Dave Marlowe—Case Officer, Leader, Boat Builder, and Deputy Director of CIA for Operations 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).

All Episodes

UnderSimplified

Dave Marlowe—Case Officer, Leader, Boat Builder, and Deputy Director of CIA for Operations

November 09, 2023 • Aaron Brown • Season 1 • Episode 6

Episode six is with former CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) Dave Marlowe. At the time of this recording, Dave had just given up the DDO reins and was preparing to retire after 32 years at CIA. During his career, which began in the Army during the Cold War, Dave served in some of CIA's most important roles including as the CIA Assistant Director for the Near East Mission Center, Chief of Station Kabul, Chief of one of CIA's largest Stations in Europe, and across positions in the Counterterrorism Center. We spoke about the future of human intelligence (HUMINT), leadership, bureaucracies, and the culture at CIA.

UnderSimplified Home: https://www.undersimplified.org/
UnderSimplified Music by: Arethusa Strings
Exclusive Sponsor 2430 Group: 2430Group.org

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

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

UnderSimplified Home: https://www.undersimplified.org/
UnderSimplified on Twitter: @undersimplified
UnderSimplified on Instagram: undersimplified_podcast

Aaron: Deputy Director Dave Marlowe, welcome to the Under Simplified Podcast.

Dave: Well, thanks. It's good to be here. I'm not deputy director. I'm former deputy director for operations.

Aaron: This is as I know. And, and as I was telling you a bit before we got started we realized we don't really do titles in the c i a the way that lots of other places do. We would've called you chief, at least throughout the entire duration of my career.

You were a, a senior officer and, and we, and we think of you as chief and, and it's just not a place that looks like a lot of the government. I'll have given you an intro, the listeners will hear what I think the Deputy Director of operations or the d o is in the C I A, but you actually served as the D D O, you just gave up the reins to that job very recently.

You're still in the C I A and you're facing down impending retirement very soon here. And you've spent, I think, 32 years in the agency, which is almost half the agency's existence, which is an [00:01:00] interesting way to think about it. So yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you think of that position, how you would define it to the, to the uninitiated

Dave: thanks Aaron for inviting me here for this. The point about being deputy director, I. Is illustrative of the character, the director of operations. , and it's part of the culture that attracted me in the first place. So the director of operations traces lineage back to the, to the O S S which was a very flat, informal organization.

And so the O SS S was

Aaron: the Office of Strategic

Dave: Services? That's correct. World War ii. Yes. And sorry, I used an acronym already. That's

Aaron: okay. That's what we're here for.

Dave: In, in the informality that comes with, it allows for a conversation and dissent and, and creativity. And it's something that we actively cultivate.

Or I should say I, I actively help cultivate when I was Deputy Director for operations. If you have an organization where there's, is hierarchical and everyone called Sir or ma'am or called by their title, it's,[00:02:00] potentially stifling , and kind of the open informality of, of the c i A. You don't know what somebody's pay grade is.

You know, what they can deliver and you know where they fit as part of the team. That's, that's not entirely true, but it's something that, that we actively work at. What was your question? So

Aaron: the No, you, you hit that topic. I think right on the head and, and that's what I was thinking about, but also the, the position of D D O.

Is, is a storied and, and long on history position and many famous CI officers served in it. And, and for those who, aren't aware of how the agency's organizational chart works, , they don't quite understand, most people don't quite understand where the D D O fits, but , the person in, in the DDO slot is the chief of all human intelligence operations in the United States, not just in the CCIA a but across the entire intelligence community.

And it puts you in a position to have to lead something that you don't necessarily have full [00:03:00] authority over all the time. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't necessarily understand about the position. Yeah,

Dave: your point about it being a story position, I was very much conscious of the, the long line of folks who, who occupied that chair before me and some historical figures.

And I, I've been fortunate to have a couple of jobs like that where you can look back and think about decisions that were made in that office that, that were of tremendous import I had a, a couple of functions as, as D D o one was managing the operational workforce ensuring that they were prepared Properly trained, properly distributed across challenges and all that sort of thing, that lessons were being learned and absorbed , and integrated , into ongoing operations and that sort of thing.

There is a not entirely ceremonial function of being the, the leading character for human intelligence across the US government. And then there's the, [00:04:00] there's the, the role of being a confidant to the director and the deputy director. If anybody in the US government must absolutely be a cold-blooded pragmatist.

It's the deputy director for operations, the person who's unaffected by politics and willing to say, you know, this is how it is when, when other folks are, have some kind of impediment to that. And then I guess the thing that I, that I enjoyed embracing was seeing myself as sort of the spiritual leader of the clandestine service.

The person who's who, whose role it is to remind people why we're here, to encourage people to do it, to ask people to strive towards that elite level of performance that, that the, the role deserves, frankly. If we're being asked to do something with a special set of authorities and do so in a way that is.

Is discreet clandestine. [00:05:00] Then it, it requires a, a real commitment to excellence. And you don't get high performance without high maintenance. And, and an an elite organization has to be conscious of it and strive towards it every single day. And I, I saw that as part of my role.

Aaron: We, we get a lot of sports teams metaphors across this table, and we talk about high performers and, and high maintenance individuals, and I definitely think we'd like to get into that. But you, you mentioned lineage and, and history and, and how much we look back to that and you know, the Office of Strategic Services that the precursor to the ccia a that, that ran sabotage operations and forgery operations and many of the behind the enemy lines operations in World War ii and, and in some cases even before.

And that's where the C I A got its start. But I think we would love to hear, you know, as you're finishing out your, your long career at C I a and, and this is an interesting opportunity because again, you're still inside ccia A, you're no longer undercover. Though the d o position is often a, a covered position, and so not often does that [00:06:00] person get to speak on a podcast e even having just given up the reins.

So this is a unique opportunity for us. But I would love to hear how you, as you're, you're settling into the retirement phase and I'm sure looking back and giving time to reflect how you view. Your career starting all the way back in the military because you, you've gotten to experience and participate in so much of the world's history for the last more than 30 years if you include your military time in a way that most people only observed.

And I think it would be just amazing to hear how you think about that arc of history starting with, you know, your, your, your first day in the US military and just thinking about how the Cold War was still going on at that time, and you watched the wall fall, you joined c i A and then watched us go almost full circle back around to where we started in some ways.

So I'd love to kick it over to you and just listen to how you, how you think about that.

Dave: Well, I, I, you're, you're right. I have been fortunate and my, my timing has been pretty good sort of in series. . So [00:07:00] I, I joined the Army in 1985.

I was conscious at the time that I was in, in the Cold War. My dad was in the Cold War in the Navy in the 1950s. And, and I think that's a, a thing that younger folks aren't conscious of today. The fact that we had a decades, decades long at least competition with a another major power that was, , menacing to our way of life.

I served in the, in the Gulf War as well, in, in 19 90, 91. So I, I, I joined the Army and I, I learned Arabic and I was a tactical operator. I had asked for Chinese when I, when I went to language school, and they gave me Arabic, and I thought, well, I just want something hard and that'll work. At the time, I don't think anybody anticipated the, the, the conflict that we've seen in the past couple of decades in the Middle East, and the

Aaron: tactical cient operator in this case would be a signals intelligence,

Dave: signals intelligence guy carrying a hundred pounds of radios and enormous batteries.

I'm sure they've gotten lighter now, but [00:08:00] in either carried in a ruck sack or in a vehicle or whatever. But collecting, collecting adversary, radio communications and trying to figure out what they were revealing by their lapses in security. Got it. So, so I came to the agency right after the Gulf War and already speaking Arabic and, and getting some, some further training in Arabic and obviously training in, in espionage.

And I went to, to serve in the Middle East. And because of the, the decision made by some personnel clerk in the army in 1985, I was well positioned to, to get sort of professional development early in my career and then be in place. To be involved in some, some key things that happened over the next couple of decades.

So I was, I was very active in counter-terrorism operations in from the late nineties through the, you know, the following couple decades. I served in every place that you can think of in the Middle East. And I was at the right [00:09:00] place at the right time for a lot of activity, including being part of the early, early days in Iraq.

And so I could've, if I had had Chinese, I would've had a, a great career and I would've enjoyed living in, in Asia and, and working on China issues. But, but this is the way it turned out.

Aaron: I, when you came into the a, you were enlisted or an officer? I was enlisted. You were enlisted, okay. It's funny, I, I knew you were in the military 82nd, was that right?

Dave: I was in, I was on active duty with the hundred first. Okay. And then when I came back as a reserve, so I went with the 82nd to Okay. To to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. So in my

Aaron: mind, I always had you as a company commander or something because I guess I, I always attributed you as a senior officer in the agency.

And I remember one time you,

Dave: all of us start out with modest

Aaron: beginnings. This is true. You, you and director Petraeus at one time had a, a back and forth across the table about your military career. 'cause he was always. You know, looking for rapport building with the do. And I happened to be in that room.

I'm sure you don't remember I was seat seated to your right at the big [00:10:00] table. And well, I

Dave: remember the, I remember the, the conversation he'd been commander of the hundred first Airborne, which is as cool a job as you can possibly have, right? Yeah.

Aaron: And yeah, that's right. He was reflecting back on how you potentially served in and around him at that time.

And he was giving your history a bit of his own dust over the top. And it was a, it was just a funny little exchange that happens up in that conference room quite often as I understand. But what I really would like to hear is, you know, you, you join the agency in the, in the early nineties with Arabic and, and the Middle East as your destination.

And though obviously the Iraq war had a great imprint on what was happening in geopolitics at that time. The Middle East was still kind of a, or at least in my memory of it, and you can correct this, it was still kind of a, a, a backwater issue to a certain degree, or it was, it was a building issue, but wasn't a at the forefront everybody's mind other than the Iraq war at that time, the first Gulf War, when you got to the agency, where did it fit in the agency's mission at that time?

Dave: I, I would say it was, it was not the highest priority. I, I think the [00:11:00] Middle East had been for, for some time, like other parts of the globe. It was sort of the playground on which we had confrontation with the Soviet Union and, and with other competitors terrorism on the. On the scale of the seventies and eighties was, was modest and a terrorist event would, would claim the lives of, you know, five or six or seven people, and seemed like a thing that was a long way away.

It wasn't, it wasn't a defining issue for the Central Intelligence Agency and it wasn't a defining issue for our, our activity in the Middle East. So I, that all changed, obviously. It,

Aaron: it absolutely changed. And I, I joined the military in 1997. It went in to the Rangers, and I remember then at that time it was still kind of Cold War mentality in the Rangers we had the, you know, battle of Mogadishu featured prominently in the, in the lineage of the Rangers at the time.

So the tactics were somewhat based on the huge consequences of that battle. But [00:12:00] the enemy in 1997 was still, for a rifle platoon, the hind helicopter coming out of Russia. It's still what we thought about until 1998 and the embassy bombings in, in the fall of that year. And, and then the Rangers had a mission at that point to look at Bin Laden.

When you're looking at the late nineties approaching, obviously the, the agency focused on Al-Qaeda and terrorism much sooner than the rest of the world did. And this is, you know, in, in many history books and many podcasts. But it would be interesting to hear just how. You viewed that from your position at that point, having had a, a few years, at least in the agency when, when this shift started to take place.

Dave: Yeah, so I mean, just off the top of my head, I think the, the character of, of what we understand stand to be terrorism evolved and the perspective of Middle East states on terrorism also evolved. So in the, in the [00:13:00] seventies and eighties when you thought of terrorism, you were typically thinking of, of politically motivated Palestinian actors who've long been eclipsed by, by larger, more ambitious groups.

But those, activities had a, a, a level of sympathy, a across the, the Middle East populations that, that has also evolved tremendously. And countries like Saudi Arabia or, or Kuwait or, or others didn't look at, at extremism as an internal threat to themselves. And that that evolved.

Definitely in, in the early two thousands when, when those groups began to really turn their energies, not on foreigners, on on Arab soil, but on those, those governments as well. And you know, if you think about the, the leaders in the Middle East of the seventies and the eighties and nineties, almost all those folks were gone.

But they were all [00:14:00] getting older and creakier and, and, and more distant from their own populations. And when that happens and they surround themselves by, by people who are telling 'em what they want to hear, then you've got the conditions that in which you get discontent, which turns into the violence sometimes.

And so that evolution from somebody hijacking a plane or, or attacking an airline counter in, in in Athens or in Rome or something like that or kind of a one-off destination, those sorts of things, it it evolved into, into a, a much bigger scale. And, and as a consequence, our relationships with those host nations also evolved.

And so, back to your question about, about where did, where did Middle East issues fit in the hierarchy of issues in, in the. In the 1990s[00:15:00] we, we, the intelligence community put a much greater investment in in our relationships and our interactions with host nations across the Middle East. And our scale changed.

Aaron: It would be interesting to just talk about the regions or, or the areas you know, somewhat non-specifically that you got to experience during this time because, you know, the, the Middle East for most Americans remains kind of a, a strange place in their mind.

And, and you and I have spent many years of our life there. And, and in some cases I think you're probably like me in that, in some of those places you feel as comfortable there as you do in Chicago or New York.

Dave: That's, it's funny that you phrase it that way. I, I would be more comfortable going to a place like Damascus or Sonna than going to New York.

I don't know why. It's my sort of semi-rural upbringing. I guess New York fills me with trepidation, but, but something like, like I dunno, Bangkok is like exciting. So I. I won't say specifically where, but I, I had [00:16:00] enough experience on the Arab Peninsula to really immerse myself in, in not just the language, but the culture and the history, and understand the interaction of the tribes with one another over history.

I always say that, that the job of a do officer is to go to somebody else's country and understand them as they understand themselves, not, not go there and tell them something, but go there and learn from them.

And you don't get there without learning the language, without spending time with people drinking tea and spending long hours just talking to them about everything that that's, that's in their heads. And as I say, the the best way to do that is in their language and not in yours.

Aaron: you spent a good portion of your career, especially the middle portion, as did I, focused on the Middle East and counter-terrorism. And we now are entering period in history where it's [00:17:00] likely that folks are joining the C I A at this point, that were born after nine 11. And it's just interesting to think about what it means for this organization as we go through a generational change whereby the formative experience that was nine 11 becomes less and less of an issue that drives what the younger portion of our workforce thinks about.

And I wonder how you think about that both from, both from the generational. Change. And then also how the agency transitions as history shifts yet again,

Dave: the sort of generational issues I, I think, often come up when, when you're in a, a leadership or a management role. And one of the points that I like to make, I, I think back about my, my grandfather and my great uncles, five brothers who served in second World War.

Two of my great uncles were a D-Day. And my grandfather fought his way across North Africa [00:18:00] in, in Italy. And they were just ordinary people who were in extraordinary circumstances in extraordinary times, and they did their jobs well. And and my great uncle's bronze star citation from the hours before D-Day sweeping minds before the invasion under the German guns is, is quite remarkable in its spare language of, of heroism.

So my point is that if you served in the c i A in the 1960s, Vietnam would've been a priority issue. If you served in the, in the fifties and sixties and seventies the Cold War, the Soviet Union would've been a priority issue. And the experience of the folks that that brought me into the world of espionage was very different from mine.

And, and the people who brought them into the world of espionage also had a different kind of experience. They were the. The people who, a lot of cases they were people who had been in the O s S and had served in Germany [00:19:00] or in Burma or or wherever else. So that's always gonna evolve. I don't, I don't worry about the fact that somebody didn't have the nine 11 experience personally.

What I am concerned about, or I say, should say, my focus of attention should always be are we, are we bringing on the right kinds of people who have the resilience and the determination to be looking forward? And, you know, there's obviously, there's value in the lessons of the past, but the challenges of tomorrow are not the same challenges that, that we did well against, or not so well at times against in the past few decades.

So to me, you, you acknowledge that there's differences, but you overcome them by first focusing on the understanding, the commonalities of personality types over time, making sure we got the right folks, and then giving them the opportunity and [00:20:00] encouragement to be creative and entrepreneurial and attack problems with the same vigor that you know, my grandfather and great uncles did.

And that, that I, I tried to do myself across my career. So I think we

Aaron: sort of putting a A little more emphasis on the, on the generational stuff, because this is one that I always think about and always comes up. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna absolutely butcher this quote. I'm not gonna try a quote, but I'll, I'll paraphrase Socrates and, and that I think he said something like, you know, these damn kids they don't understand anything.

And then he reflected on that comment and, and, and realized that that must have been said since the beginning of time. And, and obviously a lot

Dave: of times since then. Yeah, I'm sure.

Aaron: Yeah. And, and so we face this inside and, and you'll find that I say we still as a member of the C I A though I am no longer, 'cause I still think of myself often as that being my identity.

But so in this case, I do though we, we face this with the generational change that's happening right now, and there's an interesting component to it [00:21:00] that is new and there's probably always something new. But the one that, that we're seeing right now that we're living through is, is technology. And, and a lot of young people growing up, you know, with cell phones having always been there and the internet having always been there, and, and the internet being a daily, hourly, minute by minute, sometimes facet of their lives, and then they come into an organization where the internet is, is quite a risk to secret operations and as are electronic devices just in general.

And that shift, I think for a lot of them is a, is a pretty dramatic one in some cases emotionally, psychologically and dealing with that, I think has been a challenge for the ci from what, what I've seen, even as a. Middle leader as I got out. And I just wonder using that as the guidepost for these generational changes, how, how do you sort of think of that and when we're picking people and, and seeing how they, they, they come to terms with their new life as a, in some cases clandestine c i [00:22:00] officer, and, and how does that affect the history that they bring with them as young people?

Dave: So I, I think there's some practical considerations, you, but there's also some sort of, I dunno what the right word is, emotional, psychological considerations to go with as well. The practical considerations is, you know, folks today typically have a tremendous history of, of, of interaction in a digital world, which is all traceable and discoverable and, and says something about who they are.

And that is, that definitely has to be managed from the outset and through the duration of somebody's career. Because if you're trying to say that you're something and there's a huge volume of data that says you're something else, then it, you, you at least have to be aware of it and manage it. The other thing is, is about, I don't know if, if I, if [00:23:00] social media is the, is the right word, but the sort of inward focus of.

Of that sort of thing. Now, I'm gonna sound like a curmudgeon Luddite when I say this, but I remember when I was in college and I, I saw the first people walking around with a Walkman a cassette player at the time, with a, with a big, bulky set of headphones. And the thing that I objected to at the time was it allows people to shut out the outside world and just, and think about themselves, turn off everybody else and think about themselves.

And that has, that trajectory has continued, as I mentioned before, just driving over here, watching people walk across eight lanes of traffic in a, in a crosswalk with their heads down, looking at their cell phones instead of paying attention to the world around them. And so it's not a, it's, it's a reality.

It's not a thing to object to or support. It's just that, that younger people [00:24:00] today tend to, to have been encouraged by, by their access, constant access to electronics to be inwardly focused and think about themselves rather than being paying attention to the world around them. And I, I, I'm not a psychologist, so I, I don't have any way of measuring sort of tangible, empirically measurable effects of that.

But that the sort of focus on, I. Individual needs and is this person comfortable and all that? It's, it's important and is valuable, but we have a business which is about discomfort and, and you're a ranger or at least you say you were. And and it's not my

Aaron: LinkedIn page. Okay.

Dave: That makes it true.

Does it? Okay. But, but you didn't get to be a ranger by, by seeking comfort. In fact, you went through Ranger school, which [00:25:00] is specifically designed to make you as uncomfortable as it as they possibly could with the expectation that you're either gonna say, this is too much for me, or you're actually gonna prove to be tough and resilient and determined.

And, you know, being a a C I A officer is not the same thing as being a ranger. Being a ranger isn't the same thing as being a c i A officer, but both of them require a toughness and a resilience that is challenged by people wanting to always be comfortable and have their world ordered around them.

So my point in this is, It's, it is a leadership challenge to to anybody in a management position to be sure that, that we're all being enlightened empathetic leaders and consider the people who are on our team and doing everything you possibly can to bring out the best in those folks, but not avoid the reality that we have [00:26:00] hard work.

And we were actually, it's a privilege to be selected to, to do that work just as it is a privilege to be allowed to go to ranger school and have them starve you and, and beat you and make you fall out of airplanes and stuff like that. It's a privilege to have that. And people were selected because they have the wherewithal to take that challenge on.

And, and that's something we, we can't walk away from.

Aaron: Do you think, are we in an era, and this is just as we're not psychologists, it's hard for us to be historians as well while we're actually living history. I mean, there's, there's plenty of examples where writing history too soon is a fool's errand.

Do you think the agency is succeeding at navigating this tricky spot right now? Are we succeeding in building this resiliency or attracting people who already have this resiliency?

I'm, I'm torn to know whether it's a nurture versus nature [00:27:00] problem resiliency. But I, I don't know. It's hard to grade and I just don't know. Yeah. But you actually had a job where you kind of were responsible for grading it all the time.

Dave: Yeah. So that's a, it's a good question. So let me just make a couple points first.

I, I, I remember being called a kid when I showed up and I wasn't a kid. But, you know, that's just, that's, you know, Socrates did it and so has everybody else since then. I, I'm also not comfortable talking about this generation or that generation. Hmm. I don't like being categorized or, or dropped into a, a bucket myself.

People assume things about me 'cause of whatever age my I am or, or my background assume things about how I think. And I prefer not to do that. With others and assume that somebody who's a certain age thinks a certain way or has a set of experiences that produce a particular effect on 'em. I prefer to look at people as individuals.

I also prefer to help people drive [00:28:00] themselves towards positive rather than attacking the negatives. 'cause I find that to be more effective. So the question of grading I, I struggled with this in, in a number of jobs I had. How well are we doing in, in a, in a world where so much of what we do is has an intangible effect?

Did something happen because of us? Or were we just sort of incidental in the process? Did something not happen because of us? Or were we just incidental in the process? And I, I've come to the conclusion that you may not really ever be able to tell, you know, how's morale, how's, how's energy levels, how, you know, in, in a way that's measurable and, and empirical.

But what you can understand is a leader is that it's your job to be working on that a hundred percent of the time you're trying to, to drive an organization and teams within that organization towards excellence. They're never gonna be at a hundred [00:29:00] percent. So if your, if your effort is at bringing out the best in people and getting people to, to be focused and work well together and Be and to prioritize and think for themselves and take the initiative, take responsibility, and you're focused on that, trying to get performance from 90% to 95% instead of worrying, have I dropped down to 75%?

That's the approach that I've always taken. And I, I just, there may be somebody who can measure it, but I was never satisfied that I could. So you mentioned

Aaron: earlier that, that you think of yourself and you think of the d d O position as that of a spiritual leader for the workforce. And so I wonder how do you impart your message and encourage people to do truly hard things and really push the boundaries, but at the same time, how do you avoid smuggling in [00:30:00] bad behaviors while you, you ask people to push the envelope on things.

Dave: Yeah, it is a tough question because it's not, it's, it's not scientific at all. And I. So I, I describe myself as militantly naive, and that is that that I, I, I can see faults and shortcomings and, and that sort of thing as, as well as anybody else, but I have high expectations of people I know that people can deliver if in a positive environment.

And I expect people to help create that positive environment. So when somebody complains about how something is, you know, that doesn't work or this isn't whatever, okay, well that's true, but you still have your job to do. And and I regularly tell people, look, work as if you're in the organization as you wish that it were, and people around you will, will feel [00:31:00] that in a way that's contagious.

And guess what? At least the, the work team that you're on will be more like the team that you want it to be if you're acting as if it were that team. And the other thing is, you know, candor to me is a sign of respect. And I, I think plain language about things that work, things that don't work, how, how tough something is, how miserable it's gonna be.

I think all of that stuff is useful. You just say, yes, all these things are stacked against us. But this is our piece and we're gonna do it the very best that we possibly can. And it might work and it might not, but our job is to not complain about what somebody else isn't doing or, or how something's not fair.

Our job is to do, the piece we're responsible for is absolutely well as we can and, and [00:32:00] aim for a spillover effect. So, I don't know, it's a, that sounds like platitudes, but to me, just being plain and direct with people is, has proven to be of tremendous value.

Aaron: You, you talked about a little bit when we were chatting before the podcast about how you viewed yourself in the position of the deputy director of operations as somewhat the spiritual leader of the clandestine service.

And I think that's an interesting way to look at it. I'm not certain, a lot, a lot of people, it's a big organization and most of it doesn't get time to spend with you like we are right now or over beers, and don't get to hear you talk about that at length and, and in uncontrolled environment. But I, I think that.

The way that the organization would interact with the D D O would change dramatically if everybody did have that opportunity. And, and hopefully, if we're getting lucky, we're giving them [00:33:00] a little bit of this right now. But as the spiritual leader, how did you view yourself as the, as the leader? How did you, what techniques did you use to sort of pass on these, the spiritual guidance, you know, that you thought people needed to hear?

And, and how tricky was that, especially in an organization as big and unwieldy and, and sometimes hard to communicate with as the clandestine services?

Dave: So I the, the first thing that I thought was important to do was to be like visibly and legitimately competent at what I was doing. Understand what the issues are, attack them in a, in a way that is sensible and is logically aimed at correcting or producing efficiency, or having us focus in the right direction.

And I had a, a tremendous team around me and I had all kinds of inputs from, from all over the place to help me sort of steer a strategy and vision and to [00:34:00] be working on the things that actually mattered and, and communicate about them. And the, the second thing is to, to, to recognize that, that I'm on display and, and so it's important that I.

That my behavior be calculated to represent kind of the, the best of what we, we expect of people. And you know, as you become more senior, you're more and more on display and, and

Aaron: more and more lonely I think in, in the

Dave: six. Well, that's true. That's true. Yes, that's right. 'cause you get positive feedback and you think, ah, it's a bunch of nonsense that that person's an ASCUS or whatever, or, and you get negative feedback, you're like, okay, I already know that.

Thanks a lot.

Aaron: Yeah. Everybody thinks they can do the D d O job better than the current D D

Dave: O I think. Absolutely. Right. But, but I always use this analogy of about sort of tampering yourself to the role. When you go to a concert, there's a guy who's sitting in this kind of [00:35:00] booth in the audience who's got this big board with a bunch of dials that he's moving things up and down.

And I think to be an effective leader, you have to be conscious and aware enough of your own personality, what you look like to people to adjust those dials to the occasion. And that sometimes you need to be more of this or less of that or whatever. And you have to be deliberately tuning yourself. You have to think about what you want to have on display and why.

And I'll give you a small thing. Like if I'm walking down the hall and I see a piece of trash on the floor, I pick it up and the reason is it's my agency. And. And somebody sees that sometimes nobody sees it. I'm doing it because I don't like to see trash on the floor. But somebody sees that and says, well, d d O just picked up that gum wrapper.

Wow. Maybe I should think more a sense of ownership here. I was out in Afghanistan and we had, there was a long day there. It started early and it ended late. And I was there [00:36:00] from the beginning of the day to the end of the day with breaks in between. I'd go work out, may maybe take a nap in the middle of the afternoon or go eat or something like that.

But I'd often go in, there was this one person who went around and emptied all the trash in the trash cans, and I would often get up and, and go empty the trash with her. I didn't say anything about it. I didn't tell anybody I was doing it, but believe me, word got out that, that the chief had came and helped take, take out the trash.

And the, the point of it is, it's, it's all our responsibility. Every one of us is, is responsible for, for mission success. And it starts with small things and it starts with taking initiative and having ownership and not assuming that somebody else is gonna do it, or that somehow it's not your job or it's beneath you.

And to me, those are the things that, that represent sort of spiritually the, the best of, of what we're supposed to [00:37:00] be. When you were a ranger, Yeah, you weren't leaving stuff for somebody else to do If it needed to be done, you did it. You didn't say anything about it. You didn't ask for thanks. You did it.

And, and that is what, that's what delivers a powerful team.

Aaron: When I get asked what I look for in teammates or in folks that I want to lead one of the things I, I constantly will say is I almost more than anything else, I want a person who looks for work, who looks around and says, what needs to be done here?

I know the mission. Hopefully they know the mission. Hopefully they know what we're trying to accomplish. And then I want those folks who are working with me or for me, or even above me to look around and say, okay, here's some things that need to get done. Nobody's told me to do them. But I can tell based on what I know the mission to be that they need to be done.

And then they just go and do them. And if everyone does that, or if you get a good, healthy number of people to do that, the rest kind of takes care of itself. And that's everything from, you know, exactly like you said, taking out the trash or, you know, making sure [00:38:00] that in our case, you know, the the cable that needs to go out that night, even though it's already 11:00 PM gets out because there's a piece of information in there that might have actual consequence on the course of history.

And sending you the next day is, is just not something you could do. And, and that's a little bit where I think that resiliency and, and work ethic comes in and, and is somewhat tricky as we. As a nation and maybe as a world rewrite our understanding of work and, and life and how those two intertwine.

Dave: Yeah. So I, you know, the, the spiritual leader idea is, you know, understanding what we're, what we there are therefore and then repeating it again and again, and again and again in plain language. We're, we're, we're different than everybody else. Our role is different than everybody else. It's up to us to do it.

Yes, it's hard. Embrace the fact that it's hard. You were selected to do something hard that nobody else [00:39:00] can do. That's where the joy actually of the work is the fact that you're able to do something with special authorities under special circumstances that nobody else is able to do and dig in and do it.

Aaron: So we're going to do something a little bit new here and splice in a portion of the conversation here where it did not exist in the original recording. What you're about to hear are some comments that Dave made before we actually got started in that. Proper portion of the podcast and he's given his permission for us to. Add it in. Right here. And you'll hear him. Talk about his time as the assistant director for the near east mission center. Uh, and he said some pretty insightful things about that role and we wanted you to hear them. You'll notice that the audio quality is not quite as good because we weren't set up yet on the mics and the chairs are squeaking, but the comments are, are very good on the less.[00:40:00]

Dave: I never had a bad job ever. I also really enjoyed being the ad for, for anemic because, , it was like being, when you have

Aaron: the totality of responsibility

Dave: from the president to your kind of most unreliable subsource in a source network overseas, and everything laterally in between, , you feel like a, big chief of station.

'cause you can look at whole problems and design a campaign approach with not only how

Aaron: do you, how do you solve the intel problem, , abroad, but how are you servicing. You, you

Dave: personally responsible for being sure that the, the right people in the right places are hearing the things that they need to hear, not necessarily the things they want to hear but the things that they need to hear and how you, , managing the flow of information to ensure that you're actually heard.

I, I would tell our chief of analysis that, that you should think in operational terms about analysis. You should think, okay, who [00:41:00] needs to understand what and what are the impediments to that? And sometimes the impediments of that person's personality, in which case, if I can't get through to you with something, then I need to get through to the people around you to affect their thinking.

And how do you take that on, in a, in a deliberate campaign approach to ensure that you've got, you've got fidelity through the system where you're really, you're asking the right questions and solving the right problems, and then ensuring that those solutions actually go into the marketplace of ideas in Washington in a way that's effective.

Yeah, that's, um, that it's, it's fun. Um, but it requires, it requires some really deliberate effort and you can get lost in the sort of day-to-day stuff, the tactics. Um, and you'll be ineffective or you can be thinking about everything you're [00:42:00] doing in. Campaign terms, interlocking campaigns and when you can get the machine to hum.

It's, it's just really cool. So I enjoyed that job as well.

Aaron: Okay. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now, back to it.

I think I, I'm realizing this is potentially a good spot and I, I'd like to hear how you think about this, but we've talked a lot about the work and the special authorities and, and obviously some of this is, is incredibly sensitive, but really the work of the, the do officer of which, you know, the do consists of many different types of officers who, who bring all this work together to a meaningful state.

I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about just what that, what that work is, you know, even down to being on the street and how you thought about that over your career. That the, the role of a, of a deal officer obviously you were a case officer, but. But the role, it isn't meaningfully [00:43:00] different, I don't think, across most of the, the force.

Dave: Yeah. So I, I won't talk about any specifics here, but let me just say this. If you're, if you're working in the director of operations or if you're involved in operational activity, it's important to understand fundamentally what it is that you're actually doing. And that the whole of the machine is aimed at looking at questions for which we don't have an answer.

And determining is there something that can be acquired through clandestine means that adds insight, which we're not gonna have otherwise, which is denied to us somehow. And then figuring out how are we going to get that, have it and not be discovered in, in the process. So that's, that's what it's all about.

And, and so the first part of that is looking at the questions we're asking, what is it, what is it we need to [00:44:00] understand here? And then the next part is what are the, what are all the alternate means for, for gaining that understanding of that insight. And then what's left over, what's the, what's the thing that can't be done?

And then reevaluating, is this something that's important enough to know either, because if it's. If its role is a puzzle piece in a story or the story itself, is it important enough to know that we're going to take extraordinary risk to try to acquire that?

Aaron: So what you're talking about here is, is is human intelligence, human being the intelligence of last resort across all of the other intelligences intelligence

Dave: collection mechanisms?

Yeah. Yeah. More or less. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but not much more complicated. And the, the additional sort of facet of that is that that human doesn't stand on its own as part of a, a whole story about a particular issue. [00:45:00] And most of the time it's also not, it's not applied as a standalone discipline.

It's, it's sort of multiple disciplines are applied to solving a problem. So, so I mean that about the particular risk that comes with meeting an agent who's well placed in a foreign government. But it's, it's in a larger context of, of, of understanding what's the issue? What do we need to know about the issue?

What are other ways to find out the things we need to know about the issue? And then if, if everything else is kind of off the table, then how do we do it in such a way that, that we preserve everybody's dignity, you know it's bad manners to get caught.

Aaron: In the world of human collectors, it is not unusual to hear a very worn and, and somewhat tired joke that human, human espionage is the second [00:46:00] oldest profession.

But more and more now you hear folks who sort of add to that discussion a question of how long will humint be a profession? And this is especially asked now as so many alternative forms of intelligence start to come online. And you're here talking about commercial information and open source intelligence and big data and so many different ways to gain insights that no longer involve a human.

And I just wonder as you, you finish up your time as the, the chief of all humans, how do you look on the future of human and what, what do you think about the people who question how much longer it's gonna be around and, and to what extent it's going to have the same level of importance that it has for so many years?[00:47:00]

Dave: So there's the, the question of where's the place of human intelligence in, in today's world with, with everything else that's available ultimately? The things that we're interested in are about human behavior what somebody is doing or what somebody's going to do, what's what's driving them. And there's only so much that you can get from watching things from from space or from getting onto somebody's computer or listening to their communications.

The general calls the, the head of state and tells the head of state something about the, the readiness of the forces or whatever. And he might lie or embellish. He might not understand that, that his role in some particular activity is to be a decoy role, which the president knows. There's, there's human behavior that happens [00:48:00] that can't be learned except by interacting with humans.

And, and so you know, the great example of before the D-day invasion of all the sort of inflatable tanks that were on the, on the English coast, ready to go be loaded on the vessels to some location other than where the invasion actually happens. It's possible to create decoys that can, that can misguide technical collection from, from overhead.

It's possible to create E either for somebody to be lying to somebody else or, or not telling the whole story when you're, when they're in communication with one another. It's possible for a government to set up an, an elaborate effort to misguide us through things that are available in communications or on computer systems.

And, and it's more challenging today, it to, to be anonymous and to gain critical access to the humans who know the critical thing. [00:49:00] But it will never go away because ultimately the things that we're interested in are what are people thinking? What are they gonna do? What's driving them? What's their calculation on a particular issue?

And ultimately, that answer best resides in the minds of those people. So you're gonna need the confidant that the, that the ruthless dictator talks to. You're gonna know, need to know what he says and what he's thinking in addition to what all of his generals are telling him, because all that stuff is gonna be not quite true because they're afraid of the dictator and they want to maintain their positions.

So it's just, I, I don't see it it ever going away because it's about human interaction.

Aaron: So I wonder, this is, this is where I get the, the fantastic opportunity by having a podcast microphone and, and getting to run the podcast across the way here. That in a way that we wouldn't [00:50:00] necessarily have this conversation if I was still mid-level leader and, and you were senior leader in the agency.

'cause I'm not sure I would've I would push back on the d o as a senior case officer in the agency on this topic, especially given how that, that organization sometimes can work. But now I get this opportunity and I would love to bat this back and forth just a little bit because now out here in, in my current role which I don't see as being that far different from my previous roles, despite maybe some of my peers seeing it as very different, I've gotten the chance to see a lot of these capabilities and tools and open source technologies firsthand and use them against some of these problem sets that we did use human to mostly against inside.

And I, I'm, I'm wondering, I think I also agree that it won't, human won't completely go away. I, I can see lots of reasons for it, not, but I do wonder. As we look at all the ways, and you said behavior as a perfect example, all the ways that large amounts of data, especially when measured together [00:51:00] and in the aggregate.

So not just the imagery of the fake tanks, not just the, the cient that potentially comes out from the, the conversation between the general and the dictator. Maybe over a a phone call or in a room that has an audio device, but in some cases, hundreds or thousands of other little things that happen.

Changes in logistics orders you know, additional fuel orders moving one element from point A to point B that seems like an insignificant move when measured in the individual way, but becomes a very significant move when measured in the aggregate. All many of these things have been measured since the beginning of intelligence, but now with massive compute, artificial intelligence and, and machine learning, which is an overuse term, but in this particular arena actually is highly consequential.

This is AI and ml. What it does, it does in this arena very, very well. We're starting to get to the point where measuring those factors, measuring that data [00:52:00] can tell a very specific story about someone's behavior, even better than they sometimes understand it themselves, even better than the general is telling them about the readiness of their force.

Dave: So it it, you frame the question, I think, I think perfectly. And, and there's two things that come outta it. First, it's, yes, it's true that the, the, the president or the dictator or the head of state can be himself deceived by what's happening or what his, his folks can do. And you can think of an immediate example in Ukraine where there's all kinds of lying going on between senior characters and the Russian government.

So there's, there's that, but the, the, that is the argument for our prioritization with human intelligence. Yes, it's harder. Yes. It's, it's, it's it's harder to be anonymous. It's harder to go someplace without a trail. The fact that you can actually understand an awful lot of stuff that you couldn't 20 years ago by aggregating small things which can be [00:53:00] discovered and, and telling a story that is not otherwise available.

Just because you've put together a bunch of stuff that looks like it's unrelated, but it actually pulls together and tells the whole story, is the argument for spending the the risk on that which actually matters. It doesn't mean that that which actually matters goes away. It means that we're able to more efficiently focus energy on those things.

It just requires. It requires a, a first, a comprehensive understanding of, of what we're capable of. It takes an entrepreneurial and creative approach to making us capable of more things and sort of, it's constantly to be developing how, how we pull in all that other stuff. And it takes kind of a, a cold-blooded, rigorous approach to prioritization.

And so a challenge with the intelligence community, you know, especially the C I A, we have a can-do organization [00:54:00] is, is just saying no yes we could go do that, but should we be spending our risk on this? And should we instead be more narrowly focusing our, our attention on that, which we can't get from data aggregation.

Or do we want to go validate our assumptions that we've arrived at because of data aggregation? It leads us to believe this thing. Let's go see if it plays out this way. Or maybe discover that we've actually got the reality over here. And the head of state is operating with a false set of assumptions.

What does that imply for what his behavior is gonna be or his capabilities are gonna be? Is he gonna run into a disaster and then act in a way that's irrational because he didn't understand what he was getting himself into? So it doesn't go away, it just needs to be managed with, with discipline. And I.

And with a, you know, a deliberate sort [00:55:00] of objectivity that allows you to produce better for prioritization. I'm curious

Aaron: how, how do you go about choosing your battles?

You know, you mentioned that there is way more need for funding than there are dollars allocated to so many of the projects. And as you, you know, latch into a senior leadership positions at the agency, you have just aim menu, a huge menu in front of you, of things that could be done. And many of them are very, very consequential, and yet no doubt, you look at them and, and, and you just realize right away what you can't do all of them.

And yet you have to choose and you have to when you choose, you know, it does become sort of a battle both to convince folks why you chose how you did, and then also convince the, the unlucky folks who, who don't get their issue looked at at those high levels. Why, why they've lost out in [00:56:00] that. And I just wonder, yeah.

How did you look at that from a leadership perspective? And then what advice might you have for other leaders as, you know, you sort of retire from this senior position. What did you learn along the way about how to go about that and, and what can they learn from the, the experiences you've already had?

Dave: Picking battles? That's a good question. So I would say, you know, you, you take on a job. You've got, you've got two responsibilities with the job. One is to do the job and the second is to do something with the job. And, and the, the do the job thing is that the day-to-day activities that you have just to accomplish the mission assigned to you.

And that's true regardless of whether you're, you know, working in a drug store, I think probably, or working at the c i a and the second is what, you know, back to your point earlier, people who are looking for work what do [00:57:00] you, what do you want to do? What can you do with the, the things that are either under your authority or within your influence to make things run better, to make things evolve, adapt to updated circumstances and that sort of thing.

And so my approach has, has been to look for, so truth is you're not gonna, you can make a long, exhaustive list of things that, that need to be fixed or needs your attention and you're not gonna do them all. And the more things you try to take on, the less likely that any one of those things is gonna be driven to completion or be, be done well.

So my approach has always been to. Be honest with myself about what I can actually cover with my span of attention. Identify those things clearly and then think, think, okay, what, what is the thing that's likely to, to be successful to have high impact into in itself? [00:58:00] Produce some of the follow on effects on the other things that I'm not gonna get to.

And so in my most recent jobs, it, I've taken a consensus approach to it, talked to a lot of people about what's, what are the things that actually matter here? What are the things that're gonna, going to lever movement elsewhere? And then sort of articulate those things, get buy-in and, and just drive focus and stay on 'em again and again and again.

And, you know, in a, in a large organization that the, the director of operations as part of the CCIA A, the C I A is part of the intelligence community. The intelligence community is part of the, sort of the national security community. The national security community is part of our US government. We all work for the American people.

Nothing is in isolation. Everything is connected and has effects or is impacted by stuff from outside of what you initially think is, are the boundaries of your problem. And [00:59:00] so understanding the. Legal ramifications of something. Understanding where you need something from somebody else or where the thing that you're gonna do is gonna affect somebody else.

I, all of that is important. But once you sort of put parameters about what it is you want to accomplish, then you just gotta stick with it. And, and you've gotta be a strategist, an evangelist a hands-on doer a communicator and all those things. And, you know, I've done some of those things better or worse at times.

But I, to me, that's, that's the way you do it. And I guess the, the last point I'd make is be careful not to pick anything as a battle or, or, or to characterize something as a battle. You're picking a battle, but you don't want to characterize it that way. You want to, you want to get buy-in from the people who maybe aren't affected by it, but whose help you need.[01:00:00]

And there's no substitute for, for good manners. And, you know whenever I've understood that I had some kind of a, a conflict with somebody, my, my typical approach has been to make an appointment on their calendar, go see them in their office and sit and talk to them in, in their space about what it is I'm trying to accomplish and, and understand what it looks like to them and how, how to, I.

I adjust or how do I enlist her support? And, and I think you have to do that in, in any bureaucracy, whether it's at c i A or in elsewhere in the government. And I'm sure it's true in every co you know, company in America that you've got competing priorities and you've got stuff that matters under your authority and a much larger set of things that are under your influence.

And if you just drive and say, this is my authority, we're going to do it, then you end up with a lot of [01:01:00] friction and complication that may ultimately block your progress. We talk about

Aaron: culture quite a bit on this podcast and how culture affects organizations, how challenging it is to change cultures, what leadership has to say about culture.

And I, I will regularly point out that I don't think anyone who makes their mission statement, something about changing an organization's culture is going to find much success in that effort. 'cause I think cultures on the whole are very, very hard to affect. I think it's more about affecting the, the foundations underneath those cultures, the micro behaviors and the, and the ways that leaders demonstrate their, their strategy and their mission.

And then the culture shapes around that. But another factor that we continue to think about now is just how. Much American culture as the big culture affects organizational culture. And if we look at [01:02:00] c i a specifically, c i a has a, a very unique culture and I think one that many of us believe needs to be maintained, actively maintained, or at least major portions of it.

And it's interesting to then think about what role the big American culture has on the unique culture that is the c i and, and how much of an effect does the American culture then have on an organization like the c i and, and and how important is that American culture to the CIA's organizational culture?

And what, what, what have you thought about that?

Dave: Yeah. Okay. So back to my point about being militantly naive, I think I, I think you, you framed the question well. There are some things that you, that are American culture and some things that are unique to the agency and, and specifically to the clandestine service.

And, and so if you, [01:03:00] if in, in my time in, in America, I've, I've watched a tremendous evolution in, in who we are as a population. In, in, in many ways our, our, our culture, our American culture is more American than it was 40 and 50 years ago. In that it, it is representative and more consciously representative of, of all of who we are as a nation.

And every bit of that is good. And even the stuff that makes people uncomfortable and where people's views on things are, are widely different. The fact that, that we talk about that stuff is what makes us who we are as, as a nation and, and we're in a particularly tumultuous period right now. And there's times when it's things sort of evolve the way they have in a way that's slower and then thing, there are times when there's a lot more conversation about it.

[01:04:00] And some of that is, is polarizing. And that's just, that's just kind of my observation about America. So c i a is supposed to represent America abroad. It's supposed to be a, a place that that's a, a, a nice tight, shiny nugget of, of America. Culture, ideals, values and that sort of thing. And we're successful because our brand is America.

And so we, under no circumstances should we ever think about walking away from American culture or, or American social phenomenon or anything like that. At the same time we have. In the director of operations, we have a unique function that has to be accomplished and has to be accomplished well, and those two things don't have to be at odds with each other.

They shouldn't be at odds with each other. It's, there's room for conversation for people with, with a variety of views. [01:05:00] And but there's also the, the unifying things about, about what we do and what drew people to the organization and what the organization looked for as it was drawing those people to the organization that are about a peculiar mission that, that the, that the do has to do exceptionally well and consistently, exceptionally well.

And so I, in my view and my experience, you can have both be representative of the best of America, have, have comfortable conversation about all of what's happening in America, and yet go do something that's that's really hard and requires people to, to, to have it, you know, set aside the healthy discussion they're having on whatever it is they're having on it.

And then focus on, okay, what is a hard task? We need to do exceptionally well here because our job fundamentally is to preserve America. And if we're not working along with a whole [01:06:00] bunch of other folks in different places to preserve America, then we don't actually have that conversation. We're not the country I.

That, that we all grew up with and love in its various, you know, permutations. So I, I just think there, those things are not at odds with each other. And I think we fail as leaders when we confuse the two and say, well, we can't, we can't talk about something that's hard or difficult or challenging. We just have to focus on kind of social phenomenon.

It, it's, it's a healthy balance that allows us to be successful.

Aaron: Can you talk about some of the highlights of your career, some of the things that you look back on and think, wow, I, I was so amazingly grateful to be a part of these things. And, and of course some of those things are gonna be things that remain secret right now, and, and you won't be able to talk about them, which is sort of the curse of ci.

But you know, maybe from the lens of here's why it's such an amazing thing to be a CI [01:07:00] officer over the course of a 30 year career.

Dave: Yeah, I don't think I can do that.

Aaron: Yeah, I, I, even as I was asking the question, I was thinking of some of the ones I know about. So

Dave: let me, let me just answer that in, in sort of a diversionary tactic here.

The things that I found most satisfying in my career were times when I, probably some of these were in Arabic. Certainly some of 'em were in Arabic, where I managed to have a human connection in a way that delivered something that was just on a otherwise unavailable. And whether it was convincing somebody to do something that was, that was gonna be difficult for them getting somebody's buy-in to something I was doing, getting their support those things to me were tremendously satisfying when I was able to, as an individual, be be competent at the [01:08:00] fundamentals of the job and actually deliver something that matters.

And then the other things, the other sort of category of things that I was, I felt privileged to be part of were kind of big team efforts that that took creativity and really kind of out of the ordinary thinking. And multiple components and combine those components to deliver a spectacular result that had like very clear, immediate, tangible impact.

And I can think of a handful of things like that where I was either part of a team or I pulled together a team and got people to figure out how to engage with one another with not only personalities, but capabilities in a way that was multiplicative rather than additive. And, and then delivered a kind of a, a very high quality result.

And I've been fortunate to have, have done that on a handful of [01:09:00] occasions. And because of the, the sort of nature of those results, I'm not gonna talk about what they, what they were. But it's the kind of thing that you, if you're fortunate and you're determined those are the kinds of things that you can experience in a, in a career in the clandestine service.

Aaron: We've tried to talk about on this podcast is you know, we've had some other folks on here who've had careers in, in this, these sectors and, and done amazing things. And we talk a lot about fear and, and the, the effect of fear and how often in these jobs you one feels fear. And it goes back to a little bit to resiliency and, and how you deal with these things.

And, and again, not necessarily asking for a specific example here, but more how you, when you encountered the fear or, you know, scary moments throughout this career, you know, how you dealt with those and pushed through and, and got to the other side and how you viewed leadership specifically in those situations.

Dave: I've [01:10:00] had a handful of occasions where I've been shot at or I've been at in a unexpected encounter with the host nation authorities and had to work my way through them and keep my cool as I was doing it. And certainly those give you the shot of adrenaline. I'll tell you the times were most memorable is when I was a, a chief in Afghanistan and we'd have something happening that w with potential lethal consequences, and I'd have to make decisions about what we're gonna do. And I would be very conscious of the fact that I'm standing in a group of 25 or 30 people who are all taking inputs from, from various places and try to feed them into a control center.

As I'm saying this, I'm thinking of some other activities are analogous and I am standing on the decision making [01:11:00] X and, and the thing that I'm gonna do is going to have consequences. And I've got people watching me and I've got to actively discount all the pressures I've got from what other people are trying to ask me to do so that I'm effectively bringing in the information, but not bringing in the influence and then making decisions.

And that is, that is, it's challenging. It's, it's emotionally exhausting. It's also a privilege to be in that kind of a situation. So I, I've had actually, I've had a couple of roles where I, I had that sort of thing that I had to do and.

Fear isn't really the right word for it. Consciousness at the, at the moment that this is, this is important and I have to get it [01:12:00] right, and people's lives may depend on me or a a, a key national security thing may depend on me. It's, it's it's the kind of thing that's memorable. It's like I say, it's the kind of thing that's a privilege to be in that sort of a situation.

It forces an introspection that most people never, never experience, which is cool and exhausting.

Aaron: Well, I, I, I won't spoil any of it for our, our dear close listeners from the, the, the, the security organs from inside t i, but I, I got the chance to serve under you in some of those situations that I imagine are rolling around in your head right now.

And, and I always your, the coolness with which you approached those circumstances or that, that, that you were hoping to exude, I think in those circumstances. It landed on me I remember it quite distinctly in fact, from your leadership style, how, how even you just were across many situations, some of which were, were [01:13:00] very.

Trying and anxiety inducing for those of us who were, were under you at that time. And so it's interesting to hear you think about that. Well, that's,

Dave: it's, it is nice of you to say that. It's kind of back to my, my point about, about teamwork and doing your job. You know, you, if, if you understand what your job is and you pursue that with clarity then it makes it a bit easier.

Aaron: It, it causes me to go back to a topic that we talked about a little earlier and, and making these decisions and being a leader at the absolute top and having to also, in addition to deal with, you know, the consequences of those decisions and, and the impact they might have on a person's life or a national security topic.

Like you said, you also have in that position, everyone has this, this extraordinary amount of judgment around you by others who think they would've made a decision differently or judging the decision you made after the fact with much more information than you had going in or this loneliness at the top as you sort of rise up through an organization [01:14:00] that, you know, as you get near to the top.

It's been said to me by other senior officers when I've asked this question, you know, you, you, you no longer really have any peers. You know, once you get near to the top, you have, you know folks you work alongside. You obviously have some, some close friendships and things like that, that you built over years, but you don't, you don't have like, like a GSS 14 or a GSS 15 in, in a middle leadership role, you know, a thousand peers to your left and right that aren't necessarily.

Interested in every decision you make, whereas the ddo, the entire d is interested in every single decision and has an opinion about every single decision. And to me that just feels like a lot of weight that you must have had found a way to deal with and pushed through.

Dave: I, I think it's, it, it requires a little bit of a thick skin. It, and then you just have to be discerning about who, who you take inputs from and what you take. You probably need to hear everything. [01:15:00] But you need to sift through all of that and figure out, okay, what are the things? Am I, am I gonna, you know, put into my equation here?

Often you have to, in order to get somebody's legitimate expertise, you may also have to hear a lot of their opinion, and you have to internally, Discount their opinion part and hear the expertise, but you're not gonna get the expertise if you're not willing to patiently hear the opinion. So, so it's you know, there, there's an art to it and there's times I've, I've gotten it right, and other times I've, I've missed the boat.

But I, I, I think it's important to be conscious of the fact that you have to do that as you're doing it. And that if you're just, if you're not deliberate about it you're, you're not going to probably get the right inputs. You're not gonna be able to sift through them. And ultimately, you know, the, a key function of, of a leader is to, is to make decisions.

And so, you know, you gotta recognize that that's your role. [01:16:00] Indecision is not leadership.

Aaron: Yeah. That's absolutely true in addition to observing your leadership style and, and seeing the qualities that you, you were attempting to exude. There were definitely times, , where I said, dammit, what the hell is Marlowe thinking? I could definitely make this, , decision better. So, uh, I can't be absolved of, , being one of those individuals down below that was judging calls from which I didn't

Dave: have all information.

Well, I mean, that just means you're a, a deal officer. That's all. It's true.

Aaron: We said, I've said that a couple times on here. I think, and this is true of not just the Rangers, I'm sure the Marines and lots of other folks say this, but they, you know, they say if, uh, if if rangers, , ain't bitching, you've got a problem.

Yeah. Uh, and I think that's true inside, especially the do. Yeah

So I think we have a number of listeners who listen to this podcast because they're thinking about a career in national security in, in some way, shape, or form. And this is, I think it is a tricky time to choose a career in national security for some of the reasons we, we previously discussed about culture and, and how exposed so much of the work is [01:17:00] that we do.

And, and so many of the things that we get wrong but I I'm still a firm believer that careers in national security are extraordinarily rewarding. They're absolutely necessary. They lead to really amazing lives. And I tell this to anybody who, you know, wants to take the time to listen to me, I usually give more opinions than I do expert advice.

So a lot of that gets discounted. But if, if you, if you had an audience of folks sitting in front of you right now that were considering the c i a as a career, just the intelligence community in general what, what would you say to them to help them make that decision?

Dave: Well, it's, it's not for everybody.

There's, there's no question about it. And it's you can make more money doing other things. There's probably some places where you can find more satisfaction if the way that you derive satisfaction is a, is a human being isn't aligned with, with the satisfaction that you're gonna get in the ccia, the director of operations.

It's not gonna go away. You joked earlier about it being this [01:18:00] second oldest profession. It isn't gonna go away. It's a, it's a it, human nature thing. The United States has to have good, comprehensive, well understood intelligence about national security challenges across the spectrum.

Everything from global warming to, you know where, where Putin's got the, you know, state of his nuclear weapons and all that kind of thing. It's gotta be done. It's, it's the kind of thing that it's the right job for the right person, and it's not the right job for everybody. So some people come to the agency, work for a little while and then find that it wasn't a perfect fit and go on and do something else, and that's what they should do.

Some people come and stay because it, it works for them. The things that I've found, Rewarding about it is I'm, I'm hands-on to kind of get things done kind of person. And it's, it's different from diplomacy. And [01:19:00] you, you're expected to actually produce results. And I, diplomacy sometimes does and sometimes doesn't.

It's diplomacy sometimes just shares an American perspective on things. But it's a, it's a very active way of defending American ideals. And so if it's, if it's the right fit, it can be spectacular. If it's the wrong fit, I imagine it would be miserable. It's, the things that I like about it are, it's a, it's a sort of dichotomy.

It's about individual performance and, and holding yourself to really high standards and doing your very best when nobody else sees what you're doing. Because that's, that is kind of what espionage operations are. You know, it's often one person doing something by themselves and the rest of the system taking that person's word that they did it and they did it well.

I love that aspect of it, but it's also teamwork, high performing [01:20:00] teams on, on things that are just a spectacularly interesting. But really just different from, from anything anybody else is, gets to work on. Even within the government. And it's a, it's a unique mission. So I mean, for me, I, I've been, you know, part spy, part diplomat, part sociologist, anthropologist, part adventurer at Times Warrior.

It's just been tremendously fun. And, and at the same time you asked about highlights, you, you get to those highlights through a lot of deliberate patient mundane work where people are just counting on you, just assuming that you're doing the kind of the daily brick laying of, of the job in a way that has the kind of craftsmanship and fidelity that is going to ultimately produce a, a high quality product, but you've, people are counted on you to do it.

So all that stuff I've been fortunate to, to find thrilling, [01:21:00] even some of the mundane stuff. Yeah.

Aaron: I, I, I completely agree. And I, I say it very similar to you, but laying the bricks and you know, I say something like it's 99% of it is writing and, and reading emails and, and 1% of it is just absolutely amazing.

And it just so happens that that 1% is so amazing and so thrilling that it makes the other 99% worth it. It makes

Dave: that investment worth it. It does. Yeah. Yeah. I used to tell my kids when they asked, what do I do? I read stuff, I talk to people, I write things down.

Aaron: Yeah, that's true. That's exactly right.

And then every once in a while you have what what I would call a, a, a ccia a day. Yeah. And, and you don't normally only recognize it once you're in it, or sometimes when you're afterwards, you know, having the, the whiskey at home and you're like, wow, that okay, this was a c i a day today. Yeah. And something happened that I would say oftentimes was even cooler than the movies, but just less frequent than a, than a two and a half hour spike thriller.

Yeah. I would,

Dave: yeah. I would say in every instance when I've been involved in something that was really cool. It was cooler than anybody I could conceive of in a movie. Yeah. Well, I'm

Aaron: glad to hear you [01:22:00] had that same experience. Well, we'll close here. We didn't actually, I don't think we, we, we didn't delve into so much today, some of the really dire and dramatic stuff that's happening in the world right now.

So I, I think we've actually stayed pretty optimistic throughout this talk. But we generally, you were

Dave: gonna ask me what am I optimistic about? Yes. So I'll go back to the generational thing. Yeah. I think there is something immutable about American ideals that we as individuals all often don't live up to, that we as a nation often don't live up to, that we as a government, often don't live up to, but it's there.

Nevertheless, I think it's our brand that makes us attractive when we're overseas dealing with foreigners or foreign governments. And I think it's a thing that draws people to the c i a and in particular to the clandestine service. I think representing and defending those things that are immutable is [01:23:00] incredibly, it's an incredibly powerful experience.

And immutable means it's true over time, which means it crosses generations. And so I am optimistic that within America, there are people who believe in those things deeply enough to put their, their, their day-to-day activity, their lives or careers against the defense of those things. And that, to me is a unifying thing that, that absolutely overwhelms the differences that come with one generation or another.

And I'm absolutely optimistic about that. And frankly, if I weren't, I wouldn't have done all the stuff in the first place. That's what drew me in into the military. It's what drew me to the agency, and that's what kept me focused through the, the course of, of an extremely fortunate career.

Aaron: That's a great place I think to stop for today. This is just a great way to look at life and I think I couldn't agree more and [01:24:00] just wanna say thanks chief for coming on and, , hope to see you in your, your boat, , going down the Potomac here in a couple months. Maybe with your beard slightly longer, ah,

Dave: beard won't get any longer, the boat's done, so I'll look for you.

Okay.

Aaron: Well thanks again. We'll chat with

Dave: you soon. Okay. Thanks a lot.