Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tracy Walder The Unexpected Spy 20240712

Out of college and served as a staff Operations Officer at the counterterrorism center, where she was responsible for tracking down terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. She went on to become an fbi special agent at the l. A. Field office, where she specialized in chinese counterintelligence operations. Tracy lives with her husband and four and a halfyearold daughter in dallas, texas. This evening, tracy will discuss her memoir, the unexpected spy from the cia to the fbi, my secret life taking down some of the worlds most notorious terrorists. Tracy will be interviewed by our very own historian and curator, dr. Vince houghton. After their discussion, they will open the floor to audience questions and answers. Everyone will have an opportunity to ask their questions this evening. We are also going to ask that if you are trapped in the iddle of a row, please put your hand up and we will ensure you have a mic to answer uestions but there will be two mics on each side of the auditorium that you can use to answer your question. Again, if you cant get out, just stay where you are at, raise your hand, and well send a mic to you. One other administration notice. If you have a cell phone anyone have a cell phone here . Probably everybody, right . Please silence it. And i will lead by example and make sure mine is silenced. All right. So, now, i will kick it over to vince and tracy. I think youre going to really enjoy this evenings discussion. Vince thank you, chris. I just want to mention that the first time we were introduced to tracy as a museum was when our Educational Team discovered the amazing work that she was doing now as a teacher at a School Called the Hockaday School in dallas. Were going to talk about this later, but it is extraordinary what she decided to do to challenge young people. I have taught at every level, from Elementary School all the way through college, and just the gumption to challenge these people is really extraordinary. I probably would not have had College Students do what youre having them do so it is really interesting, that. She is also on the board of directors for a Nonprofit Organization called girl security, which we will definitely talk about later on as well, which is another way she has decided to give back to not only her community but also to her country. We will hear about more of those later, but i want to jump right in. We actually just had a long conversation. If anyone listens to spycast, youre going to get a chance to hear a much longer version of this on tuesday. We just recorded a podcast together. We had a chance to try out some of these questions before we put it in front of a live studio audience, as it were, and some of them worked better than others but one that was interesting to me, certainly as an author myself and as someone who has dealt with redaction and classification, was the process you had to go through to get this book cleared through the cias publication review board, in particular because they can be somewhat problematic. They can be somewhat difficult. If anyones looked at the book already, you will see that there are lines redacted that were left inside. In our conversation, though, there was a whole lot more that they didnt want you to put out when you first went through this. How much difficulty was it, getting this through the prb . Tracy first, everyone, thank you for coming. I want to recognize one of my former students in the audience. Thank you for being here. In terms of the publications review board, there were two women that came before me. Both of them took about two years to get their books through the prb and i credit them with the easier time that i had. Getting my book through the prb was extremelyimportant to me. I signed a nondisclosure agreement when i left and i wanted to honor that. I sent it off to them, just hoping it would not be what we called denied in full, which means you cannot publish this period. It was not. It came back about four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters just flatlined. The cia was actually really great. You can email them back and forth. They will not tell you exactly why. You have to play a game of guesswork. I resubmitted it and it came back with two chapters redacted completely and then a chapter and a half and finally, after i took up one word, which was the name of a statue, they let that whole chapter through and then publishers and i decided the way it was was intelligible enough for people to be able to read. Vince it is tricky because, yes, they do not want you to give away what cities that the cia is operating in if it is not widely known, but you kind of allow the leeway to describe the cities pretty well. Like there is a modern headquarters for their intelligence right on a river and this is near where a famous serial killer killed five people in the victorian era. Oh, victorian, i should not have said that out loud. I am not talking about london at all. Tracy i will never understand why they redacted some of the things that they did. I was just talking to someone about this. Why they redacted some things and did not redact others, i do not understand the process. Some of them, in my opinion, it is extremely easy to figure out where i am. Vince maybe they want people to take that extra step of googling for about 10 minutes. Tracy i do not know. Vince lets talk about your origin story because it is somewhat different than others. It has nothing to do with you being in a sorority in Southern California. It is the fact that a lot of people who join cia or National Security institutions wanted to do it from a very early age. You did not really set out to think about being a cia officer in middle school or high school, although subconsciously i guess maybe you did a little bit because of what you studied. When other people were playing, you are reading about the middle east. You are looking at maps when other people were doing normal middle school things. What eventually led you to want to join the agency . Tracy i think to back up just a little bit, this would have been, you know, when i was recruited in kind of the mid1990s. Popular culture looks really different today than it did then. I did not grow up with quantico or criminal minds or sort of any of those things, so i had no preconceived notions about this is what the cia is and this is where i want to work, and im not sure a whole lot of people did either necessarily. But i do know that i had a really large interest in the middle east and in counterterrorism. So i would say that was really cultivated sort of when i watched the peter bergen interview when he interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1997. That was a huge turning point for me and sort of when i decided i wanted to i guess do something about him. So when i applied at that career fair in college, that was really the impetus. Vince most of us in here, unless you are really young, maybe some of your former students, remember exactly where we were on 9 11. It is kind of a turning point in a lot of our lives. For many people, it is the turning point in their careers, the decision to go in a direction. You are already working at the cia. You are at langley the morning of 9 11. This is a question that popped in my head. I sat on my couch on 9 11. I had been out of the army for about a month, just pissed off that there is nothing i could do about it. I could go back in the army, but my knee stunk. A lot of us had this feeling of we have been attacked appeared what do i do now . There is nothing i can do. To a degree, you had an dvantage because you could not wallow in selfpity about our country being attacked because you had a second to do that and then it was time to get to work. Tracy you made me think about that question differently. Everyone always asks how i was feeling and thinking. I was happy people had pride in the world trade center, but you have to compartmentalize those thoughts so you can get on with the mission and work you need to do and stop the next attack work gather the evidence you need to stop the next attack. Having a sense of purpose to do something about it, even though maybe you are not stopping the next attacker you can try in a way keeps us going. Vince you move into the vault, which is ground zero for the war against al qaeda, the war that was created because of 9 11. When i say ground zero, zero, you are working in a small group. You turn around and george bush is asking you what is going on. This is the epicenter. This is the nerve center of the cia response. How daunting was that . You were 23 at the time. Tracy 21. Vince 21 at the time. Who are we killing today . You are not allowed to say that. Who are we looking at today . It had to have been a surreal experience. Tracy that was a chapter i was surprised the cia approved. I submitted it and i thought the whole thing would come back redacted. I was read into that program on september 10, 2001. I was naive and said, we will never need to use this. Obviously, we did. It was intense. You working long hours. You are not really thinking about the people in the room. If you think about people in the room, youre not focusing on what you are doing. I think you really cannot process who is in there and what they are doing other than who is in there every day. He brought Us Thanksgiving dinner and doughnuts and bagels all the time. He was really great to work with in that environment. Other than tenant, he was the only one we were super aware of at the time. Vince the concept behind this world and space, and im not going to make you say anything you cant say, but this is where you have you are a Southern California girl. You mentioned in the book about what direction you lean politically. I am not a fan necessarily of certain administrations, but in that room i did not matter. We are so used to today. This is not just because of this current administration. So used to politicizing Foreign Policy and National Security. These were moments where it did not matter where you came from. Everyone was working together. Tracy that was what was great about the cia when i was there. I grew up in Southern California in a liberal household, but i am registered independent. The cia sort of helped move me to the middle in a weird way. They did not purposely do hat. It just told me think more about issues not in a blackandwhite way. It was sort of a gray. What i liked about my time there i served under clinton and bush. What was so great about that experience is i felt at least people around me, it was very apolitical. Politics were taken out of the situation. Some people are frustrated that i had nice things to say about bush and they did not understand that, but it was not about someones political agenda. It is about what my observations were at that time in that moment. That helped me gain this apolitical insight when it came to Foreign Policy. Vince while you were there, there was an event people do not talk about much today and certainly has become less and less a key moment in the timeline of the early global war on terror. That is shortly after 9 11, when the United States this is an outpost in the middle of nowhere. You had a firstperson view of what was going on there. Talk a little about how that panned out and the frustrations perhaps he mustve felt having a chance to get the guy who kind of caused 9 11 but having him slip through your fingers. Tracy what was interesting about that was i was reading another book at the time i was writing that chapter about someone in the Ground Forces there. It was easy to use what i was doing and marry it with what he was doing and i think that is one way i got the chapter approved. I do not know. It was frustrating. We were working seven minutes on, seven minutes off because it was so intense, what we were doing. Eople would have thought that, once we lost him, that it would have been screaming, yelling. That did not happen. It was like the air had gone out of the room. What people did what they went into their offices i will never know. In the room, it was like the sales went out of it and we carried on doing what we were supposed to be doing. Vince this will be a theme we will investigate again and again. When i think about your work, your operating in eastern time in the United States in langley, virginia, whereas the action is taking place sometimes 5, 5, six hours ahead of where you are, sometimes more than that. This is not a normal 9to5 job where you drive to work and then get off in time for dinner. Youre working shifts that start in the middle of the night, that do not allow you to be in normal human being. How draining was that . It was nonstop. We talked to the briefer of president bush. Asked him when did your day start prior to 9 11 . He usually woke up around 4 30. What happened on september 12 . I woke up around midnight. Racy it is one of the reasons i alternately im a morning person, so that schedule was difficult for me to keep up. I would have my best friend come over and wake me because it was hard sometimes. You have to change your whole ody clock. I agree with mike. I guess your proverbial 9to5 kind of job and then that went out the window. Vince you went from a relatively stressfree job hunting terrorists to the most stressful job i can imagine, hunting down bioterrorist who are trying to create weapons of mass destruction to kill not only a couple thousand people but hundreds of thousands of people around the world. When you moved to the wmd group, those of us that have studied weapons of mass destruction spent years in school. I studied physics for a long time. You spent two weeks in Poison School and then they sent you out and said, go find bad guys. Tracy it is a little different than that the guys who works the new program, they had their phd in Nuclear Physics and things like that. We did more toxins and poisons. I think they thought it would be enough training for us to understand what al qaeda was trying. Vince this is what keeps people up at night. Not Nuclear Weapons. Nuclear weapons are difficult to create, to deliver. Bioweapons, if you drive by the pentagon at 3 00 in the morning and there are lights on, people are worrying about a bioweapons attack. Tracy my students had to do a threat assessment in my class on bioterrorism. They had to do that. It does keep people up at night. I know you want me to say it is ecause the cia has spoiled them all but it is difficult to track biological weapons. Nukes require a lot of stuff about launch systems, those kind of things. Biological weapons come at you can get them in parts. You can order them off amazon, home depot. It is unfortunately not that difficult. Will becomes problematic is maybe people are not putting the entire piece of the puzzle together. That is where we are probably going to slip up one day. All you really need is an air conditioning vent. Vince the problem with Nuclear Weapons if you need a delivery system. Tracy i would guess they are not trying to use Nuclear Weapons because what you eed. Vince when you combine someone willing to kill themselves with the ease and access of Nuclear Weapons, it becomes very scary. Sleep well tonight, guys. You kind of have to be on the ground in these areas of the world to truly do this, to understand the culture, the eople. This is the first time in your career you started being deployed places, spending time overseas, in these countries that you cannot talk about my ame in the book. Tracy i did. Everyone has their own experience in the cia and fbi. I felt very prepared at least rom a cultural standpoint in those countries. That was one thing i thought they did extremely well. Vince preparing you is one thing. The frustrations you might have experienced having to cooperate ith local intelligence agencies you talk about in the book it being both the womans side of things in developing countries that tend to have fundamentalist islam as a tenant in their governing system but also that they were not quite taking things seriously as they should have at the time. What ended up being more frustrating for you . Tracy you wanted me to get mad about the sexism. One called me malibu arbie. It did not bother me much because my colleagues were so great about being she is the one you need to talk to. If you want to continue calling her malibu barbie, go ahead, but you are going to continue to deal with her. What frustrated me was getting cable. We do not work on sundays. That was frustrating. As a result, we cannot locate that person because they do not want to work on a sunday. Vince you have a known bad guy going through a european country or in a european country. You know where he is at. They either do not work on sundays or there is not enough evidence to arrest the person. They are not probably going to attack albuquerque or chicago. They are going to attack russels or china or in the people youre trying to warn. And they are like, sunday is our day off. I can understand that today may be, but in 2002 that seems crazy. Tracy i printed that cable and highlighted it and put it on my cubicle. It was frustrating. Vince lets talk about what should have been the most frustrating moment of your career. If it was not, i do not understand. That is the iraq war. This is probably something you do not like talking about. You had a unique role in the lead up to the iraq war. Not on purpose. Your job was to look at some of these bioweapons networks being developed and figure out how they work around. At no time did you say there was linkage whatsoever to iraq, but what happened you turn the tv on, you see colin powell and the United Nations and what has happened . Tracy a lot of times what we would do is make checks. Who is at the top of this network and how are they connected . I have no idea if they still do it, but that was a thing we used to do. The tocsin in poison network was getting complicated, so we had a cool printer. We can make big charts. We put it on the outside of our cubicles. Vince cia gets the best printers. Tracy we put it on the outside of our cubicles just so we could always look at it and keep everything straight. Someone had come through our office and wanted a copy of this and it was given to them. That chart ended up being used by colin powell to justify the invasion. It was a misuse. Vince it was not that chart exactly, right . Tracy the title of the chart was changed. You can look it up. This was Something Else i was surprised the cia let me put in. Maybe it is because it absolves them. I do not know. They are not perfect, but the title of the chart was something different. It said iraq bio if you look it up, that is what it aid. Vince can you say if the word iraq was on the chart before . Tracy it was not. Vince how did you not call the New York Times the next day . Tracy someone called me a coward for not doing that. I had so much respect for my colleagues and agency that that is really not the right thing to do and that was not the right time to do it. I do not feel regret about the decision i made not to out it, but i know people will disagree with me. What we were most concerned about about the chart was now all of those people that we were looking for, the whole world knew we were looking for them, to include them. I think that is where we were upset. Now they are all going to go underground. We are going to lose our intelligence work to get information on them and we will not be able to perhaps stop future attacks. In the immediate, that is what we were more upset about. Vince i chose to drink water the minute you stop talking. It is almost impossible in 2020 to come it with any kind of honor, go back to 2003 and say you should have done something different. It seems ridiculous at this point. Others call you a coward certainly cannot put themselves in your shoes. Let me change directions almost completely. Art of what i think is really interesting about especially being posted overseas and being in this job where youre costly inside a small room helping people across the world, all you are thinking about day and night are bad guys and terrorism. How do you maintain a sense of elf . How do you keep being tracy versus the cia operative trying to catch bad guys . You talk a little in the book. Did you costly have to stop and say, take a step back, take a breath, remember where i came from . Just remind yourself of who you are . Tracy yes. I dont think i was that cerebral about it. It was more things like planning for the future like being in a war zone and calling my mom to see if she can make me an appointment to get my roots done when i got home. Just things like that. It is ok to be a girly girl. Lots of women are at the agency and that is fine. Another thing that i did i am very into the usc trojans. One of the things i did was bomb collars sent to the dogs. Somewhere, there are a bunch of bomb dogs that have usc trojan collars on them. Vince when you leave cia, you leave on a bit of a high note. Youre doing exceptional work. Youre catching bad guys. You are at the pinnacle of a 20yearold career and you decide to leave it and move to a Different Agency with a different mindset and focus. Why . Tracy i loved the agency. I still do. My book is really positive about it. I left on good terms, but maybe that was for the better. I think at the ripe old age of 25 or 26 i wanted more stability in my life. I do not know why i realized that then. I was interested in counterterrorism. I thought maybe i can do that. I thought maybe transitioning , into the fbi, special agent work in a large office and able to stay there really until i wanted to retire. That is why i made that choice. Vince you mentioned you are positive about the cia. It is almost counterintuitive because there are so many books that are kind of poohpoohing the cia. Your experiences with the fbi were not that great. Certainly, your training we are , not far from quantico, virginia. , thats a mythical place is the Training Center for the fbi. You went there not in the 1930s or 1940s or 1950s, but a decade ago. It was almost like you were there when j. Edgar hoover was in charge. It is extraordinary, the kind of rancor you got. At the fbi, kind of. What was crazy for me as i had come from the cia, where i had no issues whatsoever between the genders at all and i think i was always naive that the fbi would be the same way. They are all part of kind of the same community and it could not have been more not like that. Vince i had a hard time grasping it until you used a phrase that made total sense to me. You said it was junior high all over again. It was cliques, people back each stabbing each other. It was you dealing with a jealous potential coworker. The instructors themselves were pushing this narrative that you should not be there. Tracy i think the narrative all started on my first day at the academy. I dont know if you still do this, but you are kind of in a theaterish type of room. Everyone stands up and says what they used to do and introduce themselves. I stood up and everyone started rolling their eyes and calling me a liar, that i never had worked at the cia. That was what was so shocking to me. You had done my background check. It is not that hard to sort of validate that. It is really not not difficult. So that narrative it was before i could even get out of the gate, that is what had happened. And as ridiculous as that sounds that is what everyone , perpetuated the entire time that i was there. More than that. Vince but that was the thing i was going to say, some of the stories are out of the 1950s. Where you did a perfect interrogation exercise, and then got chided because your pig of an instructor thought you were too good looking, basically. Tracy what happened again, i do not know if quantico still does this. But one of the first things we did was interviewing witnesses. That was your first thing that you do at quantico. You wear a uniform when you are there, but they ask that you wear a suit for this particular exercise. I wore a suit that i wore many times at the cia. I didnt buy new clothes. After i did it, i had no issues with what i had done procedurally in the interview, but what was the problem was that my suit made the instructor of that program uncomfortable. So i had to write an apology letter to him. Vince it is worth buying the book just to see your first three drafts of the apology letter. That is where the book becomes pg13. Tracy sorry. Vince it is all right, it is good. I was hoping you sent one to him. Tracy i didnt. Vince but in the end, you have a class full of former lawyers. And people to get in the fbi, you have to be highspeed. You have got to be top of your class. Of course, you are a former cia counterterrorism officer. And you by far had it harder than everyone else. And we talked about this earlier. It was not just boohoo, i had it harder, but so much attention was paid to you that other people who knows if they are trained to be fbi agents at this point because the instructors were not even looking at them. Tracy what had happened, as you progress through training you go to hogans alley, where you do Situational Awareness for anyone familiar with that. They would always, always, always make me the team leader for probably the most difficult exercises on purpose, and i knew it was to see if i would mess up. You sort of got me thinking about that. Did they even test anyone else . You kind of have to wonder if other people were qualified. Because there was so much focus put on wanting me to mess up. I mean, i didnt but it was so , stressful. I would lose my hair. They did not let me go back to my grandpas funeral, but they let my colleague go to his grandpas funeral. It was out of hand. Vince they didnt let you miss one day when they let the other guy miss multiple days. Tracy he missed 10 days. Vince they said you cannot miss a single day. As i am reading this, i am thinking maybe this is an officer and a gentleman moment where they are all standing eyes,with tears in their weing we pushed you harder, knew that you could do it. No, it is the opposite. They wanted you to fail. They did have access your file. They should have seen how qualified you were for this. And yet it did not matter. Tracy it did not matter. I think just from day one, that was what they decided they were going to do. It was very easy to check all of that information. I was not lying about where i worked. And so, why they focused on me, i am not 100 sure im ever going to know the answer to that question. What was really disturbing too is that was when i was there, some of the people that were just as bad were the other women in my classroom, pretty mean to me. Vince this sounds like an indictment on quantico. Oer the fbi academy. Or the fbi academy. Tracy everyone has their own experience. Vince it did not stop there. Your first duty station that is what i use in the military. Your first fbi posting was the Los Angeles Field Office, where, right away, you are kind of pigeonholed into doing the woman jobs also. Tracy that is not what i had as much of a problem with, to be totally honest. When i had first gotten my assignment, and again i do not know if you still do this, but you go down, you open your envelope about where you are going sort of in front of everyone else. I said Los Angeles Field Office and then it said the smaller Resident Agency that i was assigned to, and that created a becausewithin my class you should not be assigned to a Resident Agency. I really did not care, i did not ask to be. And i assumed i would be working counterterrorism because that was what i did, but, instead, so much so that the head guy did not believe that i should be there. He called. They said no, we need to clear , her to work counterintelligence. I did not complain about it. I just did it. But it was surprising that they would not take the background i had and put that to use in counterterrorism, not that im the best at it, but i do not know, i wouldve thought. Vince youre sitting in a room with george bush behind you fighting terrorists. Yeah, just seems strange that yes. But we are the spy museum, so we are happy you worked counterintelligence because we can actually talk about a really interesting case. The case was great, and it is one some people may have heard of because it is that size of case. Tracy that was really worked out well for me with my book. Because he has been tried and convicted and all of that. That means we can talk about it. So the whole mack family had been in the u. S. For over 20 years. Some of them had become citizens. They worked in a Company Called power paragon, and the company was using radar cloaking technology for a Nuclear Class submarine, and they took that, stole it, and give it to china. And we found out. And what was really neat was it was every part of a cia operation. We got to dumpster dive, we got to do surreptitious entry, we got to do all those things in a short period of time. Working that case, it was really neat. But unfortunately. Vince yeah, so we are going to make you read the book to find out how it turned out. But it worked out well for the fbi in that they have been tried and sentenced. Not so well for tracy. And if so let me ask you, why did you end up quitting the fbi . Tracy well, i do not want to say in full. Vince and a general sense. Tracy youll have to read my book to find out what my ffa said to me that ultimately sort of threw me over the edge. I was not going to leave at that point. I was living at home at the time because it was really close to where i was and saving money. I came home and told my dad. And my parents are great parents, but they has always been the kind of people, we are not going to fight your fight for you. You deal with it. You handle it. That is just kind of how they were. And i told my dad. To say that he lost it would be an understatement. And i think at that moment is when i knew i cannot stay here. The biggest regret that i have personally and it was funny. I was writing the book. And i was writing a chapter about how i had so much regret over that i did not file a complaint and i did not do more. And my mom said, what are you talking about . You did. And i think i had completely blocked out everything that had happened. But i wish i would have pursued it harder. Vince for all the great work you did at cia and for all the excellent work you did in fbi, after leaving, you moved on to maybe what you were designed to do all along, which is be a teacher in dallas, where like i said, kind of where we ran into you in the first place. Because, again, i could not believe it when i heard what you were having them do. If you could you talk about the curriculum you developed at a high school. Think about that. These are 16 and 17yearolds doing bioterrorism and other things. Tracy i am looking at some of them in the audience. Vince unbelievable. I have more than a crazy amount of respect for not only you for challenging them for that level, but also for them to rise to that challenge. Tracy they are Pretty Amazing students, so that made my job really easy. It actually came out of my first year, they all kind of found out what i did and they just had question after question. They would all hang out in my classroom. Just lots of questions. What did you do, what did you do . From there, i realized, wow, we need to have a class on this. What i also realized too, and this is not a slam on anyones intelligence, but there were a lot of basic geography questions. And i do not mean that in a bad way. But what i meant is sometimes like when russia invaded crimea, it was easy for me to pull up a map, show my students. Oh, i get why they did that. That was so much easier for them to visually be able to see that. And i realized we need to sort of have a foreign affairs, international relations, terrorism, espionage course. So our school gives us a lot of autonomy in the classroom. So on top of the ap classes i taught, i created that class. Vince and they are doing podcasts. Tracy a couple of things that , is a newer thing. I wanted them to have a product at the end of it, a why are we doing this sort of thing. So the cia conducts threat assessments. Some of them are available unclassified online. We just followed their format and may have to assess the likelihood of a terrorist group. They have to pick it out of a hat. Or i think i make them research it, i cannot remember. And the likelihood that they would commit a bio attack, and how they would do it, what they would do it with. And then we send those to our elected officials. Now they do a podcast. Vince so anyone who wants to listen to the podcast. Where is it available . Tracy everywhere. Spygal. It is on apple, spotify, stitcher. Vince let me reiterate, these are High School Students and it is extraordinary. Because these are not did one. Ey just i do not pick the topics. Vince these are things that you probably would think of in grad school or at least a high level of college. They are Pretty Amazing. Let me ask you about girl security because this is , something you have put your talents and experience to work trying to pull up those below you. When you mentioned the fact that the other women in your quantico class were just as bad as the men, this seems like it is somewhat trying to remedy some of that. Tracy that is what is so great about girl security. Gina bennett, a terrorism icon, she is Pretty Amazing, she sits on the board as well. So we design curriculum modules that go out across the u. S. They also do wargame scenarios once a year. Last year, it was Nuclear Proliferation in north korea. I think this year it may be election security, but i do not want you to quote me on that. It is spring boarding off what i high school and having a nationwide reach. It is getting girls, they hook them up with mentors, not just in intelligence but a nuclear research, with an essay, with really all of the organizations, and they hook them up with female mentors. And i am not man bashing, but sometimes when you are a young girl it is nice to see another woman in that position. I guess it makes the job more real to you, and so that is what we do. Vince we will end up putting youtube, so for the thousands of people out there who hear this and say how in the world do i get involved in that, how does someone who wants to help this cause find out more . Tracy go to the girl security website. It is nonpartisan, nonprofit. You can donate. That will be fabulous. [laughter] then you can also sign up to be a mentor if you are in those types of jobs, we are constantly looking for mentors. And again, it is across the board. Vince National Security, Foreign Policy, not just intelligence or military courageous anybody involved. Tracy but we do include military. Vince we are going to open it to questions now. I have taken up too much of her time. I know that you might have questions for her as well. If you do, head to the microphone and line up. Or not. I love to hear myself talk. We can keep it going for a while, but this is your opportunity if you have any questions for tracy. Or if you are trapped, i can bring you a microphone. You look trapped. [laughter] vince yes, sir. Ok, this is going to be a little bit provocative. I am actually working on a novel with bioterror antivirus, and it is really creepy to watch what is going on. Anyway what i , proposed was that a persian in military intelligence was moved out before dont ask, dont tell and is now in civilian life. He teaches high school and he is brought back into the cia or into intelligence because of a , very bizarre bio threat, which may involve aliens and other things. How plausible is that . That is my pitch. That is my movie pitch. [laughter] how plausible is this that it would really happen . He would be teaching high school, ap history in dallas. It is actually set in dallas. I live there. Tracy i do not think that is very possible. He is sent on excursions to investigate this threat. Which is a very bizarre threat. Tracy i do not foresee that as something that would happen, but it is a novel. So, you know. Vince in all seriousness, moving onto the idea of expertise, there is a real problem potentially, a brain of brain drain within the agency, where you went on to be a High School Teacher or an fbi agent. When you get people at the level of some of the people you have worked with and worked under, they are very tempting to companies that want to throw a lot of money at them. That is certainly true when it comes to normal cia officers. Whether it is Lockheed Martin or any of those other people. Did you ever have the temptation to go that route . Tracy no. I think some of my friends did. Actually, my best friend from the agency did. I do not hold that against her at all. I think for me, i grew up my dad is a professor. My dad was in the military. Both my grandparents were in the military. I just did not really have any interest in going in the private sector, but that is just me. I do not shame people who want to. Everyone is in sort of a different state. Hi. Thank you for your talk and thank you for your book. When youre going through an experience like you did at the fbi academy, how do you deal with that emotionally . Do you use your anger to spite them with your success . Do you detach emotionally . How do you deal with that . Tracy [laughter] that is actually a great question. Because i do not think people realize not to get too cerebral, or feelingsy, how much that damage does to someone. I talk about how in my book i was bullied in Elementary School, middle school, high school, but this is different. This is isolation on a huge, huge scale. It was such falsities that hit at the core of who i was that it was very psychologically damaging. I mean, i will be super honest, i went on antidepressants. I am very open about that. And i think a lot of it was because of that. Because you are so isolated. I think the one thing that saved me that i know other people maybe did not have was i obviously had lived in virginia at the time. So in my room in quantico, i had a car. And so, i could go to starbucks. Or i could just get out when i needed to. You feel like youre in this isolated box that you cannot get out of. I do not know that i have this in the book so i hope i do not offend anyone in the audience. Probably one of the worst rumors was that i had had a stage one Breast Cancer tumor removed. And i was in the shower, kind of like a group shower that started a rumor that i had breast augmentation, scars that i had. And i have not, but i am sure you can imagine. Obviously, that was a process having to go through and be , revictimized by that was just, it was on a whole other level. That was how i dealt with it. Also, another way i dealt with it was running. Actually,unner i just had knee surgery. But that was the way i dealt with the stress. To get the stress out. I do not like to run with people. I never have. It is kind of my way of being by myself. But that was it. Vince im thinking about it now. The fbi are supposed to be the good guys. Tracy that was just my experience. Vince but i am saying, going in that, you are like, im joining the fbi, the good guys, and the bottom falls out of that. Tracy they have not changed. I mean, here is the thing. You also have to look at too, i was writing an article on women in intelligence and law enforcement. And in the research look, the cia is not perfect. Im sure plenty of people have had problems there, but the cia has at least been engaging in a dialogue about gender equality. Since the 1950s with the petticoat panel. It was not completely successful, but it was at least a dialogue that happened. Hoover did not allow women to be special agents until 1972. Period, end of story. So they are already a lot of years behind and im not sure we realize that, how far they are behind and having it be normal that females are working alongside you. Hi. I want to say thank you for writing your book. I read it in, like, a day and a half. It was awesome. Tracy i am glad you liked it. I have the utmost respect for you. Im going to ask a tough question. Tracy go ahead. Throughout your career whether it be cia, fbi, if it is , something you can talk about, what was your biggest mistake . Something that haunts you at night when you go to bed. But more importantly i am , curious about what you learned from that. And how you transcribed that. Tracy that is actually a really easy question and does not offend me at all. I think i said my biggest failure was, in my opinion, was not speaking out about my treatment at the fbi. I 100 regret that. Because now i know there are other lawsuits that are making their way through the courts. And that is devastating to me. Because in a way, i feel like i do not want to get upset. I feel like i could have done something about that. I feel very guilty. But what that has taught me now is that when there is Something Like that going on, i speak up right away. I do not stop for two minutes. So i think in a way it helps me, but that is my biggest regret. Thank you. Vince what is tricky with regretting is when you regret stuff like that, it is in hindsight. You are using your the fact is you may not have impacted so many lives at hockaday or through girl security if you did not have that experience at the fbi. So maybe you might still be an fbi agent now and not mentor all the people you have without having that experience yourself. We do not know. That is one of those things we could go back and you can go, aw shucks, i should have done that a different way. But it is kind of factual. You cannot change your life. But you look at what you have done since and maybe that never , would have happened if you had gone a different direction. Tracy thanks for making me feel better. [laughter] vince i think we have a young lady over here that has a question for you. How did you get such an important job at a young age . Tracy that is a really good question. I actually applied on a whim. Basically it was, why not, was sort of the reason that i did it. I had my resume on me, because i was going to drop it off somewhere else that day. And i saw there was a cia recruiter on my campus and i thought that looked interesting. So i applied and they called. And so i think my biggest piece of advice is if there is something you want to do, do not ever doubt your ability and whether you should apply. And i always tell this to my students. They always say i am not going to get into this college. They know what im talking about. And i always say to them, let the school tell you no. Do not tell yourself no. It is kind of the same thing with a job. A lot of people said they will not call you back, you will not get in. But i think because i just didnt care, and i did not think about what would happen if they said no. I think that is what encouraged me to actually apply. Thank you. Tracy you are welcome. Ok, so, first of all, i have a comment and a question. Tracy ok. The comment is that, yes, you may regret not fighting back at the fbi, but youre a writer. [laughter] you are one that is one of the most and that is the biggest superpower in the world, because it takes i am telling to a national level. Tracy well, thank you. Youre 10 feet tall and bulletproof in that respect. Tracy thank you. The question i have is that i read an article on you that said you were born with floppy baby syndrome. Tracy i talk about that in my book. In that case, i cannot wait to get to that part of the book. But i have it, too. Tracy oh. And was later diagnosed with cp. So my question for you is, what were your physical limitations as a kid and how did you overcome them . Because it seems like cia and fbi would be really physical jobs. Tracy yeah so, cia, surprisingly not as much so than the fbi. That is a really great question. I do not know that i have met anyone outside my family who had it. Not a lot of is known. Hypotonia is when you are born with very underdeveloped muscle tone. I really do not talk about it a lot, because i think when people see me they do not think there is any issue. I did not walk until i was about 3. 5 maybe, which is very late. And i did not hold my head up until i was about 1. 5 years. And if so, i do not want to date myself but i was born in the 1970s. We did not have a lot of information about these things. Doctors still do not know a lot about it, which is so weird. You would think that 40 plus years later we would have moved past this. But for me, my biggest issues were with fast twitch muscles. I do not know if you know the difference between slow and fast twitch. I can run really fast, really long distances. That has never been a problem for me. But at the fbi i mean, i barely by a 10th of a millimeter. The sprint was beyond difficult for me. And so, for me, thats my only sort of limitation. Also, i trip and fall pretty much all the time. Which i wear heels all the time, so. And then for the amount of working out and physical therapy i do regularly, i do not show my legs. But if people saw my legs, they would be surprised by what they look like. I just do a very good job of hiding it. I think my students even probably do not know that i had it. I do not talk about it a whole lot. I have a few questions but i will keep them very short. First day of any new job is probably very frightening to many, so i would be curious to know, sort of, obviously you cannot reveal what that they day encompassed, but what your thoughts were on the first day and also what your where your headspace was on your First International assignment. Because again, i would think that that probably too was stressful. The third part of my question is how you feel about how tv portrays female cia agents. Homeland. Tracy can i answer the last question first . Yes. Tracy ok, because i have an opinion. It frustrates me, because i think the women they portray are deeply, deeply flawed. And i do think that you want to have some demented tv characters. That part i totally understand, but they are like seriously flawed. You know, i think almost to the point of only a crazy woman would do this. That does not sit well with me because i do not see men necessarily being portrayed in that manner. So, that is how i feel about that. My first day when i eodd, or entered on duty at cia, i was really nervous. I do not remember sleeping the night before. The best thing that came out of that were my two best friends, who are still my two best friends, they were bridesmaids in my wedding. And i think at the agency, obviously, when you are there you rely on your friends a lot. They sort of become your family. One had power of attorney over me when i was overseas. And i am still really close to them. My first overseas assignment, i was really nervous. I did not know what to expect, but i did travel with a colleague, which was a blessing in that sense because they had gone before and were able to show me the ropes. So, i am glad i was not obviously i traveled later by myself, but im glad on my first one i was with my colleague. Im assuming most of your friends obviously did not know that you worked for the cia. What was your cover . Tracy i was a employee. Vince you did not always travel. Tracy i cannot really talk about that. Vince it is in the book. Tracy not really, though. Vince not really, ok. [laughter] vince yes, sir . Actually two comments and a question. First comment is i just want to thank you for service to our great nation. Tracy thank you. Second comment is i am really proud of what my daughter could become. You broke the glass ceiling. God bless you. Tracy you are going to make me tracy you are going to make me cry. Thank you. The question is, would you consider coming back to federal service . I know the department of Homeland Security would love someone like you. There are a number of means to come in even as a temporary person, or political. [laughter] tracy so, i would absolutely come back to federal service. I miss it. I really do. To a certain extent. I would i think, though, part of me yes, i would come back to federal service. Wait, you said that was not plausible when he asked for it in the pitch. Tracy no, what i think he meant was that the cia would come calling back for me. And i do not think that piece is plausible. They should, though. [laughter] tracy no, there are very talented people there doing great jobs. Vince let me ask you this, though. What do you need to accomplish before you would entertain that . Do you have goals you have not accomplished yet . Do you need security to reach a certain level . Do you need your students . You are ready for your next adventure at this point. Since you are 25 years old still, you have plenty of time. Tracy i am in my 40s. [laughter] vince any other questions anyone might have . Thanks for being here tonight, and thanks for your service to the country. What do you see as the biggest threat facing the United States today . Tracy well, a couple things. Inside the u. S. , i think domestic terrorism is a big problem, and i think the fact that it is not prosecutable right now is another huge problem. Obviously i can only talk to the fbi from when i was there. I cannot speak to it right now. But all i can say is that when we were there, i did not feel it was taken seriously. And why i feel that way is because again, i do not want to upset men. Sometimes it is a gender narrative. Some men have gotten into the fbi to be on the swat team, be on hostage rescue, take down gangs. And that is great. We need people to do that, absolutely, but they looked at being on a domestic terrorism squad or the cyber squad or intelligence squad as being lesserthan, and i think that needs to change. That mentality needs to change. Because if your whole heart is not in it, youre not going to do a good job. I think that is a huge problem. And i think more money needs to be allocated to it as well and i think it needs to be a prosecutable crime. Some people disagree with me on that, but that is my opinion. From the outside, international, i feel like a really big problem are failed states. The reason i think that is a big problem is because failed states breed terrorists. It is a breeding ground. Right . Even if you look at iraq. Saddam hussein is a really bad person, i am not saying he should not have been taken out, but dictators tend to be conducive to terrorist groups forming. They love instability. Right now, libya has instability. Even south sudan is having instability right now. Somalia, yemen. They are having instability right now in somalia and yemen. We know these countries are unstable. If you look at those countries, i would guess i do not have access to classified information, but i would guess we are seeing an uptick of terrorist activity. So that is two. Im sorry. Vince i want to ask a question now, one final question. Where do you come down on some of the controversial issues that surround cia . I know you mentioned one of them in the book when you talk about eit. The Intelligence Community writ large. Because i am sure your students are asking questions about snowden, about privacy, about the extent the Intelligence Agency is involved our lives. How do you answer those questions that are clearly not blackandwhite . They are really gray. Tracy snowden i feel is very blackandwhite. [laughter] im sorry. Im sorry. Vince i know your answer, because youre former i. T. , so a traitor of course. When you get into stuff like eit, you are very gray. Enhanced interrogation, the socalled torture program of the cia. You are very gray in the book. Tracy people got really mad at me about that. Someone gave me a one star review because she was real upset that i did not condemn bush. I can only be honest with how i feel. So, that was sort of what i try to do, particularly in the classroom i think my students will tell you im pretty apolitical in the classroom. I try to be. I always tried to give them the facts and they can figure it out. But they know how i feel about snowden and the surveillance state and all of that, simply because i feel like i have some facts to back up my statement. I usually dont make that strong a statement. The reason with eit, the reason i am gray, you have to look at why it was done in the first place. Eit was not necessarily gaining information. Right . Eit what to make people complacent so we can then get it. Vince i was really interested to see, you are like, torture does not work. Tracy but torture and eit are not the same thing. Vince yeah, see . Nice and gray. [laughter] i want to thank you for coming. Tracy thank you for having me. Vince and for the book, for anyone who is not considering checking this book out, you are crazy. It is really one of the most interesting ones. Reading it as a narrative, is fantastic to get i was so mad so many times in this book. The one thing she does is she changes all the names. But god, i wish you had publicly shamed some of the people at quantico. I was ready to get into my car. Tracy my publishers attorney said that was not possible. [laughter] vince but thank you so much for being here. Tracy thank you for having me. Vince she is going to stay and sign some books, if you want to purchase the book and have it signed afterward. I implore you, please, dont rush up here to talk to her. We are going to get her actually out there so she can sign books before midnight tonight. So please join me in thanking tracy walder for taking the time to be here. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv covering history cspan style with archival films, lectures and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan three. American history tv on cspan3, exploring people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up sunday, 9 a. M. Eastern, marking the seventh anniversary the 70th anniversary of the korean war with pulitzer prizewinning and sunday, authors at 4 p. M. Eastern, a series of u. S. Government korean war films starting with, to help peace survive, an orientation film for soldiers assigned to south korea. 7 00 p. M. , u. S. Marine veteran alan clark on serving tors in korea between 1950 and 1953. Exploring the american story, watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. Night,y saturday American History tv takes you to college around the country for lectures. Why do you know who Lizzie Borden is . Raise your hand if you had ever heard of the gene harris murder trial before this class . The true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of american people. We will talk about both sides of the story. The tools and techniques of slave owner power and power, practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions on topics ranging the revolution to september 11, lectures in history on cspan3, saturday, 8 p. M. Eastern, American History tv, lectures available as a podcast, find it where you listen. Steve welcome to cspan 3s American History tv, a continuation of our reel america series, archival film that puts the events of today into context. We will look at a silent film that was produced in 1916 titled uncle sam watching the mexican border. Here joining us in our studio for some context and analysis is julie prieto. She is a historian and author of the mexican expedition 1916 to 1917, put together by the u. S. Army center of military history. Put this time period i