesting, as I know, my friends from Steel Team 6 or Delta or the other units we're not supposed to talk about what we can tonight on this show. But ultimately, you know, these were people that, these are individuals that I met, you know, probably in Afghanistan or around the Afghan CT fight.

And then it went to Iraq and then it went to Yemen. And then it went to, you know, so 20, years later, you know, we've all grown up together. So there is, there is an incredible synergy between between the Joint Special Operations Command and the agency. And because ultimately, the agency is designed to kind of feed intelligence for the CT mission and the direct action elements, you know, you know, lie in J-Soc. And so it's, it's a relationship that I think has been, you know, pretty extraordinary. I, you know, there's, you know, everyone wants to hear that the relationship is terrible. And I actually, you know, to the contrary, I have great friends from Army and Navy and then also Air Force, you know, special operations units.

And, and as kind of the years went by, you know, you have a lot of trust together. So I'll give you a perfect example. There's, you know, I remember a time, I'm going to be careful in saying this. There was, you know, there's a bad, there's a bad J-Sox strike in the Middle East and and a lot of kind of recriminations. But you know what? We managed through this because we all knew each other. And we kind of, we got through it because there's personal relationships that have been

formed. And so, you know, it's two organizations, you know, whether you say Delta, you know, when I say Delta, it's the same thing as still Team 6 or, you know, or the race. It's basically J-Soc altogether, whether it's the Rangers or, you know, First Recon Marines or whatever. But, you know, we've kind of grown up together and we're kind of attached at the hip. And the fact of the matter is they, you know, we work very well together. And, you know, these are my kind of brothers and sisters in arms. And I will always think of them in that fashion. I'm just curious, did you ever run into like conflicts because you have an organization like J-Soc that normally works sort of tactical ground game?

That's a broad generalization I'm making. But an organization that deals on a tactical level, whereas the CIA traditionally is working to collect strategic intelligence. Does that ever conflict with one another? You know, I think that for me, the answer is no. you know, because ultimately so, you know, because our coordination or our time on the ground together with J-SAC is going to be more in a tactical environment. You know, I think what's really interesting and, you know, maybe we pivot to this now is, so, you know, so where do J-SAC and the CIA move now into a more strategic situation, which

is, you know, I was corrected the other day. I was calling it the near-peer environment. But this is when we're talking about how do J-SAC and the CIA work together to, to, to, to, against China and Russia, frankly, which we call New York Pier, or there's been a different name change. And so, you know, that to me is really interesting. But, you know, the way, and I've written quite a lot about this, because ultimately I think that, you know, the U.S. government got really good at manhunting. You know, so there's no better organization in the world, and it's the intelligence community, the CIA combined with, you know, kind of, you know, the J-Soc elements where we can, you know, ultimately put up. on the X, just about anybody around the world. It's not a question of if we can do it,

it's should we can do it. You know, should, I'm sorry, should we do it? And I, you know, the, you know, there's, there's so many examples of the Soleimani strike is a perfect example of, you know, our ability to do this. And so, but now what do we do when it comes to Russian intelligence officers, Chinese intelligence officers, you know, Chinese or Russian, you know, malign influence, covert influence efforts. And I think that it's a really interesting subject to talk about how the CIA and J-Soc kind of partner together against that. And I know both of you have commented on social media and Twitter, you know, one way or the

other on this. But, you know, that's the new game right now. I recommend direct energy weapon personally. Well, yeah. I'm right with you, Dave. I'll be there. How do you see that, Mark? how do you see both J-Soc and the CIA in that liaison relationship

shifting gears to go from counterterrorism, you know, hunting down bad guys, catching them in their beds, to now going and fucking with some powerful countries, you know, their global powers, like it or not. Cold Wars almost. Yeah. Right, right. So here's what I kind of espoused before I retired in July of 19. And I wrote about recently, and I think, you know, in some of my kind of, columns and it got a lot of positive feedback. And then some blowback too. But ultimately, okay,

if we're really good at manhunting, you know, and this is this has to do with, you know, you know, obviously al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Isbullah, you know, you name it. What do we want to do in kind of more established countries? Okay, let's say it's Europe. Well, we want to, we want to find out, we want to track the activities of the Russian GRU and SBR officers or the Chinese MSS officers. And so can, you know, the agency in partnering with JSOC do that? So it's going to be a little different. So we're not doing it to put them on the X, but, but I see no reason. I see no reason why we can't ask our J-Soc, you know, brothers and sisters, if they're trained correctly. And it has a lot to do with training. But can we put them on the street to help us develop what I, what I call, you know,

what we call pattern of life? You know, ultimately to determine what a Russian GROU or Chinese MSS officer is doing an XYZ country. And that's really important because either we're going to try to kind of shut them down operationally or maybe we're going to try a recruitment pitch. Why not use those capabilities that we've developed with J-Soc because they know how to do this? And that was kind of my pitch when I was in government and it's been kind of what I espoused afterwards. Now, there's a lot more that that goes that, you know, that, you know, that, you know, that, you know,

that, you know, J-Soc has to do. But I think in this niche, I think they can really help. and they're going to look a little different. So I remember going to kind of units in J-Soc that do this. I'm like, okay, the white guy with tattoos, you know, on their arms, is that you Dave right there or Jack? I don't know. I can't use you right now.

Right. But you know what? But there are J-Soc elements that do have, you know, people with different ethnic backgrounds. There's female officers. And so can we use you for manhunting, you know, on the street to find out the pattern of life of a hostile intelligence officer? officer. And I would argue that you can. Now, the mindset is going to be a little different for

J-Soc. And I would always caution my J-Soc colleagues is like, okay, everyone loves zero dark 30, like you guys killed bin Laden, you guys are rock stars. Guess what? You might actually never know what happens. So you're going to have to have that maturity to say, okay, we've given the CIA target package. We followed this Russian intelligence officer for six weeks in XYZ country. Off to you. Right. Guess what is the CIA? For compartmentation reasons, we might not tell you. Right. And you have the maturity. And so, you know, that's kind of my paradigm on this. I think it can be done. I hope it's being done right now. Outside of just even like the ethnic considerations or skin color considerations, I think one of the other challenges you run in with J-Soc with any elements

is you put three or four J-Soc operators. It doesn't matter what their color is, particularly males, on the street. You've got three yote dudes walking around. You know what I mean? That brought attention, you know. And I think that's what he said, like those yoked dudes that have like the nautical star tattoo on the neck. Like they're not going to be. Yeah. Yeah.

Even without the tattoos, I mean, you know, it's not often that you see people at that level of fitness out in public in general. But then you see three or four of them. And it's like, what is today like national fitness day? or like what's going on is there you know yeah no but but so you so you know then you need you know selection has to maybe change a bit right on some of these units

how many Oreos can or you can wear disguise or you know look there are there are ways you can kind of you know you know you don't like maybe you're not wearing your uh you know your Oakley's and your 5-1 cargo pants I was and your uh your Solomon

sneakers which is the fucking exact profile of every J-Soc person I've ever met. All right, listen, listen, Mark, I resemble some of these comments. You were in Sullivan's right now? Yes, you are. Merrill's actually.

Merrill, same thing, right? Well, I was watching a hearing not so long ago where General Nagata, who he served in a special mission unit, served in the special operations community. He's retired now. He was saying that this is, this is

absolutely true. However, we also want to maintain our counterterrorism capabilities because as we saw during the years of the Soviet Union and even to today, we're also going to see state-sponsored terrorism that as we try to confront Russia and China, these possibly, it's a possibility, they may wage war beneath the nuclear threshold by sponsoring terrorist organizations. Yeah. So that's right. And I think that, you know, so we can't take our eye off the ball. Look, there's so much on our plate. We have Russian-blind influence. China is clearly the existential threat. I think one of the most interesting things is that between the Trump administration and the Biden administration, there's actually agreement. Yeah. China is the correct of our time. Yeah, yeah. It is.

But we can't take our eye off the CT ball, you know. And so, you know, this is my bailiwick for most of my career was counterterrorism. It's what I love. But you're right. So, so, so, you know, you worry that you don't want, those, you know, that critical capability to atrophy in any way. Right. So you still have to have those units that do that. And, you know, maybe it's a good time to kind of jump into kind of the discussion on the Afghan withdrawal. Yeah. That's one of the things that I'm actually really concerned about.

Because ultimately, I just personally, I don't see the reason why we had to go to zero there. You know, not having a residual force of about 2,500 where you still can have CIA intelligence assets and, you know, officers on the ground and a residual kind of CT force, you know, I think that we've taken that critical element of humans away by, with a full withdrawal. And I'll tell you, I think we're going to, we're going to see some really grim, grim, you know, videos, grim, grim, grim stuff on TV about the collapse of Afghanistan. It's going to be really hard for a lot of us. Because, like, 2,500, to me, and this is nothing.

This is not something that should be even up for debate. I don't understand what we have to go down to zero. So you think there should be like a residual counterterrorism force left behind in the country? Absolutely. Sure, sure. And so that would include, you know, agency officers and paramilitary officers and also J-Soc. 100%. If you look at it, you know, we have no other allies in the region.

If you think, you know, I always talked about Pakistan as the ally from hell. I sat on eastern Afghanistan and kind of fought against the, Taliban and al-Qaeda aided by elements of the Pakistani military. You know, Pakistan is not our friend. If you think the stands, you know, all kind of this, the old Russian satellites, which are their own countries now, but if you think that, you know, Vladimir Putin is not going to put pressure on them to say no to kind of U.S. basing, you know, maybe we can fly, you know, kind of MQ9s from, you know,

from the Gulf states. And I think that's one of the plans that I've seen in the press. But ultimately, you know, a full pull out of Afghanistan. It's just for me and a lot of people, you know, in kind of my world, you know, at the CIA, it just doesn't make sense because we're not talking about 50,000 or 100,000 troops. We're talking about a tiny residual force. You know, it's the concept of defend forward. And I don't, and you can actually say we've withdrawn from Afghanistan and it's over and still

have that force of 2,500 there or whatever it is to keep some assets in place. And so I just, I don't understand it. I was very upset when President Trump advocated this and I'm even more upset that Biden has jumped onto it. And then you see press reports now where Secretary of Defense and others, we're thinking about options on how to do kind of over the horizon on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's stuff that should have been pre-cooked already.

Years ago. It's crazy. We're way ahead of the, you know, what do you say, you're pushing the cart above the horse here or whatever. I'm getting that analogy wrong. So you're not really looking at maintaining forces in Afghanistan, necessarily for like maintaining a stable Afghanistan or continuing the war on Afghanistan, but more of a satellite or a platform in that region because we don't have other platforms in that.

Is that right? That's exactly right. And because, you know, again, I go back to the paper I wrote when I first, came on as an analyst in 1993. And if I have any credibility, it's going back to there, which, you know, which talked about the Afghan Arabs. And, but, but the whole point was we abandoned Afghanistan after, after we defeated the Soviet, you know, the Soviets there.

And, and empty spaces and ungoverned spaces, which is about to happen there, is, is a breeding ground for terrorism. And so I don't, I don't think what I'm advocating is anything radical. And look, I believe we should not be fighting in Afghanistan anymore. but that doesn't mean we can't have a small residual force. And so, you know, I have a lot of friends who, I think, in the intelligence community, who really feel strongly about this in the same way. Because what I think you're going to see is, you know,

is scenes of, you know, what we saw, you know, in Saigon with, you know, with embassy evacuations. I mean, I don't fundamentally understand how the U.S. Embassy in Kabul or any Western embassy, you know, will remain there. I just don't see it. I think you're going to see some pretty gruesome images. and I don't understand why the Biden administration, who was really critical of that Trump, you know,

kind of decision to just get out? Yeah, yeah. Why we couldn't have left just a small force there. I don't get it. You know, the United States has a policy historically of what I call defend forward. That's putting U.S. troops forward. It doesn't mean 100,000 U.S. troops, you know, let's, you know, but it certainly doesn't mean, you know, it certainly shouldn't be, you know, down to zero.

So, do they continue combat ops? in Afghanistan or are they more there? Like I'm just trying to grasp. I think you'll continue. So it's a, you know, there's obviously the CT elements that are there, but certainly you can aid the Afghan government and pushing back

against the Taliban. And, you know, but you have to be on the ground there. Yeah. There's no way we do this, you know, especially if the embassy collapses and it's going to. There's no doubt in my mind that we're going to see you know, you know, some some pretty gruesome images.

of our withdrawal from the embassy. I mean, in my opinion, for whatever that may or may not be worth, I think that before all was said and done that we'll see something like that, a battalion-sized element left behind in Afghanistan, I think that they're going to, our government will cave at some point. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong, but. Jack, I mean, like, because it just, it doesn't make sense in any way not to have that. And when the television images come where we're back to, or not us, but the Taliban is back to cutting women's throats and soccer stadiums, there's going to be a certain pushback to that, in my opinion.

Yeah. And so I don't understand this. And, you know, it seems to be there's almost sometimes a knee-jerk reaction that we have to go to zero. But I don't think what people understand what zero really means. And then, you know, and look, and then, you know, I did my book signings yet. I did my book launch the other day, which was, you know, you do this at an indie, you know, Jack, you might remember this. You at your local bookstore and your friends and family come.

And a whole bunch of my teammates from Afghanistan came. That's cool. I hadn't seen them for years. This was freaking awesome. And in fact, you know, talking about my leadership book, I'm going to give another plug here. One of my guys from Afghanistan came and told my son, there you go. And he goes to say, hey, Mark was the best leader we ever had. And, of course, I was busy signing books and I missed it.

and what an idiot and I wrote him a note later on. But one of the things that every single one of my teammates talked about was kind of the Afghan Indage and the interpreters. And kind of, and the utter horror that we're kind of all feeling about this. And I'll tell you something. As a CIA operations officer, I learned Arabic,

but you know what? I didn't know Darya or Pashto, and I had a turp with me every time I went for any agent meeting. you know every time we we kind of rolled outside the wire and every you know i had to kind of try to you know i had to try to play badass and roll out with the ground branch guys and so when i went out on patrols with them we had afghan turps with us um the fact that these guys might be in peril like that causes me the night like that's horrible um and so so you know that that's uh i'm really worried of what we're going to see in the next couple you know kind of weeks and months uh Mitch says

uh i arrived late so i may have missed it as mark talking about the kind of thing like the Havana syndrome. Yeah, that's what he's talking about. If you go back, you'll see it. Jim B says, can Mark touch on the career progression issues that headquarters based officers may face within the Directorate of Operations? Thank you. I enjoyed the book. Oh, well, first, thank you that you enjoyed the book. That makes me happy. So, look, so, you know, the one of the things that I talk about in the book, so, so first of all, there's all different kinds of CIA officers. So obviously you have field operations officers. You can have our military officers. And there's a ton of officers who stay back at headquarters. And there's nothing wrong with that.

And you do that for a variety of reasons. But one of my principles in the book is called the glue guy. And I can say the blue guy, glue gal as well. But my principle, the glue guy is, you know, there are always indispensable members of the team and even a high performing kind of elite team that are going to be in the shadows. They're going to be in the background. And as a leader, you really have to take care of them. And so, you know, so whether, you know, let's say we take, the CIA conducts an operation if we kill bin Laden or we capture an HVT or anything like that. Always those in the front, you know, the tip of the spear are going to be rewarded.

But as a leader, you have to kind of sit back and always say, okay, who else, you know, participate in this. And so, you know, that's one of the things that I learned, you know, and so, you know, what I would always talk about, you know, our headquarters operations, a headquarters officer supporting operations or the analysts or anyone else. Like this is a team sport in a huge way and everybody has to be rewarded. And I'll give you kind of a really silly example. So we're in eastern Afghanistan.

We run an operation. We actually put a Taliban member on the X and they are no longer with us. I call an all hands meeting in our skiff, you know, in our secure facility. I'm like, you know what? You know, fuck this. we're going out to the fire pit and I get our cooks. Our cook was from Macedonia. I don't even fucking know his name.

But I know he cooks good food. I'm like, get the cook, get the support guy, get all these people out here. And we're going to all come together. And I sat there and I told him what we had done. And people, like, and I remember my deputy is like, hey man, like, they're not clear for that. I'm like, I don't care. We just took a bad guy off the battlefield. And that cook is the reason why the GB guys could go out on patrol.

That cook is why you're not kind of shitting in the corner. we're in eastern Afghanistan. And so everybody has to be celebrated. And so that's kind of a key principle of mine. So, you know, look, the CIA is a forward-leading organization. We are an overseas organization, but our headquarters personnel, and they're not necessarily support personally. They could be analysts, they could be targeters.

They're just as important. So you kind of have to celebrate them all the time. And that's one of the leadership principles that I, you know, it took me a while to get to, but I really celebrated, you know, at the end of my career. Jake has kind of a very specific question here. He says, Hi, Mark, I'm an Arabian Peninsula analyst, and I'm having a hard time being an effective analyst. There isn't much going on in the area. What can I do? I don't even know. I mean, I don't know. If you're in the Arabian Peninsula, you have Yemen,

which is kind of a mess. You have Muhammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia who likes to kill American journalists, and is probably bipolar and a little psychotic. I don't know. It seems to me... There's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. I mean, starts... I mean, you know, the, you know, the rabid...

To me, it was really interesting. I served in that area of the world at one point. And, you know, it's a region which is fascinating because for a long time, it was not as important. But then under the Trump administration, clearly they pivoted towards that. And Trump had this fascination with the... Saudi, obviously with Saudi, you know, Jared Kushner spent a lot of time going there. But ultimately, if you look at the Arab Peninsula, there is one country there that is kind of a

success story, and that's the UAE. The United Arab Emirates is, I don't know if either of you guys have been there, but it's pretty extreme. You go to Dubai, you're kind of taken aback at what they've done. And so it's a pretty amazing place. And then, you know, right in front of them is the threat of Iran. So I don't know. I think a lot's going around. A lot. What's going on in the Gulf. You've got a shooting war going on in Yemen. You got Oman there and some stuff going just beneath the surface. You scratch hard enough.

They're smuggling going on across the Gulf of Aden. There's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, yeah. Andrew says, how does Mark feel about John Kirooku posting a gig with Radio Sputnik? Yeah, so I don't like that. That's not good. I'm going to be honest. And so, you know, so I don't know if John is, you know, is, you know, kind of needs employment or not, but, but, and I'll say this.

And I'm not, I'm not going to denigrate another, you know, former agency officer. I will say, though, that, you know, there are, you know, media outlets, which are obviously sponsored and controlled by the Russian government, whether it's Russia today, RT or Sputnik. And to me, those are arms of the Russian government. And so I'm not a really big fan of them. Their dissemination mechanisms for Russian propaganda is pretty obvious. And so I'm not a giant fan. I would not, if they ask me to come on and trust me, I'm trying to sell my book all over the place, I'll go on left wing radio, right wing radio, I don't care, I'm not going on.

I'm with you, Mark. This is getting a little bit down in the weeds. But I've noticed a phenomena where we have American citizens. who were U.S. government employees, they get into some kind of trouble. Maybe they become whistleblowers. Maybe they get in trouble with Department of Justice. They do some time.

Maybe they don't. But they become, for one reason or another, ostracized. And it seems like they end up running into the hands of the legs of RT and Sputnik and some of the Iranian press, like press TV. Do you, how do you think we should handle that? Do you think that even the guys who get into trouble that there should be some sort of reconciliation process to bring them back into the fold so that they don't run off to these foreign press? I love this question.

And I'll tell you something. And I'll tell you why I love this. And it's actually something I will admit to you that I have actually discussed with our director with Bill Burns. Because I think there is a really bad tendency of agency officers, you know, when they retire, you know, to, you know, to, you know, sometimes they're disgruntled or something's happened to them, but something goes wrong. It doesn't happen in the U.S. military like this, but for some reason it happens at the agency. And so there's got to be a better way that we kind of embrace the farmers. That's what, you know, that's what kind of, that's what everyone is called it, are the farmers.

And so, you know, you know, that the worst thing possible is for them to do what you just, what you just talked about. So there's got to be a way to embrace them more. for some reason when people leave the agency so many people even at the senior levels are unhappy and there's something wrong with that and we've kind of got to get to the bottom of that and we have to kind of bring them back into the fold and brace them more look I look for you know for a long time after I went public I was ostracized people did not like the fact that I went public begging for health care but you know I think director Burns has been really smart about this and kind of brought me

back into the fold as have others and so you know there's there's there's no There's nothing good that happens in talking to an RT or a Sputnik. Right. Period. Right. That, you know, that's, and, you know, in the times where, you know, I was fighting with the agency for health care, that never even crossed my mind in a minute second. That, to me, is going to the enemy, period. Yeah.

I agree with you. I also think that, one, I mean, if people are looking for employment or money and these other, like, those are the only outlets that they think. think they can get that some people that's what they might choose and with the with with it being more like intelligence people than military it could be that those people are just more valued

by those agencies have more opportunities with those agencies and say you know somebody from the military would you know because there's a there's a mystique obviously I mean I can tell you I've I've definitely gotten invited on RT many times

invited on press TV all those outlets before. Thanks, but no thanks. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, it's like working for the enemy, but, I mean, if you wanted to go on there and tell them that, you know, that Vladimir Putin is, you know,

it's a big. You know, look, like, I think that that it cannot be an outlet. You know, it can't be the last resort for people. And so, you know, simply for a counterintelligence perspective, if you go to a place like Sputnik or RT, that is to me that's an organ of Russian intelligence. And that's a place you don't want to be. Right.

Yeah. Just disappear. It's also part of the overall propaganda battle, right? I mean, it's not just intelligence, but it's also, hey, look, RT has this four-old of CIA. They want to have, and I know other reporters too who have been, you know, invited on there. They want to have someone like me on there because I sometimes write and I say things that are critical of the United States government. But that comes from a place of, I just want to. to be better. I'm not sure as hell not involved going over to the other side and trying to.

Jack, you're 100% right. So it's so funny you say that because that is the essence of being an American, of being a, of being a, you know, existing in a democracy, of being a patriot. Of course you can criticize your government. You have a First Amendment right to do so. Right. I mean, that's 100% accepted and accurate. But not with our teeth. Yeah. I'm with you, man. I have your idea about sort of bringing them back into the folder, you know. Yeah, yeah. Like that, I think that is a very, it's important because once people do feel ostracized,

it's difficult for us to do, but just my, in my opinion, having seen what some of these guys go through, I don't agree with a lot of what they've done, but I also think that it's maybe a mistake to just leave them in the wind. Yeah. I agree with you, 100%. No, you're right. And so I think we have to look back and say, okay, how have they gotten to that place? Yeah. Yeah.

And so, you know, and like, I mean, you know, John, you know, we're talking about John. You know, so, so again, it's a, you know, so why did he feel that it was necessary to go talk to them? Right, right, right, right. You know, when you have, I mean, I remember, I was curious about this because I looked and, you know, there was, I don't know if I'm going to get the news organization wrong, but it was, it was a San Francisco paper, San Francisco Chronicle or something like that saying, you know, what a patriot he was. to speak out against torture. There are organizations in the United States that should be able to embrace him,

but to go to what I consider is the enemy right. Right. KT asks, for those who are unaware, please ask Mark about the history of Soviet international terrorism, starting with its inventor, KGB General Alexander Sakharovovsky. I don't know.

Do you know anything about that, Mark? I don't know. Well, okay. So I think that probably the best way to answer this is, you know, if you go back to kind of the classical terrorist groups of the 1970s, you know, the Soviet Union certainly sponsored them, whether it was the, you know, PFLP GC or the PFLP, G.C. With Wadiah, Haddad and Abu Dahl. Yeah. There was always a Soviet sponsor and, and, and, and, or, or an East German sponsor. And so, look, this was, you know, what, what, what are the, you know, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the.

book that I love and it's it's going to cause you know people to probably going to fall asleep at night but it's called the Matroken archives and and it's it's a book that you know ultimately it's a it's a it's a Soviet intelligence officer

who defected to the Brits and brought a whole bunch of stuff with them and they wrote a book about it but it's actually it's super interesting because it details so much of what the Soviet Union did in terms of you know their efforts against the United States against the West, but also in the kind of in the CT realm. And so look, at the end of the day that, you know, the Soviet Union was sponsoring international terrorist movements, particularly, you know, the Palestinian movements. And so, you know, there's, there's kind of a long history of that.

You know, it's documented. It's not a surprise. It's part of their kind of their great struggle against the West. Alex asks, oh, this is pretty specific too. Mark, can you please explain the capabilities of the CIA's Maritime Branch? Are they more like aquatic listening outposts or seal teams? Jeez. Oh, I don't even know how to answer that.

You know, probably better to pass on that. I mean, when you start getting into specific, yeah. I... I'm branch or maritime branch. It's probably better to pass. You know, we have maritime

capabilities, just leave it at that. I will take the time to just plug something I wrote that may answer a bit of his question. I know what you're going to write. I know what you're going to say right now as well. There's an article that I wrote that was published by Yahoo.

The title is the CIA sent a team of four operators on a spy mission targeting China and none came back. If you go and read that article, it'll give you the gist of it. And that's a heartbreaking article. It is. It's fucking tragic, honestly, what happened to those four guys. Andrew says I think the name is I think he means Michael Schuller

is he as crazy as he sounds I'm talking about Mike Schoyer I know what he's talking about so Mike Schoier was a former agency analyst who then was one of the bosses of what we call it Alex Station and this was pre 9-11 in which it was a unit

you know, mainly an analytic unit that was tracking Usama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. And one of the things, kind of the sad things, is that Mike Schoier, over the years, kind of has kind of degenerated a little bit. And so he's turned into a QA-9 guy. Yeah. You know, he was someone, I knew him as an agency officer.

He was a very good agency officer. He was a great analyst on Afghanistan kind of in the 1990s. You know, he was one of the first chiefs of Alex Station. Again, this was the unit that was designed to track UBL and Al Qaeda, but something went wrong. And so he's a kind of a full-bore QA-N conspiracy theorist now and, you know, what do you say? How do you think that happens, Mark? And I've witnessed it also with some special operations guys. I mean, you're talking about, in the case of Michael, a highly intelligent, high-performing individual.

how do you think they go down that rabbit hole I don't know you know so you know it's look I think this is a sad case you know I don't like talking about it all that much because it's someone who I you know I liked and I thought it was really brilliant for a long time and that was truly you know kind of gone off the wall

you know I don't know I mean I think look I live in northern Virginia it's a it's a suburb that has you know you know you might think it's pretty progressive but i have a lot of friends who are kind of trump supporters and i have some friends who are kind of kind of the kooky cueing on folks um it's hard to deal with people like that i don't know these are people who i really like um you know i have friends who are at you know at the capital on january 6th and it's really hard um for me to deal with them uh but but you know you kind of you know making that switch you know i don't know i i don't know

your guess is as good as mine how you kind of go down that rabbit because these were really great Americans, they're friends of mine and took a turn for the worst and I have no problem if someone is out, you know, talking about their

First Amendment rights, they can do anything they want, but you know, kind of the assault on the Capitol, I have friends who kind of, you know, were involved in that and that's been very difficult for me to deal with. Yeah, you've got to draw the line somewhere. And likewise, Yeah, it's super painful.

And I mean, I've mentioned it before. Someone who is my direct superior in special forces was at the Capitol that day. It's painful. It's really painful. I don't know how you come back from that. And in fact, I'm not going to get into names, but I have not talked to it. So I remember seeing a video and I was like, oh, my God, he's there. And I've not talked to him since then.

I don't know if I can. You know, that to me was kind of a bridge too far. not to say that. Like half my friends are Republicans, half my friends are Trump voters. That's fine. This is going way beyond. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I live in Washington.

Like, you know, there's Republicans and Democrats everywhere. And I mean, for God's sakes, I write, you know, I decided to write a column for a conservative newspaper, even though that's not really my political bent. That's fine to me. But those who've kind of taken that step a little darker and deeper, I don't know. That's a, that's hard. I don't know how to deal with that, frankly. I'll look to you all for advice, too,

because I have friends who are at the Capitol. I've not talked to them since. I'm still working on it myself, Mark. I'm afraid to say. I mean, I'm kind of in the corner where I don't think that there was, I mean, I think people's right to protest, people right, prejudice. I don't think everybody that was at the Capitol is guilty of some grand treason.

I think the people who broke in, the handful of people that broke in, you know, were, you know, going above and beyond. You know, but like I don't look at everybody who is there as having committed some great crime anymore than people protesting outside the White House. I'm talking about people who kind of broke in. Well, that's, and that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't know, you know, and it's weird, you know. I don't know. I don't know how to feel about it because, you know, first off, I'm not the protesting type of person for court anything, really.

I think I'm too lazy, so I can't even put myself in the shoes of being out someplace like that. Right, exactly. But I don't know. You know, I just, I don't know. You know, actually, I like this conversation two hours into it because everyone's had a couple of drinks. Yeah. No, no, but to me, this is actually really important because, and it's important because those of us in our world, and this is, you know, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your viewership or listenership, whether it's, you know, Intel or spec ops or, or, you know, or regular military or whatever, like this is our world right now. And I think everybody is struggling with this. I have great friends, you know, in the community who I think have, have kind of gone astray. and frankly, I don't know what to do about it. And these are people who were great Americans,

great patriots I might have served with. But boy, it's tough. I also have to say, though, that I'm a little procured. I 100% do not agree with what happened at the Capitol. I 1% believe that anybody who committed a crime needs to be arrested for that crime, that we have rights on the Constitution, They have the right to peacefully assemble, all these things.

But anybody who committed a crime needs to be arrested for that crime. But I'm also somewhat perturbed that nobody at all talks about the same thing happening at the White House with like 60 secret service agents and officers being injured. One of the guard shacks being burnt down. The gates being, you know, breached. But it's not accurate because lots of people have talked about it. I think you froze. A lot of, yeah, it looks like Mark's internet connection may have dumped.

But, I mean, lots of people have talked about it. And if you go through the arrest records for Washington, D.C., there are like hundreds and hundreds. But we don't mention them in the same breath. Why don't we mention that? I mean, aren't they the same thing? You're mentioning it right now. I am. But aren't we talking about the same thing?

We are talking about U.S. citizens, I mean, attacking government bills. And I really want Mark to be in on this. Yeah, he's going to have to call us back. Hey, if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe to our channel. Hit the little bell icon to get your notification. Also check on on Patreon. We have a new level on Patreon now, don't we? Yeah, we're doing a couple bonus episodes in month for people who are supporting us on Patreon.

And there's also a link in the description for the merch. There's T-shirts and there's coffee mugs. And what else do we got going on? Oh, we have our Instagram at the dot team house or dot team dot house. Yep, it's all down in the description. But yeah, on our Patreon, you know, we have our normal $1 support, which will get you all of our bonus content. Or we talk to our guests about, you know, things that maybe, you know, funny stories, body stories, you know, just random things that maybe they didn't get a chance to tell her they didn't want to talk about. And now we have the new $5 level of support, which is another two meetings of just Jack and I shooting the shit and D actually joining us.

So, you know, put some brothers up. Peter says, Jack, can you get two GWAT experienced guys to debate both sides of the full pullout versus residual force in Afghanistan? That's not a not at all a bad show idea. something we think about so I don't know what happened to Mark unfortunately we've never really had the internet the plug pulled like that before

so we're kind of like but we were kind of starting to come to the natural end of the show so maybe we can end it here and try to get Mark back to do the bonus segment in a moment and no I'm sorry guys that we lost Mark

hopefully did the Russians get him? I don't know. Is there, is there the SWAT team come and hit his house and they bowed them up and they're carrying them off right now? We don't know. Oh, there he is. Hey, Mark, how you doing, man?

I don't know what happened there. We see your tech support just left. What just happened? We were wondering if the Russians came and got you or maybe the Department of Justice blew in your door and they were hauling you off. I just say, I don't know, my, everything went crazy and we synced

with my iPhone, so sorry about that. Okay, so thank you, Mark. I appreciate you coming back. Yeah. I think we're kind of coming towards the natural conclusion of the show. Mark, if we can do the bonus segment with you for a few minutes, that'd be really cool. Mark, I was just

going to ask you, because one of the things that perturbs me about talking about the Capitol, and again, I am not advocating anything that happened. I believe you committed crime, you get charged for the crime. But What the terms of me about it is that people do not talk about what happened in the Capitol and what talked about the White House. You know, like 60 Secret Service agents and officers getting injured, a guard shack getting burned down, the gates getting breached.

They don't talk about those things in the same breath. Like, that people pretend as though the whole thing at the White House never happened. And I think to be fair, we just have to say people are out of control right with this stuff. That's me, though. Well, you know, I don't know. I think that there's a there's kind of an inability to have any kind of conversation in this country right now. And I think that just in my view, like the, you know, I think there should be some kind of commission that kind of looks at what happened on January 6th because it's, you know, it's a pretty dark day in our country. I don't particularly care how they do it.

But there's got to be something. And the fact that we are unable to kind of come to a agreement between, you know, the Republicans and Democrats, Democrats, Democrats to actually kind of, you know, go forward and take a, take a hard look at what happened. It's not about the security failures of the Capitol Police. That's silly. It's got to be kind of un-inherently what happened there. I think that's the point. So, you know, it's a, it's a, that's the times we live in, you know, we'll see. Yeah. So, hey, everybody. I mean, Chagall Mark's book, clarity in crisis, a great leadership, but but also, I mean, just great to see the insights of somebody who's been there and done that and led in all different types of environments.

And I hope you guys really enjoyed this episode. And if you liked it, go check out episode 67, the last episode we did with Mark, gets into a lot of his kind of boots on the ground experiences. The career and talking about the Chapman bombing, doing HVT hits with Steel Team 6 in Iraq, some really interesting stuff in there. Let me, I'm going to throw you guys another loop. Let me get a really quick story. Yeah.

Okay. So one of the really cool things I did last week, or maybe 10 days ago. So, you know, one of the GRS officers, one of our security officers who was killed there, Jeremy Weiss. His brother is a guy by the name of Bo Weiss. Bo Weiss was a Marine, and he was deployed in Afghanistan during the time of Jeremy's death. And so him and an author, a local author here in Vienna, by the name of Tom Saleh wrote a book. and it's called the Three Weiss Man because ultimately it's an amazing story

so Beau Weiss who was a Marine his two older brothers Jeremy who worked for us in CIA and this older brother Ben who's a special forces operator both of them were killed in action and so it's extraordinary this guy is a double

gold star brother that's insane yeah and so so you know a couple months ago Tom Sillera reached out to me and said hey you know this guy my friend Bo, who I'm writing a book with, wants to come see his brother Jeremy's star on the wall at CIA headquarters. And so I arranged the whole thing. I called in the office.

I talked to the director of Bill Burns. And we got him in. And so Bo Weiss, you know, a couple days ago, maybe 10 days ago, came in. You know, former Marine, he's retired now. But he came in and he saw his brother's star, Jeremy on the wall, the memorial wall of CIA headquarters. Amazing moment. and I just want to kind of throw that out there as kind of our segment to end it

because it was pretty cool had they not invited the family when they put the show? No, they did, but but you know look, I'm not, I can't throw a dig on the Marine Corps, but but Bo was deployed in Afghanistan and didn't let him come home.

Right. So he didn't see the memorial ceremony at CIA headquarters and so you know, it was neat for him to see me, it's the wrong word. It was emotional, it was powerful for him to see his brother's star on the wall at Langley. And that was really awesome. And, you know, look, like I tried to do so many.

Obviously, as you talked about, you know, my role in the whole operation. And so, you know, there's a lot of things I want to do for Bo. But the other thing I did was I called a whole bunch of friends. I live in the D.C. area. And, you know, we got Bo to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals game. That's amazing. That was so freaking cool. He's a huge baseball.

fan. It was so awesome. And, you know, I said, you know, over the couple days of meeting Bo and talking to him, amazing experience. And, you know, that's the right thing to do to honor, honor his brother. Is that something that is challenging to organize? Like, when you think of the CIA, you think of this really, you know, shadowy organization, that, whatever. Is it, is it really hard to, like, get a family member in there to see, you know? Well, no, I mean, So yes and no, but you got to remember. So the same reason why I kind of battle for health care and ultimately got it, I was senior, so I don't give a shit.

Right. And so I'm like, we're going to get this dude in. Like, are you kidding me? He's never seen his brother's star on the wall. Right. So I start making phone calls and stuff like that, but I ain't stopping until he's going to, he's there. And God bless Bill Burns, you know, the new CIA director.

And finally I got to him. I was like, and I talked to him. I said, hey, can we get Beau to come in and, of course he can. That's awesome. So, you know, look, just like anything else in life, there's, you know, there's steps along the way and kind of got to push through it. And, man, seeing, see and Bo go there, there's a lot of stuff in the media about this, but seeing Bo go and see his brother's star on the wall and the tears in his eyes, and that was

awesome. And, you know, it's the least I could do to honor his brother. And Bo, Bo's a great kid. You know, he, you know, he was the Marine Corps. But then when both of his brothers were killed, the Marines told him, you can't deploy anymore. He's like, are you kidding? Wow. Yeah. Like, I want to be on the front. I want to be in the tip of the spirit. They're like, you can't. Yeah. You're the old old star brother. Like, we're not doing this again. Yeah. So, you know, he lives out in Oklahoma now. He's a great kid.

And it was awesome, awesome meeting him. Yeah. I mean, and that's the whole, uh, saving private Ryan type of thing that they're not going to take the last, the last child of parents. Yeah. And it blew me away, just emotionally. The whole thing was crazy, you know, it just, but that must have been really powerful. Yeah, that's hardcore. Here's a thing for you guys too. You guys have a platform as well. Like, if you find something that's wrong, like just fight it.

Like, just get it done. You know, he's like, hey, can I go see my brother's star on the wall? Like, hell yeah, we're going to make it happen. I don't care how. And so that was awesome. Yeah. No, I'm all about it. I like to be very combative.

Yeah, you should be. Personality flaw. Patrick Skinner would be a great guest on this, says Graham. If he would. Um, yeah, we'll have to see what we can do there. Um, so, Mark, this has been really fun, man. Thank you for coming on the show tonight. And I love you guys. This is awesome. I love this show. I can do this for like several hours. We do too, Mark. We love having you on, man. And we cannot wait till you were in New York and you come in the studio. That would be a lot of fun. We'll get fucked up. Uh, next episode next Friday, we're going to have, uh, Danny Colson on again, who, uh, was the founding, uh, FBI agent. He founded the FBI agent. He founded the

FBI hostage rescue team. And we're going to be talking about Waco and Ruby Ridge that he had some he had some ancillary involvement. Well, he had supervisory roles not on site, but he was directly involved

with both of those in their execution. So that's coming at you next episode. And then the next one after that, the Friday after, is episode 100, where we're going to have a little party here. Have some pizza, some drinks. We're going to have like six, seven people in here, all in the studio,

and probably get drunk off our asses. So it'll be a lot of fun. Yeah. So I just want to plug this again. First off, the book, and secondly, Sound Off. You know, tell, and I posted a link in the app, it's Sound-Off.com. You know, pass that around for people who don't know about it. Absolutely. And tremendous resource for kind of mental health, you know, for for for veterans and others. And, you know, God bless. Like, you know, we have to be there for people who have, who have served and have given so much. And, you know, if, you know, if we can do anything, you know, it's, we can, we can honor those. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for pushing that. And Mark, we're, we're really happy here that, you know, you've been getting the care that you have and all that, you know, it's been helping. You know. Thanks guys