Inside the CIA - Agent Reveals Secrets You Weren’t Meant to Know

29:37The same thing was in Syria, right? Russia was involved in Syria. America was involved in Syria to fight Russia. Russia was involved in Syria to fight the United States. And you got Turkey involved in all of this. And you got Iran involved in all of this. That's called proxy war. If you look at the world through a lens of the evolving nature of war, there are many special, there are many people out there who would argue we're already in World War III or on the brink of World War III through this lens of proxy war. If there was a World War III, who would be the strongest nation? That's what everybody was wondering right now.

30:10It wouldn't be nations. It would fall to powers. And I don't know how much you're keeping up with what's happening right now in geopolitical space, but the world is dividing into powers again. Just like in World War II, we had an Axis power and an allied power. Something very similar is happening now. The United States has aligned itself with NATO fairly heavily. However, not all the countries in NATO are committed to NATO, right? Hungary is the best example to use. Hungary is kind of supporting the Russian side of the Ukraine conflict instead of the NATO side of the Ukraine conflict. And because of that, NATO and the United States are pressuring Hungary to kind of fall back in line with NATO objectives and NATO's point of view.

30:50How strong is Putin? Meanwhile, on the other side of the balance you've got russia pairing up with china you have russia and china supporting north korea in the un you have iran supporting russia so you're seeing these two sides start to form russia and china is it for me would be the strongest looking from the outside i don't know all the ends and outs but that's a power couple to me that where they've got the resources they've got they seem to have everything in place like it's scary to think like what's your opinion on wars uh what's my opinion on wars so wars are are terrible things wars are are destructive they're expensive in terms of lives they're expensive in terms of dollars uh they put these exclamation points in history that are interesting to study but but terrible to remember so i don't i don't like war i don't like military conflict i don't like uh when people turn to shooting and killing as their solution for things but i also understand that there are certain aspects of life that must be protected and if that protection falls through all the different levels to the basis level where we have to start shooting and killing then that's that's a legitimate way of protecting what matters see i believe in self-defense i believe in defend yourself at all costs but what i don't know i don't know who pulls the strings behind them we can all go down the conspiracy route and say this and that because we watch a few videos on YouTube but there seems to be a lot more to it but for me if there was people arguing over certain things for me it should be the men in suits going and fighting and sending their kids.

32:32There's so many innocent people dying in wars from both sides like Ukraine can talk about Russia but people dying in Russia, Britain's invaded nearly every country on this planet we're the worst. We're the worst so it's just hard to see I don't know if it's certain families funding both sides or if there's real truth to behind what it says about words I genuinely don't know I can only get it from like I say watching videos and reading some books but for me as human beings there's 8 billion people on this planet now and it's just sad to see how it's still happening to this day and it seems to be getting worse it's just is it human conditioning to be a fighter to want to be joining the army or wanting to kill people I had a sniper on who'd killed over 80 people who was a sniper and at that moment he thought it was obviously the right thing to do but now his mental health is totally gone every man I know that's served in the army or the military or whatever it's not a humane thing to see their heads are gone so that tells me as a human that's not what we should be doing that's not what we should be saying Fall has never looked or tasted this good.

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34:25I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS I've never been alive but Scotland's ever been invaded and no doubt if it was I'd be the first one to grab a gun and try and protect the ones I love but it's just sad to see when people's minds go and they think they're doing it for the right reasons because if everybody in the wars were to step down and not do it do you think then it would stop if all human beings decided okay enough is enough I think we need to recognise that human beings are conflict oriented creatures Why is that?

35:12Because we're alpha predators, right? If you think about us just through the lens of animals, we're alpha predators. Alpha predators don't just eat to survive. Alpha predators hunt to protect and to essentially grow a resource pool around themselves. It's like your great white shark. They don't just eat when they're hungry. They eat to prevent themselves from becoming hungry. Or like your wolf pack. Wolves don't just hunt when they're hungry. they hunt to prevent themselves from being hungry. Lions create prides, right? These are all different alpha predators. Human beings are alpha predators.

35:48We're the alpha predator of the entire planet. The biggest threat to a human being is another human being. You said it yourself, you believe in self-defense. The only reason you believe in self-defense, brother, is because you know that the thing you fear the most are other human beings. So wars are just the manifestation of what happens when human beings organize themselves into nation states, or a nation state is really nothing more than a more advanced tribe, right? And a more advanced tribe is nothing more than a more advanced clan. So there are eight, you're, you're, again, 8 billion people on the planet.

36:24There's not enough planet to go around for 8 billion people. There just isn't. There's not enough resources so that 8 billion people can live a comfortable lifestyle. There simply is not. So So the way that we ensure the survivability of our own, again, just like you said, if someone invaded Scotland, you would go there, pick up a gun, and defend the people you love. That is not someone who believes in self-defense. That is somebody who believes in protecting the clan, your family being your clan. And I'm right there with you. The reason I joined the military was because I wanted to protect what I cared about, my family.

37:00I wanted to protect my future children. it wasn't until i started learning how conflict is policy because that's really what conflict is we're not going to war because someone's invading us most of the time we're going to war over resources over oil over food protection over maritime rights over whatever rice production exactly right because the tony blair's got a lot of blood in his hands he was at a rack says weapons of mass destruction and there was no weapons found millions of people died like you've just got to question that then like well we have the benefit of hindsight to question that right at the time it's not it's not quite so big like just look at what happened just look at what happened in the last four days we had a missile fall in poland and kill two polish people on the border of ukraine immediately what happened everybody blamed russia immediately there was no question.

37:59There was no investigation that even needed to happen. The public outcry was Russia dropped a bomb either by mistake or on purpose across the border into Poland. Well, three or four days later, we have investigations that have taken place. And now we know it was actually a Ukrainian anti-missile missile that went off track and landed in Poland. not intentionally targeted just the the the byproduct of war right it was it was collateral damage that was done outside of ukraine but at the time people were calling for blood people thought it was russia it's the same thing that happened in iraq at the time blood was hot people didn't trust iraq people didn't trust the gulf people were afraid of islamic extremism and people were absolutely terrified of what would happen if weapons of mass destruction fell into the hands of terrorists.

38:53So all of that just made a very convenient narrative for economics to also happen at the same time and make sure that the right people got the right contracts to, you know, to do whatever was needed to combat these potential weapons of mass destruction. And yes, after the fact there was no evidence of live ammunitions live weapons of mass destruction so now we all look back on it and we say we were duped in reality we should be happy that there was no evidence found because had we not gone in there's no guarantee that weapons of mass destruction wouldn't have eventually been produced there or or housed there or stored there or transited there so it's a it's a difficult thing yeah there was no uh it just it's just a lead up to them?

39:39Or do you think they're planned 10, 20, 30 years in advance? Wars are economic. And there's a very strong mathematical model that shows how wars are economic. It's called the Kondratiev wave. Kondratiev was a Soviet era mathematician, economist. And he basically showed how there's a repeatable pattern in economic growth and decline. And when you follow that pattern, the natural outcome of an economic decline is a war. That's just what people do. Because when the economy starts to decline, resource demands do not decline. So they have to turn to an alternate way of securing resources. And if you can't secure resources by producing them, then you essentially have to go out and take them, because the consumption still remains the same.

40:24So if you look up Kondratiev's wave, you'll see that his wave model aligns very closely to when the great conflicts of our time have happened dating back to World War I. Now, one of the things that's very interesting about his model is that each wave actually stretches out. So it's similar to a light wave or a sound wave or a radio wave. The longer the wave gets, the further away it goes, it actually gets stretched out further and further. so his wave what starts as a 20-year cycle turns into a 27-year cycle and then a 32-year cycle and then a 42-year cycle right and that's what we're seeing so it's hard to predict exactly when these things will happen but right now according to kondratiev's estimation from like the 1920s we are due for a major world conflict and what we're seeing is that we all seem to be marching towards a major world conflict yeah so how does a man get involved with the cia like one of the top agencies on the planet like how does if you got to be recruited or do you sign a form or do you put an application in like how does that come about there's a lot of different ways that cia picks you up it's not that different from mi6 or massad or svr or anyone else uh you some most people apply to CIA because most jobs at CIA are not undercover jobs.

41:49Most jobs at CIA are analysts or logisticians or mathematicians or engineers. And none of those people are undercover. Or if they are undercover, it's a very, very small percentage of people who are undercover. So their tax receipts say that they work for CIA. Their address on their lease says that their employer is CIA. They work for CIA and there's nothing secret about it. And the vast majority people apply through an online portal. Then there are some people who apply slash are invited from college fairs. So your high-performing college students or your bilingual or multilingual college students, they might get a visit from a CIA recruiter at a university.

42:29And then that recruiter says, hey, here's my card. Here's my phone number. Why don't you submit a resume? And then that recruiter can earmark the resume and try and get it streamlined in. And then you've got the classic military direct recruiting. So a lot of CIA officers are former military. The government has our entire profile. When you're a military person, the government knows everything about you. So CIA really just kind of does a handshake with the government, with the military, and then they pull you over or they ask you if you want to come over and it's no break in service. It's a really simple transition.

43:03And then the last way is similar to the way that I got recruited where you're going about a life on your own and that life gets interrupted by CIA. For me, I was trying to leave the military and join another part of the federal government. I was trying to join the Peace Corps and my application was flagged and then I got a phone call. Some people have the same thing happen when they're trying to move from the corporate sector to a different corporate sector or if they're trying to move on the law side of the house. Some people get pulled out of fbi so but a lot there are times rarely when cia finds you in your daily life and then they ask you to come and that's a that's an invitation most people say yes to but you know you've got to be cream of the crop then so as a cia watching then universities colleges to see who the top of the the top of the tree is to say recruit him yeah obviously they want the best of the best correct and uh you it i think anybody who thinks that cia would not be watching is silly because everyone is watching.

44:04Booz Allen Hamilton is watching. Deloitte is watching. Google is watching. Salesforce is watching. Everybody watches. Amazon is watching. Everybody, the top law firms in America, everyone is watching talent in their industry and especially at university. So of course, CIA is there doing the same thing, not because they're trying to steal people or ruin people's lives or lie to people and trick them, but because they're looking for elite talent, just like you said. So it's not like men in black sort of things. People coming in black suits, secret handshake, listen, CIA, like secret tests and bunkers.

44:38Like it's none of that. Then it's not like... Fall has never looked or tasted this good. Sweet Greens Fall Harvest Menu is back with seasonal favorites dressed to impress and made to be devoured. Warm roasted sweet potatoes, crisp apples, maple glazed Brussels and crave worthy flavors in the Autumn Harvest Bowl, maple-glazed salmon plate, and roasted bacon Brussels side. The season's most desirable menu has returned to Sweetgreen, featuring fall's best dressed. Make your move. Order on the Sweetgreen app. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

45:18Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS. Some James Bond shot. Yeah, no, the movies have to make it look a whole lot more interesting than it really is. It is secrets, but here's the thing. Real secrets, really important, powerful secrets, are very, very boring. They're not exciting.

45:55Most exciting things don't have to be secrets. the real secrets are extremely dull boring things like for example the the the miss the nuclear yield on a warhead in you know one of the station one of the uh squadrons in cheyenne wyoming that is a classified secret like how much is the yield on the third warhead in the second missile in the fifth squadron in cheyenne wyoming how boring is that detail nobody cares about that We want to know, you know, who's sending. Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. We want to know about drug smuggling in Panama to fund human trafficking in the United States. Real secrets are not sexy.

46:39Real secrets are not interesting. Real secrets are secrets that we're protecting from foreign governments. so all the stuff that you see in the movies they could never make a movie about a real spy because the movie wouldn't sell it wouldn't be interesting and most of the time everything the spy does would be completely overlooked and ignored because they are operating in secret and if they're doing it well nobody ever pulls a gun nobody goes by their real name nobody drives a nice car nobody wears a nice suit and for sure nobody gets laid totally under the radar then yeah What about how many people are in the CIA?

47:12So I think that the total population of CIA is like 10 ,000. That's a lot though. It's a lot. That's an army in itself. Yeah, but it's not as much as a Google or an Amazon out there where you've got 70 ,000 employees or 50 ,000 employees. But I think it's 10 ,000 people at CIA and I want to say that approximately 1 ,000 of them are undercover. So 90 % of CIA is not undercover. people possibly in offices and just taking away looking for new recruits how does a man like yourself then top his craft in the military like that's a high ranking job is it not working with the missiles so how does what was the attraction for you in the CIA yeah so the I didn't like being in the military I don't like having short hair I don't like shaving my face I don't like having shiny shoes I didn't do well in the military it wasn't a good fit for me so I was trying to leave And I was trying to go into a place where I had more freedom.

48:08Like I said, I've been on a 42-year journey to try to express myself. So when the agency asked me to come to CIA, they're a civilian organization with government roots. And they're largely, they let you be pretty independent as long as you operate within the confines of their rules. Because it benefits them. It benefits them to have a diverse workforce where people might go to Kenya or people might might go to Bogota or people might go to Canada, who knows where. So they want a diverse workforce. So the appeal for me was I still get to be in the government. And I get to say, even if I just said it to myself, I get to say to myself at night, I'm in the CIA, like I'm undercover, working covert missions for the CIA.

48:55All of that was very attractive to me compared to being in the military or compared to a low-paying job working in the Peace Corps in some of the hardest conditions in the world. Was it easier for you to get into the CIA because you're coming from a military background? Or is it better being an unknown and nobody knows your history to get in? So it's hard for everybody. It's just different types of hard. So for me, it was very fast. I had a top-secret SCI clearance, which is one of the highest clearances you can get in the military. And it's the minimum clearance that you need to have as a CIA field officer.

49:30So I already had the clearance. That saved me like 11 months of recruiting time. Because a normal person who's not military, they have to vet the person, review the person, interview the person. And then after all of that is done, then they can start the process to get them a clearance. And the clearance process alone can take nine months. So I was done with all the clearance piece, all of the health requirements, all of the mental stability requirements, everything was in place. So when I got interviewed by CIA, it was really just a couple of interviews to make sure I was a sound fit psychologically, a couple of interviews to make sure that I could, you know, write a report and have enough social skill that I could get a secret if I needed to.

50:14And then, you know, essentially that was it. A few fit type of interviews, kind of like getting a job in a career field. They were very rigorous, but it was only two or three. Some people might come back five or six times. And depending on how people do with a polygraph, again, I came from the military, no drugs, no history of crime, easy for me to get through a polygraph. Somebody who goes to a normal college and someone who has a normal first five or seven years, they most likely have a misdemeanor somewhere and they most likely have done drugs at some time. And that makes it incredibly complicated to go through the polygraph process.

50:49So when you're doing the testing stuff, obviously you can go online now and do tests to see how smart you are or see what kind of letters you've got and these sort of things and you're besides your name but see when you go through it the jap seem you do the mental side of things for these tests or is it to see if you're saying and saying that and i'm going off course here but see when before you get recruited do you think they already had a job for you or did they judge that once you've done all the tests they judge it once you have all the tests done that's for sure because you can't make a sound call, a high probability call about someone's capacities until after you've put them through very standardized, stringent testing.

51:31So CIA knows that there are broad strokes that they're looking for, right? They're looking for people who are ethically flexible. If someone is really ethically rigid, they're not going to do well at CIA. Because in some countries you're going in and you're killing terrorists. In some countries you're going in and you're bribing officials. and some countries are going in and you're setting narco traffickers to fight each other. It's an ethically ambiguous job. It's not as easy as being a public school teacher where it's all very cut and dry and you know what's right and you know what's wrong. So they know for sure that they want to recruit people who are ethically flexible.

52:07They know for sure they want to hire people who are interested in international events, current events, geopolitics. So they have some broad strokes that they start with. But then when they put you through the really rigorous testing, then they get your IQ, they get your personality type, they get your tolerance for stress, they get your tolerance for ambiguity. Once they have all of those tolerances, then they can kind of match you into a very high probability good fit job. Sometimes they're still wrong, but they have confidence, a smaller margin of error for putting you into something that's wrong.

52:43Why do they do the polygraph tests? because when you are at CIA, you know things nobody else knows. In many ways, you're the only one who knows it until you tell somebody else. So the way that CIA works is a field officer will go meet with an asset, collect a secret, and now that field officer is the only person who has that secret. He's the only person or she's the only person who knows where the terrorist is going to be sleeping tonight, right? The polygraph is there because CIA needs to test every recruit to show that they are an honest person and a loyal person under the right constraints.

53:25So you can be lying to everybody, but CIA wants to make sure that while you're lying to everybody, you're telling the truth to them. That's why the polygraph is so pivotal. What was your first job in the CIA? My first job was kind of my only job. So I was put into a role. it's called staff operations officer. So operations officer, you hear different types of terminology that's out there. But my role was essentially to collect, manage and plan intelligence operations around the world, wherever we need to collect key intelligence that supported policymaker interests. And then to execute on those missions, sometimes I had to go in the field, sometimes I stayed in Langley, sometimes I deployed somewhere in between and managed an operation or managed a group of people who were operating um but all the changes isn't the job what changes is the missions so sometimes that was in africa sometimes that was in asia sometimes that was in latin america that that's what changes what was it like going on your first mission are you already trained to be cam collective then or do you still learn as you grow as you did you do more that were you nervous you're thinking fuck me like this is getting a bit shaky here or were you just and to do the job and get out so another thing that cia does really well is they hire people who are not um so you've interviewed a number of navy seals you've interviewed a number of elite elite military operators there's a phrase that we use among ourselves where we call ourselves too dumb to quit and that is essentially what cia and what Navy and what the Army does really well.

55:05When they hire these elite fighting forces, they're looking for people who are too dumb to quit. They're looking for people who will put themselves in harm's way. And when they're face-to-face with harm or face-to-face with danger, they don't think to themselves, oh man, I made a bad decision. Oh, I'm worried. Oh, I'm scared. They think to themselves, how cool is this? And that's exactly what it was like for us. The first time I went on a mission, I was totally blind to the risk of capture and the risk of torture and the risk of being shot. I was so amped. Chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

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56:48Get a Big Mac meal only at McDonald's. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than real pricing. The Viore Core Short moves with you. With everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash core20. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash K-O-R-E-2-0. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. To be in alias, in a foreign country, on my own, operating for CIA, it was like that was the forefront of my brain. My training was there so that if I got captured or if I got interrogated, I would be able to keep myself calm.

57:39But my personality and the way I was wired was such that when I was in a dangerous situation, all that was on the forefront of my mind was excitement and adventure. i was i was too dumb essentially to realize that i was in a position of such high risk and that's the difference between who people who do a job like what i do and people who do different jobs because you know an analyst at cia might not feel as excited in the field as they do sitting behind you know a computer getting boatloads of information do you think your childhood plays a massive part in the adrenaline rush of being in danger absolutely I mean, a lot of what happens in those core conditioning years, like we were talking about, when you're in puberty and when you're in your core first five years, that shapes everything.

58:23So for me, an adventure was what I've been looking for since I was 14 years old. Being a brown kid in rural Pennsylvania, you are absent of adventure. All I wanted was an adventure. And now here I was, 28 years old, working for CIA, swimming in all the adventure I could possibly want. That's all I cared about. And CIA knew that, which is why they put me in that role. What sort of things are you taught in the CIA? It depends a lot on the type of operations you're running, the type of conditions you're going into. We're, of course, taught to drive and shoot. We're taught medical triage. We're taught land navigation.

59:06We're taught social skills. We're taught mind hacks, body hacks. We're taught survival and resistance. We're taught about geopolitics. We're taught about foreign languages. There's a number of things. We're taught how to pick pockets. So there's a number of different elements that you're trained in, but the big thing isn't what you're trained in once. It's the training that you have to go back and get multiple times. So, for example, we have paramilitary units. Paramilitary units are units that do both intelligence and essentially kinetic combat type of operations also. So when a Navy SEAL comes to CIA, they usually go paramilitary.

59:48When a Delta Ranger or a Delta Force Army guy comes or Army Gal guy comes, they go into paramilitary. That's a group that will probably do a lot more shooting than your standard CIA officer. So if you're getting taught how to pickpock, are you getting someone who used to be a pickpocker to then teach you like a 95, being in college and studying to learn how to be the best at it? It's not just a case of one or two days you're learning it consistently to become good at it. Correct. There's a lot of times that they'll bring in former convicts. They'll bring in former criminals as part of their sentence to teach us how to cyber hack or how to rob crypto or how to crack codes and get into a vault or a bank.

1:00:29We're constantly learning from the criminals out there who have done it and been caught because they get to reduce their sentence by coming in and teaching us how to do it and then of course when cia executes the same criminal activity it's sanctioned by the u.s government and we're doing it on foreign soil against foreign enemies so it's it's allowed it's not illegal that only kind of happened in films you see the fbi going and get people out of prison we'll give you a shorter sentence because i watched a film catch me if you can i think leonardo dicaprio and uh i think they got him out of prison just to how to force checks and how to so that's legit then that's very real and the cia hire people from prison to then teach them they don't hire they make deals yeah they commute right so it's uh essentially what they're doing is they're they're trying to take someone who has been a net uh a net burden on society a criminal and turn them into something productive for society and then there's also the very real thing where there is no professor out there that can teach you how to pickpocket.

1:01:34There's no professor out there who can teach you how to hack into a cyber wallet and steal it. There's nobody out there that can teach you how to do that. The only people who know how to do that are the people who learned how to master it in the school of hard knocks. Criminals, I say it often, and people criticize me for saying it, criminals are the closest thing to a true CIA field officer that's out there. Their risk tolerance is shot. They thought it was a good idea to be a criminal. That's the definition of someone who's too dumb to quit. They landed on the conclusion that the best option for me is a criminal enterprise.

1:02:10And it's gonna be fun, right? When that's how you feel and that's how you think, you're already wired. You're conditioned the same way that a CIA officer is conditioned. That's why I get along so well with people who have a background in crime. So see, people who are in the CIA, did they ever turn against the CIA with all the tricks that they learned to try and make money, to try and rob crypto, to try and, not saying pickpocket, but they've had the tools and techniques to be a bit smarter than the average man to then fly under the radar. Did anybody ever turn against their own? Yeah, there's a number of stories where CIA officers have turned against their own.

1:02:44It's not usually to go into low-level criminal activity, though, right? So if you're a mid-ranking CIA officer, you're probably making somewhere to the tune of$95 ,000 a year, right? If you're going to leave CIA and you're going to take on the risk of making yourself into a wanted man, you're going to break American laws, you're going to break your secret oath with CIA. If you're going to take those steps, you're doing it for a massive payoff, right? You're doing it for half a million dollars. You're doing it for$700 ,000, whatever it might be. So you have two types. You have people who turn against CIA because they become spies.

1:03:22And there's a whole history of people who have done that, whether it's Aldrich Ames or whether it's Jerry Shun-Ching Lee or, you know, any number of spies through history. They take all the skills and all the things that they are taught and then they sell them to the Russians or they sell them to the Chinese or they sell them to the Israelis, whatever it might be. So they sell the secrets that they were trusted with. But then you have another group that's a much smaller group that then they go on and they start to apply their skills in organized crime. Weapons proliferators, drug proliferators, human traffickers, weapons smugglers.

1:03:57Those are a different lot because they don't fall under the Espionage Act because the Espionage Act is what protects secrets that belong to the United States government. they don't fall under the espionage act and because of that they're a lower level threat than uh than a normal human trafficker or a normal weapon smuggler so it's the fbi is incentivized differently but i there was when i was working at cia there was a very popular case of someone who was in who was in the cia doing uh nuclear proliferation like combating the spread of nuclear weapons. And the person they were targeting, they went out and they just met that person.

1:04:40And they said, Hey, I've been targeting you for four years. Here's everything CIA knows about you. And I don't want CIA, like, I would rather work with you than continue to hunt you down. Super ballsy move. But then that guy became one of the guy's top generals and undid the entire case from the outside. So we had to start a whole new case against the nuclear proliferator. And we had to start a whole new case against the guy who was former CIA with all the training and all the skills that he had to now cover the tracks for both of them, right? And undo all of the, all of the tracking and the coding and everything else.

1:05:17Did you have to get clearance to then speak out and tell your story and stuff? So I still don't have the clearance to tell my story, which is why you don't hear me talk about my story very often. I'm working on trying to get clearance for that. Everything that I publish in written form has to go through what's called the publication review board, the PRB, and that's something that's part of our lifetime secrecy agreement when we come out and when i speak specifically on podcasts or when i speak on television when i speak for corporate events it's not the same obligation because i'm not sharing anything sensitive i'm sharing publicly known facts or facts that are not classified so there's no reason to have those things uh reviewed and approved in the same way as when you publish something yourself what happens if you don't go free for all and just start saying everything that your life become at risk, but in case it's not prison, it's death.

1:06:10So it's not far fetched. That's pretty far fetched. That's more movie style. Right. Uh, what, what is much more realistic is that I would fall under the, the court system. If I started speaking out about classified information, then the court would have a viable reason to come after me and arrest me for speaking out and breaking my secrecy agreement. because it's a breaking the statute of a law. However, to prove in a court of law that I was disclosing classified information, CIA would then have to classify, or they would then have to share the same classified information. And that becomes a technicality, right?

1:06:45So every former CIA officer understands that we're under an obligation with the PCRB and under an obligation with our secrecy agreement. We all understand that. And we all understand that there's no benefit to us sharing secrets because all secrets do is hurt our own country and hurt our own peers so i'm not here to share secrets i'm not anywhere to share secrets and then on the third reason that we don't disclose anything is because on top of it all we also run the risk of losing our livelihood or going to jail or losing losing the source of revenue that we're generating from from all the work anyways and there's no incentive there for us to do that so the real goal for us is to the The goal for me, at least, is to get out and share as much as I possibly can, because so many of my peers, they don't share anything.

1:07:35They just they don't want to have their face on a screen. They don't want to have a microphone in their face. They don't want to contribute to a larger narrative. They want to stay kind of hidden because that's what they've been conditioned to do. So your tests at the start, when you first joined the CIA, do you think they had a rough idea that you would speak out many years later because the results are again is that a little far-fetched yeah so i would imagine that what the results of my test showed cia is that i was i would buck authority that i would resist authority that i would push the envelope push the limits of what was allowed and that's certainly how they used me when i was at cia also they used me in a in a way to create new things that hadn't been created before to try new experimental operations that hadn't been run before.

1:08:22That was how they used me there. So it was a risk-reward comparison, right? But I also believe that they understood through those tests, through the polygraph, that I would always be reliable to adhere to my secrecy agreement. So I may speak out, I may be a voice, I may become a threat to their mystique and the mystery of CIA, but I wouldn't put American lives at risk just to get a buck. And that was, I think, what their tests probably showed about me. And it is also what I believe continues to make it so that three years now I've been interviewing and talking about CIA and the only feedback I've gotten from them is positive feedback.

1:09:08Yeah, that's a good thing. But you're clearly an intelligent man and no doubt you would plant the seeds, whatever you wanted to tell your story, like you're not going be I believe you would be solid to and loyal to whoever you worked with at that time but as you say you're a free spirit you want to be free you want to not be hold down and feel as if you're in a box if somebody told you not to do something I believe you would do the opposite obviously if you're in the CIA that can't happen but so see when you're doing certain missions does it become so normal or have you always got that little bit of adrenaline because you're adrenaline junkie where you crave that something but because looking at you thinking you wouldn't know if you're a cia or you're a yoga instructor or a hippie that see when you're doing that sort of stuff like does the adrenaline go or is it always a buzz there's always a buzz but what happens is the buzz it's smaller it's like smoking or drinking or anything else you build up a tolerance to it and that's good you don't want to be shaky and jazzed with cortisol on every mission because that's going to blow your cover.

1:10:21It's going to put you at risk. So you want that tolerance to build up just like you build up your drinking tolerance, your smoking tolerance. So that is a very real thing and does decrease. It's always there because new mission, new place, new job, new cover. There's always this voice in the back of your head that says, I get to do this, right? This is my job. I'm getting paid to do this. The US government put me on a plane. The US government put me in the Continental Hotel or the Intercontinental. The US government is paying for highfalutin food and top shelf drinks while I woo this North Korean general, whatever it might be.

1:11:00So it's always in the back of your head like, this is awesome but thankfully the adrenaline spike is much less every time you do it how do you get an in with people with the training that you've got like what i know if you can't give secrets away but what is like is it easy to read people posture the way they walk the way they breathe like can can you read people easy you can you can there's a lot of things that you can do to understand a person through their nonverbal cues which is what when you say read somebody what we refer to that as is baselining on nonverbal cues verbal cues are anything you say nonverbal cues are the way that you act so whether someone is uh fiddling with their fingers or whether somebody is scratching their face or whether somebody is obsessed with their hair where they look around in the room how often they breathe or how they sniffle or whatever else All of those nonverbal cues help you understand a little bit about the person that you're sitting across the table from.

1:12:01But you don't really get to create a full profile of them until you also engage the verbal cues as well. So you're watching their nonverbals, but you're challenging them verbally, which then gives you a chance to see what their nonverbal communication is like and what their verbal communication is like and how they prioritize between the two. because when you're thinking, it's often difficult to control your nonverbal cues when your brain is engaged. It's also difficult to control your nonverbal cues when you're speaking. So if you're going up against someone who is untrained, oftentimes you can learn a lot by seeing how they process information when they're listening, how they process information when they're talking, and how they're nonverbally communicating at both times.

1:12:44When you're going up against the trained person it's much harder because you can see that they're trained to control their non-verbals you can see that they're trained to control their verbal and you can see that they're intentionally slowing down how they speak you probably see it in me intentionally slowing down what i say and when i say it to align my verbal and non-verbal cues so see if someone knew you were cia could they obviously you've picked up and say my fingers fidgeting but could someone do that in purpose to try and throw you off to give you different signs or can you tell someone's acting you can you can tell people are acting because most there's a high probability that you'll see when people are using what's known as a distraction technique or a distraction tell it's not a real tell if i were to like scratch my neck as a distraction tell the whole reason i would be doing that is to try to make you think that i have a tell but the problem is it takes a lot of cognitive demand, a lot of resources to make that distraction tell happen.

1:13:47So you would see that it wouldn't be consistent. You have very consistent fidgeting. The way that you, the fingers that you touch, the way that you break and connect, the way that you move your hands is very consistent throughout the entire interview. When someone has a distraction tell, it becomes inconsistent. You can see that it's inconsistent. And then especially when you pair that with the uniqueness of their verbal nonverbal alignment you can see that you're not just working against someone who's trained but you're working against someone who's trained who's testing to see if you are also trained which is usually when people use distraction techniques they're trying to see if you're noticing their distraction so see when you speak with your hands and stuff is that a technique or is that natural so a lot of what i do with my hands is is it's natural it's also me confident it's it's me trying to um show energy because it's very hard whenever i do an interview with people to have energy communicate through the video itself or communicate through the microphone so larger than life physical gestures make it easier to communicate that energy both verbally and non-verbally so that's why you see me do that quite often if you and i were to go have coffee or have wine i would be much more subdued what about that mk ultra and stuff is that true like because i had a woman on called barbara o 'hare and she was she spoke about this in the 70s with her it was evil doctors who were experimenting on kids um and they called her crazy and it could come out that she was telling the truth that the doctors were experimenting with kids with mk ultra some kids were getting sent into water and just keep walking never turn back obviously natural instincts with to swim and it turned out it was true man they were experimenting on kids like how in depth do they use mq ultra i know you see things that say the president and somebody they've been in their brain and mq ultra on their way to kill someone like is that legit or is again could that be far-fetched so i don't i've never heard of mk ultra experimenting on children if that's true or untrue it's beyond my realm of of knowledge but i do know of the mk ultra program and that the mk ultra program has been validated and verified as a true program and again i would highlight just like we were doing with with the invasion of iraq keep in mind the time keep in mind where we were in history at that time we were we were trying to develop weapons that would be competitive with the weapons that were being developed uh i believe what years was mk ultra i want to say that was world war ii yeah in the 40s yeah so we were trying to keep up with essentially hitler's weapons research and one of the ways that you keep up with your opponent's weapons research is by researching the same type of weapons they're researching.

1:16:44So, I mean, Hitler was very much into researching some very esoteric weapon types from mind reading to psychedelics to ancient artifacts. So it makes perfect sense through the lens of time that if your opponent is trying to create a weapon that's basically based on remote viewing from psychedelic enhancement, the only way you're going to be able to compete with that weapon is if you do the same thing. And that's how something like MKUltra is born. That's how nuclear weapons were born. That's how hypersonic missiles were born. That's how bombs, I forget what they're called now, bombs that drop bombs, bombs that drop bomblets, right?

1:17:29Scatter bombs. They were all created the same, the same way. Nobody wanted them for themselves, but they saw that their opponent was creating them and they had to have a tool to combat it. Yeah. But what do you think about the brain? About the brain? Yeah. I think the brain is the most powerful organ and muscle in the human body. It's the only part of the human body that is both an organ and a muscle. So the human brain is a fascinating and powerful thing. Why do you say we only use like seven, eight percent of it? Why can't we tap into the full existence of it? Is that with vaccines? Is that with the food that we eat?

1:18:06there must be a reason why we've not tapped into the the full brain completely the pineal gland in the middle of the brain which is also a powerful thing that there's so many things unsolved about it and we're 2022 look at how far we've advanced but yet we're still unsure how the brain functions like how powerful is the brain yeah i think you've got i think you're hitting on a number of really interesting things we don't know how powerful the brain is there's a lot of speculation about how powerful it is. And there's some really solid empirical evidence that suggests that it is a much more powerful tool than we understand.

1:18:43However, you also have the problem of research. It's difficult to research the human brain. It's especially difficult to research the human brain when it's in a living subject. And then the brain works, and we don't even understand how it works all the time. It does things that are beyond our understanding currently. So if it works in ways that we don't understand then it would make sense that we can't understand how it works and we can't understand how to make it work better we can't understand how to change the way it works because we don't understand the way it works in the first place what do you think of human beings and why are we here what's your opinion on that i i believe that human beings are just we are another type of animal.

1:19:29We're just another creature. And whether we were put here by divine intervention or whether we were put here through this infinitesimally small chance of evolution, we're here now. And we are alpha predators, not because we have sharp claws or sharp teeth, but because we have this tool called the human brain. If you think about it, we're actually one of the weakest creatures out there in terms of survivability. Small temperature variations can absolutely devastate us. We have a huge dependence on water that very few animals have. We don't have natural external layers that insulate us against heat or cold or water or anything else.

1:20:14If we get wet for too long, our skin starts to actually compromise, right? So we're not a sustainable resilient creature but we become this alpha predator because we have logic and reasoning and innovation and we have these human brains that we can tap into that nobody else can tap into but life it's like the little things you just mentioned there with water and even the food aspect of it that we're still here like evolution as i'm getting older i don't believe we've evolved from apes or monkeys whatever it is i believe this could be a game i think this is a game i think potentially we could be avatars i think is the more i'm researching the more people i speak to in life that that's only my opinion and i'm not a scientist i'm not a doctor but what i have got is good intuition and a good soul where i just think there's always something i miss i genuinely believe an avatar look at the technology now where people have got metaverse and this is this some sort of game where I believe there's something higher than us even the universe, there's talk about stars I've never been outside of this planet I don't know if it's round, I don't know if it's flat, and frankly I don't fucking care because we're still here as one, but I do look at the moon and I think, what is that?

1:21:33Why does it go dark and light and why do we talk and how do we connect and how do people come into your life and out of your life and why do you feel happy Why do you feel sad? Like there's just so many unanswered questions that people are so caught up in some sort of race. They're not asking the really important questions. And for me, it's like, what are we? So it's interesting. The fact that you're having those questions at all is what we call a first world problem. You have all of your basic needs met. You have more than your basic needs met, which is why you have the space to dedicate your time and energy to thinking through these ethereal questions.

1:22:15The vast majority of the human species does not have excess resources. They don't sit around pontificating and wondering about the ethereal nature of the universe because they're literally just trying to find clean water to drink right now. They're literally just trying to not get eaten by a lion or not get bitten by a poisonous spider or not sleep in a bed with a viper. That's the majority of the human race is constantly on the precipice of starvation, dehydration, or death. So could we be avatars in some grand game? Possibly. But the game wouldn't be to live a life like you and me, right? The game would also have to include all those lives out there from tribal New Guinea to war-torn Libya and Yemen.

1:23:04Who's playing those characters? And who wants to play those characters? and what's the purpose of those characters. It could still be true. Maybe there's an alien species out there that doesn't know anything about emotions. Or maybe there's an alien species that has evolved over millions of years and they no longer have emotions. So the only way they can feel emotions is by tapping into us. So some days they want to be you. Some days they want to be poor African child. Some days they want to be handicapped, mentally retarded, one-legged beggar child in India. and they want to feel all those feelings.

1:23:37Maybe that's true. But my point is, if I have excess resources and I have excess time, I would rather use it to produce something that makes us all better rather than reflect on the woulda, couldas about right now. Because again, going back to where we started, there's a producer mindset and a consumer mindset. Producers understand that the more you produce, the more impact you make. consumers will never understand true impact. They always strive to make an impact at all, and oftentimes end up very depressed and discouraged about their life, because they feel like they're not making an impact, when all they need to do to switch is start to produce something, right?

1:24:19Start to create something, a blog, a podcast, your own company, something, right? It's just, it's not that hard to flip, but turn all that extra energy into something productive and what you find is that you no longer suffer from first world problems the same way that other people do so see if there's eight billion people on this planet and like you say people suffering two-thirds of the world starving like as human beings like i know you talk about being alpha but we're still good people as well we still want to help people we still want to see people do well that why is should why can't people rally together to then stop poverty to stop hunger to stop wars like we're not daft like what do you think it would take for people to go to the forefront and say wait a minute what's happening right now for me is kind of backwards that there shouldn't be homelessness there shouldn't be starvation like i even think i've done a homeless documentary and some things like france were the first country to make law that you restaurants and supermarkets can't throw away food and then they're feeding millions and millions of people extra each year i understand people if you're homeless you struggle with confidence low self-esteem many many things so there's people with two jobs now who can't afford to even keep a house so it's difficult but for a human race and eight billion people and there's a lot of intelligent people on this planet that why do you not think that these things haven't been eradicated or cut out where people can live a better life a human being's first instinct because we're still animals like anybody else.

1:25:57Our first instinct is our own survival. That first instinct is exactly the answer to your question. In order to dedicate your resources, your time, your money, your talent, your energy into solving these larger problems, you essentially have to take those resources away from your own core survival. If everybody in the world did that, there's a chance that we might all come together. But to use your words, I would say that we are, as a human race, we are daft. That's exactly what we are. We are kind of, we are selfish. Selfish, yeah. We are prioritizing ourselves first, right? If you had five people that were hungry in front of you and two of them were your children, who would you pick to feed first?

1:26:48Yeah, fuck everybody else. And that right there, my friend, that's how every human being thinks. And that's why if we have to choose between taking something away from our tribe or our clan to give it to others, we're not going to do it. When we have built up so much excess, then we'll do it. Or if you look at how the UK and the United States are kind of structured, we incentivize people to give money away by rewarding them for giving the money away with reduced taxes, right? So we're trying to incentivize it all. But none of that has to do with the human condition being one of generosity and stewardship and community.

1:27:30Now, I'm not saying everybody is like that. There are certain people out there who genuinely, truly want to help those that are less fortunate than them. and they absolutely make sacrifices and suffer themselves to try to help others. There are absolutely people out there like that, but they're a minority. They're the minority like there are people out there who want to go to war every day and shoot everybody who disagrees with them and cause immense pain and harm. That is also a minority. So you've got these two minorities on both sides because in the middle is a bell curve, a bell curve of all the people like you and I who will help where we can help when we have excess but we never are willing to risk our livelihoods or the livelihoods of our families in order to help someone who who has never been part of our responsibility do you think that just becomes a good thought then to think you're a good guy to think that oh yeah we can save the world and but realistically we're still like you say Alpha and family comes first and we can talk a good game but when you actually break it all down it's probably selfishness and greed that the world is upside down in a lot of places because we never know all the answers and we're never going to find all the answers it's just a good thought to think we know what the fuck we're talking about sometimes I think you're okay you know certain things but other times you just think you're just I'm just winging it yeah but you know what who's defining what makes us a good guy or not a good guy?

1:29:05It's our cultural conditioning. The way I see it, if you're somebody out there who says, fuck everybody else, I'm only taking care of my family, who's to say you're not a good guy? Are you a bad guy because you say, fuck everyone else? I say you're taking care of your family. There are plenty of people out there who don't take care of their family. You may not sacrifice for anybody else, but you've gotten up in the middle of the night for your kids. You've gone hungry for your kids. You've gotten sick for your kids. That is selfless. That is you sacrificing yourself for them. You've done it for girlfriends.

1:29:43You've done it for your parents. You've done it for spouses. Other people have done it for you. the the definition of good people bad people is fundamentally flawed because who's to say what is good and what is bad if you are out there and you're sacrificing for anyone in any way i think there's a case to be made that you are still a good person the person out there who is truly taking only and giving nothing back that's a rare person that's a hard person to find We talk about galaxies in the universe and how big it actually is. We're just a pinhead in this, whatever it is we're in. But do you think there's other species living amongst us?

1:30:24Aliens? I think the probability is too high that we have other species living amongst us that we can't see, we can't define, we can't explain. At the very least, there are other animal species that are completely terrestrial that we have yet to discover. At the bottom of the ocean. Yeah. Living in the Amazon rainforest, living in the Arctic ice fields. We know. So if we know that there's that high a probability of terrestrial creatures that we can't explain and we can't see, then the probability that there are non-terrestrial creatures also out there is too fantastically high for us to reject.

1:31:07So do I believe that we have seen aliens? I don't believe that we've seen them. I don't think the probability is there for us to have been able to observe them with our naked eye or with our own human terrestrial technology. but that doesn't mean that it's impossible. Maybe it has happened. I just think the probability is low. What do you think Antarctica? I think it's amazing. I think the fact that we live on a planet with ice caps is mind boggling. Why do you think people can't go there? Well, I think that there are groups that go there for science and for research. People with money though.

1:31:45Who cares? Yeah. Right? People with money, people without money. They're just people, right? People with money, people with expertise, people with skills. People can go there. If you don't have money, you can volunteer to go be a mailman in Antarctica, right? It's a miserable, difficult nine-month job and you don't make a lot of money, but if you want the experience, you can go do it, right? So I don't believe everybody has equal rights to experiences around the world. You just don't. You have to be able to contribute in order to earn a seat at the table. If you can't contribute, you have no right to sit at the table.

1:32:20your job is to then find a way to contribute so that you can sit at the table it's mad though to think that there's ice all around sort of the planet that what do you think of it in moon landings and stuff i think it's all fascinating it's uh i was recently talking to somebody who i really respect and who i really like and they were kind of having one of these you know what if conversations and they were talking about what if we were actually ejected into space how long would the human body actually survive jettisoned into the vacuum of space and it's funny because movies i've seen it go both ways in movies i've seen it where people like immediately explode and freeze and i've seen it where people somehow last you know 15 seconds floating through space before anything bad happens to them but it was really interesting to be in this conversation where this guy had seriously thought it through and uh and i feel like if if this guy is a friend of mine who has seriously thought this through, and he's an intelligent guy.

1:33:21If this one person in my community has put that kind of time and effort into it, how much more impressive is it that there are so many other people like him who have put the time and effort and energy into creating spacecraft, craft that can transit the vacuum of space, land on the moon, rove the moon and send back pictures how crazy is it that we have satellites that are nothing other than giant floating telescopes you know a hundred thousand miles away from earth taking pictures and sending the pictures back here uh is it the space travel and space exploration are just fascinating to me uh and i love that we live in a time where we get to enjoy it if you think about it the 19 before the 1960s nobody nobody had any of what we have now was it 60 67 68 the same people to the moon like as fascinating like you can go through the conspiracy theory routes and look at certain things and think that's not real but everything for me is a conspiracy unless i can see it with monies like how do i know what's real or what's fake yeah even this table you like what is it really like it's just mad the universe how it works how it functions ensuing beings like i'm so fascinated when you go into that little zone and think about it it can blow your mind but absolutely it's just life is a magical journey it's painful it's happy it has its moments but it is a journey i'm not going to get out alive maybe with technology now man who knows but see when you like you go on missions and certain things do you get do you get paranoid when you come out the CIA?

1:35:00Like the get scared that anything, or you just so calm and collective and all aspects of life? I would, it's not paranoia, but it's also not necessarily calm. It's more like a sense of, of confidence and a sense of control. I know with higher confidence than the average person, what my security awareness is, what level of threat I'm exposed to, what the chances are of something, you know, tragic or terrible happening. So because of that, that kind of logical calculated approach, I feel more capable day to day, and more capable on a mission. The people who suffer from anxiety and the people who suffer from depression, oftentimes they can't quantify what their true risk exposure is.

1:35:49So as, because they don't know, they end up just reacting to a feeling. And that's a very difficult place to be. So paranoia is an example of that. Paranoia is reacting to feelings rather than calculating objective data or objective fact about your status. So I would say that I'm blessed to be less paranoid, but it's not always great to know your true security status because there's plenty of places that I go now with my kids or with my spouse where I can't get comfortable. Why? Because I know how dangerous it is where we are. I know how vulnerable we are when we go to a concert, when we're standing at an airport, when we're in line to go vote, right?

1:36:40Like those are your most vulnerable points. you're in a group that's predetermined to be there and it's a concentrated area usually with controlled entrances and exits it's like the most dangerous place you can be so back in the day i used to love going to concerts i used to love going to big busy bars and big packed you know amphitheaters where there would be a big football game or something now it's like oh we're not nearly as safe as if we were back at home or playing in the backyard or at a park or a playground or in a place that's where there's less people and more space so it gets to be a tricky double-edged sword are you envious of the just the average human who just works and is oblivious to what can actually happen with terrorists or whatever it is the information that you have that do you ever get envious of being them being so oblivious of what can happen in life you know i'm not i'm not jealous of the average ignorant oblivious person i'm not jealous of that person because that person's just uninformed they're disinterested and they're uninformed and they're a walking victim but the people who i am honestly jealous of are the people who are completely satisfied with their life especially if they're like completely satisfied with a kind of mediocre life because they're satisfied.

1:38:08They're happy with their job and they're happy with their paycheck and they're happy with their spouse and they're happy with their kids and they're happy with their diet and they're happy with their body and they're happy with their sleep and whatever else. And they just go through life day after day, kind of rinse, wash, repeat. And there's, there's no, there's no stress because there's no, uh, there's no desire to achieve anything. There's no ambition. So therefore there's no disappointment. I live in a life where I'm constantly aspiring, where there's tons of ambition and therefore I'm failing all the time.

1:38:47So every morning, every night I go to bed, I wake up thinking I've got to try, I've got to work I've got to do more today. And every day I have a tally that goes through my head of wins and losses. And the losses always outnumber the wins, right? So I do get jealous of the person who doesn't have that conversation in their head, of the person who is very content to just turn on Netflix and binge watch a show and have two beers or two glasses of wine and order takeout or a microwave dinner. And they're completely satisfied with that. so see we spoke earlier about how powerful the mind is that right now it's so rife with suicide and from males that because of the mindset everything i believe is the mindset and how you see the life and how you want to be but why do you think suicide is so bad for males what do you think the ingredient is that why men are slipping and the heartbreaking thing is they want to take their own life?

1:39:48Yeah, you know, I have a soft spot in my heart for men because I myself am a man. I have a son. I have a stepdad who killed himself. So I hear that. It's not, I appreciate that, right? It was his choice, not mine. But I don't want to think that suicide is only an issue for men. It's an issue for teens. It's an issue for women. It's an issue for children, it's an issue for the elderly. Suicide is a sad, sad thing. When an alpha predator determines that they're so surrounded by threats that they have to essentially be a threat to themselves, that's a very sad thing. Now, when you ask why, I think that the reasons for why are many more than even I understand.

1:40:37Our culture is a very challenging place right now because we're so divided. If you have an opinion, there are just as many people who are willing to hate you and spit in your face about your opinion as there are people who are willing to listen to it. So that guarantees you that almost half of who you meet are people who are going to disagree with you and make you feel bad about your opinion. Even if you're just trying to discover what opinion you have, there are people who will just as happily sock you in the stomach or slap your face if you just verbalize an idea that you haven't decided on yet.

1:41:15That makes it hard. That makes it hard for people to trust one another. It makes it hard for people to have a community. It makes it hard for people to have friends and relationships that they trust. If you don't have a community, you can never have a tribe. If you never have a tribe, then you're always stuck on the outside. And again, we're alpha predators that want a pride, that want a wolf pack that want a community or a clan when you force somebody to the outside where they never feel like they have that kind of connection you're it's a death sentence right they say that loneliness is the number one killer of people worldwide it's worse than cancer it's worse than war it's worse than anything else because we just people can't find a community they can't find a group where they have connection and and we're a predator that doesn't survive when we're outside of the group do you think that's why tribalism is a big thing to people want to go to the nfl matches or the soccer matches and feel part of something like it's not a bad thing but it's to they just want to feel like if there's a rally or there's street parades people like you say there's all these isms and all these labels marches and labels like people if you're feeling lonely you're happy to just join something and match with people just because you want to feel part of something yeah exactly right tribalism tribalism isn't a result of us feeling lonely tribalism is our default status it's what we want in our core even the most even the most lone wolf people out there the most independent people out there still want to surround themselves with other independent people maybe they don't want 25 friends but they still want two so it's by nature we are pack animals so i i would say that the the tribal aspect of us is how we're wired at our core and then when we're left alone or pushed out then we can never resolve that wiring and that's what drives people to a a slow and steady grave it's not guaranteed to kill them but the probability is very high that that loneliness will will have permanent damage was your cover ever blown as a spy my cover was uh i was never able to confirm whether it was compromised or not compromise is the word that we use rather than blown or burnt um there were there was one mission in particular where we had an open inquiry into whether or not it was compromised and if it was compromised internally or externally, or whether it was compromised by some action that I took.

1:43:55And the results of that were inconclusive when I left CIA. Since then, and this is part of the story that I'm trying to get the Publication Review Committee to let me tell, since then there have been arrests made, there have been moles discovered at CIA that could reasonably explain where my cover or how my cover was blown or resolved or compromised, excuse me but i don't have the i don't have the silver bullet solution i don't have the smoking gun right now because it's probably still sits somewhere in classified files how many different ranks are there in a cia lots it's not it's not like that is it like the army where you've got sergeants yeah i was gonna say it's not like the army no no it's not it's more like a corporate structure um and less like a military structure you can become you know a vice president or a director that's not what we call them but you could become that kind of person but it's not like you earn it through tests or years of service who's the the top agency on the planet obviously mi6 you've got cia what's the one in like china's rss mss like who's the biggest and the strongest there's different ways to categorize uh biggest biggest and strongest right the mossad is the most vicious, but they're very small.

1:45:13They have a very small budget, large compared to the state of Israel, but small compared to everybody else. But they're highly capable because they're so willing to take risks. CIA, heavily funded with multiple avenues, technology, weapons, paramilitary, covert influence, cyber attack, cyber defense. So extremely capable in a large set of skills with global reach. So CIA is obviously very powerful. MI6 is in the same boat. Well-funded, lots of reach. But then you have places like DGSE in France or the BND in Germany, where they don't have the large reach, but they have a very large budget dedicated to just one kind of skill set.

1:46:01So that makes them extremely powerful in the one thing or two things that they choose to focus operations on. And then of course, you've got Russia and the SVR, which has insane reach and incredible knowledge into how to make clandestine operations work for a long period of time without being discovered. So it's a mixed question. But I would say if you wanted to know who the top four were, so that you could research them for yourself, I would definitely say CIA is at the top. I would say, uh, DGSE is at the top. I would say the MSS is at the top. I would say SBR is at the top. Your wife also, she's an agent.

1:46:41Correct. My wife is a former CIA officer, just like me. Is that against policy or anything? Like, does you have to keep that secret? No, it's actually very much something that CIA likes. They don't really encourage it, but when it happens, they like it because when you've got two people who are dating or married and they're both undercover and they both work for CIA, it's basically like the family is a CIA family. All we did was work. We didn't go home to our wives. We didn't go home to our husbands. We were at work with our wife and our husband. So you just work all the time. It wasn't until we had a child that we started to come into issues with prioritizing our time with CIA.

1:47:21Now, all of a sudden, there's a child in the mix and the child is something that we want to spend time with our kid we want to spend time with each other and our child so now something is pulling us outside of cia but when we were just married and operating together it was all cia all the time they were very happy see with the emotion see if you were on a job together like you say we're alpha we want to protect can that jeopardize a mission because there's you're also with someone that you love or are you soldiers caught up in that mission that you've got to leave your emotions at the house basically.

1:47:54Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So the best combination is when you can draw the parallel with how the mission is helping the person that you're leaving behind. When you can do those two things, you're invincible. When you don't know the purpose of the mission, or when you can't see how the mission supports the family, then you're left leaning on willpower and leaning on self-discipline to compartmentalize them as separate things. And then you're like, you know I don't want to think about it right now. I'm going to choose to stay focused on the mission. But then as the mission grinds you down, as you start getting tired, as you start running out of resources, your mind wanders.

1:48:33Why am I doing this? What's the point? What's the value? What's the benefit? So that's a less ideal situation. And then you've got the totally worst situation, which is when you're directed on an assignment that you've asked not to be on because you're concerned about something on the forefront at the house. conflict with your spouse or a sick or dying parent or a baby that's on the way, your brain is preoccupied with your clan, with your tribe, and you're being forcefully sent somewhere else. That's the hardest type because now it's not when you run out of resources that you start thinking about them.

1:49:08You're always thinking about them. So you're in a position where you have a higher risk exposure by virtue of the fact that your head, keeping your head in the game takes so many resources, takes so much effort, so much time. And that's the worst situation to be in. Luckily, they don't usually do that to us. But sometimes they have to sometimes you're the only person that can run a mission. And it doesn't matter that your wife is delivering twins or you're delivering twins. If you're the only one that can do it, they're going to ask you to do it. And you kind of have to take the the career penalties if you say no.

1:49:43What sort of penalties do you get if you reject a mission? And so it's kind of like getting a job offer. You may never get asked back again. So you may be penalized by not being invited back. You may be penalized by missing an opportunity to advance in your career. Like I said, it's not like the military. So it's not every two years you're not eligible for promotion. Sometimes you're only able to promote if there's space. And the only way there's space is if somebody else was either retired or threw out or died. So if you miss that opportunity, that opportunity may not come back again in your career.

1:50:21And then, of course, there's also a very healthy culture of fiefdoms or godfathers, godparents, where, you know, you're a senior officer, I'm a junior officer, you like me, and we become like a godfather situation. So anywhere you go, as you go up the chain, you bring me with you. and anything i do i always try to make sure you look good right so that's that's been a a benchmark way of how cia does business for a long time how long can you go on a mission for it can be years it can be hours it's it depends on what the mission sets and the mission needs are the longer the time that you're gone on a mission the higher the chances that you lose track of who you really are and then it becomes dangerous because you might have psychological or cognitive issues trying to come back to your true persona and leave your alias behind.

1:51:14And there've been instances of that happening. And then of course, the shorter that you're gone, it's kind of, you have the higher chance of making a mistake. Your name is Jimbo, but you're only Jimbo for like two hours on the phone and you accidentally forget that your name is Jimbo. So the sweet spot is somewhere in between, right? The sweet spot is somewhere in the, you know, three to five days into as much as three to five months. That's enough time for you to really have a standard cover. I watched a documentary with Jim Carrey and he was talking about method acting. I think it was Man on the Moon.

1:51:48A comedian he played. Andy Kaufman. Yeah, and he actually believed he was him. He was so close to actually getting kicked off the set because he was just annoying everybody. He actually became Andy Kaufman. Andy Kaufman, I thought, does that play a part then when you become an actor you're so engrossed and being that person that you actually believe you are that person yeah there's a big difference between uh between method acting and operating an alias and the big difference the it's not in how we do it we do it almost the same way the difference is that actors are encouraged to adopt their persona They're encouraged to take on the feelings and the roles and try to really put themselves in that person's role, right?

1:52:36To experience that person, to become that character. That's what they're trying to do, become the character. That's not what we're encouraged to do. We're always encouraged to compartmentalize. So imagine it like, imagine you have a drawer and inside your drawer, there are these little square boxes. inside one box is your real self. And then all of the other boxes are filled with the character that you're being, but there's still you inside that box. That's how we're taught to go through alias. So we always have, we're always grounded in who we really are. And the rest is always a role, but we're putting effort into playing that role.

1:53:16Ideally over time, we put less effort into it, but there's always a role to play. Method actors, that last box, even that is filled with the character. They don't leave any room for who they are themselves. That little bit of compartmentation makes all the difference when it comes to how we operate. What about disguises? Disguises are a super interesting thing because there are many different types of disguises. Some of them are very simple. Some of them are complex. None of them are really like they make them look in the movies. The movies make it look like you wear all sorts of rubber and prosthetics and that those things last forever and that they get ripped off in some sort of great reveal at the end of the mission.

1:54:01That's not really how it works in the real world. In the real world, we try to stay away from anything that's a prosthetic because prosthetics are very unreliable. And instead, we lean on simple things that break up our profile because your profile is one of the most identifiable things about you how you stand how you walk uh how you laugh those are all part of your profile if you can break those up then essentially you are in disguise to people what about cloning is that a part that people getting cloned humans like i know they've done dolly the sheep they cloned a sheep made another sheep now we're talking about human beings can be cloned now is that does that happen uh if i have never seen a scenario at cia where human cloning or any kind of animal cloning is executed.

1:54:47Maybe there's, I'm sure there's still science and scientific research for sure. It's got a use case in espionage, but not in my experience, not yet. What was it like coming out of the CIA? It was hard. Leaving CIA is like leaving any other job, only on top of the job, which is a very interesting and enjoyable job. You're also leaving the whole community. And when you're living and working undercover, the only people who know who you really are, are the people that you work with who are also undercover. Because you all work in the same secret base, you all work in the same secret building, you all, you know, in many ways, you share the same cover.

1:55:24So it's really hard when you leave that. Because going back to our whole idea of, you know, tribal animals, you leave behind everything you leave behind everyone who knows the real you, and you have to start all over again. And you can't stay in contact with the people that are still undercover because if you become what's known as overt, when you say, hey, I'm a former covert CIA officer, then you can't be connected to people who are still current covert intelligence officers, not through social media, not through phone numbers, not through Sunday night dinners, because you would compromise their cover.

1:56:01So when you step away from CIA, you step away from all of your friends. how what's the to come out of the CIA was a step to do it with you and your your wife then given birth let us do they understand that or is it a kind of look you can't leave like what's the steps to leave yeah they don't really have good steps to leave when when my wife and I left in 2014 we were a rarity it was very uncommon for anybody to leave mid-career their attrition rate was less than half of 1%. Now their attrition rate is much higher. CIA actually has a challenge right now, recruiting and maintaining talent because people don't want to work there.

1:56:41Why is that? The politics, the constant bipolar, the polarization in politics in the US itself. Then there's also the pay is not competitive compared to what people could make if they went and worked for Google or Apple or Salesforce or Amazon. So there's a number of things that the modern current generation doesn't like that older generations used to be very proud of. So in the United States, if you didn't know, in the United States, there's a major recruiting crisis for the military. People don't wanna be soldiers. There's a major recruiting crisis for the government. People don't wanna be government employees.

1:57:19There's a recruiting crisis for CIA. People don't wanna be spies. It's a challenge that they have yet to figure out because the current youth want to do something else with their life rather than be government servants, which is what so many people have always wanted to do prior to the current generation of adults. How safe is the USA 11, Andrew? It's not dangerous to live inside the USA. I know we have a strange reputation abroad where people think that it's very dangerous, that there's high crime rates and there's violent people with guns. Not as many as the UK. The UK is probably one of the highest in the world.

1:57:59Well, UK is really interesting because of knife violence. Knife violence is strangely high here compared to, it's anomalous compared to the rest of the world. It'd be scary if we had gun stores here, like how many deaths there would actually be. Glasgow, where I'm from, was the murder capital of Europe for a couple of years, man. Wow. Well, I think that speaks to human condition, right? People are violent. Alpha predators hunt. That's what they do, especially when they feel like that's what they have to do to survive or what they have to do to gain an advantage. So how's life been then since you've come out?

1:58:33You've been a father. Have you adapted okay? Did you miss the whole life? flat. I love life now. My wife has a different answer. My wife really misses being in the know. She misses all the secrets. She had a different job. My wife was a targeter. Her job was to take information and use that information to find people of interest and then either recruit those people, capture those people, or neutralize those people. That was her job. So she lived in the world of data and targeting and human profiling. For me, it was always about going out and meeting people. And what I find now is I still get to go out and meet people, only now I do it as a business owner and I do it as a friend and I do it as a world traveler.

1:59:19I don't do it on behalf of the U.S. government in whatever requirements and whatever cover alias identity that they gave me. So for me, life is infinitely more fun i control my own schedule my own travel plans i hang out with my kids i sleep in i stay up late if i want to some days i don't work some days i work extra hard it's it's the ultimate freedom for me but i do know that my wife misses the insights do you speak to people once you come out like psychologists or therapists to kind of reassess your mind that people struggle with ptsd here in the military and stuff like the jews have anything in place or or you just forgot about as soon as you leave?

1:59:59Yeah, no, there's nothing in place for us. CIA has never had a transition plan because they don't expect people to leave. For the most part, when people leave CIA, they just come right back in the next day as a private contractor or with a big firm, and they come back. They make an entire life out of working at CIA. So they don't have a plan for dealing with PTSD. They don't have a plan for dealing with long-term stress or people who have continuous health problems because it's a very demanding job, right? Some people ruin their body, ruin their gut, ruin their hearing, ruin their eyesight in service to their nation.

2:00:35And there's no long-term care for that. But I've been fortunate that most of my operations, I didn't see the kind of trauma that triggers PTSD. My operations were, for the most part, very clandestine, very well controlled, very well executed, very well organized. so I was there was just not a lot of trauma it's not like a James Bond movie it's a very boring life when it comes down to it my wife she has anxiety that she still struggles with and a lot of that anxiety comes from what she saw what she knows how she had to do her job and that is harder for her to shed and anxiety is a tricky thing because it doesn't have a clear trigger, right?

2:01:23Like PTSD can sometimes be triggered by loud noises or flashing lights or a memory. Anxiety is not like that. Anxiety can just creep on you, creep up over the course of three or four days and you don't know why. So she struggles with that. We have employed therapists and we've employed different types of prescription medicines and we've explored supplements and all sorts of stuff, just like everybody else has. That's one of the big things to understand is CIA officers aren't that different from everyday people. We were recruited out of everyday life to go do something extraordinary. And then when the extraordinary thing is done, we come right back to everyday life.

2:02:02And there's nothing special about us. We just got a chance to do something that most people would say yes to if they got the invitation. So no matter all the training you've got, like you say, you're still a human being. You're still suffering struggle with everyone else. Do you ever feel used then that there was no help after it where you've stepped to the forefront and agreed to do what you've do, but you ever think, well, I've helped you, but no one's helped me. Do you then ever feel used at what you've done? So the way I would kind of classify that is I think a way that's very common among tier one and elite military and elite government.

2:02:37We understand that we were given an amazing opportunity and we were given incredible training and we had an incredible experience. so i was was i used as a tool absolutely but was i rewarded for the time that i was being used absolutely i got to do things and see things that i still can't talk about i i have just as many memories that go through my mind that are that will bring a smile to my face and make me just immensely proud of myself as i do situations where i'm i have remorse or discomfort right Right? So the challenge comes when you realize in the job that you are just a tool, that you're replaceable.

2:03:21You're just a number. No one is going to remember you. CIA does not remember its veterans. It does not remember it's dead. It does not remember the people who made a big impact. That's not what it's there to do. It's there to keep Americans safe. Keep Americans safe today. keep Americans safe tomorrow. There's a huge backlog or there used to be a huge backlog of people who wanted to get in. So they would just churn, right? Bring in new bodies, get rid of old bodies, keep Americans safe. That's their job. That's what I want them to be focused on. The day that they start focusing on heroes inside the building is the day that they lose their focus on keeping Americans safe.

2:03:59So you just have to, once you have that realization, you have to ask yourself the question, do I want to dedicate my life to a job that's not going to remember me? Or do I want to dedicate my life to something else where I can make a real impact or a lasting impact? For me, I wanted to build a legacy. I wanted to build a family that was not a family I was born with, a family experience that I didn't get to have. And I want my children to have fond memories of me because I do not have fond memories of my childhood. And if I can give my children a legacy that they can carry on two or three generations in the future for me that's infinitely more valuable than all the spy operations in the world yeah that's what it's all about isn't it like you can break everything down and but you've created memories to last a lifetime where everything's all about risk whether you enjoy it whether you don't enjoy it like how hard does that look for you and your wife then is that a big bonus that you just to know the job and you know what you went through where you can keep each other in a nice balance where you don't actually run wild with it yeah we've basically saved each other's lives correct it's uh it's in it's immensely therapeutic and valuable and helpful that we've had the experience together we see the world through the same lens we see what's happening in the news we see what's happening around the world we see what's happening in politics and in government and we can immediately be on the same page when we compare notes.

2:05:29There's no gap between us because of what CIA gave us. We're still husband and wife. We still don't agree on everything, right? But when it comes to the world around us, for the most part, we see that eye to eye. It's just the family that we're building that we don't see eye to eye on all the time. That's what it's about, brother. I know you're tired. Just a couple of more questions, but what's your plans for the future? So I'm working to grow the company. Everything is about Everyday Spy right now. What is your company? So our business is Everyday Spy. You'll find it at everydayspy.com. We have an iTunes top 10 podcast called the Everyday Espionage Podcast.

2:06:07And I have on social media, you'll find me anywhere on social media at Everyday Spy. But the mission that we have right now is to build a company that provides us long-term financial security, long-term financial independence. and inshallah, in an ideal world, our company will be so healthy and so strong and so resilient that we'll be able to pass it on to our kids if our kids want it or we'll pass it on to a suite of executives that we hire and then if it gets as big as I hope it will get, then we'll also be able to open a whole philanthropic element, a whole wing of our company where all it does is help do good just like you and I were talking about because I understand and I believe that when you have excess resources, you do the responsible thing and you use those resources to help lift others up.

2:06:56And for me, there would be no better, there is no better win scenario than my financial independence, my children's long-term financial security and the excess to donate and make philanthropic things happen. Yeah, that's the beautiful thing about life that the gift in life is given. When you help another, that's both rewarding for both parties, I believe. For anybody that's watching, Andrew, that's maybe struggling with mental health just now, what advice would you have for them? Keep trying. Keep fighting. Keep working. Understand that you're not alone. Mental health challenges are common for alpha predators, not just human beings, but in the animal kingdom too.

2:07:41They find animals that show illogical, erratic behavior all the time simply because they're alpha predators that did not have a pack or a pride or the right kind of prey to hunt. So we have to understand that if it's in our nature to be part of a community and be part of a tribe and be awesome, that's what an alpha predator is. It's an awesome creature. Then if you're not feeling awesome, if you're not part of a pride, if you don't have a community, of course you're going to have those mental challenges so the goal is to just keep persevering keep trying take what we've talked about today and apply it find find your one or two close friends that maybe you haven't met yet but find them out there find your pack find your tribe and and build an amazing life river to kiyahuasca andrew i've thought about it to be very honest so one of the things that I've been looking at doing is how to, again, tap into more of that energy source that drives us.

2:08:46And we didn't talk much about energy today, but there's a whole science behind energy that's really interesting to me, not just the hippie stuff like I look like, but actual scientific energy. And in my consideration of ayahuasca, I've actually started on a journey towards transcendental meditation to try to see how deep I can get into that energy before I have to use any kind of herbal or external supplement of any type. And I've already started to see significant benefits, even just from the Eastern practice of meditation. Meditation and breathing techniques is the strongest thing you can do on this planet.

2:09:24I'm a friend of Wim Hof, a cold water fairy priest, but on the podcast and I've done ayahuasca. I made a documentary about it in Costa Rica again I'm always searching Andrew if I'm honest I'm always craving something there's always something I'm missing me no matter how popular my podcast comes or how much money I make or how happy my family is I'm never satisfied and it's fucking sad but it's just how I am I've accepted it and for me it's just to keep moving forward and setting new heights and hitting new goals and energy is a very important thing because everything I believe is energies and frequencies like you sitting here and me sitting here why are we here at this time talking the way we're talking like something's put us here like energy's forces are such a powerful thing even thoughts is energy you're shooting energy into whatever it is I genuinely I think you'll be doing ayahuasca next year for some reason but I'm not a fucking I don't see the future but I genuinely believe that's the route you maybe take DMT as well but I feel as if ayahuasca I'm always sceptical I'm always I struggle with trust if I'm honest and when I was doing that I wasn't really in a good place I hear that's important yeah I think I was you look for answers and if the people are telling you this is a shortcut to happiness it's a miracle cure whatever it is you buy into it but whether I believe that 100 % truly I don't know I'm still in a great place I'm drink free I'm drug free I'm gambling free four years I've created a podcast but I always want more yeah but listen for coming on today andrew i thoroughly enjoyed your story man no my pleasure absolutely great and for taking the time i know you're just off the plane but would you like to finish up on anything i you know i love what you're doing and i love hearing uh hearing that you are also on such a similar path with me not just to the people out there who are struggling with mental health but i also think it's worth highlighting all the people out there who struggle just like you and i do with we're never satisfied with what's the next thing what's the next big thing and why why can't everybody else move as fast as i can move why isn't everybody else trying as hard as i'm trying why are other people wasting their time behind the tv or or burying themselves in drink or burying themselves in drugs like where are the people that want to just make the most out of this one rock this one ride around the rock that we get right and those are those are the people that you and i want to surround ourselves with i would imagine that after hearing what you just said you live a fairly lonely life yourself there's not a lot of people who you can connect with here myself brother london do you know what i mean that i've got family back home but i'm wanting more my in my mind the perfect life would be with my family kids and but i'm always searching for something i don't know what i'm searching for i think i always make out i've got the answers but i just don't i've not got a fucking clue if i'm honest that i don't understand why people turn to drugs and drink and tv and sex and all that i've done it but it never ever made me happy that made me least satisfied than ever the more people i was surrounded with the more drugs i took the more money i had the more unhappier i was and now that i'm doing everything in a positive light i'm still battling with that happiness and sadness that's the energy and that's scary and i'm thinking am i wired up wrong like i can do cold water therapy i can do meditation i can do yoga i can eat clean and i'll never i'll feel amazing for short little bursts but then there's always something missing and then sometimes i can slip my only downfall now is eating i don't eat clean i believe if i eat better i believe it will take me to another level i believe it will take me i believe my frequency is strong my energy is strong but I believe that my eating is my main downfall because I emotionally after this podcast I've done three podcasts now today it becomes tiresome you're drained because there's so much there's no notes here it's just energy looking into the eyes and trying to dig a little deeper than most but we're all on our journey brother and I'm proud of everything you're doing and this is something that we don't know what's around the corner we can only just enjoy it how can people get in contact with you Andrew?

2:13:36Anybody who wants to find me, the best place to go is everydayspy.com. Start there. You'll find a contact form if you want to reach out to me directly. You'll also find I have a quiz on my homepage, a button that just takes you into a fun little quiz that I built that basically simulates the same kind of psychological exam you would get at CIA. 12 questions, and you find out exactly what kind of spy you would have been at CIA. So the best place to find me is at everydayspy.com. Second best place to find me is on social media at everyday spy and then of course if you are a podcast person if you if you like to listen because i don't really have a youtube podcast going yet but if you're an audio person find me at the everyday espionage podcast on your favorite podcast platform why are you not doing a video as well because you you bring in big numbers that you would hit big numbers because you're very well educated on life and you have your own opinions and everybody has opinions on life and that's great but you're very well educated on i believe you can help a lot more people weff.

2:14:32I want to too, trust me. I want to reach a larger audience. It's why I'm here, man. It's why I flew here to sit with you because I want to reach more people. For a limited time, you can get a Big Mac meal for just$8. That's a burger, fries, and a drink. They don't call it an extra value meal for nothing. Get a Big Mac meal only at McDonald's. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. The Viore Core Short moves with you. with everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash core 20.

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2:15:59It takes time. It takes talent. It takes resources to create a decent video for YouTube or for anything else. And I don't have that time or those talents. And I'm trying to find someone who has the time and the talent and pay them. But business has priorities. So you've got to do things in a certain order. So that's the next goal. I'll probably be on video before I'm on Hiawaska Andy boy a pleasure again, I wish you all the best for future, anything I can ever help with my phone call away brother I appreciate it James