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The immediate aftermath of the 9 11 terrorist attacks. She also discusses her decision to leave the cia to become an fbi special agent focusing on chinese counterintelligence. The International Spy museum recorded this event in february. Good evening, everyone and thank you for coming out on this gloo gloomy washington, d. C. Museum. Im chris costa, director of the International Spy museum. Im excited to introduce this program with former cia Operations Officer, fbi special agent, now author tracy walder. Tracy joins the cia straight out of colonel and served as a staff Operations Officer at the Counterterrorism Center where she was charged with charging down masters at the l. A. Field office where she specialized in chinese counterintelligence operations. Tracy lives with her husband and four and a halfyearold daughter in dallas, texas. This evening tracy will discuss her memoir, the unexpected spy, from the cia to the fbi. My secret life taking down some of the worlds most notorious terrorists. Tracy will be interviewed by our very own historian and curator dr. Vince hoten. After their discussion theyll open the floor to audience questions and answers. Everybody will have an opportunity to ask their questions this evening. Were also going to ask that if youre trapped in the middle of a row, put your hand up and well ensure that you have a mic to answer your questions. But they will be two mics on each side of the auditorium that you could use to answer your questions. Again, if you cant get out, just stay where youre at and raise your hand and well send a mic to you. One other administration notice. If you have a cell phone, anyone have a cell phone here, probably everybody, right, please silence it and ill lead by example and plaque sure mine is silent. All right. So now ill kick it over to vince and tracy. I think youre going to really enjoy this evenings discussions. Thank you, chris. I want to mention, the first time we were introduced to tracy as a museum is when our Educational Team discovered the amazing that she was doing now as a teacher at a School Called the huckaday school in dallas. It is extraordinary what she decided to do to challenge young people that i would never i taught at every level from Elementary School up through college and just the gumption to challenge these people is extraordinary. I probably wouldnt have had College Students do what youre having them do so it is interesting. And shes also on the board of directors for a nonprofit called girl security which well talk about as another way to give back to not only her community but to our country. So youll hear about more of those later. But we want to jump right in. We actually had a long conversation, if anyone listens to spy cast, youll hear a longer version of it. On tuesday, we just recorded a podcast together so we had a chance to try out some of the questions before we put it in front of a live studio audience as it were. And some of them work better than others but one of the most interesting to me certainly as an author myself and as someone who has dealt with redaction and classification and everything else, was the process that you had to go through to get this book cleared through the cia publication review board. In particular because they could be somewhat problematic, somewhat difficult. And if anyone looked at the book there are lines redacted that were left inside. And in our conversation, there was a whole lot more that they didnt want you to put out. How much difficulty was it getting it through the prb. So, first, thank you everyone for coming. And i see a lot of my former students in the audience which is really exciting. A lot of people who 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. Netta becko and Sarah Carlson and both took two years to get their books through the prb and i credit them with the easier time that i had. So my book was extremely important to me. I signed a nondisclosure agreement when i left and i wanted to honor that. So i sent it off to them being what we called denied in full. Which means you cant publish this period. It was not. It came back, though, with about four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters just black lines. So the cia was actually really great. You could email the prb, there is a lot of places that you could not. But you could email them back and forth. They wont tell you exactly why. You have to play a game of the guesswork so i resubmitted it and it came back with two back redacted completely, then a chapter and a half. Finally, after i took out one word, which was the name of a statue, they let that whole chapter through, and publishesers and i decided the way it was was intelligible enough for people to be able to read. Its tricky, yes, they dont want to give you away what cities that the cia is operating in if its not widely known, but you you are allowed the leeway to describe these cities this is near where a famous serial killer killed five people in the victorian era. Im not talking about london at all. I dont know i was talking to some about this, wee they redacted some things and not others, i dont understand the process. Maybe they want people to take that extra step. Lets talk about your origins story. It is somewhat different than others. Its the fact that a lot of people who joined the cia or National Security institutions wanted to do it from a very early age. You didnt really set out to think about a cia officer in middle school or high school, though subconsciously maybe you did because of what you studied when other people were playing, you were reading about the middle east, looking at maps while owl people were doing more normal middleschool things. What i think to back up a bit, this would have been when i was recruited kind of in the mid 90s. Popular culture looks different dan than then. I didnt grow up with quantico or criminal minds. I had no preconceived notions about this is what the cia is and this is where i want to work. Im not sure a lot of people did either, necessarily, but i do know that i had a really large interest in the middle east and in counterterrorism. So i would say that was really consult vatted when i watched the peter bergen interview, when hi interviewed osama bin laden. That was a turning point to me when, i decided i wanted to do something about him. When i applied at that career fair in college, that was the impetus. Most of us, unless youre really young, remember exactly where we were on 9 11. Its a turning point in a lot of ours lives. For many people its a turning point in their careers. In fact, you were at langley the morning of 9 11. This is a question that popped in my head when we talked about it hasnt been thought about that much before, but i sat on my couch on 9 11. I had been out of the army about a month, just pissed off because i could no nothing about it. A lot of us had this feeling of, oh, my god, weve been attacked, what do i now . There is really nothing i can do. To a degree, you had an advance. You could have walloed in selfpity about our country has been attacked, because i had like a second to do that and then it was time to get to work. You made me think about that question a bit differently. Everyone always asks how i was feeling, thinking, its not that i was happy that people had died in the world trade center, but you have to compartmentalize yourself so you can get on with the mission, the work you need to do and stop the next attack, or gather the evidence you need to stop the next attack, so having a sense of purpose, to be able to do something about it, even though youre not stopping the next attack, but you can try, in a way maybe helped us keep going. You werent like in the you were moved into what is known as the vault, which is ground zero for the war against al qaeda, the war that was created because of 9 11, and when i say ground zero, youre working in a small group, you turn around behind and george bush is asking you what is going on, or george tenet or condoleezza rice. This is the epicenter. How daunting was that as you are 23 at the time . 21. 21 at the time, and youve got cigarchomping george tenet, who are we looking at today . Was that something as a 20whateve 20whateveryearold that chapter i thought would be redacted, but didnt. For me, i was read into that program on september 10th, 2001. I think for me i was naive and said well never need to use it. And obviously we did. It was obviously very intense, youre working very long hours, but youre not thinking about the people in the room. If you think about the people that are in the room, then youre not focusing on what youre doing, which is trying to get people im trying to talk around it. So i think you cant process who is in there, other than tenet. He was in there almost every day, sat with us, hung in with us. He probablies thanksgiving dinner, doughnuts and bagels all the time. He was really great to work with in that environment, but other than tenet, he was the only one we were super aware of all the time. Youre a Southern California girl, you mention very overt in the book about what direction you lean politically. In that room it didnt matter. This was a moment where everyone was working together without politics. That was what at least so great about the cia when i was there. You obviously grew up in Southern California, in a liberal household, but to be honest, im actually registered independent. The cia helped moved me to the middle in a weird way. They didnt purposely do that, but help me think more about the issues not as blackandwhite way, it was sort of a great. What i liked, i served under clinton and bush, what was so great about the experience, i felt about the people around me, it was very apolitical. Some people were frustrated who read my book before it came out that i had some nice things to say about bush. They didnt understand that, but it wasnt about servicing someones political agenda. It was about what my observation were at that time in that moment. That real ly help me gain that insight. There was an event that people dont talk that much about today. Certainly since the death of bin laden has become less and less of a key moment in the timeline. That was shortly after 9 11 when the United States had bin laden pinned down, the last time you knew where he was abbo in abba. Having a chance to catch the guy, but having him slip through your fingers. What was interesting about that is i was reading another booic at the time so it was easy to footnote to use what i was doing, and i think thats one way i got the chapter approved. I dont know, but it was extremely frustrating. It was just so intense what we were doing. I think he people would have thought once we lost him that, you know, there would have been cursing, screaming yelling. The 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 it was like the sails completely went out of it, and we just carried on doing what we were supposed to be doing. When i think about your work in the vault, youre operating here in eastern time in the United States in langley, virginia, whereas the action is taking place sometimes 5, 5 1 2, 6 hours ahead of you. This is not a normal 9 00 to 5 00 job. Your working shifts that start in the middle of the night, that really dont allow you to be a normal human beings. How drank was that . We talked to mike more rrell, a asked about what was your day like before 9 11, and he was like i woke up about 4 00, 4 30, and after he was up at midnight. I think you willy thats one of the reasons i left. An anecdote, im not a night person, im a morning person, so that schedule is difficult to keep up. I would always have my best friend to come over and wake me up. I just have to change your whole body clock. I completely agree with mike. I guess your proverbial 9 00 to 5 00 job, and then that all went out the window. You went from a relatively stressfree job to arguably the most stressful job i can imagine, that is hunting down bioterrorists who are trying to create weapons of mass destruction trying to kill hundreds of thousands around the world. When you moved over to the wmd book, those of us who studied weapons of mass destruction spent years in school. You spent two weeks at Poison School and think sent you out, saying go find bad guys. Yes. Its a different than that the. The guys that were analysts who worked the nuke programs, they had their ph. D. S in nuke already physics, so i dont want to negate your work experience, so we did crude toxins and poisons, like ricin, so we thought Poison School would be enough training for us to understand what al qaeda was trying to procure. This is really what keeps people up at night. My students, who had to do a threat assessment and know what im talking about in my class on bioterrorism i feel vindicated they had to do that. It does keep people up at night. I know you want you want me to say that the cia has foiled them all, but its difficult to track. I dont want to sea nukes are easy, thats not the right word, but it requires a lot of stuff. In my opinion, biological weapons you can order them off amazon. Its not that difficult. What becomes problematic is people are not putting the entire piece of the puzzle together, and i think maybe thats where were going to slip up one day. And with nuclear weapons, you need a delivery system. You need a minneapolis to contain into which is why terrorists really i would guess theyre not trying to really procure one because of what you need. When you combine someone willing to kill themselves with the ease and access of bioweapons, it becomes a very scary prospect. I agree. Sleep well tonight, guys. Youre welcome. Whats extraordinary, and i didnt quite have a great understanding of this before i read the book, you kind of have to be on the ground in these areas of the world to truly do this, understand the culture, understand the people, so really this is the first time in your career you started being forward deployed, spending a load of time overseas, in these countries that you cant talk about by name in the book. Yes, i did. I know some people would disagree. Everyone has their own experiences at the cia and fbi, but this was my i felt very prepared, at least from a cultural standpoint in those countries. Thats one thing i thought they did extremely well. Preparing you is one thing. The frustrations you might have experienced from 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 who tent to have fundamentalist law as a tenet, but they also werent taking things as seriously as they probably should have at the time. What ended up being more friday traiting for you. We talked about this, you wanted me to get mad at the sexism, one Intelligence Service called me malibu barbie. It didnt bother me that much, because my colleagues were so great, shes the one you need to talk to, so if you want to continue calling her malibu barby, go ahead, but you have to deal with her. I felt supported by my colleagues. What frustrated me was sometimes getting cables back when we knew someone was transiting a country, im so sorry, but we dont work on sundayss. That was really frustrating. As a result you cant locate that person anymore, because they dont want to work on a sunday. Wait, you have a known bad guy going through a european country or in a european country, you know where hes at, and they either dont work on sundays or theres not enough evidence to arrest the person. Again we talked about this. Theyre probably not going to attack albuquerque or it somewhe somewhere, theyre going to attack the people you are trying to warn. No, thats our day off. I could understand that maybe. I presented it and highlighted it on my cubical. It was very frustrating. Lets talk about what arguably should have been the most frustrating e ining moment career, and thats the iraq war in 2003 you had a unique role in the leadup to the iraq war, and figuring out the linkage. At no time did you say there was any linkage whatsoever to iraq, but ill set the scene. You see colin powell in front of the united nations, and all of a sudden what happens. To back up a bit, a lot of times what we would do is make link charts to make terrorists straight, who is at the top of the network and how they are connected to who. I have no idea if they still do it, but that was a regular thing we used to do, the toxin poison was getting complicated, so it was a really large chart. We had this really coot printer, and we would put it on the outside of the cubicals. The cia gets the best printers . I guess. We could keep look at it and keep everything straight. It was just cells and areas in 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. That chart ended up being used by colin powell to sort of justify the invasion into iraq. Colin powell has since then said it was a misuse of information. It wasnt that chart exactly, though, right . It had been altered . It was that exact chart. The title of the chart was changed. Google this. It was Something Else that i was surprised the cia let me in, but maybe im thinking maybe it absolves them of it. And theyre not perfect, but the title of the chart was something different. What was it originally . I dont think i can say that. What did it ended up being . It says iraq bio. Can you say if the word iraq was on the chart before . It was not. How did you not call New York Times the next day . So someone on twitter called me a coward, actually for not doing that, but and 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. That really wasnt the right time to do it. I dont feel remorse regret about the decision i made not to sort of out it, but i know people will disagree with me. What we were the most concerned about, about the chart was now all of those people we were looking for, the whole world knew we were looking for them, to include them. Thats where we were upset. Great, now theyre all going to go underground, were going to lose all our intelligence sources, we wont be able to perhaps stop future attacks. So i think in the immediate, thats what we were the most 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. I didnt want to come across someone calling you a coward certainly cant put themselves in your shoes. Its perfectly fine. Part of what i think is interesting about is especially being posted overseas, and being in this job where youre constantly in a small room, hunting people across the world, all youre thinking about when youre falling asleep and waking up are bad guys and terrorists. How do you maintain a sense of self . How do you keep being tracy . Versus the cia operative thats trying to catch bad guys. Disconstantly have to say take a step back, remember where i came from, root for the troj s trojans playing a football game. I dont think it was i was that cerebral. For me it was 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 its okay to be a girly girl. A lot of women at the agency are, and thats totally fine. Im into the usc trojans very much. One of the things i did is had collars sent to the somewhere theres a bunch of bomb dogs that usc trojan colors on them. That segues me into the question about your transition from cia to the fbi, because when you leave cia, youre leaving a bit of a high note. Youre doing exceptional work, catching bad guys the pinnacle of a 20whateveryearold year, and you decide to leave it to an entirely Different Agency with a entirely different focus. Why . While my book is really positive about it, we left on really good terms, but maybe that was for the better. I they at the ripe old age of 25 or 26, i wanted more stability in my life. I dont know dwight i realized that then. I wanted i really was passionate about working counterterrorism, and i thought maybe i can do that and do it in one place. I thought maybe transitioning into the fbi as a special agency there, i could work in a large office and stay there really until i wanted to retire. Thats why i made that switch. You mentioned youre very positive about the cia, its almost counter intuitive, because theres so many books out there poohpoohing the cia and rahrah the fbi. And your experiences at the fbi werent all that great, certainly year training, which were not far from quantico, virginia. Its kind of a mythical place. Thats the Training Center for the fbi, you went there not in the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s, but a decade ago, it was almost like you were there in j. Edgar hoover was in charge. Its extraordinary the rancor you got at the fbi academy. 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 will be the same way. Theyre all part of the same community, and it could not have been more not like that. Well, you mentioned i had a hard time grasping it until you used a phrase that made total sense. I said it was junior high all over again. Cliques, people backstabbing each other, and you couldnt go to the instructors at the academy were kind of the ring leaders of all of this. It wasnt you just dealing with a jealous, potentially coworkers, the instructors themselves were pushing this narrative that you shouldnt be there. When i think the narrative all started was on my very first day of the academy y know if they still do this, but youre in a theaterish type of room, and everybody haz to stand up, say what they used to do, i stood up, said my name, where i used to work and introduced myself, and everyone just started rolling my eyes and calling my a liar, that i never worked at the cia. You had to come there to do my background check. You can pull up my its really not that hard to validate that. Its really not that difficult. So that narrative, it was like before i could even get out of the gate. As ridiculous that sounds, thats what everyone perpetuated the entire time i was there. It was more than that, but some of the stories are out of the 1950s, where you got you did a perfect interrogation exercise, and then go the chided because your pig of an instructor thought you were just too good lolooking basically. I dont know in quantico still does this, but the first thing was to interview witnesses, and they ask obviously you wear a uniform when youre there, but they ask you to do a suit to, so i wore a suit that i had worn many times as a cia. I didnt buy new clothes. After i did it, i had no issues with what i had done procedurally, 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. Thats where the book becomes pg13 a bit. Sorry. Thats all right. I was hoping you sent one of them to him. I didnt. But any end up a class full of former lawyers, and to say in the fbi you have to be high speed. Youre a former counterterrorism officer, you had it by far harder, it wasnt boohoo, i had it so much harder, but so much attention was paid to you, who knows if others are trained to be fbi agents, because the instructors hadnt looked at they will. You go into hogans alley, where you do session wailal awareness, they would always, always make me the team leaditious for probably the most difficult exercises, on purpose. I knew it was to see if i would mess up. You got me thinking about that, did they even test anyone else . You have to wonder if other people were qualified as well, because there was just so much focus put on wanting me to mess up. I mean, i didnt, but it was so stressful. I would lose my hair they didnt let me go back to my grandpas funeral, but they let mea colleague go back to his grandpas funeral. They didnt let you miss one days ago when the other guy missed ten days. Correct. As eye reading this, im thinking this is like an officer and a gentleman moment where theyre all standing there with tears in their eyes no, its the opposite. They wanted you to fail. What i wonder is they did have access to your file. They should have seen how qualified you were for this, and yet it didnt matter. I think just from day one, thats what they decided they were going to do. Its very easy to check all of that information. So i why they focused on me, im not sure i will ever know, but what was disturbing, too, when i was there, some of the people who were just as bad were the other women. They were pretty mean, too. Everyone has their own experience, but it doesnt stop there. Your first duty station thats where i use the military your first fbi posting was the los angeles field office, where right away youre kind of pigeonholed into do the womens jobs. Thats not what i had as much of a problem with, to be honest. When i had first gotten my assignment, and i dont floe if they still do this, you go down, you open your envelope about where youre going, sort of in front of everyone, and i had gone, and said los angeles field office, and it said the smaller Resident Agency that i was assigned to. Then that created a problem within my class, you shouldnt be assigned to an inresident i didnt care, i didnt asked to be, and i assumed i would be working counterterrorism, because thats what i did, but instead so much of the kind of head guy didnt believe that i should be there, so called, and they said, no we need her clearance to work counterintelligence, so i was placed into counterintelligent. I didnt complain about it, i just did it, but i was surprised they wouldnt take the background i had, and mutt me to use. Youre sitting in a room with george bush behind you, and it seemed strange, but were in the spy museum, so were happy you were in counterintelligence, because we talk about a case that was interesting. It was interesting. It is that size of a case that people may have heard of. It worked out well for me with my book, because hes been tried and conviction convicted, that means we can talk about it. The whole mack family had been in the u. S. For over 20 years, and some of them had become citizens. They were working a Company Called power paragon. They were using Radar Technology cook for a nuclear sect marine. They took that, stole it and gave it to china. We found out, and what was what was really kind of neat is it was every part of like a c. I. Operation. We got to dumps terr dive, surr surrepetitious entry. Its somewhat of a short period of time. So working that case was really neat, but unfortunately yeah, were going to make you read the book to find out how it turned out, but it turned out well, and that hes tried and sentenced, not so well for tracy. So why did you end up quitting the fbi . I dont president to say youll have to read my book to find out what my ssa said to me that ultimately sort of supervisory special agent that sort of threw me over the edge. I wasnt going to leave at that point. I was living at home at the time, it was close to where i was, and i came home and my parents are great, but theyve always been the kind of people were not going to fight your fights for you, you deal with it, you handle it. Thats just how they were. I told my dad, and to say that he lost it would be an understatement. I think at that moment was when i knew that i cant stay here. But the biggest regret that i have personally and it was funny. I was writing the book, right . I was writing a chapter about how much i had so much regret that i didnt file a complaint, i didnt do more. My mom was like what are you talking about . You did. I think i had completely blocked out everything that had happened, but i do think i wish i would have pursued it harder. Well, for all the great work at the cia and fbi, after leaving, you moved on to maybe what you were designed to do all along, which is to be a teacher in dallas, where, like i said, 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 bit about the curriculum you developed at a high school, which think about that. These are 16 and 17yearolds doing bioterrorism and other things. Thats crazy. Its unbelievable i i have more than a crazy amount of respect for not only you for challenging them to that level, but for them rising up to that challenge. Theyre amazing students. It came out of the mire first year at hockaday. They found out what i did, and they had lots of questions. I thought, wow, we need a class on this. What i also realized, too, this is not a slam on anyones intelligence, but basically , what i meant sometimes, when russia i get why they did that they need a Foreign Affairs international relations, terrorism, espionage course. Our school gives us a lot of autonomy in the classroom. , and theyre doing and what started is i wanted them to have a product, i guess at the end of it, like a why are we doing this sort of thing . So i think the cia conducts threat assessments. Some of them are available unclassified and online, and we followed their formats. The girls have to assess the likelihood of a terrorism group, they have to pick it out of the hat. And the likelihood they would commit a bioattack, how, when, with what they would do it with . And then we sent those to our elected officials. Now they do a podcast. Its extraordinary. Future of space wars was one. I dont pick the topic. These are things that you probab probably. You put your challenge, your experience to work, trying to pull up those and you mention the fact that the other women in your quantico class was just as bad, this is what it seems like trying to remedy some of that. Thats whats so great about girl security. And so we design curriculum modules that go out across the u. S. For girls. They also do war games scenarios once a year. They do that last year. Proliferation in north korea. I think this year maybe election security, but dont quote me on that. So its a way of having a much well, its springboarding off what i did and sort of having a nationwide reach in getting girls. They hook them up with meantors, not just in intelligence, nuclear research, it with nsa, with really all of the organizations, and they help them with female mentors, not man bashing, but sometimes when youre a woman or a young girl, its nice to see another woman who is in that position. It makes its, i guess, sometimes the job more real to you, but thats what we do. For those of you were going to end up putting this on youtube, but for thousands who hear this, how does someone who wants to help this cause . Go to the girls security website. Its nonpartisan, nonprofit. You can donate. That would be fabulous, and you can also sign up to be a mentor if youre any of the those types of jobs. Again, its across the board. Across National Security policy, not just intelligence. Not jest military. To include military, too. Were going to open it up to questioning now. Ive taken up too much of her time, because i know you might have questions for her as well. If you do, get and head over to the microphones and line up, but i love to hear. Youre if youre forecast you look traveled. This is going to be a big provocative. Im actually working on a novel and with bioterror and a virus and its really creepy to watch whats going on. I wonder if what i proposed, military intelligence, moved out before dont ask dont tell, now in civilian life. He teaches high school history, and brought back into the cia or into intelligence because of the a very bizarre biothreat, this may involve aliens and other things. How plausible is that . Thats my movie pitch. How plausible is this could happen, you would be teaching high school, a. P. History said in dallas i lived there. Hes sent on excursions to investigate this threat, which is very bizarre. I dont foresee that as something that would happen, but its a novel, so when you get people at the level of work with and work under, they are very tempting to companies that want to throw money at them. Did you ever have a temptation to go that route . No. I think its not some of my friends did. Actually my best friend from the agency did. I dont hold that against her at all. I think for me, you know, i grew up, my dad was a professprofess. Both my grandparents were in the military. I just didnt have any interesting into going to the private sector. Thats just me. I dont really shame people who want to. Everyone is in a different state. Thank you for your talk and your book. When youre going through an experience like the phish academy, how do you deal with that emotionally, do you use your anger to spite someone with your success . Detached emotionally . How do you deal with that . That is a great question. I dont think people realize not to get too cerebral or feelingsy, how much that damage that does to someone. I talked about it in my book. I was bullied in Elementary School, high school, but this was different. It was isolation on a huge, huge scale. There was such falseities that hit at the core of what i was that it was very psychologically damaging. Ill be super honest. I went on antidepressants. Im very open about that. I think a lot of that was because of that. Youre so isolated. I think the one thing that saved me that i know other people really didnt have this. I obviously had lived in virginia at the time, so in my room in quantico, i had a car. You could go to starbucks, or i would get out sort of when i needed to, but you feel like youre in an isolated box that you cant get out of. I dont know that i have this in the book, so i hope i dont offend anyone invi the audience probably one of the worst rumors i had a Breast Cancer rumor, and that started the rumor that i had breast augmentation. I havent, but im sure you can imagine that was a process to go through and be revictimized by that was just it was on just a whole other level. Another way that i dealt with it was running. Im a huge well, i just had knee surgery, unfortunately, but that was the way i dealt with the stress, to get the stress out. I dont like to run with people. I never have. Its just a way of being by myself. That was it. I can imagine the fbi are supposed to be the good guys, but im saying, like, going in that, youre im joining the fbi, im joining the good buys. Heres the think you also have to look at, too, writing an article about women in intelligence, and the research, look, the cia is not perfect, im sure theres plenty of people who have had problems there, but the cia at least has been engaging in a dialogue about gender equality since about the 50s. It wasnt completely successful, but at least hoover did not allow women to be special agents until 1972, but period, end of story. Theyre already a lot of years behind. Im not sure that we realized that, sort of how far they were behind in having it be normal that females are working. Hi, i just want to say thank you for writing your book. I read it in like a day navy. It was awesome. Im glad you liked it. I have the utmost respect, but i have a tough question, if its something that you can talk about, what was maybe your biggest slipup or mistake . Or something that hauntsds you at night, but something im more curious is what you learned from that and how you transcribed that . Thats a really easy question. It doesnt offend me at all. Its a good question. I think i said my biggest failure, in my opinion, was not speaking out about my treatment at the fbi. I 100 regret that. Now i know theres other lawsuits making their way through the courts. Thats devastating to me, because in a way i feel like i could have 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 about that going on, i speak up right away, i dont stop for two minutes. In a way it helped me, but that was my biggest regret. Whats tryingy, when you regret stuff lie like that, its in hindsight. The fact is you may not have impacted somethings lives if you didnt have that experience. Maybe you might not have a chance to reach out and tough all the lives you touched and all the people you have without having that experience yourselves. We dont know. But 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 thanks for making me feel better. No. I think one of a young lady with a question over here. How did you get such an important job at a really young age . Thats a really good question. I actually just applied on a whim. Basically it was, why not . I think it was 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 that there was a cia recruiting on the campus. That was interesting, and so i applied, and they called. So i think my biggest piece of advice, if thats something you want to do, is dont ever doubt your ability and should apply it. I always told me to my students i always said to them, let the school tell you no. Dont tell yourself no. A lot of people told me, they wont call you back, you wont get in, but 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. 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 that is one of the biggest super power in the world, because it takes telling it to a national level. Thank you. You have ten feet tall and bulletproof in that respect. Thank you. The question i have is that i read an a realize on you that said you were born with hy hypotonia, floppy baby syndrome. Ibility wait to get to that part of the book. I have it, too, and later was diagnosed with cp. My question is, what were your physical limitations as a kid, and how did you overcome them. It seems like cia and fbi would be physical jobs. Cia surprisingly not as much so than the fbi. Thats a really great question. I dont know that i meant anyone outside my family that had it. Not a lot of people know. Its when you are born with very underdeveloped muscle tone. I really dont talk about it a lot, because i think when people see you, they dont think that theres any issue, so 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 a about a year and a half. I dont mean to age myself, but i was born in the 70s. We didnt have a lot of information about these things. Doctors actually still dont know a lot about it today. You would think 40plus years later we would have moved past this. So for me, my biggest issues were with what i guess we call fasttwitch muscles. So i run r really long distances. Thats never been a problem for me, but at the fbi, what became i would pass, but by bare barely with the sprint. The sprint was beyond difficult for me. 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, so its fine. Then for the amount of kind of working out and physical therapy that i do regularly, i dont i dont show my legs, but if people saw my legs i just do a good job of hiding. Even my students probably dont know. I dont talk about it a whole lot. So first day of any new job is probably frightening to many. I would be curious obviously you cant reveal what that day encompassed, but your thoughts on the first day at cia, and also what your i guess where your headspace was on your First International assignment. I would think probably that too was stressful. The third part is how you feel about how portrays in can i answer the last first . I have an opinion. It really frustrates me, because i think the women they portray are deeply, deeply flawed. I do think that you want to have some dimension in tv characters. That part i totally understand, but theyre like seriously flawed. You know, i think 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. The first day i entered the cia, obviously i was really nervous. I dont remember sleeping the night before, but the best thing that came out of that are my two very best friends, who are bridesmaids in my wedding. When youre at the agency so much, you rely on your friends a lot. They sort of become your family. One had power of attorney over me when i was overseas, and im still really close to them. My first overseas assignment, i was really nervous. 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. Im glad i obviously i traveled later by myself, but im glad on my first one, i think. Im assuming most of your friends didnt know you worked for a cia, but what was your cover . You didnt always travel. I cant really talk about that. Its in the book. Not really, though. Okay. I just want to thank you for the service to our great nation. The second comment is really proud of what my daughter can become. You broke the glass ceiling, god bless you. Thank you. The question is, would you consider coming back to federal service . I know the department of homeland would love somebody like you. There are a numb of means to come in even temporarily or political. [ laughter ] director wa oor walder. I would come back. I miss it. I ra elly do. I would i think, though debt yes, i would come back to federal service. Wait, you said that wasnt plausible when he asked for it in the pitch. What i think he meant is that the cia would come calling back for me. I dont think that piece is plausible. They should, though. Its okay they dont. Theres very talented people there doing a great job. Let me ask you this, though. What do you need to accomplish . Do you have goals you havent accomplished . Do you need goal security to reach a certain level . Just ready for the next adventure at this point . And since youre like 25 years old im going into my 40s. What do you see as the biggest threat facing the United States today . Like well, a couple things. Inside the u. S. , i think domestic terrorism is a big problem. I think the fact that its not prosecutorable is really another huge problem. Obviously i can only talk to the fbi from when i was there, right . I cant speak to it right now. All i can say is when we were there, i did not feel it was taken seriously. And why i feel that way is because again see, i dont want to upset men. I feel sometimes its the gender narrative. Some men have gotten into the fbi to be on the s. W. A. T. Team, be on a hostage rescues team, takes down gangs. We need people to do that, absolutely, but they looked as being on the domestic squad orenyl intelligence squad as being lesser than. I think that needs to change. That mentality needs to change, because if your whole heart isnt in it, youre not going to do a good job. Thats a huge problem. I think more money needs to be allocated to it sort of outside international, i feel like a really big problems are failsafe. The reason i think thats a big problem is because failed states breed terrorists. Its a breeding ground, right . Even if you look at iraq, dictators love instability, and right now libya has instability, even south sudan is having some instability, somalia, yemen, we know these countries are unstable. Obviously i dont have access to classified information anymore, but i would guess were seeing an uptick of terrorist activity. Where are you coming down on some of the controversial issues that surround cia. I know you mentioned one of them in the book in eit, the Intelligence Community at large, because im sure your students are asking questions about snowen, about, you know privacy, about the extent the Intelligence Agency involved in our lives, and how do you answer those questions that are clearly theyre not black and white, theyre really gray. Snowenden i believe is very black and white. You talk about it in the book, where you are very gray eit the socalled torture program of the cia, youre very gray. People got really mad at me about that. Someone gave me a onestar review, because he was real unity set i didnt condemn bush, but i can only be honest with how i feel, right . What i tried to do particularly in a classroom i think my students will tell you im pretty apolitical in the classroom. I try give them the facts and they can figure it out. They know how i feel about snowden and sort of the surveillance state and all of that. Simply because i feel like i have some facts to back up my statements. I usually dont make that strong a statements. I think with eit, the reason its gray is because you have to look at why it was done in the first place. The it wasnt to gain information but to make people complacent so we could then get it. I was really interested to see, i dont think we show torture, torture doesnt work. But torture and eit are not the same. Nice and gray. I want to thank you for coming here. Thank you for having me. For anyone not considering checking this book out, youre crazy. Its one of the most interesting ones. Reading it as a narrative, its fantastic to kind of get that i was so mad so many times in this book. The one thing he shall does is she changes all the names. But god i just wish you had publicly some of the people at quantico. Because i want to get in my car and my publishers attorney said that was not possible. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you for being here. 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 afterwards. I implore you, please, dont rush up here and try to talk to her. Were going to get her out there and have her sign books before midnight today. Thanks for taking the time to be here. Thank you. [ applause ] every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union but reagan met him halfway, encouraged him, supported him. Freedom of the press well get to later i should mention, madison called it freedom of the use of the press. It is, indeed, free tom to print things and publish things. It is not freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the president. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Next on history book shelf, jim dwyer and kevin flynn talk about their book 102 minutes their untold story of the fight to survive in the twin towers. Interviews with family members of victims who made lastminute contact with friend and relatives on the morning of september 11th, 2001. The 92nd street y and times books hosted this event in new york city in 2005. Good afternoon, im the director of the daytime program, daytime at the stein heart building is program of the

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