1
00:00:02,240 --> 00:00:05,720
Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holts on

2
00:00:05,840 --> 00:00:11,400
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. This week. On the podcast, I have a

3
00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:14,680
Speaker 1: fascinating guest. His name is Jack Divine, and he is

4
00:00:14,720 --> 00:00:19,479
Speaker 1: the former Operations director of the Central Intelligence Agency. When

5
00:00:19,480 --> 00:00:22,279
Speaker 1: you hear people say the line, oh, this guy knows

6
00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:26,000
Speaker 1: where all the bodies are buried, this guy literally knows

7
00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,000
Speaker 1: where all the bodies are buried. If you are at

8
00:00:28,080 --> 00:00:36,480
Speaker 1: all interested in spycraft, relationships with Russians and other foreign agencies,

9
00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:42,760
Speaker 1: counter narcotics, intelligence, and just the role of intelligence agencies

10
00:00:43,479 --> 00:00:47,199
Speaker 1: on the global stage, this is the conversation for you. So,

11
00:00:47,280 --> 00:00:56,000
Speaker 1: with no further ado, my conversation with Jack Divine. I'm

12
00:00:56,040 --> 00:00:59,320
Speaker 1: Barry rid Holts. You're listening to Masters in Business on

13
00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:02,760
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. This week on the show, we have an

14
00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:06,959
Speaker 1: extra special guest. His name is Jack Divine. He is

15
00:01:07,080 --> 00:01:11,600
Speaker 1: a thirty two year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency,

16
00:01:11,680 --> 00:01:15,240
Speaker 1: where he served as both Acting Director and chief of

17
00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,360
Speaker 1: the Latin American Division, as well as running the CIA's

18
00:01:19,600 --> 00:01:24,920
Speaker 1: Counternarcotics Center. He has received numerous awards from the agency,

19
00:01:25,080 --> 00:01:30,320
Speaker 1: including the Meritorious Officer Award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, and

20
00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:34,760
Speaker 1: other recognitions. From the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also

21
00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:37,840
Speaker 1: a founding partner and president of the ark And Group,

22
00:01:38,120 --> 00:01:42,600
Speaker 1: which specializes in strategic intelligence, and he is the author

23
00:01:42,680 --> 00:01:47,840
Speaker 1: of Good Hunting, an American Spymaster's Story. Jack Divine, Welcome

24
00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,240
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Great to be here. Your your timing could

25
00:01:51,240 --> 00:01:54,760
Speaker 1: not be better. Uh, we'll get to some of the

26
00:01:54,800 --> 00:01:57,520
Speaker 1: current events that are taking place, but but let's start

27
00:01:57,560 --> 00:01:59,720
Speaker 1: at the beginning. How did you find your way to

28
00:01:59,840 --> 00:02:04,680
Speaker 1: the CIA? After graduate school, I taught American history in

29
00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:09,600
Speaker 1: suburban Philadelphia, and for my birthday or anniversary, I don't recall,

30
00:02:10,639 --> 00:02:15,040
Speaker 1: my wife Pat gave me a copy of David Wise's

31
00:02:15,120 --> 00:02:19,320
Speaker 1: book The Invisible Government, which is at the time was

32
00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:22,560
Speaker 1: sort of a scandalous book about CIA and the military

33
00:02:22,720 --> 00:02:26,799
Speaker 1: complex and how it was controlling the world. And uh,

34
00:02:27,800 --> 00:02:30,960
Speaker 1: I found a fascinating and actually had a different different

35
00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:35,000
Speaker 1: reaction than the author probably intended. And that as I thought,

36
00:02:35,040 --> 00:02:38,679
Speaker 1: what an amazing place to be, setting aside the fact

37
00:02:38,760 --> 00:02:41,639
Speaker 1: that there isn't such a conspiracy. But I wrote a

38
00:02:41,720 --> 00:02:43,320
Speaker 1: letter with you know, when we used to have big

39
00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:48,000
Speaker 1: pens and pre computers and cell phones, etcetera. And the

40
00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:50,240
Speaker 1: letter went off to c I A and within a

41
00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:52,919
Speaker 1: few weeks, Um, I got a letter telling me to

42
00:02:52,919 --> 00:02:57,239
Speaker 1: go to the the twelfth and Chestnut and thus began the process.

43
00:02:57,960 --> 00:03:00,400
Speaker 1: So you actually reached out to them, they didn't you.

44
00:03:01,160 --> 00:03:04,679
Speaker 1: That's correct. The British system, you know, had a tradition

45
00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:09,320
Speaker 1: of professors tapping people on the shoulder, and the early,

46
00:03:09,480 --> 00:03:13,680
Speaker 1: very early days of the OSS and in the early

47
00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:18,560
Speaker 1: days of the CIA, that was not an uncommon way

48
00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:22,160
Speaker 1: to be brought into the C. I a very clubby. Um.

49
00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:24,240
Speaker 1: What are they looking for when they reach out and

50
00:03:24,280 --> 00:03:28,040
Speaker 1: tap somebody? What is it a certain moral flexibility or

51
00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:35,160
Speaker 1: is it witty? No? Uh, well again I didn't They

52
00:03:35,160 --> 00:03:37,520
Speaker 1: didn't reach out to me, so I lacked whatever it was.

53
00:03:37,560 --> 00:03:41,000
Speaker 1: I had to go through the process. And today let

54
00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:45,800
Speaker 1: me just do a reverse engineering. Today instead of writing

55
00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:50,560
Speaker 1: a letter, you have to go online. Is much more impersonal,

56
00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:53,080
Speaker 1: which I think we lose some really good people because

57
00:03:53,120 --> 00:03:57,200
Speaker 1: of that, But the numbers require it. Um. I think

58
00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:00,640
Speaker 1: historically what the CIA is looking for p who are

59
00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:04,640
Speaker 1: Almost everybody that joined CIA has sort of within a

60
00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:10,560
Speaker 1: range of i Q education. They work hard to get

61
00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:14,840
Speaker 1: the extremes out people that have, you know, fantasies of

62
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:21,200
Speaker 1: being James Bond. So they the psychiatrists, you know, have tests,

63
00:04:21,240 --> 00:04:24,520
Speaker 1: the interview. There's all types of souped up s, a

64
00:04:24,600 --> 00:04:29,440
Speaker 1: T test, personality test, there's interviews. Physical that they need

65
00:04:29,480 --> 00:04:33,920
Speaker 1: you need to be physically fit, mentally uh sound that

66
00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:37,440
Speaker 1: they do polygraphs to make sure that your integrity level,

67
00:04:37,520 --> 00:04:40,000
Speaker 1: that you're not involved in any type of theft that

68
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:43,480
Speaker 1: would you know, since there's no controls many times when

69
00:04:43,480 --> 00:04:48,000
Speaker 1: you're delivering money. So it's across that that broad spectrum.

70
00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:51,400
Speaker 1: But I would say fundamentally, at the core setting all

71
00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:55,719
Speaker 1: these um what I would consider fairly standard requirements, they're

72
00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:58,120
Speaker 1: looking for people that have a sense of mission, that

73
00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:00,960
Speaker 1: they feel they want to serve their government, and they

74
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:03,719
Speaker 1: went to serve it in a in a particular way.

75
00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:06,359
Speaker 1: It's not a place we apply just to get a

76
00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:08,919
Speaker 1: job because you have a degree in political science or

77
00:05:08,920 --> 00:05:12,920
Speaker 1: speak Japanese. So I think that's one of the key indicators.

78
00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:16,760
Speaker 1: They didn't recruit you and you approach them. What sort

79
00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:19,480
Speaker 1: of training did they put you through? No, we all

80
00:05:19,480 --> 00:05:21,560
Speaker 1: went to the same training, and everybody, I mean they

81
00:05:21,600 --> 00:05:25,440
Speaker 1: stopped doing the tapping on the shoulder probably in their fifties,

82
00:05:26,240 --> 00:05:29,680
Speaker 1: so everybody in my class, the what they called the

83
00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:32,920
Speaker 1: career Training class, which is sort of the premier class

84
00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:38,240
Speaker 1: where they developed the future leaders of the agency UM

85
00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:43,400
Speaker 1: and the training is about nine months. Half of it

86
00:05:43,440 --> 00:05:47,320
Speaker 1: is in learning how to be a spy, you know, surveilling,

87
00:05:47,440 --> 00:05:50,880
Speaker 1: how to develop people, how to assess people, how to

88
00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:55,840
Speaker 1: right reports, um, how to take pictures at at night,

89
00:05:55,920 --> 00:05:59,120
Speaker 1: and so on. And the second part is what they

90
00:05:59,200 --> 00:06:02,919
Speaker 1: called paramilitary training, which is it's a bit like boot

91
00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:06,640
Speaker 1: camp where you learn how to use every weapon under

92
00:06:06,680 --> 00:06:08,400
Speaker 1: the sun, not because you're going to use them as

93
00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:10,680
Speaker 1: much as you're going to be dealing with people that

94
00:06:10,760 --> 00:06:15,360
Speaker 1: are jump training, demolitions training, so it has a heavy

95
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:19,560
Speaker 1: military overtone to it. And at the end of that

96
00:06:19,680 --> 00:06:24,839
Speaker 1: nine months, then you're assigned to an area of the CIA,

97
00:06:25,080 --> 00:06:30,840
Speaker 1: and it's operational region. The analyst go through a much

98
00:06:30,960 --> 00:06:35,640
Speaker 1: shorter training because this is not necessary to be an

99
00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:41,279
Speaker 1: analyst's good scholar. Coming out of major universities. With orientation

100
00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:46,480
Speaker 1: and some basic um basic training about the analytical process,

101
00:06:46,600 --> 00:06:50,160
Speaker 1: they're they're good to go. The operational training is much

102
00:06:50,240 --> 00:06:54,839
Speaker 1: more intensive, including jungle training. Back in those days, did

103
00:06:55,080 --> 00:06:57,400
Speaker 1: friends and family have any idea what you were doing

104
00:06:57,520 --> 00:07:01,680
Speaker 1: or was this completely sequestered from personal life. Well, you're

105
00:07:01,720 --> 00:07:05,200
Speaker 1: instructed early on in the process, do not share this

106
00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:10,640
Speaker 1: with with outside people other than your spouse, if you're married,

107
00:07:11,320 --> 00:07:15,280
Speaker 1: and your parents. And so I did, and I told

108
00:07:15,280 --> 00:07:18,120
Speaker 1: my father and he was very thrilled to have a

109
00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:22,720
Speaker 1: son in the CIA. And I explained them, whatever you do,

110
00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:26,040
Speaker 1: do not discuss it. So not too long after I

111
00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:29,080
Speaker 1: did that, I went to a wedding, family wedding and

112
00:07:29,400 --> 00:07:32,680
Speaker 1: dancing with my aunt and she's grabbing me around the

113
00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:36,200
Speaker 1: hip snuff here. Now my aunt's getting a little off

114
00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:38,560
Speaker 1: the reservation, and I said, what are you doing? She said, well,

115
00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:41,960
Speaker 1: I'm looking for your gun. So Dad couldn't keep a seeing.

116
00:07:42,080 --> 00:07:44,400
Speaker 1: Now there is a rumor in the family, which I

117
00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:50,280
Speaker 1: never bothered to validate. The rumor was that an article

118
00:07:50,320 --> 00:07:54,200
Speaker 1: appeared in the Delaware Counting Times newspaper announcing my assignment.

119
00:07:55,040 --> 00:07:58,240
Speaker 1: Um So, when I was polygraphed, I could say in

120
00:07:58,240 --> 00:08:02,000
Speaker 1: a straight face, they said, did you tell anybody about

121
00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:05,720
Speaker 1: your employment with CIA? And I could say without batten

122
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:08,880
Speaker 1: and I absolutely not. They didn't ask me did your

123
00:08:08,880 --> 00:08:12,400
Speaker 1: father tell anybody? And that would have been the probably

124
00:08:12,440 --> 00:08:15,760
Speaker 1: the end of my budding career. Amazing, you wrote a

125
00:08:15,800 --> 00:08:18,560
Speaker 1: memoir about your time at the CIA, Good Hunting an

126
00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:23,240
Speaker 1: American spymaster story. I assume you can't just publish that

127
00:08:23,320 --> 00:08:26,040
Speaker 1: without the agency putting you through some sort of a

128
00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:29,560
Speaker 1: vetting process. Did you get the manuscript back with these

129
00:08:29,640 --> 00:08:33,360
Speaker 1: long black markers through it or were they pretty reasonable?

130
00:08:33,640 --> 00:08:36,400
Speaker 1: When you join the agency, you have to sign an

131
00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:39,800
Speaker 1: agreement that Bassie says, anything that you're writing, anything you're right,

132
00:08:39,880 --> 00:08:44,320
Speaker 1: has to be presented to the CIA too. Is UH

133
00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:49,440
Speaker 1: a publication review board whereas reviewed by a analyst and

134
00:08:49,800 --> 00:08:53,880
Speaker 1: supervised by a lawyer, so that they're they're cognizant of

135
00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:58,439
Speaker 1: any legal implications. So when I went through the process,

136
00:08:58,600 --> 00:09:02,720
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable. Most people in CIA cannot write about

137
00:09:02,760 --> 00:09:06,920
Speaker 1: their experiences because they're not in the public domain. My

138
00:09:07,080 --> 00:09:10,240
Speaker 1: career is interesting, and that half of it was in

139
00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:14,079
Speaker 1: the James Bond excuse me, the George Smiley lick or

140
00:09:14,160 --> 00:09:20,679
Speaker 1: AE fandestine meetings, betrayal, espionage, and that's the part you

141
00:09:20,840 --> 00:09:23,839
Speaker 1: really can't talk about very much. Although I happened to

142
00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:27,160
Speaker 1: know Rick Ames and quite well worked with them, and

143
00:09:27,440 --> 00:09:30,920
Speaker 1: I can talk about Rick Games, the KGB mole inside

144
00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:33,880
Speaker 1: of c i A. So there are some espionage things,

145
00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:37,680
Speaker 1: but where I became publicly identified. It was in the

146
00:09:37,760 --> 00:09:43,280
Speaker 1: action part, the James Bond, part of running the Afghan

147
00:09:43,320 --> 00:09:47,360
Speaker 1: task for the drive the Russians out of the Afghanistan.

148
00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:50,000
Speaker 1: I was in Chile when i NDI was overthrown. It

149
00:09:50,080 --> 00:09:52,160
Speaker 1: was in the middle of the around Contra affairs. There's

150
00:09:52,160 --> 00:09:55,800
Speaker 1: a whole series of things that eventually became public. I

151
00:09:55,840 --> 00:09:58,360
Speaker 1: didn't realize at the time when I was doing that

152
00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:01,080
Speaker 1: they become public. I as a result of that, once

153
00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:03,880
Speaker 1: it's in the public domain in an official capacity that

154
00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:06,840
Speaker 1: there was a government has to have information out there.

155
00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:09,800
Speaker 1: It's not enough that it's just out in some newspaper.

156
00:10:09,840 --> 00:10:11,560
Speaker 1: It has to be officially out there. But all of

157
00:10:11,559 --> 00:10:14,760
Speaker 1: this materials out there so I can address and I

158
00:10:14,800 --> 00:10:17,160
Speaker 1: do address in the book. This is a book about

159
00:10:17,800 --> 00:10:20,480
Speaker 1: largely about the action part of of c I A.

160
00:10:21,160 --> 00:10:24,920
Speaker 1: They did do a vigorous and painful scrub now, and

161
00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:28,280
Speaker 1: I would tell you it wasn't about a sourcer method,

162
00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:31,480
Speaker 1: which is the key question. No, you can't mention any

163
00:10:31,520 --> 00:10:35,400
Speaker 1: sources or any methods. But we seem to be hung

164
00:10:35,480 --> 00:10:38,080
Speaker 1: up in the process about you can't say you were

165
00:10:38,080 --> 00:10:41,400
Speaker 1: in this country permanently. It would shock your audience if

166
00:10:41,400 --> 00:10:43,800
Speaker 1: I told you which countries. We can't say that because

167
00:10:44,360 --> 00:10:46,400
Speaker 1: since you were in the fifth grade, you probably assumed it.

168
00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:50,520
Speaker 1: We had people there, but it was about geography, and

169
00:10:50,559 --> 00:10:53,200
Speaker 1: it was a bit more obstinate. And I'm working on

170
00:10:53,240 --> 00:10:55,200
Speaker 1: a second book now and I'm not as obstinate. I'm

171
00:10:55,240 --> 00:10:58,360
Speaker 1: not gonna waste my time on the issue of can

172
00:10:58,400 --> 00:11:00,880
Speaker 1: I say was there permanently or I just say that

173
00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:03,880
Speaker 1: I bopped into town. And when you say that, I'm

174
00:11:03,880 --> 00:11:09,680
Speaker 1: assuming Russia, China. I ran places like not necessarily those places,

175
00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:13,240
Speaker 1: but places like that. No, not really, because that I

176
00:11:13,280 --> 00:11:14,920
Speaker 1: got it right out of the starting gate that I

177
00:11:14,920 --> 00:11:18,160
Speaker 1: wouldn't touch any of those. Now these are these are

178
00:11:18,200 --> 00:11:23,640
Speaker 1: places where where I don't give any any clues. But

179
00:11:24,559 --> 00:11:26,640
Speaker 1: let's say you'd be comfortable going there tomorrow and be

180
00:11:26,679 --> 00:11:29,440
Speaker 1: happy to go there for a weekend. Really that that's

181
00:11:29,440 --> 00:11:32,400
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. Let's jump right into some of the

182
00:11:32,440 --> 00:11:37,040
Speaker 1: more interesting places where you headed up some missions. You

183
00:11:37,120 --> 00:11:41,440
Speaker 1: were ahead of the CIA's Afghan Task Force in the

184
00:11:41,480 --> 00:11:44,959
Speaker 1: mid eighties. What was the goals of the task force

185
00:11:45,040 --> 00:11:48,520
Speaker 1: and and how much of these were accomplished? When I

186
00:11:48,559 --> 00:11:51,040
Speaker 1: looked back over my career, it's probably the point where

187
00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:54,560
Speaker 1: I felt I had the most direct role part in

188
00:11:54,880 --> 00:11:58,680
Speaker 1: a major historical event, world changing one, and that was

189
00:11:58,760 --> 00:12:03,520
Speaker 1: driving the Russians out of Afghanistan. When the Russians invaded

190
00:12:03,559 --> 00:12:08,880
Speaker 1: in the late seven seventy seventy nine. The administration was

191
00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:11,280
Speaker 1: a Carter administration at the time, and the world in

192
00:12:11,320 --> 00:12:15,000
Speaker 1: general reacted that very negatively and understandably so to the

193
00:12:15,040 --> 00:12:19,720
Speaker 1: Russians invading. And at that point we actually began to help,

194
00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:24,960
Speaker 1: but it was a modest effort, using antiquated weapons to

195
00:12:25,000 --> 00:12:29,400
Speaker 1: support the Mujadine. But each year more and more support

196
00:12:29,520 --> 00:12:34,040
Speaker 1: was given and the Russians increased their presence there stubtly

197
00:12:34,080 --> 00:12:37,000
Speaker 1: as well, and it became a battleground, the key battle

198
00:12:37,040 --> 00:12:41,199
Speaker 1: around in the Cold War, and the Russians departure in

199
00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:45,560
Speaker 1: nine I think was one of the three major factors

200
00:12:45,600 --> 00:12:48,040
Speaker 1: in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I can

201
00:12:48,080 --> 00:12:50,720
Speaker 1: elaborate on it. You know, the Russians did leave, and

202
00:12:50,720 --> 00:12:54,680
Speaker 1: theyre one of the major parts of factors in that.

203
00:12:55,600 --> 00:12:57,520
Speaker 1: First I would say, had people on the ground who

204
00:12:57,520 --> 00:12:59,360
Speaker 1: wanted to fight and that was the Mujadine. You had

205
00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:05,520
Speaker 1: support um the Pakistani government and the huge us UM

206
00:13:06,160 --> 00:13:13,439
Speaker 1: material support in terms of weapons machinery, transportation and eventually,

207
00:13:13,520 --> 00:13:17,840
Speaker 1: during the time I was um involved in the operation

208
00:13:17,840 --> 00:13:21,079
Speaker 1: the introduction to the Stinger missile, which I believe it's

209
00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:23,160
Speaker 1: one of the few times in history we can see

210
00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:27,280
Speaker 1: an individual specific weapon changed the course of history. I

211
00:13:27,360 --> 00:13:30,240
Speaker 1: have a very vivid recollection of I want to say

212
00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:34,000
Speaker 1: it was sixty minutes doing a story on the Afghan

213
00:13:34,040 --> 00:13:39,199
Speaker 1: War and showing the Stingers bringing down Russian helicopters. It

214
00:13:39,280 --> 00:13:44,280
Speaker 1: was a real significant game changer for that conflict. Absolutely,

215
00:13:44,720 --> 00:13:48,880
Speaker 1: uh we. When I say we, I mean the Western

216
00:13:48,960 --> 00:13:53,200
Speaker 1: world and particularly that the CIA in the US really

217
00:13:53,280 --> 00:13:57,800
Speaker 1: ran into a brick wall in and that was we

218
00:13:57,800 --> 00:14:01,160
Speaker 1: were able, to a man a large amount of weapons,

219
00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:03,520
Speaker 1: but we couldn't get them across the border and in

220
00:14:03,679 --> 00:14:08,679
Speaker 1: Afghanistan because the Russians were using the Hind helicopter, very

221
00:14:08,679 --> 00:14:12,920
Speaker 1: sophisticated one, not unlike our black Hawks, and they just

222
00:14:13,080 --> 00:14:17,120
Speaker 1: pinned down all transportation. So this is night vision and

223
00:14:17,200 --> 00:14:21,000
Speaker 1: heavily on. Oh, it's speed, it's it's it's the back

224
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:23,360
Speaker 1: in its day. You know, the black Hawk was the

225
00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:28,400
Speaker 1: you know, the the super super jet of of helicopter world,

226
00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:31,560
Speaker 1: and it was easy to suppress forces on the ground.

227
00:14:32,040 --> 00:14:36,560
Speaker 1: Great fire. It had great firepower both that's what I'm saying.

228
00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:40,920
Speaker 1: But at the time we were we the c IA

229
00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:46,600
Speaker 1: was looking for we were only putting in Soviet block weapons.

230
00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:50,920
Speaker 1: When you run an insurgency, one of the theories, and

231
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:52,960
Speaker 1: it's a good one, is that on the ground you

232
00:14:52,960 --> 00:14:55,920
Speaker 1: want to have interchangeable weapons. By that, I mean, if

233
00:14:55,960 --> 00:14:58,840
Speaker 1: you're fighting the Russians, you want to be able to

234
00:14:58,880 --> 00:15:01,360
Speaker 1: give your troops a K forty seven so that they

235
00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:07,360
Speaker 1: can with the capture and exactly so whether you capture

236
00:15:07,400 --> 00:15:09,520
Speaker 1: weapons and you can use them and you're used to

237
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:13,760
Speaker 1: using those weapons. So we had to find enough weaponry

238
00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:17,080
Speaker 1: to support a hundred and twenty thousand USDINE fighters. You

239
00:15:17,080 --> 00:15:22,400
Speaker 1: can do the math on how much ammunition and a

240
00:15:22,560 --> 00:15:24,760
Speaker 1: K forty seven are needed. But none of it could

241
00:15:24,760 --> 00:15:27,520
Speaker 1: move because it just couldn't move across the border. So

242
00:15:27,560 --> 00:15:33,160
Speaker 1: we're looking for anti air weapons. They could be fired

243
00:15:33,200 --> 00:15:37,920
Speaker 1: in the field and bring down these helicopters. And everything

244
00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:41,200
Speaker 1: we tried in the foreign setting didn't work, but it

245
00:15:41,240 --> 00:15:44,880
Speaker 1: so happens. In eight six, the US government was just

246
00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:48,040
Speaker 1: manufacturing the sting or missile, which is heat seeking that

247
00:15:48,120 --> 00:15:52,280
Speaker 1: means you know, you fire it far to the left

248
00:15:52,280 --> 00:15:54,720
Speaker 1: of a of a helicopter and the heat from the

249
00:15:54,760 --> 00:15:59,240
Speaker 1: helicopter steers that missile right into it. So the effectiveness

250
00:15:59,280 --> 00:16:02,960
Speaker 1: at the time General Dynamics thought, um the Stinger might

251
00:16:03,000 --> 00:16:09,640
Speaker 1: have success rate It exceeded seventy and one point that

252
00:16:09,640 --> 00:16:12,760
Speaker 1: I'd make Barry. That's a lot of people don't understand.

253
00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:17,120
Speaker 1: It's not just shooting down helicopters. What happened on September

254
00:16:19,880 --> 00:16:22,480
Speaker 1: is when the first shot was fired and the helicopter

255
00:16:22,560 --> 00:16:24,800
Speaker 1: came down. I shouldn't say first shot because the first

256
00:16:24,800 --> 00:16:27,640
Speaker 1: one bounced across the ground and the people on the

257
00:16:27,680 --> 00:16:30,680
Speaker 1: ground said, Jack Divine, sent us another piece, and I'll

258
00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:33,920
Speaker 1: leave the blank out of equipment. But the next three

259
00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:38,000
Speaker 1: took out three consecutive helicopters single shots. But what happened

260
00:16:38,000 --> 00:16:44,280
Speaker 1: that day is the helicopters thereafter flew above the trajectory

261
00:16:44,320 --> 00:16:47,160
Speaker 1: of the Stinger missile, so it meant that they were neutralized.

262
00:16:47,160 --> 00:16:49,800
Speaker 1: They just weren't able to suppress anything on the ground,

263
00:16:50,240 --> 00:16:52,960
Speaker 1: and that consequently we were able to just pour weapons

264
00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:56,440
Speaker 1: across the border. So it wasn't just I'm shooting down

265
00:16:57,160 --> 00:17:01,760
Speaker 1: the first few helicopters and several number of them. Quite

266
00:17:01,760 --> 00:17:04,560
Speaker 1: a few after that was the fact that the strategy

267
00:17:04,720 --> 00:17:09,720
Speaker 1: moved the helicopters above effective range. And what it also did,

268
00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:14,679
Speaker 1: which is terribly important, is back in Moscow, it was

269
00:17:14,760 --> 00:17:18,480
Speaker 1: like the last straw. You know, They've been slugging it out,

270
00:17:18,640 --> 00:17:21,000
Speaker 1: thought they could neutralize in it. What do we do now?

271
00:17:21,040 --> 00:17:23,560
Speaker 1: We have to up the ante. Are we going how

272
00:17:23,600 --> 00:17:26,640
Speaker 1: long we're going to stay there? And frankly, it became

273
00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:30,320
Speaker 1: a policy decision to start the withdrawal and that was

274
00:17:30,359 --> 00:17:32,760
Speaker 1: as early as EIGHTI six that day. Once had Stinger

275
00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:36,679
Speaker 1: missile was fired, the process of getting out began. And

276
00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:40,840
Speaker 1: I think the leaving of of Afghanistan was a great

277
00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:45,440
Speaker 1: blow to the to the morale of the Kremlin. And

278
00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:49,879
Speaker 1: I think it eventually along with the being so overpowered

279
00:17:49,880 --> 00:17:53,600
Speaker 1: by the economic strength of the United States and to

280
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:59,520
Speaker 1: some degree President Reagan Star Wars initiative, which the Russians believed,

281
00:18:00,080 --> 00:18:03,040
Speaker 1: I was agnostic about. They believe that thought, well, we

282
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:06,000
Speaker 1: really have to change our game plan, and they did

283
00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:09,600
Speaker 1: so they came down. So they made a movie about this,

284
00:18:09,800 --> 00:18:14,240
Speaker 1: Charlie Wilson's War. How accurate were the broad strokes? And

285
00:18:14,640 --> 00:18:19,240
Speaker 1: when you watch these fictionalizations of actual events, are they

286
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:23,399
Speaker 1: remotely close to the idea or is it just you know,

287
00:18:23,440 --> 00:18:27,080
Speaker 1: a goofy uh, these are It's a really good question,

288
00:18:27,119 --> 00:18:30,600
Speaker 1: actually a serious of questions. Barry. So, I was here

289
00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:34,080
Speaker 1: in New York and I was having a late lunch

290
00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:38,000
Speaker 1: in Saint Regis Hotel, which has sentimental reasons for me

291
00:18:38,040 --> 00:18:40,400
Speaker 1: from my CIA training. Will leave that aside for now.

292
00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:44,200
Speaker 1: And and Seymour Hoffman was there, and I really leave

293
00:18:44,240 --> 00:18:46,800
Speaker 1: actors alone. I never approached them. And in fact, my

294
00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:49,440
Speaker 1: wife was furious once in London because I came down

295
00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:53,760
Speaker 1: the elevator with Anthony Hopkins and she said, well, what

296
00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:55,280
Speaker 1: did you talk about is I didn't say a thing.

297
00:18:55,320 --> 00:18:58,119
Speaker 1: Don't pretended I didn't know she was living. So I

298
00:18:58,320 --> 00:19:01,399
Speaker 1: don't make a habit of, you know, going over the celebrities.

299
00:19:01,440 --> 00:19:04,480
Speaker 1: But I couldn't resist, so I went over to Hoffman,

300
00:19:04,520 --> 00:19:08,680
Speaker 1: who was a real gentleman. I said, Mr Hoffman, my

301
00:19:08,720 --> 00:19:11,639
Speaker 1: wife loves you. Was an actor, uh, and thought he

302
00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:16,440
Speaker 1: did a great job in the movie Charlie Wilson's War.

303
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:19,520
Speaker 1: But you know, Mr Hoffan, I'll tell you that that

304
00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:22,800
Speaker 1: justice and the way it came down. So I think

305
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:24,600
Speaker 1: he looked out thought, oh, here's another one, and he's

306
00:19:24,680 --> 00:19:27,600
Speaker 1: new York crazy people, and he said, listen, thank you

307
00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:31,359
Speaker 1: for your service. But I'm sure he felt um that

308
00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:35,919
Speaker 1: I was. He was being put upon. But even before that,

309
00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:40,040
Speaker 1: Charlie Wilson and I had dinner in uh Sparks here

310
00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:41,880
Speaker 1: in New York. And your audience may not be aware

311
00:19:41,880 --> 00:19:48,360
Speaker 1: of Sparks is where where Paul Costillano was assassinated doorstep,

312
00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:51,240
Speaker 1: which appealed to Charlie. Charlie had a sense of romance

313
00:19:51,920 --> 00:19:54,440
Speaker 1: and uh he was with his wife at the time,

314
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:57,160
Speaker 1: and I was with mine and we sat down and

315
00:19:57,160 --> 00:20:00,720
Speaker 1: he said, Jack, I know you didn't like the book.

316
00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:04,920
Speaker 1: You're really going to hate the movie. And here's the reason.

317
00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:07,720
Speaker 1: Let maybe Charlie was a great character or someone that

318
00:20:08,480 --> 00:20:11,560
Speaker 1: we all should be have to have known. He was

319
00:20:11,600 --> 00:20:14,760
Speaker 1: a patriot. I mean it's been He was much more

320
00:20:14,800 --> 00:20:21,000
Speaker 1: substantive than people have recorded. But it wasn't Charlie Wilson's war.

321
00:20:21,600 --> 00:20:23,600
Speaker 1: But in order to make a movie, you have to

322
00:20:23,640 --> 00:20:26,639
Speaker 1: have a central person, you know. So you have Tom

323
00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:30,760
Speaker 1: Hanks and you have Julia Roberts, and you know, you

324
00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:34,560
Speaker 1: have this drama. And the truth of the matter is

325
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 1: these programs no congressman with a somewhat wild it's portrayed

326
00:20:41,040 --> 00:20:46,040
Speaker 1: by the movie CIA operator and and a socialite from

327
00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:49,480
Speaker 1: Texas are going to change, change and run a war.

328
00:20:49,920 --> 00:20:52,439
Speaker 1: It's not how it's done. It's a it's a major

329
00:20:52,600 --> 00:20:59,040
Speaker 1: logistical um effort done by the way governments do things,

330
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:03,240
Speaker 1: with Chaine at command, and it's all within house. I

331
00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:05,879
Speaker 1: think it would surprise people to know that, you know,

332
00:21:06,080 --> 00:21:09,480
Speaker 1: and Charlie's Wilson more and I was responsible from eight

333
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:16,320
Speaker 1: five onward to the well into eight seven, and I

334
00:21:16,440 --> 00:21:20,960
Speaker 1: never sold their version of Julie roberts Uh. Charlie Wilson

335
00:21:21,600 --> 00:21:24,119
Speaker 1: had a stinger hanging over his office. One of my

336
00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:29,320
Speaker 1: colleagues gave him an expended too, But Charlie and Fairness

337
00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:30,800
Speaker 1: in his book said, you know, I had nothing to

338
00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:33,200
Speaker 1: do with the stinger, which he didn't, but most people

339
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:38,480
Speaker 1: don't focus on on that. Charlie and I traveled a

340
00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:42,439
Speaker 1: couple of times to south to Pakistan and to the

341
00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:45,560
Speaker 1: border area of Afghanistan, and it was almost like a

342
00:21:45,560 --> 00:21:50,520
Speaker 1: diplomatic trip. But I would say over my tenure with Charlie,

343
00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:55,159
Speaker 1: we probably had five at most substantive discussions about there

344
00:21:55,160 --> 00:21:58,160
Speaker 1: had no no impact on how the world was being run.

345
00:21:58,200 --> 00:22:01,119
Speaker 1: He called me once and said, well, Jack, understand you

346
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:09,040
Speaker 1: shifted the supplies from Egyptian made and Chinese to sixty

347
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:16,520
Speaker 1: Chinese and Pakistani. What's up. He had the closest relationships

348
00:22:16,520 --> 00:22:19,560
Speaker 1: excuse me, Egyptians. He had a close relationship with the Egyptians.

349
00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:23,440
Speaker 1: And I said, listen, Charlie, it's very simple. The the

350
00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:27,680
Speaker 1: weapons are get there faster, cheaper than their better maybe

351
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 1: he said, okay, got it. So Charlie's influenced in the

352
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:33,800
Speaker 1: details of the war and the running of the war

353
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:37,520
Speaker 1: is just not very realistic. He was important because he

354
00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:41,720
Speaker 1: brought attention to it early in the in the early eighties,

355
00:22:41,760 --> 00:22:45,399
Speaker 1: and I think that's important. And he kept pressure on.

356
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:48,400
Speaker 1: I once asked him, how did you get involved in it?

357
00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:55,040
Speaker 1: And Charlie's west Point at Annapolis Graduate and uh, he said, well,

358
00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. The Speaker of the House, Jim Wright,

359
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: came to me and said, Charlie, I want you to

360
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:03,960
Speaker 1: stay on this. I want to stay on Afghanistan. That's

361
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:06,320
Speaker 1: your job. So that's how he actually got involved. And

362
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 1: I noticed on one of these TV shows that you mentioned,

363
00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:11,840
Speaker 1: they have him in a hot tub with a couple

364
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 1: of beautiful women, which was when he was a bachelor,

365
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 1: sort of his uh style, and he's watching a video

366
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:23,920
Speaker 1: of or a TV show with Dan rather talking about Afghanistan,

367
00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:27,679
Speaker 1: and in the movie he suddenly becomes enamored with the

368
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:33,200
Speaker 1: battle the real bat. The real truth was that Congressman

369
00:23:33,200 --> 00:23:35,640
Speaker 1: Wright told him to get on it. Uh. The other

370
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:37,439
Speaker 1: thing about but the hot tub is I got a

371
00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: number of calls the next day, and it's quite interesting.

372
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:43,920
Speaker 1: They wanted to know, not about the stinger, not about this.

373
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 1: They wanted to know, was I in the hot tub

374
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:50,840
Speaker 1: with Charlie. Now I was annoyed because you know, professional

375
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,359
Speaker 1: isn't going to be caught in that sort of situation.

376
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:56,640
Speaker 1: So I could tell when I answered the caller and said, look,

377
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,320
Speaker 1: I wasn't in the hot tub with him, they were disappointed.

378
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: It was well, Jack is kind of planned. He really

379
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 1: doesn't belong in Hollywood. But by the third call, I

380
00:24:05,440 --> 00:24:07,840
Speaker 1: finally wise stopped and I said, I don't want to

381
00:24:07,840 --> 00:24:10,400
Speaker 1: talk about it. So I wasn't going to mislead them,

382
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,439
Speaker 1: but I I left the impression that maybe maybe I

383
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:16,320
Speaker 1: was a little more flamboyant than then the legend would

384
00:24:16,359 --> 00:24:22,400
Speaker 1: have it plausible deniability after the fact. Looks back at Afghanistan,

385
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 1: that have said, well, the subsequent blowback from once the

386
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:31,040
Speaker 1: Russians left UH and the United States says okay, we

387
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:33,399
Speaker 1: have no more need to be here, is that it

388
00:24:33,440 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 1: created a power vacuum into which rises the Taliban. How

389
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,560
Speaker 1: accurate is that depiction of of that part of the world. Well,

390
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 1: Charlie Wilson I did have a discussion at the time,

391
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 1: and both of us were the view that we should

392
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 1: have kept pushing funds into the Afghan fray. The experts

393
00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 1: and people that have studied it for years and the

394
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 1: policy makers or other view, look, we wanted to drive

395
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: them out. We completed our and you have to know

396
00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: when to end. And with hindsight, when I looked back

397
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: on it, and I would say, you know, twenty years

398
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:10,840
Speaker 1: later or whatever, when I sat and I was able

399
00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: to see the longer arc of history, I really believe

400
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:15,679
Speaker 1: I was wrong and Charlie was wrong. And that is

401
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: we could have thrown as much money. You can throw

402
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 1: as much money as you want into Afghanistan is not

403
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:25,439
Speaker 1: going to make a material difference over Well, I'm not

404
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: a big fan of a nation building. I've come over

405
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 1: the years to believe nations must decide when they must

406
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: have the the grit and will and desire to create

407
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: their nation. We can't force feed them. We can maintain

408
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:44,120
Speaker 1: things as a we can keep things at bay if

409
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,240
Speaker 1: that's desirable from a foreign policy point of view. But

410
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 1: the thing we can go into a at that time,

411
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 1: a civilization that would have been more familiar in the

412
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: sixteenth century, and think that you can fast forward into

413
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 1: a democratic country and with all the wherewithal is a

414
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,120
Speaker 1: fool's mission. So I'm I'm opposed to it. I think

415
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:08,760
Speaker 1: I might have been more charged up at the time

416
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: about the battle, and but with candor and hindsight, I

417
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 1: think this is a bad, bad argument, you know. And

418
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: the second part of that argument is, oh, and you

419
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: created the Taliban. I mean we created a vacuum into it. Now.

420
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: I think your yours is better state at the vacuum part,

421
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 1: which I accept. But you know, what people don't focus

422
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:34,359
Speaker 1: on is even after UM, after the Russians pulled out

423
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:38,880
Speaker 1: the communist Ppe state, Najibula state in power for three

424
00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: years and there was it wasn't an immediate vacuum because

425
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: we pulled out UM and the Taliban didn't exist then.

426
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,399
Speaker 1: So and the Taliban is not a remake of the

427
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 1: mujadine that that we support it. So you know, it's

428
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 1: convenient sometimes for people to draw lines, and I just

429
00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:59,880
Speaker 1: think that an honest look will will lead to better

430
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:03,480
Speaker 1: conclusions than those. Let's talk a little bit about your

431
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: most recent venture, the ark In Group, and how you

432
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 1: came to co found them from the CIA. You were

433
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: at the agency for thirty years. What motivated the exit. Well,

434
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:17,719
Speaker 1: I think there's a certain point. It's usually in your

435
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:23,119
Speaker 1: late fifties that um people exit the agency and you

436
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: wanted They wanted to have a flow through, so the

437
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: leadership was still relatively young in the early days. They

438
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:33,280
Speaker 1: wanted people out at fifty, which was unrealistic frankly, because

439
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 1: most people are just hitting their stride as senior executives,

440
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:40,200
Speaker 1: so it's sort of pushed back to sixty. Most federal

441
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 1: employees can't retire to the sixty five, but in CIA,

442
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:46,919
Speaker 1: at fifty five, with five years of experience abroad, you

443
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:52,359
Speaker 1: can leave leave early. In my particular case, I had

444
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: the job as the chief of worldwide Operations. That is

445
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 1: about as far as you can go in the system,

446
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: So staying around unless they decided to make me the director,

447
00:28:05,080 --> 00:28:07,200
Speaker 1: which I would gladly have accepted. I would that's a

448
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: political appointment. That's a political appointment. Yea. So it was

449
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:13,199
Speaker 1: it was time and there is a time to move on.

450
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: I did what I wanted to do. I got as

451
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: far as my aspirations, uh wished. So I felt it

452
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: was a good time to leave. And if you go

453
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,639
Speaker 1: into the private sector market, you're better going in at

454
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,120
Speaker 1: your late fifties, in your early sixties. So I love

455
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: the agency and I would have stayed there forever if

456
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: there was still uh still opportunities. But you can't go

457
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 1: back and do the same top job. It's just it's

458
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: not any question of not being fair, but I think it, uh,

459
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:44,760
Speaker 1: you get too ingrained in the system. So what was

460
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: the transition like from government work to the private sector.

461
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: I didn't have a I'd like to say I had

462
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 1: a career plan, a mission, and I when I left,

463
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll go back to

464
00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:01,479
Speaker 1: teaching or whatever. But there was a form acting director

465
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: of the FBI, find fellow named Larry Potts, and he

466
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: called me and said, look, you know, there's an investigative

467
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: company up in New York, and how we'd like to

468
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: come up and run our office for a year, which

469
00:29:11,600 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 1: I did. And the reason I was interested in the

470
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 1: move is I always found New York to be an

471
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:21,440
Speaker 1: exciting city and I wanted to the idea of coming

472
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 1: here there. Well, this is a foreign assignment coming to

473
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: New York. You know, two years would be great. You

474
00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 1: can enjoy New York and and see the big lights.

475
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 1: So two years it takes two years to find an apartment.

476
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:35,479
Speaker 1: Well I didn't know that at the time. That was

477
00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,360
Speaker 1: as I said, Well, right, and when I was abroad,

478
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 1: you had the infrastructure of an embassy to help you

479
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: find the place. But in New York, how long have

480
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: you been here for? I've been here seventeen years, so

481
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:50,280
Speaker 1: you know, another seventeen I'll be in New York. I'm

482
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: working on it. But you know, I spent a lot

483
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: of time in living in suburb of Washington, and it

484
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 1: never quite clicked for me. And then I've began to

485
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 1: think about I was born to Philade area, and I

486
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:04,480
Speaker 1: lived in capitals around the world. Was a city person,

487
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: so the thought of going back and living in the

488
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 1: suburbs just didn't have the appeal. So this is an opportunity.

489
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: And after I got here and spent several months or

490
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: almost a year doing this. UM I ran into my partner,

491
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: current partner, Stanley Arkin, who's a very prominent lawyer. Uh no,

492
00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: Nashally actually, and it's actually tried the first case before

493
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: the Supreme Corridor on insider trading in the defense UM

494
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 1: and one the case and they changed the law accordingly.

495
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 1: But and he what people didn't realize was in he

496
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: was asked by the director of c I A if

497
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: he would come down and defend one of the senior

498
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:50,680
Speaker 1: CIA people caught up in the Iran contra affair. So

499
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: I remember I didn't meet him, but I remember him

500
00:30:54,120 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 1: coming down and that the the officer Stanley was able

501
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: to cut a deal for him, and I thought, how smart,

502
00:31:04,680 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: What a smart operator here he was. Now other c

503
00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: I people weren't too happy because Stanley his only mission

504
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 1: that the press of the director, was to cut a

505
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: deal for this felon. He did so. When we ran

506
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:19,240
Speaker 1: into each other, we had fairly limited contact. And then

507
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: one day Stanley said, well, look, the company with you

508
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: too cheap to buy buy lunch. And Stanley doesn't need

509
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: a free lunch, I'll assure you. But I said, look, Stanley,

510
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: I'll buy you lunch. So we went to Maloneium for

511
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: Celi over on Shiftier Street. Stanley doesn't even sit down.

512
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:39,640
Speaker 1: He's still standing and says, Jack, I think we should

513
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: go into business together. So I said, like, when you

514
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: sit down, we'll talk about it. So the basic concept was,

515
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 1: you know, he had a very rich roll, decks of

516
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:56,040
Speaker 1: contacts and um and had been in the business of

517
00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 1: using information in support of his big cases. And he

518
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: felt that I had to know how on how to

519
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: produce that information. And it appealed to me because I

520
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: am an information junkie. I mean, I'm an intelligence junkie.

521
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: When I first left, I went out and interviewed and

522
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: I won't name the company, but it was a furniture

523
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: company out in Grand Rapids, and I thought, oh my god,

524
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: how am I going to do this? You know, I'm

525
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: not I'm not sure I'm going to be convincing the

526
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:31,280
Speaker 1: salesman and uh and uh. Fortunately uh. I ended up,

527
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: as I said, in something I like you now, and

528
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 1: that's collecting information and collecting information internationally. Now we do

529
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: about a third of the work here in the States,

530
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: but much of the distinguishing work, because it's so much

531
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 1: harder for companies, is in this space collect internationally, and

532
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:55,760
Speaker 1: I think over the past seventeen years, UM, standing are

533
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: proud of the network we've we've built up, and I

534
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 1: think it's uh, it's very very robust, but it's information

535
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: collection and no one's Justice Department is not going to

536
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: authorize me to help overthrow governments or counter invasions anywhere.

537
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 1: So it's were strictly in the information business and helping

538
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:19,800
Speaker 1: clients to navigate abroad. Let's talk a little bit about

539
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: what's going on in the headlines. Uh, the infamous House

540
00:33:24,480 --> 00:33:29,640
Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee memo was authorized to be released. It raises

541
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 1: the question how independent are intelligence and law enforcement agencies

542
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,040
Speaker 1: like the CIA or the n s A or the FBI.

543
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:42,560
Speaker 1: So I think professionals in both law enforcement and we'll

544
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 1: talk about the FBI or in the intelligence world CIA,

545
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:49,280
Speaker 1: although there are other law enforcement agencies, and there's also

546
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: other agencies involved in intelligence collection like n s A

547
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: and military intelligence and so on. The professionals in this

548
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: field really don't want to see an interest section between

549
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 1: politics and intelligence. It's really Uh. I don't know if

550
00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: you've ever had an opportunity to go into the CIA headquarters,

551
00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:11,800
Speaker 1: but no, but I'll take you up on that offer.

552
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:15,279
Speaker 1: For sure. Well, you're gonna have to get on the

553
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 1: payroll first. So when you it's a from my view,

554
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: from an a steady point of view, what I like,

555
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:26,719
Speaker 1: and we're in the past and now was the there's

556
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 1: aesthetic dimension to it you walk in. There's a certain

557
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:33,440
Speaker 1: amount of simplicity to it. On the left is a

558
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 1: quote from the Bible, and it says you shall know

559
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: the truth and then it will set you free. Now,

560
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:44,319
Speaker 1: someone gave that thought when they were thinking of what

561
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:47,480
Speaker 1: would go on the the wall of the CIA. That

562
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 1: is the mantor of the words. Your job is to

563
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: get the facts, the truth, and as Jack Webb used

564
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: to say, nothing but the facts, and it should be

565
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:00,880
Speaker 1: deep politicized. I wouldn't note on the other side of

566
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: the wall the symmetry of the stars where the falling

567
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:09,879
Speaker 1: officers of C. I A Are recognized, and there's over

568
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty stars. When I joined was probably fifty.

569
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:16,879
Speaker 1: So there's the ultimate price that officers have paid over

570
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,880
Speaker 1: the years for standing by that. I can't tell you

571
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: the political orientation, and most of the people that I

572
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 1: worked with, I mean, there are a few that I suspected,

573
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:30,480
Speaker 1: but it was unprofessional to bring into the workplace, you know,

574
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: domestic politics. It just wasn't professional. And the CIA is

575
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:40,040
Speaker 1: blessed and compared with State Department in a minute, which

576
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: for whom I have great respect and an important role

577
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: they play. But in c I A. When the directors

578
00:35:45,520 --> 00:35:47,960
Speaker 1: come in, they come in with only a couple of people.

579
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:51,319
Speaker 1: Usually it's the general council and maybe an assistant or two,

580
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: but none of them hold command positions. And it was

581
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 1: it's free of the political point. He's other than the

582
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: director and deputy direct actor State Department. There are so

583
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: many jobs that are open to the political arena. Assistant

584
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: secretary of this ambassador. All ambassadors resigned at the end

585
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:14,799
Speaker 1: of an administration, so it can be politicized more than

586
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: the law enforcement agency. The FBI director is a tenure

587
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:23,280
Speaker 1: tenure and there's been designed to make sure it carries

588
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 1: over and before any single lord two term presidency. That's correct.

589
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:34,680
Speaker 1: So I'm a strong advocate of keeping both of those institutions.

590
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,320
Speaker 1: And again I'll leave State aside and other government agencies,

591
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,000
Speaker 1: but two that are very much in the headlines out

592
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 1: of politics. And I think the leaders of agencies that

593
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 1: dabble in politics to a great disservice to the Core

594
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 1: Mission and to the institution. So it takes discipline and

595
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: not to become part of when you're in the administration,

596
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 1: not to become part of the politicy sex and um.

597
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: You know, if anyone were listening on this issue is

598
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 1: going to be the director, I would encourage them to

599
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:10,359
Speaker 1: d politicize. So so what are we to make of

600
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:15,799
Speaker 1: this recent attempt at painting agencies like the CIA but

601
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: these days the FBI as corrupt, biased, one sided institutions

602
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:28,160
Speaker 1: that are working to thwart a candidate or a president.

603
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,719
Speaker 1: Is this just part of the angling? Or let me

604
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:34,520
Speaker 1: start with the CIA, the one I know best, And uh,

605
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a good description of what's taking place.

606
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: I think people sort of missed the fact that the

607
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:44,919
Speaker 1: very first official visit that President Trump made was out

608
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:50,560
Speaker 1: to the CIA headquarters. And my own sense is day

609
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: in and day out, the relationship with d c I,

610
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: the Director, Pompeo, and the administration is probably very, very solid,

611
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 1: and the workforce itself tries to be supportive of the

612
00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:08,800
Speaker 1: executive branch. But I my guest today that if you

613
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: walk through c I A and not much different than

614
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: when I would walk through and half the population would

615
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: be Democrats and the other half Republicans, maybe shifting within

616
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: two percents, you know, in a given year. And I

617
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 1: don't think they're politicized, and I don't think that's what's

618
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,600
Speaker 1: at challenge here. I do think when the directors go

619
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:30,359
Speaker 1: out and they should revisit this and feel like they

620
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 1: are spokesman for policy and political policy, that it paints

621
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: a picture that, uh, and the institution is so people

622
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: underestimate the power of bureaucracies, and bureaucracy is a bad word,

623
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 1: but over time, bureaucracies really mold the governments themselves. And

624
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:53,520
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic that and I believe this is happening that

625
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 1: the longer the Trump administration goes on, the more the

626
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: bureaucracy begins to create policies and and things that are

627
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 1: more recognizable in a more traditional sense. The FBI, by contrast,

628
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: right now is in a firestorm. And you know, the

629
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 1: FBI is most conforten is doing the investigations into crimes

630
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:18,839
Speaker 1: and kidnapping and so when and and counter intelligence. They

631
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 1: do a great job in you know, weeding out spies,

632
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: and they are terribly important agency for our government. But

633
00:39:29,200 --> 00:39:33,719
Speaker 1: when you get involved, and sometimes you're necessarily involved in

634
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:40,720
Speaker 1: the political part, then the institution is at some some jeopardy.

635
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 1: So these are really difficult times for the FBI. And uh,

636
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: you know, I think the sooner these the investigation is

637
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 1: concluded and and people can get back to doing the

638
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:54,880
Speaker 1: other things that they do so well, I think it

639
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: would be healthier for the institution. So I do feel

640
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: that the FBI is in a really difficult period. CIA

641
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,919
Speaker 1: has been in difficult periods in the past. I don't

642
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 1: think today is one of them. How do you think

643
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 1: this plays out with the FBI? Is is this the

644
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: sort of thing that could lead to a Saturday night

645
00:40:14,719 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 1: massacre where a bunch of people get fired, or because

646
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: you've you've had a finger on the pulse of politics

647
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 1: and d C, you know what sort of what's going

648
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:28,799
Speaker 1: on there. What's your best guess as to how the

649
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: capital deals with all these crazy cross cards. I bet

650
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: onto bureaucracies over in the long term that they because

651
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:40,799
Speaker 1: they're so needed, and the congressman down on the hill

652
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: know that, I mean they really do. I mean, you'll

653
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 1: have speeches, but at the end of the day, I

654
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: don't think there's any sensible congressman that's thinking that somehow

655
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:51,880
Speaker 1: we don't need the FBI or they're not doing a

656
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: very good job. So when this is done, I mean,

657
00:40:56,160 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: this is the problem. This has been elongated, um boody match.

658
00:41:00,920 --> 00:41:08,719
Speaker 1: But it's a major overhaul and is probably not what

659
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: I would think would come down the road. Now it

660
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 1: depends on how this plays out, but certainly some people

661
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: will self elect to leave. Probably good for everybody, um,

662
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 1: but I would expect the FBI to very quickly stabilize

663
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: and returned to its rightful place in our national security arena.

664
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 1: But it's going to be hard sledding until this, until

665
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:34,600
Speaker 1: the investigations are completed and we move away from the

666
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:39,080
Speaker 1: politics of of of the Russian meddling in the election

667
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:42,360
Speaker 1: and get on with the more strategic issues in the

668
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:48,280
Speaker 1: international arena. So it appears that just about every intelligence

669
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 1: organization in d C has come out and said with

670
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,360
Speaker 1: a fairly heart degree of certitude, yes, the Russians have

671
00:41:55,520 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: meddled in our elections. They've meddled in elections around the world.

672
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:04,399
Speaker 1: They have a very effect active online presence. Um there

673
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,600
Speaker 1: seems to be some reluctance to accept that as true

674
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 1: amongst both parts of this administration and certain Congressmen. Devin

675
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:19,280
Speaker 1: Noon has probably most specifically, how does other agencies looking

676
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: at this from afar? So we don't obviously know what

677
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:26,000
Speaker 1: people in the FBI are thinking, But when the n

678
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: s A or the CIA or other agencies are watching this,

679
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:34,840
Speaker 1: what's the internal discussion like saying, is it, hey, thank goodness,

680
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: is not us? Or are they looking at it as

681
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 1: if they could go after the FBI? They go after us?

682
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 1: What does this mean going forward? I'm not sure I

683
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 1: would be surprised if people and the other agencies are

684
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 1: internalizing it. I think they see it pretty accurately for

685
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 1: what it is, um and I just don't see other

686
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:05,160
Speaker 1: agencies going through anywhere near the pain that the FBI

687
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 1: is going through. When we talk about seventeen agencies, I

688
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 1: mean you have to go back and look at the list.

689
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: I mean they're not all you know, it might be

690
00:43:12,600 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 1: the Indian Affairs has a branch of collection or whatever,

691
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: So I mean you really only have a handful, and

692
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 1: the premier collectors are would be the you know, the

693
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:27,759
Speaker 1: n s A and the CIA and the FBI. When

694
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:30,719
Speaker 1: I think of collections and the military collects a great

695
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:35,840
Speaker 1: deal of information and also the satellite agency that collects

696
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:41,360
Speaker 1: satellite data. So when you get around to the word baddling,

697
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:45,720
Speaker 1: it's really a good word. It's you know, and trying

698
00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:49,040
Speaker 1: to understand this. I think there's really very few people

699
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:54,760
Speaker 1: today that don't realize and accept that the Russians are meddling.

700
00:43:55,000 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 1: Meddled in the twenties sixteen presidential election. But what's does

701
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:05,359
Speaker 1: meddling mean? And and from my view, you know, I

702
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 1: know what big covert action operations look like, and if

703
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,919
Speaker 1: they if Putin really wanted to have a field day

704
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: in our election, you don't spend two hundred thousand, and

705
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 1: you don't dabble. There's a dabbling dimension to this that

706
00:44:19,239 --> 00:44:23,319
Speaker 1: I think should give people pause that if I were

707
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:26,480
Speaker 1: too and I want to be clear, this is not

708
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: inside information since years of looking at it, um if

709
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 1: I were the to analyze it, I think they wanted

710
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:39,880
Speaker 1: to be a nuisance, or they didn't anticipate that Donald

711
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:45,279
Speaker 1: Trump would become president and they didn't foresee the unintended

712
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 1: consequences that they were trying to destabilize the West. It

713
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:52,400
Speaker 1: would mean that they never read Western history. And what

714
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 1: happens when you heard is destabilized, you know that you

715
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:57,719
Speaker 1: get end up with the Hitlers of this world in

716
00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:01,400
Speaker 1: World War one or World War two, so destabilizing the

717
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 1: West if they wanted to do that. This this is

718
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:06,879
Speaker 1: very small potatoes, but that they meddled, and that there

719
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:11,240
Speaker 1: has to be a resetting of it. Um is uh

720
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: is beyond a question of doubt. And I take some hope.

721
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 1: As you know, the three top Russian intelligence officers visited

722
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:22,040
Speaker 1: the United States recently. My hope not based I'm not asking.

723
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 1: I hope is that it's to sit down and say,

724
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,400
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and now we've got to we have

725
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:28,920
Speaker 1: to go back and re examine where are we here?

726
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 1: Is this the way we're going to play the new

727
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: world we live in, or we're gonna stick by the

728
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 1: old Moscow rules in which we didn't interfere in each

729
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 1: other's election. So I'm hopeful it's the only way this

730
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 1: gets resolved, because if it continues, then we will have

731
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: to respond, and very few people are giving there's nothing

732
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 1: in the public discourse about what we do. But we're

733
00:45:48,520 --> 00:45:50,800
Speaker 1: not going to sit here and let the Russians medal

734
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:52,799
Speaker 1: and then we'll meddle there and we'll be back to

735
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: the old Cold War program. So I think it's a

736
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 1: good time to capt this off and have frank discussions

737
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 1: and put some markers don't know what we will and

738
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 1: will not do, so if there's any silver lining, maybe

739
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 1: that's it. So you raise a really interesting point. If

740
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:11,920
Speaker 1: we decide that, hey, you want to play that way, Ivan,

741
00:46:11,960 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: we could do something similar. What can we do to

742
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:21,399
Speaker 1: respond to the Russian participation and Facebook and Twitter? And

743
00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: you know, it's not so much that they are coming

744
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:31,320
Speaker 1: onto our physical lands and wreaking havoc. They're just creating

745
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: some confusion in the online space, which really causes a

746
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:39,160
Speaker 1: lot of people some discomfort. We live in a new

747
00:46:39,200 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 1: age of intelligence. I mean, if if you ask me

748
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 1: what's the biggest change over my lifetime, it isn't how

749
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 1: you go about getting human sources. That's as old as

750
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:55,719
Speaker 1: a prehistoric times. So the h it isn't It isn't that.

751
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: It's the technology, the speed with which which you can

752
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: move information across boundaries. I mean, you just can't imagine

753
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: the type of struggles I had to go to the

754
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 1: collect information that today one your click, one click away

755
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:12,919
Speaker 1: from getting fifty times that and what I would work

756
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 1: for days to collect. And the second thing is my

757
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 1: ability to mobilize people. I mean, you have to go

758
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:23,520
Speaker 1: on higher group and paint signs. And today you know,

759
00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 1: with a good Twitter account you can really stir up

760
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble. So and there's a there's a

761
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:30,360
Speaker 1: leveling to it because you don't have to be a

762
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:37,720
Speaker 1: powerful nation to metal. So I I still believe, strongly believe,

763
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 1: based on again the arc of history, that America still

764
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:47,799
Speaker 1: is your most sophisticated intelligence operation and in the technical area,

765
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:50,839
Speaker 1: and we certainly can respond anywhere in the world with

766
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:54,399
Speaker 1: things that are not seen by the naked eye today.

767
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:58,760
Speaker 1: So we can make life very difficult in the cyber world.

768
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,960
Speaker 1: They crash gin is to what end? I mean, what

769
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: we really don't want that to happen. It doesn't there's

770
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: no win win in that. So but it's unchecked that

771
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: you're you're led there, you will be led down that path.

772
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: So I think it's in the interest and I'm you know,

773
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 1: having been an adversary of the Russians, I have a

774
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,920
Speaker 1: lot of respect for uh them in a different category

775
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:26,719
Speaker 1: that they're not unmindful of what's about what's taking place here,

776
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: and they need to recorrect because they were dabbling and

777
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 1: didn't realize it would have the impact. They never dreamed

778
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:36,440
Speaker 1: that it was going to turn around, lead to sanctions,

779
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:40,720
Speaker 1: isolate them in the West, and I think they're probably

780
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 1: trying to find a way out, pull a rabbit out

781
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,280
Speaker 1: of the hat. On their end. We have been speaking

782
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 1: with Jack Divine, former acting director of Operations for the

783
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: Central Intelligence Agency. If you enjoy the sort of conversation,

784
00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:57,560
Speaker 1: stick around for the podcast actors. Will we keep the

785
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,240
Speaker 1: tape rolling and continue to discuss all all things intelligence.

786
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:03,839
Speaker 1: I'll be sure and check out my daily column on

787
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:06,440
Speaker 1: Bloomberg View dot com. You can follow me on Twitter

788
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 1: at rid Halts. I'm Barry RIDH Halts. You're listening to

789
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Jack,

790
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:29,319
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. Didn't really get

791
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:32,840
Speaker 1: to talk about Edward Snowdon and and the n s

792
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 1: A and mass surveillance. What are your thoughts on that?

793
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: Well in Snowden. Actually, when green Wall's book came out

794
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: about Snowdon, I was called by Politico and asked for

795
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: a few comments about it because they wanted to be

796
00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:53,479
Speaker 1: balanced between Greenwald's version of St. Snowdon and line and

797
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 1: um as I said, earlier in the program. I knew

798
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 1: Rick Ames. He was m the American CIA officer who

799
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:08,399
Speaker 1: volunteered to the KGB. Isn't that sort of a bizarre thing?

800
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: I mean right, it's well one of the problems in

801
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 1: finding Rick Games and I think the same problem recently

802
00:50:17,080 --> 00:50:20,279
Speaker 1: with Jerry Lee and the Chinese following that in the newspaper,

803
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 1: But is that the CIA had a really hard time

804
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:26,920
Speaker 1: accepting the fact that one of their own was working

805
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: for her for the Russian so it looked for all

806
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:36,160
Speaker 1: other explanations of why we were losing agents. And I

807
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 1: have made it a habit of when I've talked to

808
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 1: a number of the directors over the past several years,

809
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 1: to make the point that there is a mall inside

810
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 1: the institution. So you need to make sure that you

811
00:50:50,719 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 1: get briefed by the counter intelligence people and the attractive

812
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: because it's part of the business, is what I'm saying.

813
00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: Just assume that, and we've had spies inside the Russian system,

814
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: they've come out their public faith no surprise. Why we

815
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 1: would think we would be immune from it as as

816
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:12,919
Speaker 1: a tad naive or a group of people that are

817
00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: so hard nosed, But it is true. We think of

818
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: ourselves as the the light on the hill, and that

819
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: you know, as I said earlier, you joined because of

820
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:26,120
Speaker 1: a sense of mission. Who could possibly betray it? And

821
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:28,320
Speaker 1: I can talk about some of the behavioral things. I

822
00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 1: wanna talk about Aims for one secual, just to overlay

823
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: it on. Yeah, No, it's fascinating. So when you find

824
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:38,920
Speaker 1: when you look at Rick Aims, he was very well

825
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:44,239
Speaker 1: read person. He was enthusiastic about the CIA and the

826
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 1: counter intelligence and hunting down spies. But he had a

827
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:54,839
Speaker 1: self importance. He thought why he was not very materialistic

828
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: at this point in his life. He thought he was

829
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 1: smarter than he was, you know. But he had a hambit,

830
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 1: uh And it's a very dangerous one for anybody in

831
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: business and in the bureaucracy, and that is it was lazy.

832
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 1: So he would do things well, he didn't like to

833
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:12,839
Speaker 1: do it. He wouldn't do it at all. So it's

834
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:18,400
Speaker 1: very safe to project over a career trajectory that people

835
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,600
Speaker 1: that are lazy eventually fall behind. So when you get

836
00:52:21,640 --> 00:52:23,800
Speaker 1: in the middle of your career, you think you're smarter

837
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 1: than everybody, but now you're you find that you're a

838
00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:29,359
Speaker 1: major and your people that went through your training with

839
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: you are now colonels and one star general. So the

840
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:37,759
Speaker 1: bitterness of the gap between your narcissism and that's where

841
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: the anger is. It's very rarely that people betray their

842
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 1: country on some big philosophical issue. It's about that personal thing.

843
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:50,239
Speaker 1: You look at Snowdon. Now, Snowdon, I think it's a

844
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: fairly bright fellow. But he wasn't good student in school.

845
00:52:53,760 --> 00:52:55,759
Speaker 1: And why if you start to look at snow and

846
00:52:55,880 --> 00:52:58,080
Speaker 1: you see he was sort of a lazy guy, did

847
00:52:58,120 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do. It was a very junior officer,

848
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:06,120
Speaker 1: and I think the same tendency was that he thought

849
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: he was should be somewhere else in life and smarter,

850
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:11,600
Speaker 1: and the revenge sets in. I don't believe he was

851
00:53:11,640 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: a spy. If so, the Russians had up their game,

852
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:18,200
Speaker 1: that you could find a Snowden where in his position,

853
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:22,919
Speaker 1: find him and recruit him is better than my understanding

854
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:25,400
Speaker 1: of our success rate. So I think he was a

855
00:53:25,440 --> 00:53:28,720
Speaker 1: disgruntled Yeah, But the minute he ended up in Russia,

856
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:33,279
Speaker 1: I just there's no you know, it doesn't take much

857
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 1: imagination to realize that Snowdon everything that he does is

858
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:41,680
Speaker 1: controlled by the state. In this case, the KGB and

859
00:53:41,719 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: the FSB, and and that is his meals, his job.

860
00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:49,799
Speaker 1: Who he meets, who he sees, what he can say

861
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:54,600
Speaker 1: public and not say publicly, are all controlled by the system.

862
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:59,719
Speaker 1: So after a while you become wittingly or unwittingly in

863
00:53:59,800 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 1: a in of the system. So while that may not

864
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:05,560
Speaker 1: have been his design, that may not have been his motivation.

865
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:10,360
Speaker 1: He is a pawn in the system. And over time,

866
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 1: almost old defectors leave very very unhappy lives. And I would,

867
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:18,359
Speaker 1: and that would be my forecast for him. He will

868
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,040
Speaker 1: be as he ages, and he's got a long way

869
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: the age, he will become a terribly depressed person. Ever

870
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:30,479
Speaker 1: coming back to the United States, So if he wants

871
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:35,040
Speaker 1: to go to jail, he will be prosecuted and convicted.

872
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:38,359
Speaker 1: And that's that. Let's talk a little bit about counter narcotics,

873
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:42,360
Speaker 1: because you headed that division, you worked on the Pablo

874
00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: Escobar case, helping to bring him down. Tell us a

875
00:54:46,200 --> 00:54:49,440
Speaker 1: little bit about that. What was that like and what

876
00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:54,400
Speaker 1: were the goals of the counter Narcotics division. Number of

877
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: your listeners may not recall that in the early eighties,

878
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:05,719
Speaker 1: counter in our potics was the number three concern. Narcotics

879
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:08,920
Speaker 1: was number three concern of the American public. They wanted

880
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:13,600
Speaker 1: their government to do something about it because drugs had

881
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 1: moved into suburb we had moved into the country side.

882
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:21,840
Speaker 1: It was pervasive, and it was business, big business. So

883
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:25,040
Speaker 1: there was a huge push and all the government agencies

884
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:32,200
Speaker 1: too um enter into counter narcotics. CIA and the FBI

885
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: was not enthused about it. And one of the reasons

886
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:40,080
Speaker 1: was they were reluctant to get into business that concerned

887
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 1: that they might get too close to the business themselves

888
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 1: and the temptation and corruption would be an issue. So

889
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. And the FBI wanted

890
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:57,400
Speaker 1: to do crime busting and and uh, and we wanted

891
00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 1: to do um catching spies, running spies. So they actually

892
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 1: created had a great d e A and had another

893
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 1: name at the time, but it had to be made

894
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:09,759
Speaker 1: up and people drawn from other agencies because no one

895
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:11,640
Speaker 1: wanted to do it. But then as it got more

896
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: and more money, next to you know, the Navy was

897
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: using ships to go run down a little tobacco boat

898
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:22,359
Speaker 1: running from the Caribbean, so money draws, so little by

899
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: little became a big business in the in the CIA

900
00:56:25,680 --> 00:56:29,480
Speaker 1: as well, and we created a center which brought in

901
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 1: people from other agencies and and from other disciplines in

902
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:37,240
Speaker 1: c I a what I got out of the center,

903
00:56:37,400 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: which which is it's the way you do business normally

904
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 1: in the agency. It's stovepipe analyst, operators, scientists. In fact,

905
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:50,280
Speaker 1: we have elevators that were color coded when I walked

906
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:52,480
Speaker 1: into the building, and you would never dream of going

907
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: up the green a scientist elevator, and nobody would ever

908
00:56:56,280 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 1: rub the spy elevator. They didn't weren't as spy. So

909
00:56:59,560 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: creatures of it. The beauty of the counter and arcotage program,

910
00:57:03,160 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: the counter Terrorism wanted had changed the discipline and that

911
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 1: all of these groups had to work together. We brought

912
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:15,000
Speaker 1: them together and we started to develop new capabilities linkage analysis,

913
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:17,440
Speaker 1: which we take for granted now, and that is how

914
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:22,720
Speaker 1: you use software to tie different conversations. And technology became

915
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 1: a huge part of it. And on the ground, uh,

916
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:31,600
Speaker 1: we invested a lot of time in integrating capabilities. And

917
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 1: I know this will get boring for your readers, but

918
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:37,440
Speaker 1: I'm just saying the counter narcotics targeting became a model

919
00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:40,280
Speaker 1: for the future of how the agency was going to

920
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: do business in the drug business. Ugly ugly business. Pablo Escobar,

921
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: for sure, it was a high figure in Colombia. Uh

922
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:52,440
Speaker 1: had his own zoo, blew up an aircraft. I mean,

923
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:55,280
Speaker 1: he was a really vicious and dangerous guy in Meta.

924
00:57:56,280 --> 00:57:58,920
Speaker 1: But the more dangerous group was the Colleague cartel, which

925
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 1: had a lower profile, but they had more They were

926
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:04,720
Speaker 1: really moving more drugs and more money. But because of

927
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: Scoobars fighting with the government, he had a higher profile,

928
00:58:10,120 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 1: more easily identified. So from an agency point of view

929
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:19,720
Speaker 1: and working with other agencies, the mission was to identify

930
00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:22,920
Speaker 1: where he was and then to have a well trained

931
00:58:23,040 --> 00:58:27,440
Speaker 1: unit to be able to take action the Colombians. And

932
00:58:27,640 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 1: we felt that if you took a policeman and put

933
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 1: him on the street after your training, within a day

934
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 1: or two he's met by a drug traffickers saying, look,

935
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:39,240
Speaker 1: I'm either going to give you a hundred dollars and

936
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: you don't have to do a thing. Just don't do

937
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:43,760
Speaker 1: a thing. There's nothing and if you don't, if you

938
00:58:43,840 --> 00:58:46,840
Speaker 1: try to be active, you know we're going to shoot you.

939
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:51,480
Speaker 1: And so it was a question between you know, the

940
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:55,080
Speaker 1: expression in Spanish was you know the wall and between

941
00:58:55,160 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: lead and money, and you can either. So it's very

942
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:02,240
Speaker 1: tempting for April, so you couldn't put police in around,

943
00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 1: so we had to develop special units. And then if

944
00:59:05,080 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 1: you watch as the Scobar movies or whatever, you will

945
00:59:09,600 --> 00:59:13,680
Speaker 1: see that at the end he was located on his

946
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 1: cell phone talking to his side, and so that the

947
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:21,320
Speaker 1: technology the world we live in made it easier to

948
00:59:21,360 --> 00:59:26,760
Speaker 1: identify him and to uh to he met his demise

949
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:28,600
Speaker 1: as a result of that. What do you think of

950
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:32,840
Speaker 1: the war on drugs that took place domestically and how

951
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:36,600
Speaker 1: does that contrast today where I believe it's a not

952
00:59:36,680 --> 00:59:41,120
Speaker 1: just a majority, but a substantial majority of Americans favor

953
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 1: either the criminalization or legalization of things like marijuana. Well,

954
00:59:45,640 --> 00:59:49,440
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a tricky subject. One of

955
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: the things I was on what I would call the

956
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: supply side or how do you how do you stop

957
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 1: the supply and stopping this why is an important thing.

958
00:59:56,600 --> 00:59:59,640
Speaker 1: If you don't do it, if you're getting let's say

959
00:59:59,720 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 1: five hundred kiloads a day going into the United States, um,

960
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: you'll end up with a thousand if you don't have it.

961
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 1: But that isn't the real the way. In college, I

962
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: was on the demand side, So I heard that filed.

963
01:00:12,000 --> 01:00:17,360
Speaker 1: Your file indicates that. But the the the problem is,

964
01:00:17,400 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: as long as there's a demand, no matter what you're

965
01:00:20,200 --> 01:00:23,240
Speaker 1: doing on the supply side, the price will go up.

966
01:00:23,360 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 1: But people are going to find those drugs and deliver them.

967
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: So if I had ten dollars, I'd put three dollars

968
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 1: into If I were the decider, I would put three

969
01:00:32,520 --> 01:00:37,960
Speaker 1: dollars into supply and seven into demand. The problem with

970
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:40,480
Speaker 1: the demand side is, you know, we talk health, and

971
01:00:40,680 --> 01:00:43,320
Speaker 1: certainly we should do everything can, but the rate of

972
01:00:43,360 --> 01:00:45,600
Speaker 1: success in dealing with from a health point of view,

973
01:00:45,640 --> 01:00:49,600
Speaker 1: it was really dismal. So how do you prevent the

974
01:00:49,720 --> 01:00:55,240
Speaker 1: consumer consumer from taking drugs? So law enforcement is going

975
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:57,360
Speaker 1: to go in and do what it can, but it

976
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:03,040
Speaker 1: doesn't impact on the consumer and to some degree, and

977
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 1: why people giggle at it, I don't uh. Nancy Reagan

978
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:11,960
Speaker 1: said say, no, well, it's not as simple as that.

979
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:16,440
Speaker 1: But you have to do something that makes people feel

980
01:01:16,560 --> 01:01:19,480
Speaker 1: that it isn't good to do this, that they decide

981
01:01:19,600 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 1: that it becomes uh, not fashionable. What would be my point?

982
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:26,880
Speaker 1: Why do why did everyone on TV three or four

983
01:01:26,960 --> 01:01:29,320
Speaker 1: years ago where purple shirts and purple ties. I have

984
01:01:29,360 --> 01:01:32,120
Speaker 1: no idea. I don't know who started the trend didn't happen,

985
01:01:32,160 --> 01:01:34,760
Speaker 1: But there are trends in history. There's trends in foreign policy.

986
01:01:35,080 --> 01:01:36,880
Speaker 1: And if I look at isis today we're seeing a

987
01:01:36,920 --> 01:01:40,760
Speaker 1: downward trend, right, But when you looked at narcotics, where

988
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: was there in history that the drug, the cocaine heroin dropped?

989
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 1: Now it's back, But why did it drop? It became uncool.

990
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:53,800
Speaker 1: Hollywood did so much in terms of playing at that.

991
01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 1: You know why it might have been cool for not

992
01:01:56,960 --> 01:01:58,760
Speaker 1: not in any circle life care to be in. But

993
01:01:59,080 --> 01:02:02,000
Speaker 1: here in New York, you know, to put a cocaine

994
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:04,080
Speaker 1: on the table and have a party. There was a

995
01:02:04,120 --> 01:02:07,200
Speaker 1: point where you didn't look too good if you were

996
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:09,600
Speaker 1: doing that. So they're the point is you have to

997
01:02:09,600 --> 01:02:15,520
Speaker 1: spend time and what I would call social and engineering,

998
01:02:15,560 --> 01:02:18,240
Speaker 1: but we careful how we do it, but that you

999
01:02:18,400 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 1: have to get the consumer, the American people, to stop

1000
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:24,880
Speaker 1: thinking that taking drugs is a good thing. I kind

1001
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:28,560
Speaker 1: of like the idea of making the price so cheap

1002
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:31,880
Speaker 1: that there's no profit margin for the bad guys, which

1003
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:35,680
Speaker 1: is what seems to be happening with marijuana wherever they

1004
01:02:35,760 --> 01:02:40,560
Speaker 1: legalize it. And now they're talking about Canada, becoming the

1005
01:02:40,640 --> 01:02:44,560
Speaker 1: first G seven country to make it completely legal. Well,

1006
01:02:44,720 --> 01:02:46,560
Speaker 1: I remember not too many years ago, four or five

1007
01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:49,640
Speaker 1: years ago, sitting down with the head of the police

1008
01:02:49,680 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: in Mexico City and we're talking about narcotics. City said, look,

1009
01:02:53,840 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 1: you're legalizing its state by state, and you know he

1010
01:02:56,440 --> 01:02:59,920
Speaker 1: was ahead of his time in identifying the use of marijuana. Uh.

1011
01:03:00,040 --> 01:03:03,040
Speaker 1: I do think your point is right on target as

1012
01:03:03,080 --> 01:03:08,040
Speaker 1: it relates to the huge downside of it being a

1013
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 1: criminal offense is that you fluster criminal organizations. They're taking

1014
01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:15,520
Speaker 1: the money. It's not only out of the system, but

1015
01:03:15,560 --> 01:03:18,560
Speaker 1: you have people that influence the political rename can do

1016
01:03:18,680 --> 01:03:23,640
Speaker 1: horrible things. If you legitimize it, that would go I hell. Ever,

1017
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: on the other hand, UM dubious that we actually would

1018
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 1: be effective and managing it is too often you start

1019
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 1: with we're going to control it and the control turns

1020
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:39,680
Speaker 1: out not to be there. So and I want to

1021
01:03:39,680 --> 01:03:42,200
Speaker 1: be careful that we don't have a doped up society.

1022
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:45,800
Speaker 1: So there is some balance in this. And now, I

1023
01:03:45,800 --> 01:03:49,200
Speaker 1: think in the criminal system, and I'm not an expert

1024
01:03:49,200 --> 01:03:51,240
Speaker 1: on the statistics, but I think most of the people

1025
01:03:51,280 --> 01:03:54,160
Speaker 1: that are in jail are you are not users. They

1026
01:03:54,200 --> 01:04:01,000
Speaker 1: are sellers so and the question so the little bit

1027
01:04:01,120 --> 01:04:04,840
Speaker 1: of the legitimatization of marijuana. I mean, I don't want

1028
01:04:04,880 --> 01:04:07,080
Speaker 1: to get in trouble with all of my former colleagues

1029
01:04:07,080 --> 01:04:10,280
Speaker 1: who worked so hard on but there is something here

1030
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,000
Speaker 1: to try and get organized crime out of it. But

1031
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:16,680
Speaker 1: I have yet to see a program that would make

1032
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:21,840
Speaker 1: me comfortable that we would have the self discipline and

1033
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 1: to manage a program where we wouldn't end up being

1034
01:04:25,840 --> 01:04:31,360
Speaker 1: a very weak populace. And and I have some libertarian

1035
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:34,920
Speaker 1: friends who think everything should be legalized. I think beer

1036
01:04:35,280 --> 01:04:39,320
Speaker 1: and wine and weed are one thing, and the opioids

1037
01:04:39,320 --> 01:04:43,200
Speaker 1: and heroin and all that stuff an entirely different set

1038
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:47,720
Speaker 1: of issues and problems and risks for a society at large, right,

1039
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:50,240
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, no matter how we look

1040
01:04:50,320 --> 01:04:53,120
Speaker 1: at it, we have to deal with it. The drug

1041
01:04:53,160 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 1: problem is back, and back big time. The heroine is

1042
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:04,560
Speaker 1: really quite amazing because it is so addictive and yet

1043
01:05:04,600 --> 01:05:09,200
Speaker 1: it's worked its way into our everywhere. But in the

1044
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:13,440
Speaker 1: school system is where it caused the flashback in the eighties,

1045
01:05:13,480 --> 01:05:19,240
Speaker 1: and people her we're news now down in the low

1046
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:23,800
Speaker 1: teens is quite large, and the number of overdoses are

1047
01:05:23,920 --> 01:05:27,560
Speaker 1: stunning stunning, So I have to get to my favorite questions.

1048
01:05:27,640 --> 01:05:31,000
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do a lightning round on a couple

1049
01:05:31,040 --> 01:05:34,120
Speaker 1: of quick things because I I can't miss them before

1050
01:05:34,120 --> 01:05:39,120
Speaker 1: our standard standard questions. UM, so really quickly, U S

1051
01:05:39,240 --> 01:05:42,880
Speaker 1: drone program effective and effective? What do you think of it?

1052
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:48,600
Speaker 1: You didn't ask me, but I'm I'm stunchly opposed enhanced interrogations. Okay,

1053
01:05:48,720 --> 01:05:51,080
Speaker 1: that's the next question on my list. I want to

1054
01:05:51,080 --> 01:05:53,600
Speaker 1: take them side by side so that somehow you don't

1055
01:05:53,640 --> 01:05:57,920
Speaker 1: think I've become whimpish over the years. So torture, does

1056
01:05:57,960 --> 01:06:00,680
Speaker 1: it work? And should we do it? Let me let

1057
01:06:00,680 --> 01:06:03,919
Speaker 1: me answer your drone So I want to say I'm

1058
01:06:03,960 --> 01:06:07,800
Speaker 1: opposed to the enhanced interrogation on the drone. I feel

1059
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:11,680
Speaker 1: quite differently. To me, it's like the new Stinger. I

1060
01:06:11,760 --> 01:06:14,360
Speaker 1: actually had my hands on what I believe is the

1061
01:06:14,440 --> 01:06:17,960
Speaker 1: first drone that was going to be used in combat

1062
01:06:18,040 --> 01:06:21,240
Speaker 1: in six We were going to use it in uh

1063
01:06:21,360 --> 01:06:25,760
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, and I was looking at it looked like

1064
01:06:25,760 --> 01:06:29,240
Speaker 1: a souped up toy plane, but it was about six

1065
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:32,400
Speaker 1: foot wine and I gotta call the lawyers. Called said,

1066
01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:35,840
Speaker 1: oh Jackie, you can't use that. That's assassination. Okay, so

1067
01:06:35,880 --> 01:06:37,720
Speaker 1: I said, right, we're not. I guess we won't use that.

1068
01:06:37,800 --> 01:06:41,120
Speaker 1: So instead we got these big mortars and fired mortars

1069
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:45,000
Speaker 1: with GPS. Now this is where your business clients we'll

1070
01:06:45,200 --> 01:06:47,000
Speaker 1: want to take me with the grain is salt, because

1071
01:06:47,000 --> 01:06:49,360
Speaker 1: we'll realize that they don't have a keen business interest

1072
01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:52,400
Speaker 1: in this area. I actually had the first we had.

1073
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 1: The GPS was introduced to me. We put it with

1074
01:06:54,640 --> 01:06:57,480
Speaker 1: the mortar, first time ever used in combat in Afghanistan,

1075
01:06:58,040 --> 01:07:00,720
Speaker 1: and to me it was a weapon system. If I

1076
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:03,320
Speaker 1: had a business sense, I should the facts. A wait

1077
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:06,800
Speaker 1: a minute, this is GPS. We can we can make

1078
01:07:06,840 --> 01:07:10,360
Speaker 1: this thing really hum well, as you can see, I'm

1079
01:07:10,440 --> 01:07:13,920
Speaker 1: not here in Armani suit because I just didn't remember

1080
01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:17,360
Speaker 1: remember to do that. So so I'm an advocate of

1081
01:07:17,360 --> 01:07:19,480
Speaker 1: I think it's a powerful thing. It was used originally

1082
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:22,200
Speaker 1: for surveillance, and then someone said we need to put

1083
01:07:22,680 --> 01:07:25,280
Speaker 1: help fire missiles on and frankly, I've got no no

1084
01:07:25,360 --> 01:07:27,720
Speaker 1: time for the terrorists. And and but it has to

1085
01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:30,720
Speaker 1: be handled you know, smartly. I mean you have to.

1086
01:07:30,960 --> 01:07:33,120
Speaker 1: And I believe we have the capacity and have been

1087
01:07:33,200 --> 01:07:37,520
Speaker 1: using smartly so pro drone anti torture let's talk about

1088
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:40,439
Speaker 1: w m d S in Iraq. What the heck happened there?

1089
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:42,920
Speaker 1: And who do you blame for that? Was that the CIA?

1090
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:49,600
Speaker 1: Was that the shadow agency that the Vice President's office created. Well,

1091
01:07:49,600 --> 01:07:54,560
Speaker 1: I think there's several aspects of the the weapons of

1092
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:59,240
Speaker 1: mass destruction issue um And again this is where there's

1093
01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:04,120
Speaker 1: a hilarity with me. I was for going into Afghanistan

1094
01:08:04,200 --> 01:08:09,160
Speaker 1: immediately after nine eleven, finding Ben Ladden and taken down

1095
01:08:09,160 --> 01:08:13,200
Speaker 1: to tell them unequivocal, no compunctions about it. We did

1096
01:08:13,320 --> 01:08:18,800
Speaker 1: as a CIA special forces went in took down the Taliban,

1097
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:22,160
Speaker 1: using some of the folks that we worked with back

1098
01:08:22,160 --> 01:08:25,120
Speaker 1: in the old days. I had no compunctions about that.

1099
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:27,840
Speaker 1: I wouldn't I would have. My view is not to

1100
01:08:27,880 --> 01:08:30,600
Speaker 1: hang around. I wrote an article some years later in

1101
01:08:31,400 --> 01:08:34,479
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal saying, you know, you want to

1102
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:37,080
Speaker 1: keep using the CIA and special forces in low prob.

1103
01:08:37,080 --> 01:08:38,680
Speaker 1: You don't want to go in and build through the

1104
01:08:38,800 --> 01:08:41,679
Speaker 1: nation building. But leave that aside. A rock. I never

1105
01:08:41,800 --> 01:08:47,120
Speaker 1: understood in the sense that well, the weapons is you know,

1106
01:08:47,160 --> 01:08:50,000
Speaker 1: we talked weapons of mass destruction. He definitely had weapons

1107
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:54,240
Speaker 1: of mass destruction. Inspectors went and this is before the crisis,

1108
01:08:54,720 --> 01:08:57,840
Speaker 1: and we know, they destroyed only half of them at

1109
01:08:57,840 --> 01:08:59,960
Speaker 1: the time, so whatever happened to the other half, So

1110
01:09:01,160 --> 01:09:06,840
Speaker 1: it was not an unnuh unreasonable position to believe that

1111
01:09:07,160 --> 01:09:10,400
Speaker 1: there were weapons of mass destruction. I mean Sun was

1112
01:09:10,439 --> 01:09:13,519
Speaker 1: saying fooled his own cabinet. Now there was everyone else thought, well,

1113
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:16,320
Speaker 1: he's had it, he has it hidden somewhere or else, okay,

1114
01:09:16,680 --> 01:09:21,519
Speaker 1: and you know he never denied it publicly. But my

1115
01:09:21,760 --> 01:09:24,600
Speaker 1: problem is there was nothing that I saw, and have

1116
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:28,000
Speaker 1: yet to see to this day, anything that indicated that,

1117
01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:30,160
Speaker 1: even if he had them, that he was going to

1118
01:09:30,280 --> 01:09:32,360
Speaker 1: use them. He used to be against us, and that

1119
01:09:32,400 --> 01:09:34,320
Speaker 1: there was an eminent threat and we needed to deal

1120
01:09:34,360 --> 01:09:37,840
Speaker 1: with it immediately. So I think it's going to prove

1121
01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:42,000
Speaker 1: to be one of the great UM blunders. Is that

1122
01:09:42,080 --> 01:09:44,760
Speaker 1: a good way? It's more than military because I think

1123
01:09:45,479 --> 01:09:49,400
Speaker 1: it's really a geopolitical mistake. Allowed I Ran to lose

1124
01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:53,200
Speaker 1: a counterbalance. They really expanded dramatically. We've opened up, you know,

1125
01:09:53,280 --> 01:09:57,879
Speaker 1: you've opened up a huge instability vacuum, and and today

1126
01:09:57,920 --> 01:10:02,760
Speaker 1: that we're living with so um you know, conventional wisdom

1127
01:10:02,840 --> 01:10:06,000
Speaker 1: and you know, we're not talking about North Korea and

1128
01:10:06,000 --> 01:10:09,360
Speaker 1: Iran today, but I was reading today in the newspaper

1129
01:10:09,479 --> 01:10:12,880
Speaker 1: about giving somebody, you know, giving them a bloody nose,

1130
01:10:13,040 --> 01:10:19,320
Speaker 1: you know, uh so, and having options on going in

1131
01:10:19,560 --> 01:10:24,679
Speaker 1: and preemptive strike. And I'm thinking, gosh, that we ever learned?

1132
01:10:25,160 --> 01:10:28,479
Speaker 1: I mean, what are the unintended consequences? Play back your

1133
01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:31,880
Speaker 1: tapes from when we went into Iraq? The oil? The

1134
01:10:31,920 --> 01:10:34,599
Speaker 1: oil was going to pay for the war. I mean

1135
01:10:35,320 --> 01:10:39,080
Speaker 1: our ability, very smart people to deceive ourselves when we're

1136
01:10:39,479 --> 01:10:43,960
Speaker 1: when we're spun up. So I think these the Iraq

1137
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:49,280
Speaker 1: is the most unfortunate development in our modern history. And

1138
01:10:50,400 --> 01:10:53,040
Speaker 1: getting out then this is the problem. When you do

1139
01:10:53,160 --> 01:10:57,160
Speaker 1: preemptive anything. It's easy to get in. And we are

1140
01:10:57,200 --> 01:11:00,400
Speaker 1: the most powerful force in the world bar none, so

1141
01:11:00,439 --> 01:11:02,200
Speaker 1: we don't have troubly getting in. It's how do you

1142
01:11:02,200 --> 01:11:05,599
Speaker 1: get out? And what are the consequences? Have you foreseen

1143
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 1: all the consequences clearly in issue? And for the record,

1144
01:11:08,960 --> 01:11:12,800
Speaker 1: I will add nobody who actually could do basic math

1145
01:11:13,640 --> 01:11:16,519
Speaker 1: imagine that the oil would pay for the Iraq war,

1146
01:11:16,680 --> 01:11:21,360
Speaker 1: that that line might have affected the enumerate, but the

1147
01:11:21,400 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 1: rest of us knew that was nonsense. I only have

1148
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:26,080
Speaker 1: you for another eight minutes. Let me jump to my

1149
01:11:26,200 --> 01:11:30,160
Speaker 1: favorite questions. Um tell us about some of your early mentors.

1150
01:11:31,960 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 1: I think as I think back over my career, and

1151
01:11:34,400 --> 01:11:37,599
Speaker 1: that's where good hunting. Uh. It was helpful writing it

1152
01:11:37,640 --> 01:11:39,879
Speaker 1: because you had to go back and say, oh, my goodness,

1153
01:11:40,920 --> 01:11:43,920
Speaker 1: I really did I thank that person enough. And I

1154
01:11:43,960 --> 01:11:46,360
Speaker 1: started making calls because of an interview of people, and

1155
01:11:46,400 --> 01:11:51,080
Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was fascinating. I remember calling

1156
01:11:51,120 --> 01:11:54,280
Speaker 1: one feather that was my deputy on the Iran program

1157
01:11:54,400 --> 01:11:58,000
Speaker 1: and how we tried to avert getting into the Iran

1158
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:00,799
Speaker 1: contry affair. And he was out and I was somewhere

1159
01:12:00,840 --> 01:12:04,760
Speaker 1: on a tractor and I called and and I could

1160
01:12:04,800 --> 01:12:06,559
Speaker 1: hear his wife getting him, and he got on the

1161
01:12:06,600 --> 01:12:10,599
Speaker 1: phone and I said, this Jack divine, and I heard

1162
01:12:11,760 --> 01:12:13,880
Speaker 1: big sigh and I thought, I know, I know, I

1163
01:12:13,920 --> 01:12:16,240
Speaker 1: know that side that sigh is Oh what did he

1164
01:12:16,280 --> 01:12:19,639
Speaker 1: get me into? And I said, look, Claude, I thought

1165
01:12:19,720 --> 01:12:21,880
Speaker 1: I wanted. All I wanted to do was tell you

1166
01:12:22,000 --> 01:12:25,320
Speaker 1: how grateful I am on you know, which I didn't

1167
01:12:25,320 --> 01:12:28,760
Speaker 1: appreciate enough at the time. I did because of the

1168
01:12:28,760 --> 01:12:31,640
Speaker 1: book get to talk to some of my mentors, and

1169
01:12:31,680 --> 01:12:33,519
Speaker 1: a few of them have died in the last few years,

1170
01:12:33,680 --> 01:12:37,200
Speaker 1: and it's a great thing to go back and and

1171
01:12:37,400 --> 01:12:41,000
Speaker 1: to talk to him. So I talked to a fellow

1172
01:12:41,400 --> 01:12:46,559
Speaker 1: who was my chief and my first assignment abroad. And

1173
01:12:46,560 --> 01:12:48,640
Speaker 1: when you look back, must it was a pain to

1174
01:12:48,800 --> 01:12:51,200
Speaker 1: deal with me, you know, too much Huberts and all this.

1175
01:12:51,320 --> 01:12:55,040
Speaker 1: But I learned so much from him, and he was

1176
01:12:55,080 --> 01:12:58,040
Speaker 1: helpful to me. As his career advanced, he was helpful

1177
01:12:58,080 --> 01:13:01,640
Speaker 1: to me. Tom Polger was the last chief off of

1178
01:13:01,640 --> 01:13:05,320
Speaker 1: the roof in Vietnam uh and was the chief out

1179
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:10,840
Speaker 1: there wrote that famous message about uh you know, you know,

1180
01:13:10,920 --> 01:13:14,240
Speaker 1: you need to learn from history. But so I called

1181
01:13:14,320 --> 01:13:17,800
Speaker 1: Tom on the phone and he said, I said, Tom,

1182
01:13:17,880 --> 01:13:21,040
Speaker 1: I wrote this article. He said, yeah, that's good, but

1183
01:13:21,080 --> 01:13:23,439
Speaker 1: I got a couple I want you to read, you know.

1184
01:13:23,479 --> 01:13:26,120
Speaker 1: So he hadn't changed one bit. So I had a

1185
01:13:26,120 --> 01:13:28,640
Speaker 1: whole series and we couldn't go through them. But I

1186
01:13:28,680 --> 01:13:31,200
Speaker 1: felt I was helped. You know. They called the business

1187
01:13:31,400 --> 01:13:35,680
Speaker 1: a trade trade craft, and you know, I'm I'm the

1188
01:13:35,720 --> 01:13:38,080
Speaker 1: son of a plumber, and you know, and I worked.

1189
01:13:39,000 --> 01:13:41,280
Speaker 1: I was terrible. That's why I had to become a spy.

1190
01:13:41,439 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 1: But you know, it's you learn that you're an apprentice

1191
01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:48,080
Speaker 1: at the elbow of a master. And I think the

1192
01:13:48,120 --> 01:13:51,080
Speaker 1: best of the best. Thing that can happen to an officer,

1193
01:13:51,160 --> 01:13:53,640
Speaker 1: and ce I has to work for someone who's a

1194
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:56,120
Speaker 1: real craftsman and has an interest in development. So I

1195
01:13:56,120 --> 01:13:59,519
Speaker 1: think I've been extraordinarily lucky in that regard. Let's talk

1196
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:02,599
Speaker 1: about books. This is everybody's favorite question. Tell us about

1197
01:14:02,640 --> 01:14:06,400
Speaker 1: some of your favorite books, whether they're related to intelligence

1198
01:14:06,479 --> 01:14:11,240
Speaker 1: or not, fiction or nonfiction. Well, I think, uh, well,

1199
01:14:11,280 --> 01:14:17,600
Speaker 1: first of all, and the um I would mention a

1200
01:14:17,640 --> 01:14:19,599
Speaker 1: book that I read a little bit every day. And

1201
01:14:19,760 --> 01:14:22,680
Speaker 1: whether you're secular in your beliefs or not, but I

1202
01:14:22,720 --> 01:14:25,920
Speaker 1: read two verses of the Bible every day because I

1203
01:14:26,080 --> 01:14:32,959
Speaker 1: find it leaving the religious connotation inside about life and frankly,

1204
01:14:33,120 --> 01:14:36,000
Speaker 1: even the language from which we speak. It's interesting in

1205
01:14:36,040 --> 01:14:39,840
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. You know, most people back in those days,

1206
01:14:39,880 --> 01:14:42,000
Speaker 1: the fundamental book that they worked for was the Bible.

1207
01:14:42,040 --> 01:14:44,840
Speaker 1: They didn't have other books. So Lincoln when he talks

1208
01:14:44,920 --> 01:14:50,639
Speaker 1: about you know, no House Divided, I can't stand. I mean,

1209
01:14:51,040 --> 01:14:54,360
Speaker 1: where was he drawing this? So I I find some

1210
01:14:54,400 --> 01:14:56,920
Speaker 1: inspiration in it. But right now I'm reading a book

1211
01:14:56,960 --> 01:15:01,160
Speaker 1: about grant by around turn Off. Everybody has told me

1212
01:15:01,200 --> 01:15:03,679
Speaker 1: they loved that book. The book it can be read

1213
01:15:03,720 --> 01:15:06,599
Speaker 1: on several outs Look, I'm just leaving the Battle of Vicksburg.

1214
01:15:06,680 --> 01:15:09,839
Speaker 1: I'm not a military expert. I mean I've been involved.

1215
01:15:09,840 --> 01:15:12,200
Speaker 1: But the reason I was involved because I was surrounded

1216
01:15:12,240 --> 01:15:14,120
Speaker 1: with people that really knew what they were doing. But

1217
01:15:15,439 --> 01:15:18,719
Speaker 1: it's the person Grant. It's so interesting that he would

1218
01:15:18,800 --> 01:15:21,839
Speaker 1: absolutely have been a failure at all, and and it

1219
01:15:21,720 --> 01:15:24,400
Speaker 1: was a failure in just about everything else. He was

1220
01:15:24,479 --> 01:15:29,000
Speaker 1: unassuming character. But there is a great deal to read

1221
01:15:29,200 --> 01:15:31,720
Speaker 1: and to reflect on and thinks about the Civil War

1222
01:15:31,800 --> 01:15:36,200
Speaker 1: that I had missed the role of ex slaves in

1223
01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:38,720
Speaker 1: the army, I mean, real roles for them. So it's

1224
01:15:38,720 --> 01:15:43,320
Speaker 1: a it's a fascinating reading them and enjoying it. Um.

1225
01:15:44,120 --> 01:15:50,080
Speaker 1: I I'd like history. So you know Doris Kern's uh rainals,

1226
01:15:50,120 --> 01:15:53,120
Speaker 1: you know, how does the government function and the dynamic

1227
01:15:54,240 --> 01:15:58,160
Speaker 1: around that. I read one on the CIA last year.

1228
01:15:58,479 --> 01:16:01,200
Speaker 1: It was called The Brothers and was Alan Douglas ahead

1229
01:16:01,240 --> 01:16:03,519
Speaker 1: of c I A and uh, what do you think

1230
01:16:03,520 --> 01:16:07,000
Speaker 1: of it? I learned a lot because even though I

1231
01:16:07,040 --> 01:16:09,560
Speaker 1: was in the business, the dynamic of the two of them,

1232
01:16:09,880 --> 01:16:14,680
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. I'm a student not only of the

1233
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:17,040
Speaker 1: bigger history but the c I A history, So it

1234
01:16:17,080 --> 01:16:23,120
Speaker 1: was it was interested me the broader readership. Probably not, um,

1235
01:16:23,160 --> 01:16:26,679
Speaker 1: not not so much. And I don't know what you think. Well,

1236
01:16:26,720 --> 01:16:29,439
Speaker 1: I did read John Lacy's latest book. Like, I don't

1237
01:16:29,479 --> 01:16:32,280
Speaker 1: read spy books. I've never read one of Ian Flemings,

1238
01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:34,880
Speaker 1: but I did read his first three books, which I

1239
01:16:34,920 --> 01:16:38,600
Speaker 1: thought were superb and understanding the psychology of people in

1240
01:16:38,640 --> 01:16:42,360
Speaker 1: the business. And I just read his last book, Legacy

1241
01:16:42,439 --> 01:16:45,479
Speaker 1: of Spies, and I wish he hadn't written it, just

1242
01:16:45,600 --> 01:16:47,800
Speaker 1: sort of diminishings. I mean, I just read it. It's

1243
01:16:47,840 --> 01:16:50,960
Speaker 1: like the first three of the ones to read. The

1244
01:16:51,000 --> 01:16:54,840
Speaker 1: first three were really pieces of art. And uh, my

1245
01:16:54,960 --> 01:17:01,440
Speaker 1: last two questions. If somebody recent graduate or a millennial

1246
01:17:01,520 --> 01:17:03,400
Speaker 1: came up to you and said, I'm interested in the

1247
01:17:03,479 --> 01:17:07,280
Speaker 1: intelligence field, what sort of advice, uh, what sort of

1248
01:17:07,320 --> 01:17:09,960
Speaker 1: career advice might you give them? Well, I think there's

1249
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:13,280
Speaker 1: a couple of things that they need to realize. They

1250
01:17:13,280 --> 01:17:16,040
Speaker 1: have to go online, so and then you're going to

1251
01:17:16,120 --> 01:17:18,719
Speaker 1: get an interview. You need to know the business enough

1252
01:17:18,800 --> 01:17:22,599
Speaker 1: to talk articularly about about it. So I would recommend

1253
01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:24,920
Speaker 1: you read books good hunting. Certainly it's a good stuck,

1254
01:17:25,560 --> 01:17:28,599
Speaker 1: but there's a number of really good books. When I

1255
01:17:28,640 --> 01:17:30,960
Speaker 1: was looking for books, to read. There was hardly anything

1256
01:17:31,040 --> 01:17:34,519
Speaker 1: Alan Dull's Craft of Intelligence David Wise. Today there's a

1257
01:17:34,560 --> 01:17:36,960
Speaker 1: lot of really good books. But and then you have

1258
01:17:37,040 --> 01:17:39,280
Speaker 1: to decide what do you want to be where do

1259
01:17:39,320 --> 01:17:40,800
Speaker 1: you want to be in And you have to think

1260
01:17:40,840 --> 01:17:42,920
Speaker 1: about the life that you're gonna do you want to

1261
01:17:42,960 --> 01:17:45,439
Speaker 1: be in Washington as a an analyst or you're going

1262
01:17:45,520 --> 01:17:47,439
Speaker 1: to travel around the world. What's that going to mean

1263
01:17:47,479 --> 01:17:50,640
Speaker 1: with you? So there's a lot of life issues that

1264
01:17:51,240 --> 01:17:54,000
Speaker 1: go into it. Almost any degree, as long as you

1265
01:17:54,080 --> 01:17:58,040
Speaker 1: do well in it, and almost any respectable school is

1266
01:17:58,040 --> 01:18:00,599
Speaker 1: going to get you there assuming you have you know,

1267
01:18:00,680 --> 01:18:04,400
Speaker 1: and I could que that somewhere between forty you don't

1268
01:18:04,439 --> 01:18:08,120
Speaker 1: have one seventy because then you're dysfunctional inside the bureaucracy, right,

1269
01:18:08,920 --> 01:18:11,280
Speaker 1: we can't have too many geniuses. You really need the

1270
01:18:11,360 --> 01:18:15,160
Speaker 1: question of integrity, and it may be counterintuitive to the movies,

1271
01:18:15,240 --> 01:18:17,160
Speaker 1: but you know, you have to have a sense of mission.

1272
01:18:17,200 --> 01:18:19,599
Speaker 1: You want to be there, and they're going to be

1273
01:18:19,680 --> 01:18:22,639
Speaker 1: looking to make sure that you're a person they can trust.

1274
01:18:22,680 --> 01:18:25,080
Speaker 1: And as I said earlier, you know that you are

1275
01:18:25,200 --> 01:18:29,360
Speaker 1: not a person who's engaging in petty theft. Because we're

1276
01:18:29,400 --> 01:18:32,120
Speaker 1: worried that petty theft will lead the big time theft inside.

1277
01:18:32,160 --> 01:18:35,200
Speaker 1: So these are the types of things that people need

1278
01:18:35,280 --> 01:18:38,680
Speaker 1: to think about. And our final question, what is it

1279
01:18:38,760 --> 01:18:43,599
Speaker 1: that you know about spycraft and intelligence gathering today that

1280
01:18:43,720 --> 01:18:46,280
Speaker 1: you wish you knew thirty five years or so ago

1281
01:18:46,479 --> 01:18:53,200
Speaker 1: when you started. There's uh a great quote by by

1282
01:18:53,240 --> 01:18:57,920
Speaker 1: former Secretary of States Schultz, and the quote is no

1283
01:18:58,200 --> 01:19:04,960
Speaker 1: bad idea dice and washing. And the point is that

1284
01:19:05,520 --> 01:19:07,760
Speaker 1: early in my career, I thought, this is such a

1285
01:19:07,880 --> 01:19:12,160
Speaker 1: dumb idea that it will not go anywhere, So you

1286
01:19:12,200 --> 01:19:16,200
Speaker 1: don't have to stand up and be counted, right, And

1287
01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:19,080
Speaker 1: that held me well because virtually all the bad ideas

1288
01:19:19,400 --> 01:19:23,080
Speaker 1: didn't did die. But the one that didn't die was

1289
01:19:23,080 --> 01:19:27,240
Speaker 1: the irand Country affair. And I do think I stood up,

1290
01:19:27,240 --> 01:19:28,880
Speaker 1: but I think I should have gotten top of the

1291
01:19:28,920 --> 01:19:31,120
Speaker 1: building and screamed at the top of my voice that

1292
01:19:31,160 --> 01:19:35,080
Speaker 1: it was a bad idea. So uh, I would say

1293
01:19:35,120 --> 01:19:40,439
Speaker 1: that people in key positions and bureaucracies, you know, when

1294
01:19:40,479 --> 01:19:43,920
Speaker 1: you see a bad idea, stand up. And I would

1295
01:19:43,960 --> 01:19:48,720
Speaker 1: say to young people and and people that are seasoned, ah,

1296
01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:53,000
Speaker 1: it is important. It's critical. It's a responsibility at a

1297
01:19:53,040 --> 01:19:58,200
Speaker 1: certain level in in all institutions to uh speak truth

1298
01:19:58,240 --> 01:20:01,920
Speaker 1: to power. And for those people that are worried about

1299
01:20:01,960 --> 01:20:04,599
Speaker 1: their career, you know, I would tell you it helps

1300
01:20:04,640 --> 01:20:06,960
Speaker 1: your career. Now you have to be careful how you

1301
01:20:07,080 --> 01:20:11,240
Speaker 1: phrase it so you don't annoy the unduly the recipient

1302
01:20:11,280 --> 01:20:15,519
Speaker 1: of it. But it is so important in the public sphere,

1303
01:20:15,880 --> 01:20:19,479
Speaker 1: and I believe in corporations as well to speak truth

1304
01:20:19,560 --> 01:20:22,080
Speaker 1: to power. And I think there's some of the lessons

1305
01:20:22,120 --> 01:20:26,400
Speaker 1: that did you reflect back on. It's it's key the

1306
01:20:26,439 --> 01:20:28,639
Speaker 1: things that you learned. It's not just how to put

1307
01:20:28,720 --> 01:20:30,639
Speaker 1: down a dead drop in the middle of the parks

1308
01:20:30,640 --> 01:20:34,280
Speaker 1: to No. One season. We have been speaking to Jack Divine,

1309
01:20:34,600 --> 01:20:38,760
Speaker 1: former director of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency and

1310
01:20:38,960 --> 01:20:43,559
Speaker 1: author of the c I a memoir Good Hunting. If

1311
01:20:43,600 --> 01:20:45,880
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an

1312
01:20:45,880 --> 01:20:48,120
Speaker 1: inch or down an inch at any of the other

1313
01:20:48,880 --> 01:20:52,799
Speaker 1: or so such conversations that we've had. We love your comments,

1314
01:20:53,000 --> 01:20:57,880
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast

1315
01:20:57,960 --> 01:21:01,200
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I

1316
01:21:01,240 --> 01:21:04,719
Speaker 1: did not thank my crack staff who helps put together

1317
01:21:05,240 --> 01:21:08,960
Speaker 1: this show each week. Michael Batnick is our head of research.

1318
01:21:09,439 --> 01:21:13,960
Speaker 1: Taylor Riggs is our producer slash Booker. Medina Parwana is

1319
01:21:13,960 --> 01:21:18,400
Speaker 1: our audio engineer and producer. I'm Barry Ritults. You've been

1320
01:21:18,439 --> 01:21:21,439
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.