The Team House - Marc Polymeropoulos served nearly 3 decades in the CIA: Ep. 67

Episode Date: November 7, 2020

Marc Polymeropoulos served in the CIA for nearly three decades prosecuting the war on terror across the middle east until his career was cut short by a mysterious attack in Moscow.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. We're live. I apologize for the delay there with some few technical issues. As we frequently do on this show, this is what happens when two Rangers are hosting and producing and directing. and every other frequent thing. But we're so happy to have with us today. I'm going to see, on the first try, Mark.

Mark, Paul Barapolis. There you go. All right, awesome. Mark is a former CIA case officer or operations officer. He spent nearly three decades with the Central Intelligence Agency. He served all over the Middle East, and he also spent some time in Russia, which will get in probably towards the last time.

side of this show. We're very excited to have Mark with us today. I'm Jack Murphy, by the way. This is co-host Dave Park. Thank you for joining us live tonight. And I think we'll jump right into it. I mean, Mark, usually, Dave, you go ahead and ask it. This is your time here. So, Mark, Jack and I both big comic book geeks. And so we always like to ask our heroes, what's your origin story? Like, where do you come from? What was your childhood like? What drove your, how did you wind up in the CIA?

So that's a great question because, you know, everyone's got, you know, everyone has to have some kind of journey to this kind of weird life that we all led. So, looks like, you know, I was born in Greece. My dad was Greek. My mom was, you know, lived in Long Island. They met in college. And then my father had to go back and do his Greek military service in his mid-30s. Imagine that and enlisted Greek army.

in 19 you know in the late 60s i don't know he said uh he said uh he said his boots smelled a lot but uh no so i was i was born in greece immediately i came to the united states after that and just because of kind of the interesting upbringing um you know we ended up going back to greece each summer my dad traveled all over the world and then you know when i was when i was 10 years old my dad had a one year sabbatical teaching in algeria of all places this is before the insurgency and i know you all are you know certainly follow kind of ct you know issues in in North Africa and elsewhere. And so, my father and I, when I was 10,

we drove 2,000 miles in a Volkswagen minibus through the Sahara Desert for a month. And I fell in love with the region. I mean, I thought I was Lawrence of Arabia. And so I kind of had an idea, I wanted to come back and do something with the Middle East. And after kind of going to college and then I applied to the agency,

and it's scarily enough, it's the only job I've ever had. But I just fell in love with the region, wanted to go into kind of the, you know, the espionion, business probably read too many Tom Clancy books and then I've been off I went to kind of a crazy career and how did you get into like did you approach a recruiter yeah no so you know so I went to Cornell University they had you know it's a you know

it's a place where there's you know there was a history of you know folks going off to the agency it was also a time though and you know this is 1991-92 so you know there was no the CIA is not the most popular place on a an Ivy League campus or, you know, necessarily. So I remember when I had my interview, there was an office security guy outside with an earpiece, probably armed because there was protesters on campus. But it's just what I wanted to do. It's amazing I got in because, you know, all my friends were not taking, like, all the background stuff seriously.

So I think when, you know, when the security investigators came to interview them all, you know, I think they walked into a room. There was probably, you know, crushed beer cans and a giant bong. And they said, you know, I've ever seen Mark do any of this stuff? And they said, no, definitely not. And the whole thing just kind of deteriorated from there. But, you know, so it was just coming right out of college and then off I went. I actually had to wait a long time for my security clearance because of, you know, being half Greek and all the overseas travel I did.

And all the kind of the kind of crazy things. And I did have to sign some kind of a special dispensation for not misbehaving because of all the stuff they saw that my friends were doing. And so when you got hired, it took a while when you got hired, what happened next? Sure. So interestingly enough, so I had, so, you know, I served for 26 years and CIA. I got hired. I did my undergrad. I got a master's degree as well in kind of, you know, in public policy, but really a focus on Algeria of all places since that, you know,

I fell in love with it years earlier, and I wrote my, you know, my master's thesis on Islamic fundamentalism and the rise of the Islamic Salvation Front there. was hired in for the first two years into the director of intelligence. So I was actually an analyst for the first two years, amazingly enough. And they put me just like everything else in the CIA in government, you know, so I was an expert in Algeria, so I became an Afghan analyst. Right. So, you know, that makes sense, of course, exactly. And then, and then I switched over to do Palestinian affairs, and then I took a trip to the Palestinian Authority areas and traveled all throughout the West Bank in Gaza. And I came back, and my boss at the time was a, My group chief was a guy with the name of John Brennan, of all people, you know, clearly of, of, you know, fame, becoming the director years later.

But I went to him and I said, look, I want to become a case officer and I'd love to, I want to be overseas. I want to run operations. And he said, you know, without hesitation, yes, sure, no problem. And I look back and then, I must have been the shittiest analysts of all time. I mean, they didn't even try to keep me. So it was, you know, and years later, as when Mr. Brennan was the director and I, you know, would see him in brief and we laughed about this story. was clearly I wasn't I wasn't set for that for the analytic tracks so then I went off you know went through our you know our requisite training which everyone knows about you know

down the farm which you're not supposed to say the farm but everybody does and then uh and then off to doing you know for most of my 24 to 26 years doing middle eastern issues uh mark you had a really interesting story you had told me actually about 9-11 or the aftermath of 9-11 as well I wonder if you could tell us about, you know, being ground, being down there at Ground Zero with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City. Right.

So, so, you know, the, and I think a lot of your listeners and, you know, the Joint Terrorism Task Force was kind of, you know, really interesting phenomena that was born in which they, there was a kind of a multidisciplinary, lots of different agencies, you know, work together in the United States, you know, originally on counterterrorism issues, and it's evolved. But so I was, you know, I was in New York and we were there, you know, I was living there, My family and I, you know, we lived on the Upper East side.

We actually were not at work that day. But I'll tell you, my daughter's daycare center was at World Trade Center 5. And so, you know, it's pretty emotional. You know, what happened several days later, we're actually out of the city. So when I finally came back, I remember kind of going through the rubble. And just, you know, with the FBI. And, you know, we're trying to recover. You know, there was obviously the World Trade Center come down,

but there were some federal buildings there. as we were trying to recover some safes and material and that was kind of strewn all over the place. I don't know, maybe you can't say this, Mark, but I remember it was reported on the news at the time that there was an agency building in that area that was destroyed. Yeah, so obviously a reason why I would be in that area.

That's probably what I can say, but I'll never forget five days after and the rubble that's still smoldering and this is a different, And it's a true story that we're walking through and there was a, I don't know if it's a New York City fireman or policemen, but in full kind of regalia with a bagpike. And he was, he's playing walking through the rubble. And I mean, people, you know, you get tears in your eyes thinking about it. And so just an extraordinary moment, you know, I was there.

I stayed in New York for, so again, you know, I thought a lot about having, I would have dropped my daughter off at World Trade Center Five. I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of stories about kids being orphans by individuals, you know, who had the same kind of situations. they had their kids down there than working in the towers. I don't know if that's true, but, you know, certainly motivated me to do counterterrorism work. You know, I don't think there was a day that walked, you know, that I had the rest of my career that I wasn't motivated after what we saw. And, you know, so I stayed on in New York for a bit of time.

I started clamoring to go into Afghanistan with some of the teams, just like a lot of other people. But I'll tell you, it's one funny story. Just that, you know, as there was a lot of investigations that were going on in New York City. I remember my boss of the station chief, she called me in one day and she said, Mark, you know, I was watching ABC News last night and, and I saw someone in an FBI raid jacket, you know, the yellow FBI in the back, you know, and there was a raid in a bodega in Queens and it sure looked like you. And I thought, you know, no way could he have been so stupid to do that, put on an FBI jacket, running around and get caught on television. And so I said, I didn't say anything. I walked out and I gave, you know, the couple of minutes later I brought the jacket back and gave it to her. So that was my, great times, you know, amazing, you know, really, I mean, when you think about everything that happened after 9-11, having been there was just a tremendous motivation and really pushed me to do a lot of CT work over the years after. I think this is an interesting segue, or maybe it may be a teachable moment for John Q. Public, because a lot of people have confusion out there about the CIA's role domestically in the United States and the laws that applied to you guys. and the things you can do working in conjunction with the FBI

and the things that you cannot do. Right. No, it's a, Jack, it's a great question. Look, so there's a couple of things, first of all, you know, we do have a, you know, there's domestic collection that can be done in essence, there's a, you know, there's a very patriotic,

motivated business community that travels to a lot of places around the world that the CIA wants to talk to, and that's what some of the things that you do. Look, in New York, there's, I'll just, to be frank, there's at the United Nations, there's a thousand diplomats. That is a tremendous recruiting ground.

And so there's, you know, there's, so clearly there's some interest in, and us having access to those, to those individuals. And then there's the, then there's kind of the work with our federal law enforcement partners. So the JTTF is a tremendous concept where, look, I was a case officer, I spoke Arabic.

I was able to help with the law enforcement, kind of brothers and sisters. And I'll tell you, and this is, this can be a theme, we get to later everybody early in my career whether it was from the joint special operations community or the FBI i ended up somewhere down the road um being with in some you know some third world country i mean FBI HRT deployed us into Iraq um FBI special agents went on to become legal attaches uh it is a very small community and so those kind of original days in new york

were really important to me uh in kind of making those connections and and really working with some great people that I saw down the line. Mark, we've all seen the movies, so out of curiosity, is there a CIA hit team in every major city, or are they all flown in individually when there's... Unfortunately, despite all of my, all of any, anyone, any CIA officers who, you know, lives and works in the United States, you know, would love to have a badge and a gun, but, you know, we're not allowed to have that. I did manage to get, and tell you, and I think, you know, as New Yorkers, I did manage to get an NYPD parking pass. That is a coveted piece of hardware.

I just slapped it on my dashboard. If I needed a rose beef sandwich to the deli, I'd pull up right there in front of the fire hydrant. That thing was gold. That's nice. I should have kept it. Then after 9-11, what was your first experience, you know, actually deploying to the Middle East?

I mean, how did that all come about? Like, you were there at Ground Zero, and like how did you get into that fight how did that go down right so so you know one of it one of the great things about the agency is that you know first of all small so the case officer cadre and then really director of operations the whole organization is this mothers there are more FBI agents assigned to New York City than there are CIA case officers worldwide so it is a small it's a small group and so you know look a lot of us were really motivated so first

first and for not for lack of good work but I wanted to get it back to the get out to the Middle East. And so, you know, off we went to an assignment in North Africa with the goal of kind of slowly making my way as the teams were, you know, were going in. So, you know, I was not on one of the original teams in Afghanistan. I ended up going to Kondahar in March of 03. So the first teams, I think, went in October of O2. But nonetheless, it was still kind of a really interesting and kind of, you know, wild time. I mean, I remember, you know, going, whether it's the, you know, our newly open station, and I, and I, and I, Afghanistan or I, you know, when I went to Kondahar, it was the old governor's palace, which still there was an SFODA and a couple agency officers.

And, you know, I was still pretty, pretty green, honestly, as an operations officer. And so I have so many great stories of this. But, you know, look, I was not, you know, I was that I told you. I was not, you know, former military. And I remember my first night when I got into Kondahar, they said, you know, you have the, you know, the four hour shift, whatever, 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. So I go up to the roof and this is my governor's palace. You know, occasionally we take some incoming, mostly small arms fire. And we had some Blackwater kind of the folks there to help us with this one guy who's former seal. And he goes, hey, take this.

So what the hell is this? Because it's an AT4. And I'm looking at it. And he's like, hey, you know, just let us know what happens. And he kind of climbs down the ladder. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking of myself, yeah, I'm not sure how to use this thing. And so ultimately, I kind of, you know, I kind of, you know, called down to the boys below. I said, hey, can you guys come back up here?

Like, which way does this thing fire? I mean, so many of my stories are kind of self-deprecating like this because, you know, one of the things I always say is, you know, I volunteered to go everywhere. I was a pretty good officer. But so much of the greatness of the agency is that, you know, you get some really solid training, but you can make a big difference by, you know, by really kind of, you know, raising your hand. But the time, you know, look, I got. the bug with this the time in uh in in kandahar look there's you know when we would go into you know

chasing hvts and into helmon for example this is march of o two the afghans there thought we were were soviets they hadn't seen anybody i mean these are rows of poppy fields um i remember one time and if you don't mind i got lots of stories to tell us though you know keep on keep on having some beverages but we were there was a kind of it was called a high-value target was kind of wasn't wasn't that important but it was someone that we wanted to capture and um you know uh you know uh you know the ODA got a you know got got a I think they got the test force 160 to drop them you know with to airlift their their high luxe vehicles into Helmond with the idea if we catch the hvety you know we'll blow the vehicles and get a ride back out so so I get so you know later I got a

call I got you know I called called back to our our head shed got some money because there was going to be a little financial transaction between us and the tribal elders and you know fly in there we get to the ground you know I talked to the to the captain, he's like, hey, like, here's the deal. Like, you know, we got to catch this guy because if we don't, we got to drive back, the 13-hour overland drive. And I was like, all right, fine. So we sit down with the tribal elders, you know, and this is, I mean, this is, you know,

I look back to my time where I was reading, like, the book by James Mitchner called caravans about the foreign service officer in the 1950s. And then, you know, and I read that when I was a kid. And then years later, I'm sitting here. Same thing, cross-legged with some Afghan tribals. And, you know, I say, look, we have some money for you. We'll build you a well. We need you a hand over this, this guy.

I'm pretty green at this point. I mean, really honestly. And so one of our interpreters, and you all know this, you know, kind of this, you know, we always listen to the ICOM chatter, this is the insurgent communication. So they pick something up and someone, they come and they tell me and the captain say, hey, this whole thing is bullshit. They're going to kill all you. They have no intention of handing this guy back.

So he said, all right, so the captain and I sat in front of the tribal elder and the captain said, what you want to do? And I said, all right, I'll take a crack at this and I looked at the tribal elder. I said, look, there's, and I'm making this up, I said, look, there's, you know, they fear the AC-130, they feared the spectre. They were terrified of the spectre gunships. I said, you know, there's one of those up top. And if anything happens to us, you know, we're going to frankly kill everybody in this village, you know, every man, woman, and child. And, you know, and afterwards, I joked around with the captain. He's like, yeah, that kind of works out. So they, the tribal

udders said, all right, let's have some more tea. They called the whole thing off, but we had to drive back. And again, it's being the green agency guy, and I would never do this in the future. I went to the, you know, so I thought, I'm going to prove myself to these ODA guys. I'll sit in the back of the high lux for 13 hours with the Afghan indage, you know, cuddling together. It's freezing cold. So we did a 13 hour overland drive, and I thought I was going to die. And these dumb, you know, these guys and these grizzled SF guys were in the front laughing their ass off at the stupid case officer. But at the end of the thing, it was really important that I kind I've showed myself. I wasn't better than them. It was, you know, great team building.

I remember thinking on that trip, I'm like freeze to death. So, I got the bug with kind of doing the CT work. It's, you know, it's exciting. It's, there's incredible sense of self-satisfaction. You get to work with tremendous individuals. And like later on in my career, we talked about, so I did regular tours at embassies and then I went off to do kind of the, you know, every once in a while some war zone stuff. But I spent almost three years in kind of the, you know, different, different arenas. because frankly, it's the work I loved. One of the things that I'd really like to get into you with that you said that, you know, you also enjoy talking about is the psychology of recruiting sources, of recruiting assets,

which is, you know, really the bread and butter of what you did throughout your career. So, I mean, I would have loved to hear your take on that. And, you know, how does a case officer do their job? What do you do to get inside a person's mind and get? their trust. No, and this was what I loved about the job the most. So one of the things, and you get better at it. So, you know, I joked about being green.

I was, I was, you know, you know, coming out of training, you know, you are really sharp in terms of your skills. But one of the things that you learn quickly, especially the way CIA works, and, and, you know, perhaps it's, it's a bit different than the military because we're clean, because other intelligence services don't know who we are. Very often we are tasked at a very young age with handling the most sensitive cases. So the penetrations of, you know, hostile intelligence services or hostile military. So when you're young, that's when you get kind of the sexiest stuff because you're shark and nobody knows who you are.

So I'll never forget. And, you know, and this was, you know, early on in my career, I was tasked with handling it. It was a penetration of an Arab government, you know, hostile to the United States. And we had what's called an out-of-country meeting. meeting. And so, you know, I was training him on communication system for kind of denied area operations inside, inside back in his capital. And at one point he stops and he, you know, and, you know, things are going well. And he said, look, I just want to tell you something. He said, you know, every day, you know, I know what your life's going to be like, you know, you have

other things to do, you know, you're going to, you're going to watch, you know, American football on armed forces on AFN like everybody else does. And you're going to have a beer at the, you know, at the embassy, you know, pub. And so you're going to think about me sometimes, but let me tell you something. I'm going to think about you every single day, because if you mess up once, not only am I going to die,

but my whole family is going to die. So I'm going to think about you every single day. And he kind of looked me right in the eye. And I was just, you know, I was struck by this. And that's, you know, at a young age, a CIC case officer has really an astounding responsibility. And because if we, if we screw up, you know, on our tradecraft, on a surveillance detection route,

something with a communications plan. You know, someone can really get hurt. And so, you know, and so I take that and then you have that, that relationship you have with someone is unlike anything else on the planet. You know, so you're sitting across from someone, whether it's, you're doing a brush pass, whether it's a hotel meeting, whether it's a car meeting, that agent, and I remember, CIA officer, we're officers, not agents, that agent, the foreigner we recruited, you know, you develop this, I mean, it's a romance. I mean, it's an incredible relationship with someone that's really hard to understand unless you have someone else's life in your hands. And it sounds dramatic on this, but it's really what I felt. And so just that aspect of even the handling of agents is really extraordinary and really important. Because, again, it's, you know, it's a human business.

And if you screw up, someone's going to get hurt. How did you do that? How do you go into a country and get somebody to, I mean, betray their country. and come come work for Mark. Like, hey, man, come work for me. We'll take care of you. How does that go down? So, you know, it's, I love talking about this because there's, you know,

because things have changed over the years. So, you know, in the past, look for, well, first of all, you know, our job as a case officer is, is to look for vulnerabilities of a target. The idea that everybody is, every foreigner's recruitable is silly. So we're looking for specific things. Now in the Cold War, you always look for, for example, you know, there's the conflict between obviously communism and capitalism. because so so potential you know uh agent could be someone who has been disaffected you know in the past with

the with with communism the soviet ideology things have changed a lot now in fact it's much more personal so if you're looking for individuals who have you know who are vulnerable for a certain reason maybe they want their kids to go to an american university maybe they have a sick relative who needs care in the united states um maybe they're part of a minority of a government you know obviously you know things like christians in the middle east there's a glass ceiling they can't grow you know they can't rise up in their foreign ministry or their intelligence service or you know or or maybe they you know they've been they've you know it's based on ego they haven't progressed as well in their line of work so you're looking for that and then you know it's just

finding ways to you know it's a little bit of manipulation it's psychology you know it's a psych 501 class it's not a 101 class you're never going to get someone to do something that they don't want to do and that's kind of critical so it's always finding that vulnerability and moving them towards a place and frankly we live in a country in which you know they're there are you know the ideals of freedom and democracy really do resonate um especially in the third world uh you know and and so um you know it's uh and and the other thing is you deal with failure you have to overturn a lot of rocks i mean you know so so to find you know so in a typical you know overseas assignment you know you're not going to recruit you know 15 agents that doesn't happen you know it's

going to yeah you've got to do a lot of work finding those those individuals in countries we care about So, so, you know, I was, there's great baseball analogies here. You know, if you hit 300, you know, that's extraordinary. But you got to learn to, you learn to deal with a lot of failure and trying to find people who kind of want to come to work for us. But they're out there. And they're out there, you know, in every target country, whether it's Iran, Russia, China. That's, you know, the one thing about America is that we do stand for something. And that really, to me, that really mattered.

I used that a lot. And that it was, it was, I mean, I, I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, remember things like, I mean, you have to understand America, it's not only American democracy or the ideals of box. It's American football. I've had targets who loved the Pittsburgh Steelers. I would be off in the Middle East. I'm like, I got to somehow get back to the states and get someone to get, you know, Ben Rothsberger to sign a helmet. And now this didn't happen, but that's the kind of stuff we do. And I'm going to, I'm going to make sure to get it to the, and so, you know, it's stuff like that. Or it's, hey, hey, you know, if you ever come to the States,

I'll take you, I'll take you to a New York Giants game at the Meadowlands. And so, So it's the American ideal. It really does work. Without, like, I know you're limited in what you're able to say, and I can only even ask for, like, so many specifics, but is there anything you tell us about, you know, in a non-specific generalities, like how you talk to somebody and walked them through that whole process of recruitment?

Well, so what I, you know, so everyone has a different style, you know, and of course there's, if you're lucky, you've got to walk in. You know, that's somebody who's just going to volunteer, away and that just that you know and there's a there's a lot of stories of this and you have to you know if you're you have the right profile you know so the idea of this you know the you know glad-handing you know loud american diplomatic functions that's not really what works you know so so if someone's going to kind of volunteer they're going to look around they might be able to find out who the CIA case officer is but they want someone who they know they can trust

and not you know and uh and keep their of course they keep their lives uh intact um one of the things I always did successfully, you know, look, I'm a Greek background, so I was in the Middle East. So, you know, Greeks and Arabs have a lot in common. You know, so, you know, you kind of gain the trust of not only the target, but the family. And this is not manipulation, because at the end of the day, if I'm going to ask someone from an Arab country to spy the United States, you know, don't forget, in my view, it's, you know, it's for the right reasons. And so, so, and we might be helping the family in some matter. But we, you know, I just kind of what I always do is I try to get, you know, we try to get close from the family. You develop a personal relationship at times.

Sometimes that's hard because after you recruit a target, sometimes you have to turn them over to another case officer. When your tour ends or for a variety of reasons, maybe your cover gets kind of shredded. And so that's hard. But it's very personal. Again, it's it's talking to someone. I mean, there's so many, you know, you know, techniques that you use, but you can say things like, you know, boy, that, you know, that that that big big meeting our foreign ministers are going to have next week it's really important to us you know the ambassador's asked me to kind of kind of get a feel for one you know you don't know anything about it and I know you can't tell me a lot but you know give me kind of some of the atmospherics and then and then maybe they say some things that they should or shouldn't not that big deal and afterwards when it's over there's no intelligence pass but I'll go and I'll say hey look by the way you know the ambassador like you know I got I got they gave me you know 500 five hundred dollar gifts or certificate to this restaurant town and I'd like to take you, you know.

And you kind of, so you kind of start the process of, of an exchange of information for something tangible and you kind of kind of move it down. And there are a lot of times you can tell that the target's like, no, not interested. Okay, we're good. But a lot of times they know what they're doing, you know, I always thought that people who are, you know, end up getting recruited, you know, knew it was going on and they, and they wanted to go down this road again. And I, I'll say it over and over because of who we are, because we are, you know, is what America stands for. And so, yeah, but it's a, it's a really personal kind of business in which that's what I, that's what I loved about it. Mark, you say it's a personal kind of business.

And, you know, popular media paints, you know, movies in Hollywood, and then all the conspiracy theories, paint people in the CIA as heartless, cold, calculating. Right. How do you deal with the humanity of knowing you're putting this person a danger or when you have to pass them off having formed a relationship with them? Because you're not totally immune to that, right? Well, yes. So, I mean, but, you know, I'm still human. You know, it's in, and, you know, my colleagues who are watching this now or were no me. I mean, one of the hardest things I ever had. The most difficulties I had was, was in that kind of that turnover when a case officer has to turn someone over to another officer because I usually develop such a strong personal relationship. But, you know, it's, I mean, you know, again, it's, my, my thought on all this is whether it's a penetration of Al Qaeda or, you know, an Arab diplomat who, you know, we don't have great relations with, but we need to understand their country more. I mean, you're doing it for the right reasons. You know, every once in a while, you'll get, you'll, you'll, you'll handle it or recruit an agent. It's based just based on kind of that mercenary, you know, maybe monetary transaction. But, you know, like, I just that, you know, my, my success was always much more based on doing it for the right reasons. And just, you know, using that American ideal. I mean, I tell this story and it's corny and it's just, but it's what I believe. I mean, you know, there were so many times where I was in some crappy country and, you know, I'd walk at night and I'd go and I'd walk by the U.S. Embassy and you see that flag, you know, in the silhouette, you know, the flag flying.

And you look there and there, you know, might be a small embassy and there's not a lot of Americans there and there's a, you know, you're in a hostile area. And so I'd be proud of that, but I'd also know that people actually walk by there and that flag meant something. I have so many funny stories in the Middle East of, and I mean, so, you know, I'll tell you one story. I remember someone came to get a visa. And, you know, in the visa interview, you're asking questions. And, you know, and you have to ask them sometimes questions about, you know, they're, you know, do they support terrorist groups? And I had one time I asked this person, I said, you know, what do you think of Isbalah? And they said, we love Hezbollah.

They're, you know, they're freedom fighters. They're going after the Israelis. And I said, yeah, you want to come to the United States? You want a visa? And they said, yeah, of course. America is a land of opportunity and democracy. And I'm like, all right, like, like, like, like, let's. let's pretend like so and i kind of like this person i'm like let's start this interview again because

that his balla part's really not going to work they weren't terrorists but but they saw you know they could support his bala as well as it's a really was you know in a lot of our minds was the a team of terrorist organizations a really hideous uh organization that killed a lot of americans and um but in this person's view it was a just a political movement and but they wanted to come to america the land of opportunity and it was so you know that's you know it's a uh i'm still a sucker for that, you know, and even now with the crazy kind of political atmosphere, you know, when you're, when you're overseas, you see that American flag at an embassy or you're deployed somewhere with U.S. military, a flag means something. And it means something to a lot of other people, too, not just

us. Yeah. Did you ever lose an asset overseas, Mark? Did you ever have that happen? You know, it's, you know, it's that kind of, the kind of transition. The first time this happened is, is, so, you know, I talked about that first kind of Afghan trip in Condor. Then I came out of there I was posted at a North African embassy then Iraq was kicking off and I kind of made noises that I wanted to go do that so I was sent off to northern Iraq this is a December of 02 and I think you've had some other guests on in the past who have done that duty and so I was up you know living with the Kurds I mean it's you know wild time you know it's we arrived there's only a couple of Americans there's there's you know we have kind of a little trickle of cold tap water we're living with the Kurds in the mountains literally our team was was near the Iranian border as in all great, you know, CIA deployments. The first thing, you know, the two things we need when we get there is weapons and beer. And so I remember that some of the,

the courage, this is the P-UK, the, you know, one of the kind of legendary, you know, current groups, I said, what do you need? And I said, Amstall beer, but I knew they had it. And then, well, and behold, we had crappy food, we had beer.

So that's a theme of all my, my CIA stories. But on a serious note, that was the first time I lost an asset. It was someone who, you know, was crossing over into regime lines. Took too many risks. Kind of was giving us, you know, good information, the order of battle stuff. That was basic building block as, you know, in the run-up to the evasion.

And he was caught, and I found out he was tortured and killed. And that really, that really hit me really hard for two reasons. One is that's a personal relationship you had with someone, and I knew he was dead. And number two, I blame myself because, you know, there was such a thirst for the information. And this was an eager, eager to please us. I should have kind of rained,

reigned to him in. And that's a lesson I, interestingly, it's a lesson I took later on, not only for other agents and similar to that that I ran, especially in Afghanistan, but also kind of in stuff I do now teaching on leadership and just kind of having

that kind of sense of humility and patience. That, you know, that short-term gain where we're getting out of the order to battle ended up costing this guy's life. And I certainly blame myself for that. That's hard. I mean, that's, you know, I still remember this guy. You know, he knew what he was doing. the risk he was he was undertaking but uh you know every once a while it's a really hard business

and i learned that later on as well with with some other kind of unfortunate times that's got to be so difficult for such a situation to be in where you know you're a member of america's premier you know strategic strategic human intelligence gathering organization uh you're an alpha male type go-getter there's all this um pressure coming down from the white house we need this intelligence this is national security stuff. This has got to happen right now. But then there's also this human being in front of you that perhaps higher echelons,

they could give a shit less about that guy. But as you said, you have a relationship with that person. And maybe you also see a longer-term play here that this guy could be a long-term asset for us. But if he gets kanked his first time out, so you're 100% right. And I always, so of course, so headquarters and the analysts back home

you know are loving the information um but but your role as a case officer you're almost an advocate for the asset as well um there's always going to be a push for more there's always going to be pushed not always but you know some maybe some enhanced risk taking but you end up being correctly so the advocate uh and uh it and it is interesting sometimes because there you know there can be kind of conflict i mean there's you know there's i got i have to rack my brain there's so many different stories i had um about someone in headquarters sometimes in senior positions who they said, you know, get this, you know, this, this asset to do X, Y, Z. And you're like, yeah, that's, that's a little risky.

Or sometimes you think that they can do something. And then, you know, you get the kind of the note from back home. But, yeah, I mean, yeah, look, the, that, you know, it's funny that as it, and I, I wanted to tell you this all today. That was the first kind of true experience I had. And it's the name of this, the show, the team house. In northern Iraq at our base, which was in, it was in college, Yulon, it was, you know, we had a team house. It was a giant table in a room where we all had our little laptops. And by the way, the other thing you didn't ask me is what's the biggest, the most important skill set for a case officer is your typing ability.

It's your typing ability. That's the biggest misnomer and Dave's laughing now. But you've got to be able to type. But we sit around the laptops and that kind of camaraderie we had in this really strange environment. We're along, you know, we had no ex-co plan. you know, you know, the kind of the helos from from Insulik were like, we can't get there. We can't. There's not, you know, the amount you got to carry out. So, so literally we're like, we had a couple of foresty speakers. We're going to walk into Iran if Saddam was going to come

across 30 second parallel and just we figured the Iranians would kind of like wonder who the hell we were. But that was our expo plan. But you know, this kind of great team environment. And I'll leave you with one story where, you know, it's a, I can't tell you his name is retired, we're a legendary ground branch or paramilitary armed grounds. 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.

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visit college well.com. We're changing the way families feel about and approach college savings. Officer, and I was sitting there one day and we were kind of scraggly and he looked across the table for me. And he just looked up to me and I saw him and I was like, this isn't going to be good. He said, the fighting lamb shop. I had these sideburns. You do stupid stuff in these things. My hair was long.

I had a big beard and I had these sideburns. And he just said the fighting line. Then the second that came out, I was like, I am so screwed. And that stupid name just lasted forever. I'd walk through a hall of Sue Langley and I'd hear lamp shop. And I'd be like, yeah. But that's the kind of stuff you miss, this kind of incredible carottery. And interestingly enough, a lot, you know, a whole bunch of those officers on that deployment I was with forever afterwards,

whether it's at traditional post in Afghanistan. But boy, those times are memorable. I want to get more into that, but you reminded me that that operation was run through Turkey. And I'm just thinking, a Greek CIA agent, they must have loved you, man. They must have loved you. You know how we got in? So we had to, we would fly into Istanbul, then take a Turkish air flight to Diabr. the flight I was I remember when we first went in December the flight the previous week crashed and killed everybody on board

It's Turkish hair in the middle of winter then we drive from Jobaker Which is this really kind of rough old town where the you know the PKK used to operate And we were linked up with the Turkish special forces who saw me with my great old name Polymropolis and it was awesome We had a great relationship and we drive to the Hobbard gate all the way across northern Iraq And so yeah so it's so you know look I've gone in and out of Turkey I got along with them fine, but it was, but my last name always was, look, at the end of the day, you know, Greeks hate the Turks. The Turks look at the Greeks, it's like, kind of like an annoyance. So it wasn't that bad. It was, you know, but my father would never forgive me if I ever said

I was, I was working with the Turkish Special Forces, that's for sure. Yeah, because your dad was probably like, you know, Constantinople was Greece. End of story. Well, absolutely. That, he, that, that, those words have come out of his mouth. Well, I want to talk more about the Iraq mission, but I just want to hit you up. Jureen Cook chimed in on the chat here, and he said, just here is spying. Mark looked out for officers on the promotion panels, and it was appreciated. That's nice. It's good.

So, look, at the tail end of my career, and that's far past all these times here when I was promoted to the Senior Intelligence Service, you know, at that point, you know, your operational days are, you know, of fun. as a case. Look, your days is the line case officers the most fun you're ever going to have in your life. When you're managing several hundred or several thousand people, it wasn't that fun. So I switched my whole mentality to try to take care of my officers. And so I absolutely loved

sitting on promotion panels and fighting for officers who I knew really had what it took. And so, you know, when you switch into that mentality of mentoring, you know, that was the reward that I had. Because most of the other crap is a senior headquarters SIS officers personnel issues. you know, some commo guy has been in some, like, you know, I don't know, he's in some S&M room in D.C. And like, can we deploy him then to Moscow? You're just like, oh, my God.

You know, but serious. But then when you get to do a promotion panel, we have people come and ask for mentoring. And that's the stuff that matters, because all I want to do and what I want to do at the end was just pass the torch to the next generation. And that's what that's what really matters. And I'm telling you, like, the whole point of, we're not going to talk politics on this, But I'm telling you, even at the end, the last two years when I was at a senior level with the Trump administration, everyone asked me the effect on the agency. There were people walking in the door as motivated as ever before. You know, people join the CIA for certain reasons. And, you know, they certainly did after 9-11.

But even now. And so I love that motivation. And you want to tap into that. Because, you know, when you get old and grizzled, that kind of goes away a little bit. Yeah. When you say that you would fight for these young officers on the promotion board, Was it just because you knew was it because there were gatekeepers or would everybody kind of fight to try to get people they knew promoted people they knew were capable promoted? Well, yeah, no, so that's a great question because, you know, there are, there are so, God, this is good, this is getting, it's not getting to the weeds too much, but there's, you know, so, so for example, there's a lot of officers that I knew. So there was no requirement for a war zone in CIA.

yet yet in the 2015 time period if you went through our war zone bases just like all of us we've been there time and time again and so and so you know and then you're wondering where the hell is everybody else now there's no requirement it's okay and sometimes there's reasons for people not to go and i get that and even now in 2020 that that whole kind of requirement is going to go for the wayside is because because there's not you know there's not that many more places to go to but for example if someone said to me, you know, sometimes, you know, an officer would have done two or three kind of, you know, one-year assignments. The development of a case officer, that's not a great thing. You know, you really need to go to do a high CI threat, you know, environment, you get some additional training. You go to a place where

maybe there's a low CI threat for two or three years, get to recruit a lot, and then you go to a war zone, but some people love this kind of the adrenaline on the war zones. And sometimes, you know, people get penalized for that. And I was trying to, you know, so I would look out for them. Or, you know, there's there's a really kind of i wrote an article in a in a there's this NYU um law journal just security which is really it's a great place to publish stuff and i wrote an article about compassionate um leadership in the sense of sometimes officers screwed up and so you know and so maybe 10 years ago they did something and they paid the price they went through the penalty box but then someone on that panel is still holding it against them that's kind of bullshit right and you got to call that and so

you get to a certain level of seniority when you're able to do that and and that's what i really enjoyed in the end because you know for for whatever reason people would listen to what I had to say and so I really wanted to kind of take care of that young generation because I'll tell you one thing like in life I would rather take an officer who screwed up sometime paid the penalty can they walk into it to an office and say hey I messed up this is what happened um has some warts did a lot of hard stuff did a did a counterintelligence tour did a war zone did a regular traditional tour has a lot of tools you know uh in his or her toolbox but but if there's there's a little blip, that's okay.

You know, you want to see how people react to failure. So I like, I actually liked pushing those officers forward for promotion because I thought they would actually do a lot better down the line. Now when you say there was no requirement for a war zone, do you mean there is no requirements of training or do you mean that people in the CIA were not, case office were not required to deploy like the military?

Right, so it changed. So over my career, so at some time, you know, Every once in a while, it would be like, everyone's got to do a war zone. So then they kind of pull back on that. So the question, you know, the bottom line is for promotion. And it's changed over time, is, you know, did a one-year war zone, you know, was that a requirement for advance to a certain level? There was a time where we had enough war zones out there where I thought that was a really good idea.

For so many reasons, because I think it teaches you a lot about yourself. You know, war zone service is hard. It's important. You also get to be co-located with the U.S. military, which is a tremendous partner across the world. And now when we talk about these buzzwords like near-peer competition, like so we're not going after the Russians and Chinese alone. We're doing it in concert with our U.S. military brethren. Now in 2020, there's not enough war zone slots to have that requirement, so it's a little bit different. But yeah, no, but to answer your question is, you know, sometimes it was required for promotion. Sometimes it wasn't.

But I just wanted to make sure that folks who did kind of the hard stuff were, we're, we're, board it because I'm telling you at the end of my career like it's that we we had and I got to be careful in this there was multiple station chiefs in Kabul who had been there many times that that's ridiculous now they're great officers and they knew Afghanistan but where the hell is everybody else right so you're saying that if people did multiple tours sometimes that would be that would work against them amazingly enough they didn't do the embassy tour they didn't do the real CI staff right yeah Yeah, sometimes it did.

And, you know, and, and, and they have to do that to get to be kind of a full performance officer. You want to see, you know, so for example, in Afghanistan, we didn't run the surveillance detection route on your own. You know, you've got to be able to do that as a case officer. You've got to have that, that ability after a two, three, four hour surveillance detection route, changing modes of transportation, maybe changing your physical appearance. You've got to be able to make that split second decision. Now, one of the things that we also have to be careful with is don't penalize people who want to do hard stuff. So, you know, if you go back and forth, I would take an officer, if it's a first tour officer, comes out of the farm, comes to, goes to Afghanistan, comes to me in an embassy, they're thinking they're hot shit.

I recruited three officers. I got some tactical intel. We called in some air strikes, killed some HVTs, well, not whatever, but if you're lucky, get some HVTs. and I look at them and I said right now for me you did a year there thank you for your service you have not been on an SDR by yourself you had what we call it GRS

you had our global response staff kind of get our you know some some shooters with you who maybe ran that surveillance route for you so you have to prove to me now that you can operate on your own so it's a mix of stuff you know back and forth and I'll tell you and I'll the last part too is our paramilitary arm

you know with ground branch air branch Maritime Branch are paramilitary officers. Same type of thing. The importance for them to go do a regular embassy tour, for example, really important to get that kind of full skill set. And I loved having these guys or gals come. Because I knew

what they did in the past. And then, you know, they were super eager to kind of learn that new skill as well. So, yeah. So back to Iraq. You were in there early on before the invasion doing the same mission. thereabouts with Sam Faddis who we had on previously talking about it.

You were down south, I guess around Salamaneo with Puk, Sam's a little further north with KDP. Were you guys focused on the regime or more on the Ansar al-Sharia mission? Or like how did that all pan out? It was both. It was both, you know, so it depended. I mean, so I would say, geez, how can I say, you know, in terms of this is going back a while.

Certainly we're focused on the regime. So we need to order a balance. battle, no doubt. You know, the invasion was coming. We needed to know disposition of Iraqi military units. We also needed to get penetrations of the Iraqi military and intelligence services. So that was, that was, you know, that was my job there. You know, the fight against Ansar is a totally kind of separate story and a heroic story, especially for our ground branch officers there. You know, one day it will be told. I think maybe it was told about one of Bob Woodward's books. But it was kind of a dual kind of CT mission with Ansar, but also with But it really was regime focused. You know, it's one of the most interesting, I remember this clearly today because there's actually some books that have come out. I think Robert Draper, The New York Times wrote a book about the run up to the Iraq War and a lot of the mistakes that were made. I remember in the team house, we're talking about watching Colin Powell's address with George Penn up behind him to the UN and they're detailing this intelligence and we're looking at each other and being like, where's that coming from? You know, because we had no WMD mission up in the north.

So, you know, and so, but as you both know, those existential big picture things as a line officer you're really not worried about, we knew we were going in. A lot of us had done from either seats counterterrorism center or from the Near East Division. We've done or we've been involved in Iraqi operations for a while. Whether you justify the war, however you want to, with the WD, the bottom line of Saddam was a pretty huge. character who conducted you know who was awful to his people you know we're up in the in Kurdistan so you know we do the stories of Halabja the gas and the chemical attacks and so there's no love lost with the regime so we're kind of getting jinned up to kind of go on in and that's kind of the next kind of step in my

in my you know life is when you know they said all right who wants to go in with with the Joint Special Operations Command with Dev Group you know into into Baghdad and I raised my hand and once again as I about before with you I find myself you know on an info with Task Force 160 into into biap you know and a nap of the earth flight getting shot at thinking I got to stop volunteering for these things you know this is getting a little getting a little crazy and then I got to hear this story two months yeah no I mean I remember it was myself was one of one of the deaf group operators and and my my

chalk that that ELA was was all the combo gear and they dropped this on bi app I remember sitting there and, you know, of course, no one came to get us. So we're kind of scratching our head. You know, there's, you know, C-130 almost came in, plowed into us. I have thousands of pounds of agency commigarer. It was crypto. I can't leave it. I'm not a common officer.

I'm kind of, I'm like, how did that? So anyway, bottom lines, we were okay. But there's a couple moments where you kind of scratch your head. What the hell am I doing here? But I went there because I had a source network that was developed up in northern Iraq that J-Soc won. wanted to tap into and we went in to kind of, you remember the deck of 55 cards of the Iraqi high value targets and so had a really unique experience there, kind of kind of running and gunning with

those guys. But you know, but I'll throw in like, you know, again, what do we do as a CIA officer? The first thing on the ground, you know, day breaks, we get to our location at Bayat. We're sitting around scratching our heads and is only, we had way too much time on our hands. We actually had a couple days and we're thinking, you know, what do we need? Well, is there a duty-free shop here? It's not yet. And so we're like, yeah, so me and a couple of boys went out and we found the bi-app duty-free. And within about 48 hours, we had built the famous HVT bar in Baghdad, which was a legendary place. But I remember, I remember putting the wood down. We had, you know, we obviously confiscated a lot of, you know, high-quality beverages. And this, this, this, this, you know,

This damn bar caused so much trouble over the years, but I'll tell you there was, there was, you know, within within one week there was a plethora of senior U.S. military officers, including flag officers, having a drink or two with us. That's impossible. They were under general. Yeah. There's no way they could have been drinking. No way. So, yes, the HPT bar was great. And so that's kind of a claim to fame.

But really, that was a really unique time. And there's a couple points on that. One is the individuals I met from Dev Group, that's, that's in two, this is in a March, this is April 2003. I ended up knowing and working with for my entire career to the point where, you know, their leadership, you know, down the line was, you know, where people I was familiar with. And so, you know, it was just, there was interesting time. I had the, I had the, I had the Iraqi agents. We were kind of wrapping up and rolling through high value targets. one of the things that you both kind of know, I'm sure, is when you go into a conflict zone in the beginning, nobody knows what you're doing.

So I had a shitload of money. I had no supervision, and I was assigned to, you know, I had a whole bunch of, you know, of obviously elite, you know, special operators with me. Now, to be fair, I had a whole bunch of GRS officers with me as well. But boy, we had a blast there kind of doing some just crazy stuff. You know, I remember there was we caught an HVT one time and had to get him and his family out. And we, you know, one of my one of my buddies hotwired and we stole it a Rocky City bus. Just just stuff that, you know, when I, and I never asked for permission for anything. And I read about it in the cable later and people were loving. I mean, I remember coming back and, you know, George Tennant, the director and in the DDO at the time.

We were just like, you know, it was amazed. But that's the fun of these these kind of initial deployments where we can, where I think the ingenuity of the agency, coupled with the special operations community and kind of a lack of supervision, you can do a lot of good. Could you talk about what the operational cycle was like at that time?

I take it you were running the source network providing the intel that Dev Group was then using to go in and Shanghai some high-value targets and back-down. Yeah, I mean, it was non-stop. So I remember the funny parts of this is, then there's some very serious or i don't think i didn't take a shower for six weeks um we were going non-stop day and night uh a lot of it was you know was was kind of tactical intelligence so you get a you get a you know a you know a tip or phone call or whatever from the source now so you're rolling

um you know the our special operations you know friends were fantastic uh and um i think there uh you know i think i think ultimately it was it was a it was a it was a more permissive environment at that time, this is April of 2003, then what happened later on. 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.

I do remember what we were in, it was either Flujer, Ramadi. It must have been Ramadi. I remember driving through with with with with with death group was an open back Hummer you know a Humvee and so you know wasn't up armored it was open back and because we thought it was gonna be okay and all of a sudden the town's thrown rocks at us and you start you started kind of shaking your head saying wait a second I we're not getting you know really you know received with with flower petals and so so but it still was low it was it was a more permissive environment I mean I mean there was

there was still fighting going on in the city as well so you know there was there was something the other day I posted on Twitter. Just I always have these memories. Oh, I know what it was. It was the retirement of the M1 Abrams, M1-A-1-A-1-A-1-Bram tanks in the Marine Corps. So I remember, so the Marines took the east side of the city in Baghdad. I remember we were running it off with the seals.

And, you know, as, you know, it was at night. We kind of, there was two vehicles. We were kind of approaching the Target's house. And then we saw on the nods, a night vision, kind of the Thetting Saddam guys come out with RPGs and we slowly crept back. One of those other times when I remember

one of the boys in the truck looked at me and said, ah, we're fucked. And then I'm thinking myself, once again, I volunteered for something stupid. But we kind of crept back, found cover behind a Marine M1A1 tank. And the tanker, this young Marine

had half his finger blown off. And I remember jumped up. He had no freaking idea who we were. Because we were running around the city. you know, and I look scraggly, and I remember jumped up there. You know, the moniker's OGA, other government agency. Everyone knows what that is. That's the agency. But I said, hey, we're from OGA and we're running.

And he goes, hey, whatever you all need. And I left, what the fuck happened to your finger? Half his finger's gone. This guy was just tough. He's toughing it out. And I was so impressed by that. And so whenever I think of Marines and tanks, I think of that story. But I remember we then, you know, we called in Little Birds.

They came in. They kind of, you know, took care of the Fed Ain't Saddam guys. We went in, blew down the door. I was the second one, threw the door, down the high value target. I come back and I tell these stories and my leadership was like, you will not do that ever again. But again, that's the beauty of these initial deployments. It was just so much fun. And really just incredible times.

I remember even then having me and one of the dev group guys, you know, if you all know, back there, the Montserie district was there kind of fancy. There was an ice cream place. It was still open. I'm sitting there having an ice cream. him and I are just total plainclothes and I see some of our ground branch brethren, some legendary ground branch folks, you guys probably know him.

Ended up being one of our, being our DDO. And he's rolling through with some dudes in a in their battle route, you know, in a Humvee all kidded up and they looked over and they're like, is that fucking Mark having an ice cream? And they're looking at me, I'm waving at him,

and I'm in so much trouble. I got back and I got this and ass to it again. But, you know, we had some great success. It was really, it was, it was the, you know, tremendous experience for me. And as a young case officer, still, this is 2003. It gave me unbelievable confidence just in myself. And mostly in my ability to not take a shower for six weeks. That was pretty impressive.

It must have been pretty cool, too, that, I mean, the difference between the traditional case officer's job and what you're doing here. It's like you're seeing immediate results so quickly. You know, every night you're going out and using the internet that you gather. to go and police some jackass up. I can see, you know, why it's addictive for some people. Well, so frankly, that's the drug. I mean, and that's what gets you.

And so this is not the CT mission. It's the war zone mission, but it's very similar. And so later on when I did, you know, work, and I got to be careful when I stated, but when I did a lot of heavy kind of CT work where we had kind of unique missions, because we're taking people off the battlefield. I mean, I'll tell you, you know, there's just, this is, you know, I mean, you know, my, my, my, my, uh, some of my, my kind of civilian friends would think I'm kind of bloodthirsty, but there, I mean, it's a satisfying feeling, you know, you're killing America's enemies.

It's, uh, and it's hard to replicate that because it's a case officer, think back what I talked to you about before about the, oh, so we didn't really talk about the recruitment cycle. To recruit somebody to spy for us can take up to a year. here we are in war zones the recruitment cycle is much quicker and you're getting this this immediate satisfaction uh you know i'll never i remember one time in bag that same no same group uh and uh and and i had some other kind of you know sources on the ground i remember and the sources were really good so they're like hey there's a group of fedean's uh uh uh saddam folks that's that's that was kind of that was the iraqi paramilitary arm of of saddam hussein you know hold up in this house and here are the grid coordinates I remember going, got it, and I'm on the ground. Like, I got a phone call on it, it's the riot.

And I went and I knocked on a fucking axe to the Bradley. And they pop it up, and I'm like, here are these grid coordinates. And then, you know, 20 minutes later, I hear that sound that you all know of Bradley, of that gun going off, done. That's hard to replicate, you know, as a case officer when you're at U.S. Embassy, XYZ later on, and you have to do a long developmental cycle. You have to really switch that whole mentality. Sure.

But, you know, these are kind of really unique experiences. that you know that I think I think made me a stronger person giving a lot more confidence wasn't great you know I mean there's there's I just on personal level I'm like you know there's a lot of bad stuff I saw I had some serious I had some PTSD when I came back from that there was a lot of bad things that I saw and I was a little jacked up but um you know it was unique time you're talking about like collateral damage and things like that that happened on the battlefield

it was there's a lot there's a lot and we killed a lot of people I saw a lot of dead bodies. There was, I remember when I came home. You know, I left, I was there for half a year. I left, my son was four months old. I came back. He's 10 months old. It doesn't recognize me at the airport. That was heartbreaking. And I just, I had nightmares of dead bodies nonstop. And it was, this is a really interesting story because my wife is at this point panicking. Like I was not well. We had a legendary CIA officer. His name's out in the press now, Charlie Seidel, who was our, who was our chief there. He passed away. He died of a heart. attack last year. Charlie had a house on Cape Cod. And so when we got back, he took that original

team and all the families, he said, come stay with me for two weeks. And I was not well. And those two weeks was incredible because two things happened. One is I kind of get my head straight. You're at the beach, it's beautiful. It's the summer in Cape Cod. Number two, I'm back with the boys and the girls. You know, so I'm back with my old team. And when you leave these experiences, it's hard. Yeah, when you're sitting in Northern Virginia, sitting out back, and you're thinking about, you know, you miss all this stuff. It's really, it's weird. So, but those two weeks with the team, but decompressing, that got my head straight. And so that was a little scary time for me.

But, you know, but that goes back to that whole kind of concept of the camaraderie of our business. Speaking of some of the fallout from war, you had mentioned to me about the incident in Koust. which again, I don't know if you're allowed to say the name of the place or not, but I've been there before, Fop Chapman and Kast Province Afghanistan. And you mentioned that you feel some sort of responsibility for what had happened. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how that went down, what that incident was and, you know, your involvement or visibility. I mean, I can say some of it.

So, you know, so first and foremost, you know, just as, you know, your listeners, you know, some of them will kind of know this story well. So everything I talk about now has actually been cleared for release. I mean, Leon Panetta wrote a book and he had a solid chapter on this. So when I talk about it, I take a lot of it in public. I take a lot of it from that. But, you know, but, but, you know, so the 50,000 foot, the kind of the bottom line up front is, you know,

you know, we were beat by Al Qaeda. You know, we had what we thought was a really promising penetration with, with a sister Arab intelligence service. And he ended up being bad and the end result. I was intimately involved in helping, you know, in the beginnings and running the case. I wasn't on the ground and coast, but I sent one of my officers there who was killed.

I was, you know, the planning, everything involved in it. And ultimately, you know, seven of my colleagues were killed. And that was, to me, it was personally devastating. You know, that was by far the worst kind of day of my life, you know, period. And it certainly taught me a lot about humility. And I think I, you know, I always talked about, you know, war zone service is really interesting because you come back and you walk a little taller because you did something important.

But it's also really important to have a sense of humility and, you know, never believe in your own hype. And we got beat. You know, Al Qaeda ran a double agent at us. And so ultimately, you know, we put too much trust in someone. And I remember having discussions with, you know, with individuals, headquarters. Would al Qaeda ever be able to do this? Like the Chinese, the Russians. You know, the conventional wisdom was no. But ultimately we trusted someone who we thought

would get to the number two in al-Qaeda, Amin Zohiri. This asset candidate, agent candidate, was a doctor. And he, you know, he, he, he, he, he has since had a very quick, uh, kind of jailhouse relationship recruitment within, with an Arab Intel service. And we then kind of were involved in the case. And ultimately, um, because of all the things that he passed on, which was battle damage assessment from drone strikes, which was, you know, some personal information or clearly in situation that he could get close to some of the senior leadership of al-Qaeda. We knew Amund Zerahiri was sick. This guy was a doctor. We had some, certainly some ideas that he might be getting close to Zerri, but we thought we had to meet him.

And so the meeting arrangements, you know, kind of moved over time, but ultimately he was going to be in Coast Afghanistan, which, you know, is, you know, it's Bob Chapman. It's a, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a place, it's a stronghold of the Haqqani network right across the border in Pakistan, Mayor Maw, but it's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a legendary place in CIA Lord for, for a lot of reasons. One of our first kind of, or one of our biggest kind of counterterrorism pursuit teams located there. But ultimately, that was the meeting location. And at the end, unfortunately, and you never know what happened.

And, you know, and I take as much responsibility as anybody, but this, the meeting arrangements that that this, the leadership of the base and others, you know, that we thought were in place, they, they, they, for whatever reason, kind of, kind of stood down on them. And so ultimately, this, this individual was a suicide bomber and, and he detonated, you know, was improvised explosive, and killed seven of our officers, including my friends. And so, you know, as someone who had been intimately involved in the operative. I was on the live feed when this occurred. It was an ISR feed. All of a sudden something that goes really wrong. I remember, you know, this is, and again, it was, it's out in the press now, the CIA case officer that was a phenomenal officer named Darren Labonte. Someone who I considered to be, you know, I loved him,

he was super human. This is someone who was an FBI agent, US Marshal, he was an Army Ranger, and he was a cop. He did everything before. I would joke with them and said, you can't hold down a job, but he was the most badass dude I've ever met in my life. Did the previous service in Afghanistan as well at one of our bases. And standing up, you know, when this happened, you know, I remember getting, you know,

something clearly was wrong and I finally got a phone call from our station chief in Kabul, who's one of our kind of legendary officers. And again, this taught me so much. And he said, he said, Mark, you know, look, you got to sit down right now. They're all gone. And you're going to have to get up in front of 400 of your people you lead in this other in this office Everybody who knows and loves Darren and tell him what happened. He said, look, there's going to be a time for you to create and figure out what happened, but you know, you need to stand up and lead. And I remember that calling that all hands was the I don't really remember even when happened was the hardest experience of my life and people dropping in their knees and crying.

And it was it was truly, truly awful. And so, you know, I feel an enormous sense of response. responsibility to that. I remember when I was promoted to the Senior Intelligence Service sitting in the ceremony in our bubble of headquarters thinking I don't deserve this. And but you know, it's, you know, the only thing I'll say on this is, you know, I have tremendous, you know, sadness and regret. I know the Labani family very well. I still visit them in Florida. I remember years later talking to he's there, he's our current ambassador in Saudi Arabia. He was the at the time the deputy commander of Sancom John Abizaid, you know, very well known three or four star army officer. Army General. And I was telling them about my feelings what happened. He said, Mark, you know, you're going to have to deal with this. And he said, just think about what I do. You know, 70 of your friends were killed. He goes, I do this on an industrial scale as the deputy of SEMCOM. And so, yeah, I mean, it was a terrible moment. I learned a ton. I have an enormous sense of humility. Never believed my hype ever again after that. And I tell that story a lot just because, you know, it's, you know, it's, There's a lot of lessons learned from that. And that spurred me then to go on to Afghanistan, where I kind of had a lot of anchor

and we wrecked a lot of vengeance. I went back for a year after that, immediately, when I was done with that Middle Eastern Post. So, Mark, you were watching a live feed. This was an attempt to recruit an al-Qaeda insider. This would have been a huge, huge intelligence recruitment for the CIA. And this effort, this attempt of recruitment, would have been classified as a covert operation.

So you're there watching the live feed from the drone, is what you're describing to me. Well, it was, you know, it was an ISR feed where we were not going to watch the meeting. We watched the movement of the individual for the base. And so we knew it was going on. And now I'm just on a chat. I'm on a secure chat with the base. And nobody's answering me. And nobody's answering me.

And I'm thinking something's not right. And there were people behind me who knew Darren well. And I looked behind, I'm like, everybody out of my office. Because people started getting worried. And then, I mean, you know, it was all, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, I mean, I remember after that it was, it was, I didn't eat or sleep for 48 hours. I ended up, and this is, this is nothing compared to others who never came back, but I ended up getting a freaking kidney stone. I passed out and had to be hospitalized, uh, uh, with a kidney stone because for 48 hours, I didn't eat or drink after that because we were so, you know, consumed with, with, with, with, uh,

but, but, you know, when, when you there's there, and, and you all know this, there's times in your, in your life when you know something's wrong, you get that, whether it's your hair stands up or you get that sick feeling. That was a bad feeling. Um, and, uh, and, and, and, you know, it's, uh, you know, there's a lot of lessons learned that have gone into kind of, uh, the, kind of the agency playbook for operations, which is really important. Um, uh, and so, you know, you hope some good comes of, um, uh, and so, you know, you hope some good comes of it, but you can never bring those, those folks back. And so, you know, I mean, I remember, you know, our base chief, Jennifer Matthews, again,

that's out in the press quite a bit. I remember, you know, that day talking to her. I mean, just, you know, really, really stuff that I'll never forget. And then, you know, everybody, just like everybody else, I was very interested in the movies here at Dark 30, and they have that whole scene, which was excruciating for me to watch. And, you know, I don't even know if it's accurate or not, because they're all gone. but probably has some element of truth in that. So that was tough.

But Mark, why did, I could never really figure out, why did Zero Dark 30 incorporate that incident in Fob Chapman? It had nothing to do with the hunt for bin Laden, as I understand it. I think it's just, it's the story behind the agency efforts. And, and, you know, so ultimately, you know, I have some really good friends. I, you know, I would go in and out of the hunt for Al Qaeda,

to be honest, over. that period between 9-11 and when bin Laden was ultimately killed. But even afterwards, and, you know, there are individuals I knew who were involved for, you know, nine, ten straight years. That's all they did. They worked in our counterterrorism center. They rotated in the TDI-Y circuit between Pakistan and Afghanistan. You know, to me, they are total heroes in this because, you know, they had encyclopedic knowledge of the target. So I think it was, the zero dark 30 was just a story of that, that commitment. You know, it's funny because one of my really good friends who was, was, you know, he's still in, he's a station chief now, but I remember sitting with them, you know,

at the local dive bar here at the Vienna, we're talking about this. And he said, he said nine years. You know, they, it was nine years and a lot, and a lot of colleagues, unfortunately, were killed. And by the way, this, this does, you know, so, you know, we're focused on, on, of course, what happened in Coast, but there's a lot of ground branch officers who paid the ultimate price as well. And so, you know you can't you can't forget that in afghanistan was a is a very unforgiving place so so the agency's given a lot there can you tell us then about afterwards after that event where you were back in langley and now you volunteered to go to schkin and get into the shit so so i came back um again you know there's a there's a there's a theme here so i came back you know obviously really shaken by this and

I walked into our personnel office and this is after I left that, you know, service in the Levant, another Middle Eastern country. And I said, obviously I was upset about what happened. I said, send me to the worst place on the planet. And they're like, we got it for you. And I said, where is it? And they said, it's a Schen, Afghanistan. I said, sign me up.

And so, you know, Schen was a legendary place in agency law. Three Grand Branch officers have been killed there. It was the first CTPT after 9-11 was was created in Schen I mean there's great pictures of these guys

and sandals and and you know FD NY and NYPD hats there's been so there's others obviously others killed there's Navy SEAL there killed and then there's some terrible incidents of there was a U.S. military

shit was a helicopter that was that was shot shot down there and so you know but it was It was a really interesting place.

It is 10 kilometers six miles. It's in Patika, Pactica province. It's right across the border from Pakistan. It is probably the farthest end of the earth you could ever imagine. And it's a place where, you know, so it was not an al-Qaeda stronghold. I think, you know, it was more Taliban. There was a group there called the Commander Nazir group

that you both might be familiar with, which is, you know, in essence a Taliban group, responsible to deaths of a lot of Americans. And so it was a really, unforgiving place and it was you know to get there you'd have to take the obviously it's the you know it's a flight to Kabul and then it's uh you know from Kabul um uh you'd have to get to uh you know with the C-130 to uh to coast and then from coast you take the helo into skin which runs every two once every two weeks because the weather's so crappy which means you're stranded there

all the time either stranded at coast and i was joking with you all before and talking to others some of your some of the folks probably uh uh uh watching today Coast base was a it was a shithole of staggering proportions. If you and I think maybe you all have both been, both been to the transient TDI place where we'd sit around away for the Gila was like infested with bedbugs. It was a hard. It wasn't so bad by the time I got there at a Faba Salerno. Okay. Because this place was gruesome.

Now, but again, you know, we were sitting around the fire pit, incredible camaraderie. But then you got to go through this mountain pass and fatigue and you end up at Schen and you are at the end of the earth. And that was to me the happiest year of my life. Number one is I was able to kind of seek vengeance for what happened. Maybe not, maybe our shrink should have let me out there, but they did. I had an incredible cadre of regular case officers and paramilitary officers. One of the things that that and you know, I would get, like there's no. no way if I had this conversation and I was going out again, they would ever let me go out again.

Because one of the proudest things that happened, I was back in Coast and it actually is the current head of our special activities division now, or special activity center, but he was the base chief at Coast. He looked at me, he said, Mark, you're running a freaking cult there. The people that, you know, skin was shut, we were so tight. And so because when I got there, I said the following. I said, look, everybody here's mission is one thing. And they knew I came from the whole mess and coast. I said, we're going to kill as many people as possible, lawfully. But, but, you know, so we are going to wreck vengeance. And there are, there are, there are, there are things that you have to do in terms of, what do you call it?

Winning Hearts and Minds, we call it covert influence. There's a lot of, of nation building we had to do. I did that, but my officers knew I didn't care about that. We were, we were on it, we were on a mission there because of what had happened. And so it was a unique time where everybody was, you know, was so much, I'd have, I'd have the damn, like, we, so again, there's so many great stories, you know, our cooks, we had a Macedonian cook. This guy's not cleared at all. He's probably a freaking Russian agent. When we'd have a, when we'd have a successful operation, I'd bring him into the all hands and he'd given him high fives too. Because by the way, agency food in the war zones is great. And so, so this dude, this dude deserved it too. So we had just this incredible tight-knit unit. And, and, you know, there's, I think the highlight. was you know there was there was several ground branch officers who'd been killed there over the years there was one high-value target we were going after who we knew was directly responsible for the death of one of them and that was my mission i could care less about anything else and so we recruited agents

across the way in afin pakistan again right across the border across the border control post and uh and uh geez i don't remember that the the month it was but but we you know obviously put them on the We called it in a strike and we killed this individual who's responsible for killing a lot of Americans, but directly responsible for killing a CIA officer. And that feeling as we kind of sat down around the fire pit, I always called the fire pit, and you all know this is caveman TV. There was nothing better than sitting around that fire pit every night. I love that because I'm with all the officers.

And I say when I say the boys and the gals, you know, there was, you know, we had certainly male and female officers altogether. But that was the time where we spent these times together. And I remember, you know, we kind of made it, you know, we had a toast. And one of the ground ranch guys said, you know what, let's make the call to Fort Bragg, North Carolina right now. And we call this officer's widow. And boy, when I got in a lot of shit for doing this, we called her and we told her, hey, we just avenged the death of your husband. Jesus. And so we sat back that night and there was some tears.

I must have had 500 messages from all over, all over the world. A lot from kind of the paramilitary arm, but others from just, hey, that's what we do. And it was awesome. And I remember thinking, you know, we can pack up and go home now, but we didn't. And, uh, but you know, but those those deployments, and you both know this, you know, it's the sense of brotherhood and in its sisterhood that is just something you can't even imagine. And we're talking before the show. I'll just, I'll promise you. Uh, you never talk politics. But, you know, uh, uh, there are people in from my group, from my team there who are completely different politically, you know, their ideology they say you know i think they probably have like uh their their arsenals that they're they have like a bunker in montana that they're they're getting ready for i could care less because i know right now they'd have my back and they always will um and i and i love these folks and literally today i was at the vienna end i will tell you i'm sitting at the vienna in it's the dive bar i'm with my buddy who's a b1 pilot in the in the air force

and he flew missions over us we always joke about this and i'll tell you one thing a show of force from a B1 is a is a is a mighty righteous thing um but someone tapped me on the back and uh it was an officer from from this is 2020 this was from eight years ago who was who was back from something else he said hey mark i couldn't believe he was there and you know that's the kind of camaraderie that you have um and and you can you can really never never replace that so that year was just incredible for me it is it is at the end of the earth it is a nasty place it is unforgiving uh i go out you know so So again, I'm the base chief. I have the paramilitary officers with me.

I have a chief paramilitary officer who's in charge of ground branch. Every once in a while, I've got to go out, you know, and roll with the boys. And I know what they did. I'm like, hey, hey, on Wednesday, I want to go out of you. And I'm like, they're like, crap that mission. Like, let's just take them around for a fucking drive. So we don't get killed. And we'll, you know, and I know they're doing that.

But I wanted to go out with them. And there's nothing better when we're out at one of our kind of, you know, forward remote bases, right up a board. with Pakistan we're sleeping overnight there there there's shitty bed bugs and you know you just that that's an unforgettable feeling and and i'll tell you you know the part of that that was what what i'm missing that i that i haven't said is time magazine at one point called skin the most dangerous place in the planet we took idf every morning every morning al-Qaeda would rocket us it was i you know i threw out my watch um we we had idf every single goddamn morning if to go running around

you got to hug the Hescoes. It was insane. We lost two of our of our indigenous commanders there. We're both killed. Legendary in kind of in Afghan lore. No, you know, we didn't have many Americans there. There's only about 20 of us, which is again, extraordinary 20 Americans for a year, several hundred of the indig. And then and so, you know, you have this incredibly dangerous environment. But I would also say that unlike when you saw these these kind of green on blue attacks when you had, you know, there's been a terrible rash. over the years of Afghan military kind of turning on on conventional U.S. military forces. Man in Schen, like, we lived with these guys. We ate with them every night. You know, there was, I ate a lot of kind of nasty ass stew. I don't know what the hell I was eating. Goat. We had a tradition there. We take a shot of bourbon before we'd go eat with them. We were hoping it would kill whatever was going to go in us. But I love these guys. And there's no doubt in my mind that they saved our lives all. the time, you know, our indigenous partners. And so again, it's a, it's a remarkable kind of

of year of my life that I will, I will never forget. I will always cherish. And I remember, you know, and I'll tell you one thing, when you, when you, you fly in a place like that, there's no daytime kilo insertion. It's everything's at night because you're getting night and you up all the time. So, so that was one of those times where I'm flying in. And it's a great friend of mine now. He's retired. Nick Mulroy, you know, he's a big guy in ABC now. I love Mick, because Brown Branch Officer, came station chief all over, all over Africa. he's a big dog now in the media

but I remember I took over for him and I remember flying in there and you know our first attempt there's IDF and then we finally get in the ground and you know you don't walk between the LZ and the and the

and the skiff you got to get there quick because it's dangerous and I remember that was one of those times of scratching my head again like I did it again volunteering for this crazy stuff

here we go again but what an amazing year I remember when that heel lifted off and I left that place. I mean, I had tears in my eyes because I love that place. I loved everybody who served there and it was pretty remarkable. Mark, there was, you know, I know things are got haywire in our country right now. And normally, you know, Dave and I don't get into political stuff. There was one question.

I'll ask you at the end, though, since you had mentioned it to me. Sure. About your colleagues speaking out about some of the things going on recently. But before we get there, I wanted to ask you. ask you about this entire episode in Moscow. Yeah, true. Totally changing gears here. This is, I don't want to insert too much or editorialize too much.

I'd rather just, let's just hear it from you. What happened in Moscow? What were you doing there? How did things go down? So, so after all this kind of craziness, I came back and then, you know, my life got much less, got much more dull. I, you know, I got promoted. I had some headquarters jobs.

you know my kids got older and so you know my my my daughter and my son who you know kind of loved living all over the middle east they wanted to come back to america so uh took a break from overseas stuff so i was the deputy office chief for the middle east at the for a time and then when i when i received promotion the senior intelligence service um our ddo at the time our operations chief for the whole agency um basically was like look we have to we need you to do something different and at the time this was when you know the russians kind of frankly kicked our in terms of the election interference in 2016. And whatever you, this has nothing to do with whether you think it affected the election,

but the Russians were screwing with us. And so what they did is they brought a whole bunch of former CT folks like myself or Middle Eastern folks and put us into positions where we could kind of push back against the Russians. So I did not have any Russian experience, but I started off as the deputy operations chief overseeing Europe and Eurasia, which is, you know, 2,000 plus officers and 50 countries. And, but really it was, it was, you know, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, which of course is easy and, like, it's nothing to do with the news. And, you know, I thought, I thought I was going to be, like, TDIY and going on, like, temporary trips like Paris and Berlin. I never did that.

And so, so our job was to push back against the Russians. And we did so successfully. And as part of that, you know, at one point, I, you know, I made a trip out to Moscow in December of 2017. I wanted to see Ambassador Huntsman. He is a, he is a legendary ambassador. I was ambassador in Beijing, ambassador in Moscow, you know, a big Republican political guy who's the governor, I think, in Utah, ran for president, but a wonderful guy. So I wanted to talk to him about kind of get his views. And I needed, I needed, frankly, an area fam trip. So I spent 10 days in Moscow and St. Petersburg. And, you know, like I, you know, obviously there's a whole lot to talk about in this. This is something that my going public on this was really uncomfortable for me. But, you know, but. but it had to be done based on kind of some medical issues. But ultimately, and I think, you know, some people might sound like we're kind of getting a little nutty or not.

But there was a whole issue with officers who had been affected by really mysterious illnesses in Havana. And so, so I'm in Moscow. It's, you know, it's December, I think 5th of 2017, you know, at a hotel near the embassy. And, you know, we had, of course, heavy surveillance. The Russians didn't want me there. They were really suspicious. by the talks we had with them are awful They accused me of all sorts of crazy shit what am I what are you doing your spying on us?

And I'm like I'm a freaking SIS officer like I I'm gonna fucking SDR in the years I'm not spying anybody I'm gonna get some dinner at the you know pushkin cafe in in Moscow and then meeting with you but it was very hostile relationship was terrible and so look in the middle of the night I had this event that happened and it just I know it is what it is and and you know with incredible vertigo and and and you know with incredible vertigo and nausea and something happened to me where I had this, you know, tinnitus and and it turned into this kind of years of medical issues. And so ultimately, back up, Mark.

Describe exactly like what happened to you. What did you experience? Middle of the night, I was awoken with a start. I had incredible vertigo, you know, this is not being able to even stand up. I was falling over ringing in my ears. Incredible nausea. I thought I was going to vomit. I was, you know, and all I can tell you is after having, you know, shrapnel whizz by my head and all the crazy shit I did in the Middle East, I was terrified of Moscow what happened.

And, you know, by the next morning, it subsided a little bit. I made it through the trip and then I came home and it started this journey. You know, I missed four months of work. And ultimately, by July of 2019, I couldn't even get through a full, you know, eight-hour day. And I had to retire. And I could retire at 50. but I had to retire. But, you know, I've been through to numerous medical doctors.

I have gone through programs at NIH. You know, fortunately, after some of this press that's come out, I'm going to get to go to Walter Reed, which is that, and Walter Reed is the gold standard of TBI, traumatic brain injury treatment. I'll probably be there with a lot of folks I might have known in the past, in fact. And so, so look, so ultimately it was an event that happened. And the fact of the matter is there's, there's 40 plus U.S.

government officials who have had similar events whether they're in havana or china and now it's happening again um and and look i love the agency i have dear friends in that place but our our office of medical services our medical staff is is abysmal um it's it's like the nfl was 15 years ago with tbi it's probably like the u.s military dod was with uh gulf war syndrome um in the beginning so something is happening to our folks uh you know some people can can say that you know i sound like a kook All I can say is, you know, I retired as an SIS4, who probably was going to be on the seventh floor very quickly. I have a great, you know, track record in terms of operations and leadership and mentoring. There's no reason for me to, you know, say any of this stuff, other than something really bad happened.

And I think the agency owes us the proper medical care. In terms of culpability, that's a whole separate issue. I think there's an article in GQ, which was accurate. There is a strong circumstantial case that, you know, using techniques such as geofencing, which is, is you know the new york times that a great article on this in terms of what it means it's buying ad data where you can track cell phones and so there's you know in some of these cases what has happened there was russian intel officers in the vicinity so it's an interesting circumstantial case so clearly it has to be more done um people always ask me you know are the

russians capable of doing this answer is of course look what they're doing across europe now with their assassination campaigns i mean there's you know the you know the vladerman puttn is is there's there's no constraint on his behavior. But I don't know if it's them. You know, kind of for me, it was just kind of drawing attention to the 40 plus officers who have been hit in Havana and a couple of us who have kind of who this happened to recently. And all I can say is that going public with this was incredibly difficult and stressful. And look, ultimately, I have a migraine headache 24-7.

It's for three years. It doesn't stop me from having this conversation right now. but it's chronic pain. And again, I equated to the NFL and TBI. And as I just, you know, I see a lot of world-class doctors. I was just at NIH for a week. And I remember I talked to one of the doctors. I said, look, you know, it's going to take a while to figure out what's going on here.

The National Academy of Sciences NIH-W. Walter Reed all believed something occurred in the medical community is kind of coming to consensus. But I said to them, I said, look, I can do a couple things. I can have a couple pops of bourbon like I'm having now, which is really not. healthy. But I said, but I got my medical marijuana card. So it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, in, in Virginia. And, and I, and I, and I, and I joke around in this, but the bottom line is there's a lot of people suffering from chronic pain. And, uh, and that's, um, not new to the DOD community, uh, at all.

I think when I go to Walt Walter Reed, I'm going to be with a lot of former, you know, uh, folks from Virginia Beach and from Fort Bragg. Um, this is what I'm told. Uh, but it's new to the agency community. And, you know, it's something we just got to take care of. And Mark, just to try to unpack all of this a little bit because this is such a bizarre, but honestly, a fascinating story. The Russians have been fucking around with novel weapon systems going back to the 1950s or 60s. They've continued that development on lasers, mazes, they were called at one point, overwave weapons, acoustic weapons. They were very interested in the field of cytronics or psychoenergenics, ways of fucking with the human mind, essentially,

mind control, like the CIA was at one point in the 1950s. There were, there were, these organizations were very interested in these things. Some people have pointed out that a microwave weapon takes up, it's like the size of a tractor trailer. The issue with these weapons have always been that the, the battery is huge. We don't know if you guys, you've got, hit with a microwave weapon or some other type of weapon. No one really knows as far as my sources have told me and what I read in the press. Right.

But maybe if it was just to you, we could say, okay, Mark's got some screws loose, something wrong with this guy, but it's not just you. You have people across the Central Intelligence Agency in the State Department who are reporting similar symptoms. But there is clearly something going on, although we don't know exactly

what that something is. Yeah. So, so, Jay, you're 100% right. Look, so as I've come out in the press on this, which again was quite odd, and I think there's certainly some people probably in the senior leadership of the agency not happy with me, but ultimately I've talked to a lot of these people that the Havana cohort, I mean, it's terrible.

I mean, there's some folks who are seriously way in worse shape than I am. There is, you know, whether they went to the University of Pennsylvania or University in Miami or NIH or Walter Reed. There is medical evidence and then the National Academy of Sciences has a study that is about to come out which is unfortunately hasn't been released yet. You know, Dr. Dave Relman who kind of ran the whole thing. I've talked to a million times. He's pissed. He's talking about it in public. Something happened. And so, you know, so what, you know, what is it?

Okay, well, there's a couple things. So first of all, we have developed, you know, weapons like this. I don't believe we've used it, but certainly the U.S. military has experimented with these things it's not unheard of and again in number two if you talk to people you know my old friends i was not a russia expert but but people i know who served in moscow in the old days you know that spy dust is toxic uh you know i have friends who who there's been there's been a rash of serious illnesses that have happened to agency officers who have served in moscow over the years and so you know this is this is the agency's agent orange or or or just like you know the nfels tbi it's something that they have to come come to grips with now now now i will

say that the senior most levels of our operations director completely believe this. The medical staff at CIA doesn't, and that to me is really wrong. I think there's, which is what kind of spurred me to kind of come forward and go public on it. But, but, you know, we have to figure out what happened here and I think we can. The way I always equated it is if there was a county, so if I was a CIA officer going out to Bucharest and I knew that an al-Qaeda hit team was going to come out and try to kill me. We would put heaven and earth. We would put, you know, 40 officers on the street. We'd have counter surveillance. We'd have all sorts. We'd have J-Soc coming in. We'd have liaison coming in.

We need to have that same kind of focus for what's happening here and that's what I'd like to see. I think we'll get there. I think there's a lot of people within the operations director who believe in this. I know, and again, it's been out in the press. This has been brief to our director. It's been brief to the National Security Council. I think, you know, under a new and administration. This is not a political statement. I think it will be taken more seriously. But really, for me, it's just getting the folks the medical attention that is deserved. Because something happened. But ultimately, you're right. I mean, the way to also reverse engineer this is we have to find out what it was.

You know, and so look, like at one point I thought, this has been a three-year journey for me. I thought it was a second collection thing just juiced up and they just fricking fried me. I mean, you all remember, we had Scooby vans running over, you know, you know, A Scooby van is a van with Sagan Pier. You run around and you try to find the phones of a bad guy, and there's a team that goes in and picks them up. I always thought it was something like that. It turns out it might not be.

Might be something else. Mark, I was wondering if, you know, based on your experience in the intelligence community and having directly experienced one of these events, whatever it is, if you could speak a little bit to the motivation behind it, What would be the motivation to attack our officers in Cuba, in Beijing, in Moscow? Why would these attacks be taking place? So to me, this is easy.

That's kind of the easiest part in terms of just my analysis, because what do you want to do as, you know, so, you know, obviously, you know, killing an officer is one thing, but the kind of incapacitating an officer is something that is of, you know, So you look and you could do that you could do that by sending you know 10 walkins you said 10 walkins to an embassy and agency case officers are have taken up you know, you know, 5,000 man hours or you know of their time. It's it's that same thing. So this is this is doing something that's going to harm somebody that's going to take them offline from their jobs. That to me is is is kind of the kind of the motivation of this. And with with with with kind of the added component. of kind of the non-attribution. I mean, this is a little odd. We can't figure out what's going on. According to the press, and I've got to be very careful on this,

because I have to honor my secrecy agreement, but if you read the New York Times article and the GQ article, the agency concluded that via geo-fencing techniques, there were Russian intel officers in the vicinity of some of these attacks. That is interesting. Very interesting.

And this is not Russian intel officers in Moscow. This is attacks that happened in third country. where we saw serious movement and travel. So, you know, that's, you know, so it's, but I wish they would attack the problem like they would have if it was an al-Qaeda cell that was operating against our officers. And you know what? It's hard talking about this because, you know, I don't know if I was on the other end. I think these guys were, these people are all nuts.

I'll say, but I think you're 100% alright. It's not just me. Talking to the Havana, the officers affected in Havana is heartbreaking. They are, they have serious issues that have caused them to retire, whether it's state, commerce or the agency and that's really sad. And I would hope that it's taken seriously in the future. I think that comparison to the Gulf War Syndrome or Agent Orange is pretty in the sense that those are instances where our government was like,

deny, deny, deny, cover up, deny, deny, and meanwhile, all these folks keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse, it's better to just pull the Band-Aid off and for the CIA and the DCI and DNI and whoever else is involved to just pull that band-aid off. Let's get the, that's get the people the help that they need rather than playing this whole game. So, you know, it's funny because I have friends, you know, across the political spectrum on this. So there's, you know, there's certainly, and the outpouring was amazing. I had, you know, three former directors kind of contact me and kind of, because I knew them.

You know, the difference in me is only that I was just really senior and this happened. I mean, that's why I feel a sense of responsibility for everyone else. But the other piece is that, you know, this is not ideological. You know, a friend of mine, I guess I don't know what I name him, but, you know, he's a Fox News commentator, a former agency, you know, he called me and he said, okay, like, what is this thing? And I said, look, the only thing that matters, let's forget the, let's forget the complicity angle because everyone goes crazy when you say Russia. Just get our people treatment.

That's it. You know, so if they got to go to Walter Reed, sign a damn memo and get them to Walter read right and I think that that is that is very similar to Gulf Gulf War syndrome or TBI with the NFL you know the one of what I always describe and what I always told my junior officers and what upsets me now is that you know you make a pact this is a weird job that we have and it's the same thing the special operations community as a as with the agency so we are tasked to do the impossible we are tasked to kind of go way out in the limb

it's gonna be legal what we do but it's out there there and you always have to know that your super you know your your superiors you know the people in your command um have your back uh because bad stuff happens and so ultimately that's where i think this has been violated a little bit because i always did that i knew that you know you know if if bad shit happened i'll never forget a story where we're conducting counterterrorism mission i was back at headquarters things went bad and i had to go in front of the you know the the the uh the the deputy director of the CIA um and so i so i was trying to prepare myself for this and I walked in there I said okay so this happened we you know there was

we conducted a strike you know it was counterterrorism mission something went wrong there was some collateral damage this thing happens and let me tell you something this is this is on me and these are the three things that we did to kind of fix that now I knew that the agency leadership is going to get just an ass chewing from the White House because whether it's our intel support to the military whatever it was something went wrong the political folks are going to be pissed but but as as I gave this briefing and at the end of it and I asked you know any questions said no and I walked out and and afterwards there was you know there was certainly dissatisfaction that we had done something that

that didn't go well but they had my back and when the White House called said what the hell they said you know what shit happens we fixed it sorry you know no one got killed there was you know there's some people injured and and something that happened. But my agency leadership had my back. They could have hung me out to dry. And I was, I was senior officer. I was an SIS officer at the time. And so that kind of goes into the same thing here, is that you have to have a pact with people in order to do hard stuff. Why would anyone go to Moscow or Afghanistan or to Yavin or Syria if your leadership is not going to take care of you, both politically, but also on the medical front. That's really important. And so that's where I think

this has failed. Look, I'm also always an eternal optimist. I think this will be fixed. Just a couple quick comments from people viewers. Graham says thanks for the pod, as always, and most importantly, thanks to Mark and our chat spy for your service. Good luck with everything. Thank you. Thank you, Graham.

Kevin says, love Mark, hate that he is no longer with the U.S. government. We would be so much better with him. And thank you, Kevin, for a very I appreciate it. I think, again, we don't normally get into like the partisan politics and things like that on the show. But you brought it up and I think considering everything

that's going on in America right now with the election and everything, maybe it's sort of a propop a topic. One of the things you had mentioned to me was speaking towards why so many of your agency colleagues are kind of coming out in a very political way that I don't think we've seen from former agency people past. They're being very vocal about how they feel. What's your take on that? What are your thoughts on that? Boy, so, oh, God. So there's a couple things on this. One is,

I think that, how can I say this? Because I can't be a hypocrite on this. I've been extremely vocal in the media about my views on the, you know, the, I don't know, the current, previous, whatever you want to call it, administration. I try to, I try to, I try to, keep that in terms of kind of intelligence and foreign policy matters. But clearly that old tradition and history of former military, former intelligence, former special operations folks, not commenting is way that that ship has sailed in a big way. I think it's because this is such a unique president and administration.

And so I think, you know, when I left, I remember I went to see a former, director and I said, look, I think there I have a lot to offer and talk about intelligence matters. I didn't think we would get into political stuff, but there's a lot that we can say in terms of explaining the intelligence community and what happens. On a personal note, and, you know, and you can, one can agree with me or not, I was so disturbed about a lot of the things I saw. I think Lafayette Square, the events of Lafayette Square Park really bothered me. And so I was really outspoken on that. It would be nice, and of course I'll be called a hypocrite because, you know, obviously my, maybe my political views are known. It would be nice if we could get away from this again.

But I also, in the age of social media, I, you know, I don't blame people for whether it's an Admiral McRaven or a Jim Mattis for speaking out. If they feel like they have to, if things have gotten so bad in their mind. And so, you know, it's hard. It's a tough situation. You know, I mean, I don't know. Like, I have a long track record on what I've said in the press and on Twitter. I got to live with that. You know, I said what I said.

But, and so, but I did so only because I love this country and I thought what I would say would make something, make something better. I know, like, I will repeat once again that my brothers and sisters of different political. ideology so I had served with in really bad places, you know, have a seat at my table anytime, because I know that if I was in ever any danger or anything going on, I could call them. Even if I was like demonstrating across the street from them somewhere, you know, they'd be, they'd have my back. But, but you're right, that, you know, that old norm of not, not being kind of out there, has been, has been broken. You know, I think it's a really, it was a really unique time. That's what I would say. Yeah. It really is.

And, you know, one thing I want to ask you, Mark, is I absolutely think that, you know, just because you're former CIA in your case, former military in our case, I mean, you don't lose your political voice. You shouldn't, I mean, you have just as much a right to express yourself as anyone else in this country. However, I do have to say, not about you personally, but I was wondering if you think there are some of your agency colleagues, former military general officer. who perhaps have gone a little bit too far in describing President Trump as, you know, a Russian asset, this sort of insinuation of treason without evidence. So, okay, so, yeah, no, I, that's a great question. And I was always very careful on this. I mean, so, so, you know, so I was there for the first two years of the Trump administration. It was a mystery to me about the contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians. And it still is to this day. But I will say, and I have said very clearly, we have, we have, we have. you know when we catch a spy it's from a penetration of the russian intelligence service and until we have someone tell us a penetration that that trump was an agent i don't believe he was i just don't the idea that there's some some analysts sitting in the bowels of cia trying to catch like that

doesn't happen we catch spies based on a penetration saying that we are running this person right so when it comes to trump you know do i believe is a russian agent no but he's sure freaking complicated. Jesus, you know, and his affinity for Putin. And so I was always really careful in all of my comments on that because I think it's dangerous to say that, you know, because as an intelligence officer, former intelligence officer, you have to have evidence behind the kind of assertions. What I can't explain is his affinity for Putin.

And it drove me crazy. You know, and, you know, maybe one day we'll find out, who knows? Is there business interests, business ties? doesn't even matter, but I think what your premise is right is you have to be really careful in making those kind of sweeping generalizations without hard evidence. Because if there was hard evidence, you know, he wouldn't be president. You know, you can argue about the impeachment one way or the other, but if the CIA, if the DIA, if NSA picked up something where there was a, you know, an SVR officer running, you know, Trump, you know, he's not president anymore.

That has never happened. And so what I always tell people is the history of kind of the Trump campaign's dalliance with the Russians, because it did happen, is going to be told when someone brings out the Russian intel files on this. You know, there's the famous book, and it's worth, you know, called the Matroken files. A long time ago, there was a dump of a huge, you know, a KGB kind of history. That's when we'll find out what happened. Until that, you know, it's all, but you got to be really careful on this. I mean, you know, I kind of, because, you know, one of the things, and, you know, my friends will get annoyed with me now is the fact of the matter is when I was in the seat, here's, here's why I had my sleepless nights. There is a really weird affinity that, that President Trump has with Putin.

All of the things about Russian disinformation and Rudy Giuliani, you know, is really disturbing to me. That said, we also conducted a lot of offensive activity against the Russians. CIA was, you know, we were tasked to push back against the Russians, and we did so with White House approval. That's what makes this such a vexing strange problem that you could never kind of put your, you kind of put your finger around. My friends on the right say we were the hardest policy-wise against the Russians in a long time. They're not wrong. But then, you know, whether it's the Helsinki Summit or his kind of, kind of, you know, the, you know, the Roger Stone contact with WikiLeaks.

I mean, in the intelligence game that, like, this is really bad, it's, I don't know. It's, you know, I, like, you know, I, I, I, I think that the Mueller report, which I think was really flawed, was accurate, only in the sense is it's, it's still, it's a story that hasn't been written yet. And so I think that's kind of a fair characterization that I know I'm trying to kind of, you know, dance, what's it called, dancing between the raindrops here and satisfy everybody. but you know Trump's not a Russian agent but certainly he loves Putin but we push back hard against the Russians and a lot of Trump's policies you know ultimately I think helped you know kind of you know in Russia's push back against NATO in the West so I don't know go figure I think that's a fair characterization is it possible and I don't know is it possible that he just identify with or admired Putin's style of leadership or his machismo or whatever, but also recognize Russia itself as a threat. Absolutely. So that is entirely my favorite

token I brought back from my trip to Moscow was a coffee mug where you had a shirtless Putin on a horse with a shirtless Trump, you know, riding together on horse. I on the same horse. I mean, you know, maybe they're one of the same, you know, that, you know, that Trump just admires, you know, that kind of Russian, and Putin, you know, personifies that machismo. I think that, you know, that to me is a little, you know, and I, you know, I think about this, that a lot, there's, there's too much evidence out there, though, of this, and perhaps it can be explained by the naivete of the, of the Trump campaign or the Roger Stone's, there's just

too much contact with the Russians. I mean, at some point, you know, and maybe, it's because Trump was so naive coming in in the entire campaign. But this can't happen. You can't have this with our adversary. And then, of course, Rudy Giuliani running around the world. I mean, you know, which would, and my understanding is that everyone from national security advisor O'Brien to Attorney General Bill Barr is telling Trump, like, you got to stop this. Like your personal lawyers is acting like a lunatic, but Trump's like, that's Rudy.

Well, you can't because Rudy is in concert with Russian intelligence. whether winning or not doesn't matter he's pushing disinformation so it's a really muddled story i mean this is going to be studied in history for generations and you're right you know we'll have watched it but it is a it's a it's an incredible story where people get very passionate about but the true counterintelligence professionals are certainly uh scratching their head because this isn't normal what happened well trump's not normal and what i mean by that i mean he he's a queen's a new york businessman. Right.

Even Giuliani are bosom buddies that go way back. I mean, there was a photo, I think, ages ago with Giuliani and Drag and Trump like rubbing it, right? But didn't that happen? Right. Yeah. You know, like a publicity thing, like they go way back. It's possible that Trump never, you know, he didn't grow up in Congress or spending time

as a politician. So it's possible he's just freewheeling as a business. man not understanding the implications of like you say these contacts or or whatever else I think that that you you make a very good case there look Donald Trump for me so I look I grew up in New Jersey I mean Donald Trump for me was Howard Stern I mean I love this stuff like if you listen to Howard the that when Trump went on Howard Stern it was it was a it was a zoo yeah it was crazy Trump was page six of the New York New York Post you know and all of his all the crazy stuff so

You know, if you're a New Yorker from New Jersey, you know, like I was, like, you know, this, you know, certainly you understand who Trump was. I think Giuliani's gone a little off the wall over the years. I mean, you know, his kind of recent behavior is a little, a little disconcerting. But I will tell you on my office, I had, you know, I had a picture of, you know, after 9-11 of Bush, you know, George W. Bush and Giuliani together at 9-11 with the bullhorn. And their famous, you know, the kind of leadership stories of George W. Bush, Giuliani was right there. I mean, did an extraordinary job. You know, it might be a more fascinating story of Giuliani's kind of dissent into a kind of little bit of nuttiness rather than Trump.

Trump has been Trump the whole time. Right. Yeah, I don't know. It's the whole, the Trump presidency, trust me, will be studied by political scientists and historians. but also counterintelligence professionals i mean one day we're going to get our we're going to get our hands on russian intel intel files on it it's going to be fascinating and and probably it's going to be just as muddled now as then as it is now like you know you could see how look there is there are there are times where trump probably does things so provocatively in favor the russians that the russians

would say that's actually too much i i don't know if that makes sense it makes it makes it makes sense to you all. So if Trump is truly a Russian agent, he's not hiding it. Right. You know, it's, you know, a Russian agent doesn't, doesn't show his complete affinity to Putin, you know, openly.

I mean, so the whole thing's complicated, but I tell you, I have some sleepless nights over it. The one thing, and this is gonna drive probably all your viewers crazy, especially my former, is some of the, my friends at Ground Branch. When Trump invited Lavrov, um uh and sergey kisliak to the famous oval office meeting and he kind of and he was kind of

denigrating james combe who he had just fired i was scratching and basically he said to the russian interference is like my bad you guys are good that was like and i wrote about it a lot and a lot of people are upset about it but it was like that that's the that's like george w bush invited in bin laden after 9-11 and said yeah we're okay it's not the same thing but it's sort of is i mean there's not three thousand american dead but it was a it was a you You know, it's a, it just, just Trump violated so many of the norms of that, that I think has driven us all. Trust me, there's a lot of people, I think, probably on both sides of the aisle who just wants some normalcy now. I think probably Mitch McConnell is probably the number one person who just wants to kind of, you know, take a, take a knee, take a breather.

I don't know. Well, there was nothing normal. I mean, you said, you know, the normalcy. I mean, he walked in North Korea, you know. Like, nothing. he's a showman in all ways to his detriment I think you know I think that people would have a very different opinion who had he stayed off Twitter had he not yeah so you know but he's and if you know I agree I mean so you know I have very good

friends who were experts on North Korea who thought a lot of what he was doing was actually quite quite brilliant quite interesting really is the wrong word interesting. So it's taking a different tax on a really intractable problem. What do you do about the North Koreans? I think ultimately it didn't work. But I think, you know, the story of the Trump, not let's let's leave it at the Trump foreign policy is that he did things so differently. Sometimes he was right. Getting NATO to pay more, you know, is a good thing. Getting NATO members to pay their share. No one disagrees with that. Obama is trying to get NATO to do that. But I think he probably hijacked himself with a lot of silliness that was unnecessary.

So, you know. I was massively in favor of this Soleimani strike. You know, I thought that was for Iran to go, there's nothing you can do to us. And then two weeks later, I was like. So, so, you know, that's, that's a whole other. So the Soleimani strike, I came out, you know, so first of all, it cost him Solomani deserve to die. Yeah. And so, so I was, I just didn't like the way it was done because I think it could have been done under different circumstances.

in fact what we call title 50 it could have been a strike that's not attributable like the Israelis or like we do it i wasn't you know i wasn't always in favor of uh of kind of the chestn't something that happened afterwards because i think that invites more of an iranian response i think we got lucky lucky is a terrible word i think when when covid hit and when the iranian shot down the ukrainian airliner it caused so much internal dissension in iran but but ultimately uh i think that you know, the, you know, killing Kassum Soleimani, you know, no one sheds a tear on that whatsoever. I wish we had done it in a non-attributable fashion. That was kind of my beef with that. But look, you know, it's a real bad guy taken off the battlefield.

No, I mean, there's a lot of U.S. forces who, there's a lot of, you know, who I think are a lot of U.S. servicemen who were killed or injured because directly because of him. I don't think Trump would have been able to do it in a non-tribunal way. That's true. You know, right. When Iran publicly tells him you can't do anything. And like Jack and I discussed this when it happened because I don't even know if it was everything like COVID and all that. I think Iran and the leaders around actually go, we don't know how far to push this guy because we legit do not know what he will do.

That's the old that's the old kind of when when people thought, you know, Nick. Nixon was crazy or Reagan was crazy. You know, and so, but I think that, that, uh, I still think that the Soleimani strike, you know, that, that chapter hasn't ended. I think that, you know, and I always said that, you know, it might be beyond a Trump presidency, but, but I, you know, the Iranians are going to try to, you know, seek revenge on this. And then there's, there's a lot of U.S.

You know, uh, military diplomatic personnel who were exposed. Not to say, let me, let me just put this in a, in a, in a, in a very clinical fashion. I worked with the Israelis for years on very sensitive operations. When the Israelis choose to conduct a targeted killing, they do a very meticulous analysis of the repercussions that might come between zero and 10 years later. They will say, if we do this, we're going to lose an embassy. And they go ahead and they do it anyway. So I think that America just has to be prepared that when we do something like kill Qasem Soleimani,

which was a righteous thing to do, this is not a free lunch. might come come back to us down the line i'm okay with that um but i just i just you know that i it's it's worth it's worth making the point that that this is not going to uh uh uh you know go unanswered i think uh down the line so mark uh jim says thank you for doing this as a senior intel officer is there pressure to act in certain ways publicly not with classified info but in other ways I mean, the only thing I'll say is that, you know, so we have a, you know, when we sign a secrecy agreement, everything that I do and say I'm very careful on, maybe this is what he's alluding to, you know, whether I talk in, and, you know, speeches, you know, I wrote a book on leadership that's going to come out next July. It's called clarity and crisis. I'm really excited about this because I think that has a lot of great leadership principles for, for my time at CIA. But everything like all these stories that I talk about now are cleared when I talk to the media. It's all cleared. I'm really careful on this one of the things that is extraordinary is the amount that the agencies will clear and so you know You know that the story that I told you podcast. It's incredible you know and so so you know and so you know the story I told you about handling that agent in the Middle East

They cleared all this stuff now of course I'm not going to talk about someone who's active and the events I talked about in Iraq happened, you know, 20 years ago. But I'm really careful on this stuff. And so you just, you have to, you have to adhere to your secrecy agreement. If not, you know, you kind of get jammed up a little bit. But, you know, my relationship with the agency's publication review board is, I probably talk to them on a weekly basis. this because I, you know, I write and I talk so much on stuff. It's, look, they do weird things.

They're like, and of course, I violated it tonight. They're like, don't say J-Soc, say so-com. Yeah, they don't like you to say, they won't let you say special operations. They make you say special forces. It's like, what? Okay, whatever. And so, so, you know, and so, so ultimately, I think we're all kind of really careful on this. because because the other thing is that as you as you as you asked me before is you know why do why do why does someone elect to speak out i think there's a lot i can teach people about what cia does i think it's an indispensable institution and let me just jump into politics one more time we're if we're entering and admit you know an era where there's a democratic administration joy joe bide is a centrist there's a lot of people in the left in the democratic party who probably don't like the cia right i think there's much i think there's much as much of an

audience, you know, for me to speak and others to speak about the importance of the intelligence community and a strong intelligence community and strong authorities for the intelligence community. Because I think there's going to be kind of, you know, we're going to shift a little bit to struggles with, okay, does, does the intelligence community involve itself in targeted killings? What is the, you know, should we conduct covert action? These are real questions that are going to happen. They're going to come forward. I think there's a lot that the former's can say. On both, you know, like, yes, yes, we should do X, Y, and Z, but maybe not as much here.

That's what I plan to do. A lot of my friends are like, oh, you know, Biden's going to be elected and you're not going to say anything anymore. And that's just not true. Because frankly, and this is getting too political, like, I am as opposed to some of the things that Trump did and said as to AOC. and kind of that, you know, that kind of, you know, kind of what I think is a radical agenda. So I'm a centrist, true and true, and I think we need a strong intelligence community, and I'll fight for that as much as I can. We're not going to defund the CIA.

That's right. I mean, you know, come on. But some people want to. I mean, look, yeah, the irony is that, you know, so so many in the intel community became the darlings of the left as we trash the Trump administration. It's weird. It's weird, you know, because before I was a baby killer, you know. Yeah, we all were. We all were, Mark.

Right. And so, you know, so, so I, you know, I believe very strongly in the importance of the intelligence to me of special operations forces. I think just, you know, to throw one other thing out there, I think there's a really good debate to be had now is what do we do about kind of unconventional warfare? What do we do about Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq? I wasn't in favor of kind of the Trump, let's get up and get out and leave. But the never-ending wars, you know, have to have to end. America has to kind of project power, but it's got to be, it's got to do so in kind of a responsible fashion. These are really good, you know, debates to be had now.

So I think that that all of us, you know, even on, you know, everyone on this program has a lot to offer to that. because, you know, right now, you know, what's going to happen in Afghanistan? I try to get through these quickly here, Mark. The Killer Angel, he says, I've read a few things about reflexive control and its impact on American political discourse. Do you think current levels of political polarization and misinformation can be fixed, or is this the new normal in America? That's what a great question. Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things that distressed me the most was kind of the disinformation piece.

Not only that it was coming from the Russians, but that, but because our adversaries, whereas the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians are going to put forward disinformation. The thing that bothered me was the willingness of large swaths of the American populace to kind of take that in. It's really hard to combat that. Right. You know, and so, you know, and the best way to combat disinformation is, is, is, you know, and what we did, you know, to push back on Russian covert influence is to push, is to say what the Russians are doing. Right. But it's, but it's hard. Like, I mean, you know, I mean, you know, Facebook, this is a whole other program you could have, you know, the, you know, is Facebook a, a, you know, something of, of good or something of evil?

You know, there's, you know, Facebook puts forth an astounding amount of information more so than CNN, MSNBC, and Fox combined. So it's hard. You know, you know, where do people get their news? Where do people get their truth? So, you know, I don't know the exact answer. I think right now, you know, if you can live in your little bubble of watching CNN, MSNBC, other people who watch Fox, OAN, or on or on kind of, you know, on kind of Facebook chats have a different version of what's happening at the election. So it's a it's it's really I will tell you though what what what was the most disheartening to me was when Rudy Giuliani's running around with kind of all of his ukraine conspiracy theories and elements of the u.s. kind of political of polity are kind of are kind of running with it that to me was was something that that was really disturbing i've just i thought that was you know despite efforts of the FBI and the i see and others to kind of you know educate folks so this is not going to go away with

with the election. It's here to stay. T. Barr says, and I think you already answered this largely, but can Mark comment on the challenges of bouncing between a kinetic mission in the CT fight versus traditional intel? Seems like a big objective change. That is a great question because I think that we have to, with what we could, you know, the buzzword is near peer competition, which means China, Russia. So we have to move ourselves away from kind of the kinetic CT mission while still doing it sometimes to kind of the near peer competition. China is obviously our biggest kind of strategic adversary. Russia is, you know, medals and kind of tortures us constantly. What I would argue, though, is that we also, you don't only shift resources. CIA officers, CIA stations have to shift

back to kind of back to basics, Russia, China stuff. Safety is still important. I would argue also U.S. military does as well, including the, you know, the special operations community. And so, So it's a really good question. And so, you know, the way I dealt with it when I dealt with my special operations colleagues is, you know, goddamn, like, who's better in manhunting than the U.S. government and to narrow it down the IC and J-S.ok or SOCOM? No doubt, right? Manhunting is what we do. Soleimani strikes a perfect example. Why not shift that to finding out what the GRU officer are doing all over Europe?

Why can't SOCOM shift to that mission? Now, you might have to look a little different, you know, if you're, if you're, you know, six foot, six one white dude with tats and a buzz cut, you know, that might not be the profile to send them into Paris. But J-Sach and Socom have to evolve as the agency, so we should take that same manhunting mentality and push it to the near peer. It's going to take some more trainings, you know, some more trade craft training, but as I left, I was talking about this to the kind of the special operations community. There was enormous receptivity to that because, you know, I think that's where that's where we have to go. So there has to be that kind of shift. Yeah. Yeah.

Player Paul says, thanks for your service. Wanting to be a doctor in the military and considering going into the agency after, worth the pay cut and the secret lifestyle. No. No, I'm going to. Of course it is. Look, you know, I mean, I don't know. So, so, but this, that translates into a really vexing problem we have. So look, you know, so you can make a living in the U.S. government.

You both know that. You know, you have a middle class lifestyle. Maybe you have some fancy housing when you're in an embassy overseas, but you're going to do fine. The problem is not that. The problem is what do you do with a kid coming out of, I don't know, MIT or the University of Chicago, who can go get a job for $200,000 with a tech company? Or come as a GS-9 and make $75. dollars in the US government. So we have to be able to be competitive in terms of our in terms of our hiring of

world-class talent. You know doctors, sure, I mean, you know, look, I mean, you know, we have plenty of docs. But I but I think that that there's got to be kind of a change in focus on hiring because we're not going to be competitive in getting that kind of talent. Not necessarily in the case officer, Codre, we're a bunch of kind of knuckle-draggers, just like, you know, you were from them. I mean, you're going to get people who do it.

But in terms of kind of, we need data scientists. Right. You know, we need people who know about artificial intelligence. Right. You know, Google and Facebook are going to gobble these people up and pay them a lot of money.

The U.S. government's got to be able to do that. So, so I would say, you know, is it worth it? Look, serving your country is always worth it. I mean, the, the, the, I don't know I just, you know, I've just retired, so I don't know what the private sector is like in terms of, you know, I wrote a book, and so, and I talk a lot. But I'll tell you that motivation's always there, because there's nothing greater than kind of serving your country for the greater good. But you got to pay you, there's got to be, there's got to be a way to attract talent, and that has to be kind of with increased pay. Again, you know, and then, and then there's a flip it one thing further, and this, you know, this might, you know, resonate with you all.

U.S. government deals with brick and mortar facilities. So Facebook and Google all these places during the pandemic, you know, banks, Wall Street, learn how to operate from their homes. These are billion-dollar industries with proprietary information that's just as sensitive as the agencies. We have to be able to kind of move away from, you know, an embassy facility or Langley or the Pentagon and be able to kind of work in an environment. You know, these are things that I think about. I think about independently and at the I see yeah no that's a great comment actually Mark I think about that but tell us about your book sure what it's about where we're going to be able to find it what's going on with that so it's it's a great story because

you know so anyway the book is called clarity in crisis you know I was very lucky Hartford Collins is my publisher WME which William Morris endeavor it's a great you know literary you know a talent agency is is behind me. It's going to come out in June of 2021. I think it's going to come out on Amazon pre-sale next month. But what I did was, so when I left, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I did a little consulting for, you know, we have a whole bunch of kind of firms that teach tradecraft to the special operations community. So I did that. I trained some seals on tradecraft or surveillance detection. But ultimately, I wanted to write a book on leadership. And so

it's not a biography. It's not an autobiography. It's not a hero worship. a crap thing because ultimately my life, you know, taught me so much about dealing with failure. So I wanted to write a book on leadership with kind of key principles, you know, such as adversity and humility. And so I did so. And, you know, it's in the process of editing. I think it's going to be really well received because, you know, it's a book about how to deal with kind of all aspects of life. So, you know, it's nine core principles. I kind of give, you know, some examples and help for if it's a, you know, if it's a private sector client and what to do. But for example, you know, one of my key principles I talk about the glue guy or the glue girl. And what does

the glue guy mean? You know, every organization, every unit, military unit, every platoon, every agency station has individuals who are not the superstars, but are absolutely integral to a, to the success of a mission. And when I talk about clarity, crisis is these are these are fundamentals that when times are really tough when there's adversity when you don't know what's going on you'll be able to make decisions um which actually are not so difficult to make so what does that mean you need a glue guy you need these fundamental individuals that's a support officer um uh uh you know to be able to kind of give you that that that that's that feeling of of confidence that that there are people behind you um i talk you know one of my

other principles is is i talk you know adversity is the pd to success the performance enhancing to success you can't succeed in life if you haven't failed before so again when you're when you're when you're facing some kind of decision in in times of you know lack of situational awareness if you haven't failed before you're not going to be able to make that decision and you know what you've learned from it uh you know i i one of my other principles i talk about win an oscar that's that's the ability of an officer to get up in front of people and to have that kind of sense of authority you have to have some empathy you have to have compassion um i learned that you know it's a great story behind that i you know we came back from one of you know

one of the one of the ground branch uh missions you know i've been out for 36 hours hadn't slept i go sit in the chow hall as skin i'd never do this but i just sit by myself and the freaking base falls apart like like over the next over the next you know 15 minutes and and you all know this these are these are ground branch folks who are former special operations uh uh personnel who who were in you know events in somalia of black off down we're in torre bora it's and i didn't talk to them because i wanted to be my myself it's like the whole world fell apart because i because i made a mistake i didn't say to them hey i'm i'm freaking be tired so instead of me like yucking it up and trying to be how i always was i'm

gonna go sit by myself so so that that principle of win an oscar is really important again in times of ambiguity when you have to have these kind of critical decision makings in the book i kind of i you know um i end it with with putting it all together and it's an HVT operation in Schenann and I can tell you about it. Ultimately, we were looking for a really senior HVT who is responsible of the death as hundreds of Americans. I had left, I was not the base chief anymore, I was back in our headquarters. I get called down and by a very senior officer who says, what should we do right now?

We can, I've got to be careful on this, we can launch an operation to, a capture or kill operation. um he said what do you think we should do and so the principles that i talk about all kind of led into this uh you know adversity is the p ed success we've we tried before on this individual we had failed we learned our lesson um you know win an oscar they're asking me you know so so everyone's looking to me to make the call you know how can i make this call with lack of situational awareness except i really do have that situation it's an easy call to make um and so ultimately when we make the call and an officer literally a senior

officer at CI literally says to me if you're wrong this is your career I said that's fine you know launch let's go and there's a and and and it was a success and afterwards people like how like it was total confusing like how did how did you make that decision I was like it was easy because these fundamental building blocks we went into yeah was so clear to me even to the point of you know uh you know I talk about things like you know one of my principles is the process monkey it's training an agent we had trained an agent on the ground I knew this guy I felt totally confident as to at a time where there's this incredible you know ambiguity was a lack of situational awareness where people like want it want to say no you can say yes and i know these are a

lot of kind of cliches i'm thrown out there but i think there's a lot too it my my friends from the navy seal community will get pissed every navy seal in buds like is thinking about his book that's a really terrible thing to say but you know it's true like everybody in the steel community writes a book right we're with you i mean jack you wrote a book what the fuck i mean come on But not many CIA people have written a book on leadership. So I thought this is kind of interesting because we have this kind of different perspective on stuff. And so I'm really excited for this.

I think it'll, you know, it'll resonate. And if it doesn't, so what? I don't know. Like, what do I have to lose? No, I think, yeah. I mean, Jesus, this has been a fascinating conversation. I think it's going to be great. Say the name of your book one more time?

It's called Clarity and Crisis. It'll be pre-sale on Amazon in about a month. Probably next month. Next month, I'll send you all a note. It'll be pre-sale next month and then published in June of of 2000 and I will tell you a funny story that my agent said because we raised the political thing. So he says, so my agent at WMA, William Morris,

he's like, okay, there's two ways to sell a book. You got to go on two shows. You've got to go on NPR. To the left, you got to go on Fox & Friends for the right. So he's like, calm down. He's going to go. he goes, calm your freaking Twitter feed. You've got to go on Fox and Friends.

And I said, I got time. So he was right. So I think it'll, I'm excited. It'll be fun. That's awesome, Mark. And we will have you back on the show as we get closer to that publication date. Oh, sure. I mean, you've got such a breadth of experience that there's much more we can talk about.

Sure, sure. So, you know, if you're willing, we have an alienated too bad. We love to have you back. No, look, I'll make a little plug for you all. I love the show, and I love the show not only because it's informal, but you have such a great range and crazy cast of characters, because that was our life. I mean, I was joking before that, you know,

you had your buddy who was in a French Foreign Legion. I've been to French Foreign Legion bars in Djibouti. Like, when you said you had that, I'm like, I got to listen to this, because I saw those fun. Yeah, that's a great one. It's so much fun. And so what our community has, as whether it's intelligence or special operations or conventional,

no, it doesn't matter, it's just characters. And it's so fun to hear the stories because everyone thinks I'm crazy, we're all crazy, but, you know, and these are really life and death situations and terrible things we went through, but when it was a hell of a ride and you meet some crazy characters along the way. And if you can't kind of get off on that part of life and that, you know, that just the interesting people you meet, you know, you're living a dull life. So that's why I love the show and I love all the different kind of diverse characters.

You have on. It's on, thanks for having me on. I had a glass. We're honored. I mean, you know, we're the lucky ones because we get to have this wild, crazy cast of fascinating people. Oh, sure. Showing and talk to them, you know? And on that note, please remember to like, share, and subscribe to the channel.

If you're interested in supporting the channel and keeping us going, there's a link down the description to our Patreon page where you'll get excellent. to bonus segments and T-spring. Check out our T-spring. I think the link is below. The one's in the description. I would maybe avoid the T-shirts and the sweatshirts for now. That's not how you're supposed to sell merch, Dave. Where are they? No, all kidding aside, we got some T-shirts and like hoodie sweatshirts printed out and the logo came out like a little faded, more than so than we want to. The coffee mugs actually looked really good though, I think. You know, happy with how they came out. We need to thank Joey also Joey thank you for that. Yeah, Joey. It says one of the best episodes. Yeah, thank you man.

Rangers, see the way. So here's, this is the hoodie. As you can see, it looks a little faded. So we're going to call this vintage. It's a vintage hoodie, stonewashed. And then the t-shirts, we're not super happy with how the logo came out. We probably have to color it. It just needs to be a little darker, that's all. We just want to let you know so you don't get disappointed if you go buy one of them. Anyway, so that's what we're wrong with. But the coffee mugs came out nice. So, thank you again, Mark. I know we've kept you for like, what, two and a half hours?

If we keep you for a bonus segment for like an extra like 15 minutes. Yeah, no problem. Okay, thanks, man. So we're going to cut it here. And next week, our guest is going to be Baz Basil. I don't know if you know him, Mark. He was a paramilitary guy back in the old days. Oh, no way.

All right. Yeah, back on the 80s. All right, so we'll kill the feed here. Thank you for joining us for everyone tonight, and we'll see you next week, Friday, 8 p.m. Eastern Time. And Ian, at the last moment, thank you, Ian. What does Mark think of giraffe sells for on the black market? It's an inside joke.

Take a wild guess. What are you thinking about? I have no idea. Jesus. It was like $35,000, actually, according to a previous guest. all right guys we'll see everyone next week right thank you and that that