Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tracy Walder The Unexpected Spy 20240712

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 memoire, 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 youre trapped in the middle of a row, please put your hand up and we will ensure that you have a mic to answer your questions, 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 we will send a mic to you. One other administration notice, if you have a cellphone, anyone have a cellphone here . Probably everybody, right . Please silence it. 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 in evenings discussion. Thanks, chris. I want to mention the first time we were introduced to tracy at the museum was when our Educational Team discovered the amazing work that she was doing now as a teacher at a School Called the hawk a day school in dallas. Were going to talk about this later but its extraordinary what she decided to do to challenge young people that i would never i taught at every level from Elementary School all the way up through college and just the gumption to challenge these people is extraordinary. I probably wouldnt have had College Students having them do what you are having them done. She is also on the board of directors for a Nonprofit Organization called girl security which is another way that shes decided to give back to not only her community, but also to her country. So we will hear about more of those later, but i want to kind of jump right in. We actually just had a long conversation if anyone listens to sky cast you will get a chance to hear a longer version of this on tuesday because 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 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 and Everything Else what 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 anyone has looked at the book already you will see 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 difficult how much difficulty was it getting this through the prd. So first thank you everyone for coming. I also want to i feel a lot of my former students are in the audience which is really exciting, a lot of girls that took my class, so thank you for being here. So in terms of the publications review board, there were two women that sort of came before me and both of them took about two years to get their books through the prb and i really actually credit them with the easier time that i had. It was extremely important to me, i signed a nondisclosure agreement when i left and i wanted to honor that. I sent it off to them hoping that it wouldnt be what we called denied in full, which means you cant publish this, period. It was not. It came back, though, with in about four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters just black lined. So the cia was actually really great. You can email the prb, there is a lot of places in the cia you cannot, but you can email them back and forth. They wont tell you exactly why, you sort of have to play a game of guesswork so i resubmitted it and it came back with two chapters redacted completely and then a chapter and a half and then finally after i took out one word which was the name of a statue they let that whole chapter through and then the publishers and i decided for people to be able to read. Its tricky because, yes, they dont want you to give away what cities that the cia is operating in if its not widely known but you are allowed the leeway to describe this cities very well. There is a not earn headquarters for intelligence on a river and near where a serial killer killed people in the victorian period. Why they redacted some of the things that they did, i was talking with someone about this, why they redacted some things and didnt redact others i dont understand the process, but 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 origins story because it is somewhat different than others. Its the fact that a lot of people who joined cia or National Security institutions wanted to do it from a very early age. You didnt really kind of set out to think about being a cia officer in middle school or high school, although i guess subconsciously maybe you ask a little bit because of what you studied when other people were playing, reading about the middle east, looking at maps when other people were doing normal middle school things. What eventually led you to want to join the agency . So i think to back up a little bit. This would have been, you know, when i was recruited in the mid 90s. Popular culture looks different today than it did then. I did not joe 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. 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 around in counterterrorism. So i would say that was really cultivated within 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 you are really young, maybe if you are a former student, remember exactly where we were on 9 11, the turning point in many of our lives, for many people its the turning point in their careers. You were already working at cia, in fact, you were at langley the morning of 9 11. This is a question that kind of pops in my head and we kind of talked about how it really hasnt been thought about all that much before but i sat on my couch in 9 11, i had been out of the army for about a month just pissed off because there was nothing i could do about it. I could go back into the army but my knees stunk and i probably wasnt going to work, i could do other things. So a lot of us had this feeling of, oh, my god, we have been attacked, what do i do now . Theres really nothing i can do. To a degree you had an advantage because you couldnt kind of wallow in selfpity about our country has been attacked because you had like a second to do that and a 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, you knew, everyone always asked how i was feeling, thinking, and its not that i was happy that people had died in the World Trade Center but i think you have to almost compartmentalize those thoughts so that you can get on with the mission and get on with the work that you need to do and stop the next attack or gather the evidence that you need to stop the next attack. I think youre right, having the sense of purpose to be able to sort of do something about it even though, you know, maybe you are not stopping the next attack but you can try in a way maybe helped sort of keep us going. You have the unique advantage you werent like the Canada Office of the cia, 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 you are working in a small group, you turn around behind you and george bush is standing behind you asking you whats going on or george tenant or condoleezza rice. This is the nerve center of the cia response. How daunting was that as you were 23 at the time or 21. 21 at the time and you have george tenant standing behind you who are we killing tonight, another way to say that targeting or drones, who are we looking at today . Was that something as a 20 whateveryearold it had to be a surreal experience. That was a chapter i was very surprised the cia approved. I submitted it and thought the whole thing would come back redacted and it didnt, so yay. Certainly i was, i guess, bred into that program on september 10th, 2001 and i think for me i was naive and said we will never need to use this and then 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 that are in the room then you are not focusing on what youre doing which is trying to get people trying to talk around it. 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 in there and hung out with it us, 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 tenant, 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 make you say anything you cant say, but this is where you have and i wont out you your politics, but you are a Southern California girl, you were very overt in the book about what direction you lean politically. Im not a fan necessarily of certain administrations but in that room it didnt matter. At that point it didnt matter. We are so used to today and this is not because of this Current Administration but under obama and the end of the bush administration, so used to politicizing Foreign Policy and National Security. This was a moment where it didnt matter where you came from, nebraska, texas or Southern California, everyone was working together without politics. That was actually what was at least so great about the cia when i was there, you know, obviously i grew up in Southern California in a liberal household, but to be honest with you im actually registered independent and the cia the cia sort of helped me move to the middle in a weird way. They didnt purposefully do that, it just helps me think more about the issues not in a black and white way. It was sort of a gray. And what i really liked about my time there, i served under clinton and bush and tenet was there under both of them which was great. What was so great about that experience is i felt at least the people around me, it was very apolitical. Politics are really taken out of the situation and some people are frustrated who read my before it came out, but had some nice things to say about bush and 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 really sort of helped me gain this sort of apolitical insight when it came to Foreign Policy. While you were there there was an event that people dont talk all that much about today and certainly i think since the death of bin laden has become less and less kind of a key moment in the timeline of the early global war on terror and thats shortly after 9 11 when the United States had bin laden pinned down. The last time we knew where he was and this was an outpost in the middle of nowhere called for ra bora. You had a firstperson view of what was going on there. I wonder if you could talk about how that panned out and of course the end, the frustration perhaps that you must have felt having a chance to get the guy that kind of caused 9 11 but having him slip through your fingers. So that night what was really interesting about that was i was reading another book at the time that i was writing that chapter about someone who was in the Ground Forces that were there and so it was actually really easy to footnote to be able to use what i was doing and marry it with what he was doing and thats how i got the chapter approved. I dont know. It was frustrating. We were working seven minutes on, seven minutes off because it was so intense what we were doing. I think people would have thought that once we lost him that, you know, there would have been cursing, screaming, yelling, and that really didnt happen. It was like the air had sort of just gone out of the room. What people did when they went to their offices i will 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 is something 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 the United States in langley, virginia, whereas the actual action is taking place sometimes 5, 5. 5, you know, 6 hours ahead of where you are, maybe sometimes more than that. So this is not a normal 9 00 to 5 00 job. This is not something where you have to scratch the dog behind the ears in the morning and drive the gw parkway to work and getting home for dinner. Youre working shifts in the middle of the night, shifts that dont allow you to be a normal human being. How draining was that . We talked to mike morell famously because he was the briefer of president bush, i asked him, you know, when did your day start prior to 9 11 . He was like i usually woke up around 4, 4 30. What happened on 9 12, i woke up around midnight to start my day. It seems almost impossible to keep up over a long period of time. I think it is and, again, i think its one of the reasons that i ultimately left, but just an anecdote i am not a night person, im a morning person so that schedule was really difficult for me to keep up. I would always have my best friend come over to my apartment and wake me up because it was really hard for me sometimes you just have to change your whole body clock. I completely agree with mike, your proverbial 9 00 to 5 00 job before that and then that all went out the window. You went from a relatively stressfree job haunting terrorists from the vault to the most stressful job i can imagine hunting down bio terrorists 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 was funny from the book was those of us that have studied weapons of mass destruction went years in school, i studied physics for a long time to understand nuclear policy. You spent two weeks at school and they sent you out to go find bad guys. Yes. Its a little bit different. Those are people who had their ph. D. S in Nuclear Physics so i dont want to your Work Experience but we did more toxins and poison. So ricin. It was Poison School and that was two weeks that that would be enough training for us to understand what al qaeda was trying to procure. This is really what keeps people up at night. I mean, the idea not Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Weapons are incredibly difficult to create, to deliver, but bio weapons, you drive by the pentagon at 3 00 in the morning and theres lights on because people are there worrying about a bio weapons attack. How much going through that two week school when you came out were you even more worried about this. I think youve just helped my poor students that had to do their 15page threat assessment and they know what im talking about in my class on bioterrorism feel very vindicated that they had to do that. So it does keep people up at night. I know you wanted me to say its because the cia was foiled them all but i think its difficult to track biological weapons, i think nukes are easy is probably not the right word but it requires a lot of stuff, it requires launch systems, all those kinds of things, in my opinion biological weapons you can get them in parts, its very easy, order them off amazon, home depot is unfortunately not that difficult. I think what becomes problematic is that maybe people arent putting the entire piece of the puzzle together and i think thats what were going to probably slip up one day. All you really need is an air conditioning vent. And the trouble of course with Nuclear Weapons is you need a delivery system. You need at worst case a ship, you know, with containers that sails into a port. Bio terrorists really as we guess they are not trying to procure one because of what you need. When you combine someone willing to kill themselves with the ease and access of bio weapons it becomes a very scary proposition. I agree. Sleep well tonight, guys. Youre welcome. Whats really extraordinary and i think that i didnt quite have a great understanding of this before i read the book is you kind of have to be on the ground in those areas of the grow under to truly do this. Kind of understand the culture, understand the people and so you really the first time in your career that you started being Forward Deployed places, spending a lot of time overseas, a lot of time in these countries that you cant talk about by name in the book. Yes, i did. And i felt i know some people would disagree with me, again, everyone has their own experience at the cia and fbi, but this was mine, i felt very prepared at least from a cultural standpoint in those countries. That was one thing i thought that they did extremely well. Preparing you is one thing, the frustration through might have experienced through having to cooperate with local intelligence agencies, you talk about in the book being both kind of the womans side of things, these are developing countries that tend to have fundamentalist islam as a tenet behind their governing system, but also that they werent quite taking things as seriously as they probably have you had have at the time. What ended up being more frustrating for you . For me and i know we talked about this, you wanted me to get mad about kind of the sexism, what the Intelligence Service calls the malibu barbie but it really didnt bother me that much. My colleagues were so great about shes the one you need to talk to so if you want to continue calling her malibu barbie, go ahead, but you will need to deal with her. I think i always felt very supported by my colleagues. What really frustrated me was sometimes getting cable back when we knew someone was transiting a country saying, im so sorry, but we dont work on sundays. Thats really frustrating. As a result you cant locate that person any more because they dont want to work on a sunday. You have a known bad guy. Yes. Going through a european country or in a european country, you know where hes at and they either dont work on sundays or theres not enough evidence to arrest the person and its not that again, we talked about this, theyre not probably go to attack albuquerque or chicago, theyre going to attack brussels or liechtenstein or the people youre actually trying to warn and theyre like, no, sunday is our day off. I can understand that today maybe, but in 2002, in 2003 that just seems crazy to me. I printed that cable and highlighted it and put it up on my cubical. It was very frustrating. Lets talk about what arguably should have been the most frustrating moment of your career, if it wasnt i dont understand, i will be very honest about that, and thats the iraq war in 2003. Okay. This is probably something that you just dont like talking about. You had a unique role in the lead up to the iraq war, not on purpose, because your job was to look at some of these bio weapons terrorists, the network that were being developed and figure out kind of 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 i will set the scene you turn the tv on, you see colin powell in front of the United Nations and all of a sudden whats happening . So just to kind of back up a little bit, a lot of times what we would do is kind of make leap charts to keep pairs straight, who is at the top of this network and how are they connected to who. That was a very regular thing. I have no idea if they still do it, but that was a very regular thing that we used to do. You know, the toxin poison that was getting a little complicated so it was a really large chart, with he got this really cool printer, we would make really big charts on and we put it on the outside of our cubicles. The cia gets the best printer . I guess. We put it on the outside of our cubicles so we could always look at it and keep everything straight. You know, it was just kind of 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 to iraq and colin powell has said that it was a misuse. It wasnt just it wasnt that chart exactly, though, right, it had been altered. So it was that exact chart, the title of the chart was changed. You can look it up, actually, its google its Something Else i was surprised that the cia let me put in, but i guess im thinking sure. And theyre not perfect, but the title of the chart was something different. What was it originally . 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 your 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 collars 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 segues 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 there are so many books out there poohpoohing the cia and your experiences at the fbi werent all that great, certainly your training, which, were not very far from quantity coha 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 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 my name and where i used to work and everyone started rolling their 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. What happened was and, again, i dont know quantico still does this, but one of the first things we did was 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. Its worth buying the book just to theres a couple of versions in the book if you an apology letter or not. Thats where the book becomes pg13 a little bit. Sorry. 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. What happened as we progressed through training, you go through 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. Im thinking, 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. 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 this as well, 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 smaller Resident Agency that i was assigned to 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 working Counter 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. Thats actually what i had 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 think i 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 into you in 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 i 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 affairs, 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. Couple of thing s thats 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 unclassified online, so we followed 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. I cant remember what i did. And the likelihood that they would commit a bio attack, 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 things 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 intelligence 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 involved. 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 creepy 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 think 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 falsities at the core of who i was that it was very psychologically damaging. Ill be super honest. I went on antidepressants. Im very open about that. And i think a lot of it was because of that, youre so isolated, i think the one thing that saved me that i know other people didnt have this was i obviously had lived in virginia at the time, so in quantico i had a car. So i could go to starbucks or i could get out when i needed to. But you feel like youre in this isolated box, that you just that you cant get out of. I dont know i have this in the book, i hope i dont offend anyone in the audience, probably one of the worst rumors was that i had a stage one Breast Cancer tumor removed and i was in the shower, and the scar i had and i havent, but im sure you can imagine, that was a process, having to go through and be like revictimized by that was it was on a whole other level. But that was really how i dealt with it. Also another way i dealt with it was running. That was the way i dealt with the stress to and dont like to run with people, i never have, it is my way of just being myself. That was it. I can imagine, thinking about it now, the fbi is supposed to be the good guys. That was just my experience. Going in that, going in, youre, like, im going into the fbi, im joining the good guys and the bottom falls out. You have to look at, too i was writing an article on women in intelligence and law enforcement, and in the research, the cia is not perfect. Im sure there is plenty of people that had problems there. But the cia has been engaging in a dialogue about gender equality, it wasnt 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. The they are already a lot of years behind. Im not sure we realize that, how far they are behind in having it be normal, having a female working alongside you. Hi. I just want to say thank you for writing your book. I read it in a day. Glad you liked it. So i have the utmost respect for you. Throughout your career, whether at the cia, fbi, is it something you can talk about, what was your biggest more importantly, more curious about, what you learned from that and how you thats an easy question and doesnt offend me at all. It is a good question. I think i said what is my biggest failure in my opinion was not speaking out 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 ill get upset i feel look 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 i dont stop for two minutes. I think in a way it helps me. Thats my biggest regret. Thanks. When you regret stuff like that, it is in hindsight, youre using your, you know, the fact is you may not have impacted so many lives if you didnt have that experience at the fbi. So maybe that you might still be an fbi agent now and not have the chance to reach out and touch all the lives you touched and mentor all the people you have without having that experience yourself. We dont know, right . Thats one of the things we can go back, i should have done it a different way, but you look at what youve done since, and maybe that never would have happened if you had gone in a different direction. Young lady over here. How did you get such an important job at such a young age . Thats a really good question. So i actually i applied on a whim, basically it was why not . I think i sort of the reason 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. I thought that was interesting. And so i applied. And they called. And so i think my biggest piece of advice, something you want to do is dont ever doubt your ability and whether or not you should apply. I always told this to my students, im not going to get into this college, im not going to get into this college. And i always said to them, you know, let the school tell you no, dont tell yourself no. It is the same thing with the job. A lot of people told me they wont call you back, you wont get in. 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. So, first of all, i have a comment and a question. The comment is that yes you may regret not fighting back at the fbi, but youre a writer. You are one of the thats one of the most thats the biggest superpower in the world, because it takes im telling to a national level. Well, thank you. That you are ten feet tall and bulletproof in that respect. Thank you. The question i have is that i read an article on you, that said you were born with i talk about that. 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. Yeah, so cia surprisingly not as much so than the fbi. Thats a really great question. I dont know that ive had anyone ask that in my family that had it. Not a lot is known. It is when youre born with very underdeveloped muscle tone. I dont talk about it a lot because i dont i think people see me, they dont think of there is an issue. I didnt walk until i was about 3 1 2, maybe, which is i didnt hold my head up until i was about a year and a half. And so i dont mean to age myself, but i was born in the 70s, so, you know, we didnt have a lot of information about these things. And the interesting thing is doctors actually still dont know a lot about it, which is so weird. You would think 40 plus years later we would have moved past this. So for me, my biggest issues were with i guess we call back twitch muscles. I dont know if you know the difference, twitch and i can run really fast, really long distances. Thats never been a problem for me. But as the fbi, i passed, but, like, the sprint was beyond difficult for me. And so thats really for me my only sort of limitations. Also, i trip and fall pretty much all the time. Which i wear heels all the time, so and so the amount 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 looked like. I do a very good job of hiding it. I think even my students dont know that i had it. I really dont talk about it a whole lot. I have a few questions but i will keep them very short. So first day of any new job is probably very frightening to many. I would be curious to know, obviously you cant reveal what that day encompassed but what your thoughts were on the first day at cia and to piggyback on that, i guess where your head space was on your First International assignment because again, i would think that probably, too, was stressful and the third part of my question is how you feel about how tv portrays female cia agents, homeland. Can i answer the last question first, because i have an opinion. It really frustrates me because i think the women they portray are like deeply, deeply flawed and i do think you want to have some dimension to tv characters. That part, i totally understand, but theyre like seriously flawed. You know, i think almost to the point of, well, only a crazy woman would do this. That doesnt sit very well with me because i dont see men necessarily being portrayed in that manner. Thats how i feel about that. My first day when i entered on duty at cia, obviously i was really nervous. I did not know i dont remember sleeping a whole lot the night before but the best thing that came out of that were my two very best friends, who are still my very best friends who were bridesmaids in my wedding. At the agency, because youre there so much, you rely on your friends a lot. They sort of become your family. One had power of attorney with me when i was overseas and im still really, really close to them. My first overseas assignment, i was really really nervous. You know, i didnt know what to expect. But 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 that i wasnt obviously i traveled later by myself. Im glad on the first one. Im assuming most of your friends didnt know you worked for cia, so what was your cover, what did you do . I was an overt employee. You didnt always travel. I cant really talk about that. Its in the book. Not really, though. Yes, sir. Actually, two comments and a question. First, the comment is i just want to thank you for the service to our great nation. Thank you. And second comment is im really proud of what my daughter could become. You broke the glass ceiling, god bless you. Youre 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 somebody like you, and there are a number to come in as a temporary person or a political. Director walder. 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 wasnt plausible when he asked for it in the pitch. Well, no, i think what i think he meant was like the cia would come calling back for me, and i dont think that piece is plausible. They should, though. Its okay. Theres very talented people that are there that are doing a great job. Let me ask you this, though, what do you need to accomplish before you would entertain that, do you have goals you havent quite accomplished that . Do you need girl security to reach a certain level, are you ready for the next adventure at this point, and since youre like 25 years old still and really have plenty of time. Im in my 40s. Any other questions anyone might have . Thanks for being here tonight, and thanks for your service to the country. Thank you. What do you see as the biggest threat facing the United States today . Well, a couple of things. Inside the u. S. , i think domestic terrorism is a big problem, and i think the fact that its not prosecutable really right now is another huge problem. Obviously i can only talk to the fbi from when i was there, right, i cant speak to it right now. But all i can say is that when we were there, i did not feel that it was taken seriously, and why i feel that way is because, again, see, and i dont want to upset men. I feel like sometimes its a gender narrative. I think some men have gone into the fbi to be on a s. W. A. T team, be on a hostage rescue team, take down gangs, and thats great. We need people to do that, absolutely. But they look at being, you know, on the domestic terrorism squad or the cyber squad or even the intelligence squad as being lesser than. And i think that needs to change. That mentality needs to change because if your whole heart kind of isnt in it, youre not going to do a good job, and i think thats a huge problem, and i think more money needs to be allocated to it as well. I think needs to be a prosecutable crime. Some people disagree with me on that, but thats my opinion. From the outside international, i feel a big problem are failed states. And the reason i think thats a big problem is failed states breed terrorists. Its a breeding ground. If you look at iraq, Saddam Hussein is a bad person. Im not saying he shouldnt have been taken out. Dictators love instability, and right now libya has, you know, instability, even south sudan is having instability, somalia, yemen, we know these Different Countries are unstable, and if you look at those countries, i would guess, obviously i dont have access to classified information but i would guess were seeing an uptick of terrorist activities. So thats two, im sorry. Ill ask a question now, where do you come down on some of the controversial issues that surround the cia . I know you mentioned one of them in the book when you talk about eit. The intelligence community, writ large, im sure your students are asking questions about snowden, about, you know, privacy, about the extent the Intelligence Agency is getting involved in our lives, and how do you answer those questions that are clearly, theyre not black and white. Theyre really gray. I feel its very black and white. Im sorry. I know your answer. When you get into stuff like eit. You talk about it in the book, you are very gray. Eit is enhanced interrogation, the so called torture program of the cia. Youre very gray in the book. People got very mad about that. Somebody gave me a one star review because she was upset i didnt condemn bush and the program. I can only be honest with how i feel, right, so that was just sort of what i tried to do particularly in the classroom, and i think, i dont know, but i think my students will tell you that im pretty apolitical in the classroom. I try to be. I give them the facts and then they sort of 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 kind of back up my statements. I usually dont make those statements. I think with eit, the reason that im gray is you have to look at why it was done in the first place. Eit wasnt to necessarily gain information, right, eit was to make people complacent so we could then get it. Thats the thing, i was really interested to see, i dont think we should torture, torture doesnt work. But torture and eit are not the same. See, nice and gray. So before we end, i want to thank you for coming here. Thank you for having me. And for the book. For anyone who is not considering checking this book out, youre crazy. Its really one of the most interesting ones. 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 is she changes all the names, but god i just wish you had publicly shamed some of the people at quantico because im ready to get in my car. My publishers attorney said that was not possible. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. And she is going to stay and sign some books afterwards if you want to take a chance to purchase the book and have it signed afterward, i implore you, please, dont rush up here to talk to her. Were going to get her out there so she can get through everybody and sign books until midnight tonight. Join me in thanking tracy walder for taking the time to be here. Thank you first ladies, influence and image on American History tv examines the private lives and public roles of the nations first ladies through interviews with top historians. Tonight we look at Edith Roosevelt and helen taft. Edith roosevelt along with her husband became the first president and first lady to travel abroad while in office, when they made a trip to panama. Helen taft was the first first lady to ride with the president in the inaugural parade. Watch first ladies, influence and image tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who Lizzie Borden is. And raise your hand if you ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial before this class. The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. And so were going to talk about both of these sides of the story here, right, the tools, the techniques of slave owner power, and well also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan 3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. And lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. The Senate Health committee holds a hearing tuesday to get an update on the Coronavirus Response and plans to reopen the u. S. Economy. Witnesses include White House Coronavirus Task Force Members dr. Stephen hahn, dr. Anthony fauci, and dr. Robert redfield. Live coverage begins at 10 00 eastern on cspan3. Online at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Each week american artifacts take viewers into archives, museums, and historic sights across the country. We visit the International Spy museum in washington, d. C. To tour their exhibit on cold war berlin. Our guide is lead curator alexis albion, who explains how the city came to be divided after world war ii and shows us artifacts used by the east germans to spy on visitors and control their own citizens. He,