CIA Senior Intelligence Service Officer | Doug Wise (throwback episode)

how you got your superpowers? What is your origin story, where do you come from? How did all this happen in the very beginning.

think is spectacularly great. And I just want to thank all of the people that have dialed in and and logged in today, you know, for supporting the program and for making this such a great success within the national security and the veteran community. So I think it's absolutely great.

by hand in Bancaster County, Pennsylvania. You know, at the end of the ride, you know, I had the pleasure of serving in public source for fifty years. That's a half a century, and it was you know, not as I've said, and I think many of you who are listening to me and watching, I think you can kind of resonate with this that you know, I never had a bad day. I've had better days, right, but I've

never had a bad day. I think the worst day that I've experienced was probably in December two thousand and nine when I was in Iraq and we had eight of our colleagues that were you know, murdered at CO space in Afghanistan, and I knew every one of them from the base chief on down. I knew all the all the officers, including the g RS guys who were who were wounded and fell in the line of duty.

So you know, that was not a good day. But in the end, you know, I looked for the positive that you know, their sacrifice was not in vain because we took a hard look at the positive of that and we were a better agency and so they didn't die in vain. Their sacrifice actually produced probably life saving changes in the way we did business. But I never

had I had a real, a real bad day. One of the things that's interesting is after you come out of the ride, and for those of you that are younger on this podcast and have either at the beginning of your national security journey or you you know, are contemplating you could take a look at me. This is on photoshop. This is what you're going to look like

at the end of the ride. So if you want to if you want to look, if you want to look like a hard ridden mule, you know, beaten mule, well well then you know you may want to get off the train right now. But anyway, it was, it was great, but you know, the challenges galore throughout my entire career, and it didn't end when I left, as a matter of fact, because when I became the Deputy Director of DA, they rolled back my cover from day one, which went all the way back to nineteen eighty seven

when I entered on duty with CIA. And if either you gentlemen are interested, you know, I'm more than happy to talk about that that process as well later. But you know, one of the things that when I came out from undercover, and and I'm able to tell people, you know, with even with great pride, quite frankly, and legitimate pride for the for the officers like you both who you know, I serve with, serve for who served for me, UH made it. You know, always a good

day and often a better day. But you know, I when you come out from undercover and you can kind of shed and take off the jacket and you and you really expose your real self, you know, there's there's a lot of benefits to that because you can talk about the power and the majesty of the of what you experienced and and help to provide a little bit of insight into what those of us who are working outside the public eye, you know, what contributions that were

making with the risks we're taking, the challenges we face, and and and how we feel when we when we do that, uh, sense of pride, the sense of accomplishment and UH. And so you know, being able to discuss that finally and attribute it to CIA is is a wonderful thing. But then what happens is usually to the person that you're talking to who may not know you. Particularly when I public speak as I do a fairmount, you know, you collide with the public perception of what

a CIA officer looks like. Uh. And I think that you know, David, you and Jack would agree I do bear a striking resemblance to Daniel Craig. But I'm maybe maybe Matt Damon. I'm not. I don't. I don't look a lot like Matt Damon. But the but the perception of what CIA officer is, it is really framed by Hollywood. I do. I do a fair amount engagement with with Hollywood, and if you want to talk about that, we can

talk about that as well. But I was given a prestigious invite to go speak at give an evening lecture at Chathamhouse in London on James Saint James Square. Wonderful institution. It is one of two think tanks that exists in the United Kingdom. In America, we have a lot of them in the United Kingdom. They have to are U, S, I and and Chattermouse. And Chatham House was where Chathamhouse Rule came from and they're the ones that started it.

And so it was really an honor. And I had never been there and I had no idea what to expect. So I'm waiting in the wings of this huge auditorium insider building with my American program counter sponsor, my wife Cindy, you know, who was just absolutely spectacular, lay put up with me for decades and was a super professional in her own writer, as an FBI special agent, pioneer, female first pilot for the Bureau, female pilot for a whiles. I'm more proud of her than I am of myself.

But she was in the audience because you know, I thought it'd be a great thing to share. And so the audio, quite frankly, autorium was getting full. So I turned to Jacob and I go, hey, Jacob, is this a big audience? And he looks at me. He says, second largest audience we've ever had here at Chathamouse, second second largist. I said, who, Who's who drew the biggest craft? And he goes, Benjamin Netanyao, he was here two weeks ago. And I go, well, I'm honored, but I'm not a

Benjamin Yeo class figure. But the attractiveness for all of these people was the fact that I was acknowledged and open CI officers served in clandestine service. They marketed it heavily as a note for our audience. The British Secret Intelligence Stores have a secrecy agreement. We have sort of one, but they have one for life where they can't they

can't acknowledge their association with m I six. So the fact that I was a spy and could acknowledge and could discuss by stuff, even though my topic was actually Russian disinformation. I think they came to see what a real spy looked like. So I hadn't really thought through what the what the collision would be from perception to reality, but I learned that pretty soon after the thing was over. So Jacob and I walk in, We sit down on the stage. There's a podium there. He's going to go

introduce me. In the meantime, my wife's in the crowd and being an FBI special agent want to be you know, hey, your timeline target got to be tot is. Now this thing should have this thing should have be done here at that you know, at at seven pm. You know, she leans over and you know it's now seven ten, seven fifteen. So she leans over to ask the the British guy sitting next to her in the audience, and she goes, hey, uh, seven fifteen, it's supposed to start seven.

When's this thing got stuck? And the guy goes, uh, man, I think it's going to be when that fat old guy introduces the c I speaker. And so when she's telling me that story, I go well, well, babe, didn't you only put him on the spot and tell him you were married to me? And she goes, nah, to apply the need to know principle, He didn't need to know that. So I'm under no illusion, you know that you know what I represent. Maybe this consonants with what

the public expects. So again, kudos to you, gentlemen, for creating this platform that allows you know your guests many have done much more than I have along this special obsens Spina's journey, you know, to kind of a inform, dispel mythology, and to be able to maybe not inspire.

I don't think I'll be inspirational, but maybe to you know, get over some obstacles and come and join the family, you know, put an application and be part of service to America and the safety and security of the American people. But anyway, back to you, gentlemen, where you want where you want to go from?

which was kind of an interesting experience. Although Northern iiO was very agricultural, so that wasn't wasn't all that bad that you know, people didn't dress the same as we did, but the but it was kind of interesting. And I grew up there, you know, typical Midwest kid, you know, monocultural experience. You know, I don't believe there was a

single Hispanic in my town. There was, I think a small number of African American families, and most of us were sliced white bread kids, you know, growing up to you know, four hundred kids in high school to varsity sports. And you know, ultimately it was John Glenn that appointed me to the military Academy at West Point. So I joined the class in nineteen seventy two. In nineteen sixty eight, not a not a good time in America, a very unpopular war, and so joining the military was not was

not fashionable. Can I say that what John Glenn did was he used a screaming mechanism that doesn't exist anymore, and it was a civil service aptitude test and kind of like sat like, and all he did was use that to discriminate, you know, first order throw out to people that can't fill out the circle with their number two pencil, you know, throw that guy at So told to go to Findlay, Ohio, which is a modest sized town in north northern Iisle, a little south of Toledo,

and go to the post office upper upper level ink well desks. You come in and they give you the test Booklet tell you don't open it up until we tell you because the time tests fill out the first page, and the first page all biographic, right right, So you're writing all that stuff down, putting your initials of your name, you know, down in the in the block and then the seminole block that found about midway was what academy are you are? Are you do you wish to attend?

My dad flew in World War Two. Ultimately my younger brother he flew US fifteen Strike Eagles, and so I was raised to be an Air Force kid, you know, so my job was to go to the Air Force Academy. So it was a no brainer for me. So I marked, I put the darken that little circle, you know, Usafa. So there's a seat in front of me, and all of a sudden puff of air plot this guy sits

down in front of me. His name is Kent Cartwright, you know Hollywood name, and Kent looked like the epitome of you know, weightlifting surfer, if there was such a thing. Broad show narrow waste captain of both the football and the basketball teams, had an active social life which I didn't have, and was an academic star and was the most popular guy in school, you know, homecoming king of the wholeworks. So I tap him on his shoulder and I go, hey, Kn't, what academy are you going? What

do you academy are you going to? And he turns and looks at me and he goes, I'm going to Air Force Academy. And I go me. So I turned that number two pencil around and I just erace that, Usafa, and I just mark sense not the Coast Guard Academy, not doing that, Naval Academy. Now my mom knew my dad I wasn't eligible to go to the academy. So I'm going to USMA. So I have Max and said it the winds of fate blew cut right to the Air Force Academy. They threw him out after a semester.

The other wind of fate blew me to West Point, and as I said, I entered and commissions second lieutenant in nineteen seventy two. So that's kind of my journey to get to that point, right, and not some not an outcome that I think anybody, any of my relatives back in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, would have anticipated. But anyway, that's that's that's my early story.

that was necessary for the army to transform itself. And we had not yet gotten to the point where we even you know, began the first step of a twelve step program by acknowledging that the army was really in

harm's way, quite frankly, de professionalized. It was ridden with all kinds of corruption, moral corruption, ethical corruption, tainted by this unpopular war, you know, underappreciated, not even under but not appreciated by the American people, really not understanding what Vietnam veterans had gone through, you know, all of the horrors of war, all the trauma, all the shock, you know, all of just the whrrors, and then to come back and not be welcomed back as a member of American society.

And of course she had the whole thing of a deranged Vietnam veteran, right yet, that kind of mindset that I think a lot of people, a lot of people had, so entering the army at that time was a really

difficult time. And I think one or more or of your guests I think had mentioned, uh, you know, pulling duty officer armed because you know, as a young officer, if you were alone, you didn't go alone into the barracks because that was that was the same thing as going being the point man, you know on a on a jungle patrol. You know you're going to hit a trip wire and you were going to be the first casualty of that, and uh, you know it was it

was frightening, to say the least. But you know, here's how my first day, you know, in a real unit began. You know, I show up in the unit and I show up into the replacement detachment. On the walls of the replacement detachment these big posters and it said, if you're going to this outfit called this autobon number, somebody from the unit will figure out how to get you there. And so I called the unit and there was in the unit was the first battalion five or ninth Parish

Airborne MECH Infantry. If there ever was a dichotomous concept having mechanized airborne battalion. We didn't do a lot of MECH because none of those M one one three's worked, and we never did any maintenance saw him to make sure they didn't work. Because we prefer to be paratroopers rather than the motor Pool monkeys. But uh, it was an elite unit at that time. If the US Army Europe, we were in an entire aborn morgety of the eighth Division. So I call, you know, uh, my sponsor expected to

show up first. Lieutenant Morrison was his name. I don't know why I remember it. And all of a sudden I hear my name, you know, and I jump up excited, and I got a ton of wives, and I go, yeah, here, here, here, and E seven walks over and introduces himself because of a Sarah, welcome to Charlie Company, first time five a night parachute, and I said, well, thank you, So I

appreate to welcome. Where's my sponsor? I thought he would come and get me, and he goes, nah, he de row style, he's gone, And uh, I said cheekily, not too seriously, but chicily. I said, well, I'm surprised the company commander didn't come to personally welcome me to the And he looks at me and he goes with tennant,

you are the company commander. I'm your first off, so you can imagine you don't even know where to put your second Lieutenant bar you didn't even know you guys to go on the left or right, you know, And all of a sudden, now you know, everything you've ever been taught is now going to come into sharp focus

or be defocused. So, without a doubt, I was the acting company commander for about ninety days of Charlie Company, and out of doubt, for me personally, it was the most formative, immersive, challenge laden leadership development experience that just really educated me on the thing to do and things not to do as the leader that in the Army of nineteen seventy two, And for me it was just a platinum, gold standard, absolutely spectacular leadership experience.

That's every one of them. Were draftings. You know, they knew that nobody could they could act anyway they wanted, and so they knew that there wasn't enough time for you, you know, you to threaten somebody what's sending you back to Vietnam. Have to ease it, come out? Did thirteen

months in Vietnam come back? They had a short time left and then they were leaving the army for the most part, and so using the power majesty of a go bar of a second lieutenant and to be able to issue peremptory orders and expect them to be obeyed like all military academy cadets, and you know, pretend second lieutenants at the Infant Officer Basic Course and Ranger School at Bathronder School and all the other courses that I jumped atter school that I went that I went to

in preparation for this assignment. You know, all of those skills were helpful but not essential. And so you quickly found out that you know, ordering, pressuring, you know, directing, and acting like an imperious you know, company commander was not going to get you to an outcome that would be useful for you personally and more importantly for the unit. Or would it benefit the soldiers early company at that point, And so I realized and got a chance to learn

that sweet spot you got to be in. You've got to be strong, and you gotta be you got to show confidence, but not overconfidence. You got to make good decisions. You got to allow the soldiers' deaf some freedom of action, particularly at that point. You've got to allow the NCOs to really you know, you command and the NCO's lead.

And I really learned the distinction between that as the Russians are finding out now, you know, when they're performing so poorly on combat because the NCO, we always joked right the backbone of the army was the nonconditioned officer corps. Well, guess what it turned out to be true. You know, Ukraine has proven that to the Russians beyond the shadow

of death. And so knowing that, determining where that sweet spot, how hard you could push, you know, how often you had to push, but how much freedom but not too much freedom? You know what kind of relationship that you had to have with your E seven first sergeant and your six platoon leaders. Uh, you know, because I was the only officer in the company on top of that you know at the time. And so that was an

interesting experience to say the least. And uh yeah, and the way you learn, at least the way I learned, it's not not the best way to learn, but the way I learned was by making mistakes. But you don't want to make big mistakes because then your soldiers will lose confidence in your ability. But you do have to you do have to get out on the edge, not

over the tips of your skis. But you got to be leaning forward, and you got to be you gotta be you got to be comfortable in taking some risks when you're an inexperienced, you know, really naive commander and you're trying to command you know, men who are really combat veterans and who are you know, quite jaded and affected by the attitude of the American people and by the experience that they had traumatic in many respects, but you know, learning where that sweet spot is and learning

how a good leader will be able to operate in that sweet spot, to be effective, to be confident, not over confident, not to be unaffective, to really be able to have your soldiers benefit for the period that you're in command, to have soldiers be at one level when you begin, and have them be at a better place at the end. I'm not sure I did that real well, but learning that I needed to do that in that ninety days was probably the most important thing for me.

And I'll tell you what, the lessons I learned in those ninety days carried me forward and later on in my career. I mean, had the honor and a pleasure to be a company commander in the first Ranger Battalion when it was established. I was in the second wave

of company commanders and then the only battalion. And you know, had I not really learned those lessons and applied those lessons, you know, I don't think the chief staff of the Army would selected me as one of the captains to come in and command then the premier unit in the United States Army, frankly, and I would have never I would have never developed into something that would have been even competitive for them. And then later on in my career, and as many of your guests have said, you know,

it's a little awkward to talk about yourself accomplished. It's easy to talk about what you did. Talking about what you've accomplished. Kids to be a little self serving, but you know, I had the unexpected honor to be, you know, two years below the zone selectee to for and there's goods and bads in it. I lost a lot of time to learn what it's like to be a major in the United States Army, and that was unhelpful to me. But one at one point, you know, I think the

statisticians would delia. I was one of six youngest lieutenant colonels in the United States Army when I made oh five and and so that's a good thing if your name is me. It's a bad thing if you want an lieutenant colonel that's got all the experiences that you want a lieutenant colonel to have when they make lieutenant colonel. Uh. And so for me, I found myself to be at a professional personal disadvantage by the time I got to five.

Proud to be early select but really paid a huge price for that because I was woefully untrained and inexperienced to be a very good lieutenant colonel after my time in the in the Rangers. It was interesting because and I mean no disrespect to the US Army Recruiting Command or whatever they're calling it now, but I remember the team for mil person from the Hoffman Building, then the head of all Army Personnel, and the people from Infty

branch or whatever. I don't remember. You know, they came down to Fort Stewart and they were giving us career advice and guidance and talking about, you know, what we've done and what was in the future, and you know, giving us an opportunity to say what we wanted, and they had the opportunity to totally reject all that and

tell us what we're going to do anyway. And so, you know, I go down and they go, well, let's look at what's coming next for you, and so they open up the big musty book of Common Knowledge, you know, this big home boom, and they flipped through some parchment and then they go down. They finally wise, Wise, Wise, Yeah,

there you are. Yeah, you're going to go back and teach at the Military kit And I said, no, sir, I'd rather just stay with troops, that's all right, And they go, okay, so you don't want to go back and be a member of the faculty at the Military KIP. I said no, I said, they want you to come back, and I said, I'm proud of my four years there. I didn't enjoy my four years there. I wasn't a good cadet. I was a crappy cadet. And quite frankly,

if I never go back there again, I'll be perfectly happy. Ironically, my wife just encouraged me to go back to my fiftieth reunion. And I will tell you this, when you have a fiftieth reunion of any institution, there's a lot of old people there, you know, and I like to think I was one of them. There's a lot of old people there. A lot of guys brought their dads, I think, and so I said, no, I'd rather not go, and they go, not a problem, not a problem. We're

flexible here. Let's see what the book the Common Knowledge has for you. So they go back a few pages and they go, oh, you're going to command a recruiting but diying in Detroit. And I, you know, kind of looked and went, hey, can we go back a few pages and talk about that West Point? And they go, yeah, we thought you'd kind of your senses stay. I ended up going off to graduate school and teaching and teaching at the Military Academy, but I only did two years there.

So I went to troops and back to troops, and I had a couple of tactical assignments, and then I ended up at the Pentagon and deskhops for anybody that served in the Deputy Chief Staff for operations. I think it's called the G three of the arm now. And I was in the basement of the Pentagon where all the special ops guys were, And one day I got told that go up to the personnel office. You've got an RFO request for orders. You know you're going you got a new job. I didn't ask for a new job.

They go, we're not interested in what you want. You go up get your So I go up in an RFO. It was pink if I recall correctly, and you know, it was a form that turned it out on pink paper, and it was at my name and date of birth and solid security under and all that, and then it said assignment day. It effective and it was like tomorrow, and then the to do what classified to do? Where classified to do this? So the whole thing was just useless in terms of me being able to figure it out.

Nobody in desktops knew what was happening, and so what had happened is apparently CIA had asked for a military detail with you know, some semblance in my background, you know, my at my rank. And so the next thing I know is, you know, I'm going off to some mysterious organization. So I was told to call this number. So call this number, and a guy at the other end goes hello,

and I go, oh, yeah, this is Colonel Wise. I just got a military piece of paper that told me that I was getting a new job, and I was supposed to call you, and I don't know who you are. And so I apologize if I'm bothering you, But maybe I called the wrong number. He goes, not, you called the right number. Here's what I want you to do. The intersection to three ninety five in Franconia Road. You

know where that is. Yes, there's a hotel there. Interestingly enough, some years later a Russian kgb offster you know, hundred covers, was arrested by the FBI there meeting an American spot. So anyway, he says, go to that hotel, walk outside into Portico, have a red ball hat, have a magazine under your right arm. He's going to pick you up in a pickup truck. He's not you get in the back, don't talk to him. He's not going to talk to you.

And all will be explained in two cours. So you know, I do the whole ball hat magazine under pickup truck shows up Johnny on the spot. I get in the back of the truck. You know, I want to be able to say, hey, thanks for giving me a ride. But you know I'm follow the rules, so you know, I have no idea. And then he drove me to CIA quarters where it became obvious to me he may not be the brightest bulb in the drawer. This to me that now I understand, you know what I'm going

to do. Well, it turned out, you know, to be a a a temporary status as a detailer while all this excurity process and at that time was totally different than now we do. We have to be assessed as a full staff officer for CIA, uh, not just as a detail A go through the you know, the counterintelligence polygraph. We had a whole lifestyle than get abused by the poligrapher.

And you know, someday when I pass away and I meet one of those guys in Hell, I'm going to kick his butt because you know, uh, you know, a number of them abused many of us. But uh I was asked to join the counter Terrorism Center, which was quite a new institution, was an innovative institution at the time because the director of Operations for CIA, WASH was

organized geographically. And of course, as some of you that are that are older than others, you know who may remember terrorism in the time of hijacked airplanes, the Ntebbi raid and by the Israeli Defense Force and and that period of time. You know Steedam being you know, murdered and thrown out on the Tarmact, and you know Egypt there, you know, aircraft being hijacked to Malta. You know, all of this stuff, all of which was state sponsored, but

all of which was transnational in its execution. And so having to deal with the issue of terrorism which knew no boundaries. Terrorists generally don't care about political boundaries and

they don't care about national affiliation so much. And so you know, some iconic last in CIA took a big risk and created the counter Terrorism Center and pulled us, pulled people out of the geographic divisions which is what they were called, and put them in to the counter terrorism Phil Mutt for example, you see him on CNN all the time. He and I were branch chiefs and counter Terrism Center together at the same time. Mike Schuyer a little crazy, uh, you know, Mike Schauer was another

branch chief you know at that time. But you know, I think the reason why I was there one from my military backgrount and to be able to, you know, so they didn't have to waste a real talented, real CIA officer in this experiment known as the counter Terrorism Center, which was not career enhanced. Quite frankly, you know, you, as a young operator, you wanted to grow up in an area division the feudal lord owned you, abused you,

rode you like a rented mule. But at the same time, if you were worthy of his attention and investment, you know, your career, you know, would be guided and enabled to nurture by by your division chief serving and counter Terrorism Center wasn't going to get you that nurturing and that mentoring and that that developing, and so nobody wanted to

go there. So I'm being honest. I think you know, they picked me for a couple of reasons, one of which was they didn't want to waste to perfectly go to CIA.

about it? Like like what because you think now we think, oh, a counter terrorism center that makes sense? Why wouldn't Why would that be a problem? But like what were the problems that they ran into in the early days.

the dinosaurs. And to give you a sense of scale, when I joined CTC back then count of Terris and Center, there were ninety four of us, and that included four contractors. At the time that I served in CTC as a senior Intelligence Service officer. When I came back to be the assistant director of Operations, there were two two hundred

officers in that center. To your point, and further to your point, if you were a traditional CIA officer and a traditional geographic division and you hadn't served in a counter terrorism capacity, that had some career impacts too. And the idea was to incentivize talented officers to acquire that experience, and we needed that talent and we needed those officers to contribute. My career, like many like you, gentlemen, your career is defined by nine to eleven. You know mine

as well, And so back to your question. You know, the demarcation between authorities were sharply defined by geography. You had the Near East Division, you had European Division, you had Africa Division, you had Latin America Division, you had you know, Asia Division, and the Boar and the boundaries between those divisions bureaucratically were impermeable and I horus. Nobody crossed and there were no defectors generally who who were

of any value. You know, if you were a talented aufstar and you decided, hey, you know what, I'd like to serve an Asia division, your European division would would say absolutely, and the shoots you in the back as you kind of climbed over the border. Uh, it was, it was really, I mean, and I used the term feudal lords in a way that is very accurately descriptive, and yes it does negative connotations. And then and so yeah, uh, there were some negative aspects to both the people and

the and the organization. So when the CIA, and I wasn't part of the discussion obviously, you know, I came in after the decision had been made. So there are probably many people who you could get on your podcast who could talk to you about the early history of

the counter terrorisms much more authoritatively incredibly than me. But if you look at somebody who wanted to literally shatter the organizational structure of the Director of Operations, somebody had to make that decision, and obviously that decision had to be made, had to be endorsed or made, you know, at the director's level, right, it couldn't be made down

at the GS twelve. And so you not only had to create a res on debt for this new enterprise, you had to rationalize the value it would it would bring because it would create all kinds of chaos and disruption if for another reason, just in a personnel system, in the cable traffic system, because nothing existed. You know, this was new enterprise created out of whole cloth. And it's a zero sum game in CIA. So it's not like you could just hire ninety four additional officers to

be professional counter terrorism officers. And in fact, the term of art was you were home based in the geographic division. There was enough resistance that senior leadership of the agency said, will authorized CTC to be to come into existence, but it won't have the authority to home based officers. They didn't want officers to permanently homestead like you could in the geographic divisions. So I can only infer from what I know of the rigidity structure remarkable flexibility operation.

But the but you can imagine a terrorist, you know, a terrorist originates, you know, even if state sponsored terrorists originates in one country, transit to another country, ends up in a third country, links up with another dude, then travels to another part of the globe, gets all gunned up and equipped up. You know, it does this all

pre mission rehearsals and then do this. So you can imagine if there is ruthless guarding of operational turf created by the structure of the do you'd have to coordinate and who would do the coordination whose terrorist is that right? You know, is that terrorist the wholly owned property of where that dude originated, where he transited, or where he's going to conduct the operation or everybody. So who's in charge?

Everybody's in charge, but nobody's in charge. So somebody had the guts and the wisdom to create as they looked at this emerging terrorist threat as they got more violent and more large scale, to create this pioneering institution called the counter Terrorism Center, which ultimately became instantiated and was truly part of the magic of CIA in post nine to eleven. Time for it. And so once you had CIA to your point able to see all of the information flow from all the area divisions, none of the

other area division terrorists could originate in any division. All that traffic for counter intelligence reasons was need to know for any division, wasn't need to know for AF division. So how do you break that compartmentation barrier in a timely enough fashion to actually mount an operation counter TERRORSM operation to interdict and maybe remove the guy from the battlefield. And so you know, we we had an optic sitting in seat TOC that no other division had in the agency.

And so we proved our worth every day. I'm not saying I did. I'm saying that the officers who pioneered that center, you know, proved their worth every day in providing safety and security to Americans by this emerging threat. My job was very narrowly defined. I was a renditioned guy, and so my job was to help start the in perpetuate the nascent rendition program. And arguably, you know, we

had a modicum the success. We captured Kanzi, the guy that killed our officers, We captured Ramsey YUSAF from a number of others, and we kind of learned and those were all weren't based renditions and so are also one of the by products of counter Terrorism Center was, you know, we were able to create partnerships with institutions across the US government that none of the area divisions wasn't because

they didn't want to, they had no need to. With federal law enforcement, right, who's our natural partner, Federal Feer of Investigation, right, Federal law enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol you know now known ice. You know, yet all of these partnerships because of course, in the beginning days, we didn't have you know, non warranted operations directed to remove

Terrace from the battlefield. We didn't have lethal authority except for personal protection when we're out on operations, and so it was warrant based, and so we had to have not only we would in the parlance of standard crystal, we would find and fix and then partnering with the FBI, they we would together do the finishing. But the front face of that finishing was very naturally and very appropriate preserve the judicial process because all of these guys, we

brought back many minor terrorists. If there is such a thing to Rom's the use of class terrorists. You know, the Bohka operation, you're going to drop eight United Airlines out of the sky, you know in Asia, you know glad we took him off the battlefield and so our team got him.

You know, I had a counter terrorism responsibility, and we

understood that that was the existential threat to America. You know, Eastern Europe was still coming out of the disintegration and the Soviet Soviet Union, China was still you know, had you know, come on to the world stage, and North Korea was being its petulant teenager pubescent in the geopolitical terms, you know, you know, immature, you know, infantile behavior, but which was an irritation but not a not an existential issue, you know, And so it was terrorism that became the

threat to Americans, particularly when America's was still as you know, global power with big embassies, and we had very active foreign policy, and we were very much at risk. And so having officers like many of us on this podcast, you know, to be part of that that process was was key and essential for American security and a huge part of American foreign policy and national security policy. As I think you.

no basis in fact. Uh, some of that was by you know yet you know guys that just now they could call General's bob, you know, as opposed to general right. And so I found I concealed my military affiliation in my time in the counter terraces. You know, I grew my hair bout the same length I have it now, and which was quite awkward when I went to retire from the army in nineteen ninety two, I had to get aircut nor to process out. You know, the bastards made me cut my hair. If you talk to anybody

knew me back then, they go. We always thought he was an it guy, you know, because he had that long hair, and but I found the anti military attitude there was was was mystifying to me. The longer I stayed there, the more I am understood that it wasn't out of evil, it was out of really not understanding what the power of majesty that comes from the intersection of the military and CIA, which we learned and we can talk about that, you know, we learned in other

battlefields and other places antecedent or Afghan experience. But I had, you know, my first leaderships as a real CIA now I had led as a branch chief. I had the rendition branch chief, and then rendition program was taken to a fine art by generations way beyond me, you know, to scale and professionalism far beyond what I and my team would have ever envisioned. And it was also across discipline team by the way, and interagency team. So it

was kind of unique that we had, and nobody. And a nice thing about my job is nobody would say no, you know, because really you're not interested in saving American lives. You can say no and say maybe you don't want that guy to be a spy because we can't afford him, but oh really, you put a price tag on American lives, sir ma'am, and you immediately got a U. Well, well, I mean that's essentially by saying no to my budget request. You know what a sect you're doing, right, You're putting

so and so. I had Actually, you know, I'm being a little facetious, but nobody said no, you know to those of us who are doing God's work in the counter terrorisms. Tenter, but the military editor is interested. So I retired in nineteen ninety two, took an appointment as had to go through the old security process again, matriculated as a full CI staff officer, got an appointment, and then I ended up advocating for my first official CIA

leadership job, and I found it interesting. I interviewed with an SIS three, so he had an opening for a branch chief, and I figured, what a great place for me to begin, because I just was a branch chief of a large branch. Quite frankly, okay, and so I'm having this discussion and he goes. He goes, you were a military officer when you for the last five years,

I understand. I go, yes. He goes, so when you led your branch, you were using military leadership and I go, no response, and he goes, what I need you to do is use CIA leadership. And I go, sir, I'll due respect. Leadership is leadership. There's different aspects of leadership that are environmentally you know, appropriate, but fundamentally defining the mission, identifying the task or accomplish the mission. Build a team, you know, resource them, help them understand opportunities, help them

understand what obstacles are, provide feedback. I said, sir, that that's not the sole purview of the military or CIA. That's called leadership. One O one. So we had these molt. I had a two hour conversation with this guy, and he said he was very gracious, and he was very patient, and he's very understanding of my plotting discussion academic though it may have been about the issue of leadership. Uh. And finally at the end he said that he said, hey, look, Doug,

I really got to admire you. You gave it your best shot, he said. But you know, and I understand what she said. A lot of it makes sense, he says, But in the end, I need somebody that's led in CIA before. I'm thinking back of my mind. You know, well, if leading in CIA for the first time requires you to have led before, then that wasn't the first time. So how are you going to ever lead if you got

to have led before you? So I couldn't figure out the logic that he was applying, right, And so I finally I said, sir, look, you've been very gracious for your time. I've taken way more time than I had asked for. You know, you listen to me. You gave me my opportunity to speak, and I respect your decision and I'll just go away. And he goes, well, thank you very much. I appreciate it, says I did learn something, and I said, I'm glad, and I start to go, and I go, but sir, can I can I just

make one more point? And he goes, yeah, what's your final point? I goes, there's only one officer in this branch, and I'm and that's the branch chief. It's a branch of one officer, it'd be me working for me. I said, take the risk, and he sits back and he goes, well, yeah, that's a good point. So anyway, the point of my long story is this is all predicated in this somehow, you know, somehow the perception of what the military was right.

And as you all know, if there is a critical not just necessary, but it's strategic partner for CIA among the many strategic partnerships, certainly within the IC, but outside the IC, it's certainly CIA regardless to enough to be s sad in my day. You know, paramills the strategic partnership is with the special operations community of the United States military. And if America has a machine that is paramount and pre eminent in the world of clandestine operations,

it's because of the intimacy between those two communities. Extraordinary, extraordinary. We could not have done what we did without our special operations partners, whether they were whites offt or blacksof And I'm convinced that our soft partners, if they were on this. I mean, don't get me wrong. CIA is an acquired taste. I get it. I get it. We're an acquired taste we're kind of like Caviat, very expensive and we're not very flavorful, but you know, we are neutral.

But the fact of the matter is that the partnership between our two communities was what has brought us success in the counter terrorism domain. Yes, it's from the skills, the talent, the experience and the application, the leveraging of that, and the dedication and commitment of the women and men who have given up years of their lots to become experts on terrorism and how to defeat it, how to

mitigate it. Yes, I get that in both communities. But the reality is that's that intersection, that power that is more powerful than the arithmetic some of our two halves. And you know it is I can say now, and I know you degree and all of our colleagues who on this podcast who have had similar experiences would agree. You know, the collaboration and the cooperation between the two communities was not only mission success, but it was also

life saving at the same time. And I can say that today, but back in the early days, it was really hard. It was really hard, and it wasn't all anti CIA attitude out of the Special Operations community, who in and of itself as a reason to be prideful and self sufficient, you know, and and highly skilled and highly committed and courageous, very capable. But you know, we learned an awful lot of lessons, and some of them hard won by blood and sand, by learning how to

work together. But you know, we began with baby steps, and those baby steps eventually got us to be a you know, one hundred meters sprinters, world class printers.

And blending of authorities and blending of funding and yeah, consistent with American.

colleagues to go do something. Uh. And so, you know, learning how to work together in that very unique way right through the defense Sensitive Support system is was you know again this was all pioneering, right, Yeah, we were all we were all pioneers. You know, there's no there was no book, you know, you go chapter nine how to work with Jason there there was no such a thing.

f b I didn't possess. This is before they were legal legal attaches and every embassy in the world. And so the f b I was pioneering and having extra territorial squads and in the FBI and and getting involved in in mitigating the criminal and terrorst threat before it got to inside the United States was pioneering for the FBI. I didn't find as much, uh much attitudeinal collision between count or terrorism center. Others may have a different view.

So I was in a rendition business. The agents we worked with were just extraordinary.

We were able to do that. The friction comes in generally when when you have overlapping capabilities and overlapping authorities, and then you get into the you know, I won't do it on the podcast, but I can show you the title fifty title ten scars I have and they had when the mL and you know, the militarily is on element wars in the early years, and but it's really where you had you were operating separately, but you

had overlapping authorities and sometimes you had undisclosed overlapping presence in each other's I used the term battle space because I think it's probably the best descriptive. And then we

learned that actually that's a prescription for disaster, right. And so over time we learned through exchange of hostages and just through just brute force, uh, training and educating and beating the drum that you know, the military, you know, and I and I said all the time, I said, we need to identify opportunities to help our soft brothers, you know, succeed. And I like to think that they're

doing the same thing. When we observe behaviors that are not consistent with CIA normative behaviors, I urged all my officers take a deep breath, impute evil, because what they're doing may be very consistent with their mission, their organization, and their own culture and authorities. And so doing a little investigative work before you enter into judgment mode is the most helpful thing. And I told my officers every day, talk to any of the officers serve with me interact.

I said, it's been a good day. When you can say that you helped another officer CIA or not succeed, that by definition is a good day, you know. And so we learned an awful lot and I think the probably the classroom where we learned at was in the Bosnian theater of operations. And if I don't know whether you might.

chief four times. And I might say, as an aside for your audience, you gentlemen know this many many in the audience tough, but some might not. You know, a typical CI station is quite small and modest and deep, and we have a broad range of obligations and record gronments and uh, you know a lot of us very sensitive and we can't talk about it here. But but you know, for the most part, they're right quite modest. I mean, these are not like Treadstone class CIA presence.

If I could use adjacent Bourne analogy, the Treadstone was evil. We're not evil. But the fact of the matter is that, uh to your question. You know, I had really escalatory and graduate graduating, you know, leadership experiences both at Starfleet Command, you know, and in the field, which helped prepare me to be you know, my first chief of station job, which was in the Balkans. I was another chief of station in the Balkans as well, and I supported a

number of programs in the Balkans. I was a base chief in the Balkans, you know, And and that experience, you know, was where quite frankly, you know, as as all the people in the audience know. You know, America invested eavily and built in creating order out of chaos. You know, you had to date in the courts, which I think a lot of us who experienced and who

benefited from that. You know. It's a great way to end the war and end genocide, but it's a real crappy way to birth a country, you know, and try to imbue it with jeffersony empluralistic democratic tendencies, you know, with all the trauma that comes from genocide, you know, and so America's investment, which was quite controversial at the time, and I wasn't a policy maker, so I'm not facile in the intimate policy history and all the blood letting

that probably came from making this decision to deploy US military forces. Nobody wanted to put US soldiers in harms way. Nobody did. Nobody wanted to put US forces into a situation eerily similar to Vietnam. What was the US interest in Vietnam? There was no Domino theory of play here in the Balkans, so you know, rationalizers didn't need and have that. There was no Gulf of Tonk in analogy, you know. And and even though that was fake if you read the Pentagon Bakers, uh, you know, none of that.

This was an unforced initiative by the United States government, on both the military side and on the non military side, particularly in diplomatic and CIA. This was unforced. We weren't required, and by doing what we did it did incur risk.

We had no risk. And by putting Americans into that environment automatic whether they're a ten Special Forces Group colleagues, whether they're for you know, Dave Grange's Divisions colleagues, whether they're in Multinational forces because we're part of ESPORT and on before IPHO and then spur I was there for all of that. And this was America at its finest. This was a story that should make Americas proud. It's going to get lost in the very necessary asked the

discussion on Ukraine. But this was America at its finest. We didn't have to do this. No Americans were harmed by this genocide, weren't even injured. No Americans the big debate, no American equities. And the reason why we had made this investment is because of what makes America great, American core values. That's why we were there. We were the power projection of American core values into an environment that

was absent of anything similar to American core values. You were having women and children that had just been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands of Boshniaks slaughtered on the battlefields and then the towns and the villages. And when you go and part of your job is to find mass graves, which wasn't hard because you could see body parts sticking up out of the ground. That was the easiest part

of what we were there to do. And CIA's presence was traditional CIA presence to be able to provide actionable intelligence to a wide variety of customers and to be able to inform the policy makers, because again, America was pioneering its way through this very ambiguous, ill defined environment, highly politically charged, you know, post genocide trauma and anger and need for revenge, and Americans were there to kind of be the cadmium rod in this geopolitical reactor. And

America did amazing work. They did American work just extraordinary. And I'm exempting myself from that. But in the in that battle space with CIA where our special Operations colleagues, and I.

that was hard. We learned very quickly that their culture and their their US, you know, both with ten Special Forces as well as Special Mission Unit, their ethos mirrored arrow. And as your guests that have preceded me have told you, uh, you know, we learned a lot. We learned. We learned how to respect each other's capabilities. We learned how to without judgment, to understand shortcomings in capabilities, understand strengths. We understood how to how to respect each other, how to

not be caught up in mythology and misperception. We were we were sharing the mission, we were sharing the risk such as it was, and our success was very dependent upon mutually supporting each other. Uh and uh. And it was a way for us to really understand, you know how, you know, for us to learn the hard, difficult to learn lessons on how to coo, cooperate, collaborate, to how to share and and and how to disagree in a respectful way that doesn't affect each other's mission or the relationship.

You know, we learned that as young. I wasn't chronologically young, because you know, I had a job before CIA that wasn't working for dead, and so I was chronologically ordered older and so but all of us, I was experientially young, you know, just fifteen, and so was young you know

in see I speak. And so, you know, the opportunity to undertake this exciting mission to represent the ideal of America to an environment that is absent of any concept of American idealism, and to be able to save lives, to be able to bring order out of chaos, to help the United States foreign policy, to bring genocide to an end, and to do something about that genocide, and in many cases, to bring the perpetuators and the perpetrators

of that genocide to justice. The American presence in the Balkans was all of that, was all of that and all of us that were part of their rom Uller and the other game. You were proud to be part of that because it's one of the reasons why we signed up for this. Me granted as a draftee to the agency, but I could have left, I could have retired and not signed.

they pay me when I leave federal service. There was dual compensation that statute, which lasted for eight years my CIA CIA service that I forfeited my military retirement in exchange for Yeah, it was all all civil service. Pack. They eventually what are they called, not revoked the legislation that they whatever you do to laws, Yeah, repeal, that's

really repeal. Uh. They repealed that because they realized they were you know, they were you know, essentially disincentivizing some incredibly talented you know, military officers from joining CIA.

the Vietnam experience. You know, it's the first time that the modern army, you know, the reformed army, you know, CIA came through its own reformation, the Church and Pike Committee hearings, all in the Crown Jewels and all of that. You can go back and study that we were a totally different agency than we were back then, the United States Army Special Forces to come from my day, you know,

whereas an alternate specialty. And you were a shitty SF officer and a shitty traditional officer at the same time. Works Yet you're a shitty aviator and you were a shitty tanker. You know, you weren't good at both. That was great. You always tapped a guy on a helmet and said, how long have you been flying? Well, I just came out of a tank armor company. Come in. You're going, oh wow, how about having that warrant officer take the controls? You know? Is that kind of thing?

And so this was a professional army, this was a professionalized intelligence community. It had learned a lot of lessons, had a lot to learn, and out of that came a lot of incredible connective tissue that ultimately that we all who went to Afghanistan, you know, benefited from and saved lives and accomplished.

But I think that at least for me a lot of times, the perception is nine to eleven Afghaniste in Iraq like nine was was that was that formative moment for you know, uh, special operations and the CIA. But but you're saying that it it goes back to actually bossing where those were those roots our first our first laid you know, and and it grew from there.

and that's very understandable. But we shortened the timeline from orders to to action by what we what we all experienced out of out of the boss name theater.

You know, you know what we did in Bosnia, and so I'm not offended at all that it is kind of fallen beneath the American consciousness. But for those of us that have experienced that, I think anybody on this podcast and anybody who anybody talks to and carry some of my remarks will find a deep resonance between what we all experience. I'm exempting the conventional unit because we didn't have a lot to do with you know, the big armored divisions and mechanized divisions that rotated out in

and out of Bosnia. But I'm talking about you know, our Special Forces and Special Mission unit. Uh. You know, we learned a lot and we became fast friends, tight colleagues through that experience, and it's it's saved us a lot of time and a lot of lives on future battlefield that we could not possibly imagine.

And and so I considered it It's very true, and I know it sounds very begging for compliments, but I considered myself part of the blue collar of the director of Operations. I didn't come with the with that kind of Washington education and development kind of kind of background, and so I figured I was I was the military equivalent of uh, you know, in the Navy, you'd say a Mustang, right, right, And I was the I was the CIA equivalent of kind of the you know, the East six who went to O c S came a

COMPS an officer, you know. But having said that, you know, the unexpected, totally unexpected. I think a lot of a lot of women and men who get promoted to the senior service are are grateful, uh, but they're they don't

expect it. But I think they probably know whether they're made of the right stuff, and so the promotion isn't a surprise, and they get enough feedback, you know, what they have to do to improve, to make themselves more competitive, and they get a lot of interaction by their senior mentors and chain command. And you know, I guess I got some of that. I don't remember, but I didn't take any offense if I didn't, because I didn't think I was worthy of it, quite frankly, you know. And

I appealed to my boss. I appealed passionately to my boss, please don't bring me back at the end of my command tour from to Starfleet command. You know, I don't have my light saber is just not going to work back there, and my Jedi knight you know, fire passion, they will go disappear. Look, send me to any crappy place you want, where you need a good, solid field leader. I'll go lead myself again as I did my first leaders are. I made it the argument I possibly could,

and it seemed to fall on deaf ears. And the next thing I know is I get a call from a guy you made may know, Zay Rodriguez, who is the DdO at the time, who said, I got some good news and I got some bad news. The good news is we've selected you for promotion to the Senior Intelligence Service. The bad news is you're in a g S fifteen position. You're coming back to Storrowfleet Command. And he said, so you're coming back to the counter Terrorism Center. And I was the deputy for the director of Ops

for CTC and I did that. You know, when I came back, that was my first SIS job. And I had a couple I had. I had a couple of assignments. I think I was in you know, what's now known as the Center for Cyber Intelligence. I think I dabbled in that a bit. Somebody said, well, you got you got a graduate degree in an arcane sign it's you're perfect for this. Yeah, yeah, well maybe I don't remember any of that. I can't even read my dissertation and

understand what I wrote. And so I did that for a little bit, and I had another assignment in there. Memory escapes me. It was a highly classified project that I worked which was known to very very few, and it was quite an exciting thing. The cool thing is is you can apply the cult of secrecy and you can emanate that, you can exude the cult of secrecy, and that makes you very special. The bad news is

you can't cooperate and collaborate with anybody. You just can't tell anybody what you're doing, so you got to do all the work yourself, and that sucks. I'm just telling you. So a team building how you get a team of one? You know? Okay, this is great, this is great. But if memory serves me correctly, I went from there back to Iraq, and we didn't talk about my affirmative Iraq E three and four.

we all rushed into to scramble to watch TV. And I remember to myself it was it was just shocking. And I remember the way I rationalized and dealt with that sickening feeling in my stuff was I said, oh, this is a navigation era, this is some pilot you know, pilot out art attack. You know, never occurred to me, even though I had done tech counter terrorism for like ten years, you know, the fact of matter, I was just sitting there, you know, mystified, shocked, mystified, sickened by

that and it wasn't. But you know, after, you know, America's policymakers really digested what had happened, you know, from the attacks on nine to eleven to two aircraft Flight ninety three in the attack on the Pentagon. And ironically, one of the officers of my cross agency, large cross agency team that I had in the field from DUD from uniform military, multiple civilian agencies, and yet and some of our special Forces College. So we had a pretty

powerful team. One of my team members who happened to be named Mike stan who meant who left immediate because Sad called him back immediately. U s a d and Mike, of courses, all of the snow is the first American to die in the line of duty, you know, and the expulsion of al Qaeda and Taliban from Afghanistan. Mike was really just a spectacular guy. He was. He was everything you'd ever want in any kind of officer, a gentleman warrior, you know, just extraordinary, gracious, courteous and yet

steal hard. You know. Of course he's a former marine, right and uh so I lost him immediately there it was like hours, if I recall correctly, Boom. He was summoned back. We sent him back a couple of days later after they made a decision to mount the US response.

Of course, he had Jawbreaker, which you know you've covered extensively. UH. And my job, I was immediately summoned up to US Yukon to work with then to me a very unknown UH Seal one star who some of you may have heard named Bill mccraven, who's the commander of SAKI, and we were trying to figure out what it was that the US in command in soak here needed to do in response, you know, because the attack on the homeland

was not going to be the only attack. And it certainly added because there have been three embassies hammered hard the usas cole Kobar Towers. We had all kinds of explosive history in the business of terrorism up to this point. And the other thing that my job was to be able to work with soak here to prepare the support, the special operations support requirements because of the emerging soft

contribution to America's response. Then I went back to back to Washington, d C. To you know, to equip myself to gun up and get ready to go to Afghanistan. Myself and I and I remember one of your guests, can't I can't remember who, uh Mick maybe who said who talked a little bit about it. I think you asked him the question. Tell us about the time that

you were preparing to go to Afghanistan. Mine was spending hours in r I. I remember going in there in a place for stripped I think, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember going in there and you know, one of the ari I sales sales ladies comes up to me and says, so can I help you? And I go, yeah, I got this list. I need to get all this stuff on pick cash. I need all this all this stuff, and I need it right now. And she goes. You're like, you're like the fiftieth guys been in here. I think

I think a lot of stuff. I think they bought all that stuff. So, you know, I had to run around, you know, and others like me that were in the in the in the latency part of the response, you know, the month after sort of thing, and so you know, you're buying sleeping bags and all kinds of stuff because again, you know, as as I think a number of your guests of you know, Cee, I was not. You know, our military things was not de regord for CIA, right it is today, but back then it was. It was

an aberration. It was an afterthought. Those were the officers that would get you in trouble because those retired Special Forces E eights that were now GS twelves and thirteen's. There's no good it's going to come. Have a ground branch, a ground branch team. I've been a cos couple of times for ground branch guys. I know the mythology. Having him come from a community, I wasn't as fearful, but no good could come from having a ground grand branch guys.

And you go, you know, you know your your family aren't safe, the animals aren't safe. Fruit and not safe is going to know up all that, you know, all of that kind of bizarre thing, you know. So there was paramount. So CIA was not prepared to go. I when I when I had my team in Afghanistan, we had a Sony Vial laptop through an encrypt to an in mar set. We were creating cable traffic and Microsoft

word you know. Yeah, we had Satcom And that was just to tell the gang back at Starfleet that we had a couple of files for them, and then perhaps maybe in another episode sometime, you know, if you ever want me back, I can tell you a little more about, you know, that kind of pioneering that was done by many who didn't way more than I did, in way more dangerous places. You know, My my gang was in a sadabab, you know, way up in the southern end of the Conor Valley north of Jilal. But but you know,

we were learning how to how to do this. We were you know, creating capability on the fly, you know. And I was just a cognet machine. I wasn't a driver. I wasn't you know, a pioneer leader. I wasn't taking

the decisional risks, you know. I was just excited and happy, you know, coming out of that bossing exp It's flush with pride, you know, wanting to you know, be part of America's response, you know, to bring justice and righteous revenge to those that had you know, killed our citizens and those of other nations who had despoiled our country, you know, forever, and as you know, I, like all of us you know who served there, proud to be part of that, whether in the early days or even

more dangerous quite frankly, you know, days that most of you served in Afghanistan, we could even go downtown and have dinner at an Afghan restaurant, you know, without getting blown up and shot and stabbed, you know where. Many of you weren't able to do that, but you know it was and we immediately began to apply the experiences that I just discussed the length, you know, and the lessons that we learned, you know, and that you know what turned out to be a much more pacific battle

space known as the Balkans. But uh, you know, who do you find in places like Afghanistan? You know, no longer Captain Scottie Miller. I think he was Major Scottie Miller, maybe lieutenant colonel, So you found it was you know, as I think we all used the expression same dude's different.

his own right. He has a little blemish because he's a Naval Academy graduate and he's the nuclear guy too, you know, like that who's that guy Rickover? Or is that that? Was that a German pilot in World War One? I don't remember who was the guy started nuclear Navy. I don't know the Navy is relevant to me, but the but uh, you know, the total numbers. But I think we only had like I think it was around

twenty eight, you know, in the initial initial presence there. So, but we had a huge force multiplier in uh in in uh you know, the the g's and in Swick speak, the g's from the Northern Lions. And so the picture you so kindly put on the advertisement for this was my leadership team. With my team. It was myself a ground branch guy, and we had one hundred Northern Alliance you know, colleagues that were there to take the fight to the enemy. And that was not unique at all,

and so there are very few in the beginning. So I was in Afghanist Fans and opera.

a bunch of rubble. And I found because thank you for the climate there which is absent of rain, I found a real Russian military map with hands draw on military symbols to show where they positioned, you know, rifle companies and infantry platoons in the mountains around around the Sadabad and so I have that framed, you know, on the wall on my I Love Me and I Love You wall here in New Mexican or New Mexico home.

But I was an operator to your question, and I came back and I was the acting because we didn't have a permanent station. I was the acting deputy chief of station my second go around, and so that took me through the end of two thousand and two. I became a chief of station after that for a year, and in Iraq happened. And then I got a call from the Deputy Director of Operations said, have your wife pack you out. I want you I want you to Kuwait in twenty four hours. So that's how things are done.

What was it like being at Langley? It was different than being at a base or a station somewhere else in the world.

who are operators. You know, there's life forms in CIA that love Starfleet Command. You know, they like to commute and they like to live, and they don't want to be overseas. Vast majority of them are are you know, hunger for the core business of what CIA does, whether you're an operator or an analysts, board officer, a techops officer,

or something in between. But there are many officers who don't need to go overseas and make a seminal and existential contribution to what we're trying to do overseas, and they're very necessary and just like service in the Pentagon, and granted, you know I was in the Pentagon, as a No. Five And for those of you that have never served in the Pentagon is No. Five. There is no lower life form in the Pentagon, in an army lieutenant colonel. Yeah, you don't even you don't even get

donuts for generals, get donuts for for sixes. You know, Hey, you go over there and attract the index away from those uster making you know, doing some real work. You go over there, Carl, you go sit there in the corner. Go get me a Dona. Yes, sprinkley. I like to watch sprinkles on my Donna and cream into coffee and let me know when it comes back, because I don't want to call it. And so there's no lower you know, you know, you know, just insignificant life per formed in

a lieutenant colonel and Pentagon. But what you do see is the same thing that I found out in my service. And I began life at Star Free Command. So I understood and it made me a better field leader. I understood the culture of head quarters. I understood the challenges that they were facing. I understood the sludge in the machine and why the sludge is not capricious sludge, it

is inexorable, just necessary slowness and glacier times. It's just part of large bureaucracies, even chrisp bureaucracies like CIA, which is probably the Christmas of them all. Without question. You know you have sixteen days after nine to eleven, you have Gary schron and Johnpricker on the ground right, no other institution.

And that that short interval between the most senior decision makers in our government and the Plebeian operator based chief like me on the ground that was built and with great risk, because all of a sudden you add a guy like me talking to a guy like George Tennant, you know, and you could only imagine that George taking advice from a GS fifteen versus taking advice from Sis four, five and six, advice that is well formed, well studied, well wrung out, well read teamed, and all you got is,

you know, opinions from a wellspring of opinion GS fifteen. You know, who thinks that he knows everything is to know that's useful for the director, you know kind of thing. And the same thing happened when I was chief and station in Iraq, conversations with the Leon Paneta, for example, when he was the director and Leon's deputy, you know. And so that shortening of the chain of information and the chain I guess, well is it? You know that

that Air Force colonel created that oodle thing? Right, I don't know what to stand for, but you know, at least one of those os.

and confidence. Because they didn't have that, they wouldn't have been able to shorten that decision making timeline, right, you know, because nobody would have allowed a guy like me to talk to provide advice and recommendation to senior officers on the seventh floors. Yeah, or directly to the d d O or to the to the Director of the Counter Terrorisms Doug.

from them. Like check out sap Gear. They have some amazing stuff on there, all kinds of like counterintelligence, you know, a lot of great gear.

modern American history. It opened it geopolitical tectonic plates that we had no idea what we were creating, because we had no plan in the notion that we could create, you know, pluralistic Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq with all the secretarian vicious sectarian fighting, and anytime you remove a brutal dictator, you know how the dictators roll very brutally, and you ask, hey, you're a dictator, why you got to be so brutal, because I'd be dead if I didn't, because I got

to keep you know, my hands on a pressure cooker that lives going to fly right up. So anyway I was at the time, I wasn't quite as as I didn't have that insight, but I was proud again, you know, to be part of the next grand American experiment to move American foreign policy and to kind of be part of a cog in the new SI machine and the next big, big thing that we were doing, which was Iraq,

and CIA played it. And I don't go through the details, but there's probably some people that I give you a good, good description of what we faced. But we accomplished an awful lot. We were lean main CIA machine in Iraq, and it was a bad time in the beginning because apparently there were a lot of people there that didn't like Americans. You know, there are a lot of Kurds and a number of Shia in the beginning were appreciative

that we removed this brutal dictator. But there are apparently a lot of Sunnis who took great offense at our removal of Saddam, in our our destruction of the entire Sunni socialist socialist system of power and wealth and support that existed. And of course the bath party we were taking. I have it's a video, but it's it's audio because

it's at night. We would take when we were first there, seventy six indirect fire shots at night at what was the American presence inside the Green what would ultimately become the Greens On. It was just a gigantic impacteria, seventy six you could count them all, from artillery to rockets to mortars, and it was just a very very difficult

time and we were getting hit every every night. And then, of course, as the American military presence went from you know, from you know, invaders, and I say that in a very positive way, not in a negative way, and as they consolidated their games and as they were able to really start to deal with some of these vets in life. Strangely and bizarrely turned to normal where you could actually go down on town, you know, along the river and

actually have some mos goof, you know, in a restaurant. Now, you know, the last time we ate in this restaurant, you know, thirty days later it was totally blown up by a suicide bomber. And that was that was late in two thousand and four. I want to say, but I considered a rock to be you know again, you know, just an opportunity to do a lot, and when we were sort of missionary, like I guess at the time myself included bringing some kind of better outcome for the

Iraqi people. Maybe that's naive. I believe that was naive and myself at the time. But you know, the American soldiers tremendous courage under very adverse circumstances, and particularly as the years went on, you know, two thousand and seven hardyre,

Iraq hard. But we were there again in the early days, you know, our natural partners who were there with our Natural Partners Special Mission Unit, and of course it was Stand the Crystal and who was himself transforming at Jaysak, which was the National Mission Force into the premier counter terrorism force that we now know and love today. You know, find, fix, and finish, and he and his staff battle engineered you know, that shortening that that information circle from intel to actioning

that intel where you pull guys off the objective. And many of you know this far better than me, and many of you participated in this. You know, where you'd be pulling a guy off an objective and you'd be interrogating them in the air on the way back. Another assault force is waiting to action that before they're even back.

And so you all of a sudden have one force coming back, another force going and and that requires a professional, professional, competent lethal choreography that is unparalleled in military experience of my view, and it showcases just extraordinary capabilities. And so in the end, you know, that was intelligence driven. You know, you needed intelligence to make that happen. That was the fuel that started that process and it was the fuel

that kept going. And Jason pioneered a huge amount of that, and CIA to our natural partnership, you know, we were feeding into that as well. And the CIA presence and I'm not going to talk about numbers, but you know the CIA presence expanded dramatically, uh interact, and eventually, you know, we became the size of what you could argue was an ifter brigade, which isn't much for the army, but for CIA is an extraordinary investment.

digressive for what you're trying to accomplish here. But the reality is we had to take the traditional elements of espionage, the trade craft that worked for CIA for generations since nineteen forty seven, and we add to it, carefully, adapt that, tailor it, and modify it so that we could still do the business of meaning human beings and extracting intelligence through that meeting without bringing extraordinary risk to that individual that is working on bath of the United States subjectives

and our own officers. And how do you do that, because inherently that has to be a non public, very secret enterprise and in a non lethal environment in the Genevas, you know, in the Paris, you know, blends of the world extraordinary counterintelligence pressure. Don't get me wrong with Moscow. Impossible to work there. You know, it takes an incredibly special officer to do that. I would never be able to do that. I was never able. I would never be good enough. So I wouldn't have done well in

the traditional espionage business. But because of my military background, because of my counter terrorism experience in CIA, I think I was well experienced enough to be a constructive part of the adaptive process to figure out how does CIA do business without getting people killed and still providing you know, valuable and intelligence for the policymaker and actionable intelligence, you know,

for the war fighter. And so we had to do a lot of a lot of adaptation, a lot of modification, and kudos to the officers who took those risks when we were trying new stuff for the first time. You know, you had no idea. I don't say you implying that I was part of it. They had no idea that they were going to come back from them, right.

no effort to keep American women and men alive. That is a sacred obligation and we must do that. That is job one. Nothing else going to be done. The second priority ends up being providing the intelligence so that our military partners could smoke on the battlefield those that are creating the force protection issues that we were trying to mitigate. And so job one force protection, job to

actionable intelligence to the warfright. Then, of course, CIA, unlike you know, our military colleagues that are very focused on CT, very focused still going uh. You know, we had the broader rate broader we had to worry about the stability of Iraq. We had to worry about Iraq, we had to worry about Saudi Arabia. We had to worry about the golf Arab States, We had to worry about the

third country presence there. And even though Bagdad was an incredibly challenging environment, there were still other embassies that were there, and other diplomats, and they all played a role in either helping us or impeding us, and so we had to pay attention to them and had to engage them.

And so the broad, incredibly complex and diverse mission that cias everywhere and every place that it is was complicated and made more existential by job want to jump to and that required a very special structure, a very special culture, and more importantly, some just extraordinary women and men who were really who volunteered to come out to that kind of environment. You know, thrived in most cases in that

kind of environment. And it really says a lot about you know, those young and often inexperienced CIA officers who I hold in the highest of regard because they volunteered to get involved in something that they had absolutely no

idea what the con personal consequences were. I think as soldier kind of recognized we expect that you kind of expect that, right and and uh and and but in in CIA, because you know, we didn't train for war, right, we didn't train for war, and and not not you know, not a major portion of c I A, you know,

got the Afghan experience. So there were officers rogered up to leave family, single moms, single parents, single officers, married officers, huge families, small families, you know, elder care issues, you know, all of the obligations of life. And these remarkable officers were willing to set that aside, to undertake a task and put themselves into an environment that they had absolutely

no conscious appreciation for it. And it was such a dynamic and unpredictable environment that you could think that this neighborhood of Bank Dad was actually pretty safe, and then you find out that ussed wrong, you know, because it changed literally last minute. And so I sit and just hold in the highest regard. I obviously hold my military colleagues in extraordinary high regard, and that goes without saying.

But you know our CI officers, and what's interesting, I mean, you think you had an EFTRA brigade size investment in Okay, and I had a SUB I had like the twelfth largest air force in the world. I had everything from you know, shall we say traditional CIA authorities. And what else say euphemistically is non traditional military authorities always say aggressive authorities, which we used in times when our military colleagues, by policy, were precluded from exercising, you know, their own

aggressive authorities, shall we say. And you know that was a large number of officers that were there that you know, that adapted and they learned, and they worked together, and they were sharing the mission with their own colleagues, and they were sharing the mission with their military conart and they were committed each other's success. And I know I sound like I'm a Polyannish guy and I'm over exaggerating. And for those that haven't had that EXPERI I understand

why you'd probably think I'm being a little traumatic. But I can't begin to tell you that I don't think I'm exaggerating very much. If I am, it's not by intent, but it's just I don't know.

were there at a future day. But you did eventually become the deputy director of the d i A. The d A was very active, but also the DEA doesn't get much credit for anything at all, really, but they were very active there in Baghdad, particularly in those early years and everything, being at the station and being being the big dog of the intelligence world, as you know, as the CIA is. What did you have an impression, awareness, and knowledge opinions of the D I A presence there, Uh, the d.

CIA workforce. Second was, you know I had found in my formative experience with the power Majesty of the d D was in Bosnia, where I had a major defense human Defense case officer operator presence there, all of whom had gone through the formative same formative experience operational certification experience that we CIA officers went through in the same location actually with a shared gagery of trainers and educators, and in the same environment against the same task so

we were virtually identical life forms and so we're now serving together. So I had an extraordinary positive. Plus, there was significant defense human separate presence there. There was a strategic base that they had to and then there was this thing I think called Eskimo Base that was there that was doing their thing, and the inmacy and cooperation

was absolutely important. And I think any of those base chiefs would tell you that CIA was a really good partner because we really respected their capabilities and what we did. I carried that and so yes, there was a DIA presence in the rector was right across the street at FOB Union three, if I recall correctly, and I would go all there all the time as a CIA station chief of that with a major amount of presence, a massive diversity of responsibilities. Investing my time was an expression

of what I thought was valuable, right right. I went over to that little detachment almost every day. Wow, and I had developed as close a partnership and interestingly enough, that detachment was not just what you and I now call Defense Glandestine Service defense human that they were all. They were actually uh you know, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, you know agents that were in there. There were agents

from other federal law enforcement who themselves to source operations. Right, maybe they don't use the same trade craft in the same kind of environment, but they were also out there, you know, putting themselves at risk to provide intelligence. And of course, being the quote the d n I REP, you know, the Defense the Director of National Inteligence Rep, the senior intelligence officer in Iraq, MY job was to

integrate and coordinate. So yeah, I had an obligation to make sure I gathered all the intel guys, you know, under my warm embrace. But the reality is I did that, whether I was required to do that or not, because I really thought that those those women and men over there, we're bringing some significant value to what we're trying to accomplish in our our compound. So yeah, DIA was there in space, and you're right, d I A doesn't the credit.

It's the part of that Stuart's positioning in the political battle space. But the IC in Washington, d C. Part of that's due because of just the necessary obligations of secreceed and part of that's because they just don't have

the prominent infrastructure for collection. I think everybody's probably heard of military ad tche so every one of them works for the director of di A. They're all dias, Okay, So the defense at say, service works for the director of d You know, some people know that, some people don't. But everybody's heard of military ada chet. Probably very few

people have heard of the defense Clint. Fewer still because they toil away and anonymity to a degree which is imposed on them, but it's a very necessary part so they can be effective. So yeah, they don't get the credit they deserve. And there are remarkable officers and de I as an inherently an all source analytic agency, and

that's what the culture India is. It's designed to support the analytic machine and the purity of the analytic processes within d i A. So it it does have a very analytic you can smell, you know, it's very analytic smell in the enter of the building, joking, but you can smell it when you have the building.

CIA structures as some of us are. You know in the director and first thing is you know in the Director of Operations, I would guess probably you know less than a quarter operators get to be a CS one time, and with me having the privilege and the honor to be a four times extraordinary, it says more about the

agency's risk taking than it does about my competency. But I think that the Deputy Director of Operation time guy named Mike Silik, who was a consultant for the for the Americans and wrote a book about the Russian intel operations in the United States. Great guy, former marine is the anything I could say bad about him? Uh via Harvard Graduate Vietnamese linguist if you can believe that marine interesting, Mike is an amazing.

you know it was at twenty and ten. You know, I'm now from nineteen eighty seven to two thousand and ten at that much time in the agency, and I'm still you know, I wasn't acting like it, but I certainly believed it. You know, I still wasn't worthy of this kind of opportunity. I really didn't think I was worthy.

And maybe there are others that would I agree with that as well, But you know, that was a wonderful opportunity to kind of go back and see how you know, the big the big training machine worked and you know, to be an advocate, to be a champion, to be able to take credit for you know, the training cadret of both former officers as well as current officers, military accomplished military officers, and I should say other non military, NONKAY members of the leadership and training cadret as well,

who themselves were graduates of that program. So it was a wonderful opportunity for me to really reconnect with the basics of espionage and and really realize, hey, how much I failed to learn and how much I had learned but forgotten. Yeah, and so for me, it really as I think anybody who was an instructor you know at that location, we'll tell you they came out of that as a much better operator than they did going into that assignment.

And yes, there are adaptations there. There are always improvements to the course as you would expect, you know, interjection of modern technology, because that was critical and important for officers to understand the benefit. It's the risk of technology. And what you found is down in those in those locations, you found you know, the record of science and technology, presence and training and graduate level, you know, courses. You

found the rector of analysis. So all of a sudden you find in that environment, in close geographic proximity, all of a sudden you find the other tribes that are there. And then after I left that location and became the Grand Puba, I was the you know, the Emperor Palpatine

of the entire training machine. Uh. You know, we tried, we built a greater integration from a visionary standpoint, you know, even more integrate and better integrate and develop better appreciation for the different life forms within the doos, some of which you mentioned, Uh, you know, targeters, cmos, you know support officers all of that, and I only you know, kind of kicked that rock down the hill. I fought

the visionary battle. But it was you know, guys like uh, you know, Darryl Blocker, who's who's an over officer, Mike Lacombe who was a multiple COS in Iraq, who had been my d c O S when I was there. There were guys like like Lacombe who really really made the transformation of that entire you know, operational training enterprise to be a modern one, to reflect the demands of the environment in which modern CI officers were finding themselves. And so, you know, my role was minor, and it

was and it was interesting. If I could go back to something I said is you know what I did was created a vision where you come in entry on duty and you go to graduated leadership and operational development process until you ended up as a as a proto wretched pensioner at the end of the ride. And there were some CIA officers who are quite you know, you know, impervious to and insoluble and new ideas. Fortunately minority. You know, I had conversations like this, which is where that's not

going to work. And I go why not. And they go, well, because it's not. It's just not gonna work. We don't have time, we don't need any of that, and it's not gonna And I said, what's the fundamental objection? And they would go, well, well, let me not object let me just say this. Let me go. You're a military guy, right, isn't that where you can I go, yes, sir, And

I go, yeah, that's a military thing. That whole thing, that whole thing from basic course to advanced course, to leaven Worth to the work College, you know, all of that stuff. It's a military thing that's not us. So going back to my conversation in nineteen ninety two on you know, this non existent process of military leadership versus CIA leadership, now I'm facing that, you know, you know, as a very senior officer in the Director of Operations, I thought it was very ironic. The good news is

that their vision didn't take the day. It was guys like Blocker and Mike Lacom and others who followed them that really made it happen and created a fully integrated program that you know, is still under improvement every day that that thing exists.

I don't want to get political here. But the it really is because of the strength of the agency workforce, you know, the commitment to not only American core values, but also the agency ethos. You know of being right when nobody's looking at you, whether you are being right, you know you're doing the right thing when nobody's looking thing. And so you kind of you know that stuff's going to happen. You can't plan for it. You just plan for an existence of some negative thing, and you know,

you just get beyond it. You got to get through all that. And because the agency officers, you know, the women and men regardless of the tribe you know, and in the agency are just so remarkably resilient. You know, there are remarkable people throughout federal service who are who are remarkable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the only remarkable stuff that exists in federal service is

in CIA. You know, the personal side of me wants to say that, professional side say that, but the reality is it's the strength of the and the caliber and the quality of the people and the leaders in CIA that make it so resilient and we get through that stuff, whether it's Durham investigating guys like me and others, whether it's you know, all the things that you mentioned, whether it's rd I, whether it's you know, traitorous behavior by

by respected colleagues. You know, Jim Nicholson was a branch chief in CTC when I was there, you know, and he of course was recruited by the KGB. And you know, it's just to answer your question, it's the the strength of the agency's officers and the strength of the culture and in the commitment to do what's right. You know, we get beyond that. We just say, Okay, this happened, let's fix the agency and let's move forward.

to educate and help to spell mythology. And he wrote misperception. And that's why I'm telling you a lot of my very traditional minded CIA colics, probably a number of current officers who may be part of your listeners watch it on YouTube, might sit and go, you know, I can't believe that guy's out there just blabbering away, just yack

and yack and yac and about stuff. And I think I have because I can't, because I'm undercover and because that my career represents a decent part of the agency, you know, and so I can do my part and taking advantage of your kind invitation and and be able to speak and be part of this incredibly respected enterprise known as Teamhouse podcast. Uh, and so being able to you know, be a little more transparent with the American people.

Well he wrote what you said, Dave. You know, and and current officers can't do, you know, because they because there's stuffs too secret. But former officers like me can give our opinions and our perceptions and and and to talk about you know, the you know, in very general terms,

you know, the magic that makes CIA so remarkable. And in the end, as I've said multiple times at nauseum, look, the magic is because of the magicians and CIA, you know, and all of those women and men, all those officers, you know, our magicians in every.

that were doing it. They didn't have a system. And I'm not denigrating, you know, the earlier generations of those suffering officers that served in the PRB, but the reality is nobody had ever put any serious systemic, any time and attention into creating a system that allowed the agency to live up its side of that that obligation, and then what would happen inexorably when the agency didn't. They should have guys and galas who would just say, you know,

screw up. I'm not a publisher anyway, what are they going to do? I'm out of the agency. They got to fire me. I don't have a clearance. You know, what can they do? I don't I don't work for the agency. I'm not a green badger. You know what leverage did they have with me? You know, some federal prosecutor are going to prosecute me for publishing the you know, a document and the stife for brief. You know that

they didn't clear with the PRB. You know, no, they the agency has very little options when it comes to those of us on the outside. It don't live up to our obligation. But the agency had to do its part to keep us on task because it had to create a realistic response. The response was pathetic in the

early days, horrible pathetic. Now it is very crisp. The other thing that the agency made a dramatic change is in the early days of the previous presidential administration, if an officer was to say something that was politically unappealing to the White House, the agency would try to wrap that up in terms of redacting that as a contingent contingency for approval of your document. In the early days, the agency's PRB was known as the Pre Publication Review Board.

Now it's known as the PCR, the pre Publication Classification Review Board, because its mandate is to review for classified information, not for inconvenient facts and truths and opinions that a certain White House administration you know, found to be unappealing and was pressuring in the agency, you know, to stifle those of us that were exercising our First Amendment rights. But again back to my point about how resilient the agency is now transformative it can be. It immediately responded

when that criticism was loving boom, got it right. You send something to the PRB. In some cases they will turn it around within hours. Wow, they've got they've got a chrisp machine. Now. Now, if you're writing a book, you know, and and it is a turgent tone, of immense number of pages and consists of every boring fact about your agency existence from all the e pas except

for performance awards. You've got all the meetings, you attended everything at that and you don't know And so yeah, they've got to shot that out to people that actually understand where the secrets reside and who are the custodians of secret. So there is a little latency in there

that is very very reasonable and very realistic. But if you're writing an article for political magazine or for the Cipher Brief, which I think is a great outlet too, and if you guys published documents as part of your podcast, which I wouldn't recommend you to do, I might stick with your business file. You know, you find that the PREB was very very responsive. Now they've made some dramatic improvements.

I suppose I'm making stuff up. I'm writing a book about my agency experience, and I talk about you know, the agency's you know, development of cold fusion reactors that could power to meet the entire global energy needs, you know, and and and the pr B Sitstan says, all right, it's could that be compartment? Could that be real? This guy?

You know, I'm making it up? You know. So you know, when you when you read fiction and very closely mirror the real world, and even in the most naive of cases where you make up some bit of trade crafter, you make up some technical widget, you know, wizard and only Q could love. Uh you may you may not even know that there is such a very similar to that. Yeah, all of a sudden, there's some SAP some places, right, you know, and and then all.

not that's not what they're doing. And that's not what a c O D review represents of your book.

people who were. If they were to sit there, if they call out somebody who wasn't, but then they don't call out somebody who says they were, then what does that tell you?

what you're all about. That's what you guys provide this remarkable platform for dudes like me, you know, and others have done far more. Doug to be able to explain.

myopic view. Uh. One the paramilit to PMO Paramilitary Operations officers, which are you know, certified to be case officers to handle to develop and handle spies, recruit spies and handle them, and to also be able to continue to maintain their military skills, because everyone of them had a military background, whether it's you know, ten years or whether it was a full career, whether you were a traditional you know, military officer, or whether you were coming from a special

mission unit. You know, paramilitary officers bring a unique capability to the agency. You combine that with the extraordinary authorities, your operational authorities and financial authorities of the agent, and you got a tool, a foreign policy tool is second to none for the President of the United States. So those women are currently serving them the Special Activity Center, who are not all of them are p and moos. Many of them are just paramilitary experts, if I could

use that term. I don't know what the term of art is.

quite perishable. So it is a very tough tough job to maintain that because you know, the two years you're the deputy chief of station and in some station someplace, you know, that's two years somebody else's carrying your rucksack and sac. I have always been well by every paramilitary officer, whether they're pm specialists or whether they're pmos, I have always well or they are an extraordinary enabler, they are an extraordinary capability. I have found them to be constant

professionals in every way. Uh. Yeah. Sometimes they wear ocalice inside an embassy and we don't fire at the pants on, but we just if somebody comments on that, we just tell them they're from this fifth Special Forces Group. I don't know any better.

to criticize something I never experienced. But the agency is physically restructured to meet the modern demands on the senior agency leadership and on the intelligence requirements of its customer base. The agency has created another director, the Director to Digital Innovation. That's to reflect, you know, the impact of digital based technology in terms of capabilities and threats. So you have the Director of Digital Innovation, which in and of itself

has evolved since its birth in some years ago. So that's all changing, and so you know, and the Director to Support has mutated in a positive way over time, and the Director of Analysis is always so well plugged into the customer community and the collect and community kind of they're the connective tissue in the bridge. And they have evolved in restructure and their training program has kept

pace with that with modern demands. So the agency of the Central Intelligence Agency that I served in is not the Central Intelligence Agency today. If I went back, and I don't. I've been back four times, one time to do a personal meeting with Gina Asport, whom I know and admire very well, and it was at the end of her ride. The other was for promotion and in a medal ceremony. And so it is an agency that

in some respects I wouldn't recognize. But the commitment of patriotism, the capability, competency, the energy, the passion to patriotism, you know, it's the same. But the agency is totally different. And that's the way it needs to be. It needs to be a different agency. And three years from now, the kids that are serving in the agency today, I shouldn't use the word kid, but now everybody's a kid. You guys are kids. They uh, you know, it's it won't

be the agency that they recognize her. The elements that are recognize. The core values that the agency are immutable and haven't changed, right, And that's that's the most important thing.