Episode 369: The Beat: Profiles of Police Nationwide: Kim Woodward - CIA (Volume 20) - Mic’d In New Haven

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
You're listening to the Bike to Do Even podcast hosted
by media personality and consultant Mike Globe.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
We're not out there fighting anything other than crime.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
WI see stuff that nobody should have to.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
You know, Shorge thirty one erect Now.

Speaker 4 (01:08):
I'll make your car.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
You're listening to the beat profiles of police nationwide. One
of the things I wanted to do that way, we
didn't pigeonhole ourselves when we started this mini series. One
of several of course that we have in the Mikey
New Aven podcast is I didn't want to limit it
to just local law enforcement. I wanted to take it
federal as well, get different perspectives of the A, t
f DEA, the FBI. Tonight for the first time, the CIA,

(01:34):
which I've never done before. So the Mike the New
Aven Podcast, and more waste than one. This evening is
in a little bit of uncharted territory, so we have
a CIA guest to all introduce in a moment, and
we're also on the road live from an undisclosed location,
still in the state of Connecticut, but not in my
usual studio. You don't see the Wayne Gretzky poster behind
me or any of the other usual backdrop that I have,
so I won't say where I'm broadcasting from, but I

(01:56):
am on the road this evening, so it'll make for
a different podcast, but nevertheless, still the same fun interviews
with still the same fascinating subjects that we've been fortunate
to get on this program. And speaking of fascinating subjects,
if you haven't checked out the previous episode, please do so.
Bill Gross worked New York City EMS prior to the
FD and Y merger, was involved in the transitional team
that made that FD and Y merger possible in the

(02:17):
spring of nineteen ninety six, and kept on working right
up until really recently when he was able to step
away from public service and go into the private sector again.
He came back during COVID, which he discussed as well.
So fascinating picking his brain because nobody in the first
responder community is more unsung than the men and women
of THEMS, so it's always great to chronicle the work

(02:38):
that they do, and I look forward to chronicling the
work that my guest tonight has done and continues to
do to all you tuning in. You know the drill
by now if you have a question, the chat fire away.
I will highlight at the appropriate time before I introduce her.
As always, I want to introduce my main man, Bill Ryan.
The Mike Thing You Have For podcast is proudly sponsored
and supported by the Ryan Investigative Group. If you need

(03:00):
an elite PI, look no further than the elite Ryan
Investigative Group, which is run by retired NYP Detective Bill Ryan,
a twenty year veteran of the Department who served the
majority of his career in the detective Bureau, most notably
in the Arson explosion squad. So if you need a
PI to handle anything from fraud, legal services, and anything
else that you might require, contact Bill at three four

(03:20):
seven four one seven sixteen ten. Again three four seven
four one seven sixteen ten reach him at his website
or the email that you see here. Again, if you
need a PI, look no further than Bill Ryan and
the Ryan Investigative Group, a proud supporter and sponsor of
the Mike Den Newhaven podcast. More sponsors come soon, including
of course producer Victor in the Chop Seat podcast discussing

(03:41):
all things baseball, mainly the Atlanta Braves. As I personally
get ready for the New York Yankees, for the sixteenth
consecutive year to disappoint me once again. But I don't
want my blood pressure to rise, So instead of talking
about them, I'll introduce my next guest, who is someone
who has worn many hats. Think about it, a former
CIA Intelligence Operations officer, school counselor. I have an investigator
in handwriting analyst with a career spanning high risk intelligence operations,

(04:05):
mentoring new officers, and now supporting students in schools. She
has developed a truly unique perspective on human behavior and
national security. Her work has taken her everywhere from Latin
America to the state side in Virginia, blending skills and
intelligence education as well as restorative practices. Tonight, the BEAT
celebrates at Smilestone twentieth volume, and I cannot think of
a better guest to welcome for this milestone than a

(04:27):
former CIA Intelligence Operations officer Intelligence Operations officer. I should say,
Kim Woodward, Kim, welcome, how are you.

Speaker 4 (04:33):
Hey, Mike, Thanks for that intro. I'm just happy to
be with you and I think we're gonna have a
fun evening tonight. I've got a lot to share and
I'm honored to be one of your guests.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Thank you very much. As we were talking about off
the air, we've been connected for a while, so I've
been thinking about this. I'm like why, And I literally
popped into my head one day scrolling LinkedIn why have
I not messaged her yet? So I messaged you. I know,
our schedules didn't line up, but finally tonight they did.
And I got a lot to pick your brain about.
Before I even get into anything regarding your career, what
you've done, just take me first through where you grew

(05:05):
up and what those early years were like.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
So, Mike, you know, it's interesting. I am one of
the few Native Floridians probably that you've met, born and
raised right near Fort Lauderdale down in South Florida. And
I actually grew up as a New York sports person
because in the nineteen sixties, seventies, even into the eighties,
really there weren't a lot of professional sports teams in

(05:27):
South Florida. So but there were a lot of New
York transplants, right, So we grew up with Madison Square,
Garden TV wor anybody back in the day members WR
so Yankees fan as well Rangers fan. But anyway, I
grew up there. I was fortunate enough to have very
supportive parents who had a very unique worldview. They wanted

(05:49):
me to travel, they wanted me to learn different cultures,
different languages. They supported exchange programs, and I was able
to go to Jakarta, Indonesia as an eighteen year old,
and it just my eyes to the complexity of the world.
I lived in a country with over thirteen thousand islands,
where there's over one hundred languages spoken. There's a blending

(06:11):
of many major religions there. I actually considered converting to
Islam during my time there. I was living with a
Muslim family. I participated in the Ramadan fasting and so forth,
and it really the whole experience opened my eyes to,
you know, cultural differences, but cultural similarities as well, and

(06:32):
how complex the world is. It was great to get
out of kind of my suburban upbringing, if you will,
which was a very privileged and wonderful one that I'm
thankful for. But I really got to see kind of
how things are in a third world country, right and
I could see some awful things. I saw some people,

(06:53):
young people my age and their late teenagers die of
disease that we are now we have medication and vaccines
for and this was in nineteen eighty four, so it's
not that long ago. Things like that, basic safety issues
being different overseas in third world countries, of course, so
it opened my eyes as a young person. I went
on to study anthropology. I wanted to be in a

(07:15):
nation's capital. I'm still here outside of the nation's capital.
But at GW is able to major in anthropology and
you don't just meet a lot of diverse thinkers who
opened up my whole world. Went overseas again to Italy.
Didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do after college,
but I realized that I wanted to do something with

(07:37):
an international flavor and I wanted to help people. So
I had kind of a greater calling of getting out
in the world making a difference, and I knew that
I wanted to be able to travel. So of course
there's a couple places that come to mind, Peace Corps,
CIA maybe not so much, and other government agencies such

(08:00):
as AID, which is not really thriving anymore these days,
State Department, which of course is our official diplomatic representation overseas.
So I applied to, you know, an abundance of those
international organizations and national security entities, and surprisingly enough to myself,

(08:21):
the CIA came through. Now, the process always takes a while,
so I was kind of, you know, not sure what
my future held. But I was very fortunate enough to
be brought into the agency, and I went through a
training class, as individuals do. We had kind of a cadre,
if you will, a class that goes through a certain

(08:42):
process together for a period of time, learning about the
intricacies of the agency. Now, I was brought in specifically
to work in the director of Operations, which is kind
of when you think about the CIA, you know, stereotypical
Larry Watch movies. There are the people overseas who were

(09:03):
meeting agents undercover, and so I was able to do
that specifically for the purpose of gaining useful intelligence for
our US policymakers, right, people in National Security Council, the President,
right whoever's making the big decisions. So I was very fortunate.
So I went from being kind of a South Florida

(09:24):
suburban girl, had an experience that opened my mind, which
I think was invaluable, and then I was able to
kind of parlay that into an international oriented career.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
And as we'll document tonight, our guess is Kim Woodward
here for this volume twenty of the big profiles of
police nationwide. Now, the CIA's methods are different. I don't
know if any if you don't mind going into it.
Did they recruit you or I mean, they're not like
other federal agencies, where at least the FBI, you could apply.
Did you apply? How did that work?

Speaker 4 (09:55):
I did apply. I did apply, And back in the day,
the CIA would go to college campuses and apply. That's
and recruit individuals to apply. That's not how I was
able to enter. I just kind of applied, you know.
Back in the day, there wasn't an online application. There
was a paper application and you were called back on
the phone to then go and meet at a certain place,

(10:18):
and there was a very regimented, if you will, process
where you went through certain steps and it was all
rather time consuming and it involved about a year and
a half of waiting, and ultimately I did have to
pass a polygraph test and a thorough background investigation that
included lifestyle choices and things like that and decisions. There

(10:44):
was also kind of a you know, review of what
foreign national contacts I had and who those people were,
so those have to be disclosed, and then ultimately I
was cleared from that perspective and I was hired.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
So nineteen ninety one is kind of an interesting time.
We're out of the Cold War by this point. It's
around the time that we have the Gulf for which
didn't last long but nevertheless was a major moment, and
at least in the hw Bush administration Bush forty one,
and that blows over with the thwarting of Saddam Hussein's
attempt to take over Kuwait. And I feel like there
was a period of time where the War on Terror
and the War on narcotics kind of in the interlapped

(11:20):
in the mid nineties. The War on Terror eventually took over,
especially after September eleventh, but during this time, Escobar is
still alive. The war with Noriega and Nicaragua kind of
just subsided. But there's a lot going on with the cartels,
both in Columbia and in Mexico, and that is infiltrating
the United States heavily. Even though the peak of it
was the eighties with the crack epidemic, it's still being

(11:41):
felt in major cities and pretty much everywhere you can
think of across the United States getting involved in operations
like that early on where we talked about useful intelligence.
These are evil people running an evil business, like it's
a fortune five hundred company. What was it like to
be embedded in something like that.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
No, you're absolutely right, Mike, that's a great discus. So,
you know, it was very interesting, and you have to
remember the CIA is not a law enforcement body. Okay,
so overseas we're collecting intelligence. What is intelligence, you may ask, right, intelligences? Well,
I could kind of summon up in five points. Basically
it's foreign Okay. Obviously this is information that's not about

(12:18):
what's going on in the United States, right, it's up
in interest to policy makers. So do we care what
Pablo Escobar for lunch? No we don't, But we care
about the meeting he had with his his you know,
advisor regarding plans to shift the next you know, cocaine shipment. Right.

(12:39):
We think about as being new. This is stuff that's
not in the newspaper. This is stuff that you know,
is not out there that people already knew. This is
new information. It's also information that ideally is authoritative. So
in other words, the information that the CIA collects and
then ultimately disseminates to policy makers. Once, we wanted to

(13:01):
come from sources who actually have the access that they
claim they have. So, for example, with the case of
Pablo Escobar back in the day, would we really put
a lot of stake into information that came from one
of his house cleaners, perhaps one of his you know,
his mansion. You know, maybe not, because maybe this is
a person who really did not have the access to him,

(13:23):
and maybe she's exaggerating that to gain a relationship with
us for financial purposes or others. But however, if that
advisor I mentioned previously, advisor to Escabar, one of his
closest right hand man, he's looking to make some money
and he's looking to risk his life ultimately, of course,
by betraying his boss, that person is going to be

(13:45):
able to provide us with authoritative information. So when we
look at intelligence to put out to the intelligence community,
whether it's from Latin America anywhere else, it's got to
have that component to it. So back in the nineties,
when we were looking at counter narcotics, we were supporting DEA,
we were supporting FBI overseas in our embassies by collecting
intelligence that then we would provide to them. Now, would

(14:09):
we provide them our sources? Am I going to give
them the sources name? No? Am I going to provide
them the methods? No. So sources and methods are very
important in the intelligence community. They're always protected. However, we
can pass kind of a sanitized version, if you will,
of the information to the actual law enforcement components, who

(14:29):
will then work with the host country military or whoever
the designy is in this case DEA, FBI working with
their counterparts. We call them their liaison counterparts. So whatever
body from the for example, the Columbia National Police that
is handling the narcotics effort, they would be coordinating. Now,

(14:50):
the problem back then, of course, there was rampant corruption
within those military bodies, So oftentimes we could not trust
that the intelligence we were shared with them for them
to then go out and take action, law enforcement action.
We could not trust that that was always going to
be handled appropriately. Okay, money, greed, you name it, right.

(15:13):
The problem with the nineties was that a lot of
the people who were supposed to be protecting and going
after the bad guys, right, the Pablo Escobars, the Achowa
brothers whoever we're talking about. They were corrupt. So that's
the obstacle in the area that the US government kept
just running up against was that. So ultimately we started

(15:35):
looking at also some of the involvement of terrorist groups
in Colombia and Venezuela who were cashing in on the
drug trade. When I say terrorist groups, these are not
international terrorist groups in the sense that they were plotting
like al Qaeda, to conduct operations in other countries around

(15:56):
the world. These were terrorist groups as defined by the
host government because they were basically insurgents. They were left
over from previous wars and they had they were basically
kind of looking for a return to a more socialist
type of you know, a plot of land for each person,
et cetera. So they were fighting and staging just a

(16:18):
very staged in the nineties, planned terrorist attacks against government targets,
targets of basically opportunity. Well guess what a target of
opportunity for them was also to cash in on the
drug trade. So they had these established networks going on
already in place from their insurgent efforts, and they cashed

(16:39):
in on the drug trade then as well. So we
had an overlapp being especially along the border La Frontera
with Columbia and Venezuela, where we were monitoring a lot
of that activity and it became, you know, like you said,
nine to eleven happened and ooh, our priorities completely got

(16:59):
shifted away from counter narcotics. Rightly so, given what happened
on nine eleven, of.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Course, and we'll talk about that a little bit as well.
Part of the glare the son's going down here in Connecticut.
So the look the way I do, like Harvey Depp
from Batman two faced, right now, one side of me
is bright, the other not so much. Can make that
a little bit better. But now, I mean, before we
even get deeper into that. To your point about the corruption,
it's funny you mentioned that because for those of you
that have ever seen the movie That Departed, it was
like a real life version of that. There's a mole

(17:28):
in the organization and one end there's a mole on
the other. You have to figure out who's who. It's
a constant cat and mouse game. And not to mention
boblo Escobar's black Oblomo policy, where he would go up
to these people who didn't necessarily want to go down
the road of corruption. But the threat was obvious. Either
you work for me or I'll kill you. And back
then it was not out of the question. Not only
would he kill them, he killed that person's family.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
Absolutely, So you know, what are you going to do?
What are most people going to do? Right if your
families involved?

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, it's a brutal thing to be a pawn of,
but that was the case. Nevertheless, I didn't want to
dive into this as well before I continue with this
ten year chapter of your life. This was David Cohen CIA.
David Cohen. Of course, for those of you who are
alumni of the NYPD, you know how much of an
impact he had on the NYPD, and he ran the
counter terrorism of Europe the New York City Police Department

(18:15):
a lot like he ran the CIA.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
I have forgotten about that, Mike, Thank you for that reminder. Yeah,
I totally. I was there under David Cohen, and I
remember everybody being excited about his just the New York
energy they brought into the agency and how it was
kind of a different type of leader. So he was
in charge of the counter terrorism in New York City.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
That's right, that's right, yep, of course he took over
two thousand and two. But getting back into the mid nineties,
of course you're not undercovered from the standpoint of doing
these operations yourself. I mean, obviously it's a wide ranging network,
but you got to gain trust, and you're operating in
foreign land where, even if it isn't Latin America, anywhere
in the world where you are not from that country,

(18:59):
audit madically at a disadvantage. You have to simulate to them,
and you have to operate discreetly with the capital d
lest they find you, less they threaten you, less they
kill you. And you never know how far these people
are willing to go to protect the empire the running
rather be drugs, terrorism or otherwise. So just tell me
about being able to gain trust where naturally doesn't matter
what country you're in, people just don't trust the government.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
Well, you know, make Overseas, whenever we were on our
way to meet an agent, we would definitely you know,
have to be on our toes in terms of doing
counter surveillance and you know checking is somebody following me? Okay,
So sometimes that would involve leaving the embassy or leaving

(19:41):
your apartment an hour and a half ahead of the
time of meeting the agent, so that you had ample
opportunity to make an abundance of turns. Maybe use several
varieties of transportation, getting on the metro, for instance in Karrakas, right,
getting off the metro, stopping in and purchasing a magazine

(20:06):
or a coffee, right and checking and noticing who is
perhaps still following you, because you did not want to
get burned. Because to everyone else, you are an embassy
employee who was there working out of the embassy, just
like the other political counselors, perhaps the FBI agents, the DEA,

(20:29):
the folks in the consular office who granted visas and
so forth. So it was kind of a guessing game
to the local nationals who worked in the embassy, because
if you are in an embassy overseas, there's a fair
number of locals who are their employee to support the
embassy with. That's the embassy guards, they're working in the cafeteria,
they're working in cleaning and so forth, and some of

(20:50):
the administrative positions anyway as well. So there's always kind
of among the locals kind of like hmm, let's see
which one's the spy, right, because they know that someone
is usually a spy if they're working in an embassy,
so surveillance checking for that surveillance became a very important piece,
and then also doing that as well after the agent meeting.

(21:14):
Also when you are looking to meet with a person clandestinely,
and they need their cover protected as well, because if
people see them meeting with you, they're going to be
questions to ask. Now, I had a little more cover
being a female, I will be honest, right, because there's
all kinds of things that can go people and through
people's minds right when they see if it's a male

(21:35):
agent that I'm meeting with as a at the time,
I was a young female. So you have a little
bit more cover for action, if you will. That looks natural.
A couple strolling, a man and a woman strolling may
look fairly natural. And if I'm passing you papers, you
know that that could just be well, you know here, honey,
this is a newspaper or whatever. So we had a

(21:57):
little more cover for action being a female. But in
terms of trust from the US government, from the local government,
essentially during this time, the Venezuelans were extremely pro US.
They wanted to work with us. We had many many
Venezuelans who had moved to the States, living in Miami,

(22:18):
who were still there at the time. This was prior
to the re election, if you will, of Hugo Chavez,
who had been he had overthrown, attempted and overthrow to
overthrow the government military coup, and then he was actually
elected to be really a brutal dictator is what he

(22:39):
became to be. And that was in nineteen ninety eight,
and this was following decades really of economic prosperity for
the country through their oil. But unfortunately, of course, like
so many Third world countries, there were only certain echelon,
a certain group of people who were benefiting from that
economic prosperity. So of course there were the haves and

(23:00):
have nots, and the haves had homes of Miami, and
they had plantations, and they had access to travel and
fancy vacations and nice cars and so forth. So the
election of Javas in nineteen ninety eight was really, you know,
the improverished people kind of speaking out, feeling that no
one was there to help them. But however, Chaves just

(23:23):
ended up stealing from the country as well. And then
what we see, you know, he stayed in power for
a long time. The COVID pandemic worsen things so horrifically
really in the twenty twenty because they did not have
access to the medication of vaccines. Poverty increased, there were
many deaths, and crime, of course increased at the same

(23:44):
time that the political instability increased, So we had kind
of going from Chavez as a military dictator to having
really a increase in poverty, increase in disease, and increase
in crime. So to the point of this, Will is
really not a very safe country these days, and there
is I believe there's still a travel advisory regarding going there,

(24:08):
and it's really a shame because we used to have
cruise ships would stop routinely, they'd be able to go
into port. There was a nice shopping there were nice restaurants,
tourism people would fly in and do some snorkeling and
other opportunities off the coasts. Yeah, so we were very

(24:29):
closely aligned in the nineties with Venezuela. They were very
pro yet us until Chavis came to power, and then
the whole country since then has just really tragically gone
down the tubes. And of course we saw a lot
of Venezuelans come to the US under temporary protected status,
which has now been repealed, and I believe that's a

(24:50):
Supreme Court fight. Right now. I've lost track of where
things are, but you know, it looks like we're at
least trying to allow these TPS Venezuelans to continue their
stay TBD.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, did you find that in particular? Of course, there
was the actions in Venezuela and the Ally ship up
until nineteen ninety eight, but as far as after Escobar
went down, and I believe nineteen ninety three, did you
find that the CIA is ever not going to have
anything to do? There's a lot to do, especially during
that period in time, but there is a shift. Naturally,
you're still keeping your eye on Columbia, but there's was

(25:26):
there ever the mentality of Okay, down goes Escobar. He's
out of the picture. Now we know someone else will
come up. But let's now that he's done, same thing
with Noriega Nicaragua, let's turn our attention elsewhere. Was it more, No,
let's keep an eye on this as things developed post Escobar.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
No. I think the recognition by the US government was
that and you know, I mean CIA da FBI. Someone
is going to just take in that back. Someone's going
to Fillo shoes, Someone's going to step into that vacuum.
As long as the you know, the infrastructures there, the
buyers are there, the means are there. So it was

(26:05):
never something where the US government kind of took took
their eyes off the game. I think counter narcotics to
this day, whether it's Latin America or even we were,
you know, looking very closely at Afghanistan and Pakistan back
in the day for all the poppy production that came
out of Southwest Asia as being problematic, and you know,

(26:25):
it's always going to be an issue, especially why these
economies tend to suffer. And when we look at what's
happening in Central America, particularly with the rise in the
criminal gangs kind of stemming or being part of the
drug trade to a certain extent, we have Trent of

(26:46):
the Agua and Venezuela MS MS thirteen coming out of
El Salvador, and we know that as long as that
political instability and that criminal high level of basically you know,
crime stats in El Salvador, you know, you don't want
to you don't want to step foot in San Salvador.
We have a lot of families, of course, who have

(27:07):
moved here because of that reign of terror from the
crime gangs and so forth. So there's always going to
be the drug em that's always going to be part
of that. And until we have political stability and we're
economic prosperity in these countries, it's going to continue to
just be a plague on those on those cultures. And
we know we're all well interconnected down.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeap, especially through social media and things of that. Yeah,
one thing I did want to ask you about too
is much like it's not all good, it's not all
bad either. I mean, the TV in the news doesn't
always do a good job befoortraying the situation is and
until you're actually in it that you understand the full
nuance of it. You had some wonderful, as you disclosed earlier,
international experiences early on being in Jakarta, being in Italy,

(27:50):
getting able, being able rather to travel abroad, which your
parents encourage you to do. So you had a lot
of wonderful experiences that way, and I imagine even in
the CIA, And I'd love it if you could talk
a little bit about it here. The operations were serious,
the matters were serious, and there was a lot of
danger involved. But I imagine that for as intense as
that was, it also yields the way to some really
uplifting and fascinating experiences in the positive way.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
Oh, I think, you know, I would recommend living abroad
if anyone out there is thinking about it. You know,
I know so many people these days, we have so
much more interconnectivity, and we have people living next to
us who have come from other countries, and they make
it look easy, right. They just fit into our culture,

(28:33):
or they don't fit into our culture, but they make
it work. They find jobs, they find employment, they find
circles of friends, they find outlets. And let me tell
you one thing, though, don't let them fool you, because
usually there's a struggle involved, because they're torn between two places.
And we should always remember that, right, whether or not
it's your family member that's come from another country and
maybe your first generation, there's always a struggle. There's always

(28:56):
going to be that yearning for the home element and
the attempt to assimilation. The assimilation always brings with it struggle,
but it always brings with it. I think broader perspective right,
So you can bring the great things from your culture
and you can share those things, and hopefully you're living
somewhere where it's really well received and people are interested

(29:18):
and they want to celebrate all those differences of those
new experiences. So I know, for me, for instance, living
in Indonesia was such an amazing experience because I was
forced in a situation where I didn't know a word
of the language, and I had to kind of attend
a high school in Jakarta not knowing any of the language.

(29:40):
In fact, one of the classes I had was German,
so they were teaching me German in Indonesian, which I
didn't know, and I didn't know any German. So it
was like I would leave and my head would be
about to explode, right, So I actually learned a little
German from there though, but I did learn a lot
of Indonesia. The best way to learn a language, anybody
out there who's interested in learning the language, total immersion, right,

(30:02):
just put yourself into it. It beats to a lingo,
beats babble. If you have the opportunity, just just go
for it. I think you know, nowadays we have such
such amazing opportunities to just meet people from other cultures
every every step we take. Right unless we're in a
real maybe small town rural America, most of our large

(30:23):
cities are just such a melting pot of everyone from
all over. And I think, I think it's always wonderful
to see, like a friend of mine brings me to
the Puerto Rican festival that we have outside you know,
outside Washington, d C. Or I've gone before. Also, we
have a Dominican festival here. We have German Octoberfest, right,

(30:44):
it's now Octoberfest, even though September, that's october Fest time.
So I think I think it's great just to be
able to celebrate all those things, and for me, like
some of the fun things, some of the fun stories
I would I would have to tell you that we
fortunate as embassy workers to have provided for us at
extremely low cost household help, if you will. So I

(31:09):
had a maid, okay, which I'd never had before, and
she was actually from Columbia, she was actually from the
Border area, and she would come to my house once
a week and she would clean and she took a
special attachment to one of my cats, to the point
this cat was so shy he got freaked out because
we brought him over in the plane, right, and that
kind of changed his personalities, like, wait, wait a minute,

(31:30):
I'm on a plane and I'm in this new country.
And we didn't have air conditioning, so we had to
keep the windows shut. But as you guys know, if
you've been in other countries, there's usually not window screens, right,
so we couldn't open the window. We were on the
sixth floor because the cat would jump out because there
were no screen. So we had it was really hot,
and then we had fans going. And then we had
this wonderful, wonderful woman who would come to our house

(31:52):
once a week. She would make special food for this cat. Okay,
this woman probably earned ten a week. Okay, this woman
probably I think she. I think she told me once
there was like this was like a two hour bus
ride to get to the part of the city in
Caracas where I lived, where they housed the embassy people

(32:15):
in pretty nice apartments. Right, So she drove, she was
on a bus for two hours to come see me.
Sheer and I don't even know what she had, relatives
that were sick, not access to medication, things like that,
she will come, she would clean my house. She would
make me at APUs if you're familiar with Columbia or

(32:35):
venezull and she would make me at APIs. She would
spend time playing with my cat and feeding from her
hand my cat, my shy cat who had freaked out
from the from the transportation drama getting overseas. And this
is a woman who, like I said, she earned so little,
she had so little. She always seemed very happy and

(32:57):
just grateful for what she had. And so I always,
you know, sometimes we get going crazy with everything with
life and it becomes complicated, and I think back to
her and I think, wow, you know, she she took
care of her family, She worked as hard she had to,
and she appreciated what came into her way, even a
little cat. You know, she took time to show love.

(33:19):
So I think that was a neat experience. I think
you find experiences like that, you know, all the time,
if you kind of put yourself out there.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Absolutely, it's the only way. I mean, even in larger
cities here in the States where you have a little
Italy usually you have a China town, you have a
heavy Spanish neighbor populated neighborhood. That's the way too, where
you know, you're able to break down those barriers, so
to speak, just by talking, just by walking and talking.
Like you said, it's the old school way. You walk
a block in New York City, anywhere in New York City,

(33:48):
you'll get that experience, that's for sure. And I'm sure
that's something you've done plenty of time. Over One thing
I always like asking too on segueing into something a
little bit different but still during covering your time with
the CIA, is you know to my PD and FT
friends that come on and hello to you, duty wrong,
good to see in the chat my friend once they
get a little bit of time on the job, I

(34:08):
always like to ask them, Hey, you know, now that
you're in a position where you have a little bit
of seniority, but you're still smack that in the middle
of your career, tell me about the fact that now
you're in a position where you can mentor now you're
in a position where you could pass this information off
the same way other people did to you when you
were first coming in so by ninety seven, ninety eight,
ninety nine, tell me about looking at your experiences Okay,
here's what worked, here's what didn't, and taking someone with

(34:32):
that same bright eyed, bushy tailed enthusiasm you had in
ninety one, and mentoring them and leading down, leading them
down the right path.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
I think mentoring is so important, you know. I think
any any person who has considered their career as success
can can point to at least one person who served
as a mentor, and probably they couldn't have done it
the same without that person. I think now, from now
that I'm an older adult, you know, I have the
lens of really being able to appreciate all the people

(35:01):
who helped me get to where I was. And I
want to say that back at that time, it took
me a while to realize how important that was initially.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
You know.

Speaker 4 (35:11):
It's interesting and I don't know if some of your
law enforcement buddies will probably agree. But of course there's
such the tough love at the beginning, right, Yeah, there's
total tough love. Okay, So you have to step up
to the plate. You got to really earn your dues,
you got to, you know, work to the grind to
prove yourself. But then once you kind of have shown
that you are you are ready to do the job,

(35:33):
you're committed, you've kind of passed that test of character.
If you will. Then I think people really open up
their heart and they really just speak with honesty. And
I think the number one thing that I would say
would be speaking to people with honesty about you know,
the downfalls the pitfalls of the job, especially for me
working at CAA. You've got a lot of ethical dilemmas

(35:56):
that you're looking at, right, You're looking at Okay, I'm
asking this person to commit espionage essentially right and give
me information, which is an illegal act for them to
do in their country. And I'm telling them that I
can protect them, when in fact, I know that I
really can't promise that. I really can't promise that. So

(36:18):
you're asking somebody to do something that you probably would
really have to think hard and fast about, and you
have to convince them that it's for their best interest
or whatever their motivation is right right at the time.
You know, whether it's money, ideology, whether they've been compromised,
or whether it's ego, right, whatever their motivation is, to

(36:42):
cooperate with the US government. I in my own experience,
I ran into a lot of situations where the assets
that I met with, the human sources, if you will,
of our intelligence that I met with were motivated either
by money or ideology. The ones that I worked with,
the ones that were motivated by ideology were very uplifting

(37:05):
to be around because they truly felt at the time
that the US government needed their information so that the
US government could help their country be a better place.
So back to the mentoring, I think that when I
was going through that kind of you know, journeyman phase
of my career and I started to have more confidence,

(37:27):
did an overseas tour and then was ultimately selected to
instruct others at intelligence report writing, I think the best
advice was really the honesty and also the ability to
kind of reflect and make sure am I okay with
doing this? And if I'm not, that's okay too, I

(37:48):
can step away or I can let somebody else handle it.
So one of the flexibilities. You know, you're building relationships
with your agent, but there's always the time and place
when you have to say, you know what, I can't
handle this person. I can't you know this person. For instance,
in Latin America, one of my tours I had, I

(38:10):
was handling a human source who the communication arrangements were
that he would pick me up in his car. Okay
for clandestine meetings. He showed up extremely drunk, over and over,
which put my life at risk, right because he was
driving me around he was drunk. They're driving there was
crazy to begin with, Right, you think it's bad in

(38:31):
New York. No, this was you know, lay lines are
just suggestions, right, Staff signs are kind of yeah, And
that's how the third world is. Right. Traffic is a
whole different beast in the third world. So I finally said,
you know, to the person who ultimately was my mentor,
I said, you know what, I just I'm really nervous

(38:52):
about this because I'm you know, this guy, he can
barely drive when he picks me up. He's drunk.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
You know.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
That person said, that's okay. You know, hey, we're gonna
you know, let's let's let's change things up. So don't
be afraid to appear weak if there's something that really
makes you uncomfortable, be honest, you know, as a mentor,
give advice that is authentic and genuine, and that also

(39:17):
shows and an opportunity for someone to really admit a weakness.
At the same time, they're you know, building on their strengths.
It's okay, we all have strengths. And weaknesses and just
try to utilize your strengths to the best of your ability,
and then somebody else. You know, we're all part of
a team. Somebody else can step in if you have
a certain weakness in one area. We're all interconnected.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
So of course, I think that's a good way to
sum it up. And I mean it goes back earlier
to what you said to I love what you mentioned
regarding ideology because you mentioned they're torn. They're torn between
their original homeland, which, despite its instabilities, whatever those instabilities
may have consisted of, it's still their homeland. There's still
an emotional task. It's all they know versus what they

(40:02):
know w it's a right and what they know will
ultimately lead to a better outcome, whatever that may consist of,
down the road. So you know, I think it is
and this is one of the things that you know,
I'm one of the reasons I should say I'm glad
we're talking tonight. It highlights just the complexities of human
nature where when emotion and attachment specifically is involved, it
makes decisions that on the surface may seem black and

(40:23):
white that much more complicated. And I'll segue that into education,
but just to kind of wrap up the CIA years,
you made the decision to switch to a contractor role,
as you mentioned off the year around two thousand and
two thousand and one, you're getting ready to welcome a
little one, and nine to eleven happens. And what happens
with nine to eleven is is in terms of federal
law enforcement specifically at specifically rather where interagency collaboration is

(40:47):
being encouraged like never before because of what we learned
in the aftermath, A lot of people are staying a
lot of people who maybe thought about leaving have opted
to day because of what has just occurred. And there's
new opportunities because of this massive tract. Were you torn
to yourself at the time, But you know what, should
I stay? Should I get involved in this counter terrorism fight?
But I got a little one at home? Now, what

(41:09):
was your two thousand and one, two thousand and two like,
when you made the decision? You know what, let me
walk away from this?

Speaker 4 (41:14):
Yeah? I was. I was definitely torn because when that happened,
you know, obviously the impact was just enormous on everyone,
and the intelligence community of course just got you know,
rubbed up and for lack of a better word. I mean,
there's no better motivation to do what you do until
something like that happened and you realize, gosh, this is

(41:36):
so important. Of course, so many things have been said
and written and investigated about, you know, the strengths and
weaknesses of intelligence during that time. But the bottom line
is that every single person who worked at CIA, and
every single person who was involved in looking at transnational
terrorism through a lens, especially of El Qaida and so forth,

(41:57):
they were one hundred percent committed to that effort. And
I think, you know, the men and women of the CIA,
for whatever blame can be cast or whatever, I think
everyone has done such a fantastic job at their mission.
And I'll even rewind a little bit back to before

(42:18):
nine to eleven and nineteen ninety three. I was waiting.
I don't know if you've ever been to Langley, Virginia,
where the headquarters is. There's a double turn lane that
goes to the left turn to go into CIA Headquarters
that all employees go through to enter the compound. This
was January nineteen ninety three, and it was the morning

(42:42):
commute and I had just made the left turn into
CIA Headquarters. The light then changed to red, and so
the next round didn't go forward. Those people stopped at
the staff light were became victims to a murder. There
were two individuals CIA employees who were murdered, several other

(43:03):
people were wounded, and that was done by Pakistani foreign
national who Amer Kanzi. He lived in nearby rest in
not maybe fifteen twenty minutes from Langley, Virginia, extremely anti
American sentiments, just stepped out of his car, took his
rifle out and shot. One of the persons killed was
a CIA psychologist, and he actually nobody got his car

(43:26):
number or make, and he was able to leave the
country undetected, fled to Afghanistan, and then four years later,
by luck actually of an informant just walking into an
embassy saying, I know where Kanzi is. He was in
Pakistan and we were able the FBI, working with the
local law enforcement there, was able to go and apprehendim

(43:48):
and bringing back to the United States. My point is
that they never ever, ever stepped away from that being
a priority from day one. As soon as that incident happened,
the men and women of the CIA and the whole
US government, they said, we're going to get this guy.
We're going to get this guy. And I think we
saw the same thing happen obviously with Osama bin Laden, right,

(44:12):
So we have we've stayed we've stayed the course, right,
and there have been twists and turns along the way,
and it hasn't been easy and it hasn't been perfect.
But it is upsetting to me to see sometimes, you know,
in the media or you know, just out there in
the in the chatter, that sometimes people who serve their country,

(44:33):
whether it's military or with the agency or FBI DEA,
that they are not every day doing everything they possibly
can to keep our country safe. And there are so
many small victories that happen all the time. And you
guys in New York you know this, right, There are
things all the time, whether it's NYPD, there is stuff thwarted,

(44:55):
there are attacks that are thwarted, that are wrapped up,
and we never hear about it. And sometimes I wish
that you, you know, the American public knew a little
bit more about those everyday successes that are happening literally
all the time, and not only in the big cities of.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Course, you know. And it goes back and Ron I
see your question. IM gonna highlight it in just a moment.
It goes back to something I used to hear Ray
Kelly and David Cohen say a lot went back during
Kelly's days with the NYPD Commission. It's not what you see,
meaning intelligence operations, counter terrorist initiatives, it's what you don't see.
It's all the unmarked units, it's all the individuals operating
whole you'll never know about. And even to your point,

(45:35):
other agencies, not that I'm knocking them, this is just
what they do when they have a line of duty death.
You know about it, you know, and there's a funeral
for this fallen officer, for this fallen agent. In CIA's case,
you hardly ever know. And there's so many stars on
that wall at headquarters in Virginia of individuals who, even
in death, their identities must remain a secret and people
will never know what they went through, what they did.

(45:58):
Just to think about that is doily to your point,
very very sobering.

Speaker 4 (46:02):
And Mike, you know, one of those stars was a
groomsman on my wedding, you know, So I I'll never
forget you know that individual.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, Ron asking the chat
a little context on Ron Ron is there. A retired
New York City Police detective with the YouTube channel and
successful podcast of his own. He wants to know if
you know his friend Tracy Walder, a former CIA officer C.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
Walder. Tracy Walder, No, I don't. I don't believe so,
unless that's a married name props.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
All right, Well, if there's a made name involved, Ron
more than free to put that in the chat. Yeah.
Ron's a good man. He's been a former guest of
the show. Is in the old New York City Housing
Police as well, prior to its merger with the NYPD
in the spring of nineteen ninety five. So interesting, man,
for sure. You know, I didn't want to ask this
as well. It's an interesting transition from intelligence usually. I mean,

(46:51):
you've been a private investigator as well. Somebody would stay
in that realm. You went into education. Was that always
a passion of yours prior to your tenure with the CIA,
and you just hadn't had a chance to pursue it yet?

Speaker 4 (47:02):
You know, I know, Mike, I've been asked this question
a lot. It does seem a kind of a strange transition.
A couple of things. When I was overseas, I did
spend a lot of time with families of fellow intelligence
officers or embassy personnel. So I found myself, you know,
kind of chatting with the older kids, enjoying they would

(47:24):
confide in me. I realized that I really enjoyed that.
And then another aspect of my work in meeting clandestinely
with these human sources. For example, that drunk general I
told you about who would pick me up. The reason
why he was drunk so much is because he was
really having a lot of conflict with his wife at home,

(47:44):
who was pressuring him to earn more money to support
the children and the family. He would want to come
and just kind of dump all of that onto me.
Rather than provide me the intel that I really wanted
to get from him about Park and eln movements on
the Columbia Venzuella border, He'd rather talk about his family.

(48:04):
And I found that if I was an empathetic listener
and I really heard him out and listened to his
story and showed that I cared, I found that it
really it really invested both of us in the relationship
to such a greater extent, so that he started to
view me as somewhat of a friend and he worked

(48:28):
even harder to ultimately get that information that I would
finally work my way around to reminding him, Hey, I
really need you to look at X y Z after
I've listened to him, after I've empathized, after I've basically provided,
you know, a listening ear So that was with an adult,

(48:49):
and then I also had, as I said, children of
fellow embassy officers who would come and talk to me.
And so when I got back to the States and
I started having my family, I knew that I wanted
to have a little bit of a different lifestyle. I
wanted to have a lifestyle that was a little bit
more conducive for me as a mother. Everybody's different, and

(49:12):
so I did go back to school part time, and
I earned my master's degree in counseling. And you know,
you'd be surprised and perhaps I don't know some of
your NYPD or some of your other you know, friends
and guests would also say that, you know what, being
a good counselor and using empathy has really resulted in
some productive relationships. Whether it's whether it's in gaining information

(49:36):
or just being a good human being. It's a really
good skill to have, and it can get you. It
can get you a lot of buy in no matter
what industry you're in.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Absolutely one hundred and ten percent. Ron mentioned Chandler is
the maide A name. I don't know if it still
rings a bell or if it doesn't. And if it doesn't,
it's he sets. It's fine, But Tracy Schandler was the
original name. Small world, but a big world. Nevertheless, at
the CIA, we're talking with Kim wood Work, former intelligence
operations officer for the CIA. This is the milestone volume
twenty of the beat profiles of police nationwide. Now there

(50:07):
is the relatability factor. And I don't ask this in
a bad way. It's good for the record. It's good
not to grow up struggling. One can't control the circumstances
they're born into. But if they're positive circumstances, then hey,
that's good. That's how you want people to grow up.
But in dealing with at risk children, which I saw
a lot of in my middle school years and dealt
with it from the standpoint of unfortunately having not the

(50:29):
best relationship with those kids at the time, our maturity levels,
not being the bestest preteens and teens. You know, it's
difficult to relate to them when you havn't gone through
certain aspects of what they've gone through. So breaking that
barrier when a lot of these kids are already hard
hearted and cynical as it is, gets that much harder.
But then again, you've been around the block, and even
without all the experience of the CIA, seen a thing

(50:52):
or two by that point in your life, using your background,
how are you able to soften them and be able
to reach their hearts?

Speaker 4 (50:59):
You know, I say making them the expert in their
own lives as a great approach. You know, so you know,
explain to me what does that look like? You know,
you feel really upset about your you know, the way
your dad treated you, or you're upset with the teacher
at school. Right, you know, what did that look like
for you? You know, if you could, if you could
have a magic wand and you could fix that, if

(51:21):
you could change your dad, right, what would that look like?
What would what would he have said to you in
that situation when you had that argument?

Speaker 1 (51:29):
Right?

Speaker 4 (51:29):
So you're empowering them to be kind of the narrator
of their experience to you, rather than you coming across
as the expert. Because I'm not the expert on their lives. Right,
I'm just listening, So I'm giving them the authority. I'm
giving them the power, and I'm empowering them to be

(51:50):
able to explain to me what that felt like or
what that looked like. And then I'm also giving them
the power to kind of sit back and say, well,
if you had to do that again, if you had
to have that conversation with your dad again, how would
you have wanted it to go? Right? So we're never

(52:12):
casting value judgments. We're not critiquing right, we're not giving
positive and negative feedback. We're just more helping them frame
their lives in ways that they can see things for themselves.
And you know, with preteens that's tough, right, the frontal
lobes not developed yet fully right, so it's really hard

(52:32):
for them. But kids will sit back and they'll reflect
and they'll say, you know, maybe next time, I wouldn't
have run out of the house.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
It's reasoning thinking, it's critical thinking, and it's important to
establish that because ultimately, you know, I didn't understand this.
Because when you're going through bullying, it's incredibly frustrating because
you know, you don't feel like people understand you, and
there was something that used to drive me nuts. But
the older I get, the more I do understand it.

(53:04):
When my mother, trying to kind of calm me down
from a particularly bad day, would say, well, for them,
it's just a cry for help, to which my rebuttal
that would be, well, it's a pretty crappy cry for help.
But the older that I get, the more I see well.
And in some senses it is not that it makes
the behavior correct, now that it makes the actions correct.
That I am not in any way endorsing it as

(53:24):
someone that went through it and had an awful time
of it. But then you peel back the onions, so
it's a big you look behind the curtain, and I
love what you said. Because they don't have control over
their own lives. You go to their houses and it's
a very sad set of circumstances. They've been born into
a situation they didn't ask to be born into. So
by making them the expert, I feel like it's giving

(53:44):
them the power they never truly had.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
It.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Maybe that's the reason that they were able to relate
to you.

Speaker 4 (53:49):
So well, yeah, it's very possible that you know people
who become bullies, right, you know, children in middle school,
late elementary school, high school, they don't have that person
who really feels, you know, is there for them and
is a stable, loving presence. And that's a sad thing,

(54:13):
right for a child obviously, And I think that power
element as well. There's always that feeling of inadequacy that
many bullies have for whatever reason, it is right that
they are then in some ways projecting on others sometimes. Right.

(54:33):
I see a lot in my work now, I see
bullying that happens oftentimes because of actually some of it
kind of mimics some behavior they see at home. Is
what I'm seeing currently, and it's very interesting. You know,
we were mentioning a little bit of off camera before
we started speaking about the use of a lot of

(54:55):
profane language, right, And I'm seeing an increase in younger
children calling name calling as part of bullying, you know,
calling calling another child some really gross of scene names
that you know they shouldn't be doing. And it's coming
from home, It's coming from you know a lot of
media sources, social media, et cetera, et cetera. But it's

(55:17):
becoming more mainstream in our culture. So there's been an
uptick in that which is unfortunate. But I think a
lot of the bullying does come from something missing inside
that that person and so being able to either ignore
or being a you know, being an upstander in the
sense of saying, hey, stop it, I don't like that.

(55:40):
Is there something you want to tell me? What is
the root is? What is this really about? Did I
do something that bothered you? Please tell me again? We
get back to honesty, you know. But kids, you know,
we said their brands are still developing. So a certain
amount of you know, conflict is normal. That's how learned
to get along. And I think a big thing that

(56:03):
I teach that's really important is conflict resolution and problem solving.
You know. I think when we think, when we look
at the increase in school shootings and so forth, you know,
a lot of suffering has come about by a lack
of problem solving and conflict resolution and no one really

(56:25):
being able to be there and understand the type of
grievances or the type of suffering these individuals are going through.
And I don't mean to put this together saying that
there's school shooters and bullying and so forth. I'm just
saying people have to be heard. They have to be understood,
and they have to be able to have adults who
are going to help them resolve their their conflicts right.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
And even if it doesn't resort to that level of violence,
even if it just resorts into you know, not a
good old fashioned you know, this is not what's supposed
to happen in schools, but a fistfight of some sort.
You know, how did we get here? That's the common question.
Rather be a fistfight, rather be a fight outside of school,
rather be unfortunately the extreme case of a stabbing at
school or a shooting at school. How did we get here?

(57:10):
The common theme is what you just mentioned. Nobody ever
sat down and mend defenses. And boy, especially when the
frontal lobe is not developed, and even a little bit
into early adulthood in you know, early twenties and so
on and so forth, can grudges manifest and can they
spill over in the worst of ways if that is
not done.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
Absolutely, And you know the problem we run into. And
you know, it's tough because of course, kids, kids are
going to be told by their parents, you know, to
a certain extent, you got to defend yourself.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, we'll let.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Them hit you got to fight, you know, you got
to fight back. Well, okay, you know, look, I understand that,
But there are ways we can empower and strengthen children
by teaching them other skills besides punching back or hitting back.
That in the long run is going to make everybody
safer and is going to also keep that one kid
out of trouble, because we all know that. Okay, if

(58:00):
you retally, you're going to get caught too. You're usually
the one that gets caught first. Sometimes you're the only
one that gets caught, right, I mean, yeah, So if
we can teach people, you know, alternative alternatives too bullying
in terms of we don't have to fight back, and
it doesn't mean you're a wuss or you're weak if
you don't punch, if you just walk away, or if

(58:21):
you say something funny or unexpected, or you distract the
person from what's going on whatever has them so heated.
You know, there's there's a lot of different strategies that
can be applied, but parents need to be on the
same page with that.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Yeah, that's tricky, No, it is, And I tell you
it was night and day for me. Well, then again,
there's a maturity factor too. From middle school. I did
homeschool for high school for a couple of years just
to kind of recalibrate, and then I went back into
the public educations field for college. In college, my main
strategy that has served me well to this day. See
the toughest guys, see the guys that look the scariest,

(58:58):
make them laugh. You make them laugh. Turns out you
can make wonderful friendships that way.

Speaker 4 (59:03):
You know.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
You talk about the ballgame last night. You know, that's
usually a nice break or two, and those guys, you know,
nine times out of ten, they will have your back,
you know, and that's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
It's a good strategy, you know. So they usually say.
One of the things that my guys at the firehouse
kid me with is go to the toughest guy and
punch him in the face. No, make him laugh, make
them laugh.

Speaker 4 (59:25):
It works, It really does.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
It really does work.

Speaker 4 (59:28):
Then you know, having an argument with your your your
better half, that works too, right, Yeah, you're siblings.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
She can relate, you know. I throw one a SpongeBob
reference in there and immediately alleviates attention as she can
relate to having happened many a time over. So going
back again, there's there's so many things that have come
full circle in our conversation to this point. I love
what you mentioned earlier about your international experiences because you've
taught Spanish. Now, you wouldn't think of someone with the
name Kim Woodward teaching Spanish. There you were doing that

(01:00:00):
help me about that experience.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
You know, I loved teaching Spanish, Mike. So I learned
Spanish to go on my assignment with CIA. I had
studied Latin, Indonesian, German in college. I needed Spanish to
go on my deployment, and so I actually had a
six week training course, eight hours a day, one on one,

(01:00:22):
and I loved it. And then I would go home
and I would watch Spanish TV and movies. So I
tried to kind of imitate. I kind of tried to
create like a self immersion here in Virginia, and it
served me well because I scored well. I do like languages,
you know, we all have strengths and weaknesses. I like
learning languages. So when I became a Spanish teacher, I

(01:00:43):
was actually working at an alternative high school at the time,
so the students that I had were first of all,
they didn't like school, second of all. Second of all,
they were taking Spanish because they had to. Okay, they
weren't really that interested or eager excited. And thirdly, many

(01:01:05):
of them were either gang members or they were on
probation for some type of juvenile crime. And then there
were another type of student who just really didn't fit
into the larger homeschool situation because they maybe socially they
were just different and they wanted a smaller environment environment.
So made for kind of an interesting mix of students

(01:01:26):
in a classroom. Right, you have a foreign language classroom,
you're teaching Spanish, You've got some gang members, You've got
maybe some kids who have you know, been picked up
for drugs. And then you've got some kids maybe who
really are extremely introverted or maybe have some very large,
you know, huge impactful anxiety disorders that prevent them from

(01:01:49):
really feeling comfortable in a large school. So they were
at our alternative high school. So here I am trying
to kind of find a common motivating force to get
them all in engaged and interested in my class. And
that was quite a challenge. That was quite a challenge.
I do recall myself several times standing on desks doing

(01:02:09):
anything from showing music videos to you know, I allowed them.
When it was time to do their project on a
famous Latino person, I allowed them. Some of them did
Pablo Escobar, bad Bunny, you know, I mean he was
probably no who was the There was another one, Selena

(01:02:31):
was a common one. So it could be any kind
of pop star, even criminals, as long as it was
somebody that they were excited to actually do a research
project on. So, you know, normally at another high school,
I would have been on the front pages of the
paper if I allowed somebody to come in and do
a do a presentation on Pablo Escobar, right, But that

(01:02:53):
was kind of nice working on Alternative high school because
we could kind of make it up as we went
along and do whatever it took to engage the is
and to real you know.

Speaker 5 (01:03:01):
So I showed them videos of Diana Naiad, who I
don't know if you heard about her, but she swam
in a shark cage from Key West to Cuba.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):
Okay, she was a swimmer. Her body was totally destroyed
between the the you know, the different things in the
water and the seaweed and so forth. As sharks going
out our cage, but I showed them that just to
introduce them the concept of cubathers this little island. A
lot of them didn't were not familiar with geography, and
a lot of them weren't familiar with the countries that

(01:03:34):
their families came from. So it was really kind of
an honor for me to be able to open their
eyes and to show them things about their parents' home
country that they didn't know about. You know, that was
so cool for me, you know, just to expose them
to things like, you know, teach them a little bit

(01:03:55):
about art. So I would use that. I would show
them Pablo Picasso's Guernica, you know, very famous painting done
about the German practice of bombing that World War two
that they they did in Spain and the demolishment, and
just opening their eyes. I would show them music videos
of various you know, Hispanic artists and so forth, pop artists,

(01:04:19):
and we would talk about Salvador Dally, any cultural elements
I could bring in because it was all new to them.
Most of these students came from families who either lacked
education themselves or were you know, had been educated but
were not really able to step up to their parental

(01:04:41):
role in terms of exposing their children to to new
experiences and the world around them. So that was, you know,
all the jobs I've had, Mike, that was probably the
one that I felt the most passionate about. Maybe you
can hear it in my voice.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
I can, and I love it because you know, again,
we need educators like this. Their educators that get jaded,
that get cynical, that you just want to be done
with the day. But to hear you so invested in it,
you know, especially considering the life experiences that you've had,
and that this is the thing that you were most
passionate about. I think it speaks to a lot of
the great educators that we do have out there across
the country, across the world that genuinely care about these

(01:05:17):
kids and are is invested in them if they're lucky
enough to have good parents as their own parents are
or their own grandparents are, whoever it is out there
that cares for them. So in line with that, I mean,
by the way, before I continue, if I was in
your class as a baseball fan and as a wrestling
fan as a kid, you either would have gotten a
presentation on Sammy Sosa or Eddie Guerrero, so and it

(01:05:37):
would have been the best presentation of the class, might
I say? But with that in line, you know, I'm
pretty sure maybe you keep in touch with a lot
of your students. Maybe not, I'm not sure. But are
there students that maybe again they were at risk, you
made a positive impact on them, and you keep in
touch with them. You see nowadays they're doing really well.

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
I do have some. I mean I have stories on
both sides, you know. I actually had a student who
came to our school. She had just moved over from Cameroon.
She was not in my Spanish class, but she was
at the time. I was also a counselor at this
school in addition to teaching Spanish. And when she came over,

(01:06:17):
she was already seventeen years old, and they told her,
you know what, you don't have time to get all
your credits to graduate from a US high school. Now
back in her home country, she was on track to
be a petrochemical engineer. She came here because of her
parents' decision to emigrate to the United States, write no
decision of her own, and we told her, well, you

(01:06:38):
just you got to get your ged right. So she
studied for a GED. She passed her GED. She was
distruct right because she thought that she would be able
to easily access college in this country and go on
to you know, get her master's and be an actual

(01:06:58):
petrochemical engineer because in her home country it was an
easier path, it was a more direct path. They kind
of had maybe a tracking system, if you will, where
they identified the best in the brightest earlier on and
then they kind of channeled them in her case of
stem direction, right, because that was her interest. So she
would have been the best in the brightest had she

(01:07:18):
stayed in her home country. She comes here and has
to take an alternative path right to graduate from high school.
So she gets her GED. She then really has no
financing options open to her to even you know, to
participate in community college as a first step and then
perhaps to go on to greater, you know, more advanced

(01:07:41):
degrees in her field. So she actually went and she
joined the military, and she's traveled all around and she
has a family and she is a pretty high ranking
I don't remember specifically her job title, but she has
been able to use her skills in the military and
is quite successful and happy. So it's really neat to

(01:08:03):
see because she had a rough start and she felt
like coming here that she was disadvantaged just because of
her age and the time that she arrived here. Now,
I had some students who I had in Spanish class
who things didn't work out so well. I had quite
a few students who have committed pretty violent crimes and

(01:08:27):
went on to be sent down to the state penitentiary
as juveniles and then as adults as well. So that
was really rough to see. It was really rough to see.
We have I don't know if you'd be surprised, you
guys are up in the New York City area, but
in northern Virginia, outside.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Of Washington, d C.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
We have a pretty significant gang presence. And so with
a lot of our kids coming here from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,
their parents of course made the choice to make the
rough journey and sacrifice a lot to get their kids
out of that criminal environment and out of that gang
environment where they were being groomed or basically forced into

(01:09:09):
working with the gangs. They made the decision, the parents
did to bring them up here for their safety. And
then the awful irony and the awful tragedy is that
in many cases, the kids, despite their parents' best interest,
they just got dragged into gang activity here in Northern Virginia.

(01:09:31):
The goal was to escape that in their home country, right,
So that's been really hard to see.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Yeah, I can imagine, you know, and that there's too
many stories like that across the board. That was a
big problem in Long Island until years ago with MS
thirteen which you mentioned earlier, and other gangs infiltrating the
area that they're such a pull and sometimes, you know,
when you have immigrant parents, I've noticed a lot of
this too. They're working hard because they're trying to make

(01:09:59):
headway or in the States they're not home. Doesn't make
them bad people. They're trying to do the right thing
to provide for the family. Supervising your kid. You don't
have as good grip on the household while you're out working,
and kids, unfortunately, can sometimes be too smart for their
own good and can be sneaky with that, and when
that factors in, there's nobody to pull the reins back.
It can lead to disastrous consequences across the board. And

(01:10:21):
that's one of the ways they get sucked into bad lifestyles,
making bad choices and Sometimes you get them back before
it's too late. Sometimes you don't.

Speaker 4 (01:10:29):
I had one student, Michael Never Forget. He's from Guatemala.
He came over. He was seventeen going on eighteen, so
he was still you know, of education educational compulsory education
age here in the States. And he really had very
little English, and I was working with him teaching him

(01:10:51):
Spanish because he also was pretty much, you know, not
able to write or spell in Spanish. He was basically
not literate. He had not attend many years of school
in his home country of Guatemala. But he would come
to me and he would always have a little turtle
in his pocket that he brought from home, and we
would work together and write stories about this turtle. His

(01:11:13):
name was Anthony, and I know that he had been
kind of in and out of gang activity. He was
one of those kids who you know, you just hope
for the best because he's teetering, he's walking on that
fine line. He knows that he shouldn't be involved in
the gang activity. He knows what the right choices are,
but he can't help himself because he's surrounded by the
pressure and the fear. And ultimately he decided on his

(01:11:36):
own to go back to Guatemala. So yeah, I hope
he's safe.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Yeah, I hope so too. Hopefully over there. Sometimes listen,
sometimes if someone goes back, it actually does work out.
So I hope that that is the case with Anthony.
I'm glad you mentioned that you are a PI as well,
so you haven't completely left your law enforcement background behind
and we don't have to get into any of the cases.
Obviously that's the point of being a private investigator and
not a public one. But nevertheless, handwritten analysis has been

(01:12:04):
one of the keys in identifying not just who was
responsible for certain crimes, but what I loved, what we
kind of talked about off air, to the personal insight.
It became a big deal during Brian Coworker's trial, it's
become a bigger deal in recent notable headlines as well.
So gaining an insight into what someone's thinking, I mean,
it's not as obvious into what they're writing on the

(01:12:24):
paper all the time. Sometimes there's more involved, maybe the
way they phrase something, and there's nuances to it. Your
CIA background certainly helps you understand that. So tell me
about how you got into that and what most stands
out from what you've been able to see from a
surface level standpoint, again, not getting into any specific cases
you've worked.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
Sure, no, absolutely, so you know I did. Actually I
learned handwriting analysis when I was in the intelligence community.
I was trained in that capacity. That is open source information.
I'm not divulging anything that's classified here. It's been used
by intelligence agencies law enforcement agencies, of course for a
lot time now. The CIA would use it to assist

(01:13:02):
in psychological profiling, targeting individuals who, like I said, we're
trying to convince them to work for the US government,
So what is their motivation? What things are important to them?
Handwriting analysis can actually reveal some very interesting things about people.
It's not magic. And if you go to AI and

(01:13:23):
you look up handwriting analysis, there's going to be all
kinds of things flying out at you. Let it just
be said that it's been used by the intelligence community
and is still used in law enforcement. I have privately
worked on several kidnapping, threat letter cases and so forth.
You know, an interesting technique that we would use in
the case of for example, well, let's say a private

(01:13:47):
individual who has decided he has received letters of threat
to him and his family, and he believes that it
is one of several employees who are working on his estate,
say where he lives with this family. We would be
able to if he requested a handwritten statement from those suspects,
if you will, we would be able to look and

(01:14:08):
really give you an idea of which individual we thought
had written the threatening letter. Now we can do that
by a couple of things. We're comparing obviously the actual
execution of the letters on the page right a forensic
document analysis. In other words, are these letters formed in
the same way as they're formed in the threatening letter?
But we can also look at it from a behavioral perspective,

(01:14:30):
because oftentimes when people are not being forthcoming, there will
be hesitation in their writing. So there's a lot of
different perspectives we look at when we look at handwriting analysis.
It's a little bit different than document analysis. When I
mean document examination document analysis, I'm referring to more of
a legal aspect, where we're looking at forgery, we're looking

(01:14:51):
at fraud, we're looking at even anonymous writing. You know,
it goes back in time, early in the twentieth century.
As a matter of fact, they were very famous cases
solved or assisted by document examinist handwriting analysts. For example,
in the Lindberg baby kidnapping, I don't know if you

(01:15:12):
were going back to nineteen thirty seven, way back in
the day, when the famous aviator Charles Limberg, because small
infant was kidnapped from their home and the case was
solved in part by handwriting analysis. Fast forward a few
decades and we get to the Hitler Diaries. Those multiple

(01:15:34):
huge volume of diaries supposedly written by Adolf Hitler were
found to be obvious forgeries, and those were were solved
by the cases were solved by handwriting analysts. Now there's
that application, but then there's also what we can also
call graphology, and what I have been doing a lot
of lately. I've been doing more graphology, which is, let's

(01:15:56):
look at a person's character through their handwriting. Just the
other night I did an event for a Young Professionals
club that involved me providing them with kind of like
a snapshot handwriting handwriting analysis in a very short period
of time, which typically I don't really like to do
because it's actually very involved in intense but this was

(01:16:19):
more like, okay, can you tell me some basic things,
and can you also tell me some compatibility issues that
come up in the handwriting, because I had many husbands
and wives or girlfriends and boyfriends that were part of
this club that would come and say, hey, what do
you guys think about as a pair, And I'd be
able to look at the handwriting and say, well, you
guys are pretty compatible on these points, but you might

(01:16:40):
have difficulty in the future with these other points. So
you'd be surprising that handwriting is really like body language
on paper. Okay, if you think about it that way,
or if you think about it as brain writing. Okay. Now,
we know through research that's been conducted over several centuries

(01:17:02):
that people who lose their writing limbs. I'm right handed,
say there's a terrible accident, I lose my right hand,
I start writing with my left hand. Eventually I'm going
to do all the exactly same writing style that I
had when I was writing with my right hand. It
even works. They've even shown that with people who have

(01:17:22):
learned to write with their toes, they will eventually have
the same handwriting, which is hard to believe. The dexterity
it's it's the reason is because it's brain writing. It's
it's not completely just the movement of our hand. But
it's the signals, of course from our brain that's directing
our motor reflexes and our motor control find motor skills

(01:17:46):
to the writing instrument. So a lot of studies have
been done that show that handwriting is not only kind
of an insight a behavioral look into a person's character.
The same way is maybe we look at body language
and word choice and things like that. It's also very

(01:18:07):
beneficial in many ways, starting off with children. You know,
we talked about my job as a counselor with children.
Studies have shown that kids have a higher level of
self esteem and personality kind of development when they start
writing cursive. Now Here in loud And County, Virginia, we
have returned to a mandatory cursive instruction starting in second

(01:18:30):
grade based on that research, and in fact, I believe
it's now thirty seven of fifty states in the US
have reinstated cursive as part of the curriculum. Why because
we have research showing that it helps. And think about
your typical second grade classroom. Right, the teacher's got a
paper with no name on it, right, holds it up, Hey,

(01:18:51):
whose paper is this? You know? No name on it?
The kids will look and they'll see the writing, and
they'll say, oh, that's Johnny's paper. How do they know
it's Jon's paper? How do you know that letter you
get in the mail is from your aunt?

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:19:05):
You recognize the writing, right, just like we all have
unique thumb prints. Right. Okay, no two persons writing is
the same. It doesn't matter if you're the best master
forger in the world. Now there's a whole aipiece that
goes into it, but that's the whole topic for another podcast.
But the point is that handwriting is a unique signature
part in the pun there that we all have and

(01:19:28):
it can't be replicated, and so that says something about
us as people. And the fact that graphology or handwriting
analysis is difficult to quantify has meant that it has
been less accepted, if you will, in the psychological community. However,
studies show that many handwriting analysts are able to provide

(01:19:52):
information on clients that are as accurate as a psychiatrists
who have done other research, and other behavior at analysts
who are providing their report on an individual. They all
seem to be about the same level of accuracy, if
you will. And again, it's difficult to quantify. So there's

(01:20:13):
a lot of research out there. I encourage people to
look into it because I think it's often overlooked. And
of course the past several decades we're all a tech world. Now,
people say, well, I don't write anymore, right, So you'll
be surprised though, if you're having a tough day, If
you're having a tough day in and encourage people to
do that, sit down and just start writing and figure

(01:20:36):
out what's making you feel better as you write. And
I do this all the time. Sometimes I'll look at
my writing and I'll say, oh my gosh, what's going
on with me today? And I'll make a concerted effort
to make my writing maybe a little more pressure or
a little bit more forcefulness, and I'll actually kind of
feel the energy increasing in myself. So, you know, we

(01:20:59):
started out by saying the world is connected world. Everything
that we do is connected to our psyche, our soul,
and even something as basic as writing that we've done
for you know, millions of years, it's really something that's
not only good for the soul, it's good for our brain,
and it's good for self expression. So there's so many benefits.
So I really encourage people. As much as you keyboard,

(01:21:23):
you'll also have way better retention of information if you
write it down.

Speaker 1 (01:21:27):
I agree, I agree, someone's a lot of Yeah, someone
has done a lot of writing myself over the years. Yeah,
that is something that I've always find to be very
cathartic and very therapeutic, and something I plan to continue
to do. So, you know, you and I are definitely
in lockstep on that point. And even just one of
the things you were mentioning earlier. You know, originally in
the nineties, the utibomber ted Kazinski was able to be

(01:21:47):
identified and traced definitely because of his hand with his
brother Reckon, Oh, that's my brother. Absolutely, that's what led
to the captures. So in extreme senses and in more
common senses, you know, again, it's it's really wonderful how
much insight you can gain into the psyche of a
human mind through someone's writing, rather be keyboarding, or rather
be natural written word, be a pen and paper, pencil

(01:22:10):
of paper.

Speaker 4 (01:22:12):
Yeah, I think, you know, just for those of you
out there who are interested in the whole serial killer genre,
you know, take a look one day in your spare time.
You can pull it up online. You can look at
Ted Bundy's handwriting, you can look at Jeffrey Dahmer's handwriting,
and you'll look and you'll notice, you know, there are
things that even to the lay person, right to the

(01:22:34):
naked eye, you can look and say, that's that's that's
a little bit concerning, you know, so it's very interesting.
You don't you don't need a in depth training to
sometimes spot things that you notice about a handwriting that
may cause some kind of flag to you know, to
to light up or you know, red light comes up

(01:22:57):
to you and says that that's interesting, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):
Absolutely, we're almost at the ninety minut mark and the
time has just flown by.

Speaker 4 (01:23:05):
It.

Speaker 1 (01:23:06):
Yeah, this has been a really fun conversation as I
knew it would be, as I knew it would be.
And that now brings us into the rabbid fire. Five
hit and run questions from me, five hit and run
answers from you. Of course you can say past if
you want, do we still have you there? In connection?
Froze up there for a second. So unfortunately this brings
a early conclusion to tonight's episode. Again, technical difficulties, but

(01:23:26):
we got most of the conversation and we just missed
the Rabbid Fire. I'll get in touch with Kim and
I'll thank you very much for her appearance. She did
a great job and I really enjoyed our conversation with her.
So Kim, if you see this, thank you. You did
a wonderful job, and we'll ask you the Rabbid Fire
some other time. But thank you very much for you
contributed tonight. My friend. I'm really glad that we got
the chance to talk. Producer Victor on the ones and

(01:23:47):
twos as always doing a great job and filling in
and bantering with me while we worked that problem out.
So you know who's coming up Friday, I already mentioned it.
You know who should be coming up Monday. I already
mentioned that. For those of you listening on the audio
side from their nineteen eighty nine album Sonic Temple, it's
British Legends the Cult coming your way with Firewomen, so
enjoy that. For those of you listening on the audio side, well,

(01:24:11):
she just messaged she couldn't get back on, but that's okay,
so we'll try that some other time. No problem there again.
Enjoy your evening, folks. On behalf of Kim WinWord and
producer Victor. This has been volume twenty the Milestone Volume
twenty upeat profiles of police nationwide and we will see
you next time. So here everyone see you.

Speaker 6 (01:24:30):
Friday speak man, honey, who since I said my ayeshold you?

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
I'll tell you that.

Speaker 7 (01:25:16):
S you a crime eisode.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
You're trying to clasic.

Speaker 7 (01:25:26):
Come, honey, where.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Shaken up? Your blame? Goss a fall.

Speaker 7 (01:26:25):
Him? Oh yeah, news seems like a cad FT sh
Now I say falls shack guy Myles not.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
I'll stand him what I have been miss him.

Speaker 7 (01:27:41):
I'll tell you truthfully.

Speaker 8 (01:27:43):
He she's coming close now, confused her, She's getting close
to me.

Speaker 7 (01:28:20):
She stop song house.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
Shot said baby said, the family said, fun star Guy

Speaker 7 (01:29:04):
My Erud

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Episode 369: The Beat: Profiles of Police Nationwide: Kim Woodward - CIA (Volume 20)

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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;}Episode 369: The Beat: Profiles of Police Nationwide: Kim Woodward - CIA (Volume 20)