The Team House - Tracking Osama Bin Laden with DIA Case Officer | Shawnee Delaney | Ep. 183

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Shawnee Delaney, a decorated Intelligence Officer and licensed private investigator, spent nearly a decade with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as a Clandestine Officer conducting Human Intelligence (HUMINT) operations all over the world. After leaving DIA, Shawnee supported the Department of Homeland Security in the protection of U.S. critical infrastructure and industrial control systems for the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team.  Shawnee is the founder and CEO of Vaillance Group. Check out Shawnee here:⬇️ https://www.vaillancegroup.com To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. the team house and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not so good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy,

and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Team House. This is episode 183. I'm Jack Murphy, here's David Park. This is our special Christmas edition that's pre-recorded going out to you guys. I hope you're having a Merry Christmas back home. And I know we have some holiday confusion on this show because we had another Christmas

episode that ended up going out on Thanksgiving. But this one's for real. This time it's really Christmas. We're here with our guest today, Shawnee Delaney. She served in the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, multiple tours overseas to Iraq, Afghanistan, other places around the world working strategic intelligence in Latin America, Asia, Africa. Really, you're the first DIA officer we've had kind of boots on the ground experience. So really excited to talk to you, Shawnee.

And thank you again so much for coming on the show today. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. This is a great show. I love it. Big fan. And to, not to put you on the spot, but I will anyway. The great Jim Waller suggested you to me. He said, you've got to have Shawnee on the show. She's one of the best students I've ever had.

And I think that means a lot coming from somebody like that. Yeah, he's amazing. I tell everyone, Jim Lawler is a national treasure. If anyone's ever read his books, they're phenomenal. I do have to put a plug in that he's named a character and created a character. after me for his third book. So I'm super, super excited to see that. Yeah, he's super cool guy. So Shawnee, let's jump into it. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, kind of like how you grew up and what was that pathway like for you that took you towards governmental service eventually in the defense intelligence agency. Yeah, so I am one of those super weird kids,

I think. My parents were big hippies, very polar opposite from going into federal government or military. And I've told this story before. So apologies if anyone's ever heard of it. But when the marine barracks were bombed in Beirut, Lebanon, I was young. And my dad used to watch the nightly news with Dan Rather. And I, as a little girl, like, I really liked Dan Rather and his deep voice. And there was something about the attention my father paid to that news story and the tone that Dan rather, like how it changed and the images. And it just, something clicked. And I wondered, I remember watching the show and I remember wondering, why would somebody do that? Like that's bad. You know, my little kid brain, that's bad.

And so as I got older, I just became more and more interesting. interested in counterterrorism and psychological motivations of why people, you know, when they strongly, strongly believe in whatever it is, they believe, why do they take it to those steps? And then when I discovered intelligence and I don't know how young I was, that was like, you know, I heard angel singing. That is what I was meant to do. And so I was just a total geek and doggedly pursued it. I think I applied to the CIA when I was like 19. and made it through several interviews. And I just kept applying different places until I finally did it. I did ultimately sign up to take the ASVAB. I had decided, okay, I could do like Air Force. You know, that sounds easier. And then I think the night before the ASV, I was like, no, no, no.

Like, what if I take, I'm a horrible test taker. What if I get something I don't like? I don't have control. And little type A, I need control. So I went and got a master's degree in counterterrorism. counterproliferation. And I went and studied Arabic and I lived in Egypt and just kind of everything I did, I did it with that goal of being marketable to get that job in Intel. That's amazing. That's really interesting because a lot of people like stumble into those fields, you know, kind of randomly sometimes.

Yeah. You really went after it with intent. It's all I wanted. It's all I wanted. And so one of those applications got accepted at DIA. And what, I mean, could you walk us through kind of what that process was? I think people are always interested, like, how that recruitment process works and the training process. Yeah. Well, I think if you're interested in getting into intelligence, you've got to be aggressive. You know, they want you to apply online and you and five million other people are doing that and you go into this black hole. So I did that.

I attended all the recruiting sessions in college and grad school. I would go talk to the recruiters. Like I said, I applied to CIA when I was 19. I got selected, or no, that first time I didn't get selected, I made it through a bunch of interviews, and I remember, I think it was the third interview. The guy is like, wait, how old are you again? And I was like, ooh, 19.

He's like, can you call in a few years? I slipped through there. But each time I got farther and farther along. And then I did get a job offer with agency with CIA. I remember the recruiter told me to go buy a car. I was from California. Like it's snowy in D.C. You're going to need a car.

So I did that in about two weeks before. This is like one of my biggest failures in life, even though I didn't fail. They called, you know, this is Mary. You know, she didn't say who she was with. But like the billet's been decremented. We got rid of the billet. And I was devastated. Like I was this close to achieving my dream.

So I remember actually being in the waiting room of one of the like interview cycles. I think it was the psychological assessment. And there was another redhead named Sarah. And we were talking and I remember Sarah saying, if I don't get this job with agency, I'm going to play with DIA because it's the same thing. It's the same training. And no one's ever heard of them. And I was like, okay.

So I'm going to try that. So I did. And by chance there was a recruiter that came out to my graduate school. And there was a recruiter. And then there was a woman that was an alum who happened to be like number three at DIA. She's amazing. Sharon Hoy, love her, love her, love her. And I listened to the pitch and I walked up to Sharon and this recruiter named Craig.

And I said, hey, DIA needs me. And here's why. And both of them looked at me, A, like I was nuts. But then you saw this like, huh. all right. And I remember Craig said, let's go get a beer. And so I basically went and recruited him over a beer and was able to get in. It took, you know, a year plus, but I was able to finally get in. And what was the job that you actually applied for and got hired for? Case officer. I was like, humant all the way. And they're like, well, you know, there's these others. I was like, humans. So maybe at this point, it's a, it's a good moment for a, and they're like, well, you know, there's these others. And I was like, humans. a tactical pause, if you will, to talk about what is the DIA? Because as you mentioned, even in the recruitment process, a lot of people don't know what the DIA is, don't know what you guys do, aren't familiar with the career field.

Could you kind of like give us the, I guess the DIA pitch, if you will? Yeah, well, I'll give you one sentence. I mean, the cool thing about the DIA is we support the warfighter, period, right? So with DIA, when I had first started, everything was very tactical. You know, I had multiple war zone tours, and initially those were very tactical. We were in that phase of the war in Iraq, for example, where we needed to find the IEDs, and we needed to stop our people from getting blown up. That was a very cool mission.

But then when politics starting getting involved and there were elections coming up, we ended up moving into strategic. So the cool thing about DIA is while you think it would be purely military and tactical, We touched everything. Also, kind of different than CIA, where usually as an officer, you're put in like a commercial cover or an official cover. A DIA, and maybe it's because we kind of marched to our own beat every now and then. We would dabble in both. So as an officer, I could, depending on the target that I was going after, I could pick, okay, I'm going to be commercial for this one.

I'm going to be official for this one. So it was great because my experience was global. I wasn't pigeon told in one region. And I was able to kind of dabble in, you know, fake private sector and creating my own horrible website and all these different things. So it was really cool. And then I'll say also in deployment, we joke. People have probably heard me say this. But, you know, we call lovingly the discount intelligence agency because we did not have the resources.

We didn't have the tools. We didn't have the personnel. We didn't have the support that CIA had on the ground. So we had to make do with a lot of nothing. Yeah. I mean, you say discount Intel. And I was thinking the AI is kind of like the redhead of stepchild, right? Of the intelligence community that few people know what they do, but what they do, they do very, very well.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's because officers are forced to think outside the box. When you don't have resources, but you still have a mission and you're trying to save lives, you are going to wake up early and you're going to figure out how to get it done. And I loved, loved that about that job. Did you also find or feel that the DIA, because it was driven by the military and by the military mindset, that it was less risk adverse a lot of times than like maybe the agency

was? Yeah, I think with any organization, it's leadership dependent, right? But as a whole, yes. I mean, for example, with CIA, so I was in Mosul, Iraq, which, you know, was a garden spot. It was gorgeous. Right. We would rely on thin-skinned vehicles that were acquired from raids and stuff like that, from other military units. So while I would be mission commander and I would create, you know, my op ward and I would run this mission and go outside the wire and pick up my own assets and sources,

The CIA, bless them, had, you know, uparmored G-wagons, you know, Mercedes G-Wagons, and they had their GRS guys, you know, the big, everyone would walk around with no shirt on and everyone was handsome. They would go out and get the source and bring it back to the case officer. So, I mean, we got scrounged. We were down and dirty. Like, we did the work, which, again, I think was pretty special. I definitely want to get into all that. But before let's, I'd like to hear a little bit about, like, what the training pipeline was like for,

you as a DIA human mentor and what that entailed. Yeah, so there were several courses that we had to take, you know, joining a military organization, obviously you had to be familiar with the military. So there were like basic 101 courses where you learned ranks, things like that. And then it kind of progressed. So there was something called DISDIC, Defense Strategic Debriefers course down at Fort Wachuka, where you're learning strategic debriefing. because one of the things that DIA does is defense or strategic debriefing where I could say,

hey, my name is Shawnee Delaney. I'm with the Department of Defense. I see you just went to China. Could I ask you some questions? So it's overt. There are a lot of people that go into that pipeline, but that was kind of like a foundation. So then you could choose, do you want to go interrogation? Do you want to go Klan? And so I obviously went Klandestin. So we had other courses. One was called, oh gosh, what was it called? A TOTELF. Amsock, and I don't remember even what that stands for. But we had that course, which was, I don't even know how many weeks, six weeks, 10 weeks. It was a solid course where it's like case officer light.

Like we had the authorities where if you went through that training, you could actually recruit someone in a war zone if a case officer was with you. So you'd get credit, so to speak. But that basically was a force multiplier and giving us more clandestine officers light, right, in these war zones because we just had so many people going out constantly. Then there was a pre-course, and the pre-course was a course that people took before they went to the farm. Everybody's heard of the farm, right? So that pre-course, actually, I did not take. I had it waived.

I guess that was pretty good. Right. So I didn't have to take that. And then I went straight into the farm, which was some of my most favorite memories in the history of my life. Again, it was the nerd, right? People would go every weekend. They'd come home to D.C. or, like, have a life. And I was the only student that stayed every weekend and cased and drove around.

And I was just, like, eating every second up. I loved it so much. Yeah, this was like literally your like kind of childhood dream coming true, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here, if you see over my shoulder, where is it? That coin, that frame right there was given to me when I graduated from the farm. I saved the suit that I wore the day I graduated. I put a little note in the pocket for my kids. You know, if I die one day, like, mom, I graduated from the farm in this suit, you know, like it just, it was everything to me. And now you're learning about, you know, source handling and surveillance detection routes and all that kind of stuff. I mean, what, what, now that you're kind of in it, I mean, what, what's your impressions of it? What's your thoughts about, about the, you know, world of human? I loved it.

I hated, hated the politics. I hated feeling like I had to pick sides or, like, be in a game. game somehow to get a good assignment or things like that. But I am the kind of person where I just, I go under the radar and I just want to do my job. But I ate, slept and breathed it. Like, you know, there were times, I was stationed in Germany for a while. There were months where I'd be home one day a month because I just wanted to be out. Yeah.

You know. Were you able to kind of direct, like, like self-direct in that way? Like, were there opportunities that if you just jumped on them, you could always kind of get out, get out the wire. And I know in Germany, but get out the gate and like, go do your thing. Yeah, I would say that I had a lot of control over my career, which I didn't think I would. But again, it's being a self-advocate.

I mean, you got to talk the, you know, you talk talk, you got to walk the walk. You've got to be good. If you're not good, you're not going to get anything. Right. But I was constantly fighting. So like I wanted to go to Pakistan. I wanted to go. You know, we have defense liaison officers and different, you know, embassies around the world.

And I was constantly talking to my bosses, whoever that was. Like, this is where I want to go. What can I do? How can I, you know? So I was just, I wouldn't take no for an answer. And I think that's one of the secrets at DIA. And then what year did you graduate from and finish all of your training to go operation? 2008?

But weren't you sent over to Iraq in 06? Yep. So I was there 06-07 and 09. So 06-07, I was Amsock trained. So I was the K-Bosar light. Okay, gotcha. Okay, so let's start getting into that. Well, tell us about that first deployment arriving in Iraq. I mean, 0-607.

I mean, it was very, it was very hot over there. I mean, literally and figuratively. Yes, yes. I think if you look at the violence chart, you know, the graph that they have, my two deployments were the two peaks of when it was the most violent. You know, you're finding sever heads everywhere. And so I remember, you know, taking that military flight over. And when we landed, you know, I was the only civilian on that flight. And, you know, it's pretty intimidating.

I'm not in the military. Like, I've had training and what the military is, but I've never lived this. And I remember everyone like shuttling off the plane and then they are yelling at everyone to line up and everyone's lined up in front of this plane. And then they start telling people, here's an amnesty box. Like anything you've smuggled in, like put it in. I'm just like sweating. Like what do I have? Like and then they're waiting and everyone's quiet and I'm looking around like trying to find a friendly face.

Like someone tell me what to do. And then they're like, all right, we're going to go look through everyone's bags. And everyone like got in a line was marching into that room where they, you know, tear your stuff. and I was just like, I'm going to get sent home. I don't know what I did, but I feel like I'm going to get in trouble. And then I remember someone like calling my name, you know, and I was like, oh, thank God. It's me. It's me. You know, but I just remember thinking through all that, like, what have I done? Am I going to, am I going to do this? You know, you hear people talk about imposter syndrome. I still suffer from it. I knew I was good. I knew I was ready. But I had had, you know, so much training where I had

instructors telling me I wasn't going to succeed because I was a white chick and who in the Middle East was going to talk to a white chick. And so, you know, just every step I took closer and closer to my chew, you know, my room, my office on that base, I was like, I don't know. Yeah, so there's some trepidation as you finally approached this. And what, I mean, when you got there, I mean, I'm sorry if you mentioned it, what base were you on? And what was your mission? I mean, what was your understanding of the mission when you showed up? Yeah, so I was on Fab Merez and Mosul. And initially that first tour, it was all tactical.

We needed to find every, you know, weapons cash, every IED location. We were there to save lives, period. Yeah, I was on the airfield with task force in 05. So, yeah, you got there, like, right after. Like that Diamond Jack? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, that was a very hot area during that time frame.

Yeah. But, I mean, think about it. Like, how many people, you know, I know a lot, you know, military people go do patrols. But imagine for, for me, you know, terrified, not blending in, to have the ability to go in a thin-skinned, really shitty vehicle and drive around Mosul at the height of the war and case, you know, and see these old neighborhoods and see these old mosques. And I mean, I have so many pictures. But it was just like, I call it combat tourism. You know, it was like I was like war zone Barbie. Like everywhere I went, I was just so excited to be able to, oh, there's the Mosul Museum. And, you know, which is now destroyed. But, you know, stuff,

stuff like that. It was just, it was so, so cool. You remember the playground over on the east side of the river. It looks like something out of a Mad Max movie. Yeah, it was really long, like long across the, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's slides and stuff like that, but it's like, all just desert, like, weeds growing up and stuff. It was a little creepy. The whole, I mean, the whole street, honestly, was yeah, yeah. So, so tell us about that, about doing human in Missouille, I mean, kind of at the height of the war. What, what was that like, How were you going out there trying to find sources, recruit sources, handle sources? Yeah, so we were limited of court.

Like I couldn't go, you know, hit someone up cold call. In Afghanistan, I could cold call people. I was a little bit different, but not really, it wasn't permissive. So a lot of the times we relied on subsources, you know, so we had a source and they knew someone. You know, we were, you know, we recruit people and try to get additional people. hey, we're looking for X. Do you know anybody that would have this? We also, I developed a really good relationship with, oh God, I can't remember the name of the team. But there was a counterintelligence officer. His name was Liam, love him to death. When people did walk-ins and would come on to base,

he was the person to screen them. And so when I met him, I was like, I'm going to recruit him because he can give me good leads. And so we actually became fast friends. But basically anything like that, walk-ins, um, sub-sources, things like that. Yeah. But you know,

like again, we're rolling around. I had to, you know, I covered, you know, wore a headscarf. I did not drive.

We had a driver and an interpreter. I would sit in the back. But, um, this, this white-ass face does not blend it. What, what was your first experience that like got your heart going when you were there?

There are so many. Um, Guy can think of so many. I would say probably the scariest moment was when, and Delta, a Delta guy, two Delta guys actually, I think saved my life here. I think this was my second tour, actually. So this wasn't the first one, but this is like the major one. There was a fatwa that had come out where Al-Qaeda was looking for female intelligence officers. And the sofa had ended. And So I was still rolling out. And I rolled out.

It was one car, just me. There was a driver, interpreter in the front. I was in the back. And when we left base, we were doing our surveillance detection route in the neighborhood right outside the base. And I detected surveillance. And all the cars were the same. And there was just, you know, that gut, you know,

training kicks in, of course, but your gut instinct too. You're like, all right, this is it. And they had kind of set us up into a course. corner and I radioed back to base and I said, you know, I'm abhorting the mission. We have surveillance. When we came back to base, I don't know, maybe an hour later, like shortly thereafter, this Delta guy came up on base and he had a report and he's like, they've identified you. So one of their subsources was working for them. And in the report, they had described the tattoo on my driver's arm. They described me. And they were basically they were setting up to kidnap.

They were like red not that instance, but like the next time I rolled out. So I was grounded for a while. So that's when you're like, oh, this is real. Yeah. Did the J-Soc guys like try to bait them into an ambush or anything like that? No, not that I know of. But it was just kind of like lay low, let it go away. I remember they tried to do that in out at the airfield back in, yeah, like 05, something like that.

Yeah. I did. There was a Delta, that same Delta guy. They were doing an op. And I got to go, I was one of those, like, if you're doing something fun, I want to do it with you. So like, I remember they had this special van, you know, with cameras and all kinds of stuff. And I got, they let me ride around in the van. So we're riding around Mosul, you know, surveilling, you know, safe houses and caches and stuff. And I was just like, oh, it's so cool. The Scoopy van. I remember that. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And so. I'm not going to beat around the bush, you know, following up on your earlier comment, being an attractive woman in a war zone doing this human mission, pros and cons. The con is that everybody thought I would sleep with them or I was sleeping with someone they knew. The pro was that I could commandeer a helicopter fly to Zip. I mean, how many people can do that?

Fly to Zahko or Talafar or wherever and say, hey, this is who I am. This is my mission. I need a mechanic. I need a room for debriefing. I need billeting for my team. And I always got yes. Because with DIA, we didn't have that stuff. There was a helicopter unit on Diamondback that I actually, because we kept getting hemmed up at checkpoints, I drove down to that unit.

and I'm still, she's one of my best friends to this day, the commander. I basically recruited her and I said, we need air support because we've got nothing. We don't have radios. We were relying on local cell phones, which, as you know, did not work. And so when we kept getting hemmed up at checkpoints, we needed something so I could, so this unit gave us radios. They gave us the pucks. We put special stuff on the car.

So when we got hemmed up, I could call and be like, hey, see those helicopters? They're with us. Like, leave us alone. So that was the benefit, right, to being a woman because people said yes. As an ex-girlfriend of mine used to call that the Babe Clause. You can get away with shit that other people can't. I mean, Baghdad 5, I'll take it. You can get away with a lot more than Baghdad 10.

What does it mean to get hemmed up at a checkpoint? What does that look like for a team like yours? Yeah. So basically being questioned, right? First, and I'll say 90% of the checkpoints, again, being a woman, we'd roll through and they would look at the driver and the interpreter, give them like a glare. And then I would lean forward and say, salamma alaikum. And they'd be like, oh, go ahead. But we got hemmed up a lot. Like one time the axle fell out of my car, the local vehicle, like the whole front axle. One time we got, and this is in Afghanistan actually. actually, we were pulled over. This is a terrible story. This is so bad. Our cover office didn't look at the Bolo list, and they used Velcro to Velcro license plates

onto our vehicles. And they had Velcroed one from a province that was on the Bolo list that day. And when we rolled through a checkpoint, there was a guy who was not friendly, pulled us over and started beating the car up with the butt of his rifle. And he kept telling me, like, kept pointing at me and telling me, he told me, he said, he was going to kill me. No. And my driver and my interpreter were both escalating.

And the guy was screaming obscenities at them and they were screaming at him. And I was, for some reason, I stayed calm until the evening after everything happened. But he broke the mirrors. He was trying to crack the windows. And our only window that wasn't, and we were like, it was like level two, level three. The only window that wasn't up armored was the very back window. It was the only one he didn't try to hit. But he pulled us up.

we were there for like 45 minutes and then he went he called a truck a truck came up and then they came out and they got two RPGs and he picked up the RPG and he was very close i don't know how it would have worked that close but he walked right up to the car and he was pointing at me and he's telling me you you know pull me up so that that was a solid hem up and i actually had to call a source in the government that i knew and i was like could you could you maybe send someone to get to get us off the ex please so that that's the kind of thing that i'm talking about yeah i uh i also wanted ask you as far as like being a woman handling sources in the Middle East, what that was like. I interviewed years ago, I have to try to get him on the show someday. Remy Adelake, who's a

African-American Navy SEAL. He's literally African-American. He's a Nigerian immigrant. Came as a little kid. And I asked like, being a black guy in Iraq, I mean, what was that like handling sources? And he was like, dude, it was always a positive. He's like, I would start telling jokes and the people that the Arabs I was working with, they had no idea what I was saying, but they had all seen Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle and these black comics and they just knew intrinsically what I was doing was funny and they were just laughing so much. He's like, it opened up all kinds of doors because they had never seen a black American doing that job. And so I was just curious as a red-headed American woman. What was it like handling sources for you?

It was amazing, actually. I would say it was a huge, huge benefit. And it took me a while to figure that out, honestly. And I still don't understand why. But I could straddle both worlds. So, for example, you know, a very devout Muslim asset invited me to his home. And I would make dinner with his wife, his mother, his aunts, his daughters. Wow.

pictures sitting on the kitchen floor picking cherry stems and then after dinner was ready i would walk into the they would serve dinner to the men you know we you know sit on the floor with all the pillows and play back i'm and drink whiskey and i would be in their world talking intel and they accepted me it was like i was in this different category right um maybe a novelty i don't know um but i i could talk to women i had female sources um all of the world not just in war zones whereas my male counterparts, they could not build that rapport and that trust because, I mean, you can't even be alone with a woman, you know. So I literally could pick a world. I could jump right into it. Right. And I don't know about Iraq, but I know in Afghanistan, like, even on doing like, you know,

the village engagement stuff, like having, you know, women out there if there were civil affairs, like the women would always want to talk to them, but you were, and they had tons of information, But there was no way to get that information if all you had were a group of men because the women were not going to talk to you. 100%. There was actually an ODA team that called me, this is in Mosul also. They had a female source who, you know, wore like full everything. She had long black gloves. And she had come in and told them that she was tortured and was telling them a location of some safe house or something. And they kind of didn't believe her.

And so they called me in and I went and debriefed her. And they could not take her gloves off. She had said that they had pulled her fingernails off, but they couldn't take her gloves up. They couldn't examine her. And I could. So guess what? Nobody had tortured her. Instead, they were manipulating her, trying to get her to give them information for an ambush, right?

But having that woman, having me be able to go hell, save lives potentially. I want to ask you about the next deployment to Iraq in 2009. I just want to give a quick promotion out there for our own show. I want to remind everyone to like, share and subscribe to the Team House. There's a link down below to our Patreon. If you want to get these episodes ad-free, both audio and video. We really appreciate the support you guys give us. And again, I hope everyone's having a great holiday weekend vacation or holiday.

Yeah, get us to $60,000 before the New Year. It would be awesome. Coming up, we're like probably 1,000 subscribers away from $60,000. Help get us there. We really appreciate it. Nice. So, Shawnee, you went back to Iraq a second time, 2009. Where were you? What was the mission this time around? So I was in Mosul again. I just couldn't turn it down.

And it was a very, it was different. I mean, it was obviously still very violent, but the groups had shifted. I operated in Kurdistan a lot, both tours. So I had really great relationships with Peshmerga and Asaish. And it was pretty cool because when I had come in in 2009, the group ahead of me hadn't explored Kurdistan. And they had kind of lost that contact. And so we moved into a lot more strategic. They were still tactical always, but a lot more strategic with elections and things like capabilities and stuff like that.

Funny story, again, it's talking about not blending in, right? I remember I had rallied my group and we took several cars. up to Kurdistan. I was going to give everyone a tour and like area familiarization. And when we rolled through the very first checkpoint into Kurdistan, not even two minutes later, my interpreter gets a phone call. And he just, he opens, like, his eyes got really big and he looks at me. And he's like, uh-huh. Okay. Uh-huh. And I was like, what? What's wrong? And he goes, they know you're here. They want you to come say hi. So good times. And you had mentioned to me that you were down in Telafar also on this trip.

Yep. That was one of the places. So Zahogate up on the Syrian border, Rabia or Rabia on the Syrian border, Zahogate and Talafar were three of the places that I literally commandeered helicopters and would go try to get support for our unit. My ODA was down there in Telafar in 2009, but it sounds like we probably may. missed each other at that point. Yeah, I don't know. It was, it was fun. I mean, Talfour is not like the best base. So sorry about that. But by, by, by 09, it was, it was, it was the city had pacified. Yeah. As opposed to 2005. Every time we went in there, we were getting shot up. But, you know, it was like night and day difference between 05 and

09. It's amazing how it changed. Yeah. So any like highlights from that from that deployment in 09 that you recall that you want to mention? I just kept pushing to do fun things, right? Like, combat tourism is a must. I got to do a dismounted patrol in Talafar. I got to play with, like, the robot, you know, the bomb robot thing and put on the scuba suit. I got to fly a helicopter in war zone. I got a, you know, so like all, I got to blow up doors with an ODA team, shoot a tank.

Like that was my way of like, you know what? Life is short. I've had a lot of near-death experiences. I'm going to make this fun. I'm going to do great work. I'm going to get great intel, but I'm also going to have fun. It sounds like you were able, though, to, you know, like you weren't, you weren't, like, as the DIA element, the D.H element, you weren't some secret, secret squirrel, you know, element hiding out in a compounded base. Like, nobody knows what we do.

It sounds like you were building a lot of rapport with the local, with the local U.S. units around you for that. support for that yeah but you know i think that's just me honestly like i'm a relationship builder by nature i still do it to this day um you're never going to accomplish anything great if you don't have help and if you don't help others period like we can't do this alone so when i would build these relationships with people i would always there's a benefit to them too you know i would pass them specific intel like the helicopter unit what do you need to know I'll find out for you. Plus, I brought them cookies from Kurdistan.

You know, what can I do to help you? You're helping me. This is a two-way street. Right. And after that, 2011, you're heading to Kabul. Yes. Yep. So I lived, it was technically in the red zone, a little safe house there.

Very, very strategic. Again, always some tactical. but I really enjoyed that in that I was working with a lot of government officials, terrorists. You know, like it kind of runs the gamut of who you're meeting with each day. I had a lot of success in Kabul. I one of my favorite story. And again, there's a podcast out, so I'm not going to retell this story. But I recruited one of Osama bin Laden's right-hand men, like nine-hour marathon meetings for months and months and months.

And he was a mullah, and it was an incredible challenge. But we ended up really respecting each other. I really liked the guy. It's a really incredible story. He knew where bin Laden was. And my interpreter didn't understand what he was saying. And just it's a long, frustrating story. But I worked with a lot of women.

This source knew that OBL was in Abbottabad? Yes. So he, towards the end of my tour, he would come in and, you know, his tasking, part of his tasking is, where is he? Yeah. And this guy had access, you know, a lot of access. And he kept saying, and I have notes where I put abat-a-bod question mark. And my interpreter was not from where this guy was from.

And so the accents were very different. So when I would go to our NGA folks, you know, geospatial and, you know, and. interpreter and I'm writing up these reports. Everybody's like, I don't know what he's saying. I don't know what this is. But he described it. He sent me, he gave me pictures like everything. He described, okay, on this road, then you take a right at this tree or what, you know,

like it was 100% accurate and we could not confirm it. And then I woke up one morning three, four weeks after, like we had been talking about this. And on CNN, they had caught him in Abadabad. and I think I shit myself. I went back. We had a meeting with him and I'll never be able to tell him this, but he was like, see, I was right.

I was right. We got it. I'm like, yes, it's amazing. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. Yeah. Somewhere out there, there's a guy telling the story of how he got bin Laden. Yeah.

Yes. And he did. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, man. That's wild. Yeah. So close.

I will kick myself for the rest of my life. Is that guy still out there somewhere? I don't know. I hope so. I mean, he ended up, like, his whole motivations, he had very solid motivations. He completely changed his beliefs. His family was his priority. So, like, going into this, meeting him initially, like, having that, like, trying to get rid of any bias. Like what you did and what you knew about is horrific and will probably make me

cry if I really think about it. But getting to know him and the whole story and dragging that out over months and months, you realize people can change. His father was a huge inspiration in that. And I hope he's doing well and his 8,000 kids are doing well because a great, dedicated father. That's a wild, wild story. That's cool, though. And then in 2013, you went back as a detachment chief. Yes, I was a detachment chief for kind of a hybrid unit where we had a lot of sources and subsources. And that was a huge challenge in that we ran out of funding like in spring for the calendar year. And so I had to keep several hundred sources and subsources happy and giving us intel.

with no money. And DIA would not give us more. So when I came in, we were already in the red. So it was like nothing that that I had done. I tried requesting more. I did everything I could. And they were like, nope, nope, nope, nope. So in that, again, remember I said, like,

you have to think outside the box. In that situation, I went and recruited the medical staff on base who are amazing human beings and patriots. And basically we arranged to provide medical care for all the sources, subsources, families, grandmas, kids. And so instead of payment, we would treat them and give them medication. And what happened was they told me that this was actually worth more than money to them. And it ended up just being an incredible success.

And we got a ton of great intel as a result. And I can say I've given like EKGs to old ladies and stuff now because remember the men couldn't do it. So I had to do it. Was this because like the NDAA had not passed that year or something? Like why was the funding frozen? We were kind of being punished. My predecessor had had spent it in not a smart way. And even though that person had left, DIA was still kind of like, you're on your own.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand how like D-EA, or I'm sorry, DIA just like denies funding to its own source networks as like, like, who are you punishing here exactly? Right. How does that work? Right. 100%. Especially when you know that the, why that source network was so important is it wasn't just reporting on stuff for US.

It was protecting lives for ISAF. I don't, it's, it's, yeah, it's an argument. I'll always have that DIA did the wrong thing. Right. But hopefully I was able to kind of make it right. Right. It's almost like telling, like punishing a surgeon and saying you can't operate on people, that's your punishment.

And it's the patients who are actually suffering, right? That you guys weren't really the ones suffering from that lack of funding. It was the people you were protecting, the warfighters. Well, yeah, it's destructive. It's destructive to the agency itself. Yeah. Well, reputational. I mean, if you were an asset or.

Right? And you're putting your life and your family's life on the line. Right. To come meet with me or one of my teammates. Right. And then we're like, hey, we don't have any money. I'm sorry. Yeah. But can you keep giving us intel?

Yeah. What would you say? Right. You know? Yeah. What was it like for you transitioning from, you know, driving around in thin-skinned vehicles, you know, near-death experiences to now going into this sort of like managerial role and having to,

presumably manage a bunch of DIA officers and their source networks, you know, maybe their mellow dramas, you know, what was that, what was that like now being in that position? It was a bit of a culture shift, for sure. While I'm super good at relationship building, I wasn't prepared for the egos, I think, involved. I think in Intel, I'm not going to speak for other agencies, but at DIA and Intel, there's a lot of ego.

Everyone thinks they're special. I think I'm special. We all drink the Kool-Aid to a degree. You have to. You're putting your life on the line. But I had not just in that deployment, but a follow-on assignment. I had a lot of pushback where I had people that I managed that were older than me, or there was a colonel even, who just were not happy that I was the manager.

I got told that by the colonel, I got told I should be barefoot and pregnant. at home. So that kind of stuff was a real pain in the ass and nothing. No one is more professional than I. Right. The Army creed goes. Yeah. So I'm much preferred working on the street than, I mean, shoot at me any day, but put me and, you know, make me manage someone who's, you know, an egotistical dick. I'm not going to be happy. Yeah, you'd mentioned before the show that you had experienced like a fair amount of sexual harassment, unfortunately. I mean, was that coming more from like the green suitor side from the actual military personnel or the civilian side? No, it was both. I mean, the most egregious was civilian side, to be honest. But there were some military,

there were some issues on the military side as well. I think especially in war zones, people get in this really odd mentality. I mean, we all think we're going to die, right? There's rockets and wars. Like, you've experienced it. landing around you, you're like, yeah, maybe today, maybe not. I don't know, I'm just going to keep doing my thing. But there's always something in the back of your mind. Like every time you go outside the wire, like, could it be this time? Right. Do I have my stuff tight? And so I think that causes people to act differently. You act like you're going to die tomorrow, which means you're going to take more risks. You know, you're going to make different choices than you would back home.

And so people definitely acted that way. But it wasn't just sexual harassment in, you know, know, like, hey, I want to get with you. Also, like, you know, I, one of the rules was, if you had a source or an asset and they gave you like a weapons cash location, for example, you would accompany that person to go identify it because that's your source, source protection, right? I want to make sure they're safe. And I finally got my opportunity and my, my manager, who's a male, was like, no, no, you can't go. This guy can go for you. And so we got in a very heated where I was like, why? And he straight up said,

because I don't know what I would do if something happened to you. And I said, but what if something happened to him? And he's like, it's different. You're a woman. I mean, just straight upset it. Right. So there was a lot of that where I was constantly trying to prove, I can do it.

I can do anything. Just give me the opportunity. And I got a lot of nose. Did you, you know, you mentioned that you were a relationship builder. builder and you know you you went around to these units to to build these relationships were beneficial to both you know your element and that element did you ever find that you had did you changed your approach in how you built those relationships because people like men

misinterpreted that that process yes 100 percent um i i i tend to think why i think i'm a pretty friendly open person i i i i I am nice. But I found that when I was myself, people interpreted that friendliness as flirting or you must be hitting on me. And if you're not eating on me, you're clearly a bitch. And if you're not a bitch, you must be a lesbian because you're not into me. They're kind of like three times. Right.

You're kind of a split, a bitch or a lesbian, like pick one. So I would have to go in, you know, not being myself where I was more stoic and professional. all, you know, like I remember there was, I was giving an op-word. Actually, one of the Delta guys was there and we were talking about this joint mission and I was briefing my mission and everybody, it was all guys at the table, a bunch of us. And I remember talking and we went through it. And I was like, I did a really good job. And the one Delta guy at the end of the table is just really quiet and just had a weird look on his face. And I remember saying, do you, do you have a question? Like, is there something you want to talk about? He's like, uh, I don't know what to say because I've

ever worked with a woman before. So like, just say it. There's all I have to do, just say it. So there was, there was a lot of learning about communication relationships. Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunate sometimes like how infantile the community can be when it comes to some of these things. Like, yeah. Do you ever have like a mom or a sister? Was there ever a woman somewhere in the works? Yeah. Yeah. And then you also worked, um, some, strategic assignments in Latin America. You mentioned Gambia. I mean, can you tell us about some of those types of jobs,

some of those types of missions? Yeah, so I had, I served a tour in Texas and a tour in Germany as well as DC. And so in those different assignments, like Germany, I focused on Africa and Texas, I focused on Latin America. So I was able to do a lot of really cool strategic assignments. I mean, shoot, I got to go to the Seychelles and case for like nine days and

play tourist. Like, thank you, US taxpayer dollars. You know, that it was amazing, but I was meeting with an incredible source from Asia with just really cool information. So it was really interesting, you know, transitioning from this combat mindset where you're working 22 hours a day and you think you're going to get blown up to just this totally different world where you're, you know, you've got a cover to live and whatever that is. And, you know, I was a photographer or whatever. But like the Gambia, you'd mentioned, I had a source that I, that was in the Gambia that I had to go meet.

And again, don't blend in at all. And I didn't find out until I was there. Station had sent a cable saying that there was something, if anyone's ever been there, there's something called bumsters. And in the Gambia, there are these young local men who, like, like hang out on the beach and they're like prostitutes and white western women from Europe will come down and get a boyfriend or whatever so people kept asking me like what do you what are you doing here what you know so why are you from the gambia and i was like you know whatever my cover was and

then i realized oh shit they think i'm here for like sex tourism like that's not a good cover the gambia was wild i mean there's hesbola entities I was trying to do a surveillance detection route with zero control, you know, taking taxis in these like dirt streets. And I had a taxi driver come. I told him where I was going. I had like pre-planned everything perfectly. And then he pulls over in the middle of the route and picks up this other dude. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to get raped.

So they're driving and he drives me to this like a lake, like this abandoned dirt road. He pulls over this lake and I'm thinking like, okay, do I run? Like how am I going to get out of this? they get out of the car and just start smoking joints. You're like, you want any? I'm like, not good. I'm trying to cut back. Thanks.

In the meantime, I'm like, how do I write this up in my report? You know, like, son of a bitch, that report just got really long. So like, you just have no control in some of these places.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And for people who know, like a surveillance detection route, like it's, like there are, it's clocked, it's time.

Like you know where you're supposed to be at each moment. Yes, you know, very small windows. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was a little stressful. Yeah, I imagine.

I imagine. So what made you decide to eventually leave DIA? What was it? So that was a really, really tough decision. That's probably one of the toughest choices I've ever had to make. I was dealing with a lot of health issues. I mean, like I said, home one day a month. You can't go to the doctor.

You can't schedule an appointment. You can't get follow up. I was being bullied, honestly, by a manager, a female. I was exhausted. I wasn't appreciated, you know, just general disgruntled employee syndrome, right? Yes, employee disgruntledness. Right? And I wanted to have kids.

I decided to do IVF, and so I left so that I could start a family. And I started my own little, I've got three. three kids who were amazing. And I was very fortunate also in that when I was in Afghanistan on that last tour, like the world works in mysterious ways, right? I had been breached out to by someone I went to school with who was former agency, and he recruited me to join at Merck. And it's just like timing, like everything in my life has really just fallen into place.

And a side story, like on Intel related, this is like, you know, the world that how it works in mystery. serious ways. I did not know this at the time, but when I got hired with Merck, one of their benefits was like paying for IVF and all the drugs they make are free. Well, guess what? Wow. That was all free. Because that's a very expensive process, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Miserable too. Yeah. But I mean, like, how weird is that, you know? Yeah. You know, we talked about sort of like the, sort of the sexual harassment and things like that with the men. we've also talked on this show before about how women can be harder gatekeepers in those communities towards other women.

Did you experience that? Because you mentioned being bullied by your manager who is a woman. Yes. I think with women, because they are forced to just really fight it out to like prove their worth. Plus, like I said earlier, I know, I'm only half joking. Like you're a bitch, a slut or a lesbian, right?

pick pick a category because you don't fit in any other category really um these women have fought so hard to prove themselves that when they see someone that they think is competition it's like an instant i'm going to take you down the worst managers i've ever had have been females and i hate to say that i hate hate hate to say that but it was all competition one of them when i was in mosul and you know I told you I'm flying around trying to get us resources because we had nothing. One of my managers was a female and I actually had a meeting with her where she told me, you have to stop being the face of this unit. I should be the face.

I'm like, I don't want to be the face. I just want resources. Do your job and we'll be okay. You know. Yeah. Again, it ends up being very destructive to the organizations as a whole, you know, whether it's coming from men or women. Yeah. Yeah.

And the mission. Like just let people do their job. jobs. So moving from the Intel world, you're a case officer. What, what job is there for you at Merck? What jobs are there for Intel officers, you know, for case officers in the outside world? So I think there's a lot of jobs people might not even think about. A lot of people think about physical security, which is one path. But what I did was I leveraged my experience in recruiting vulnerable insiders to standing up insider threat programs. I really just dug into insider threat and insider risk.

Knowing the psychology behind why people commit espionage or why people do malicious acts, you know, sabotage, revenge, fraud, all these things. I had been an investigator prior to joining DIA. I did background investigations for police and fire in California for a while. So I had corporate investigations, of course, too. So being an investigator, sitting across the table from people who have, you know, stolen intellectual property, being the case officer where I'm a new, manipulating people into stealing intellectual property and then standing up program.

So I help stand up Merck's and Center Threat Program. They call Intellectual Property and Trade Secret Protection Program, say that five times fast. And then later I did it for Uber and other things. But taking that trifecta of knowledge, if you will, and helping the private sector understand. I mean, I understand national security risks and the threats. So being able to help these companies understand, this is how your humans are putting you at risk and what you can do to mitigate those risks has been just really incredible. And I think a lot of intelligence officers are not thinking about those skills.

We're used to having a mission and we're used to contributing to U.S. national security. It's just twisting it on its head where we're helping educate our companies here at home and how they can do it better because all these companies are getting their lunch eaten, you know, by China and Russia and everybody. What can you tell us a little bit about for people who haven't heard about insider threat? you know, it sounds almost like a made up thing because you're like, oh, it's Merck. What secrets do they have? Or what can somebody inside the company do? And why would they do it?

Can you kind of give us the breakdown on that? Yeah. So every company has sensitive information, right? It's what makes your company unique. The best way to think about it is if your information, whatever that is got in the hands of a competitor, would that cause harm to your company? Would that help the competitor? That's like the easiest way to look at it.

But when you think about insider threat, what I like about it is it's this huge umbrella, right? You've got everything and it's unintentional. The vast majority is unintentional. People are stupid. We're ignorant. We take shortcuts. Maybe I leave something in the seat back pocket on an airplane. Oops, right?

That's a mistake. That's the vast majority of insider threat. But there's, you know, I told you I was disgruntled. There's disgruntled employees. There's people who don't feel valued. They want revenge. They drop a logic bomb. They want to sabotage something.

They shoot up power stations. There are a lot of things. Espionage, fraud, sabotage, theft of intellectual property, workplace violence, active shooter. All of those things are encompassed an insider threat. And the bottom line is, if you have humans working for you, which we all do, we have insider risk. That's before the fact. That's left of boom. Insider threat is after it's happened.

Is there, I have a cyanide poised above Dave's coffee. It's ready to go in. Outside of like nation state, like, you know, China getting, you know, all the secrets, you know, to basically for copyright violation or patent violation or whatever, not copyright, but yeah. But would, I don't want to say like Pfizer and Merck because I don't want to mention any companies, but are there active like intelligence operations from within some companies targeting other companies trying to recruit their employees? Yeah, 100%. In fact, I've worked cases where there was Chinese PLA involved in placing someone in that company to steal trade secrets. There are a lot, I mean, multiple cases. But it's not just nation states.

You know, competitors do it too. Pick a sector. You know, there's business intelligence for a reason. You want to stay ahead of the curve. But with COVID, what's been interesting, when COVID started, not a lot of people talked about insider threat, but then everyone moved at home and companies realized they can't control what they used to be able to control. People are working behind unmanaged home routers. They're not using VPN. You don't know who's accessing, you know, the screen or the office. And so fraud and theft of intellectual property skyrocketed because a lot of people started getting fired or leaving their job, and they were. pocketing stuff to either start their own business, sell it to a competitor, or take it to a new job so they sounded smart.

I actually had a woman once tell me she took, I mean, terabytes worth of stuff, so she sounded really smart at her new job. People are hedging their bets because they have to provide for their families. And COVID has really just pushed people in this weird new zone where it's kind of a free-for-all. That's interesting. And it's interesting to think of this corporate intelligence war, right? that that not you know that that Pepsi hasn't and and probably Pepsi and Coke don't give a rat's ass about each other you know what I mean but but that Pepsi has an intelligence unit going after Coke's secret recipe and Coke has an intelligent you know that there's this this other war that goes on outside of like the nation state technology or you know intelligence war yeah yeah I mean

I've seen it a lot there's some good stories But then add in a layer of social engineering and fishing and ransom and all of the cyber threats. I like to tell people it's not the computer that's clicking on that link. It's someone's finger. So if you don't have an insider threat program or you're not training your people and how they're making your company vulnerable, how do they know what they're doing is wrong or just kind of a bad call? How do they know what nation states are targeting that company's intellectual property? Because I can tell you, 99.9% of people are like, well, I don't have access to secrets. I don't know anything special.

Right. Those are the people I used to recruit because they didn't think they had anything special. Shawnee, do you have anything, you want to promote any companies that you're working for, endeavors that you want to, that you want to plug? Sure. Yeah. So I started my own company several years ago called Viance Group. violence means courage or bravery in French. So you have to say it really snooty.

But I do insider threat consulting. I do training, awareness. I'm a keynote speaker for several different agencies. We do human risk assessments. Like I said, just with espionage too. Like I eat sleep and breathe it. I love it. I think it's fascinating.

It affects every company, every industry, every country. You know, you can't escape it. And then I'm working on some really cool holidays. I can't wait to drop. I've got a podcast. There's a TV show and a film all in the works. Wow. Very cool. Not about me. But about espionage and about insider threat espionage. I've got something about the race for autonomous vehicles and it's got layers of espionage and insider threat in it. And I've got some really great partners. Yeah, it's very exciting. Awesome. Okay. Well, when you get any of those projects up to the finish line. We don't have to have you back to talk about some of that stuff. Yeah, I would love to. I would love to. Anything else that I failed to cover that you really want to discuss? No, I just want to say thank you for your service. Thank you to any of the listeners for their service as well. I really, I didn't

have the balls to do it and sign up myself, so I deeply appreciate it. Well, I mean, I think you still put your life at risk running around Missoula at the height of the war. So, yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate you, you know, joining us for this episode and sharing some of your experiences and Jim for introducing us is awesome. And I hope everyone else, again, this is supposed to be our Christmas episode. So I hope everyone's having a great holiday. And our next episode is going to be our year in review, our New Year's episode, Year in Review. Can't wait for that. Yeah.

So, yeah, we're going to, we're finishing 2020 strong in 2023. is going to be awesome. We're scheduled right through March as of now. So we got plenty going on. So again, Shawnee, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for being with the team house over the last year, three years really at this point. And we'll see you guys real soon. So thank you. Thank you.