The Team House - Senior CIA Officer Weighs in on Ukraine and Syria | Doug Wise | Ep. 155

Episode Date: July 23, 2022

Doug Wise joins us for a second episode! Today's Sponsors: SAP Gear (Stately Asset Protection) https://SAPGEAR.com Veteran-owned company, Stately Asset Protection’s retail store specializes in handmade and unique survivability products. Use the code “TEAM” for 15% off your order! https://SAPGEAR.com For all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed Subscribe to our Patreon! 👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #ukraine #syria #ciaoperationsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents,

and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in, rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever.

else, those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the team house and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page, and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops. espionage, the team house, with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 155 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park.

Introduce our guest in just a second here. I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone there about how this is the first day in our new studio. I know it doesn't look drastically different right now, but we moved in. It was a whole lot of chaos. De-worked, really hard to get everything up and running from last week's show to this week's show. And here we are. I think it's everything came together. We're here. We're on the internet, right?

I hope so. And, yeah, so we're showing off our globe bar. We think that all men should have a glow bar and we'll be enjoying some LeFroyd tonight. I don't have a globe bar. You need a globe bar, Doug. I mean, you got everything else. You got a stem gun. We'll train you the globe bar for the stuff.

Sten gun. Yeah, he's got a stem gun and he has, is that a, it's not a ballistic knife. Is that an Applegate Fairbairn knife mounted? Yeah, it is. And that, it's actually a sterling SMG, but it's suppressed. That's pretty cool. So, guys, joining us again tonight is, Dude or Duder or El Dutorino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing. No, no, brevity thing. Doug Wise, senior CIA officer. now retired. Joining us on the show for a second episode, we covered so much in the first one, but realized we couldn't fit it all in. So I really appreciate you joining us for a second episode, Doug. Thank you for coming and spending your Friday evening with us.

Well, thank you for hosting me for the second time. The first time, it's always daunting when one does something live, but I think the team house makes it as, as low stress as it can possibly be for somebody who's not actually spent a lot of time in the public high. And I also just want to say on behalf of all the other veterans out there that, you know, we really appreciate what you guys have created, you know, a legitimate, authentic, respectful, you know, platform, you know, giving a voice to the voiceless and having an opportunity to, you know, appropriately share, you know, a little bit of our lives and, you know, a little bit of our lives and, you know, a little bit of our professions who, you know, others can become a little more educated and familiar and be informed citizens. And so I think it's absolutely great. I'm certainly not, you know, as heroic and as who as most of your guests are. But, you know, I'm here prepared to

discuss what you gentlemen want to discuss. Well, Doug, no, we appreciate it, man. And when you come through New York next. I hope that we'll have. We're building a whole second set over here that's going to look like a smoking lounge, and we'd love to have you in the studio, smoke some cigars and drink some whiskey. It's not going to look like a smoking lounge. It will become one. Yeah, we'd love to have you. And it's honestly, it's our honor. I mean, we are, I think both Jack and I feel very humbled and privileged that, you know, people such as yourself would even Dane give us the time of Dane. So we deeply appreciate you and others coming on and sharing their stories with people.

Okay, let's start. It's our pleasure. So thanks. So, Doug, I mean, I'm trying to remember exactly where we left it off on the last episode. But I know there were a couple topics specifically that I wanted to talk to you about. One of them was Syria. I mean, without giving like a huge preamble. from your point of view in your experience,

what did you make of that conflict? I'm specifically talking about the 2012-2013 uprising in Syria that then evolved into a full-blown civil war. From your vantage point, what did you make of that conflict and how the United States responded or failed to respond to it in those early years? I think it's interesting because, You know, I spent a lot of time on the Syria issue.

Obviously, we had a situation here, which from our perspective, you know, the behavior of Bashar al-Assad and his government was just totally in conflict with American core values and human values as far as that is. You're talking about a brutal regime that, you know, is using like Saddam Hussein, you know, willing to use chemical weapons as a crowd control device. And it's, you know, the classic minority brutalizing the majority. And using, you know, every, every tool in the toolbox for, you know, autocratic dictators. And so it was a brutal, violent regime that's so richly deserves to no longer be in power. The problem is Syria like Iraq is very multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-political. And so there is no one natural political and ethnic and cultural power in that country. And so what we saw as a reaction to Bashar al-Assad's father,

Hafaz al-Assad, when he killed about 25,000 of his own civilians trying to quell, you know, an emerging rebellion, what we discovered was limited tools that the international, community had. And when the Syrian people reacted, they too reflected that resistance and that rebellion. And when you use the two R words, it sounds like there's more substance and structure than it really was. But the fact of the matter is there were 1,600 separate resistance groups in operation in Syria at the time that I paid attention to this issue. And we used, the time to free Syrian army, but quite frankly, that was just a Western moniker that I think the media adopted to try to put some sort of form and function, you know, to the folks that were watching

and reading the media outlets. When the reality was, it was just an inchoate, chaotic, unstructured, uncoordinated, no collaboration, you know, individual from small groups of people to maybe 50 to 100 people in groups and everything from moderate Syrians to extreme Islamists. And in fact, many of the moderates that were fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime long before we got involved. You know, if you plucked one of those guys out and put them in Chicago, you know, our government would brand them a terrorist. And so, you know, we had to be very careful. And yes, there were, there were Al-Qaeda represented groups there. Jabid al-Nusra, was one of them that's metastasized now into something else.

But, you know, so we had al-Qaeda. We had every, we had non-aligned groups. We had, you know, non-religious groups. We had Islamic groups. And so it was a very complicated thing. And so trying to Western powers, trying to bring some structure and some cooperation and collaboration as all of our listeners here and viewers on the podcast, particularly the military veterans, you know, the unity of effort and unity of command didn't exist. Didn't exist. And so that's when the United States of America came in. And the Obama administration created a policy of very limited engagement in Syria.

And they put a lot of strictures on all the agencies and departments who could legitimately be involved in actioning U.S. foreign policy in Syria. and our role was in a cross department cross-agency effort was to try to improve on that unit, create unity of effort, and try to bring some organization and structure. And it was quite a daunting task for all of us involved in that process, everybody from State Department to DOD to the Department of Defense and many other departments as well. I was a whole government approach. But again, with very limited objectives imposed by the president. And we all, as part of the executive branch, we follow the guidelines by the president. And so we action within the limits of our authorities. And it was a nearly impossible task.

It was dangerous, brutal battlefield, extraordinarily brutal battlefield. There were no rules at all. And then as the fight went on, we started to see as ISIS grew from the loins of a destroyed al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the remnants of AQI migrated into Syria. They metastasized into ISIS. And then ISIS became the brutal machine that we ended up seeing. And at that point in time, we had to take some serious, decisive international action because they were murdering. not only their own countrymen, but they were murdering international representatives and

citizens as well. But in the early days, it was a very difficult, very difficult situation. Doug, if I, correct me if I'm wrong, but I just recall that, you know, Obama at the time, you know, said, you know, ISIS is JV by comparison to Al-Qaeda, which there's, I guess, some basis to that, but a lot of thought that they were as a lot of thought that they were, as a lot of, sort of internal, sort of national Islam or what's the political Islam movement internally in Syria and Iraq and that they were not interested in external operations like al-Qaeda. Is that why the CIA was given a fairly limited mandate initially in addressing ISIS, at least until Paris happened?

Well, I mean, ISIS was in a period of time that you identified, which was 2012, all time for it. ISIS was non-existent and was just, you know, it was more of a concept than it was anything real from my recollection, not a long time ago for me, but, you know, it wasn't a threat. It wasn't a factor in what we were doing in those early days. And it was really until several years later that ISIS transitioned from the junior varsity that it began like to, you know, a professional terrorist organization, which I think we all agree had tremendous capability and tremendous reach and quite a significant ideological following. But, you know, the president used that term, junior varsity. And I think given the ISIS in its existence at the time that the president

made those remarks, I don't think he could argue with it too greatly. Now, in retrospect, you look back and you go, You know, even I think maybe the president might wish he had not made those kind of remarks and characterized ISIS in some other fashion that, you know, at least allowed for its expansion and growth. But the reality is it was non-existent. I mean, quite frankly, the Syrian army was the bigger threat. There are another, a large number of members of Congress that were very afraid of interaction. in Syria only because we would provide inadvertent capability to, you know, some what appeared to be a benign, you know, resistance group that had, you know, the potential, like ISIS did, potential for, you know, extremist tendencies and growth and expansion and metastization. And so there are a lot of congressional limitations, not just executive branch. The Congress of the United States put a lot of restrictions on what we were asked to do. And so it was a very difficult task.

And honestly, like, it's, I mean, in retrospect, people can say whatever they want, but it's really trying to read the tea leaves when you're, you know, conducting an operation like that as to whether some element or some faction of it is going to grow up and become some big bad. Like, nobody, you might, you know, you might be able to say this has the potential to happen, but nobody can flat out say that it's going to happen. Doug, we just lost, all right, you're off mute now. Okay.

The, my puppy was barking, so I didn't know where these guys could hear it. So I was trying to keep the distraction down. No, I mean, you know, how do you predict the. path that a terrorist group is going to take from its humble beginnings as just a non-aligned, a non-ideologically motivated religious group. You know, it was, you know, very difficult. And yet at the same time, you had Jabba al-Nusra there. And so if you had Jabba al-Nusra on one end, and we had, you know, a, what we branded as a moderate group on the other, and there was legitimate geographic co-location, you know, if you engaged, you know, group A that had a very natural connection to the al-Qaeda-al-Aid Jada al-Nusra, you know, does that mean that you no longer have any connection?

You no longer try to help and advise. You no longer try to provide any assistance. These were the very difficult, to your point, very difficult. decisions. And Jabid al-Nusra was not an al-Qaeda organization. It was aligned with al-Qaeda. And then it became hardcore al-Qaeda. To your point, you know, would anybody have predicted that from its early days in the resistance there in Syria? I doubt anybody could predict the outcome. Who would have predicted the outcome that we see today? Right. Where, you know, I'm now a wretched pensioner and Bashar al-Assad still in power as a brutal dictator.

and Iran and Russia are fighting together, you know, in Syria on behalf of the regime. Well, on that note, Doug, I also wanted to ask you about the agency seeming, I don't want to say conflicting missions necessarily, but dual missions. On one hand, fighting ISIS. On the other hand, you have regime change. How did those two different missions work together or not work together? I mean, that must have been incredibly difficult. I will be a little reticent because I'm not sure, you know, what is discussable in the public domain, but I'll try not to weasel too much.

Those missions are, by any practical matter, they are incompatible. Yeah. Just from a resource standpoint. But, you know, the agency is a remarkable organization. And as I said on the previous podcast, I said, you know, remarkable people doing remarkable things in remarkable places. And I had the honor and a pleasure of serving with them. And so the way the agency structure in the demarcated, you know, counterterrorism center and then the rest of the geographic parts of the Directorate of a intelligence in my time, Director of Analysis, eventually, and the Director of Operations and

ultimately the mission centers of which I pioneered one, which was Syrian, and as a test case for the director at the time. But, you know, the reality is the agency has the ability to handle both of those very conflicted missions at the same time and exceptionally well indeed. And we also are able to partner up in a way that's not confusing and doesn't cause massive deconfliction problems and challenges. So we have our partners were able to join us in those separate missions. And we're certainly in the fight of ISIS extraordinarily effective. In the other aspect that you mentioned, we were certainly the entire West. You know, the Western nations were not quite as effective.

And I lay that less on our abilities and more on the fact that, you know, once the Iranians and the Russians showed up on the battlefield, there was very little way for us or the resistance to compete with that. Right. Because he had brutal military, no rules. Everything from conventional to chemical weapons, slaughter of innocent civilians was always always. on the table for both Iran and Russia. And, you know, we just, that's, that's in conflict with American core values. So, yes, there were executive branch limitations on our effort, true. But the fact that the matter is, given out brutal at battlefield,

we had very legitimate, self-imposed American core values that actually were the greater limitation. Right. Because we just didn't want to have our, our, our, loyalty to American values eroded by the brutality of that battlefield. Right. Doug, I don't know if you were, obviously this didn't have much to do with the agency, like decision-made process.

This was at a policy level. But we've seen, you know, we saw what happened in Yugoslavia when Tito, you know, died, you know, and then we saw Saddam what happened in Iraq when we got rid of Saddam. Was there a, we didn't want to get too involved in Syria, but was there a plan? backup plan. And was there a plan that if we did manage to topple, Assad, that how were we going to keep, you know, was there, you break it, you buy it? Because the alternative was ISIS at that time. Right. I mean, it's all, and like you said, there were 1,600 different factions. And we all

know what it's like in that part of the world. They are all vying for power. Yeah. Yeah, to answer your question as to whether there was, you know, a plan, it's a very simple two-word answer. No. I had a conversation, and if you would allow me to be very candid and not wheezzle my words, I had a very private conversation with a senior administration official who asked me what my, I was. down to White House. And so what was my job? And I said, I'm in charge of the Syria Task Force. And this individual goes, so it's a very tough job. And I said, yes, it is. And then the individual goes, well, can I ask you a question? I said, by all means, you sure can. And they said, so the day

after you removed Bashar al-Assad, what's that day going to be like? And I said, it's going to be way more fucked up than the day before. Yeah. I got two words for you, Saddam Hussein. Yeah. So it's an it's an eerily identical set of conditions. And my following comments was I said, ma'am or sir, your administration has no more plan for what comes after that transition of power than did the Bush administration. Right. And I probably exceeded my brief as a senior intelligence community official. And, you know, I was banned from going down to the White House after that, which didn't really break my art because, you know, it's very, it's very difficult to get in, very difficult to get out. And so I wasn't, I wasn't personally offended by being.

you know, spanked in that regard. But yeah, but that's, it's very, that's kind of a silly story to answer your question. No, it's not a silly story. I mean, it again, it's a, it's a question of pragmatism, but again, also a question of values and how do we balance those two things? And I think that's fundamentally what that conversation was about. Yeah, and it gets back to, to what, I think it was you, Dave, who said, you know, how do you predict things in a geopolitical environment.

Right. There are a number of factors that you can control, some of which you create and you can control them. There are a number of factors you don't control, you don't create, and you have some ability to manage them. But the vast majority of the forces, the factors, the issues of play in these things are not of your own making, and there's absolutely no way you can control them. And so it's a very, very dynamic, very exponentially.

explosive and unpredictable environment. And so I recognize that it's very hard, both for President Bush as well as President Obama, to scientifically calculate the outcome of a foreign policy decision. Right. Why I'm glad that I served as an executor of foreign policy, not as a maker of foreign policy, because those of us that don't make it can criticize those. it do. But, you know, it is nearly impossible and something that looks great, you know, because there's a shelf life for the outcome of foreign policy. Let's go back to the early 1950s when Kermit Roosevelt, when CIA, you know, removed, you know, Mossadegh from power, right? I'm sure, you know, in 1954, a year after that, I'm sure there are a lot of medals.

and a lot of clinking of glasses and everybody was talking about out of this bloodless coup and we now got rid of a communist leaning elected, you know, head of state in Iran and we have a very cooperative and very

collaborative, you know, Shah of Iran. It's now in power. And so the United States had a very, very helpful ally right on the periphery of the Soviet Union. That looked really great then. And I'm sure everybody was talking about and putting

the, you know, par bullets about what a great contribution they made. Fast forward and what do you have? An autocratic nuclear added Iran, right? Right. You have, you know, and so you could work back and say

we wouldn't have a theocratic Iran bent on the eradication of Israel. Right. And trying to kill Americans now. We wouldn't have that maybe. if we hadn't removed Mosaddek in 1953. And so could you predict, can I fault the people in 1953?

The answer is no. Can I fault Bush and Obama? Perhaps maybe a little bit Bush, you know, when a president is strongly advised, you know, that here are some deleterious outcomes for foreign policy. The president may wish to take heed. of the negative outcomes that are possible. But the reality is in the end, nobody can predict.

Nobody can predict. Doug, I have some other stuff about Syria I'd like to talk about before we move on. I'm sorry to interrupt real quick. I have to give a shout out to our sponsor for tonight's show, which is Sapp Gear. And I want to tell you guys out there about their RE Factor Dead Man's Hand shooting deck. And this is actually pretty cool. It's a deck of cards. You can use them to play cards if you wanted to.

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

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, um, okay, so the other thing I wanted to ask you about is why it took so long for the United States to get on board with the organization, the YPG and YPJ, eventually we call them SDF incorporating some Arab battalions as well. I'm asking to preface this. I'm not trying to make a gotcha question. I was told that it took a long time for us to get on board with the Kurds

because there was quite a few people in the administration who believed the Turkish propaganda that they're all PKK heroin smugglers. And so there's a disconnect there. It took us. a long time to get on board with really what was maybe the only viable partner force in the region. And I don't know if you had any visibility on that at all, but I did want to ask, you know, what your thoughts are. Well, I didn't have any visibility, but as a wellspring of opinions, I can offer an opinion. Sure. I think the administration at the time was extremely reluctant to get involved in an unwinnable, a truly unwinnable situation.

where even the foreign policy outcomes were very difficult to craft in an understandable detail. And yeah, I'm not surprised that there probably weren't at the time, a few people that believe that having a relationship with YPG would not be in the best interest of the United States because of some of the complexity, the regional complex. not the least to which was Turkey, who was a very staunch ally in our efforts in the region. They had every reason to want to have this brutal war end. The last thing that Erdogan needed was something like this on this southern flank. And plus the refugee problem that he had to deal with in the humanitarian crisis of starvation in Syria, that Turkey did a lot of good work, quite frankly. You know, you could do a whole podcast on the complexities of Turkey, needless to say.

But I think the administration was quite conflicted at the time. And I think what got us, and I could be way wrong, and my SOCOM colleagues might object. But I think it was really SOCOM took a true. brutal, hard look at what were the possibilities in Syria. And they're the ones that made the compelling argument to the administration that the YPG was the best possible ally we could have that could drive the most benefit to the U.S. and to the West and the region and the Syrian people, quite frankly. you know, if we had an ally with them, and then it was just a matter, as we all know, of managing the byproducts of that that came from the Turkish reaction.

But I think it was really, you know, our special operations colleagues that really saw the opportunities was very, with clarity, that it was not, you know, was not contaminated by bias. in politics at the time. And then as things began to pick up, you did identify a viable partner, started coordinating with our international partners as well. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the, well, the U.S. role, but from the CIA's perspective or your personal perspective from where you sat,

what it was like as we started rolling back ISIS. And we actually started chalking up some winds out in the field and pushing them eventually all the way back to Raqa. Well, I think of what you just described is the way the administration kind of parsed this very difficult thing. And it transitioned away from regime change to counterterrorism. And I think at that point in time, ISIS had now become a global threat. And yet it was the centricity was certainly in Syria, because that's where the greatest number of operators enjoyed some freedom of action,

but also ISIS represented, you know, an ideological ideal and an expectation from the senior leaders of ISIS that a lot of extremists all over the world had signed up to. And then we had the decentralization of terrorist violence where you didn't need to have, like back in the al-Qaeda UBL days,

where you had actually had to go brief bin Laden and then bin Laden had to approve or bin Laden had to send a task. And it was a very, very corporate kind of structure that existed. No, everybody knew what Abu Bakr, al-Baghdadi wanted. They didn't need to be told. And they, on their own initiative outside of Syria, cobbled together the capabilities, whether that was a handgun or whether it was an M-16

or whether it was a little bit of explosives, or whether it was an automobile driving into a crowd. they didn't need to be told. And so in Syria, you know, our mission, the U.S. and Western mission transitioned from regime change to counterterrorism. And that's where you saw the focus on ISIS. And very legitimately so. Yeah. And at a at what point, I mean, you said you were running the Syria task force. At what point did you transition out of that job and onto the next? I'm just kind of following chronologically. Let's see, you're asking me to do math.

Again, I'm an interim. It's kind of hard. I want to say I went to DIA right after Syria. And I want to say that had to be in the spring of 2014. Okay. So, yeah, let's get into that and talk about your transition into DIA. I mean, was that an interesting cultural shift for you to make from CIA to DIA? It was probably less of a cultural shift for me than it was for the people in DIA.

One of the things that is interesting is, one, I was very proud and very pleased, even though I didn't seek it. This was greatness thrust upon me by both Jim Clapper and by Bob Work, who was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, obviously with the support of Michael Vickers. who was USDA at the time. And so it was an interesting thing because I was following a CIA senior officer who had served extraordinarily well, a guy named David Shed, who could talk more about, you know, that period of time with DIA than I can. But, you know, I showed up in the spring of 2014. Mike Flynn was there and was soon removed.

And, you know, we don't need to talk about him during this podcast. But I think, you know, DIA is an analytic agency that has some elements of operational capability in it. And it's very difficult for DIA. And it, too, like CIA, you know, has just some extraordinary. women and men that are serving America in a large number of places, every embassy in the world, for example, all the J-2 staffs for the combatant commands are all DIA officers that are rented out by DIA and hired by the J-2s. And so DIA officers are serving, you know, extraordinarily well and professionally all over the world.

And so that is all analytic for the most part and an extension of the analytic power, majesty of DIA. Then there's the Defense Attachet service, which I think many of us are very familiar with, and probably the more common part of DIA that most people in the community had interacted with. And we add the Defense Clandestin Service, which had a very close point. partnership with the Director of Operations, and I prefer not to discuss that in detail, but, you know, it was the defense analog, and they were both mutually dependent in many respects, and it was great

cooperation, and trained to the same standard and trained in the same location. And I was the director of operational training, so I'm very familiar with that. And I'm very pleased with how that interagency cooperation had evolved over the years and produced just spectacular products now that training machine. And DIA is the beneficiary of that. They had something called the Defense debriefing service, which also, you know, spent time extracting information and adding in to an additional aspect of the richness of the intel flow into the analytic side of DIA. But DIA's mission was to support the chairman of the joint staff, was to support the Secretary of Defense, and with support the combatant commands, and to focus on the requirements that come from each of those customer constituencies, and to focus on that. And that gets to be very difficult because most of those customers are not policy makers in the traditional sense.

and, you know, they have a difficult time, you know, articulating a requirement that you can actually collect upon, you can process upon, and you can analyze and de Sam, you know, do the whole intelligence cycle. But I think DIA is really an underappreciated part in the concept of the American people, I think, not within the intelligence community. Right. But certainly within the awareness of the. the American people, you know, the tremendous contributions that the officers in DIA are making on a day-to-day basis in all corners of the world. Yeah, you know, it's funny that you say that

they're underappreciated because that's sort of in my experience, too, that a lot of people are completely unaware of the DIA. And when we say DIA, if you don't know, we're talking about the Defense Intelligence Agency, which, you know, central intelligence. agency, defense intelligence agency, but their people are highly trained, very skilled, and a lot of times are operating in austere environments without the resources that the CIA has, but they're still getting their job done. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The Defense Department doesn't support the defense intelligence agency as well as it should. And I think that comes from the fact that that most people in the defense department struggle as to the role of intelligence, period,

you know, the origin and the process to provide intelligence to them and to senior policy makers in the Pentagon. And so it's very difficult for them to really understand, you know, of the seminal, important, and critical role that DIA plays. And of course, Hollywood doesn't help, right? You know, because who gets all the credit in the movies? I mean, I'm enjoying, you know, the old man now, naturally, Jeff Bridges. Again, you know, you know, a corrupted U.S. government hunting down some patriot. And so it's disappointing that that happens to be the plot line as it is for the

gray man as it is for a number of others. But in any event, you know, MI6, thanks to 007, and we have CIA that get the lion's share of the focus by the entertainment industry and thus the exposure. And you don't find a lot of movies and maybe DIA doesn't want it. Maybe the director of DIA, Steve Barry, who's just a spectacular officer. Great experience. And just, he's just a wonderful guy. you know, maybe they don't want that kind of exposure. Maybe they just prefer to be professionals, you know, and do their job without the notoriety that the other agencies get. And again, it's just an agency that really is not as appreciated as it should for, you know, depth, depth of knowledge, do you experience the expertise, the commitment to the mission?

in defense of America that it really it should get, quite frankly. Yeah, I mean, I think honestly that the exposure would be good for them for recruiting purposes. You know, I mean, they do manage to get like some of the best and brightest

in the military, but, I mean, a lot of people are completely unaware that they're out there. And as far as the CIA, you guys are always the villains in every movie anyway. So, yeah, yeah. If we were as, if we were, if we were as good in real life as our villains are in the movies,

wow. Yes. CIA could do anything. Yeah, that cigar would have worked on Castro. Yeah, that's right. You guys just come in in the morning and you flip the switch and turn on the weather

machine. Exactly. That's how it works, right? From your volcano. But the reality is, I think if you talk to any former senior defense official, you know, particular former chairmen's of the joint staff,

former secretaries of defense and deputy secretaries, and the senior leadership, as well as current and past four stars, I think they'd all sing the praises of DIA and would be the first to admit that they couldn't do their jobs without DIA. And they'd equally say they can't do their jobs without the intelligence. the diversity of capabilities and the professionalism and patriotism of the IC. They just couldn't do their jobs.

And DIA is a big part of the intelligence community, just not as well known. Yeah. And what was the position you were put into? Were you the deputy? I was a deputy director. And so my job was to manage, in corporate world, you'd call it the chief operating officer. and so the director connects the agency to the outside world, and my job was to manage the day-to-day affairs of the agency.

And this was a very difficult time in history in quite a bit of ways. I mean, 2015, 16, I mean, we're talking about all the stuff in Syria and Iraq happening and then Ukraine happening in 2014. I mean, you lived through a slice of history there, Doug. I mean, what was that like from your vantage point? It was, you know, as I think many of my colleagues and many of your colleagues, and you, both of you, for that matter, you know, your participants in history. And so ultimately, we're able to talk about, you know, the history that we made. And so it's, it's an honor.

It's a privilege, you know, to serve America in that way and to serve with our country. colleagues, you know, as I said, you know, just extraordinary colleagues, you know, to the left of us, to the right of us who were working for and who were working for us. It is fascinating indeed to be an agent of history, to say the least. And you characterize that period of time quite well. It was quite strange, indeed, unpredictable, dynamic and potentially lethal. And in many parts of the world, both, you know, kinetically as well as geopolitically. Let's jump into Ukraine a little bit. 2014, Russia annexes Crimea.

Can you unload that from your perspective, again, from your point of view, Doug. I mean, I don't want to go on my own diatribe here. What did you see happening there? Did you, was there any thought or prediction that this was going to happen? Do you see it ramping up? What was the takeaway from that and what was Russia's motivation that pushed them in that direction? Yeah, I spent time in Ukraine and I really admire the Ukrainian, the former leaders as well as the current leaders. The brutal invasion and attack on Syria should not have been a surprise to anybody.

Putin had talked long decades ago about the fact that Russia could not be an imperial power without owning and regaining control of Ukraine. And they just lost Libya. Yeah, and they just lost Libya. And in fact, you know, Russia's geopolitical influence all over the world had begin to erode, you know, the periphery of the geopolitical empire of Russia, you know, it was just rise. and just atrophine for all the right reasons, who wants to ally themselves with somebody like the Russian Federation.

They don't share any core values with any other nation on Earth. So it's kind of hard to allow, maybe Iran, obviously, in Syria, but that's about it. You know, and so no surprise. And I characterize the special military operation, as Putin's military operation. This invasion of Syria began a long time ago. He spoke about it. He was articulate.

He was consistent. He used guttural, you know, very rural Russian terms to describe his disdain and his hatred toward Ukraine. And then when Ukraine decided to become a, you know, a values-based, democracy. And yeah, Ukraine's got issues, but a values-based democracy that was Western leaning, Putin could not personally allow that to happen. We need to keep in mind that Putin's invasion is Putin's invasion. It's not the Russian invasion. As president of Russia, he's got a strategic plan to do more than just Ukraine. But the invasion of Ukraine, it was personal. This was. This was, still is a personal fight, which is why Putin is prepared to pay any cost.

They've already lost, whether you believe CIA numbers of 15,000, or whether you believe Ukrainian numbers of 30,000, it really doesn't matter because Putin doesn't care what the numbers are. He's already lost a divisions plus in men. He's lost divisions in material. He's lost everything he's had all over the world. He's destroying his economy. And he doesn't care because he's so obsessed and personally and emotionally involved in the eradication of Ukraine. He wants to eradicate Ukrainian identity, the Ukrainian culture, the Ukrainian language, to Ukrainian people and Ukrainian political structure and the identity of Ukraine.

And when you're so emotionally and irrationally involved in that decision, you will pay any price and you will pay any cost. And Putin is going to be impervious to and insoluble in shame when we criticize human rights and genocide in Ukraine. All of that just goes off his back. He doesn't care. All for the fever dreams of empire is what you're saying. All is hunger for empire. That's right. And it's not just a Russian Federation foreign policy objective.

If that was the case, you could probably negotiate an end to this. Right, right, right, right. You could probably make an argument even to the Russian, even to Putin. Right. To a non-Putin president of Russia, you could probably make a compelling argument that maybe there's a way we can end this. You can kind of win and we can kind of win in the way that

we look at it. You got to keep in mind that the Russian ethos is we don't have to win as long as you lose. You as Ukraine, you as the West, you as the U.S. Right. And then the other thing you got to keep in mind in terms of the cost.

Right. You know, within the Russian culture, it's a culture of suffering. They have suffered from the beginning. Russian people have paid enormous price. Look at the World War II cost. Look at the death and destruction. And the Russian people were prideful sufferers.

They were the victims of military genocide as, you know, in Russia because of, you know, the operation to, in the Hitler mounted against Russia. And all of that which is followed. from that. And so it's prideful suffering and suffering is a duty to the state right in Russia. Right. And so even Russians are prepared to pay any cost because of that cultural obligation. Right. There is no way to end this war until the last Ukrainian is killed or run out of Ukraine. It's not going to stop. It's interesting also because, Because, you know, like what you said, that it's a personal war.

It's not just a Russian Federation thing. It's a personal thing for him. And now, and I think that if he would have taken Ukraine in three days, like he thought he would, then there would have been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the international community. But he could have kind of gone nothing to see here. Like, everything's fine. Oh, the damage would be done. You know, like it's over.

Like, get on with it. But now that it's become what it is. is, and in its personal, his pride, his image internationally, his image within the country, do you see an off-ramp for him? Or do you- No, no, there's no off-ramp. The off-ramp is the death of the last Ukrainian. That's it. You know, there is no negotiation. There is no, you know, mediation that's possible. Yeah. Can there be prisoner swaps? Yes. Can there be agreement for the release agreeing to avoid famine in China, famine in North Africa and other places? You know, can there be little micro agreements? The answer is yes. But is there going to be a strategic negotiated end to

this genocide? The answer is no. That's not, I don't see that in the cards. It's not what Putin has telegraphed already in very clear terms. And I had, and I really respect that, had a British MI5, and I respect that service immeasurably. At the Aspen Security Forum, I think the director may mention that the, you know, Russia is now, Putin is now tired. The Russian military is running out of steam. I think we're going to run out of steam long before the Russian military is going to run out of steam. The Russian military may run out of tanks and soldiers and guns and bullets and rockets. It's possible. They're going to have to do some replenishment and research. supply. But the reality is, I think, there will be a weariness in the West. There will be a running

out of steam on the West before the Russian military runs out of steam. This, when it's personal, there is no way it's going to stop unless your personal goals are met explicitly 100%. Right. This guy's not going to quit. Well, and it's also interesting because, you know, during the cold the whole idea of mutually assured destruction sort of kept nukes off the table. But I mean, New York just came out with a public service message about a nuclear attack. And I don't think they're just like picking that out of the ether, you know, that somebody has briefed them and said this is a possibility because if Putin is on this crash, and I'm not trying to fearmonger,

but if Putin is on this course where there's no cost that's too high in order, to achieve his goal, then that obviously has to be on the team. But if that's true, he would have used tactical nuclear weapons already, and he hasn't. So clearly there is something that is preventing that. I mean, it's not that there are no rules. And, you know, he's afraid of what the repercussions would be of doing that. Well, I'm not sure what limits Putin's use of tactical nuclear weapons. I think right now he doesn't need them.

That's probably why he's not using them. This is a guy that's prepared, again, he's prepared to lose so we can't win. He is prepared to sacrifice every citizen of the Russian Federation to nuclear Armageddon, I think, in order to accomplish his personal goals. Megalomaniac goals, you could argue, you know, where they're rational goals or not, there is goals are personal, they're emotional. And he's prepared, as I said, to pay any price. Right now, I'm guessing he sees he can accomplish both his Ukraine goals as whether his other geopolitical goals to return Russia to the greatness of the Russian Empire of the early 1900s. You know, I don't think he needs to use that. Would there be a downside to Putin for the use of those?

assuredly so. Would he assume greater risk for proportional response? You bet. Could that affect his goals in Ukraine and his regional military goals? The answer is yeah. So he does have pause. He's not ungoverned by those factors. But imagine the following scenario where he makes progress in Ukraine. the Russian front line is now, you know, from Belarus down through Kiev, down to Poland. And he's now facing, you know, what you and I would argue would be just an amazing guerrilla campaign that he'd have to deal with. He's going to suffer a guerrilla warfare requirement that's going to be unseen in modern times. and what's the most successful guerrilla campaigns? It's those that have the will of the people and have sanctuary.

Whereas the sanctuary, it's going to be a NATO territory. So how long you can conjecture, how long is Putin willing to take guerrilla bans living the high life in Poland while moving across the border at night, smoking, you know, a Russian platoon or an artillery battery, and then going back to the safe haven of Poland? think he's going to let that happen too many times before he lobs a 12 kiloton bomb into some NATO peripheral city. Yeah, is he going to bomb Warsaw? Probably not. But some city are we willing

to go transnuclear? Right. I don't know. I'm glad I'm not responsible for that decision. But I think there are certain conditions that could exist that would make Putin's use of tactical nuclear weapons very comfortable for him and very obvious, too. So what do you think the play is, then, Doug? I mean, I read today that Russia has committed about 85% of their military to Ukraine at this moment. I think this came out through the Aspen Security Forum that you mentioned, because the DCI was there as well. They talked about how they're running out of ammunition. They're losing hundreds of soldiers.

The Russians are running out of the ammunition, losing hundreds of soldiers a day. They're getting war down. Yeah, they're taking a little bit of ground here and there, losing it in other areas, but they're paying for every inch of it. What is the way forward from this point of view? I mean, they're kind of locked into a war of attrition right now.

Well, without a doubt, and it's going to be brutal. It's going to be long. And the other thing we need to keep in mind that Putin's not under, any time of line. I mean, going back to Dave's comment, I mean, would Putin have loved a go for one outcome? Yeah, you bet. You know, a couple hundred dead people and done in 19 days, right? And yeah, he would have been more than happy to do that. And then he would have continued another Gulf War I further into Ukraine, or having Ukraine totally capitulate and have the Zelensky

government be in exile now and have an occupation. I think that would be, I don't think the Russians would have been able to do that. But the fact of matter is, if they take several years to do that, then it's in the art of the possible, in my view. I have done my part to help by buying up every bit of wolf ammo that I possibly can. So I've tritted a little bit Russian ammunition stockpile as well. But the reality is the Russian military is going to slowly learn and incorporate lessons, learn.

They're going to improve. Are they ever going to get even close? close to the capability and a professionalism of Western military. No way. But the fact of matter is they will learn enough on that battlefield and make enough change and modification to be ultimately successful if they wish to be using the Zhukov ideology of destroying everything in your path, whether they're combatants or not, move forward into the rubble and then destroy everything further forward and repeat that process as often as necessary. I think the Russian military industrial complex will slowly catch up as well. So yeah, could they be out of ammunition

now? I doubt they're going to be out of ammunition a year from now because their war machine on the industrial side is going to be going to get into high gear. It's going to be more efficient. That's what I think. Even with all the sanctions? that have come in place? Oh, yeah, the sanctions. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm a fan of sanctions. Don't get me wrong. And I think they're absolutely, they're necessary, but not sufficient.

Because I think Iran, North Korea have proven under some of the most rigorous sanctions regimes possible. Right. You can still have tremendously lethal capabilities in North Korea case, including fission weapons. Iran, not far behind. And so I don't have confidence in, if you can't keep a North Korea from becoming nuclear, you're hardly going to keep the Russian military industrial machine from producing 762 rounds and rockets. I just don't see that. It's not like China can't funnel them everything that they need to keep it going and to bleed us on the down-mo, you know.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you could do a whole podcast, I think, on China's role now, not only in Ukraine, but with Russia, with Serbia. Yeah. You know, I spent a lot of time in the Balkans. You know, Serbs just bought a ton of military equipment from the Chinese, perhaps maybe the thumb their nose a bit at the Russians. But the reality is, you know, you could do a whole thing on China. But China clearly offers moral support. They offer financial support. And I suspect that when it in an existential situation, that China would fill the gap between the shortage of military supplies to buy time for the Russian industrial machine to catch up where they wouldn't need Chinese help. Yeah. But we're not talking about existential. We're just talking about pushing that out of East Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think, I think, yep, I don't, I don't disagree. have they expended a lot of stuff, they lost a lot of tanks. They've burned up a lot of gas. Yeah, they've done an awful lot. But I think ultimately they're going to catch him. But I think that that kind of like that connects back to your earlier comment that this is really Putin's war. It's not Russia's war. It's Putin's war. So for him in a lot of ways, it very much is an existential threat. Yeah. And because everything from a leadership standpoint, you know, in America, for example, you know, the power of our political leaders devolved. from the Constitution, you know, the amendments to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the

statutes that all underpin that. In Russia, you know, all of the political power devolves from one dude. Right. Vladimir Putin. So, so, you know, whatever Vladimir Putin wants, everybody's going to line up behind him and do what he wants. I often get asked, well, do I think there's going to be a push or a coup d'etat. And the reality is, I say, is that possible? Possible? Is it probable? No way. You may remember that pre-invasion national security meeting was kind of bizarre where, you know, Putin was sitting, you know, social distance away from this arc of apparatchiks, you know, and confidants and political officials, the Putin cabinet. And if you look, and you think you go, well, could there be one or more of these people to grow tired of the cost and think about Russia rather than Putin and themselves?

And the answer is no. Why? Because all of them are unimaginably wealthy. All of their wealth doesn't come from the bank account they have in their name in any reputable bank. It comes from the web and labyrinth and financial structures that keep Putin wealthy. All of their wealth devols from Putin's wealth, all of their political power, which enables their wealth and actions their wealth, and gives them status and position and privilege within the Russian society, all devolved from Putin. So they don't need the guy on the far left of that group, you know, poisoning, putting a cigar or putting a bullet or a bomb on Putin. That would be counterproductive to everybody's self-interest in that room. All their money goes away, their status goes away, the Dacha goes away, the car goes away, the security goes away. Everything that makes them what they are today goes away. If Putin goes away, they have a vested interest in keeping that.

dude alive and to make sure they do everything in their power to satisfy his personal obsession with the extermination of Ukraine. So, yeah, they're held hostage by the political system they created. Absolutely. But so Doug, if from an, let's say from an American perspective, if you're the director of central intelligence today and the Biden administration's policies defeat Russia and Ukraine, what are you recommending? What is the move here?

here. What is the play? Well, I think we have some legitimate self-imposed limitations that we've put on ourselves. You know, we're not going to put U.S. forces into Ukraine. We missed the opportunity to do that. The administration should have done that as soon as Russian began to build military power, combat power on the periphery. We should have slapped an infantry division in there for training with our counterparts and just left him there. Would that have stopped Putin? Would have given him some pause? He might have tried it,

but the first time that, you know, that that American division lost three soldiers and Putin lost 3,000, he might do a little bit different math. I don't know. But we missed the opportunity, no longer possible. And so I support the policy decision

not to put American soldiers. You know, do we let other elements of the U.S. government operate. Obviously, we put an embassy back at Kiev. The answer is yes, and we should. We're doing everything that we possibly can to really help the Ukrainians as much, and we already have seen the results of that. And those policy decisions by the Biden administration certainly haven't come without some risk. And so I got to give credit to the administration officials, president on down, for making those hard and courageous decisions. On behalf of our core values and our support, essentially an ally and somebody who's being brutalized, you know, by Vladimir Putin.

But the reality is the most important thing we can do is to continue Western unity, NATO unity, continue our strong and our resolve to recognize that this Russian invasion is part of a greater move on the part of Russia. that this is not just the annihilation of Ukraine. That's a huge part today. But five years from now, there's going to be a whole different set of geopolitical objectives, maybe not as person, but certainly going to be part of Russian foreign policy to, again, to punish those that escaped the grasp of the Soviet Union.

Lithuania, Estonia, Al-Afia. Yeah, the Baltic states are going to. get, they're going to get spanked hard. And so we've got to do everything in our power to keep further Russian expansion if we lose Ukraine. And it's all going to be possible only if we maintain our resolve, our determination, and our unity of effort. So again, I give serious credit to NATO leadership, the United States leadership and British leadership. And, and British leadership. and trying to keep everybody's eye on the ball here and recognize that it's not just a fight in Ukraine. This is a fight for survival of Western and Eastern Europe.

That's what's going to be at risk here. And when you say Western Resolve, Doug, I mean, inserting my own opinion, you know, America, we've loved to fight as a country. And even when the wars are somewhat unpopular, as long as we don't have a draft, it seems like we're happy to arm people. We're happy to do airstrikes. We're happy to do special operations missions. Americans don't have too much trouble throwing down. When you say Western Resolve, do you mean like the Russians cutting off gas to Germany and then the winter that develops into a political conundrum?

What do you see is the friction points as far as Western Resolve is concerned? Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. It's a great question because, you know, resolve and determination probably, you know, 100 different people have. Hard to define sometimes, yeah. Yeah, a definition. What I'm talking about is political unity where the messaging and the political foreign policy decisions by Western nations are coherent and they're in support of the geopolitical objective of preventing Russian acquisition and brutalization of other emerging and existing democracies, particularly those that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. I think it's a political unity of effort, a messaging unity of effort, a resource expenditure

unity of effort. And yes, there's a military unity of effort as well to recognize that we must, in fact, show military resolve as well, even if we're not lobbying, nor should be lobbying. you know, NATO armament into the Russian Federation. But to be able to deploy and host other nation NATO forces in countries that they historically have not been to and haven't been in permanently and semi-permanently, I think we have to do that. And I think the resolve also will be a byproduct of following through on commitments that have already been made. I'm already starting to see a little wavering, you know, in Germany's, you know, remarkable, you know, promises that they

had laid out for us. And so, you know, it's going to take courageous Western national leadership to be able to prevent Putin after, and it's going to be a, and it's going to be an exhaustive war for Russia. Even though I said, I think the military industrial complex in Russia will ultimately catch up. They'll never get to where they were before the conflict. And they will be exhausted as well, thanks in large part to sanctions, thanks to what I think will be some lack, I think some tiredness on the part of China. because China's got its own financial issues. It's got to worry about.

And it's got its own geopolitical objectives all over the world, not just in Europe. But I think, you know, Vladimir Putin is going to have a hard decision once he's done with Ukraine to turn his sights to other non-Russian Federation territory. And anything we can do to make that decision harder is going to be in our best interest, whether that's to show unified military presence in Europe

and Eastern Europe, whether that's going to be unified political messaging, unified foreign policy, decision-making, it's going to require what Russia perceives as a solid, unified approach and reaction to his own foreign policy, aggression and brutality. Well, how would you rate our response thus far? Because, again, my own opinion, if I would previously not have thought that we were capable of this level of cohesion and unity and leadership, as we've shown over this conflict so far, throughout Europe and the United States, North America, getting on the same sheet of music and fighting towards a common objective, prior to this recent conflict, I would not have thought we were even capable, given how incoherent our foreign policy has been in years past. Well, I'd give, quite frankly, the administration an 11 out of 10 for effort.

They've done more in Ukraine than I would have ever anticipated, ever anticipated. I wouldn't see this out of a Democratic administration, this kind of thing. And if you look at the relationship building, if you look at the gap between the way the Western European nations and the way NATO viewed the United States coming out of the Trump regime, this administration had to build, had to rebuild a lot of trust, had to rebuild a lot of rapport, and had to reestablish a lot of relationships that preexisted. So they had to do that just to begin their response to Ukraine. So I give the administration tremendous chops. And I also give, quite frankly, an equal amount of credit to the heads of state, the leaders and the citizens of Western European and Eastern European nations. I'll exempt Hungary from this because they're kind of nationalistic and kind of turn in very

Russia like, but the reality is that those citizens, those leaders also respond, set aside those created issues with the United States. They were willing to set aside that bad blood and those eroded relationships and trust. They were willing at great risk to set that aside, citizens and leaders alike, because they recognized that partnering with each other under United States and international leadership was going to be absolutely extentially necessary to respond to this brutal invasion of Ukraine. And, you know, for us, we're separated by Russia, by, you know, 30-minute ICBM launch and by a massive ocean.

For them, they're sharing a border. Right. So they are there within, you know, tactical missile range. So, you know, for them, it's all different issues, the Russian threats, all different issues. It's very complicated. You mentioned natural gas, you know, is obviously a lever that Putin's going to pull. We'll see how well the Germans stick to their resolve when things get a little chilly. And I've now on record of saying, you know, the Germans willingly became energy hostage of Russia for self-interest.

And now they're paying the price. But that's it. Our administration has done remarkably well. They've done more inside Ukraine than I would have ever thought possible, ever thought, because the political and the escalatory cost, you know, would be, in theory, by any measure, would be extraordinary. And the fact that our State Department, our Department of Defense, Secretary, Defense, Secretary of State, you know, Bill Burns and CIA, Avalho Haynes, in the IC, all doing their part as well as other agencies, departments, to build unity of effort with our European partners. And again, the courage that our European partners have shown, you know,

to overlook the issues that existed when this crisis began and to recognize the United States and unity of effort for what it is and what it needed to be. I give, quite frankly, tremendous credit to the senior to the heads to the heads of state and their leadership teams we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for that courage take i'm curious about a little bit about china i mean we like we beat the soviet union by outspending them right by by making them you know basically insoluble with i mean china is the largest lender in the world we owe like a trillion dollars to china do you do you think that China is going to buffer Russia in order to bleed more countries in terms of their long,

you know, their 200-year plan? Well, they want to, you know, Sinai, Russia, you know, politics, very complicated and involves everything from military economics to politics and intelligence and, you know, all that dime stuff. I think, you know, I've, I've, I'm on record as having saying that Russia wants to destroy us, China wants to own us, because China can't afford to destroy us because they've bought so much of our debt. Right, right. And we buy so much of their stuff. If their biggest customer collapses and goes away, that's not in China's best interest.

Yet at the same time, propping up Russia, they don't need an unstable Russia. They need Russia to come out of this, you know, this war of annihilation and this crazy foreign policy, you know, journey that Putin has set the Russian Federation on. Russia doesn't need a lot of instability along those former Soviet client states that exist along the Chinese periphery. They don't need that. China's got enough problem. They got Uyghurs. They got COVID. They have their own financial issues.

They're ultimately going to find a rusty population. because of the kind of the brutal, pop societal controls that they put on, you know, social credit score among them, you know, all of that stuff. So Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership

have got challenges galore. They don't need another one on their, on their western flank, when Russia melts down and, you know, the Russian Federation collapses. And then China's faced with dealing with the humanitarian aspects and the political byproducts of that. They don't need that. So they're going to help Russia survive at least and maybe even prevail because if Russia prevails, we don't. So

that's it to the advantage of China without getting kinetic with the United States. Right. Right. And I think, you know, when it's all said and done, you know, China has very adroitly exploited the greed of emerging and non-emerging. nations. Economic power, you know, ask any, any country that isn't as wealthy as, you know, first world countries. And you'll find that, you know, China built them a dam, build them a railroad, build them a power grid infrastructure, put their GSM network in place, you know,

giving them cars, I mean, just tremendous and not without cost to China as well. But, you know, there are limits. look at Sri Lanka. Franklin brought that up. Yeah. Because in great measure, they had tied their entire economy to the, to the Chinese support to the Sri Lankan economy. All of a sudden China said, we got, we're not able to help.

Boom. No fuel, no food, no electricity. Wow. And all of a sudden you had, you know, total societal and political collapse in Sri Lanka, you could tie that to China. economic foreign policy in Sri Lanka. And Sri Lanka is just one of a hundred countries that have eaten at the Chinese financial trough.

To your point, China has mounted the largest intelligence operation in the history of the human race against the United States. It is the most extraordinary, the most comprehensive, the most comprehensive, intelligence operation, again, that one nation has ever mounted against another nation. China has done that from humid to tech in its many forms. China has done that.

Why? Because they want to understand us. They want to be able to leverage us. They want to know how we make decisions. They want to manipulate those decisions. It's not that they want to destroy us. They don't want to create a Sri Lankan collapse of the United States. It's not in their best interest because, again, the financial future of China is inextricably linked to the financial future of the United States of America when it's all said and done.

Yeah, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. So, changing. I told you. I was a wellspring of opinions. I told you. Well, they're great. I mean, they're, to my people. We appreciate it. Tell us, Doug, a little bit about winding down on DIA and going into retirement. after so many years in the military and then the intelligence community, what was that experience like? It was like it is for any officer who retires, whether they retire from the military or whether they retire from the IC.

It is something that has to be done with forethought. You just can't do it impulsively. And the minute you retire, the entire, and I'll just say support. network that is often under underappreciated and not even detectable that exists when you're a public service employee all of a sudden goes away and now of a sudden that you are out on your own. I remember when I was a young captain, I think, and I was in graduate school in Dartmouth and I got a below the zone promotion to 04. And David Petraeus's father-in-law had retired to a little town just south of Hanover, New Hampshire. And he asked his dad to call me and his father-in-law, excuse me, his father-in-law, General Nolton retired, who had just retired, to call me and

congratulate me. And General Nolton actually did more. What he did is he invited us down for lunch. And so he went down for lunch. I walked into his, what was a man room. I won't say a man cave. And he's busy nailing stuff up on the wall. And he said, hey, I'm sorry, it's going to be a very simple lunch because my wife sat taking driver's egg. Because you see, neither my wife or I have driver's licenses because we've always had drivers. Wow. Our entire adult life. And so I'm now, because I ask him. I said, so what's the biggest challenge? And he goes, I have no staff. I now have to manage my life all by myself. And he goes, the military, you know, a lifetime and military service put me into a condition of learned helplessness. And I laughed and I said, I don't really understand that. It doesn't make

any sense to me. Then I retired from DIA and all of a sudden I didn't have my own remarkable, although small, my own remarkable staff, you know, the young women and men who took care of me that managed my life and made sure I was on time and made sure that I was prepared and stayed late and came in early and got me to point B from point A and made sure that, you know, I could be the best that I could be and made sure that I could be the best. The DIA needed to be, needed me to be on the 31st of October. August, 2016, that all went away. And then all of a sudden I reflected on General Norton's helplessness. And I said, now I know what that the late General Nolton was talking about, because I am illiqued. And while I certainly as adept as anybody else that came out of 50 years

of public service on the national security business, of being able, and I think we all, you gentlemen included and all of our all of our viewers you know pride themselves on being able to operate in a chaotic environment with limited data and you pick and choose and then you winnow it out wheat from chaff you make a decision got to have a decision better than no decision and you do this all at the speed of light and the speed of human thought and you try to make the best particularly in combat to make the best decisions you could possibly make and we all pride ourselves of being able to do that and following the Boy Scout oath through justice to the American way and being patriotic and all that.

Guess what? None of, for those in the private sector and I'm the private sector, it's going to sound bad. None of that applies in the private sector, you know, so much, right? And so the first thing I discovered was how little I knew about human existence in the real world and how even though I served like you both did multiple times in very dangerous environments. The reality is I know very little about human life in the normal world and how do you function as a business person without compromising your ethics.

Right. Intentionally or unintentionally. Right. By now trying to function in an environment that you were not. never and intentionally so, nor should you have been, intentionally exposed to. And it was a scary, frightening, horrible situation to find yourself in with no real support network. Right. Except my lovely wife was my biggest fan, you know, who kept me on the straight and narrow, kept me so that I didn't lose faith and confidence, you know, and, you know, I love her to death and wouldn't be eight. I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for a... I'm going to ask you about a life after service.

I have a couple fewer questions to get to. I think we touched on this a little bit. KJM asks, why do you think Putin agreed to allow Ukraineing grain shipments to Africa and the Middle East to move forward? Positive PR for him? Positive PR, and it's what Erdogan wanted. Artie asks, love the show.

What's Doug's take on Putin health rumors? if so, does that apparet check prop him up like weekend at Bernie's or do they back down? Yeah, it's like the guy is returning Dean Wormer's wife. I always remind people that Anamos was written by a Dartmouth graduate and I went to Dartmouth. I know I know Animal House for a well. But I take Bill Burns' remarks at face value that Putin's health is as good as it ever is going to be at this age under this set of conditions. I think if the director of CIA thought that there were some risk physiologically to Putin, I think he would have nuanced that message about. And I think what he wanted was to send a message.

with I powerfully believe. He's not going away. We can't depend upon a black swan event medically or otherwise to solve this problem, which gets back to my point, which I made too much, which was resolved determination and unity of effort in the face of this Russian brutality. We can't depend upon, you know, Putin choking on a chicken bone, you know, or, you know, getting cancer to overdose of steroids or some crap like that. Now, Bill Burns doesn't want us to settle on the fantasy of an easy button.

That's what Director Burns was saying. Doug, out of curiosity, if you were like the king of America and, you know, setting policy, is there a limit to how much we support Ukraine in this effort? Is there a budgetary limit? Is there like, where do you think? Yeah, where do you think the limit is, I guess? I don't know where the limit is from a dollar value. I mean, obviously, there must be a limit because even though the U.S.

is extraordinarily fortunate in many ways, financially and natural resources, the fact of the matter is that even America has some limits because we have other expenditures that we need to make for social services, for infrastructure, and our own national security that has nothing to do with Russia and Russian provocation. And so, yes, there is a limit. And I trust that the president and the U.S. Congress, regardless of who's in the Congress, I trust those women and men to make the right decisions as best as they can. will it be as much as many of us would like? The answer is probably not.

No. But the reality is we've already spent more than I would have ever predicted, ever predicted. And so there's a limit for sure what that limit is. I don't know. Nor should we know because we want Putin to not know either. Kjam asks, curious your thoughts on why NATO does not have immediate response squads or dedicated against Russian troops to prevent fires and critical wheat fields? That's a bit of an odd question there, hey, Jam.

I mean, I could probably hazard a guess. I mean, we've already said we're not going to have direct engagement against Russian troops. Yeah, I mean, first thing is, if I infer from the question that if there's a, right now, there's an issue because the grain is embargoed. And but if the grain fields are destroyed, then that's a permanent embargo. It doesn't matter what agreements Russia makes with Iran and Turkey regarding Ukrainian grain. And so should NATO have flyaway squads to go prevent that, I think, you know, the argument could be made that, you know, from a global perspective, that probably makes sense. an escalatory perspective, that probably doesn't make any sense. And so I agree with you, Jack, that that's just not going to be practical. Isaac asks, this is a little bit of a different

changing gears here a little bit. Mr. Wise, you have a background in counterproliferation. How dangerous is the nuclear black market and why isn't the threat taken more seriously? In Mumbai, India of May 2021, a nuclear black market was busted with seven grams of uranium. This is stuff that should not be out in public at all. So how is it getting in a criminal hands? Also, there was that Boy Scout, how to build his own nuclear corps with fire alarms and tinfoil. So there is a big fear of another average show

making his own or worse terrorists. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a good question. First thing is, I have a little bit of experience in counterproliferation. I have zero expertise in counterproliferation. And I think my counterproliferation center colleagues in CIA and those across the community that are working this, this real top priority issue, I think would be the first to say they don't get the credit they deserve or the priority. That is necessary that motivated the question. And because proliferation is like ubiquitous, it's so embedded in organized crime and in human trafficking.

and narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking. It's so embedded. I mean, just the trans, the black market culture and ubiquitous aspect of that makes proliferation very, very difficult. And so you have a very effective in existing human trafficking network, narcotics network. You just inject a little medical grade,

you know, radiological material in there and get it into the hands, is some guy who wants to build a dirty bomb. And that is really, really difficult. The signatures created by, and I'm not talking about the radiological signatures, although that's part of it. The reality is you don't have to have much

to do a lot of harm and to create a lot of chaos and psychological damage through the use of WMD in its many forms. And so it's extremely difficult. difficult to eradicate. And when you have emerging nations that possess those WMD materials and precursors, and their adherence to the rule of law is not very strong. And their own criminal infrastructure is quite prevalent. You know, it's very difficult for them to be an effective ally, even if they want to be with the United States and other other nations in counterproliferation efforts.

It is really, really difficult. And I use the poster child example as North Korea. We have put in place one of the most oppressive counterproliferation regimes ever. And yet, you know, North Korea, with, without by Pakistan, China, just the name to Russia, you know, who have enabled North Korea to circumvent. And that's the other issue is we have other nations that not only are just benign neglect, but they're actively working China, Russia, Pakistan, the name three. And North Korea is its own proliferator too, you know, to circumvent legitimate nation counterproliferation efforts. Very difficult problem.

Doug, I thought that was really interesting when you said. I never thought about that before. So sort of in your experience or in your purview, like the human trafficking, narcotic trafficking, weapon trafficking, they're all sort of using the same sort of rat lines. There's sort of a combined interest there just in how they spread? Yeah, it's the same principle that is applied that creates and sustains those. kind of trafficking in its many forms networks that exist. I mean, we were and still are concerned that human trafficking networks will allow terrorists to illegally enter the United States.

I think the likelihood of that, fortunately, is quite small. The likelihood of self-radicalization is much higher and a greater threat. But the reality is that's true. That infrastructure is perfect for proliferators. Perfect. Arty asks, sorry to get into politics, of course, but he briefly mentioned him earlier. What does Doug think of Mike Flynn and his quote-unquote beliefs? Actually, I'm on record. You can find everything I have to say about Mike Flynn by Googling me up and Mike Flynn. I prefer to keep the team house as apolitical as we possibly can. I've already erred on, you know, edged into, you know, the DMZ of the team house by my earlier comments.

And so anything I have to say about Mike Flynn, the better use of Team Mouse time to go Google me up and everything I have to say. There are two documentaries coming out this fall that I've contributed to, and I have further to say, by that mechanism. I actually, before we get into post-service life, I do have one question for you myself, Doug. The banner image that we used for this video of you looking like Santa Claus posing with some Afghan paramilitary soldiers. Could you tell us the backstory behind that picture that you sent us? Yeah, that was Team Mike in Afghanistan. It was in Assadabad.

and was that picture my wife coined the term the dream team and that was my Northern Alliance leadership team. Our team in Assadabad, which was about as far away as any team was at the time, there was no forward operating bases that existed. It was CIA, we're with AFO and with other elements of U.S. Socom in country. We were out on the edge of the empire. And that was a picture of my leadership team. And it underscored the partnership that we had with Ahmed Shah-Makshu's Northern Alliance as an institution. and the investment that the Northern Alliance was making a great cost in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

And you can only imagine with all of those men that are in the picture, minus me, are all Tajik's. And we're in posturing country. And so you can only imagine kind of the tension that existed at that time. So there are only two Americans there, is my own. myself and all other basegies, you know, it was just too, myself and a ground branch guy. So, Doug, talk to us, you did talk about the shock of retirement, but what is your post-surface life consisted of? What are you up to these days? Well, I am actually busier than I ever thought I was. and by virtue of the privilege of having retired from senior ranks of the U.S. government,

I'm attractive to certain parts of the private sector than some other colleagues might not be as fortunate. I serve on a number of corporate boards. And, you know, I'm privileged because I'm able to serve not only for some extraordinarily enlightened, you know, company leadership, but also company employees, but also companies that are really doing a lot for America, quite frankly. Oxford Analytica, I'm on the Strategic Advisory Board for them. They're a British American company that provide business intelligence. you know Oxford Analytica, not Cambridge Analytica, right? Not Cambridge Analytica, this is Oxford Analytica.

And yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because some of our participants today might have thought it was the same, but it's not. A company called Bodie Aviation, which is a special operations aviation company, which a number of folks in 160 know real well, Global Guardian, a global security company, Global Guardian evacuated

10,000 people. I've heard of that. Yeah, an extraordinary company. 10,000, third country and Ukrainian nationals from Ukraine. Global Guardian just did an amazing job. Former J-Soc guy run in that company. Yeah, if you call Pete General Schoonmaker, a former J-Sockewarm.

guy. I often tell people, I'm the, I'm the guy on when you got the former chief staff, the army, former commander of Socom, the former commander of JSOC, former commander of Delta, and another commander of JSOC and a couple TF160 people. Yeah, yeah. And FBI senior, former commander of the FBI HART, when you have them on the board, I'm the guy, I'm the junior member. Oh, we lost signal with him. So, hey, everybody, until he comes back, there he is. Oh, there we go. I'm just privileged to be a member of that.

And then Taylor's International Services, which provides all the logistics for a number of state department enterprises. And I prefer not to say any more of that. And interestingly enough, I'm on the honorary board of the International Spy Museum. I have chuckle, only because, you know, other members of the board are a couple noteworthy Americans that you might heard of, such as Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro on the board. So it's kind of crazy. But I'm honored that the Spine Museum bestowed me that singular honor.

I do a fair amount of consultations. I've been a long time consultant with the world's largest law firm, Denton's U.S. They have 147 offices around the world. And I work very closely with the senior partner Carl Hopkins there on security and risk mitigation matters for clients. And I should say that I'm also on the board for SpyCraft Entertainment, founded by Jerry O'Shea and John Sefer, both of whom I think you know. who do the interface between Hollywood and the intelligence community. I do that as well. And I work a Los Alamos National Labs a bit.

I work for an advisor and a consultant for Moody's Analytics. And I suppose I should say that I work for two companies that probably nobody here has ever heard of called Native American Technologies and Valbin Corporation, and both of them provide subject matter expertise to U.S. military leadership and training exercises. Native American technologies at the two-star, three-star level, run by the combined arms center to warfighter series of exercises as part of the country team infrastructure that supports those general officer training exercises and Valban Corporation that provides subject matter expertise at the tactical level where I role play as a CIA

station chief for our special operations colleagues. And so you turn the crank on all that. And I'm staying, quite frankly, you're rather busy. Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like in the out processing, you missed, you were gone the day they talked about what retirement was. The retirement is. It's funny, it's funny you mentioned that day because some of the. of our closest friends out here in New Mexico, where Cindy and I are involved in an hot air balloon

community, we grew for one of the special shapes balloon. And they all say the same thing. You don't grasp the concept of retirement. Yeah, aren't you supposed to be drinking white Russians? Yeah, yeah, I should be. I should say also that, you know, this is going to further conflict with what Dave had to say, I'm also an adjunct professor with the University of New Mexico in the National Security Studies Program and with the counterpart program at Fairmont State University, which is run by a CIA colleague of mine, Rob Pap. And so I'm an adjunct for those two as fine institutions. So you can be honest with us as T-Mass. We're all about the open, the honesty. Have you done all of these things?

just to try to get a staff again? Yeah. Yeah, well, it's because of all these things that I am suffering the disadvantages of not having a staff. And my lovely wife, again, throughout our marriage, you know, she's done a number of things. And I'm serious about, you know, I would be dead today. I was heading down a path of self-destruction that was unhelpful. and she got me on a straight and arrow. But yeah, she's the first to say, look, I'm your wife.

I'm your biggest fan, but I'm not your staff chief of staff. So it's all on you. I don't know, like, this is a very personal question, and you can answer it any way you want. But when you talk about like a path of self-destruction, did that have anything to do with like, with the job, how you handled it, or was that something completely different? No, this wasn't a PTSD-like issue.

No, this was just, you know, me, you know, because of a number of factors earlier in my career, that, you know, I was consuming a little too much alcohol. And like any other issue like that, you know, I become the last to know that it's a problem. Right. that my loyal subordinates enabled and compensated for me as long as they possibly could. And then they eventually, you know, couldn't tolerate the behavior anymore. And they literally had an intervention with me. And, you know, I remanded myself into the warm embrace of the Employee Assistance Program,

which is not something that is a very natural thing. for most of us to do. And I'm not saying that it was a courageous decision because I did that out of self-preservation and job preservation. And because my wife was so insistent that it was going to be in our best interest. And she was so lovingly supported through that whole process. But the stigmatization of doing that is something that, you know, is a counterpoise.

And it's something that pushes you in the opposite direction. something like, you know, out of control drinking, you know, you internalize a self-preservation mechanism which prevents you from seeing your own behavior the way it is and you rationalize it. You make all kinds of excuses. And back when I was at GS-15, if the wise corporation were selling stock, nobody would have bought that stock. That's. That stock was valueless at that time. I had behaved in a way that I had eroded, quite frankly, a lot of confidence in my subordinates, my superiors, and my colleagues. I had broken a lot of trust.

I was somebody that I think a lot of people admired. And I think my behavior, my affliction, my disease, and the way some people describe it was certainly an abrogation of that trust and the confidence they had. placed in me. And quite frankly, I had a lot of rebuilding. And I'll bet that a lot of people, senior, lateral and beneath me probably thought there was no fucking way I could do that. There is no way anybody was going to do that. And you would have not bought any, it wasn't even penny stock. You know, it would have been stock that would have been negative of worth. And I don't think anybody would have said there's just no way this guy is going to make it because he's just not going to be capable. And with a lot of help, a lot of support, a lot of the absence of that

stigmatization, great people in the employee assistance program. And as I've said multiple times, you know, the patient-loving, you know, extraordinary resilience on the part of my wife when many times on the path of of resurrection and redemption and and rebuilding and rehabilitation that I could have drifted off into what that's a lethal path right that's not that's a lethal path right you know Cindy kept me on the on the straight and narrow and kept me true to all of the other support that everybody else was trying to provide me this the CIA did a remarkable job. And CIA colleagues and leaders did a remarkable job and helping me get back on the path. And the evidence allows me to conclude that I did a reasonable good job at that.

And I managed to, after that, be at chief of station four times and become the deputy director of the defense intelligence agency. That's really important, Doug, because I'm glad you share that story because there's so many, this remains an issue, right? That there are so many jobs in the intelligence community. It's a high stress position. And there's still a fear that if I go to get help for what I'm going through that I'm going to lose my security clearance and all these other things. And, you know, your story kind of shows that there is a path to redemption. It's not just, you know, a one-way ticket out. Yeah, and it is a path where both you and the instant, you who are on the journey, it's not an easy journey because you got to make significant substantial.

I've overused the word existential. Existential life changes, behavioral changes in order to get through that and to make the changes that are necessary to allow you to become what others. wants you to be first and what you ultimately see that you need to be second, quite frankly. And it's a hard journey. It takes an awful lot of work, but it takes an awful lot of work on a part of the institution. The fact that CIA created a program such as EAP, which tries to destigmatize it as much as we possibly can. I won't say that's quite the same with the anomalous health, Anomalous Health Initiative, otherwise known as Havana. They've taken a different path.

But the fact of matter is in my time, and I like to think the Employee Assistance Program is a life-saving program. Yes, the CIA has plenty of counterintelligence equities in the success of that program because the Russians would be more than happy to exploit a wounded, vulnerable employee, you know, who doesn't recognize. they got a problem. The Russians will recognize it first. So I get that. But the fact of matter is, I'm glad you said what you said, and I'm the first to admit, I do not believe for a minute that any of the stress and any of the environmental factors by virtue of my profession were a factor in what I was what I was personally dealing with. But it was heartwarming to me to see that the agency, literally, I don't want to make this too saccharine, but literally it put its arm, the institution put its arms

around me and took an employee first approach and said, we'll worry about the work later. Let's get you right. And it was a multi-year journey before the agency was confident enough that I had made enough changes to allow me to reenter into the workforce in a meaningful and significant way. That's amazing. I mean, I mean, you'd be hard to press to find any employer, honestly. To put up with that. It's true.

That, you know, and I mean, it's, and especially like in, I don't, I don't know that you'd see that in the military, maybe. Depend, it all depends on your leadership, right? Yeah. Yeah. It really does come down to that. And it's also such a testament to you, too. My dad's been sober for like 30 years, and I know what a journey that is, you know, when, you know, when he was going through that and everything.

Yeah, I've been sober since 1997, so not as long as your dad. But, you know, I don't regret it. I have found that I enjoy life even more than I didn't realize what a drag it was causing. I mean, it poisons you. it kills you, right? Yeah. It kills all your relationships. It kills everything.

You know, a lot. And I was very fortunate in that, you know, I didn't have an automobile accident and kill a family of five. You know, I didn't commit anus crime. You know, I didn't betray America and the Central Intelligence Agency because of this. And I'm very fortunate. So I had a lot of advantages that a lot of sufferers don't have, probably like your dad. didn't have. I had a lot of advantages to begin that process that a lot of people didn't have. And I had a lot of people who were really fighting for me as well, many of whom remain anonymous

to this day, quite frankly. I don't know who they are. And I give great credit to those who suffered before I got my shit together and became a little different. me. And I like anybody else along the path of human existence, you know, you have a lot of regrets in life and a lot of geez, I wish I had had done that and I wish I hadn't behaved that way. I wish I hadn't have done that. I wish I hadn't have spoken. But the reality is, you know, I think anybody that knew me then and knows me now will tell you this dude is not the same do. Right. You know, he is totally different. And it's not so much because of me, but it's because of the others that wanted to make me, the me that now is on your podcast, by frankly.

Yeah, one more question for you, Doug, and I'll let you go here. Brendan G. asks, I hope we didn't talk about this on the last podcast. I don't think we did. I think this was an off-air conversation we had. But Brendan is asking, what's the deal with the sterling submachine gun on your wall? Could you tell us the backstory on that? That was a, let's see, how do I want to be able to be truthful here? That was a gift, a non-monetary gift given to the agency by a foreign government. that had been captured in a clandestine operation.

It had been, I don't know what's the right word. You capture a weapon. You probably don't take, I don't know what the right word is. And then the agency honored me by presenting it to me as a non-monetary award before I retired. It's amazing. I mean, you have some incredible, not just that, but you have an incredible, you have an incredible, I love me well. And I'm sure that that's not even half of it. This is only looking, I hate to say this, at a small portion, there's this portion, there's that portion, this here.

Yes, I have a world-class, I love me, wall. It's amazing. And Doug, Isaac has one other question, just to boil it down here. What recommendation would you give to young people out there who would like to pursue a career in the CIA? Well, first thing is, while Hollywood presents an artificial aspect of CIA, the reality is the CIA is an institution that is just remarkable, the remarkable mission, remarkable resources, remarkable people, as I've said multiple times, driven by patriotism, rule of law, and American core values. this agency and its employees epitomize that, quite frankly. The agency needs everybody from electricians and carpenters to clandestine operators to logisticians, to technical operations officers.

There's not a single area of interest that CIA doesn't have a need. Not all of those skill sets are needed in massive quantities. but because you are a unique individual with unique set of skills, don't self-select out. Don't self-select out. Give the agency a shot if you think you have the right stuff. And you should also come into the agency with a notion, and many of them haven't and many of you won't.

That is a lifetime of service. I mean, it is a, it is a, it's not a job. It's a lifestyle profession is what it is. Very much like special operations and very much like the rest of the I.C. It's a lifestyle profession. There is nothing that I am today. I've already described some aspects of it. But there's nothing that is me today that hasn't been created,

informed, modified, given unto me or earned by me that didn't come from the Central Intelligence Agency in my own time in the United States Army, but predominantly from the Central Intelligence Agency and DIA for that matter. So don't self-select that. There is a role for everybody. Not everybody will fit in the agency, and the agency has a very rigorous process, and a lot of people become very disappointed because they get rejected. And it's not because they're lesser people. They're not qualified. There may not be a requirement.

The other bit of advice that I give people all the time is the agency's got a remarkable tool on their website. Back in the day, it was somebody like me who tapped you on the shoulder and said, I think you ought to join the agency. Give me your CV. I put it in and I dogged it through the labyrinthine process. which is an unfeeling clinical, sanitized process that is from an application standpoint, a little bit cool and cold on occasion.

But the fact of matter is, I was able to kind of keep you informed. I can't do that anymore nor should I because of privacy issues for your benefit and the agency's benefit. So you go online, you go on the website, you apply. they've got a career assistance tool. It will help you apply for what you have indicated are your skills and your best attributes. And the better responses you make to the questions and the tool, the better the answers will be. The reason why I say that is because if you apply as a clandestine ops officer or if you

apply to be an analyst, you apply to be a logistician, you apply to be a PA, you know, in the medical profession. And you are not selected for that. Like a normal company might in fact flog your CV and your application to another department. Okay, probably not a good, even though he or she wants to be an analyst, probably not cut out to be an analyst in our evaluation. But, it might make a good logistician or Klanesan ops officer. The agency has so many applicants, they don't have the luxury of being able to do that. And so you apply to something. That's where the agency's time and attention.

They don't look at you for some target you for someplace else. So the tool is exceptionally important. And the agency's got a field of very talented and very committed and probably overwork. recruitment officers. And they are a great source of wisdom, therapy, advice, and patience. And the best way to connect with them is to reach out to an academic institution, you know, a large academic institution that has a national security program. They almost assuredly have a relationship with a known recruiting officer and they could put you in touch with that with that individual as well. So that that's my long answer to your short question. No, it's great. And it's funny

that you say don't self-select because our very James Powell, our very first- said many, many times. Yeah, December 19th or December 2019, our very first like CIA guest said the exact same thing. Don't self-select. K-JM is asking. if we can host like a kind of roundtable about mental health, which is interesting. He asked that because tomorrow, if everything goes according to plan, her plan gets in, we're going to do a live stream tomorrow, a bonus episode with Kate Kemplin, who has two PhDs and her ex-husband was a member of Army intelligence who took his own life. And one of her PhDs is in special operation suicides.

So this woman has very unique insights into this subject. And we'll be talking to her tomorrow. Again, if everything goes according to plan. And last question here from Vince, any chance you knew a gentleman named Ron Haynes? He was a dear friend and a mentor. Thank you. I'm always reluctant to be able to, I mean, first thing is, I'd say it's all the time. You know, because I think a lot of people when they go,

hey, do you know Joe Schmidlap? And I go, no. And they go, oh, yeah, you were in the agency. Everybody knows Joe. And then they think I'm a poser. But that's in my own mind. That's me. That's probably not true.

But, you know, the problem is the agency is huge, and so you can't know everybody. The directive operation is quite small, so you can know a lot of people there. But a lot of times you're under a pseudonymic identity, not for anything other than just convenience. and often your alternate identity is way cooler than your real name. So, you know, I've known Dave for 20 years in the director of operations.

And I've known him as goose fairy. Right. I don't know him as Dave. And everybody calls them goose fairy or everybody calls them, you know, whatever the names that they assign you for administrative matters. It was goose fairy. You got it. Yeah, the other thing is that I don't know whether Mr. Haynes, A, retired or resigned, had his cover rule back. So you don't know whether, and so I'm a little reluctant to confirm an association that, you know, the individual might not wish to have confirmed.

Sure. But anyway, if this, if Mr. Hayes provided, you know, great mentorship to the question. ask her, then I'm very pleased with that. As I was talking, I was remiss one of the other boards I'm on is a company founded by a former CIA colleague of mine called XK Group, and they do a lot of diligence and a lot of international security mitigation work. And so there's the board, not surprising, consists of a lot of former CIA colleagues. And Kevin Ulbert is the founder of that company. And so we enjoy helping Kevin out and providing advice and consultation when necessary.

So XK Group was the other company. So yet another thing that I'm involved in in my time as a wretched pension. Real quick, Ron Mueller did say to say hello. He was in the chat. He said hello. And then, R. the guy who asked about the Sterling, it was actually

above. He was actually not asked about the Sterling, but the photo or the picture above the Oh, that's a print of Virginia Hall. Oh yeah. The Lentling Lighting. And that's

a commission, that's a signed numbered print by the agency's art program and the original oil painting of that is hanging in the hallway of New Equorders building. And when these pictures are commissioned, I got several of them. I got several military art as well, which you can't see.

But Virginia Hall is really one of the giants upon whose shoulders that all of us have stood and figuring that she as a female OSS operator, you know, who is being hunted down. you know, for, you know, immediate execution by the Gestapo. And she parachuted into France twice, lost a leg in service to America. And she really exemplifies all of the ethos of the CIA. And really it's somebody that every CIA employee former and current, you know, she really is admired. And so I put that print up there. and gave it a prominent position on my I Love Mewell,

so I don't forget what she represents. Right. She represents the best of us. And I wanted to be able to remember that every time I walk into my I Love Mewell. That's amazing. So, folks, thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you for joining us in our new studio. We got really big plans for this place.

Our next episode, we're going to have a gent who is a former Navy SEAL, and then served in the intelligence community. Actually, he wanted to be on episode 156, a little bit of superstition, because that was his Bud's class graduation. Yeah. So, oh, geez, what happened here? Yeah, I don't think they see it.

Okay, no worries. So we will see you next Friday with a very exciting guest. Doug, thank you for joining us tonight, man. Really appreciate it. This has been super insightful. Yeah, and please join our Patreon if you haven't already. A few bucks a month. You keep us on the Freud and help us pay for our news.

Already did, brother. Oh, thanks. We appreciate it. And, Doug, you know, people like you are the reason why we're in this new studio and why we're able to build out new sets and do all kinds of cool things. And again, Doug, when you're coming through New York, let us know because we want to have you here. I will do that. Yeah, I'm hoping to get to New York sometime in September time.

All right. Thank you. Yeah, just hit us off, let us know. And folks, again, thank you for joining us. First time in the new studio, episode 155. And thank God everything, work. Thank you, Dee. And we'll see you next Friday.

Okay, guys, thanks. Rangers will lead away. Take care. I have a question for you.