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Michele Rigby Assad spent 10 years as a CIA officer specializing in counterterrorism and counterintelligence, with assignments in Iraq and other locations across the Middle East.
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00:00My name is Michelle Rigby Asad.
00:02I was an undercover CIA officer for over a decade.
00:06I was stationed in Iraq and a number of other secret locations.
00:09This is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
00:13Are you who you say you are?
00:16Everything in intelligence flows from that point.
00:18If this person tells you they're the emir of an al-Qaeda cell, you have to push them
00:23really hard to establish their bona fides.
00:25One individual, he gave us such incredible intelligence.
00:30He was so successful with us that we were able to like wipe al-Qaeda out of his village,
00:36literally liberated them from the stranglehold of this terrorist group on them.
00:46So the CIA has various directorates, so it's split up into different parts.
00:51One would be administration, one would be cyber focus, analysis, and then there are the collectors
00:58in the field.
00:59These are the undercover officers that are actually in the field recruiting, handling, and collecting
01:06information from sources.
01:08I loved my job in the agency.
01:10I was a collection management officer.
01:12You're in charge of knowing what are the requirements or questions that policymakers and whoever consumes
01:21our intelligence needs to know.
01:23I served in the Middle East.
01:25My specialization is the Arab world, and every Arab government is different.
01:29Due process in some places could look a lot like it does in the United States, and in other
01:34countries, you're tortured in prison until you give up all the information.
01:39There isn't due process, there's torture.
01:42If anyone knows they're a CIA source, then their life is in danger.
01:46Let's say they're a member of a terrorist group.
01:49You don't want other members of the terrorist group to know because obviously they'll kill
01:54them if they figure that out.
01:55All of our meetings with them have to be carried out very carefully using well-established trade
02:00craft to do that without outing them as our secret source.
02:04You can't recruit anyone.
02:05You've got to know what you need, and then you've got to find the guy that's got it.
02:08So it's a behavioral analysis that makes you a really good intelligence officer.
02:14So if you don't understand the behavior, you can't understand the motivations, and you can't
02:19work with people.
02:20You have to be able to get to the core of who they are.
02:22A typical day in the life of a collection management officer, which we refer to as CMO,
02:28the more reports you can read, the more information you can gain not only on your own country but
02:34on your AOR or area of responsibility, the better.
02:37And then you would be meeting with case officers right before they go out to their meetings
02:42with their sources.
02:43And they'd say, okay, here's who I'm meeting with.
02:45And they'd say, what do we need to know, or what do I need to know?
02:48What questions do you need answered?
02:50After the meeting occurred, okay, I gathered the following information.
02:54Is any of this of interest?
02:57When you're in a war zone, that day is punctuated with hair on fire moments where it's like,
03:03my source just called in the location of an IED that they just buried.
03:08And so you don't even have time to put an intel report together.
03:11Fly up the stairs to a place where we could coordinate with the military, get on the phone
03:16with the military commander of that area and literally call in the geo-coordinates of that
03:21IED, or improvised explosive device, before someone rolls over it and loses a limb or loses
03:27their life.
03:32The types of really critical information that we really saw, especially in war zones, were
03:38the names of the terrorists, where are they located?
03:42We called that their bed down location.
03:43You know, where do they sleep at night?
03:45So where can you get them?
03:46Where can you pick them up?
03:48Where's the safe house where they meet?
03:50Where's the safe house where they're constructing IEDs?
03:54Where's the location where they're putting the car bomb or the VBIED together, the vehicle
04:00borne explosive device?
04:02Basically, what are the plans and intentions of the terrorists?
04:05What are they planning and how can we stop it?
04:07Of course, sometimes we don't stop it.
04:10We can't stop it.
04:11And in those cases, we're very prioritized to find out who ordered it, who executed the
04:17attack, where can we find them?
04:20You know, all the data, the phone numbers, the locations, the descriptions, all their activities,
04:26things like that were critically important.
04:28I would read a signals intelligence report, a SIGINT report, and I would go, oh, that name.
04:35I know that name.
04:36I think one of our sources is reporting on that guy, and any time we can make a connection.
04:41I mean, that's what really gave us the ability to do more with what we had.
04:50In terms of providing a timeline for my service in the CIA, really can't go into a lot of
04:57detail about that.
04:58What I can say is that I had five overseas assignments.
05:01When they're war zone assignment, they last a year.
05:04A regular assignment lasts two years.
05:06So I spent the next 10 years of my CIA career mostly in the Middle East and primarily doing
05:15counterterrorism work.
05:16Until the very end of my CIA career, when I focused on more difficult cases, I was part
05:22of a special team that could do that and be able to take a second look at these complex,
05:28often long-running cases to see whether there were any counterintelligence issues or not.
05:32The very first place that we were assigned, which I can't mention the name of, but it
05:38was a really crazy place, yeah, I mean, that was the country that I actually had to use the
05:43Get Off the X training in order to possibly save my life.
05:48This was a period of time, 2003 to 2005, when tribesmen in this country would kidnap a target
05:57of opportunity.
05:57And so my husband and I had told each other, you can never get taken.
06:02So I was by myself driving to work, which was a good half-an-hour drive.
06:05And if you saw a woman ever in public, which you rarely did, they were completely, absolutely
06:10covered.
06:11But I did not cover my hair or my face.
06:13I was at a stoplight and a car came up behind me and another car was beside me and I
06:19was
06:19against, I was on the side of the road, there was like a big curb here.
06:22And a man was crossing the road in front of me and he looked up and saw me through the
06:27windshield, just my face, and decided that was too much for him.
06:33So he started self-pleasuring in the middle of the road.
06:39I'm turning as red as my jacket and I'm like, oh my God, this is embarrassing.
06:43The men started to come out of like the shops to see what was going on and they weren't disturbed
06:48by him.
06:49They said, what is inside the car?
06:52That's so interesting.
06:54So they started coming out and this is a, this is a place where they were just awash in
06:59weapons.
06:59They were like weapons bazaar to the whole Middle East and everyone had an AK.
07:05Everyone had knives, like, except for us.
07:08They were going to surround my car because I was a single female by myself.
07:13Oh no, I'm on the X.
07:16Like, like instinctually my training kicked in.
07:18I did what I was, I was taught to do.
07:20You can use your car as a weapon.
07:21And so I actually had to hit that man, had to hit him with my car.
07:27He got back up.
07:28He was shocked.
07:29I was shocked.
07:30I'm like, I can't believe I did that.
07:31Got back up and he started again.
07:33And I was like, you cannot make this up.
07:36So I ended up hitting him a second time.
07:38He fell down.
07:39He got back up.
07:40He realized how very serious I was.
07:42And then he finally got out of the road and cleared so I could move.
07:47And I didn't stop for one more stop sign, one more red light.
07:51I blew through every one of them on the way to work.
07:53And I think I shook for like a good hour afterwards.
07:56So I was realizing how very fast things can go wrong in the field.
08:02You have a very short window of time to act before it's too late to do anything at all.
08:06And I'm really grateful that I got that training because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have known what to do.
08:17We always say in the CIA, it doesn't matter what that person's motivation is, but we have got to know
08:25it.
08:25If you're going to work with a source, is that person motivated by ego, money?
08:31They have financial problems, power.
08:36Or they watch too many Hollywood movies and they simply think it's a cool thing to do.
08:40Like, I can work with any of those.
08:43I was always surprised when we had what I would call a positive motivation because there were so very few
08:49of those.
08:50Maybe I should say altruistic, but they were like gold when we found them.
08:54I've been a terrorist for 10 years.
08:57I'm over it.
08:59This ideology is crap.
09:01The way these terrorist groups work is crap.
09:04I've been used, I've been abused, I've been manipulated, and I am willing to do anything I can to work
09:12against it.
09:13You're like, whoa.
09:15Bless their hearts.
09:16They will do anything, which really included risking their lives all the time to give us the information we needed
09:23to take that group down.
09:24Negative motivations would just be, you know, everything else.
09:27My heart really went out to a lot of the sources we've worked with who are motivated by money.
09:31Because a lot of times, they're the only person feeding the family of 12.
09:36The economy is terrible.
09:38It's a war zone.
09:40These people are just desperate.
09:41I felt really bad for these guys.
09:43But you had to be really careful with them because they just basically tell you anything to get paid.
09:49With terrorists and insurgents, what you learn very quickly is that a ton of them are motivated by ego and
09:56just are like little narcissists running around.
09:59It's so fascinating to deal face-to-face with them.
10:03I love it.
10:04It's so, it's such a, like, the psychology 101.
10:09So, how do you deal with a guy who literally waltzes in the room because, you know, just with swagger,
10:15you know, street swagger like you've never seen?
10:18When I see the big ego, I'm like, great, good, here we go.
10:22This is going to be fun.
10:23They want their ego to be stroked, and that's an easy thing to do.
10:26They would think of me as a female as being, like, what are you doing in the dangerous world of
10:33Iraq or counterterrorism or CIA?
10:36Like, who the heck are you? You're a female.
10:37So, ego, money, obviously, even if that's not people's primary motivation, it was often a secondary motivation, really important to
10:47them.
10:49So, you do something effective and successful, you get paid more.
10:53We had one source, this makes people laugh.
10:56He was an insurgent, he was a little bit overweight, a little bit of a pudgy guy and balding, and
11:03he was very concerned about his appearance.
11:07Like, you can't make this stuff up.
11:09I mean, we're all human at the end of the day.
11:11So, his case officer actually arranged to get him some sort of weight loss supplement and some sort of special
11:20shampoo for his balding head.
11:22Like, sometimes that was enough.
11:25A lot of them were playing us, too.
11:26So, when they, we didn't know, we didn't know they were playing us, but they would, hey, they'll give you
11:34whatever you want.
11:34You know, they, they're not, they are so smart.
11:37Bacon is haram, and, and for Muslims, meaning you shouldn't eat it.
11:43It's forbidden.
11:44But, boy, a lot of them, they, they wanted bacon.
11:47And they stuffed it in a bag, and off they went.
11:56Abu Muhammad was actually my husband's source.
11:58So, I had been following his case very closely.
12:02And Joseph, of course, filled in all the details about his personality and what he's like to deal with.
12:06He's like the muscle guy.
12:08He'd be the guy in the insurgent group that, like, broke legs or to get people in line.
12:13Like, he, he would kill people no problem.
12:15Joseph told him that a special, uh, person was coming in to ask him questions about a very particular, uh,
12:22murder that had happened in Baghdad to an American citizen.
12:25He just knows I'm a CIA officer.
12:27Um, he certainly does not know we're married.
12:30So, I knew it was going to be a handful before I ever walked in there.
12:33So, I would go over, and I shake his hand, and I say, uh, Kaifik, uh, Abu Muhammad, Salamu Alaikum,
12:39and I'm trying to speak some Arabic to him.
12:42And he's like, the, the Kalam Arabi?
12:43You speak Arabic?
12:45And I'm like, shwaya, shwaya, you know, I speak a little bit of Arabic.
12:48Besides my husband, who's a native Arabic speaker, hardly any Americans knew any lick of Arabic.
12:54So, uh, he was, like, shocked.
12:56So, I thought, oh, that's great.
12:58That's what I want to do.
12:58I want to shock them.
12:59I'm not what you think I am.
13:00I'm like, you know, it's really important to stroke his ego, right?
13:04Abu Muhammad, I've been following this case for months.
13:08And he's like, you have?
13:09I am very impressed with what you've done.
13:13Um, you, you together in this partnership, you and whatever Joseph's name he was using at that time, you've saved,
13:20you've saved so many lives.
13:21And I know that there's great risk to you, and I really appreciate that.
13:27And I saw him, like, you know, stand up taller, and you can see, you can see the difference it
13:34makes.
13:34I've done those two things, and I need to do a third thing.
13:37He needs to know that I'm smart.
13:38And he can't get anywhere unless he knows I'm intelligent.
13:41So I started speaking to him about Iraq and Iraqi culture and what's going on in his village and trying
13:46to be as demonstrably smart as I can in that moment.
13:51And it works.
13:53Abu Muhammad, he flipped.
13:55I had really long meetings with these people.
13:57We're talking, like, five, six, seven, eight-hour meetings.
14:01And I'd leave that meeting, and I, I kid you not, I would be, like, I got nothing.
14:06I got, I got nothing.
14:08No insights.
14:10No special assessments.
14:12Like, why did I just waste eight hours of my time, CIA resources?
14:16I would review my notes, and then I would suddenly have a moment of clarity where I go, oh, oh,
14:22my gosh.
14:25I just realized what he didn't say for eight hours.
14:28It wasn't what he said.
14:30It's what he didn't say that whole time I spent with him.
14:34How people act when they're not telling you the truth or when there's a real extreme level of discomfort.
14:38They do kinds of weird things.
14:40I've seen sources stack up Coke cans on the table in front of him because I'm on the other side
14:47of the table,
14:47and suddenly he feels the need to literally build a wall with Coke cans or snacks on the table.
14:54I had a source one time who, who I didn't think was a problem, but I thought actually his wife
15:01might be a problem.
15:02And I asked him about his wife, and as soon as I asked about his wife, he jumped out of
15:07the chair and ran to the bathroom and slammed the door.
15:17You have to be constantly assessing your source for behavioral changes.
15:22The one thing that was absolutely critical, like I couldn't get past it unless I had absolutely established this one
15:29thing, are you who you say you are?
15:33Everything in intelligence flows from that point.
15:36If this person tells you they're, they're the emir of an al-Qaeda cell, emir means like prince or leader,
15:43you don't say, oh, okay, well, let's go with that.
15:45Prove to me that you're the emir of an al-Qaeda cell.
15:49You have to push them really hard to establish their bona fides.
15:52One individual that we were running for at least a year before I got involved with the case,
16:00and he claimed to be exactly what I just mentioned, the emir of an al-Qaeda cell in a village
16:08west of Baghdad.
16:09He gave us such incredible intelligence that, you know, it was just like the military kept actioning it, and they
16:16got the guys.
16:17And intelligence were like, that is the best vetting ever.
16:21If your intel results in the military being able to take terrorists down, that's, that's amazing.
16:27That's it.
16:28That's what you need.
16:29He was so successful with us that we were able to, like, wipe al-Qaeda out of his village, literally.
16:36Liberated them from the stranglehold of this terrorist group on them.
16:40Now, if you are the only one with the ability to put food on the table for a family of
16:4612, might you then need to do something to keep the money coming in?
16:53Yes.
16:53And so the intelligence changed, and suddenly it was weird.
17:00It was a bit odd.
17:02It almost seemed like he watched a few too many movies.
17:05After I got involved with the case, I said, well, I just want to go back to the basics.
17:08Simple questions.
17:09Like, if I ask you, what is your job?
17:11What do you do in a day?
17:12What do you spend eight hours doing?
17:13You can very clearly tell me A, B, C, D.
17:16He couldn't.
17:17What we ended up figuring out was anyone in the village could have given us that intel.
17:22It wasn't secret, apparently.
17:24So his 12-year-old kid could have volunteered to the CI and given us the intel we needed to
17:29take the group down.
17:30Now he was just making new stuff up, and, like, he was using his imagination and coming up with things
17:36that sound a little bit like, you know, Hollywood-ish.
17:39And you're like, whoa, this is not good.
17:42People got really good in Iraq at lying in order to survive, because if you told someone you didn't really
17:50like Saddam, it was literally off with your head.
17:54What you get after 30 years of that are people who are too terrified to tell you the truth, who
18:00will say yes to anything.
18:01They've been conditioned their entire lives to say yes.
18:04And I think that's probably how I honed my ability to identify good and valuable information from embellished or fabricated
18:14information.
18:14This one source ran his own subsource network of sources in a particular area, and I kept disseminating the same
18:24report over and over and over again with slightly different details.
18:28It would be like, here's the location of this massive missile.
18:33Do they keep finding missiles everywhere?
18:35And the case officer's like, no, they never find anything.
18:38I'm like, then what are we doing here?
18:41Somebody's lying.
18:42Either he's lying, his subsource is lying, or doesn't exist.
18:46The military was ticked off at us, because they're like, no, your information sucks.
18:51And I was like, wow, that hurt, because every time they rolled off a military base to action our intel,
18:59there was a really high, you know, big chance they might not come home again.
19:03I can't keep flying like this.
19:04I've got to take time.
19:05I've got to stop.
19:06And I have to be strategic.
19:13A lot of countries are spying on each other.
19:15It's kind of how the world works.
19:17There are a lot of countries that mean a lot to us and have high priority for us as collectors.
19:22But the same could be said of China and Russia.
19:26There's more nuance to counterintelligence.
19:28So sometimes counterintelligence covers a very broad array of activities.
19:33So not only is it trying to identify a double agent who is literally working against you,
19:39but it is also to learn how the other government works.
19:45How do they do operations?
19:47Some of the most valuable things you can learn are how the Russians travel abroad
19:53to carry out assassinations in foreign countries, because they do that a lot.
19:57There's a particular case towards the very end of my CIA career that is so interesting,
20:03an Arab intelligence officer.
20:06And he was a big guy.
20:07He was like a 6'3", 250-pound guy.
20:12I developed some ideas on other countries that he might be working with,
20:17which in our line of business is bad.
20:19You just want them working with you.
20:21I spent hours asking that guy all kinds of questions,
20:26trying to get at who he might be meeting with that he's not telling us about.
20:29I tried this way, I tried that way, and I got really frustrated.
20:33I'm just going to make this really easy and stupid.
20:37I made a list of countries that I thought he potentially would be working with.
20:42And then I literally went, I said to him,
20:46let's talk about your relationship with each of these countries.
20:49I've already established what his normal body language is,
20:52like how he feels when he's comfortable, like I am right now,
20:56how he's sitting, how he's seated, how he looks at me, and all of that stuff.
21:00And then I got to the potentially problematic country, and I said it.
21:05And that guy sat up, took the pillow from the couch that he'd been sitting on,
21:13pulled it out from behind him, and then balled up and started hugging the pillow.
21:19This is not happening right now.
21:22Wow.
21:23This is it, I think.
21:25This is it.
21:26But then I dropped it, and I went on to another country,
21:29and as soon as I changed the topic, the pillow went back behind his back,
21:34and then he went back to being calm and confident again.
21:38And the weird thing is he doesn't even know he's doing it,
21:41and he's giving himself away.
21:43And so I was able to say, like,
21:45I am really confident that he's working with them.
21:50And it actually took me years, years, years, years to find out that it was correct.
22:00C.I.A. recruiters go to all the local universities, including Georgetown.
22:04I applied to every single job opportunity in the Career Center, which included the C.I.A.
22:10And the very interesting thing is that it was the only job opportunity that came through.
22:16So they don't tell you a lot in the beginning.
22:18They tell you just enough for you to decide whether you want to take the next step.
22:22I kept thinking, I'm not sure that I'm C.I.A. material.
22:27But as they would say, okay, we're looking for really adventurous people.
22:31We're looking for people who know how to operate in foreign environments very comfortably.
22:35So now you have to go through multiple days' worth of personality testing, psych evaluations, writing tests.
22:46It takes a good year average to go through all of these steps.
22:51I was working in a nonprofit in D.C., just north of the State Department,
22:55and I had to keep taking these phone calls from C.I.A. recruiters.
22:59So I'd have to, like, squirrel away in somebody's closed, dark office
23:03and tell the C.I.A. recruiter to call me on the following line.
23:07A few weeks before I was supposed to start this, you know, incredible, exciting job with the C.I.A.,
23:13I got a one-pager in the mail from the C.I.A.
23:16You no longer meet the requirements for the C.I.A. job,
23:20and we are rescinding this position from you.
23:23What just happened?
23:25And they don't give you any further information.
23:27I thought, well, what could I have possibly done?
23:29I haven't done anything weird or strange.
23:32That led to a very long period of time of being absolutely lost,
23:35because I just couldn't get a job.
23:37My husband, during this period of time, learned about this other side of the C.I.A.
23:42called the Directorate of Operations.
23:44He's like, I want to apply.
23:46He had just gotten his citizenship.
23:49He's originally from Egypt.
23:51And I said, well, knock yourself out.
23:53I don't think I'm C.I.A. material because the C.I.A. has told me I'm not C.I
23:57.A. material.
23:58The recruiter who was talking to him said, wait a minute.
24:02You have a spouse, and she's also an Arabist,
24:05and she also knows the Middle East like you.
24:08But why don't I have her resume right now?
24:10And he goes, well, because you guys rejected her.
24:13And she said, oh, wait.
24:14That's the other side of the C.I.A.
24:17We're different.
24:18Bring her resume to me.
24:19That's how, basically, my husband, Joseph, ended up getting in first,
24:25and then I ended up getting in six months later.
24:32I started working for the C.I.A. just a couple months after 9-11.
24:36I started my training in January 2002,
24:39and that training lasts for an entire year.
24:42It's called tradecraft training.
24:44It's a strange way to refer to a C.I.A. training facility,
24:47but we call it the farm.
24:48I think everyone calls it the farm.
24:50It used to be a big secret, but it's out.
24:52C.I.A. training is so fun, interesting, stressful.
24:57You're learning different layers,
24:59and then each time you have a scenario,
25:01they'll add another layer to that pile
25:04so that your brain gets used to dealing
25:06with multiple inputs all at once.
25:09You learn everything from how to conduct surveillance.
25:12What if you are under surveillance?
25:14What do you do about it?
25:15You have to learn all the various aspects
25:18of how to recruit a source.
25:20How do you identify a double agent?
25:22What does a double agent look like?
25:25How do they behave?
25:27What do you do when you figure out someone's a double agent?
25:30I know this sounds not interesting.
25:33Write reports, because they always say in the C.I.A.
25:35if you don't write it, it never happened.
25:37So you have to get extremely good at written communication.
25:41All of your training is also geared towards seeing whether you break
25:46under a lot of stress and inputs.
25:51My instructor, he couldn't understand why I was so fascinated by the Middle East,
25:56and he couldn't imagine seeing me in the Middle East working,
26:00because he was a Latin America expert.
26:03And I think he thought I was lying to him about my knowledge.
26:06I don't know.
26:07But he really turned the screws on a couple of scenarios where he told the role players,
26:14make it really hard for her.
26:17Like, really, do your best to make her fail.
26:20This part got redacted out of my book, so I can't talk about what the scenario was.
26:24But in a word, I came back from this training scenario, and I was like, I was sweating.
26:30I was shaking.
26:31And I was like, you know, you always compare notes with the other students,
26:34like, how is that for you?
26:36And I came back, and I was like, that was freaking hard.
26:39And everybody was like, no, it wasn't.
26:40That was like the easiest scenario ever.
26:41And I was like, what?
26:44So then my instructor, who I don't think really thought much of me up until that moment,
26:49came by and said, hey, I heard you didn't suck.
26:54And I realized that was his way of saying, I did a great job.
26:57If you make it through that, and a lot of people don't, but if you do,
27:01then at the end of that, they give you special paramilitary training to prepare you for the field.
27:07We got qualification on a Glock, an M4.
27:11So you had to be proficient with these weapons.
27:14Oh, we would shoot tens of thousands of rounds all week long in order to qualify.
27:20It turns out I'm really good with a Glock.
27:23My favorite was high-performance driving.
27:27You learn how to make, you know, quick changes where they block your vision,
27:30and then suddenly they'll remove, like, the cardboard,
27:34and you have to make a quick, like, left or right to avoid running into something.
27:38Pre-9-11, you would go through tradecraft training,
27:42and then you'd be given linguistic training if you needed it,
27:45so you could take Arabic for a year or two.
27:47And then there's something called sitting on a desk,
27:50which is really sitting on these various accounts that you're going to be working in the field.
27:56But we didn't have time after 9-11.
27:59Everything was hair on fire.
28:01Get people out to the field as quickly as possible.
28:04We're just trying to stop the next terrorist attack from occurring.
28:07You just have to sink or swim when you get there.
28:15Iraq changed my life.
28:17Iraq is what fashioned me into an amazing intelligence officer.
28:22Things were going very poorly in Iraq.
28:24The U.S. government was surging all kinds of personnel to the war zone.
28:29CIA, FBI, almost every three-letter office and federal agency was represented in that surge.
28:37We started hearing rumors that we were being surged to Baghdad, which was a terrible thought.
28:41All you had to do is, back then, turn on the TV.
28:45It was just death and destruction all the time.
28:47You get a special flight from D.C. to Baghdad, and you land at night.
28:53Then it's too dangerous to drive to the CIA compound because the terrorists bury IEDs all night long.
29:00And then it's called IED alley.
29:02So we had to get flown in helicopters to the CIA compound, but it was too dangerous during the day.
29:09So that was only done under the cover of darkness.
29:11You're issued your weapon, your helmet, your Kevlar vest, your rounds, your radio.
29:17You're crawling up these little tiny stairs to get on this helo, and you have all your carry-on luggage
29:23that you're trying to balance as you walk up these steps.
29:26And the rotors are spinning through the air, and it's like 120 degrees.
29:30It's still at night, and so it's like hot sand blowing into every orifice.
29:36What am I doing right now?
29:39What is this place?
29:40The shelling every day, which started a couple of months into our EIT tour.
29:47You know, we're in the green zone, so we're fairly safe.
29:49Obviously, it was hell outside the green zone.
29:52But then Iranian military advisors were sent into Iraq to do what they do best,
29:59which is teach other people how to kill.
30:01This IDF, this indirect fire, which normally is just kind of like point and shoot
30:06and hope it gets somewhere near where you want it to go.
30:08So they really honed in on their targets.
30:12So U.S. Embassy, you know, they get very close if not hitting, started really hitting us.
30:20Everything changed.
30:22We were getting shelled every afternoon, every morning, sometimes different times during the day.
30:29But you could really count on, like, this 3 to 5 o'clock window.
30:32It was like they had tea and crumpets, and now it's time to go shoot some rockets.
30:37Like, I don't know why that time.
30:39You had to always run into a bunker as soon as the warning alarm went off telling us that IDF
30:45was coming in.
30:47So it was just a huge amount of stress every single day because it came to the point,
30:54there was so, we were getting hit so much that it was like every cell in your body was, like,
30:58primed to run on a moment's notice.
31:01One day, this rocket came so close to the side of our building that it sounded like we were getting
31:10buzzed by an F-35.
31:14Oh, it was so loud, and it came in, and everybody hit the ground.
31:18Boom!
31:19And it exploded in the compound right next to us, and it shattered our windows.
31:25And then they're like, that's it.
31:26Getting boarded up, that's all.
31:28Every time we got a warning that a rocket was coming in, probably, like, 15 of us in the room.
31:33There were two of us, and we took it very seriously.
31:34We ran out of that room so fast every single rocket attack.
31:38So we were always, like, jumping out of our seats.
31:41Our chairs would slide behind us and hit the wall, and we'd be out into the middle, like, to the
31:45safety,
31:45the safe area of our building, but we were always, the rest of them just sat there.
31:51I don't know why I didn't bother them, but I was like, you know, it could hit directly at any
31:56moment.
32:02Back then, it was very, very much assumed that the Middle East was a very difficult world to operate in,
32:08because it is.
32:10And it is very difficult for women to work as case officers, to recruit sources.
32:16It's just inappropriate for a man and a woman to be meeting each other in the Middle East without their
32:22spouses.
32:24So there's some truth to why, you know, there was a lot of feelings like women can't do that job.
32:30I was being judged only on my gender.
32:32I wasn't being assessed based on my personality, my experiences in the Middle East.
32:38I carried that weight on my shoulders for the first, oh, goodness, four or five years in the agency,
32:44thinking I wasn't capable or good enough until I got to Baghdad.
32:49Because my training instructor, he just had two students he was assigned to.
32:53He really talked me down off of, like, you're not going to be able to work in the Middle East
32:57the way you want to.
32:59They're never going to respect you.
33:00My first few managers, they really believed women had a hard time doing the job.
33:06They wanted me in that CMO position and to do no additional operations.
33:11We had been told in training, we're training you to do everything.
33:14So you can do operations as a CMO, no problem.
33:17And then we got to the field and they were like, no, you can't.
33:20Why do you think that?
33:20I'm like, well, because the entire CIA up until this point has told us that.
33:24So it was very confusing.
33:26They're like, well, we'd really rather you not.
33:28But once I finally got the opportunities to handle sources, I think everyone saw the results of that meeting and
33:35they were like, wow, okay, well, I have a problematic source over here.
33:41Do you want to come in and see if you can get him to spill the intel he won't give
33:45us?
33:45And I would read the file, know who you're talking to, and then realize that the reason why that source
33:52wouldn't give it up is because that case officer was talking to him as like a street guy, like the
33:58mid-level insurgeon I dealt with.
34:01But the guy they were dealing with had a PhD and was an educated man.
34:05That changed everything about the way you talk to him.
34:07I used the proper honorifics, and I spoke to him as an educated Iraqi, and his brain was blown because
34:16he'd been just treated like he was some little street terrorist.
34:20It showed me how easy it is to do it right when you know the person you're dealing with.
34:29I left the CIA in 2012 after 10 years, and there were many reasons.
34:35The first one was exhaustion.
34:38Another one was one of Joseph's parents passed away, his father, and his mom was left running a large ministry
34:46in Egypt, and he needed to take care of her, and the agency was giving him a really hard time
34:51about that.
34:52Once the agency say they're more important than your family, that's really the last straw there.
34:57I served under both Democratic and Republican presidents.
35:01There was a period of time where you could see that the value for what we were collecting was waning,
35:07and I'm not even going to go into details about which presidency.
35:12I try to stay apolitical, but at some point you say to yourself, why am I risking my life again
35:17if so-and-so doesn't even take all of his presidential daily briefs?
35:24Even if we stayed, we could do really good things in the agency.
35:27We could really, as you move up and you move into leadership positions, you could do a lot of good,
35:33but the idea of leaving that safe government cradle for the unknown world was terrifying.
35:42Some of my family knew, some, knew that we were in the CIA, and the rest of them seemed to
35:49know enough not to ask many questions.
35:51We made the decision and got the agency's permission to drop cover.
35:55We have to be very careful about where we go and what we do.
35:58We can't just travel to all the places other people go to.
36:01Were, doesn't matter.
36:02Were, are, they'll just say, oh, you still are.
36:06Venezuela, same thing would happen.
36:07Mexico would be very dangerous just because of the criminality there.
36:12We are definitely on an Iranian hit list because of our work in Iraq.
36:16My husband and I continue to do consulting work for companies that do business in the Middle East.
36:21We tend to get the call when something goes awry or something's not ideal.
36:26So we were based initially out of Abu Dhabi, which is the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
36:31That was four years.
36:33Our, our business was at a, at a place where we could really do this from anywhere.
36:37We could actually finally return to the United States, which was mind-bending.
36:43Like, we could live home.
36:45We came home and we still run our consulting firm, which really uses a lot of the same skill set
36:51that we honed in the CIA.
36:59After we left the agency several years later, to give context, this is really important.
37:04Al-Qaeda had regenerated into ISIS, name change, same ideology.
37:08They had flooded back into Iraq from Syria and had swept across northern Iraq and taken over Iraq, second largest
37:17city, Mosul.
37:17They would surround these ancient towns that were inhabited by Christians and Yazidis.
37:24And they would say, you know, basically convert or die or become a sex slave.
37:28Like, these are your options.
37:29Hundreds of thousands of these individuals fled into Kurdistan for safety.
37:34We're very familiar, since my husband's a Christian, of the persecution of Christians in this part of the world and
37:39have a real heart for it to help these people.
37:41So this project was sponsored by Mark Burnett, Hollywood producer Mark Burnett, and his wife, Roma Downey.
37:48They said, well, we have the money.
37:51We have fundraisers.
37:53We have people on Capitol Hill to do advocacy.
37:55But we really need somebody who knows how to actually do the operation to see if we can relocate some
38:02families to a new home and get them to safety.
38:06That's our bread and butter, operating in dangerous places, trying to do helpful things.
38:12So we got brought into that project, and it was quite miraculous.
38:17Refugees were spilling into Europe from every direction, from land, from the sea.
38:21Everyone was overwhelmed with refugees.
38:23We would approach different countries at a very senior level to say, can you take these refugees?
38:27They would say, no, we've got plenty.
38:30We don't need more.
38:31So eventually we found one country that was willing to say yes, Slovakia.
38:37Joseph and I did what I thought I would never do, is go back to Iraq, and we met with
38:43and interviewed and debriefed and gathered all kinds of identity documents and vetted the heck out of these people.
38:52These internally displaced people, these Iraqis, who were still in Iraq, so not classified as refugees yet, Slovakia said they
38:59could take 150.
39:00And I'm telling you, this stuff generally takes so long.
39:04The wheels of diplomacy and government bureaucracy, they're painful.
39:10We are not bringing you terrorists.
39:12We are not bringing anybody who's going to be a security threat to you on any level.
39:18So we want to be able to say, like, we put our names on this list.
39:21Like, we vouch that these are who we say they are, that we have personally met with them.
39:27Like any good operation, something's going to go wrong, and likely many things will go wrong.
39:33We were the rare flight that had been given special permission to leave.
39:36This was a period of time when the Russians were shooting missiles across Iraqi airspace into Syria.
39:44They kept shutting down the airport because of Russian missiles.
39:47That had thrown the initial timeline off by three days.
39:52We even lost our initial aircraft.
39:54The airport was shut down.
39:56There was one aircraft literally sitting at the airport.
39:59We have a friend in D.C. who does a lot of contract work for the Kurds, and he's like,
40:04I know who owns the aircraft.
40:06Now, what I need you to do is, on that day that you're airlifting, you need to arrive at this
40:12gate at this time,
40:13and we'll make sure all of the guards know at these various gates that you're coming.
40:18Because it was 33 miles from the front with ISIS.
40:23Of course, as an airport, it's definitely a target.
40:26So you can't even get anywhere near the airport with a car.
40:29So you have to deposit your cars and get bussed over to the airport.
40:33Well, they were going to just let us in in all of these minivans that we had.
40:36We had, like, 14 vehicles with all of these people and their luggage on there.
40:40We planned it to leave lots of time in the schedule.
40:43We were late because we forgot to give everybody their passports.
40:46So we're out here getting everybody their passports to 149 people,
40:50and they're saying goodbye forever to the people on the ground.
40:52It was chaotic. It was crazy, but it was as organized as it could be.
40:56We knew there had been a changeover in guards, and we're like, crap, because here's how the Middle East works.
41:02If I don't know what you're talking about, I'll say no, and that way I will not lose my job.
41:06I'll not get beat up. I will not get tortured, like, whatever.
41:10As soon as we got to the first checkpoint, it was the wrong set of guards.
41:15No, no, you have to go this way.
41:18The driver started to turn off into the parking, and Joseph was like, no, we were told we could go
41:23straight.
41:24And he took the steering wheel, and he did like this.
41:27And then the guy went forward, and then nobody chased after them.
41:32By the time we finally got to the airport safely, they've never even been in an airport ever in their
41:37life.
41:37They have no idea what to do.
41:39So you need to manage the whole check-in process.
41:41It's critical that the guy doing the check-in doesn't have any heartburn over what's happening.
41:46They don't know what we're doing with these people.
41:48They think they're going on vacation.
41:50The check-in manager, so he's like, so who are you again?
41:54And I'm just downplaying everything.
41:56I'm just using the cover.
41:58And he's like, what are these people doing?
41:59Oh, they're going on a religious trip to Slovakia.
42:03And he's like, and I am trying so hard.
42:06I'm using all my skills to calm this man, make him think this is no big deal.
42:12And he finally said to me, he goes, these people are not returning to Iraq, are they?
42:17And I go, why didn't you say that?
42:20And I'm like laughing.
42:20I'm like, oh, that's so silly.
42:22I knew he knew something was up, but he never threw a wrench into it.
42:27Thank God, because he could have shut the whole thing down.
42:30Our heart was in our throat the whole time.
42:32Our aircraft is lifting up as the sun is beautifully setting in the Iraqi landscape.
42:38And we still couldn't breathe.
42:40What if there's some Russian cruise missiles in Iraqi airspace?
42:45December 10, 2015, we successfully transferred these people from Iraq to Slovakia.
42:51This post-CIA operation was so miraculous, because in the space of three and a half months, we did all
42:58of this.
42:59And it ended with an airlift of 149 Iraqi Christians out of Kurdistan, and we took them to their new
43:09country.
43:15I'm concerned only because it seems as if a lot of the leadership in the CIA has gotten very political.
43:22And it's a very dangerous thing to become political when you're dealing in intelligence.
43:28The CIA and FBI really need to be set apart.
43:30Like, you serve at the pleasure of the president, whether you like him or not.
43:34We deserve our CIA to be apolitical, and we deserve to hire people who are just there to make this
43:41country better no matter what.
43:43As far as I can tell, there are still a lot of problems in the agency in terms of our
43:47lack of knowledge and understanding of foreign cultures.
43:50And so whenever somebody tells me, I want to be like you, I want to work for the CIA, they
43:56go, what do I need to do to do that?
43:57I'm like, well, you better become an expert in some part of the world that is important to us that's
44:04showing up in the headlines every day.
44:06It's not a mystery.
44:08I'm like, are you a Middle East expert?
44:10Are you a China expert?
44:12Are you a Russia expert?
44:13Are you a cyber expert?
44:15Like, these are the things that clearly that we need.
44:17We don't have enough people who understand Chinese culture.
44:21And we have far more Chinese operations going on against us in the United States than we have enough FBI
44:29agents to pursue.
44:30The world has changed since I was a student, and so it's gotten a lot more challenging to study abroad.
44:37Because I'll tell you, one of the things that I would have never thought about but I think about now
44:42for young people is the potential of being recruited or developed by a foreign intelligence service when you're studying abroad.
44:49China has a program to bring American business people to China, and this whole program is meant to turn them
44:59into sources of information.
45:01And American business men and women think, I have a free trip to China, and look at all these people
45:06who are being so nice to me.
45:07It's a whole recruitment initiative.
45:09There are some people who are working as sources to the Chinese government that don't even realize their sources because
45:16they don't necessarily go through a formal recruitment process like we do in the agency.
45:21They will just keep asking you for more and more sensitive information.
45:25So it's, they get you comfortable with handing over information as an expert in your field, and then they start
45:34paying you for your trouble, your time to write the report.
45:38They're pretty aggressive.
45:39They do this pretty fast.
45:40People have money problems, and they have to send kids to college, and they have sick, you know, the idea
45:45that as an intelligence officer will find out what is your, what is your need.
45:52And they'll try to plan that.
45:54Joseph and I actually saw what we thought were Chinese operatives in a Cocoa Beach bar working the room the
46:03way we used to work the room as intelligence officers abroad.
46:06The Space Coast of Florida is a target-rich environment that doesn't feel like a target-rich environment.
46:11It's where a lot of people go to retire.
46:14There's a lot of families there.
46:15Our Space Coast holds Blue Origin and SpaceX and NASA and propulsion and technology and engineering and all kinds of
46:26flight engineering, and we have a launch probably once a week that, you know, shakes my house every time it
46:32goes up.
46:32So we have engineers and people involved in secret developmental efforts that cost billions of dollars for our companies, and
46:41the Chinese have operatives crawling up and down the Space Coast, South Florida, CENTCOM on the West Coast.
46:49Generally, when we catch them, we just send them back to China.
46:52So we haven't made it dangerous for them to do this work here.
46:57Our democracy makes it very easy for other foreign intelligence services to operate here with impunity.