Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Rick Brada, welcome back to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: I'm ready for you. Thank you very much. I'm really
Speaker 2: enjoying this.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I have got so much to ask you.
Speaker 1: I just want to start off for just a little
Speaker 1: bit of left field. Here. There's a quoting your book
Speaker 1: by George all Will and this is a quote. We
Speaker 1: sleep safely in our beds because rough mans stand ready
Speaker 1: in the night to visit violence on those who would
Speaker 1: do us harm. I like that quote, and I understand
Speaker 1: that quote, but I just want to get your comment
Speaker 1: on that quote.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite quotes because it's it, you know,
Speaker 2: typifies our culture. You know, when we have Veterans' Day,
Speaker 2: most people focus on the military. I'm always always post
Speaker 2: something that includes our law enforcement, our first responders besides
Speaker 2: the military, because it's it's what we do, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's the majority. You figure in the United States,
Speaker 2: for example, two percent of the population ever serves at
Speaker 2: a given time in the military. Another percent serves in
Speaker 2: law enforcement. Right, that means that the rest of the
Speaker 2: ninety six percent have no idea what we do and
Speaker 2: what we sacrifice in order for them to have the
Speaker 2: life that we enjoy, whether it's in Australia or Brittany
Speaker 2: or the United States, anywhere where they're there, where there
Speaker 2: is are there are freedoms. So that that quote I
Speaker 2: think crystallizes and it's easier to explain to a lehman that,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, sometimes you have to cray habit
Speaker 2: and let slip the dogs of war. But those dogs
Speaker 2: are not going to bite you. They're going to bait
Speaker 2: the person or the entity that is trying to destroy you.
Speaker 2: That's one of my favorite quotes, and it's one that
Speaker 2: I always love hearing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like it, and it resonates with me as well,
Speaker 1: because I think sometimes you do things that it's not
Speaker 1: in your nature to do, but you do it because
Speaker 1: you have to do it, and it's an ethical thing.
Speaker 1: But it's not going to be pleasant, but you'll do that.
Speaker 1: And quite often I think people don't understand what goes on,
Speaker 1: what goes on behind the closed doors to make sure
Speaker 1: the world is safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you look at like I said that
Speaker 2: that ninety plus per scent of people that have never
Speaker 2: been shot at, uh, have never had to shoot back,
Speaker 2: had never had to fight to to neutralize an aggressor
Speaker 2: and somebody who was trying to rape a woman or
Speaker 2: whatever it is. So those are those are things that
Speaker 2: and they don't understand the risk and everything else, and
Speaker 2: mostly importantly, they don't understand the impact, the post incident
Speaker 2: impact that those things have on the on the on
Speaker 2: the person that has to carry them out. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm like I said, I wrote Rescue in Miami, UH
Speaker 2: in the seventies, for God's Sake, which was when the
Speaker 2: drug wars were were rampant.
Speaker 1: And uh, it would have sayn a bit then oh it.
Speaker 2: Was, it was. It was brutal. And as a paramedic,
Speaker 2: there were shootings every night. There were you know, robberies,
Speaker 2: there were things. And it's it's funny because although, yeah,
Speaker 2: there are some things in my a CIA career that
Speaker 2: still give me a little bit of goosebumps, some of
Speaker 2: the worst memories came from pole that I couldn't see. Uh,
Speaker 2: people that were you know, we did everything we could,
Speaker 2: but they still didn't make it. And and uh, I
Speaker 2: read somewhere not too long ago a phrase of the
Speaker 2: guy says, yes, said people don't understand that it is
Speaker 2: harder too. It is easier to forget somebody you had
Speaker 2: to kill then to forget that you could not see.
Speaker 2: What are your partners or what are your friends.
Speaker 1: We've taken you back to Honduras for a moment when
Speaker 1: you were working in the in the camps, and then
Speaker 1: coming back coming back to your wife. You're living in
Speaker 1: country and your wife was living in country. Was it
Speaker 1: hard for you to go from yeah, you're in the jungle,
Speaker 1: you're fighting in the jungle basically, and everything else that
Speaker 1: you're doing. Then you come home and you walk through
Speaker 1: the door and Hi, honey, I'm home. Like, how did
Speaker 1: you how did you navigate between one extreme to the other.
Speaker 2: That's that's an excellent question, and it's one that I
Speaker 2: eventually mastard. I mean, I was pretty rough around the
Speaker 2: edges of the beginning. You come out of these camps,
Speaker 2: you have to be thinking tough, you have to be
Speaker 2: you maybe you got shot at that day, because you know,
Speaker 2: all these camps were right in the contested areas. And
Speaker 2: but you know, I had two things going for me,
Speaker 2: and the biggest one was my wife is a believer.
Speaker 2: She didn't know exactly what I was doing. She knew
Speaker 2: I was at the camp. She knew I carried a
Speaker 2: gun and a grenade and a knife and all this
Speaker 2: other stuff. But she was a believer because she lived Communism,
Speaker 2: so she knew that I wasn't out there drinking and
Speaker 2: hurrying around. I was out there trying to win, to
Speaker 2: win a battle. But you do learn to turn it off,
Speaker 2: or at least to tone it down. I will tell
Speaker 2: you that one of the things that I that I
Speaker 2: try to mentor my my my subordinates and people that
Speaker 2: come to me, is something that I could have done
Speaker 2: better was to better sensitize my spouse of what I
Speaker 2: really do without going into operational details. But here's the
Speaker 2: here's the problem. When Johnny, whose dad works at the
Speaker 2: car dealer or owns a car dealer, has a bad
Speaker 2: day and comes home pissed off, it means it's sullen.
Speaker 2: Of course, when a guy like you or a guy
Speaker 2: like me come home after we you know, and we've
Speaker 2: had a bad day, is compromised, mission is compromised, and
Speaker 2: or somebody is dead, there's a severity. There's a severity
Speaker 2: to the consequences that we live within that most people
Speaker 2: do not understand.
Speaker 1: I found it hard sometimes if you're in operational mode
Speaker 1: and you come home and you're in an environment that's relaxed,
Speaker 1: whether your kids are there, your partner there, or a
Speaker 1: happy environment, and when you've been well. This is how
Speaker 1: I found myself. When I'm in operational mode, I make
Speaker 1: a decision, Bang, this needs to be done, that needs
Speaker 1: to be done. That's the way you've got to operate.
Speaker 1: You've got to operate at that speed. So you could
Speaker 1: be doing that for days on end, and then you
Speaker 1: come home and it might be a comment like do
Speaker 1: you want to go out for dinner, and yeah, where
Speaker 1: do you want to go? I don't care. Come we
Speaker 1: get there, and it just the conversation escalates from there.
Speaker 1: And that's just a silly example. But you're being in
Speaker 1: an environment where it's bang bang bang, I know this,
Speaker 1: done that, done this done, and then you're in this
Speaker 1: relaxed environment and then you have to check yourself and
Speaker 1: realize you're the one that'say out the step, not the
Speaker 1: people that are.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely true, and guilty is charged many many times.
Speaker 2: But again with age. I mean, I've been married forty
Speaker 2: two years, so I must have done something right eventually.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, it's hard to turn it off. It
Speaker 2: really is, and there's people that don't. There's people that
Speaker 2: actually and those are the ones that unfortunately suffer the
Speaker 2: consequences you know, alcohol or drug abuse or or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, just violent temperament issues. When you cannot, you
Speaker 2: don't learn to turn it off, or at least to
Speaker 2: turn it down. You never turn it off.
Speaker 1: I always had, and that's why thirty four years in
Speaker 1: the cops and I think I've come through relatively unscathed.
Speaker 1: But I could switch it off. And I know people
Speaker 1: that can't switch it off. I can be intense and
Speaker 1: then walk through the door and yeah, there'll be a
Speaker 1: debriefing type situation, but then I can just relax and
Speaker 1: then okay, game on when you walk out the door again.
Speaker 1: I think it's something that you're lucky, you're fortunate if
Speaker 1: you can do that. Clearly, with the length of your
Speaker 1: career and the type of stuff that you're doing, you
Speaker 1: had the ability to cape with the pressures.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that that was part of the wiring
Speaker 2: and the eventual growth that I did. But like I said,
Speaker 2: having a family that really understood, you know, what I
Speaker 2: was doing and the reasons I was doing these things.
Speaker 2: Mix coming home a lot easier. Mix coming home a
Speaker 2: lot easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, we've had you in the jungle, you've been
Speaker 1: to the farm, We've polished you up. You've got all
Speaker 1: the skills. You know which side the knife and fork
Speaker 1: should be on. Communicate, you've got your edge. You get
Speaker 1: deployed to the Philippines, talk us through that deployment because
Speaker 1: a lot happens in the Philippines that, Yeah, it can
Speaker 1: be a crazy place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the Philippines at the time that that
Speaker 2: was my third tour in my Latin American tour, which
Speaker 2: I cannot mention the country, but both were being assaulted
Speaker 2: by highly trained, highly financed terrorist communist terrorists. One was Maoist,
Speaker 2: the other ones where whatever. And the New People's Army
Speaker 2: and the ABUSAF group was starting to take Wayne down
Speaker 2: in mind now the southern part of the Philippines. So
Speaker 2: the Philippines has always been a violent place. And when
Speaker 2: these things were, they were literally on the streets. There
Speaker 2: was a very famous colonel, Colonel Nick Roe wrote a
Speaker 2: fantastic book called five Years to Freedom or something like that,
Speaker 2: because he was a pow for five years and he
Speaker 2: became the military attache in Manila and he was assassinated
Speaker 2: like eight months before I got there, right on the streets.
Speaker 2: In other words, mp A was, you know, operating with
Speaker 2: impunity in the very capital of the country. And that's
Speaker 2: what we were sent there to to butchers the local
Speaker 2: I work with this constabulary, I work with the Navy,
Speaker 2: and I worked with the army, the Special Operations.
Speaker 1: GAY so and what what role did you go in there? Like,
Speaker 1: what was America's interest to have you in there? What
Speaker 1: you can then count site it's.
Speaker 2: No I mean it's it's very basic. I mean, the
Speaker 2: you know, we're trying to, uh to buoy a democracy
Speaker 2: that is you know, failing because they don't have the
Speaker 2: capability or the training. Uh So we were sent there
Speaker 2: to work primarily with our counterparts and train them up
Speaker 2: and provide them the craft that they needed to learn.
Speaker 2: The logistics as you know, you know logistics in any
Speaker 2: businesses there is the main and drive being able to
Speaker 2: give them the resources financial and technical that they needed.
Speaker 2: That was one of the things we were doing a
Speaker 2: lot of intercepts because back then communications were more vulnerable,
Speaker 2: and not that they're not now, but there it was.
Speaker 2: It was part of the being able to find out
Speaker 2: what the terrorists were planning or doing. So there was
Speaker 2: a lot of technical aspect to it also, but it
Speaker 2: was our mission there was to help the government survive.
Speaker 2: And eventually they did push the MPa out of the
Speaker 2: city and back in.
Speaker 1: The woods, and a lot of that would be done.
Speaker 1: I would imagine Rick with human intelligence like getting people
Speaker 1: and I think there was a quite a new book
Speaker 1: that in the US you look for people's strength rather
Speaker 1: than targeting their weaknesses. So when you're looking for an asset,
Speaker 1: you're looking for someone that can help what you're trying
Speaker 1: to achieve. Can you talk us through that and the
Speaker 1: difference between target need someone for their strength rather than
Speaker 1: their weaknesses. Hew, yeah, different different nations upright.
Speaker 2: That's an excellent question in one of my pet peeves.
Speaker 2: You know, Soviets and Chinese and some of the more
Speaker 2: radical elements. They recruit our strengths, but they also recruit
Speaker 2: for weaknesses. In other words, you have a drinking problem,
Speaker 2: you are being unfaithful to your wife, you're doing drugs,
Speaker 2: you're doing something illegal, you're stealing from your company. They
Speaker 2: love having those people because now they have them, they
Speaker 2: have them, they you know, they're demand. You know they
Speaker 2: have them. So that part is very problematic because that
Speaker 2: person will never be loyal to you because they're only
Speaker 2: there under duress. I did twenty four and a half
Speaker 2: years at CIA. Not ever did I see us recruit
Speaker 2: somebody for that reason. As a matter of fact, I've
Speaker 2: had assets that were developing drinking problems and we would
Speaker 2: find them, you know, find them help. They're gambling problems,
Speaker 2: we would find them help because you know, a recruitment
Speaker 2: is a process of getting the person to understand what
Speaker 2: you're trying to do and make it, you know, mutually beneficial,
Speaker 2: and part of that is taking care of that individual.
Speaker 2: Training that individual and helping them were necessary. You know.
Speaker 2: I think I recruited more people because their kids wanted
Speaker 2: to go to college and that was a thing that
Speaker 2: we could make happen, you know, to help in the
Speaker 2: long run. But those are the things you do to
Speaker 2: be able to run an asset for ten, fifteen, twenty years,
Speaker 2: thirty years, and those do exist. We do have those
Speaker 2: those kind of track records with that.
Speaker 1: Well you break it down and the term, yeah, the
Speaker 1: carrot or the stick to get what you want and
Speaker 1: dangling the carrot. You made me reflect on a lot
Speaker 1: of my career was spent like nice crime and informants.
Speaker 1: And I think about the informants, the ones that I
Speaker 1: had long term relationships with and the ones that always
Speaker 1: delivered and could be trusted. Were the ones that were
Speaker 1: doing it not for their own mutual benefit, but doing
Speaker 1: it for the right reason. It was something that they
Speaker 1: wanted to do. And yeah, so I understand the logic
Speaker 1: behind doing that. How it can be hypothetical, but you
Speaker 1: just tell me, you've gone into a new country, whether
Speaker 1: it be the Philippines or back in South America. You're
Speaker 1: perhaps there working within the embassy, have a role within
Speaker 1: the embassy. What do you how do you recruit someone
Speaker 1: you just get out there and socialized, or how does
Speaker 1: it work? Give us an example?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you know, so you know the data, the life
Speaker 2: of a case officer. You get up in the morning,
Speaker 2: you go to work, and well most people take the
Speaker 2: most straight line. Well you can't. You have to be
Speaker 2: watching to see if you're being watched because you may
Speaker 2: have a meeting that name and see what kind of
Speaker 2: screwed you're in and you're checking in the embassy just
Speaker 2: like everybody else. American embassies are kind of strange because
Speaker 2: we do lie higher foreign nationals. Our secretaries and our
Speaker 2: phone operators and some of the other stuff are are
Speaker 2: foreign nationals. So you have to live your cover even
Speaker 2: inside the embassy because obviously there will be penetrations through
Speaker 2: those so those individuals. So you know, I've been a
Speaker 2: political officer, I was a science officer in the Philippines.
Speaker 2: I was liaison officer, which is what afforded me access
Speaker 2: to the military guys.
Speaker 1: H So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's it is a new challenge when
Speaker 2: you come into a country and you have look, you
Speaker 2: have to assume. Let me put it this way, foreign
Speaker 2: services assume that you are a spy until you convince
Speaker 2: them that you're not.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in art If you.
Speaker 2: If you're an American working out of a US embassy,
Speaker 2: the intel, the local intel service, will look at you
Speaker 2: as a spy until if your tradecraft is good enough,
Speaker 2: they eventually go, oh, this guy's just the boring whatever
Speaker 2: is he in doing anything? And they put the resources
Speaker 2: on somebody else. And that is very, very difficult, and
Speaker 2: that is a huge process. And every time you start
Speaker 2: in a new country, you start from scratch. You know,
Speaker 2: you live your cover inside the embassy, outside the embassy.
Speaker 2: But then you do either through existing assets, get new
Speaker 2: leads through intel research. You know, they say, hey, here's
Speaker 2: the guy that made this comment, and you know he
Speaker 2: may be willing to cooperate, and he works in the
Speaker 2: ministry of whatever. And then we there's a process by
Speaker 2: where we approach the individual under you know, false pretenses
Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, usually in a social environment.
Speaker 2: And once you become friends, you find out you know
Speaker 2: what I've always described it is find out what keeps
Speaker 2: them up at night. Uh and that if you could
Speaker 2: resolve that for them, it is that is your entry
Speaker 2: point into into recruitment.
Speaker 1: They've got something, You've got something they need and you
Speaker 1: bring them along there. You're also deployed with North Korea
Speaker 1: or not in North Korea, but working in that field.
Speaker 1: What was that lot? Because that's a yeah, SAI is
Speaker 1: a secretive organization, but North Korea it's very isolated. What
Speaker 1: what was that lot?
Speaker 2: I actually did four years total working the Korea account.
Speaker 2: The first two was actually working in in Seoul and
Speaker 2: the embassy UH. There, I was a senior liaison officer
Speaker 2: uh so I had the US military J two was
Speaker 2: my counterpart, but the heads of the different services including
Speaker 2: the police, which I made some good friends there. So
Speaker 2: you know, the target is mutual. You know I was
Speaker 2: working with a South Koreans. The target is mutual, which
Speaker 2: is the North Koreans. The North Koreans have two natural enemies,
Speaker 2: South Korea and the United States. That's it, That's all
Speaker 2: they care about. That's all they care about. So we
Speaker 2: obviously don't have ready access. I'm not saying that we
Speaker 2: don't have programs that we do have it as successes,
Speaker 2: but North Korea is a very prohibitive place to operate
Speaker 2: because there is no embassy, there's no you know, you're
Speaker 2: you're under surveillance twenty four to seven. You have a
Speaker 2: very controlled audience. So for us, that work is overseas.
Speaker 2: There's about fifty some embassies, North Korean embassies throughout the world,
Speaker 2: and that's where we target those individuals for recruitment, is
Speaker 2: trying to find them and they're they're tough not to crack,
Speaker 2: but we've cracked them. And when you don't crack them,
Speaker 2: you compromise them. And that was something that I developed
Speaker 2: an act for you say no to me, you were
Speaker 2: going to get into trouble.
Speaker 1: Somehow, and and again without giving away trade craft, but
Speaker 1: they could get in the trouble with an account created
Speaker 1: in their name or something that doesn't reflect well on them,
Speaker 1: or a picture of them hanging out with someone they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be hanging out. Is that the type of thing
Speaker 1: that they get compromised on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's it's it's a it's a it's
Speaker 2: it's very complicated in the sense of that it depends
Speaker 2: on the individual. What's going on. In the case of
Speaker 2: the North Koreans, what I was able to do, was
Speaker 2: I approach these guys as a Latin American private investigator,
Speaker 2: a private businessman and spoke Native Spanish. This was in
Speaker 2: a Latin American country, and I went up to the
Speaker 2: Korean embassy in that country, knocked on their door and say, hey,
Speaker 2: my name is so and so, I'm from such and
Speaker 2: such a country and I want to talk business with you.
Speaker 2: That's very important because North Koreans have to earn their
Speaker 2: own money to operate, and most of it they do
Speaker 2: it through elicit businesses that they get into. A lot
Speaker 2: of it is procurement of embargo things for the for
Speaker 2: the for the regime. So my thing was, I said, look,
Speaker 2: I'm a businessman. I'm in the tobacco business. You guys
Speaker 2: have access to Cuba. Can you smuggle me some Cuban
Speaker 2: seeds so I can improve my tobacco crop. And I
Speaker 2: reached into my sock and I had a lot of
Speaker 2: hundreds like this, And when I started doing that, that
Speaker 2: got their attention. And uh, when when the time came
Speaker 2: that I pitched them, they you know, they did not
Speaker 2: want to work. There was a long process in between.
Speaker 2: We turned them into the local authorities that these guys
Speaker 2: were smuggling. They get caught smuggling something into the country
Speaker 2: and they get p Indeed, they get sent out of
Speaker 2: the country in disgrace. And for North Korean that's often
Speaker 2: a goolag type of existence. You embarrassed the regime by
Speaker 2: getting compromised overseas. You go buy, you're gonna.
Speaker 1: Pay heavy price, so you're not going to have a
Speaker 1: good not having a good time.
Speaker 2: Were subsequently a couple of years later, then I took
Speaker 2: over the whole career's program. That was where I made
Speaker 2: senior grade, uh, and I worked with you. I was
Speaker 2: the the CIA's nsc rep for anything to do with Korea,
Speaker 2: and that was a very very different assignment for me
Speaker 2: than all the other stuff that was more kinetic and
Speaker 2: more street wise than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you find like climbing that climbing the
Speaker 1: corporate ladder or say ladder, whatever you call it, How
Speaker 1: did you find your career? Because were you getting pushed
Speaker 1: up and you're trying to stay at a level so
Speaker 1: you could operate?
Speaker 2: Yes, and no, I never took an assignment for promotion. Never.
Speaker 1: Well, Rick, can I just say I like you for that?
Speaker 1: That says a lot about the type of person. You
Speaker 1: are well done. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It is one of my badge of honors. I believe
Speaker 2: in the mission, and when you do well your mission,
Speaker 2: you're going to get recognized and moved up. I could
Speaker 2: not say no to that position because that made me
Speaker 2: a flank rack officer in the agency. But my heart
Speaker 2: was always in operations and that job. After that job,
Speaker 2: I took over in our counter terrorist center. I was
Speaker 2: the chief of operations for the counter terrorist Center where
Speaker 2: ninety eleven happened. So now I'm you know, at first
Speaker 2: I wasn't out on the street, but I have fingers
Speaker 2: in the pie. I'm mentoring my guys, on my gals,
Speaker 2: I'm putting things together. We're doing renditions, We're doing all
Speaker 2: of this stuff. So at least you're still in the game.
Speaker 2: But to your point, about a year after ninety eleven,
Speaker 2: I went to my boss and I said, we're not
Speaker 2: doing enough on this outside of the military. You know,
Speaker 2: military theaters, you know, Afghanistan and Iraq kind of thing.
Speaker 2: At the time, it was only Afghanistan. And I came
Speaker 2: up with a program for chasing bad guys all over
Speaker 2: the world and getting patterns of life on them, getting
Speaker 2: their tradecraft, who they see, where they live. In case
Speaker 2: we needed to operate against them to disrupt them, we
Speaker 2: now had the ability to do so. So I went
Speaker 2: from you know, chief of operations, where I had about
Speaker 2: three hundred and fifty operators working for me, to having
Speaker 2: a twelve person team because I had almost as many
Speaker 2: women as I had guys to do this kind of work.
Speaker 2: And we were doing surveillance and targeting bad guys. And
Speaker 2: that's how I ended my career. The last two and
Speaker 2: a half years of my career were out on the
Speaker 2: street again.
Speaker 1: Okay, And look, I think that operational experience that you
Speaker 1: get that you've managed to stay in that area for
Speaker 1: so long, and like some people might say, well you
Speaker 1: were managing three hundred and fifty people there and you've
Speaker 1: gone down to fourteen. But I see quite often in policing,
Speaker 1: and I can only speak of law enforcement, that we
Speaker 1: lose a lot of the experience When people that rose,
Speaker 1: as you said, through operational and you rise the very
Speaker 1: thing that made them good, they take them away from
Speaker 1: it and then they're they're in charge of something with
Speaker 1: a rank, but all their operational skill has gone out
Speaker 1: the door. So the fact that you ended up back
Speaker 1: there Another question I wanted to ask, as working under
Speaker 1: the false identifications, is that hard to get your head rounded?
Speaker 1: I know with my friend the French spy, at any
Speaker 1: one time, he'd had five different identities that he could
Speaker 1: rely on at different stages, didn't have to go from
Speaker 1: one to the other, but had them there if needed
Speaker 1: in the type of work that he was doing. We
Speaker 1: had Joe Pistoni on the podcast Donnie Brasca who went
Speaker 1: undercover in with the mafia and speaking to him about
Speaker 1: a really impressive, impressive fellow. He was about always being
Speaker 1: alert and you've virtually got to live that life. Is
Speaker 1: that how you adopted the identities you became John Smith
Speaker 1: or whoever you were.
Speaker 2: You have to and we people didn't understand is like again,
Speaker 2: James Bond, what walks into country acts and he is
Speaker 2: James Bond and he goes and does all this crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, we walk into country X and we're if
Speaker 2: we're already in alias. We have to live that cover,
Speaker 2: whether it's business, whatever it is that you're doing, tourism,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, you have to live that character. And
Speaker 2: but the the attention to details is what is you know,
Speaker 2: precarious because I don't have to know the answer to
Speaker 2: a question. All I need is your reaction to that question.
Speaker 2: If I ask you what kind of color?
Speaker 1: What what? What? What?
Speaker 2: What school did you go to in in the United
Speaker 2: States or where Holland or whatever the hell you and
Speaker 2: you sit there, well, I yeah, I want to You're done.
Speaker 2: So that's the time. I mean, what is the national
Speaker 2: anthem of of your of your of your country. It
Speaker 2: is just getting a piece of paper that says you're
Speaker 2: Joe McGillicutty with a photo of you, and you go
Speaker 2: out there and you go through that kind of security,
Speaker 2: especially when you work in denied areas, which we do,
Speaker 2: and swead.
Speaker 1: The details counter terrorism the work when you got into there,
Speaker 1: and that was mid nineties and when you started working
Speaker 1: the canter terrorists.
Speaker 2: By my first counter terrorism assignment, although I was still
Speaker 2: a paramilitary officer, was in nineteen eighty eight when I
Speaker 2: went to that South American country and I was resta
Speaker 2: wrong for CIA internally, you know, the outside folks did
Speaker 2: not know that I was there doing that. So that
Speaker 2: was my first. The center was created by one of
Speaker 2: my mentors, Dewey Clerage, one of the most impressive men
Speaker 2: I ever met in my life. He started the counter
Speaker 2: Terrorism Center in nineteen eighty six, and in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: my first assignment for CTC was that Latin American country.
Speaker 2: From there I went to the Philippines. That was still
Speaker 2: under the same ct auspices.
Speaker 1: And when you were assigned task with Osama bin Laden,
Speaker 1: it was at the the mid nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the lod was. We started the Bladden Task
Speaker 2: Force in January of nineteen ninety six and I had
Speaker 2: just come back from from Saul, Korea. I was a
Speaker 2: branch chief. I had the PLO branch and all the
Speaker 2: Palestinian stuff. And I got called in and asked if
Speaker 2: that I by name had come up for being the
Speaker 2: deputy chief of station for a task force targeting Osama
Speaker 2: Bin Laden, And I said who, and my boss exactly.
Speaker 2: So I became the deputy chief of station for that
Speaker 2: for that for that mission, and that was in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six. There was an incredible operator named Billy Wall.
Speaker 2: He was a being Bret legend, and he did thirty
Speaker 2: some years in the agency on contract and I knew
Speaker 2: that he had worked cartoon because I knew him. I
Speaker 2: met him nineteen ninety in the Philippines. So that was
Speaker 2: one of my biggest you know sources when he came
Speaker 2: to what cartoon like because that's where we're Osama bit
Speaker 2: lot all the time. So we started working against bin
Speaker 2: Laden and you know, when let's say that when we
Speaker 2: started we had two files on him. Six months later
Speaker 2: we had twenty or thirty. A year later we had
Speaker 2: one hundred. I mean we were between working liaison services
Speaker 2: sources and then our technical overhead and singing and everything else,
Speaker 2: we were compiling a lot of information on bin Laden.
Speaker 2: We knew he was bad. We had over the training
Speaker 2: camps he was building, and unfortunately the administration at the
Speaker 2: time did not want to take the risk that we
Speaker 2: were proposed. He was, let's take care of this guy
Speaker 2: now because he's building something that is huge and he's
Speaker 2: got Saudi money by the tenth millions of dollars. And
Speaker 2: it was always, well, we don't have enough proof. We
Speaker 2: had people coming out and telling us this guy is
Speaker 2: training terrorists to do this. We have the communications, but
Speaker 2: they still wouldn't do it. And our thing was we
Speaker 2: either additional you know, when you capture the individual and
Speaker 2: take them out of country, or you you know, you
Speaker 2: neutralize them by you know which everyone ag sent a
Speaker 2: special team of military special team from the agency, from
Speaker 2: our Special Activities Division, and they would never buy off
Speaker 2: on that. And the reason I you know, that's so
Speaker 2: important to me is because imagine if we would have
Speaker 2: been allowed in nineteen ninety seven, nineteen ninety eight to
Speaker 2: take down Usama bin Laden, it'd be like it would
Speaker 2: it would be Hitler in nineteen thirty eight, the coal
Speaker 2: the embassy bombings in Africa, you know, the ninety eleven
Speaker 2: all those things were probably been adverted and not happened.
Speaker 1: And is that because there was a lack of appetite
Speaker 1: with the politicians, the presidents or various presidents about the
Speaker 1: SAII and you know, an assassination basically if this person
Speaker 1: is a target and there wasn't the stomach for it,
Speaker 1: is that what prevented it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know there is a risk adverse in
Speaker 2: every in every uh uh you know organization. We had
Speaker 2: a few in the Agency, not many, but we did
Speaker 2: have a few that were just like you said, careerists.
Speaker 2: These are the individuals own up the ladder like this,
Speaker 2: and you know, because they were always smelling where the
Speaker 2: next promotion was.
Speaker 1: So sorry, I'm laughing. I'm laughing, Rick, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: I under understand it. Every decision that's made. How will
Speaker 1: this further in my career? Yeah, that the top of
Speaker 1: the hand.
Speaker 2: Those but you know, the things with politicians also are
Speaker 2: that they are in the art of compromising, and you
Speaker 2: know they they they look at things. I always try
Speaker 2: to teach people that you cannot run special military or
Speaker 2: special intelligence operations through a political optic. You got to
Speaker 2: put politics aside. You know, it's there's a mission. President
Speaker 2: tells you you need to do this, You do whatever
Speaker 2: it takes to get it done and not get caught.
Speaker 2: And that's how you get promoted. In my world.
Speaker 1: I look, I think if people look back, if we're honest,
Speaker 1: that it would have been so much better. Like the
Speaker 1: means justify the ends. If you take someone out like
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden. If an opportunity presented, and my understanding
Speaker 1: was there was ample opportunity, it could have been done,
Speaker 1: but the decisions above decided not to. And hindsight's a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing. But look where we're at now and the
Speaker 1: damage that was caused and the lives that were lost, So.
Speaker 2: It must be The sad thing is that you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't just killing the guy. You know, we are
Speaker 2: prohibited from doing political killings. I'm good with that. If
Speaker 2: you're an elected proper or even a dictator, that's off limits.
Speaker 2: But when you have a terrorist that you know is
Speaker 2: targeting Americans and it's going after other democratic allys that
Speaker 2: we have, and you have the capability to disrupt and
Speaker 2: preempt their intentions, that is our job. As a matter
Speaker 2: of fact, that's one of the models of the count
Speaker 2: of Terrorist Center is to be able to deter or
Speaker 2: prevent acts of happening, not retaliate after the fact. So
Speaker 2: we had plans, we even proposed plans of not even
Speaker 2: shooting him. We knew that he was so comfortable in cartoon.
Speaker 2: Khartoum at the time was a hotel for terrorists. That's
Speaker 2: where Carlo the Jackal was captured by Billy Waugh, my
Speaker 2: friend in ninety two. Because he was there, he knew,
Speaker 2: he knew the operations. But if you were a terrorist
Speaker 2: and you had money, you could go to Khartom and
Speaker 2: you were there with impunity, you had papers and everything else.
Speaker 2: So he was what we call in the white He
Speaker 2: was driving his own car going to places, so coming
Speaker 2: in with the team and kidnapping him and throwing him
Speaker 2: in a helicopter and getting out of there was very doable.
Speaker 2: Shooting is a lot easier when you try to take
Speaker 2: a you know, a six foot five guy that weighs
Speaker 2: two hundred pounds against his will. That's a little harder
Speaker 2: than out of a country. But shooting him up, but
Speaker 2: we had the options. It wasn't just you know, shooting them.
Speaker 2: But the fordit to the political fortitude was never there.
Speaker 1: It was never their stomach for it. So when that
Speaker 1: you guys were looking at him, knew that he was
Speaker 1: up to stuff. You disrupted him, financial trials whatever, why
Speaker 1: you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we went after the money as much
Speaker 2: as possible. That was one of the things the initiatives
Speaker 2: that that we were going after. I mean again, logistics
Speaker 2: is is what you know, experts really practiced, and logistics
Speaker 2: means money and the cost of that logistics. So we
Speaker 2: did attack that, but primarily was trying to go out
Speaker 2: and get sources that could report on these terrorist groups.
Speaker 2: You know, we we you know, a national terrorism where
Speaker 2: like in South America, what I dealt with, what I
Speaker 2: dealt with in the Philippines, to international terrorism, which was
Speaker 2: any evolution of that, you know where I started spreading
Speaker 2: all over you know, like has wella hitting you know,
Speaker 2: the synagogue in Argentina, you know that, that kind of
Speaker 2: international capabilities. So trying to be able to not only
Speaker 2: penetrate those groups, but work with friendly liaison services to
Speaker 2: help each other, like in the Philippines, like in the
Speaker 2: South American country, where we would help certain people be
Speaker 2: better at their jobs so we could help them take
Speaker 2: down the bad guys before they took us.
Speaker 1: Now, the pressure that you carry with task like that,
Speaker 1: if you've been assigned that. It's not a nine to
Speaker 1: five job obviously, but you'd have to give your heart
Speaker 1: and soul to that. Then there's always something more, something
Speaker 1: more that I could do. Did you find that type
Speaker 1: of pressure working working cases like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And And to tell you the truth is, I
Speaker 2: don't think that I did enough. I really look back
Speaker 2: and I think I wish I would have done this,
Speaker 2: or I would have done more, or I would have
Speaker 2: insisted it on this. You know, I think the people
Speaker 2: in our business are never satisfied with the damage that
Speaker 2: we could do to the bad gays, you know, the
Speaker 2: justice we can bring to the to the PURBs, you know, uh,
Speaker 2: and even to this day, you know, I sit here
Speaker 2: and I'm well retired and everything else, and I go like,
Speaker 2: you know what I miss it? I missed being able
Speaker 2: to know what's.
Speaker 1: Going on and doing something about it and making a difference.
Speaker 1: And you need, I think, to be good operators in
Speaker 1: that field or other other fields, you need that obsession
Speaker 1: or it needs to be bordering on obsession. I'd get
Speaker 1: criticized to say, are you too passionate? It's passionate with perspective,
Speaker 1: and I think you've got to be passionate about what
Speaker 1: you do. I think it's interesting. And you paid homage
Speaker 1: to some of the Intel operators that were just brilliant
Speaker 1: at what they did. Information that they could analyze and
Speaker 1: see the links that me immortals down, see those type
Speaker 1: of things. I think on one of your teams you
Speaker 1: had a businessman accountant mindset, wasn't the most socially capable guy,
Speaker 1: but was very good at what he did. You need
Speaker 1: a team of almost misfits to a degree that come
Speaker 1: together to make something function with. What's your take on that.
Speaker 2: You're the ring master of the zoo at the the
Speaker 2: the event, because yeah, you're right. I mean I had
Speaker 2: several paramilitary guys that were pointy, elbowed. They just wanted
Speaker 2: to go out and bite people. And you gotta you
Speaker 2: know again, you know, you know when to let them
Speaker 2: loose and went to control them. And we had people
Speaker 2: that you know, have really rough personalities. Now I didn't.
Speaker 2: I was always from the other school. I only blew
Speaker 2: up a couple of times in the agency and just
Speaker 2: really they had to repeat my room after I got
Speaker 2: through a couple of these individuals that really really did
Speaker 2: something stupid. But for the most part, I would try
Speaker 2: to preempt by the gaiters. And like I said earlier,
Speaker 2: you know, our job in the agency, as we claim,
Speaker 2: is to ojt the next person. You know, rainom on
Speaker 2: what to do, how to do this, and you do
Speaker 2: it by example. It's like with your kids. You know,
Speaker 2: your kids do what they see you do, not what
Speaker 2: you tell them to do. Same thing in business. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the same thing in our business that the people
Speaker 2: that you're mentoring look up to you and they go,
Speaker 2: oh gee, you know that that's not what Gary would do.
Speaker 2: He would do this, and that that's how you guide
Speaker 2: them in that direction.
Speaker 1: Now, but it is I think the mentoring in the
Speaker 1: type of world you operate, because you can't learn it
Speaker 1: from a textbook. You need these good mentors. And throughout
Speaker 1: your book you pay homage to a lot of people
Speaker 1: that obviously had a big impact on you, and you
Speaker 1: took the way they'd operate and tried to adapt that
Speaker 1: to something that soothed yourself. Is that a fair assessment?
Speaker 1: How you navigated your way through the very is.
Speaker 2: Very excell assessment. And it wasn't just the operational part,
Speaker 2: but was the leadership part. You know, learning to be
Speaker 2: a leader. You have some natural qualities, but they only
Speaker 2: need to be polished. All our strengths always need to
Speaker 2: be polished. And I was blessed with leaders, not managers.
Speaker 2: I was, you know, blocked with leaders. There's a huge difference.
Speaker 2: So learning how to you know, gain the confidence of
Speaker 2: your men and women. I will tell you that at
Speaker 2: the end of my retirement. When I retired, I got
Speaker 2: some pretty pretty heavy duty medals, but the biggest badge
Speaker 2: of honor that I got was my guys coming up
Speaker 2: to me and going, you're the only senior officer we've
Speaker 2: ever paid working for That was first through the door,
Speaker 2: first in the gym first picking up brass. I never
Speaker 2: asked guys else to do nothing that I hadn't done before.
Speaker 2: You're not a leader on the world lead it's implied
Speaker 2: to the name. You have to show them that you
Speaker 2: can do it better than them, and then they try
Speaker 2: to emulate you, and that's how you grow them.
Speaker 1: I one hundred percent agree with your thoughts and philosophies
Speaker 1: there on leadership, management and leading. And yeah, I got
Speaker 1: criticized because I'm out in the field or I'm in
Speaker 1: the witness box. What are you doing in there? You're
Speaker 1: a detective inspector. Why isn't sergeant? It's not asking people
Speaker 1: to do stuff that you wouldn't do yourself. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and everyone in the team, I think another aspect of
Speaker 1: working with dynamic teams. Everyone in the team is as
Speaker 1: important as anyone else, So it's not this sort of
Speaker 1: pecking order, or that's a junior officer. Sometimes the junior
Speaker 1: officer comes up with the best idea out of all
Speaker 1: You've got to draw all that information.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm a friend believer in that.
Speaker 1: Nine eleven. On the day you're in the CIA, what
Speaker 1: was your position and describe how you became aware of it?
Speaker 1: And the flow on effect from that.
Speaker 2: Well, for me, that was a pad peeve obviously, because
Speaker 2: like I said, I started to visit the task Force
Speaker 2: in ninety six and here we are in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one and now I'm the Chief of Operations for
Speaker 2: CIA's Counter Terrorist Center. In other words, I'm in charge
Speaker 2: of all the people that are trying to mess with
Speaker 2: the bad guys worldwide. My experiences from Bin laden Uh
Speaker 2: taught me a lot. And when we were getting all
Speaker 2: this noise that they were up to, we knew that
Speaker 2: they were up to something. We knew that they were
Speaker 2: going to hit us. We didn't know when or where,
Speaker 2: but we knew that they were going to hit us,
Speaker 2: and that was very frustrating for us. And then of
Speaker 2: course when we got hit, I was there as a
Speaker 2: matter of fact that you know, we all know exactly
Speaker 2: where we were a lot on ninety eleven, and it
Speaker 2: changed the whole dynamics of the CIA all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the diplomatic circuit was tritiary. Now it was kind of terrorism.
Speaker 2: We needed to go back and try to put that
Speaker 2: genie back in the in the bottle. So for me,
Speaker 2: it was a learning experience that again, if we would
Speaker 2: have been able to do something about bin Laden before
Speaker 2: that would have happened. And number two, if we had
Speaker 2: things in place that would allow us to disrupt other organizations.
Speaker 2: And again this is what I gave up my big
Speaker 2: job for to go out on on the road with
Speaker 2: twelve men and women. And it was my concept was
Speaker 2: give me thirty names of key individuals that have a
Speaker 2: public persona for every organization. Okay, so three from Hesbola,
Speaker 2: three from al Kaeda, three from this or that and
Speaker 2: the other. We went out, we made book on them.
Speaker 2: We had patterns of life, We knew what kind of
Speaker 2: cars they had. There was a guy that I even
Speaker 2: had a set of keys for his car that we
Speaker 2: have been able to finagle. So we had all these
Speaker 2: things in place. And the idea was when Hesbolah, when
Speaker 2: we're hearing that chatter that Hesbola Hamas or any of
Speaker 2: these are doing are planning something, what do you think
Speaker 2: happens if all of a sudden, three of their senior
Speaker 2: guys in three different places get neutralized. One gets couple,
Speaker 2: one guests duck taped and brought to justice, the other
Speaker 2: one gets shot. What do you think they're going to do?
Speaker 2: They're going to stop their operations because they think they're penetrated.
Speaker 2: So that's that's what I learned from my experiences and
Speaker 2: what I try to inculcate and what I try to
Speaker 2: set up at the end of my career.
Speaker 1: It makes sense in the theory of it, like be proactive,
Speaker 1: have it there ready. If we need to, we roll
Speaker 1: because it's always hard playing catch up, isn't it? Life
Speaker 1: events already?
Speaker 2: And when I briefed that program, one of the things
Speaker 2: I told them was I said, you can't told the
Speaker 2: directors is you cannot build the firehouse when your house
Speaker 2: is on fire. These are things you have to have.
Speaker 2: So when the fire starts, you have the firehouse, you
Speaker 2: have the water, hydrants, you have everything. It's the same thing.
Speaker 2: You can't wait until you've been hit to neutralize or preempty.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you've got that, got the hose ready? Was
Speaker 1: there a finger pointing with what happened on nine eleven?
Speaker 1: Like I would imagine there would be people that be
Speaker 1: looking looking over why didn't we do this? Why didn't
Speaker 1: we do that? How did the organization react at.
Speaker 2: The political level? Yes, of course, obviously George Bush had
Speaker 2: just taken over, so he was a very different individual,
Speaker 2: and he actually was extremely supportive of the agency and
Speaker 2: gave us free reign to go after but Laden, that's sweets.
Speaker 2: He's saying that, you know, the special authorities for us
Speaker 2: to go after Bin Laden anywhere that he was at.
Speaker 2: But there were some political comments, you know, people say
Speaker 2: you should have you know, I remember having Feinstein chastise
Speaker 2: us about not doing this or not doing that. And
Speaker 2: the thing is I could go right back to him
Speaker 2: and said, I could have had been Laden in ninety seven.
Speaker 2: I could have had a lot of ninety eight it
Speaker 2: had been Laden in eighty nine. So yeah, you took
Speaker 2: away the tools that I had to neutralize them. And
Speaker 2: now he's doing this to you, and you want to say,
Speaker 2: why did this happen? And well, how we cannot prevent it?
Speaker 1: We couldn't shuts down the appetite to lay the blame
Speaker 1: at your feet.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And I think in operational phases and this is obviously
Speaker 1: at the extreme, but if it's documented there and make
Speaker 1: people make the decisions, will not just say I look reck,
Speaker 1: we'd rather you didn't put the report in. Make them
Speaker 1: sign off and go no, you can't do that, because
Speaker 1: when something does happen as catastrophic as that was, people
Speaker 1: look back and they look for blame and the only
Speaker 1: way they protect yourself because I've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: good people come on stark because they haven't got the documentation.
Speaker 1: We know it wasn't their fault on what's happened, but
Speaker 1: people higher above or with more power, more influence of
Speaker 1: many to point the finger at them.
Speaker 2: It isn't making never every organization, Like I said before,
Speaker 2: you cannot run in special ops through a political optic,
Speaker 2: and our bosses are political and you know we we
Speaker 2: are a military structure organization. So you know, just because
Speaker 2: I used to tell my guys, just because I'm saying
Speaker 2: please and thank you, which I always do, doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that is a request. Okay, Now an order is an
Speaker 2: order and you're gonna follow it whether it's yes or
Speaker 2: no or sir, I don't want to do that, and
Speaker 2: I'll get somebody else that can do it. So you
Speaker 2: know that that that mentality at the political level doesn't
Speaker 2: doesn't doesn't calculate, and that is part of you know,
Speaker 2: getting your black built in bureaucracy as you go through
Speaker 2: the ranks, learning how do you can manipulate your your uppers.
Speaker 2: You know, you you manage down and you manage up.
Speaker 2: You lead down, and you manage up, because that's part
Speaker 2: of your job as a senior officer in any organization
Speaker 2: is to get through the bureaucracy and get the mission done. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always if I was trying to manage up, I
Speaker 1: let the without naming names, let the boss think it
Speaker 1: was their idea. After I've told them what the idea is,
Speaker 1: and when they repeat it back to making that's a
Speaker 1: great idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know, it's funny, isn't it. It does work simple.
Speaker 1: It's almost like good cop, bad cop. It's just so simple.
Speaker 1: Great idea, boss, Wow, Yeah, and then run with it.
Speaker 1: When did you decide it was time you got out
Speaker 1: of the CIA? It was there. It was there, just
Speaker 1: a time that you thought I'm done here, or what
Speaker 1: prompted you to leave?
Speaker 2: Very painful. Those programs that I created at the end,
Speaker 2: and they allowed me to put that in the book,
Speaker 2: not what we were able to do, but the concept
Speaker 2: and what we were, you know, capable of doing. I
Speaker 2: briefed the Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney,
Speaker 2: on that program. He blessed it. But the time came
Speaker 2: to execute. You know, here here we are a trial
Speaker 2: to all these first, second, and third world countries, making
Speaker 2: book on bad guys, risking our lives, coming up with
Speaker 2: these ops plans, and then when you go to present them,
Speaker 2: they go yeah. And in one partic the one case
Speaker 2: that made it happen, we had this one target, We
Speaker 2: had him down to a nat We knew where, we ate,
Speaker 2: he knew where. We knew everything about this guy. And
Speaker 2: I briefed the director and the director of Operations and
Speaker 2: the DCI are the agency director, and I briefed them
Speaker 2: on our plan. Everything else well we were doing. It
Speaker 2: was a two hour meeting. They're asking me a million questions.
Speaker 2: At the end, the Director of Operations says to me,
Speaker 2: says to the director of the agency, says, sir, there's
Speaker 2: no doubt in our minds that Prado and his team
Speaker 2: can not only do this, but they can get away
Speaker 2: with it. I'm going like yes. Then he said, however, Comma,
Speaker 2: we need to look at the political implications of doing this. Now.
Speaker 2: That was the second time that this had happened. I
Speaker 2: went back down to my Boston CTC said I cannot
Speaker 2: put my people at harm's way just because we brief
Speaker 2: well and capabilitton tiger on your mantle that you could
Speaker 2: go to the politicians is we could do this, but
Speaker 2: you're never going to implement it. I cannot do that
Speaker 2: to my men and my women.
Speaker 1: And that was the time for me to go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand, and walking away, you look back with fond
Speaker 1: memories of your time there and what you achieved and
Speaker 1: what you Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people don't there, especially when they
Speaker 2: leave under that kind of circumstances, they tend to get bitter.
Speaker 2: I actually, and I describe it in the book because
Speaker 2: it was one of these things that God put in
Speaker 2: my brain on how to survive this. I literally the
Speaker 2: day that I retired, I walked in my house, I
Speaker 2: got my favorite cigar, got a bottle of my favorite wine,
Speaker 2: and sat outside. And my wife knew to leave me
Speaker 2: alone because she knows me well enough that just let
Speaker 2: them be. And I sat out there for two or
Speaker 2: three hours, and I started from the day that I
Speaker 2: started in the agency. I started recalling the things that
Speaker 2: happen and the people that I dealt with, and in
Speaker 2: my mind, every time there was a good op or
Speaker 2: a good leader, that was a crystal marble that I
Speaker 2: would put in one jar in my mind, the other
Speaker 2: was a black ball of the bad experiences. I would
Speaker 2: put that in the toilet. That was my mental exercise
Speaker 2: until I drank the whole bottle of wine and smoked
Speaker 2: the whole cigar, and I can look at it right here.
Speaker 2: I still have that jar full of marbles. I actually
Speaker 2: went out later and bought a jar and put marbles
Speaker 2: in it, clear marbles, to remind me that I could
Speaker 2: not afford to be bitter with a career that expanded
Speaker 2: over twenty four years, and that I know the successes
Speaker 2: that we had and the colleagues, the friends that I made.
Speaker 2: That when you know, when you go in harms way
Speaker 2: with somebody, there's a bonding that doesn't come out of
Speaker 2: the you know, the it's just different. And I could
Speaker 2: not afford to throw out twenty four years for a
Speaker 2: few black marbles.
Speaker 1: If you get my drift, so full credit to you there, Rick.
Speaker 1: It saddens me, and obviously I speak to a lot
Speaker 1: of ex law enforcement military types on here and the
Speaker 1: ones that look back with fond memories. The way to
Speaker 1: get it. I look back at every single day I
Speaker 1: had in the cops. I enjoyed it. There were some
Speaker 1: bad things, yeah, but there's bad things in every way.
Speaker 1: The fact that you can look at your career it
Speaker 1: is so good for your own soul, isn't it. How
Speaker 1: would you be if you walk away and you just
Speaker 1: bitter and and that just burns inside you. So full
Speaker 1: credit to you. But I like the marble idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I said, I literally I can see it
Speaker 2: from here. I still have it there, just a nice
Speaker 2: reminder what I'm having a bad day or something to
Speaker 2: go look at that, and you go, I've had worse
Speaker 2: and I've had better, and you march.
Speaker 1: On, you know, and your life for you now, your
Speaker 1: wife is glad you're at home or does she want
Speaker 1: to send you back out in the field to get
Speaker 1: some time?
Speaker 2: And I think sometimes she said, you know, there was
Speaker 2: a time there where she would have kind of aren't
Speaker 2: you going teddy y somewhere because we'll spend the time,
Speaker 2: you know, that kind of thing. But no, you know,
Speaker 2: we have we have a very strong relationship. We do
Speaker 2: a lot of things together. And I'm at this stage
Speaker 2: in my life where where I really just want to
Speaker 2: spend my time on you know, my my family, my friends.
Speaker 2: I'm at that age where there isn't a month that
Speaker 2: I don't lose a colleague or a friend, you know,
Speaker 2: either either through you know, operational attrition or or you know,
Speaker 2: through illnesses. And it's the old. Hey. You know, the
Speaker 2: only day that you own is today. So we try
Speaker 2: to make the best of it. We take vacations, we
Speaker 2: spoil our grandkids, and you know, live live as best
Speaker 2: as we can. That that said, if I was called
Speaker 2: upon to help tomorrow, I would I cannot but say
Speaker 2: no to this. To my country, I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: You've you've still got that each I can say it,
Speaker 1: I can say say it in if I say it
Speaker 1: in your time. But look, you're looking good. I also
Speaker 1: heard you say you love jumping on the motorbike or
Speaker 1: jumping on the horse, and that gives you a bit
Speaker 1: of fun and fun and freedom. So look, I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you for coming on. I've enjoyed the
Speaker 1: chat obviously, and more importantly thanking you for the work
Speaker 1: that you've done. I know the type of sacrifices people
Speaker 1: like you make to keep the world a safer place,
Speaker 1: and you come under criticism and everyone's got an opinion
Speaker 1: on different things. But yeah, you've demonstrated you've risen through
Speaker 1: all that and you've done some good. So full credit
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I mean so lot to me
Speaker 2: coming from a guy like you, that means so light.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, appreciate it, and I just want to
Speaker 1: give a shout out to your book that we can
Speaker 1: see on your right shoulder, Black Ops, Rick Prade. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, if you want to get a sense of
Speaker 1: the world, get yourself that book. I read a lot
Speaker 1: of books in lead ups to getting people on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and you just took me deep into that world. I
Speaker 1: think you're slightly crazy too. Rick got to say your
Speaker 1: first apparliament in Honduras. But full credit to.
Speaker 2: You, Thank you very much. Like I said, I've lived
Speaker 2: a blessed life. Cheers, jeers. Appreciate it.