Ric Prado: CIA Black Ops Operator That Hunted Bin Laden

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Ric Prado shares his remarkable journey from Cuban refugee to CIA Senior Operations Officer, revealing how being separated from his parents at age 8 during Castro's revolution eventually led him to America where he found purpose in military service and intelligence work.

• Escaped Cuba at age 8 through Operation Peter Pan, sent alone to a Colorado orphanage
• Joined Air Force Pararescue (PJs), enduring brutal training that forged his determination and resilience
• Transitioned to CIA where his Spanish language skills and paramilitary background made him uniquely valuable
• Spent three years in Contra camps fighting against the same communist forces that drove him from Cuba
• Co-founded the Bin Laden Task Force in 1996, gathering intelligence on threats before most knew the name
• Served as Chief of Operations at the CIA Counterterrorism Center during 9/11
• Wrote his memoir "Black Ops" to honor fallen colleagues and correct misconceptions about the CIA

Find Ric Prado's book and more information at www.ricprado.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I really appreciate you taking the time.
You know I read through yourbook and what an amazing journey
I mean.
You know when you started out.
You know all those years ago,right as a young kid in Cuba,
like, did you ever fathom thatyour life would take anything
even remotely close to where itended up?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, as a matter of fact, I was in a long drive
yesterday and I was thinkingexactly about that.
That here I am, you know, atage eight, happy, hoarse, bb gun
, you know, running aroundhaving a great time.
The next thing I know I'm on anairplane by myself to go to an
orphanage in Pueblo, colorado,and lo and behold, I retired as
a senior CIA operations officerwith a good track record.

(00:46):
So, no, there isn't a day thatI don't pinch myself.
There really isn't a day Idon't pinch myself.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, I mean, your story might be one of the most
inspirational stories that I'veever read.
Is there another place in theworld where that's even possible
?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, no, I think that that's what the American
dream is all about.
I mean, if you were willing,first of all, I believe that God
puts a path in front of us andif we have the courage to pay
the price of a mission, you willhave an interesting life.
Let's put it that way.
But no, I think that there's alot of countries where this

(01:24):
would have not worked.
I would have been marginated,or it would have been a caste
system.
Who knows?
But for me it is literally thebase for my life.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, yeah, maybe you know.
The only other place that Icould think of it even being
possible would be Europe.
Maybe you know, but I feel likethe chances, as great as they
were, stacked against you evenhere, I feel like they would be
even greater over there, youknow, so like it's even less
likely to take place, you know,in Europe.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah well, we, you know as a community, the Cubans,
assimilated very quickly.
I think that that's one of thethings that distinguish us from
from the rest.
When, when my parents came overabout eight months after I left
, shortly as soon as my dad gota job, he came home and says
we're not going back to Cuba.
So we're saying we get anopportunity to live in this

(02:15):
country, we're going to make thebest, because we came legally,
I mean, we had visas and we wereall refugees.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, talk to me a little bit about that, right,
like, why don't we start there?
What was the situation in Cubathat your family was fleeing
from, right, and how did thatprocess even look like?
Because so, I'm a new dad,right, I guess not a new dad
anymore, right, I have atwo-year-old and a two-month-old
, but you know, I'm at the verybeginning of that section of my

(02:44):
life old, but you know, I'm atthe very beginning of that
section of my life and Icouldn't even fathom sending my
kids somewhere and I'm not withthem and just saying I'll find
you.
I mean, that's not even like apossibility in my brain.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, and I couldn't agree with you more.
When my oldest son turned 10, Ilooked at my wife and I asked
her.
I said do you think that Iwould have the stones to do what
my dad did?
And she said over my dead body.
But you know the painting, thepicture.
I mean.
I lived an idyllic life at theage of eight, nine, you know.
I had a horse before I had abicycle.

(03:17):
I had a BB gun.
When I was six, my dad used totake me on trips into the
mountains.
When we went to buy coffee orsell coffee, we had a roasting
company.
The first sign of violence wasaround 1958, because Castro took
over in 59.
So late 58, they hit the townthat we lived in, which is the
foothills of the EscambrayMountains, where Che Guevara was

(03:39):
running the show there, and Isaw my first firefight,
literally, you know, 15 yards infront of me, except for there
was a guy right by the pitwindow that I didn't see, so it
was more like three feet infront of me.
That changed and that was, Idon't want to say, traumatic,
even though there were bodies inthe lane around, people getting
shot at.
But what was really eye-openingwas how quickly our world

(04:03):
changed.
Within six months they hadconfiscated my dad's business.
My dad employed maybe 10 guysand he built every single
machine in that roasting company.
So when they confiscated it sixmonths later, it went out of
business because they couldn'tfix it Almost immediately I'm
talking within a month of themtaking over.
I was wearing a uniform to goto school and you had different

(04:26):
colors for different you know,bandanas for different groups or
whatever.
Because I was about nine yeah,about nine I was sent to
campesinos' homes, farmers'homes, peasants' homes to teach
them how to read and write Eightor nine years old, you know.
But it was just part of thatbrainwashing.

(04:46):
I think that the deepestexample that I can give you is
they would literally tell usthat if we heard one of our
parents speak ill of Castro orthe revolution, that it was our
patriotic duty to report them.
And kids did, and theconsequences were dire.
So I went from that to my dadright after the Bay of Pigs.
When the Bay of Pigs went south, my dad's hopes were shattered

(05:09):
and he said that's it, we'releaving, even though we were
already contemplating it,because he had lost his business
.
He still had a little bit ofmoney.
But there's a deal in Cuba thatwhen you register yourself to
leave the country under Castro,they confiscated every single
item in your house.
They would come in, they woulddo inventory.
If you had silverware thatwasn't there when it was time to

(05:31):
go, you could not leave.
And my dad had a 57 Pontiac, aJeep and a Deuce and a half and
that was part of the problem.
The infighting in town aboutwho was going to get what was
delaying and delaying, anddelaying.
And that's why I came out bymyself with a program called
Peter Pan through the CatholicChurch and I ended up in the
Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo, colorado.

(05:51):
So you know, you go fromidyllic life to seeing that kind
of violence.
Headed to the airport, Iremember in the main avenue
there towards the airport therewere three guys hanging from
trees by the neck with signsaround that said counter
revolutionaries.
I remember I was in the backseat and my mom tried to jump
back and cover my eyes.
It was a little too late, I hadseen it.

(06:12):
Then, getting on the airplaneyou mentioned something about I
will find you I had a hesitationbecause my mom was having a
nervous breakdown.
You could only imagine my dad.
I'll never forget it.
He took a knee, he put his handon my right shoulder and says I
will see you again.
And my dad was a cowboy beforehe was a business man and that's

(06:33):
the way he brought me up.
You know what a man is supposedto be like the backbone.
How do you behave?
To be stoic to the degreepossible.
So I got on that plane and youknow, I remember leaving the
what they call the fishbowl,because it was all glassed in.
My parents were on the otherside, but talk about a shock.
I don't remember anything afterthat.

(06:53):
I don't remember getting on theplane where I sat, my
conscience against begins, whenI got out of the airport in
Miami and there was a priestwaiting for me and three other
kids that were on board.
The rest was just totallyblocked.
I blocked that all out, I guess.
Just I was scared, wow.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, I mean it's incomprehensible to even start
with imagining that kind of fearwhere it blocks out a memory.
That's crazy.
Now that I'm a parent, it'sjust like it's such an
incomprehensible thing to eventhink about.
I mean, I got choked up when,when I was reading your book, I

(07:31):
had put, you know, put the audiobook on pause because I was
like I couldn't even, I couldn'teven fathom it.
Find you, did he like stay incontact with that priest?
And you know, there was like anarrangement where like hey,
he'll be here until you get hereand at a certain time period,
like maybe you go somewhere elseor whatever, but that priest

(07:53):
would keep track of you and theprogram was called Peter Pan,
pedro Pan Program and they wereby the Catholic Church, so they
were very well structured.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
They kept tabs on the kids.
There was no communication withthe parents because they were
in Cuba and that was almostimpossible.
But as soon as they would getto the United States they had
been told call this number andthey call that number.
And then it took about 30 daysto clear, make sure that they
had a place to go to live beforethey send me back.
But it was, yeah, it was deadspace.
I never spoke to my parentsduring those months.
It was dead space.

(08:21):
I never spoke to my parentsduring those months and I'll
never forget it.
I was playing basketball afterdinner and one of the nuns came
out and told me to come in.
So I ran to the nun and shetook me to the office and I'll
never forget it.
It was a black phone and thehandle was off of it.
And I pick up the phone and itwas my dad.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Wow, that's amazing, was my dad.
Wow, that's amazing.
So so, to fast forward, youbasically went through what
sounded like you know, highschool, grade school, high
school timeframe, and then youfound yourself in the military.
Right, I don't want to likefast forward or butcher your
story in any way, right, I'mtrying to, I guess, maybe get to

(09:01):
the get to the interestingstuff, right, get to the good
stuff within the short amount oftime that we have, because I
try to really stay on par withthe timing and whatnot.
But you found your way into themilitary.
Talk to me about that.
Start, because I remember when Iwas in high school, I went to a
pretty poor high school and sothe military recruiters were at

(09:23):
our school just nonstop-stop,and I was a wrestler, right.
So I was looking at, like their, their quote-unquote, like
fitness checks, and I was likelike pull-ups, how many do you
want me to do?
And I'll just do it.
You know, like push-ups, likeit didn't even register that
there was a, that, there was astandard or anything like that,
because as a wrestler, you'rebeat down so many times, it's
like you're on the pull-up baruntil you're done.

(09:44):
We say you're done when you'redone, that sort of thing, and so
I actually didn't take thatpath in my life.
I ended up going to college, butmy intent was after my
bachelor's let's get away fromthe intent of going to the
military to get a free education.
I want to go into the militarybecause I want to go in.
And then, after college, rightwhen I started to try and get in

(10:08):
, right, that didn't happenbecause I had donated my kidney
and that disqualified me, whichI didn't know.
When I donated my kidney, Ifigured, you know, because my
doctor was like, hey, you coulddo everything that anyone else
can do.
There's no limits, right?
So I figured, okay, I'm good togo then for the military, Come
to find out, no one will talk tome, right?
So what was that like for you?

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Well, first of all, good on you, because you
obviously did it for the rightreasons and it just wasn't meant
for you to be.
That's the way I look.
You know, I was in my firstsemester of junior college and I
wanted to be a marine sciencetechnician professional diver.
I was always fascinated withyou know Edgar Rice, boros,
tarzans and Africa and JacquesCousteau, and you know James

(10:51):
Bond novels.
I read a lot, since sincemiddle school I was infected by
a very permanent teacher intoreading.
So I was and again, this isfake.
I was sitting in my oceanographyclass and there's this guy next
to me.
We kind of shoot the breeze allthe time.
Then one day he wore somethingthat I said man, that's a
good-looking jacket.
Where'd you buy it?

(11:12):
He goes, I didn't buy it, Iearned it.
It was a flight jacket.
He told me I'm a PJ.
I went what the hell is a PJ?
He took me to his house.
He showed me the photos.
Six months later I was in theAir Force.
What is me?
The photos Six months later, Iwas in the Air Force.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
So what is a PJ?
Because you ended up becoming aPJ, right.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah, pararescue is part of our special operations
forces in the community, allunder SOCOM, special Operations
Command.
So you have Navy SEALs, youhave Green Berets, you have
Marine Raiders and you have AirForce Pararescue and Air Force
combat controller.
Those are the five maincomponents.
Rangers are also right there onthe cusp.
But I didn't know.

(11:50):
I had been in this countryeight years.
I didn't really nobody in myfamily had ever served in the
military Both my boys havepotentially, but nobody in my
family and I had never met aperson in uniform.
So my first contact was withGlenn when he told me I remember
clearly he showed me all thesepictures and I still had an
accent and I said you know whatI mean.

(12:11):
You mean to tell me that I getto jump out of airplanes and
shoot guns and do medical andscuba and get a really cool hat
at the end.
He goes yeah, he said sign meup.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, that's pretty awesome.
That's pretty exciting.
I mean, like you know, I have acouple of friends that went
into the military and theyalways tell me that you know,
like the recruiters theyapproach you with like the most
exciting stuff.
And I actually talked to a Navyrecruiter, you know, before we
found out that I wasdisqualified and whatnot.
And you know, I gave him mybackground and I was like I

(12:58):
don't know.
He asked a very specificquestion that brought up me
wrestling.
And as soon as I said that Iwas a wrestler, he slid.
This Navy SEAL, pam, saidwhenever it gets hard, just make
it to the next drill, just makeit to the next exercise,
whatever it needs to do, andthen make your choice.
After you get there, right, andafter a while of making those
choices, you start figuring out.

(13:19):
You're like well, I didn't quittoday, so I'm probably not
going to quit tomorrow.
And then tomorrow kicks off andyou're sore, you're hurting,
but when you get moving, stuffstarts getting numb, and so you
start working your way throughand you practice that sort of
thing.
So my whole mentality was well,if I just take that and apply it
to the SEALs, surely thetraining isn't going to kill me.

(13:41):
I mean, why would they havetraining that will kill someone?
So if I'm not going to die, I'mjust going to pass, because I
won't quit.
That was my whole mentality.
And so to fast forward, ormaybe back up a little bit, when
my friends in high schoolstarted going into the military,
they told me the exact samething the recruiter will tell

(14:03):
you anything that they can toget you in right.
And I'm thinking to myself as ayoung man at that age.
If I would have gone to therecruiter and they would have
told me that I 100% would havesigned on the dotted line, not
thought about it, told myparents when I got home and gone
, you know, you know, you hit onsomething when you said to tell

(14:24):
your parents my draft numberwas so high that even today they
wouldn't have drafted me.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
It was a long charge.
My parents were so happy and Ishow up and I didn't say
anything to them until like amonth before and then say hey,
just so you know 26th ofDecember, and both my parents
they didn't get angry at me, butI could see that they were in
pain.
You know, I'm 20 years old.
That's a completely differentmentality.
Later on I realized what I hadput them through, because they

(14:52):
already lost their only son once.
Now this idiot who has a highdraft number wants to go to
Vietnam during the Vietnam erain some special forces type
stuff and there's a very iconicphotograph.
I don't think it's in the book,but it's about my mom and my
dad and I'm in the middle andI'm standing there, I got my

(15:15):
corduroy jacket on and both ofthem have this look on their
face and I never noticed thatuntil probably about four or
five years ago and I said now Iunderstand they were watching me
walk away, just like they didat that airport.
So that was very poignant.
Getting back to what you weretalking about the training and
everything else.
I too thought I was tough untilI got into pararescue.

(15:37):
Right, basic training was abreeze Because I mean, I was in
the martial arts as I was 15.
I lifted weights, I ran, Iboxed, I did all kinds of stupid
stuff.
And I thought I was in themartial arts as I was 15.
I lifted weights, I ran, Iboxed, I did all kinds of stupid
stuff.
Man, I thought I was a toughkid First week in the pararescue
pipeline.
Yeah, it was a weight.
But you also said something thatis very telling.
I said to myself I am going tomake this or I'm going to die,
but I ain't quitting.

(15:58):
And that forged my mettle sohard that I've been through a
lot of stuff in my life.
But I could always go back andsay I got this, I got this
because of OAM.
So, yeah, the backgrounds thatyou had definitely made you a
very solid candidate.
But the second most importantwell, the most important thing
that you said afterwards was theain't quitting, because that's

(16:21):
what it's all about.
You had guys that go there.
My friend is a Navy SEAL and hesays, yeah, buds, he was an
instructor at Buds.
We used to call them spandexathletes, because you get these
Adonis, they could run, theycould swim, they could do
everything, but they would quit.
And then you have some skinnyguy over there in the corner who
just ain't quitting.
He's not in front of the pack,he's not in the back of the pack

(16:42):
, but he was in the pack.
And what he mentioned to me?
Because he ran Bud's twice.
He said the problem is thesegifted individuals never had to
work that hard for anything.
And now you're telling themyou're going to be doing this
for 20 years.
And that's when they ring thebell.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, no, that's a really good point.
You know, like you, you reallygot to suffer.
You know, and I don't I don'twant to even, like you know, try
and like make a comparison,right Between like wrestling and
the military or anything likethat.
But in wrestling you are, youare suffering every single day.
Right, if you're not having tocut weight, you're still
suffering because you're doingthe same amount of work.

(17:19):
You know we would do.
We would do summer camps, right, and all of the other sports
would do summer camps too.
Their summer camps were liketwo weeks long, a week long,
whatever it might be, andthey're like goofing off and
everything.
I mean we were up on ourwrestling deck.
I remember very vividly one timeI did a move wrong and I just

(17:39):
snapped my finger in half,snapped it right in half.
It's crooked.
I have an L for a finger now.
Right, I wasn't allowed to quit.
I finished the drill, okay, wehad another five minutes of this
drill.
So I'm over here grimacing andyou know like tears are coming
out.
I'm not like crying, but liketears are coming out because I'm
I'm in so much pain.
I go over to my coach.
He looks at it.

(17:59):
He's like, okay, pops it rightback into place, right like,
aligns my finger, tapes it up,and he's like, oh, okay, pops it
right back into place, right,like, aligns my finger, tapes it
up, and he's like all right, goahead.
Yeah, I got one of those.
I mean, that was the trainingand all the other sports.
You know, like every once in awhile, you know, you get a
basketball player or a trackrunner or a swimmer.
You know, come up to thewrestling deck to see what we're

(18:21):
actually doing, becausesometimes, like you know, you'd
hear just a giant pound becauseyou know, someone just threw
someone.
It makes a really loud bang,right, and so they, they would
go up there and be like, andlike our punishment that we go
through, like our punishment inour sport is literally their
everyday warmup, like that.

(18:43):
That, that's their warmup.
We would do like a two hourwarmup.
Sometimes you know where you'reflipping and you're running
just nonstop.
And my coach was like, if youcan't make it through the warmup
, you're not going to make itthrough a match, and he was
right.
You know there was kids thatquit on the warmup and you know,
match one of the season,they're, they're out, they're
done, they're like, yeah, thesame for me.

(19:04):
I was just too stupid to quit.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
No, I mean if you look at the odds when you get
into the military, thestatistics is that there's about
2% of the population serves atany given time in the military.
So here you join the militaryand now you're a 2%-er.
Out of 300 and some odd millionpeople in this country, you are
a a two percenter, but that'sjust regular Army, navy, air

(19:28):
Force or Marines.
Now if you got to go into thespecialized areas like fighter
pilot or pararescue or whatever,that's 1% of the people that
are in the military.
So they have to.
They have to have selection.
You cannot have an eliteanything unless you have two
things great recruitment andattrition.
If everybody that you recruitit makes the candidate list, or

(19:51):
if everybody makes it throughthe training, you're not elite.
You're not elite.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah, that was.
You know I watch everythingfrom, like, former special
forces guys, right, Because I'mjust so fascinated with the
world and mentality andeverything like that, right.
And they were talking aboutmaybe a year ago about like
changing the standard forbecoming a Navy SEAL to get more
diverse candidates and whatnot.
And you know, every SEAL thatyou know talked about it was

(20:16):
like anyone can be a SEAL, awoman can be a SEAL Like it
doesn't matter who you are, weliterally do not care.
If you can meet the standard,then you're in.
It's that simple and no one everbudged on it or anything like
that.
And the reason is because thestandard is the standard for a

(20:38):
reason, as soon as you open itup to be like, oh okay, 0.5 of
the military can get in, well,not only do you have now
probably millions of SEALs andGreen Berets and Rangers and PJs
and all of these differentspecial forces, right, but
they're not quality, right.

(20:58):
Like you send in a team of sixNavy SEALs, you expect a certain
result.
Well, you're not going to getthat same result if you send in
six Marines or six you know,army infantry.
You're going to get a totallydifferent result.
It's going to be a disaster,there's going to be movies
created about it, right, not ina good picture, and so it's just
something you know that Ialways keep in mind.

(21:18):
Right, like anyone can do it,they'll accept anyone.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Well, you know, if you talk to anybody in the soft
community, they will tell youexactly the same thing.
I don't care if you're pink,with purple polka dots, if my
ass is on the ground because Igot a bullet hole in my leg.
I want you to be able to pickmy ass up and drag me and not
quit on me, and help me, and Iwill do the same for you.
People think that the trainingis very, you know, very physical

(21:44):
, and it is.
I mean, it's extremely physical, but psychological.
I'll give you a short story.
We had one group that we weredoing.
It was, I think it was a ruckmarch and rucking and rucking
and rucking and rucking and weget to the end what we think is
the end and they said, okay,everybody, drop your rucksacks,
stop.
And then, hey, you're relaxing,we're smoked, and here comes

(22:04):
the other sergeant.
He goes put your packs back on,here's your new.
We're going this way again.
About 10% of the people quit.
When we got around the cornerthere was a bus and we got on
the bus and we went back todifferent training.
Those guys were literally 50yards away from their dream and
they quit.
They broke them not physically,they broke them mentally and

(22:26):
they thought that they had givenit all.
And now, geez, I have to domore.
And that's the secret in allthese specialized units is doing
what the average person is notgoing to be able to do
physically or psychologically.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point.
They gave up at the 50 yardline, right, when they're about
to be done, because theycouldn't see the finish line,
and that's that's the hardestpart about all of it, Right,
Like you know, I don't mean tolike bring up wrestling, right.
But it takes me back to thetraining.
When you know they would changethe end times every day and

(23:00):
there was no clock, Right, soyou're getting out one day at 2
pm, the next day you're gettingout at 5 pm or 6 pm, 8 pm,
Sundays, 9 pm, they would changeit on you.
So you don't know what toexpect.
The start time was the same,but you don't know when it's
going to end and you don't knowwhat you're doing throughout the
day until you're about to do it.
And so that was something thatyou kind of get used to.

(23:22):
You just get used to not reallyknowing and just keep on going
until you know either somethingbreaks or you know you're done
for the day, Right, Like thatwas that mentality.
But you know, I wanted to diveinto a little bit about, you
know, maybe the training of whatit takes to be a PJ, Right,
Because I'm fascinated with that, Because when I hear a Navy
SEAL say you know, I've seen PJsput people back together that I

(23:47):
thought were long gone, youknow?
And they I mean they all say ifI have a choice of you know
someone, I'm taking on a missionwith me.
It's a PJ every single day ofthe week.
That speaks volumes to thecommunity and to the training
that PJs go through.
So what was that like?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, first of all, you know there's a lot of Air
Force jokes out there, out there.
And I always say you know youjoke about the Air Force until
you either need close airsupport from combat controllers
or a pararescueman to pull yourass out.
And when I taught at Fort BraggI taught at Fort Bragg for
about seven years I had aspecial forces guy come up to me

(24:27):
.
He goes, he says, sir, don'ttake this wrong, but we hate
seeing you because when we seeyou that means we're really
screwed up.
You know that we're banged up.
Yeah, it's called a pipeline.
Back then it was a little overa year, now it's even longer.
Rest humans are EMT2s when theycome out of training.
So you have a very strong phaseone and at the end you have

(24:48):
your phase two.
So in my case we went throughbasic training.
Then we were at Lackland AirForce Base for about six or
seven weeks of two-a-days.
You ran every morning you didPT, flutter kicks, blah, blah,
blah, and then in the afternoonyou were in the pool.
That's why pararescue and SEALsare so close together and

(25:08):
that's why we both say Puyo,that is a scuba school thing.
At the time only SEALs andpararescuemen had to have scuba
school in order to get theirtrident or their beret To this
day.
If you're a green beret, youdon't have to go to scuba school
.
So we went through thispreconditioning, which was very,

(25:32):
very hard.
That was the hardest part, Imean once you know, and the
attrition was incredible.
Every Saturday we'd had 80% ofthe people that volunteer for
the PT test quit and we may haveone guy that joins the group
and then by the end of theactual training, some of those
dropped off too.
We went from there to ShepherdAir Force Base for medical
training and that was brutalbecause we had pool work at

(26:00):
seven o'clock in the morning.
Seven o'clock in the morningyou were in the pool till nine.
You went to class.
You got out of classmid-afternoon and now you did PT
for several hours.
Then you get back to thebarracks and you got to spend
the rest of the night.
You know, studying, becauseyou're studying a very hard
matter that can get you kickedout From there.
We made it to scuba school.
Now we also have a saying inthe military, both special
forces and us, everybody.

(26:20):
You know when people starttalking about airborne and the
joke is, if you ain't scuba, youain't shit, because it is
arguably the hardest school thatyou can go through.
Luckily for me, I was already adiver.
I was an advanced diver.
I started diving when I was afreshman in high school.
That was my passion and so Ihad all my licenses and all that
other stuff.
But I never told anybody,because my first pararescue

(26:41):
sergeant saw me with a divewatch when we came back from PT.
He says what's that?
I said oh, that's my dive watch, sergeant.
He says, take it off.
He goes don't wear your watchto school.
With school and the story isn'tthat simple.
The story is when you gosomewhere to learn something,
keep your mouth shut, your eyesopen and your ears open and suck

(27:02):
it all in, and then whatdoesn't apply to you, you could
push it aside.
So.
So school was cool and I had alittle bit of break over over my
buddies because I already knowball boils law and decompression
tables and nitrogen gynacosis.
I know all that crap.
Now these guys are trying tomemorize all this kind of stuff.
We went from there to jumpschool, which for us it was

(27:24):
really a joke.
We were there with a group ofMarine Recon guys that had been
in scuba school with us and wegot into the we'd be doing PT
and at the end, you know, theysay all right, and then we go,
and one for pararescue, boom.
And then recon guys, one forrecon, and of course commander
finally comes on and says, cutthe shit out, because regular

(27:45):
guys are dropping dead.
And you guys, you know.
So, cut it out or you're allgoing to fail.
So the spread of the core thatcomes from bonding with people
like that, some of my teammatesand classmates are still to this
day, the ones that are stillalive.
A couple of them have passed.
We're still tight because it'sa bond you can't break.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, there's something about suffering
together.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, yeah.
Then you go to Sears SchoolFrom there.
We went to Sears School andSears is a three-week course, or
was a three-week course.
The first is some classroom,some PT, that and the other, and
then you go one week whereyou're actually out in the woods
with nothing.
They give you a pocket knife, acouple of hooks, they pat you
down, make sure that you don'teven have a protein bar anywhere

(28:25):
.
Well, they didn't have proteinbars back there, they were
chocolate bars, but anyway,there was nothing.
So catch a rabbit rabbit, andyou're six guys.
You know how much meat there'sin a rabbit for six guys.
And then you get into the actualPOW scenario, which is was the
head of CTC at the time.
I told him, I said I called himback, I said listen, I'll

(29:00):
remind you this is what we gothrough.
Every single soft individualand every fighter pilot goes
through SEER and that's loudmusic that's being caged up,
that is not being fed, that'sbeing smacked around and if you
don't handle it well and you'rein an alpha hotel, you're going
to get waterboarded.
So all this enhancedinterrogation, loud music waking
you up every hour, you know itjust really wears you out.

(29:22):
And then we went to the finalphase, which was I don't
remember if it was three or fourmonths at Hill Air Force Base.
And now is when you put it alltogether you get advanced
parachuting, you get advancedparachuting, you get advanced
diving and then advanced medical.
This is where you get youractual EMT too, and every single

(29:42):
exercise becomes, or everyevent is, an exercise.
So you may jump at night intocold water in a lake in Utah,
but when you get to the shore,there's two or three bodies
there that have boolages andthey're bleeding, and you have
to patch them up and call for areal, you know, for pickup and
all this kind of stuff.
So it was very interesting, butit was also very demanding.
And then at the end of thatwell, we got our berets.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Wow, that's awesome.
That sounds like an amazingtime.
From there did you deploy toVietnam or?

Speaker 2 (30:08):
No, I got my beret in early 73.
And by then Vietnam was prettymuch winding down.
So I did two years active inHomestead.
Well, one year training, oneyear active in Homestead and you
know, at the time, post-vietnam, the attrition in the military
and the intelligence service wasincredible.

(30:28):
I mean, they fired.
So they were telling peoplelook, you know, why don't you go
in the reserves or get out orwhatever?
Because you know we'reshrinking, we're having to
shrink.
So I stayed in the reservesuntil 74.
Well, no, I stayed in thereserve till 1980, but I stayed
in 74 when I was stillpararescue.
Reserves I applied for well, Ididn't apply One of my teammates
senior, much senior than now,he was an E-8, was actually the

(30:51):
captain in the local firedepartment, miami-dade Fire
Department, and he was the headof rescue.
So he told me he says man, yougot to try out for this, you're
going to do it, you'll breezethrough it, but you got to do
this, it's a good job.
So I rode rescue for Miami inthe 70s, which were the gang
years, the cocaine gangs, boys,whatever it was.

(31:12):
A lot of shootings, a lot of.
So in pararescue I was jumpingevery time we went and I was
doing all this stuff becausebeing in the fire department I
had two days off every third day, kind of thing, and the pilots
will call you up, I'll buy youlunch if you come out and do a
couple of jumps, because we needour certifications with nerves,
you know.
So it was kind of cool, butthere was no purpose to it.

(31:32):
It was training for trainingsake.
I wasn't making a differenceand I wanted to make a
difference.
I was making a difference inthe paramedic side of stuff.
But that's very different andthere's some very traumatic
things.
There's a couple of them in thebook that I still, you know,
wake up at night sometimesthinking about those.
So I applied to the agency in 74.
They came back with a real niceletter that said basically

(31:54):
sorry, we're not hiring, we'refiring.
But then in 1980, I appliedagain and this time they brought
me in on contract as aparamedic to work with our
Special Activities Division,ground branch, which is the
CIA's Special Forces, for lackof a better word.
Everybody in SAD are either.

(32:14):
Well, we've talked about NavySEALs, sire, pararescue, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
So I did that on and offbecause it was for about six
months.
I just couldn't handle it withthe absence from the fire
department.
So I stopped.
And then Ronald Reagan came inand when he came in, the first
thing he did was declare war oncommunism, especially in Latin

(32:35):
America.
And that's the beginning of theContra program, where the
Sandinistas, the communistSandinistas in Nicaragua,
supported by the Cubans,supported by the Soviets via
Cuba it's a more accuratedescription.
He wanted that gone and theagency at the time did not have
a single native Spanish-speakingparamilitary guy.
Wow, did not have a singlenative Spanish-speaking
paramilitary guy.
Great paramilitary guys.
And they had great Spanishspeakers, but Spanish speakers

(32:58):
were not military and theparamilitaries were native
speakers.
So everybody scratched theirhead.
What was the name of that?
Pj?
Blah, blah, blah.
And that's how I got in.
I completely backdoored it intothe agency because when they
called me, I'll never forget it.
I had just come back from along run, I had just gotten
divorced, so I was not in ahappy place.
And I just come back from aseven mile run and I'm soaking

(33:20):
wet and the phone rings and itwas somebody from headquarters
and Russ says hey, rick, youknow, this is Russ.
You know we got something foryou.
Are you interested?
I asked him.
I said is it contract or is itstaff?
He says no, this is long-term.
I said I'll take it.
He said don't you want to knowwhat it is?
I said no, I was atheadquarters on Monday this was

(33:42):
on a Thursday.
I was at headquarters on Mondaygoing through physicals and I
already had the polygraphsbecause I had worked on contract
with them.
And literally two weeks later Iwas in the Contra camps in
Nicaragua with no adultsupervision.
I was for the first.
I was there for three and aquarter a little over three
years, monday through Fridaysleeping in a jungle hammock,

(34:02):
and for the first 14 months ofthat program I was the only
gringo in the camps, becausethat's why the title of the book
is Black Ops.
Black Ops is where the hand,the American hand, has to be
hidden and I could pass.
As a matter of fact, I wasthere as a Honduran major Intel
guy with the Air Force and thatwas my cover.
So people tell me I said youknow, you did three years

(34:25):
sleeping in a jungle hammock.
I said I never woke up in themorning and said, oh man, I'm
still here.
No, it was the best.
I mean, I had some fantasticjobs, but for me that was
probably the most enjoyable, andnow that I have time for
introspection, I realized thatthe reason was you know, I lost
everything my parents, I lost mycountry, I lost my horse.

(34:45):
I lost everything at the age of10 to this monster and now, at
the age of 30, I'm not only aCIA guy, but I'm a CIA guy
fighting that, helping theseguys fight that same monster.
So the job satisfaction wasincredible for me during that
period.
Plus, I had fantastic bosses.
Ray Doty, who was my main boss,was arguably the best boss I

(35:08):
ever had in the agency.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah, that's like a full circle moment.
You were ran out of the countryand now you're back there
fighting the enemy that you wereI mean, you were not even.
Arguably, you're definitivelytoo young at the time to fight
the enemy.
And now you're back with allthis training and totally
different background, totallydifferent person, and you're

(35:30):
going against that enemy.
I mean, I would imagine that'slike the most fulfilling thing
that you could possibly do.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Payback's hell, Payback's hell.
You know, you read the book, soyou know the Puerto Cabezas
bombing that we did was a screwjob.
And it was four mosquito divers.
They were lobster divers.
I trained them into militarydivers, compass swims and all
that other stuff, PT them tohell until only four were left.
But we blew up Puerto CabezasPier, which was the belly button

(36:00):
for all military assistantscoming from Cuba, and we did
that in the middle of the night.
So it was very rewarding andyou know, word gets around like
everything else, Everybody allof a sudden after that operation
not that they ever looked downon me or anything like that, but
I was always.
He's teaching us and he'sleading us in some things and
he's training us on this, but,holy moly, look what he put

(36:20):
together and we did it.
So yeah, it was very rewardingand it was poetic.
Justice in my book.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, I imagine.
So where do you go from there,right?
So you spent a couple of yearsthere, you said, right, I?

Speaker 2 (36:36):
spent a little over three years working there.
I got married about a yearafterwards after I started I had
met my present wife.
We've been married 43 years now.
Oh wow, just before I Actually,I met her the first time.
I came home for Christmas fromHonduras, and it was at a party,
and I met her and we.
I came home for Christmas fromHonduras and it was at a party,

(36:56):
and I met her and we starteddating and that was it.
So she came over about a yearafter I was there the first year
.
Then she got pregnant and shehad to leave at age seven, seven
months of the pregnancy,because we were in alias and you
cannot be born in alias.
It takes an act of citizenship.
So at seven months she wasforced to come out, and so when

(37:18):
I got out of there after thethree years I still hadn't
finished my college.
I had a couple of years worth.
They sponsored me at GeorgeMason University to do all that
I had to do, and I had a year todo it.
I was a GS11 and that's all Idid, and all I did was study.
I graduated with distinctionout of the university and from
there went straight into mymaster's in espionage at the

(37:38):
farm.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, when I read it in the book that you made that
switch, that sounds like a veryuncommon change.
I mean, I imagine someone likemyself, I've wanted to go into
federal law enforcement andwhatnot.
Right, I wanted to go intofederal law enforcement and
whatnot, I wanted to go intodifferent agencies.
But it always seemed likewhatever you get in there and

(37:59):
you start as, you're typicallygoing to end your career as that
thing, because I want to sayit's impossible to make a switch
.
But you have to basically argueagainst the needs of the agency
at the time, right To argueagainst yourself for not having
your current position, to go andmake a case to get into a new

(38:23):
position.
It primarily almost like servesyourself.
You know, like that's kind oflike how it would be viewed or
something like that.
So how did that change eventake place?

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Well, first of all, ray Doty, the guy that was my
boss, was also my mentor andwhen the time came at the end,
he called Dewey Claridge, whichis another guy who became a
mentor of mine, and told him.
He said look, prado's done afantastic job for us.
We need to get him sponsoredfor school.
And I spoke with SAD and theytold me yeah, I don't worry

(38:55):
about it, but I don't believethem.
And well, he was chief at LatinAmerica division.
So he called the chief of SADand said you got six hours to
home base Prado, or I'm takinghim to Latin America division.
Well, they home based me,approved my college and, luckily
for me, when I was in my senior, my junior and senior year, I
worked in a very nice men'shaberdashery.
It was a good men's clothing,so I learned to dress up and

(39:18):
clean up well.
But you're going from a bluntobject out there in the jungles
for three years with twogrenades, a pistol, a knife and
an AR-15 to coat and tie,learning tradecraft and learning
all those softer skillslearning tradecraft and learning
all those softer skills.
Timing was also on my sidebecause for the longest time our

(39:38):
paramilitary officers were kindof looked down upon.
You know, you had the IvyLeague elite and then you had
these knuckle draggers, snakeeaters, and they were like the
pit bull that you keep in theback of the yard with a chain
and you feed them once in awhile and, you know, let them
loose when you have to.
But that changed right about thetime that I got in.
It started changing where thesaying was you're not in the
central airborne agency, you'rein the central intelligence

(40:00):
agency, and for you to stay inspecial activities division you
have to go through the farm, youhave to go through the course.
Now they had two courses one,which was the long course, what
I went through, and that waswhat all case officers went
through.
The other one was a shortenedcourse and it was primarily for
those people that did not wantto make the transition.
They wanted to stay training atthe base or deploying, you know

(40:21):
, you know in ditch somewhere.
They did not want to get intothe the Intel gathering aspect
of it, but they had to at leastunderstand and have a flavor of
what it was about.
So that really propelled it.
I did very well.
I was in the top 3% of my classand after that I have six
overseas tours been shot out acouple of times, and a scrape

(40:42):
here and a scrape there, buthere I am talking to you.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Wow, what was that training like at the farm
compared to your PJ training?
I know you can't tell me anyspecifics about it.
I would prefer the USgovernment doesn't show up at my
door, right.
So you know, don't tell meanything.
You can't, of course.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
No, I mean, you know it's obviously very different.
Like I said, one, the first wasvery physical and very
psychological torture.
The second one was making thatswitch from a blunt object to a
scalpel and the fact thatthere's a science behind this
and learning how to read peopleand learning how to recruit
people and how to vet them andhow to run them.
You know the farm exercise,which is again several months

(41:22):
long.
I don't remember if it's like,I think it was about five months
.
You're there a hundred percent.
You know you're either in aclassroom getting a lecture or
you are playing spy.
You know you're going out tomeet somebody, have lunch with
them, or you're going to go outand surveil somebody, or you're
going to do a surveillancedetection route or you're
looking for surveillancedetection routes and places to
have meetings and takingphotographs, clandestine

(41:44):
photographs.
You know you worked 10-hourdays and then you had to write
all this stuff up.
So it was always 12-hour days,sometimes 14-hour days, to write
all this stuff up.
So it was always 12 hour days,sometimes 14 hour days, and the
next day you do it groundhog allover again.
So that one it's.
Also there was no attrition inthe sense of somebody quitting.
But there was attrition ofpeople not getting certified.
In my class, which was a goodsize class, we had two people

(42:07):
that didn't make it period theywere offered lateral jobs into
admin or something like that,and two that were.
They were offered lateral jobsinto admin or something like
that and two that made it onprobation.
They had to prove themselves.
They had a six-month but it wastradecraft, it was spycraft, it
was what makes people ticks andthe legalities of what we do.

(42:31):
Very few people understand thatthe CIA is the only federal
agency that has what is calledTitle 50 authorities.
That means if the president, heor she, signs a lethal finding
or any finding and hands it over, we can legally go do by US
standards, legally, where you'redoing it, of course, and that's
it.
The military has Title 10authorities, which means they
can do anything that's necessaryin a war theater.

(42:53):
So I'll give you an example.
As you know from reading thebook, I started the Bin Laden
Task Force.
I was with Mike Schor, who wasan analyst, in January 1996.
We kicked off the Bin LadenTask Force and it was such a
change because now terrorism wasreally getting into a
completely new level ofsubstance there.
But for us that was such anincredible change because now

(43:14):
you're going from in thecounterterrorist center, you're
going from the localizedterrorist Latin America in
Africa.
Now you have this pandemic ofterrorism that was coming out.
Hezbollah was blowingeverything up in 83 and
everything else, so it was thatescalation.
So the change for us wasdrastic, especially when you
came from the paramilitary side.

(43:35):
But the crate, the tradecraftaspect of it is patience and you
know, not falling in love withyour, your agent, for one, is
one of the things that they say.
I don't.
I don't mean physically, we'retalking about emotional the fact
that you I mean I really likethis guy joe has always, he's
always been on time and everyyear.
But but I always have to testyou, I always have to watch you,
because you could be turned oryou could be a double.

(43:58):
So it becomes, like I said,from playing checkers in the
paramilitary side to playingchess with somebody who's
obviously not stupid, becausethat's why you're trying to
recruit them.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, I actually had on Jim Lawler yesterday.
He's been on several times,right, and so we were talking
about Iran and his latest bookthat came out and everything.
And it's like four-dimensionalchess, right, because you have
to be thinking several stepsahead of your target or whatever
it might be.
B, you're directing things indifferent ways and impacting

(44:32):
them in ways that are probably,you know, in their subconscious
that they don't even realize isgoing on, but you're really
trying to direct them towardsthis funnel, with them believing
that they made the decisionthemselves.
But you really influenced it inthe background, right, and I
think maybe the first time hecame on he talked about how he
wouldn't just like recruitanyone, right, like they had to

(44:54):
have like a discrepancy, theyhad to have a reason, because
without that reason, withoutthat discrepancy, the likelihood
of you succeeding is very low.
It's probably not going tohappen, and so you don't want to
burn that resource, you don'twant to burn yourself in a
country or in a community orwhatever it might be, and so
it's critical to choose whichtargets or which battles to

(45:17):
actually take on.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Well, you know, jim was masterful.
He's a very good friend of mineand his latest book is very,
very, very good.
I read it early and if you lookat the cover, I'm one of the
testimonials in his book.
But no, absolutely Unlike thecommunist bloc countries and
intelligence, we try to recruitfor strengths.
They recruit for weaknesses.

(45:39):
You have a gambling problem,you're homosexual, you're an
alcoholic, you're womanizing,whatever it is.
They love that because theyhave you by the short hairs.
I'm not saying that we haven'tdone those.
I never saw a honeypot in theagency in the 26 years I was
there.
But we try to recruit the peoplefor their strengths and what
you talked about, which was verywell put, the fact that they

(46:01):
think that it was their decision, but you're the ones that led
them there.
And when I taught for severalyears to the military, I used to
tell them I said, you have toinfect them with your enthusiasm
.
They have to be able to knowthat you care about what's going
on in their country, what'sgoing on in their family, the
importance of fighting theterrorists or the narcos or the
communists or whatever the hellthat happens to be in that

(46:23):
theater.
You infect them with yourenthusiasm and that's where the
recruitments come in.
What people believe and onething that you've got to
understand that they teach youthis very early in the farm.
You go out and you're a GS-13 orGS-12, and you're not going to
recruit it.
You don't want to recruit astaff sergeant, you want to
recruit a general right.

(46:44):
So when you start arelationship, it's usually like
this the general is here or thecolonel is here and you're down
here because you're a thirdsecretary in the embassy,
whatever it is, and you're lowon the totem pole.
So we call it.
You cannot pitch somebody fromhome plate, you have to pitch
them from the mountain.
So psychologically, you have todo this and that's how you, by

(47:07):
the way, you comport yourself.
Your subject matter, expertise,whatever it is that gets you
above, at the very least equalto this individual, to where he
is looking at you or up to you,especially for this particular
thing that we have in common andthe combination of the respect
that you gain from yourdevelopmentals and the fact that

(47:31):
you're giving them somethingthat will resolve with their
concerns.
The other thing that I'vealways taught the most important
thing is find out what makesthat person stay up at night.
Once you figure that out andyou could provide a solution.
You got yourself a recruiter.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Yeah, that's a really good point.
So my day job is incybersecurity, right, so I'm
protecting systems, protectingdata and stuff like that.
I have to think like anattacker, a whole lot more than
you know what people on my sidewould probably even admit.
Right, and I have a personalpolicy and I really vocalize
this to my team Don't just comeup with a problem that we have.

(48:12):
Don't bring a problem without asolution.
You have to have the solutionalready there.
And if it's a real problem andyou don't have a solution,
that's fine.
But call it out.
Be like hey, I looked into thisfor 10, 12 hours.
I don't know what to do.
I need help.
You know, obviously, in my lineof work, if you don't know what
to do for 10 hours, you'reprobably getting fired, but you
need to be able to assess it alittle bit quicker than that.

(48:33):
But that's a very valuablementality to have, because
there's so many people 98% ofthe people out there.
They're going to complain aboutsomething, they're going to
only find issues, they're onlygoing to see it one way and
whatnot.
But when I see a problem, I seean opportunity.
Well, how can I build somethingthat secures this against this
weird problem right?

(48:54):
What solutions are out there?
How do I approach this problem?
And that same mentality paysoff in the agency.
It sounds like because youcan't be.
I feel like when you only seeproblems, when you only bring up
the problems, you're at theground level of like that mental
state, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Yeah, you know, I have a very, very dear friend of
mine.
His name is Matt DeVoe.
You might run across him.
He's the scariest guy I know,because he's one of you and I
tell people I say I can run awayfrom a bad guy, but this guy
can destroy my life sitting inhis shorts and his home, you
know.
So it is very important.
But the thing that you have tounderstand about the CIA when it

(49:37):
comes to our profession, 90% ofour training is on-the-job
training.
You get out of the farm and thejoke is, yeah, you think you're
Mario Andretti, but you justwent through high school
driver's ed.
You get to a station.
You have a chief of station.
He or she is going to bring youin and say, okay, here's your
task, here's the things you'regoing to do, and, by the way,

(50:00):
that branch chief over there youcannot breathe or go to the
bathroom without briefing him orher, and everything is on the
job training.
So you go out and they tell youokay, we need you to case a
place for a lunch.
These are the requirements.
Come back with your plan for asurveillance detection route.
Go do it whatever it is, andit's all.
Sweat the details.
You never go to a meetingwithout having somebody more
senior than you until you getobviously until you get higher

(50:20):
up the ranks, but for the firstand second tours you are
definitely on a short leash.
And again, the part of thedriving analogy is that, yeah, I
need you to learn to drive fast, but I cannot afford you to
wreck my car, that, yeah, I needyou to learn to drive fast but
I cannot afford you to wreck mycar.
The station is a mission thatwe cannot afford to taint.
So there's that real scrutiny,like if you were going to go to
a meeting and you were talkingto me as the chief of station,

(50:42):
it'd be okay.
Who are you meeting?
What is the purpose of themeeting?
What is your cover for havingthe meeting?
How are you getting there?
Where are you having it?
What are the questions you gotto ask this guy?
You go through this and thenthe person goes and does it and
if he comes back and screws thatup, there's a problem and
people do get bounced or atleast demoted, you know, if you
don't, that is a very esotericthing, but we're one of the few

(51:08):
professions where just abouteverything you learn.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
you learn on the job.
Well, that makes sense too,because you know, when you're
out in the world, you're not ina training environment and
you're dealing with real people.
The variables are endless andyou have to be able to use the
foundation that they give you,you know, in your training
curriculum and build upon itright and adapt it to whatever
environment you're in, becausethey can't prepare you for the

(51:31):
thousand situations that you'regoing to encounter before lunch
in a foreign country.
They give you the guidelines,they give you the groundwork for
, hey, this is probably how youshould react.
These are the skills that youneed.
Here's all the stuff.
Okay, now go execute and buildupon it.
You shouldn't be performing atthis ground level that we put

(51:52):
you on already.
You should be, you know,climbing the ladder up, building
new things.
Yeah, it's really fascinating.
So you know, I know we don'thave much time left,
unfortunately, but could we talkabout the early days of going
after Osama bin Laden?
Right, like?
What did that look like?
Was he a person of interest,but not enough interest to take

(52:16):
a decisive action against him?
Was the evidence there?
What does that look like?

Speaker 2 (52:21):
I had just returned from Korea and I was a branch
chief.
I had the PLO branch and gotthe counterterrorism center.
I had just gotten promoted toGS-15 when my boss, chief of ops
for the center, called me inand says your name is being
looked at for a special stationthat's going to be a task force.
I said okay, deputy chief ofstation.

(52:41):
This is great.
You know, I was just chiefliaison, now I'm deputy chief of
station.
And I said sir, who are we?
After?
He said you know we sound alittle bit Latin.
I said who he goes exactly.
Yeah, my, um, the the chief ofstation was a guy named Mike
Sawyer and Mike was a verysenior.
He was already an SIS officer.
So you know grade wise, whichis flag rank for the agency, uh,

(53:03):
but he was an analyst and so Iwas the senior ops officer and
his deputy in in, uh, in thestation we were only about nine.
The rest were analysts, most ofthem women.
I think we had one or two guys.
Jennifer Matthews, whounfortunately got killed in Kost
in that bombing, was one of ourplan owners.
She was one of our original BinLaden task force kind of guys.

(53:25):
Let's say we started with twofiles on Bin Laden.
We knew that within a year wehad a wall full of files,
electronically and paper.
We were still making thattransition back then and the
proof was there, from liaisonservices that are helping us,
from volunteers, from recruitedassets, from technical

(53:45):
intelligence, from wiretaps,from intercepts, from overhead.
We knew that amount of moneythat he was getting from
donations or extortion,whichever way you want to make
it, and what he was doing.
He was in Khartoum at the timebuilding roads and everything
else, but what he was reallydoing outside the city he had
camps we had overhead of theguy's training in terrorist

(54:08):
attacks and we kept putting upthe proposals up the ladder and
that the administration just no,we don't have enough evidence,
we can't prove that he was bad.
And there's a very renowned guyin the name of Billy Waugh.
Billy Waugh was a very dearfriend of mine.
We met in 1990 and stayedfriends for a very long time
until he passed.
And Billy is the first guy todo surveillance on bin Laden in

(54:32):
the early 90s in Khartoum.
So when I started the Bin LadenTask Force, I called my buddy
Billy Waugh.
I said Billy, you were there,tell me what's the situation.
The guy was still there.
I mean, he was still inKhartoum and he told me he says
Rick, he says he's in the weight, he drives himself half the
time.
He's got some goons with himonce in a while that follow him
around, but they're not justkillers.

(54:52):
A special team from us, wecould wipe it out.
And he had this plan and we hadthat plan.
We submitted all thesedifferent ideas of how to
neutralize bin Laden and I wouldsay by 1997, 1998, before I
left the station we could havehad him and the impact of that,
Jason.
Imagine if we would have beenallowed in 1997 to take down Bin

(55:16):
Laden.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
It would be like shooting Hitler before World War
II.
The world would have been acompletely different thing
Better or worse, that's not forus to say but we missed those
opportunities and unfortunately,mike Shorey, of whom I used to
be a very big fan of he, kind ofimploded afterwards.
But Mike took it very personalwhen we got the embassy bombings
in Africa and he got intoGeorge Tenet's face and told him

(55:40):
he says the blood of thesepeople are in your hands.
Well, george Tenet was apolitician, but it wasn't his
decision, it was theadministration's decision not to
do so.
I think that if theadministration would have
approved it, he would havecarried it out.
So that got him sideways andpretty much ended his career.
Bin Laden, of course, shortlythereafter went into Afghanistan

(56:00):
and once he did that 2011, wasable to get bin Laden.
And everybody says, well, theSEAL team shot bin Laden.
I said, yes, the SEAL team shotbin Laden.

(56:22):
Did CIA, that task force in CIAthat finally tracked them down,
pinpointed it, verified to thepoint that the administration,
this administration agreed thatit was worth going.
And back to Title 50, thoseSEAL Team guys were under title,
they were actually detailedlead to the agency because they

(56:44):
were not doing this inAfghanistan, they were doing
this in Pakistan and that's anact of war.
So that needed Title 50authorities and the signature of
the president, so technically.
And we had guys on the groundwith them.
But not only were CIA the onethat pinpointed and finally
found them, the SEAL team thatdid a fantastic job.
Don't get me wrong.
I have nothing but admirationfor those guys were under

(57:06):
auspices for the legalities ofit.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Yeah, I remember you know from different sources,
right, seals that were there andwhatnot they were talking about
.
You know their plan to like getout.
What if this thing wentcompletely sideways and Pakistan
was alerted and somehow reactedbefore they could finish their
mission and get away?
Right, and they were talking,you know, okay, you know we have

(57:29):
different tiers of QRF.
We have one QRF that isn't thatfar away of a whole bunch of
SEAL team six, you know, likeother SEAL team six guys.
And then if we really need it,we have an entire ranger
battalion that's ready to go.
You know that's already spun up, you know to to handle that,

(57:53):
handle whatever fight we get.
And I remember hearing in one ofthe briefs that Obama was in,
someone said what happens ifthey get captured and Obama, at
least from what I heard, heshook his head.
He's like my guys are notgiving up If they decide that
they're going to try and takeour guys.
We're going to level thatentire military base that is
right there.
And he told the Air Force to gofigure out what they needed to

(58:14):
actually make that happen andhave that ready, already ready
to go.
And I mean I don't agree withall of Obama's policies or
anything like that.
I mean, if you ask me today Iprobably couldn't even name one,
but I remember at that time Ididn't really agree with
everything on him, but for thatI always, you know, like tip my
hat to him because he knew, youknow he, he was taking the

(58:36):
handcuffs off.
You know, and I feel like inthe agencies and in the military
the handcuffs are normally likeon because you have so many
highly trained pit bulls thatare just like man.
If you would take me off thechain, this thing would be done.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Open the cage.
But there's another componentof that too, which is something
there is no station in the worldCIA station in the world that
doesn't have evacuation plansand evacuation resources.
So that's the other thing thatwe had in Pakistan.
Yes, and this is textbook.
You have a very small unit herethat's going to do the deed.
You have the first level of QRF, which may be another 12 that

(59:13):
can come in with heavier weaponsand whatever it is, and, you
know, some air support.
Then you have, like you said,the 82nd Airborne, ready with
Rangers or whatever to jump inand just destroy everything.
But we also had rat lines case.
They did have to diddy-mow outof there and they would be able
to go to a particular placewhere somebody would stick them
in a truck and try to smugglethem out in some way or another.

(59:36):
So it is definitely a teamsport.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think the beautiful thing about the
military and the CIA,specifically with Ground Branch
you're getting all these guyswith all this different training
, all these different expertiseright, all this different
background, and you know, whenyou bring them to the table and
say, hey, like we have thisthing over here, we need you to
bring it to us, or destroy it orwhatever it might be, the SEAL

(01:00:01):
is going to approach it from adifferent angle than the Green
Beret or different angle fromthe CIA.
You know, operator like,whatever that looks like, and
you get to go through and like,really create.
You know and design like theperfect situation.
I don't want to call it theperfect situation, but you get
to design your solution right.

(01:00:22):
And then you have all thesetertiary plans in place where
it's like, okay, well, if thishappens, I'm going to go to this
expert in getting people out ofa country, a hostile country,
in a hostile situation.
He's going to be there, he hashis own team, that that's all
that they do, right?
It's just, it's fascinating tome.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
But you know, you hit on something that's a very
strong point.
Special Activities Division isfull of soft individuals.
Everybody's operations forcesthe four that we mentioned, but
on top of that they're trainedcase officers.
They have to do tours as caseofficers and, as a matter of
fact, we've had dozens of chiefsof station.
You're looking at one of themthat was a paramilitary guy.

(01:01:05):
We even had a DDO that was aparamilitary officer.
The tables were changed withtime but yeah, that's the
uniqueness of special activities.
It's now a special activitiescenter, but in my time it was
SAD, special Activities Division.
The fact that you have thesereally highly trained and
specialized people wherever it'sair, whatever it is, but

(01:01:28):
they're also case officers.
And I think that that was thebig bumper for us was the
international terrorism, becausenow we had to send somebody to
be chief of station in a placethat the average Joe Inga cut it
.
You had to have the caseofficer training, but you also
had to know how to defendyourself and how to get yourself

(01:01:48):
out of trouble or beat thetrouble.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Well, rick, in an effort to wrap up our
conversation, I feel I'd goanother three, four hours with
you, but I got a hold to my timeframe.
I'm sure my wife with mytwo-month-old would be
appreciative of that.
My wife with my two-month-oldwould be appreciative of that.
Why don't you maybe tell us howyou got out of the agency, what
you're doing now, that sort ofthing?

(01:02:13):
What drove you to the end?
Because it sounds like youprobably came up on that
timeframe that they impose oneveryone where you're.
What is it?
It's mandatory retirement by acertain age, so you probably I'd
retire before that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
In my case, I was chief of ops at the
counterterrorism center when9-11 happened.
So this was a very personalthing for me because I started
the bin Laden task force.
Now I'm the chief of ops atCIA's counterterrorist center
and we get hit.
I think I got the job like fourmonths before when I came back
from a very bad where I waschief of station really bad town

(01:02:48):
in a Muslim, radical Muslimcountry in East Africa.
That's as far as I can go withthat one.
So I, after about a year inthat job, I told Kofra I said
you know, we're kicking the crapout of these guys in
Afghanistan, but there's dozensand dozens and dozens of these
individuals that are worldwidefirst, second and third world
countries that are operatingwith impunity.

(01:03:09):
We need to go after them.
So he said, look at me.
He says well, you're my chiefof ops, fix it.
So I came up with a programwhich he kicked me out of the
room when the first time, when Itold him that I wanted to run
it.
He says great idea, but youain't running it.
Talked about it by the end ofthe day.
And I put together a team of menand women that, between
surveillance and intelligencegathering and tapping into the

(01:03:31):
sources, we were making book oneverything find, fix and finish
on all these individuals thatwere out there supporting, you
know, the head of anorganization.
A terrorist or criminalorganization?
It's hard to get to and youchop it off, it's a hydra.
Or criminal organization?
It's hard to get to and youchop it off, it's a hydra.
Two others are going to pop up.
The shooters are a dime a dozen.
You kill 10 of them.

(01:03:52):
Another 20 come in andvolunteer, right.
The soft belly of any criminalorganization or terrorist
organization is a supportmechanism, because they have to
exist somewhere in order toprovide that support.
And a lot of them are doctors,lawyers, indian chiefs.
So we put together a programwhich was to take three
individuals from every singleterrorist group of our concern,

(01:04:15):
do the fine, do the fix and haveoperational plans for the
finish, the disruption,compromise, kidnap or kill.
And it wasn't a hit team whenit was leaked, that's the way it
was sold.
It wasn't, it was.
When it was leaked, that's theway it was sold.
It wasn't.
It was an intelligencegathering exercise with teeth.
And the idea was and this iswhy it came to be that way was

(01:04:35):
when 9-11, we knew we were goingto get hit, we knew that that
was big, we knew that it was inthe country but we couldn't
disrupt it.
We had no way of disrupting it.
What do you think would havehappened if, on 9-7, three of
Bin Laden's top guys in threedifferent countries get taken
out, compromised, put on therocks, and that biases the time.

(01:04:56):
So that was the program I puttogether.
I was actually honored to havebriefed Dick Cheney, vice
President Dick Cheney on thisprogram, and Condoleezza Rice,
and they approved it.
Then the agency bureaucracykicked in.
We were getting distance from9-11, the backbone, the calcium
in the backbone starts to meltand when you're dealing with
politicians which our leadershipat that time was you could not

(01:05:17):
run intel or special operationsthrough a political optic.
You have to do it by theprofessionals.
And after three or four thingsthat we had these guys even
briefed the vice president on,they still wouldn't let me pull
the trigger.
So I said you know what I'mgoing to move on.
So that's when I retired.
I retired, I think I was maybe51, 50 or 51.
And from there I went to workfor Blackwater Eric Prince.

(01:05:40):
I had met Eric Prince when hewas providing security for us in
Kabul and I was chief of ops.
When I retired, he pitched me.
I went over there and his thingwas I don't want you to do
business, I want you to recreateexactly what you were doing
before, because I was trainingat Blackwater.
He didn't know what the.
He's a smart guy.
So he knew that he was up tosomething high speed, low drag,

(01:06:02):
ninja stuff and that it wasimpactful, and so we started
those programs in support of theagency and Special Operations
Command.
I did that for almost eightyears for him Great job, doing
the same thing that I knew howto do.
So I got 24 years of agency andthen another eight on top of
that of operating and leading mygroups up there.
Only now I was gettingcorporate money, which is kind

(01:06:23):
of nice.
So when Blackwater met itsdemise for political reasons
again, this is one of thecriminality of administrations
that come in and try to throwthe baby with the bathwater
Blackwater did not have a blackeye anywhere.
The amount of people that wehave saved, not a single person
that was our protectee ever gotkilled in an all-state order.

(01:06:45):
So when that went away and Iran these programs for myself
for a couple of years, but stillwith Eric's support here and
there.
That came to an end also, whenI taught at Fort Bragg Advanced
Special Operations andTechniques is the name of the
course I played the chief ofstation and I did that for seven
years and then came the book.

(01:07:05):
Which is the biggest surpriseto me and to my family is that I
would write a book.
I always wanted to be a diver.
I always wanted to be a specialmilitary.
I always wanted to be JamesBond.
I always wanted that.
Never in my life did I thinkthat I should write a book
someday, much less become a NewYork Times bestseller list kind

(01:07:25):
of book.
But the reason for it was really, really simple.
It was I had time forintrospection and realized that
my agency is so badlyrepresented in every media forum
, especially in Hollywood andour men and women who sacrifice
so much with no recognition.
We can't wear our ribbons, wecannot wear our jump wings, we

(01:07:47):
cannot wear our berets.
We can't wear any of that.
You're in a coat and tie with abadge.
That is the same whether you'rea clerk or if you're the DCI.
In the place you wear the sameidentical blue badge and I felt
a debt of honor again, like Idid for my country, because of
what they did for me and myfamily out of Cuba.
It was to create something thatthose fallen, the widow, could

(01:08:09):
go to the kids and say this isthe kind of thing your dad or
your mom really did during thewar.
Show what the agency is.
You read the book.
There's so many sexy stuff inthere that are good for a movie.
But they're real.
But it's very, very differentthan how they're portrayed,
especially the ethos, thededication and the character of
my colleagues.

(01:08:29):
I've lost colleagues Mike Spannand I mentioned Jennifer
Matthews earlier and dozens ofothers that we send in harm's
way.
So that was the reason behindthe book trying to put something
out there that would educatethe masses.
The book has sold 100,000 unitsso far, so it's doing very,
very well still.
But that's my goal to keeppumping that out and I'm not

(01:08:52):
doing anything else.
I promote the book through apodcast, some things here and
there, and I just ride horses,ride motorcycles, shoot guns and
chase my wife around the house.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's a fantastic book.
It was a great read and I'm nota big reader, but when it's
nonfiction, it's a true story.
It really captivates myattention and so it was a great
experience just hearing some ofyour hundreds of stories I'm
sure you have.
I really appreciate you takingthe time to even just come on.

(01:09:24):
When I messaged you, I assumedah, he's not going to message me
back.
Why would he?
This is a legendary guy.
Why in the world would he wastehis time on this small little
podcast?
But I really appreciate yougiving me the time to actually
talk to you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
And, like I said, look, I wrote the book.
Although I was paid to writethe book, that was a nice touch
too, but I wrote the book to getthe message out, and if anybody
calls me for an interview in adifferent niche, in a different
area, where it's going to get toa different audience than
normal audience, that would pickup a book like Black Ops I'm
going to do it and I'll keepdoing this for as long as I can,

(01:10:04):
because I believe that the bookdoes have merit and it does
educate people about a realitythat they don't have a bloody
clue about.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Well, you know, rick, before Ilet you go, how about you tell
my audience you know where theycould find you if they wanted to
reach out?
And I'll have a link to yourbook in the description of this
episode.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Website is wwwricpradocom.
Rick.
Without a K dot com that takesyou their bios, are there some
pretty cool photographs, andthen there's links to Amazon and
you know Barnes and Noble orwhatever that they can get the
books.
They're still very availableand that's about it.
I mean, you know that's theeasiest way to get out there.

(01:10:46):
But thank you, thank you somuch for supporting my efforts
to get this message out.
It means the world to me.
It's I call it my lastfirefight.
This is the last thing I'mdoing.
I got 55 years going intopararescue and writing the book,
so you know that's enough.
But I will keep promoting thebook anytime that I can Not
financially, because I got mymoney up front.

(01:11:06):
I'm very proud of the fact thatI could have sit on my butt and
sold 10,000 books, that I wouldhave the same amount of money
in my pocket.
I did it for a very differentreason and I'm very proud of
that and my family's very proudof that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Well, thanks, Rick.
I really appreciate you comingon again and I hope everyone
watching this episode enjoyed it.
Thanks everyone.