Movies, you are a rockstar. Guest we havent inspired any movies. Host thereve been characters created around the work that you and some remarkable women have put it in. Its phenomenal. You arent like breaking glass ceilings. Guest there were predecessors before me that did a lot of work. When i joined the agency, there were not a lot of women in operation fields in senior positions. Host baucus through what inspired you to write the book and tell us what are the targeting officer important and what is your mission . Mission . Guest i joined as an analyst on the analyst decided and my intense was to have a job where i could work overseas. I always wanted to travel and be immersed in other cultures. I got lucky and applied and got him in a completely different role. By the time i became a targeting officer, i had been there a little while. The job i took at the time was on the operations side. Host tell us about the role that you initially took on. Guest the first job i had was a role in hr and Organizational Development i was hoping the operation died allocate resources and try to understand how they could best structure and modernize the workforce. Host were the skills transferable . Guest that was until i start my poor academic and professional career. I just kind of ended up there so my background was economics. Host you are from texas originally . Guest montana. Host did you always grow up and want to be an intel . You could have joined the circus, a rock band, why the cia of all places . Guest i might be a good backup singer but i would need a lot of vocals. I didnt really focus on the cia especially when i was younger i thought about Law Enforcement, but i was really focusing on living overseas and happened to see an ad in the economist. I was in my late 20s by that point and i took a flyer and applied inslee to beat coke luckily luckily got a phone call. Host having a background in economics, you have a global worldview im assuming you wanted to be part of a global conversation so when you came to the agency, were you disappointed when you got there, were you surprised that some things . Did you expect to be jumping out of a buildin the building and fs shooting at you . Guest because i didnt join the agency under the delusions of hollywood, i didnt have expectations. Ive been in the workforce long enough by then, i was 30 and i knew most institutions just had a bureaucracy you had to deal with. There were everyday people Walking Around in every building but i wasnt expecting. Host tell us about the culture of the agency. Guest its pretty diverse. You have to be able to blend into other countries. It attracts people interested in positions living internationally and people that are mindful of other cultures because if you are moving through another country and our disrespectful, you draw attention to yourself. Host tell us about the mindset of people that you are tracked what goes behind that and do you think they start off with the mission or do they become radicalized over time, what kind of rationale do they set to justify their actions . Guest thereve been a lot of studies at this point about extremism regardless of what kind of extremism and there is a spectrum why people join organizations and not everybody embraces becomes violent. So there is i think the United States dont have a long way to go to reflect on whats happening internally but as far as the type of ideology goes it seems like every individual is unique in that aspect. Host so you were hunting terrorists and you work with a group of phenomenal women. What has become tamari . Did you simply bonded together because of a maledominated industry . Guest when i started as an analyst theres gender equity on the side its based on your skill set and if you could write and breathe a policymaker and that is what you were judged by. Gender inequality was more on the operations side. Host for the viewer make a distinction guest the analyst in the analytical world their job is to digest the information coming in whether its from our operations officers, other intel agencies were technical collections they are taking in all that information on the area they are looking at, digesting it and pulling up pieces so then to write products or give briefings to policymakers. We recruit people to spy for the United States. Host during my time in the department of Homeland Security and the Fusion Center the analysts did the bold of the work and we have analysts from the fbi and other agencies and this was at the beginning of kind of facebook and myspace so a lot of people were creating fake profiles but the best analysts honestly were women because there was an instinctive thing to anticipate movement and actions and kind of create profiles that spoke to a particular target. Do you think women arent unique in terms of anticipating Human Behavior and being able to be different leaders with regards to men relying that you talk about gender equity that as a Law Enforcement and intelligence space, women have yet to get their fair due because of decades of discrimination. Guest normally i pushback on that merited a little bit because i think regardless if you are either gender or whatever you identify if you can be good at your job, the skill set is unique to the individual, but i do think that there is, there have been studies that women have a emotional maturity that seems to be further ahead depending on different age groups, but as adults i think we are all capable and have different skill sets. The women a that started off in the Counterterrorism Center that started before me, that unit they were doing the job and large part because it wasnt sexy work and they were not being rewarded for that before 9 11. It was horrid and arduous and detail oriented. I think they were just okay with not having sexy positions. Host i know the cia in recent years has changed this model allowing analysts and officers or agents to train for the first few weeks. Is that a good idea . Guest i think it is actually a good idea. I think it is useful for all agencies to understand what each other does. I also think it is useful for them to share a lot of the Lessons Learned like why recreate the wheel. The cia put a lot of time and energy into developing their schools so all their training programs. I did work with Law Enforcement and there is a distinction between Law Enforcement and cia. I worked on the joint Terrorism Task works for a while and the cia is charged with analyzing information on foreigners and charged with conducting operations overseas that have to do with foreign entities. What they dont do is be able to arrest people or as you well know College Information on persons so there is a huge distinction with a Law Enforcement is about upholding the rule of law and the cia is focused on collecting information spying on other countries and i guess you could say they are like the opposite. Host one is tasked with enforcing the law and the other is tasked with breaking the law. Guest not u. S. Law. Host there is controversy around the usage of drones. Some feel like there should be a responsibility solely given to the military. Guest s host is their utility around the agency to have the capacity to obligate drones . Guest in my experience, i think that the agency does a great job of analytic targeting. That is one place i think that the cia shines. They understand the analysis theyve been collecting this kind of information and looking at its inception so it is a fine tuned program in the sense that they understand how to listen to the collateral targets. I dont know who needs to own the program itself. I dont have a clear answer for that i just know each agency is good at one or two thing is, and i think that we need to be focused on ms. Best to carry out the mission. Host most people know who Osama Bin Laden is. There was another figure you have a connection to with your service. Tell us about your experience tracking him and those around him. Guest initially charged with looking at whether or not iraq had anything to do with 9 11 and al qaeda and as an analyst we have been writing products integrating them and the bottom line was iraq had nothing to do with 9 11 and al qaeda so there wasnt a connection. After the invasion, when i became a targeting officer, zarqawi had risen to prominence because he had been attacking targets inside iraq and then eventually joined al qaeda and creative al qaeda and iraq. My job was to dismantle his organization and leadership so its similar to being an analyst but you are operationalizing the information. Host a lot of what we do in life manifests itself in our personal work. You hav had some defining momenn your life. You lost your grandfather. I lost my grandmother, you ask your mom, i lost my mom. How does that impact you positively and negatively and shape the person youve become . Guest it had a huge impact shaping my focus in life. My mom and my grandmother loved to travel and they instilled that curiosity in me. My grandmother was always wanting to learn something new so that had a big impact on me. Loss and grief is something we dont talk about enough and the stacks of it. I remember looking up and reading books about how to grieve. It has a huge impact even as apples. Host who are you most like your grandmother or your mom . Guest probably most like my grandma. She was able say strongwilled and have a clear opinion. Host how did she express herself . Guest probably more eloquent than me. She was hilarious, she had a great sense of humor and was articulate. Host and she was from montana. Guest first generation. Host tell us about your dad. Guest also from aunt anna. He also was the second or Third Generation farmer. Host did you pick up any skills from the farming experience . Host when you get stuck in a field in a tractor by yourself you figure out how to fix things. Host you got your macgyver skills from your dad, you are a bit of a contrary in and underrated comedian. What did you gain from your mom . Guest probably empathy. My mom was a childs social worker that focused on children. She was great with kids and was always the person hugging you. Host how can you be apathetic and work for the cia . It is a contradiction. Guest its not. You can have your own moral come and work for any organization. You could ask that about people that work for Tech Companies because often they are demonized in the news as well. Its up to the individual what is your moral compass to stick witstick withyour own integrity. Host in the book you describe the terrorist and evolution of his capabilities from before the iraq war all the way up to the murderous attacks when he was responsible for what happened in iraq. Take us through that journey. Guest from kind of the beginning of his notoriety, he started out as a street kid in jordan getting into trouble. He had criminal convictions, he had been in and out of jail and ended up in prison with a radicalized cleric at the time who ended up radicalizing zarqawi initially. That i think for him was a sense of belonging and purpose. Prior to that sense of purpose was drinking and doing all the fun stuff he wasnt supposed to be doing. So for him, that path was that sense of belonging and providing a sense of community and his sense of purpose and mission and as soon as he latched onto that he was totally focused and starting to galvanize the Network Since the early 90s he moved into iraq prior to the invasion. He was co located with another terrorist organization and was focused on creating these rudimentary poison essentially. At the time the government knew he was there. He would talk about Colin Powells speech, but he joined al qaeda and this new network. He had quite a Diverse Group but it wasnt like the structure that al qaeda has. Host what lessons can we learn from the war in iraq now that we are talking about going to war in iran dealing with weapons of mass destruction aggressive in tow reporting, perhaps kind of mischaracterizing weapons of mass destruction and pressure from the top political branches in the Bush Administration resulting and kind of politicizing intelligence and reporting process what are some takeaways . Guest from the members of the public at the collection regardless of if its an anonymous statement come ask for receipts so we can understand the reasoning and the detail behind it i also think during that time is when perfecting the soundbite to change the narrative took a huge role in the decision for the iraq war and galvanizing that kind of support. It was a Snowball Effect that every time they said the same thing over and over on tv it had an impact this must be the truth regardless of what else is being sent into the nuances of the language. Host often times our troops and i can tell you as a politician you go to a town hall and say send back our troops you get a standing ovation but often times folks in the community that served or overlooked. You talk about troops did suffer from ptsd. How many folks, how many Unsung Heroes are there in the Intel Community who suffer from ptsd and are we doing enough to address those issues in a real way in the agencies tasked with protecting americans . Guest i think theres probably a lot of people who like me didnt realize they have ptsd. Had ptsd. It wasnt until id hit rock bottom i had an understanding of what it was a and i say rock bottom as in just unable to do everyday normal things. I talked with a friend of mine who had the same experience and didnt realize until we were out of the agency this is something we have to deal with and that we have been going through. I dont know how many people it infects but im hoping at least acknowledgment that this happens but you dont even have to be in a war zone you can just be constantly inundated with graphic imagery and constantly reading about disinformation and your role is to then make sure the policy maker understands it or stop it from happening it has an impact on the human psyche and the sooner we get ahead of that to acknowledge what is happening we will be much better off. Host so its not just in the war zone and i can relate to that seeing documents regularly but its not just being in the war zone its about maybe the organization and having a culture of being vulnerable. I spoke to a cia official the other day and shes a trailblazer. She mentioned that the culture is changing a bit where you have a kind of superhero mentality that there are Wraparound Services being provided for officers and analysts to seek help and get treatment where its no longer a bad thing to be open about depression or any other illnesses. Are we doing enough . Should we even look at management and some who happened to be tyrannical . My philosophy is everyone should work retirement at least once if you survive but if you survive in a healthy way you become a more compassionate leader. Our manager is a part of the problem . Guest they can be. Im relieved to hear that they are focusing on having some sort of wraparound surface because when i was there theres a stigma of even acknowledging you might need some kind of therapy. It has to be reported according to your National Security frame and added there were people that really felt like they were retaliated against for the factt they were in therapy. So im glad to hear there is an evolution taking place and i hope that its enough, but the culture is definitely going to need to embrace this and change and shift focus of this being such a stigma around therapy and counseling and acknowledging you need some help. Its another organ in our body. Why we treated that way is treas beyond me. Host its something im passionate about having a mother that suffered from schizophrenia i understand how different work environments are tough when you have stressors or managers or coworkers and if you are not Strong Enough or assertive enough you can allow them to get you into a depression and you are fearful to the point of even seeking help. What might be done and what would you say to anyone considering a career in the cia specifically . Guest its changed a little since ive been there and i know that the competition is fierce. I think about if i were applying now, theres no way that i look at him. Im listening to grad students and phd students talk about their credentials applying and they are getting cream of the crop at this point. Host effect the ivy league, bilingual, rhode scholar . Guest i hope it isnt all ivy league or we are missing other people that could add value. People that are focused and driven to participate in National Security. The goals and the languages its incredible. Host you talk about struggling with panic attacks and readability. How long has it taken you and perhaps you are struggling with the aftereffects of your servi service. Maybe that ptsd carried on and how much of that have you carried with you in your new chapters . Guest its certainly changed me going forward. Im a different person today than i was prior to even acknowledging i have it. Host are you more suspicious of people . Guest no. Host are you a Glass Half Full . Guest i consider it to be pragmatic. Host cynical . Guest maybe. Years of therapy. Its a lot of hard work. Really intense at first but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Some of the symptoms go away, but i think its forever changing as far as your outlook on life. I appreciate Little Things every day that i wouldnt have before. Host like what . Guest host going to starbucks . Guest leaving the house, enjoying time with friends, just doing things that maybe its old age, i dont know, doing things much simpler to get host having your phone into a room without having to leave it in a secure area. Host guest thats nice. Guest to talk about what i do. Host gossip. What did you miss when you were overseas, things that normal folks would take for granted . Guest in iraq i missed coffee because at the time i was first there we were in a setup that didnt really have access to things like that. Host on a remember a time working at the center representing the Indiana Excise Police and this is a sentiment among Police Officers and analysts that the analyst did all the work come the Police Agencies took all the credit. Its a similar tension that exists even in the cia and you have folks taking credit for the pioneering work and folks are getting accolades and fewer like hello, im over here, can you see me. How frustrating. You sign up to be invisible to some degree that you are still a human being and you need a pat on the back and want to feel validated for your work and feel appreciated. How annoying and frustrating must have been . Guest analysts at the cia are at the pointy end of the spear said its a different situation in the cia as an analyst versus fbi or other law was meant. They are not subject to having to ask a really information to the agent. They are in charge of their own world which is communicating with policymakers, they are taking the case officers information and deciding whether or not it goes into the president ial daily brief so in that relationship has equal power versus Law Enforcement by now in some cases still struggling with how they fit analysts into, how they partner with them or work with them. After working at the joint Terrorism Task force i can see the distinctions but they are also operational analysts said it is a different type of work. Host do you stay in touch with some of your old buddys . Guest its pretty impossible once you are out. Its difficult to talk. You cant talk openly or discuss what they are doing at Works Communications shrinks after loyal. Host its difficult to have a family or relationship. Tell us about that familial dynamic and having come from a military family having gone to iraq and afghanistan visiting our troops and speaking with constituents they talk about ptsd and a lot of dear john and dear chain letters, do you see this interesting . This relativistic, this mom has passed away, the guilt associated with it, relationships faltering. Guest its hard because if you are having to live overseas and your spouse isnt able to change their job and move every few years its difficult to be married to someone that also has a career that doesnt work there and for me it became impossible. Host the agency is pretty good with helping spouses find employment through contracting or even with the government, bright . Guest sort of. Its very case dependent. In my case there wasnt really anything. My husband worked in technology. Part of what he was doing at the time failed that doesnt have been overseas necessarily. He was really sort of walked into do i move into transition into a different role and interrupt my career or do i leave so we ended up at the end i ended up quitting my job. Thats kind of dynamic creates a serious imbalance in a relationship. Guest it does this doesnt necessarily happen to analysts in that way so i think it is based on a cold war and postworld war paradigm. I dont have all the answers but there is something. Guest face time could be great for some relationships. Host take us to the point where you were and where you are now in your future goals. Are you going to run for office, are you going to do more consulting, dm instructor . Guest that is a good question. If you have an answer for me i am all ears. Im still exploring where i can have an impact. Thats ultimately what drives me. I want to have an impact and do something interesting. Its kind of hard once you leave the cia to find that sense of fulfillment. It was an extraordinary place to work. Host there are 16 agencies. Pick one. Theres the cia, we know that there is great agencies. Guest i know. Maybe i will just run for office. Everyone else is. Host are you going to make an announcement . Guest no. Host what would you run for . Guest i would start by running as a representative navy. Host you never know, this is your big break. Would you consider being an instructor or teaching on College Campuses . Guest absolutely. Host you could teach virtually. Guest i would need to finish a phd. I am not working on that. Host youre doing something exciting. Guest the book is excitin exciting. Host what do you want people to look know about this great piece of work . Guest it was part of the government review process. This book took three or four years to get out because it went into the review process and needed to be reviewed by other agencies and that process is very broken. Host as the chairman of the subcommittee over counterterrorism and counter proliferation, i need with the cia regularly. Is this something i should bring up . Guest yes. This process is broken. They had no way to get it back from the other agencies. Theres no deadline in those agreements. They dont have the ability to call up and say we need a date. I had no way of sitting down and talking with anybody to file a lawsuit which i ended up doing so i could get them to the people to just discuss what it is we need to change. Host are there some details left out are you still disappointed other . Guest though because i was able to build a story around that with the essence of it. Host we dont want to give e the book away because it is a great book but for those that are curious about the target or four netflix and those that want to do a book based on the target or give us your sales pitch. Guest the subtitle is ultimately what its about. My life in the cia, terrorists and finding the white house. Its those three elements are the primary themes of the book. Host why would yo you eat ad challenge the white house . Who are you . Guest i had a bold chief. Our team was as i mentioned before charged with evaluating whether iraq had anything to do with 9 11 al qaeda they were looking for that englan that ant everybody was in the administration. Part of the white house and pentagon are looking for that angle and regardless of how we answer the question, when we inserted consistently after doing all of the analysis, the question kept coming back in different forms and i think it was probably frustrating for some members of the white house, and for us it was a lot of work because it didnt matter what he said. Host there were some folks in the Bush Administration who were focused on tying Saddam Hussein into the scenario of political expediency perhaps . Guest absolutely. You know, there were different shops set up specifically to support the narrative, and i think our analyst is with them being put against another in narrative that wasnt based on truth and fact, so it was pretty difficult, and it was really stressful for our team day in and day out to be a punching bag for this. Host you mentioned a cuddly little fellow in the book. Guest adopted him in dc, hes a rescue dog about 2yearsold at the first thing he did his ran up the stairs. If you want to know how he gets down, you have to buy it. Host you still have dogs. Guest one is a shepherd which is a breed from turkey and they are very independent and if you want a dog to boss you around, hes great, literally will argue with you. The other is another rescue. Host for which one is really mamas dog . Guest the first one. Host just a charmer . Guest i think so because he is super smart. You talk about the dynamics of race in your book. How does that even take this . Guest at the time in iraq unthinkable for military planning. There were Different Task forces so they were either based on one task force in the military or the other and most of the time they dont go along with those that are feeding the intelligence that they actually use. In this case when we finally got there it was like a sort of wild west. I was not at all prepared for anything like that. Host in Chapter Seven you wrote about something that frustrated your work and you call this a backward looking question that seem to be prevalent they took you off course but for its second amount of time take us through the clutter and how did it impact your work . Guest it was recovered after somewhere inside of iraq is talking about connections between the regime and members of al qaeda. There was a lot of discrepancy in the letter if so few could tell by the first read theres no way that it could possibly be true that our job was to not go there with bias but to analyze things so we did point by point and we also had a letter in ink itself analyzed by another agency and after all was said and done we were able to use the information that have been validated to refute that and the paper and ink wasnt old enough to draft it prior. Host i dont want to give too much away but you said something in chapter ten about the highprofile attacks this includes the un bombing and the bombing of the mosque that was prominent in the community. You were one of the first to start drawing connections. How did you make the connection, was a group effort . Guest yes it was a group effort. I have a colleague i talk about in the book that was helping out in iraq. That really stands out just killing so many innocent people that were civilians its incomprehensible to me that this was going to be his mo. It was a team effort. My colleague of his in iraq at the time hoping piece together the information i was doing the analysis and turned it into a president ial daily brief and informed the administration. Host what goes into a president ial daily brief . What kind of work goes into that . Did you feel honored . Guest in your career as an analyst you get to write a few of those and there was a president ial daily brief or two coming out every week but its difficult because you are on the cutting edge of whats happening but you are still having to analyze the information and make sure that there is the truth to veracity but it still has to be at the forefront of whatever the issue might be so those are an intense process you send it out to all ooffto all of your colleh related subject matter. Host i have a suspicion that you have a fascination with turtles. Guest some of my titles come from my old boss and if it wasnt for him i would upgrade chapter titles. Host were you inspired by a popular book that became a movie . Guest no. Are you talking about zero dark 30 . I wasnt part of the bin laden process. Host but the book of turtles came across. Guest that wasnt either a. It was a bucket of turtles and my boss would always say life around here is a bucket of turtles everyone i every one iso get to the top. We had a few frustrating days and that is what i try to portray hi is walking through wt its like to work there. Incredible and amazing as some of the work is it is such absurd things that happen at the same time. It seems like a slow process. What did you do on the weekends or your days off, did you work on a rotating shift . Guest during the initial invasion we did work on a rotating shift i worked at an early briefing where we briefed the briefers selec. I worked on at the during the initial invasion and after that it was based on the work itself and for a long time they were putting in 12, 13 hour days. Host not many bowling alleys in iraq. Did you play video games, take up games, go to the base . Guest it was working around the clock, wake up, work, go to bed at 11 or 12 at night. Host what did you look forward to doing . Guest become artery that you build up similar to a situation like that theres not many places for you to go. There were nights we all got together and there was a makeshift bar that we dont but i had a fourth of july that kind of stands out. Now you are going back to your cia stuff. Guest its like when you are walking between the bar and where youre working so you dont step on anything that was left around the area. But host surely you still came into the office of. Host why would anyone want that kind of career for themselves after listening to you . Guest i think being there especially after wartime the pace continued and it was just a constant. Its not always like that for the United States in general we dont take the steps lightly being able to serve your country and if you are at all inquisitive about the world it is a fantastic place to work. Host how much access is in the military budget . Do we need to cut back or are we not spending enoughs guest i think it is fair to take a really indepth look at how the military spends. From news articles, the accountability that wasnt happening especially at the time with contractors that is inexcusable to me. Theres no reason they should ever hand over money without accountability and responsibility. Host i can remember a lot of guys leaving the Police Department and going to work with contractors but also they are still getting threes where meals a day and making like six figures. Guest it creates in inequity that shouldnt exist asking them to do that alongside people that are now making three times as much for semisimilar positions but not even putting themselves at risk that can be problematic. Host if you have the opportunity to go back and work for a contractor would you do that . Guest it depends on the world. Host were yo host where you have her heart broken at seeking some teenagers oversees the reform . Guest absolutely. Driving around seeing these Young Marines draped over the top of their humvees trying to get a little bit of rest and sleep its heartbreaking to. The resources whe resource is wr these conflicts i think that has to be the first conversation we have as a member. How much and is it worth of . Guest what do politicians need to realize and the question is should america be the worlds police. People are critical of the cia as it relates to intervening in elections but yes we are critical of others intervening in our elections. How important is the cia and not and should we try to police the world . Guest too bad i would say theres a distinct difference in how the agency conducts their work. The campaign im not excusing anything the cia or the government engaged in this our National Security to begin with and we cant dismiss it. If we say we did this earlier, we would have no National Security objective. We cant dismiss something that is attacking us in spite of our own country. Host is it true that a lot of countries and their leaders criticize publicly but privately they beg for the system to help . Guest i will put it on you. Do you think that there is truth to that . Guest host of course. I am for world peace but i think that keeping people safe can be a money business and the boundaries can become hard to determine when you are dealing with countries that practice normalized corruption who dont have our core values that i would still say it is important. Our military is important. Can we have a broad discussion or in even deeper discussion about our excessive presence globally is important to know what people think that they are not protecting ourselves, surely with evidence in the 2016 election, folks would infiltrate and do more damage than weve seen. Guest what kind of world do we want to live in and support on our own is making sure we have the right in place i think we have to figure out what is our priority at this point . Guest must there be a single priority . Just like theres an eerie that National Security objectives. Host thank you so much. This has been fun. Host if you want a good read, tell them what you want to talk them. Guest it is available at your bookstore, on amazon, barnes and noble its still an insightful read and i hope a lot of women will choose the path to National Security. Host if you want to read about a reallife captain marvel, go get the target or. Thank you so much. A bookseller here at politics and prose on behalf of the owners i would like to welcome all of you to your favorite bookstore for this afternoons event. As you