How KGB Compromise Attempts Really Work With Mike Fournier, Author of Intelligence Operator 230

A lot of people think “spy” means gadgets, fights, and glamour. We’ve got a different story for you, straight from a Canadian military intelligence operator who actually worked the Cold War and later returned to serve in Afghanistan. Mike Fournier, known as Intelligence Operator 230, joins us for a candid conversation about what intelligence work really is: supporting the commander, learning an insane amount of detail, living by strict rules, and staying calm when the situation turns sharp.

We dig into how compromise and entrapment work in the real world, including the slow build adversaries use to find a weakness and apply pressure at exactly the wrong moment. Mike walks us through unforgettable stories from behind the Iron Curtain, including a honey trap attempt on a fellow soldier in Norway and a Warsaw scenario that shows why “no fraternization” isn’t just a policy, it’s protection. Along the way, we talk surveillance, counterintelligence, tradecraft, and why real spycraft is often quiet, methodical, and exhausting rather than cinematic.

We also go where these conversations usually don’t: the mental toll, the isolation, the hyper-vigilance that sticks around for decades, and how PTSD shaped Mike’s life after service. Writing his memoir became a way to face those demons while still honouring the truth of Canadian Forces intelligence work. If you’re interested in Canadian military history, Cold War espionage, counterintelligence, and the human cost behind the badge, you’ll get a lot out of this one. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves real-world spy stories, and leave a review.

Link to Mike Fournier's New Book:  https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000249065885/Mike-Fournier-Intelligence-Operator-230

#servicecanada #military #intellegence #coldwar

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Cheers! Cheers! Welcome to the afternoon point. I'm Mike Tolkien. I'm Matt Conrad. I'm Mike Fournier. Mike Fournier. Good to meet you, sir.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

Yeah.

What An Intelligence Operator Does

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Good to meet you too. Yeah. Intelligence Operator 230.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Tell me a little bit of who that is. That's my my trade, intelligence operator. Yeah. And 230 was my intelligence number. And intelligence, what are we talking here? Canadian. Canadian intelligence, military. Yeah. You know, some of it is tactical intelligence, ground forces. You're out in the field with the troops and you're providing intelligence to battalion and brigade headquarters. The other side of it is more on in the headquarters type of side at a higher strategic level. Yep. So and that covers a broad range of specialties. And an operator first, and eventually I became an analyst after going through training. So now you now I'm sitting in a headquarter analyzing stuff, writing reports and and that, but but by and large, an operator.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

In layman's terms, like what's the mission statement or of your occupation as a as an operator, intelligence operator?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

There is no mission statement. All it is is regulated by where you go serve.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

So if you serve in a brigade, then you're gonna do soldier stuff. If you serve in an Air Force base, you're gonna do air stuff, you know, jets, jet fighters, mission planning, uh, you know, helicopter stuff. So it just depends on where you're at. You follow their edict, what they are supposed to do, and you support the commander. Doesn't matter where you go, you always support the commander. If we're gonna go on a mission somewhere, then he's going to lay out the parameters, what is it that he requires, and every department is responsible for providing him with what he wants. Logistics, they want to know trucks, gas, ammunition, food, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

You want to know the logistics of the opposition, like the opposition?

Why He Joined And Remustered

SPEAKER_02 2:11

I want to know what the enemy's logistics capabilities are. That's my job. But you know, the commander has his mission, he he gives everyone their assignment, their direction, and that is what regulates the intelligence. What's the commander directing us to do? So, what decades did you uh work as an operate? I uh started in 1980 and retired in 97.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Was out for 10 years, and I went back in to go to Afghanistan, so I did another seven years.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Why did you get into this occupation?

SPEAKER_02 2:43

I was in the Navy for a while and I got bored to tears. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Okay. So it was what what I guess what kind of made you originally join the military though? Was there like a particular calling or anything that inspired you to join the military in the beginning?

SPEAKER_02 2:55

My father was in the military at one point, and my grandfather was in you know artillery, yeah, served in the first war. It's a real military family then. So we basically had had been, yeah. Now before my great-grandfather never served in the military, they were lumberjack and and you know trappers. Yeah. So, you know, it was fairly new in our family. But before then, there were some people that served in Canada to defend Quebec against the American invasion in 1775. Yeah. I had ancestors that were there. Wow. You know, so so we basically we have been a military family, but there was a spot of about three generations where it wasn't, you know, they were trappers, they were whatever.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

So uh, but it was always in my blood, I think, to be to be one. And so when I joined, I ended up going in the Navy because I went, oh, look at that high pay field those guys are paying. I'm going there. So I ended up as a stoker in the Navy.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

So right on. Yeah. And then so you you joined the Navy. How long are you in the Navy? Nine years. Nine years, and then you just it got too boring for you, eh?

A Storm Rescue And A Sinking

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Yeah, things changed. We were doing on fishery patrols, and you know, you go out and it's like three weeks of bobbing around, you know. That's it. Nothing, nothing major. The the the most before I remastered to intelligence 1980, in the spring of 1980, the most exciting thing happened. The Morris de Gagne was sinking in a super big storm, and there was an emergency alert. We got the call. Naval headquarters sent us there, Marcon, to save them. Yep. So we got on location, and it was a hell of a storm. I I describe it in my book how you're literally walking on walls, that's how friggin' bad it was.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

And so we got on location, and I was coming off shift, and a bunch of us went up top where we weren't supposed to because of the storm, but we went up top anyway.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

And uh we're looking at the ship. She's listing and she's like really in bad shape. So, and it's not a big ship, but she's rough. So I go back down with another guy down to the main control room, and now the engineer is starting to assemble a rescue crew, you know, so because the captain wants options. So we'll have a rescue crew, and some of the and the things that we used to do in the ships, we were the damaged control people. We're sitting on the on the deck waiting for the call. We're at all our gear. Finally, the captain comes on, he says, cancel us. You're gonna send the diver over to start pick putting people in the harness. Sea King went over and the diver started putting the people in the harness to haul them away. It was like, I think it was like 18 people if I if I remember right, 14 people. I think they did like three, four trips, and then there was the diver and the one guy left. We're up midship and we're all watching, and she's really going. And suddenly, like the guy didn't want to go. You could see that he was refusing to go be put in a harness, and we're going, what the hell? What's wrong with you? Yeah. So anyway, suddenly the ship hits a dip or goes down. Whoosh. And then when we see it again, he's like running for the friggin' harness to get put into it. Well, and they get hauled up. Our diver's the last one off. He he gets hauled up. We go over to the back to the ship, and we all watch it sink. Oh wow. That Moore Scotty sank about 15 minutes later, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

What was the Moors Grand? What kind of ship was it?

SPEAKER_02 6:34

It's just a cargo ship. Cargo ship? Yeah, some some of this it was carrying uh railroad ties. Okay. And the storm had cut it loose and it smashed all of the cut off all of the upper deck fittings. So the water was sinking into the compartments. So anyway, so we're like, holy shit. We all eventually go down to our mess deck. And there's the diver, he's one of our messmates, sitting there, he's having a smoke, he's having a beer, and he's not saying a word. So none of us disturbed him. We just watched him. Looks at us, he goes, Bet you want to know what happened. Yeah, you know. So and one somebody said, So who's that guy at the end that didn't want to go in the harness? He said, Oh, that was the captain. And somebody said, Are you fucking kidding? He says, Oh, why kid you not, mate? He says, It's the captain. He had some idea of going down with his ship, but when we went, took that dip, changed his mind. So I imagine. Hisslef was his name. He got the medal of uh certain bravery for that, starved courage.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

And I'm I'm sorry, I have to ask, you you said that was boring? So you got into the No up to that point.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

I mean, I had already I already put my application to to transfer. It's like this thing's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I gotta I gotta tell you though, as much as we I do believe that we should always have a strong military because we need to protect our sovereignty. I don't hate the fact that maybe you found it boring, because that means there's a lot there's peace if you find it boring.

How Compromise And Entrapment Work

SPEAKER_02 7:59

I was quite purried for the Navy and then but then I I in the September I went it was over and uh now the intelligence school.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

So I'd left the bilges of the uh of the engine rooms and that, and I'd moved over to the classroom and learning intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Day one intelligence school. I mean, did you have to tell your wife or like how do you like flap club? Like it's like you don't know.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

She already knew I was right away. She already knew I was remastering. Yeah. That's what we call it remastering.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Remustering.

SPEAKER_02 8:56

She already knew I was changing traits.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

How much could you tell her right off the cuff? Or does it is it does always come a point of secrecy right away?

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Well, you you know there's some things you can't say.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

And there's you know, so you you generalize conversation. And my wife, fortunately for me, was never the type of person I wanted to know. So, what'd you do today? Tell me about your day. What did you learn? You know, it was none of that stuff. Right on. She's just like just like this book. Yeah. She complained I was so so many hours in the room writing. I'm getting bored, I want to go score. I'm writing this book. So she was never one of the pry or stick her nose into something that she's a typical blue-noser. Sometimes some things I would feel a need to tell. Like we were on a course learning about how the the KGB and the in the in the Soviet system, they try to compromise you, they try to entrap you.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

And you know, we so we got a lot of training in that area of how they do it. We had some stories about some actual things that happened to learn from. And so I would I I told her, I said, so today we learned, uh you need to know that we learned about this today. She looked at me, she goes, Why do I want to know that?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Okay, so she was just like, well, it didn't hit a radar. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Well, I just I should just tell you that this stuff happens.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

And she goes, Okay. And it was it. I went, well, you need to know that if ever happened to me, because it could, just want you to know that I love you, and I would go see my boss, I would tell you about it, then I would go see my boss and tell them and let the chips fall where they may, and that's it. So what's I mean, can you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

What what what what does compromise mean in this time of a big incompromise by the KGB where you have to tell your wife that you're saying?

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah, it's it's it comes down to I've been involved in a few incidents where I had to intervene or someone tried to compromise me in Warsaw.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

In the old in the Soviet days.

SPEAKER_03 11:08

Yeah.

A Honey Trap In Norway

SPEAKER_02 11:08

So so it's um so I had first hand experience with it. So what happens is this if the enemy, the Warsaw pack in this case it was at the time, they want they want to achieve a certain objective, like they want to accomplish something. Yeah. Then they decide how are we going to do this? So depending on the target, the person they want to compromise, or they want the information, so they'll figure out how do we get that information. Oh, this guy works in that comp that department. And they'll see, and they'll start seeing who has weaknesses that they can be exploited. And then when they find that one person, it could be debt, it could be they like to mess around on their wife, right? You know, and keep it secret, stuff like that. It could be anything, right? You know, or they have a drug problem or whatever. Okay, they'll target that person and they'll work on that person for as long as necessary, and then they'll drop the hammer. Hey, listen, I need a favor. My boss, you know, is looking for this. Maybe you can help me. So you might think, oh yeah, okay, sure, I'll I'll help. You're a friend of mine. We've known each other for a while now. You're okay. Yeah. You know, realize that that guy, he's a spy and he's out to nail you. If you watch the the show, the TV show The Americans, that is an excellent way of how compromise is done. How they, you know, they try to get information from people and they set things up. It's really, really well done in research. It's not very good as far as that goes. Um, but that's how they basically get you. So one time we went on a CAS reconnaissance, the CASP means Canadian AirC Transportable Brigade. We and our job, I was with the Special Service Force, our job was to we would go to North Norway and we would hold defensive positions. The Soviets were invading, we would hold until NATO came and relieved us. So we would go there and do reconnaissance, go from town to town, do different things. And we were in this one little town in Norway, and it was a long day. Everyone was a little tired. So we went to a pub next door, this little hotel we stayed in. And everyone's relaxing, having a beer, shooting the shit. And then this one guy, he we go in there, he's already gone to lunch. And we go, what the hell's going on with him? So turns out his wife had called him, but we didn't have cell phones in those days. Right. So it was like she called the hotel, and uh he he found and he got to call her back, and she said, I'm leaving you for so-and-so. And you know, I I've been wanting to for a while, but I this is a good time for me to leave while he's over there. He just lost it. Like he got depressed, angry, got drunk, wow, all this stuff. So everyone's kind of keeping an eye out for him. Yeah, and at some point, like I'm watching for him because he's in the room next to mine. So I just keep an eye out for him. So I seen this uh, I spotted this guy in black leather, you know, and all typical KGB outfit. And he I saw him kind of looking at someone and talking, but I couldn't see who he was talking to. But he just had that look that you go, that guy is up to he's up to something.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

And then so I turn away, we shoot the shit. I think I went to the bathroom and I come back, and there's this blonde girl, you know, an average-looking girl, and this guy creeps sitting right across from them at the table. And so go on, and the girl's hanging all over my buddy, and he seems to kind of like the attention, and I'm going, oh, this is not good. So, you know, my intelligence brain started working.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

And the especially the counterintelligence side of our training, so it's not good. So I decide I'm gonna go check in on him, see how he's doing. So I go, the guy's sitting by himself, so I come in and I give him a little body check with my body as I slide into the spot next to him, knock him over. He looks at me all annoyed, you know, and I'm kind of smiling at him. And I said, Hey, my name is Mike. I went to shake his hand, he just looked at my hand and he didn't do anything. Oh, all right. So I said, I said, Chappie, who's who are your friends? Introduce me. Oh, yes, I don't remember their names, but uh they're my friends. Okay. And the girls like all over him. And so after a while, I said, you know, you gotta get to bed because tomorrow's an early day. You gotta get on the road early. And he gives me hell for dad, you know, leave me alone, I'll be okay. Yeah, so I got up, went back to the bar with the other guys and started shooting this shit. At some point, look around and he's gone. But he's gone and the girl's gone. No one noticed.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

And then one guy said, Yeah, yeah, he left with that girl as some lucky guy. And then somebody else said, I don't think he's in any kind of shape to have any fun tonight. So I kind of left it at that. So after a while, time for me to go to bed too. Uh I get hit the rack, and I'm hearing this giggling and laughing next door. It's very thin walls in those hotels. So he left the door unlocked, which was good. And I go in. Here's the compromise part. She's in her bra and panties, she's draped all over him, leg up on him, and her head on his shoulder, you know, her arm across his chest. Like he doesn't even know what's going on. He's like out of it. And there's the creep sitting in the chair at the table, just near the bed, and he's watching. And she's and she's watching him. So right away, boom, I I they saw me come in, and I looked over at that girl. I said, You get fucking dressed right now, get out of that bed. She's looking at the guy, I said, out right now. The guy went to stand up, and I moved him real close, real fast on him. I said, You sit down. If you stand up again, I'm gonna knock you over this table until next week. So shut up and sit right there. So anyway, she got out and they're all like wondering, they're talking Russian.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

And so, you know, I stand to the side and went, out the door, hit the bricks. And uh so he she left. He left too, and he gave me this dirty look. I went, I looked at him like, yo, come on, really, really, get out of here. So, and and Chappie goes, Where are my friends? He's like, I said, they're not your friends, Chappie. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Lock the door, go back to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

So my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Oh yeah, I said that was my first time of dealing with actual and a compromise attempt on someone. So it was uh quite the interesting evening.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

The story about the wife. Do you know that was planted or if that actually was the case when the wife called the hotel and said?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

No, they they got separated. So the next day, and I told him what happened. Yeah, he he thanked me, says, you know, he says, you saved my career. Wow. He says, Wow. And then I found out a year or so later, and we got to chatting, and apparently he got back with his wife, and everything was fine. So it was a nice ending for him. And you know, it it's typical of like any soldier would do that for another soldier. You step in and you know, stand up for them, you know, and when they need it. Right. Because you make the difference no matter what. You may not understand what difference you're making right away, but you know that you gotta stand there for your your buddy. Was this guy also in intelligence though? No. He was uh he was a uh he was in the artillery battalion.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

He was one of the operations officers.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

So it's good because I was gonna say, like, if uh you know if he's an intelligence and he's yeah getting compromised, it just goes to show you that even the best uh the best train to not be compromised can also get compromised.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

But yeah, yeah, and you know, and it's easy to happen. I mean, the it was attempted on me uh in Warsaw and you know, behind the Iron Curtain. I was active in a lot of counter-surveillance stuff, counterintelligence stuff, uh, and did a lot of that work. And then when it was actually happening to me. I couldn't believe it. I was like, are you fucking kidding me? This is happening, really? This is really happening. I didn't see it coming until it actually happened. Thankfully, you know, we had rules to live by.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Yeah.

A Compromise Attempt In Warsaw

SPEAKER_02 19:31

So we had these rules called no fraternization rule. You were not allowed to visit Polish citizens, Polish workers in the embassy. You weren't allowed to mingle with them. No fraternization with anybody. So the next morning I go see my colonel. He's having a smoke at the back garage door looking and I I told him what happened. He looks at me. He goes, Okay. And how it started is she was babysitting for us. And she's complained about I don't have a ride home. My friend called, the car broke down, the buses aren't running, and my wife says, give her a lift home. And I'm going, no. So trying to tell her I can't do that, I'm not allowed. But she insisted.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Yeah, okay. So I took her home. It's on the way home. It was the second time I took her home. First time was okay, chat chat, you know, Canada, the weather, you know, bullshit. And it was okay. I still reported that to the colonel, so you knew. But this time was a little heavier.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

So taking a babysitter home. Like this is pretty easy. Like this is normal for me to be here.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

She worked in the embassy.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

And so uh she was an employee. And so, you know, all the embassy workers, they hired some of the women, a couple of the women, to babysit for them. So we're driving home and then her tone changed. You know, I don't know if you guys experienced this before, but you're having a chat and suddenly the tone changes, the voice drops, and things get a little bit mellow, and you notice it, you go, okay, yeah, what's going on? So as she starts to talk about how miserable her life is. She lives, she's a single woman living in this apartment, and men are always knocking on her door, wanting to come in and have a coffee or or take care of her. And she says, if I did any of that, their wives would kill me. You know, they they find out that would be it. So it's miserable, it's terrible. Oh, that's that's awful. Try not get involved in the conversation. Yeah, yeah. And so it's like uh we get to her to drop her off at the apartment building, and she looks at me, and she's now she's really her face has changed, and she's looking at me. She's not really pretty. She might have been pretty like 15 years before. Okay. Straw red dyed hair, you know, shit like that. It was like and um she had a sexy way about her, but she looks at me, she says, uh, how would you like to come in for a tea or a coffee? Oh that moment, my shit freaking left my body. I went, holy shit. Holy shit. So it's like I looked at her and calm as hell, went, nah, I'm not. Right. I'd rather not, you know. She goes, it's okay. You can park right over there. It's an empty spot. And I have diplomatic plates on.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:06

And I'm thinking, yeah, like that's gonna fly. You know, as soon as I go into your apartment, the secret police will be around taking pictures. Who knows what's in your apartment? I don't know. But said, no, no, no, I'm gonna go home, make sure the kids get to bed, and I'll be fine. Thanks very much for the invite. And she looks at me, she says, Okay, I'll let you get away with it this time. And as I'm driving off, I'm going, what the fuck did she mean by I gotta get away with it this time?

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Told the colonel the next day, and he goes, Yeah, don't get her to babysit for you anymore.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

I mean, it sounds quite cinematic. Do you do you feel like in your own mind, like when I we when dealing with intelligence, and I I mean I really do want to read this book that you've just put out. When's the book come out, by the way? May March 30th. The book released on March 30th, so it's available now. And where can people get it?

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah, you can get it uh on Friesome Press, Indigo, and Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

All you gotta do is tell do a search on Intelligence Operator 230.

Cold War Tradecraft And Close Calls

SPEAKER_01 24:08

230 will pop up. Awesome. And we'll have a link for it in this episode too. So if you're listening and you want to check out this book, there's I'm sure I know there's tons of these stories in there, right? You told me another one. We might tell that one too before the show's over. You told me one when we first met last in December. We might get into that. Okay, sure. Be happy to. What's one of the biggest revelations you really had about the Cold War at this time? You were there like on a whole different side of it. People were actually fearing nuclear war at the time at home.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

When I when I got assigned to go to Warsaw and I went on my training, yeah, there was an American intelligence major and he had wandered too close to East Berlin fence, fence off area.

SPEAKER_03 24:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Signs everywhere, all that stuff, and he got shot. So for me and my training partner was on a course, he was going to Moscow. We were doing all the trade craft for a year. It was uh an eye-opener. We never did find out the story, even at our level, we never really knew the ins and outs, the bones of the story.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

But when you kind of read generally, I think even now you could read generally about it, is that he didn't believe that anyone would shoot him. So he kind of wandered in too close. Apparently, soldier yelled or something, and he may or may not have heard him and he wandered closer, bang, shot.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

So you know, you go you your takeaway from that is okay. I don't know if he was arrogant and he thought, gonna do it anyway.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

The takeaway is simply don't go where you're not supposed to go in front of other soldiers watching. You know, and they warn and they yell at you, back off. I mean, while I was there, I went in a lot of places I wasn't supposed to be. Yeah, and there was a couple of times I could have been shot. So, you know, I I had, you know, one time an AK leveled at me. Yeah, get the fuck out of here. When we went beetled it, that was a whole different sort of hurry up and get the hell out of there moment. It was a really holy fuck moment.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

And then there was another time I went to take photos of an airfield, a short grass runway. And right across the street was a guard tower. That's a chapter in the book, you know, Sniper in the Tower.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

And so it was an army garrison.

SPEAKER_03 26:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

And when I was going and look, and I came back, I saw I paid attention to it, and I'm looking for silhouette or something in the tower or something. I didn't see anything. So I'm going, okay. And I go out and I tell my partner, it's your turn. So he goes off and he takes pictures for his country. He's from another country.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

And as I'm watching, somebody shows up in the you can see a silhouette, someone popped up into the tower. He couldn't really tell what they were doing because it was sort of a worn kind of plastic. So, you know, when he was there and Betty was done, I had already taken pictures of this sign on a post. Oh wow. And he's looking at me saying, What are you taking a picture of that for? Oh, it goes in my report. He says, What does it say? I took a Polish course, so part of my training, I said, No trespassing on pain of death. The guy was so comical. I mean, he had no training, and he was a real handsy pansy kind of guy. And his face went white and he looked at me. Are you kidding? I said, No. I said, here's the here's the word for trespassing. No trespassing. Death. There's a tower. Let's get the fuck out of here. So we got a truck away we went. Yeah, yeah. Every time we left a location, you always go in a hide. Right. So we go in a hide, wait for however long you felt you should wait. Camouflaged. Everything you're camouflaged, you're out of the site. And uh when you think it's clear, it'd be half an hour later, you go to the next target.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

So as Operator 230, where do you feel you really helped like stop like stop what was happening in Russia? Where do you think your key contributions were?

SPEAKER_02 28:28

I was only in one little straw in the pile. I mean, right, you know, there was a lot of other colleagues of mine in the other countries doing similar stuff. Yeah. You know, and so we never shared what we did because that's compartmentalization. That's what you know, you don't touch about it.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

But you're talking about it. But I am now before surveillance, before we had, you know, many ways to look at people before the internet. Like you guys literally all had to go in the field in different ways to map out this intelligence.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Even if I uh say uh you were my colleague, say in you know, in Hungary. Right. And we ran into each other after our tour back in Canada. We weren't allowed to talk to each other about what we did. See, information got passed up, not sideways, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

So it's uh the only people who would really know it are the people who are collecting the information.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

And and during our training, we would get, oh, by the way, this happened. Like, you know, our guy was in in he's on the street and he got followed by secret police and blah blah blah. So those things are reported. It was part of our training to know how to detect and escape surveillance and that kind of a thing. So so we were really well trained in that area, so it you know, it saved my bacon a few times. Imagine. You know, not you know, mostly from being arrested, detained, and you know, sent back to Canada, embarrassment to the country, yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. So it but yeah, it is really good, serious training, and and it really worked well.

Spy Movies Versus Real Intelligence

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Would you say like, I mean, people think of obviously like you know, they think of like being a spy, everything gets like, you know, there's glamour in Hollywood and things like that. Would you say like proper intel and spying is maybe more boring than most people probably really think?

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Yeah, yeah, it is. I I write in that prologue of the book, I basically I say, uh, yeah, and the the job is real world. There are no guns, no fancy cars, yeah, and no pretty assistant to help you through the mission. It's just you period. Yeah, and you just do your job, and you you know it it's it it is it's boring that way, you know. It's but it it's never boring in a sense of doing the job. Yeah, you because your radar is on all the time.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

And the realization of these global threats that that are around every day that many people don't see. The global threats don't affect you there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

What affects you there is what's happening in that country, that city.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

But it must be a very isolating career. Yes, it is. We don't have very many friends. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like you you you can't really talk, you know, if you have friends, like say you're back in Canada, you're not on you're not on a mission or anything, I mean you can't really talk about your job, right? You can't really you may not even be able to tell people what you do.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

I mean, now it's different because I I put this book through the the Department of National Defense for their review.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

For the National Securities Act, make sure Secrecy Act, make sure that everything's fine. And they sent it back to me twice. I had to cut out like sections like a whole page and a half.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Or I couldn't use certain terminology, or I couldn't use this person's nationality. Like anything that had to do, like the partner I had on the on the ground, I couldn't use his nationality.

unknown 31:54

Oh yes it is.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

I could only say NATO partner. That's all I could say. NATO. I couldn't say he was from such and such a country like that.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Well, I mean, I because I think back, there was a there was one time I remember, so Mike and I work in the insurance world, and I remember I was talking to somebody, this is back when I worked in Personal Lines, and I was just trying to like in the personal lines, if you get, depending on what your career is, you can get discounts in your home and auto insurance. And I asked the guy, I was like, So what do you you know, what do you do for work? And I'll never forget it. I was like, what do you do for work? You know, there may be discounts depending on where you work. He's like, I can't tell you what I do. And I was like, Really? I was like, really? I was like, haha. Well, and he's like, No, I can't tell you what to do. And I like literally, I was like, Oh. He's like, just move on. And I was like, okay. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Yeah, I thought it was there's I mean, I never back in the day, it was the same for me. It wasn't such I can't tell you what I do, or I have to shoot you. Yeah, it was more of like, yeah, I'm in the military.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Just I do that when they ask for my email at the grocery store, you know, to further receipt. I think I said, No, I can't tell you. I can't tell you my email.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Sorry, I'm in special ops. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

So so nowadays a bit different because now you you do hear things about like JTF2, you know, the you know you know, the commandos, that kind of thing. You do hear of them, you know their names. Right. So and now you can see their names interviews with so-and-so, they wear their badge. So it's not like they're incognito now. It used to be in the day, but not so much now. It became more open. Just don't talk about what it is you've been doing. Your missions you do. You can't talk about the training, you can't talk about operations, you can't talk about any of that stuff, obviously. But it's not a big deal. No one's gonna have a kitten if you say, Oh, I'm with special ops.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Right. You know, no one's gonna shoot you. Well, I mean, and it was probably like, you know, we have so much information today, so it's easier to get it.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

I think I might have put this on.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Sure, yeah, it's a little louder in here. Yeah, and I'm gonna turn down our volume here. So uh your headset number two. So I'm just gonna turn you down a bit so it's not too loud.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

That's good. Is that good? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's it's I find maybe it's a little different today versus before because there's so much information that you can get today. Like you can you can look at anything on a satellite and everything, right? And yeah, sometimes on Google. Yeah. But like the Cold War, because it wasn't an actual physical war, it was really fought with you guys. Like intelligence was a big part of it, right? Spy versus pie. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean where no bullet was really fired for you know for the most part, no bomb was dropped. It was really a race to kind of see where people were. I mean, right? The race to the moon was that, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Yeah, there's I mean, there are movies that are exciting to watch. Yeah, you see them and you see the character actor, the main actor, they're like invincible.

SPEAKER_03 34:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

And they're going through about 30 friggin' bad guys like in like nothing. And I'm a Hapkido master, and I fought a lot in my in my life for real, you know, when I was younger. Yeah. And I'm looking at that, I'm going, good thing is choreographed because you want to get too far. Yeah, because you you would be overwhelmed by numbers and taking it out the first time, the second time. So and the acrobatics that they do.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

I don't know. I'm not gonna say it's impossible, but I'm I kind of look at it and go, probably not something I would do. You know, I'd probably run my pell real fast the other way. So intelligence. Yeah, so uh I don't I don't know, they're fun to watch. Oh, yeah, they're good to watch and uh, but uh there's some parts where like a soldier would look at it and go, no, no, no, that would never happen.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Or you don't do it that way, you know. So yeah, we will look we look at it the same way. And you know, I know some of my colleagues used to talk about did you see that movie? Fuck a shit.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

So less like John Wick, more like Indiana Jones running on the boulder.

Family Pressure And The Mental Toll

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Yeah, John Wick's exciting to watch because it's pure fighting and movement and just going flow one to the next, the next, and so you go, okay, if you had if you had drunk a case of Red Bull, yeah, maybe you'd probably get away with that. But it's it it's you've got to take it with a grain of salt, and it's just entertainment, that's really all it is.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

You know, we have a lot of people of all ages that listen to this show. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the psychology of intelligence work. What type of people are a good fit for this type of work?

SPEAKER_02 36:28

That's what you say. It starts at the first course. Yeah, it at least it did in my day. And we were told right from the start, this is the hardest course you're ever going to take, ever in the military. It says not all of you are gonna pass.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Because it it's just so intense. So it's pressure.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:49

So first thing to do is pressure. And then it's the learning curve, the workload.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

We literally in those days were known as walking-talking encyclopedias.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Yeah, we had to memorize a crazy memory retention.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

We had to remember every little detail of everything. Yeah. You know, T-55 tank, how far it goes, 450 meters, you know, how many shells does it carry, you know, 40 shells in the turret, in the 100 millimeter, here's the range, stuff like that. When your commander came and asked you, I'm facing a tank regiment, right? T-55s, uh, tell me what's the danger, how capable are the capabilities and that. And you would know, you would know from satellite, from whatever, that they had extra fuel tanks, they had this and that.

SPEAKER_03 37:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

You would know the support, all the support they had, logistics, yeah. And you'd be able to figure out by measuring in that how much how much ammo they had for the tanks and how everything. And then you'd be able to tell them, yeah, this is uh their capability and this is their how they how far they can go and where they're going to go. And from that we would know their objective. He would go off and he would do his planning to take them out. So, you know, they have to that was the thing.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

So that really shows you though what the type so is a in a memory. I mean, how about like with it with this compromising stuff you thought of? I mean, you have to have a real element of self-control in your mind, I think, to to not succumb to the fear that's in this job or the fear of a family getting hurt or yourself getting hurt. I mean, yeah. Do you do you feel like like is that where some people fail, or do you feel like becomes a huge component of a risk of the job?

SPEAKER_02 38:34

My family was with me in Poland. And all the family all the people that work there, their families went with them.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Foreign affairs staff, everybody. So that was to normalize your environment for you know, come home to your family, have supper, or whatever. Sure, yeah, and you know, go on outings and that. So one of the things you never expect is to have your family targeted.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Right. Yeah. That would be the fear, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

That's yeah, well, it's not a fear until it happens.

SPEAKER_01 39:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

You don't think about it until it happens.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

And then when it the first kernel drops, you better pay attention. Yeah. And then you see the second, third step. Right. And then you know there's shit happening, and you've got to. So now on this in your own head, that really messes you up. Because now you know they're in trouble, like there's a danger. Like I told my wife, I said, this is what's going on, this is what I think is happening. And at first, she didn't believe me. No, nobody would do that. You know, I said, We're not talking about the nice people of Poland. I mean, these people are nice. Yes. We're talking about secret police here to do anything to do their job.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

And guess what? We're part of it. So it had gone beyond me. What I it took me years to think about this. Why did they do that? Target my family. They didn't hurt them, they just psychologically messed them up and uh you know, toyed with them and scared them, that kind of thing. Scared my kids. My oldest was 12 years old. Uh so you know, it was that kind of thing as a father. You really get anxious about, you get worried, you know, you're not there to look after, but they're in danger. And so it really tears you apart. And then you know it's because of the job. They couldn't catch me.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Red-handed. They could never catch me. I was always messing them up big time. You know, as if I had a target somewhere and it was a bit of a distance, I would leave at four in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

With my partner. My handby bambi partner is like, that early. Yes, we're hitting the road. And we go.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

And nobody's around, everyone's sleeping. And they'll show up around, I don't know, seven o'clock, eight o'clock in front of my door, wait for me to come out. They'd be waiting. Right. Waiting. I'm already gone. So so that would upset them, I guess. They'd be looking for me. They had no idea where I was going. Yeah. Because when we were planning the missions, we would be in my office with the map laid out, and we'd say, Okay, tomorrow we're going to be here.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

And we're going to go down this road, and we're going to go to this target.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

We'll do our thing, go to hide, then we'll go to your target over here.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

So they would never know where we were to start with. So it was like it's always that kind of a talk. So we go to a place, oh, we're an hour early. Let's take a nap. Sleep in the cars. Trucks that it camouflage. And then we'd hit the road and hit our target. So there were times like that. And so they couldn't catch us. They even found us in one town. We stayed overnight. The next day they we were going to my next target across the other side of the country. And there's a secret police guy who's having a smoke and he's leaning against the car. He's smiling. Oh yeah. And I told my idiot partner, I looked, I said, we have a flat tire. You could tell the roof of the car is more canted. And he goes, we have a flat tire. So yeah, we have a flat look at the roof. It's we have a flat tire. As we approached, sure enough, it was a flat tire.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

And the guys across from the camera, looking at us, and I'm looking at him. So I couldn't believe what I just heard next from my partner. What are we gonna do? I'm looking at him. I'm going, I'm thinking, are you kidding me right now? Really? I looked at we changed the tire. That's what we do. And he goes, Oh, I said, You got a spare tire in this thing that works? The last time we had a flat, they had a flat tire, a spare tire was useless. So we change it. Change it about 15-20 minutes, so it's very fast. And the guy leaves and we leave. So in a chapter of the book, I talk about there's always a plan B. Right. So to get to my target, I follow a different plan, expecting that they would think I was gonna go one certain route, and I went all over the fucking country and I went to my target the wrong way around and I got to it.

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

So I mean it's it's it's that kind of work. And it's it's boring when you're looking at uh you know uh John Lacari books or James Bond or you know, it's not like tech, it's just using your noggin and doing what you gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

What's the next step? So this is the question I have though, is like if they if people are aware of what you're trying to do, like it's not like your identity is like hidden, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Oh no, they knew who I was.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

They knew who you were, they kind of know what you're trying to do, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Well they know exactly what my mission was. So in those days, like in the years before I showed up, like all of our era showed up, yeah, they used to use covers. So I remember one of my warrant officers, intelligence warrant officers, he went over to one of those countries as an administration clerk.

SPEAKER_03 44:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Didn't wear any intelligence future military, it was administration, so that was his job. Right. And but then after a while it was basically, come on guys, we know what everyone's doing. So we got to wear all our intelligence badges, uniforms, and they knew exactly what we did. So it was no messing around with them. They knew. So that that was part of the job and uh we have to deal with that.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

So uh I I think we're gonna wrap up here first, but I mean I do really wanted to ask one more question about the book before we do our 10 questions. That's kind of the fun part of our show. We asked some silly questions. But before we get into that, I wanted to ask you like, what do you hope people get out of reading this book? It's uh you might have to go into your mic because it's a little loud here now that the party has begun at the Queen's Arm, which is we are running a little late here tonight, which is okay, but if you lean into your mic, we'll be fine. Yeah, yeah.

Why He Wrote The Book

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Uh basically, uh for me it was a cathartic thing because of my PTSD, it was pretty severe.

SPEAKER_03 45:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Look, when I started to write, it was just to release and face some of my demons that I had. And in the process, there are a lot of times I was writing, I stopped writing and started crying. You know, uh, especially with Afghanistan. Yeah, you know, and so you know, I try to keep it straightforward without none of that emotional stuff in, but just to share what I thought. And what I I'm hoping that the reader will get out of it is uh an understanding of what military intelligence uh you know operator is of what we do in the Canadian military as intelligence people. Uh it's not about fancy suits and guns and shit like that. Yeah, it's it's people that are wearing you know combat uniforms and regular working offices, they go out in the field and put their lies on the line and still people talk about mental language and everything else. They play a real toll. That that guy that was my partner, he was so untrained. My colonel, I first got on the ground, it was after the first NATO meeting. He said, Oh, I I hooked you up with that guy from that country. Yeah, he says, they're not trained. Okay. He says, You're gonna have to train them on the on the run, on the road as you go. Thanks, sir. And you know, and I had and that guy out put my life in danger several times. In fact, at the at the quarry, we almost got shot because of this idiot. Didn't even have the skills of a boy scout. You know, we got there and I'm going along a tree line in a foliage, and I'm hiding, and I'm just going over this crest, and I'm approaching it so that eventually my eyes start to get over the crest line. Yeah, now I can see. So maybe only this part of my head is showing, but I can see everything, but I'm in the bushes, so I take my pictures. Right. Armed soldiers everywhere, something's going on, and I have no idea. So the analysts would have to figure that out. Right. There was a guard shack across from us, and so I thought, okay, I took pictures. This was an opportune target. Yeah. And uh so I go back to the SUV and I tell Buddy, I said, okay, just what I saw, go over and take some pictures. He was supposed to watch me and learn from me. Nope, didn't happen. I'm putting my camera away in the bag, and I happen to look over, and there he is, the middle of the fucking road, up to his waist above the crest line, and he's looking and he's going.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

Okay, this guy sounds like he should be in a comedic movie with you. Like, I watched you a bit of comedy here for a Cold War movie.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

So anyway, I uh I didn't want to yell so that people might hear me. Yeah. So uh I run up to him and I grab him by the coattail, yeah, and I pull him back, and as I'm pulling him away, there's a guy who just stepped out of a shack. He's pointing at us and he levels his AK at us. Right, and I'm going, let's get the fuck out of here. I would say go into the truck and boogie.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

I have to ask, did you keep in touch with his partner? Fuck no. It's too bad. I'd like to see if he stood. I'd like to see if he made it through the ramp with his lens. It sounds like you helped him a lot through a few predictions.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

He didn't go on another job with me. Uh his partner did, his other sergeant in his unit, he was a bit more level-headed, common sense. Yeah. He didn't get training either, but he was easier to work with.

Modern Wars And Domino Risks

SPEAKER_01 49:38

I have another question. Matt might too, I'm not sure, but one of the ones I I wanted to ask before I get into our team questions, it's more of our fun bit. Like, fast forward to 2026 that we're in? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm just joking. Yeah, yeah. Like, what what would your your intelligence mind be the most fearful about today for this year happening with everything going on in the world through I mean Iran and uh this this new war that's kind of brewing?

SPEAKER_02 50:10

There are a lot of my old colleagues that are out in the open and talking about what they see and and and doing analysis of what's going on on a unclassified level. Yeah. You know, it's just years and years of training and stuff they know and they know how to interpret what they see. Right. And so they give their two cents worth. And and we are all on the same page. That's what the United States did is by far the dumbest thing anyone's ever seen on this freaking planet ever. And it's put everybody in danger. So we basically all agree on that part. The only thing that we like everybody else that's out there, wonders when's it gonna stop and who's gonna stop that guy. You know, because that's the only way you can stop this, is like getting that guy out of there, and no one wants to seem seem to want to get him out of the office. So it's like for all of us, all we're doing is watching, wait, watch, wait.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

Yeah, you know, and it's not political at this point, it just seems to be more of an issue with the the the man on top. It's just I don't understand the.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Well, look at the what ifs. Like, yeah, it's yeah, it yeah, it has a lot to do with the man on top and what he's doing and putting everyone's existence in danger. But it's also about if this happened, it might trigger this. If that happens, triggers this. If that's triggered and that's triggered, holy shit. You know, it right it just dominoes. And so all of my old colleagues and I, we all look at it that way. But everyone's everyone's got their opinion. Uh, and but is it correct? Well, we don't know because we're not privy to classified information, so we don't know. Yeah, but it it is dangerous for now how the world is going, and I don't think anyone has the answer and how it's going to stop right now. Uh, how is it going to end? We don't know. Hopefully, the bomb doesn't go off. You know, hopefully. And uh you got you know, Notre Dame has said there would be a Armageddon in that region. And what what are we looking at right now? Middle East, Israel, Jordan, you know, Syria, Lebanon, all those places, Gaza, it's like leveled. It's just in uproar. Now you're looking at Iran, Gulf of Ormuz, all that stuff. Everyone's throwing bombs in every direction. You're going, fuck, there's people dying everywhere. And you're going, yeah. Is this Armageddon?

SPEAKER_03 52:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

You know, and that's the question you're going to be left with. Is this Armageddon? Was Amsterdam is correct? Yeah. So it probably feels like it to people over there. Right. Oh, it probably does. Yeah, they don't know which way to turn anymore. You know, it's that's the terrible thing for them. You feel bad for them. It's not like going to Afghanistan where you had uh a definite bad guy who was hurting people, and you wanted to stop that bad guy. Right. It's quite complicated, man. The bad guys are well used to be the good guys, you know. It's like what that, you know, Israel, Israelis, the Americans, uh, nobody wants to touch them, you know. Europe, nobody wants to talk to these guys now. No, you've got to stop this.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

You know, and then it shuts down intelligence, eh? What it probably shuts down intelligence, like sharing of intelligence.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Yeah, yes, there has been that, of course, but the Europeans and us, we still have open open minds, yeah. Australia, New Zealand, England, and us, we still have that communication, and we're probably forming new open lines of communication with other countries in Europe, yeah. We're starting to become more friendly with. But now everyone's starting to leave the Americans out. Yeah, you know, it's can you blame it? No, it's like you don't know what he's gonna do with that. He attacks the Pope. Yeah, yeah. Who the who the hell does that? You want a stable partner, right? He's far from stable, that's for sure. But you know, just to finish off on the question, say what kind of psychological you know, psychology is a person for this job. It it is to want to do the best you can. You know, you go in and you're learning stuff and you're drilled from the beginning. The job you do is to protect soldiers.

SPEAKER_03 54:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

You need to give the commander everything he needs so he can do the right make the right decisions that will mitigate lives and have a successful mission. You know, and that's that's the whole thing. It's like it's opposite of what Trump's doing. They're just going in there and they don't give a hell about plans or if I do this, how many people are gonna die? No. That was our job. You have to tell the commander, these are the dangers, these are the things that you need to consider. In the end, it's him who makes the decision. Yeah, not you. You give him the information, right? So you help them make calculations, but that's our job, so he can walk away and go, okay, thank you. Because he gets advice from other people too. 100%, yeah, not just us. Yeah. So so it it's to help them. Now, an intelligence operator has to be able to just do the goddamn job. Don't don't feel sad or hurt because the commander didn't take your piece of advice. Right. Get over it.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

And you're just sharing information and intel for another mind to really get over it.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Yep. That's his decision to make, you know, and that's not yours to make. So that happens. Happened to be in Afghanistan. Yeah. So it's it's a hard thing once you embrace something and then you gotta turn it over to somebody else, yeah, and you don't like that person, he's gonna mess up all the work we did. Seriously, it's yeah, but that's the feeling you have. Yeah, and that's another psychological aspect of you know being professional. You have to learn to be professional and one let things go.

Ten Questions And Life After Intel

SPEAKER_01 56:25

Yeah. Well, I tell you, the more I listen to you, the more I want to keep getting more stories and keep getting more of the. Well, yeah, yeah, it's it is crazy here now, though it's really popped off. It's busy. I think we should still do our 10 questions. Yeah, go ahead. And I'm gonna read the book. You know, maybe I'll read the book to get more stories. And again, operator 2 30, it's out now. Anybody can show them. That's right. We'll both get a copy, yeah. So uh let's jump into our 10 questions. Matt, you can you can kick them off if you want. All right, sure. All right.

SPEAKER_00 56:54

So, question number one. So if you had to pick, are spies more like ninjas or librarians? These are dumb questions, by the way. No, that's fine. So jumping, yeah. More like librarians by and large. Okay. For the most part. I was hoping you would say that actually.

SPEAKER_01 57:12

Over you. Question number two. And these are kind of spy themed, okay? So, how many times in your career do you dramatically have to hang up a phone?

SPEAKER_03 57:20

Like the birthday church, and then it's Friday we're gonna have to.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

Never. Never? No, never. Uh you know, I never got anybody on the line if they were really angry and yelling, yeah, just hold it away. And then you hear the are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here. Right, then they calm down.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

Very cool.

SPEAKER_03 57:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

All right, question number three. So the uh paranoia of constantly being followed or recorded, like, does that stick with you, like even to this day?

SPEAKER_02 57:52

Yeah, it drives my wife crazy. I'll I'll walk down the street, like we could walk down the street tonight.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:58

Go to Canadian Tire.

SPEAKER_01 58:00

Which we won't, because we've already had all these conversations now. I'd be scared to walk down the street. That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

We we could walk down. Yeah, yeah. And we're all chatting. Yeah, yeah. But this guy, and watch, and I'll tell her sometimes we'll be on the street. That's the third time that car drove by us. Well, stop it. Will you? That's not true. No, it's not true. Yeah, it is. Same car, same guy in the friggin' driver's seat, wearing a ball cap, beard. Yeah, same guy. And in fact, I got his last three numbers on his plate the last time it's in. And she'll go, why do you do that? I don't know, it's just in me. It's just something I do. And when I used to be, when I had a school, Marshall.

SPEAKER_01 58:43

I know some guys that smoke pot who had that same problem.

SPEAKER_02 58:46

When I when I taught my my students, keto students, these are part of the survival things you teach them. Yeah. Be observant, watch. Don't if you see something odd, memorize it. If someone's looking at you kind of oddly, memorize that face because you're gonna see him again. You know, and and if you memorize it and you see him again, you know he's up to no good. And that'll cause you to make decisions like turn left, exit, stage left, you know, that kind of thing. And it's gonna make you make decisions that might make a difference in your in your survival.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Mike, it's not good for my brain, me hearing this. I think we should move on to the next question. Uh what is one thing that you think every person should carry with them? Pocket knife. Pocket knife.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

Yeah? Nice. Well, there you go. I only use it to cut boxes open.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Or could mean it's uh it but it's there. I've had it for years.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

Yeah, 151 episodes. First time a knife is pulled out on the show. This is pretty cool. It's a cool moment.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

Give me your beer. And uh, you know, it's it's just that's the thing, it just gives me comfort. Yeah only not because I need it for defense, I don't need a weapon for defense. Yeah, I I never did. No, no. But uh, but it's just I use it, it's a utility knife for me, it's just all it is. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Question number five. So if you were hiding a secret for someone here at the Quinn's Arm Pub, where would you place it?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

Well, we gotta describe to me what it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:18

Hiding a secret note for somebody.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:19

A note, secret note with secret code on it to break into the Royal Bank garden of this bank. There's some cool spots.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

There's a boat behind you, there's a monkey, a golden monkey holding the light bulb behind you.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Yeah. Well, someone might say you might put it in behind a picture. Yeah. You know, like if they if they pull away from the wall, yeah. You know, there might be a ledge put in the back or against the wall and say it's back there. Hopefully it doesn't fall back. Right. It doesn't fall. I mean, you it there's a lot of places where you could put it, you know. Some people say, Oh, behind a radiator, nah, it's gonna fall to the floor. But behind a picture, maybe cool, yeah. Under a cushion with the lift?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:04

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Section number six. Okay, so uh you you've kind of alluded to some of these stories already in in today's episode. Uh if you were compromised and had to leave North America quickly to escape, which country would you flee to and why?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:21

I'd pick uh either Norway or Australia. Oh, okay. Yeah I know people in Norway, but Australia is always kind of exotic and all this stuff. I know they have winters and those summers, but it's kind of like still like the south of Canada, like the Canada South.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:39

The opposite, yeah. Yeah, yeah, love it. Good answer. Question number seven. So what is one what sorry, what is one thing about being an operative that you actually didn't like?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Uh there was uh there was the time when I think it's the story you're alluding to in Warsaw when the visa clerk was compromised, yes, by secret policeman.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:13

This is a story you told me before that kind of got you on this show, really, because it was a cool story. Yeah, I think that's in the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:19

Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah. Uh I think because I had to quote unquote interrogate her.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:29

I didn't want to make it sound like I was gonna pull her guts out, but I wanted to get answers, and uh so I had to have a special approach so I didn't really scare her because she was giving me the body language that she she was afraid. Right, yeah. She'd protect her gut, she'd do different things, and she'd look away when she went to answer, and you know, and they were not hard questions, they were things like so uh, you know, this guy picked her up at a bus stop.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

And you don't want to, I mean, as an interrogator, I would say, why did you get in the car? Right. That sounds attacking. Sure. But because I was already trained as a counselor, believe it or not, you don't want to ask those questions, you just say things like, so what made you think it was okay to get into that car? Same question, or different? And you get the same answer. Why do you think it was saying? So it's just uh so the hard thing was I didn't want to make her feel like I was interrogating her. And it got to a point where I did ask a question and the first secretary was there, he stopped because now we're starting to talk about the secret policeman. And he was a major in the secret police, and so that was part of my book and in the story in the chapter. And the you know, he didn't want to talk about it, so he dismissed her. I said, Okay, fine. What triggered me to get this line of with her was I'm not gonna tell you what happened before that secret policeman chased her in the shirt, you know, all that's it's in the book. Yeah, uh, and so we kind of lost track of her. I told her to go fix, you know, refresh herself and freshen up and that. And the first secretary and I went up to his office and couldn't find her. So it was like um, where is she? So we sat there, and then she was up at the door with a knock, knock, knock. She had a piece of sheet of paper in her hand.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:36

And I see the paper, my interrogator brain started right away to come to work, and she said, I thought I I would write up what happened tonight and give it to you. So as an interrogator, go, nobody asked you to do that. Why are you doing that? What compelled you to do that? So right away I started thinking that she's trying to not hide something, but to kind of soften things over, smooth things over, and try to distract us from what happened. But in the end, I know exactly what happened. I investigated this at my level and I didn't like what I was seeing. But in the end, in my report to Foreign Affairs, I basically said, you know what, this isn't any of her fault. She was a single person, put in a communist country, and it went against the regulations of the Foreign Service. She was already in Beijing. You cannot cross-post someone from one communist country to another, a single person. They have to go home to rest and you know, whatever. And so they did that. So they put her in that position. Okay. So she was vulnerable, she was lonely. She was not a bad-looking girl. I mean, she, you know, attractive enough, but they targeted her because she was. Remember, I said earlier, we knew her weakness, she was lonely, and she was alone. And the person that started compromising her was the embassy receptionist. She started, she saw everyone who came into the embassy. She knows everyone, she takes notes, and she would go out to lunch with her. Wow. No fraternization, but she broke the rule. So now she was uh she was a bit afraid of getting in trouble for that. So so that I didn't like that putting her in that spot.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:29

Good answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:29

You know, it it was just like, but I had to do my job, you know, I had to do what I had to do. And uh you know, you're yeah, you're working sometimes with good people. So when I submitted my report, it wasn't even typed up, it was handwritten, full scap, 12 pages. And it but I got called in for debriefs a few months later, yeah, and to Ottawa, and the head of the Secret Service Foreign Affairs and his partner had me. Down, and there was my report in a folder, and said, We have some questions to ask if you don't mind. I said, Oh, go ahead. You know, so it was about that incident. So you know, I I tried to make it like in the book, I say respect for her. She didn't she didn't buckle, she stood her ground, she got caught in a situation, and she, as far as I know, never said anything. They were looking for names of people, Polish people applying the visa, because that's when the wall came down. Right. Okay. And they were looking to see who was going, so she didn't she didn't give in at all. So for me, I said respect. Respect that she she did the right thing. Yeah. So, but that had to be the hardest thing in my career that I did was to to look at another Canadian. And there's no way I was going to be compromised because to me, like it's the lowest fucking thing you can do to your country. The worst. And and if I got punished, whatever it was, fine. It better, it's better to be a person who fucked up.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:15

Like, you know, got divorced because he had an affair or whatever. Yeah. It's quite another thing to be branded a traitor. You'll never be able to live that down or get over it. Yeah. But being divorced because you were an idiot, you had an affair, huh? You know, eventually that goes away.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

Question number eight. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:37

Me or you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:37

I forget. Okay. What's the theme song of your new book? Theme song. You gotta give yourself a theme song, Operator 230. What's the what's the theme song of this book, Mike? You didn't think of this? I never thought of anything like that. Get out of here. Pick a good song. Maybe a song you like from the from the time. How about how about the SS Minnow the freaking okay? Well, sorry, elaborate. What's the SS Minnow?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:05

You know, the here's the tale about a ship. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:09

Gilligan's Island. Yeah, Gilligan's Minister. Gilligan's Island. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:13

It has nothing to do with intelligence, but it's silly. Yeah. So we'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:18

Good answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

The book isn't silly, it's serious. But yeah. But I mean, you've got to have some little bit of lighthearted.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:24

A little bit of fun to it. I like I like the the second book.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

We'll have some lighthearted stuff. Nice. Oh, so you already got the second book. It's already. Look, a lot of the stuff in this book, I had to cut out.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:37

I had to cut out tons of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:38

It's over 200 pages long.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:40

Yeah, so now I got, oh, now I got more stories. More stories I can tell. Cool. Some of them are funny. Good. Like when I stuffed this one, guys, every frickin' pocket of his combats, every pocket, even the secret one. It's paper towel. Stuffed it full. And his boots, toe boots, I didn't just put one wad of paper. I put three wads of paper in each toe. So that when he thought he had one out, it was another one. And you'd get mad and angry, and another one. Oh yeah. Okay. He uh it was one of those things to teach him a lesson. Right on. A soldier's lesson. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

Question number nine, man. Question number nine. So after years of living in a world where you couldn't fully trust people, do you think that like you've lost that ability to like trust people, like even people close to you, or do you think that you've managed to get over that?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:34

Well, I'll tell you this: as a native man, I've always taken people for who they are. You present to me yourself to me in a certain way. Yeah. That's who you are. That's who you are. And then when you start to take little ticks away from that who I think you are, then you you have my attention. Now I start to look at why did he say that? Right. What made him say that? What made him do that? Now it's not about So are you on the mat yet? Yeah. But I mean it's like it's not like I don't trust people. Right. I take them at face value for who they are. Sure. You know, even when I used to get new soldiers in my unit, and the their old boss would call me and give them a heads up oh, this guy, you know, and I go, Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. I'll be the judge of that. Sure. You know, it's because he's he's here, he's new, he's my guy. I'll be the judge of you're gonna figure him out. You know, yeah, you know, and he's probably really good. So it sounds like he's gonna be a good one. It's just that the other guy probably has a bad boss, so you know, but yeah. And when they start to do things that are kind of questionable, then I will start to give them a second look. There's an old there's an old uh proverb, an old native proverb, and it it's it fits. Always look twice at the man with two faces.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

Okay, yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

So if you if you follow that and you say, okay, I see you there, and then you start seeing behavior that's a little different, right? Opposite, that's two faces. So you're gonna look at them, and then you then you can judge whether you want to hang out some more with them. It's not a matter of losing trust. But is this the kind of person you want to be friends with? You want to share your thoughts and whatever else. Because it could be used against you. It could be used against you. So you kind of, yeah, you know, so if from that basis, I'm guilty of not having many friends.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:37

Only because you find a lot of people have that second face, or most people? Or would you say it's a only I I I don't know. I'm just wondering, curiously.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:46

You think it's majority or minority that would have most mostly it's mostly there's not that many people that have that two-faced approach.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:54

I mean, they are everywhere, and you know probably a handful of them, you probably know a bunch yourself. People have two-faced, and you go, fucking guy, you know. Right. But and you decide whether you want to hang out with him or not, or just stop being friends. But for the most part, you know, I can't relate to a lot of people because a lot of people never walk the same road I did. Sure. So I remember years ago when before I went to Poland, I went to visit a school chum from my elementary school days. Right. We were chums since grade one. He died earlier this last year, but God rest his soul. But yeah, you know, uh, I went to see him, his wife. When I was on leave, a single guy, we used to go on toboggan down the hills together, just having a blast.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:49

So now he had a wife and he had a kid, and I went to visit him with my wife, and I gotta tell you, the atmosphere in that room was dead. There was no way I could tell fairly quickly that we had nothing in common. And when when he asked me about my you know my military life and where we'd been serving and stuff, uh he was only being polite and he didn't care. Right. And uh, you know, uh, and he was an architect, and you know the whole world view is completely different. Opposite ends, yeah, and nothing bad was said. But when I left, yeah, I turned to my wife and I said, We're not gonna be friends anymore, it's just no nothing in common. Yeah. So he didn't do anything bad. Sure. He was a good guy, he was honest, great face.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:50

Yeah, just you know, I'm gonna say to you as a friend is I'm always direct and honest to a fault, so I mean, I would challenge you to be more open to people that you have nothing in common with. Well, that'd be because that that's a different thing than two-faced, right? Like two-faced, I gotta get I get why you don't want those people in the life, but man, I from doing this show and from meeting, so so I mean, you and I have nothing in common, but I've learned countless things today that I'll probably take with me for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:17

This this is sort of conversation we had because it is a conversation over a mic. Sure. It's yeah, we could talk sports, yeah, yeah. We could do all kinds of stuff, and I do know a lot of people like went to Lawrence Conrad's thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I met some new people there, and but you know, that was it. Right. You know, it's like no one had any more contact after that. It was like well you like it. We're doing it real quick. Well, yeah, I know we're doing it, but you know, there's a real estate guy, they touched. I went to talk with them, they're talking about these big sales they had in the market, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:48

Okay. You know, and they were nice guys, it's just a different world. Sure. And and it's only because it's a different world that it's hard to find someone you can be compatible with. Look, even my Hapkido School, I ran my school for 12 years or so.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

Had a lot of students, a lot of black belts go through, and we were very good friends in the school. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:15

But it just didn't translate outside of that, eh? No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:17

You know, and I don't know why. I mean, I was always open. Yeah. I was always open to be you know, I mean, there's a couple I did go out with, like uh he died there uh late last year, uh, some disease. But you know, he was more my age, and because he was closer to my age, and you know, he I won't hold him against the Air Force, but you know, we got along okay, and yeah, you know, off and on we run into each other, shoot the shit, that kind of thing. But uh outside of that, you know, if people don't have the same outlook. You know, it's not that they're bad people, it's just that you know, yeah, they don't they don't get it, you know, they don't get where I came from. So I can't I get it. It's like you said earlier. How much do I tell people what I do? Right. Well, I I start I I can tell stories like we did tonight. Sure. And everyone has a laugh. It's over a beer, how it's funny. Right. That's it. Yeah, nothing more after that. Yeah, you know, uh Fornia gave us all we wanted to know on entertainment. That's it. See ya. So I'm used to that kind of a thing. And uh, you know, I've never been invited to people's cottages for the weekend or you know, to go fishing. I can go fishing and teach them a thing or two. I'm sure you could. You know, yeah. On the SAS course, I went to we went to a pond. We were supposed to catch fish with our little hook and hook and line.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:42

I go we go to the pond, my group and I, and I'm looking at it, and I told the boss, we call him boss, and I said, No fish in that, it's no fish in that water. What are you talking about? They wouldn't send us here to get fish if we're telling you there's no fish in the water. Yeah. How do you know? Well, I said, see any birds? No birds. He goes, they all look around, they go, No, no birds. See if there were fish in the water, there would be those little bugs that float on the water for the fish to eat and the birds to eat. No bugs in the water, right? You know, and it was dead, calm. And so they go, they didn't believe me. So we walked a little ways along the shore, and there's these two civilians, these beautiful black graphite rods, sitting in a graphite stand in the water, and lines are up. They're in a camper van walking up. One of my guys uh in my group asked them for a smoke. Yeah, the smoke started shooting the shit. So yeah, after a while I asked, I asked, excuse me, I said, How long have you been here? Oh, we've been here since yesterday afternoon. Yeah, okay. Did you catch any fish? Not a one, not a bite, nothing.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:02

I looked over at the bossman. See? There you go. I tell you. So it so I mean, yeah, you have wisdom to share.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:09

Yeah, I mean, obviously. I mean, you have a lot of good qualities. I think you'd be surprised. I I I think like you and I, though we walk very different paths, we probably both kind of want the same thing for the world at the end of the day, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:22

I think it comes down to I want friendship as much as anybody else does. Sure. Yeah. And admittedly, it's a little hard for me to find a friend. Yeah. Because maybe I do put up a facade that that guy's not very funny. If I can look at a face on that guy, and they don't want to be friends with me. So, you know, it sure. So I'm not open like you said, be willing to be open. Yeah. And it could be as simple as that. Yeah. But you know, as much as I do have a laugh at people, shoot the shit, you just don't feel that it's on on the street and all that, it doesn't come back as, hey, let's go have a coffee together.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:02

Yeah. It's dead right there when we go our separate ways. So it's that's an unfortunate thing, and it's been like that for me for well since I left high school, since I joined the military.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:13

Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:14

I mean, when I was first in the Navy, I had lots of friends. I had friends coming out of my ears. And uh I had my share of fights, and I fought with everybody that wanted to fight with me. You know, challenge me. I mean, I'm telling you, I fought. I took look a guy smashed me in the face with a beer can one time. That sounded like a friend to me. Yeah, but you know, but we're all and uh I mean he'd defend me as quickly as you know but he he didn't like me. He was an older guy, about 32. I was like 18. Yeah, and he smoked me with a freaking beer can side of the bed. Boom! I fell against some lockers on one knee, and everything was black, like it's stars flashing. Right. And I had my hand up and I was ready, and I could hear him talk. He's you know, get up, you little wobble. I'm gonna teach you a lesson, you know, blah blah blah. And I could hear him talk, my missile went right up to his face, caught him right in the mouth. He went down, bang! I still couldn't see, so I jumped on top of him and I started pounding, and it was a tight mess, very small area, not much bigger than this, and everyone's pulling each other off. So, you know, yeah, he challenged me, so I'll meet you on the jetty right there. So I that was the kind of world I lived in, and I had buddies, I had friends, we'd go ashore, yeah, get drunk, we'd get lost, we'd get in trouble. Sure. In Italy, we got into bar fight, stuff like that. It was just stuff. When I once I moved over to intelligence, yeah, I mean I was already married, so it's not my wife's fault.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:55

I have a recommendation for this friendship problem. But you know, I start a podcast, okay? We make a new friend every week. We really do. We're getting good at it, new voice. We learn somebody's perspective every week. It's brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:05

Yeah, but I I think once I went into the intelligence world, I learned you might have just kind of kept your circle tight. That was down a level. That was your world probably. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:14

And so and that's a huge long career, right? And that probably really suppressed a lot of those friendships. And also raising families. I think a lot of people naturally lose a lot of their friends too.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:23

I think I think there's a lot of people when you tell them I was with intelligence, they go, okay. You could see the little gear wheel turn and ship gears, okay. You know, and it it's just it's not conducive to look. I I think I know you could say without contradiction, yeah. A lot of my old colleagues of my era, yeah. They only a lot of the them friends they have are old colleagues from our era. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. You know, yeah. Because you could sit and you know, I don't have anybody like that here. So I'm pretty much isolated. They can be in Kingston or Toronto or Ottawa, yeah, having a barbecue and a beer and talk about old times or talk about that guy they hated. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:07

I don't have that luxury.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:10

Someday I had supper with two of my old friends from EW Squadron. Oh nice, and I realized when they were sharing with me their difficulties they had after they came back, I wasn't imagining things for me. I was experiencing the same thing they did. And what they told me sort of validated a lot of what I went through.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:33

You know, I mean, this is also really good information. Is any of this in your book about like the personal, you know, struggles outside of this this this this fascinating career?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:42

Like um no, not really.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:45

Uh it's there's a mention of it, you know, there's a but not what I just I I I mean and all and I'm speaking honestly, I I I do entertain you, right a little bit about that and share some of that because I think that's useful too. I agree and and and I'm sure that other people listening to it feel a little less alone when they heard it because 100%. I I mean I I mean honestly, yeah, you're not the only man in the world that probably feels like he has no friends.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:08

And you know, you don't have to have been a soldier to experience the things to feel that way. Yeah, you know, it's a it's a mental health issue, yeah. And there are a lot of people that are struggling with things, you know. They they lost uh uh a son in a terrible car accident last year, and they're still struggling with that kind of thing. So there's a lot of people that are struggling.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:28

My struggle is a little bit different. Everyone's struggle is a little different, so so and and how I deal with it is a little bit different. But uh, you know, as a soldier, as an intelligence operator, I mean, you know, I came back in to serve in Afghanistan because I wanted to do more because I could. And so I did. It wasn't because I was Joe Hero, it was uh, you know, it was a a global TV news piece. They were interviewing General Hillier, CDS at the time. And they asked, he was talking about the training, they were in Petwalla or Gage Town, wherever they were. And the interviewer asked, So what more would you do you think you'd need to help you with the mission? And he looked right at the camera and he said, I would love if the people who recently retired or released from the military would come back. That would help us a lot. It would help the families back home and all that. And I'm looking, I went, it's talking to me. You know, basically, it was like, oh shit. So I went back in. Uh and you know, I did my time, and I was with everybody in the sandbox, and we did our thing. It came back home, and nothing was the same after that. I already had PTSD from Poland. I was already assessed for that. I didn't do some very good things that kind of got me in trouble, and I ended up going to the hospital and got assessed. Then I was going to Afghanistan. I went to through two interviews. Yeah. Wow. You know, the second time they said, Oh yeah, we just got your file from Ottawa, brushed the dust off of it. Uh, and it was uh when I lost it when I tried to run a secret policeman off the road with my car. That was the only James Bond moment I had in my career.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:18

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:18

Yeah, he pissed me off. I looked at him and I smiled. Yeah, fucking grin, and away I went, drove right into him. I wanted I was looking at getting him in the oncoming traffic, and he controlled his car.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:32

Yeah, and that's their whole job. They want to break you.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:34

Yeah, and so that's what ended up sending me home early. Oh gosh, okay. Uh so you know, PTSD from that, from that whole my family in danger, all that stuff. Yeah, picked up force, yeah. And then Afghanistan, what we went through, that's hit me again really bad. So, yeah, I mean, writing this book was cathartic in that way that got me to share things and and say things uh to for people. I never did go as deep as you suggested with how I felt. I there was a point where I thought I might, then I thought, that'll be such a wuss. Fucking just you know, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:13

I think I think people would relate to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:14

Other soldiers is certainly other other soldiers and people to understand the soldiers' life a little bit better. I mean, you know, it's a it's it's an incredible, incredible thing to take your country and and and and and work to save your country, yeah and to put and to have to protect your family in the process and to think of integrity over being compromised and the the crazy stuff you went through, man. That's not uh you know, a little higher than my nine to five, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:39

Yes, you know, and be sure to read about the fan fatale of Warsaw.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:44

That's the first story you told me, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:45

Yeah, so she she was something else.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:47

I won't talk about it today because we went on uh I don't want this to go on too long, but we uh Matt, why don't we just go to our quote? How's how's that? Yeah, and sounds good.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:55

Let's see uh I will but I will write about that, I will put it in the second book about the little deeper feelings. I I really think so because it shares a lot more. It'll take me about two months to rework it and rewrite it and rework it. No, I mean to to get the message across and it doesn't sound just to say what it is. That's how I write now.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:14

That's cool. Yeah, writing's a hell of a challenge, but it's a rewarding one, right? I'm I'm sure you're proud when this book got out.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:19

So yeah, I it really took me over three years to write the damn thing. Clean it up, change it, fix it, grammar edit.

Final Advice And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 1:28:27

Last question, my friend. All right, life advice. Yeah, so if you could if there was any advice that you were given in your life that you'd like to share with us, we'd love to hear it. That I was given in my life? Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:40

Yeah, pass on. You've already passed down a ton of wisdom. One episode, but one more.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:44

One of the things is simple, and it's I think people in my generation heard it many, many times, and it's just something that disappeared. It was always something like my dad would say to me Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:01

Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:02

You know, because they'll never get done.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:06

You know, you always think that was the spy movie. Tomorrow never comes. James Bond. Yes, yes. There you go, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:12

I think that's the one where he pulled a big water rope out from behind a rock and had volcano, and he's in a suit, and you're going, where the fuck did he get that?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:19

It might have been one of the old Sean Connery ones. Those are awesome to watch still, by the way. They were so funny. I just watched them the other year and they were fantastic. They're all redone in HD. Cheers to you, Mike. Cheers to you, Mike. This is great. Thanks for your time. We gotta get some more. Yeah. Seriously, it's empty. When the second book gets done, we do welcome you back for another read. It'll be next year this time. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:40

I just gotta put all the stuff, pull it in from where I got it, and just kind of put it in order and just kind of fix it up. We look forward to it, Mike. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you for having me.