Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Laura
Speaker 1: and I write a dictionary for our own language and
Speaker 1: mock the cool kids in our new foreign tongue. Lisa
Speaker 1: shows me how to make a spider web string all
Speaker 1: over my bedroom and hang bells on it to detect ghosts.
Speaker 1: While we sleep. For three months, we're happy. Then the
Speaker 1: day after Christmas, my mother sits me down to tell
Speaker 1: me that Laura is dead. She was killed while flying
Speaker 1: home with her entire family grandmother to infant brother, on
Speaker 1: the pan Am flight bombed by Libyan terrorists over lack
Speaker 1: of the Scotland. I am eight. I fall quiet for
Speaker 1: a long periods. I feel like my head is full
Speaker 1: of cotton, feel sleepy and mute and numb. Finally, my
Speaker 1: dad teaches me to read the London Times. You have
Speaker 1: to understand the forces that took her. It will seems
Speaker 1: scary if you do. I think of the faceless monster
Speaker 1: on the cardboards spook House, and I know that he's right. Slowly,
Speaker 1: my world is filled with a new cast of characters,
Speaker 1: Kadafi and Thatcher and Reagan and Gorbachev. They sound like
Speaker 1: exotic fairy tale people, wizards and witches and woodsmen living
Speaker 1: in distant magical forests, but their storybook showdowns can spill
Speaker 1: over into the real world, into my world, and steal
Speaker 1: my friends from the sky, so I have to pay attention.
Speaker 1: That's Emeralist Fox. You know. If I were writing a
Speaker 1: novel about a spy and I had to come up
Speaker 1: with a great name for that spy, I'd like to
Speaker 1: think I could invent a name as perfect as Ameralis Fox.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, Emeralists really was a spy, recruited
Speaker 1: by the CIA at the age of twenty one and
Speaker 1: working under deep cover for nearly a decade. She's the
Speaker 1: author of the memoir Life Undercover, Coming of Age in
Speaker 1: the CIA. This is a story about what happens when
Speaker 1: being a secret and keeping a secret is a matter
Speaker 1: of life and death. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is
Speaker 1: family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the
Speaker 1: secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep
Speaker 1: from ourselves. The landscape of my childhood changed every year,
Speaker 1: and I think as a result, eventually I realized that
Speaker 1: my landscape was planet Earth, you know, and that whether
Speaker 1: it was a suit in the Middle East or it
Speaker 1: was a refugee camp in Tanzania, or it was a
Speaker 1: beautiful Downton Abbey type house in the countryside and England
Speaker 1: that humans and the humans that inhabited them were the same,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that was an enormous gift.
Speaker 1: It didn't always feel that way as a kid, being
Speaker 1: in a new place every year, but I suppose the
Speaker 1: landscape of my childhood was in a sense my family,
Speaker 1: because it was the one consistency between all of these
Speaker 1: places we moved every year because my dad was an
Speaker 1: economist who focused on developing economies and took us with
Speaker 1: him to new countries every year. And you know, my
Speaker 1: birthday since September, so every year I would know nobody
Speaker 1: in a new place to invite over for my birthday.
Speaker 1: But it was an amazing range of experience. I think,
Speaker 1: looking back on it now as an adult, it seemed
Speaker 1: ordinary to me as a child, but it was really
Speaker 1: quite magical. Sure it always does. Right our childhoods just
Speaker 1: feel like that must be the way the whole world lives, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think actually it's to milestone when
Speaker 1: you realize that there are so many ways to live
Speaker 1: a life, and the people who have taken another path
Speaker 1: through their life, have from all of the different hills
Speaker 1: and valleys that they've been through that we haven't have,
Speaker 1: had a completely different vantage point on the terrain, and
Speaker 1: have intelligence that they can share with us. But definitely
Speaker 1: as a child, I thought, I mean, I knew people
Speaker 1: didn't move every year, but I thought that everyone felt
Speaker 1: as at home in the world as I did. And
Speaker 1: I think it was really sort of getting to university
Speaker 1: and realizing that for many people that was kind of
Speaker 1: the first time that they had had any horizons beyond
Speaker 1: their hometown. Every September when the new school year started,
Speaker 1: Amarillis would find herself beginning again. This might be New York,
Speaker 1: or in the UK, or Jakarta, Zanzibar, Moscow, Thailand. Each
Speaker 1: country had different customs and modes of dress and sights
Speaker 1: and smells, and she grew up having to make sense
Speaker 1: of it all to witness, learn and adapt. It's such
Speaker 1: a primal period and you're kind of trained in a
Speaker 1: very primal sense to look for the archetypes that you
Speaker 1: need to recognize to survive when you're a young child,
Speaker 1: and you look for the caregivers and you look for
Speaker 1: the potential friends, and those people exist everywhere, and so
Speaker 1: I think in a way that the terrain of my
Speaker 1: childhood on the surface looked incredibly varied, but when I
Speaker 1: look back on it, it all feels very warm. I
Speaker 1: had a great sense of safety in my early childhood.
Speaker 1: I think that that changed, as it always does as
Speaker 1: we grow up, But in my early childhood and even
Speaker 1: beyond that, physically, I felt very safe, even in very
Speaker 1: tumultuous environments as a kid, because I've kind of never
Speaker 1: known anything else. Describe your mother me. My mother is
Speaker 1: a poet at heart. She's an artist. Um, she's English,
Speaker 1: and she comes from a very old, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of snazzy English family that kind of knows all the
Speaker 1: rules about what to say and what not to say,
Speaker 1: and what salad work to use and so on. But
Speaker 1: in her heart she is this incredibly free thinker and
Speaker 1: this really radical poet and artist. She went to a
Speaker 1: really interesting school as a child in England called be Dales,
Speaker 1: which has a reputation for kind of breaking out of
Speaker 1: the stiff upper lip British mold and creating the kind
Speaker 1: of the hippie free thinkers of the UK. And you know,
Speaker 1: she really gave me a love of the spoken word
Speaker 1: and the written word. I memorized poetry all through my childhood,
Speaker 1: and that was very much down to my mom. You know,
Speaker 1: she had learned poetry growing up in Britain, poetry growing up,
Speaker 1: and she walk home from school, skipping classes and walk
Speaker 1: home through the meadows reciting poetry. And it was really
Speaker 1: important to her. And it is now to me to
Speaker 1: have kind of the wisdom of ages past in a
Speaker 1: place that no one can ever take it from you.
Speaker 1: You know, I think the things that we learned by
Speaker 1: heart are hours and even in a terrible circumstance, even
Speaker 1: when everything else has been stripped away, you know, no
Speaker 1: one can take that. And my mom really gave me
Speaker 1: that love of art and literature as a way of
Speaker 1: understanding society, challenging society. Tell me about your father. My
Speaker 1: father is much more analytical, much more almost like a
Speaker 1: human computer, I guess you could say. I as a
Speaker 1: child and even now, I sort of always had the
Speaker 1: sense of his knowing everything in terms of fact, not
Speaker 1: so much always in terms of the life experience or
Speaker 1: wisdom emotionally in terms of emotional intelligence. To put those
Speaker 1: facts to work in a way that you kind of
Speaker 1: might think of as wisdom. But he is incredibly curious
Speaker 1: and incredibly intelligent in his capabilities, in his ability to
Speaker 1: always be seeking new information and to pull all of
Speaker 1: that information in to kind of constantly update his model
Speaker 1: of the universe and crunch as many numbers as you
Speaker 1: could kind of possibly put in front of him. And
Speaker 1: he is in fact an economist by training. He's American.
Speaker 1: Grew up in a little small town called Franklin, bill
Speaker 1: And upstate New York, and was one of only two
Speaker 1: kids in his class to go to college the first,
Speaker 1: and his family very different childhood from my mother, you know,
Speaker 1: working class, single mother. And he ended up at the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago and was kind of a wonder kinds there,
Speaker 1: you know, it was loved by all the professors and
Speaker 1: advanced really quickly and up being one of the youngest
Speaker 1: tenured professors there in his early twenties. And met my
Speaker 1: mom that as he sort of moved towards his thirties
Speaker 1: and she was much younger, and they just were as
Speaker 1: different as two people could be. How did they meet?
Speaker 1: They met actually by mistake in a way, and my
Speaker 1: dad had been set up on a blind date with
Speaker 1: my mother's sister when he was visiting London for business,
Speaker 1: and my mother's sister got the stomach flu and and
Speaker 1: send my mother instead, and they went to a little
Speaker 1: night music to play the musical in the West End
Speaker 1: in London and had, you know, by all accounts of
Speaker 1: very romantic evening. And then my dad went back to
Speaker 1: America and my mom went and traveled around Greece and
Speaker 1: Italy as a as a kind of backpacker, because she
Speaker 1: was still just fresh out of school. And my dad
Speaker 1: wrote to her and kind of, you know, my Mamo
Speaker 1: says he drew birds on the top of the paper
Speaker 1: in that way that you can write the that looks
Speaker 1: like an m you know, and that that seems so
Speaker 1: romantic because he is so analytical and not an artist,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of his attempt to be romantic
Speaker 1: at any rate. He eventually center of one way playing
Speaker 1: ticket to Chicago, and she went. And I think it
Speaker 1: was such a new world for her, because she was
Speaker 1: coming out of the world of country manor houses in England,
Speaker 1: surrounded by ideas and art and literature and these kind
Speaker 1: of six hundred year old rooms that are incredibly grand,
Speaker 1: but like the heat doesn't work, and there are mice
Speaker 1: in the covers, you have to knock on it before
Speaker 1: you open it, you know, just all the contradictions of
Speaker 1: English country life, and suddenly was in the midst of
Speaker 1: this kind of intellectual cauldron at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: where every night they were at a different dinner party
Speaker 1: with incredibly articulate, fast, intellectual men and women. But I
Speaker 1: think the women in particular really struck my mom because
Speaker 1: they were so different from anyone she had come across
Speaker 1: before that could just repartee on any topic, and we're
Speaker 1: so worldly, and we're ten years older than she was,
Speaker 1: because so is my dad, and I think it was
Speaker 1: quite bewildering for her at the beginning. I think she
Speaker 1: kind of struggled to remember her own worth a little bit.
Speaker 1: Then two huge events occur during Amarilla's childhood. First, her
Speaker 1: older brother, Ben, her partner in crime, compatriot closest person,
Speaker 1: is sent off to boarding school. Ben has learning challenges
Speaker 1: and is also exceptionally bright, with the kind of mind
Speaker 1: that retains detail history musical scores. Ben and Amarilla's have
Speaker 1: always spent lots of time together, haunting museums in various
Speaker 1: cities or attending concerts. He is the consistent backdrop of
Speaker 1: her childhood, her everything, and then just like that, he's
Speaker 1: gone away. He puts a brave face on it, but
Speaker 1: e Marilla's is terribly lonely. The family is now living
Speaker 1: in London and Marilla's is in the third grade. She
Speaker 1: makes new friends, particularly a girl named Laura. Then Laura
Speaker 1: and her entire family are killed on PanAm flight one
Speaker 1: oh three, blown up by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Speaker 1: My mom waited until after Christmas to tell me, so
Speaker 1: I always think of it as just after Christmas, but
Speaker 1: it was just before. You know. She'd been traveling back
Speaker 1: with her mom and her dad and her sister to
Speaker 1: go home for Christmas, as so many people on that
Speaker 1: flight were, and they were all gone, you know, And
Speaker 1: I remember my mom saying it's a blessing that they
Speaker 1: were all together, and there's you know, there's no one
Speaker 1: left to grieve them. They all went together, and I
Speaker 1: just it was just so much to process and to absorb.
Speaker 1: I'd never lost anyone really close to me. I'd like
Speaker 1: death was kind of a something I'd read about in books,
Speaker 1: but I'd never really experienced in a deep way until then.
Speaker 1: And it's also the first time that you have any
Speaker 1: awareness that there's terrorism in the world, and that's something
Speaker 1: like this can happen, and it can happen on purpose.
Speaker 1: It can happen on purpose that somebody somewhere who never
Speaker 1: knew Laura, never knew me, could make a plan for
Speaker 1: some reason that made no sense to any of us
Speaker 1: and had nothing to do with our lives and steal
Speaker 1: my friend and her entire family from the sky. It
Speaker 1: was just so scary and huge, you know. It was
Speaker 1: just such a big revelation that really shook my world.
Speaker 1: And I think I was really struggling with it because
Speaker 1: my dad stepped in, which was quite rare in general.
Speaker 1: My mom was very much kind of the heart of
Speaker 1: our family, and my dad was sort of, I guess,
Speaker 1: more than the mind, but he was often deploying that
Speaker 1: mind out in the world doing his work, and wasn't
Speaker 1: really a big part of child rearing. But I remember
Speaker 1: him stepping in there and introducing me to the newspaper,
Speaker 1: and I think he sensed that I needed to make
Speaker 1: sense of what had happened. I needed to understand why
Speaker 1: somebody had done this thing, and why they had done
Speaker 1: it on purpose, and how it might or might not
Speaker 1: happen again. And I think I've had a hard time
Speaker 1: at the beginning reading those stories as more real than
Speaker 1: the kind of fictional stories that I was used to reading.
Speaker 1: But I also kind of had this constant, sort of
Speaker 1: Damocle's idea hanging over my head that at any given moment,
Speaker 1: one of these things might spill over into real life
Speaker 1: and do this kind of incredible harm. And so you know,
Speaker 1: when I look back on it, it's definitely something of
Speaker 1: the kind of end of innocence, but also the beginning
Speaker 1: of feeling an urge and desire and need to understand
Speaker 1: what was happening in the world, and some sense of
Speaker 1: responsibility of kind of understanding it so that maybe someday
Speaker 1: I could do some small thing to help it be better.
Speaker 1: Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: Amarellis grows up paying attention to the news to world events.
Speaker 1: When she's twelve, her father is working in Moscow and
Speaker 1: there is a siege. For a number of panicked hours,
Speaker 1: he is unreachable. When he returns safely home, he registers
Speaker 1: that Emorrealis needs to see more of what's actually happening
Speaker 1: on the ground, so that in its tangibility, it will
Speaker 1: be less frightening to her. So on his next trip
Speaker 1: to Moscow, during a time of protests and a fight
Speaker 1: for democracy, he invite try to join him. I think
Speaker 1: it was a great insight on his part. I think
Speaker 1: he probably recognized the part of my d n A
Speaker 1: that was his, you know, which is this part that
Speaker 1: finds things that I can understand and no up close
Speaker 1: and personal, much less scary than the kind of shadows
Speaker 1: and boogeymen and monsters in the closet. You know. I
Speaker 1: also was scared for him going back, and he felt
Speaker 1: as though if I could go and see the thing
Speaker 1: that was scaring me up close and personal, that I
Speaker 1: would understand it, and then maybe there would be some
Speaker 1: jagged edges that really were there, but in seeing them
Speaker 1: I would not be imagining them as worse than they were.
Speaker 1: And he was right about that, not only that time,
Speaker 1: but pretty much in every other circumstance thereafter. I mean,
Speaker 1: it became, I guess you could say, a coping mechanism
Speaker 1: for me every time something really scared me to try
Speaker 1: to take it apart and understand it, or to get
Speaker 1: to know it better rather than to avoid it. And
Speaker 1: that practice has turned out to be a great gift
Speaker 1: because I think you know, especially if you fast forward
Speaker 1: to today's world where everything is seen through the lens
Speaker 1: of media and social media, all of which is kind
Speaker 1: of designed to make scary things even scarier for profit.
Speaker 1: The habit of sidestepping that narrative and going out and
Speaker 1: meeting the scary people or seeing the scary place for yourself,
Speaker 1: that's been an enormous gift in my life and making
Speaker 1: me feel safer and making me feel better about the
Speaker 1: future that's to come. That reminds me of a great
Speaker 1: moment in your story where it's like kind of a
Speaker 1: perfect metaphor where you describe this little toy vampire bat
Speaker 1: that your brother had had and it scared you. You
Speaker 1: started dreaming you hated that bat. And what your father
Speaker 1: did in that situation, which struck me as so wise,
Speaker 1: and it's the same really as as what you're saying
Speaker 1: is it's like a childhood version of it. Is he
Speaker 1: sat you on the floor and pulled apart the bat,
Speaker 1: and I took a part the bat, laid out all
Speaker 1: the pieces of the bat, the battery and everything about
Speaker 1: what made that bat look scary, and then you write
Speaker 1: after that I had never been afraid of him again. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: It was a story that I went back to so
Speaker 1: often in my mind um as I got older and older,
Speaker 1: and things that seemed just as existentially terrifying as that
Speaker 1: vampire bat had to me when I was a child.
Speaker 1: And I mean, by the way, this thing was really scary.
Speaker 1: It had like it had read pretend blood that swirled around,
Speaker 1: and it's probiscus and my brother, would you know, bring
Speaker 1: it up and squeeze its stomach to get the get
Speaker 1: blood swirling. And as it as it approached my arm,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty young, I really felt that this
Speaker 1: thing was a threat to my survival, you know. And
Speaker 1: as I got older, there were other things that I
Speaker 1: thought were threats to my survival, and that memory of
Speaker 1: kind of okay, but what if you give this the
Speaker 1: vampire bat treatment. You know, what if you set out
Speaker 1: the towel and you take this thing apart, piece by
Speaker 1: piece and figure out that that blood swirling around in
Speaker 1: the probiscus is really just a piece of plastic with
Speaker 1: red paint, and when it swirls, it looks scary, but
Speaker 1: when you take it out, it's not, you know, and
Speaker 1: understand what the source of fuel is that's fueling this
Speaker 1: what is that battery? And as I got older and
Speaker 1: began thinking about the things that scared me in my
Speaker 1: own personal life and then the things that scared me
Speaker 1: in geopolitics and in security and in the world, that
Speaker 1: same idea applies. And it's allowed me to see people
Speaker 1: as the humans that they are instead of the kind
Speaker 1: of vampire bat that they might feel when you first
Speaker 1: hear whatever the threat and the story is, It's like
Speaker 1: there was a training ground there almost for Yeah, what
Speaker 1: would end up being your path? Yeah? I think my
Speaker 1: dad was just trying to get some sleep, honestly, because
Speaker 1: I kept having nightmares about this thing. But it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a really great life. Lesson A Marillas
Speaker 1: grows up to be the kind of young woman who,
Speaker 1: as a senior in high school, cuts school because she
Speaker 1: hears that Houston Smith is speaking in d C. It's
Speaker 1: a rare opportunity to hear Smith, who is one of
Speaker 1: the world's most influential scholars in religious studies. So she
Speaker 1: plays hoockey and gets a demerit. Can you believe it?
Speaker 1: She isn't off somewhere smoking weed or making out with
Speaker 1: her boyfriend no, she's educating herself, but hey, that's high school.
Speaker 1: Her innerpendulum swings back and forth between her passions and
Speaker 1: interests poetry, literature, the space program, a life of public service.
Speaker 1: For college, she debates between the Naval Academy and Oxford University.
Speaker 1: She chooses Oxford, and when she graduates from Oxford, she
Speaker 1: enrolls in a master's program in conflict and terrorism at
Speaker 1: Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. So you go to graduate
Speaker 1: school at Georgetown and you are recruited by the CIA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds crazy when you say it that way.
Speaker 1: I A friend of mine said, you know, it must
Speaker 1: be hard if you ever go to therapy, because the
Speaker 1: therapist is sort of trained to think that anyone who
Speaker 1: thinks they work for CIA is crazy. Um. But the
Speaker 1: approach at the time nine eleven had just happened, and
Speaker 1: nine eleven for me was an incredibly I guess the
Speaker 1: word today is triggering thing in in that obviously was
Speaker 1: for all of us an incredible national trauma. I think
Speaker 1: on top of that, for me, it brought back Laura's death,
Speaker 1: and this idea of terrorism is something that can completely, um,
Speaker 1: you know, derail the world old and the lives of
Speaker 1: people in it with no warning. And I was in
Speaker 1: d C in that day, you know, and the black
Speaker 1: smoke over the Pentagon, and my little sisters were evacuated
Speaker 1: from the Cathedral school because they thought it might be
Speaker 1: a target, and it was. It was all kind of
Speaker 1: it felt very reminiscent in odd ways of losing Laura.
Speaker 1: And so after all of that, I was really set
Speaker 1: on kind of in a way, I guess you could say,
Speaker 1: going back to that vampire bad advice of my dad's
Speaker 1: from my childhood and trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we take this thing apart and figure out
Speaker 1: what makes it tick. The agency person who I first
Speaker 1: spoke with was a CIA officer, but he was declared,
Speaker 1: he wasn't undercover, and he was working as a professor
Speaker 1: at Georgetown teaching classes in the subject of intelligence, you know,
Speaker 1: what what it means and what its impact is on
Speaker 1: geopolitics and so on. So he was kind of openly
Speaker 1: teaching students, and so when we first talked, I think
Speaker 1: I was so surprised by kind of how humble and
Speaker 1: curious and quiet he was, and it was just nothing
Speaker 1: like the movies, and he really seemed to have that
Speaker 1: same interest that I did in taking this thing apart
Speaker 1: and and understanding what drives it and from what the
Speaker 1: humanity is behind it, in order to find some way
Speaker 1: to make it stop. And that really spoke to me
Speaker 1: in a way that I never expected the intelligence world
Speaker 1: to be something that I would find any appealing. Like
Speaker 1: the CIA officer who is Emoralyss's professor, other CIA officers
Speaker 1: she meets strike her as curious, humble, and genuinely interested
Speaker 1: in questions beginning with the word why. She begins a
Speaker 1: long process of interviews and exams while playing language aptitude tests,
Speaker 1: psych evaluations, and polygraphs. At the age of twenty two,
Speaker 1: she receives a provisional offer of employment. She has a
Speaker 1: friend from Georgetown named Jim, who has also undergone the
Speaker 1: arduous application process. The two of them confide in each
Speaker 1: other traveled together as they await word. Then Amarillis receives
Speaker 1: a cryptic message her security clearance top secret clearance is complete.
Speaker 1: She's given instructions to report to CIA headquarters in Langley,
Speaker 1: Virginia the following week, and in the meantime to tell
Speaker 1: anyone who knows she's applied that she did not make
Speaker 1: the cut. She meets Jim that night, looks him in
Speaker 1: the eye and tells him her first lie, and then
Speaker 1: she starts to cry. He was the last person who
Speaker 1: had known her truth, and now she has lost him.
Speaker 1: But maybe maybe there's one other person who can know
Speaker 1: at least something of the truth of her life. Her
Speaker 1: boyfriend from the UK, Anthony, if he's to move to
Speaker 1: the STA, it's to be with her. They'll have to
Speaker 1: get married, and the Agency will have to approve. This
Speaker 1: is what's known as an agency marriage. Anthony has put
Speaker 1: through a battery of tests, including a polygraph, and he
Speaker 1: passes muster. He and Emoryalis get married, but this doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that she can share much with him. The secrecy
Speaker 1: continues doing what secrecy does, causing rifts, opening fault lines
Speaker 1: to make matters more complicated. A month after their marriage,
Speaker 1: Emorialist is moved into the most elite operational training program
Speaker 1: on Earth and is sent to a covert base in
Speaker 1: Virginia known as the Farm, which is a little like
Speaker 1: the CIA meets the Truman Show. It's an incredibly lonely
Speaker 1: way to spend your twenties, There's no doubt. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a kind of Russian nesting doll or
Speaker 1: something where you're the only person who knows the real
Speaker 1: truth of who you are. Is like the little doll
Speaker 1: at the center. You know, and the people that you
Speaker 1: work with who've trained with you at the farm or
Speaker 1: who work on your behalf on your desk back at headquarters,
Speaker 1: they kind of know the next level out. And then
Speaker 1: the people who work for your cover company and provide
Speaker 1: your cover maybe know the next level out. And and
Speaker 1: then eventually the people around you in the field don't
Speaker 1: know you at all. And the difficult part, I think
Speaker 1: the hardest part really is that your family and your
Speaker 1: friends from before are in that outer shell layer for
Speaker 1: you know, for their protection, for your protection, for everyone's protection.
Speaker 1: But for me, it was really difficult and really lonely
Speaker 1: to not be able to lean on my mom in particular,
Speaker 1: but lean on my family in general and ask their advice.
Speaker 1: You know, you're suddenly in some of the most really
Speaker 1: complex and challenging moments and scenarios you've ever been in,
Speaker 1: with enormous responsibility and obligation, and and then right at
Speaker 1: this time where you would need guidance and wisdom from
Speaker 1: the people you trust most, you can't ask anybody's advice,
Speaker 1: and you can't seek anyone's wisdom because no one knows
Speaker 1: what you're doing, and then they can't know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So the farm is really this, as you say, wild
Speaker 1: Truman Show simulation, where you know you're you're pretending to
Speaker 1: be a first tour officer in a kind of fictional
Speaker 1: country for six months um and working on operations against diplomats,
Speaker 1: against terrorists, against other spies and every person there from
Speaker 1: you know, the sources that you're developing, to the police
Speaker 1: officers who are throwing you in the gravel and searching
Speaker 1: your car, to the newscasters that are on the twenty
Speaker 1: four hour TV news in your bedroom are all actually officers,
Speaker 1: officers who are taking a tour away from the field
Speaker 1: back home to help train, you know, the next generation
Speaker 1: of operatives. And it's an incredible investment that they all make,
Speaker 1: and the government makes in all of us. And I
Speaker 1: think it's an appropriate investment because once you get out there,
Speaker 1: you are so alone, and you have the lives of
Speaker 1: other people in your hands, and I mean your own life, yes,
Speaker 1: but also the lives of people who are putting everything
Speaker 1: at risk in order to warn us about an attack
Speaker 1: to warn us about something that is coming down the pike,
Speaker 1: um that would put their own life in danger. For sharing.
Speaker 1: It was just a small group of us that we're
Speaker 1: in this incredible pressure cooker. But at least during training
Speaker 1: we had one another to lean on. And then once
Speaker 1: we were all out in the field, your sense of
Speaker 1: self sufficiency and your self knowledge really has to kick
Speaker 1: in because you're the only person who knows you at
Speaker 1: that point. Yeah, you know, I'm just sitting here thinking
Speaker 1: about what you said before about moving every year and
Speaker 1: starting a new school and being in a new country,
Speaker 1: and developing the skill set of looking for the caretakers,
Speaker 1: looking for the people who will make good new friends,
Speaker 1: like the survival skills that were in a way already
Speaker 1: taking root in you in a certain way, like you
Speaker 1: had to start over again and again and again as
Speaker 1: a child, and that must have created a great sense
Speaker 1: of self sufficiency that then was at least a piece
Speaker 1: psychologically of what made it be possible to be that
Speaker 1: tiniest nesting doll. Yeah, I think that's true. I think
Speaker 1: my childhood was probably my first training course. In many ways.
Speaker 1: There are skills that I was given at the farm. Obviously,
Speaker 1: most of what you're doing is is a kind of
Speaker 1: actual deep relationship building and how to keep your sources
Speaker 1: secure and so on. And then you do the stuff
Speaker 1: you see in the movies. You know, the defense of
Speaker 1: driving and land navigation. And I qualified on the block
Speaker 1: and the m flour even though I never carry the
Speaker 1: weapon in the field, but you know, you do all
Speaker 1: of that kind of the sexy stuff you see in
Speaker 1: the movies. But one skill that I learned there that
Speaker 1: was immensely useful to me was meditation. And it it
Speaker 1: kind of seems surprising that that would be part of
Speaker 1: the spy school training, as it were. But having the
Speaker 1: ability to get quiet every day, um in a formal way,
Speaker 1: but also in my own head in the middle of
Speaker 1: a sequence, when I'm not sitting on a cushion somewhere,
Speaker 1: and when I'm in the middle of something that is
Speaker 1: unfolding very quickly with a lot of kind of kinectic uncertainty.
Speaker 1: To be able to remember the kind of true self
Speaker 1: and true purpose in that moment was really the bed
Speaker 1: rock that I relied on for so many of those years.
Speaker 1: So it was really grateful to have that. I still
Speaker 1: it's one of the few things that I learned there
Speaker 1: that I still practice on a daily basis, that was
Speaker 1: taught as kind of part of the standard issue. Here's
Speaker 1: your glock, here's your MPO, Here's how you flip a car,
Speaker 1: and here's how you get quiet sitting on a cushion.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll be right back. And a realist and
Speaker 1: Anthony's marriage doesn't survive her time at the farm. She
Speaker 1: returns home to find an empty apartment and Anthony gone.
Speaker 1: In the stillness, she says, I was flooded with relief.
Speaker 1: She's now working under Nona ficial cover, a coveted dangerous
Speaker 1: position and charged with keeping weapons of mass destruction out
Speaker 1: of the hands of global terror groups. She travels around
Speaker 1: the world, returning home only to switch out bags and
Speaker 1: pick up new alias documents. But eventually it's time for
Speaker 1: a more permanent cover, and it isn't easy to find
Speaker 1: just the right identity for a year old white girl
Speaker 1: in places like Yemen, Libya, Pakistan. So Emeralss, who has
Speaker 1: grown up steeped in the art world whose parents are collectors,
Speaker 1: becomes an art dealer as her cover. She meets her
Speaker 1: family for brunch at a cafe and tells them she's
Speaker 1: going to try her hand at dealing indigenous art. Her
Speaker 1: parents believe it. She hopes al Qaeda will too against
Speaker 1: this backdrop, and could there be anything less conducive to
Speaker 1: form a lasting relationship. Emeralss has begun and on again,
Speaker 1: off again really lationship with a guy named Dean who
Speaker 1: also works for the agency. They each understand that by necessity,
Speaker 1: they have secrets from one another. A Mailla's continues to
Speaker 1: rise to the top of her field and is eventually
Speaker 1: asked to take on a highly sensitive six year assignment
Speaker 1: in Shanghai, and she and Dean are given a choice.
Speaker 1: Either they can go together another agency marriage, or they
Speaker 1: won't see one another for the next six years. This
Speaker 1: isn't a marriage based on great love as much as
Speaker 1: it is on practicality and a bomb against loneliness. I
Speaker 1: think as much as it would be kind of romantic
Speaker 1: to say that it was all about not wanting to
Speaker 1: not see each other, I think it was as much,
Speaker 1: maybe more, about not wanting to go alone. You know what,
Speaker 1: both of us were looking at long deployments in dangerous places,
Speaker 1: doing complicated work that we could not talk to anybody
Speaker 1: else about, and the only kind of possibility of having
Speaker 1: having a shoulder to lean on and somebody to ask
Speaker 1: counsel from. Was to marry someone who you trusted their judgment.
Speaker 1: And even in that circumstance, we weren't totally both read
Speaker 1: in on what the other one was doing, but we
Speaker 1: knew enough about each other to at least share, you know,
Speaker 1: a pretty significant part of our truth that nobody else
Speaker 1: around us knew. And I think we had immense professional
Speaker 1: respect for each other and a good, strong friendship and
Speaker 1: we have both of those things to this day, and
Speaker 1: we share an amazing daughter. So I think ultimately, in
Speaker 1: its own funny way, it was the right decision. But
Speaker 1: definitely I now look back on it as as a
Speaker 1: mom of two girls who I I know we'll fall
Speaker 1: in love one day themselves. It was a sign of
Speaker 1: how the work and the mission was not only expected
Speaker 1: to be the number one priority, but really the only priority,
Speaker 1: you know, and anything else, whether it's a relationship or
Speaker 1: love or family kind of only was there in as
Speaker 1: far as it sort of fit in the space around
Speaker 1: that priority, which was the work itself, you know, preventing
Speaker 1: whatever the next attack was. And in my case, I
Speaker 1: worked on m D and it just you know, the
Speaker 1: potential scale of of a disaster that seemed to kind
Speaker 1: of drown out everything else. On top of the secrets,
Speaker 1: on top of the secrets, and Marillason Dean are both
Speaker 1: aware that their house in Shanghai, their every move is
Speaker 1: likely bugged, that, as they say, the walls have ears.
Speaker 1: So the play acting of the young woman art dealer
Speaker 1: must continue even during all hours is an identity she
Speaker 1: has to assume through and through. It was a time
Speaker 1: that emerging art was sort of suddenly on the fine
Speaker 1: art scene in a big way, and I was working
Speaker 1: on WMD that had the potential to fall into the
Speaker 1: hands of terror groups, which is a required being in
Speaker 1: places and mixing with sort of the people that your
Speaker 1: average kind of like twenty something, your old white girl
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily have a logical explanation for being in or
Speaker 1: meeting with. And so emerging art seemed like a plausible
Speaker 1: reason to be in the places that I needed to
Speaker 1: be in. So that was what we want with what
Speaker 1: did it feel like camera lists like during those years,
Speaker 1: I mean, you had such a sense of purpose for
Speaker 1: a very good reason. But I keep on going back
Speaker 1: to that image of the tiniest nesting doll of you know,
Speaker 1: you were close to your family and they didn't know
Speaker 1: where you were, or vaguely they knew where you were,
Speaker 1: like what you were doing? What allowed you to stay
Speaker 1: as steady as you did? I mean, I think it
Speaker 1: was this constant kind of how can I do this?
Speaker 1: But also how can I not? And you know, each
Speaker 1: step you get farther in and then you're in this
Speaker 1: place where you actually have the operational ability to build
Speaker 1: a relationship with a source within a terror group or
Speaker 1: within an arms network that has the potential to prevent
Speaker 1: an attack where hundreds, maybe thousands or more Laura's you know,
Speaker 1: which is how I'm thinking of it at this front.
Speaker 1: But I had lost and their families will die, you know,
Speaker 1: not just on our side, by the way, but on
Speaker 1: all sides of this thing. And I think it became
Speaker 1: a way of trying to make things right in some
Speaker 1: small way, or do right by this friend who never
Speaker 1: got to make choices about what she was going to
Speaker 1: do as as a grown up, you know. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just Laura, but I think this idea of so
Speaker 1: much lost potential, and especially once I had my daughter,
Speaker 1: that the idea of how much there is to lose
Speaker 1: through conflict. You know what it means to really love
Speaker 1: another human being, which I think you understand in a
Speaker 1: kind of completely new way once you have a child,
Speaker 1: And what that means for the mothers and fathers on
Speaker 1: all sides and in all places who are affected by
Speaker 1: division and by conflict. And how can each of us
Speaker 1: do some tiny part, you know, to get ourselves to peace.
Speaker 1: That became a real preoccupation and purpose for me. But
Speaker 1: I think with it was the recognition that you can't
Speaker 1: ask a source to put their life on the line
Speaker 1: unless you can look them in the eye and say,
Speaker 1: there is nothing in my life more important than keeping
Speaker 1: you alive. And I got to the point, you know,
Speaker 1: towards the end of that decade, once I had my daughter,
Speaker 1: where I began to realize I couldn't honestly, honestly say
Speaker 1: that anymore. And I felt like maybe that meant that
Speaker 1: this sort a particular form of service for me had
Speaker 1: to really come to an end, and I had to
Speaker 1: entrust it to the next generation of amazing kids. And
Speaker 1: they are kids, We were kids, you know, we're so
Speaker 1: young the people who do this work. But it came time,
Speaker 1: I think, to pass the Baton at that stage. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, when Emorless is not quite twenty eight,
Speaker 1: she returns to the States with her family. This was
Speaker 1: initially so Dean could undergo and advanced surveillance course, but
Speaker 1: the agency marriage is fraying, and so is Amoryless sense
Speaker 1: that she can balance being a spy was being the
Speaker 1: mother of a very young child. Did you know when
Speaker 1: you returned that that was it, that you weren't going
Speaker 1: to go back? Maybe in some deep place in my soul,
Speaker 1: but I don't think i'd really practically grappled with it
Speaker 1: or come to that conclusion. I mean I was at headquarters,
Speaker 1: working there in support of some things that were happening
Speaker 1: in the field, well, thinking about what what my next
Speaker 1: tour would be, which is pretty typical. You know, you
Speaker 1: spend some time rebuilding relationships at at headquarters and kind
Speaker 1: of doing some support work there while you figure out
Speaker 1: what you're going to do next, And people do that
Speaker 1: with multiple tours throughout their career. But I think as
Speaker 1: I was there and thinking through what another tour would mean,
Speaker 1: and that it would necessarily as so he got older,
Speaker 1: I mean asking her to participate in secrets in some
Speaker 1: form or another that I realized I couldn't ask that
Speaker 1: of her. I could ask it of myself, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't ask that of her, And that there were other
Speaker 1: forms of service out there, you know, And I wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly sure what that would look like or what was next,
Speaker 1: but I think I began to sense that period of
Speaker 1: service in that form of service for me was drawn
Speaker 1: to an end. So now she's back. She's given nearly
Speaker 1: a decade of her life to the CIA, and Amarillis
Speaker 1: is done after years of building alias after alias, cover
Speaker 1: after cover, secret after secret. What was it like to
Speaker 1: sit down with her parents, her brother, the people who
Speaker 1: had been imagining one life while she was living quite another,
Speaker 1: and to tell them the truth? It was? It was
Speaker 1: a great relief for me to tell them, but I
Speaker 1: think in large part because I could do it with
Speaker 1: it being in retrospect, right. I could tell them this
Speaker 1: thing that I knew would be very scary, especially for
Speaker 1: my mom and say, and then we all lived happily
Speaker 1: over und you know, you know, I don't think that
Speaker 1: my family was as shocked as kind of maybe you
Speaker 1: might be if you had a different kind of daughter
Speaker 1: or had raised her in a different kind of way.
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, if I remember back to
Speaker 1: nine eleven and the decision to go to George Shown
Speaker 1: and study the causes of terrorism, the thing that I
Speaker 1: gave up in order to do that was going back
Speaker 1: to the type of these border and pursuing a career
Speaker 1: as a human rights and war journalists focused on the
Speaker 1: conflicts in northern Burma, and so I don't think they
Speaker 1: ever expected me to kind of be an accountant. So,
Speaker 1: but it was an immense relief to be able to
Speaker 1: kind of reclaim real intimacy. And I had never felt
Speaker 1: as though we were strangers to one another, even though
Speaker 1: they didn't know these kind of very important facts of
Speaker 1: my life. For a while, we were still intimate soulmates
Speaker 1: throughout all of that. My mom is my best friend
Speaker 1: in the world. But it makes it a lot easier
Speaker 1: when you can actually really open up all of those
Speaker 1: nesting doll layers and look into one another's faces again. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a it was a beautiful moment. We were
Speaker 1: out on a boat. Actually, I thought it was easiest
Speaker 1: to be able to do it in a place where
Speaker 1: we could have a whole conversation without interruption and with
Speaker 1: without the ability of anyone to walk away. I think
Speaker 1: in so many cultures there's a period during the transition
Speaker 1: to adulthood where you go through some kind of experience
Speaker 1: in the wilderness, or some kind of service to your
Speaker 1: country or your community, or a period of fasting and growth.
Speaker 1: And in a weird way, this was all of those things,
Speaker 1: you know, And it was wonderful to be back in
Speaker 1: real life, in the arms of my family, but knowing
Speaker 1: that I had served, and that I had grown, and
Speaker 1: that I had learned enormously, learned so many things, and
Speaker 1: was kind of ready to return to life as a
Speaker 1: grown woman when I had really left as a child.
Speaker 1: Here's Amarillis reading a brief passage from her book about
Speaker 1: those remarkable years. When I'm invited to speak publicly about
Speaker 1: my work, my body physically revolts, like jerking my fingers
Speaker 1: back from a hot stove. I get it. The journalist jokes,
Speaker 1: you want to keep all your lessons locked up so
Speaker 1: only you can enjoy them. No, I laugh, I'm just
Speaker 1: scared of. I pause of. He prompts me. Every instinct
Speaker 1: and every piece of training I've ever undergone is in
Speaker 1: opposition to this moment. What will happen if I tell
Speaker 1: the world the truth, spill that most secret of secrets,
Speaker 1: but always soldiers and spies, all the belching, booming, armored
Speaker 1: juggernauts of war, all the terror groups, and all the
Speaker 1: rogue states, that we're all just pretending to be fierce
Speaker 1: because we're all on fire with fear. What will happen
Speaker 1: if I speak those words out loud? Will I get hurt?
Speaker 1: Will Zoe get hurt? Will our life be disrupted all
Speaker 1: over again? But then I remember my daughter came up
Speaker 1: at me and laughing. I think of the white flowers
Speaker 1: on the table in Karachi, and the girls sitting in
Speaker 1: their dusty circle outside Mosco, of the prisoners here at
Speaker 1: home making amends to their victims and themselves, of the
Speaker 1: gang members removing their tattoos of nothing. I answer, and
Speaker 1: instead of hiding, I sit in front of a camera
Speaker 1: and tell the truth. Family Secret is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Media. Dylan Fagin and Bethan Macaluso are the
Speaker 1: executive producers. Andrew Howard is our audio editor. If you
Speaker 1: have a secret you'd like to share, leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode.
Speaker 1: Our number is one secret, zero that's secret, and then
Speaker 1: the number zero. You can also find us on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Danny Writer, Facebook at facebook dot com slash Family
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod, and Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if
Speaker 1: you want to know about my family's secret that inspired
Speaker 1: this podcast, check out my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.