Latest / UK Column Radio / Deep State Gangsters - with Author and CIA Whistleblower Pedro Israel Orta

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Deep State Gangsters - with Author and CIA Whistleblower Pedro Israel Orta · UK Column Radio

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Good afternoon, and welcome to the UK column audience, wherever
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: you are in the world. I have another very special
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: guest with me today. This is Pedro israel Arter who's
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the author of The Broken Whistle, a Deep State runner
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: mock and Pedro is a former analyst and operations officer
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: with the CIA, and his book is a remarkable story
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: as to what happens when ultimately he turned whistleblower and
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: started to expose just some of the things that have
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: been happening and he'd observed and experience during his time
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: with the CIA. So we just pop on screen the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: book very briefly so that people can see the cover there,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to say I've spent hours reading this book.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I found it absolutely fascinating. Courage viewers to purchase a
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: copy and to read what I've been able to read.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm also going to put on upfront Pedro your website.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: So you've got a little bit here saying this website
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: is hosted by Pedro israel Or, a CIA whistleblower, author
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: of The Broken Whistle, and executive producer of Deep State Gangsters.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And then it goes on to say that you're an
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: ordained minister, preacher of righteousness and an award winning photographer.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: So without any more, Ado Pedro, welcome to the UK
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: column and thank you very much for agreeing to this
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: interview today.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Thank you Brian for being so gracious and hosting me
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: on your show today.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a pleasure. As I said, as I've just
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: said to the audience, the book I've found absolutely fascinating.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: It raised lots of questions for me. And what I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: thought we'd do today is just get you to more
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: or less take the audience through the sequence that you've
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: followed in your book. And you've got a fascinating background.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Your family originally from Cuba, and as you state that
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the family has experienced all the tough times in Cuba
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: under a very oppressive regime, and then you've worked your
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: way up through a very interesting career in commercial companies
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: which included groceries and through into the flower market if
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I remember those sections correctly. But ultimately you've got the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: opportunity to move briefly through the military and then into
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the CIA. So welcome and tell the audience a bit
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: about yourself and how you made that amazing journey from
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that sort of background in commercial world into the interesting
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: a reader of the CIA.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Brian. I certainly have a very diverse and
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: interesting background. And what I had to do because whistleblowers,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of times, whistleblowers are aligned, you know, disparaged,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the scum of the earth, trash, you know,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: troubled employees, troubled persons. So I wanted to make sure
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: that the reader would know that no, I was not
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a troubled employee and a troublemaker. But in fact I
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: had a very long, distinguished work history prior to the
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: CIA and in the CIA. So I start the book
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: with basically the hook. The main story there is how
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: real whistle blowers like myself so treated like yesterday's trash,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: while fake whistle blowers like the Ukraine whistleblower are heralded
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: as heroes. And that's very detailed in chapter one, the
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: weaponized whistle Blown, And that sets the stage so that
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: the reader would know real whistleblowers like myself really have
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: no fair chance at all to make a mark and
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: have what they disclosed to be dealt with, and for
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: that matter, the end result this just you know, just
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: unsurmountable amount of reprisals. So we jump into basically the backstory,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: you know, Chapters two through sixteen are essentially the backstory
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: before we get to the real meat of the CIA
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: whistle blowing that got me into trouble. And I start
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: off with my background being a Cuban American born and
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: raised in Miami, of you know, immigrant Cubans who fled
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Communist Cuba because of anti crast Castro activities. I had
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: a grand uncle thrown in prison for twenty years. My
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: grandfather was thrown in prison, but he miraculously was able
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: to get out, and that precipitated the immigration with his family, wife, daughter,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: and three sons to Miami, where I was born. And
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: you know, we knew first hand the perils of form
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: of government. Our family suffered much. They left Cuba and
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: came to the United States with nothing and without language,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: which made it very difficult for them to get a
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: head start here in the United States. My father came
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: at age eighteen, basically left behind his medical studies and
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: never was able to study medicine. And in fleeing Cuba,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: you know a lot of relatives were left behind. I recall,
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: you know, many incidents growing up on the hardships. You know,
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  Speaker 2: my family encountered my grandmother one day crying hysterically and
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: it's like, what's going on, Grandma? Her mother died in Cuba.
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  Speaker 2: She had not seen her mother more than a decade.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: I think it was maybe fifteen years, and she couldn't
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: go back to her mom's funeral. Things like that and
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: the difficulties we had. You know, we were a family
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: of modest income, you know, lower lower income, not poor,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: but certainly not well off, and that really hurt my
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: ability to seek higher education. So I ended up working
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: in the Miami business world perishable commodities, groceries, fresh produce
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: as a buyer, a wholesale buyer where we would sell
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: to the grocery stores. Extremely competitive business on a product
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: that had very low margins for error, so excellence was
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: a must day in and day out. We had to perform.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, there was no cutting corners. This was either
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: you do it right or go out of business. I
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: eventually did perishable flowers, fresh cut flowers, same thing. So
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I cut my teeth in work almost fourteen years in
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: a high stakes environment where excellence was demanded, and at
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the same time in a culture of excellence, integrity, honor,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: and respect, which was that old Cuban mindset. We would
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: basically do business by a shake of a hand. Award
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: was our bond. We would basically come to an agreement,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: shake hands, turn of backs, and keep our words on
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: both ends. That's the environment I grew in. And you know,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: in time, I was able to put myself through school
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: at night, working full time during the daytime, going to
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: school at night, graduating summa cum laude, which was a
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: remarkable achievement considering that, I mean I was basically my
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: life was basically working the day, school at night, weekends
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: and nights, homework, writing papers, reading the political science, international relations,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: just a lot of reading and writing for that matter.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: And you know that got the eyes of some CIA
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: recruiters who came to the university, Florida International University, and
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: I interviewed with them, and that's how this all began.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I entered the CIA as a graduate fellow and from
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: there on as a whole different story. And I'll turn
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: that over to Bryan so that I don't continue on
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: for too long.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: No, that's fine. Well, that was a fascinating part of
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: your story and a great introduction to the book, and
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: of course I think it's true to say that the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: facts that your family were, of course fluent in Spanish.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: This was those language skills was an additional attraction to
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you joining the CIA. I am all right with that.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: That is correct. So my language, Hispanic heritage, my work skills,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: my work history. I had the letters to prove it,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: you know, letters of accolades and awards, plus my grades.
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  Speaker 2: I got the attention of the CIA recruiters, and they
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: were officers, senior officers, I'm a say from the Director
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: of Intelligence now known as Director of Analysis. So I
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: came in as an analyst working Central American political issues.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And eventually what would happen here is you know, this
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: was July two thousand. Fast forward September two thousand and one,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: nine to eleven, the United States precipitated some significant changes
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: within the national security establishment and that just opened a
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: spickett for dollars and people to basically to be employed
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: at the CIA. So that opened the door to convert
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: my graduate fellowship into a full time job as an analyst,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: and that basically led to getting my certifications as an analyst.
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  Speaker 2: So I as a bona fide career analyst at the CIA,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: fully trained and my duties. Actually, despite being a graduate fellow,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: I was actually in charge of a significant account at
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the time Central America and the Caribbean on drug trafficking
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: issues because I would transfer over and do work on
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: drug trafficking issues. Did that for almost three years years
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: total as an analyst, again winning accolades, Exceptional Performance award,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: writing presidents daily briefs, doing plenty of briefings, and writing
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: other products for senior executives in the government. And that's
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: how it all began at the CIA, and from then on,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like after four years of sitting at
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: a desk, it was just a significant amount of research, writing,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: networking as well, reaching out to other government agencies, looking
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: for any possible source of information in order to be
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: able to deliver results. So I wanted to try the
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: operational field, and that opened the door with the Iraq War.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: The Iraq War again just another event that changed the
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: landscape for US national security, and they were needing plenty
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of officers out at Iraq to fight the war. And
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: one thing led to an It's a long story how
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I got to Iraq, and basically it's a story of
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: just how broken bureaucracy it can be within the US government.
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  Speaker 2: The Directorate of Intelligence Analysis wouldn't let me go into
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  Speaker 2: Iraq and you Eventually, nine months later I got out
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: on a temporary duty assignment, and once there, the officers
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  Speaker 2: there realized my potential, my skills, and it's like, wait
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: a moment, we really like this guy. There's a job
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  Speaker 2: he can definitely do. So they switched my duties, put
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: me in charge of a department, and they wrote back
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: to CI headquarters and said, we need this person out
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: here on a permanent change of station. So they actually
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: arranged for me to remain in Iraq, and that led
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  Speaker 2: to a two year tour in Iraq as a chief
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  Speaker 2: of a branch that did a significant amount of liaison work,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: working with the US military at high levels, colonels, generals
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: on sense of issues, some detainee issues outside of the
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: rendition program. I had nothing to do with that, working
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  Speaker 2: more with high value detainees like you know, Saddam Hussein
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  Speaker 2: and his henchmen, and you know again, more accolades, more awards.
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  Speaker 2: I think I had eight four exceptional performance awards. I
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: had highly praised by multiple chiefs of station. Spending two
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: years out there, I was able to work with it
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: was like three chiefs of station, three deputy chief of stations,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: many senior leaders, and that continued to open doors for
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: me so that I would go back to CIA headquarters
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: and obtain my Operational Officer certification so that I can
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: be a bona fide certified operations officer case officer and
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: do human operations where I would deploy back out into
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: another country, which I call in the book Carmenia to
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: do basically COVID action duties.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Work any pedro if I can just come in there,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: just focus on Iraq at the moment, and it'd be
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: hopeful if you give us some dates here. So we're
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: going to work through a chronology of time, so be
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: helpful if you said some dates. But you're in Iraq,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: you're working in some pretty dangerous environments. I think this
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: is an important thing to talk to the audience about
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: your work environment, what the risks were, and the responsibilities
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that you had and your intelligence gave for the security
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of people who were there in a military or an
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: exposed situation. But start off with the date. When was
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: this exactly?
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my time in Iraq again in July of two
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: thousand and four, a very critical time a time in
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: which there was basically the Soon, the insurgency out on
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  Speaker 2: the west and the Shiite, the uprisings within Solder City,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: h We were faced with dangers every single day, dangers
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  Speaker 2: as far as indirect fire, vehicles being shot at, rockets
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and motors being lobbed at. US are checkpoints, you know,
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  Speaker 2: prone to suicide bombers. Every single day. I mean, we
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: dealt with something, whether it was a bomb that went off,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a rocket that hit near US, rocket hit us actually
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: day in and day out. You know, we had officers
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: that were injured, We we had coalition members obviously killed,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: even civilians. I remember one time I was in a
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: meeting at the US Embassy and you know, the meeting
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: got called off because two rockets or motors hit the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: building not far from where I was at actually penetrated
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: the building. The day in, day out like that. Another
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: instance of you know, we're asleep or you know, just
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: about beginning our day and a rocket hit our compound
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: and hit a generator and that caused a significant explosion
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: that rocked the entire compound, day in and day out
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: like that. You know, our travels, we would take a
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: route from the airport to the downtown area known as
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Route Irish. It was the world's deadliest road, five six
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: seven miles. You know, every time we would take that road,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: you know, the potential to encounter death was there, suicide
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: bombers and cars trying to explode next to us, you know,
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: the rocket propelled grenades, small arms fire, you name it. Eventually,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: you know, they shut that down and we would only
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: do helicopters, but even that, you know, prone to small
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: arms fire. Two years.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: This is actually a wall zone that you were in
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and there were risks to the COLA personnel working. You're
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: also working. You're talking about working extremely long hours for
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: an extended period of your deployment. So, yeah, what was
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a day like?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Our typical day would begin six seven, eight in the morning,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: you know, depending on how late we were working each day.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: So we let's say start at eight am, you know,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: finish at eleven o'clock at night on call twenty four
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: to seven, you know, head back, try to get some sleep,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: get called in at two o'clock in the morning, go
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: back to sleep at four to wake up, back do
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: it again. You know. Every single day we would work
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: seven days a week, eighty plus hours a week, sometimes
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: ninety sometimes one hundred, and we would go on for
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: two three four months without a day off before they finally,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: you know, we were able to take what's known as
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: rest and relaxation break. When I first got to Iraq
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: in July two thousand and four, I worked without a
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: day off until I left in November of two thousand
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: and four. When I got back out there for my
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: permanent change of station, I was out there in January.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: I did not take a break until May of two
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: thousand and five, and it was just NonStop and every
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: single day you had to be on top of your
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: game because you know, decision making was critical to preserve
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: the lives not just of the employees, our colleagues, but
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: also assets and coalition partners or other government workers. It
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: was a perilous environment, prone to We had to protect
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: ourselves from general petty office politics for example, you know,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: personality differences. We had to throw them out the door.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: We needed to learn how to work together. This by
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: our differences. And back in that time, you know, this
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: was the mid two thousands, two thousand and four to
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: two thousand and six. When I was in Iraq, we
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: had a lot of astute senior managers that were very,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: very skilled. These were an older generation who had come
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: into the CIA seventies, eighties, maybe even early nineties. But
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: for the most part that they were a professional cadre
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: who had life experience, military experience, business experience, law enforcement experience.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: These were not novices who would come into the CIA
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: with no prior life experience post nine to eleven. That
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: would change after nine to eleven they just turned the
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: spick aoun to bring people in and they were bringing
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: in fresh hires straight out of college with very little
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: to no experiences whatsoever. So that would have a significant
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: impact down the road.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, again, Pedro, this is you're touching on this. Really,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: this is a key thread, the key thread through your
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: book as you as you go out and into these environments,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: you start to see an experience we'll call it a
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: management style, which is often or sometimes lacking. You meet
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: very good, experienced people who are doing a good job,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: but you also come up against people who clearly are
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: not able to function perhaps as well as they should.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: That's going on. Just something I want to want to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: pin down is you've come through you've come through CIA training,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: You've you've done how do I describe it a desk job,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: a comfortable job. Working with a CIA. You're then in
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: an environment which is dangerous. It's on the front line.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It's reinforcing what's happening with the troops. But at that stage,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: you're your mind is completely focused on the job. You
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: are there as a as an American doing a job
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: which you probably believe needs to be done to support America.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: You're working for an organization called the CIA that you
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: believe in the CIA is doing a good job. The
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: meat of your situation is you've got trust in the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: trust in what America is doing and trust in the CIA.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Is that correct?
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's an excellent point right there. I mean
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: what I found in Iraq is it was essentially a
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: nation building exercise of trying to turn a former dictatorship
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: tyrannical form of government into a fully functioned democracy. Everything
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: that we did at the CIA in Iraq was geared
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: towards establishing a legitimate democratic government. Where I mean the
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: CIA did not stop a Siete candidate from winning the
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: premiership the prime ministry in Iraq. I mean we basically
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: were there to have a security environment that would allow
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Iraqis to vote in a government, and that's what they did.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And once they formed a new government, again just provide
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: a secure environment so that this new government can build
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: a new democratic style of type of government in Iraq.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: So we were day in and day out working on
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: collecting human intelligence to secure the environment, the operational environment.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: At the same time, you know, deal with terrorists from
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: the Sunnis who were trying to destabilize the new government.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: So the entire mission was a nation building exercise. And
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: you know, people go into these type of jobs with
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: honor and integrity, seeking to do what is right. And
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: for the most part, you know, people didn't have any
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: ulterior motives. We were civil servants. We followed our orders
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: from the president on down the line to his senior cabinet,
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: and you know, we didn't have any significant issues of
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: politization as we have seen further down the road. It
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: was truly a civil servant job to do what our
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: government asked us to do in a perilous environment in
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: order to try to build a new nation in a
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: country that had been under a repressive point of government
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: for decades.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Right, Okay, yeah, thank you for that. I I think
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: this is an important point because you were there working
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: hard in a system that you absolutely believed in. But
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the story is starting because you I'm reflecting your words
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: back to you. You encounter some people who don't have
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: quite the gravitas of the more experienced team. They haven't
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: got a military background, or they haven't been working in
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the field before. And there's one or two incidents that
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: you experienced that just make you think a little bit
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: about about what's going on. Can you tell us anything
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: more about what you actually saw in the rock amongst
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: your colleagues that made you think or made you a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: bit nervous.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, thankfully we had such a strong management team
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: that made a huge difference. You know, we were having
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: problems as far as getting personnel to go out into
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: war zones. So we did have some of the younger
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: ones fresh out of college and just didn't have the experience.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: But you know, at the same time, some of the
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: senior people that did go out couldn't handle a war zone.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: But the capabilities of our management team so adept at
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: understanding the dangers and the intricacy is of what it
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: takes to manage the war zone. I remember specifically a
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: GS fifteen, which is a senior officer. He was put
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: in a position as an acting chief of base, and
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: this particular officer, you know, couldn't handle the indirect fire.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I mean the indirect fire can be very alarming. I
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: mean you're just working or you're sleeping, and all of
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a sudden you hear a kaboom that rocks everything and
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: just rattles you, and you have to go into action.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: You know, first, first and foremost priority is make sure
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: everybody's fine and safe and at the same time get
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: everybody to safety. Well, he couldn't handle the rocket attacks.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: So what this management team did was very simple. You
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: deal with it, you fix it, all right. They called
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: him back, put him in back that station in a
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: position in which he could excel that he could do,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: that he could function, and they brought out somebody else
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: to be the acting chief of base who could handle
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: the environment. A very simple fix to a very simple problem.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: And the reality is that not everybody is cut out
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: the same. Some people can handle war zones, some people cannot.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: And even within a war zone, you do have flexibility
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: as far as where to go and what to do.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: That's probably the best example that I can give. At
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: the same time, we were dealing with young people who
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: needed to be mentored, led guided, and we had senior
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: managers that would take the time to ensure that these
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: younger officers would be mentored appropriately and correctly to ensure
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: that they would succeed. It was a very professional environment
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and I learned a lot in Baghdad station as far
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: as what to do and what not to do in
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: a CIA station in a war zone, and on personnel matters.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: It's just plain and simple. And this is quite a
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: contrast to what would follow me after Iraq, which we
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: can get into, but i'll turn that over to you.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a good point to a good
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: place to do that. So you move from from Iraq
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: eventually into a region or a country you describe as Carmenia,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a country which you describe is very unstable and has
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: has been effectively at war for some time. So we've
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: got civil unrest, war and you effectively get a job
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: in that environment. And this one is yes, So I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: think where the meat, some of the meat in your
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: books starts. So tell us about Carmenia.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yea, Carmenia. It's a fictitious name because I couldn't reveal
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: the real name, and it's just a creative way to
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: be able to do some storytelling so that the reader
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: doesn't have to read over more redactic texts, since there's
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: enough redacted text in Carmenia. So I deploy out to
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Carmenia in September of two thousand and seven. I had
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: already received my operational tradecraft training. It was fully trained,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: and I was chosen for this job by a senior
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: officer who knew me very well and knew I had
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: the capability to do this job, and he was correct.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I was able to hit the ground running and begin
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: to deliver results in this war zone. It truly was
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: a war zone. A nation had been a war for decades.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: It was more of a kind of a paramilitary type
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: war with an insurgency counter terrorism focus. And my job
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: was to work with the locals, the host government, a
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: particular group of those officers there and help them through
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: basically providing intelligence advice. I was more of a This
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: was a very interesting job because on paper I was
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: still a Director of Intelligence analyst targeting analyst, but I
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: was operationally certified to do operations officer work for the
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Director of Operations. The job was titled as a targeting
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: officer but the reality is that I was more of
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: a covert action power military advisor, providing you know, hands
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: on not technical training, but hands on intelligence advice, intelligence analysis,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: intelligence perspectives, and you know, other types of aid so
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: that they could combat the terrorists in their country. And
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: this required a significant amount of field deployments. But for
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: this particular tour, you know, I came from a station
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: of excellence in Baghdad to a station that I named
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Potemkin Station in honor of Gregory Potemkin, the Minister of
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Interior for Russia that put up a facade that everything
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: was going fine in you know, the certain places he
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: visited in Russia, when it was not. Because this was
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: a station and name only. We had a management team
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: that had no war zone experience, that were more learn
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: about their reputations and how they can rise up the ranks.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Their officers were basically mostly tools that they can use
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: to get ahead in their careers. On top of that,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: you know, we had young officers here who had no
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: prior life experiences, no military experience, no war zone experience.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: They were just put in here and it was just
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: a complete just clown show, which is why I named
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: the Chief of station, the top officer Moe, his deputy Larry,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: and the number three Curly in honor of the three Stooges,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: because their own actions would reveal them to be stooges
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: in action in this station that significantly derailed morale and
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: hurt the mission. You know, the first year that I
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: was there, we were still basically benefiting from the prior
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: management team that got us all kinds of tools and capabilities,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: and we were very aggressive going out into the field,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: you know, working with the locals to combat you know,
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: the terrorists, and we were basically changing the environment, turning
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: this country around to be a safe country for its citizens.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: And ultimately, as I got into my second year, this
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: all changed. Morale was out the door. Some of the
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: more skilled officers had left at the same time. You know,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: they were not interested in basically combating terrorists threatned this country.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: They were more interested in just playing petty office politics
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: of you know, patting their numbers for intelligence collection at
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: the same time trying to put their favorite people in
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: certain positions. And here's where I had the first incident
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: of essentially blowing the whistle, where you know, there were
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: some things going on within my job that I had
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: to speak up, and I did, And I mean, you're
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: required by federal law if you see something wrong to
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: report it. You're a chain of command or inspector general
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: or higher authorities in an agency. So as soon as
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I reported some things going on in this station, all
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, I had a performance problem. Mind you,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I just got promoted, literally just freshly promoted, an excellent
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: performance appraisal, and on top of that, you know, six
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: months had passed by, and if you were to compare
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: my performance after that promotion, I was delivering two to
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: three times more results. So I didn't have a performance problem.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: They were just playing a game with me. They were
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: trying to chase me out of their station to replace
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: me with somebody else. And they put me on a
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: performance improvement plan and I start meeting the plan. Well,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: now they start shutting down my work to sabotage my
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: ability to make this plan, and I still keep making
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: the plan. When I continued to make the plan and
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: their sabotage efforts does not stop me from meeting their plan.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Then you know the deputy chief of station, who I
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: call doctor Jekyll mister Hyde, because any given day he
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: could be either character decides to basically have a confrontation
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: with me where he can be call it what it is,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: a jackass, and accuse me of being disrespectful and cause
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: it as a action to literally shut me down and
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: kick me out of his station. And you know, here's where,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: you know, we really get into some of the meat
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: where now I become a buona fide whistleblower, where I'm
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: blowing the whistle to the Inspector General for the CIA
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and for the Eco Employment Opportunity Office, and the Inspector
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: General wants nothing to do with this. They don't care
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: the Eco Employment Opportunity Office. The long story short, or
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: else we can get down into the weeds. But the
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: long story short here is that you know, the Eco
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Employment Opportunity Office is supposed to come in and do
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: like a crime scene investigative unit. Does you have a crime,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: you have dead body, you have evidence? They're supposed to
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: come in, sweep look for evidence, you know, fingerprints, you know,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: you know, take photographs, you know, take testimony from everyone
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: that potentially could provide testimony. Well, the reality is Eco
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Employment came in eventually late and instead of being that
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: crime scene investigative unit, they were the unit that typically
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: comes after and cleans up the crime scene and sanitizes it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: So they came in basically to cover up the crime,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: clean up the crime, conceal the crime, and defraud me
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: of basically my civil rights. And the reason why I
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: had filed a complaint was very simple. I mean, it
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: was a crime. You know, the law was violated, and
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: you know they were taking a third year extension away
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: from me, which would severely damage my career. It potentially
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: had the potential to send me back the CIA quarters
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: where I would literally sit and rot at a desk,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: never to go back out to the field. On top
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: of that, I also had personal reasons. I had a
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: fiance and a child expected on the way, my first
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: daughter her, so I had more reasons why to fight
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: to remain there for a third year. But nobody wanted
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: to fix this problem other than cover it up, so
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: they got their way. They chased me out, and I
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: found myself basically finding another job and through persistence, literally
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: sheer persistence, trying to get ahead of the game. I
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: had to find a job before they would write a
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: performance appraisal because obviously they were going to trash me
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: and with which they did. I mean if you were
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: to read the performance appraisal where I just got promoted,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: and read the performance appraisal after I was promoted, you
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: would sit there and go what happened here? First of all,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: this guy did much more and his performance is worse
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: the reality as anybody could read through it and see
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: it thankfully down the road people would if.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: We just had a bit in here. I think this
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: is an important thing for the audience. This station was
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: particularly dangerous. People had died, You were worried about kidnap.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: This was where you were having to deal with serious
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: safety problems for individuals, and at particular times, due to
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: a breakdown in the management structure of that can I
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: call it a cell that operation, people's lives were put
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: at risk, and you talk about ending up coming back
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: on a plane with dead bodies. This was a serious
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: environment in which some of the field of some of
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: your management colleagues or field operators were clearly not doing
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: that job in a professional way. So you talk about
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: one individual who was womanizing and using prostitutes at one stage,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: You talk about operatis who were not completing the field
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: reports that they should have been completing. So you were
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: there in this very dangerous environment.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: We had serious kidnapping threats again, small arms fire. I
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: could go on and on. I kind of, in some ways,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I worked in so many parallels environments that I kind
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: of became immune to it and learned how to perform
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: in it and keep a level ahead and be focused
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: on what I needed to do. But I was working
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: with people who had never worked in a war zone
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: or for that matter, really couldn't quite grasp the magnitude
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: of what we were doing. And they were so caught
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: up with some of the petty stuff that was so
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: mundane and just not even related that in their failure
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: to asked the gravity of the situation, they didn't realize
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: that every single day that I or my colleagues went
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: out into the field were putting their lives at risk.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: You know, it was it was a great disrespect. And again,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: you know we were I wasn't working eighty hours a
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: week in this particular field, but I was working seven
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: days a week for the most part on call again
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: twenty four to seven. I was doing a significant, significant
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: amount of field deployments going out into some of these
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: dangerous environments and malaria infested zones. There was one particular
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: operation in which you know, we had a situation where
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I was in a small helicopter and it's like, you know,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: what's going on here? Why are you going up so
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: high and so slow? And you know, they said, you
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: see this hill down there, we need to make sure
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: we're high enough off this hill because a week ago
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: some of the insurgents actually blew up a bomb upward
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: that destroyed one of a helicopters. So when you know,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: we told them, please take your time, go up as
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: high as you need to go. Thank you. We appreciate that.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Day in and day out.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Again, I say, against this background, then we're on this
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: theme that proper management decisions and a professional attitude by
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: all of the CIA team on station is vital to
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: preserve the safety or protect the safety of not only
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the CIA operatives, but also the contractors or the military
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: people in the field. But you saw that things were
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: not going properly and you made effectively a complaint. And
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: what you're describing is instead of your concerns being investigated,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the team that came in appeared to want to close
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: it down. They wanted to cover up what you were exposing.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Is that the simple story.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: That is the simple story. And this here leads to
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: a pattern that not just myself but others have written
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: about or told about, where the authorities within the CIA
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: that are supposed to look into these type of complaints. Now,
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: when I use the word complaint, it's more of a
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: legal term because if you raise up an issue, you
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: report or wrongdoing, that's known as a complaint or a disclosure.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: So the elements above eco employment, opportunity, human resources, the inspector, general,
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: grievance officer, or even senior managers. For the most part,
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: what we find is that they immediately go into defense
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: mode to discredit the messenger, destroy the messenger, and cover
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: up crime as if the crime never happened. They will
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: denegrate the messenger and at the same time pervert twist
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: what the managers have done wrong into oh, you know,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: they have done no wrong. You're just having an operational difference.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: You disagree with your senior manager, but because your senior
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: manager is above you, you have to agree with him,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: so you're being insubordinate. So therefore you have to get
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: out of there.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: You do your time in this particular station. The next
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: place that you're going to be posted is Afghanistan. How
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: did you get out to Afghanistan.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: Persistence to find the job so that I wouldn't go
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: back to CI headquarters and rot at a desk allowed
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: me to. At the time, this was now, you know,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: late two thousand and nine, early twenty ten, there was
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: another surge in Afghanistan. They seriously needed officers out there
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: to do a counter offensive to try to take back
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: territory from the Taliban as the Taliban began to win
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: the war in Afghanistan, so more jobs, more people, more
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: money was thrown into Afghanistan, and I was able to
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: apply for several jobs. I actually was offered two jobs,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: and I chose to take the counterintelligence referant in Kandahar Base,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: which is a significant base down south at the heart
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: of the Taliban. We were literally in mullah Omar's compound
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: where you know Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban lived.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: So I go out there in early January twenty ten
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: at a critical time where we just had the coast
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: suicide bomber on December thirty of two thousand and nine
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: killed seven CIA officers and injured half a dozen others.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: So as a CIA refaurant, I had a critical role
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: in protecting our base, protecting our officers from you know, infiltration,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: and you know the dangers of suicide bombers of you know,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: dirty assets who were out to kill us, so forth.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: So what was the what was the experience then working
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: in the base. It was tough. You were working these
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: incredibly long hours again, but you were also in Afghanistan
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to also encounter what you clearly thought was mismanagement, but
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: dangerous management. There were things that were happening or not
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: being done that were again putting people at risk who
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: were on the front line. What did you observe happening.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: In this particular case. This was a very unique posting,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: a unique job because now we're starting to get into
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: a time frame where you're beginning to see the older
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: officers being weaned out, you know, retiring or moving on
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: or moving up the chain where they're not maybe not
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: necessarily taking warzone deployments, and you're seeing a younger set
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: of officers coming in I'm beginning to be managers or
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: for that matter, also younger officers who who have finally
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: gone up the pipeline and are getting out into the
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: field but with very little experience. So it was kind
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: of a mixed job. Thankfully, I did have some really
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: good managers. My first and both chief of bases were outstanding.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: They were of the older generation where I began to
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: see some of these differences where with the deputy chief
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: of base. My first deputy chief of base was clearly
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: someone who was a character and really made it a
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: very difficult work environment that people were happy to see
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: this person go to everybody. The second deputy chief of
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: base had the gravitas, had the experience to do a
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: really fine job. As far as the dangers, again, this
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: was a perilous environment where day in and day out,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: you know, our base was at risk of indirect fire attack,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: small arms fire, you know, suicide bombers trying to penetrate
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: our perimeter or our checkpoints. So we had to basically
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: be on guard every single day, on top of our game.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: And it was an environment where we worked seven days
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: a week, eighty hours a week. We would work two
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: three four months, about a day off, and it was
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: a one year tour. I ended up, you know, getting
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: out of there doing very well, and I didn't blow
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: the whistle there really. I mean I did run into
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: one situation that I could have spoken up, but I
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: did not because at that point in time, there was
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: really nothing I can do about it, and decisions were
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: already made that were made. And you know, our second
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: chief of base was a little bit too aggressive and
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: it was just his personality, but you know, the lives
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: were being put at an increased danger for what would
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: have been a marginal gain. But you know, thankfully no
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: one was killed when I was there, But you know,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: in the future, perhaps some of those programs that were
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: started may have led to a casualty. But you know, ultimately,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: you know, you can only speak up when something is
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: really being done wrong. And you know, this was not
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: particularly something that was extremely wrong. This would have been
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: actually would have been classified as an operational difference, and
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: I did differ in in this particular operation, but it
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: was inappropriate for me to speak up, so I didn't. Right.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: So if I got this right, did you do two
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: tools in afghanistane? When when does Cathine come almost? See?
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, Now there is a second tour in Afghanistan,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: and this is the one where all hell breaks loose,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: and this is the one that is just a total,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: complete mess. Absolutely, I can fast forward and get into
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: that now, Prior to that, I went back to CIA
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Headquarters where I was put in a war zone position
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: at CIA Headquarters doing technical targeting counter terrorism work where
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: I would deploy out to the Middle East and do
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: counter terrorism operations. I earned two Exceptional Performance Awards. I
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: received two nominations for Collaboration Awards. One was for the
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: department wide that I was at, the Information Operations Center,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: and another one was for the entire Director of Operations.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: So I had proven myself I had the experience. I
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: was also at that time finally changed my career service
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: from targeting analyst and Director of Intelligence to a targeting
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: officer within the Director of Operations. This set me up
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: to compete for a job as a deputy chief of
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: base in a war zone Afghanistan base that I cannot name,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: but it's quite obvious to the reader when they read
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: basically the chapter. So I received all the training that's
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: you know a manager gets, you know, basically the chief
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: of station, deputy chief of station, chief of base, deputy
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: chief of base seminar where you hear from all the
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: senior leaders, the Director, the deputy Director of the CIA,
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: inspector General ECO Employment Opportunity human resources are wide variety
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: of senior leaders. I mean they explicitly give us guidance
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: on what to do, what not to do, what is right,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: what is wrong personnel wise, you know, so forth, and
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: for that matter, that isn't enough. Another part of the
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: deployment was to meet individually and then collectively with every
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: senior leader for the division, South Asia Division before getting
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: out to Afghanistan. So before I actually deployed two Afghanistan,
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: I met with the chief of operations, deputy chief, you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: this senior leader, that senior leader, and they told me
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: explicitly what they were expecting of me, what I was
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: supposed to do, what I was not supposed to do.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: I was given explicit guidance to do something about the
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: indirect fire attack, work with the military, get out of
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: the base, the inner sanctuary, and go meet the military
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: people and do something about the indirect fire. At the
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: same time, the intelligence personnel who wanted reports of intelligence
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: is like, look, you know there's opportunities to collect intelligence,
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: right intelligence, but nothing's being done at that base. You
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: need to do something about this. Furthermore, you know human resources, Look,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: you know there are personnel issues will arise, and when
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: they arise, they need to be dealt with swiftly. So
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: point is, I was chosen for a job I was
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: very well qualified to do that. I had the experience
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: I had, you know, six plus years of war zone experiences.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: I had learned what to do, what not to do.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I was trained, you know, by what I saw in Baghdad,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: what I saw in my prior Afghanistan tour. I learned
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: what not to do based on what I saw in
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Potemkin Station, Carmenia and all the managerial training. So I
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: deployed to Afghanistan, and here is where I find myself
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: in a war zone base, working for a chief of
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: base who had no war zone experience, had just gotten
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: out to the war zone after doing three years of
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: europe time, going around Europe, coffee shops, museums, you know, cafes,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: using the t you know, living the good life. But
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: at the same time, you know, I mean, she was
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: a very nice lady. I never had a complaint against
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: this lady. But she was a mother of three boys,
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: one in college, two younger one basically elementary school, and
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: she couldn't really handle the family separation that cost basically
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: oppression and despondency. Where she would begin to adopt sons
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: in her own words, to cope or cook to cope,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: and you know, playing favorites over others. She couldn't handle
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: the indirect fire. It would absolutely just rattle her, make
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: her make just poor decisions. And in this environment she
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: basically turned this base into a social club on steroids,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: where we were not meeting our obligations of meeting with
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: the military, exchanging information, getting intelligence, providing support to the
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: main CIA state or for CIA headquarters or the other
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: basis officers. You know, a spat was growing between a
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: younger and an older The younger was her adopted son
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: who she catered everything towards him at the expense of
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: the older officer. Our lives were being endangered where she
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: would send us out for yoga classes, for food into
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: environments prone to be hit by rockets. In one of
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: those situations, actually we drove through a spot where a
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: rocket did impact, like ten minutes afterwards, and it was
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: all unnecessary. I had to speak up in this particular case,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: not knowing who to speak up too. An opportunity came
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: up to talk to the regional psychological officer to shrink,
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: and I explained it to him. And he basically flat
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: out to me he can't handle it, and she's coping,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: and he wouldn't do anything about it. But he told me,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: you need to talk to the superior above her, so
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: you know, eventually, you know, it's a situation continues to
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: the grade. I spoke up to the superior above her,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: which is also my superior. He didn't want to hear it.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: It appears that he probably told her some things about it.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: So now the environment is somewhat poisoned against me. But
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: on top of that, you know, she's getting worse and
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: worse and worse and worse. And you know, at one
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: point in time, I finally had to speak up to her,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: knowing that she wouldn't get it or wouldn't understand. And
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: that's exactly what happened. She got offended and did nothing
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: about it. So the situation blows up one day between
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: the younger and the older. It leads to an incident
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: where now I really have to speak up and let
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: her know, look, you caused this, and this is why
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: she got more offended. Now she starts defending the younger
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: and starts falsely accusing the older of drawing a weapon,
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: which he never drew. So now I've got our superior
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: above her trying to cook up allegations against the subbort
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: in it who never drew a weapon. And you know,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: I'm put in a situation where i have to speak
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: truth to power and let him know, no, you're wrong,
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm here. This is what I've witnessed, this
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: is what I've seen, this is really the way it is.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: This is the problem, and no, I'm not going to
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: take punitive actions against us a board than who did
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: no wrong. So it leads to basically the chief of
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: base having a spat where she just absolutely just went
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: off the rails with me. And at that point, you know,
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: I'm having to pull myself out on a it's called
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: a rest and relaxation break where I would take a leave.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: I took my leave like three weeks early, but on
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: my way out of Afghanistan, I relayed everything to the
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Eco Employment Opportunity Office because there were Eco employment opportunity
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: issues here, and I had basically a virtual teleconference call
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: with the Chief of Station, the Deputy Chief of Station,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: and the chief of human Resources and we go over everything.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: And on top of that, the cos got the emails
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: with all the information. His last words to me, where
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: go on your leave. We will take care of this
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: and we will get back to you. And one week
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: into my leave, I get a phone call to go
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: to CIA headquarters and you know, a few days later,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: the day I'm supposed to go into CIAD quarters for
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: a meeting, the ECO Employment Opportunity Officer calls me. I
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: see him before the meeting that same day, and he
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to hear anything about the EO issues. He
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: begins to basically defend the chief of base, saying, there
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: was nothing wrong on that base until you showed up,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: So clearly I had a biased interlockertor that was in
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: cover up mode. There goes the cover and cleanup crew.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: So I go into this meeting with the superiors for
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: the particular office and division for Afghanistan and they flat
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: out tell me you're not going back to Afghanistan. They
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: wouldn't tell me why. They told me I can apply
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: for an job I want when I raise up a
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: couple of jobs in Afghanistan. Nope, those jobs are not
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: available for you. You're not going back to Afghanistan. They
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: wouldn't tell me anything. And this gets into really the
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: real meat of what is a CIA a deep state
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: run amock as far as trampling the rights of whistleblowers,
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: covering up crimes through basically criminal obstructions of justice, violation
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: of civil rights, and so forth.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you for that. I just wanted to add a
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: little bit to that story, I think, if I remember correctly,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: you also described that there was another young woman on
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: that particular base who was going out at night for
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: some sort of personal liaison with somebody, which was you felt,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: in breach of rules. It was clearly something that was
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: dangerous because nobody knew exactly who she was having the
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: liaison with, and you brought that to the attention of
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: the base officer, but that was similarly suppressed. Do or
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: remember that correctly?
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: That is correct. It was a small base, a few
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: number of persons there. One of the ladies there had
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: a critical position chief of support, and this person was
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: basically the countrywide officer dealing with medical evacuations to get
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: medical support in this country for CIA officers or officers
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: working with the CIA. And we worked in a small
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: little sanctuary of a big, huge military base. And you know,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: her priority was to be on call twenty four to
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: seven to deal with any of these medical emergencies. Well,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: you know, we had surveillance cameras to see what's going
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: on in our compound, and the older officer who was
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: a communicator communications officer. We had a communications office staff
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: by two, the younger one and the older one. Twelve
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: hour ships at amapm at am every night or a
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: lot of nights. This lady would get on her vehicle
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: eleven o'clock twelve o'clock and drive off somewhere to another
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: side of the base to do who knows what. So
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: she was away. But more importantly, you know, we were
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: dealing with dangers in this particular entire sanctuary perimeters that
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: were prone to breach, the potential kidnapping, small arms fire
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: and the indirect fire attacks as far as rockets impacting,
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: and a lot of the places that she would drive
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: were prone to all those potential threats and particularly the
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: indirect fire attack. So you know, in this environment, you know,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: I had already blown the whistle. They didn't want to
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: hear it, so I did not. But ultimately at the
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: end when I brought it up to the chief of base,
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: she actually had the audacity to accuse me of trying
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: to slander and defend this younger lady accusing her of
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: having an extra marital affair. Yeah, and it's like, you know, no,
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: that's not the point. The point is she has duties
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: here and she's putting herself in danger and potentially putting
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: other lives on danger. And in fact, one time she
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: barely made it back to handle a medical emergency because
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: she was gone away from her post.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Right, So, in military terms, albeit many years ago, it
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: was military and this would be an absolute offense because
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: you have a place of duty, you should be in
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: your place of duty and if you're wandering off into
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: an unsafe area at night. I think we'll just stress
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: for maybe the UK audience that when you were talking
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: about these bases, these American bases, they're actually substantial bases.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: They've got an extended perimeter and it's simply not possible
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: to ensure one hundred percent safety at all times around
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: that perimeter. And this is this is why for you
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: to see her going out alone at night to an
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: unannounced location put her self at risk, but also potentially
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: put the security detail at risk because they would ultimately
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: be the ones tassed to save her should something untoward happen.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: That is fair to say absolutely. I mean, large sprawling base,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: and you know, because of you know, the terrain and
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: some constraints, you weren't able to go very fast. You
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: had to go very slow. It could take twenty minutes
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: to get to the other side of the base. You know,
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: twenty minutes is a long time when you're dealing with
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: areas prone to indirect fire attack. And you know, one
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: of the things about the indirect fire attack that I
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: haven't talked about is, you know, we actually went out
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: and did some scouting, some security officials and I and
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: what we determined was that the biggest danger was not
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: necessarily a rocket impacting exactly over you, on top of you,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: or right near you, but these rockets would come at
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: at shallow angles. So what would happen here is you
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: would have a backblast at a shallow angle that could
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: go out hundreds of meters, so you literally could be
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: two hundred meters from the actual rocket impact and the
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: shrapnel could kill you at two hundred meters away. Yeah,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: So I mean it was a serious and significant danger,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: and it had to be mitigated by not being reckless
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: with moves that were not necessary and in this particular base,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: at one point in time, the dangers were so significant
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: that the greater military base, although a CIA officers and
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: a CIA base, we don't follow on military rules that
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: general in charge of the entire compound had issued on
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: order do not, under any circumstances get out and make
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: unnecessary moves if you don't have to, because there's no
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: reason for you to quit your life or your colleagues
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: life in danger for nonsense. And our nonsense was yoga
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: classes and food not mission essential.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Well, now, as you say, into the heart of it,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: because you've you've made some complaints about what you see
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: as a failure of CIA management in other locations. You've
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: made these complaints as a result of what you've seen
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: on this base. And then this is when the pressures. Well,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: two things happen. One is you expect somebody to investigate
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: and to start to take some proper administrative action. You
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: expect that to happen. That doesn't happen. But what does
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: start to happen is you experience pressure. You experience trying
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to apply for new jobs within the CIA, refuse jobs.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I think at one point you say that you were
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: refused a total of thirty jobs. So you get the
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: strong impression that you're a marked man, and also you
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: start to be questioned in a very aggressive way as
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: to why you did what you did. You find the
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: pressure comes on you for making a report to do
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: with failures whistleblowing, rather than the CIA machinery starting to
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: correct the problems that you've identified.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where it gets very interesting. Chapter. Basically,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: you know, this is what I named it. A fight
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: with the Devil. Round one, a fight with the Devil,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: round two, a fight with the Devil round three. Before
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: we even get to that, I call it the pit
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: of Hell, CIA Headquarters, Chapter eighteen. I am basically pitted
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: against the entire bureaucracy that's hell bent on destroying me,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: destroying my allegations. The I You know, I could get
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: down into the weeds and give a lot of details,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: and I'll try to give you the essence of what
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: needs to be stated. The point here is that you know,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: there are mechanisms in place that employees, by law are
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: directed to use so they don't leak to the press.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: Because if you become a leaker to the press and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: you leak classified information, now you can get prosecuted for leaking. Yeah,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: so you're forced to use mechanisms in place internally to
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: handle allegations of wrongdoing, allegations of reprisals, allegations of civil
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: rights violations. And these channels are basically again EEO, the ECO,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: Employment Opportunity Office, the Inspector General, but you also have
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: some lesser elements that are able to help the grievans
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: officer in human resources. Well, what I found was that
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: at first no one wanted to hear anything nothing. So
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: I'm literally forced to reach out to the Director of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: National Intelligence, the EGO Employment Office there, who direct me
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: to a grievance officer at CIA who when I talked
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: to him, he washes his hands. He says, you need
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: to talk to EEO, mind you. I just spoke to
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: EEO and they wanted nothing to do with this. I
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: actually had a follow up call with the EEO officer
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: after I was kicked out of Afghanistan, and I actually
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: met with him in person later that day. So I
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: met with him twice and I spoke to him a
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: third time. EO wanted nothing to do with this. Despite
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: the fact that there were two EEO issues here, the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: harassment against the older officer It's basically an age discriminatory issue.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: And I, as a manager, if a manager witnesses an
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: EEO issue, the agency is at fault and held liable
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: if a manager sees it and does nothing, or if
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: a manager sees it speaks up and nothing is done,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: or reprisals are taken against a manager. In this particular case,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: it was all three of those. So we had EO
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: trying to cover this up. Grievance officer wants nothing to do,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: bounces back to EEO. You know, by this time, there
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: were also whistleblower reprisal issues protected by a presidential policy directive,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: which is which has to force an effective a presidential
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: executive order, which has to force an effective United States
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: Statute Code law. In this particular case.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: This is a boma. Is this bogo? Is this a bomb?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: As the initiative, President Obama issued the Presidential Directive Policy
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: nineteen to protect whistle blowers in the intelligence community for
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: blowing the whistle through the appropriate channel. So it was
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: an Obama initiative, backed by Clapper and endorsed by Clapper.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of bureaucracy involved here. Ultimately, Director
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: of National Intelligence James Clapper certified to President Obama that
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: all the agencies had implemented policies and procedures and standards
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: to adjudicate alleged violations reprisals against whistleblowers. So by law,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: I was protected. And I used this mechanism reporting mechanism
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: of reporting the reprisals to the Inspector General. But the
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: Inspector General wants nothing to do with it. So I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: basically go into CIA with an entrenched bureaucracy that has
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: no desire to do anything. And my low bar for
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: resolution was just let me find a follow on job.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: And by the way, you have all these jobs you're advertising,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: you know I'm qualified to do these. I have all
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: the training and certification to immediately deploy. There was one
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: particular job that clearly I was qualified to do. I
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: had the language Spanish, I had experience having done a
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: similar job with excellence. You know, I had all the
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: training required. Some of the people who had filled that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: job in the past had a lot less qualifications that
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: I had, and you know, they wouldn't allow me to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: take this job. I applied for it, they re advertise it.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: I applied for it, they re advertise it. I meet
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: with officers who or the hiring officers for this job,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: and they wouldn't give me the job. And ultimately what
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: happens is, you know, EO, you know, eventually is forced
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: to try to do something. But they're not helping me
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: at all. They're not letting me see documents I need
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: to see. They're not helping me to track down documents.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: You know, they're not really seeking to correct any of
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: these issues. The attitude was that Pedro israel Or was
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: screwed up. You know, he was a terrible manager, creator
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: a hostile working environment. So he got kicked out of
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: the base because he deserved it. And you know, I
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: was blacklisted, black balled, and ultimately I end up having
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: to take a what's known as a rotational assignment. It's
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: called a joint duty assignment, where I'm loaned out to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: another government agency and I land in the office of
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Inspector General for the Intelligence Community. Now now is when
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: now the inspector General for the Central Intelligence Agency. It's like, oh,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: I think we you know, you may have a reprisal case,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: you know, you know, do you want to open our investigation?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: I tell him, yes, please, I've been telling you for
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: months open and investigation. Well, even after that, they still
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: try to shut it down. Yeah, and it isn't until
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: I'm working for the Office of Inspector General for the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: Intelligence Community that eventually what happens is the CII g
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I portally begins the work a case. But you know
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: that's a whole longer story, and I'll turn it over
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: back to you.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Well, let me just bring in a couple of things
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: which I think important for the audience to understand is
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: that while you're now being it's almost like a whirlpool
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: that's sucking you in. You've tried to do the right thing,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: you're being closed down, you're being prevented from getting proper
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: promotional jobs within the CIA. So you're clearly being targeted
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: by the CIA because you've raised these concerns and you've
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: created with ripples. But you've also in this considerable period
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: you've had problems with your health, which you attribute to
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: I think anti malarial drugs in was it a Raq
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: or Afghanistan. But you've experienced some quite big problems with
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: your health which you're having to you've had to deal
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: with as well. And you've also because of the break
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: in your career progression You've been placed in jobs where
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: you're not able to move up the career ladder to
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: earn more money, and this in turn has put pressure
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: on your family life. So you've also started to get
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: some family pressures. Coming to the to the foe, just
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: tell us a bit about your health and the drugs
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: that you were taking.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is a lot to process and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: go over. And you know, the point is when you
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: work in war zones, or you work eighty hours a week,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: seven days a week, you know, forty hours about sleep,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: You're work in a war zone. Fourth of toxins, environmental
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: hazards Iraq, taking showers with chlorine infested water, in the
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: Middle East, you know, taking showers with water infested with E. Coli.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: You know, food was a serious issue in some of
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: these places, a lack of quality nutrition. I'm one of
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: these tours. In my second my first one in Afghanistan,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: I ended up having a really bad urinary track infection
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: required me to take cipril floxen. I ended up having
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: to take cipril flocksen for six weeks and unknown to me,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: unknown to many people, it does have a black box
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: black box warning by the Federal Drug administration where you
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: know floral col loans can be toxic to your body.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: They're actually a hybrid man made, man infused antibiotic that
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: uses fluoride, a neural toxin. So apparently over exposure to
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: floral corna loans ziprol floxen caused some serious damage to
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: tendons in my body throughout multiple tendons, shoulders, for example,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: the elbow on our nerve. You know, you know it
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: cost issues. You know, I've had multiple surge reach to
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: deal with some of these tendon issues. And you know,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: the environmental toxins in Iraq, you know, hurt me with
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: thyroid functions, so you know, a lower diroid function in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: my body requires me to take medication, so you know,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: and then you know, I have to say this. I
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: would rather go out to a war zone and be
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: awakened by rockets landing around me. I have to deal
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: with the bureaucratic eRating and bullying that I dealt with
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: at CIA headquarters from basically March twenty fifteen through July
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen that destroyed my health in terms of my
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: quarter zone level through the roof, hormone imbalances left and right,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: sleep disrupted, stress, Galore. You know, I was basically in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: in dire straits physically, and on top of that financially,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: I was in a single income household with a foreign
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: national who had become a US citizen, with a young
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: daughter who needed special needs education, you know, living in
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: the most expensive part of the United States, Northern Virginia,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: and you know, not really being able to meet the
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: needs of my family, which would cause some serious hardships
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: on my family, my daughter, and ultimately, you know, it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: would need it would lead to me getting some holistic
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: type of medical care breaking free from that, you know
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: environment that was so toxic, which is how I landed
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: in the Office of Inspector General for the Intelligence Community.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: But you know, that's basically a that's considered like a
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: death sentence for your career to be an Inspector General.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: You didn't get a lot of sympathy from from the
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: CIA for those medical problems that you you suffered. What
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: they did start to offer you and this is this
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: to me reading the book, is is a continuous thing.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: They keep offering you psychiatric help. So it seems to
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: me that as you pressed your case, as you produced
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: more evidence, one of the responses from the CIA was
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: to suggest that it could be helpful to you to
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: have some form of psychiatric intervention.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. I mean, this is just a continuation of the
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: reprisals in another form, in another fashion. Now you have
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: a psychiatric problem. You need psychiatric help. And oh, by
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: the way, really you're taking steroids, and you're on steroids
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: for taking hormone replacement therapy, which is what a medical
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: doctor told me I needed to do. Instead, the CIA
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: psychologist's answers was you should be taking psychiatric drugs. I
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: found that the entire bureaucracy was hell bent on covering
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: it up and just basically calling you a complaint right
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: the fact that not only did they cause a problem,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: it made the problem worse.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, Pedro, you know you're caught up in this whirlwind.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: You're trying to you're trying to get your case dealt
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: with properly through the CIA. You're being put under a
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: lot of pressure. They're messing you around with jobs, they're
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: clearly not investigating. There's almost a whispering campaign. So you
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: discover when you do try and apply for a job
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: that somebody's been there before you, and your name is
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: already dirty and Therefore people are saying, well, we'd like
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: to employ you, but so you don't get moved into
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: these new jobs. When did the critical point happen? When
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: you decided that you couldn't just fight through the CIA,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: that you had to look for a legal remedy and
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: you thought about getting your own attorney to deal with this.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a couple of facets of this journey. In
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, I did find unemployment attorney, and it was
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: just an employment attorney. It wasn't another attorney really adept
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: in dealing with national security whistleblower issues. So through the
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: help of this attorney, eventually what would happen here is
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: because Presidential Policy Directive mandated that the CIA the Intelligence
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: community members follow certain standards, policies, and procedures on allegations
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: of reprisals for blowing the whistle. There are certain timeframes
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: that needed to be followed. Those timeframes are very straightforward.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's codified in law. If I allege reprisal
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: to an IG, the IG has two weeks get back
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: to me and let me know if there are potential
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: issues of reprisal, And if there is a reprisal, they
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: have to start an investigation, and I believe it's two
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: hundred and forty days. They have two hundred and forty
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: days to conclude their investigation. Now, in that two hundred
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: and forty days, you know, I believe it's every sixty days,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: they're supposed to communicate and provide the complaint an update
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: is what is going on? If they're going to need
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: more than two hundred and forty days, they're supposed to
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: ask permission from the complaint. Hey, you know we're taking
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: more than two hundred and forty days. What do you
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: want us to do here? You know, there has to
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: be that communication. And on top of that, according to
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: these standards, policies, and procedures, when they do that investigation,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: they're supposed to give a report to the complainant so
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: the complaint can verify if all the material facts have
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: been properly vetted and investigated, if all the witnesses have
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: been appropriately contacted in interviewed. The CIA broke every single
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: one of those rules. It's like if it just wrap
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: it up a piece of paper, throw it in the garbage,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: that's a civil rights law violation. That is a violation
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: of the law as well. Conspiracy to obstruct you know,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: civil rights and you can name multiple laws there. So
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: the attorney filed a lawsuit under the Administrative Procedure Act
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: to compel the CIA to do this investigation. That was
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: in December twenty sixteen. By this time I was in
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: the Office of Inspector General, and you're right, I had
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: applied for several CIA jobs. There was one job that
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: I was extremely well qualified to do. You know, I
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: had worked for, you know, that same Information Operations center,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: you know, in a country I had worked out before,
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: clearly qualified to do this job. And you know, I
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: was a probably the leading candidate for the job. The
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: managers went way out of their way to interview me,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: and they were very happy with my answers in the interview,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: and it took them for weeks to get back to me.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: And I know how this particular Information operation center works
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: is they'll pick up the phone, they'll call officers left
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: and right, they'll properly vet a candidate, you know, and
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: it was quite obviously there was a whisper campaign. You know.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: They probably called the chief of base in Afghanistan, who
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: just totally trashed me and obviously didn't meant to the job.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: So your attorney was now trying to pressurize the CIA
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: machinery to produce a response. One of the things that
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: they did to that attorney was that they said, well,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: we can't really deal with you because you're not security cleared.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: So when you were trying to use your attorney, he
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: was being stooled and blocked by this so called security
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: clearance from the CIA.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: Well, this gets very interesting. There are two attorneys in
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: this entire saga. The first attorney was actually bullied and
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: threatened to you know, have them disbarred, accusing them of
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: having classified information or having them sign over and over
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: and over again nondisclosure and secrecy agreements, as threatening them
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: to take action against them. So my first attorney was
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: basically neuter, which they became ineffective, and this led to
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: I trying to get another attorney. And the second attorney
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: is where we get into the Office of General Counsel.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: The CIA absolutely just using horrific methods of denying me
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: my rights to counsel, you know, obstructing the process to
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: get an attorney, you know, accusing you know that hanging
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: up on the attorney when he would call. And the
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: issue here is because I was a CIA officer undercover,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: where I would they on paper, I didn't work for
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: the CIA. I could not openly go out to this attorney.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: I had to have somebody go out to them without
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: the disclosing my identity. And I couldn't go directly and
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: disclose my identity or tell him anything about my case
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: unless the CIA granted this attorney a limited Security Agreement
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: approval Limited Security Approval LSA that would allow me a
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: right to retain this attorney. So it's a long story
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: because ultimately what happens here is I am denied the
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: right to counsel. And in this process, the reprisals against
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: me begin to increase as I begin to blow the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: whistle at higher levels, and at the same time, you know,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: the whisper campaign to the ninemy jobs just explodes and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: gets worse.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: Right, and again, correct me if I've got this wrong.
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: But it's it's within this period that also the political
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: situation is has got quite volatile because there's information coming
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: to the surface around the Hillary Clinton emails, and this
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: is right, this is creating a lot of debate at
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: Congress level as to the actions of the security services
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: and the fact that the security services might not be
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: telling the truth on all occasions.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of issues at stake care,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: particularly when I was working for the Office of Inspector
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: General for the Intelligence community. You are correct, this was
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: the pivotal time where the Inspector General for the Intelligence
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: community was looking at the Hillary Clinton email problem, and
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: the Inspector General himself for the intelligence community. It actually
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: became a whistleblower blowing the whistle to Director of National
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: Intelligence Clapper, and for that matter, the oversight authorities and
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: Congress like Senator Feinstein and other senators, and he was
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: shut down. It was silenced. They didn't want to hear it.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: They didn't want to hear the allegations of Hillary Clinton
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: having done wrongs, and this caused a situation where essentially
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: he basically retired early. Before he retired, he took a
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: lot of time off as Inspector General, and that allowed
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: the environment to change within the Inspector General where we
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: had a principal deputy come in, a new officer come
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: in to be elect the acting IG, and ultimately the
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: deputy IG got fed up of all the nonsense and
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: he decided to bail, which caused the General Counsel for
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, Janet macmillian to
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: become the acting Deputy IG and in this environment you
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: know of Wayne Stone the acting IG and Janet macmillian
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: the deputy Acting IG. While we as a team in
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: the Inspector General worked on an evaluation to review the
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: implementation of reprisal protections, they did not like what we found.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: They wanted to shut it down. They wanted us to
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: change our findings. Originally, Janet macmillian wanted to find a
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: report that basically said, yeah, there are protections and protections
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: are being implemented. We as a team basically said that's
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: not what we found. We can't budget this is exactly
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: what we have. And ultimately what happens here is they
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: accuse me of having an independence issue and tainting the report,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: which it was impossible to do because we had a
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: work plan that had very clear data testimony, and the
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: work plan was actually approved by them, So I mean,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: I couldn't taint this report even if I wanted to,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: because it was a team effort and we were continually
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: basically brainstorming and bringing our conclusions and our findings to
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: ensure that we were hitting the mark correctly. So I
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: got kicked out of the ICIG sent back to the
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: CIA for this round two and three with the devils,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: and the IGS actually launched a counter investigation against me,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: claiming that I had an independence issue. And it's just
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: here's where it really it gets very very ugly, thirty
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: and absolutely just shocking. Right.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: So you were i'd use the term scapegoat. You were
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: being used as a scapegoat to help derail the investigation
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: that the ITG department was carrying out. You end up
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: being almost blacklisted within the organization. But from this point on,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: it seems to me that the movement towards getting you
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: out of the CIA starts to accelerate. So you've got
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: trouble with your jobs, You've been put under pressure, and
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: then eventually you are being questioned on a security issue,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: which means that you're actually taken to a particular location
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: with men I think you described them as eighteen eleven,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: so they're armed officers. They think they're going to interrogate you.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: But you managed to deflect some of this. So it's
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: getting more and more sinister. What is happening to you?
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: Or from a simple start that you started to point
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: out failures in the field or within field offices, which
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: we're putting people at rest. When when did the when
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: did the armed officers appear in the equation?
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is really I mean, you can't make this
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: stuff up. I mean, this stuff is basically could be
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: made into a movie script Enemy of the State essentially.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm basically sent out of the Inspector General,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: you know, black ball, blacklisted, whisper campaign at the CIA.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: My reprisal complaint with the CIA g not investigated going nowhere,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: you know. At the same time, you know, I begin
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: to see my applications being tampered with. You know, yeah,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I'm looking at applications. This is
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: what I filed, and this is what they submitted, you know,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: document tampering. So I began to do Intelligence Community whistle
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: blow or Protection Act disclosures to the acting IG on
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: everything that I witness at the CIA. And you know,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: my disclosures do not get processed, they get suppressed, they
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: don't respond back to me, you know, in this timeframe,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: and investigation is opened against me. Now I've got the
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: Department of Treasury IG out there running around trying to
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: determine whether I had an independence issue, whether I infiltrated
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: the ICIG, you know, and miraculously, within eighty days or so,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: they're able to do a complete investigation, and I'm the
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: last person they talked to. Meanwhile, my reprisal investigation and
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: allegations are outstanding, like by five hundred, seven hundred days
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: or even more, whatever it is. So I'm called to
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: a meeting downtown in DC where, you know, basically it's like,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: you know, we need to talk to you, the Apartment
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: of Treasury IG. I get there, you know, and it's like,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping finally, and I'm making some traction here on
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: my reprisal allegations, and I've got an IG looking at it,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: because it's not unusual to have an external IG to
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: conduct a reprisal investigation when there are conflicts of interest.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: The Department of Homeland Security actually did an investigation about
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: reprisals against some CIA officers in their own IG because
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: of the conflict of interest with the CIIG. So the
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: CIIG was corrupt to the core with their own officers
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: in charge. The IG and Deputy IG haven't taken reprisals
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: against their own whistleblowers, so the CIIG had no authority,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: no basis, no legitimacy to do any reprisal investigations. So
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: I was hoping the situation here is Department of Treasury
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: was investigating. I get there and I'm in the room,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: and you know, the both of them got you know,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: their their weapons, you know, like you know, and you
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: know clearly if they have a weapon, they're considered a
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: law enforcement officer the career track eighteen eleven. So you know,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: now I've got a serious problem. Okay, what are they
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: going to ask me about? So the first thing the
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: senior officer does, do you know why you're here? And
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: I go, yeah, you know, I'm here because of my
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: reprisal allegations and hopefully you folks are going to do
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: an investigation. And he turns around says, no, we're here
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: because we need to investigate for your actions in the
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: ICIG of you know, potential independence issues. At that point
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: in time, I completely just shut him down with the
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: law Presidential Policy Director of nineteen explaining that the letter
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: of the law states, your investigation of me now constitutes
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: an act of reprisal for eye blowing the whistle on
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: the broken reprisal protection processes. So you know, this guy
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: didn't expect me to pushback so hard. So the meeting
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: ended and this began. Now a serious problem where now
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: with an investigation against me, is when I begin to
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: try to retain another attorney that is absolutely just stopped,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: you know, through illegal tactics, and it just continues to
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: escalate and escalate and escalate. I began to blow the whistle,
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: you know, to Congress.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: No, sorry, you moved straight on to it. I was
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: about to say to Congress, and you've said, so you're
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: expanding it. You're now putting formal information directly in front
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: of Congress, in front of senators. Yeah.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: What happens here is because my intelligence community was a
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: Blower Protection Act, disclosures were not processed through the ICIG,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: and the attorney had filed a lawsuit earlier. My attorney
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: had sent a copy of the lawsuit to the relevant
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: respective oversight authorities, the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence and
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: the House Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence. So two democratic senators.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: Typically it's been the Democrats who come up and help
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: whistleblowers responded and wanted to get information. So the Office
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: of Congressional Affairs for the CIA immediately turned around threatened
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: me to take punitive actions against me, including potential termination
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: or security clearance revocation which will lead to termination for
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: having direct contact with Congress. And I explained to him,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: wait a moment here, my attorney is talking to Congress,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: and yeah, we do need to talk to Congress. We've
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: got this list of documents we need to get to Congress.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: So the CIA tells me Office of Congressional Affairs, we
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: don't pass all those materials to Congress. So I have
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: no idea to this date what Congress got or didn't get.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: A Congress did get something. So now Congress is aware
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: of these serious reprisals against me for what happened in Afghanistan,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: the counter investigation, and more importantly, the fact that you
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: know every element that the CIA eco employment, the i G.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: Human resources, Brevians. You know they're basically just a criminal
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: cleanup crew to deny a complaint. You know their rights
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: as a whistleblower. And it just continues to escalate because
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm putting a situation where I'm going nowhere
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: more job denials. I'm about to be basically put in
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: a job I don't want, or having to take a
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: job that is well beyond inferior to my capabilities, you know,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: career death sentence, and in this environment, you know, I
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: end up essentially reaching out to Director Mike Pompeo through
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: his number three, Brian Bullatile, the Chief Operations Officer, and
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: they washed your hands of this and says, you know,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: we got to stay out of this. We got to
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: let the cii G do its job. Mind you, it's
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: the corrupt cii G.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: We'll just bring in here. We've also got going on
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: in the background that that other whistle blowing cases are
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: coming to prominence in the media in the States. You're
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: seeing them, the intelligence agencies are certainly seeing them. The
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: wider public are seeing some of it through mainstream media.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: So this isn't just one example. You're the focus of
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: what's happening here. There were other whistleblower cases that were
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: also prominent because of the reprisals that the CIA had
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: taken against the individuals.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, we're dealing in a critical time period
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: where other whistle blowers had come out publicly and will
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: continue to come out publicly. There were two specific CIA
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: whistleblowers who came out of the Office of Inspector General
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: for the CIA. They had allegeder was against the Inspector
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: General himself, David Buckley, and the deputy Christopher Sharpley, who
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: upon David Buckley's resignation he actually he was fired told
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: to leave. Yeah, under Christopher Sharpley is acting. You know,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: you know we're having Andrew Bacage Jonathan Backland making disclosures
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: to Congress. Thankfully, when I was at the ICIG under
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: Charles McCullough the IG and Daniel Myer at the head
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: of the Whistleblower office, those two men have to be
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: credited with being pro whistle blower and helping whistle blowers out.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: They were able to see to it that the Department
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: of Homeland Security IG would do an investigation on the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: reprisals against Andrew Bacage and those results would come out
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: a year or two later. But in this process publicly
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: it became available that the CIIG was corrupt as hell
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: itself in terms of taking reprisals against their own whistle
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: blow And on top of that, you know, we had
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: found out that they didn't want to implement a reprisal protections,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: they didn't know what standard to use, they weren't using
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: the correct standards. They weren't following the time standards. If
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: you don't follow the standards and you don't follow the time,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: you will never substantiate a reprisal. It's like trying to
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: do a murder investigation a year, two or three after
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: you know the murder happened and the crime scene has
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: been completely sanitized. You know a murder did take place,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: but you can't find evidence of murder because you didn't
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: do a timely investigation. That's the CIIG in terms of
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: doing reprisal investigations, and that's against the law, and that
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: does raises the issue of potential civil rights law violations.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: And also you can call it criminal obstructions of justice.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: So with these whistleblowers in time, what would happen here
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: is as I began to make disclosures to Congress because
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: I escalated basically after going to Mike Pompeo, Bryan Bulatow,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: I went to the d N, I himself, Daniel Coates,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: his deputy Susan Gordon. I continue to make disclosures to
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: Congress as best as I can. Internally, don't know what
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: the CIA passed. You know, eventually it turns out that
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: the ig for the Inspector the Inspector General for the
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: Intelligence community that that entire office is also corrupt at
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: the high level. They literally take reprisals against Daniel Meyer,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: the head whistleblower office, gentleman, and he goes public with
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: his case. So you have a total complete uproar in Washington,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: d C. Numerous press reports, and you know, the bottom
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: line is you've got people alleging reprisals for blowing the
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: whistle on the broken whistle, which is how I get
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: my title the broken Whistle because I was not alone
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: blowing the whistle on the broken whistle. And ultimately, you know,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: like all of us, I you know, hey, we were
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: fire wrongly terminated, never seen our cases properly adjudicated. And
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: in my case, they got very creative. Now what they
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: did was is they falsely accused me of being a
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: threat to the workforce. So I begin to get investigated
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: by the CIA Officer security. I have two investigators from
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: the Threat Management Unit questioned me, and you know, that
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: was the most productive conversation I had in my entire
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: two plus years of dealing with this matter. They actually
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: had the audacity to tell me, look, you're not a
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: threat to the workforce. What can we do to help you? Well, unfortunately,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: they pulled a Michael Flant on me, like the FBI did.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: Whatever I told those investigators when they went up, the
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: chain of command got totally flipped around, because now I
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: had the Director of Security sending an emissary one of
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: his deputies, a high level deputy security official up in
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: the chain of command, and they have a frank conversation
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: with me, basically telling me be happy you have a
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: job as and we can take the job away from you.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: You're being too vocal at trying to deal with these issues.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: And I told him, well, it's not that I'm being
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: too vocal. I so you folks are being just too
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: you know, you're being a bunch of bullies, trying to
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: shut down a legitimate complaint that I made it very
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: easy to fix, and you've got some serious problems here.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: So you know that leads to even more escalation. You know,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: in this process of time, the Office General Counsel is
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: completely obstructing my ability to get an attorney. I'm getting nowhere.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: They're shutting it down. I can't get a new attorney.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: You know, they escalated, so I reach out to this,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: deputy director said, look, you know, if the director's security
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: sent you to pass me a message, this is important
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: to him. I want to meet with the director of
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: security personally to go over these issues with him, because
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: if he thinks this is so important, it demands that
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: we meet face to face and discuss it. Well, they
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: didn't like my tactic. So now what they did was
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: is they sent the personnel security director to basically threaten
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: me to take my clearance in my job and fire
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: me if I would refuse to sign basically a letter
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 2: of warning. And the letter of warning was basically that
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: I had to shut up seasoned, desist from any of
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: my complaints as far as you know, allegations of reprisals
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: against me, and all these violations of law pertaining to
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: adjudicating alleged reprisals. When I refuse to comply with the
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: letter of warning, this is where he does this wonderful
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: stunt of putting surveillance on me. I literally got surveilled
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: at my house one evening and the next day I
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: was denied entry into a building where I have to
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: turn in my badge and leave, and I'm immediately put
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: on a minis of leave with pay Wow, I'm an
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: administrative limbo, only to find out basically a month later
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: that I'm being put through the personnel evaluation board to
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: basically strip me of my clearance and fire me as
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: a CIA officer.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: Right Pedro, I'm watching the clock a little bit here
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: because we've extended the interview, which I'm really happy with
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: because you're talking some fascinating things. But I think we
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: must see whether we can bring this little section to
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: a close. I'm going to say to you straight away,
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: I'd love to have a part two with you to
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: discuss the implications as to what's happened to you, because
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: I think there are a number of things and it's
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: it's affecting the system in America. But I would also
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: say we see similar things happening here in the UK.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: So if this interview is watched by American viewers, please
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: do don't assume that, because it's a brick doing the
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: asking questions, that I regard what's happening as being a
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: unique American problem. I think we've got equivalent problem underway
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: here in UK. But we can speak about that. But
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: just to bring this little bit to a close, you
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: ultimately end up losing your job with the CIA. You're
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: initially not being paid, but then there's a formal ending
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: to it. Your services aren't required. You've also attempted to
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: get your case heard in court, but your court case
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: is dismissed. But one of the I can't remember the
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: name of the organization You describe a particular unit or
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: organization that you approach and they say they can't deal
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: with you because you're not employed. But you did also
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: try and approach them when you were employed and they
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything to help you. Then let's just give
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: us that little bit, because I could use the word
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: one before, and I don't mean that in a domeaning way,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: but my goodness, if you're going to mess somebody around,
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: this is a brilliant way of doing it. What was
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: that organization that did that to you?
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: The Office of Inspector General for the Intelligence Community that
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: failed to process my disclosures that I requested to be
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: passed to Congress in April May of twenty seventeen, and
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: when I followed up in July of twenty seventeen, when
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: I reached out to them again, In believe it was
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: April May June of twenty eighteen, they asked me to
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: refile my intelligence community was a Blower Protection Act disclosures.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: Mind you, I had already processed them once, asked a
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: bottom a second time, so now we're talking about a
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: third time. So I refile my intelligence community was a
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: blower Protec connect disclosures as an outsider, so these are sanitized,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: but they lead you to the documents internally or to
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: the allegations internally that the IG had received. So I
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: reprocessed these allegations in early twenty nineteen. I was terminated
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: September twenty eighteen, but my appeals did not actually come
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: in the last appeal I received a response in mid
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: January of twenty nineteen, so my official termination really comes
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: in January of twenty nineteen. That really should be considered
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: the legal date of termination. So I've filed these allegations
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: again in February March of twenty nineteen. Immediately, I'm talking
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: about immediately, like within days, I get a letterhead response
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: to the off as IF Inspector General for the Intelligence Community,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: and they have the audacity to tell me, well, you've
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: been fired. You're no longer an employe of the intelligence community,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: so you have no standing at all to file an
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: Intelligence Community whistle Blower Protection Act disclosure basically, go screw yourself,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: go pound sand bye. So, I mean, what more can
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: I say about that? You know, while I'm employed, they
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: don't process them. While I'm employed, I follow up, they
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: don't respond. While I'm employed, I ask again and they
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: say refile them. When I finally file them and I'm
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: no longer employed, they basically tell me you can't file them.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: So the Intelligence Community whistle Blower Protection Act process is
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: completely just broken and flawed, and it would be a
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: factor where we saw later on in twenty nineteen where
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: it was weaponized against President Trump. And this is where
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: we get into in chapter one of my book, where
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: real whistleblowers like mysel So, if we try to use
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: the system, are completely ignored, crushed and destroyed, while those
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: who can't be used for political expediency are heralded as heroes.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: And this has serious implications for the rule of law
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: in our society. I mean, if our government is a
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: government of thugs and criminals, what right do they have
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: to govern us? And for that matter, you know, how
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: can we combat this duggery? We have no choice but
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: to elect people like Donald Trump and appoint people like
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: Toulcy Gabbert, John Ratcliffe, Matt Gates who are going to
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 2: come in and get rid of this criminal organization inside
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: our government. I mean, sadly, you know, people may disagree
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: politically on who Trump is and then who he picks,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: but we cannot continue down the road of a tyrannical
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: government within the United States of America because we're going
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 2: to become basically just another tyrannical government like Stalin's, Hitler's, Lenin's,
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: Castros Maduros and so forth.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Pedro, we must send the Unfortunately, because my goodness, there's
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: a lot more to talk about, but I'm going to
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: say thank you very much for joining us and taking
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: us through what you've had to endure. It's an incredible
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: story because it starts with something so black and white,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: so simple. I think it's to do with safety of individuals.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: But because you quite rightly did not back down, the
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: thing got bigger and bigger. So I'm going to say
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: thank you very much for sharing that with us today.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: I'll ask you now, would you come back and do
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: a part two with me to talk about the follow
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: up in a bit more detail. I've got some questions
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: I'd like to ask you about how you see the
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: organization and American society, and I think there's some interesting
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: points we could cover.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Brian, I'll be delighted to come back. I mean
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: there's a lot more. I mean there's things that are
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: not even covered, and there's interview, and you know, the
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: implications are significant. At the end of the day, the
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: bottom line is again, you know, we're supposed to be
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: a government of the people, for the people, by the people,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: and government is there to do good to the people,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: not there for its own good. And I would be
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: delighted to come back.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, thank you very much, but thank you for the
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: interview today. It's been really excellent. Thank you. By Drug