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Jack Devine Talks About the FBI and CIA · Masters in Business

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  Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holts on
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. This week. On the podcast, I have a
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  Speaker 1: fascinating guest. His name is Jack Divine, and he is
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  Speaker 1: the former Operations director of the Central Intelligence Agency. When
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  Speaker 1: you hear people say the line, oh, this guy knows
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  Speaker 1: where all the bodies are buried, this guy literally knows
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  Speaker 1: where all the bodies are buried. If you are at
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  Speaker 1: all interested in spycraft, relationships with Russians and other foreign agencies,
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  Speaker 1: counter narcotics, intelligence, and just the role of intelligence agencies
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  Speaker 1: on the global stage, this is the conversation for you. So,
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  Speaker 1: with no further ado, my conversation with Jack Divine. I'm
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  Speaker 1: Barry rid Holts. You're listening to Masters in Business on
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. This week on the show, we have an
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  Speaker 1: extra special guest. His name is Jack Divine. He is
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  Speaker 1: a thirty two year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency,
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  Speaker 1: where he served as both Acting Director and chief of
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  Speaker 1: the Latin American Division, as well as running the CIA's
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  Speaker 1: Counternarcotics Center. He has received numerous awards from the agency,
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  Speaker 1: including the Meritorious Officer Award, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, and
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  Speaker 1: other recognitions. From the Central Intelligence Agency. He is also
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  Speaker 1: a founding partner and president of the ark And Group,
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  Speaker 1: which specializes in strategic intelligence, and he is the author
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  Speaker 1: of Good Hunting, an American Spymaster's Story. Jack Divine, Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Great to be here. Your your timing could
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  Speaker 1: not be better. Uh, we'll get to some of the
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  Speaker 1: current events that are taking place, but but let's start
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  Speaker 1: at the beginning. How did you find your way to
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  Speaker 1: the CIA? After graduate school, I taught American history in
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  Speaker 1: suburban Philadelphia, and for my birthday or anniversary, I don't recall,
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  Speaker 1: my wife Pat gave me a copy of David Wise's
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  Speaker 1: book The Invisible Government, which is at the time was
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  Speaker 1: sort of a scandalous book about CIA and the military
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  Speaker 1: complex and how it was controlling the world. And uh,
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  Speaker 1: I found a fascinating and actually had a different different
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  Speaker 1: reaction than the author probably intended. And that as I thought,
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  Speaker 1: what an amazing place to be, setting aside the fact
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  Speaker 1: that there isn't such a conspiracy. But I wrote a
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  Speaker 1: letter with you know, when we used to have big
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  Speaker 1: pens and pre computers and cell phones, etcetera. And the
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  Speaker 1: letter went off to c I A and within a
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  Speaker 1: few weeks, Um, I got a letter telling me to
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  Speaker 1: go to the the twelfth and Chestnut and thus began the process.
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  Speaker 1: So you actually reached out to them, they didn't you.
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  Speaker 1: That's correct. The British system, you know, had a tradition
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  Speaker 1: of professors tapping people on the shoulder, and the early,
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  Speaker 1: very early days of the OSS and in the early
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  Speaker 1: days of the CIA, that was not an uncommon way
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  Speaker 1: to be brought into the C. I a very clubby. Um.
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  Speaker 1: What are they looking for when they reach out and
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  Speaker 1: tap somebody? What is it a certain moral flexibility or
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  Speaker 1: is it witty? No? Uh, well again I didn't They
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  Speaker 1: didn't reach out to me, so I lacked whatever it was.
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  Speaker 1: I had to go through the process. And today let
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  Speaker 1: me just do a reverse engineering. Today instead of writing
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  Speaker 1: a letter, you have to go online. Is much more impersonal,
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  Speaker 1: which I think we lose some really good people because
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  Speaker 1: of that, But the numbers require it. Um. I think
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  Speaker 1: historically what the CIA is looking for p who are
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  Speaker 1: Almost everybody that joined CIA has sort of within a
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  Speaker 1: range of i Q education. They work hard to get
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  Speaker 1: the extremes out people that have, you know, fantasies of
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  Speaker 1: being James Bond. So they the psychiatrists, you know, have tests,
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  Speaker 1: the interview. There's all types of souped up s, a
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  Speaker 1: T test, personality test, there's interviews. Physical that they need
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  Speaker 1: you need to be physically fit, mentally uh sound that
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  Speaker 1: they do polygraphs to make sure that your integrity level,
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  Speaker 1: that you're not involved in any type of theft that
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  Speaker 1: would you know, since there's no controls many times when
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  Speaker 1: you're delivering money. So it's across that that broad spectrum.
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  Speaker 1: But I would say fundamentally, at the core setting all
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  Speaker 1: these um what I would consider fairly standard requirements, they're
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  Speaker 1: looking for people that have a sense of mission, that
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  Speaker 1: they feel they want to serve their government, and they
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  Speaker 1: went to serve it in a in a particular way.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a place we apply just to get a
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  Speaker 1: job because you have a degree in political science or
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  Speaker 1: speak Japanese. So I think that's one of the key indicators.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't recruit you and you approach them. What sort
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  Speaker 1: of training did they put you through? No, we all
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  Speaker 1: went to the same training, and everybody, I mean they
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  Speaker 1: stopped doing the tapping on the shoulder probably in their fifties,
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  Speaker 1: so everybody in my class, the what they called the
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  Speaker 1: career Training class, which is sort of the premier class
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  Speaker 1: where they developed the future leaders of the agency UM
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  Speaker 1: and the training is about nine months. Half of it
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  Speaker 1: is in learning how to be a spy, you know, surveilling,
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  Speaker 1: how to develop people, how to assess people, how to
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  Speaker 1: right reports, um, how to take pictures at at night,
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  Speaker 1: and so on. And the second part is what they
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  Speaker 1: called paramilitary training, which is it's a bit like boot
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  Speaker 1: camp where you learn how to use every weapon under
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  Speaker 1: the sun, not because you're going to use them as
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  Speaker 1: much as you're going to be dealing with people that
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  Speaker 1: are jump training, demolitions training, so it has a heavy
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  Speaker 1: military overtone to it. And at the end of that
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  Speaker 1: nine months, then you're assigned to an area of the CIA,
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  Speaker 1: and it's operational region. The analyst go through a much
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  Speaker 1: shorter training because this is not necessary to be an
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  Speaker 1: analyst's good scholar. Coming out of major universities. With orientation
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  Speaker 1: and some basic um basic training about the analytical process,
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  Speaker 1: they're they're good to go. The operational training is much
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  Speaker 1: more intensive, including jungle training. Back in those days, did
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  Speaker 1: friends and family have any idea what you were doing
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  Speaker 1: or was this completely sequestered from personal life. Well, you're
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  Speaker 1: instructed early on in the process, do not share this
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  Speaker 1: with with outside people other than your spouse, if you're married,
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  Speaker 1: and your parents. And so I did, and I told
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  Speaker 1: my father and he was very thrilled to have a
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  Speaker 1: son in the CIA. And I explained them, whatever you do,
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  Speaker 1: do not discuss it. So not too long after I
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  Speaker 1: did that, I went to a wedding, family wedding and
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  Speaker 1: dancing with my aunt and she's grabbing me around the
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  Speaker 1: hip snuff here. Now my aunt's getting a little off
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  Speaker 1: the reservation, and I said, what are you doing? She said, well,
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  Speaker 1: I'm looking for your gun. So Dad couldn't keep a seeing.
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  Speaker 1: Now there is a rumor in the family, which I
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  Speaker 1: never bothered to validate. The rumor was that an article
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  Speaker 1: appeared in the Delaware Counting Times newspaper announcing my assignment.
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  Speaker 1: Um So, when I was polygraphed, I could say in
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  Speaker 1: a straight face, they said, did you tell anybody about
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  Speaker 1: your employment with CIA? And I could say without batten
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  Speaker 1: and I absolutely not. They didn't ask me did your
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  Speaker 1: father tell anybody? And that would have been the probably
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  Speaker 1: the end of my budding career. Amazing, you wrote a
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  Speaker 1: memoir about your time at the CIA, Good Hunting an
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  Speaker 1: American spymaster story. I assume you can't just publish that
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  Speaker 1: without the agency putting you through some sort of a
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  Speaker 1: vetting process. Did you get the manuscript back with these
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  Speaker 1: long black markers through it or were they pretty reasonable?
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  Speaker 1: When you join the agency, you have to sign an
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  Speaker 1: agreement that Bassie says, anything that you're writing, anything you're right,
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  Speaker 1: has to be presented to the CIA too. Is UH
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  Speaker 1: a publication review board whereas reviewed by a analyst and
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  Speaker 1: supervised by a lawyer, so that they're they're cognizant of
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  Speaker 1: any legal implications. So when I went through the process,
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  Speaker 1: I felt comfortable. Most people in CIA cannot write about
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  Speaker 1: their experiences because they're not in the public domain. My
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  Speaker 1: career is interesting, and that half of it was in
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  Speaker 1: the James Bond excuse me, the George Smiley lick or
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  Speaker 1: AE fandestine meetings, betrayal, espionage, and that's the part you
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  Speaker 1: really can't talk about very much. Although I happened to
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  Speaker 1: know Rick Ames and quite well worked with them, and
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  Speaker 1: I can talk about Rick Games, the KGB mole inside
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  Speaker 1: of c i A. So there are some espionage things,
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  Speaker 1: but where I became publicly identified. It was in the
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  Speaker 1: action part, the James Bond, part of running the Afghan
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  Speaker 1: task for the drive the Russians out of the Afghanistan.
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  Speaker 1: I was in Chile when i NDI was overthrown. It
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  Speaker 1: was in the middle of the around Contra affairs. There's
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  Speaker 1: a whole series of things that eventually became public. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't realize at the time when I was doing that
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  Speaker 1: they become public. I as a result of that, once
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  Speaker 1: it's in the public domain in an official capacity that
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  Speaker 1: there was a government has to have information out there.
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  Speaker 1: It's not enough that it's just out in some newspaper.
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  Speaker 1: It has to be officially out there. But all of
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  Speaker 1: this materials out there so I can address and I
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  Speaker 1: do address in the book. This is a book about
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  Speaker 1: largely about the action part of of c I A.
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  Speaker 1: They did do a vigorous and painful scrub now, and
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  Speaker 1: I would tell you it wasn't about a sourcer method,
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  Speaker 1: which is the key question. No, you can't mention any
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  Speaker 1: sources or any methods. But we seem to be hung
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  Speaker 1: up in the process about you can't say you were
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  Speaker 1: in this country permanently. It would shock your audience if
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  Speaker 1: I told you which countries. We can't say that because
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  Speaker 1: since you were in the fifth grade, you probably assumed it.
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  Speaker 1: We had people there, but it was about geography, and
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  Speaker 1: it was a bit more obstinate. And I'm working on
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  Speaker 1: a second book now and I'm not as obstinate. I'm
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  Speaker 1: not gonna waste my time on the issue of can
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  Speaker 1: I say was there permanently or I just say that
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  Speaker 1: I bopped into town. And when you say that, I'm
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  Speaker 1: assuming Russia, China. I ran places like not necessarily those places,
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  Speaker 1: but places like that. No, not really, because that I
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  Speaker 1: got it right out of the starting gate that I
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't touch any of those. Now these are these are
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  Speaker 1: places where where I don't give any any clues. But
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  Speaker 1: let's say you'd be comfortable going there tomorrow and be
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  Speaker 1: happy to go there for a weekend. Really that that's
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  Speaker 1: that's very interesting. Let's jump right into some of the
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  Speaker 1: more interesting places where you headed up some missions. You
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  Speaker 1: were ahead of the CIA's Afghan Task Force in the
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  Speaker 1: mid eighties. What was the goals of the task force
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  Speaker 1: and and how much of these were accomplished? When I
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  Speaker 1: looked back over my career, it's probably the point where
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  Speaker 1: I felt I had the most direct role part in
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  Speaker 1: a major historical event, world changing one, and that was
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  Speaker 1: driving the Russians out of Afghanistan. When the Russians invaded
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  Speaker 1: in the late seven seventy seventy nine. The administration was
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  Speaker 1: a Carter administration at the time, and the world in
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  Speaker 1: general reacted that very negatively and understandably so to the
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  Speaker 1: Russians invading. And at that point we actually began to help,
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  Speaker 1: but it was a modest effort, using antiquated weapons to
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  Speaker 1: support the Mujadine. But each year more and more support
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  Speaker 1: was given and the Russians increased their presence there stubtly
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  Speaker 1: as well, and it became a battleground, the key battle
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  Speaker 1: around in the Cold War, and the Russians departure in
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  Speaker 1: nine I think was one of the three major factors
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  Speaker 1: in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I can
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  Speaker 1: elaborate on it. You know, the Russians did leave, and
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  Speaker 1: theyre one of the major parts of factors in that.
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  Speaker 1: First I would say, had people on the ground who
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  Speaker 1: wanted to fight and that was the Mujadine. You had
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  Speaker 1: support um the Pakistani government and the huge us UM
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  Speaker 1: material support in terms of weapons machinery, transportation and eventually,
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  Speaker 1: during the time I was um involved in the operation
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  Speaker 1: the introduction to the Stinger missile, which I believe it's
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  Speaker 1: one of the few times in history we can see
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  Speaker 1: an individual specific weapon changed the course of history. I
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  Speaker 1: have a very vivid recollection of I want to say
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  Speaker 1: it was sixty minutes doing a story on the Afghan
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  Speaker 1: War and showing the Stingers bringing down Russian helicopters. It
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  Speaker 1: was a real significant game changer for that conflict. Absolutely,
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  Speaker 1: uh we. When I say we, I mean the Western
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  Speaker 1: world and particularly that the CIA in the US really
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  Speaker 1: ran into a brick wall in and that was we
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  Speaker 1: were able, to a man a large amount of weapons,
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  Speaker 1: but we couldn't get them across the border and in
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  Speaker 1: Afghanistan because the Russians were using the Hind helicopter, very
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  Speaker 1: sophisticated one, not unlike our black Hawks, and they just
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  Speaker 1: pinned down all transportation. So this is night vision and
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  Speaker 1: heavily on. Oh, it's speed, it's it's it's the back
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  Speaker 1: in its day. You know, the black Hawk was the
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: you know, the the super super jet of of helicopter world,
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  Speaker 1: and it was easy to suppress forces on the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Great fire. It had great firepower both that's what I'm saying.
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  Speaker 1: But at the time we were we the c IA
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  Speaker 1: was looking for we were only putting in Soviet block weapons.
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  Speaker 1: When you run an insurgency, one of the theories, and
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  Speaker 1: it's a good one, is that on the ground you
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  Speaker 1: want to have interchangeable weapons. By that, I mean, if
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  Speaker 1: you're fighting the Russians, you want to be able to
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  Speaker 1: give your troops a K forty seven so that they
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  Speaker 1: can with the capture and exactly so whether you capture
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  Speaker 1: weapons and you can use them and you're used to
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: using those weapons. So we had to find enough weaponry
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  Speaker 1: to support a hundred and twenty thousand USDINE fighters. You
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: can do the math on how much ammunition and a
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  Speaker 1: K forty seven are needed. But none of it could
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  Speaker 1: move because it just couldn't move across the border. So
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  Speaker 1: we're looking for anti air weapons. They could be fired
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  Speaker 1: in the field and bring down these helicopters. And everything
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  Speaker 1: we tried in the foreign setting didn't work, but it
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: so happens. In eight six, the US government was just
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: manufacturing the sting or missile, which is heat seeking that
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: means you know, you fire it far to the left
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  Speaker 1: of a of a helicopter and the heat from the
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  Speaker 1: helicopter steers that missile right into it. So the effectiveness
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  Speaker 1: at the time General Dynamics thought, um the Stinger might
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: have success rate It exceeded seventy and one point that
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  Speaker 1: I'd make Barry. That's a lot of people don't understand.
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  Speaker 1: It's not just shooting down helicopters. What happened on September
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  Speaker 1: is when the first shot was fired and the helicopter
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  Speaker 1: came down. I shouldn't say first shot because the first
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: one bounced across the ground and the people on the
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: ground said, Jack Divine, sent us another piece, and I'll
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: leave the blank out of equipment. But the next three
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  Speaker 1: took out three consecutive helicopters single shots. But what happened
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  Speaker 1: that day is the helicopters thereafter flew above the trajectory
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  Speaker 1: of the Stinger missile, so it meant that they were neutralized.
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  Speaker 1: They just weren't able to suppress anything on the ground,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and that consequently we were able to just pour weapons
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  Speaker 1: across the border. So it wasn't just I'm shooting down
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  Speaker 1: the first few helicopters and several number of them. Quite
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  Speaker 1: a few after that was the fact that the strategy
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: moved the helicopters above effective range. And what it also did,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: which is terribly important, is back in Moscow, it was
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: like the last straw. You know, They've been slugging it out,
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  Speaker 1: thought they could neutralize in it. What do we do now?
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  Speaker 1: We have to up the ante. Are we going how
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  Speaker 1: long we're going to stay there? And frankly, it became
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  Speaker 1: a policy decision to start the withdrawal and that was
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  Speaker 1: as early as EIGHTI six that day. Once had Stinger
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  Speaker 1: missile was fired, the process of getting out began. And
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I think the leaving of of Afghanistan was a great
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: blow to the to the morale of the Kremlin. And
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I think it eventually along with the being so overpowered
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  Speaker 1: by the economic strength of the United States and to
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: some degree President Reagan Star Wars initiative, which the Russians believed,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I was agnostic about. They believe that thought, well, we
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: really have to change our game plan, and they did
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: so they came down. So they made a movie about this,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Charlie Wilson's War. How accurate were the broad strokes? And
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: when you watch these fictionalizations of actual events, are they
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: remotely close to the idea or is it just you know,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: a goofy uh, these are It's a really good question,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: actually a serious of questions. Barry. So, I was here
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: in New York and I was having a late lunch
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: in Saint Regis Hotel, which has sentimental reasons for me
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: from my CIA training. Will leave that aside for now.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And and Seymour Hoffman was there, and I really leave
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: actors alone. I never approached them. And in fact, my
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: wife was furious once in London because I came down
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  Speaker 1: the elevator with Anthony Hopkins and she said, well, what
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: did you talk about is I didn't say a thing.
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  Speaker 1: Don't pretended I didn't know she was living. So I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: don't make a habit of, you know, going over the celebrities.
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  Speaker 1: But I couldn't resist, so I went over to Hoffman,
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  Speaker 1: who was a real gentleman. I said, Mr Hoffman, my
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: wife loves you. Was an actor, uh, and thought he
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: did a great job in the movie Charlie Wilson's War.
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  Speaker 1: But you know, Mr Hoffan, I'll tell you that that
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  Speaker 1: justice and the way it came down. So I think
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: he looked out thought, oh, here's another one, and he's
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: new York crazy people, and he said, listen, thank you
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  Speaker 1: for your service. But I'm sure he felt um that
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I was. He was being put upon. But even before that,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Charlie Wilson and I had dinner in uh Sparks here
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: in New York. And your audience may not be aware
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: of Sparks is where where Paul Costillano was assassinated doorstep,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: which appealed to Charlie. Charlie had a sense of romance
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  Speaker 1: and uh he was with his wife at the time,
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  Speaker 1: and I was with mine and we sat down and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: he said, Jack, I know you didn't like the book.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: You're really going to hate the movie. And here's the reason.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Let maybe Charlie was a great character or someone that
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: we all should be have to have known. He was
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: a patriot. I mean it's been He was much more
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: substantive than people have recorded. But it wasn't Charlie Wilson's war.
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  Speaker 1: But in order to make a movie, you have to
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: have a central person, you know. So you have Tom
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Hanks and you have Julia Roberts, and you know, you
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: have this drama. And the truth of the matter is
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: these programs no congressman with a somewhat wild it's portrayed
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: by the movie CIA operator and and a socialite from
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Texas are going to change, change and run a war.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: It's not how it's done. It's a it's a major
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: logistical um effort done by the way governments do things,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: with Chaine at command, and it's all within house. I
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: think it would surprise people to know that, you know,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and Charlie's Wilson more and I was responsible from eight
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: five onward to the well into eight seven, and I
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: never sold their version of Julie roberts Uh. Charlie Wilson
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: had a stinger hanging over his office. One of my
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: colleagues gave him an expended too, But Charlie and Fairness
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: in his book said, you know, I had nothing to
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: do with the stinger, which he didn't, but most people
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: don't focus on on that. Charlie and I traveled a
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: couple of times to south to Pakistan and to the
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: border area of Afghanistan, and it was almost like a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: diplomatic trip. But I would say over my tenure with Charlie,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: we probably had five at most substantive discussions about there
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: had no no impact on how the world was being run.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: He called me once and said, well, Jack, understand you
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: shifted the supplies from Egyptian made and Chinese to sixty
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Chinese and Pakistani. What's up. He had the closest relationships
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: excuse me, Egyptians. He had a close relationship with the Egyptians.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And I said, listen, Charlie, it's very simple. The the
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: weapons are get there faster, cheaper than their better maybe
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: he said, okay, got it. So Charlie's influenced in the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: details of the war and the running of the war
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: is just not very realistic. He was important because he
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: brought attention to it early in the in the early eighties,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: and I think that's important. And he kept pressure on.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I once asked him, how did you get involved in it?
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: And Charlie's west Point at Annapolis Graduate and uh, he said, well,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you. The Speaker of the House, Jim Wright,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: came to me and said, Charlie, I want you to
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: stay on this. I want to stay on Afghanistan. That's
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: your job. So that's how he actually got involved. And
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I noticed on one of these TV shows that you mentioned,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: they have him in a hot tub with a couple
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of beautiful women, which was when he was a bachelor,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: sort of his uh style, and he's watching a video
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: of or a TV show with Dan rather talking about Afghanistan,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and in the movie he suddenly becomes enamored with the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: battle the real bat. The real truth was that Congressman
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Wright told him to get on it. Uh. The other
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: thing about but the hot tub is I got a
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: number of calls the next day, and it's quite interesting.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: They wanted to know, not about the stinger, not about this.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: They wanted to know, was I in the hot tub
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: with Charlie. Now I was annoyed because you know, professional
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be caught in that sort of situation.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: So I could tell when I answered the caller and said, look,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I wasn't in the hot tub with him, they were disappointed.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: It was well, Jack is kind of planned. He really
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't belong in Hollywood. But by the third call, I
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: finally wise stopped and I said, I don't want to
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: talk about it. So I wasn't going to mislead them,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: but I I left the impression that maybe maybe I
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: was a little more flamboyant than then the legend would
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: have it plausible deniability after the fact. Looks back at Afghanistan,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: that have said, well, the subsequent blowback from once the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Russians left UH and the United States says okay, we
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: have no more need to be here, is that it
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: created a power vacuum into which rises the Taliban. How
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: accurate is that depiction of of that part of the world. Well,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Charlie Wilson I did have a discussion at the time,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and both of us were the view that we should
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: have kept pushing funds into the Afghan fray. The experts
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and people that have studied it for years and the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: policy makers or other view, look, we wanted to drive
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: them out. We completed our and you have to know
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: when to end. And with hindsight, when I looked back
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: on it, and I would say, you know, twenty years
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: later or whatever, when I sat and I was able
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: to see the longer arc of history, I really believe
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I was wrong and Charlie was wrong. And that is
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: we could have thrown as much money. You can throw
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: as much money as you want into Afghanistan is not
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: going to make a material difference over Well, I'm not
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: a big fan of a nation building. I've come over
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the years to believe nations must decide when they must
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: have the the grit and will and desire to create
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: their nation. We can't force feed them. We can maintain
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: things as a we can keep things at bay if
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: that's desirable from a foreign policy point of view. But
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the thing we can go into a at that time,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a civilization that would have been more familiar in the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: sixteenth century, and think that you can fast forward into
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: a democratic country and with all the wherewithal is a
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: fool's mission. So I'm I'm opposed to it. I think
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I might have been more charged up at the time
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: about the battle, and but with candor and hindsight, I
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: think this is a bad, bad argument, you know. And
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the second part of that argument is, oh, and you
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: created the Taliban. I mean we created a vacuum into it. Now.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I think your yours is better state at the vacuum part,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: which I accept. But you know, what people don't focus
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: on is even after UM, after the Russians pulled out
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the communist Ppe state, Najibula state in power for three
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: years and there was it wasn't an immediate vacuum because
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: we pulled out UM and the Taliban didn't exist then.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: So and the Taliban is not a remake of the
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: mujadine that that we support it. So you know, it's
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: convenient sometimes for people to draw lines, and I just
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: think that an honest look will will lead to better
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: conclusions than those. Let's talk a little bit about your
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: most recent venture, the ark In Group, and how you
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: came to co found them from the CIA. You were
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: at the agency for thirty years. What motivated the exit. Well,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I think there's a certain point. It's usually in your
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: late fifties that um people exit the agency and you
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: wanted They wanted to have a flow through, so the
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: leadership was still relatively young in the early days. They
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: wanted people out at fifty, which was unrealistic frankly, because
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: most people are just hitting their stride as senior executives,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: so it's sort of pushed back to sixty. Most federal
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: employees can't retire to the sixty five, but in CIA,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: at fifty five, with five years of experience abroad, you
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: can leave leave early. In my particular case, I had
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: the job as the chief of worldwide Operations. That is
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: about as far as you can go in the system,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So staying around unless they decided to make me the director,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: which I would gladly have accepted. I would that's a
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: political appointment. That's a political appointment. Yea. So it was
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: it was time and there is a time to move on.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I did what I wanted to do. I got as
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: far as my aspirations, uh wished. So I felt it
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: was a good time to leave. And if you go
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: into the private sector market, you're better going in at
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: your late fifties, in your early sixties. So I love
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the agency and I would have stayed there forever if
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: there was still uh still opportunities. But you can't go
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: back and do the same top job. It's just it's
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: not any question of not being fair, but I think it, uh,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: you get too ingrained in the system. So what was
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: the transition like from government work to the private sector.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a I'd like to say I had
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: a career plan, a mission, and I when I left,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll go back to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: teaching or whatever. But there was a form acting director
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: of the FBI, find fellow named Larry Potts, and he
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: called me and said, look, you know, there's an investigative
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: company up in New York, and how we'd like to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: come up and run our office for a year, which
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I did. And the reason I was interested in the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: move is I always found New York to be an
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: exciting city and I wanted to the idea of coming
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: here there. Well, this is a foreign assignment coming to
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: New York. You know, two years would be great. You
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: can enjoy New York and and see the big lights.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: So two years it takes two years to find an apartment.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Well I didn't know that at the time. That was
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: as I said, Well, right, and when I was abroad,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: you had the infrastructure of an embassy to help you
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: find the place. But in New York, how long have
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: you been here for? I've been here seventeen years, so
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: you know, another seventeen I'll be in New York. I'm
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: working on it. But you know, I spent a lot
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of time in living in suburb of Washington, and it
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: never quite clicked for me. And then I've began to
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: think about I was born to Philade area, and I
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: lived in capitals around the world. Was a city person,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: so the thought of going back and living in the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: suburbs just didn't have the appeal. So this is an opportunity.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: And after I got here and spent several months or
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: almost a year doing this. UM I ran into my partner,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: current partner, Stanley Arkin, who's a very prominent lawyer. Uh no,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Nashally actually, and it's actually tried the first case before
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Corridor on insider trading in the defense UM
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and one the case and they changed the law accordingly.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: But and he what people didn't realize was in he
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: was asked by the director of c I A if
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: he would come down and defend one of the senior
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: CIA people caught up in the Iran contra affair. So
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I remember I didn't meet him, but I remember him
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: coming down and that the the officer Stanley was able
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: to cut a deal for him, and I thought, how smart,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: What a smart operator here he was. Now other c
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I people weren't too happy because Stanley his only mission
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: that the press of the director, was to cut a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: deal for this felon. He did so. When we ran
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: into each other, we had fairly limited contact. And then
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: one day Stanley said, well, look, the company with you
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: too cheap to buy buy lunch. And Stanley doesn't need
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: a free lunch, I'll assure you. But I said, look, Stanley,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: I'll buy you lunch. So we went to Maloneium for
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Celi over on Shiftier Street. Stanley doesn't even sit down.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: He's still standing and says, Jack, I think we should
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: go into business together. So I said, like, when you
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: sit down, we'll talk about it. So the basic concept was,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: you know, he had a very rich roll, decks of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: contacts and um and had been in the business of
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: using information in support of his big cases. And he
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: felt that I had to know how on how to
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: produce that information. And it appealed to me because I
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: am an information junkie. I mean, I'm an intelligence junkie.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: When I first left, I went out and interviewed and
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I won't name the company, but it was a furniture
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: company out in Grand Rapids, and I thought, oh my god,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: how am I going to do this? You know, I'm
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: not I'm not sure I'm going to be convincing the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: salesman and uh and uh. Fortunately uh. I ended up,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: as I said, in something I like you now, and
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: that's collecting information and collecting information internationally. Now we do
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: about a third of the work here in the States,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: but much of the distinguishing work, because it's so much
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: harder for companies, is in this space collect internationally, and
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I think over the past seventeen years, UM, standing are
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: proud of the network we've we've built up, and I
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: think it's uh, it's very very robust, but it's information
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: collection and no one's Justice Department is not going to
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: authorize me to help overthrow governments or counter invasions anywhere.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: So it's were strictly in the information business and helping
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: clients to navigate abroad. Let's talk a little bit about
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: what's going on in the headlines. Uh, the infamous House
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee memo was authorized to be released. It raises
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the question how independent are intelligence and law enforcement agencies
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: like the CIA or the n s A or the FBI.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: So I think professionals in both law enforcement and we'll
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: talk about the FBI or in the intelligence world CIA,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: although there are other law enforcement agencies, and there's also
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: other agencies involved in intelligence collection like n s A
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: and military intelligence and so on. The professionals in this
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: field really don't want to see an interest section between
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: politics and intelligence. It's really Uh. I don't know if
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: you've ever had an opportunity to go into the CIA headquarters,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: but no, but I'll take you up on that offer.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: For sure. Well, you're gonna have to get on the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: payroll first. So when you it's a from my view,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: from an a steady point of view, what I like,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and we're in the past and now was the there's
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: aesthetic dimension to it you walk in. There's a certain
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: amount of simplicity to it. On the left is a
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: quote from the Bible, and it says you shall know
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the truth and then it will set you free. Now,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: someone gave that thought when they were thinking of what
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: would go on the the wall of the CIA. That
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: is the mantor of the words. Your job is to
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: get the facts, the truth, and as Jack Webb used
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: to say, nothing but the facts, and it should be
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: deep politicized. I wouldn't note on the other side of
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: the wall the symmetry of the stars where the falling
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: officers of C. I A Are recognized, and there's over
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty stars. When I joined was probably fifty.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: So there's the ultimate price that officers have paid over
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: the years for standing by that. I can't tell you
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the political orientation, and most of the people that I
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: worked with, I mean, there are a few that I suspected,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: but it was unprofessional to bring into the workplace, you know,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: domestic politics. It just wasn't professional. And the CIA is
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: blessed and compared with State Department in a minute, which
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: for whom I have great respect and an important role
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: they play. But in c I A. When the directors
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: come in, they come in with only a couple of people.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Usually it's the general council and maybe an assistant or two,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: but none of them hold command positions. And it was
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: it's free of the political point. He's other than the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: director and deputy direct actor State Department. There are so
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: many jobs that are open to the political arena. Assistant
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: secretary of this ambassador. All ambassadors resigned at the end
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: of an administration, so it can be politicized more than
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: the law enforcement agency. The FBI director is a tenure
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: tenure and there's been designed to make sure it carries
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: over and before any single lord two term presidency. That's correct.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: So I'm a strong advocate of keeping both of those institutions.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And again I'll leave State aside and other government agencies,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: but two that are very much in the headlines out
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: of politics. And I think the leaders of agencies that
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: dabble in politics to a great disservice to the Core
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Mission and to the institution. So it takes discipline and
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: not to become part of when you're in the administration,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: not to become part of the politicy sex and um.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: You know, if anyone were listening on this issue is
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: going to be the director, I would encourage them to
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: d politicize. So so what are we to make of
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: this recent attempt at painting agencies like the CIA but
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: these days the FBI as corrupt, biased, one sided institutions
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: that are working to thwart a candidate or a president.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Is this just part of the angling? Or let me
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: start with the CIA, the one I know best, And uh,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's a good description of what's taking place.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I think people sort of missed the fact that the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: very first official visit that President Trump made was out
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: to the CIA headquarters. And my own sense is day
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: in and day out, the relationship with d c I,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the Director, Pompeo, and the administration is probably very, very solid,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and the workforce itself tries to be supportive of the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: executive branch. But I my guest today that if you
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: walk through c I A and not much different than
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: when I would walk through and half the population would
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: be Democrats and the other half Republicans, maybe shifting within
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: two percents, you know, in a given year. And I
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: don't think they're politicized, and I don't think that's what's
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: at challenge here. I do think when the directors go
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: out and they should revisit this and feel like they
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: are spokesman for policy and political policy, that it paints
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a picture that, uh, and the institution is so people
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: underestimate the power of bureaucracies, and bureaucracy is a bad word,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: but over time, bureaucracies really mold the governments themselves. And
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I'm optimistic that and I believe this is happening that
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the longer the Trump administration goes on, the more the
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: bureaucracy begins to create policies and and things that are
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: more recognizable in a more traditional sense. The FBI, by contrast,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: right now is in a firestorm. And you know, the
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: FBI is most conforten is doing the investigations into crimes
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and kidnapping and so when and and counter intelligence. They
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: do a great job in you know, weeding out spies,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and they are terribly important agency for our government. But
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: when you get involved, and sometimes you're necessarily involved in
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the political part, then the institution is at some some jeopardy.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: So these are really difficult times for the FBI. And uh,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: you know, I think the sooner these the investigation is
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: concluded and and people can get back to doing the
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: other things that they do so well, I think it
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: would be healthier for the institution. So I do feel
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: that the FBI is in a really difficult period. CIA
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: has been in difficult periods in the past. I don't
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: think today is one of them. How do you think
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: this plays out with the FBI? Is is this the
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: sort of thing that could lead to a Saturday night
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: massacre where a bunch of people get fired, or because
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you've you've had a finger on the pulse of politics
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and d C, you know what sort of what's going
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: on there. What's your best guess as to how the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: capital deals with all these crazy cross cards. I bet
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: onto bureaucracies over in the long term that they because
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: they're so needed, and the congressman down on the hill
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: know that, I mean they really do. I mean, you'll
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: have speeches, but at the end of the day, I
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: don't think there's any sensible congressman that's thinking that somehow
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: we don't need the FBI or they're not doing a
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: very good job. So when this is done, I mean,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: this is the problem. This has been elongated, um boody match.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: But it's a major overhaul and is probably not what
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I would think would come down the road. Now it
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: depends on how this plays out, but certainly some people
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: will self elect to leave. Probably good for everybody, um,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: but I would expect the FBI to very quickly stabilize
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and returned to its rightful place in our national security arena.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: But it's going to be hard sledding until this, until
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the investigations are completed and we move away from the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: politics of of of the Russian meddling in the election
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and get on with the more strategic issues in the
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: international arena. So it appears that just about every intelligence
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: organization in d C has come out and said with
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a fairly heart degree of certitude, yes, the Russians have
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: meddled in our elections. They've meddled in elections around the world.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: They have a very effect active online presence. Um there
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: seems to be some reluctance to accept that as true
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: amongst both parts of this administration and certain Congressmen. Devin
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Noon has probably most specifically, how does other agencies looking
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: at this from afar? So we don't obviously know what
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: people in the FBI are thinking, But when the n
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: s A or the CIA or other agencies are watching this,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: what's the internal discussion like saying, is it, hey, thank goodness,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: is not us? Or are they looking at it as
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: if they could go after the FBI? They go after us?
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: What does this mean going forward? I'm not sure I
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: would be surprised if people and the other agencies are
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: internalizing it. I think they see it pretty accurately for
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: what it is, um and I just don't see other
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: agencies going through anywhere near the pain that the FBI
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: is going through. When we talk about seventeen agencies, I
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: mean you have to go back and look at the list.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: I mean they're not all you know, it might be
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: the Indian Affairs has a branch of collection or whatever,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: So I mean you really only have a handful, and
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the premier collectors are would be the you know, the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: n s A and the CIA and the FBI. When
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I think of collections and the military collects a great
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: deal of information and also the satellite agency that collects
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: satellite data. So when you get around to the word baddling,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: it's really a good word. It's you know, and trying
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: to understand this. I think there's really very few people
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: today that don't realize and accept that the Russians are meddling.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Meddled in the twenties sixteen presidential election. But what's does
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: meddling mean? And and from my view, you know, I
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: know what big covert action operations look like, and if
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: they if Putin really wanted to have a field day
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: in our election, you don't spend two hundred thousand, and
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: you don't dabble. There's a dabbling dimension to this that
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: I think should give people pause that if I were
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: too and I want to be clear, this is not
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: inside information since years of looking at it, um if
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I were the to analyze it, I think they wanted
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: to be a nuisance, or they didn't anticipate that Donald
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Trump would become president and they didn't foresee the unintended
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: consequences that they were trying to destabilize the West. It
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: would mean that they never read Western history. And what
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: happens when you heard is destabilized, you know that you
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: get end up with the Hitlers of this world in
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: World War one or World War two, so destabilizing the
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: West if they wanted to do that. This this is
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: very small potatoes, but that they meddled, and that there
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: has to be a resetting of it. Um is uh
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: is beyond a question of doubt. And I take some hope.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: As you know, the three top Russian intelligence officers visited
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: the United States recently. My hope not based I'm not asking.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: I hope is that it's to sit down and say,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, and now we've got to we have
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: to go back and re examine where are we here?
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Is this the way we're going to play the new
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: world we live in, or we're gonna stick by the
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: old Moscow rules in which we didn't interfere in each
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: other's election. So I'm hopeful it's the only way this
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: gets resolved, because if it continues, then we will have
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to respond, and very few people are giving there's nothing
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: in the public discourse about what we do. But we're
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: not going to sit here and let the Russians medal
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and then we'll meddle there and we'll be back to
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the old Cold War program. So I think it's a
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: good time to capt this off and have frank discussions
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: and put some markers don't know what we will and
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: will not do, so if there's any silver lining, maybe
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: that's it. So you raise a really interesting point. If
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: we decide that, hey, you want to play that way, Ivan,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: we could do something similar. What can we do to
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: respond to the Russian participation and Facebook and Twitter? And
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not so much that they are coming
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: onto our physical lands and wreaking havoc. They're just creating
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: some confusion in the online space, which really causes a
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: lot of people some discomfort. We live in a new
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: age of intelligence. I mean, if if you ask me
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: what's the biggest change over my lifetime, it isn't how
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: you go about getting human sources. That's as old as
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a prehistoric times. So the h it isn't It isn't that.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: It's the technology, the speed with which which you can
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: move information across boundaries. I mean, you just can't imagine
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: the type of struggles I had to go to the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: collect information that today one your click, one click away
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: from getting fifty times that and what I would work
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: for days to collect. And the second thing is my
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: ability to mobilize people. I mean, you have to go
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: on higher group and paint signs. And today you know,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: with a good Twitter account you can really stir up
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of trouble. So and there's a there's a
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: leveling to it because you don't have to be a
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: powerful nation to metal. So I I still believe, strongly believe,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: based on again the arc of history, that America still
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: is your most sophisticated intelligence operation and in the technical area,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: and we certainly can respond anywhere in the world with
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: things that are not seen by the naked eye today.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: So we can make life very difficult in the cyber world.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: They crash gin is to what end? I mean, what
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: we really don't want that to happen. It doesn't there's
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: no win win in that. So but it's unchecked that
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: you're you're led there, you will be led down that path.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: So I think it's in the interest and I'm you know,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: having been an adversary of the Russians, I have a
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: lot of respect for uh them in a different category
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: that they're not unmindful of what's about what's taking place here,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and they need to recorrect because they were dabbling and
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: didn't realize it would have the impact. They never dreamed
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that it was going to turn around, lead to sanctions,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: isolate them in the West, and I think they're probably
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: trying to find a way out, pull a rabbit out
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: of the hat. On their end. We have been speaking
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: with Jack Divine, former acting director of Operations for the
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Central Intelligence Agency. If you enjoy the sort of conversation,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: stick around for the podcast actors. Will we keep the
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: tape rolling and continue to discuss all all things intelligence.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I'll be sure and check out my daily column on
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg View dot com. You can follow me on Twitter
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: at rid Halts. I'm Barry RIDH Halts. You're listening to
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Jack,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. Didn't really get
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to talk about Edward Snowdon and and the n s
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: A and mass surveillance. What are your thoughts on that?
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Well in Snowden. Actually, when green Wall's book came out
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: about Snowdon, I was called by Politico and asked for
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: a few comments about it because they wanted to be
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: balanced between Greenwald's version of St. Snowdon and line and
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: um as I said, earlier in the program. I knew
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Rick Ames. He was m the American CIA officer who
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: volunteered to the KGB. Isn't that sort of a bizarre thing?
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I mean right, it's well one of the problems in
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: finding Rick Games and I think the same problem recently
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: with Jerry Lee and the Chinese following that in the newspaper,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: But is that the CIA had a really hard time
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: accepting the fact that one of their own was working
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: for her for the Russian so it looked for all
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: other explanations of why we were losing agents. And I
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: have made it a habit of when I've talked to
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: a number of the directors over the past several years,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: to make the point that there is a mall inside
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the institution. So you need to make sure that you
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: get briefed by the counter intelligence people and the attractive
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: because it's part of the business, is what I'm saying.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Just assume that, and we've had spies inside the Russian system,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: they've come out their public faith no surprise. Why we
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: would think we would be immune from it as as
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: a tad naive or a group of people that are
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: so hard nosed, But it is true. We think of
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: ourselves as the the light on the hill, and that
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: you know, as I said earlier, you joined because of
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: a sense of mission. Who could possibly betray it? And
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: I can talk about some of the behavioral things. I
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: wanna talk about Aims for one secual, just to overlay
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: it on. Yeah, No, it's fascinating. So when you find
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: when you look at Rick Aims, he was very well
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: read person. He was enthusiastic about the CIA and the
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: counter intelligence and hunting down spies. But he had a
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: self importance. He thought why he was not very materialistic
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: at this point in his life. He thought he was
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: smarter than he was, you know. But he had a hambit,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: uh And it's a very dangerous one for anybody in
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: business and in the bureaucracy, and that is it was lazy.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: So he would do things well, he didn't like to
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: do it. He wouldn't do it at all. So it's
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: very safe to project over a career trajectory that people
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: that are lazy eventually fall behind. So when you get
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: in the middle of your career, you think you're smarter
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: than everybody, but now you're you find that you're a
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: major and your people that went through your training with
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: you are now colonels and one star general. So the
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: bitterness of the gap between your narcissism and that's where
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the anger is. It's very rarely that people betray their
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: country on some big philosophical issue. It's about that personal thing.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: You look at Snowdon. Now, Snowdon, I think it's a
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: fairly bright fellow. But he wasn't good student in school.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: And why if you start to look at snow and
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: you see he was sort of a lazy guy, did
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: what he wanted to do. It was a very junior officer,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: and I think the same tendency was that he thought
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: he was should be somewhere else in life and smarter,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and the revenge sets in. I don't believe he was
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: a spy. If so, the Russians had up their game,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: that you could find a Snowden where in his position,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: find him and recruit him is better than my understanding
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: of our success rate. So I think he was a
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: disgruntled Yeah, But the minute he ended up in Russia,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I just there's no you know, it doesn't take much
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: imagination to realize that Snowdon everything that he does is
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: controlled by the state. In this case, the KGB and
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: the FSB, and and that is his meals, his job.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Who he meets, who he sees, what he can say
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: public and not say publicly, are all controlled by the system.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: So after a while you become wittingly or unwittingly in
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: a in of the system. So while that may not
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: have been his design, that may not have been his motivation.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: He is a pawn in the system. And over time,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: almost old defectors leave very very unhappy lives. And I would,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: and that would be my forecast for him. He will
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: be as he ages, and he's got a long way
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: the age, he will become a terribly depressed person. Ever
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: coming back to the United States, So if he wants
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to go to jail, he will be prosecuted and convicted.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: And that's that. Let's talk a little bit about counter narcotics,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: because you headed that division, you worked on the Pablo
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Escobar case, helping to bring him down. Tell us a
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: little bit about that. What was that like and what
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: were the goals of the counter Narcotics division. Number of
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: your listeners may not recall that in the early eighties,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: counter in our potics was the number three concern. Narcotics
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: was number three concern of the American public. They wanted
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: their government to do something about it because drugs had
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: moved into suburb we had moved into the country side.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: It was pervasive, and it was business, big business. So
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: there was a huge push and all the government agencies
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: too um enter into counter narcotics. CIA and the FBI
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: was not enthused about it. And one of the reasons
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: was they were reluctant to get into business that concerned
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: that they might get too close to the business themselves
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and the temptation and corruption would be an issue. So
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. And the FBI wanted
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: to do crime busting and and uh, and we wanted
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: to do um catching spies, running spies. So they actually
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: created had a great d e A and had another
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: name at the time, but it had to be made
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: up and people drawn from other agencies because no one
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: wanted to do it. But then as it got more
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: and more money, next to you know, the Navy was
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: using ships to go run down a little tobacco boat
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: running from the Caribbean, so money draws, so little by
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: little became a big business in the in the CIA
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: as well, and we created a center which brought in
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: people from other agencies and and from other disciplines in
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: c I a what I got out of the center,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: which which is it's the way you do business normally
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: in the agency. It's stovepipe analyst, operators, scientists. In fact,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: we have elevators that were color coded when I walked
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: into the building, and you would never dream of going
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: up the green a scientist elevator, and nobody would ever
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: rub the spy elevator. They didn't weren't as spy. So
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: creatures of it. The beauty of the counter and arcotage program,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: the counter Terrorism wanted had changed the discipline and that
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: all of these groups had to work together. We brought
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: them together and we started to develop new capabilities linkage analysis,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: which we take for granted now, and that is how
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you use software to tie different conversations. And technology became
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: a huge part of it. And on the ground, uh,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: we invested a lot of time in integrating capabilities. And
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: I know this will get boring for your readers, but
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying the counter narcotics targeting became a model
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: for the future of how the agency was going to
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: do business in the drug business. Ugly ugly business. Pablo Escobar,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: for sure, it was a high figure in Colombia. Uh
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: had his own zoo, blew up an aircraft. I mean,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: he was a really vicious and dangerous guy in Meta.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: But the more dangerous group was the Colleague cartel, which
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: had a lower profile, but they had more They were
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: really moving more drugs and more money. But because of
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Scoobars fighting with the government, he had a higher profile,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: more easily identified. So from an agency point of view
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and working with other agencies, the mission was to identify
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: where he was and then to have a well trained
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: unit to be able to take action the Colombians. And
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: we felt that if you took a policeman and put
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: him on the street after your training, within a day
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: or two he's met by a drug traffickers saying, look,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: I'm either going to give you a hundred dollars and
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: you don't have to do a thing. Just don't do
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: a thing. There's nothing and if you don't, if you
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: try to be active, you know we're going to shoot you.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: And so it was a question between you know, the
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: expression in Spanish was you know the wall and between
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: lead and money, and you can either. So it's very
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: tempting for April, so you couldn't put police in around,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: so we had to develop special units. And then if
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: you watch as the Scobar movies or whatever, you will
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: see that at the end he was located on his
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: cell phone talking to his side, and so that the
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: technology the world we live in made it easier to
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: identify him and to uh to he met his demise
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: as a result of that. What do you think of
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: the war on drugs that took place domestically and how
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: does that contrast today where I believe it's a not
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: just a majority, but a substantial majority of Americans favor
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: either the criminalization or legalization of things like marijuana. Well,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a tricky subject. One of
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: the things I was on what I would call the
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: supply side or how do you how do you stop
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: the supply and stopping this why is an important thing.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: If you don't do it, if you're getting let's say
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: five hundred kiloads a day going into the United States, um,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: you'll end up with a thousand if you don't have it.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: But that isn't the real the way. In college, I
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: was on the demand side, So I heard that filed.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Your file indicates that. But the the the problem is,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: as long as there's a demand, no matter what you're
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: doing on the supply side, the price will go up.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: But people are going to find those drugs and deliver them.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: So if I had ten dollars, I'd put three dollars
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: into If I were the decider, I would put three
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: dollars into supply and seven into demand. The problem with
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: the demand side is, you know, we talk health, and
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: certainly we should do everything can, but the rate of
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: success in dealing with from a health point of view,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: it was really dismal. So how do you prevent the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: consumer consumer from taking drugs? So law enforcement is going
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: to go in and do what it can, but it
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't impact on the consumer and to some degree, and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: why people giggle at it, I don't uh. Nancy Reagan
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: said say, no, well, it's not as simple as that.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: But you have to do something that makes people feel
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: that it isn't good to do this, that they decide
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: that it becomes uh, not fashionable. What would be my point?
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: Why do why did everyone on TV three or four
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: years ago where purple shirts and purple ties. I have
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: no idea. I don't know who started the trend didn't happen,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: But there are trends in history. There's trends in foreign policy.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: And if I look at isis today we're seeing a
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: downward trend, right, But when you looked at narcotics, where
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: was there in history that the drug, the cocaine heroin dropped?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Now it's back, But why did it drop? It became uncool.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Hollywood did so much in terms of playing at that.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: You know why it might have been cool for not
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: not in any circle life care to be in. But
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: here in New York, you know, to put a cocaine
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: on the table and have a party. There was a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: point where you didn't look too good if you were
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: doing that. So they're the point is you have to
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: spend time and what I would call social and engineering,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: but we careful how we do it, but that you
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: have to get the consumer, the American people, to stop
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: thinking that taking drugs is a good thing. I kind
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: of like the idea of making the price so cheap
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: that there's no profit margin for the bad guys, which
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: is what seems to be happening with marijuana wherever they
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: legalize it. And now they're talking about Canada, becoming the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: first G seven country to make it completely legal. Well,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: I remember not too many years ago, four or five
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: years ago, sitting down with the head of the police
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: in Mexico City and we're talking about narcotics. City said, look,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: you're legalizing its state by state, and you know he
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: was ahead of his time in identifying the use of marijuana. Uh.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I do think your point is right on target as
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: it relates to the huge downside of it being a
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: criminal offense is that you fluster criminal organizations. They're taking
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: the money. It's not only out of the system, but
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: you have people that influence the political rename can do
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: horrible things. If you legitimize it, that would go I hell. Ever,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, UM dubious that we actually would
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: be effective and managing it is too often you start
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: with we're going to control it and the control turns
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: out not to be there. So and I want to
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: be careful that we don't have a doped up society.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: So there is some balance in this. And now, I
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: think in the criminal system, and I'm not an expert
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: on the statistics, but I think most of the people
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: that are in jail are you are not users. They
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: are sellers so and the question so the little bit
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: of the legitimatization of marijuana. I mean, I don't want
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: to get in trouble with all of my former colleagues
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: who worked so hard on but there is something here
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: to try and get organized crime out of it. But
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I have yet to see a program that would make
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: me comfortable that we would have the self discipline and
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: to manage a program where we wouldn't end up being
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: a very weak populace. And and I have some libertarian
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: friends who think everything should be legalized. I think beer
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: and wine and weed are one thing, and the opioids
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: and heroin and all that stuff an entirely different set
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: of issues and problems and risks for a society at large, right,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, no matter how we look
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: at it, we have to deal with it. The drug
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: problem is back, and back big time. The heroine is
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: really quite amazing because it is so addictive and yet
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: it's worked its way into our everywhere. But in the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: school system is where it caused the flashback in the eighties,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: and people her we're news now down in the low
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: teens is quite large, and the number of overdoses are
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: stunning stunning, So I have to get to my favorite questions.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do a lightning round on a couple
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: of quick things because I I can't miss them before
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: our standard standard questions. UM, so really quickly, U S
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: drone program effective and effective? What do you think of it?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: You didn't ask me, but I'm I'm stunchly opposed enhanced interrogations. Okay,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: that's the next question on my list. I want to
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: take them side by side so that somehow you don't
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: think I've become whimpish over the years. So torture, does
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: it work? And should we do it? Let me let
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: me answer your drone So I want to say I'm
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: opposed to the enhanced interrogation on the drone. I feel
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: quite differently. To me, it's like the new Stinger. I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: actually had my hands on what I believe is the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: first drone that was going to be used in combat
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: in six We were going to use it in uh
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, and I was looking at it looked like
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: a souped up toy plane, but it was about six
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: foot wine and I gotta call the lawyers. Called said,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: oh Jackie, you can't use that. That's assassination. Okay, so
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: I said, right, we're not. I guess we won't use that.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: So instead we got these big mortars and fired mortars
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: with GPS. Now this is where your business clients we'll
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: want to take me with the grain is salt, because
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: we'll realize that they don't have a keen business interest
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: in this area. I actually had the first we had.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: The GPS was introduced to me. We put it with
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the mortar, first time ever used in combat in Afghanistan,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: and to me it was a weapon system. If I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: had a business sense, I should the facts. A wait
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: a minute, this is GPS. We can we can make
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: this thing really hum well, as you can see, I'm
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: not here in Armani suit because I just didn't remember
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: remember to do that. So so I'm an advocate of
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's a powerful thing. It was used originally
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: for surveillance, and then someone said we need to put
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: help fire missiles on and frankly, I've got no no
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: time for the terrorists. And and but it has to
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: be handled you know, smartly. I mean you have to.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: And I believe we have the capacity and have been
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: using smartly so pro drone anti torture let's talk about
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: w m d S in Iraq. What the heck happened there?
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: And who do you blame for that? Was that the CIA?
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Was that the shadow agency that the Vice President's office created. Well,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I think there's several aspects of the the weapons of
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: mass destruction issue um And again this is where there's
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: a hilarity with me. I was for going into Afghanistan
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: immediately after nine eleven, finding Ben Ladden and taken down
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: to tell them unequivocal, no compunctions about it. We did
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: as a CIA special forces went in took down the Taliban,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: using some of the folks that we worked with back
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: in the old days. I had no compunctions about that.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't I would have. My view is not to
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: hang around. I wrote an article some years later in
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal saying, you know, you want to
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: keep using the CIA and special forces in low prob.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: You don't want to go in and build through the
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: nation building. But leave that aside. A rock. I never
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: understood in the sense that well, the weapons is you know,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: we talked weapons of mass destruction. He definitely had weapons
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: of mass destruction. Inspectors went and this is before the crisis,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and we know, they destroyed only half of them at
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: the time, so whatever happened to the other half, So
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: it was not an unnuh unreasonable position to believe that
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: there were weapons of mass destruction. I mean Sun was
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: saying fooled his own cabinet. Now there was everyone else thought, well,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: he's had it, he has it hidden somewhere or else, okay,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: and you know he never denied it publicly. But my
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: problem is there was nothing that I saw, and have
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: yet to see to this day, anything that indicated that,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: even if he had them, that he was going to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: use them. He used to be against us, and that
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: there was an eminent threat and we needed to deal
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: with it immediately. So I think it's going to prove
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: to be one of the great UM blunders. Is that
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: a good way? It's more than military because I think
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: it's really a geopolitical mistake. Allowed I Ran to lose
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: a counterbalance. They really expanded dramatically. We've opened up, you know,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: you've opened up a huge instability vacuum, and and today
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: that we're living with so um you know, conventional wisdom
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: and you know, we're not talking about North Korea and
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Iran today, but I was reading today in the newspaper
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: about giving somebody, you know, giving them a bloody nose,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: you know, uh so, and having options on going in
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: and preemptive strike. And I'm thinking, gosh, that we ever learned?
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, what are the unintended consequences? Play back your
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: tapes from when we went into Iraq? The oil? The
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: oil was going to pay for the war. I mean
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: our ability, very smart people to deceive ourselves when we're
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: when we're spun up. So I think these the Iraq
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: is the most unfortunate development in our modern history. And
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: getting out then this is the problem. When you do
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: preemptive anything. It's easy to get in. And we are
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the most powerful force in the world bar none, so
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: we don't have troubly getting in. It's how do you
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: get out? And what are the consequences? Have you foreseen
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: all the consequences clearly in issue? And for the record,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I will add nobody who actually could do basic math
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: imagine that the oil would pay for the Iraq war,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: that that line might have affected the enumerate, but the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: rest of us knew that was nonsense. I only have
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: you for another eight minutes. Let me jump to my
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: favorite questions. Um tell us about some of your early mentors.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I think as I think back over my career, and
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: that's where good hunting. Uh. It was helpful writing it
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: because you had to go back and say, oh, my goodness,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I really did I thank that person enough. And I
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: started making calls because of an interview of people, and
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was fascinating. I remember calling
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: one feather that was my deputy on the Iran program
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: and how we tried to avert getting into the Iran
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: contry affair. And he was out and I was somewhere
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: on a tractor and I called and and I could
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: hear his wife getting him, and he got on the
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: phone and I said, this Jack divine, and I heard
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: big sigh and I thought, I know, I know, I
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: know that side that sigh is Oh what did he
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: get me into? And I said, look, Claude, I thought
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: I wanted. All I wanted to do was tell you
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: how grateful I am on you know, which I didn't
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: appreciate enough at the time. I did because of the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: book get to talk to some of my mentors, and
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: a few of them have died in the last few years,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: and it's a great thing to go back and and
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: to talk to him. So I talked to a fellow
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: who was my chief and my first assignment abroad. And
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: when you look back, must it was a pain to
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: deal with me, you know, too much Huberts and all this.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: But I learned so much from him, and he was
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: helpful to me. As his career advanced, he was helpful
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: to me. Tom Polger was the last chief off of
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: the roof in Vietnam uh and was the chief out
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: there wrote that famous message about uh you know, you know,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: you need to learn from history. But so I called
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Tom on the phone and he said, I said, Tom,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I wrote this article. He said, yeah, that's good, but
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: I got a couple I want you to read, you know.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: So he hadn't changed one bit. So I had a
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: whole series and we couldn't go through them. But I
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: felt I was helped. You know. They called the business
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: a trade trade craft, and you know, I'm I'm the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: son of a plumber, and you know, and I worked.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: I was terrible. That's why I had to become a spy.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's you learn that you're an apprentice
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: at the elbow of a master. And I think the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: best of the best. Thing that can happen to an officer,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: and ce I has to work for someone who's a
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: real craftsman and has an interest in development. So I
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: think I've been extraordinarily lucky in that regard. Let's talk
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: about books. This is everybody's favorite question. Tell us about
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: some of your favorite books, whether they're related to intelligence
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: or not, fiction or nonfiction. Well, I think, uh, well,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: first of all, and the um I would mention a
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: book that I read a little bit every day. And
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: whether you're secular in your beliefs or not, but I
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: read two verses of the Bible every day because I
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: find it leaving the religious connotation inside about life and frankly,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: even the language from which we speak. It's interesting in
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. You know, most people back in those days,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the fundamental book that they worked for was the Bible.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: They didn't have other books. So Lincoln when he talks
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: about you know, no House Divided, I can't stand. I mean,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: where was he drawing this? So I I find some
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: inspiration in it. But right now I'm reading a book
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: about grant by around turn Off. Everybody has told me
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: they loved that book. The book it can be read
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: on several outs Look, I'm just leaving the Battle of Vicksburg.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not a military expert. I mean I've been involved.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: But the reason I was involved because I was surrounded
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: with people that really knew what they were doing. But
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: it's the person Grant. It's so interesting that he would
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: absolutely have been a failure at all, and and it
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: was a failure in just about everything else. He was
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: unassuming character. But there is a great deal to read
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: and to reflect on and thinks about the Civil War
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: that I had missed the role of ex slaves in
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: the army, I mean, real roles for them. So it's
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: a it's a fascinating reading them and enjoying it. Um.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: I I'd like history. So you know Doris Kern's uh rainals,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: you know, how does the government function and the dynamic
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: around that. I read one on the CIA last year.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: It was called The Brothers and was Alan Douglas ahead
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: of c I A and uh, what do you think
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: of it? I learned a lot because even though I
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: was in the business, the dynamic of the two of them,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Uh and uh. I'm a student not only of the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: bigger history but the c I A history, So it
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: was it was interested me the broader readership. Probably not, um,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: not not so much. And I don't know what you think. Well,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: I did read John Lacy's latest book. Like, I don't
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: read spy books. I've never read one of Ian Flemings,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: but I did read his first three books, which I
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: thought were superb and understanding the psychology of people in
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: the business. And I just read his last book, Legacy
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: of Spies, and I wish he hadn't written it, just
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: sort of diminishings. I mean, I just read it. It's
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: like the first three of the ones to read. The
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: first three were really pieces of art. And uh, my
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: last two questions. If somebody recent graduate or a millennial
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: came up to you and said, I'm interested in the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: intelligence field, what sort of advice, uh, what sort of
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: career advice might you give them? Well, I think there's
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: a couple of things that they need to realize. They
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: have to go online, so and then you're going to
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: get an interview. You need to know the business enough
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: to talk articularly about about it. So I would recommend
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: you read books good hunting. Certainly it's a good stuck,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: but there's a number of really good books. When I
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: was looking for books, to read. There was hardly anything
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: Alan Dull's Craft of Intelligence David Wise. Today there's a
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: lot of really good books. But and then you have
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: to decide what do you want to be where do
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: you want to be in And you have to think
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: about the life that you're gonna do you want to
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: be in Washington as a an analyst or you're going
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: to travel around the world. What's that going to mean
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: with you? So there's a lot of life issues that
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: go into it. Almost any degree, as long as you
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: do well in it, and almost any respectable school is
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: going to get you there assuming you have you know,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: and I could que that somewhere between forty you don't
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: have one seventy because then you're dysfunctional inside the bureaucracy, right,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: we can't have too many geniuses. You really need the
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: question of integrity, and it may be counterintuitive to the movies,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: but you know, you have to have a sense of mission.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: You want to be there, and they're going to be
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: looking to make sure that you're a person they can trust.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: And as I said earlier, you know that you are
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: not a person who's engaging in petty theft. Because we're
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: worried that petty theft will lead the big time theft inside.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: So these are the types of things that people need
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: to think about. And our final question, what is it
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: that you know about spycraft and intelligence gathering today that
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: you wish you knew thirty five years or so ago
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: when you started. There's uh a great quote by by
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: former Secretary of States Schultz, and the quote is no
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: bad idea dice and washing. And the point is that
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: early in my career, I thought, this is such a
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: dumb idea that it will not go anywhere, So you
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: don't have to stand up and be counted, right, And
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: that held me well because virtually all the bad ideas
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: didn't did die. But the one that didn't die was
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: the irand Country affair. And I do think I stood up,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: but I think I should have gotten top of the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: building and screamed at the top of my voice that
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: it was a bad idea. So uh, I would say
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: that people in key positions and bureaucracies, you know, when
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: you see a bad idea, stand up. And I would
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: say to young people and and people that are seasoned, ah,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: it is important. It's critical. It's a responsibility at a
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: certain level in in all institutions to uh speak truth
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: to power. And for those people that are worried about
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: their career, you know, I would tell you it helps
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: your career. Now you have to be careful how you
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: phrase it so you don't annoy the unduly the recipient
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: of it. But it is so important in the public sphere,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: and I believe in corporations as well to speak truth
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: to power. And I think there's some of the lessons
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: that did you reflect back on. It's it's key the
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: things that you learned. It's not just how to put
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: down a dead drop in the middle of the parks
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: to No. One season. We have been speaking to Jack Divine,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: former director of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency and
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: author of the c I a memoir Good Hunting. If
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: inch or down an inch at any of the other
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: or so such conversations that we've had. We love your comments,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: did not thank my crack staff who helps put together
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: this show each week. Michael Batnick is our head of research.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: Taylor Riggs is our producer slash Booker. Medina Parwana is
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: our audio engineer and producer. I'm Barry Ritults. You've been
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.