IAN FRITZ-WHAT THE TALIBAN TOLD ME

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Episode Transcript

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This is Later with Lee Matthews theLee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear Weekday
Afternoon's on the Drive. He andFritz was an airborne cryptologic linguist with the
United States Air Force from two thousandand eight to twenty thirteen. And when
he joined the Air Force at eighteen, he did so had a necessity which
we'll get to in just a minute, but he ended up becoming one of

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the bigger translators to what the Talibanwas saying and communicating during our time trying
to take out the Taliban. Andhe's joining us now to talk about the
book he's written all about it whatthe Taliban told me. Ian Fritz,
Greetings, good to have you here. Hi, Lee, thanks for having
me. So let's start with yournecessity to join the Air Force. Sure,

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so, yeah, I joined whenI was eighteen. I graduated high
school a few months earlier. ButI grew up in a small town in
Florida, and I had a workof lot in high school helped for my
family, and so I didn't getinto college. So after graduating, I
didn't really have much going on.I didn't have a plan other than to
keep waiting tables. So I hadmet a recruiter when I was in tenth

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grade who had talked about this airbornecryptological linguist job, and I remembered that
after graduating and sort of spinning mywheels for a little while, and I
went and found a new recruiter andyou know, asked him if I could
still do that job, and hesaid, yeah, well, we'll see
if fix some tests. I didall of that, and eventually eight month
ten months after I graduated high schoolin February two thousand and eight, I

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joined the Air Force and immediately theyrealized, you have the ear for language.
Have you always had this? Ithink I have probably had a lot
more exposure to other languages than mostpeople. I grew up in a family
where other languages were spoken because mymother grew up speaking other languages when I
When you joined to become a linguist, you have to you have to actually

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pass a test to people even togo to language school in the first place.
And that tested what helps determine,Yeah, do you have an ear
for this or are you capable oflearning a new language very quickly? Yeah,
that's that's the thing. I mean. I when I was in college,
I had to have a foreign languagefor my particular study. And I
grew up in deep south Louisiana,where everybody spoke an Akkadian dialect of French,

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and I thought, well, letme let me get French in that
way I can better understand the languageI grew up in. And of course
it was all full. So thenext two were German and Spanish. I
said, all right, I guessI'm speaking Spanish because I'm not going to
start a foreign language and then changehorses halfway through the race. And I
was amazed how quickly I took toit. I had no idea I could,
and in three years I became proficientin it. And still am It

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really takes an ear for it,doesn't it? I think it does.
Yeah, I knew at least youknow a couple of people at language school
who were incredibly intelligent humans, likemuch smurterer than me in many ways,
but there was something about the waytheir brain worked that even hearing different sounds,
let alone making those different sounds,was not really possible for them.

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Well, I also grew up kindof like you did, where these peculiar
conversations would be going on just inthe supermarket. You had the elderly people
who did not speak It wasn't theirfirst language English. Their first language was
the Akadi Francois, the French Acadian. So they were speaking to everybody in
the Akkadi and the people were answeringgrandchildren, daughters, sons, they were

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all answering in English. So youhad these peculiar bilingual conversations going on.
And later when I was exposed tosome Hispanic families, they kind of do
the same thing. Yeah, it'sreally fascinating when you find people who are
bilingual that do this sort of switchingback and forth. I think in America

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we're probably most used to hearing itin public and exactly what you're saying in
Spanish, because you'll have these,you know, two or three generation families
altogether who have different levels of thecomplic both Spanish and English. Right the
older generation, you know, superproficient in Spanish as minimal English. But
then the younger kids grew up herein English all the time, and they
understand Spanish, but they really wantto respond in English because they're more comfortable

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with that. It gets very interestingto sort of imagine how their brains are
working defining miss languages what the Talibantold me. Ian fritzis with us.
The language you took on for theUnited States Air Force, Was it Farsi
or a dialect of Farsi? Yeah, Dari is functioning the same language as
Farsi. It's just the name forthe version of Farsi that's spoken in Afghanistan.

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So we're talking about a whole differentalphabet. Yeah, the Arabic alphabet
plus a couple of extra letters.But yeah, it looks it's written,
you know, from right to leftinstead of left and right, and it
sort of looks like the joke,It looks like spaghetti that someone throw against
a wall. But that's interesting.Hebrew, another Middle Eastern language, is

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also written that way. Yeah.Hebrew in Arabic, you know, are
very closely related on the language level, and so Farsi uses the Arabic script.
And in fact, many many wordsin Farsi and Dhari impostu are loanwords
from Arabic, sort of the sameway, you know, many words in
English are loanwords from French. Mostcommonly, was it more important for you

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to understand what was being said orto speak what was being said? And
if it was to speak what wasbeing said, did you have trouble with
an accent? So in the inperforming my job, all I had to
do was to be able to understandit. I'm a person in my position
as a linguist, but in languageschool you do have to do a lot

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of speaking. So you know,you studied Spanish, you understand that that's
speaking another language is the hardest partof the language. Ye, by a
large, large amount. And Ithink maybe like you, because I grew
up hearing other languages, I wasa pretty decent mimic. Sotally developed an
accent. Like a number of myteachers were all from one area of similar

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accent, so I wound up justsounding like them. Yep. All my
Spanish teachers were Venezuelan, so Ihave a Venezuelan accent when I spare Spanish.
Yeah. So the name of thebook is what the Taliban told me
Ian Fritz is with as he's writtenit. You were eavesdropping upon conversation after

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conversation after conversation. Yeah. Thatwas the whole deal of the job,
is that you would every time youknow, you flew a mission, you'd
be trying to find the communications ofthe Taliban were making with one another.
And were largely doing this over aradio or where it was code involved as

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well. It's all over radio.They primarily use push to talk radios,
which are just like high powered walkietalkies. The it's within the job title
right air and cryptological linguists. Theywill sort of sometimes speak in not like
a full code, it's still thenormal language, or they have code words

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and all that you have to learnto differentiate between. You know, So,
what were some of the things youeavesdropped upon, Well, all sorts
of things. I spent a largenumber of hours doing it. The position
I was in, you know,was in high demand, so we flew
quite a lot. You know,the stuff people are generally most interested in

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is in battles, in firefights,right, So they're planning attacks, they're
coordinating during an attack, they're planningambushes, they're figuring out what weapons they
want to use, and all thesesorts of things. You know, beyond
that planning for attacks, there's amoment in the book that talks about,
you know, a very memorable conversationthat many people who did my job heard,

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and it's you know, two guysare sitting on a mountain side at
two o'clock in the morning in themiddle of winter, and it's very cold
and miserable, and one guy saysto hey, you know, go plant
that id down the road. Weknow the Americans are coming tomorrow. We
want that id down there. Andthe guy he told to do it sort
of like, no, I don'treally want to do that. I don't
think I'm going to do that.They go back back and forth and back

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and forth and back and forth,and finally the first guy says no.
He orders him, he says,you absolutely have to go put that id
down there. Go do it.And then finally the second guy pauses and
he says, brother, it's toocold to jahade. But not a thing
that you would ever imagine, right, Maybe you know, someone funnier than
me could imagine that conversation taking place. But hearing it, even if you've

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just heard a recording or something,it's kind of wild. Where are the
Taliban good at what they did?Yeah, they're very good what they did.
I mean it took him a longtime and a lot of people attrition,
but they did, you know,managed to be the other world superpower.
After when you were listening to theseconversations, did they sound organized that
they sound well executed. They inso far as the particular type of warfare

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that they were interested in that theywere good at, so like guerrilla warfare.
Yes, you know, they're notdoing sort of these big military maneuvers
or anything like that. Compared tous, you know, they're like wildly
disorganized. But for what they weredoing, they had what they wanted to
do down to a pretty decent science. Ian Fritz is with us. He

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was an air force linguists and acryptological linguist at that. He's written about
his experiences in what the Taliban toldme and I gather a good A good
deal of what you were hearing wasclassified or considered classified. What I was
hearing I would often, yeah,not be able to exactly relate to a

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lot of reasons for that kind ofwhat I said earlier, like code words
and things like this. The natureof the job of an airborne linguist is
classified though, just how you doit and the technology that you use all
that sort of thing. Did youever feel in danger once or twice being

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in a plane? You relatively safe? You know. I had an instance
on takeoff where someone else on theplane thought that they saw a rocket launched
at us, so we got todo a base of maneuvers and that sort
of thing. But for the mostpart, it is you know, the
guys on the ground who were doingthe fighting that were I was, you
know, I felt in danger forthem, if that makes sense. Yeah,

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oh yeah, makes perfect sense.Yeah, so you know they're the
guys getting shot at. Actually right, I'm up above them, you know,
trying to help them out what theTaliban told me, Ian Fritz.
It is out now and available everywhere. Is a fascinating read about an American
Air Force linguists during our fight withthe Taliban, and I thank you for
bringing us the book and joining ustoday. Thank you so much for having

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me. Thanks for listening to Laterwith Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The DriveLive weekday afternoons from five to seven
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