FBI Agent Sent to the CIA to Find Spies | Bill Evanina | Ep. 361 - The Team House

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Special Operations, Cobert Espionage The Team House with your hosts
Jack Murphy and David Park.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey everyone, this is episode three hundred and sixty one
of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and
our guest on tonight's show is William Ivanina. He served
as a FBI agent, starting off his career working organized
crime cases, robberies, was on the SWAT Team nine to
eleven happens, got involved in all types of investigations, and

(00:43):
then he went and served on the joint FBI CIA
counter Espionage Task Force, going after people who are spying
on the United States, all kinds of different stuff there
with Snowden and Jerry Lee. We'll get into that in
a bit. And then he went on to head up
the Office of National counter Intelligence, which transitioned into the

(01:04):
National counter Intelligence Security Center, and today he is running
his own company, the Evanina Group. So we're going to
get into all of this. But Bill, thank you for
joining us. Really appreciate you coming on the show, and
let's kick it off by, you know, tell us a
little bit about you know, your upbringing and how that

(01:24):
took you eventually towards governmental service.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Well, first of all, very humble to be here.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Man, it's exciting, very familiar with the podcast to watch
a lot of them. I'm excited to be here and
add a little value to what you do already and
with the great Patriots.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
So it's excited looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
So I'm a kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, little bit north
of Scranton, PA.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Grew up there mom and dad.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
So I was the first kid in my family to
graduate high school. So never mind college, but to high school.
Typical broken family story, you know. I played a lot
of sports in high school, played baseball, in football, little wrestling,
and went college. Played baseball in college for my four
years there. So I was an athlete. And then basically

(02:10):
I was going to go to the Navy and be
a jag.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
That was my plan.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
And then I got offered this presidential internship and with
the federal government. I'm like a senior in college and
I'm like, what is this about? Oh was a GS
seven eight nine thing And I'm like how much money
is that? Well it's fifteen thousand a year and I'm like,
well that's fifteen thousand more of my mon ever made.
So I'm I'm in So I joined the government. I

(02:36):
was assigned to an agency called the General Services Administration,
where I got put in one year training program. I
got kicked out into the what's called the Public Building Service,
So I ended up being a project manager for building
federal billiams and courthouses. Part of that process, I probably
built four or five FBI buildings, so I get to

(02:57):
work closely with the FBI, which I ironically was my
dream to be an FBI agent my whole life, since
I was twelve years old. So I ended up applying
and I got in the FBI when I was twenty
eight twenty nine years old, and I started.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
I went to Quantica, which was an amazing twenty.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
Weeks there, and my first office assignment was Newark, New Jersey.
So growing up in Northeast Pennsylvania, a blue collar family
for sure. My dad was a machinist. I had a
polka band, right, So we're very eclectic neighborhood. Currently, my
brother's an Orthodox priest, my sister's.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
An FBI agent.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
We were really really weird families successful coming out of
the crazy northeast Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
So we're very proud to be up from that area.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
And so what year was it that you graduate from
the academy and get assigned to New Jersey Newark, YEP.

Speaker 4 (03:48):
So I went into the academy and the summer of
ninety six. So I graduated in nineteen February ish ninety
seven and went right to New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Right right at that point.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
You first started off on organized crime.

Speaker 4 (04:03):
Yeah, My first assignment was the organized crime Squad, which
was plenty of that going on there in New Jersey. Well,
I was assigned to a multiple cases when which involved
the Bananos, the Little Casey and Genevieve's crime family one
of them. I ended up working a really good case
on the Bruno Scarfro family out of Philly.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Their their faction that was up in New Jersey.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
We had a confidential witness, made a lot of tapes,
worked hard, listened to those tapes. We took into his
attorney's office. We got an indictment, rico indictment. We indicted
like seven seven mafia guys, guys like Joseph Scoops, Lakata
and Nikkio Oliveri and Fat Lou Pazini, all the typical names.

(04:48):
So that was my big, first big case, my first
bunch of arrests of mob guys in New Jersey on
a Rico case.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
They all end up pleading guilty.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
The funny thing about the bureau which makes it awesome,
so worked really hard on this got them the pleete guilty.
They all got nice sentences. I go on vacation, I
come home and I was transferred to a violent crime squad.
I was like, this is ridiculous. I'm a mafia agent.
This is you can't just transfer me to violent crimes.
I don't even like violent crimes, right, so I was.

(05:19):
I went there kicking and screaming until the first day,
and day two I was kind of like, I can't
believe I.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
Haven't been doing this the whole time.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Right, So the first time you find somebody, whether it
be a fugitive or my first case was an armored
car robbery eight hundred thousand dollars, bank robberies, kidnappings, kicking
doors down three o'clock in the morning, and until you
actually do it, you have no idea how awesome that is.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
What are you kind of learning about, you know, both
law enforcement but also criminality during this timeframe. I mean
it sounds like you're dealing with white collar crime but
also some pretty violent folks that are doing, you know,
knocking off banks and things.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, so I think looking back at that, juxtaposing those
maybe three or four years of work there, I think
the fundamental line that goes through that is evidence, techniques and.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Capabilities of your team. Right.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
So my violent crime task force was agents, County detective,
City detectives, and new work. Like people have been on
the street a long time, right so, but you know
the goal is to get the evidence. And for us,
what you learned real quick is you're training in quantico
or you're training on the street.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Once you get people in a room, you own them, right.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
And we're really good at well trained at doing really
good interviews. Good cop back hoop. I was fascinated by that.
I was always a good cop. I didn't have it
in me to be the back cop, but that dynamics
worked very well for me personally. Guys, I'll tell you
the hard part for me was with the La coos
and Osha guys. You could just walk up to them

(06:51):
at a cafe and start shooting the shit and say, hey,
not for nothing, but we're gonna come arrest you on Saturday,
just to have your shit in order, and they'd be oh.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
Thanks, Bill, appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
You know, it's just business, you know, and they would
be ready to go. When I got to the violent
crime folks, completely different, right, because you word they were strapping.
I mean, I think in nineteen ninety nine to two
thousand we took about one hundred ninety guns off the street.
So it's a different world those guys. It's not business, right,
it's life or death for them. And back in the day,
at that time, what we would do is we would

(07:22):
take cases that the state had that were there were
two time felons because back then we had what was
called trigger loock violations, so if you got them with
a gun, the third time was minimum mandatory twenty five
years in prison.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
So those are the big cases we would go to get.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
And then we looked at every case Bank Robby Cruz,
We look at the mas Ricos.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
You know, those are big gang cases.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
It was gangs that were doing violent crime at the time, right,
So whether it be Black game gangs, the Puerto Rican gangs,
we had a lot of Dominican gangs, or it was
like the Muslim Brotherhood and make a difference two or
more people they were a gang.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
So you're out of mouth. I can charge them with conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
And Newark is a gamy place to this day.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
Oh it's the best food in the East Coast. No
one knows about. But yeah, I wouldn't recommend anybody going
there unless you're strapped or you know how to handle
car jacket.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
It's pretty rough.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
It's a pretty rough areas are getting pretty bad as well.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I went to a concert there, not maybe like four
weeks ago. Second we got off the train at the
train station. There guy doing the clucking chicken on the sidewalk,
puke all over himself. Cops standing there writing a ticket like,
oh my god, where am I?

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (08:35):
So, and I'll tell you a weird part about being
on a task force for me. You know, whether it
be violent crimes or fugitives or bank robberies. You know,
you're sitting next to Newark cops, we're sitting next to
Essex County detectives whatever. And then but you what you
know they don't know is from your friends that are
working public corruption. Maybe the police chief is on their investigation,
the mayor's on an investigation, one of their buddies run investigation.

(08:57):
So it's really complex scenario. It's really really difficult to
be in that space, and you really have to be
able to be to facilitate your own inner dynamics of
politics pretty well.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
And is this how you started getting involved in the
FBI swat team because you were doing these violent cases
and you wanted to increase those capabilities exactly.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
So when I got transferred from the mafia squad to
the violent crime squad, I'm going to say ninety percent
of the guys they're on the swat team, right. So
they're like, hey, you're gonna train for a year and
you're going to try out for the team.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
And I'm like, I don't. I don't think I'm a
squak eye a guy. You know, I'm a.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
Decent shop but you know, so the guys are around me.
They took another new wing. We trained hard. I tried
out in January. It was like seven degrees. I did
really well. I made it end up making the team,
which was phenomenal, and they immediately sent me to a
sniper school, so which I fell in love with that
aspect of being an operator. Right, So not only I

(09:57):
was an operator, but I was also, you know, a sniper,
and I thought, I love the tacticianal part of that.
I love the craft of being a sniper, building hides
and do most of the FBI sniper work is surveillance work, right,
It's basically get into a position and take pictures and
watch stuff. And we'll talk about that later on Antrax
if you want. But yeah, I loved it, and I

(10:18):
thought wow, And you don't know you're going to like
something until you actually get a chance to do it, right,
And then being at sniper school and advanced sniper schools
and you're training with some of the best shooters in
the world who've come from real work, you know, whether
it be Delta or Seals or you know, the Israelis.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
You're like people that have really done this for a living.
So what am I doing here? Right? So it just
makes you a better.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
Working, harder and understanding the craft, whether it be on
the rifle or off the rifle.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
And I was fascinated by that. I really enjoyed it.
But I did know, guys.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
I'll tell you that I did know early on, maybe
about two three years in, that I thought I could
be a better leader of these.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Men than I was an actual man on the team. Right.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
So down the road twenty fourteen, A little later, I
ended up getting promoted to my first supervisory job and
it allowed me. I was in charge of the Joint
Terrors and Fast Force Threat squad there, but I also
became the supervisor of the SWAT team, so which was
really really fun, you know, to be the yansing commander
for operations. And as you know in Newark you mentioned it,

(11:22):
we were a very busy swat team. From when I
got on the team of ninety eight on, we were
very busy, probably five six jobs a month, which is
a lot.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (11:31):
What so for people who may not know, what is
the difference between the roles that HRT has and then
a like a regional swat team has.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Ye great question.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
So every FBI office has a SWAT team, right, they
have twelve to thirty dudes on your team, depending on
the size. You know, Newark's probably got thirty, Washington Fields
probably got forty to fifty, New York's probably got forty
or fifty. Every office has. The HRT is located in Chronicle, Virginia.
Those are the special operators. They do this full time.

(12:06):
So if you're like me, I was a swat Asian
in New Jersey, or you're in California. It's part time job.
You still have cases and investigations to work, right, so
you got to do both. So you got to do
four to five training days a month on top of
all your cases and your informants. And it's a lot
a lot of those individuals who are on those teams
get recruited to go trial for HRTY And a lot

(12:30):
of the guys on my team, or whether you're in
San Francisco or Houston, maybe your former Delta, your former
Green Beret or Seals, those guys are pretty apt at
being able to go down and do that training, right.
So I think that's where it gets and over time,
I think in two thousand and nine they got smart.
They said, hey, listen, we're going to make a special
trap in the FBI so that you don't have to

(12:51):
spend all your years doing investigations. Is you come from
a Special Forces career, So now they said, if you
come from one of the Special Forces, you can go
right into a swap program, or you could go right
to HRT and try out if you want. Those are
the guys actually also that come to like Jersey or
go to Houston and do training on you know, two

(13:12):
bluer targets or CQB or you know sniper advanced sniper training,
big operations.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
We would try tabletop exercises. They would run that.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
But if we have after a bunch of school shootings,
we have new TTPs that come into play. HRT would
develop those new tactics. They would bring them to the field.
They would train us on a new way to hit
a hallway in a school, or a new way to
do a stairwell in a school, and then we would
learn that, and then we would take that and we
would train the state police and the local police departments.

Speaker 5 (13:41):
Yeah, and then does that does having that kind of
background does that give you like some bona fides when
you go kind of to a more like lower speed job,
you know what I mean? Or people like, oh he
was in SWAT, Like he listened to him. He knows
what he's talking about.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Without a doubt.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
I mean, not only you know, within the FBI, everyone
knows what it is. But when I went over the
CIA to be the chief of the Common ESPIONATS program,
there was a lot of like, WHOA tell us about
your SWAT days, right, because they don't know, they don't
know what they see on TV.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
Right.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
What really manifests itself is like when you're out in public,
right and you're doing speeches or you're talking to CEOs
or business people and you want to talk about China
and intellectual property theft. They want to talk about what
was it like to be a sniper on the SWAT team?

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Right? So, yes, I.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Mean really over beers and cocktails with people who make
you know, multi billionaires and people who want to hedge funds.
They want to talk about your first SWAT arrest, right right?

Speaker 3 (14:38):
What happened?

Speaker 4 (14:39):
What's it like, you know, kicking a door down? Do
you ever have a mistake with a flash bang?

Speaker 3 (14:43):
You know? All that.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
They want to know all those things, which is really
good for business. But also it's really cool for me
to be able to talk about things I like to
talk about with someone who has no idea other than
what they see in the movies.

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(17:06):
Sounds like you're having a hell of a good time
at this point, but now we're getting into the late
nineteen nineties early two thousands, Can you tell us a
little bit about what your experience was like sort of
in the run up to nine to eleven and then
that day.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
Absolutely so nine to eleven, So the morning of Tuesday,
September eleventh, we had a swat job. So we were
out three thirty in the morning till you know, five thirty.
We had a big arrest of about ten or twelve gang members.
We came back, we cleaned up. We do what we
do always. We go to a great diner in Jersey.

(17:39):
We have breakfast to the diner. We come back all
stuffed and ready for naps. We get back and walk
in the office. We're not even in the walkers back
in the office, probably twenty minutes where we see I
see twenty thirty Asians analysts huddled around this little thirteen
inch TV in the corner of the office, maybe fifty
feet away. I'm like, who knows what's going on there?

(18:01):
You just to pay attention. And then you hear people
yelling and screaming and running around. I'm like, what's going on?

Speaker 3 (18:06):
So then you.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
Start working your way over there, and literally it's probably
a seventeen inch tubule TV back in two thousand and one.
And then you see the World Trait Center burning, right,
it's crazy. And then you have some people looking out
the window going on our building roof. We're in the
twenty first floor in Newark and people are going the
roof to see the smoke over there, like what's going on.

(18:27):
One of my swat guys, Carl, was a pilot, and
he's like, that's not a saz that there's no way
look at this hole hole in that building. I'm well
and behold. Second plane hits. So you're now you're talking
about pre ten o'clock in the morning. We have two
planes hit. Now I'll mind you to put this a
little layer here.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
We don't have cell.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
Phones, right, so FBI is at the time you have
a pager, you get a page, you got to go
find a payphone and call somebody.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
So that's where we are in the world of FBI.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
So we're like, okay, crap, find eleven o'clock in the morning,
maybe eleven five. We had the manifest from all the planes.
So those manifests came in and we obviously had a
plethora of literally Easter male sitting at first class at
the time. We identified thirteen maybe fourteen of them by
noon that we're living in New Jersey, so it was

(19:21):
an oh shit moment for us at a minimum, So
we decided to split up in teams. State police came
in by probably four o'clock in the afternoon. We at
a time we didn't have a special agent in charge,
and we didn't have an assistant special agent charge. They
had left, so we were a lot of acting dudes
and duets that were and some did really well, somewhat

(19:42):
in the fetal position.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
We depended.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
So we decided who we're going to send over to
New York into the pit to help, and then who's
going to start working these cases. I got assigned to
the to Zaiage r R who was the pilot of
flight ninety three, and we started dealing with that issue
like right then, and then you probab pably know this
story already. But then that night we had you know,
the urban mover guys driving around Jersey taking pictures and

(20:06):
turned out to be a bunch of Israeli guys. So
it was really crazy first twenty four hours of nine
to eleven for sure, and then to me, we didn't
go home. So on Wednesday, it's a brand new day.
And the weird part of this whole thing was Tuesday
the eleventh. Again, we lived in a it's called the
Gateway Building, a tall building in Newark. On Tuesday eleventh

(20:31):
was the first day of the building of a new
construction for an FBI building in Newark two blocks away,
so we were starting that process. You know, the hole
on the ground, so we had to secure that site.
It was a lot of chaos on nine to eleven,
New Jersey, to say the least.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
How did your part kind of evolve on flight ninety
three as the days go on?

Speaker 3 (20:54):
So it's funny.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
So I was assigned, as it was called, a lead agent,
an individual one of the anda sit around and get
all the incoming leads and then you assign them to
other folks. What happened tangentially, we're still working swat stuff, right,
so we're still going jumping out and grabbing people and
doing search warrants everywhere, So then you're doing that. At

(21:15):
the time, we really didn't have what's called a public
affairs officer, so I got sucked into doing a lot
of public affairs. So if you go back in the
media in two thousand and one and two, you're gonna
see me on TV a lot because they didn't have anybody.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Who could do it or who wanted to do it.

Speaker 4 (21:30):
So for me personally, I was involved in those three
things around the clock. I eventually dropped off as a
lead agent, but my squad that I was on was
assigned Flight ninety three, so I stayed with that probably
for the next three years, and then Flight ninety three
ended up we end up prosecuting the Zacharias masally as
a twentieth hijacker.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
Right, So that all came out of our Newark office.

Speaker 4 (21:53):
My good buddy and partner, REGADEBTI from the State Police,
was the case agent. So a cool thing about this,
you can talk about a not So this is September
of out one. Then shortly thereafter, in October, we have anthrax. Yes,
and the post the mailbox it was mailed by I
was in Princeton, New Jersey, which is about three miles
from where I lived. So the fun thing on that

(22:15):
is I get to be a sniper, build my hides,
hiding in bushes, taking photographs of every single human being
that went to that post office. Let me just tell
you that's a long twelve hour shift. This is a
long twelve hour shift. And then we had a month
later the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, who was the Wall
Street Journal reporter and who would have known at the

(22:35):
time that he was kidnapped and then sold to Kleetchik Muhammad.
It's a small world. So in New Jersey we had
a lot going on at the same time.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, jeez. So the anthrax thing, which is like one
of these sort of enduring mysteries, I know, they think
they know who did it, guy who has passed away
since then, What do you recall from that investigation and
kind of what came out of it?

Speaker 4 (23:00):
Yeah, I recall being scared, Like I remember, you know,
we had two things going on, two different types of
people at the time, so you're not the fall of one.
We still think it's Middle Eastern mails doing antrax, like
we I mean, it's hard to have revision as history here,
but so we're thinking, Okay, they crashed planes in the buildings,
now they're poisoning to people antracks.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
What's next.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
So there was a big spiel i'd say, from maybe
November of o one to May of two.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
We you know, we.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
Thought they were gonna they were taking hazmat truckson They're
going to drive them into buildings. We had all these
things going on at the same time, But for me,
the stress was being assigned to that mailbox.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
So they identified the mailbox on Nasau Street and Princeton
as the as the place where these letters were mailed, right,
So that was you want to talk about twenty four
to seven unbelievable technical in human coverage on that.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
It was pretty impressive.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
So every everybody, you know, the first five people that
I took pictures of covertly going to the mailbox, I
think the first three we had gloves on, so we're like,
what are you wearing gloves for?

Speaker 7 (24:02):
It?

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Go to rest?

Speaker 4 (24:03):
Those people right, turned out to be, you know, like
they were today, crazy people wearing gloves, right. So I
just remember that first probably four or five months, just
being scared of everything and scared of the unknown of
what's next. And then what the cool part was that
really helped honestly the investigations. At the time, this would

(24:25):
have been probably late October. Two dudes come in our
office with these two huge boxes. Open up these boxes.
There's all these really cool Star Trek flip phones.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Boom. It's like, this is really cool.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
So everybody got a flip phone, everybody got a phone number,
and you're able to press these letters that for automatic answers.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
It was it was a company called Nextel at the time.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
Right, and they had this new thing and they wanted
us to try them out for free, which we did.
And the ability to be out in surveillance and be
able to text folks the way not that we do now,
but the way back and hey, who has eyes?

Speaker 3 (25:03):
I do? Right?

Speaker 4 (25:03):
Just and you press? You got to know to me,
that was for us. It was the most technological advancement
probably since the typewriter, you know, FORBI agents, that we
could have a cell phone and call people. But more point,
the last thing, the coolest part of the next step
was to push the talk feature. Right, so we'd have
to do the FBI radios. We could push the talk Hey,

(25:24):
bill Mark, where you at?

Speaker 3 (25:25):
I see him? I don't see him? Right, Hey, let's
I'll meet to the diner. You know. That kind of
stuff was a really it was earth shattering.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
So in New Jersey we ended up getting about four
or five hundred of them, and I think New York
got about a thousand of them.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Was that kind of like the end of your part
of the anthrax investigation, of the surveillance portion.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
No, I ended up So after surveillance, I say probably
early part of twenty eleven, they created an anthrax task
Force in DC. Some of the New York agents New
Jersey agents were in Trenton, they went downtown. My work
on that on that case being more on the public
affairs side, so I ended up not being part of
the actual investigation probably early part of two thousand and two.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Do you have an opinion about who is behind that
and what their motivations may have been.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
I think the last guy that's now dead was the guy.
I think that the Bureau screwed up a lot early on.
I think, very similar to Richard Jewel, you get locked
in with intelligence spies and you get locked in that
this has to be the guy. I think the Bureau
made those mistakes, but fortunately that the last individual is
name's case right now.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
I think he was the guy.

Speaker 4 (26:37):
The evidence on the molecular part of the anthrax is
too strong to really neggate, and he was the only
one to be able to have that access to it.
I think I'm good Listen that there's a lot of
things that aren't solved. I'm pretty confident he was the
guy on that.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, he was like a lab doctor or something like
that that worked with that.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
And he's the guy who was very Cavalier about Hey,
I know, you know he was trying to turn over
the people in and you know he found he could
overplay the agents. I think early on we had the
wrong agents on the case. We had the wrong agents
doing interviews. Right, It's really easy to do. There's cases
like that of you where where initially it goes awry,
but then we do get locked in an intelligence.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Spies at the end of the day.

Speaker 4 (27:15):
I've always said, let the evidence follow where your work goes.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
But you got to have evidence.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
And then you know your experience on the Danny Pearl kidnapping,
as you point out, he's a Wall Street journal journalist
who was killed by KSM. From what we learned later.

Speaker 4 (27:34):
Yeah, so my again, my squad, the violent crime squad,
we had a lot of senior agents that were really,
really good. And I looked back at the way I
talked about it is like you always have in your
wallet if your son has kidnapped, your daughter's kidnapped, who
do you want your wife to call? Right, And those
three agents are four asients. All those agents in my
office were on that squad. Right. So one of one

(27:56):
of my good friends, John Mulligan, ended up getting sent
over to a Pakistan to be the lead agent from
our office, and we supported him from multiple aspects of that,
working with his attorney's office and doing all kinds of
work with the CIA and DA out of the Newark
office on our squad. And John ended up being the
guy who actually ended up getting the videotape of Daniel

(28:17):
Pearl being beheaded and was the first guy to watch it.
And you know, John sat literally next to me my cubicle.
So those were really trying times as well. Again at
the MOO laws, we don't really know who was who, right,
and then as you know, it took a while to
recognize that tattoo from the beheading and making that connection
to KSM down the road.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
And then I think you worked an early counterintelligence case
in Jersey. Was that during this time frame or was
that later?

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, oh boy, that's a good part of that.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
So two thousand and four I get my first supervisory
job in the joint Arrismen Task Force in Jersey, which
was phenomenal, right and doing really good work, and then
also and down every suspicious van laden on the New
Year's return part. But in two thousand and five we
had this case that came out of nowhere. So we

(29:11):
I'm now acting assistant Specializer in charge. Right, So I'm
like number two, we're waiting for the new guy or
gal to get a signed Who knows when that's going
to be. We get a call from our office, Donald
Redbank that says, hey, we got a really suspicious one here.
We got a guy who's taking top SI your classified
data out of the high slide, and he's putting in

(29:33):
the low side, and he's changing in his name and
he's sending it to the somewhere in the Philippines. I'm like, what,
So we dole they did a little work on this
ends up being you know, a captain, retired captain in
the Marine Corps. His name is Landro Arragoncio. He was
an analyst, a child point analyst for the FBI. What's
he doing looking up terrorism stuff and Chinese stuff?

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Right? And he should be doing that. Turns out, long
story short, he.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
Was taking stuff and sending it to uh a senator
Laxed in the Philippines. They were trying to overturn the government.
They were trying to do a coup. So they were
you know, they were working with Abu Sayf and a
bunch of other things. The Marcos family had been removed.
They're trying to get the Marcos company back in, So
he was doing it out of you know, ideology for
the most part. Well, once we realized, oh my goodness,

(30:21):
previously before coming to the FBI, he was the pre
briefer for Vice President Shady at the White House, so
we had access to unbelievable top secret classified information. So
we have an investigation on him for like three or
four weeks. We're following him around, We're watching him move
really really complicated stuff off from the high side to
the low side because back then you were able to

(30:43):
do that and send it over there.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
And then the gig was up. We set issued a subpeda.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
To his bank for bank records, and with unbeknownst to me,
the bank manager.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
Was friends with his wife.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
So she calls up his wife and says, hey, is
your husband doing anything crazy? Why willd the fbi'd be
looking at his record? Five minutes later she calls him.
He starts putting stuff together, he bolts out of the office,
and then we have a high speed chase.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
We arrest him.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
He ends up playing guilty and spends ten years in
jails being a spy for the Philippines.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Wow, just out of curiosity, How did these coup plotters
think they were going to be able to use American
intelligence information to sort of like plan their coup or
kind of position themselves in the Philippines.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
That's a great question. So I gotta be careful. Some
of this is on the classified side, but let me
just say there were other countries involved helping the Philippines
try and foster facilitate the coup, right, and some of
that was, hey, get us information on this stuff and
he'll help you kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Oh geez, yeah, okay, God.

Speaker 4 (31:50):
The thing is always as it seems, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, yeah, there's another player in the game.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
There's always another player. I mean everybody talks about, you know,
Cuban intelligence, Cuban intelligence and a montask Well, you don't
think Cuba gives everything they got to the Russians. I
mean it's really, it's really they're like a subcontractor for
the Russians.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Right yeah, right, uh okay, So the next stop for you,
uh you go over to counter Espionage Joint FBI CIA Endeavor.
For people who don't know, can you tell them what
that task force is?

Speaker 4 (32:22):
I will but first a couple of big parts here
I enjoyed in my life. Yeah, I want to get over.
So I get I'm I'm fact dumb and happy in
New Jersey. I'm runing my own office in Trenton, New Jersey.
I got a thirty agents there. We're doing great stuff.
And then there's this new policy director, moss Is five
years up and out. You gotta go if you want
to you want to be a supervisor. So I got

(32:42):
sent down the headquarters. Now I am in charge of
all everything in New Jersey, right except counter intelligence. It's
different squad I go to. I get a job in
headquarters in the Russian counter intelligence program. It's kind of
a little weird. So, unbeknownst to me, I get down there.
The reason I got sent down there because we were

(33:02):
getting ready to arrest ten rushing illegals who are working
hearing out in the United States and expiltrate a source
out of Moscow. So I spent the next year planning that,
working with the CIA, planning the A lot of the
counter intelligence folks who had worked this for ten years
had never arrested anybody. They didn't even know where the

(33:23):
handcuffs were, right, So we had to have find a
way how are we going to arrest these ten twelve
people in America systematically on the same day without anybody
knowing about, you know, and then at the same time
get the source out all that stuff. So I spent
you know, a year planning for that, which was really cool.
But I ended up getting an ACEAC job, which we

(33:45):
call him Assistant Special Asing in charge in our Washington
Fill office.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
From that we arrested all those guys.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
I became the Counterintelligence ASAK in Washington Field so which
was awesome. We did that for about a year and
a half and then I got moved over to be
the Counter ten rosm A SOAK and Washington Field Office,
so I had the Joint terrist and Task Force SWAT
HRT and the Threat Squad and then we had the
Navy Yard shooting under my command there.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Oh see.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Yeah, so that was Aaron Alexis. That was pretty gruesome
and being on scene there was kind of crazy. And
then from there is when I went to the CIA
to be Chief of the Counter Restaurants Program, which was
my first senior executive service job.

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Speaker 2 (36:58):
Yeah, the spine network that you guys broke up was
that the Anna Chapman ring.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
It was very much so, so she stands out in
my mind. Sorry, I wonder why.

Speaker 4 (37:09):
I'm just curious how that would work for us Red
blood and Americans that would you know, you know, it's
just you and then and you know, so for me,
you know, being able to be part of that.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
And be exposed to.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
Not only the awesomeness of what we can do as
the federal government and monitor a spy network for ten years,
the steganography, breaking, this tegonography, the coding like just.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Oh, their tradecraft that they used tradecraft.

Speaker 4 (37:35):
Right, and Anna Chapman had a recruited at the time,
Susan Rice's secretary at the u N right, so they
were getting close, right, they were doing good things. So
for me, it was my first I'm gonna say it
was my first big holy cow moment, This is how
big this is.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Right. I had come from New Jersey, very myopic space.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
Now I'm in headquarters and I'm like, wow, we have
these people all over the country. These are illegals, Like
what are they doing?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Right?

Speaker 4 (38:03):
So for me, it was it was an eye opening
experience and I fell and the falling in love with
espionage and spy world and the evilness of Russia and
China at the time, which for me was yes, terrorism
is always going to be there, but I had not
been part of this ecosystem, a badness of other countries
and their intelligence services.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
And another thing you mentioned that I think sounds really
interesting is, if I understand correctly, you're saying the CIA
had to exfiltrate their source about this spy ring because
once you guys moved in and arrested them, the source
would be compromised. And is that what was going on there?

Speaker 4 (38:41):
That's kind of what's going on, right, you know, we'll
get too deep into this, but that had happened first
before we arrested anybody, right. And the cool thing about
this is at the time Medvedev was the president of Russia.
Putin was running this operation. This was his baby, like
he was in the spy world. He had tickets some
time off mendme. You know, he took us abatical and
then Medvedev was running the show. Uh So when we went,

(39:04):
we the Bureau and the CIA went to brief you know,
the President, Obama and the short and Hillary and everybody else.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
Was the late late part of that week.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
We were going to make this arrest on Saturday Sunday,
and I remember, uh, our director coming back from from
the White House and you know, just telling us that, hey,
Obama was excited about this, so was Hillary. Hillary hated
uh Putin at the time, but Medevedev was in d C. Right,
so we had to wait till he was wheels up

(39:33):
Saturday night before we could start this process.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
So it was a lot of drama going on.

Speaker 4 (39:38):
And then we arrested him, obviously, and then they had
their initial appearances all over the country, which is really cool.
And then globally we really embarrassed Putin, you know, really
embarrassed him and he's still pissed about this obviously. And
then you know, we had a spy swap in Vienna,
which was was really cool.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
And then obviously then we.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
Had the Americans, which is even cooler a good, good
TV show.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
So then tell us about the counter Espionage Task Force.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
So, by legislation subsequent to Ames and Hanson, the two
Big Spies, Congress said CIA's counter Ashman's program shall be
led by an FBI senior, Right, So that has always
been the case. So the senior who was there had
had recently left subsequent to the arrest of General Petres

(40:28):
as a CIA director, and she had left and went
to be an sac out in California. So they put
me over there to do this, and which was just
freaking amazing. Like here i am an FBI number two
in Washington, d C. And I'm going over to be
number one in charge of hundreds of people in the
CIA tracking down American spies around the world. And my

(40:50):
deputy at the time, a guy named Mike Berry, was
just phenomenal and he ended up being chief of station
in cable twice and he ended up being head of
Intelligence ennesc good guy, and we just clicked immediately.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
And just doing amazing things.

Speaker 4 (41:04):
And for me being in charge of that many people
from different culture was probably the first time in my
life I had actually learned how to lead, like to
actually be a leader of people who weren't familiar with
your culture and in the FBI way, so it was
really exciting to learn, but it was also very difficult
to learn because they had to build trust of how

(41:28):
you do things, and they're in a much more secretive
world than the FBI was at the time. So in
the long term cases, I found it fascinating and I
loved not being under the proverbial thumb with the Department
of Justice and be able to do things.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
The CIAA was pretty fascinating.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
As I understand it. Correct me if I'm off base here.
Counter espionage is sort of like a subset of counterintelligence,
Like counterintelligence can encompass like deception campaigns and things like
that that were confusing the opposition, But counter espionage is
like you're trying to catch spies.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Absolutely, that's a very good way to say that. And
you know, think of counterintelligence as an umbrella, right, and
in that umbrella is you know, disinformation, misinformation, spy ops,
theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, right, buying land
here in the US, you know, sending roguagents here to

(42:26):
take Chinese people back to China, Like those are We're
trying to counter all of that, right, Russian spies doing
bad things. Espionage is one of those forks in the umbrella, right, right.
So this was the This was a joint counter espionage
task force. We worked together since Ames and Hansen to
try and vet out who in the American government is

(42:47):
spying on behalf of other foreign countries, mostly you know,
Russia and China, but we had something from Israel as
well and Iran. But who who are those people? And
that this joint group of people a couple hundred. The
FBI executive was in charge of it. That happened to me,
and it was a fascinating time there.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
And the first one you had to deal with it
sounds like, was the resignation of David Petraeus and that
classified information was divulged to his mistress.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 4 (43:15):
Not an easy case for sure, not an easy case
to be able to facilitate. It wasn't easy for him.
I mean, he landed on his feet, obviously, but I'm
sure it was incredibly embarrassing, not only for his wife
and everything. But you know, he somehow escaped charges there.
I mean a lot of topsy good information went to her,
who wrote books about it and agendas and it is
what it is, was what it was. But at the time,

(43:37):
so now you're talking circa two thousand, thirteen, twelve, thirteen fourteen,
there we had a lot going on. We had a
lot of unsub we call the sub cases where we
had we knew Americans were spying on behalf of China
and Russia and Iran, we just didn't know who they were, right,
So it was basically.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Who done it? Like who are these people? How do
we find out?

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Right when that happens?

Speaker 5 (44:00):
What are your indications that it's going on in the
first place, Like what are generally the first like hints
or clues that there is espionage happening?

Speaker 3 (44:11):
So great, great question.

Speaker 4 (44:13):
So let's take China for instance, back in two thousand
and nine and ten, and it's been public reported, there's
probably been between twenty five and forty we'll call them assets.
The CIA recruited, FBI had recruited who disappeared, who were
going to jail, and they were murdered right publicly, So
like that's a problem. Something's going on here, right, And

(44:34):
then you go back to the hands and the names days,
same thing. When you have all these assets, they're not
showing up for their meat and then they're getting killed.
You're like, what's something as bad as happening here?

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Right?

Speaker 4 (44:45):
So someone in our shop is devosing this information and
whose people are to the Chinese, the Russians and Iranians
and at the same time, not just humans, but you
might have a collection you know of a specific office
like in someone's you know, uh, personal space, a foreign
leader and that goes dead, right, Or you have maybe

(45:07):
an informant that's driving that a guy around that I
got and that they go missing, and then you have
you're up on your cell phone and that goes off.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
All these things.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
You got to put them, these little stars and bullets
together to say something's a miss here, right, we have
something to miss. And then you get like human informants.
The CIA is phenomenal at this. And you have maybe
an informant who tells you, hey are our mainline KR guy,
Russian guy who does human intelligence and recruitment. Our main

(45:38):
KR guy is going next Thursday. He'll be in Mexico City. Well,
we know the only reason he's going there is to
meet someone from the US, right, So then we have
to figure out who the hell in the US government
is going to Mexico City, right, and now you're on
literally on a mohak trying to figure out is it
some of them, the CIA, the FBI, NSA, n ron DA,

(46:01):
that's the first circle of the people that work big,
top secret stuff or is it something from the Department
of Energy, Department of Labor.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Right, you just don't know. But then how do.

Speaker 4 (46:10):
We figure out, you know, get get flight and manifest
you who's going to Mexico City next week or maybe
they're already there with your family on vacation, right, and
when do they get So that process begins in earnest
to say, and then we say, okay, we're gonna send
a joint surveillance team on to Mexico City and we're
gonna go follow this Russian guy to see who he
meets with.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Right. So that's the.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Process where this congressmantic group would do all that work.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
I've heard that's a story like that about how like
the Russians would send like their main headhunter, like their
best human guy that pitches and recruits the highest level
of people. They're like, send him to the United States.
You'll be driving around, you know, on the West coast
like freaking the FBI the hell out because God only
knows what he's doing. But then, you know, as you describe,

(46:56):
you guys have to figure out is it just deception,
is just screwing with it or is this the real thing?
Or you know, but you can't you can't ignore it.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
One hundred percent, and and some I would. Yes.

Speaker 4 (47:08):
So if it was the main guy, Uh, he's meeting somebody, right,
they're not setting here for for nothing, But he might
be here for two or three weeks and he might
meet somebody on day eleven, you know, for thirteen seconds
at a wild wa in Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Right, So we we got it. We can't even you know.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
And there's been plenty of times when they were here
and they'd go out and get coffee and we would
get caught bringing in their hotel room, right because they
know we're doing this, right, So his job is to
be able to meet or do that dead drop and
meet that person without getting caught. Our job is to
somehow find so that that's a cat and mouse game obviously.
But yes, they also will send maybe the number two,
number three, number four guy and the drive around for

(47:47):
for weeks and they're not meeting anybody.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Yeah, it's probably killing.

Speaker 5 (47:52):
It's probably tough when an entire state is a cover stop.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Right.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
They would go to Niagara Falls all time and like
there we go. You know there falls are nice, but
they're not that that nice?

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Right? Yeah? So did uh you know during that time frame,
do you recall ever, like you were your guys observing
an operational act, like catching one of these guys red handed.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
So I'm going to say when I was at the
FBI Counter Intellivisience in Washington Field, at the CIA, and
then later as director of NCSC, there are multiple times
when we would catch these individuals red handed, but we didn't.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
Always know what they were doing. Right.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
So you would get like a technical officer of the
FSB or an MSS officer going to a parking lot
where there's a bunch of contractors and they would take
a backpack out of their back of.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Their car and they put up on their car.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
They'd open it up, they'd look around and clearly they're
exfiltrating some data somewhere, we just don't know where, right.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
So a couple of.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
Times we had some rogue agents rogue you know, steal
that backpack and we'd get in a lot of trouble
and have to give it back to them. But like
us as frustrating when we know they're actually doing something technically,
but we just don't know exactly what it is, so
it's it's problematic.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Yeah, And of course, I mean counterintelligence is known to
be a little bit more aggressive than intelligence as I
understand it. But when you're working domestically, I mean you
have to work within the confines of American law.

Speaker 4 (49:20):
You do, and looking at a perspective and from an FBI,
you know ecosystem where you're you're built in an ethos
of arresting people and indicting and that's not the case.
So you're really excited about maybe a neutralization, right, or
I mean that's really if you can neutralize an intelligence
officers activity here, that's great, or PNG right where you

(49:41):
can get State Department the PNG someone out of the
embassy because you comerated.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
That's like a big deal. Right.

Speaker 4 (49:47):
So there's no really excitement where you get a raw
rob because you neutralize the guy. But if you could
get them to not meet that source or not collect
that intelligence of a defense industrial based contractor or whatever.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
It is they're doing, that's a big deal. Right. But
you know, growing up.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
In that ecosystem where it's handcuffs, indictments in jail. Now
in counter intelligence it is not that, right, it is
neutralizations and you know, and I would say that that
would be the biggest aspect of the differentiation.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
What were some of the big cultural differences between FBI
and CIA?

Speaker 3 (50:24):
I'd say the biggest difference.

Speaker 4 (50:28):
Oh, let's start with the way they work, right. So
the FBI they recruit and you work in teams, teams
of two, three, five, ten. The CIA you work by yourself, right,
So they recruit people who could go overseas and live
a life by themselves and do great things and not
have to worry about friendships and family. Right, So there's

(50:51):
two different people. Well, those people end up growing up
through the CIA, and they're still still the same. So
there's a lot of reservedness in them, a lot of
lack of trust because they grow, they grew their bonafeites
and their successes in the CIA, because they were phenomenal
at working alone, right, and doing amazing things for the
US government that are never going to be known by

(51:11):
themselves in an alley way like in Cyprus. Right, all
of a sudden, now they're back in Langley and they're
asked to be on a team. It's a little bit different, right,
So so I was about a row I was more
of a row le, let's make this team thing. Let's
get a little bit more, and where the FBI was
all about team, team, team all the time. So that
that's the number one culture i'd see their numbers two

(51:33):
is FBI agents are always it's about the law, right,
your defense. You have the Department of Justice, you have
the Domestic Guidelines Book, you have all these rules. Let's
see I didn't have a whole lot of that, right,
So it's kind of like culturally, what in this task force?
What can we do that satisfies both books of being okay?

Speaker 3 (51:53):
Right? Oftentimes we always yielded.

Speaker 4 (51:56):
To the CIA way because it was cooler, more, more flying,
and less.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
And during this time you also kind of dealt with
some rogue CIA employees, some other rogue US government employees.
Actually where to start, do you? I mean I think
you touched on it a little bit, but Jerry Lee, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
So I think just in general, going to just be
able to do a lateral across time frame. So you know,
I'm in the FBI, I'm in charge of counter intelligence
there for a while with my partners who were doing espionage,
and then we're working these cases, these unsubcases.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
Then I go to the.

Speaker 4 (52:35):
CIA, we're still working these unsubcases. We know things are
going bad, right, and then by time I leave the
CIA and I go to the head of counter intelligence.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
During that time, we end up solving these cases.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
We I mean, the amazing women and men of the
CIA and FBI who do great work. Finally getting to
the position where you know, like Jerry Lee's one of them.
We investigated him for a long time and we finally
you know, sucked him into coming back to the US
and we got and to confess to being a spy.
You know, we have you know, Alex mah another CIA
case officer who had eventually caught him. They ended up confessing,

(53:09):
and they had Kevin Mallory, world jerk CIA case officer.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
We worked him for a long time.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
We ended up catching him because he had horrific tradecraft
selling things that CIA. So it's good for me over
my years to be able to say, okay, I was
a part of that, part of that.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
I saw that.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
I saw that, And now they're all coming through fruition, right,
so as you see, we just arrested His name is
Roacha from the State Department. He was spying for the
Cubans ye for since the seventies, right, So you don't
always get immediate gratification here. Over over time, you know,
it's a golf clop exciting, but it's just also awesome

(53:48):
to see that the women and men who do this
for a living don't give up, right, and over years
they just don't give up.

Speaker 5 (53:55):
Like you know, I think that one factor that a
lot of people might not consider is the caution that
you guys have to approach something with, because if you
do finger the wrong person or even put them under
a lens, you don't even have to say this is
the person, to just put them under a lens, that
could like tarnish their career forever if they are innocent.

Speaker 4 (54:18):
It's happened multiple times, right. And then if you look
back to Robert Hanson, the FBI spy, right, we caught
him and we rested him in two thousand and one
February March. I believe up to that point we knew
there was another spy, right, you knew we knew Ames
wasn't the only guy. We knew and the FBI and
agents who are working this case. They thought for sure

(54:40):
it was.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
A guy named Brian Kelly.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
Right, he was done, and they investigated him, they fized
him and you know, did a complete life enema with
his family.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
It was terrible, right, terrible.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
And then we finally, you know, through great human work
by the CIA, we end up getting tapes from defector
source in Moscow that has voice on it who the
spy is and it turns out to be Rob Hanson. Well,
what do you say to Kelly? I'm sorry, you know
it's not easy, right, So this is a dirty world

(55:12):
and it's not always fun and it always doesn't end.

Speaker 7 (55:15):
Well, yeah, I'm I want to ask you real quick,
you know as far as these CIA employees going rogue,
based on your experience and observations, I mean, what's their motivations?

Speaker 2 (55:28):
What kind of makes these people tick? And why do
they go off the rails?

Speaker 4 (55:31):
Yeah, So a just challenge the question a little bit.
It's not always CIA agent's going rogue. I know, we've
had nsa plenty FBI, so there, I would say, you know,
intelligence officials going right, So, and I've been in the
inside of the Red presents a long time. It used
to be up to probably two thousand one to five

(55:55):
to eight. It was then called mice, right. It was
you know what motivated them is mostly money, right, So
we look at Hanson names, they're making millions of dollars
spying on the Russians. It was a lot up to
probably twenty twelve and thirteen. The FBI agent who gave
away all the radio codes to Chinese again money, His
family lived in China. He was helping out his family,

(56:17):
and the Chinese are phenomenal at the way they micro
attack Chinese nationals here in the US who have family
back there.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Just phenomenal to do that.

Speaker 4 (56:30):
And then god forbid, you have a China, you're ethnic Chinese,
and you're working intelligence community, You're going to be screwed. Right,
So he was giving all this stuff up. He played
guilty to ten years. NSA has got a bunch of
them as well. I think over time, you see the
last ten years people who are spyings specifically of China
and Russia. Very little money, very little money. You're like,

(56:51):
wait a minute, you're going to give up your life
and your career and go to jail forever for ten
thousand dollars for what's going on, it turns out.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
To be more ideology.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
And I would call it disenfranchisement. I look at it
as that individual who says, what the crips nobody, Nobody
thinks I'm good. You know, I applied for this job
three times. They didn't get it, Like my boss is
not treating me well. They maybe have some trouble at home.
It's an opportunity for I would call it disenfranchisement. And
if you look at now, all the government employees were

(57:21):
being removed in the last you know, three four or
five months, the doze effect, Right, thirteen hundred state departments
just got thirteen hundred state department employees just got fired
last Friday. I'm concerned about them, right. They have a
lot of stuff up here that you just need one
or two of them to say, screw this. I'm going
to send an email to the Chinese with the Russians

(57:41):
and then we give we give away the farm.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
Right.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
So it's really really complicated. And I would say the fifties, sixties,
in part of seventies it was ideology. Eighties and nineties,
early parts it was money, a lot of money. And
then subsequent that it's backed a little bit more idea,
and I would say disenfranchisement because the Russians and Chinese
know they don't have to pay anybody because.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
It's not worth it.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
And then the woman who left and defected to Iran
Monica witt ideology, right, so didn't take a diamond, she
gave up a lot of a lot of bad things
and ideology. So I would say we're back to disenfranchisement,
the angry employee, and that's changed over thirty years.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Would would you put Edward Snowden in that category?

Speaker 4 (58:29):
Absolutely? Absolutely disenfranchised employee?

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Law? He was lost.

Speaker 4 (58:34):
He was a contractor for a couple of different organizations
working in the NSA CIA. No one liked him. He
was an asshole, right, so he treated everybody bad. So
the supervisors didn't treat him well. And I say supervisors
not only in the NSA, but as well as at
booz Allen where he worked in other contractors.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
He just wasn't treated well because he wasn't.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
A nice dude and he thought he should be making
more money, I have more jobs.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Just wasn't the case.

Speaker 4 (58:58):
And then he was a technically proficient scumbag, right, so
he was able to do really, really horrific things that
at the time, I'm not sure anyone in the government
and the Ice intelligen Committee knew that that was capable
being doing with Tour and the way he took things.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
So that was a wake up call for sure.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
And then you had some involvement in the Vault seven
case too, right, well.

Speaker 4 (59:23):
Not really I was already the head of Connor Intelligence
at that time, but the CIA worked that case. But
that went back to those days, right, So that was
an unsubcase where we started saying, what's going on? Why
are we missing this stuff? And he went to trial,
so it all blends together. But I didn't have any
actually eything.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
To do with that case.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
And I know this maybe gets into the sensitive side,
but are there any operations from this timeframe bringing in
different agencies that you're allowed to talk about or maybe
with some nonspecific information talk about.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
So again, when I was head of Connor Intelligence, the
cool part of it in my job was to be
like the quarterback of all the agencies actually do stuff, right,
So at NCSC we really didn't do anything, you know,
we were like the quarterbacks, the people who hosted and
came up with a strategy a policy that we would

(01:00:17):
go after X, Y and Z, and then we would
facilitate and pay for all the agencies to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
Oh my goodness, I came and tell you being able
to utilize maybe some tier one assets that as Iraq
in Afghanistan we're gearing down, we had some great human assets.
To be able to take them in creative way and
convince do D to put them against hard.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Targets in Europe. It's fascinating, right, and then give that
a shot. And then you have you know, d D
and Jaysock. Are they okay with their assets reporting now
to chief of station?

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
Right? So we had all that dichotomy, right. It was
a challenge and being in the middle of that was
really fun. At the same time, we had some we
were doing some amazing things as the government, like we do,
we build things and we make things that we want
to keep secret. So my organization would entail bringing in FBI, CIA, Coastguard,
Department of Transportation, and we would offecate around that and

(01:01:13):
we would get the Chinese and Russians to believe that
we were actually doing it in Florida, when in reality
we were doing it in Washington State.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
So then we would monitor the Chinese and the Russians
doing surveillance in that location in Florida. We would have
metrics and feedback to say, how many ships are they
putting in the gulf, how many humans are they put
in on the ground, what kind of technical collection are
they doing from Cuba on that location in Florida.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Meanwhile, we're doing what we need to do.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
From maybe Washington to Alaska without them knowing it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
I imagine, and I don't know, but I imagine, whether it's
like our shipbuilding or building the next generation fighter, that
there has to be a counter intelligence plan built into
all of that from the get go.

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):
There is, from moment one, there is, and you can
look back to say where there wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
You can show me.

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
I'll show you the failure, right and have the supply perspective.
And I think, to your other question, off the top
of my head, I just remembered something.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
So twenty twenty, we have COVID and another Trump.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
You know, you know, I'm in the job, and we
got to build a vaccine right from scratch.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Both so does the Chinese.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:22):
So, as part of an Operation Warp Speed, my job
was to leave the counter intelligence program to protect the
development of that vaccine from ideation to the small town
organized labs that we're doing testing, to Johnson and Johnson Advisor,

(01:02:42):
protecting movement of stuff from point A to point B,
working with sheriffs and state police. So from the from
the time it was thought of till it actually went
in an.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Arm we had to protect that vaccine.

Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
So it wasn't the Chinese were trying to not only
steal it, but they were trying to disrupt us from making.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
It right because the big deal right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
So so that to me that was working with the
army hand in hand with that was just fascinating. Say
what you want about the vaccine. Everybody's all over the
map on that. But from a counterintelligence perspective, we the
women and men of the counter intelligence programs, the police
departments of state police, and the army did a phenomenal
job of protecting that we actually we developed.

Speaker 5 (01:03:24):
Wasn't there I can't remember and my memory is not great,
But wasn't there some weird stuff that went on when
they're like a Chinese American scientist who was like working
on the vaccine that was killed down like Pennsylvania or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
I can't remember. Now, I don't know that, Okay, all right.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
I would I would not say it's not true, but
I just I don't recall that. Yeah, because if we
said yes, you would ask me if we did it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
But so I'm not saying.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
No, no, no, no.

Speaker 5 (01:03:53):
I like I think I think he was on our
side working on it and got killed, but I don't
remember the details.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
So the last part of this thing is from a
domestic operation perspective. During warp speed, we were able to
waive a lot of the existing policies restrictions to be
able to do stuff. So we're able to get up
real quick and do things technically to avoid the Chinese
from doing what they wanted to do, whether the geof

(01:04:23):
and all that kind of cool stuff that you can't
normally do. But this was a big national emergency, right
and it was really fun to be in that space
countering another countries want to steal what we were trying
to develop.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
That's cool. And so twenty fourteen, you get assigned to
the Office of National Counterintelligence. I think again, we should
probably start by, you know, having you tell us what
that office actually is and what it does and how
it integrates with the rest of the government.

Speaker 4 (01:04:54):
Absolutely, and you know, analogous to what I talked about
with the conterresh Manage Group, where there's a legen lady
of legislatively in charge person of the CIA. Subsequent to
hands and names, the Commerce created the National Connor Intelligence Executive,
So this was the one person who would lead and
run all Connor intelligence activities of all the agencies and

(01:05:16):
the government. And that person had an office, so it's
called the Office of the National Connor Intelligence Executive. So
that person, the first one was a guy named Bear
Bryant from the FBI, so that job, that office existed.
So I went over there in June of fourteen and
took over the job that I wanted to change it.
So what we ended up doing is making it an

(01:05:38):
Office of Connor Intelligence. We wanted to make it a
center under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Under the d and I, they had the National counter
Terrorism Center and CTC, so I said, well, we should
have the counter Intelligence Center. It should be the same, sure,
And then December of twenty fourteen we ended up we
had the ribbon cunning of the counter Intelligence Security Center

(01:06:00):
like NCTC. And then next year Congress loved everything we're doing.
They decided to make my position a presidential appointing in
Senate confirmed position.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Did I mean, so you were there beforehand, but did
you then have to go and get confirmed by the Senate?

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Yep, YEP.

Speaker 4 (01:06:17):
So I got nominated by President Trump in twenty eighteen.
I had my hearing in May of twenty eighteen. I
came out of the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously, and then
I had a hold put on me by Senator Grassley
because nothing about me, but he wanted administrative information of

(01:06:39):
the Department of Justice and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
So I probably was on hold for a year.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
I was still in the job, still still doing it,
and then the hold was dropped in twenty twenty. And
then I got confirmed by the entire Senate in twenty
twenty as the first Senate confirmed head of counter intelligence
security for America, which is pretty cool. So to be
able to represent the women and men all over the

(01:07:04):
world doing really cool stuff was pretty humbling for me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
That's amazing. I'd love to ask you a little bit
about that confirmation process. I think it'd be great for
people to hear that, Like, just ask you what that
process was like when you went in and talked to
the Senate. Was there like a classified portion of that
and a non classified portion of it?

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Yes, So I had already been briefing these women and
men on the Senate for years, right, so as an
FBI agent, as a CIA head of coon.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
So they knew me.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
They I had briefed them a million times, so they
knew But if they knew all the cases, so that
was pretty easy. But so I would say for everyone
open hearing, there was twenty close hearings right of really
important stuff. So by the time my actual open hearing
came around, it was pretty uneventful.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
So at the time, you know, Senator Widen hit me
pretty hard on privacy and whistleblowers on the So I
had eighty nine votes, So I did pretty well bipartisan lee, right,
and both Senator Burr at the time and Senator Warrener,
who were chairing and vice chair very supported me very much,

(01:08:14):
and then Senator Rubio. So I had some bipartisan support
during that time, and then that all went away during
the election.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Uh what else was I going to ask you about that?

Speaker 7 (01:08:28):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Yeah, so what was your impression kind of interacting with
the legislative branch you know as a counterintelligence official, was
that like a difficult process? Were they pretty receptive to
the not not just the investigations, but sometimes operations that
you have to pitch.

Speaker 4 (01:08:43):
Yes, yeah, so that's a great question, and my goodness gracious.

Speaker 7 (01:08:47):
So.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
The answer is yes.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
So as part of my job also kind of telligendecurity.
I was also you know, the guy and the organization
that did security clearance reform, right, So a lot of
that was like why claricians take so long? So a
lot of that drama, right, is part of that. But
early on, I'm going to say, when I first got
in the job in probably twenty ten to twenty thirteen fourteen,

(01:09:11):
the House was the primary intelligence organization. It's called HIPSIE,
the House Permanent Select Committee Intelligence. Back then they were
the big dog and sissy and the sentence side was
probably not as big right over time, So now you
fast forward twenty fourteen, I'm in the job now as
the head of counter intelligence.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
Hipsey decides.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
To do their own investigation and snowed it just because
they can't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
So now I have that whole thing.

Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
So you have that whole butting heads with you know,
staffers and members of the Hill wanting to do their
own investment because they don't believe that we're what we're
doing is good enough. And over time, I'd say, you know,
twenty sixteen, the House side goes high, right, right, so
you have Democrats come in in power, the Shift, and

(01:10:00):
it goes really bad. They're not bipartisan anymore. You have
Shift and Nunez and then you know, it's just not
a good situation at all. And then the Senate takes primacy. Right,
So fifteen sixteen seventy eightthing the Senate grows. You had
great bipartisan ship there between Senator Burr and Senator Warner
and Sena Rubio, Centator Cotton. You had a lot of

(01:10:20):
really good senators that wanted to do the right thing
for America, and they became the pre eminent intelligence oversight
committee and they still are. But yes, in the depths
of the classified briefings and the skiffs, it gets pretty hairy,
it gets pretty knuckle dragging, yelling and screaming. But for
the most part, these the senators have some great ideas,

(01:10:44):
some great thoughts, and they get their own briefing some
individual agencies, so they have some ideas, and then they
we have to ask them for money to do some
really cool stuff. So there's a lot of skiff meetings
with members and staffers, a lot. I mean you're talking
like three to four a week of that, so keeping
them advised and informed of what's going on in our world.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
Same thing for terrorism. It's just they're really if you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:09):
Get on one of the intelligence committees, it's a hard job.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
There's a lot going on there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
The other thing about this time frame is I wanted
to ask you, you know, you were telling us a
little bit before the show about some of the cultural
issues in counterintelligence, including in the Counterintelligence Center, and how
you and some of the other guys are kind of
like miserable by the job because there's such an emphasis
on the failures rather than the successes, and how you

(01:11:37):
kind of reversed that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
Yeah, a great question.

Speaker 4 (01:11:40):
I'm not sure I reversed it, but I certainly mitigated
a little bit. But first on the culture side, Yeah,
you know, when the FBI, everyone's there, they're all type a's.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
Everyone does their job. You know, you're you're you're a
born leader.

Speaker 4 (01:11:55):
You are you aren't, but you don't have to lead
a whole lot of people, right, Everything just happens really organically.
When I went over the CIA, it was the first
time I really had to work my ass off to
be a good leader, right, because now I'm in charge
of a whole bunch of people from a different culture
who don't know me and don't know the Bureau way,
and I have to facilitate their way, right. My job

(01:12:16):
is to ingratiate myself with them and their culture. I
worked really hard at that, and it was not easy,
but I learned a lot about myself. I learned a
lot about leadership leading people from other cultures.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
It was it was really cathartic, and I learned a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:12:29):
And I became a great, much better person being in
charge of women and men from a different agency. And
then they taught me a lot about being able to
transform yourself into a human being where you could thrive
in someone else's culture. And I thought that was fun,
challenging and unique. The second part of it, you know,

(01:12:51):
the question, I believe you were talking about the negativity
of the job. I mean, listen, no one's going to
say that counter intelligence and security is sexy, right, It's not.
It's depressing. It's all bad stuff. And you know, in
my time as the director of NCSSE. You know, from
the breach of oh pm on, right, You've got breach

(01:13:12):
after breach after breach government private sector. The White House
was breached, the State Department was breached. We had companies
every day getting breached.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
It's negative.

Speaker 4 (01:13:21):
We had intelligence operations going bad all over the world.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
It was not good.

Speaker 7 (01:13:26):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
We had underground cables in the oceans being cut by
the Russians, and it was just NonStop negativity. So I
want to say, by the fall of my first year
in the job, I was a mess, right, So I
would come home.

Speaker 3 (01:13:38):
My wife was like, what is wrong with you?

Speaker 4 (01:13:40):
And at the time I had a young teenage boy
and I was trying to coach little leg.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
I was a mess.

Speaker 4 (01:13:45):
So I said, there's got to be something out here.
We got to be able to do something. So I
had some people give me some advice. So we ended
up creating what's called the White Binder. So that binder
was basically four to five vignettes that you would read
every day before we go home. All the awesome successes
we've had around the world, right, and whether not just
here in the US, but things that we did in

(01:14:06):
Asia and Africa and against the Russians or Chinese, their ratings.

Speaker 3 (01:14:09):
And Cubans just successes.

Speaker 4 (01:14:11):
Whether it be ncis, Osidia department to Treasury, didn't make
a difference that on day one was a winner, right
because so day one, I'm going home now all reffed up,
excited because we were kicking ass around the world, right, and
no one's going to know about this, No one's going
to make a movie about these things. So you do
that over four or five six days, now three months in,

(01:14:33):
it's like a addictive drug. I can't wait till I'm
getting ready to go home to read what they put
in my white binder, right, because that's what's going to
get me motivated to go home, hug my family, spend
time with my kids, and want to come back the
next day.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
So to me, I found that to be something that
I handed that off to my successor, and I think
it's now a fairly common place and the inteligent community
is have your little white happy binder where you can
learn about awesome things that awesome people are doing around
the world to protect America.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
And you were saying the information that was collected in
those binders was eventually used to hand out awards to
these folks.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
Yeah, yeah, great point.

Speaker 4 (01:15:09):
So what we ended up doing probably Christmas time that
first year. I'm like, hey, listen, everyone should know about
this amazing things Like I remember one time was one
of the ones I read was just an amazing counterintelligence
operation the Marine Corps did with the Coastguard. I'm like,
the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard doing counterintelligence?

Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
Who would know? Like I would never know this, right.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
So what we decided to do myself my deputy at
the time, Connie who was former COS of Beijing at CIA,
she was a CIA case officer, We're going to have
an awards ceremony in the summertime, and we're going to
take the best and brightest of these and we're going
to bring their families in.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
So we did.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
The first one we did was in the summer of
two thousand oh I guess it would have been fifteen,
and we brought We had a board of made up
of maybe five or six agencies. They're representatives that picked
the winners. And when those winners they came into the
they brought their families in. We gave them a big

(01:16:09):
medal and award. We read what they did as unclassified
as we can. But their families got to come in
and see, hey, my mom, my dad is doing amazing
things to protect this nation, it's people, it's places, and
I didn't know about this, and we recognized them not
only in front of their leadership, but in front of
their family, which and we end up doing that and
still today.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
And tell us then I get well, I mean during
this time frame before we move on to the next thing,
I mean, was there any other ops or actions or
anything that you'd like to highlight that you guys did.

Speaker 4 (01:16:45):
I'm trying to think what could be talked about here.
Probably not a whole lot I can talk about right here.
Oh oh yeah, probably not that one either.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
No, I'm sorry, that's all right.

Speaker 4 (01:17:01):
I will say that the things that we got to
do involved five, six, sometimes ten or twelve agencies, right
and unique to this not only are are you know,
the agencies that never get looked at in this world,
like the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard OSI n CIS
just do amazing work in these in these cases around

(01:17:24):
the world, and the Coast Guard just doesn't get any
credit for the amount of work they do in intelligence
and counter intelligence because they have amazing capabilities, resources, shipboarding.
We boarded a lot of ships to help the FBI
and CIA. The Coastguard facilitated that. So the world and
the ecosystem of the military is pretty fascinating outside just

(01:17:46):
you know, kinetic weaponry.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Okay, So then let's talk a little bit about the
run up to your retirement in twenty twenty one.

Speaker 4 (01:17:58):
So twenty we're in the midst of this COVID chaos
and everyone's working, you know, fifteen feet from each other.

Speaker 3 (01:18:06):
It was just surreal time.

Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
To be a government employee working in the intelligence community
with COVID. So we as you know, twenty sixteen, the
government did not do the best job in the election cycle, right,
so whether it be Russian stuff, Chinese stuff, briefing of
the candidates, this was poorly done. So I get confirmed

(01:18:32):
by the Senate in April, I think of twenty twenty.
At that time, the decision was made by people bigger
than me that we are going to do it better
job in twenty twenty election and we are going to
start giving classified briefings of the candidates, their staffs, the RNC, DNC,
and every member of Congress.

Speaker 3 (01:18:55):
Well, lo and behold, I got in charge of that.

Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
So I was the principal briefer of all of this, right,
So we started in a good maybe may or junior
that we started off good, both the Trump and Biden campaigns,
the rn C, DNC, and then we started briefing all
the committees in the Hill. It was going pretty well,
and then I sent out a letter probably had to

(01:19:21):
be July or August of that summer basically saying, hey,
we have one hundred years too to the election. Here's
what we're seeing so far, declassified information. We're seeing the
Russians do this, the Chinese do this, the Iranians do this. Well.
The Democrats on the Hill went ballistic the fact that
we even recognized the fact that China Rush or Iran

(01:19:42):
we're doing anything, because for them it was Russia, Russia, Russia.
And I say the Democrats mostly like Schiff and Adam
Schiff and those folks and Pelosi there were furious the
fact that we declassified information, that Chinese were favoring this
down whatever. So we did more classified briefings than I
came up with a follow up memo where we laid

(01:20:02):
out actual people said hey, this guy, android Andre Gertschak
was actually doing things uh to facilitate election interference. And
then we and the intelligence community, UH had had some
intelligence they released that said basically, we believe, you know
that one country is favoring this that candidate. This candidate's

(01:20:23):
being favored of the country. We put that out again again,
the politicians went ballistic berserk, right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
So, uh, it just was an ugly, ugly situation.

Speaker 4 (01:20:31):
And you want to talk about politicizing intelligence, right, it
starts in Congress, right, And that was it was because
you have the anti Trump I want to say, Anthony
got the hatred of Trump, right, and then you have
Republicans going against Biden to being intelligence apparatus during.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):
The time frame.

Speaker 4 (01:20:48):
Was was very difficult, right, because you had women and
men intelligence community collecting information, doing assessments, and no matter
what we gave to the members of the Hill, it
was politicized.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
So it's problematic at the time.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
So I decided in September of that year that I
was not coming back.

Speaker 3 (01:21:05):
I had been there six years, six and a half years.

Speaker 4 (01:21:07):
I said, I'm leaving on an inauguration day regardless of
who wins this election.

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
But you know, fortunately for us, we were able.

Speaker 4 (01:21:14):
To vet out that yes, the Chinese were doing stuff
and the ratings were doing stuff. We had a big
press conference and I ran and then it all ended
up working out well. But it was not for lack
of incredible anxiety and stress on my part, right, So
it was, it was It was a rough six months
for a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
Yeah, I mean, I can't only imagine what it would
be like that. You know, as a federal law enforcement officer,
you're trying to maintain your impartiality, you know, serve you know,
just as a as a police officer essentially, but at
the level you're at, you're having to deal with Congress
and getting pulled in these two directions. It must have
been very hard to maintain that balance.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 4 (01:21:55):
And again you want to try and at the end
of the day, number one, maintain your integrity, right and
and and fortunately for me, uh my boss at the time,
the d N I. Ratcliffe, and the Chief of Staff
Medals and the President, no one ever interfered with me.
No one ever asked me to change anything. No one
ever asked me to make a comma or include this
or not include that.

Speaker 3 (01:22:15):
So everyone was straight up on that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:16):
It's just that when he got to the Hill, the
politicization there was, you know, I mean again, they got
to win elections, right, I get all that right. And
then the women and men in the intelligence community and myself,
we were we were part of the ponds in that game.
It just it is what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:22:31):
Got to put your big boy pants on and go
deal with it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
So you retire in twenty twenty one and then start
up the Evanina Group. Tell us about that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:43):
Yeah, So when I retired, I said, I had a
plan to be able to basically do what I was
doing in my old job, but make more money doing it, right.
So I wanted to be basically a strategic consultant for
companies to help them neutralized, defeat, and defend against China.
So it was my big thing. So I was big

(01:23:05):
on intellectual property theft. You know, had worked really hard
on China for years and I had We had done
these road shows, myself and Senator Burr, Rubio and Warner
would travel in the country. We would brief all these
CEOs on what China is doing from IP theft, to
trade secrets, to penetration to cybers you name it whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
And then at the time I think twenty twenty we
had the largest number.

Speaker 4 (01:23:29):
It was like six hundred billion dollars that had stole
from theft of intellectual property and trade secrets just in
one year, six hundred billion, and then once we aggregated
up to be like four thousand dollars per America family
of four after taxes. I said, listen, I got to
do a better job of this, right. We did not
do a good job in the government. So I said, listen,
I'm going to do this for business. I'm going to

(01:23:50):
go out and advise and informed companies and help them
defend against China.

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
So that's basically my company.

Speaker 4 (01:23:55):
So I have these really cool tabletop exercises at are
thirty minutes long for executives to walk them through a
breach or cyber or an insider threat, you know, an
active shooter. It doesn't make a difference, but also just
basically saying, hey, here's the threats we face from the
Communist Party of China, here's how we have to mitigate them,
and here's what you make, you sell, you procure that they're.

Speaker 3 (01:24:18):
Coming after, and here's how you can help defend it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
I think we have some questions from viewers their d
if you can pull those up. I actually have one
follow up question before we get into the viewer questions.
From your point of view, I would love to hear
your take on Havana syndrome.

Speaker 4 (01:24:40):
Well, I'm very clear about in the public sphere. Oh boy,
where do you even start this, because it's it's a
rabbit hole.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
Well, President, I'll.

Speaker 4 (01:24:52):
Go this way and I've said this publicly on CNN
and million times. The Santa Gupta did a series hole
special on this, and I was very clear about my thoughts.
The President Obama said in his second term that we
are going to open relations with Cuba, and we opened
an embassy there, and we were doing very well, and
we were doing very well, and the intelligence apparatus in the

(01:25:16):
United States were doing very well. Right, not just against
the Cubans, but who else is there? The Russians are there, right,
So all of a sudden, people start getting sick, getting hurt, injured.

Speaker 3 (01:25:26):
We got to close the embassy.

Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
There's only one country in the world that wins with that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
That's not the Cubans. Right.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
So for me, I'm convinced without evidence, I think there's
plenty of evidence. Sixty minutes has done some really good
pieces here on this that it started in Havana. They
called the Havana syndrome, but you know, hi they call
it now is pretty prevalent. There's a lot of women
and men who are incredibly bad shape.

Speaker 3 (01:25:56):
People have died. It's been been well documented.

Speaker 4 (01:25:59):
To me, there's only one country that benefits from doing this,
and that's Russia. Now that being said, proving it is
a secondary thing. I think this administration is doing much
better job of being transparent about the evidence.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
The previous administration was not.

Speaker 4 (01:26:15):
But I think this administration you're starting to see more
data coming out on this.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
But I will say this.

Speaker 4 (01:26:21):
As well, And even if we get a defector or
we recruit a Russian, you know, I even to come
out and say I was the guy that did this
and here's the weapon, people are still gonna think that's
not enough evidence. Right, So you know, at the end
of the day, we'll never get to a place where
we could prove this. Secondarily, and big picture apparatus, what

(01:26:43):
happens if we do prove this, What happens if it's
unequivocally the Russians? Then what right, So we have a
foreign country who's harmed severely a lot of US citizens
that are US government employees, then what do we do?

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:26:57):
So, so the answer sometimes does not always good to know,
right So, I think at the end of the day,
if the government ever does find out unequivocally that it
was the Russians, it probably won't be disclosed anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (01:27:11):
What do you make of the claims of people getting
hit here in the United States, Because it's been quite
a few FBI people hit or have claimed to have
been hit. I don't mean to be skeptical, but I mean,
what do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
Yep?

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
So I'm not skeptical because I know some of the
people that are that are sick, right, But to be
able to say it's the same weaponry that was used
in Havana or in Vienna or anybody else in Mexico City,
I don't know that to be true.

Speaker 3 (01:27:41):
I just know that people are really sick.

Speaker 4 (01:27:44):
Historically, the Russians have been very reluctant to do anything
here in the US, but doesn't mean they haven't done
it systematically recently to offuscate all the other stuff around
the world, Right, it could be another country doing it
to blame the Russians, right if that's the case.

Speaker 3 (01:28:00):
Been some people hit literally close to the White House.

Speaker 4 (01:28:03):
So geopolitically, I find it hard to fathom Putin being
okay with this, right, so you look about how he
screws up everything else with the scripples, and you know,
live Anenko. They're not good at these opposite Russians are
bad at these things, right, so they get caught most
of their assassination of him. So I'm really skeptical that

(01:28:25):
they would let them do this. The other part of
it is there's a lot of women and men in
the State Department, CIA and the FBI who are really sick.
So I just don't know. My argument is, I don't
think we're putting enough.

Speaker 3 (01:28:35):
Resources to this that we should.

Speaker 4 (01:28:37):
This should be a massive undertaking with women and men
full time doing this investigation, which.

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
Is not d What do we have from viewers? From them?

Speaker 6 (01:28:52):
We have? Can you talk a bit about how closely
China's publicly declared five year plans seem to match the
actions that you saw then take? What while the actions
you saw in them take during your time in government?

Speaker 3 (01:29:05):
Great question.

Speaker 4 (01:29:06):
So not only did they match, they over they incredibly
surpassed those. I mean, let's talk about China made a
twenty twenty five planned where they were very clear about
g was very clear about obtaining the world's best intelligence
on you know, quantum and advanced manufacturing and bio farming.
Not only did they reach that, but they outdid themselves

(01:29:29):
with mostly through theft, you know, of intellectual property and
trade secrets and be able to do joint ventures and
mergers and getting all of the technology. I mean, they
have the Cormac airplane that this rolled out, which is
basically they stole everything from you know, Boeing and Airbus
A three twenty. So it's everything's been stolen. And I
think if you look at their five year plans, the

(01:29:51):
twenty twenty five year plan has been very successful from
a Chinese perspective, obtaining the intelligence they wanted to get
in the top ten tiers of technology.

Speaker 5 (01:30:01):
I have a question about the Chinese because you know,
in a in a free country against a you know,
kind of totalitarian country, like you know, you mentioned their
tactics with like Chinese Americans who may have relatives over
over you know, over or in China, where you know,

(01:30:22):
a Chinese agent will bump up against them and say, hey,
you know, how's your grandmother, how you taught her lately?

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
Here's a picture of me with her.

Speaker 5 (01:30:30):
How how does the US obviously not you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
Know, uh, you know, uh.

Speaker 5 (01:30:38):
Cut out Chinese Americans from technology and universities and laboratories.
But how do we defend against that type of intelligence service?

Speaker 4 (01:30:48):
You've got to fight through it, right, And again I've
been victim this a lot in many years that hey,
this is you are you are racist against Chinese.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
You are racist.

Speaker 4 (01:30:57):
This is a racist rant, right, because that's what the
Chinese intelligence services. What everybody do is racist. You got
to fight through it. You can't coller. Right, We've cowered
a lot. I had not cowered, and I basically make
sure I tell them it's not the Chinese people. This
is the government, the Communist Party of China that's doing this.
They're utilizing, like a lot of the students that are
here in the US, spying on their behalf of China.

(01:31:18):
Majority of them are doing it unwittingly, right, and they
come over here. You know, if there's three hundred and
twenty thousand students in China every year, there's only about
six thousand them that are actually bad, right, the ones
that are doing you know, high level SCEM postgraduate work.
And even though They don't know that they're going to
do anything to the government till they're.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
Asked, right or told, yeah, yeah, what are you.

Speaker 3 (01:31:38):
Working over there?

Speaker 4 (01:31:38):
I'm working on quantum computing and da dah da da oh.
Because you send us what you're working on, sure, I'll
send it here. They don't even know that's bad, right,
So that's the problem. Secondarily, like from an education perspective,
you know, there's two hundred and forty two Chinese companies
on the US stock market.

Speaker 3 (01:31:54):
There's zero US companies in the Chinese stock market.

Speaker 4 (01:31:56):
Yeah, the Chinese government through fake comp but he's have
bought probably three to four hundred pieces of property in
the United States around US military installations and nuclear sites.

Speaker 3 (01:32:07):
We didn't go to China buy anything.

Speaker 2 (01:32:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:32:10):
They have three and twenty thousand students here. There's probably
not thirty in China of Americans. So it's not a
two way stream.

Speaker 2 (01:32:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:32:22):
Can you also talk about how you think about China's
corruption purges in the last few years. Clearly that was
a genuine threat to them in certain ways, But to
what degree do you think it was about She's consolidating power?

Speaker 3 (01:32:35):
Yeah, great question. It's both of them.

Speaker 4 (01:32:37):
Actually, So you look able to say the last two
years of not only the arrest, the disappearance of leaders
around him, the quote unquote retirement, the executions.

Speaker 3 (01:32:51):
Right, it's two things.

Speaker 4 (01:32:52):
Number one three things him telling the disport people in China,
I'm the boss and I'll make all these decisions. Secondarily,
he doesn't trust people around him, you know, at all,
especially those who might be conspiring or might be someone
who might challenge him in a couple of years phil
He's got to get rid of those. Third if they're
not being aggressive enough what he wants from a defense

(01:33:13):
department perspective, or making progress in Taiwan or the Philippines,
you're going to be out.

Speaker 3 (01:33:18):
And the last one money.

Speaker 4 (01:33:21):
Chinese are incredibly corrupt and it's part of their culture.
Unlike in America we look at corrupt is like a
bad thing. China, it's not a bad thing. So if
you are making a lot of money in a corrupt
fashion in Beijing and to the point where she doesn't
like it, you're out. And then if you're lucky, he'll
let you walk away somewhere with your money.

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
But usually they get jailed. So he's very vicious.

Speaker 4 (01:33:45):
He might be one of the most mononacal men in
our lifetime. Jiji Ping, right, Putin is evil in his
own way, but Jiji Ping's hatred for US is number one.
But his fear of his own population makes him incredibly moniacal.

Speaker 6 (01:34:01):
Are you familiar with Operation Solo? If so, should this
have remain for internal use only?

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
I'm not familiar with Operation Solo.

Speaker 6 (01:34:14):
A couple more, What can tech companies and US government
do to combat disinformation?

Speaker 3 (01:34:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:34:24):
Disinformation? So I got this one last week. You know
where do I get my news from? Well, I honestly,
I wake up in the morning, I go right to BBC,
BBC America, I find out where the news is, you
know where is it? And then I go to Yahoo
News because it's very straight down the middle. It's basically
what's the news with no commentary. From the tech perspective,
I would find the most conservative based technical news bulletin, website,

(01:34:52):
information gathering that you can in your genre, whether you're
doing micro biology or whether you're doing nanotechnology, or you're
doing you know, the most latest quantum physics. Find a
niche where you can go on to a form and
get the most latest and greatest information and stay away
from mainstream media.

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
Already.

Speaker 6 (01:35:12):
One more.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):
Nord stream pipeline was that the Russians.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
I don't know what you're talking about. I have no idea.

Speaker 4 (01:35:23):
I never heard of that pipeline.

Speaker 2 (01:35:27):
I actually have a question.

Speaker 6 (01:35:29):
So built in your career, have you ever had like
holy shit moments I can't believe this is going on,
and like freaked out kind of moments in terms of
like penetrations in whether it's the FBI, CIA or any
of the agencies.

Speaker 4 (01:35:45):
More than I could possibly imagine. Yes, and they just
so I'll give you one of the topics. You know,
when they when the Chinese breached and they took the
data out of oh PM, right, So, okay, okay, they
took OPM data.

Speaker 3 (01:35:59):
You know, Okay, it's a bad it's a bad day, right,
bad day.

Speaker 4 (01:36:02):
They took all until you get into it and find
out what they actually took. The oh Ship moment was
to me, it's like, well, not only did they take
Bill Evanina's information, they took my entire top secret background
investigation file.

Speaker 3 (01:36:17):
Every cage of it.

Speaker 4 (01:36:19):
Right, So me and twenty one other million, twenty one
million Americans not only not twenty one million Americans who applied,
but the people who actually didn't get clearances, all in
negative derogatory. Your old wives and girlfriends who said bad
things about your college roommate, who said you smoke cocaine
on a car and a train track, they have all that, right.
So for me, that was the most That was one

(01:36:41):
of the biggest Oh shit moments for me was like,
Oh my goodness, this is really really bad. Right, that's
number one. It's really bad. But I'll fast forward to
a recent event. You know, you may or may not
be familiar with volt typhoon insult typhoon, Right, So volt
Typhoon is the Chinese UH putting the malware on critical
infratruction in the US to make it, to destroy it,

(01:37:01):
to make it not work right in preparation of the battlefield. Well,
cell Typhoon was their penetration of Verizon eighteen ten Mobile,
so they were able to get in those telecommunications companies.
They were not able to steal data law law, fair data,
FIZA data data that with the FBI has been using

(01:37:22):
for subpoenas, but they were able to listen to US
telephone calls. Think about this, The FBI would need a
search warrant or PHIZ that to do this right. NSA
can't do it, nor can the CIA. But a foreign
nation is listening to US based phone calls for me,
that's an O shit moment.

Speaker 5 (01:37:41):
Yeah, you know, we've talked about the challenges with the
federal agencies and with corporate America. What about our politicians
themselves though, right, because they get elected and they get
a security clearance, it's not you know, it's not like
anybody's probably tell them no, Right, So, how like.

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
Is how do you guys manage that?

Speaker 4 (01:38:10):
Difficultly? So, and it's not just Congress, it's the White House. Right,
So if you work in the White House and you're
on National Security Council, you're not getting polygraphed, right, You're
gonna get a security clerics because you asked for. One
of the presidents says you're getting one. And that also
goes for as you mentioned, members of the House and Senate. Now, fortunately,
not everyone gets all the information.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:38:32):
If you are in the Senate Select Committee, Intelligence or
House or you're on hask for DoD or SASK on
the Senate side, you're gonna get some pretty intelligent you're
going to House Foreign Affairs, you're you get some pretty
heavy stuff. But if we try, and the government and
the intelligent community tries to do a pretty good job
of b viper kating that information. So not everybody gets
everything right. So that's kind of the way we do

(01:38:54):
the best job of it. But you know, listen, these
politicians are elected, some of them aren't even elected.

Speaker 3 (01:38:59):
Some of them was just.

Speaker 4 (01:39:00):
Given their jobs because someone left, right, So you know
you're going to go brief a senator because he or
she was given the job by the governor, like what like.
It's it's for a career intelligence, professional, law enforcement. It's
a difficult thing. But you're just gonna have to trust
the system. Obviously, we dealt with that in sixteen and
twenty on the election cycle every day.

Speaker 2 (01:39:21):
Yeah, all right, one more question of our allies.

Speaker 6 (01:39:26):
Which of our allies are the worst in terms of
spying on us?

Speaker 4 (01:39:33):
Well, so by saying that question the worst, maybe you
want to change which one's the best. We have some
pretty amazing allies and we've we've I can't I can't
say that we've officially ever caught the Brits, that Canadians,
a Shillian spying on us. We have caught the Israelis

(01:39:54):
spying on us at the French. Yeah, just French, don't
get me started. Uh, they're good at what they do.
You know, if you fly into charge the gall you
better not bring a telephone.

Speaker 2 (01:40:08):
It's economic warfare.

Speaker 3 (01:40:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:40:10):
So, but but the Israelis they do what they have
to do, right, so when when we're in the space
race and you want technology, uh, they do what they
have to do, and they're in ally and we can't
do anything without them where they're they're you know, they're
they're the second best partner in the world. So I
think it's called friendly fire, you know, friendly spying. It
is what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:40:30):
My argument with.

Speaker 4 (01:40:31):
Israelis is if you just ask us, we'll give it
to you. Yeah, you know, you know, you know, you
get caught spying and giving that stuff. But like I
think the Americans will always be best known for not
only partnerships with our five Eyes, but with our other
friendly companies that are allies and could be the most
innocuous country. But when we send our women and men
around the world to partner, whether it be the Italians

(01:40:54):
or the Thailand, doesn't make a difference. We do amazing
things and everyone knows America is the big dog and
you better partner and then want to partner, right. So
even some of our frenemies were willing to partner, right.
So I think now when you see what's going on
in Assyria, you'd be shocked at some of the things
that the Syrians are doing to help and partner with
us that was not even thinkable three years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
Bill, is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?
And also tell people where they can go and find
you and find the Evenina group.

Speaker 4 (01:41:26):
Yeah, so you can get me online Bill at evaninagroup
dot com. Hit me up. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm very
very popular on LinkedIn. In terms of my mom there
a lot. I am of a twitter at Bill Evanina.
I tweet a lot, especially on China and putin. I
do what I can out there. People are willing get

(01:41:47):
me there they can. In terms of forget, we could
do this for several more hours, as you know, and
I wish I was there and we could smoke some
cigars next time. There's tons of good stories here, but
I think I just want to leave with for you
and and your your loyal audience.

Speaker 3 (01:42:03):
Just know that the women and men.

Speaker 4 (01:42:08):
In uniform, whether it be law enforcement, the intelligent community
or DD work their asses off every day to protect America.
So we all know who they are. You have family
members and friends that do this. I would just ask
your viewers this coming week coming up, take take a moment,
pat them on the back, say thanks for what you do.
Right and then if you know someone who's maybe in

(01:42:29):
the Middle East or in Asia and you don't know
what exactly they're doing, send them a note say hey,
I don't know what you're doing over there, but thank
you for what you're doing because my family appreciates it.
I think we just as Americans, the government's going through
some rough times right now, the intelligence community as well.
I just think we have to rally and support those
awesome people who around the world, even here in the US,

(01:42:50):
who are protecting us every single day. Just take say,
take a moment, send them a note, put them on
the back, and say thanks. I think that's what I
think it would be, go along with with giving them
a little bit of fuel and emotion to keep doing
what they do that's a passion and a livelihood they've
wanted to do as a dream. We just as Americans
got to support them a little bit moving forward.

Speaker 2 (01:43:12):
Help them fill up that white binder a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:43:14):
Help them fill up that white binder.

Speaker 4 (01:43:16):
And sometimes it's three or four little taps in the
back saying, hey, could I buy your coffee today?

Speaker 3 (01:43:21):
Thanks for your doing. Hey.

Speaker 4 (01:43:23):
Maybe it's a baseball coach or a baseball kid. Hey,
I don't know what you do, but I know you
do something really cool. Whatever it is, thank you for
what you do. Right, you see a woman or a
man in a US military uniform, whatever the service, walk
up to them, shack their hand, say hey, I'm Dave,
I'm Bill.

Speaker 3 (01:43:38):
Thank you for what you do.

Speaker 4 (01:43:39):
I don't if it could be procurement doesn't make a difference, acquisition.

Speaker 3 (01:43:42):
Thanks for what you do.

Speaker 4 (01:43:43):
It goes a long way for those people motivating to
get through that day.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
Well, Bill, thank you so much for this interview and
telling some really unique stories from the uh you know,
depths of counterintelligence that most people don't get to hear. Yes, fascinating. Yeah,
it's a very unique perspect and I thank you for
coming on here and doing this. We'll have some links
down the description for our listeners or viewers where they
can find Bill and they can find the Evenina group.

(01:44:11):
So thank you again for doing this. I hope you
joined us in studio next time, Bill.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
I look forward to it. I'm going to probably be
up there in August. Look you up and bring up
some cigars.

Speaker 2 (01:44:20):
Outstanding and we'll see all you guys next time. Thank you,
Thanks pleasure. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to
talk to you for a moment about how you can
support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it,
but you'd like to get a little bit more involved
and help us continue to do this, you can check
out our Patreon. It is patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse,

(01:44:42):
and for five dollars a month, you can get access
to all of these episodes of The Teamhouse ad free.
The same goes with our affiliated podcast eyes On with
Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons mcmulroy. That one you will also
get all of those episodes add free. And you support
the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it.

(01:45:03):
The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company,
this small business survive, especially during our early years, and
you are what continues to help this thing going even
as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So
we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to
be a link down in the description to that Patreon page,

(01:45:26):
and there is also going to be a link to
our new merch shop, so if you guys want to
go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers
and we also have patches, and I should mention if
you sign up for Patreon at ten dollars a month,
we will mail you this patch as well, so we
really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the

(01:45:47):
merch shop and additionally, they got t shirts up there,
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We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

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FBI Agent Sent to the CIA to Find Spies | Bill Evanina | Ep. 361

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}FBI Agent Sent to the CIA to Find Spies | Bill Evanina | Ep. 361