Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about
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Operations Coberts, Aspiona, the Team House with your Hopes, Jack Murphy and
David Park. Everybody. Welcome to episode two hundred and seventy seven of The
Teamhouse. I'm Dave Park. We're with Jack Murphy and our guest again tonight,
Jack Divine. If you haven't seen Jack's first episode, please check out
two sixty uh Cia Legend and we really appreciate you joining us again tonight.
Well, I'm glad to be back. I'm a little more tense this time
because last time I got some feedback right away. Say, you were doing
well at the beginning, but when you reached for the brass knuckles, it
brought back then from two CIA guys. And I'm thinking, wait a minute,
was that my management? Fine, don't know, but I'm sitting here
and I'm my left hand wants to grab it, but I was gonna.
I'm folded by hinds, so I don't touch it. So we're getting a
little uh, we're getting a little tea from the past. Well, maybe
maybe your next book. Also, Jack has written a Good Hunting and The
Spymaster's Prism. Check them both out. But maybe your next book should be
interviewing people who worked for you and getting that feedback on the uh. We
did interview for the first book, Good Hunting, about eighty people. Yeah,
because I had my I asked a couple of people in my staff because
I think it's awkward for you to call right right, and one of the
things you worry about when you're you're got a fan of a large unit,
and that is at least I think it's common among CEOs. Was I strong
enough? Right? So they came back and said Jack don't worry about that
one, so I don't know what they meant. But the second one I'm
not going to go into because it was sort of deprecating. Uh guys,
well, I'm gonna have that one of your bourbons later before before we jump
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I might try one of those later, although the office refused. Well,
my assistant refuses to serve me caffeinated coffee. She thinks I get too hypers.
Yeah, she won't take my calls after she's heard of. So you
know her name is Stephanie by I better do a shout out there. I'm
in trouble taking her name in vain. Stephanie, You're the best. I
didn't say that, we added that. We added Yeah, she's better than
better than that. So, you know, the last time you were on
we covered I don't know, maybe a third of the book Good Hunting.
It's kind of a chronological story of your life or time in the agency.
There were a lot of things we didn't get to. Some of we want
to touch on tonight, but some we also want to ask, you know,
just your opinion on different aspects of espionage, different takes on what's going
on in the world today. And I think the first take that Jack and
I are most interested in, because we're both kind of movie buffs, is
like your take on the movie industry. Which movies get it right, what
movies get it wrong? About the CIA? Yeah, things like that.
Well, growing up in the agency, you know, I almost refused to
watch a James Bond movie. I thought it trivialized it right, and it's
silly right. Also, Metron Connery, I'll tell you about that. We
had dinner once, but and then one day, what are you doing?
James Bond is dashy right the world of things. He goes out and solves
all their problems. The queen loves them, and you're going around. Now.
I'm not like that. I'm really kind of a dull bureau right way
a minute. So that's the plus side. There is a downside because there's
an impression in some policy circles that yes, see how you can do everything,
and therefore the you have to approach that cover action business we talked about
with some restraint. But there's lessons in a lot of movies. The James
Bourne I enjoy them immensely. The first one I looked at. This is
really a lot of fun. Right, they have the technology, but it
wasn't integrated like the movies. Right, But we go the James Bourne Reborn.
It was so Hollywood has a tendency sometimes to think out more creatively about
the future. So I think that was another and you stop me where you're
one. But one of the things, you know, trying during the Afghan
War to get a media campaign against the Russians and all of this, you
know you'd have to go around and get fifty people with signs. Right today
with social media, I mean, it's a totally different game, right.
But the most powerful impact was I think was Rainbow three with Slice alone,
where he's hanging out of the single handedly defeating the Russian army rear wide movie
and it changed the view will not changed. It a tremendous impact. Yeah,
so you know, I kid about it, and then you get into
some serious movies which John mccara's books so there because he was in the business,
he gets the texture of the betrayal and the darker side and he does
Tinker Tailor is one of my favorite because it's really the philby Kim Philby story,
one of the great not from our perspective, but one of the the
great traders of the British Service and the interaction and it is really quite quite
realistic. So I've come around on it. In fact, I'm going to
do a series on them because I'm interested in because a lot of life lessons
have come out of it and what's behind you try. I have to ask
then, Jack, because you have direct involvement, what did you think of
Charlie Wilson's war with Tom Hanks? Is there assignments? Well, I guess
I didn't discuss it. But Charlie was a very interesting guy to travel with.
He was an important face of the program, great ambassador if you will,
of it, but he didn't have hands on in the running of the
program. He didn't decide what weapons where they went, how they went the
training. But he was a great ally. So he invited me to dinner
with his wife after he retired from Congress, and he wanted to go to
Spark Steakhouse and well Spark Steakhouses where Paul Costiano the mafia dom was killed on
the stuff. He didn't want to go to Smith and Lensky's. He wanted
something with Disaz that was Charlie. But at the dinner he reached across and
put his hand on me, and you know something's coming, right, he
said, Jack, you know you didn't like the book. You're going to
hate the movie. And the reason is I you could laugh about it because
it was Charlie. When you can get a ward named after you and you
learned the real the key of this program, that's quite an accomplishment. And
he knew that, and he was due credit for sure. But it wasn't
his war. The war was really made up of hundreds of people. The
mule skinner that made, you know, made the saddles for the mules,
the trainers of the Stinger missile, the people that rounded the mules and drove
them across China, the people that helped build the weapons. Trained. So
when Milt Beerden, who was the chief in Islamabad, when it came to
an end, sent out a cable saying, we want and I think it's
better for history. It's a lousy movie, but it's better for history to
realize it takes organization, planning, plumbing, a lot of logistics. It's
Ulysses as Grant building an army, and it should never be Ulysses as Grant's
war. But Charlie is I almost give him a pass. But I don't
want anyone to think that you get a congressman, a couple of CIA guys
and you whip together a war. So that's a part where and I understand
why Hollywood went down that way. But Charlie, for example, one of
the things that he had in his office was a Stinger missile hanging over the
door. Charlie was opposed to putting this Stinger in so to Afghanistan because I
think he was told by those in power, so to speak, going to
cause World War three, and he was a company guy and said, we
don't need the Stinger, and the people the agency said they did as well.
And so that was a critical aspect of the war. And I think
Charlie wasn't on board. He quickly once it was used, couldn't be more
supportive. Sure, so Charlie had a role for sure, but it wasn't
his war. And yeah, I have to ask to before we move on
to the next thing. But tell us about this dinner with Sean Connery.
How did that come about? And what was that? Like? You know,
James Bond meeting a real spot. I was aloud to give a talk.
A friend of mine has property in the Bahamas and Sean Connery lives there,
so he was one of the stars of the club, right, So
he was in the audience, knew, we knew he was going to be
there, and the host invited me and Sean Connery said beside me through dinner.
So the first time I came across showing Connery, I was sitting in
a restaurant in London. I happened to be in London at that time,
and Pat was with me, my wife, and the head of the British
Service was there with his wife, and Sean Connery came in. You have
to see somebody like that come into a restaurant. The whole place flutters right.
Everybody's gigging, including our wives. Now I didn't do it. The
brit did it. I'm standing by that story to this thing. He said,
why are you so enthused? We're the real thing. I would never
say that, right. They start giggling and laughing and turned and said,
there's the real thing. So when I went down to the Bahamas, I
thought it was a great story. I told that story. He didn't laugh,
but afterwards he was really a delightful. But what's funny is in the
movies he's a Brit through and through and the Queen's servant. Right. He's
a Scotsman. He's opposed to monarchy. He was part of the Scottish independence.
I raised it. That's what I learned what the real story was,
because he was pushing back on us about Scotland. Oh okay, Sean,
okay. But it was a delightful, delightful actor. And he was self
contained by that. I mean he saw himself as another person and there was
no pretensions about him, and it was really a treat to be with.
So I don't mind being identified with Sean Connery. Was he at all?
You know? Curious about the CIA, about your time, the CIA,
about how you know the Sean Connor or the James Bond story matched with what
you know. No one ever asked me that, and I didn't go on
to me at the time. We didn't talk about We talked about his movies,
which one did you like best? And not? Because he was currently
Go Anywhere? And I'm now hesitating thinking why not? And I think because
maybe he wasn't interested in actually the Lea Coree George Smiley part, although we
could have had in retrospect, because I was more interested in hearing from him
than him for me, just because well I don't know why, because he's
a star and I'm Jack divine. So it would have been an interesting,
interesting discussion because I was involved a lot of COVID action, which runs up
against the type of activities Bond was involved in, as opposed to the espionage
of George Smiling age I was involved in as well. So I wish we
had a second dinner because that would have been really interesting. But I was
sort of excited, sure, not like on the people in the restaurant.
I think he played that no offense to any other I thought he was he
was for me. The James Bond, Yeah, if you wanted to look
I mean it just very classy, natural class like carry grant. They just
had that ability to carry themselves in a way that you know, you got
respect from it. I'm curious, you know, it's just kind of hypothetical
on my end, but I'm curious if the reason that you were you were
curious about him and he wasn't that curious about you, is the reason he
was a movie star and you were an intelligence officer. Yeah, so you
like to analyze that. Yeah, sometimes, but but you know, like
like being curious about other people obviously helps you in your line of work now,
I think, But I want to be clearer, it wasn't because of
an ego issue. Sure he would have gone wherever we wanted to go,
and uh and I would have as well. It was actually a bit like
the conversation we're having today. I pretended he wasn't showing Connery, and I
pretended I was object the line, right, So it was. But the
reason I didn't think about it because I didn't think about it in that context.
There's a kind of a fun moment un moment. It wasn't a substance
of Yeah, but it's it's an interesting I think I agree with your analysis
that in that regard. Yeah, do you feel as though because you know,
the CIA is often portrayed as the sort of big bad in a lot
of movies. You know this this organization or people within an organization behind the
scenes pulling strings or conducting these off the book ops. Do you feel as
though that hurts the CIA at all? No, I think it adds to
the mystique. I mean, be honest with you. I mean there's by
power. Now you can convert that into real power. And by that,
I mean that image is very helpful abroad. You're representing you, you're working
for the CIA. They're assuming way way too much. Right, you got
back foots over fences. Yeah, you have hit teams in every European city.
When I when you mix it up what I would call the day to
day people to make this country run. If you pull them aside, they
say, you know, go do more. In other words, they have
no idea that like fifteen lawyers holding me back. Right, But there was
I think in America, I understand what you're saying, and we've gone there's
a new period. Now I'm going to leave. I'm leaving the last fifteen
years aside for a moment but I think there was great support for the agency
despite the critiques. And you know, frankly, I told you the beginning.
I joined CIA because there was a scandalous book and I read it and
had the opposite reaction. And I think American assumed they know CIA is helping
defend this gun. They really get it, and they know that tough things
have to be done, and it has to be done, and so they're
now does the intelligentsia sign up to it? And it's a good mix.
So I don't think it's it's tarnished it. I think in the recent years,
and I don't want to get into the politics of it, we can
moorward like much of TV could be boring, and that is the politicization of
intelligence has sorted to turn people, Okay, I'm a Democrat or I'm a
Republican, in therefore I'm with or not the CIA. The CIA must remain
independent. It has to be nonpartisan. It can't function because it's only job
is to look at things concretely. So I think it's I think we've had
some rough times lately and so you may there may be some tarnishing of it,
But I still think if I don't want to pick on Kansas. You
go out to Kansas and sit down the bar and say what do you think
of Cia? Hey, I'd like to join. Yeah, I'm going to
tell you a story for a second about this. So a nine to eleven
game. I have a great doctor, a great doctor, best degrees,
head of the department. And I didn't I Halrady knew him at that time.
And he had looked at in New York Orth the Repeaty Garret. He
was looking at my knee and Pat said, see the fellow there, I
think that's your doctor. Well I didn't seem Pat's always on the lookout for
to protect me and and none, and behold it was my doctor. And
he came over and it said, Jack, I think you can use me.
I said, what do you mean could use it? I think I
could be a sniper. Now this is his mother must have spent every penny
she had to make him not a doctor, a big time doctor. And
at age fifty he's going to get up in a tree. Right. I
mean it's like that's a different part of America. Yeah, okay, yeah,
And in nine to eleven brought a lot of that out. Yeah,
And so it's there and so uh and I'm kind of proud of me.
Fortunately, I said to him, Look, I think the window of opportunity.
I'm trying to help his mother the best syd Right. I don't want
to call me up and said what did you do? So, but I
thought the sentiment was interesting. I mean that the god and country, uh,
our country was attacked. No ambiguity about that, right, count me
in. And a lot of people were drawn to the agency. I think
they probably you'd spike in talent at that time. Yeah, you want to
jump into the yeah, absolutely. Well. One other question, just while
we're on Hollywood is when we had Johnna Barker on the Chief of Disguise,
like we talked of I'm sorry, Jonah Mendez, I'm so sorry, Yes,
Jonah Mendez, the Chief of Disguise. You know, she talked about
the agency and how they worked with Hollywood at times, you know, for
special effects, you know, for things like that. But you know you
had mentioned that like Iran, like there there have been times when the agency
in Hollywood have had a relationship, some sort of relationship. I think that's
a matter of right. I think the classic example, I'm not sure how
deep it is defer the horror on that because she was in charge of that
program. I'm only thinking of disguise. I mean, you can't do a
lot with me now. Jane said, well, we'll do something with you.
But I remember one of my colleagues was trying out the mustache. He
didn't go to her, right, and he actually went out and had soup
and it was the steam it was sliding off. But it was a training
program, right. So but what happened in the Iran contraver is they wanted
to sneak people out of the country, right, and there's a lot you
can do. And so the issue was they went to Hollywood, who were
masters today. Look at Hollywood and it's ability to change someone who looks like
they're fourteen years old and they show you the end of the movie at eighty
five and they're able to transform them to the magic of it. They weren't
as far as they are far advanced today as they are eighty five or six.
So I think they went out to Hollywood. And again some would say,
well, Hollywood actors don't like CIA. They couldn't have been more help.
My experience with actors, Sean Connery is the only it's not like I
hang out with Hollywood people, but you just run into them, and they
also are very supportive. They might be opposed to policies, but as if
we can help, they did everything they could to make it. In fact,
much of American business and CI is very fortunate that it's a good ticket.
You go out and say, can you help me, you know,
tell me this about your trip to China, or you know, can you
help me with the device, or can you give me the sky's capabilities?
And you know, the agency, if it was on its own, it
didn't have that support, it'd be a much tougher hoe. At the beginning
of the CI, for the first thirty years they did everything inside. It'd
be impossible. Technology we made our own devices and down in the basement.
World has moved so quickly that you need external help, and not just Hollywood's
Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh, it's fascinating. I mean, you
know, even talk about like DS and T it's fascinating how you know they
at one point in time, we're creating everything and now like technology moves so
fast that you need you need uh yeah, privasiness, you need the business.
Yeah. So in terms of the book Good Hunting, which uh,
you know is is your your autobiography. Basically, at least your time in
the agency. We got up to like, like I said, a third
the way through, and I kind of wanted to like pick up on some
of the pieces that we didn't have an opportunity to get to. You went
you. You eventually became head of counter Narcotics. Can you tell us about
that time and the war the agencies were on drugs, America's War on drugs.
Basically I was in Rome at the time and I've been there two years.
I wanted to stay three. But the head of the Counter Narcotics Unit
it was set up when it was set up as well, named Howard Hart,
and they just started to develop these centers and not to get too bureaucratic
with the audience, the agency was many stovefights, right, but because of
terrorism and narcotics that were international, so you had to build organizations that had
analysts, operators, different skills. You do the same thing on task worce
like Afghanistan, but when you get these international problems, you make them bigger.
So it was a very exciting thing. And when had happened at that
point, the Cold War had come to an end. I mean it was
virtually at the end. It was nineteen when I took over, nineteen ninety,
ninety one, ninety two overs ninety so at that point it was Judge
Webster, the director's number one tasks. The building. The cold door was
over. Yeah, eighty nine. The wall came down. The wall came
down, but gerbertrov was still in power. So my mind, it came
to an end in ninety not the split hairs, but when it fell in
in August of ninety one. So the well, I don't know, yeah,
yeah. And the war on drugs and how did they there's a number
three target. I wanted to say that, and Nancy Reggie and said no,
and you know, everyone said, well that was too simple, but
it was a slogan. And what had happened there's the drugs had moved into
suburban and it was a nationwide problem. So there's a long story if you
want to ask a lot of other aspects of it. But it became a
target and when I was in Rome, they asked me to come back and
take it over because Howard Hart I said to Rome, said I think you
should go, and I said, okay. Or if they wanted to let
me know what's the CIA's roleing counter drugs, because obviously we have the Drug
Enforcement Agency and all of these other bureaucracies that deal with this particular issue,
whereas the agency has sort of a different mandate. Right. Well, if
you go back to the beginning, the CIA and the FBI did not want
to do drugs. Both had the same reason that when you get in close,
there's a possibility that you'll get content, your officers will become suborn,
right, so there's a risk in it. And it's for the CIA,
it's criminal activity as opposed to political military. So it was not an easy
mix. So because they were so slow at it, they created a new
agency, THEA, and they drafted people from FBI and CIA, and you
know that's rather drastic, but the budgets hadn't caught up. But once the
budgets, because it became so important, we're flowing all of a sudden,
the army, the Navy decided we'd chase with submarines speed boat with fifty pounds
of marijuana on it. So the every agency then got involved in it.
And then I think the CIA for its part, the CIA for its part
thought well, we'll bring the intelligence business into it. And the reason I
can't say I was honestly excited about the idea for the same reason that it
doesn't feel like espionage. It doesn't feel like covert action. But it was
cover action, big time cover action. But I couldn't see that. I
didn't see the magic of the intelligence revolution that was in it. What does
that all mean? When I came to I saw all this energy of mixing
analysts and operators, people from other Not only did I have both a mixture
of people from CIA, I had a community of twenty or thirty people from
other agencies who were sitting there right with me, doing a community. And
then, as you said, there were seventeen agencies, but nobody wanted in
the director of operations PCs in those states. They didn't want computers, right,
And because the risk, right, the security risk, the people that
needed the most resisted, right. So they resissisted the secure phones because you
know, internationally, who would keep a record of the bad things you're doing.
But what I found is if you're doing a target narcotics and having the
ability to linkage analogy analysis through computers, counting all the integrating information, bringing
that computer working for instead of index cards. We began to develop a really
good understanding of all the different narcotic traffickers and they could say on the phone,
I'm bringing three oranges. You know it's three something, but you're mixing
up with the travel. It became a powerful tool and it was infancy.
And then the second thing was a strategy. There were two other aspects of
cut me off whenever you're there are two other strategic aspects. Two other aspects
of this. One is the strategic one that goes to the seventeen. So
I like to approach things strategically, and I wanted to do it on this
one. They have an executive dining room and that was for people that were
flag rank officers, and you could go there and have lunch, and it
was subsidized, so you could have a restaurant type lunch and you'd be at
at very low price. And you're wondering why I'm getting into that. I
invited seventeen different people to come eat lunch, and I couldn't afford it with
my family. I really couldn't because I had five kids at the time,
and so I'm not like, it's not like a businessman inviting area, but
it was an opportunity to bring them out, and one by one I tried
to get them to buy into a single strategy, which was instead going after
one country, we would go up and down the chain. And it became
known as sort of the linear approach to it. And Judge Bonder, who
I got along very well with Deea, brought on to it. There would
not have been a program without him. But he also wanted the kingpins,
and so we brought the two together. One was how we were going to
attack it and go after the kingpins, Pablo Escobar, the Calie cartel.
The other thing, which is revolutionary. And again this may be inside baseball,
but in the intelligence world up until that time, you were minimalist.
You gave liaison your foreign counterparts the least you needed to give them to keep
them happy. And countries, powerful countries today would have to come to say
we need actuators. You probably don't know what it is, but it's a
way the tap phones. The old days, right, they couldn't buy it
anywhere. Today they can get satellites, right, and they can buy these
information. So there was a reluctance to give. You cannot do counter tourism.
You can't do counter narcotics, you can't do proliferation without foreigners. There
were many people in CIA for a generations felt let's do it on our own.
We'll have the aison just to keep everybody happy, but we'll do it
our own. We can't, and then you shouldn't. So it became we're
going to give counter narcotics people tools to do it. We're going to give
them training. Instead of minimalists, we're going to bring them as much as
we can. So in the counter narcotics program, there was an officer who
came up with the idea of calling them scening. They would develop units in
each country. Once you run the police force, it's very likely someone would
come up and say, you either look the other way or you're not going
to be around, and we'll give you two hundred dollars a week not to
do that, right, So you're corrupted. So they would pull units out
of the academy, give them computer training, signals training, make them really
quality intelligence collectors, integrators, and tie it into our capabilities. That was
revolutionary, and the same thing was happening and terrorism. Terrorism probably actually started
earlier in this. So when I was sitting there. I was looking at
as a narcotics problem, but I was also looking at a revolution in the
intelligence business. How it was going to look everywhere, you know, ten
years out the big problem again stop. But on the counter narcotics program.
I remember the deputy director's name was. His name is Richard Kerr, and
we were talking one day and he said, Jack, you have to remember
the counter narctics counter narcotics program is a criminal program. It's never going to
go away. You just take a stick and you beat it and you try
and keep it off the front steps, but it's coming back. And I
think that's what you have to realize. And it's frustrating. So Pablo Escobar
in the book, some of the people to help do the calling for me
with people in the agency called the chief who went down the was going down
to Columbia and they interviewed him about me, and he said, well,
what I know is when I was walking out the door, he said,
you know, any last advice and I said, get Pablo Esco war So
uh so he did. I mean when I say he did, it's like
Charlie Wilson right right, a big effort. And at that time people didn't
think you could yet, because they put him in jail and he would you
know, hit cocktail parties at night and went out whatever he did on the
wild out through the tunnel. But you know, those units that I'm talking
about allowed you to actually find him and he was on the phone too long
with his son and they got him. They found him and then he ran
off the roof and running across the roof and you know they found them in
That was the end of Pablo Escobar, but it was they would never been
able to do that without more sophisticated intelligence, intelligence escapeable How How what was
the release? Because the CIA is set up in like divisions right area like
area divisions or generally that's how you when you talk about the stove pipes.
How does a center that reaches across those divisions? Was there any rough times
like working with the different divisions as a center? Well, I think I
think I should go through the process. You need to, you need to
anticipate that two experiences on this and creating one. When was the Afghan task
for us and I was more junior and I was called up to talk to
case one on one and what did I need because we were going to build
a program right, And I thought, I have to get this out of
the rest of the division, the divisions. Do I want to the rest
of my life be the most hated guy because you couldn't send me. We
weren't. You weren't allowed to send a D officer D level. You had
to send a B plus or an A. You weren't allowed to do this.
So you're going into divisions where that's hard and you have to kick in
people. That's not a popular road. So I tried to pet what could
I do within this primary? What was the right number? Right? So
let's say, for Matt's sake, I said one hundred and never forget a
casey thing. They were you sure that's all you need? It was a
really good question because of the business man. He was to give me two
hundred and fifty and I'll make this thing right. But I'm trying to what
can I get without having a revolution and having people to participate, And I
think we didn't get the two fifty. We've got up quite a bit.
Fast forward. When I got to the counter narcotics program, I came in,
we developed a new plan, bigger budget things are coming and Bob Gates
was the director at the time, and I remember this. I know it
wasn't trying to be like Angleton because it was quite different. It was open
and everywhere, but he was We sat for a while because he was downtown.
But we came in. There was a room with just one light,
and Bob sat down and my deputy, who was the strategic planner in terms
of what we needed. So Bob came in, sat down, and you
have to understand the management of time at that level numbers. He's not going
to ask me about how the kids doing. You can with Bob when you're
traveling, but when he's just come from the hill and he's gone somewhere,
he's got this meeting. Every second counts. So Bob's sitting there. We
give what we think is a great brief and he said thank you. We
walked out, looked at each other. Oh God, all that work.
We got a call from the staff chief the next day. You've got the
numb you've got the numbers, so uh that dynamic. Then you have to
you have to pull together, and there is tension. I worry a bit.
I'm being a little more kind than I might want to be. We've
now gone to center rizing so many things so that when you have a crisis,
when you're pulling your everybody together the best. So I think we've now
there's there's there's a reason to have some specialists of a Russian and African and
they you really need that depth and when you start to homogenize. And then
they had this expression when I was in mid career, you have to have
an out of body experience and that meant let's say you're linguist in Spanish or
French and they would say, well, you have to go to Indonesia for
a year Indonesian. It's like, yeah, that's interesting, but you really
need me as a real linguist and expert. And I remember talking to a
fellow who had a fluent French and you just came out of the training r
So we're gonna well, they're gonna send me to Spain. Well, send
me to Spain well because they want me to be more diverse because you have
the Spanish. And it was someone's missing the point right right, that is
there's a lot to be said for being identified. I am at this type
of expert. So I think we have to be careful and I think the
terrorism. There was no choice. This is not a critique, This is
an observation. When we're fighting wars for twenty years and your intelligence is supporting
it, you need to bring targets. You need to be focusing in on
how do you attack targets, so your information is collected differently, and you
have to in that process need to make sure that you keep those identities of
area geopolitical understandings. I don't want to tell good hunting, but I'm pleased
with where I ended the book, which is terrorism is as we know with
al Qaeda, they're still around, right and I knew they would be around,
And it's like criminality, and we've had it and I faced it in
the seventies, and that it was pretty big in Europe. Nowhere near as
scary, trust me, but that there was we were looking at a phase
where we were heading south with terrorism, but was coming back was the Nation
States, and that meant we were gonna be with Russia China, and I
think there was a lot of skepticism about that. Our budgets weren't matching what
I was asking for because at that point the investment of the the funds for
Russia was Soviet Union was seventy percent, and by the time we're writing the
book, it's ten percent. But and then when I wrote spy Man for
Prison, as I said, I wrote it a year or two early.
And my best critiques from the from the agency folks that I know, Oh
it's all about China, right, So you know, my point is you've
gone from not having nation states where today it's Russia, China, Iran,
North Korea. Yes, terrorism by it's terrorism Hamas almost from a nation state
basic right, right, So we're in a new world. We're heading in
another direction, which we you know, we'll touch on later. Do you
I know that like during for instance, the Iraq War, the you know,
the station in bag Guy was very big, and a lot of agency
personnel were not happy with their with like their role in the war. That
they didn't feel like that was where the CIA should be active, that that
was a military and a military intelligence war, and and the CIA was getting
the emphasis wrong. What are your opinions on that or if you have any
I have an opinion and everything I don't. It doesn't mean wisdom or anything
else, but I've got an opinion. But at this a long time and
I feel that's why I write the books. I mean, it's not trust
me. I'm not making a living off of that. I wouldn't have been
able to take the uber over, you know, I'm a ride. So
there was There's been a through the early years, the formative years of the
agency, and this goes back to the movies, and it's the foreign intelligence
collection versus covert action. And at the beginning, the emphasis was on covert
action. They're coming out of World War two ohs, satisfighting the rush,
a lot of covert action, and then as you moved on, became the
predominance of a foreign intelligence When you would hit into the eighties late eighties,
I would say ninety percent of the officers would prefer, if not more,
just give me a fly, don't give me, don't me give me.
It all blows up, right, you know. And I actually spent more
time because I was interested in One of the reason I got into the agency
was the action part. But there is a price because you will read about
it. You better love what you're doing because you're going to read about it,
and you're going to be writing about talking that for years to come,
and hopefully it's right. But it's that one clause in the charter the CIA,
you will carry out those special activities directed by the President of the United
States. What I'm saying is there was a reaction against getting involved, and
many people there was actually a group as late as nineteen ninety were talking about
let's go out to West Virginia and we'll be just spying. And I said,
goodbye, No one's ever the Senates that were going to call the President
is not going to go. You have there talking to yourself. If you're
just going to do FI foreign intelligence, you have to have the action part.
So when you get to a rock, the targeting that support, that
intelligence support needed to be done. So what happened, I think a career
service. A new group of people had to be trained and brought into it
had to be done. Yeah, right, But the natural pull is I
wanted to develop and recruit that spy and so I understand it. But I'm
sure people didn't want to go to Vietnam, right, So it's and many
people didn't want to participate in Central America. But fortunately were enough and the
agency you know and two expressions you know can do and yes, sir,
In other words, you were never you should never ask for an assignment,
you will be told where they go. And I was well served by that.
You know, I think you know you should if you're asked to go,
and everybody I knew in the agency expected to respond to that, and
the world demanded that. So yes, that happens. Now. Would I
have put an army in a rush? I wass not where I was.
You know this from our last discussion. It was not for putting an army
in Afghanistan if you can't get it done with COVID action and the people supporting
you. I'm an advocate for cover action, I'm actually you know, but
it's more for peace and keeping our truths out there until we actually you know,
we're being hit straight on, straight on. So but once there,
then you then you're going to carry out the mission. You know. In
the last show, we talked about your involvement in COVERD Action. You've been
involved in so many and you just mentioned how if somebody is going to write
about if you know a guarantee. Yeah. You also in the book,
which we didn't talk about last time, I talked about both the Carter administration
and the Clinton administration in terms of of ethics and and you know and how
that sometimes went up against like the c i's pragmatism when it came to their
needs for covered action. Can you talk about can you talk about that a
little bit? Well, I think there as you you know, when you
were looking at the Carter years, there were swings and budgets, right,
and I remember with the slogan was it was do more with less. There
was the chief would say, all the chiefs would say, we're going to
do just as well with less. Well, okay, but you're going to
be less. Okay, But you know, if you've been around long enough,
you're soon going to be called back to duty because there's a mission that
has to be done. So I remember going through the orientation program and I'm
not going to pick up A lieutenant colonel came in. It was a detailed
from the military. It was very good briefing, but he said, listen,
you have to understand Latin Americas. I was headed to Latin America.
And he said, well, you know, only dictatorship's work. He didn't
say only, but he said, look at this, all these dictatorships,
the ability and coming to your point. It was pragmatic. So we didn't
want to necessarily want them, but they were there. They were your counterparts,
and there was containing the the the enemy. So this is right,
communists and so on. But what Jimmy Carter. Carter came in, and
there are a lot of things that I wasn't happy with Carter, just like
any other president, you have things you like and dislike. But what he
pushed was human rights. And the issue was you better not be dealing with
foreign governments intelligence business and if they're violating human rights. Right. So as
the young person, wow, that's going to be really hard to do.
So I was talking to a chief of a man I have great respect for
Ray Warren, and he said, Jack, I think if Jimmy Carter says
this, it's going to revolutionize the business and it's probably a positive thing.
Now what did he mean? It was absolutely true. If you looked ten
years later, we were still in liaison with every country in Latin America,
but that none of them are run by the dictators. Right now you've got
a mix of autocrats and so on. But it wasn't predestined. But what
we ended up doing in the first round, people weren't happy about it.
You went into the head of the servant and said, look, you know
we're not doing it with you, but you know you're doing bad things down
in the basement, and you know we're not going to be able to give
you this and help you, and and we're going to provide help and try.
You'd be surprised how positive that was. I mean, that wasn't welcomed
warmly, but everybody adjusted. I mean, America's influence is really certainly that
timeframe overwhelming in the sense that okay, if that's what it takes to have
a relationship, we'll put these away, right. So I think it was
it had a very positive impact. Most the IA people do not want to
have to be dealing you know, most of them are really almost all of
them are idealistic in want to see a better world and people treated. You
know, no one's going outter to be part of taking people down the basement.
That's not you know, that's not intelligence collection. Right, So if
that was the issue, I would say there was. There was tension,
but sometimes you have to have tension to move forward. Now there's other you
know, today we've got a lot of autocrats out there. We still at
a national level forgets see, I have to still still deal with some unsavory
countries that are using violating human rights, right, you still need to get
along with them. You keep saying to them, you know, we're uncomfortable
with this. We can't do this with you. We can do that,
but we're not going to do this. So it's part of the practicality of
doing business. And you know there's a it's a gray area. And yeah,
you know you probably don't belong in the state partner in CRA or Defense
Department because it's it's impossible to function without some of them. Try and keep
it the minimum, try to change it. Do you think the gospel?
Do you think the media? Not like I'm not talking about some kind of
conspiracy media, but just you know, the United States deals with a lot
of countries that violate human rights. But sometimes if the media like starts reporting
on one, even though their abuses may not be more than fifteen others that
we're dealing with. But if the media picks up one, does that have
a tendency to change maybe the administration or the agency stance towards that country.
Well, reluctantly, I got to give the media a pass. I mean,
they're out there trying to make it live and they're trying to collect information.
I mean, if they weren't you push the old days, everything went
under the board. It depends on the quality the journalism, the quality of
the seriousness of it. Right. But if they find it, then I
think you have to address it. Right. But I don't think anybody sits
around and says, well, over here, right. I think the point
is where stories developed. You're not going to have a choice anyway, so
you might as well make peace with the fact you're going to deal with it,
right. But if it's a legitimate issue, then you should deal with
Yeah. One of the things had an experience which was a very good lesson
for me when I was running the Latin American Division in salvad Or. The
Human Rights Commission wanted to talk to us. The first reaction to the director,
We're never going to talk to him ever, No way, no how.
But fortunate had a very smart fellow who's a friend of mine, is
a top quality analyst, and he was my deputy as an analytical person.
Attack. I think this is manageable if you go in there and tell them,
tell them the story, because we aren't doing this or that or the
other. If you show even a little ankle, you might be surprised with
you again instead of a big blasted story. And actually he was dead right
showing a little ankle there about talking to them about it, not trying to
worked out. We ended up with a favorable relationship and not relation. We
never had a relationship with him, but the commission was reasonable. And I'm
not saying you can do that everywhere, but he had sized this up,
so you can't have a knee jerk reaction against that interaction with doing right.
Yeah, no, it's I mean, it's it's fascinating to me sometimes that
even if the media knows that there's stuff going on, like what they focus
and again I'm not not putting blame on them, it's just and it's not
just the media. Sometimes it's just sort of a zeitgeist white what people think
is important at one particular moment, when you know, we may know that
the China is like doing this to the Wagers, We may know that you
know that these things are going on, but those aren't that important. Here's
my issue. And I've known a lot of journalists over the year. Yeah,
okay, they too have become highly politicized when they're writing the news.
I think they're pretty good. Yeah, I think they're very good. In
others, I think they're looking at the news and they're going after and collecting
it. Where we're having today when it rubs up against politics, then it
gets to my view, if you're reporting about an incident yea Yemen, Yemen
in Yemen, you will have a good story, all right. You're going
to have an accurate reporting story. If it ends up being an issue with
the Congress and this and that, then the reporting is substandard by my view
of what the reporting was like years ago. And then maybe it's every aspect
of life and the politicalization. But newspaper newspaper people are very close to CIA
people. They don't like to hear that, But what are they doing?
Who what when we're in hat go out there and meet somebody, stick your
neck out. I mean, look at the journalists have been killed, kidnap.
It's a it's very close to being a CIA mission. Ours is a
state national security and there's his news. There is there are friction, but
I've had good experiences with them. When you bring them in to a story
and you try and you know, don't do this, most of the national
respected will will go along with that. So my concern today is that overlay
of the politics syle that is in the national security arena. In other words,
before it wasn't it wasn't so bipolder, right, Yeah, but that's
true in Congress, It's true in every aspect of it. It was so
much easier for me to do COVID action. And in my book, I
say here are the old theoretical theological arguments for just war. I've added a
couple bipartisan. If you don't have bipartisan support, don't do it. If
you look at it today, it sounds like I'm saying don't do it.
Yeah, And that's not a good place to make you. You had an
interesting story about when you were at CENC about actually going to the KGB headquarters.
H Can you talk about that? See that was sort of a hidden
you know, to go in the eniti's den and walk out alive. It
was I backed into it because that actually, you know, I ran in
the Afghan program and it was you know, their their war, and it
was a war that ended not well for them and contributed to the downfall.
So you would think I'd be the last person after milk Beard and maybe that
would be welcome. So when I came back, when I was in the
head of the count of Narcotics, Milk Bearden, who was an islam about
as the chief and they're good friends. And he was the head of Russia
Division, you know, And he called me one day and I always know
when I get a call from millet's gotta there's a deal in it. So
mil said, look, Jack, and I'd like it if you could come
to Russia with me. And I said, why would I do that?
Why would we go there together? He said, well, we're trying to
warm things up and the only thing we can talk about is narcotics. And
I said, look, that wasn't on high on minds. Now, if
you said that you're going to meet the chairman and go in the ca then
I would start to be tempted. But then I have to think we're getting
out of that. But he said, I've got a deal for it.
I said, okay, what's He said, The poppy fields are right by
the Friendship Bridge where the Russians left Afghanistan that we were so heavily involved.
They if you come, they'll take us down to the poppy fields, but
they will stand on Friendship bridge with us the KGB. Milt Knight, I
have a picture. I mean, I think it's in the book. This
one in the book, if I'm not mistaken, where we're on the bridge
with the and Assary. Now this is where terrorism and intelligence interaction is different.
They knew I had a job. I knew they had a job.
You know, it's you don't say, well, you're a tarvist and you
have a job, and I understand it. You never understand that, right,
So they couldn't have been more hospitable. And part of the drill was
I was supposed to go see the chairman of the KGB. Now he's the
head of a powerful service. I was in the upper asheland, but there
was a layer well above me here with the director. So I really shouldn't
have be able to see the head of the KGB. But I saw the
deputy and I wasn't put off. They said, look, he's busy.
Well he didn't though he was busy organ This was in June of ninety one
that we went. I didn't realize he was being busy organized in the coup
against Yelston that came down in August ninety one. Now, I'm going to
stick with the story. Yeah, right, But I thought it was incredibly
standing in the building with the KGB Lennon's head behind you. Now what they
had is interesting. As we walked down a cart and they had black curtains
over certain photos, right, so you know what they were the photos of
their success against some CIA person that they arrested or whatever. But they pulled
him down. So that was all very interesting. And we were with the
head of the kind of intelligence group and there was a general in the colonel
and they said, look, we got one more thing we want to show
you. And we come around behind the headquarters and there's a you know,
a wall and a gate and there's a corporal. I didn't know it was
a corporal. We had a Russian speaker with him and kg B. I
walked up to the gate and he said, I'd like to bring our guests
in. No, I didn't say, like, I want to bring the
guests in, and that rush rough Russian matter. So the corporal looks at
his watch, little looks it's ten after five. It closes at five.
Now this is a corporal turning to the crime. He said, you don't
understand I'm here with the general and said, well it's still quarter every and
he would move. We went away. Now they were humiliated and humbled by
that. When I went back, I wrote, I said, I wrote
a memo, but it wasn't something you circuit it. Wow, look at
this memo. But it was my trip report, and I said, the
people have lost the fear of the KGV. The system is in serious trouble.
I didn't know it was that serious that two months later, but to
me it was like the whole trip. That two minute discussion. They called
the next day and said to our representative with us, he's not there anymore.
You know, Mike bett Is that they didn't move him either. So
that was you know, it was one heck of a trip that I'll remember
for a long time. I think in your book, I think the title
was the beginning of the end, Like you knew at that moment that Yeah,
well, I don't want to say I would have ran up to the
director. So I have to tell you I just suddenly found the secret.
Right, it's going to go right. But I left their field. This
is that this is not going the right way. I know what happened in
Afghanistan. I could see the political dynamics of it. In my wildest dreams,
you know, I never as a CIA person the whole thing was going
to collapse, right, and then the wall and then where we're going to
get as far as we did. And it was from a life experience point
of view, incredible to watch that and walk away with what are the three
thousand lessons you learned from that? Yeah? You know you mentioned Philby.
Can we talk a little bit about ames because you knew aims and sort of
how that you know came about in your view, and then also a comparison
with like aims in Philby. Just for chronology, let me hit Philby.
Yeah, sure, may not know, sure, but Kim Philby was a
very senior member of m I six who joined the Communist Party as a young
person I illogically oriented and rose up into the high strengths. He represented I
six in Washington. He was the liaison, the interface with CIA. FBI
went to the cocktail parties, the legendary two and three martini lunch in the
book, And I was talking to an official from that time who, in
fact, it's maybe one of the Philby books. They'd have two martinis who
go out to the club to drink. I mean, I don't know how
you function, but recognized you were you were, you were five. But
it was a betrayal, a huge betrayal. And what was fascinating about it
when you look at it and you compare it with ams. They had the
Cambridge five. They all went to Cambridge five people that became very senior.
One was the queens, this art historian Ano. There was a senior person
in the embassy in Washington. Two of them. One was he was a
true drunkard and walked around town sort of tell people it was a spy,
but he was so drunk and to know what he was talking about. They,
by the way, defected while Philby was in Washington, and the one
that was the drunkard lived lived with Philby. You would have thought the bell
might have gone, maybe there's something not right here, right, So the
fact that he betrayed his country, and this is why the when you look
at all the Carey books, they're all about that type of betrayal within the
highest levels there is. It's the top. When you look at taker Tailor,
it's around the table, right. Each chest piece represents one of the
most senior people in the service, and the head of the service at that
time gets Smiley to help find out which one of the top five. Okay,
and let me say one more thing about Philby, otherwise I could spend
hours. Two things. I'll say about one. His wife. His first
wife was a communist and she introduced him to a woman who was very active,
who who then introduced him to a KGV officer. And he thought he
was become an activist and support of communism and the KGB over there. You
got to get out of that. You've got these great credentials, you're part
of the club, you're the governing class. You have to go back,
right, So what he did is he shed it his communist background and became
one of the club. And the British system is very much a class system
and the club system. And once you're in the view is nobody in this
club would ever betray their country. It's what you are. You are Her
Majesty's government. You I mean, you just it's inconceivable. So you're blinded.
No one went back to beta communist roots. Later on and the investigation
started, there was a woman that said, you know, he was an
active member of the Communist party, right right, so but that was,
oh, everybody was in the twenties and thirties, and so there it was.
It got in the way. Seriously, god Jack, could you expand
on that a little bit? I think like the notion of ideological recruitments is
particularly interesting. And what do you think it was about Kim Philby that drew
him towards Communism or that pushed him away from the British system, that led
him to betraying his country. So I think again, bear with me,
because I'm guessing in some parts. But what do you see in the number
of the de fact there's a relationship with the father? Okay, Now I'm
not interesting, and it's problematic. It doesn't mean abuse. It just means
that there's a there's a it isn't it's a split. There's something that his
father was in the intelligence service, the father was so some reason the idea
of the system and whether it was father and as remember I gave the father
a book you know about as he gave me book about espionage Calfin for Demetrius,
right, and I gave him one the Psychopathology of Leadership. You're predestined,
you know, if you look at it in some ways Philby. They
had a choice, don't get me wrong, but they were more psychologically tuned
for betrail because of wherever they were with feaces of either father and the system.
Even though Philby was in this system, there was some tension in that
area. But the world was different. Nineteen seventeen, there were a million
Communists in the United States, you know, New World, the workers will
prevail, the a delly lifestyle. Well, when Stalalin got in, that
changed changed. But Philby's nineteen twenty nine or twenty eight, and then he
was in that nulou in Cambridge, as were the other And I'm not saying
they all had father's issues or right, but in Philby's case, whatever reason,
he became a true believer, an ideological believer. When he later defects
that we're jumping ahead in the story, but we're not going to spend all
night on phil because we could his wife. What happened is he thought he
was going to become a senior figure in the KGV and they didn't trust them
because he betrayed his country. Once you betrayed, well you betray again.
But they treated him and they you know, he would come in for a
briefing, but they gave him an apartment. It's not a luxury. This
one for sure. Never learned Russian. Only read papers in English from the
cricket scores. Two fisted drinker, kind of a miserable life. His wife
separator. She went with him to wife in this case left and she said
even to the end he had misgivings about Russia and this lifestyle, but he
was still a committed ideological communist. Which is right, you're lamping again as
we go further into Cold War. The Russians had a really hard They couldn't
sell that, right. I mean, we can sell democracy and that's really
money. People work with us because we had a better product. They had
a hot product for a while, remember, had the depression him. There
was a lot of forces the same change this world, the other side,
which fascism was growing because she had the same frustrations, but people were coming
out of the other end of the tube with radical approaches to things. So
I think when we look at Philby, he's the idellogical one. The other
second part is that he was part of a group that makes them different.
And the third he was part of the class and he was a senior person,
a real player, at the top of the pretty service. So if
we fast forward, well, I should say one thing. I gave a
talk at one of the clubs and I don't one of the clubs in town
in New York City, and we spent a lot of the night talking about
this, and they sold some books and lad one lady came up, and
then another. What about Kim Philby? He lives on, I mean he
lives on. As people that follow this, it was such an intricate story,
and I tried to figure out, as you just asked me, how
is he not like games right now? Philby did a lot of damage because
he was sitting at the top and had a lot of information about what was
going on and could have it almost became ce he got that close. So
until there was rumors about him, and even when sources started to report that
he was a you know, a trader, the services split about fifty percent.
And then he farmed him off the bray route. And we'll leave it
again. We can go on and on with Philby, but if we fast
forward to Aims. So I did know and he was about to go into
training and I was coming into an office behind him several months and he was
a diehard loyal Murray again committed loved espionage Russia, that was where he was
going to be. Came to me once and somewhere along the line said,
you have to understand, counterintelligence is the ace of spades, and I guess
the ace of clubs and diamonds, right, don't matter as much. But
very from the beginning he was into this framework. One of his drinking incidents
even further in his career, which I read about later, was a fight
or argument, a heated argument when he was drunk with a cuban. Other
words, he wasn't sympathetic to the queue with it now he had. I
think he was liberal socially, if you will, but from an intelligence point
of view, he was very conservative at the time. And as his career
prosper and we look at Ames, he was the equivalent of a major.
Nothing wrong with the major, right, But Philby was a genuine three star
contender, I mean three star general and a contender for the top job.
He was part of the boys at the top in those days, right.
Ames was not He was a middle and he wasn't a manager. He was
you know, sort of his specially he was doing rush. He had some
skills, and he wasn't flow and fluent, but he could speak it.
Very few people did, so he was often involved in the sensitive cases.
I don't know if Philby ever had the access. It's a smaller service,
so he may have. But Aimes sat where the crown jewels were, right,
so you could have been the cleanup crew. If you had access to
the safe, you would do great damage to our country. Right. So
Ames was just because he was there didn't mean that he didn't have access to
some of the most powerful and damaging secrets. And as a result of it,
ten of our best spies inside the Krumblin and lost their lives. Thanked
Rick Ames turning over their names. But Rich's motivation I looked at it differently,
and I said I knew him well, and he went to his wedding
and so on, and he worked for me for a while. He was
supposed to leave. I wish he had left before I got there. His
wife was pregnant, so they extended him. In retrospect, I'd got to
see him later in his life, but early in his life he could care
less about how look, you know spoke the teeth brown and missing, and
clothes were the same shirt and he could care less. But if he gave
him a good buck and a class of bourbon and a cigarette. I mean
he was happy in life. It wasn't like he needed Gucci shoes. But
he married. He fell in love with a Colombian diplomat in Mexico who had
come from money but lost it. But she had financial knees. When she
was arrested, and she had five hundred pairs of shoes, it was like
the Milde Maco and she had designer dresses that had never been taken out of
the bag. It was like buying, and she was sending a lot of
money to her parents because they didn't have it. Unfortunately, when the CAI
started to investigate aims, because they had several investigations looking for them, all
they knew there was one in there, and the report came back she came
from money. So he's a kept man today. There's so much information you
could you know, you wouldn't have to leave your computer to figure out what
kind of money she had or didn't have. But that was his story.
But she then next thing, you know, he's dressing botter, his teeth
are all fixed. But he didn't it wasn't because he felt a need to
dress that way, look that way. But he had tremendous financial presser and
he had a drinking problem. And again whether an alcoholic or just drink too
much constantly is a different area issue. But he could lay off of the
difference was he could lay off of it from time to time, but he
needed money to keep that going. But I think it was a convergence the
psychological part. So I would say money to Eleanor's that's not an issue with
philby right, but it becomes an issue with Aimes and a number of them
handsome, but Hanson also, I would say both of them have a psychology.
And that was Ames sort. He was smarter than everybody. Now,
a lot of smart people in the agency. I'd never met anyone that was
not smart. Now that doesn't mean they were right, doesn't mean that I
read with them, but by and large decent IQ. You don't want to
be a genius because then you're dysfunctional. So we could all pass off as
they were just a little below genius. I maybe further than that, but
he really had a bigger ego. And one of the mistakes I consistently have
made in life is I don't recognize the size of your ego because I looked
at them. Why would you have an ego? Right? And the on
need to find out it's massive, right, So it's deceiving. So he
thought he was really God's gift to the intelligence world, and we just didn't
appreciate him. But he was lazy, so he never looked in the mirror.
Well, Ricky, only do the things you like, and you only
do them well when you like them. And you don't do accountants, you
don't do reports, you don't hustle. Yeah, so no, you're not
going to get fronted, right. So, yes, people are passing you
by wreck so, but that's not how he's looking. He's looking at the
system is bad. They're denying me my rightful role as this intelligence. That's
it's and this happens in many defectors. It's it's the system that they're they're
going against. It's not it's not this is phil it's not Philby. I
want to be a commune. He didn't want to be a communist. He
wanted money and he wanted satisfaction, he wanted respect. So, sitting across
from the Russian embassy, I'm surprised he didn't have three martinis, but I
think it was like three and tonics, right, but it's enough you get
double shots or triple So he sat there thinking about it because he had a
big ego. I can go in and hustle the Russians. Yeah, okay,
So he goes into the guy that's handling that is handling handsoen so you're
you're walking, You're walking into somebody that knows something about how to handle this
type of ego. And they played the violins for him, and they gave
him that, right, and you know, the camaraderie and all of this.
The interesting thing about Hanson, though, is from what I've read at
least, is the KG beat never actually knew who he was. No,
they had no idea, never met him, and they were paying him in
diamonds. Right. No, I don't know, I don't know. Okay,
I'm sorry if i'm I don't know about that. But bags of cash
if he got back to cash Adam, because I think I would have heard
that. You know, you just don't get a bag of diamonds and go
down to the jewelers row and it all works out right. You got to
know how to do that. Yeah, And I didn't. I didn't see
that or read that. I think there was plain Hanson is an interesting case
too. To juxtapose with Ames, well if you want, but just roll
right. Yeah, But going going back to Ames, he walked in and
he was going to give them some junk, right, But the second meeting
he gave he cloffed up the whole tent and there was an interesting not interesting.
There was a tension between the KGB and the POLYP or the political government.
They did not want to kill the spies. They wanted to keep them
in. In other words, they wanted to handle from a counterintelligence point of
view, and they also wanted to protect aims. Now, would you wrap
up these ten you're going to find aims. You're going to find handsome.
But the Polypu was so annoyed, not annoyed, that doesn't get it.
Kill them, you know. So they were all executed. Two of them
are at the other day. Were shot in the back of the head.
I mean, it wasn't you know, it wasn't let's say, and I
don't know how you died nicely, but I don't know. But it wasn't
a trader's sort of exit, right, It doesn't have any you know,
you're not shot in the face or shot of firing sweat. So it was
you know, it was devastating. And there was a journalist and I don't
recall which one, but she was at an interview with him. There aren't
many of them, interviews with Ames, and it was in the early years
after he was arrested and interviews going along. It's interesting Ames, you know,
sort of telling his story and she said, well, do you have
any remorse regret about it? And it's not like he stopped and said,
well, let me think about that. Instant said I didn't have any remorse.
Oh my god. One of them, which again I was reading something
on this the other day, he actually became friends with one. I mean
he was they he actually thought that. He thought that, he says he
was my friend. We became friends. And but if I didn't throw him
under the bus, you know, I was going to be I would be
at risk. So gave him up to So wow, I want to go
into this is the psychological and the financial part of it. So in the
end, again there's so many aspects of these cases. Yeah, but Ames
was there's a number of people that built a team. We knew we had
a mole. There were a couple. There were years that went by where
we were like the bridge. We could not accept that we had a molt.
Therefore, it must have been long Tree when he broke into the when
he had a party inside the embassy. Right long Tree was a security guard,
marine guard. That must have been it. Oh, it must have
been technology. They're bouncing beams now there was Everything was technical because they couldn't
accept it. Eventually, you couldn't run away from it. We had somebody
who Milt had this interesting anecdote about when there was a Soviet defector and he
arrived in the United States that Aldrich games like immediately like snuggles up to this
guy in the car on the ride from the airport to wherever they were at
the safehouse that they were going to, and he's trying to figure out if
the defector knows about him that he's a trader. Was that motor boat?
No, that's me. This is built okay, Oh yeah, okay,
so motor boat the same things with less happy ending. Like that guy went
on to live. So when I was in Rome, we had a bulgarian.
Again, see how he's not going to come and drag me out of
here in the middle of this interview, because this is all in the public
domain that I've been told you any secret. And I want to assure everybody
this is not jin this is this is Poland Spring. And we did not
do shots before the show. I'm just saying, we did not do Oh,
you're really helping me a lot. So so you know, coming back
to the story with motor Boat. He walked in to the embassy and it
was going to be met over the week and debriefed and polygraphed, right and
Rick spoke Russian. This guy spoke Russian, so that they were going to
that made sense. And so when I was coming in the morning, I
ran into the polygraph operator and I said, well, how did he go?
He said, oh god, we did it seven times? And I
said you did what? Because once you start doing potographs, you degrade a
polygraph. But Ames was concerned that motor Boat might have been able to identify
and identify it, so you ended up with an inconclusive polygraph. Right now,
he never came back. I didn't know it was never coming back.
But I'd like to think I'd like to think I'm cool and composed, but
I really, I really was upset so and he was in a different part
of the building so it wasn't un though it was within reach. But there
was a card and I saw him coming down the carder and we just it's
one of those ugly situations. And I really I'm glad I did it to
him, but I probably would be embarrassed if I tried it with either of
you. But or worse, But the I really said, how can you
do this? How can you be so stupid? I mean, it was
not nice. And normally there's two reactions. One is, well, let
me explain myself, right, you explain myself because you do. Or the
other is you don't know. I know more than you do. And I
did that, you know that. There's two things. What I got was
stone silence. It was like, wow, that was really odd. You
know, you're bleeding to death, but you're just standing there. And there's
in Spanish the word oha, which means look out, watch out that little
pieces of something wrong with things? Is it? But that doesn't mean you're
a spy. That doesn't mean a spy. Doesn't mean a spy if you're
fall down drunk. Now they dried him out because we had a system of
trying to bring him in, but so you leave that aside and the team,
the team that was put together. And by the way, their first
vote when they had looking at the list, Ames did not make the top
slot. I think he made it on Geene and Sandy Grimes as they were
on the team list, but they Ames did not look like the person that
was going to be fingered for this. And then it dissolved. I have
no idea why it dissolved. And Gene was about to retire when it's let
me give another shot and start looking for it, right. And so they
came to me not too late, in very lately, gave me. When
they're getting to the and part, they called said, Jack, we can't
meet you in our office. Can we meet you somewhere like where it looks
like we're having a couple of copi and just you know, it doesn't look
business. So it came in, saidjactly one one question. We're closing in
on Ames. I mean this is a very you know, they're not asking
a lot of people that question. He said, do you think he could
be a spy? Now? Like Ames? I responded immediately, I do
now He said, well, Jack who's the second person in the entire building
who you think could be a spy? I mean stuck. It was that
one moment. Now I didn't know what it was. There was something wrong.
So when they said it, of course he could be was he I
knew about the ego and all these others. But when but I saw him
and remembered him as such an anti communist that it wasn't clicking. But at
that moment I said, yes he could. So my point is the psychology
of Ames and who he was, and his behavior is quite different than Philby,
and Hansen gets closer to Ames than Philby, and Ames was not part
In other words, he was Philby was a highly respected person. Ames was
not. You go to Hanson, and again we haven't even introduced him yet,
but are some of these same conditions apply apply with Hanson? You you
wrote about the fallout from Ames, where I don't remember if it was a
new director or whom it was, but but they called, you know,
ten people basically to carpet a lot of people in the auditorium, and people
thought that the these ten people who had worked with Ames or failed to identify
Ames were going to get fired. And really they they just got they got
reprimanded. Right. Bill Studeman was the Admiral Studeman. It was a good
friend of mine. It's a good friend. I haven't seen it in a
long time. He goes up in New York, but I remember him saying,
you know, this was our best day. We caught up. Yeah,
all the people before us didn't catch him. Sandy says the same thing.
It's your best day and your worst day. Right, we got him.
We really did a great job. But now it's hell to pay.
But there's so much pain, right, the institutions that somebody has to hang.
The outside world was really wanted people that. However, they did an
investigation, and what happens in a lot of these things, there's like fifty
people that may have they should have done the polygraph, they should have seen
it on the polygraph, that someone should have checked his finance at somebody.
So what you had with fifty people had different different roles. But Woolsey was
a lawyer, so his expert I looked at as a lawyer, I'm looking
at do I want to prosecute anybody? From that point of view, And
so he saw it as fifty people, so he had to grade it and
I think there were you were under the couple were not getting promotions and they
weren't going to get an award and this, and but I was in the
auditorium and I could feel, no, that's not the right answer. Someone
throw them to the wolf, get somebody right. And I thought Wolvesey was
just going to stay on this ground. And I think it was painful.
It's people underestimate just I mean, it's betrayal and it's detrimental effect. I
will point out I was not on the tent but coming back, and I
think it may be more than that, but very very, very painful experience.
But one of the things that happened, and I think I told you
this at the time, the executive director decided we're going to fix things.
We're going to have new c I training, we're going to have this.
All that's good. I'm not saying you don't do it. Be able to
look at financial things right. Anyone who gets a drink will it'll be set
off. So we're gonna have all these things. But then they hand it
out never again, right badges. I refuse to wear one. Some people
probably said, well he's yeah, there's a communist. We've found what the
other people that thought I might be betrayed. I'll get to that in a
minute. But went handsOn. But the point is you can't say never again.
We're penetrating the countries. That's our job. Get sources. And if
you go back over history, we've had sources. They've been in there,
they're always you have to work on the assumption they're always there. It wasn't
that I was arrogant. I already was told that we had one right handsome
and CIA. Now it turns out and the FBI was They won't like me
saying that. They were absolutely convinced it was ours why they had the blinders
on. It can't be us, got to be you And turned out in
the end I had twenty FBI people helping to find Hanson, and so I
how can I put it never never again when we had somebody sitting right in
the midst of us. And the flip side of that, because with the
Hanson story, with the flip side of that, wherever he thinks you,
you know you're you're either the FBI or the CIA. You should be able
to find these people. You have Kelly right, who was was wasn't he
the first person like I identified, but it was a wrong identification. There
was a fellow Brian Kelly, and it's a I knew Brian. Brian actually
worked for me. I thought he was an excellent officer, very dedicated.
Only Brian aside first, Okay, when we started looking for Hanson, because
of the experience and names, I called the team that was looking at him
and I said, I want to see hos on the list. I want
to see whether it was anybody I had a feeling about, right, Yeah,
And they refused to give it to the right number. At that point,
I was the acting director of the all operations, right, so you're
several, but you're not going to give it to me. So they were
really terrific people. I mean, they were protecting their country. Don't let
anybody know this, So I have to know. So they came up and
I think they probably went back and opened a file on it. But none
of them felt right to me. And I didn't know everyone, but it
doesn't I didn't feel right, but that doesn't mean there wasn't somebody on that
list. But it's so hard because you're looking and you're going to report,
Oh he served in Berlin. Oh No, who also was in Colombia.
He's thirty five. No, he's more he's sixty two. So what you're
getting is your matrix. He but who's the one person? So it's not
a as easy as it sounds. But little by little there was you know,
one of the women that was on the team, Diane, but worked
with Rosario or a new Rosari very well, and she knew she didn't have
money. So I think she went to the team and it was a breakthrough.
She doesn't have any money. How does Rick have the money? Now,
now you've got the makings of a case. Where is the money?
How did he get the money? And then there was a I have a
chapter, takes a spy to catch us by if nothing else, you need
to have spies over there, so they tell you how they find your spy.
So just like Ames was a spy that helped catch all their spies.
Someone on the end said, not provided enough identifying data from the KGB,
But there wasn't any doubt that Ames was the guilty party. But because we
know you're a spy, we can't arrest you. You have to prove it
in court. So then begins a big FBI operation. They bought the apartment
next to them. Dozens of officers follow them. I mean, despite rich
training, he probably never spotted it. I don't know. But he was
lazy. So the FBI pulling his trash every day. It's especialty in some
business. I'd be surprised when he goes out in the trash. But he
was lazy. So he on a post it wrote down clandestine contact instructions that
he got from the KGB. They had that and they got him. And
it was this laziness, his lack of operational as Ubrius again going to catch
me. I'm smarter than all of these, all these people the same again,
just to we transitioned the hands and because we talked about him with people
and the audience may not know was an FBI officer and he betrayed his country.
But he actually had a longer run I think over twenty years. Rick
out about fifteen. And you had mentioned to me earlier the KGB never met
him, right he established a relationship with him over in McLean. If you're
Virginia, there's a right middle and there's a park foxtone I think, and
he would put a trash bag of documents there. KGB's I mean CIA people
lived up and down the street. You know, no one knew what was
going on. He would leave the documents, they leave the money, he
would take the money. And they worked for the KGB the gru passing periods
where he wasn't working, but they never met him. But he his fingerprints
on the trash trash bags. So like games, not quite as smart as
he thinks he is. But the second thing is he made one call during
his entire time to the case, not identifying himself, but they taped his
voice. So when they were closing in on Hansen again, the spy of
ours, or let me put de factor, came to us and said,
here's a tray, here's a trash bag. And I think it must have
been a heartbreaking thing because I think the head of the FBI was Leuis Free
and the top officers sat there and listened to the recording and they knew exactly
who It was not your best best day. But again he thought he was
gifted smart, but he had a personality disorder. He was kind of a
creepy guy. You know. Well that's to say that we can get into
his lifestyle, but we had some cansiously, yes so, but he had
issues. He had an issue with his father was a policeman in Chicago,
and there was tension. But again it was this big ego and trying to
prove himself somehow in this process. But he was a techie when it wasn't
as common as everyone's a techee today. But so he was able to get
into different places in the just like Ames, where there was very sensitive information
and a huge damage to the agency. But like Philby, because we really
didn't get a tip on Ames, Hanson's brother in law was an FBI officer
and went to his superior and said, I think Hanson is involved in espionage
because his wife found a drawer of money and it did go anywhere, and
then there was a case of that got wrapped up and he was involved in
it. And Edwin Pitts was an FBI officer and reported to his superior,
I think Hanson is And again you're going back to the British service. There's
this reluctance that you can't underestimate. It can't be, it can't be not
one of us. And so he lingered over there working even though there were
lips on the screen. So you have the psychology he needed money as well
for his lifestyle. Yeah, we'll leave that side of me. That's a
whole different story, the kinky side, but how he used the money.
But he was also a split I don't want to say with personality, but
he was deeply religious and then on the other side, he was the Devil's
mate. He was an opus stain member, wasn't he? Yeah, yes,
and Alton McLean. But at the same time, you know, he
spent a lot of money on an exotic dancer, which which she says they
never consummated a relationship if you will, so I don't know. But well,
the worst part, I mean this in the record them. This is
again not something that came up, but you know, he he videos his
wife they're having sex, and he sent it over to his neighbor. I
mean it's like, what planet are you on? Yeah, So it's like
there's there's things rolling around on that head that I mean, I think I'll
defer to psychiatry. So when you get into espionazed cases, is there there's
really really they're not the first they fall in these pockets. The last category
is coercion. Right, and despite the movies and now I'll wait some CIA
person will correct me on it. If so, I want to hear more
about their story, and that is that wasn't CIA style. I can't remember
a case where they came and said we're going to go blackmail this despite we
didn't have to. We had people who wanted to come to us, or
how would you like to how do you like to have a college fund that
up for you? Right, you know there weren't the honey pots, weren't
really creates a hostile asset. So, but on the other side, I
mean the most famous case again come back to the novels, as you were
saying, sometimes you can look out, but the correct Carla is Marcus Wolf.
Marcus Wolf was the head of East German service during the Cold War,
and by the way, Putin was in East Germany at the same time.
I'm not saying he met him, but it probably, you know, it
was a formative in his own thinking. But there was a book and a
movie called I think, I hope I'm right, Red Sparrows, so in
there. First of all, Marcus Wolf had one hundred thousand spies. I
mean, I don't know how to keep track of though that's well above the
US average. I just want to tell you that he was patting the books.
Well, I don't know who he's patting the books, but he But
I'll leave it at that. Well, there's agents. There's agents, probably
every doorman, every in other words, he had a network. It was
a domestic He wasn't working in a foreign country with one hundred thousands, but
he had one hundred thousand domestically. But they used honey traps and we went
to school, we learn how to seduce people. So why because we would
like to show you the the the gulags in Russia. We want to show
you. We're going to try and sell you this product of the crepit economy.
Right, they didn't have that, so they they did. They did
resort more to coercion. They had volunteers, and we were just talking about
some of them. But I just it just seemed not to be the It
wasn't necessary, and I think it'd have a hard time passing the smell test.
And then you know, you go down to Congress and let me show
you all these pictures. It's like, yeah, okay, but right,
you have to go back to my constituent. You know, I know one
of the things, I mean, we're we're already at like an hour and
forty minutes, and we don't know where we could be last time. Maybe
we go to flyve. I'm happy to go to five. But I know
we wanted to kind of talk about like the DGI. But but one of
the things I want to ask you about, because we've talked about the espionage
game and these these double agents or these these traders, but I want to
ask you about the present and the future of espionage and along like what keeps
you awake at night? And along with that idea, are you worried about
sort of ideological influence in like our young people now them growing up in the
intelligence world. Do you think that plays into the future of espionage? Yeah,
so I think you've got three questions, yes, yeah, which should
take us to three hours. So if I remember all three, let's start
with the maybe we'll start I'm afraid if I do the first one, because
what case we awaken night is a big story, And then we have what
will influence? I will let you answer any of those in any order you
want, the priority you'd like to get them, let's just do the first.
Witch in the middle. The intelligent world has changed so much, the
speed of it is breathtaking. I'm not one hundred years old. I'm getting
there. But when I first joined the agency there were people abroad. What
you did is you wrote a long message because you couldn't write a short message
because you didn't have bandwidth. You'd write your message, cut it in half,
mail one half in one week. You would have funny words to take
out your name Dave. They'd say X one right, and then it said
the next one in the following week. You glue it together. That's the
speed of which intelligence was moving. Right in the seventies, you got bandwidth
and then you got cables over twenty two pages long. And in the middle
of it they said that the office car was dropped in the river. And
by then you didn't bother reading it, so you were able to get the
information. But the idea of having the magic of an iPhone and be able
to click it GP chat and say tell me about this, tell me about
that. The world abroad, they're called chief a station commander in the British
Service. Why you have to make the decisions because there's no time for Washington
to get back to you. The power was so social media technology digital intelligence
starts with the spun make in the satellite, so the speed and AI and
so, and even the targeting, so you have to move fast and it's
changing so rapidly. The one saving grace that I want to bring from the
past we have to be careful who don't outrun human because and we talked about
this the last time, and I won't go back over it too much.
Other than with all that information, you also get conventional with them and you're
not really using primary sources, and sometimes decisions are made like Hamas going in
Israel was missed because they didn't have the human sources. I think in the
private sector, I'm starting to feel a renewal interest because there's so much confusing
and confusion. They're asking for ground truth more in terms of investing, and
so I think the agency is being driven that way as well. The problem
is you can't operate the way you used to operate because I'll be able to
You can't tell me here's a card, call this number, or I'm going
to tell you I'm going to Chicago when I'm going to you the drones on
top of you. Go practice your surveill and training all you want. You
won't even see it coming right, So how are you going to operate.
It's this radical movement and that has to take place. But I'm saying,
hold on to the field. I know best the things we're talking about today.
Those sources can save you a lot of time and trouble. Okay,
I wouldn't take the young and the ideology. The edge we still have with
what I'm going to talk about keeps be awake is we need to preserve And
as I said earlier on, if you go out in this country, you'll
still find a lot of support for CIA. You're going to find a lot
of support for American So we with the young people, you know, we
hope we imbued them with this. And that is just how valuable precious democracy
is. And I lived in Chilean and it was as a young man,
and I watched a communist system in the process of being and taking over lands,
and you know, again people being fearful and leaving. And then I
saw a right wing fascist or and if you like, the boot steps system.
And I landed in Miami and the cab driver started ripping in the Richard
Dixon and I'm sitting there laughing inside. It wasn't about Richard Dixon that that
cab driver thought he could talk to a stranger that way about the President of
United States, he'd be dead right. So what I'm saying, I was,
in fact vaccinated with what we take for granted or liberties and freedoms,
and people don't understand we need to go back and study civics, the Constitution,
separation of powers, what it is that's underneath the flag. So coming
back to the idealogy, there's no counter ideology, right, So I think
I'm hoping that somehow we rally around this. I think we will. We've
been through there's been periods where this has been challenged in the United States.
We've had Civil War. I mean, it's not as though it's been one
smooth ride. So I'm not losing too much step about it. I do
worry about what they're getting in school. And again, I taught school for
four years in high school, and I can honestly tell you I wasn't politicized.
In other words, I didn't get it, and I was teaching history.
It was here's history, right, I mean, And I wasn't trying
to let me pass on this is what I believe, right, So I
think there's a little too much of that, as I understand that the other
side isn't really selling the theology, but she and the others they have a
new world vision and let's see if they can sell it, which is,
you know, we're going to give you order. You know, we've got
a lot of order, and trains are going to run on time. You
won't have any disturbances, but you might your whole family might be in exile.
Right, So, but they are trying to come up with a new
order, which is my segue into what keeps me awakeed. Yeah, So
for many years I thought, well, where would be the flashpoint, where
would be something that would rock the earth? Right? So Indian Pakistan.
I always kept an eye on Indian Pakistan because they have the equal amount of
nuclear weapons, powerful in almost matching ways. They've been to war three times
since World War Two, so there's been long standing divisions from the day they
were separated. So it would there be a misjudgment and a nuclear weapon could
go off. So I was concerned, not because Korea doesn't have exactly that
same North Korea doesn't have that same challenge. So that was where I thought
of it, and I think both of those society have moved on. I
think those prospects are lower. Need to keep an eye on it. Right
now. It doesn't bother me. I don't wake up in the middle of
the night. What I do find that's really troubling me at the moment is
I think we're being challenged one more time. You know, I'm a cold
warrior. I saw it grew up in a generation where there was a communist
block opposed to the democratic West. There was a real struggle, I mean
about who was going to which system was going to prevail. And we did
prevail, and there was a proximary candid for a while where we actually where
the big We could be the big force in the world and hopefully for good
I'm not saying without flaws, right, And it looked like an opportunity.
And you know, if you go to the Clinton administration and he looked at
well are there big challenges? Well, Haiti you were going to made Haiti
Ireland was an issue, I mean, and it did have the Eastern Europe.
So but by today's standard, that's not mind boggling, right, Okay,
right, And as I said in the book, what I've anticipated is
with me, it was not that I wanted to see that happen. You
have a very strong China, you have a very aggressive and well armed Ran,
you have North Korea, and you had Russia. Now they were all
sort of in that same area. The war with Ukraine has rocked the system.
This isn't about Ukraine and Russia. It's not of Israel and Hamas.
There is a reshuffling of the deck that's happening now. These kind of trees
are working together. North Korea is providing missile technology that's helping Russia. The
Iranians are providing the drones. You know, the biggest trading partner now with
Russia is China. People are Russians are studying Mandarin. Right, they're not
coming to Russia is no longer looking New York. We need to wake up,
you know. We're thinking that somehow that we bring them back. This
was my view, bring them back to Europe. Right, No, this
is now a block and they're friends that are autocratic, so we're not We're
looking I don't know what the policy strategy is in the back room, but
I think we tend to look at these as if this is all very one
to one at hot I believe when I told you when I went to China
to buy weapons, they gave me a discount because we were fighting the Russians.
And I said, at the time, I think there's long long standing
Tensionaire I would tell you today they'd raise it two dollars. There was that
relationship as getting more and more important to both of them. The struggle with
Russia was often about Iran. Who could control Iran? If you remember the
child and all of this. The Russians always had their eye on the run.
Weird looking at a block that is at least the size and dimension with
much more deadly force. My view, and I was on record when Putin
went into Ukraine, and that was he had sowed the seeds of his own
demise. He was a weak country. He had just shown it. He
put it, and then he put his army in there, which was a
unanticipated ragtag operations. Things aren't constant. My assumption, hope was that we
would stay the course. We're now two years in there. They went to
flight Zelensky out and we thought that they were Russians would roll them over.
The Ukrainians stood up tall as I go into my second books say they would.
But we've had a long delay we were not providing. It wasn't critical
of what we were providing because I understood there was again this let's not cause
world War three, where I'm coming back saying, you're not going to cause
World War three. You better start moving fast or better with everything you can
possibly be put into it. Because what has happened with Russia that RG type
army, those tanks that were broken down, they went on a war footing.
Putin has changed his country into a war fighting machine aligned with Russia.
They are now producing new equipment and with the help of our technology, has
extolen so much from the West right so that that old army is getting stronger.
And we were slow. And this is the dysfunctionality of our political system
here that we weren't able to see this. We're not able to see that.
We have to take care of the border and we have this looming looming
crisis this country. You'll be able to take care of both of us.
My concern now is we've passed sixty one billion dollars. That is not trivial.
They won't be able to spend half of it this year. Why because
the things they need are not viable. There's not enough one fifty, So
we are not in this the way that the opposition is. So what keeps
me awake at night is I see looming. I have an article coming out
in a it's a book, and one of fiftieth out of my book where
I see this as the new core word. This is actually a block that's
getting strong, it's more cohesive, and we're here thinking that somehow as you
grain, is it relevant or not. We've always had an isolation in stream,
but boy, our times have passed. If you think you can sit
here and watch this group get stronger and stronger and are not going to have
to confront it. So I understand the reluctance, but we have to look
beyond. My view is if we could hold long enough, Putin would go
because he doesn't have a party like she, he doesn't have an ideology,
and his own people would say let's walk him out the door. We blew
wind back into his sales because he was saying, you won't stay, you
won't stay. That was his key argument, and so we put the sixty
one million. It's like, do you think they're going to still stay?
I mean, in other words, it wasn't enough to bring back the argument
so that he would be weaker inside. The clock on his minds does not
start until we get a stalemate, and we're not going to get a stale
man. Now, there's a lot of people say, well, come the
middle of twenty five, the Ukrainians will be tired and ready for concessions,
and Putent's going to agree to them. And my Ukrainian friends, I say
to them, that's what you think may happen. Putin's going to say,
z Linci steps down. I want this, I want this, I want
this. He will come out with looking so much stronger, and he will
have an industrialized part of Russia. And we have helped create this problem and
whether I understand it how we got there, but I'd want to put the
fire alarm on. This is moving faster and we are soon going to be
confronted where the gap is going to be huge, huge, And I don't
feel like you know, there was an article by a woman who said,
look, I think I see the problems, not this, but see one
doesn't never understand that. And I have a trouble because I really feel this
coming and I'm convinced of it, and yes I could be wrong, but
the details of what I'm reading day in and day out suggests that we have
a real dangerous situation. Let me just one last thing. Yeah, the
fact that we're not doing this, she's timetable for taking Taiwan is different.
His calculation is different. Putins is different, and that is they're not coming.
They're not coming. They're not going to stay the chorus, and they're
going to get more aggressive, not less aggressive, and so will North Korea,
and so are the Iranians. There's a stream, and we can talk
about this the next time. They keeps you awake. The stream within our
governing class that somehow thinks that we can make a deal with Iran. I'm
just here the safety. We're looking at something formidable, and I believe we're
up to it, but it starts with recognizing the problem. And I don't
think I don't think the issue has been joined. We've really treated them with
kid gloves over the years, haven't we, Or like an unreturned faith,
I guess, or idealism. I don't know what you would call it.
I'm trying to think of labels that I'm going to be careful that. But
to some degree Russia, I would say, maybe there was benign neglect.
What was said, the government fell, there was an opportunity to move in
for whatever reason, private sector of government. It wasn't that we tried to
undermine it. There might have been an opportunity and putin year by year.
No, he's not worried about US or Europe, and they've all found ways
to work around it. Yeah, none of them are suffering from the sanctions
the way that it makes a difference in this type of struggle. China wasn't
benign the bug. We invested heavily. We made their army, and I
understand how we got there. It was a hypothesis that once they had all
these goodies, they would then become a democratic state. You have the strongest
Communist party, strongest leader of the Communist Party, and the United Block there
and hard line both of them. All of them believe we are the enemy.
Their propaganda message is an integrated one. They're all saying the same thing,
and that is we are the enemy. But I think they smell weakness.
And I'm not talking about the administration. I'm talking about our body politic
and how we view the world. And I think we're thinking that somehow,
you know, life when the United States can go on and leave it be
as it is. Europe is very worried because they've been invaded over and over
again. Their problem is they don't have an army. In other words,
what are they going to do? And they're starting to build up and they're
building up NATO, so they're building, but it's not going to match what
we're looking at this other group. It's not nearly as aggressive or war oriented.
So that's what keeps me awake at night and not in a lot of
times during the day I sort of twinge with and it's not. I usually
say it's my grandkids that keep me awake at night, and it is,
but it's because this isn't necessarily your problem. This is a long legs right,
and we have to get this is years. This is not a five
year problem. We're looking at a shift, a big shift that we're going
to be dealing with. So we have to construct our build our army accordingly.
We have to have our body politics united about what this is, right,
which the Republican Democrats, if they agreed, sit down and say this
is the problem, let's cut the BS out and let's just sit down and
start to figure out how we're going to do. Do you see this Jack
as like the new axis powers Iran, Russia, China, maybe dovetailing with
North Korea? And is this really I mean, the way you're talking about
it sounds like we're already in a global war. That's recalibrating. That's power.
Yeah, that's where I am. It's a balance of power. It's
team democracy, team autocrat. Now it's not just them. They have friends,
a lot of autocrats, a lot of governments, and they're looking in
the United States and you're making a calculation. Do I bet that they're going
to be there? Yeah? Right? So is look at what China is
doing around around Look at the Russians are there. They're trying to build that.
This is this is the old containment. We bought them everywhere where they
tried to make an encroachment and sell communism. It's not as blatant. In
other words, it's not communist. What are they selling? Their new view,
the new worldview. We're losing market share, right whatever you want to
however you want to look at it. And they're in cahoust together in a
way that is going to those who think that somehow the China and I used
to be among those until we have gone. This crossing the border February twenty
second, twenty two was a game changer. But it's it's not about you.
I mean, Ukraine is vitally important for the people. They're suffering so
much, but it's really this new structure and that's a big deal. You
have to organize accordingly around that. How is it going to differ this time?
Like I made the allusion to World War Two, We've talked a lot
about the Cold War. How is this one different? It perhaps isn't different,
except it's more dangerous. Yeah, we have a much bigger we can
if you. One of the things that's very scary when you look at the
well, the war going on between Russia and Ukraine, there's a new war.
I saw a video the other day of some Russians, different pictures of
Russian soldiers on the ground, running, running down the basement, hiding here,
hiding there, and next thing you know, they disappear. The drone
just I don't know, five hundred dollars right boom? Yeah, I mean
the Kindis magazine did a cover once, I want to say ten years ago.
It was instead of like the movie Hitchcock, with birds all drones,
but that's what we're doing. War fighting is different, and there there are
so many scary aspects of this and how much damage we can do to each
other. Yeah, it's it's interesting because you know a lot of people did
him to get on my high horses? No, but you asked me what
this is really strong business? You know, a lot of people laughed at
Bush when he talked about the axis of evil, right, but we're really
not like we're seeing sort of the fruition of that now. Whether you call
them evil, whether you you know, you call it evil, it's it's
evil in the terms of it's the antithesis of the American view. But I
think he was talking about relatively weak states at the time. Now you're talking
this is where the transition from the terrorist target, right, which also will
go back in history and look at all of that. But right now this
is more similar to nineteen sure, absolutely than it is to nineteen ninety.
Yeah, and absolutely. And I just mean in the sense of the countries
that he named are the countries that we're concerned about now, They just weren't
so much of a concern at that time, right, because I thought it
wasn't he you're talking about Maybe I'm missing the point here, but with Reagan
it was the accent right now. But then the Bush was talking about Iraq
and terrorism. But I thought he talked about Iran. Iran for yeah,
Iran, but yeah, they're not in the same way. And it's not
just China and Russia. It's China and Russia in tandem. Right, It's
Iran, Russia, China, random, it's North Korea, right and their
friends. That's different. That's really that is an axis that is a counterweight.
And I think I start out in like the first part of the book
with the defector of two thousand and one who came out and said when he
joined the KGB, number one target was the CIA, Number two was Natio.
Number three was China. Right, this was KGV. Now today maybe
China is thought one, but when he left it was the same, we're
the main enemy putin whatever. I don't think he ever really thought of it.
He always felt a deep grudge because of what happened to his services KGB
and the country tree. He was going to reconstitute it. He's on a
mission, right, So I mean, I think I think there's a lot
of you know, a lot of conviction here we have. So so here's
the thing. We have to have you back at least we get the fourth
chapter at least once. We might at least one more shot. Yeah,
we we're about halfway through the book. Now. We didn't do Haiti.
We didn't we didn't do Haiti. We didn't do Yeah, we didn't do
the d g I. We didn't talk about about uh, the French,
the Espiona with the French. Like, there is so much we have and
I'm telling everybody what a great job you're doing. You're not getting half of
it, then we're horrible. We'll get there, We'll get it's the booze
it. I feel like the man left out the the group, but I
do. Okay, So we have a couple of questions and unfortunately one of
them is about the Cuban DJ and that's like a whole that's like a whole
episode on self. But so first off, Wang Wang, thank you very
much. Ask if he can give some insight on the Office of Global Access.
Tell me about the office so close, okay, so we he can't
give you any insight on the Office of Global Access. I'm just saying this.
I really I'm not familiar. Yeah, I'm neither am I I'm not
either, So sorry about that one. Thanks for just you know, let
me I'll look into it. K X, Thank you very much. And
this is so we did want to get to this and we will next time
you come on because this is a large topic. But if you want to
answer this is you know your opinion, please ask if he has an opinion
about the Cuban d g I and their total penetration of US Cuban intelligence.
Great show. So there was a Cuban agent who was arrested several years ago,
right, But what I found interesting I think it was and she was
in d I, A a very senior person in the Cuba business, very
respected, good scoring. She was a idellogical recruitment. The GGI recruited her.
But what I found fascinating is somewhere in her debriefing when after she was
apprehended, was oh, the DGI has a lot of sources in the government.
Right. I have a lot of respect for the DGI and a couple
of reasons. They had the fire when the Soviet Union was you know,
basically stale. The Cubans were selling in Latin America Revolution change down. Try.
They had a message, and they spoke the language, They swim,
swam in the water. They they weren't afraid to go to the university.
She was recruited, by the way, on Hopkins, I'd have to I
want to go look at some point and figure out where they made the where
the Cuban DGI guy made the connection with her. We're talking about Montesa.
So she she was the real thing, and she was illogical. She thought
that she identified so much with Cuba that she wanted to help them, and
she provided very valuable information. But that was a good recruitment. That's an
intelligence source covering you. You get her, and you get her through the
old fashioned recruitment. And then more recently we had ambassadorca ambassador American ambassador to
Bolivia, you know, twenty five years but he was, uh, he
was an illogical recruitment as well. These are not trivial recruitment, right,
and their long standing one. Right. So I would say that the Russians
weren't nearly as good as recruiting. And we have a large you know,
we had the Cuban population, and so there was water for them to swim
in, right, And so I think because it's the island of Cuba has
never measured up, just like the Soviet Union didn't measure up. China did
because we provided his investment there. But what I'm saying, don't underestimate their
intelligence service, and they clearly have good sources. Agy Remember we were going
to talk about phil Agi at some point because he's in the book that's a
Cuban recruitment. He actually walked into the Russians and they didn't trust them,
so they went to the Cubans and they ran him and had very the notorious
effects. So I know we can't talk a lot about it, but just
because Cuba is where it is and Castro's gone, they were formidable adversary.
And you know, I'm hoping the FBI is spending a lot of time because
there's so much distraction, rightfully, so in what's going on in the Middle
East, in Iran, and it's really you know, Cuba is not attacking
us militarily, so sometimes your resources are you know, missuppropriate proportion proportion accordingly,
I thought, I thought I read that one of the things about Montez
was it she did like openly talk about, like poorly about America and positively
about like socialism or communism. I thought that that was That's that's why they
found her. She was in the university speaking that way. Now, my
sense is she went through the Philby experience and toned it down. Okay,
and so in other words, I don't think she was walking the hall of
the of the d I A if so, let's talk to security office what
they're doing. In other words, my point is she just like Philby,
she was there was a history if they had gone back. Yeah, at
the university, it's a hell because there are hardcore ideologue and then all of
a sudden it stops. You have to know that does happen in life,
right, because you know this is a Whitiger chamber case back in the McCarthy
eraror but sometimes you have an ideological break. Sure, but better prove it
to me, right, prove it to me. First of all, I'd
like to know that you had that, you know, I would not like
to not know that you had that conversion, like not know you were a
communist. Right, But once I know that, uh, you better really
prove it before you walk through the halls of the intelligence commit So with you
know, obviously kids are kids, and people, you know, they you
know the old saying, if you're not a liberal when you're young, you
have no heart. If you're not a conservat when you're old, you have
no brain. You know, like like there are these sign to any of
the h not dragging me, yeah no, but but there are these ideas
that you know, like you know, kids, young people are often influenced
you know by whatever that when the intelligence agencies, when the FBI, when
they're looking to hire, especially with social media being so prevalent. Now,
you know, there used to be that question on the security clearance. I
don't know if it's still there. But have you ever been or are you
now or have you ever been a many a member of the Communist party?
Right, like, do you think that agencies should like go back through people's
social media back? Like do you? I hope they are? I mean,
I do it my business. In other words, if you come to
me and say, listen, I'm about to make an acquisition of a company
in this country or wherever it is, you go into that social media,
pull everything or to pull apart the background because you don't want to make a
mistake. Right, so much money is riding on it. National security is
even a higher stake. So my assumption is that we're using all the tools
you can to assess people. I don't think we're going to have the problem
they had with Monte. I mean, I'm hoping that doesn't happen, because
I think there's falls, right, someone misses the paper, they lost the
paper, but it's systemically I think we're that's less likely. I think with
AI you're going to reduce that. The more likely thing is you're going through
your career like ag and then you switch to the other side, rather than
you were a communist and you get a KGB guy to go. That's on
the lower end of the end of the equation. Let me. I was
talking last night at dinner after this speech about you know what's missing with some
of the young people, and again there's a young person across the table.
I say, you know, we need it's not there. For it's not
just there. I had to take responsibility. But I'm not going to talk
about whether Jack Kennedy was a good president not a good president. But the
one thing I can tell you for sure is he was a charismatic one.
In other words, in the nineteen fifties, you know, politicians were smoking
cigars in back room and precinc captains. You buy the boat and you get
your sister on the book who works in the bank, and she can go.
When Kennedy ran, you just started the media age and he brought this
bazaze with him. Okay, and what happened in American politics. People went
into the Democratic Party, but they went into the Republican Party. Young people
went in because working in the government hell inspiring. Kenned be so I went
back to my old high school. They wanted me to talk about the book.
Hardest audience, much easier than this audience, a mess, harder fourteen
to eighteen year old kids, trying to convince them to stay pay attention where
you'll find you interesting. But when I talked to them afterwards, it wasn't
that they didn't want to go into CIA, not want to go into yours
government. They brought like the twenty of the best students. They don't call
them that, but that's when them were going in anything in public service period,
military, police, teaching, doctors they didn't want, I mean doctors
they did. Lawyers weren't on the list either. It was all either technology
or addrestment. Banking. In other words, there's I think we're running that
generation that came in with Kennedy and both parties. I'm not saying it affected
them, just like Watergate made a lot of journalists right, but it was
even more evasive with Kennedy has run its course because all those people that came
in of public service. So what we've been into is drought. Not that
they weren't good precedents, but you haven't had a charisma around politics and public
service that young people say, wouldn't it be today? There was such a
blow up in the House of Representatives. I mean it was my you know,
I don't care who's right or wrong. It's like you're a kid,
you're watching Wow. Why am I going to get into that? It's not
aspiring? And I think, you know, coming back to it, there's
a the earth. I mean, we need you know, you need inspiration.
How do you change things? Now? Was he influencer? Jack Kennedy
completely ruined the hat industry with a single inauguration. He didn't wear a hat
and that was the end of it. So that ability to influence society is
really high. There's an obligation of leadership in every walk of life. So
coming back to a number of the things we're talking about, there's some inspiration,
some vision about where we are and how we get back to the level
of civility and cooperation and national security jointness. And I mean when I went
down to Congress on Afghanistan and it wasn't Republican Democrats, what work can we
do? How can we get this done right? I mean, and they
would come and visit it, not me, but they'd come to countries and
I'd be with they could they would eat and drink together and talk together,
disagreed, but on national security there was a lot more rhythm. Charlie Wilson,
you know, it's just it was. And we have to get we
have to find our way back. We have to find leadership. And I
think it's every walk of life, whether it's the media, the politics,
but we're up up against an adversary. I want to keep coming back to
that block. They've got a message. It's very clear. I mean,
there's no they're very specific about what they're accomplished and what they're selling, and
then they're united and who's the enemy and how they're going to address it.
I don't think they're as good as salesman. Let me put it that because
I think the party is still right, so we can beat we can win
this one, but we're not going to win it with wobbley Lee's and lack
of you know who's on first base and you're going to be here, you're
not uncertainty. The worst thing that creates weakness is uncertainty. What what's going
to happen? Are we going to be with them? Not be with them?
So I don't mean to drag this out, but it's I think it's
very I think we're the crisis. I mean, you know, we're having
a good time tonight. My children are having a good time. There's a
crisis afoot in the national security arena. Let's get through these questions with Oh,
that's all of them? Okay, Yeah, we do have a couple.
The first one from m Corbin, he asks, uh, there seems
to be nothing new under the sun when it comes to the world's second oldest
profession. You had mentioned last episode that the Directorate of Science and Technology was
your original goal. Where do you think your career would have taken you within
the Directorate if you had gone that route. Well, let me correct the
record, because I must I promise I didn't have one of your Bourbon's.
It was really at the end of my career the other wads. I went
in and I my DNA somehow fit. I loved what I've really belonged in
that, the operational part. But I was also seized at the end of
my career of the because of the counter narcotics experience and technology and all the
things. I actually was a little bit of a pest early in my career
that they needed to do more. So I thought I would like to take
a shot at that. But it was at the end, not at the
beginning. So what would have happened at the end of my career. It
was almost like a postlos. I'd run the course, I'd run the cards
on it. So I was in London and you know, okay, you
let me stay if you if you wanted me to stay around, Why don't
I do the technology goose? Because I sort of don't go back and do
the same thing you did before at the top of the operational thing. So
but all the engineers looked and said, what's this guy? But it wasn't
about engineering, right, so I can't answer. I mean, the answer
is it wasn't it was at the end of the cycle. Well, they
didn't need me because how far the world has moved in intelligence in terms of
technology. Right, Duncan Idaho asks, enjoyed both your books. Well,
he's a fan. I'm his fan. I got an hour for him.
Do you think that O d n I has been successful in increasing collaboration between
intelligence agencies? If you were dn I under the current framework, what changes
would you make across the agencies? This is so bad? This question is
this is this is dynamite. We were sitting on a keg of dynamite.
So if you go back, you'll find there was a not bed written shortly
after the dn I was created, Right and uh I was invited by the
Washington Post to write a notbed and said, why am I invited to do
a notbed? Well, they had directors, they had ten top people saying
the dn I was a good thing. Well, I'm saying it's the worst
idea. Why they probably couldn't find anybody to say that. And my point
was at the time, to me, I think the finding fathers got it
right. Otherwords, you have an institution, you structure it and you keep
it tight and the DNI because there was a reaction at the time and they
had a plan that they've had for years in the basement. They did a
really good job on the Commission in terms of diagnosing what happened, but they
didn't have a plan and they slapped that on the end. That's my view
of it. But it was meant to be advisory, but be in the
government what it is. We decided we would make it a big agency.
Why you need an agency of the scope I think there may be a few
thousand people in it, And you're wondering, why do you have that when
you already have It doesn't make any sense. You've got competing and you're sitting
in Paris and the head of the DNI comes out and then the head of
the CIA comes out trying to figure it out. I don't understand, And
again I don't want to. Everybody working and I'm sure is a well deserving
government employee, and they're something great. I think we have built a very
major structure. The intelligence is so big that we're gonna get lost in the
woods. And I've talked to a couple of directors. I don't go nameless,
and I've expressed this and they have the same response, Jack tore doing
better and you can't. We can't do this, We can't, we can't
undo this, Congress. You have to understand I do understand all this right,
and it's too hard. But they know it's not the right answer.
They know in a hardheart is not there and they know if they get into
it, it's a it's a you're in a pit bullfight, right, And
why do I do this? I'm only gonna have the job for two years
and I'm going to spend all the time and nothing but headaches. I will
the morale and they pass on it. So this is going on. No
one's going to address it. I mean, I think there's we're going to
be in really hot trouble. But well, I mean a little time to
face up to what type of intelligence world are we going to have? The
face up to the challenges. The one thing I can promise anybody the steps
us to do it. They will never be rewarded for it. They will
you have to do it because you're a public servant. You believe in it,
and it's not like, oh it's too hard, and we'll work around
the edge. And to work around the edges, it just gets you.
What happens, you work around the jines, you keep building out things.
It's well exactly that. I mean, it's a little bit ironic that from
what I've read the CIA when it was created, the intent was that they
would be a coordinator of intelligence key people that were on the panel, two
of them, okay, and that they designed it. They did not think
that. They did not think this would happen. They don't. They should
know better than I know. When you start moving money and you do this
structure, what are you going to do with it? Well, we'll build
another, right, We'll hire more people, right, we have to give
them a roll. Fifty years ago. I don't understand that the Brits and
their service are leaning mean. And that is if you're an ops officer,
you do your own reporting, right. In other words, you don't have
we build these these blocks. And I wonder, you know, we build
a support structure that sits on the top of relatively small number of agents,
spies and a small amount of money, and we have a big structure to
support that, And I wonder, if I'm not wonder, I don't think
we have that right. Yeah, Well, last question from Alan, now
that no one will ever speak to me again, has the will? Has
the intensity of the Ukraine support in terms of dollars put the dollar itself someone
at risk in terms of the more complex environment it has to operate regarding volume
of borrowing and sanctioned hurdles for international trade. If not, would a China
Sea conflict induce manifestation of the same risk. That's a big monetary question there.
Well, when you actually look at what sixty one billion dollars is in
terms of the budget and world and world, you know, it's a lot
of money. To me, it's you know, but you know, you
look about what it's cosse to build a couple of planes and a couple of
ships. But let's look at what's happening. Originally we were paying that the
week in one of our biggest enemies. That's a pretty good deal. Anytime
you can use and it's not used, that's the role wor whenever you're lying
with surrogus. If you again, I don't like these words because I see
it more as a partnership. And they are out there because they want to
do it, they're defending their country. That that stuffs us from actually putting
boots on the ground blood on or Kona's saying, but it isn't. I
mean troops has sent right, So I think we have to recognize that they're
part of our team. And by sticking with them, we would have weakened
Russia, which would have weakened this access that I'm talking about. So it's
the what I would have say to the writer, this is a really good
investment. And remember a lot of it comes out of our stock, which
is then really replenished. Yeah, it goes into the American economy. I
forget where it is in the budget, but in terms of real expenditure it's
I don't think it's really the money that's the problem in Congress. Now,
are there a lot of other things that ought to be cut out of the
budget, And true, yeah, I would cut out a lot of stuff.
But I think this is one of the best investments, you know.
Yeah, And I think the problem that we discussed earlier is too small.
Yes, it needs to be bigger, and it needs to be more direct.
In other words, you don't send it to the checks so they can
send their second hand and you have to up the ante on the level.
And I learned this from this thing or this is a technology battle. This
is a new war. Putin's new forces are bringing new technology. They're not
sending, they're not holding back, They're putting their best in there. If
we give second best, what we're counting on is Ukrainian termination. Why don't
you give them determination? Why don't you give them everything that you can give
them? If you want to really stop, if you stop Putin, just
hold him. You don't have to win. Why we decided to do a
counter offensive, I don't understand. If you just hold him, he will
be a failure. And we stopped that. We looked like he was a
failure. We have made him alive again. He's strutting. You can't even
see it. You can see on the stage. Why because if we had
held him, now he looks like he's winning. So well, who's going
to try and you know, be any resistance. If he's winning, let
it go, let it roll. We'll get an industrial base out of Ukraine.
Sometimes relaxed old espion. I just want to let folks know that on
Tuesday we're going to be back with Matt Stevens, former Navy seal, and
then on Friday we're going to be here with Robert Young Pelton who's a war
journalist. But turn over to you guys to wrap it up. I mean
final thoughts. Please buy and read Good Hunting and The Spymaster's Prison. I
promise you will enjoy them both. We have to have you back because we
need this looks like a lifetime enterprise. We would love to have you.
We were doing two page the time, but now we're doing one patient at
jack. We didn't have time to or we didn't really get into it in
depth. We'll have to next time. But for folks who are out there
listening to this, could you tell them about the Arcing group and what you're
doing today and where they can find you. So when I left the agency,
I wanted to stay close to the information. Again, a lot of
things are certaindipitous. And there was a top lawyer defense lawyer in town and
he thought he was the best lawyer, and I'll have to say he was
the best layer in the country. I thought it was one of the best.
But I mean, I usually don't say the best because there's you don't
want to get two over the charged. But he asked me if i'd go
into business with him. We created a business and it was provided intelligence to
the private sector, right, and you know it's I'm not in covert action,
which was you know, so half of micro all my careers now devoted
to collecting information and basically in that consulting faction, which is factor which is
bringing in eligent saying, this is what I think about. This situation is
a bigger demand now for geopolitical and there's so much already out there analytically the
customers I'm now getting, Yeah, I got that. I really want to
know ground troop. So I'm suddenly gotten a new market. So most of
our clients, many of them come through law firms, because that's where companies
people that have problems are, especially as international, and that is looking at
companies people we're making investments, but now a lot of it is every All
the investment companies were looking at risk and geopolitical, but it was number four
on the list and they felt comfortable because they had models that would work.
Now people are coming to me more in the geopolitical arena. We're a small
boutique and you know, we don't have hats, and they were not at
conferences. Most of our workers referral and we have a website. We're putting
a new snazzy one off. What's your website, Well, it's the Arcan
Group. Yes, Arkham Arkhamgroup dot com. Thank you ARCA. My partner
was Stanley Arkin, and when I started, I had fourteen percent. I
never owned anything, and six months into it, I think he said,
I don't think this is working. So I had a piece. I was
about to say something good, good thing. Once in a while, you
hold your tongue. He said, I think we should be fifty to fifty
partners. But he didn't want the company to be named after him because he
was right, it's too personalized. So what I did know is truly one
of the great lawyers. But he was so successful. There's a lot of
people that don't like him because he was successful. He brought down the CEO
of American Express, so I don't get a lot of business from American Express.
So well, it's the Arcan Group. And sadly it was we were
in business twenty years. But he he was not a part There was a
real friend. We were really quite different, but there was a core there
that was very similar and it was a big loss on a on a personal
basis with Stanley. So we've held on to the name and uh, and
we've been known in the marketplace and sometimes it's called tagged just because it's simply
to yeah, write that, and so you can find this and uh,
you know, my door is I was about to stay open, but you
got too many people. Yeah, so yeah, it's and we have a
podcast and the news letter it goes out and you can see that I'm having
some fun. Actually we did some of it tonight. I mean it really
mine is going to be about spy cases and try and bring some of it
into the business community. Like insider its rat when you look at the aims
in the private sector, a lot of these same conditions. Someone said,
it's the oldest profession. Some of the gredients in the human side are indeed
constant psychology and all those things are still very much part of it. Yeah,
well, Jack, thank you so much for sharing some of your experiences
with us. And like they've said, we're going to have to do this
at least one more time. I think too. I mean, honestly,
I think we should just do it like every three months. We just put
it on the book as a recurring you know, I think it's endless.
You know, I do too. So my granddaughter gave me a for a
present like the right of Family's Story, which sounds great until you start to
do it. It's like, wow, I can write something quickly about today,
right, But if I have to go back in the book, you're
only up to you're halfway through. I'm only up to nineteen seventy four and
I've got twenty thousand words. So I mean, so we can go on.
I don't know if I can catch up to you. You know,
we're here for it. I mean, we were here for it. I
think the audience that needs a break once in a while. And well,
that's a lot of great guests, I mean terrific guests. We'll get back
to it in the fall. I think, you know, ye let us
sink in, let some more problems, because tonight's problem is not the problem
we were talking about the last time. This movie, this world is movie
so fast. I like to take some of my experience and fast forward into
we're three months from now, we'll be talking a different way about this,
Jack. See what you said. Now they're all broken apart. I'm betting.
I'm betting that's not the case, but I think will be. I
think, you know, to degree you want to do what I enjoyed.
Yeah, you are the best interviewers because if anything else, the audience they
know that you know what you're talking about. You know, you've read this
book and I said that one fellow you know, invited me and held up
the wrong book. We're having any discussions because you know what you're talking about
and it's in an area that I feel comfortable with. So, uh,
that's why I come here. No, thank you. I mean, I've
done a lot of one timers, but I don't come back twice. If
you don't know who I am and called me billy, it's like, okay,
not going to work. But I feel like we are in this living
room here, and uh, I feel like a real real camaraderie. We
really appreciate that, Like we feel blessed to have you and people like you
willing to come on and share your life with us and your you know,
your experience, your wisdom. Do you make sure you clip that part where
he says how great we are? Yeah, that's important. Well, every
once in a while exaggerated. The rest of it was straight. But they
said they're not going to help me get an uber unless I say something that
part no, but no, but we feel pat. We got to get
Pat in here. She was here last night. Yeah, yeah, she
was great. Yeah, she well she has a crutches, so she's more
lethal. But she's she's coming back fast, she's coming back good. That's
good. Yeah, you actually, well, I don't know if she'll agree.
She has real high demands on her contract, but some of the things
she's done in behalf of the intel. She's she's more than welcome, you
know, Like we don't like try to exclude the spouses, be they male
or female. They're like welcome to come on the show. We're going to
have ground rules. So between you and her, Yeah, I can't.
I can't. We can't enforce that contract. You guys have to. Yeah,
I'll just tell you. We were taking Italian together because we were going
to Rome and the spouses can take the course, and we were going down
route ninety five, and I had the audacity to suggest that she wasn't using
the subjunctive right. The window goes down ninety five, out goes the Italian.
But we didn't have We went to class. There was only three of
us in class there not knowing our stuff. So you gotta be careful push,
but lucky I didn't get hit with the book book that I was in,
So we'll bring her back. She's she's been a big, big,
big part of keeping me afloat. We appreciate it. And our church upstairs,
it sounds like they've got getting started. It's time to worship. Uh
So we will see all of you on Tuesday and then again on Friday.
Please check out our friends at Caso Carabeo Cigars Costocarabeo dot com. And it
can't be. It can't be ten thirty. This is it is. Sorry,
apologies here, get off that couch. I got to roll. We're
having after all, right, guys, we'll see you