Senior CIA Officer on Russia | Legendary Case Officer and Chief of Station | Glenn Corn

did my first assignment I got somewhere and they were just okay sorry but we got to we got to deploy in an hour and then you're just out the door and yes your heart's in your mouth and you're nervous and you're scared and by the way to the very end there were times when you know I and I never like it never went away that that I'm like fear that something's going to go bad and especially when you work in certain environments where the the locals are very good at trading cases right so double agent operations dangles you have to always know that you could be on the wrong end of a very well planned operation welcome to combat story I'm Ryan fugit and I serve war zone tours as an Army attack helicopter pilot and CIA officer over a 15-year career I'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat on this show I interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines this is combat story today I am so excited to share this combat story with a legend from the CIA spanning the first Cold War battling the Soviet Union to the fall of the Berlin wall to the counterterrorism refocus and then the second cold war with Putin's Russia Glenn Korn Glenn recently retired after 34 years of US Government service that included time with the Army and state department but primarily was with the CIA as a case officer Russia expert and multiple time chief of station some of the most important countries around the world for America's Security in this interview we delve into Glenn's experience at the agency to include close calls let's learned his command of foreign languages Glenn's a fluent Russian speaker and where the agency is going today but we spend the entire second half of this interview digging into everything Russia to include Putin's motivations naval's death the experience of the Russian people from the late 1980s until today and what it would take for Putin's Reign to finally stop and give the Russian people a just leader Glenn is now a founding partner at varag strategic Consulting and an adjunct professor at The Institute of world politics I am good friends with Glenn's brother Gavin who is sitting just off screen during this interview and who also spent many years in government service with the Department of Justice they come from a family that has given so much to this country and I'm so excited for you all to hear Glenn's story for the first time all right Glenn thanks so much for taking the time to share your story with us today thank you for having me it's great to be here so just so everybody's tracking we have Glenn's almost identical brother sitting off camera it's going to be really tough for him to not comment on this but I thought we'd start off with your uh your transition out of government recently but then we'll get to you and growing up with Gavin and the fam okay but for starters you know you spent a long time career in government you're recently out what does it feel like being out now after how many years was it uh 34 years total um I've been out almost a year now and I would say it's mixed mixed emotions how uh honestly I feel guilty because if you look at what's going on in the country today and around the world and the number of threats that the United States is facing I felt guilty leaving um because I you know you you could work forever the threats keep coming and coming the challenges are there uh but on the other hand I don't miss a lot of the bureaucracy uh so mixed emotions but and I miss I mean the one thing about the organiz you know I retired from the CIA and that's where I spend most of my career is the camaraderie the people a lot of great people not all but a lot and uh I miss some of them sometimes especially the younger officers who you know I felt bad leaving some of them behind I feel like you your point on you could always keep working um I certainly felt that way after leaving you know just eight years at the agency and eight in the Army and and I felt bad both times leaving were were there any conversations you had with mentors or people as you were exiting to help you make the decision uh to be honest with you not really um it was more that most of my real mentors the people I really uh enjoyed working with and respected had left they had already made that move um and what I realized one day was that no matter how long you do it there's always going to be a new crisis so for example in 2021 with Afghanistan the withdrawal I felt very Mo I was going to retire before that and then I felt very motivated not to go uh because okay I had some experience with that issue and I thought I could be a value and and then of course uh Russia expanded its invasion of Ukraine and I'm you you know I'm a Russian speaker and I served in that part of the world a lot of my career so I said oh I can't go I just realized it's always going to be something and there are plenty other people that can do the job yeah oh jez such a tough call and I know the Russia background is so big for you so I can't even imagine walking just before we get to your family would you ever go back to Russia now or you could never set foot there was that the oneway ticket that was song uh I don't think I would go back to Russia at this point I would love to go back to you know I would say that uh I I really enjoyed being in Russia uh each time I was there I I have nothing against the Russian people matter of fact I have to say you know my understanding is 40 of them were killed overnight in this uh terrorist attack and no matter who's behind it uh my heart goes out to the families you know I like the Russian people and um Moscow was a wonderful City if you ask my wife St Petersburg where we live was a wonderful City so there's a lot of great uh greatness about the culture the people um unfortunately the regime is problematic in many many ways and we're seeing what they're doing the atrocities they're committing not only on the ukrainians and that's heartbreaking but on their own people so I would go back if the Russians uh how would I say this if the regime was different yeah yeah and I think we'll get to kind of the difference between the people and the regime later because I I do want to dig into that for people who haven't had the chance to obviously spend time there but if we can jump back obviously you spent 34 years at the agency you've got brothers who have also done time in service I should say in the government um where where does that come from growing up like where does the service Dynamic come into your family uh well first I have to correct you right there wasn't 34 years in the agency there was also some time at State and I worked for the Army when I first started out for uh inscom which I worked in a great unit with some great people um but the where did the service come from I think it was my father when we were younger you know we grew up in New York my father had been in the Army and then he left the Army he was a surgeon he was in private practice and then during the Reagan years when Reagan rebuilt the the military uh and by the way for your your listeners your viewers the greatest president ever in my opinion Ronald Reagan the great communicator uh the Army came to my father and asked him to go back into service and he did and I remember be watching that I mean he gave up probably a much higher salary and maybe more financial benefits material benefits to go back and serve the country and I remember him and my mother they went overseas to Brussels I mean to to m shape headquarters and they were very happy and they were surrounded by great people who were serving the country and a lot of foreigners and that's when I really got the wonderand lust the desire to kind of live overseas so I think it was my mother and my father and the example they set and then I had other an older brother who went into the army out of college and I think that was a great example so what was the context of them bringing your dad back into service they needed surgeons they needed experienced Ser surgeons because the Army was increasing in size and so they went my understanding is they're doing this today for some professions as well uh which I think is a great thing so he went back he was happy to serve again and he served for how long I don't know 10 15 years before he finally retired for good and you all went with him to Belgium or no no it was the you know it was one of those cases like usually the kids move out of the house in this case my parents went into the military they left us they abandoned us uh we were in college at the time okay so but we got to go for Christmases and during the summer and that was this great experience I remember GA Gavin my younger brother and I the first time we went to Europe we flew through Heathrow we had tickets at the army bought us and I remember sitting in the the bar in Heath thr and we were too young to drink in United States but we went up to the bar we bailed up to the bar and we ordered two woodpecker alses and the bartender is like are you sure you want this mate we were like I it was like 8:00 in the morning we're like yes we can drink and the guy gave us the Woodpecker alss and was like the most horrible tasting thing I've ever had it's like turpentine but uh but uh but it worked but it worked and it was a great experience I don't was fun and we found out McDonald's Had beer in Belgium right I think we that commented right as it should as it should I was born in Mons actually born in Mons there we go I could appreciate this that's awesome um what would where where did you get the itch for government service or the military was it this kind of watching your parents well the parents then the Reagan years like feeling like I had some obligation to the country and for whatever reason I was blessed with a skill you know I was a Russian speaker and I managed somehow to become very good at the language and I felt like at the time you know people told me the country needs this the late 80s Cold War was still going on so I hate to say that but I started before the end of the first Cold War and I retired during the start of the second Cold War Cold War 2.0 um but I just felt like I had some obligation to serve and I was very fortunate that from the beginning I got to do jobs that were really interesting intellectually interesting um gave me the opportunity to travel a lot see the world and do crazy stuff which was kind of my nature well before we hit record we were joking about your math skills but then you know opposed to some strong language skills when did you start picking up languages you mentioned Russian and and being a fluent speaker but where does that come up uh I in high school I was a horrible French student I tell you the story I I was such a bad French student and on the state Regions exam I think I got a 65 which just barely passing or a 66 and uh when I went to college I decided to study Russian and the reason is um one I didn't want to take French again I saw the Spanish line was really long and then I looked at the Russian line and there was a really good-looking blonde on it and there was like nobody else on the line I'm like this is the best way to meet a you know somebody at college so I signed up for Russian and the teacher the one Russian professor at the school was sitting there and she said this is Russian do you know how hard this language is I ah piece of cake trying to be all confident and then of course two weeks later the young lady disappeared she I think went over to German or French probably French and I just got hooked on Russian and I was super motivated by it it was hard at first but I really was interested um something inside of me just said stick with it and then I went to Russia for you know an immersion and the Soviet Union at the time and that was just phenomenal to see what you could do like when you spoke the language and how fascinating it was and I you know from that point on I'm like there's no way I'm not never going to not do this language and I'm going to M you know I told myself early on like I'm going to read War and Peace in Russian I'm going to read dfki in Russian and um Dr shivago and I did and it was like a great feeling and speaking the language was really exciting you know the the the Turks have a saying one language one life right the more languages you speak the more lives you have and I was very fortunate in my career to learn multiple languages and be able to use them overseas and it was just one of the highlights of my career did did you feel like when you were learning that language that this was kind of harnessing the interest that like this this is your career path you're seeing an opportunity in this space uh I'll say two things one I learned Russian and I became pretty proficient and when I was working for the Army I went through some training with uh the CIA and there was a guy at the time who had been very senior in the CIA and he was running this course and his name was Mar and uh we were talking one day on a break and he said oh you should come over to us like you know you have skills and I said well if you were going to come over to the CIA what language would you learn this is late 80s by the way early ' 8990 and he said I would learn Turkish and I said why Turkish and he said because the Soviet Union is going to collapse and we're going to need people that speak turkic languages and all the embassies in Central Asia and the caucuses you know aeran and I took his advice and like that next week I went out and sign up for Turkish classes at the Middle East Institute in DC and I ended up serving in Turkish speaking countries you know in Turkey I learned Turkish I learned USC I learned useri and to this day I I have a lot like I just never forget that mentorship wow and that lesson he gave me and uh you know once I learned Russian like learning Turkish was not I'm not going to say it was easy but it was much easier I learned Arabic later for a tour in the Middle East and it was always fun it was always exciting it was I love talking with people in the language I love just connecting with people um and it was great for my career uh and it was great for I think for like our personal lives because we got to meet so many people that we probably would never have spoken with in all kinds of crazy situations what happened with the French then was it just you didn't have a reason to learn it the way you did with Russian I don't mean to be like childish or Bas but I remember later when my father was in Mons uh again uh key person in my life Gavin my younger brother we were in in Brussels one night and we went to a like a disco and there were like two good-looking Belgian women at the at the bar and I tried to speak to them in French I was like v v or and the one French girl looked at me and she said your French is horrible and they both stormed off and I was like aha languages are important right you got to be able to communicate with people so um and I have to say that because of Russian I you know early in my career I was sent to a place called the US Army Russian Institute which was in garish Parton kirkin and when I was there I met my wife and thanks to Russian I met my wife and we got married and you know uh the language thing it kind of I I met the blonde later um after college but a different blonde but much better looking and much more patient and another great American who put up with all the crazy tours that we had around the world but was also a Russian speaker uh she was not a Russian speaker she was working in Germany for a US company but I met her at a party on the St Patrick's Day which is by the way a great holiday for all people around the world and um she ended up learning Russian when we went to Russia and she did like amazing job of learning it without a lot of formal she could she could get anything done in Russian and then later in you know in Turkish and in Arabic and she always had friends wherever we went and um to this day she keeps in touch with a lot of those people that you know yeah what was it like being in the Soviet Union then since you've seen Russia in different permutations like that first time in the Soviet Union I can't even imagine what that was like what was stunning is that the people you know we that was the Cold War that we were the enemy we were Enemy Number One and yet the Soviet people were so kind and so open they were curious about America they all wanted to talk and especially if you spoke Russian they went crazy you know people inviting you to their Apartments even though there was some risk to them uh the other student I mean I have a lot of great stories I I'm finishing up a book I'm writing about my experiences with the Russian people and the Soviet people and then later when I worked in the former Soviet Union and like a lot of those great experiences um and uh what was you know the only people that like in our dormatory the only people that were not nice to us were the Cubans there were a bunch of Cuban students and they clearly did not like the Americans but the Soviets were were great and it was a fascinating experience and then going back after the Soviet Union collapse collapsed and working in St Petersburg in the like the mid 90s or early 90s that was fascinating the Russians were extremely interested in connecting with Americans learning from us you know my own view is there was a period where we had a window of opportunity in Russia which for a number of reasons including some I think on the US side mistakes we made yeah we didn't seize the opportunity and you know guys like Putin he was the deputy mayor in St Petersburg at the time for foreign relations uh the head of this svr now ser nishin he was there yeah so that and then I went back again later you know in the late 90s and I saw the change like where the where the anti-americanism started again the kind of people people saying we we need a strong hand we need another Stalin so you could see Putin was coming I would not say that like I or anybody else predicted Vladimir Putin would be the president of Russia in 1997 it's someone like him but someone you could hear people saying including young people we want someone like him uh and then going back again years later and seeing what had happened and how things had changed and in my own opinion how Russians became politically passive because they realized they had given up their chance at kind of Liberty freedom of speech they couldn't change they felt like they couldn't change anything and so they try and focus on other things but a lot of them were frustrated because they saw their country it as one Russian told me once our goal was not to be allied with North Korea and Iran and that's where we are and that was in the you know you 2019 period so um and now they're even bigger parios today because in my opinion Putin has taken the country on a very dangerous path so you mentioned inscom why did you why was that your first foray out of school into government they I I took a job as a clerk typist working for the government and working for the Army and there was a a program it was a 2-year fully funded program for graduate school and then on the job training that inscom had and they were looking for a Russian speakers and I applied to that um there was a wonderful woman in in the the HR System who kind of pushed me to do that and um motivated me to do it I did it I got that job it was called the defense funded language and area studies program and um that's how I got to go to garish which at the time was I was the youngest student there maybe the youngest student to ever graduate it was great experience it was a it was a 2-year um postgraduate level degree program certificate program in Soviet military studies and security studies taught all Russ right up your alley yeah it was amazing and of course it was a beautiful place kind of like where we are now like your your neighborhood here you look out the they were Mountain like The zuk Spits uh and the other students were you know very impressive they were all Army Foos MH so very impressive bunch of Americans and we had one British student and one Australian and and um yeah that's how I ended up at inscom and you mentioned you kind of get recruited almost out of inscom to go to the agency is that how it worked or did you end up finding a different path no I went then I went to State okay uh and then I went to the agency so a little bit of a different path SECU but I had an opportunity to go work for state department and go overseas and go to Russia so I took it geez all right so um if if we can one of the things you before we we jump into Russia itself but really one of the things we always talk about on the show are some of the formative moments you have when you're doing this job you've been trained to do um certainly in the agency this can take many shapes and sizes and obviously being very delicate with the topic itself but are there one or two moments you remember being particularly challenging when you were in the field operating making decisions that you still think back on today all the time yes that's one thing about the uh just talk about my career with the agency and being I was an operations officer and I don't know that people can understand how much psychological stress and pressure that you live with because people's lives are in your hands when you're a young officer like your running agents that's that's extremely stressful it's fun you could work with really great people and exciting you know it's like an adrenaline rush all the time uh but there's stress okay when you're in some places you're under observation all the time Sur Ence all the time you know you're you have to be on it's like you're an actor on a stage um and then when you're leading people like people's lives are in your hands when you're in the war zones yeah you know you're going out um you're rolling out to do something and bombs are going off there are checkpoints everywhere that's exciting and I would never trade a minute of what everything I did and the people I work with but that come with a lot of stress right and so the formative stuff I just I was lucky I work with a lot of great leaders people that were motivating that had done the job themselves they had that experience and they shared the experience uh they were very honest the feedback was very honest sometimes brutally honest but it was I for me it was a great way to learn um probably 80% of the people I worked for in my career 85% were really good leaders some were exceptional leaders uh not all of them some were not and you probably find that in any organization or bureaucracy um and then other formed stuff 911 seeing what happened after 911 and like the way people came together working with the military working with the Special Operations Command working with the bureau that was great it was fun just a quick word from our sponsor boltor and we'll get right back to this combat story I got to tell you guys about the boltor podcast they interviewed the top people in the outdoors listen to the guests they've had on their show includes EJ Schneider from Naked and Afraid they've actually had five people from Naked and Afraid on their show Jordan Jonas from the show alone Forest Gant that guy was on Joe Rogan show he knows everything about the outdoors animals Wildlife you name it tons of other people from the Discovery Channel National Geographic the Red Bull team and much more the host is Michael Stein who's the founder and CEO of boltor an Outdoor Products company he's also an actor filmmaker standup comedian that's worked with Academy Award winners guy gets around go to their website at bor.com that's B t.com or just look it up on all the podcast platforms for the bolur podcast that's the boltor podcast anywhere podcasts can be found if you want outdoor adventure stories tips and tricks about the outdoors or discover things you never knew about the outdoors and hear from the most influential people in the outdoor industry check it out the boltor podcast and now back to this combat story what do you remember from that I'm curious what was it like that day for you uh shock not how can I say this I'll never forget I was it was about 3: in the afternoon we watched the events on TV at first I thought it was like a Arnold Schwarzenegger movie like a what do they call like a action movie and then when we real we we saw the second plane hit uh I was watching the TV with one of the office manager secretary and then okay we had to get the Ambassador tell people what happened happened um the next day like every my boss the time pulled everyone together and said okay the world is just change we're at War and your lives are going to change and from that M moment on it was like a Sprint for 10 plus years non-stop work traveling deploying doing like just weekends there was no such thing and there were periods in my life where I would feel guilty if I would leave the office and I hadn't finished something and I turn around I go back so I'd work like 22-hour days but I just couldn't sleep I'd go home and I'd be like okay I did I miss this did I not get this and then go back it's like an addiction a compulsion um but the people around you were doing the same thing to your left and right that that level of dedication was there uh and a lot of our you know we don't talk about this life but a lot of our foreign Partners you know they they worked harder than we did and they were taking greater risks than we were so to be with them and I was fortunate to work with some really great people who I you know I don't know where they are in the world today but I I hope that they're safe and sound but unfortunately we lost friends uh especially during the war on terror you know people that were killed in raids in operations uh and that that experience was amazing like just talking about formative and I look back I it was very fortunate at the period like the government was doing stuff like we were it was action-oriented but one thing I remember going back to your question on 9/11 I went home at about 8:00 at night cuz my my boss said go home and spend some time with your family cuz it all changes tomorrow and when I went home my youngest son was sitting on the couch crying and he was probably 4 years old wow and I said what's the matter he said dad they're going to kill us all and um my other son I I went to talk to him he's like leave me alone I'm watching cartoons so he was not as phased um but watching like my son like that and I have to say too I was in you know a place where the next day when I went to work there was a mountain of flowers outside of our empath entrance wow the locals you know you don't see that every day they were so supportive um as there were a lot of other people it was a really interesting time well certainly being in a Muslim country um as that happens there's probably a lot of questions for the family like what does this mean for us did did they have to get evacuated out or no in one of my tours after that they were evacuated because of threats um no you know we were in a place where we were hit by Suicide bombings and terrorist stuff and you know my my kids told me later when we came back to the States they said you know we were worried all the time we just never told you cuz we were worried mate I was like were you worried you were going to die and they said no but we were worried you were never going to come home yeah right and um you don't think about that when you're in that 120 mph mode yeah right you're doing your thing but you know what they went through the sacrifice they made and my wife yes she had to just pick the kids up and go like one day I came home and said you got to get out of here and we went through that multiple times and we went through that threat multiple times uh where they just had to be ready at a moment's notice and my wife is incredible because she never complained about it she just did it and um you know she'd complain if I left dishes in the sink I didn't understand what that was all about like but okay so yeah um some of the guys we've had on on the show have had the I'd say almost Misfortune of having their kids also serve in the military or in the government literally in the same place as they either flew over or on the ground and universally they will say it's way harder being the the family member than the one who's downrange because of that like the uncertainty of dealing with it and I I don't I mean I guess your kids are probably of age where they might be doing something crazy as well did you did you ever push them into this career path military service uh I didn't push them I think that they had a desire yeah watching that growing up um you know like it's like our father didn't push us but there was a desire and I know I told my kids all along you do whatever you want as long as you're happy my father told me once you know if you can be any job as long as you feel you're doing an honest job and you're happy with what you do don't worry about how much you make you know you can make an impact no matter what you do and I try to tell that to my sons but what they've told me is they feel an incredible amount of pressure because of my my career and my my brothers who are also very successful and they've served and they've done great things for the country and so and I talked to my nephews I hear the same thing from my nieces so it's almost subconscious maybe um which is a little unfortunate because I hate to have them have that pressure on them yeah uh but you know I guess it's built it's going to help them for sure hopefully hopefully um you mentioned something earlier about the mentorship the leaders and the feedback and sharing one of the the big things I remember from the agency was how well at least my impression obviously far far Junior from your experience but how well people shared the history Lessons Learned like brown bags sessions in the building in station it was UN it was not like that in the military for me even as an army officer do you remember like what that was like sharing rece any any of those moments come come to mind it used to be when I came in that that was very important and it was like almost built into the system Lessons Learned case studies yeah talking to like the gray beards yep who would just gray beards yeah I mean you know like just when I when I started there was like a group of ethnic Russian officers and they would like pull me aside and tell me stuff and share stuff you know we we'd go outside in front of the building and smoke and they' tell me War Stories for I what I saw in the last couple years is that's gone away I don't know if it's the same anymore uh you know I I teach a graduate level course on Russian studies and what I see is a lot of the students just don't have the sense of History they're great students I love them all but I don't know that the education system in this country is doing the country the service that it needs to do it's my personal opinion we have a lot of work to do and I think it's the biggest national security threat facing America today is our system of UC ation um but yes I mean back then it was it was built in and if you like history and you like you you're a sponge and you're intellectually curious which is probably one of the greatest like people say young people say to me what do you what skills do you have to have to be a case officer you know it's being able to listen being intellectually curious the best officers I ever worked with were ones that they would just they go they get an assignment and they just do everything they could to learn about that country the culture MH um the language even if they didn't have a year or two years of language training at night they were doing it on the weekends you know I've seen a trend where that's gone away and that's a little bit disappointing and and concerning because our cultural awareness is is lacking um and our ability like we We As Americans have to understand the world out outside of this country is different and we shouldn't expect everyone to speak English and think like Americans it doesn't work that way and um when I started it was a big big deal like know the history of the organization know the history of the operations uh you know and there's a lot of great literature written about things one of my hobbies is I love to read all the Russian literature about like Espionage and that's fascinating and and the Russians have a lot more stuff out there available uh they have YouTube channels just dedicated to the history of like the ESPN spy versus spy usually you know KGB versus CIA and listening to their version of things is fascinating when you know from our side what the version is there's probably a little propaganda going on their side but a lot of it like I learn stuff every day some of the things that they did have you heard any stories that involv you or something you were involved in not yet and I don't want to you don't want worried about that no I actually there is one book I read which I'm in the book uh and you I won't talk about it but someone knows doesn't know what it is but it's the story of like when these cases and the guy's talking about me and I like I wish I could tell people about it because it's kind of cool but I can't I can't even show my does it portray you in a good light it it it makes reference to my language skills which made me very proud when I saw right yeah wow yes that's a pat on the back and my uh my what's the word bit my tenacity all right yeah that's great yeah it was fun um all right you also talked about having this responsibility people's lives in your hands not just you know other other officers but obviously assets and and liaison Partners um did you have any experiences where you ended up losing someone on on the other side and if so how did you handle it um places where I wor I mean first we lost uh yes and it's hard I mean especially in the CT world you know it's a very very dangerous business and a lot of times when you're you know the best way to stop a terrorist attack is to recruit penetrations of a terrorist cell but those are people that are running around with terrorists and you know me personally no but people that work for me they had to go through that were people that they were handling never came home um and partners like in in some of the foreign services that we worked with you know guys killed in raids guys that we had worked with that you had known uh I mentioned like I went I was somewhere where we had suicide bombing two guys that I used to talk to all the time like every day i' shoot the I can't say that oh yeah you can all right I I shoot the with them and smoke a cigarette with them and then one day like they were just blown up by a suicide bomber and when I you know I was called outside to like deal with the crime scene and one their body parts are everywhere and and I knew that they both had small children yeah right and it's a country where they didn't have you know I'm sure they didn't have a a pension or so that's kind of heartbreaking how do you as a leader when when somebody loses maybe an asset or or you know someone close in in that chain how would you talk to them about it because this is something they can't bring home right I mean they can't really talk to anyone about it is there anything that you learned over time or that you would try to do well I'll tell you this one story one my first tour I I was going to a very difficult place right I won't I can't name the country but it's really really difficult in our business place to go and one of my instructors from the training from from the farm was the older guy uh not older wiser he was a great great CIA officer and he had moved on to another job he was working in our headquarters I was going through another set of Advanced Training to go where I was supposed to go and one day I got this call from my instructor and he said hey hey uh so and so I'll say his name Cliff wants to see you can you go Friday at like six o' I'll cut you loose for an hour he wants to talk to you about something and leaving that course for an hour is no small no small thing and I'm thinking okay what did I do wrong like I got I'm going to get in trouble what did I do so I and they gave me his address and he lived in like uh Northern Virginia somewhere and I go to his townhouse and ring the doorbell and he lets me in and he had two beers and he's like let's have a beer and he sat me down on his couch and he's like listen I just want to talk to you about something he said in this organization people don't talk about their failures everyone brags about what they've done but nobody talks about mistakes they've made or failures they've had and he goes I want to tell you like I'm I'm in the senior service I've done this all over the world and I've made major mistakes and I failed and he said I want you to know cuz where you're going like the pressure is intense probably worse than anywhere else and I want you to know like if you lose one day some sometimes the other guys have a better day than you do sometimes it's just bad luck sometimes they throw more resources at it sometimes you'll win sometimes you'll lose but when you lose you got to get back up on the horse you can't give up you got to be resilient and I just want you to know like doesn't mean you're not a good person it doesn't mean you're not a good officer or a great officer if you lose sometimes no one goes in the ring and doesn't get punched in the face and they don't get a bloody nose that's not realistic and what you can't do is not get in the ring or get in the ring and just run around you got to get into a scrap that's what we do and I just would never forget that discussion I left thinking like God this guy took the time to do that for me that was like great mentorship why do you think he did that I think because he was a good person and I think he he thought about okay this guy's going he's young and he's going somewhere really intense and maybe you know so again in that organization sometimes people exaggerate you know like the the you always get the as you're walking out the chief's door don't get caught or don't don't f up that's not like the easy that's not the greatest advice I guess to someone and so back to your question I try to tell my officers look like we got your back because the best the best people I worked for were like when you get hit the street it's all you you're going to make the call you don't get a call you know there's you don't get a phone call like the lifeline there's no radio you can call back and you got to make a decision that's the thing that's very special about the job and someone's life may be in your hand you may have a ton of money with you some technical stuff whatever but when you get back here no matter what call you made I got your back okay I'm empowering you I trust you to do what you got to do and you know the best bosses I had were like that and I try to do that for my officers and let them know that you're not going to win every game I mean he must have seen something in you to have brought you to his house like out of that training and not just gone into the class with other people probably in the same pipeline as you yeah I don't know maybe knew I like beer I don't know no he was a great he was a he's he's still with us thank God and he's a great he was a great mentor like and a great personality yeah that's the other thing about the agency we say like we had a lot of great characters that's true a lot of like just weird unique characters which I never found like when I was at inscom there was some of that but in the agency it was especially in the director of operations it was you know just people was strange languages strange skills quirky but unique and when you get like on the street with them or in the field with them it was just fun to be around them so how about diversity like there was a divers intellectual diversity that was kind of amazing to be around um one of my grad professors was Burton Gerber yeah I don't know if you ended up I assume you had spent some time with him at some point but also quite a character and very high up you know in the agency in Russia and and whatnot so I always just looked at him just this is a character here operates in his own way yes and there were people that he kind of mentored and molded and they were the same way I do worry too sometimes we we're losing that too we become like very cookie cutter MH maybe too overly bureaucratic there's you know I had a friend who was another great like just great linguist really unique guy uh he spoke like nine languages he was the son of a plumber who had just figured it out I you know I grew up in a small town in you inid Midwest I think but he told me once he's like I wish we could make the misfit team because you know in the agency there's a lot of people that don't fit into anything but they're just really they have one little skill that's amazing and when their time comes like that's the person I need I need her cuz she's got this very unique skill and let's throw at the problem and they can do incredible things for the country but you have to tolerate them and if the system isn't designed to do like you just want to stamp everyone to look the same we tend to crush that so let's just for a moment let's talk planning um this is something that I I don't think people really understand you mentioned going to very tough places you've been to the hardest um there's a lot of planning that goes into just a regular day on the job there where you really have to be detailed about what you're doing where you're moving what you're carrying with you um you know certainly in the military it's known for the planning side of things but I just felt like that's one of the things people don't realize about the agency could you share any anecdotes or your experience on both sides the person actually going out and executing and then the person overseeing someone else's plan as you Advanced well when you I mean you probably remember from the you're you're taught multitasking they want to test you like when you go through the training can you multitask can you make decisions on a on a dime you know you go out with one plan and then no plans survives like contact with the Enemy right uh how do you react to that like do you fall apart um over time like you don't my wife and I argue all the time because we'll leave the house and we'll start going somewhere she's like oh I forgot this I'm like we're not going back like once you once you set out on that course right and you know I'm I I have the set way I'm going and I got to go that way I got to be there on time you know when I travel even now I'm retired like I could have been a day late but I you like you can't miss a flight you you got to be there on time uh you got to be there in that window and you're constantly processing and this is one of the things even after you retire which is a little difficult because you're never present for other people because you're constantly processing what's going on around you the timing you know timing hacks between here and here what happens if there's traffic what if I can't get a you know a cab what if this how's that going to impact me and it's so built in that you're doing it all the time in your head and by the way like where I was you don't write a lot of stuff down cuz that's evidence you don't want that and then you're looking watching Everybody all the time and you're constantly like hyperactive you're hyper sensitive you're sitting in Starbucks and everyone else is chatting away blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and you're in there like okay why is that guy doing this why did he what did he just put in his bag like why why is he holding his hand inside of his Jack jacket like is he got a like a you know a Detonator in there now maybe the other people in Starbucks are all also retired agents and they're all doing the same thing I don't know it maybe every Starbucks around the country and if you listen to like the Russians all Americans are CIA anyway so maybe that's it but yeah I mean planning is big and then what people don't realize is the paperwork you know how much I've written when I retired there was a think tank that you know they were they were talking they like have you written anything oh I said oh yeah I've written like reams of stuff and they were like well what can you share with us your like as a writing example I'm like nothing zero zero and and they were like well what like but you said you've written stuff I'm like oh yes I've written a lot so you a lot of paperwork uh but they never show you in James Bond is the finance part of it right you know why oh James why did you use two bullets instead of one you know there's a new policy you know uh oh you know the Aston Martini you have to change the tires and you haven't done it okay you spend a lot of time doing paperwork uh the bureaucracy can be pretty the red tape can be pretty heavy it's ason Martin oh sorry Aston Martin Oh I thought you were mixing it like the Aston Martini Martini I I see as together who you call the Boza over there who is that guy PF Gallery um I I will say that's one of the things I feel like a hidden talent that you get coming out of the agency is your ability to write something quickly distill what's important and put it on paper very fast yes I definitely didn't have it in the military but the agenc just breeds that into you I think and briefing and briefing and doing meetings like doing fast meetings concise um that's I you know I learned especially like when I when you get to the more senior ranks when you're going up and briefing the director you're going to the White House like you sometimes you have like three minutes to brief a really complicated thing and you have to like boom boom boom and I had a boss that'd be like going through like a prep session and he' just be like uh you're boring the hell out of me like make it sharp I he was a great boss he he taught me like you walk in that room you got to like seize the moment and you may have two minutes and you better get your point across because you either need an approval or you need to make sure that the principal is tracking so they don't get blindsided by something because if they do no one likes a surprise and uh it was a it's a skill that you get at the agency I had a question here on what do people not understand about the agency I think you just nailed it with with the writing is there anything else that comes to mind the things that they don't get to see when they're watching the movies or reading the books well also like the you know the personal sacrifice in terms of like your okay every 5 years you know what happens they you know you can't have friends you know that was hard I I like people and I liked a lot of the people that we knew overseas and you know you would have to get approval to maintain friendships or contacts and sometimes they would say no and that really stunk right and my wife and kids would be like how come we can't talk to so and so anymore like don't worry about it um and there are people around the world probably think go Glenn's an cuz like he never called he never wrote and most of them it's not because I'm an well maybe I am an but I like I like those people I just was not allowed yeah so and then people in my college think that I was okay well we can tell that story too if you want tell that story uh or we can tell a story about when you came to visit me in a certain country and the surveillance guys couldn't they let's tell it let's tell the story so you guys look alike we look alike and Gavin came to visit me in country X and uh they the locals were like we W I walked out of the building one day and they were they had a guy at a booth watching and you could see saw like he thought no sorry Gavin walked out first and he looked like okay check like he The Target just left and then I was watching him do it through a doorway and then I walked out and I watched him like do a double take and then he gets on a phone what happened they multiplied uh yes so Gavin and I do look well he's better looking yes yeah don't sell yourself short on that agree you you look very similar um do as much as you can say about this I understand very sensitive topic but what I often talk to guys about especially in the military side is you have all these expectations the first time you go down range first time you go outside the wire you feel like it's going to be World War III almost everybody universally is like they just believe it's going to be a gunfight and usually it's pretty mundane when you think about maybe the first time you were running a surveillance route for real do you remember kind of the the emotions the the fear what was it like sure that time sure yeah I mean my where I got what I got like they just handed me something said go do this and what what you know you talking about the planning when you're in training you're given time to like plan and and one of my instructors told me was like hey when you get to the real world you usually don't get that choice like something snaps and you got to go and that's why like when you need to know the place like the area the city you're in you need to be able to move move around so you got to spend all your free time working in like moving around learning the city learning you know area familiarization and when I went to my first assignment I got somewhere and they were just okay sorry but we got to we got to deploy like in an hour and I'm like and then you're just out the door and yes your heart's in your mouth and you're nervous and you're scared and by the way to the very end there were times when you know I and I never like it never went away that that I'm not like fear mhm that something's going to go bad and especially when you work in certain environments where the the locals are very good at creating cases right so double agent operations you know being uh dangles you have to always know that you could be on the wrong end of a very well planned operation and some services are very very good at it and of course what we learned unfortunately after 911 is that non State actors have become very good at it and so you you know you've got to be super super smart and going back to your officers making sure that that that it's part of their um like subconscious that they know if an opportunity comes like how they protect themselves and the source because the golden rule was always like the source comes first you protect the source but after 911 what it became too is like I don't want you walking into an ambush these are certain things you have to do to make sure that you keep yourself safe because at the end of the day like I want you coming home to your family MH uh and and the challenging places where I was at were where things seemed okay and then they would just go up in flames and you know people would get in a a little bit of a lull or like they felt lulled and you should never do that but it's very hard to sustain you know like in some countries I was in I'd leave on I leave on like RNR and I would get sick two day like immediately my wife would go crazy because we'd get to some I don't know we'd fly to Dubai and as soon as we got Dubai I'd be like sick I'd be lying in the to relax this is your vacation basically right and I'd be for the first day or two I'd be out and and uh one of our medical people told me they were like that's just your nerves like your stress level you're going down from 120 M hour all the time to you're now you know you can relax a little bit and so your body like is adjusting and that was for years like that how about after your and I would also get sick when my wife had asked me to do errands that was terrible just happened just happened just a quick word from our sponsor give Legacy and we'll get right back to this combat story I was really excited to bring give Legacy to our listeners veterans and members of the Armed Forces have twice the risk of infertility than the general population sperm Health can be affected by lifestyle age injury and environment including exposure to toxic chemicals such as those in Burn pits radiation and pollutants hundreds of men in high-risk occupations like police firefighters members of the military use Legacy to test and freeze their sperm this will allow them to produce biological children even if the unthinkable happens the military's Health Care System offers limited options for couples diagnosed with 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to talk about but what's the feeling like there for this thing that you've probably been looking forward to and and being nervous about right for so long it's uh exciting like when you can connect with somebody um and I always did believe that like you're you're opening up doors like opportunities for somebody uh and that's like a great feeling back in the office um you know sometimes the tradition the tradition was you'd celebrate right some places some place it was were just too busy to do too much of that as a as a manager like as a leader you try to do something special um just kind of celebrate and give people credit for what they what they did what they achieved uh but I was always too you know like in the back of your heads like I got to make sure this person's taken care of and there were many nights like I I would go to bed and like okay where to this day I'm like where is so and so like like one of your officers well no like my agents oh yeah like I hope they're okay like I hope everything is fine cuz the the rule is too once you go you go you don't you're not supposed to go back and ask so actually could you speak a little bit about that because I feel like this is something people might not understand but like how close you get to that person and they might think it's adversarial but it's not in many cases and then you literally will never talk to them again right and and you're just cutting ties like the emotional side of that right it's very emotional it's very again psychologically can be very difficult you build a bond you're in many times you're in very dangerous situations together you're going through very hard times together and then you just part ways and not only like you're not going to talk to them again you're well the way I was taught is you don't even go back and ask the people on the desk how so and so like how's he doing how's she doing that's just done need to know MH right you just go you move on if you're lucky later in your career someone may come and say blah blah blah but a lot of times you don't know yeah and you're not supposed to know and you have to be very disciplined about not you know asking do you do you think there might be a time where you will see one of them again maybe they're out of whatever they doing in in a safe place uh I always hope right I mean again a lot of these we used to laugh like say someday we're just going to sit on a beach somewhere and drink a beer together without all this stress without fear I don't know if that's realistic but um yeah you know I would hope and and honestly like some of the adversaries I worked against too I'd love to like sit down in the future with them and drink a beer drink a cup of coffee um I had you know a lot of respect for the people that that were working against me and I you know in different countries like I I had a lot of respect I got to say like they were very good they were very dedicated their job was to stop us and our job was to do what we were supposed to do and like there was almost an honor among Thieves um I you know the surveillance teams like I always tried to respect them and you know understand like that's a that's a hard job that's a it's a crappy job to sit in a car you know in minus 30° for 12 hours until okay Glenn decides he's going to go to the store uh that's you know that's not a fun life and they're doing their job most of them they're doing it for their country just like we were doing it for our country sometimes I always I always thought it was a little silly like our people would get very like make things personal or overly emotional I could see on the CT front yeah right okay like people that kill people terrorists yes like I don't really have a lot of sympathy for them although what I saw on that side too and I spent a lot of time in the CT world is a lot of those people were just victims of like hard it's probably like anywhere like inner city you know kids growing up without parents or going through you know I guys that I had the opportunity to chat with had you know lost both parents in a in a bombing raised on the street and then how do they survive they get involved in terrorism they get involved in extreme is you know maybe the same thing with like narcotics traffickers and um so even there I there were some people that I I really like I felt for him I had like a a certain compassion for him uh and of course like the security services that worked against us got to take their hat your hat off to them a lot of them don't have the money we have the equipment we have and they did pretty impressive things and I learned a lot from them so it's funny one of the guys who we've interviewed on this show twice tce he was actually the first guy I interviewed and it felt like I was in an asset meeting cuz that was how I just knew to set something up but he was a former Marine who was in fuah as an officer and then he was a pmoo he was in marso and then a pmo um he's now an author Elliot AC he writes pretty extensively um but he's written a few books and one of them was called places and names and I read about this and then I had him on and we talked about it so when he was out of service and writing and he was reporting basically for the Atlantic and different places he was in turkey and his fixer arranged a meeting between him and a former card carrying AQ member in Turkey actually right on the border so he goes to it at first it's like he's not a marine he's just going in as an American journalist and then they're all speaking through this fixer As an interpreter basically and they're talking for hours the guy figures out he's a Marine that he had been in fuia and all these different places that the the AQ guy had fought and he said eventually The Interpreter is like I can't do this for much longer I'm going to take a break and he said that he and the AQ guy sat there with a napkin and they drew out the locations of places that they had both served and the dates to see had they ever been on the other side of the other guy and there was just this respect the same way you talk about yeah I mean he was obviously on the terrorist side from our perspective but he was fighting for what he believed in and there was a there was that relationship that they had uh cultivated basically just sitting across the table from each other drinking tea in this case so very very similar to that sentiment yeah I mean it sounds very familiar and you can understand why um again yeah okay we yes for us they're terrorists for them they had a different perspective and they're defending their homelands or they're defending their you know whatever Villages or uh and I again I felt like the best officers I worked with instilled in us like always respect the enemy always respect like what you're working against never take them for granted that's a big mistake we make a lot we underestimate you know it's a little country they don't have a lot of resources never make that mistake especially when you're on their Turf and that's the thing about being a operations officer you're on their Turf and they own the turf and to survive you need to understand and respect them yeah if if I can ask about the post 911 changeover maybe since you experienced both sides of it of pre and post all I knew was post 911 from like I joined the the Army in O2 um agency you know later in 11 so that was all I knew but I had heard hey things changed you know the the pace of operations obviously the target set changed we diverting resources you got to see that firsthand and then I don't know like over you know the next 10 years did you see it swing back are you worried about tradecraft and the way it's implemented based on the post 911 era I'm worried yes for a number of reasons I would say one I mean I think there was a burnout at some point because we were working like crazy right and it's probably was not sustainable if you look I mean this my assessment before 911 there was the hiring was not high uh after 911 there were like major hiring but there weren't enough experience managers leaders to manage and Lead all the young people and that meant they were throwing younger people without a lot of leadership experience into leadership jobs and that's sometimes problematic I think you know people have criticized okay the war zone mentality or like the tradecraft on the CT side is different than the let's say traditional stuff or like you know harder CI targets there's some truth to that and some of the me some of the mentality became what I saw was the organization became very focused on how many people you managed like almost became like paramilitary Focus if you managed a th000 you know 10,000 then you're a general if you manage three then you're only a captain but in the Espionage business is just a little bit different right and so you like you can only manage two people but your impact could be incredible if you look at the case of like uh the billion dollar spy and what they did in in that station at that time like the impact they had on the US government was incredible and it wasn't you know thousands of people so um I think numbers became very important uh and then you know again in a lot of those environments languages were not important and I this is one of my critiques I think the organization has lost its like focus on language skills it that worries me a lot you know I saw more less and less of like the dedication to like really mastering foreign languages and uh using them so and I think part of that may be a product of you know in the in the bigger places the war zones there was that just wasn't what was done and you know one year rotations that kind of stuff was problematic for for various reasons you just don't learn the country you know most places I were it takes you even if you speak the language fluently it takes you a year just to get your feet yeah and so you know two years is short three years good one year you know it's not enough my opinion do you see it swinging back though to a better State as you were exiting you know in the more recently or you feel like that kind of post 911 hangover that's has not changed what you just described I think this is my view like the whole country is going through a very difficult time right now and like um I don't think it's gotten better yeah I think the organization by the way like we've always traditionally turned to now you got to remember like I was a operator right a humaner but I get very frustrated I hear you know ENT you know AI ENT Ai and like people love technology in this country but I said this after 7 October like Hamas did not publish their plans in Osan or if they did it just nobody caught it yeah right so the human stuff becomes critical uh and by the way what I understand happened there is probably more of a strategic failure on the leadership of the Israeli Services right the apparently the Israelis that's what the media is claiming they had Intelligence on what Hamas was planning to do but people dismissed it and that's because as my assessment Hamas ran a very complex Counter Intelligence operation and this is my why am I talking about this this is my big concern I think we've gotten like we've lost the ability to think critically part of that is because like nobody can be um critical everyone sensitive like the level of sensitivity is so high when I was young I would have bosses say like like this is not a good idea let me explain to you why like you need to think about this from 10 different angles not just the one that you came at it with and was I a little like angry that they didn't like my idea sure but that I like was it the end of the world no you just get over it you get back on the horse and you do your job and you learn you know up until the end and I had had some really senior jobs in some of the hardest places and most significant uh places we had have around the world and I worked for a guy towards the end of my career who was legendary and he would come to me and he's like did you did you think about this and I'd say son of a like how did I miss that and I go walked in my car that night I'm like man I'm such an idiot like I've been doing this for all these years and I didn't think about this this guy is like that much smarter than me or more experienced than me and I got to learn that and I go like i' write a note to myself like don't don't screw this up again uh I saw a TR towards the end of my career where that's not acceptable and my concern is that that kills critical thinking if you don't have critical thinking in in the intelligence business then you have like big problems yeah and so um I don't know how you get over that because it's it's society-wide from what I understand there's a trend right now in the country where there's some a lot of difficult things happening and we're just a reflection we we may have a fence around the building and badges but we're American still American still American um just before we pivot on to Russia last question on this side of things I would ask if you look back at your career what is one of the hardest moments or decisions you had to make that you're able to discuss even if it's OB fiscated to some degree but do you remember one or two in particular doesn't have to be the worst or hardest but hardest decisions well a couple things one like taking assignments and the struggle like for my family especially being away from my family that was the worst thing by the way about my career like I hated being away from my family and I was away from my sons I was away from my wife missed a lot of holidays um a lot of birthdays have you counted how many years in total you've been away by any chance uh no because it's probably impossible I once tried to figure out how much time I I spent wasted an airport and train stations and you know waiting for people on street corners then it got my 12 cigarette you know and they're late uh or I'm in the wrong place which also happens um no but like that was always hard like making the decision to do to take certain assignments or take on certain obligations uh other things like there was one point where I had to like I knew I was going to get in trouble with people above me but I had to make a decision to make sure that the senior senior people knew something and you know I knew like I'm going to get hit by a ton of bricks but I did it and I got hit by the ton of bricks and but that's what your job survived yeah that's your job right I mean I sort of survived okay uh and then the last one the hardest thing was probably just making a decision to leave to like retire uh again only because I felt so guilty about where the country country is now and what the threats are uh but I also felt guilty because I like I have two sons I wanted to spend more time with them I wanted to spend time with my family you know my wife who was you know denied a lot of the attention she probably deserved and deserves and then my other brothers like their families I was just gone all the time and even if I was back you know I was like back in the States for a one-ear assignment I was so busy every weekend you know every late at night I I you know before my mother passed away you know going to visit her was almost impossible a lot of the times and it broke my heart because I wanted to see her but I'd say okay like we're going to go this weekend and then I'd get notified okay you got to go here or you know you're on duty something just happened and um so I guess what I'm saying is you at some point I finally said I just got to spend some more time taking care of my family and uh let other people do the job yeah all right Glenn so so we kind of talked through your experience with the agency growing up getting here for people who may just be tuning in to listen to thoughts on Russia could I just ask you to share maybe a little the bonafides on your side like the the time you spent focused on Russia Soviet Union just to establish that off the bat uh okay I mean probably since I was I don't know freshman in college when I started majoring in Russian and studying Russian and Russian studies and then uh that's what I did when I worked for the army that was my main focus uh when I was with State Department that was pretty much my main focus um and then with the agency much much of my career so my bonea fees I don't know I mean I don't think there's anything I spent a lot of time living in Russia uh I'm very proud of the fact when I retired like I had um Native like when I finally tested like fives like that was like just for people listening five is the highest you can get that's that was that was I was proud of that right that took a lot of work but what I want to say is like I never and I have a master's degree in Russian language and literature by the way that's my big I love Russian literature uh in a bachelor's degree in Russian studies and I went to the Army Russian Institute I told you and like I spent a lot of time studying Russia and working in the former Soviet Union but somebody asked me they're like you're a Russia expert I'm like no even the Russians don't understand their own country like I don't believe that there's if anyone tells you they're a Russia expert I don't believe it I don't like all these people that are out there say I'm a Russia expert uh no I don't I don't go for it well let's if we can let's start with the Russian people as you kind of mentioned to begin with you see them very differently from the government and I just think let's start out on a positive note here as we talk about Russia like your experience with the Russian people and how you've you see them uh it was I mean 98% of our experience my experience and I think I could speak for my wife and my kids was a very positive experience people are very warm it they they don't look like that they have the facade but when you get beyond that facade they can be very warm people uh well you grew up in New York right so it's the same it's similar yeah yeah it's true like a little tough on the outside but actually good people um little crazy like there there's more they're more about the soul than the logic what do you mean by that like that's the kind of thing they make decisions based on emotion they're very the conflicted you know they have this fa famous thing like between like the syop files people that see themselves being part of Asia or EUR Asia and then the European so there's this conflict in them all the time that I saw the average Russians are like they they love America that was the thing that always amazed me like most Russians only had great things to say about America if they ever been here they had good things to say and if they hadn't been here even people in the government that officially would say bad things privately they like oh like you know Washington's a great City I've been in the United States before you know I have a cousin that lives in Miami or whatever so they you know and probably there's a reason a lot of them send their kids or sending their kids to study in the US and live in the United States so what I saw with the Russians is with the Americans they have this inferiority complex they want want to be treated as equals they want to be seen as equals I think one of the tragedies of the relationship is we we were never under like people didn't understand that like when we called when certain us leader called Russia like the world's gas station that was probably so insulting for them um I'm pretty sure that that was very very insulting and it just made them angry what used to make me surprised like in the 90s they would get pissed because they weren't in the news all the time in the United States and wanted to be they wanted to be and sometimes I would think that they were like teenagers like they do something bad just to get attention from the United States they wanted to be in the New York Times They want to be in the Washington Post where does that come from I think they look to the United States like they look up to America they knew that America is a great power America is financially successful they're culturally again Russians would come here and they'd come back and like go back to Russia they would tell me like it's amazing you can breathe freely uh people are like I I had this one very senior Russian guy once who went to the United States and he was not a fan of the United States and he came to the United States on a two-e program and he was living for part of that program one week in kalamazo Michigan and he came back and he had like a stack before digital photos he had a stack of photos he took from his time in kalamazo just one week with this like middle class American Family living as their guest and he was like Glenn these people are amazing we would go to a restaurant we'd go to like tji Friday and they would like treat every waiter and waitresses nicely like they were kind to people they were kind to me they took me to their Church they took me to the state fair I got to judge like the pig contest this guy who was very sophisticated uh and actually kind of sad thing afterwards he told me he said you know my job during the Soviet Union I was in the like the counter American propaganda uh Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and he goes and he had tears in his eyes when he told him this he's like I was saying things about Americans that I never knew like I was I was telling negative things to the world about the United States that are not true now I know it and I had never met an American I had never seen America now like he said I regret having ever done that because it was a great experience to see the United States and to meet so many like just average Americans um so I think that I don't know Russians they're they're very mysterious they're driven by emotion and a lot of them feel a connection to the United States and they feel a little bit shunned now what's hard today is what they're doing in Ukraine is atrocious I mean the the the bombing of houses and you know um schools hospitals you know this the latest round of strikes you know energy infrastructure dams terrorizing which is the way that they fight Wars is they're just trying to terrorize the ukrainians into submission so I can understand and what worries me is that like the hatred for the among the ukrainians for the Russians now is probably going to last for a very very long time and I hope that the ukrainians get their land back I hope the Russians stop this war but even after that there's probably going to be a serious challenge between those two countries and for understandable reasons on the part of the ukrainians is there you know I don't mean to uh bore the crap out of people listening but I I wonder I think we look at We As Americans might look at Russia in all right we have the Cold War and we have what's going on now we have you know the Soviet Union and Russia do you ever hear when you were in Russia or meeting with Russians throughout your career is there any um time that they they think back to pre- maybe pre- Lenin or pre-communist that has any Nostalgia or positive um influence today or is that so far removed they can't even think about or or they don't care to well let's that may be a lesson for the United States a little commentary but when Lenin and the bulvik took over and by the way horrible people and horrible things what they did to the people of the Soviet Union including the Russian people they wiped away the history of everything before they they painted if there was history to talk about the zorus times it was it was propagandized and made to look negative uh they for example the Zars secret police the the oana they painted them as being horrific horrible and if you look at the stats the the Soviet ccha was killed many more people arrested many more people without trials than the than the Okana ever did the oana's way of work used to be they would arrest someone then they'd either set him free of course they try and recruit them and run them or they would just send them to Siberia for a couple of years or let them immigrate like Lenin and a lot of the Bolsheviks they they let him go to Europe and live in Europe and then like they didn't hunt him down and kill like we see the regime is doing today to its opponents so a lot of Russians don't know their history yeah there's nothing you know there's there's an attempt by some people to say oh like during the Civil War we sent the Russian Fleet to Baltimore to send a message to the English because the English were debating whether they should join on the side of the North or sorry the South and we sent you know to Abraham Lincoln we sent our support and we know we've had great relations in the past the reality is sadly if you look at russian-american relations it they've never been very good there has always been a lot of tension in the relationship for a number of reasons in the United States there was always you know before the Revolution there was people were very critical of the Zar human rights issues Liber civil liberty issues uh probably competition you know very large countries competing for influence um you know when the United States started to get bigger and more powerful I think the Russians were concerned about that and there's a great book out there I forget the name of it but it's about like all the it's somebody who collected all the letters that us ambassadors or envoys going back to the first Envoy from the Continental Congress in 1775 Zars court and one trend line in there they all complain like we're under surveillance all the time we can't get any meetings with senior Russian officials uh we're be like they're send like our household staff are all recruited by the secret police they're stealing our letters and reading them not a lot of warmth in the relationship so for those listening if you heard about that book and you think that sounds interesting the CIA is a good career for you that if that turns you on yeah um so there's no like hey if we could just return back to that pre-communist era there no there's no nostalgia in fact what I saw with a lot of Russians especially like people I would say like of the Lenin oh sorry the Putin mindset is they go They're point of reference is to 1917 and then the uh the Civil War when the United States states sent troops we intervened in the Civil War we supported the opposition to the Bolsheviks uh you know the Wilson Administration was supporting the opposition and Russians to this day remember that they oh my God they tell me all the time you sent we never send troops to us soil you had troops in vadavas you had troops in the north of Russia you and your English allies and your French allies were trying to undermine the regime you had there was a famous case called The lockart Affair where a British Diplomat together with an American and the French they the the Bolsheviks claimed they were trying to kill Lenin and overthrow the government early on in 1917 1918 uh debatable on what they were doing whether they were really doing that but they were kind of meddling this famous Sydney Riley you know Sydney Riley the Ace of spies although I don't think he was a very good by cuz he got caught but um he was involved in a plot to try and overthrow lennin and so many Russians will look back to that and say you fired the first shot wow from the very beginning now you could argue that the Bolsheviks were also inciting revolution in this country and in Europe all over Europe and we should remember that the Bolshevik goal Lenin's goal was not to stop in Russia in fact he was when the when the February Revolution happened he was caught off guard he didn't think it would ever happen M and then he rushed back to take advantage of it steal power from the provisional government overthrow that government and then they were trying in Europe you know they created the common turn they were they sponsored Revolutions in Europe in Germany in Hungary they were providing weapons and uh some of the same in the United States there was a bolik effort to create a Communist Revolution in the United States you'd mentioned when we started talking that we probably missed a window after the wall fell where is that window and why do you think we missed it I would say 91 to 95 maybe what I saw there was the Russians were very open to engagement um both sides are guilty of missing the opportunity one because corruption was so bad in Russia my opinion what I saw two the United States was completely flat-footed and like nobody saw the Soviet Union collapsing nobody very few people I should say and and the administration at the time like the Bush Administration was very concerned about the collapse of the Soviet Union the Clinton Administration in my opinion was staffed by people that were not foreign policy experts they didn't have a lot of depth on Russia this you know because of the way that the Soviet Union was there were not a lot of really um a lot there were not enough Russia experts to go around and what I saw in my first tour there was we didn't have like enough people to try and understand that country I hope and I'll say this now I said this before I retired and I keep saying it the the US government needs to be ready the American people needs to be ready and by the way us business needs to be ready when when the Putin regime ends and it will end uh when there's an opportunity again for a better relationship we better be ready to take advantage of it and do it smartly you know I saw Americans going to Russia some behaved in a really pathetic fashion you know you talking 90s yeah yeah if they had you know if they had a a thousand dollar they were super super human and they took advantage of it in ways which I thought were disgusting you know you'd go to the bars in in St Petersburg or Moscow and there was you know was like Sodom and Gomorrah and they took advantage of a lot of people that were desperate uh then there were Americans that went and they tried to do the right thing but then the Russians would fleece them you know organized crime corruption was rampant I don't think that the Rel like my own view is we should have been more patient with the Russians and understood like you're not going to go and we probably saw this later in other places like Afghanistan we're not going to turn Russia into a democracy or a western style like us style democracy in 10 years not realistic so there's probably an alternative that we should have looked at and at the time which was interesting a lot of Russians used to say to me why are you pushing us to do that and yet you're doing business with ch communist China and you let them maintain you know they did 10 to men Square you didn't end all business relations you you put up with that with the Chinese but with us you're demanding you know complete Market reform uh elections like you have in the United States which is we're not made for that we've never had it in our history so how about in the post 911 SLP potin era I suppose and and please just correct me on on this one but it it felt like and I was so focused on Afghanistan and Iraq from O2 on but it felt like there was a period of time maybe from 2001 to 2008 or so where maybe we could have had more of a role or an influence or changed the trajectory we had maybe better relations where we would coordinate on CT something and then it just felt like obviously with 2014 with Crimea and whatnot things changed drastically was there any more of an opportunity after 911 with some of the I don't know maybe support we could have gotten for America or not really we were we were kind of destined to where we're at now uh I don't know that it could have been much different once Putin came to power I think because his goals and his interests were um completely different than what we thought and what we what our goals and our interests were the Russians viewed Afghanistan you know the people around Putin from what I saw they saw okay the us is going to Afghanistan really the goal is to surround Russia and to destroy Russia you know why did the United States go into Iraq to build bases in Iraq to come after Russia why are they going like why are they funding all these colored revolutions they refuse to insist that the Georgians or the ukrainians might actually just want to have their own independence and all suspicion all suspicion and like the some of the most suspicious people I've ever met in my life maybe because in their own system nobody trusts anybody so they definitely don't trust Outsiders um and so like they they were on a different course and they were very sensitive about our relationships with like countries in Central Asia in the caucuses uh and at some point I think Putin gave the order like cut the leg the legs out of the Americans from underneath them and my own view is people in Washington were so focused on the CT thing uh and the the the disaster in my opinion that was a rock that decision just took everyone's attention away from it and we just didn't pay enough attention to Russia for a long time and we paid a price I think one of the the battles that Russia fights in that time period where we're so focused elsewhere is with Georgia right this 2008 at the time what were you thinking as that was going on it feels like it didn't get a whole lot of visibility because we were so focused in two separate fronts what was it like on your end uh so I I was in of those very CT focused places but my Hope was that people were going to realize like okay this is like this is a strategic problem for the United States we've got to play pay more attention and give more attention to this problem the Russians are not going to go away and just do whatever we want that's like fantasy and there was a little attention then it went away again right 2014 Crimea yeah same thing I thought okay now this should be a wakeup call no not really and you know I think that that's the fault of the machine in Washington that was very focused on other things and PE you know there were people that would tell me no the Russians are our friends like they're our allies they they I think that's what I may have heard like oh it's different now they'll support us in certain areas but uh no no I mean if they were going to support us in certain areas then we we also had to modify our expectations and our policies and we weren't will we didn't even I think think about it and uh you know the challenge with the Russians all the time is but that they can't accept that the the former Empire is not their territory and they used to talk about countries like usbekistan Kazakhstan azerbijan that that's our sphere of influence and I would always argue no it's the sphere of influence of the iSeries if they want us to be good like good relations with them or they want the kazaks want us to be there we had a military base in usbekistan and if they wanted us to be there that's their choice not moscow's choice you know the ukrainians this is the the problem in my opinion right now the Russians just will not accept that Ukraine is an independent country and they need to accept that and it's it be shameful if the United States turns its back on the ukrainians who are fighting for their independence this is not anti-russian it's actually would be to Russia's benefit if Ukraine were closer to Europe and an independent healthy country with a healthy economy the Russians would benefit from it why is that because trade business like growth integration right there lot right there are a lot of ukrainians that their first language is Russian right like that's the bridge to Europe MH uh but the Russians see it as a military Bridge like a plot storm for NATO and Europe to invade Russia you know I I can say I never ever heard once anybody say let's invade Russia the best story I ever had was one of my guys that worked for me when I was there the last time he's from Texas from a little town Texas and he came out to visit his son and his daughter-in-law and he told me he said you know Glenn said I hope that's my bad text accent he said you know Glenn you know when I got to the Border you know the Russian border guards are always like Sullen and you know not always the most friendly and he said I got the Border guard there was a young man he kind of gave me a scowl I gave my passport and he said what is your purpose for visiting Russia and he said well I tell you what son I did my study of history and I know I'm not here my intention is not to make the mistakes of Napoleon or Hitler I am not here to occupy any territory or take over your country I'm here to visit my son and my daughter-in-law I'll be here for 2 weeks and I promise you I will leave in peace and I will not try and take any territory with me and he said this Russian kid smile from ear to ear he's like welcome to Russia was that my father-in-law sounds familiar what what would be in in your opinion the opening Salvo of the second Cold War as you referenced earlier like we've had the first Cold War we've had the second what what would be the entry point my and to me it was uh it was 1999 when really yeah that when we went into U Yugoslavia when we started to use force in Yugoslavia for the Russians if you remember at the time you have G primakov who was the Prime Minister was flying to Washington when we started the air campaign he had meetings with Al Gore as I recall and he turned his plane around halfway and he flew back to Moscow and they canceled the meetings they had this famous U um Gore churn ameran commission the vice president and the Russian prime minister this like bilateral commission and he turned around and he went back to Moscow and that was it and that was a message that the Russians like for years we had told them NATO was not an offensive Alliance it was a defensive Alliance and then the Russians that's you know Putin cites it to this day you lied to us NATO is an offensive organization you went after our Ally W you know mosovich who you know okay I don't know that the serbians really want the Russians as allies that's whole other story but that was the Russian perception and I think that's where I saw I would I will never ever forget I was in a in a uh car dealership getting my car fixed and I was there in the company of some individuals whose job it was to always keep their eyes on me like four of them and the TV was on in the car dealership and I remember seeing the first strikes and they looked at me and they all just shook their heads and I said to myself this is not good right and honestly I was a little bit worried like on the drive home like they're going to run me off the road and beat the crap out of me wow because the Russians were pissed and right after that we had huge protests in front of the embassy like they were like the Russian reaction was very very negative they did not buy the reason that you know that Washington had for going into Yugoslavia they thought it was regime change and uh I think that's where the the new Cold War really started and it just kind of deteriorated for years were you in Russia at the time if you can't answer all that out so you got the full brunt of that effectively I thought I remember from that air air campaign that the Russians helped talk was it m mosovich at the time off the ledge basically like they tried to my my remember like I wasn't a Yugoslav expert I understand as they tried to but mosovich was his own man but then they were like really upset and we had these tell the story we had these very very large protests at the embassy and like we had to evacuate the embassy and we put all the families on lockdown so I I was like one of the uh what do we call like you have to be on duty um essential personnel and I called my wife and I said like I wanted to tell her like don't go anywhere and you know my wife's the kind of person like oh I want to go see these demonstrations like don't go anywhere but the maid answered her name was Tamar and Tamar says oh gleni listen I have a plan I'm just telling you if things get out of control I'm taking Leanne and the boys and I'm taking them to our apartment and I'm going to hide them there until things die down and if I have to I'll smuggle them out of the country and I'm like tomorrow what about me she's like you're like a Russian like you're on your own she's like you're going to have to take care of yourself uh and uh anyway with you know that I remember like that was the turning point in my mind where now Pro you could say like earlier in the90s things started to go bad um and then of course there was a period after 911 maybe there was an opport but on the CT stuff you know people in Washington a lot of the the um cold Warriors felt that you know the Russians were insincere that they were using the excuse of 911 to go after the catchin and there there was some of that for sure it felt like they did a good job with their propaganda that's what they were doing right they wanted to paint all chin as terrorists which is not the case at all many of the chin just wanted their independence like the ukrainians today right uh by the way those people argue that the ukrainians should sign a peace treaty right now should remember what the Russians did in Cheta after they lost the first war and how long it took them to start the second war is a repeat a repeat and the ukrainians haven't forgotten that so one of the things that I think we're certainly taught at the agency but I think anybody who studies cold war or Russian history like we're told that the Russians are great at propaganda what's your take having spent 30 years plus going up against them the Russians have a very good uh disinformation machine that's been honed over the years uh by the way it goes back to the zarus times many Americans don't know but this you know the famous Protocols of the Elders of Zion were created by the Zar Sana false document that accused the Jew the Jewish people of having a conspiracy against you know a worldwide conspiracy they they created that to take pressure off the Zar for some of his failed economic policies and and to anger ethnic Russians and ukrainians and kind of let them blow off steam by uh assaulting doing pilgrims against the Jewish population in the Russian Empire Americans should remember that today too when they surround like Jewish students in a Auditorium somewhere and in a threatening way like that's unacceptable that was propaganda that that that came from the zarus toana so the machine goes back before 1917 the Soviets perfected it but I will share with you my own opinion today okay like the question did the Russians interfere in the 2016 elections because for years everyone took their eye off that if you worked in the former Soviet space during that period I saw it all the time the Russians were working very actively to undermine the image of the us and our relationships with people 19 uh 2016 comes and they came after us on our territory they weaponized the I'm here in Silicon Valley where you know all the the dreamers that created the internet and the you know social media and they were going to bring democracy to the world that was a threat to Putin and he weaponized it and they turned it around on us and they try to use it against us now that the Russians have meddled in our elections going back to 1917 okay they offered our candidates money for their campaigns they uh put out disinformation against Reagan when he was running they ran big disinformation campaigns during the Soviet times there's a long list of things that they done they tried to like stir up race riots in the United States in the 1970s okay go through a long list 2016 what they did was no no different than what they had done in the past it was just the first time people paid attention to it and I don't think they had that much impact really if you look at it we just we are the problem and I said this yesterday I was speaking at a symposium I'm not worried about thisinformation today what I'm worried about is information we have given the Russians and our enemies too much bad information on the behavior of people in this country to use against us right how do we give them that what do you mean poor Behavior by our politicians and poor Behavior by by people in society uh and you know if you tie that then you add that to the the multiplying factor of of mass of uh you know social media and you know the different platforms that are out there PE people have lost and if you look at the surveys I don't have the numbers with me but I had them yesterday up on the screen uh people have lost confidence in the government like the the level of confidence in the Supreme Court of trust in the intelligence community and Trust in the federal government is at alltime lows and that should be and in politicians and that should be a very much concern to Americans because you know one of the goals um in the 1924 a Russian ogpu officer wrote like a manual on how to wage war and in the manual his name was turlo Serge s T and he wrote that like modern warfare doesn't just start when the fire like battle starts the battle starts in the information space and the goal is to undermine your enemy's faith in its government its politicians to spread rumors to play upon bad things that they're doing to like undermine further faith in the system to undermine the economy everything that he talked about is happening today in this country and the main catalyst for that is not the Russians it's the American people themselves that's why I said our system of Education worries me because we're not teaching critical thinking when I see people protesting in favor of Hamas that scares me and when you talk to some people say why are you protesting for Hamas or I you know I saw someone recently from The River To The Sea and someone asked him what is the river and what is the sea and someone said the Black Sea okay that's scary right it's kind of funny but it's kind so you're basically saying we're going to liberate Turkey right I mean people don't know but they go They're Out protesting they're out you know because it's I don't know maybe it was like in the 60s it was a party it was a way to be seen and be they want to feel active but they're not thinking critically we're not teaching people to think critically and uh again I think the behavior of too many people is just unprofessional and not disciplined and um it's allowing our enemies they we're just giving him ammunition to work against us why does that I I agree strongly with everything you just said and your point earlier that Ukraine getting closer to Europe would be would be beneficial for Russia what you're describing kind of weaponizing information or just us giving them information so it kind of makes us look even worse how does that serve Russia because it it would seem to further break these ties so if you're a Russian why is it like well that's great if the US is weakened why would they not see it maybe in the way we perhaps would that it's an Economic Opportunity I think it's the mentality I think it is as long as it's bad for the other guy and it could be bad for me but we're all suffering like no one's going to get the benefit and of course I think guys like Putin see the world in a zero sum like it's a zero sum game so if if they lose I win and there may be some truth to that but there's also cases where like if you look at Europe after the second world war and the integration of the European economies there were a lot of benefits for a lot of people right um you know going back to Americans what I can't understand is like the self-loathing I see in this country today like we have a great country and we've done a lot of great things we've made a lot of great progress were we perfect no do we have problems yes uh can we fix things yes but does that mean that we know it's almost like civil rights never happen it's almost like you know every American's a racist no matter what what group they're from this identity politics thing is out of control and again what the goal is of any enemy that wants to undermine us is to divide and conquer separate and I I've never seen it like this before in my career you know after 34 years especially coming back home I was like what is going on you know how can people be so angry at each other when so much was done to try and make things better and I think we made progress I was very proud when we elected an African-American president I was overseas at the time I was like okay this is what America's all about like yes do we have a problem with racism yes but we also made progress uh but apparently wasn't enough you mentioned earlier Putin's motivations I I'm curious how you would portray those now and have they changed since maybe the late 90s very much oh it's a great question I think they've become like his anger you know I that's just my assessment Putin was one of the guys that he watched the Soviet Union collapsed he was part of that system he was part of the elite like the petorian guard right he was a KGB officer he was told like a lot of rans were told this is the greatest Empire in the world we're on the ascendancy the United States is a decadent country western Europe's decadent it's all going to collapse you know uh our socialist system will prevail and then out out of nowhere just coll collapsed they watched it collapse and I always use this analogy you ever see the movie falling down with um I think it's who's Kirk Russell's Kirk Douglas's son Michael Douglas falling down it's a movie about a guy in Los Angeles he loses his wife and he loses his job all in the same day and he's trying to get home I think his car breaks down and he's he's just like this very angry guy in his world has just falling apart and I like that's what I saw in Russia in the early 90s A lot of people like that and people would tell me like we all the ideology that we believe for 70 years was a lie and we don't know what to believe in anymore and the United States became for them like a threat and and Putin definitely wanted to re he said like you know one of the worst things maybe the worst thing that's ever happened is the collapse of the Soviet Union and he wanted to rebuild some kind of Empire I don't think he wants to be rebuild the Soviet Union I think he wants to rebuild like a Russian Empire and of course they don't care about like the ukrainians don't want to be part of that Empire and I always made the argument and I certain I believe this we should tell the Russians you do what you want in your country like we shouldn't meddle in your country don't meddle in ours we won't meddle in your country but your country is not Ukraine your country is not lvia your country is not Georgia those countries are independent and we the United States if they want us to help them defend them we will do it to the last man because if if we lose this fight in Ukraine right now it's going to be a ter thing for the United States in my opinion for all of our children why do you say that because we'll lose credibility because we will embolden other people like Putin who think they can just take territory from others uh we will have failed like a country that reached out for help we'll have turned our backs on them and if you put it in very base terms like you know where we grew up if if the three of us went into a bar and a gang came in and jumped you and we turned around and walked out that would be pretty lame right that's not what we that's not what Americans are supposed to do we're supposed to stand by people that are in need and we should be standing by the ukrainians by the way the ukrainians are not asking for Americans to go fight and die in Ukraine they're just asking for financial help which we have plenty of and for weapons to protect themselves and how we can't overcome this hurdle right now in Washington um I mean I understand why the mechanics but we've got to get over this it's not going to be good for the United States countries just think about this we in 2004 no was it sorry 1994 The Budapest Accords we guaranteed Ukraine's sovereignty together with Russia right I think in France and Great Britain we failed they gave up their nukes now ukrainians are saying why do we ever do that if you're another country it's my personal opinion but if you're another country around the world then you see what's going on you say I can't trust the United States that umbrella anymore I better do it myself and that concerns me right so so I'm gonna ask you about navali but I'm gonna tee up a question for after that so the the question I'm teeing up is what is the event that would have to take place to remove pu Putin or seriously destabilize that place so that he's not in power anymore so just putting that to the side obviously nal's killed not long ago or dies I want to talk a little bit about that but obviously that wasn't the Catalyst that was going to change everything so I want to spend just a moment on on naal like your thoughts on it how how surprised were you if at all that it took this long yeah I'm surprised that it took that long that raises a lot of questions um you know we shouldn't forget nalni he was also a Russian nationalist he said a lot of things which were unacceptable let's say for the Georgians for you know he he supported annexation of Crimea right he's very unpopular in in Ukraine uh when the White House invited his wife to come and sit next to naval's Widow at the State of Union I thought that was a big mistake because the ukrainians were not happy about it and of course his you know zelinsky's wife didn't come I'm personally glad she didn't because Naval was a very controversial character what the Russians have done very effectively is destroy any opposition that's what I was saying before and like most Russians I would talk to when I was there my last tour they just don't have any hope in the politics they would say like we don't really we don't like Putin but what's the alternative there's nobody else out there and he's done that deliberately like all dictators do they knocked the you know Stalin did it anybody that started to rise up in the ranks and see effective a threat knock out their legs so um I don't know like what is the people keep asking this question if someone's out there that knows the answer more power to him but I don't know and the way Russia is it's it's a it's a mysterious place it may just happen tomorrow it may not happen for another hundred years there have been periods in Russian history when people just snap and then you have Revolution you have a lot of violence who needs to snap I guess in this is it is it older mothers of soldiers who are getting killed in this fight I think it's the people in the Security Services and the Armed Forces they just have to say enough is enough if you remember in 91 when they had like the the coup attempt and then you know when they were outside the White House and yelton the famous scene where he got on top of the tank and the and the troops that have been ordered to fire on the crowds they went over to them the Revolutionary or to the crowds right to the Democrats and yelton was a hero and that was the end of the Soviet Union right there you have to have in my opinion an event like that where people just say enough is people are out there's a crowd and the power kind of either that or people around Putin just say like we've had enough of this we don't want to be tied to North Korea for the rest of our lives like and by the way you know in the 2000s when the Russian economy was doing relatively well because of their oil wealth and their natural resources uh the Russians were traveling all over the world they were you know traveling to Europe traveling to the states I'm sure that many of those like the El if they haven't left Russia already they're there they're angry they're not happy that they can't do the things that they were doing before now I think like the key is for the average Russian people to just say okay we're we're tired of this we're tired of having no heat what the question I have is Putin came to power go back to the 9s when there was chaos in Russia and there was chaos and he was that iron hand he promised them stability he promised them order order and he delivered that probably up till 2014 now his this my opinion his aggressive policies towards his neighbors have started to undermine that and you know what the question is where's the stability in three guys going into a concert hall and shooting people up right yeah uh the the troops you know they were letting they were going to the jails and recruiting criminals rapists murderers and sending them to fight in Ukraine well guess what a lot of them come home and they were given amnesty by the way they had to make it a year right they had to make it a year and they go home and there have been cases like the number the crime um incidents of like violent crime on the rise in major cities in Russia that you know the energy infrastructure is not doing well you know there are shortages so I don't think like it's great for Russia either and uh what like that's my question what has Putin delivered to the Russian people what greatness and was there any any any indication the United States was going to invade Russia no as a matter of fact I say this too I wrote an article about this in the 90s we pumped so much money into Russia to keep it from collapsing so when he claims that we let Russia collapse or we wanted Russia to collapse we want to divide Russia and Destroy Russia it's the opposite we kept him afloat if it weren't not for the United States and supporting yelon in the 90s Putin would probably still be somebody I don't know he'd be an insurance salesman in St Petersburg or an retired government employee so we didn't destroy when we had the opportunity of Russia may we may not have made all the right decisions in our relationship but we did not try to destroy Russia quite the opposite and that goes back historically in in the 20s when they had major famine After the Revolution and when during the Civil War we sent in millions of billions of dollars of Aid to help feed people the United States during the second World War Lend Lease yep so this paranoia that the United States is trying to destroy Russia no I don't buy it and the other thing I used to tell the Russians all the time I'm like if you look at history I can only think of one country I'm not a great historian but in the second world war our two major enemies were Germany and Imperial Japan after the war we occupied both countries and we we helped rebuild both countries and now there are major economic um partners and competitors and we enabled that and we gave the country back to them right we don't tell the Germans what their policy has to be we don't tell the Japanese what their policy has to be and I used to tell the Russians in the 9s just be patient like let Americans invest here let us do our thing because one thing we do know is like business and industry and you'll get your country like in 20 years 30 years you'll be running the factory your kids will be running the company and you know you you everybody's better off you'll be buying remember in the 70s like the Japanese were buying car plants United States and like that's the way it worked that's the way a market economy works and the Russians Vietnam yeah yeah same thing in Vietnam so so like what did we do proves to the Russians that were that evil I don't know um maybe last question on this possibly spicy I don't know um you know you talk about maybe there's this event where the people are there the security services you know decide to not engage or or or take a stand is that something you think we could influence or even should influence or is that we just have to hope that people have enough in Russia and we can't really accelerate it 1990 I was in Dresden after the fall of the Berlin wall but I was with a group of guys from you sorry from the Army russan Institute and we were in a park in Dresden and we ran across an a Russian guy who was a Soviet citizen at the time but a ethnic Russian and he was backpacking through Eastern Europe and he was an older gentleman he was an engineer and we started talking to him and he was saying like the Soviet Union is coming to an end like we have major problems and we it's our job was to study the Soviet Union right so I said to him yes like things are not looking good and I said to him what should the United States do and his response on their forget it he said don't do anything just be America be the symbol of Hope be the symbol of goodness that I the Cold War the dod didn't win the Cold War the Pentagon the defense industrial complex they' all played a role but what won the Cold War was American culture and I remember being a student in the in the Soviet Union in the 80s like that's what people were focused on Levis jeans Playboy uh MTV you I'm like those students they were so focused on it and and just like this dream about America that I think is what we need to get back to and I gu goes back to the self-loathing thing Russians would probably ask themselves why would we want to and by the way this is one of the things Putin wants him to say America's chaotic Americans don't love their country why should you look up to their country right Americans don't respect each other why should you respect Americans What alternative is that to what I give you at least I give you stability and I'm defending you from chaos in my opinion we need to get back to a place where we like love our country and we show the rest of the world we respect you and your cultures but we have a great culture and you can be a part of it if you want if you don't want to fine mhm so you mentioned you're writing a book can you talk a little bit more what's it about what's the impetus behind it and how can people pre-order it oh well first I have to get it published so so if you send me $9.99 and you get a Chia Pet Chia probably get in trouble for doing that like a trademark you I don't think so but I think a lot of people won't even know the reference right sorry about that uh but it will be cool so you're going to want to pre-order that you get a toaster um the book is about just my stories of dealing mainly with Russians during my time in Russia and it's not political it's more just silly stories about like one of the things some of the things experiences I had with Russians kind of I don't know I just some of them were funny some of them are touching some of them are pretty sad and like I'll give you one story if I can yeah please so 19 97 I got in a cab Russ at the time everybody used Gypsy cabs like you stick your hand out and anybody would pull over and give you a ride and you give them some rubles and so I get in this Gypsy Cab and there's an older guy driving the cab his old little um L and he's cruising around and he's like I said okay take me to the American Embassy and he says oh like why I go because I'm an American he goes oh you're an American I said yes he goes oh do you have time I said time for what he said I have something I have to give to you so I said like what and he said said just can you I said yeah I can give you like 30 minutes I'm not in that much of a rush and he's like okay now part of me I'm like what am I doing like he's probably going to kidnap me or something he's a little old man but he drives to his apartment building which is like 20 minutes away and he Parks his little Jiggly and he jumps out leaves the car running he's like stay here I'm going be right back and he runs off and he comes back down like 10 minutes later and he has gets back in the car and he throws it in reverse and he starts driving and he hands me this piece of of like newspaper something WRA newspaper he said this is for you and I first I thought maybe it's a provocation like maybe the the security servic is trying to set me up for something I'm like I shouldn't open this and I'm like well you know whatever say a little old guy and I don't know so I open up the newspaper and there's a wrench from the Troy um industrial works and I said what is this he said I want you to send this back to the United States I'm giving this back to you and I said' what is this wrench he said let me tell you a story son during the second world war during the Great Patriotic War I was a air uh conscripted into the Soviet Air Force I was a mechanic here at tuso Airfield and I don't know if you know it but Stalin only flew on American provided Len leas aircraft did not know that and I was I worked in the unit that we serviced all his aircraft and he said the Americans not only gave us the aircraft but they also gave us all the equipment to service the aircraft and at the end and like I was I had like aircraft I service they were like my babies to me during the war he said after the war when the Cold War started Stalin sent a message that we're going to return all the stuff to the Americans because we don't need it like we can make our own so we were told pack up everything and our commander told us if there's one item missing you'll be shot you're going to the gach so we packed up everything we went through everything we packed it all up we put it on train cars and they shipped it down I think he said to the Crimea and they put it on on ships to send it back to the United States right that was our doing this to the Americans he said we also heard that when the Americans got him on the freighter they took him out into the Black Sea and they pushed them off to go like this to us like we don't need it either so he I don't know if that's true or not but that's what we heard he said but as I was being demobilized a couple of months later I was going through my mechanic suit and I found this wrench oh he must have been mortified and he said I was so scared and I've been hiding this wrench for years I've been waiting for like the security police to come Gra me for years and I've thought about like bringing it to the American Embassy to turn it over but everyone knows that KGB watches the American Embassy and I don't want to go to the goog he said I had it at my daa for a while buried out there and then I had to sell my daa so I put like I've been hiding in my apartment and he goes please take this and send it back and I want the American people to know I didn't steal their wrench wow so I went back and I I I called Uncle S at the time and I'm like do you can you find this company for me let's send it back and like let's tell the story but the company was out of business it was in Troy New York oh so like those kind of little stories like and like the emotion in the guy's eyes as he was telling me and the fear in his eyes is this all in Russian it was all in Russian yeah that's cool and and he's like you could tell the fear was palpable that he was still worried after all those years that the secret police were going to come get him and haul him off because he made the mistake of leaving a wrench in his uh jumpsuit wow yeah so L of those stories like that so so people can't pre-order it but I guess I would say if you're interested and you want to know just shoot me a note in the description and we will forward it over to Glenn for when he's ready send me your email and we'll make sure that you're on a pre-order it's almost finished I have to get I have to get it cleared by the the agency they have to approve it they approved half of it okay so now I just going to put get it cleared that'll take probably a couple of weeks and then put it in order try and get it published okay any Publishers out there interested publisher that I said maybe one of his listeners is any Publishers out there uh give me a call yeah 1 1800 Chia Pet I do think you should pair it up with a Chia Pet now you might you might really send it to the next level okay so there's two questions I ask everybody and then I'll I'll get you out of here so the first is and I'm going to modify this slightly because I you probably wouldn't be able to answer this otherwise but I always ask people and it's usually vets was there anything that you carried with you on missions that had sentimental value maybe a good luck charm something somebody had given you clear clearly besides a picture of your younger brother Pi my brother of course was front and center yes but uh for you clearly like you probably couldn't carry much with you but was there anything that you did before you stepped out the door anything that you thought about or anything maybe you brought with you when you PCS everywhere that was really important that you had oh great question yes I have this this uh on my necklace I have a a cross and a star of David that my mother gave me years ago and I always carried that with me and then I have my wedding ring because uh not because I didn't want to hide the fact that I was married but because I used to work out with kettle bells a lot and the kettle bell like would catch the ring so I couldn't do it so I put it on my chain but I and since I've been married since uh 1991 I've never taken this ring off my person the only time is when I had my appendic taken out and apparently when I went under the doctor did it cuz you're not allowed to have any jewelry so other than for medical procedures got it uh but for years I had it on my necklace and I would always cool all right yes and then last question uh certainly with 34 years in we didn't even dig into a lot of the stuff that obviously you're not going to be able to talk about for years but a lot of the sacrifice that you did mention the tough times and a lot of of time spent away from family as you look back on those 34 years would you do it again absolutely I mean I would hate to see some of the struggle that my family went through again uh but I would do it again especially working with a lot of the people I worked for and with and the mission we had um and the impact I think we had uh yes sure it was a great career it was a great you know if people are thinking about that that type of job it's it's amazing it's you know it's not without its hard points and its knocks and you know there were a lot of a lot of painful times too no doubt about it but at the end of the day I look back on it it was you know people write books about and make movies about what we did and the best thing was just the people whether they were the Americans or the foreigners I worked with not just you know in CIA in the US government and then just other countries we worked with and some of the assets that we had they were just some of them were incredible people even ones were probably double agents I still liked them still like yeah they were still funny I had some that had great senses of humor some that like I just learned so much from what what was the most uh money you'd carried with you at one point let's not talk countries or anything oh on your person a lot okay a lot Fair a lot and of course like I was always wor I was going to lose it and have to pay it back right I wasn't worried about the paperwork been horrible the paperwork would have been horrible uh yeah a lot all over my body all right yes perfect thanks so much for taking the time with us that was that was fun thank you very much I hope you enjoyed that combat story it's not every day you get to hear from somebody like Glenn who spent that many years undercover at the agency 34 years in government service going up against the Russians time and again it is really amazing to hear and what was even more fun we had Gavin his brother here with us while we were recording and he's a good friend of mine and in between takes they were chatting just about some of the the crazy serendipitous things that happened and one time they were both in a third country didn't know it and ended up at the same hotel and saw each other uh with some liaison folks around so they couldn't really interact but they look so similar so I think it really threw people for a loop um but anyway those are the fun things that happen when you're involved in uh various government Service as they both were coming from a great family um just before we jump into some listener comments I wanted to ask you to please subscribe comment like where you can it's all very helpful in helping us get in front of more people if you're listening to this on Spotify or apple if you give us a festar review it would be huge and so uh I'd be so grateful we also have a newsletter that you might want to check out what we're doing what's going on some history uh quote that we're thinking about what we're watching and it's combat story.com newsletter and just a couple comments here I'm going way back in the archives to uh two comments that really caught my eye one was on the Daryl UT video from Tony ke he says gez this is up there with the top combat story interviews I've lost count of how many there are in that category but it's like half a dozen what a dude this podcast absolutely has everything in it next level Homo Sapien stuff time just flew by I'm excited with the heads up about who's lined up for the future content Medal of Honor wise thanks guys bring this up for two reasons darl UT has a book that's coming out later this year we hopefully will get him back on the show he's such a he's such a selfless guy he's been so great in connecting us with more vets to interview and he's doing so much for the community so I'd love to help him out and I think we're all going to enjoy his book and then also we might have another Medal of Honor winner uh on the show uh hopefully by the time you listen to this but if not we're still working on it and the second comment is another YouTube comment from Bill bergart one and it's on the Mike Celli interview and he says I'm currently on a tactical team that has major voids in leadership in reference to the attributes Mike talks about can only imagine the progress we'd make if we were all exposed to someone like him so worthy of emulation I'll be buying his book ASAP thank you for such a great interview and exposure and Mike Celli continues to amaze I think anything he touches just turns to Gold he's got a great documentary he's got ongoing podcast book um company just phenomenal guy and for those who haven't heard him he was a uh SEAL Team Six or Dev grew operator both uh enlisted seal and then off Sur side and he's a former Marine like many of these guys who go on to great things anyway I hope you enjoyed uh this episode it's always great to sit down with another agency guy especially a legend like Glenn hope you enjoyed it and I hope whatever you're doing right now whether it's wrapping up your weekend or hopefully getting out of the week that you're doing all right and stay [Music] safe

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 113,125

Keywords: CIA, Military, Interview, Podcast, Author, Veteran, Trending, Explore, For You, Tales, Specials forces, Agent, Secret Agent, Legend, Politics, Intelligence, Intel, Central Intelligence Agency, Senior Leadership, Agency, Latin America, 9/11, Decision making, Decisive, Enhanced Interrogation Program, guantanamo, guantanamo bay, Combat, Combat Story, Story, stories, EIT, CTC, DDO, Asset

Id: hnc9ZyOOK8A

Length: 128min 18sec (7698 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024