The Team House - Former CIA Officer Marc Polymeropoulos | In-Studio Bonus Episode

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Former CIA officer and friend of the stream, Marc Polymeropoulos joins us for an in-studio bonus episode this Wednesday at noon! Find Marc here👇 https://marcpolymeropoulos.com Marc’s Twitter �� https://twitter.com/mpolymer?s=21 Marc’s Book👇 https://www.amazon.com/Clarity-Crisis-Leadership-Lessons-CIA/dp/1400223865/ref=nodl_ Sound Off app Supporting veterans on their terms. Non profit mental health services for Vets.  Check out the app👇 https://sound-off.com Want 2 bonus episodes per month and access to the bonus segments? Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media Links:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #ciaofficer #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Special operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this bonus episode of the Team House, joining you at the rare hour of noon. What is it? Yes, it is just afternoon here in Brooklyn.

Usually this show happens Friday night when we're drinking way more than we should be. So we have a very sober episode with former CIA officer Mark Palmeropolis. This is his third appearance on the show. He is the author of Clarity and Crisis. We're really pleased to have you back on the show, Mark. Thank you for coming in. It's great to be here. Not an evening performance, which means I got to drive back to Virginia after this. So we're going to stay sober, which means that I don't have to have that self-hate tomorrow morning. What the hell did I say last night?

It's been really cool watching you since, like, right after you retired and got out, what is this second phase of your post-CIA life? What has that been like? What are you doing? Well, lots of different stuff. I mean, you know, you always kind of try to find yourself after retirement. And so, you know, one of the things I've fallen into is kind of this leadership genre. You know, I wrote a book, obviously, on leadership.

And I've gone, you know, I have some private sector clients and I talk to businesses on it. But now I've kind of jumped into the sports world. And so I was up here in New York, and it's awesome that I got the opportunity to stop in the day. But I was up here talking to St. John's University baseball. And so sports teams have really, really kind of, you know, gravitated towards the book because there's so many lessons in there, which are really applicable to sports. So it's been really fun. And, you know, I get a chance to kind of help mold, you know, the young men and women in athletics

and how they deal with adversity, something that I obviously dealt with a long time. But it's been a blast. So I think that's where I want to go. You know, you never know. I still do some, you know, commentary on foreign policy and foreign affairs. But the sports stuff is that's kind of my passion now. So it's been fun. You're like a lifelong baseball fan, right?

Yeah. So, you know, I grew up in Jersey. And so, you know, D will be upset when I say this, but I'm, because we did. did some summers up in Martha's Vineyard, so I'm a Red Sox fan. I'm not a Yankees or Mets fan, so he's upset with me already. But I'm just, you know, crazy baseball fan. My son's playing, you know, college baseball now for a junior college down in Richmond. It's just one of my passions. But the interesting thing is that, you know, as I have kind of reflected on my career as an intelligence officer in dealing with adversity and a lot of tough times and, you know,

you know, sometimes, you know, percentages aren't with you. Very similar to baseball. You know, you hit 300. You're an All-Star, but that means you fail seven out of the ten times. There's just, there's kind of great similarities in the two worlds. I've kind of found an interesting niche to talk about this. And so here we go. I got to get, I got to get some clients from pro sports teams. I think that'll pay more. Okay.

That's the next step. I can't remember if I ever mentioned this to you or not, but I had a friend once tell me that you guys were somewhere in, I think, East Africa, playing baseball trying to knock out the windows on the Iraqi embassy. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Sawball. Yeah, that was, that seemed like the right thing to do. I think that was, well, that was a lot.

long time ago. I believe it was a temporary duty assignment to Khartoum. But it seemed like the right thing to do. I was trying to hit the ball as far as possible and hit the Iraqi embassy. I don't know if we succeeded, but it was fun. So it's just good memories. So yeah, I mean, it's been really interesting to see all this. And yeah, you offer or you're still very much engaged in like foreign policy and you offer a lot of commentary and you work with a lot of people in the media. what's that been like going from like being completely black? Like I do not, you know, Mark Palomaropolis undercover. You know, it's been an interesting evolution.

When I was going to retire, I asked a couple friends of mine, former agency, you know, senior officers, former, you know, deputy director, Mike Morel or John Seifer, or others that you see in the meet of Doug Weiss. And I asked them, I said, you know, what do you think of my doing this, of my kind of, you know, coming out and actually, you know, doing what some of what you all are doing, but just, you know, talking about the agency

and talking about intelligence. in the spotlight. And they actually all, like to a T said, it's a really good idea because we need that voice. Yeah. And so, you know, obviously you abide by your secrecy agreement. But, you know, explaining to the American people why, you know, we need to have an intelligence organization,

explaining, you know, the importance of intelligence. And, you know, I mean, look what's happening now in Russia, Ukraine. You know, Intel is kind of top in the list of a tool that's being used now by the administration. But, you know, that is only a good thing because, you know, in the age or in the year of 2022 where there's, you know, a staggering amount of data of open source material, like American people got to understand why the CIA has to exist. And if we can't explain that to them, you know, are we going to become irrelevant down the line? So, you know, the idea of talking openly about it, it's been fun.

Sometimes, you know, I wonder, you know, I try to only talk about things which I had, you know, which I worked on in the past. I mean, I remember one time that, you know, CNN called me up and asked me to comment on a, you know, an issue involving China. And I said, you know what, that's not me. You know, I want to focus on things like, you know, counterterrorism in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, you know, a little bit of Russia, things I worked on because you want to be credible. And, you know, in the back of my mind, I'm always wondering, like, you know, if my old friends, you know, back of the agency, you know, when they see me on in the media, you know, some might not think it's a smart idea.

Some might think it's fine. But you all want them to say, well, at least Mark knows what he's talking about. It's good to figure out what your wheelhouse is, or your own left and right. right, limits are because as we know, there are a lot of people out there constantly offering commentary on things they know fucking nothing about. And it's like, come on the time. I mean, I always wonder, you know, should I try to get one of those gigs, you know, as a contributor, CNN or MSNBC or Fox, because so often I do see folks and you're just, sometimes it's cringe-worthy. But at the same time, you know, I, again, I only want to talk about things that I know about. I sometimes get

asked to offer commentary or even go in the media to talk about things like police shootings. Right. It's like, listen, I'm not a police officer. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a civil rights expert. Like, this is not my wheeled house. I'm going to stay away from that. It's just, you know, you've got to be authentic. You got to be credible. You might not like what I have to say. But at least you want someone to say, well, he knows what he's, you know, what he's talking about. And that sometimes means turning stuff down. Yeah, yeah. And that's fine and say, you know, I just, I'm not, you know, people, you know, I had a little

experience on Russia, you know, before I left. I was the acting operations chief for clandestine operations in Europe and Eurasian. That included Russia. But I only did that for two years. So, you know, I don't like to be included as a Russia expert. I can comment on Russia because I, you know, I did it for several years, you know, but then, you know, in the opposite, you know, in terms of counterterrorism, in the South Asia and the Middle East, I can talk about that all day, because that's what I did. It's interesting being billed as an expert, isn't it? Supposedly, I should be like an expert on counterterrorism through things that I did and studied. But then again, if someone put me on the spot and asked me,

Jack, can you walk me through the history of Palestinian nationalism, there would be an embarrassed silence. I wouldn't be able to do it off the cuff. Right. I mean, so the other thing that we have to be careful on, whether you're a journalist or, you know, former military, in your case or myself as former intel, is that we're not academics. The other thing, too, is like, I'm older.

Like, I forget stuff. So I couldn't do that either. I mean, you know, I've spent a lot of time doing, Palestinians. But if you know, you know, but I'm, I'm not teaching at Columbia, um, uh, or any place like that. And so, you know, you just got to be, I think you've got to be careful. I was, I have, I have a new thing I'm doing now. I'm a, let's see, I'm a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlanta council. Okay. What does that mean? For the squares out there. So the Atlanta council is, you know, is a very prominent, you know, in essence, you know, one of the DC think

tanks. Um, uh, but, you know, as a former government official, you know, they wanted my kind of expertise on hybrid warfare. Okay. And so I have to, you know, I have to do some right. writing a couple times a year, do some, you know, comments, commentary in the media, attend some conferences, but they like having, you know, former government officials there. And so, but what's interesting to me is, as I, you know, there's also, you know, again, I kind of go back to what I'm good at and what I know I need to work on. There's a lot of really smart people there. And sometimes I kind of, you know, worry a little bit, like, you know, should I be in this, you know, in this room? Because there's super smart academics with, you know, with decades of, of experience. experience. Now, they would counter and say, well, you were actually a practitioner. You're an operator. And so we need that, you know, that view from kind of the street level. And I get that. And I can do that. That was a point that Nick Mulroy brought up when he was on the show because he went up and became a policy, White House policy. I get his title wrong every time, but he was like the deputy Middle East advisor or something of this nature at the White House. And he said, you know, coming from being a paramilitary officer in the CIA. it's very good to have a practitioner, at least in the room with the people who are forming policy, to have that perspective there. And I think, and that's the niche I want to play or, you know, or, you know, sit in with the Atlanta Council, but I have to also be careful.

I'm not going to give you kind of the history of Russian hybrid warfare from, you know, from 1950 on. So, you know, it's just, again, it's just having some humility, knowing what you're good at, what you're not. I certainly had a lot of humility after all my kind of ups and downs in my career. So I've got to keep that going. And I mean, and the idea of doing stuff in the media, like you can't, someone gave me some really good advice once. They said, don't do the commentary in the media to see your name in the New York Times all the time and get excited about it.

You know, do it to offer something unique and interesting. But if you do it just to get those, you know, those TV hits or the, you know, the press hits and prominent publications, you're doing it for the wrong reason. Right, right. You just become a talking head. Yep. I wanted to jump into a related topic that we were talking a little bit about off camera before. is the situation that's been unfolding in recent weeks in Ukraine and some of the tensions with Russia. And we're having a conversation, which I think we both agree on, that we're kind of seeing America fight back in a way that we haven't been for quite a while it feels like.

And playing information warfare games with the Russians and kind of beating them at their own game. What do you think about some of the diplomatic signaling and messaging that has come from our government over the last few weeks? Well, and I would say, like, you know, finally, it's about damn time. Yeah. You know, so again, we're talking about the practice of hybrid warfare, where information operations always plays a key role. And for the first time and a long time, the U.S. is actually doing this successfully. So, you know, and these are not intelligence leaks.

These are authorized disclosures of intelligence information that is designed to kind of keep Vladimir Putin and the Russians, you know, on edge or kind of knock them off their game. And it's really smart. It's almost gotten into, you know, Putin's decision cycle in his head. It's also so to probably a lot of doubt that we have, you know, you know, penetrated his government, both with human and technical means. I don't know if it's true and it doesn't matter if it's true because that's what it seems like. It just matters that he thinks it's true.

That he thinks it is. And so ultimately, you know, it's playing or it's, you know, it's finally leveling the playing field with the Russians. And I think we've done a really good job on that. So, you know, whether an invasion is imminent or not by saying that we know that it is imminent, that is designed to forestall an invasion, you know, to, right. And so I think that was, it's been done in a really smart fashion. I think, you know, they're going to be, you know, you know, history books written on this. But hopefully it becomes, you know, kind of part of a practice.

If you look back to the 2014 time period, again, you know, the, you know, actually Russia has, you know, when Russia first invaded, this is, you know, there was intelligence that was not released to the public. And there was a struggle. And this has been talked about in the media lately recently. There's a former U.S. ambassador, you know, Mike McFaul who's on all the time saying he wanted to release information. But the intelligence community wouldn't do it. This time they are. So I think we've learned. Doesn't the White House, the president, have the ability to declassify at will, whatever intelligence he wants?

Ultimately, the president can. But you really have to have a kind of a cooperative relationship. So the DNI of real hands is the one who is doing this. She has that power as well. The DNI has that declassification authority. And so I think they've been really small. heart on this. And, you know, there's been some kind of talk of do we risk, you know, sources and methods, and I don't think so. Again, because I don't even know if this is real. Right.

You know, you know, if we really have penetrated. Now, the intelligence is real, but just, you know, kind of getting in Putin's head, this is brilliant. And I think they've, you know, so far they've done it successfully. There is, I think there's probably in the media, you know, it causes a lot of, kind of, you know, hysteria is the wrong word, but a lot of concern about the imminence of an invasion. Yes. Well, you know, that's for journalists to kind of decipher. It's information operations. I definitely wanted to bring that up. And I think that's kind of like some of the boomerang effects that this has. And I was mentioning earlier, I'm a little disappointed in the way a lot of journalists and academics and people who should know better have responded

to some of the signaling we're sending out. And that they're taking it all at face value without putting any sort of critical thinking or context behind it. And I think hyping it up and scaring people, maybe more than they should be. And that's just a secondary or tertiary effect of what we're doing. It's like, hey, guys, like, you might want to view this information with a little bit of skepticism. Like, we're putting this out for them. Right. Oh, yeah. You're not supposed to look at this and just take it at face value at the same way.

But, yeah, how do you mitigate that? And like you said, journalists have a responsibility to, handle that in a responsible, incredible way. And I think that maybe they could have done some more diligence on it and how they represented that information to the public. Right. And so, you know, and I hear you on that, and I agree with you. The other kind of the wild card, though, is I don't know if anybody knows what Vladimir Putin's going to do. Sure. You know, from, again, for my limited time, you know, working Russia, but from, you know, extensive time on the Middle East where there are plenty of other autocrats.

You know, I think that, you know, that these are individuals, you know, leaders who, you know, who are not, you know, perhaps they act rationally sometimes, but they're not acting in the best interest of their country on courses of action that they want to take. And so, you know, I would argue that, you know, kind of looking at the intelligence community overall, I think we've done a really, the intelligence community has done a really good job of providing, you know, situational awareness to the policymaker. So there's 150,000 Russian troops, you know, on the borders of Ukraine. And so, you know, we have done. our job. My old outfit has done its job of providing that warning function, but it's not our job

to be predictive in time and place. And you can't ask for that, especially with a leader who literally could change his mind overnight based on a whim. So it's not like the intelligence community has to kind of get up and go home. But I think this has been, you know, they've had a pretty good run because you give the policymaker options. And what I like to do also is, you know, I like to think, you know, kind of with the, what do we call it, the right of boom mentality. So So that worst case option of full-on invasion, you know, we are now planning for that. So there are plans in place. To me, that's when the intelligence community has done its job.

I want to just dig a little bit deeper in there to kind of expand this for viewers, some people who are not, you know, follow this stuff super closely. As far as what we're trying to do by sending out some of this message and talking about the invasion being imminent, saying outright this invasion is going to happen, in some cases even putting like timelines, on it. I recently interviewed Nick Trickett, who's a Russian analyst, or a Russia analyst. And he had some very interesting things to say. His point was that by saying the Russians are going to invade, we're kind of taking that threat away from the Russian government. They can't threaten to invade because we're saying every day you're going to invade. Right. No, it's, I mean, look, I think it's pretty brilliant as well. Again, you're almost ahead of the decision cycle, even of Putin. And so, you know, the warning of imminence also then allows allies to kind of,

to, allows the United States to kind of rally our allies altogether. And, you know, I don't doubt that there is intelligence that shows that Putin could evade at any time. Right, right. It's just a question of will he? And so maybe you push it a little bit and you say, or you kind of selectively leak saying that, yeah, the invasion is going to be on, I think it was actually supposed to be today, Wednesday. Well, there's no, you know, I think that's, you know. You're making him look like a punk because either he invades and proves that he's a bully.

Right. Or he backs down. He blinks and looks like a cowlid. I think we put him in a box. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a bit. And so, and, you know, this doesn't work if we have, you know, without diplomatic efforts amongst, you know, the NATO alliance. It's really interesting because ultimately. Military efforts, we've deployed troops over to Romania and Poland. And, I mean, you actually have a strength in NATO to a degree that we couldn't even have imagined several years. ago when former President Trump was dissing NATO all the time. Well, it's pretty amazing now that this move by Putin, this obviously aggressive and threatening mood, move has really allowed to kind of, for the alliance to kind of regain its credibility. And ultimately, I think that's a good thing. Because again, we're back in an era of great power competition. Is that what we're calling it now?

It was near peer. Don't get me started on the buzzwords. DoD always has a different buzzword. But, you know, we've moved away from kind of the CT wars, counterterrorism wars for two decades. And so we're back to great power competition where alliances really matter. And NATO is strengthened. That's a really good thing. Even that, you know, the Germans are even coming around. And, you know, there's been a tremendous amount of criticism because Germany wouldn't allow for overflights and wouldn't, you know, provide any lethal assistance.

But even, I think, even the Germans, you know, in private, you know, we're saying that Nord Stream 2, the gas pipeline. You know, that would be canceled with a Russian invasion. So pretty remarkable. You know, if you're into the transatlantic alliance stuff, this is, you know, we're back at, really at a high point. We're saying, I was writing a week ago about how we are, the focus on this is kind of going back to, you know, mainstream DOD deterrence as opposed to like the sexy counterterrorism, special ops missions. And I think it's the DOD has like the Office of International Cooperation or something of that nature. But it's just the programs that distribute lethal aid and includes trainers and training them up. And it's all, there's nothing secret about it.

It's publicized quite openly. And all of that plays into deterrence to, you know, bring javelin missiles and other ammunition over there. I think that, you know, it'll be interesting to kind of look back. Well, first of all, who knows what's going to happen. I mean, you know, we could have this discussion now, as we're saying, you know, that and, you know. As tanks are rolling across the order. And, D, you've got to check the Twitter feed. we'll

we'll redirect yeah that's right but you know so so ultimately you know that classic deterrence of providing you know which is in essence defensive equipment you know that might be

you know that might really have worked you know at the end of the day and so and so you know we're not back to sending you know thousands of U.S. forces you know we are back to kind of that old classic you know style of you know providing you know military assistance to another country

obviously we provide training. But I think that's a good thing. And again, when we're talking about China, Russia, that's going to be the way of the future. What do you think, from your perspective, is President Putin's overarching goal with Ukraine? So, you know, I think this is where, you know, so many in the United States and really many administrations have gotten it wrong because, you know, Putin at the end of the day is obviously one not to be trusted. But he does, you know, He does not believe Ukraine is a country. He believes it's certainly part of kind of historic Russia. And his goal is to destroy the NATO alliance.

And the amazing thing that people seem to miss is that he talks about this openly. He is open about this all the time. I mean, there's, you know, I think a famous session with the NATO Secretary General and Putin several years ago when, you know, the NATO Secretary General said something like, we look forward to working with you and Putin's response is, well, I look forward to destroying, you know, what you have built. I mean, you know, NATO is not something that Russia, you know, ever would, you know, would cooperate with or be in favor of. And so ultimately, I think we have to treat Putin for what he is.

He is a autocrat in charge of a rogue state. Russia is not our friend. You know, you know, myself and several other officers, maybe a year or two ago, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about kind of the fallacy of cooperation with Russia on counterterrorism. Because we're always asked to do it. And we always kind of roll our eyes and off we go and do it and it never works. because they don't want to cooperate with us. And so ultimately, you know, Russia has to be treated as an adversary and an enemy. And, you know, Putin's the head of that state, I guess, you know, until, you know,

until, you know, 2030 something now. I mean, you know, obviously there's some decree that was passed. So, you know, this is something we're going to have to deal with for, you know, for now, you know, for decades into the future. But this is not our friend. And the other point, too, is that, you know, even as we kind of stand down or perhaps the tensions, you know, diminish a bit in terms of Ukraine, he's still going to have 130,000 troops on Ukrainian border. And I think this is going to be a long slog now.

If there is no invasion, those units are not going back to garrison. Those units will still be in a posture that's quite medicine. And so we're going to be kind of in this slow, long grind with Putin. And we've got to stay strong on that. I've tried to point out, and I don't know what your thoughts are, that the Russian narrative or President Putin's narrative, of stopping Ukraine from joining NATO is really moot in the sense of this current context, this current conflict.

They've already taken Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. There's no way that Ukraine can join NATO when they don't have control over some of their territory. It's the same reason why the Russians are in South Ossetia and Georgia. A country can't join the NATO alliance when it would immediately drag us all into an Article 5. Absolutely. So what is Putin really talking about when he talks about NATO? you know going into Ukraine Putin fears a democratic Ukraine you know he fears a country on its on his border that is evolving that does have democracy that has

freedom of thought and expression I mean that to me is kind of the basic part of this the idea of NATO and NATO expansion is silly because it's not on the table you know we can't you know openly say that Ukraine is not going to join NATO because Ukraine is a democratic country and if it wants to join it can go to a process of doing so and we have to allow democratic states you know to kind of move forward on that. But if it really was about Ukraine joining NATO, Putin wouldn't be there now

because they're not going to join NATO. Right, right. Now, what's interesting is he has amassed enough force and we are providing a considerable amount of defensive assistance. You know, there was always the talk of the Finlandization. Yes. Well, Finland, you know, has the F-35. So, you know, is that what we, you know,

so are we going to end up, you know, giving the F-35 to the Ukrainians? well, they might not join NATO, but they might have the most advanced U.S. fighters at the end of the day. So, you know, I think this is a huge kind of misstep by Putin, but, you know, the talk of, you know, NATO enlargement or not is, is not serious. That's certainly moot. And I think he really just fears democracy, you know, a democratic state. And Ukraine is making progress. And that's a great thing for the United States, a great thing for the West. Certainly not a good thing for Putin.

Sorry viewers out there if you can hear the drilling going on next door. It's typical that you start doing one of these streams and somebody starts... That's right. It's good to be in Brooklyn. You know, I grew up in Jersey. I think, I think of Jack, I was telling you, I grew up in Jersey. As I was a kid, I think about my kids now and what I don't allow them to do. But when I was a kid at like 11 years old, I'd jump on the train out of New Brunswick

and come to see New York Ranger games at Madison Square Garden. And so it's, you know, this is bringing me back to my childhood. I mean, New York is, it's different. I live down in Northern Virginia now, but New York is kind of tough and grimy. I'm wearing my Doc Martins, so I got my New York look going. But it's a, this is a different place here. I think I've definitely parked illegally outside. I hope my truck doesn't get towed.

Wow. Yeah, it's so different. And as I frequently remind my mom when I see her that, like, you know, you remember when you used to leave me in the car while you go to the grocery, go grocery shopping? The windows rolled up. Yeah, you get arrested for that these days. They throw you in the clink. for that. But it's a, but you know, and the other thing too is, like, even DC traffic's tough,

but this is, I was, I drove from Queens to Brooklyn yesterday. It was a 10 mile drive to 155 minutes. Oh, God. Traffic here is killing. This is a subway city. I know, I know, but I drove. Can't drive. But it's a driver. It's good to be here. I think that, you know, the key thing was that I, I, I did have some good Italian food last night. Um, and I did this morning, as I, as I was kind of going back and forth on Twitter with you, I went off to get a good New York City bagel. That's awesome. had to do it. Are you working on any other book projects? So what a great question. So I'm not sure. So I have something in mind. But really when you write a book and you know this, like I got to give it more time to promote this one. So I'm going all around the country doing tons of, you know, speaking engagements.

Well, it's also going to take you a year or write the book and then it's going to take another year for it to get published. So you got some time. There's, you know, there's a side of me that, you know, it's not a memoir. So it's a book on leadership. So what? What's next? You know, what else do I do? I don't want to really write about myself anymore. I think writing fiction is hard. I don't know if I'd be good at that. I've kind of made some friends who are authors. And I think that's a different bear. It's a totally different skill. But I'm going to kind of, and I'm really going to stick with this and just kind of the, you know, talking leadership. It's really a passion of mine. And we'll see what goes from there. You know, the other part, too. And I think you must remember this. I mean, you know, the publishing industry is not easy.

I think one in 100 books makes money. And, you know, while my publisher, Harper Collins, was very good to me for a while, you know, ultimately, you know, the kind of the PR stuff, you know, after several months, that goes away and you're kind of off on your own. So I really am doing this a lot on my own now, obviously trying to, you know, go out and I still do kind of book events all over the country and certainly leadership talks, but it's humbling. So I did a talk in Dallas two weeks ago. Actually, one in Dallas, one in Fort Worth. Fort Worth was packed. 100 people, sold a ton of books. It was amazing.

But then, you know, a couple weeks earlier, I did a Northern Virginia event. And I was there at a bookstore for an hour and two people came. That's humbling. I'm sitting there and so you just never know. And so the kind of this whole book thing is you got to have a sense of humility. Yeah. It's, you know, you have some great events and then sometimes there's people don't show up and that's okay and you've got to kind of pick yourself up.

And you say, okay, I know the book's good. I know I can do this. But, you know, I guess today just, you know, no one decided to show up. My favorite was speaking, and I'm sure you must have these when you're speaking to your former colleagues and friends. But I did one event with the Special Forces Association and another at the Army Navy Club in D.C. And, you know, those are the audiences where, like, you're not going to get away with a bunch of bullshit war stories. Right. You know, looking at you.

Oh, really, Jack. Is that how that happened, huh? No, that's true. I mean, you definitely tailor it for your audience. And sometimes those audiences, you know, that's where I, you know, you got to be on your game for that. Because they'll call the yes, right away. The questions are on point, you know. But I like talking to those audiences.

Sure. And, you know, one of the things for me, which has been really rewarding. And again, you kind of never know, but I did a book event in Northern Virginia and I had a couple former agency officers who worked for me in the past. And they came. And this was actually really cool. And my family was there, my son was kind of helping me out. Sometimes they come along. And one of these is a, he's still in the agency now.

And he's been, you know, station chief multiple times. So he came to the event and he took my son aside. And he said, hey, you know, I really like Mark Book. And by the way, you know, he was the best leader I ever had. And he taught me so much. And he really taught me about all the things, you know, all those principles about overcoming adversity. Like that really is what, you know, what got through to me. And that's what I practice now.

And that, to me, kind of made it all kind of worthwhile. You know, this is, you know, he's someone who worked for me, but a sense, it's a peer. And if you can pass the torch to the next generation, like, that to me is the most rewarding thing. And did your son for so many years think you were just some dweeb diplomat? Oh, totally, yeah, yeah. Although it's really funny. They, you know, at one point, we caught a flight back home from the Middle East on the director's aircraft. So it's a C-17, but they, you know, they slide in a VIP pod.

And I think, and I think my kids were probably, you know, 10 or 11 years old. and then they're kind of scratching their heads. Like, this is not normal. Like, why are we flying back on this, you know, on this Air Force plane and when there's all these, you know, security folks there? And then another time, I think they really, they really figured it out when it was actually, it was Mike Morel. He was acting director.

And my wife was his executive assistant. My wife's a case officer, too. She just retired. But she was his EA at the time. And I texted him. I said, hey, come over to watch a hockey game. Come over to watch a Caps game. so enrolled two suburban

of the protective detail lights flashing and they pull into my driveway and my son and my daughter like what is going on like this is not what State Department people do and so when we finally told them my wife and I they were like we knew no whatever but you know the stuff with kids is cool because you don't realize this

but it turns out they actually were really proud of what both my wife and I did just in terms of public service and kind of defending the country and so you know they're super supportive of us us, they're super defensive, you know, when, you know, like, if you're in the public eye, some people don't like what I have to say, and they get, and my, my kids get pissed. And, uh, but I think they're, they're really proud. I don't think they're going to do the same line of work. I think that, um, no, they enjoyed kind of growing up and living in the Middle East, but, but I think they, uh,

they also kind of saw the toll, you know, that it took on me. And so I think they, they, they might go a different route. And sometimes we hear from viewers, and I get a lot of emails from people who are thinking about governmental service. And, uh, I'd always, try to remind people too, like there's all sorts of different ways they serve their country. Oh, absolutely. You don't have to be a, you know, snake eater. You don't have to be a case officer. You don't have to, there's all sorts of different things.

You can go and be into diplomacy. You can be an imagery analyst. I mean, there's all tons of- It can be a firefighter or a cop. You can do local stuff. I mean, I think, but what always motivated me was kind of doing something for the kind of the public good. I mean, I just, you know, look, I, you know, I went to, got my undergraduate and graduate degrees at Cornell. It's probably like some of your, you know, Columbia brothers and sisters,

like a lot of my friends from college have made a lot of money that I have not. Certainly not in my job and not selling a book. That's why you need to go to Hollywood now. That's right. But, I mean, they are, you know, they are, they made tons of money. But, you know, I was just never motivated by that. Yeah. And so it can't get out of bed for it. You know, I really, you know, and I've had my kind of arguments with the agency, particularly, and maybe we'll talk about it later in terms of health care and some of the health stuff that I've gone through. But I really believe in the place,

and I don't regret having done, you know, having service intelligence officer. And so, you know, again, it was, you know, every day, it was an exciting day. And it's not like, I mean, it's overseas, you're kind of pretty pumped all the time, serving their headquarters. It's not all that great battling traffic. But, you know, just a fascinating job. You know you're doing the right thing. I always would talk about, you know, you open the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times.

And really, all the stuff, the international events are things that we contribute to. And sometimes you witness history, sometimes you make history. And that's the stuff that I, you know, I, whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or so many places where, you know, I would have to pinch myself sometimes that, you know, that we were involved in this. And that's what you want to do. You know, it's so it's, and you can be on the tip of the spear in so many different ways. It could be in, you know, USAID or a State Department or Peace Corps or anything like that. But ultimately, it's the idea that you're kind of helping your country. And that always, that motivated me so much.

It sounds corny, but it's a, that's the way I tick. It's what makes me tick, at least. Oh, and it is. It's exciting. I wanted to hit you up, too, about all this stuff with the, what's come to be known as a Havana syndrome. You talked about it, the first interview we did. Do you want to, like, give, like, the elevator pitch, I guess, or the, I mean, in brief, you know, what happened to you in Moscow so people who are just seeing this for the first time understand what happened?

So it was a, it was a December of 2017. At the time I was the deputy operations chief for, again, what we call the Europe and Eurasia Mission Center. I had been a career, you know, officer in the Near East and counterterrorism. They moved a whole bunch of us over to do kind of Russia, frankly, in a pushback against Russia after the Russian election interference in 2016. And so I was put in a pretty senior position and I needed to go to Moscow for what's simply called area fam, area familiarization. I went out there to see obviously the embassy. We had an ambassador there, John Huntsman, who was this kind of career, or not career, a career public servant in the sense. He was governor of Utah and he was ambassador in Beijing

and then ambassador in Moscow. And I was there to meet kind of my Russian counterparts, which is kind of strange, but is what we do. You know, the CIA and KGB. This is above board. It's not covert. It's like a liaison. It's a business trip.

Right. It's a boring business trip. I was, you know, semi excited to go because I had never been to Russia. But it's not operational. You know, there's, I mean, it's, it is, there's no stress involved whatsoever. I mean, you're staying at a nice hotel and you're going to have some meetings and I'm just going to go to Moscow and St. Petersburg. And St. Petersburg is, you know, is a beautiful city. And so I was, I was, you know, I was excited to go on the first couple nights of the trip.

Well, let me just preface that the Russians didn't want me to go. It was interesting. So I was myself and another officer. And they started, right before the trip, they started asking like, why are you coming here? Why, Mark? And now, of course, they knew me from the past, from the spy wars of all my time in the Middle East. And but, you know, they started making some accusations saying that, you know, is this, you know, why are you coming here? Is this trip operational? And our response was, that's insane. I'm a senior agency officer. I'm coming. I'm coming to meet you. They thought you were coming to, like, pitch somebody or something. That's so far-fetched. I mean, it defies, you know, credulity. And so, so, but they ultimately allowed us to come. On the second or third night, I can't remember what it was in December 2017. You know, it was something awful happening. I woke up in the middle of the night with a stunning case of vertigo, you know, terrible headache, tinnitus, which is, you know, ringing in my ears.

You know, felt physically sick, but, but it was the vertigo. And that was pretty terrifying. And, again, I, you know, I'd spent a lot of time in Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, other places, has been shot at plenty of times. This was the scariest moment because I just had a total loss of control. And it started on this kind of awful health journey, which I have even until today,

where I've had a migraine for four years every day. I still have one now. I've just learned to live with it. Probably would feel better if I had a bourbon, but I got to drive back. Dee's getting some bottles out now. No, we're not going to do that. But ultimately, you know,

something terrible happened to me that night in Moscow. Now, when I came back and I kind of engaged in a bit of a back and forth, a bit of a battle with the CIA's medical staff, who didn't believe at first something happened to me. I didn't look like what it occurred to some officials from the U.S. Embassy in Havana in 2016. When did you become aware that this wasn't a singular thing that had happened to you, that there were other people were experiencing? So, look, so this is in December 2017. In 2016, the U.S. Embassy officials in Havana, Cuba, were subject to this,

what was called Havana syndrome. And there are far greater numbers, 20-30 U.S. officials. So I was aware of that, but I wasn't thinking about it at all. But ultimately, when I came back and I started trying to get medical care, and they said I didn't look like them, the symptoms they thought were a bit off. I think they've changed their mind on that now. But ultimately, you know, I couldn't. So I started this path of trying to deal with the agency doctors, the agency medical staff,

they kind of refused to put me in them with the same group from Havana, which would have meant that I would have gone to certain facilities that were treating our officers, or U.S. officials, which was at the time the University of Pennsylvania, University of Miami and University of Pennsylvania, where they were really providing care. So I had to go off on my own, and I started this awful journey of seeing, you know, you know, tens of doctors, everything from obviously neurologists, but infectious disease specialist, allergists, and went on and on. I had tons of different treatments, all sorts of steroid shots. I mean, it just, it was this kind of a life of misery. And ultimately, you know,

it got to the point where I couldn't actually go to work. And so, you know, starting when I came back, you know, in 2018 onwards, I ended up retiring in July of 2019, but even in that really senior position, I could only go to work for two or three hours a day because of the headaches. You know, and because of the brain fog. At one point, you know, I was losing my cognitive, you know, abilities. I couldn't drive. I lost my long distance vision. It came back after a while, but, you know, it was truly thought me to me to retire. And at the time, I was, you know, as in the senior intelligence service, I was, you know, you know, obviously I had done quite well in my career and I think they were, there were certainly thoughts of me going even higher, at least my, you know,

My bosses. You weren't ready to retire. No, I was a lot more left in the tank. But I had to retire in July of 2019. Now, interestingly, as I was retiring, some of my other colleagues and friends, frankly, people I knew started coming back from the field with the same symptoms. What was their experience like? Were they getting hit in hotel rooms like you did? Yes. Really? Very similar. And so that, and so that to me was, you know, because you had what happened to me in December of 2017 in Moscow. by mid-2019, it started happening to others. And as I was walking out the door and retiring, I saw that some of my colleagues and friends were getting pretty severely affected by this. And make no mistake, this is not something that you bounce back from.

You know, there is an enormous recovery time. And in effect, you know, when I got to Walter, finally, when I finally got to Walter Reed's National Intrepid Center of Excellence, which is their traumatic brain injury program, I was diagnosed by Walter Reed with a TBI based on based on what they called an external exposure event. So all of a sudden now, you know, there's doctors, this is getting real, they believe us. And certainly, you know, things started changing, particularly in the medical community.

You know, that something really did happen. Guys, if you have questions for Mark, please get them in. Isaac has a question, a long patron. It's on the Patreon if you have it set up. Oh, okay. I'll get in there in a sec. So, Mark, what is, they have, come to accept that this is happening to guys. How are they treating it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one's really sure what the hell this is. Right. So there's a couple things. So, you know,

we now have multiple medical facilities in the United States that have treated, you know, U.S. officials. You know, University of Miami, University of Pennsylvania. Johns Hopkins now is accepting, you know, our officers as well as Walter Reed's, a traumatic brain injury program. And, and in essence, you know, they are treating us as if we suffered a, in my case, you know, it was diagnosed, a traumatic brain injury. So what does that mean? Well, there's lots of different ways to treat this. There's kind of the pharmaceutical option. There's a, you know, for headaches, you know, there's been a long history of using kind of classic antidepressants, frankly, to help for migraine headaches. And I have not had success from that. Others really have. There's physical therapy that you can do.

And then there's things like, you know, like obviously nutrition, kind of classic wellness stuff. I mean, you know, you want to see kind of funny things. It's not really funny, but it's, you know, a whole bunch of myself and a whole bunch of Navy SEALs or, you know, Air Force Special Operators like doing yoga every morning, Walter Reed. Like that stuff helps. Deep breathing techniques. There's, you know, there's sleep hygiene. You know, 50% of TBI victims develop sleep apnea. Yeah.

And I have it. And I did, when I was tested there, so here, so I go to the sleep lab at NICO and they take my blood pressure. It's 170 over 100. And they were like, holy shit. And then I do the sleep apnea test, and I'm off the charts. So I have what's called a CPAP. You know, I look like a B-1 pilot when I, you know, when I sleep now. But that immediately, you know, has changed my life.

Where now I, you know, that my sleep hygiene is really good. So there's things you do. Obviously there's, you know, I see psychiatrists and psychologists. But there is a set kind of program for TBI victims. I think that has been really helpful for, you know, those of us who are kind of victims of, you call it an anomalous health incident, Havana syndrome, whatever. But it's a slow process. Like, you know, I'm way better than I was, you know, a year ago, but I still got a headache right now.

And so it's, you know, it takes a long time to recover. Now something happened. So there's an external exposure event to something. There's a theory on this that it was, you know, directed energy. I'm not a, I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. I think a lot of people, you know, do believe that, but it's going to take some more kind of investigation. Have you heard anything with since they started taking this a little more seriously in the last couple of years,

the agency, from what I've read, they stood up sort of like a task force, to look into this and to try to unpack and figure out what's going on. I mean, if you heard anything about why people are being targeted, who's behind it, what the technology is?

So I think there's, you know, we have to be, you know, again, and this is not a criticism in the media, but, but, you know, there's, there's so many stories, and like I, sometimes I contribute to this by making comments about it, but so many stories on what's happening. So there's a couple things. There's a panel of experts, that the response to that would be keep looking. I mean, they've been at it for seven

months. It took us 10 years to find, you know, the most wandered man on the planet who's living right outside, what, Pakistan's version of West Point. So, you know, it's okay. Like, we're seven months into this. So we don't know who is doing this. They're not even sure what it is. They know people have effects that look like they've been subject to a directed energy attack. And we just got to kind of keep on going. And the only thing I would urge is just is patience. And because, because ultimately, you know, and I think it's been really interesting when myself and some others have gone and we've testified on Capitol Hill, both to the Senate and the House. And this is the right mechanism to do it. It's not to kind of talk about this in great detail in the media.

This is okay what we're doing now, but I'm talking about testifying in front of the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees in great detail. That's the right form. It's a classified form. But when senators and congressmen and congresswoman come out after seeing a victim, and I look, I'm in pretty good. shape, but they see some of the others who've been medically retired, who can't walk, who have, you know, who have, you know, legally blind. It's pretty compelling, and it's really hard to say, well, you know, you're, you know, you were a tip of the spirit case officer, you know, from Havana or from a European country or from Moscow or whatever, and now your life is essentially,

you know, been derailed that you, you know, you had a, you know, your, you're kind of had a psychogenic attack or this is this was mass hysteria it's not something happened we just got to get to the bottom of it this is to me this is you know the u.s. government has been at best incompetent in responding to this but you know what think about what happened after agent orange after gulf war syndrome after burn pits there's there's you know bad things happen sometimes it takes us a long time to you know to accept it um uh and the science has to come around the investigation but i kind of put it in that in those bins Because, you know, people really have been injured by this. I mean, if you meet victims from this, you're not going to walk away thinking they made it all up.

It strikes me that this is a way to take people, take chess pieces off the board and doing it without an assassination. Yeah. And there's no clear. There's no murder weapon that we can identify. We can't identify the weapon. We can't identify the actor behind it. But it's a way to take intelligence officers out of the field. So it's, I mean, I hate to use the word brilliant, but, you know, but it is a brilliant technique, weapon, tactic, whatever this is.

It's done several things. It has, you know, it's taken someone off the playing field. It's very hard to find attribution. And ultimately, it's so an incredible dissension, you know, even within the U.S. government. I mean, people still argue about whether this is real or not. There are elements within the agency who don't believe this. There are a whole bunch of elements within the agency that do believe it and a lot of others, particularly in DOD. It's interesting to me that that DOD has really kind of led the way in accepting that something bad has happened. Oh, really? You know, and well, you know, I think that it was telling to me I was at Walter Reed's, you know, the TBI program.

It's located in a certain building in Walter Reed, but I had to go across the street for some physical therapy. And not just as an aside, if you ever want to be humbled, you know, go to the PT clinic at Walter Reed. And, you know, whether you see amputee, double amputees. I mean, it's, you know, I was in tears, you know, whenever. every time I went over there. But I sat down with one of the specialists and I said, hey, I'm from across the street over at NICO at the TBI clinic. And I'm one of the folks who had kind of the, and it's even hard to talk about it. I said one of the, you know, been a victim of Favanna syndrome. And she said to me, she goes, oh, I've seen a whole bunch of your folks,

of you folks. And I said, well, that's not possible. I'm only, I'm the only second person who's been here. And she said, no, you're not. There's a whole bunch of DOD folks who've been here for this in the past. Right. Wow. And that's what I said. And then she saw the look on my face and I said, can you tell me more about that? And then she said, I can't because of, you know, because of patient privilege. But clearly DOD has had experience with this in the past. And one of the interesting thing is, is I, you know, I wonder if it's our Intel guys or our J-Soc guys or who's being, who's being, it would be interesting to find out who's being targeted. Well, well, here's, you know, and there's a lot of stuff in open source research, but it was about

maybe a year or so ago, you know, and bids for contracts are always put out in public. Well, J-Soc put out a bid for a bond. body-worn device that would detect directed energy. So if J-SAC is actually wants operators to wear this, that means it's serious. Something's happening. Yep. And so there's no doubt in my mind that DOD has had experience in this. And so, you know, again, it's, one of the things that we haven't had is a whole government

approach. You saw recently that the CIA put out an interim report, which got, it caused all sorts of controversy. And then later on, the DNI put out report from the experts panel that seemed to contradict this. Well, all this is kind of mess. You know, and you're watching the sausage being made, which is not pleasant. What you need is a whole-of-government approach.

We need a coordinator, and I think we have one now after this kind of mess, but a coordinator at the National Security Council who's actually going to put all the agencies together. And so you're going to marry up what DOD is doing, with what state is doing, with what CIA is doing. But to me, you know, the answer is this lies in DOD. There's no doubt, because they also have expertise in kind of unconventional weapons programs. And if we're to follow this kind of thesis through, I'm kind of curious, like, why would the Russians buzz like the entire U.S. Embassy in Havana? Do you think that's just because they were pissed off that we're normalizing relations?

Yeah, 100%. That, to me, makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And it caused us to evacuate the, you know, to close the embassy, in essence. And so that to me, you know, is, you know. You think that shows a sort of political intelligence behind what's being done. Yeah. And, you know, I guess there's a, that's a solid explanation there.

Now, why are there attacks at other places around the world? I don't know. You know, and the other thing, too, that would, you know, would concern me is, you know, what is their target selection, if it is an adversary doing this? And why? Now, you know, the agency came out and the interim report and said something the extent of, you know, they don't see any kind of patterns. Yet a whole bunch of my friends who all involved in Russian operations did get hit. And so to me, you know, that's, that is pretty significant. And so, look, the other thing is, you know, directed energy weapons is nothing new.

The Russians have had a long, extensive program. There is, they have published papers in the open source on this. I, you know, sometimes, you know, myself and some others, you know, tweet this out every once in a while, just to remind the public and the intelligence community that the Russians have a program. Now, we're not saying they did this. I think they did. But that's just me based on, I'm not in government anymore. But countries have these directed energy weapons programs.

And so I think that, I would imagine there's going to be a lot of focus. on that going forward, whether it's Russia or China or Iran or other states that do that. And we have it as well. We have them. What do you make of the reports of people getting zapped like right in Washington, D.C.? Like walking around to, you know, the Lincoln Memorial. So, you know, so I have to be really careful on this because the one thing that that happened with me is that, you know, people, you know, when I kind of came out and because I was, in essence, begging for health care, you know, that people kind of dismissed me. So I don't want to be dismissive of others. And so, you know, my kind of response on that is, you know,

and I've talked to some of these officials, you know, from the National Security Council and others who've been hit. The symptoms they have are very similar, you know, and that's, you know, and they are hurting. You know, they have, you know, they have taken enormous career hits and they're getting medical attention. So I think you just have to, you know, show some empathy. You know, there is, you know, it's hard to imagine that,

you know, that adversaries are running around the United States in great numbers doing this. But it's also, we also had a history of Russian intelligence operations on U.S. soil as well. So you just don't know. I just, I don't like dismissing folks claims. Yeah. No, not neither would I. I mean, I want to follow wherever the evidence leads us on that. But I mean, you'd think this would, has this technology really been miniaturized to the point that you can do something like that?

Right. There isn't like a huge panel band nearby. Yeah, right. I mean, I hear you. I don't know. Yeah. And, you know, like, I, at sometimes as I'm talking on this stuff, like, because there's no doubt in my mind that something happened to me in Moscow. So, so, you know, I'm very confident of saying that. I was, I emerged a different person and had to retire. You know, was it a directed energy attack? Was it poison? But I don't know, but something happened that changed the course of my life. So I'm really confident on that. But then sometimes when we start talking about these attacks on kind of a bigger scale or in the United States, you know, and I want to show empathy, you know, for the victims, you know, I feel like, you know, I'm one of the folks like chasing UFOs. Like, it starts sounding like a crazy person.

And that's, but that's, you know, I don't want to be that. I don't want to kind of, you know, charge that there's this, you know, kind of mass campaign that's affected thousands of people. But, you know, as the, as the experts panel from the DNI said, there are, there are several dozen cases that are unexplained that it is entirely. plausible to them and likely that there was a directed energy attack on our officers. And so I just have to kind of kind of go with that. Yeah, I don't want to paint anyone as being quote unquote crazy, right? There is, I think, going to be a point where this starts to overlap with the conspiracy theorist, which is what the danger is. Yep. Are you familiar with gang stalking?

No. These people have been around since like the 70s or 80s, but there are people, I think most of them have some form of schizophrenia, and they believe that they are, they call themselves TIs, targeted individuals. Oh, that's right. And they believe the NSA is following them around. They hit me up on Twitter. And blasting them, blasting them with directed energy. Yeah, they inbox me too because they think I know something about it. Right. And it's, the New York Times actually did a very interesting story on them maybe like five years ago talking about because of the internet, all of these people have been able to meet each other and form like, sort of like group self-help. kind of things where they all come together.

And now it becomes a sort of mutually assuring delusion because they're all convincing one another that this is happening. No, I get letters to my house. I get phone calls on my home phone. No, no, I do know. And that's, you know, that's the danger of this. I certainly get it. And, you know, I don't, I don't even like the role of, you know, I love talking about

my book, talking about foreign affairs because we talk about this. I don't, you know, end up kind of playing the role of professional victim, not what I want to be remembered for. Sure, sure. And so, and with that said, you know, so I sympathize with the intelligence community for the following reason. So, you know, they didn't take this seriously for a long time. Then we had this kind of a spate of attacks, which I think these are the core ones that are still unexplained. Then what the U.S. government did in good intentions, but what was inevitably the wrong move,

was basically announced to our overseas personnel if you are not feeling well. If you have a headache, you'll write in and tell us. So if you read the press reports, and if they're accurate, then there were a thousand cases of this worldwide. Well, that's a self-inflicted wound. So what we have now done is we've solved most of those, 99% of those cases, which was generated by our data call, in essence, and we're back to this core group of several dozen that are unexplained. And so I sympathize a bit because they had to kind of. of call through the data. But now we're back to kind of square one. So, you know, what I kind of,

the way I leave this now is, you know, in the last eight months, we actually haven't gotten anywhere. Now, now they, you know, they say that they can't find attribution, okay. But ultimately, we're still down to, you know, several dozen cases. By the way, if you're talking 30 cases, that's extraordinary. Where people are injured, are being treated in U.S. medical facilities, and where doctors say they were subject to something. That's pretty extraordinary. Yeah. And so, you know, the whole thing has been kind of messy to deal with. It's fought in the media all the time.

You know, the headlines are always coming out. And it sounds like, it seems like there's whiplash sometimes that this is all made up, no, this is real. And ultimately, I would just, again, just, you know, urge patience. We'll get to the bottom of this. You know, the U.S. government as a whole, not the CIA, but the U.S. government, which means DOD, it means the CIA, it means D.O.D. The intelligence community. It means our national labs. It means academics and research.

It means open source entities as well. I mean, look what Belencat has done over the years to uncover kind of Russian malfeasance all over the world. And so, you know, there's going to be data out there that has to be collected and at some point we'll get to the bottom of this. We definitely haven't heard the last word on it. Let me hit up a few questions here. Isaac asks, Mark, I'm almost 29.

I just started university. I'm majoring in information systems, and I want to get a master's in cybersecurity. I want to one day join an agency. day join an agency, but I feel like the older I get, the more my chances demur. I want to be like Batman and Snake, but I wasn't able to join the military. So I hope whenever I get my master's people will look past my flaws, but want to do, what can I do to increase my chances? Because I want to do cyber and paramilitary, but I'm afraid I'll never get to live my dream.

So what should I do to increase my chances, I guess, of joining the agency? No, it's a great question. I get asked all the time. One of the things I really have fun do is I go and I talk to colleges. And it's not just my leadership talk. I'll go talk to them about the intelligence community because one of the things I found most rewarding was kind of, again, passing the torch to the next generation.

So college kids ask me all the time, you know, what should I do to better my chances? You know, what should I study? What's my degree? And my response is pretty basic. One is it doesn't matter. You know, study whatever you want to study. Now, if you want to get into cybersecurity, go get that degree.

Your undergraduate and master's. Computer science. Computer science. That's great. But to go into the intelligence community, and really I'm talking about the operational side, I'm not talking about the analytic side, you know, you get a leg up if you learn a foreign language and a hard target language. And that means, you know, it's Russian, Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Korean.

Learn one of those five languages, and you can have a degree in nothing. And you will get put to the top of the pile, period. That's what we need. And then you have to have just that kind of intangible, which is, you know, this curiosity for the world. You know, and I tell people all the time, I said, you know, if you want to live in America, you're going to join the FBI. If you like foreign cultures and people and food and religion and have this curiosity, you know, being a CIA officer is a really neat thing. But guess what? You're not hanging out with Americans. Like, I don't want you comfortable on a U.S. military base or at our embassy.

You've got to be hanging on the street with the, you know, with Shabab, you know, the kind of, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with, with, you know, with, with. with kind of folks in the Middle East, you know, you've got to be comfortable taking taxis and just, you know, you know, kind of immersing yourself in different cultures and having that curiosity. And so my response would be, you know, study whatever you want. But that kind of that kind of learning of foreign language is absolutely critical. The agency is also, correct me if I'm wrong, like increasingly interested in recruiting people who don't look like me and you. That's right. Yep. And, you know, it's not mean in a negative set. For very practical reasons. So this is going to be a fun conversation about the wokeness of the agency. It drives me nuts because. So the agency put out this video, which everyone went crazy over,

that it was, you know, they thought it was too woke. And that, it annoys me because of the following. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents, and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging.

It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Diversity is an operational advantage in operations as a case officer. Because, you know, again, so if I'm sitting in the Middle East somewhere, I don't want someone like me or you. I want someone who's not going to get, what, not going to get caught.

Because your job is to meet an agent clandestinely. So if you don't look like an American, you know, it's a hell of a lot easier. I loved in every station that I was managing. and oversight over operations, you know, particularly in the Middle East to use female operations officers. And I tell a great story in the book of we had a female officer out on an surveillance detection route, and by chance, you know, she was spotted. And we later on through a penetration, we got a report saying that, hey, we, the host service, saw X, Y, and Z this female officer and what they believe was a surveillance detection run.

And because of that, let's put surveillance on her husband because she could never be a spy because she's a girl. And, you know, that's how we win. You know, I remember years and years ago in one of the stations in the Middle East, we had a case officer who was a Filipino national, it's a Filipino American. He was invisible. You know, so Filipinos in the Middle East are not treated well. Yeah, because they're like the domestic servants and stuff like it. This guy could go anywhere at any time.

With a mop in his hand and no one would look twice. So diversity is our operational advantage. It's how we win. It's not being woke. It's how we actually, you know. That commercial they did was a little over. It's totally over the top. It's totally, but, you know, but what I don't like is then you have kind of the old guard

like saying like, oh my God, you know, this is the end of civilization. Yeah, that's also a little over the top. It's over the top. But again, I loved having, you know, diversity in our officer corps because, again, as you tailor operations, you do it for one thing. You do it so you don't get caught. That's how we win. And, you know, what's interesting is, you know, in the intelligence business, particularly

if you're kind of serving in a denied area, like, that's the only thing you got. So the host country is going to kind of treat you like shit all the time You know, they're going to break into your house They're going to take a dump or take a piss in your toilet They're going to leave it They're going to take a dump in the middle of your living room They turn your stereo up super loud I mean, you know, I remember in one posting I came in

You know, middle of winter all of our windows were open everywhere Stuff's trashed So, so you know, so as we're subject to that If we know in the back of our minds, you know what We're kicking their ass clandestinely all the time you know, that's a tremendous feeling, and you do that from having a diverse workforce. Kind of simple as that. And the conventional thinking, I think a lot of people have is like, you can't send a woman to the Middle East.

It's a male-dominated culture. Right. Well, guess what? You know, first of all, that's not true. There's two things on that. One, again, is kind of operationally going out on the street. But number two, I'm not going to get in trouble on this. But it's what I believed is some of the best handlers of our Arab agents were female officers.

Now, why is that? Let me just, let me preface this, that my wife is Lebanese. You know, she's, you know, and so I married an Arab, so I can say these things sometimes. But there's a really interesting dynamic in the Arab world between, you know, a female, a mom, a mother, and their son. And so if you can, and the respect that an Arab male has for the mother figure is extraordinary. If you can replicate that in running operations, you have a female officer who has an incredible, incredible amount of control over an Arab, you know, a male agent. Sometimes are the Arab men more willing to divulge to a woman for that reason?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And so, and so, you know, these are kind of the things that I would think about as we're kind of trying to tailoring operations. Or we have, you know, we have a pool of agents or I have to figure out who's going to handle this source. Well, you know, maybe the most difficult agent should be handled by someone if you can replicate that dynamic, that father, sorry, that mother's son dynamic. And so again, it's for our operational advantage. That's it. That's how we went. Yeah. And I love that kind of stuff, too. And there's nothing better than watching, you know, someone who doesn't look like an American, but who is a great patriot,

just kicking the shit out of another service just because based on their prejudices. You know, and that's it happened all the time. That was very much the case when we interviewed, where's her book? I have it over here somewhere. But Marty Peterson, when I interviewed her. Right.

And this was like 1975. in Moscow. Yeah. That's right. And they were like, no fucking way is a woman, a CIA case officer. And she was invisible to them. Bring it. You love that. And you can replicate that across the board, you know, because, you know, again, and a lot of these third world countries have, you know, just kind of deeply ingrained prejudices. If male dominated or whatever, if race, religion, you know, it just doesn't matter. But if we can put people out in the street who don't get caught, we can handle folks, you know, in a particular way, that's how we win. This is an interesting question. Is there any data on hand from Canada or other Western countries that is helping to form a better picture of the Havana syndrome, whether circumstantially or otherwise? Well, Canadians, sure, because the Canadians were subject to this. They're Canadian diplomats in Havana. Okay. They have. And there's certainly a lot of, it's similar in the sense of the Canadian officials who were hit by this have kind of equally been frustrated by their governments, you know, response and kind of lack of empathy and lack of medical care.

One of the really interesting things, though, is, and it's, you know, it just, it's something that you, you know, that obviously those who are investigating this, you know, have to digest and really kind of wonder is, why is it just, you know, in some sense, a couple of Canadians, but why just American officials? I mean, this hasn't happened to the Brits, you know, our closest ally, or the French or others, and I can't answer that. It's just something that, but that is certainly notable. Jackson asks, what is the worst intelligence-based movie of all time? Is there anyone that really comes to mind? The worst one? Wow. I mean, you know, there's, all of them is the answer.

But no, I mean, you know, Homeland was kind of silly. You know, not real. But in terms of, you know, I mean, but a lot of these are fun. I mean, James Bond movies are super fun, but it has nothing to do with anything. Wasn't there the Al Pacino movie, the recruit? The recruit? That was a pretty bad one. Yep. No, that was not good. But I like, to flip the question a little bit, there's some sleeper movies that I love.

So one is Ronan. Yes, I love that movie. Which, you know, with Robert De Niro, and it's still, like, debated on Twitter was, you know, was he actually a CIA knock or a former knock? And the last scene is that his handler from inside Paris Station. But there's tradecraft in there that those of us who are practitioners of the arts kind of love. Whether it's brush passes or a certain combo protocol. So Ronan was incredible to me.

Also interesting because they're penetrating kind of European terrorist networks. That doesn't get a lot of play anymore. Everything is kind of, you know, in Middle East terrorism. No, that is a great movie. It's a great movie. What about a spy game with Redford and Brad Pitt? Yep. So I like that.

And the parts of it, I like the scenes from Beirut. And I like the scenes of East Germany. when they're doing some, again, trade craft stuff and kind of getting car tosses and people getting dumped out of the trunk of a car. I mean, so that to me was interesting. It also is the funny part about that that we all laughed about is, is Robert Redford retires with like at the end of the CIA career with like $200,000 in the bank. That ain't a lot.

But it's also kind of, you know, again, maybe a reflection of government service doesn't pay that well. What about a Tinker-Taylor soldier's side? That was good. Yeah. And the various inclinations of it. There was the series that BBC did a couple years ago, which was awesome. I like that. That's, you know, Le Carre is always kind of brilliant in his analysis.

Although, towards the end of his career, I think he had this kind of hatred of America. It was very critical of, you know, the Iraq War and other things. But speaking of John LaCarray, it's one of my favorite espionage books of all time and my favorite espionage movie, which is The Little Drummer Girl. I haven't read it. So, and that's about Mossad running an operation against the Palestinian terrorist groups. It is extraordinary. And because it is so, it is really interesting because it talks about, it deals with kind of the personal nature of agent handling.

Something I talk about in my book all the time because one of the things that I found most interesting was that kind of personal dynamic between the case officer and the agent. And so the little drummer girl has that in spades and it is amazing. And the movie was fantastic. I just got this book in the mail. It's an older book that I ordered on. Someone recommended it to me. This was published. Let me see here. What year. 1982. Oh, wow. So this is the setup by Vladimir Volkov, a novel of disinformation. Interesting. So this was just someone recommended it to me. I have not, I don't know really much about it at all. Born in Paris, a Russian parents fought with the French army in the Algerian war, came to the States in 66. taught French and Russian at college, written textbooks plays novels.

Yeah, I don't know. It's about Russian disinformation, so I don't know. I'll give me a try. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much of bullshit is zero dark? Oh, I knew you're going to ask that question. That gets so much conscious. So let me just say, I didn't mind it. I like the movie.

I also, for those of us, so if you ask a CIA officer what they think about this, Some people are going to say it was good. Some people want to say it was BS. But I think the real answer is it was an amalgamation of so many different stories. So there's parts of that that I know actually are pretty good. But there's other parts of it. Like they combine the Chapman bombing in Bin Laden, which these are not. Wait, but there's elements of kind of different parts of the story that ring true to me and my friends who were actually involved say is pretty good.

You know, the biggest controversy of that, well, there's two things. one is that the agency, you know, cooperated. So the second that happens, you know, everybody says, you know, kind of questions that. But the other part was just the idea that enhanced interrogation techniques were useful. And I think that's what a lot of critics see that movie as kind of, you know, pushing that notion. And, you know, if you ask me about that, I still think that's kind of, you know, an unknown. So I'm not as upset about the movie. You know, it's part of kind of cinema, you know, of Hollywood.

shouldn't be treated as fact. Yeah. You know, it's probably a little more kind of, what do you call it, you know, historical, you know, fiction. It's a good movie. I mean, you watch it and afterwards, I mean, there's just as a film. As a film. But it's not a documentary.

But people get really passionate about that. And there's still friends of mine who work counterterrorism and just, you know, it just hasn't even, interestingly enough, they haven't even seen it. You know, for me, you know, I did, I did see it a couple times. and the reason why I like watching it is there are a couple individuals that I obviously remain unnamed who are totally based on some of my friends. And that to me is always amusing. Jackson asks, are there ever civilians who end up becoming ground branch PMO's, or is that a total myth perpetuated by sloth and intel-driven novels? So I was not a member of Special Activities Center,

or I was not a paramilitary operations officer. I came from kind of conventional side from the Near East Division. To become a PMO, and I might get this kind of wrong, but I think 99.9% all come from their former military. And generally from the Special Operations Forces, a lot of them from the U.S. Marine Corps, but you need to have military experience. And you should to kind of go.

go that route. And so it's, you know, prior military experience. And, and, and, and, uh, and I believe a college degree is, uh, is a prerequisite. It's pretty cool. Tyler, thank you. And Joe, Joe asks, how accurate is the polygraph? Uh, not accurate at all. The polygraph is a tool. And so, you know, the polygraph is something that to me, um, until a lot of us, you know, it was a hated part of kind of your security processing, um, uh, because you know, just based on science and research and you know and in fact that it's not necessarily accurate it's pseudoscience it's pseudoscience and so it is designed to keep me and you and everybody else who is in a position where a polygraph is required you know designed to keep you on the up and up um so guess what like

you know you know CI officers you know aren't smoking weed it's not because we don't want to smoke weed it's because you know you're going to get jammed up on the polygraph um so so ultimately it's you know and and and CI officers you know when they're when they're in don't talk to the press well Why is that? Well, it's because when you get polygraphed, you're worried that, you know, that's going to come out. So it is a, it is a useful tool to kind of coerce behavior that they want. Now, polygraph is fake news. Inbox me, guys. I'm here. But here's the critical part of the, of what's interesting in terms of the polygraph when you, so polygraph is used to kind of vet our officers as a security tool. It's also used when we're running an agent. So sometimes, you know, and so that is a, is a, is a,

tool. It's interesting. So we know it's not reliable. But if you if you are polygraphing your agent, that's going to that's going to help ensure not always that they're actually providing it works. It works because people believe it works and it shakes them up and they start divulging stuff. Well, so for example, you know, so if we have an agent and we're paying them a lot of money and they have access to something, let's say their access goes away. Well, then the gravy train's about to get turned off. That's a life cycle of an operation. Well, oftentimes that agent will then start embellishing things, making up, you know, access. I got you, yeah. And so in order to kind of mitigate that, you know, if we're polygraphing someone, you know, regularly or routinely, you know,

they're going to be much less, you know, prone to kind of, you know, going down that road of embellishing, knowing that they're going to have some kind of security interview that they're going to get tripped up. So it just like, you know, just like for CIA officer or agents overseas, you know, it's a tool. But, you know, there's been plenty of research and I think even U.S. courts, law. It's not admissible. So there is certainly an issue on, on, you know, the accuracy of that. And, you know, and it's not a really particularly pleasant process. Isaac says, I saw Berlin station and looked it up if it was accurate and I learned the CIA was spying in Germany. Agents were caught in 2009 and 10. Were you involved? No, it was not involved

in that. But, you know, there's, look, you know, at the end of the day, you know, it's a business that is run by humans. Sometimes, you know, we make mistakes. Sometimes our agents make mistakes and sometimes you get caught. You know, that's very well-publicized incidents that happen in Germany. I think it led to kind of the expulsion of some U.S. officials. But, you know, make no mistake. You know, we have, you know, the notion that, you know, we don't spy on some of our friends is something that I think is, you know, makes everyone feel better. But do we have interests or do we have friends or do we just have interests? And a perfect example is kind of, you know, one of our best, quote, friends in the entire planet as a nation is the country of Israel.

Israel spies on us, you know, maniacally. Yeah. And they've gotten caught, but they do so. And we know they do. And, you know, it's still a great ally. But, you know, espionage is what? It's the first, that's the oldest profession? Prostitution.

Right. Espionize is the second oldest profession. a profession. So it's no accident that sometimes, you know, friends get caught kind of doing things maybe that make people feel uncomfortable. David, thank you. Michael, please ask Mark to elaborate as far as Russian not cooperating with us when they asked for our help with counterterrorism, which is, I mean, after 9-11, there was a real concerted effort, a genuine effort, right, to work with the Russians. Sort of. There was an agreement that their Russians allowed us to operate bases in their former Soviet republics, whether, you know, we're talking about, you know, the stands.

But in actual counterterrorism cooperation, it's always been a one-way street. You know, so, you know, we've given the Russians stuff and they've given us, you know, very little in return, because ultimately they don't have an interest in doing so. And so I think, you know, I think that, you know, the heyday of the cooperative effort was that we had, you know, bases in, you know, the famous bases in Uzbekistan and others, and other locations. But that was just Russia agreeing to allow us to do that in their kind of sphere of influence. The idea that they have given us information that thwarted terrorist attacks, certainly not anything I ever saw.

KT. Ant wants to hear from you. What do you think is the best book on CIA history that people should read? Oh, wow. I have to get back to you on that. there's been a couple kind of grand, you know, treatises that have been written. Often they're very negative on certain areas, so I'm loathe to kind of recommend, but they're interesting. I'll get back to that. I mean, I know I think that one of the really interesting things is that there's not a ton.

And I wish there was more kind of university, you know, classes or seminars on intelligence, where it would be a semester long. And some schools certainly have that. I took one at Columbia, of all places. I think it was intelligence studies or something like that. And that's really good. And that's where you kind of get. So it's not going to be a foreign policy class with a lecture or two on intelligence.

But yeah, I'll often think if there's a single book that kind of encapsulates everything. Because a lot of them are very negative. And look, there's controversial things the agency has done in the past. I mean, you know, one of the, my, I'm Greek. I was born in Greece. my dad's Greek and my dad hated the CIA because he remembered, yeah, the, the CIA support for the, for the, for the, for the, for the junta in the 1970s. You know, now it's 2002 right now and my dad's 83 years old.

We're still having this argument about what happened, you know, a hell of a long time ago. Greek's going to make a comeback from Cyprus. Don't worry. Don't worry. You know, there's a funny story I always tell on that. And again, because people really have long memories. This happened in the 1970s. But when I came back from Iraq, I was very fortunate to receive the distinguished intelligence.

It's called the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, which is the agency's second highest award for some of the stuff I did in Iraq. And George Tenet was the CIA director at the time. And my dad was invited to the bubble at CIA headquarters for the ceremony. And I knew Tenet because, again, because the Greek mafia really runs the CIA. That's something your listeners didn't know, but now they kind of get a hint at it. But beforehand, my dad agreed to come, even though. though he always grumbled about kind of my career choice, and I went to Tenet beforehand, and I said, would you mind just talking to my dad because he hates this place, and he hates

what I do, and he's laughing because he knows. And so my dad comes to a ceremony, and Tenet takes him aside, and they speak Greek together, in Greek for 15 minutes, and my dad comes back. It's a really neat story, my dad comes back, his tears in his eyes, and I said, you know, what did the director say, and he said, nothing, but he wouldn't talk. And so I saw the, I saw the tenant later on, and I said, would you tell my dad? And this is out of the, you know, he's trying to, you know, he's trying to do the right thing. He said, I told your dad you were a hero. And it was, you know, because I wanted, you know, he goes, I know that you have this kind of, you know, dispute with him about the agency. And I thank Tenet, you know, tremendously for that. It was really a nice,

you know, a nice thing he did for me and my family. And of course, later on when I, when I was talking to my dad, and I finally, I said, I talked to George. And he told me what he said. And my father said, he goes, I, this is a long time ago when Tenet was director. He says, he said, you know, I'm fine with you being in the CIA as long as George Tenet's the director, because it's a Greek. So then Tenet left and now my dad's back to questioning my career choice. But it would really neat move by Tenet to do that for me. That was a really personal thing.

I mean, that's a leadership thing too. It's like took him 15 minutes out of his day. Talk to a family member. And, you know, I certainly don't think the agency is like above critique by any means. And, you know, I know there's folks out there that have mixed opinions about some of the stuff that I've written about the agency. But at the same time, a lot of the criticisms you often hear over and over again, people are like reaching back. to like pre-church committee, MK Ultra. Like the CIA is not the same that it was in 1958.

You know, a lot of time has passed. You know, Jack, you're totally right. And the critical thing that I've said all along in my career when I talk about the agency is that we actually, and this, I was an operations officer, and we actually believe strongly in congressional oversight. And for a long time, the CIA hated congressional oversight. But the public still thinks you guys are like smoking people without any. But here's what happened.

Here's why congressional oversight is good is number one to keep. keep us honest. Because, you know, the CIA does not belong to the CIA. You know, CIA is an executive branch tool where, you know, it's, you know, so, you know, CIA doesn't do stuff. It's the United States does through, you know, obviously through the executive branch. It's U.S. government actions, not just the agency. But number two, when we're asked to do unusual things, it's all legal. It's all legal. The Department of Justice involved, and it's a brief to the congressional committees. And one of the things that that you see time and again when some kind of scandal, you know, kind of comes forward, or there's something controversial.

Perfect example is the, you know, the EIT is the enhanced interrogation techniques. This was briefed to everybody multiple times. Now, maybe it was the wrong thing to do. Maybe history is not going to judge us fairly or judge that, you know, it was wrong. But it was not the CIA going off rogue on its own. Right, right. You know, members of the House and Senate leadership knew exactly what we were doing. And then after it comes out, we never heard of this.

That's just, that's bullshit. That's not to say it was right, but, but, you know, but ultimately it's kind of, because, because we, you know, you're smart when you're asked to do some unusual things, I was involved, I think, in every covert action program in the Middle East for two decades. And, you know, and these are, this is covert action, these are findings, some of these are lethal findings, but ultimately, we have spent so much time with Congress that you know that, and sometimes things go, go wrong, you know, on, on these programs, but at least there has been oversight, you had permission, there's no kind of rogue operations. And so, you know, when people talk about the CIA going rogue, because insiders, like, you know, people, you know, you kind of laugh. Like, you can't go to the bathroom without telling Congress. And that's good. You want that. But very rarely do we ever kind of do stuff that, that, you know, is a surprise to anybody on the hill.

So, like, in the lead up to the Iraq war, when the intelligence to most CIA folks was, you know, not coming out exactly. It wasn't what we were being fed. And I'm sure the CIA knew that more than anybody. when there was a concerted effort to like cherry pick intel, like what were you guys feeling in the CIA at the time? Oh, no, I see what you're saying. So, so let me just, I'll give you just a vignette. So we're up in northern Iraq.

You know, I know you've had some, you know, Sam and others here, you know, who led those teams. And I was on kind of a kind of, and I was with, actually with Mick, Moldroy, my old friend, on kind of a different team up in northern Iraq. I'll never forget watching Colin Powell's speech when he's kind of laying the case for the war and talking about Iraq, WMD.

And we're all looking and saying, What? Great was a different stream that we haven't seen, but good. Good on us that we have that. And so, you know, there's always kind of skepticism, but ultimately that was a tremendous failure of the agency, more so on analysis rather than collection. But ultimately, you know, I think, you know, as you kind of reflect on that, that was just a tremendous analytic failure.

And things are now put in place. But it's not like we knew that we were misperienced. leading. There was a lot of like malfeasance from the White House side too. I mean, weren't they coming down. That's the second point. They were coming down and cherry picking what they wanted by going around the analysts. So there was a absolute concerted effort by both, by frankly, by the White House and DOD, some officials in DOD to cherry pick Intel. So you know, there's their kind of famous incidents of, you know, was there cooperation between al-Qaeda and the Iraqis?

And so, you know, that was always kind of out there. And there's all sorts of allegations on this. Well, what does that really mean? And I can't go into details of it. But if there was, let's say there was a meeting once, that can be conflated into something that it's not. Right. And so I think that, you know, that ultimately, that, you know, there's been so many kind of safeguards put in place with ombudsman at the CIA and other things where we're not going to hopefully have that, you know, happen again. But there was never, there was never, you know, a moment where we, we thought that, you know, wow, you know, the CIA and, you know, we're kind of, we're misleading the American people and the, and the office of the presidents.

What did you think about this stuff that has hit the news in the last week about Durham's report that the CIA was like unilaterally spying on Trump? So, so, you know, it, look, I find it, you know, this has caused this kind of, kind of, you know, hysteria in right-wing media. I've read a little bit about this, and, you know, what I, what I seem to have gleaned is that there was an attempt made to ensure that, you know, that the White House was not being hacked during the Obama administration. And they have conflated that into somehow that, you know, the Hillary campaign was spying on Trump. I mean, I think it's, you know, I think that if you, even if you, you know, as you, as you kind of read exactly what Durham is saying, it is far less sensational. And so, you know, I mean, I don't know. This goes down kind of the political rabbit hole. I mean, but the idea that, you know, that there was some people spying on the, you know, the Trump, the Trump White House.

People are reading something into it that's not there. And that, again, I'm not an expert on this, but, you know, there are legitimate entities that look at certain, you know, agencies to make sure they're not being hacked. And I think that's what was being done. And that doesn't mean that you can actually even see content. of this. And again, my understanding this was done, you know, it was done during the Obama administration. So, you know, it's going to be, you know, it's people are going to run with this and, and, and I just, it's exhausting to me. It is, it actually, if you, if you read the, you know, what Durham put out, it is, it is, it is wildly confusing. It is not what the headlines are saying.

It's not, but it's also, it's massively confusing. No one understands it. And then, and then the narrative is that the Hillary campaign spied on Trump. And then you have, and frankly, I told you I wasn't going to get into politics, but then you have, you know, former President Trump calling for the execution of some of these officials. I mean, this is getting totally crazy. Go back to an easier topic like Iraq in 2003. Like when the Valerie Plain stuff was going down, what was morale like in the CIA?

So that's interesting because that was when, you know, Valerie Plain was kind of outed as a CIA officer. What I kind of respond to on stuff like this is, you know, people at the agency, actually, when they're actually, unlike me who's retired in talking about this stuff, people just have a lot of kind of shit to do during the day. And so, you know, they just do their jobs.

And so, so, you know, ultimately, I don't think it has a particularly, you know, bad effect on morale. I mean, you know, sometimes we get caught up in politics. But the bottom line is that even, you know, even, you know, during the Trump administration, where former President Trump was attacking the agency regularly, attacking the intelligence community, people there just did their jobs. You know, the great part about being at CIA headquarters is you don't have access to Twitter. I mean, obviously, our operations center is probably monitoring something in Twitter. But no, you know, so meanwhile, you know, you and I are sitting around and the three of us are like, oh, my God. You're not getting news alerts on your phone. Yeah, right. And so, you know, and so ultimately we just do our job and kind of, you know, I think it's not helpful if, you know, if there's kind of political controversy.

But ultimately, I mean, you're busy as hell every day. And so, you know, whether you're an operations officer or an analyst, it doesn't have all that much of effect, which is, I think, a really good thing. And I always kind of joked with people. Like I had no idea the political affiliation of anybody I worked with. I will tell you that to a person, all we want from a president and Congress is to just say yes on operations, you know, just to give us permission and do stuff we want to do. But, you know, I served under four presidents and they were all different and there was always controversy. And, you know, clearly, you know, under the Trump administration, it was, you know, there was so much churn and all the attacks in the intelligence community. But then you got to remember during the Obama administration, the NSC had 400 people in it.

So to get things done, the kind of approval process was really onerous. And so I always talked about we're cranky under any president, any administration. It's kind of universal. And I'm sure the same thing is happening now. I wanted to make sure that we talk about this project that you're working on with William. Ah, yes. That it's very clever and an intelligent way to kind of reach out to people as far as, like, like fighting PTSD and especially suicide among service members.

So this has become really a great passion of mine. It's a company called Soundoff, and I'm on the board, and I'm just, to say, totally unpaid, which is the right thing. But Soundoff was created by a fellow by the name of William Negley, who was a former CIA officer, and his brother-in-law was someone by the name of Bill Mulder, who was a Steel Team 6 operator, who, you know, 100 plus days after separating from the Navy after retirement,

after retiring killed himself. And Sound Off is a company, but in essence, it is an app that you put on your cell phone where it allows for anonymous mental health services. So you are connected to a, you know, someone, a clinician or, you know, something we can call a battle buddy, but someone who's going to provide anonymous health care. And why is that anonymous mental health care? Why is that important? Because of the stigma that exists.

And Jack, you know this. you know, amongst, whether it's the special operations community, regular military, or the intelligence community, you know, there is a stigma on mental health. People are scared of kind of losing their deployment status. And in particular, you know, traumatic brain injury, which is now endemic after kind of two decades of war, is a really serious issue, which, of course, leads to, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder and others. Other things.

So ultimately, it's something that, you know, we found that there was a niche. had to be filled where there are a lot of, you know, you know, providers who are willing to provide, you know, or willing to give mental health care to veterans or to military service members, the intelligence community, but this is something that's anonymous and that's really important. Yeah, it's very, it's very clever because so many guys are afraid of losing their security clearance, like that guy, Michael Frody that I recently wrote about, who was in a secret DOD unit took his own life. He was definitely one of those people who was afraid that he was going to lose the job that he fought so hard for.

And people say that. And so when, you know, and it's interesting. So, you know, Williams' brother-in-law, Bill Mulder, so he was, again, he was from CL Team 6, but he actually did a rotation in the intelligence community, and he actually worked for me years, you know, years prior. And the story is so incredibly tragic. And, you know, you talk to Sidney, his widow, you know, here's someone who is on the tip of the spear, but really, you know, struggled tremendously with serious issues

after two decades of war, and openly stated to Sydney, you know, before he took his life, that he could not get help that he needed because he was worried of losing his, you know, his deployment status, his clearance, you know, his ability to kind of stay with his brothers in the fight because there's a stigma because, you know, PTSD and really, and TBI is this, you know, it's a silent injury. And it's devastating, but it's not a gunshot. It's not something you can, you know, show visibly to your comrades. And so the idea is to have a mechanism on your phone to allow for anonymous health care, which I think fills a tremendous niche.

And what we're trying to do is going to promote this throughout the special operations community, certainly through all the various foundations for retired veterans. I mean, the statistics are awful. I think it's 17 veterans a day commit suicide. I mean, that's a number that is, that blows your mind. That's a terrible thing. I worked on a story about the Delta operator, Billy Levine, who, you know, shot and killed his best friend, Mark Leshachar. And then, you know, Levine unfortunately turned up dead in a training site on Fort Bragg.

He made comments to Mark's sister, not outright saying he needed help but couldn't get it, but kind of beating around the bush and saying, you know, the people. who really need help in the unit aren't getting it because, you know, that he felt like they weren't taken care of or that there was a stigma behind it. And I've just encountered this so many times in stories I've worked on that I think this fills a real need for people. And how many guys who have wound up dead one way or the other that this could have helped? One of the things that I found incredible when I went to Walter Reed, again, to their, to the TBI Center is that, you know, so you go there for it.

So the TBI program there, and it's really designed for the military. There are some agency folks, as I alluded to, who have gone. But you go there every morning you walk in there. And frankly, I didn't think I had an issue with self-harm. But every morning you walk in there, and the first thing they ask is, did you feel that you were going to hurt yourself last night? And I would always say consistently no. But at the end of the program, they bring in family members, and they brought my wife in.

And I was stunned by what she had to say, because they asked her, And you're there in front of your, and sometimes your kids are there too. And they said, did you ever worry about Mark taking his own life? And she said, yes, all the time. Wow. And I was like, what? And so, and we had obviously, you know, you're sitting there talking to, you know, you know, psychologists on this, but, but there were so many signs or things that I did that

really scared my wife. Now, I'm still convinced I was not, you know, going down that path. But you didn't, you also, you didn't know she was living with that either. And so, so you're right, there's two things. One is she was worried about me. So maybe I should kind of reassess. But number two, right. She was living with that every day.

really scared for me. And so, you know, just to have that ability to, you know, to talk to folks. And the amazing thing about some of these veteran suicides, including, including Bill Mulder, he went through the TBI program. He went through NICO. He came out with tools that he needed and still, it didn't work. He didn't stick with stuff, which is what happens, you know, as we were talking earlier today when we're at, you know, grabbing a coffee is, you know, you have to, you have to be dedicated and want to do this. And so just, you know, so, you know, obviously it's a, it's a, it's a company that's providing the service. You know, we do a lot of fundraising.

But it's really awareness. And so it's just, it's making veterans aware of this. You know, if you look up on the internet, sound off. Yeah, we'll throw the links and everything in the description. And there's, you know, there's, you know, Catherine Harrodge of CBS did a great piece a couple months ago where they interviewed William and they interviewed Sydney, you know, Bill's widow. And it's just, it's something I just want to kind of spread the word on.

I feel passionately about it. I think the intel community needs it as well. again, it's the same exact kind of stigma. I remember coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, you go and you kind of have your post-TDI or PCS physical, and you do see a psychiatrist or a psychologist, and how you doing? Great. Any nightmares? No, I'm all good.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing dead bodies at night, and I'm waking up in a cold sweat and all the things that I was really affected when I came back from Iraq. Because, you know, that's what we do. We lie. So that's what I did. I lied to every medical professional on some of these things.

And so, you know, it's just trying to find a way to get people help when they need it. And so people can find this on like whatever the iTunes app or whatever the hell, whatever program, Google Play. There's an app store in terms of the app itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. And it's really easy to sign up. And, you know, as we talked about before, I think it would be kind of a great future program to have, you know, William Neglion to have Sydney. Bill Mulder's Widow on and even, you know, Nick Mulroy is now involved with this, you know, my old colleague.

Yeah, I want to do something on this for sure. It's a, it's just, it's really important. It's just, it's the right thing to do. It's sound dash off.com and it's available on iTunes, Google Store, and Android everywhere you can find it. It's sound dash off.com. And there'll be a link in the description for anyone who's listening or watching later. Here are some spicy questions. Oh boy.

KT. Ask Mark about his opinion about James Jesus Angleton. going back in time. This, I mean, you know, so, so obviously, you know, James Jesus Angleton, the kind of former legendary chief of counterintelligence for the agency. And, you know, someone who is kind of rife with paranoia, you know, probably caused a lot more harm than good. But I think the story of James Jesus Angleton is something that, you know,

we should always caution on is that these are individuals who had gained kind of too much power. Institutional power. Institutional power. And we're in their positions too long. There's a reason why, you know, we are rotated in and out of jobs. And I think that, you know, that's something that the agency has to really take more seriously. CI is that specifically a field where, like, if you spend too long there, the conspiracy stuff in your head starts to mess with you? So, you know, a perfect example, it's a hypothetical example.

So let's say we try to recruit a Russian. And as part of the vetting process, you want to see what kind of information the Russians are, that Russian agent is giving us. and if it's if it's if it's if it's if it's if it's bad okay you know you know probably a provocation if it's good and here's the thinking if it's good well okay he still might be bad because the Russians are feeding us information that's good for now because down the line they're going at some point deceive us and so you know that's the that's the kind of wilderness of merges you know you're going to go crazy over time because you can you can have an agent who is providing rock solid information maybe that agent is even telling us which spies the russians

have recruited in the U.S. government, but no, the paranoid CI person would be like, well, they're going to give up one of their spies because they're going to protect someone who's even more important. You think you're playing chess with the Russians, but at a certain point, you're playing chess against yourself. Yourself. And so, you know, that kind of stuff is maddening. I mean, you know, the way you kind of, you know, you obviously have to always kind of, you know, vet and test your agents. But, yeah, that kind of thinking is unbelievable. And, you know, you see this in your careers amongst folks. And then you're thinking, yeah, you've been in the CIA game a little too long. I mean, the agent is providing good

information. But no, he's still, he or she is still bad because ultimately there's an ulterior motive and that's when you're getting a little nutty. I mean, if you think about that, you know, how do you trust your spouse? How do you trust your kids? I mean, you know, you're going to make yourself crazy over time. Here's another little spicy one. Is there any significance in the fact that Trump's first wife, Ivana, her whole family, was in the Czech KGB? I don't even know if that's true. It's true or not.

I can't fact check that right now. I'll stay away from that one. It's good, though. Because that's another CI. We'd start mind-fucking ourselves on things like this real quick, right? So, you know, what's interesting, though, is that, you know, it's, it's, as we're talking about that question of kind of recruiting a diverse workforce. And so, and we're talking about Americans. But what about, and so here's where a CIA really has to kind of, I think, you know, get out of the 18th centuries.

Look, I was born in Greece. My wife was born in Lebanon. Both of us were CIA officers. You know, so immigrants and people with extensive foreign overseas ties and backgrounds, maybe they're, you know, to China or Russia, other places like that. That actually, those are the people we need because they bring cultural understanding, bring linguistic understanding. But on the security side, there's always this kind of crazy suspicion. And again, so that's something I think that, you know, that CIA has grappled with. I don't think we're there yet, but we have to, you know, you got to, you know, maybe you're taking some chances, but you know what?

We need a Chinese American, you know, to be a case officer or a Russian American who speaks the language already, who knows the culture. Do you think those people are, I mean, this is sort of like a racist comment, but it's also something that we kind of have to talk about or at least acknowledge. Is there an increased threat of, let's say, a Chinese American? and being flipped by the Chinese intelligence. I think, I mean, you've got to look to see, you know, they have family back in China, but I would actually, but every situation is unique, but I'll tell you for my, my situation and for, you know, some of the other folks,

I know, we have a whole bunch of Arab American officers. You know, as an, the immigrant experience is really interesting, but oftentimes I would find immigrants more patriotic, more loyal to this country because they came here for a reason. Right. You know, I joke around my wife, all the time, time, like my wife's family is like to the right of Attila the Hunt. You know, and they are, you know, America can do no wrong because they fled Lebanon and came here and they have been

so successful here. So I think, you know, everything's different. Look, if you have, you know, if there's family members, you know, who remain in, you know, Russia or China, that's, that's an issue because they could be subject to pressure. But, you know, every case is different. But, you know, these are the people that we really want. I mean, again, it's that kind of diverse workforce. And for a long time the kind of security folks would, you know, would give these folks a hard time. Oh my gosh, more questions. Okay, I'll try to, I'll try to start wrapping it up here. Mark, thank you for the CIA golf balls here. The electric's item. This come out of the gift shop? Well, I have access to, as a retiree, I have access to the gift shop. So yes, I buy some golf balls to give to my friends.

Yeah, thank you. You can sell it on eBay. When I get really pissed at the agency, I'll take it out, I'll take it out and I'll hit that ball hard so it gets my aggression out. Mark, one more question. So the UBL raid, there was a walk-in. No, stop it. No, see, the good thing about doing this starting at 12 is that there's no drinking involved is I don't have to wake up tomorrow and say what the hell did I say and go into a panic. What did I tell Jack and Dee?

Oh, my God. It's always fun to see you guys. Yeah, man. And that show we did a couple episodes back with Andrew, like the last hour. I don't really, like my recollection is very fuzzy of what actually happened. I just saw you tweet something out. This went off the rails. It generated totally.

Very much did go off the rails. We had Andy take a shirt off. Thank God we've been trying for years. Male nudity on the show. Okay. What is Mark's opinion about Michael Flynn? Oh, okay. Well, I'm happy to share that.

I think Michael Flynn is an absolute, so this is, you know, maybe the, you know, some of your listeners will be upset by this or not, but I think he's an absolute traitor to the United States. Here is someone who occupied one of the highest intelligence positions in the U.S. government is director of DIA. He's completely gone off the rails, started early, not started early, it started early after his retirement when he shows up at a luncheon or dinner with Vladimir Putin.

It was involved in some crazy scheme with the government of Turkey being paid by them. but someone who is, you know, who is... Fired from the National Security Council after like two days. But it was so off the rails now in his kind of conspiracy theory and mindset. I mean, this is not someone who's a supporter of a political party or position. This is someone who is kind of degenerated and is just, you know, some madness. Absolute madness. And it's a really sad story.

And so I think that when you look at, you know, Michael Flynn and, you know, you look back to the time when he was, you know, in the war zones. And on the analytic side, you know, really, they were pioneering some of the kind of fine fix and finish and using SIGANs. And a lot of things we do really well, kind of in manhunting. But what he's degenerated into now into this, you know, Q&N conspiracy guy. I mean, it's, it's incredible. I can't, look, I have friends across the political aisle. We were joking about before that, you know, I'll talk, I'll go on CNN or Fox or MSNBC anywhere. And so, you know, I made my, my cut some of my political views known sometimes, but I'm uncomfortable in being kind of labeled to the right or to the left.

You know, Flynn is off the wall crazy, and I don't understand even some of my Republican friends who defend him in any way. I mean, this is absolute lunacy now. This is not saying you're a supporter of... Right. It's not about conservative politics at all. No, not at all. It's just that shit crazy.

And I'd love to go back to a time when people actually fought over issues. You know, just, you know, so, so, you know, what is the role of government now? You know, so obviously, you know, the Democratic Party is moving. to the left a bit and they're pushing big government programs, Republicans are resisting. That's great. Let's have that debate all day. But the Michael Flynn's of the world, I can't imagine anyone, any Republican kind of embracing him. That just makes no sense. That we have these colonels and generals coming out of the military and a few characters

from the CIA who were like stop the steel, the Dominion voting machines were hacked by Venezuela. I mean, do you think that's something of an indictment on these organizations that these people are kind of promoted to the highest ranks. So, you know, it's, it just triggered something. I'll tell you in a second. So the answer is, is, you know, is this someone who has always had these kind of beliefs? Or did it happen after. Or did it happen over time?

And again, and let's go back to 20 years of war. Like, what is this done to all of us? But yeah, it's a little nutty. I mean, you know, I remember you writing on this and tweeting about it, but certainly writing on it and talking about it, you know, how extensive in the whole stop the steel movement. or in the, on January 6th. In Q and I, you know, how many veterans were involved in this. Yeah.

Yeah, that's, to me, it's worrisome. I remember just, you know, fearful after January 6th that we would find out, that I'd find out that some of my friends, you know, were involved in the assault on the capital. Some of my friends were. Right. And that, that to me is deeply disturbing, you know, and so, so, you know, the reason why I laughed is, is one of the things, let's go back to the Havana syndrome piece. And so at some point, you know, when, when we kind of.

dismiss a lot of the claims by CIA officers that they were hit by Havana syndrome, and some of the allegations were, okay, this is mass hysteria. And so some of my friends made a quip is like, well, like, what the hell happened to our selection process? So basically you're saying that, you know, a thousand people are crazy. Or a thousand people are suffering from some kind of illness. Well, like, how'd that happen? And so, you know, I don't know.

You know, national security, you know, established them is made up of human beings. And so, you know, we all have, you know, we all have things that we deal with. If you bring it with you, you know, from the beginning or it happens over time. But, boy, I see someone like Flynn, and this is someone who's just kind of just degenerated in a spectacular fashion. I don't think he was always like this, but he is just so off the wall now. I have a hard time having a rational conversation with some of my Republican friends who actually think he's still kind of legitimate figure. Do you think some of these, like, folks who go down like the Q&on rabbit hole, Do you think it represents a national security threat at a certain point? Absolutely.

Oh, I do. And, you know, I actually, I do think that, you know, kind of from that we have a serious domestic terrorist threat now. I mean, January 6th for me was a horrific day. I watched that. I was in total horror. I have friends who are on the hill, you know, Congressman Abigail Spanberger. She's a former CIA officer. She's a rock star. You know, you know, a moderate Democrat from kind of rural Virginia. You know, she was texting me, you know, from the floor of the house. They thought they were going to die that day. She was a, she was an absolute, you know, she was a hero that day as well because having, you know, she was a case officer. So she was going around telling everyone take their pins off, the little pins, you know, congressional, the pins that Congressmen, the congressman, congresswoman wear that signifies, you know, who they are because they were worried that if people, you know, if the capital, if the floor was breached, that they would be kind of picked off one by one. That was a terrifying day.

I mean, I watched that. And again, I'd served 26 years. I, you know, I spent a lot of time in third world countries where this. stuff does happen, you know, watching that was truly awful. And so, you know, I was definitely in the back of my mind and you were writing, you were writing and talking about it. I was like, I hope I don't know some folks. And I, the same thing, I know some people who are down there too. And I've had to kind of reassess my relationships, literally my personal relationship with some of them. It's really sad. It's heartbreaking for me, especially seeing not just QAnon, but how many

people I knew retired senior leaders and special operations community going down that road of the sort of conspiracy stuff. It's heartbreaking actually. And it makes me, yeah, you have to reassess some of your relationships. And honestly, it also makes me reassess something about myself as well, because like I came out of this same world. I was a true believer. Like, what does it say about me that I admired these people so much? And I still, to this day, don't really know what to do with all that. You know, my team sergeant when I was in special forces, he's in federal prison right now. Right.

And I don't know what's going to happen to him. Right. You know, I had to cut him off like me, like over a year prior because of some of the nutty stuff he was doing. And, but this was somebody like, I was friends with him. Yeah. I went down and I visited him at his home. I met all his kids.

Right. I mean, like, it's not as clean cut is like fighting terrorism in the Middle East where you're like, you know, this is. like our friends, our family. These are like people we loved. What do you do with that? And, you know, you risk your life overseas with them. Yeah. They might have, you know, done some, you know, heroic things to save you, in fact. But no, I mean, January 6th was an awful day. You know, but I, but I think it's just in our kind of, in our world, yeah, you kind of wonder, like, how did people kind of go down that path? Because again, it's not, like the folks I know who,

you know, believed that. that somehow that was their patriotic duty to be down there and to storm the Capitol. I didn't see this in them previously. I really didn't. And some of these people I knew quite well. And so it does make a... Do you think that's something that happened to them in retirement,

that they weren't really able to transition back into the civilian life? Perhaps. You know, one of the worst things that you do in retirement is you sit around and watch too much damn cable television. Yeah, yeah. And you kind of get sucked into that world. And so, you know, so maybe, you know, the other thing, too, that in our world of intelligence and special operations, it's a community,

you have that sense of kind of brotherhood and sisterhood. You know, that, so you can see how people miss that, and then then gravitate towards Q&ons or these guys. To have a sense of community. Facebook community, you know, to have that sense. Look, it's the same grievance that maybe drove us after 9-11. Like, why did we do all those things for so many years and, you know, risk our lives and spend so much time away from home?

Well, now they have another kind of piece of rage, which is that the election was stolen or some kind of nonsense like that. Something to fight against. Something to fight against. So they miss the fight, so they're back in it in some way. But, you know, the scary thing is the anger and the passion. I mean, this is not me having a debate about, you know, what, food stamps. I'm serious, you know, like a normal policy debate.

Right, right. With someone who maybe I don't agree with ideologically, this is like off-the-wall shit. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, it's irrational. It's irrational. scary um have this is kind of an interesting one we covered we touched it a little bit have you done any more research on the russian interference in 2016 the best metaphor i have is trying to find a smoking gun like you smell smoke but can't find the gun um i don't know what are your thoughts

about that so boy what i what you know this you could have an whole episode on kind of the report and how that was not, I think, handled correctly. Come back tomorrow. I've got to get back to Virginia. No, so here's, you know, the bottom line for me, and I'll give you just my personal experiences on this, and that's all I can do. You know, as I took, you know, my position

as Deputy Ops chief in the Europe URAGE mission center, you know, there was lots of swirl about this, but ultimately what concerned me and many other people is that there were a ton of contacts between Russian figures, Russian nationals, and members in round Trump's orbit. You know, I'm not an analyst. I didn't put together kind of the, you know, a PowerPoint or any kind of, you know, fancy, you know,

algorithm on where everything fits. But there was so much there. I'll never forget, and, you know, I'll never forget watching TV and seeing, you know, kind of a what's it called, a Chiron come across the bottom. Is that right word, Chiron? Yes, D is nodding. And it was talking about, you know, a famous meeting where Jared Kushner, you know, went to, and I believe it was with, it was Kushner and Flynn, and they went to meet the Russian ambassador at the Russian embassy in D.C. And they asked to set up a separate communications channel, you know, which is the Russian government.

So that, you know, that's splashed. And so I can talk about that because it was on the, you know, it was on the news. crazy stuff. So there's, there's, you know, there's so much there. So, you know, in, in terms of smoking gun or not, there was just, there's just a hell of a lot out there. I, you know, and I, and I think that there was certainly enough to give people kind of a lot of suspicion on, on what the hell was going on. Again, you know, Michael Flynn and his contact, you know, with the Russians. I mean, and half these guys are now on, you know, commentators for RTA, OAN. Or OAN. And so, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think I hope that America kind of can move to a point where, you know,

we can say, as we should say, which the law does say, that it is not okay for foreign governments to have any kind of, you know, part of our electoral process. I mean, I think that's something that's really important. And then, you know, ultimately there's no doubt after the, you know, there was not only the intelligence community assessment on 2016, but also a Senate report, you know, led by at that time a Republican majority in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which kind of detailed the kind of the incredible Russian interference in our electoral process. And so, you know, it's pretty pretty grim time. Probably the greatest covert operation in the history of espionage.

Influence operation. The greatest ever. Yeah. Caused a staggering amount of disarray in the American county body politic. I guess history will be the judge, but I have to think that the Russians were probably pretty shocked by how effective. Yeah, it was amazing. They probably did not expect all of this attention on them. Right.

And so, you're 100% right. There's probably, you know, champagne, you know, bottles popped and metals given out, and, you know, at SVR and FSB headquarters. You know, and from everything I've read in the Mueller report and others, this was done on the cheap. Yeah. You know, nothing, you know, we talk about our old covert action programs, you know, in the billions. This was, this was probably, you know, far less.

Folks, please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. the bell icon so you get notified when we go live. We will be back on Friday with a veteran of the Chilean special operations community. So a dude from Chile, I'm going to hear some stuff that doesn't necessarily get talked about very often. So we're excited to have him on Friday coming in. Check out our Patreon down in the description if you want to get access to bonus segments and bonus episodes like this. This one we made public, but normally they're behind a paywall. So thank you everyone who joined us And thank you Mark for coming in

Do you have any final thoughts? Anything else that you think is really important to bring up Before we wrap up today? No, it's great seeing you all again. Doing it in studio is far more fun. I'll come back and we'll do an evening episode. Yeah, yeah. It can get derailed on the third hour.

I would love to do that, Mark's book is Clarity and Crisis, a book about leadership with vignettes from your career. Where can people find you if they want to? Sure. So I've a website, which, of course, is a link to the book, but also talks about all my kind of, you know, leadership talks and seminars that I give. It's mark polymropolis.com. Pretty easy. I'm on Twitter at at M. Polymer, which you'll find all sorts of crazy stuff, everything from dive bars to my view on politics. Your baseball stuff? Baseball stuff. It's all over the place. It's certainly, you know, Harper Collins and others were like kind of begging me to stop tweeting stuff all the time, but I never listened. But it's just, it's authentic. You know, it's who I am. Off the cuff. Off the cuff. But, so it's usually Twitter. And then just anyone who wants to write me an email, it's mark. Polymeropolis at gmail.com. If you can, D, you can throw it up there. I get tons of kind of crazy people writing in, but also, you know, especially folks who want to, are interested in the intelligence community. I love kind of mentoring, especially, you know, folks coming out of the military or in college who are interested in career and public service. I think it's still a noble calling. And so hit me up and I'll help you through the process. That's awesome. And of course, sound dash off.com. It's available on all the Apple store and Google Play and all there. Check it out.

Yeah, so guys, we'll see you on Friday at our usual time, 8 p.m. in a couple days. Thanks for tuning in. And Mark, we'll...