Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tracy Walder The Unexpected Spy 20240712

Lectures in history on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv and lectures in history available as a podcast, find it where you listen to podcasts. Tracy walder is coauthor of the unexpected spy. From the cia to the fbi my secret life taking down some of the most notorious terrorists. Next, she sits down as a special Operations Officer in the immediate aftermath of the 9 11 attacks, and focusing on chinese counterintelligence. The International Spy museum recorded this event in february. Good evening, everyone and thank you for coming out on this gloomy, washington, d. C. , evening to the International Spy museum. Im chris costa. Im the executive director of the International Spy museum. Im really excited to introduce this program with former cia Operations Officer, fbi special agent now author tracy walder. Tracy joined the cia straight out of college and served as a staff Operations Officer at the Counter Terrorism 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 4 1 2yearold 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. They will open the audience to questions and answers. Everyone will have the opportunity to ask their questions this evening. We are also going to ask that if you are trapped in the middle of a row please put your hand up and we will ensure that you have a mike to answer questions, but there will be two mikes on each side of the auditorium that you can use to answer your question. Again, if you cant get out, just stay where youre at, raise your hand and well send a mike out to you. One another administration notice. If you have a cell phone. Does anyone have a cell phone in here . Please silence it, and ill lead by example and make sure mine is silenced. So now ill kick it over to Vincent Tracy and i think youll enjoy this evenings discussion. Thank you, chris. I probably mentioned the first time we were introduced to tracy as a museum was on an Educational Team discovered the amazing work that she was doing now at a teacher at a school in dallas and well talk about this later, but its extraordinary what she decided to do to challenge young people that i would on ei taught at every levl from Elementary School and the gumption was exceptional, i would never have College Students do what youre having them do and these on the board of directors for girl security which we will talk about later on, as well which is another way shes decided to give back to not only her community, but also to her country. Youll hear about more of those later and well jump right in. We actually had one conversation, if anyone listens to spycast youll have a chance to hear a much longer version of this. On tuesday, we just recorded a podcast together and we had a chance to try out some of these questions before we put it before a live studio audience and some of them work better than others and one was interesting to me and certainly as someone like myself what was the process that 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 and if anyones looked at the book there were lines redacted that were left inside. In our conversation theres a whole lot more that they didnt want you to put out when you went through this. How much difficult how much difficulty was it getting through . First, thank you, everyone, for coming. I see a lot of my former students in the audience which is really exciting, a lot who took my class. Thank you for being here. In terms of the publications review board there were two women that came before me, martha backos, and Sarah Karlsson and i credit them with the easier time that i had. So my book was extremely important to me. I signed a nondisclosure agreement when i left and i wanted to honor that and i sent it off to them just hoping it wouldnt be denied in full meaning you cant publish this. It was not. It came back after four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters just black lines. So the cia was it willy really great. You can email the prb. There are a lot of places that you cannot, they wont tell you exactly why, so i resubmitted it and it came back with two chapters redacted completely and a chapter and a half and finally, after i took out one word which was the name of a statue, they left that whole chapter through and decided the way it was was intelligible enough for people to be able to read. Its tricky because yes, they want you to give away what cities theyre operating in and its not widely known, but you allowed the leeway to describe these cities pretty well. Theres a modern headquarters for an intelligence right on the river and this is near where a famous serial killer killed in the victorian era. I dont know why they redacted some of the things that they did. I was just talking to someone about this. Why they redacted some things and redacted others. I dont understand the process. Some of them, in my opinion its extremely easy to figure out where i am. Maybe they want people to take that extra step of googling for about ten minutes. I dont know. Lets talk about your origin story because it is somewhat different than others. I have nothing with you being in a sorority in Southern California, a lot of people wanted to do it from an early age and you didnt set out to think about being a cia officer in middle school or high school, although subconsciously you did a little bit because of what you studied and when other people were playing you were learning with the middle east and looking at maps and what led you to want to join the agency . To back up a little bit. That was when i was recruited in the mid90s. Popular culture looks really different today than it did then. I did not grow up with quantico or criminal minds or 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 large interest in the middle east and Counter Terrorism. So i would say that was cultivated 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 and so when i applied at that career fair in college that was really the impetus. Most of us in here, unless youre really young, maybe some of your former students remember where we were on 9 11. It was a turning point for a lot of our lives. For many people it was a turning point in their careers and the decision to go in a different direction. You were already working. In fact, youre at langley the morning of 9 11 and this is the question that popped in my head and how it hadnt been thought about that much before, but i sat on my couch on 9 11 and id been army for about a month just pissed off because i couldnt do anything about it and i wanted to go back, but my knees stunk. We had the feeling of oh, my god, weve been attacked. To a degree, you had an advantage because you couldnt wallow in selfpity about our countrys been attacked because you had a second to do that and then it was time to get to work. So i think because you made me think about that question a little bit differently. I think everyone always asks how i was feeling, thinking and its not that i was happy that people had died in the world trade center, but you have to almost compartmentalize those thoughts so you can get on with the mission and get on with the work that you need to do and stop the next attack and gather the evidence that you need to stop the next attack and i think youre right, having a sense of purpose to be able to do something about it even though maybe youre not waiting for next attack and in a way keep us going. You had a unique advantage, and you moved into what is known as the vault which is ground zero for the war against al qaeda, the war that was created because of 9 11, and when i say ground zero. Youre working in a small group and george bush is standing behind you asking you whats going on or condoleezza rice. This is the epicenter and the nerve center of the cia response. How daunting was that as youre 23 at the time or 21. 21 at the time. And youve got scar chomping doors behind you, who are we killing today . Youre not allowed to say that, targeting or drones. Who are we looking at today . It had to be a surreal experience. So that was a chapter i was very surprised cia approved. I submitted it and thought the whole thing would come back redacted and it didnt so yay. For me i was read into that program on september 10, 2001, and i think for me i was naive and said well never need to use this and obviously we did. It was obviously very intense. Youre working really long hours, but youre not really thinking about the people that are in the room because if you think about the people in the room youre not focusing on what youre doing which is trying to get people, trying to talk around it, and so i think you really cant process who is in there and what theyre doing other than tenet who was in there every day and sat with us and hung out with us and he brought Us Thanksgiving dinner and doughnuts and bagels all the time. He was really great to work with in that environment, but other than tenet, he was the only one that we were super aware of all the time. Let me ask you this because the concept behind this room, this space and im not going to mack you say anything you cant say and this is where you have and i wont out your politics. Youre a Southern California girl. Youre very overt in the book about what direction you lean politically. Im not a fan necessarily of certain administrations. In that room, it didnt matter. We are so used to today. This isnt because of the current administration, but even under obama and youre used to taking foreign approximately see and National Security and this was a moment where it didnt matter where you came from and it was texas or Southern California and everyone was working together. That was what was so great about the cia when i was there. You obviously grew up in Southern California in a liberal household, but to be hon of tesh you im registered independent. The cia helped move me to the middle in a weird way. They didnt purposely do that, it just helped me think more about the issues not as7o blac and white way. It was sort of a gray and what i liked there i served under clinton and bush and tenet was there under both of them and that was great. I felt at least the people around me it was very apolitical. Politics are taken out of this situation and people are frustrated who read my before i came out that i had some nice things to say about bush and he didnt understand that, but it wasnt about servicing someones political agenda. It was about what my observations were at that time in that moment and that helped me gain this apolitical insight when it came to foreign policy. There was an event that people dont talk about that much today and certainly, since the death of bin laden has become less and less, a key moment in the timeline of the early global war on terror and thats shortly after 9 11 when the United States had been pinned down. The last time we knew where he was and this was abbottabad an outpost out in the middle of nowhere in tora bora. I want you to talk about the frustrations, perhaps, that you must have felt having a chance to get the guy that caused 9 11, but having him slip through your fingers. That night what was interesting about that, and at the time i was writing the chapter about the Ground Forces that were there and it was easy to footnote to be easy to use and thats one way i got the chapter approved. I dont know, but it was extremely frustrating and we were working seven minutes on and seven minutes off and it was intense what we were doing and i think people would have thought that once we lost him that there would have been cursing, screaming, yelling and that really did not happen. It was sort of like the air had sort of gone out of the room. What people did when they went to their offices ill never know, but in that room it was just sort of, like, the sails completely went out of it and we just carried on doing what we were supposed to be doing. This will be a theme that we will investigate again and again and again throughout this conversation, but when i think about your work in the vault, youre operating in here in eastern time in the United States in langley, virginia, where the actual action is taking place sometimes is five, five and a half, six hours ahead of where you are and sometimes more than that. This is not a normal 9 00 to 5 00 job and you dont get to scratch the ears of your dog and then get home in time for dinner and you are working shifts that dont allow you to be a normal human being. How draining is that . This is nonstop. We talked to mike morel because he was the briefer for President Trump president bush. I woke up at 4 00, 4 30. I woke up at midnight to start my day. It seems like almost impossible to keep up over a long period of time. I think it is, and its one of the reasons that i ultimately left. Im not a night person and im a morning person. I would have my friend sometimes come to my apartment and wake me up. I have to change your whole body clock. Your proverbial 9 00 to 5 00 job before that and that all went out the window. So you went from a relatively stressfree job hunting terrorists in the vault to the most stressful job and thats hunting down bioterrorists 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 over to the wmd group, what i thought was funny from the book is those of us who studied weapons of mass destruction at school, they sent you out saying go find bad guys. Yes. Its a little bit different than that. The guys that worked the nuke program, those are people that had their phds in Nuclear Physics and i dont want to communicate your Work Experience and we did crude toxins and poison so ricin and botulinum toxin and we thought two weeks would be enough to understand what al qaeda was trying to procure. This is really what keeps people up at night. Its not Nuclear Weapons and theyre incredibly difficult to create, to deliver, but bioweapons and you drive by the pentagon at 3 00 in the morning and its because people are there worrying about a bioweapons attack. How much going through the twoweek poison school, did you come out more worried when you see how easy it was. You just helped my poor students who had to do their 15page threat assessment and they know what im talking about in my class about bioterrorism feel vindicated that they had to do that. So it does keep people up at night and i know you want me to say its because the cia has spoiled them all, but its very difficult to track biological weapons. I dont want to say nuks, thats not easy. It requires a lot of stuff, launch systems and all those keeps of things. In my opinion, biological weapon, you can get them in parts, its very easy. You can get them off amazon, home depot. What becomes problematic and maybe people arent putting the entire piece of the puzzle together and i think thats what were going to probably slip up one day. I mean, all you really need is an airconditioning vent. And the trouble is you need a delivery system. At worst case a ship with containers to sale into a port. Which is why terrorists really i would guess theyre not trying to really create one because of what you need. When you combine someone willing to kill themselves with the ease and access of bioweapons it becomes very scary. I agree. Sleep well tonight, guys. Youre welcome. Whats extraordinary and i didnt have a good understanding about this before i read the book. You have to be on the ground in these areas of the world to understand the culture and understand the people and so you, for the first time in your career, you started deployed to places, spending time overseas spending time in the countries that you cant talk about by name in the book. Yes, i did. I know some people would disagree with me and everyone has their own experience at the cia and the fbi, but this was mine. I felt very prepared. At least from a cultural standpoint in those countries. That was one thing that i thought that they did extremely well. Preparing you is one thing. The frustrations you might have experienced through having to cooperate with local intelligence agencies you talk in the book being the womans side of things and these are countries that have fundamentalist islam as a tenet behind their governing system and they werent taking things as seriously as they should have at the time. What ended up being more frustrating for me. For me, i know we talked about this, and you wanted me to get mad about the sexism when the Intelligence Service called me malibu barbie. It didnt bother me that much because my colleagues were so great about being, shes the one you need to talk to. So if you want to continue calling her malibu barbie, go ahead, but youll need to deal with her. I always felt supported by my colleagues. What frustrated me was stams getting cables back when we knew someone was transiting a country. I am so sorry, but we dont work on sundays. It was really frustrating and as a result you cant locate that person anymore because they dont want to work on a sunday. You have a known bad guy going through a european country or in a european country, you know where hes at and they either dont work on sundays, and theres not enough evidence to arrest a person. Theyre not probably going to attack albuquerque or chicago. Theyre going to attack brussels or theyll attack in lichtenstein, the people youre trying to warn. Sundays is our day off. I can understand that today maybe, but in 2002 and 2003, that just seems crazy. I highlighted it and put it up on my cubicle. It was very frustrating. Lets talk about arguably should have been the most trust rating moment of your career and if it wasnt i dont understand and ill be very honest about that and that was the iraq war in 2003. This is probably something you dont like talking about. You had a unique role in the leadup to the iraq war, not on purpose, because your job was to look at some of these bioweapons terrorists and the networks that were being developed and figure out the linkage and how they kind of work around. At no time did you in any way say there was any linkage whatsoever to iraq, but what happened or set the scene. You turn the tv on and see colin powell in front of the United Nations and whats happening . Just to back up a little bit. A lot of times what we would do is make link charts to keep terrorists straight and who is at the top of this network and how they were connected. That was a very regular thing. I have no idea if they still do it, but that was a very regular thing. The poison network, and we got this really cool printer and we could make really big charts on and wed put it on the outside of the cubicles. The cia gets the best printers . I guess. We put it on the outside of our cubicles just so we can always look at it and keep everything straight and it was cells and areas of the world that people were working and someone had come through our office and wanted a copy of the chart and it was given to them and that chart ended up being used by colin powell to sort of justify the invasion into iraq and colin powell said it was a misuse it wasnt that chart exactly, though, right . It had to have been altered. It was the exact chart. The title of the chart was changed. You can look it up and this was Something Else i was surprised that the cia let me put in, but i guess im thinking that it sort of absolves them a little bit. Sure. And theyre not perfect, but the title of the chart was not it originally. What was it . I cant say that. It was iraq bio, if you look it up. Can you say if the word iraq was on the chart. It was not. It was not. How did you not call the New York Times the next day. Someone on twitter called me a coward for not doing that, but, maybe i am. I dont know. I was 23. Im not excusing that, but i think for me i have so much respect for my colleagues and for the agency thats really not the right thing to do and that really wasnt the right time to do it. I dont feel regret about the decision i made not to sort of out it, but i know people will disagree with me. I think what we were the most concerned about the chart was now all of those people that we were looking for, the whole world knew now that we were looking for them to include them and i think thats where we were upset was, great, now theyre all going to go under ground. Well lose all of our intelligence sources to get information on them and we wont be able to perhaps stop future attacks and so i think in the immediate thats what we were the most upset about. I wanted to drink water the minute you stopped talking. It is almost impossible in 2020 for any kind of honor to go back to 2003 and said you should have done something different. It seems ridiculous at this point. I didnt want to come across as anyone someone calling you a coward couldnt put themselves in their shoes in 2003. Thats their opinion. Its okay. Want to change direction. Part of what i think is interesting especially being posted overseas and being in this job where youre constantly inside a small room, hunting people across the world, are you thinking about day, night and in between when youre falling asleep waking up with bad guys and terrorists. How do you maintain a sense of self. How do you keep being tracy versus the cia operative trying to catch bad guys. You talk about it in the book with tchotchkes and things like that. Did you have to constantly stop and take a step back, take a breath, remember where i came from, you know . Root for the trojans playing in a Football Game or Something Like that just to remind yourself of who you are . So, yes. I dont think i was that cerebral about it, right . For me it was more just 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. Things like that, but its okay to be a girly girl. Lots of women are that are at the agency and thats totally fine. I think another thing that i did im very, very into the usc trojans very much and one of the things i did was i had colors sent to the bomb dogs in one of the places i was at and somewhere theres a bunch of bomb dogs that have usc trojans collars on them. That segways me into the question about your transition from cia to fbi because when you leave cia you are leaving on a bit of a high note. Youre doing exceptional work, youre catching bad guys and youre at the pinnacle of a 20yearold whatever career and you decide to leave it and move on to an entirely Different Agency with an entirely different mindset and focus. Why . So i loved the agency. I still do. My book is really positive about it, and i left on good terms, but maybe that was for the better. I think the ripe old age of 25 or 26 i wanted more stability in my life. I dont know why i realized that then, and i wanted i really was passionate about working Counter Terrorism and i thought, well, maybe i can do that, but do it in one place, and i thought well, maybe transitioning into the fbi as a special agent there i can work in one of the large offices and be able to stay there really until i wanted to retire and so thats why i made that switch. And you mentioned that youre very positive about the cia in this book, its counterintuitive because theyre poohpoohing the cia and your experiences at the fbi werent all that great and certainly your training which were not very far from quantico, virginia, its this mythical place where not only the hrt and the bau and the marine corps, but thats the Training Center for the fbi. You went there not in the 1930s and the 1940s and the 1950s, but about a decade ago, it was like you were there when j. Edgar hoover was in charge. Its extraordinary the rancor you got at the fbi. What was always crazy to me was i had come from the cia where i had no issues whatsoever between the genders at all, and i think i was almost naive that the fbi would be the same way. Theyre all part of the same community and it could not have been more not like that. I mean, you mentioned i had a hard time grasping it believe you used a phrase that made sense to me and it was junior high and it was cliques and people backstabbing each other and talking behind each others backs and they were the ring leaders of all this. So it wasnt just you dealing with a jealous potential coworker, the instructors themselves were pushing this narrative that you shouldnt be there. When i think the narrative all started on my very first day at the academy, i dont know if they still do this, but youre kind of in a theaterish type of room and everyone has to sort of stand up and say what they used to do and introduce themselves so i stood up and said mi name and where i used to work and everyone started rolling my eyes and calling me a liar and that i never worked at the cia. That was so shocking. You had to do my background check and its not that hard to validate that. Its really not that difficult, and so that narrative, it was before i even could get out of the gate. Thats what had happened, and as ridiculous as that sounds, thats what everyone perpetuated the entire time that i was there or more than that. Thats 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. And i dont know quantico still does this, but one of the first thing weise did ws we did interviewing witnesses and that was one of the first things at quantico, they ask that you wear a suit to do this particular exercise and so i wore a suit that id worn many times at the cia. I didnt buy new clothes. After i did it i had no issues, like with what i had done procedurally in that 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. Theres a couple of versions in the book if you an apology letter or not. Thats where the book becomes pg13 a little bit. I was hoping youd sent one of them to him. I didnt. But in the end you have a class full of former, you know, lawyers and people and in the fbi you have to be high speed and you have to be top of your class. Of course, you are a former cia Counter Terrorism officer and you, by far, had it harder than everyone else, and we talked about this earlier, and it wasnt boo hoo, i had it harder, but so much attention was paid to you that other people who knows if theyre trained to be fbi agents at this point because the instructors werent looking at them. When you progress through training you get to hogans alley which is Situational Awareness if anyone is familiar with that and they would 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 and you sort of got me thinking about, did they even test anyone else . You kind of have to wonder if other people were qualified as well because there was so much focus put on wanting me to mess up, and i didnt, but it was so stressful on me. I would lose my hair. They didnt let me go back for my grandpas funeral, but they let my colleague go back for his grandpas funeral. It was just they wouldnt let you miss one day when the other guy missed multiple days. To attend your grandfathers funeral. Maybe this is an officer and a gentleman moment and theyre all standing there with tears in their eyes saying tracy, i knew you could do it. No. Its the opposite. They wanted you to fail. What i wonder is they did have access to your file. They should have seen how qualified you were for this, and yet it didnt 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 wasnt lying about where i worked and so i why they focused on me im not 100 sure ill ever know the answer to my question, but what was disturbing, too, is while i was there some of the people that were just as bad were the other women in my class that were pretty mean to me, too. This sounds like an indictment on quantico and the fbi academy. Everyone has their own experience. It didnt stop there and thats whats interesting about me, as well and your first duty station and thats the word i used in military, your first fbi posting was the Los Angeles Field Office where right away youre kind of pigeonholed into doing the woman jobs also. Thats not what i had as much of a problem with to be totally honest. When i had first gotten my assignment and i dont know if they still do this, but you go down and open your envelope about where youre going sort of in front of everyone and i had gotten Los Angeles Field Office and then it said the you wismal Resident Agency and that created a problem within my class, too. You shouldnt be assigned to resident agent. I didnt care. I didnt ask to be and i assumed that i would be, woi working co terrorism because thats what i did, but instead so much that the head guy didnt believe that i should be there and so called and they said no, we need her clearance to work counterintelligence and so i was placed into counterintelligence. I didnt complain about it, i just did it, but it was surprising that they wouldnt take the background that i had and put that to use in Counter Terrorism, not that im the best at it, but i just would have thought. Youre sitting in a room with george bush behind you finding terrorists, but were in the spy museum so were happy that you were counterintelligence because we can talk about a very interesting case. The case was interesting. And its one that some people may have heard of because it is that size of case. And that was really it worked out well for me for my book because hes been tried and convicted and all of that. So that means we can talk about it. And so the whole mack family had been in the u. S. For actually over 20 years and some of them had become citizens and they were working at a Company Called power paragon and that company was using radar Cooking Technology for Nuclear Class submarines and they took that, stole it and gave it to china, and we found out, and what was really what was kind of neat is every part of a cia operation, i guess. You know, we got to dumpster dive, we got to do surreptitious entry and we got to do all those things in somewhat of a short period of time. So working that case it was really neat, but unfortunately so well make you read the book to find out how it turned out, but it turned out well for the fbi in which chimack turned out not so well for tracy and let me ask you, why did you end up quitting the fbi. I dont want it is a in full. In the general sense. Youll have to read my book to find out what my ssa said to me to sort of throw me over the edge. I wasnt going to leave, actually, at that point, but i came i was living at home at the time because it was really close to where i was and saving money and i came home, and i told my dad and my parents, theyre really great parents, but theyve also been the kind of people that were not going to fight your fights for you. You deal with it. You handle it. Thats just kind of how they were and i told my dad and to say that he lost it would be an understatement, and i think that moment was when i knew i cant stay here. The biggest regret that i have personally, and it was funny, so i was writing the book, right . I was writing a chapter about how i had so much regret over how i didnt file a complaint and i didnt do more and i didnt do more, and my mom was, what are you talking about . You did. I had completely blocked out everything that had happened, but i do think i wish i would have pursued it harder. For all of the great work you did at cia and for all of the excellent work you did at the fbi, after leaving you moved on to maybe what you were designed to do all along which is to be a teacher in dallas at the huckaday school which is where i ran to you if the first place because i couldnt believe it when i heard what you were having them do. Can you talk a little bit about the curriculum that you developed at a high school think about that. These are 16 and 17yearolds doing bioterrorism and other things. Thats crazy. Im looking at some of them in the audience. I have more than crazy amount of respect for not only you, for challenging them to that level, but also for them for rising to the challenge. Theyre amazing students and it made my job really easy and it came out of my first year at huck day and they all kind of found out what i did and it was question, question. Theyd all hang out in my room during lunch and conference periods and what did you do . Just lots of questions and from there we realized, wow we need to have a class on this, and what i realized, too and this is not a slam on anyones intelligence and there was basic geography questions. And i dont mean that in a bad way, but what i meant is sometimes you know, when russia made it crimea it was really easy for me to pull out a map and show my students and for them to visually see that and i was, like, wow, we have to have a foreign affair, International Relations terrorism espionage course. So our school gives us a lot of autonomy in the classroom, so on top of the a. P. Classes i taught i created that class. And theyre doing bio research. Thats a newer thing. I wanted them to have a product, i guess, at the end of it. A why are we doing this sort of thing, so the cia conducts threat assessments. So some of them are available uncu unclassified their format and they have to assess the likelihood of a terrorist group. They have to pick it out of a hat or made them research it. And the likelihood that they would commit a bioattack, how they would do it, with what they would do it with and then we sent those to our elected officials. Now they do a podcast. Anyone who wants to listen to the podcast. Spy gals. Where is it available . Everywhere. Apple, spotify. Let me reiterate. These are High School Students doing these and it is extraordinary. Its the future of space wars was one that they just did. I dont pick the topic. These are thing are that you would think of in grad school or a high level of college. Theyre pretty amazing. Let me ask you about girl security because this is something that youve put your talents and your experience to work trying to pull up those when you mentioned the fact that the other women in your quantico class were just as bad as the men, this is somewhat it seems like trying to remedy some of that. Thats whats been so great about it, gina bennett, who is amazing, she sits on the board and we design curriculum modules that go out across the u. S. For girls. They also do war game scenarios once a year. Last year it was Nuclear Proliferation in north korea. I think this year maybe election security, but dont quote me on that, and so its a way of having a much well, its springboarding off of what i did and sort of having a nationwide reach in getting girls. They hooked them up with mentors and not just in intelience and a nuclear research, and nsa and with all of the organizations and they hooked them up with female mentors and im not man bashing and sometimes when youre a woman or a young girl its nice to see another woman who is in that position. It makes i guess the job more real to you and so thats what we do. So for those in the audience and well end up putting this on youtube. So for the thousands of people out there and go, how in the world do i get involved in that . How does someone who wants to help this cause know if out more about girl security. Go to the girl security website, its nonpartisan and nonprofit and you can sign up to be a mentor. If youre in any of those jobs theyre constantly looking for mentors and it is across the board. Not just military and anyone who is involve. To include military, too. Great. We will open to up to questions now. Ive taken up too much of her time because i know you might have questions for her, as well. So if you do, go ahead and head over to the microphones and line up or not. I love to hear myself talk and we can keep going for a while, but this is your opportunity if you have any questions for tracy. Or if youre trapped i can bring you a microphone. You look trapped. Yes, sir. Okay. This will be a little bit provocative. Im actually working on a novel with bioterror and a virus and its really krocreepy to watch whats going on and anyway, what i proposed was that a person who was in the military and military intelligence would move out with dont ask, dont tell and he teaches High School History and hes brought back into the cia and into intelligence because of a very bizarre biothreat which may involve aliens and other things. How plausible is that . Thats my pit thats my movie pitch, how plausible is that this would really happen. He would be teaching high school, a. P. History in dallas. Its actually set in dallas because i lived there. I dont think thats very plausible. He set on excursions to investigate this threat which is a very bizarre threat. I dont foresee that as something that would happen, but its a novel, so you know . In all seriousness, moving on to the idea of expertise there is a real problem potentially of brain drain within the agency where you went on to be a High School Teacher or fbi agent, when you get people who are at the level of some of the people you worked with and worked under, they are very tempting to companies that want to throw a lot of money at them and thats certainly true to a normal cia officer or any of those other people. Did you ever have the temptation to go that route . No. I ink some of my friends did, and actually my best friend from the agency did, and i dont hold that against her at all. I think for me i grew up my dad is a professor, and my dad was in the military. Both my grandparents were in the military. I just didnt really have any interest, i guess, in going in the private sector, but thats just me. I dont shame people who want to. Everyones 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 . That is actually a great question because i dont think people realize, not to get too cerebral or feelingsy, how much that damage that does to someone. I was and i talk about it in my book i was bullied in Elementary School in middle school and high school. It was different. This was isolation on a huge, huge scale, and it was such falseities at the core of who i it was very psychologically damaging, ill be super honest, i went on antidepressants. I am very opened about that 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 didnt have, this 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, get out, sort of when i needed to, but you feel like you are in this isolated box that you just, you cant get out of. I probably, i dont know that i have this in the book, i hope i dont offend anyone at all, probably one of the worst rumors was that i had just a stage 1 Breast Cancer tumor removed and i was in the shower, kind of a group shower and that started a rumor that i had breast augmentation, the scars that i have. And i havent. Im sure you can imagine obviously that was a process having to go through and sort of be revictimized by that, it was on a whole another level. But that was really how i dealt with it. Also another way i dealt with it was running. That was huge, well, i just had knee surgery, unfortunately, but that was the way to deal with stress, to stress out. I dont like to run with people. I never have, so its kind of my way of just being by myself. That was it. I can imagine the difficulty thinking about it now. The fbi are supposed to be the good guys. Maybe they are. That was just my experience. Going in there, im joining the fbi. Im joining the good guys and the bottom falls out of that. They have not changed. Heres the thing. You also have to look at, too, i was writing an article on women in intelligence in Law Enforcement and the research, look, cia is not perfect. Im sure there are plenty of people that have had problems there. But the cia has at least been engaging in a dialogue about gender equality since about the 50 with the pet at the coat pan emt. It wasnt complete and successful. But it was at least a dialogue to happen. Uber did not allow people to be special agents until 1992, period, end of story. So theyre already a lot of years behind. Im not sure we realize that of sort of how far behind they are in having it be normal that females a working alongside you. Yeah. Hi. I just want to say thank you for writing your book. I read it in like a dayandahalf. Oh, thank you. Im glad you liked it. To process the question with the fact that i have the outmost respect for you, to answer difficult questions. Throughout your career, whether cia, fbi, is it something you can talk about what was maybe your biggest slipup or mistake, like something that hurts you at night when you go to bed . More importantly and curious about is what you learned from that and how do you transcribe that into the rest of your world . Thats a good question. It doesnt offend me at all. Thats a good question. I think i said my biggest failure was in my opinion was not speaking about about my treatment at the fbi. I 100 regret that. And because now i know there is other lawsuits making their way through the courts and thats devastating to me. Because in a way, i feel like i could have, i feel like i could have done something about that. I feel very guilty. But what that has taught me now is when there is Something Like that going on, i speak up right away. I dont stop for two minutes. I think in a way it helps me, that was my biggest regret. Thank you. Whats tricky to regret, its in hindsight, the fact is you may not have impact with so many lives or through security if you didnt have that experience with the fbi. So maybe you may be an act right now and not be able to reach out and touch the lives you have and mentor people have you without having that experience yourself. We dont know, right . Thats one of the things we can go back, shucks, i should have done it a differentway. You cant change your life. You look at what you have done since. Maybe that never would have happened if you had gone in a different direction. Thank you for making that so we have a young lady over here. How did you get such a good job at such a young age . Thats a really good question. I actually just applied on a whim, basically, it was, why not . I think 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 that there was a cia recruiter on my campus and i thought, that was interesting. And so i a applied and they called. So i think the biggest piece of advice that something you want to do is dont ever doubt your ability and whether or not you should apply. I always tell this to my students. They always say, im not going to get into this college. Im not going to get into this college. You know what im talking about. I always said to them, let the school tell you know, dont tell yourself no so its kind of the same thing with a job. A lot of people told me you know they wont call you back. You wont get n. But i think because i just didnt care, i didnt think about what would happen if they said no i think thats what encouraged me to actually apply. Youre welcome. Okay. So, first of all i have a comment and a question. Okay. The comment is that, yes, you may regret not fighting back at the fbi, but youre a writer. You are one of that is one of the most bit that is the biggest super power in the world. Because it takes untelling to a national level. Well, thank you. So you are 10 feet tall and bulletproof in that respect. Thank you. The question i have is that i read an article on you that said that you were born with hypotonya, which is floppy baby syndrome. I talk about that in my book. In that case, i cant wait to get to that part of the book, but i have it, too. 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. Yes, so cia surprisingly not as much so than the fbi. Thats a really great question. I dont know that ive met anyone outside of my family that had it. Not a lot of you know. Not a lot know, hypotonia is when you were born with very under developed muscle tone. I dont talk about it a lot. I think when people see me, they dont think that there is any issue. So i didnt walk until i was about 3andahalf maybe, which is very late. And i didnt hold my head up until i was about a yearandahalf. And so, i dont need to age myself, but i was born in the 70s. So we didnt have a lot of information about these things and the interesting thing is doctors actually still dont know a lot about hypotonya today, which is so weird, you would think 40 years later, we would have moved past this. So for me, my Biggest Issue with fact switch mist muscle. I dont know if you know fast twitch and slow twitch. So i can run really fast really long distance. Thats never been a problem for me. But at the fbi, like with me barely about a tenth of a millimeter of a second with the sprint. The sprint was beyond difficult for me. And so, thats really for me my only sort of limitation,als, i trip and fall pretty much all the time. Which i wear heels all the time. So, for the amount of kind of working out and physical therapy that i do regularly, i dont, i dont show my legs, but if people saw my legs, they would be very surprised by what they look like. I do a very good job of heighth hiding it. I think stupid probably dont know i have it. I dont talk about it a whole lot. I have a few questions that i will keep them very short. So, first day of any new job is probably very frightening to many. So id be curious to know, obviously, you cant reveal what that day encompassed, but sort of what your thoughts were on the first day at kia. Also to be back on that, what your i guess where your head space was on your First International assignment . Because again i would think that that probably too was stressful and then the third part of my question is how you feel about how tv portrays female cia agents on homeland . Can i answer the last question first . Yes. Okay. Because i have. It really frustrates me, because i think the women that they portray are deeply, deeply flawed. And i do think that you want to have characters, but that part i totally understand. But there are like seriously flawed. You know, i think it was to the point of well, only a crazy woman would do there. That doesnt sit very well with me. Because i dont see men necessarily portrayed in that manner. So thats how i feel about that my first day when i ep terred at cia, obviously, i was really nervous. I did not, because i dont remember sleeping a lot, not before. But the best thing that came out of that were my two very best friend who are still my very best friends, who were in my wedding and i think at the agency, obviously, because when you are there so much, you rely on your friend a lot, they sort of become your family. One has power of attorney over me. When i was overseas and im still really close to them. My first overseas assignment, i was really nervous. I didnt know what to expect. I did travel with a colleague, which was a blessing in that sense because they had gone before and sort of were able to show me the ropes. So im glad i wasnt sent, obviously, i traveled later by myself. Im glad on my first one, i was there with my colleagues. I am assuming most of your friends didnt know you worked for cia, what did you do . I was an overt employee. Thank you. You didnt always travel . I cant really talk about that. Its in the book. Not really, though. Not really. Okay. Yes, sir. Actually two excepts and a question. The first comment is i just want to thank you for your service to our great nation. Oh, thank you. And second comment is, im really proud of what my. Could become. So you broke the glass ceiling. God bless you. 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 and security would love somebody like you and there are a number of means to come in even as a temporary person or a political. Yeah. So. Districtor. So i would absolutely come back to federal service. I miss it. I really do to a certain extent. I would i think, though, a part of me, yes, i would come back, of course, to federal service. Wait, you said that wasnt plausible when he asked for it in the pitch. Well, no, i think what i think he meant ceg was like thae cia would come calling back for me. I dont think that piece is plausible. They should, though. I know, its okay. There are very talented people that are there. Theyre doing a great job. Let me ask you this, though, what do you need to accomplish before you would entertain that . You have goals, you havent quite accomplished it. Do you need goal security . Your students . You are ready for the next adventure at this point . Mmhmm. Since you are still 25 years old you have time. Im in my 40s. Any other questions anyone might have . Thanks for being here tonight and thanks for your service to this country. Thank you. What do you see as the biggest threat facing the United States today . Like, well, a couple things. Inside the u. S. , i think domestic terrorism is a big problem and i think that its not prosecutable really right now is another huge problem. Obviously, i can only talk to the if ib fib from when i was there. Right. I cant speak to it right now. All i can say is when we were there, i did not feel that it was taken seriously and why i feel that way is because again, see, i dont i feel sometimes its a gender narrative. I think some people, some men, have gotten the fbi to be on the smart team, the hostage rescue team, take down games. Thats great. We need that absolutely. But they looked at being on the domestic terrorism squad or cyber squad or intelligence squads a being lesser than. I think that needs to change. That mentality needs to change. Because if your whole heart kind of isnt in it, you wont do a good job. Thats the huge problem. I think more money needs to be allocated to it as well. It needs to be a prosecutable crime. I think thats probably where some people would differ with me on that, thats just my opinion. From the out sort of outside international, i feel like a really big problem is space. I think thats a big problem is sales space frees terrorists, right, if you look at iraq, im saying a bad person im not saying it shouldnt have been taken out. Dictators dont tend to be conducive, right, to terrorist groups forming. They love instability and right now libya has instability. Even south sudan has some instability right now. Smallia yemen. We know all these different countries, right, are unstable. If you look at those countries, i would guess obviously, they dont having a says to information anymore. But i would guess we are seeing an uptick of terrorist activity. So thats, two, im sorry. I would ask a question now, a 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 you talk about eit. But wren when you look at the Intelligence Community at large, im sure your students are asking questions about snowden, about, you know, privacy, about the extent, the Intelligence Agency is involved in our lives. And how do you answer those questions that are clearly, theyre not black and white, theyre really grey . Snowden i feel is very black and white, sorry. Im sorry. I know you cant answer you are a former, its a trickert. You talk about, you are very grey. Eit. Interrogation of the socalled torture program of the cia. You are very grey in the book. People got really mad at me about that. Someone gave me a oneshot review because she was real upset that i didnt condemn bush and just condemn korea, i can only be honest with how i feel. So that was sort of what i try to do particularly in the classroom, and i actually dont know about me, i think my students will tell you im pretty apolitical in the classroom. I try to be. I try to give them the facts and they can sort of figure it out. But they know how i feel about snowden and sort of the surveillance state and all of that. Simply because i feel like i have some facts, just kind of back up my statement. I usually dont make that surrounding statement. I think with eit, the reason that i am grey, is you have to look at why its done in the first place. Eit wasnt necessarily to gain information. Eit was to make people complacent so we could then get it. So, yeah. Lets just say, i was really interested to see, you are like, i dont think we should torture, torture doesnt work. But torture and eit are not the same. See, nice and grey. So, before we, i want to thank you for coming here. Thank you for having me. And for the book, i mean, for anyone who is not considering checking this book out, you are crazy. Its really one of the most interesting ones. Its, reading it as a narrative is fantastic to kind of get that, i was so mad so many times in this book. The one thing she does and see if you she changes all the names. But, god, i just wish you had