-The CIA or Central Intelligence Agency,
is a foreign intelligence service of the U S government tasked with gathering,
processing and analyzing national security information from around the world,
such as examining satellite imagery to monitor potentially threatening activity,
deciphering coded messages from other countries and developing disguise tactics
to blend in during undercover operations. In 1947, President Truman signed
the National Security Act, which officially created a permanent Central
Intelligence Agency for the country with about 200 officers in the service. It's been estimated that today the CIA has
roughly 30,000 to 40,000 employees with the budget upwards of almost $11 billion. My name is Anthony Padilla and today
I'm going to be sitting down with former CIA agents to learn the truth about this
highly elusive and secretive line of work. Do these ex-CIA agents enjoy the
responsibility of guarding highly sensitive top secret information,
or do they find themselves tormented by the sheer amount
of dark and disturbing knowledge they've been forced to internalize? Hello, Michelle. -Hi, Anthony. Jason. Jonna. -Hi, Anthony. -Thank you so much for coming on here and
teaching me about the world of CIA agents. -Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. -What do you consider yourself? A former CIA agent, someone who
possesses top secret knowledge? -Former intelligence officer. -Intelligence officer, even though
CIA agent sounds a little bit cooler. -It does sound cooler, unfortunately,
we don't use those terms in the CIA. -That sounds sexier, but I
just go by former CIA officer. -Former intelligence officer. -How long were you in the
CIA and what was your role? -I was in the CIA for 10 years. My specific role in the CIA is called
a CMO or collection management officer. -It sounds like it has to do with
taxes, but I'm guessing it doesn't. -Thank God, not taxes. -I was there from 2003 to 2010. I was in the surveillance
protection security type of arena. You might be running surveillance
on a person, you might be running counter surveillance. You're making sure that nobody's
watching the person who others are watching personal security type of work. Again, let's say there's a high value
target, protecting them, protecting assets, making sure they're safe. -High value target being a human being. -Yes. Yes. Being a person, correct. -I'm not used to hearing human beings
is talked about as a high value target. -In the 27 years, I was for a while a
secretary, I became a disguise officer and eventually the chief of disguise. It was so many different things, but
it allowed our case officers to go out in the world and do their work. It protected them. -What kinds of things would
you do to help disguise people? -You might want to actually change
everything, change your clothes, change your cologne, change the cigarettes
you smoke change where you wore your wedding ring, but it was often
useful to blend in wherever you were. -Do you remember what your first
mission was that you ever went on? -I went to Europe and I met with an
agent of ours who was from the far East. I met him at a Hilton Hotel in London,
and we'd given him a tiny camera, a camera that would fit inside of a Sharpie. It's a film camera. -A film camera in a Sharpie? -It was about this big and inside
that camera was a film cartridge. It's about big. The man said, "I don't think there's
enough light in my office to use this. I kept turning off the lights in the
hotel room until it was almost pitch black and taking pictures and then I went
in the bathroom and set up a dark room and developed the film and came out and
showed him the film we had just shot. He said, "Oh, well, I have
more light than that." If you had your camera and you're
taking pictures at your desk of the agenda of the meeting and your boss
walks out, it's still worked as a pen, so you can make a note, stick it in
your pocket and go to lunch with it. -You're just sneaking
pictures the whole time? -Yes. -All my postings, I can only mention that
I've been to Iraq for a year, to Baghdad. -Okay. The rest are still classified. -We fly in after 36 hours and we're
arriving on what looks like the moon. -Very different than what
you're used to in the US. -It was a moment of total fear. That two years was a place
that's one of the carjacking and kidnapping capitols of the world. It was a very dangerous tour and we
spent two years constantly looking over our shoulders for hostile surveillance
or somebody holding an RPG or an AK47. -That's how common it was. -They all had weapons
slung over their shoulders. -Did you have to keep it a secret when
you were going out on these missions? -We could tell our family and friends,
but the CIA is very clear on, like, "You can only share this secret with
people you know can keep the secret." If your mom's going to be so proud, she's
going to call all her friends on the phone and tell them probably on the phone. -Basically, if you mom's the type of
mom that puts a bumper sticker on her car, that says, "My child is an honor
student," but probably don't tell her. -That's right. There were a few members of my
family that I couldn't tell. -We kept a little book inside of the
front door because he also traveled for his job, his CIA job, and we
would leave notes, "Heading South, I'll bring you back to the parmesan." -That was almost a little
hint about where he was going. -It was food code. -I could share with my immediate family,
but the problem was is when you're single, it's not like you can go on a
date and start hitting on a girl and be like, "Hey baby, I worked for the CIA." -It might work but you can't do it. -Exactly. You're supposed to be
very plain and boring. -That guy that these people are going on
dates with where they come out and they're like, "Wow, that was a very plain man." It's likely very small percentage, at
least that you could be in the CIA. -Very small percentage, but yes. -You're telling me there are
actually just really, really, really plain people out there. -Unfortunately,so, and I
pretended to be one of them. -But it was all pretend not plain at all? -Kind of. I don't know. -Before we continue learning about
the world of former CIA agents. -They would shoot 3, 6,
9, 12 rockets at a time. The earth shakes when it lands near
you and the sound of the explosion and the smell of burning things
in the air and then the sweat, because it's 130 degrees outside. -I'm happy to announce that
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of former CIA agents. How often do CIA agents and officers go
undercover and were you ever in serious danger or close to being exposed? -My whole career was undercover. We had always used masks, stunt
double masks, like Hollywood. Then we had a category of
masks that were very effective. They all had beards because that's
how you would hide the edge, but you could change the ethnicity of anybody
with gloves, and you could turn men into women and women into men. We made an animated
mask, which was so good. It's so good that I was asked to go
to the white house and show it to the president, but I ended up wearing the
face of a young woman who works for me. This was the president, George H. W. Bush. I briefed him. I said, now it's so much better. I want to show you what we've got. He's looking around my chair and I
said, "Well, I'm wearing it, but here I'm going to take off and show you." I started to do the Tom cruise peel. Pretty cool. -You blew everyone away at that moment. They had no idea how good your disguises
had actually gotten at that point. -When we were in the oval office, there
was a photographer just circling the room. I was holding it up for him to see
and they airbrushed the mask out of my hand, in the picture they sent
me and it looks like I'm lecturing the president of the United States. -Did they have to airbrush it
out because that was evidence of how good the disguise had become. -It was classified for many,
many years that we could do that. -What's your most memorable CIA story? -There's a very bad drug lord in a
country, that's not in the United States. -Classified. -The government wants to get
this drug lord off the streets. Well, he's always surrounded by
bodyguards with a bunch of guns. What happened is he was very routine,
meaning he did the same thing every day. He parked at this big intersection every
day to go in into one of his clubs. There were agency people. It a big intersection going like
this and they staged a fake car crash as soon as he got out of his car. The drug lord and all his guys ran into
the street to see what was going on and then a lot of other people jumped
out from behind, put some hoods over their heads, made a vantage and that
drug lord can hurt people no more. -Okay then. What got him in trouble was following
routines, which is boring and also not paying attention to his surroundings
because he was being distracted by the possibility of a loss of a human life. -That's exactly it. Be careful of the distraction. -What is your most bizarre situation
that you found yourself in the CIA? -One is the time that I thought
I was getting carjacked. I was driving by myself in to work. I was stopped at a stoplight and a
man was crossing in front of me and he stopped because he saw I was not covered. He started carrying out a very Harvey
Weinstein thing in the middle of the road. -Seeing the face, a very taboo thing,
which invites unwanted solicitation. -Then came from every direction
to see what was causing this. Not what was he doing, but
what was I doing to cause this. My car was being surrounded and
basically I had to use my ambush training that the CIA had taught us. Like you can not get taken so you
can always use your car as a weapon. That day I had to use my car
to hit this guy to move, so I wouldn't be surrounded and taken. -You just floored it. -I didn't have to floor it. I just had to hit him a couple times. -A couple times you go to back up and
go back and forward a couple of times. Was it like a--? -It hit him the first time, he fell. He was shocked. He's like, "I can't believe
you did that to me." -You're both in shock at that point. -Because I didn't think about my
training just kicked in, thank God. He got right back up and started. -You didn't have to back up, he
gave you room to hit him again. -Yes, I was like, "I will
hit you a second time. I'll run you over," and screaming in
English and I'm screaming in Arabic. Finally I hit him the second time and
then he saw how very, very serious I was and he finally got out of the way
and I just blew through the stop sign. -How many people were surrounding
your car, by the time that you actually were able to escape? -Several hundreds. -Several hundreds,
there was a full-on mob. -Mob.
They're mobs. -They were carrying
RPGs at that point too. -AKs, AK-47s, machine guns. It's good to laugh now
in the moment, boy, ooh. -How dangerous would these missions get? -The Shia insurgents were shooting rockets
into the green zone at us and they got really good at honing in on their targets. Thankfully, we had an
early warning system. The siren would go off and it
would go [makes siren sounds] incoming, incoming, incoming. That gave you like about up to
four seconds to get into a bunker. They would shoot 3, 6,
9, 12 rockets at a time. You're like in the bunker, you're like
praying and the stuffs landing all around you and the earth shakes when
it lands near you and the sound of the explosion and the smell of burning
things in the air and then the sweat because it's 130 degrees outside. You just think of all of these things. You're like, "Well, you can't
tell that from the movies." -That's what's going through
your mind at that moment. This is even worse than
the movies make it seem. -It was like every afternoon. Why the afternoon? I don't know. They drank tea and then
they went and shot rockets. -Yes, that's when everyone's loosened
u ready to fire off some rockets. Did your personal beliefs or morals ever
contradict with your missions in the CIA? -The CIA at large never asked me to do
anything that I found problematic from a moral or ethical or religious viewpoint. Now I worked with a couple of people
who had a lack of morals and who were trying to do things that were not okay. There were some very difficult
moments where my husband and I had to make a decision to not do
something a boss had told him to do. -Maybe not on like a CIA systemic level,
but more of a personal level where someone's telling you to do something
that fits their personal desires? -Yes, I was going to make him look
good and he was changing intelligence. He was rewriting what actually happened
in the meeting and my husband was there and he's like, "That's not what happened." -Any position that can give someone
power and the ability to acquire more power, there will be corruption. I feel like that's just a fact, no
matter which area, which type of person, which field, which part of the world. -That's absolutely true. -Now that you're out of the CIA,
do you still feel the need to be on guard and alert and watch over
your shoulder at every given moment or have you been able to separate
yourself from that part of your life? -It's so natural now that you just do
it, it doesn't take a lot of effort. My address is not anywhere like you
couldn't find my home if you tried. Just because I don't own my home. It's an LLC it's wrapped in trust. My address is not in document. I'm still making sure that
my privacy is taken care of. -Is that why there are no windows behind
you to be seen with your very clear location behind you out the window? -I have a good friend of mine who's an
FBI agent and he was going to come try and visit me once, and I was like, "I
don't give out my address to anybody." He said, "I can just find you." He went through everything
couldn't find my address. Finally he called me when he's close
by in my town, I was like, "All right, here's how you get to my house." -You drive for three minutes, you see
the tree on the right, when you've counted the tree with the three
apples, you know you've gone some far. -Precisely you read the email. -The one thing that you can ever
turn off is reading other people, just because when you deal with so
many people who lie and fabricate and embellish so many bad sources. The worst of the human condition,
I don't trust people very easily. I assume everybody's lying to
me until I can prove otherwise. -Guilty until proven innocent. Were there any shocking takeaways
or realizations that you've had since leaving the CIA? -How many spies are in the United
States, Chinese spies are everywhere. They're in our government
and our universities. China is our biggest adversary. They're the ones that are
flooding more spies in the United States than anybody else. Then of course there's Russia,
Cuba is very good at what they do, especially the Cuban women. If you ever run into
Cuban woman, be careful. They will slit your throat in a heartbeat. I'm not kidding. -Woah. You hear that every Cuban woman
watching who will not slit your throat, maybe it will. -If they worked for Cuban
government, if they're Cuban spies. -Are there any conspiracy theories
circulating out there that are closer to the truth than most people might think? -The only thing that comes to mind
because a lot of the conspiracy there is of course totally wacko. I can tell you what the
deep state actually is. Again, it's not super sexy. It's not people appointed by
the president, it's not people appointed by the government. It is career employees and various
government agencies pick your agency, whatever it is, who are trying to change
things because they hate what's going on. Whatever political party you're affiliated
with that are trying to screw them. It's not some like huge conspiracy
theory where there's guys meeting in a basement and a bunch of billionaires
because the billionaires don't hide it. They fund whatever they want. That's no secret, but when everybody
thinks there's like this secret society and the government who
like, again meets in the basement. -Yes, it's painted to be like
the Illuminati or something. -They're in there, meaning they've
been in that same position so long, they're not a political employee who's
going to get fired easily and so what allows them to, "Get away with murder." -In the age of nearly every website or app
that we interact with on a daily basis, gaining access to our personal data and
being able to use that, however they wish, are there any things that you utilize
in your daily life that help ensure your privacy and your data remains secure? -I have a flip phone. I have a other smartphone. -Retro. -Yes, I've never sent a
text message in my life. Don't text me. -No rare find, man. Someone that knows how to use a webcam,
but has never sent a-- That's like a combination that you don't think exist. -I use a VPN, virtual private
network whenever I'm on the internet so that it encrypts everything. -That's our sponsor. That's our sponsor for today's video. -Wonderful, you're doing the right thing. -Wow, what a great segue. Are there any tips that you
learned in the CIA that you utilize in your head everyday life? -I just do, you know, little things
like, and this is not tech things, but making sure I'm not being followed home. If you want to know if you're
being followed, go around the block, if that car is still
behind you, you're being followed. -It's that easy. -It's called a surveillance
detection route. -In other words, a circle. -If you're a spying, let's
say you're going to a meeting. You're not just going to get in your car
from your apartment and go straight to McDonald's, if that's where the meaning
is, you're going to go to Starbucks and you're going to get a Walmart,
then you're going to go Home Depot, then you're going to go to the meeting. If you see the same car, same people
everywhere then you know to abort that and not go to the meeting. -You had to learn a lot about detecting
lies while in the CIA, do you have any tips for people watching for how to
detect a lie or for how to lie better? -Establish what is their baseline. You have to be able to have a very
nonchalant and good conversation with them before you get to the tough questions. Then when you ask what you think
might be problematic or might be an area in which they lie, then you
see if their body language changes. It creates energy. And so that energy has to spill off
their body in some way, shape or form. You will see them react. If I am totally comfortable in
a sudden, suddenly I go like this, that's an indicator. -It's a natural human response when
you're lying for the most part, for most people, for that stress, that
energy to a need to escape in some way, or try to escape in some way. -Their posture will change. They'll keep scooting
around on their seats. If a man's wearing a collar, I've
dealt with so many sources like this, they started lying to me and
they started pulling tugging on their collar like it's choking them. In our line of work, we call
that the hangman's noose. -They know when it's happening. Well, they don't know when it's happening,
their body knows what's happening. There you go, a few tips to
detect when someone's lying to you or to know how to lie better. Andy wants to know how accurate the
theory is that the CIA and FBI can spy on us through our webcams at any moment. -If they wanted to, yes,
they could, but they don't. The agency is only dealing overseas. It's not spying on US citizens. The FBI is the one if you're
doing something bad they'll spy on you, but it is possible. -You better cover up. Just get a little piece of tape. Put over your webcam. It's not that hard. -Mine is right here. As soon as we're done, mine goes
back over, a piece of duct tape. -Even the CIA agents use
a piece of duct tape. You can, too. -See? This is my piece of tape right here. -How do you feel about the way
CIA agents and officers are depicted in movies and TV shows? -Most of the shows show that
physical activity and the kicking and hitting people and running and all
kinds of you're driving fast cars. Most of the time, it's a
psychological game that we play. I think it's hard to depict in a movie
what our real life is like, and it day in and day out of keeping your cover and
how much time is spent behind a computer. That's the stuff you can't see. -A lot of your time is spent
just like the rest of us with the blue screen shining into your
eyeballs and burning your retinas. -That's correct. -Why do you think the CIA is
historically so male dominated? -It's a good question, because I'll
tell you that women make the best spies. -Why is that? -Because they blend in,
nobody expects them. If you're in a foreign country,
everybody thinks every American male who gets off a plane works for the CIA. Women can get away with more, extract
more because people let their guard down or are more trusting towards them. -It's 2002. I start training. We had a mentor, one mentor for every two
students during that tradecraft training. Mmy colleague named Adam, he and
I were paired with this retired gentleman who was like a CIA
superstar and he couldn't look at me. -Just because you're a woman. -For two months, he would walk into our
little student office and he would talk to Adam and then Adam dropped out of
training, so imagine how awkward it got. -Oh boy. He had to interact with you at this point. -My mentor came in and he was all slumped
over and he actually said, "Michelle, I don't know quite what to say, but I
just don't know what to do with you." -That sounds like a personal
problem, a lot more than something that has to do with you. -He said, "I'm just not used to women
being involved in operations and you tell me you want to go to the
Middle East and do counter-terrorism. Look at you. You're smiling. You're friendly. You're cute. Like you're never going to
be able to do this job." -Of course it has to do with
your looks and how cute you are. -Instead they put me in a different job. They're like, "Let your
husband do that other job." 2002. - Yikes. Do you think it's gotten
much better at this point? -I think it's probably gotten
better, but I feel like a lot of it's probably window dressing. There are a lot of entrenched attitudes
about women, what they're capable of in hard places like the Middle East. I feel like I've proved
that that's not the case. It's your intellect that matters. It's your experience that matters. It's your linguistic
capabilities that matter. That's what you want to be judged on. You don't want to be judged
on your gender, but what you're bringing to the table. -All right. You got five seconds to shout
out or promote anything you want directly into camera. -This newest book, <i>The Moscow Rules</i> can
be found along with a bunch of other stuff on our website, themasterofdisguise.com. -If you want more inspiration,
read my book <i>Breaking Cover</i>. -I want to give your friends a free copy
of my <i>New York Times</i> bestselling book. It's about spine survival
secrets and safety secrets. Just go to freespyhero.com
and they can get the book. -You got free stuff on our show. We got free stuff. Thank you. -All right guys. He's legit. Go subscribe to Anthony's
channels worth it. -I am legit. Did you do a background check on me? -I will neither confirm nor deny
that I ran a background check on you. -Thank you so much, Michelle. I feel like I understand the
world of being a former CIA agent just a little bit more. -It was really fun.
That was so great. Thank you so much. -After spending the day with
these former CIA agents. I've come to understand that as much as
people glamorize their field of work these operatives have truly sacrificed the part
of themselves for their former job and for the perceived safety of their country. See you later, bye guys. -Press the like. [music] -Did any of that have any effects
on your emotional wellbeing? -What are these things called
emotions you talked about again? -Emotions never heard of them. -Now you're going to like
dig me in a hole here. -Your emotions are like a light switch. -Yes, you're like a chameleon in a way. That's a simple way to put it. -That is a skill I wish I could have.
