Shawn Ryan Show - #31 Marc Polymeropoulos - CIA Senior Intelligence Officer

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Marc Polymeropoulos gives great insight of what a career from start to finish at CIA would be like. We discuss how he was recruited, his training at the farm, and his deployments killing bad guys.  Marc then discusses his trauma from Havana syndrome. Believed to be caused by microwave weapons. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com, slash vigilance elite, and support the Sean Ryan Show today. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. This episode is broken up into basically two different portions. First portion being all about CIA, how we got recruited, what it was like in the training pipeline over at the farm

and what it's like being an operative Second portion is all about Havana syndrome Havana syndrome is basically a severe traumatic brain injury Believed to be caused by microwave weapons pretty interesting stuff anyways I just want to thank you guys for being here. I love you all. Thank you for the support I just want to thank you guys for being here. I love you all. Thank you for the support. Please like and subscribe to the channel and if you're feeling extra generous Head over to iTunes or Spotify and leave us a review links are in the description. Love you guys. Enjoy the show

These people would got your sister you put them on the streets of America, they would kill every American. Scariest the wrong word, they're just fucking evil. They would do it. They would. There's now to doubt my mind that you're directly responsible for the deaths of several bad guys. And the night where a hellfire missile ended the life was a really bad guy because it's not only responsible for killing two of our officers, but he was plotting additional attacks. I have the phone number back in the Fort Bragg of the widow of one of these officers. We should call her, and we call her.

And we said, we have had his death of your husband and she just said thank you. Since 2016, US government officials overseas and their families have reported sudden, unexplained brain injuries. These officials were injured by an unseen weapon. But look, in 2016 in Havana, Cuba, the US Embassy there, there was a rash of these kind of mysterious injuries in which US intelligence officers and diplomats, as well as the Canadian Embassy staff, heard this kind of high-pitched sound, earlier this year, I did a psychedelic healing journey, and that changed many aspects of my life for the better. Two of them being, I haven't had any alcohol or coffee in over six months.

Another aspect that changed of mine is my morning ritual and I want to tell you guys about my new addition to my morning ritual mud water. It's a coffee replacement. In my opinion, the best thing about mud water is every single ingredient was added for a very specific purpose. Cacao and Chai for mood in a microdosa caffeine, lion's mane for alertness, Cordyceps to help support physical performance, Chaga and Resshi to support your immune system, turmeric for soreness and cinnamon for antioxidants. Not only is mud water good for you, it also tastes incredible. My favorite ingredient is the lion's mane because it keeps my brain alert all hours of the

day. Some people like to mix their mud water with milk, some people like to put some honey in it, personally myself, I just dump it in a glass of water, stir it up, and throw it down the hatch. Mudwater is whole-thirty approved 100% USDA organic non-GMO gluten-free vegan and kosher certified. Mudwater also donates monthly to the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. As mudwater believes the country is in a mental health epidemic.

And so do I. Go to mudwater.com slash Sean to support the show and use code Sean for 15% off. That's mudwater.com slash Sean use code Sean for 15% off. Mark Polly Marappalus. Nailed my name, he got it. Man, I had to say that like 20 times. But hey, welcome to the show. I really appreciate you coming out. Thanks for having me.

It's good to be in Tennessee. It's hot. Yeah, it is. We got a heat wave going right now. But 26 years CIA intel officer, the author of clarity and crisis and victim of Havana syndrome. So we got a lot, we're going to dive into today. I did quite a bit of research on Havana syndrome and I had no idea how many different places that was happening and I can't wait to dive into your experience and where you think that's

coming from. But we also wanna cover a lot of your agency career and then we'll get into what you're doing today. But every guest starts off with a gift. All right. Thank you. Draw open it now. Absolutely.

You gotta open it now. Well, you pronounce my name correctly, so. I'm gonna get this right. Jesus. I'm tearing this thing apart. Just rip it and do it. Jesus. All right, gummy bears.

I love it. Thank you. You're welcome. And a teacher too. I love it. I hope it's a extra large in my, in my, in my retirement. Anybody start hitting the, hitting the gym a little more. Thank you very much. You just stored it in wherever. Yeah. I, I thought anybody who's deployed with CIA

knows that agency personnel love a good candy aisle. Yeah, that's right. Right. Got a lot of stuff. Everybody go swadging candy aisle for sure. But I, but let me just say Sean, I got to, I got to say one thing. You pronounce my name correctly. And that's it. That's right. Right. Got a life span. I go swapping candy aisle for sure. But let me just say Sean, I got to say one thing you pronounce my name correctly. And that's it. So we're going to have a great interview. And I always tell the story back when I was in the Middle East, maybe 2005, 2006. I was a deputy station chief and there was a crisis. And the president's briefers called me. I was a, I was sitting in an embassy and they said we got to go down see George W. Bush. I got to see W. I gave my take on the crisis. Pretty excited about it, waited by the secure phone. Hours later, they called back and I said, how was it? Pretty pumped, you know, junior officer. The president's going to hear what I had to say. And they came back and they

said the entire time in the Oval Office, W was trying to pronounce your last name. That's it. I can relate. You are one up on him, so. Hey, I practiced it before he got here. That's right. But just before we dive in, just off the wall question, all this UAP UFO stuff's going on in the news right now. Congress just had their first congressional hearing on, what, 50 years?

What do you think is going on here? You know, I think that when you, you know, I've gotten at 53 years old now, you know, smart enough to know that I don't know everything. And so while, you know, I think probably 20 years ago, I would have dismissed all this as nonsense. I don't know, I'm kind of open minded now. Yeah.

You know, and so I think that clearly, you know, the American people deserve to know if this is, if there is something to this or not. I will tell you, I've talked to pilots who have seen weird stuff. You know, you and I have had a lot of, you know, time dealing probably with Air Force and Navy, you know, Naval Aviators. They see stuff.

Yeah. And one of my buddies would be one pilot at the Air Force, and in the Air Force still is now. And I said, what do you think about this? And he's like, I don't know. So I'd be open-minded. I think that, as you get older, it's probably the right thing to do. I'm open-minded. I always used to just ride it off as testing.

Right. Military's testing stuff. Agency's testing. So now all the experimental stuff. I mean, so much, I think so many of these cases, you know, happened out in the West and Nevada, obviously testing grounds everywhere. It's funny. I've actually been to Roswell, New Mexico. Really? I have, and because before a deployment to Afghanistan, we went out there because the terrain is so similar.

And so there's, you know, there was, there took some, did some, did some shooting, did some blowing stuff up out in New Mexico. So I don't know, I went to Roswell. I saw the crazy UFO things, t-shirts everywhere. I don't know who knows. I don't dismiss stuff. There's, you know, there, there might be an explanation one day. We'll see. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. It's interesting stuff. That's not an off the wall question, by the way. But you never know what you're gonna get, you know, but Let's dive into when Did you first realize you wanted to go into intelligence community? So you know everyone has their kind of their origin story, you know the journey that you have I think for me

You know, I was a kind of a product of an odd, you know, marriage my mom and dad So my mom was a nice Jewish girl from Long Island, and my dad was a true Greek off the boat going to university in the States. And so they meet, and it's a marriage, which both sides of the family totally objected to, different cultures, religions, everything. But they left after they both finished university,

and they went to Greece. And so I was born in Greece. And my dad came back, he was a college professor at Rutgers for his whole career. But because of that, we would go back every summer. So automatically, here I am, as a kid growing up, every two months or so, or every year, I'd go for two months of the Greek islands, not bad.

Even though it was middle-class kid from New Jersey, we didn't have much money, we always kind of saved to do that. And so I was able to travel, I was able to see the world. And then kind of the seminal event for me, it's amazing, I think about it, you know, even today I have a picture of this, even in my house back in Vienna, Virginia,

is my dad took a sabbatical teaching in Algeria, you know, North African country. This is before it was racked by an Islamic, you know, insurgency. And at 10 years old, he's gone for a year. My mom, and who do this now? I mean, I have two kids in college. We're always worried about, I know,

you each had a kid, right? So you gotta see it, how are you gonna raise them? What are you gonna let them experience? But my mom put me on an airplane when I was 10 by myself, flying through Paris, off to Algera's, the capital, and my dad and I for a solid month drove 2,000 miles in the Sahara Desert

and an old Volkswagen minibus with one of my dad's buddies. And I thought I was Lawrence of Arabia. And so I tend, I'm thinking like, I wanna do this. Like this is unbelievable. And I fell in love with the Middle East. And so I've probably read a lot of Tom Clancy books over the years.

But I always knew I wanted to do public service. And it was either gonna be the CIA. I was thinking about DEA, I was thinking about FBI. Like everyone else, I wanted to be a Navy pilot, but my eyes went bad. I got a LASIX a couple of years ago, but I had glasses. But CIA seemed like the right thing to do, and I was at Cornell University in Ethnic in New York,

and CIA recruiter was there, and I walked in and only job I ever had. Really? Yep, never did anything else in my life until now. So did you go to the recruiter? He was at the career office, you know, and I made an appointment, I had an initial interview and I said I wanted to join the C.I. and I said okay.

And then of course it took, you know, 18 months. I had so much of a background in terms of, you know, obviously family overseas and just getting the security clearances. Plus, I think my fraternity brothers in college didn't make it easier. You know, and they come and I think, a classic case, I think they wrote this all off.

I did have to sign something about, you know, alcohol and drug use and what they alleged I had done in college. But they went to see, they went to see my, my college buddies who after we graduated, were living out in Breckenridge, Colorado So just go think about they walked and I think there was a mattress in the floor of Bung and beer cans everywhere And they said you know have you ever seen mark do any of this stuff and they said never It's surrounded by this

So it took me it took me 18 months to get cleared But really that was it. So you know off I go into into see I really is the only job I really ever had. I mean, I had summer jobs, painting houses, and doing work to make money in college. But pretty amazing. I think that's unusual now. What were they? Did they steer you in a direction?

Yeah. So I went in, so I'd undergrad in a master's degree in public policy, but focused on the Middle East. So I went into the Director of Intelligence versus an analyst. And it was a way in the door. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an operations officer, which is handling, spotting, assessing, handling,

spies. Of course, recruiting spies, those are foreigners who obviously provide us information. But I started off as an analyst and it was actually really interesting for me for the first two years I did that. I went off on a temporary duty assignment to the Middle East, maybe two or three years after I joined it, I knew right then I wanted to go on the operations side of it, but what being an analyst taught me how to do was to kind of brief but to write, which is critical,

because in our job, and talk about it later, the job of a case officer, you can have, you know, you go to an agent meeting, you collect information, if you don't write it down in the cable, didn't happen. But one of the really interesting things I did, my first job was on the Afghan desk. And I was with some senior analysts there, but this was a paper. This was written in 1994

about the Mujahideen, the Afghan Arabs who were fighting in Afghanistan and a young financier, you know, where this is going, named Usham had been lawden. 1994 is one of the first papers written. Oh, kid. At CIA and friends of mine who are involved in this, I think people have tried to submit FOIA requests for this. But, you know, agency was tracking this back then, not a lot of people, but bin Laden was on the radar screen. And the Afghan Arabs, there's 10,000 who came and fought with the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union until obviously the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan.

But they were radicalized and they were going to be a problem when we knew it back then. Wow. So you're an analyst for two years? That's two years, yeah. And then I decided, look, I wanna be, so I went off for three month assignment to obviously a location I can't talk about in the Middle East.

And I said, look, I gotta be, you know, just my personality, I wanted to live overseas. So I wanted to be a case officer. And I came back and just, you know, whether you like it or not, I'll mention a name, certainly controversial, but I went into my boss at the time. His name was John Brennan. And I said, look, I think I want to become a case officer.

I'm going to leave. And he said, sure, no problem. And he actually, he didn't fight me on this at all. So I probably was the world's crappiest analyst. It was pretty shitty at it. So, you know, later on when he was CI director, I would, you know, mention the story to him. You didn't remember it. But it was funny. But, you know, in a to him, and he didn't remember it, but it was funny.

But on a good note, the agency didn't want me to leave. They recognized something about me. And so instead of, I could have quit, but I said I wanted to become case officer, so I kind of switched over to the operation side, went down the farm, which is our training facility, which is the worst kept secret on the planet. Then off I went, I think seven operational tours, almost three years

in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of tough times, a lot of great times. It's a journey that's filled with a lot of incredible successes, a lot of humility. I had friends who were killed, I had lost agents. And so a lot of good, a lot of bad. And it's kind of sit back at the end of your career and scratch your head and you wonder if it was worth it or not. And of course, and we'll talk about it later, because at the end of your career and scratch your head and you wonder if it was worth it or not And of course and we'll talk about it later kind of the end of my career was when I had the faithful trip to Moscow But say that for later. Well, let's talk about the farm a little bit

What was that how long is that? Dr. Training pipeline. So, you know, I think it's changed over the years And it's not terribly difficult. So it's anywhere from six months to a year. At least you know my recollection So it's anywhere from six months to a year, at least my recollection. They change this over time just in terms of kind of adding training of solutions or maybe doing them up north. It's the I head quarters, but it's obviously a secret base in Virginia. But the idea is to teach you trade craft. And so it's the, again, it's the concept of, well, first and foremost, the basic

fundamental trait that you need to learn as a case officer is surveillance detection. So you basically have people follow you, you know, for weeks and months on end, and it's the idea of getting to, from one location to another, doing things such as, you know, taking certain turns, putting on disguises, youises, changing modes of transportation. But if you're going to meet an agent securely, you can't bring surveillance with you. So it's like in your old job in the teams, like if you can't shoot, you're not going to be in a Navy SEAL.

A CI case after you can't run a successful surveillance detection, or it's a basic process. And so they teach you that. And then the other part of the trade craft piece is how to handle and recruit agents. So it's the idea of how do you get an individual, you know, and you have to find their motivations or vulnerabilities and get them to kind of switch

on or switch over, come on our side. And one of the things that I found about the training class and this doesn't, this is not for everything that we do or we did it at CIA, but it's pretty realistic. And one of the things that I found was inspiring, and I heard this over and over again, even from when I was managing in the field, and young case officers would come out of the farm, they'd go to assignment and they say, actually, this is kind of like the farm, it's real. But the beauty of it is America does offer something.

And no matter what happens in our country, I'll always feel this way. I do believe in American exceptionalism, but recruiting agents is not particularly difficult because of what America has to offer, which is both political freedoms, but economic freedoms. And so a prospective candidate who's gonna be a spy in agent candidate, remember, we're not agents. We're intelligence officers.

An agent is someone we recruit, a foreigner, a Russian, a Chinese, an Iranian. But ultimately, they want something that they don't have, or they have something that they need. But a lot of times, it could be, you know, they want their kids to get educated in the United States, or maybe there's someone as a medical issue in their family. Maybe they need money, or maybe they've hit a glass ceiling because their country doesn't have the same kind of kind of just justice and fairness that we do and that you can make something yourself. So we find those vulnerabilities and then eventually you meet them and bring them along to get them to spy on their country. But I think that just fundamentally as an

American we have an advantage. I recruited agents for everything from you know again You know a tangible need maybe someone needed you know medical assistance from a sick relative to Literally they were fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. They loved American football. They were living in some you know God forsaken country and we're able to watch some TV and and you know through our contacts. I'd get them a Sign football helmet From the Steelers so so ultimately, but that's what they teach you down the farm is how to, you know, what's the process of recruiting and handling a spy. And, you know, it's not a, it's not, you know, mentally challenging. Certainly not like, you know, what you went through with buds in terms of physically challenging. It's a lot of time management. And that's the key.

And the weeding out process really is surveillance detection skills. And again, just the ability to crunch your time and have this kind of information overload. And ultimately, they produce officers who, the last piece I think was critical is the ability to operate on your own. Unlike the military, CIA is actually a different piece. Case officer is out on their own, whether they're handling an agent, meeting an agent, recruiting someone, usually you're not with someone else. It's that ability to think on your own, which is really critical as they weed out folks going through the class.

What is the attrition rate? I don't know if it's particularly large. It's funny. The classes were huge after 9, 11 and the hundreds. My class was tiny. They only had 30 plus. And there was only a couple of them that year. And that was pre 9, 11, so everything changed.

But the attrition rate, I think, is small in a sense, maybe 10 or so out of our 30 didn't make it. But what is more important is just getting in in the first place. I mean, I think the attrition is more in the screening processes. I'm gonna go through tons of stuff, even to get to that point. But it's not like, it's not like selection for your old life.

I think they do a lot of that in advance rather than through the course itself. And then really, people drop out, people don't make it because they can't detect surveillance and some people can't. I mean, it's just the idea of having street awareness and street smarts. And the other is just kind of that information overload and how to deal and time management. Because that's why the end of the day, the class is actually realistic to what you see in the field.

Interesting. So when you show up, they actually want everybody to make it. They really do. It's different. And it's funny, there are interesting folks who come through. It's not all going to be type A personality, former military, former special operations. There's some introverts. There's some true academics.

But they got to have those street skills. But at the end, they want you to get through. And I think the idea is the selection has occurred almost in advance. And, but again, it's months and months of basically, just as I think you're familiar with, having people stare at you, 20 hours a day. And then particularly, when you get to the end

of the training cycles, and again, very similar to the special operations world where you have these kind of real world training scenarios, kind of a final exam over a week or two weeks, that's where they turn up the heat. And I'll tell you that they do lose people. And that's a pretty, you know, awful feeling seeing some people you've spent, you know, almost a year with, you know, not make it the last two weeks. But there's a reason for it, because in real world, you want them, want them to be ready. Where do they go if you don't make it? Where do you put it? I mean, you get the clearance. Yep, so they will give you an opportunity they used to go somewhere else in the organization.

You know, the CI is made up of, obviously, the operational side we're talking about here, but there's obviously an analytic side. We've talked about it before. There's a, you know, there's a science and technology side. So there's other places. I think they'll give you some time to find another job and some people take it. I think a lot of them don't.

And again, it's the kind of thing where, there's, and I don't know, some people I think should have made it who didn't and just you probably can identify this. Some people who made it, you're like, yeah. That's what they're every outfit. Yep Yep every outfit. That's what every outfit But it's it was a it was a really good You know

Of course which taught you a lot about yourself And it really is realistic and like like there's a thousand things about the US government about the agency that we can you know I'll be critical of I'm sure you agree The this training evolution for becoming case officers is pretty damn good. Interesting. I've worked with you guys a lot about nine years and I can't remember how many deployments. I've always, the majority I've seen with you guys developing assets and spies is recruiting people. I see a lot of turnover. You know, I see a new case officer come in,

they take over the management of the asset. I've only seen a few times where we actually are going after somebody knew and trying to turn them. But what I've never discussed, to be honest with you, is you show up to a brand new base. Nobody's been there in your recruiting. Where do you even be here? Sure.

I mean, so, like, area fam is the number one thing, so a variety of reasons. So, you got to get there. So, first of all, hopefully you're taking turnover from someone, but if it's a new base, you got to get the lay of the land. One of the things that CI is really good about and it went away a bit with the war zone deployments only because it was such a mad rush to get a lot of people out there that they didn't have proper language skills. But if we prepared properly before you go out and assign them and you know the local

language, you know the culture, you know the religion, And then you try to get there and you hit the streets. And then one of the things for me is, one of the differences I think between C.I. operations officer and someone from perhaps the State Department, or even someone in the U.S. military who's used to being on a basis, I would look around like when I was managing in the field,

if I see my guys and gals there, what are you doing here? You better be out in the street, you better be on every street corner, you better be talking to everybody. One of the things that you want your officers to do is be the smartest person in that area for the US government period. And I remember I was in the Middle East one time

and there was a senior congressional delegation and I was the deputy station chief. And whether you're like her or not you know maybe your listeners or viewers won't but Nancy Pelosi came out I mean she at the time was the the majority of the leaders speak for the house whatever it was the number two or three person you know when most powerful people in the US government and the ambassador actually told her the ambassador just got in there told her hey go talk to Mark he's the smartest person on this country.

And I was really proud of that and it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant on which political, you know, American political figure came. But ultimately, you know, that's what you want to be because I you spend no time in the embassy or the base. You know, a whole job is to be on the street and so you develop, you know, so you kind of you can go, you can go step by step. So you've got to know who are the powerful people in that area. So if it's a rock, Afghanistan, obviously we have local contacts who are the warlords, who are the power brokers and you just kind of go from there. And in the end, you're throwing a net out. I've got to overturn rocks. And there's people out there with information that we need. We find them. It's not particularly hard to recruit what it does do. It's just, it's shoe leather.

It's hitting the streets. Because ultimately, again, we have a kind of the best, when I say product to sell, but ultimately, it's the United States. And whether it's a war zone, a ferrocuret, Afghanistan, it was not difficult to recruit agents because we paid well and we were gonna win. Now, whether we can have a long discussion on

whether that was successful or not. But I remember in Afghanistan, one of the most interesting things getting to a base one time, and I talked to it, we had a local contact. He wasn't even a recruited agent. But ultimately I said, what's your story? And he said, well, you know, I was, I was a member of the, um, communists under the Naji Bula regime in Afghanistan. No, this is decades ago. And then the Soviets

invaded and then became a Musya Dean. And then the Taliban took over and I became a, the Taliban. Then you guys came. I'm with you all now. And so that's just, you got to find people who are going to willing to help. What are you guys using as a cover? You know, I know it's always different, but it depends where, and this is where, you know, the obviously, you know, there's different elements of the United States government that can provide cover for us. I can't tell you which, you know, sometimes, you know, whether it's the military or other

places or you're there as a declared representative. And so the more senior individuals at a station or base might be declared to the host government. So it just depends. And then we have non-official cover-offs, who poses businessmen. Do you think they know? A lot of times yes. So if you're doing your job successfully by the end of your tour, they're going to know because who else, you know, is because, you know, US military officers or, you know, a state department, political officer, an economic officer, maybe they're not, you know, out eight nights a week, seven nights a week, joking. But, you know, so it's, you know, our job is just to know the streets. So you look a little bit different, but that's okay because what is going to beat the

adversary in the end, that's a trade craft. So let's say I'm in a certain location and my cover is kind of shredded at that time. Well, I still have to go meet an agent. Well, my trade craft, how I run that surveillance detection route is going to beat the adversary. But at some point it's time to go as well. And you know that. Yeah. And you're trying, remember, one tour I had, there was a US television network came out and they were asking around kind of the locals and I had a lot of local contacts and and I remember the the some of the local contacts told me I said you know what who they who are they asking for and they said well you know this this this US journalist was asking like you know who's

the smartest person in this country? And they said, and my local contact said, the word around town was go ask the CIA guy around. It's Mark. And I was like, yeah, that's not good. That's, maybe I've been here too long. And that's why we have a two or three year assignment in a place because sometimes it's time to go. And the other part too is, being a-off, so there's some risk involved.

And depending where you are, risk gets elevated if you're in a country too long. Yeah, we've both seen that play out in that way. Just another question. It is a lot of times it's a two or three year assignment. I've seen a lot of you guys get attached to the asset Oh, and but I always wondered does it bother you when I mean if you're working on Something for two or three years and then you switch stations and you go to another part of the world

I mean I would think that you can't help but wonder what's what's happening at the old station. Right. Right. Developing. Do you get any insight on that? Or is it? I love that question. So I was I was a pretty good recruiter. And one of the reasons why I was good is because I in the recruitment process and the development. I became really close to the target. And you do this in different manners. So you can, you know, you spend a lot of time with them, but perhaps, you know, you introduce your families together.

You know their kids. And so, so I was able to recruit them, but oftentimes, and this made it really hard for what we call turnover. Oftentimes when it was time for me to leave, the agent would say, or the asset interchangeable, would say, well, wait a second, I've been spying for the US, I know that, but I really did it for you, Mark. And I don't wanna take the turnover.

And I kind of sucked at that part. And there are some agents who did not take turnover because I just was really good at getting them on board. Information was totally legit. They'd be willing to meet other people. Maybe we brought an analyst in from back home. And so it's all going great. But they're like, yeah, you know what,

I did this for you. I don't want to do this anymore. And so that was one of my Achilles' deals. You know, you as in this job, you know, and it's kind of like everything we do in the Intel and Special Operations world. Like, you know, you're talents are out there for everyone to see

and kind of your faults too. And that was one of the things I really wasn't great at. And I struggle with that my whole career is that period of turnover. But here's, Sean, the amazing point is running an agent. To me, it's like a romance. It's an incredible relationship. And so, I'll never feel so I had taken turnover of it.

He was a, I got to be careful on saying, he was a member of an Arab government. And he, I was training my communication techniques and trade craft in Europe. On the streets of Europe, before he went back to the Middle East, and I was going to handle him inside. And we're doing kind of really sophisticated communications protocols.

And this and that. One night he took me aside and he said, I spent a lot of time there. There for a couple of weeks, I haven't dinner with him, getting to know him even more. And he said, he goes, Mark, I know you're going to go, we're going to be in the same country. And we're going to meet maybe once or twice a month

using all these established protocols. And you have your life there. Your family's going to be with you. And this guy knew, America goes, I know you're going to be watching Armed Forces Network, watching football, at the middle of the night on Sundays, like all the Americans do. And so you're going to think about me every now and then he goes, he goes, but make no mistake, I'm going to think about you every single day because if you make one mistake, I'm dead. And not only am I going to die, my family, my whole tribe is going to die. So you have to be perfect. And I was shocked at that. But then, but you think about it,

I mean, that's the essence of handling someone because their life is in your hands. And I love that story. And I told that story a lot of the younger officers when I was managing them later on, because that's what the essence of being a case officer is, is you know, you had an individual relationship with someone who if you screw up, they they can die and you better be damn good.

And so, and so I tell that story because then when it's time to, for turnover, I've had this two or three year period of doing this with someone and it's, you know, it's an emotional attachment. And you got to be pretty cynical not to, because then when we, when we turn an agent over, that's it, you're done. No more contact. You know, this is considered an institutional relationship with the CIA. And so you're gone.

And, you know, the agent is struggling with this, and you got to kind of secure the turnover to another all. But what about the case officer? That's only human nature. And I just, you know, thinking about, you know, your old career too, at the agency. I mean, you supported a hell of a lot of agent meetings. And you probably saw some of the agents we had who did some damn heroic things for the US government. And then when you, you know, and, you know, whatever, whatever's happening in that country, they're risking their life.

And so, you know, you end up, I remember, you know, some of your former colleagues being super tight with some of the really kind of superstar agents we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's just human nature. But I always, the turnover part, I sucked that. That was really hard. That's just an Achilles heel. I had, I was known for that. They're like, oh crap.

This is going to suck. Mark's going to fuck up this turnover. But just, it is what it is. I still get phone calls today at my house in Northern Virginia from agents overseas that are long past their time with the agency. Somehow they track me down, because probably I'm too stupid to hide my phone number.

But pretty wild, because if you agree to spy from the United States, God damn, that's a pretty big decision. It's someone who's gonna make when the sanction is death, think about that. Have you ever lost an agent? Yeah, it was early on in my career in Iraq. You know, in late 2002 before the war,

I went up into Northern Iraq with a team of agency and special forces, operators, and we're kind of, we're kind of, you know, setting the stage for the invasion, didn't know if it was gonna happen. Our job was to collect, you know, obviously intelligence on Saddam Hussein's military, so just kind of classic order of battle stuff, which made sense because, you know,

this is what the Pentagon needed. And we had recruited in Iraqi, who was eager to help, and he was providing an order of battle. And everyone was loving it. And I was the handling officer. And it's up to me to determine the meeting cycle. That means how many times is he going to cross from Iraqi lines into the Kurdish territories, which was dangerous. And I, I, I, I combination of him being to eager and me pushing him too far,

even as DC was, you know, loving this information. He was caught and executed, and I'll never forget that. And, you know, one of the strange things I, I felt that I was, you know, I was responsible, but it just, I hate to say it, it's just, you know, it is what it is. It happened. And so it's a combination of, I pushed him too just, yeah, I hate to say it. It's just, you know, it is what it is. It happened. And so it's a combination of, I pushed him too hard. Really, he took too many risks. Because the agent's always saying, I'm fine.

Because he also wants to get paid. Yeah. And so, but ultimately, I never forgot that because I felt that was on me. And that was, that was really, really personal to me. And so that was a really shitty time. How did you find out? Never showed up.

He just didn't show up. Stop showing up. You have a meeting cycle. Yeah. And then you essentially receive reports from other assets, or perhaps, I can't remember if our Kurdish partners told us that. But ultimately, never showed up again. And I just, for a long time, I remember

the guy's face looked like. Yeah. Now, you know, the pace there was so intense, and then I got pulled from being up in the North to go kind of link up with some of your old boys from Naval Special Warfare, with Dev Group, and went in for the HVT Hunt into Baghdad. And so I had a crazy two months after that.

So it was only really, you know, I started processing, processing kind of that loss, you know, when I got back crazy two months after that. So it was only really, I started processing, kind of that loss when I got back after six months in Iraq. But that stuff stays with you. I mean, it's a human being. And this person put their trust in me and ultimately I failed them. And that's, I look back at my career

and I have all sorts of, I'll invite you to Vienna, Virginia. If you ever want to come up North, but know, I have a place similar than not as nice as the studio here, but I have my little room where I have my intel metals and all the shit from all the tours overseas. And I'll sit around and we'll have a, have a Scotch or a bourbon, but ultimately, you know, there's a lot of failure that went along with a lot of successes. And there's a lot of kind of, you know of mental and emotional baggage. And for me, some physical baggage, too, that came with all these things. So it's not, it hasn't always been

great. And even to my times in Afghanistan, when I ran one of our paramilitary bases, we lost a whole bunch of indigestalgers. These are the Afghans, our own surrogate forces, as well as the commander of the Afghan unit was killed when I was there. You don't forget that stuff. Yeah. I mean, you're dealing with two different aspects. You're dealing with the emotional aspect that you've gotten close with the asset and now

he's dead. And then also what I've always wondered, and I've seen, I've seen, I've been in country when this has happened several times. When the asset dies, I mean, all that work seems to, I mean, you got it all the way up to a certain point, and then just like that, it's back to square one. And so, and, and, you know, in wars, and then later on in war zones, when I was, when I was running the, you know, one of our bases in Eastern Afghanistan, we lost a couple of assets we were caught and killed too. And it's not to say you get used to it. It certainly is part of the business. This is not without risk.

But I think that, and we all, both of us have experienced losing colleagues as well, and that's horrific. But I look back and that is the worst possible outcome of any operation, and I experienced that, and that was kind of catastrophic for me. But I also don't forget the agents. And again, these are the people that we recruit. And so, you know, that's one thing about CIO officers. I think they're a little bit, perhaps a little bit different, is that, you know, our jobs

deal with foreigners. You know, that's what we do. I do a lot of talks to colleges all over the country because I really want to advocate for people to join public service, to join the national security sphere. And so I would say, if you want to protect Americans, you want to live in the United States and deal with a lot of Americans, join the FBI,

or become a D agent. If you want to see the world, eat funny food, learn languages, and deal with other cultures, and deal with foreigners. Agency is a good place for you, but our foreign partners are really important. And I was shaken up not as much admittedly as losing a colleague, but losing an agent, losing a partner from a liaison service.

Someone we're working with at host country, that's tough. Yeah. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, let's get into some operations that you did after 9-11. Sure. Sure. Did you know 75% of the human population struggles will sleep?

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All right, Mark, we're back from the break and we're getting ready to get into some of your operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, post 9-11. Or Prairie if you want. Prairie if you want, if you were there. But, so, you know, I mean, well, everything changed after 9-11. Let me just, let me go back to actually 9-11 that day. It's an interesting story just for me,

because I think for all of us, our whole world changed. CIA changed. I mean, CIA was not a sleepy little outfit, but we went from an you know, an organization that, you know, had a mission to one that had almost an obsession afterwards, which is to track down, you know, capture and kill everyone involved in this.

But on 9-11 that day, my whole family, we were in the Greek islands. Why it's relevant is I actually was assigned, I was in New York City at the time. You know, there's something called the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is where, you know, in select cities around the United States, this is out in the open kind of press. It's kind of a multi-agency effort to, you know,

track down, and of course, deter terrorist attacks on America. Ironically, I was there. I was assigned to that unit in New York as an agency officer. But we were gone that day. And why it's relevant is my daughter's daycare center was in World Trade Center 5. And just, you know, and, you know, the legends, the wrong word. It's, you know, what we had heard afterwards

is some kids were orphaned From from that day of care center. We just just by by dumb luck just weren't there that day and About five days later I was able to talk away on to you know the first the some of the first flights coming back in or Maybe it was a week later in the United States and I immediately went to work and I was you know working with the bureau in New York City But what kind of changed certainly my life and my career was walking through the wreckage in Ground Zero and just absolutely surreal. It's still smoldering. I mean, it was smoldering. It was on fire for weeks and months, but this was pretty intense. And I'll never forget walking through and this was I mean it was it was

surreal and there was I don't know if it was in New York City firefighter or a policeman but it was in full kind of Scottish garb playing the bagpipes walking through the wreckage just I get chills even thinking about it now and we all knew like all right this is you know every day September 12th now and and probably not not for the rest of my career, because I did some other stuff afterwards on Russia, we can get to later, but the majority of the rest of my kind of professional life was going after Al Qaeda and going after terrorist groups, and that feeling that we had was extraordinary.

I was in New York City, and we knew who Elk Kite was. Certainly knew Ben Laden was. But there's a feeling at the agency that we failed. And perhaps it's not fair. It's almost like being a soccer goalie. One's going to get by. Well, the pretty goddamn big one got by. But the rest of us then kind of dedicated ourselves

the rest of our lives. And obviously you did as well, Sean, to track down those responsible for this and made it our mission. It's something that there's so many kind of retrospectives on certainly on Afghanistan. But ultimately I'm really proud of what we did. Because no matter what, there's so much controversy.

There's some great things that we did, obviously, you know, degrading and destroying al-Qaeda, including killing bin Laden. And there's some things which are super controversial, you know, enhanced interrogation techniques and Gitmo and other things like that. But I tell you know, no matter when I go around the country talking to folks, you know, and they will raise these things and I'll say say where we hit again And the answer is no and that's because of the work of special operations community the intelligence community and what we did at CIA And I'm super proud of that. Oh, but boy that day changed everything what How long was it before you went over to the Middle East after 9-11? pretty soon I was yeah, I was I was

Raised my hand and throwing a bit of a fit. And so I then made it to a North African country, which was a close partner of ours. And so we ran counterterrorism operations from there. And then I first made it to Afghanistan. I believe February of 02. So not one of the first teams that went in. I think that was October of 2001,

but by February of 02, I was in Condahar, which was absolute Wild West. Yeah. Really extraordinary time. It taught me a hell of a lot about myself. Also taught me some things about the agency that I think we've gotten away from a bit, but which we're good was just get there and we'll figure it out.

I mean, so as a regular case officer, you know, not, you know, with what you're doing, and you're line of work for the agency, but, you know, so we'll go through some weapons training before we go out there. So you got a couple weeks on, on kind of the Glock and the M4. And then you get out to the real world and what the fuck are the M4s? Well, now, grab an AK-47 to figure this shit out. There's no fucking, you know, scope on it or anything like that. It's a just a You know steel site right there, and so it's you know, but it was it was exciting

I know that that was that to me is what made the agency really great. No X-Fill plans will sort of you know someone will come get us here there. There's a couple people You know, it was it was such a wild time in Afghanistan in the beginning, kind of hunting down high-value targets. And so it was just pretty amazing. And then that's really where I saw kind of the extraordinary cooperation between the special operations

community and the military. I'm sorry, and the agency. Really start, which is really interesting because those first, and it was a rock in Afghanistan in the O203 time frame, but then, all the way up to when I left, those relationships all stayed. So the junior guys from fifth group,

and I remember Chris Miller ended up being the acting secretary of defense, remember the under-truck administration. I remember him as a fifth group guy. I met in 2002. And so those are really important relationships that are built over time. But getting Afghanistan was important. I wasn't there for long.

It was probably under a month. I mean, that had to be a insane. I got a story that just this is the way we do things. And I was actually fine with it. I remember getting there and someone said, hey, you know, you got about a four hours of sleep and you got guard duty on the roof. I'm like, okay, so I jumped up on there.

There's an 84 up there. And some, I'm coming off and the guy gives it to me he says, you know, here, take this. And I'm like, I've not been trained on this. You know, we have the system like, what the fuck? He was actually, he was a black-water guy from, it was a former seal, it was up there and I'm like, can you fucking, wait five minutes and show me which way this thing fucking shoots?

And he's laughing, and it wasn't that hard. But it was just, and I'm sitting, sitting up there thinking, and I'll never forget this. You know, I'm a CI case officer, I speak Arabic, so that's why I'm there. Because we're chasing down the al-Qaeda, the Arabs. Obviously, the majority of al-Qaeda were from the Arab world. This wasn't going after Taliban, going after the Afghans. But I'm sitting on the roof, listening to the call to prayer.

There's some automatic weapons firing in the background. We had the day before we got there, we had someone to shot a rocket and kind of zinged off another roof and almost took out the base, but we're fine. But I'm like, what a fucking opportunity this is. This is cool as shit that I'm here. Now, there's some things I'm really good at. So, we're going to recruit agents. We're going to catch some bad guys.

Some things I don't know God damn think about, which is how to fire an AT4. But, you know what, we're just going to make it work. And we had a great team, we're co-located with an ODA. It was a night, it was a 19th group team. That makes sense from Colorado. So these were really experienced, you know, operators from special forces, you know, most of them who were, I guess it's that thing, it's about a Colorado, but ultimately a great bunch and Kabul station might have been a billion miles away. They're just like, go, I have money,

I had agents on the ground, supposed to go find some, we obviously had lists of high-value targets. And this is, there's so many incredible times from that, but I don't know if you recall, before the invasion in Afghanistan, there's a famous scene in Condahar of the Taliban hanging a whole bunch of what they called agents.

And in the soccer stadium, and this was broadcast worldwide. One of the really amazing things was, as I got there, we actually found the widow. And one of them was an agent of ours. Someone who worked for the agency. We found the widow and I kind of made it my priority to give her kind of the death benefit,

the payments that we will give. When an agent is killed in line of duty, a foreigner, we will always take care of the family. That's just something that the agency does. And that's, again, you know, when an agent is killed in line of duty, a foreigner, you know, we will always take care of the family. That's just something that the agency does. And that's, you know, it's one of the, again, we talked about the relationships before, yeah, between the agent and the case officer or just the organization. So I tracked her down and this wasn't a kind of a sexy operation. It wasn't written about anywhere, but I got some money that the agent was owed.

written about anywhere, but I got some money that the agent was owed and I went into some dingy little mud hut in Condohar City. I couldn't talk to the wife directly because it was in Afghanistan such a traditional culture. And so it literally was like a curtain hang between us. And she of course is fully covered. And I made some kind of silly speech, which I thought was kind of, you know, very, very relevant about his sacrifice because it was all over, you know, every, every media outlet and the entire planet that this person had been executed.

And we gave the payment, and that was something that was really important. Now, you know, how this ends, who knows? Did she ever ever get this? She probably had a whole bunch of male relatives, who stole the money, but it was just night after night of just doing these things. And I just having, you know, feeling that, you know,

what an opportunity this was, that I was honored to be able to do this kind of stuff. And again, different time of Afghanistan, this was only months after 9-11. We were eager to kind of track down, track down, you know, those responsible. So, what were you, did you go on overseas prior? to kind of track down those responsible. What were you, had you gone overseas prior,

I know you earlier you said you were in New York, it's a go-to for that. I had done, I could be careful saying this, my wife was in the business as well. She was on her first tour in a country in the Levant in the Middle East, and I went to learn Arabic. Okay. I actually took that Arabic. Okay.

I actually took that time. One of the things the agency does really well is these tandem assignments. So, if two officers are married, they'll try to get people both jobs. And so she had a great job there, and I needed to learn Arabic, so I did my time there.

Breeze and I'm asked is, when I worked there and I assisted you guys with a lot of operations, I always, it was always kind of talk around the outfit that I was in is you guys are coming from working in permissive environments, then you show up to just a straight war zone, Kandahar and O2, and your guys

as adaptability is phenomenal. But a lot of times you show up and you're like, well, you might not wanna go out there, by yourself and you might wanna carry a little extra stuff. And I was just wondering, what is that? Cause that's just a completely different world to go from you know just what what you're right to to and our Afghanistan. There are those who can do to make that transition and those who can't I'll never

feel when I left there so I I I followed a case officer who had been in special forces. And he was certainly more, in terms of his background was more conducive to being, where it was, but then I showed up and I spoke Arabic, and I was comfortable in that environment. So I offered, he had some things that he offered and I had some things that I offered. I remember when I left, the officer coming in was not, shouldn't have been there.

And sometimes you see that, but what's interesting, why this matters is the management in the base or the station. And so, for example, because I did both, I ran stations in permissive environments, and I ran a base in a paramilitary environment. It was in Eastern Afghanistan. We got rocketed every day for the entire year. It was insane. So someone who didn't have military experience, or hadn't been in that kind of environment before, I would say, okay, here you are, and you're going to go to your agent meetings, you're going to have your security personnel, like yourself, Sean. Ordinarily, we telecast officers, you make all the decisions. When it comes to that op case officers, you make all the decisions. When it comes to that op and safety, you're going to listen to someone else today. So if we

got shooters with us, they're going to be the ones just rely on them. At the same time, sometimes I would get officers who came from a war zone, had a spectacular career to a permissive environment. And they're like, hey, man, I did a tour. And I'm like, well, sort of. Because what you did do is you served your country for a year in a really shitty place and risked your life. But you know what, you never ran a surveillance detection route because Sean, you guys ran a forum.

You know what I mean? And so you gotta be able to adapt. And the case officer has to have some humility. One of the things I worked really well with your old outfit because number one, I respected what you all brought to the table and it tremendous fashion, but it was also, I was like, okay, if the hair starts going up in the back of your neck, get us out of this. I'm not going to question that. I might have an agent meeting. This agent might have information we desperately need,

but if Sean, if you come to me, said, Mark, we got to get out of here, we're getting out of here. And you know, you just kind of have that kind of back and forth with your security folks. And to me, that was always always, because I mean, you got to have some humility. I don't know certain things, parts of what are required and the security side. And perhaps you all don't know what's required for the agent handling as much, but you kind of have that kind of mind meld together and it can work. It doesn't always. There's some tension sometimes.

Yeah. And I would have to talk sometimes to this security personnel or to our case officers saying, just get your shit together. We all got to work together. But at the end of the day, when you run operations, there's a fallback, which means if you've you gotta get off the X, get off the X. Yeah. And because, you know, there's no, you can't,

you know, bullets, bullets gonna come at you and you can't turn that around. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah. And I think after some terrible instances in the war zones where we lost people, I think people got smarter.

Yeah. How many deployments did you do in war zones where we lost people. I think people got smarter. Yeah. How many deployments did you do in war zones? So I did, I gotta be careful in saying this. So it was, you know, probably almost three years altogether off and on, but it was a solid year. In 2011, 2012, I was chief in Eastern Afghanistan in Petika province. And then before that, it was my time in Afghanistan

and then happy year on Iraq and then some other places I can't always talk about. But it was enough where I became really comfortable in that environment. And it's important for a couple of reasons. I'm not former military. So I was very cognizant of that. And so if I was a base chief in a paramilitary base,

I would have someone from our special activities center as a kind of the chief paramilitary advisor. And I would have some security folks from your old outfit there as well. And maybe some other folks too. And so, man, it's a team effort. And so if we're taking incoming rocket fire and we have the ability and the authority to return fire, I'm going to rely on people who know how to do that. So, you know, I might

give the final okay, or I might just say, don't even ask me. You know, we have the point of origin site. We're getting shot at by al-Qaeda across the board in Pakistan, return fire with our mortars. That's, I'm good with that. And you kind of, but you know what you know. Yeah. And so it was, but I became really comfortable in those environments. And that's what I was kind of known for. And I think that not everyone can do that.

But it's just a place where I thrive because I also brought that kind of the operational side of things. So again, I was a good recruiter. I mean, I was also singly focused. I think that, I remember when I got to Afghanistan, even much later on, 2011 or 2012, and for a variety of reasons, I really was super aggressive. This is coming off kind of a terrible tragedy

what happened in one of our sister bases in coast. In December 30th, 2009, so a lot of us wanted a lot of, you know, vengeance is the wrong word. We're not really supposed to, you know, taking vengeance out on our enemies. It's a very kind of calculated process on how we go after high-value targets. I mean, it's got to be based on kind of continuing,

non-going threats to US personnel, but the idea of killing, you know, killing al-Qaeda members or collecting intelligence to do so. And I'll tell the proudest story I had in a war zone was from my time. In 2011, I got to the base. I'll never forget flying in. I was replacing a great friend of mine. I ranically who I'd been up in Northern Iraq with.

In 2002, his name is Mick Mulroy. He's out now and he talks. He's a former Grand Branch officer in Special Activities Center. Then he went on to be a station chief in Africa. Super great friend of mine. Again, we had spent months together in Iraq and I'm flying into to Afghanistan. If you recall, our helo infills are always at night and we're flying in and this base took incoming in a hundred and seven millimeter rocket fire constantly. And so we're flying in and this base took incoming you know, hundred and seven millimeter rocket fire, you know, constantly. And so we're hovering until kind of the IDF finish and we go down there and,

you know, it's pretty folks. Um, someone picked me up and we can get to a kind of a, the, the, hard and shelter the base. And I'm, I'm, I'm there for a year. This is my base. And I'm like, what the fuck have I got myself in, dude? Which, which is, it's the right, it's the right attitude. Yeah. And, uh, and, uh, and mix there with a big smile in his face.

He's like, hey man, welcome. And he couldn't wait to get out of there, too. So we do a quick turn over and he's on the verge. And he's gone. But one of the things about that particular location is a couple years earlier, two C.I. officers had been killed from our special activities, center, and we knew who did it and so you know, there's a lot of things you can do

You know, so we're there trying to win hearts and minds We have all of our kind of humanitarian projects and we also have our the HVT mission and I gather everyone in the base And I said if we do anything in this next year we're gonna get we're gonna kill the dude Who's responsible for the death of two of our colleagues. And we did. You did? Yep. And the night where a hell of fire missile

ended the life of a really bad guy, because it's not only responsible for killing two of our officers, but he was plotting additional attacks and responsible for additional attacks against American forces. And that's really important too, but that night sitting around the fire pit, which is, as you remember, it's caveman TV. The single greatest moments I've had in war zones are places like that.

I think you know, the camaraderie. If you ask me, what do I miss about CI? It's not the bureaucracy. There's a whole bunch of bad shit that happened to me in the end, but is that camaraderie around the fire pit in a war zone? But one of the guys with me there was like, hey man, I have the phone number back and Fort Bragg of the widow of one of these officers. We should call her.

That's fucking unheard of. Wow. And I said, fuck it, get the sad phone. And we called her. And we said, we avenge the death of your husband and she just said, thank you. Holy shit. No cables just said, thank you. Holy shit. No cables.

Yeah, I just, and that to me, we sat around, had a toast of bourbon. And that was, that was relatively early on in my year, but I was like, that was good, man. That felt good. And I've talked about this story before. And some people have criticized me as saying, you know, that's just, you know, getting, you know, kind of getting vengeance

for something that happened in the past, but not, you know, the code is, you know, these people, you know, this individual took out two of our guys and we got them in the end, and I freaking love that story. That's interesting that you say that, and that's one of my next questions is since we're on the topic of killing.

Yeah. One thing that I noticed is killing is a lot more... People don't get so emotional about it when I was in the SEAL teams. Right. Whenever we killed somebody or took out a group of bad guys or whatever, it felt more like an accomplishment. Yeah.

When I jumped over to the agency, what I noticed is there's a lot more emotion within agency personnel when it comes to, when it comes to killing bad guys. Yeah. What was that like? And I know where you were at in Afghanistan, you know, Candid-ahar, extremely dangerous place. Where you're talking about an East Afghanistan,

probably even worse. A time magazine called my old base, the most dangerous place on the planet. Yeah. That's fun when you go home to your wife and you say, hey, I gotta go to Afghanistan for a year and she's like, are you going to Kabul? I'm like, yeah, maybe not.

But I guess what I'm getting at is because of the areas that you were hanging out and there's not a doubt in my mind that you're directly responsible for the deaths of several bad guys. What was that like for you emotionally, mentally, the first time that you were directly responsible? Oh, it was a great question. You know, it's, I was flat. There wasn't anything. You know, it happened actually first in Iraq. And I'll never forget this because as I was,

this was this was probably March, April of 03. And I'm running around with, you know, some of your old, your old buddies. This is with Dev Group, and because we were doing the HPT hunt, but occasionally, and then I would work with some of the other NSW units there, which actually, for probably a variety of reasons, were actually, it was easier to work with them, because they're really eager to kind of jump on board, and we were doing some other things,

but I remember collecting intelligence on the location of remember the old Fedeine Saddam these are the Iraqi regulars and so I had the geocords and you know we're somewhere in Baghdad and I freaking knock on a fucking Bradley fighting vehicle that was nearby and I was like hey or take this And they're like fucking game on and then you hear that fucking, that were of whatever, I don't know what caliber weapon comes out of a, out of the Bradley, but God damn. And afterwards I was just like, that was fucking crazy.

So we, some bad guys we killed. That was, that was a little weird. I think that it was different from me because I then saw on the ground. I mean, there's, you know, this is the infill into Baghdad, there's a lot of dead bodies around. That stuff fucked me up when I came back. I had some PTSD after that.

Yeah. Different than doing the CT mission in Afghanistan where just 100 percent, it's kind of clinical. You're collecting intelligence, passing it to certain, either certain US government entities that can kind of do the finish. And then they're gone. And but I didn't see it up close. Did you ever watch it happen? Yeah, all the time.

How did that feel? And in person too, watching airstrikes. I don't know, it just be, you know, I be, this is maybe it's a dig on me, I became almost obsessive with it. You know, there's, remember the old, that old, it's a dig on me, I became almost obsessive with it. Remember the old, that old, it's still around the Longword Journal? Yeah.

So the Longword Journal kind of covered the HVT fight in Afghanistan. And when they'd run an article that said, you know, senior Taliban or senior al-Qaeda member killed by drone strike, I'd fucking cut that thing out and put it up in the base. Nice. And we had that shit covered everywhere. Nice. And that's what motivated me. But it wasn't, it was, there was never high fives, it was

kind of a feeling of calm. Yeah. Weird. You know, so years later, and you know, when I was at Walter Reed kind of getting, you know, getting treatment for my traumatic brain injury. I remember I met this is a great, very grizzled, the one person who helped me the best there was a grizzled old Marine Corps chaplain, Chappy. And I'd seen all sorts of psychiatrists and psychologists just asking me about how I was doing. And so he sat and I was with one dev group guy,

one Navy EOD guy, one Air Force, a CCTV. And he said, okay, let me just, let's just talk about moral injury. And he said, is anyone here feel any regret for any of the killing you've done? And everyone kind of said, no. And he goes, all right, let's move on. And so it was the same kind of thing.

It wasn't, I was not traumatized by that. I was okay with it. I don't know. You know, and kind of the issues I've had afterwards were not really, didn't really surround that. I'll tell you what doesn't know. You know, and kind of the issues I've had afterwards didn't really surround that. I'll tell you what doesn't happen. There's no high fives. There's no cheering involved.

I never saw any of that. It's just become, because it's just, again, everyone had to remember every day with September 12th. Yeah. I've seen both. I've seen people be devastated because of it. I've seen people get really excited about it.

And then the people that do it all the time, it's kind of like, all right, let's go get some dinner. Yeah, that was it. Let's go get some chow, get ready for tomorrow. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think that, you know, and then I was involved in some other types of activities like that over the years outside of the war zones. And so, you know, ultimately, just something that we did. Now, some people don't like that. I mean, you know, the agency is an interesting place because there are people

to this day who didn't support kind of the, what are you going to call the targeted killing program, which was 100% legal and lawful, or they get very upset about things like the enhanced interrogation techniques in this and that. For whatever reason, just with me, it really doesn't bother me. I understand for moral reasons why some people get upset by it, but don't get involved in counterterrorism operations. There's an ugly side to this. Yeah.

And, and, you know, the men and women I know who were involved in this kind of stuff. I mean, you'd go to your local, I don't know what you got here in Tennessee, Safeway, Publix, Giant, grocery store. They look like normal people. They're not super men or super women, but they were comfortable in doing what we had to do.

Yeah, and to me that was, I have no regrets on any of that. And even when people really get upset about the whole issue about torture, and I get it. And probably we shouldn't have done some of those things, but I don't lose sleep over it. It's weird, I just, I'm being super honest in this interview, I just, it doesn't bother me.

Maybe it should. Have you ever said in with a advanced interrogation? I was not, I was, I was once in an interrogation not with a, with an Arab intelligence service where they started, they started abusing the titanium. We told them to stop. Yeah, they played by another several. Yeah, and it was just, they were stupid.

And they actually, it caused a bit of a, bit of a stink, but I never, it's a, and then so, you know, again, I talk about this stuff to groups all the time. They're like, well, first of all, they don't believe me. How are you not involved in any of the EIT stuff with all this, your counterterrorism experience? I just wasn't. Maybe it's luck. I certainly, when I was in Condahar in 02, I remember going to some of the initial, you know,

doing debriefs in prisons with some of the initial alkyt of members who were caught, but this was, this was basically what he gets a battlefield interrogation. I was nothing. And I'll tell you one thing. And this, this, and my wife and I talk about this all the time, we're like, are we bad people for not caring about this? Because I really, it doesn't bother me. And maybe that's something that's wrong with me is,

I, you know, this is in February and March of 2002. These are al-Qaeda, these are Arab al-Qaeda fighters taken off the battlefield, who were in some shitty tents somewhere being guarded. And I would look at them and I was like, these people would gut your sister. You put them on the streets of America, they would kill every American possible.

I mean, I sound, you know, they the streets of America, they would kill every American possible. I mean I sound you know, it's scary. It's scary is the wrong word. They're just fucking evil. They would do it. They would. And so when it comes you know so so my I guess my view on some of these things whether in the handstand interrogation techniques are it's it for me it's not the moral side of things more and is it effective or not? That's where that's you know that's where I come out and and a lot of people say it's not. A lot of things more and is it effective or not? That's where I come out. And a lot of people say it's not. A lot of people say it is.

But after seeing the AQ folks up close and personal and there's a lot of people who are very active in defending folks at Gitmo, defending some of the senior AQ folks who were subject to enhanced interrogation, I got no time for that. Yeah. Because these are evil motherfuckers. And I'm telling, I remember having this, you know, so I grew up in, again, my dad was college professor and, you know, I'm pretty center of the road politically. He's super,

you know, on the left. And I remember coming back from Afghanistan when I saw him one time and I said, I said, Dad, man, I saw these people. Like, they've got black in their eyes. And I'll never forget my dad and my stepmom or just like, I fucking kill all of them. That's awesome. That's awesome. I don't know, it's a really weird personal thing for a lot of us who did counterterrorism operations,

but I don't lose any sleep over it. And the other part too is, I don't think it's ever going to happen again. You know, we're not going to do those kind of things. You know, the targeted killing, which is, which is really regimented and lawful, the agency, you know, under covert action or authorities will, you know, probably continue to, I imagine, you know, be involved in this. In terms of enhanced interrogation, it's so controversial.

We're never going to go near that again. And so, you know, people, remember when I think former President Trump in the campaign said something about he was for, like, that's not even a relevant issue. No CIA officer is gonna go near something like that for a billion years.

For a billion years, it's just- How is your season getting to the public? Yeah, I know. That's what I want to know. Yeah. Is how does that even get into the public? Yeah. Is it leaked? Well, about the, you know, there know. That's what I want to know. Is how does that even get into the public? Yeah. Is it leaked?

Um, well, about the, you know, there was obviously the black sites got leaked. Um, uh, uh, but again, I, again, I, it's just, it's, it's, I, I don't think we're ever going to do it again. It's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a dumb debate to have. Yeah. Um, it is interesting, you know, you know, how we got there. Um, but to me, what, what is not really, uh, you know, known we got there. But to me, what is not really, you know, known,

you know, I hear, you know, former acting directors, C.I. Mike Morrell, I'll talk very passionately saying, this shit worked. Yeah, it's effective. It's effective. I don't know. You know, if there's a, if there's a ticking time bomb, what do you do?

If you were director of C.I. right now, yeah, will. Yeah, we'll be doing that now just because it's too controversial Okay, and they worth it It's just you know, it is that's what I that's what I say it. It's you know now now I should should the CIA You know conduct you know lethal operations you kinetic operations absolutely Because we're fucking good at it. I mean, the one of the things that I found amazing, and I was, you know, later on in my career, I was, I was involved in some of these kind of unique programs. I'll kind of leave it at that is our ability to do man hunting is extraordinary. And that's when you marry up, you know, human intelligence spies on the ground with ISR, which is obviously view from the sky, whether it's aircraft drones, and then signals intelligence, SIGINT. Our ability to track someone anywhere around the world is unmatched. And we're really good at it. And Americans didn't die because of that. So we had decades under

multiple administrations, whether it's George W. Bush, whether it's Barack Obama, whether it's President Trump, and now with Biden, that, you know, we have a unique ability to track someone globally, and we're really good at it. And thank God we are, and I got no problem with that, because, you know, again, when it comes to Al Qaeda going back to that time in February, March, 2002, I'm looking at, and al-Qaeda detainee, like, these people will gut your sister. Yeah. There's no rehabilitation.

And sometimes you gotta go kill these people. I learned a lot of the, a lot of lessons I think over the years from working with the Israelis, who kind of have that attitude. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're chopping our reporter's heads off on national television.

That's right. And I think Americans forget that. Yeah, I mean, you're chopping our reporter's heads off on national tellers. That's right. And I think Americans forget that. Yeah, I mean, you know, when you think back, do you remember a couple of years ago when the drone strike killed Gossam Soleimani? Mm-hmm. Again, you know, what did that tell you? We have an amazing ability to do this.

Now, you know, that's something that has been honed over two decades. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I, I, I, I, I sound like a crazy person saying this, but I'm pretty damn proud of, of our ability to do that because it's protected Americans. Period. Does it, so speaking of tracking people, yeah. Do you get, especially with the SIG and stuff? Yeah. Because I remember when I came on, and I started seeing some of the capabilities that we had, and that was, I mean, shit, that was 10, 15 years ago now. So I can't even imagine what we have now, but when I left, it made me very paranoid knowing how effective we are.

Do you have any paranoia? Well, I mean, it's paranoid is a wrong word. I mean, it's all self-inflicted. So what do you want to do every day? I'm an idiot, I'm on Twitter and, I mean, it's paranoid is a wrong word. I mean, it's all self-inflicted. So, what do you wanna do every day? I'm an idiot, I'm on Twitter and, and all family members on Facebook, Instagram. So, how do you think we do this stuff? So, and Americans have this incredible willingness

to put their whole life on social media. Well, guess what, that's a targeting package for someone. You you can choose not to do that. Now I'm probably not disciplined enough and I, you know, tweeted about too many stupid things like my love of the Red Sox and, you know, all this kind of stuff. But ultimately, I'm here in Nashville now, so we went out to Bourbon steak last night. Well, I was tweeting about it today. It's the best damn steak I ever had. I told you about my $112 steak. My wife and I is 25th wedding anniversary, but ultimately is we, there's so much out there. And so that is sort of when you talk about SIG

and I'm talking about open source. But so in adversary and just as we can track everything about you, what are you, so Sean, I don't know your social media profile, but if you're just kind of like the average American, we can probably tell where you're going 24 hours a day. Yeah. And that means our adversaries can do this to us as well.

And so there is, but a lot of it is what we decide, we elect to put, you know, some of my friends, one of my friends, you know, lives out in Montana now and he's like off the grid. Yeah, I get super paranoid sometimes and I do the whole turn the phone off, throw it in the other room, go outside, and I still do that.

Right. But it's not, you can be paranoid about our own government. You can be paranoid about our adversaries. But but the, but I mean, I don't know, probably a private detective. Yeah. Be tracking you. Again, it's everything we have. Your entire life is on your cell phone, your computer. You know, I mean, what, so I don't know, what did I do the other day? I was, I was looking at my wife and I are now obsessed about buying an RV So I was on just on the internet Googling RVs, you know, these I saw him here these like these little small win-a-bago revolts pretty cool

They're too expensive. Well goddamn every time I jump on my social media now boom There's some algorithm RVs pop up everywhere You know, and so it's just, it's a kind of thing where, you know, you can be a little paranoid, but again, you know, that's how, you know, what, how adversaries can track us, that's how we track them, and it's just,

that's the world. So, I mean, that's a whole other conversation, but imagine trying to run espionage operations, trying to become a cake as a case officer. You gotta go run a surveillance detection group, but you have that, you know, the kind of the advent of social media and how people can track you.

And you gotta go black. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Earlier offline we were talking, and you had mentioned, believe it was one of my colleagues saved your life. Yeah. And got a agency star.

I just thought, sure. Can we go in there? Absolutely. So this was a, it was a, it was a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, And we caught someone who we had to do a quick kind of battlefield interrogation on, who we thought would have knowledge or the HBT was. And the initial search failed to find a giant kind of machete. It's huge knife on him. And I'm in this small vehicle afterwards. And as you remember, how you position yourself

in these is really important. So one of your old colleagues, we put the guy in the back here, your old colleague is here, so he could have kind of a view just across the seat. And this guy goes down and pulls this giant knife out and lunges at me. And can we say the old outfit were you at?

Do we say that or not? Yeah, the GRS staff, security staff, he pulled out his block, put it right to his head and didn't shoot him, but that was it. I would have just jammed that knife right in me. So obviously I was quite indebted afterwards the GRS officer received the intelligence star, which is one of the agency's highest awards for bravery.

Certainly, 100% warranted. Of course, as you know, with your old outfit, it turned into, it wasn't really a giant knife. Giant machete, it was a little bread, plastic, you know, bread knife. So all your colleagues gave him shit for years and years, but I'll tell you one thing, that was pretty great. So you know, I evolved all the times,

I mean, that was close. Yeah. And afterwards, I was just like, and it happened so quickly, afterwards I was like, what the fuck just happened? And then I turned to the seals, I was like, you didn't fucking search the guy. Well enough, they were like, hey, sorry about that.

And I was like, my bad. But search the guy. Well enough, they were like, hey, sorry about that. I was like, my bad. But afterwards that guy talked, and later that night, we caught a huge HVT. Really? And actually, it was the pace of operations there where I was joking before as we were talking. I don't think I took a shower. I even run in water and shower for six weeks. It was wild before as we were talking. I don't think I took a shower. I wouldn't, you know, I would know run and water and shower for six weeks.

It was, it was, it was wild, but we were running every night trying to catch. This is, this is, remember this Saddam Hussein's deck of 55, you know, the old regime figures, but we had some enormous huge successes there. Yeah, it was, I almost bought the farm on that one. And so, and again, it was, you know, the, the, the, the G the Geras officer, save my butt,

turn out to be becoming a dear friend of ours. And I talked about loyalty and camaraderie. I remember years later, and it's probably from his time in the team, but also from, from, I remember calling him one time, and I don't know, this was a couple years after that. My kid was like 10 or 11, got into a fight at school.

And I'm gonna accidentally say his name. I shouldn't, he was living down Virginia Beach. He's like, I'll be there in three hours. I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, he's 11. He's like, I got it. That was the loyalty. I'm like, no, you're not coming.

That's awesome. So, but you know, that's, that's, you know, when you go back to the, you know, those, so whether it was, you know was in the streets of Baghdad with the GRS or again, with my team in Eastern Afghanistan, and think about all the deployments you did, that kind of camaraderie you can't miss.

I'm sorry, you can't replicate. That's what I miss from being in the organization because it's, you look to the left and the right and see your brothers and sisters, and that's it. And a lot of times we're not thinking big picture on stuff. You know, we have a job at hand, there's an operation at hand. I'm not thinking about the geostrategic value of Afghanistan or Iraq, but it's going through those times

and just those kind of those intense moments. I'm even, and I mean, again, that I've been getting rocketed every day for a year. I didn't have a large clock in Afghanistan for that whole year. It was hilarious. I'll kite it every day for a year, 6am, 107 millimeter rockets coming down. Damn. Don't go running. Then every day was, you know, it was, they were stupid. They were too predictable because then, you know, it sometimes didn't happen. And sometimes it happened when the helos would come in.

But that's where you kind of forge these relationships. And one of the things that I still do is there's a great little dive bar in Northern Virginia called the Viennén. It's a famous agency hangout. But from the people I serve with, whether it's in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, other places, you know, we still meet up there. Because those are the relationships that are really important to me. I have nothing to do with what they became later, how high they got in life. They don't give a shit about my career in terms of, I was very senior at the end of my

career. I just remember those times. I just, story after story. I mean, I just, we just had a reunion there recently and we're talking about, there was a, it was a, he was a ground branch contractor, former, former deaf group guy who loved animals. And we were co-located with a special forces team.

And they fucking shot, and we had a dog, curly the dog. I mean, I sent pictures of curly back to my kids, like, you know, fourth grade class. And these fuckers across the way shot our dog. They claimed he had tried to bite one of the SF guys. And I remember going to the captain there and we both of us were like, fuck, I said, first of all, you killed our dog.

Second of all, we got a crazy person back at our base, who was a former sniper for DevGroup who's now going to come after your guys. And he's like seriously for killing a dog. He's like, yep, he loves animals. You guys are a deep shit and he's like, what are we going to do? Just crazy stuff like that. So I've been, yeah, I've seen that happen many times.

Cats, dogs, you name them dog, curly dog. But let's take a quick break. When we come back, let's get into Moscow and Havana center. Sure, sure. Absolutely. Hey guys, I want to tell you about Kachava, my all in one daily super blend. If your word you aren't getting all the nutrients you need

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That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A.com slash shot. I am finally going to get to take my family down to Florida for some relaxing beach and pool time this summer. It's something we have been looking forward to for a while now. We just haven't had the time in the past to do things like this. But we do now. And being a business owner, the last thing you want to spend your time on

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Ready for the URL? It's zippercruder.com slash SRS. That's where you can try it for free. Again, that zippercruder.com slash SRS. All right, Mark, we're back from the break and we're moving into your service in Moscow now. Right, right before you got the Vannis Syndrome. Sure. What were you doing over there?

So, you know, after all my time, this running counterterrorism operations, I think, you know, this was in about 2015 or so. The DDO, the Deputy Director of Operations, the kind of the lead head spy, it's the I called me up and said, you know, enough here, enough counterterrorism work. And we need you to get back to doing some kind of more traditional kind of headquarters management assignments for, I can't remember why, for one reason or another,

probably my kids, I was gonna stay in the DC area for a bit. So, it was kind of moving up the ranks. And so, first I was the deputy ops chief for the old Middle East, and then I became the deputy operations chief for what we call Europe and Eurasia, which is overseeing about, I don't know, 50 or so countries from Ireland to the most Eastern time zone in Russia. And it was kind of interesting. And so I

was promoted to the senior intelligence service, which is kind of a big deal for someone in their clothing, only 4% of CI officers kind of rise, that ranks. It's like the general officer category in the military. So you're a one-star general or admiral. So really big deal for me. I didn't for other reasons. Didn't always feel like I deserved it. You know, great operational successes and some terrible failures too, but I was promoted.

And I was sent to oversee operations essentially across Europe and Eurasia, but really focused on Russia. I was not a Russia expert. I'd never been there. So I did what, you know, even going back to our first part of our conversation, you know, you need some area of fam. So I was like, I got to take a trip to Moscow to see what Russia's like. And to see the ambassador there was a guy by the name of John Huntsman, really, you know,

an elder statesman in the, in the US government, I think it had been governor of Utah. And it was ambassador in Beijing and ambassador in Moscow. but I wanted to get the lay of the land. And also, amazingly enough, as a senior officer, I was supposed to meet my Russian counterparts. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB would meet. And to this day, we still have kind of liaison relationship, which is just having an open channel. And we do this with our adversaries. That's okay. that's actually pretty smart

to have that ability to talk kind of under the table. So I decided to take a trip to Moscow in December of 2017, it was 10 days, it was actually to Moscow and to St. Petersburg. And again, area famed and to meet my counterparts in the Russian security services. And it was obviously a trip that changed my life. I wish I had never taken it.

It was the irony is that after all the kind of craziness I talked to you about in my years in the Middle East and South Asia, getting shot at and rocketed and all the, stuff, escaping, you know, the harm. I go on a trip where I'm wearing a, you know, a business suit, standing at a five-star hotel in Moscow, but it changed my life. What did you do? So, Havana Syndrome, they've, this is, I thought this was in one spot, Cuba. Right. And then we talked, found out it was in Russia, And it's also been documented in Germany, China, England, Austria, India, Russia, Latin America, Cuba, United States, inside the United States, Philadelphia,

Washington, D.C., to include inside the White House grounds. So it's a, this is a, it's one of these stories that's a mystery. And I think to, to kind of put this in perspective, you know, because there's no doubt something happening. And I'll tell you what I faced and kind of the initial attack, because it was pretty awful. But to put this in perspective, think about, you know, Agent Orange from the Vietnam era. Think about Gulf War Syndrome.

From the first Gulf War, think about burn pits, you pits, something that's really prevalent now in the news. John Stewart, the comedian, has been an incredible support for veterans who have been seconded by the burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's where this lies. These are medical mysteries that happen to our national security professionals where eventually people are really harmed by it. Eventually we find out what it is. So just kind of keep that in mind. But look, in 2016 in Havana, Cuba, the US Embassy there,

there was a rash of these kind of mysterious injuries in which US intelligence officers and diplomats, as well as a Canadian embassy staff, heard this kind of high-pitched sound, but really suffered debilitating injuries. One of my colleagues there, a good friend of mine now, and it's incredible what's happened to him. I mean, he was subject to an attack like this, and he lost eyesight.

He's blind in one eye, he walks with a weighted vest as a service dog. This is someone who is serving in Havana, which is tip of the spear stuff. Cuban intelligence service is no joke. And so we're going to send people there who are at the top of their game. But this happened in 2016. And I really didn't think much of it. There was always a suspicion. Obviously, the Cubans were involved, but perhaps the Russians were as well. And kind of in big investigation, it went nowhere. But we had dozens of US government officials who really suffered debilitating injuries.

Some had to be medically retired. And so that's the context when I go to Moscow in December 2017. And so I'm at a five-star hotel about two blocks from the US Embassy again a routine trip Didn't expect anything it was it was I mean wearing a business suit Something I had to do to kind of I thought for my credibility as a senior operations manager at our headquarters overseeing Russia I got to go visit Russia But I woke up in the middle of the night with a with and I didn't hear anything, but it was the stunning case of vertigo the room is spinning I terrible tonight isitus, which is ringing in my ears, probably you're familiar with that from

kind of exposures to blasts, but it was Tinnitus. I was splinting headache and I felt physically sick, but it was just this incredible case of vertigo, which was frankly terrifying. And again, I told you about all the kind of the crazy moments in my life before, my career, something really had happened. By the next morning, I went to a pharmacy with the US Embassy officer. It was some kind of medication to kind of control the vertigo. It got a little bit better, went to St. Petersburg for the night, came back, and then I got a suffered suffered another spell I remember to Moscow restaurant and almost passed out But the room spinning and then I spent the next 36 hours in my hotel room before I kind of crawled home But something awful happened to me and I was with a colleague as well

someone who worked for me traveling from headquarters He was hit by this as well. He has lost hearing in one of his ears And and so something awful happened that time. I get back to our headquarters in Medellite and my condition is actually getting worse. I go to our medical staff and I say, hey, something really bad happened in Moscow. I've heard of things like this in our folks in Havana. Can you just check me out? And they kind of ran through some Havana, the protocols that they had developed for officers who had been hit by this unknown ailment in Havana,

but they said they didn't see in that, that I kind of qualify for whatever, I didn't hear anything. They were very focused that I didn't actually hear anything, but my condition was getting worse. And again, this was, I was in the senior intelligence service, I was the deputy and then I became the acting chief of Europe, New Asia. This is a this is a job which you know a huge stepping stone

To the really most senior ranks, but I couldn't even go to work. I mean, I was having debilitating headaches every day I had one point by March of 2018. I lost the ability for long distance vision. I couldn't drive I had suffered terrible cognitive difficulties, brain fog, and I was fucked up. Something really bad had happened, and I started going to every doctor under the sun. Meanwhile, I'm asking the staff at CIA, and this is where kind of my whole

kind of life journey and story gets sad. I've given you my whole journey about some credible career at the agency with highs and lows, but with always the underlying assumption about the camaraderie and kind of the greatness of the people there. So this is where this derails because I'm going to the medical staff

and they're just totally dismissing me. So I'm off on my own. I went to every doctor under the sun, whether it's neurologist, infectious disease doctors, allergists, I think I had six or seven MRIs. No one could figure out what was going on, but I was really suffering. And at that point, I was going to about six or seven MRIs. No one could figure out what was going on, but I was really suffering.

And at that point, I was going to work two or three hours a day, but it just wasn't getting any better. And I was going through our operations directorate pleading for them to actually send me to the University of Pennsylvania where they had sent some of the Havana victims. And our off-summedical services kept rejecting me. And it just, you know, really, this is a really terrible tale of incompetence

because one of the things for me is, as a leader at CIA, but at this point again, I'm, you know, when I left in that last job or I'm telling you about, I probably managed one or 2,000 people. But the whole point is a leader is, if someone's hurting under your command, get him care.

You don't have to argue with what happened. It's just a fundamental, a tentative leadership. If something's wrong with someone, just get him help. You don't have to argue with them how it happened. But I was trying to get to University of Pennsylvania, they kind of rejected me outright. And so by July of, or by actually early spring of 2019 when I was turning 50 I was eligible for a tire I had to retire I couldn't go to work anymore. I remember going into you

know the deputy director of operations the DDO and telling her I had to kind of hang it up and she said will you please reconsider I want to make you one of the ADDOs. This is the number two or three you three operations officer in the entire organization. That's what they are offering me. And the only reason why I don't say that bragging at all, because as I mentioned before, I had a lot of success, a lot of failures too.

And one of the things I haven't mentioned, I think the biggest character trait for an intelligence officer is to have some humility and I have a lot of that. But the story I have now is, I'm not the story of a disgruntled employee. I was a really well-regarded officer who, again, was offered this incredibly senior job, but I had to retire. So, in July of 2019, I kind of call it quits, but I'm a mess. And things actually get worse. So, I retire at the very end,

the agency agreed to send me the National Institute of Health. So they did relent a little bit to a research, it's a five year research study, which was useless. They were good folks there. At NIH, the world renowned facility, I remember the highlight. So it's just testing. It's not designed to make me feel better,

and that matters later on when I end up going to Walter Reed. But one of the things that I was so pissed pissed at the end and I wasn't getting better and I wasn't getting the treatment. The agency said, whatever you do, when you go to NIH, don't tell them you're coming from CIA because we want to keep that secret. So I remember going to our store at CIA headquarters and buying about 30 CIA golf balls and the next day handing them out to all the staff at the NIH, that was my victory. So what the fuck, you know, whatever.

But ultimately I had to retire because of this, but that's really where kind of the medical journey begins because my condition really worsened in retirement, my pleadings to the agency, formally and informally in retirement and my pleadings to the agency, formally and informally, in retirement, to send me to Walter Reed's dramatic brain injury center, where some other officers actually started going to,

because they had been getting, so what happened to me in Moscow started happening, as I'm retiring, it's happening to some of my colleagues, also doing Russia operations. Really fun, weird. They are starting to get to Walter Reed because their TBI centers, they actually Walter Reed actually believes

something bad is happening. So I start asking informally to get there as well. And again, the answer was always no. And it caused me to take a decision, which certainly changed my life, which is to go public. So in October of 2020, which is to go public. So in October of 2020, I contacted a journalist named Julie Yaffe who writes for a GQ. At that time she's writing for GQ.

She's a Russian expert. She's a rock star. And I chose her very clearly and I had to talk with her. I said, I don't want you to tell my story, but I can't come out. Cross is a crazy person. But I just need you to tell the story because the story is designed to get to force the agency to send me to Walter Reed. They're sending other people there. They're saying no to sending me there.

And I need to go public with this. And just imagine Sean the idea of, you know, some in 26 years at the agency, my whole life was in the shadows. I did all this crazy CT shit. And now I'm actually gonna go and start, which is in essence, a public fight with CIA, which is what I did. And the blowback was severe and caused a lot of fucking heartache for me.

Yeah. I mean, this seems to be extremely targeted. It looks, in my research, everybody, everybody that's kind of come out has been a government official, and I believe it's said, I found half of the victims have been CIA personnel. One family was hit in China, and then hit again in Philadelphia. Then there's two different reports of personnel being hid in a staircase outside the White House and There's only three countries on record that have

Kind of dabbled in microwave weapons. Yep, US China Russia Well, so let me let me say first and foremost on this on this issue There's no doubt to me that something is happening. And what's interesting is, so after I went public, the reaction was, I'll talk about that in a second because that's more of a personal story, but we know the Russians have this.

It is an open source information. The Russians have dabbled in this technology and in these weapons and they've admitted it. As I've come along, you know, whether it's when, you know, in the Trump administration or the Biden administration, people across the aisle believe this is happening. So, you know, when I personally sat next to John Bolton, former National Security Advisor, he said, apps are fucking lootly because two of his people under his tutelage, under his command, were hit by this.

I had a beer with, again, Chris Miller, the former acting secretary defense and the Trump administration, former fifth group guy who I'd met years earlier in Iraq. And he said absolutely because there are U.S. military members who have been hit by this, who've come back, he met them. And then of course, just in dealing with bill burns and the current crop of national security officials.

But Russia has the expertise in this. And certainly I would say they would have the intent because it's taking Americans off the playing field. But there's a couple stories on this. There's three bins I put this story in. One is how the US government has treated us so poorly who have come forward on this and not getting health care. So there's an accountability piece because they screwed this up. The second bin is the health care piece and they're better at that. And then

the last is who's doing it, you know, culpability and what does that mean? And so it's all kind of interwoven, but it's been, you know, such a, it's been such a, for the victims of this. Again, I've met these people. I know these people, I've served with them in the field. A whole bunch of them have done Russian operations in the past, so it's pretty suspicious to me that they're being kind of hit right now. The bad part about it is, and this is why when I finally

made it to Walter Reed to the traumatic brain injury center, I identified so much with the seals or the Air Force combat controllers or others who are going through their own TBI's. It's the silent injury. Nobody believes you. So if you're a team guy and your fucking head's killing you and you're having depression and suicidal thoughts, but nothing looks bad on you, if you say I got to take a knee, everyone's gonna look at you a little weird.

Same thing with this, with what happened with the Havana Syndrome stuff is, I wish I'd been shot. But the me time, I have a splitting headache that never goes away. You know, I have it now. I've got some kind of cool new experimental treatment that's made it a lot better for me.

But ultimately, it's that kind of that unseen, silent, silent moon. And so, it's just one of those things that we have to kind of get to the bottom of, because there are really outstanding US national security professionals who have done incredible things for the US government who are now kind of taken off the battlefield. And colleagues in mind, I retire, but they're having to retire as well. If you talk to CI director Bill Burns privately, he says, absolutely this is happening.

The investigation, I don't know what they're uncovering or not, and I do get a sense that there's concerns about liability within the US government on this just because, you know, so many of us, you know, so ultimately it took me four years to get to Walter Reed. When I finally got to Walter Reed's Traumatic Brain Injury Center, which, you know, it's called NICO, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence. It's the world's leading center, which has treated thousands of veterans after 20 years of, 20 years of sustained combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have no doubt that something has happened to us. There's kind of unanimity in the medical field

that you've been subject to something. And so the idea that it took so long for me to get there, when Bill Burns went there, I see I direct her, so did Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, and my doctors told them, TBI doesn't get better over time. It took you four years for Mark to get here. That's unconscionable.

And one of the things that was amazing, they also said, if you keep doing this, if you keep delaying care, you're gonna have a rash of suicides on your hands, of agency officers who have been subject to this, who can't get care. And so they've gotten better at it. But damn, we've got to get to the bottom of this.

And you know, I mean, you asked, the opening question you had in the whole interview today was about UFOs. That's not what I want to be associated with. Yeah. So I'm not one of those folks with, you know, I think there's a tin foil out of my, wearing a helmet outside of C.I. headquarters, we're always, you know, protesting. This is something real and serious. But, you know, it's not gonna handle well

and a lot of people have suffered with me through myself. All the victims that I watch their interviews all say pretty much the exact same thing. They hear something, the vertigo, traumatic brain injury. One male said that he was in a hotel and a van pulled up.

Right after the van pulled up, he felt it. Then the van pulled up again, I believe it was the next night, felt it again. Let me tell you something, this is something from your old world. It's interesting, as you did your research, you can find out through open source, but maybe two years ago, there was a bid for body-worn kind of detectors for this kind of attack. And it was a bid, it was from Socom, that they wanted their operators to start wearing these things. So that doesn't happen. Yeah.

If people don't think this is real. And so, again, when I talked to Chris Miller, when I talked to others, I mean, this is something that is of serious concern. One of our officers, let me clarify that, a USG officer official was stricken in Hanoi. Hours before Vice President Harris was supposed to arrive. I think it was last year or the year before.

That scared the crap out of everybody. This officer was severely injured. But what does that say? To me, and I think to others, there's a message that even our VIPs are vulnerable. And again, I think the Secret Service is taking this seriously as anyone in kind of executive protection. Because there is, someone is doing this to us.

Are they 100% sure it's microwaves? They're not 100% sure of anything. And I gotta be careful on this because I don't know about a government since 2019. So it's everything from people inside kind of quietly telling me to talk into tons of doctors. I mean, there's a really interesting panel. They put together an experts panel, the director, the DNI did on this, which is really interesting

because they came out with their executive summary just a couple of months ago and they said, yeah, this is likely a directed energy attack. And I think that, you know, that's the world's leading experts on this, saying that this is happening to us. This is scary shit. I mean, this goes through glass, goes through walls, goes through buildings. I'll tell you everything. And one of the things that's happened in some of our officers,

and I know these officers, there's no doubt on these, their family members have been affected. And so in one case, you know, a young child who has a permanent traumatic brain injury diagnosed by doctors in DC, there's no doubt about this. So, you know, so one of the things that you see a lot in the media on this is, well, maybe it's psychosomatic, you know, maybe it's a directed energy attack, to the actual maybe it's a directed energy attack, to the actual doctors who have treated us, there is no doubt. It's not if you were subject,

something is that you were subject to something we're still not exactly sure what it is. It's most likely a directed energy weapon. And that's pretty fucking scary. Yeah. And again, it's for me, on a personal note, what a weird way to end my career. And look, I'm still suffering from this for sure.

But after all those years and shitty places, fuck, this happens. And it's been, there is a, it's gets a more personal level. There's a mental health aspect of this too. So, I finally make it to, so I go public in October 2020 on this. The blowback from my best friends and my colleagues and the agency was severe. Because I did something that you're not supposed to do.

Now, to their credit, three former CI directors immediately called our seven Florence and said, what the fuck? And they then kind of, you know, relented and got me into Walter Reed. So I arrived at Walter Reed in January of 2021 and I'm a mess. Not only because the physical pain I'm in with my headaches and occasional bouts of vertigo,

but some cognitive decline. But it's also the, there's a moral injury here where I've been totally shunned by all my colleagues. I had friends calling me or sending me message on encrypted apps saying we've been told by the 7th floor not to speak with you. And first of all, that's bullshit. The lawyers are telling us we can't talk to you. Well, what they can't say is don't talk to Mark about this issue, but for fuck's sake,

I worked for two and a half decades in the field with them. And so I arrived at Walter Reed. My mental health was all fucked up with anxiety and everything. I mean, I'd heard there were threatening, come after me in terms of crimes reports that I'd spoken to the press. Now, I was very cognizant in not violating

my secrecy agreement. I told my medical story. The journalist, Julie Yaffee, did a huge piece on this whole thing. So I don't even know the sources she had, but my piece I'm still very comfortable in that. I never violated any part of my secrecy agreement, but there were rumors that they were gonna

try to come after me. And so I was a frickin' mess. When I got to Walter Reed, they were like, okay, you got a bad headache all the time. And you got some cognitive decline. We're gonna try to fix in this, but we hope you don't kill yourself. And the my anxiety level was at a control.

And that's where they helped me. Kind of the most. They have 18 people who kind of swarm over you for a month. And again, this old Marine Quart chaplain was the guy. And I joked about before his, when we talked about, when he talked about, you know, any kind of regrets on, on kind of the war own duty and lethal operations. But what he taught me was forgiveness because I was so angry at the agency and all my friends.

And his story of just talking about empathy and compassion and forgiveness was not like, these motherfuckers wronged you, and they always will. And you don't ever have to be friends with them, but just kind of release the anger against them. That's for you, it's for your health. Yep, totally. And then, and I saw a psychiatrist, a psychologist, I've had Walter Reed is famous. This program, Nike, was famous,

and the special operations community is embraced. And I had this incredible cocktail of these acupuncture treatments. It's really famous for it. They really know about traumatic, and by the way, I was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. So the Walter E. doctors were like, yep, Mark got fucked up by something.

So I have that piece of paper. I remember when I first got that, man, I had tears in my eyes. So these fucking agency doctors said no for a couple of years. And now the world's leading TBI center said, yep, and they said you got a TBI from an external exposure event. So that was really groundbreaking, but back to the Marine Corps chaplain,

was it kind of releasing that anger? My anxiety really, he actually saved me. I didn't, it wasn't, I didn't go, you know, try to farm a suit corruption. And, you know, I don't kind of respond well to drugs. I do respond well to gummy bears. Yeah. A little salt menum, which Walter Reed was totally for,

but ultimately that Marine Courtschab when taught me about forgiveness and that helped me a lot. And so now, as I still go there, it's still trying to kind of battle just some of the pain I have, which kind of flares up now and again. The one of the things they do is this art therapy program, it's famous.

They're famous for these masks. So it was on the front cover of National Geographic, I think back in 2015, but everyone who goes there in the program, and again, it's this intensive outpatient program you're there for 10 hours every day. So I think probably half a dev group and Delta has been there at tons of SF.

I mean, just, you know, there's huge walls inside of Nica where each unit and the CI has got a big wall now too from all of the Havana Syndrome victims. But it's the seals, it's an army, then the CCTs from Air Force. And you design a mask and it's just mask and you paint it and it's a creation of art, but it's how you express yourself. And I'm not an artist at all, but what I did was kind of this cathartic experience for me where I took a mask and I painted Superman on it

because that's what I thought my kids thought of me. Here I was the guy, the dad who was gone all the time which sucked, but I was defending them and defending America and my kids were proud of me, but it was a Superman mask. And then in it was an ice pick, which signified my headaches, and then I overlaid this mask on top of a piece of wood, which I carved the CIA seal, which was cracked in half, because that was the portrayal of the organization. And it's hanging in Nica right now, and I just talked to the art therapist.

She said, everybody comes and sees that. That's kind of the signature piece for the CIA portion, for the Havana Syndrome victims. But again, Bill Burns has seen it, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor saw it. It's important they see this, because this is the way we've been treated, but making that mask has been really cathartic. But again, it's the idea of people that I served with for years and years really abandoned me. It was really sad.

And to me, to this day, I think anyone who goes public decides in our old world to be out in the media or do something like this probably has experience with that. I don't know if you feel that same way. Oh, yeah. Some of your guests, too. I obviously watched Rob O'Neill's interview, which was fantastic, but really interesting piece where you asked him about what he thought about if people didn't, you know, kind of,

weren't so positive about him going and talking about his role in the Ben Laden raid and he said, yeah, it doesn't bother me anymore. There was something like that. And because of all of it, because it does matter to all of us, because we're a member of this kind of elite fraternity. And, and, you know, when you get ostracized by that,

it can be pretty painful. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, moving away from it, though, it's like, because yeah, I've dealt with it a lot. And once you've moved past it, it's just like freedom. I agree with you.

It really is. But there's a process in that. Yeah. And it's not easy. And what's interesting to me is as I have been vocal about this issue, and then ultimately, Congress passes legislations called the Havana Act, which is gonna provide compensation

for not necessarily people like me, I don't care, I'm senior and I'm fine financially, but what about the GS11 or GS12, who's medically retired? And so there's gonna be some liability from the US government, and so it's, and present sign this, I mean, I sat, I keep saying we're not talking about politics,

we won't, but I sat in a room with Devon Nunes and Adam Schiff, who hate each other. You know, this is, they were on, this is the ranking minority and majority member of the House permanent select committee on intelligence. They hate each other on every issue, except this one where they totally agree.

President signs a lot, there's gonna be some financial relief for folks. And so all of a sudden, people from the agency, who abandoned me for a long time are calling me again. And I've had to kind of process that. But I go back to what that Marine Corps chaplain said, just, you know, I'm polite to everyone, but I won't forget the people who abandoned me. And ultimately, you're right because that's what I've tried to do. And I wrote a book on leadership.

That, you know, I do a lot of kind of leadership talks to sports teams now. I'm on baseball as a passion. So I talked to a lot of high school and college, baseball teams. The more I get away from, you know, my old world probably the better, because that was the end, it was really unhealthy,

both physically but also mentally too. And again, you sit and you talk about scratch your head, you're sitting having a, I'm not supposed to, but if I have a Scotch or two, what did I do the last 30 years? And there's a lot of good, a lot of bad. It ended really in a shitty manner. And I'm 53 years old now,

or I'm turning 53 soon, there's got to be another kind of chapter in my journey. I got some time left, I hope. Before we go into that chapter, let's just rewind a little bit. So knowing that the US, China and Russia are the only three people, or the only three, excuse me, governments that have come out and said that they've dabbled in microwave weapons, I mean, you have to have sat at home and thought about who is responsible, who targeted you, because it's very obvious they're targeting specific individuals.

Right. What's going on through your head? Well, so for me, it's easy to target. You know, I obviously, you know, as a CI officer, I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and the Russian's knew who I was always. When I went to Moscow, they didn't want me to make the trip. The Russian Embassy in DC tried to cancel the trip. They said they accused me of trying to come for an operational matter. I'm like I'm a frickin senior intelligence service officer known to have to plan it. I'm coming here to meet with your officials. There's no operational reason for my trip,

but they, but I don't think they liked me very much, but it was, to me, as they had, my thought on this is the Russians have targeted CI officials who have been involved in Russian operations because it's part of their hybrid warfare strategy. I mean, if you look at, and China does this too, but it's, these are, this is, you know, this is a step below kinetic events.

And so, if they're able to take some of our most experienced officers off the battlefield in a non-attributable way, it's perfect. And so it makes sense to me. It also makes sense, obviously, Vladimir Putin is someone of zero morals or ethics. It's right in line with his war crimes and atrocities and assassinations that the Russians state has committed over the last decade plus. But it does make some sense.

And again, as part of their hybrid warfare strategy and ultimately, it's been successful because not only has it really taken really quality intelligence officers out of the intelligence game. It's also caused this huge kind of dissension. I mean, think it. So when you say Havana Syndrome, some people roll their eyes. Some people don't believe this. This is exactly what the Russians want. It's the kind of caused chaos.

So in my view, it's been wildly successful. But that's why we got to find out who's doing this. And my contention, and again, I was heartened to see, I think it was Senator Collins, who's been a big advocate. There's certain representatives and senators who are really good on this across the political spectrum because they have constituents who have been affected by this. So for Senator Collins, there's CIA officers who are from her state. And just like you have Marco Rubio has been a huge proponent of really pushing the US government on this. Because obviously he cares a lot about Cuba.

But Senator Collins said, look, we have to get to the bottom of this because this is a, in essence, a war crime. Oh, she said it's an act of war, not a war crime. Excuse me, she said it's an act of war against our personnel. And she's right. Do you think there's any possibility it could have come from within? No, no, no, I don't. I don't, you know, for just to me, there's been, I gotta say this carefully, I'm gonna quote the GQ article, that's why I stay safe on this.

There has been investigations by the US intelligence community, and again, this is from the article in GQ and it's been repeated other times as well, in which there has been correlation of travel of Russian intelligence officers to the locations where our officers were hit. No shit. So now that is a pretty damn strong circumstantial case. What does that mean?

I would say, keep fucking investigating, keep looking at it. Yeah. So that's where I kind of come out on this. And again, it took us 10 years to find Ben Laden. Right now with, if you remember Gulf War Syndrome, from the first Gulf War, I think they've concluded, this is decades later, that it was exposure to seren gas. It was from US military strikes on the seren stockpile that the Iraqis had, is what second, hundreds and not thousands of US military personnel, it's going to take a while to find out what this is.

But I would be amazed if it's not the Russians. It also could be a combination of adversary. It could be the Cubans at first. It could be the Russians and the Chinese. That's really where I come down on that. Have the fortitude to keep going, just because we don't know right now, shouldn't stop us. Are there any foreign intelligence officers that you're aware of that have been hit? No, that's the mystery. All been US.

It's weird. Canadian diplomats. Canadians. Yeah, but, right, so I think that, you know, when you talk to the Brits, there's, you know, there's a question of why isn't happening to them. I can't answer that. There's no, there's a lot of holes in this. Because you would think that our allies would be hit by this too. But again, when I sit with individuals who have been struck by this,

they have suffered severe injuries. I'm one of the fortunate ones. Friends of mine are like, Mark, you seem fine. I'm like, well, compared to others, yeah, I've a fucking headache all the time. Still, but ultimately something really bad happened and we gotta find out what it is. Just because, again, this is one of those total mysteries

and I don't want it to be treated like frickin' UFOs. And because sometimes it gets put in that same bin, but this is a little bit different. There's a lot different. Yeah. Are you still looking for ways to manage the pain or to improve? Sure. So again, it's really interesting.

There's been an outpouring from just so many people And there's a new therapy that Havana Syndrome victims are using. Originally it was designed for, and it still is for autistic kids. It's called MERT. It's taking a little, it's taking a little magnet and just kind of they tap it against the side of your head. For whatever reason, they started, it was a, there's an incredible company. There's some former, in fact, Slab, Brett Slebensky's involved, out in California, that has kind of pioneered this for autistic kids, but they came to us some of the Havana's syndrome victims

and offered us some treatment. So it's, for me, it was kind of life-changing, it was five weeks, there was an anonymous donor, don't know who it was, it's for me, it was kind of life-changing. It was five weeks. There was an anonymous donor. Don't know who it was. It's fucking expensive, but some great Americans decided to try to help us, and it's changed my life in the sense of my headaches are drastically diminished. And it makes some sense. And so, you know, I went to Walter Reed after that. And I said, what do you think of this? It's called TMS treatment, but it's usually designed for artistic patients or for PTSD, but they want to use it

for a vanicentral victims. The Walter Reed doctors who are amazingly enough for military, they're pretty kind of new age and they're thinking. Walter Reed is their pioneering use of psychedelics and all sorts of stuff, which I freaking love. I think you talk about this a lot too. I was going to ask, have you looked into psychedelic? That's you know, I got I got I I am interested I got to see how I'm doing But ultimately Walter reels like yeah, that makes sense with what's you know because it's all about your it's all about your your It's your brain waves You know, there's you know, so something has happened to our brains with this thing. Yeah, I did that I did that treatment you did and

Yeah, I did that, I did that treatment. You did. And a lot of the people that have been on the show of them, that treatment, and everybody is having these profound results. I love to connect you, you know, if you're an artist. For sure, I am, trust me, because, you know, there's been a lot of suffering involved. And so I have my good days and bad days.

I'm on a good day right here, probably, because I'm enjoying the good life and Nashville, good food here. Yeah. But there's still some shitty times. And again, you get to a point where you'll try anything. And the last thing, you know, you know, the what is, it is interesting to me

seeing how much I've suffered. I mean, I've been in pain for four years. I know that you can relate to that and people in the special operations community just after two decades of war and all the trauma that people have faced. But, you know, the easiest thing to do is it's not even hitting the bottle because having a drink will help, but it's good that I can see how people get addicted to opioids. Now, because you're sitting around and you're in pain all the time. And you will do anything to get rid of that pain.

I don't have that addictive personality, I guess, enough. Where that, I'm worried about that. I'm certainly drinking is not great. And the more I can cut down on that, the better. Because if I have a bad headache, you have a Scotch or two. You feel better. But that's not a healthier, the right answer. But I'm always looking for new things to do.

Because again, it's just kind of this lifelong search of how to not be in pain all the time. Well, I'm gonna connect to that. Sure. I did it and it changed my whole life. It's the most profound experience I've ever had. Very well, please do. Sean, one of the interesting things is,

so I go to NICO. I go to the Toa Walter Reed. And after that time, half a dozen folks that I have really good friends of mine from your old community, from the soft community came out. And these are folks from Dev Group or from Delta or from White Seals or from Special Forces. And they all said they'd been there too. I just hadn't talked about it. And so, you know, there is, it was,

this was a really amazing experience for me, not only because they know they care about you and they try to help you, but also for, I mean, this is two decades. And I'm a little different because the Havana Syndrome stuff, there's a whole cohort of us being treated there, but just to see what the last two decades have done to men and women in the intelligence special operations world, it's extraordinary.

And these are the toughest people I've ever met in my life, and they are in real bad straights. And it's sad, but it is 100% real. And it's pretty profound because these brain injuries know, brain injury is something that's again in this in this art therapy sessions. I remember Myself and one other person he gets more credit than I do But it was he painted this giant black canvas, you know something that would be on here and when it like the size of that flag It's all black, but then he he took a can of a red paint and he threw it on there and it was kind of splotch of red paint

And he called it the gunshot. And everyone was like, you know, what the hell is that? He's like, I wish I was shot. This signifies, you know, a brain injuries don't show up on anything. Sometimes I memorize, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

But he goes, I wish I was shot because ultimately then people would believe me. They know how to treat me. So it's pretty scary. It's humiliating. Yeah. Totally. But I tell you, but again, I was, you know,

being with some of the seals and the CCTVs and these are tough son of a bitch's and they were wonderful kind of part of the cohort to go through. But just, you know, and I mean, this is gonna sound, and not to see them vulnerable, but just to see that other people are suffering is actually really important.

Yeah. And, you know, it's, and so, you know, the last, I'm gonna throw my last plug into that's charity that I'm doing. Can I talk about sound off? Yeah, let's take a quick break. Sure, and then we'll come back and talk about that. Cool.

All right, so we're back from the break. We're going to just talk about what you got going on now. You got the book, clarity and crisis, and sound off the nonprofit that you're involved in. So let's start with the book. So this hopefully is kind of the, not when we say the positive part of the story, but I've just been talking about some of the troubles I had with my health, with physical and mental.

So there's always, hopefully the end of the journey is a good part of one's life. And so when I retired, I decided to write a book on leadership. And that's it's clarity and crisis right here. And what I realized was that in my career at the agency, I started out, so great leaders are not born, they're made. And CI does really shitty job in leadership training.

The military is great at it. If you're an officer in the military, you're gonna go probably two entire years at two separate leadership schools. CI doesn't do that at all. We go through a week or two separate leadership schools. C.I. doesn't do that at all. We go through a week or two of leadership training, and also your job as a case officer, would you work in a loan, has nothing to do with

when all of a sudden you've got to lead 20 or 30 or 40 men or women in a station. So by the end of my career, probably based a lot on the war zone time, I developed some leadership principles. And I was always thinking about this. And again, I was some leadership principles. And I was always thinking about this. And again, I was considered, no one's ever going to say, hey, Mark, you're a great Arabic language

linguist because I wasn't. My Arabic was always crappy. And I told you before about, you know, and my recruiting and handling agents, I was really good at recruiting and handling, and I could never turn them over well because I, you know, I always fall in love with the agents. And so I had my kind of, it certainly kinks in my armor, but I was always considered a really good leader at the end of my career. And I was trying to figure out why. And it was just, it was based on a lot of experience.

And so I came up with kind of these core principles. And I put them down on paper, along with just a little bit about myself and about explaining what CI does. Because I think that I believe strongly in my heart, CIA is an indispensable institution for the United States government, and so people have to understand that. Whatever you think about, alleged abuses in the past or anything like that doesn't matter

because the country has to have a functioning and proficient intelligence service. And so it is one of those kind of fundamental things that we have to get right. And so I like talking about, you know about just the agency and the intelligence community and then leadership principles which serve me really well and serve me in times of crisis. It's obviously called clarity and crisis, but it's the idea of how do you lead in times that are what is in the gray. You want to raise your hand and say, send me when the shit is hit the fan. But at times like this, I found at the end of my career when I got really good, I was really comfortable. And so, you know, it was a lack of situational awareness. You know,

comms are down. ISR is not working. You've lost contact with some team members, whatever it is, but you're like, we got this because, you know, I formed a team over the last several months that was really strong in terms of its values together. That had trained really well together. They got down the processes that were right. So I put it on paper, wrote a book on it, and it turns out it's been really fun because I think it's applicable in all walks of life, but particularly in a sports world. I'm a baseball nut, my son's playing college baseball now, and so I love going around talking to different baseball teams, particularly college teams.

Because again, how do you react as a team if you're down, you know, three one and the seventh inning in a playoff game? You know, what have you done to get there? And so, and then, and then kind of the other big group I, group I deal with and talk with our cops. You know, not, not just first, but really with police officers. I've been going back and forth to Philadelphia Police Department, teaching them principles from this book. I'm because again, policing, what is it? It's an indispensable institution that is much

maligned all the time. We have to have a functioning law enforcement community. Failures are thrown all over the front page of every paper, just like the CIA, but successes are never seen. And Morales down, a lot of these police departments. And so going and talking to them about leadership principles, on how to lead under fire, and how to have that kind of intestinal fortitude, one of the principles in the book,

which I love, and it gets in trouble. And I talk to sports team. I call it adversity as the performance enhancing drug to success. And it's not complicated, but see, I did, you know, you got to hit rock bottom for an elite team to then really perform well in the future. And, you know, I mean, I always joke around like, you know, what happened to Michael Jordan as a sophomore in high school who's cut from his basketball team.

Did he quit? No. I mean, the really simple principles like this, but, but, and because this is what happened with me is going through a lot of adversity in my career, but then being able to kind of learn from that. Do you find that you're looking back? It sounds like you revisited your entire career, right in that book.

Did you find that, do you feel like you were a stronger leader in times of crisis than you are on the everyday? Oh yeah, totally. What do you think that is? You know, get more narrowly focused. You kind of get zero in on what's important. And it's also just the idea of just building these teams. So it's building the correct type of team that can then, you know, thrive in that environment. And so again, you know, what I talk about in the book is,

identify processes. I call it the process monkey, one of the leadership principles. Identify key processes that your team needs to succeed at. So when the shit hits the fan, you're gonna feel as a leader, my guys and gals got this. So what is it? If you're a CI case officer,

it's running a surveillance detection route. If your Navy's still, you gotta be able to shoot. I mean, so if you're a baseball team, you better have taken batting practice, or you better hit the weights all in the off season. So when times are really tough, you're like, my guys and gals got this. What's interesting to me,

that sounds really simple and basic, right? So, you're talking about mastering fundamentals. Mastering fundamentals. Mastering fundamentals. So, but you go and you talk to, you know, when I say, you know, the regular world, people don't, people not only do they not do that, they haven't even identified those.

So I'll go to a client, let's say, and I say, what are the five fundamentals? And they're saying, well, I'm not really sure. Well, what are the five things you have to be able to do? So when COVID hits and the economy's in tatters and you go lay people, and you're like, you're in a state of neur panic, actually, maybe you step back and say,

you know, we've done a couple of things right, we're gonna be fine. So that's why I've had so much fun with this book. One of the other principles I talk about is family values, it sounds kind of silly and basic, but it's building that teamwork, that camaraderie, where you know that everything you've done, that the men and women you have under your command,

I use the word love a lot, and it's not really love, but it's just that have that absolute loyalty to each other, and that to me was always absolutely critical. So again, it's the idea of leading in times of crisis, it's been a blast doing that I love talking about. I've talked to so many different groups, I go talk to Google, love to have me go talk to their folks. But then I live in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County public teachers had a conference. They said, can you come talk to us on that? I'm like,

well, shit, there's a lot of stuff about killing people in there. So I'll sanitize that part. They're like, no, just give us everything. Really? And they freaking loved it. Because one of the principles I talk about is the glue guy. So again, in every high performance team, you have glue guys. They're not your superstars. These are the people that are fundamental to success. So I went to the teacher's conference.

I said, all right. So you have all your teachers, your administrators. Who's your glue guy? Someone raised their hand. They said it's the IT administrator. I'm like, spot on. If your computers aren't working, nothing's happening. Who's your glue guy someone raise their hand they said it's the IT administrator and like Spot on If you if your computers aren't working nothing's happening But the keep the keep part of this I said so so in your successes celebrate them and your planning

Also include them and your planning because I learned that at CIA as well So perfect thing it's CIA special operations intelligence same thing If you haven't meet we're gonna run an operation What do we need obviously we need the case officer the tip of the spear we got to have operations intelligence, same thing. If you have a me, we're gonna run an operation. What do we need? Obviously we need the case officer, the tip of the spear. We gotta have kind of an operational plan, but what do you need?

How about some logistics? How about your finance guy? Guess what, do we have enough money to pay for this damn thing? Like little stuff like that. And when you have this huge success, celebrate them all. But again, it's the planning part of it too. When I was, at the end of my career,

I remember when I was managing stations or bases. I used to in the beginning, when I first was a manager, I would say, let's have an ops meeting every morning, right? Ops meeting would be the case officers. At the end of my career, let's have an ops meeting every morning, chief of support, chief of finance, chief of logistics, security, chief, everybody's there. That's it because you kind of get it, that it takes everybody to do. So these are the principles that I've really enjoyed talking about.

So it's fun. I hope folks kind of pick up the book. As I've gone travel throughout the country, it's fun when I go to an airport and I see it there. It's a perfect airplane book. Yeah, it's two on the pages. Just read that thing and so it's wild just seeing that. But I think it's it's resonated. I'm having fun doing it. And I think it's it's gonna and again, it's talk about something. Whereas we were talking before about

kind of mental and physical health, you want to expose yourself, write a book or do a do a show YouTube or podcast like man, because you can have some critics and your whole life's out there. He get a lot more respect for doing it than you do critics Yeah, you know, it's hard to see because we we focus especially yeah People have come from a background like yours myself We we tend to focus on because I think a lot of us are perfectionists, right? And we focus on the negative shit, but but what you don't see is all the positivity that's around it. But it's been fun.

The response has been great. So it's exciting. I think I'm my own worst critic. I'm such a type A personality. So I'm like, why isn't this number one in the New York Times bestseller is right now? Yeah. After this show, I'm expecting next week,

no pressure. No pressure. No, but it's been fun. But you expose yourself, man, it'm expecting next week. No pressure. No pressure. No pressure. No, but it's been fun. But you expose yourself, man. It's raw out there. And just like some of your other guests who, if you go out in the media and you talk, I don't care if you're giving

your, I remember with the afghan withdrawal, I was super critical of that. Because again, I thought about all of our engaged personnel. Not everyone's going to like what you gotta say and you're saying in public. And just like you write a book, you expose yourself and then you're looking like sneak peek on Amazon reviews. Like, fuck, why is it four and a half stars?

Who gave me a shitty review? I'm gonna track that person. I'm gonna track that person. Well, I'll link it into the description and we'll put it on our newsletter as well and spread it across social media. Appreciate it. But when you wrote it, did you have a particular audience

in mind and then it just expanded to everyone? I thought when I was, when I was first writing it, you almost, it's weird because first of all, it's a cathartic experience to write a book. And I was suffering. So this is, this is right when I retired. So I had these terrible headaches. And so I wrote for about two hours every day

for a couple of months. And then the editing process is kind of miserable. But it actually, it turned out fine. But at first you almost writing it for our peer group. But then something clicks and you're like, well, wait a second. First of all, all my friends are gonna read this and say, what the fuck? You know, but then I started writing it

for kind of the lay person. And so I thought about cops and firefighters. My step-brothers, they ear our doc. And I talked to them about this. He's like, this is perfect for an emergency room. Really? Yeah, because what about nurses? So who are the unsung heroes in the,

you know, are there processes? We have to follow who are the unsung heroes? What, you know, are there processes? We have to follow who are the unsung heroes? What about teamwork, camaraderie? What about mentoring? I mean, so everything I talk about in this book, owning mistakes. I mean, the huge part of this is about adversity and humility. They see that every day in it. And it even works in New York City.

It's a New York City emergency room. So I was like, well, well, that's going to work. And then I had a great, great feedback from an editor once and like, and this is, this is, you'll, you'll love this. It goes, you, you can have to write this for a librarian. And I'm like, what? And they're like, yep, that's right. Librarians can have to be able to look at this completely opposite of who you are, introverted, you know, I don't know, buried in the stacks. And so it, so I thought of that when I did that, that, you know, that, that talk with the school teachers in Fairfax County. So the more it resonates with people

totally unlike us, the better. And so, and again, it's just kind of universal principles and fortunately or unfortunately, this came out in the time of COVID where a lot of businesses were struggling. I'll never forget, it's one guy who is a CEO of a healthcare company. One of the principles there I talk about winning an Oscar,

which is when you get up in front, you know, in a crisis situation, it matters on how you react. So you gotta tell the truth, you can be empathetic, but everyone's looking at you. You are the leader. And so, you know, you can't fail in that time, in that moment, and he said, he goes, you know, Mark,

that was incredible to me because I couldn't make payroll last week. So my art, our business is cratered under COVID. And I had to get up and figure out a way to tell the people who was, you know, their livelihoods depend on me. I'm the CEO. I can't pay them this week. And it goes, I thought of you.

And I use some of those principles. And the principle is telling the truth, but also, you know, not being, you know, you know, not being false. I mean, obviously, you know, having that, having that, that that that air of authority air of assurance things are gonna be okay, but you know what we're gonna face some tough times And there's you know because I look back at my career on some of the I'll never forget

No, I was in an embassy in the Middle East. I was an attack by al Qaeda and The first the first wave of attackers hit us in the front gate of the embassy with automatic weapons fire and then a car bomb hit the back gate. Didn't detonate. But me and my, I was a deputy station chief and the station chief was there. Him and I, he's a former seal. We've been in a rock together and now we're in the Middle East at an embassy and we look at each other. We're like the same good. Our wives were there.

But things were looking grim. It was, it was, it was a mess with the Marine Corps, the attachment there. The gunny had just come back from Iraq. He was all fucked up from PTSD. They fucking collapsed. The whole comm system and the embassy went down. And so, you know, so the state should look to me. He's writing a flash message to headquarters to try to get some assistance too.

And I'm trying to open the weapon safe. And I'm sitting there in a frickin' dial. It's been, and my heart rate went from zero to about a billion. And we opened the safe, I'm handing out weapons, putting people in the right places in the station, giving out, you know, having done their body armor. And I'm admittedly later on, I'm fucking terrified.

I'm gonna die today with my wife and this fucking shitty way to go. With these assholes attacking this embassy and the marine debt has fallen apart. And I got up and I, as I'm trying to put people in position and kind of, you know, and we're going through a full burn down too. We got to burn the station down.

We got shit in there, got to get in the shredder. Afterwards, when we kind of did the AAR, people said to me, Mark, that was awesome. You were great. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I was scared out of my mind. They said, no, you actually portrayed a really sense of calm that really reassured us.

You also said, hey, this isn't good. I mean, there's grenades hitting the top of the station and we're getting, you know, there's AK-47 fire and at the front gate, there's, you know, there's really good chances, it doesn't go well for us, but you kind of, you actually reassured us and kind of got us into place and we did things. There's nothing like, you know, this bad,

this bad shit's happening, we're going through a burn down, well that was smart, give people something to do. But afterwards, so I thought about that after all, and that's when I came up with this kind of's happening, we're going through a burn down. Well, that was smart. Give people something to do. But afterwards, I thought about that after all, and that's why I came up with this kind of notion of, it's how you kind of portray yourself in time of crisis, is really important. So, how'd you get out of it?

Luck. The car bomb didn't detonate, and the local guards forced kill the attackers. Oh, shit. Don't fucking luck. You know, I remember, and, and, I gotta be careful in what I say here, and a, a TDY J-Soc operator took over. Security duties at post one, then saved us. We tried to get him a, a big,

a big intelligence medal for it, but State Department denied it because their guys had fucked up so much. Shit. That was a shitty day. But here's a great, again, talk about the dedication and so I go home. My kids were about a mile from the embassy, watching smoke, obviously, the school, the International School went into lockdown.

They think their parents are dead four or five hours later. We reunite, go back home, sitting around there. I'm like, all right, what are we doing tonight? My kids are set and crying. I'm like, let's order a pizza. You got a pizza and I'm like, all right guys, gotta go out and my wife knew it was coming. My kids looked at me like, what are you talking about?

You guys almost died today. I'm like, my job. No. We have to go out and start contacting agents, like what the fuck just happened? That's just what you do. Yeah. Anyway, there's, you know, that's, and so that there's,

there's, I think the stories, and when I tell stories like that, and a lot of those stories, there's great operational stories in the book, just to make a point. So everyone loves these stories from the spec ops or Intel world to just kind of make key points, but that key point was kind of winning an Oscar that day, meaning that, you know, how you act in times of crisis,

telling the truth, but having kind of that kind of feel of authority is really important. It's contagious. Yeah, it is. And just, you know, and there's some other stories there too. So, yeah, so that's the book. So, off I am going around the country, talking to different groups, and you know,

whether it's school teachers or cops or sports teams It's been fun quite the variety. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the non-profit. Yeah So this is something I'm super passionate and again it goes back to my time at Walter Reed So so sound off is a is a nonprofit. It's based in San Antonio, Texas And ultimately it is an app for your phone which provides anonymous mental health care for veterans and because and there's there's kind of two conflicting numbers both are more awful And ultimately, it is an app for your phone, which provides anonymous mental health care for veterans. And because there's kind of two conflicting numbers, both are more awful.

It's either 17 or 22 veterans every day kill themselves. So veterans suicide is a horrendous issue. And this, where I got interested in this is, you know, I went to Walter Reed for a month. And I learned much more about this. But concurrently, I was contacted by the CEO of this, of this nonprofit. And because his brother-in-law was Bill Mulder. Bill Mulder was a CilTium-6 operator who, after separating from the Navy in 2017,

killed himself. This is his brother-in-law. And he's telling me this story, and I'm like, I know Bill Mulder. Bill Mulder worked for me at CTC on a rotation. So just bizarre, weird coincidence. But the more I went to Walter Reed, the more I kind of got into this whole concept of mental health and the stigma of mental health.

And so this nonprofit and this app on a phone absolutely tackles that problem because it is an a way anonymously for a veteran or a frankly current member of the Special Operations World, and that's who this is targeting right now, to get care that they need because of the stigma. And in talking to Sidney Mulder, who's Bill's widow, and I've gotten to know the family really well,

is it's incredible. I mean, she had conversations with Bill, who literally said, if I tell people what I'm going through, I'll lose my status. His life was his operator. He was a badass, but he goes, if I actually tell people what I'm going through and the demons that I'm going through now, I'm going to be taking offline. There's that stigma.

This is not the VA hotline. This is for people who don't want to go that route, but who need to get that care. And it's, the response has been unbelievable. So right now we have, so I'm on the board. I don't get paid anything for this. I'm obviously passionate about it because of my own mental health struggles. But at this point, every special operations foundation from the Navy Steel Foundation to the unit foundation, which is from Delta, across the border of Green Berets,

TF160 aviation management, everybody is signed onto this. And the MOU is that they are spreading the word to their personnel. And so my job now is to talk about this and frankly to raise money for it. It costs to run something like this, just the processes and the engineering is one to two million a year. And so doing a whole bunch of fundraisers across the country for it, but the response has been astounding. And so not only is the Navy Steel Foundation endorses NSW has as well.

And so I just got to note that people are saying that it's all out in Coronado. There's stuff all over the walls of the buildings there. And so that's what you want to see down at Fort Bragg as well. And so it's been huge. That's amazing. It's just really resonated with me. The agency is slowly getting on board.

No shit. It's slowly hasn't been easy. There's some agency officers who have reached out and are using it anyhow, which is critical. And the US Coast Guard just came to us and said, can we play? And then the police, the first responder community, both police and firefighter paramedics,

I mean, there is it because it's the idea of getting anonymous care. There's so many resources out there for folks who will do it overtly, but it's the ones who, and by the way, this is not a suicide prevention hotline. It's someone who's obviously, you know, because if you're there, that's a whole different scenario. This is someone who's having some trouble right now and which wants to talk to a mental

healthcare provider in an anonymous fashion. And so I just believe in this deeply. I don't make a penny off of it. It's, you know, make a penny off of it. But I become pretty passionate. And it all goes back to that just weird confluence of Bill Mulder work for me. Now, and I remember, and then talking to his widow, Sydney, who again is a hero in this, with her kids,

and she asked me, she said, what was Bill like? So what do I say? Do I tell her the truth or not? Because when Bill was on rotation us at CIA, he was a son of a bitch. Because, you know, why? Because he was really struggling. Yeah. And I told her the truth. I said, you know, I think we had some problems with them. And she said it makes sense because he was going some really dark times there. Yeah. And, you know, there is, in the story of this, is so horrific in that it was over a video call

that he killed himself in front of his wife. this is so horrific in that it was over a video call that he killed himself in front of his wife. And so, you know, it's soul crushing when you hear this. And Sydney is really dedicated to her life too to really helping, just again, it's raising money and funds and awareness. And, you know, just like, you know, last week I got a call from the Philadelphia Police Department, a cop there, committed suicide.

And, you know, with, I got a call from the Philadelphia Police Department, a cop there, committed suicide, and you know, with, I got a, the different, well, your audience will know, you know, there's, I think last year, two TF Orange operatives killed themselves, and there's a former dev group operator who I think a month ago did. So this is a terrible problem. Yeah. And again, and I get it because I was at Walter Reed and I saw how people were suffering. And I friends from the community who would call me and say they were in really darks.

And one former Dev Group operator and one former Delta operator told me if they hadn't gone to Walter Reed, they wouldn't be here. And so just put it all together. Sound off really helps. And so that's why, you know, that's why this is what a perfect, you know, audience that you have, I'm not asking for money, raising funds, I'm asking to spread the word. If you're a veteran, from the Speck

Ops community, there is a outlet for you to talk to someone, and that's just as huge. Yeah, we'll link that below as well. Appreciate it. Thanks. But, um, yeah, thank you for sharing all that. Yeah. And, uh, thank you for coming down to Nashville and, and, I just wish you the best of luck. Thanks, appreciate it. Great chat today, Sean. Yeah.

Thanks for having me. Cheers. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for listening to The Shaw and Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan show overview. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support.

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So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way all of the positive things have come out of this, but it also feels like we have this massive hangover. No shouting or grandstanding. Principles over partisanship. The Bullwork Podcast.

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