The Unexpected Spy with Tracy Walder

[Music] Hey good evening everyone and thank you for coming out on this gloomy Washington DC evening to the International Spy Museum I'm Chris Costa I'm the executive director of the International Spy Museum I'm really excited to introduce this program with former CIA operations officer FBI special agent now author Tracy Walter Tracy joined the CIA straight out of college and served as a staff operations officer at the counterterrorism center where she was responsible for tracking down terrorists and weapons of mass destruction she went on to become an FBI special agent at the LA field office where she specialized in Chinese counterintelligence operations Tracy lives with her husband and four and a half year old daughter in Dallas Texas this evening Tracy will discuss her memoir the unexpected spy from the CIA to the FBI my secret life taking down some of the world's most notorious terrorists Tracy will be interviewed by our very own historian and curator dr. Vince Houghton after their discussion they will open the floor to audience questions and answers everyone will have an opportunity to ask their questions this evening we are also going to ask that if you're trapped in the middle of a row please put your hand up and we will ensure that you have a mic to answer your questions but there will be two two mics on each side of the auditorium that you can use to answer your question again if you can't get out just stay where you're at raise your hand and we'll send a mic to you one other administration notice if you have a cell phone anyone have a cell phone here probably everybody right please silence it and I'll lead by example and make sure mine silence all right so now I'll kick it over to Vincent Tracy I think you're gonna really enjoy this evenings discussion thank you Chris I mentioned the the first time we were introduced to trace Museum was when our educational team discovered the amazing work that she was doing now as a teacher at a school called the Hockaday school in Dallas we're gonna talk about this later but it's extraordinary what she decided to do to challenge young people that I would never at every level from elementary school all the way through college and just the gumption to challenge these people it's really extraordinary I probably wouldn't have had college students do what you're having them do so it's really interesting that and she's also on the board of directors for a nonprofit organization called girls security which we will definitely talk about later on as well which is another way that she's decided to give back to not only her community but also to her country so you'll hear about more of those later but we're going to kind of jump right in I we actually had just had a long conversation if anyone listens to Spike cast you're gonna get a chance to hear a much longer version of this on Tuesday cuz we just recorded a podcast together so we had a chance to kind of try out some of these questions before we put it from a live studio audience says that it were and some of them work better than others but I think one of them was was interesting to me certainly as an author myself and as someone who's dealt with redaction and classification everything else was the process that you had to go through to get this book cleared through the CIS publication Review Board in particular because they can be somewhat problematic they can be somewhat difficult and if anyone's looked at the book already you'll see that there are lines redacted that were left inside in our conversation though there's a whole lot more that they didn't want you to put out when he first went through this how much difficult how much difficulty was it getting this through the PRB so at first thank you everyone for coming I also want to see a lot of my former students in the audience which is really exciting a lot of girls that took my class so thank you for being here so in terms of the publication's Review Board there were two women that sort of came before me in a tobaccos and Sara Carlson and both of them took about two years to get their books through the PRB and I really actually credit them with the easier time that I had so many of my book through the PRB was extremely important I signed a nondisclosure agreement when I left and I wanted to honor that and so I sent it off to them just hoping that it wouldn't be what we called denied in full which means you can't publish this period it was not it came back though with in about four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters just black lines and so the the CIA was actually really great you can email the PRB there's a lot of places in the CI you cannot but you can email them back and forth they won't tell you exactly why you sort of have to play a game of guess work so I resubmitted it and then it came back with two chapters redacted completely and then a chapter and a half and then finally after I took out one word which was the name of a statue they let that whole chapter through and then publishers and I decided the way it was was intelligible enough for people to be able to read it's tricky because yes they don't want you to give away what cities that ci is operating in if it's not widely known but you kind of allowed the leeway to describe these cities pretty well like there's a modern headquarters for their intelligence right on a river and this is near where a famous serial killer killed five people in the Victorian era Victorian I should have said that I will never understand at all why they redacted some of the things that they did I was just talking to someone about this why they redacted some things and didn't redact others I don't understand the process but some of them in my opinion it's extremely easy to figure out where I am maybe they want people that take that extra step of Google I don't know let's talk about your origin story because it is somewhat different than others nothing to do with you being in a story at Southern California is the fact that a lot of people who join CIA or national security institutions wanted to do it from a very early age he didn't really connect set out to think about being a CIA officer in middle school or high school although I guess subconsciously maybe you did a little bit because of what you studied when other people were playing you were reading about the Middle East looking at maps while other people were doing more normal middle-school things would eventually led you to want to join the agency so I think just to back up a little bit this would have been you know when I was recruited in kind of the mid 90s so popular culture looks really different today than it did then I did not grow up with Quantico or Criminal Minds or you know sort of any of those things so I had no preconceived notions about this is what the CIA is and this is where I want to work and I'm not sure a whole lot of people did either necessarily but I do know that I had a really large interest in the Middle East and in counterterrorism so I would say that was really cultivated sort of when I watched the Peter Bergen interview when he interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1997 that was a huge turning point for me and sort of when I decided I wanted to I guess do something about him and so when I applied at that career fair in college that was really the impetus and most of us in here unless you're really young maybe some of your former students remember exactly where we were on 9/11 it's kind of a turning point a lot of our lives for many people it's the turning point in their careers or the decision to go in a direction you are already working at CIA in fact you're at Langley the morning of 9/11 and this is a question that kind of popped in my head and we kind of talked about how it really hasn't been thought about all that much before but I've sat on my couch on 9/11 I'd been out of the Army for about a month just pissed off there's nothing I could do about it I'm like I could go back into the army but my knees stunk and I probably wasn't gonna work I could do other things so a lot of us had this feeling of oh my god we've been attacked what do I do now there's really nothing I can do to a degree you had an advantage because you couldn't kind of wallow in self-pity about our country's been attacked because you had like a second to do that and then it was time to get to work so I think because you made me think about that question a little bit differently I think you know everyone always asked how he's feeling thinking and you know it's not that I was happy that people had I didn't in the World Trade Center but I think you have to almost compartmentalize those thoughts so that you can get on with the mission and sort of get on with the work that you need to do and stop the next attack or gather the evidence that you need to stop the next attack and so I think you're right having this sense of purpose to be able to sort of do something about it even though you know maybe you're not stuffing the next attack but you can try in a way maybe health sort of keep us going and you had a unique advantage you weren't like the Canada office at CIA you you've moved into what is known as the vault which is ground zero for the war against al-qaeda the war that was created because of 9/11 and when I say Ground Zero you're working in a small group you turn around behind you and George Bush is standing behind you asking you what's going on we know our George tenant or Condoleezza Rice this is the epicenter this is the the nerve center of the CIA response how daunting was that as you're 23 at the time or anyway 21 at the time even and you've got scar chomping George Tenet study mind you who are we killing today wait you're not allowed to say that you know let us say targeting or drones who are we looking at today was that something as a 20 whatever year old it hadn't been a surreal experience so that was a chapter I was very surprised CIA approved I submitted it and thought the whole thing to come back redacted and it didn't say yay sir of me I was I guess read into that program on September 10th 2001 and I think for me I was naive and said you know we'll never need to use this and then obviously we did um it was obviously very intense you're working really long hours but you're not really thinking about the people that are in the room because if you think about the people that are in the room they're not focusing on what you're doing which is trying to get people trying to talk around it um and so I think you really can't process he's in there what they're doing other than Tennant who was in there almost every day and sat with us and hung out with us um he almost became sort of a normal picture yeah he brought us Thanksgiving dinner and doughnuts and bagels all the time he was really great to work with in that environment but other than tenants he was the only one that we were super aware of all the time well let me ask you this because the concept behind this room this space and I'm not gonna make you say anything you can't say but this is where you have and I want out you your politics but you're a Southern California girl you mentioned that were very overt in the book about what direction you lean politically I'm not a fan necessarily of certain administrations but in that room it didn't matter at that point it didn't matter we're so used to today and this is not just because of this Kern administration but under Obama and even at the end of the Bush administration so used to take a politicizing foreign policy and national security the source is a moment were it didn't matter or what where you came from it was Nebraska or Texas or Southern California everyone was working together without politics that was actually what was at least so great about the CIA when I was there you know I obviously grew up in Southern California in in a liberal household but to be honest with you I'm actually registered independent and the CIA I don't have the CIA sort of helped move me to the middle and in a weird way they didn't purposely do that it just helped me think more about the issues in on this black and white way it was sort of a gray and what I really liked about my time there I served under Clinton and Bush and Tenant were there under both of them which was great I mean what was so great about that experience is I felt at least the people around me it was very apolitical politics were really taken out of the situation and some people were frustrated who read my book before it came out but I had some nice things to say about Bush and who didn't understand that but it wasn't about servicing someone's political agenda it was about what my observations were at that time in that moment and that really sort of helps me game is sort of a political insight when it comes to foreign policy why you were there there was an event that people don't talk all that much about today and certainly I think the death of bin Laden has become less and less kind of a key moment in the timeline of the early global war on terror and that's shortly after 9/11 when the United States had been laden pinned down the last time we knew where he was before about a bad and this is a outpost in the middle of nowhere called Tora Bora and you had a talk about a first-person view of what was going on there and what if you talked a little bit about how that panned out and then of course the end but the frustrations perhaps that you must have felt having a chance to get the guy who kind of caused 9/11 but having him slipped through your fingers so that night what was really interesting about that was I was reading another book at the time that I was ready in that chapter about someone who was in the ground forces that were there and so it was actually really easy to sort of footnote to be able to use what I was doing and marrying with what he was doing and I think that's one way I got the chapter approved I don't know but it was extremely frustrating we were working kind of seven minutes on seven minutes off because it was just so intense what we were doing and I think people would have thoughts that once we lost him that you know there would have been cursing screaming yelling and that really didn't happen it was like the air had sort of just gone out of the room what people did when they went to their offices all never know but in that room it was just sort of like the sails completely went out of it and we just carried on doing what we were supposed to be doing this will be a female will investigate again and again and again throughout this conversation but when I think about your work in the vault you're operating in here in Eastern Time in the United States in Langley Virginia where as the actual action is taking place sometimes five five and a half you know six hours ahead of where you are maybe even sometimes more than that so this is not a normal 9:00 to 5:00 job this is not something where you got a scratch the dog behind the ears in the morning and drive on the GW Parkway to work and then get off in time for dinner you're working shifts that start in the middle of the night working shifts that really don't allow you to be a normal being how draining was that this isn't this is non-stop I mean we've talked up Mike Morrell very famously because he was the briefer Bush I asked him you know when did your days start prior to 9/11 he's like well I usually woke up around like 4:00 4:30 like what happened on nine twelve is like I woke up around midnight yeah like to start my day I mean is that that seems like almost impossible to keep up over a long period of time I think it is and again I think it's one of the reasons that I ultimately left but just an anecdote I am NOT a night person I'm a morning person and so that schedule was really difficult for me to keep up I would always have my best friend come over to my apartment and wake me up because it was really hard for me sometimes to to you just have to change the whole body clock but I completely agree with Mike and that it was I guess your proverbial nine-to-five kind of job before that and then that all went do we know so you went from a relatively stress-free job hunting terrorists in the vault to arguably the most stressful job I can possibly imagine and that's hunting down bio terrorists who are trying to create weapons of mass destruction to kill not only a couple thousand people but hundreds of thousands of people around the world when he moved over to the WMD Group what I thought was funny actually from the book is those of us that have studied weapons of mass destruction spent years in school like I studied physics for a long time understand nuclear policy you spent two weeks at poisoned school and then they sent you out saying don't find bad guys yes so it's a little bit different than that so the guys that were our analysts that worked the new program those were people that had their PhDs in nuclear physics and things like that so I don't want to mitigate your work experience but we did more kind of crude toxins and poisons so bryson botulinum those kinds of things and so I think they thought that if we took it was poison school and that was two weeks that that would be enough training for us to understand what al-qaeda was trying to procure this is really what keeps people up at night I mean the idea it's not nuclear weapons there's nuclear weapons are incredibly difficult to create to deliver but bio weapons you know though you drive by the Pentagon it three in the morning and there's lights on it's because people are there worrying about a bioweapons attack how much going through that two-week poison school when you came out were even more worried about this I mean see how easy it was I think now you've just helped my poor students that had to do like their 15-page threat assessment and they know what I'm talking about in my class on bio terrorism feel very vindicated that they had to do that so it does keep people up at night I know you wanted me to say it's because the CIA has foiled them all but I think it's really difficult to track biological weapons I think nukes or I don't want to say easy that's probably not the right word but that requires a lot of stuff right it requires launcher systems all those kinds of things in my opinion biological weapons just you can get them in parts it's very easy you can order them off Amazon Home Depot it's unfortunately not that difficult and I think what becomes problematic is that maybe people aren't putting the entire piece of the puzzle together and I think that's what we're gonna probably slip up one day I mean all you really need is an air-conditioning vent well in the trouble of course with nuclear weapons is you need a delivery system right you need at worst case a a ship you know with containers a sail into a port which is quite tears that Terrace really I would guess they're not trying to really figure one because of what you need well with when you combine someone willing to kill themselves with the ease and access of bio weapons it becomes very scary but I sleep well tonight guys you're welcome what's really extraordinary I think that I didn't quite have a great understanding of this before I read the book was you kind of have to be on the grounds in these areas of the world we do this to kind of understand the culture understand the people and and so you at this really kind of the first time in your career that you started being for deployed places spending a lot of time overseas a lot of time actually in these countries that you can't talk about by name in the book yes I did and I've I felt and I know some people will disagree with me again everyone has their own experience at the CIA and at the FBI but this was mine I felt very prepared at least from a cultural standpoint in those those countries that was one thing I thought that they did extremely well preparing you is one thing that the frustrations you might have experienced through having to cooperate with local intelligence agencies you talked about in the book at both being both kind of the woman's side of things bizarre your developing countries I tend to have fundamentalist Islam as kind of a tenant behind their governing system but also that they weren't quite taking things as seriously as they probably should have at the time what did it be more frustrating for you so for me and I know we talked about this you wanted me to get mad about kind of the sexism when intelligence service calls me Malibu Barbie but it really didn't bother me that much because I mean my colleagues were so great about being you know she's the one you need to talk to so if you want to consider you know continue calling her Malibu Barbie go ahead but you're gonna need to deal with her so I I think I always felt very supported by my colleagues what really frustrated me was sometimes getting cables back when we knew someone was transiting a country saying you know I'm so sorry but we don't work on Sundays that was really frustrating and as a result you can't locate that person anymore because they don't want to work on a Sunday you have a known bad guy yeah going through a European country or in a European country you know where he's at and they're either don't work on Sundays or there's not enough evidence to arrest the person and something again we talked about this they're not probably gonna attack Albuquerque or Chicago they're gonna attack Brussels so they're gonna somewhere Liechtenstein or somewhere the people you're actually trying to warn and then like not on Sundays is our day off I can understand that today maybe but in 2002 in 2003 that just seems crazy I printed that cable and highlighted it and I keep the code frustrating let's talk about what arguably should've been the most frustrating moment of your career and if it wasn't I don't understand I'll be very honest about that and that's in the Iraq war in 2003 okay this is probably something that you just don't like talking about you had a unique role in the lead up to the Iraq war not on purpose does your job was to look at some of these bio weapons terrorists that the network's that were being developed and figure out kind of the linkage and how they kind of work around at no time did you in any way say there was any linkage whatsoever to Iraq but what happened I'll set the scene you turn the TV on you see Colin Powell and for the United Nations and all of a sudden what's happening so just to kind of back up a little bit of a lot of times what we would do is kind of make linked charts to keep terrorists straight you know who's at the top of this network and how are they connected to who that was a very regular thing I have no idea if they still do it but that was a very regular thing that we used to do and you know the toxin poison network was getting just a little complicated so we decided to make it was a really large chart we got this really cool printer but you know we can make really big charts on and we put it on the outside of our cubicle gets the best printers I guess we put it on the outside of our cubicles just a we could always look at it and keep everything straight and you know it was just kind of cells in areas of the world that people were working and someone had come through our office and wanted a copy of the chart and it was given to them and that chart ended up being used by : Powell to sort of justify the invasion in to Iraq and Colin Powell since then has said that it was a misuse and it wasn't it wasn't just it wasn't that chart exactly though right it had it been oh so it was that exact chart the title of the chart was changed and you can look it up actually it's Google and I suppose something else I was surprised that the CIA let me put in but I guess I'm thinking maybe it's because it sort of absolved no but I sure I don't know but and they're not perfect but the title of the chart was something different but what was it originally I don't think I what would it end up being it says a rock by oh I mean if you look it up that's what it doesn't was can you say if the word a rock was on the chart it was not how did you not call the New York Times the next day so someone on Twitter called me a coward actually for not doing that but maybe I am I don't know I was 23 I'm not excusing um that but I think for me I have so much respect for my colleagues and for the agency yet that's really not the right thing to do and that really wasn't the right time to do it I don't feel remorse regret about the decision I made not to sort of out it but I know people will will disagree with me I think we were the most concerned about about the chart was now all of those people that we were looking for the whole world named out that we were looking for them to include them and I think that's where we were upset was great now they're all gonna go underground we're gonna lose all of our intelligence sources to get information on them and we won't be able to perhaps stop future attacks and so I think and the immediate that's what we were the most upset about I choose to drink water the minute you stop talking but it's almost impossible in 2022 with any kind of you know honor to go back to 2003 and said you should have done something different it seems ridiculous at this point so I didn't want to come across as saying that I don't need another Andover's calling you a coward certainly can't put themselves in your shoes back in 2003 let me ask you change directions almost completely because part of what I think is really interesting about especially being posted Persis and being fran overseas being in this job where you're constantly inside a small room hunting people across the world all you're thinking about day night and in-between when you're falling asleep when you're waking up or bad guys and terrorists how do you maintain a sense of self how do you keep being Tracy versus you know the CIA operative that's trying to catch bad guys you talk about a little in the book the idea of kind of tchotchkes and other things like that did you constantly have to kind of stop and say take a step back take a breath or remember where I came from you know root for the Trojans playing in a football game or something like that just to remind yourself of who you are so um yes I don't really think I was that like cerebral about it right yeah okay for me it was more just things like planning for the future like being in a war zone and calling my mom to see if she can make me and point me to my roots done when I got home you know it's just things like that but it's okay to be a girly girl lots of women are that are at the agency and that's totally fine I think another thing that I did I'm very very into the USC Trojans like very much and one of the things that I did was I had collars sent to the bomb dogs that were in one of the places I was at and so somewhere there's a bunch of bomb dogs that have USC Trojans colors it's really segues me into the question about your transition from CIA and FBI because when you leave CIA you leaving on a bit of a high note you're doing exceptional work you're catching bad guys you're really at the kind of the pinnacle of a certainly about 20 whatever year old career and you decide to leave it and move on to an entirely different agency with an entirely different mindset and focus why so um I loved the agency I still do my book is really positive about it left on really good terms but maybe that was for the better I think at the ripe old age of 25 or 26 I wanted more stability in my life I don't know why I realized that and I wanted I really was passionate about working counterterrorism and I thought well maybe I can do that but do it in one place and I thought well maybe transitioning into the FBI is the special agent there I can work in one of the large offices and be able to stay there really until I wanted to retire and so that's why I mean that's waged and what you mentioned that you're very positive about the CI in this book it's almost kind of intuitive because there's so many books out there that are kind of pooh-poohing the CIA and saying rah rah the FBI and your experiences at FBI weren't all that great certainly your training which you know we're not very far from Quantico Virginia it's kind of this mythical place where not only the HRT and the BAU and the Marine Corps but that's the that's the training center for the FBI you went there not in the 1930s in the 1940s and 1950s but but a decade ago it was almost like you were there when junior Hoover was in charge it's extraordinary the kind of rancor you got at the FBI what was that was crazy to me was I had come from the CIA where I had no issues that whatsoever between the genders at all and I think I was almost naive that that the Iowa it would be the same way they're all part of kind of the same community and it could not have been more not like that well I mean you mentioned it I had a hard time grasping it til you use a phrase that made total sense to me you said it was junior high all over again it was clicks it was people backstabbing each other talking about each other's backs and just as bad you couldn't go to a teacher but the instructors of the FBI Academy we're kind of the ringleaders of all this so it wasn't just you dealing with a jealous potential coworker the instructors themselves were pushing this narrative that you shouldn't be there when I think the narrative all started on the my very first day at the academy I don't know if they still do this but you're kind of in a theater age type of room with with desks everyone has to sort of stand up and say what they used to do and introduce themselves so I stood up and said my name and where I used to work and introduced myself and everyone to started rolling their eyes and calling me a liar that I never had worked at the CIA and that's what was so shocking to me was you had to come there to do my background check like you can pull up my that's a 50 it's really not that hard to sort of validate that it's really not that difficult and so with that narrative it was like before I even could get out of the gate that's what had happened and I was ridiculous as that sounds that's what everyone perpetuated the entire time that I went there what was more I mean oh boy that's the thing I was gonna say is it some of the stories are out of the 1950's where you got you did a perfect interrogation you know exercise and then got chided because you're pig of a instructor thought you were just too good-looking basically so what had happened was and I again I don't know Quantico still does this sort of suction but one of the first things we did was interviewing witnesses that was sort of your first thing that you do and want to go and they asked obviously you were a uniform when you're there but they asked that you wear a suit to do this particular exercise and so I wore a suit that I've learnt many times at the CIA was I didn't buy a new clothes and then after I did it I had no issues like with what I had to unprecedented the problem was that my suit made the instructor of that program uncomfortable so I had to write an apology letter to him it's worth buying the book just there's a couple of versions that's where the book becomes pg-13 sorry it's all right it's good I was hoping you'd send one of them to him but really in the end you have a class full of firmer you know lawyers and people that you get in the FBI you have to be high speed you've got to be you know top of your class of course you are a former CIA counterterrorism officer and you by far had it harder than everyone else and we talked about this earlier it wasn't just who I had it harder but so much attention was paid to you that other people who knows if they're trained to be FBI agents at this point because the instructors weren't even looking at ya so what had happened like kind of as you progressed through training um you go into Hogan's Alley which is where you do sort of situational awareness if anyone's familiar with that and they would always always always make me the team leader for probably the most difficult exercises on purpose and I knew it was just to see if I would mess up and you know you sort of got me thinking about that did they even test anyone else you know you kind of have to wonder if other people were qualified as well because there was just so much focus put on wanting me to mess up and I mean I didn't but it was so stressful I mean I would lose lose my hair they didn't let me go back you know for my grandpa's funeral but they liked my colleague go back to his grandpa's funeral it was just it was out of it but u s-- miss one day when the other guy miss you missed ten days yeah yeah they said you couldn't miss a single day and as I'm reading this I'm thinking well maybe this is like an officer and a gentleman moment where I forget they're all standing there with tears in their eyes go Tracy I knew you could do it like we pushed you hard was there the butt no it's the opposite like they wanted you to fail and I what I wonder is they did have access to your file they should have seen how qualified you were for this and yet it didn't matter didn't matter I think just from day one that was what they decided they were going to do I mean it was very easy to check all of that information I wasn't lying about where I worked and so I why they focused on me I'm not 100% sure I'm ever gonna know the answer to that question but was really disturbing to use when I was there some of the people that were just as bad were the other women and in my class were pretty mean to me too this sounds like an indictment on Quantico at the FBI Academy but it certainly everyone has their own experience right but it didn't stop there and I think that's what's interesting about this as well is that your first duty station that's the one that's where I use the military is your first FBI posting was the Los Angeles field office where right away you're kind of pigeon-holed into doing the woman jobs also so that's not as what I had as much of a problem with to be totally honest when I had first gotten my my assignment and again I don't know if they still do this but they have this you go down you open your envelope about what you're going sort of in front of everyone and you announce and I had gotten you know it said Los Angeles field office and then it said the smaller resident agency that I was assigned to then that created a problem within my class to you because you shouldn't be assigned to a resident agent I I really didn't care didn't ask to be and I assumed that I'd be working counterterrorism because that's what I did but instead so much so that the the kind of head guy didn't believe that I should be there and so called and they said no we need her clearance to work counterintelligence and so I was placed into counterintelligence so that's actually what I had the bigger I didn't complain about it I just did it but it was very surprising that they wouldn't take the background that I had and put that to use in counterterrorism not that I'm the best at it but like I don't I just would have thought you're sitting in a room George Bush behind you fighting terrorists I don't yeah it just seems really strange that that yeah but but we're the spy museum so we're happy that you were counterintelligence because we can actually talk about a really interesting case that you the case is great and it's one that some people may have actually been heard of because it is that size of case and that's the case of chima and that was really worked out well for me with my book because he's been tried and convicted and all of that which is that means we can talk about it and so the pole Mac family had been in the US for actually over 20 years and some some of them had become citizens and they were working in a company called power paragon and that company was using radar cloaking technology for a nuclear class submarines and they took that stole it and gave it to China and we found out and what was real was really kind of neat is it was every part of like a CIA operation I guess you know we got to dumpster dive we got to do surreptitious entry we had to do kind of all those things in somewhat of a short period of time so working that case it was really neat but unfortunately yeah oh so there we're gonna make you read the book to find out how it turned out but it turned out obviously well for the FBI and that GMAC is now been tried and sentence not so well for Tracy and so let me ask you why did you end up putting the FBI um so well I don't want to in a general sense you'll have to read my book to find out what my SSA said to me that ultimately sort of threw me SSA supervisory special agent said to me to sort of throw me over the edge I wasn't going to leave actually at that point but um I came I was living at home at the time because it was really close to where I wasn't saving money and I came home and I told my dad and my parents they're really great parents but they've always been the kind of people that we're not gonna fight your fights for you you deal with it you handle it that's just kind of how they were and I told my dad and to say that he lost it would be an understatement I think at that moment was when I knew I can't stay here but the biggest regret that I have personally and and it was funny and so it's writing the book right and I was writing a chapter about how I had so much regret over that I didn't file a complaint and I didn't do more and I didn't do more and my mom was like what are you talking about you did and I think I had just completely blocked out and everything that had happened but I do think I would have I wish I would have pursued it harder well for all the great work you did at CIA and for all the excellent working to the FBI after leaving you moved on to maybe what you were designed to do all along which is to be a teacher in Dallas at the Hockaday school where like I said kind of where we ran into in the first place because again I'd I couldn't I couldn't believe it when I heard what you were having them do you talk a little bit about the curriculum that you developed at a high school which I think about that these are 16 and 17 year olds doing bioterrorism with other things that's crazy I'm like looking at some of them I believe I have more than there's a crazy amount of respect for not only you for challenging them to that level but also for them to rising up to that child they're pretty amazing students so it made my job really easy but it actually came out of my first year at Hockaday they all kind of found out what I did and it was just like question question they all hang out in my room like during lunch and our conference periods and what did you do what did you just lots of questions and so from there I realized wow we need to have a class on this and what I also realized - and this is not a slam on anyone's intelligence but there was a lot of just basic geography questions you know and I don't mean that in a bad way but what I meant is sometimes you know but wouldn't Russia invaded Crimea it was really easy for me to just pull up a map show my students oh I get why they did that right that was so much easier for them to visually be able to see that and so I realized why we need to sort of have a foreign affairs international relations terrorism espionage course and so our school gives us a lot of autonomy in the classroom and so on top of the AP classes I taught I created that that class and they're doing so I guess on bio research yeah so a couple of the things that's a newer thing what start is I wanted them to have a product I guess at the end of it like a why are we doing this sort of thing and so the CIA makes conducts threat assessments so some of them are available unclassified online and so we just follow their format and the girls have to assess the likelihood of a terrorist group it's they have to pick it out of a hat I figure I make them research that I can't remember so when I did and the likelihood that they would commit a bio attack how they would do it when with what they would do it with and then we send those to our elected officials so now they do a podcast yo so any we wants to listen to the podcast by Gallup well spy-guy where is it available everywhere Apple Spotify stitcher and let me reiterate these are high school students that are doing these and it's extraordinary because again these are the future of space Wars was one that they just did they picked it I don't pick the topic these are things that you probably would think of into grad school or at least the high level of college so they're pretty I mean they're pretty amazing let me ask you about girls security because this is something that again you've put your your talents you put your experience to work trying to pull up those below you and that's it when you mention the fact that the other women in or near Quantico class were just as bad as the men this is somewhat it seems like trying to remedy some of that well that's what's been so great about girls security Geena Bennett who's kind of a terrorism icon I guess she's pretty amazing she sits on the board as well and so we designed curriculum modules that go out across the u.s. for girls they also do war game scenarios once a year they do that last year was nuclear profile a peripheral proliferation in North Korea I think this year maybe election security but I don't quote me on that and so it's a way of having a much well it's springboarding off of what I did in Hockaday and sort of having a nation wide reach and getting girls they hook them up with mentors not just an intelligence but a nuclear research with CSIS with and I say with really all of the organizations and they hooked them up with female mentors and I'm not man bashing but sometimes when you're a woman it's a young girl it's nice to see another woman who's in that position it makes I guess sometimes the job were real to you and so that that's what we do so for those of this audience and then we're gonna end up putting this on youtube so for the thousands of people out there who hear this and go how in the world do I get involved in that how does someone who wants to help this cause find out more about Google secure we can go to the girls security website it's nonpartisan nonprofit you can donate that would be fabulous and then you can also sign up to be a mentor if you're in any of those types of jobs they're constantly looking for mentors and again it's across the board way across the national security foreign policy not just intelligence not just like military and anyone who was involved but to include military with you wait well we're gonna open it up to questions now I've taken up to uh too much of her time because I know that you might have questions for her as well so if you do go ahead and head over to the microphones and line up or not look I love to hear myself talk we can keep we can get going for a while but this is your opportunity if you have any questions for Tracy or if you're trapped I can bring you a microphone you look trapped yes okay this is gonna be a little bit provocative I'm actually working on a novel and with bioterror and a virus and its really what creepy to watch what's going on you wonder if you thought of the seniors but anyway what I proposed was that a person who was in the military and military intelligence was moved out before don't-ask don't-tell ended and everything and he's now in civilian life he teaches high school history and he's brought back into the CIA or into intelligence because of a very bizarre biothreat which may involve aliens and other things how plausible is that that's my pit that's my movie pitch how plausible is that this would really happen he would be teaching high school AP History in Dallas it's actually set in Dallas I've lived there as a cover and then he goes on surfing he said on excursions to investigate this threat which is a very bizarre threat I don't first see that as something that would happen but it's a novel so and you know in all seriousness moving on to the idea of expertise there is a real problem potentially a brain drain within the agency where you you went on to be a high school teacher or an FBI agent when you get people who are at the level of you know some people you work with and worked under they are very tempting to companies that want to throw a lot of money at them and that's certainly true when it comes to you know normal CIA officers whether it's Booz Allen or Lockheed Martin and those other people did you ever have to have a temptation to go that route no um I think and that's not a slight some of my friends did and actually my best friend from the agency did I don't hold that against her at all I think for me I grew up you know my dad as a professor my dad was in the middle my grandpa was both my grandparents were in the military I just didn't really have any interest I guess I ain't going in the private sector but that that's just me I don't really shame people who who want to everyone's in sort of a different state I thank you for your talking thank you feedback when you're going through an experience like you did at the FBI Academy how do you deal with that emotionally do you use your anger to spite them with your success yeah you know that is actually a great question because I don't think people realize not to get too cerebral or feeling see how much that damage that does to someone I was Ben I talked about in my book I was bullied in elementary school in Middle School in high school but this was different this was isolation on a huge huge scale and it was such falsities that hey that you know the core of who I was that it was very psychologically damaging I mean I'll be super honest I went on antidepressants I'm very open about that but I think a lot of it was was because of that because you're so isolated I think the one thing that saved me that I know other people maybe didn't have this was I obviously had lived in Virginia at the time and so in my room in Quantico I had a car and so I could go to Starbucks or I guess get out sort of when I needed to but it you feel like you're in this isolated box that you just like you can't get out of probably I don't know that I have this in the in the book so I hope I don't offend anyone in the audience would probably one of the worst rumors was that I had just a stage one breast cancer tumor removed and I was in the showers there kind of like a group shower and that started a rumor that I had had breast augmentation and the scars that I had and I haven't but I'm sure you can imagine like obviously that was a process having to go through and then to sort of be like rebec demise by that was just it it was on a whole another level but that was really how I dealt with it also another way that I dealt with it was running I'm a huge well I just had knee surgery unfortunately yes it's the running of it that was the way I dealt with like the stress um to kind of get this stress out and I don't like to run with people I never have and so it was kind of my way of just being by myself but that was it I can imagine the difficulty about it now the FBI are supposed to be the good guys but maybe they all right that was just Michael but I'm saying like going in that right going in you're like I'm joining the FBI I'm joining the good guys and then the bottom falls out of that they have not changed I mean here's the thing you know you also have to look at - I was I was writing an article on women in intelligence and then in law enforcement and in the research look the CIA is not perfect I'm sure there's a plenty of the people that have had problems there but the CIA has at least been engaging in a dialogue about gender equality since about the 50s with the petticoat panel it wasn't so completely successful but it was at least a dialogue that happened Hoover did not allow women to be special agents until 1972 like period end of story so there already a lot of years behind and I'm not sure that we realized that I'm sort of how far they are behind in having it be normal that females are working alongside you hi um I just want to say thank you for writing your book I read it in like a day enhances oh I'm glad you liked it and to process this question with the fact that I have the utmost respect for you cuz I'm gonna ask kind of a tough question but throughout your career whether it be at CIA FBI if it's something that you can talk about what was maybe your biggest slip-up or a mistake like something that kind of you know the thing that haunts you at night when you go to bed but more importantly and the thing I'm more curious about is what you learned from that and how you transcribe that into the rest of yours yes so that's actually a really easy question it doesn't offend me at all it's a good question um and I think I said what my biggest failure was in my opinion was not speaking out about my treatment at the FBI I 100% regret that um and because now I know there's other lawsuits that are making their way through the courts and that's devastating to me because in a way I feel like I could I want to get upset I feel like I could have done something about that I feel very guilty but what that has taught me now is that when there is something like that going on I speak up right away I don't I don't stop for two minutes so I think in a way it helped me but I thought is my biggest regret thank you well it's tricky to regretting when you regret stuff like that it's in hindsight and you're using your you know the fact is you may not have impacted so many lives at Hockaday or through girls security if you didn't have that experience at FBI so maybe that you might still be an FBI agent right now and not have a chance to reach out and touch all the lives that you've touched and mentor all the people that you have without having that experience yourself we don't know right I mean that's one of the things that we can go back and oh shucks I should have done it a different way but it's kind of factual right what do you know you that you can't change your life but you look at what you've done since and maybe that never would have happened if you had gone in a different direction thanks for making me feel how did you get such an important job at such young age that's a really good question so I actually just applied on a whim basically it was why not I think was sort of the reason that I did it I had my resume on me because I was gonna drop it off somewhere else that day and I saw that there was a CIA recruiter on my campus and I thought that looks interesting and so I applied and they called and so I think my biggest piece of advice if that's something that you want to do is don't ever doubt your ability and whether or not you should apply and I always told this to my students they always say I'm not gonna get into this college I'm not gonna get into this college and they know what I'm talking about and I always said to them you know let the school tell you know don't tell yourself know so it's kind of the same thing with a job a lot of people told me you know they won't call you back you won't get in and but I think because I just didn't care and didn't think about what would happen if they said no I think that's what encouraged me to actually apply you're welcome okay so first of all I have a comment and a question okay the comment is that yes you may regret not fighting back at the FBI but you're a writer you are one of the that is one of the most that is the biggest superpower in the world because it takes I'm telling to a national level well thank you so you that you are ten feet tall and bulletproof in that respect thank you um the question I have is that I read an article on you that said that you were born with hypotonia which is floppy babysit and I talked about that Oh in that game in that case I can't wait to get to that part of the book but um I have it too oh and and was later diagnosed with CP so my question for you is what were your physical limitations as a kid and how did you overcome them because it seems like CIA CIA and FBI would be really physical jobs yeah so CA surprisingly not as much so than the FBI that's a really great question I don't know that I've met anyone outside of my family that had it not a lot is no not not a lot is known so hypotonia is when you are born with very underdeveloped muscle tone I really don't talk about it a lot because I don't I think when people see me they don't think that there's any issue so I didn't walk and talks about three and a half maybe which is very late and I didn't hold my head up until I was about a year and a half and so I don't mean to age myself but I was born in the 70s so you know we didn't have a lot of information about these things and the interesting thing is doctors actually still don't know a lot about hypotonia today which is so weird you would think 40 plus years later that we would have moved past this so for me my biggest issues were with what I guess we call a fast twitch muscle and I don't know if you guys know the difference between slow to twitch and then fast twitch so I can run really fast really long distances that's never been a problem for me but at the FBI what became I mean I passed but like and we mean just barely about 1/10 of a millimeter of a second was the sprint the sprint was beyond difficult for me and so that's really for me my only sort of limitations also I trip and fall pretty much all the time which I wear heels all the time and then for the amount of kind of working out and physical therapy that I do regularly I don't I don't show my legs but if people saw my legs they would be very surprised by what they looked like I just do a very good job of hiding I think even my students probably don't know that I had I really don't talk about it a whole lot I have a few questions that I will keep them very short so first day of any new job is probably very frightening to many so I'd be curious to know sort of obviously you can't reveal sort of what that day encompassed but sort of what your thoughts were on the first day at CIA and then also to piggyback on that what your I guess where your headspace was on your first international assignment because again I would think that that probably too was stressful and then the third part of my question is how you feel about how TV portrays female CIA agents homeland can I answer the last question first yeah okay because I have an opinion I don't I really it frustrates me because I think the women that they portray are like deeply deeply flawed and I do think that you want to have some dimensions the TV characters that that part I totally understand but they're like seriously flawed you know I think it almost to the point of what only a crazy woman would do this I I don't that doesn't sit very well with me because I don't see men necessarily being portrayed in that manner so that's how I feel about that my first day when I know dear entered on duty at CIA obviously I was really nervous I did not know what time it was I don't remember sleeping a hole and I love the light the night before but the best thing that came out of that were my two very best friends who are still my very best friends who were bridesmaids in my wedding and I think at the agency obviously because when you're there so much is secret you rely on your friends a lot they sort of become your family I mean one had power of attorney over me when I was overseas and I'm still really really close to them my first overseas assignment I was really really nervous you know I didn't know what to expect but I did travel with a colleague which was a blessing in that sense because they had gone before and sort of were able to show me the ropes so I'm glad that I wasn't sent on my I mean obviously traveled later by myself but I'm very glad on my first one I was done with my colleague and I'm assuming most of your friends obviously didn't know you worked for CIA so what was your cover what did you do I wasn't over employee you were no thank you but you didn't always travel I can't really talk about that that's in the book not really though really okay yes sir actually two comments and a question first common is I just want to thank you for the service to our great nation thank you and second comment is really proud of what my daughter could become so you broke the glass ceiling god bless you here made me cry thank you the question is would you consider coming back to federal service I know the Department of Homeland so love somebody like you our number means to come in even as a temporary person yeah and we're political so so director Walter so I would absolutely come back to federal service I miss it I really do to a certain extent I would I think though part of me yes I would come back to forth to the federal service wait you said that wasn't plausible when he asked for it in that in the pitch well no I think what he what I think he meant was like that the CIA would come like calling back for me and I don't see that happening I don't think that piece is plausible does that they should it's okay no they don't there's very talented people that are there they're doing a great job what's what do you need to accomplish before you would entertain that do you have goals that you haven't quite accomplished yet just do you meet girls security to reach a certain level do you need your students you're just ready for the next adventure at this point and since you're like 25 years old still in very employment my for easy any other questions anyone might have thanks for being here tonight and thanks for your service to the community what do you see as the biggest threat face in the United States today like well I couple things um inside the u.s. I think domestic terrorism is a big problem and I think the fact that it's not prosecutable really right now is another huge problem obviously I can only talk to the FBI from when I was there right I can't I can't speak to it right now but all I can say is that when we were there I did not feel that it was taken seriously and why I feel that way is because again see and I don't want to upset men I feel like sometimes it's the gendered narrative I think some people had some men have gotten into the FBI to be honest Joaquin be on a hostage rescue team take down gangs and that's great we need people to do that absolutely but they looked at being you know on the domestic terrorism squad or the cyber squad or even the intelligence squad as being lesser than and I think that needs to change that mentality needs to change because if your whole heart kind of isn't in it you're not gonna do a good job and I think that's a huge problem and I think more money needs to be allocated to it as well and I think it needs to be a prosecutable crime I think that's probably where some people disagree with me on that but that's just my opinion from the out sort of outside international and I feel like a really big problem or failed States and the reason I think that that's a big problem is simply because they'll say it's breed Terrace I mean it's a breeding ground right if you even if you look at Iraq Saddam Hussein is a really bad person I'm not saying you shouldn't have been taken out but you know dictators don't be tend to be conducive right to terrorist groups for me they love instability and right now Libya has you know instabilities even South Sudan is having some instability right now Somalia Yemen I mean we we know all these different countries right are unstable and if you look at those countries I would guess obviously I don't have access to classified information anymore but I would guess that we're seeing an uptick of terrorist activity so that was - I'm sorry I would ask a question now since final question where are you where do you come down on some of the controversial issues that surround CIA I know you mentioned one of them in the book when you talk about di T but when you're looking at or the intelligence community writ large because I'm sure your students are asking you questions about Snowden no mal you know privacy about the the extent that the intelligence agencies are being involved in our lives and that how do you answer those questions that are clearly they're not black and white they're really great Snowden I feel is very black and white so NinjaTrader of course when you get into stuff like right you talk about it in the book where you are very gray EW I'm sorry enhanced interrogation CIA the so-called torture program of CIA you're very gray in the book yeah people got really mad at me about that and someone gave me a one-star review because she was real upset that I didn't um condemn Bush and just condemn program but I can only be honest with how I feel right and so that was just sort of what I tried to do particularly in the classroom and I think I don't know but I think my students will tell you that I'm pretty apolitical in the classroom I tried to be I always try to give them the facts and then they sort of could figure it out but they know how I feel about Snowden and sort of the surveillance state and and all of that simply because I feel like I have some facts to kind of back up my statements I usually don't make that strong of statements I think was AIT the reason that I'm gray is because you have to look at why it was done in the first place AIT wasn't to necessarily gain information right AIT was to make people complacent so that we could then get it like so yeah what's the thing I was really interested to see you're like I don't think we should have tortured torture doesn't work but but torture any idea not the same see nice and gray so before we head I want to thank you for coming here absolutely and for the book I mean for anyone who is not considering checking this book out here crazy it's really one of the most interesting ones it's reading it as a narrative it's fantastic to kind of get that I was so mad so many times in this book I the one thing she does and I let's see if you're is she changes all the names but god I just wish you had publicly shamed some of the some of the people at the Quantico as I wanted to get breathing get in my car I publishers attorney said that was not possible yes but thank you so much for being here and she is going to stay and sign some books afterwards if you want to take a chance to purchase the book and have it signed afterwards I implore you please don't rush up here to talk to her we're gonna get her actually out there so that she can get through everybody and sign books before midnight tonight but please join me in thanking Tracy Walter [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: IntlSpyMuseum

Views: 24,620

Rating: 4.7751756 out of 5

Keywords: International Spy Museum, spy museum, spies, spy, CIA, Delta Gamma, Unexpected Spy, Tracy Walder, espionage, DC

Id: ziNk__5-8lY

Length: 67min 42sec (4062 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020