Inside The C.I.A. - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 2/1/25

Guest host Richard Syrett and former intelligence officer Kevin Shipp discuss working within the most secretive agency in American government.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight. From coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
You were talking about I guess, sort of behind the
wall in the former Soviet Union in your capacity as
a CIA field officer, you had this moment as as
a Christian. You mentioned you'd sort of been backsliding in
your faith for five years because you had gone quote
unquote native and a woman I guess who was sort

(00:27):
of proselytizing on the street there asked you, you know,
have you do you know Jesus Christ? And you pushed
her aside, and that was kind of obviously a profound moment.
You realized how far you had backslid in your faith.
So you went back I guess, to the office thinking

(00:47):
that you were going to resign right there, and then
what happened.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
No, obviously, my career trajectory was looking really, really good
because of some of the intelligence that I had gathered,
and I was offered a full time position out in
the field as a case officer in the stations. And
when I was called by the division chief and offered
that in his worst honor, I had to tell him,

(01:13):
you know, listen, I can't do this for the rest
of my life. It just it just kind of violates
my own principles because what I've seen was the belly
of the beast. It was dirty, it was ugly, it
was immoral. And I'm not saying that all case officers
are bad. I worked with a couple of real heroes,
one in particular that that I just admired, and and

(01:36):
and probably one chief of station that was that was
really worth working for. I also worked with him for
a lot of a lot of snakes. Excuse me, and
I'll cover later my wake up moment and when the
CI began to target me for what I uncovered. But
based on what I just heard on your break, there
a story that I'd never revealed publicly before. When the

(01:58):
CI targeted me and put me on that secret base
in the US or the agency had buried a lot
of it's things that wanted to forget, chemical weapons, assassination pistols,
high caliber weapons, and a bunch of things from COVID operations.
My family was poisoned, which we may get into later.
But one thing I've never talked about is I was

(02:20):
the XO on that base, appointed there basically on purpose,
and that may be in charge of the security guards
and So after really supporting them because they were considered
second class citizens biology people who thought they were above them,
I support them, got them training, told them how important
their job it was, which, of course it was. So
they started to trust me and confide to me about

(02:43):
certain things. One afternoon, Jesse, a security guard and the
command post, called me and he goes, mister ship, can
I talk to you confidentially please? I said, sure, I'll
come on over. So I went to the command post
and said, listen, I don't know what this means, but
I want to tell you several of us on the
security guard staff, I have seen something that is really

(03:05):
terrifying us. I said, uh, what is that? He goes,
It's it's a figure with with it's got like a
goatshead on it. And I said, uh, now I do
I do. I know about the occult and I've read
a lot about that and what the goat had similar
Jesse didn't. I said, listen, why don't you draw a
picture of this thing for me and I'll take a

(03:25):
look at it and I'll look into it. Next day,
Jesse dropped his sketch off and sure enough, it was
a sketch of Batha met the goats head, symbol of
Satan and demons, a lot much of it down in
South America. So uh I started asking some of the
other security guards what they had seen, and they had

(03:48):
witnessed and described the exact same thing that Jesse had said.
That they had seen this, this dark figure with a
goat's head, dressed in a long black coat, standing by
the edge of the woods, watching them at night, scaring
the daylights out of him, and they didn't know who
to tell, they were afraid to talk about it, and

(04:08):
so Jesse was kind to their point. Man. So I
took note of this and understanding that there is a
spiritual world in a world of darkness, especially, you know,
that's what scripture teaches, I just kind of filed it away.
So one evening, my son Joel had a friend named
Adam over to stay with us on the base, and
Joey and Adam went out for a walk up the

(04:28):
road in the base, which is a beautiful, beautiful place,
and about half hour later, out here that's screaming, and
Adam comes back screaming at the top of his lungs,
and he runs into the house that had him calmed down,
calm down and gets behind him. About ten minutes later,
my son Joy runs and screaming, Dad, Dad. I sat
Adam down, I said, okay, you guys, calm down. What's

(04:50):
going on? He goes, you was what we just saw?
I said, what did you just see? We saw this figure?
It had like a live goats head on it, and
a long line black cook standing there watching us. I
said really, I said yeah, and Adam was up and
out of there. The next morning he was visibly shaking, shaking.

(05:12):
So I started realizing that there have been several sightings
of this thing on this base, which just kind of
added to the darkness of that place. Something something really evil.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I had no idea we were going to I had
no idea where were going to go there, Kevin, but
this is fascinating. Let me just ask you then straight out,
because you know, there have been claims that there are,
you know, within certain let's say, enclaves of certain organizations
in government, there are occultists and Satanists. I mean, did

(05:48):
you ever uncover I don't know, a nest of Satanists
within the CIA.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
I'll give you an example. I was a team leader
on an operation down in South America. Of course, I
can't say, where as a team leader, the first thing
you did was go meet with the chief of station,
and he gives you his orders, his orders regarding what
the operation is going to be or should be. So
I go down his office was down in the basement
of this building. And I go down into his office

(06:14):
and the lights are low, and he's got one of
those green library lights on his desk and the lights
are down and he's looking kind of sinister. And I
go sitting in a chair and I said, yes, sir,
I just wanted to meet with you first, and you
give Gihim any guidance that I need. It looks over
his desk at me, and he goes, let's get something

(06:36):
straight from the beginning, Kevin, I will sell my soul
to the devil for intel. You got that? And I said, well,
I got it. I remember thinking that maybe you, buddy,
but it's not me. It was just weird and sinister.
And then he said that will be all. I got
up and left and thinking my gosh, where did that

(06:56):
come from. You have to understand it. At the upper
levels of the sea, especially out of the field and
several chief of stations, these people are narcissists. There some
of them are psychopaths, they're atheists, they have no morals.
They believe that they're the intellectual evolutionary elite amongst everybody else.
And some of them are just mentally sick people. And
those kinds of people get into the dark things like that.

(07:20):
And this was so strange because it because it matched
what happened to us on this base and how we
were poisoned and the house broken in and the chemical
painted on the ceiling and all of that that happened
in the in the midst of these sightings. I just
wanted to bring that in. I've never talked about that before.
This is the first time, but I think it's kind
of relevant to to the darkness of that of that

(07:43):
secret place. Secrets is usually is rarely is it ever
good anyway, But uh, that's that's what happened on that base.
My defining moment, however, was I I was a loyal, dedicated,
decorated officer, and you know, I was supporting my family
like all the other officers. You know, there's a good

(08:04):
eighty percent of CI employees are good, patriotic people that
are just doing their job. And logistics and the secretaries
and administration and all of that. It's the upper twenty percent.
Even Mike Pompeo said this when he came out, the
upper twenty percent of the CIA do not believe in
democracy and they do not believe in the Constitution. And
having been on the seventh floor, these people are psychopathic

(08:27):
narcissists who believe the CIA is their life's mission, its expansion,
and its protection. And that's how dark it is at
the top, with some operations, bloody ones known only in
one case to five people up on the seventh floor.
So it's a very dark place. I was doing an investment.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Why did they come after you? Why did they come
after you?

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Kevin Well, Yes, this is what happened. I was doing
an investigation. I was tasked with an investigation when I
was a security officer of looking into CIA computer connection
or CIA personnel that were undercover in US embassies and
the computer all the computer connections and data involved in that.

(09:09):
And as I was looking at that, I started to
started to look like anyone in the open Visa section
could go into the embassy computer system and easily identify
our cover, our cover officers, the chief of stations, and
by extension, the assets that they recruited, and at first
I was a little shocked. The more I dug, the

(09:30):
worse it got. And it was pretty apparent that in
the VISA section, a foreign intelligence service TERIFFT organization whoever
could sit down at an open computer and go in
and identify our case officers by name and in some
cases their address and where they live. So I put
together a report and I submitted this report through internal
agency mail. I called the chief of the division for

(09:52):
Covers fifteen and is that? So? Answered, and I said, listen,
I've done a report here on the threat to the
cover of our officers overseas. I think your chief may
want to look at this. She goes, well, send it
to us and we'll take a look at it. So
I sent it by an internal CIA mail which is tracked,
and waited a week. I gave a week to look

(10:12):
at and called him and said, what did your chief
think of the reports that I sent you? Her response
was what report? I said, the report I sent you
through internal mail? That report? She goes, I don't remember
receiving any report. They did it a second time, calls
her again, did you get the report? No, we still
haven't gotten any report. So I said, okay, ma'am, I'll
tell you what I'll do. I'm going to bring it

(10:33):
over to CI headquarters to you personally. I was in
an outer building. I'm going to bring this over to
headquarters to you personally and give it to you. So
I traveled over CI headquarters, went up to that office
in charge of CI Cover, handed my investigation report to
this exo across her desk and said, ma'am, this is
a document that I sent you twice. And she goes,

(10:55):
she bristled and said okay. I said, your chief really
needs to see that. She goes, okay, I'll see what
I can do. I gave her a week, called back
and said, man, did did the chief get a chance
to look at this document? To my shock, she said
what document? I said, man, the document I personally handed

(11:16):
to you over your desk. She goes, I don't remember
any documents. So I went into the CI headquarters server
where I had all the document and the evidence stored,
and it had been erased from the CIA server. Then
I get you this menacing phone call from the division
chief of this cover division, and a menacing voice. He said,
I am ordering you right now to drop this investigation permanently.

(11:40):
Do you understand me? I said, this could be the
lives of our agents here, he goes, I'm telling order
you to drop it or it's your career. Click and
he hangs up the phone. It was on the secure line,
and at this point I was like, what on earth
is going on here? Well, it turns out my report
was leaked to the Department of State, your investigations group

(12:01):
in charge of embassies around the world, and it got
into their hands, and they gave me a call and said, Kevin, listen,
so and so, and I know who it was. He
was a high level officer. So and so passed to
report to us. We've looked at it and we were concerned.
We think there may be something here. This is what
we want you to do. Do not tell the CIA

(12:24):
that we're doing this investigation. Do not tell them you're involved.
Do not tell them what we're doing. We're going to
go globally around the world and conduct our own investigation.
It's going to take us about three months one of
several embassies, and when we get back, we'll contact you
and let you know what we found. So I kind
of said, okay, sir, thank you on those glad I
someone else had it, took it over from there, and

(12:47):
three months later, sure enough, the secure line rang picked
it up and we'll call them Jim. Jim said, Kevin,
this is Jim SO and So State I g I said, yes, sir,
he said, we've come back from our investigation. We visited
multiple embassies, We went into the visa section, into the computers,
and it's not just as bad as you thought. It's worse.

(13:09):
We have a meeting this Friday at Department of State,
a high level meeting, and we'd like you to be there.
And I said, of course, yes, I'll be there. So
I reported dutifully to the Department of State that Friday,
went up to their floor. They buzzed me in the door.
I met Jim and the other two IG guys. They
led me into a long conference room with a long
walnut table. Jim sat on one side and me on

(13:32):
the other, and the two i G guys at the
very head. And they said, just hold on a few minutes, Kevin,
the CIA will be joining us. I heard the CIA
even knew about it. Well, it turns out they didn't.
So the door buzzes in walks this GS fifteen division
chief who was in charge of destroying my memoos, erasing
it from the server and trying to cover it up.

(13:54):
And they said at the.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right, yes, yeah, sor Ry, No, the same guy that
threatened you is to bury the story, not to pursue
this investigation. The same guy now was sitting across from you.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
This guy sitting across from me, had replied, the guy
who threatened me disappeared. His name's name was Chuck. Chuck disappeared,
and this guy had taken his place as now the
chief of that division. So it was a different guy
in same position wherever Chuck went. I don't know, Chuck
was no longer. This guy's name was Bill, And of

(14:31):
course I can't say their last names. So as Bill
sat down, kind of startled, like, what's this all about,
the seniors IG guy stood up and said, consider this
an official rebuke of Department of State IG to the
CIA for putting the lives of its agents at risk
for over ten years and covering it up. He kind

(14:53):
of froze and the blood drained from his face, and
he said, and we want you to know that an
entire report about what the c I had CIA has
done will be published to the entire intelligence community, and
they will see what the CIA has done. He just frogs,
they said. That will be all.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
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