John Sipher -- CIA Officer, Hollywood Movie Producer, Twitter Guru, and Radical Centrist Artwork

UnderSimplified

The Under Simplified Podcast is on a mission to have deep conversations about the most crucial and consequential issues facing society. We will do this by way of myriad topics like technology, philosophy, health, history, and science, all at the crossroads of culture, society, the present and our future. We will take great risks to have provoking and meaningful discussions that push listeners beyond their comfort zones and to new heights of understanding, empathy, moderatism, skepticism and optimism. We will do all this in the hope of improving our collective ability to talk to each other, instead of past each other. At the heart of so many of our global (and local) challenges are difficult discussions often with people with whom we disagree. Our mission will be to have these conversations while also demonstrating that they can be constructive. We will dig deep to uncover the truth of a matter…as truth almost never rests on the surface, and by doing so we hope to show that truth is findable, despite an era of superficial news cycles and the echo chambers of YouTube. UnderSimplified’s host, Aaron Brown, will use his career in the CIA, as an Army Ranger, and deputy sheriff, and now as an entrepreneur and technologist, to engage deep thinkers and experts across pivotal issues of our time. Using this platform, Aaron will challenge these guests to join him in raising the quality of our collective conversation. And, if we are lucky, maybe we’ll find an easier path to travel together. UnderSimplifed is a fully bootstrapped operation, with the entire team donating time and services. Though a longshot, we’d love to run this podcast solely on support from our listeners, either through Patreon subscriptions or one-time donations. Please consider supporting us and this very necessary mission. Support options found at: https://www.undersimplified.org/ (link below).

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UnderSimplified

John Sipher -- CIA Officer, Hollywood Movie Producer, Twitter Guru, and Radical Centrist

September 09, 2022 • Aaron Brown • Season 1 • Episode 1

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John Sipher is a senior CIA officer who retired after 28 years, serving many times as a CIA Chief of Station across the world and as the head of CIA’s Russia Operations. As a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment he now works closely with Hollywood to advise on spy movies, write and produce more accurate espionage films, and push the industry to take greater risks. We chat about CIA, Russia, risk taking, innovation, and how British MI6 flew him and a Soviet defector first class to Scotland solely to drink expensive scotches and brainstorm about how to catch Russia’s spies. But John’s story is interesting for a host of other reasons too, especially for the UnderSimplified podcast, because he has also, reluctantly by his account, entered into the public political fray since leaving CIA; with 250k followers, he is very likely the most followed former CIA officer on twitter. He was also one of the 50 senior intelligence officials that signed a now infamous letter related to Hunter Biden’s laptop and Russian misinformation, which has been weaponized by both sides of the political spectrum. And it is here that we get into one of the central missions of this podcast: difficult conversations.

John considers himself a radical centrist, but because of this letter, which is often held up as proof of the deep state, and John’s public comments about Donald Trump (which he stress that for him is less about politics and more about his deep appreciation for America’s institutions), it’s hard for John to establishing himself as a centrist while having these challenging conversations. But we must have these conversations… so how do we do it?

This is the first episode of the UnderSimplified podcast and we hope to have many more from as many angles as we can manage. If you like this episode, or even the idea behind this effort, please subscribe to and rate this podcast in Apple or Spotify. The ratings on these two platforms are absolutely consequential in these early stages.

John Sipher on Twitter: @john_sipher
Spycraft Entertainment: https://spycraftentertainment.com/
Music by: Arethusa Strings

****Ways to support this podcast****

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undersimplified
Venmo: @UnderSimplified
PayPal: paypal.me/UnderSimplified
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/3d1b01b4

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Today, we're talking with John SIPER. He retired as a senior CIA officer after 28 years serving many times as CIA chief of station across the world. And also as the head of CIA's Russian operations as a co-founder of spycraft entertainment, he now works closely with Hollywood to advise on spy movies, write and produced more accurate espionage films and push the industry to take greater risks.

While John has certainly had a very interesting CIA career, I was most grateful to speak with him today about what he's done since leaving. Go. John is a fierce, moderate, but his comments recently have dragged him squarely into the red team versus blue team political skirmishes. Most recently, related to hunter Biden's infamous laptop.

I believe conversations like this, even when they're challenging are absolutely critical. What do we have to fall back on? If we lose the ability to talk calmly about difficult or controversial topics. So for that reason, John was an ideal guest to start this podcast journey with. We shared some fun stories, but more importantly, he leans into a candid and authentic conversation with wit and humility.

This of course is the first episode of the oversimplified podcast. We hope to have many more just like it from as many angles as we can manage if you like this episode, or even if you just like the idea behind this effort. Please subscribe to and rate this podcast in apple or Spotify. The ratings on these two platforms are absolutely consequential in the early days of a podcast.

Other ways to help support this podcast. And John's public information are located in the show notes. And now onto the conversation, John cipher, welcome to the under simplified podcast. My pleasure. Glad to be here. So, , this is episode one. Oh, so quite an honor, you're doing for us here by, by getting us off the ground.

Well, be wait and see till afterwards whether you think it's an honor or well, well, we're actually hoping, uh, you carry us most of the way through here, given, , your experience at this. So, uh, we'll we'll I might need some scotch or something to help that process. It is, uh, nine 30 in the morning and, and very CIA of you to, um, reference scotch it's cuz it is it's scotch time somewhere.

That's true. We do have it. So if we need to bring the bell, we can. Fair enough measure of it in there. You had a very long, uh, career in the CIA. And for me coming out of the CIA to do something like this, it really only made sense to have our first discussion with someone like you who's out in the public light right now, but, but spent the vast majority of your professional career, you know, in the shadows behind the veil and you were in a front office, which in this case, about as high as it gets, at least on the directorate of operations side, we would've called you chief , uh, at that point, right?

Um, many times in your career where you call chief, but that's a, a pretty honorable title. I think there's a lot of folks who would say maybe used a little too widely these days, but yeah, I mean, the, the, the agency, in some ways, you know, I sometimes describe it as tribal, right? So there's a variety of larger tribes.

There's the clandestine service, the covert operators, people like you, you know, who spend most of their career overseas, trying to recruit new sources, collect intelligence, it's sort of the human intelligence side of the organization, but then there's other sort of large tribes that are, you know, critical to the functioning of, of CIAs sort of an all source intelligence agencies, or has a large analytic cadre whose people are, you know, they have experts on almost every issue on foreign policy where there's, there's someone, who's an expert on, you know, Egyptian economy and someone who's an expert on, you know, the south African military.

And, you know, they're putting together the papers and the intelligence. From all over the world, whether it's open source or whether it's from clandestine collectors or satellites, or what have you to provide policy makers with intelligence. And then there's a large sort of science and technology cadre who are doing, you know, Sexy stuff back in the old days, it was, it was the satellites and, and communications technology and all sorts of things that you can read about.

And then there's, you know, obviously a large sort of support and administration, part of the agency who are incredibly talented and sort of make sure everything works. And so it's very tribal, but then inside, even inside those big areas, there, there are sort of specific groups. There's the counter inside the covert area.

There's the counterintelligence people and the counter terrorism people, and the people who focus on, you know, Russia and China and European relationships and all these type of things. And so a front office becomes almost sort of like, you know, the, the, the war Lords inside the inside the clandestine service.

So, you know, the person who's in charge of terrorism, the person who's in charge of counter intelligence, the person's in charge of, of working with, you know, domestic partners and the person who's in charge of very European work. And so. Yeah, it's very interesting. You get to see a lot of stuff. Personnel issues sort of come to the fore, um, you know, trying to manage operations around the world.

And so it, it, it's, it's an interesting place to see how an organization, a large organization functions. Because when we think of CIA, we, you know, often think about the people out at the end of the line who are meeting sources in dark alleys and reporting intelligence, but that feed into a much larger bureaucracy reflecting on that.

I wanted to have you hit two points first. What would you want to tell someone who has no experience in national security and, and, and knows nothing about government? What would you say to them that you think is important in this era? And then two what's something you would wanna say to someone who remains inside of government and still in the thick of things?

Sure. Um, so, you know, people who sort. Know about intelligence either from movies or just, you know, they're interested in follow along to try to figure out there's a few sort of things that I think, you know, are misperceptions and, and things that I would like people to think and understand about our intelligence community and CI in particular is one is it's filled with professionals.

It's a profession. People are go through, you know, long training. It's like, you know, becoming an airline pilot or, or something. You, you know, you, you learn how to do things. You, you, you, as a young officer, you sort of are trained and, and move forward, get some experience and move up through the. And also the thing is that there's a lot of legal support oversight.

There's a lot of people weighing in on things. That's, you know, when I was young, there was this sort of view that the agency was a rogue agency that was sort of could be out of control or involved in assassinations around the world. And nobody would know. And there's still this view that, you know, because it's a secret organization, we could be up to stuff that, that nobody knows about.

That's not being done in the name of the American people very well, but I've always wanted to take someone to just one meeting with the five lawyers that go to every idea. That's just like, if you could sit through one meeting yeah. Uh, about an operation with the attorneys, not, we have great attorneys at CIA, some, some fantastic ones, but they would quickly be disabused of that notion.

yeah. I mean, a lot of people talk about the Washington post test, you know, like when you, when you do things, you wanna do things that, you know, if your mother saw you on the front page of the Washington post, if it, if it leak. She could still be proud and understand the, the reasoning behind why you did what you did, but even on the inside, there's quite a bit of oversight.

And so our lawyers are, you know, are looking, think every piece of correspondence that we send. In fact, everything we do is written. And I think that's another thing I don't think people understand is, is it's a, it's a written culture. So as if you meet a. On a street in a dark alley and, you know, Eastern Europe, the, the preparation for that is written and provided in all of the planning for that is written in pro in and sent into headquarters.

Then after our meeting, everything is written up, you know, what did the source say? What was the plan? What went right? You know, what was the sort of security protocol in the street? So everything is written and on every one of those pieces of correspondence is, is a lawyer to make sure that, you know, we're, we're doing things, you know, ethically and legally and, and properly as well as, as the oversight from the operational and, and Cland decant side of the fact.

So those are the things I think it's professional, it's serious. And on the other side, what would I wanna say to people who are inside now that I've been outside for a number of years and what I would suggest, and shouldn't be a surprise is there's still too much. It's still too insular. , there's a lot of the senior people at the organization.

because they grew up in an environment of counter intelligence and, and the Russians trying to get in, in Chinese and others, trying to get into our correspondence, trying to recruit sources, you develop a care and, and you sort of stay off of social media. You stay off of the internet, you try, you stay off of telephones.

I don't think people understand on the outside how much, you know, we go to meetings, you know, when we go into the building, there's no telephones with this. When we have our meetings, there's no, there's no laptops. There's no phones on the desk. There's none of those type of things. And so even now, you know, I tend not to want to be on the phone.

I tend not to like talking to people. It's just sort of an instinct. And so I think people on the inside. Develop an insularity that they're not paying attention to what's happening on the outside. And because there is so much vibrant activity and things happening inside, and there's fantastic work being done.

And there's incredible intelligence and information coming from around the world that becomes your world. And you assume that is the world. But when you get on the outside, you realize there's a tremendous amount of expertise, information. You know, people moving forward on the tech side, all these type of things that actually would benefit the agency and people on the inside should be engaging in and paying attention to.

And so, you know, it's hard for senior leadership in the agency to make decisions on some things of, of related to technology related to communications related to. over at work because they've avoided it, they've stayed away from it. And they tend to think there's only downsides to engaging with that. And so they, they wall it off and there's, there's some benefits to that, but there's also a lot of downsides to that.

I, I, I completely agree. This is one of the reasons that I left, , at about half the career, , that you served and it was just, you go back. I , they, they say that's potentially possible. I have to mind my PS and QS, uh, out here, but it was exactly for this reason, just like you, I loved it every moment up until the last day.

And, and I didn't leave disgruntled or, , you know, with any ill will I still often speak as though I'm still there, even though it's been more than a year, but those of us in the middle ranks were starting to witness exactly what you saw. And it's become extremely tricky to do both things at once, you know, live in that insular culture and it is opening and there are lots of folks that realize it must, but at the end of the.

no matter how many of them realize that, that I say this often the building itself, the bureaucracy itself seems to be alive and no matter how many people try to shift it, it, it sort of holds its course pretty steadily. And especially when the technology involved in what we need. And what we're trying to do is a threat to those operations that they're trying to protect.

There's multiple functions, , that are weighing against decision making in the building. But this gets into a point in that as folks become more senior, , in, in rank and, and take over these positions such as you did a lot of your decisions as a, a senior officer, as a chief of station, we're based on the experiences you had on the streets in places like Moscow and Eastern Europe and, and, , the middle east, and when a newer officer would come in and say, I'm facing, you know, X, Y, or Z problem.

You could think about it and then draw on some of that wisdom to help them work this out. But now as technology becomes a bigger and bigger facet of operations and security, how does someone, uh, who's reached that point in their career answer? , a young officer, uh, on a, on a topic related to technology when they've never used that piece of technology?

Not because they're a ludite, but because senior people at the CIO are busy, I'm not sure how this gets fixed. And I actually think that part of the fix is, is out here. And that's why I'm here. But I wonder as you've thought about that, because you've watched that start on the inside, but you've really watched it pick up speed here on the outside.

I think that's a function of leadership. And I think, you know, wisdom is more than just experience and, you know, trying to pass on specific things that you've been through to help the next generation. I think one of the. I think what C needs to do is, is look at itself and look where it's succeeded and where CIA's been incredibly effective is actually those places where they've shifted and, and moved in a different direction.

So, you know, I came up, you know, working in a place like Moscow, where, you know, it was constant surveillance people on you, 24 7, whenever you're in the public, everybody you talk to is, is stopped and questioned. You're followed everywhere, you know, and I, in very hard counterintelligence of our environments trying to run sources under sort of the strictest that the enemy has to provide.

But then the organization moved into terrorism. And I remember when, when they came to the CI and said, you need to be at the forefront of fighting this new battle on terrorism. At first, it was like, this is, this is not our space. This is a law enforcement space. This is a, it's not something we're comfortable with.

You know, we don't have the ability to meet slowly and recruit sources that are in the middle of a terrorist organization because, you know, we don't have access to those people and they're not the kind of people, you know, sort of a white bread boy like me, or you are gonna be able to sort of saddle up to and, and recruit as a, as a spy.

But the organization, you know, really did live up to it. It, it sort of moved in that direction and by, you know, the mid two thousands late 2000. In 2000 tens and such, you know, CI was doing incredible work, you know, really destroying these terrorist groups at their core. And now I remember after 2001, the America public was so afraid.

We were willing to do things that may have moved, you know, out of sort of the ethical zone of, of what we think we needed to do. And we saw some of that with the interrogation and, and some of those kind of issues, but now people aren't afraid and therefore they're sort of pushing back on things that CIA might have done, but they're not afraid because we've had tremendous success.

And so what I'm trying to suggest is the agency has changed and it has done different things at different times. Sometimes, perhaps slowly bureaucracies are afraid of risk. If someone like you comes and says, Hey, we need to think about doing this thing publicly, or we need to change things. There's gonna be a lot of people who say, yeah, I can see how I might get in trouble.

If this doesn't go well. Yes, there's a real, there's a potential upside, but. if the upside happens, I'm not gonna get at, you know, I'm not gonna get anything for it, but if the downside happens, I'm gonna come down on me. And so therefore the safe bed is to say no, and you know, I'm working in Hollywood now you see the same thing.

Why do you think Spider-Man 19 is being made rather than some new interesting show? You know, it's, it's hard. We're trying to push to get, you know, realistic ESP espionage shows made, but they would almost rather step back and get something like gray man or whatever, which is, you know, car chases and people jumping outta planes without parachutes and all that kind of stuff, because they, because they've had that success before they made some money, it's much safer.

To just do something you're comfortable with rather than take a risk on something new movement and change comes from people willing to take those risks, even if they see a downside and that's what leadership is. And so CI's done that before. There's a, there's strong, you know, tendons not to, but, uh, I think that's what, where leadership needs to do it.

And if you say, for example, now the heads of the CESA service are, are working with you to, to change that or to try to actually have some sort of public face. I think I find that as very, um, is a very good thing. Yeah. I think that's, uh, I, I do see that change happening and it's funny as you mentioned it, because I came in in the mid odds and went straight into counter-terrorism and actually I joined to do that.

Right. I was, you know, in, in special operations, in the ranger regiment, uh, in the late nineties when the embassy bombings, uh, happened, and we didn't go anywhere, uh, to combat at that point. And then nine 11 happened just after I got out of the military. And I immediately pivoted to Arabic. Uh, I did my last year in Cairo and I arrived, uh, to the agency straight into the CT fight.

And I never did any of the things that you did, , early in your career. I was going from CT mission to CT mission, and it was a rarity that I would find myself actually alone on the street. As a case officer, I, you know, I had usually security or someone else with me who was helping me ask these questions.

And there was a lot of technology at play. In fact, the people who I think suffered the greatest in operations at that time were those who were very anti communications, understandably, where they came from. But it turns out to catch terrace. You need to be on the phone with assets all the time. Yeah.

Multiple phones all the time. And that was an easier switch for me because I didn't have that background, um, to go up against. And now, ironically, that is a benefit in this new era because those of us who used technology heavily in those operat. Now are more familiar with them and, and have a better grasp of how you can incorporate them into some of these more traditional missions.

It's not a, a seamless transition, but it's better than starting from zero. Well, I also think then, you know, this is a little inside baseball, but there's sort of a group of tech expertise in the agency that we draw on. If we're gonna do some sort of covert communications, we reach out to this group that is supposed to be experts on that and never heard of them.

And, and they are, they provide incredible support, but the, but the problem there is if you work in that area and you're incredibly talented and creative and innovative, if you're there for 30 years, you're not on the outside experiencing things. Some of them, the good ones figure that out. They try to figure out what's out there, but it it's, it's those guys that need to sort of, you know, stay up, stay with a new thing.

It would be useful if the agency could allow people to sort of leave and come back in with those new new skills so that, you know, your tech. Como support people are, you know, 58 years old and never left the agency. Are they really up on sort of, what is the best way to, to communicate, communicate securely, communicate quickly?

What are the risks versus gain as you go to what, you know, when you came into do terrorism? I, don't know that the American public knows how successful eventually CIA became. I would argue that essentially 95%, I made that number up, but of the real success against the core of Al-Qaeda ISIS, these kind of things was work that the intelligence community, CIA, N S a and others were doing the military huge boots on the ground.

Lots of experience, lots of, sort of finish find and fix and finish, um, activities, but it was often led by the intelligence community. And so, um, you know, I think if you look back and try to figure out what was the change that allowed CIA to, to move maybe slower than they should have, but move from, you know, one type of work to another.

and then now what is, what is it we need to look at where the agency has to be able to move in the next direction. You know, we've done it successfully in the past, despite, you know, the, the challenges and the roadblocks. And so we didn't look at that. You know what I think you, you just hit on there and, and gave an example of, is the agency acting a bit like a startup?

You know, it, it was able to go from one way of doing things, to doing something completely different and that that's not an easy thing to do. And that's, that's, that's a good way to put it. Yep. I think the agency does pride itself on being able to make those types of changes. But lately I think we've heard a lot of folks talk about, you know, doing some of the things that we already do, and that are the most important things that the agency does doing those things better.

But if the real amazing feature of the agency is that it can reinvent itself. Then, I guess the question becomes, what is that thing? What is the thing that exists right now, or the thing that the agency must do? What, what should the agency adopt that founders or that startup mentality to accomplish next in this ever changing world?

There are some things that are not just us doing what we've always done better. It's having, like you mentioned that startup mentality, that mentality of, Hey, let's look at this in a new way. Let's bring in different people. You know, we don't NEC this doesn't need to be a top down. We don't need to bring our most senior people that tell us what to do.

We need to have young people, people on the fringes providing input, providing support, everybody needs to play a game here in terms of what we need to do. And there's a number of things that an organization needs to look at as it, it tries to deal with new challenges because it's very D. In a bureaucracy to change, bureaucracies would almost rather fail than change.

I think that's true. And, and it, it goes back to just what we talked about before, where the bureaucracy lives and, and, and seems to inhibit the, the, the types of changes that even our, our brightest and most effective leaders want to make, but the bureaucracy lives. For a real reason. I did a lot of work with the FBI was doing a lot of counter espionage.

I was involved with, uh, catching Robert Hansen, the FBI special agent who was spying for the Russians and spent a lot of time working with FBI professionals on, on, on Russian things, for example. And it was really interesting to, for the agency, at least in my experience, working with the FBI is there's completely different cultures and oftentimes they clash.

And for example, you know, the, I often would say the FBI culture is a cop culture and the CIA culture is a robbers culture, right? So we're the robbers, their cops, the completely different thing, but culture builds up around mission, right? And so for years and years, the FBI succeeds, because it had that sort of, you know, black and white right, and wrong legal, here's what you need to prepare people to be arrested, to be arraigned and get into trials.

And, and CIA has succeeded because it lives overseas and it breaks laws and it breaks rules overseas while maintaining sort of. You know, and ethical principles, you know, back home to make sure that we don't use those kind of tools where, where, you know, back home or against each other. And so culture builds up around the mission.

And so you say bureaucracy is really hard to change. It really means a culture is really hard to change and cultures are built up for real powerful reasons and they help us succeed and do what we, we do. So therefore, when we're trying to change it, we have to do it with real intention, real focus and being clear, you know, why it needs to change because the agency for years has had a lot of smart people like you and me and others who've, you know, we came in, we were hired because we were willing to sort of say things that other people wouldn't say or not afraid to speak our mind or, you know, thought we knew better than everybody else.

We're all sort of those type a people who think we're smarter than everybody else. Even though we, we know enough. That when we sit in the meeting and I think I'm smarter, everybody is not to not to make it clear that have come in and said, we need to change. We need to do it this way. We do it that way.

So the agencies had lots of people year after year, month after month saying, you know, this needs to change, that needs to change. And sort of the, the organization has been careful not to be moving from one thing to the next, but there are things that about the culture that need to change as we, as we focus on threats that are facing us now.

And a lot of that has to do with a world where the old way of being able to sneak around the world was possible. Whereas nowadays, everything is being monitors, cameras, and every street corner there's checking, bio things, getting into countries. You know, I used to be able when I first came in to just grab a fake passport check into a hotel and in the same city that I was working in a different name and I could get away with it.

Culture is. You know, as you noted is, is just something that people want to change, but the more that you try to change it, the more it stays the same, it's important for leaders in the intelligent community, essentially in any company or enterprise to, to understand their culture and to understand culture and how important it is in, in general.

I mean, you know, I, I talked earlier about how I used to, to work at that leadership seminar for younger officers. And I thought that was really important. And in our system, in, in the agency, as you move into the more senior ranks, especially if you're gonna move into. the, uh, senior ranks get sort of the general Admiral type of ranks.

They put us through a series of courses. We often will go to, to, you know, Harvard or Northwestern or these type of things, or the Aspen Institute, and then a number of internal intelligence community courses. And, you know, we try to work with other organizations in the IC and others to sort of explore our cultures and what they mean and what is it.

We wanna really value and save and pass on to the next generation in which things. But I remember talk one of the people speaking at, at one of our leadership seminars. Describing culture in, in this way. And he said, essentially, there's, there's, there's a well known, uh, experiment, essentially putting five monkeys into a cage and putting in the middle of the cage, , sort of a stand with a banana hanging from the center of the cage.

And when the first monkey would make a move to go up the stand to grab the banana, they would take a fire hose and hose down the other monkeys, knock 'em all over and spray 'em down. And then another monkey would try to go get the, the banana and they would do the same thing. They would hose down the other, you know, with a, with a strong fire hose.

This is not where intense interrogation came from. Well, maybe it did. And. and very quickly, , when a monkey would try to go for the banana, the other monkeys would eventually just like grab and beat up the monkeys and say, stop doing that. We're gonna get hosed down. And so what, what the, uh, researchers would then do is then take a couple of those monkeys out of the cage and put two new monkeys who obviously never seen the thing.

And when they would go for the banana, they would get tackled and torn down. And, they'd do this a couple times. And eventually those same monkeys would actually tackle in others that would try to go get the banana and they would then take the next step and, and remove some monkeys. Eventually you had a system where you had five monkeys in a cage with a banana hanging from the ceiling, and none of the monkeys would go for the banana, but none of them had ever seen the water hose.

So essentially. None of them knew why they just knew this is the way things are done around here. And so that's sort of an explanation of culture is, is we come into these cultures oftentimes, and this is just the way things are done. And sometimes like someone like you as a rule breaker say, well, why is that?

And you get these sort of angry looks like, well, just, that's just the way it's done. And it was done for a purpose and maybe the purpose made sense. Maybe some people got hit with water hoses early on as they understood. But, but as, as the culture moves on, there's some things that are held, but it's not clear why.

And there may have been a good reason. That's why it's healthy to look at your culture, try to figure out what it is you do and why, and maybe go back and understand those kind of things. And so you can understand, there are certain things that are worthy of changing because the situation has changed.

And then which ones are really important to sort of move forward and into the future. And it's such a great example. And, and we're gonna talk about culture as much as we possibly can on this podcast, cuz I do believe it is culture that is challenging us here, but at the same. I, I believe it may not be the right approach to think about changing culture or at least not making strategic and leadership decisions based solely on changing a culture because a culture, as you said, it develops organically.

And to think that it can then be changed by edict or strategy or, you know, well framed and worded culture statement, I think is, is a first indication that someone doesn't understand culture when they try to implement that. Again, the culture builds up around the mission. It builds up around the reward system, the promotion system, and how people lead from the front.

And most of those leaders, when they're really good at it, they don't think about culture when they're doing that. The culture develops around them. But then that becomes tricky when the world is changing faster than your culture is changing. And you have this great urgency to make that cultural change because people are, you know, avoiding risk.

That was probably a good risk to avoid in the 1980s. And so, but now we're left with, again, I think a, a risk aversion that is built into the culture and, and, you know, just using myself once again, as an example, as you were talking, I was, I think often known as a bit of a rule breaker in the CT fight. Some folks would, would comment that, you know, I was a cowboy or that I was running a team of radicals to some degree, but the reason this was is because a lot of the rules that we had in place from the 1990s were not effective rules for catch.

Terrorists and people would say, well, you know, you need to get approval in advance before you do that. And I would say if I had to get approval every single time before I did this, we would never, the target that we were chasing would always be one step ahead. Our senior leaders are praying that will break this rule.

Yeah, exactly. Because if they have to raise that rule, they're gonna have five lawyers that are gonna say you can't change that rule right now because of X, Y, and Z. Really good reason you gotta no, but the one thing to keep in mind is the agency has lived off of and succeeded by officers. Like you who've, who've, who've taken and broken rules over the years, essentially.

That's, you know, now that I'm out and I'm sort of reading a lot of history, a lot of books to start to see if I can make them into movies or shows, you know, there's been a lot of really interesting people who have, have pushed. All over the world and all kinds of plays that have led to success led to change.

Now, of course, what you, what you don't see in those books is there are a lot of people who pushed boundaries and got punished for it, right? And, and didn't then hang around long enough to sort of come back around and continue to push boundaries. And so it, it's a, it's a dicey thing. When you're in a bureaucracy, if you're someone who is a, is a rule breaker, it can be essentially what pushes the organization forward.

And what's what leads to success. Or it can be a way of getting yourself, you know, kicked out. I did worry about that. Even now. I, I feel the need to clarify the, the rules that we were breaking were not big ones. You know, it was, can we use this piece of technology that we bought out on the street before someone has reviewed it, whether or not it's effective for what we're gonna do?

Is there a risk in there that we haven't yet? Let all the smart people think about? Well, whatever that risk was, the risk of not using it and letting that CT target get out there to plot is, is worse. One of the ways I always went about this was I, I had it in my mind every day that. I was okay with being fired that day.

Uh, I, I thought to myself, I love my job. I hope that I'm not. But if today is the day that they come to me and be like, you didn't ask for permission to use that gadget and that's gonna be the end of it. Well, I, I'm totally fine with that and I'll go find something else. And again, the organization is, is face that challenge of working with enemies and threats that didn't play by the same rules.

And then we had to sort of face that and figure out how, how we do that. If you look at sort of early CA it's really interesting after world war II, after OS was disbanded in the CA started, it was very largely, you know, a British sort of supported paramilitary organization that was, that saw Stalin's KGB as the big threat.

And the KGB was playing by no rules. They were assassinating people. They were doing disinformation, subversion, all these type of things. And we thought that we had to play. by essentially non-American rules. We had to play their game. We had to play the same game. We had to overthrow countries and, you know, assassinate people and, and, you know, play tough, tough games.

And essentially, if you look at sort of the history of CIAs that went through this and eventually got pushback and eventually reforms in the 1970s is we realized that there's certain rules that we, we can push and change, but there's an American culture too, that, uh, intelligence organization has to play in, but we need to adapt and create a system that can defend and deter and push back against those enemies in an American way.

And so there's lots of people who were, were rule breakers and push the envelope. And, and some of that was ended up being really healthy for the organization. Some of that got us in trouble as, as an organization and got pushed back from, you know, white houses and Congress and American public over time.

So there's, there's a lot of sort of history that can be, uh, instructive. as we move forward and, and you can make smart decisions that also break, quote unquote, the rules. Well, you've brought us right up to our current moment. Oh, I think, and I'm gonna turn up the heat a little bit here, because what you're talking about is yet another situation in history where I think many people are looking around and, and saying, are we gonna be able to stay in this fight and fight the fight fairly?

And with our ethics in place, as our adversaries, do what they've done so many times over the years and, you know, fight unfairly and fight in ways that we, as a country have decided we would rather not for a whole bunch of good reasons, but the question then comes up yet again, can we hold to those values and ethics and still fight that fight, especially while we're also fighting, uh, amongst ourselves.

And I, I have no doubt as we're recording this. And as, as we, as. You know, hopes that some people listen to this, there's there's without questions. Some folks are gonna listen to this and hearing me and you talk about breaking the rules and they're gonna immediately think deep state. Hmm. But you and I, of course know, as do all the men of the women who work in these organizations that, uh, a deep state conspiracy is just not possible.

And there's so many reasons why this is the case. One of the challenges that we have of course, though, is that we have incentive to say that, and we are not immediately looked at as credible sources on whether or not, uh, a deep state exists. Right. Because if we were part of the deep state, then we'd obviously have incentive to keep it secret.

But that's just, it, what I think a lot of folks would actually grasp if they thought about it for a little bit, But they don't, they don't think about it that much is that these organizations are just made up of their compatriots, right. They're neighbors. And if you took a, a slice of the CIA or, or the military or the NSA, you would find within that slice myriad opinions mirroring those that you could find across the United States.

Now you might not find the, the far left or the far right within that batch because of the selection process and the type of person that is attracted to these organizations. But you're not gonna find people who fully agree with one side or another on any topic. And so it's just impossible to imagine, you know, one person getting three other people in a room at CI headquarters and saying, Hey everybody, uh, I've decided, uh, that I think we should sway a us election one way or the other, and then hope that those three other people are going to agree with them.

Actually, I don't think you could do that with one other person and not have that thing. Blow up in your face. And, and have you immediately reported to numerous higher authorities? Um, not, not to say that there aren't people who had opinions one way or the other, but that a conspiracy could somehow crop up and drive an entire organization of true professionals like this.

It's just, it's inconceivable. It's not that it might not be possible or is nearly impossible. It's totally impossible. And so if we're not a credible source on this, how can we use our inside knowledge to help illustrate and expose some of these things that are not really necessary to keep secret so that the greater population can understand why there's no such thing as a deep state, I'm left here thinking of the old adage, you know, never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained with incompetence and.

Certainly there have been some political missteps by all of our organizations in how those organizations dealt with the extraordinary political environment that's existed for more than a decade now, but none of those decisions, including the worst ones could ever be ascribed to conspiracy, it just doesn't work.

And so one of the things I wanna be able to do at this platform and, and in conversations with someone like you is help me explain to the extent that you can, what you would say to the general public about these organizations that makes them a place where a conspiracy theory like a, a holy organized, deep state just could not exist.

Well, this is the problem of a secret organization in a democratic sort of country, right? It's, it's been something that American people and we, and, and subsequent governments have had to deal with. And so when we're talking about rule breakers, As you, and I know as we talk about this, we're talking about tactical in the field decisions that I think if you had to sit down and explain to almost any American, they would understand, and it goes back to my thing about what is it you need to understand about CIA and it's, again, it's that these people are professionals they're hired for their, you know, there are common sense for their judgment, for their ability to make, to understand what's happening in the world.

To understand politics, to understand where the boundaries are that are sort of smart people that are trained in, in their inner bureaucracy that has oversight that has legal oversight, rather the justice department, which has oversight by Congress. And that works on behalf of elected leaders in the white house.

And so when we're talking about breaking rules, we're talking about trying to be effective to, to solve tactical problems that are given to us by leaders who are accountable to the, to the public they're they're, you know, white houses, they're you. Presidents they're Congress people. And then there's, you know, the legal justice oversight.

So we're not talking about breaking rules and then hiding that from our overseers. We're not talking about breaking rules, you know, for fund, we're trying to, we're doing this within a, a structured system. You know, the CI is a bureaucracy. It does work on behalf of elected leaders. And it it's sort of funny.

I mean, I ju I guess I understand because it's secret again in an open society that people think it operates on its own. And you often hear about the, the CIA overthrow of Iran or the CIA, you know, program of, of, of interrogation or the CIA, this, the CIA that you and I know that the CIA often doesn't make these decisions on their own.

They're made by politicians and, and presidents and others that put these things on us to be done. And so, you know, when you talk about the deep state, there's sort of this intention that. We in these organizations want to do things that are wrong or illegal, that we have this desire to, you know, interrogate prisoners or whatever it is.

I'd like to be interested to talk to those people. Like, what is it you think, where is an incentive coming? Why do you think that those people want to do that? The things that we do we're doing, because we are being asked to do them by, by political leaders. And therefore we're trying to do our best to meet those needs and meet those requirements.

It isn't as if the CI is doing these things on their own and then hoping that it fits into a bigger, bigger sort of political program. Yeah. I think it's why, you know, conspiracy theories in general are so tricky because they're, they're generally shorthand for deep thinking. And almost always, if you put any amount of deep thinking into them and you use logic, uh, and not circular logic, you quickly get to the end of the road.

When, when you think about how could you possibly get a thousand people in CIA to do something that not two people would agree with and the place, you know, Leaks like a SIV when somebody's done something wrong. There's definitely like a Kennedy assassination. That's a great one. Did you even, I kind of still question that one.

Yeah. It's like really like, you know, I keep telling people, like I was in the CIA for almost 30 years. If I knew that the CIA had done it, I would be telling people, no, like I said, first book, book, number one, right here. It is. Uh, yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, and, and that, that one, you could see how that one, would've been easier to keep quiet.

Some of the bigger conspiracy theories would have to have, have involved, you know, hundreds and hundred of people. Yeah. That's ridiculous. And I, yeah, I think this is, you know, one of the things that frustrates me the most is just, I wanna scream at the rooftops, uh, at this point or now into this microphone.

I guess if folks have the opportunity to just meet all of these amazing people across these organizations that you and I know they would. No way, but to believe what you and I believe now, you know, CIA has taken a beating over the last decade or so. FBI now is in the cross hairs related to some of its challenges in, in entry into the political fray, which I think many of us would say was would've been really hard to avoid, but I think we each probably know some FBI agents who would disagree that, that this was the way to go.

And yet we know that the organization has not gone rogue like us often portrayed in the movies. And, and I'm sure that this has an effect, but we're in a bit, uh, of a quandary here because as we prepared for this podcast, we found, uh, a clip of Ron Paul, which I'm sure you're familiar with where he is a former elected official.

And actually names you personally, as being a part of this broader conspiracy theory to undermine the us election, he goes out of his way to tell his listeners and anyone who listened to him, that you are using your dastardly skills that you were given with great confidence to go abroad and, and do these things also, not quite right, but that you have then taken those skills and, and brought them back here to the United States and used them against your own government, which is just ludicrous on its face to those of us who understand how this works.

Even if you wanted to do that, John cipher himself wanted to do that. It wouldn't be possible to do, but you don't. And yet an elected official like Ron, Paul can say that you do and have that message stick in many quarters. And yet again, having an elected official say that this type of deep state activity can exist completely then undermines anyone else's argument, because they're gonna look at Ron Paul and say, well, he has that same insight.

As John cipher and Aaron Brown, and yet he thinks it's possible. Now, I don't think Ron Paul actually thinks that, but that's a topic for another day. However, that that's the battle that we're up against. And so when you think about elected officials or other folks who have, uh, a voice that can reach a large audience speaking like this in a direct confrontation to the things we believe, what does that make you feel and, and think, yeah, that's a good question.

We all understand when we're inside, you know, that we're working on behalf of the country, we're working on behalf of elected leaders, but we also understand we work in a, in, in a political world. And most of our, when I was in, most of our leaders would say, do not pay attention to all that stuff. Focus on, you know, doing your work.

You. Doing what you have to do. And, you know, I often tell, tell people when I talk outside is, you know, inside the agency for 30 years, I work with all kinds of people. And not once, not once. Did we talk about doing something on the heck of a political party or a political, a specific political, you know, president or leader?

It was, it was all focused on, you know, national security, the issue at hand. I didn't know the politics of all the people I worked for and it wasn't fact till I retired and some of them I would see on Facebook or something, I'd be like, oh my God, I didn't know. He was, you know, you know, sort of far to the left or far to the right, even though I worked day in and day out overseas.

And I knew this person really well and had dinners with him and their family. And so you. People inside have political views and people inside have differing views about the work they're doing. So, yes, it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing I think. And it's dicey. Uh, I, I do think, and we can talk about it.

I think there's a value to having, you know, former intelligence officials, leaders have some sort of public role because I think the American public needs to understand what the intelligence community does on its own behalf. But there's also a downside to that. Right. You know, I'm now out long enough and I have sort of, you know, some sort of.

Public persona on Twitter and these kind of places where you could probably understand what my politics are. You know, I think of myself as a radical centrist, but I also think that Donald Trump was a real danger to the country. I think he was anti-democratic. I think he didn't take national security seriously.

I think he was trying to do damage to our institutions and I believe our institutions are really, really important for us and they're guardrails and they're filled by professionals and they're, you know, they're, they're built on years and years of, of, of sort of legal and ethical boundaries that, that he doesn't seem to understand is, is going against.

So the. it is, there is sort of a view that if you're a former CIA or intelligence community, you're military person you're speaking and you're showing some sort of political bent, there's a danger that people then say, see, this person with this sort of political bent was in the CIA that shows me that the CIA was political.

And, and that's a, that's a tough thing. And, and sometimes those of us on the outside maybe do go too far. Uh, I know Michael Morrell, for example, uh, wrote an op-ed, you know, as Trump was running for president that was quite, you know, sort of negative about him. And after the fact, he said, you know, that Trump sort of used this for political purposes, say, see, the CIA is working against me.

You know, it's part of this deep state and, and Michael to his credit, as he looked at that afterwards said, you know, perhaps that was. Was wrong because I was writing it as a, as a retired American official based on sort of my experience, not as a CIA insider, but it was taken the wrong way by the public I gave sort of, I gave weaponization to people to, to make these claims against, you know, the CIA.

And this is, and that's obviously Michael Morda former deputy director and acting director, uh, of CI writing about Trump. But you have gotten wrapped up into this as well, with the, the 50, folks who signed the letter, uh, related to the hunter Biden laptop. And, and I, I, I know that you're a radical, uh, address.

We've talked about this before and, and, you know, I read that and I remember that era and I, I can totally understand the reason for it and what was happening there, but it's a perfect example, as you were just saying of, of what. Likely a tactical decision at the time. That's now being used as a strategic weapon, not just by, uh, Ron Paul.

And yeah, I just wonder, you know, even though you will scream at the rooftops that you're a radical centrist, mm-hmm, other folks are gonna put you into a left and they have in that right. Uh, and, and, you know, how do you deal with that, uh, in the face of your detractors who are louder than your supporters and not, get stuck in sort of a never ending argument carousel where you're not gonna win it, uh, real politicians and people like Ron Paul and others can maliciously take information and use it for direct political effects.

So they can take people like me and others who say something that they believe to be true based on, you know, years of experience and, and, and knowledge, and throw it into the same camp and suggest that there was political intent behind it. So, yes, I signed a letter. And to lead up to the election with, you know, 50 or so other former, uh, you know, senior intelligence officials, general Hayden, John Brennan, Mr.

Panetta, a whole series of others saying that we thought that the hunter Biden issue was being something that was being potentially promoted and pushed and exploited by Russian intelligence. And the reason I signed that is cuz I believed it not because I wanted to play a role, not because I was trying to, you know, hurt president Trump or was trying to, you know, support president Biden.

It was because I know very well what the Russians do now. They used to create false narratives and push him into our system for disinformation subversion. But nowadays what they can do is they can. Things that Americans are doing. They can take comments by American politicians and others, and they can exploit and amplify them to do damage to the United States.

Their goal is to create chaos and to create problems. And so, and this issue, for example, the fact that Rudy Giuliani was running around Ukraine over and over. Trying to talk to anybody who could to include Russian intelligence officers looking for damaging information for political purposes. This gave the Russians a weapon to use.

And therefore, I thought that that was something that was worthy of of saying now, of course what's happened is it's been twisted in the political space to say, we said that the laptop itself was a fake thing by the Russians. And it, it looks to like, that's not the case now. Of course that's not what the letter said, but the problem is we did, we waited into a poli, a political fight without this political skills and the willingness to say things for political purpose that are further a field.

And so. When we're dealing with the Jim Jordans and the Ron Pauls of the world who are willing to say anything or to lie or to, to twist what's happened, we're in sort of a difficult game. So you got a professional intelligence officers who, who I, I think I speak for all of 'em did it for legitimate purposes because they understand the threat from Russians, not trying to use it for domestic political purposes because of that.

We gave a weapon to people who are, you know, willing to use it for political purposes. And so that's, it's something we gotta sit back and say, Hey, you know, did we, despite good intentions and despite actual experience and knowledge, did we, you know, create problems for Americans under that can be manipulated for Americans, understand so that they think the CIA is political.

And that's a really good question. And, you know, perhaps it is something that, you know, if we'd look back on. maybe it wasn't worth doing. And, and it wasn't just the Trump people in the Ron Paul world, president Biden in the debate with Trump brought this up to try to, to support himself.

When in fact this was written as an anti Russia issue, Biden took it for political purposes. And therefore, of course, the Russia, the, excuse me, the Republicans then thought it was something that was fair game for them to do too. And so we waited into a political game, I think, with good intentions, but the, the fallout is something I don't think any of us are, are happy with.

So these are questions. If people like me and others, senior leaders who leave the organization are going to have a public role, we either have to openly face these things. We have to be better at, at communicating and explaining things. Or we have to just figure out where the boundaries are and, and try to avoid problems like this.

No, it's it strikes me as just incredibly. Tricky, uh, you know, it, it, it goes back to something I said earlier where, you know, I, I know in some cases firsthand, uh, and in almost all cases, secondhand everybody on that letter, almost everybody on that letter. And I remember just thinking, if you only going back again to, if you could only see them when they were in their jobs and how unbelievably careful they were with communications and messaging, and is this gonna cause that, or this, and we don't wanna be political, we won't avoid it at all costs.

If you saw how each one of those, even the most political among them did that behind the scenes, outside the limelight, you could couldn't but only realize that that's their intention, but this is the trick that we're in right now, even this podcast, you know, having you come on for episode one, we, we talked about it and, and you, you can't pick a radical centrist and actually have your first person be a radical centrist, cuz somebody out there, some element is going to.

Believe that they're not in the center. Yeah. They're in another direction. And so you just have to try and pick wisely and then expose as much as you can. The person's real thinking and hope that that's consumed in a way that's constructive. And then let folks know that we're gonna go all over the map on this.

We, you and I have talked about this before, where it's disappointing that we look at politics on a spectrum with a left and a right, because it would be much more helpful, you know, if it was buckets of, uh, principles or political ideas, and you could choose from one, depending on what you think on one topic and choose from another on another topic and then not be combined into the bigger bucket just by having selected a couple of really sharp ones.

Uh, yeah, but that, that's just not the era we live in. So we have to figure out how to have a more effective conversation. I think those of us who grew up in this world, Try to look at each case and give opinions that might be strong opinions on, on the specific things. So I wrote and pushed, you know, very heavily on sort of the Afghan pullout and the way that leaving Afghanistan was tremendously terrible, very embarrassing.

These people that in the Biden administration were very upset in there's. A lot of people on Twitter of the, of the sort of left were very upset that I was as critical as I, as I was, you know, I very critical of, you know, the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton in terms of how they dealt with Russia, you know, up through 2016, you know, we accommodated them, the Russian reset, you know, Lary, Putin, same person.

He was 10 years ago, you know, he's been in political warfare against the United States. He's been trying to do damage to the west, to the United States to do this, this aversion of sabotage against us and subsequent presidents, everybody from Clinton, Bush. Obama and even Trump didn't get it. Support pushed, gave Putin benefit of the doubt, gave him accommodations and led us to a place where Putin could make assumptions that we were weak and we wouldn't respond here.

And so I try to be fair and you understand that, and everybody understands that, but it's a game where politicians can pick one piece and use it sort of, you know, to weaponize it. And so you're gonna see it. I think if the, if the Republicans win the house, I think all of us are gonna be sitting down there on Capitol hill, getting queried and pushed and, and beat up over this issue of the hunter Biden laptop, which is, you know, not a place any of us wanna be yet.

I think, you know, I don't wanna speak for the others, but I don't give a damn about hunter Biden. I mean, he sounds like a horrible person. And if you know, he's done things that are unethical and illegal, he should be held accountable for them and arrested. I don't, I don't, that's not the issue. The issue was knowing what Russia is trying to do to hurt us.

And I think that's one of the damaging things. the Trump administration did. And the radical sort of tribal politics that we have now is such that we've created a situation where our domestic political opponents are the enemy. And so if in the Republican world, if the Democrats are the enemy working with Russia is certainly fine because the bigger threat enemy are internal Democrats.

And those of us who worked in national. We understand how just horrible and damaging that is Americans. Even with strong differences of opinion are all on the same team, are all Americans. We all want the best for our country. Even if we think there's different ways to accommodate it, but the Russians don't want the best for us.

They wanna hurt us. They wanna damage us. They're willing to use violence, assassination, sabotage, disinformation, lies, whatever it takes to, to hurt our country. And that's the space that we thought we were dealing in. But by doing that, we just handed up a silver platter to the politicians and what a and what an enormous risk.

Now we have made riskier and I feel I have bad news for you and for us here on this podcast team, in that I think it's just a really, really bad time to be a radical centrist. We just live in an era, unfortunately, where it seems there are only two recognized teams, you know, the red team and the blue team.

And if you sign up to the red team, you're agreeing to all of the principles and ideas. Are ascribed to the red team and you have only one enemy and that's the blue team and vice versa. You're on the blue team. You are signing up for all of their ideas and cheering for all of their ideas, no matter which you actually believe in and don't, and your enemy is the red team.

And so if you're a centrist or even a radical centrist, one, that idea is not recognized by eyes of the red team or the blue team. So they're going to choose a team for you. And if you really are doing your job well as a radical centrist, both teams, both teams are gonna try to put you on the other team because you're not wholly subscribed to their ideas.

And this is just a, a really a painful feature of our politics right now. And one of the things we wanted to do here as a team is identify another term modernism to help us do some work here. In addition to it being somewhat difficult to say, you know, it's a word that doesn't have, uh, A whole lot of meaning in American political lexicon.

And so we can put some meaning onto it, but it's not that different than radical Centris. This is just, you know, this is what your, your mother or your grandmother, you know, always said all things in moderation. And that just holds true in so many facets of life, but, but also in politics. And there's great reason for that.

You know, you can't agree on something the further you are from the thing with which you are trying to agree upon. And that's just bad for our country and bad for the world. And our adversaries love this, right? The more that they can separate us to the point where we cannot agree, the more advantage they have.

And so their plan to an effect is working because now they don't even have to really execute any effort on their own. We're doing this to ourselves. And so how do we get outta that? And then, you know, when, when you don't have a team, if you're. Radical center category. There's no grouping of teammates that you can rally around and, and defend yourselves.

You just sort of exist there. And if you'd like to have this system whereby you can choose your political ideas or your political positions, a LA carte and weigh each of those positions on its merit. Well, you'll find yourself without any allies quickly. And that just strikes me as a, as a dangerous place to be.

And so, as we move ahead in this hyper politicized environment, how do you think about trying to hold to this moderate position? When really no one else is gonna believe you, and there's no one there to defend you and attackers seem to be coming from all sides. One of the things I did when I left, I left CIA.

Loving the job, loving the place, wanting to be supportive, wanting to be helpful. I didn't leave disgruntled. I had a good career. Um, I sort of waited into sort of having an, you know, a public face. I didn't do it openly. I didn't try to jump into this space. I didn't say, as I was leaving the organization, what I wanna do was I wanna be on TV.

I wanna write things. You know, I sort of started, you know, doing, working with another job and it was sort of a series of circumstances that led to me to where I am today. But what's really important to me is to maintain credibility with people I knew inside and that people I respect who are, you know, former national security officials there, there's a, there are a number of former military officers, former intelligence officers who decided to go with one tribe or another to sort of make it clear that I'm part of the red team or part of the blue team.

What I wanted to do at the end of the day is, is have enough. Even for people who aren't comfortable with intelligence officers having a public role, I wanted them to at least say, okay, at the end of the day, I'm not a hundred percent comfortable with him or others out there, but the issue he's talking about, the issue he's writing about, you know, he's providing a common sense.

Look, he's providing, you know, experienced and knowledgeable look at what's going on. So to me, credibility with people on the inside is really important. And it's really kind of weird because if my goal is, is to increase my public face is to create some sort of brand that either brings me, you know, wider knowledge base of people who know me or some sort of money for doing stuff.

I might do it differently, but I really care about how people still think of me inside, which is weird because nobody in the public area knows who those people are or, or cares. But to me, I remember being inside and seeing. People outside speaking sometimes. And they would be saying stuff that was just crazy.

And I, and I lost respect for them. And to me, it was important to maintain that respect. Now, I don't know if I've been able to, to, to, to fill that and do it properly. But to me that mattered, no, I, I'm definitely afraid of the same, uh, myself. I, I, I'm constantly thinking about how will I let my previous colleagues who I still think of as my current colleagues.

Yeah, right down by doing this, I hopefully had, uh, a handful of folks that really respected the work that I did and, and how I did it. And it would be heartbreaking to me to learn that by doing something out here, I've somehow changed that, uh, idea about who I am and, and what I stand for now, I'm gonna do it anyways, because I think it's more important than any of the other things that I've done, having these conversations and talking about the things we're talking about right now, and I'm fearful.

That the experience that you had with the hunter Biden laptop and Ron Paul coming after you now. And some of the points he makes are actually quasi Valli, and you raised some of them yourselves where, you know, he says that was a gift to the left leaning news outlets, who just reframed that letter as proof of a thing that you all were trying to say was not actually proof, but we should be concerned about, well, the Russian intelligence and security apparatus is gonna come at us again is already coming at us again.

And what happens if folks like yourselves don't feel empowered or feel there's too much risk now in going out there and raising the flag again and saying, Hey everybody, look, this could be Russia. What they're tending to do is run secret operations. We can't always know when it is Russia, but we need to be able to raise the flag and say, this might be Russia.

This is an insidious playbook that they're using. We will not use it, but we need to know when they're using it because we've gotta adjust our approach. And what happens if that just becomes a hazardous space to talk in at all? Well, we lose for sure. And so we have to talk in that space. There's just no way to avoid it.

And we have to be able to interact with other people with whom we disagree in order to not defeat ourselves with Russia, having to do very little, it's a daunting experiment to be a part of. But, but here we are. Yeah. And, and I, you know, to a certain extent, yeah, I'm not gonna change who I am and you know, for you, for example, every year you're out.

And as you, as you get more comfortable with yourself and what you're doing, and, and I know what my intent is, and therefore, you know, I've gotta be very careful when I write things or speak that I try to, to build the basis to show why I'm doing what I'm saying, I'm doing. So there's a clear pattern.

There's a clear information out there for people who wanna understand now, will that be used? Will it be taken against me or the CIA sometimes? Yeah. I think that's just sort of the, the price of doing business. I remember we had a, um, you know, how the Russians would use this kind of thing inside against us.

So one of the things that Russians do, like I said, in Moscow, they're following us, they're tracking us, they're doing things. Our officers are trying to do their best under very, very difficult circumstances to meet and, and create new sources. And so one of the things that Russians can do is, is a Russian with information on something that the us needs information.

They can't get this information any other way. Therefore intelligence service needs to be in a place to try to collect this. The Russians know that that's something they can weaponize. And so oftentimes they would do what we call double agents. They would try to run people against us. They would give us somebody that one of our officers could meet, looks like in a natural way who looked like it might be a good source to allow our officer to meet that person.

And then they could either. run that person in a false way so that we thought we had a real source and we didn't, or they could use to, to weaponize it against it and sort of wrap up or arrest one of our officers meeting at Russian. And that happened once in the early two thousands, where an incredible opportunity came up to one of our officers in Moscow.

They continued to meet this person and then were in a political over the top way. They were an arrest with cameras and the American was thrown out of the country. And I can remember, we went up to, to brief George tenant. Who's a director of CIA on this issue and saying, Hey, listen, you know, this is unfortunate.

There's this, you know, Americans being arrested and kicking out of the country, you know, it's gonna be in the American papers. It's gonna be this issue. Russia's gonna use it against us thing. We're doing these kind of things. But it was our view that we had to take this opportunity because if we self-selected and said, oh, this person with important information, let's just, there's there's risks there.

Let's just not do it. that's a problem, too. If, if this, if your intelligence service is afraid to take risks, to collect information, the other side wins, the American intelligence service needs to be able to take prudent risks, to get the job done. We can't be afraid to act. And that's sort of how I see what's happening here now is yeah, that's unfortunate.

I didn't wanna be in a place where people are coming at me for political stuff when I didn't mean to be political, but Hey, it's the price of doing business. If we think a bit about worldviews in, in Russia, you know, if one's worldview is correct, then that person really shouldn't be surprised by anything that Russia does, right?

They, they should be calibrated such that they can anticipate and predict what Putin's Russia is going to do. But if we look at the United States, as a whole. And as though the United States has a worldview, it seems that the United States is, is constantly as a body surprised. And I just wondered from your purchase a long time, Russia watcher and, and understanding what your thoughts have been over these last years on Russia.

What, what has surprised you and, and what do you think we, the United States gets wrong in our approach to this problem and our understanding of either Russia's intentions as a country or, or Putin intentions as a person and, and how he's running that country. I, I think people who worked on Russia for a long time are not surprised by any of it.

In fact, that's part of my, my complaint about a series of administrations is that it was clear that that Glen Ru Putin wanted to do his harm and was engaged in a war against us, whether we. treated it as such or not. And I think some of it is the us political structure was very focused on terrorism. And there was an assumption by Americans that we and the Russians were sort of in the same space on terrorism.

Those of us who worked on Russia understood that Russia would use that against us. And it's not true in Putin's mind. It's a cold world. The tougher guy has to win. You know, you never, you never give up, you never show weakness. Um, it, it's sort of the, it's not the American way of doing business. And so I think, you know, there's something about just our political culture that we're never, you know, able to sort of take that tough stand early enough.

And I, if there's one good thing about the Ukraine invasion is that it takes the blinders off. There's been people all the way along saying no, no, no, no. Don't you see what's happening. but the American sort of political class and Americans in general see them as, and that some of this is through effective Russian, uh, propaganda disinformation.

So there's, there's a, a ton of Americans who see the Russians as, Hey, these are Europeans, they're white. They're very similar to our conservatives. They don't like immigration. They don't like foreigners. They don't like gays. They, they cleverly had this woman, Maria Bott over here working with the NRA, sort of creating this view among sort of people in the NRA and right wing world that, Hey Russians, you know, see, they, you know, they have the same culture, they have a gun culture.

They're, you know, they're, they're very religious and, and put, and those guys sort of knew how to push that and promote that in a, in a certain space. And I think at least the Ukraine invasion now has us realizing like, okay, that's he is who he is. He's not gonna change. We have to move back into what we did in the cold war days of.

either containing them or deterring or defending. It's not, it's not just, Hey, let's just hope for the best. And it'll come around. I, I wanted to ask you sort of a, I got you social, uh, media question. Now that you're an expert in it. What do, what does Don Johnson? Chuck Norris and Katie Holmes have in common.

Who's Katie Holmes. I don't know who Katie homes. That's a perfect example. So she was married. This is probably not where you're supposed. She's an act. She's an actress. Um, she was, I think, best known for being married to Tom cruise. Uh, this might be where I first take my backlash on social media. I'm not sure that that's how she would wish to be described, but that's how I think of her.

So all. So Chuck Norris, Don Johnson, but you knew who Don Johnson was. So we're gonna split the middle on that one. Some he, yeah. they all have fewer Twitter followers than you do. how did you you're right. That is right. We spent some time doing the research here. um, I'm not so sure that Chuck Norris is responsible for his Twitter account, but, um, he, he has fewer than you.

Uh, Don Johnson definitely does. And, and, uh, Katie Holmes relatively new, uh, to Twitter and she doesn't seem to be exploiting it like many celebrities would, but yeah. How, how did this happen? Like how did you get, uh, a quarter of a million Twitter followers? Did it just happen? Was it one particular, two particular things?

And all of a sudden you woke up the next morning, like, oh my gosh, I have 10,000 more followers than I did yesterday or, yeah, it's it. Wasn't intentional. It's still is not intentional. Yeah. It's odd. So I, I'm still fairly new. I've been at like three years, I guess again, I came outta the agency. S like every other sort of senior person didn't really do Facebook didn't do social media was probably a little hung front.

There's too much of that. And, uh, you know, slowly I'd used Facebook to get in touch with, be in touch with sort of old high school friends. And those type of things didn't understand Twitter. Didn't get why anybody would care about little small snippets of stuff. And, uh, so I started, I got on and then I would use it to sort of just follow the New York times and places that were providing information, you know, Russia, people who spoke about Russia or other issues that I cared about.

It was sort of a place where I could use to sort of collect information and, and sort of keep up on. News things or smart writers that I, that I liked. And I don't know. I think just because it was a cuz I worked for CIA, there was some just sort of general interest there. And some people would try to, you know, early on what are some books that are interesting, those type of things.

And I would respond early on, there was a guy ethnic Iranian American journalist who sort of early on sort of picked up and said, Hey, you know, this is you're doing, this is really interesting. I think there's an interest in what you're doing. He sort of promoted me and said, Hey, you should follow this guy.

So it went from, you know, 600 followers or whatever it was to, you know, 2000 followers. And I guess my commentary over time has sort of built up slowly. So there's never been a big jump. It's sort of been this constant sort of slow rise of, of followers. And I don't know whether it's because you know, sometimes on certain issues, I'm snarky.

I put my own writings in there sometimes and they get. followers are not. Yeah, it's, it's an odd thing. It's not a totally comfortable place, uh, would be, it'd be interesting to see if we could go and, and find out how many, uh, Russian security officers , uh, are following right now. Wouldn't be a fun experiment, but no, this is just a fascinating, and it is interesting.

I, you know, sometimes I get, you know, I was sort of very anti-Trump and, and was pushing things and wrote a lot of articles about Russia and Trump stuff that, so they get a lot of sort of pushback from people sort on the far. Right. But oftentimes the nastiest and hardest of is people on the far left on certain issues.

You should brandish your taking, uh, arrows from both sides as you're your, the, the symbol that you are a centrist where I think there's no, I say all the time there. You know, you've arrived to the moderate position when the far left and far right. Are attacking you equally. Um, that should be the goal. It doesn't feel good though.

No, I think you also then have to master ignoring most of that too, which is, is humans we're not designed for. It's why Twitter is so addictive. Right? We, we wanna see what gets said after we say our thing. One of the things I remember over my career and actually was fortunate enough that people had told me to watch out for this were these really spectacular, uh, days in CIA.

You know, obviously you, you hit on the fact that it's like 95% writing and that's one of the things I think most people don't expect when they get in there. You have to be a very good writer, uh, or very good at other things. If you're not good at writing and you have to. Comfortable knowing that, you know, 95% of your time is going to be not dull, but, but not action packed.

However, when the, the fun stuff comes, in my opinion, at least it always makes up for, uh, the doldrums. And I remember thinking many times throughout my career on just single days, not necessarily big operations that came to conclusion well, had some of those very luckily and, and that's awesome. But every once in a while, I'd have one of these days that I call, uh, oh, this is a very CIA day , uh, and it would be one of those things where like, that's what you expected to do every day.

And in fact, you get maybe two a year. Uh, my, the example that came to my mind this morning was we were in a, in a middle Eastern country in, out on one of the Auste borders, uh, of that country, you know, not, not unsafe, but not safe. Uh, certainly some indirect fire from time to time and, and an unsecured border with a very unsafe place.

And, you know, we're dusty and, and we're, you know, in one of those places where you don't have all of the, the niceties of some of the war zones, And we'd finished up there, you know, and we've got our, our kit and, uh, the, the local country had sent a flight to pick us up and we get on that airplane and it's a Gulf stream, G six decked out bedroom, shower, gold plated, everything we get on this chartered plane.

And it's got a full staff of people, you know, dressed like they're picking up a king or a president or a prime minister. And here we are dusty and Bera. Uh, and they serve us sushi as we get on the plane. and then we ride that plane for two hours. I played a little bit of chess that I carried around in my backpack for years and years with a friend, just so we could say that we played it on this plane.

And I remember landing and thinking like, okay, this is a very CIA day. Uh, not, not a, a great war story, but just one of those days where like you ended that day. Like, I, I did what I expected to do every day, only today. And maybe I'll do it again in six months.

On the day on the morning when there was a bombing of the, the Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotel. So there was a major terrorist attack and I wasn't even on the computer system as you know, and the best I walked in now I'm in charge of this large group of people, all looking at me like, what do we do? You know, how do we respond to this?

I wasn't, you know, I was brand new first day. Kids are in the, in the house and we don't even have the TV hooked up or anything. And just trying to, to deal and do the boss at this point. Right. There's no one above you. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just, you know, it was, it, it just felt like that expeditionary thing is like, Hey, here's a big thing we're supposed to take action.

Let's figure this out together. Uh, and that was interesting and fun, fun. Um, you just, you just hit a very, um, interesting point that I wanna put a all right, a quick topic, because you, you said fun. That was a lot of fun and that only CIA people or military people would understand this. I arrived to a country where bomb had gone off.

Uh, and, but you. You hit it. Like, these are the things where like we joined these organizations to handle those problems. And the, you know, the problem itself obviously is tragic and all that went around with it, but handling it and doing it well, that is actually fun. And, and is kind of confusing. Well, it's fun because you wanna have an impact.

You join the government, not to make money, not to be cuz you know, for lifestyle purposes, because you want to, you wanna matter, you wanna deal with the issues today. You want to have impact. And so, especially with CIA, you. Be in places that matter. You wanna, you know, report back things. I remember being in Yugoslavia as in Yugoslavia, during sort of the protests against Melos VI.

I was there when later on when the prime minister was shot and having tried to deal with these kind of issues I was involved with heavily with the FBI and the Connor espionage investigation of Robert Hanson, the FBI special agent. And I was able to actually, because we had had a source that led us to figure out he was the spy working with the FBI.

I was with a small group of people who were able to sort of be on the street and block away when he was arrested. I think that was fascinating that, um, one of my, sort of funny stories off tell sort of other folks is, um, I'm working with, we had a, uh, Russian source, um, who sadly, this Robert Hanson, the FBI officer was able to give up to the Russians.

And so the FBI mishandled. Their correspondence inside the FBI. They had information that was supposed to be protected. And compartmented it. Wasn't about an F a CIA overseas source and Moscow, Robert Hanson was able to get access to that. And because he was spying for the Russians, passed it onto the Russians.

And so we had to go immediately and, and tell this source that he had to defect. He had to leave the place that he was his, he was spying for the Americans for a number of years, his family and wife didn't know. And we had to say to him, you're leaving tonight. The Russians may be on you. You need to, if you want to convince your wife or your family to come.

You can't do it in your house, cuz the Russians may have bugged your house by now, but we're, you know, you need to leave tonight. You can never go back to Russia. And to his credit, he was able to get his family to come. We were able to fly him to the United States and then take care of him. He was an incredible source.

He helped us uncover Robert Hansen and others. But the, the British, when they found out that this source had come out, had had said, Hey, you know, this is, this is really important. We'd be, we'd really like to talk to this source and this, you know, he's now as a Def defector. And I can remember meeting with, with the, the Russian, when he had moved here and we'd taken care of him.

And he got, luckily gave a big house and, and he's a Russian. So he likes, you know, talking about and drinking alcohol. And so I was sitting with him having a, some scotch and said, Hey, listen, the, the British would like to speak to you about some of your experience and your perhaps knowledge about, you know, what the Russians are doing against the British and other kinds of things.

And he was a little bit, I don't know, I'm a little nervous. And I said, Hey, listen, you know, you're in charge here. You can. You can tell them the means by which you wanna speak to them or, or not. You can tell 'em you wanna travel there? You could tell 'em you wanna go visit scotch? Just I said, just as an off we're drinking scotch, you can go tell 'em you wanna go visit the scotch distilleries in Scotland.

He goes, really? I said, you can tell 'em whatever you want. he goes, yeah, tell him that's what I wanted. Do. Good idea, John. So, so you, so we went to the British and they were like, of course. And so we got paid for her Majesty's government flew us over first class. We get dinners in London with. Russian and a couple of us and who travel up to Scotland and stayed in small bed and breakfast.

And, you know, her manages government paid for us to have every kind of possible scotch on these walls of hundreds of bottles of so that they could speak to this, this Russian source. So it was a, it was a, a fun way to like, oh, take advantage of, of a situation. You know, I remember. And then one of the things that was most enjoyable is in a place like Moscow, that was so oppressive that, like I said, my house was bugged with audio, with video, I was followed and this is not hyperbole 24 hours a day.

If I left my house at three in the morning, cuz the dog had to go to the bathroom outside or something. I had surveillance people there for my entire tour. They followed everywhere at all times. Everybody I talked to was interviewed. They went behind and, you know, places, we went thinking that we might be putting down packages or meet people.

You couldn't. I was single then, and you couldn't have a date without Russian surveillance guys sitting, staring at you at a, either a restaurant or where, where you were. It was a, an impressive place so that when we were able to take those incredible steps to prepare, to meet a source in a place like that, that was, you know, counterintelligence wise, as oppressive as possible.

Everything was being used to stop us doing our business those times when you were on the street, working through fields and alleys and hidden, and maybe in, in disguise to make a meeting, it felt so. refreshing and open. Cuz I realized I was wandering around this historic city, this place and they didn't know where I was.

They didn't know I was here. They didn't know we were meeting sources here. It just felt like invigorating, knowing that you're beating them, this, these people who are putting every national resource and the stopping you doing what you do and you're still beating them. It was just, it was just, it was a fantastic feeling.

One of the things I think that really shows the human side of, of folks like us in this business is to talk about an extraordinarily, uh, fearful moment that we encountered and then, you know, showed resiliency in the face of a fear and it need not be a, a personal risk fear. I mean, obviously mm-hmm, you get those in, in CI and, and, and you know, when we talk to folks who've gone to combat, they, they have some really interesting ones, but sometimes our, our fears in CI are not personal risks.

They could be risks as you just sort of outlined to an asset that we care, uh, a great deal about. I know I've gotta. Uh, a close friend who's one of his greatest fears was he was in a tough spot and, and was getting challenged, uh, and had compromising, uh, material on him. And his only thought he said was how scared he was for that person.

Cuz of course our officer, you know, at worst, most of the time at worst is just gonna get kicked outta the country. But the asset is, you know, at risk of spending the rest of their lives in jail or, or very often getting killed. And he was extremely fearful of this and he said, I just need to get him to safety thinking the things he had on, on his person.

I always found that as a, a really telling story. So yeah. I don't know if one comes to mind for you there. Uh, but I it's illuminating. I think of this profession to, to think of those. I think, you know, sometimes when people meet us, they work for CIA. Americans will say, oh thank you for what you did. You guys are heroes.

This. I think those of us who worked in the agency understand there are real heroes, but there really are sources. There's foreigners overseas that are working to benefit to save American lives, to help American policy, to help us uncover the bad actions of, of, you know, foreign, dictators and other kind of things whose lives are at risk.

Their families are at risk. They're doing. For us, those guys are real heroes. And, and as you understand, our solemn duty is to protect those people totally as best we can. So my story is similar to the one you told of your friend, every time in a place like Russia, or a counter intelligence environment, where you are going to meet a source, you understand that the, the greatest danger for that person is when you're face to face with them.

Anybody who sees that can report that can look at who that person is, follow that person, figure out who that source is. And unlike in the United States where they might look at that, they might try to come up, build a sort of, uh, judicial case against them to see if they're bad in, in a place like Russia in a place like SLA in a place number of.

Other countries that I've been in, they would know immediately. That was a, was a source who's committing TN against the country and would be killed or the family would be, would be taken. So to me, w we go through a thing, oftentimes we call like, you know, counter a counter surveillance detection run. So if you're going to meet a source, you have to be a hundred percent, right?

All the time. You have to know that the security services who are tracking you do not see that meeting. And one means of doing that is operating on the street in a way that you can be aware if you're being followed, if you're being tracked. And it's something we can talk about. It's harder now cuz of cameras and other kinds of things.

And so you might go through three hours, four hours there's times that I've done multiple. Surveillance detection runs to make sure that at the end of the day, when I go to meet that source, I am confident, not just a little confident, but a hundred percent confident that nobody is following and nobody is tracking me.

This meeting is gonna be completely hidden in secret. It's not, it's not just covered. It's not my using my cover to meet someone and hoping that people don't understand it's being totally hidden. And I don't think people understand the fear of those last minutes as you're about to meet that person. So I've gone, I've done all these things.

I've hidden in bushes. I've, you know, tried to track, I've actually followed people on the streets that I thought might be surveil me to see if they were doing these kind of things. And you do all those things to, to protect and be sure that you're going to meet that person securely. But those last couple minutes, you're like, did I do everything?

Could I be? Because you're seeing people moving around, you're seeing cars, you might be in a, in a sort of semi-public place in an alley. And, and you're like, oh my God, You know, if, if I'm wrong in this source, who's doing all of this on behalf of the United States, government is caught and arrested. It's my fault, because maybe part of the way through this, I was daydreaming about something I had to do that night or a fight I had with my wife earlier or something.

There's a real fear that like, oh my God, it's there's, nobody else can be blamed here. This is on me a hundred percent. So if this person is, is not safe and we don't get this intelligence or that person's, you know, life is, is snuffed out. It's it's my fault. And did I do everything and, and that pressure on you to protect and save someone else's life is, is something that creates a real sense of tension and fear.

And so that, those are the things that come to me. When you talk about being fear, there's a number of situations that were like little dicey that were being in places that were dicey and scary. You know, you remember being in P shower, walking around thinking, oh my God, you know, I don't know what the heck's going on here.

This is sort of dangerous. And, um, but those are the ones that really matter. It's our sources. And if there's anything I want people. You know, listen to these, this podcast is, is it's all about the sources and keeping them safe. And the things that you're talking about now in terms of changing and changing technology, it's all for the same purpose.

It's finding ways to get intelligence that this government, this country needs to, to be safe and there might be new and different ways to do that, but it all is about finding those sources, recruiting those sources and protecting those sources and protecting them is our, is our duty. So John, before we, uh, close up here, I just wanted to hear a little bit about what you're doing now and, and you know, how you're finding your, your life outside after eight years in the public life?

Well, my, my main work now is I have a company called spycraft entertainment, which is meant to be sort of a, a, a movie and television sort of production company. And it started in sort of an odd way. Um, I was doing some writing on, on Russia. You know, around the, the beginning of sort of the Trump running for office.

And I was home one day and I get this phone call outta the blue and I'm sitting in my living room and, and the person says this, John Seifer said, yeah. So this is Rob Reiner. And I'm like, Rob Reiner, like that's from my generation, he was in hall in the family and he made all movies is important. I'm like, yeah, what can I do for you?

And he said, well, you know, I'm really upset about all this stuff that Russia is doing and how the Trump administration was early years, even, maybe even before Trump was elected, uh, what they're doing. And I would like to do a video of you and general Michael Hayden talking about the threat from Russia and what's happening here.

And I was like, yeah, of course that'd be really fun, fast forward a year or two later. And, and I was sitting with a number of, of CIA friends and someone who were retiring and, and buddies, and we were at a bar drinking and, and. I started bragging about that. I knew Rob Reiner and had been out to dinner at his house and, and met Larry Dave and all these Barbara stre and all these kind of people we started talking and said, you know, Hey, it's really interesting that, that, you know, there's some agency people who've been consultants on TV shows and they've done these kind of things, but there's nobody who's actually like tried to take the variety of stories and work sort of at, in a functional way with Hollywood to be sort of the place where Hollywood knows to come for ESP Espina stories and people who've left, the Espina business could come to.

And so we actually created a, a, a small company to try to do just that. And, and in the early years we were looking to maybe to do some sort of, uh, like a reality show, like a Anthony Bourdain, travel the world and do food. We would travel the world and tell old spy stories. Secrets, but you know, things that have been in books and out there before, and, but sort of make a reality to 'em as you walk around Vienna and stop in the pubs and bars and coffee shops, and talk about what happened here over the years.

And as we were out in Hollywood, we were talking to a number of people out there, and some of 'em said, Hey, that's, that's great. And you should pursue that. But there's a whole world of, of writers and producers here that would love to just work with you on content to build stories, scripted stories, to either movies or series.

And so I, uh, a colleague of mine, Jerry Oche, who is a very senior officer in the, in the agency, worked in counter intelligence. So he and I started this, this company. And that's our goal is to build a brand telling really good stories. Uh, so that Hollywood knows where to come to for ESP, our stories and people here who have books, ideas.

So we've optioned, a number of books telling old spy stories. We've told some of our own stories. All of them are cleared through CIA to make sure they. Sensitive or classified in any way. Um, and we have a number of things going with, with Netflix and senior actors and writers and, and we're having really good fun doing it.

It's it? It, so that's what I do. So those are the kind of things I'm doing to keep myself sort of busy, but a lot of walking of dogs and stuff like that, mostly. Great. Well, it sounds like you're doing it right. And it's an interesting story to follow we'll. We'll point folks, both to this by craft website and, uh, your Twitter handle and the show notes.

We're gonna measure the success of this podcast by how many additional Twitter followers, uh, you have after positive or negative Twitter followers. Do you want? Oh, I, I didn't even think about measuring the negative. We only measure success here, so failures will not be measured all. Um, but we'll, we'll see how it goes in.

You're at, at John cipher on Twitter. It's John underscore cipher John under John under. Okay. Somebody else got John cipher before you got. yeah, I don't even, yeah, I was, I was a newbie to this whole thing. And so I think there was a thing said you should do it like this. There was an NOCR . Yeah. Okay. Well it works, uh, whatever, and it's fun to follow.

So we'll we'll point people that direction. Thanks. Well, John, thank you so much, uh, for honoring us, uh, as episode number one, and, and for having such a, a Frank conversation, I, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I, I think we hit on so many of the points that I think, uh, our, our early listeners will wanna hear from someone of your stature and, and career.

Listen, I'm old guy sitting at home trying to make movies and try not to wake up too early and walk in the dogs and stuff. So it's fun to sort of come back and talk about these kind of issues, but, uh, it's your generation that's gonna solve 'em for us. Well, thank you very much. We'll we'll do the best we can.

All right. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with John cipher. Future podcasts will drop about every other week. And the next few will include a special operations commander, a former New York times, cyber journalist and author, and a special agent with a long career. And the FBI. Once again, if you enjoyed this or you enjoy anything at all about the work that we're doing, please rate this podcast and apple podcast or Spotify and help us get this idea off the ground.

Thank you. And good.