The Team House - The Team House Ep. 20 w/ CIA Operations Officer James Powell

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

James Powell served in the Marine Corps, the nuclear security industry, and then as a CIA Operations Officer. In this episode we have a wide ranging conversation with him that dispels a lot of myths surrounding what the CIA does and does not do. James walks us through his recruitment into the agency, training, and then going out into the field in Afghanistan and with the agency's little talked about National Resources division within the United States. We also discuss the so-called "black mafia" in the CIA. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MurphysLawstreamBecome 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. We're streaming. So I, you know, I said, why did you do that? And he goes, why did you eat my pie?

And he goes, there's still a rhubarb pie. I go, nobody likes rhubarb. What is rhubarb? Yeah. We're on? We are on day. we are now on. We are live streaming

We are live streaming. Sorry, sorry. We are live streaming episode 20 with Jason or, I'm sorry, James Powell. Either or. Also goes by Jason.

Jason served in the Marine Corps. And then after that, he was a staff operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. And And today you continue to work. Yeah. Dual-headed. Dual-headed.

As a civilian recruiter for the Office of Naval Intelligence, and then part-time for New Jersey's Office of Homeland Security in their Counterterrorism Law Center. Yeah. And we've known each other for a while now, what? 2014. Six years or something like that? Yeah. Yeah.

And actually, yeah, you came, I think, weren't you working in, you had been working in, you'd been working in nuclear security for a little while. Yeah, that was, yeah, that was before I even went to the agency after I got out of the Marine Corps and before I went to CIA. Okay, okay. I came to know you through the old SOFRA, answered an ad for writers, and I sent out an email and somebody, I don't even think they worked there long after I got there, answered, had to answer a few questions, you know, the hokey we need to bet you sort of thing

and then and then I came aboard yeah yeah um so I guess we just got get into go ahead

should we say hi episode 20 yeah did we did we uh huh sorry I was trying to turn on this off did you just move off screen a little bit

I'm just trying to work on it this is I'm directing and hosting so like I'm also dual-hadded when we do this Yeah, really. But yeah, thanks everyone for joining us tonight. Again, we're here with James Powell, aka Jason.

And I don't know what's, you want to start at the beginning? I mean, are you actually from Philadelphia? You grew up there? No. I don't even live in Philadelphia. No, I worked there last, that was my last assignment for when I was at the agency, and I work in Philly now for the partner in the Navy, but I'm from Jersey, from the shore.

I hate saying it, the Jersey Shore. The Jersey Shore. Where? So I'm from Brielle, which is this tiny town in between Point Pleasant and Manusquan, which is what most people know, or Asbury Park. A lot of people say, this is that near Atlantic City? No, it's nowhere near Atlantic City. It's central Jersey on the shore.

So grew up there, you know, did the normal kid things, sports and all that. But I knew I always wanted to be a really. Marine and so when I left I got out of high school I had my oldest daughter just after I graduated high school so I went on the late entry program to the Marine Corps did that from 92 until 2001 I got really sick over in Japan and literally died whatever it was they don't know some kind of virus you told me this is the you were the bubble boy yes I was the bubble boy yeah So I woke up one day. So backtrack that Friday that I got sick.

I got sick on Monday. That Friday, a friend of mine flew in from Thailand. Good friend of mine. I still friends of them today with his family. His daughter was sick. I picked them up from the airport and took, you know, drove them home. The next day he called me and said, hey, can you take my daughter to the hospital? He was working.

He wasn't going to get there in time. Can you take her to the emergency room? No problem. Took her the emergency room. we figured it was a bad flu that was a Saturday that Monday I woke up thinking I had the flu and within a few hours

my brain had swelled my temperature was like 105 degrees all kinds of stuff so most of this I don't remember my ex-wife was really good about filling in the gaps so at one point it got so bad that the doctor

said to my ex-wife you should prepare yourself because we don't know if we can save him so it was like a might be like a might Crighton novel yeah it's crazy did something similar happen to his daughter like did she go through the same thing not the exact same thing but she got pretty bad she the difference is she got over it within a week or so yeah literally a year it took me not

for the big stuff sure you're throwing a brain all that but um to go back to some semblance of normal so in the midst of all this literally this was in a day's time they had taken me to the base clinic um in iwakuni it's a it's an air base you know um Marine Corridor race in Japan, but it was just a clinic. So they took me out in town to a Japanese hospital. Literally, the Japanese took one look at me and went, nope, get them out of here. Because they didn't want, you know, that part in the movie where the monkey, you know,

it's right, it's like the news. The red is spreading across the map. That's why I bet it in Japan, it stops. Yeah, it just stops. Yeah, they're like, no. Yeah, negative. So, that's funny. Yeah, so they took me, they flew me to, I believe it was a Tsugi.

They flew me there. And it was really cool because the whole base kind of rallied around me. The base commander was a pilot, and he personally intervened to get a plane, I believe was a C-9, to come down and get me, flew me back up there. And yeah, I was in a bubble for a little while. That's crazy. And they can never figure out what it was. They sent a team from CDC over to figure out what's going on.

And within from February of 2001 to, I think it was like, sometime in 2002, I had a total of like 18 or so spinal taps. And if you've ever had a spinal tap, you know, they made you. I never had one, but I've helped people before them. Yeah, yeah, you know. It's not. It's not. Oh, my gosh. So never figured out what it was.

All they knew was that there was intense pressure on my brain. So whenever they did the spinal tap, I guess from drawing the fluid off, the pressure would go down. Then it would go right back up again. Now, so let's get this straight because everybody wants to know. No. Is this your origin story? Yes. Is this how you became like, is this how you became like super like?

So when Denzel plays me in a movie, make sure he gets his part right. So actually it would be more like Bill Duke or somebody with his head. Yeah, so, you know, got real sick. And then again, it took like within a year or so I was starting to recover. But the biggest overriding thing was I kept passing. out from, I guess, the pressure of my brain. So I was passing out, like, breaking things.

You know, like, you know, breaking bones and stuff from passing out. So I went from Iwakuni, Japan. They flew me to Okinawa, couldn't figure out what was wrong, sent me back to Japan, sent me to Hawaii, couldn't figure out what was wrong, Tripler.

I think it was triple, yeah, sent me back to Japan, and finally, literally the commanding general of third, mall, I believe it was third, is it third mall later? Second mall, said, you will not send him back to Japan. You will send him somewhere. You will not send him back

to Japan until you can fix him, or you determine you can't medically retire him. So he sent me to Balboa in San Diego. And I remember meeting with the neurologist there, and he said, I remember these words. He said, I am the best at what I do. And if I can't fix you, nobody can fix me.

Well, a couple months later, he was like, I can't fix you. So I actually passed out while I was talking to him at one point. I was standing there talking to him. Next thing I know I'm in a hospital that I'm like, holy shit happened. And he's like, you went down hard. Yeah. So and he didn't even try to catch you, didn't he's like

oh yeah. So a young James Powell was, I've seen those pictures of you when you had your high and tight in the Marine Corps. Yeah. Could you could even call it? It was just it was high and tight. It was like set. There was high.

no graet, no graving, it was just skin and that. I would have caught you. Nowadays, I don't know, you're not. Freshman. So, how they didn't send you to Thailand? Because it came from Thailand. It obviously came from Thailand. And if they would send you to Thailand,

some Thai doctor would have probably just given you, like, two aspirin, you know, some, some tiger penis. Some tiger penis. And, you know, and, you know. Some rhinoceros horn. Exactly. I see a rhinocin. And you would have been good.

Exactly. And what's crazy is... I'm sure they've dealt with that before. Yeah, and I obviously picked it up from his daughter. But what's crazy is, in between then, in between that Saturday or that Friday and that Monday, I was around my kids, I was around my... None of them got sick. Really?

Yeah, none of them got sick. No systems of nothing. So he decided, okay, I can't fix you. So they processed me for the temporary disabled retirement list for the Marine Corps. He said, okay, we're going to send you back to your home of record, which is injurious. Jersey and we'll figure out from there. And I was going to have to go to Walter Reed, Bethesda at the time. And so I was, they flew me to up to New San Diego, Travis Air Force Base.

Yeah, Travis Air Force Base waiting to send me, fly me back to Jersey, and I'm asleep. No, Travis is up in Washington State, right? You said San Diego? No, San Francisco. Oh, San Francisco. Is it near there? I can't remember. I know I was near San Francisco.

Alamedo was up there. I mean, in a naval air station. Whatever. Whatever. Air Force is up there. Yes, that's where I was. So I remember being woken up and the night before I had had a seizure. And so I don't really remember the night before much, but I remember being woken up by a nurse.

And they said, you need to call your wife, my ex-wife now. But they said, you need to call your wife. I'm like, okay. And I'm not putting together that as a nurse. I'm doing all this. There's all these planes just taking off tanker after tanker after, you know, transport and all this stuff. And people are running around. I'm like, all right, whatever.

So go make a phone call and she's upset. And I'm like, now, they're still in Japan. My ex-wife and kids are still in Japan. They had come a bunch of times to see me. They came to Hawaii and they came to San Diego. But they figured, all right, he's going back to Jersey. We'll follow one later on. So she's upset.

And I'm like, what's going on? She's like, you don't know? And I'm like, no. And she's like, turn on TV. So I turned on the TV and one of the towers was burning. It was September 11th. Holy shit. Yeah, 2001.

I'm like, whoa. I was like, so she put the kids on the phone. I remember my, I think it was my oldest daughter upset because from our apartment building on base, you could see the roof of her school. And they had set up post, machine gun posts. And there were Humvees with machine guns at the gate and everything. And so she's like, Daddy, there's men with the big guns. And I'm like, it's okay.

You know, it's all right. And my whole time I'm thinking, I got to get back there. So I call my unit and they're like, you're not coming back here. They're like, nobody is coming. If you're in the States, you're stuck in the States. Unless you're operationally necessary, you're not coming back. So they ended up sending me back to Jersey. And then my family came about a month or so later.

They were able to come back. So I piddled around on this TDRL for a while, and then they made it permanent in July of 2002. And so I'm like, what do I do now? So the doctor's like, we can't work. You can barely stay conscious, you know. So I don't know how I finagled it, but I was able to finagle my way into part-time work as a security, you know, doing unarmed security in Jersey. And then I got cleared by my doctor at Bethesda to work nuclear security.

They had at the time they were hiring because, you know, it's right after 9-11. I really want to beef up to the. security so and I had the military background I was a grunt 011 and then I left moved into the 7011 which is expeditionary airfields okay so I had the background at the time what what is expedit I'm not familiar with that I'm so excursionary airfields would be like let's just say Saudi Arabia doing the Gulf War or Kuwait or whatever they would go in exposition airfields guys would go into areas that have been deemed

safe and build runways along with either CVs or construction guys and put in either A helo pads and refueling farts, refueling points or put in arresting gear and just start trapping aircraft you know, forward-deployed arresting hook geared aircraft. So I did that for a while. So I guess I had the military background. So they were being really stringent at the time. And I think I actually wrote an article. That was my first article for SOFRAP was about the state of nuclear security, which is not very good and I

thought hell about that. Well, the same thing after the air marshal program after 9-11. It was like this level, nuclear security and air marshals were this really intense, really high level thing, and then the demand for both nuclear security and

air marshals superseded the desire to maintain the standards. And apparently standards in both fields just dropped dramatically. Absolutely. I mean, you could do a whole segment on it. I don't know how it is today. I've been out of the game for a while.

You were not confident in our nuclear security posture at that time? At that time? Well, in the beginning, yes. When I first got there, yes. Although, and anyone who worked with me, I won't say where the place was, anyone who worked with me will know this story. The day that I checked in, So they had their old guard, and then they had the new people coming in.

So the day that I checked in, you know, you go through the main gate, park your vehicle, and then you go to the, I forget the name of the building. Basically, it's where you enter, you put all your stuff on the conveyor about, you go through the metal detectors, and then when you just pass through that, when you're finished there, you're in the rad area. You're now in an area where you have to have the, you know, you have to be the badge, the badge, yeah, and all that. stuff.

Yeah. So outside of that place, it's kind of like a parking lot. You know, anybody can, you know, as long as you're allowed to access, you can be in that area. So there's this guy. He has the security uniform on, he leaned up against the building. Did you ever see those cutouts? I think they're mostly in the south. I've seen him up here where it's like a cowboy.

He's like leaning against the tree or smoking a cigarette or wherever. This guy was posed like that. And so I walked on and I remember saying, hey, and he doesn't answer. So I'm like, okay, whatever. So I go in and do my thing, and then we were sitting in the shift briefing, and this guy is like two rows ahead of me, and all of a sudden I hear something. I think this guy's taking a piss. I'm like, what is going on here? And I look, and he's spilling his drink, his Coke.

And so he, somebody taps on the shoulder, he goes out, well, come to find out, this guy had had surgery, and somehow, I don't know if he made friends with his doctor or whatever, but he was able to get morphine patches. long after surgery. So he was slapping morphine patches on and coming to work and passing out. So he had like cigarette burns on his uniform from like smoking an action on his uniform and stuff. So that was my introduction to nuclear security. So, you know, I mean, nothing to be alarmed. Yeah, exactly. And it's nothing like crazy glamorous.

I mean, yeah, you know, you're your AR-15. It used to be shotguns, air-15. Your Glock. and stuff like that, and you know, you've got your tag fest and all that stuff. But it's not like you're running and gun in every day. The most excitement that I remember, and again, things could have changed. I haven't been there since, like, 2005 or so. The most excitement was when we did force-on-force drills.

So they have, like, this team where they would take former special operations personnel, pair them with people who were handpicked from these different nuclear facilities, and train them up. They would go somewhere and train them up and basically they would do like mock attacks on places just to test of defenses. So that's when everybody got all spun up.

We're out at the range when we're shooting and stuff. So it was good fun. I worked with some good people. But in the midst of that, I was going to school. I was going to college. And so I was going to work,

working 12-hour shifts, getting off work, and going right to college. And I was the old band in these classes. so, you know, I'm watching these kids, you know, coming in, you know, half drunk or whatever, and I'm just dying because I was up for 12 hours. But so I'm doing that. And in the midst of that, I had a cousin who contacted me.

And I'd see him every couple of years or so at a barbecue or whatever. Knew he worked for the government, figured, you know, he was State Department because that's what, you know, we'd get the pictures and all. So he contacts me And he's like What are you doing right now? This is what I'm doing So okay send me your resume

Send him my resume He comes back Had bled all over it Take this out Take this out You know Why would you put this in there And I'm like

Okay So I rewrite it Send it back He's like okay great Now I want you to apply To all these different places And he sent me a list From Department of Energy

All the way through FBI and everything in between And in there was CIA So I'm thinking myself Why do I have to apply to all these places? So I do it. Some I never heard from. Some I did and got a quarter of the way.

Some, you know, Secret Service was, I think I made it the farthest. I don't remember exactly where, but I made it pretty far with them. And then at a certain point, everybody just started falling off. And except for the agency. And so finally he sits me down and he's like, okay, this is who I work for. This is why I did what I did. He wanted to hide it in there. But, you know, so he's like, who have you told that you applied?

No, so. 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. Nobody. I had told my ex-wife. I said my ex-wife,

and he said, okay, that's it. Don't tell anybody else. All right, fine. So at that time, by this time, I had left the nuke plant and was working for a company, a mobile training team, run by a, he's a still active police officer.

He was a SWAT. SWAT team guy. So he said, hey, you know, I'd like you to come aboard. I met him in a security expo. As one of my counterterrorism guys, you can teach, like, the history of it, blah, blah, okay. So I had to go through all of his courses, all his running gun courses, be certified in those, and then assist in those while teaching the history of counterterrorism, things like that. So part of that was we had to go overseas. So I was in Taiwan and, you know, and some other places not realizing that every time I went back overseas, it restarted my security background check. So literally what now takes, I guess, about six months once you hit send for the agency

to come aboard took three years. And I didn't know this. So I'm doing all this traveling. And then finally, I remember we were up. My family was up in Maine. And where we were with some friends, there was no, barely any reception. And I just remember a phone call coming through. And I'm stand at the end of this dock and it was a recruiter from the agency and she's like, listen, do you plan on traveling anymore? And I'm like, I don't know why. And she said, because we keep having a restart your security investigation. I really like to bring you on board. And I'm like, okay. So, so no more traveling. So that was the summer of 2007. By December 2008, they called and said, okay, we have a school or a class slot for you. Do you want to take it?

It said yes. And March of 2008. I came on board. Went through Surr, Operation Officer Surr course one and a half times because the first time I went through about six,

no, I see it is six months, but halfway through, my appendix decided didn't want to be a part of my body anymore and just burst. And so had to leave. Appendix had a party. Yeah, yeah.

So, went through again and then ended up not finished or I finished but not starting at the end of it so I slid over to staff operations officer course okay when it was back in headquarters went through the staff operations officer course I finished that no problem and then went to well in between that I had a my youngest daughter was sick thank God it was anything crazy but you know it was enough that I didn't go anywhere overseas yet so

Philadelphia station was closest to where I lived. So they said, hey, send them up here. So I was going back and forth between there and headquarters in Jersey, see my daughter. And then eventually I got a full-time slot there. But before that, I volunteered to go overseas, so I went to Kabul for a bit. And then I came back, was, you know, did some stuff with Philly and stuff here and the States, other TDYs here and there. And in May of 2014 is when I left. So I think that like the whole mystique of the CIA, right? I think that's some things that people are very curious about. When you were initially, not when you're applying, because I know you just kind of sent out resumes everywhere, but when you got your first, like was the recruiter's call, was that the first time you'd actually heard from them? No.

The first time I heard from them was, So I sent in the, I did it online like I was supposed to. And what I was told by my cousin was, you're either going to get a fat envelope or you're going to get a thin one. If you get the thin one, it's basically, hey, thanks, but no thanks. You could try it in six months or whatever it is. I got the fat one.

So anybody who's ever gone through it will know that, and I'm sure that this is. Can we say a fat envelope anymore on you, like in that envelope shaming? Yeah. So, all right, it's a plus size envelope. So plus size envelope. Yes, plus size envelope. I did not have the model size. It's a BBE, right?

Big Beautiful envelope? Yes, yes. So I got that one. And so I did everything that they asked for. And if anybody has ever gone through this, I'm sure other agencies are the same way, if you open it up and you're expecting to see the big seal and all this other stuff. And, you know, and yeah, fireworks. right in blue fire no it is like a blank piece of paper right with a date on it

and hey be at this place at this time or whatever it is and um so i did everything they were supposed to do and then um i swear to this day that this was a test at one point they said they did a telephone interview and part of that telephone interview the woman said okay i'm gonna call you are you available on thursday morning i was like sure i said i have class but i can step out and answer. She goes, no, no, I don't want you to meet class, but what time is your class? So I told her 8 o'clock. And she said, okay, at 733 on Thursday in the morning, I'm going to call you. Can you be available then? I'm like, well, sure, I'll be available at 730. No, 733. Okay, no problem. She was like, all right, I'm going to call. Sure enough, it's 733 on the dot. And she made sure, she's like, are you going to use your phone or your

cell phone? And I was like, I'll use my, you know, whatever you tell me. And she was like, use your cell phone. which later on played into, you know, part of my training. So 733, look at my cell phone, boom, the phone rains. It was her. So she was like, okay, just wanted to make sure that you can do what you say you're going to do. Right. You know, be punctual. So I was like, okay.

So that was the first one. So then I got a letter asking if I could come down to Northern Virginia for a face-to-face interview. Okay, no problem. so they arranged a flight down there. You know, I knew where I was going. I knew the hotel and all that stuff. And my ex drove me up to Norick Airport. And I go to the counter and they're like,

we don't have a ticket for you. I'm like, what? And they're like, we don't have taken that. This is like 5 o'clock in the evening or whatever. So I'm frantically trying to call somebody down at headquarters. And finally somebody picks up. And I explained to the woman and she had like no. sympathy and she's like well I'm sorry but I don't know what you're gonna do and I was like

well can I get another flight she's like I don't know can you and she's like well hold on where do you live and I told her and she said would you be willing to drive down and I was like sure so you're sure and I said yeah so now by this time my ex-wife had left so she had to turn back around on the turnpike and come back and giving not happy at all so she came back and got me drove home threw my stuff into my car, drove down to, uh, down there,

Virginia. Um, and during this interview, you know, I did the interview and during the interview, and I think I'm going to have told you this story, uh, they had us go into this building, this business,

you know, just a regular building and, uh, go upstairs to this office. So the office had like glass, a glass front. So when I get there, I'm like,

am I in the right place? Because there was nobody at the front desk. I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? So I stood there for a minute. And of course, they must have out of camera because someone comes out, take me into this, like, a board room. There's all these people sitting around.

And most about my age, some younger, some maybe a little older. And the woman's like, okay, you guys just sit in here, talk so much yourselves, get to know each other, you know, that sort of thing. So we're talking. And by the time my turn came to go into my little interview thing, I was just completely defeated. And the woman that I sat with this little old white lady, she was just. just the nicest seem like, the nicest lady was like, what's wrong? You seem like something's wrong. So I said, you know, I'm sitting in this room with these people, and they're talking about

being lawyers, some are spec ops, somewhere, you know, I said there are all these accomplishments. I was like, and I just feel like maybe I don't belong here. This woman says to me, and I know my kids are listening, so she says to me, don't you ever fucking say that to me again. And I was like, I was like, uh, she was like, let me tell you something. She said, I don't know the exact statistics, but from what I understand, we recruit less than 1% of the population of this country. She said, if you're here, you belong here. She's like, so don't you ever let what anybody else has on their pedigree affect who you are?

And I was like, okay. I saw that lady probably, so this was 2006 or seven. So I saw her probably in like 2009. She remembered exactly who I was. Wow, that's awesome. Yeah. She was awesome. She was sitting in a class that I was in and she came up to me.

She's like, do you remember me? And I'm like, wow. Yeah, I do. And she's like, do you learn the lesson? And I said, yes, ma'am. And she was like, good, don't call me ma'am again. Yeah, so it really stayed with me throughout that career and into today. And I try to teach that to my kids too.

Yeah. But it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing. The point is not to self-select yourself. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I remember in a special. horses assessment and selection like there were other people in there um you know i remember there's a guy who was a russian speaker there's a lot of spanish speakers of course there's a guy who spoke

polish yeah all these people have these like foreign language capabilities and understood foreign cultures and stuff and i was like dude i'm just some kid from new york yeah i was an 11 bravo i don't know i don't know shit i'm like i can carry a rucksack and shoot guns and stuff like i know about tactics but these guys are like way ahead of me um but some of those guys were not selects yeah Yeah, you know. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, what looks good on a resume is not as sure.

It doesn't encompass the whole person. And that's something that I learned even as a recruiter now with Naval Intel. It's they can, you know, put down all the flowery stuff that they want. But until they're sitting in front of you and even then, some people know how to interview. Whereas, and that's why I've always believed that even an interview, you have to have a formal interview, of course. but I once did it. I did an interview once with Lawrence Livermore, the lab out there in California.

And, you know, I sweat like I'm being chased by hounds, like a runway slave as I say it. But I was out there. It's blazing hot. I'm in a suit. And part of what I had to do for the interview was give a presentation, a 45-minute presentation to this board. And I'm just sitting there sweating so bad.

And thank God for this guy that was running it, because he said, let's just stop. He said, get this guy, a glass of water. He was like, take off your jacket, sit down. We're just going to have a conversation. He was like, forget the presentation. We're just going to talk about you. Turns out that he grew up two towns away from where I did, knew some of the same people. And, of course, none of that helped me because I'm sitting right here and not working at more.

Whatever. But it was nice, you know. So I just believe that And so message here is don't sweat Like if you can get rid of your gland Like whatever And try to find out as much as you can about the person that's interviewing Because you might be able to use that

Yeah But you know it just Between the agency and this job here I found out I really like getting to know people Because that Once you make them comfortable And then this works in the spy world as well

They start to let their guard down and either they rise to being the good person that they are or they show their asshole side. And, you know, so of course, in this job now, I don't make the final decision on who gets hired, but there's a funny, real quick, veer, funny story. I got a, I had a resume from a guy, and there's a gap, and we're used to that. It happens, you know, we just adjudicate it. We'll have people who adjudicated, they'll call, say, what's going on. Well, we didn't have to do that because at the bottom of this guy's resume,

He had a little star and it says, note, that basically the gap in his resume was because he had slept with his boss's wife and got fired and was unemployed between. That was the bullet point. That was what he put on his thing because he just wanted to be honest. That's a straight. Yeah. And all I can do is noted. I don't make the decision. Yeah.

So I guess the lesson there is don't sleep with your boss's wife. Don't get caught or don't put on your resume. Yeah, don't put it on your resume. I mean, I don't know. Does that kind of special skills? It could be. He got fired. Well, so they can't be all that special.

Right, right. So, but, yeah, so then after I left the agency, I wrote for software for a little bit and then started working for, it's, the official title is the Department of the Navy's Office of Civilian Human Resources, OCHR. under that they have navs up that they naval supply that they'll recruit for naval aviation all that stuff I work for naval intelligence so now is that recruiting civilians into the gs system or is that recruiting officers as for can it's both actually okay so I don't recruit people off the street to join the navy I recruit for people who have either a like me had an intelligence background and want to get back into the game or slide over from another agency or military personnel who have the skills not necessarily intel skills but the skills that that command

is looking for and they're about to get out from the military so we will say okay you're projected you know you know um eAS date is six months you can apply now they just can't take you until you know do you go looking for those people or do you wait for them okay yeah um The commands can go looking for them, and what they'll do is do recruiting rodeos at like a trade show, or not trade shows, schools or job fairs, things like that. They can go looking for them, but we wait for them to apply via USA jobs or a flyer. Like if, let's just say it's for a promotion spot. Let's say we are a command and naval intel, and they have a GS-15, or a G-G-G-G-G-S, a G-15 position. We're all 14s. They will put up a flyer. It's not an actual flyer, but they'll sign out on email and say we're going to post for this job and

What they have to do is let us know hey, we are posting this job. It's going to be internal so it just changes the dynamics of how it works They recruit it instead of us. We just do the admin part of it on the back end, but normally what happens is Joe Schmo from off the streets says I want to get back and into the Intel game or I don't have an Intel background but I have cyber skills computer skills based on what I did in the Air Force or what I do or exactly non-chucks skills whatever it is and they'll apply on USA jobs then we'll see it and you know work it through that way so what what are some like are there some because there are people watching on we got 40 people on right now and you know more people will you know will you know watch this. And for anybody who, whether it's the CIA or the Office of Naval Intelligence

or, you know, any other intelligence apparatus, if somebody's coming from the civilian world, let's say they don't, you know, because a special operations background is really irrelevant most the time except for in very specific cases. The path to get into that in the military is very straightforward now. Right, right. But like there's a lot of people who are just confused or scared or I don't know. They think it's very mysterious how to get into the intelligence world. It's not that it's that it's, it's not hard to get into. It's just a matter of common sense, a lot of it.

So unlike the movies, you don't have to have a special operations background. You don't have to, you don't have to have a language. You don't have to have any of those bolt on things that you're going to get once you're there. you what you have to at least with CIA I cannot speak for any of the other agencies but at least with CIA you have to have a college degree right that's right off the bat if or you have to have a projected graduation date before they'll even look at you um and what about oh and i it depends on the job okay some jobs um let's just say a zero one zero 132 which is an an intelligence specialist it's kind of an overarching intelligence job, you do not have to have one.

You just have to have the specialized experience that's in the announcement, the job announcement. We can talk about that in a minute. But there are certain jobs like an engineer job, which still will fall under, because it all depends on what commander going to will determine, is this an Intel job or not. So an engineer, you have to have a, they call it a basic requirement. You have a basic education requirement of an engineering degree, and they even spell out what type of engineering degree, and you have to have the specialized experience. Some jobs, you have to have, or you can have either the education or the specialized experience. So let's just say you don't have working with UAS's, unmanned air, you know, air vehicles and stuff like that or surface craft, but you have a degree in,

certain things, you can use that in lieu of to get in. But it also depends on the grade. So anything that you can use education in lieu of specialized experience, usually a lower grade. Like a 7, 9, 11, something like that. Because the way

they look at it is, you have a base that we can build on from there. Whereas the higher grades are like we expect you to come in with this skill set. So with CIA, unless it's changed. Again, I've been out of the game for a little while.

All you can do is go to the CIA.gov, and actually USA Jobs actually advertises some jobs for the agency as well. You go on, you create a profile. I think it's good for a week, maybe two. 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. We Resource Network.org today. Somebody in the comments will correct me. And once you set that up, it's only good for that week or two. If you don't press send after that, it goes away. You have to redo it.

Once you're on there, I always advise people, think about the job that you want going in. And this applies to the jobs that I recruit for, or if you're going to sign up for the uniform services, go in with a job in mind. Because if you don't, you're coming out doing something that you didn't want to do. all the people who come to me like asking like, should I be a Marine or a Navy SEAL or should I be a Green Beret? It's like, dude, what do you want to do? Exactly. Because if not, you're going to come out with a job you don't want with a promise on the back end.

Oh, it's not open right now. But if you take this truck driving job and nothing against truck, you know, motor transport, but if you take this job in a year or two, six months, it'll open up. And three years from now, you're like, oh, my God. Right. And then you can't let you go. Yeah. Yeah. So go in.

the job you want, let's just say it's CIA.gov, look at all the different jobs. They're very, very vague. Purpose. You know, they're purposely, you know, it always starts with the flowery, you know, do you want a chance to serve your nation, you know, that kind of stuff. And then, you know, it'll give a little brief description of what each job is. You're still going to be confused because having been, had been there, done that sort of thing, you look at it and you're like, these all sound exactly the same.

I think, you know, these days you can pretty much go to, Wikipedia. Exactly. And mind the answer. Can we talk a little bit about that? Because that's another thing I noticed there's a lot of confusion about

the difference between an operations officer, a case officer, a paramilitary operations officer. And let's also talk about the term spy. Because that is something that people get wrong all the time. An agent and officer. An agent. Yeah.

Okay. So we'll go with the broad thing for me. So spy. When people think of spy, they think of you know, Tom Cruise. Right. That's cutting open windows and, you know, all the way into Dubai and yeah, you know, that kind of stuff. And there are people that do that stuff, serratitious injuries, and we've talked about this and stuff and stuff like that.

But your run-of-the-mill spy does not do that. Intelligence officer does not do that. They have people that do that for them. So technically, a spy and properly a spy is the person that. We recruit to steal the secrets for us or go to the meeting and come back and tell us what that general is. So a spy is actually the person with the access. Yes. So a spy is your nuclear engineer in Iran or your Chinese diplomat.

Those are spies. The CIA doesn't have spies. They have people who identify business. Right. But we have intelligence officers and now we'll talk about that. The difference seeing the agent and officer is, an agent is that spy or an asset. They are the person that you are asking to do to betray their country. So we are officers. We are, you know, CIA officers. We are the ones who go out,

the intelligence officers who go out and collect, technically they're the ones collecting, giving it to us. But those also apply to support people that apply their officers, security, their officers. We're officers. The FBI has agents. they are FBI agents. They are law enforcement agents. They do have officers, but I believe those are just like security officers. Right. That's where

the term case officer comes because they're basically case managers for the assets. Yes. For the spies. And they're not even called case officers. The old school is case officer. They're operations officers now. That's changed. A couple of things have changed now. Like the special activities, it's no longer a division.

It's a center. It's a center now. It's a center. Yeah. You know, so there's these little idiosyncrasies that in the whole of it don't make a big difference, but at the same time, they do. So the website's not really going to help with that. It will. It'll tell you the correct nomenclature. But once you apply for these jobs, because I think they ask you for three or four, your top four jobs or whatever it is, you send it in, they'll come back with the fat envelope or the, you know, or excuse me, the weight channel. envelope or the you know whatever um and then it goes from there yeah and it'll say on the website at a certain point if you make it to this point certain point you're to stop telling people

that you apply or tell them it just didn't work out right because now uh the chances are greater that someone's going to brag about their son or their daughter and say oh my kid is applying for CIA um a great uh story about that is the i don't know if he's there anymore, but he was the head of M.I.5, I believe it was. Yeah, MI5. A couple years ago, he gets his appointment as the new chief for MI5, I believe it's M.I. 5 or 6, and his wife promptly blast that out on social media. Of course. So proud of my husband. Not just that, but puts a picture of their house, you know, and everything. And it was like, oh my God. Right. So, you know, how to docks yourself. Yes, exactly. He might as well just been standing out there in his

trunks, you know, or a short. There's a couple of DGSE guys who added themselves on LinkedIn like a year ago, I think. And of course, somebody could say right now, you know, well, aren't you out on yourself? I'm not from undercover. Right. I can, now what's the process for that? Because some people in the agency, when they leave, they can't say for a certain period of time, they cannot say that I work for the agency. And other people can't. Yeah. So the whole reason for that is, is that if you putting on a resume or otherwise divulging that you worked for the agency, someone, and it's people's job to do this, could walk back where you were and what you did and could affect ongoing operations.

So ongoing or past operations. They can also look at your paycheck, see who was paying you. Absolutely. I got to find out other people who are working for that. Absolutely. Their whole job is to look at your footprint and be able to out you. And you may not even be the actual big fish. It could be, well, he's connected to this person.

Right. So that's the reason. So what they do is it's called rolling back your cover. So when I left, before I left, I made it known that I was leaving. So I was told by my boss contact, I forget the name of the office, and they'll tell you what to do. So they said, write this big flowery resume, as if you were going to hand it into Fortune 500 company, put everything on it. And I'm like, what?

So they put everything on it. So I did that. And they came back and said, take this out, this out, this out, change this, blah, blah, blah, and literally just rifted the shreds in a nice way. The whole reason is, is because they want to look at what you've done and how you're wording it.

And would that cause a problem? Right. So I rewrote it and they said, okay, this is acceptable. We'll keep it on file. You'll have yours. And from now on, if you want to change it or alter in any way, you have to come through our PDB. So you have to go through them and say, this is one I want.

Same thing with writing a book. You know, any kind of written in speeches, anything, you have to get their approval. So some people, mine was completely rolled back. They rolled while, I guess I was that much of a pissamp. No, I didn't do enough that, or I wasn't connected enough to operations that it would have jeopardized anything. So they roll my cover back completely. I can tell anybody that that's where I worked. Right.

It's like I've talked to people who they have part of their cover drops, but others are still intact. So they can say, yeah, I was in Bosnia, but they can't say, oh, I was in Iraq. Yeah. And it's the same on the resume. A good friend of mine, one of my best friends. He works for another agency now, but when he left CIA, they only ruled his coverback partway. Right. So when he went in for interviews, he, he...

He would have to, they would say, you know, when they bring up the gap in his resume, he would have to pull aside the senior person and say, listen, I worked for a three-letter agency or however he worried it. That's why I can't say anything. And then that person, he'd have to trust that that person's not going to say anything. Right. The agency is that now? It gave him a problem.

Even though they knew where he worked, it still gave him a problem. ultimately it worked out but um so that's the whole point of um rolling back someone's cover some people never had it right rolled back i talked to one guy who is a agency officer working i won't even say where he was working but he had a lot to do with like the wars and the balkins and stuff back in the day and uh he wrote two books one of them he had to sue the agency to get the PRB to release like information like uh he said one that he wrote a he wrote a two books one of them he had to sue the agency and like uh he said one that he in one part of the book, I was meeting with a source with an asset and a field with football shaped or sized rocks.

And they redacted that. They're like, well, somebody could figure out that you met with the source because of the, he's like, dude, there's rocks all over the place. They air way on the side of caution. His second book, writing about some other work he did, actually here in the States, like more like political stuff, right? the book sends it into the PRB and the PRB calls him in it's like okay so you know how much better you're gonna redact this time half of it two-thirds and like no the

whole thing you can't even publish the title it's crazy yeah it's crazy it's I mean I think some of it is arbitrary but I understand them erring way on the side of caution now when it comes some of it it's up it's a political yes someone else yeah all that and was like absolutely yeah it's not just for like like their version of offset like sources and methods. There's also a political scrutiny. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now,

how does the rollback happen in terms of mandatory declassification laws in the United States? Because what's the declassification? Like 35 years? Well, 10 years is the first mark where things have to be reviewed. And everything is classified has to be reviewed at 10 years. And then it has to meet certain criteria to stay classified. Otherwise, it's mandatory. There's still.

stuff like OSS assets that are technically classified. And I imagine because some of them went on to become prime ministers in Europe, and it's like that after the war. But I thought that after is a 60 year, there's a certain point in time where things have to be declassified. Like I don't, isn't there there, everything, everything from World War I is declassified now. Yeah. World War II, some stuff is still. Yeah, I can't remember the actual timeline of that. Yeah. So does that all, affects some miserable out. Does that also do you know or roll back in terms of I'm sure that it would because I know people who mentors of mine who have had stuff that is still they it's still not roll back and they're retired okay and some of whom have taught at universities and things like that and they're told they have to turn their curriculum in to be looked at and it's like no no take this out take this out wow because like now we're you really are getting it from the source.

It's like, wow, Joe taught that. So maybe he was a part of that. So now let's look back on where he's been, you know, and things like, and people are just coming to, we'll come to a weird conclusion. But wait, I thought the whole declassification process, I thought that with that all you had to do is remove the word classified from the top of the document. I was going to say, I hope you're about to laugh. Absolutely not.

Isn't that the rule? Not in that the rule? With the camera. No. They have been all that you just, don't look at me. One of the advantages I've had, you know, working as a journalist is I got out of the army as my T.S. was still being processed.

So I never had a top secret clearance. I've never read on to anything. So made my life a lot easier. Yeah. Yeah, some people that I know would actually, so even something like your LES, your leave an earning statement from at least the agency is technically a classified document. some people would actually take and just cut off

the top and the bottom and use it and now of course I don't think that's ever hurt anybody it was good enough for him and they would use it and um little sharpy and of course

and there are things there are ways that the AEC has to deal with those kind of things so like whatever your cover is and you know you can Google what the types of covers are but I won't say what they are or what mine was but their your paste while you're there will come from them right so let's say you're going to buy a car or

you're going to mortgage a house or whatever it is your whatever your cover agency or company or whatever it is is that's what your pay stuff will say on it but some people like when you get yours off your you know your pay stuff from your your agency off the computer whatever you do you print it off and you're like I just want to go home and do my taxes and you just cut the top and bottom off and take home that's illegal you still can't yeah in fact the uh the agent has uh or is it the ncio or the or the uh o d and i the office of director of national intelligence they have like very specific rules about when somebody's applying for a loan that the loan people have to send that's exactly have to send their stuff to them

yeah they send it yeah and it either gets you know like validated on their end like yes this is how how much they make or whatever else. Yeah, and they're very rigid about that. Even when you're getting out or you're out, they'll give you an address and a fax number. I think it may be a phone number which nobody ever answers to verify. And it's employment verification. Literally, all that will say is yes, you work here or no, you did not.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting slash creepy to think about. But like allegedly there are entire. fours on buildings here in New York City and that are just empty. Yeah. And it's just a mailbox. Yeah. Either there's nobody there. I know there's others where it's like a secretary there. It's just someone to pick up the phone

because it's a backstop for a couple. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. It's nuts. Like it's like you said, it's fascinating, but it's creepy that the stuff that goes on around us that we don't see. Don't see. You know, or don't know about yeah, it's just

you know, but once you've been on, I hate saying this on the inside, you look at things differently. What do you know, Powell? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who does number two work? Like, overhead. Yeah. I mean, do you, can we talk about like NR?

Is that something that? I mean, I can, yeah, on a basic level, because anybody, again, just because you can look it up, and I was sure this doesn't mean that you should talk about it. But yes, the agency has a division that is devoted to domestic. I'm not going to say operations because that's not what they are. Domestic work in the United States as in, you co-locate with other agencies, FBI, whatever it is, JTTFs, Joint Terrorism Task Force, things like that. And those are only when there's two reasons for the national resources or domestic division.

Number one is to work with the law enforcement agencies in the United States if there is a foreign net, to it. Right, a foreign nexus. Because the CIA, by law, cannot spy on American citizens. And even when there is a quote-unquote operation against American citizens, there has to be a foreign nexus to it. Meaning, your cousin is a known terrorist or a suspected terrorist or proliferation, you know, counterperistoration, operation, you know, like works in nuclear missiles and he's trying to sell them to, you know, Iran or something like that. and we know that. If you have regular contact with that person, well, by proxy, we're going to need to look at you. But we don't take the lead on that.

That would be the FBI. And we, if there's a foreign nexus to it, if, you know, hey, we're drawn a blank on this guy's overseas travel. Do you know anything? Then maybe we can help there. The FISA courts before this week. Before this week. Exactly.

It's very good about that. Apparently, that's not the case. Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, the FISA court, the FISA court doesn't seem to be the problem. The problem seems to be the information of the FISA court. They're being given exactly. The DOJ's playing tanking. Yeah. And they were quick to, I never dealt with them like one-on-one, but I've read all the reports and all.

So a FISA court is a foreign intelligence surveillance act court. And what they do is they take the documentation that the government agency, the FBI, the CIA, whomever, gives them and they take it to face value. They don't think there's, they don't think there's dodgy ship going on. And they apply the laws of the United States to it. And then, and then they determine whether or not a surveillance, you know, whether wiretaps, surveillance efforts are legally warranted in this case. Absolutely. So that's what a FISA court is. I've also never been to a FISA court, but I mean, I've been told in the past that, like, that's supposed to be the FBI's bread and butter. So like the judges expect that all the T's are crossed, all the

guys are dotted when they get it. Like it's almost like a formality. And the Fides of course, from what I understand, they don't play. Like they're serious. I thought it was like three judges have to sign off on or something like that. I don't think it's just one, but there, I know at least again, I can only talk from the agency standpoint. I know that there were constant memos that would go out when we were writing cables, these, you know, intelligence reports, if there is any nexus to a U.S. citizen in there, it will be stripped. That person's name will be stripped out. It will be looked at hard. You know, do they really have a nexus to this? And if they do, that goes in a completely

separate eyes only cable where very few people will see who that person is. Probably outside of those people who are authorized to see that, I'm going to say, I could be wrong, but probably the only other person. that could say, I need to know who that is, is the president. And they have the right to say that with anybody. It would be advised, you know, if you don't really need to know, you don't need to know. Right. But when I was at the agency, they were huge on that.

They were really big on, you know, if it was a U.S. person. Now, you could say an unnamed, unidentified or unnamed U.S. person. But then, again, the question would come, you know, okay, just a U.S. person. what is their nexus to this whole thing? And if they had nothing to do with it, whether it was a phone number, even people who think, oh, they're spying on our phones and stuff like that.

NSA and CIA and whoever collects just billions and billions and data points. And yes, U.S. persons' data is going to be in there somewhere. But again, that stuff is stripped out. And if it's not needed, it's stripped out, and it's looked over and it's scoured to make sure that people are not caught up in something that they shouldn't be. Now, the whole sort of Hollywood image and probably media image, too, the CIA as just this rogue element. I thought about this many times. You know, like conducting all these black ops, you black bag operations.

Like, what is your, what was your impression of that and how the agency runs on a day-to-day business or a day-to-day basis and things like that? Okay, so I'll go back to before I joined. Before that, I believed all the same things. Not necessarily that they were the bad guys, because I was smart enough to know that, you know, it can't be everybody there is bad. Everything they do is bad. But, yeah, I thought that, you know,

hey, maybe we'll go start a war while I'm there, something like that. Right. You know, whatever. Then when I got there and I was blessed enough that my first, two of my mentors, were old school case officers. They were just amazing.

One of whom has written, he wrote a book, hopefully he's still alive, prayerfully. He was a great guy. He was one of the first into Afghanistan. He was just amazing. What's in this book? First in, Gary Strong. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Just amazing, amazing guy sitting down and talking to him. And he said to me, I remember once on a break from a class, we were talking, and he said, he loved the term Mickey Mouse shit. And he would say, you know, don't believe. on Mickey Mount shit you see on TV. He was like, we're not smart enough to, you know, to run all this, you know, this crazy stuff. He said, but in my day, he said, I've seen some things, you know, some things that ended up before committees, you know, because obviously they're true, like the church committee

and things like that. And generally, though, what, generally, and tell me if I'm wrong, that's not like the agency, though. That is, that is, that is, that is an individual or a group of people who are like-minded individuals within the agency. The clique. Who kind of go outside of the boundaries. Yes, absolutely. Now, in the conspiracy theorist defense, some things did come from the White House.

Sure. You know, we see the Bay of Pigs. Sure. We see the, the, uh, plots that were, you know, failed against Castro, things like that. Those kind of things came from the White House. That was all pre-church committee also. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so anybody that wants a movie that illustrates his stuff, not the Good Shepherd.

Yeah. With Matt Damon. Yeah. Really, really good movie about this. As a matter of fact, I remember my ex-wife were watching that movie. Just before I e-odd, I think, was when, entered on duty, was when that movie came out. And there was a part where Angelina Jolie, they were at dinner

or something like that with friends and one of them turned to Matt Deem and said, oh, whatever's his wife's name, says that you're working for the CIA now or something like that and he just looks at her. And afterwards he confronted her and she was like, I don't even know what it is you do and you're a liar, blah, blah, blah.

So I was looking at me and being like, is that going to be you? And I was like, I don't know. I was like, no. I said this is a certain movie. It can't be very shady. Yeah, of course, absolutely. There's actually a term for it.

You know, C-Oing somebody or case offerings. Case officering someone. When you take the training that you be giving, given on how to be a professional liar or illicit information or whatever, and using it on. All the end of the family. I was told like, yeah. Like if you pull that shit on your station, she don't fucking kill it.

Because I spot it in a heartbeat. Yeah. You know, and yeah, they do not play that stuff. But my wife now, she'd never been intel and she could pick up. up like that. Yeah. No. She should have.

She's a, yeah, she was a, she's, um, yeah. What can you tell us about, uh, what can you, what can you tell us about the farm? Like, I know in movies, like they do all kinds of like surreptitious, surreptitious entry. And then, um, shootouts in warehouses, like, uh, you know, uh, all the, what, some of the other stuff you see like in the, in the farm, in the, in the farm, in the, CIA training in movies. Oh, the worst was that one with Al Pacino? Oh, the recruit?

Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, negative. So, yeah, you're going to approach a U.S. citizen in a foreign country and use him as an asset. Yeah, negative. Yeah, especially, and you're definitely not going to pull, I mean, anything is possible, but as far as I know, you're not going to pull a trainee out of his training early to go do run operations. Yeah.

Who's in the knock? Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah. It's the girl with the art gallery who doesn't know anything about art. It didn't. She doesn't know a thing about art, but she's a knock. Dave and I are Amarillo's Fox Truthers now. Oh, gosh.

Yeah, I mean, so the forum is, it's, basically it's spying 101. And I really, really liked it. The outcome wasn't what I wanted, but it was amazing. So it's basically a crawl, walk, run sort of thing. So you'll learn it in a big classroom. You'll learn it again and practice it a little bit in like your small group. Now are people learning how to like cut holes in windows and disable security alarms? Yeah, safe cracking.

Yeah, no. You're learning the basic stuff. Elicitation. You're learning how the recruitment cycle works. You're learning how to write intelligence reports. You're learning surveillance detection. Yeah, you'll learn all those things. You'll learn a little bit about black caches, things like that.

And the way they'll do it is, again, you'll learn in the classroom. You'll learn it and practice it a little bit in a small group, and then you'll go out and do it in a controlled setting, meaning the area outside of the farm, once you set foot, or actually, once you get out into your car, your fair game. You could be followed, you can be stopped, whatever it is. And when you come back, you'll run into little roadblocks and all those other stuff. And it's just a way for you to practice before you actually go out and do it.

Some people, that's what caused them to fail. They just, one thing or another, or a couple of things cause them to fail. Either getting caught with documents, you have a concealment device. but it's not zipped all the way or a prison person or like some person in my class she had all her documents on her car scene

like out in the open when she went through a road block so I mean it happens you know there's that but it could be something as little as or not as little as but it could be something as simple as you just don't have the personality

to approach someone right and so you know if you don't have like well they always taught us one thing we can give you all the We can give you all the training. We can't give you a personality. If you're not a people person It's just not for you and I've seen introverts who One, they're doing that job just completely blossom and then I've seen people who were extroverts who would get in front of someone and just fall apart So we have a question from Alex real quick

Alex Bennett and uh Jureen popped in and he says He says you worked in Wakanda. You just don't want to admit it Mount Wakanda, did you hear that our free trade agreement with them just ended? Yeah, yeah. I'm out of here. So, Alex, thanks Alex. Thanks for the donation.

Alex said I finally made it. Welcome. Just wanted to ask what are the church committee hearings, thoughts on the UPS shootout, and how did toys for tots start? Wow. Wow, we are all over the map. We are all over the map. Um, so the church committee, I can't give you all the details because I don't know all of them.

But basically it was in a nutshell, the agency got caught doing, yeah, doing all the stuff that doing doing dirty saying you did. And they were bad at it. It's why they got caught. Yes, they were bad. And here's the thing about, here's the thing about it's like you say, it's like, you know, or the case officer told you that we're not that smart. It's like if you're going to plan an assassination or try to do some elaborate assassinations. With an exploding guitar, the only people who are good assassination are people who do assassinations on a regular basis and America has never had that kind of that that sort of that background Yeah, so we're just doing like wazoo shit because because it's sort of like a wily coyote type thing

You know like oh this will work You know we can't do that You know I mean countries like you know they can put a an irradiated pellet into an umbrella tip. You know, countries that can do stuff like that, how long history is doing stuff like that. However, in the defense

of that, wasn't it a Taliban guy or Al-Qaeda that had the bomb in his hat and killed the, I think it was a minister or something like that? Oh, they did the bomb camera right before 9-11. Yeah, but I think there was a guy who had a bomb in his hat and made it into

a meeting. A few years back there was the butt bomb in Saudi Arabia. I remember that. Yeah, but that's taken it. That, though, is being a suicide bomber, which takes it to a whole new level. Because part of the planning of, like, we were snipers, and part of the entire planning, like 70%, 80% of the planning of a sniper op is, how the hell do I get out?

Yeah, exactly. Once I take that shot, now how do I get out? Because I'm not going down. Really, exactly. You know, one time. And, I mean, that's, I mean, that's a lot of times, that's what it is. Like, you can, you know, you can train probably a Chinaman Z to shoot a rifle accurately at two or three hundred yards. You know what I mean?

But the mission planning, you know, infill into, you know, the place. And then more importantly, now you've taken that shot. Everybody in the area knows somebody's out there. Now the X-fil, you know. So, like when we're talking about suicide bombers and that type of assassination attempt, I think that's a little bit different because, you know, you're missing half the planning consideration. Yeah, absolutely. You know?

So, yeah, so with the church committee, all of this stuff came to light. And I believe it was named after a senator, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. And he basically said, what the hell? And we had to come clean with it. Yeah, it was a lot of, like, the reporting that Cy Hirsch did back in the day, assassinations. The CIA, like, they worked with the Italian Mafia. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, because Italian Mafia was good or decided. Because they're willing to do the things. Yeah, they had people who knew how to do that. And on a side note with that, you just said, you know, these reporting, the media is a spy or the intelligence world's best friend and worst enemy at the same time. Because they can, if we're talking covert action, they can be your best friend because they can get that story out there most of the time unwillingly. That we want push forward right that I already know where the comments just get ready for the comments That is not supposed to happen here in the United States

More so in foreign countries you know It's it's not this simple but it's like hey This story probably should go out on the wire at six o'clock that sort of thing But it can also be our worst enemy because you have things like recently where that former asset of ours who is literally I believe it was Virginia or Maryland was outed and I believe it was NBC and Jureen can correct me because we were talking about it just NBC knocked on the guy's door his front door so the media can I remember that yeah so the media can be our you know worse than you're

best friend and back then that series of stories you know about our attempted assassinations and you know starting revolution and stuff it it blew up and it made a lot of changes that are still in place today, the clamp that has been put on covert action, and that's the other thing that should be clarified to, the CIA specifically does a few things. It's not just recruit spies. They also do covert action. Right, which is their title, Title 50. Yes, yes. Which gives them powers that the United States military does not have. Absolutely. And that, those are all the things that I cannot talk about. So we do covert action as well.

And there are other things that go within their special activities and all that. I will point out, since I'm not covered under any NDAs or anything, covert action, some of those things we never hear about. Other things you definitely hear about in the news every day. So like drone strikes in Pakistan. Absolutely. That are CIA run drones that falls under Title 50, paramilitary operations in Afghanistan or Iraq that are with CIA proxies.

You guys hear about that in the press all the time. A lot of that stuff, if not all of it, falls under Title 50. Absolutely. Absolutely. And also, it's worth noting that many of the what looks like purely military operations that you see, the CIA has a component in it. Bin Laden, for instance, we've all seen zero dark 30. that was a classic example of the

the work of the agency coming to fruition at the end of a rifle. And allegedly, the dev group operators were operating under Title 50 auspices. Leon Panetta kind of beat around the bush on exactly saying what happened there, but for them to do that cross-border operation at the past standpoint.

Right, because Title X, because the military works under Title X, and really they cannot go into a friendly country or they can't, yeah, they can't. It's not a declared war. It's not a declared war. So if the, I mean, the president can't authorize you and I state's military to go into a country

without a formal, without a formal declaration of war for like 30 days. But when it comes to a friendly country or a neutral country, it becomes completely different. Yes. So. And Jorwayne chipped in $5 into our bucket of gold. He said that's the Black Mafia.

Oh, we should talk about... Oh, the Black Mafia. I wanted to ask you, can you talk about the Black Mafia? Pandora's Box. I have a tendency to do that. Awareness, Chris, thank you also very much for that. Thoughts on Ground Branch and favorite... And then we'll get into the Black Mafia and everything.

Thoughts on Ground Branch. On your door. Favorite assault rifle. Secondary and sniper rifle war with the CIA. Thanks. Thoughts on the ground ranch? The G-Bers that I work with were amazing. Absolutely amazing personnel. I always felt bad for them because not only were they working the paramilitary side of things,

they were also expected to be a case officer. So they were expected to while you're training that, you know, X, Y, Z, fledging military, you're also going to see if you can get Intel on their commanding officer, whatever it is. But they were absolute professionals. They're awesome personnel. I also did some limited work with Maritime Branch folks, which we call them some, we call them the yacht drivers, because some of them literally do drive agency yachts.

and then Air Branch, I worked, did a lot of work with them. Yeah. They're pretty, that stuff was pretty cool. They're Russian Heinz. Secret airplanes and secret airplanes and yeah, buying up front companies. Yeah, so for those of you don't know, Ground Branch falls under special activity, special operations group. I don't know if a special operations group now or. I think it's center. Or, you know, the group within the center?

Yeah. Yeah, I believe it's the group. So, and they are essentially, the agency's paramilitary wing, they're very, very, what most people think of the agency, what most movies portray of the agency, they're actually portraying more of a ground ranch type of person, but ground ranch is actually, I mean, it's not, they're small. They're very tiny. Compared to the budget, compared to the size of the agency at large, it's very small. Before 9-11, there's like, what, 10 people in Grand Prix? It was tiny. Yeah, it was tiny.

And then, yeah, and so. Yeah, they just got. I mean, I didn't say, I mean, I know some people have gone over to Ground Branch or like, some are special forces dudes, Delta Force Sergeant Majors end up over there. So, I mean, you get some guys who have, like, a shit look. of special operations experience. Yeah, and coming out of the global war on terrorism, that while I was there, that was a prerequisite.

Like, it was like, okay, great, you were in the Marine Corps and you were infantry. Did you see combat? Yes, how much did you see? Then they would decide where they want. And you tell them, you've seen C-beams glittering. Exactly. Who did kill Kirkman.

Yeah. And Ground Brunch does have its, I mean, it does have its own pipeline where, you know, guys, you know, if guys are going the ops officer route, then guys would go through the branch to the ops school, to the farm or whatever, and then back into the ground ranch. But they don't stay there forever. No. You know, they...

Yeah, a lot of them will do a traditional tour. Yeah. They'll come out and do it. And then you have your other guys there that, you know, that's what they do. That's all they do. And they're not off the office. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're not expected to do.

And then... Actually, that ties in things. to what we were talking about earlier, I just felt like the other side of it is, as a side of the ops officer, there's also the PMOOs. Those, yes, so those are what you were just following that. Yeah, those are GBs, air branches, branchers, maritime branchers. So it's just paramilitary operations officers. Right.

So basically you can split that in two. You're expected to do paramilitary stuff. You're expected to also do ops officer stuff. Right. Do you have to have, if you're coming from, say you're an SF guy, J-Sach operator, Do you have to have a college degree to go and do that? You know? I don't know because.

Oh, you do. Okay. There you go. And how would you go about? Because I get asked this, you guys probably do too. If you are one of those guys, if you are a, you know, 29-year-old Green Beretian out of the Army, you want to apply. You just go on the CIA website. There is a spot for it.

There's a paramilitary operations. I mean, I see it advertised in like Foreign Affairs Magazine. So, I mean, people still act like it's this mysterious thing. But there's a process. I will say probably, though, and I can't say this for sure because I was not Special Activities Division or Center. But I would assume that once you hit Send, if they see PMOO on there as one of your things, you're probably vetted pretty heavily from people who are already there.

Because they have a pretty broad spectrum across the community, special operations. Yeah, and everybody has a hall file, basically. You know, you're unofficial. Yeah, good dude. yeah no no no absolutely so and mean great to drink with but not so much on the yeah exactly so yeah I mean I'm sure that has a place I'm not gonna name any names of interesting characters who have passed through those particular halls quite a quite a few quite a few do we answer older question favorite assault rifle and yeah and

like like even bigger in that like again I think people have this idea of like Sam Fisher and Splitter Cell that when you join the CIA they give you the goggles that have both night vision and thermals in them and like you're doing a split in the hallway at night with two suppressed pistols. What's the gear like when you show off in the world? How long at the farm do you spend on working on your splits? That's what we were like that. You're expected to have them down past right time you get there. Yeah, so if you want to join the CIA, you have to be able to do the splits. The splits. But like for real, how different is the gear, if at all, from what you would find in a military unit? Okay, so not everybody gets gear. That's first of all.

So it all depends on two things. One, your track, if you're on PMLO, you know, that sort of thing. Even if you're on airbranks or marathon branch, you get a kit. You'll go through a separate training after you go through your cert course. You'll go through a special training somewhere down south, further south than Virginia. And then you'll get your kit. I don't know if it's standard or not because I've never been around all of them, but it's basically what you would see on a special operator.

I know much people love that word. Let's go to the other side of that. You can go through your surcourse, your operations officer, staff operations officer, target or surcourse, whatever it is, if your next assignment is not to a non-permissive environment or a war zone, I shouldn't even say non-permissive, because Russ is not permissive, but a war zone, you're not getting any kit. You're not getting anything special. Because you're not, I want to say, deniable, but if you're there under state department cover,

you are not carrying a pistol around Moscow. Exactly. Now, the other side of that is if you're going to Iraq, Afghanistan, or something like that, you will carry, you're expected to carry at the least, sidearm. At the least. sometimes it's an M4 you know it just depends but

and that's a way we're talking about this that's the way some people got out of going overseas they would say I'm not carrying a weapon and they're like well I guess you can't go overseas then and you know of course and it's not the military where you have to go where they

I mean people have to understand that like if you're in a government agency and you say I'm not going to Afghanistan they go all right well that's going on your eval Yeah. I mean, that's it. It goes in your hall file, like, or people talk. I mean, I know you've seen too, Dave, I mean, when you're like,

even like, just like an airborne school and somebody freezes up in the door, like, no, not going, you get a jungle boot to the back. You are, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got on the plane, you're getting off. And I'll tell you, one of the best, some of the best finaglers I've ever, yeah,

their chattelers I've ever seen. Amazing. Finaglars I've ever seen, like, people, when I was there, everybody wanted to go over to the world. I mean, the CIA has more money than God, right? They do. And I'll be honest with you, when I went to Afghanistan, I went to, I forget where it is you go, the name's the office, and I probably couldn't say it anyway, to do the processing for it. And they were like, hey, you've ever been to REI?

And I'm like, no. And they're like, well, kids know it. Here's your budget. Here's $2,000. Yeah. And they were like, and they said, here's the standard. This is what you have to have. Yeah.

Anything else over that is up to you. And I was like, oh my. Now, of course. So you went to got food boo and fat farm. Hell, yes. Pele, payle, all that. I was in there and I'm like, like, I, you know, sleeping bags.

Most of the stuff I never used. Most of it, you know, you are issued a vest. You're issued that. You're issued an M4 when you get there. you're issued a your Glock when you get there. That's it. Other than that,

you bring what you have on the list and it's literally you don't use most of it. The only other thing you tell you is don't pet the straight cats and dogs. That's it, seriously. There was a kid that died there. Yeah, you get that.

You get that. You died from rabies. Really? Yeah. You got bit, yeah. We had a guy in my battalion so, you know, like, in Iraq, like raw sewage in the streets. And they're just like pits.

of raw sewage in the streets. So a bunch of rangers who are out on patrol in the night. This was in my battalion. I wasn't there when this happened. There's a mechanic in the unit and the mechanics were like, take us out on an hop,

take us out on a knob. So finally they were like, okay, dude, like come with us, you can come out with us. So they were like this mounted, patrol in Iraq at night under night vision. You know, you can't see shit. And this kid fell into one of those pits

and actually went underwater. Oh, my God. And I was told that like he was on the brink of death. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, can you imagine to say that gamut a globulin shot?

Bro, I can't even begin to imagine. I may have heard stories of ops officers, analysts, reports officers, miscellaneous people who, apparently, rumor has it,

that outside the door of the agency's primary compound or primary building in Iraq and in the green zone, there was a clearing barrel. And it was policy for everybody to... I heard this story about Chapman, not a... It was policy for everybody to clear their weapon before going into the building. And there were so many negligent discharges that they finally just said... Got rid of the barrel? They, yeah, they're just like, just don't, just don't touch your pistol. Just like, hold, put it in your holster. You don't have to clear it.

Just don't touch it while you're in here because, like, there were so many. Yeah. My friend and fifth group had some agency guys come through their Aob, and agency guys, like, one of them didn't have a sling for his rifle even. And so my buddy used 18 Bravo goes and gets to the sling. Like, here you go. And the guy just looks at the sling, like, looks at his rifle, like, can you put it on for him?

Yeah. Now, we're not talking about ground branch. We're talking about, like, your standard ops officer, who goes to the farm. I mean, there is a, there is a weapons course that they may go to after that. But it's,

but it's, it's a familiarity course more than anything. Yes. Yeah, you're talking about some dude who has like a decree. Is it a two-week course or four-week course? The M-4 is two, four weeks. Because there's,

and God, both four weeks. And then, but there's a, is there a shotgun? I think there's shotgun. I think you do shotgun fan while you're in the, yeah, one of those two courses. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're not all trained. No, it's, It's not the high speed. Everybody's karate certified. Yeah, no. No. And sniper rifles while you're with the CIA. What's the deal with that?

Does everybody get a sniper rifle? They do not. They don't even see one. No. Because then somebody's not doing their job if you see it. Yeah. Yeah. No.

Again, that would be a ground branch thing and part of a completely separate package. Yeah. So no. And I imagine that, you know, if there were, like sniper out of the ground branch, are probably, generally they're based on what people were using in the service, what they're familiar with. Yeah, whatever they're familiar with. Whether it's a windmack, you know, a wind mag, 300 windbag or a, uh, that. Or, I mean, this is getting a little bit deeper into the, into the weeds. Uh, but I mean, ground branch or other paramilitary elements also request military assets.

Absolutely. And you get, uh, J-Soc guys or actually a lot of Rangers. you know going out on operations absolutely yeah I mean yeah I mean all the time we worked with other elements up to an including like even like State Department personnel or it just depends on what you're doing what the goal is sure the operation is we'd work with them sometimes that bit us in the ass yeah like so I like I said we when you're in a war zone I can't speak for Iraq necessarily but in Afghanistan, we were required to have a vest and a sidearm at the very, at the least.

We go out. Not all agencies were like that. So at one point, I was at the embassy in Kabul, and I was standing outside near the gate waiting for a ride to come, and there were two people behind me, male and female, and I heard the female say, well, who's that guy? Why is he wearing that? The guy said, because he's an agency. He's like, what?

He's like, he's CIA. I just turned around. I looked at the guy and he's like, I was like, oh, yeah. So, I mean... And now your family's going to disappear. Exactly. It's family.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, and it would make my skin crawl and, you know, they know what they're doing, but that they weren't required to wear the stuff because we were required to, most of the time, to take a vehicle, even between the short distance between the station and the embassy or whatever,

or vice versa, whereas they could just walk around the street. So I would be driving behind my up-armored vehicle, and they're just walking around outside. I'm like, oh, it made my skin crawl. But, you know, I mean, there's a reason for that, which I'm assuming is you don't want to be out in this community with these people who are vulnerable, you know, up-armored, you know, you got all this gear on and stuff like that.

And they're like, well, what about me? You know, it doesn't make you them feel any safer. So I assume that's the reason why. Let me take just 30 seconds to make the obligatory YouTube call to action promo. I just want to thank everyone who stopped by to watch tonight, the whole bunch of people watching right now. Thanks for coming. Please make sure you subscribe to the channel.

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We'd be set and then some. We'd be, yeah, absolutely. So, what happened to my screen? So, yeah. And thanks to everybody who is giving us the tips in the chat, too. We'll try to get to everybody's questions. But obviously, if you have something pressing, you know, just send us a buck on there. Just send us two bucks on there.

I did want to ask you before I forget about it. Dave and I did a whole episode talking about the spook you sat by the door. And I want to ask you that question because, I mean, it's one thing to hear from like two white guys doing a movie review of this film about black militancy. But I wanted to hear your opinion on it because actually you were the one who recommended it to me. I was like, huh, that's really interesting. And then actually Jurewain was the second guy who was like, yeah, you got to go see this movie. And I was like, okay, fuck it. I got to track it down.

You told me the story. You actually found the VHS tape during your training at the CIA. I did. Yeah. Accidentally. Yeah. So down at the farm, without going crazy into it, part of surveillance detection is the whole point of it is to look as natural as possible so that anyone that might be following you would say, okay, this guy is born. Let's leave him alone.

Now I can go do whatever it is. I'm supposed to do a meeting or whatever. Part of that is what are called cover stops. You will have pre-planned places that look natural on your route to stop for a certain amount of time. To determine, number one, it looks natural. Everybody goes to store. It falls into your pattern of life. It falls into your pattern of life.

Number two, it gives you a chance to probably spot or hopefully spot anyone that might be following you. And number three, it also keeps you on a time. schedule so that when you finally get to where you're supposed to go, you and that person are getting there at the same time, around the same time. And part of that number two is it allows your counter surveillance team also to have preset in this area. Absolutely. Because they know where you're going to be so they can sit and say, okay, post two saw these

people there. Now we're seeing them again at post four likelihood that you're being followed by somebody. Yeah. So the Russians pushing the baby stroller around. Exactly. Yeah. The old Babushka pushing her. car shopping cart so on one of my training cover stops there was a god this is going to tell how old

i am a hollywood video an old video store and this one was closing and so i stopped in there before and it was just normal but when i go in there this time there's the shells are almost empty there's boxes everywhere and um i'm like are you closing guys like well we're closing but where everything's on sale go look around find whatever you want so i'm looking through i'm grabbing these DVDs and video tapes and stuff. And I find this one box and I'm going through it and I open this, look at this one VHS tape. And my first instinct was like, what the hell is this?

Because it said spook in big letters. And I'm like, excuse me? Right. And then I looked at it and I'm like, okay, I turn it over and I read it. And I'm like, wow, this is really awesome because it says on the box basically that this movie was so controversial that the government. wanted it gone yeah they didn't want people to to watch this so I was like oh I got to have it now so I go to the guy and I'm like hey you know I'll take these but what

he looks at and he's like where'd you find this so I said back there you know in that box and he's like you sure you want to buy it and then I knew I was like oh yeah I was like I want this so I got it for like four bucks or something like that so I watch it and it's very over the top I'm not gonna tell everybody what it's all about but We did a whole... Oh, you did a thing on it. We did a thing on it. So basically it takes place in the 60s.

You know, this guy, so the agency first decides, you know, this whole civil rights thing is getting out of hand. We need to get ahead of it. Why don't we get some black officers, you know, bring them in. We don't have to do anything with them. We'll try them up. We'll just stick them in a hole. So that's basically what they did. They recruit this a bunch of them, but there's this one guy in there.

And he's like, you know, Joe Schmo, businessman or college guy off the streets. And they train this guy up and all. And he does really well in his class, which starts to worry. Some of the powers that be are like, oh, shit. So eventually they just literally stick them a hole. They stick them in the basement. And there really is a basement at CIA headquarters. And there are offices and stuff down there, operations offices and stuff like that.

But they stick them down and he's like filing papers and a lot. He keeps, you know, like, when are you going to send me out? And they're like, just do your thing, boy. So eventually he leaves, but he takes that train with him back to Chicago. With him, meets up with his old friends, blah, blah, blah. Hey, we have this meeting going, and it's like a Black Panther meeting. And he basically volunteers to help train these guys in counter-revolutionary warfare. And it's like, you know, ambushing cops, robbing bank.

you know, all this other stuff. And basically it turns it to a full-blown war. Yeah, full-blown war. Yeah, full-blown war in the movie. And that, obviously, you can see why the government at the time, the real U.S. government, didn't walk this out there. So that is literally my favorite, well, besides the volleyball scene in Top Gun.

And my favorite is my favorite movie of all time. And the book is incredible. And there's a really good, there's a couple of them, but there's some good clips on YouTube from the author. He sat down with radio stations. I think I said it to you. I was watching it when I was doing to research. Where he talks about how people came to him and were like, listen, you can't do this. And he was like, to hell with you, I'm going to do it.

And I recommend everybody watching it. Yeah, it's very interesting. And, you know, they took that movie. I did some research when we watched it. They took that movie. and when they put it in storage the original

print they gave it a different title so nobody could find it it's like maybe or something nobody could find it and see I am of the opinion like having Washington

I'm of the opinion because he was a revolutionary in college I am of the opinion that he went to the CIA with the intent of of learning that stuff to take it back

you know I mean that of course it doesn't say that, but it would make sense. You know, but you definitely can see why the government didn't want that out there at that time. Supposed, the feds went harassed United Artists

and they got the movie out of theaters. They surveilled, like, movie theaters that did have it before they took it out. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The actor never got another lead role. He had very few roles, actually. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was...

Lawrence Cook, I think, his name was the actor's name. Yeah, it was a great movie I recommend it. Tell us about the black mafia. That leads me. Yeah, yeah, because I'm told this movie is like an underground classic with the black mafia at the agency. I can't say that it is or isn't. I would assume it is, one of mine. So, in a nutshell, the black mafia is a group of, it started out, and it's largely African-American black officers who basically look out for one another.

And the whole point of it was, as it was explained to me by one of my mentors there, was that there was a time when either there were no black officers or the ones that were relegated to support jobs. The copy room. You know, the copy room, stuff like that. And so when we started being able to branch out more in the operations, things like that, we didn't have the mentors that were needed or the backing that we needed. needed so we decided you know let's take it upon ourselves not to segregate ourselves but to say hey i've been there let me help you got let me help guide you through it you know um it wasn't like you know hey i just killed somebody at two in the morning i need you to help me hide a body it wasn't like that it was more professionally let me help you navigate this you know um my mentor um i won't

say his name because I don't know what his status is. Honestly, I don't even know if he's alive. I pray he. No, I believe he is. Talking to, and Dr. Rink, you probably tell me. Just, he was just the funniest guy in the world. I loved him. And Pete was, anyway, who's been there and has been in the black mouth, people know what I'm about to say.

Before I met with him, I had been talking to another black officer, senior. He was a division chief, actually. And he said to me, when you sit with him, whatever you do, do not stare at his pinky. And I'm like, okay, that's all he would tell me. So we meet in the cafeteria headquarters. We sit down and I'm talking to him.

And the whole time, I'm like, don't look. Don't look. Well, inevitably, I look. And his pinky nail was like two inches long, probably longer. Every other fingernail was perfectly manicured. I'm like, so I'm staring at it. And it was like a movie. I look up like this and he's like

the fuck are you staring at and he was like don't ask me and I was like Roger that so to this day I don't know what that picky finger was for It's gonna keep me up yeah it's gonna It's really bothered me But he was

I guess the word is indispensable He was incredible at helping me navigate The system Not just as a black man Not just that And mostly it had nothing to do with that. I mean, everybody, the way I understand is like, especially for like for case officer or offsets, like everybody needs a mentor, a sponsor. See that.

Yeah. Everybody has to have it. And he just was, I was able to get the, this is how you do it because this is the way it was back in the day and why it needs to change. Right. And so I met him. I met, I was a gentleman name and I can't think it was last name now. Willie. He was in charge of his special operation.

group he was I believe he was the chief when I was there this dude had the coolest afro I've ever seen in my entire life was like salt and pepper it was it was just it was just the man you're see um what's that movie with uh Eddie Murphy um Beverly Hills cop yeah you remember his chief back in Detroit area that was Willie yeah but with an afro he was just incredible um and through that so what they would do is have like besides a one-on-one mentor mentor meetings, they would do dinners and things like that. We'd meet at restaurants and all that stuff.

And it grew to, I'm sure they'd grown before I'd gotten there, but it wasn't just black officers. They were Hispanic. They were white. Sure Wayne says Nick Fury. That's about right. Yes. Nick Fury, yes.

It was just, it was, they would have some incredible meetings, like literally like, you're in this restaurant and this big, long table, they push tables together, just all these people just eating dinner and talking and always in there was how can I help you? What can I do to help you? And it wasn't, sometimes it would be, hey, I need to call in a favor.

Like, for instance, I had an issue where, again, my youngest daughter was sick at the time, and I needed to be able to be up in Jersey, but I still wanted to work. So it was, someone had said, suggested Philadelphia. Why are you working in Philly or New York? Both, somebody reached out to both COS's, Chiefs the Station.

They both said, sure. Well, then where I was my home office at the time, my boss is like, absolutely. He's the one that set it up. Somebody above him said, no. It was a career planner. It was like, no, no, it's not conducive for his career. Anybody that knows me knows, I don't care if I'm about to ascend to the presidency. if one of my children or my wife needs something,

everything else gets dropped, as long as it's legitimate. And in the case of a sick child, you're not telling me, I was ready to leave. I was ready to quit. I get a phone call, and I doubt she's watching,

and I won't say her name, but I get a phone call, and it was, it was like, God himself calling, it was the wife of a former division chief. And that's a pretty big deal. Yeah.

And she was just there as a contractor, And Jureen will know exactly what I'm talking about. When I heard her voice, and she called me by my pseudonym name, not my true name, and she's like, are you busy right now? And I was like, no ma'am. And she's like, can you meet me in the cafeteria? I said, sure. So I met her down there, and she knew the full brief before.

I didn't have to tell her anything. So that's something that not just the Black Mafia does well, but the whole agency, especially at headquarters, where travels fast. So she came to me and she said I heard there's a problem with getting you up there and I said yes, but you know She's like nope. It's already taken care of Somebody went to my branch and Or no to the division and said he will be going to where his daughter is And I didn't argue with it wow

Yeah it was I mean it moved literally within an afternoon. It was done and now some people might say well that's bullshit because That's not fair and at this point when it came in my child, I didn't care. It'd be something different if I was like, hey, I want to go to Bonn, you know, I want to go to Germany and you're standing in my way. Right. You know, that'd be different. But when I came to my child, that I was, do, pull whatever string. Whatever strings I had to pull.

And that is one of the reasons I'm forever grateful today. See, there are some things. The pros definitely outweigh the concert. Some things that they do or did that I don't like, but that right there was incredible. But that also comes to, that's not an institutional thing. They will say it is, but it's not. It comes down for the individual bosses that you have.

And I learned I've been blessed that overall, most of mine bosses have been incredible people. Yeah. Where like, even when I was in Philly, if, like, they would ask about my daughter or, you know, what's going on with this

or what's going on with that, my boss would just walk up and be like, shut your computer down, go home. Or to anybody else, like other people in the office, you know, Oh, like he'd listen. And if he heard somebody's kid who was sick, you'd be like, why are you here?

He would always say, national security will always be national security. Your family needs you, go home. And they would just send you home. Whereas there are other bosses who national security is God or my life. And if I'm here, you're here. And they would make you stay.

Which is whatever. Right. It is what it is. But I don't know a lot about leadership between the Marine Corps and the agency about how you're supposed to attribute people. What is the, I'm just curious, what's the real life history about, I don't even want to say necessarily integration, but the CIA is starting to hire black people. When did that begin?

How did that come about? Because I'm sure, you know, the film we were talking about is a film. Yeah, yeah, it's a film. It could have happened that way. I honestly don't know the complete history of it. I couldn't even tell you, Jureen might be able to and others might be able to tell you who the first black officer was. sure I knew it at one time, but I do know that most of them started out in the beginning as clerks and things like that.

I know there were some who were hired as case officers, but that was few and far between. What time frame is? This is probably just before Vietnam. Yeah, I think, like 60, like 60, because I would say late 50s and 60s. Yeah, I know it really started to happen like during and after. Vietnam because they brought in a lot of military guys. Yes. Yeah. And that's what I was going to say. There's somebody and I cannot think he was named now who comes to mind that was in Vietnam as a case. I think I know you're talking about.

So I mean it did happen. It's just I think the issue was much like the Marine Corps after up to and just after World War II. The culture inside the agency and inside the government period did not keep up with the changing times. Like the Marine Corps, for those who don't know, they were the last two desegregation. They were staunchly opposed to it. They were like, we are not... The Army desegregated right after World War II, I think. And during, more so during, you know, it was towards the end of it, the Marine Corps

were staunched. They were like absolutely not. The Marine Corps stuttered. Yeah, oh my God. When was, when was, because the Army was, uh, it was, uh, it was, uh, was actually desegregated and then Woodrow Wilson re-segregated him. Yes. Did they?

I know, like even in Korea, there was other, there's an all-black ranger battalions. Yeah, and companies, yeah. Yeah. And I know with the Marine Corps, they had the Moffert Point Marines, but they were not, there were non-combat units. They landed on Iwo Jima, as far as I know, and most of the island hopping campaigns, but always in support rules. Some of them saw combat because.

necessity that's what just happened. That's kind of funny. That's kind of funny to think about too because isn't like the narrative that like we used like poor black disenfranchised people as cannon fodder and like threw them into the front lines. Yeah. But I mean like some of the even like stuff

you know studies about Vietnam I mean most of the kids that died were white middle class. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It wasn't quite like did you feel as though like at at the agency I mean I feel like

It's a fairly liberal organization in the sense of most, like a lot of people there are like Ivy League grads. You know, they're coming from these liberal institutions. But I don't think that liberal nor conservative really makes a person racist. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, of course. So do you feel, in your experience, like, did you feel like there was, did you have to deal with a lot of racial issues or racism or anything like that? There was one. And I started to tell you before we went on air about it actually.

Only one time, no, twice, once in training, and this I think was a test. And once actually, while I was after training. So I was, once I was at headquarters, suit and tie. I'm at work. And I go to get on an elevator, door opens, and there's a white lady standing there, older, and literally did the bad clutch. Like, and went in the corner. Yeah.

And I looked at her. And I was like, really? And she just looked at me and I was like, oh man, I just walked off. Walked away. That was one. And then once when I was in training, you know, they throw different scenarios at you to see how you're going to react. So I had a guy who was being turned over to me. So I had to do that part of the training.

So the case officer before me, you know, led up to in the weeks or months before saying, hey, I have to go back home because of my family. This person is going to take over their great. blah, blah, blah. And so when it came down to the turnover, I met this person, and right off the bat, he was, it was a role player, but right off the bat, he was hostile.

After he was three, because you know the story in the bar. You guys know. So I'm talking to this guy, and he's just so rude to me. And again, it's training, you know, but by this point, you're so immersed in it that it's real. Right, right.

So this guy, all of a sudden, brain clicked and he's like this guy's called you boy like three times okay it's on now so he kept saying it and then and so part of the recruitment cycle is you're gonna offer them money you know you know it's the saying is it's not a recruitment unless they take money so I kept trying to push money on this guy and it was just pissing me off that he wasn't taking it so at one point he says and I had my hands on my on the chair like this and he says boy I'm not going to tell you again that I'm not going to take your damn money my hands my knuckles turned white he said later because you get a brief afterwards and I started

to raise up off my chair and then I'm like training sat back there so afterwards he said I swear I was looking for the door because you were coming out of the seat after that's funny oh my gosh so so that was that was a training yeah and he said you really you know I'm not really like that yeah and I said yes he said I'm just trying to show you that culturally, there are some people that are going to treat you different. Sure. So he said, now if you had been a woman,

I would have used a tactic like that. So then the other time, which we've talked about, we had to do what's called a bump. You had to find a reason just like, you know, you see in the movies to get in front of a person so they allow you to sit down and talk to them so you can start a relationship.

Right. So you've identified your spy, the asset, who has access to whatever it is you want. Yep. And so in this case, It was early on, so they had identified our instruction that identified it for. You got a picture of them, blah, blah, blah, their background, all that stuff. So I knew they were going to be at this bar. So I go to this bar and I walk in, and it's like one in the afternoon or so, I walk in, and there's

like maybe six people in the bar. I see the guy sitting there, and I'm like, crap, what am I going to do? So I notice he has a newspaper. So I go past him, use the restroom, come back out, and I stop. And I'm like, oh, I was like, you know, I didn't get a chance to read the newspaper today. I'm trying to find this article about such as such. Do you mind if I take a quick look? And he just gave this little smirk.

Yeah, you slip. So he was like, sure. So I sit down and we're talking and he had a beer. So he finished. He's a role player. He's a player. Yeah, as well. I'm going to say all of them.

I don't know us for sure, but I'm going to say most, if not all them, are former intelligence officers, case officers, whatever they are. Right. And so they're seasons. So they know what they're, they know how to play this. Right. So, and most of them fly in from other parts of the country. So, um, uh, so I would ask if you want another beer, what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to ingratiate yourself. So, um, I go up to the bar to get a beer. Now again, there's six people in this bar. Nobody sitting near me. And I'm like, uh, the bartenders right there. I'm like, hey, excuse me. And he just looks at me and just goes back to what he doesn't walk away. I don't pretend he doesn't hear me.

Just completely ignores me. I'm like excuse me like twice ignore me well now the role player gets up walks over and he's like Excuse me do you not see this man standing here? The guy pulls back his sleeve and there's a freaking swastika on his wrist The instructor looks at me or the role player and goes like this meaning we are not in time right now And he was like I don't give a shit what you have on your arm if he asked for a beer you're gonna give them a guy's like I don't serve his kind here you would thought we were in the movie

the heat of the night. It was like, what? And that guy was like, you're going to go back to your classroom. He's like, this is over. You're going to go back to your classroom. And you're going to tell the instructors what happened. I will follow it up with a phone call. And I was like, you're sure? And he was like, yep, go. And by the time I got back, they had already knew what was happened. That bar was declared off limits. And I don't know what happened.

Well, I mean, you shouldn't pick bars called the Eagles Nest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The right stand. Yeah, the right shot. Exactly. Yeah. And apparently that part had been used before, no problems. I don't know who else went in there, black white or whatever. Right.

Or if he was a new one, but wow, I was like, wow, is this part of the extra? But when he went like that, I knew that that wasn't a part of it. So, yeah. So those instances, really that was it. Yeah. Did you ever have like working operationally handling assets, like any interesting experiences? Do they approach? Because I've asked this in many different people, both military and intelligence community people who are African American.

And they always have a very interesting answer when I asked them this question. No, I did have one Somali guy that I was working with who, and I've heard this before, told me that I don't see you as black. You know, Africans don't see African Americans as Africans. You don't look at any symbolic enough. Yeah. So, I mean, there's that. And then once when I was going through an airport, I was escorted in the secondary,

and the guy basically was like, you know, are you here to sell drugs? And it's like, what? No. You know, then he asked me, he was weird. He was all over the place. Asked me if I, like, little boys or something like that. This was at an American airport?

No, no, no, no. This was a foreign airport. No. And I was like, what? No. I was like, no. He was just trying to trip me up. Well, either that or he was trying to either buy drugs or somebody. Exactly. I know.

So, I mean, but no, other than that, no, I mean, everybody else that I worked with, you know, whether it was liaison or otherwise, were everybody was pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, if I had a problem with anybody most of the time, it was somebody at headquarters. That's what it was. Is it if you're on the same. Yeah. That's usually what it was. And we talked about like the ones who, everybody was clamoring to get over to the GWAT.

You know, so you can always tell the ones who had just come back because their hair was a little longer. They had a beard if it was a guy, big watch, and they would just walk with their nose in the air. And it was like, you can still get punched in the face. So, you know. And then they're going on to their necks because they just had a hardship to her. Yeah. So now they're going to go to Paris. Yeah.

Now they're going to Paris. I'm beating whether I should cut this off. I'm smelling of gun oil and blood. Yeah. So, I mean, other than that, you know, some people had to be taken down a peg because it's funny, there's tribes and tribes and tribes. So it's like you have them coming in, oh, I was elite. I was, you know, either special operations or I was, I had an elite school.

Then when they get to the agency, it's, oh my God, now I'm agency, you're FBI or State Department. Now it, and then within that, it's, I'm director of operations and you're a director of operations and your support or whatever. And then within that, it's, you know, I'm in N-R or I'm in, at the time it was either any Near East Division or, you know, SAD or something like that. And so there's all these tribes and tribes. So it really is like high school like-

It really is. People never, people never grow up. Yeah, people don't change. They don't change. Hey, Alex, thank you very much. And he wants to know, Jack, can you go over your A-10 gun pitch? Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, we're getting off the top.

Yeah, so you guys see the new trailer for the Top Gun movie? No, it sure did. And it actually looks like it's going to be fucking cool. I want to know where Sundowner is. Is Tom Cruise? Where's the Black Pilot? Fuck, I don't know, man. Exactly.

We could have had him, man. Remember that, dude? What about, I think I heard somewhere Val Kilmer is going to have a camey. I heard. Yeah, I heard that too. Is Tom Cruise in it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And I was actually watching a thing today about how they actually put Tom Cruise up in, like, I guess an F-16 and they were filmed them like, yeah, actually, not just him, all the other actors, the younger actors also. So they're like pulling G's and stuff and barrel turns. That'd be fun. And actually, I mean, I was never a big top gun fan,

but like the movie actually looks pretty cool, so I'll check it out. But anyways, so my point was about this, I was like, when do we get a top gun film about an 8-10 pilot? In the movie, the 8-10 pilot, it should be a girl that's like 5'3-3 from like Alabama or Missouri in like dips Copenhagen snuff.

It should be like that kind of because like the the public has this idea this vision of like when they're going to get a female Navy seal it's going to look like the meme or yeah when we get a female ranger she's going to look like Mia Jovovich or uh galgadat like these beautiful women these beautiful like 10s them fatals and it's like no the reality of it is when those women do come around when we do have female rangers and seals they're going to be like these kind of like stocky girls like they're going to be butchie. they're going to be able to deadlift some way and they're going to talk like fucking soldiers and they're going to be just as bad as the guys they're going to be like we're dicks and they're going to be fucking assholes too like that's just the kind of personality

and the type of person you're going to get into those jobs they're not going to be the super feminine woman so I love to see them do a top gun film about this female A10 pilot who just like you know started like yelling at guys like Get your fucking cock handles off my fucking airplane. You know, like, push the guy into the lockers and shit.

Like, what are you looking at, Breeder? Yeah, the fuck out of here. You know, like I said, like, you know, you have a scene where she's taking guys home from the bar and then, like, afterwards, like, throws them a box of Kleenexes. Like, wipe yourself off. Get the fuck out. Yeah.

You know, I gotta get up early. On one hand, it, like, gives the woke girl power movement exactly what they want, but not quite in the way they want it. Right. So it draws a little bit of that in, but it also draws in the God-fearing American that loves war movies. And, you know, definitely scenes of her doing gun runs, strafing runs. I'd watch a movie with A-10 runs. Yeah.

That'd be amazing. Just like, and like there's, I don't know if either you guys ever experienced this, but it would be a great scene in a movie to play out. Like, if you open up the film and it's a bunch of like Rangers on the ground, and this actually happened to me in Afghanistan or the platoon I was with. Charlie Company, we kept hearing this girl's voice over the net. And, you know, a bunch of rangers been overseas for a lot. It's like squirrel? Yeah, we can keep talking. Squirrel?

We haven't even seen a woman. I don't know how long. And you're hearing this girl, and she sounds hot. Like, I don't know how to describe that to people, but this girl sounds hot. She's over the net. And you hear her voice every so often. And everyone on target is looking around like, where is she? God?

Where is it? Where the fuck is it? Like, you keep hearing her, but where the fuck is she? And finally someone put two and two together, you know, like, whoever that is, they're in the air. And so now there's, like, what base is she on? Is she with us? Is she over in Candahar, where is?

And I heard through the grapevine that she was a AC130 pilot. Oh, really? Yeah. Oos. I'll tell you what, one of the most, it's funny because, you know, people talk about war movies. I don't watch a lot of, like, modern war, like, old war movies, but I don't like a lot of the new ones that are about Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's not because, like, they're traumatic. It's not, I just, I'm not. It's like I've been there. I don't, you know, whatever. Yeah. You know, it'd be like what, I, I imagine to be like an accountant watching a movie about accounting. You know what I mean? Yeah.

There's not the account with an afflick. But anyway, um, but one of the most powerful scenes in a movie, like a move, a moment that literally made me stand up, stand up and cheer was in, I think it was the first Transformers when, when they were out in the desert. and do you guys see that the first Transformers they're out in the desert and like the Decepticons are coming in and then the AC130

the Spector starts Oh yeah starts to light up and I was like I just like Yeah because I mean Anybody who has been

Has kind of had their ass pulled out of the fire by like my Spector like that thing Like It's like when it's a really really cold day Or like you've been

You've been in a patrol base All night long and you're freezing and all of a sudden the sun comes up and just feeling it. You know, you're like, ah, that's what, that's Spector. Spector is the sunshine coming out on a Bloomfield coldy day that's like, oh, thank God. That's the aircraft that the Taliban are like really a far. Oh, yeah. Because it flies so low that they can hear it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they, man, when they can hear that, it's like, you don't have a lot to worry about because they know that they can. I mean, I was in Afghanistan in 2004, so, like, things were relatively, relatively tame, but we had AC130 reducing targets in Iraq after we'd pull off of objectives. Reduce the targets, I love that. As we're pulling off, boom, boom, boom. Now did they fly during the day?

This was at night. Yeah, they didn't fly during the day. When I came back to that same city in 2009 when I was with SF, got to see their handiwork, those buildings were still there. Still there. It's, yeah, they wouldn't fly during the day. They fly so low. You can see him naked eye. But don't tell me that movie would

fucking sell. I was saying on Twitter, I was like, man, that's like permission to make your own printing press and just run off sheets of $100 bills.

Would you do a cameo? Me? Person? Yeah. Like the grizzle? I could be like one of the, like, Ranger, like, you know, I'm old enough.

I could be like the platoon sergeant at the scene. Like, who's the girl on the radio? I could be that guy. You know, there's a split. All right, sweet cheeks. all right ladies

it's time for you soldier up yeah I could do that I'd be a shoe in for that role yeah I'd be the dude

like refueling it feeling it good love yeah unwed but yeah I think that that would be a

fucking ball of ass movie yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah let's see what

let's see what kind of questions we have back in the comments yeah sure if you guys really, really, really want us to nail your question and to get it out there. Throw us 99 cents and we'll get on it. He's loaded by a penny.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So while Dave looks in there, I mean, without going in to, I know you probably can't go into any specific information, but I mean, what's it like actually handling an agency asset and going in there and meeting with one of these people and, you know, whatever it is you have to do at the time? So I didn't have any long-term ones, but the ones that I did have were turnover. So they were pretty easy.

I didn't have to go through the full cycle of recruiting and all that other stuff. Which, if I had stayed, would have been a detriment to my career because they want you to have full cycle recruitment under your belt. But the ones that I did were pretty well-seasoned. And so they were like one guy, the very first one was a guy who worked in the exciting world of minerals. But within that, some of the components of these minerals were able to be used in the manufacturing of missile components, things like that. When I got this guy's file, literally it was like a movie. They bought it up. Like first it was like a stack.

Boom, here you go. And then it was like carts. He had been an asset since like 1979. Wow. Yeah, so I was like, oh, so I had to read all this stuff. It was insane. And eventually my boss came out and was like, listen, don't worry about this, just read this.

And the guy, it was almost like he knew how to handle me in the sense, like, I've done this before. Of course, you don't want to ever let an asset run the meetings or the relationship, but he knew the deal. He knew the deal, you know. The one thing he was really, you know. really good at was realizing that I wasn't the previous officer. So while most things would stay the same, there were certain things that, because of my

personality, messing with his, we had to, you know, change up. But overall, it was, it was a lot of fun because I loved learning about these people. And another thing that NR does is community outreach, meaning we will go to, in partnership with the FBI, go to U.S. businesses in the United States that work overseas, do, you know, shipping, whatever it is, and say, hey, this is who we are because we have to tell them that we are agency, we don't give them a real name, but we say this is who we are, and we know that you, you know, we've noticed through our research that you do great work with blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, some of your works in China or whatever it is, would you be interested in helping us

and in my experience in the time that I did it 99% of them said yes either they were like absolutely hell yes or if you hadn't come to me I was gonna come to you that sort of thing so if they said yes we would brief them on you know don't do any stupid spy shit like steal a you know a manual which actually happened not to me but to a deputy chief of mine He went to a meeting, an asset meeting, and the guy's like, hey, I got something for you, and he was like, boom! And it was a, what I say it was, I want to say it was a SU-35 or something from a foreign cut. He had gone to a train show and stole an a manual and bought it back.

And he's like, oh, what I'm saying? He's like, you can't do that. He's like, well, I can't take it back now. I found it. So it actually ended up going to headquarters and he did whatever he did it. But we have to tell them, do not do that. Don't do anything out of the ordinary that you wouldn't normally do. Just come back.

Because they're supposed to be, if anything, a support agent, not an action agent, right? Yes. They're not supposed to be breaking into the States. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll just tell us, the things that you think would be of interest or we'll say to you, if you hear about this, just let us know. We won't task them. We don't test them with anything. Because, again, they're not an action, anything.

They're not an action, they're just support. there I've been some that I've said no I went to one where the guy said he did some work with another country and said not only is it no but I'm going to tell my customers that you approach me at that point the me part of me wanted to punch in his face well now you can tell them that but okay no problem sorry you know to disturb you we move on

people have asked me I've told that story to someone else and they asked me, you know, because you're with FBI, they're like, well, can you just arrest them? No. They didn't do anything illegal. They were asked a legitimate legal question, and they said no, legitimately, and we just let it go. Now, so the way it works is if we want to go after a company

or approach a company, I shouldn't say go after, we will tell our FBI partners, this is what we want to do, this is what we're closing. They will check their holdings, and if there's no legal action, pending against them or an investigation, okay. If there is, nine times at ten, they'll say,

no, or hold off. Sometimes they'll say, okay, we're going to go with you, and we're going to see what we can find out why you're there. Right. Right. It just, you know, it just depends.

Any interesting questions? Oh, I haven't made it through all of them. Nuclear security, do you know anything about this? The nuclear security at the Amarillo Panx plant going on strike in 2007? I wasn't there, so I don't know anything about it. on it. Let's see here.

What specific career opportunities are directed at someone in the CIA if they have an interest in geopolitics and global affairs example of the doings of China, Russia, Iran, etc. Anything. Literally. Yeah. So there are certain things while you don't have to be

like super nerd or whatever it is to get in. Before you get there, you will have a conversation with your recruiter about what you want to do and what's best. for the agency. So based on your skill set, especially something like that, you'd probably end up being an operations officer. They're not going to force you to do it, but they're going to strongly suggest you do it. But you could also be an analyst. An analyst, yeah. So it just depends. Like me, like people

always ask, what do I have to have or need to have to go? And I said, there's a difference between have to and need to, in the sense that you have to have a college degree to be operations, you know, to go into clandestine service. Right. But you should have or need to have, it would be great to have, I should say, a language. Some sort of world affairs background would work best. I shouldn't say work best, but would help you. But you don't have to have those things.

I didn't have a language. I still don't have a language. I gained some things while I was there, but I don't know. You were DLI. You went to DLI. You were formally trained. I wasn't. what the agency will do is

they'll strongly encourage you to get a language and they will pay for you to get a language and there's signing bonuses and all that other stuff. Did the CIA sell cocaine in South Los Angeles? Not to me, they didn't. But people are cracking. No, I'm just playing.

No, I don't know. So AW says you're the coolest guess we've had so far. Well, thank you. Let's see here, come as soon. Oh, they want to know what your shirt says. Oh, stop. Wait, which camera, that one? Yeah, that's...

It says Black Panther. I think. Although, this could be one of those tattoo things. Yeah, yeah. It says, you know, eat nuts or something. These balls. Yeah, I don't know. These nuts.

I'm like, and I like to collect t-shirts that are not mainstream. Yeah. That's my thing. Sahara says, what's the overall vibe regarding CIA operations in and vice versa obviously we can't go into details but would it be feasible for a Kremlin asset to be a tier be in a tier one soft unit and vice versa? I mean I guess you're saying could like some could could could could Russia infiltrate somebody into a tier one special operations unit? I guess it could I mean anything is possible anything is possible there I mean if you watch that show the Americans that's based on loosely on actual, not events, but an actual couple. I don't know all the details, but anything's possible.

The whole goal of sleepers is to, from birth, be raised towards that. In Russia, you can do that. We can't do that, but they are very, they were very good at it. I mean, if you look at those 10 who got rolled a couple years ago, maybe they're losing their touch a little bit, but overall, they're good at that. Well, and the other thing is, is like, when you're identifying or when you're, I mean, one of the biggest things about Tier 1 units is while the people are active in it is the anonymity. And one of the reasons for that anonymity isn't just to protect them against hostile threats, you know, whatever, you know, whether, you know, ISIS is going to come over and look for them and try to kill them in their homes. But it's also, people have vulnerabilities. And, you know, as an ops officer or as, you know, other ops officers in other countries, you know, you're looking for something that you can exploit.

What is exploitable in this person? Do they want money? Do they have a gambling problem? Is there child sick and we can get the medical care in the United States or whatever else? So in the same way, if, you know, foreign services were looking at, tier one operator or, or anybody, for that matter, they're looking for the same type of stuff. for what what is it about this person that we can exploit because obviously if somebody's in a tier one unit then they probably have a sense of patriotism right i mean us also i mean a lot of people like oh you know the reason people get into special ops or do this or do that is because

they're hardcore patriots and i would say that yeah all everybody's probably a patriot but there's also a selfish aspect to it where everybody does it because they want to yeah you know they they love doing that, you know. But but that doesn't mean that for all of them that half a million dollars couldn't overcome their patriotism

to a certain extent because there's also it's also like when you're approaching somebody, you're not telling them necessarily to sell you the whole farm for, you're like, look, I know that you have friends there. I know that. and they don't mean not even know it's Russia approaching it. It could be a false flag, right?

It could be, you know, a person can pose as a journalist and say, hey, I just want to know some details of this story. I don't want to know your friends. I don't know. And then bit by bit, they open it up more and more. I mean, if I were a Russian and I were going about that, I mean, I just hit them up and be like, oh, hey, we're in this office at J-Sach, and we just need to improve communications between our fellow offices.

And, you know, can you just like hit us? slide us some info on the DL so that we can de-conflict battle space. Yeah, a lot of it, yeah, a lot of human engineering. Yeah, you just tease it right out of them. Yeah. I don't think it would even be hard. Well, and the other thing that other countries will do that the United States generally won't. I mean, I think that

the United States is pretty reluctant to do it, and I don't even know if they do, but are honeypots. So, you know, like, you throw a hot agent, a hot chick, you know, in a bar where you know that operators go to, she's going to get some secrets

over time. And even throwing a male. Yeah. Either A, another male or B, a female. Because a good, and to qualify what you said, the U.S. as far as I know, it's not. See, that's what I'm, I believe that

too. I don't think they do. I don't think we do that. But before, unlike in the movies, and because of expediency of time, and all that, that would be something that would be worked over a long period because you can't just throw it at anyone. It has to be, there's certain criteria.

Is that person lonely? Right. Is that person have other issues going on around them that will fog their senses enough that when I throw this person at them, they're going to be. Right. When I say, yeah, and they're not, like, that person would not be trying to get all the secrets from one and nine. Like, it's a process.

And it may not be any secrets at all. It could be. they're looking to put that person in a compromising position so that the real intelligence officers can come in and say, now we have video, what are they going to do? Yeah. You know, so it's a long process. You're like, I don't know, throw it on you for me. Exactly.

You know, I think my wife's listening. So I'm just going to say now, if they ever do that to me and said, we're going to tell, I'd be like, here's the phone number. Yeah, exactly. Because I would rather, it's like a lie. I'd rather you get it. Oh, you know. You told me that story one time about the case officer who had somebody like slid, slide, pictures across the table too. Yes. Yes. And he

freaking was like, oh well, yeah, they don't care. Especially the old school ones. Yeah. Because this was an old school case officer. Someone approached him and said, we have this envelope everything you need to see it. Open it up. It's him doing his thing. Oh well. Tell. They don't. Yeah. That's some gangster. That's a shit. Gangster. Yeah. I'm like, oh, well. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, send me a cop.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. You have that on video. Yeah. We got to wrap it up here, and I wanted to do, if you have, if you had thought of anything, do some, a video for our subscribers, the actual supporters of the stream, like, just like an anecdote or something. I don't know. We'll talk about it after we finish here. Absolutely.

But I wanted to record that for like 10 minutes. So, like, maybe we'll take a couple more questions and then we'll get going on the stream. Yeah, sounds good. We'll have to have James back on again because there's a lot more stories and interesting. Should we talk about our project? Is that something? Not yet because we can't, we don't have anything to deliver quite yet. So we'll talk about that.

So James, there's, uh, uh, uh, Jim says, I met a guy on a septa terrain in Philly who said he was in the CIA and was one of the first to land in Afghanistan. Uh, but he seemed off to me. Um, I didn't know how to vet him properly. anything I could ask properly or respectfully to vet him. There's not really anything that you can ask them. What you could do is, and we were told this operationally, is if you approach, like, say, a U.S. company, which is one of my duties, and they say, well, how do I know that you're with the CIA? You can direct that person to the CIA's website.

And on there, I don't know exactly where it was. I think it was in the left corner or something like it. It was called the Threat Management Unit. You can call that number and you can say, does such and such work for you? And they'll just tell you yes or no. So I would ask that person their name. And the reason why I say you go to the website is if you say to them, give me a number to call your boss, they can give you any number. Now, this might be more of a casual.

I don't know if this was just like sort of a casual. Like, sort of like in, you know, you might ask a guy like what Ranger school class he went to or, like. Like what are some insider things that... Only a true... You could ask them their class number. Yeah. You could... But then you'd have to have a way of it.

You'd have a way of knowing that. You have to ask their pseudo. Or ask, you could ask their pseudo, and if they don't know what a pseudo is, that's... The problem I've had as a journalist, like, when I talk to former agency people, and I'm trying to... I have to do my diligence and verify that they are who they say they are, and that they were, were basically where they said. they were. So then I, you know, take the name to other people I know who are in the agency and do you know such and such? Like, I have no fucking idea. Yeah, because we only know these other by pseudo. So I have to get the picture. And you remember, I can say since he's public,

Tom King, the comic book artist. And he was one of those guys who, like, we know some people in common. Yeah. Or I'm sorry, the comic book writer, not artist. But he was former agency dude. And so like, I have to like resort to pictures and get a picture of Tom King off of like a website. Yeah. Like, do you know this man? And like, oh yeah, I went to the farm with him. He was a funny guy. He was great. And then all of a sudden, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you could also ask them, you know, things like when were you, you said you were one of the first ones in. Who else was on your team? They're smart. They're going to say, I can't tell you that. but it's a little harder than with somebody

the stolen vower of the military because there's really not a Don Shipley that you can go to and say... There's no Don Shipley anymore because he got kicked off. No, he's back. Oh, is he? Okay, but there's not somebody like that. It's even worse than that in the sense that like you can, even if the dude was like a J-Soc guy, you can get like a one-page service record from the Pentagon after they're out.

Again, as a journalist, this is things I've had to do with it. past, right? It's either FOIA information or you don't even have to FOIA to get that one page. It says, you know, staff sergeant, U.S. Army served in wherever, you know, basic shit. Yeah. They'll give you that. Like, you go to the CIA and say, did Wayne Simmons serve in the CIA? It's just crickets. They're not going to confirm or deny.

You know, did Amarales Fox? Was she really a knock? Yeah. They're not going to confirm them. Right. Even in my job now, recruiting for naval intel. we have people that apply that were CIA. And so there's a thing called an SF50,

which is your basic, hey, this guy worked here, this is how much he was paid, blah, blah, blah. The last one before you left, and you get one when you come in, and then you'll get them periodically for different things, awards, whatever, you'll get a resignation one as well.

So we asked them for their last one, and they're like, how? I can't give it to you. I was lucky that I had one. I asked for one and got one before I left, because trying to get one for somebody who doesn't have one already, it's close to impossible. Is it? Yeah.

I mean, I guess one thing you could do, especially if he told you that he was the first one in Afghanistan, is you could ask him what division or branch he was in when that happened because there was very limited numbers of. You say that shit to me. I'll find out of 15 minutes whether or not. And also ask them their job, I suppose. Because, like, I think a lot of people who say, like, I was CIA or whatever, they don't know anything. They don't know enough about the agency to even put on a good show. Bro, there was only like two, three teams in field initially. And they asked them if they were on that first team.

What's the book? What's the name of the book that was written? In that specific instance. Because Gary Shoran wrote a book and Gary Barron's. Yeah. It's like the guy who told me he was a, and this guy actually was a legitimate Special Forces NCO, but he couldn't help himself. Had to tell me he was an A squadron.

Had it kick it up. Had to turn it up and I Just tell me he was an operator So I started asking around I'm like, okay, so who do you know in the unit? The only people he could name where KIA is. Yeah. Some people make a living

I'm doing that. I know. I know. I was in megaforce. Oh. Yeah, that's an old. It's like, oh, no one of you know. No one knows that.

So all the guys who knew in this unit were either killed in Somalia or died in training accidents. Hmm. And you lived. Yeah. Go figure. Just jumping in, not sure if this has been asked.

What's the best path to get into the DO, the director of operations? Military first, graduate degree in regional studies, international relations. They're asking if those things are good to have or they have those things. Best path to get into the DO? Just have a, honestly, a college degree. If you have a language and all those things, great, but a desire to work in the DO, but you have to know what it is you're getting into it. Yeah, and military is not a requirement for anything, for anything other than, you know, paramilitary stuff.

Yeah, and the reason for that is that people have asked me that, I've spoken in classrooms and stuff, and they ask me, why? Why wouldn't you want somebody to have military background, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they said, think about what it is that you're doing. Your end goal is you're trying to get someone to spy for you or you're trying to run covert action. If everybody has a high and tight haircut or is jacked or is, you know, this and that, everybody's going to stick out. You're going to stick out. The way I tell them is think of a, what's it called, pass a visa line or you're coming back into an airport from, you know, you're flying overseas. And you have all these different lines.

And would you be able to pick out the CIA? I shouldn't be able to. The average ranger is not cut out for that kind of work. Yeah. Some are. but the average one. Yeah, no. Absolutely.

It's like, you know, and actually along those lines, I asked a question, when I first got there early, we had an assembly of the new officers, the new class, and,

Zaybund, you know who Greg Vogel is, right? I know. He was the chief of SAD. Love him. Just amazing guy. He was in charge of this. So he actually administered the oath to us,

which was really cool. Yeah. And so he's like, you know, is anybody having questions? So I thought about it. And I'm like, you know, I just want to know, like, why, what is the thinking behind sending someone that looks like me to Sweden to run operations and then sending a pale guy to Africa to run operations? And he sat there and he was like, as long as I've been here, I don't know. he said his answer basically

was that's always the way it's been done so that's the way it's done I don't think that the government has ever whether it's in the military you know and the agencies or anything like the government has never been focused on the right person

for the right job it's just it's just the numbers it's just like I've got a stack of papers I'm going to put the special forces will generally do it like a lot of Asian guys and they're sent to first group. A lot of the Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, Latinos get sent to seventh groups.

And that's... And that's why, I mean, we don't have many Arabs, many Muslims and many Arabic speakers in the military. So fifth group ends up being guys that look like me. Drew Dreyer, was it a heart attack? Yeah, I thought it was a heart attack. I mean, I'm not going to get into it. If his family wanted to make a statement about it,

they would have, you know. How can... nobody ever talks about optics using surveillance zoom cameras binos monos telescopes because that's a whole different office that does that stuff yeah that's technical surveillance

like if you are doing surveillance on the street you're gonna everybody around you's gonna see you pull out a telephoto lens a telephoto lens and stuff like that and now we're taught basically in the beginning how to

not that kind of stuff but like how to, when you check into a hotel, look around basically, you know, for signs of surveillance. Right. You know, you're not going to really see pinholes and stuff, but there's an actual, at the farm, you have a house or a couple of houses that are built like that. Like, you're supposed to go in and you're supposed to have like a little meaning, little thing or whatever. And inside that house is like pinhole cameras and stuff like that.

And then they come screaming up, you know, and, uh, So you're taught basically look for that stuff, but if that's what you're specializing in, you'll learn. Yeah. That's a whole separate. And I understand that surveillance is a very different skill set than surveillance detection. Absolutely. They're two completely different because you guys don't even do surveillance. We don't do surveillance.

No, we have. It's a completely different skill set. I mean, you have to understand the fundamentals of surveillance in order to do surveillance detection, to defeat it. But it's very different. All right, guys. We need to get going because we got to do an exclusive segment also for the supporters of the stream. But thanks everyone for coming by and thank you for coming out and making the trek out here. I want to do it again the next time you're in the city.

Let us know. There's lots more to talk about us. I mean, this could go on for another like two and a half. How long have we been gone? Like two and a half. Oh, my God. I'm so sorry. No.

It's all right. It's all right. It applies me. It's fun. I would keep going, except we have a meeting after this. So thank you, everyone, for coming by. We'll do this again with our guest. Please subscribe to the stream.

If you haven't, please remember to hit that bell icon so you get notified the next time we go live. And if you look down in description, you can find the link for the podcast. If that's what you're interested in, instead of watching the video. You can also find the Patreon link if you want to support the stream financially. We really appreciate that. Thanks to all our donors today. We really appreciate that. Thank you.

Awesome. Yeah. Any parting words? No, I mean, like that little old lady said to me, you know, if you're in the room, you belong in the room. So if you guys want to be a spy, go for you. Get in the room. Get yourself in the room.

Do whatever you need to do to get in that room legally, of course. And just, you know, know that you belong there. That's it. Thank you, everybody. We really appreciate you being here. Thanks, brother.