August 10, 2025 • 56 mins
Former CIA Head of Counterintelligence (and co-worker with John & Jerry) Susan Miller has recently been targeted by Tulsi Gabbard for her work on a classified report on Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 election. How is she dealing with this "attention"? Also, now out of CIA, Susan and John and Jerry rehash some of the day-today moments of serving.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small. Could they be true?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. So today's guest is Susan Miller.
She's a colleague and a friend of ours. She worked
almost four decades in the CIA. Was our boss in
the CIA at one time or another. Some of her
senior jobs were the head of counterintelligence. She worked on
issues with China. She worked in Russia, Israel, in a
(00:48):
lot of senior positions, East Ages and so we're glad
to have her with us. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Good to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
What I wanted to start out, Yeah, I know, we'll
get into that part of it.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I want the first question this time, who's more of
a make be introducer?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
If you get the first I know, who was more of.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
A problem to be a boss? Of John or me
who was the bigger problem child in the agency.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Honestly, it was you were both horrible. So that's all
I can say.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Oh, all right, all right, John, not over to your question.
He bet you, but clearly.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, no, I was ready for that. So Susan one
of the you know, we don't want to dwell on
this too much, but you are embroiled in a conspiracy
right now. So Toulci Gebbert just spoke at the White
House and said that former CIA director John Brennan former
President Barack Obama conspired to damage candidate Trump in twenty
sixteen by putting out false information that Russia was assisting
(01:42):
his campaign.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Twenty, yeah, sixteen, seventeen.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, the election was in sixteen, but the ICE didn't
come out until seventeen. So it's unless you have a
time machinet. I don't know how that this assessment could.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm sorry, they're they're never really good on facts, so.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
It's all right. Yeah, So here's my question for those
unfamiliar with CIA culture. What would it actually happen if
the director came to a group writing an assessment and said,
I want you to publish a false story for political reasons.
What how would that look if that actually happened.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
How it would look if he had asked us to
do that, Yeah, we would. I would have quit. I
would have gone to the IG Inspector General. There's no
way any of us would have done it. And it
would have been a much more salacious story, that's for sure,
but it was a pretty boring. None of us would
have done it. There's just no way the idea that
(02:35):
we would conspire to write something like this. If I
was going to conspire to write something, it would be
really righteous. And this particular report ended with basically, yes,
one hundred percent, the Russians tried to influence the election
in Trump's favor, and a one hundred percent, we can't
tell you if it worked unless we pulled every voter.
(02:58):
And therefore, in our opinion, Trump is our president and
that was it. And for that he decided to do
the I don't know how long later it was, but
bar Durham put me and a couple of members of
my team on trial for writing a paper that ended
with and Trump is basically the rightful president, or you know,
(03:21):
is president. And I remember when they came when my
lawyer came to me and told me this, and it
was I left my head out loud and he goes, no,
I'm actually serious. I'm crap, and it's a criminal complaint.
I said, yeah. He said, what's the crime? Has something
to do with insurrection? I'm not positive and then just
went on from there.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
But there was another element to this, and I think
if there is a conspiracy on the right now, this
is part of it. The assessment also said that we
have no evidence, there's no proof that the Russians were
able to impact on our election infrastructure. They didn't change votes.
If you voted for A, they didn't turn it to B.
(04:02):
And this is part of as I understand Gabbert's claim
is that she's conflating the fact that we didn't find
any election interference. They weren't in the guts of the
election machines.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
No, they weren't.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That means that they didn't have any influence, which is
not what we're saying, right.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I means, yeah, here's what it was is they were
doing an influenced campaign towards Trump, both in the US
and around the world.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Did it include some social media? Maybe we weren't. We
didn't actually get down into that because as CIA were
not allowed to go into things that are at that
are inside America. But what we understood from the sources
was the source was that it was ordered by the
(04:57):
Russian leadership and they had chosen Trump because they felt
he was more favorable than the Democratic the Democrat that
was going to be running, any Democrat that would run
against him, and other Republicans and things like that. And
so that's what we found. And everybody wanted us to,
(05:19):
wanted us to come to a firm conclusion, and we
did too. Honestly, starting this out, we wanted a firm conclusion,
Yes he should not be president, or no he should
be president, one way or the other. We didn't really
care which way it ended. But we couldn't find that,
and so that's what we ended up with. And it
(05:40):
was briefed to Trump by our director and he was
quite happy and he basically said, good briefing when it
was brief to him. And then it was not too
long later that I got called into the OGC's office
and told that Trump was with a couple other team members.
(06:02):
By the way, that we were all being charged by
the Attorney General for writing the paper and we all
left our heads off at it and said, you know,
you tell us really why And then they said, they said, no,
it is absolutely true. You are being charged. It is
(06:24):
a criminal process. And I said, so, who do I
get from my lawyer like one of you guys from OGC,
which is what you would normally do in Cia, You
get your own lawyer. They said, no, you need to
get a private criminal lawyer who has a clearance, which
is why I got ken Waynstein. I actually asked around
to all the lawyers who's the maastiest nice guy in
(06:47):
court meaning lawyer? And I had three of them independently
say you got to get ken Wayninstein. So I did,
and so did Cohen. As a matter of fact, he
also got ken Wayne Stein. And then we sat in
front of the tribunal for hours and hours.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, oh good fun.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Fifteen hundred bucks an hour? WHOA?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What was the crime though? Saying something? I mean, this
goes sort of the core of intelligence, right, We're supposed
to say the truth and then the politicians can ignore
it or take it on their advisement. This was basically
you said something that they didn't want to hear, right.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
That was it? And so ken actually did try to
find out what is the crime. We don't understand how
a report that ends with and Trump is our president
is a crime. He never got a super good answer.
And it's something that during the actual bar Durham where
(07:46):
I sat in front of them to provide my testimony,
I asked that question too, and nobody gave me an answer.
I think one person mumbled, you're trying to bring down
a government or something like that. But again, it wasn't clear.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
But the assessment was classified. Right, It's not like you're
giving it to the New York Times.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Right, No, I was not. It was classified. Yeah, referred
to this day that it was never lated.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, Susan, can you outline your role in creating the
Epstein files?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
No, we're told no, the President said that it's the
CIA and the deep state and Obama people. So the
same people that they did say that, So the same
people who put out this false report that you worked
on created the Epstein files.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
But there is there is a link to Epstein Gate.
In so far, I believe this is and this is
a conspiracy, but I think it's a true. One is
that Tulca Gabber cooked up this canard basically to to
have people look the other eight a bright shiny object,
something they could claim, oh, so that they're not looking
(08:54):
at Epstein. Right out of nowhere, Epstein Gate's going on,
and she suddenly is charging Barack Obama with treeson. That's interesting,
and you're being pulled into this as a distraction.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
But at the same time, there's reports that she's under
the gun because she went to Japan and made this
crazy videotape about Hiroshima and the president was unhappy. And
so I think these people have to do these kind
of things to keep on Trump's favor. They're afraid they
can get I would agree.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So I want to talk about you know, you've got
John and I here to pharmacy. I want to talk
about one of our great CIA colleagues, John Kiriaku, who
was arrested, went to jail. He's a bad guy. So
I was surprised that he was on the interweb the
other day and he was claiming that Epstein was an asset.
(09:47):
But he wouldn't say to Israel, but he like to
them that it was clearly like he was. It was
an anti Semitic sort of he was like he's with
the Jews, right, I mean, that was pretty clear. But
he says, and the reason, his reason for this, and
one reason he's probably kicked out of one of the
reasons is he was a an access agent's what we call.
(10:11):
And there's this hush tone that the person he's talking to,
he says, and that explains how he got the billions.
Access agents get like private islands, they get him like.
So he's trying to tell whoever his audience is, me
and like six other guys that if you're an access
(10:33):
agent for the Jews, you're going to get billions. So
how would you respond to this through that? Like in
the world of reality, like what an access agent is
and whether Jeffrey Epstein had any connections to any intelligence
organizations alif I know, but it certainly doesn't explain his billions.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
But that that's crazy. But bottom line is that's ridiculous.
That is so ridiculous for people.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Who don't know what an access agent is. And our
old world where supposed to recruit sources to give us
secrets that the US government can't get any other way.
And one of the ways that you might try to
get towards someone we call a target who might have
those secrets is to recruit someone who knows them. So
if you have someone who works in those circles that
can provide you information background where that person might be,
(11:19):
we call that an access agent. And it's not the
person giving us necessarily intelligence. Is the person helping us
find somebody that could give us intelligence. And by the
ends of our careers, even CIA was very hesitant to
approve those kind of relationships because we get promoted on
how many people we recruit, and it's much easier quote
(11:39):
unquote to recruit an access agent than an actual spot.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
The North North Korean won't talk to us, so we
find some like Peruvian second secretary to throw a party
with Canopy so that we can bump into him. But
they don't get private islands.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And this cannop page, it's Canna paid.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
There's chief. This is just the canopiece, right, the canopiece
any money.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So there is one more conspiracy that I just saw yesterday.
I was looking on Twitter. I saw this conspiracy and
it said, how is it possible that a girl from
Santa Rosa could be one of the most senior CIA officials.
This is clearly doesn't make sense that someone like that
could be in the senior position. I think we're being hoodwinked,
and so I don't know who that person thinks actually
(12:23):
does work at CIA. If you can't come from a
small town or whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Are you are you joking or no, oh my god,
that you can't have a CIA officer who came from
California or.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Just from a small town, or a girl or whatever.
I don't know who they think. They've created this myth
of the deep state of some kind of elites or whatever,
and they're like, I think what they did is they
found your article end like your school newspaper, and it
talked about your growing up like anybody else would. But
then they said, oh, this doesn't make any sense. A
senior CIA person couldn't be a normal person like that.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Agree that there's a lot of abnormal people that work
at CIA, like two of you. The bottom line is,
you guys know inside the building, we're all normal. We
have kids, we have families, we have vacations, we like
to take. Were we turn off the espionage gene or
(13:20):
switch I should say, whenever we get in our car
and start heading home, and you find a way to
do that. We have a lot of stress and our
jobs and a lot of things that we can only
talk to each other about because of our clearances and
things like that. But yeah, I feel like we are.
(13:41):
We are a family of sorts. We've belonged to a club,
a dysfunctional club, yes, definitely, but we are and it's
really really is what makes what made my thirty nine
years so happy. There's very few idiots I had to work.
There's very few, you know, problem bosses, and very very
few problems people that had to that were working for
(14:03):
me at different times. But it was just it's really good,
smart people who weirdly want to tell the truth. People
think CIA people lie all the time. We don't lie
to Americans. Well, I guess we sort of do when
we say I actually were in the State Department. But
basically we're we are not what we were back in
(14:27):
the fifties and sixties, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, since it's twenty twenty five and between the three
of us, so this is a scary thought. We've got
almost one hundred years of operational experience. Have you ever
seen anything like this now where we are afraid to
speak truth to power? We have seen this, but we've
(14:50):
seen this when we've dealt with Russians or Cubans or
Chinese where they look over their shoulders before they actually
like talk to you. We've never done that. That's only
been one of our great powers is a peace people
Americans have ever done that?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Right? I worry that this.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
New normality, we're just this Overton window. We're just like
accepting it. How different is this Trump two point zero
that we're going through now where people are afraid, people
are being fired, people like yourself, You say something that
you believe that the facts base, and then you're like
up on criminal charges. How different is this and how
is this changing intelligence?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
I think part of it the problem is that his
denigration of us and what we do is definitely resonating
with his base, and his base are talking to their
children and their neighbors and things like that, and a
fair number of people are going to say, ah, that's
just you being conspiratorial again and all that. But you're
(15:47):
raising a whole new generation, honestly, or more generations of
people who are going to think that the government lies
all the time and that CIA is like Trump is
spreading right now. CIA is not good. It's dangerous. It's
(16:10):
not good. To speak truth to power. It's not good
to be honest or anything like that. I just feel
like it's gone off the charts. And part of that
is social media is out there and everything else as well,
and he loves working on social media.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
That's for sure. Yeah. General Hayden wrote a book about this,
about the post truth world. It's where everything becomes partisanship
in politics for short term political gain in an intelligence
community can't really exist in a post truth world, and
so it's a real it's a real problem. I don't
think maybe former presidents and former intelligence directors that have
(16:46):
made clear well enough or communicated American people how important
that is and how much we've actually benefited over the
decades having a serious expertise in international affairs and intelligence.
We've tried to produce truth.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
And that we tell the truth, and we fire the
people that don't that make up an asset and make
up and a report maybe from a real asset or
something like that. We don't put up with that. And
it's our culture.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Which may suggest there's a lot of talk out there
now which I sort of stay away from. A people, Well,
Trump's a Russian asset. He clearly is a Russian asset.
They've been running him for years and years. Can you
imagine trying to run him as an actual source, like
as a control there as a controlled source is he
doesn't know, he doesn't know reality from not reality. It's
all about him, it's all about publicity. So I mean
as a controlled spy, the kind of spies that we
(17:37):
tried to run to provide us diligence, he just doesn't
fit that bill in that sense. He might be valuable
to the Russians or somebody else in other ways, but
as a spy in the way that we define running
a controlled source, that just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Because he's Yeah, he's too unpredictable.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Let me ask you a more sort of question. You spent,
like you said, almost forty years inside Jerry, and I
know all the important and neat things done, and you've
been all over the world. Can you talk about maybe
some of your favorite experiences in the field or in headquarters.
Which places do you think were most important in your
development and which places did you like the best?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
So most important in development? The one I liked the
best of my day to this day is my first tour,
which was Moscow, USSR. As a case officer. Mike Suliuk
was my deputy chief of station. Mike Klient was my
chief of station, and Silica is just He's a righteous guy,
you know, and a really good boss and somebody that
was really good at mentoring all of us. My favorite
(18:34):
story about Mike was when he came to me and
he said, Susan, I need you to go do this operation,
and normally you will abort the operation if you find
that you have surveillance when you leave the embassy. Leave
the embassy, and he goes, I want you to use
those California drive and skills, and I want you to
(18:57):
lose them. And I'm like, oh, this is the best
thing that's ever happened to me in life. And so
I go out and I did lose them. I definitely
had like normal I would call it normal surveillance. It
wasn't particularly sneaky or anything like that. I had the
regular two cars behind me that kept switching lanes and
(19:18):
stuff like that, and so I back then they just
had the stupid lattas that didn't have any kind of power,
and I had an American car. It was a plimoth
that wasn't like a nice car or anything. And I
just punched it and I lost them totally. And I
was gone for like ten hours, and I came back
(19:40):
to my apartment that was a New York Gorky park
that was off the compound, and I parked my car.
It was always snowy parked my car went upstairs. I
could see that the uniformed KGB guys that were surrounding
all of our apartment buildings called me in when I
got in, And so the next I come out, and
(20:01):
sure enough, the snow was up to my windows on
the car like normal, and I just get in the
car and it's powdery snow and I just drive off.
And then I pull out and I see three surveillance
cars lined up in a row, and I'm like, oh,
they're really mad. Good I was. I left them. There
was no other American diplomats living in that place, and
so I pull past them and I see all three
(20:22):
of them pull out behind me, and I turn on
to Leninski Prospect, which you know was the beltway of
Moscow but with lights, big big you guys, remember it
a really big, big street. And I pull out and
I'm feeling a car fielder. Really it's pulling really funny.
So I pull over and I get out of the
car and I look at my front right tire and
(20:44):
I find that there is a hole in the sidewall.
And then I go around the car. Back tire is fine.
Then the second back tire, the one on the opposite
side of the front tire, also had a hole in
it and its sidewall. And I look back and three
of these cars they're laughing their heads off, and I'm like,
you know what, I know how to change a tire.
(21:07):
My dad didn't want me, being raised in California, to
get picked up by like another Charles Manson type or whatever.
But anyway, I knew how to do it, but I
was not going to do it. It was freezing, I was
like minus thirty and I just sat there. I had
a warm car. I knew that those Lattas did not
have heat. They even remember their steering wheels were a
(21:28):
little off, so they just were really crappy piece of car.
So finally, I don't know. It's like, after twenty minutes,
one of them comes up and knocks on my door
and says, oh, hellos, I'm a innocent Russian citizen, not
a KGB guy. Following you, and I just noticed that
your car has been sitting here for a while. Are
you okay? I'm like, oh yeah, fine, don't worry about me.
(21:49):
I got heat, I have two flat tires. I have
zero idea how it happened. And I'm just waiting for
somebody from the embassy to come by. And don't worry
about me again. I'm warm and I'm doing fine. And
so I saw this guy go back, and I saw
them arguing for like about ten minutes, and then one
of them comes up, and of course they're cold because
(22:10):
their coats aren't as good as ours or anything like that.
And the guy comes up and says, will change your tires.
And I'm like, okay, so that's my best job. They've
flattened it and they changed it.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Just a second.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
We'll continue in a moment. John and I we do
hear a lot people ask, oh, my kid once is
thinking about government service, and what would you say, And
throughout my entire crew, I've always said, young talented kids,
(22:48):
yeah you should think about the agency, depending on what
you want to do with your life and so forth.
But I mean, I loved my thirty three years. I
loved every tour of it. What would you tell a
young person now.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
So, right now, it's still a really good place to work.
Let's just put it that way. You've still got most
of the people are just righteous, they're fabulous people. They've
got good morals, they've got good senses of humor, they've
got a desire to serve the US government. So it's
still a good thing to go after, and I would
(23:21):
encourage them to keep applying to it even if you
don't like whatever government. Let's say you didn't like Biden
or you didn't like Trump. It doesn't matter for the
most part. And when I say most, I'm out to
the ninety eight percent of the time. It doesn't matter
who's in charge. They might have different goals. Russia's a
(23:43):
bigger thing this time, or maybe I ran as a
bigger thing next time, or whatever. They want us to
do our jobs, and they want us to do it right.
The only issue right now that I have with people
applying is that when Musk was dowed, he wanted to
get rid of everybody that was in whatever agency across
(24:06):
the US government that had three years or less, and
that obviously was approved by Trump. I don't know if
it was invented by him. It might have been invented
by Muss, was approved by him. But again this is
asked backwards, thinking you and I, all three of us
have absolutely gone through ups and downs during times when
(24:29):
they needed to save money, we didn't have enough money
and all the rest of stuff. And what we did
was early outs people who wanted to retire a couple
of years early, and then they could take their retirement
a little bit early, and that was pretty much a
no cost freeing up some money, some extra money. And
then one of my concerns is that obviously the doge
(24:51):
thing went away for now. I don't know that the
ideas are all gone, because the entity still exists, but
it just bothers me that they don't seem to be
doing what you guys and I would do. When I
want to try to maybe do something a different way,
I'm going to go and I'm going to get a
(25:12):
group of people together that I like and that I
know are going to give me different opinions of things,
and I want to work out is this going to work?
Is it not going to work? And then it's only
after I work with that group do I actually go
and I say, yes, I think something something should be done.
And again that's something that I'm not seeing in this particular,
(25:35):
at least at the high levels of this government. But
I would hope that it's still going on even with
the new DNI, with the new DCIA, all the rest
of that stuff. I really hope that they are reaching
down to the people that work below them to really
think and talk out how we do things, why we
(25:57):
do things, and what our priorities should be according to
the President and to the NSC. Honestly, so long the
short of it, that's I would still go into it.
There's always been up and down, We've all had them,
so it's worth going into.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
It's a great career, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's free too. Yeah. I worry that it could get
rubbed away when the head of the CIA is saying,
agreeing to what Gabbert is saying, that the CI had
lied about this stuff. Essentially, you're throwing your workforce underneath
the bus, saying people who worked on this lied what
you're doing. That's you can't run an organization and say
that the people work for your own liars. That's a problem.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah, And I think that's another good point is that
those of us who are here on the outside. Need
to let people know that, despite what the movies and
TV shows show you, we don't lie inside the building.
We might lie to an agent that you're trying to
recruit that I'm State Department, but that's my cover. That's
(27:00):
a legal cover that I have that has been given
to me by the US government for a purpose. But
if we get tell an agent, we're going to give
you ten thousand dollars for X we do, and so yeah,
it's still a good job.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Well, let me step back to your experience in Moscow
and we're going to talk about some other things. My
understanding is you were there when the Prologue thing happened.
Is that true. There's been some writing on it. I've
actually written on prolog and I've had it approved by
the agency. So Prologue helped me out US none. Yes,
So just to give you a quick sense, US EU
are guys cool?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, there you go. In the seventies and eighties, the
Russians had recruited some sources to include Robert Hanson at
the FBI, Alder James at the CIA, and when Gorbachev
came in, he sentially said was briefed and told that
there was a bunch of spies spying for the Americans.
But we know this because we have spies inside the
FBI and the CIA, and Gorbachev essentially told the KGB
(27:54):
and the MBD the police there, you have to arrest
these Russians who are spying. Of course, that creates a
problem for the KGB. If all of the all of
our sources that we know are arrested, we will then
realize we have a problem, that something's wrong or communications
are wrong. We have a spy inside, and we may
investigate and then uncover their super secret spies Ames and Hansen,
(28:16):
and so as part of that process, the Russians created
a deception campaign. What they did is they took a
senior KGB officer, his name is Sasha Joe Moff. We
called him prologue our code word from his prolog, and
they ran him against the station. So they essentially had
this person contact a CI officer in Moscow provide incredibly
important information to explain why all these people who've been
(28:39):
arrested what happened. And they had a different reason for
each one, that the guide made a mistake, that CIA
made a mistake, that some of it was dumb luck
because they didn't want us looking and saying, why are
all these people arrested? It must be a spy, Let's
go investigate. They wanted to give us an alternative explanation,
and so he was what we call like a double agent.
He was run against us to give us false information,
(28:59):
to set information. And there was debates within the station
and with CI is this person real? Is this fake?
Are they trying to fool us? Is this a real source?
Because he's giving us really interesting information? And fast forward
it turned out that it was a deception operation on
the Russian But you were there, So what was it
like being in the station when you were having these
debates people whot to go out on the streets, the
(29:20):
snowy streets to meet us spy and not sure whether
he was real or not.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, our boss at the time, well S Look and Cline,
we knew they were running a very super secret case
which was prologue, and we also knew that there were
starting to be a few doubts about it, that sort
of thing, and that there were some really weird things
(29:45):
happening at some of our site where we would go
And I remember going to one myself to pick something
up and there was a candle burning next to where
it was. And that's not something this particular agent had
ever done before, as I learned when I came back,
and I'm like, oh, does this guy always leave a
candle by it? You know kind of thing. So we
(30:08):
definitely knew something was off. But at the time, the
guys who were spying against CIA for the Russians were
telling people that, no, there'd never be a spy inside
the agency. It has to be tradecraft, and all of
us were like looking at us, saying, no, there's something
(30:31):
more here. And so eventually that that ended up working out,
and we were able to find out that there were
several spies hands and all, and I remember, oh gosh,
and working with the FBI on this, and we had
gotten all this great information and that showed that clearly
(30:53):
that this particular American spy spying against America for Russia
was clearly it had to be FBI. And I won't
go into details about how we knew that, but we
just we could just tell and we kept telling FBI this,
it's got to be an FBI agent would never do it,
only CIA and other people would. And then I remember
(31:14):
one of the guys. I worked with FBI guy, a
guy named Dave's eighty. He actually was there when we
got the final piece of information in the form of
a recording, and he listens to the recording and he
starts saying the F word over and over again. He goes,
I know exactly who this thing is and as one
(31:35):
of ours, Yeah, that was interesting times.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, so you were head of counterintelligence for the agency. Yes,
And people on the outside tend not to understand what
sort of decisions you have to make with incomplete information.
You have to make inferences, you have to make choices.
When most people are like, Okay, it's a court of law, right,
(31:58):
it's like you've either you've got the evidence the smoking gun,
where you don't. But in counterintelligence, it's often just the
preponderance of evidence. Right, it's more likely than not that
this is true, but we can't prove it, or we
can prove it, but we're not going to prove it
because that could cost someone their life. So when you
(32:18):
see the US society pulling itself apart, so is Trump
an asset of the Russians? Asset not meeting he's a
paid spy, but he's he's basically working with them, or
was there collusion between the campaign And I'll just hit
just two or three points that are irrefruitable. Right. Paul Manifort,
his campaign manager, in twenty sixteen, was meeting secretly with
(32:41):
a Russian intelligence agent, and Don Junior met with a
Russian asset in Trump Tower who said that we've got
recordings we've done illegal activity the United States. He said, great,
and then he lied to the FBI about it initially.
So those don't prove collud shit, but they are inferences.
(33:02):
They're data points that make you, like uncomfortable. How do
you deal now in your life when you see things
like Epstein? There's all these unanswered questions. There's no proof
of anything or Trump's relationship to the Russians. How do
you think about it? And how should we on the
outside think about it. We can't prove anything, but we
can have opinions. We can have informed opinions, we can
(33:25):
make informed assessments, we can like do balances. How would
you just in general, how would you have people think
about this? Because it's complicated. They just want a black
or white yes or no, an encounterintelligence that's rarely, if
ever the case.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, black and white is hard because counter intelligence just
gives you hazy information, right, Yeah, it's an actual investigation
where you start getting more and more of that hazy
information that you're able to bring it together and say
this guy or somebody with this profile has to be
the spy. Yes, I think we still have to look
(34:03):
at anybody that we recruit could be lying, he could
be really telling us the absolute truth. But we also
have to have that skepticism in the back of our
mind so we don't get lazy and just take it on.
And like you were saying, we've got to be able
to corroborate it. We've got to be able to see
(34:23):
if he can recite it more than once that it's
something that before we would accuse somebody of being a spy,
then you would have to have some counter surveillance and
surveillance of the person in America or wherever this American
was living. I mean that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
The bullet report was not a counterintelligence report, right it was.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
It was not a counterintelligence report. It was simply a
report that was done by the counter Intelligence Mission Center
because we had our elfe election being impacted by an
enemy country, and I don't mean the Russian people. I'm
(35:08):
talking about the government right the enemy country, and that
is something that we have to stand up and really
take a hard look at immediately, because at the end
of the day, the democracy depends on a free and
unhindered and unfiddled with election process. And this is why
(35:34):
it's so serious.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
So in twenty sixteen, go to Hell's let's go afterwards,
let's go to Helsinki where Trunk meets with Putin and
he's asked famously, I think it was nineteen basically every
single US intelligence community entity, CIA, FBI, and our every
single one of them said that Russia attempted to and
(35:56):
did impact on our election in some way, shape or form.
And he said the president said he was The president said, well,
I believe Vladimir poop. He said he didn't do it.
Now as a counterintelligence officer or just as a human being,
I'm like, either A, he's lying because he's one embarrassed
Putin A or B what the fuck? Yeah, I can't
(36:17):
prove anything with that, but boy, that just is like
freaking weird.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah. See, he seems to like the power the Russian
tippy top government officials have that a democracy like ours
in like Europe and like other democracies around the world,
don't have where you can just choose to throw anybody
who disagrees with you in jail or threatened them or
(36:45):
whatever to get them to shut up.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
And now I think all of these things that you
talk about looking at things as a counter intelligence officer, Yeah,
it's not like a court of law. We don't have
absolute evidence to put someone in the arrest them. But
you see a patronive activity, yeah, would sugges something. So
a twenty four year old working for the FBI, the
state to promit the CIA, the Defense Department has to
give a security clearance. With the pattern of activity we've
(37:09):
seen around Trump and the Trump family, that would be
enough of a pattern to not give them a security clearance, right.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Yeah, at one hundred percent, there'd be no chance of
it of getting a security clearance. And that is absolutely
true when you look at the various lives he's been
telling over time, first of all, and secondly is he
is so arrogant and so all about me. The easiest
(37:35):
people to recruit are the arrogant ones. You guys know this.
The ones that want money also can be you know, okay,
but the arrogant ones where you go to a guy
and you say, oh, you mean your boss the foreign
minister yelled at you. Oh god, I'd never yell at you,
and you know, you should be really mad, and all
(37:56):
the rest of this stuff. And then you also, people
who want power and money are really easy too. But
I'm just saying that when you're looking at some of
the traits that our president has and all, it's one
of those things that we would look at. And certainly
I'm not, you know, claiming he's an agent of the Russians,
(38:20):
but certainly Poop has enamored him and he likes what
he sees there. Despite the fact that Trump did the
waffling on the whole aid to Ukraine, originally he took
it away, which I was like, oh, there you go again,
and then he went back. But I am like ninety
nine percent sure that was because Congress and other people
(38:42):
and even to some of his constituents came to him
and said, you know, wtf are you doing.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, so, Susan, you also had one of your senior
jobs at CIA was over China. Can you, in general
tell us how United States, either the Intelligence Committee or
our ability to defend ourselves against Chinese. How are we
positioned to deal with the Chinese, whether you want to
call it a threat or challenge, whatever you want to
call it.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
So there, I was having fun and what I thought
was going to be my last tour, and I was
going to retire out of Israel when Director Burns came
and I'd screwed up by not screwing up his visit,
and he asked me, are we doing enough on China?
And I said hell no, and he goes, yeah, I've
been talking to some other people at Connie Taub and
some others at our former colleagues and things like that,
(39:29):
and he said, I don't think we're doing enough on China,
and I said we're not. And what I told him
was that Shi jin Ping, you know, everybody was hopeful
when he took over that he might still be bringing
China a little bit more towards a democracy or something
that was at least approaching it, but he very shortly
(39:50):
after started showing that no, he himself is a dictator.
He's going after the ethnic groups. It was actually out
in Beijing. I went to Beijing for a visit when
I was Chief of China Mission Center, and there is
a camera every three feet in that place. You can't
spit on the ground and have somebody not see it,
(40:11):
and the Chinese will probably arrest you. But the bottom
line is that this is a much bigger threat because
they have much more economic ties with the West, so
none of us can completely break with them. And secondly,
they are not afraid to use that to convince us
(40:34):
don't break with us. And third when it comes to
espionage and things like that, they are willing to come
after us in ways that we've never seen before and
spend money on it. And they do this with their
own people. It's not just us, So it's just the
difference so far between US and them is them monitoring
(40:59):
their people, putting them in jail for no reason just
because you looked at a Western newspaper. But they are
so more intertwined, and they are so more thoughtful and
patient in the way they do their operations against us
than the Russians have ever done. That it is something
that correctly needed to have extra focus on. That's my
(41:22):
thinking on China. I do think when I look at it,
China and Russia together are our two biggest threats in
the United States government right now.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Let's take a break and be right back.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
So Susan, we it's clear inside of the agency that
the CIA almost didn't survive when John and I left.
I don't know how it hung on, but I didn't
mean to laugh out loud, But I don't know how
with the three of us gone, it can ever survive,
is it?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
So that'll say, yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
But one thing I've been struck by, and I wanted
to ask your opinion. In John's two you grew up
in California. John and I both grew up in like
small towns in upstate New York. I grew up in
a town with one street light and two bars and
four churches.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
And tell you what, and clearly you didn't go to
any of them.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I was an older boy. But we've spent most of
our careers either abroad, living outside the United States or
inside the Beltwait, which is arguably true, weirdly only part
of the United States. And now that you're out, are
you finding that the country you thought you knew and
that you defended is either different than you thought, it
(42:45):
is the same, or has it changed?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Those are all really good questions, and it is interesting
for any of us that either worked at Cia or
state department, or worked for a business and lived overseas,
understand the view that that country's citizen injury against, for
US or against what their views are much better by
(43:10):
talking to them. And what I have found is that
a lot of it depends on what's going on things
like that, and who you were talking to. I had
lunch not too long ago with a British colleague whose
works for six and I asked her, what are your
(43:30):
views of America like right now? And she said, it's
not just England. It's not just England, it's not just
the United Kingdom, but all of Europe is very concerned
about a lot of things. Trump is saying. Whether he'll
follow through on us, we don't know. But it really
(43:52):
disturbs us, is what they say. I said, yeah, I
think that's fair. But you guys got to remember that
we are still really good partners. We were still good
partners under the previous Trump administration. And as you see
how things unfold in this one, you'll get an idea
(44:13):
as to what you want to share with us and
what you don't. But don't just dismiss it out of hand.
Keep your relationships up with the various coss around the
world and with us here, and we should continue to
keep that door open where the five eyes were strong.
We've done a lot of great things together. But I
(44:34):
can tell you right now they are a little concerned
about sharing things on Russia with us because where it
might go or not go. Is it going to be
publicized or are they going to be targeted in the
same way that say we worry.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, they're going after you for saying something sensible that
was source driven, that was well price on Russia. If
the British had given us some of the key information
that had led to that, they would be attacking the British.
The British sources would be out at all these kind
of things. And so it's understandable that foreigners are concerned
about sharing secret information with so Jerry, I think there's
a real concern with things changing, and some of it's inevitable. Right. So,
(45:17):
there was a post World War two America. You know,
we came through one of the biggest challenges in our history.
Then there was Stalin with the bomb and we had
to figure out what was the threat from communism, and
essentially our leadership over time created the greatest generation period
of peace probably in history, and the greatest economic growth
the world has ever seen. But we've now moved to
(45:39):
a point where I think people forget that. They forget
what was good about that. I don't know if leadership
communicated well enough how different that was in world history,
and people feel disconnected. I think globalization is scared people
that the rest of the world is changing and I
can't control if my job is going to China or something.
I can't control that, and so there's a lot of
(46:00):
the issues. I think we have to expect a lot
of change, but I think the world is different and
our leaders are going to have to come to terms
with it. And one of the things I'm frustrated with
is I don't think this leadership is taking those challenges seriously.
Trump acts like it's the nineteen seventies and we need
more coal, and we need to not trade with other countries,
and we need to get rid of immigrants, and I
think it's just the opposite, right, But time will tell.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Bring back Smoot Holly, Yeah, I totally agree. I think
that's an underlying theme even to our own conversation, is
him acting on things and coming up with ideas without
talking to other people and understanding what works and what
doesn't and getting the teams together to comment and work
on various issues and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
So he's got the greatest resource in the history of world.
The United States government has more experts on more issues
and more power and fire though. Yeah, and he's treating
him like they're his enemy because they don't always tell
him exactly what he wants to hear. And we took
pride in the CIA telling leadership what he didn't want
to hear, like, yeah, it's becoming Hey, listen, sir, I
know this is your policy, but here's what the truth
(47:02):
is over to you. Yeah, and yeah, and to him,
to him, that's a challenge and.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Saying it politely and everything else and saying, hey, sir,
this particular policy viars is not working, but this one could.
What do you think sort of thing is not possible
right now?
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, So you've been out now for how long?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
A couple of years almost, I've been out for it's
one year.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
All right, what do you miss?
Speaker 3 (47:27):
I thought I would be missing the camaraderie, but I'm
not because I find that I'm still hanging out with
agency friends and things like that, and we're still having
at the time and all the rest of this stuff.
I missed driving into the building every day by thirty
nine years in because you.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Had a good parking spah, you had a good part,
you have a total lot.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
That's true. Yeah, in all seriousness, I remember the first
day I had to drive in. You guys were rich too.
They tell you, okay, you got to go down one
twenty three, and then you got to do this and that,
and then you go here and there. And I was
like terror about even just driving in there, right, And
I go in and they had told us a certain
(48:06):
place to park us new cts, you know, and all
the rest of the stuff. Trainee, yeah, career trainee if
new officers, and we're going to get badged, and then
we were going to go to another facility in the
next few days to go get trained off combat. But
I remember driving in and was like I got in,
I gave them my driver's license and they gave me
(48:26):
a badge and it was like, oh, this is so cool,
and they took pictures and got me an actual badge.
I'm like, oh, I actually work here. I actually work
here at CIA. Every single day I went into the
very day that I went out the last time. Is
was a joy. It's ups and downs, like this whole
thing that we were just talking about, But the bottom
(48:48):
line is it was ninety percent up.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
You know, and cia When you walk out, you're out.
It's not like you can come back and visit or
hang out with your buds and a lot of people.
You basically walk out over the seal famous, right, Bobby,
Did you go out like just by yourself or did
you have a whole bunch of people come with you
or what was your exit like?
Speaker 3 (49:09):
So I had the retirement ceremony and then it was
about a week. It might have been a week or
two later because I was still clearing up some reports
and stuff I needed to do and some of the things.
And yeah, there was a big clap.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
There was people from counter intelligence from Europe sections and
from the China and East Asia section, and my daughter
who works at NSA was also there because she could
get in with her badge. And it was really fine.
The day I walked out, which was different than the ceremony,
(49:43):
I walked out with a friend of mine who was
retiring on the same day. Her name is lis Deagall.
She's a d and analyst and she was in my
CT class because they had all four it was only
four directors at the time, all four directorates in that
first year of training and then we all split off,
but we became good and so we walked out that
(50:04):
day and everybody was clapping, and I was thinking, Oh,
I'm going to be sad. I hope I don't cry
because deans I'm a Danish American hate crying. But I didn't.
It was just such a happy event. And we actually
walked out of the doors and Liz and I just
spontaneously just turned around and did high fives, and as
(50:24):
we were doing it, you could see everybody laughing at
us that we were doing it, and it was just great.
And then we just went out to our cars and
headed out. It was great.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yeah, you're so, you're you are married to an actual
State Department office.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
A real State Department officer.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Yeah, overseas and places you were or sometimes different places. Yeah,
what's the difference. What was his view of his career?
Was it any different from years? Did he have the
same sort of positive views of State Department or.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
He did he also there's always ups and downs, right
and all the rest of this stuff. Yeah, if you'll
remember I met him in Poland my second tour and
he was a first tour consular officer at the time.
And I got together with him because his car got
stolen by a Belarusian car thief, which was happening because
the Soviet Union while we were in Poland sell apart, basically,
(51:11):
so I said to him, I said, well, are they
going to find your car at this party? And he
goes and they said no. And I lost my favorite
leather jacket in it. And the worst part is I
have to take the bus, and the Polish buses are
full of people who still don't use deodorant infect I'm
going up to aid right now and I'm going to
(51:32):
tell him get deodorant on the street here. And I
was laughing and I said where do you live and
he told me and I said, that's right on my
way to work. And we were married six months later.
I'll set you up and we literally on December eleventh,
which is our wedding date. We toast the Belarusian car
thief every year.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Never found his car, never found his car. It's probably
still going. They're probably still driving around someone.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, probably now it's probably and Siberia somewhere.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
I was in Berlin with the during the Kosovo War
and just afterwards there was actually a show on TV
in Germany like where's your car? And they would call
somebody up and they say where's your like where's your car?
Huk and he's yeah, we have a picture of it
just crossing into Kosovo now. So they stole it the
night before and then one of the people in the
(52:22):
station that you know, Susie, she lost her car. She
had random BMW and next thing you know, they had
a picture of it driving into Kosovo.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
There used to be a billboard going to Albania for
a while that had a big picture said it was
like a tourist, you know, visit Albania. You know your
car's already here's my.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
Favorite human rights abusers. Yeah, So what are you gonna
do with retirement? People ask this of us a lot.
You have this job, it's full of adrenaline and mission
driven and you were in these senior positions. So what
are you gonna What are you gonna do with your
life now and your talents and your dry and everything
like that. What do you know yet?
Speaker 3 (53:02):
Or yes, I already have some training gigs I'm doing
and it's intermittent. I'm not doing anything full time. What
I've really been enjoying since retirement last year is last
calendar year in twenty twenty four, my husband, and it's
only men who come up with these ideas, says to me, Hey, sissy,
you know what I want to do in twenty twenty four?
(53:24):
What he goes, I want to go visit all all
seven continents. So we visited all seven continents. We're related
to travel this year and next year we are visiting
every baseball stadium to see a game. And we've also
got some other just travel with some friends coming up.
So we've really been enjoying ourselves doing that. And in
(53:44):
in between these intermittent.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Gigs, that's good. You should travel because it's not gonna
be long before they pull your security clash like they
pulled ours.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Did they have one?
Speaker 1 (53:52):
But yeah, they have checked at a executive orders first
day in right, So I didn't have one, but I
did you have any?
Speaker 2 (54:00):
But he pulled it. If it existed, it.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Was big money and podcasting. If you want to get into.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
That, yeah, I bet hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
So the agency falls into two categories. Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks,
which did you go to when you were in the agency?
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Starbucks?
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Oh, I knew there was something wrong with their jobs.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
Idiots did the Dunkin Donuts, So it's all about you
guys being cheap rich.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
A dunkin doughnuts guy.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
Usually most offices had like a coffee maker. We did,
and nobody actually wanted to clean, so it had like
a brow burned into the bottom of or something.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
And they were always post its notes next the wall
next to the coffee maker. We mean it clean it out.
If you started new pod, if you're the last one,
and nobody.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Ever you mentioned Moscow and like for example for people
don't follow us it. Our office in Moscow obviously was
very sense, very secure, locked up. None of the locals
could come in there, and so it means we had
to clean our own stuff, which means we had a
bathroom in there, and we had to what a rotating
thing that the people in the office had to do
(55:13):
the vacuuming and the cleaning and cleaning the bathroom to
include the chief. So Mike Sulick was the chief when
I was there, and we had these fancy, super secret
cameras where we get his little wire he could put in.
So every time Sulic would clean the bathroom, we would
run this wire in there and we would watch it
on a video set in the office of him like
kneeling down with his butt and I can say he
(55:35):
senior officer, but he did clean those toilets.
Speaker 3 (55:37):
I of all the bosses that we all work for,
that's the one. And they said one of them would
actually clean toilets, that's the one I would do. Because
he was so humble. He's still yeah, he's such a
great guy.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
The James Bond movies never have the boss cleaning the
toilet or.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
It was a real pleasure to talk to you, and
I want to say, you know, please keep yourself safe.
You're speaking truth to power, and in this day and age,
that can be a dangerous thing. But we respect that
and appreciate it. So thanks for spending so much time
with us, and I hope we can do it again
for too long.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Thank you very much, you guys.
Speaker 5 (56:07):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible.
It is a production of Honorable Mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart podcasts,
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
our adversaries.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
theories large and small. Could they be true?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is mission implausible. So today's guest is Susan Miller.
She's a colleague and a friend of ours. She worked
almost four decades in the CIA. Was our boss in
the CIA at one time or another. Some of her
senior jobs were the head of counterintelligence. She worked on
issues with China. She worked in Russia, Israel, in a
(00:48):
lot of senior positions, East Ages and so we're glad
to have her with us. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Good to be with you, guys.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
What I wanted to start out, Yeah, I know, we'll
get into that part of it.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I want the first question this time, who's more of
a make be introducer?
Speaker 1 (01:01):
If you get the first I know, who was more of.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
A problem to be a boss? Of John or me
who was the bigger problem child in the agency.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Honestly, it was you were both horrible. So that's all
I can say.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Oh, all right, all right, John, not over to your question.
He bet you, but clearly.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, no, I was ready for that. So Susan one
of the you know, we don't want to dwell on
this too much, but you are embroiled in a conspiracy
right now. So Toulci Gebbert just spoke at the White
House and said that former CIA director John Brennan former
President Barack Obama conspired to damage candidate Trump in twenty
sixteen by putting out false information that Russia was assisting
(01:42):
his campaign.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Twenty, yeah, sixteen, seventeen.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, the election was in sixteen, but the ICE didn't
come out until seventeen. So it's unless you have a
time machinet. I don't know how that this assessment could.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm sorry, they're they're never really good on facts, so.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
It's all right. Yeah, So here's my question for those
unfamiliar with CIA culture. What would it actually happen if
the director came to a group writing an assessment and said,
I want you to publish a false story for political reasons.
What how would that look if that actually happened.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
How it would look if he had asked us to
do that, Yeah, we would. I would have quit. I
would have gone to the IG Inspector General. There's no
way any of us would have done it. And it
would have been a much more salacious story, that's for sure,
but it was a pretty boring. None of us would
have done it. There's just no way the idea that
(02:35):
we would conspire to write something like this. If I
was going to conspire to write something, it would be
really righteous. And this particular report ended with basically, yes,
one hundred percent, the Russians tried to influence the election
in Trump's favor, and a one hundred percent, we can't
tell you if it worked unless we pulled every voter.
(02:58):
And therefore, in our opinion, Trump is our president and
that was it. And for that he decided to do
the I don't know how long later it was, but
bar Durham put me and a couple of members of
my team on trial for writing a paper that ended
with and Trump is basically the rightful president, or you know,
(03:21):
is president. And I remember when they came when my
lawyer came to me and told me this, and it
was I left my head out loud and he goes, no,
I'm actually serious. I'm crap, and it's a criminal complaint.
I said, yeah. He said, what's the crime? Has something
to do with insurrection? I'm not positive and then just
went on from there.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
But there was another element to this, and I think
if there is a conspiracy on the right now, this
is part of it. The assessment also said that we
have no evidence, there's no proof that the Russians were
able to impact on our election infrastructure. They didn't change votes.
If you voted for A, they didn't turn it to B.
(04:02):
And this is part of as I understand Gabbert's claim
is that she's conflating the fact that we didn't find
any election interference. They weren't in the guts of the
election machines.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
No, they weren't.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That means that they didn't have any influence, which is
not what we're saying, right.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I means, yeah, here's what it was is they were
doing an influenced campaign towards Trump, both in the US
and around the world.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Did it include some social media? Maybe we weren't. We
didn't actually get down into that because as CIA were
not allowed to go into things that are at that
are inside America. But what we understood from the sources
was the source was that it was ordered by the
(04:57):
Russian leadership and they had chosen Trump because they felt
he was more favorable than the Democratic the Democrat that
was going to be running, any Democrat that would run
against him, and other Republicans and things like that. And
so that's what we found. And everybody wanted us to,
(05:19):
wanted us to come to a firm conclusion, and we
did too. Honestly, starting this out, we wanted a firm conclusion,
Yes he should not be president, or no he should
be president, one way or the other. We didn't really
care which way it ended. But we couldn't find that,
and so that's what we ended up with. And it
(05:40):
was briefed to Trump by our director and he was
quite happy and he basically said, good briefing when it
was brief to him. And then it was not too
long later that I got called into the OGC's office
and told that Trump was with a couple other team members.
(06:02):
By the way, that we were all being charged by
the Attorney General for writing the paper and we all
left our heads off at it and said, you know,
you tell us really why And then they said, they said, no,
it is absolutely true. You are being charged. It is
(06:24):
a criminal process. And I said, so, who do I
get from my lawyer like one of you guys from OGC,
which is what you would normally do in Cia, You
get your own lawyer. They said, no, you need to
get a private criminal lawyer who has a clearance, which
is why I got ken Waynstein. I actually asked around
to all the lawyers who's the maastiest nice guy in
(06:47):
court meaning lawyer? And I had three of them independently
say you got to get ken Wayninstein. So I did,
and so did Cohen. As a matter of fact, he
also got ken Wayne Stein. And then we sat in
front of the tribunal for hours and hours.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, oh good fun.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Fifteen hundred bucks an hour? WHOA?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
What was the crime though? Saying something? I mean, this
goes sort of the core of intelligence, right, We're supposed
to say the truth and then the politicians can ignore
it or take it on their advisement. This was basically
you said something that they didn't want to hear, right.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
That was it? And so ken actually did try to
find out what is the crime. We don't understand how
a report that ends with and Trump is our president
is a crime. He never got a super good answer.
And it's something that during the actual bar Durham where
(07:46):
I sat in front of them to provide my testimony,
I asked that question too, and nobody gave me an answer.
I think one person mumbled, you're trying to bring down
a government or something like that. But again, it wasn't clear.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
But the assessment was classified. Right, It's not like you're
giving it to the New York Times.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Right, No, I was not. It was classified. Yeah, referred
to this day that it was never lated.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah, Susan, can you outline your role in creating the
Epstein files?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
No, we're told no, the President said that it's the
CIA and the deep state and Obama people. So the
same people that they did say that, So the same
people who put out this false report that you worked
on created the Epstein files.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
But there is there is a link to Epstein Gate.
In so far, I believe this is and this is
a conspiracy, but I think it's a true. One is
that Tulca Gabber cooked up this canard basically to to
have people look the other eight a bright shiny object,
something they could claim, oh, so that they're not looking
(08:54):
at Epstein. Right out of nowhere, Epstein Gate's going on,
and she suddenly is charging Barack Obama with treeson. That's interesting,
and you're being pulled into this as a distraction.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
But at the same time, there's reports that she's under
the gun because she went to Japan and made this
crazy videotape about Hiroshima and the president was unhappy. And
so I think these people have to do these kind
of things to keep on Trump's favor. They're afraid they
can get I would agree.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So I want to talk about you know, you've got
John and I here to pharmacy. I want to talk
about one of our great CIA colleagues, John Kiriaku, who
was arrested, went to jail. He's a bad guy. So
I was surprised that he was on the interweb the
other day and he was claiming that Epstein was an asset.
(09:47):
But he wouldn't say to Israel, but he like to
them that it was clearly like he was. It was
an anti Semitic sort of he was like he's with
the Jews, right, I mean, that was pretty clear. But
he says, and the reason, his reason for this, and
one reason he's probably kicked out of one of the
reasons is he was a an access agent's what we call.
(10:11):
And there's this hush tone that the person he's talking to,
he says, and that explains how he got the billions.
Access agents get like private islands, they get him like.
So he's trying to tell whoever his audience is, me
and like six other guys that if you're an access
(10:33):
agent for the Jews, you're going to get billions. So
how would you respond to this through that? Like in
the world of reality, like what an access agent is
and whether Jeffrey Epstein had any connections to any intelligence
organizations alif I know, but it certainly doesn't explain his billions.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
But that that's crazy. But bottom line is that's ridiculous.
That is so ridiculous for people.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Who don't know what an access agent is. And our
old world where supposed to recruit sources to give us
secrets that the US government can't get any other way.
And one of the ways that you might try to
get towards someone we call a target who might have
those secrets is to recruit someone who knows them. So
if you have someone who works in those circles that
can provide you information background where that person might be,
(11:19):
we call that an access agent. And it's not the
person giving us necessarily intelligence. Is the person helping us
find somebody that could give us intelligence. And by the
ends of our careers, even CIA was very hesitant to
approve those kind of relationships because we get promoted on
how many people we recruit, and it's much easier quote
(11:39):
unquote to recruit an access agent than an actual spot.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
The North North Korean won't talk to us, so we
find some like Peruvian second secretary to throw a party
with Canopy so that we can bump into him. But
they don't get private islands.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And this cannop page, it's Canna paid.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
There's chief. This is just the canopiece, right, the canopiece
any money.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So there is one more conspiracy that I just saw yesterday.
I was looking on Twitter. I saw this conspiracy and
it said, how is it possible that a girl from
Santa Rosa could be one of the most senior CIA officials.
This is clearly doesn't make sense that someone like that
could be in the senior position. I think we're being hoodwinked,
and so I don't know who that person thinks actually
(12:23):
does work at CIA. If you can't come from a
small town or whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Are you are you joking or no, oh my god,
that you can't have a CIA officer who came from
California or.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Just from a small town, or a girl or whatever.
I don't know who they think. They've created this myth
of the deep state of some kind of elites or whatever,
and they're like, I think what they did is they
found your article end like your school newspaper, and it
talked about your growing up like anybody else would. But
then they said, oh, this doesn't make any sense. A
senior CIA person couldn't be a normal person like that.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Agree that there's a lot of abnormal people that work
at CIA, like two of you. The bottom line is,
you guys know inside the building, we're all normal. We
have kids, we have families, we have vacations, we like
to take. Were we turn off the espionage gene or
(13:20):
switch I should say, whenever we get in our car
and start heading home, and you find a way to
do that. We have a lot of stress and our
jobs and a lot of things that we can only
talk to each other about because of our clearances and
things like that. But yeah, I feel like we are.
(13:41):
We are a family of sorts. We've belonged to a club,
a dysfunctional club, yes, definitely, but we are and it's
really really is what makes what made my thirty nine
years so happy. There's very few idiots I had to work.
There's very few, you know, problem bosses, and very very
few problems people that had to that were working for
(14:03):
me at different times. But it was just it's really good,
smart people who weirdly want to tell the truth. People
think CIA people lie all the time. We don't lie
to Americans. Well, I guess we sort of do when
we say I actually were in the State Department. But
basically we're we are not what we were back in
(14:27):
the fifties and sixties, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, since it's twenty twenty five and between the three
of us, so this is a scary thought. We've got
almost one hundred years of operational experience. Have you ever
seen anything like this now where we are afraid to
speak truth to power? We have seen this, but we've
(14:50):
seen this when we've dealt with Russians or Cubans or
Chinese where they look over their shoulders before they actually
like talk to you. We've never done that. That's only
been one of our great powers is a peace people
Americans have ever done that?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Right? I worry that this.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
New normality, we're just this Overton window. We're just like
accepting it. How different is this Trump two point zero
that we're going through now where people are afraid, people
are being fired, people like yourself, You say something that
you believe that the facts base, and then you're like
up on criminal charges. How different is this and how
is this changing intelligence?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
I think part of it the problem is that his
denigration of us and what we do is definitely resonating
with his base, and his base are talking to their
children and their neighbors and things like that, and a
fair number of people are going to say, ah, that's
just you being conspiratorial again and all that. But you're
(15:47):
raising a whole new generation, honestly, or more generations of
people who are going to think that the government lies
all the time and that CIA is like Trump is
spreading right now. CIA is not good. It's dangerous. It's
(16:10):
not good. To speak truth to power. It's not good
to be honest or anything like that. I just feel
like it's gone off the charts. And part of that
is social media is out there and everything else as well,
and he loves working on social media.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
That's for sure. Yeah. General Hayden wrote a book about this,
about the post truth world. It's where everything becomes partisanship
in politics for short term political gain in an intelligence
community can't really exist in a post truth world, and
so it's a real it's a real problem. I don't
think maybe former presidents and former intelligence directors that have
(16:46):
made clear well enough or communicated American people how important
that is and how much we've actually benefited over the
decades having a serious expertise in international affairs and intelligence.
We've tried to produce truth.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
And that we tell the truth, and we fire the
people that don't that make up an asset and make
up and a report maybe from a real asset or
something like that. We don't put up with that. And
it's our culture.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Which may suggest there's a lot of talk out there
now which I sort of stay away from. A people, Well,
Trump's a Russian asset. He clearly is a Russian asset.
They've been running him for years and years. Can you
imagine trying to run him as an actual source, like
as a control there as a controlled source is he
doesn't know, he doesn't know reality from not reality. It's
all about him, it's all about publicity. So I mean
as a controlled spy, the kind of spies that we
(17:37):
tried to run to provide us diligence, he just doesn't
fit that bill in that sense. He might be valuable
to the Russians or somebody else in other ways, but
as a spy in the way that we define running
a controlled source, that just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Because he's Yeah, he's too unpredictable.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Let me ask you a more sort of question. You spent,
like you said, almost forty years inside Jerry, and I
know all the important and neat things done, and you've
been all over the world. Can you talk about maybe
some of your favorite experiences in the field or in headquarters.
Which places do you think were most important in your
development and which places did you like the best?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
So most important in development? The one I liked the
best of my day to this day is my first tour,
which was Moscow, USSR. As a case officer. Mike Suliuk
was my deputy chief of station. Mike Klient was my
chief of station, and Silica is just He's a righteous guy,
you know, and a really good boss and somebody that
was really good at mentoring all of us. My favorite
(18:34):
story about Mike was when he came to me and
he said, Susan, I need you to go do this operation,
and normally you will abort the operation if you find
that you have surveillance when you leave the embassy. Leave
the embassy, and he goes, I want you to use
those California drive and skills, and I want you to
(18:57):
lose them. And I'm like, oh, this is the best
thing that's ever happened to me in life. And so
I go out and I did lose them. I definitely
had like normal I would call it normal surveillance. It
wasn't particularly sneaky or anything like that. I had the
regular two cars behind me that kept switching lanes and
(19:18):
stuff like that, and so I back then they just
had the stupid lattas that didn't have any kind of power,
and I had an American car. It was a plimoth
that wasn't like a nice car or anything. And I
just punched it and I lost them totally. And I
was gone for like ten hours, and I came back
(19:40):
to my apartment that was a New York Gorky park
that was off the compound, and I parked my car.
It was always snowy parked my car went upstairs. I
could see that the uniformed KGB guys that were surrounding
all of our apartment buildings called me in when I
got in, And so the next I come out, and
(20:01):
sure enough, the snow was up to my windows on
the car like normal, and I just get in the
car and it's powdery snow and I just drive off.
And then I pull out and I see three surveillance
cars lined up in a row, and I'm like, oh,
they're really mad. Good I was. I left them. There
was no other American diplomats living in that place, and
so I pull past them and I see all three
(20:22):
of them pull out behind me, and I turn on
to Leninski Prospect, which you know was the beltway of
Moscow but with lights, big big you guys, remember it
a really big, big street. And I pull out and
I'm feeling a car fielder. Really it's pulling really funny.
So I pull over and I get out of the
car and I look at my front right tire and
(20:44):
I find that there is a hole in the sidewall.
And then I go around the car. Back tire is fine.
Then the second back tire, the one on the opposite
side of the front tire, also had a hole in
it and its sidewall. And I look back and three
of these cars they're laughing their heads off, and I'm like,
you know what, I know how to change a tire.
(21:07):
My dad didn't want me, being raised in California, to
get picked up by like another Charles Manson type or whatever.
But anyway, I knew how to do it, but I
was not going to do it. It was freezing, I was
like minus thirty and I just sat there. I had
a warm car. I knew that those Lattas did not
have heat. They even remember their steering wheels were a
(21:28):
little off, so they just were really crappy piece of car.
So finally, I don't know. It's like, after twenty minutes,
one of them comes up and knocks on my door
and says, oh, hellos, I'm a innocent Russian citizen, not
a KGB guy. Following you, and I just noticed that
your car has been sitting here for a while. Are
you okay? I'm like, oh yeah, fine, don't worry about me.
(21:49):
I got heat, I have two flat tires. I have
zero idea how it happened. And I'm just waiting for
somebody from the embassy to come by. And don't worry
about me again. I'm warm and I'm doing fine. And
so I saw this guy go back, and I saw
them arguing for like about ten minutes, and then one
of them comes up, and of course they're cold because
(22:10):
their coats aren't as good as ours or anything like that.
And the guy comes up and says, will change your tires.
And I'm like, okay, so that's my best job. They've
flattened it and they changed it.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Just a second.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
We'll continue in a moment. John and I we do
hear a lot people ask, oh, my kid once is
thinking about government service, and what would you say, And
throughout my entire crew, I've always said, young talented kids,
(22:48):
yeah you should think about the agency, depending on what
you want to do with your life and so forth.
But I mean, I loved my thirty three years. I
loved every tour of it. What would you tell a
young person now.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
So, right now, it's still a really good place to work.
Let's just put it that way. You've still got most
of the people are just righteous, they're fabulous people. They've
got good morals, they've got good senses of humor, they've
got a desire to serve the US government. So it's
still a good thing to go after, and I would
(23:21):
encourage them to keep applying to it even if you
don't like whatever government. Let's say you didn't like Biden
or you didn't like Trump. It doesn't matter for the
most part. And when I say most, I'm out to
the ninety eight percent of the time. It doesn't matter
who's in charge. They might have different goals. Russia's a
(23:43):
bigger thing this time, or maybe I ran as a
bigger thing next time, or whatever. They want us to
do our jobs, and they want us to do it right.
The only issue right now that I have with people
applying is that when Musk was dowed, he wanted to
get rid of everybody that was in whatever agency across
(24:06):
the US government that had three years or less, and
that obviously was approved by Trump. I don't know if
it was invented by him. It might have been invented
by Muss, was approved by him. But again this is
asked backwards, thinking you and I, all three of us
have absolutely gone through ups and downs during times when
(24:29):
they needed to save money, we didn't have enough money
and all the rest of stuff. And what we did
was early outs people who wanted to retire a couple
of years early, and then they could take their retirement
a little bit early, and that was pretty much a
no cost freeing up some money, some extra money. And
then one of my concerns is that obviously the doge
(24:51):
thing went away for now. I don't know that the
ideas are all gone, because the entity still exists, but
it just bothers me that they don't seem to be
doing what you guys and I would do. When I
want to try to maybe do something a different way,
I'm going to go and I'm going to get a
(25:12):
group of people together that I like and that I
know are going to give me different opinions of things,
and I want to work out is this going to work?
Is it not going to work? And then it's only
after I work with that group do I actually go
and I say, yes, I think something something should be done.
And again that's something that I'm not seeing in this particular,
(25:35):
at least at the high levels of this government. But
I would hope that it's still going on even with
the new DNI, with the new DCIA, all the rest
of that stuff. I really hope that they are reaching
down to the people that work below them to really
think and talk out how we do things, why we
(25:57):
do things, and what our priorities should be according to
the President and to the NSC. Honestly, so long the
short of it, that's I would still go into it.
There's always been up and down, We've all had them,
so it's worth going into.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
It's a great career, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It's free too. Yeah. I worry that it could get
rubbed away when the head of the CIA is saying,
agreeing to what Gabbert is saying, that the CI had
lied about this stuff. Essentially, you're throwing your workforce underneath
the bus, saying people who worked on this lied what
you're doing. That's you can't run an organization and say
that the people work for your own liars. That's a problem.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah, And I think that's another good point is that
those of us who are here on the outside. Need
to let people know that, despite what the movies and
TV shows show you, we don't lie inside the building.
We might lie to an agent that you're trying to
recruit that I'm State Department, but that's my cover. That's
(27:00):
a legal cover that I have that has been given
to me by the US government for a purpose. But
if we get tell an agent, we're going to give
you ten thousand dollars for X we do, and so yeah,
it's still a good job.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Well, let me step back to your experience in Moscow
and we're going to talk about some other things. My
understanding is you were there when the Prologue thing happened.
Is that true. There's been some writing on it. I've
actually written on prolog and I've had it approved by
the agency. So Prologue helped me out US none. Yes,
So just to give you a quick sense, US EU
are guys cool?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Guys?
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, there you go. In the seventies and eighties, the
Russians had recruited some sources to include Robert Hanson at
the FBI, Alder James at the CIA, and when Gorbachev
came in, he sentially said was briefed and told that
there was a bunch of spies spying for the Americans.
But we know this because we have spies inside the
FBI and the CIA, and Gorbachev essentially told the KGB
(27:54):
and the MBD the police there, you have to arrest
these Russians who are spying. Of course, that creates a
problem for the KGB. If all of the all of
our sources that we know are arrested, we will then
realize we have a problem, that something's wrong or communications
are wrong. We have a spy inside, and we may
investigate and then uncover their super secret spies Ames and Hansen,
(28:16):
and so as part of that process, the Russians created
a deception campaign. What they did is they took a
senior KGB officer, his name is Sasha Joe Moff. We
called him prologue our code word from his prolog, and
they ran him against the station. So they essentially had
this person contact a CI officer in Moscow provide incredibly
important information to explain why all these people who've been
(28:39):
arrested what happened. And they had a different reason for
each one, that the guide made a mistake, that CIA
made a mistake, that some of it was dumb luck
because they didn't want us looking and saying, why are
all these people arrested? It must be a spy, Let's
go investigate. They wanted to give us an alternative explanation,
and so he was what we call like a double agent.
He was run against us to give us false information,
(28:59):
to set information. And there was debates within the station
and with CI is this person real? Is this fake?
Are they trying to fool us? Is this a real source?
Because he's giving us really interesting information? And fast forward
it turned out that it was a deception operation on
the Russian But you were there, So what was it
like being in the station when you were having these
debates people whot to go out on the streets, the
(29:20):
snowy streets to meet us spy and not sure whether
he was real or not.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, our boss at the time, well S Look and Cline,
we knew they were running a very super secret case
which was prologue, and we also knew that there were
starting to be a few doubts about it, that sort
of thing, and that there were some really weird things
(29:45):
happening at some of our site where we would go
And I remember going to one myself to pick something
up and there was a candle burning next to where
it was. And that's not something this particular agent had
ever done before, as I learned when I came back,
and I'm like, oh, does this guy always leave a
candle by it? You know kind of thing. So we
(30:08):
definitely knew something was off. But at the time, the
guys who were spying against CIA for the Russians were
telling people that, no, there'd never be a spy inside
the agency. It has to be tradecraft, and all of
us were like looking at us, saying, no, there's something
(30:31):
more here. And so eventually that that ended up working out,
and we were able to find out that there were
several spies hands and all, and I remember, oh gosh,
and working with the FBI on this, and we had
gotten all this great information and that showed that clearly
(30:53):
that this particular American spy spying against America for Russia
was clearly it had to be FBI. And I won't
go into details about how we knew that, but we
just we could just tell and we kept telling FBI this,
it's got to be an FBI agent would never do it,
only CIA and other people would. And then I remember
(31:14):
one of the guys. I worked with FBI guy, a
guy named Dave's eighty. He actually was there when we
got the final piece of information in the form of
a recording, and he listens to the recording and he
starts saying the F word over and over again. He goes,
I know exactly who this thing is and as one
(31:35):
of ours, Yeah, that was interesting times.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, so you were head of counterintelligence for the agency. Yes,
And people on the outside tend not to understand what
sort of decisions you have to make with incomplete information.
You have to make inferences, you have to make choices.
When most people are like, Okay, it's a court of law, right,
(31:58):
it's like you've either you've got the evidence the smoking gun,
where you don't. But in counterintelligence, it's often just the
preponderance of evidence. Right, it's more likely than not that
this is true, but we can't prove it, or we
can prove it, but we're not going to prove it
because that could cost someone their life. So when you
(32:18):
see the US society pulling itself apart, so is Trump
an asset of the Russians? Asset not meeting he's a
paid spy, but he's he's basically working with them, or
was there collusion between the campaign And I'll just hit
just two or three points that are irrefruitable. Right. Paul Manifort,
his campaign manager, in twenty sixteen, was meeting secretly with
(32:41):
a Russian intelligence agent, and Don Junior met with a
Russian asset in Trump Tower who said that we've got
recordings we've done illegal activity the United States. He said, great,
and then he lied to the FBI about it initially.
So those don't prove collud shit, but they are inferences.
(33:02):
They're data points that make you, like uncomfortable. How do
you deal now in your life when you see things
like Epstein? There's all these unanswered questions. There's no proof
of anything or Trump's relationship to the Russians. How do
you think about it? And how should we on the
outside think about it. We can't prove anything, but we
can have opinions. We can have informed opinions, we can
(33:25):
make informed assessments, we can like do balances. How would
you just in general, how would you have people think
about this? Because it's complicated. They just want a black
or white yes or no, an encounterintelligence that's rarely, if
ever the case.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, black and white is hard because counter intelligence just
gives you hazy information, right, Yeah, it's an actual investigation
where you start getting more and more of that hazy
information that you're able to bring it together and say
this guy or somebody with this profile has to be
the spy. Yes, I think we still have to look
(34:03):
at anybody that we recruit could be lying, he could
be really telling us the absolute truth. But we also
have to have that skepticism in the back of our
mind so we don't get lazy and just take it on.
And like you were saying, we've got to be able
to corroborate it. We've got to be able to see
(34:23):
if he can recite it more than once that it's
something that before we would accuse somebody of being a spy,
then you would have to have some counter surveillance and
surveillance of the person in America or wherever this American
was living. I mean that sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
The bullet report was not a counterintelligence report, right it was.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
It was not a counterintelligence report. It was simply a
report that was done by the counter Intelligence Mission Center
because we had our elfe election being impacted by an
enemy country, and I don't mean the Russian people. I'm
(35:08):
talking about the government right the enemy country, and that
is something that we have to stand up and really
take a hard look at immediately, because at the end
of the day, the democracy depends on a free and
unhindered and unfiddled with election process. And this is why
(35:34):
it's so serious.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
So in twenty sixteen, go to Hell's let's go afterwards,
let's go to Helsinki where Trunk meets with Putin and
he's asked famously, I think it was nineteen basically every
single US intelligence community entity, CIA, FBI, and our every
single one of them said that Russia attempted to and
(35:56):
did impact on our election in some way, shape or form.
And he said the president said he was The president said, well,
I believe Vladimir poop. He said he didn't do it.
Now as a counterintelligence officer or just as a human being,
I'm like, either A, he's lying because he's one embarrassed
Putin A or B what the fuck? Yeah, I can't
(36:17):
prove anything with that, but boy, that just is like
freaking weird.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah. See, he seems to like the power the Russian
tippy top government officials have that a democracy like ours
in like Europe and like other democracies around the world,
don't have where you can just choose to throw anybody
who disagrees with you in jail or threatened them or
(36:45):
whatever to get them to shut up.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
And now I think all of these things that you
talk about looking at things as a counter intelligence officer, Yeah,
it's not like a court of law. We don't have
absolute evidence to put someone in the arrest them. But
you see a patronive activity, yeah, would sugges something. So
a twenty four year old working for the FBI, the
state to promit the CIA, the Defense Department has to
give a security clearance. With the pattern of activity we've
(37:09):
seen around Trump and the Trump family, that would be
enough of a pattern to not give them a security clearance, right.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Yeah, at one hundred percent, there'd be no chance of
it of getting a security clearance. And that is absolutely
true when you look at the various lives he's been
telling over time, first of all, and secondly is he
is so arrogant and so all about me. The easiest
(37:35):
people to recruit are the arrogant ones. You guys know this.
The ones that want money also can be you know, okay,
but the arrogant ones where you go to a guy
and you say, oh, you mean your boss the foreign
minister yelled at you. Oh god, I'd never yell at you,
and you know, you should be really mad, and all
(37:56):
the rest of this stuff. And then you also, people
who want power and money are really easy too. But
I'm just saying that when you're looking at some of
the traits that our president has and all, it's one
of those things that we would look at. And certainly
I'm not, you know, claiming he's an agent of the Russians,
(38:20):
but certainly Poop has enamored him and he likes what
he sees there. Despite the fact that Trump did the
waffling on the whole aid to Ukraine, originally he took
it away, which I was like, oh, there you go again,
and then he went back. But I am like ninety
nine percent sure that was because Congress and other people
(38:42):
and even to some of his constituents came to him
and said, you know, wtf are you doing.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, so, Susan, you also had one of your senior
jobs at CIA was over China. Can you, in general
tell us how United States, either the Intelligence Committee or
our ability to defend ourselves against Chinese. How are we
positioned to deal with the Chinese, whether you want to
call it a threat or challenge, whatever you want to
call it.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
So there, I was having fun and what I thought
was going to be my last tour, and I was
going to retire out of Israel when Director Burns came
and I'd screwed up by not screwing up his visit,
and he asked me, are we doing enough on China?
And I said hell no, and he goes, yeah, I've
been talking to some other people at Connie Taub and
some others at our former colleagues and things like that,
(39:29):
and he said, I don't think we're doing enough on China,
and I said we're not. And what I told him
was that Shi jin Ping, you know, everybody was hopeful
when he took over that he might still be bringing
China a little bit more towards a democracy or something
that was at least approaching it, but he very shortly
(39:50):
after started showing that no, he himself is a dictator.
He's going after the ethnic groups. It was actually out
in Beijing. I went to Beijing for a visit when
I was Chief of China Mission Center, and there is
a camera every three feet in that place. You can't
spit on the ground and have somebody not see it,
(40:11):
and the Chinese will probably arrest you. But the bottom
line is that this is a much bigger threat because
they have much more economic ties with the West, so
none of us can completely break with them. And secondly,
they are not afraid to use that to convince us
(40:34):
don't break with us. And third when it comes to
espionage and things like that, they are willing to come
after us in ways that we've never seen before and
spend money on it. And they do this with their
own people. It's not just us, So it's just the
difference so far between US and them is them monitoring
(40:59):
their people, putting them in jail for no reason just
because you looked at a Western newspaper. But they are
so more intertwined, and they are so more thoughtful and
patient in the way they do their operations against us
than the Russians have ever done. That it is something
that correctly needed to have extra focus on. That's my
(41:22):
thinking on China. I do think when I look at it,
China and Russia together are our two biggest threats in
the United States government right now.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Let's take a break and be right back.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
So Susan, we it's clear inside of the agency that
the CIA almost didn't survive when John and I left.
I don't know how it hung on, but I didn't
mean to laugh out loud, But I don't know how
with the three of us gone, it can ever survive,
is it?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
So that'll say, yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
But one thing I've been struck by, and I wanted
to ask your opinion. In John's two you grew up
in California. John and I both grew up in like
small towns in upstate New York. I grew up in
a town with one street light and two bars and
four churches.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
And tell you what, and clearly you didn't go to
any of them.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I was an older boy. But we've spent most of
our careers either abroad, living outside the United States or
inside the Beltwait, which is arguably true, weirdly only part
of the United States. And now that you're out, are
you finding that the country you thought you knew and
that you defended is either different than you thought, it
(42:45):
is the same, or has it changed?
Speaker 3 (42:48):
Those are all really good questions, and it is interesting
for any of us that either worked at Cia or
state department, or worked for a business and lived overseas,
understand the view that that country's citizen injury against, for
US or against what their views are much better by
(43:10):
talking to them. And what I have found is that
a lot of it depends on what's going on things
like that, and who you were talking to. I had
lunch not too long ago with a British colleague whose
works for six and I asked her, what are your
(43:30):
views of America like right now? And she said, it's
not just England. It's not just England, it's not just
the United Kingdom, but all of Europe is very concerned
about a lot of things. Trump is saying. Whether he'll
follow through on us, we don't know. But it really
(43:52):
disturbs us, is what they say. I said, yeah, I
think that's fair. But you guys got to remember that
we are still really good partners. We were still good
partners under the previous Trump administration. And as you see
how things unfold in this one, you'll get an idea
(44:13):
as to what you want to share with us and
what you don't. But don't just dismiss it out of hand.
Keep your relationships up with the various coss around the
world and with us here, and we should continue to
keep that door open where the five eyes were strong.
We've done a lot of great things together. But I
(44:34):
can tell you right now they are a little concerned
about sharing things on Russia with us because where it
might go or not go. Is it going to be
publicized or are they going to be targeted in the
same way that say we worry.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, they're going after you for saying something sensible that
was source driven, that was well price on Russia. If
the British had given us some of the key information
that had led to that, they would be attacking the British.
The British sources would be out at all these kind
of things. And so it's understandable that foreigners are concerned
about sharing secret information with so Jerry, I think there's
a real concern with things changing, and some of it's inevitable. Right. So,
(45:17):
there was a post World War two America. You know,
we came through one of the biggest challenges in our history.
Then there was Stalin with the bomb and we had
to figure out what was the threat from communism, and
essentially our leadership over time created the greatest generation period
of peace probably in history, and the greatest economic growth
the world has ever seen. But we've now moved to
(45:39):
a point where I think people forget that. They forget
what was good about that. I don't know if leadership
communicated well enough how different that was in world history,
and people feel disconnected. I think globalization is scared people
that the rest of the world is changing and I
can't control if my job is going to China or something.
I can't control that, and so there's a lot of
(46:00):
the issues. I think we have to expect a lot
of change, but I think the world is different and
our leaders are going to have to come to terms
with it. And one of the things I'm frustrated with
is I don't think this leadership is taking those challenges seriously.
Trump acts like it's the nineteen seventies and we need
more coal, and we need to not trade with other countries,
and we need to get rid of immigrants, and I
think it's just the opposite, right, But time will tell.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Bring back Smoot Holly, Yeah, I totally agree. I think
that's an underlying theme even to our own conversation, is
him acting on things and coming up with ideas without
talking to other people and understanding what works and what
doesn't and getting the teams together to comment and work
on various issues and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
So he's got the greatest resource in the history of world.
The United States government has more experts on more issues
and more power and fire though. Yeah, and he's treating
him like they're his enemy because they don't always tell
him exactly what he wants to hear. And we took
pride in the CIA telling leadership what he didn't want
to hear, like, yeah, it's becoming Hey, listen, sir, I
know this is your policy, but here's what the truth
(47:02):
is over to you. Yeah, and yeah, and to him,
to him, that's a challenge and.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Saying it politely and everything else and saying, hey, sir,
this particular policy viars is not working, but this one could.
What do you think sort of thing is not possible
right now?
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, So you've been out now for how long?
Speaker 3 (47:21):
A couple of years almost, I've been out for it's
one year.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
All right, what do you miss?
Speaker 3 (47:27):
I thought I would be missing the camaraderie, but I'm
not because I find that I'm still hanging out with
agency friends and things like that, and we're still having
at the time and all the rest of this stuff.
I missed driving into the building every day by thirty
nine years in because you.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Had a good parking spah, you had a good part,
you have a total lot.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
That's true. Yeah, in all seriousness, I remember the first
day I had to drive in. You guys were rich too.
They tell you, okay, you got to go down one
twenty three, and then you got to do this and that,
and then you go here and there. And I was
like terror about even just driving in there, right, And
I go in and they had told us a certain
(48:06):
place to park us new cts, you know, and all
the rest of the stuff. Trainee, yeah, career trainee if
new officers, and we're going to get badged, and then
we were going to go to another facility in the
next few days to go get trained off combat. But
I remember driving in and was like I got in,
I gave them my driver's license and they gave me
(48:26):
a badge and it was like, oh, this is so cool,
and they took pictures and got me an actual badge.
I'm like, oh, I actually work here. I actually work
here at CIA. Every single day I went into the
very day that I went out the last time. Is
was a joy. It's ups and downs, like this whole
thing that we were just talking about, But the bottom
(48:48):
line is it was ninety percent up.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
You know, and cia When you walk out, you're out.
It's not like you can come back and visit or
hang out with your buds and a lot of people.
You basically walk out over the seal famous, right, Bobby,
Did you go out like just by yourself or did
you have a whole bunch of people come with you
or what was your exit like?
Speaker 3 (49:09):
So I had the retirement ceremony and then it was
about a week. It might have been a week or
two later because I was still clearing up some reports
and stuff I needed to do and some of the things.
And yeah, there was a big clap.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
There was people from counter intelligence from Europe sections and
from the China and East Asia section, and my daughter
who works at NSA was also there because she could
get in with her badge. And it was really fine.
The day I walked out, which was different than the ceremony,
(49:43):
I walked out with a friend of mine who was
retiring on the same day. Her name is lis Deagall.
She's a d and analyst and she was in my
CT class because they had all four it was only
four directors at the time, all four directorates in that
first year of training and then we all split off,
but we became good and so we walked out that
(50:04):
day and everybody was clapping, and I was thinking, Oh,
I'm going to be sad. I hope I don't cry
because deans I'm a Danish American hate crying. But I didn't.
It was just such a happy event. And we actually
walked out of the doors and Liz and I just
spontaneously just turned around and did high fives, and as
(50:24):
we were doing it, you could see everybody laughing at
us that we were doing it, and it was just great.
And then we just went out to our cars and
headed out. It was great.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yeah, you're so, you're you are married to an actual
State Department office.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
A real State Department officer.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Yeah, overseas and places you were or sometimes different places. Yeah,
what's the difference. What was his view of his career?
Was it any different from years? Did he have the
same sort of positive views of State Department or.
Speaker 3 (50:48):
He did he also there's always ups and downs, right
and all the rest of this stuff. Yeah, if you'll
remember I met him in Poland my second tour and
he was a first tour consular officer at the time.
And I got together with him because his car got
stolen by a Belarusian car thief, which was happening because
the Soviet Union while we were in Poland sell apart, basically,
(51:11):
so I said to him, I said, well, are they
going to find your car at this party? And he
goes and they said no. And I lost my favorite
leather jacket in it. And the worst part is I
have to take the bus, and the Polish buses are
full of people who still don't use deodorant infect I'm
going up to aid right now and I'm going to
(51:32):
tell him get deodorant on the street here. And I
was laughing and I said where do you live and
he told me and I said, that's right on my
way to work. And we were married six months later.
I'll set you up and we literally on December eleventh,
which is our wedding date. We toast the Belarusian car
thief every year.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
Never found his car, never found his car. It's probably
still going. They're probably still driving around someone.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Yeah, probably now it's probably and Siberia somewhere.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
I was in Berlin with the during the Kosovo War
and just afterwards there was actually a show on TV
in Germany like where's your car? And they would call
somebody up and they say where's your like where's your car?
Huk and he's yeah, we have a picture of it
just crossing into Kosovo now. So they stole it the
night before and then one of the people in the
(52:22):
station that you know, Susie, she lost her car. She
had random BMW and next thing you know, they had
a picture of it driving into Kosovo.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
There used to be a billboard going to Albania for
a while that had a big picture said it was
like a tourist, you know, visit Albania. You know your
car's already here's my.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
Favorite human rights abusers. Yeah, So what are you gonna
do with retirement? People ask this of us a lot.
You have this job, it's full of adrenaline and mission
driven and you were in these senior positions. So what
are you gonna What are you gonna do with your
life now and your talents and your dry and everything
like that. What do you know yet?
Speaker 3 (53:02):
Or yes, I already have some training gigs I'm doing
and it's intermittent. I'm not doing anything full time. What
I've really been enjoying since retirement last year is last
calendar year in twenty twenty four, my husband, and it's
only men who come up with these ideas, says to me, Hey, sissy,
you know what I want to do in twenty twenty four?
(53:24):
What he goes, I want to go visit all all
seven continents. So we visited all seven continents. We're related
to travel this year and next year we are visiting
every baseball stadium to see a game. And we've also
got some other just travel with some friends coming up.
So we've really been enjoying ourselves doing that. And in
(53:44):
in between these intermittent.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Gigs, that's good. You should travel because it's not gonna
be long before they pull your security clash like they
pulled ours.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Did they have one?
Speaker 1 (53:52):
But yeah, they have checked at a executive orders first
day in right, So I didn't have one, but I
did you have any?
Speaker 2 (54:00):
But he pulled it. If it existed, it.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Was big money and podcasting. If you want to get into.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
That, yeah, I bet hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
So the agency falls into two categories. Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks,
which did you go to when you were in the agency?
Speaker 3 (54:16):
Starbucks?
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Oh, I knew there was something wrong with their jobs.
Speaker 3 (54:20):
Idiots did the Dunkin Donuts, So it's all about you
guys being cheap rich.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
A dunkin doughnuts guy.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
Usually most offices had like a coffee maker. We did,
and nobody actually wanted to clean, so it had like
a brow burned into the bottom of or something.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
And they were always post its notes next the wall
next to the coffee maker. We mean it clean it out.
If you started new pod, if you're the last one,
and nobody.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Ever you mentioned Moscow and like for example for people
don't follow us it. Our office in Moscow obviously was
very sense, very secure, locked up. None of the locals
could come in there, and so it means we had
to clean our own stuff, which means we had a
bathroom in there, and we had to what a rotating
thing that the people in the office had to do
(55:13):
the vacuuming and the cleaning and cleaning the bathroom to
include the chief. So Mike Sulick was the chief when
I was there, and we had these fancy, super secret
cameras where we get his little wire he could put in.
So every time Sulic would clean the bathroom, we would
run this wire in there and we would watch it
on a video set in the office of him like
kneeling down with his butt and I can say he
(55:35):
senior officer, but he did clean those toilets.
Speaker 3 (55:37):
I of all the bosses that we all work for,
that's the one. And they said one of them would
actually clean toilets, that's the one I would do. Because
he was so humble. He's still yeah, he's such a
great guy.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
The James Bond movies never have the boss cleaning the
toilet or.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
It was a real pleasure to talk to you, and
I want to say, you know, please keep yourself safe.
You're speaking truth to power, and in this day and age,
that can be a dangerous thing. But we respect that
and appreciate it. So thanks for spending so much time
with us, and I hope we can do it again
for too long.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Thank you very much, you guys.
Speaker 5 (56:07):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'Shea, John Seipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible.
It is a production of Honorable Mention and abominable pictures
for iHeart podcasts,
Hosts And Creators
Adam Davidson
John Sipher
Jerry O'Shea
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!