We'll start with my favorite part Good evening and welcome to the Commonwealth Club of California I'm John Diaz the editorial page editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and I'm going to be moderating tonight's discussion Joining me on stage is Johnny Mendez a retired CIA officer with 25 years of service Jonna is the former chief of disguise at the CIA. We'll get into that a little later what that is uh, and She's also a author of three books a fine arts photographer a lecturer and a consultant in many ways on intelligence matters She is also the co-author of the new book The Moscow rules the secret CIA tactics that helped America win the Cold War her book charts the most exciting parts of being a CIA agent during the Cold War from Hollywood inspired identity swaps to an armory of James Bond style gadgets Jonna and narrates in this book her role in developing instrumental tactics that allowed CIA officers to outmaneuver the KGB It's co-written with her late husband Tony also a former longtime CIA agent this book is a fascinating and remarkable tribute to those who risk their lives to serve their country and the ingenuity that allowed them to succeed Ladies and gentlemen, please give a Commonwealth club welcome to Jonna Mendez Jonna it's great to be here with you tonight. I have to ask you know You and your uh late husband Tony employed your spy craft really in the depths of the Cold War when uh in the Soviet Union whenever it was almost impenetrable for an American to be there Let alone be a spy there, you know, the Soviets certainly would be tracking anybody who was an American regardless of why they were there How did you get started? well You start where you enter the scene and you see what you can do while you're you know While you're present on that stage, you're right, by the way your introduction I really wish someone would write it down because I like the way you said that, all of it very very very much I will email it to you You know the the book starts the real meat of the book starts in 1963 with the case that we that we had a man stepped forward a Russian and said I want to help the United States I want to help the West and we were actually we didn't have any equipment or any tradecraft to deal with him We we had no tools to offer him We had no no ideas about how to keep him safe if he was going to work with us So we did the obvious. We went to our British cousins Who had been spying forever and we partnered with him we ran that case jointly as the man's name was Penkovsky and he he worked for us for 18 months and um And was arrested and was executed and that's that's the career trajectory in Moscow if you're working with the West It's it's like it's written in stone the book talks about Using that as a beginning what we did about it and the office that we were in was the the queue of CIA we were like the Mission Impossible guys it was our our audio people were the third story men who could go up and use Sherpa ropes and in an urban environment like San Francisco, they could plant a bug anywhere they could We could disguise anyone we could give you a new identity. If you need we had physicists and chemists and engineers working with us Supporting operations. The book is the Ark of the the story in the book is how we went from this Very low capacity and an inability to help these people work with us To the other extreme where we were able to provide them with just incredibly sophisticated equipment and techniques But there's another trajectory in the story and that is that these Soviet Russian agents that worked for us would work for us for a period of time and would be betrayed by someone and would be arrested and would be executed So there are kind of these two stories going on at the same time I can imagine one of the hard part of being a Spy in a hostile place like the Soviet Union is how do you figure out who is potentially an asset for the United States? And who the Russians may be sending? I think the term of art is dangles people Who are they send out so that they can figure out whether you're a spy kind of like this spy versus spy for those who read in that magazine in their Tony Mendez read meant magnet, so did I That was always an issue Dangles were also known as double agents and the Russians like to send them to us They would pretend that they wanted to work with us but they didn't they just wanted to see what we needed to know because that would Be of great interest to them. We had a man working at CIA named James Jesus Angleton famous famous character almost he was almost a Caricature of himself. He looked kind of like a grasshopper He was a skinny pale tall thin man with glasses This big before that was cool He raised orchids He had all these funny hobbies He was a fly fisherman and he was our chief of counterintelligence for 20-some years His job was to find the dangles So he ended up believing that everyone was a dangle and Basically shut down our Soviet East European operations for a period of time. Everyone was suspect. He had a theory That was he was Paranoid it appears. It was actually a big big problem it took Richard Helms And Bill Colby were the two DC eyes that finally got him out of there, but he almost shut down operations That idea that you always have to vet people you have to test them You have to check their bona fides You have to make sure that they are who they say they are and then you have to see that they give you actionable intelligence Because the dangle will give you all kinds of bits and pieces but he won't give you actionable intelligence They would not allow that so there was a methodology to tracking them down, but Angleton just wanted to declare everyone Including Penkovsky that first agent that I told you about he said, oh he was he was a double agent You know I I would think that one of the challenges is not only figuring out who might be announced that but once somebody becomes an asset I big part of your job is protecting them because as you mentioned If they're discovered That's in a best-case scenario. They're in the gulag Worst case scenario probably more common scenario. They're executing the worst case scenario was a rumor That was always floating around that Some of them that were caught and arrested That they were not Executed but that they were tied onto stretchers and fed feet-first into the fires of a crematorium no one ever knew whether to believe that we thought that was a KGB generated myth to keep their people from working with West But it was always out there Now you served as the CIA's chief of disguise Again job title in the agency's office of technical services now chief of disguise who knew there was such I've never seen that on anyone's from me And I want to ask you about some of the techniques that you used And how they've advanced over the years. I mean it goes way beyond fake beards wigs Masks or a fake fake ears. I mean this is not something that you can go buy at the Halloween superstore. No Where do you come up with this stuff? And and how is it advanced? You know we call the the basic the basic elements that you're talking about wigs and and facial hair glasses fake tattoos all the little piercings things that you can do to make a person Transform a person that's what we would call traditional disguise. But the interesting part I thought came along with advanced disguise And that was a whole different category of work. That's where we did get some chemists involved. We got some people out in Hollywood involved we got We had worked very closely with a man named John Chambers and in our first three books we couldn't even say his name now They let us say his name. He's been dead for 20 years But he never would have minded if we said his name but the CIA did John Chambers Did the work on the Planet of the Apes movies? Which was a breakthrough back then he had those those masks the ape-like Masks that were really fitted around the eyes really fitted around the mouth. They did animate we were Intrigued with that Tony Mendez was very very interested in that He worked with John Chambers On a movie called the island of dr. Moreau, which was supposed to have been just a terrible movie But the work that John Chambers did turning people into monsters was supposed to be incredible You know chambers ended up getting an Academy Award for his makeup work. It was the first one So Tony was out there. He wasn't working on the movie He was working with John Chambers learning how you make a mask that can fit like that and can animate like that He brought that technology back to CIA And we started working with our first mask technology not beautiful gorgeous things that they turned into but these were initially Stunt double masks. That's what they started out as you know The ones that the they take the star off the horse and they put the stunt guy on the horse with the mask on There were three sizes large medium and small Large was Rex Harrison. I Cannot remember medium and small but everybody wants to know so I'm gonna go back to our papers and find them they were three three known movie stars and You could make their stunt double mask with aluminum molds, and we did that. So we end up with a latex Replica of Rex Harrison's face and then we could turn him into anything We could turn him into a South Indian We could turn him into an African American just by the way, we finished it the hair goods. We applied we could turn him into a woman not very pretty a Female That's where our advanced techniques began Then we went back to LA because Tony had always been interested in me and magic since he was a kid. Yeah, there was a There was a popular magazine when he was a kid the boy the boy mechanic I think it was called lots of tricks lots of stuff like magic tricks and and so Tony started pursuing that out in Hollywood and it led to some really interesting things that we did I understand that the Hollywood techniques Which worked there don't always necessarily work in the field for spies. Yeah true For example, I was reading where you were talking about the mask that That the Hollywood makes the mask out of latex. And if you're a spy and in a humid climate, that doesn't work so well How'd you get around that? If you're wearing one of those and it's a really hot and humid day It's like being underwater You just there's nowhere for any Perspiration to go your skin can't even breathe. They're fine in an air-conditioned car. They're fine in an indoor environment So we that's how we use them to Do something that could be more easily more comfortably worn. We had to go to completely different materials We had chemists working in chemistry labs coming up with various concoctions and we try it out and see if it was comfortable and See if it would wear well and see if it could collapse into nothing So if you had to take it off and stick it in your armpit, it would it would do that We had a lot of things we needed for it to do and we went through a lot of materials to find To find the ones that we that we finally used. Oh How convincing are these I mean how close can you get to somebody who's wearing one of these masking and not detective I? Wore one to the White House. I Went to the the White House with Judge Bill Webster who was head of CIA at the time We didn't mean to take it to the White House. We had no idea we would do that But I this was a new product and I was chief of disguise. So I got the first one it turned me into a Much younger rather pretty Can you tell it I liked it I was going to ask if you're wearing one tonight It wouldn't look like this. I I told him when I retired they said, you know Was there any any regret that I had I said? I regret that that mask is in a box in the archives CIA because it only fits me but anyway I took it to judge Webster a head of CIA and he said this is Great or going to the White House. Now the first one I was an African American man And it did look great, but I couldn't well I couldn't go into the White House I couldn't talk it it didn't work, you know many levels it didn't work, but it looked good So he said make another one then I became the pretty girl so I went to judge Webster's house in the morning in true face and His little dog was at the door and they did a little dog it's just barking at me and didn't like me at all and I went in the powder room and I You know what they say about dogs with hats that dogs don't like hats I thought oh god, this dog isn't going to kill me when I walk out wearing a mask. The dog will love me Dog wouldn't leave me alone so, um we went to the White House and we Were outside the Oval Office and there was a meeting going on in the Oval Office and it was going along Now even if you're chief of disguise there's a little paranoia when you wear the first new anything when you're of something you haven't tried out and probably so I'm a little nervous and everybody's laughing telling jokes and Finally we went in and I was the first one to brief. It was President George HW Bush and in that room was Brent Scowcroft John Sununu The judge was there Bob gates was there. He was national security adviser then it was just a little ring of people around the the desk so I went first I was gonna leave first I Told the president I had brought him pictures when we made disguises for him when he was at CIA So I showed him to make my tens of him I said But we've gotten a lot better and I'm here to show you the the latest thing and he said well show me he's looking like what you got a bag somewhere it show me and I said, okay, and I I Did that thing that Tom Cruise thing? I just bailed it off He loved it John Sununu who's next to me Not paying any attention Because he's making notes or changing notes because he's gonna go next and he's got some things to say to the president Almost fell out of his chair He was kind of a big man. Anyway, and there's a White House photographer circling the room catching jingjing, she must be in there always or he So I'm we finished and I left I was holding up the mask at one time just to show the president I was just kind of dangling it and then then when I was done I left and The photographer came out to the secretary's office where that dog Millie and the puppies where they were we were playing with him And she said what did you do? What was that? And I said I can't tell you It's classified So 10 years later, they sent me the picture 10 years and they never brush the mask out So this hangs in our librarians people say, you know, that's what were you saying to him What were you you're in front of the president with you? So the Secret Service did not Ask at the at the gate why your picture on your driver's license did not match. I didn't have it I don't think I haven't had a person I did not have a piece of paper. That's That's the old days. I think it's tightened up a little bit since yeah a bit Yeah, you see commercial possibilities for this. I could see people wanting to buy these masks for their class reunions That's a really good idea That'll be your next million. You know, we do have one of our former employees Works with people who are damaged he worked with a lot of the 9/11 people people that lost ears People that lost noses and he can it's called anaplastologist On his work with us he can rebuild Years, and he has dress ears with diamonds in the studs And then your everyday ears with hoops sounds funny, but it's changing people's lives I understand that you had a little test at the CIA where you would send an agent into the Cafeteria. Oh, yeah everybody knew him or her yeah in disguise and and that would be a good way to test to see how Detectable it was with a light thing. Tell us about that a test was for him We would we would have our officers before they'd go overseas They would come to us and we figure out what they needed and we order it and we get it all Ready and just like getting a suit made We have a final fitting make sure everything was right and at the final fitting I would say so you feel comfortable Is this gonna work for you? They'd say yeah. Yeah. Well, this is for the men Because we knew that the men Didn't want to wear disguise to begin with and we thought that they would probably put it in the top kit stick it in their Safe door and never take it out Unless we showed them that it worked so we get them they were all in it and we'd say okay go to lunch. Come back Or go to 7-eleven buy me buy me something go we'd sent on a mission and they go out in their disguise Everyone's the same the first time you walk in a store. You're sure they're gonna think you're shoplifting I mean people are just nervous and they come back saying You know what? I said next to my boss and he didn't know who I was or whatever and Then we thought we had a good chance that they would use it if they needed it So did the bad guys have this? Technology as well. I mean, could they possibly get into the White House? No Nobody has that technology because nobody else needs it It's really a big research and development program to build the capability to do those faces We it was the only way we could get to work in Moscow I mean it was the only way we could step away from surveillance is if we could Convincingly it look like someone else The Russians that are in the United States thinner they don't need any of that I mean they're they don't have 24 hour a day, you know seven day a week surveillance on them They can do their work for easily in the open. I'm sorry to say we Should work on that? interesting So what does it take? What are the characteristics that it takes? There might be folks in our audience tonight who are interested in being a clandestine CIA agent What are some of the characteristics said to make a successful spy? It might be one or two of them in this room that I've spoken to over over the years What we recruit for it is a type and I'm talking about the classic operations officer But there are many many jobs at CIA. There are analytical jobs. There are Administrative jobs. There's a lot of people and a lot of work but the operational jobs The case officers that are going to go out into the world and find Someone like you or you or you and convince you to betray your government and to work with the United States government To work against your own government. That's a tall order So we are looking for people with extremely good interpersonal skills we're looking for people who are typically extroverted who are self-starters who are world travelers who are curious and Interested in what's going on in the world? It's it's a It's a character type these these larger-than-life personalities. That's we have to find them Because we can't create them We can teach them a lot of things we can teach them area knowledge We can teach them language and where they're going. We can teach them a Lot of the skills that they will need, but we have to get that initial personality to begin with We don't want people who are just out of school. We want people with with life experience We love people who have traveled We love people who have mastered languages maybe more than one language and the more exotic the language the more interested. We are in them We we have I understand I was in was in three weeks ago we went in they presented my husband Tony with with a post-mortem this incredible letter with medals and Stuff on it and I was talking to the woman who's running the director of Science and Technology That's the number four job at the agency. I said, you know, do you get a lot of applications you get enough? She said we get about 50,000 a year So they're okay on applications. What Tony and I were we were always looking for people We were always trying to up the quality of the of the applications when we talked so you would actually be recruiting not only assets but spies for the Americans We have been approached by a number of people when we talk to a group like this. Someone will come up afterwards and Want to know how do you submit a resume, you know? Can I send you a resume? Will you Tony Mendez or Johnny? Will you look at my resume and tell me if? If it makes sense if they would be interested and we're always glad to do that we know that a couple of people have come in because because of that Here's an interesting question from the audience and that's about facial recognition technology Has that in any way complicated these masks or ability to disguise oneself. I mean can the technology? Pick up somebody who's not really they present themselves as that's a good question. Whoever whoever wrote it Facial recognition came in to CIA through at one of our DC eyes Bill Casey and he had seen a James Bond movie Goldfinger And he called Tony Mendez and he said can we do that? And Tony said I don't think so In case he said well, let's let's get some people on it. So Tony sent it off to Department of Army Research the advanced group called DARPA and kind of Kissed a goodbye about ten years later National Geographic did a double-page spread of my husband's little thumbnails they call in there were 64 pictures of my husband trying to defeat the state of the art of facial recognition at the time with nothing more than some cotton balls and a cigar and a goofy mustache and a hat glasses just basic everyday stuff 84% of the time he could beat it because back then we knew kind of the algorithms We knew what they were working from me that would the set of the ears the distance from the outer corner to the outer corner all these Configurations. That was then I Think now I think it's gotten really good China in particular has really advanced facial recognition. I think it's gotten really good. And I think people are Paying attention to that Here's not as question that it there's a common perception That the CIA now relies more on technology and less on human assets. What's your perspective on that? toward the end of the book that that I'm here to talk to you about I quote Gina Haspel our current female director of CIA That's two fairly senior CIA women. I'm pointing out. Although I'm not a feminist Gina Haskell says there will always be a need for what we call humans for human intelligence There will always be a need for person-to-person To look people in the eye to give them the courage to go and do what needs to be done Technology is there and it will always be there too, but you can never eliminate the human We had a previous head of CIA Stansfield Turner who didn't trust the the human element He thought all spies people that would betray their country to work with us. They must be bad guys so we could not trust them He wanted it all to be satellites. He wanted it all to be technologically oriented and It doesn't it doesn't work. You have to have people always always well What is your your view of what Stansfield Turner was saying about someone who's gonna betray their country? What do you think motivates people? You know, you've been all over the world you've been in in Asia you've been in Europe you've been in Cuba What would compel somebody to turn on their country in that way? We do they perceive it is that they're turning down their country? We've looked at that closely and there's a there's an acronym that we use in in the intelligence community And it's it's M IC e mice It's it's the motivators the primary motivators that cause people to spy or that they attribute their spine to its money Ideology compromise an ego and It's kind of interesting because it's changed right now Since since the end of World War two the Americans that have been spied that have committed treason The despite against the United States government have pretty much done it for money Not pretty much almost exclusively. They need money. They want money. That's what drives them before the war They would do the same thing for ideology. They were interested in the Soviet Union They thought maybe that was a recipe for something interesting and they were supporting the Soviet Union from an ideological point of view Ideology is the second motivator and that is most of our Russian assets that work with the United States Intelligence community do it for ideology the very best of the best. We don't even recruit them They volunteer like that pink offski. Like the first guy talked about we didn't go looking for him. He came looking for us He wanted to work with us. So That's money ideology compromise Compromise is not a very good motivator compromise Usually results in somebody wanting whatever it is going on to stop. Maybe they're being blackmailed It used to be maybe they were homosexual because that that was a very powerful problem and then ego is the big the big basket at the end of the whole thing because it's everything from Being irate at your office to being ticked off at your boss to being mad at your wife to being Considered you know, you think people don't think you're good enough Thousand things fall into that last basket. That was Bob Hansen the FBI guy He all of his colleagues all of his colleagues were getting promoted and he was not So he decided to show them just how good he was at what he did and he gave away More secrets to the Soviet Union than anybody else. He was a human wrecking ball When they arrested him it was his own FBI that arrested him an FBI officer when they were putting the cuffs on him He said what took you so long like like You know, you should have found me ten years ago, but you didn't did you anyway Tell us a little bit about your motivation and a question for the audience. Why did you want to join the CIA? And what did you have to sacrifice? And having this profession. Hmm. I Kind of wandered in a side door so I can't say that You know, I I left Kansas with this keen burning desire to be a spy. I did not I went to Europe and bumped into a bunch of spies who I thought we're working for the US military Because they were keeping their cover anyway My first husband was one of those I'm married into the CIA Did some pickup jobs came back to the States? what what kept me there and what I loved with all my heart and still do is the opportunity to First of all most important to help protect those people that were working for us They were taking enormous risks. And like I said a lot of them weren't taking the risks for money They were taking it because they believed in our democracy. They believed in Western government. They they they hated their governments They wanted to help bring them down. I Wanted to help keep him safe so by using All of our technology to keep our officers from leading the KGB to them We were saving their lives by teaching them how to communicate with us without divulging where they were communicating from was saving their lives to teach them how how would We would we would do dead drops and put up signals. And I mean it was very complicated It was about protecting them and that was the piece of it that I loved but by the way It's also an opportunity to do something that actually really matters and to make a difference and I don't know that many jobs that I would feel that way about I Loved knowing that I mean, I was just a wheel in the COG. But or was I cog in the wheel? Whatever it was. I was part of a large machine and I liked very much being part of that machine and Watching the thing go forward it seems to me that see a CIA age agents are really unsung heroes in many ways similar to military They risked their lives. They you know, they but unlike unlike someone who's in the Armed Forces There's no veterans day. There's no Memorial Day for CIA a lot of agents will go to their graves without anyone really knowing the Contribution that they made to this country. It's absolutely true I am In airports. I never passed a soldier that I don't just say. Thank you for your service and When people tell me thank you for your service. It's the greatest praise I get because all the years I served Nobody knew I was serving So now to have it at the end is really it's kind of special to have people tell you. Thank you It means a lot it's odd that Tony and I Can speak out and do because most CIA people cannot and don't Tony got it came through some little rabbit hole in the fence When they named him as a trailblazer and it was it was actually the the head of the CIA said I want you to give an interview to the New York Times that Was our enemy back then don't talk to the newspapers. I want you as the enemy of some But Tony actually said no and George Tenet said Speak to them Tony go do it. And so and so he did so we're in a unique position actually And we're trying to make make it count in that interview had to do with Tony's remarkable Operation in the that was made famous in the movie Argo. Yeah We're for those who did not see that oscar-winning movie. Where? he basically Concocted a a story of a Canadian film crew Going into Tehran with in rescuing six American hostages. I mean just remarkable Ben Affleck played Tony And and it wasn't until many years that was many years after that was the operation was what in 1980 I think it was 19 years later Yeah that that the story came out because we had we had given all of the praise and all of the glory to the Canadians It was supposed to have been a Canadian operation the Canadian ambassador to Tehran Became a rich and famous because of that story and that was the cover story and we were very pleased about all of that Then the CIA made Tony take the story back the kanae. Are there any Canadians in here? Because the Canadians were not terribly happy about that. They thought they didn't get quite the credit They deserved we thought they deserved a lot of credit ourselves Yeah, it was It was interesting I guess there was some political motivation in terms of public perception that That him too decided to get the story out at that time that the CIA had been Taking some hard knocks at them at that point. It looked like there was a lull, you know, it was before right before 9/11 Patrick Moynihan was starting to say I'm not sure we actually need a CIA because the Cold War's seems to be over and Everything seems to be cool and then all hell broke loose but but it was in that moment that George Tenet decided to Like light a cigar and have a moment and we had the public in and they named The 50 top guys in the 50 first years of the CIA and my husband was one to his great surprise But not to mine That was just amazing start was that The most incredible story that you've ever heard with the CIA in terms of a clandestine mission mission No But is a really good one it was bright, I mean just even Even knowing the outcome watching that movie. It was like heart pounding and start to finish how many people in here saw that movie Look at that isn't that amazing? Good for you There's probably a little self-selection though those who would want to come But that is impressive Here's a three-part question. I love all three of them. We'll take them one at a time Have you ever been in a position where you were concerned for your life? Yes Elaborate oh, it's my follow-up Oh Once and I always have to be broad once in South once in the subcontinent I was I was in a Sheraton hotel. I was there because I was visiting that city temporarily and while I was there an Honest-to-god terrorist a really really bad guy had called our chief of station Who he knew? From some other place and he said I know about an American airplane that's gonna be brought down I know about a hijacking and I want to give you the intelligence Well, our chief of station didn't want to meet with this guy because this guy wasn't really he was a terrible terrible man So the chief of station was scared and he said there were seven of us there and he said everybody's coming with me I'm not going in that hotel by myself So I disguised everybody I disguised myself and everybody else and the chief of station. He was really tall distinctive looking a really blonde American big man he was like 63 and I had to put him in like a shower kameez and sandals and give her a cigar and and Tony had always said it's not really it's not the disguise. It's the way you wear it You can you can just get a stick and say this is my cane and you know I own this place. If you can act it. This guy was a great actor. So we went into that hotel Gave him a chance to size up the terrorists before the terrorists sized him up. And anyway, I was in a rug shop. I'm Staking out the corner of the hotel I'm in a rug shop looking through a glass wall Across the corridor another glass wall into a newsstand and I'm counting knots on these rugs I'm looking at and counting and looking and looking and I looked up and in the newsstand. It's just a little bit him in who just looked just Cut he looked mean it was very small sharukh amis with these two huge men one on each side with ak-47s in a Sheraton in The newsstand and I looked up and I made eye contact with him and that's like rule number one don't look him in the eye and we just you know, and I thought They might shoot me they really might shoot me because Interpol was after them the local Police were after them. His terrorist organization was after him He was fleeing for his life and there I was countenance and I thought well, you know It won't be personal at least if they shoot me it won't be personal but then they didn't shoot me today There were a couple of moments like that when you really thought this could go this could go either way I was always flashing forward to the headline in my mind, you know American Western woman counting knots in a rug store Did you carry firearms yourself no But I was trained in All of them. Okay, we get to part two which I love this part, too How hard was it to keep privacy and cover from close family and friends in the questionnaire ask parent or puts in? Parenthetically my mom would blow my cover My dad almost blew mine and he's the only person I told that I wish I had not told because it was a burden for him and for me he He just You know Wanted to tell his friends his buddies the guys he went he was retired He'd go to coffee at McDonald's or something with his friends And he wanted to tell them and I couldn't take it back I had worried me, but then I thought if he only tells his friends at McDonald's. Everyone's still safe No one's gonna get shot know. What nothing Bad's gonna happen in the world because my dad and his friends at McDonald's know this I had a really really good friend my best friend's she was Not American. She was a banker. She was assigned all over the world And I never could tell her and I never did tell her what she thought was that I had the most boring job ever Did something with the United States Army she wasn't sure but I would be overseas that would be back She had this is this high wire act of a job dealing in foreign exchange She'd make a mistake and it would cost her bank five million dollars that morning and she'd call me and say oh god you all Believe what I did, so we talked about her job She found out I worked for CIA because we had an art show She came down from New York to surprise me at the Art Show 60 minutes was at the art show with her cameras And I had called everyone that was agency and I said if you're gonna come don't just just know that the media will be here most of them did not show up, but I'd never thought to call my Best friend and so she popped in she got really mad at me She's probably still a little ticked off Well, what would you say if somebody was drilling down about your job and something with the army? Oh I could go on and on. I mean I could bore I could I could your eyes would glaze over Okay, then I won't ask anymore Well, the the part three of the question suggests gentleman, does that you're doing a pretty good job of making this sound interesting because part three is is 48 years old too old to join 34 is for operations 34 is that cutoff? I can't speak to other pieces of it if you have a skill that they need And you're not looking to be operational overseas. You could probably knock on their door take your Your your skills forward and see you know what happens Different question, but someone who obviously may also be interested in your career there be a short line outside the door afterwards I'll take I'll take names Yeah, are there different needs and requirements or tasks for women versus men in terms of becoming an agent? Well, there were when I was there, but I think the women that followed me have straightened that out Of the top five jobs at CIA right now Four of them are occupied by senior women the women have always done well Though on the seventh floor and the executive level women have have proven themselves years ago Its its feet on the ground. It's working with agents. It's that operational piece of it that The guys were slow DeLaet the to let the women in they always thought we were working at a disadvantage I always thought we were working at an advantage Because special, you know, if you're working stay with Middle Eastern men there's this whole face-saving thing that goes on they have always have to save face if they're being trained or by by another by another Westerner they say they're same age and they don't understand or they get it or they make a mistake where they get it wrong They lose face and that's very uncomfortable But I found that if it's a woman doing the training I can just say oh, well, you know, let's do it again It's not a big deal They don't lose face with women and that was like one of the first wedges that I found that you know We can do this as well and sometimes better than the men I think today women do very well at the CIA Across the board. It's it's um, I always found that if you if you if you could show them that that you could do it they would let you do it and That's that was one way that a lot of women got out of the typing pool and into much more interesting jobs There audience question how much more fascinating is the information that you aren't allowed to share In other words how difficult was it and we talked about this backstage What kind of vetting did you go through with the CIA? And how much did they read pencil out? We've written we've written four books and they all go through really a rigorous review sometimes multiple reviews We got one all the way through and it was lying on the d c-- eyes desk the head of CIA One of the attorneys corporate attorneys there came and picked it up and said I can't publish this Had to go back down into the review process for me When it's all over it's like I have guardrails. I know I know when I can talk about and I know what's kind of out there that I can't talk about so makes it easier for me to appear publicly people are I think I think people sit in the audience and worry that I'm gonna say something that I shouldn't I Worry that the CIA is gonna come after me someday, but I haven't I haven't had that happen yet So we we don't want to reveal anything that shouldn't be revealed in in their eyes I'm so far off from the question that I've forgotten the question Let me ask you their earlier question about the public perception of the CR CIA and it's been a bit cyclical certainly in the 70s with the Senator Frank church, there was a lot of Crackdown on the CIA and some of its excesses Then then we had 9/11 and and certainly the value of intelligence became very paramount More recently We have a prison in the United States who's basically in some ways dispersed its own intelligence agencies there. It was sitting Standing next to glad Amir Putin and when Putin said we did not meddle in the election Basically saying that he trusted Putin his own Own intelligence community. And in other ways he's he's been critical of the intelligence committee community I'm in duress and not only your perspective but I'm sure you're in touch with a lot of folks who are still in the agency and what they think Well, you know you go back to the Church Committee and and that was an interesting time at the microbio inoculator these Frank Church was holding up these weapons I think they did discover that a little bit of oversight wouldn't hurt wouldn't hurt the CIA I think at the end of the day the CIA Complied with all of that and felt so like It wasn't a bad thing. It was they were working in partnership with these oversight committees. That went down. Okay It's hard to comment on what's going on today, I don't like to get Political when I'm when I'm talking about my book even writing about the book we wanted we wanted to stay away from that But you can't stay totally away from it because it's it's in the air that you breathe right now. I Think it's not just what the president is doing publicly It's what he's doing privately There's a the presidential Daily Brief, which is it's like a newspaper that's made. It's got really one one reader It's the President of the United States. It's the distillation Everyday of from from 16 intelligence agencies into one smallish paper This sir is what's going on in the world and the fact that he doesn't read it Is an issue Because these people that I was talking about that are working for us that are taking chances that were work We're breaking our backs to protect them to keep them from being arrested and executed This is what they're taking those chances for To get the intelligence to Washington to our policymakers so they can make informed decisions that's the whole point and when they refuse to accept the Intel That's got to be kind of mind-numbing inside of the agency I've always said that it didn't matter who was president I've always said that the agency was a pretty a political organization I never knew the people I worked with if they were Republicans or Democrats I mean, I really didn't know actually I really didn't care because we were so busy doing what we were doing We weren't sitting around talking about politics if we were sitting around with beers we were talking about work That's that's kind of how it was. I I Never cared who was in the White House because at a working level It didn't matter the work went on. It was the same. I'm not sure that that's absolutely true today with this this kicking around kicking around we can take Like the FBI they can take some kicking around FBI might kick back. I mean they're tough guys a little rivalry between those two institutions Yeah, but but this thing about the information not being used It's disheartening and that probably does filter down into the working level the people that work there Most people the CIA worked there for their entire careers You don't pop in and pop out you don't Do a three-year gig and move on to something else you get into that and and they people stay and that's still true Sounds sounds ridiculous. It's almost a calling because you think it's important you think that the work that you're doing matters You think that you might make a difference and you want to keep doing it? There was this incredible statistic about our retirees. This is back at the time When I retired most of our people were it was it was a men's? Organization that I worked in there weren't that many women our men their average lifespan after they retired was 18 months So Tony used to say it was like that going to work was like Drinking from a firehose and retiring was like jumping off a moving train because Those people I'm talking about those they didn't really have Active outside lives they didn't have hobbies They didn't go on huge vacations their work was their passion and when they left and that door shuts behind you You are cut off from all your friends because they are all your friends Everybody marries everybody in the CIA Because you can kind of talk a little bit everybody Understands what's going on and you leave that whole community and you're kind of cast out and our guys would die They'd have heart attacks. So they had to redo the retirement process to kind of ameliorate that Yeah, I guess the good thing when they're president is talking down The CIA and the so called deep state At least if you're at spy, your friends and relatives don't necessarily know what you're doing Whereas if you're a journalist, and he talks about fake enemy of the people Everywhere you go your good point Let me ask you I understand another of your specialties Obviously you're a fine arts photographer. But you're also an expert in clandestine photography Tell us about it, you know, tell us I love talking about spy craft Do you have a camera on you? No You know, I usually when I do these talks, I usually have one one of one of my props is my lipstick because I I Can open it up and I can get the lipstick up and I can show you that you know it still works and but there's a camera in it or I can pull out my fountain pen and I can sign a book and Then I can flip it over and take a picture of the page I worked with these little bitty cameras some miniature cameras. They were proprietary to CIA One man made them they were they were About that big as a camera. It was a film camera so inside of that was a cartridge a film cartridge and inside of that was a piece of film about that long and it was just When you see old film from 35 millimeter camera work, it's hard The hardness is a backing the emulsion is like saran wrap and you can strip that emulsion off And it is like saran wrap. That's what that little thing of film saran wrap you could you couldn't even feel it in the darkroom and there would be 50 black dots on it when you developed it and each one was a Page of text like you have in your lap Wow and those cameras collected more significant intelligence during the Cold War then that any other Tool that we had they were better than well I can't say that because someone took me to task for saying that we Had all those satellites up in the air and they were working like gangbusters They're going over Russia and Cuba and there was photographing and everything on the ground We could see in Cuba we could see where the missiles were How many missiles we could see you know where they're preparing to add more but that little camera Was taking pictures of the agendas of the meetings of the planning sessions for the meetings that little camera was collecting Plans and intentions what they were going to do What was coming what they're thinking about? So I think if we still had those little cameras In North Korea today if we had one inside of that machine that is his government taking pictures of his his minutes his agendas his Wouldn't that be fun or if we had another one in the Politburo, you know where we're flawed Amir Putin is making his plans for our next election cycle. It'd be interesting to see what Those cameras because of the you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words' pictures from those little cameras were just they were absolutely Golden it was it was just really significant and by the way, they were all they were handmade by one man in his garage and We thought to ourselves you Can't just have one source. You have to have another another source so we went looking first in America and then in the world we went to all the major optical companies in America and We took we took the schematics for our little camera. We gave them everything they would need. It's an eight element that means there are eight pieces of glasses stacked on top of each other in that in the In the lens and we said we're looking for someone who could make these for us so we can have a backup Not one. We never found anyone else that could make them just the guy in the garage Just him Wow, and did he approach you or did I mean, how do you power our ally find people? who do this our engineers our engineers found that guy and And hired him and and together our engineer helped design it and that that man was able to assemble them I was on the other side of the world at one time and I was issuing those cameras and we were running low because we didn't have that many of them and Then then they said I was gonna have to wait like a month to get any more And I thought where are they? And then I saw on on the local TV. This is in a foreign country I saw in the local TV a film clip from Cuba and they had just arrested like 20 double agents down in Cuba and they were in the film they had a Video camera and they're going to their equipment shop and they're going up and down the shelves Showing what they found this American equipment that these double agents had and there were my cameras And I could make out the body numbers on them and I thought okay now I know where they are. Thank you buds. Got him And by the way, John is also a member of the board of the Spy Museum and washed in which I highly recommend I haven't seen that the new facility, but it's You'll never walk into another person's home again and not wonder that Everything's looking at you and recording you this new museum. It is phenomenal I mean, I don't have to be associated with it to say that it is it goes into some areas? we've never touched on like an Analysis, it shows the Abad Abad the whole the whole red team incident of how the president received these streams of information and you receive them on a cute on a Computer in front of you you receive the information. He received me try put it together And then the question is would you have gone into a bond a bond would you have sent those helicopters in? Would you have said that team in the way Obama did? Obama at the end of that exercise, which is fact-driven Obama said he figured the odds were 50/50 That's what he made his decision on Yeah, that's seated. I mean that's guts Well, let's talk a little more spycraft you in there's some terms that maybe you can expand on you mentioned dead-drops How's that work dead? Drops are one reason one one one Method of doing impersonal communications with your Russian agent. You can't meet him in person because Surveillance is going to be all around you. So you can pre establish a site where you can leave something for him And then he can come maybe the next day maybe the next hour and pick it up There are all these signals that go with it But the whole thing was that that package that you put down it has to be something that nobody else will pick up It has to be innocuous. It might want to be disgusting There are a lot of ways to keep people from picking up your dead drop We used crushed cans covered with motor oil and the thing would be protected inside we we used to fake bricks in construction sites, which is tricky because it's Really really really looked like a brick Mike Porter done You could lose a couple that way we use dead rats dead rats was One of our favorites with little Teflon closures and they were Nasty, they were cleaned up But to make sure that an animal wouldn't pick up our dead rat we would we would dip them in Tabasco And dry them on clotheslines and then you know We have him on the shelf so we could turn him around really I think our 48 year old recruit is about to keep his Or her day job Yeah, so dead drops were a thing okay another one the jack-in-the-box in the car oh That was a that was a great one. That's Tony Mendez. That's right sitting in some bar somewhere in the subcontinent Drinking Kingfisher beer and eating samosas big clue And he had been there doing some work and he decided That day that we needed a diversion in Moscow. We needed a way to Make surveillance think there were still two people in the car when there really was just one person in the car So we needed a dummy a pop up dummy and and that was the beginning of a thing called the jack-in-the-box Or Jim we called it a Jim It started out back home He took two of our engineers and he sent them to Al's magic shop down by the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue to buy Some party dolls. This is my introduction to party dolls. I'd never heard the term So they bought some Inflatable plastic dolls brought them back and they were working with them experimenting and then they had to go get more this turned into a Problem because the engineers didn't want to go back to the magic shop over and over for more party dolls They were young It started out they were inflatable and we had gas canisters and we put them in briefcases we only need the top half so we would duct tape the top half and then you'd you'd hit a button in the Briefcase would pop up in the dummy would pop up and the gas canisters would would start going well What happens is the gas when it comes out really really fast. It's really really cold really cold So we sent one of these things we thought we had it fairly refined we sent it Behind the Iron Curtain to one of the case officers and his wife there practicing with it The wife is driving down the street the man bails out of the car She hits the button the dummy pops up the gas starts going to the the whole thing. Just blew up in the car We ended up with a very elegant very sophisticated Beautiful piece of equipment that could replicate you if you were I'm driving and you're in the passenger seat There's some choreography with the car, but we do two right turns you bail out. I hit the button The thing tops up, so we're in your blue coat. It's wearing the same tie It's actually wearing your face because now we've make these brilliant masks It's got a wig on just like you and the head swivels so You can turn you can turn your head and talk to me and the people behind us They see to you know, if they came up beside you at a stoplight, which they normally wouldn't do There's no question that it's you. It's you in the car. This was a this was a wonderful piece of equipment. We got it So refined that in the book one of the stories Has two men getting in the front of the car the chief of station in the case officer The two wives in the back and one of the wives has a birthday cake on her lap because they're going to a birthday party they've been chattering on the phone about this all day because they know that the Soviets are listening so when the men jumped out The wife leans forward puts the birthday cake on the seat Pushes the button the thing comes up out of a birthday cake. I thought was best I'd ever had ever heard of and That was part of a huge wonderful operation That Jim allowed that operation to take place And that also has commercial viability here in the Bay Area and carpool lanes. Yeah I I tell you I think when those engineers were working with those party dolls. I think that maybe we're a couple of the party Another spy technique fresh contacts. How does that work? that that's a little bit of the magic thing going on brush contact is Two people pass each other and you have to kind of work on this you can just hand something off to someone and you can do it so easily that that People in the vicinity would never know we tried it out We proof-of-concept was at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC. We had some observers Two of our officers. One of them was standing inside the door. The other one walked in he had a raincoat over his arm He he he changed the raincoat from one arm to the other and while he did that. It was just sleight of hand He handed a small Package to the man that was standing inside the door who held the door for him and then he walked out It was just a that's a brush pass and it's very easy to do actually and it's very hard to see It's another form of impersonal communication Well, unfortunately we reached the point where we have time for one more question and we'll take it from the audience and That is about the book Moscow rules, which not only celebrates the CIA's successes but highlight some huge failures and how Did or do CI age agents deal with these failures? You know when we lose an agent It's personal and it's not It's never supposed to get personal it's kind of like you and your doctor I mean you might like your doctor a lot. Your doctor might be great, but they're trained don't don't let it get personal because it can bump into your judgment it can it can Interrupt, what should be more like a business arrangement? When we would lose people we would go back and agonize over. Was it something we did could we have caused it? Is it something we should fix? Is it something we can fix? What happened? the agents that we lost A number of them. We lost because of American officers intelligence officers who betrayed those agents for money Aldrich Ames you guys probably all heard of Aldo James Murray games He sold about 12 Soviets pounds of flesh for money and He knew when he gave their names up that they would be killed I mean he knew that he knew they'd shoot them. Some of them were friends of his some of them he had recruited He when they started killing them he got really concerned, you know, this all happened sort of in 1985 Timeframe he went up out to the Russians, and he said he sent them a message that we intercepted later It said don't kill them so fast It's gonna lead back to me they're gonna figure out that it was don't do it so slow down Just heartless And so that became a new Moscow rule It's the very last rule in the book and the rule is that betrayal can come from within that's now a rule we never The CIA refused to believe that one of our own could do something like that. It was just a big Awakening when we found out Rick Ames Edward Lee Howard and Bob Hansen those three people gave away people operations not just American people in operations worldwide huge operations operations with with allies with other intelligence code it just it was just It was devastation what they did and it was hard to come back from you have to rebuild from the ground up well on that note, please join me in thanking John Mendez author of the I Also Feel terrific And you you recruited a couple of spies potentially might have some news or maybe more eyes I also want to remind those in the audience that Jonna will be signing copies Of the book which are for sale here and a few minutes outside and with that I'm John Diaz and this meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California is adjourned
