The Team House - The Future of Human Intelligence w/ Senior CIA Officer Marc Polymeropoulos | EYES ON | Ep. 13

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseMarc Polymeropoulos retired from the Senior Intelligence Service ranks in 2019 after serving for 26 years in the Intelligence Community in operational field and leadership assignments. He is an expert in counterterrorism, covert action, and human intelligence collection.Find Marc here:https://marcpolymeropoulos.com/https://twitter.com/MpolymerFind Andy here:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substackhttps://amilburn.substack.com/Andy's bookhttps://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations/dp/1526750554#espionage #spyingBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. We would really appreciate it if you guys went and reviewed us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews really help people find the podcast and help it get recognized. And, you know, if you've been enjoying the show, we really appreciate your support. Another thing that you can do to support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And, when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad-free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go in and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of IZahn. Today we have a special tree, aside from our usual lineup star host cast with both D and Jason today, we have Mark Polymeropolis. And I am smiling a little bit because we were laying bets on who would mess up

his name the most. But because it is firmly being ingrained into my memory, it trips off my tongue. I'm delighted to have him. You will be pleased to hear that we are going to give him a stream consciousness today. Quick bit about Mark in case you've been hiding under a rock and just don't know who he is. Mark's been 26 years in the agency, has had a number of, when you look at his resume, it's a lot of hard billets in bad places. And yes, you know, Jason will tell you, of course, that's the norm for the agency. But it looks like Mark has actually chosen these places out. Mark also was the target of, I think we're suspecting, well, it is suspected it was an EW attack or a directed energy attack that resulted in traumatic brain injury. And he's been going pre-treatment for that.

So if you have questions about, please, you know, do ping him. And since, you know, since leaving the agency, and by the way, you know, Mark, Mark's name carries a lot of Wasta in the agency. When we even thought we were getting them on the show, Jason, I don't know how to say it other than what, I mean, he was giddy. And girl. Fan girl was the name.

But anyway, my point is since Mark's got out, he has continued to do great work for the course. Some of you may have been following his writing and his commentary. He is one of those rare people who they rope in as an expert to Fox News, MNSBC, MNBC, well, anyway, several networks. Yeah. Thank you, D spanning the name. Okay, that's long enough intro, Mark.

We are delighted to have you on. And I'm going to turn over to you to talk about your favorite topic, which I think is soft agency integration. So, hey, thanks guys so much. You know, it's an honor to be on here. Congratulations on the show. I actually, I have listened to it. I have watched it.

Love it. And of course, I've been a friend of the team house for some time. I think, Dee, how many times I've been on five times? I don't know what that's. I think it might be four. Okay. But it's been a blast. And so, you know, because again, I love coming on because I'm talking to my old peeps.

And there's a sense for me of comfort, frankly, in doing that is, you know, when we leave the agency, you know, there's a lot of things I don't miss about it. But there's certainly the camaraderie and kind of the brotherhood and sisterhood. That's what I really, really do miss. And so thanks for having me on. Great honor. I know it's early in the morning. But come on, I'm almost 55 years old. I get up at like five. So you guys got to suck it up. It's not early. It's 730. There you guys. Generation. We got Generation Z and and. It's very early for me. Jason looks young enough to be Generation X, but he's not. I have, I have grandkids. This is early. Wow. There you. No, but you, you, you mentioned something.

I just did a talk to a DOD seminar, the Department of Defense seminar. I think there was 1,400 people on a Zoom call. And it was something that I actually believe in passionately. And that's the future of the CIA Special Operations Forces soft relationship. But really how we do this kind of in the era of great power competition, which is kind of Russia, China, in some case, maybe Iran. But, you know, almost kind of the crappy states or where the Department of Defense sees kind of our greatest threats coming from. how do we take those 20 years of the GWAT in which the U.S., which the C-I and SOF were kind of, you know, aligned side by side, how do you translate that? And in particular, and I know I'm jumping into the weeds

too much, you guys will shut me up, these start waving your hands if I'm talking too much. But how do you do this in the era of what we call, and Jason's going to know this really well, ubiquitous technical surveillance, which means a way different operational environment that I grew up in, that Jason operated in, and that, you know, how does the agency and SOF, run, you know, in essence, clandestine slash covert operations when you have sensors everywhere. Really interesting stuff. And so, you know, that's my stream of consciousness this morning. Along with, you know, I picked up, I was reading the paper this morning. I was thinking about our colleagues at the U.S. Embassy in Port of Prance and Haiti. I mean, holy shit.

Talk about environments in which we all used to operate. That is crazy, crazy stuff going on now. So that's where I am this morning. Jacked up on coffee and I've been up a while. Hey Mark, on this, your discussions of soft agency, can you can you just talk about, I mean, I'm all on when we look at our past experiences when I was hosting the irregular warfare podcast. We had some really good episodes on this particular topic. And when we look back, yes, we eventually figured it out Iraq. Actually, in Afghanistan, right off the bat, but then we had some rocky times in that related. And sometimes when it was too compound mentalized, it always worked really well at the team level. You know, always, always never. And so if we can capture that, if you could maybe talk about some, I mean, areas, the times before what, Colombia, I'm thinking of like things like Planned Columbia where or El Salvador where small, you know, soft and the agency worked together very well on an informal. the level and the second thing um you could just talk about in a in you can do this in a way that that makes a otherwise dry subjects sound really exciting but the you know the the title 10

title 50 um obstacles perception thereof etc etc sure so i mean let's let's go back to world war two you know so the creation of the office the os s the office of strategic services so kind of you know the intelligence gathering special operations you know in some sense um always kind of had an entity, and that was the OSS. And in fact, the CIA and SOF were born out of the same kind of, you know, thing. And so, you know, but they are two different entities. As you mentioned, Andy, they operate under different titles, whether, you know, Title 10 or Title 50, which is intelligence operations versus military operations.

But ultimately, I think that if I look back in my career, I mean, I started the agency in 93, so really the Balkan conflict in Bosnia, you know, is where we're. this stuff kind of started and where, you know, members of my generation first got a, got an inkling that we have to kind of integrate and work closely with, with SOF. And then, of course, 9-11 occurred. But what kind of bound us together was necessity. And so, and so, and that, of course, is the challenge now. You know, so what do we have? We had war zone operations. We had embassies in Baghdad and Kabul with a thousand personnel. That means there's a thousand CIA personnel who every day are side by side with their soft brothers and sisters. And so we kind of squished together, forced to kind of learn about

each other. Everyone has their own habits. Everyone has their own preconceived notions. I mean, you know, what does it happen? So, you know, someone from fifth group walks in and we say, hey, here come the knuckle draggers. Some of the agency comes in. They say, watch your wallet. They're going to steal our shit. And that was the first, you know, that was the first kind of reaction. but then over time, because you had this, certainly a common enemy, but we're actually in proximity next to each other, we were forced to adapt and learn. And I think that is absolutely key. But what does that really mean? It means personal relationships. And that's, you know, in the kind of the talk that I gave, I called it the three R's. It was relationships, resources, and then Russia, meaning kind of, you know,

or conflicts for the future, being really Russia, China. But when they say relationships, so, you know, thing about Chris Miller. I don't know if he's on your show or not. Chris Miller was the, you know, acting secretary of defense in the Trump administration. I first met Chris on the border with, you know, in Kuwait, in the border with Iraq in 2002 when he was with fifth group. And so, you know, you have these personal relationships. Same thing with, you know, the, the, he was, I think he's now a commander of J-Soc. I don't even know if I'm supposed to say his name. He was the head of SEAL Team 6 of Dev Group. I first met him when he was just a, you know, a regular seal officer. And so, because just side by side,

year after year in where in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria. I'm going to think of, you know, good buddy of mine, Rob Blively, he retired as the CSM, the command sergeant major of, he'll get mad if I say it, as of Delta. He doesn't say it, but I'll say it. Him and I spend six months together kind of in Syria years ago and got to be great friends. And so when they kind of went and when everyone grows up together in their organizations, those relationships are key. So, and Andy, when you, you know, I think about things that went wrong sometimes. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, There was a strike in Yemen. It's the famous wedding strike. It was a bad, bad strike on AQAP, killed a lot of innocent people. Huge mess between the agency and SOF and J-Soc, really. And it was worked

out in the end because the personal relationships that I and a whole bunch of other people had. And so think about that in relationships. You know, born in the OSS, kind of, I think Bosnia was a big deal. But then Afghanistan, Iraq really kind of made that and kind of nurtured it. And so that, you know, as you guys know this, everyone knows this. I mean, I can, you know, if you and I know each other and something bad happens, but, you know, we have this personal relationship, we're going to figure it out, as bad as it might be. And you can kind of overcome all those biases. One key point just to make on this stuff. And I think it's started in Bosnia as well. Columbia, I imagine same thing. I'm not just not as familiar. But as a case officer and Jason, you'll understand this as a case officer. So if I'm sitting in Baghdad, if I'm sitting in Kabul, I have, I have an agent meeting. You know, we have a penetration of ISIS or Al Qaeda or something like that. And so, but our right, our kind of, our kind of piece in this pie and the fine and fixed finish mission is the fine and fix mission. And I got my soft colleagues to the right or left of me and not, you know, they're doing the finish. Why would I not? And I did. And it was not the norm. But why would I not in the beginning of some of these conflicts take a soft operator with me to an agent meeting? I mean, do I not fucking trust them? Of course I do. They're, they're an American. They have their clearances. Now, that was not the norm, but I would take someone, for example, from dev group with me to an agent

meeting when we're trying to go after a high value target. And, you know, and, you know, perhaps CIA headquarters would go bananas about this. But then slowly this gets kind of institutionalized. And we're like, you know what? These guys get it. We can trust them. And they're, in fact, they're the consumer as we're doing these fine, fixed finish. My consumer is my soft colleagues right next to me. Not the president of the United States. It's not the secretary of state. I'm not getting the talking points for the foreign minister. I'm getting a location of of a bad guy. And so with, you know, that kind of, uh, understanding and that change in mindset, I think was really important. Um, and, you know, what does it do? It builds trust. Uh, and, uh, and ultimately

successful. And so, you know, some of my finest memories. I mean, you know, a great buddy of mine is Mick Mulroy, you guys, fat, I'm on the show. I mean, Mick and I have been in Iraq and Afghanistan together. And, and when we're up on the Nile teams in northern Iraq, um, living with the Kurds, I mean, this is where, you know, and he think I, I think he wrote a piece too, um, that he got clear by the agency about this, too, the kind of the integration with 10th group and how, you know, our agency kind of element there along with special operations forces really were critical in kind of, in the battle against not only Saddam's Iraq, but also terrorist groups. And so it's just the way to do it. And so the key thing on the relationships is, I guess the question is,

how do we continue that now when we have Russia, China, when you don't have embassy Baghdad or embassy Kabul. How do those relationships, we need to nurture them, we need to sustain them. I mean, I'm retired. You know, Jason, you're out. And so, so, you know, so at the end of the day, we got to, we got to make sure that these relationships can flourish. Or we're going to go back to those old biases. Absolutely. I mean, I came in during a time when EO1, 2, triple three, which basically told us you will cooperate, but that was interagency, was really hot and heavy. So I didn't, you know, obviously. Can you explain quickly what, what that was the executive order one, two, triple three.

It's the, I don't know the legalese of it. But basically it's, it was after 9-11 when we saw the mistakes that had been made because of compartmentalization between us and mainly FBI. Literally, we sat or FBI sat in our spaces and but didn't share the information. They would get information from their people, but literally within the same office wouldn't tell us. I say us as in CIA. This is before me. So 9-11 happens and we figure, hey, you know, we can't have this. So EO1, 2, Triple III was signed and disseminated saying you will cooperate with one another.

And so I came in at a time when it was already being implemented. So I didn't have an issue of, hey, I can't tell you that. You know, yes, there were certain things that I need to be read into. or someone had to get permission from their ASAC or, you know, or their special agent in charge to be able to tell me. But it was pretty smooth. I had some, you know, speaking to what Mark was talking about, some great relationships with FBI agents that I still have, who are in some pretty senior positions today. But again, they were a special agent, junior special agent. I'm a junior intelligence officer. And, you know, we just, we just clicked on a personal level. And because of that,

I did a lot of work domestically. So when I would go out to these meetings, if that person, you know, FBI, we would take FBI along with us. And they would be able to ask questions from a legal standpoint, you know, trying to make a case or whatever they're trying to do that I might have been able to ask, but it might cross a line. Or it was something that I just didn't even think to ask because I'm not looking. I'm looking at gathering the intel. You know, they're looking at it from a prosecution standpoint or a counterintelligence standpoint. So those relationships were pretty awesome. And sometimes in the beginning it was, hey, let's sit down and game this.

Let's figure out you ask this. I'll ask that, blah, blah, blah. After a while, it just became sympathetic. It was just, you know, they knew to ask questions that I missed or, you know, things like that. Or they would be able to even say something that would calm the person down because I'm getting them revved up, trying to get the intel, they would be able to say something, or I would be able to say something to calm that person down, reset, and then they would be more comfortable telling us what we need to know.

So I think that's a smaller scale of what Mark is talking about. No, 100%. But again, it's also based on necessity, you know. And so that's huge. By the way, I think I flipped Title 10, Title 50 when I was describing that. Sorry about that. Because if you think back, the Bin Laden operation was the Title 50 operations. Sorry.

So all of those were good things, but we have, and when I say we, I mean, we collectively, U.S. security establishment have a dreadful record about holding on to lessons learned and reapplying them right off the bat the next time we need to. And as you point out, Mark, now is the time to do this. And, you know, while there are obstacles in the way, I mean, I can I just give you an example that I think, you know, I think you're right on target. So we are, you know, we've been talking about the Red Sea problem recently. Bottom line is this.

There's really only two ways to solve that. One is to really, really put pressure on Iran, but that might not even solve the problem. Who knows if the Houthis are now the teenagers ready to leave the house? Number two, and Evan cringes when I say this, but you do need to have someone on the ground. Because that terrain there, you can launch all the airstrikes you want based on targeting data that looks really good. and still not hit a damn thing that, you know, of worth doing. You know how it is. It's very easy for them to move stuff.

It's very easy to do it undercover, et cetera, et cetera. So the only way you can get in, and obviously you don't want to put conventional forces there who are basically helmeted targets just walking around. You want to put guys who are working with Ian Ditch on the ground. Who does that best, you know, agency. But you have to have DOD reps there too because of the support that you're going to need.

need. You know, you guys know, yes, of course, and principal DOD will, I mean, DOD will always support, but it really helps, really helps if you have soft guys, you know, represent, on, on the ground too. Yeah, and you should. I mean, you know, so, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we, how do we do that going ahead? You know, I mean, what. So I think there's, okay, so there's, there's a, there's a, there's a couple things on that. If, and if you take a look, for example, you know, Ukraine is, is not great. Just because of the, kind of the, kind of the prohibition set by the White House on on, on, on, on, on, on, uh, on, uh, no U.S. boots on the ground. So, you know, ostensibly, you know, D will smile now, you know,

there's a, there's a rather large intelligence community footprint in Ukraine. Um, and, and what there should be is a soft footprint as well. There's not, because of prohibition from the White House, but, but really that would be an ideal, um, you know, and that's just something that, you know, you kind of have to, uh, ultimately live with. But, you know, when you think about kind of the, I call it, it's not, so it's, it's, it's the manhunting triad of human. SIGAN and ISR, but it would apply to something like the Houthis as well. So, you know, you do need human. And so that means you need people on the ground. And so let me get, let me go back to

what I was talking about before. And one of the, one of the evolutionary things that happened with SOF is they also had the ability and were trained. And they went down to our schoolhouse, down to the farm as well. So they had, they had some, you know, the special mission units of SOF have in some ways some of the same training as the agency does in terms of, you know, surveillance detection, human, human, there's, there's, I got to be careful in saying this, there's troops, there's, there's units in these special mission units who are trained up to kind of the gold standard. So there's a way to kind of work together with the agency on this. I kind of, I agree completely, 100% completely. But let me kind of flip all of this to what's important is how to sustain these

relationships, how to sustain this ability to work together. And it has to do, I think, with training. And so one of the things I, what I still don't understand doesn't happen is why, for example, for the special forces, the Q-course, why for the agency, you know, trade craft training down at the farm, why are we not cross-training? And so what you do is you take everyone, this is going to be a silly analogy, like, you know, out of the womb at birth when you're training someone to be in our kind of old weird world. Let's start with the idea of we're going to have to work together from the beginning.

So in the final problem set down the farm or in the Q-course, integrate what a station would be like. Integrate what an inter-agency environment is like. Integrate what a war zone environment is like. Do it from the beginning. Because what happens? People learn, but then all of a sudden,

I'm sitting there, 26 years old, just graduated the farm next to my, you know, maybe someone of a similar age from Army Navy Marine Corps special operations, I'm going to know that person for the next 20 years because we train together. We don't do that. I don't get that. But it's going to take, and of course, and Jason will remember this, there'll be a thousand

reasons. We can't do this. Okay, because they're not clear or we're too busy or this or that. You should do it. And talk about what we do even domestically with the Bureau. Same thing. Why down at Quantico is when they're training to be a special agent, why are they not agency folks down there?

This is what it was like to be. I've got to be careful again, but in a perhaps a domestic environment, what a domestic station would look like. Here's how you work with your intelligence community partners, Mr. and Mrs. Special Agent. So it's that, you know, that kind of that training piece that I think we're not getting right and we're going to fall back on our bad habits again. And all of a sudden, when China moves on Taiwan and we have an embassy country team that's kind of in a panic on this in Taiwan, you know, and agency and soft and the Bureau there all together,

well, if they didn't experience Iraq and Afghanistan or Syria, and they might not, how are they going to work together? Well, they would be able to if they trained. So that's my... Mark,

that's a really interesting point. And you brought up kind of a couple of things that I want to go back. Sure. And touch on. So first of all, your point about integration with training. Yeah, it is amazing that we haven't done that.

yet at the institutions. You know, we all know that it's happening. For instance, in Marsok, we would bring agency guys into our former agency guys into exercise, but it's still not quite the same as, you know, having one gray beard there is different than setting it up. So you're actually integrating training. And I think, you know, the obstacle to that is just the fact that although there is a great kind of peacetime, I'll use that term, peacetime, I hate it, but peacetime relationship or in between

the war's relationship between the agency and tier one, that relationship tends to atrophy between the agency and, you know, I hate using these terms, but soft, right, tier two or, you know, whatever we're calling them today, white soft, which is, you know, which is, which is all important. Which is right, way larger, way larger. Yeah, and the tentacles are farther and it is. And it's really where you want to have that connection because it is where you're doing stuff day in, day out in an area with people who are regionally affiliated with that area. Lastly, I'm going to say, though, on that, I think you're on the right track because putting people, when we're talking about forcing this or not forcing it, but, you know, forming a task, organized teams, it's going to take forever. You know that. You're not, even within DOD, but now you're

talking about between DOD and an outside agency and you're talking about doctrine and you're talking about, you know, so many other things that it will take, we will talk about this forever before we do it. But if you set up within the schoolhouses and the institutions, then you're building that relationship informal and you've got type A personalities on both sides who are going to make this happen in a and come up with really good ideas in each region let me let me throw in here's a here's a hypothetical scenario that i that i use all the time um because i have to say it's hypothetical just to get it by the agency publication review board but it's not hypothetical because it's true that's the secret is this going to be like a jason's hypothetical honeypot yeah that's right it's sorry never

happen so so let's say so uh again a hypothetical so you're at a u.s embassy um in eastern europe And your role is, you know, obviously it's not the same as a war zone, but your role is to kind of uncover, find out what Russian intelligence officers are doing, right? It's a small CIA station. And so, and, you know, we're working with the local liaison too. But in essence, we're doing, and just think about this compared to the GWAT, we need to find POL, pattern of life on the Russian I.O. presence, right? So what does that mean a lot of time on the street, some kind of surveillance training, maybe, you know, recruiting folks. who can assist on this. It's a fine-fix mission, but the finish mission obviously is not, you know, a hellfire missile from an MQ-9. The finish mission is going to be a recruitment

attempt. A finish mission might be a disruption operation with local liaison, but that's the job. So all of a sudden you have a soft element that kind of rolls in. And they're doing primarily, again, it's in Eastern Europe. So they're primarily training, you know, local security services. So a station chief, a smart one, and this is where this is the resources piece of my whole argument, the smart one's going to be like, you know, hey you guys or gals or whoever it is. Like, you know, I have a manpower shortage because CIA always does overseas. People forget how small. There's less, there's more FBI special agents in New York City than there are CIA case officers globally. So that's how small CIA is. But the local, the station chief would say to the soft commander who's probably not an officer, probably, you know, an E8 or nine or whatever. And so you would say, you know, what training do you guys have or gals have? And they're like, well, you know what?

You know, we did the equivalent of kind of what we call it, HETSI, hostile environment trade course, trade craft course. In fact, there's, and, you know, and there's lots of units that have had hadsy training. And they're like, the COS is going to be like, all right, hey, so when you're done with your training evolution with the local security services, can I have some of your guys and gals to go out in the street? Because I got to find these Russian intel officers. We got to find their pattern of life. give me two weeks. And so the local soft team lead will be like, well, goes back to, you know, goes to his teammates. Hey, you want to help the agency out kind of chasing Russian assholes?

And they're like, fuck yeah. And so it's all right. So now what do we have now? So there's some people have trained correctly. We have resource issues. Now what happens, of course, is this is wildly successful in the field. And back in the rear in soft, the commanders, the officers hate it. Well, what are you doing?

You're not supposed to be doing that. you're supposed to be doing your training mission. But, but, but, and, and by the way, guess what's not? There's no zero dark 30 moment, you know, so, so, so, because what the agency will do is, thank you for this targeting study on the Russian I.O. presence. And guess what's off? You're never going to hear what happened. Yeah. If it's successful and we recruit a Russian, you know, 99% of CIA headquarters is not going to hear. It's going to get into a compartmented channel.

And so all of a sudden, this kind of, you know, what we got addicted to, including me, very selfishly, the fine fix and finish portion, taking bad guys off the battlefield, you don't have that anymore. And so that has to be a change in mindset of SOF as well. But that scenario works and can work really well. And I remember I retired in 2018. I had these discussions with SOCure, Special Operations Command Europe, you know, senior leadership. And they were game at the time. I don't know what happened. But I was like, we need some help. And I can tell you, I can tell you that happens. I can give you an example of a really, really savvy station chief in a country that, well, the Middle East, who did exactly that integrated. Actually, there were Mawksok guys to generate. It was to help the

case officer, help collection efforts. And I'm trying to remember, but I don't think we had to get a lot of clearance to do that. He was, you know, because what he was having them do was already within the parameters of what they're allowed to do. But he had enough rather than that usual kind of, there's always, there's always courtesy. But here there was real collaboration and it was based on his initiative. I mean, there's always cultural relationship. And then all of a sudden, like there's no, you know, credit is shared. Yeah, exactly. The end result is unknown. Like, we're going to leave collectively. And maybe the CIA station, we're never going to know, the fruits of our labor. if you're sitting in the station there as well and you leave,

that targeting study is sitting there. If it's successful downline, no one's going to, from Russia house or operational unit super compartmented, no one's calling you and saying, hey, what you did a year ago. Yeah.

And so you have to have that mentality that there's, you know, there's a greater game, greater, greater purpose here. And so. And by the way, in these guys,

the Marines involved in their careers as A-SOTs and, you know, or just regular. That is the, that's the only time they got to do in a, you know, kind of a totally non-combat, not even near-combat environment, third country, doing that kind of type of operation.

And Andy, let me tell you something. I've never met a soft operator who didn't want to do it. That's what I was going to say. Who wouldn't want to do it? Yeah, who wouldn't? They loved it. They said, this is great. And you can, you know, hitting the bars or watching Armed Forces Network on TV, you know, those stupid commercials that they still have.

Or you can go out and help, you know, help Team America. And I never met anyone who didn't want to do it. But again, is this institutional? No. And so, you know, in this paradigm I'm talking about, I actually, you know, I call, I don't ever reach back into the, I retired in 2019. I'm very careful. I don't know what they're doing now. I don't reach back to the agency.

But I do talk to my buddies like Mick and others who have some experience with this and kind of all of us kind of collectively, you know, Doug Wise as well. Another guy you should get on your show. A great friend of mine, former deputy director, DIA, and chief of station in Ben, and. Baghdad. I think another team house veteran too. But, but, but, you know, so as we're talking about this kind of premise of CIA soft, you know, into the future, I think a lot of us do think these problems still exist. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they figured everything out in the last three or four years, but I don't think so. I think culturally it's hard to imagine that they have figured it out. You know, I mean, we've talked here about, again, it's just, when I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago,

And yes, despite all the dreadful failures that they have done, they have one thing very strongly on their side now that is unity of purpose. And all the barriers, any barriers that were there before, to include between the services seem to have disappeared. I mean, it's, but we, yeah, and that happened with us in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. But when we don't need to, we tend to lose that touchpoint and we revert to our own, our own areas. But what you described, integration with case officers work because we use, soft is used to working with agency, paramilitary, not working with them, but that's kind of their

natural shaded area in the Venn diagram. But actually, they can do arguably in these places a lot more constructive or strategically relevant stuff for case officers or station chief. Yep. Yep, free labor. Sorry. That's what I'm looking for. It's true. Patriotic Americans, free labor, excited to go kind of take the fight to the, you know, it's where we are in 2024 and beyond. That's kind of Russia, China, Iran. And so I don't know.

I mean, I hope this is done. One thing to note on this, though, and this will be my next kind of soapbox. You know, Dee, you gave me some okay to do stream of consciousness. So sorry, you know me. And that's what we're called the ubiquitous technical surveillance environment. And so, you know, where we all kind of grew up, in terms of counterintelligence threats has changed dramatically. And so, you know, and so, you know, what does that mean?

And so just kind of for the regular person, it's, it's, you know, it's your cell phone. Well, that's an incredible kind of collection device for any hostile service. It's biometrics. When you go into an airport, you get your picture taken. At some plate, I would always laugh biometrics, how much, how hard it is for us. Some of these systems are actually systems the agency gave to the host country. There you go. just don't use this on us.

I don't know if that was well-potted out. You already program in all your bio data. Right. It's the same time. Smart cities are everywhere. There's the camera systems. And so the world now is a collection of sensors. And so that has a huge effect on both the CIA and the soft community because you can't hide anymore.

And so, you know, the perfect example is, you know, in the past, you know, let's say I was in, I don't know, throughout a place. Askus, Syria. So I go off, you know, I have my cell phone, I turn it off, leave it in my house, do my surveillance detection route, meet an agent successfully. I know I'm black. You know, 100% if you're sure I'm black. Do a reverse surveillance detection route, come back, got some great gouge, you know, in terms of, you know, something that the president, the national security advisors is going to love. Syria was a hot button issue. Pour myself a little Jameson, and, you know, that was a great day. that world doesn't exist anymore.

Not at all. And so let me, and if you dissect that, and this is all, this is all, everything I'm telling you now has been clear. It's okay for me to talk about by the agency. So what does that mean?

Well, first of all, your cell phone, if you turn it off, the hostile service is monitoring your cell phone all the time, that's a, you know, so that's a, that's a flag.

When you drive and you do your surveillance detection route, if you're running through things like such as smart cities, any kind of sensors, you know, that can be, that's data that can be, not only seen real time, it can be recorded for the future. And so in all, so when you go back and you're sitting in your house saying, I was, I was surveillance free. I did a successful agent. That doesn't exist

anymore because we don't know because this data is collected. It can be stored. And then that stored data, which means these sensors again, everything from your cell phone usage to the camera system of a city, to your vehicle, which is just a rolling GPS, to any casuals on the street with a, with a smartphone, all of that, you know, is stored forever, but then with AI can be accessed immediately. So hostile services can kind of go back years and take a look at data on a certain individual. And so, you know, my argument in all this, and I think that, you know, and the HCI did put together what's called the ubiquitous technical surveillance center, Bill Burns has announced as publicly, there's a UTS center. So it's how do we do things, how do we kind of tackle this really

this enormous problem of sensors, which kind of control our lives. I mean, I sound like some crazy futurist, but I'm not. And the answer is probably to kind of go to do something called in-pattern operations. And, you know, Jason's nodding, but it's the notion of hiding in plain sight. So instead of doing a surveillance detection route, I'm going to go to, you know, I'm going to Liverpool in England and go to a Liverpool game with 50, 60, 70,000 fans. And my agent meeting is going to be in that stadium somehow, because I've established a pass. pattern of going all the time to Liverpool games and so is my penetration in the Chinese embassy. They're doing the same thing.

And so ultimately you kind of build things in pattern. And the challenge is, first of all, how does the agency do this? But then here's the other thing. There's 70,000 members of SOF. How do you do that with 70,000 members? Who, by the way, everyone's addicted to what? You know, my fancy watch or your phone. Mark, but I just jump in very quickly.

yes, 70,000 for the, you know this, everyone here knows this, 70,000 people in Socom. Yeah. But when you're talking about to the kind of the point of the spear, actually US soft is retail heavy. I've just, but that's the scale. That's the challenge we have. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how do we run in pattern operations for CIA, but also CIA and soft together? Again, an enormous challenge.

And, you know, and so that's because the whole kind of our trade has changed. so dramatically. And, you know, it's, it's the kind of thing where, you know, so I, if I, if you have my, if I have my phone, I can't, I can't turn it off because the hostel service is going to see it. Well, I can't leave it on and leave it in my apartment of residence because that hostel service is also monitoring what Twitter sites I go to. So then, this is just conceptually, then I'd have to have my spouse or my kid be, you know, surfing, you know, Twitter and ESPN and all the stuff at, you know, with the same pattern I do every single night, because you've got to, you got to be invisible. And that just gets super hard. Yeah. And so it's the idea of kind of,

you know, in pattern operations. And I think that's where there's a lot of thought going into. But just these are, these are just huge, huge challenges. And, you know, at the end of the day. Is that, is that a, you probably can't say. We hope that that is being taught at the farm now, right, as part of that. Sure, sure. And again, there's a UTS center. So, in this talk I gave the other day to DOD, what I challenged to the DOD community is, does soft have kind of a center doing this? And if they do, and I would imagine some of the special mission units are focused on this. I think they are. But are they, I guess, are they integrated with CIA's UTS center? Because you have to have this gold standard of tradecraft. And so that's the question

in the respective schoolhouses is this being taught. I don't know. I would hope so. It is very interesting. And just an example of how we in the U.S. soft don't yet think this way. And I think, you know, I've got a theory on it that's not that interesting. But as an example, for instance, just talking to Israeli soldiers going into Gaza, at least once with two main divisions there. And this guy was with the 98th who's with their reconnaissance unit. But he said this was standard across when they go into Garzorim and the conventional infantrymen,

they put everything in a box, everything. You know, and it's familiar to you, but it's not to the, you know, average Marine or soldier to include their cell phone. They won't see that cell phone until the end of the operation. There's no, hey, can I call my mom? They're writing letters like World War II and the logistics officers picking them up, taking the bat, scanning them into WhatsApp and sending them out. And, you know, it's, it's, so they, they are reverting, you know, I mean, that kind of approach is yet culturally not there within the US military. Within certain soft units, yes, but main street soft, yeah, kind of awareness, but not that, conventional units, no, forget it.

Can you imagine? Okay, hey, give me all your shit to include your cell phone two months. send your wife one last text. And you remember in Ukraine? And this was like, I mean, oh, this was some commercial firms were doing this because, you know, the Russian military had their cell phones on everywhere. And, you know, there's a, there's a hundred thousand Russian forces with basically pinging their location.

Yeah. I mean, this is like this is a godsend. And so, yeah, you're right. It's very hard to stop what is kind of, you know, normal behavior. And when the, and when the Russians, by the way, collected up all their cell phones and of course soldiers didn't get them back there were two units that were exempt

one was the Wagner group progosian never imposed that on his own guys and the other group were the Chechnans you know two of the who were doing a lot of the serious fighting within the campaign they all had their cell phones and their Chechnins were incredibly undisciplined

unbelievable experienced fighters taking soul fees. I mean, it was it was a godsend to the Ukrainians, as you know, who knows. That's why you know, the check and so on. You don't hear about them so much now. But again, you know, there's so many examples of these, of tradecraft errors and the need to be really disciplined. And so I guess the question is, can CIA and soft, as we talk about this, you know, move to great power competition as a target, can they actually both adapt together to that ubiquitous technical surveillance environment? It's a, it's a, I mean, this is an awesome conversation. Like, I've never had this before.

with anyone. So this is, we're doing kind of like a graduate level seminar right now. You know, you know one reason why I think the U.S. are, not just the military, but within our culture, we find it harder to understand this. In places of Europe, I mean, CCTV has been ubiquitous in Europe for a long, long time. London was one of the first four companies, right? Yeah. And so there is nothing, there is really very little you can do in public in Europe without it being recorded by a camera. And Europeans understand that. You know, even and, but we in the United States, that would be kind of abhorrent to us. But so if you grow up kind of being used to certain aspects of the surveillance state already being in place, it doesn't make a big difference if someone

says, oh, now they can listen to your phone or this or that. But for us, we hold on to this feeling of, well, there's part of me that's always exempt from this. No, 100%, 100% true. And, and then, you know there's there but it's also in other places i mean so certainly in europe you're right london is one of the one of the first smart cities but do you remember that op i think it was back in it was it 2010 i can't remember in dubai when masad got caught trying to kill this amos dude in oh yeah there's the great there's the great uh ccb footage of an israeli uh intelligence officer and it was a female with a tennis racket yeah that that was that was actually it should have been it should have been a wake up call yeah that should have been a wake up call it

holy shit in the UAE technology. Wait, when did they? That was on a hotel? CCTV. Yeah, CCTV. You sought hit team with this woman with the tennis racket. Now, a lot of us are she going to like serve him to dash? I know.

No, but I think there was a lot of us who's actually served with these relatives before. I think I recognized that officer. I think we, I knew her. But anyhow, so, but that was a wake-up call. But it was 2010. So, you know, again, I don't, I'm not sure we have kind of evolved in a rapid fashion. But our. have and it's very interesting even Hamas who is not regarded you know previously not regarded

by the Israelis as being particularly sophisticated showed a very sophisticated approach to taking out the surveillance all the surveillance assets along the fence line but also at the military basis that they then made a beeline for to kill the soldiers so they couldn't respond to the kibbutz massacres but that it was surveillance it was those cameras that that was their primary target right off bat. So you're right. And that's something that, you know, when they knew where they weren't. They knew where all the cameras were. I mean, they told you. The first targets was an intelligence base in essence. Yeah. servers were located that, that, you know, that did control the kind of the camera system. So you're, you're a thousand percent. Also, don't forget that Hamas. And again,

this is, this is hubris. It's what we did with, you know, in terms of Al Qaeda as well, you know, pre-9-11 to some sense. But, but there is this, it turns out that Hamas was very, you know, cognizant of Israeli SIGAN capabilities. And so what did they do in the tunnel system? They ran this incredible network of, in essence, landlines. So they communicated in ways in which Israeli SIGT could not pick it up. Pretty extraordinary. And so that's the idea of underestimating your adversary.

Really interesting point on that, Mark. So during operations in Gaza subsequently, so jump forward from 7 October, at least five weeks. And 9-8 brigade has done a relief from. place with the 36 or whatever it was, a division, I'm sorry. At that point, at the unit level, they're still not getting intelligence. There is some exquisite, there's a lot of exquisite signals, intelligence, allowing higher level targeting. But for the troops on the ground, they're gathering intelligence through drones.

It's all tactical intelligence. And they're using drones, you know, obviously to great effect. But it's kind of interesting. So even now with all of those assets, tech assets focused on Hamas, the amount of information that they're getting is very limited. Because Hamas is adapted. Right. You know, and no one gave them credit for adapting. Just like no one gave the Russians credit for adapting in Ukraine.

We had this feeling of, you know, organization X is effing incompetent. We just can take our eye off the ball. And as you know, the U.S. intelligence community trusted the Israeli. to keep in their eye on her mask, which was a big mistake. And now I'm guessing that the agency's doing a very quick catch-up. We have a- That's exactly. Oh, go ahead.

No, I'm sorry. We just, speaking to what you were just saying, Andy, we, and I say we collectively as a, as agencies and as nations, we have a mindset of they can't, quote-unquote, they can't. We completely underestimate and just dismiss right off the bat the capabilities of certain organizations, you know, like Hamas. And again, that's going right back to the beginning of our conversation where human comes into play. All this technology is great when it's, you know, when it's, it confirms our bias of they can't.

But until you have that person standing across from that other human being saying, yeah, well, actually we can and we're going to, you know, and this is how. Until we get back to that, we're, it's just going to keep happening over and over. Yeah. Amen. No, 100%, you know, Tom Sylvester, who has now come out in public, or it's been reported in public as the new deputy director of operations for CIA. He did, the CIA actually has their podcast, not as good as this one, of course, that we're talking on today. But it's called the Langley Files. And so they really talk about, like, let's be honest. It's interesting. But he actually came on and, you know, this was this kind of coming out. And he's a great friend of mine, great American. And he, but he basically said exactly that. Like, we still need a human source. So what is a human source? You know, it's not. a snippet in time. It's someone you can talk to. It's someone you can debrief. It's someone you can task. And so actually having that kind of that granularity is absolutely critical. And one of the questions after October 7th that I had was, you know, what how did Israeli military intelligence,

how did Shinbet not recruit a single individual out of, out of, in essence, a 3,000 person terrorist army? I mean, that's incredible. You know, you know, there's, I think there's a couple reasons, Mark. One was the withdrawal from Gaza made it more difficult for human. And then when they built the wall, that gave them an excuse, you know, with all that, not the excuse, but with that huge surveillance paraphernalia of, you know, two billion shekels, it, you know, there is a scene back in 2021 that you can't replicate where the head of Shimbab, head of Mossad, and Halevi, who's the chief of staff of the army, meet at this wall and do an interview with Heretz newspaper saying, hey, you know, this is, this means the communities can sleep in it.

I mean, they were regretting that interview now. But to me, that was just, you know, it was, it was underestimating Hamas, thinking that they were just caring about administering Gaza and now total reliance on a war. How many lessons do we have to learn before we realize, you know. You know, I agree. I'm one of these kind of intel geeks that I actually am looking forward to the afteraction. You know, the Israelis are going to, they're doing two of them. One is the military is doing their own.

which is a little sketchy in the sense of... Well, Netanyahu directed the military one to try and get the... Right. But when they... I've got to be careful here. ...ourous commission, you know, and it's for all of us on this show right now. I mean, it's going to be super interesting. I do think, you know, and to the credit of, for example, Ronan Barr, the head of Shimbab.

I mean, he said, you know, this is on me. I think you're going to see, you know, the Israeli military and intelligence chiefs all resign after this, as they should. there has to be some kind of accountability. But ultimately, it's going to be fascinating to see, you know, what SIGN was produced. There's all these kind of reports that the Hamas, you know, battle plan has been floating around for several years. So, you know, how did that not get to the right policymakers? But also, I'm in my-

Since 2008. Right. The plan, they showed me up in the IDF, they had a plan captured from Hamas. Yep. It was around two. It was after the war. It was after the 06 wall. That's the plan.

it shows five part encirclement hitting kibbutz that were taking out the military basis. So you could superimpose that plan down in Gaza. And it is way. What they didn't have was a human sourcing, the plant, it's a go now. Exactly. So to me, that is going to be kind of the, you know, just as a kind of geek out on this stuff, that's going to be the critical intel failure. But it's a 3,000 person army.

Like how, and I've been, you know, with all the counterintelligence practices, I still think it's a spectacular failure in our old kind of, you know, human world. Let me just, one thing, a pet peeve of mine, it just came across because it was bugging me the other day. So the DNI put out their annual threat assessment. And they still assess that Iran had no kind of knowledge of this operation, which I just think is a load of crap. I think it's political because we don't want to deal with the Iran problem.

But let me tell you why. The idea is saying they hear Farsi or at least the Israeli say, you know, you know, in Who trains Hamas? That's the IRGC, right? So, and, you know, those of us in the Intel world, when we do training missions, guess what we also do? We also recruit our host partners. That's, that's 50% of my job. Sorry, it just is. It's not a secret. So if you're telling me the IRGC codes for us with their training mission for Hamas, whether it's inside Gaza, whether it's Iran, whether it's in Lebanon, you're telling me they didn't recruit anybody. You know, and so that's a load of crap. And so that kind of stuff drives me nuts too. Now, you know, maybe maybe the Iranian intelligence

services are having the same conversation we're having right now. Oh my God, we were surprised, but I doubt it. Yeah. So agree. It's interesting though. So a couple of things. What I didn't realize is the fact that Iran is the puppet master behind all of this is not commonly understood by the general public in the United States. And that was brought to my attention. when someone sent me a note about one of our previous episodes, very kind. I forget what it was. I think it was a message on Facebook. Very kind message saying, hey, that episode was total trash.

All you guys did was trot out conspiracy theories about Iran. But it is truly concerning. Yes, indeed. Will Israel be obliterated by Iran? No, very unlikely in the next decade or so, or two decades. but that's not comforting. I'm not taking sides on this. I'm just saying from U.S. perspective, very concerning.

And how it was set up, the Israeli is so focused on Hezbollah, the indications, and there's a lot of discussion, even the Shibet doesn't know the level of coordination. But what they think happened was that Hamas definitely expected Hezbollah to step in. All the signal traffic was that HOSBOLA was about to step in right after it kicked off. They were ready. They'd been preparing.

But for some reason, they didn't. Where did that come from? You know, no one really knows. We can speculate. But the point is this whole thing was balanced and set up. Huge focus on Hizbola. The IDF contingency plants are all about response to the northern border, not the south. You know, they had no off-the-shelf plants to pull off, you know.

And so all of this was, it wasn't accidental, right? It wasn't a perfect storm. It was very carefully orchestrated. Yeah, I think we take our, take our eyes off the ball or the balls that are in play. We did it with GWAT. I think we, and I saw it when I was at, you know, when I was at CIA, it was like, it went from when I first got there. I mean, it was well into, you know, Gwatt.

It was 2008. So I noticed an uptick based on surges, things like that, of like guys walking around with beards as opposed to clean cut suits, you know, at headquarters, things like that. You know. If you wear it, if you have a beard, you look exactly like an Afghan. Exactly. Yeah. No one can tell the difference. Yeah.

So I think everybody wanted to get in on the game that was the big game at the time. And so we kind of took our eyes, and I'm saying this from my, you know, 10 foot level, you know, inexperience there. It seemed like we took our eyes off of the traditional spying that I was trained in. But the point is, and going back to what you were just saying about, you know, how Hezbollah was the focus, we can do it all. The Israelis can do it all. You can focus on Hezbollah because you have people. trained to do that, let them do that and say, keep your eyes north while we have those who are trained to, you know, to counter her Hamas, let them focus. If we need you up north or is you get

indication that Hezbollah is going to step in, that's when you, you know, you let us know. But I think everybody wants to get in on the big game or whatever the issue is that's going on in the case of, let's just say, pre-9-11, the whole Cold War, quote-unquote spy, was starting to slow what had slowed down with what we believe was the fall of the it was the fall of Soviet Union but not the fall of Russia. So now we were like, okay, now we can turn our attention to terrorism. Everybody turned and look this way. But we didn't leave anybody in place to do the traditional human. And I think we need to get back to that. I think we're getting back to that. But what's the next thing that's going to happen that's going to take our eyes right back off of it again?

And I think that people like Mark, you know, who are, you know, screaming with what some people would say their hair on fire with the whole soft integration. And, you know, I think that people like that need to keep screaming with their hair on fire. Because if not, when that near peer thing kicks off, you know, let's go back to the on the ground level. it's it's going to suck to be that CIA officer that that paramilitary officer or whoever who's standing next to that dev group guy or you know those those white side soft operators having to huddle up and say okay listen this is what an SDR is this is what this is having to explain the nomenclature and you know ready break and get them out on the streets to help like those examples you guys gave were awesome but they were one-offs but if we if we formally training

each other side by side. You don't have to. Everybody knows the, the, the nomenclature. Everybody will know, hey, in this situation, you know, this is what we need to do because I went to the farm or I went to the Q course, you know, even though I'm CIA or soft, you can just huddle up and say, okay, this is the, this is the op. Let's get it. And everybody just goes and does their thing. It doesn't have to be on the fly. So I think people like you, Mark, and this is not me blowing smoke, I think that you're what we need. People like that are what we need to keep screaming. You know, great.

This is great that this is what's happening over here. But can we focus over here as well? You know, so sorry, that was my rant. I think there are people thinking about this. You know, I am confident. It's just it's going to take kind of the, you know, breaking bad habits that are kind of formed again to get that notion of, okay, you know, we can't wait for the next conflict.

We do have to do that cross training. I mean, to me, this, it shouldn't be that, you know, the excuse the agency always gives is there's so few case officers. There's, you know, and so it's my other kind of rant and we can do it in another episode is about leadership training, which we suck at. We don't do leadership training them. You know, to get to the senior intelligence service level, you have to take basically three one-week classes in your career. Unlike in the military, Andy, that you know, where you're going to go for a year or to a staff college. You know, to make a colonel, don't you have to do two one-year evolutions of training? know. We never did that because we can't take people offline and that's that's shit.

And I think it's also and the agency and that, you know, may have changed, but certainly within the State Department, what it is is just not an understanding of how leadership is really a hard skill. Right. I mean, it is, it is the fundamental building block without which you, you really can't do anything else effectively. This is me spouting leadership propaganda because, you know, My preferred brand is always toxic. But you know, you see this a lot, especially in non-DOD government agencies. Hell, you see it within DOD, that it's all too easy to slip into a management style and justify it on the basis of the new generation and forget about the tenets of what we've learned about, which are ultimately how you get people to do things regardless of the move on technology.

that's one thing I've always was taught at the agency by a great mentor and I use it still today is there's a huge difference between a manager and a leader and we have too many managers and way not enough leaders and it's it shows yeah mark where can we find you tell us everything you're doing sure so you can see me on tv I work for MSNBC now so I'm kind of one of their national security analysts so I'll pop on and and try to give you know my apolitical perspective, which is very hard in these times, particularly on stuff like, you know, Gaza and Ukraine. I am prolific and I'm sad if anyone has to actually follows all my silliness, but on Twitter, it's at M. Polymer, and I will tweet about, you know, my favorite dive bar in Northern

Virginia, the Red Sox, my love of heavy metal and, of course, kind of serious topics like national security and intelligence. And so, you know, I just, I'm, you know, I'm, one, one cool thing I'm doing next fall is I'm going to be an adjunct professor at the Citadel for intelligence study. That's awesome. That's awesome. Is this before they go on before they go on to get their GEDs? That's right.

I mean, I have people have asked me why the Citadel and I said, have you ever been to Charleston? Yeah. So I'm doing some stuff, you know, here and there. It's been fun. I'm trying to stay busy in retirement, but not too busy. because we have a house down the outer bank, so I spend a lot of time at the beach, which is that's my happy place.

It is everyone. Hey, Mark, before we sign off, first of all, we've got to secure an on-air agreement to come back on again. Oh, sure. Okay, all right, we've captured that. And secondly, I want to point out that this is, it's kind of a riddle, but we've accomplished something here.

There's only four of us. We have two Marines, two agency guys, and two Greeks. That's right. Yeah. Somebody's bingo card got punched. Yeah. Hey, I will hope that, you know, the Russians just tried to essentially kill the Greek prime minister the other day.

I wanted to talk about that. Like, imagine what if... The Greeks off. The Greeks now put together a nice aid package. I think they're sending all the entire inventory of howitzers to Ukrainian. So don't piss the... The lesson is don't piss off the Greeks. Yeah, we're not just sending Sublachia over the fucking Ukraine.

Yeah. it's not all about goats oh wow hey all right all right dion that now why do you sign us out all right check out and check out andy on substack

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And I'm doing a go fund me. I'm doing a go fund me to get you guys to bribe me to get back on Twitter. Oh, yeah. That it's not happening. All right. Thank you. Bye, everyone. Thanks.