Speaker 1: Special Operations, Cobert Espionage. The Team House with your host
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy and David Park.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy
Speaker 2: here with co host David Park. Our guest tonight is
Speaker 2: j R.
Speaker 3: Seeger. Jr.
Speaker 2: Served as an Army infantry officer and then went on
Speaker 2: to have an extensive career in the Central Intelligence Agency,
Speaker 2: which included leading paramilitary teams, one of the first teams
Speaker 2: into Afghanistan, amongst many other postings around the world as
Speaker 2: a chief of station, chief of base, all sorts of
Speaker 2: interesting things that Jr. Will be able to get to
Speaker 2: in varying levels of detail as he's allowed.
Speaker 3: He is also an author.
Speaker 2: He's an author of the Mike Force series, and he
Speaker 2: is the author of a steam punk series. This is
Speaker 2: a school for the Great Game and I, uh, well, Jr.
Speaker 2: I've wanted to interview you. I've wanted to have you
Speaker 2: on the show for a long time. I really appreciate
Speaker 2: you doing this.
Speaker 4: Well, it's my pleasure, guys. It was the reason I
Speaker 4: didn't have any idea. You interviewed a teammate of mine
Speaker 4: and you looked right in the camera and said, hey, JR.
Speaker 5: If you're watching I want to.
Speaker 3: Talk to you.
Speaker 4: So that's actually why I'm talking to you today.
Speaker 3: You're talked about what we had Justin on.
Speaker 5: That's right, absolutely, Yeah, Justin.
Speaker 3: Sapp we had on a little while back. He was great.
Speaker 3: We had him in studio.
Speaker 2: So for folks who are watching, Justin was assigned to
Speaker 2: Special Forces, but was detached to one of the CIA
Speaker 2: paramilitary teams in Afghanistan, Alpha Team. The Alpha Team leader
Speaker 2: was this guy right here, Jr. So that's why I
Speaker 2: wanted to have him on the show.
Speaker 3: They are let's kick it off. I'd like to hear
Speaker 3: a little bit about your origin story.
Speaker 2: We asked our guests to tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about their upbringing and sort of that path that took
Speaker 2: them into governmental service, in your case, into the Airborne
Speaker 2: Infantry then the Central Intelligence Agency.
Speaker 4: Okay, well it's not terribly exciting. I mean, basically, I
Speaker 4: grew up in a blue collar family. My dad was
Speaker 4: a railroad engineer, grandfather was a railroad engineer.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: There, it was just a blue collar family. I grew
Speaker 4: up in a little, tiny rural town. It's today it's
Speaker 4: not quite as rural as it used to be, but
Speaker 4: it was a rural town outside of Buffalo, and then
Speaker 4: my folks made it very clear I was going to college.
Speaker 4: I mean it was just like there there was no
Speaker 4: I mean, I was either going to go to college
Speaker 4: or they were going to knife me in my sleep sometime,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean it was really that that straightforward,
Speaker 4: and I I was fine with that. I mean I
Speaker 4: was not a terribly interesting kid. I mean I had school,
Speaker 4: and I had sports. I played soccer, and I was
Speaker 4: a wrestler.
Speaker 5: That was it. So Honestly, if.
Speaker 4: It hadn't been for the New York State Regions Scholarship,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I could have afforded to go to
Speaker 4: college right after high school. But I did, and I
Speaker 4: was able to go to a small school college called
Speaker 4: Eisenhower College. Now, for those of you who might look
Speaker 4: it up, you won't find it because Eisenhower College folded
Speaker 4: in the in the late nineties or mid nineties actually,
Speaker 4: And you know, it was a school that was designed
Speaker 4: at the request of President Eisenhower to create a cadre
Speaker 4: of people who were experienced in world events and worlds.
Speaker 4: It was called World Studies. And one of the reasons
Speaker 4: it wasn't terribly popular is because you didn't get you
Speaker 4: didn't get any electives until you were in your second
Speaker 4: semestery of your junior year. But I mean, I you know,
Speaker 4: to give you a feeling for how the school started.
Speaker 4: Class one in the big lecture hall was on the
Speaker 4: creation of the Chinese Empire, and then class two was on.
Speaker 5: Confucianism, and then class three.
Speaker 4: Was on Chinese literature, and then class four was on
Speaker 4: you know, was and and it went across the world.
Speaker 4: So we learned about not just European history, but Asian history,
Speaker 4: African history, and African culture, African art, Asian art, Asian culture.
Speaker 4: So it makes me an, actually a pretty good cocktail.
Speaker 4: A party guy. I can talk for about a minute
Speaker 4: about just about anything, uh, you know, And more than
Speaker 4: once in my career I have looked a guy in
Speaker 4: the eye had said Majong. Yeah, I know what majong is.
Speaker 4: I've always wanted to play majoh. And then of course
Speaker 4: I go home and open up my books and figure
Speaker 4: out what the hell majong is?
Speaker 5: Is it a what is it? Is it a sport?
Speaker 5: Is it a game? Is it a board game? What
Speaker 5: is it?
Speaker 4: But anyhow, uh I mentioned and I've spent a little
Speaker 4: bit of time focusing on that school, because the only
Speaker 4: reason I ended up in the CIA is because of
Speaker 4: Eisenhower College, and not the way you think.
Speaker 5: Anyhow, I went to I went out of college.
Speaker 4: I then went to graduate school, where I came to
Speaker 4: the realization that I was a pretty good student. I
Speaker 4: was a terrible scholar.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: I learned that lesson when the I had the department
Speaker 4: pulled me aside and said, you know, Jef, your grades
Speaker 4: are really good.
Speaker 5: You're never getting a degree here.
Speaker 4: So I mean, you know, you don't have to throw
Speaker 4: a brick through my window to make me realize I
Speaker 4: need to go away. So after my master's he got
Speaker 4: the chairman of the department got me a job as
Speaker 4: an archaeologist, and I was an archaeologist for a year
Speaker 4: in Wyoming. This is nineteen nineteen seventy nine nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 4: Things happened the course during that time period, the hostage
Speaker 4: crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. And
Speaker 4: I had always been interested in thinking about how I
Speaker 4: was going to do service. In fact, while I was
Speaker 4: in grad school, I sent a note to an application
Speaker 4: to the CIA. In the old days, you had to
Speaker 4: mail it in and I got a letter back that
Speaker 4: said no, thank you.
Speaker 5: So I was like, okay, I guess that.
Speaker 4: You know, that's so far my career progression is really
Speaker 4: working well for me, right, everything's everything's doing fine. I
Speaker 4: keep asking for stuff and people keep saying no.
Speaker 5: So then.
Speaker 4: I joined the army and that was our shock. To
Speaker 4: my wife, she was my girlfriend at the time, she
Speaker 4: was like, you did what.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I enlisted in the Army as a private and went
Speaker 4: to Fort Knox, Kentucky in basic training as a twenty
Speaker 4: six year old, and then went to a CS and
Speaker 4: went on to you know, Airborne School, ranger school, all
Speaker 4: that stuff, and then did four plus years with the
Speaker 4: eighty second as an Airborne Infantry officer and then progressively
Speaker 4: a couple of other staff jobs before I was getting
Speaker 4: ready to go on to the advanced course. And I
Speaker 4: guess most of your folks would know that unless you're really,
Speaker 4: really good and you're an OCS officer, you're at the
Speaker 4: bottom of the pile. And I used to think that
Speaker 4: was just you know, prejudice, but I understand now, having
Speaker 4: done a long career in the federal government, that they're
Speaker 4: just amortizing their investment, right costs a lot of money
Speaker 4: to put an officer through West Point and a lot
Speaker 4: of money to put them through ROTC. I got commissioned
Speaker 4: after four and a half months as an E four
Speaker 4: A specialist, so it didn't cost them very much to
Speaker 4: put me into that commission source. So I am trying
Speaker 4: to figure out what's going to happen to me when
Speaker 4: I'm working in my office at I was the the
Speaker 4: S three air in my battalion, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: in an airborne battalion, there's got to be an NCO
Speaker 4: and an officer who designed all the jumps and get
Speaker 4: the airplanes and get the parachutes all that stuff. And
Speaker 4: I get a phone call says, hey, Captain Seeger, we
Speaker 4: understand that you're thinking about, you know, what's going to
Speaker 4: happen next, and we we'd really like to talk to
Speaker 4: you about an opportunities in CIA cold call. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: really like, really, this is how you do this, right?
Speaker 4: So I turned to my partner in crime at the
Speaker 4: time and E seven that I've done a lot of
Speaker 4: other kinds of stuff with him, and I said, Jim,
Speaker 4: here's the deal. They want me to meet this guy
Speaker 4: at a hotel if if I end up face down
Speaker 4: on the Cape Fear River tomorrow. I want somebody to
Speaker 4: know what the hell was going on. So anyhow, that
Speaker 4: was just that, that's sort of what happened. I wasn't
Speaker 4: it was a real deal, and I was puzzled for
Speaker 4: years as to how I was approached. Well, it turns out,
Speaker 4: uh so many years later that classmates of mine at
Speaker 4: Eisenhower College were already in the CIA because their parents
Speaker 4: were in CIA interest. And in those days, that's, you know,
Speaker 4: not the only way that things could be done, but
Speaker 4: it was one of the ways that.
Speaker 5: Things we've done today.
Speaker 4: Of course, for anybody who is interested, you go online,
Speaker 4: and like every other part of the federal government, you
Speaker 4: apply online and the process then goes into a you know,
Speaker 4: a protected environment. But there you can't you know, refer anybody.
Speaker 4: What happens is they you go on you know, the
Speaker 4: applicants go online, which is a good thing because quite honestly,
Speaker 4: if you have these referrals, everybody looks ends up looking
Speaker 4: like the next guy, right, I mean, you know, and
Speaker 4: we need all kinds of different people in the CIA today.
Speaker 4: And so anyhow, that was my entrance into the CIA.
Speaker 4: I worked into a training program which the selection process.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it is now, but the selection
Speaker 4: process when I was going through, I started in April
Speaker 4: of eighty five and I was certified as a case
Speaker 4: officer in June of eighty six, so it's approximately a
Speaker 4: year plus of different steps along the way. And then
Speaker 4: by that time I was married and I had convinced
Speaker 4: the agency. Actually I walked into a personnel office and said,
Speaker 4: this is my wife's resume. You can see that she's
Speaker 4: really the smart one of the two of us. And
Speaker 4: they looked at the resume and they said, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 4: We're interested in her because she is much smarter than
Speaker 4: you are.
Speaker 5: Hired her.
Speaker 4: And then as to onward assignments, basically there were two
Speaker 4: different outfits that were two different parts geographic divisions. They
Speaker 4: don't have those things anymore, but they were in the
Speaker 4: old days. There were geographic divisions and the director of operations.
Speaker 4: There are two geographic divisions who were asking me if
Speaker 4: I was interested, and I basically told them, whoever hires
Speaker 4: my wife is.
Speaker 5: The one that's going to be, you know, on the list.
Speaker 4: So it turned out that it was near East Division,
Speaker 4: and which was actually okay by me because I'd already served.
Speaker 4: When I was in the Army, I served in the
Speaker 4: Multinational Force of Service in Egypt. So I thought, that's cool.
Speaker 4: I mean, I get it. I mean Arabic's tough language,
Speaker 4: but I can do that. So I get off my
Speaker 4: you know, one week leave after this months of training,
Speaker 4: and I go in and they said, good news, you've
Speaker 4: got an onward assignment. Bad news, you're late for language school.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, okay. Oh and by the way, it's
Speaker 4: going to be a Dari and I'm like, okay, not
Speaker 4: having a clue what Darry is not a clue, So
Speaker 4: I said okay, and they said, well, you know you're late,
Speaker 4: get down to the you know, State Department, because that's
Speaker 4: where the Dari language school is.
Speaker 5: Check.
Speaker 4: And so what I found out was, of course it's
Speaker 4: Afghan Persian. And all my peers who were onward going
Speaker 4: on to onward assignments and they were going to study
Speaker 4: Chinese and Arabic and Russian. They were like, oh, Jay,
Speaker 4: you're so screwed. I mean, you were no one is
Speaker 4: going to care. You know, you're going to finish off
Speaker 4: a tour someplace and then you're never going to be
Speaker 4: able to use your language again, You're gonna have to
Speaker 4: study another one. I was like, well, you know, orders
Speaker 4: are orders. I mean, I just came out of the army.
Speaker 4: I know, I don't don't. My hair hadn't even grown
Speaker 4: out yet, you know, I get it orders or orders,
Speaker 4: and so of course it. You know, in the long run,
Speaker 4: Afghan Persian turned out to be a pretty good language
Speaker 4: to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what was that first assignment? Then you said
Speaker 2: you were in the Near East Division. What did that
Speaker 2: look like for you? In what year was it by
Speaker 2: that time that you after you finished you graduated your sinning?
Speaker 4: Well, okay, so I went to my first assignment in
Speaker 4: eighty seven because it was a year long language program.
Speaker 4: And as I told you earlier, I have to just
Speaker 4: sort of be generic. Sure it was it was in
Speaker 4: South Asia. You can do them, you can do the math,
Speaker 4: and I was. I was assigned instead of a standard
Speaker 4: sort of conventional tour. I was assigned because I had
Speaker 4: the Afghan Persian. And for those of you, for you know,
Speaker 4: your your listeners who don't remember this time period, the
Speaker 4: Soviets had occupied Afghanistan and they were fighting the Afghans
Speaker 4: across the entire country. So I was sent in along
Speaker 4: with a couple other people to UH to meet with Afghans,
Speaker 4: Afghan resistance guys. Now, this was not in any way,
Speaker 4: shape or form associated with the the paramilitary weapons program
Speaker 4: that we had at the time, and that's you know,
Speaker 4: it was super secret then. But you know, let's face it,
Speaker 4: once you start to deliver Stinger missiles into Afghanistan, it's
Speaker 4: kind of a clue who's in charge.
Speaker 2: We've had Bass Basil on the show before, who may
Speaker 2: have mentioned a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, Well, bas was one of the guys actually,
Speaker 4: Baz and Uh there was my very first job, uh
Speaker 4: in the agency, before I was in the pipeline, was
Speaker 4: down in the sub basement in the building with guys
Speaker 4: like in fact, with baths and a number of other guys.
Speaker 5: We refer to ourselves as the methane breeders.
Speaker 4: Because of course, you know, would say it's a heavy
Speaker 4: gas and it goes down into the basement.
Speaker 5: Anyhow, So I spent three years.
Speaker 4: Meeting Afghans night after night after night who had just
Speaker 4: come out from a war zone and we're willing to
Speaker 4: talk about what they were doing. And so that's what
Speaker 4: I did. I debriefed soldiers. Basically, it was a very
Speaker 4: unconventional sort of environment for me, and that was my
Speaker 4: first tour. You know, if you no matter how bad
Speaker 4: your language might be, if you meet guys like six
Speaker 4: nights a week for three to four hours in a night,
Speaker 4: pretty quick you get you know, unless you really a
Speaker 4: dim you get to you know, you get pretty good
Speaker 4: at the language. So that's that's sort of where it was.
Speaker 4: And I was finished my tour. I had a I
Speaker 4: got into a tiff with any division. It was my fault,
Speaker 4: uh really quite honestly, because I told him that I
Speaker 4: would had been working with sad guys and I wanted
Speaker 4: to go work an sad And they said, you don't
Speaker 4: seem to understand, young case officer.
Speaker 5: We you you're an any guy. You're going to be
Speaker 5: an any guy. Okay. Uh?
Speaker 4: Well, anyhow, Uh, for all of the things that we
Speaker 4: can say bad about Sada Hussein, the fact that he
Speaker 4: invaded Kuwait actually made my life much easier in one respect,
Speaker 4: which was uh, they had a job for me, which
Speaker 4: was a crummy what what I they thought was a
Speaker 4: crummy job.
Speaker 5: It was a great job for me.
Speaker 4: I was in a desert shield, desert storm in the
Speaker 4: eastern province of Saudi Arabia. There was no other agency
Speaker 4: officer there that could work with the Saudis and work
Speaker 4: with the military. So, uh, that's what I did. For
Speaker 4: a better part of the year. I was the uh
Speaker 4: you know, this is a classic sort of story. People say,
Speaker 4: how can this possibly be? But it's a classic. It's
Speaker 4: kind of like the story, Uh, there's a there's an
Speaker 4: old story about Texas Rangers, and there's a story about
Speaker 4: in the in the twenties, there was a you know,
Speaker 4: there was a a riot a in Waco, Texas and
Speaker 4: it was a one riot, one ranger exactly, you know.
Speaker 4: And so the idea is is that I was the
Speaker 4: the agency l and O for eighteenth Airborne Corps, first
Speaker 4: Marine Expeditionary Force and UH eight the first tack Fighter Wing.
Speaker 4: So I kept pretty busy during that time period. It's
Speaker 4: mostly because of my background. It was mostly associated with
Speaker 4: what at the time was called force protection but really
Speaker 4: was counter terrorism counterintelligence stuff. And did that for until
Speaker 4: I know, returned and then they by that time all.
Speaker 5: Was forgiven and.
Speaker 4: Mary's Division said we've got another job for you and
Speaker 4: your wife because we're a Tanem couple, which makes life
Speaker 4: kind of complicated. I had told them they could send
Speaker 4: me anywhere in the world so long as there were
Speaker 4: two jobs. So they said, we got a job for you.
Speaker 4: And it was a It was actually a very very
Speaker 4: cool job.
Speaker 5: It was in a.
Speaker 4: Specialized it would have been called it was a specialized.
Speaker 4: This is a long time before these kinds of things
Speaker 4: happened before, where it was a station going after Near
Speaker 4: East rogue state proliferators, terrorists and counterintelligence officers. So I
Speaker 4: did that for four years, working my way up from
Speaker 4: being a line case officer through to managing a team
Speaker 4: hunting one of these rogue state well all the rogue
Speaker 4: state intelligence services basically that we were working after, so
Speaker 4: both their military and their civilian services.
Speaker 5: Which was great.
Speaker 4: It meant being on the road about twenty days a month,
Speaker 4: so if you can do the math, it means, you know,
Speaker 4: I was home on weekends and leaving every Monday.
Speaker 3: And in this was a tandem a tandem tour.
Speaker 5: So it was my wife.
Speaker 4: If you're gonna ask my wife, it is what's what's
Speaker 4: called the Reports and Requirements officer Now it's called now
Speaker 4: they're called a CMOS. I guess right, and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: the only reason to go out and do stuff, of course,
Speaker 4: is to produce reports. By this time in my career,
Speaker 4: I'd come to the realization that although every case officer
Speaker 4: has to be a both a hunter and a handler,
Speaker 4: I come every case officer, by their second tour, ought
Speaker 4: to know which they're better at. And I'm a I'm
Speaker 4: a better handler, quite honestly, And you can, I can,
Speaker 4: I can basically squeeze intelligence out of just about anybody.
Speaker 6: And can you tell us sort of you know, in
Speaker 6: like case officer vernacular or whatever, what the difference between
Speaker 6: a hunter and a handler is?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 4: So so in you know, in the spy world, there
Speaker 4: are two things that have to be done right. One
Speaker 4: is produced intelligence, and that's done by people who are handlers.
Speaker 4: You debrief people, you keep them on board. You make
Speaker 4: sure that they are are productive, that they're safe, that
Speaker 4: they understand what they're supposed to do for us, right.
Speaker 5: But you're always you always need new.
Speaker 4: Business because you know, guys uh decide somewhere along the
Speaker 4: way they don't want to do it anymore, or they
Speaker 4: want to retire, or they want to or they get caught.
Speaker 4: So you always have to have new business. As well,
Speaker 4: so the hunters end up finding and recruiting the new spies. Now,
Speaker 4: most hunters prefer to just once they once they've recruited
Speaker 4: a spy, they prefer go and recruit another spy because it's.
Speaker 5: What they like to do.
Speaker 4: And then, man, that's not to say that you can't
Speaker 4: in the CIA as a case officer, you must be
Speaker 4: able to do both, right, But you know, pretty quick,
Speaker 4: like I say, early on, you figure out what you're
Speaker 4: better at, and I.
Speaker 5: Was.
Speaker 4: I'm not doing it at all anymore, but I was
Speaker 4: better at producing intelligence, taking the requirements, designing them so
Speaker 4: that the debriefing makes sense, doing it in language, and
Speaker 4: keeping the asset safe because that's our primary director, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, more than anything else. The CIA is a
Speaker 4: place where you were expected, more than anything else to
Speaker 4: keep your asset alive and safe. Teach them how to
Speaker 4: be safe, as they don't know. It's not their profession, right,
Speaker 4: So it's it's our trade craft skills that we use
Speaker 4: to do that.
Speaker 2: And then afterwards you had a more conventional tour in
Speaker 2: a South Asian country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was, you know, I was a base chief,
Speaker 4: running you know, regular espionage operations. Uh, And I mean
Speaker 4: it was. It was a good tour. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was an okay tour I did. I did two years
Speaker 4: there and uh, I mean I can't really talk very
Speaker 4: much about the cases, but I mean basically it was
Speaker 4: classic spot assessed, developed, recruit, and handle and then manage
Speaker 4: young case officers who are spotting, assessing, developing, and recruiting. Uh.
Speaker 5: And it and as as was pretty typical of the time. Uh.
Speaker 4: You have to remember that we're talking about now. Now,
Speaker 4: we are talking about the post Cold War world. So
Speaker 4: there's lots of different kinds of people who five years
Speaker 4: earlier would have been great targets and are now our
Speaker 4: allies or at least at least our neutrals. And then
Speaker 4: but there's always going to be targets out there, and
Speaker 4: of course if you and also you're always going to
Speaker 4: be looking at local targets if you can. It depends
Speaker 4: on the It all depends on the security environment. And
Speaker 4: I was in a pretty rigorous security environment, so we
Speaker 4: didn't do a lot of that stuff. We did in
Speaker 4: awful lot of third country national stuff. But you know,
Speaker 4: I mean during all of that time there, actually just
Speaker 4: before the conventional tour, during the other tour, I got
Speaker 4: grabbed up and opened up a provisional station.
Speaker 5: In the former Soviet Union. Wow.
Speaker 4: So that was another one of those classic sort of
Speaker 4: stories of hey, who are we going to send to
Speaker 4: this Oh, we'll just send this guy. Why, well, because
Speaker 4: he's reliable, but he's also disposable, you know. I mean
Speaker 4: it just it is. When I was sent to there
Speaker 4: was you know, a bunch of teams all going out. Right,
Speaker 4: There's nineteen ninety two, the USSR had collapsed. All of
Speaker 4: these places are opening up, and I'm getting my in
Speaker 4: brief and I'm looking around with all the other guys
Speaker 4: that are there.
Speaker 5: There's nobody who was from Russia.
Speaker 4: House like, it's all of my pals who were in
Speaker 4: like had been in Southeast Asia or Africa or any
Speaker 4: or someplace like that. And you know, okay, you know
Speaker 4: it turns out, of course, Afghan Persian is actually pretty
Speaker 4: well translates across to the other side of the border.
Speaker 4: Not I mean, if I had spoken Russian it would
Speaker 4: have been great, but I didn't, But I could speak
Speaker 4: Afghan Persian, and so you know, Afghan Persian works pretty
Speaker 4: well for COGICs.
Speaker 5: It will.
Speaker 4: You can get along with Uzbeks, you can get along
Speaker 4: with Turkmen all those those southern Central Asian countries.
Speaker 3: Did they also send you Jr.
Speaker 2: On a job like that because they figure, oh, this
Speaker 2: is an army guy, like he can sleep in the dirt,
Speaker 2: like use a rock as a pillow.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, it's not that big a deal.
Speaker 4: Well, it's that, I mean, that's true. But it's also
Speaker 4: because most of these places, right after the collapse of
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union were at civil wars, right, I mean
Speaker 4: so so yeah, a lot of the kinds of things
Speaker 4: I did there. And it wasn't for very long until
Speaker 4: the station was formalized, but you know, as a provisional station,
Speaker 4: it was really nineteenth century sort of intelligence. It was like,
Speaker 4: gohst buy the land, go out and see every day
Speaker 4: you're like, walk out on the street, see who's shooting
Speaker 4: at somebody else? Uh, you know, get in a car,
Speaker 4: figure out where the shooting stops. Give us a better
Speaker 4: feeling for what's going on. It really wasn't an espionage tour.
Speaker 4: And and you know fair enough, I mean, my my successors,
Speaker 4: you know, or the people who opened up the station afterwards,
Speaker 4: they you know, they were able to to conduct conventional
Speaker 4: espionage that just wasn't what they asked me to do.
Speaker 5: And uh that was a good thing, because isn't what I.
Speaker 6: Do nowt out of curiosity. When you say that, like
Speaker 6: in all these former USSR Soviet Union countries that nobody
Speaker 6: was from rush House or the people were't from rush House.
Speaker 6: Is that because they were all drunk wondering what had
Speaker 6: happened to their career and their life with the Soviet Union.
Speaker 4: No, Actually it was because they were in Moscow, Okay, right,
Speaker 4: I mean they were they were doing U in Moscow
Speaker 4: or in Saint Petersburg, or in places where the KGB
Speaker 4: was running away too, you know, I mean there was
Speaker 4: there were lots of There were lots of It was.
Speaker 4: The collapse of the USSR was a you know, it
Speaker 4: was a catastrophe if you were a KGB agent, right,
Speaker 4: I mean because even if you were only in the
Speaker 4: First Chief Directorate, which was the Foreign Intelligence Service, you
Speaker 4: couldn't say to you like your neighbors, oh I'm with
Speaker 4: a I was with the KGB, because they're going to
Speaker 4: think about the other side of the KGB, which was
Speaker 4: the you know, the toutalitarian U terrorizing people stuff. So
Speaker 4: there was a lot of work to be done in
Speaker 4: those places. It just wasn't going to be in the FSU,
Speaker 4: which is fine because turns out, of course, the FSU
Speaker 4: turns out to have been a fascinating place for or
Speaker 4: the for the agency, and for State Department for that matter,
Speaker 4: and for the military. I mean, you know, one of
Speaker 4: the things that if you read like Toby Harden's book,
Speaker 4: or if you read Doug Stanton's book about about the
Speaker 4: operations in Afghanistan, the one of the odas Oda five
Speaker 4: nine five had just come back from working with the Uzbeks.
Speaker 4: So I mean, you know, it turned out to be
Speaker 4: a really important It turned out to be a really
Speaker 4: important thing to build a network of allies during that
Speaker 4: time period. I take no credit for that might because
Speaker 4: they were just the guys who were eventually were in
Speaker 4: charge were still shooting at each other when I left,
Speaker 4: but but eventually, I mean, you got to start with
Speaker 4: a footprint someplace, and that's what we did. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of times it's the it's just the footprint,
Speaker 4: that's all you do. And you got to be ready
Speaker 4: for the fact that it's not always you know, great
Speaker 4: intelligence operations or great paramilitary operations.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's just spade work.
Speaker 3: Right, and then after that you had a couple of
Speaker 3: state side tours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we did well, I mean the state side tours.
Speaker 4: I mean, so two things. By that time, I was
Speaker 4: relatively senior, so I was managing the teams, not necessarily
Speaker 4: a station, but flyaway teams, and we were just using
Speaker 4: the US as a start point to go after all
Speaker 4: kinds of different sorts of targets all over the world.
Speaker 4: My team wasn't the only one that did that, I mean,
Speaker 4: but that's that was the States that in the meantime
Speaker 4: while since I was you know, not doing a lot
Speaker 4: of that flying away some but not as much because
Speaker 4: I had to be home managing and talking to guys,
Speaker 4: making sure that they followed all the TDY rules, make
Speaker 4: sure they don't get caught all that.
Speaker 5: So what I did was I.
Speaker 4: Was responsible for working with the FBI on counter terrorism stuff.
Speaker 4: At the time, counter terrorism was this is the late
Speaker 4: nineties going into just before well I was. I was
Speaker 4: in stateside for through nine to eleven. But the the
Speaker 4: FBI had, you know a challenge because before nine to eleven,
Speaker 4: the idea was that the that counter terrorism was something
Speaker 4: that was really hard to prove and it was really
Speaker 4: hard to build networks the way the FBI is really
Speaker 4: good at building networks on other kind of criminal enterprises.
Speaker 5: I mean, the FBI.
Speaker 4: Don't ever think that if the FBI is after you,
Speaker 4: you won't get I mean, I'm just here to tell
Speaker 4: you their work is exceptional.
Speaker 5: But it was a challenge.
Speaker 4: And here I was a guy who had spent basically
Speaker 4: from nineteen eighty seven until I arrived in California in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety seven, I'd been a guy who had, you know,
Speaker 4: worked with on terrorist targets. That's what I did, and
Speaker 4: I was building a network of flyaway guys who were
Speaker 4: doing counter terrorism missions. So I could go over the
Speaker 4: FBI and sit down with the FBI senior managers and say, Okay,
Speaker 4: here's here's how.
Speaker 5: We would do it.
Speaker 4: I don't have any idea how you can do it,
Speaker 4: but at the very least I can tell you what
Speaker 4: the bad guys are doing out there in their efforts
Speaker 4: to come here. So that was, you know, that was
Speaker 4: part of my work that I did just before nine
Speaker 4: eleven jr.
Speaker 2: And then could yeah, take I mean, this is a
Speaker 2: little bit of a segue, but maybe worthwhile we want
Speaker 2: to take maybe just a moment to explain to people,
Speaker 2: because I think the public has this perception, largely because
Speaker 2: of the movies, that the CIA has a very robust
Speaker 2: and intrusive presence domestically in the United States. Could you
Speaker 2: explain how that works in real life, I mean, the
Speaker 2: realities of the limitations that you have as you know,
Speaker 2: any sort of state side assignments.
Speaker 4: Well, sure, I mean, first of all, there is I mean, like,
Speaker 4: as I said, the team that I was managing, they
Speaker 4: were I mean the only reason they were state side
Speaker 4: is because we had great airports, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 4: that's what we did. We flew out from stateside to
Speaker 4: someplace else and that's great.
Speaker 5: I mean it was.
Speaker 4: I mean, let's face it, as the counter intelligence environment
Speaker 4: has become progressively more difficult, it's really hard to.
Speaker 5: Do some of the thing.
Speaker 4: In fact, it's impossible to do some of the things
Speaker 4: that I did in Europe back in the early nineties.
Speaker 4: Can't do it because of what's called ubiquitous technical surveillance, right, right,
Speaker 4: that had just that had just started in the end
Speaker 4: of the nineties, but it was already we knew that
Speaker 4: our work was going to be limited unless we did
Speaker 4: something like start and finish from the USA.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, our work with the FBI was exclusively
Speaker 4: and I can't speak for what it's like now, but
Speaker 4: our work for the FBI was exclusively to help them
Speaker 4: understand the target set. We weren't allowed to talk to
Speaker 4: Americans at all, I mean at all unless The only
Speaker 4: time I ever talked to an American was when I
Speaker 4: was with an FBI agent, and we would talk to
Speaker 4: an AM He'd show his creds and I'd show my
Speaker 4: creds and there was no sneaking around. And that was
Speaker 4: really rare because quite honestly, the FBI, if they're building
Speaker 4: a case, they really don't want any complications. They want
Speaker 4: two special agents who are trained to do the right thing.
Speaker 5: And we're not.
Speaker 4: I mean, CIA guys aren't trained to do I mean
Speaker 4: we're trained, you know, to steal things and break things.
Speaker 4: I mean basically, right, that's our job abroad. And so no,
Speaker 4: there is not a robust CIA presence in konis continental
Speaker 4: United States. And what it is is maintained in a
Speaker 4: structure that is through our FBI partners. The FBI, by
Speaker 4: the mid nineties had what they call the Joint Terrorism
Speaker 4: Task Force which would have been in each of their
Speaker 4: field offices, So there would have been sheriff's deputies and
Speaker 4: police departments and and uh you know members of NCIS
Speaker 4: and members of OSI Air Force. Uh intelligence, Uh, well
Speaker 4: counterintelligence aren't. And we were just there to to provide
Speaker 4: a context. If they wanted to talk about something that
Speaker 4: was going on someplace else, we could use our electronic
Speaker 4: capability to pull down that data. And the data are
Speaker 4: important when you're building the case, no question, But a
Speaker 4: lot of times, at least in you know, post nine
Speaker 4: to eleven or pre nine to eleven, I didn't even
Speaker 4: know what the cases were. It was completely out of
Speaker 4: my h you know, they wouldn't talk about it, and
Speaker 4: rightly so, because you know, if you want to put
Speaker 4: a guy in to if you want to try a
Speaker 4: guy for some kind of crime, the last thing you
Speaker 4: want to do is have in the discovery process some
Speaker 4: data that says, oh, yeah, and there was this shmoe
Speaker 4: from the the I.
Speaker 2: A right, the right, and you're you're living under a
Speaker 2: cover and an alias and so on. So it's not
Speaker 2: like you can take the stand under oath under your
Speaker 2: real name and offer testimony.
Speaker 4: Right, and we're still of course, is that as you
Speaker 4: said in the you know, the movie presentation of what
Speaker 4: agency officers, what what we're like is a you know.
Speaker 5: Is terrible.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just absolutely terrible in a criminal you know,
Speaker 4: in a criminal court. So we just didn't The FBI,
Speaker 4: you know, was was more than happy to be to
Speaker 4: work with us, but work with us in a way
Speaker 4: that was consistent with what they needed to accomplish. Now,
Speaker 4: I won't you know, I don't want to leave this
Speaker 4: subject without saying, and the FBI would help us if
Speaker 4: they had a case that went overseas, if they didn't
Speaker 4: have a you know, an overseas footprint, and they and
Speaker 4: they thought that they could help us while we were
Speaker 4: working abroad. Then absolutely our partners in the FBI did
Speaker 4: that too, right, So it was a it was a
Speaker 4: mutually beneficial partnership. But it wasn't something that my the
Speaker 4: guys were working for me were going to spend their
Speaker 4: time doing, because they were busy hustling new cases, producing intelligence,
Speaker 4: doing all that stuff.
Speaker 6: Right now, in terms of like working with the FBI
Speaker 6: when it came to overseas counter terrorism, because obviously the
Speaker 6: CIA doesn't have any arrest authority and the FBI did
Speaker 6: if you know, they can show it, like, was it
Speaker 6: was it acceptable for you know, the titles the CIA
Speaker 6: worked under for for you guys to run your intelligence
Speaker 6: operation and then bring in the CIA or i mean
Speaker 6: the FBI, Like, how is that evidence?
Speaker 3: How is that like custody of evidence?
Speaker 6: And how how when you built your case were you
Speaker 6: sharing it with them? Were they allowed to use your
Speaker 6: information by US legal standards?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: The answer, the short answer is no.
Speaker 4: That Actually, let me just say to both of you,
Speaker 4: you know it's important for you to know. I'm going
Speaker 4: to reveal a secret to you, right, So CIA Case
Speaker 4: Officer Class one hour one. The answer to all questions
Speaker 4: is it depends. Let's just so you know, right, And
Speaker 4: of course that's because we're always working with humans, and
Speaker 4: humans change over time. But in the case of the FBI,
Speaker 4: basically what you would be looking at in a case
Speaker 4: of overseas, the intelligence network that you build then becomes
Speaker 4: something that the that might be shared both with the
Speaker 4: FBI and with a local law enforcement edity that would
Speaker 4: be partnered with the FBI. So, so what's going on
Speaker 4: abroad is not about I mean, I mean and I
Speaker 4: was never involved in counternarcotics or any of that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff where we you know, where bad guys get
Speaker 4: grabbed and brought to the United States. I was involved
Speaker 4: in counter terrorism stuff, and what would happen would be
Speaker 4: the case would be built. Uh, we'd be producing great
Speaker 4: intelligence and then anything that we could share with the FBI,
Speaker 4: that the share that the FBI could share with the service,
Speaker 4: or we could share with the service for that matter,
Speaker 4: if the FBI didn't what didn't have a footprint in
Speaker 4: the country that we were in, then we would because
Speaker 4: at the end.
Speaker 5: Of the day, uh, you know, I mean there's.
Speaker 4: The motto of the counter Terrorism Center, right, preempt, disrupt, defeat.
Speaker 4: So if you can disrupt the counter a terrorist network
Speaker 4: in a third country long before they are any threat
Speaker 4: in the.
Speaker 5: United States, absolutely you do that. Right.
Speaker 4: And if that means bringing in a liaison service, if
Speaker 4: it means partnering between a liaison service and the FBI
Speaker 4: and a CIA entity, good great. Actually, so I hope
Speaker 4: that sort of answers That means it's complicated, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: it is complicated, and every case is different, That's why
Speaker 4: it depends. But the vast majority of the stuff that
Speaker 4: we were doing on counter terrors some cases was producing
Speaker 4: the intelligence that then could be passed to a liaison
Speaker 4: service either directly with you know, because I was to
Speaker 4: give you a feeling for this, I was declared to
Speaker 4: like I think my last count was twenty two different
Speaker 4: liaison services. So so you know, if you could pass
Speaker 4: the intelligence, you would. If it made more sense to
Speaker 4: pass the intelligence through the FBI, and the FBI was there,
Speaker 4: you would. I mean, it's it's all you know, it's
Speaker 4: one team, one fight in that sense, there's there's no
Speaker 4: real downside to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into the run up into nine to
Speaker 2: eleven jr. Because you're already working counter terrorism, making these
Speaker 2: trips overseas kind of like where were you at around
Speaker 2: that period of nine to eleven?
Speaker 3: Where was your head at? What?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 2: What were the cases you were working? Was being laden
Speaker 2: in al Qaeda on your mind at that time?
Speaker 3: What? What was kind of your world at that point?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well okay, so just prior to nine to eleven, I
Speaker 4: had I had made a couple of trips out to
Speaker 4: Uzbekistan uh for something I mean it was associated with
Speaker 4: but not focused on us.
Speaker 5: Have been laden, right, U? Some have been laden?
Speaker 4: However, had become a for for counter terrorism center. Some
Speaker 4: have been lauden had been you know, like Target one.
Speaker 4: Everybody knew that it was. It was absolutely part of
Speaker 4: our mission set. Now, a lot of what I was
Speaker 4: doing wasn't necessarily it was associated. We used to call it, right,
Speaker 4: it was Islamic extremism, and you know it and we
Speaker 4: you know, we knew it was al Qaeda, but a
Speaker 4: lot of the al Qaeda network wasn't in fact calling
Speaker 4: itself al Kaeda at the time. I mean, ben Laden
Speaker 4: had this headquarters in Kandahar. They had had training camps
Speaker 4: in other parts of Afghanistan. We were certainly doing what
Speaker 4: we could understand that and work against him. A lot
Speaker 4: of the kinds of things that I was doing in
Speaker 4: in tash Kentworth was associated with rebuilding networks against Afghans
Speaker 4: or with with Afghans, so the Afghan resistance, and people
Speaker 4: don't I mean, people often ask me like, how in
Speaker 4: the world could you put you know, nine to eleven happens.
Speaker 4: You know, two weeks later we've got a team inside
Speaker 4: the ponds here and then you know, another week later
Speaker 4: you're flying out to tash Kent, and then two weeks
Speaker 4: after that the Team Alpha Team goes in, how can
Speaker 4: that possibly be? And the answer is, because we were
Speaker 4: running cases all the way through the nineties. It wasn't
Speaker 4: that we expected nine to eleven. It was what the
Speaker 4: CIA does is is you build a case, you run
Speaker 4: a case, you keep a case running. You get those
Speaker 4: folks used to seeing you with the understanding that sometimes
Speaker 4: the intelligence is good, sometimes it's bad, but generally speaking,
Speaker 4: it's that sustained relationship over the years. I mean, small joke.
Speaker 4: I gave this presentation to a bunch I've done this
Speaker 4: with a bunch of Special Forces groups, and I was
Speaker 4: given the presentation about this and I finished, and I'm
Speaker 4: walking out to get a cup of coffee, and the
Speaker 4: guys are walking out to get away from me, and
Speaker 4: I hear one of the younger Special Forces guys go like,
Speaker 4: who is that guy anyhow? And one of the older
Speaker 4: guys goes, man, you don't know that cat Man Jr.
Speaker 4: Is the forest gump of Afghanistan. Now I'm hoping, I'm
Speaker 4: really hoping. In the largest scheme of things. That was
Speaker 4: because I had been to a lot of different kinds
Speaker 4: of stuff. Right I met with Masoud in the nineties.
Speaker 4: I had worked with a bunch of different guys in
Speaker 4: the resistance in the eighties, and so the idea was that,
Speaker 4: you know, I just maybe it was because I was stubborn,
Speaker 4: Maybe it was because I like working with Afghans, maybe
Speaker 4: it's because I had the language. But I kept doing it,
Speaker 4: and I wasn't the only one. I mean, by no
Speaker 4: means was I the only guy doing the same thing
Speaker 4: who were just stubborn and kept working the Afghans whether
Speaker 4: the United States government cared or not. And now the
Speaker 4: CIA cared, and our intelligence that we were producing at
Speaker 4: the time in the nineties, you know, it was not
Speaker 4: it wasn't going to end up in the Presidential Daily Brief.
Speaker 4: It just wasn't. What it was doing is it was
Speaker 4: building that understanding of the complex web inside Afghanistan. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: we've been we'd focused on it for a long time.
Speaker 6: Did you during that time, especially after like the Russians
Speaker 6: left Afghanistan, when there was a period where was there
Speaker 6: a time when you had to sell Afghanistan to management
Speaker 6: and say, we still need a presence there, we still
Speaker 6: need to know what's going on.
Speaker 4: Well, what you do you don't, I mean, the answer
Speaker 4: is sort of kind of right, I mean, what you
Speaker 4: do is you sort out if the if the seniors
Speaker 4: aren't interested in it. Used to be a joke in
Speaker 4: the State Department. Actually one of the jokes this is
Speaker 4: in the in the seventies, and the joke was if
Speaker 4: you wanted to joke about somebody doing something that was
Speaker 4: absolutely of no interest to anybody. The argument that the
Speaker 4: line was, so, what's the political situation in Afghanistan? I mean,
Speaker 4: that was literally what State Department officers said when they
Speaker 4: were when they were trying to tell one of their
Speaker 4: their junior officers, what you're talking about? Nobody cares about, right,
Speaker 4: But the good news about Afghanistan, well, it was a
Speaker 4: terrible news. But from a standpoint of the United States government,
Speaker 4: there was a very quick transition from you know, the
Speaker 4: the problems associated with a civil war, right, because that's
Speaker 4: what happened when the Soviets left, it was a civil war.
Speaker 4: But pretty quickly after that people were interested in Afghanistan
Speaker 4: because it was the center of narco trafficking and then
Speaker 4: shortly after it being the center in narco trafficking, which
Speaker 4: it stayed throughout the entire Taliban era. It also became
Speaker 4: one of the centers of counter terrorism. So as a
Speaker 4: case officer and a manager of case officers, we always
Speaker 4: wanted to make sure that we weren't just doing something
Speaker 4: because it was something we wanted to do. You don't
Speaker 4: commit espionage because it's a cool thing to do. It's
Speaker 4: just not because you're putting a person at risk, whoever
Speaker 4: that is that's producing that intelligence. We're regardless of where
Speaker 4: they are, they are being put at risk. So you
Speaker 4: better have a reason behind it, you know. The truth
Speaker 4: is is that Afghanistan had sufficient reasons for all those
Speaker 4: years that you could always say, Okay, yeah, I know
Speaker 4: it's a country that has no economy, and I know
Speaker 4: that it really doesn't nobody really cares about it. But
Speaker 4: it's the primary producer of black tar opium. Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's disruptive, so yeah, we want to do something about that.
Speaker 4: Oh by the way, it's where ben Laden's headquarters is now,
Speaker 4: and he's training people. Long before we thought he was
Speaker 4: training people to attack America, he was training people to
Speaker 4: attack people all over the world, basically the entire West,
Speaker 4: So it was not a real problem.
Speaker 2: So when nine to eleven happens, was all these images
Speaker 2: of Masad and the northern alliance bin Laden was this
Speaker 2: what immediately came to mind, And if you could, I
Speaker 2: think we talked about this with with Rick Prado a
Speaker 2: little bit, but if you could talk to us a
Speaker 2: little bit about what it was like inside CTC and
Speaker 2: SAD that day.
Speaker 4: I can't tell you because I was on TDY in California.
Speaker 4: I was in California, I was driving, I was I
Speaker 4: was actually driving with my wife going to the FBI,
Speaker 4: and I got a phone call on the mobile phone
Speaker 4: saying from the regional boss saying, turn on the radio.
Speaker 4: And we're like, okay, you know, or we're in the
Speaker 4: middle of nowhere, We're probably she said, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 4: turn on any radio station.
Speaker 5: So that was, you know, as soon as nine to
Speaker 5: eleven happened.
Speaker 4: I mean we all, I mean basically all of us
Speaker 4: who had been doing the counter terrorism gig knew it
Speaker 4: was al Qaeda and it was designed and perpetrated by
Speaker 4: Ben Ladden. Now just because I mean, is what I thought, right?
Speaker 4: I mean, in the CIA, you got to make a
Speaker 4: very significant distinction between what you think and what you know.
Speaker 4: What you know is based on intelligence that you have
Speaker 4: either collected or somebody else's collected. It might be human,
Speaker 4: it might be Sigan, it might be something else. That's
Speaker 4: what you know. But all of us who have been
Speaker 4: working these targets for five years new or at least
Speaker 4: we thought, we certainly thought that it was ben Laden.
Speaker 5: So it took me.
Speaker 4: I mean, as we're driving, my wife turns to me
Speaker 4: and goes, you realize, you know, you're going to get
Speaker 4: on an airplane as soon as you can. They're going
Speaker 4: to call you back. And I was like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I know that. It wasn't like it was the first
Speaker 4: TDY I disappeared on. But you know, for a few days,
Speaker 4: I was able to close up some cases that that
Speaker 4: had been because you couldn't travel unless you drove someplace,
Speaker 4: and so I traveled to a bunch of different FBI
Speaker 4: units that were working cases and try to help them
Speaker 4: work through what they're what they were doing because their
Speaker 4: world changed completely.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 5: And then as soon as the.
Speaker 4: As soon as you could fly, I was called back
Speaker 4: to Washington and that's when I By that time, CTC
Speaker 4: Special Operations CTCSO had already been established, and I had
Speaker 4: a little sad face because I thought that I was
Speaker 4: going to go out with the team that went to
Speaker 4: the punch. I mean, I had helped set up the
Speaker 4: team that went to the pond ch here, I'd met Masu,
Speaker 4: I'd done all that stuff, and I get back and uh,
Speaker 4: they already gone.
Speaker 3: What was that that Jawbreaker?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly it was. It was actually, you know,
Speaker 4: officially titled the Northern Afghanistan Liaison.
Speaker 5: Team, and Jawbreaker was Nault three. So I'd been on
Speaker 5: Nault one.
Speaker 4: I'd had some of my guys, my flyaway guys, on
Speaker 4: Nault two, so I felt a little bit of of ownership.
Speaker 4: Well that was you know, slapped out of my head
Speaker 4: pretty quickly. Uh and uh, I was I was terrified
Speaker 4: that I was going.
Speaker 5: To end up.
Speaker 4: You know, I was back in the basement because that's
Speaker 4: where the the space was, and I thought, for sure,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be you know, doing uh all the
Speaker 4: all the kinds of stuff that that headquarters, all the
Speaker 4: important stuff, right, the logistics, the the management, but still
Speaker 4: not the cool guy stuff. And let's face it, you know,
Speaker 4: we all, given an opportunity want to be cool guys.
Speaker 4: So even at forty six, which is how old I
Speaker 4: was at that point in time. So but as soon
Speaker 4: as they started the as soon as you know I
Speaker 4: got my in brief. They were like, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 4: don't you worry. We're putting together another the first team
Speaker 4: that's going to go behind the lines, that's you, and
Speaker 4: Sad has already got the team assembled. Alex was my
Speaker 4: deputy and he was already assembling a team. Justin was
Speaker 4: there by the way, just a small sidebar to show
Speaker 4: how small the world is. Justin Sapp's dad was my
Speaker 4: instructor at the farm, so so you know it was
Speaker 4: it is a small world, Eddihow. The point is is
Speaker 4: that I start figuring out, Okay, we're going to go,
Speaker 4: how are we going to get in? And we can
Speaker 4: fast forward to that process. The only thing that's really
Speaker 4: fun or an interesting really the rest of it, it's
Speaker 4: just sort of administrative stories. But an interesting story is
Speaker 4: the day before I left, so I went out a
Speaker 4: day about actually a week early to Tashkent. Alex was
Speaker 4: assembling the team, assembling the weapons, assembling the como, assembling
Speaker 4: all of that, which obviously wasn't going to go on commercial.
Speaker 4: So he was assembling the equipment and the team that
Speaker 4: was going to go out on an agency bird. I
Speaker 4: went out commercial to tush Kent. But the day before
Speaker 4: I went out, it's a Sunday. There's you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: the team down in the basement that's managing CTCSO is
Speaker 4: working diligently, but it's basically an empty building. And in
Speaker 4: I'm sitting in front of a picnic bench because you know,
Speaker 4: it's a folding classic plastic picnic bench, because that's all
Speaker 4: there was in the basement. And I'm working through my
Speaker 4: notes and trying to figure out what we're going to
Speaker 4: do now next when incomes Director Tenant co for Black
Speaker 4: and Hank Crumpton. And I have known I've known Hank
Speaker 4: a little bit. I've known Koe for oh, I don't
Speaker 4: know at that point, fifteen years or so. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's a small world. So Director Tenant comes in. He's
Speaker 4: a big, burly guy. You've probably seen pictures of him
Speaker 4: at the very least, and he walks over to you know,
Speaker 4: the map that's at the table, and he goes, come here, Jah,
Speaker 4: I want to tell you what I want you to do.
Speaker 5: I'm like, yes, sir, I think I know. He says, why,
Speaker 5: I want to be clear.
Speaker 4: I want you to be clear about this, yes, sir,
Speaker 4: So he takes and because he's a big, burly guy,
Speaker 4: he takes a very large hand and puts it over
Speaker 4: all of northern Afghanistan and he says, Okay, Jair, listen,
Speaker 4: here's the deal. These are the five provinces of Afghanistan
Speaker 4: that you're responsible for. I want you to destroy the
Speaker 4: Taliban and capture or kill any Al Qaeda you could find. Yes, Sir,
Speaker 4: it was okay. Just wanted to be clear. He got
Speaker 4: up and left. That was it. That was my I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, in the army we talk about commanders in
Speaker 4: tent right, right. I mean, you can't ask for better
Speaker 4: commanders in tent right than that.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, Hey JR? Can you fix Afghanistan for us?
Speaker 2: If you could have that done by the end of
Speaker 2: the week, that'd be great.
Speaker 3: Thanks man.
Speaker 4: Luck Well, I mean, it wasn't only not all of Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: just five problems. I mean I have eight guys, right right,
Speaker 4: so you know, by the way, I mean, of course,
Speaker 4: at that point, I didn't know how it was going
Speaker 4: to get in. I didn't know what I was going
Speaker 4: to do when I got in. But he didn't care
Speaker 4: about that part because he was certain that I was
Speaker 4: going to make it work. Yeah, and you know, I
Speaker 4: guess if any of your your your listeners have read
Speaker 4: either Doug Stanton's book or Toby Harden's book. We were
Speaker 4: able to do that. Now, sadly we lost one of
Speaker 4: our guys while doing it, but we were able to
Speaker 4: accomplish that in probably much shorter time. I mean, when
Speaker 4: Alex and I talked about this, you know, we just said,
Speaker 4: you know, we're going to be in for a year.
Speaker 4: I hope you're prepared for a year. And I've told
Speaker 4: this to lots of people over time. This was a
Speaker 4: you know this, the success in the Fall of two
Speaker 4: thousand and one is a function of three things.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: It's a function of a CIA network, it's a function
Speaker 4: of ODA capabilities, and it's a function of US air power.
Speaker 4: Now you might say, well, what about the locals. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: the locals are a centerpiece to this, But the locals
Speaker 4: had been fighting the Taliban for the better part of
Speaker 4: three years and making and having almost no success along
Speaker 4: the way. So it was the addition of those three
Speaker 4: resources working together in collaboration, but not necessarily you know,
Speaker 4: trying to do the same thing. Everybody was doing something different.
Speaker 4: Is how we were able to accomplish what got accomplished,
Speaker 4: and I mean we inserted on the sixteenth of October.
Speaker 4: ODA five nine five I think came in on the
Speaker 4: night of eighteen nineteen, so two days later, two and
Speaker 4: a half days later, ODA five three four came in,
Speaker 4: about two weeks later, the the the ODC came in
Speaker 4: about another week after that, and in the space of
Speaker 4: so we and we rolled into Mazar Sharief on the
Speaker 4: tenth of November.
Speaker 2: Yeah, could you tell us about your team at Alpha team,
Speaker 2: kind of your planning process and insertion and kind of
Speaker 2: how that played out.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean, like most agency stuff, it's just
Speaker 4: sort of informal. So I had I was in Tushkent
Speaker 4: for like a week ten days, well about a week
Speaker 4: before before Alex was able to come in. So I
Speaker 4: spent that time period doing a couple of different things.
Speaker 4: The first thing was to work with the both the
Speaker 4: station there and with the Uzbek service to get in
Speaker 4: contact with with Abdu Rashido Stamp because he was the
Speaker 4: one guy that we had up in the north that
Speaker 4: we that was working behind the lines that we knew.
Speaker 4: I mean, there were other guys working behind the lines,
Speaker 4: but he was the one that we knew. So I
Speaker 4: started getting into a conversation with him on satellite phone.
Speaker 4: And he's a character and a half. I mean mostly
Speaker 4: if you've read anything about him, you know that. And
Speaker 4: you know early on he uh. So I decided, because
Speaker 4: I knew that they had no encrypted comms, I wasn't
Speaker 4: going to give my true names. So I decided I
Speaker 4: was my my nom de guerre was going to be
Speaker 4: Baba John, which just means grandfather. So we're talking back
Speaker 4: and forth and he says, you know, Baba John, I'm ready.
Speaker 4: I mean, we're ready for you, but we want to
Speaker 4: want you to know it's a little different here in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: And I was like, yes, Commander, I kind of know that.
Speaker 4: And he's like, well, no, let me just explain to you.
Speaker 4: So what we call an armored personnel carrier, you call
Speaker 4: a horse, and uh, you know, I was like, got
Speaker 4: it right.
Speaker 5: Check.
Speaker 4: But so so I've so I know, I got a
Speaker 4: guy at the other end. Now I got to get in.
Speaker 4: So we have some resource, some agency resources there, but
Speaker 4: nothing that will get us in deep enough to where
Speaker 4: we want to go. And I've got a couple of
Speaker 4: guys from the from the agency from s A D
Speaker 4: Air branch, and I find that the at the at
Speaker 4: the Toashkent Airport, actually the military side of the Tashkent
Speaker 4: Airport is an old Soviet aircraft kind of looks it's
Speaker 4: a it's a biplane sort of.
Speaker 5: It's a Its use is in the old Soviet days.
Speaker 4: It's used as a crop duster and moving people around
Speaker 4: and so it's it's an Antonov too. It's been around
Speaker 4: for a very long time. But I thought it was
Speaker 4: kind of cool because it looked like a lifesander. Now,
Speaker 4: for those of you who don't know what a lysander is,
Speaker 4: it is the aircraft that virtually all of the s
Speaker 4: OE and the OSS guys who didn't go in by
Speaker 4: parachute into France went in by lysander. It's an it's
Speaker 4: a high way stole aircraft. And I thought, how cool
Speaker 4: would this be?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: I mean, this is like right out, I mean we're
Speaker 4: already CTCSO right, So, I mean, which is what ossso
Speaker 4: SO is where they took the name from. So Okay,
Speaker 4: I go to the our crew, our air branch guys,
Speaker 4: and I go, what do you think? And they said,
Speaker 4: I don't know, we'll go check it out. They come
Speaker 4: back that afternoon. They said, we'll fly anything, but we
Speaker 4: cannot fly that. That airplane does not that's not safe.
Speaker 4: And that said a lot to me because I'd flown
Speaker 4: a bunch of different air branch aircraft and a bunch
Speaker 4: of different aircraft air branch pilots who will fly anywhere
Speaker 4: and do just about anything, and I thought, who I
Speaker 4: guess that didn't work out. So we're still puzzling over this,
Speaker 4: and Alex gets in and we're doing all the other
Speaker 4: sort of team and isolation stuff that an s F
Speaker 4: team or a MARSC team would be doing, right, we're
Speaker 4: doing you know, everybody's doing the checking weapons, checking comms,
Speaker 4: everybody's cross checking. What are you going to be able
Speaker 4: to do? We're getting our our our medic mark is
Speaker 4: giving us sort of basic this is your medic kit,
Speaker 4: this is my medic kit. This is what's going on.
Speaker 4: And I'm just puzzling with Alex. I'm like, we got
Speaker 4: to get in, but we can't walk in. I mean
Speaker 4: there's this river and we can't drive in because we
Speaker 4: can't cross the bridge because the Taliban owned the bridge.
Speaker 4: And he was like, well, let me get down to Carshaknabat.
Speaker 4: You know, I've still got some contacts down there. See
Speaker 4: what I can do. Remember now, Alex was a was
Speaker 4: a retired senior sergeant major. I mean he'd been a
Speaker 4: sergeant major in like multiple units in uh in the military, okay,
Speaker 4: multiple special forces units, multiple soft units. So he had
Speaker 4: a couple of contacts. So I said, excellent, you know
Speaker 4: we can I got you know, the the agency pilots
Speaker 4: will fly you down there. That's not a problem. So
Speaker 4: he goes down like the next day, he's magically said, hey,
Speaker 4: we're good to go. Uh I've talked to John mulholland
Speaker 4: and uh, we're you know, we're good to go. We
Speaker 4: got we We're going to fly in on the the
Speaker 4: night Stalkers are going to take us in.
Speaker 5: I'm like sweet.
Speaker 4: So we get down to we then we all fly
Speaker 4: down to tash to kku Z and go into isolation.
Speaker 4: And I go over to the night Stalkers and fold
Speaker 4: up my map and I say, I take my little
Speaker 4: fat finger like right out of Ranger school, point to
Speaker 4: the place. I that's that's where that's where our uh
Speaker 4: are Elsie is.
Speaker 5: Going to be.
Speaker 4: And they're like okay, and They're like, how do you
Speaker 4: want to get there? I'm like, guys, you're the pilots.
Speaker 4: I have no idea. I'm not gonna I'm certainly not
Speaker 4: going to try to tell guys from Task Force one
Speaker 4: sixty how to fly helicopters and where to go. All
Speaker 4: I want to do I've pointed once again feels that's
Speaker 4: where I want to go, and they're like, okay, any
Speaker 4: other thing, anything else.
Speaker 5: I said, well, I don't know if.
Speaker 4: We're going to have a reception committee, but you're not
Speaker 4: taking us back right this bird. Your birds are going
Speaker 4: to be empty when you go home. We'll getting off
Speaker 4: and if there's no reception committee, we'll figure out what
Speaker 4: we're going to do at that point, and they looked
Speaker 4: at me. Clearly, they looked at me, and they're like,
Speaker 4: oh boy, sure, this guy's nuts, but you know what,
Speaker 4: it's a mission. It's a really good mission. We're doing it.
Speaker 4: So there was some weather issues, like there always is
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan. So we were actually supposed to go in
Speaker 4: first the night of thirteenth and then the night of
Speaker 4: the fourteenth, and eventually the weather cleared up and we
Speaker 4: ended up in the night of the sixteenth and so
Speaker 4: that's how we got I mean, that's I have a
Speaker 4: whole story about getting in, but I that maybe just
Speaker 4: answers at least the front end of your question. Is
Speaker 4: there something else you wanted to talk about as far
Speaker 4: as kku z first.
Speaker 6: Before before we move forward, I just want to ask
Speaker 6: you because you were, like you were working Afghanistan in hindsight,
Speaker 6: like in retrospect when people go through the records, and
Speaker 6: I'm not talking about the you know, the hijackers here
Speaker 6: in the United States, but was there ever any indication
Speaker 6: or ever any any intelligence that like looking backwards, that
Speaker 6: that people could have predicted. Was there any way to
Speaker 6: tyl like Masud's death on the nine to what was
Speaker 6: going to happen?
Speaker 3: Or was it just a completely closed loop at that time?
Speaker 4: I mean I wasn't involved in the headquarters analysis of that,
Speaker 4: So I mean the short answer is I don't know, Okay.
Speaker 4: I can say that certainly ben Laden made no secret
Speaker 4: about the fact that he was going to attack Americans,
Speaker 4: not necessarily America, but he had named US in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety eight as the main enemy, and of course he
Speaker 4: had attacked the embassies, right, so he got the Nairobi
Speaker 4: and the darbombings, and then he attacks the USS call
Speaker 4: very clearly he was going to live up to his
Speaker 4: statement that he was going to attack Americans. Now the
Speaker 4: nine to eleven side of the house, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I mean, I really don't know. I certainly don't have
Speaker 4: any I mean, the stuff I was working with the
Speaker 4: FBI was more focused on possible other kinds of infiltration.
Speaker 4: Remember the nine to eleven hijackers are are Arabs, and
Speaker 4: they were on legitimate visas, right and and really not
Speaker 4: associated in any way, shape or form that we could.
Speaker 4: I mean maybe in hindsight somebody's looking up and figured
Speaker 4: it outright, but certainly not not from my perspective, right.
Speaker 6: And I like in h and that's why I say,
Speaker 6: like in hindsight, it's it's always easier or PC like
Speaker 6: it seems obvious or whatever. But you know, I don't
Speaker 6: think that people understand sort of the massive intelligence requirements
Speaker 6: that are placed on you know, the CIA, the FBI,
Speaker 6: the NSA, and you just can't collect on every single
Speaker 6: individual in the world. I was just wondering if if
Speaker 6: it had ever if I if especially in Afghanistan at time,
Speaker 6: like if we had access to those camps if we
Speaker 6: had sources, or if they were just so insular, insular
Speaker 6: and isolated that that there was no way to sort
Speaker 6: of predict that.
Speaker 5: I have no idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I really don't uh that that camps
Speaker 4: were that Ben Lawden and his crew. Remember Ben Laden
Speaker 4: was the figurehead, but he had a very sophisticated crew
Speaker 4: of guys who understood counterintelligence. Why do they understand counter
Speaker 4: intelligence because they had been on the run, they'd had
Speaker 4: like half a dozen services trying to kill them for
Speaker 4: almost a dozen years.
Speaker 5: Right, right, And so.
Speaker 4: How they protected their intelligence, how they how they protected
Speaker 4: their operations is I just wasn't involved in it.
Speaker 5: So I'm not even going to try and answer that question.
Speaker 6: Well, the Afghans, like even you know, during warlike they
Speaker 6: had fairly sophisticated counter as well, just because of their
Speaker 6: dealings with the Russians, whether they were trained by Russians
Speaker 6: or working against the Russians like they were not. You know,
Speaker 6: you think of Afghanistan as a non you know, not
Speaker 6: a very advanced country, not very technological, but they've been
Speaker 6: doing this for ages.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean this is part of the great game, right,
Speaker 4: And I'll give you I'll just give you one little
Speaker 4: tiny vignette that teaches you this kind of stuff. This
Speaker 4: goes back to the eighties. So I was I. I
Speaker 4: had a case that was that I had turned from
Speaker 4: being a case about about combat operations into a penetration
Speaker 4: of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, the DRA Ministry Defense.
Speaker 4: And it was a complicated thing because we had to
Speaker 4: do I mean, the communications network was unsophisticated. We were
Speaker 4: getting intelligence I got. I was able to get a
Speaker 4: document copy camera into Cobble. I was getting document film
Speaker 4: out of Cobble. And the very first time that I
Speaker 4: got one of those things, I was sitting there with
Speaker 4: a guy who was managing I mean the Afghan who
Speaker 4: was managing this network, and we're sitting drinking tea, and
Speaker 4: of course we're eating you know, the classic sort of
Speaker 4: pistachios and almonds and raisins and all that stuff Coot
Speaker 4: exactly Mulber's.
Speaker 5: And he said, so, how do you like the mix?
Speaker 5: And I was like, okay, it's great. He said, is
Speaker 5: it salty or sweet?
Speaker 4: And you know, of course I'm thinking maybe this is
Speaker 4: a rapport thing, right, So I'm saying, well, I find
Speaker 4: it kind of salty.
Speaker 5: And he said exactly. And that's our signal that.
Speaker 4: The material that was shipped out and smuggled out through
Speaker 4: three different smugglers was untouched because every one of the
Speaker 4: guys in the network had to include something and each
Speaker 4: of them knew what it was going to be. The
Speaker 4: last one was a mix of twot raisins and salty nuts,
Speaker 4: and I was like, dang, you know, this is like
Speaker 4: right out of Rudyard Kipling. Yeah, you know, it was
Speaker 4: really right. So, yeah, they understood, they still understand how
Speaker 4: to do this properly. But in the case of the
Speaker 4: al Qaeda guys, you know, Afghans weren't allowed into the
Speaker 4: al Qaeda basis, right, I mean they at all. So
Speaker 4: that would have meant that we would have had to
Speaker 4: have recruited years before an Arab who was being vetted
Speaker 4: for a mission that nobody knew about.
Speaker 5: Yeesh. You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's asking a lot.
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Speaker 5: So JR.
Speaker 2: Tell us the story about the about the infiltration, then
Speaker 2: behind enemy lines with one sixtieth.
Speaker 4: The assertion was, I mean it was I mean, first
Speaker 4: of all, by now we're like an hour in, you
Speaker 4: realize I am basically not a cool guy.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: Now, Alex was a cool guy, and most of my
Speaker 4: team was filled with cool guys. I mean real guys.
Speaker 4: I mean guys who, uh you know, who had done this.
Speaker 4: We had one who had you know, a ranger who
Speaker 4: had been in Mogadishu.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: I mean we're talking about people who had seen the elephant.
Speaker 4: Is the way it's presented. Now, I'd had people shoot
Speaker 4: at me, but it's a different thing. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was an espionage thing as opposed to a cool guy thing. So,
Speaker 4: uh we load onto it's you know, it's a classic
Speaker 4: sort of story of we walk out it's the middle
Speaker 4: of the night, and we load onto our two helicopters
Speaker 4: we have.
Speaker 5: Uh So, there's eight of us.
Speaker 4: So there's four and four and a couple of Pelican
Speaker 4: cases and our rucksacks and uh so the door closes.
Speaker 4: John Mulholland h was was there. I think I think
Speaker 4: Justin said I knew that John pulled him aside. I
Speaker 4: didn't know what he said. You know, of course, you know,
Speaker 4: Justin told you right, don't die, is what is what
Speaker 4: John said. But so we close the doors, and you know,
Speaker 4: the birds take off and and head into the darkness.
Speaker 4: And I'm I've got headset just like this, uh sort
Speaker 4: of except nicer.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so I'm doing you know, I'm talking to the
Speaker 4: pilot and command and the crew. I don't have the
Speaker 4: colms out. I can hear the colms out, but I
Speaker 4: actually can't. They're not gonna let, you know, a guy
Speaker 4: like me talk out. So the first thing that happens
Speaker 4: is we're flying into the night, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: I'm listening to the guys are.
Speaker 5: You know, they're they're cool guys, and they're.
Speaker 4: And and they've done a bazillion different kinds of ops,
Speaker 4: so they're they're not in the least bit bothered. And
Speaker 4: all of a sudden I realize they ain't talking much.
Speaker 4: And then I look out my I'm I'm looking I'm
Speaker 4: sitting on you know, looking out the left door. And
Speaker 4: I realized we are about like, I don't know, it
Speaker 4: seemed like within touching distance. Of course it wasn't. It
Speaker 4: was probably forty feet from the tail of a of
Speaker 4: an MC one thirty because we were refueling to get
Speaker 4: into Afghanistan. And so you know, the guys are kind
Speaker 4: of nervous about this because it's in the dark. They're
Speaker 4: doing it with nods on and so, and we're right
Speaker 4: on the Afghan border. So success, right, both birds refuel.
Speaker 4: The MC one thirty pulls away, and some detached voice
Speaker 4: from on high says, congratulations, gentlemen, you've just conducted the
Speaker 4: first combat in air refueling for the regiment.
Speaker 5: Good luck, And I thought, this is like right out
Speaker 5: of a movie.
Speaker 4: Later I found out that we had like aircraft stacked
Speaker 4: up to the sky for this operation. It was the
Speaker 4: only operation taking place that night, right, So we had
Speaker 4: uh a jstars, we had the inner refueling, we had
Speaker 4: three different C one thirties, we had we had fast movers.
Speaker 4: We had a lot of aircraft with us. So anyhow,
Speaker 4: as soon as that happens, the guys just dropped down
Speaker 4: onto the deck and we cross over the Amu Daria
Speaker 4: and head into Afghanistan in the pitch stark and you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's up and down because there's a lot of
Speaker 4: mountains there. So I'm looking at the watch and I'm
Speaker 4: and i'm I'm listening to the guys talker.
Speaker 5: They're the the.
Speaker 4: The co pilot is telling the pile in command and
Speaker 4: the crew sort of the countdown as far as how
Speaker 4: long it's going to be before we.
Speaker 5: Hit the LC.
Speaker 4: And uh, what I'm thinking about is, uh, one thing, right,
Speaker 4: just one thing, which is there are two door handles
Speaker 4: on a black Hawk. One is the door handle that
Speaker 4: opens the door. The other one is the door handle
Speaker 4: that releases the door in an in an accident. Now
Speaker 4: I know, I mean, I hadn't worked with one sixtyth,
Speaker 4: but I worked with a lot of pilots of all sorts.
Speaker 4: I realized none of them want to leave parts of
Speaker 4: their airplane behind when we pull away. So I'm, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm staring right at that making sure I grab it
Speaker 4: right handle. And it's pitch black. I can't see, and
Speaker 4: I don't have my k noods on. It's you're really black,
Speaker 4: and and the guys are counting it down and they're like, OK, JIR,
Speaker 4: We're one minute out. So so I said to the guys, well, okay,
Speaker 4: I key the mic and I say, okay, guys, like
Speaker 4: thanks to the ride. We'll see on the other side.
Speaker 4: And I was just getting ready to take the headset off,
Speaker 4: because that's the other thing you don't want to do.
Speaker 4: It tells people right up front that you're not a
Speaker 4: cool guy when you like get off the helicopter and
Speaker 4: you still have the headset on your head, right, That's
Speaker 4: that's not going to work. So okay, fine, Just as
Speaker 4: I'm about to take the headset off, I hear the
Speaker 4: pilot commands say hey JR. I think we're here, and
Speaker 4: I look out over his shoulder and out there is
Speaker 4: what looks to be like about two tennis courts lit
Speaker 4: by about fifty sixty what light bulbs. Because I had
Speaker 4: tried to talk ghost them into, you know, doing some
Speaker 4: sort of American I mean, I had my ranger handbook.
Speaker 4: I know how to set up an elsie, and I've
Speaker 4: been telling him how to you know, do all the stuff,
Speaker 4: and he was like, no, no, don't worry, it'll be
Speaker 4: set up. And I'm like, okay, I guess I'm just
Speaker 4: going to have to take your word for it, And
Speaker 4: in fact it was absolutely set up.
Speaker 5: So our bird lands. The second bird, of course, hovers over.
Speaker 4: It's got the miniguns looking at any kind of because
Speaker 4: we still don't know good guys, bad guys, could be
Speaker 4: anybody might be a mistake. We're in the right place
Speaker 4: for sure. I'm not worried about that one. So I
Speaker 4: opened up the door, I grabbed the right handle, I
Speaker 4: got the headset off. Now the agreement was I was
Speaker 4: going to get out of the helicopter. Everybody else was
Speaker 4: going to stay in the helicopter until we confirmed that
Speaker 4: we had a real reception committee and not Taliban, Because
Speaker 4: I mean, I was confident that since right over my
Speaker 4: shoulder was a minigun, I was confident that it was
Speaker 4: that if there was problems, I wasn't going to have
Speaker 4: to worry.
Speaker 5: About, like shooting it out.
Speaker 4: But I didn't want everybody out of the helicopter while
Speaker 4: a shootout was taking place. Right So I look out,
Speaker 4: and what do I see in the dust the helicopter
Speaker 4: course blazers still turning is like about fifty people who
Speaker 4: looked like the sand people from Star Wars.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: They're dressed in these long it's called Chapon's that just
Speaker 4: it's the long jacket. They've got the you know, the
Speaker 4: cumber bun. They got knives, and they got guns, and
Speaker 4: they got turbans, and I could just barely see their
Speaker 4: eyes and they start walking towards the helicopter. Now, you
Speaker 4: guys know, and most of your audience probably knows, when
Speaker 4: a Blackhawk is on the ground, hovering the front the
Speaker 4: blade is only about six feet you know, forward, and
Speaker 4: it is really a bad thing to start a an
Speaker 4: insertion by, you know, a bunch of guys.
Speaker 5: That are supposed to be helping you getting killed.
Speaker 4: So I go running out there outside the blades and
Speaker 4: I lean over and I put up you know, the
Speaker 4: classics sort of all everybody in the world knows, stop
Speaker 4: right the hands out stop?
Speaker 5: And I say stop.
Speaker 4: Of course, nobody can hear me because the helicopter, and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden I realized, you know, everybody in
Speaker 4: front of me is sort of bend over holding their
Speaker 4: hands out. They're assuming it is some sort of you know,
Speaker 4: take me to your leader sort of greeting, because after all,
Speaker 4: we are aliens. And while they're not shooting at me,
Speaker 4: So I turn around and give Alex a thumbs up,
Speaker 4: and he starts to unload the bird. And as soon
Speaker 4: as he starts to unload the bird, the guys start
Speaker 4: walking forward again. And I bend over and I put
Speaker 4: my hands out and yell stop, and they bend over
Speaker 4: and put their hands out and stop. We could have
Speaker 4: done this all night long, but I decided that it
Speaker 4: was probably better for me to walk to the very
Speaker 4: front grab the guy who looked like the leader. I
Speaker 4: grabbed him by the collar of his chapon. I took
Speaker 4: a knee. I pulled him down to take it me.
Speaker 4: Everybody took a knee, and so the helicopters, you know,
Speaker 4: we offload both birds. And for you know, anybody who's
Speaker 4: been an assertion, whether it's day or night, when the
Speaker 4: helicopters are gone, because you're hearing, has been affected by
Speaker 4: this very loud noise of turbans.
Speaker 5: It seems like there's absolute silence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's just absolutely It's like you're you've got earplugs
Speaker 4: in or something.
Speaker 5: And uh.
Speaker 4: I look over at the guy that I've grabbed and
Speaker 4: he pulls down his Uh. He's he's got his turban
Speaker 4: wrapped around his face. And I've got my goggles and
Speaker 4: I pull my goggles up and he says, Baba John,
Speaker 4: welcome to Afghanistan. We must have tea. So uh that
Speaker 4: was our uh, the beginning of the adventure. And in
Speaker 4: fact we did have tea, interestingly enough, and this just
Speaker 4: people say, you know, these guys are you know, sophisticated
Speaker 4: and unsophisticated.
Speaker 5: There's big arguments about this.
Speaker 4: Those them had decided he could have brought us in
Speaker 4: to an Elsie on his turf, but instead what he
Speaker 4: did is he brought us in on an Elsie on
Speaker 4: his Shia allies turf to allow the Shia to feel
Speaker 4: like they were to get the bragging rights for the
Speaker 4: fact that they brought the Americans in. I thought that
Speaker 4: was just pretty clever. So we ended up having tea
Speaker 4: at the Adam madrasa run by the Shia leader Mahakek,
Speaker 4: and then we loaded up into trucks and we went
Speaker 4: to those dumbs headquarters, which was deeper into or closer
Speaker 4: to the front lines, let's say. And then eventually, of course,
Speaker 4: when we brought brought five nine five in used an
Speaker 4: Elsie that was Dustan's Elsh right in front of what
Speaker 4: we you know, where we were based out of which
Speaker 4: we called the Alamo, which was you know, it was
Speaker 4: very like a little Nativity scene. It was a you know,
Speaker 4: we had a major It was a little stables that
Speaker 4: had been abandoned and so there.
Speaker 5: Was room of the inn for the Americas.
Speaker 4: And so that's where we spent our next the first
Speaker 4: few days.
Speaker 2: And at this point, I assume you're getting the way
Speaker 2: of the land, starting to assess everybody alive.
Speaker 5: You're still there? What, Yeah, I missed you.
Speaker 3: Uh, I was just asking.
Speaker 2: I mean, at this point I assumed that you were
Speaker 2: kind of getting the way of the land and assessing
Speaker 2: the state of the Northern Alliance, the state of the Taliban,
Speaker 2: and how you're going to live up to Director Tenants
Speaker 2: directive to you know, take care of this broad Taliban
Speaker 2: problem here in northern Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the great thing about Dustan is is
Speaker 4: that you know, he was trained. He's a military guy, right.
Speaker 4: He found it amusing that he he knew. How he knew,
Speaker 4: I don't know, but he knew. He says, you know,
Speaker 4: Baba John, I know in the eighties you were trying
Speaker 4: to kill me. I think that's pretty amusing. Here we
Speaker 4: are now together. So, uh, you know he he already
Speaker 4: had a plant his baby. He rolled out the first
Speaker 4: night right now, Dhostom, as near as I could tell,
Speaker 4: never slept a whole night. If he ever slept more
Speaker 4: than an hour the whole time we were rolling, I
Speaker 4: never saw it. But so the first night he rolls
Speaker 4: out this map that's the size of a you know,
Speaker 4: a six or five x ten carpet hand drawn of Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: And he says, look it, here's the deal. If we
Speaker 4: take Mizaar Sharif, Kobble will fall. It's just that simple. Now,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to argue with the guy, right, I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 4: you know, historically that's true. When when when Mazarre Sharif
Speaker 4: fell to Masud's guys, it was after you know, this
Speaker 4: is after the Soviets left, the dra was done, and
Speaker 4: in fact they were then able to roll in from
Speaker 4: Jabal Saraje right into Cobble. So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 4: But he had a you know, he said, so here's
Speaker 4: who we're working with, and here's where they are, and
Speaker 4: here's where we are, and we need you know, it's
Speaker 4: a classic sort of warren Zevon right, without the lawyers.
Speaker 4: We need guns and money, right, and so I'm like, well,
Speaker 4: I've brought money, and he said, that's a good start,
Speaker 4: you know, And shortly afterwards we start delivering guns and
Speaker 4: bullets as well. Nine five comes in and as soon
Speaker 4: as nine to five comes in, they're bringing in tea lamps,
Speaker 4: so they're bringing in lasers, which is, you know, really
Speaker 4: good because trying to do air strikes. Well, the United
Speaker 4: States military at the time, now it changed over twenty
Speaker 4: years of war, but the United States military at the
Speaker 4: time were like, no, if you can't give me absolutely
Speaker 4: the grid coordinate down to you know, a ten meters square,
Speaker 4: we're just not going to drop any bombs. And we're like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, that's going to be kind of hard because
Speaker 4: we're sitting up in the mountains looking at these guys
Speaker 4: with binoculars. But once nine to five and three four
Speaker 4: came in with tea with soft lambs, it was it
Speaker 4: was all over for the Taliban. But what was most
Speaker 4: interesting about this was that the Taliban in the north,
Speaker 4: I mean, there were there were serious Taliban bad guys.
Speaker 4: I mean they're they're back in power and cobble, but
Speaker 4: the vast majority of their foot soldiers were just that
Speaker 4: they were foot soldiers. They were what the British would
Speaker 4: call levies. They were either you know, kidnapped and told
Speaker 4: that they were going to fight or die, or they
Speaker 4: were given a small amount of money. And you know,
Speaker 4: sixteen year old kid, you give him a Kalashnikoff, you
Speaker 4: give him a Toyota High Loucks, and you say, you
Speaker 4: can terrorize anybody in the neighborhood as long as she's
Speaker 4: call yourself a Taliban. Generally speaking, he's going to say that's.
Speaker 3: Cool, right.
Speaker 4: But the thing about it is, hardly anybody, you know, truthfully,
Speaker 4: hardly everybody's more than willing to kill for jihad, but
Speaker 4: hardly anybody I ever met in Afghanistan wanted to die
Speaker 4: for job. Some did, but not very many. So what
Speaker 4: we were able to do with do Dostam was the
Speaker 4: one who had the best connections. Was he call the
Speaker 4: guys up on radios and say, hey, you know, you're
Speaker 4: on the wrong side of the history here and I will,
Speaker 4: in fact, I and I can pay you to be
Speaker 4: on the right side. And the first time he tried that,
Speaker 4: the guys would say, you know something, rude guy.
Speaker 5: I was listening to him.
Speaker 4: I was sitting right next to post them on the
Speaker 4: radio and they're saying something rude to him and that
Speaker 4: he would turn to Mark Nutch or whoever with nine
Speaker 4: to five was there that day, and he'd say, see
Speaker 4: that that's right over there, that's.
Speaker 5: Where I am. That's the guy I'm talking to.
Speaker 4: And so they'd put the soft lamb laser designator on
Speaker 4: that and squish, you know, the guy would would go,
Speaker 4: would be done. And then he'd call the guy next
Speaker 4: to him to the right or the left of that
Speaker 4: line and say, hey, mom, And you know, I was
Speaker 4: just talking to Abdul and I offered him a deal
Speaker 4: and he basically wasn't much interested. But you know, I'm
Speaker 4: hoping that you have seen what happened to Abdul and
Speaker 4: you'll come to our side. And pretty quick, that's exactly
Speaker 4: what happened. A lot of the Taliban levies were like,
Speaker 4: I'm not dying for these guys from Condahar. I'm from
Speaker 4: around here, right and uh. And if I can, if
Speaker 4: I can be financially successful as well as be on
Speaker 4: the right side of history.
Speaker 5: I'm in.
Speaker 4: So that's basically what happened. And it was, you know,
Speaker 4: one after another after another. Uh, slowly but surely, that.
Speaker 4: As I said that mix, our work was to keep
Speaker 4: the resistance guys fighting each other. Now, the Shia and
Speaker 4: those times were close, they'd always been close, but the
Speaker 4: Shia and those times weren't very close to the Tajiks Mahmadata,
Speaker 4: so we had to constantly work on that. Meanwhile, we
Speaker 4: needed to send a team to Bamyan so that another
Speaker 4: SF team could come into Bamiyan, So that was we
Speaker 4: split the team and sent h Justin and mike' span
Speaker 4: and Mark in a jeep into the Bombia. That's you know,
Speaker 4: so they went out, they went out and disappeared for
Speaker 4: weeks because it was a long drive and they were
Speaker 4: doing exactly what we were doing. And then we realized
Speaker 4: that we were never going to get real success with
Speaker 4: Ata until he had his own agency team and his
Speaker 4: own uh Oda. So we split the team again and
Speaker 4: that became then Bravo team, and that was three guys,
Speaker 4: and then when Oda five three four came in, two
Speaker 4: more ground branch guys and a medic came in and
Speaker 4: helped set up that team. So in the space of
Speaker 4: at the end of the first two weeks, we were
Speaker 4: split all over there the country right we were in
Speaker 4: all kinds of different directions. Three no, no less than
Speaker 4: three at a time, but a lot of times two
Speaker 4: or three guys going to do something. As I said,
Speaker 4: we we uh you know, rolled into miss miss Archery
Speaker 4: fell on the tenth of November and we rolled into
Speaker 4: bizarre and uh it was like, uh, you know, it
Speaker 4: was one of those things that you I mean, no
Speaker 4: pictures were taken, but it was kind of like the
Speaker 4: films you've seen of the liberation of Paris without the Champagne.
Speaker 4: So you know, men and women throwing rose petals at us,
Speaker 4: women you know, throwing their burkas underneath the jeeps so
Speaker 4: that they would be driven forever destroyed. Uh, cheering crowds.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was all liberation of Paris, except it
Speaker 4: was the liberation of miss Archery.
Speaker 3: It's incredible to think of.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 3: And from there, what was the next step was on the.
Speaker 4: Well for us, the next step we still had a
Speaker 4: couple of provinces to take care of, right, Uh so
Speaker 4: the first province, the first set of provinces that we
Speaker 4: had to take care of, were really not liberations but
Speaker 4: just announcements. So Justin and I jumped in the jeep
Speaker 4: with Dostam and we went to the three provinces.
Speaker 5: To the west.
Speaker 4: The first one, of course, was was his old province Chiles,
Speaker 4: John sorry Pool was there, and then Maimanah as well.
Speaker 4: So we did did basically a grand tour, saying, by
Speaker 4: the way, the reason that Taliban are gone is because
Speaker 4: they ain't coming back. They're they're done. And Dostam was
Speaker 4: of course the big the big winner there and it
Speaker 4: was his turf, so I wasn't surprised at that part.
Speaker 4: Uh classic sort of uh you know story again, a
Speaker 4: small bit of humor.
Speaker 5: So we're driving.
Speaker 4: Along, we were blast along on this highway that goes
Speaker 4: from Missar Charief to Chevakan and uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 4: still kind of nervous. I mean, there's still Taliban out there.
Speaker 4: And Justin's to my you know, so I'm a lefty,
Speaker 4: so I'm on the right seat looking out the window.
Speaker 4: Justin's on the left seat looking out the window behind
Speaker 4: Doos Dominus driver And all of a sudden and we've got,
Speaker 4: you know, a truckloaded guys in front of us and
Speaker 4: a truckload of guys behind us, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: the trucks absolutely screech to a halt and go into
Speaker 4: a herring bone, classic sort of military herring bone. All
Speaker 4: the guys in the pickup trucks jump out and disappear,
Speaker 4: and I'm like asking thhost. I'm like, what's going on.
Speaker 4: He's like, Baba, John, don't worry. I'm like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: but you know, I'm kind of worried. He's like, no,
Speaker 4: don't worry. And all of a sudden, like in a
Speaker 4: very short amount of time, all these guys come running
Speaker 4: back into their truck. They come to our truck and
Speaker 4: they start handing us melons and those some goes we
Speaker 4: always stop here. This is the best the whole region.
Speaker 4: And I was like, okay, you know, I guess you
Speaker 4: know what, what the hell? But the last, of course,
Speaker 4: the last big UH problem was UH was well, there's
Speaker 4: two problems. There was There was UH some goan which
Speaker 4: still had a Taliban in it, and Kundus. So Alex
Speaker 4: took a team to Smogan and started working on the
Speaker 4: distribution of resources money, guns, bullets and bring it in
Speaker 4: an oda there and Kundu's was supposed to be well,
Speaker 4: you know the problem was that dostm and Ata had
Speaker 4: been convinced by Mulla Fozzle, the head Taliban guy that
Speaker 4: the Taliban wanted to surrender, but if they didn't accept,
Speaker 4: if if most of them Anata didn't accept the surrender,
Speaker 4: then they were going to have to fight house to house.
Speaker 4: And he said, neither one of you guys wants to
Speaker 4: be the butcher of Kundus. Well, okay, so, uh, none
Speaker 4: of us, not none of us Americans were all that
Speaker 4: excited about any of this. But you know, it's it's
Speaker 4: exactly what Lawrence said, right, it's better for the locals
Speaker 4: to do what they do, you know, it's it's it's.
Speaker 3: You know, for you to do it for them exactly.
Speaker 4: So we're like, you know, what are we going to do?
Speaker 4: I mean, we can't, uh, we can't. We don't have
Speaker 4: an invasion for us. Right, We've got ODA five nine five,
Speaker 4: We've got O d A five three four, and the
Speaker 4: commanders that they're working with they want to arrange, you know,
Speaker 4: go with the surrender.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, both.
Speaker 4: Doug Stanton and and Toby's books talk in detail about
Speaker 4: the fact that it was a completely false surrender, and.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: I mean from the standpoint, I mean it was horrible.
Speaker 4: I lost a man, Afghan's lost some of our closest allies.
Speaker 4: Dave almost was killed. We were almost killed out in
Speaker 4: Kundu's because it was at ambush there too, though we
Speaker 4: had AC one thirties on our side. So it didn't work,
Speaker 4: you know, it didn't work out so well for the Taliban.
Speaker 4: But the point is that, whether you like it or not,
Speaker 4: it was an exceptionally sophisticated deception operation because they had
Speaker 4: convinced the two major you know.
Speaker 5: Afghan allies to.
Speaker 4: Drive right into a trap that was going to kill
Speaker 4: him right and would have killed him if it hadn't
Speaker 4: been for AC one thirties and the fact.
Speaker 5: That we had you know, we had the UH at
Speaker 5: that point.
Speaker 4: It was Max Bauers who was the battalion commander for
Speaker 4: these guys, and UH Sergeant Major v Hill, Mario ve
Speaker 4: Hill and their coms network with the authority to call
Speaker 4: in airpower like right away.
Speaker 5: Otherwise you wouldn't be talking to me today.
Speaker 4: We still would have won the battle, but I'd be dead,
Speaker 4: no question in my mind about that. And uh so
Speaker 4: that's what happened. I mean, you know again, I would
Speaker 4: point your your uh your listeners to reading either one
Speaker 4: of those books because they go into significant detail about
Speaker 4: about that, and it's it's a tough story to read
Speaker 4: and it's not a great story to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when we talked to both Toby and Justin, I
Speaker 2: think that really came through about like SPAN's death and
Speaker 2: just what a horrible day that was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, I mean I so, Uh, Scottie
Speaker 4: and I made it back for day two of that operation,
Speaker 4: and Uh and Alex drove up from Sammagan.
Speaker 5: So Alex and I went.
Speaker 4: Were in the fort when Mark Mitchell the night that
Speaker 4: Mark Mitchell won his Distinguished Service Cross with the with
Speaker 4: the team. It was a pretty spooky thing. The Taliban,
Speaker 4: or it wasn't Taliban, it was the al Qaeda guys.
Speaker 4: We're using all of the resources that were available. I
Speaker 4: had never really thought that you could direct fire direct
Speaker 4: lay a one twenty two rocket, but I guarantee you
Speaker 4: it was either that or they were using explosives to
Speaker 4: send telephone polls over my head. I'm not sure which
Speaker 4: it was. Either way, it was pretty scary. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: you know again, AC one thirties won out the day
Speaker 4: and the Air Force saved our lives.
Speaker 2: Could you tell us a little bit more about like
Speaker 2: how that came about well.
Speaker 4: Okay, So so I get back to Scotty and I
Speaker 4: came back from Kundu's. The guys who had been in
Speaker 4: the fort that day, to include the SBS team had
Speaker 4: were all coming back rolling in. They they well, they
Speaker 4: looked exactly like what they were. They had been buried
Speaker 4: alive because the Jadam had hit the fort and buried
Speaker 4: him alive. They dug their way out, and they were
Speaker 4: coming back trying to figure out what they were going
Speaker 4: to do. And the the part of the fortress that
Speaker 4: overlooked that truly overlooked where the where the the the
Speaker 4: al Qaeda guys were was not where they had been,
Speaker 4: and they didn't know quite how they were going to
Speaker 4: get in there. And uh so Alex and I gotten
Speaker 4: a jeep uh and drove over there and we you know,
Speaker 4: shouted from the from the ramparts, Hey, we want to
Speaker 4: come up, and they said, come on up. So we
Speaker 4: climbed up the ramparts, went through a drainage hole and
Speaker 4: came up to where our Afghan allies were. And I mean,
Speaker 4: these are the same allies we've been with now for
Speaker 4: six weeks. So they were all like, hey, Baba John,
Speaker 4: good to see you. You know, bullets flying everywhere, and uh,
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, here's the deal. Uh, you know, if
Speaker 4: you can hold these guys in place tonight, we're going
Speaker 4: to bring in airpower. And they were like, absolutely, we
Speaker 4: can hold these guys inside these walls. And they'd already
Speaker 4: seen what airpower did, so you know it was they
Speaker 4: were like, come on back. So then we you know,
Speaker 4: climb over the walls, down through the drain pipe, up
Speaker 4: you know again, jump the jump in the jeep, go
Speaker 4: back to where everybody was set up and Mark and
Speaker 4: a combat controller and one other guy. Then about nine
Speaker 4: o'clock that night, we loaded the jeep back through you know,
Speaker 4: same story, right up the walls, through the drain pipe,
Speaker 4: up were the walls, and in and tell the commander, okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to start bringing in airpower. And he was
Speaker 4: like that's good because they found mortars. And just about
Speaker 4: the time he got mortars out of his mouth, round
Speaker 4: started landing on the parapet around us, and we were like, well,
Speaker 4: that ain't good. I've seen good before, and that ain't it.
Speaker 4: And I turned to Alex and said, you know, Alex,
Speaker 4: I don't have my ranger tab the high under. I
Speaker 4: mean if I did, I wouldn't be worried. But I
Speaker 4: don't have it with me. So he was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't have my sf TA with me either, So
Speaker 4: you know, we'll just we'll just stick here. And you know,
Speaker 4: it's really up the Mark at this point and the
Speaker 4: combat controller to do the job. I mean, there's no
Speaker 4: sense in. I mean, we couldn't see the bad guys.
Speaker 4: They could see us well, I mean we could have
Speaker 4: gotten stood up on a paraprit shot our aks.
Speaker 5: But like, why so Mark called.
Speaker 4: In the the AC thirties they made two runs. This
Speaker 4: is about the same time that the guys are shooting
Speaker 4: mortars at us and the one twenty two's and just
Speaker 4: about anything they could find. They were doing direct lay
Speaker 4: on us.
Speaker 5: And finally I.
Speaker 4: Remember Mark talking to the aircraft and saying, guys, I
Speaker 4: know you have to rotate back through right.
Speaker 5: You do.
Speaker 4: You're doing your rotation because the all the guns are
Speaker 4: on the left side of the aircraft. But you just
Speaker 4: need to know you need to finish this this time
Speaker 4: because the last couple of rounds, mortar rounds are only
Speaker 4: landed about like fifty meters from us. They've got they're
Speaker 4: walking the mortars in on us. Now, I didn't hear
Speaker 4: what Mark. I mean, I heard what Mark said. I
Speaker 4: don't know what the Air Force guy said, but absolutely
Speaker 4: they came roaring in. And for those of you who
Speaker 4: remember it, if you've ever seen the final scene from
Speaker 4: Apocalypse now when the arc light comes in and the
Speaker 4: entire sky turns orange, well, to this day, I don't
Speaker 4: know what they hit. I think they hit the cheese
Speaker 4: charges and then that kicked off all the other kind
Speaker 4: of mortar rounds and everything else.
Speaker 5: The entire the entire end of.
Speaker 4: The fortress where the bad guys were just exploded into
Speaker 4: into fire. So I turned to the Afghan commander and said,
Speaker 4: you know, I think our work here is done. We're
Speaker 4: going to go come back tomorrow, and I need to
Speaker 4: find Mike. We still, I mean until, I mean, I
Speaker 4: wasn't willing to say that Mike was Kia until we
Speaker 4: knew he was Kia. Because Mike had been such a
Speaker 4: power in so many different ways and so good at
Speaker 4: what he did. I thought, even if he was wounded,
Speaker 4: and he could have easily crawled into a space and hidden,
Speaker 4: and then the guys would never have found him.
Speaker 5: So until we actually found Mike's remains. I mean, I was.
Speaker 4: Really committed to to hoping. Of course, you know now
Speaker 4: we know from Dave's debrief and everything else, that didn't
Speaker 4: work out that way. But anyhow, we left the next day.
Speaker 4: The whole team now is crawling in because we think
Speaker 4: we're just going to edit go into the fortress and
Speaker 4: you know, do our post blast analysis. I would climb
Speaker 4: into the fortress doing the same thing again, and the
Speaker 4: commander goes, I say like, so, why aren't you down
Speaker 4: in the area. He says, well, it turns out that
Speaker 4: and then just as he said, you know that, you know,
Speaker 4: two mortar rounds hit on the parapet again. He says, yep,
Speaker 4: they're still firing mortars at us. I'm like, oh, great,
Speaker 4: well it's daylight. And he said, yeah, we're going to
Speaker 4: bring in We've got a we've got a t Sist two.
Speaker 4: We're going to bring in a tank, and we've got
Speaker 4: troops all along the parapet. We're just going to start
Speaker 4: opening up on these guys. And and you know, it takes.
Speaker 4: It took all that day and they still ended up,
Speaker 4: you know, the guys, the al Kainda guys retreated into
Speaker 4: the what's called the pink House, which was it was
Speaker 4: pink and then what was really clever. I would never
Speaker 4: have thought of this, but the Afghan thought of it.
Speaker 4: They brought in a fire truck and started to flood
Speaker 4: the Pink House. And remember this is November, late November,
Speaker 4: it's cold at night, and by the next day the
Speaker 4: guys were hypothermic. They were no longer combatants, and they
Speaker 4: were pulled out of the pink House and grabbed. And
Speaker 4: then by that time a good chunk of Dostom's team
Speaker 4: were there. Dostom was still in Kundu's dealing with the
Speaker 4: Afghans there, but they put him into trucks and they
Speaker 4: took him to Sheppergun And that's basically the last of
Speaker 4: the story, except when the medic in nine to five
Speaker 4: identified John Walker Lynn. Then they brought him back to
Speaker 4: actually to the Turker School where we were headquartered. I
Speaker 4: made sure that my guys didn't didn't talk to or
Speaker 4: do anything with Mike Span with John Walker Lynn for
Speaker 4: two reasons. One, I was afraid they would do him
Speaker 4: harm right, but more more importantly, having worked with the FBI,
Speaker 4: I knew that if any of us were involved in
Speaker 4: this at all, the defense team would immediately say that,
Speaker 4: you know, we were somehow perfidious, and so.
Speaker 5: We didn't do anything.
Speaker 4: Admiral Kallan understood it as well, because he'd been you know,
Speaker 4: Seal Team six commanders, so he'd had a lot of
Speaker 4: work in this weird world of counter terrorism and criminal
Speaker 4: enterprises all that, and so he just put guards on
Speaker 4: the room that that John Walker Linn was there until
Speaker 4: they could fly in from At that point, they flew
Speaker 4: him in from Tashkent, some Army ce I D guys
Speaker 4: and then the Army c I D guys matched up.
Speaker 4: They also had some n CIS guys there, and they
Speaker 4: put him on a bird and took him out of there,
Speaker 4: and that was that was the last I saw them, Jr.
Speaker 2: You know, the John Walker Lynn, the so called American
Speaker 2: Taliban amazingly out of prison now.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, he's taken up some writing, a little bit
Speaker 3: of writing, and.
Speaker 2: Has accused the CIA and the Army of committing work
Speaker 2: crimes out there.
Speaker 3: And I'm just curious what you think.
Speaker 2: Of of John Walker's account of how that went down
Speaker 2: out there that those few days.
Speaker 4: You know, I I honestly I haven't followed any of that.
Speaker 4: I mean I'm sorry, I can't. I can't stomach the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, and uh, you know, the only thing that
Speaker 4: I know about that guy.
Speaker 5: Is after the fact.
Speaker 4: I talked to some of the FBI guys who did
Speaker 4: the initial interview with him, and they showed me some
Speaker 4: pictures and they said, they showed me the pictures of
Speaker 4: when he was first, you know, first brought out and
Speaker 4: interviewed and he I think you've seen some of those
Speaker 4: pictures because they've become part of the of the story.
Speaker 4: But anyhow, like half of his face looks really dirty
Speaker 4: and the other half looks sort of dirty. And the
Speaker 4: FBI guys I talked to said, well, that's because that's
Speaker 4: what happens when you you know, have a good stock
Speaker 4: world on an AK forty seven and all that carbon
Speaker 4: from those from those rounds start start, you know, comes out.
Speaker 4: Because AK forty seven's for everybody who's ever fired one,
Speaker 4: you know, they're sort of I mean, they're designed to
Speaker 4: be loose so that they can be so that they
Speaker 4: can be shot in any environment. That's why they are
Speaker 4: so popular all over the world. But it was you know,
Speaker 4: carbon from the so I have not followed John Walker
Speaker 4: lint I mean, I'm sorry, I can't. I can't brain
Speaker 4: myself to do it. I'm an old guy, the geezer.
Speaker 4: Uh he he is a trader, uh the end, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not going to judge anything else about him,
Speaker 4: And what he wants to talk about now is between
Speaker 4: him and he's a he's a mom, so it's between
Speaker 4: him and his god, you know.
Speaker 3: Really fair enough j R.
Speaker 2: But on a saturer note, how how did you guys
Speaker 2: get our resolution on on Mike's span and evacuate his remains?
Speaker 4: Well, we we went in, I mean after that, after
Speaker 4: the the guys had been pushed into the pink house,
Speaker 4: but before they were pulled out, we walked at the
Speaker 4: the Afghans. Of course, you know, see a good chunk
Speaker 4: of the of the folks who were who were actually
Speaker 4: the fighters are fighters on the ramparts were Shia, right,
Speaker 4: they were because it was the Shia that had been
Speaker 4: had had well Bazaars Reef was a Shia talent before
Speaker 4: the Taliban took over. So they were always the guys,
Speaker 4: and they knew Mike very very well. Mike had been
Speaker 4: Mike and Justin and Mark had been our focal points
Speaker 4: with the with the Shia resistance and then with the
Speaker 4: Shia when we started to rebuild. So they went in
Speaker 4: on their own, found him UH and brought him out
Speaker 4: in a stretcher, and so we didn't have to go
Speaker 4: searching for him. They had already brought him right out
Speaker 4: to the entrance of where the big gun fight had
Speaker 4: taken place. And UH then we UH recovered Mike. We
Speaker 4: had a you know, a classic American UH uh bag
Speaker 4: that put him in, brought his remains to the UH,
Speaker 4: brought his remains to the the Turker School, put him
Speaker 4: in a space where we could do a quiet time
Speaker 4: with him. And then that night half the team UH
Speaker 4: loaded up with Mike's remains, loaded up and do a
Speaker 4: C forty seven and flew back to Kku.
Speaker 5: Z Alex was on that.
Speaker 4: You know why half the team well, you know we
Speaker 4: had not been we had you know, we hadn't been relieved.
Speaker 4: We were still doing stuff across the board. So it
Speaker 4: was half the team needed to go because half, I mean,
Speaker 4: Mike was buried, buried before I even got back to Konis.
Speaker 4: But we needed half the team needed to stay to
Speaker 4: continue to work the stuff that we were doing, which
Speaker 4: was building something resembling a legitimate not government exactly, but
Speaker 4: at least in a legitimate order, and also hunting down
Speaker 4: the last of the Taliban and the al Qaida guys
Speaker 4: who were now on the run in samagan.
Speaker 5: Jar.
Speaker 3: How when you.
Speaker 6: Talk about like building not the legitimate governmentybe a legitimate
Speaker 6: coalition or whatever.
Speaker 3: How tough was that?
Speaker 6: Because even though these warlargs like Dustom and that they
Speaker 6: were fighting the Taliban, they they were all there wasn't
Speaker 6: like a national identity for them. They were also fighting
Speaker 6: for themselves and would just as easily turn on each
Speaker 6: other if they thought they could get away with it.
Speaker 3: How was that for you?
Speaker 6: Trying to orchestrate that or manage manage those relationships.
Speaker 4: It was something that of course, you know, this goes
Speaker 4: back to experience in the eighties, right. I learned a
Speaker 4: long time ago that there comes a point in time
Speaker 4: where you can't you can you need to be polite,
Speaker 4: but you need to draw a line in the sand.
Speaker 4: And I made it pretty clear to the guys early on, actually,
Speaker 4: uh well before we had entered Massaari Shrief. Let's just
Speaker 4: say that if they didn't cooperate, we were all going home.
Speaker 4: There'd be no more money, no more guns, no more odas,
Speaker 4: no more anything. And then if so, you know, and
Speaker 4: if that was what they were they were committed to do.
Speaker 4: We weren't going to get in the way of it,
Speaker 4: but we certainly weren't going to help them, and so
Speaker 4: they took it to heart. I mean, they didn't have to,
Speaker 4: I get. I mean, I don't know if I was
Speaker 4: uh blunt or if I was you know, just looked
Speaker 4: sincere or what. But it was like one on one
Speaker 4: with these guys. Uh. I've had guys in the past
Speaker 4: when I was doing this. I mean say, you know,
Speaker 4: really with just like you're surrounded by bad guys and
Speaker 4: you're saying it like it's our job.
Speaker 5: It's what we do.
Speaker 3: Right, it's all you have too, Yeah, well it is.
Speaker 4: And it's not like they're going to kill me because
Speaker 4: that would also you know, and and the relationship. So
Speaker 4: they could grumble about it, but they had seen what
Speaker 4: was what was successful now, you know is and what
Speaker 4: we said right up front was look at once, we're
Speaker 4: once the talibant.
Speaker 5: We're only here to.
Speaker 4: Get these guys out of here. It's really up to
Speaker 4: you to figure out what you're going to do next.
Speaker 5: And uh, you know.
Speaker 4: My own I mean, I've only done Afghanistan Afghan since
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty six, so I'm not going to pretend that
Speaker 4: I am like a real you know, cultural expert, like
Speaker 4: you know, from Harvard or Yale, because I'm just a
Speaker 4: kid who, you know, blue collar kid who just lived
Speaker 4: with these guys for years.
Speaker 5: But there is no such thing as an Afghan.
Speaker 4: Right right, There's there's absolutely no such thing as an Afghan.
Speaker 5: The only Afghan I ever.
Speaker 4: Met was Amarula Salid, who was, you know, the last
Speaker 4: vice president of Kalb but before that, he was the
Speaker 4: head of the National Defense you know, the the.
Speaker 5: National Directorate of Security.
Speaker 4: And before that he was one of of Masud's guys.
Speaker 4: I mean, he was actually a very close to Maud
Speaker 4: and was one of the guys that traveled with Masoud
Speaker 4: when Maud was going back and forth between the Panshir
Speaker 4: and dou Chambay. To me, folks, he's the only Afghan
Speaker 4: I ever met who was an Afghan. All the rest
Speaker 4: of them, all of the rest of them are tadjiks
Speaker 4: Uzbek's Hazara push tunes and there's two different I mean
Speaker 4: and that you know, people say push things but you
Speaker 4: know the truth is that the push dune of let's say,
Speaker 4: Jalalabad can barely understand what the push dudents in Condahar say,
Speaker 4: and neither one of them can understand what the push
Speaker 4: dudents from Memors say. I mean, it's not a country.
Speaker 4: National geographics done, the maps. You know, they had a flag,
Speaker 4: and so by definition Americans think that they're a country.
Speaker 4: But you know, they are neither a nation. Oh they
Speaker 4: were a state certainly, but they were not a nation state, right,
Speaker 4: and the folks in the north nor I mean, remember
Speaker 4: when the winter comes, you can't drive from Kabble to
Speaker 4: Missouri Shrief, right, the roads are closed. There's no way
Speaker 4: to get through the Hindu kush. Even today they have
Speaker 4: to fly. So what we had to do was convince
Speaker 4: all these guys that, regardless of what they thought of
Speaker 4: each other, and they didn't like each other, that's for sure, right,
Speaker 4: that that they needed to collaborate, cooperate if they wanted
Speaker 4: the country back.
Speaker 5: And they did.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't just because they grumbled doesn't mean
Speaker 4: that they didn't do their job. They did their job
Speaker 4: in ways that were you know, exactly what you could
Speaker 4: have asked for.
Speaker 2: Right, What was the next phase for Alpha Team after
Speaker 2: that whole incident, after Mike's band's death and resolving the
Speaker 2: situation at the prison. I mean, as you said, you
Speaker 2: were continuing to do things. The mission wasn't over. So
Speaker 2: what was the next step.
Speaker 4: Well, the next step was to you know, to build
Speaker 4: to work with all three of our Afghan allies to
Speaker 4: make sure that there weren't Taliban, uh, you know they
Speaker 4: I guess the only term I could think of is
Speaker 4: is a term from you know, from World War Two.
Speaker 4: We wanted to make sure there were no war wolves
Speaker 4: out there, right, that not everybody was worried in forty
Speaker 4: five that there were Nazi war wolves out there hiding out,
Speaker 4: just waiting to come.
Speaker 5: So we did that. We Uh, we were involved with.
Speaker 4: The ODA that was down in Salmangan, working with us
Speaker 4: Mailei's totally different culture as well.
Speaker 5: Uh. And then that you know, for me, my job.
Speaker 4: Towards the end was to be sort of uh the
Speaker 4: intelligence diplomat. I worked a lot with Admiral Kaland as
Speaker 4: we built airfields, and we worked with the commanders trying,
Speaker 4: you know, the three leaders to try and make sure
Speaker 4: that they continue to collaborate and cooperate, dividing up the city.
Speaker 4: How you do police work, you know, I mean I
Speaker 4: don't mean like a police force, but you know, making
Speaker 4: sure that there aren't checkpoints that are hostils with each
Speaker 4: other across the town, all that stuff. And then you know,
Speaker 4: our allies started to roll in and uh so, I
Speaker 4: mean we had lots of ally guys already. I mean
Speaker 4: the Brits were our shoulder to shoulder with us, but
Speaker 4: I mean the the other allies, the Jordanians, special forces
Speaker 4: came in, the French aviation folks started to come in.
Speaker 4: Eventually Christmasare Schrief was was run by a German unit.
Speaker 4: Uh So that at the very end the job was
Speaker 4: just there were there were five of us left, and
Speaker 4: uh the five of us carved up every day a
Speaker 4: little piece here, a little piece there, trying to do
Speaker 4: all of those things until we were relieved in place
Speaker 4: in the mid in mid December, and you know, did
Speaker 4: the did the handshakes with our the really the new team,
Speaker 4: and introduced them to all the other, you know, the
Speaker 4: guys that we've been working with all this time. And
Speaker 4: then we boarded a an agency uh twin otter and
Speaker 4: left CA or left Bazaars Reef and headed back to Kkuz.
Speaker 2: And you had a few more years left at the
Speaker 2: CIA before retiring in two thousand and seven. I believe
Speaker 2: you finished as the Deputy of Operations of CTC.
Speaker 5: No, well, I mean I did.
Speaker 4: I mean, first of all, you know that wasn't my
Speaker 4: last trip to call, right, I mean or Afghanistan. I
Speaker 4: made like five different trips TV wise for lots of
Speaker 4: different kinds of projects over time as we worked with
Speaker 4: the station.
Speaker 5: Now by that time the station set up.
Speaker 4: It's a big station, but there were certain things that cooperation, collaborations,
Speaker 4: some other stuff.
Speaker 5: There's some training that I was involved with.
Speaker 4: After in two thousand and four, I was pulled back
Speaker 4: to headquarters after seventeen years kicking and screaming, but orders
Speaker 4: or orders, and I went back into the basement. Of course,
Speaker 4: it only goes I was. I was given an office
Speaker 4: in the basement to do some other stuff that was
Speaker 4: nothing to do with Afghanistan. And then I ended up
Speaker 4: as a h the chief of ops for a geographic
Speaker 4: division for about six months and then I got promoted.
Speaker 4: Shocked everybody myself included, and I got grabbed up to
Speaker 4: go to CTC CGC is a big place, right, I
Speaker 4: mean there were at that point in time, there's over
Speaker 4: not quite four thousand.
Speaker 5: People in the CTC mix.
Speaker 4: Now, that doesn't mean that there were four thousand people
Speaker 4: working in headquarters. There are four thousand people doing the
Speaker 4: CTC mission. Are you still there?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That you lose you okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: So anyhow, the operations office, so I was I was
Speaker 4: one of the two deputy chiefs of operations, and then
Speaker 4: we had a chief of Operations and he had a
Speaker 4: deputy So I was partnered with Doug Wise. So Doug
Speaker 4: and I, uh split And you've had Doug on on
Speaker 4: on the on the on the podcast.
Speaker 3: He's coming back in a few weeks.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: We got on scheduled for the twenty second.
Speaker 5: Yeah, excellent.
Speaker 4: Well, anyhow, he and I divided up the day to
Speaker 4: day management of CTC in half. So, uh, I ended
Speaker 4: up with a you know, a bunch of different parts
Speaker 4: of CTC and then the the Uh, the CTC director
Speaker 4: wanted to have a a syops program, a robust syops
Speaker 4: program going after countering violent extremism.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: So I wanted to call it the you know, political
Speaker 4: warfare Department.
Speaker 5: No, that wasn't going to work. That sounded too political.
Speaker 4: Uh So we ended up calling it the Strategic Communications Department,
Speaker 4: and I was listed just so I could go over
Speaker 4: the State and not be laughed out of a building.
Speaker 4: They listed me as a deputy director of CTC for
Speaker 4: Strategic Communications. So I spent the tail end of the
Speaker 4: last eighteen months of my career managing teams that were
Speaker 4: all over the world. Is again kind of, you know,
Speaker 4: the same sort of story over and over again that
Speaker 4: were working on what is what would have been called
Speaker 4: in the old OSS days black propaganda, and you know,
Speaker 4: and black propaganda is designed to undermine the morale of
Speaker 4: the bad guys, as opposed to psyops or strategic communications
Speaker 4: that the military and the State Department were doing, which
Speaker 4: was to bring guys onto our side, right, to convince
Speaker 4: people on our side.
Speaker 2: And also that the bad guys don't know where they
Speaker 2: information is coming from, as opposed to like say the
Speaker 2: Broadcasting Board of Governors, where it's very clearly coming from
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 3: What you guys are doing is concealed.
Speaker 4: And what we're doing, I mean what basically what we're
Speaker 4: doing is telling them, in a sense, a modified truth,
Speaker 4: which is your leaders are making themselves rich while you
Speaker 4: guys are being asked to be martyrs. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: and which is all true.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's not really modified truth. That's kind of the truth.
Speaker 5: That is the truth.
Speaker 4: But it has to come from some place that doesn't
Speaker 4: say United States of.
Speaker 3: America doesn't have CIA all over it.
Speaker 5: Right, that's right. So we did.
Speaker 4: We did a variety of different, very creative things. I
Speaker 4: take I mean no credit for this other than getting
Speaker 4: money to make it happen.
Speaker 5: I mean the I had a.
Speaker 4: Team of exceptionally smart folks, and then because I knew
Speaker 4: I was going to leave soon, have Alex to take
Speaker 4: over for me. So we ended up at the end
Speaker 4: of I ended up at the end of my career
Speaker 4: with Alex as my deputy again, which was great. And
Speaker 4: then he took over my job when I left.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. So retired in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: And tell us a little bit about what your life
Speaker 2: has been like post retirement. I'm sure your your wife
Speaker 2: is happy to have you at home a little more
Speaker 2: often and getting into writing.
Speaker 3: Your pretty very prolific writer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, let's start with you know, I this this trade,
Speaker 4: this blend of intelligence and special operations. It's it's very
Speaker 4: addictive and it's very hard to just go cold Turkey.
Speaker 4: So for years I worked very hard with the Army
Speaker 4: and the Special Operations community to try and do some
Speaker 4: training for them, cultural training. I'm an anthropology by training,
Speaker 4: so cultural training on how to work with the locals.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously Robin Sage, they teach how to work
Speaker 4: with the locals, but I'm like down in the tactical
Speaker 4: this is how I worked with the locals, as well
Speaker 4: as how to work with the CIA, because working with
Speaker 4: the CIA is a challenge because it's another culture entirely.
Speaker 4: And you know, it might seem easy when you're in
Speaker 4: a forward operating base and you've got a base chief
Speaker 4: and maybe one it's another thing entirely when you're going
Speaker 4: to fly into a station, an established station, and you're
Speaker 4: going to be talking to people who are interested in
Speaker 4: conventional intelligence operations because that's their job. So I spend
Speaker 4: a lot of time working on that and still do
Speaker 4: a little bit of that. And then about five years
Speaker 4: ago I started writing. And it seems more profic than
Speaker 4: it is because Mike.
Speaker 5: Four had to go through two years with the sensors.
Speaker 4: Oh really, and then and then uh, it's the sequel.
Speaker 4: Friend or foe was twenty eight months with the with
Speaker 4: the sensors, and then eventually what happens is I guess
Speaker 4: I just warmed down or they just figured out I'm
Speaker 4: not going to quit. And I also crack that, you know,
Speaker 4: got the code, right, I got the code. I understand
Speaker 4: how to write to make sure that the sensors legitimately.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm I.
Speaker 4: Signed a document in nineteen eighty five, right, they could
Speaker 4: they could watch everything I wrote forever. So it isn't
Speaker 4: like I don't understand that it's the rules.
Speaker 5: I get it.
Speaker 4: But it seems like if you look at like, you know,
Speaker 4: like nine books since twenty nineteen. Well, no, actually I
Speaker 4: started writing Mike four in twenty and fourteen, okay, finished it,
Speaker 4: finished it in fifteen, and then had to find get
Speaker 4: through the sensors, and then after the sensors had to
Speaker 4: go through and find a publisher. So meanwhile, while I'm
Speaker 4: doing all that, I'm still writing. So it looks like
Speaker 4: I'm creating these things. Now, those people who have read
Speaker 4: it will say it's sort of slap dash anyhow, But.
Speaker 5: I mean the point is that it is. The publication
Speaker 5: date doesn't reflect what happens.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 6: So I was just going to say for audience, who
Speaker 6: doesn't know, because we've had people on who've written autobiographies
Speaker 6: and whatnot, and we've talked about the pre publication review
Speaker 6: board at the CIA that has to review their stuff
Speaker 6: and make sure it's not classified. But you might not
Speaker 6: know in the audience that even if you write fiction,
Speaker 6: they have to go through it and check it to
Speaker 6: make sure that you haven't spilled any secrets in your fiction.
Speaker 5: Correct, correct, and you know and fair enough.
Speaker 4: I mean, at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 4: there's an entire you know, there's an entire part of
Speaker 4: the CIA that does open source intelligence and it you know,
Speaker 4: for years and years and years, the KGB was doing
Speaker 4: open source intelligence on all of their officers who were
Speaker 4: in North America. That's what they were doing. So yeah,
Speaker 4: the pre publication is a fair requirement. I think what
Speaker 4: happened to me was that I hit it at a
Speaker 4: time just about the time that a bunch of very
Speaker 4: senior people legitimately wanted to write essays and articles and
Speaker 4: books about their careers. Whereas so what would happen would
Speaker 4: be I mean, I don't know this for sure, but
Speaker 4: my guess is my fiction kept getting back down to
Speaker 4: the bottom of the pile. Because, let's face it, if
Speaker 4: a former director wants to write an editorial that's going
Speaker 4: to the New.
Speaker 5: York Times, that's a whole lot more.
Speaker 4: Important than me writing about a fictional character who is
Speaker 4: a special operator, right, I mean, it's just totally different.
Speaker 6: So Jared, please, I'm I'm going to talk about your
Speaker 6: other series and I'll ask you questions about it, but
Speaker 6: please tell us. We haven't had a chance to read
Speaker 6: this one, so please tell us about Mike four. It's
Speaker 6: it's there are six books in the series.
Speaker 5: Seven now and it's not another one just came.
Speaker 6: Out, and it's about a family whose history and Special
Speaker 6: Operations intelligence goes back to World War Two.
Speaker 3: Correct?
Speaker 5: Correct?
Speaker 4: So the basic story is, Mike Fuur is the call
Speaker 4: signed for a female special operator who is on a
Speaker 4: surveillance detachment.
Speaker 5: Okay, leave it at that.
Speaker 4: For those for folks who know what we're talking about,
Speaker 4: they know, but that's what the that's what the Policy
Speaker 4: Review Board wanted it to be called.
Speaker 5: So fair fair enough.
Speaker 4: So she's in a surveillance detachment, very successful and but
Speaker 4: very aggressive. Now you might say why a female character, Well,
Speaker 4: partly because I met a ton of female operators and
Speaker 4: a ton of agency females, and you know, you'd look
Speaker 4: around in the fiction try and find some in fiction.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Anyhow, she is this the daughter of a tandem couple,
Speaker 4: and she's the granddaughter of an OSS commando SO who
Speaker 4: also then becomes a CIA off so very senior and
Speaker 4: ends his career CIA officer. She doesn't want to be
Speaker 4: in the family business, so she you know, goes through
Speaker 4: selection and ends up in this surveillance detachment in Jalalabad.
Speaker 4: She ends up walking into an ambush and it becomes
Speaker 4: a what is known in the wounded warrior world as
Speaker 4: BTK below the knee amputee and just like many btks
Speaker 4: from Iraq Afghanistan, the Army, after she is healed as
Speaker 4: much as a BTK can be healed, says to her, Okay,
Speaker 4: here's the deal. You can either get one hundred percent
Speaker 4: disability and start a new life, you know, go back
Speaker 4: to college, go do something else, or you can stay
Speaker 4: in the fight as an intelligence officer. And we're going
Speaker 4: to send you to the farm and you're going to learn,
Speaker 4: you know, CIA tradecraft, and you're going to be one
Speaker 4: of our that is the Special Operations Community Intelligence officers. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, Mike Forrest spent her whole life trying to
Speaker 4: dodge the family business. But given a choice between staying
Speaker 4: in the fight or not staying in the fight, she
Speaker 4: chooses to stay in the fight, and she ends up
Speaker 4: working in a team that is a Special Operations Intelligence,
Speaker 4: human intelligence counter terrorism collection team. Now people say why
Speaker 4: a BTK. One of the training programs I was in
Speaker 4: after I retired was down at Fort Wachuka and I
Speaker 4: was doing, you know, my cultural stuff, but we were
Speaker 4: doing it out.
Speaker 5: This is back in the day when Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: The guys who were doing intelligence had to be able
Speaker 4: to get out into the literally out into the field.
Speaker 4: So I was working students one after another and evaluating
Speaker 4: them after the fact. It's a five day, six day program,
Speaker 4: and you know, because I was an outsider, at the
Speaker 4: end of that program, I would give them a one
Speaker 4: on one. Hey, this worked well for you, this didn't
Speaker 4: work so well. And like you know, I learned through
Speaker 4: all the leadership training I've ever given and ever taken
Speaker 4: that you know, it's it's really good to unkey the
Speaker 4: mic and listen for a while. Now those of you
Speaker 4: who have been listening to me for now two hours
Speaker 4: are wondering about that. But nevertheless, so I went to
Speaker 4: one of these guys and I said, so you have
Speaker 4: anything you want to say, because he had done very
Speaker 4: well and I didn't expect him to say anything more
Speaker 4: than thank you and go. He's like, man, this is tough.
Speaker 4: This was really hard, and I was like, dude, it's
Speaker 4: supposed to be hard. That's the whole point. And that's
Speaker 4: when he rolled up his pants leg and showed me
Speaker 4: that he was a BTK. I had walked this guy
Speaker 4: all over southern New Mexico and he had never said
Speaker 4: anything and had done his job on his own, all alone,
Speaker 4: face to face with me giving him a hard time.
Speaker 5: And it was at that point I realized.
Speaker 4: That is one you know, this is in the eighty
Speaker 4: second when you say that that guy's as hard as
Speaker 4: woodpecker lips. Yeah, you know, I mean he was one
Speaker 4: hard character. Well, years later, when I'm trying to figure
Speaker 4: out how I'm going to move this character from this
Speaker 4: side of the house to that side of the house,
Speaker 4: it only seemed fair to make sure that there was
Speaker 4: a person there who was a BTK who said right
Speaker 4: up front, I'm not a victim. I am a person
Speaker 4: who is still in the fight, and I will remain
Speaker 4: in the fight until I retire.
Speaker 5: And you know, the.
Speaker 4: Special Operations community, the Army as a whole is filled
Speaker 4: with people right now who are gravely who were gravely
Speaker 4: injured in a rocker Afghanistan and are still in the fight.
Speaker 4: And God bless them for that, because most folks don't
Speaker 4: even know that they're that they are wounded warriors because
Speaker 4: they don't tell anybody, They don't ask for any any pity.
Speaker 4: They just want to do their job. So that's that's
Speaker 4: Mike four goes through a bunch of different stuff. There's
Speaker 4: seven in the series. Six of them are about Mike four,
Speaker 4: and one of them is entirely focused on a prequel
Speaker 4: about her grandfather.
Speaker 5: Because through the series you.
Speaker 4: Find out that there's a vendetta between a Russian family
Speaker 4: of spies and an American family of spies, and book
Speaker 4: four reveals, actually Book three reveals that the origins of
Speaker 4: that vendetta.
Speaker 6: So, guys, so check out if you I mean, check
Speaker 6: out the Mic Force series. I'm going to talk about
Speaker 6: a school for the Great Game which to me is
Speaker 6: a mix of Kipling Hopkirk The Great Game.
Speaker 3: Uh uh, it's got.
Speaker 6: It's steampunk, like it says, it's a steampunk rise novel,
Speaker 6: but it's also like a Philip K. Dick like alternate
Speaker 6: alternative history or alternate history. It's it's a fascinating book
Speaker 6: that draws on real history of the world. It's basically
Speaker 6: The Great Game, but more in a steampunk environment where
Speaker 6: it's a little bit of Ian Fleming, where mysticism and
Speaker 6: mentalism actually exist. I mean, it's a fascinating book. Where
Speaker 6: did this come from?
Speaker 4: Because there's two of these, there's actually I'm working on
Speaker 4: the third one.
Speaker 5: We're in will I on a regular basis.
Speaker 4: You know, my wife's an artist, and all of the
Speaker 4: illustrations in that book.
Speaker 5: Are from her.
Speaker 3: Oh cool, So.
Speaker 5: But you know, I'll regularly say to her.
Speaker 4: Recently, I'm saying like, I'm going back to my office
Speaker 4: and back to nineteen fifteen, because book three is set
Speaker 4: in World War One. So what I'd like to tell
Speaker 4: people about this series is, if you can imagine Rudyard
Speaker 4: Kipling's Kim meeting stan Lee's Doctor Strange. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 4: the story.
Speaker 6: But there's Ian fleming that there's there's Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Speaker 4: Oh well yeah, well, well here's the here's the deal.
Speaker 4: I mean, when in the eighties, when I was in
Speaker 4: f you know, doing the Afghan stuff. One of the
Speaker 4: things that I really believe in is if you're going
Speaker 4: to do this trade, you have to understand history. Whatever
Speaker 4: culture you're working against, you have to understand history. So
Speaker 4: the good news is when the Brits left the subcontinent,
Speaker 4: they left behind the print plates for all of their
Speaker 4: old books, and so you could buy in books you
Speaker 4: still can buy in bookstores memoirs of you know, twenty
Speaker 4: years on a Kiber, this and that and the other thing. Well,
Speaker 4: a lot of those books include these statements that, you know,
Speaker 4: the guy dyes his skin with walnut oil and puts
Speaker 4: on the local garb and disappears in the crowd. Well listen, bullshit,
Speaker 4: trust me. Yeah, I mean exactly. I mean, I speak
Speaker 4: the language pretty darn good. I grew a beard that
Speaker 4: looked like zz top. But let me tell you, I
Speaker 4: didn't fool any locals, right except maybe at a distance
Speaker 4: where if they were looking to shoot somebody.
Speaker 5: They might not shoot me first.
Speaker 4: They'd shoot me eventually they were not going to shoot
Speaker 4: me first.
Speaker 5: So okay, fine.
Speaker 4: So but I thought to myself, Okay, well I know
Speaker 4: it's not true, but what if it was true. Well,
Speaker 4: if it was true, somebody would have to teach these
Speaker 4: guys to do this stuff. So I created the school
Speaker 4: right where they were being taught how to disappear into
Speaker 4: the crowd, how to run their operations against the Russians.
Speaker 4: Now by the second book, they're Russians and the Brits
Speaker 4: are allies, and they're running their operations against the Germans,
Speaker 4: as they are in this new book too. But it's
Speaker 4: a fun book. It takes a lot longer to write
Speaker 4: because I put real people into the story, and those
Speaker 4: real people kind of have to be where I say
Speaker 4: they are, right, because most folks are going to wonder
Speaker 4: about who are these people? And in today's world of
Speaker 4: Google and Wikipedia, people are going to really quick no
Speaker 4: if I was completely off base, right, So I do.
Speaker 5: I do a fair bit of research.
Speaker 4: But of course, as I said, I bought a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of books from that time period and brought them
Speaker 4: back to the States. My office has got probably five
Speaker 4: hundred books of background stuff that I can use.
Speaker 5: It just means I have to be a student again.
Speaker 5: That's all.
Speaker 3: Well, what's so fascinating about it?
Speaker 6: Is it like in a lot of like in some ways,
Speaker 6: if you took out the fictional elements, the characters, the
Speaker 6: you know that, you know, the steampunk, you know, the
Speaker 6: you know, the magic or whatever, it's a history book.
Speaker 3: Like there's so much rich history in it.
Speaker 6: About Afghanistan, about like there are so many things and
Speaker 6: I'm like, oh my gosh, like you know.
Speaker 3: You're talking about the possible.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean when I'm talking about the Waziris
Speaker 4: and the Mansuits, and that's absolutely the Waziris and the
Speaker 4: Marsuits were regularly causing trouble up on the and the Fata.
Speaker 5: Well you know.
Speaker 4: And and the thing about the mysticism is interesting. I
Speaker 4: got that from there was a h An adventurer, a
Speaker 4: Belgian adventurer that went up into Tibet in the thirties.
Speaker 5: Oh and he came and he came.
Speaker 4: Back and wrote this book about all those things that
Speaker 4: I'm talking about, right, all the the you know, the
Speaker 4: the uh being able to jump long distances and being
Speaker 4: able to be untelepathy and all that stuff. Now another
Speaker 4: you know short you know, reality story. I have a
Speaker 4: friend who I worked with for years and years and years,
Speaker 4: Special Forces guy was also an Olympic kayaker, and years
Speaker 4: later he was hired by National Geographic to be a
Speaker 4: scout for them. They were going to sport a sponsor
Speaker 4: a team that was going to try and and and
Speaker 4: whitewater raft, so rafting on the headwaters of the Ganges
Speaker 4: all the way from Nepal down to Calcutta. Well, you know,
Speaker 4: my friend Wick, he uh, and he's a writer as well.
Speaker 4: He's he's now, of course we're all geezers, so we
Speaker 4: can't be adventurers anymore.
Speaker 5: We have to write.
Speaker 4: But he was doing this and he was you know,
Speaker 4: of course he doesn't speak Nepali uh, and he doesn't
Speaker 4: speak kindy. So so what he did was on his
Speaker 4: first leg of the whitewater, he hired a young man
Speaker 4: who was from the University Katmandu, spoke good English uh
Speaker 4: and was a comparative religion guy, which in University cat
Speaker 4: And who meant he was comparing red hat white hat Buddhism.
Speaker 4: But anyhow, Wicks, you know, spending his time with this
Speaker 4: guy and at one point he says, after some weeks
Speaker 4: and he's made friends with the guy look at He says,
Speaker 4: I don't want to insult you, but I've been reading
Speaker 4: for years about the fact that, you know, Tibetan monks
Speaker 4: could could you know, astral project from one monastery to
Speaker 4: another monastery, and you know all that stuff. I've read
Speaker 4: this book about this guy who says he's seen all
Speaker 4: this stuff, like really, And the young man said, you know, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 4: there's you got to separate facts in fiction, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's our religion is our religion, and we believe these
Speaker 4: things and some of these things, he says personally, and
Speaker 4: then he he you know, raises his hand. He says,
Speaker 4: I've never seen a monk Levita anymore than up the
Speaker 4: height of my shoulder, and and wiccoes, all right, then
Speaker 4: that answers the question, you know.
Speaker 5: So so I just.
Speaker 4: Put that stuff in because it's fun, it's you know,
Speaker 4: and it gives me an opportunity to get some of
Speaker 4: the characters out of jams. Sure that would they would otherwise,
Speaker 4: you know. And and partly it's true that if you
Speaker 4: are able to, i mean, disappearing in the crowd is
Speaker 4: one thing. But there's plenty of stories of modern stories
Speaker 4: about snipers disappearing into ground that nobody would expect they
Speaker 4: could disappear too, right, And that's because.
Speaker 5: What well, I mean, it's it's because.
Speaker 4: They understand how the adversary's mind works. So if you
Speaker 4: look like something that the adversary expects to see, then
Speaker 4: you are. You're not invisible in the sense of doctor
Speaker 4: Strange invisible, but you are invisible to your adversary.
Speaker 5: Because I don't see you. Right.
Speaker 3: It's also like it's just a fun element to the story.
Speaker 2: Let's jump into the user questions here. Let's try to
Speaker 2: get through these for JR.
Speaker 3: Okay, Jerry, thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Do you have knowledge about operations some moom back in
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety in Iraq?
Speaker 4: No, I mean, I'm not a I'm a Central Asian guy,
Speaker 4: So I'm sorry, I can't.
Speaker 5: I can't speak on.
Speaker 4: Iraq at all. My I made two trips to Iraq,
Speaker 4: and neither one of them were in that time period.
Speaker 4: I mean I made two trips in the Rock because
Speaker 4: I had some of my black propaganda team there, so
Speaker 4: I was in Bagdad and Ramadi a couple of times.
Speaker 4: But no, sorry, I I'm not trying to dodge it.
Speaker 4: I just don't know anything.
Speaker 3: About it, and you know, as you weren't trying to judge.
Speaker 3: It's totally cool.
Speaker 6: We get it, John Verre, but we know you John Pierre,
Speaker 6: thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Keeping people safe. Last year was reported that the agents.
Speaker 6: Made to call out on the loss of too many informants?
Speaker 6: Is the is the cause the tougher environments or the
Speaker 6: lack of talented handlers?
Speaker 3: And I'm going to add on to this order, is
Speaker 3: there do you think that there are other issues?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, right, the whole idea of what's
Speaker 4: called uts right, ubiquitous technical surveillance makes it exceptionally hard
Speaker 4: to do the old kind of trade craft I did.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Then you add to that, how are you going to
Speaker 4: communicate with these folks if you can't see him face
Speaker 4: to face? Well, then you then you enter another piece
Speaker 4: of Now you're into another world where cyber operations and
Speaker 4: cybersecurity and everything else. So I think that what happens
Speaker 4: is we go through it is and I don't want
Speaker 4: to make light of it because it's people's deaths, But
Speaker 4: it is a competition, just like it's a competition between
Speaker 4: stealth aircraft and air defense. You're constantly competing with your
Speaker 4: adversary who's trying to get better to defeat you, and
Speaker 4: then as they start to defeat you, you have to
Speaker 4: figure out new mechanisms, new means to get through it.
Speaker 4: So I think probably the answer is the technology is
Speaker 4: moving so quickly now that it's really hard to do
Speaker 4: the job that I mean, you couldn't do the job
Speaker 4: that I did. Really, honestly, the sort of trade craft
Speaker 4: I used might as well be you might as well
Speaker 4: be talking about the nineteenth century.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, Rowdy's incoherent rambling.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for your donation. Very good podcast.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 6: I spent a good bit of last night actually doing
Speaker 6: some more research on early two thousand and one operations.
Speaker 6: Interesting listening to someone who is on the ground watching
Speaker 6: it all unfold. And thank you very much Jr. For
Speaker 6: being here and for sharing your experiences with us and
Speaker 6: with our audience.
Speaker 4: Like, well, it's my you know, I won't say a
Speaker 4: pleasure because it reminds me of a death of a teammate,
Speaker 4: but it is nice to be able to now, twenty
Speaker 4: years later, be able to talk about something and tell people,
Speaker 4: how to explain to people how complicated it is. It's
Speaker 4: not it's not easy to do this stuff, and it
Speaker 4: requires time on target. Yeah, you know it, two thousand
Speaker 4: and one didn't happen because of two thousand and one.
Speaker 5: It happened because of we were doing in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: Right, And you could say the same thing about what
Speaker 4: happened in Iraq.
Speaker 5: You could say the same thing today. Probably.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know anything about Ukraine except what
Speaker 4: I read the newspaper. But my guess is some of
Speaker 4: those successes are probably associated with a partnership between the
Speaker 4: Ukrainians and some part of the United States government.
Speaker 6: Right, just say it, right that the foundation has been there,
Speaker 6: Sassar an Omen, thank you very much for the donation.
Speaker 6: Thanksteam House. Your content never disappoints. Thank you that with
Speaker 6: We're all broke my heart in your opinion? Does this
Speaker 6: so this is your opinion. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 6: based on anything you do or don't know. Does CEI
Speaker 6: have plans in supporting the resistance Afghanistan?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Would you think about would you think that the agency
Speaker 6: would have plans in supporting the resistance there?
Speaker 3: Or do you think that would probably just pull up?
Speaker 4: I mean again, it's been years and years since I've
Speaker 4: been I haven't been in the building and only that
Speaker 4: as a guest, and that was five years ago. So
Speaker 4: I mean, so that's again, let's go back to what
Speaker 4: I said before. In nineteen eighty nine, theoretically we stopped
Speaker 4: being in contact with Afghans? Did we stop? Were we
Speaker 4: and we like stop the whole program? Did we stop
Speaker 4: working with Afghans?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 4: No, you know, now it's complicated by the way that
Speaker 4: everything has happened in Afghanistan. But you know, in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety one and ninety two, we were still contacting Afghans
Speaker 4: in the middle of a civil war. In nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 4: I was still contacting Afghans when the Taliban were in charge.
Speaker 4: So I can't imagine that there aren't people in the
Speaker 4: agency working this problem set. However, I want to reinforce
Speaker 4: to your to your to the folks who write and
Speaker 4: to you guys. I don't know, right, I'm a geezer.
Speaker 4: I am long out of practice. I mean, it was amazing.
Speaker 4: I tell people. When I tell people I was riding
Speaker 4: on you know, on horses at forty six, they roll
Speaker 4: their eyes at that. You can imagine. You can imagine
Speaker 4: at sixty seven how useless I would be in that game,
Speaker 4: so nobody is much interested in what I have to
Speaker 4: think or say.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Stuart, oh, thank you very much for the donation.
Speaker 3: We really appreciate it. Jr.
Speaker 6: Thanks for telling the stories of the accomplishments of you
Speaker 6: and your team.
Speaker 3: Makes me proud.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much for saying that. It's the
Speaker 4: that time period was something that was really something and
Speaker 4: it wasn't just remember we were Alpha Bravo, but it
Speaker 4: was I mean, if you haven't read the books, I mean,
Speaker 4: Foxtrot and Condihar is about uh Echo and Fox Fox
Speaker 4: Trot teams. Uh, there's there's a you know, there were
Speaker 4: a bunch of I mean, Fox Trott was probably the
Speaker 4: last of the teams that was behind lines. Uh, but
Speaker 4: there were teams. I mean we were we were just
Speaker 4: two of all those others. And I would have to
Speaker 4: actually get my fingers and count on my toes to
Speaker 4: try and figure out how many. But because I'm I'm
Speaker 4: not real good about the alphabet and all that. But
Speaker 4: I'm just saying there were a lot of guys out
Speaker 4: there who committed to this and did very much the
Speaker 4: same sort of stuff we all fought in this battle,
Speaker 4: along with the odas, along with the Rangers who went
Speaker 4: into Condohar early on along with the you know this
Speaker 4: special boat Service guys that you know were with me
Speaker 4: for weeks. Uh, so you know it's it's a good thing.
Speaker 3: Scotchy, thank you very much for the genation.
Speaker 6: How does black propaganda work when the enemy enemy knows
Speaker 6: who it's coming from. I want to have more effective
Speaker 6: trash talk in video games.
Speaker 4: Well, the enemy can't know where it's coming from. That's
Speaker 4: the whole point, right, So what you do in black
Speaker 4: propaganda is, let's I'll just give you a generic example.
Speaker 4: So if I well, I mean, you don't have to
Speaker 4: do a generic example. We could do what the Russians
Speaker 4: to talk about what the Russians did in sixteen, So
Speaker 4: they created fictional Americans to reside on the web to
Speaker 4: say whatever they wanted to. Because they were fictional, they
Speaker 4: could say whatever. And the idea was to create controversy,
Speaker 4: to create hostility on the web. So sometimes those fictional
Speaker 4: Americans were pro Hillary, sometimes they were pro Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they were neither. And they were doing wedge issue stuff,
Speaker 4: whether it was gun control or abortion or Christianity or
Speaker 4: whatever that in today's world, it's really it's not easy,
Speaker 4: but it is much easier to create fictional characters than
Speaker 4: it's ever been before that are that are that appear real, right,
Speaker 4: I mean with with Ai especially, you can look like
Speaker 4: or that that fictional character can absolutely look like he's
Speaker 4: writing to you right now, uh huh. And and the
Speaker 4: time stamp is going to be right, and the IP
Speaker 4: address is going to be right, all of that stuff.
Speaker 4: So I would say to your to the it's about
Speaker 4: making sure that they that you are not who you
Speaker 4: say you are.
Speaker 6: So Scott, you need some sock puppet accounts exactly when
Speaker 6: you're trash talking and gaming, you need to create some
Speaker 6: sock puppet accounts to create controversial topics.
Speaker 2: I got one last question from Isaac. It's a little
Speaker 2: bit of a long one, but he says, dear mister Seeger,
Speaker 2: I'm twenty nine years old in my second year of
Speaker 2: university getting my bachelor's and Computer information Systems. After that,
Speaker 2: I want to get my master's in cybersecurity. When I'm done,
Speaker 2: I want to apply for the agency. I would be
Speaker 2: happy doing clandestine services, being a case officer or cyber
Speaker 2: ops officer, but I want to work, do the work
Speaker 2: like you did, and go into ground branch but I'm
Speaker 2: afraid of hitting the same roadblocks as when I tried
Speaker 2: to enlist. I could not enlist in the army because
Speaker 2: I didn't qualify for medical waivers, even though I'm not
Speaker 2: medically restricted at all. The recruiter described to me that
Speaker 2: a MEPs doctor did not want to take the chance
Speaker 2: on me. Also, I had a record for misdemeanor, which
Speaker 2: has been resolved for a long time. What can I
Speaker 2: do to make the agency see me and increase my
Speaker 2: chances of getting in? Do they care if people were
Speaker 2: never honorable students because I'm not. Does even asking questions
Speaker 2: a lot format like this hurt my chances?
Speaker 3: What do you think? JR?
Speaker 4: Okay, First things first, nobody in either the CIA or
Speaker 4: the FBI is going to look at anybody who's still
Speaker 4: an undergraduate. What we want to see is a person,
Speaker 4: and again I've worked with FBI recruiters just as much
Speaker 4: as I've worked with CIA recruiters. What we want to
Speaker 4: see as a person who has finished school and then
Speaker 4: gone to do something else. Because let's face it, when
Speaker 4: you're in college, you probably don't meet nasty people. You
Speaker 4: may think they're nasty professors, but you don't meet challenging
Speaker 4: nasty people, and you're going to be in the CIA
Speaker 4: or the FBI, You've got to understand that perspective.
Speaker 5: So start with that.
Speaker 4: So basically, what they want to see is four year
Speaker 4: degree followed by some work. Actually they'll be fine with
Speaker 4: a two year degree followed by some work. Doesn't have
Speaker 4: to be military, work, doesn't have to be could be anything.
Speaker 5: I mean, it just needs to be work.
Speaker 4: Then the other part of this, which is important to realize,
Speaker 4: it's totally different from my world. Everybody applies online. Everybody,
Speaker 4: and so tell the truth when you apply, show them
Speaker 4: what you have done, and then hope for the best.
Speaker 4: Because it's a it's a it's a rigorous selection process,
Speaker 4: and it is you know, the vetting process starts with
Speaker 4: checking to see if what you put online is true.
Speaker 5: Anybody who might.
Speaker 4: Try to make their resume better than it really is
Speaker 4: probably is immediately going to get rejected. So just tell
Speaker 4: the truth, do your job, get it, go to school,
Speaker 4: go to a graduate school. While you're in graduate school,
Speaker 4: get a job that would be associated with your with
Speaker 4: your career, and then apply. What's the worst that can happen, right,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean really, but it's not a secret.
Speaker 4: You just go online to CIA dot gov or FBI
Speaker 4: dot gov. It's right there, the applications right there.
Speaker 5: Do it.
Speaker 6: And in your case, you did apply, you got rejected,
Speaker 6: and then later on, when you weren't even looking, they
Speaker 6: called you. So it's sort of it's one of those
Speaker 6: things where just because you get told no the first time, like,
Speaker 6: keep living your life and gaining the experience, keep doing things.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and I can understand now looking back on it,
Speaker 4: why they weren't interested in me in nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 4: because I'd gone to graduate school and I had just
Speaker 4: started working period. Right I was in Wyoming working, but
Speaker 4: I hadn't really proven that I could actually hold a
Speaker 4: job all that well. I mean i'd proven that I
Speaker 4: could go to school. Well that's great, lots of people
Speaker 4: go to school. And you're right, it wasn't until after
Speaker 4: I had been in the army. And of course it
Speaker 4: was just literally dumb luck. But that you know sometimes,
Speaker 4: you know, Louis Pasteur said something that I like to
Speaker 4: use this quote a lot, which is fortune favors the
Speaker 4: prepared mind. Okay, so if you're prepared, then when luck
Speaker 4: does strike, you know, I mean, you're more likely to
Speaker 4: succeeed than if the guy who hasn't thought it through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, JR, I really appreciate you taking the time. I
Speaker 2: know I've kept you like way long, almost like three
Speaker 2: hours here tonight. Again, really appreciate your time and telling
Speaker 2: the story. I hope people check out the mic for series, oh.
Speaker 3: And and the school for the Great Game. Guys, this
Speaker 3: is a really enjoyable read. If like yeah, I am.
Speaker 2: Enjoying that, they'll link to the books is down the
Speaker 2: description of this video so you can find it right there.
Speaker 2: Next week, we're going to have a one to sixtieth
Speaker 2: guy on he flew MH forty seven's for one sixtieth.
Speaker 2: Excited to talk to him on Friday next Friday. We're
Speaker 2: also a bit at the end of an era here.
Speaker 2: We're moving studios, so by the end of this month
Speaker 2: you're going to see episodes in our new studio. This
Speaker 2: place is going to be shut down.
Speaker 3: Jack and I were just looking at emails or earlier
Speaker 3: we've been We've been in here for like four years altogether.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, so and Jack the Smith, thank you
Speaker 6: very much for the donation.
Speaker 3: We deeply appreciate it. JR.
Speaker 2: I would love I know, you split your time between
Speaker 2: two different locations. When the next time you come through
Speaker 2: the Greater New York metropolitan area, like sometimes this fall
Speaker 2: or this winner. I'd love to have you in our
Speaker 2: new studio because you're also a bit of a historian,
Speaker 2: and I would love to have you just sit down
Speaker 2: and discuss the history of CIA paramilitary operations or just
Speaker 2: CIA in general, because you have so much information about
Speaker 2: that and you've studied it so closely, you're so passionate
Speaker 2: about it. I'd love to continue this conversation, you know
Speaker 2: later on in this year.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll be happy to Justin's already invited me to
Speaker 4: come to New York and talk to him as well, So,
Speaker 4: you know, I think we'll make it, make it work.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure when.
Speaker 4: Uh uh, you know, that's a that's the great thing
Speaker 4: about being a mere wretched federal pensioner.
Speaker 5: I don't actually have a schedule.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe we can have both you and Justin come
Speaker 3: in at the same time. That would be amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, uh, okay, guys, well it's been my pleasure and
Speaker 4: uh and and good luck as you move studios.
Speaker 5: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. We're really excited about it. And all
Speaker 2: the things that to come. It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 3: JR.
Speaker 2: Thank you again, and everybody else out there. We'll see
Speaker 2: you next Friday. Have a good weekend okay out here.
Speaker 3: Thank care, JR.
Speaker 5: Thank you JR.