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