Mother, Daughter, Sister, Spy

[Music] [Music] I'm sorry by introducing our panelists for today we have Melissa Meili right here in the orange melissa is a former US intelligence officer and an expert on the Middle East she has worked on many of the key challenges of US national security including running operations against Al Qaeda terrorists and illicit networks selling weapons of mass destruction she received a presidential letter of appreciation for her work on the Middle East peace process and she's also received numerous exceptional performance awards from the CIA for her recruitment of agents melissa is the author of the book denial and deception an insider's view of the CIA from iran-contra to 9/11 next we have John and Mendez and Jonna is the former chief of disguise and that really is Jonas former chief of disguise in the CIA's office of technical service she's also a specialist in clandestine photography and she's currently a fine art photographer an author a lecturer and a consultant on intelligence matters her 27 year career for which he earned the CIA's intelligence commendation medal included operational disguised responsibilities in the most hostile theaters of the Cold War from Havana to Moscow to Beijing and ultimately to the Oval Office she co-wrote spy dust a true story of espionage and romance with her husband Tony Mendez and next we have Rolly Flynn and Rolly is a 30-year veteran of the CIA she held senior executive positions that included the director of the CIA's Leadership Academy executive director of the CIA counterterrorism center and chief of station in major posts in Southeast Asia and Latin America she is the founder and managing principal of Cigna consulting she's a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research in - she's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and then sandy Grimes sandy is a longtime veteran of the CIA's clandestine service she helped get to capture Aldrich Ames the infamous CIA officer turned traitor and she co-wrote the book circle of treason a CIA account of traitor Aldrich Ames and the many portray betrayed with her colleague Jean Berta Fey so welcome to all of our panelists this is a very distinctive group of former intelligence officers we're thrilled to have them here I'm going to serve as moderator I'm going to ask them some questions and then we're going to open it up to the audience for questions so are you ready to start all right so Newsweek recently did a major feature article on women in the CIA women and intelligence and in that article by Abigail Jones she says Hollywood has convinced us all that women in the CIA belong to a sorority of badass who's stabbed by day and seduced by night from homeland Carrie Mathison - state affairs Charleston Tucker we have become accustomed to this repository of interchangeable female CIA screw-ups and honeypot and they're unstable erratic behavior that we forget that the job involves saving lives and preventing atrocities and that you must be able to compartmentalize your emotions at precisely the most horrifying moments so with that as our intro the first question I'm going to ask I'm going to ask John and you're going to get this one first I know John a really well so I know do you think you were ever classified as a badass or anybody here I worked with okay no maybe pieces of that but not all of it hook together I found what I was working that the way to get the work done and to get the results that you wanted was certainly not to be a it's the same I think and in any office and any corporate environment in America if you want to get the work done and you want to get the results you need to get you have to contextualize your actions people cooperate with you for a lot of reasons but very seldom because they think you are a proponent of that SEC that kind of theory of behavior I found that working in an office full of men my job was I was one of the few women in the office of technical service when I began working with those men was a cooperative endeavor on my part my goal was never to be the badass it was to outperform those men it was to just put my nose to the grindstone and be the one who you could count on for success and that was the way in that time that was the way to rise up success was the great moderator if you could do it they would let you do it and that's how you go from being a secretary to being the chief of disguise in the area where I worked thank you anyone else care to answer that question I think I would say that and there are some people here who worked with me so maybe I should make them ask this question I do think it's really important to be tough but you have to hold that in reserve as well and I was talking to a friend the other day and she said well I think it's important every now and then to put a head on a stake to show people you're tough well not literally I might say but but I might recount a story was told a story about me about a boss I worked for once a man and it sort of illustrates that there's a little difference inside the CIA from what you do outside the CIA and he told me Rolly you need to bear this in mind to succeed at the CIA you have to be you have to come across as tough you have to come across as though you're the sort of person if you had to could call in a b-52 strike now he said now I don't want you to you know not be feminine but just bear that in mind and if you can't come across like that you'll never succeed in this place I would like to add just one point on the badass part because there's this real perception that's pushed out by the you know by Hollywood of you know what CIA clandestine operators actually do and and you know it's quite a man and I remember being interviewed by journalists who wanted to have my reaction to the protagonist and aeleus and I watched it for the first time and my response back to the journalist when she asked is it look I never once was in a situation where I jumped into a room just in my underwear because that would be my definition of you know a weapon of mass destruction so we need to separate the media the hype from what what the women really do and I don't know about you ladies but I spent a whole lot of my career kind of dismissing the female case officer part to just the case officer part yeah absolutely so so I think my follow-on question to that would be given to this mother daughter sister spy how did being a woman shape your perspective of your work and so sandy I'll ask you to start with that one how did being a woman KP respect to say and I think a lot of people may be surprised that I was a woman had no impact at least in my mind it was a job it was a task we had to work together as a team we were responsible for keeping our Soviet East European division recruits alive it was serious business so that I was a woman all I did was bring something to the table and again our work was tasks driven didn't matter if you were a male or a female if you had the information you had the knowledge and you had the courage to make difficult decisions you were welcome at that table Johnna and in my office of men there was a common perception that women couldn't do a lot of the job for various reasons I spent a good amount of my time in the subcontinent where women are culturally dismissed from the conversation the men in my office said you can't work with these foreign men in these foreign lands they're going to dismiss you they're not going to listen to you they're not going to respect you you're not going to be able to do the job that's what the American men said but guess what when I was out there meeting with these agents who were risking their lives to work with the United States government and provide us with information they didn't care if I was from Mars they didn't care if I was green I could show them how to do it safely and successfully I could protect them I could protect their families whether it was disguise or using concealed cameras or communicating with us with secret writing I could show them how to do the work they wanted to do without suffering the consequences which in many countries was death are you kidding me those men paid more attention to me than they paid to their mother it was sometimes the fact that I was a female sometimes it was an advantage and whenever I saw that I used it women on the street were invisible out there that they didn't they didn't they just didn't see you it was a perfect cover for espionage to be a woman in some countries in some parts of the world so it went both ways I would add to that I found that being a woman sometimes was a disadvantage particularly out in the field and more often than not inside our buildings sometimes but I found it more often than not it was an advantage for some of the reasons Jonah has said that women aren't suspicious and a lot of the countries we work were not considered a threat the other thing I found was that I got meetings that my male counterparts couldn't get I would get a meeting with the minister that they'd been trying to see for months and months because you know yeah I'm different and overseas in particular there weren't that many in the countries I served professional high-level women and I got the meetings so when in the countries where the stature of women is different Middle East you are there weren't issues with being a woman and to the Middle East I know the giana that's what you're referring to but I'm surprised that that was not a more challenging so Melissa I think that's for me yeah I you know I think in some ways I was a third sex in the Middle East because in that context they're not used to women of power a women of authority and and so I had and I remember when I was actually very difficult bureaucratically for me to be assigned to the Middle East because women were not sent to the Middle East it was just not done and I was really persistent at being assigned because frankly I spoke Arabic I had lived in the region and they had hired me why did they hire me if they were going to send me there so I was quite persistent and ended up that I think they sent me there to get rid of me frankly and I had this great I had a fabulous career recruiting Arabs and other folks because again they looked at me differently they weren't used to that power dynamic and frankly you take somebody I'm sure you all look at your personal lives and you'll be able to relate to this if you take somebody out of their comfort zone into new terrain you know you can have oh you were in a much firmer position to guide what happens next so I used being female to my advantage and I had a great time I can tell an anecdote where it wasn't advantageous and this was in Africa and I was going off to meet with one of my sources we call them agents but it so I don't confuse people I'll say a source and I was trying to be very clandestine and I was taking a very circuitous route to the meeting when all of a sudden I noticed that there were a couple of young men on a motorbike behind me and this was many years ago I was much younger blond had little ponytail and they were sort of hooting behind me and going hey and I realize they were following me and you know I'd make some twists and turns and try to be as I say circuitous and I could not lose them and they want a ride baby I mean it went on and on and on and I finally had to say I can't go to my meeting I can I cannot shake these people I I can't go and of course I was working for a very crusty old chief of station and had to go in the next morning and say I couldn't get my meeting and here's why and I'm sure he just sort of said Oh God female case officers I'm sure he did but that was an incidence but most of time it was an advantage I have had similar experience with Africa but this time I was much much younger same blonde hair but it was I was mistaken for a hooker and I mean when I was there I couldn't understand why it was in print speaking Africa and at that time there were lots of Scandinavian blondes who would come down for the French businessmen and I was mistaken for one of them thank goodness I didn't know French or I would have been in haha I'd rather be taken for a hooker than a spy good I see how you can get yourself out of that one alone yeah yeah I do have locked my door that knocks enemy caca that's banging on the door all night long most melissa is just reminding me of something that I forgot that I forgot and it was a lot of the work that we did took place in hotel rooms around the world we'd meet with a case officer we'd meet with an asset and there was a training involved maybe it would be an encrypted communication system where you had to spend some time in the room going over the material with the foreign asset and the first thing that you generally would say in that hotel room when the door closed was this if they come through the doors what are we going to do the classic solution to that don't laugh jump in bed just pull up the covers not the guy me just get in bed and pull up the covers and they'll back out of the room oh sorry sorry that was that was one of the main lines of defense if you had a situation in the hotel room so I went into every meeting in a hotel room prepared to do that but I never had to those are great stories I appreciate all of their stories how did this type of career with so much more vulnerabilities and I know I have in my career how did it affect your relationships outside of the agency so your family romantic children how did it affect those relationships Melissa you you look like you have a story to tell so I think that there's also maybe a perception that you you joined the CIA new Park your family in a post office box or something like you know you do get to keep your husband and your in you know my personal case I'm still married to the same man he's wonderful he's put up with me all these years I had a child overseas now I'll say that was not terribly welcomed by my leadership I had a very good way of dealing with it I didn't tell them and then it was too late and they didn't get on an airplane and so I was oh so you're going to stay at a great job I didn't want to lose my job and I would have that's a fact you know we put the nice kind of stunts but it was certainly a milot run organization that had ideas of what a woman's place was and a pregnant women did not belong in the field and a high danger post where I happened to be at that time and I didn't want to give up my job and I wanted to have my baby too so and I got my way and and I think that it's like any though any major decision that any woman makes that you're going to keep your career and you're going to keep your family and you think you figure out a way to make it work and that's what I did that you know things would happen that everybody has to give the nanny a day off and you know your husband's not always there so what happens you take your baby to work with you and that happened to me on more than one occasion I have this great picture of Yasser Arafat bouncing my baby on his knee back because he wanted to you know like see me then write that and I said okay but I do you know it doesn't true but you figure out a way of making it work but I would also say just as not to go on too long about it probably the emotional side is the most difficult because you are gone a lot and you are away from your family and the other thing is this big whole black hole called secrecy that's in your relationships all of your relationships and you have to learn to navigate that to protect those relationships and keep them enduring and and there are a lot of women that do it very well so just one brief comment as former chief of disguise a baby in your arms was one of the best disguise assets we had if you wanted to go under the radar pick up a baby that's great I will add to what Melissa said I think the fact that as I was a case officer an Operations Officer so I had to go out a lot at night and because of secrecy I could not tell my husband where I was going and I will say that secrecy does cut is a stressor in any kind of relationship and you know there's a sense that you don't trust me going on and I will say that when I had a boyfriend who ultimately became my husband I had dated him for a long time and we were overseas before I told him what I really did and I think he was a quite shocked and wondered why I had taken so long to tell him so with these kind of relationships there's always a period of Education where you have to make the people understand that this is not like other jobs but you really can't tell them everything you're doing I have to say I had a much easier time because I wasn't overseas for most of the time but I will say probably one of the most difficult times I encountered was shortly after we had our first child she was not quite a year old and I was asked to get on a plane immediately and spend the next five weeks in Nepal supporting an operation and I went home and said Gary I have an opportunity I'll never forget it I have an opportunity to go to Nepal for the next five weeks but I promise you I will not go if you tell me I can't he took one look at me and said sandy it doesn't make any difference what I say you'll go anyway I was so hurt I thought I really meant that sort of yes the next five weeks in Nepal our only correspondence was the cable that came to CIA headquarters saying police tell the husband that she's a landed she joined it safely in Katmandu and then the second cable please pick her up PanAm 107 from London and that was it and you know you eat you had a relationship at least with us he new way with getting in force I couldn't talk about my work but I think it's true for probably a lot of the ladies here you work on classified things whether you're working for private industry or not you don't share those things but you learn to pull in the same direction and I have to say we will have been married 47 years in another month so you can make it work I would I would ask the other ladies on this panel if their experience was the same as mine and that was after years of living overseas living back in Washington DC in between assignments ducking and dodging the neighbors the friends what happened in my in my group is we became very insular and so we had young people we dated other CIA people we tended to marry other CIA people and we socialized with other CIA families it was such a relief not to have to play that that game with the public did that was that your experience you know we spent so much of our career overseas that we were pretty much always operational we had very little time state size and because my husband did not work for the CIA never did we always had another piece to our life that was that he he drove and that was very important that made me constantly live my cover all the time exhausting I actually found living in Washington much harder than living a and obviously I was operational when I was overseas but overseas I had children but I had affordable help overseas and a much more flexible job I worked very long hours when I was overseas but again it was flexible and I had people who helped me overseas it was when I got back to this country and the cost of childcare was roughly equal to the cost of my salary when it was very difficult I found and I had two two kids who were two years apart and they were little when we were here that's certainly what I say staying in the States for most of my career raising kids childcare not available in the olden days it was you found somebody who was a stay-at-home mom and for extra money you didn't have any way of vetting these people it was usually and it was more than difficult the other thing that nobody probably would think of today certain childhood diseases like chicken pox try to find a babysitter when you have one after the other get chicken pox you simply couldn't go to work and what occurs in those situations is somebody else has got to do your job so you're really putting a burden on the people you're working with and like Melissa thankfully my husband was a non agency employee and certainly not a Dok sauce so I'd love to hear about what a particular stressful day in your life may have been one day that stands out or to give us an idea of what a tough day is like in your special secretive world I think one thing that characterizes CIA officers is that when there's troubled we run toward it and I was when I was serving as a COS I was out of country and when unexpectedly the country where I was cos fell apart and so I faced a 4:00 a.m. knock at my hotel room saying to get up here you got to get on an airplane right now and get back I got on an empty airplane there were about six of us on that airplane and and not including the group going into a city that was burning where the airport was a sea of people trying to get on that airplane and my one of my biggest concerns beyond getting to the office and getting you know command of the situation was that I had two little kids who were my son at the time I think will must have been about four and my daughter was seven they're six and so I had to get them on an airplane because all the Americans in the country were evacuated get them on an airplane get them out of that country and then actually believe it or not I was greatly relieved to have them out because I could focus on the job and then not have to worry about them okay that would I would call that a stressful day was a stressful day so I'll tell a story because everybody likes stories you know when we have our cover lifted that were allowed to tell talk about maybe just much of our career and we leave out big facts and kinds of things but I can actually talk about a location on this one because the agency said it's okay so I was serving in the Palestinian territories and I was working a counterterrorism mission I was trying to work with the Palestinian security services and they didn't trust me wisely they didn't trust me they but I was doing my best trying to make some inroads and and so I would go into these police chiefs and other security services there's never never called back right ah one day the chief of police in Bethlehem called me back and he asked for me to come and visit and so I was quite pleased and at that point in time the police station in Bethlehem was about the distance of here to the back of the room of the Church of the Nativity zuv second holiest shrine in Christianson so centrally located I went to the police station and and you know you have to have good manners wherever you go into that means sitting there and having a three cups of Turkish coffee before you start talking business and we're in this guy's office second floor offices typical police station I could see the Armory's right behind me he's sitting at his desk smoking a cigarette kind of going on and on lots of smoke in the room and he's finally you know it's fine it's enough time to say so sir why is it mr. police chief did you want to see me yeah we conducted this raid and found this stuff and I wanted to get your opinion on it so he reaches underneath his desk and he pulls out this large duffel bag with a big metal zipper and he's got a cigarette in his mouth and he zips it open and pulls it open and I'm on the other side of the desk doing one of these and I start back in out of that room as fast as I can without actually running because I know what's in that bag a highly sensitive improvised explosive device explosive material called TATP and I didn't want to be anywhere close to that stuff so I get out of the police station I convinced the police that they need to evacuate the area was very difficult because they didn't trust me and they thought it was some kind of a plot and and what I really wanted them to do was to call the Israelis and have his stuff destroyed but they wouldn't do that either because they hate each other and so I'm in this kind of very dicey situation of trying to figure out how to resolve a real crisis here because they don't get it's dangerous this stuff is finally you know the type of Arafat Arafat says okay go ahead and move the stuff so if they move they put it on the back of the truck and I'm just like yeah you move it over there into the we took it out that this body's about this empty area outside of Bethlehem and I blew it I did an improvised trigger and then blew it all at once because I didn't lose too unstable to separate out it blew out windows I mean it was a huge explosion and that was a mildly stressful day because yeah because that was quite deadly and I was seven months pregnant oh my god I don't think I can top that we don't need to top it with lots of stories have a good understanding your world mine was a pretty sad one it was the most stressful day I think I've ever had at the agency and I'll never forget to date it was October 2nd 1985 and it was stressful because I couldn't do anything about it I could take no action I couldn't change what happened it wasn't the the thrill of exfiltrating somebody from a denied area you know the big high that particular afternoon I was in called to the front office of the Soviet East European division and went into the deputy's office he did not say a word to me he just pointed at the chair i sat down and he handed me a cable from an unidentified field station and I read it and it simply said that KGB officer Polish Duke has been arrested you might ask who polish choucas well it was the KGB counterintelligence officer that my component was handling in Lagos Nigeria at the time he was on mosque in Moscow and homeless and had been arrested I couldn't catch my breath you just looked at those sort words and you knew exactly what it meant he would be executed the other part there were no tears there were no there was no expression from either the deputy division chief or myself I simply said to him I elect Lagos no walk back to the office and sat there for a half an hour just looking at that computer screen what in the heck am I going to say to that case officer in the field who's handling that agent finally I just wrote there's no easy way to say it Polish Duke I didn't use this true name obviously has been arrested we all knew as I said what was going to occur and one year later again a date I'll never forget 30 July 1986 he was executed and he was the beginning of one after another that we lost in 1985 and in 1986 and I guess the big exclamation point is we carried that burden that we might have made the mistake which led to these deaths for eight years until we discovered it was none other than Aldrich Ames who had given up Polish Duke and every one of the other ones so mine wasn't happy you know if I could Gerry interject one thing because I think this is also in kind of the subtext of money it shouldn't even be the substance subtext I think we've mentioned it these are serious stakes we have this is a job that requires real nerve and clarity of thought because people's lives depend upon decisions that we make actions we take or don't take and there's a huge emotional burden that comes with that because when something when you lose an agent you know you feel guilt that the deepest level is it you is something you did do something you didn't do and those stakes we live every single day in every single way and every single thing that we do and and at the same time that has to be a motivating factor to not make those mistakes and to keep on going after the intelligence piece and to achieve them at the mission but there are some there are some you know emotional human costs here that you know or should not likely be dismissed you understand the gravity of the job you have I mean that's part of it we love Soviet operations because those were the big leagues there's big-time risks but you never you did your best to ensure that there wouldn't be any errors and when it happened it really was as you say it was it's devastating can't have tears you have to go on and you do and I think probably all of us like by ourselves found some way to cope with it and I'll just add for me it was after everybody in the family had gone to bed I'd open the window in the bedroom I take the screen off hang my head out and light a cigarette everybody would do pedestal II then I was okay the next morning I'd be fine I would just add one new install that and yes you did feel the onus of responsibility to to not make any mistakes but the real difficult thing was it always it wasn't always clear what was the right path because we lived in a very gray world and sometimes do what was the right thing or the right tradecraft choice wasn't always clear because usually you didn't have command of every single fact you were dealing with that's an excellent point I think we always put it the other way at headquarters can't we have just one cable that comes in that we can say yes or no to we begged for those but the business is gray and shades of grey and notice we're not talking about being male or female that's great exactly well those stories are amazing stories my story is small and personal in a way I was visiting a station in the subcontinent and while I was there the chief of station was contacted by a known terrorist who had had some contact at a previous time and knew our chief ization and wanted to meet with him and he told him back then that he had information about a plot to bring down a Pan Am flight the chief of station had to go meet with this guy but he didn't want to and so he came out to the main office and he said I want you all to go with me I'm going to meet him in this hotel but I am not meeting him alone he was scared of this guy this man was was being sought after by Interpol he was being sought after by his own terrorist organization he was being sought after by the police of the country that we were in everyone was looking for this man he was a really dangerous man and so I was there doing something to do with photography but I knew something about disguise so I said okay here's what we'll do that the cheetah station was about six-two and he was Texan and he was blonde and he had this horrible pockmarked face he's also brilliant so we had to disguise him what do you do with that we put him in shalwar kameez which in that part of the world worked just great and some of those sandals that are made from recycled tire fragments we glasses on him gave him a great big cigar and a clipboard that was his disguise and said don't talk because your Texas accents to draw too much attention we I disguise six other people and myself so there were eight of us in that hotel in the lobby that night watching our chief of station chief of station said I'm not leaving the hotel with him and if you see that beginning to happen step forward so I positioned myself in a rug shop on down in this kind of little arcade I can still see the lobby and glass walls and across the hall is another glass wall and like a drugstore but not like our drugstores but I could see everything through the glass so I got this pour shop owner to start unrolling the rugs for me and I'm counting not and they're bringing me some chicken tikka or something and it's all points everyone's looking to make sure nothing goes wrong here and I looked up and in the newsstand in the drugstore across that hallway was that guy and no one he wasn't wearing a nametag he was really small he was really little shark amis just staring holes in me and he had on each side of him one of these tall local northeastern tribal guys wearing all kinds of headgear and they're armed to the hilt they have ak-47 they're carrying them openly in this international hotel and he looked at me there's a rule that says you never make eye contact oh don't do that but I did and I saw him and he saw me and I knew that he knew that I was part of this counter-surveillance I knew that and the thought that went through my head was this might be where I died this might actually be where I get shot because he doesn't care he has nothing to lose he knows now that embassy staff are in this in this hotel and the thing I couldn't let go of was the fact that it wasn't going to be personal that it would be an impersonal shot that would kill me and no one would ever know well he didn't shoot me they didn't shoot me he went out he met with our chief of station who in the end threw him out because the information that he had was bogus and we all left that hotel safely that night but it was really touch and go it was I didn't have anything to do with logic or with reason or with right or wrong it was that great thing you talked about there could have been a shootout in that hotel as easily as not and there wasn't and the fact that that I could that I could be shot like that not having incited a riot not having stood up and made but not having done anything wrong that you could just be shot like that that was a moment of reckoning in my career I mean I set back and thought about that for a while and then went on with my career it was scary all right thank you for sharing those stories I'll tell you about a bad day too slimy hands those are very very powerful stories I think that gave a lot of us a lot of insight into what what kind of risk you were taking I want to open it up to the audience art you're jumping there hold on hold on I just fascinate because the world's change so much since you first started your service to your country and we're at the eve of a presidential election what do you think are the top issues that the next president in your mind of the most dangerous issues that we face as a country I'll go first you know for so long we have been focused with a laser vision on the Middle East and there's all this other stuff that's been going on and we haven't been paying maybe sufficient attention to some of these emerging threats and I remember sitting up and on this podium and talking like five years ago about the cyber threat as over the horizon threat it's not over the horizon is here I will also remember talking about you know we are our traditional adversaries we can't lose track of those developments because traditional adversaries there's a word traditional you know they keep on coming back well look at Russia today and look at what's going on in the south South China Seas so I think you know if those kinds of issues that we have a tilting right now on one of those moments of the world is again changing the power of balance the global power balance is shifting and that's going to create new offer opportunities for bad things too for bad guys to do bad things and and so that instability that we really felt in you know in the I would say the pre 9/11 days without even knowing it I think we're back at one of those moments and that that the young officers that are growing up and learning their skills in the agency today they're going to be living in a different world than that post 9/11 world and it's going to be more dangerous I'll just a lot more dangerous because it's not going to be just the states that have access to very dangerous capabilities it's also going to be those sub-state actors so yeah we're going to still need a really strong intelligence if we just go down the line I absolutely agree with everything that you said I think there has been some shifting of perceptions though I think that as a country we've always thought we had the same the same idea about controlling say nuclear nuclear material nuclear arms nuclear capabilities and that's getting kind of a little blurry there are there are other voices now that are that are happening forward other ideas the the concept of our traditional enemies is also a little bit under attack things that we have taken for granted has Givens given reference points in this global community that we're part of are being questioned they're being probed they're being fiddled with it's a time of change and I think I think a lot of people are very very uneasy nuclear proliferation has always been on the top of everybody's list certainly has been on the top of mine terrorism has always been the last 20 years on the top of everybody's list none of that is getting better none of that is looking at solutions I wouldn't want to be the president and sometimes I wonder why anybody wants to be the president today in this world unmanageable I agree with both of what they've said again it gets back to Donald Rumsfeld and the unknown unknowns it's a dangerous world and it's that thing that you don't know that you should be concerned about which to me is an argument for great intelligence capabilities and the flexibility to have the resources to go wherever the new threat emerges one other thing I might say in terms of you know if I were to counsel the next president one one way the CIA has historically gotten in a lot of trouble and it's from presidents who like us too much and love to use our special capabilities and the CIA is a super can-do organization you know we're really flexible we like to do stuff we're action-oriented but think about the times when we've gotten in trouble it's been Nixon and Watergate it's been Reagan and Iran gate it's been Bush 41 she does love they all loved our capabilities and asked us to do stuff and we yes sir we do it and I think that's sort of a watch out situation when when that starts happening yes and I would make this unanimous but I'd add one other or two other things to the mix chemical weapon and biological weapons just like the nuclear one you have a lot of actors out there who can gain access to these things and it won't take much I have so many questions that don't know which one to pick but so I will go with I'm going to get it right to you sandy about the Aldrich Ames case and once you realize though you had that experience where you know you lost your first agent Susan and didn't even realize what was happening and followed by many many others at what point did you guys start focusing internally and then when you when did you realize and then still have to work with Aldrich Ames or how did that go I would say my co-author Jean vertifight was involved on the investigative aspect of it for a long time the entire time I was on the other side trying to keep any of our new assets alive because we didn't know whether we had a human penetration or a technical penetration so anytime a new asset came down the pike we had to find some way simply to keep this one alive when did we really focus on looking for the trader we'd pretty much given up the theory that it was a technical penetration with in 1991 and my first time I thought it might be Rick Ames you knew a couple of things one it had to be a person who had access right don't look any further that's where you start and Rick by virtue of the job he had no Soviet East European division had access to every single operation we lost that was the first thing the second thing maybe I answered the question wrong about a woman's intuition but in this particular case when Rick and his wife from soryo returned from an assignment to Rome they were gone for three years the Rick Ames who showed up at CIA headquarters was a completely different human being than the old Rick I had grown up with in Soviet news to European operations for that matter we carpooled together he was a friend but he but it was no longer the fancy Italian shoes and suits his whole demeanor was different he was usually a pretty absent-minded professor terrible dresser could I don't think he ever washed his shirts comb to tear perfect slob but he was absolutely crossed to the nines and he stood up he was erect it was almost as if this wonderful nice guy you knew his head wouldn't fit through a doorway the arrogance was mind-boggling hmm and that's really how it start and then of course when we established when what became later known as a mole hunt team we've put together gene myself Paul Redman Dan pain two guys from the Bureau it was a systemic thing you had the names of everybody who had access to one or more the cases we lost and we went from there and it was rigging another question Peter you know we're going through a period of time when there is so much blood being slung at government and the functioning of government and trust in government and I would just like to say CIA even aside you are wonderful exemplars of government at its best I would love to end on that but we can have time to squeeze out one more question and I hate to even lose it a couple of minutes so one more question and then we'll I was just curious unless I know you touched on this before but I guess the way I know about your world is through TV so now there's Quantico and blind-spot I love them both so I'm just curious do you guys obviously you said the sexualization the relationships maybe aren't realistic but even if you haven't seen those shows what would you say are the most realistic aspects and the unrealistic aspects and you guys watched you enjoy it and then what do you think about us being kind of involved in your world through Hollywood so right right of all Hollywood is the great I mean we should not criticize Hollywood because Hollywood creates interest it creates mystique and it also creates power let me tell you the world out there thinks the CIA is all-powerful that's a good thing all right when you walk in you you have this relationship you're developing you break your cover you tell them yeah you're working with the CIA I mean that has impact and that's because of Hollywood all right all the rest that stuff the high speed car chases the blowing up buildings how sneaky is that nobody would invite me home so I think you know we we kind of lose what real espionage is in Hollywood has a hard time doing suspense alright that's why they do the cheap trick so but I don't know about you ladies I can't watch the show he's doing a lot of sitting next to me because I think nope they would never do it no that's wrong okay and in you know I can be a whole litany the event you know the American sleepers Russian spy agents they forgot the sleeper what part of sleeper don't you get can't you can't make a TV show out of the sleeper that is boring right so again the high speed car chases and all that stuff but I still think it serves a wonderful purpose and kind of maybe to cycle back to the museum if you haven't had a chance to wander on through the museum you will see that there's a whole segment that's that talks about how espionage is shown in through the media and there's a whole bond segment and I think one of the the great thing that the museum does is that they take that and but they also show the other piece of it so you suck them in a little of the switching bait stuff a lot of it but it's important because a lot of people think of espionage in those terms so bring them in educate them and and then you know disabuse them of the idea that we're all you know honey hots we don't really watch the spy shows we've met Jennifer Garner but we've never seen alias not one not one segment but we just started binge watching the Americans we heard so many good things about it so we're like three episodes in and it's fun that's that's really we just like you said it's no fun watching it or reading it when it's wrong it's just irritating so we save ourselves via the problem I never really watched by movies or TV or read spy books until I retired I just didn't have time and it felt too much like work but huh but the one thing I will say that most of the programs I've seen do get right and they get a lot of details wrong but one thing I think they get right is the dedication of people in this line of work and just how incredibly dedicated they are and sometimes take shortcuts with the personal life in order to to pursue the mission I'm like the other three I've never watched a Current TV spy series and I didn't read the books either the last spy story I've watched was BBC a long long time ago Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy written by I loved it and my husband and I had been - had been married that long and I said after the second episode Gary I know who the Spy is he said I'm so confused yes I made a list of characters and I was right it's the only one it's the only one I remember and then I can't thank you for enough for the sacrifices you've made for what you did for our country for the risks you took and for the pioneers that you were and - thank you and thank you for being here today for us it was a wonderful session [Applause] [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 33,023

Rating: 4.9400001 out of 5

Keywords: CIA, women spies, Jonna Mendez, Rollie Flynn, Sandy Grimes, Melissa Mahle, Aldrich Ames, International Spy Museum

Id: boyGigccHKc

Length: 57min 39sec (3459 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2017