The Terror Is Still Out There with the CIA’s Marc Polymeropoulos 

21:55But that's the idea about integrity. And I will tell you, Anthony, you know, that's the only thing that we have kind of honor and integrity as foundations. And so while sometimes we are betrayed, and that happens in life, you know, my view is you always have to give people the benefit of the doubt. That's the only way to kind of move forward in a positive fashion. Now, sometimes you're going to be disappointed. I remember in my career, I would help a young officer with something. You know, I'm trying, I push really hard from a promote for a promotion and the officer gets promoted. And somehow down the line, I hear their shit talking to me some way.

22:26And I'm like, wow, that's a bit of a betrayal. But you know what? It was still the right thing to do to get that officer promoted. And so, you know, there's, there's just a set of, you know, ethics and, and kind of the integrity that you have. That's all you really have in the end. So I think it's just the idea that these things are going to happen. You try to build teams around trust. You certainly get to, you know, you kind of go around, you get to know your team. One of the things I'd love to do, and I got better at this as a manager is I would try to understand my people more. So you have, let's say you're running a unit of 10 individuals or 20 individuals, and it could, this could, you could be the head of a fortune 500 company because these are some of your top managers, but I'd get them together and we wouldn't talk about work.

23:02I said, tell me something about yourself. And so you, you know, you kind of, you build trust that way. You try to have empathy with, with your, with your employees and your peers as well. But at the end of the day, sometimes human nature kind of bites you. And so, you know, there's this we've all been stabbed in the back in the past, but you try to kind of move forward and kind of live by that honor of or that that code of honesty and integrity, which ironically for a place like CIA is something that is really important because we're entrusted with just a critical mission. We have unique authorities.

23:29We have incredible amounts of power. And so that's what you have to really kind of you have to live that code every day. You know, you said something when I read it. I was like, okay, that is actually true. It doesn't feel like it at the time. You said that adversity is a performance enhancing drug, you know, and I've been kicked in the face. I've been fired. I've been lit up in the American media, international media. And when I'm in an adverse situation, like I own Bitcoin and it's dropping 65 % for the year, and I've got every client and their mother coming at me with a hatchet, it doesn't feel good, Mark.

24:08And so tell me why adversity is a performance enhancing drug. So for me, so I came up with that one of the principles, adversity is the PED to success. It's because every really incredible elite team that I'd been on, we had failed prior to that, but before some huge success. I mean, it's just something that this is based on my experiences. This is not just something I kind of came up with out of nowhere. And so what I started thinking about is adversity can be your super fuel. And, you know, There's so many examples in life. The one I use all the time is Michael Jordan. What happened his sophomore year in high school where he got cut from his high school basketball team?

24:41I think he didn't quit after that. But it's just the idea that you need to taste rock bottom first before you eventually succeed. And you know what? That's life. To me, the idea of this principle is I use this with my kids all the time. My son's playing college baseball. He's had two shoulder surgeries in three years. Brutal. What are you going to do? you know you either you know you can complain about it you can pick yourself up and do your rehab and get back at it I mean this is going to happen in life whether it's your personal life whether it's in business family anything and so it's just going to make you it's going to it's going to make you ultimately strong I'm going to give you a great baseball analogy I remember in 2003 the Red Sox Yankees series the Red Sox Red Sox lose the Yankees on a walk-off home run by of Of course, Aaron Boone against a great knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield.

25:29Watch that game, man. What happened the next year, 2004, the Red Sox are down three games to none, right? And Kevin Millar, incidentally, a glue guy, gets up in front of the world media and smiling. He says, we're going to shock the world. And the Red Sox come back, win four straight, beat the Yankees. And if you talk to any member of that Red Sox. Which has never been done before. Let's just let everybody know that. You know, the go 0-3 and win the remaining four games, never been done before. Boston Red Sox do it. Every member of the Red Sox team, every member said there's no way we win in 04 if we hadn't had that incredible loss in 03 because we learned.

26:05And so, you know, when I talk to groups about this and when I talk about my book, whether it's athletic teams or Fortune 500 companies, you know, I say the same thing is that, you know, sometimes going through adversity makes you what? Makes you fearless. So, Anthony, what you've gone through in terms of, you know, experience with Bitcoin, like how much worse can it get? Well, the answer is actually, you know, It was pretty bad for a while. But in the future, you're going to be fine because you went through that. And it's just having that kind of mental toughness. And so the idea of embracing adversity.

26:34I don't know if you have an opinion of it or anything, but what does the agency think about Bitcoin? There's rumors out there that the agency invented Bitcoin. You think that's BS? I have no idea. I'm not sure. I think, you know, I guess sometimes it's harder to track. I don't know. But who knows? We're probably giving credit for a lot of things we didn't do. Right. Right. Well, yeah, amen. You're probably getting credit or sometimes discredit. There's a lot of nonsense, nonsensical conspiracy theories and so forth. Let's talk a little bit about your time in Afghanistan. You were in Iraq. You were in Afghanistan.

27:07I obviously only spent a week in each of those countries. But man, I thought they were very different countries. You know, there's just a whole different culture in both those countries. So set the scene for us. What was your time like in Iraq? And what was it like in Afghanistan? And how did they get it? So setting the scene is a perfect way to think about this because ultimately, and I wrote about this and talked about it on Morning Joe a couple of weeks ago as we kind of did a retrospective on the 20-year anniversary of Iraq. But, you know, you have to remember that whether it's Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, you know, I was a tool of the U.S.

27:41government. It's a sharp tool. It's one that is employed with care. But so I'm not going to give an impression on whether it was right or wrong. For me, it was the idea of answering the bell. And so the U.S. government trained me to do something. I was asked to go. I volunteered to go, in fact, begged to go in both those places because that's what we do. But ultimately, both were quite different in Iraq, certainly before the war, as I was living up with the Kurds in northern Iraq. And then when the war kicked off, I went in with the Navy SEALs for what we call the high value target hunt when we're tracking down members of Saddam's regime.

28:14But my recollection of this was not anything about WMD or anything like that. It was that I had run Iraq operations for a while and Saddam Hussein was an evil, evil bastard. You know, one of the one of the worst dictators of the century. And the sense that we had is that we were actually helping the Iraqi people. Now, everyone might kind of scoff at that now after after, you know, not finding WMD. But, you know, if you knew the Iraqis and knew what they had gone through under a brutal dictator, this was a chance to do something different. So that was kind of the feeling I had there. In Afghanistan, far different emotions for me because and this is not, you know, this is I'm going to give you just a personal view of this.

28:52You know, it's about revenge. I was in New York on 9-11 going to Afghanistan. I was a base chief in eastern Afghanistan. I ran one of our paramilitary bases. And our job was pure and simply to track down high value targets. And that's fine, fix and finish missions with along with the U.S. military against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And for me, it was avenging the deaths of 3000 Americans. It was avenging the death of terrorists who killed my fellow CIA officers. And so, you know, there was never a day I woke up and said, boy, I wish I was back home. I loved every second of my time in Afghanistan because I thought what we were doing was absolutely righteous.

29:28This is far different than nation building, far different than what probably a lot of people's experiences there. But for me, I'm extraordinarily proud of what we did because Americans are safer, for sure, from what my team and my fellow colleagues accomplished there. I know that we are safer, but tell us why we are safer, because you're all this cynical nonsense in the press. So and we've also I don't want to jinx us, but we've also managed to really in the last 21, 22 years curb any monumental terror attacks in the United States. So tell us why we're safer. So, look, every day, you know, there's a great poster that was put up at CIA headquarters every day.

30:09Just think about this. Every day is September 12th. Every day is September 12th. What does that mean? You get up every day saying that what happened on September 11th will never happen again. And I'll tell you, as a member of the intelligence community, we considered, you know, September 11th a failure. I mean, you know, I know we had to be perfect and we weren't. And so when you say every day is September 12th, we're going to do everything possible so that doesn't happen again. And, you know, again, lots of retrospectives, obviously, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But you know what? We weren't attacked again on our homeland.

30:41And I think the men and women of CIA and the intelligence community and the U.S. military deserve a hell of a lot of credit, even if we made mistakes in Afghanistan, even if we stayed too long. Fine. Got it. But at the end of the day, we were not attacked again. And that's because of the resolve. Look, a friend. I have a friend. This is an incredible story. I can't tell you his name. He spent 10 years on the bin Laden hunt. Think about that. Every day he woke up for 10 years. Most of the time he was deployed in South Asia, in Pakistan or Afghanistan, not married, you know, no girlfriends, maybe a girlfriend or two or whatever, but no personal life.

31:12Every day for 10 years he hunted bin Laden. Thank God we have people like that who have that. I didn't have that resolve. I went back and forth. He was there for 10 damn years. And, you know, those are the kind of people that, you know, God bless we have them, you know, working for us. It's a, you know, listen, it's an amazing story. And, you know, like you said, we've got to be 100 % right. You know, General Kelly and I have become very close. And he told me the story, which is now declassified about the laptop bombs that they were making for these computers. And they were going to bring laptops onto the planes and blow the planes up with these laptop bombs.

31:50And, of course, the Homeland Security CIA, everyone had to make a decision to continue to allow laptops to come into the United States or even be flown around domestically in the United States. And, of course, we disrupted that terror cell, got all the information and adjusted our security screening so that we could continue to have our laptops on planes. We can't forget, and I think we have, that people were terrified that there was another attack coming. I remember it like it was yesterday. Not only terrified, but I think it's also important for people to know that the terror is still out there, which is why we're spending all of this money to disrupt terror.

32:29And as you know, we have to be perfect. They just got to get it right once. And it's only us. We're the ones – we'd always say to each other, there's nobody else. If we're not successful, there's no backup. right behind us. We're on the ramparts. And so that was a tremendous responsibility. But I think a lot of us have a lot of pride in terms of the counterterrorism work we did. Where are we today in terms of our safety? Wow, what a great question. So the world has changed. We were so successful in the counterterrorism field that the threat of an attack on our homeland is diminished because of how we have so significantly degraded international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

33:04But the world has changed. And now we have, of course, a rising China, which is our kind of long-term pacing threat. And then we have a country like Russia, which is kind of the most near-term threat, particularly to Europe, to NATO. And so the threats are different. In the United States, sometimes the national security sectors and aircraft carrier move slowly, but we have shifted towards this, what we call great power competition, which is China, Russia. But Anthony, you saw this in the White House. How humbling is it for the president or a national security team to get the president's daily brief?

33:36And you can, as a candidate, you can say all you want, but you get that brief every day. Right now, what President Biden's getting, you got what's going on with Russia, Russia, Ukraine, the potential threat of use of a nuclear weapon by Putin. I don't think it's going to happen, but that's out there. You have a rise in China. You also have what? An Iranian nuclear program that's accelerating. You have a North Korean missile program and nukes as well. Israeli-Palestinian violence, on and on and on. It's pretty sober. You have the Yemeni civil war, the complication between the Arabian Saudi Arabia now and Iran.

34:08It goes on and on. It's a dangerous thing. The only thing I would say about that brief is that when, you know, and I try to tell this to people without getting specific, there's just so many things that we don't know. And so we're giving our best guess to people that have to make these decisions. Of course, if the president is making the decision, that means there were 5 ,000 other people in the United States government couldn't make the decision. That's how difficult it was. And so it filtered up to the president. So, you know, it's not only humbling, but it also has prevented me from becoming overly critical and too much of a Monday morning quarterback on people because there's just so many things that we don't know.

34:44So I know I'm running out of time and I could talk to you all day. I want to talk about Havana syndrome. You know, you have it, struggling with it. Any better? Headaches are better now or no? No, Anthony, thanks for asking. Yeah, I've gotten much better. In fact, you know, I went to a one month program at Walter Reed at their traumatic brain injury clinic. I have I've had some subsequent treatment from some former Navy SEAL doctors and specialists. And so, you know, it's at the five year mark since this happened to me in Moscow in 2017. And I am definitely better. Thank God. But it's a marathon.

35:15You know, I still have a headache five years with a headache that's been going on 24 seven, but much better. My, you know, my cognitive abilities are vastly improved. um and and to me you know i think about of course you know the my book now clarity and crisis but i think there might be another book in me about uh overcoming chronic pain because it's been an incredible struggle you know thank god i channel my energies you know this because we have a mutual friend and uh who's a personal trainer and ray i channel my energies into working out you know so i'm a workout fanatic but i also could see with this battle of chronic pain how people do things like getting getting hooked on opioids you know of course no i mean chronic chronic pain is it It's been a brutal, brutal journey.

35:54And so to me, you know, it's an absolute, you know, kind of daily struggle, but I've managed to channel it successfully. Thank you for asking. But, you know, it certainly has been a marathon. No doubt about that. So with every one of my authors, I throw out a couple of words. I want them to react in sort of a quick fire reaction. You know, it could be a sentence or two or even three. So let's start with the Middle East. Complicated. And America will never be able to disengage. And the reason we can never disengage is? Oil, our dependence on oil. And also just because it's such a volatile area.

36:35And I'll throw on top our historic support for Israel. And that's interesting because, you know, it goes back to Thomas Hobbes. In the Leviathan, written almost 500 years ago, what Hobbes said is you need one hegemonic power to suppress the internecine conflicts. If you can do that, you can get to world peace. If you don't have a hegemonic power doing that, these tribal conflicts, these disagreements, they bubble up. And of course, you and I are students of Middle Eastern history. So we know that the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the treaty that was put together by the French and the British as they were leaving Palestine and the Middle East, as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling.

37:13Those guys were a little dastardly. They created border disputes in every single country. So those tribes are still fighting over the varying borders. So World War I in the Middle East has not ended, Mark. You and I both know that. And so a result of which the United States definitely needs to be there. I'm just wondering, though, about what Henry Kissinger would say, where he said, don't let the Russians in, don't let the Chinese in. We seem to have let, we seem to have let both the Russians and Chinese. I think that, you know, this is more of a complicated discussion, but I think Obama, President Obama, the Obama administration let the Russians into Syria in particular.

37:50And, and now the Chinese influence in the Middle East is quite significant. You actually see Saudi Arabia tilting towards China. And, but that's also a reflection, I think, of it's not a, unipolar world anymore. United States is the dominant power, but China is right behind us. So we're just going to have to live with that, I think, in the years to come. No question. So let's go right there. China, or as Trump would say, China, China, China. It's our longest term, our pacing threat. I think, though, and perhaps this is a bit controversial when I say this. I'm not as convinced that we will inevitably have a war with China because China wants one thing, and that's 9 % growth.

38:36China is not Russia. China's economic interests trump everything else. And so I think we're going to have to learn how to coexist with another power in the world. But I'm not as convinced we will have armed conflict, I think, as others are, because China ultimately values stability and they want that 9 % growth. Yeah. And I also think they are long term planners, you know, and they don't need a conflict today that's going to disrupt the long term plan. But you think they invade Taiwan? I do not. I think that the lesson of Ukraine is going to be, you know, front and center in their minds. And as long as we kind of continue on with with with a strong deterrent capability, I do not think they will.

39:15Again, that would threaten the world economy, certainly threaten the China's China's economy. Doesn't make sense to me why they would do that. It was nice to see former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the Ukraine going against the MAGA narrative. It's a fight for the democracy and it's also a fight for the stability of the West. So let's go to that monolithic country, 13 time zones, the largest land mass in the world, Russia. You know, I would say it's a country ruled by a war criminal. Enormously disappointing, I think, to many. You know, you had the old German view that Russia could be integrated into Europe.

39:50I think that has been, you know, shattered totally. And ultimately, while we're going to have to continue supporting Ukraine as they as they try to push Russia out of their territory, you know, what happens the day after the war ends? How do we deal, assuming Putin's in power, with a bruised and battered Russia? That's going to be kind of a key, key issue of our time. That's what the National Security Council is focused on. I strongly believe Ukraine is going to win this war, but I don't think anybody understands what happens the day after. OK, so you got the Ukrainians winning the war. What does that mean for Vladimir Putin and his regime?

40:28Right. So Putin is going to have to find a way to somehow couch this as a success when he inevitably is going to have to he will he will lose. He will have to withdraw. You know, one of the things is that Russia is a is a pretty monolithic police state. So he seems to have, you know, kind of a hold on power. But at the end of the day, I think one of the one of the things that I find fascinating is I'm not sure we understand Russia and the Russian people as much as we think the notion that Russian the Russian people are somehow going to rise up against him. I'm not sure that's accurate. My friends of mine who know Russia far better than I see a population that is that is demoralized and and has just kind of accepted that they have this war criminal in power.

41:12So I'm really, you know, again, I think that it's the notion that somehow Putin is going to be deposed. I think that's that's that kind of that silver bullet idea is a bit fanciful. What he you know, but how this ends is is going to be quite, quite curious. He's going to have to have some reason to to kind of call it quits. I say this all the time that, you know, when I say it in the media and people always are quite horrified. The only thing that matters every day is the is the amount of Russians we send home in body bags, us and the Ukrainians together. That that is going to be how this this this war eventually ends.

41:43Now, listen, it's a terrible thing to say because both you and I know how devastating war can be. And we know that it unravels the rhetoric, the hot rhetoric turns into real personal tragedy for so many families and individuals. Two last ones. OK, you ready? USA. say, the United States? I still have hope. You know, here's a great, you know, I go around and I speak to universities all the time. And, you know, there's so much negativity in the media. And a lot of it is justified. You know, the events of January 6th, I think, are a historic stain on our country. You have a Republican Party that nobody can really recognize anymore.

42:18But then I go and I talk to Generation Z. I go and talk to the youth. And you know what? They still are interested in public service. They are not as depressed or demoralized as sometimes many of us in the media are. And so I think there is hope for the future. And, you know, it's our job to try to pass the torch correctly. But, you know, I still think of America as the shining city on the hill. Anthony, when you travel overseas, go by a U.S. embassy and the consular section. Even now, there are long lines of people who want to emigrate to the United States. We are still seen as the land of political and economic freedom, and nobody should forget that with all of our problems.

42:54So I still have hope. Yeah. I mean, we've hurt ourselves. I mean, listen, I love the country. It's a resilient country and it will improve. And like you said about Reagan, our best days are probably ahead of us as we reform ourselves, as we always had. We've had a civil war, two world wars. We've had setbacks related to the Cold War. Now we're experiencing a tremendous amount of tribalism. Some of that is actually being infected by intelligence forces that are adversarial to the US. You and I both know that these robotic server farms are designed to influence Americans, make them feel bad about themselves or make them hate other Americans.

43:33And so, you know, we'll figure it out as time goes on. I'm super optimistic about America and love the country and want to be part of the solution. Last one, CIA. It's the nation's first line of defense. Key part that CIA has to understand is with the explosion in open source data, we have to remain relevant. And that means we have to be able to continue to spot assess, develop, recruit, and handle agents, human sources. The explosion of open source, the explosion of data means about 80 % of what the president and national security team needs to know comes from open source data. But we need to have that 20 % niche.

44:13We need to recruit a penetration of the inner circle of President Xi in China, of Vladimir Putin. We still need to penetrate terrorist groups. So CIA has to be on their game to stay relevant. But again, it's still it's the it's the nation's first line of defense. And, you know, I still I still believe these are everyday heroes. America never hears about them. They're in the shadows. I'm never going to get a pat in the head. But they go to work every day helping protect America. Well, listen, it's been a spirited exchange. You're a great man, a great American. I loved your book, Clarity in Crisis, Leadership Lessons from the CIA.

44:46And I'll see you rooting for a team that I don't like sometime this summer somewhere. How's that? That's a deal. And I'll come up to New York anytime to see you. Thanks, Anthony. Really appreciate it.

45:02Well, I'm certainly grateful for Mark's service. And I'm grateful for the CIA and the commitment that these men and women have to America. and their willingness to sacrifice anonymously on behalf of the interests of the United States. And of course, because I've been privy to a lot of the different operations that the U.S. has been engaged in over the last decade, I can tell you that these men and women like Mark have put their lives on the line. They have put their lives on the line for America to protect civilians, not only here in the United States, but Americans around the world and frankly, innocent people around the world.

45:38So I'm super grateful to him. And I'm noticing that the glue guy or girl is something I thought about a lot since Mark's reading. And I'm going to tell you that my erstwhile producer, Holly, is a glue person. We won't call her a glue guy or girl, but we'll say that she's a glue person. But she's been an incredible teamwork-oriented person here at Skybridge and all things related to salt. And it's nice for people like Mark to acknowledge and bear witness to that.

46:13My guest this week was Mark Polymeropoulos. He's a CIA veteran. He's basically a spy, Ma. So what do you think of the CIA? Do you like us having a CIA? You need the CIA. Of course you need that. All right. Tell me why, Ma. Because they have to be informed, informing the American people on what the hell they say. Right. They can prevent terrorist attacks. They can disrupt attacks. right? Absolutely. They can find out who the bad guys are before they cause a big problem, right? They had two Chinese men in the Chinatown being spies. They didn't have the FBI or the CIA would really be in trouble. All right.

46:53So I spoke to him about all this, okay? Mark said something to me that I want you to get a reaction to. He said to me, you have to become comfortable with the unknown to succeed. You know, sort of like when I started my companies, I had no idea if it was going to go well or not, but I had to be comfortable with the fact I didn't know. Is that a true statement, Ma, or what do you think? Absolutely. Because Anthony, since you were a child, you always were comfortable in your own skin. I think I have three children that I have tried to, I had a saying, look in the mirror and tell yourself you're beautiful or you're handsome And you would end up getting a better feeling about yourself if you said it to yourself every day.

47:36And I believe that helps. My father told me that, and I answered it on to my children. Okay, so you built up good self-esteem. Is it this way I can take the body blows when they're like attacking me in the paper, right? No problem. We also had an uncle who had a feisty personality and told you, who was my brother, never to be afraid of anyone if you think you're right. Explain yourself to the person. and then if they are belligerent then you tell them why they're off the wall and usually you're right yeah he said never have any fear of anybody which was a true story of course he fought in the second world war and he helped to liberate one of the concentration camps and and so he was very tough and he he didn't like bad or evil people there was no question about that so so he gave everyone a chance many years ago when we had discrimination and in 1955 he hired someone that was uh african-american who was very loyal to him because of that and he treated him like he treated himself and everyone else around him and with that you you adopted arrow no i mean yeah no i got i got raised colorblind and that was a very good trait to have and so but that's also you know i don't walk around gingerly around black people i talk to them like white people or green people it doesn't matter to me and people doesn't matter people can cancel me or not cancel me.

48:59I'm going to tell them exactly how I feel one way or the other. Keep going. I think that's a gift. Right. Well, okay. Well, you helped me with that. So thank you, Ma. We talked about teams and having people you can count on. So how do you know, because you know you're a little bit of a witch, Ma. That's what my brother David calls you. How do you know that you can count on somebody? What's the instinct? What do you feel about the person that knows that, hey, that's a person I can count on? I think I have a gift on that. I really do because I can sense it. Sometimes I keep things in. I have leukemia from keeping things in because no one in my family has it.

49:36And I think that it's the stress of keeping stuff in. And when I see someone that I think is really bad and that I think it could hurt somebody by me saying it, I hold it in. But I know the person is about good. Okay. I appreciate that, Mom. So you just, there's a sense that you get, right? Definite sense. My father even told me as a little kid that I had a sense of that. You know, I just feel that. And then I don't get all those too easy, but sometimes I take a back seat. I let that person win just so I don't have a conflict. Not anymore, but when I was young, I would let that person win just so I could survive life.

50:16Without saying who it is. All right. All right. I love you, Ma. I am Anthony Scaramucci and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at plus one nine one seven nine oh nine two nine nine six i'd love to hear from you i'll see you back here next week