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The Road to Damascus · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. I have a theory that the most interesting autobiographies
0:21
Speaker 1: are the ones written by second tier people. I'm not
0:24
Speaker 1: using second tier in a derogatory sense like second rate.
0:28
Speaker 1: I mean it in a sense of hierarchy. When the
0:34
Speaker 1: people on the top tier tell their story, it's invariably boring.
0:39
Speaker 1: They have too much to lose by being honest. Their
0:41
Speaker 1: public stature works against them on the page because they know.
0:45
Speaker 1: Anything they write that's even vaguely controversial or opinionated, in
0:49
Speaker 1: other words, anything interesting, it's going to get dissected and
0:53
Speaker 1: distorted by the media. But the memoir of the person
0:57
Speaker 1: under the general or the president or the CEO, the
1:00
Speaker 1: person you've never heard of, that person has a lot
1:03
Speaker 1: less to lose, and their memoirs are where the gold lies.
1:11
Speaker 1: Not long ago, I picked up a book called Company Man,
1:15
Speaker 1: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA. It
1:18
Speaker 1: was by a man named John Rizzo. I checked the
1:21
Speaker 1: book flap for Rizzo's bio. He wasn't the director of
1:25
Speaker 1: the CIA, or the deputy director, or even the Head
1:29
Speaker 1: of Operations, which is the person who runs all the spies. No.
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Speaker 1: Rizzo was an attorney in the agency's legal Department, eventually
1:37
Speaker 1: rising to acting General counsel. When I saw Rizzo's book,
1:41
Speaker 1: I thought, BINGO, I have to read this. I was
1:46
Speaker 1: not disappointed. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to
1:54
Speaker 1: Revisionist History, my podcast about Things Overlooked and Misunderstood. This
2:00
Speaker 1: episode is about a story John Rizzou tells on page
2:03
Speaker 1: one forty eight of his autobiography. It's a story about
2:06
Speaker 1: a spy, a very good one, and what happened to
2:08
Speaker 1: him him. Right after I read it, I got in
2:15
Speaker 1: touch with Rizzo. I asked him if I could interview
2:17
Speaker 1: him about the story of the spy. He said, of course.
2:21
Speaker 1: Then in his email he added a PostScript, PS, interesting
2:26
Speaker 1: that you focused on that episode. When I finished the manuscript,
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Speaker 1: I figured that if any single anecdote in the book
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Speaker 1: would garner public attention, that would be the one. As
2:37
Speaker 1: it turned out, I don't remember anyone ever asking me
2:40
Speaker 1: or otherwise talking about it, which I found puzzling. Yes,
2:48
Speaker 1: it's puzzling.
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Speaker 2: I mean it was probably forty maybe. As I say,
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Speaker 2: I saw pictures of him, photos of them. At the time.
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Speaker 1: I'm sitting at Rizzo's kitchen table at his house in Washington,
3:01
Speaker 1: d c. He's telling me about the spy he mentioned
3:04
Speaker 1: in his autobiography.
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Speaker 2: And he looked like al Pacino, no circa godfather too.
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Speaker 2: He was at Europe, I mean, he was European looking.
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Speaker 2: He's to a young man, and I think he reached
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Speaker 2: sort of, you know, a stage in his life that
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Speaker 2: he felt remorse skills about what he had done in
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Speaker 2: his youth and in his formative years. You know, as
3:27
Speaker 2: simple and confounding as that. I mean, I don't, honestly,
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Speaker 2: I don't recall another instance of an asset coming to
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Speaker 2: us under those kinds of circumstances.
3:39
Speaker 1: An asset is CIA speak for a source, someone on
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Speaker 1: the inside. This asset, the man who looked like al
3:46
Speaker 1: Pacino was a terrorist. Do you know the details of
3:50
Speaker 1: his how he approached the CIA to say I've had
3:55
Speaker 1: a change of heart.
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Speaker 2: I you know, I believed he just volunteered his services,
4:01
Speaker 2: and I think he just walked into an embassy.
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Speaker 1: And what was what do we know about the quality
4:08
Speaker 1: of the information he was providing.
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Speaker 2: It was very good. You know. He was considered the
4:13
Speaker 2: highly reliable and he he didn't want much money. That
4:17
Speaker 2: was the other interesting thing. He didn't want money. I
4:21
Speaker 2: mean it wasn't you know most assets didn't want money.
4:25
Speaker 1: Why didn't he want money?
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Speaker 2: Because he said that he was doing this for his conscience,
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Speaker 2: to make up and it was an act of expiation.
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Speaker 1: An act of expiation. You will want to take sides
4:40
Speaker 1: when you finish this story. My advice to you is don't.
4:50
Speaker 1: If you make a list of the greatest investigative reporters
4:53
Speaker 1: of a last generation, there's Bob Woodward at the top.
4:57
Speaker 1: There's Mark Bowden, who wrote Blackhawk Down, Seymour Hirsch who
5:01
Speaker 1: wrote for the New York Times for many years, and
5:03
Speaker 1: then The New Yorker, Steve Cale, Jane Mayer. There's a
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Speaker 1: guy who I sett when I first started my career
5:10
Speaker 1: at the Washington Post many years ago, Mike Isikoff, who
5:14
Speaker 1: was a bulldog. And somewhere in that top cluster of
5:17
Speaker 1: investigative reporters is Tim Weiner. He's one of the few
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Speaker 1: journalists ever to have won both a Pulitzer Prize and
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Speaker 1: a National Book Award. In the nineteen eighties, Weiner worked
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Speaker 1: at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and his first foreign assignment was
5:32
Speaker 1: covering the overthrow of the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. When
5:37
Speaker 1: Weiner came back, he convinced his editor to send him
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Speaker 1: to Afghanistan, where the CIA was then secretly funding the
5:44
Speaker 1: mujah Hadeen in their battle against the Soviet occupation.
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Speaker 3: I called up the CIA, which had and always has
5:51
Speaker 3: had a public information office, and I said, hey, I'm
5:56
Speaker 3: going to Afghanistan. I understand you people do country briefings
5:59
Speaker 3: from time to time for foreign correspondence. How about it?
6:04
Speaker 3: And he said absolutely not hung up the phone. If
6:09
Speaker 3: I went to Afghanistan. I had a jolly old time.
6:11
Speaker 3: Came back and I hadn't been back in Washington for
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Speaker 3: more than a day when my phone rang.
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Speaker 1: It was a public information officer from the CIA. This
6:19
Speaker 1: time he was friendly. He said, why don't you come
6:23
Speaker 1: by for that briefing.
6:25
Speaker 3: So off I went through the CIA, which is in
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Speaker 3: the woods, about eight miles outside of the White House,
6:31
Speaker 3: checkpoint one, checkpoint two, checkpoint three, into the lobby of
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Speaker 3: the CIA, and up on the left hand wall, in
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Speaker 3: great gold letters, it says from the Gospel of John,
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Speaker 3: and ye shall know the truth, and the truth will
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Speaker 3: make you free. So I'm hooked already. I go up
6:48
Speaker 3: to the seventh floor, which is where the executive suites
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Speaker 3: were and there are four CIA officers sitting around a
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Speaker 3: table for my quote briefing unquote, But they really only
6:59
Speaker 3: wanted to know one thing from me, which was what's
7:03
Speaker 3: it like. These were supposed to be the four top ciaxps.
7:09
Speaker 3: It's on Afghanistan. They'd never been to Afghanistan. So I
7:16
Speaker 3: walked out of there thinking, I'm going to devote the
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Speaker 3: rest of my life to making a study of this agency.
7:23
Speaker 3: I was completely fascinated.
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Speaker 1: Why I went to The New York Times in nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety three continued covering the agency all throughout the nineteen nineties.
7:35
Speaker 1: He was very, very good at it. When I was
7:38
Speaker 1: covering the CIA during the Aldrich Ames affair, you may
7:41
Speaker 1: remember that Ames was a senior CIA officer who worked
7:45
Speaker 1: there for more than thirty years, and he ended up
7:47
Speaker 1: telling the KGB everything he knew, including the names of
7:51
Speaker 1: the agency's assets inside the Soviet Union. It was one
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Speaker 1: of the most damaging cases of espionage in American history.
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Speaker 3: Ames is under arrest, and I'm thinking I should go
8:03
Speaker 3: interview Ames. I wonder where Ames is right now, and
8:06
Speaker 3: as it turned out, he was in a county jail.
8:10
Speaker 3: So I go to the county jail and I say,
8:13
Speaker 3: I'd like to talk to prisoner Alder James. And I've
8:16
Speaker 3: walked into the interview room and there was Alda James.
8:20
Speaker 3: We talked.
8:23
Speaker 1: How long did you talk to him?
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Speaker 4: For?
8:24
Speaker 3: Well about an hour?
8:26
Speaker 2: Wait?
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Speaker 1: You stopped after an hour? Did they stop?
8:29
Speaker 2: You know?
8:30
Speaker 3: It's a visiting hour, Tim, this.
8:32
Speaker 1: Is the greatest scoop of your It's a school.
8:36
Speaker 3: And I gave my phone number and he called me collect,
8:42
Speaker 3: you know, on a regular basis. And I did a
8:46
Speaker 3: number of stories based on first hand interviews where he
8:50
Speaker 3: essentially confessed to everything he'd done and gave me some
8:54
Speaker 3: rather vivid descriptions of life inside the CIA, most of
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Speaker 3: which were true and demonstrably true.
9:00
Speaker 1: Maybe you have to have been a reporter to understand
9:02
Speaker 1: how fantastic that story is. I was a reporter at
9:06
Speaker 1: the Washington Post for ten years. I would have assumed
9:09
Speaker 1: that the worst spy in American history was under triple
9:11
Speaker 1: lockdown somewhere, whisked away by helicopter to a black side.
9:15
Speaker 1: I would have waited for the press release. But Weiner
9:19
Speaker 1: is a kind of person who would assume that if
9:21
Speaker 1: the intelligence establishment was naive and disorganized enough to have
9:25
Speaker 1: its clock cleaned, by a KGB mole. Then it was
9:28
Speaker 1: probably naive and disorganized enough to park that same mole
9:32
Speaker 1: unattended in the county jail.
9:34
Speaker 3: And I covered them like you would cover a courthouse
9:37
Speaker 3: or the cops, or Congress or the White House. They're
9:40
Speaker 3: an arm of the government, like the Internal Revenue Service
9:44
Speaker 3: or the Post Office. They happened to be a secret
9:47
Speaker 3: arm of government.
9:53
Speaker 1: Weiner would later write a book called Legacy of Ashes.
9:56
Speaker 1: That's how he won his National Book Award. It's an
9:59
Speaker 1: amazing book, easily the best history of the CIA ever written.
10:07
Speaker 1: Some people within the agency thought that one was biased
10:09
Speaker 1: against them, that in his reporting, and particularly in Legacy
10:13
Speaker 1: of Ashes, he went on too long about what the
10:16
Speaker 1: agency had done wrong, and that he said too little
10:19
Speaker 1: about what the agency did right. I understand why they
10:23
Speaker 1: think that way, but I'm not sure that assessment is fair.
10:27
Speaker 1: Weiner is not biased. He's aggressive. You only have to
10:31
Speaker 1: meet him to understand that he has one of those big, square,
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Speaker 1: impressive heads, barrel chest, the kind of self confidence that
10:39
Speaker 1: you have to have if you're in his line of work.
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Speaker 1: He's a kind of relentlessness about him. I can't remember
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Speaker 1: how many times we talked on the phone and went
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Speaker 1: back and forth in emails before he agreed to sit
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Speaker 1: down with me. He kept it up for weeks, clarifying, probing,
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Speaker 1: why do you want to do this story? What are
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Speaker 1: your intentions? Weiner is aggressive because over the course of
11:03
Speaker 1: his career, he needed to be aggressive. It's not like
11:06
Speaker 1: the CIA puts out colorful brochures highlighting its latest initiatives.
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Speaker 1: It's a secret agency. There's a man named Jeffrey Smith
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Speaker 1: who will figure in this story as well. Smith used
11:21
Speaker 1: to be the general counsel for the CIA. He's very
11:23
Speaker 1: much a member of the intelligence establishment, genteel, bookish. He's
11:28
Speaker 1: now in private practice at one of the most prestigious
11:31
Speaker 1: of DC law firms, Arnold and Porter. And one of
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Speaker 1: the things that Smith says is it's a good thing
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Speaker 1: for the agency that reporters like Tim Winer are aggressive.
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Speaker 1: The agency needs a free press.
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Speaker 5: It keeps you honest. It's not unlike congressional oversight. If
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Speaker 5: any government agency is asked to do something or is
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Speaker 5: considering something, the CIA, you have to think, this is
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Speaker 5: probably something that is going to have to be reported
12:00
Speaker 5: to our two oversight committees. How are they going to
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Speaker 5: react and what happens if it leaks, how do we
12:08
Speaker 5: explain what doing? And that question comes up all the time,
12:14
Speaker 5: and without a press it wouldn't come.
12:15
Speaker 1: Up, So you need needs yes, Does the CIA always
12:25
Speaker 1: remember that?
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Speaker 5: In the ranks, some people don't see it that way.
12:33
Speaker 5: As you get more senior, you do see it that way.
12:36
Speaker 5: And the senior people have to explain to the younger
12:40
Speaker 5: people as are coming up through the ranks why that's necessary.
12:47
Speaker 1: Why do we put up with a hugely powerful agency
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Speaker 1: like the CIA, with a budget in the tens of billions,
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Speaker 1: doing things we know very little about, because we're confident
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Speaker 1: that if the CIA does something truly evil or stupid,
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Speaker 1: the press will find out and let us know. Weiner
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Speaker 1: lives by this idea. He devoted his career to it.
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Speaker 3: What does the CIA look like in the absence of
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Speaker 3: free press? It looks like the KGB. We have a
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Speaker 3: uniquely American problem here, Malcolm. We're trying to run a
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Speaker 3: secret intelligence service in an open, democratic society. The Russians
13:26
Speaker 3: don't do that, the Chinese don't do that, not even
13:29
Speaker 3: the British do that. We need to have a constant
13:34
Speaker 3: tug of war between a free press, a cantankerous press,
13:41
Speaker 3: a skeptical press, and the powerful institutions of our government.
13:47
Speaker 3: But there are going to be arguments.
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Speaker 1: Believe me, they were arguments.
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Speaker 5: He's the world's most wanted man, the son of a
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Speaker 5: wealthy Venezuelan lawyer.
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Speaker 1: His profession is spreading terror worldwide.
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Speaker 5: He has links with groups like that.
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Speaker 1: The most notorious terrorist of the nineteen seventies and nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighties was a man named Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez, so known
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Speaker 1: as Carlos the Jackal. He was born in Venezuela, but
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Speaker 1: worked closely with a radical group called the Popular Front
14:16
Speaker 1: for the Liberation of Palestine, setting bombs assassinating people. He
14:21
Speaker 1: was thought to be responsible for the deaths of more
14:23
Speaker 1: than eighty people. He played a role in the massacre
14:26
Speaker 1: of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in nineteen
14:29
Speaker 1: seventy two. Carlos the Jackal was almost as notorious in
14:33
Speaker 1: his day as a Soma Ben Lauden was in ours.
14:36
Speaker 1: He was the subject of a massive international manhunt that
14:39
Speaker 1: went on for years. Finally, in nineteen ninety four, he
14:43
Speaker 1: was captured in Sudan by French intelligence. How did they
14:47
Speaker 1: find him because of a tip from the CIA. Where
14:51
Speaker 1: did the CIA get its information from a man who
14:54
Speaker 1: was once high up in the same world as the Jackal?
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Speaker 1: The guy John Rizzo wrote about the asset who looked
15:00
Speaker 1: like Alpuccino. Here's Rizzo again.
15:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually you work case officers, work potential sources and
15:08
Speaker 2: assets for months to years before even pitching them to help.
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Speaker 2: This guy just walked, I mean just just walked in.
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Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, at the time is recruitment. There
15:18
Speaker 2: was a great excitement, eagerness that this is one of
15:21
Speaker 2: the few guys, the best guy we have inside a
15:23
Speaker 2: terrorist organization.
15:25
Speaker 1: So you never met him, but you saw a picture
15:28
Speaker 1: of him, and you say, you describe him as looking
15:32
Speaker 1: like al Pacino. There was something kind of glamorous about him.
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Speaker 2: Is that what?
15:35
Speaker 5: Yeah?
15:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, sleek, dark hair, is European looking. I mean he
15:41
Speaker 2: was not you know, he was not your jihadi. I
15:44
Speaker 2: mean he was he was Westernized.
15:50
Speaker 1: Al Pacino helped the CIA find Carlos the Jackal, but
15:55
Speaker 1: by the following year, the summer of nineteen ninety five,
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Speaker 1: the CIA found itself in crisis. The Aldrich Aims scandal
16:02
Speaker 1: had devastated the agency's reputation. What's more, the Cold War
16:07
Speaker 1: was over, and since the CIA was essentially created to
16:11
Speaker 1: fight the Cold War, lots of people in Washington, serious
16:14
Speaker 1: people wondered if the United States even needed the agency anymore.
16:19
Speaker 1: Then all kinds of stories broke about shady characters the
16:22
Speaker 1: agency was mixed up with in Central America, murderers, drug dealers.
16:27
Speaker 1: It was the last straw. President Clinton brought in a
16:30
Speaker 1: new director, John Deutsch, with the mandate to clean house.
16:35
Speaker 1: Deutsche ordered what's called an asset scrub, a review of
16:39
Speaker 1: every spy, informant, an asset on a CIA payroll, with
16:42
Speaker 1: a specific emphasis on ethical considerations. As the CIA's General Counsel,
16:50
Speaker 1: Jeff Smith was in the middle.
16:51
Speaker 5: Of it, were there assets who had committed major felonase
16:57
Speaker 5: human rights violations or had attacked Americans? And so we
17:02
Speaker 5: added that dimension to the assets scrub that was currently underway.
17:06
Speaker 1: And one of the files the agency reviewed was that
17:09
Speaker 1: of al Pacino. John Rizzo was Jeff Smith's deputy. He
17:13
Speaker 1: was in the middle of it as well.
17:15
Speaker 2: It was discovered that he had actually committed terrorist acts
17:19
Speaker 2: against Americans, bombings in Europe, and that he had wounded
17:26
Speaker 2: some with his bombs. I mean, obviously the intent was
17:29
Speaker 2: to kill them. Now that was somehow missed. Now I
17:34
Speaker 2: don't know how it was, mister, whether frankly it was
17:37
Speaker 2: just overlooked, but it should have been a red flag.
17:43
Speaker 1: You can imagine what some people inside the CIA thought
17:46
Speaker 1: of the asset scrub. The function of a spy's service
17:49
Speaker 1: is to find out what the bad guys are doing,
17:52
Speaker 1: and the best way you find out what the bad
17:54
Speaker 1: guys are doing is to have another bad guy tell you. Right,
17:57
Speaker 1: So why would you have a rule saying the CIA
18:00
Speaker 1: needs to be extra careful about hiring bad guys, but
18:04
Speaker 1: at the same time as a group that says, look,
18:07
Speaker 1: the agency is a mess. We might not have a
18:09
Speaker 1: future unless we clean up our act. We have to
18:12
Speaker 1: play by the rules.
18:14
Speaker 2: So what that meant was, we've belatedly discovered that we
18:17
Speaker 2: should have reviewed his record before entering into a relationship
18:22
Speaker 2: with them, and we should have actually gone to the
18:27
Speaker 2: law enforcement, the FBI, Department of Justice at the outset
18:32
Speaker 2: before we even began a relationship. And I would have
18:35
Speaker 2: been the guy to do it, was to go to justice.
18:37
Speaker 2: The out that we did not do that.
18:39
Speaker 1: In the middle of all that handbringing, someone calls Tim Winer.
18:43
Speaker 1: So when do you first get wind of the retired terrorist?
18:48
Speaker 3: As I recall in the late spring or early summer
18:53
Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety five, I get word from inside the
18:58
Speaker 3: CI that we have a problem here, and I begin
19:04
Speaker 3: to make inquiries.
19:07
Speaker 1: So somebody from is the CIA? What is their motivation
19:12
Speaker 1: for telling you this?
19:14
Speaker 3: The CIA has screwed up. It has failed to inform
19:18
Speaker 3: the Justice Department that they have an asset on their books,
19:24
Speaker 3: a foreign agent who has again euphemistically American blood on
19:29
Speaker 3: his hands.
19:30
Speaker 1: So why do they want to call the New York Times.
19:36
Speaker 3: To write or wrong? Because sometimes public disclosure is the
19:45
Speaker 3: only way to write a wrong.
19:47
Speaker 1: Do you think it's ea? Did they think it would
19:50
Speaker 1: be easier for them to fulfill their obligation to inform
19:56
Speaker 1: the Justice Department if there was a kind of leak
20:00
Speaker 1: of this fact.
20:01
Speaker 3: First, there was a battle royal going on inside the
20:05
Speaker 3: CIA over the scrub.
20:09
Speaker 1: So Deutsche's pushing that and within the agency there's a
20:13
Speaker 1: considerable amount of pushback, so they're anticipating this is going
20:16
Speaker 1: to be a struggle.
20:17
Speaker 3: A considerable amount of pushback is an understatement. There was
20:21
Speaker 3: fierce opposition.
20:24
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing the people who call you are the
20:27
Speaker 1: ones who are in favor of the scrub.
20:31
Speaker 3: The people who call me are patriots who love their
20:38
Speaker 3: country and who were sworn to uphold Let me rephrase that.
20:45
Speaker 3: The people who called me, I believe, are patriots who
20:50
Speaker 3: love their country and are motivated to live by their
20:55
Speaker 3: oath to uphold the Constitution and obey the laws of
20:58
Speaker 3: the United States.
21:01
Speaker 1: Why or Waits continues to ask around. Then, late in
21:06
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen ninety five, the CIA decides to
21:09
Speaker 1: take its medicine. Rizzo goes to the Department of Justice
21:13
Speaker 1: and tells them good, bad and ugly about their al pacino.
21:18
Speaker 2: They were upset, you know, basically, why are you just
21:20
Speaker 2: telling us this now? You know, why didn't you tell
21:23
Speaker 2: us before you got in bed with this guy? So, yeah,
21:27
Speaker 2: they were upsets. I knew they would be. You have
21:30
Speaker 2: to weigh this guy is, you know, gold, against the
21:35
Speaker 2: fact that, well, you know, he's got attempted murder of
21:39
Speaker 2: Americans on his resume.
21:42
Speaker 1: At the same time Rizzo's having that conversation, the head
21:45
Speaker 1: of the CIA's counter Terrorism Center went to Capitol Hill
21:49
Speaker 1: and briefed members of Congress about the acid scrub. They
21:53
Speaker 1: weren't happy either. People all over Washington. Now knew about
21:58
Speaker 1: al Pacino, people in the Department of Justice, people in
22:02
Speaker 1: the White House, people on the Hill, representatives, senators, staffers,
22:07
Speaker 1: and Winer's phone rings.
22:09
Speaker 3: Again, my rule of thumb on a story like this
22:15
Speaker 3: is and I want to have three sources, and I
22:18
Speaker 3: want to make sure that the second source is not
22:21
Speaker 3: the first source, in which case I have one source. Right,
22:25
Speaker 3: So I had two sources. I did get a call.
22:35
Speaker 3: The call was a call to have a conversation outside
22:43
Speaker 3: of the normal circuits of the telephone lines. The conversation
22:50
Speaker 3: was with a member of Congress. At this point, I
22:55
Speaker 3: have three sources. Subsequently, there was a fourth who is
23:01
Speaker 3: an American diplomat, was an American diplomat at the time.
23:05
Speaker 1: Winnercalls the CIA Press office and talks to the agency's
23:09
Speaker 1: Oaksmith at the time, Dennis Box. I met Box in
23:13
Speaker 1: a restaurant in northern Virginia.
23:15
Speaker 4: And it was at that point where they said this
23:18
Speaker 4: is not good, this is this is really gonna put
23:23
Speaker 4: somebody at risk. And I said, said, well, let's invite
23:27
Speaker 4: him in and try to lay out for him. You
23:32
Speaker 4: know what's gonna what the risk is. He said, he
23:36
Speaker 4: sat in my office with the head of counter Terrorism Center.
23:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what was do you remember much? What was
23:42
Speaker 1: the what was the nature of the conversation.
23:45
Speaker 4: Well, it was pretty straightforward. It was he's got a
23:47
Speaker 4: fairly mild demeanor. He's not at least with us. He
23:51
Speaker 4: you know, he wasn't aggressive or abrasive. I mean, he
23:54
Speaker 4: was just kind of laying out, here's here's what I have,
23:59
Speaker 4: here's what I've been told. But it was the detail.
24:02
Speaker 4: It was the details of this particular asset that got
24:06
Speaker 4: our folks worked up.
24:08
Speaker 1: This particular asset meaning Alpucino, Bach says, the head of
24:13
Speaker 1: the counter Terrorism Center explained all the specific things that
24:17
Speaker 1: if published, would put al Pacino in danger. He tried
24:21
Speaker 1: to interest Winer instead in a broader story about the
24:23
Speaker 1: asset scrub, which wasn't really a secret at that point.
24:29
Speaker 1: These kinds of conversations between reporters and government officials are
24:33
Speaker 1: not unusual. This is how Washington works. In the United Kingdom,
24:39
Speaker 1: there is something commonly known as a d notice, which
24:42
Speaker 1: is a government order issued to a media organization saying
24:45
Speaker 1: you shouldn't publish what you want to publish because it
24:49
Speaker 1: endangers national security. If this story were taking place in
24:54
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. The minute winer called to say, I
24:57
Speaker 1: know about al Pucino. The British government would have slapped
25:00
Speaker 1: a D notice on him, end of story. But the
25:03
Speaker 1: United States doesn't have dnotices. It has a constitutional right
25:07
Speaker 1: to freedom of the press. So what happens instead is
25:11
Speaker 1: a negotiation. The reporter comes in, he or she gets briefed.
25:16
Speaker 1: Maybe the head of the CIA calls the editor of
25:18
Speaker 1: the Washington Post or the New York Times and says, look,
25:22
Speaker 1: we're really uncomfortable with this. Here's why. Just as I
25:28
Speaker 1: was writing this episode, the Washington Post reported that in
25:32
Speaker 1: a meeting with Russian officials, President Trump lets slip some
25:35
Speaker 1: very sensitive intelligence from an ally. It was about the
25:39
Speaker 1: intention of Middle East terrorists to use laptops as bombs.
25:43
Speaker 1: Huge story, but if you read the initial news accounts closely,
25:48
Speaker 1: it's obvious that the reporters held some information back. They
25:52
Speaker 1: didn't tell us which American ally gave us that information.
25:57
Speaker 1: It seems like they knew the location of the spy,
26:00
Speaker 1: but they didn't tell us that either. This is what
26:03
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Somewhere along the line, there was clearly
26:07
Speaker 1: a conversation between those reports and the CIA and the
26:10
Speaker 1: reporters listened and then said, we're going to disclose what
26:14
Speaker 1: we think is necessary to make the point about the
26:16
Speaker 1: recklessness of the president, but we're willing to withhold details
26:20
Speaker 1: that you tell us might damage national security. Jeff Smith
26:25
Speaker 1: says he's been involved in lots of these conversations, both
26:28
Speaker 1: on the government end and now on the media end,
26:31
Speaker 1: because he has media organizations among his clients.
26:34
Speaker 5: One of the things I fault the government is too
26:37
Speaker 5: frequently the government just says, well, harm could result. That
26:41
Speaker 5: then leaves my clients when I'm on the client side
26:44
Speaker 5: in the terrible at the lemo of saying, well, what's
26:46
Speaker 5: the harm? We can't tell you.
26:49
Speaker 1: But Smith, as you can imagine, can see the government's
26:52
Speaker 1: side as well. If you're the CIA trying to convince
26:56
Speaker 1: a reporter or an editor not to spill a secret,
26:59
Speaker 1: you have to tell them enough about the secret so
27:01
Speaker 1: that they understand what's at stake. What you don't want
27:04
Speaker 1: to do is reveal even more the secret than what
27:06
Speaker 1: has already been revealed. And all of this respecting the
27:09
Speaker 1: fact that the press in America can, at least in principle,
27:13
Speaker 1: do pretty much whatever it wants.
27:16
Speaker 5: What the government tries to do is indicate gradations of harm.
27:21
Speaker 5: This is really bad, this is less bad, and leaving
27:27
Speaker 5: the editorial judgments to the press. But the government should
27:32
Speaker 5: not be in the business of saying, we agree, you
27:35
Speaker 5: can print this.
27:37
Speaker 1: It's tricky from the.
27:39
Speaker 5: National security side. You have to trust the editors of
27:44
Speaker 5: the publishers or whomever you're talking to and tell them
27:49
Speaker 5: why and as specific as you can what the harm
27:52
Speaker 5: would be, so that they can make a judgment. It's
27:55
Speaker 5: then incumbent upon the editors to take that seriously.
28:01
Speaker 1: This is exactly the kind of elaborate dance Winer and
28:05
Speaker 1: the head of the counter Terrorism Center are having in
28:07
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen ninety five. In Rizzo's book, he
28:11
Speaker 1: says that some of the things the counter terrorism chief
28:13
Speaker 1: told Weiner left him bug eyed with shock. Weiner says,
28:18
Speaker 1: that's nonsense. But the point is this. The conversation. Wasn't
28:21
Speaker 1: the CIA giving instructions to the New York Times. That's
28:25
Speaker 1: not how the balance between a free press and a
28:27
Speaker 1: clandestine service works. Did the counter terrorism chief say to you,
28:34
Speaker 1: don't mention his guidele.
28:39
Speaker 3: It was a strong preference of the counter terrorism chief
28:45
Speaker 3: that certain identifying details that were known to me stay
28:53
Speaker 3: out of the public realm, and I agreed with that.
29:01
Speaker 3: I mean, what is the point of publishing the guy's
29:04
Speaker 3: country of origin, the intelligence service he worked for, the
29:08
Speaker 3: specific time and date in place of the attacks. Does
29:12
Speaker 3: the reader need to know that? No, the story's about
29:15
Speaker 3: the balancing test. I knew who we worked for, I
29:20
Speaker 3: knew the specific time and place of the attacks, and
29:23
Speaker 3: I knew how grievous the attacks had been. Every detail
29:29
Speaker 3: of that was scrubbed of my own free will and
29:32
Speaker 3: volition from that story, based on my principle that I
29:37
Speaker 3: do not want to publish anything they can get anybody hurt.
29:45
Speaker 1: But Winer made it clear to the CIA that he
29:48
Speaker 1: wasn't going to leave al Pacino out of the story entirely.
29:52
Speaker 1: He was going to reveal that al Pacino was the
29:54
Speaker 1: source who helped find Carlos the jackal that Paccino had
29:58
Speaker 1: and I'm quoting from the story. Winer eventually wrote a
30:01
Speaker 1: brutal resume. He had been involved in two bombings in
30:05
Speaker 1: Western Europe in the mid nineteen eighties that had injured Americans,
30:09
Speaker 1: and he had only broken with his terrorist group in
30:11
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven. Four separate people someone inside the CIA,
30:17
Speaker 1: a congressman, a diplomat, and someone else in the know
30:21
Speaker 1: had told Weiner about Alpucino. Al Pacino was the person
30:25
Speaker 1: about whom the agency had failed to tell Congress and
30:28
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. From Winer's perspective, al Pucino was the story.
30:36
Speaker 1: Jeff Smith says that when he realized what Winer intended
30:40
Speaker 1: to publish, his heart sank. What was the in general,
30:44
Speaker 1: the feeling within the agency about the possibility of this
30:49
Speaker 1: story being written.
30:52
Speaker 5: Anger, anger that it had leaked so quickly, and then
30:59
Speaker 5: a real desire it that we do all we could
31:03
Speaker 5: to not have the details of what this individual had
31:06
Speaker 5: told us and what happened come out.
31:10
Speaker 1: When you say what happened, do you mean are you
31:12
Speaker 1: talking specifically about this individual's involvement with fingering or help
31:16
Speaker 1: define to your mind that was the identifying Yes. Yes,
31:21
Speaker 1: the agency scrambled to get in touch with al Pacino.
31:25
Speaker 1: They had to warn him. Here's Rizzo again.
31:28
Speaker 2: You can't just call up an assentence that made me,
31:30
Speaker 2: you know, made me in the cafe around the corner
31:32
Speaker 2: of the hour. I mean that located signal emergency meeting
31:38
Speaker 2: was necessary. I think the meeting actually took place, either
31:44
Speaker 2: just immediately before the story came out or on the
31:47
Speaker 2: day the story came out.
31:49
Speaker 1: And what did the assets say during the meeting when.
31:51
Speaker 2: Told this, Well, I was told that he was flabbergast,
31:58
Speaker 2: felt absolutely betrayed. How could this happen? How could you
32:02
Speaker 2: do this to me? I'm a dead man, you know.
32:06
Speaker 2: And our case officer broken news to him, offered immediate evacuation,
32:12
Speaker 2: safe haven, get the hell out of there, and he refused.
32:18
Speaker 2: He just walked away. You betrayed me, and that was it,
32:23
Speaker 2: he just walked.
32:31
Speaker 1: The story ran on August twenty first, nineteen ninety five,
32:33
Speaker 1: on the front page of the New York Times CIA
32:37
Speaker 1: re examines hiring of ex terrorist as agent. It was
32:40
Speaker 1: also translated and ran in newspapers around the world. Al
32:45
Speaker 1: Pacino's case officer put a copy of the Greek version
32:48
Speaker 1: on his wall, and when the case officer was asked why,
32:51
Speaker 1: I'm told, he said, I do this because it is
32:55
Speaker 1: a reminder to all of us in this division about
32:58
Speaker 1: the consequences of breaking faith with your asset. One of
33:05
Speaker 1: the most famous of all New Testament stories is what
33:08
Speaker 1: happened to Tarsus on the Road to Damascus Saul was
33:14
Speaker 1: a strong opponent of the early Christian Church. He persecuted
33:18
Speaker 1: the early Christians, the Bible says beyond measure. He stood
33:22
Speaker 1: by and watched as one of the earliest of Jesus' followers, Stephen,
33:27
Speaker 1: was stoned to death. And then one day on the
33:30
Speaker 1: road to Damascus, Saul had a vision of the resurrected
33:34
Speaker 1: Jesus and converted to Christianity. Saul became Paul, cornerstone of
33:41
Speaker 1: the early Christian Church. Saul was allowed to become Paul.
33:45
Speaker 1: That's the point of the story of Paul's epiphany. He
33:48
Speaker 1: had been the sworn enemy of the early Church, and
33:51
Speaker 1: then he said that he had changed his mind, that
33:54
Speaker 1: he regretted his previous acts, and he was forgiven. That
33:59
Speaker 1: idea that we are allowed to transform ourselves has been
34:03
Speaker 1: central to our culture ever since. The man we've been
34:07
Speaker 1: calling al Pucino was a sworn enemy of the West.
34:11
Speaker 1: He helped plant bombs in Western Europe that killed and
34:15
Speaker 1: injured innocent people. And then he had an epiphany. He
34:19
Speaker 1: walked into an American embassy. He said, I don't want money,
34:24
Speaker 1: I just want to atone for the evil that I
34:26
Speaker 1: have done. But in al Pucino's case. We did not
34:31
Speaker 1: allow him to transform himself. The CIA went to Congress
34:35
Speaker 1: and the Department of Justice to confess they had hired
34:38
Speaker 1: an ex terrorist with a terrible past, even though he
34:42
Speaker 1: was an ex terrorist who only came to us because
34:45
Speaker 1: he had repudiated his terrible past. The Justice Department says,
34:51
Speaker 1: why didn't you tell us before you got in bed
34:53
Speaker 1: with this guy? As if he were still the guy
34:56
Speaker 1: you would never want to get in bed with. The
34:58
Speaker 1: headline to Winer's story says, CIA re examines hiring of
35:03
Speaker 1: ex terrorist as agent as if the central fact about
35:07
Speaker 1: al Pacino was his past associations, his brutal resume. As
35:12
Speaker 1: Winer put it, a resume is a list of accomplishments.
35:16
Speaker 1: But al Pacino did not consider his past record and accomplishment.
35:20
Speaker 1: He wanted to repudiate it. That was the whole point
35:23
Speaker 1: of him walking into an embassy and offering us everything
35:26
Speaker 1: he knew. Remember what Rizzo said about why al Pacino
35:30
Speaker 1: did not want money. He said he was doing this
35:34
Speaker 1: for his conscience. It was an act of expiation. Expiation
35:39
Speaker 1: is the act of making amends or reparation for guilt
35:43
Speaker 1: or wrongdoing. Atonement. He asked for atonement. We pretended to
35:50
Speaker 1: give it to him, then we took it away. What's
35:53
Speaker 1: wrong with us? So what happened to al Pacino? I
36:01
Speaker 1: think you can guess. Very soon after the New York
36:04
Speaker 1: Times story ran, he was killed by his former terrorist colleagues.
36:09
Speaker 1: They identified him, they tracked him down. When I said
36:16
Speaker 1: at the beginning that you would feel the urge to
36:19
Speaker 1: take sides, and that you shouldn't, I was talking about
36:23
Speaker 1: this moment. We can argue all day about what is
36:28
Speaker 1: and is not an appropriate leak, or about who's to
36:31
Speaker 1: blame when negotiations break down between the government and the
36:34
Speaker 1: press over a sensitive story. But if you get too
36:39
Speaker 1: lost in picking a side in that argument, you lose
36:42
Speaker 1: track of Alpucino, whoever he was, this man who risked
36:46
Speaker 1: his life for a country other than his own, asking
36:50
Speaker 1: only in return that he be granted absolution. I never
36:58
Speaker 1: found out anything more about al Pucino. There is apparently
37:02
Speaker 1: a long story about what happened to him and how
37:04
Speaker 1: he was killed, but it's still classified. The CIA people
37:10
Speaker 1: were only free to talk about Tim Weiner. Tim Weiner
37:13
Speaker 1: only wanted to talk about the CIA.
37:16
Speaker 3: I think there's a problem with that. Story as Rizzo
37:20
Speaker 3: tells it, just as he thinks there's a problem with
37:23
Speaker 3: my story is published. I respect his right to his opinion.
37:29
Speaker 1: To winer Rizzo was just blaming him for a problem
37:32
Speaker 1: of the CIA's own creation. They were the ones who
37:36
Speaker 1: opened up al Pacino's file.
37:38
Speaker 3: If they hadn't screwed up their own procedures and arguably
37:41
Speaker 3: violated a presidential directive on how you handle a problem
37:45
Speaker 3: like this, then they wouldn't have had to go to
37:48
Speaker 3: the FBI and Capitol Hill, and I wouldn't have gotten
37:51
Speaker 3: my third and eventually my fourth source on this story.
37:54
Speaker 3: Where's the leak? Here? The leak is because the CIA
37:59
Speaker 3: violated its own guidelines and practices, and mister Rizzo, who
38:05
Speaker 3: is a good lawyer and a capable lawyer, you know,
38:11
Speaker 3: has made a false and arguably defamatory argument here, which
38:15
Speaker 3: is the New York Times got an asset killed.
38:22
Speaker 1: False and defamatory. One side puts the front page of
38:26
Speaker 1: The New York Times up on the wall. The other
38:28
Speaker 1: side says, don't blame me, I'm just the messenger. Can
38:33
Speaker 1: we at least agree that we should have forgiven al
38:35
Speaker 1: Pacino his sins and that, however it happened, he was wronged.
38:41
Speaker 1: And maybe if you run a front page story about
38:43
Speaker 1: a man one day and right after he gets killed,
38:46
Speaker 1: even if you don't think it was your fault exactly,
38:48
Speaker 1: maybe you should run a little explanation of what happened,
38:52
Speaker 1: or even just have a moment of silence, a little
38:55
Speaker 1: bit of remorse. What was the reaction in house the
38:58
Speaker 1: New York Times the story?
38:59
Speaker 3: Do you remember the reaction in house at the New
39:03
Speaker 3: York Times. There were a lot of page one stories
39:06
Speaker 3: about the CIA in that era, and I don't think
39:15
Speaker 3: that there was a major reaction at all.
39:20
Speaker 1: What happens after the story runs, Life goes on? Revision's
39:41
Speaker 1: History is produced by me LaBelle and Jacob Smith, with
39:44
Speaker 1: Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Sillomarra Martinez White. Our editor
39:49
Speaker 1: is Julia Barton. Flaonon Williams is our engineer. Original music
39:54
Speaker 1: by Luis Sciarra. Special thanks to Andy Bauers and Jacob
39:57
Speaker 1: Weisberger Panople. I'm Malcolm Gladwell,