Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tracy Walder The Unexpected Spy 20240712

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 memory, 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 dr. Vince houghton. After their discussion, they will open the floor to questions and answers. Everyone will have an opportunity to ask questions this evening. Were also going to asked if youre trapped in the middle of a row, put your hand up and well be sure you have a mic to answer your questions, but there will be two mics on each side that you can use to answer your question. If you could get out stay where youre at. If you have a cell phone probably everybody please silence it now. Id lead by example and make sure mine is silenced. Ill kick it over to vincent and tracy. Thank you, chris. The first time we were introduced to tracy was when our Educational Team discovered the amazing work she was doing, now a teacher at the school in dallas. Were going to talk about this later, but its extraordinary what she decided to do to challenge young people i taught at every level just the gumption and challenge of these people is really extraordinary. I probably wouldnt have had College Students do what youre having them do. Shes also on the board of director for a Nonprofit Organization which well talk about as well, which is another way she decided to give back not only to her community, but also to her country. Youll hear about more of this later, but were going to jump right in. If anyone listens to spycast, we just reported a podcast together, so we had a chance to try out some questions before we put it before a live studio audience, as it were. I think one of the most interesting to me. What is the process you had to go through to get this cleared. Ink theres a lot more you they didnt want you to put out. So first, thank you everyone for coming. I feel a lot of my former students its really exciting, so thank you for being here. There were 20 women that came before me it took about two years to get their books through. I credit them with the easier time that i had. So it was extremely important are important to me. I wanted to honor nigh nondisclosure agreement when i left. I was hoping that it wouldnt be denied in full. It was not. It came back, though, in about four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters was the cia is really great. You can email the crb back and forth. They wont tell you why. You have to play a game with guesswork. I resubmitted it, back then chaps were redacted, then a chapter and a half. After i took out one words, they let that whole chapter through, and then publishers and i decided the way it was was intelligible enough for people to be able to read. Its tricky. Yes, they dont want you to give away what cities the cia is operating in thats not widely known, but you allow the leeway to describe these cities pretty well. Theres a modern headquarters right on the river, this is near where a famous serial killer killed five people in the victorian era. I dont understand why they redacted some of these thing did 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. Lets talk about your origin story. It is somewhat different. It has nothing with you being a authority in Southern California. Its a fact that a lot of people enjoy kriismt o or National Security institutions wanted to do it from an early age. You didnt sit out thinking about being a cia officers. You were reading about the or doing middle School Things what led you to join. This would have been when i was recruited. Popular culture looks different today. I didnt grow up with quantico or criminal minds any of those things i do know i had a i would say that was really cultivated when peter bergen interviewed sosama bin laden. When i applied at that career fair in college, that was really the impetus. You were already working at langley the morning of 9 11. I sat on my couch 9 11, just pissed off i couldnt do anything about it. So a lot of us had this feeling of my god, weve been attacked, what do i do now . To a agree, you had a disadvantage. You could have wallowed in selfpity, but you have a second to do that and then it was time to get to work. I think you almost have to compartmentalize those thoughts so you can get on the with the work you need to do, or gather the evident you need. In a way make it helps keep us going. Grounds for the war again al qaeda, a work that was created because of the 9 11. Youre working in a small group, you turn around and george bush is asking you whats going on . Or george tenet or condoleezza rice. How daunting was that . Youre 23 at the time. 21. And you have who are we looking at today . That had to have been a surreal experience. I was very surprised. I submitted it and thought it could come back redacted, but it didnt. I was read into that program on september 10th, and for me, i was naive and thought well never need to use it. Its obviously intense. Youre not thinking about the people in the room. If you think about the people in the room, youre not focusing on what youre doing so i think you cant process what youre he he brought Us Thanksgiving dinner, doughnuts, bagels all the time. He was really great to work with in that environment, but other than tenet, he was the only one we were superaware of all the time. Let me ask you this, the be yond this space youre a Southern California girl, you mentioned very overt in the book about what direction you lean politically. Im not a fan necessarily of certainly administrations, but at the end at that point it doesnt matter. So it used to take politicizing foreign policy. This was a moment where it doesnt matter where you came from, everyone was working together without politics. That was what was so great when i work there. I grew up in a liberal household, but to be honest, im registered independent. The cia sort of helped moved me to the middle in a weird way. They didnt purposely do that. It just helped me think more about the issues not in a blackandwhite way. It was sort of a gray. 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, i felt at least the people around me, it was very apolitical. Politics were taken out of. I had some nice things to say about bush, but it waujt about servicing someones political agenda. It was about my observations at that time in that moment, and that really sort of helped me gain this apolitical insight when it came to foreign policy. While you were there, there was an event that people dont talk about much today. Certainly since the death of bin laden has been less and less a key moment, thats shortly after 9 11, when United States had bin laden pinned down. You talked about a first person view of what was going on there, i wanted to talk about how that panned out, and of course about the frustrations perhaps you must have felt, having a chance to get the guy who caused 9 11, but having him slip through your fingers. What was interesting about th that, it was easy to footnote what i was doing and marry it with what he was doing, but it was frustrating minutes. It was a seven minutes on, serve minutes off, because it was so intense. I think people would have thought 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 just gone out of the room. What people did when they went to their offices ill never know, but in that room, the sail completely went out of it and carried on what we were supposed to be doing. This will come up again and again throughout the conversation, but when i think about your work, youre operating in eastern time in the United States in langley, virginia, whereas the actual action is taking place sometimes five, five and a half, six hours ahead of where you were, so this is not a normal 9 00 to 5 00 job. Youre working shifts that really doesnt allow you to be a normal person. I asked mark morel, when does what happened on 9 12 . Hes like, i woke up around midnight to start my day. It seems like impossible to keen up over a long period of time. I think it is. I think thats one of the reasons i ultimately left, but just an anecdote, i am not a night person, im a morning person, so that schedule is always difficult for me. I would always have my best friend to wake me up. It was hard for me to sometimes you just have to change your whole body clark. I agree with mike, if it was a proverbial 9 00 to 5 00 job before that, and that went out the wind. A relatively stressfree job to arguably the most stressful job, hunting down bioterrorists who are trying to create weapons of mass destruction to kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world. When you moved over to the wmd group, what i thought was fun frommy the book is those of us who study mass destruction like years in school,s you spent two weeks and they send you out and say go find bad guys you guys have their ph. D. In Nuclear Physics or things like that, but we did more kind of crude toxins and poisons, so i think they thought if we if it was that that would be enough training for us to understand what al qaeda was trying to procure. This is what keeps people up at night. Boy weapons, how much but through that twoweek point in school, when you came out were you even more worried about this . I think now my poor students that have to do a twopage threat assessment and they know what im doing about in my class theyre still that they have to do that. I know you want me to say that the cia has foiled them all, but i think its very difficult to track biological weapons. It requires a lot of stuff. In my opinion, biological questions, you can get them in parts, its easy. What becomes problematic is maybe people arent trying to put the entire piece of the puzzle together. I think thats where were probably going to slip up one day. All you readily need is an air conditions vent. At worse case, a ship with containers sailing into a port really, i would guess theyre not trying to really procure one because of what you need. When you com combine someone leech wesleep well t guys. Youre welcome. You have to be on the ground in areas of the world to understand the culture, understand the people, and so you this is really the first time in your career that you started being forward deployed, spending a lot of time in these countries that you cant talk about by name in the book. Yes, i did. I thought some people would disagree. Everyone has their own experience at the cia and the fbi, i felt very prepared, at least from a cultural standpoint, in those countries. Thats one thing i thought they did extremely well. Prey paring you is one thing. The frustrations you might have experienced, you talk about it in the book being both the woman side of things, youre in developeding countries that sometimes have fundamentalist islam as a connect behind their governing system, but also they werent quite taking things as seriously as they should have been. For me, there was one Intelligence Service that called us malibu barbie, but it didnt bother me that much. My colleagues were so great, this is the one you need to talk to. I always felt very supported by my colleagues. What really frustrated me was times getting cables back, and we knew someone was transiting a country, im so sorry, but we dont work on suddndays, and as result you cant locate that person anymoor. You have a known bad guy going through europe kwan country, or in a european country, you know where hes at and either they dont work on sundays or theres not enough evidence. Theyre not going to attack albuquerque albuquerque, but maybe brussels, or a place youre trying to warn. This 2002, 2003, that seems crazy. I highlighted it and put it in my cubical. It was very frustrating. The iraq war in 2003, this is probably something you dont like talking about, but you had a unique role in the leadup to the war. Not on purpose, your job was to look at the networks that were being developed and figure out the linkage. At no time in any did you say theres any linkage to iraq, but what happened ill set the scene. You see colin powell in front of the united nations, and all of a sudden whats happening. Just to back up a bit, a lot of times what we would do is make charts to keep straight who is at the top of the network and how they are connected. That was a very regular thing we used to do. Toxin poison that was getting complicated, so we decided it was a really large chart. We have this really could printer, and we would put it on the outside of our cubicles, just so we could always look at it and keep it straight. It was cells, areas in the world that people were working, and someone had come through or office and wanted a copy of the chart. It was given to them. That chart ended up being used by colin powell to sort of justify the invasion. It wasnt that chart exactly, right . It was that exact chart. The title of the chart was changed. It was something i was surprised that they let me put in, but maybe its because its resolved. Theyre i dont know. But the title was something different. What was it originally . I dont think i can say that. Okay. What would it end up being . It says a rock bio, i mean, if you look it up, thats what it says. Can you say if the word iraq was on the chart before . 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, actually, for not doing that. 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 that 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, but i know people will disagree with me. I think what we were the most concerned about was all of those people that we were looking for, we were looking for them to include them. And i think thats where we were upset with, great, now, theyre all going to go underground, were going to lose all of our intelligence, and get information on them. We wont be able to perhaps stop future attacks, and so i think in the immediate, thats what we were upset about. Its almost impossible in 2020 to, with any kind of, you know, honor, to go back to 2003 and say you should have done something different. It seems ridiculous at this point, so i didnt want to come across. Anyone calling you a coward cant put themselves in your shoes back in 2003. Let me ask you, change directions almost completely because part of what i think is really interesting about especially being posted oversea, and being in this job where youre constantly inside a small room, helping people across the world, are you thinking about day, night, falling asleep, how do you maintain a sense of self . How do you keep being tracy, versus, you know, the ci operative thats trying to catch bad guiys. Did you constantly have to kind of stop and say take a step back, take a breath, well remember where we came from, you know, root for the trojans, playing a Football Game or Something Like that, just a reminder of who you are . So, yes, i dont really think i was that cerebral about it. 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 very much, and one of the things that i did was i had callers send the bomb dogs that were in one of the places im at. Somewhere theres a bunch of bomb dogs that have usc trojans on them. This segues to the question about your transition, when you leave the cia, youre leaving a high note, catching bad guys, the pinnacle of a 20 whateveryearold career, you decide to leave it and move on to an entirely Different Agency with an entirely different mind set and focus. Why . So i loved the agency. It was really positive about it. But maybe that was for the better. I think the ripe old age of 25, 26, i wanted more stability in my life. I dont know why back then, and i wanted, i really was passionate about working Counter Terrorism, and i thought maybe i can do that but do it, and work one of the large offices and be able to stay there and so thats why i made that switch. Youre positive about the cia, its counter intuitive. There are so many books that are saying rah rah, the fbi, and your experiences at fbi werent all that great, certainly your training, which, you know, were not very far from quantico, virginia, the mythical place, the hrt, and bau, and the marine corps, but thats the Training Center for the fbi, you went there not in the 1930s or 40s or 50s, but a decade ago. Tgs almost like you were there when Jay Edgar Hoover was in charge. Its extraordinary, the kind of ran kor you got at the fbi. I had come from the cia where i had no issues between the genders. 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. You used a phrase that made total sense to me. It was junior high all over again, clicks, people back stabbing and the teachers were the ring leaders of all of this. It wasnt just you dealing with a jealous potential coworker, the instructors themselves were pushing this narrative that you shouldnt be there. 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 with desks and everybody has to stand up and introduce themselves. I stood up and said my name and where i used to work, and introduced myself. Everyone rolled my eyes, and started calling me a liar, that i never had worked at the cia. You had to come there to do my background check. You can pull up my its really not that hard. Its really not that difficult. So with that narrative, it was like 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. It was more than that. Some of the stories are out of the 1950s, where you did a perfect interrogation exercise and then got chided because your pig of an instructor thought you were too good looking basically. What had happened, and again, i dont know if quantico does this, but one of the first things we did was interviewing witnesses. That was sort of the first thing you do at quantico, and they ask that you wear a suit to do this particular exercise, and so i wore a suit that i had worn many times at the cia. I didnt buy new clothes and after i did it, i had no issues 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 versions in the book. The first draft of the apology letter, thats where the book becomes pg 13 a little bit. Sorry. It was good. I was hoping you sent one of them to him. I didnt. Really in the end, you have a class full of former, you know, lawyers and people that, to get in the fbi, you have to be high speed, youve got to be, you know, top of your class, you are a cia Counter Terrorism officer, and you by far had it harder than everyone else, and we talked about this earlier. It wasnt just boohoo i had it harder. 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 had happened, kind of as we progressed through training, you go into hogans alley, which is where you do sort of situational awareness, if anyone is familiar with that, and they would always, always, always, make me the team leader for probably the most difficult exercises on purpose, and i knew it was to see if i would mess up, and you sort of got me thinking about that. Did they test anyone else . You have to wonder if other people were qualified as well because there was just so much focus put on wanting you to mess up, and i mean, i didnt, but it was so stressful. I would lose my hair. They didnt let me go back for my grandpas funeral but let my colleague go back for his grandpas funeral. It was out of hand. They didnt let you miss one day when the other guy missed multiple days. And they said you couldnt miss a single day for your grandpas funeral. As im reading this, im thinking, maybe this is like an officer and a gentleman moment, theyre all standing there with tears in their eyes, tracy, we knew you could do it. 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 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 why they focused on me, im not 100 sure im going to know the answer to that question, but what was really disturbing, too, when i was there, some of the people that were just as bad were the other women in my class. This sounds like an indictment on quantico or the fbi econoacademy. Everyone has their own experience. It didnt stop there. Your first duty station, thats the word i use for the military, your first fbi posting was the Los Angeles Field Office where right away, youre kind of pigeon holed into doing the women jobs also. Thats not as much what i had a problem with, to be truly honest. When i had first gotten my assignment, and i dont know if they still do this, you go down, open your envelope about where youre going sort of in front of everyone, and i had gone to the Los Angeles Field Office and it said the smaller Resident Agency i was assigned to, and then that created a problem in my class, too, because you shouldnt be assigned to a resident agent. I really 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 so that the kind of head guy didnt believe that i should be there, and so they said, no, we need her clearance to work counter intelligence, and so i was placed into counter intelligence. Thats actually what hass the bigger, it was surprising they wouldnt take the back room that i had and put that to use in Counter Terrorism, not that im the best at it, but like i just thought. Youre sitting in a room with george bush behind you fighting terrorists. It seems really strange that but im happy. The case was interesting. The case was great. Its one some people may have heard of. Its that size of case, and thats the case she met. It worked out well with my book because he has been tried and convicted. That means we can talk about it. The whole max 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 a Nuclear Class submarines and they took that, stole it, and gave it to china. And we found out, and what was really kind of neat is it was every part of a ci operation. We got the dumpster dive, we got to do entry, we got to do all of those things in somewhat of a short period of time. Working that case, it was really neat. But unfortunately. Were going to make you read the book to find out. Not so well for tracy. Let me ask you, why did you end up quitting the fbi . In a general sense. Youll have to read my book to find out what my ffa said to me that ultimately sort of threw me over the edge. I 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 they have always been the kind of people, 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 at that moment was when i knew i cant stay here. But the biggest regret that i have personally, and it was funny, so i was writing the book, right, and i was writing a chapter that i had regret that i didnt file a complaint, and i didnt do more. And my mom was like, what are you talking about, you did. I think i had just completely blocked out everything that had happened but i wish i would have pursued it harder. For all the great work you did at cia and the excellent work at 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 hawk day school, which is where we ran into you in the first place because, again, 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. Its crazy. Im looking at some of them. I have more than a crazy amount of respect for not only you for challenging them to that level and them rising up to the challenge. Theyre amazing students so it made my job pretty easy. It came out of my first year. They all kind of found out what i did, and it was like question, question, they would hang out in my room during lunch or conference periods, what did you do, just lots of questions, and so from there, i realized, wow, we need to have a class on this. What i also realized, too, and this is not a slam on anyones intelligence, there was a lot of just basic geography questions, you know, and i dont mean that in a bad way. Sometimes when russia invaded crimea, it was easy to pull up a map and show my student, i get why they did that. It was easier for them to visually be able to see why they did that. We need to sort of have a foreign affairs, international relations, terrorism espionage course, and so our schools gets a lot of autonomy in the classrooms, and so on top of the ap classes i taught, i created that class. And theyre doing bio research. Thats a newer thing. What started is i wanted them to have a product i guess at the end of it. And so the cia makes conducts threat assessments, so some of them are available unclassified online, and so we just followed our format, and as well as have to assess the likelihood of a terrorist group, they have to pick it out of a hat. I cant which one i did, and the likelihood that they would commit a bio attack, how they would do it, when they would do, and then we send those to our elected officials. Now they do a podcast. Anyone who wants to listen to the podcast, where is it available . Everywhere. Apple, spotify. And let me reiterate, these are High School Students that are doing these, and its just extraordinary because these are not the future of space wars was one they just did. I dont pick the topic. These are things you probably would think of in grad school or the high level of college. Theyre pretty amazing. Let me ask you about security. Its something that you have put your talents, your experience to work trying to pull up those. You mentioned the fact that the other women in your quantico class were just as bad as the men. This is trying to remedy some of that. Thats what is great about girl security. Gina bennett, a terrorism icon, she sits on the board as well, and so we design curriculum modules that go out across the u. S. , but they also do water game scenarios once a year. They do that. Last year was Nuclear Proliferation in north korea. I think this year maybe election security, but dont quote me on that. Its a way of having a much, well, its spring boarding off what i did and sort of having a nationwide reach in getting girls, they helped come up with mentors. Not just in intelligence, but in Nuclear Research with nsa, really all of the organizations and hook them up with female mentors, and im not man bashing but sometimes when youre a woman or a young girl, its nice to see another woman in that position. It makes, i guess, sometimes the job more real to you. Thats what we do. So for those of n this audience, and were going to end up putting this on you tube, so for the thousands of people out there who hear this, how does someone who wants to help the cause find out about girl security. Go to the girl security web site, its nonpartisan, nonprofit. If you can donate, that would be fabulous, and then you can also sign up to be a mentor if youre in any of those types of jobs, theyre constantly looking for mentors. And again, its across the board. To include military, too. Ive taken up too much of her time. You might have questions for her as well. If you do. Head over to the microphones. And line up. We could get going for a while. This is an opportunity if you have any questions for tracy. Or if youre trapped, i can bring you a microphone. You look trapped. Okay. It is going to be a little bit provocative. Im actually working on a novel, and with bioterror and a virus, and its really creepy to watch whats going on, wondering if youve thought of this, but anyway, what i proposed was that a person who was in the military and military intelligence was moved out before dont ask, dont tell, and everything now in civilian life, he Teach High School history, and hes brought back into the cia or into intelligence because of a very bizarre bio threat, which may involve aliens and other things, and how plausible is that . How plausible that this would really happen . He would be teaching high school, ap history in dallas. Actually set in dallas. Hes sent 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. 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, you know, some of the people you work with and worked under, they are very tempting to companies that want to throw a lot of money at them. Thats certainly true when it comes to normal cia ops, or any of those other people. Did you ever have a temptation to go that route . No. Some of my friends did, and my best friend from the agency did. I dont hold that against her at all. I think for me i fwru grew up, d is a professor, both grandparents were in the military. I didnt have any interest, i guess, in going in the private sector. Thats just me. I dont shame people who want to. They run 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, detach emotionally, how do you kind of deal with that . That is actually a great question. I dont think people realize, not to get too cerebral or feelings, how much damage that does to someone. I was and i talk about it in my book, i was bullied in elementary school, and middle school and high school, but this is different. This is isolation on a huge, huge scale, and it was such falsities that hit 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, because youre so isolated. I think the one thing that saved me that i know other people didnt have this, i obviously had lived in virginia at the time, so in my room in quantico, i had a car, and so i could go to starbucks or i could just get out, sort of when i needed to. But you feel like youre in this isolated box that you just, like, you cant get out of. I dont know that i have this in the book. I hope i dont offend anyone. Probably one of the worst rumors was that i had stage 1 Breast Cancer tumor removed and i was in the shower, kind of like a group shower. That started a rumor that i had breast augmentation. I havent. That was a process to go through and be revictimized by that. It was on a whole other level, but that was really how i definitely with it. Also another way i dealt with it was running. Im a huge, well, i just had knee surgery unfortunately, but that was the way i dealt with like the stress, to kind of get the stress out, and i dont like to run with people. I never have. So it was kind of just my way of being by myself. But that was it. Im thinking about it now, the fbi are supposed to be the good guys. But maybe they are. That was just my experience. Going in, youre like, im joining the fbi, im joining the good guys, and then 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, and then in law enforcement, and in the research, look, the cia is not perfect. Im sure theres plenty of people that have had problems there, but the cia has at least been engaging in a dialogue about gender equality, about the 50s with the panel. Hoover did not allow women to be special agents until 1972, but period, end of story. So theyre already a lot of years behind. Im not sure we realize that, sort of how far they are behind in having it be normal that females are working alongside you. Hi, i just want to say thank you for writing your book. I read it in like a day and a half. It was awesome. For us, this question was the fact that i have the utmost respect for you because im going to ask a tough question. Throughout your career at the cia, fbi, is it something that you can talk about, what was maybe your biggest slip up or mistake, like something that kind of, you know, haunts you at night when you go to bed . But more importantly, and the thing im more curious about is the thing you learned from that, and how you transcribed. Thats an easy question, and it doesnt offend me at all. Its a good question. 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 theres other lawsuits that are making their way through the courts and thats devastating to me because in a way i feel like i dont want to get upset i feel like i could have done something about that. I feel very guilty but what that has taught me now, 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 helped me, but that was my biggest regret. Thank you. When you regret stuff like that, its in hindsight, youre using your, you know, the fact is you may not have impacted so many lives at girl security if you didnt have that experience at fbi. Maybe you might still be an fbi agent right now, and not have a chance to reach out and touch all the lives you have touched and mentor all the people you have without having that experience yourself. We dont know. Thats one of the things, shucks, i should have done it a different way, but its counter factual, you cant change your life, but you look at what you have done since, and maybe that never would have happened if you had gone in a different direction. Thank you for making me feel a little better. We have a young lady over here that has a question for you. Oh, yay. How did you get such an important job at such a young age . Thats a really good question. So i actually just applied on a whim and 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 looks interesting, and so i applied and they called, and so i think my biggest piece of advice is that something that you want to do is dont ever doubt your abilities and whether or not you should apply. I always told this to my students, im not going to get into this college, and they know what im talking about, and i always said to them, you know, let the school tell you no. Dont tell yourself no. So its kind of same thing with a job. A lot of people they wont call you back, you wont get in. I think because i just didnt care, and didnt think about what would happen if they said no, i think thats what encouraged me to actually apply. Thank you. 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. That is one of the most that is the biggest superpower in the world because it takes untelling to a national level. You are 10 feet tall and bullet ro proof in that respect. Thank you. The question i have is that i read an article on you that said that you were born with hypotonia. And i talk about that in my book, yes. In that case, i cant wait to get to that part of your 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 i have met anyone outside of my family that had it. Not a lot of you know, hypotonia is when youre born with very under developed muscle tone. I dont talk about it a lot, because when people see me, they dont think theres any issue. I didnt walk until i was about 3 1 2, maybe, which is very late. And i didnt hold my head up until i was about a year and a half, 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 still dont know a lot about hypotonia, which is weird. You would think 40 plus years later, we would have moved past it. For me, my biggest issues were with what we call fast twitch muscles. So i can really fast, really long distances, thats never been a problem for me, but at the fbi what became, i mean, i passed but like made just barely by a tenth of a millimeter of a second. The sprint was beyond difficult for me. And so thats really, for me, my only sort of limitation. Also, i trip and fall pretty much all the time, which i wear heels all the time. And then for the amount of kind of working out and physical therapy that i do regularly, i dont show my legs, but if people saw my legs, they would be very surprised by them, what they looked like. I just 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 bride maids 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, 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 . 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. 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 work. 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 al kited allocated to it as well. I think needs to be a prosecutable crime. From the outside international, i think 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 personment i. 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 town 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 agent 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. 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 i mem pretty apolitical i 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 thanks tracy walder. 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 it 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 lizze bourden is. 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 eastern on cspan 3. Online at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Each week american art facts 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 cure rator als albin. Hello, im dr. Alexis albion, and im a