The Team House - CIA Operations Officer Erin OLoughlin served in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ep. 39

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

Erin talks to us about how she started at the CIA as an intern shredding papers and rose to becoming an operations officer working in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the interview, she shared some pretty hair raising stories about how they nearly drove into an ambush in Mosul but her GRS security element saved their lives. In another incident, the Army actions a target she had developed and she got to ride in the Humvee as it smashed through the front gate. Support our sponsor Ned by visiting www.helloned.com/TEAMHOUSE to get 15% off your first order and free shipping! We are also excited to announce our second sponsor, HighSpeedDaddy.com. Use the discount code "JACK" at checkout to claim 10% off your purchase. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. 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. All right. It says that we are live streaming on YouTube.

All right, folks. Welcome to episode 39 of the team house. Apologies for some technical details that delayed us for a few minutes. But here we are. I'm Jack Murphy. here with Dave Park, my co-host. And over in the other square, you will see Aaron O'Wallon, who, oh, and Aaron is a former CIA operations officer at a very interesting career.

She literally started off in CIA headquarters as a paper shredder, as an intern, and worked away all the way up and ended up becoming, you know, for those of you don't know, an operations officer used to be known as a case officer. they're the actual spies that they send out into the world to recruit assets and gather intelligence, strategic intelligence for the United States government. And Aaron did this in war zones, places, well, I'll let her get into that. But that's the gist of our episode. We're going to talk about, you know, her entry into the agency, some of her deployments around the world, and then talk about getting out of the agency and, you know, some of the difficulties that Aaron had transitioning over

into civilian life. So, Aaron, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. I think that maybe a good place to start this episode off would be, you were telling me a little bit earlier that you were actually supposed to be in the Pentagon on 9-11. Yeah, that was the, granted, I did start as a paper shredder in college where I literally shredded paper for them. So I sort of, I grew up in the agency walls. But when I came in, as a, as a, as a quote adult at what 23 years old. I'm still quoting adults at 40-something years old than I am. When I came in as a quote adult,

I came into the personnel security side of the house where I did background investigations for routine background checks every five years. The employees had to have background checks. And I had a gentleman who was in the National Guard. And I had to go to his command at the Pentagon to be able to fill out his background checks for the agency. So, you know, he did every weekend and then two weeks a month. So he had to talk to his command. And it's pretty common to have different background investigators in the Pentagon or, you know, all over the place. There was no real office for background investigators. And I kept having to put off this meeting with him. And it was like the third time. And I said, I finally had to call him. And I said, oh, on September 10th, we were going to have a meeting there. It was a third time I had to schedule, reschedule. And the thing was, I,

I had been picked to work on some voice recognition software. The only reason why I was picked is because I happened to be standing in the offices, picking up case work at the time. And my team leader looked at me and said, you, you'll do. Get in here. And started talking to me about how I was being volunteered to work on some voice recognition software. So background investigators can have less time typing. And there's a lot of typing background investigations.

So I called him September 10th, 2001. And I lived in Arlington at the time. And he did as well. And he knew that it was me calling saying, I'm so sorry, I will make it up to you next time. So the third time, you know, fourth time is a charm. And the next morning I woke up and drove down into Tyson's where I had to go and deliver my speech in my presentation with another colleague of mine in the Tyson's corner building, one of our satellite offices, our outbuildings. And every single background investigator that we had was in our office in Tyson's in the out building, which was actually quite the, I guess when you look back, it's a black building. which was actually quite the, I guess when you look back, it's a blessing because any of us were supposed to be anywhere at any time, whether it be in Fort Mead, whether it be down Quantico, whether it be anywhere and everywhere that we were dealing with the background investigations. So every single one of us, there was 40 some, plus our team leads, were all together in one underground sort of, who is on the bottom level, area. And I was upstairs and I was in the cafeteria. And I was getting

my coffee and I was thinking about my presentation and I was going over things and I was thinking, okay, what am I going to say? It's one of my first ones. And I happened to be purchasing my coffee at the little cafe that's right there. And I'm handing my money over and the TV is right there above the cashier's head. And I look up and all I can think is, wow, what a horrific accident. Who misses a building like the World Trade Center? And we all look at each other and we go, hmm, that's really odd. And then the second that I start to leave that particular line and walk around the corner, the entire cafeteria, the whole level of that outbuilding was literally buzzing. People were literally flying past me. The words of that's on accident, Samabin Laden,

terrorism, attack, those sorts of things were flying past me at 23 years old, 22, actually, 22 years old, going past my ears, I had no idea what they're talking about. And I go downstairs and I kept saying, well, everyone's just sitting there waiting because we didn't have phones, obviously, in those buildings. And I go in and I look at my co-worker Allen and I pull my coffee down, I said, it's been a weird accident or something. Someone just, a plane just went into the World Trade Center. His eyes got really wide. He looked to me and said, what? And the doors, two are the auditorium area where we were supposed to be delivering, slam open. And something out of Hollywood, we had a very tall group chief at the time. And he comes literally barreling in. And he was very, very

calm in what he said, but he was very pointed and said, the Pentagon has been attacked. The World Trade Center has been attacked. Everyone got out. out, get into your cars carefully and drive home. Do not pick up anyone else who are in government plated cars. Try and follow each other as best you can. And you're not allowed to come back into we tell you to. We will get in touch with you. So much confusion, as you can tell. Forty some odd investigators. We have no idea what's going on. Nine minute commute. Supposed to have been a nine minute commute from my office to my apartment. Took about four or five hours just to try and get through. And there's an off rant there near the Pentagon. And I happened to be sitting there and my friend

Kristen was behind me and we both have government plate of cars. We can't get a hold of anyone. All the signals are jammed. And that's when we start seeing the people with ashen covered wounds. They, they're blood on them. They just so many people were coming up around the hill there. And seeing the human spirit at that point and seeing people jump out of their cars and help strangers and getting them in their cars, uniformed civilian. It was, it was beyond amazing to see that if it has to be an amazing thing at all.

And I sat there and I was not going to bring anyone. in my car because I had a government-plated car. It said U.S. government license. And if this was an attack, we didn't know what was going to happen next. I'm sure you guys probably heard that too on 9-11. We don't know what's going to happen next. I was afraid to put anyone in my car. What if there was guys with AK-47's guerrilla warfare style coming around just going to mow people down? We would probably be the first ones to go because we were sitting ducks. I don't want to put anybody in jeopardy that way. And so I just sat there and tried to do the best I could help other people, you know, direct them to other cars try to explain, but there wasn't a whole lot of explaining. So I got in the car and listening

to the radio, I kept hearing the term Osama bin Laden. I kept hearing the term terrorism. I heard the other, the traits in our fall. I mean, they were describing everything as we went. And I was just sitting there watching the Pentagon burn and listening to the New York tragedy at the same time. And it really hit me and I said, okay, holy shit. What is this? I had no idea what those terms were. I had no idea who these people were or why they would want to kill innocent people sitting here just going to work. That's how naive I was. That's how I didn't know anything about it. I seriously had no clue. And two or three nights later, I was able to go to a safe spot and at least far enough away, but still far enough that I could see, close enough I could see. And for weeks on end, I don't know if you guys had this, if you were there at the time, you could still smell the smoke.

And it kept drifting into my bedroom in my window. It was so much. It was whole hard to breathe. And a couple nights later, I was able to get out and look down. Again, it was from a rural neighborhood area, and you could go and climb them up there. Some people had gathered to be able to look, and it was very serene, and it was very surreal at the same time. And I kept saying, what is this? What's happening? Why? And that's when I really started to throw myself into, I'm really glad that I'm going to go in operations because I had just been okay to go from the director of administration, which it used to be.

It's not there anymore, but the director of administration over to ops. I had already been okayed for it. And that's when the spark was lit for finding these guys. I didn't really know how much it was going to be lit until I got overseas after getting certified and two years later and things like that. So that's really what lit the fire for me. And there's other things that happened that along the way too. But yeah, that's basically how it started. Tell us like how you even got to that point because, you know, you were already in the intelligence community, so to speak. And as you said, you were already in the show. to transfer over to operations. I mean, what what kind of propelled you that far before 9-11 happened?

Well, immediately before that, I was, I was done with the job. I really was. I mean, it's a great job. It's a great job. I mean, if you can get in and do, I mean, especially for, say, working moms or dads, whatever, if you got kids, it's a perfect job because you don't have to have an office. You can go around and do your own schedule. You can do, you know, it's very, very liberating that way. I didn't like it at all after a while because while I do have a thick, skin and my family can attest to this. I do a very thick skin. I got sick of people closing the door in my face. I got sick of being yelled at because it wasn't a matter of me going and saying, hey, so-and-so wants to have a job in the agency where everyone loves you. Everyone go,

oh, yes, yes, yes, I'll talk to you. No, these people already have jobs and they don't want to be bothered. And so there was quite a bit of abuse that's thrown at background investigators, even when I just come in as very, very conversation style, very, I tried to be friendly and say, hey, it's time for your background and we got to do this. I know, I know. I try to really connect with the person first. And I'd say 70% of the population were really great, but it's that 30% that really got to me. No matter what question I asked, I would get yelled at or say, you don't need to know that. And I would say, well, okay, that's fine. You don't need to have this job. Bye-bye. It's not up to me, but it just, it was too adversarial for people who were supposed to be

on the same team and I really tried to make it a team effort, but just the door shut my face. It's not something you really want to go through every day. You don't get paid enough. Yeah. Yeah, that's really unexpected because the people, like, they want to keep this job. It doesn't make sense that they would be, you know, a dick to the person that comes to do their background investigation. Yeah. I think it depends on how many years they've been in, like maybe for the first, at the first five year or whatever, like, yeah, okay, whatever. You know, the third, the fourth, they're like, get out. Like, get out.

Exactly, yeah. That's how they work. Or they had a bad background investigator who didn't treat them very well before, so they're going to take it out on you now. And that's why I always tried to be very chatty, very friendly. You know, some people know, it's kind of hard for me to be all that friendly when some people I don't know. But I tried.

And I always went into it with the same thing. Hey, I know it's time. whatever you can, please. I got sick of it. So I happened to have made friends with this woman, again, because I was very conversation style in my interviews, this woman who was going out to be chiefest station in Japan, she every time you go out, especially a management position, but every time you go out to take a PCS tour, you got to get your clearances updated, especially for the chief of station. So she had a recruitment center tour there in Northern Virginia and she was leaving there to go to BCS Japan. Amazing woman. I loved her to death. I walked

to our office and we did nothing but chat for almost two hours when most of my interviews were 45 minutes and we chatted for almost two hours and she said to me, I want your resume on my desk tomorrow. I said, I don't, I can't do that. I have to get your background done out of the way. No conflict of interest, but sure, lady, I'll be, you know, you're in operations. You want to, you know, sell people a lot of bill of goods sort of thing. I didn't quite believe her until after I told her, she emailed me, said, is my adjudication over? And I said, you'll get a notification. She got a notification. Her adjudication was over. That's the other. step in the background process that I didn't have anything to do with. And so she said, she got it.

And she said, you're going to be hearing from the recruitment center. I said, all right, whatever that means. I really didn't know much about the DO, which it was DO at the time. I didn't know much about DI. I didn't know much about the breakdown of the different jobs, the career tracks, nothing. And I got a call saying, hey, we want you to. I'm sorry, the DO and the DEI are the director of operations and the director of intelligence? Yes. I don't believe they exist now. It's been almost 10 years since I've been out. So I think they changed to MCS. That's for the clandestine service. Something like that. Yeah, the DO called me and said, we want you to come in and interview. And I'm like, interview. I'm already in. So I didn't quite understand what all that meant.

And next thing, I know I'm going through this battery of tests again. And oh, what is this? And all the, just everything. I'd do everything all over again. But it was also a window to me getting out of background investigations, personal security. I didn't really see a future in that for me. I was like, I've done it, but what else is there? I'm itching for something else. And then it came along. I literally, I think it was in 01. I was accepted in August. And I had to wait for the next class, the next operations class to come in, the clandestine training class, that's CT, to come in. And that wasn't going to be until November. So I had to sit around for three months doing a job, I loathed for three months. But, you know, not a big deal. I learned later that there

are worse situations to be in. So I did that. And in November, I came in and it was obviously post-9-11. So we were the second class. I was class 12. We're the second class to come in after 9-11. So you mentioned, you know, that your family could attest to, you know, sort of your character. Tell us a bit about your origin story. Like what got you like to the agency to begin with? Because a lot times people, it's a mystery, right? People, right? How do these people that I watch on TV, you know, the born identity and whatnot, the recruit, how do they all get there? Yeah, and you've, you've had people say before I was recruited, you know, you've had a woman on saying they, they approached me in college, things like that. That's really, that's the cool stuff,

that I didn't get that. I was just born into it. So my mother was agency. She was very, she is very, very, she's very personable. I mean, Everyone loves her. She's warm and personable and she makes friends everywhere. She talks to everyone. And everything, she has to talk to everybody that she meets. And it's on the one hand, a very endearing quality. On the other, it's all about her sort of thing. So that's another story. But she, she made friends when she went back to work when I was in junior high, she went back to work as a secretary for a state government position or city, something like that. And so she went in, I was in junior high. She was the secretary. And this woman, who was her boss, got into the agency. And she was so excited. It was her lifelong dream. And she actually pulled my mother along with her because she liked her so much. And she said, I want her as a secretary and the secretary pool in the field. He went out in the field, meaning at headquarters, wherever you want to put her. She would, she would be really good. And she was. She got in and she started out as a secretary.

And she was ecstatic to have that job. It was just an amazing dream, you know, to think that she can do this little girl from, you know, Virginia Beach, all that stuff that didn't think she could amount to much is now working at the CIA. So she basically said, under no uncertain circumstances, so would I. I had no choice in the matter. At least I had no choice in the matter when it came to working there during college. Because during college, there's something called the summer employee program. And we had to wear gray badges because we were between the ages of 18 and 21. And we were in college and we only had secret clearances. So we would answer the phone. and headquarters and all the outbuildings and everywhere, we'd answer the phones, Aaron, summer only.

And you had to say that in case someone wanted to talk about something classified. They need to know that they're talking to a kid. But not a kid, but you know, I think of a kid now. And I had to say that. And sometimes I'd walk into some skiffs in the headquarters. My mom actually had, she was the secretary and worked a way up to staff operations officer for Sarah Pitch's Entry Group, which is people who break into things. So whenever I wanted to get into that skiff, they would put a red, you know, siren.

thing, nothing loud. It was just a red thing saying, hey, there's someone here who's not cleared. And then I would just walk in and make fun of myself going, gray badge, gray badge. You know, I was a kid. And I was kind of expected to keep going on. And I wanted to be a social worker and save the world because, you know, that's what social workers do. So I got my degree in social work. Yeah, that's how, yeah, I didn't want anything to do with the agency. It didn't, it didn't appeal to me. There's nothing about it that I wanted. It was stuffy. It was a long commute. I had to wake up so early as a college kid. I just wanted to be a lifeguard at the pool. And so I'm grateful that I got that because it gave me the foot in the door. So I cheated.

And, you know, I've heard that it's the Army motto, if you ain't cheating, me trying. Am I wrong? No, that's correct. So I cheated. You weren't trying hard enough. Yeah, exactly. So I sort of cheated my way in. Nepotism. Nepotism is fantastic in the agency because if you can bring in your kid who's been exposed to this life. who's sort of been bred into it, then there's more of a chance that they're going to be dependable and, you know, hopefully not commit espionage against the country, that sort of thing. So it's a good program.

And I grew up within those walls. So I really feel like my formation as a, I guess you say, as a young adult was formed within those walls. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today.

Being a parent can be really challenging. 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 children. parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. That's fantastic. So like growing up, you said your mom was very personal. And what about your dad? Was he government also? Or was it? Yeah. Yeah. We're a fed family. Yeah. He, so it's funny because he, my mom went out to New Mexico.

I was born in New Mexico. And they, my brother and I were born both in New Mexico, seven years apart. And for 10 years, my mom said, I'm leaving this godforsaken land. And she was angry about being out there. So my dad was actually a journalist. And he got his degree in journalism. And he became the editor, I think it is. I might be speaking out of school. He'll probably smack my hand. But the editor of a small paper there in New Mexico. And then he applied to be the press secretary for Senator Pete Diminici. And at 15 months old, he packed all of us up. And we moved to Northern Virginia so that he could have this press secretary job on the hill. And my mom always says, you know, happiness is Lubbock and a review mirror. She never wants to go back to that area of the world at all. So she, you know, she happily went back to near her family three hours away. So it was a really

good situation for her and for everybody. So my dad's career just took off. And he stayed on the hill. He was press secretary for Pete Domenici. And then he moved over to a press secretary position for the federal energy regulatory commission. And then the press secretary where he retired for federal election commission. So yeah, growing up in Northern Virginia, it's fed, fed all the time, or you're a teacher, you're a doctor's kid or something. You know, it's just so much, we permeate the entire area. And with my dad being pressed and working with the press so so much that we would have every once in a while, we would have some reporters call our house. And he hated that. He would get so mad at them. So we would have Greta Van Custrin call her house

every once in a while and some names I don't even remember. I remember her, though, but I don't remember other names. I couldn't pull them out. We had the Senator over to our house for dinners. I remember that being little, and that was really cool. I like that. And then so then my mom got into Fed and everything. So you got not quite press ganged, but I mean, you know, pushed in a certain direction as a kid and then as a young woman. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I obviously had the chance to get the degree that I wanted and there was no pressure there. But, you know, there was them going, you know, nudge, nudge. You ain't going to make any money as a social worker, but who am I to talk, you know, sort of thing. And, but they're right. And

the thing is, I really, you know, I, I'm very grateful for the time that I had there because there's no way I would have gotten in as a social worker. I mean, I may have been able to talk my way in because, you know, I'm bubbly, but I don't think anybody would have seen my resume and gone, yeah, we should have her. There's just no way. Well, there might be. some crossover. My mom is a social worker and she has had to go into the houses of people of all different types of cultures and sometimes speaking wildly different languages and try to build some sort of rapport with them. And it's very interesting the kind of situations you can run into in that kind of job. I did find that when I was doing the training at the farm, I had a couple

of trainers actually. They actually would do this to say, you know, break, you know, and they would start, I think what was it called admin time or something like that, to tell you, usually it's a bad thing when they want to break character while you're learning. And I would, my stomach was trained. It just go down to my feet. Oh, crap, what did I do wrong with this? I just had something fall. Crap, what did I do wrong this time?

And I had a couple of them do this. And then they said, are you a counselor? And as, well, I have a social degree. And they say, oh, okay, that makes sense. All right. And are back on. No, now you've screwed me up. What do you mean?

Was that bad? What? I found out later that that was a good thing because a lot of people that were coming in, they were so nervous about this is their dream job and they're like nuclear scientists or something, which is fantastic, amazing. They were having a hard time really listening to the person on the other side of the table from them and things like that. So that was a huge help for me. I know that.

Everything else, no, I had to struggle. So you graduated from the farm. You said second class of after nine, 11. And I mean, in my mind, and correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like they must have like amp you guys up like, you're the go to war class. Like this shit is on now. They did. They did. So the funny thing about that is that I was actually what's called a PT. So I came in not necessarily as a CT. I should back up. I came in as a PT in that November, which is professional trainee, which is, I don't even know if they still have that anymore, but it was kind of, you could consider

it sort of like the kindergarten class to the CTs, where you were just really young and you needed to sit the desk for a while, at least maybe a good year and a half, two years, something like that, which I gladly accepted. I gladly took and said, I'll do anything over this. I'll sit at the desk. Sure, I'll learn everything because the longer you sit at the desk, I knew, because I'd been there in college. The longer you sit at the desk, the more knowledgeable you're going to be when you go to the farm and the farm is a mind fuck you don't want to go down there unprepared and i knew that from being able to talk to and listen to so many different people and so many different people who seemed so amazing and they came back and they failed out they washed out and i was stunned so of course i got

more scared and more scared and more scared going how am i going how am i going to do this so it was it was so good for me to have that time so i remember there was a um i had to leave because my family had a family reunion in Texas. So I took some time off and I went my dad's side of the family in Texas. So we had a family reunion came. I came back to every shit had hit the fan. They had moved almost our entire PT class up to the CT class 11. So there, I think there is a book called Class 11 that's out. And well, it came out years ago. And they almost all of them moved up to to 11. And here I am because I had to take vacation. I'm stuck behind. And I walk into some of my best friends going, we're no longer PT classmates anymore.

So what the fuck? What just happened? So I got, I'm sorry. So was a PT class like an introduction to it? Yeah, it's like a kindergarten class, the CTs. CTs get a couple months on a desk here, a couple months on a desk here rotation. Boom, you're down at the farm. PTs sit a year rotation here and a year rotation there, and then you can go down to farm

or do a Citi rotation, that sort of thing. It's you get more time on the desk. And the reason why they did that was because they were pushing so many people through because they need to get people certified out in the field and go after these guys. They were really pushing us to do that. And I was brought down to our HR lady and she said, you know, I don't have a place for you. I don't know if I can push you into the next class, but you have an option. I can find you something and I'll work on it.

And I said, no, I'm good. I'll sit where I am. I was probably the only one in class who wasn't just chomping at the bit to go up to the next class. I wanted to make sure that I actually graduated. I wanted to make sure I did well and I was too scared. I have a track here in my mind and I'm going to go with it. So I'll just continue where I'm going. And she was so funny.

She was always crying. She was like, oh, thank God. Just stay where you are. It's too much work for me. So they were pushing us to really go after these guys. And when you got out, you weren't forced to do a war zone tour. You really weren't. But there were so many that were saying, hey, CTC will take these number of people,

CTC and other, you know, do this first, get out of the way. then you go back, go to the office you want to. Aaron, can the CIA order you to do a war zone tour? Because, I mean, you can defer on it, can't you? Yeah, I never heard that. I never heard anyone having to go, no. And I mean, that's kind of interesting to sign up for a job, you know, like that and be like, nah, I'm good dog.

I'm just going to go hang out in Paris. You know, that whole Afghan thing. State Department do. State Department do. there was a huge, huge hullabaloo I was hearing from my State Department colleagues when the whole, it was after 03, obviously, when Iraq was coming down and they were having a hard time. So around 05 or so, they're having a hard time staffing, mainly just in the Baghdad embassy. And people were, they're practically going on strike at State Department.

And I couldn't understand. So when you're a foreign service officer, that's what you're signed up to do. And this is where America needs to. And, you know, that guy, like, I'm sorry to go on like a miniature rant here, but that kind of gives me a case of the ass because you're fighting an insurgency campaign, and you need a whole of government approach. We needed the State Department there. We needed the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Treasury.

Everyone should have been over there to build up the Iraqi government and get that thing going so that we can end the war and get the troops the hell out of there. So for all these other people to like defer and cop back. out, like, that kind of pisses me off to tell you the truth. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't understand it. It was, I try to put myself in other people's shoes now. I haven't always been able to do that. And I can get into that, too, based on how I grew up. But I try to, I always try to say, okay, what are they going through right now? But that, yeah, I like that term, case of the ass. I don't have much time for that.

But, I mean, I thought it was interesting that, you know, you, so it's, initially you were deployed to, you know, into Southeast Asia. But then you requested to go to war. Like you were not trying to, you weren't playing the draft dodger card, you know, burning your draft card and your bra with all these hippies. Could you talk about that whole process and, you know, some of your first assignments coming out of the farm and then how you requested to go to some pretty dangerous parts of the world?

Yeah. So I came out in December of 03. And January of 2004, I took almost what most of us did, almost the whole month off. It's, you're just so, you have no idea how to go back into the real world. So, you know, late January, early February, 4, I was told that I was picked up by the EA division, East Asia. And that's kind of what I wanted. That's what I put in for because I had a really good working relationship with the interim boss, my interim there as a CST when I went in or CT.

That's what I was. They changed the curriculums, made us a CET. But I had a really good experience. experience with a boss. And she was just amazing. And she's the only good boss I ever had as a female boss I ever had there. And she, yeah, I can get into that later. So she convinced me, you know, to go EA. And I really admire her. And I, I've lost touch with her. Obviously, I would really love to know where she is, what she's doing. And she convinced me. And I did. And then when I got out, they told me, okay, you're EA, but you're not going to be China. And I at first I was kind of like,

oh, well, all right. And then they said, we're going to put you in the Southeast Asia desk. We need someone to work for a while on the Manila desk. So I went to the Southeast Asia group, and I sat the Manila desk supporting operations, but I had to sit there for several different reasons. There was no, so when people got out, so Congress said they have to have certain a certain amount of people out in the field, slots out in the field. And but what they didn't actually cover for, for the agencies, give them enough funding to create those slots. So there was a backlog.

So the funding went to recruiting and hiring, but it didn't go to the offices where they actually needed it to actually place those people there. How that works, I really don't know, but I just know there was a backlog. And I really, I'm from there. I'm from Northern Virginia. So I didn't really, I wasn't itching to get out. And quite honestly, I got provisionally certified when I came out. So there was quite a bit of when at my murder board, apparently I heard that there was quite a bit of consternation from some instructors saying they didn't want me to graduate.

But my counselor is such a bulldog. And he said, absolutely not. She's graduating. And the compromise they came up with was I'd sit the desk another year. I didn't care. And that's where the politics comes in a lot of times. because my counselor over here, this guy, counselor one, I can't tell you how many. He had a few friends at the farm.

He's amazing. I love this guy. He was awesome. We bonded right away. Crazy redhead like me. I mean, we just bonded. And I didn't need to have him hold my hand a whole lot. I didn't want him to.

And he liked that. He said, great, I got a family take care of. And he was always there when I needed him. And he knew that I was learning along the way. But I made mistakes. We all made mistakes. I made quite a number of them. Same along with everybody else.

And I learned from them. And that's what my counselor said. Did you learn from them? And I said, yeah. And he said, what did you learn? And we walked through what I would have done differently. And he said, that's what I'm looking for. That's learning.

That's how you get out of here. And apparently the instructors that I went up against didn't like Jack. And my counselor, sorry. They didn't like him at all. And so they wanted to fight against him and say, no, we're not going to have her graduate. And he said, I would agree with that if you didn't say no to every single one of my council please. So you don't have credibility. That's one of those weird things about the agency where like the word of the day is mentor and like everyone has a freaking mentor. And like in the Navy day,

like they call it your C daddy. Isn't that what they call it over there? See daddy. Oh, that sounds like never mind. Yeah. Well, it's like the it's like the person that looks over your career and hides all of your mistakes for you and you know that kind of thing. And I don't know. it just comes across as very like, you know, like there's a lot of nepotism in that regard. Yeah, there's a lot of nepotism politics. Yeah. Aaron, I'm curious because. Go ahead, I just, you know, you said that while you were sitting at the desk during your PT class, you saw a lot of amazing people go to the farm and fail out or not pass. Was there a commonality?

Was there, were there very specific reasons or everybody was different? Every single one different. Every single one. What did like sitting at desks, you know, kind of doing this tour or through the agency, what did it teach you? What did you learn there that helped prepare you for the farm? So when you're sitting, quote, sitting the desk, that's a really good question. When you're sitting the desk, you're reading operational cables, cable traffic.

You're seeing what these case officers are doing with their developmental. Developmental is what is called before you fully recruit. You're seeing how they're doing things, how they're going along. You're getting these anecdotal, you know, these stories in your head to go, all right, he did or she did this, did that. And there's so many psychological profiles that you can read that they put together to say, and, you know, the CO gets help with the psychological. There's a template that you can fill out regarding the few.

future asset or the development, or whatever. And that helps too. So I would read that. And then I would think to myself, okay, how would I go, how would I approach that woman or man? How would I do this? And then sometimes in my head, I would go, sometimes I get excited because I go in the next day, go, I wonder if they did it this way. And then it would be sitting there waiting for me to open. And I'm, yes, they did it this way. This is great. Or no, they did a different way. And it still worked. So that was a way for me to learn, okay, if I run into that scenario overseas somewhere, then I'll go, all right, there's my toolbox. I know somebody else did something like this. Let's see if this works. And it really helped at the farm because they were certain, what they do is at the farm, they bring together stories, anecdotes from the instructor's time in the field. So they bring real scenarios, absolute scenarios to say, this actually happened to me. How would you deal with it? And knowing that, okay, that's when I just try to digest everything I could on the desk to say, how did they get through this? And when people would come back, a CEO would come back and they'd sit and meet with us and say, oh, you, and they would say, oh, you provided me with.

the case review for this and things like that, I would just try and pick their brains and go, how did you go about this? How did you do this? And I really tried to utilize my time with them. And I got a lot of really good advice about how to deal with people at the farm that you wouldn't get in operational cables. So, you know, you say COPS, and you also mentioned ops officer. You know, I think that a lot of people have this idea of the CIA training spies. When you go to the farm, you go to spy school. Is that accurate? Is that? No.

And it's what, I think you guys mentioned this with James as well. We go there to learn how to recruit the spies. Okay. So we are the case officer saying we are going to learn how to spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, and terminate. Terminate, not with extreme prejudice necessarily, but terminate meaning fire. Fire.

Get the hell out of here. Fire. And yeah. So you learn how to. read people so much better than you would if you'd never gone through that course. And it's, it's definitely, it definitely changed my entire life on that, on how to read things. I mean, we talked earlier. The reason why, there's a couple reasons why I think I was as successful as I was, and why I wanted to go certain places was a lot of different things. But one of them was the fact that,

well, number one, I was single at the time. So that was really nice. I could just go wherever I wanted. I didn't have anybody else to think about and just do what I wanted to do, which was something I needed to do my entire life because it was I actually have a narcissistic mother. So she's warm and welcoming and loving and so, so social to everyone. And then it's a different story inside. So there's a comedian who has a Netflix special now that I'm highly recommending to everybody. Neil Brennan, I think is his last name. He is Dave Chappelle's co-writer, co-creator. He has, he nails it so much more than any doctor I've ever talked to. He nails it because he says when you spend your entire childhood. 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. Trying to just walk on eggshells and not be the person your protector wants you to be. And you don't know how to be that person. Your protector needs you to be or want you to be because you're still learning.

You don't know how to connect with other people or even know yourself. So I learned how to connect with other people through mimicking her. And oh, this is how you do it. This is how you do it. But then when things happen like not quite 9-11, but other bigger things, like someone dies or something, it doesn't hit me right away. It just doesn't. And I used to think, oh, I compartment. That's just how my brain functions. A compartment. No, I don't know how to digest those things because I didn't really have a chance growing up to develop my own personality,

because I was always wrong. I was gaslit my entire life of this is wrong, that's wrong, this is wrong. And part of the reason why I even went into operations was to show her that I can be good enough, that I can actually succeed. And is this what you want? And it still's not good enough. So I get into sort of touchy-feely stuff here and it's probably not your fan base. And I don't want to bore people to say, woe with me because I don't feel that way.

I'm very happy and very lucky from the life that I have. But I bring it up. So in case anybody else has had that in their life, I hope I can help to say, you're not alone. This is what's going on with me. There are a lot of coping mechanisms I've used. Most of them not good. Some of them good.

That sort of thing. because like what Jack said, what makes us broke in our, was, makes us broke in real life, makes us successful in national security or something like that. What did you say? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes the things that make you completely broken in normal life actually make you very successful in, you know, some of these career fields. Yeah. And it pushed me. What was that like that you were, as you said, you were like developing your personality. And I mean, you were a young woman for starters, okay? I mean, you were still a young person. But on top of that, all these, you know, this way you grew up and that you were trying to figure out or you were not, your personality was not fully developed, as you said, because of your upbringing.

And now you're in a career field where it necessitates you wear different masks at different times for different people. Right. Right. Because you don't have a super, like, you are, your way of functioning is already sort of being a social chameleon. Yep. Right? Just to survive the day. Right. That there's no strong, you know, sense of self. It's more like gauging what's going on and reacting to that. Meeting, you know, meeting other people's frames, basically, and adjusting. So then you go into this career field where that's actually a real strength. Yeah, absolutely. So I have a weird family life as far as extended family. I don't know about

weird, but my former sister-in-law, I know she's watching this, I love you, my former sister-in-law, but I call her my sister because we've been in our lives since we were 12. I was 12, and she was my matron of honor. She actually said it right. I told her the other day, this comedian that said it. And I said, maybe that was why I was kind of successful or I pushed myself to get into that role. And she sat quiet for a couple seconds. And she goes, that makes so much sense. So I said, okay, I guess that was right. I was on to something. It's weird how in my 40s, 40s something, I'm still learning, you know, we all, we're all still learning what we've done, how we're going to do things and how we can be better. And I don't think that ever stops,

obviously. But yeah, it's just a lot of things are coming to the to light now because I'm not so rushed and trying to go here, do here, do this, be successful here, be something that I'm not for somebody else who doesn't appreciate it, that sort of thing. It's nice to be able to sit back, take a deep breath and look back and go, holy shit, look the life I led. That's, why did I do that? Jack, you mentioned, why did I, how did I get from the Southeast Asia desk? I sort of rambled on that one. I didn't really answer it. But the reason why is because I was sitting the Philippines desk, and then I was pulled into my chief's office and who said, look, you're a certified case officer and you're sitting here for political reasons and you're sitting here because of backlog. All right. Both are BS.

and I was like, I like this guy. This is cool. And he said, we need help in Kuala Lumpur. And what I want you to do is I want you to spend a couple months. Can you go there in Kuala Lumpur? And can you do different things for us that the station needs? And I was like, I'd be there yesterday. Yeah, that's absolutely fun.

That's pretty cool. So I was able to go. That's hot. I spent a little over three months there. And since no one knew me there, like liaison didn't know me, I could do a whole lot of little things that were really cool, actually. They can be boring, too. I mean, don't get me wrong.

It was, I stayed in my apartment looking at the skyline of the Kuala Lumpur Towers. It's an amazing view. I mean, it would light up at night and I turn the lights off. And my, oh, my God. And I would just wonder, how did I get here? This is amazing. But then realized, this is boring as shit. I'm so bored right now.

I got no one to talk to. I've got no one to share this with. And so I really was coming into a lot of different realizations in KL. and I must have been on my face because I was in station one day and I was coming out of the chief's office. He'd asked me to do something and I was okay, do it to do and I'm reading it. And I look up and there's his wife. And his wife at the time was the station CT representative officer. And she comes up to me.

She goes, what's wrong? And I said, oh, nothing. And she's, okay, here, I want you. I know what my husband said to do something. Can you do something else on the side? I said, yeah, sure. So we sat down. I was kind of a jack of all trades there, which was nice.

nice. It was really cool. I wasn't just pigeonholed into one one thing. And she asked me to help her with some CT operations. And I was just flipping out going, sure, what do you need? I mean, this is really cool. So she asked me to do these things. And then she said, okay, I need you to learn the Al-Qaeda matrix. I need you. And I said, oh, I don't know these names, the Abu Mahamaha. I don't know any of that. I don't speak the language. I don't like, I will get lost in this, in the gibberish. And I'm not saying airbrick is gibberish. I'm just saying it sounded like it to me. So she started putting graphs in front of me in charts and everything. And I said, oh, my gosh. And so I started really learning about it. And then she started recommending books for me to read.

And I started really getting excited and going, wait a minute, something is sparking here again. I was losing that spark. And she found it. And she lit it for me again. And when I said, okay, And she said, all right, after this, where are you supposed to be going? I said, I heard I'm supposed to have a 2005 PCS assignment to the Philippines, to Manila. And she looked at me and she goes, you have no fucking business being a normal case officer. I was like, what? What are you talking about? And I thought I'd done something wrong.

And it's okay, what did I do? How can I fix it? And she looked at me and she goes, you need to go to CTC. And I said, okay. What do you mean? And so she got me in touch with a bunch of people who, I then started looking around. I started talking to people and saying, should I go here? I still have time. I don't have to accept this assignment to the Philippines. Should I go? And so a friend of

mine reached out who was in class 11, whom I knew. And he had me come to LX1, which is an outbuilding. I think you guys are both familiar with it. And I went there to talk to them and I just fell in love with the mission. It was the WMD mission, chemicals, poisons, and toxins group. And I said, this is it. I want to do this. And they said, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to sit the desk another year. Do you want to do that? I said, I don't care. I really don't care. I lost the spark overseas, so how am I going to get that if I don't learn about this stuff here? So I did that. I did targeting work for a year. I loved it. Oh my gosh. I found something I didn't think I was going to find again. Was this the type of targeting where you're trying to identify assets, potential assets of the

type of targeting? It was like, what kind of targeting? Oh, really? Okay, cool. Well, I was reading a lot of military reports. I had access to those. So we're pulling those in and we're pulling in operational stuff and we're working a lot with you guys and being able to say, all right, what's happening here on the ground, that sort of thing? Because, you know, we had limited view into things that were happening there. And because of the limited view, because you guys were the awesome guys on the ground there and you could see things first. And some of my people that I was supporting back here in Conis weren't able to see that. It started to, again, light the flame for me. I'm like, I want to get down there. I want to be on the ground. And I didn't realize what I was wanting so bad until a couple

months after I started, my boss, Matt, he sits on my desk and he goes, yeah, I know you just start it. And this is, what do you need? He goes, I need you go to Afghanistan. I'm like, okay. And I need you to help dig up Osama bin Laden's Tarnak Farm. What? So the Tarnak Farm is a public thing. Everyone knows about it. I'm not saying anything classified. So that was his training camp. And so there was an objective there that we had that one of our analysts discovered and then we were able to go and dig up. But it was that was fun. I got so work. I mean, it was amazing. So much spark was lit in me when I landed there because working with the military was amazing for me. They were so good to me. Everything I asked for, they jumped, everything I did. And I knew that we were guests there

and we had to act like guests. We were not coming in there as like, hey, I'm agent so-and-so. I'm not agent anything. We're in your, we're a guest in your house. and we need to act accordingly. We had a mission where there are some scientists that needed to come in. And unfortunately, the scientists didn't know how to behave themselves. Again, I was raised in kind of a military style. PhD's gone wild. Yeah, exactly.

Holy shit. We've all bought that video. Late-night DVD purchases. They thought they ran the place. They thought because they have a degree and that they are who they are, they could tell the military and my counterparts what to do. Nope. Not going to happen.

It was kind of a bad scene. I was a bit too young to have really utilized the leadership skills that I have now. I really wish I had. I think I did as good of a job as I could have at 27 years old doing this and I was in charge of them. I'm grateful for it. I learned a lot. But yeah, that really just kept me going. I just kept going back.

And Afghanistan was all TV-wise. So put them all together. It was mostly with Pakistan. it was mostly like nine months, almost a full year going in and out. And I love it. I mean, from what you're describing, would I be correct to assume that you were digging up this terror training camp to see if they were developing WMDs there at some point? Something like that. It's out there. It's published.

Interesting. So you're going back and forth doing that job. You can actually, I don't know if it's still up, but Google, you could back in the day. I haven't done it because it's too awful. CNN was running back in the day, these videos of these puppies. I don't know if you saw them when you guys were out there. These puppies in these cages, not cages, but almost like an aquarium tank. Gorgeous little golden retriever puppies, and they would put the lid on them, and it was the stuff that they were mixing and testing,

and just the absolute torture these puppies were going through based on the gas attacks and things like that. It was just, it was too hard. It was unbearable. And there were too many people involved for us. us, our little group, to really be, hey, you know, we can stop this sort of thing, but we were trying really hard to find the lower level guys and tell them to you guys, say, hey, here's what we found, blah, blah, blah.

Here's who we found and those things. But, yeah, that's what we were trying to do. Aaron, I hate to interrupt you. We have a couple donations and questions real quick. Luca, thank you very much. We really appreciate a donation. Andrew, thank you for the donation. you retracted your message if you want to ask another one.

Alex, thank you. What was your, Aaron, what was your favorite meal you had in your line of work? Like, in all your travels, and we haven't even gotten to, you know, half of them yet. But did you have a favorite place that you like to go when you're overseed, like one? This one's impossible. Yeah, this is an impossible one to recreate because it was a Afghan general. who invited us, the team that I was just telling you about, the scientists and me and my boss, he had us over at his quarters and there's this long table and we all got to sit there.

And the food that he put out, the buttery type of rice, I can't remember the name of it, I'm going completely blank, but the non-bred, the meat, the lamb that, that I don't know what they used. And first, I honestly started having a conspiracy theory moment because I'm eating this thinking it's it's so buttery and so good and almost like ice cream it tasted so good i i had or maybe i was just so hot and sweaty and disgustingly hungry that day my has big spoon and everything and my my non-bread i thought am i this am i this tired and dehydrated or is this this good and i looked down the table everyone's reacting the same way and i'm thinking is he fucking poisoning us

is he phasing up slaughter oh my god and so i just kind of sat down i'm watching him going Am I supposed to look at him like a Bond villain? Is he a Bond villain? I don't know. The food was, I would do it again. Absolutely. And again, I'd have it every day in my life. I can't remember.

Did they call it? I know in Uzbekistan was Bloth, but was it, was it Bluff in Afghanistan also? I can't remember now. The rice. No, none. Oh, the rice. I don't remember at all. And then, oh, Andrew, thank you again.

Andrew said piled higher and deeper. That must have been a comment to something. Andrew, I'm sorry, I didn't see that when it was relevant, piled higher and deeper. And Gordon, thank you very much. Aaron and Jack and Dave, if you were the U.S. Intel Tsar, what changes would you make? I get rid of one of the three-letter groups or merge, etc. Are there – Aaron, in all your experience, with the sort of a top-down view of how our intelligence systems worked, whether how they work together or whatever was there was there like a massive shortcoming you saw

that if you were the intel czar you would change oh god that is such a loaded hard question it's a good one though um it's tough because i've been 10 years out i'm not going to lie um when i was in i watched the establishment of the dn i um so on the one hand it sounds good like the dna that sounds really like let's get a place where you coordinate the intelligence uh that sounds like a really good one, but I don't know how it fit in with operations. I would question it now to say, I know that within the agency, there's been also initiatives to change the Directorate of Intelligence, meaning the analysts, to have say over operations. That's been something that keeps happening quite a bit, and that's an internal structure that you, they have to live symbiotically.

Operations can't exist without analysis. Analysis can exist without operations. So I don't understand leadership, especially a DCI that comes in and says, no, we're to switch it. Who's more important, who has more power? I don't get that. Why can't we be equal? That's an internal question. Now, as far as like an administration level top down, God, that's hard. I would definitely look at it, especially from being in the financial industry now for almost 10 years, nine years, and seeing how much redundancy there is in the private sector. I know there's been so much redundancy in the public sector. I already knew that. I would try and get rid of as much redundancy as possible. For instance, in Afghanistan, I ran across a problem where the DEA and the New York cops were running operations

against something I was trying to do in Afghanistan. That was ridiculous. I mean, I don't know if that was a COS decision. I don't know if that was an administration decision. I have no idea. But there was too many cooks in the kitchen. So the redundancy was way too much. Where I would start, I honestly can't answer that. So I probably really disappointed you. Was no, no. First, when you say the DNI, you're talking about the director of national intelligence, which was established as an attempt, was an established as an attempt to bridge the intelligence failures that they saw at 9-11 with people not coordinating and communicating, right? And has that served its function in your? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. I really don't. when you had the DEA and NYPD, it's funny because NYPD, when I spent a couple of months in Guantanamo Bay for the interrogations, you know, not not on the behind the cage.

But NYPD was there too. Like they, they really stretched out their operations sort of in the name of, you know, criminal prosecution for. 4-9-11 and then their counterterror stuff. Was that, did you find that with the DEA and NYPD and all these different players that it was cooperative? Was it competitive? Was it just nobody was talking to anybody? Those last two things you said. It was competitive and no one was talking to anybody.

So I tried being the 5 foot five redhead to walk up in the embassy to walk up to the DEA guys and go, hey, What hell was that? I just, I heard that you did blah, blah, blah, yada. Trying to be joking too, like with a smile on my face, but it not be too like, man, you know, just trying to establish some rapport from what I've learned. And they just basically turn their backs and we're like, and turn around. Something you'd see in TV on the show. That happens so rarely, though. It really did, because everybody besides that particular instance and besides the NYPD instance, which was wrong the same time.

Every time I try to talk to anyone on, you know, national security and military, our people, everyone is a team player. That's why I loved being in a war zone so much because I didn't realize how much of a camaraderie I needed and how much of a team player that I like being a part of. Because when you're out by yourself as a case officer in a regular CEO position in an embassy, you're doing your undercover work by yourself. And you guys stay sort of away from your colleagues a little bit.

and then you go and do your CEO work at night. And then you got to keep that level, you know, there with someone not too familiar. And then you go home and you sleep, you do it all over again. That was very, very isolating to me. I didn't realize it would be after I graduated. If I'd known that, maybe I would have thought twice. I don't know. But being, I knew I needed to be certified.

And then after that, you know, finding CTC was a godsend for me. Yeah. So Andrew Hansen, Pied. Higher and deeper was a reference to the science team, PhDs. B.S. Bullshit, more of the same, piled higher and deeper. Got it. I thought he was talking about the bodies.

How did you know about that? Body-wadi? So, Aaron, he tells us then about, you requested then to go to Iraq and probably the most dangerous part of Iraq at that time. What spurred you? I mean, you were already living the dream at this point, living your dream, right? You were making all these TDIT trip to Afghanistan.

you were, you know, you got to play eye in the sky doing all that. I mean, why Iraq? I sort of wanted the trifecta, number one. I thought, well, I've been running around these two Afghan PAC region for a while. I might as well, because how much longer would I have, really, as far as because I was, you know, zeroing it on 30. And I thought, well, the trifecta would be cool to try and get a different perspective. And that, coupled with my personal life, my relationship. ended and I said, okay, I guess someone's telling me something. And my friends were starting to do

more PCS's and they're getting a little further in their careers. And I thought, I need to do that. I kind of, if I don't, I'm, I need to switch career tracks and become a staff operations officer and actually do be on the career track to sit the desk, which would be more beneficial to me. That's what I did. But I was in the career track. This is all a paperwork thing. But I was in the career track of case officer, but not doing case officer work. And that wouldn't do very well for promotions and I knew that and for career advancement. So I thought, well, I'm at the right time in my life. This just happened. Let's just go. And I happened to have a girlfriend at the time who was already there in Mosul. And I knew Mosul was a small entity. So I knew I'd be able to, having gone around

different areas in Afghanistan and working in a bigger area like the Islamabad embassy, I knew the different impact you'd have with smaller bases versus being what we call quote near the flagpole. If you're in Baghdad or if you're in Kabul, you know, you don't really, you get more of the politics. You don't get as much of the effectiveness of your work. And so I wanted that. And I thought at the time, I wrongly thought, incorrectly thought that if I go somewhere where it's a small, base life with just a limited amount of people and very stressful, which all war zones are, but if it's going to be that stressful, I need to go somewhere where I know the other female that's there. And she and I were very close. And we had several talks before.

and we said if we have a problem with each other, we talk to each other, we're not going to let this shit happen. We're not going to do the whole, you know, stereotypical women can't get along in an office. And what do you know? That's exactly what happened. And I tried so hard just to keep my, my anti, I guess my mask on. And I didn't do a very good job towards the end because I had to keep it on for about seven months living with her. It was tough. It was weird how people change when they get out in these stressful environments. I was trying to remember that and it, I just broke.

So I loved the work because I got to get out a base. I got to go, you know, and just travel all throughout northern Iraq. I got to go up. We would have meetings with liaison and DeHuk, and I got to go up near the border there, the Turkish border and Syrian border. And that was an experience I'll never forget. I mean, even driving around Mosul was just doing this when you go across the wire. And I did everything my guys told me to do.

My security team told me to do everything. I mean, I was terrified not to do anything they told me to do. So I got that experience. And then maybe there was a bit of a competition there with her. And she was jealous. I don't know. I tried not for it to be, but it's just exactly what happened. So I'm like very fascinated to hear, you know, to the extent that you're able to talk about, you know, what you were doing over there because I had, you know, my own experience, but I was just an army guy.

I was just a nug run around wearing body armor and carrying a gun. I really like to hear about your experience from your side of the house, you know, what that was like over there. In Iraq? Yeah, yeah. It's weird to say I loved it because I did. Because working with, I keep saying you guys, I mean, the military was such a rewarding experience for me because it was something I was never used to.

I was never military. So it was a lot of exposure to another world. And that's why I joined the agency, right, to have exposures to other worlds. I was in another culture. And I got to see how the military function without having to be in it and do the crap that you guys. And I got treated with respect, you know, all that. And the friendships that I've made through that were just amazing. I mean, especially the guys that protected me, I will tell you that there's too many times that the ego gets way too involved in the CO.

way too much ego. And I didn't realize how bad it was with my career track until I got to Mosul. So when I got there, they're called, I don't know if I'm allowed to say, the three letters that my security guys are a part of their office. But there are usually about six, six or so that are assigned to you when you move in a war zone, especially as dangerous. And everyone here saw 13 hours, you know, Chris Peranto. So yeah, you know what she's talking about. All right, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Well, those contractors, yeah, a lot of more contractors. Some aren't. But they, they were just such the glue that would hold a base together. They could even provide you so much more intel about whatever target you're going after because they constantly come in and out. And they see more things because they stay quiet. They stay stoic and they listen. And I never realized that in Afghanistan because I was doing other things. I didn't have to, I didn't hardly have any security team around me with the different things I was doing in Afghanistan. Some of it driving around a thin skin truck in Kabul, which was stupid. I see realize that now, dumb.

But then right after that, I went to Iraq and I couldn't move anywhere by myself. So it was a really weird situation. So it forced us when going to Mosul, it forced me to really make friends of these guys. And it was so easy because, you know, I get along better with men anyway. I'm not, this is, you know, I don't like to say I'm a girly girl. I've got Wonder Woman all over my room. But, you know, I really enjoy the military mentality and I bond with it. And these guys, they were so burned when I first came in.

that they were sort of, there was just skittish when I walked in base and they're like, oh, who is this trick? I'm sure they said who's this bitch because the woman, the girl I was replacing was this 24-year-old twat and who just, all she cared about was her ego. That's what I heard. I met her once. That's it. I thought she was fine, but, you know, I heard so many bad things about her when I came in.

So I'm like, wow, I'm coming into a shit show. She was awful to you guys. She would put them down. She would make fun of liaison to their faces. She, oh, she was awful because she was so. young. They pushed people through, Congress pushed people through post 9-11, and she was one of the ones, the failures that actually got through. She should have never graduated. And so she got there, but fortunately, she made me look good, which doesn't take much if you're that bad. So, and I'm not that good.

So I'm like, hey, this is a great, you know, recipe. So the thing that, that, one of my first experiences when I got there was the guys really, they were skittish, the security guys were skittish. I had a lot to read when I got there. I had to, you know, settle in. And then I was the only CT officer there. Granted, everybody's a CT. So, but I really wanted the liaison account. I really wanted to work with the Kurds. And I didn't understand why I didn't have the Kurd liaison account because I've been working with the Pakistanis before that. So I wasn't, it wasn't my first rodeo. And I had to convince the chief of base to give me the Kurd relationship because he didn't think I could do it. Although he gave it to my predecessor. who was what, four or five years younger than me and had hurt the relationship. I didn't realize to how much to the extent because she lied about it. So I picked up the mantle going, great. I would really love to fix this relationship. I'd really love to, you know, know what they're doing because that's where the good work is.

That's where the effective work is to work with liaison in the CT realm. You're not going to be James Bond in Iraq. You're just not for Jane Bond as my thing falls. You're not going to be Jane Bond or James Bond in Iraq. And I really knew that the only way to make an impact was to work with the Kurds. So he did give it to me. And he literally patted me on the head. This is like the only other time, you know, something like this happened.

And I said, what the fuck? He patted me on the head. And so then I get in the car. We did, we plan everything out. I made, I had the translator make the appointments for me. I made the introductions. And we had our meetings about when to move and stuff. And I, we got together, two cars.

I was in the lead car with the guys and there's another car behind us. And I'm nervous. I've got my notes out and I'm doing my, I'm in the back. And after you leave Mosul, there's another 45 minutes before you get to hook. And we could decit. We would stop and we'd just decit.

We'd take everything off and we could just sit and just relax. We could talk. We could, it was good. It was nice. There was a nice time to be away from the base. And it's a beautiful landscape too. It's nice and green during spring and summer.

Yeah, it's gorgeous. And I took in so much. of the scenery and I had my notes out and I was well okay this is my first meeting with them what if I screwed this up and da-da-da-da I've never met them yad a yada I'm only used to the pakistani is where you have to actually have a heavy hand and I didn't get anything done until I gave him a heavy hand um so being a bitch I had to be a bitch before I got anything done and um so I was playing the game at first I was like oh thank you that no that doesn't get you anywhere and so I thought well can I do that with these guys I don't know and when when my guy Troy who I'm still good friends with

We talked just the other week. I'm still good friends. He sat in the front. He had been in and out, especially that base for so long. And he made a comment. He said, well, my call sign was Wildcat. And he said, Wildcat, are you, what are you doing back there? So I'm looking at my notes.

I'm trying to take notes for the meeting tomorrow. And he said, oh, we get real quiet. And I could see in the river mirror. He's thinking about someone. What's up? And he said, do you want my advice for tomorrow? Yeah. Why not?

Yeah, absolutely. And it didn't hit me. Oh, yeah, he knows these guys. And he told me so many things that was so wrong with what my predecessor did. It threw everything out the window that I was going to do. My entire outline, everything. It was the best piece of intel I could have ever gotten. And it literally saved the relationship because I walked in the next day and I looked at

Troy and said, thank you so much for saving my ass. And I walk in and I have that meeting and I was supposed to meet with the number one. He sent his number two. And I could tell because they were testing me like, you people suck. It was basically what he was saying. You people suck. and he was blowing smoke in my face the entire time. Well, he did that because my predecessor would do nothing but nag them about their nicotine use.

This is the building into hook. Yeah. And the guy, there's one guy, his big black hair swept back and then there's a big fat guy that works in there also. Well, yeah, they're just, yeah. Yeah, I got, I got detained by those guys. I was held in that building overnight once. Well, we met in different ones that aren't known to the public because that's where we need to have meetings. So they're like houses and stuff.

Directorate of political internal security or whatever the hell they call themselves. No, we were like in hotels and stuff because they're there. Oh, it wasn't the building. Okay, no, this was actually, this is actually they had prison cells. Yeah, I know. I went there once, but no, they wouldn't really bring me there for a meeting because that would kind of give everything away. So they owned the entire region there. So they would just be like here.

They own that building too. The big four star hotel up on the hill. Yep. We stayed there constantly. Yeah. That's a nice place. Oh, yeah. The pool and everything.

We'd have martyans. I'm not going to say that through your fans, but that's exactly what we did. But he was blowing smoke in my face. You're right? And he was blowing smoke with my face. And the only thing I could think of was, I know why he's doing this. I wouldn't have known that had my guy not told me. And I would just maybe I would have like, dude, come on or tried my best to try and work through it.

But since I knew that piece of intel, I used what is it, the line from the Nick Cage movie, Art of War. I think it's what it is when he's in the hotel room and these two prostitutes come in in Nigeria, I think it is. And they say, why should we be afraid? If he says we can wear a condom and they said, no, what about AIDS? We live in an area where we walk outside the door. We're dead in 10 seconds. What are we afraid of being killed in 10 years? And that hit me.

And I didn't use the prostitute, you know, a reference to him. He didn't. That would not have gone over very well. So I'm sitting there and I'm telling him my, my bona fidey saying, I'm not new. I worked with the Pakistanis before. I know you hate them. Blah, blah, blah. And I said, these are the things that I did over there in a very general term.

And then I said, and I am not here. And I did not drive and go through Mosul and put these men here at risk and myself at risk just to sit here and nag. on you, at you, about something that's going to kill you in 10 years. When you live in an area that's going to kill you when you walk out the door in 10 seconds, that's fucking bullshit. He looks at me and he stopped smoking and he sat back and then he starts, the smoke starts going up instead of at me. And I thought, oh, I got him. And he does this. And then he looks at me and he stamps it out and he only would talk to me via his translator at first. And I just let him, I let him stay quiet. And then he stamps out a cigarette and he looks at me and does it. I'm like,

don't say anything. It's so hard not to say something. Don't say anything. Don't say anything. And then I just look at him and I said, and he goes, all right, you I like. Then he got up and walked out. It's like, okay. It's, it's been really interesting, you know, in my travels later on as a journalist talking to, you know, when you say liaison, you're talking about the foreign intelligence services that the CIA has liaisons with and coordinations with. Yes. And, you know, traveling going around, you know, after my time in the military and meeting a lot of liaisons, so to speak, meeting a lot of our foreign host nation counterparts, military members. And from their perspective, looking at it through their eyes, they see this that, you know, they know we come and go every six

months, eight months, whatever. And every time for them, they feel like it's just rolling the dice. Because sometimes an American, new American comes, and they're awesome. And they love them. And it's a great relationship. And sometimes you get the person you're going to. just describing that's just a total asshole and just like comes damn close to wrecking our foreign relations with our partner force. Exactly. I was so surprised at how me just incorporating the golden rule what you learn as a kid and not anything like, you know, from the farm or tradecraft or anything like that. I just treated them as I wanted to be treated. And next thing I know, it was starting to be about four or five months into my tour, they're giving me some of their

best guys. Oh my God. I'm surprised. And then they're telling me be careful because, you know, you guys can suck sometimes. And then next thing I know, the Pentagon got hold and they couldn't understand why the relationship had turned around. And we were, I was on VTCs and they're saying, what's happened? They're just giving us stuff now. And it's coming true. I mean, everything that you've said is vetted. And I'm like, it's not anything I've said. It's everything they've said. They've said it before. They just haven't had the right person to give you the information, almost unfiltered. And I don't understand that. It's really, it's, it's, it's, just have to listen. I don't get that. I guess because I grew up having to listen so much to go,

what is she saying now and having to survive and going, okay, what did I do that was so wrong, that she's so mad and constantly thinking about what I, what I've done, that it now, you know, in early adulthood and stuff like that, even going through the farm, I'm like, I've already done this. I've already, you know, break myself over the cold 16, seven times. You can't be worse on me than I am already sort of thing. And I try to, the best I can to listen to. you and say what it is you need and try to deliver the best I can. Well, and that kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, not having like this really strong self-identity because obviously your predecessor, this 24-year-old girl, did have a very strong identity, right, that I am this

and not only am I who I am, but this is who I work for and we have all the money and we have, you know, all the resources and we have all this. So these guys are pumpkins. These guys are, you know, you know, because I think that a lot of times when you see, and it's not just younger people, but you see it in people that, you know, treat indigenous peoples in whatever country. Right. like they, you know, like they're savages, basically, and that they should be listening to us because, you know, we're the United States.

Yeah, I can't, ego. Again, it's ego. I can't understand it. I really don't. And she, I would hear things, too, about not just her. There were other CEOs as well, male, other ages. Oh, sure. Yeah, I had a lot to fight against to show these security guys of mine that I'm not like that. I mean, I didn't. go over the board like, look at me. I'm a really cool girl. No, I didn't try that. I got work to do. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you felt that way. But, you know, it's not me. I got work to do now. And I just figured, you know, you'll learn. We're here together for a year. You'll figure me out. And the first trip we tried to make. I tried to go out and meet someone who had only been met as developmental, who'd only been met once. And he was passed off to me when I first got there. So I made contact. And he said, can you meet me at this certain place? And I said, okay,

I checked, make sure it was all right, blah, blah, we were going to move the next day. All six of the guys are getting ready. Well, turns out we had to turn back RTB return to base. There's just too much ground fighting. There's just wait until we couldn't get past it. It would have been really dangerous for all of us. What I didn't realize, so the way I came about it, the way I started thinking it and the way I was trained was if we have to RTB, they made that call. My security guys made that call. And I was hired to talk my way in or out of things. If I can't call this guy, this developmental, again, who's not vetted, by the way.

If I can't call this guy and say, hey, it's not good for either of us. Let's put it off 24 hours or 48 hours. There's nothing wrong with that. These guys, my security guys, he came back. They were terrified that I was going to scream at them and terrified and getting ready for a fight. They were itching for a fight because they thought that's what I was going to do. And I looked at the team lead and I was like, why are you looking at me like that? And it's going, we're not going to be able to move.

You know that. And I go, yeah, calm down. I'm going to call him now. It's fine. we need to live to fight another day, right? And his face just crumbled like, you're not going to fight me? Who hurt you? I don't understand what you went through because if I can't talk to someone out here,

that means I don't belong out here. You guys are the ones that make the call. You guys are the ones that know when to RTB. I don't. I probably would have just like an idiot gone right through and said, what's happening, you know? Yeah. Can you tell us any particular stories about, you know,

trying to recruit assets and meeting with assets over there? and kind of like, again, to the extent you're able what it was like to meet these people over there and try to cultivate them as sources and interview them. The nice thing, the nice thing about the war zones, again, I'm lazy. So I like to the whole, look, you're here on base because you've now put yourself in danger to come here. So you've done what we've said for security reasons and measures and stuff like that, and you're here. There's no beating around the bush. You're here to give me information.

I don't I didn't really get into the whole cloak and dagger thing I didn't like it. I did it at the farm and did it, you know, and call on poor and Philippines and stuff. I can't stand it the whole, oh, you like to go eat shrimp? I do too. I want to be your best friend. I don't like that. I like to just sit down, figure out, you're here to see me. Okay, great.

What's your information? How's it going to help people? Who do you think, you know, you're going to save with this, blah, blah, blah. And then you'd be on your way. It was a transaction. For me, it was always a transaction. Everyone knew up front. There's no hiding it.

And that's what I really enjoyed about it because I thought, this is the best way to make sure our troops that are on the ground, that they are safe. Because if you're coming on base and saying, look, they're going to set up at the corner of blah, blah, blah, with all these different explosives or Al-Qaeda is taking control of this particular quadrant in Mosul, yada, and you guys don't know it yet.

And the spring offensive is coming. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted to get my teeth into and say, look, we've got to stop this because the safer we can make Mosul, the sooner we can leave here. But there's a whole other, like, you guys could probably go into a three or four hour podcast on the Kurds doing what they have to do and need to do to survive and keeping things unstable. But I'm not going to go into conspiracy theories. Yeah, I mean, so you're saying that you didn't, you appreciated more the idea that everybody

that came in, they were already putting themselves. risk to come in as opposed to the cold a cold approach at an embassy party or you know a cold bump you know in a bar or something and they're trying to cultivate something out of nothing you just you kind of wanted to get down to no for play yeah you wanted to get down to the meat of it so I'm talking about something else anyway yeah you just want to get straight to business yeah I really appreciate that just that whole three cups of tea, I just couldn't stand. I had to do it in Pakistan because they made you in Pakistan before they would ever even let you finish with the meeting. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there. My boss is, she's the head of liaison. She's sitting next to me. I'm looking at

my watch going, come on, you assholes. Let's go. But I had to keep it down. All right, let's up. I'm a guest in their country. I will play their game. And I did. I played the game until I lost it on them. And I said, you get nothing until I get what I need when I first got here two months ago. And then they finally said, the number two actually finally said, okay, that's what I was looking for. You can get what you want. What? I had to yell at you. I had to be an absolute B to for you to finally give me what you should have given me anyways because I paid you for this. So it's very, that's a whole other story. I know I'm rambling right now. And when you say you paid them for them like, I mean,

was there a problem with people giving you information simply for money? Like what were like the payouts and were people trying to make a living off of U.S. intelligence without really providing anything? I had one guy in Pakistan try that, but that didn't last long at all. We saw through that because luckily within the apparatus of the community itself, there are layers you have to go through to be vetted. And they work. It may take a bit, but they work.

And by about the third meeting, I could tell. He was just wanting me to give him some money because each time he would get a little bit more because it was just a little bit. And then I found out the third time he came in to the embassy in Islamabad, or we actually met him out after that, after the first one. And he would just give a little bit. And it just felt weird to me. So of course, you send back the name and you ask headquarters, what's the name?

And they come back and nothing, blah, blah, okay. And then something just didn't feel right. And I said, I'm not going to give you money this time. You haven't really given me anything new. And there's also a way to test him. So if I don't give you money, are you here because you want to make sure that you get the information that you have to the right people? And that means you're suitable to continue with this relationship. Or if you fight me right now, then I didn't say this to him. This is in my head. If he fights me right now, then that tells me a lot. Well, he did. He was pissed. And luckily I had my security guys in the car with me and they asked him to leave and he got out. Later that night, I got a call from him from jail. Yeah, he was pissed, drunk. And he was going on. about how he knows someone at the embassy and he you know I need to come down there and get him and all this stuff and I was like nice life sorry I mean could you imagine if I'd gone down there for some random Pakistani guy that I'd had like two or three meetings with and like clearly you're just wanting money from me you know it's I didn't that wasn't too many times but yeah it does happen but luckily those things are in place you got you got to test them yeah yeah so go ahead Jack well I was just going to ask you know back in Iraq, if you could speak a little bit to, and if this is true, if you were making the

transition from, say, in KL to Missoull, instead of collecting strategic intelligence, now you're collecting tactical intelligence, kind of trying to dismantle terror networks, kind of in real time. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. It was overwhelming. It was, because you're a wheel, you're a cog in the wheel. And it's one thing to be sitting there at targeting and you're a targeting officer and you've got your screens in front of you and you're reading all these different agency reports that are coming in. And you have the time to be able to work up a profile. You have the time to say, oh, this case officer, this station should know about this over here. It's easy to play the chess pieces when you're targeting, your targeting officer because you've got the macro level.

when you're on the micro side of it and you're the knuckle dragger that is trying to get that information and trying to get it to the right people, the smart people, it's, I found it to be completely overwhelming at first. And then I had to come up with a way in my head and a way to just divide my time the day, what to look at, how to how to strategize, how to meet the goals and the requirements of the job for career advancement too, which is actually really annoying to me. But I was like, I got to check this box, I got to check that box, and then still stay alive and make sure that, you know, nothing happens when you go across the wire. It was overwhelming at first. But there was another reason why I loved working with the military so much is because so much of that work had been done.

So your targeting officers would give you things before you go. You learn a lot before you go the analysts in the DIY. Oh, they're absolutely invaluable because they're the brains. And then you go out there. And yes, it is a different story. but you have those things in your head when you get out there. It's just a matter of how you prioritize and compartment them all. It's hard to explain because, and then you only have like between your R&Rs,

mandatory R&Rs, and it's only one year. It will end up just doing about nine months. So you've got nine months. That's it. And it goes by like that, even though it didn't feel like five years. I imagine it must have been interesting in that, you know, unlike gathering strategic intel in Manila or Kuala Lumpur, that operating in that environment, you must have saw the direct results of your work very quickly.

You know, with strategic intelligence, you collect the intel and most of the time, you literally don't do anything with it, right? It just goes somewhere and you sit on it. But in this case, it's like you're giving that information over to, I don't know who you can tell me, but over to some barrel-chested freedom fighters who are like blowing down the front door and clearing and kicking some ass. That was the cool part. Again, I became addicted. It was a cool part of working in a war zone because when I would put out, any of us in the base would put out a report. If it was something that was that tactical and in our AOR, then usually within 24 hours, usually, we would get a ring at our base door and we'd see the camera and we would see that it would be one of you guys, one of the army guys.

And usually it's captains that would come to our door and they'd say, we want to talk about and then they would say the number. and all of us would just, there's like four or five of us, we'd go rushing back to our computers to see who wrote that particular number report. Like, oh, you're going to action it. Oh, that's so cool. And we'd look it up. And we get so, we would get so annoyed if it wasn't our report.

I'm like, oh, you get to do the cool stuff. And then they would go and meet with the captain or captains about how to action that, meaning you would end up going with them, either have it be on a raid or, you know, weapons cash collection, whatever that might be. And that's what I love. I think I had about four of those. and one that I wrote something and then, you know, 24 hours later, the army came and said, we went to action it and I got really excited and stoked to the next night. We went out. We were

only supposed to go to get weapons. That's what the source said. Well, on top of that, these guys were actually making the bombs. And there was like seven of them. And we got in there. And that's part of the reason why my knee hurt so bad because the Humveo was in, they just slammed down the front gate. And no one was expecting it. My security guys were pissed because they were like, she's not allowed to be in this kind of, you know, action. In the firefight, yeah. Yeah, and of course, I'm only, what, 29 at the time? And I swear to God, when my guy sitting next to me, when we rammed it, the look on my face,

he told me later, he said he was so pissed at me. The look on my face, I went, oh, yeah, we started going in there. And I didn't know what was going on. And next thing I know, there had to be, I had one guy, one Iraqi, just kind of like right across my lap because they put him in the zip ties and got all the evidence that they needed. and I'm sitting there like trying to do this. Like that's a huge no-no in his culture. And he's bagged and across my lap.

And I'm like, I'm trying hard not to. But what else were we going to do? They weren't supposed to be there. But we can't let him go. They had to go to the holding facility in our base. And so that was a huge surprise. We were not ready for it. But the army, they stepped up.

They were like, oh, God. And then they did everything they needed to do. And I stayed in the, you know, protective. My security guy wouldn't let me go anywhere. I tried to get out. It was like, I'll kill you myself. Were there? ever any other times over there where you're like afterwards you're like damn that probably

should have killed me like how did i walk away from that one specific uh absolutely we got set up on um coming out of mosul coming out of base in mosul um there's an s kind of thing that you do the serpentine that you go through the concrete barriers yes and you always you know i was always terrified to speak to my guys because they're concentrating so hard and i'm looking around i'm trying to make sure i'm an extra pair of eyes for them and we go barreling down down sniper alley after you go through the S because that was the bad part of it. And we got out and my good friend actually, he was very much like a brother to me. We stayed in touch several years after I got out and after base and everything.

And so he's driving. And we're all, we all have our outfits on. We all have our disguises and kits and everything. And it was a very, very rough time in Mosul because it was, they were talking about, another downfall like 04. That's what they're talking about. They're talking about it in 07 and they were saying, this is going to fall again. And I can't remember what time of year it was, but things were just ramping up like crazy with them. Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is, you know, precursor to ISIS and stuff like that. So we were out in town and we got through a sniper rally and we got to a checkpoint. And what was

supposed to happen is a, there were placards that the guys had and they held up. I didn't do any that. I'm not supposed to do any of that. So they had a protocol they were employing at the time. So we rolled up on the checkpoint, the Iraqi checkpoint, and it was a plain closed checkpoint. And that sent off signals to us. We're like, what is the clean clothes doing here? All right. So things, the feeling of just, you know, that weird feeling. So my guy in the, who's not driving, the passenger, he's putting up the Iraqi, the Arabic placard saying this is, this is free to go. And playing the, um, There's an audio thing that plays and blasts throughout this little area there of the police chiefs voice or the general or so a military member in Arabic. It's his voice saying this car should pass.

And that's the relationship and the agreement that should have been held. And they were not letting his pass. And my guy stayed very calm, all that, and we're communicating with each other. The front car, I was in the front car and they were in the second and they're trying to, you know, they're saying things calm and they're communicating back to base. well saying this is happening and I'm just I'm about to ship bricks they're going okay and next thing I know there's more of these plain clothes guys and they have all their girl kidded up underneath their shirts big time and they start they start looking at me and they want to know who the hell this maybe the shea woman is in the back and I'm looking I'm put my head down or I'm doing this or whatever

I'm trying not to make too much direct eye contact we finally were able to go so they let us go But then they lost it. They went nuts. They picked up their whole checkpoint. They picked up and ran down and got in trucks and went down around the corner like a dog leg. There's a dog leg coming. And they set up another one. And we're going, yeah, this is not supposed to be happening.

And we're trying to get a hold of people, especially our liaison folks, to say, are you, have you sanctioned this? We didn't know what was going on. And then we somehow managed to get past the second one. They did the same thing to us. And then we got stuck on what was supposed to be. It was kind of this bridge area, like a bridge going up, like an overramp. And then you're supposed to go down. Oh, you're talking on the east side of the city.

Yeah, because we hadn't gotten very far off base. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. You come out of the gate, you hit a right, and then another right. You're on the main road. You hit another right go across the bridge. I think so. You know more than I do.

It's been so long for me. I just remember, you know, we were not hardly. away from base at all that much, that far. And I knew that there was a bridge coming up, because there's the river in the middle. And we were supposed to go up and down to the right. Well, there's a huge traffic jam. They had made a traffic jam. That's what hurt them and saved us. They got so riled up because they thought, you know, we've got Americans here. We've got, you know, them in cahoots with Iraqi, you know, the police or the military, whatever. I could see it in their eyes. And they got excited in a very bloodthirsty way. And I could see their

faces. And then there's one, there's two guys that were trying to control traffic and move it to go down into an area we can't see to the right. And we sat there and we sat there and we couldn't get air support because they were helping army out in a different place. And we were trying to get air support, trying to get it, trying to get it. And I keep looking up at this guy who's standing right here and staring at me. I've never seen more blood in someone's, someone's eyes at me before. I really haven't. And I got the chills. It's 100 degree heat out, you know, and I'm like, oh my God, They want to kill us. And we just start to move a little bit. Next thing I know, the air support comes. It was the most amazing feeling ever. And it starts to come down way down on them. And my buddy, James,

who was driving, he literally goes, that's for you. And bam, bam. And they start looking up. And everyone starts to leave their cars and run. Everyone's running out of their car. So we're kind of stuck there. And I'm thinking, what's happening? We finally managed to inch our way around the cars that have been abandoned and James was just about to go right like the guy with the gun telling us to go right and my hand reaches out onto his shoulder and I dig in a little too hard I guess but he didn't feel it and he you could see it in his face at the same time he goes I ain't fucking turn right and he immediately turns left really fast a hard left and gets the hell out of there and we just take off and we return to base and of course the car behind us you know follows us and we return to base

we found out from NSA because we didn't have comms comms was just crappy of course you guys you can appreciate that we couldn't hear what base is trying to tell us they were telling us that they were getting chatter that they were setting up on us they had um they were all set up there waiting they had several iEDs there they had men that were waiting there and they were like that's it let's go and there's going to be a daisy chain like all this stuff like what and we got back to base and we had what's called the akbar the ala akbar and we stayed there the rest of the night and we had our drinks we uh we made sure that oh that was the name of the bar was the Al-A-Aqbar.

Yeah, it was, he, he saved us. James absolutely saved our lives. He did. I mean, he ended up, he ended up passing away recently a couple years ago. Oh, really? I'm sorry to hear that. He's a seal, and there's too many tours, I think. It was just too many tours.

I don't know, maybe his medication got mixed. I don't know, but I've got a memorial picture of him up there. But he definitely saved our lives that day. It's unreal. Yeah. Was, did you guys have, so you were working with the Army, did they provide you with a QRF to call in in situations like that? We had our own QRF, but there was a standby one for them. So we tried to be as self-sustaining as possible.

Okay. So that we weren't adrained to the military. And QRF is a quick reaction for us. It's like the cavalry coming in to save you. when you're high and dry. Yeah. Were they, when you were working with the Army, who was at the Army giving you the requirements, the intelligence requirements, or were the intelligence requirements coming

from the agency and then you would provide the results to the Army or how did that work? It was, well, it was agency first because there were certain things that needed to be filled like information regarding the provincial councils, the political stability, instability, the intentions of certain players, that sort of thing, more the strategic. So that had to be dealt with as far as what you look at. I didn't necessarily always go to that. I wanted to gain more of the on-the-ground tactical and say,

what's going to help our troops? That was the CT officer, so I could. But at the same time, we all had to, there was only five of us there, seven of us there. We had to play, we had to be team players and do anything we could. Like I tried to get provincial council members together. And we did outside to hook. Real quick, we have some more questions, but Jack, do we need to do our library, our ads?

Yes, sir. And if you don't mind, Aaron, I'm going to do those for two minutes. And we'll get right back into it because there's, you know, we'll take some questions from the viewers. And then also I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the tail end of your career at the agency and your decision to get out and kind of moving into civilian life, starting a family. and all of that. But I want to give a shout out to our sponsors of this show. The first one is Ned. Ned is a wellness company.

They make this hemp oil that I use amongst other products. And you can check them out at hello ned.com. They make a number of different CBD products, but also other things as well. They're not just a CBD company. And they really put an emphasis on quality. And they sent me this product that, you know, as I've said before, I was pretty skeptical of it, but it's actually really helped me sleep much better at night and wake up much better rested and feeling more energetic in the morning, which anyone who knows me when I wake up in the morning, I should not be legally responsible for my decisions the first hour after I wake up.

But no, no kidding. I really did find this, have found this helpful. I use it every night, probably like three drops of it, and I sleep much better. And for the people who watch this show, there's a 15% discount for you. And you get free shipping. on your first order, you go to hello ned.com slash team house. So it's h-E-L-L-O-N-E-D.com slash team house, and you'll get 15% off your first order in free shipping. So thank you, Ned. And then the other sponsor I wanted to mention tonight is a local veteran-owned business out in New Jersey. So it's local for us. We're really happy to be able to represent them and help them out a little bit. The company makes, they are high-speed daddy that you can find them at high speed daddy.com. And this one might be for you and your husband, well, your husband specifically Aaron. They make like high quality tactical gear, but for dads. So there's like a diaper

bag, there's a first aid kit, there's a lunch pail. They make some really cool stuff. And you can find them at hellodaddy.com. And they also have a discount code for the people who watch this show. it's actually my name, Jack, J-A-C-K, enter that in and you'll get 10% off your purchase. Yeah, you said, hello, Daddy, but it's high-speed daddy, right? Did I say that? It's high-speed, Daddy. Now, is that H-I- or H-I-G-H? H-I-G-H-S-P-E-D-A-D-D-Y.com.

You guys got it, and you can range of cord some of that stuff to to your kids. Domey corded it to your kids and never leave them or your or your tactical gear, your tactical baby gear. Also, thank you everybody for joining us tonight and thank you very much, Aaron. If you haven't subscribed to our channel, please subscribe. Hit the little bell for notifications and sometimes YouTube will notify you when we go live. And there are links for our sponsors down in the description also. Right.

So a couple more, we had a few more donations. Alex Bennett asked, favorite encounter with air and maritime branch. Did you have any notable encounters with them that you can remember, can share, want to share? Actually, no, I wish I did. No. I didn't really know many people in those branches either. I know many of those guys there. I think I only had like two guys who went to one of those branches in my class. And then I never saw them again because they were. why constantly. Yeah.

Because you're doing Sam Fisher's stuff. And thanks, Alex. We appreciate that. DJ, thank you for the donation. He just said, great story. Andrew, thank you. Was Aaron's wildcat call sign,

a reference to the animal or the speculative oil field drilling operation? Oh, that's too cerebral. So not drilling. That's way too cerebral for me, that's for sure. Go ahead. I'm sorry. It was because, you know, I told you that girl that I worked with, she was my friend.

And she was describing me to everybody when the boss asked, okay, who's this chick coming in? And usually people had a chance to put in their wants for a call sign after they got there or they got it labeled them after they arrived. But since I'd had, you know, her to talk about what I was like and stuff like that, I was very, I was pretty wild in my 20s. And it was that and my laugh. So she would really concentrate on talking to everybody about my laugh, my cackle, as they say. And they like that story. And so the boss said, the chief said, she sounds like a real wildcat. And then everyone lost it apparently before I got there and said, that's it.

She has no choice. She's going to be awesome. That's actually not a bad call sign because I liked it. Yeah, because generally when other people assign you a call sign, it's not good. It's not good news when other. people give you your call sign. You had told me a story one time, Aaron. There was something about like somebody did something you didn't like and when you got back to the base, you pulled them out of the car and started yelling at them. That's not uncommon. Yeah, that's a couple of them.

Hammer time. Thank you for the donation. And is Aaron single asking for a friend? Where were you when I was? Where were you when I was, dude? Come on. Thank you. Oh, I'm with the name like Hammer Time. Thank you to everyone on the panel tonight for their hard work and dedication to our country. Thank you for the donation, Hampton.

We appreciate it. So that is a no to being single. Right. I'm married. Well, that's actually kind of the next subject I want to get into. No, go for it, Dave. A few more, and then we'll go right back to that. Alex asked, thank you for the donation.

What was your favorite skill you learned in the CIA? What would you recommend for an insurance applicant to the CIA if the CIA didn't have a website? Oh, interesting. So what was the favorite thing I learned? Yeah, like in the farmer, even maybe before, the farm or maybe out in the field, like, what was the thing that you felt? What I, yeah, one of the tools in the toolbox that we call it that I absolutely love is, and I can't believe I mean, I kind of feel like, duh. When someone, it's about listening, when someone brings something up and says, yeah, well, I didn't want to do that because of something that happened in

college, blah, blah, blah, and then they gloss over it. Well, that necessarily, that means I have proverbially put that on the table. Okay, I'm going to listen to that. I hear that. I'm going to put it right here. Okay. I'm going to ask her about that later or ask him about that later. Or, you know, say, for instance, being overseas and someone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. oh, okay, you put it on the table. I'm going to ask about it. You've now presented it and it's fair game and I'm going to talk about it. I'm going to ask about it. And one of the best things that people, well, not the best things, something that makes people feel good is when you go back and say, you mentioned a while ago that you said your daughter was ill? What is going on with that? Can I ask?

And I already know I can ask because you said it. So that's something I found was like one of the best tactics, I think. And it's so, it's so kind of common. You know, you wouldn't think that it's a huge tool to use in your toolbox when you're trying to, you know, develop someone or whatever, you're establishing rapport. And so many people in daily life, I have told my husband not, I'll tell you. I'm like, why don't you follow up with that? They put it on the table. He goes, oh, you're right. Damn it. Yeah. Now, out of curiosity was, was that a skill that you picked up in your social work courses and developed as a case off or ops officer? Was it something you picked up when you're doing security work?

That was at the farm. I learned that at the farm, the putting on the table. Absolutely. I mean, I think it was the one place that nailed at home. I think in education and those types of things, they talk about it, especially in counseling classes, but they don't do it as well as the farm did. And I went, wow, you're right. Okay.

In fact, my counselor was, he definitely had a reputation. He was the crazy one. He walked around with an unlit cigar and a golf club. And he would walk up behind, you know, students and like, walk him on the back, whatever. He was nuts. I loved him to death. And he walked up behind me because I'd screwed up something. I didn't do what he told me to.

Pick the proverbial term up off the proverbial table. And I had really messed up a, a scenario. And the instructor told him that I did. And he walked in. There's this little phone book thing there. And he just whacked me in the back of the head. He's like, you're going to forget that now? And I was like, oh, God. No, I won't, sir. But, you know, it was his way. He could do that with me because we had a rapport like that. And I would listen to that and go, you're right. I mean, he wouldn't, I didn't get brain damage more than what I already have. But there was nothing horrible about it. But yeah, that's what I love. If you see, if you hear something like that,

you can pick it up. You put it on the table, I'm going to pick it up from you. It's a good way to use people's words. When you say it back to them, they can't argue with you. Right. You're not arguing with them. You're just using words they've already used. And that really takes a lot of listening as opposed to having an agenda to pitch a person. Yep. Right. And going in there and like, okay, I'm going to recruit this person. And really just listening to what everything they're saying as opposed to preparing your pitch. Yeah. As a student, you're going to do that.

You're going to be nervous. And I did. I screwed it up. Yeah, I had all this stuff in my head. I was going to say, I was going to do, blah, blah, blah. And you're supposed to screw up certain pitch recruitment scenarios at the farm. They need you to. So you learn.

And, oh, I did. I mean, I went down in a blaze of glory. But you know what? It's one of the best times, you know, one of the things that I've learned the best. And it stayed with me, how I failed. Yeah. Interesting. So definitely the farm is not a place for a perfectionist then, somebody who just has to always do everything perfectly right.

Otherwise, they... With the workload and the stress and just the different situations they put you through, no, you'd snap. You'd leave. Yeah. And then Andrew, thank you again. And he just said that is a hell of a... That's a hell of a story. I think he was talking about your event in Mosul.

So, yeah, that is an incredible story. And it's, I did, was there a sense of, I don't want to say disbelief, but an idea of sort of this is, this is surreal now because this hasn't happened before. Is this really happening? am I like, am I making something big out of something that's not really happening? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I mentioned before that I was raised and told, you heard that wrong. You saw that wrong. I didn't say it that way. Yes, you did. So that's gas lighting. So being raised as a gaslit child, it's exactly what else for that. So I didn't really, I had the, I had the ball in my stomach that, and it was telling me, you need to listen to this. And it was saying, listen to your gut. And the farm helped me to overcome my gas lit past where I did get in trouble when I didn't listen to my gut. Absolutely. That's why Jack hit me on the head. He said,

you didn't listen to your gut. Okay, yes, sir. And so, yes, I still had a hard time. And I still sometimes do when something big like that happens. I was just looking in their eyes and trying to figure out what's going on here. And even there still was a small part of me, even my brain was saying, nah, this is it. You're being dramatic. Right. Being dramatic. You're questioning, you're questioning your own sense of reality of that. Yeah, yeah. But when I would hear things on the radio, especially from the car behind us, and I could tell that they were maintaining calm, but in a very precise manner, it's like, they're shit in their pants too. Good. Okay, I'm not crazy. I know,

but they're so professional, and they were in that mode of this is what they're prepared to do, and they got it done. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that's a lot of people, Gira you guys think of foreign Intel SF units you guys worked with in press CMS there's a

there's a lot chat I haven't been able get through all anyway Jack you wanted it yeah yeah yeah I wanted to ask you know about what happened after Iraq and you know what eventually led to your decision to you know leave the agency

yeah it's a rough one so I knew that the policy at the time, I don't know if they still have it, but the policy at the time was when you do a war zone tour, you have to do a respite tour. You're not going to get out of it. Whether that be headquarters, whether that be, I don't know, maybe you could talk your way into a London position. I don't know. Maybe that could have happened. But it was mostly conis, continental United States of tours. Again, I was, I sort of cheated the system by being able to spend nine months in Afghanistan, then go directly into Iraq because of paperwork. But that, that played a heavy toll on me. So I got to headquarters. And actually, my last day, I flew, you got to wait in Baghdad. I'm finishing my tour, April 08. I'm waiting in Baghdad three days. And then I got my flight. And I'm with some of my friends. And we land to do our whole thing. I go to a hotel because I didn't have an apartment or anything and go to my hotel. And then the next day I go into headquarters. And I met up with my support officer there, well, the staff operations

officer, the desk officer that supported me specifically. and, well, the base, but I had to have a lot more interaction with them than most of us. And really cool dude. I loved him to death, young guy. And I walk in and I saw his face. And he had this very sad, downtrodded face like you see at a funeral. And I'm, I went, you're sad to see me. I'm here.

What's wrong? And I give him a hug. And Sam back, he goes, you didn't hear, did you? And I looked at him and I didn't hear what. I'm thinking, oh, my God, was there an attack? and it's like half our base gone, you know, sort of thing. I'm worried about our personnel. I'm worried about U.S. lives, that sort of thing.

Well, my closest source that the Kurds gave me, the most prolific, the one who was amazing, the one that the Pentagon said, oh, my God, what's happened? He ended up being shot in the head the day I left. There's a lot of reasons for that. And I got back and I was told that's what happened to him. And, of course, for like three days, I just sort of spiraled. I didn't know if I was back. on base, it would be easier because I could just, again, push it away, compartment, got to do your

job. I wouldn't feel it for a bit. I felt a bit because I really respected this man. And then I had to deal with that for a bit. And then I had to go right into, I think, no, I had about five weeks, five weeks of R&R and try to process through everything. And then come back and then I had to process out for the California position that I got. And that during that time, that's when I met Jason. We sat next to each other. And he was going into class. And we sat next to you. And he was asking, again, like me.

I could see me and him so much. And he was asking so many questions. Well, what do I do here? What I do there? And I just love talking with them because I thought, oh, this really brings me back. And you're asking all the right questions. And you're really ambitious. And it was so nice to, I sort of got my spark back.

And that was for teaching. And so we, I try to help them as best I could. And then I had to kind of sail out. I came out here to the Northern California area. And I worked side by side with the Bureau out here because as Jason told you guys, we don't collect inside the United States. Anything that we do is with the Bureau. And if we're going to do anything, it's going to be foreign nationals on our U.S. soil. But even then, that has to be okayed by the Bureau.

So you have to play nice. Luckily, I got paired with a team inside the Oakland office on the Bureau. They're just awesome. I didn't realize that they were the best group to work with in all the United States. And it was fantastic. I got so lucky that way. And I loved going in every day to see them. But when I did have to go to our base here in the area, I just found myself with a heavy,

my limbs hurt physically. I was physically hurting and I couldn't figure out what was going on. And I was getting emotional and I'm not really an emotional person other than anger. All these other emotions are starting to bubble up and I'm going, I don't know what this is. And what is this wet stuff here? You make tears come from my eyes. What is going on? And I didn't understand.

I was trying to figure myself out. And I was having a hard time. So I was struggling with the job here. It was affecting my job here because of what I'd never processed in my life and what I didn't process or take the time to process from Iraq. And all these things sort of came to literally a perfect storm. And I didn't know it. I really wanted to stay in. But the work here just was so boring. I was so addicted to being able to work with the military, have things over here. Right, right. And you see the fruits of your labor. Everything that I wrote here that was not in a war zone, just kind of went into the ether. And you don't know if you made a difference or not. And that's really hard to handle. That's why a lot of officers leave. It really is because there's no satisfaction in it unless sometimes you can see it,

unless you really enjoy working the hard targets, which those guys, my hat's off to them. They're amazing. If you can work the hard targets like the Russians and Chinese and, oh my gosh, I have such admiration for them because I can't. I know my limitations. I can't do that. I don't have that kind of patience.

And the dedication for that is extraordinary. But that's just not me. I wanted to go CT work. And then when I realized I couldn't do that here, obviously, and then the only joy I was getting was working with my FDA colleagues. They really kept me going for at least probably a little less than a year. And then next thing I know, I turn around and I meet my husband out in San Francisco. And I was like, I'm done. Here it is. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know it at the time. But we started dating. And about two months later, I said, look, I travel a lot, you know that I'm going to Hawaii with my best friend, Zoe, and turns out she can't go because it work. Look, if you want to go, you can go with me. But,

you know, if we can't travel together, we're not staying together. So why might as well figure it out now? And so he was like, okay, this chick's crazy. And so he went ahead and got himself a ticket to Hawaii and he came with me two months after dating. And I was like, okay, we can travel together. This is going to work. And he left three days or so before the end of my trip, which is perfect because I got that time to myself. And I sat on the beach most of the time there in Hawaii. And I'd never been. So it was my first time there.

And I needed that downtime. I didn't realize how much I needed it. And I really started going over, oh, my gosh, in 10 years, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do is to be in this job here. But I'm not going back to D.C. You can forget it. There's no way I'm doing that. What am I supposed to be doing next?

I don't know. I really, something told me to just stay here. I don't know what it was. I'm not a religious person, but I do believe that I'm not an egotistical person enough to say that there's nothing out there. God or Allah, Buddha, Shiva, whoever you are, someone told me just to stay here and it all work out. And I did. I took a leap of faith. So it was hard.

And I'm now in the financial crimes compliance and risk industry. And I'm telling you, there's more, I could probably do another podcast just on that alone because there is more intelligence inside our banks and more people who want to learn how to actually go at it and find it and be. able to see what terrorist financing is, see what human trafficking, you know, patterns look like. It is absolutely enthralling to me. And it is the ability, it allows me the ability to be able to work in this room and still go after the bad guys because the banks are where it's at. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. How did you transition into that? How did you get, how did you go from CT into financial crimes? I mean, I understand that CT, there is financial crimes wrapped up in that, But how did you transition into the civilian sector with that?

Again, just like how I got an agency through my mom, I got into the bank through my husband. Hey, nepotism, right? It works. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, right? Yeah. It was tough. People out here didn't quite understand how to read my resume, and I could only say certain

things. I couldn't change it. They wanted me to add more, and I'm like, I can't. You don't understand. I can't. I'm only allowed certain things to say. And I had the best HR lady in the entire. free world because two months after I left, after I separated, my cover was rolled back. I was done.

They gave me the blessing in March 2010. I was gone January 2010. My last day was actually the Coast Blast. So I lost my only mentee at Coast Blast in Afghanistan, Harold. And it was, yeah, that my last day, I walked out of the office and I heard, oh, it was Coast and so many of them are gone. And that's what I left with. Stunned. And I got a call. We're on our way to, I was moving with my now husband, boyfriend at the time. And we were driving back and I got a call saying, yep, it was him. He's gone. And yeah, there's another thing that hit pretty hard. How did, I mean, how did you deal with all of that? I mean, this experience where you lost a trusted asset in Iraq the day you left. And then the day we left the agency, you know, your close friend who had

helped mentor you through your career was killed in Kaus. I mean, you've already alluded to. I mean, this hit this all this hit you very hard and you're also trying to make this transition into you know civilian life and trying to settle down with your husband we should bring my sister on let her talk about it because i don't know she's watched me go through all this stuff and she's been a my biggest cheerleader and and all that and has been so calm and say well obviously same with my husband too but she's known me since i was 12 so she could probably better answer that um it's it's been tough I just try to, you know, like my dad says, he's a recovering alcoholic, just one day at a time. And I didn't realize how important that was until I kept hearing him say that.

And I'm like, wait a minute, there's something to that. Yeah, he's been fighting his demons for a long time. And he's someone I look up to big time. So when I do have a bad, if I have a hard day, I think about him and go, and I'll just give him a call. Yeah, how are you doing sort of thing? And we sort of, I'm hoping we can help each other out. So, you know, you've kind of alluded to it. I don't know if you mention it like explicitly, but I mean, we're talking a bit about post-traumatic stress, right?

When did you recognize, like, how did you come to terms with that term? Like, recognize it. What I'm going through here is this thing. Yeah. It's built up over time. I had to have a counselor tell me, and then I argued with her. Why did you argue with her? Like, what was it? So I actually went to her because, again, I just thought it was quote, the baby blues. So our daughter was seven or eight months at the time. And around six months, that's when it hit me.

I just started crying constantly. I started getting these, again, physical symptoms where I felt from about my shoulder down on all four limbs, this light almost. electrical feeling when she would cry, when she would go off and start crying. And I couldn't hold her because I would shake and I'd have these electrical little little buzz, like just, just light. Nothing like I'm paralyzed or anything like that, but I would say, hey, what is this? I felt something was on me or something. And then finally my husband was like, you've got to see someone. And I did. I took his advice, which is right. And I found, through our insurance, I found a counselor and said, I don't, just give me something. Like, that's all I need. I know I just need to get through this is postpartum. I know that. Like I know everything. And then she starts digging into more of my

past. And I didn't really want to talk about it because, again, I didn't really know what I should say. And I didn't. And to me, it's always, I feel like I'm being melodramatic. If I tell her I went to Iraq, she's going to think, I don't believe you. You're making it up. And because she doesn't really, she probably doesn't see a whole lot of people out here. Now, if this is a Virginia, North Virginia based counselor, sure. We're a dime a dozen out there. Here. Here, she doesn't, I'm a, I guess you could say a unique flower. And I was afraid to say certain things. And so when she said, when she finally got out of me, she said, you were in a stressful war type

environment for how many months? And I said, well, put it all together, two years. And then she starts talking back to me and saying the, because I deal with facts much better than I do with feeling words. You just give me facts and boom, I'm done. Okay, got it. Thank you. Move on.

she starts going over what happens to the brain in stressful situations, the fight or flight response, the serotonin levels that happen, the dopamine, all that stuff. She starts going into it. And she said, these sorts of things start to erode in your brain when you're exposed to that kind of environment for more than, say, I can't remember the exact time. But she said something like more than two hours. And I was like, I was two years. And she goes, yeah, and that coupled with the fact that you never really knew who you were and you were gaslit your entire life. that, you know, this is coming to a head now. So what she said to me, she said, you've got PTSD and I kept saying, no, I never was on the ground. I never engaged in ground combat. I never had to shoot my

gun. You know, the military is always protecting me. I was fine. I was probably safer there than I am in ground zero in New York or D.C. And she goes, stop talking. You've got to stop. Because I always compare myself to people who have been in say, firefights and things like that. And I never was. So I always thought, well, I'm not as, things shouldn't be as hard for me. But it's when she explained it to me about what happens to the brain, that made so much more sense to me. And I finally thought, okay, got it. And when she did this, she said, your PTSD is kicking up your postpartum. Your postpartum is kicking up your PTSD.

And I said, so basically I'm fucked. I'm sorry, go ahead. I just say, she gave me a psychiatrist and I got some. just for a short term, well, butrin. And that really helped just to get through that postpartum part. And I'm not on that anymore. And I found out recently that I don't produce any vitamin D. Well, hardly any.

So I take vitamin D and boom, I'm good to go. I'm good. So I'm not on anything anymore, which is nice. It just got me through that. Did you do any like EMDR or EMDR? Yeah. Yeah, I can't do that. It doesn't do anything for me.

Get it for you? They try. I couldn't do it. It's something eye movement. It's supposed to be. I've read articles and journals on it. It's because psychology was my minor. So it really fascinated me. I could not for the life of me. It just didn't do a thing. And I finally broke down and told me my counselor, I can't do this. I'm not feeling different. There are a lot of modalities. There's MDR. There's EFT. There's Havening. I think that what one of the things are finding is, For whatever reason, tactile input, you know, something above the torso helps create, or not only tactile, but just some sort of sense, you know, desensit, desensit, anyway, you know what I'm saying. Check another senator. You know, sensory overload or whatever. Sensory helps kind of draw away from those memories. but different things work for different people, you know, obviously.

And it's challenging, you know. I mean, right now I think that we're at 22 or 23 veteran deaths a day due to, due to, you know, post-traumatic stress. And something else that I'm dealing with, too, is my guilt over not being there for James because he did reach out. And he called me one time and my husband and I were dating. And it was a Hawaii trip. And he goes, put him on the phone.

Put him on the phone. I don't want him to think that, you know, because I worked with you and I'm a dude, blah, blah. And they talked for like an hour. It was fantastic. And we stayed in touch. And he would send, he started to go downhill and he started sending me these documents of things that he wanted to do for his business.

He wanted me involved from the ground up. And I said, I'm so fascinated. Let's do this. But then his writings got a little out of control. And I should have seen it, especially with my psychology background. I should have seen where he was spiraling because they weren't something that was really cohesive. And that's the guilt that I have that I did.

and stop and say, look, dude, we got to talk. I know it's not my fault. I know that. But it's, I'm sure you guys have similar, similar stories. Yeah. So, yeah. So with, with your own experience, like how, how did you manage, like how, aside from the vitamin D and, and, and, and everything, like, is it something, you know, because there was obviously stuff from childhood, like, it builds, right? And I know it's been explained sometimes as like one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. And it just taxes the system on an one-stop basis. Was there a way that you processed everything came to terms with it? I don't know about you guys, but I still am.

I don't think that ever stops. I'm wondering if it ever stops, actually. I should say it that way because sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. I mean, I left Iraq 12 years ago. But it feels, I don't know if you guys feel this way, I sometimes feel like it was two years ago. And so when I do feel that anxious stuff going on or whatever, or if I just feel down like I wasn't there for James and all this stuff, I'll run. I like to do races. I'll do 10Ks mostly.

I do run a lot. And it really helps because by the end of it, when I walk back in the house, I'm a better mom. I'm a better wife. I'm more calm. It's the endorphins going through me. And I can breathe again. Can't always do that, though. So there are certain other things. Like I stress clean. And I work a lot. I'm here at this desk a lot. And that gives me a lot of joy and my daughter. So that's the only things I know right now. Maybe if anybody has any other suggestions, I'm open. But that's about it. Ayahuasca is one of us. Is that a drink?

No, hyahuasca is like that hallucinogenic Peruvian root that people eat. It is a drink, but it's hallucinogenic, yeah, from a root. They brew it. I mean, like, like no bullshit, though. I mean, there are a lot of veterans and a lot of people with PTSD who have described very beneficial experiences from using ayahuasca and DMT and things like that. Yeah. We're also doing studies now on MDMA.

MDMA and post-traumatic stress. I mean, I don't, there's also a friend of mine went through a program at Walter Reed where they were giving them some sort of shot into like the base of their spine to, I'm not sure if it's the amygdala or whatever. But I'm not, and I'm not 100% certain if it was a nerve, what it was doing, but he said it had a lot of great results. I don't know, there's a lot of advancing therapies out there. What worked for you, though, Aaron?

I mean, what did you have to learn about yourself? What kind of like self-realization did you have that helped you, you know, come to terms of some of these traumatic experiences that you had in life and in your career and, you know, become, you know, a functional person, a whole person. That could be, you know, a wife, a mother, all these other things. and life assist her? I don't know if I'm, that's interesting if we say I'm a functioning person.

No, I am. I use humor a lot to cover up, especially Will Ferrell lines. That's movies are my escape. I use them a lot. But honestly, it's been standing up for myself. So not everyone, some people feel like you have to take the abuse from people just because they're blood related to you, just because they say your family. And you don't. And it's helped a lot. And I've been able to walk away from that abuse. The second one of my

counselors actually said, that's abuse. I started to argue against it. I'm like, no, she's not abusive. Blah, blah. And when, again, when it was explained to me about how the brain reacts in the adolescent stage and how it develops, and when that development is stunted, that's when I stop, again, facts. And I went, oh, okay. And it really started to hear that. So when I've pulled away and I've been able to live a life without that kind of gaslight and without that manipulation, it has helped so tremendously much. But it comes at a great price. I mean, I'm not proud of it. I'm not, I don't have a bullhorn saying, you know, I don't, I don't have a relationship with my mother anymore, blah, blah, blah. I'm so happy about it. I'm not. I mourn every day. And I wish the opposite.

And so, but just knowing that I've stood up for myself is what I can show my daughter. And when she asks, I can explain it and I'll explain it the best way I can. That's helped a lot. Because when you, you bring yourself out of manipulative behavior. It's, God, it changes you so much. And I've been in, what I feel is such a,

we have ups and downs in my marriage. Everybody does, but he's such a rock. And he's so steady that to not be around that manipulative kind of behavior, it's a bullhorn when I hear it now. I mean, he's shown me the good side of what a relationship is, what human contact is.

And I see that, when it's brought to me, when the manipulation is brought to me, oh, I have a physical reaction to it. I can't deal with it. And then I just sort of, you know, slink behind him and go hide. And he's like, I got this. Take care of it. When, you know, when you kind of comparing your childhood with a narcissistic parent, and then, which was very manipulative, right, in a lot of ways.

and then going into the farm, which is also teaches, I assume, a bit of manipulation. Like how did you recognize that or did you compare and contrast or like what was that? Not at first. Not at first. And if you really break it down, the manipulation that a lot of parents do against their children, a lot of, I'd say most of the time, 90 to 99% of time, they don't know they're doing it. And I hope to God, I don't. I'm not one of those that I know I'm hurting my child some other way.

I'll find out when she's in therapy. But, you know, 99% of the time, they don't know they're doing it. It's for their own, it's for the person's own good, the adults own good, because they want their ego-stroked. They want to make sure they're not in the wrong. Their ego and their pride is intact. So does it matter how bad you look? Whereas something like espionage and a recruitment pitch, you're actually supposed to be genuine.

And I really feel like every time it is because you have to have that genuine, you got to find something there that you hook with that person. Because they trust you to save their lives and keep them safe and their family safe. And you can't fake that. There's nothing. You've got to put your ego aside because you have to be there for them. You have to answer that call at 2 in the morning when that man or woman who has decided to work with you is terrified out of their mind. and they need you to listen to be their counselor. You've got to be away from your family to do this.

You have to be genuine. There could be an ego somewhere else in another part of your life, but you can't with them. Now, somebody who is not familiar, somebody who believes like all the myths and mysteries and conspiracies about the CIA would be like, why does it have to be genuine? You're just using them for the intel.

What's the purpose of, what's the point? why be genuine? Like as long as you get what you want. Is it really what you want? It's what the nation needs. Right. Yeah. So that's the way I always looked at it. So I've also sat in front of the world's worst terrorist, literally. And I wanted to take a piece of cut glass and slashes throat. I really did. Why can't we, why couldn't we do that? Save a lot of taxpayer money. That would be amazing. No. So sitting there, you put everything else, side and go, this is what I need from you. I'm going to do what I need to do to get it.

Meaning, is it, you know, saying something about your ego or saying, you know, feeding something that you need? Okay, I'll do it because it's something bigger than me that has to be met. The nation security has to be met. It's not about me. Whereas narcissistic parents, it's about them. So what's the point of being genuine, though, if, if, if, because people can, a lot of people can read through that. And if they can read through it and see through it, they're going to walk away and where are you? Yeah. Is it also a manner of like dealing people honorably so that other people will deal with you?

Because if you sort of, if everybody knows it like you're just a piece of human garbage to them that eventually nobody's going to work with. Yeah, exactly. And you're going to be handed off to other COs. That asset's going to be handed off to other COs and they have to feel protected. They have, I mean, there's no greater feeling of, of being protected when you're in that kind of environment, when you've decided, I'm going to make sure that my country is safe by giving these types of secrets to this country who can keep us safe.

There's a lot of reasons why people do it. It's because they're motivated by money or, and that's certainly not someone you want, but you'll take it sometimes. They're motivated by, you know, being upset with their boss. There's lots of different things. Or their daughter's sick. Their son is sick and they need help and they don't make enough because they're a government employee and you've come in and you've saved the day, having that genuine friendship and being

able to say, I'd love to help. I don't see why anyone would not want to do that, but they know that there's a price to pay, but, you know, maybe it's not that big of a price because you've developed a true friendship with that person. That's very interesting, because I think that there's a very, a very strong sort of idea that in order to be, you know, a CIA spymaster, and you have to be this very cold, emotional, so manipulative, you know, sort of, you know what I mean, mastermind, when really you make it sound as though empathy is really a stronger character trait or a more beneficial character trait than. That's what I learned.

That's what I learned because that's the only way you're really going to make true connections with people. And that's what I learned in college, you know, in the classes that I took as far as the, especially the group counseling classes we have to take. because like I said, I have a social work degree, and we had to actually lead the different social work type of group activities. And you had to be the leader each week. Somebody else was the moderator. And I learned that way, too, so that really helped as well. Because if you don't genuinely care about someone, again, they're just going to walk away. So is being a case officer,

or an ops officer, a tough job in the sense that some of the people that do it really well are very empathetic, you know. And at the same time, it's in a lot of ways a business relationship that our government, not you as a human being, but our government, the agency, whomever, decides when this person is no longer used to us. Yeah, and you've got to know how to word that and word it in a way that is professional, that allows them to maintain their dignity, that lets them know that they're not being thrown away like yesterday's trash. There's a, there's an art to that big time because, again, there's a

lot of feelings there. They've developed relationships over what probably several different COs or the lifespan of your tour and it's over or anything. It could be anything, but how it's handled because a lot of times, too, they already know the situation. They already know they could be let go. And we had to go through one scenario at the farm. I didn't have it in real life, but one scenario where an instructor agent actually had to pretend like they had a romantic crush on their student. And I had one instructor. He was awesome. Young guy.

He was so cool. And he comes to my room unannounced. And he has flowers. And I'm thinking, is this a test? Oh, my God. Is he in character? How am I going to do this? And I just stared at him.

I just didn't know what to do because it was off. I mean, right, right. It was supposed to be in characters and stuff. And so I just sort of looked at him. and he said his name, his character name to let me know, all right, we're on now. I've surprised you. And he wanted to know how I thought on my feet.

And I wouldn't let him in because he surprised me. And I shut the door behind me. And we talked in the hall and I said, I am so flattered that someone like you would think that way of me. I really am. However, we have to keep this professional because what would happen? If we get into a romantic relationship and you're talking to me about your work and I'm taking it back to the United States. And imagine how that's going to be on any, you could get killed because your feelings are involved. We can't do that.

I'm trying to protect you. And I'm going to be gone here in a year and a half or whatever or something like that. And it's the only thing I could think of to say, because I'm trying like, no, no, this is bad on you. This is bad on you. And luckily, I did well in that one. And he was like, yeah, that's how you're supposed to do it and just sort of walked away and through the flowers in the trash can. But I didn't have that. But that was a really good scenario to try and learn like, okay, that could happen when I'm out there.

I didn't think about it that way. So putting those parameters there, especially as a female, and you're working with a lot of men, it's really good to say, here are the parameters of this. And you will know this, whether it's me or someone else, that this may not last forever. Who knows? And they know that going into it. And so I guess my question isn't you talk about how you handle it with them, with dignity and everything like that. But as a person with empathy, with genuine feelings, and who has cultivated some sort of relationship, friendship, or whatever it is with this other person, how does that wear on an ops officer, though, to go through these periods? It is one thing to pass somebody off,

but it would be another thing, I think, to terminate to somebody to say that you're not under our protection anymore. You're not under our, you know, like how does an, ops officer carry those, those things with them. Well, I guess, you know, the, the standard answer for any time we were in class at the farm, it depends. So people now know that I actually was there, because that's the answer to everything. It depends. It's hard. But at the same time, you know that going in as a case officer. You know that going in. You know that it's a business relationship. And if you can develop, you know, the personal empathy and the the friendship type

environment, you know it's going to end when you leave your tour. So at least for me, compartmenting was easy. I don't know about others. I can't speak for them. But there's a lot of, I guess, layers that go into the brain development of a CEO and a lot of it's done at the farm and on the desk that allow them to be prepared for that. But I'm not saying it's easy. No, I, I I can't imagine it would be. Aaron, you know, I think we should probably start wrapping it up here for tonight. Yeah, I was actually afraid that we wouldn't have enough to talk about. No, no, we could keep going.

But I think we can save some stuff for next time and do it again sometime. Get into the financial intelligence stuff that you mentioned. And I'm sure there's much more. But this has been really interesting and really illuminating. So, I mean, I really appreciate your time coming on here on a Friday night for like two and a half hours. to talk to us. I have two more. Thank you, Andrew. Andrew said, my granddad went through the farm before was the farm in 1943, and one thing they would do is run up to the fence. They could see recruits as they were bust into the camp and you'll be sorry. He was in the Navy, not the CIA. Camp Perry

was a CB basic. I was going to say it didn't exist at that time at that. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, CB. And then also thanks, Andrew. Aaron is talking about narcissistic supply. Is that a, Is that a psychological term narcissistic? They need that supply of drama and whatever it is that that narcissistic person needs from you. And I'm so glad they said that. And I hope I'm saying it to what the person is referring to. This could be a whole other thing too. I've done a lot of reading and looking into it because I didn't come about the decision to walk away from part of my family lightly at all.

So I wanted to really study it and really read about it. There's something called the gray rock method where you just become this gray rock. You just, if you decide to have that person in your family, don't feed their need for their supply, their narcissistic supply. If they ask you how your dayways, go, fine. How are things going at work? Great. That sort of thing. And if you have the ability to have that, maintain that kind of relationship, then my hat's off to you.

But yeah, they need that supply to fill whatever it is that they're filling. And I just decided I don't have the energy for that. Yeah. I mean, why does a narcissist go to therapy? so they have one more audience. Yeah, exactly. Did the stream cut out, Jack was in mid-sentence? I think we're still streamed.

And thanks, DJD K-K-L-S-L-S. Yeah. Cool. Guys, just to throw out one more time, thank you everybody for watching who joined us tonight. Aaron, there's like 80, 85 people watching you live. So you're internet famous. You're internet famous.

You're internet famous. Like me and Dave, we're YouTubers. I reluctantly admit this to myself. This is what it is. So thank you everyone who watched us tonight and everyone who's going to watch this later on or check out the podcast. Please subscribe to the channel.

If you haven't already, it's down below in the description. You hit the subscribe button. There's a little bell icon you can hit so you get notified when we go live next time. Also down in the description, there are links for our sponsors. If you'd like to give them a try, Ned and High Speed Daddy. And also there's a link to our Patreon. If you're interested in financially supporting this show and this stream and you like what we're doing,

you'd like to see us do more of it and keep it going. You can get involved. Even a dollar a month. Even a dollar a month helps us. We're a cheap date. And on that Patreon, we also have bonus segments with our guests. I'm sorry to spring this on you, Aaron, but would be okay if we do a bonus segment with you? It's like 10 minutes after this.

I'd love to, sure. Okay, okay, great. Thank you so much. I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that to you earlier. But that's it. I guess that's episode 39. It's around. Episode 40, next show, big guest, Sergeant Major, Mike Vining will be on the show to discuss

the 40th anniversary of Operation Eagle Claw. So Mike Vining is a Delta Force Plank owner. He was operator training course number one. One of the originals served in Vietnam, got picked up for the first generation of Delta operators, and he was on the ground in 1980 for Operation Eagle Caw, where we went to rescue 52 hostages being held in terrain, American hostages, on that ill-fated mission. So Mike Vining is the epitome of the real deal. He's one, I mean, Aaron, he is like the Bill Casey or something, you know, it probably is for the CIA.

Like he is one of our OGs in the military. Wow. And, you know, yeah. You know, he is like, you know, Mike Vining is to special operations what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to bodybuilding. It's like, yeah, they put him on the cover of every magazine. But like, we don't care. We want more Mike Vining. Just keep it coming.

So that will be next episode. I'm super excited to have him on. He is outstanding, just a total professional. So I'm really looking forward to that. and this episode has been really great Aaron. I'm so glad that you agreed when I twisted your arm a little bit to come on the show. Thank you.

Talk to. Aaron, I just want to I'm just scrolling through the chat. Obviously we can't read all the questions people asked, but there was one with emojis, so I stopped by and it's somebody named Lady Fame and she said Aaron, oh my,

OMG, love you, you're awesome. I want the high sign like three people. It caught my eye. That's why, like, emojis. Must be one of my friends out here in our neighborhood. I told a bunch of them to watch. I paid them. So checks in the mail. So, Aaron, thank you so much for being on. Everybody, thank you for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. Thank you guys. Yeah. Thank you. And now I have to figure out how

to turn this more. Go to more. Oh, I got it. I got it.