Security Unfiltered
Security Unfiltered
Ric Prado: CIA Black Ops Operator That Hunted Bin Laden
Ric Prado shares his remarkable journey from Cuban refugee to CIA Senior Operations Officer, revealing how being separated from his parents at age 8 during Castro's revolution eventually led him to America where he found purpose in military service and intelligence work.
• Escaped Cuba at age 8 through Operation Peter Pan, sent alone to a Colorado orphanage
• Joined Air Force Pararescue (PJs), enduring brutal training that forged his determination and resilience
• Transitioned to CIA where his Spanish language skills and paramilitary background made him uniquely valuable
• Spent three years in Contra camps fighting against the same communist forces that drove him from Cuba
• Co-founded the Bin Laden Task Force in 1996, gathering intelligence on threats before most knew the name
• Served as Chief of Operations at the CIA Counterterrorism Center during 9/11
• Wrote his memoir "Black Ops" to honor fallen colleagues and correct misconceptions about the CIA
Find Ric Prado's book and more information at www.ricprado.com
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I really appreciate you taking the time. You know I read through your book and what an amazing journey I mean. You know when you started out. You know all those years ago, right as a young kid in Cuba, like, did you ever fathom that your life would take anything even remotely close to where it ended up?
Speaker 2:No, as a matter of fact, I was in a long drive yesterday and I was thinking exactly about that. That here I am, you know, at age eight, happy, hoarse, bb gun, you know, running around having a great time. The next thing I know I'm on an airplane by myself to go to an orphanage in Pueblo, colorado, and lo and behold, I retired as a senior CIA operations officer with a good track record. So, no, there isn't a day that I don't pinch myself. There really isn't a day I don't pinch myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, your story might be one of the most inspirational stories that I've ever read. Is there another place in the world where that's even possible?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think that that's what the American dream is all about. I mean, if you were willing, first of all, I believe that God puts a path in front of us and if we have the courage to pay the price of a mission, you will have an interesting life. Let's put it that way. But no, I think that there's a lot of countries where this would have not worked. I would have been marginated, or it would have been a caste system. Who knows? But for me it is literally the base for my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, maybe you know. The only other place that I could think of it even being possible would be Europe. Maybe you know, but I feel like the chances, as great as they were, stacked against you even here, I feel like they would be even greater over there, you know, so like it's even less likely to take place, you know, in Europe.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we, you know as a community, the Cubans, assimilated very quickly. I think that that's one of the things that distinguish us from from the rest. When, when my parents came over about eight months after I left, shortly as soon as my dad got a job, he came home and says we're not going back to Cuba. So we're saying we get an opportunity to live in this country, we're going to make the best, because we came legally, I mean, we had visas and we were all refugees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, talk to me a little bit about that, right, like, why don't we start there? What was the situation in Cuba that your family was fleeing from, right, and how did that process even look like? Because so, I'm a new dad, right, I guess not a new dad anymore, right, I have a two-year-old and a two-month-old, but you know, I'm at the very beginning of that section of my life old, but you know, I'm at the very beginning of that section of my life and I couldn't even fathom sending my kids somewhere and I'm not with them and just saying I'll find you. I mean, that's not even like a possibility in my brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I couldn't agree with you more. When my oldest son turned 10, I looked at my wife and I asked her. I said do you think that I would have the stones to do what my dad did? And she said over my dead body. But you know the painting, the picture. I mean. I lived an idyllic life at the age of eight, nine, you know. I had a horse before I had a bicycle. I had a BB gun. When I was six, my dad used to take me on trips into the mountains. When we went to buy coffee or sell coffee, we had a roasting company.
Speaker 2:The first sign of violence was around 1958, because Castro took over in 59. So late 58, they hit the town that we lived in, which is the foothills of the Escambray Mountains, where Che Guevara was running the show there, and I saw my first firefight, literally, you know, 15 yards in front of me, except for there was a guy right by the pit window that I didn't see, so it was more like three feet in front of me. That changed and that was, I don't want to say, traumatic, even though there were bodies in the lane around, people getting shot at. But what was really eye-opening was how quickly our world changed. Within six months they had confiscated my dad's business. My dad employed maybe 10 guys and he built every single machine in that roasting company. So when they confiscated it six months later, it went out of business because they couldn't fix it Almost immediately I'm talking within a month of them taking over. I was wearing a uniform to go to school and you had different colors for different you know, bandanas for different groups or whatever.
Speaker 2:Because I was about nine yeah, about nine I was sent to campesinos' homes, farmers' homes, peasants' homes to teach them how to read and write Eight or nine years old, you know. But it was just part of that brainwashing. I think that the deepest example that I can give you is they would literally tell us that if we heard one of our parents speak ill of Castro or the revolution, that it was our patriotic duty to report them. And kids did, and the consequences were dire. So I went from that to my dad right after the Bay of Pigs. When the Bay of Pigs went south, my dad's hopes were shattered and he said that's it, we're leaving, even though we were already contemplating it, because he had lost his business. He still had a little bit of money. But there's a deal in Cuba that when you register yourself to leave the country under Castro, they confiscated every single item in your house. They would come in, they would do inventory. If you had silverware that wasn't there when it was time to go, you could not leave. And my dad had a 57 Pontiac, a Jeep and a Deuce and a half and that was part of the problem. The infighting in town about who was going to get what was delaying and delaying, and delaying. And that's why I came out by myself with a program called Peter Pan through the Catholic Church and I ended up in the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo, colorado. So you know, you go from idyllic life to seeing that kind of violence.
Speaker 2:Headed to the airport, I remember in the main avenue there towards the airport there were three guys hanging from trees by the neck with signs around that said counter revolutionaries. I remember I was in the back seat and my mom tried to jump back and cover my eyes. It was a little too late, I had seen it. Then, getting on the airplane you mentioned something about I will find you I had a hesitation because my mom was having a nervous breakdown. You could only imagine my dad. I'll never forget it. He took a knee, he put his hand on my right shoulder and says I will see you again.
Speaker 2:And my dad was a cowboy before he was a business man and that's the way he brought me up. You know what a man is supposed to be like the backbone. How do you behave? To be stoic to the degree possible. So I got on that plane and you know, I remember leaving the what they call the fishbowl, because it was all glassed in. My parents were on the other side, but talk about a shock. I don't remember anything after that. I don't remember getting on the plane where I sat, my conscience against begins, when I got out of the airport in Miami and there was a priest waiting for me and three other kids that were on board. The rest was just totally blocked. I blocked that all out, I guess. Just I was scared, wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's incomprehensible to even start with imagining that kind of fear where it blocks out a memory. That's crazy. Now that I'm a parent, it's just like it's such an incomprehensible thing to even think about. I mean, I got choked up when, when I was reading your book, I had put, you know, put the audio book on pause because I was like I couldn't even, I couldn't even fathom it. Find you, did he like stay in contact with that priest? And you know, there was like an arrangement where like hey, he'll be here until you get here and at a certain time period, like maybe you go somewhere else or whatever, but that priest would keep track of you and the program was called Peter Pan, pedro Pan Program and they were by the Catholic Church, so they were very well structured.
Speaker 2:They kept tabs on the kids. There was no communication with the parents because they were in Cuba and that was almost impossible. But as soon as they would get to the United States they had been told call this number and they call that number. And then it took about 30 days to clear, make sure that they had a place to go to live before they send me back. But it was, yeah, it was dead space. I never spoke to my parents during those months. It was dead space. I never spoke to my parents during those months and I'll never forget it. I was playing basketball after dinner and one of the nuns came out and told me to come in. So I ran to the nun and she took me to the office and I'll never forget it. It was a black phone and the handle was off of it. And I pick up the phone and it was my dad.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing, was my dad. Wow, that's amazing. So so, to fast forward, you basically went through what sounded like you know, high school, grade school, high school timeframe, and then you found yourself in the military. Right, I don't want to like fast forward or butcher your story in any way, right, I'm trying to, I guess, maybe get to the get to the interesting stuff, right, get to the good stuff within the short amount of time that we have, because I try to really stay on par with the timing and whatnot. But you found your way into the military. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 1:Start, because I remember when I was in high school, I went to a pretty poor high school and so the military recruiters were at our school just nonstop-stop, and I was a wrestler, right. So I was looking at, like their, their quote-unquote, like fitness checks, and I was like like pull-ups, how many do you want me to do? And I'll just do it. You know, like push-ups, like it didn't even register that there was a, that, there was a standard or anything like that, because as a wrestler, you're beat down so many times, it's like you're on the pull-up bar until you're done. We say you're done when you're done, that sort of thing, and so I actually didn't take that path in my life.
Speaker 1:I ended up going to college, but my intent was after my bachelor's let's get away from the intent of going to the military to get a free education. I want to go into the military because I want to go in. And then, after college, right when I started to try and get in, right, that didn't happen because I had donated my kidney and that disqualified me, which I didn't know. When I donated my kidney, I figured, you know, because my doctor was like, hey, you could do everything that anyone else can do. There's no limits, right? So I figured, okay, I'm good to go then for the military, Come to find out, no one will talk to me, right? So what was that like for you?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, good on you, because you obviously did it for the right reasons and it just wasn't meant for you to be. That's the way I look. You know, I was in my first semester of junior college and I wanted to be a marine science technician professional diver. I was always fascinated with you know Edgar Rice, boros, tarzans and Africa and Jacques Cousteau, and you know James Bond novels. I read a lot, since since middle school I was infected by a very permanent teacher into reading. So I was and again, this is fake.
Speaker 2:I was sitting in my oceanography class and there's this guy next to me. We kind of shoot the breeze all the time. Then one day he wore something that I said man, that's a good-looking jacket. Where'd you buy it? He goes, I didn't buy it, I earned it. It was a flight jacket. He told me I'm a PJ. I went what the hell is a PJ? He took me to his house. He showed me the photos. Six months later I was in the Air Force. What is me? The photos Six months later, I was in the Air Force.
Speaker 1:So what is a PJ? Because you ended up becoming a PJ, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pararescue is part of our special operations forces in the community, all under SOCOM, special Operations Command. So you have Navy SEALs, you have Green Berets, you have Marine Raiders and you have Air Force Pararescue and Air Force combat controller. Those are the five main components. Rangers are also right there on the cusp. But I didn't know. I had been in this country eight years. I didn't really nobody in my family had ever served in the military Both my boys have potentially, but nobody in my family and I had never met a person in uniform. So my first contact was with Glenn when he told me I remember clearly he showed me all these pictures and I still had an accent and I said you know what I mean. You mean to tell me that I get to jump out of airplanes and shoot guns and do medical and scuba and get a really cool hat at the end. He goes yeah, he said sign me up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty awesome. That's pretty exciting. I mean, like you know, I have a couple of friends that went into the military and they always tell me that you know, like the recruiters they approach you with like the most exciting stuff. And I actually talked to a Navy recruiter, you know, before we found out that I was disqualified and whatnot. And you know, I gave him my background and I was like I don't know. He asked a very specific question that brought up me wrestling. And as soon as I said that I was a wrestler, he slid.
Speaker 1:This Navy SEAL, pam, said whenever it gets hard, just make it to the next drill, just make it to the next exercise, whatever it needs to do, and then make your choice. After you get there, right, and after a while of making those choices, you start figuring out. You're like well, I didn't quit today, so I'm probably not going to quit tomorrow. And then tomorrow kicks off and you're sore, you're hurting, but when you get moving, stuff starts getting numb, and so you start working your way through and you practice that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So my whole mentality was well, if I just take that and apply it to the SEALs, surely the training isn't going to kill me. I mean, why would they have training that will kill someone? So if I'm not going to die, I'm just going to pass, because I won't quit. That was my whole mentality. And so to fast forward, or maybe back up a little bit, when my friends in high school started going into the military, they told me the exact same thing the recruiter will tell you anything that they can to get you in right. And I'm thinking to myself as a young man at that age. If I would have gone to the recruiter and they would have told me that I 100% would have signed on the dotted line, not thought about it, told my parents when I got home and gone, you know, you know, you hit on something when you said to tell your parents my draft number was so high that even today they wouldn't have drafted me.
Speaker 2:It was a long charge. My parents were so happy and I show up and I didn't say anything to them until like a month before and then say hey, just so you know 26th of December, and both my parents they didn't get angry at me, but I could see that they were in pain. You know, I'm 20 years old. That's a completely different mentality. Later on I realized what I had put them through, because they already lost their only son once. Now this idiot who has a high draft number wants to go to Vietnam during the Vietnam era in some special forces type stuff and there's a very iconic photograph. I don't think it's in the book, but it's about my mom and my dad and I'm in the middle and I'm standing there, I got my corduroy jacket on and both of them have this look on their face and I never noticed that until probably about four or five years ago and I said now I understand they were watching me walk away, just like they did at that airport. So that was very poignant.
Speaker 2:Getting back to what you were talking about the training and everything else. I too thought I was tough until I got into pararescue. Right, basic training was a breeze Because I mean, I was in the martial arts as I was 15. I lifted weights, I ran, I boxed, I did all kinds of stupid stuff. And I thought I was in the martial arts as I was 15. I lifted weights, I ran, I boxed, I did all kinds of stupid stuff. Man, I thought I was a tough kid First week in the pararescue pipeline. Yeah, it was a weight.
Speaker 2:But you also said something that is very telling. I said to myself I am going to make this or I'm going to die, but I ain't quitting. And that forged my mettle so hard that I've been through a lot of stuff in my life. But I could always go back and say I got this, I got this because of OAM. So, yeah, the backgrounds that you had definitely made you a very solid candidate. But the second most important well, the most important thing that you said afterwards was the ain't quitting, because that's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:You had guys that go there. My friend is a Navy SEAL and he says, yeah, buds, he was an instructor at Buds. We used to call them spandex athletes, because you get these Adonis, they could run, they could swim, they could do everything, but they would quit. And then you have some skinny guy over there in the corner who just ain't quitting. He's not in front of the pack, he's not in the back of the pack, but he was in the pack. And what he mentioned to me? Because he ran Bud's twice. He said the problem is these gifted individuals never had to work that hard for anything. And now you're telling them you're going to be doing this for 20 years. And that's when they ring the bell.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a really good point. You know, like you, you really got to suffer. You know, and I don't I don't want to even, like you know, try and like make a comparison, right Between like wrestling and the military or anything like that. But in wrestling you are, you are suffering every single day. Right, if you're not having to cut weight, you're still suffering because you're doing the same amount of work. You know we would do. We would do summer camps, right, and all of the other sports would do summer camps too. Their summer camps were like two weeks long, a week long, whatever it might be, and they're like goofing off and everything. I mean we were up on our wrestling deck.
Speaker 1:I remember very vividly one time I did a move wrong and I just snapped my finger in half, snapped it right in half. It's crooked. I have an L for a finger now. Right, I wasn't allowed to quit. I finished the drill, okay, we had another five minutes of this drill. So I'm over here grimacing and you know like tears are coming out. I'm not like crying, but like tears are coming out because I'm I'm in so much pain. I go over to my coach. He looks at it. He's like, okay, pops it right back into place, right like, aligns my finger, tapes it up, and he's like, oh, okay, pops it right back into place, right, like, aligns my finger, tapes it up, and he's like all right, go ahead. Yeah, I got one of those.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was the training and all the other sports. You know, like every once in a while, you know, you get a basketball player or a track runner or a swimmer. You know, come up to the wrestling deck to see what we're actually doing, because sometimes, like you know, you'd hear just a giant pound because you know, someone just threw someone. It makes a really loud bang, right, and so they, they would go up there and be like, and like our punishment that we go through, like our punishment in our sport is literally their everyday warmup, like that. That, that's their warmup. We would do like a two hour warmup. Sometimes you know where you're flipping and you're running just nonstop. And my coach was like, if you can't make it through the warmup, you're not going to make it through a match, and he was right. You know there was kids that quit on the warmup and you know, match one of the season, they're, they're out, they're done, they're like, yeah, the same for me. I was just too stupid to quit.
Speaker 2:No, I mean if you look at the odds when you get into the military, the statistics is that there's about 2% of the population serves at any given time in the military. So here you join the military and now you're a 2%-er. Out of 300 and some odd million people in this country, you are a a two percenter, but that's just regular Army, navy, air Force or Marines. Now if you got to go into the specialized areas like fighter pilot or pararescue or whatever, that's 1% of the people that are in the military. So they have to. They have to have selection. You cannot have an elite anything unless you have two things great recruitment and attrition. If everybody that you recruit it makes the candidate list, or if everybody makes it through the training, you're not elite. You're not elite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was. You know I watch everything from, like, former special forces guys, right, Because I'm just so fascinated with the world and mentality and everything like that, right. And they were talking about maybe a year ago about like changing the standard for becoming a Navy SEAL to get more diverse candidates and whatnot. And you know, every SEAL that you know talked about it was like anyone can be a SEAL, a woman can be a SEAL Like it doesn't matter who you are, we literally do not care. If you can meet the standard, then you're in.
Speaker 1:It's that simple and no one ever budged on it or anything like that. And the reason is because the standard is the standard for a reason, as soon as you open it up to be like, oh okay, 0.5 of the military can get in, well, not only do you have now probably millions of SEALs and Green Berets and Rangers and PJs and all of these different special forces, right, but they're not quality, right. Like you send in a team of six Navy SEALs, you expect a certain result. Well, you're not going to get that same result if you send in six Marines or six you know, army infantry. You're going to get a totally different result. It's going to be a disaster, there's going to be movies created about it, right, not in a good picture, and so it's just something you know that I always keep in mind. Right, like anyone can do it, they'll accept anyone.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, if you talk to anybody in the soft community, they will tell you exactly the same thing. I don't care if you're pink, with purple polka dots, if my ass is on the ground because I got a bullet hole in my leg. I want you to be able to pick my ass up and drag me and not quit on me, and help me, and I will do the same for you. People think that the training is very, you know, very physical, and it is. I mean, it's extremely physical, but psychological. I'll give you a short story.
Speaker 2:We had one group that we were doing. It was, I think it was a ruck march and rucking and rucking and rucking and rucking and we get to the end what we think is the end and they said, okay, everybody, drop your rucksacks, stop. And then, hey, you're relaxing, we're smoked, and here comes the other sergeant. He goes put your packs back on, here's your new. We're going this way again. About 10% of the people quit. When we got around the corner there was a bus and we got on the bus and we went back to different training. Those guys were literally 50 yards away from their dream and they quit. They broke them not physically, they broke them mentally and they thought that they had given it all. And now, geez, I have to do more. And that's the secret in all these specialized units is doing what the average person is not going to be able to do physically or psychologically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. They gave up at the 50 yard line, right, when they're about to be done, because they couldn't see the finish line, and that's that's the hardest part about all of it, Right, Like you know, I don't mean to like bring up wrestling, right. But it takes me back to the training. When you know they would change the end times every day and there was no clock, Right, so you're getting out one day at 2 pm, the next day you're getting out at 5 pm or 6 pm, 8 pm, Sundays, 9 pm, they would change it on you. So you don't know what to expect. The start time was the same, but you don't know when it's going to end and you don't know what you're doing throughout the day until you're about to do it. And so that was something that you kind of get used to. You just get used to not really knowing and just keep on going until you know either something breaks or you know you're done for the day, Right, Like that was that mentality.
Speaker 1:But you know, I wanted to dive into a little bit about, you know, maybe the training of what it takes to be a PJ, Right, Because I'm fascinated with that, Because when I hear a Navy SEAL say you know, I've seen PJs put people back together that I thought were long gone, you know? And they I mean they all say if I have a choice of you know someone, I'm taking on a mission with me. It's a PJ every single day of the week. That speaks volumes to the community and to the training that PJs go through. So what was that like?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, you know there's a lot of Air Force jokes out there, out there. And I always say you know you joke about the Air Force until you either need close air support from combat controllers or a pararescueman to pull your ass out. And when I taught at Fort Bragg I taught at Fort Bragg for about seven years I had a special forces guy come up to me. He goes, he says, sir, don't take this wrong, but we hate seeing you because when we see you that means we're really screwed up. You know that we're banged up. Yeah, it's called a pipeline. Back then it was a little over a year, now it's even longer. Rest humans are EMT2s when they come out of training. So you have a very strong phase one and at the end you have your phase two. So in my case we went through basic training. Then we were at Lackland Air Force Base for about six or seven weeks of two-a-days. You ran every morning you did PT, flutter kicks, blah, blah, blah, and then in the afternoon you were in the pool. That's why pararescue and SEALs are so close together and that's why we both say Puyo, that is a scuba school thing. At the time only SEALs and pararescuemen had to have scuba school in order to get their trident or their beret To this day. If you're a green beret, you don't have to go to scuba school. So we went through this preconditioning, which was very, very hard. That was the hardest part, I mean once you know, and the attrition was incredible. Every Saturday we'd had 80% of the people that volunteer for the PT test quit and we may have one guy that joins the group and then by the end of the actual training, some of those dropped off too. We went from there to Shepherd Air Force Base for medical training and that was brutal because we had pool work at seven o'clock in the morning. Seven o'clock in the morning you were in the pool till nine. You went to class. You got out of class mid-afternoon and now you did PT for several hours. Then you get back to the barracks and you got to spend the rest of the night. You know, studying, because you're studying a very hard matter that can get you kicked out From there. We made it to scuba school. Now we also have a saying in the military, both special forces and us, everybody. You know when people start talking about airborne and the joke is, if you ain't scuba, you ain't shit, because it is arguably the hardest school that you can go through.
Speaker 2:Luckily for me, I was already a diver. I was an advanced diver. I started diving when I was a freshman in high school. That was my passion and so I had all my licenses and all that other stuff. But I never told anybody, because my first pararescue sergeant saw me with a dive watch when we came back from PT. He says what's that? I said oh, that's my dive watch, sergeant. He says, take it off. He goes don't wear your watch to school.
Speaker 2:With school and the story isn't that simple. The story is when you go somewhere to learn something, keep your mouth shut, your eyes open and your ears open and suck it all in, and then what doesn't apply to you, you could push it aside. So. So school was cool and I had a little bit of break over over my buddies because I already know ball boils law and decompression tables and nitrogen gynacosis. I know all that crap. Now these guys are trying to memorize all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:We went from there to jump school, which for us it was really a joke. We were there with a group of Marine Recon guys that had been in scuba school with us and we got into the we'd be doing PT and at the end, you know, they say all right, and then we go, and one for pararescue, boom. And then recon guys, one for recon, and of course commander finally comes on and says, cut the shit out, because regular guys are dropping dead. And you guys, you know. So, cut it out or you're all going to fail. So the spread of the core that comes from bonding with people like that, some of my teammates and classmates are still to this day, the ones that are still alive. A couple of them have passed. We're still tight because it's a bond you can't break.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's something about suffering together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Then you go to Sears School From there. We went to Sears School and Sears is a three-week course, or was a three-week course. The first is some classroom, some PT, that and the other, and then you go one week where you're actually out in the woods with nothing. They give you a pocket knife, a couple of hooks, they pat you down, make sure that you don't even have a protein bar anywhere. Well, they didn't have protein bars back there, they were chocolate bars, but anyway, there was nothing. So catch a rabbit rabbit, and you're six guys. You know how much meat there's in a rabbit for six guys.
Speaker 2:And then you get into the actual POW scenario, which is was the head of CTC at the time. I told him, I said I called him back, I said listen, I'll remind you this is what we go through. Every single soft individual and every fighter pilot goes through SEER and that's loud music that's being caged up, that is not being fed, that's being smacked around and if you don't handle it well and you're in an alpha hotel, you're going to get waterboarded. So all this enhanced interrogation, loud music waking you up every hour, you know it just really wears you out. And then we went to the final phase, which was I don't remember if it was three or four months at Hill Air Force Base.
Speaker 2:And now is when you put it all together you get advanced parachuting, you get advanced parachuting, you get advanced diving and then advanced medical. This is where you get your actual EMT too, and every single exercise becomes, or every event is, an exercise. So you may jump at night into cold water in a lake in Utah, but when you get to the shore, there's two or three bodies there that have boolages and they're bleeding, and you have to patch them up and call for a real, you know, for pickup and all this kind of stuff. So it was very interesting, but it was also very demanding. And then at the end of that well, we got our berets.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's awesome. That sounds like an amazing time. From there did you deploy to Vietnam or?
Speaker 2:No, I got my beret in early 73. And by then Vietnam was pretty much winding down. So I did two years active in Homestead. Well, one year training, one year active in Homestead and you know, at the time, post-vietnam, the attrition in the military and the intelligence service was incredible. I mean, they fired. So they were telling people look, you know, why don't you go in the reserves or get out or whatever? Because you know we're shrinking, we're having to shrink. So I stayed in the reserves until 74. Well, no, I stayed in the reserve till 1980, but I stayed in 74 when I was still pararescue. Reserves I applied for well, I didn't apply One of my teammates senior, much senior than now, he was an E-8, was actually the captain in the local fire department, miami-dade Fire Department, and he was the head of rescue.
Speaker 2:So he told me he says man, you got to try out for this, you're going to do it, you'll breeze through it, but you got to do this, it's a good job. So I rode rescue for Miami in the 70s, which were the gang years, the cocaine gangs, boys, whatever it was. A lot of shootings, a lot of. So in pararescue I was jumping every time we went and I was doing all this stuff because being in the fire department I had two days off every third day, kind of thing, and the pilots will call you up, I'll buy you lunch if you come out and do a couple of jumps, because we need our certifications with nerves, you know. So it was kind of cool, but there was no purpose to it. It was training for training sake. I wasn't making a difference and I wanted to make a difference. I was making a difference in the paramedic side of stuff. But that's very different and there's some very traumatic things. There's a couple of them in the book that I still, you know, wake up at night sometimes thinking about those.
Speaker 2:So I applied to the agency in 74. They came back with a real nice letter that said basically sorry, we're not hiring, we're firing. But then in 1980, I applied again and this time they brought me in on contract as a paramedic to work with our Special Activities Division, ground branch, which is the CIA's Special Forces, for lack of a better word. Everybody in SAD are either. Well, we've talked about Navy SEALs, sire, pararescue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I did that on and off because it was for about six months. I just couldn't handle it with the absence from the fire department. So I stopped.
Speaker 2:And then Ronald Reagan came in and when he came in, the first thing he did was declare war on communism, especially in Latin America. And that's the beginning of the Contra program, where the Sandinistas, the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, supported by the Cubans, supported by the Soviets via Cuba it's a more accurate description. He wanted that gone and the agency at the time did not have a single native Spanish-speaking paramilitary guy. Wow, did not have a single native Spanish-speaking paramilitary guy. Great paramilitary guys. And they had great Spanish speakers, but Spanish speakers were not military and the paramilitaries were native speakers. So everybody scratched their head. What was the name of that? Pj? Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And that's how I got in. I completely backdoored it into the agency because when they called me, I'll never forget it. I had just come back from a long run, I had just gotten divorced, so I was not in a happy place. And I just come back from a seven mile run and I'm soaking wet and the phone rings and it was somebody from headquarters and Russ says hey, rick, you know, this is Russ. You know we got something for you. Are you interested? I asked him. I said is it contract or is it staff? He says no, this is long-term. I said I'll take it. He said don't you want to know what it is? I said no, I was at headquarters on Monday this was on a Thursday.
Speaker 2:I was at headquarters on Monday going through physicals and I already had the polygraphs because I had worked on contract with them. And literally two weeks later I was in the Contra camps in Nicaragua with no adult supervision. I was for the first. I was there for three and a quarter a little over three years, monday through Friday sleeping in a jungle hammock, and for the first 14 months of that program I was the only gringo in the camps, because that's why the title of the book is Black Ops. Black Ops is where the hand, the American hand, has to be hidden and I could pass. As a matter of fact, I was there as a Honduran major Intel guy with the Air Force and that was my cover.
Speaker 2:So people tell me I said you know, you did three years sleeping in a jungle hammock. I said I never woke up in the morning and said, oh man, I'm still here. No, it was the best. I mean, I had some fantastic jobs, but for me that was probably the most enjoyable, and now that I have time for introspection, I realized that the reason was you know, I lost everything my parents, I lost my country, I lost my horse. I lost everything at the age of 10 to this monster and now, at the age of 30, I'm not only a CIA guy, but I'm a CIA guy fighting that, helping these guys fight that same monster. So the job satisfaction was incredible for me during that period. Plus, I had fantastic bosses. Ray Doty, who was my main boss, was arguably the best boss I ever had in the agency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's like a full circle moment. You were ran out of the country and now you're back there fighting the enemy that you were I mean, you were not even. Arguably, you're definitively too young at the time to fight the enemy. And now you're back with all this training and totally different background, totally different person, and you're going against that enemy. I mean, I would imagine that's like the most fulfilling thing that you could possibly do.
Speaker 2:Payback's hell, Payback's hell. You know, you read the book, so you know the Puerto Cabezas bombing that we did was a screw job. And it was four mosquito divers. They were lobster divers. I trained them into military divers, compass swims and all that other stuff, PT them to hell until only four were left. But we blew up Puerto Cabezas Pier, which was the belly button for all military assistants coming from Cuba, and we did that in the middle of the night. So it was very rewarding and you know, word gets around like everything else, Everybody all of a sudden after that operation not that they ever looked down on me or anything like that, but I was always. He's teaching us and he's leading us in some things and he's training us on this, but, holy moly, look what he put together and we did it. So yeah, it was very rewarding and it was poetic. Justice in my book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I imagine. So where do you go from there, right? So you spent a couple of years there, you said, right, I?
Speaker 2:spent a little over three years working there. I got married about a year afterwards after I started I had met my present wife. We've been married 43 years now. Oh wow, just before I Actually, I met her the first time.
Speaker 2:I came home for Christmas from Honduras, and it was at a party, and I met her and we. I came home for Christmas from Honduras and it was at a party, and I met her and we started dating and that was it. So she came over about a year after I was there the first year. Then she got pregnant and she had to leave at age seven, seven months of the pregnancy, because we were in alias and you cannot be born in alias. It takes an act of citizenship. So at seven months she was forced to come out, and so when I got out of there after the three years I still hadn't finished my college. I had a couple of years worth. They sponsored me at George Mason University to do all that I had to do, and I had a year to do it. I was a GS11 and that's all I did, and all I did was study. I graduated with distinction out of the university and from there went straight into my master's in espionage at the farm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I read it in the book that you made that switch, that sounds like a very uncommon change. I mean, I imagine someone like myself, I've wanted to go into federal law enforcement and whatnot. Right, I wanted to go into federal law enforcement and whatnot, I wanted to go into different agencies. But it always seemed like whatever you get in there and you start as, you're typically going to end your career as that thing, because I want to say it's impossible to make a switch. But you have to basically argue against the needs of the agency at the time, right To argue against yourself for not having your current position, to go and make a case to get into a new position. It primarily almost like serves yourself. You know, like that's kind of like how it would be viewed or something like that. So how did that change even take place?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, ray Doty, the guy that was my boss, was also my mentor and when the time came at the end, he called Dewey Claridge, which is another guy who became a mentor of mine, and told him. He said look, prado's done a fantastic job for us. We need to get him sponsored for school. And I spoke with SAD and they told me yeah, I don't worry about it, but I don't believe them. And well, he was chief at Latin America division. So he called the chief of SAD and said you got six hours to home base Prado, or I'm taking him to Latin America division.
Speaker 2:Well, they home based me, approved my college and, luckily for me, when I was in my senior, my junior and senior year, I worked in a very nice men's haberdashery. It was a good men's clothing, so I learned to dress up and clean up well. But you're going from a blunt object out there in the jungles for three years with two grenades, a pistol, a knife and an AR-15 to coat and tie, learning tradecraft and learning all those softer skills learning tradecraft and learning all those softer skills. Timing was also on my side because for the longest time our paramilitary officers were kind of looked down upon. You know, you had the Ivy League elite and then you had these knuckle draggers, snake eaters, and they were like the pit bull that you keep in the back of the yard with a chain and you feed them once in a while and, you know, let them loose when you have to.
Speaker 2:But that changed right about the time that I got in. It started changing where the saying was you're not in the central airborne agency, you're in the central intelligence agency, and for you to stay in special activities division you have to go through the farm, you have to go through the course. Now they had two courses one, which was the long course, what I went through, and that was what all case officers went through. The other one was a shortened course and it was primarily for those people that did not want to make the transition. They wanted to stay training at the base or deploying, you know, you know in ditch somewhere. They did not want to get into the the Intel gathering aspect of it, but they had to at least understand and have a flavor of what it was about. So that really propelled it. I did very well. I was in the top 3% of my class and after that I have six overseas tours been shot out a couple of times, and a scrape here and a scrape there, but here I am talking to you.
Speaker 1:Wow, what was that training like at the farm compared to your PJ training? I know you can't tell me any specifics about it. I would prefer the US government doesn't show up at my door, right. So you know, don't tell me anything. You can't, of course.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, you know it's obviously very different. Like I said, one, the first was very physical and very psychological torture. The second one was making that switch from a blunt object to a scalpel and the fact that there's a science behind this and learning how to read people and learning how to recruit people and how to vet them and how to run them. You know the farm exercise, which is again several months long. I don't remember if it's like, I think it was about five months. You're there a hundred percent. You know you're either in a classroom getting a lecture or you are playing spy. You know you're going out to meet somebody, have lunch with them, or you're going to go out and surveil somebody, or you're going to do a surveillance detection route or you're looking for surveillance detection routes and places to have meetings and taking photographs, clandestine photographs. You know you worked 10-hour days and then you had to write all this stuff up. So it was always 12-hour days, sometimes 14-hour days, to write all this stuff up. So it was always 12 hour days, sometimes 14 hour days, and the next day you do it groundhog all over again. So that one it's. Also there was no attrition in the sense of somebody quitting. But there was attrition of people not getting certified. In my class, which was a good size class, we had two people that didn't make it period they were offered lateral jobs into admin or something like that, and two that were. They were offered lateral jobs into admin or something like that and two that made it on probation. They had to prove themselves. They had a six-month but it was tradecraft, it was spycraft, it was what makes people ticks and the legalities of what we do. Very few people understand that the CIA is the only federal agency that has what is called Title 50 authorities. That means if the president, he or she, signs a lethal finding or any finding and hands it over, we can legally go do by US standards, legally, where you're doing it, of course, and that's it. The military has Title 10 authorities, which means they can do anything that's necessary in a war theater. So I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:As you know from reading the book, I started the Bin Laden Task Force. I was with Mike Schor, who was an analyst, in January 1996. We kicked off the Bin Laden Task Force and it was such a change because now terrorism was really getting into a completely new level of substance there. But for us that was such an incredible change because now you're going from in the counterterrorist center, you're going from the localized terrorist Latin America in Africa. Now you have this pandemic of terrorism that was coming out. Hezbollah was blowing everything up in 83 and everything else, so it was that escalation. So the change for us was drastic, especially when you came from the paramilitary side.
Speaker 2:But the crate, the tradecraft aspect of it is patience and you know, not falling in love with your, your agent, for one, is one of the things that they say. I don't. I don't mean physically, we're talking about emotional the fact that you I mean I really like this guy joe has always, he's always been on time and every year. But but I always have to test you, I always have to watch you, because you could be turned or you could be a double. So it becomes, like I said, from playing checkers in the paramilitary side to playing chess with somebody who's obviously not stupid, because that's why you're trying to recruit them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually had on Jim Lawler yesterday.
Speaker 1:He's been on several times, right, and so we were talking about Iran and his latest book that came out and everything. And it's like four-dimensional chess, right, because you have to be thinking several steps ahead of your target or whatever it might be. B, you're directing things in different ways and impacting them in ways that are probably, you know, in their subconscious that they don't even realize is going on, but you're really trying to direct them towards this funnel, with them believing that they made the decision themselves. But you really influenced it in the background, right, and I think maybe the first time he came on he talked about how he wouldn't just like recruit anyone, right, like they had to have like a discrepancy, they had to have a reason, because without that reason, without that discrepancy, the likelihood of you succeeding is very low. It's probably not going to happen, and so you don't want to burn that resource, you don't want to burn yourself in a country or in a community or whatever it might be, and so it's critical to choose which targets or which battles to actually take on.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, jim was masterful. He's a very good friend of mine and his latest book is very, very, very good. I read it early and if you look at the cover, I'm one of the testimonials in his book. But no, absolutely Unlike the communist bloc countries and intelligence, we try to recruit for strengths. They recruit for weaknesses. You have a gambling problem, you're homosexual, you're an alcoholic, you're womanizing, whatever it is. They love that because they have you by the short hairs. I'm not saying that we haven't done those. I never saw a honeypot in the agency in the 26 years I was there.
Speaker 2:But we try to recruit the people for their strengths and what you talked about, which was very well put, the fact that they think that it was their decision, but you're the ones that led them there. And when I taught for several years to the military, I used to tell them I said, you have to infect them with your enthusiasm. They have to be able to know that you care about what's going on in their country, what's going on in their family, the importance of fighting the terrorists or the narcos or the communists or whatever the hell that happens to be in that theater. You infect them with your enthusiasm and that's where the recruitments come in. What people believe and one thing that you've got to understand that they teach you this very early in the farm.
Speaker 2:You go out and you're a GS-13 or GS-12, and you're not going to recruit it. You don't want to recruit a staff sergeant, you want to recruit a general right. So when you start a relationship, it's usually like this the general is here or the colonel is here and you're down here because you're a third secretary in the embassy, whatever it is, and you're low on the totem pole. So we call it. You cannot pitch somebody from home plate, you have to pitch them from the mountain.
Speaker 2:So psychologically, you have to do this and that's how you, by the way, you comport yourself. Your subject matter, expertise, whatever it is that gets you above, at the very least equal to this individual, to where he is looking at you or up to you, especially for this particular thing that we have in common and the combination of the respect that you gain from your developmentals and the fact that you're giving them something that will resolve with their concerns. The other thing that I've always taught the most important thing is find out what makes that person stay up at night. Once you figure that out and you could provide a solution. You got yourself a recruiter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point. So my day job is in cybersecurity, right, so I'm protecting systems, protecting data and stuff like that. I have to think like an attacker, a whole lot more than you know what people on my side would probably even admit. Right, and I have a personal policy and I really vocalize this to my team Don't just come up with a problem that we have. Don't bring a problem without a solution. You have to have the solution already there.
Speaker 1:And if it's a real problem and you don't have a solution, that's fine. But call it out. Be like hey, I looked into this for 10, 12 hours. I don't know what to do. I need help. You know, obviously, in my line of work, if you don't know what to do for 10 hours, you're probably getting fired, but you need to be able to assess it a little bit quicker than that. But that's a very valuable mentality to have, because there's so many people 98% of the people out there. They're going to complain about something, they're going to only find issues, they're only going to see it one way and whatnot. But when I see a problem, I see an opportunity. Well, how can I build something that secures this against this weird problem right? What solutions are out there? How do I approach this problem? And that same mentality pays off in the agency. It sounds like because you can't be. I feel like when you only see problems, when you only bring up the problems, you're at the ground level of like that mental state, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I have a very, very dear friend of mine. His name is Matt DeVoe. You might run across him. He's the scariest guy I know, because he's one of you and I tell people I say I can run away from a bad guy, but this guy can destroy my life sitting in his shorts and his home, you know. So it is very important. But the thing that you have to understand about the CIA when it comes to our profession, 90% of our training is on-the-job training.
Speaker 2:You get out of the farm and the joke is, yeah, you think you're Mario Andretti, but you just went through high school driver's ed. You get to a station. You have a chief of station. He or she is going to bring you in and say, okay, here's your task, here's the things you're going to do, and, by the way, that branch chief over there you cannot breathe or go to the bathroom without briefing him or her, and everything is on the job training. So you go out and they tell you okay, we need you to case a place for a lunch. These are the requirements. Come back with your plan for a surveillance detection route. Go do it whatever it is, and it's all. Sweat the details.
Speaker 2:You never go to a meeting without having somebody more senior than you until you get obviously until you get higher up the ranks, but for the first and second tours you are definitely on a short leash. And again, the part of the driving analogy is that, yeah, I need you to learn to drive fast, but I cannot afford you to wreck my car, that, yeah, I need you to learn to drive fast but I cannot afford you to wreck my car. The station is a mission that we cannot afford to taint. So there's that real scrutiny, like if you were going to go to a meeting and you were talking to me as the chief of station, it'd be okay.
Speaker 2:Who are you meeting? What is the purpose of the meeting? What is your cover for having the meeting? How are you getting there? Where are you having it? What are the questions you got to ask this guy? You go through this and then the person goes and does it and if he comes back and screws that up, there's a problem and people do get bounced or at least demoted, you know, if you don't, that is a very esoteric thing, but we're one of the few professions where just about everything you learn.
Speaker 1:you learn on the job. Well, that makes sense too, because you know, when you're out in the world, you're not in a training environment and you're dealing with real people. The variables are endless and you have to be able to use the foundation that they give you, you know, in your training curriculum and build upon it right and adapt it to whatever environment you're in, because they can't prepare you for the thousand situations that you're going to encounter before lunch in a foreign country. They give you the guidelines, they give you the groundwork for, hey, this is probably how you should react. These are the skills that you need. Here's all the stuff. Okay, now go execute and build upon it.
Speaker 1:You shouldn't be performing at this ground level that we put you on already. You should be, you know, climbing the ladder up, building new things. Yeah, it's really fascinating. So you know, I know we don't have much time left, unfortunately, but could we talk about the early days of going after Osama bin Laden? Right, like? What did that look like? Was he a person of interest, but not enough interest to take a decisive action against him? Was the evidence there? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:I had just returned from Korea and I was a branch chief. I had the PLO branch and got the counterterrorism center. I had just gotten promoted to GS-15 when my boss, chief of ops for the center, called me in and says your name is being looked at for a special station that's going to be a task force. I said okay, deputy chief of station. This is great. You know, I was just chief liaison, now I'm deputy chief of station. And I said sir, who are we? After? He said you know we sound a little bit Latin. I said who he goes exactly. Yeah, my, um, the the chief of station was a guy named Mike Sawyer and Mike was a very senior. He was already an SIS officer. So you know grade wise, which is flag rank for the agency, uh, but he was an analyst and so I was the senior ops officer and his deputy in in, uh, in the station we were only about nine. The rest were analysts, most of them women. I think we had one or two guys.
Speaker 2:Jennifer Matthews, who unfortunately got killed in Kost in that bombing, was one of our plan owners. She was one of our original Bin Laden task force kind of guys. Let's say we started with two files on Bin Laden. We knew that within a year we had a wall full of files, electronically and paper. We were still making that transition back then and the proof was there, from liaison services that are helping us, from volunteers, from recruited assets, from technical intelligence, from wiretaps, from intercepts, from overhead. We knew that amount of money that he was getting from donations or extortion, whichever way you want to make it, and what he was doing. He was in Khartoum at the time building roads and everything else, but what he was really doing outside the city he had camps we had overhead of the guy's training in terrorist attacks and we kept putting up the proposals up the ladder and that the administration just no, we don't have enough evidence, we can't prove that he was bad.
Speaker 2:And there's a very renowned guy in the name of Billy Waugh. Billy Waugh was a very dear friend of mine. We met in 1990 and stayed friends for a very long time until he passed. And Billy is the first guy to do surveillance on bin Laden in the early 90s in Khartoum. So when I started the Bin Laden Task Force, I called my buddy Billy Waugh. I said Billy, you were there, tell me what's the situation. The guy was still there. I mean, he was still in Khartoum and he told me he says Rick, he says he's in the weight, he drives himself half the time. He's got some goons with him once in a while that follow him around, but they're not just killers. A special team from us, we could wipe it out. And he had this plan and we had that plan. We submitted all these different ideas of how to neutralize bin Laden and I would say by 1997, 1998, before I left the station we could have had him and the impact of that, Jason. Imagine if we would have been allowed in 1997 to take down Bin Laden.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It would be like shooting Hitler before World War II. The world would have been a completely different thing Better or worse, that's not for us to say but we missed those opportunities and unfortunately, mike Shorey, of whom I used to be a very big fan of he, kind of imploded afterwards. But Mike took it very personal when we got the embassy bombings in Africa and he got into George Tenet's face and told him he says the blood of these people are in your hands. Well, george Tenet was a politician, but it wasn't his decision, it was the administration's decision not to do so. I think that if the administration would have approved it, he would have carried it out. So that got him sideways and pretty much ended his career.
Speaker 2:Bin Laden, of course, shortly thereafter went into Afghanistan and once he did that 2011, was able to get bin Laden. And everybody says, well, the SEAL team shot bin Laden. I said, yes, the SEAL team shot bin Laden. Did CIA, that task force in CIA that finally tracked them down, pinpointed it, verified to the point that the administration, this administration agreed that it was worth going. And back to Title 50, those SEAL Team guys were under title, they were actually detailed lead to the agency because they were not doing this in Afghanistan, they were doing this in Pakistan and that's an act of war. So that needed Title 50 authorities and the signature of the president, so technically. And we had guys on the ground with them. But not only were CIA the one that pinpointed and finally found them, the SEAL team that did a fantastic job. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing but admiration for those guys were under auspices for the legalities of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember you know from different sources, right, seals that were there and whatnot they were talking about. You know their plan to like get out. What if this thing went completely sideways and Pakistan was alerted and somehow reacted before they could finish their mission and get away? Right, and they were talking, you know, okay, you know we have different tiers of QRF. We have one QRF that isn't that far away of a whole bunch of SEAL team six, you know, like other SEAL team six guys. And then if we really need it, we have an entire ranger battalion that's ready to go. You know that's already spun up, you know to to handle that, handle whatever fight we get.
Speaker 1:And I remember hearing in one of the briefs that Obama was in, someone said what happens if they get captured and Obama, at least from what I heard, he shook his head. He's like my guys are not giving up If they decide that they're going to try and take our guys. We're going to level that entire military base that is right there. And he told the Air Force to go figure out what they needed to actually make that happen and have that ready, already ready to go.
Speaker 1:And I mean I don't agree with all of Obama's policies or anything like that. I mean, if you ask me today I probably couldn't even name one, but I remember at that time I didn't really agree with everything on him, but for that I always, you know, like tip my hat to him because he knew, you know he, he was taking the handcuffs off. You know, and I feel like in the agencies and in the military the handcuffs are normally like on because you have so many highly trained pit bulls that are just like man. If you would take me off the chain, this thing would be done.
Speaker 2:Open the cage. But there's another component of that too, which is something there is no station in the world CIA station in the world that doesn't have evacuation plans and evacuation resources. So that's the other thing that we had in Pakistan. Yes, and this is textbook. You have a very small unit here that's going to do the deed. You have the first level of QRF, which may be another 12 that can come in with heavier weapons and whatever it is, and, you know, some air support. Then you have, like you said, the 82nd Airborne, ready with Rangers or whatever to jump in and just destroy everything. But we also had rat lines case. They did have to diddy-mow out of there and they would be able to go to a particular place where somebody would stick them in a truck and try to smuggle them out in some way or another. So it is definitely a team sport.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think the beautiful thing about the military and the CIA, specifically with Ground Branch you're getting all these guys with all this different training, all these different expertise right, all this different background, and you know, when you bring them to the table and say, hey, like we have this thing over here, we need you to bring it to us, or destroy it or whatever it might be, the SEAL is going to approach it from a different angle than the Green Beret or different angle from the CIA. You know, operator like, whatever that looks like, and you get to go through and like, really create. You know and design like the perfect situation. I don't want to call it the perfect situation, but you get to design your solution right. And then you have all these tertiary plans in place where it's like, okay, well, if this happens, I'm going to go to this expert in getting people out of a country, a hostile country, in a hostile situation. He's going to be there, he has his own team, that that's all that they do, right? It's just, it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 2:But you know, you hit on something that's a very strong point. Special Activities Division is full of soft individuals. Everybody's operations forces the four that we mentioned, but on top of that they're trained case officers. They have to do tours as case officers and, as a matter of fact, we've had dozens of chiefs of station. You're looking at one of them that was a paramilitary guy. We even had a DDO that was a paramilitary officer. The tables were changed with time but yeah, that's the uniqueness of special activities. It's now a special activities center, but in my time it was SAD, special Activities Division. The fact that you have these really highly trained and specialized people wherever it's air, whatever it is, but they're also case officers. And I think that that was the big bumper for us was the international terrorism, because now we had to send somebody to be chief of station in a place that the average Joe Inga cut it. You had to have the case officer training, but you also had to know how to defend yourself and how to get yourself out of trouble or beat the trouble.
Speaker 1:Well, rick, in an effort to wrap up our conversation, I feel I'd go another three, four hours with you, but I got a hold to my time frame. I'm sure my wife with my two-month-old would be appreciative of that. My wife with my two-month-old would be appreciative of that. Why don't you maybe tell us how you got out of the agency, what you're doing now, that sort of thing? What drove you to the end? Because it sounds like you probably came up on that timeframe that they impose on everyone where you're. What is it? It's mandatory retirement by a certain age, so you probably I'd retire before that.
Speaker 2:In my case, I was chief of ops at the counterterrorism center when 9-11 happened. So this was a very personal thing for me because I started the bin Laden task force. Now I'm the chief of ops at CIA's counterterrorist center and we get hit. I think I got the job like four months before when I came back from a very bad where I was chief of station really bad town in a Muslim, radical Muslim country in East Africa. That's as far as I can go with that one. So I, after about a year in that job, I told Kofra I said you know, we're kicking the crap out of these guys in Afghanistan, but there's dozens and dozens and dozens of these individuals that are worldwide first, second and third world countries that are operating with impunity. We need to go after them. So he said, look at me. He says well, you're my chief of ops, fix it. So I came up with a program which he kicked me out of the room when the first time, when I told him that I wanted to run it. He says great idea, but you ain't running it. Talked about it by the end of the day.
Speaker 2:And I put together a team of men and women that, between surveillance and intelligence gathering and tapping into the sources, we were making book on everything find, fix and finish on all these individuals that were out there supporting, you know, the head of an organization. A terrorist or criminal organization? It's hard to get to and you chop it off, it's a hydra. Or criminal organization? It's hard to get to and you chop it off, it's a hydra. Two others are going to pop up. The shooters are a dime a dozen. You kill 10 of them. Another 20 come in and volunteer, right. The soft belly of any criminal organization or terrorist organization is a support mechanism, because they have to exist somewhere in order to provide that support. And a lot of them are doctors, lawyers, indian chiefs.
Speaker 2:So we put together a program which was to take three individuals from every single terrorist group of our concern, do the fine, do the fix and have operational plans for the finish, the disruption, compromise, kidnap or kill. And it wasn't a hit team when it was leaked, that's the way it was sold. It wasn't, it was. When it was leaked, that's the way it was sold. It wasn't. It was an intelligence gathering exercise with teeth. And the idea was and this is why it came to be that way was when 9-11, we knew we were going to get hit, we knew that that was big, we knew that it was in the country but we couldn't disrupt it. We had no way of disrupting it. What do you think would have happened if, on 9-7, three of Bin Laden's top guys in three different countries get taken out, compromised, put on the rocks, and that biases the time. So that was the program I put together.
Speaker 2:I was actually honored to have briefed Dick Cheney, vice President Dick Cheney on this program, and Condoleezza Rice, and they approved it. Then the agency bureaucracy kicked in. We were getting distance from 9-11, the backbone, the calcium in the backbone starts to melt and when you're dealing with politicians which our leadership at that time was you could not run intel or special operations through a political optic. You have to do it by the professionals. And after three or four things that we had these guys even briefed the vice president on, they still wouldn't let me pull the trigger. So I said you know what I'm going to move on. So that's when I retired.
Speaker 2:I retired, I think I was maybe 51, 50 or 51. And from there I went to work for Blackwater Eric Prince. I had met Eric Prince when he was providing security for us in Kabul and I was chief of ops. When I retired, he pitched me. I went over there and his thing was I don't want you to do business, I want you to recreate exactly what you were doing before, because I was training at Blackwater. He didn't know what the. He's a smart guy. So he knew that he was up to something high speed, low drag, ninja stuff and that it was impactful, and so we started those programs in support of the agency and Special Operations Command. I did that for almost eight years for him Great job, doing the same thing that I knew how to do. So I got 24 years of agency and then another eight on top of that of operating and leading my groups up there. Only now I was getting corporate money, which is kind of nice.
Speaker 2:So when Blackwater met its demise for political reasons again, this is one of the criminality of administrations that come in and try to throw the baby with the bathwater Blackwater did not have a black eye anywhere. The amount of people that we have saved, not a single person that was our protectee ever got killed in an all-state order. So when that went away and I ran these programs for myself for a couple of years, but still with Eric's support here and there. That came to an end also, when I taught at Fort Bragg Advanced Special Operations and Techniques is the name of the course I played the chief of station and I did that for seven years and then came the book. Which is the biggest surprise to me and to my family is that I would write a book.
Speaker 2:I always wanted to be a diver. I always wanted to be a special military. I always wanted to be James Bond. I always wanted that. Never in my life did I think that I should write a book someday, much less become a New York Times bestseller list kind of book.
Speaker 2:But the reason for it was really, really simple. It was I had time for introspection and realized that my agency is so badly represented in every media forum, especially in Hollywood and our men and women who sacrifice so much with no recognition. We can't wear our ribbons, we cannot wear our jump wings, we cannot wear our berets. We can't wear any of that. You're in a coat and tie with a badge. That is the same whether you're a clerk or if you're the DCI. In the place you wear the same identical blue badge and I felt a debt of honor again, like I did for my country, because of what they did for me and my family out of Cuba.
Speaker 2:It was to create something that those fallen, the widow, could go to the kids and say this is the kind of thing your dad or your mom really did during the war. Show what the agency is. You read the book. There's so many sexy stuff in there that are good for a movie. But they're real. But it's very, very different than how they're portrayed, especially the ethos, the dedication and the character of my colleagues. I've lost colleagues Mike Spann and I mentioned Jennifer Matthews earlier and dozens of others that we send in harm's way. So that was the reason behind the book trying to put something out there that would educate the masses. The book has sold 100,000 units so far, so it's doing very, very well still. But that's my goal to keep pumping that out and I'm not doing anything else. I promote the book through a podcast, some things here and there, and I just ride horses, ride motorcycles, shoot guns and chase my wife around the house.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, it's a fantastic book. It was a great read and I'm not a big reader, but when it's nonfiction, it's a true story. It really captivates my attention and so it was a great experience just hearing some of your hundreds of stories I'm sure you have. I really appreciate you taking the time to even just come on. When I messaged you, I assumed ah, he's not going to message me back. Why would he? This is a legendary guy. Why in the world would he waste his time on this small little podcast? But I really appreciate you giving me the time to actually talk to you.
Speaker 2:And, like I said, look, I wrote the book. Although I was paid to write the book, that was a nice touch too, but I wrote the book to get the message out, and if anybody calls me for an interview in a different niche, in a different area, where it's going to get to a different audience than normal audience, that would pick up a book like Black Ops I'm going to do it and I'll keep doing this for as long as I can, because I believe that the book does have merit and it does educate people about a reality that they don't have a bloody clue about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, rick, before I let you go, how about you tell my audience you know where they could find you if they wanted to reach out? And I'll have a link to your book in the description of this episode.
Speaker 2:Website is wwwricpradocom. Rick. Without a K dot com that takes you their bios, are there some pretty cool photographs, and then there's links to Amazon and you know Barnes and Noble or whatever that they can get the books. They're still very available and that's about it. I mean, you know that's the easiest way to get out there. But thank you, thank you so much for supporting my efforts to get this message out. It means the world to me. It's I call it my last firefight. This is the last thing I'm doing. I got 55 years going into pararescue and writing the book, so you know that's enough. But I will keep promoting the book anytime that I can Not financially, because I got my money up front. I'm very proud of the fact that I could have sit on my butt and sold 10,000 books, that I would have the same amount of money in my pocket. I did it for a very different reason and I'm very proud of that and my family's very proud of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thanks, Rick. I really appreciate you coming on again and I hope everyone watching this episode enjoyed it. Thanks everyone.
