The Team House - CIA Para-Military Ops in the Philippines with fmr Ops Officer Kent Clizbe, Ep. 31

Episode Date: February 29, 2020

Kent served as a staff CIA case officer in the 1990s, and as a contractor after 9/11. He has worked in various capacities in intelligence positions in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His specialty is Counter-terrorism and Islamic Extremism. Kent has also worked Counter-intelligence, Counter-proliferation, Counter-narcotics, and other targets. In addition to extensive liaison work with foreign intel services, he has worked in the US Intel Community in inter-agency, inter-governmental intelligence operations since 9/11. He was awarded the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion, the highest civilian intelligence agency decoration for contractors, for his counter-terrorist operations in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. His work in the Philippines was described in an article by Mark Bowden in the Atlantic Monthly in March 2007, “Jihadists in Paradise.” In the US Air Force, Kent was a Vietnamese linguist, completing language training at DLI in Monterey, CA. He served for three years at Clark AB in the Philippines. Kent’s educational background includes a BA in Southeast Asian Studies-Linguistics from SUNYExcelsiorCollege and an MA in Linguistics and Business from OhioUniversity, as well as graduate studies in Instructional Design at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He has more or less linguistic expertise in Vietnamese, Italian, Malay/Indonesian, Spanish, and Arabic. He is a member of the International Association for Intelligence Education; the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, and the Association for Intelligence Officers. With a career that has spanned the globe, in multiple roles and operations, Kent has many stories to tell. 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.

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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. Tell me when. When? Yeah. Welcome to episode 31.

I'm Jack Murphy, here with my co-host, Dave Park. You can see him right over here. We are here with our guest tonight. Kent Clisbee. Ket served as a CIA staff operations officer and afterwards as an intelligence contractor has pretty extensive experience working in Southeast Asia, West Africa. He was the coalition liaison during the invasion of Iraq from the agency. So he has a lot of experience and a lot of interesting parts of the world.

And Kent and I have also kind of orbited each other in some sort of odd ways. once we both had some strange encounters with a CIA imposter named Wayne Simmons, who was a Fox News host. We'll talk about that a little later. And then it's really funny because I had talked to Kent a few different times. And then I went to the Philippines in 2017 to do a bunch of reporting on the Philippines Special Operations units. And I ended up meeting a lot of people who had worked with Kent back in the early days of the war on terror. in the southern Philippines. And I did not at the time put two and two together because like a Marine colonel would be like, yeah, I was in my living room with the CIA guy and we were plotting,

you know, these missions targeting terrorists. And I didn't realize that that guy in his living room was, so it wasn't until way later that I kind of put two and two together. But anyway, that's enough for me. Kent, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate having you on. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, maybe just to kick this off, you tell us a little bit about where you came from. You had sent me a picture of some bullet holes in your bedroom wall. I guess the streets were pretty real, where you grew up in, where was it, North Carolina? Yeah, I grew up in Halifax County, North Carolina, a little place called Roanoke Rapids. You drive down 95 going from New York to Florida. you drive right through it. You smell it before you see it. The industry is a paper mill. Tobacco?

No, no, paper mill. Paper mill. Oh, yeah, you definitely smell paper. Yeah, yeah. It was a great place to grow up, but, you know, I was kind of on the good side or the wrong side of the tracks, not quite in the worst areas, but I definitely wasn't in the best areas.

Yeah, that picture I shared with you was my buddy lived across the street named Timmy Little, nice redneck guy. Another guy we knew named Chuck Alsbrook was riding his bike by Timmy's house, and Timmy did not like Chuck. There's some kind of story there. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but Timmy pulls out his 22 and let loose at Chuck. And missed Chuck, but he hit my bedroom window. So there's a reverse drive-by.

There's a ride-by. Exactly, exactly. There's a reverse drive-by. Yeah, reverse drive-by. I never thought about it like that. Yeah. So, you know, talking about the agency and that kind of background, what's really interesting is you look at a lot of agency guys who end up being ops officers.

They'll, you know, you read biographies that, stories life stories guys have written you know they talk about well my my summer at the Sorbonne when I was in seventh grade and and and then I was in Aspen as a ski bum for college and you know that's not really useful when you're out trying to to to recruit terrorists I found I found that my background was not quite as privileged you know I never been on a ski slope until I was 35 and took my kids there. But my background of a little less privilege and a little bit more grit and reality was quite useful in dealing with bad guys. So how did you get to the CIA then?

Like what took you there? Before that, I mean, those pictures of you're going on the Hajj, I mean, how does a young guy from Renoke Rapids end up converting to Islam and ending up and sort of? some of these parts of the world. Well, I mean, how much time do we have? Three hours, some of these episodes run for us, so we got time. Until we finish that bottle of LeFroid, basically. Okay, well, that part is further on in the story.

How did I, how did a kid from Rona Grappids end up in the CIA? I did not take the state. standard way, that's for sure. I like to say that the best thing that I ever did in my life was to join the military, and the second best thing was to get out.

The military saved my life, put me straight, gave me self-discipline. They sent me to Monterey to learn Vietnamese. I went to Defense Language Institute, learned Vietnamese. why did I join the military? I had zero interest in being in the military.

I got out of high school and everybody's going to college. I said, yeah, I'll go too. That year was that summer that I went to college, the Playboy named the college that I went to the number one party school in the country, East Carolina University. that summer also Belushi

National Lampoon National Lampoon's Animal House What was it called? Animal House. Yes, yes, yeah. Animal House came out. So here I am. Here I am. This kid from the sticks end up in the number one party school

and Animal House is out. I didn't really know why I was there So the next three semesters, I got really, really good at BSing. I learned that I could go to a party and get free beer and talk to anybody about anything in those three semesters. My GPA was about 0.23, but I got a lot out of it. So the fourth semester, I said, hey, you know, this is great living, green. Greenville, North Carolina was where ECU is. Now, I said, I love living in Greenville.

Why do I need to go to school? I'll just stay here. I'll get me a job. So I had a couple jobs. I worked in a convenience store at night and a T-shirt factory during the day. I made a silk screen. I was the frame maker. Pitiful, pitiful.

I'm not making, I don't know, probably 425, 5.50 an hour, something like that. that. And you're building out the frames that they would use to lay them down? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a wooden frame. I built the frame, put the screen on it, code it with this chemical that then is burned. The design is burned into the screen. I did that for about six months. I didn't have any transportation. I had a little Harley 250 Enduro motorcycle that I'd probably paid you $250 for. About every other day it wouldn't start. So I'm constantly out kicking my bike and trying to get to get to this stupid T-shirt factory job. One day it wouldn't start. I lived in a big party house with a bunch of other folks, probably nine, ten other people. So my bike wouldn't start. Some guy's

girlfriend had a little Vega, Chevy Vega. And I said, hey, can I borrow your car just to get to work this time? She said, sure, go ahead. I backed out of the driveway, nailed a telephone pole. So here I am. I don't have two pennies to rub together. I can just barely feed myself. Now I've got to repair this poor girl's car. That was kind of like, okay, you know,

what in the heaven's name am I doing here? I can do better than this. luckily I had taken the ASVAB in high school just just on a whim it just took it so they had my scores down at the recruiter next day I walked into the into the I looked at from my limited knowledge I said you know the Air Force is probably the least military of the services and and I'm not I'm not really you know I need to do this to save myself not necessarily to to to to to to to to to to to go to war or anything. So I went to the Air Force recruiter. I got really good scores in the ASVAB. He said, yeah, you can go in three months. So that's how I ended up in the military.

How old were you at this time? So I'm 19, 19 probably. This was, yeah, 19. Yeah. I came in, I started the Air Force when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. I was at basic training when Ronald Reagan. Reagan was inaugurated the first time. And what job with your scores and everything, what job did the recruiter sell you on? They sold me on whatever I could leave the quickest. And it was, I went in

Open General, which meant they figure out once you get there. Yeah. So it didn't matter to me. I had not been, I really, I was pretty doggone hungry. I just, barely had had money for beer and you know food was like a secondary consideration so i didn't care i got i got a free place to live i got i got a warm bed uh and and three meals a day i put on weight in basic training but if if you went to dali to learn vietnamese i mean they must have funneled you into like i or something like that right so in the the way the air force did it back then was, I mean, I don't, I assume they still probably do, but since I didn't, wasn't guaranteed a job or anything in basic, based on my ASVAB scores, they, I took other tests.

One of them is the D-Lab, the defense language aptitude battery. I took that and I did good. You know, I had no idea that I could, I had any aptitude for languages. But I did good. But I did good. and they offered me to be a linguist, cryptolinguist. I said, sure, what do I need to do? They said, well, when you get out of Basic, you go to Monterey, California. Sounds good to me as I signed up. How long was Vietnamese the course? So the basic course was 42 weeks.

That was North Vietnamese, and then we went back and did redid the whole course in South Vietnamese in five weeks. So it ended up being 47 weeks. So is it cat three then? What is that? Is that the difficulty? Yeah. Yeah.

I forget all those, the terminology, but probably, probably. Yeah. Did you have a good time at Monterey? Oh, it was fantastic. I mean, so, I'm not, Monterey was a great place to live. I got married, right? basic training and which got me to live off base. I got a, I had a little apartment two blocks

off Canary Row, could walk to, walk to school. I call it school. And I'm walking school. I used to pinch myself. I'm wearing my Air Force uniform walking in this beautiful place. You know, here I am a redneck out of the paper mill. And six months ago, you know, pushing my dead Harley motorcycle trying to get to my T-shirt factory job. Now here I am. Wait, wait, is this real? Wait, yeah, yeah. It is real.

I am walking on this road going up the hill. I turn around and I look back and I'm looking out this vista of Monterey Bay. I can see Santa Cruz in the back and the cannery road is right here. I couldn't believe it. So that beautiful place. What was your military service like? So after all the training, there wasn't a lot of use for Vietnamese back then.

But we did have one use, and that was the Soviets were using our bases in Vietnam, our old bases, Cameroon Bay, at the Cam Ranh Bay especially, and they used that for, they flew their nuclear bombers, the bombers that carried nuclear missiles in and out of Cameroon Bay. So twice a year they would swap out. So for three years, I sat at Clark in the Philippines with headsets on, tied to Iraq, listening to the Vietnamese and really all we cared about was those twice a year to hear the

Vietnamese go hey hey the friends just took off and boom that was that was our big big intel it took me a couple years to figure that out because we sat there listening 24 hours a day three shifts rotating shifts but after a couple years I realized you know all this other stuff we're listening to, nobody cares about. Nobody cares what the Vietnamese are flying their, their decrepit migs down in Biennhoa or something. All we were focused on was the Soviets flying out of Cam Ran. So I did that for three years. So after DLI did you go to St. Angelo? Is that where you got your Cryptolinguish training? Yep. San Angelo?

Yeah. A little town. Good fellow Air Force base out in the middle of nowhere. out in the desert. Yeah. So at the end, you were not quite satisfied with your job in the Air Force? Yeah, I mean, you know, it was, it opened up a whole world to me. It opened up, the military gave me, gave me self-discipline, you know, got me out of this party boy, you know, just living for the next beer or whatever, gave me, helped me realize, I can learn.

I've got some, I have some skills that are useful. I have aptitudes. So I got that from the military. I got the introduction to Asia, to the Asian cultures,

to the Asian, the whole international world opened up to me. The military did it. Without that, you know, there's no telling what I would have been doing. But like I said, the best thing that ever happened to me, the second best thing was I got out, because I'm just, I'm not cut out to be in the military. I'm not, I'm a really bad bureaucrat. I'm really bad at, I guess, taking orders.

I'm really good at using my initiative and my native common sense to figure things out and do it do it myself. The military, I was not really appreciated in the military. There wasn't a, there wasn't a, I didn't see a career path that would make, make the best. What happened after you got out? Because, you know, we were talking a little bit about earlier, you had some more overseas travel afterwards. Yeah. So, so what once, once the,

whole international world opened up to me once I discovered that I really loved Asia. I started and and I discovered I found out I'm not going to stay in the military. I started trying to figure out okay what do I do now. There was no GI Bill back then. I was in in the middle. I was in between the Vietnam and between the wars starting. I was in that gap. So I got no no benefits. So I had to they had some program where if you you could make a deposit once a month or something and they would they would double it like up to $90 a month, I think. It was it was it was ridiculous. But you know, at least they tried. But I so I had to figure out what am I going to do with the rest of my life now that I've discovered these interests these my interests discovered my ability. So I started, my research led me to, I can, with Vietnamese, at the time, there was still quite a big refugee population and refugees were still coming in from Southeast Asia. So I decided that would be the best application of my skills to get in the refugee industry, if you will. And the way to do that was to, get a degree in teaching English as a second language. That was pretty much the best in. So I

went back, went to figured out where, what school could you, um, what there's two, two universities that had Vietnamese at the time, Cornell and Southern Illinois University. Since I didn't have, uh, I was going to be paying for it on my own, um, I had to go, for the cheapest place. So I ended up in Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois, established residency there and was able to finish my degree

in, I think, three semesters. I took all the Klepp tests before I left the military, did all the Kleps, got all my basic credits out of the way, and ended up able to, at Carbondale, I was able to take all of the

you know, higher level major classes, linguistics, instructional design. I did sort of a double major. I did political science in Southeast Asian studies as well. And lucky me, I also met my

wife. There was Southeast, Southern Illinois University was at the time it was like a small Malaysia. Malaysia used to back in the 80s or right up to the 90s used to send thousands of students to the states for from they would send them in their first year after high schools as freshmen and they would stay

through they they up to PhD so my my wife was one of those students my and um so i discovered at carbondale i discovered Malaysia i discovered that that culture I discovered many other interesting aspects of Asian culture, that kind of thing. So as we were finishing up, she finished her graduate. 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.

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We were trying to figure, and she was going to have to go back to Malaysia to pay back her scholarship. Oh, right. Yeah, so here, now I've got my degree in teaching English and second language. The idea is to get back to, say, the Philippines in a refugee camp. There's refugee camps in Malaysia at the same time, too, but there weren't so many jobs there. ended up we she went back to Malaysia to teach I got a job in first I did a I ran I was a supervisor child care supervisor in a refugee orphanage in Peoria Illinois the kids that they call them unaccompanied minors kids that like as the boat is I don't know if you all are familiar but they

They called the boat people back then. The refugees, they would leave on boats. As the boat was pulling away, parents would run out and toss their kid in. Oh, shit. Because, you know, it cost a lot of money to get on one of those boats. And so there's a lot of instances of unaccompanied minors would show up. And the program that I worked in was the only program

that would accept unaccompanied minors from the refugee camp to come to the states. So it was like an orphanage, in effect. So that was my first job in the refugee industry. That qualified me to get a job in the Bataan, Americans say Bataan. The Batan refugee camp, refugee processing center was huge. It was like a city back then. It was about 20,000 refugees, Southeast Asian refugees. It was the final processing before they came to the states.

So I got a job there as a, I was a supervisor in the work orientation program. So I'm in Batan. My wife is in KL. I worked, my schedule was six weeks on, two weeks off. no, six weeks on, one week off, six weeks on, two weeks off. So every two week break, I was flying to KL. And that was really interesting because I had to convince her family that I was worthy of her. They had to accept me. And they're Muslim. So for her to marry me, she could only marry a Muslim. So that's I had to convert. So I'm I'm going through this whole process at the same time

You know learning about Islam going to Talking with folks reading things and And you know it it was worth it Yeah to get her she's the best thing that ever happened to me Is there a process for that? Sorry to interrupt you, but is there like are there like are there classes? Like in order for for them to recognize you as a convert. Right. Like to become a Jew, like there is a real process you have to go through. It's no joke.

Right. Yes and no. Generally speaking, to become a Muslim, all you have to do is recite the articles of faith. That's in effect. That's all there is to it. However, there's always bureaucracies. So, for example, to get a marriage license in Malaysia, a convert has to go to the Bureau of Islam.

I can't even remember what it's called, exactly what it's called, but it's like the official Islamic Bureau. And you go and you rese- It's like, horrible, B-O-I. No, right. Sorry, that's horrible. They don't use the English name. They use the Malay name. I can't even remember the Malay name.

So all that is is you go to the Islamic Bureau and meet one of the officials and recite the Declaration of Faith. And he witnesses it, and then he fills something out that says, yes, I heard him say that. Yes, he appears to be sincere. That's it. So you had had a lot of life experience, Ken, a lot of international experience. How did all of this lead you towards the CIA? That's kind of an interesting, you know, hard-term in your life. Yeah.

Like I said, how much time do we got? We got some time? I'm ready to segue into your professional career in the intelligence community. Yeah. So it seems like an easy answer. But when you hear the answer, you'll laugh at me. But you got to know what led up to it. So once we got married, and I'm going back and forth from Malaysia to Batan,

you know, back and forth, back and forth, we realize, you know what, this isn't going to work. We've got to be together. I could not get a work permit in Malaysia. I could get a job, but not legally. So I started looking for a job that we could, she was an English teacher too. She taught English as a second language. So I found us a husband and wife job in Saudi in King Saudi University, business school in Uniza al-Gasim.

So we went there as a couple, as a teaching couple, and we did a year contract teaching there. It was a very interesting experience. I like to always put a positive spin on things, but it was, when they asked us to renew our contract, I literally laughed in their face. They treated us like shit. They treated us really, really bad.

And so it helped us to, you know, it was a step on the on the way but uh we stayed there one year from there we went to london and i uh i ended up working for a british company doing language consulting they sent me to italy and i um i i was the the american voice in the r and d facility for olivetti i created a an American language program for all of the R&D folks from the C-suite down to the floor in Olivetti. And my wife was pregnant. So that was it right there. This is the dirty little secret.

And when I told him this in the agency, when I started, when they asked, so, why did you join? They were used to, well, you know, in Aspen, and when I was, I was a young Republican and yeah. You know, they're used to, I don't know, very different stories. They would ask me and I'd say, dude, I needed health insurance. I had a wife and a baby and I had no health insurance. I needed health insurance. What do you do, we need health insurance?

Join the CIA. Everybody knows that. It's common sense. So we had to go back to Malaysia to have the baby because we didn't have insurance. and you all met that baby tonight. Oh, your son. Yeah, he was born in KL. So while we were having the baby there,

I started studying to get into MBA, to take my G-MAT to do, I was going to do MBA international business. By now I'm over 30. I'm in my early 30s. I come back and with the, with the idea of doing the MBA and found out that there wasn't a lot of demand for an over 30-year-old international business guy. So now I had to scramble. Okay, what do I do now? So I went ahead and got

my graduate degree continuing in the same field, linguistics, because I was able to get to get graduate assistantships and it didn't cost me anything. So I was able to get health insurance and enough to get by for a couple years, but that was just buying time. Now I have to apply for jobs and start figuring out what can I do. Because of my background in Intel, because I'd had a

clearance, I started looking at intelligence jobs. So I was applying to, I wasn't really interested in working for NSA, because in effect that's who I had worked for in the military and I didn't really want to do that anymore. I got really sick of wearing headphones and and I knew that I was a people person and I needed something that I could deal with people. So the CIA was a much better fit. They really were not hiring much back then, but I put in my application and took a couple years before finally they made me an office.

About long answer, but that's the story and I'm sticking to it. About what year was this when you first applied to the CA? Um, roughly. So my kid was born in 89 and I, I, I, I, I, EODed in 94, January in 94. So that, probably somewhere in between there. Yes. So, Kate, tell us a little bit about your career then in the agency before 9-11 happened, happened and so much changed for the intelligence community and the Department of Defense,

I mean, they were shooting you out to places in Southeast Asia and West Africa. I mean, it looked like they kept you pretty busy. Yeah, that was after 9-11 when I was a contractor. When I was in as staff in the 90s, that was the Clintons had just gotten reelected. Al Gore was talking about the big. our big push was going to be literally he said environmental intelligence I remember and that was where I was in the agency had been in like like a year and we're looking each other on what in the hell is environmental intelligence is

this is this what I signed up for what do I do be like sampling effluent or something I spot assess develop and recruit human sources foreign sources of human intelligence. So it was, there wasn't a lot of mission in the late 90s. I did get a chance to go out and work in the Mediterranean. I was the Libya dude back then. We were chasing the Pan Am,

I forgot there, Lockerbie, Lockerbie bombed Pan Am, yeah, 007, I think. There was a Pan Am flight that was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, the Libyan, Libyan intel guys put the bomb on in Malta. So I spent a couple years in the Mediterranean doing that when I was a staff officer. I had a follow-on assignment to go to Saudi. I was going to Jedda. And at the same time, what was happening in the real world was dot com, the new economy. It was exploding. And I'm sitting there in this another bureaucracy that I'm not good at functioning in, but I was really good at my job, but the bureaucracy didn't

care. You know, you're so, so you're good at it. So what? Sit down. Shut up, boy, wait your turn. So, and yet, and the new, the new economy is exploding. I'd learned I was really, really good at recruiting. I was good at vetting. I was good at spotting assessment. I was good at getting people to agree to sign on the dotted line. And I said, hmm, I wonder what I could do in the new economy with these skills. And I looked around and I said headhunter, executive recruiting. So I resigned. I jumped out without a parachute. I took a job with a company, 100% commission. Had two kids and a wife with, with, we probably saved up probably six months cushion,

but I was on 100% commission. Within within less than six months, I was, I ended up being 80% of, I worked for a really small firm, but I was 80% of our revenue and immediately went out on my own, started my own head hunting company, specialized in computational linguistics. All of my clients were startups out in Silicon Valley. Did that until 9-11. So, you know, new economy is going this way. 9-11 comes. New economy crashed. CT went up. So I just I just rode surfed one wave new economy onto the CT wave because on on 912 we had a mission and so I was back knocking on the door. Hey guys, I'm good to go and boom.

That's what I ended up doing the contract. Explain for us how that works. I think we all understand that, you know, or the public understands you join an organization like the CIA. You go through their training, become an officer and you go and you meet people in cafe. and recruit sources and things like this. But this whole contractor thing is still, I think, a little baffling to people.

How do you come into the agency as a contractor, as a green badger in this case? And in a lot of ways, it's like you're doing your old job? Oh, yeah, definitely. Especially back then the agency used

contractors, but there was they were very they were brought in for specific offices specific offices would bring them in to do a specific job many times there'd be retirees who just came back and did their old job after 9-11 though

the CIA was very lean when 9-11 happened they had been they'd been doing early retirements. They're not been much hiring. So when

9-11 happened, immediately qualified case officers, ops officers were deployed all around the world. They were needed in, you know, they had to deploy the war zones. They had to deploy the hot spots. They had

to deploy all over. And they very quickly found out they didn't, well, They didn't find out. They knew from the very beginning they didn't have enough people. So there was an immediate need for contractors. And so they realized there's a need for contractors. And if this goes on very long, we're going to need to up our hiring and training as well. But to serve the immediate need, they really had to turn to contractors.

So when you use the term contractor, I think a lot of people think of like Blackwater or Tropic or things like that when they hear the word contractor. But you're talking about something that's not through something like that, but sort of organic to... Well, you're working directly for the federal government. Yeah, exactly. So the way the agency dealt with that was to create something they called the cadre. The cadre was a sort of whole.

holding pen for qualified case officers, qualified ops officers, who they could come in and sign an open-ended contract with the cadre. So the cadre could hold your clearance. You could have a badge. You have all of the security clearances. The cadre held your clearance. And then the cadre acted like an employment office in effect. So you'd have a roster of, of cadre members, and then you have places all around the world are calling in offices in wherever they are, or calling in saying, we need people to do this. So then they're just matching up available with, available people with available jobs.

that that problem i'm not sure i want to say four four years maybe maybe five years it lasted like that but they as they saw that this was going to go on for a lot longer than you know there's going to be more than six months or a year uh they started changing pretty quickly to a more corporate contracting uh environment they they kept the cadre around but they also mostly retired s-IS guys formed their own companies

which they're in effect body shops take in retired guys and so they would have a company the company would have a contract and then the company would hire in effect like Blackwater

as you mentioned but there's I can't I can't remember the name of the big one, the kind of the one that first started it. I can remember the guy's name, but I can't remember the name of the company. He ended up making millions of dollars. Yeah, I mean, weren't some of the other companies like BAE, MVM was one. MVM was one. But those were more on the security side, I think, but there were other companies that were feeding other needs, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

It's for the operational side, there was one, I can't remember. Hollis Helms was the guy's name that started it, one of the guys that started it, but I can't remember the name. But yes, it all became corporatized after a bit. And so what was that like? Kent coming in after 9-11, I mean, were you getting thrown into the fray? I mean, how did it all check out? Yeah, so that was what, what, we had a mission that one of the main reasons I had left was we didn't have a mission in the 90s. We had a mission. It was clear. There were a lot less bureaucratic hurdles that you had to clear.

There was a lot more focus, especially out in the field. Headquarters was still kind of, uh, um, very bureaucratic. There was things happening that didn't really help the mission, but once you got out in the field, then it was pretty much do what you got to do. And we had a lot to do. So what it was like was not... Showing your good side has many rewards. Become a donor at Gryphal's plasma, and your plasma can make life-saving medicines. Millions of people depend on these medicines to live healthier, more active lives. And every time you donate with Gryphals Plasma, you're compensated.

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Is that because some of the other employees weren't quite so willing? And unlike the military, they don't have to really if they don't want to, right? Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So everybody at first, the employees, the staff officers, Everybody's good to go. I mean, I say everybody, but of course, there's probably some who weren't. But, you know, 9-11, that really changed most everybody's attitudes. Okay, let's go. Six months later, eight months later, nine months later, you know, this place really sucks. I've done my bit. And the officers, staff officers, had a lot more leeway to say, all right, hey, you know, six months.

is enough, you know, they, they would be required, they pretty much required everybody to do a TDY somewhere, but at some point, they, they ran out of warm blue badgers, and that's what they needed contractors to go out and fill in. A lot of what I did was, a lot of the TDYs I did was filling in for people to do R&R to, you know, maybe filling in a gap while somebody else is PCS in and waiting for another person to come in. There was a lot of need for that kind of thing, short-term, long-term. So, Ken, if you can, Q, lay out for us what was going on in the Philippines, 2001, 2002, it's early on in the war and terror. We're all focused on Afghanistan and the Middle East, but in Southeast Asia, there are things percolating over there that are bubbling up to the surface.

There are a variety of different threat groups, and there's really a confluence of events in that part of the world that read to the rise of Islamic terrorism. There are these savvy charities over there extensively that were stirring up all kinds of trouble. Can you paint that picture for us? What was going on in the Philippines that required the CIA's attention? Oh, we've lost Ken. We don't have your voice. Does somebody change? Oh, my gosh. Why did we lose Kent?

Did you kick something? Did you break something? No, I don't know. It's impossible. Would you touch? I really have no idea. Do you want to call them back? Sorry, guys.

I did that big monologue, and then we just stopped being able. able to hear him. I mean the settings didn't change in there, Dave. Nothing changed. Uh, Ken, we're gonna call you right back. Stand by. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Alright, let's do this. This is the beauty and the horror of doing this live guys, but anyways, thanks for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it. Where is he? Still can't hear him. What in the world happened? I mean, it's like straight up and like not, not able to hear him at all. Huh. Sorry guys. Anyway, so I think what Jack was saying is thank you for joining us tonight. Oh, we're going to continue.

If you haven't subscribed to the channel already, please hit the subscribe button. Also hit the little bell for notification. And I think there's an option to notify all. You might want to get that because I guess sometimes YouTube, it just picks and chooses. If you like what we're doing here and you're not on our Patreon page, the link is in the description below. please join us on Patreon even a dollar a month helps us out here helps us pay our rent and you get access to exclusive content it's good stuff guys we are not only on YouTube but we are also now on SoundCloud iTunes and Stitcher just for the team house but what is going on with Scott how do we do sound let's try let's try again I'll see if I'll just try audio this time okay Okay. Sorry, my man. I still don't hear him. He says he can hear us. It's so strange.

Yeah, I don't know how that happened at all. No, neither do I. We're better than this. I'm sorry, folks. Yeah, call them back one more time. We'll see if we can get on there. Okay, I'm got... You do these test calls and everything and... Hey guys, can you hear me?

Yes, Kent, I hear you. Oh, all right. Okay, don't touch anything. Don't touch anything. Step away from the... controls third day all right i'm sorry viewers for the technical hiccup um kepp please continue i'm sorry about that no no problem no problem yeah uh so so you you really got to understand the political situation the philippines the history the the cultures the uh and you also got to understand

americas our uh involvement there um it is if you if you you're in you know you're case someone might not know it goes back over a hundred years exactly the Philippines was actually we uh an American colony we we have not had many colonies we have possessions Puerto Rico and some others but in the Spanish American War we won the Philippines we took over the Philippines as a colony and we also inherited the political situation down south. The Philippines is made of 7,000 to 10,000 islands. Down south

in the biggest island there is Mindanao. There's the and they're mostly Muslims there. The Spanish had trouble integrating the Muslims. They call them Moro's M-O-R-O. They had trouble integrating the Moros into the rest of the rest of the of their colony, we inherited that problem. And we, the United States, if you read the history,

and if you look into it, it was a pretty brutal, nasty, colonial war, and it really never ended. The fact is that war never ended. We gave them their interest. We gave them their independence after World War II, and the new Filipino government in Manila inherited the same problem. So you have a clash of cultures. You have the Christian Catholics against the Muslims down south. There's different cultures.

There's different languages. There's a whole history that's... If you don't understand that, the whole thing just looks weird and you think, well, it's because of Osama bin Laden. No, it's not because of Osama bin Laden. It's not because of Qaddafi. This situation has been there for hundreds of years. So on 9-11, we became interested because there were moro insurrections, the Muslim insurrections down there against the the government in Manila. They're separatists. They've been trying to create their own country.

They have their own kings, their own sultans. They felt more aligned. They still do feel more aligned with Malaysia in Borneo, right across just a couple hundred miles away, is Saba, a Malaysian state, as well as an Indonesian state on Borneo. So you've got these moros that have been fighting a war in effect for hundreds of years, never stopped. What got our attention after 9-11 was there was an American couple, the Burnhams, a missionary couple, had been kidnapped.

the Moros had a pretty good and if you think about it they're almost like the mafia you know it's a sort of separatist criminal

rebel revolutionary group that was fighting killing but they're also committing crimes and funding all of their operations one of their biggest

operations to make money was a ransom kidnap for ransom they had a group led by a guy named Abu Sabaya Abu Sabaya had

was trained in Libya he was trained in Saudi and he had had a lot of of connections had gone had done a really really just pretty cool raid when you look at it operational

He took these little bonka boats up from Basilan Island up across the Sulu Sea to Palawan and hit a diving resort and kidnapped. I can't remember. I want to say a dozen people, including the Burnham's. The Burnham's were the only Americans there. The Burnham's been missionaries. It happens to this day. I mean, it's still going on. Yep, it's still going on.

Yeah. So the Burnham's were missionaries. They had lived in the Philippines for many, many years. They kidnapped him, Palawan, and took them back to Basilan. And on 9-11, they had been hostage, they'd been held hostage for, I want to say six months, six, eight months, close to a year already. We become interested that that sort of was a good reason for us to, to, to, to assert American interests there. We sent a task force, a Joint Special Forces Task Force, to work with the Filipino military down in Zambolanga, in Mindanao.

They call it Southcom, Southern Command. There was a, so the agency had an element working with the special forces there. Did that answer your question, Jack? Yeah, I think that's the stage. So then tell us, you know, your personal experience, what was it like hitting the ground in the Philippines and beginning the hunt to track down and rescue the Burnham's?

So it was like, wow, this is what my entire life I've been getting ready to do. I had a pretty unique background set of experiences to make me, to set me up for success there. I had lived and worked for many years in the Philippines. I'd never studied their languages, but I had been out and about among them. Anywhere I lived in the world, I'm not going to the five-star Italian restaurant and getting Linguini.

I'm squatting in the alley, eating fish and rice with my hands. hands with them. It's just, you know, it's my interest. I like doing that kind of thing. I'm interested, and so I learned how to get along with them really well. So here, I show up on a TDY down there and we were in, the operation was ongoing. It wasn't bearing much fruit, but, you know, it was already, it was already going. I was able to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, work with our local partners, had a vast variety. I worked with about, I think that I probably had something like 10 to 15 different local partner organizations that I was coordinating and working with all at the same time.

Pretty quickly found that there was one that was the most effective. They were all just like happens in our military, in our government. You think we would all be pulling together and working as one. It doesn't happen in our situation. It doesn't happen in theirs either. So I found that one was more effective and started working really closely with the Filipino Marines. And they had... Turns out that they had, so just FYI, this ended up, the Filipino Marines met with Mark Bowden.

Mark Bowden wrote Black Hawk Down. And he went over there after this whole thing was over, met with them. And they told him the whole story. They told him my name. They told him I was ex-special forces. So he wrote this article and then the article says, you know, Ken Clisby ex-special forces. I was like, dude. And he ended up calling me after he had the story.

He called me and said, look, I'm going to use your name in this story coming up and asked for me to cooperate. So I asked the agency for permission. They said, hell no. So they wouldn't let me cooperate with them. I thought it was a great idea because what we ended up doing and what the Marines told. what the Marines told Bowden, what Bowden reported, I thought reflected great credit on us. It was a win.

It was a win. The headquarters didn't see it that way. They saw it as a failure. I was a failure. The whole thing was a cluster. It's just there's a lot of reasons behind that but I think Bowden dipped into it and explored it pretty well. When we had Ron Mueller on a few episodes back, who's with Air Branch, and he watched the

Abusa Bayer raid on the drone feed, he was of the opinion that it was a rousing success as well. So, I mean, tell us what your experience was. I mean, Bowden got it from the Filipinos, and I'm happy they had the opportunity to tell their story. I want to hear it from you. The Burnham Rescue, tracking down Abu Sabia, how did it really go down? So Bowden in his article writes about it and the Filipino Marines talk about it. And in fact, they called me up about a month ago. The sticking point, and it's still a sticking point, was they had an act. asset, they had a human asset who was going, who was providing logistical support to

Abu Sabaya while he was holding the hostages. Wherever he was, this guy, his name is Alvin, Alvin Siglis. Alvin was, unbeknownst to Abu Sabia, was working with our partners. And so he, he was providing details on where they are what's going on. There was a five or ten, some multiple million dollar reward for Abu Sabaya. When when this was all going on, various

American organizations were trying to arrest Alvin Sigel and there was all kinds of infighting going on back in Washington about this issue what were they trying to arrest everybody everybody was everybody in Washington everybody in Manila was convinced that Alvin Siglo's had to be arrested out in in the field my buddies were Alvin Sigloz was the key to the kingdom.

Right. And so that's sort of the background as to why headquarters, why Washington, why Manila saw it as a failure? Because they didn't get to arrest Alvin Cui.

Why did Washington want this guy arrested? You got me, man. Because they don't have a freaking clue. They had no idea what was going on. They're seeing things through a lens. that is not reflecting reality. Were they trying to pin him with like material support

to terrorism or something like that? I mean, is that their deal? Yes, yes, as well as other things. I mean, it was crazy. There were, there was some, and because of all that, so it was as if we were, we were, we were battling on,

several fronts at the same time and battling the rear at the same time as we're trying to get the poor Burnham's free and you know we we had an excellent operation going and uh the the the the the hounds of hell were biting us in the ass the whole time they wanted they were trying to arrest him or get him arrested during the operation like yeah like while he was providing intelligence. Yes. Yeah. The Samsung Neo-Q-L-E-D-8-TV

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I don't, I think that, I think they didn't believe it. I think that's probably the situation is they were told that, but they didn't believe it, or they didn't want to hear it, or they, you know, there's a lot of arrogance and ignorance, and a mixture of arrogance and ignorance is, is really dangerous. So how did it end up going down? I mean, how did you end up getting the Burnums out of there? I mean, I know it was a messy operation, to say the least.

So what ended up happening was because the Marines knew had a pretty good fix on where he was located. then it became an internal issue among the Philippine, the different organizations in the Filipino military to their kind of jockeying for who can, excuse me, who can do this and, you know, ultimately looking to get credit. The White Reaction Regiment and the Marines, I mean, I know they were competing to another. Yeah, so it ended up the Army Rangers. I don't really know exactly what they did, but they swept through this very remote jungle where they... So the standard operating procedure for Abu Sabaya guy,

Abu Sayaf, the name of the organization is Abu Sayyaf. Abou Sabaya was the leader of this group. Abu Sayyaf standard operating procedure was to, usually they go in pretty small groups, anything from, you know, 15 to 100 or so. But this group that was holding the Burnums was very small, was 10 to 15. They would move pretty regularly, and they would set up a camp and set up a perimeter around the camp. and all of them had, not all of them, but there were, what is it called, grenade launchers. They had different weapons with grenade launchers, and they carried a lot of grenades. So any time they were in a contact with their enemy, the Filipino military,

it seemed like their response was to pop off grenades. pop pop pop pop pop pop so anytime there was a firefight we'd always get reports back uh we had contact with a a force of a 750 and we took we took fire and uh when it's action it's like it's like six or eight of them but i i'm laughing but i probably would would be freaked out too i'm not a combat dude i don't go out and shoot people and i'm not used to people shooting to me i'm used to being in in uh dangerous situations. But so anyway, the, the, the, the, the, the army sweeps through the, um, sweeps through the, um, sweeps through the, um, finds, finds, finds contact, uh, had a firefight.

And, uh, unfortunately Martin, the, the, uh, the husband, Martin was killed in the, in the attack. Gracia Burnham was, was shot in the thigh. several of Abu Sabaya's guys were killed two or three and that was the rescue. They, the, the army guys moved in on the position and engaged in a firefight. They were able to medevac them out and got them to Southcom pretty quickly after the, after the, after the, the battle and Martin was DOA and Gracia was recovered. She was shot pretty bad, but she recovered. Can you tell me about that picture you were able to share with me of Gracia being carried

across the airfield and the stretcher? Did you take that picture? Yeah, yeah, I did. So me and the Marines were back on Southcom, kind of monitoring the whole situation and we knew they were coming in. So I went up to meet her coming off of the, coming off of, as the Metavac came in. So that, I think they dropped her off and then a couple more came in with the wounded rangers right after that. That's pretty incredible. You told me you'd been able to meet Gracia since that event, like yours. Yeah. Yeah, just a couple years. Yeah, just a couple years.

ago, she came, so I live in D.C. I live in Northern Virginia. She came and did a, a, so she's still very active in her religious community. She came and did a, uh, an event at a big church here. And my cousin happens to be a member there. And I was, I was able to, to, he got me, got me in. And so I was able to, to meet up with her. And we, we had a good talk. and so I've been in touch with her ever since then. That's great. Yeah. Now, I wish I had managed to escape during that, right? Are you part of the follow-on efforts? So that him and a handful, about five or six of his guys, escaped from that battle.

And I guess it probably took us another week to two weeks. I'd kind of lose track of time. And it was a long time ago now. Yeah, you know, I realized now this is almost 20 years ago. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. So anyway, yes, he escaped and was on the run.

And again, luckily we had Alvin. Alvin, you know, he was, Alvin was helping him out. And the Marines knew where he was, thanks to Alvin. And, yeah, so I guess you heard the story that the, What was my buddy in the air branch? I forgot his name. Ron. Ron.

So we, I sat and watched the feed from the air, but we couldn't let our Filipino partners see it. So we came up with this workaround where the monitor was in the monitor was in the this little plywood box and we had a little window in the plywood box. So I'm looking at the monitor and my buddy Jesse, a Filipino Marine officer, is sitting on the other side of the window. And I'm saying, okay, he's turning, he's turning north. Jesse, he's turning north. And Jesse has like six cell phones and radios. Bong, he's going north.

Hey, look out for that. It was a crazy situation, but we made it work. I mean, are you able to talk at all about how you guys were able to track down and plan that operation that ended in his death? Because talking to the Filipino Marines was very interesting. I was out at General Saban's birthday party, actually, and him and his staff, his Marine buddies kind of unfolded the 10th, about how they had planned this operation in their living room with you, apparently. And there's some technical intelligence involved as far as planting beacons and tracking his whereabouts.

No comment. They have very good, they don't lie, though. I've never known them to tell a lie. No, I understand if there's some things you can't talk about. Ken, I'll just tell, I'm not under any security clearance obligations. I was telling you what they told me so our viewers can understand. They had attempted to capture or kill Sabaya several times and he had gotten a wet. They had tried to get him in the jungle and things like this.

So they finally came up with the idea every once in a while he'd get on those bonka boats, the pump boats and they figure well when he's out at sea he's really got nowhere to run right so they concocted this operation and they they developed a human intelligence asset on the ground and said hey let's put a beacon on the boat itself and then do an interdiction at sea and so there's a operation done there were American Navy SEALs present and Filipino Navy SEALs present the NavSOT guys the Bowden article also mentions a marine Philippine Marine asset that was involved in all this

and I won't mention that gentleman's name, but there's a it's a little complicated. But needless to say, they did bug the boat and they interdicted it at sea. And now exactly what happened at sea when they interdicted that boat, I've heard two or three different stories. Ron Mulwer told the story that he saw with his own eyes on a previous episode of this show. I was like stitched. He said, I saw it. I was looking at the feed as it happened, and this is how it went down. So you guys can go and listen to that episode with Ron,

and I think that you're going to hear some ground truth from that. When somebody comes to me like Ron and says, I saw it with my own eyes, this is how it went down. I take that very seriously. So if you want to hear, you know, the actions on, the shoot him up, how that went down, I think you should go and listen to, you know, Ron and hear it from his own mouth. Me too.

Yeah. Let's do some... Hey guys, is there any way I could take like a two minute break? Absolutely. Go have a percent. Okay, okay. I'll be right back. You guys, we're gonna answer some of these or get to some of these. And anything that pertains to Kent, we'll ask him as soon as he gets back. But I know we've been, it's been like an hour and we haven't addressed, so we apologize.

Yeah, we'll get to some viewer questions. Okay, Alex, thank you very much. thank you very much we now have 95 subscribers on the subreddit if you guys have not joined the subreddit it is our slash the link is down the description the link is out in the description we have 95 subscribers you know if you guys that's kind of a good a good avenue if you guys have questions for us if there are things that maybe because I don't know if you guys know it's like we don't try to ignore your chat unless you super chat it's just so often with our

guests we go like the full time and it's hard to kind of read and see what's going we want to give them opportunities to talk and answer so if there are questions that you have not the super chat because we always make sure we get to those because we really appreciate the donations but if you have questions the subreddit is probably a good place to put them I check in a couple times a week yeah I think Jack does too but that that's that's probably a good place that we're not utilizing enough and also guys if you enjoy what we're doing technical issues aside I apologize again for that please leave a comment

for us on on this video yeah please give it the little thumbs up and all that good stuff that really helps it as far as the algorithm getting it spread out there absolutely share the video with your friends spread it around all that stuff really makes a difference for us and if you are interested and you really like what we're doing there's a link down in description for our Patreon page and you can take a look at that and if you want to financially support us and helping pay the rent on the studio it really needs a lot to us as well and less than a cup of coffee a day yeah you can help Jack and

Dave drink Lefroyd and pay a rent it's really about just the logistical support for the studio and we really We really appreciate all you guys joining us. And also, I'm really excited for next month. And I'll take this opportunity since it came up and we're here with Kent tonight. Next week, next Friday, it is the return of Ron Mueller for episode two, part two with him. Ron was an agency employee for a long time, surfed on the paramilitary side, a long time in air branch, doing logistics for the agency in Afghanistan,

and he will be back on for Part 2 next week. So I'm really excited to do that. And overall, March is just going to kick ass. We have an awesome lineup for next month. Yeah. Who have a list? We'll put a tentative schedule up in the subreddite, actually. I'll put it up on our Patreon for the people who are the hardcore.

And mate. The hardcore's. That's right. So DJ, thank you very much. for the donation. Ian, thanks for the donation and thanks for the recommendation. So we have a couple questions for you. Alex asks, well, what was your, he said in the CIA, but probably in your travels, what was your favorite meal? Like what, and you said that you're not kind of a Michelin type of guy,

but more of a, you know, eaten with the locals. So did you have when you, in, in your travels did you have a favorite meal? Malaysia is the best for food. Oh yeah. Malaysian food is fantastic. It's a combination of, there's three main races in Malaysia, Malays, Chinese, and Indians.

And the food is a reflection of those three cultures. Probably my favorite is, It's called Nasi Lamat in Malaysia, which means creamy rice. It's rice cooked in coconut milk, and it's what we have for breakfast there. Rice cooked in coconut milk, and then you have a spoonful of, it's called samba, hot sauce. I love samba. Yeah, samba, and then sprinkled dried anchovies on it. half, half a boiled egg and a couple of sliced cucumbers, and then the whole thing is packaged in a banana leaf.

So that's breakfast there. Yeah, I love that. I love Samoa. Yeah. Try Nasi Lama. If you love Sambal, it's a great use of it. And then when I go to Malaysia, I got to have Nasi Lama, and then I got to have something they call ABC. ABC is Aerbatur Champu.

Herbatu Champour, which is mixed ice. And what it is, it's a dessert. Over there, mostly kids eat it. So they always laugh when I could, when I order ABC, they laugh. Yeah, what's wrong? What are you? You're not a kid. But it is great.

It's shaved ice with palm sugar syrup. And then they mix a bunch of different kinds of fruit. like jelly fruit yeah yeah jelly fruit and other things the Philippines do hollow hollow hollow yeah yeah that has the it's a shamed ice with like milk and there's like gummy bears and gummy worms in it yeah exactly the time it also it's amazing yeah yeah yeah so and then nassi lemma and abc there you go and they also ask uh when you were in the CIA like when you're going through your training or what while you're there did you have a favorite skill that you learned or what was like the

Was there a moment when you're like, I can't believe I'm learning this? It's so cool. Pretty much my entire career in the agency. I would say many times I'd stop. Just like when I was in the military in Monterey, and I'm pinching myself going, geez, here I'm this redneck from North Carolina. What am I doing on Canary Row? Same thing when I was a case officer.

A lot of times I just stop and say, damn, this is really cool. I can't believe they're paying me to do this. And I guess it's just the whole thing of your, the beauty of being a CIA operations officer is that you are out there on your own and you are, you're the tip of the spear, you know, you are, they delegate a lot of, not necessarily power, but you have, you have, you have, you have. the ability to make decisions. I don't have to stop and phone somebody or radio bat to headquarters. You have to later justify what you've done, but you are empowered to do what you've got to do.

And you are representing the president of the United States. You are representative of the United States government. The real question, though, is how is their health insurance? because that's why you went. Dude, it is excellent. We had two babies with it. Well, actually, on a little bit more serious note,

so once I got, never mind, never mind, pass on that. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I forget that story. Ian asked, are you familiar with the Philippines arms industry? like if they're proficient of manufacturing they're quite proficient

at manufacturing 1911s and long-range scopes. Are you familiar at all with their arms industry? No, I'm not. I'm not much of a gun guy. I got lots of guns, but I don't know that much about them. I can tell you one thing.

Filipinos can make anything. Yes, they have a indigenous arms industry and I can't remember the name for it. It's like, there's a word that's like automotopia for it. But they have an indigenous industry that, you know, it really came out of making 1911 clones in their garages, essentially. And that continues to the day.

I mean, Filipinos, like you said, they can make anything. And one thing you definitely never want to mess with also is a Filipino with a knife in their hand. Yeah. I love Filipinos. They're my buddies. yeah yeah um great calamari too um any old stories about japanese gold in the philippines and black gold trust so you know i was what i was just taking my break i was thinking i wanted to to point something out to y'all that this is a really this talking about the whole abu sabaya operation

It is a great case study in the value of human intelligence compared to other intelligence, like signals intelligence. So the Japanese gold, how does that tie in? So you're constantly getting reports. There's all kinds of things in the air, people talking about stuff, whether it's on phones, on radios, you're constantly hearing all these reports. When we were trying... Showing your good side has many rewards. Become a donor at Gryphils Plasma, and your plasma can make life-saving medicines.

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14,000 experts around the world using game-changing technology to unlock an extraordinary advantage in insurance, real estate services, cyber services, asset management, and more. We are the high-tech human approach to help protect and grow everything you've worked so hard to build. It's nice to meet you. Find out what AccroShore can do for you at AccroShore.com. to find Abu Sabaya, literally there would be dozens of reports. Abousabaya is shot in the left testicle and he has gone to his cousin's house in Cebu to have the testicle removed. You'd get that report. Another report. Abusabaya has taken a third wife and gone back to Libya. You get another report. and just just wild real stuff yeah in effect so but if it goes on the air it becomes intel right

so you get you get intel that the chat that has the chat boost yeah you know that that's i always hear people talk about chatter but uh it it's it comes out as intel you know you you get reports of here is this this is an intel report abusa bi's right testicle has been been wounded, and literally dozens of those. Same thing with the Japanese gold. In the Southern Philippines, they're always, they've never stopped talking about the Japanese hid gold as they were retreating as we took them back over.

So, yeah, there's constantly stories about Japanese gold. If any of you out there are interested in, that story there's a book called gold warriors written by sterling seagrave very very interesting and i don't know if it's true or not but it is about that entire story so allegedly when the japanese took over huge slots of minchuria southeast asia they're all over the place they stole the gold from all the all the things i would like it was how you stored wealth before modern banking right so they hoarded all the gold from all the places that they've been plundered all the you know you guys are probably familiar with like the rape of nan king these

horrible things that happened they took all the gold they were bringing it back to japan they got it as far as the philippines before the united states really came in and started dropping the hammer so the gold got stranded in the philippines and allegedly this gold was just cacheted and hidden in like mines and under trees and hidden in holes and that's what ken's talking about that there's treasure hunters like to this day of people out there looking for Yamashito's gold. Has anybody ever found one scratches? Sterling's. Ingrave alleges that the United States found it, that like McArthur's Intel boys found it and

it was used to for like off the books Intel operations to buy off the governments of Greece and Italy keep them out of the hands of the communists during the early years of the Cold War. Now again, if that's true, I don't know. I don't know. But the book is about that. People can read that if they're interested. Sounds cool. And let's see, I guess, I think this is about it.

Oh, it would come back with a Marcos family in Filipino politics. Do you have any position or inside? I was at Clark when Marcos imposed martial law. That was pretty interesting. in back then. You know, the whole, the, the, the politics in Manila is, Philippines is more a Latin American country than it is an Asian country.

And it's, the things that happen in the Philippines are, it could happen in Peru or Venezuela or Guatemala. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I could go on and on about colonial. The Philippines is awesome. They're right out.

And the Filipino people are awesome. I love that place. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fascinating place. So, Ken, after Abu Sabaya goes to sleep with the fish, it's, what was the rest of your Philippine adventure like? I left that that happened at like probably 2 a.m. I was on the plane out at seven the next four hours later.

I had extended and extended and extended so many times and I had to leave. So that was it. That was my last stop there. I ended up working in Indonesia and Malaysia a lot. Are you able to talk about that at all? Not so much. It was a hunt for Ham Bali, the Bali bombers, the guys, the J.I. J. Maa Islamia, based in Indonesia.

They did the bombing in Bali. I was sitting in a police station in Jakarta when they hit the Australian embassy. I was supposed to have been at a meeting at the Australian embassy when that bombing happened. I was in Jakarta when they bombed the Marriott. So I was working on the hunt for Hombali as well. Those were, I assume, like, liaison operations. We have a lot of partners. And what did become of the Bali bombers were the,

with a local force is able to track them down? So, Hambali, the name of the leader of J.I. of the Southeast Asia, the Indonesian Malaysian cell of J.I. was Hambali. And, yeah, we caught him. He is in prison now. In Indonesia? I don't believe so. I think we have him. Oh, really?

I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that's all I know. Well, as you said, it's good to have partners. Yep, yep, really good. Yeah. So they caught a lot, a lot of those guys. They had a lot of battles with them, and there was a lot of casualties,

but they did arrest many of them, and they tried. there's a handful of folks that were tried in Indonesia and are in prison now in Indonesia. So within short order, though, I mean, you found, you must have found yourself because of the timeline in this liaison position in Iraq and Kuwait. Yep, yep. So I stopped doing the CT work, which was going from, from, CT op to CT op, you know, wherever there was something happening.

CT is counterterrorism. Yeah. Please go ahead. Sorry about that. No, no, you're fine. I just, you know, for our guests, you aren't quite as familiar. Yeah. So, this was as the, as the, so 9-11, global war on terror, invasion of Afghanistan,

We still have things happening in Southeast Asia, but now the next big thing was Iraq. The Bush administration started looking at Iraq and saying something right there, and we started building up. So a big demand that, as we talked about before, there weren't enough staff officers to cover, was military liaison stuff. So I started doing that. I started as a cadre officer, I started doing military liaison. And the big need then was the build up in Kuwait as we were getting ready. We ended up invading Iraq at the time, of course, we didn't know we were going to invade Iraq, but everybody had a pretty good idea.

So I went in just before I'm really bad at dates, but I ended up leaving, I think a month before we invaded. But I was the agency rep to the coalition ground forces commander there in Kuwait as we were getting ready. So I think that, and we're going to have to Greg Walker to come on and talk about this again, because we didn't even get into his time in Iraq. But I think as the agency rep to coalition ground forces, I think one of the things we really need to talk about is the WMD's issue. Yeah. The justification for us invading Iraq. What happened? I mean, what happened there from your perspective?

What's the deal? What? No, really. It's kind of, you know, from your perspective, what was the deal? So it was pretty clear that we intended to invade Iraq. It was maybe a war in search of a justification. Saddam Hussein was breaking, constantly violating agreements, constantly. There was no fly zones.

There was, I can't even remember all of the various agreements that he was breaking. But my personal opinion is that the WMD thing was overblown. At the time, it was, I don't think that anybody could have said for sure that, no, there's no WMD in there. There's no, he doesn't have any. He acted like he had it. He acted like he was hiding something. He wasn't cooperating. He was doing other things he shouldn't have.

Personally, I don't think we should have invaded. As I was sitting there with the military intel guys in the run-up, I sat down and I drew a map of Iraq. And I said, guys, in seven years after we invade, this is what's going to look like. And I divided it in three. I said, you're going to have Kurdistan. You're going to have Shiaistan. And you're going to have Greater Jordan.

Sunni Arabia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it was obvious that Saddam was the glue that held the country together. Iraq is not a natural country.

Iraq is pieces of other natural countries that, you know, it goes back to World War I that we screwed it up. Well, the Brits and the French. Yeah. Yeah, he was basically the Tito of the area, you know, keeping everything together by force. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. And when that force is gone, it's going to going to explode and and it did but i i i think that it was it was preordained we were going to invade that country regardless i think that the with with intel um you never you never know uh it's it's always gray and and it can be interpreted many different ways did did some people um twist change uh exaggerate, yeah, probably. But it, yeah. Well, it's like on the president's daily brief, as I've understood it,

when the CIA briefs the president and it has those bullet points, there's like a percentage, like we're like 95% sure this is true. We're like 50, 50 on this issue. Isn't that how it works? I mean, nothing is ever 100%, right? Yeah, but you're absolutely right. But, you know, God bless analysts, but I don't think, you know, those numbers mean nothing. It's just a shot in the dark.

You know, they're just trying to sound good saying what they're saying. I mean, if they could actually, if they could predict the future, they wouldn't be writing reports to go. in the PDB, they'd be buying stocks or going to the freaking track. I mean, I can't speak to that because I wasn't there, but I mean, there

does have to be some element of that, you know, the agency wants to hedge their bets, right? Nobody wants to say, we're 100% sure this is true. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, yeah. I don't think there was any 100%. There was no, there was

nothing that was an absolute slam dunk there was nothing that was 100% negative either it was a war looking for a justification and we found one I don't know we had a the chief of Nesco weapons inspector on who

said that even during the Clinton administration you know that they were trying to remove Saddam to remove Saddam if not start a war Yeah, if not start a war. So, I mean, I think that when you phrase it like that, a war looking for justification, it seems as though that has been sort of the policy.

The policy, you know, no particular precedent, but I think the people, the upper echelon people that have sort of traveled along with that, that's been their, that had been their goal for a while. It seems, you know. Yep, I agree. Yeah. So what were you seeing? Ken, from that position, I'm just interested in your experience from this liaison job.

You know, you must have had a front seat ride to the invasion, watching it from a fairly high level. Yeah, I left a month before we went in. So, no, I did not see the invasion. I saw the run up to it. I was there as things were getting hot, you know. So, yeah, there was little action. I think the Iraqis like attacked a small island off the coast. There's some Marines were going swimming or something.

The Iraqis shot at them. That was that was as hot as it got before I left. Before I left. And then you would also share with me some pictures of, you know, some of the stuff you were doing in West Africa that I thought was interesting. I there's you know the one where you were wearing the african garb and you had a little yeah yeah i can you talk a little bit about some of those some of those jobs that you're doing over there i mean it's all the the counterterrorism stuff we have we have partners all around the world that have things going on in their countries and they need they need help advice training support and as as the as the designated hitter in the cadre, that's what I did a lot of.

I worked with various groups like that all around the world. I mean, in kind of the places that nobody wanted to go. There was no shortage of volunteers to go to Rome to work on counterterrorism issues or London or Stockholm. But West Africa. West Africa, Java, Borneo, not a lot of people wanted to go to those places. How would you describe, you know, West Africa then from a counterterrorism perspective? Because when you were going there, it was not on the radar so much from the public's perspective, but the last couple of years, from Uganda to Niger, I think there's been a lot more folks.

on what's going on in Africa? So, just like the Philippines, you got to look at the history. And I think that right after 9-11, we probably should have been involved in these kind of things.

We should have been at least checking out, being sure that things were settled. But bottom line is, West Africa is rife with regional ethnic, tribal, historical, colonial, all kinds of these conflicts and disagreements and little wars. And there's all kinds of things going on that it ain't none of our business. Now, here's 20 years after 9-11, those people have been fighting and killing each other. Whether it's in Syria, in Kurdistan, in Iraq, in Mindanao, in Mali, they've been fighting and killing each other.

And, you know, in effect, civil wars, if not regional wars, for thousands of years. So why are we there, Kent? Now? I mean, GWAT era from your time to today? Well, GWAT, right after 9-11, I think that we did the right thing in going and at least monitoring, having a presence there, working with the locals and finding out, hey, guys, what's up? Who are these folks? Who are those folks out in the boonies? What are they up to?

And that was right. That's what we should have done. 20 years later, in my opinion, we have no, we should not be in, we shouldn't be involved in any of these regional conflicts. We should be paying attention, but we should not have boots on the ground. We should not be droning. We should not be bombing. We should let them, it's their war. Let them fight it.

You don't think there is a at-risk population and the potential. for the Sahel to become, you know, I hate to use a cliched term like terrorist breeding ground, but let's just say a safe haven for terrorism like Afghanistan was up until 2001. Maybe. There's plenty of places that have that potential. And we should not, the United States, I don't believe, should be the world's police making the world safe for what? I mean, we're worried that it's going to become a place that bad people hang out. There's a lot of bad people in the world.

It's never going to end if you do that. I believe we should aggressively go after American interests. And American interests are not the safety of the world. There's any bad people we've got to take them on. If you start thinking like that, you start thinking, if you start thinking like we should be worried about a place becoming a terrorist safe haven. Look at all the places we should be in then. The list never ends. I'll tell you one place that fascinates me that nobody ever talks about that is a terrorist safe haven.

It's a terrorist safe haven. There's genocide going on. There is horrible civil rights, human rights violations. It's the South Sudan. Yeah. South Sudan is the world's newest country, they call it. The United States and Israel got together and forced South Sudan off of Sudan and created a Christian country. From the day that it began, the South Sudanese have been.

genociding each other. It's tribal, it's religious, they're all Christian, they're different sects of Christianity, they're different tribes, they've been massacring each other since it was since the first day that the country existed. Yeah, I mean, and I think that the reason they did that is because there was so much, so much violence against the Christians, and then they're like, oh, we can fix this, not realizing that they're just exacerbating the problem. Exactly, exactly. I mean, that's, so we got involved in that,

and what was the result? One of the worst genocides in the world. So what do we do? Well, let's pretend it's not happening. Just plug our ears and say, oh, South Sudan, where's that? I don't know. But we were, we were complicit in creating that country. Right.

And good intentions paved the way to hell, right? I mean. Exactly. we jack and i talk about this you know quite a bit that the united states and it's not the democrats it's not the republicans it's just united states policy is very myopic we like we don't have a clear view of the rest of the world and how things are on a daily basis for them so you know we we think that we can just oh look everybody wants to live this way everybody wants to be like this and that's it's also very schizophrenic

It's like, oh, we're all in with you today. Now we're pulling back, going back and forth, back and forth. You know, H.K. Roy talked about that in regards to the Balkans on a past episode. I know we've talked about it in regards to Iraq and Syria many times. I mean, the Kurds, yeah. Yeah, the Kurds, you know, America is often kind of here today, gone tomorrow because of our shifting policy and the idea that we're supposed, you know, we want to be the good guys and in some of these conflicts. Netflix, there is no good guy.

You know, there just is no good guy on either side sometimes. Yep, bottom line is that we should not be involving ourselves in civil and regional wars around the world. And they're always justified. There's always some kind of justification. You know, children are being killed or whatever. They're raping the rainforest or something. So we'll go in and, you know, George Carlin back in 70 said, you know, talking about Vietnam, he says, yeah, we'll go in and whip a little democracy on them.

Yeah, that'll teach them. Well, and that's the thing is the media, you know, I think is complicit in that, you know, today's cause, right? The media will talk about a situation in a country and all of a sudden it is everywhere and everybody's an instant expert on it and why haven't we been doing this? I'm like next week nobody, nobody remembers, nobody remembers that, you know, and nobody knows it's, it can get frustrating at times. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's, we should, our foreign policy should be America first, American interests

first, and if there's no, and we've got to define what American interests means. And American interest does not mean that there are girls in the country who don't have a girls school. Or American interests are not

you know, so human rights or something like that. Unfortunately, we cannot be the human rights arbiters of the world because every time we have gone into a country to enforce human rights, we've had, we've caused huge violations of human rights. We've caused South Sudan's perfect. A genocide. Millions, hundreds of thousands of people massacred because we went in because of human rights. So human rights can't be a reason that America projects power. We need to focus on our own

country to look at what is an actual threat to our country and to protect our country and you know unfortunately let the rest of the world hash things out if they send somebody over to bomb us by golly we'll go take care of them we'll we'll take care of them we don't need to be there 20 years later right you know we talk about the media's influence in you know sort of our involvement in the world and things like that you've had some interesting experiences with the media and with their experts, you know, the people who kind of are driving policy, right? Because they say something to the public. The public takes it on board. The public pushes the politicians. So it's this really weird sort of cycle of what motivates our

politicians to do things. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience or a lot about your experience in the media so-called experts at times? Huh, that reminds you of a story. Really? There was funny, you should mention that. For 13 years, Fox News had one of their premier counterterrorism, Islamic extremism, intelligence analysts, a former, was a

CIA officer by the name of Wayne Simmons. God bless Wayne. I wish him all the best in the world. I kind of, you know, it's kind of pitiful what happened. But for 13 years, Wayne held himself out

as an expert in all things, Intel, counterterrorism, Islamic extremism. I haven't had cable TV for 35 years so I didn't have Fox News so I'd never seen Wayne a mutual friend decided I'm guessing it must have been 2013 or so I'm bad at date so I don't know it was sometime sometime

after I'd stopped traveling I was working in DC and a mutual friend said you've got to meet Wayne Wayne is so cool he's got so much going on. He's on Fox News. He's just like you. He's a former CIA guy, did counter terrorism. I said, sure, yeah. I'd be happy to meet him. Never heard the name, which is uncommon.

Ron, you guys, the Air Branch guy, his name didn't ring a bell with me at all, but I saw his picture. Oh, yeah, I know that guy. I remember him. I remember faces. I don't remember names.

But I never heard Wayne Simmons's name. but that didn't mean anything so met Wayne got together at the at the Baltimore Airport as he was headed out somewhere on his important Intel media missions and had had a chance to have lunch with him Wayne immediately starts talking about yeah well you know we're just I was I was doing some high-speed narcotic You know how it is, Kent. We took down like six tons of cocaine. And, yeah, that's the way it is in the CIA, Kent, right?

I was going, within two minutes, I knew this dude is a total fraud. I have no idea what he's talking about. The CIA doesn't do the things he's talking about. Maybe he's confused. Maybe he thought he was working for the CIA, but he didn't. I don't know. but I don't want whatever it is he's selling. So I had my lunch, didn't say anything,

had finished lunch and said, yeah, good, keep in touch, man. And that was it. And then after I met him, I went and started doing, I started vetting, started looking, you know, what the hell is this? And found all of these videos of him on Fox News. And for 13 years, it turns out, he had been one of their go-to guys for,

commentary on Islamic terrorism on counterterrorism on telling tough guys stories huh

telling a lot of tough guys stories yeah he was always a tough guy he was yeah you know Sharia is going to take over the world

and they're coming for your wives and daughters we got to kill them now and war war war and yeah when I was in the agency blah, blah, blah. And, you know, it was, the whole thing was ludicrous.

And so I started wondering, you know, am I missing something here? So I started reaching out to my old buddies and saying, hey, guys, did you all know this Wayne Simmons dude? And, you know, everybody's like, no, I never heard of him. I see him all the time. But, you know, I just figured he worked somewhere that I didn't know. yeah uh but that that that's what that was the response for everybody i talked to uh so

it i i i ended up uh kind of took i took it personally um number one what i take personally i i since since i've been an adult i didn't get angry at anything except if somebody tries to uh tries to uh tries to play me for a fool if you You try to play me for a fool.

That pisses me off. And he tried to play me for a fool right in front of my face, sitting across from me, trying to think that I was going to believe him this crock of shit story he's telling. It's quite a bit of audacity, isn't it? It's quite a bit of audacity, isn't it? Huge audacity. Yeah, but, you know, so bottom line is he had a con going.

He was conning the Fox News, the entire nation. Everybody who watched Fox News that saw him just conning them all. And it takes a good con man has to be audacious. Bernie Madoff, by Bernie Madoff is a perfect example. He was in everybody's face. He was everywhere. He was the best finance mind ever. And he never made one investment.

He was just taking people's money and putting it in a savings account. Let me ask you that. If Wayne Simmons is not CIA, if he is not a part of so-called outside paramilitary operations, I'm doing the scare quotes with my fingers. If he is not that, then who is Wayne Simmons? Who is this guy? So I wish I could answer that. And I'll give you my hypothesis, but I can tell you, I don't know.

I don't know who he is. And I think it would be really, really difficult to get to the bottom of it. That said, I'll tell you my hypothesis. after hearing his stories, vetting him, looking back at everything he's done and said, looking at the, when he was sentenced. So he was found guilty of, I think they call it major fraud against the U.S. government, which means he lied on his security clearance forms. He claimed he got a job, he got a couple jobs as a contractor and filled out security clearance.

forms, claiming that he worked for the CIA. And the CIA, he never worked for us. So he was found guilty of that, and he was found guilty of a real estate fraud against a friend of his. I don't know exactly, I don't know the details. But when D.J. moved in, yeah. Okay. So, so he, that's what Simmons was, was.

was found guilty of and he went to prison and he got out recently and I hope he can find peace. However, I believe based on, when he was sentenced, when he was sentenced, he had kept, he had been talking for a long time about his deep black ops. And I've got files in case anything happens to me, I've got operational files. and which anybody who's been in the CIA knows that that right there tells you immediately that he's full of shit because no you don't have you don't carry around personal operational files so but okay that that this is his story and it was always his it was he he acted like it was his ace in the hole you know if you ever mess with me i've got files so when he was after he was convicted um i i i guess it was probably when they're getting ready to sentence him, he submitted his files to the court.

And you can find those online somewhere now. But those are another data point that supports my hypothesis to answer your question, of who was Wayne Simmons. All of his ops were drug-related in the United States. States. And, you know, he, well, no, almost. He had one where he was doing something in Kazakhstan, which I, and I think he did travel to Kazakhstan. But it was for somebody in the United States. That's the way that he, the way that he cast it was, and it probably had something to do with drugs. I think, unless, well, I don't think he's making this up out of a whole cloth. I don't think this is just a fantasy world Wayne lived in.

Because there is a, he has a long history of drug arrests, of arrests. Of him being arrested. Not of him slapping. Yeah, yeah. He has a

rap sheet of felony arrests of him for drug offenses, weapons offenses, assaults. I don't remember and I may be wrong. Maybe it wasn't assaults.

I don't remember. It was a long rap sheet of arrests. That he was, and DUIs. He had something like a large number of DUIs. He was seldom convicted, and he never served time. So all of these data points, you put him together, and it sounds to me like this guy was some kind of. asset of a law enforcement organization.

It could have been a city, it could have been a county, it could have been state, it could have been federal. I don't know, but I believe that he was a law enforcement asset, and maybe somebody at some point in running these law enforcement operations might have seen. said to him, you know, Wayne, what we're doing here is just like the CIA. Right. I just kind of, that's my, you know, I have really immersed myself in his history. And I think that's probably what happened.

And once that got planted, it was, yeah, I'm in CIA. And like in the, I mean, it is a fraud, but in his mind, he may very well be. believe that he was working for, you know, so-called outside paramilitary operations for the CIA. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, maybe he thought he was an asset. But I think even with that, he may have exaggerate.

You know what I mean? Like, like, I don't think that he was just, oh, I believe this is what I'm doing. You know, I believe in my core. This is what I'm doing. It's like, oh, you know what? you know now it's a lot cooler to say uh i was a double not spy for the cia then hey you know what i've been working for the county for the last 20 years as a snitch yeah yeah i'm a narc you know you ain't gonna get on fox news with that whenever um whenever like one soft guy comes

across another soft guy there's just like like a sniff test right It's, you know, and depending on the person's experience, like a ranger without a whole lot of time might not know the right questions to ask like an SF guy or a seal or, you know, or vice versa, whatever. But the more time you have in those communities, the more you become familiar with it, the easier to do those sniff tests. For you, are there similar things like when you meet somebody, you know, it's like there are basics? Absolutely. So, so first, Wayne did not claim that he was an asset, especially. He's gone through a whole various flavors of the story. He started out being a staff officer of the CIA.

He would call himself an operative. He would call himself a lot of different things. I ended up confronting him with, I wrote an article that laid out who he was and what his claims were and my analysis and my, you know, I was exposing him as a fraud. And when I shared that with him before I went to publish it and he first, his first response was, okay, yeah, you're right, I will never. put myself out as a CIA officer. You shared that message with me. I read that today. Great. So the next day, after he thought about it and probably talked to his buddies, so he has powerful friends. He has powerful friends and family. And I believe after he had time to digest that, he came back and up the ante and said, not only,

was I a CIA officer for 30 years or 27 or something like that I was a knock I wasn't a non-officially covered operations and that gets that veers them off the I'm I'm super top secret so you can't you can't find anything out about me me maybe in his mind he thought that right so what I'm getting around to your to answer your question is you so you got to know the the what he was claiming first so was there is there is there a way for CIA officers to vet each other? Is there something? Is there a sniff test? Yes, absolutely. Even if you were a knock, there are things, you're still a government employee. I tell people, you know, who want to join the CIA. I say, yeah, it's one of the, you know, the best jobs in the

world. It's still a government bureaucracy and it's run a lot like the Department of Agriculture. The post office. Or the post office. You cannot have a government bureaucracy without, they call it employee identification number. Every CIA employee has a employee identification number. Every CIA employee has benefit issues, whether it's health insurance,

which is really good, by the way. If you guys are looking for good health insurance, you know where to go. Health insurance, retirement. When you're a knock, you have an inside officer who is coming out and meeting you. He's your lifeline to the bureaucracy. He becomes your best friend. So if you meet a knock, you know, later a retired knock, he's going to remember every single one of his inside officers. Oh, George, I remember George, well, he was so great.

You know, that time when my kid got really sick and we had to ask for a medevac flight, George helped us out. He'll remember his inside officer forever. So for every single, if you're a CIA officer, there are sniff tests. There are bits of information, details, documents that you would have. even any CIA employee gets is is eligible for exceptional performance awards no matter where you're working and you'll get those and you know if if you're you're covert and you can't take it home they'll show it to you and put it in your file so there's all all kinds of things that when when you meet a CIA person that if you want to vet them, you know, it's there, there are many bits of information that you can, that will prove or disprove who they are. Now, what if he was in the part of the CIA that was so secret that not even you know about it?

Like we're talking MK Ultra. Yeah, majestic 12th, Illuminati level. So, so I definitely, I can tell you, I definitely don't. know everything that the agency is doing or has done and I don't want to know it I don't I want nothing to do with it that said that said if someone is a CIA officer they are gonna be able to explain their training they're gonna be able to there's many different flavors of training even if you're on the highest level well let's put it this way first if you are on the MQ

whatever you just said, you're not going to talk about it. If you're super double not top secret dark ops, you ain't going to be on Fox News shouting it out from the rooftop. Yeah, yeah. That's the immediate did give away. Even if there was such a thing and there isn't, there is no such thing as that. No, Omega Force or Ultra Force, Omega Force, the Magist. fly? If there is, you wouldn't be on Fox News if it's so secret.

That's number one. Number two is every CIA employee, regardless of your mega ultra-force or knock or covert or overt, you sign a secrecy agreement to get access to classified information. excuse me, you sign a secrecy agreement, it's a pre-publication agreement. You agree that anything that you ever publish will be, you will submit it for clearance by the CIA's publication review board. Wayne has written a couple really wild books. None of them, as far as I, so, and when the publication review board reviews your stuff, they will give you a a statement and they'll tell you this needs to be put on the front matter of your book.

And it says the CIA Publication Review Board has reviewed this and finds no classified, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like two or three sentences that they require to be included. None of those are in Wayne's books. That's interesting. One thing I want to point out with this is on one hand, it's like, you know, this is a C. The CIA stolen valor and we poke fun at it. But on the other hand, this guy, as you said, he went on Fox News for 13 years playing the

role as Warhawk, talking about how we need to be aggressive and violent and go to war with various parts of the world. And also he obtained U.S. government contracts using these false credentials, didn't he? And was part of the government programs. He was part of the human terrain team, I believe it was, for a little while. And it's really an indictment on the intelligence community and on our government in general that they do not vet these people as vigorously as they should. That this person was able to, he went down to Guantanamo Bay. He was part of that's a whole other issue.

He was part of the military analyst program. Can you speak to that, Kent? Yeah, there's a couple issues there. Yeah. So the military analyst program was started by the Bush administration to get journalists access, right after 9-11 as the war was really kicking off. There was the program, the idea was to get journalists access to, that they normally wouldn't have. generally speaking

it appears that they chose journalists who would be who would be on their side who were more likely to agree with them Wayne ended up he went at least on one of those trips

and it's funny that he uses that trip as a as his bona fides it's the first thing that he provided me was the manifest from his

from his trip to Guantanamo was when I asked him, show me something that says your CIA, Wayne, show me a copy of a badge, show me a copy of an exceptional performance award. What's your employee identification number? He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll get it right to you. And he emails me the manifest from a military aircraft for the military analyst for the military analyst program that he he went on a trip there uh so what it that that i believe that you know you say it's an indictment of the intel community and yes i believe that it is what what what shocked me was

that i was the only one who who started right kind of went on on on on a crusade to to to uh to put an end to this and why wasn't the cia i there years previously saying hey this is bullshit so the CIA will not do that yeah there's a lot of reasons why and many of them are valid right but some aren't at a certain point you got to be like hey this guy doesn't speak for us yeah yeah I mean you would you would think so it it it there's that's that's a very uh very uh hairy question. You know, when you really start thinking about it, are you with me? No, I'm with it. But it's not fine because all of a sudden the things like that can be used as a

means to like uncover people like, yeah, you don't want to get into the business of confirming and denying. Right. And I understand that. But as you said, this is a Fox News commentator claiming he was CIA and he's speaking with those three initials, that acronym, after his name, saying all kinds of crazy things is it really a breach of the agency's operational security or sources and methods to say hey this guy here Wayne Simmons never worked for us yeah you would think so I I ended up contacting them in the course of my you know following this up and once I had especially once I got him to what he he confessed that he wasn't which he immediately took back

But once I got to that point where I was confident that I was correct in my analysis, I did reach out to the agency in many different ways, back channels and a lot of different ways. And they were not interested in participating. So rewind just a little bit on the military analyst thing. So I believe that the way that it appears the way that he established his bona fides was through the military. The military works closely with the CIA, but generally speaking does not understand the CIA. there there's a lot of misunderstandings and assumptions um

Wayne was able that's he he skated in on on that uh through through that open gate however he also had military contact that he sold on it that's is that what you mean? Wait say that again

did he that he had like somebody high ranking the He met somebody in the military and he sold them on it and they slid him in? Yes. Okay. Yes, that's it. So I believe that, and I don't know this for a fact, this is just my analysis, my analytical conclusion is that he had a high level sponsor.

And I believe it was the highest level sponsor. Well, there's pictures of him shaking hands with Don Rumsfeld. So his sister was Don Rumsfeld's assistant secretary of, I want to say, admin. So some kind of admin role. And she had followed him from assignment to assignment. And when he became Secretary of Defense, she ended up being assistant secretary. By this time, when she had that position, Wayne had been busted for drugs. he was out and about well known in his neighborhood

he lived in Annapolis many people I've spoken with many sources in Annapolis who said yeah that dude was wide open he was scary there was bad shit going on I mean he did interviews where he's so drunk he's soaring his words and I mean I say this you know two whiskey deep right now No comment. I can tell you that.

I can tell you that people in his neighborhood, where he lived, knew him to have troubles with the law. His family knew that he had trouble with the law. So again, my analytical conclusion is his family cares about him and his family saw he needed help his family had heard him talking about he had done some kind of

you know high level deep stuff and gave him the insist family said hey boss my brother he's a really he's done some high level stuff for intelligence agencies let me introduce you to him

and because that person is very, is doing a great job and helping out this high-level military guy, he says, sure. And I believe that that was his, that's how he got his foot in the door. And so once I started following this up, and you mentioned stolen valor, I started contacting, you know, there's a bunch of folks out here, the guy that started the whole stolen valor thing for special forces. I can't remember his name. He's down in Virginia Beach. Maybe he was a seal, I believe.

But I started talking about Shippley. Yeah. Probably, yeah, that sounds familiar. And I would contact them. They were interested. My idea was, you know, this, we really should have like a parallel operation to identify these intelligence community stolen valor guys. And here's a great.

first case study. So I would talk to these military stolen valor guys and they'd say, yeah, cool, that's great. Let's go for it. Give me the details. So I'd send them the details and then they would either go silent or if I heard from them

they would be, he is who he says he is, stop. Really? Yeah. So they were doing some kind of vetting. They were calling their, you know, their buddy who's a general in the Pentagon.

Who is that coming from? What's that? Who is that coming from, though? What? That they were trying to shut it down. I talked to every stolen valor organization, everyone.

Because, I mean, you talked to me, and I said that guy's bullshit. Okay. Yeah, I, yeah, but I'm talking about stolen valor organization. Yeah. I was talking to them, they would say, yeah, let's do it. I would send them the information and they would come back and every one of them said, one guy was in Fort Bragg. I can't remember his name. I've got all the

details somewhere. But when I sent it to him, he was all hot. Yeah, this is great. Yeah, let's do this. Then he wouldn't take my calls. He wouldn't answer my phone calls. I finally got through to him. and I got through to him he says dude I checked he's real he is who he says he is leave him alone wow but see the thing is is that

again it's a full it's a trust-based system right because he doesn't have access to that information he is reaching out to people who are reaching out to people who are reaching out to people and a lot of these army guys

like everything that is C-I IA is like in this big black hole and it's like, oh, they're doing something so secret squirrel and black ops that like we can't even imagine what it possibly is. Right. Yes. They don't understand what like what Kent said. It's another government bureaucracy. Right. And the thing is, is if if a general sees or a colonel sees that Rumsel has signed off on this guy, then they're going to assume that the guy's legit. and they're going to assume he's legit and they're going to be scared shitless. I am not going to cross him. He's good. He's good.

Stop right there. Don't want to talk any more about it. Next. From those responses, that's what it was clear to me that there was some very high, very, very high level. Somebody was vouching for him. Right. So, Ken, you were spot on with this very early on. I found out through my sources when I started asking questions because I was told

Wayne Simmons is a knock he did all this high-speed stuff and you know I consulted some people and found out also it was bullshit and you know friends of mine like Ian Scotto came to me should we book this guy to be on the radio and so forth because he's working at a serious at the time and has like no dude he's bullshit yeah a couple years later DOJ moves in and they arrest Wayne Simmons on some of the charges we had talked about.

To finish out this story, I mean, what was the ultimate fall of Wayne Simmons? I mean, I don't know how the FBI got on to him, but they got onto him. They finally took

it up and they realized that it, you know, going on Fox News and lying about being the CIA is not against the law. Falsifying security clearance information application is against the law. Getting government contracts under false pretenses against law too. Exactly. Which is, I mean, it all goes back to claiming who you were experienced that you didn't have on your security clearance form.

But yeah, exactly. Major fraud against the U.S. government. So that's, I'm not really sure how I really don't know how the FBI got on to it. I did cooperate with them. They ended up calling me up and I shared my information with them. Maybe the CIA really did finally get fed up with them. No. You don't think so.

I know so. I know. I know. Yeah. Why would they really care? You know, they don't. You know what they don't like people are gonna think about think what they think about the CIA regardless So I don't think I mean I don't know but it's just it's it's interesting because

For people like me and Dave right you can check up and see if we were really in Ranger battalion You can check up see if I really have a special forces tab you get you can check up call a ranger school see if we got ranger tabs Well what about the guys who were in unit so secret that they're that their records won't show any of those schools. These hands are ready to eat for everybody, Dave. Don't make me use them. Guys, that never happens.

The secret sniper school? Even if a person is in a class, in any special missions unit, their schools will still be listed, or, you know, or some variant of the school. Right. Anyone who says they went to the secret, you know, The secret Halo school. Yeah, it's bullshit.

But my point, is for us for military guys you can check up and see if we really did those things but if you were the CIA there's this mysticism towards it and of course um for the reasons we talked about the agency doesn't want to get into the business of confirming and denying right which is understandable for their own you know operational security but that was the fall of Wayne Simmons I mean that was pretty incredible how all that went down and that he was able to perpetrate that as long as he did. And you know, and I guess that people, you know, depending on how you felt about

Rumsfeld, depending on how you feel about Fox, depending on all these things that you could say Romisville wrote a blur for Wayne Simmons novel. Right. Well, and the thing is that like is it an indictment of Rumsfeld? Is it an indictment of Fox? Maybe, but it's also just sort of an indictment of the entire system. Sort of the whole system because anybody could have not fall. for it but I mean just recently there was that the person or not recently a couple years ago the person who started the is it protest now or protest for demonstrate now whatever it was but they made up this fake company where they were hired out allegedly hired out to demonstrate against you know bring in a thousand protesters paying them X amount of

dollars a month to protest against Trump and they were paid and they went on like every like almost every major media you know and and people are interviewing like this is really what you do and it wasn't until i think they got to neil cavito was like we checked you out your website's fake you just set it up you know like all this it's just you know i'll i'll just to to round that out yeah it's a tangent it's a tangent but it's it's i have appeared on most of the major news channels over the years. I have been quoted in a lot of newspapers. In all of those years, the last like eight, well, 10 years since I've been out of the military, I have only had one journalist asked to see my Q-course graduation certificate, my, you know, DD214. There was a guy at the

Wall Street Journal, a young guy, wanted to, you know, he's like, my editor's asking me for this, I'm sorry, man, I got to ask you. I was like, don't apologize. as you're right to ask for this. And I provided it for him. But that's it. I mean, of all those appearances, I've been on CNN, Fox, I've been on BBC. There was that one kid at the Wall Street Journal. That's the only time they ever asked to see any real credentials.

And the thing is that probably, like once you got booked in your first place, like let's say you're a soft rep, right? And then somebody on Fox or CNN or whatever. It's got to be legitimate. You've got to be legitimate. I mean, do you feel that's kind of how that works? if you get in one place, you get the established epithopo peter, no matter how you get it,

then they just cares for it every place goes, okay, you're good. Yep, it's sort of a social capital. Yeah. You have a network that has vouched for you in one way or another. And yes, that's how it works. However, what in Simmons case, where they fell down, was when I and others contacted them.

We contacted directly to the top, from the top to the bottom, producers to the head of news, to tell them. And it wasn't just me. I ended up with a large group of high-level, mostly all retired, retired CIA officers, including some of the highest levels of operations officers. when we contacted them, they just blew us off. That is a problem to me. That's crazy. I don't think it's a problem to make a mistake, whether it was 13 years or whether it was one time.

You know, everybody makes mistakes. But when you get information that is, you know, clear, real good sources and you just blow them off, there's a problem there. And that is very disheartening to me. And not only did they blow us off, but they, they, the Simmons started a campaign against me. Right. You know, to take, taking retaliation against me. Well, you know, I mean, if you think about Fox, and again, I don't want to,

I'm not defending them. I would say the same thing that we're seeing in NSNBC or whatever. they have this guy who Donald Rumsfeld vouched for and then they had this group of you know intelligence officers that they they can't maybe necessarily verify 100% or whatever or even if they can verify if he goes if he goes look Donald Ronsville all these generals I've been on all these projects which he had by this point in time he had been on all these projects you don't think they would have let me on those projects if I weren't these guys just they're out for me you know it's professional jealousy they want this job and that's and that is the

ultimate hubris is that you had uh you know sent me some a recent interview that Simmons had done now that he's out of prison right and he's still going out there claiming that he is CIA that the liberal left is out to persecute him and all this nonsense I was just blown away by that stone yeah Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy. I mean, you know, I, I don't know what I would do, but, you know, I think that if I was in that situation, all right, damn it, you got me. Okay, I've paid my debt to society. I'm going to now launch a new, a new leaf, and I'm going to go out and, I don't know, become a freaking car salesman or something, but, you know, why, why double down? Why?

Well, to kind of finish this thing out, I think, there was something you had told me today that kind of blew my mind. Dave and I had talked a couple times on this show about Amarillo's Fox, an alleged CIA officer who has been running around telling all kinds of absolutely insane stories. and I asked you about her today and you, I mean, just to caveat this, I've asked many, many, many CIA people that I know, and they all said, never heard of her. I asked you about it, Kent, and I was surprised by what you had to say. So, I mean, I would just say to begin with, a CIA person not having heard of someone is not, what's the old saying, Right. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Right. Just because the CIA person hasn't heard of her doesn't mean she's not CIA. I know she's CIA. She does, I worked with her.

Yeah. I sat in and on. What's the deal with her? So, um, there was, uh, there was a push to bring in a different, uh, type of, of recruit after 9-11. and she was one of them. So she was in the employee of the CIA at one time? I have not seen what she's claiming, but I'm assuming that she's claiming she was an operations officer in the CIA. Is that right?

She's claimed that she is a knock. It was a knock. She was a art. She had an art gallery. Right? That she was undercover as, yeah, run it as an art gallery. As an art dealer.

and then did she went into Pakistan? She was in Islamabad. I mean, the claims were so wild that, I mean, I don't know what her cover was, but yes, she was an operations officer for the CIA. I did see something about her claiming to have been alone with a terrorist, in Pakistan. I don't know the details, but that seemed very, very unreal to me.

So I think what you got is, is a, I mean, I know she's a real CIA officer. She was an operations officer. It sounds like she's exaggerating her experience. Yeah. See, I was under the impression. When Jack and I talked about this, I was under the impression and and obviously you don't have to say anything that if somebody came in in in sort of a non-official capacity that they would already that they would sort they would have like if you were going to be an art if they were going to set you up as an art dealer you would have a master and fine art you would know something about art in order to be able to form that that job you know like you they you know it's

kind of hard to put somebody in a position do they know nothing about and then and then sell it. But she didn't have any history to my knowledge, to degree or anything like that. Anyway, that was just my impression, but I don't know anything about those programs. Like, I don't know. So anyway. So, yeah, you hit on a pretty good point there. It's, I believe that was a fatally flawed program.

It included bringing in people like. her can I tell you can I tell you Department of Agriculture story yes or at least I I first learned of the the the the the the fallaciousness of of government programs when I I worked one summer as I was flunking out of college for a Department of Agriculture program in North Carolina it was called the bowl weevil eradication program it was a huge program, had a PhD running it, we had all kinds of equipment,

we had pickup trucks, we had motorcycles, me and another guy got a pickup truck and two motorcycles. We made bullweevil traps, we put bullweevil pheromone in the top of it, and they had mapped out the entire region of eastern North Carolina. where all the cotton fields were, and I had certain fields assigned to me and my buddy, and we would go and put these bull weevil traps every 40 feet or something, every seventh row, something like that. So I was really excited. This is pretty doggone cool. I know bowl weevils are

bad. You know, bowl weevils, I've heard it in history. They killed cotton and all that. This is great. I'm making a contribution to society, and I get to drive a pickup truck and a motorcycle. This is great. So I go out and we put out our traps and now my job is to run the traps. So every day I go to my fields and I go ride my motorcycle down. It's a mile long row. And you check every pull up the trap and you open it up. No bull weevils.

That one. Go to the next one. So after about a week of this, I come back and I feel like, damn, I'm a failure. I haven't found one freaking ball weevil. go back to the dude running it and I said, you know, boss, I got to apologize. I feel like I'm a failure here.

I'm really into this program. I would love helping our farmers. But I have not found a bowl weevil. He said, son, there ain't been no bull weevils in the United States since 1946. But yet

this program continued to be funded, continued to have I'm assuming it was all over the south. I'm assuming there's dudes with government pickup trucks and and many bikes all over the south. We were the front lines of the Bull Weevil War. That's amazing. That's when I realized, you know what? Government may mean well, but once a program starts, number one, it can never stop. And number two, it's probably never going to be,

it's never going to be honestly evaluated. Right. So that's, think of the, think of Amarilis's program in those terms, and it all makes sense. But Kent, explain to me, if she wrote this book, I mean, it didn't go through the PRB. She said so or stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's, that was. So why isn't she in jail? That's a good question.

I have no idea. I did not really pay too close attention to that. Here's was my experience with her is I saw probably it was like a video still on a website somewhere. And I glanced at it and I said, huh, she looks kind of familiar, but I didn't even read it. Let's see what it was. It was just like, yeah, she looks sort of familiar. No name jumped into my head when I saw her. saw it again. I said, who the hell is that? Now I clicked on it, and I opened it up, and it's Amarillo's Fox, former CIA officer, telling her story.

Excuse me. And so I looked at the video, and she was being interviewed by CBS or somebody, and the things that she said, you know, that she was a CIA officer, I know to be truth. I read that her it seemed that the issue was that she was had come to the headlines was she did not get PRB approval and I stopped paying attention after that I don't know why she did it

I don't know what happened I can tell you that there had been other cases there was a knock that I knew and he went by an alias that published a book a sort of a scathing critique.

Ishmael Jones? Yeah, yeah, Ishmael Jones. And they came after him. They took his money. He was not allowed to profit from that. And I don't think they prosecuted him. Do you know when the last time they prosecuted somebody was for not going through the PRV?

Oh, geez. For not, well, I mean, there's back in the day, John Stockton, but they've prosecuted a number of people since then for, you know, allegedly revealing classified information. Well, that's revealing classified information, but I mean just going through the PRB. No, I do not. And I don't want to know.

Yeah. I think this is really, this is the next, like, Wayne Simmons scandal that's brewing behind the scenes. that something's going to happen there. And I don't know what, but... With Fox? Yeah. I don't think so.

The only scandal that I see is that she didn't get PRB approval. My guess is, although, like I said, I stopped paying attention, my guess is that they did something behind the scenes. You know, a lawyer, publisher's lawyer, has gone to the PRB, and they're coming to a post-hawk. agreement or something. That's my guess. I'd be pretty amazing if that happened.

Yeah. Thank you, Alex. Alex is asking, what advice would you give this someone who wants to join the CIA? And did you ever work with Air or Maritime Branch? That's probably a good way to kind of finish this out, actually.

Yeah. Okay, sure. Yeah, I worked with Air and Maritime. Your buddy Ron, I worked with him on that in the Philippines maritime guys were around quite a bit and I worked with them the best

way to prepit so I what I suggest is look at the website everything is on the website nowadays they'll tell you exactly what they're looking for if they say and it changes from time to time generally speaking what they're looking for is you got to have a degree. You should have international experience.

Sometimes that might be just a semester abroad, which is not necessarily the best preparation, but that's good enough to get in. Just look at, and I'll say it's for any job you're looking for that you want to qualify for, look at the job description and then mold yourself into that, whatever it is they're looking for, so that when you apply, you match the job description. And when you do, you're going to go to the top of the list. Yeah.

And be ready for the security clearance. Security clearance is what kills a lot of people. Drugs, crimes, you know, different things in your background can disqualify you. The CIA does not disqualify you for experimenting with drugs as opposed to some... But you've got to come clean. Huh? But you've got to come clean, right? Yeah, yeah.

You have to admit to it. And, you know, there's some kind of threshold. But if you have experimented with marijuana or something like that, then the CIA does not immediately disqualify you. keep your nose clean bottom line don't get arrested don't don't don't get involved in illegal stuff and then mold yourself to whatever whatever it is they're looking for it's all on the website yeah and also if you're looking for good of health insurance that helps yeah that that gets you right here apparently because that that gets you into air force intelligence and and the CIA apparently.

There you go. Thank you so much for your time. Everybody, thank you very much for joining us. If you have not subscribed to our channel, please subscribe to it. Check out our Patreon page. Check out on iTunes or SoundCloud. Do you have anything to promote?

Do you want to promote or a website or anything like that? Peace, love, and universal happiness is all I need to promote. All right, I have it, ladies and gentlemen. Peace, love, and universal happiness. Excuse me. Look at my website, kentclisbee.com. I've written a couple books. I'm also an intelligence historian. I specialize in Bolshevik covert influence. I went back from the Russian Revolution, beginning the Russian Revolution, looking at their covert influence operations. I wrote a book on that. called willing accomplices. Willing accomplices. So on my website,

Kentclisby.com. Kentclisby.com. Thanks. Thanks, Kent. And thank you, everybody. We really appreciate it. And Kent, do you think I can twist your arm

to talk to us a little bit about that for the bonus segment after this? Sure, sure. Okay. We're going to stick around now? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're going to kill the stream.

Yeah, let me take a break. Yeah, okay. Thanks. See you later, guys. Thanks everyone for joining us.