Speaker 1: How did you know that these guys were looking to
Speaker 1: ambush us? And he goes, oh, one of them was
Speaker 1: my cousin. So we saw the guy in months later
Speaker 1: and he just mentions off to the side. I says, oh,
Speaker 1: my sister got her leg blown off. Yeah, well, people
Speaker 1: know that I'm working with you, And he says, in
Speaker 1: just this one morning, I had malaria and my sister
Speaker 1: walked out and they put a mind down, and later
Speaker 1: I heard through my cousins that it was meant for me.
Speaker 1: And then several months later he was assassinated. I'm John
Speaker 1: Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
Speaker 2: I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years,
Speaker 2: living undercover all around the world.
Speaker 1: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 1: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Although I don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 2: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 2: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 2: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission Implausible fears. I feel a little bit
Speaker 2: of guilt because I tried to shame Adam by using
Speaker 2: his wife as leverage, and it's had an impact.
Speaker 3: It's been a busy summer. I have some things going on,
Speaker 3: but I missed some tapings and you called me out
Speaker 3: through the show directly to my wife, and Jen let
Speaker 3: me know, and I was like, would be really good
Speaker 3: on this show, Jen Banburry, So can I introduce you
Speaker 3: John and Jerry to Jen Vanburry?
Speaker 1: Please do hi?
Speaker 4: Gentlemen, who gen.
Speaker 1: First mistake?
Speaker 2: Oh no, she's already got low standing.
Speaker 3: Aside from that, she is not someone who likes whatever
Speaker 3: I do. She will let me know when she thinks
Speaker 3: it's not that great.
Speaker 5: And Adam makes a ton of crap that I'm like
Speaker 5: and I tell him so, but.
Speaker 3: She I think, Jen, you're like the biggest fan of
Speaker 3: this show. You love the show, not because of me.
Speaker 4: I am a fan.
Speaker 5: Yep, I already have the Jerry John bobbleheads.
Speaker 3: We met on the set of Friends in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: although we were both with other people. Her husband at
Speaker 3: the time wrote for Friends, and my girlfriend at the
Speaker 3: time had a friend who wrote for Friends, so we
Speaker 3: met as friends and then five years later, I mean,
Speaker 3: we had hit it off and would hang out every
Speaker 3: once in a while. She was much more impressed by
Speaker 3: my girlfriend at the time than by me. She was
Speaker 3: really cool, Nancy Updyke of this American life. And then
Speaker 3: five years later Jen was single. I was single, and
Speaker 3: I was living in Iraq, and Jen, after a career
Speaker 3: as a novelist and fiction writer playwright, was doing journalism
Speaker 3: and came out to Iraq and we fell in love
Speaker 3: in the romantic city of Baghdad.
Speaker 4: For us, it's amazing.
Speaker 5: We went from barely knowing each other to living together
Speaker 5: within twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Essentially, it's probably hard to find like your own place
Speaker 2: there in Begdad.
Speaker 5: When Adam was like, oh, no, you can just crash
Speaker 5: with me and it'll be fine, And I went there
Speaker 5: thinking that I was not interested in anything else except
Speaker 5: a crash pad. But I got to say very quickly,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure you guys have experienced this. When you're
Speaker 5: in a situation like that, it's it's a great way
Speaker 5: to date somebody because you know right away, oh, this
Speaker 5: is the kind of person that I can trust in
Speaker 5: a really fucked up situation, And like you see people
Speaker 5: in a slightly different way. I think we talked a
Speaker 5: lot in Iraq about how the people that we gravitated
Speaker 5: to and spend time with were the ones who we
Speaker 5: knew we could count on if something bad happened, and
Speaker 5: that's not true for everybody in that environment. Do you
Speaker 5: guys feel like there's a relationship shorthand I don't even
Speaker 5: mean romantic relationships, but like a relationship shorthand when you're
Speaker 5: in a pretty potentially dangerous situation.
Speaker 1: In Cia, we do traditional espionage where we look for secrets,
Speaker 1: but in war zones we do the same thing but
Speaker 1: under very different circumstances. And there really is something where
Speaker 1: you create these bonds of affection even inside of three
Speaker 1: or four months, that will last year in your entire life.
Speaker 1: And just one story, I was in a side abod
Speaker 1: and we got rocketed. Siren's goes off, which means within
Speaker 1: the next thirty seconds we're gonna have rockets hitting the camp.
Speaker 1: And we had a big sewage pipe buried in the
Speaker 1: ground which you could like crawl into, And so the
Speaker 1: thing goes off and I'm the last one out the
Speaker 1: door and the sewer pipe. It's full of people, but
Speaker 1: I'm getting in that thing, so I crawl in and
Speaker 1: I end up sitting on this guy's lap and we're
Speaker 1: stuck there for the next hour, and of course the
Speaker 1: jokes start. So two years later, I'm in London Station
Speaker 1: and I'm wearing a suit and I'm with a division
Speaker 1: chief and we're walking through the hallways of London Station
Speaker 1: and this door opens and this guy leaps out because
Speaker 1: he's forgot we're in London, and he leaps onto my back, piggyback,
Speaker 1: and he starts yelling, yeah, right, and then he realizes that, oh,
Speaker 1: we're not in Afghanistan anymore. And he could often say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's shook hands properly and things like that. So there's
Speaker 1: a sort of those two modes of existence. You basically
Speaker 1: you shit in a slip trench together, which brings you
Speaker 1: together and you're scared, and then being in London or
Speaker 1: Paris or Berlin very different existences.
Speaker 2: There's a danger for us in war zones and for
Speaker 2: families because in that heightened environment where everybody's in one place,
Speaker 2: you might be living in a shipping container or whatever,
Speaker 2: those people become like your immediate family. You're sharing something
Speaker 2: that the people back home don't share. And you don't
Speaker 2: have your family with you like we often do, Like
Speaker 2: when Jerry and I work overseas, usually our family's with us.
Speaker 2: But if you're in Bagdad, or if you're in Cobble,
Speaker 2: or if in one of these other places, you're with
Speaker 2: this group all the time in a really tense situation,
Speaker 2: and relationships startup that probably are pretty intense.
Speaker 1: And they're the only ones who understand you. So there
Speaker 1: are war zone romances and they generally don't work out
Speaker 1: well because you go back to the real world. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we had that. John and I were both in leadership
Speaker 1: positions and really tough places, and we would watch like
Speaker 1: a fair start, a fair stop, marriages come to a
Speaker 1: begin and end there. It is a thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we definitely know a ton of journalists whose relationships
Speaker 5: don't survive one of them getting posted to a war zone,
Speaker 5: because I think precisely that. I mean, sometimes they get
Speaker 5: involved with other people, and then other times it's just
Speaker 5: a question of they get back home and it's like
Speaker 5: you've learned a foreign language and you get back there
Speaker 5: and your partner doesn't speak that language and you're having
Speaker 5: a hard time figuring it out. So I went over
Speaker 5: there thinking I was going to stay just a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks and do some freelancing back when freelancing was
Speaker 5: possible in that environment. And then we fell in love
Speaker 5: and we decided that we were going to stay there
Speaker 5: for a while, but in the interim go back to
Speaker 5: the US for a month or so so that I
Speaker 5: could like pack up my apartment, put stuff in storage,
Speaker 5: and back in New York.
Speaker 4: We really didn't like each other as much.
Speaker 5: It was a struggle, and we went and spent some
Speaker 5: time in this farmhouse in Nova Scotia that I had
Speaker 5: used to go to, and we were just not on
Speaker 5: the same page at all, and thinking like, oh, this
Speaker 5: might be the end of it. And I just started saying,
Speaker 5: we got to get back to a rock. Now, Let's
Speaker 5: get back to a rock, because if this relationship is
Speaker 5: going to work, that's where we need to be.
Speaker 1: And I was serious that when I first started coming
Speaker 1: back from Afghanistan, my marriage took some real hits in it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until later, going back and forth that
Speaker 1: we started figuring out what was wrong and what happens
Speaker 1: is one partner, so my wife is home with the
Speaker 1: three kids, and she fills your role right and she's
Speaker 1: like taking care of finances, getting the kids to school,
Speaker 1: and you're there's no room for you anymore. And then
Speaker 1: you show up after three months, six months, and you're
Speaker 1: in a place, especially if you're in a leadership position
Speaker 1: where you're working eighteen hours a day and situations are
Speaker 1: coming answer and you're like, yes, no tomorrow, don't do that.
Speaker 1: That's safe, that's not safe. And then you show up
Speaker 1: at home and because you're there inside of twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: you get in an airplane and your suddenly you're in
Speaker 1: northern Virginia and your wife says, should we have pasta tonight?
Speaker 1: And you're like, yes, you know, it's like maybe we
Speaker 1: can have burgers, okay, yes, question and the babies I
Speaker 1: was thinking of painting it bundling board blue or maybe
Speaker 1: yes Bunny and the Moore blue. Next question, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't like you anymore. And so because you're just
Speaker 1: in two friggin different worlds, and eventually you're like you
Speaker 1: show up and she's yeah, let's not actually talk for
Speaker 1: a little while. We need to like figure this out.
Speaker 1: But when you're not used to it, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of soldiers and a lot of agency people
Speaker 1: and diplomats coming out of war zones will get divorced
Speaker 1: after that if they don't figure it out right away,
Speaker 1: because it's a whole different way of being when you're
Speaker 1: in a war zone.
Speaker 4: I'm always fascinated by.
Speaker 5: There's like the time period where whaling was a really
Speaker 5: big New England industry and Nantucket basically became like a
Speaker 5: matriarchy because all of the men were off on these
Speaker 5: whaling voyages pretty much all the time. They would be
Speaker 5: gone anywhere from six months to four years or something,
Speaker 5: and they would get back and their families were so
Speaker 5: happy to see them, Oh my god, you're actually alive.
Speaker 5: We didn't know, like big celebrations blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: And then a week.
Speaker 5: Later the women were like, oh crap, Like, no, we
Speaker 5: have a system and just because you're back, like you
Speaker 5: don't get to change the whole system, and it would
Speaker 5: cause all these big problems. And basically like they just
Speaker 5: go out whaling again and that would solve the problem.
Speaker 5: Both of you guys started before you had partners, Is
Speaker 5: that right?
Speaker 4: You both entered the CIA before.
Speaker 1: You had that's right.
Speaker 5: So, like, at what point in the dating process do
Speaker 5: you let someone in on the on what your job
Speaker 5: actually is, like, how does that work?
Speaker 1: It'll depend. So my wife is British. When you're in
Speaker 1: the CIA and you're dating a foreigner, it is a
Speaker 1: whole different kettle of fish. So there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different rules involved, things like whether or not you're
Speaker 1: allowed to cohabitate, and what cohabitation what means?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Is it three nights a week, four nights a week?
Speaker 1: Does it mean that they have a key? Does it
Speaker 1: mean if you spend half the night. So we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to cohabitate, and we're not allowed to tell them
Speaker 1: until we get permission. So when I finally proposed to
Speaker 1: my wife, I told her, A who I really work for?
Speaker 1: And she's, yeah, I don't really care. And I suspect
Speaker 1: it as much because you're a rotten liar. And b
Speaker 1: you have to take a polygraph where they're going to
Speaker 1: ask you all sorts of intrusive questions, and of course
Speaker 1: I wanted to sit in on the polygraph, but they
Speaker 1: don't allow you to do that. Ask her. She lied
Speaker 1: to me that one time.
Speaker 4: And then they have to she had to take a
Speaker 4: polygraph she did.
Speaker 1: To make sure she wasn't a commy spy. It's all
Speaker 1: counter intelligence, and so they want to know that if
Speaker 1: you're going to bring somebody on board into the circle
Speaker 1: of trust, that they're not that a. They're going to
Speaker 1: stay and be they're not sent there to suborn you.
Speaker 1: And then we have to write a letter of resignation,
Speaker 1: which if the polygraph doesn't go well, they accept or
Speaker 1: they say it's either her or us. It's one or
Speaker 1: the other. And we worked it out that I said,
Speaker 1: if they say no, I'll resign. Yeah. So we did
Speaker 1: get married. They it all worked out and not like
Speaker 1: I think. Six months after she became a citizen, we
Speaker 1: were working abroad and she basically joined the agency as well,
Speaker 1: and so she joined CIA.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: For us, well that's all it works for the kind
Speaker 2: of guys that can't get an American wife because they
Speaker 2: try to find someone overseas, because if you're my wife.
Speaker 2: Used to work in the visa section of Moscow and
Speaker 2: they used to have a thing for giving visa to
Speaker 2: these Russian women that were trying to marry American men
Speaker 2: and they would call American men American zero my hero.
Speaker 5: Wait, but the polygraph is like across the board, no
Speaker 5: matter who.
Speaker 3: Not for Americans So what if she had been like
Speaker 3: and I knew I grew up with a bunch of
Speaker 3: people who were born in Iran, they were Iranian citizens,
Speaker 3: but had lived in America maybe with a green card.
Speaker 3: What if it was a more hostile country than the UK.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes people don't get in and it's not their fault.
Speaker 1: It's like the Iranians will pressure family members. So like
Speaker 1: one of the issues would be if you're marrying, say
Speaker 1: an Iranian American, one of the issues would be, like,
Speaker 1: if you have a cousin back in around what happens
Speaker 1: if like the Iranian Intelligence Service shows up and says
Speaker 1: to the cousin or says to the wife, gets word
Speaker 1: back that your cousin's going to go to jail unless
Speaker 1: you like give us information on your husband. So they
Speaker 1: can be put in difficult situations. So for Russia, a
Speaker 1: Russian American, Iranian American, I think can be a little
Speaker 1: more dicey, even if it's like your spouse is not
Speaker 1: a spy, But can they be blackmailed?
Speaker 5: Do you know any stories of someone failing the polygraph,
Speaker 5: like much to the surprise of their.
Speaker 1: One story that I really like, it was in Kosovo
Speaker 1: and it was not in America, and it was a
Speaker 1: British colleague am I six guy, but he was with
Speaker 1: a coast of our girl and they she sort of
Speaker 1: moves in with him and people could the neighbors could see,
Speaker 1: and they were together for a while and he has
Speaker 1: the talk with her and he said, I think we're
Speaker 1: getting close. This is going a little too fast. I
Speaker 1: think we need to slow this down. And she says,
Speaker 1: you slept with me, like and people have seen, and he's, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, that's why we need to slow this down.
Speaker 1: She goes, no, no, you've slept with me. You can't
Speaker 1: back out of this now. But the neighbors know. I've
Speaker 1: been here all night. And he's like, yeah, that's why
Speaker 1: I don't think we should get married. I think we should,
Speaker 1: And so she shorts a long story short. She takes
Speaker 1: a butcher knife as they're arguing in his kitchen and
Speaker 1: she sticks them in the stomach with it. She guts them,
Speaker 1: and then she calls her parents and says he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to marry me, and the parents are like, but
Speaker 1: the neighbors have seen you spent the night there, and she's,
Speaker 1: I know, should I call an ambulance and They're like,
Speaker 1: he is a foreigner, although he has it coming. So
Speaker 1: she does call an ambulance. They show up and he's
Speaker 1: got a knife sticking in a butcher knife sticking in
Speaker 1: his stomach. So they metavac him to London and he's
Speaker 1: laying in his bed like a couple of days later
Speaker 1: and the door opens up and in she walks, and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh fuck, she's here to finish me off.
Speaker 1: And she comes over. She says, hey, I'm really sorry,
Speaker 1: but in my culture, the neighbors have seen us sleep together,
Speaker 1: and like, my reputation is gone. I can never date
Speaker 1: again because people know. And he's like, oh, I didn't realize,
Speaker 1: and so she basically says I love you. He says
Speaker 1: I love you back, and they're like, let's get married anyway.
Speaker 1: And the British fired him because he was marrying someone
Speaker 1: up for like attempted murder of him. So he had
Speaker 1: to resign because he married his attempted murder who put
Speaker 1: a butcher knife in his stomach. So this is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that can happen in the world of Espa.
Speaker 5: Wow, Yeah, that does sound like truly that instinct on
Speaker 5: his part, or it.
Speaker 1: Would make a great brom com right, except for the
Speaker 1: butcher knife part.
Speaker 2: Okay, Old, I'm going to need to go to the bathroom,
Speaker 2: so let's take a quick break and we'll be back shortly.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back.
Speaker 5: By the way, I didn't forget the fact that you
Speaker 5: said that your wife knows that you're a terrible liar.
Speaker 4: You're a terrible liar and you're in the CIA.
Speaker 5: Isn't like rule number one being in the CIA that
Speaker 5: you're pretty good at lying?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, part of what we do is we
Speaker 2: try to develop relationships with people that are are real
Speaker 2: and deep and build trust with them. So in some
Speaker 2: ways it's showing that empathy, showing that understanding and befriending
Speaker 2: people that make us more successful than the fewer lies
Speaker 2: the better essentially, And if that's part of it, sort
Speaker 2: of ties to this whole conspiracy thing. The best conspiracy
Speaker 2: is the ones that have some truth to them. And
Speaker 2: so for us most of our work, you know, if
Speaker 2: you can avoid lying is probably the smartest way to go.
Speaker 2: And there's periods of time where you can't where you're
Speaker 2: undercover or something sensitive it's happening, or you have to
Speaker 2: help you skate your background or like Jerry sometimes pretended
Speaker 2: to be a foreigner doing some work or something. In
Speaker 2: those cases, certainly you have to lie and be good
Speaker 2: at lying, but a lot of our work is just
Speaker 2: the opposite.
Speaker 1: You're like, it's a switch in your head, at least
Speaker 1: for me, John, will you turn it on and off?
Speaker 1: So it's and it's maybe actors have this or journalists
Speaker 1: where you turn it on where it's like, it's my
Speaker 1: time to be charming and to put this foot forward.
Speaker 1: And you deal with like people outside, but what do
Speaker 1: we deal with your family? They know what the switch
Speaker 1: is on or off. So like the people you know
Speaker 1: really well, colleagues or your family, they can tell when
Speaker 1: you're like case officering, them will say. And even in
Speaker 1: the agency, we're like, don't case officer me, Like, turn
Speaker 1: that fucking off. I can tell you're doing the trying
Speaker 1: to be the charming case officer. Don't do it inside.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, I don't know. How'd you do with
Speaker 1: your family, John, did you.
Speaker 3: I've never seen you guys be charming.
Speaker 1: No, we don't never turn it on with you. That
Speaker 1: was an easy one.
Speaker 3: I was going to do one in Iraq because we
Speaker 3: were there a long time and we were there most
Speaker 3: of the first year of the US occupation, which is
Speaker 3: very few journalists worse, and I speak Arabic pretty well,
Speaker 3: which was unusual for journalists. And I always since I
Speaker 3: was covering economics, I was asking a lot of boring questions,
Speaker 3: boring questions and people would say, oh, he's CIA. That
Speaker 3: was like, we would hear that all the time, he's CIA.
Speaker 3: And Jen, what did you always say about me?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I said, there's no way he could be CIA
Speaker 5: because he cannot keep a secret like he if there's
Speaker 5: some like juicy tidbit that he's in on, I'll be like,
Speaker 5: I know I shouldn't tell you.
Speaker 3: This, but i'd have Trump's approach to national security.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so running with conspiracies and let me ask you,
Speaker 1: you guys a question. So when I was spent my
Speaker 1: time in Rock, the Iraqi police hid these like rods
Speaker 1: that would go beep if you ran them over cars
Speaker 1: or people. The police would have supposedly it could tell
Speaker 1: whether or not you had explosives, and it came out
Speaker 1: afterwards that it was a total con job. There was
Speaker 1: nothing in these that either showed you had exploit or
Speaker 1: even a weapon, or could even tell whether you had
Speaker 1: something on. But the conspiracy was because people believed it.
Speaker 1: The police could like run this wand up and down
Speaker 1: a guy or over a car and they could just
Speaker 1: see that the people in there started to sweat or
Speaker 1: they look nervous, and they're like, yeah, they must have explosives.
Speaker 3: I remember hearing about that. It was like a scam.
Speaker 3: It was like a specific Yes, it made a funny way,
Speaker 3: like a rock had all these we met these like American,
Speaker 3: Australian British arms dealers who were there were these two guys.
Speaker 3: One was Australian or New Zealand and the other was American,
Speaker 3: And every time we saw them, we'd see them like
Speaker 3: every few months. They were in a different business at
Speaker 3: one point where we sell copier machines and printers, and
Speaker 3: then the next time we sell armored cars. We're shipping
Speaker 3: in armored cars from Germany. And then it was.
Speaker 5: We sell like the big magnetized signs that you put
Speaker 5: on the side of a car that says police.
Speaker 4: Those guys probably made those ones for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah they would have done.
Speaker 1: The guys who made them went up on charges really scamed.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, they arrested them. So what they did
Speaker 1: is they bribed rocky officials to spend millions and millions
Speaker 1: of dollars of our money by the way of American money,
Speaker 1: to buy these things. And then it turned out there
Speaker 1: was no There was all magic, right it was. There
Speaker 1: was no science to them, but everybody got rich off
Speaker 1: of them, and the Iraqi police refused to give them
Speaker 1: up because they success. And then the conspiracy was they
Speaker 1: just telling you they don't work, but they do.
Speaker 4: The double negative conspiracy.
Speaker 5: Whoever came up with that obviously knew Iraq well enough
Speaker 5: to know that conspiracy theories there at that time period,
Speaker 5: like any conspiracy theory could get even the most outrageously
Speaker 5: crazy one got a foothold so easily because of life
Speaker 5: under Saddam, when they were used to being sold a
Speaker 5: bill of goods, the craziest stuff all the time, and nobody.
Speaker 4: Knew what to believe.
Speaker 5: You can believe the word on the street as well
Speaker 5: as you can believe what you're hearing on the news.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, you know for sure the official story is
Speaker 3: not true. Yeah, right, so that's one hundred percent. So
Speaker 3: the conspiracy theory at least as a five percent shot.
Speaker 5: Is that something that you guys say would ever take
Speaker 5: advantage of there was a conspiracy that you know, the
Speaker 5: military had satellites that could look right into somebody's home
Speaker 5: and figure out what they had inside. And I think
Speaker 5: military people actually use that to their advantage sometimes.
Speaker 3: And the sea through glasses that they had X races
Speaker 3: that the soldiers had ex respects, and we're looking at
Speaker 3: naked women through their bias.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we do it like organizationally, but
Speaker 1: I'll be careful how I say this. I don't want
Speaker 1: to reveal. So there was a senior official in a
Speaker 1: country and he was riding through the desert in his car,
Speaker 1: and he told me he was going to go do
Speaker 1: this dangerous thing out in the boonies, out in the desert.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, dude, if you're out there with the
Speaker 1: bad guys, let's say isis and you're right, and you're
Speaker 1: driving around in a convoy, you're liable to get shot
Speaker 1: up by American helicopters because if you're in the you're
Speaker 1: in the bad zone. And so it's three in the
Speaker 1: morning and my phone rings and it's him. He's on
Speaker 1: the phone and he's I'm in the desert. There's four cars.
Speaker 1: I can hear helicopters. You gotta save me. And he says, quick,
Speaker 1: call in to scent Com and tell them to call
Speaker 1: off the jets. And and I'm like, they're going to
Speaker 1: find my phone. You're going to tell them where my
Speaker 1: phone is. They're going to tell the jet it's not
Speaker 1: going to drop the bomb. I'm going to be safe.
Speaker 1: I said, here's what you do. Drive your car into
Speaker 1: the desert, get out of your car, and just like
Speaker 1: get away from your car for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: until you don't hear noise anymore. You shouldn't be able
Speaker 1: there to begin with. But he didn't. And he says,
Speaker 1: just call scent Com, tell the military. So I put
Speaker 1: the phone down see in the morning, and I went
Speaker 1: back to sleep. And I woke up the next day
Speaker 1: and he survived, and he said, oh, thank you. I knew,
Speaker 1: he said, I would have been really scared, except I
Speaker 1: knew you were there. And I have to say, I said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I'm here for you, right. I never told him. I
Speaker 1: rollback in reality, if I really wanted to do this,
Speaker 1: I would have had to go on into the embassy.
Speaker 1: That would have taken time. I would have had to
Speaker 1: like geared up our machines. I would have had to
Speaker 1: have written a cable send it to Santacom. They would
Speaker 1: have gone. It would have been like he would have
Speaker 1: already been charred right by the time I got around
Speaker 1: to sending this in or any of it. He just
Speaker 1: assumed that we had these like superpowers like on TV.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, if you're looking to accomplish a
Speaker 2: goal or an operation, if there's a conspiracy theory that
Speaker 2: can benefit you, you might do it. And I wasn't involved
Speaker 2: in this, but I remember reading about maybe it was
Speaker 2: a sixties or seventies in Indonesia, there was a you know,
Speaker 2: a real strong belief in like ghosts and things like that,
Speaker 2: and I think they needed to get into a house
Speaker 2: or a building or something, and they essentially made up
Speaker 2: fake noise and whatever, like a ghost was there so
Speaker 2: that people would leave the house and they could break
Speaker 2: right into it. And that type of thing.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest conspiracy theories, conspiracies out there that
Speaker 1: isn't put out. There are six are British colleagues. They
Speaker 1: are still dining out on James Bond movies right, People
Speaker 1: who like, there's a guy in Iran he wants to
Speaker 1: spy against his government. He's like, I'm going to go
Speaker 1: to the British because he's seen all the James Bond movies.
Speaker 1: And in reality they're certainly not driving around in Austin
Speaker 1: Martin's with machine guns in their cars. But I think
Speaker 1: there is this grand conspiracy Mosad too. People just think
Speaker 1: they're better than they are when in reality they're maybe good.
Speaker 1: Their feet stink too, right, It's not like there anything.
Speaker 5: Is there a room somewhere where some nerdy guys are
Speaker 5: coming up with, like you know, a gun that's in
Speaker 5: a lighter.
Speaker 2: Well, it's our job when we're overseas and we're trying
Speaker 2: to accomplish something to try to come up with the
Speaker 2: most the best way of doing it, and it might
Speaker 2: be something creative or different, or involve conspiracy or whatever.
Speaker 2: But what you're talking about is the technical services like
Speaker 2: in the Bond. Yeah, that's what they have to And yes,
Speaker 2: we do have what's called Office of Technical Services, which
Speaker 2: throughout the Cold War created all kinds of cool stuff,
Speaker 2: and some of it which would lead to real stuff
Speaker 2: that we use We use now miniature cameras and phones
Speaker 2: and things like that. Nowadays, there's so much actual commercial
Speaker 2: stuff that can be used for spy purposes. We don't
Speaker 2: have to create it out of whole cloth as much
Speaker 2: as we did in the past. But yeah, they do
Speaker 2: disguises and they come up with things that we might
Speaker 2: need for an operation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So say, like you are on an operation and unied
Speaker 5: camera inside a sandwich or whatever, is there some form
Speaker 5: that you fill out and submit and.
Speaker 2: Sadly yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: One point one of the oddest conversations I had and
Speaker 1: it didn't work out, by the way, but we had
Speaker 1: an agent with one arm, but he had a fake
Speaker 1: prestsis on his arm and he basically said, I can
Speaker 1: get you this senior Al Qaeda guy. He says, what
Speaker 1: I want you to do is make me a p
Speaker 1: static arm that's a bomb, and like that I can
Speaker 1: time and then what I'll do is I'll just leave
Speaker 1: my arm behind when I leave, putting like Hitler putting
Speaker 1: the bomb under the table.
Speaker 2: Forgot your arm, right, Oh, you forgot your arm?
Speaker 1: And so we sait it there. We're like, this is bizarre.
Speaker 1: We're sitting around target, like, you know, how much explosives
Speaker 1: got to be in there? What kind of explosives? And
Speaker 1: how do we put the timing device in and the
Speaker 1: weight of the arm and how big is it and
Speaker 1: how much of an arm? Maybe just a hand he
Speaker 1: could just screw his hand off and leave it there.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we say it with these ots guys, and
Speaker 1: they built it, and as it turns out, we never
Speaker 1: used it, but yeah, we would do that.
Speaker 3: Although that sandwich gun sounds like a really good you
Speaker 3: guys can have that. I wanted to go back to dating.
Speaker 3: So that moment of revealing, like you said, having the talk,
Speaker 3: it sounds like it went pretty uneventfully. What did your
Speaker 3: eventually to be wife think you did for a living?
Speaker 1: The answer is she'd figured it out. We've been together
Speaker 1: so long, and like we were going through training and
Speaker 1: she's like, where's your parking spot at State Department? And
Speaker 1: who's your boss? And she was in DC at the time,
Speaker 1: and she's none of this makes sense, and.
Speaker 4: So yeah, tell her you did it first.
Speaker 1: I told her the State Department guy he was getting hired.
Speaker 1: So where we were being trained was this was nowhere
Speaker 1: is near Foggy Bottom. And then we went off to
Speaker 1: the farm and you have to explain, like why you're
Speaker 1: gone for an entire week and you come back unshaven,
Speaker 1: stinking because you've been out living in the woods for
Speaker 1: a week and I don't think you've been at State Department.
Speaker 1: You've been gone for a week, and you smell of
Speaker 1: bo and you haven't shaved in a week. So there's yeah, there's.
Speaker 2: Something Cia is known for bo.
Speaker 1: In Washington. There's this thing where I work for the
Speaker 1: State Department and then like real estate guys that go, oh,
Speaker 1: what section, and then you like wink at them and
Speaker 1: go the other State Department and they're like, oh, so
Speaker 1: you haven't admitted it, but they all know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I met my wife in Moscow in the embassy,
Speaker 2: and because we're under surveillance and our house is are bugging,
Speaker 2: like our stuff, you got to maintain your cover. She
Speaker 2: held her on in the political section and this and that,
Speaker 2: but she you know, worked in the ambasshy she worked
Speaker 2: doing immigrant visas and interviews and that type of thing.
Speaker 2: But she sort of knew because inside the embassy you
Speaker 2: could tell sort of who was who, Like the State Department,
Speaker 2: this is awful people, but a lot of them are
Speaker 2: sort of like they hang together, sort of nerdy or whatever,
Speaker 2: and that THEIA guys look different and she would see
Speaker 2: who I would like stand in line with and get
Speaker 2: food at the cafeteria or something.
Speaker 1: That thing about who you hang with is important too.
Speaker 1: So I was in Berlin between eighty ninety ninety three
Speaker 1: when the wall came down, and before the wall came down,
Speaker 1: we had a softball league that we played in the
Speaker 1: embassy and our team was mostly CIA guys, not all,
Speaker 1: and we played teams, and we had a couple of
Speaker 1: teams in Berlin. We had a West Berlin team and
Speaker 1: East Berlin team. Teams would come from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 1: We'd play softball against each other, all all good fun.
Speaker 1: But the CIA guys we all would like talk, right,
Speaker 1: we'd hang together. And there was this South African guy
Speaker 1: called Steve Laufer, and Steve would show up to play.
Speaker 1: He was he worked in the embassy in West Berlin.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it was the mission, actually he worked there
Speaker 1: and he was like almost an American and he but
Speaker 1: he worked. He had lunch with them all the time
Speaker 1: and he would always come and he would play softball
Speaker 1: with us. And he was terrible because he grew up
Speaker 1: in South Africa. He was good playing soccer, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't throw, he couldn't bat, and everybody knew Steve got
Speaker 1: four strikes, like the outfield would sit down when Steve
Speaker 1: got up. He was an automatic out, like his team
Speaker 1: would get four outs. And people were like, why is
Speaker 1: he coming here? He's like terrible, and he didn't look
Speaker 1: like he was having fun. And then one week he
Speaker 1: wasn't there and I mentioned this to the RSO, the
Speaker 1: regional security officer. I was like, where's Steve? And he
Speaker 1: looked at me and said, shut up. And he was like, really,
Speaker 1: like serious is if I'd known something? And He's telling
Speaker 1: me to keep my mouth shut, And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on about. I'll keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 1: And the next day he thought I knew, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: The next day it was announ Steve was arrested for espionage.
Speaker 1: He was spying for the Russians, the KGP, and his
Speaker 1: whole point was hang out with the Americans and see
Speaker 1: who hangs together, and just from the social interactions you
Speaker 1: could tell who were the CIA guys undercover. So we
Speaker 1: weren't really good undercover for those inside the embassy.
Speaker 5: When you were stationed in places not with your family,
Speaker 5: I guess more like in the war zones where did
Speaker 5: you stay.
Speaker 2: Totally depends that they can talk about a rock. They
Speaker 2: had essentially a series of shipping containers that they would
Speaker 2: divide up and people would stay in those. I lived
Speaker 2: in Pakistan and we lived on the embassy compound and
Speaker 2: there was old college dorms essentially that had been in
Speaker 2: apartments and people had lived on there. But then there
Speaker 2: were also people who lived out in the community too,
Speaker 2: in apartments or houses.
Speaker 3: Because that was something we wondered about in Iraq, because
Speaker 3: we just lived out. We had a house in a
Speaker 3: neighborhood and would go shopping in the regular markets and
Speaker 3: eat at restaurants and we had a fairly normal life.
Speaker 3: We'd go over to people's Iraqis houses for her and
Speaker 3: the Americans who were stuck in the Green Zone, we
Speaker 3: just felt like, how did they even know Iraq at all?
Speaker 3: How did you know? Like they didn't, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Except CIA guys. We were always out right. Our guys
Speaker 1: were out meeting assets like all the time and also
Speaker 1: running black right, going out with battered up cars to
Speaker 1: look like Iraqis. And when I was there, I would
Speaker 1: deal with as I was declared, meaning the Iraqis knew
Speaker 1: I was CIA, and I dealt with Iraqi officials and
Speaker 1: the job that I had, going back to the bit
Speaker 1: about turning it on and turning it off. I would
Speaker 1: sit down with officials who we would we had ways
Speaker 1: of knowing what they really thought, and there would be
Speaker 1: instances where we knew, like the Iraqi official I'm sitting
Speaker 1: down across from that he was discussing with Shea militia's
Speaker 1: whether or not to murder me, like a couple of
Speaker 1: hours before, And it wasn't oh no, don't kill Jerry.
Speaker 1: It was the US is giving us this money, or
Speaker 1: this would look bad or they might think I had
Speaker 1: something like maybe another time or another way. Because when
Speaker 1: you leave the embassy and you're going to like that ministry,
Speaker 1: you've got to go through all these checkpoints, and some
Speaker 1: of the checkpoints are manned by Shea militias, not by
Speaker 1: government forces, or you're not sure who's manning them. And
Speaker 1: you're sitting in these vehicles and all they need to
Speaker 1: do is put an RPG into you and sort of
Speaker 1: like is this the right time to kill the Americans?
Speaker 1: And they would discuss this, and then you would sit
Speaker 1: down with this guy and pretend you didn't know this,
Speaker 1: talk about turning it on, how's the wife, how's the family? Oh,
Speaker 1: and then you would offer them assistance to fight Isis.
Speaker 1: And of course, because they're Shia, they actually want the
Speaker 1: money to actually fight Isis because they hate the Sunnies.
Speaker 1: But they're also Shia working very closely with the Iranians,
Speaker 1: and so we're both using each other to fight Isis.
Speaker 1: But you know this guy is also your mortal enemy
Speaker 1: and he's like willing to kill you. So everybody's lying
Speaker 1: to everybody, and it's just like the way it is.
Speaker 1: They would never like a journalist, of course, but they
Speaker 1: would light to us. Yeah, right.
Speaker 5: Actually, what we something that we started doing a bunch
Speaker 5: was we would meet and befriend people in the CPA
Speaker 5: who lived in the Green Zone and didn't really have
Speaker 5: an opportunity to get out at all, and we would
Speaker 5: invite them over for dinner. We would smuggle them out
Speaker 5: for dinner. We would get them royally drunk, like as
Speaker 5: drunk as we possibly could, off the record, and we
Speaker 5: did always obey that. We would just get them to
Speaker 5: like explain all the incredibly crazy shit that was happening
Speaker 5: that we knew that was happening anyway, but it was
Speaker 5: nice to hear it confirmed by people from inside.
Speaker 2: We'll need those names.
Speaker 4: We were drunk too, I don't remember any.
Speaker 2: Names here go.
Speaker 1: One of the worst conspiracies I heard was when I
Speaker 1: first went to Afghanistan, and I was there like in
Speaker 1: March of two, two thousand and two, so it was
Speaker 1: like the third or fourth wave, and we met these
Speaker 1: Afghans and we really needed their help, right, And these
Speaker 1: are tod Jeeks up in the northern Afghanistan and they
Speaker 1: came to us and they said, hey, in our culture,
Speaker 1: we venerate Alexander the Great because he went through He
Speaker 1: went through Jalalabad and on his march into India, and
Speaker 1: he said, there's something that we have been hiding from Taliban.
Speaker 1: It is a suit of golden armor that we've hidden
Speaker 1: in the cave, and we've hidden it for all these years.
Speaker 1: It's like out of an Indiana Jones movie. And if
Speaker 1: you pay us like three thousand dollars, we will go
Speaker 1: up because we've been hiding it for song. But we
Speaker 1: need to be recompensed for this. We will get the
Speaker 1: armor and we will bring it down and we will
Speaker 1: give it to the museum and Cobble and they're like
Speaker 1: looking at you, like is he buying it? And you're
Speaker 1: thinking like this is like the dumbest conspiracy, like, and
Speaker 1: I think we actually went into it. We actually gave
Speaker 1: them the money, but like five hundred bucks, so we
Speaker 1: didn't laugh in their face because we needed their help
Speaker 1: for all these other things and we didn't want to
Speaker 1: like make them think like we think they're liars, although
Speaker 1: we knew they were, and so we did give them something.
Speaker 1: And of course, surprisingly the suit of armor never shows up.
Speaker 1: But I was yeah, but it was like they'd seen
Speaker 1: too many Indiana Jones movies and they wondered just how
Speaker 1: gullible we are. But we couldn't say fuck you, we're
Speaker 1: never talking to you again, because they had guns and
Speaker 1: they were important to us. So yeah, okay, we'll go
Speaker 1: with this. But writing this up afterwards is like I
Speaker 1: paid five hundred dollars not really for a suit of
Speaker 1: like golden armor from Alexander the Great. Okay, let's take
Speaker 1: a break from the craziness just for a minute or two.
Speaker 2: All right, I hope you found that time productive. Welcome back.
Speaker 5: You guys were saying that, in fact, lying is not
Speaker 5: necessarily a skill that you have to use a whole
Speaker 5: lot the questions that I had was, is there a
Speaker 5: skill that you've come to recognize is really important to
Speaker 5: have in your job that when you first got into it, it.
Speaker 4: Never would have occurred to you that you needed it.
Speaker 1: Basically figuring shit out. We are presented with these problems
Speaker 1: like I don't know how to solve this, and your
Speaker 1: job is to like figure it out. Dealing with ambiguity.
Speaker 1: So okay, there's no book that says what do you
Speaker 1: do when an Afghan ally comes to you and wants
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars for a suit of golden armor that
Speaker 1: you know doesn't exist. And the end of the line
Speaker 1: is what is your mission? What are you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 1: A year out? What is the USG trying to accomplish?
Speaker 1: What is CIA's mission? And you try to subsume it
Speaker 1: within that and try to do it. And one last
Speaker 1: thing on the not lying part is what really counts
Speaker 1: as when you sit down with somebody and you look
Speaker 1: at them and say what you're doing is important. I
Speaker 1: veil you what you're doing and I can keep you
Speaker 1: alive that you have to mean. You can't lie. Then
Speaker 1: you've got to really mean it and don't lie on
Speaker 1: that part, right, It's like I will keep you and
Speaker 1: your family safe. And if you can say that, all
Speaker 1: the rest of the stuff about your cover doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: Or so it's it's dealing being comfortable, dealing with ambiguity
Speaker 2: and operating the gray. In fact, I can remember a
Speaker 2: lot of people that came into the training that were marines,
Speaker 2: seem to former marines seem to have a tough time
Speaker 2: because they wanted like an answer, right, is it this
Speaker 2: way or that way? And the answer is when you
Speaker 2: go through training, it's as well, it depends. It depends
Speaker 2: on the person the issue that is what's happening. So
Speaker 2: we're training people, you're looking for people who have like
Speaker 2: a really honed sense of judgment. They're comfortable in foreign languages,
Speaker 2: living overseas, learning foreign cultures. They're able to develop deep
Speaker 2: relationships and gender trust with people. They like people. They
Speaker 2: got to be good listeners. They have to have a
Speaker 2: facility of foreign languages. They have to have a sense
Speaker 2: of spatial awareness and ability to operate in the street
Speaker 2: and see what's happening and done that. They have to
Speaker 2: build a right effectively and be comfortable in foreign languages
Speaker 2: and be up to data on political, diplomatic, scientific, and
Speaker 2: military issue. So it's a variety of things, but the
Speaker 2: most important one is the one I think Jerry said
Speaker 2: is you just got to be comfortable. Each situation is different,
Speaker 2: each person is different, each person is motivated differently, and
Speaker 2: so it's just yeah, it's operating in the gray.
Speaker 3: Although you also have this huge bureaucracy that you have
Speaker 3: to be true to, like these operate within.
Speaker 1: That's part of the gray too, is learning to deal
Speaker 1: with your bureaucracy. You can be handstrung by it and
Speaker 1: ossified by it, but there are ways of doing things
Speaker 1: like yeah, I'm not going to write that up. Is
Speaker 1: like Washington doesn't need to know that because they won't misunderstand.
Speaker 1: But there's also one one thing Jenda I want to
Speaker 1: throw in is you have to and then I know
Speaker 1: this sounds really weird, but you have to believe in
Speaker 1: the mission. There's almost a missionary zeal. You're not going
Speaker 1: to put your life on the line in war zones.
Speaker 1: You're not going to take your family into places with
Speaker 1: disease and poisonous snakes if you don't actually believe you're
Speaker 1: doing a good thing. That with all the warts and
Speaker 1: all the mistakes and missteps you make, you think you're
Speaker 1: act making the world a better place. And I really
Speaker 1: thought that. I still do. I think the agency has
Speaker 1: fucked up a lot, but by and large, we were
Speaker 1: trying to do the right thing in a really gray
Speaker 1: and often brutal world.
Speaker 5: See that's so interesting because the soldiers that we spend
Speaker 5: time with in Iraq, and I knew this was the case,
Speaker 5: but hearing it from them, it really felt different.
Speaker 4: Which is like.
Speaker 5: Most of them, even if they had, say, signed up
Speaker 5: because of nine to eleven whatever, they weren't ideologues, Like
Speaker 5: almost every single one had that attitude of I am
Speaker 5: here to help make sure that my buddy next to
Speaker 5: me doesn't get killed.
Speaker 4: Like I think the military.
Speaker 5: Really ingrains that in them because they realize that it
Speaker 5: actually works better to do it that way than with
Speaker 5: the ideological stuff. But yeah, you guys are not in
Speaker 5: that position, so you really do have to be true believers.
Speaker 2: No, I think we take very seriously about informing policy
Speaker 2: makers about what's really happening in the places and the
Speaker 2: issues that really matter. I mean, I think we take
Speaker 2: great pride in fact providing information that is more nuanced
Speaker 2: or more accurate than what politicians are saying they think
Speaker 2: is happening in places and running really important spies and
Speaker 2: really important places that are sharing information that can save
Speaker 2: American lives or help make American policy better. That stuff
Speaker 2: really is important. It matters to people. And so when
Speaker 2: you have like a spy you're dealing with and that
Speaker 2: person is like risking their life and they're in and
Speaker 2: a really important place, and the information is going right
Speaker 2: to people who pay attention to it in high places,
Speaker 2: that stuff becomes addictive.
Speaker 1: It is, And for me it was this coin of
Speaker 1: love and hate. I viscerally hated authoritarian governments, dictators and
Speaker 1: isis and I mean because you see what they do
Speaker 1: isis al Qaeda, the Russian security for us is what
Speaker 1: Iran does. I see them as something that is bad
Speaker 1: for mankind. It's a bad thing to go down road.
Speaker 1: And I also think that America, for all its faults
Speaker 1: and representative democracy and the ideals that we strive for
Speaker 1: in the Constitution, is an overall good for the world.
Speaker 1: People should make their choices. And so I was patriotic,
Speaker 1: but I was also like, I believe in representative democracy,
Speaker 1: and I just remember the first time I went into
Speaker 1: East Berlin and saw the Berlin Wall and the old
Speaker 1: days and what was on the other side and fear,
Speaker 1: And I remember I went to Czechoslovakia once in the
Speaker 1: old days and people were like afraid to talk to you.
Speaker 1: It's really hard for Americans to understand that people look
Speaker 1: over their shoulders like before they like even talk to you,
Speaker 1: and they might lower their voice. We never do that,
Speaker 1: and it's like, this is like fucking awful that people
Speaker 1: are living a lie and you get to fight against that.
Speaker 1: And that was very heavy for me.
Speaker 5: So was there for either of you guys. There have
Speaker 5: to have been one or more moments where you were
Speaker 5: in a situation where you just seemed like something had
Speaker 5: gone completely tits up, as a British say, and maybe
Speaker 5: in a seriously dangerous way.
Speaker 1: So there's dangerous to our asset. So we have diplomatic community.
Speaker 1: So in most places, the worst that's going to happen
Speaker 1: you is they're going to just beat the shit out
Speaker 1: of you, and then if you're caught and they're going
Speaker 1: to kick you out of the country or your reputation
Speaker 1: is shattered, right because your op wasn't secure enough for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. In war zones. It's more than that. It's
Speaker 1: people die and in front of you, like when you
Speaker 1: get it wrong and what you do about it. There
Speaker 1: is one thing. It was we were working with the
Speaker 1: US military in Afghanistan and we had recruited a source
Speaker 1: and we're driving down this narrow road in this valley
Speaker 1: and our set phone rings and the source says, where
Speaker 1: are you. We explain where we were, and he says, oh,
Speaker 1: there's forty people up ahead of you and they're going
Speaker 1: to kill you all and they're like a mile and
Speaker 1: a half ahead of you. I'm glad I got you
Speaker 1: when I did, like fucking a And so we called
Speaker 1: in Apache helicopters and they were there and everybody scattered
Speaker 1: and we were able to get through and thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this went really well. And the asset came in and
Speaker 1: the military said, hey, we made it. Nobody got hurt.
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, you guys were really lucky, says
Speaker 1: the Afghan and I were like, no, we weren't really lucky.
Speaker 1: We had you, and he goes, no, you were lucky
Speaker 1: because you drove over this huge ied. But the guy
Speaker 1: with the command detonator also ran away, so like, you
Speaker 1: guys actually drove over this huge ied that they put
Speaker 1: down in the middle of the road, and then the
Speaker 1: land of the question is like, how did you know
Speaker 1: that these guys were looking to ambush us? And he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: one of them was my cousin Wall. So we saw
Speaker 1: the guy a month later and he just mentions off
Speaker 1: to the side, he says, oh, my sister got her
Speaker 1: leg blown off. Like what he says, Yeah, well, people
Speaker 1: know that I'm working with you. And so every morning
Speaker 1: he would go to the sluice gates and open the
Speaker 1: gate for the let water go through for the irrigation thing,
Speaker 1: and he says, in just this one morning, I had
Speaker 1: malaria and my sister walked out and they put a
Speaker 1: mind down and they blew her leg off. And later
Speaker 1: I heard through my cousins that it was meant for me.
Speaker 1: And so I'm like, oh, my god, your sister lost
Speaker 1: her length because of working with us, and he's, oh,
Speaker 1: I wanted to. And then several months later he was assassinated.
Speaker 1: So Afghan refugees come into the US here, and I
Speaker 1: know Jadie Vance apparently had said, oh, they're all interpreters,
Speaker 1: and every Afghan coming here is like a lot of
Speaker 1: these guys have given their lives, their family members' limbs,
Speaker 1: and like, this is something that years later you sit
Speaker 1: and think about, did I do something wrong? Should I
Speaker 1: have even associated with him? Even though it saved my life,
Speaker 1: it cost him his life.
Speaker 2: A lot of people ask us it's a dangerous and
Speaker 2: the anxiety I had was it's not. We're not soldiers,
Speaker 2: we're not in fighting all the time. In fact, we're
Speaker 2: trying to stay away from situations where there's kinetic activity.
Speaker 2: We're trying to give soldiers information to keep them safe,
Speaker 2: to make them more effective. But like Darry said that
Speaker 2: the guilty anxiety that I feel is to that person
Speaker 2: who's providing it really important information, who is risking their lives.
Speaker 2: Because if you're an Iranian or a Russian or a
Speaker 2: Chinese person who's committing treason against their own country, it's
Speaker 2: that person who's providing the information that's putting themselves and
Speaker 2: their family at risk. And if I do anything that
Speaker 2: gets them caught, that's what I worry about. So if
Speaker 2: I'm out and I'm trying to make sure I don't
Speaker 2: have surveillance, and I'm trying to go to make a
Speaker 2: meeting with them, and I want to be prepared. I
Speaker 2: want to make sure that those few fleeting times when
Speaker 2: we get together that I'm providing them the support they need.
Speaker 2: I'm making sure I ask the key questions so I
Speaker 2: don't have to come back more times than I need to.
Speaker 2: I need to make sure that one hundred percent certainty
Speaker 2: that there's no chance anyone sees this meeting or that
Speaker 2: I had surveillance. That's the anxiety I feel that am
Speaker 2: I doing enough to make sure this person is safe.
Speaker 1: I just want to go because this is a big
Speaker 1: trope in the movies, and it touches on conspiracies. That
Speaker 1: is why, because we do care deeply for our assets
Speaker 1: more than our own lives in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: And when we have a mole like inside like aims
Speaker 1: and he gets these people killed, that is huge for
Speaker 1: an intelligence organization that is debilitating and something that it
Speaker 1: cuts really deep. Yeah, a conspiracy inside the agency to
Speaker 1: spy is something that can eat an intelligence agency from
Speaker 1: the inside out. So one thing that people might be
Speaker 1: interested in is we're intelligence officers and both of us
Speaker 1: have spouses and kids, and people always often ask about families.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, when our kids are smaller, they're
Speaker 1: not witting of our agency affiliation, but our spouses are
Speaker 1: and so as we are developing people who may become
Speaker 1: agents assets later on, our spouses generally get a sense
Speaker 1: of who it is or what we're doing. And they're
Speaker 1: not paid for this. But one of the things with
Speaker 1: the agency is we ask a lot of agency spouses,
Speaker 1: male or female, like, you must come to this reception,
Speaker 1: you must come to this party. And then before you
Speaker 1: go in, I know about you, John, I would say
Speaker 1: to my oftentimes my wife, I want you to go
Speaker 1: over to that woman over there, and I want you
Speaker 1: to befriend her, to see what she says about her husband,
Speaker 1: or see if you can get invited to her house,
Speaker 1: because then maybe I'll get invited, right Or she's friends
Speaker 1: with somebody I want to be friends with. And our
Speaker 1: wives e they're not paid, be they're not trained. See,
Speaker 1: they may have differing views on mission and things like that.
Speaker 1: For the most part, my spouse went along with it,
Speaker 1: but not always. How about you is.
Speaker 2: John, No, that's exactly true. It's sort of like the
Speaker 2: old fashioned military spouse that's meant to entertain their generals
Speaker 2: and this and that. Well, you're hosting people, you're going
Speaker 2: out to dinners. You're doing things. So even on those
Speaker 2: times when you're out at night doing things without your spouse,
Speaker 2: you're putting pressure on your spous They're the one that
Speaker 2: has to be there without you, taking care of kids
Speaker 2: and getting them ready for school and doing all those
Speaker 2: other kinds of things. So's it really is a team effort,
Speaker 2: and used to be a lot of divorces in the agency,
Speaker 2: I think less Now.
Speaker 4: How and when do you tell your kids? How does
Speaker 4: that work?
Speaker 2: That is interesting in the sense that there's no regulation,
Speaker 2: there's no rule, it's individual. Your job is to figure
Speaker 2: out when a child is mature enough or needs to
Speaker 2: be told for some other purpose, for security or what
Speaker 2: have you. What you don't want to do is you
Speaker 2: don't want to put that child in a tough position
Speaker 2: where they now have to lie for you if they're
Speaker 2: incapable of that. They have to go to school, and
Speaker 2: they know that you work for CIA, and they know
Speaker 2: they can't say the wrong thing or they can't tell
Speaker 2: their friends, and you may be putting them under undue
Speaker 2: pressure when you do that. And there's times when you
Speaker 2: might tell one kid and not the other because one
Speaker 2: kid will blab too much or what have you, because
Speaker 2: you're essentially asking them now to lie for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's got to be tough too.
Speaker 5: I remember, like in I don't know, fourth grade or something,
Speaker 5: my friend Linda said, my dad told me that he's
Speaker 5: actually superman, but I can't tell. And of course, like
Speaker 5: Linda was spilling the beans everywhere, like how do you?
Speaker 4: That's got to be so hard.
Speaker 1: Hoes were asking them to really trust us. So when
Speaker 1: we say, like I'm going to disappear for a weekend
Speaker 1: and I can't tell you where I am, or I'm
Speaker 1: going to come home at four in the morning, shit faced,
Speaker 1: smelling your perfume and smoke because I've been You go
Speaker 1: with this one Russian guy. He's like, I want to
Speaker 1: go to strip clubs and I want to be with
Speaker 1: a Russian guy. So we go there and I'm working
Speaker 1: and I'm paying for all the booze and some chickens
Speaker 1: sitting on his lap and maybe sitting on mine, and
Speaker 1: I just want to go home and watch TV. You're
Speaker 1: out till four in the morning, and then you take
Speaker 1: a taxs and you go home. Of course, and then
Speaker 1: you've got to remember how much you spent because the
Speaker 1: next day you have to put in your expense account,
Speaker 1: like exactly what it was for and all this, But
Speaker 1: you get into bed with your wife at four in
Speaker 1: the morning and you smell the booze and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was working, So yeah, it's a It puts a
Speaker 1: lot of extra strains on a marriage because you can
Speaker 1: start seeing conspiracies inside of marriage that don't exist.
Speaker 5: If you are a spouse whose partner is in the
Speaker 5: CIA but also has a predilection for cheating, you must
Speaker 5: just feel like gas.
Speaker 4: Lit all the time when I think about it.
Speaker 3: I've had three friends who thought their dad was CIA,
Speaker 3: and one of them it turned out it was. Our
Speaker 3: friend Scott Johnson wrote a memoir about his dad was
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan. Anyway. I have two friends who were sure
Speaker 3: their parents were CIA, but they were never told.
Speaker 1: Is that a thing you've met?
Speaker 2: Our other colleague, Meredith, when she took over the recruitment center,
Speaker 2: she actually changed to tell people you had to tell
Speaker 2: your spouse. But in the older generation before we came in,
Speaker 2: there were people who actually didn't tell their spouses they
Speaker 2: worked for CIA.
Speaker 1: There was one CIA officer famous story in the agency.
Speaker 1: He had two spouses at the same time that didn't
Speaker 1: know about each other.
Speaker 3: Oh, I have that.
Speaker 1: It turns out both of them knew he was CIA,
Speaker 1: but neither knew that there was another CIA spouse.
Speaker 5: This was amazing. You guys actually are interesting. Adam told
Speaker 5: me that you were not, and I was like, no, Adam,
Speaker 5: I've listened to the podcast.
Speaker 4: He was like, no, that's all in the editing. I
Speaker 4: still edit them to be interesting.
Speaker 2: But he was an excellent point.
Speaker 1: Do you still believe that Adam is just a journalist?
Speaker 5: Again, he cannot keep juicy stuff like that to himself.
Speaker 1: So that's what I would say. I would want you
Speaker 1: to believe that.
Speaker 2: Then well, thank you for shaming him, and thank you
Speaker 2: for joining us, and you're welcome anytime.
Speaker 6: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 6: and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 6: Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable Pictures
Speaker 6: for iHeart Podcasts.