S1 E5: Doug Laux

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I have declared war against my brain in order to.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
That.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Won's don't seem to.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
So long as so long as only.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Will you wave time stop, I don't have.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
To so so, jim I I kind of I was listening.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I was listening to that discussion about Pablo Escobar. I'm
wondering if you ran into any of his hippos. Yes, hip,
what's the hippo hippopotamus? I was just reading a story
about how these hippos that Pablo imported to his compound
have gone wild, are now a couple of hundred wild
hippos roaming around Columbia causing all kinds of trouble.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, I didn't see any, do you know what I'm talking?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
He saw a couple of hip hippos, but that was
back in Washington and when he was drinking heavily. That
was not what I was doing. Uh So, how do
you pronounce your last names Loux with an X like
at the ends. So you're uh uh lousus douglous dougle

(01:22):
shake him out, stir there we go. Okay, and uh
I'm here here here. I wanted to check with you
just to see how how good you were. Okay, So
look at me, all right, I slept with that Angelina Jolie.
Am I telling the truth on my line? When uh,

(01:47):
when I did a when I did a movie with her,
I don't know, twenty years ago? Mm hmm, Am I lying?
Am I telling the truth? Come on?

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Come on, man, see I don't want to say you're lying,
because then you're gonna be like, yeah, I did.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
But then I don't want to.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Say you did because I don't know you.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
You know what, I'm britting on the spot. I didn't,
so uh yeah, yeah I didn't. All right. So as
for anybody who's who's watching this, Doug, how do you
look like a k almost with a k okay? And
uh uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna lie a little bit,

(02:32):
So throughout the entire thing, I'll be lying a little bit.
So your back of your your your your things will
go up or whatever. Anyway, Doug's written a book. It's
called Left of Boom and uh it just came out
and uh it's on the best sellers. It's not on
the New York Times bestsellers list, but it's on the
every other what what are the other ones? Jim that

(02:52):
it's the best seller just what Amazon? Amazon? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's just there. We big book. Yeah, and I got
a chance.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
I don't know what bit you're doing, but it is
on the New York Times bestseller list?

Speaker 2 (03:06):
What it is on the New York Times Now when
it came out? Now, when it came out? Oh okay,
Well I didn't do that. I was just trying to
like hype your book. It was on the New York
Times bestsellers list.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Does the New York Times bestseller for a while?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
So did you make money on it?

Speaker 5 (03:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Oh? Good? Oh good, okay, good, I didn't. I don't
know anything about publishing or everything.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
It was published by a big deal publisher, a solid
publishing company for sure.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Well good. So how many people have read your book?
I mean, how many people? How many books have been
sold that you've that you've written of left a boom?

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Well, that's just like what we were talking about. Did
they actually buy it and read it or did they
listen to it the audio version like an audible Okay,
it varies sometimes, And like we were talking about previously,
it seems like a lot more people are listening yes
books than they are actually sitting down and reading them.
The reason for that is they have it everywhere. It's

(04:10):
on their iPhone. Yes, so I'm going for a walk, oh,
I'll listen to chapter five. Yes, Or i'm driving to work,
I'll listen to chapter six. You know, they can always squeeze.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Chapter five by the way, as you're kind of bitching
about to see about the about the agency. But okay,
I don't know if you remember, but that's uh oh
there's a line in there which which is a sort
of classic. But go ahead, talk to me more about
like it's it was, it's was on the bestsellers list,

(04:40):
and then how long did it stay on or like.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
A few weeks? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they generally stay a
few weeks.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, well congratulations. I didn't know that. So that's like
a huge thing. No wonder why you're working in Hollywood
as a writer. You know you actually got creds. Yeah,
you got some credibil there. So all right, let me
get my so I am. I'm just really excited to

(05:12):
talk to you because I've never I don't know anything.
I didn't know anything about what you uh do or
have done, and I've always I've always had trouble with
names in places, and you know, uh, you know, I

(05:36):
you know, it's hard for me to even come up
with al Qaeda and Taliban and immediately be able to
tell you, Oh, okay, is this in Taliban?

Speaker 5 (05:44):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
One of the things that I thought was interesting about
your book that I didn't know and maybe you could
explain to me, was according to you, and I'm sure
you're it's right that we went in there and in
whatever year it was eight years or whatever before you
got well, whatever year it was, what year was it,
you know that we.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Got involved in Afghanistan? Yeah, two thousand and one.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Two thousand and one, okay, and then we uh so
we pretty quickly wiped out al Qaeda, right, yeah, yeah, okay,
So basically according to your book, there's like one hundred
al Qaeda members left. Four hundred of them got into Pakistan,
Osama bin Lada being one of them. Probably, Well, why

(06:25):
why the fuck did why the fuck didn't we get out? Then?

Speaker 1 (06:31):
God, I think there was a big confusion to answer
that question, And that's a big one between the difference
of the Taliban and al Qaeda. It kind of just
got whitewashed too. Well, they're terrorists, they're terrorists anyway, and
depending on how you look at it, it's like, yeah,
but the Taliban did live there. These are Pashtuns and

(06:54):
that's just how they choose to live their lives, Pashtun wally,
their postume, Pashtun wall. We came there to get rid
of Al Kayeda and in the process of doing so,
went to war with the Taliban because they were harboring
Al Kaeda and Mula Omar and Bin Laden. So we
thought so it was like, okay, well now you're the enemy,

(07:15):
and the Taliban s thought process then just as it
would be now even though we're gone, is we're not leaving,
So you're gonna have to take out every single one
of us because we're not going anywhere. And if we
need to go into Pakistan to recuperate, we will, but
we'll be back. But we're not leaving. You guys are leaving.
You will leave, We promise you that, because we're not going.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Just like the Bridge, just like the Russians, just like everybody,
just like Alexander the Great, just like everybody else who
has come through.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Exactly they know, but that's in their mindset, like that's
not a ge whiz. I hope the Americans leave. It's
well wait how much longer? Right, like when you're gonna
pick me up? When are you guys leaving?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Right?

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Because you're not gonna stay. We don't have anything here
that you guys want. You wanted to kill bin laden Will,
You did that in twenty eleven, So why are you
still here? Like, go home? What do we have for you?
You're not taking oil, you're not taking anything, So like
it's time up yet. And that's kind of what it
obviously looked like when we finally left. What was that

(08:20):
twenty twenty one? I think, yeah, yeah, so but al
Kayeda there you go too, I mean you said it.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Excuse me, but al Keda is it's still sort of
just decimated. There is no al Qaeda anymore? Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Yeah? I mean you can look at that too. As
I look at and again, I'll stick with this being
my opinion, same as ISIS. I look at both and go,
whoa what is it? And it's not that I don't
understand what they stand for and what their premise was,
but you or I could walk out the door right

(08:57):
now with a bomb and say we're doing this on
behalf of ISIS, or doing this on behalf of al Qaeda.
Then that's what it was, and that's what it's going
to get picked up as, and that's what it's going
to get reported as. Or I could say, hey, we're
doing this on behalf of the Taliban, and the media
is going to run with that because I said, so
I did something horrible. I said, that's why I did it,

(09:19):
So that's why it happened. Meanwhile, if you've said you
did it on behalf because of the Taliban, I guarantee
you they'd be saying, no, no, we don't know that guy,
absolutely not. This is nuts, Like, don't put that on us.
Al Kayeda though, would be like, yeah, finally we're back.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Okay, so you know, we invade Iraq to this state.
Nobody fucking knows why. Okay, we have no idea why
we invaded Iraq. I don't think anybody does. I'm not
sure did. George Brust knows it. But the second w
But uh so, the idea that a country full of

(10:02):
pastudents is that a correct way of costumes, all right,
are harboring terrorists would be like saying there's some terrorists
in America, so we're gonna come fucking tear your country up,
and like like unless you give them up. It was
as if somehow that's why I have to look back

(10:26):
down the Taliban, we're going to be able to go, Okay,
well they're over here, they're over here, put them all
in a sack, and here you go America. That was
always incredibly unrealistic because would you agree or not agree?

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, I agree with you completely. I mean, and I've
lived here. It's kind of no different than what you
can get in different places here in la as well.
It's like maybe we don't even like that guy, but
he's from here, Like he's from our street, and so yeah,
he's kind of an asshole, but he's our neighbor. So

(11:01):
you don't belong here, what are you even doing here?
Go home? You know, like get out of here. And
so with the Taliban, it was like, yeah, they believed
in mul Omar, that was their religious leader, but did
they really buy into what al Kayeda was putting out
there and what Wasama bin Laden was saying? Not really?

(11:21):
And I've met Taliban who barely even knew who that was.
Where they'd say, well, where is al Qaeda? Who cares?
Like what I care about is Kandahar, Afghanistan and your
tanks rolling by every single day and it bothers me
and I want you to leave, and you're not leaving.
So the only thing I know how to do then,

(11:43):
since I'm not going to do it through policy, is
to fight you. So you want that because that's what
you're going to get, and we knew that, but we
were like, yeah, sure, bring it on. Who's still there, right?

Speaker 3 (11:56):
You know?

Speaker 1 (11:56):
And by the way, anything I say, I don't. I
don't do any podcasts, you know, I don't do many shows.
I don't do many interviews.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Thank you for doing this one.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
No, you made some badass films, man, and I love them. No,
I do. I love your shit like you made some
great movies. So I was like, yeah, definitely. And obviously
I know your son Kaitlin, so I was like, yeah, definitely.
But by and large, people ask me questions and I'm like,
they'll do a pre interview or something, and I'm like,

(12:26):
I don't think I should do your show because I don't.
I don't believe that I was there. I talked to
these guys, so you can dismiss me and say you're wrong, Doug,
But I'm going to go home going Yeah, But I
had tea with them, and that's what they told me.
You did it, So I mean, take it for what
it's worth. But it is just my opinion. I'm not

(12:48):
representing anybody.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Well, I understand that. And I one of the things
that I noticed ten years ago, just because of the
movies I done my wheelhouse, I get a lot of vets,
a lot of guys, you know, coming home, a lot
of guys in the military that you know, want to
meet me and talk to me and stuff. Ten years ten,

(13:11):
ten years ago, guys were coming back from Afghanistan saying,
no fucking chance, no fucking chance, we're you know, it
was ten fucking years ago, man.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, yeah, and ten years ago we had been there
for ten years. Yeah, So you know what does that
take to.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Drive out al Qaeda, which they did in year one
right or year two or if they were even there
to begin.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
I mean, wow, again, Look, this is just my perspective.
I'll be open with you and tell you whatever you want.
It's kind of the same as my last tour in
the CAA is with the Syrian Test Force, and I
was kind of just sitting there like what are we doing?
Like why are we here? Who is this Isi? Like

(14:01):
I'm the guy who's supposed to know who they are.
But it seems like anybody can just be a geek
off the street and choose bubblegum wrong today and decide
to kill somebody, and then they can say ISIS did that.
And sure there were big plots that they had as well,
and they were funded and they would put operations together,
but ninety five percent of what they were doing was

(14:23):
some person's one off set, you know, like they just
felt like doing it that day, and oh, attach that
to ISIS. So that was an ISIS event and then
the media loved it at the time. You remember those
black flags on the hilltop, the same image of the
guy marching back, and I'm just going, yeah, where the
fuck's that dude? Like are you kidding me? Like that

(14:45):
dude would have been smoked like five years ago, Like what,
he's not around And if you want to, you know,
advocate terrorism in the US military is in your backyard,
you're not going to be around a whole long, you know,
like you're going to go, so who are these people?
Who's left? And then a new topic came about and

(15:06):
there was no more ISIS And I'm going, well, I
didn't get rid of all these guys, So where'd they go?
Why aren't we talking about them anymore? Because if you
want to talk about Syria, that's a whole bag of hammers.
That's a different story.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
That sounds pretty complicated.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, and I won't even get into that. But you know,
I'm studying that, and I'm going, okay, well there's the
Bashar Alad regime, his father before him, and so I'm
gathering all that. I know what we're doing and what
can be done. This is what we would have to do.
Let's worry about those three guys on the border. I
don't care about them, and I don't care that they
say they're with Isis. They're fifteen year old? Who cares? Like,

(15:44):
I don't care. Do you want to do something on
a big scale or do we not? Let us think
about it.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Let me let me ask you a question, because you
use the word border early in your book. Yeah, once
you've gotten pasted, once you've gotten in country or whatever,
which I don't think you ever can a name exactly
where you were. Do me a favor before I ask
you about the border, because I want to ask you, like, well,
how come the border seemed to be like so pooroush

(16:11):
and like I ed stuff was pouring through the border.
It's like, how come with the fucking military didn't patrol
the fucking border. But let me ask you first ahead
of time to talk to me.

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Speaker 2 (17:45):
Really give me five or ten minutes on Afghany people
their culture, because in your book, uh, I had had
a different perspective, you know, not quite as religious, and

(18:09):
and and and the fact that Ashtu and Wally explain
to me what that is and why that's so important
to them, Explain to me, uh how poor they are,
or just kind of give me an idea of what
that culture was like when you showed up if you can, is.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
That you let me compare that to your prior perspective
or what do you what do you want you want me.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
To just just just just kind of like, uh, I
guess I picked it up in your book that but
you know, my I don't, I don't I don't really
know anything. I don't pay attention to this kind of stuff.
So you know.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Well there's a there's a line in the book that
I think is really good on that point in chapter six,
where you say, the more I interact with pastumes, the
more I realized that to think of them as anything
more than members of a world country was a mistake.
They exit the womb in survival mode and continue to

(19:11):
struggle that way until they die, And I thought that
was kind of a really interesting characteristic.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, no, and that's definitely true. But you know, and
I've said it before, although at a higher scale in
the government they'll deny it. But we do have fifth
world countries. We've all heard of third world countries, So
that's the third world. I don't even know if there's
fourth world, because I've never really heard that term. But
there's fifth world, and Afghanistan skips right into it. Where's

(19:40):
the bottom. We'll take that, you know. And people I
know who have been to really poor countries in Africa
or wherever else say there's nothing like Afghanistan. They've never
seen anything like it. It's really all I know. I
know the Middle East pretty well too, but usually I
was in the capitals and the at least they're very nice.

(20:03):
But Afghanistan, Yeah, that's its own that's its own bag, baby,
And it's you also have our government running around everywhere,
you know, and our military is everywhere, was everywhere at
least when I was there. So you have that conflicting.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Well, they're they're so they're incredibly poor, correct, So that's
kind of what you're saying, is there's no money there.
They don't have anything other than poppies. It's they're only export.
Their only thing that is worth anything is uh, what
is poppies? Opium, opium, opium.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
That's ninety eight of the world of the world.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Wow, yeah, comes from all of it.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah yeah, wow, wow.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Okay, Well that's.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
But no, it's like you said, there's no natural resources
you know where there is no oil, you know what
I mean, there's nothing really to take. And the Afghans
know that, especially the postumes, they know that. Like, but
what are you here for? Like, it's not like you're
taking anything from us, and you don't want our poppy
you're burning it, you're destroying our poppy fields, So like

(21:19):
what is it? Like we don't get it, Like we
know you were mad about the bin laden and stuff,
but what don't you understand we don't care either, Like
you want to go kill him, kill him for real,
you know, like and but when you really talk to
a guy who's in the Taliban, like you and I
are sitting here, you can get that perspective of them

(21:39):
being like, my name was Maura is Maury? What do
you want? Do you want me to give you information?
I'll tell you, but I'm not telling you anything that
is Is it valuable? We don't know. Oh, you want
to find that guy? You want a sollphone number, Sure,
I get that. I can give you his license plate,
I can give you his car. I can tell you
what he's wearing today if you want to find and

(22:00):
another guy. But outside of that, what's the value? How
are you making money on this? Are you getting anything
out of this? What is it? Because they don't know,
and so that was that confusion led to a lot
of frustration with them as well, because you know, if
I came in here and I'm like, well, I want

(22:20):
your car, give me your car, and I take it
here and go he stole my car. We're there and
they're going, this has been laden guy's dead. What do
you guys want? Why are you here?

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Like?

Speaker 1 (22:32):
What are you doing? You built this? Score? You built that?
Or you built this Madras up. Thank you, But is
that what you came for? Why are you here? And
you're asking me that? And I'm a guy dealing with
you on behalf of the government, going I get back
to you on that.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Here write a book. Lah, So they're I think that
you say in the book that they're twenty three literary.
Oh and by the way, I wanted to ask you,
since you signed out of the agency, from that moment on,

(23:17):
you no longer have any access to any information that
comes in after you've left, and nobody is willing to
talk to you about it the same way that you
weren't able to talk to you. Right, Let me ask
you a question about the CIA, because are you here
the CIA and John F. Kennedy and the CIA this
and the CIA that information gathering? Okay, other than information gathering.

(23:42):
Other than information gathering? You know, is there? What else
is there? Or is that? What the CIA does is
gather information? And I mean they don't kill people. That's
what our soldiers do. Right. Oh, you gave me a

(24:04):
little luck. Listen. I can read your face. Listen. I
should have been in the CIA, because that looks just that.
Look when I said they don't kill people. Your eyes
went up, like, yeah, they might. You can't say one
way or the other. Can you know?

Speaker 1 (24:20):
What I would give you is the roundabout way of answering. Okay,
there's a difference in Title ten and Title fifty.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Say it again.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Title ten and Title fifty authorities of action, once for
the military and one is for the CIA, and they
operate differently. For Title ten, ope, I don't mess those up.
Title ten is military, and for them to conduct kinetic
action kill somebody, yes, that has to be approved at

(24:51):
the highest levels, right, and this is for the military too.
They're going to have to bring that all the way
up command, like as a Navy seal, you can't do
go hey, let's go of course smoke that house, Like, no,
that's not going to happen. Okay, So they're going to
have to clear that, and you're gonna have to be
at a state of war, so our country will have

(25:11):
had to declare war on your country for us to
send in our military to go and capture you or
if necessary, take you off.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
CIA can get that direct from the president. Okay, So
your Title fifty, yeah, CI can do what can get
that authority direct from the president of the United States,
so they don't have to clear it with like different
generals or different kernels or whatever. Hey, we're going to
hit the site. Yeah, we're going to hit this site
because this happened, and this happened, and that's the guy responsible,

(25:46):
and here's all the evidence we have.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
So who do you have to c who does with.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Title fifty If you're gonna do kinetic action like the
Binladen raid, it's the President of the United States alone.
He has to we ink sign that document that says yes,
go do it. So when you see a zero dark thirty,
you have to realize that that's technically done by the
agency because that happened in Pakistan. Yes, so that's not

(26:11):
a Title ten authority to conduct kinetic action against the enemy.
So we're not at war with Pakistan. So you can't
technically send in the military to go do this, but
CIA Covert Action can do it as under their covert authorities.
So those Seal Team six guys go over to the

(26:35):
Agency and then it's technically conducted as their mission. Okay,
then come signed back over to the US Navy.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Okay. So you mentioned zero duck thirty and I wanted
to get an idea from you. How Catherine Bigelow directed it.
I know Catherine introduced her to Jim Cameron, who they
ended up getting married. That's another story. But I asked, uh,

(27:05):
Kaitlin to ask you, uh, and I mean you probably didn't,
but ask you about Zero Dark thirty and how realistic
what that was. And there's another movie, you know, Fair Game. Yeah, okay.
I wanted to ask you about those two movies. And
I know they're movies, but I wanted to know somewhat

(27:26):
kind of how realistically you look at those those those
two movies, and and as far as being about as
good as you're going to get, as far as really realism, yeah,
you know.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, Zero Dark thirty I think definitely is the most
realistic ci A movie I've ever seen. Okay, just in
its authenticity. Okay, A case officer does me spy A
war zone spy? Yep, that's it's pretty spot on. Like
the first time I saw I was like, this got cleared.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
I can't believe you're surprised.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Oh yeah, I was shocked. But I remember the days
because I was still working there. I remember the days
when Mark Bole wrote it was coming into the headquarters
and like he was getting taken around by the director
and everything, and so I was like, well, hopefully he
gets it right. And yeah, it's well written and just

(28:26):
even like vernacular that we use as a case officer
when you're talking to a source. You know, he's interrogating
a source. And I was like, there's no way they're
going to show that, and they do. You've seen it. Yeah,
I was like, I can't believe that they showed that.
If people know that that's real, like, oh boy, like
this is not going to be good, like, oh, I

(28:50):
mean wolf. But I guess the ending probably took care
of the tend.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
It becomes true years after after we've seen pictures of
fucking fifteen body naked bodies laying on top of each
other and that whole general or that whole that couple.
Are you know, like all the torture stuff that went
on and everything this is years past that or.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Yeah, a lot of I think what you're talking about
took place in a rock.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Oh that's Iraq.

Speaker 5 (29:26):
Wow wow.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
And and and we were in Iraq, what kind of
ant from trying to get to al Qaeda, like torturing
people and uh Iraq to find out about al Qaeda.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Look, I won't even speak to a rock. I never
served there, So I don't know Cowboy as baffled as
you are. Not as much information, Okay, but Zero Dark
thirty takes place, and a lot of things that I
think were important that they showed the bombs. Interrogations take
place in different countries, so like they don't always take
place in Afghanistan, Like somebody might be so important that

(30:04):
you don't want to risk them being in Kabble, you
don't want to risk them being in Kandahar or something
like that. Or maybe you apprehended them somewhere else, maybe
you found them in Cartoon and then you keep them there.
So a lot of information can come from a lot
of different countries based on where those individuals are located.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Was your deployment overseas for the first time sped up
because of the bomb that killed that It was depicted
in Zero Doc thirty. I think it killed seven or
eight CIA officers and a number of other people.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, yeah, it was. That's one of the first things
I talked about in the book too.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Is I wasn't supposed to deploy for probably another eight
to ten months, and then that happened. Right around New
Year's of what was that two thousand and nine? Okay,
And within a few days after that, I was called
into the office and they're like, I think you might
be able to leave like now, like Wednesday, quick as

(31:10):
you can leave. And you got to keep in mind
that that's an even harder question because at that time,
no one in my entire life knew what I did
for a living. I know, they all thought I was
in sales. So now I have two weeks to tell
you what come up with something?

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Move Hawaii.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I moved to Hawaii. You know that's the best I
could come up with.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
I could have come up with that, moved, Yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
I tried, honestly, and I've spoken on this before. The
reason I picked Hawaii is because it was the furthest
away from like my family and people that I knew.
And I was living in DC at the time. So
you're on the East coast, You're gonna come all the
way to Hawaii. If I was in LA, Well, what
is that a four hour flight?

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Right? Right?

Speaker 1 (31:56):
I ain't that bad, right, So yeah, I'll come see
you in Honolulu. But sat in another three to four
hours to That kind of kept people from wanting to
visit unless it was a big deal. And I would
come home every four to six months for R and
R and we'd do something really fun. They'd forget that
I was gone after that for three or four months,

(32:17):
and then I'd come home again and you know, relax.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
How much of do you know the movie Donnie Brascrow?

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, okay, of course, how.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, Johnny Depp? How much of being kind of undercover
like Johnny Depp's character, You know, how much of how
painful is that for you to be dealing with people
not just at home, lying to your girlfriends and lying

(32:52):
to your family and lying to everybody who maybe has
kind of an idea that you're working for the government,
maybe has that idea as compared to like getting these
sources and stuff like this in Pakistan and losing them.

(33:13):
Maybe I've kind of lost my train to thought on
my question, But the whole like not being who you are.
Do you think you could have done that for ten
years or twenty years?

Speaker 1 (33:29):
No? I couldn't. That's the big reason why I left too,
Like I was struggling with it then, right, and I
had really only done it three years in the field,
But how to keep it a secret for all of
ten years. And some people say it gets easier for me,
it actually got harder because once you build the lie,

(33:49):
that's fine, and anybody I talked to, I can defend that.
I've been asked the same questions ten thousand times. I
know what to say. It's rapid row. Here you go, okay,
now go away, leave me alone. But for the people
that grow closer to you, it becomes harder, obviously, because
they have standards and they expect things, and you can't

(34:09):
just tell a girlfriend of several years, hey, I'm gonna
move to Hawaii Tuesday, like you didn't. We should have
set this up, you know, Like there's those just standard
expectations of you can't do that. You can't do that,
What type of guy are you?

Speaker 5 (34:27):
They?

Speaker 1 (34:27):
This can't be true what you're saying. So the hardest
thing is when people didn't believe you're a lie. They
weren't suspecting that I was in the CIA. It's just
what I was using as cover sometimes didn't work. It
wasn't as Yeah, it's just like it doesn't make sense
to us, and I couldn't come up with anything even

(34:50):
for myself that made sense, like Okay, going to Hawaii,
going to be working with the navy, Gonna be on
boats a lot, won't have a cell phone, get bad reception,
won't be able to talk to you guys very much.
Maybe once a month. Okay, deal with it. You know
what you said, but you don't know how it was received.
And somebody who loves you and cares about you is

(35:12):
going but we talk three times a week. That's just
somebody you talk to on the phone. So we're not
doing that. Now. Think about somebody who you kind of
live with, you know, or your folks going way? What
what do you mean You're not coming home for Thanksgiving
or Christmas? Why so get a flight from Hawaii? Like,
I'll buy your flight. You know. My dad would say,

(35:33):
like is it the money thing? Like what's the problem?
Like I just can't why?

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Yeah, okay, And I understand that it isn't there. You know,
it would seem to me that, you know, there would
be a way of saying, I'm not in the CIA.
You know I'm not in the CIA, and yeah, and
and just you at one point in your book, you

(35:59):
you say that you don't want to burden your brother
knew another a woman knew you don't want to burden
burden them with the information. But if that's all they
know is I'm I'm not in the CIA? Is that like?
I mean, you couldn't go there? I mean you couldn't,

(36:23):
you know. I mean, it seems it seems like it's
a very rigid like got nothing to do with the
CEI got nothing, you know, like absolutely not. And and
are there. Yeah, I'm sure I know what the penalties
would be, but uh, it feels more rigid than I

(36:44):
thought that it might be. There might be a great
there's a guy I know who lives in not Washington,
but whatever the state is, blow Washington, and you know,
I'll see you know, he'll be in this place and
this Pakistan and that Akus in the stand, and he'll
be all over the place and his wife will be

(37:04):
suffering from that Cuban uh fuckingsonic thing that they think
that they've you know. Uh, And I'll see him in
a picture with Jim Carrey and Jim Carrey. Is that
is that right, Jim John Carrey, John John Carrey. I'll
see him, Jim, I'll see him. I'll see him in

(37:27):
a picture with John carry guys probably in the CIA,
you know, I mean, I just, you know, would think that,
and if you ask him what he does, he doesn't
have an elaborate cover of like working in Hawaii or
anything like that. He's just it's like I worked for
the government, and that's really all I can say. I mean,

(37:47):
is that Is that not a way to go or
a way that isn't going to work for you?

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (37:52):
No, No, you nailed it, though they see's perspective. And
again when I worked there was we want no one
to know anything at all. So you talk about rigid,
you know, like it was, no, you will not tell anyone,
and anyone you do tell, we better know exactly who
they are, like what's their social Security number, where do

(38:13):
they live, who are they? Why do you know them?
And they want the full biography on that person, so too,
even as the guy doing it, you're like, man, I
don't really want to burden those people. I don't even
want them on my file. And what good is it
to tell my folks right now? But other than to
have them worry, because I'm sure I could have got

(38:34):
a clearance like hey, I want to tell my parents
and they would have worked with me on that right well.
By and large, it's easier for them and was easy
for me. Just don't tell anyone. And the hardest part
was when people did get to that. Sure you don't
work there to get them to drop it, you know
what I mean? Like, okay, understood, you think you know something,

(38:57):
don't talk about it anymore? Right, and not for them
to get at you your girlfriend, you know, not your
best friends. Why aren't you calling me anymore? Why am
I not seeing you? Why aren't we going on a date?
This idea enough? You can't say, stop asking me about
that because you know what it is because I'm not
going to confirm it. But hey, and but not saying anything,

(39:20):
but you knowing from me going we've talked about this,
don't just I don't want to talk about it. Well,
the average person are going to go, well, what's he doing?
Is he seeing somebody else?

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (39:31):
You know, what's he up to? Is Doug even in Hawaii?
What's he doing? Is he a drug dealer? Is he
breaking the law?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
A terrorist?

Speaker 5 (39:39):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Is he a terrorist? He seems to know a lot
about that. So but there's all of those things that
they want to put in, you know, like it must
be this because they can't imagine you're a spy. That's
not what comes.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
To one of mine. One of the things I thought
was amusing about one of the references in your book
is that friends are people that you knew you thought
you were acting mysterious. So because you have such a
boring life that they you wanted them to think that
you were in the CIA here you were in they.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Would have sounded like a lot.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Yeah, yeah, No. I had people close to me say
that like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah, big agent
Doug over there. I mean, okay, but yeah, you'd get
that too, right, But it's just yeah, I mean, look,
it's something that you're doing that you're very proud of

(40:37):
and you want to be able to tell people but
you can't.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
And so just to speak on that, like from the
psychological perspective, a lot of people can act tough. And
I know, ten years ago when I came out and
wrote the book, I was still kind of, you know,
on my high horse, like well, you don't know, you know,
things like that. But you know, now looking back, it's
like man, having to old face lie to somebody is

(41:04):
not fun when you care about them, but when they know,
it's even worse. And when you know that they're playing
along with you. You feel bad, Like it's just like a
dirty feeling, Like what was the I was watching the
show on Effects recently clipped or something. It was about
the clippers owner and how his wife knew he was

(41:26):
cheating on her and had five six different extras on
the side and all of this and her just being
like there he goes, and then having to just because
she wanted to live the life just still put up
with it. And so you just get a really kind
of nasty feeling of like, man, I want to tell you,

(41:47):
and I'm not doing anything bad. I promise I'm not
doing anything bad. But then why wouldn't you tell me?
Why are you lying things that are good that you're
doing You should want to tell me, Like if you're
a Seal Team six, you can tell people that, Like
don't you see the tattoo? You know? Yeah, I live
in Coronado.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Uh, But for me back in the day, this is
how much things have changed. I did a terrible movie
called Navy Seals Ship.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
That fucking movie is awesome. I love that movie. Don't
even start with I'm gonna defend it if you won't
fucking love that movie.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Horrible.

Speaker 5 (42:25):
No it's not.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
No, it's not.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
If you want to go line by line in that movie,
go ahead, I'll go. Was the Dawkins. Wasn't that one
of the characters. Yeah, it's Chuck she Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Oh, we had a great cast. Yeah, we had the
name because of top Gun. You know that was filling
up there there, you know, uh, coffins of of people
signing up or whatever. Yeah, thank you, Jim. And so
the Navy, we had the Navy behind us. We're shooting

(43:01):
on aircraft carriers. We're shooting like we had helicopters. See
what they're you know, we were jumping out of it.
I wasn't but jumping out of airplanes and shit like that.
And but we had a and we had an incredible cast.
We had packs, and we had Rick Rossovich, Charlie Sheen
of course, who was sober, just like completely and funny

(43:23):
fun Young made three million dollars for the movie, just
a young, fun funny guy. We had a see a
seal for each one of us, you know, to double us.
And so but even at that time, they wouldn't they
they did that little thing that I said, like there
is no Seal Team six on the East coast back then.

(43:43):
That was how it's how different it was as far
as people in the seals talking about what they had.
These guys had all just retired, you know, and they
just you know the difference now between guys writing books,
guys writing you know, like like like and movies and

(44:04):
you know whatever, it's commerce, it is what it is.
But man, they were very secretive back then.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
That was still the same until Bin Laden quite honestly,
uh Tier one Operators, Seal Team six, Delta Forest guys
like that still to this day, well not to this day,
up until ten years ago, we're still like that, Like
what's ST six? I'm not sure what that test force is?
What are you talking about? Well, I'm on it? So

(44:31):
does it exist? Like we just ate cake together at
that table, So do we want to talk about what
we did last night or not? Like why can't I
say that? You know? And that would sometimes get me
in trouble too, because I would just be like, wait
a second, Like you get to go home at night

(44:53):
and you have buddies that you tell that you do this, Okay,
I tell no one but you guys I can talk to.
So there's no fucking way I'm gonna be here in
Afghanistan pretending like this unit doesn't exist, Like, what are
you talking about? Well, make sure you don't say that
when you're back in DC.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
What I'm not in DC right now.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
I'm gonna say whatever I want right here. People don't
even understand what I'm saying anyway, you know. So, But yeah,
they were very guarded, and then a lot happened, and
it was like, well, I mean, you guys know who
we are, right yeah, so their.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Their standard line to me was so if it told you,
I'd have to kill you. Yeah, I'm sure you've heard
that dozens of times. You know.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
It's more just shut up about that, Doug? Would you?

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Well there, I noticed at one point you seem to
have part of the CIA. Seemed you mentioned snipers in
the book. Just this. Did I mix something up? Is
there anything to do with snipers and C A C
I A snipers?

Speaker 1 (46:01):
I don't know. If you give me something specific, okay, I.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Can't get I can't give you anything more.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Are you thinking of scorpions?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
No? No, no, no, let me move. Let me move on
to something. Let me move, let me move on to
something else. How's your health?

Speaker 5 (46:17):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Because Caitlin told me, Uh, they you were sick earlier
this year? Was it earlier this year? And you spent
four months in the hospital. Dude, that is a long
effing time to be in the hospital and.

Speaker 1 (46:39):
Great weight loss program.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Don't get much booze in there either though. By the way,
have you had any booze since your heart attack? No?

Speaker 1 (46:48):
I didn't have a heart attack.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Well you're you said you had a heart attack.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
And you're both oh and no, this just happened recently.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
No, no, no, But the other thing, do you know you've
got me and you've got a lot in common when
it comes to like illnesses and problems and infections and
stuff like that. No, but you had another yeah? Yeah,
Like did you quit drinking then? And have you stopped?

Speaker 1 (47:12):
I stopped. I haven't drunk since November, So however long
that is like eight months? Nine months, ten months?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Okay, So the hardest act didn't stop you either, right?

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Hell? No, man, that was in my twenties, you say.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
You say, you say in your book, I'm I'm thirty
years old and I can't drink anymore shit, you know,
And I'm thinking like me being a boozer for like
forty years.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
I'm like, I'll bet you the guys start.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
You know, Applebee's has a two for one cash back.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
What happened or no? Now, no, no, no, what happened?
And this we'll get to some of yours. I've got
my own dick stories, so I want to kind of
get to that. My half of my dick story rivals
your dick stories. But I wanted to, Yeah, I wanted
to find out what's happened to you recently? Uh? And

(48:21):
can you talk about what? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (48:23):
I mean that wasn't from going at it too hard
or anything like that. I just had had It's kind
of just my mindset and I've tried to learn from it.
Was always to fix itself. Yeah, if I'm sick, like however,
Renny knows, well, go away. I don't take pills or anything,
you know, like who cares.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Except for that oy okay.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Anyway, yeah go back except for that really hardcore drug. Otherwise.
Uh No. So I've just kind of been like it
fixed itself, like I'll get better and if I don't,
I'll go to a hospital. And so with that, I
just I didn't get better. I had a really bad virus.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
What was your symptoms you have fever, stomach ache, you know,
like what what was wrong with you? Fatigue?

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah, To be completely honest, I wasn't making sense. I
was talking with my girlfriend and she was like, what
are you talking about? Because I was kind of just
mumbling okay, So like it just had a real.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Sounds like my stroke.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
But yeah, yeah, exactly. And I didn't really even know
what was going on, you know. I was just kind
of sitting in a restaurant and I was like, what,
who are you? She's like, you don't know who I am?
And it just happened like that, you know. But it
came to that I had been when did this happen? November? Okay? Three?

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah, And but I had been kind of down and
out and not feeling well for a month or so
before that, and then in November, just I just no
longer made sense and like I just felt really sick.
It's because the virus was really acting up and it
spread from like my kidneys to my liver.

Speaker 7 (50:15):
And uh, I mean, what was your diagnosis?

Speaker 1 (50:20):
They gave me? Just I was just at the doctor's office, uh, yesterday,
and he gave me the long term for it, and
I was like, yeah, I'm not going to be able
to remember that. That's way too medical for me. Yeah,
so you get it. So I was like, uh, huh,
can we condense that? Do you have an acronym? But no,
it's just a really serious, very serious virus that started

(50:43):
and my kidneys spread through my blood to the point
where my liver wasn't like allowing blood to process through it,
it was storing. It was storing the blood like when
it let it come in or exit, just wanted to
hold on to it. So then it's going to start
to swell so and really quick, because when that happens,
that's bad news bears. And so I had to go

(51:04):
to the er and ended up staying four months. Two
surgeries later.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
You had two surgeries this year, last Christmas, November December
last year, you had two surgeries, And what did they
do in the surgeries with the virus.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
All the way up and down and just opened me
up because they needed to see what was going on
and had to do a lot of repair because it
had damaged like a lot of my organs and my
stomach and everything else. So pretty much everything in here
was just not working anymore. I'd just shut down. And

(51:44):
you can ask and I certainly did, like, was this
from drinking too much? Because that's all I've really ever done.
I've never really done drugs, so like, is this from
drinking too much? And they're like, not at the rate
you are drinking now, no, but could have some residual
effects from how you used to go down, you know,
and what you used.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
They always say that about everything. So that's that is.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, it came out of nowhere. And I stayed for
a long time, and.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
You're in an intensive care for a while and then's.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
Just eer for like five weeks and how to be
resuscitated twice.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Wow on Christmas you stop breathing. My heart stopped. Wow.

Speaker 5 (52:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
And I was open, as they say, for like ten days.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
When you're open, like I've had open heart surgery, talking
about open like that.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
Why like wide open from here to here. They left
me open.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
For like ten days, for how long?

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Ten days while they were just trying to they needed
to keep going back in and back in and see
what was going on.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
And at that time, were you do you remember all
this stuff? Oh? Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
So I woke up sometime in late January and then stayed.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
So uh that's uh, well, I hope you're I hope
that never happens to you again. I mean, you know,
that sounds pretty horrible, you know, and it sounds like, ah,
you know, if you were still in the CIA, I'm

(53:31):
not sure if I would believe the story exactly. You
know that you don't have a name.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
For it, or I show you the scar.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
No, no, no, no, I believe you. Let's let's get
back to your book a little bit, because I what's
the name of the book, Jim Left of Boom, Left
of Boom, right? And uh, what did I think he
should have called it? Oh, it's the best seller, So
we can't go down that line. I was going to
basically say, like you should have called it I was
a spy or I was in the CIA, you know.

(53:59):
I mean Left of Boom is the sort of sort
of ambiguous. You know, I was in the CIA, you know,
I was you know, a spy. Yeah, I thought that
would have been a better title. But if I had
no idea you were on the New York Times, You're
on the best seller's list, and that you made a
lot of money doing, you know, I just thought it
was a book, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Well, that was an argument that lasted probably a year.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
The name of the book, well, let me Left of
Boom just me like, is that a because I I
was listening to it and I listened to that part
so left a boom, and I kind of went back
and looked at it again and I didn't quite get it,
so I just kept moving along. That just means you
weren't in the like would would you? Is that a

(54:43):
term that you would use a lot of people would
use in the military and or the CIA, where you're
saying like, I wasn't at the party, I was left
to boom, or I wasn't at that incident, I was
left of boom? Is that like a saying?

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Or now it's become a saying. See it used all
the time, especially like in tech, which shows that they
don't know where it really came from. But uh, it
was a term that meant like all of the pre
planning and pre staging we're going to do before this
event kicks off or before that thing happens, and oftentimes

(55:17):
that thing was a bad thing that's happening, So you
wouldn't call everything prior to like the mid laden raid
left of boom, But in explosion and ID that went
off and killed some people. You'd say, well, what happened
left of boom?

Speaker 2 (55:31):
So?

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Like, what happened before the blast? What was going on
left of boom? I would say that a lot. What
was going on left of boom? Who was involved left
of boom?

Speaker 5 (55:39):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (55:40):
So and so and so and so did they know anything?
What did they do right of boom?

Speaker 5 (55:44):
So?

Speaker 1 (55:45):
After the explosion? What did these guys start doing? So
that's what I'm talking about. And yes, to your point,
for over a year you are that title Left of
Boom and I was.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Your published?

Speaker 1 (56:02):
No, because we'll get Matthew McConaughey to play it. Yeah, yeah, okay,
well so many things.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Did you have any discussions about retaining the redactions in
the printed book?

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Uh? The redactions? See, I'm probably the only one. I don't.
I didn't care about the redactions because I know what's
behind them, So uh, I don't. I don't feel that
anything that was redacted really took away too much, because
when it did, I would fight them on that and
be like, they're not going to understand even what this
whole chapter means if you take that out, So what

(56:43):
can I put in instead?

Speaker 8 (56:45):
Like?

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Work with me and the agency was actually pretty good,
uh and working with me with their publication review board,
and so I would rewrite sections be like, okay, I
dumbed it down. Can I say it like this? Okay,
we don't want to say the country name. Okay, this
place to the east, can I say that? Yeah, because
any place could be to the east. You know, world's

(57:08):
a circle.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
So I would just just listening to it. I would
like to thank you for the opportunity to listen to
classical music, for you know, more classical music that I've
heard than when I saw Amadeus. I think that was

(57:30):
the last time I heard that much classical music. But
the good thing about classical the good thing about classical music,
as you well know, is free.

Speaker 8 (57:39):
Yeah, well I wanted n w A, They're not free.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Talk to me a little bit about like when you
first deployed, how much uh ah no help you had
the word I'm thinking support, how much non support you
had when you were dropped into that your very first thing,

(58:12):
and your boss kind of meets you. You're getting off
the helicopter and the head of that area, your boss
or your chief or whatever is kind of leaving, oh
see in a month or whatever, and you go in,
you start asking questions. We don't know who's the ahead
of this, We don't know what, we don't know. Talk
to me a little bit about like what what what

(58:32):
that was like?

Speaker 1 (58:33):
And yeah, I mean since we were talking about it, it
would kind of be the same thing as if you
walk into a hospital and all the doctors go, m
I haven't seen that before. Okay, I get it, neither
have I, but it's happening to me. So what do
you want me to do?

Speaker 5 (58:50):
Now?

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Figure it out? Learn to speak the language? Okay, yes,
got to take a sweet year. But yeah, that's I
mean that analogy works. It was kind of like we
don't know what do you want? We don't know, so
figure it out or not or do or don't? But

(59:13):
what are we going to do? Like you are here,
you were trained to do your job that we train
you to do, which is collect intel.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
So either you know how to do it and you
can do it that's why you're here, or you don't
know how to do it, so don't then don't. I
don't know. We wasted our time and we wasted our money.
And there were some that were like wow, or you
do get it and you're going to do a good job,
and you're going to get us great intelligence and great

(59:43):
we're glad we picked you to do it. Sometimes no,
sometimes yes, But I don't know how many baseball players
do you know in the league alone? I know like ten,
and they're all stars. You know, they're really good. I
don't know who the relief picture is for the Marlins, right,
who cares? You know, that's kind of your thing. So
if you're doing it, great, But if you're not, what

(01:00:06):
can they do?

Speaker 5 (01:00:07):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
I mean, we trained you for it. We want you
to do it. But if you're not, I guess send
you home. But at least having you there, at least
we have somebody there if you can do it. But
that was a big frustration definitely. As you mentioned, Like
when I got there, there were a lot of people
going like, ah, well, we've been here ten years. You

(01:00:30):
don't know what we're doing. That's what you're for, brother,
it's been ten years. You got to give me something. Yeah,
that's what you're here for. Well what was the guy
before me here for? We created your position for you. Okay,
Well what should I be doing for the person who
comes after me?

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Did somebody instruct you or or or advise you to
go to those me that all the old men have
where they're bitching about what. Okay, did somebody advise you
to do that? Or did you just kind of say
that I got to go out there and mix with
the uh, with the with the people, and you know,

(01:01:16):
and and and I should say and and and part
of the whole story is that you, uh, you grew
a beard down to here, uh, you dressed like and
you spoke pastun past, you spoke past How many other
people in the agency did you meet that could speak

(01:01:40):
past tuned as.

Speaker 7 (01:01:41):
Well as you fluently as well as you? Not a
very low number, very little. Yeah, I mean that really
didn't become.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
That big of an important deal until, like I kind
of fell in the right place at the right time
where they had made the decision right upbout the time
I had graduated the farm, which is our big training
on how to be a spy. Yes, right about when
I graduated, they had decided that they really wanted to
focus on the culture, you know, and understanding the language

(01:02:18):
and understanding just who are these postumes?

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
And so I was one of the first people to
get accepted into that language program. And that takes a
full year.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
So there were a year like after you graduated the farm,
you were just doing a year of language. Yes, all day,
every day. Yeah yeah, because.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
And then and then you got over there and they
dropped you in a spot where your accent was just
like you know, they dropped you in Alabama and you
had a New York yeah right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Uh yeah, yeah. That's the thing. And I've said this
to people, like, just imagine you're from a foreign country
and you come to the United States and you're so
cool because you speak English and you learned it at
this top university in your country, and you're fluent in English.
Go to New Orleans and listen to some rap music

(01:03:20):
and let me know how much you understood in that
first verson or second? What's a slab? That's a car?
A slab of meat, No, a slab of steel. What's
a car You're going to write in it? How would
I have known that? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Now you know?

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
And then you got, oh my god, all of the
words that the Taliban would use to disguise what they
were saying, like radio talk. And so now not only
have I had to learn your way of speaking in
the South, which is a different way of saying it.
But I have to know real words that I know,

(01:03:59):
but that means something else. So like the word giraffe, Well,
now I need to know what that how you say that, imposture.
But then I also need to know that you're not
really talking about a giraffe. You're talking about an RPG. Wow,
because you're not saying RPG right, you're saying giraffe. Well,
I'm thinking of an animal, but I need to be
thinking of what you know it to be. So there

(01:04:20):
might be three or four different words you need to
know just to understand. Oh, this guy's talking about an RPG.
Oh this is deadly. Oh it's not about the zoo,
got it? Okay? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
So one of the it's just the jokingly called this.
I think it's I don't know what chapter it is,
but there's half of one chapter where you basically kind
of express your grievances about the c I A and
and and and and working there. And one of the

(01:04:57):
lines you have two lines, get it on me. One
of the lines. I think I copied this out of it,
listened to it and copied it down correctly.

Speaker 5 (01:05:08):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
One of the problems with the CIA was the bureaucratic
culture that discouraged developing a new asset was changed to
kind of go absolutely against everything that the SEI is face.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Yeah, God, there's a lot to that. I stand by
that still, but I would say it's because a lot
of the focus on doing my job was still wrapped
around and based upon how it was done in Moscow,
you know, Moscow. I'm saying, just like it to be

(01:05:51):
a spy, Like this is how you do it in Russia,
this is how you do it in China, this is
how you do it in any other country. But in
those countries, US tanks aren't driving down the street, you know,
and bombs aren't going and there's not IDs driving your car,
and there's not the Taliban everywhere, you know, Like this
is an entirely different environment. But we still only have

(01:06:14):
this manual teaching us how to do it the way
we've always done it, And now we don't really have
a manual for how to do it with these types
of individuals. So we better write a new one, or
better come up quick from what we have learned in
this and improvise to get what we need to get.
So that's kind of what they were trying to do,

(01:06:35):
especially with cultural training and giving me the language. That
was a huge force multiplier and it really helped for
me to get what I wanted. But for those who
didn't get that and still filled those slots, a lot
of people would come to me and be like, Hey,
will you talk to my guy because I don't I mean,

(01:06:57):
I don't know if the interpreter has really even telling
me the truth, because now it's a three man show,
you know, and you have no idea what either of
those two said, and that guy works for you, and
that guy's Taliban, and you don't know what they're talking about.
You just have to believe that guy that he's what
are we doing here? You know? So we tried breaking

(01:07:19):
through on that, and then from what I've been I
left shortly after. So I don't know, but I've been
told by a lot of my buddies that by two
or three years after I was gone, the posture program
was all but over, like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
We just the posture program, meaning what the language program.
Really it was all over? But why? But why? It
would seem to me at that point and even before then,
like the first year or two years, you think it
would be one of the most important things. What they
did with you, you would think would be one of the
most important things that they could do with an agent.

(01:07:55):
All right, see I call you an agent whatever you yeah,
you know, And they just just was not not on
their It's kind of what I what I say about
well just was not part of not on their agenda.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
I mean, it's kind of to I mean, if you're.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
I know you're special. But if I know you're you know,
I read your book, so I know you're very special.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
You're very smart and gung ho ah ah. And you
wanted to get over there, not so badly that you're
willing to give a blowjob like the girls to get
over there a little quicker. But I but you did,
you did. I lost my train of thought that. Oh

(01:08:43):
you mentioned in the book that some of the girls
were able to find their way up the ladder and
on off.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
I don't remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
You don't remember that? Yeah, Okay, what was I saying, Jim?
Do you know what I was saying?

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Sometimes I talking about the poshtune program and them getting
rid of it, and you thought it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Was oh yeah, So, I mean, it just seems like
a no brainer that that they would have I guess
they didn't know they were going to be there twenty
years you, yeah, it was.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
But I mean it does take time, and I get it.
But think about how important Afghanistan was in August of
two thousand and one. Who cares? You know what I mean? Like,
no one could even place it on a map. Where's Tajikistan,
where's the Kazakhstan?

Speaker 5 (01:09:36):
That's what we know?

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Bat that yeah with the mustache there, that was Afghanistan too,
And then now suddenly it's the most important thing. Okay,
well we need to send a ton of people there
right now, and we need to fix this problem. Well,
all of those people that you're going to send there

(01:09:58):
used to be focused on something else. So if they
had made their career being experts on let's say China,
and they speak fluent Mandarin, they're not going to speak Pashtu,
totally different languages. It's not even moore to be close,
and they're not going to know anything about the culture.
And that's not their fault. But now bodies are needed,

(01:10:18):
and these guys have already passed the farm, and we
need you to have passed the farm to be doing
this type of work. So do you think you guys
can improvise and come here and do that type of
labor here, Not always, you know, And that took a
lot of a lot of failing and learning from it
to even get where I was ten years in and

(01:10:41):
now it's twenty years later, and I'm wondering what did
we learn. I don't know, I really don't.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
It reminds me sometimes I think about the fact that
the United States government intelligence agencies, I would think, or
the military intelligence agencies, you know, the idea that you know,
we were driving humbies without fucking armor plated, you know,

(01:11:11):
and like we didn't what we didn't know they were
going to be using IEDs to blow up our humbies.
Like that just seems so shortsighted from an intelligence point
of view, and from it not even talking about the
c I ain't talking about the military intelligence that like,
oh we didn't never even thought they'd put a bomb
on the road, and right right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Yeah, And a lot of that was always too Like
if you are seeing something that maybe not other people
are seeing, the question that's going to come back to
you is says, who prove it? When did that happen? Oh,
it has never happened before. Why well, why would it
happen to get why would it ever happen? Then? Who's

(01:11:52):
to say that it's going to happen. You say it's
going to happen, but it hasn't happened in the past. Okay,
well I don't want it to happen in the future.
Now you got a big hill to climb.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
I mean it when I say it, though, that we learn,
like anything in life, the most from our mistakes, and
so we had to make mistakes to learn from them. Unfortunately, though,
the costs of those mistakes are a lot bigger than
learning to write in cursive, you know. Yeah, yeah, you
can lose some lives, Jim, do you have.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
We Our withdrawal from Afghanistan was seen as a big
disaster and the Taliban took no time at all taking
over the country.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Was there ever a chance that that wasn't gonna happen?

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
I didn't think so either.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
I mean, I'm not even going to give you a
story on that. No, And you know it, and we
knew it. I mean, it's what I'm writing every day,
Like you know that this dude's just going to hang
out in Pakistan until we leave, right and if he
dies of a heart attack. His son's going to take
over y S and his son has eight kids and
they'll take over for him. So like they're not going

(01:13:06):
to leave, they'll be back.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
Well, what I was interpreting Jim's question to be was
the flawed way in which politically, uh, we we left
the company, we left the country, And I don't I'm not.

(01:13:28):
I don't ever want this podcast to be political. I
don't want I don't want to have anything to do
with politics. But Biden got you know, pushed very It's
been pushed around pretty hard for the fact that we
left a bunch of materials there and that we had
eight men killed in that suicide bombing that went off
of the border. But you know, look at Vietnam and

(01:13:50):
look at them standing on top of the fucking embassy
with their pushing helicopters. I mean, you know, it's just
isn't that I thought Jim was asking, wasn't that going
to happen? Is there any way to kind of leave
a country and leave a people and all in your

(01:14:12):
assets and stuff like that in a kind of cool, calm,
neat way.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
I wish I forget the name of the movie. Is
it called Lord of War has Nicholas Cage in Yes, yeah, yeah,
So I just watched that a couple months ago, and
he's talking about how at least he's buying all this
stuff from the Ukraine and Russians. This is in like
the eighties and nineties, and he's saying, yeah, I'm able

(01:14:40):
to buy all of it because it's cheaper for them
to sell it to me than to bring it back
home and store it somewhere. And they don't have any
need for it anymore, so they want to get rid
of it, or it's easier just leave it there, leave
it behind, and yeah for all intents and purposes, like
to bring everything we had over there home. Yeah, it

(01:15:02):
was like, we can do it cheaper just to build
it new. Then we'll have something fresh and better. So
why do we want any of this old stuff? Just
leave it. And whether you agree with that or not,
I'm not political either. That is what happened. That was
the decision why it was made. It is more expensive

(01:15:22):
to bring all of this home and store it and
let it collect dust, then just build something new when
we need it. So that's why it went down that way.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about
you're like, you broke your ankle pretty badly on one
of your leaves, and from what I understood from the book,

(01:15:54):
you don't have any idea how it happened. You don't
remember ever breaking it or or or you know, you
woke up one morning, you woke up out of a
blackout or whatever, and seems to me like you were
fucking pretty well had. And I've been a boozer of
my whole life, and I quit a while ago, but
you know, you seem like you're pretty well headed on

(01:16:14):
the fucking alcoholic drug addict, you know, like headed there.
You know. It's like I've said before even on this
podcast that at first drinking, you know, the fun is
always up here and the consequences are down here. And
the more you drink, the more the consequences grow and

(01:16:35):
the fun diminishes. And so before before we even talk
about the uh uh, the not xenix, the what's the
drug you're on? Oxy oxicone oxy coaton? Uh uh? Do

(01:16:57):
you remember breaking your foot? Do you remember like like
what happened? Oh, I I was under the impression that
you didn't know what happened. I was, yeah, yeah, what
did you how did you do it. Maybe it's the book.
I didn't read it. Yeah, oh that's right, you did
mention you just slipped on some ice and tore your
fucking ankle in half just about right. Yeah, okay, And

(01:17:19):
so that's when you started taking oxy cot. Right, So
I read in your book when you were you know,
having uh, you know, getting off the alcohol and getting
off the alcohol. Uh. I think wash it sounded. And
I've been through this a number of times. But when
I've been on long binges for three or four months

(01:17:41):
at a time, and I'm drinking a fifth of whiskey
every day, and and and uh, you know, I have
to be uh, I have to go to a doctor
and they have to put me under. I didn't do
what you did, which was like, you know, just like
hold on to it and and go for it. What
about the oxycot? And didn't you have Like there's a

(01:18:01):
whole great movie called Dope Sick. Have you ever heard
of Dope Sick or seen the there's a television movie whatever.
Michael Michael Keaton stars in it, and it's basically about
oxy cotton, and it's basically about the company that made oxy
conton and them saying that this is not addictive. This

(01:18:26):
is not an addictive drug, and you didn't mention if
you mentioned it in your book. I didn't understand how
you were able to just that fuck. And you know,
because I've I've taken like sixteen milligrams of xanax at
one time in my life, and you sounded like you
were taking a hell of a lot of that shit.

(01:18:49):
And were there repercussions from coming off that that you
don't talk about in the book or are I mean,
I know what it's like to come off O. Yeah.
I would have thought the whole withdrawal thing from the
oxy cotton. I'm pronouncing it wrong, I guess, but I
would have thought that that seems like that kills people.

(01:19:10):
That seems like that. That was you know, they've made
movies about the fact that people were addicted to that
and couldn't get off of it. Michael Keaton's character in
that movie. I was talking about the doctor and you know,
so can you talk to me about it?

Speaker 5 (01:19:25):
Was?

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Is that just? Yeah, because you say maybe after it's
towards the end of the book or whatever, you say,
you just came home and threw it all in the
fucking toilet, And that was the end of that, and
that seems odd to me.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Yeah, withdrawal. Uh I can't think of anything worse than
what those days were like. And it lasts for a
really long time.

Speaker 2 (01:19:51):
Did you do I'm sorry to interrupt, but did you
do both alcohol and oxy cont withdrawals at the same time? Okay? Okay?
And that was so dangerous that you ended up in
the hospital? Correct or you ended up with a heart problem?
Is that? Tell me what what the repercussions of that
were as far as your health? Yeah, I mean you

(01:20:13):
said you had a minor heart Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Well, I mean I wasn't really working because I had
the broken ankle.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
That was my first time really when you think about
it in my life that I had nothing to do.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
You don't need to justify what you were dronking do
because you're talking to their fucking choir on that one. Bro.
But but go ahead, but but go ahead.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
I wasn't trying to get numbers. Wow, you should have seen.
Uh No, the long and short of it is, it's
not even sugarcoating. It's just telling you flat out I
had nothing to do. I was bored. I didn't know
what to do. I knew I couldn't go to work,

(01:21:00):
and my work was my life. That was everything I do.
I had become I get it, and so I didn't
have anything as the first time I had nothing. And
you take these pills and you drink, and you know
what it makes you feel like, Hi, You're good to go,
and then what's the ending? Go to sleep? Sweet? You know,

(01:21:21):
And then I can just do this every day because
you keep prescribing it to me, and I'm getting ninety
at a time. Okay, well that's going to last me
about thirty five days, then, isn't it. You know, like
just knowing like, okay, all right, so we'll go through
that because I know what it's going to be if
I stop, and I know how bad it's going to
be if I stop. So even feeling that kind of

(01:21:45):
come on and maybe you've experienced this too, like even
feeling like a withdrawal kind of steep in.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
Oh, I felt that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
Look, I'm not trying to one up and I'm not
trying to be disrespectful. I'm trying to be You.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Can't disrespect me. I'm unrespectable.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
That's my next topic. We're going to get to that.
Write that down. But no, I mean you know in
anybody listening to this, who's really been through that? And
it's why I tell you, because you know we talked
and I know that you have. But it's real easy

(01:22:25):
to tell when somebody's bullshitting and it's like, oh, yeah,
you got drunk once, had to hangover. That's neat. That's
neat I'm talking about. I can't move, I can't think.
I'm just standing at my sink. What the fuck do
I do now? I don't know what I'm doing for today.
I don't know what I'm doing in the next minute,

(01:22:47):
Like what am I gonna do? What do I do?
I can't go into work. This leg hurts. Okay, well
I'm gonna take another pill and I know what that's
going to lead.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
To always you know what's she like so much? But anyway,
I'm sorry I interrupted.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
You know I knew that coming here you would find
great joy in making fun of the guy overdosing on
ACTI cooder.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
No, no, no, I I that is listen.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
No, I like it. I enjoy getting a kick out
of it now because I know how bad it was,
like you did, so I'm willing to laugh about it now,
like yeah it did and it fucking sucked. You're right,
and I'm sorry I did it, But I did do it,
and I can speak a lot about it and it
wasn't fun, but at the time it takes a lot before. Yeah,

(01:23:47):
it does take time after to look back at it
and go, Jesus Christ, I did that. And you're talking
about milligram counts and you're going, okay, well one a day,
it's fifty milligrams and I'm taking two fifty. Oh and
that's been going on for four months. Huh, how's this
going to end? So once you even feel a little

(01:24:08):
crack coming in, you're like, no way am I going
to let that door open. So now let's just take
three hundred milligrams.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
Yeah, well then drink more.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
Well, the fifth was okay, but let's put a little
couple three more shots on top of that. And you
might go, we aren't you embarrassed? No, I mean I.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
Did it, you know, I I did it kind of
the same reason that you did, just because I kind
of could.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32):
He had watch this, watch me bring it full circle
for you, Tombstone. You have that quote you're talking with
I think the actor's name was Powers Booth. Yeah, and
he turns to you, and he goes, if I was
on stage with that devil, I'll tell you what I'd
do is I'd bend him over and show him the
way or something like that. Way you think of that

(01:24:54):
and you go, I did it. You're like, I already
did it. And then he just goes like he's your
top dog, you know, He's like, oh uh and you're like,
I already did it. You know, it's like whoa, Okay.
So that's kind of how I look at this too.

(01:25:14):
I have no problem talking about it, you know, and yeah,
that happened, and uh am I happy it happened?

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
Am I sad that it happened? Not really, you know,
but it had to happen. That's what was going on
at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
And do you look at do you look at your
life and and and look back and say, would you
have changed from this from the moment I'm talking to you,
Would you have changed anything? Would you have?

Speaker 5 (01:25:43):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:25:43):
No, because I think that that all comes with experience.
And I know I sound like a hack, and but
it really does. And only when you get older do
you realize that building up those rests.

Speaker 2 (01:25:56):
You're not old.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
But anyway, write that now there's a lot of people.
I'd like to tell that too, but it does. And
you know this like being able to see it now? God,
when did I leave thirteen fourteen years ago, since I
was in Afghanistan? And look at it now, forget the politics,

(01:26:19):
forget all that. Let's just look at what I was
doing on a day to day basis personally. Now, what
I was doing for the mission, or what I was
doing with the Taliban or any of that, just who
I was, your character. You know, Wow, I can't believe
you did that. But I'm not there now. So for
me to say, well, I would never do that now,

(01:26:41):
but I would do that then because I was there then,
and that's what my mind said was the right thing
to do. That's what it told me to do. That's
what I did. I followed it. And now this is
what has become of it. Okay, Well, do you want
me to whine about it or cry about it and
apologize for it? I know you don't, but I'm saying
like I'm not going to.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
Aren't you proud? Are you proud of of of your
of your expenditure of time and effort and uh resources
and physical you know, and and all the ship went
on with your girlfriends and your family. I mean, are
you proud of of of?

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
I don't know if proud's the right word. And as
much as I'm glad I did it right, you know,
because you talk about would I do anything differently, Uh,
I'm sure I'll have feelings about sitting here right now
ten years from now like.

Speaker 2 (01:27:39):
I never should have.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
Because I think I don't do podcasts. Ever. I go
on Michael Bean's show from the Tombstone Quo it just
went no.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
Actually, I thought I thought, I thought you did the
line real well. I thought you'd the line real well. Jim.
Do you have any any any any questions?

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
No, I really don't. I enjoyed the book very much,
and I think a lot of your personality comes across
in the book. It's definitely not a driver.

Speaker 2 (01:28:16):
What's the name of the book, Jim, Left to Boom,
Left to Boom, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
A lot of insight and humor to it. I was
taken by your sense of wander lust. If you get bored, well,
let's go run with the bulls in Pampona. I want
to go surfing in Costa Rica. Or before you even
go to Afghanistan, you decide you're going to go to
the middle of Mongolia for crying out loud. So it
was a very fun reading and I enjoyed it quite

(01:28:42):
a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
I uh oh, I just have written here Mormons where
he know, well he One of one of the things
that you mentioned in your book is that more means
to make great. So you don't know if the uh,

(01:29:07):
I don't know restrictions or whatever. Like when when you
got into the CIA you could not have smoked marijuana. No,
that was like an absolute, like you smoke marijuana, You're
never going to get in the CIA, and I'll find
out about it or whatever. Right, But maybe now, I
mean maybe now it's different, but it is, but it is. Well,

(01:29:29):
how do you know, because it's public knowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
You can look it up online, okay, just on their
website to tell you how many years. I think for
me it wasn't no never. I think it was ten years.
So you had to have not smoked marijuana for ten years. Oh,
but it's still considered illegal federally still by the federal
United States. It's illegal state by state. California it's legal,

(01:29:55):
but still federally illegal drug. So you're still breaking the
law even if you're in La if you want to
join the CAA, you've still broken a federal law. So
ten years it used to be had to pass. Now
I think for weed and weed alone, it's eighteen months.
I think unless they change it again.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
I haven't had any weed in the past eighteen months.

Speaker 1 (01:30:19):
Okay, Yeah, I haven't smoked weed in eighteen months. You
can then apply that day, okay. But this is what
I tell people, because I used to talk quite a
bit at colleges. Just dude, if it's eighteen months, be
happy it's not ten years, and don't lie, because here's
what it is going to happen. If you want to

(01:30:40):
do what I did, you're going to get polygraphed and
you will not beat it. You won't, right, you will,
of course because with technology now if you think it
still like with you know, wet ink, going back now
it's a laptop and the laptop's ninety nine point nine
percent correct.

Speaker 2 (01:30:59):
It just says like it just pops up whire.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
My mind just saying you know who he is? Right?
Did not? It just was a question mark, why right,
why are we doing this? But no, you can't. You
can't beat it. And I went through it because even
after you become a case officer. When you get back
from tours, you're gonna have to do polygraphs and talk
about what you did. You know, you see it. It's

(01:31:27):
the same with like a seal. If he goes on
a raid or a mission, he's going to have to
have an after action report and talk about what happened
and what he saw and what he did.

Speaker 2 (01:31:36):
So you know, I was I was awakened baked guy
for about fucking thirty years, I would say, from the
time I was twenty until you know, and and you know,
if I had a big scene or something like that,
I might you know, I probably probably didn't do it.
But you know, there's an argument to be made. It's

(01:31:57):
smoking pot. You know. I I used to be at home.
I get a script, Tombstone comes along, I said it there.
I got the offer, I got the job, I met
the director, deal has been worked out. I haven't picked
up the script. I haven't picked up the script. I
haven't picked up the script. Let me take a let

(01:32:22):
me a little bit, let me take a look at back.
And you know, drugs affect U And I've said this
before on this podcast. Drugs affect people differently. So I
know guys who are totally wired in real life and
they do a line of coke and they they come
down to here and and so it marijuana seems to

(01:32:46):
me to be something that actually could be beneficial to
helping concentration at times. You know. And I but I
you know, I guess it's not a very good argument
to for you know, letting. So if i've if you've

(01:33:06):
smoked marijuana six months ago, you can't apply for the
CIA right.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
Now, last I checked.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
No, No, okay, well you can.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
But here's the mistake that a lot of people make
is they'll say, Okay, I'm going to stop now, but
say that I stopped eighteen months ago, and then they
get to the interview and they'll have when you press
send on the internet to submit your application, so they

(01:33:37):
have that date. So it was eighteen months prior to that,
not to when you're talking to somebody about joining the CIA,
when you hit send, you should have been at minimum
eighteen months in a day, right there. Okay, so it
started then, So you may not even speak to somebody
to be interviewed for another six months. You still can't

(01:33:59):
have smoke weed because it has to be eighteen months.
But you would have had to have known that the
moment you applied, because you don't know when somebody's going
to call you. They may call you the next day
and go, oh great, so you're good to go. You
haven't smoked weed for eighteen months? Oh, I just I
heard it would take six months to get the interview,
so I'm only at twelve months. But no, it has
to be from the moment you had sent so for me,

(01:34:21):
I had never smoked it in my life, so it
was easy.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
Just and you made a conscious choice in college not
to smoke marijuana because you were thinking about going into
a the CIA. Were you give the CIA in you?
When did when did you first start thinking about Well,
I've forgotten exactly you saw like somebody came to your

(01:34:47):
school and basically talk to you about you and a
bunch of other people about hey, come join the CIA.
But but that was in college, correct, And you had
not smoked pot for the expressed reason that like I
want a job and like like like the CI did.

(01:35:08):
What did were you thinking about the CIA before you
showed up at that? Uh no?

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
But I mean you got to realize that. And again,
just from my point of view, in the years that
I was coming up weed as far as like two
thousand and two thousand and one for a job was
still looked at today like heroin. Okay, you know what
I mean, Like it's ten years you know, like if
you smoke pot, you cannot apply, you know, like that's

(01:35:35):
the worst thing you possibly could have done. And now
it's like who cares? You know, Like, yes, so I've
watched that, Like, oh my god, I would have applied
for that if I knew that that was how lax
it is, you know. But it wasn't just the agency,
Like as far as going into college, I was like, well,
I want to get a good job, so I can't
smoke pot because if I smoke pot, I'm not going

(01:35:57):
to be able to get a good job. Well you
don't think about is yeah, all those other good jobs
don't polygraph you, but the agent does.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
Okay, how far are you into the process of joining
CEE that you're polygraphed immediately or oh and have you?
Are you polygraphed more than once?

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
It depends on what you're doing. It depends on what
you went through. Yeah, once I completed all the forms
in s F eighty six big form for the US
government to work for them, and they had interviewed everyone
knowing what I wanted to do and that I wanted
a top secret clearance if that all goes through, not when.

(01:36:43):
If that all goes through and you get blessed off
on all of that, then the agency will actually take over.
So like a different organization or unit in the US
government is responsible for all like top secret level clearances,
and they'll go and interview people from your high school
or however in depth. You're wanting your clearance to be

(01:37:05):
both the agency, it's the top it's a full lifestyle polygraph,
full scope lifestyle and CI counterintelligence. So you know you're
going to get the top top one if you make
it that far. And then once they take over and
you know that you're a candidate, they'll bring you out
for specifically that for a polygraph. And again this is

(01:37:27):
just what I went through. I don't know what the
hell they're doing today. It's what I went through a
long time ago. But they it's for the polygraph. It's
for that, and you know it's for that, and you'll
have as many as they want you to take until
they're satisfied or they're not satisfied. Goodbye. But if they
still think there's something there and they want to see

(01:37:49):
for sure, they'll revise some questions whatever, because they're hoping
that it's not what it could be. But if it
is what they think it might be, they want to know. Yeah,
and you can still you can go to jail for
failing a polygraph.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
A lying to the CIA, lying on those polygraphs. You
can go to jail for that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Yeah. Or let's or if you did something in a
past life and you mentioned it in a polygraph, that's
an admission of.

Speaker 2 (01:38:17):
Guilt, and that didn't mean you did something in the past.

Speaker 1 (01:38:20):
So there was a this must have been I want
to say twenty fourteen, I think where a guy who
was Special Forces had shot someone in a battle and
then I guess afterwards had kind of like, I don't
know what you want to say, like defiled the body
the person that he had shot.

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
Scalped him or cut his balls off and put him
in his mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
How'd you know? I can't see too good.

Speaker 2 (01:38:54):
I watched a lot of movies.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
Obviously that one would definitely get you a callback.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
So I'm sorry, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:39:02):
All right, But that guy mentioned in a polygraph will
like because they'll ask you a question, maybe like have
you ever shot anyone or something like your previous job
with Special Forces? Yeah I did. Did you kill someone?

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:39:18):
I killed this guy. How did that make you feel?
Or whatever? Whatever? However it went and he said something like, oh,
I beat the fuck out of the guy after I
killed him?

Speaker 2 (01:39:29):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:39:30):
He what?

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
And he said what he had done, thinking he's just
talking to like a psychologist or something, a polygrapher. Well,
they filed it once he said that, And that's a
matter of record now that you told a federal agent
what you did with a corpse. That's illegal. You can't
do that, no matter where you are, if you're at
war or not, you can't file a dead body. And

(01:39:51):
that's terrible. And so yeah, of course yes I agree.
And so they filed it and he was arrested. And uh,
I believe he went to jail. So Fort Leavenworth. It's
not too far from here.

Speaker 2 (01:40:07):
I don't think are we doing our time?

Speaker 5 (01:40:11):
We're at an hour forty, an hour.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
And forty, Carl God, I don't think I've ever done
one that's longer than an hour and fifteen or twenty. Well,
this is this has like been totally I can't believe
it's an hour forty. It just shows you. I I
you know, like I said, I've been around a lot
of veterans, and I've been around a lot of military guys.

(01:40:38):
I was on a base recently in Japan and UH
Marine Base and got a tour of the base where
they got the helicopters and UH some some fighter jets
and stuff like that. My son, I want to take
my son out to that. So we went out to that,
and it was after after we got the tour, and

(01:41:01):
they gave us a great tour of the BASS and
we got to sit in the helicopters. I got picture
of my phones with my son and playing the UH
like whatever you call it, like like being flying at
an airplator, but not really simulated, simulated, you know, do
all that kind of stuff. And as we left the Bass,
one of their helicopters, the one with the two rotors

(01:41:22):
that they've always had troubles with, one of their helicopters
fucking went down and you know, two fucking Marines were killed.
Now it wasn't that Bass in Japan. We've got like
lots of basses in Japan. But it was another base
in Japan. But I just had spent like all day
with these young people who had, you know, helped show

(01:41:42):
me and my son around. And I want to tell
you from the bottom of my heart that I appreciate
your sacrifices because I know that you have sacrificed a
lot and it means everything to me. And I am

(01:42:10):
so thankful that there are people in this world and
people that live in this country that are able to
do what what you did. And so I want to
thank you from the bottom of my heart and we'll
just kind of leave it at that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:25):
No, I appreciate that, and thanks for having me, because
that's a big thing too. I never got to talk
about it, you know, while I was doing it, and
wasn't supposed to talk about it so much afterwards. Then
I wrote a book and was told what I could
or couldn't say.

Speaker 2 (01:42:40):
What was the name of that book, Jim big big
big boom, big big right boom agent man.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
But uh no, that's cool, and so yeah, just letting
me come on and and be able to talk about
it is really awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:43:01):
Well, hopefully somebody will see this and buy your book
and uh give you another fifty cents in your fucking wallet,
you know. But thank you so much for coming here
and spending the time and it's being who you are.

Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
Thank you and tell me who much you let to
a strange begin show which man would you choose to
let a way onto? What cruel did you wait around
of old Billy? How would you look upon someone dirtier
than you?

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):
Under me? Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:43:40):
Coming home with us

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