← The Team House
The Team House
CIA Senior Intelligence Service Officer | Doug Wise (throwback episode)
02:39:59
original airdate 5/27/22 Douglas H. Wise retired from CIA as a member of CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service (SIS-6) in August 2016 completing nearly three decades of service. He finished his career with CIA in a Joint Duty Assignment as the Deputy...
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- [00:01]
David Park
Dreaming of buying your first car or new home.
- [00:03]
Douglas Wise
Knowing your FICO score is the first step to making it real. With Myfico, you can check your score.
- [00:09]
David Park
For free and it won't hurt your credit.
- [00:11]
Douglas Wise
You'll get your FICO score, full credit reports, and real time alerts all in one simple app.
- [00:16]
David Park
Your credit score is more than just numbers.
- [00:19]
Douglas Wise
It's the key to building the future you've been working toward. Visit myfico.com free or download the MyFico.
- [00:26]
David Park
App and take the mystery out of your FICO score.
- [00:31]
Douglas Wise
Ah, it's so weird.
- [00:33]
Jack Murphy
This app shows that my credit score.
- [00:34]
Douglas Wise
Is pretty good, but I couldn't get the car loan. Are you using myfico.com? no, it's some other company. Oh. You should get a MyFICO account instead. FICO scores are the ones used by 90% of lenders. And other credit scores can vary up to 100 points.
- [00:48]
Jack Murphy
That would have been helpful yesterday.
- [00:50]
David Park
Get the scores lenders use. Get the right FICO credit score for your credit goal, including your FICO scores used for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards. Visit myfico.com or download the MyFico app. To get started today, the Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everybody, thanks for joining us on the Team House Episode 147. I'm Dave Park. This is Jack Murphy. Actually, Jack is queuing us up behind the deck right now. D couldn't be with us tonight, but so Jack's filling in for D and Jack. And we have a great guest with us tonight, a very special guest, Douglas Wise, former SIS 6.
- [01:40]
Douglas Wise
Correct.
- [01:41]
David Park
SIS of the Central Intelligence Agency. So, Doug, the way we love to start these things is, you know, by learning how you got your superpowers. What is your origin story? Where do you come from? How did all this happen in the very beginning?
- [02:01]
Douglas Wise
Well, I mean, like many of your guests, first thing is, let me just say it's an honor and a privilege to be with you and to be able to help provide a little bit of insight through my experience, you know, to this arcane world of, you know, special operations and the business of national tactical intelligence. I also think it's a great thing for you guys to, you know, provide a platform for veterans, you know, to give voice to the voiceless, which I think is spectacularly great. And I just want to thank all of the people that have dialed in and logged in today, you know, for supporting the program and for making this such a great success within the national security and the veteran community. So I Think it's absolutely great.
- [02:47]
David Park
It's because of people like you, Doug. I mean, honestly, like you. You make the show, not us. We're just a couple of dudes yammering. So we appreciate you.
- [02:56]
Douglas Wise
Well, I think your participants are going to find me yammering a lot myself, so I'll do my fair share of yammering. Perfect. Yeah. So let me start at the end for just a sec and then I'll come back to the beginning, if we could. My beginning is kind of unusual. I grew up on an Amish farm. I don't think many people in the intelligence community started out, you know, harvesting crops by hand in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. You know, at the end of the ride, you know, I had the pleasure of serving public service for 50 years. That's a half a century. And it was, you know, as I said, and I think many of you who are, who are listening to me and watching, I think you can kind of resonate with this. You know, I never had a bad day. I've had better days, right? But I've never had a bad day. I think the worst day that I ever experienced was probably in December 2009 when I was in Iraq and we had eight of our colleagues who were, you know, murdered at Coast Base in Afghanistan. And I knew every one of them from the base chief on down. I knew all the officers, including the GRS guys who were wounded and fell in the line of duty. So that was not a good day. But in the end I looked for the positive, that their sacrifice was not in vain. Because we took a hard look at what was the causative of that and we were a better agency. And so they didn't die in vain. Their sacrifice actually produced probably life saving changes in the way we did business. But I never had a real bad day. But one of the things that's interesting is after you come out of the ride, and for those of you that are younger on this podcast and have either at the beginning of your national security journey or you are contemplating, you could take a look at me. This is on Photoshop. This is what you're gonna look like at the end of the ride. So if you wanna look like a hard ridden mule, beaten mule, then you may want to get off the train right now. But anyway, it was great. But you know, the challenges galore throughout my entire career, and it didn't end when I left, as a matter of fact, because when I became the deputy director of DIA, they rolled back my cover from day one, which went all the way back to 1987 when I entered on duty with CIA. And if either you gentlemen are interested, you know, I'm more than happy to talk about that process as well later. But, you know, one of the things that when I came out from undercover and I'm able to tell people, you know, with. Even with great pride, quite frankly, and legitimate pride for the. For the officers like you both who, you know, I serve with, serve for who serve for me, made it always a good day and often a better day. But when you come out from undercover and you can kind of shed and take off the jacket and you really expose your real self, there's a lot of benefits to that because you can talk about the power and the majesty of what you experienced and help to provide a little bit of insight into what those of us who are working outside the public eye, what contributions we're making, what risks we're taking, the challenges we face and how we feel when we do that. Sense of pride, sense of accomplishment. And so being able to discuss that finally and attribute it to CIA is a wonderful thing. But then what happens is usually to the person that you're talking to who may not know you, particularly when I public speak, as I do a fair amount, you know, you collide with the public perception of what a CIA officer looks like. And I think that, you know, David, you and Jack would agree, I do bear a striking resemblance to Daniel Craig, but maybe Matt Damon I'm not. I don't look a lot like Matt Damon, but. But the perception of what a CIA officer is, is really framed by Hollywood. I do a fair amount of engagement with Hollywood, and if you want to talk about that, we can talk about that as well. But I was given a prestigious invite to go speak at. Give an evening lecture at Chatham House in London on St James Square. Wonderful Institution. It is one of two think tanks that exist in the United Kingdom in America we have a lot of them in the United Kingdom. They have USI and Chatham House. And Chatham House was where Chatham House rule came from. And they're the ones that started it. And so it was really an honor and I had never been there and I had no idea what to expect. So I'm waiting in the wings of this huge auditorium inside the building with my American program counter sponsor, my wife Cindy, you know, who is just absolutely spectacular lady, put up with me for decades and was a super professional in her own right as an FBI special agent pioneer female first pilot for the Bureau, female pilot. I'm more proud of her than I am of Myself, but she was in the audience because I thought it'd be a great thing to share, quite frankly. The auditorium was getting full, so I turned to Jacob and I go, hey, Jacob, is this a big audience? And he looks at me, says, second largest audience we've ever had here at Chatham House. Second largest. I said, who drew the biggest crowd? And he goes, benjamin Netanyahu. He was here two weeks ago. And I go, well, I'm honored, but I'm not a Benjamin Netanyahu glass figure. But the attractiveness for all of these people was the fact that I was an acknowledged and open CIA officer, served in clandestine service. They marketed it heavily as a note for our audience. The British Secret Intelligence Service have a secrecy agreement. We have sort of one, but they have one for life where they can't acknowledge their association with MI6. So the fact that I was a spy and could acknowledge and could discuss spy stuff, even though my topic was actually Russian disinformation, I think they came to see what a real spy looked like. So I hadn't really thought through what the, what the collision would be from perception to reality. But I learned that pretty soon after the thing was over. So Jacob and I walk in, we sit down on the stage. There's a podium there. He's going to go introduce me. In the meantime, my wife's in the crowd and being an FBI special agent, want to be, you know, a your time on target. Got to be. TOT is now. This thing should. This thing should have begun here at, you know, at 7:00pm you know, she leans over, you know, it's now 7:10, 7:15. So she leans over to ask the British guy sitting next to her in the audience, and she goes, Hey, 7:15. It's supposed to start at 7 when this thing goes up. And the guy goes, ma', am, I think it's going to be when that fat old guy introduces the CIA speaker. And so when she's telling me that story, I go, well, babe, didn't you like, put him on the spot and tell him you were married to me? And she goes, nah, I had to apply the need to know principle. He didn't need to know that. So I'm under no illusion that what I represent may be disconsolate with what the public expects. So again, kudos to you gentlemen for creating this platform that allows, you know, your guests, many of whom have done much more than I have along this special ops espionage journey, you know, to kind of a inform, dispel mythology and to be able to maybe not inspire I don't think I'll be inspirational, but maybe to, you know, get over some obstacles and come and join the family, you know, put an application in and be part of service to America and the safety and security of the American people. But anyway, back to you, gentlemen, where you want to go.
- [11:49]
David Park
Back to you. You're on an Amish farm, churning butter, I suppose.
- [11:55]
Douglas Wise
Oh, harvesting crops by hand. That was nice. But it's a long, complicated journey to go from the Amish farm to northern Ohio. But it was my father who actually ended up going greatest Generation, World War II vet, and, you know, decided that, you know, he didn't want to do farm stuff. So he went to get an education, became an academic, and moved the family. And so we moved to Northern Ohio, which was kind of an interesting experience. Although northern Iowa is very agricultural, so that wasn't, wasn't all that bad. You know, people didn't dress the same as we did. But the, but it was kind of interesting. And I grew up there, you know, typical Midwest kid, you know, monocultural experience. You know, I don't believe there was a single Hispanic in my town. There was, I think, a small number of African American families and most of us were sliced white bread kids, you know, growing up to, you know, 400 kids in high school, two varsity sports. And, you know, ultimately it was John Glenn that appointed me to the military academy at West Point. So I joined the class in 1972 and 1968. Not a bad, not a good time in America, very unpopular war. And so joining the military was not, Was not fashionable. Can I say that what John Glenn did was he used a screening mechanism that doesn't exist anymore. And it was a civil service aptitude test, kind of like SAT lite. And all he did was use that to discriminate, first order, throw out to people that can't fill out the circle with their number two pencil. Throw that guy out. So told to go to Findlay, Ohio, which is a modest sized town in northern Iowa, a little south of Toledo, and go to the post office, upper level, inkwell, desks. You come in, they give you the test booklet. Tell you, don't open it up until we tell you, because it's a time test. Fill out the first page and the first page, all biographic, right? So you're writing all that stuff down, putting your initials of your name, you know, down in the block. And then the seminal block that's down about midway was what academy are you. Are, are you. Do you wish to attend? My dad flew in World War II. Ultimately, my younger brother, he flew F15 Strike Eagles. And so I was raised to, to be an Air Force kid, you know, so my job was to go to the Air Force Academy. So it was a no brainer for me. So I marked, I put the dark in that little circle, you know, usafa. So there's a seat in front of me and all of a sudden, poof, ver, plop. This guy sits down in front of me. His name is Kent Cartwright, you know, Hollywood name. And Kent looked like the epitome of, of weightlifting surfer, if there was such a thing. Broad shouldered, narrow waist, captain of both the football and the basketball teams, had an active social life, which I didn't have, and was an academic star and was the most popular guy in school, you know, homecoming king, the whole works. So I tap him on his shoulder and I go, hey Kent, what academy are you going for? What academy are you going to? And he turns and looks at me and he goes, I'm going to Air Force Academy. And I go, me. So I turned that number two pencil around and I just erased that usafa. And I just mark sent. Not the Coast Guard Academy, not doing that Naval Academy. Now my mom knew my dad, I wasn't eligible to go to the academy. So I'm going to usma. So I, Mark sense, I deck the winds of fate blew Cartwright to the Air Force Academy. They threw him out after a semester. The other wind of fate blew me to West Point. And as I said, I entered and commissioned a second lieutenant in 1972. So that's kind of my journey to get to that point.
- [16:08]
David Park
Right.
- [16:10]
Douglas Wise
And not an outcome that I think anybody, any of my relatives back in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania would have anticipated. But, but anyway, that's my early story. Yeah.
- [16:22]
Jack Murphy
And you had a pretty interesting military career. I mean, could you tell us a little bit about becoming a junior officer, some of your duty stations and what that was like for you?
- [16:31]
Douglas Wise
Well, yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for asking. In 1972 was a bad time to be in the army. It was, you know, racial violence, it was narcotics related violence, ill discipline, you know, it was a draft army and it was a combination. There were volunteers and the army was trying to transition. Read the book Prodigal Soldiers and you'll really understand some of the courage that was necessary for the army to transform itself. And we had not yet gotten to the point where we even began the first step of a 12 step program by acknowledging that the army was really in harm's way, quite frankly, deprofessionalized it was ridden with all kinds of corruption, moral corruption, ethical corruption, tainted by this unpopular war, underappreciated, not even under, but not appreciated by the American people. Really not understanding what Vietnam veterans had gone through. All of the horrors of war, all of the trauma, all the shock, all of just the horrors. And then to come back and not be welcomed back as a member of American society. And of course, you had to the whole thing of a deranged Vietnam veteran, right? Yet that kind of mindset that I think a lot of people had. So entering the army at that time was a really difficult time. I think one or more of your guests, I think, had mentioned, you know, pulling duty officer armed, because, you know, as a young officer, if you were alone, you didn't go alone into the barracks, because that was the same thing as going, being a point man, you know, on a jungle patrol, you know, you're going to hit a tripwire and you were going to be the first casualty of that. And, you know, it was. It was frightening to say the least. But, you know, here's how my first day, you know, in a real unit began. You know, I show up in the unit and I show up into the replacement detachment. On the walls of the replacement detachment, these big posters, and it said, if you're going to this outfit, call this autobahn number. Somebody from the unit will figure out how to get you there. And so I called the unit and it was. The Unit was the 1st Battalion, 509th Parish Airborne Mech Infantry. If there ever was a dichotomous concept of having mechanized airborne battalion, we didn't do a lot of mech because none of those M113s worked. And we never did any maintenance on them to make sure they didn't work, because we prefer to be paratroopers rather than motor pool monkeys. But it was an elite unit at that time of U.S. army Europe. We were an entire airborne Brigade of the 8th Division. So I called my sponsor, expected to show up first. Lt. Morrison was his name. I don't know why I remember that. And all of a sudden I hear my name and I jump up excited. And I go, a ton of wives. And I go, yeah, here, here, here. And E7 walks over and introduces himself. He goes, hey, sir, welcome to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 509 parachute. And I said, well, thank you, Sergeant, I appreciate the welcome. Where's my sponsor? I thought he would come and get me. And he goes, nah, he derosed out. He's gone. And I said cheekily, not seriously, but Cheekily, I said, well, I'm surprised the company commander didn't come to personally welcome me to the unit. And he looks at me and he goes, lieutenant, you are the company commander, I'm your first sergeant. So you can imagine, you don't even know where to put your second Lieutenant Barr. I mean, you didn't even know. You go on the left to right and all of a sudden now everything you've ever been taught is now going to come into sharp focus or be defocused. So without a doubt, I was the acting company commander for about 90 days of Charlie Company. And without a doubt, for me personally, it was the most formative, immersive, challenge laden leadership development experience that just really educated me on the things to do and things not to do as the leader in the army of 1972. And for me it was just a platinum gold standard. Absolutely spectacular leadership experience.
- [21:20]
David Park
Can you give us some examples?
- [21:22]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll explain what I mean by that. And having said that, it was a formative and very invaluable leadership experience to your question. I think if you asked the troopers of Charlie Company, I'm thinking they'd have a whole different perspective on my 90 days in command. I think they were sitting there happy that they weren't back in Vietnam. Every one of them were Vietnam vets, every one of them were draftees. They knew that nobody could act any way they wanted. And so they knew that there wasn't enough time for, you know, you to threaten somebody with sending you back to Vietnam. Draftees had come out, did 13 months in Vietnam come back. They had a short time left and then they were leaving the army for the most part. And so using the power majesty of a gold bar of a second lieutenant and to be able to issue peremptory orders and expect them to be obeyed, like all military academy cadets and, you know, pretend second lieutenants at the Infantry Officer Basic course and Ranger School, Pathfinder School and all the other courses that I jump master school that I went, that I went to in preparation for this assignment. You know, all of those skills were helpful but not, not essential. And so you quickly found out that, you know, ordering, pressuring, you know, directing and acting like an imperious, you know, company commander was not going to get you to an outcome that would be useful for you personally and more importantly for the unit or would it benefit the soldiers of Charlie Company at that point. And so I realized and got a chance to learn that sweet spot you got to be in, you got to be Strong. And you got to be. You got to show confidence, but not overconfidence. You got to make good decisions. You got to allow the soldier staff some freedom of action. Particularly at that point, you got to allow the NCOs to really, you know, you command in the NCOs lead. And I really learned the distinction between that, as the Russians are finding out now, you know, when they're performing so poorly on combat, because the nco, we always joked, right, the backbone of the army was the non commissioned officer corps. Well, guess what? It turned out to be true. You know, Ukraine has proven that to the Russians beyond a shadow of a doubt. And so knowing that, determining where that sweet spot, how hard you could push, you know, how often you had to push, but how much freedom, but not too much freedom, you know, what kind of relationship that you had to have with your E7 first sergeant and your E6 platoon leaders, you know, because I was the only officer in the company on top of that, you know, at the time. And so that was an interesting experience to say the least. And, you know, and the way you learn, at least the way I learned, it's not, not the best way to learn, but the way I learned was by making mistakes. But you don't want to make big mistakes because then your soldiers will lose confidence in your ability. But you, you do have to, you do have to get out on the edge. Not over the tips of your skis, but you gotta be leaning forward and you gotta be, you gotta be, you gotta be comfortable in taking some risks. When you're an inexperienced, you know, really naive commander and you're trying to command, you know, men who are really combat veterans and who are, you know, quite jaded and affected by the attitude of the American people and by the experience that they had, traumatic in many respects. But, you know, learning where that sweet spot is and learning how a good leader will be able to operate in that sweet spot, to be effective, to be confident, not overconfident, not to be unaffective, to really be able to have your soldiers benefit for the period that you're in command, to have soldiers be at one level when you begin and have them be at a better place at the end, I'm not sure I did that real well, but learning that I needed to do that right in that 90 days was probably the most important thing for me. And I'll tell you what, the lessons I Learned in those 90 days carried me forward and later on in my career. I mean, I was, I had the honor and the Pleasure to be a company commander in the 1st Ranger Battalion. When it was established, I was in the second wave of company commanders and then the only battalion. And you know, had I not really learned those lessons and applied those lessons, you know, I don't think the chief staff of the army would selected me as one of the captains to come in and command a venture, the premier unit in the United States army, quite frankly. And I would have never, I would have never developed into something that would have been even competitive for that. And then later on in my career and as many of your guests have said, you know, it's a little awkward to talk about yourself accomplishments, easy to talk about what you did, talking about what you accomplished. Gets to be a little self serving. But you know, I had the, the unexpected honor to be, you know, two years below the zone selectee 204. And there's goods and bads in that. I lost a lot of time to learn what it's like to be a major in the United States army. And that was unhelpful to me. But at one point, you know, I think the statisticians would tell you I was one of six youngest lieutenant colonels in the United States army when I made 05. That's amazing. And, and, and so that's a good thing if your name is me. It's a bad thing if you want a lieutenant colonel that's got all the experiences that you want a lieutenant colonel to have when they make lieutenant colonel. And so for me, I found myself to be at a professional personal disadvantage by the time I got to 5. Proud to be early select, but really paid a huge price for that because I was woefully untrained and inexperienced to be a very good lieutenant colonel after my time in the, in the Rangers. It was interesting because, and I mean no disrespect to the US Army Recruiting Command or whatever they're calling it now, but I remember the team from Milperson from the Hoffman building, then the head of all army personnel and people from infantry branch or whatever, I don't remember, you know, they came down to Fort Stewart and they were giving us career advice and guidance and talking about, you know, what we'd done and what we in the future and you know, giving us an opportunity to say what we wanted. And they had the opportunity to totally reject all that and tell us what we're going to do anyway. And so, you know, I go down, they go, well let's look at what, what's coming next for you. And so they, they Open up the big musty book of common knowledge, you know, this big tone boom. And they flip through some parchment, and then they go down. They find it. Wise, wise, wise. Yeah, there you are. Yeah, you're going to go back and teach at the military camp. And I said, no, sir, I'd rather just stay with troops. That's all right. And they go, okay, so you don't want to go back and be a member of the faculty at the military camp? I said, no, so they want you to come back. And I said, I'm proud of my four years there. I didn't enjoy my four years there. I wasn't a good cadet. I was a crappy cadet. And quite frankly, if I never go back there again, I'll be perfectly happy. Ironically, my wife just encouraged me to go back to my 50th reunion. And I will tell you this. When you have a 50th reunion of any institution, there's a lot of old people there. You know, I like to think I wasn't one of them. There's a lot of old people there. A lot of guys brought their dads, I think. And so I said, no, I'd rather not go. And they go, not a problem, Not a problem. We're flexible here. Let's see what the book of common knowledge has for you. So they go back a few pages and they go, oh, you're going to command a recruiting battalion in Detroit. And I, you know, kind of looked and went, hey, can we go back a few pages and talk about that West Point thing? And they go, yeah, we thought you'd come to your senses. I ended up going off to graduate school and teaching at the military academy, but I only did two years there. So I went to troops, back to troops, and had a couple tactical assignments, and then I ended up at the Pentagon in desk ops for anybody that served in deputy chief of Staff for operations. I think it's called the G3 of the army now. And I was in the basement of the Pentagon where all the special ops guys were. And one day I got told that, go up to the personnel office. You've got an rfo, request for orders. You know, you're going, you got a new job. Like, I didn't ask for a new job. They go, we're not interested in what you want. You get your rfo. So I go up in an rfo. It was pink, if I recall correctly. And, you know, it was a form. It turned it out on pink paper, and it was at my name and date of birth. And Social Security number and all that. And then it said assignment date effective. And it was like tomorrow. And then the. To do what? Classify to do where? Classify to do. So the whole thing was just useless in terms of me being able to figure it out. Nobody in des ops knew what was happening. And so what, what had happened is apparently CIA had asked for a military detailee with, you know, some semblance of my background, you know, my, at my rank. And so the next thing I know is I'm going off to some mysterious organization. So I was told to call this number. So call this number. And a guy at the other end goes, hello. And I go, yeah, this is Lieutenant colonel Wise. I just got a military piece of paper that told me that I was getting a new job and I was supposed to call you and I don't know who you are, and so I apologize if I'm bothering you, but maybe I called the wrong number. He goes, nope, you called the right number. Here's what I want you to do. The intersection of 395 and Franconia Road. Do you know where that is? I go, yes, there's a hotel there. Interestingly enough, some years later, a Russian KGB officer undercover was arrested by the FBI there meeting an American spy. So anyway, he says, go to that hotel, walk outside in the portico, have a red ball hat, have a magazine under your right arm. He's going to pick you up in a pickup truck. He's not. You get in the back, don't talk to him, he's not going to talk to you. And all will be explained in due course. So, you know, I do the whole all hat magazine under pickup truck shows up Johnny on the spot. I get in the back of the truck. You know, I want to be able to say, hey, thanks for giving me a ride. But you know, I'm. I follow the rules. So, you know, I have no idea. And then they drove me to CIA headquarters where it became obvious to me may not be the brightest bulb in the drawer, but obvious to me that now I understand what I'm going to do. Well, it turned out to be a temporary status as a detail while all this security process and at that time was totally different than now. We have to be assessed as a full staff officer for CIA, not just as a detailee. Go through the, you know, the counterintelligence polygraph. We had the whole lifestyle thing get abused by the polygrapher. And you know, someday when I pass away and I meet one of those, if you're the purchasing manager at a Manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing.
- [33:52]
Jack Murphy
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- [33:54]
Douglas Wise
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- [34:50]
Jack Murphy
Got safety well in hand.
- [34:52]
Douglas Wise
Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Those guys in hell, I'm gonna kick his butt because, you know, you know, a number of them abused many of us. But I was asked to join the Counterterrorism center, which was quite a new institution, was an innovative institution at the time because the directorate of operations for CIA was organized geographically. And of course, as some of you that are older than others who may remember terrorism in a time of hijacked airplanes, the Entebbe raid and by the Israeli Defense Force and that period of time, you know, Stedham being, you know, murdered and thrown out on the tarmac, Egypt air aircraft being hijacked in Malta, you know, all of this stuff, all of which was state sponsored, but all of which was transnational in its execution. And so having to deal with the issue of terrorism, which knew no boundaries, terrorists generally don't care about political boundaries and they don't care about national affiliation so much. And so, you know, some iconoclast in CIA took a big risk and created the counterterrorism center and pulled us, pulled people out of the geographic divisions, which is what they were called, and put them into the counterterrorism store. Phil Mudd, for example, you see him on CNN all the time. He and I were branch chiefs, Counterterrorism center together, same time. Mike Scheuer, a little crazy, you know, Mike Scheuer was another branch chief, you know, at that time. But, you know, I think the reason why I was there, one from my military background and to be able to, you know, so they didn't have to waste a real talented, real CIA officer in this experiment known as the Counterterrorism center, which was not career enhanced, quite frankly. You know, you as a young operator, you wanted to grow up in an area division. The feudal lord owned you abused you, rode you like a rented mule. But at the same time, if you were worthy of his attention and investment, you know, your career, you know, would be guided and enabled and nurtured by, by your division chief. Serving in Counterterrorism center wasn't going to get you that nurturing and that mentoring and that, that, that developing. And so nobody wanted to go there. So I'm, I'm being honest. I think, you know, they, they picked me for a couple reasons, one of which was they didn't want to waste a perfectly good CIA office.
- [37:43]
David Park
You know, Douglas, just real quick, because, you know, for a lot of our younger audience, you know, if they know anything about the CIA like the Counterterrorism center, the CDC has been basically the star of the CIA since 9, 11. And so they might not understand why, you know, like, why it was such a risk for somebody to take this idea when all these other, like you said, regions were so siloed. Like, what was so groundbreaking about CTC and what were some of the naysayers about it? Like, like what? Because you think now we think, oh, a counterterrorism center, that makes sense. Why wouldn't, you know, why would that be a problem? But, like, what were the problems that they ran into in the early days?
- [38:29]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, I'll try to answer your question in a way that's understandable. You know, as I said, the directorate of operations, both in Washington D.C. and in the field, and the interaction between a CIA station chief, which is the senior CIA officer in a foreign location, and the headquarters component of that are all ruthlessly geographically defined. Not anymore. But in the context to your question, back in the day, when before the comet hit the earth and killed all the dinosaurs, and to give you a sense of scale, when I joined CTC back then, Counterterrorism center, there were 94 of us, and that included four contractors at the time that I served in CTC as a, as a senior intelligence service officer, When I came back to be the Assistant Director of operations, there were 2,200 officers in that center. Wow. To your point, and further to your point, if you are a traditional CIA officer in a traditional geographic division and you hadn't served in a counterterrorism capacity, that had some career impacts too. And the idea was to incentivize talented officers to acquire that experience. And we needed that talent and we needed those officers to contribute. My career, like many, like you gentlemen, your career is defined by 9, 11, mine as well. And so back to your question. The demarcation between authorities were sharply defined by geography. You had the near east division, you had European division, you had Africa division, you had Latin American division, you had Asia division. And the boundaries between those divisions bureaucratically were impermeable and imporus. Nobody crossed and there were no defectors generally who were of any value. If you were a talented officer and you decided, hey, you know what? I'd like to serve in Asia division, your European division would say, absolutely, and shoot you in the back as you kind of climbed over the border. It was real. I mean, and I used the term feudal lords in a way that is very accurately descriptive. And yes, it has negative connotations. And so, yeah, there were some negative aspects to both the people and the organization. So when the CIA and I wasn't part of the discussion, obviously I came in after the decision had been made. So there are probably many people who you could get on your podcast who could talk to you about the early history of the counterterrorism center much more authoritatively, incredibly than me. But if you look at somebody who wanted to literally shatter the organizational structure of the Directorate of Operations, somebody had to make that decision. And obviously that decision had to be endorsed or made at the Director's level. It couldn't be made down at the GS12 level. And so you not only had to create a raison debt for this new enterprise, you had to rationalize the value it would bring because it would create all kinds of chaos and disruption if for another reason, just in a personnel system, in the cable traffic system, because nothing existed. This was new enterprise created out of whole cloth. And it's a zero sum game in CIA. So it's not like you could just hire 94 additional officers to be professional counterterrorism officers. And in fact, the term of art was you were home based in a geographic division. There was enough resistance that the senior leadership of the agency said will authorize CTC to come into existence, but it won't have the authority to home base officers, they didn't want officers to permanently homestead like you could in the geographic divisions. So I can only infer from what I know of the rigidity, structure, remarkable flexibility operationally. Let me tell you, I think Rick.
- [42:58]
Jack Murphy
When we interviewed Rick Prado, either either in his interview or in his book, he was talking about the really unique thing about CTC at that time being that they could read the reports, the cable traffic coming from any division, from everybody.
- [43:11]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, you're right. And thanks for mentioning that because I was going to talk about, you know, one of the, some of the challenges that the creation of CTC and some of the value. Rick and I were in CTC at the same time. So I'm a big fan of Rick Prado. He really, he made a huge contribution. Let me tell you, as you all know already, I haven't written a book yet and I don't think so because, you know, I don't have a big family, so I wouldn't sell very many. But you can imagine a terrorist, you know, a terrorist originates, you know, even if state sponsored terrorists originates in one country, transit to another country, ends up in a third country, links up with another dude, then travels to another part of the globe, gets all gunned up and equipped up, does his pre mission rehearsals and then do this. So you can imagine if there is ruthless guarding of operational turf created by the structure of the do, you'd have to coordinate. And who would do the coordination? Whose terrorist is that? Is that terrorist the wholly owned property of where that dude originated, where he transited or where he's going to conduct the operation? Or everybody? So who's in charge? Everybody's in charge, but nobody's in charge. So somebody had the guts and the wisdom to create as they looked at this emerging terrorist threat, as they got more violent and more large scale to create this pioneering institution called the Counterterrorism center, which ultimately became instantiated and was truly part of the magic of CIA in post 911 timeframe. And so once you add CIA to your point, able to see all of the information flow from all the area divisions, none of the other area division terrorists could originate in any division. All that traffic for counterintelligence reasons was neat to know for any division, wasn't need to know for AF division. So how do you break that compartmentation barrier in a timely enough fashion to actually mount an operation counterterrorism operation to interdict and maybe remove the guy from the battlefield? And so, you know, we had an optic sitting in CTC that no other division had in the agency. And so we proved our worth every day. I'm not saying I did. I'm saying that the officers who pioneered that center, you know, prove their worth every day in providing safety and security to Americans by this emerging threat. My job was very narrowly defined. I was a rendition guy. And so my job was to help start the and perpetuate the nascent rendition program. And arguably, you know, we had modicum as success. We captured Kanzi, the guy that killed our officers, we captured Ramzi Yousef and a number of others and we kind of learned and those were all warrant based renditions. And so also one of the byproducts of counterterrorism center was we were able to create strategic partnerships with institutions across the US Government that none of the area divisions wasn't because they didn't want to. They had no need to. With federal law enforcement, who's our natural partner, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal law enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol now known ice. You had all of these partnerships because of course in the beginning days we didn't have non warranted operations directed to remove terrorists from the battlefield. We didn't have lethal authority except for personal protection when we were out on operations. And so it was warrant based. And so we had to have not only we would, in this parlance of Stan McChrystal, we would find and fix and then partnering with the FBI we would together do the finishing. But the front face of that finishing was very naturally and very appropriate to preserve the judicial process. Because all of these guys we brought back many minor terrorists, if there is such a thing to Ramzi Yousef class terrorists. The Bohinka operation, you're going to drop eight United Airlines out of the sky, you know, in Asia. You know, glad we took him off the battlefield and so our team got him.
- [47:56]
Jack Murphy
And it still happens today.
- [47:57]
Douglas Wise
Right.
- [47:57]
Jack Murphy
But you don't see the CIA fingerprints on it.
- [48:00]
Douglas Wise
A lot of times you don't. And that is very natural and very necessary. And because you know, our colleagues are, you know, not acknowledged and so they can't be in the front face of even major successes. Obviously CIA has become more widely known for in the counterterrorism business because of their roles not only in Afghanistan, but in Iraq and in other places in the world. And quite frankly, every station and base in the world had a counterterrorism responsibility. And we understood that that was the existential threat to America. Eastern Europe was still coming out of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. China was still hadn't Come onto the world stage. North Korea was being its petulant teenager, pubescent in geopolitical terms, immature infantile behavior, which was an irritation but not an existential issue. And so it was terrorism that became the threat to Americans, particularly when America was and still is global power. With big embassies, we have very active foreign policy and we were very much at risk. And so having officers, like many of us on this podcast, to be part of that process was key and essential for American security and a huge part of American foreign policy and national security policy. As I think you all know, the last.
- [49:42]
Jack Murphy
What was it like, five years of your military career? You were a liaison with the agency, with ctc. You spoke, you spoke a little bit about some of the things that you were involved in. What was that like for you, as I guess your career evolved and maybe your thoughts and perceptions evolved about the agency. What were some of your big takeaways from those five years?
- [50:04]
Douglas Wise
Well, the big takeaway from my five years was actually the magnitude of anti military attitudes inside CIA. And some of that was because you had young CIA officers with a modicum of military experience that was quite unpleasant for them. And so it was an opportunity for them to action that in some degree, some of that discriminatory and negative attitude was out of ignorance and out of basing on tribal lore and mythology that had no basis in fact. Some of that was by, you know, you had guys just now they could call generals Bob as opposed to general. And so I concealed my military affiliation in my time in the counterterrorism center. You know, I grew my hair about the same length I have it now, and which was quite awkward. When I went to retire from the army in 1992, I had to get a haircut in order to process out, you know, the bastards made me cut my hair. If you talk to anybody who knew me back then, they go, we always thought he was an IT guy, you know, because he had that long hair and. But I found the anti military attitude was mystifying to me. The longer I stayed there, the more I understood that it wasn't out of evil. It was out of really not understanding what the power of majesty that comes from the intersection of the military and CIA, which we learned. And we can talk about that we learned in other battlefields and other places antecedent or Afghan experience. But I had, you know, my first leadership as a real CIA officer. Now I had led as a branch chief. I had to rendition branch chief. And rendition program was taken to a fine art by generations way beyond me, you know, to scale and professionalism far beyond what I and my team would have ever envisioned. And it was also a cross discipline team, by the way, interagency team. So it was kind of unique that we had. And the nice thing about my job is nobody would say no, you know, because really you're not interested in saving American lives. And you can say no and say, maybe you don't want that guy to be a spy because we can't afford him. But oh, really? You put a price tag on American lives, sir, ma', am, and you immediately got a. Well, not well, I mean, that's essentially by saying no to my budget request, you know what, what essentially you're doing, you're putting my price. So and so I had actually I'm being a little facet. But nobody said no to those of us who are doing God's work in the counterterrorism center. But the military attitude is interesting. So I retired in 1992, took an appointment, had to go through the whole security process again, matriculated as a full CIA staff officer, got an appointment, and then I ended up advocating for my first official CIA leadership job. I found it interesting. I interviewed with an SIS3. So he had an opening for a branch chief. And I figured what a great place for me to begin because I just was a branch chief of a large branch, quite frankly. Okay. And so I'm having this discussion and he goes, you were a military officer for the last five years, I understand. I go, yes. He goes, so when you led your branch, you were using military leadership? And I go, no response. And he goes, what I need you to do is use CIA leadership. And I go, sir, with all due respect, leadership is leadership. There's different aspects of leadership that are environmentally appropriate, but fundamentally defining the mission, identifying the tasks or accomplish the mission, build a team, resource them, help them understand opportunities, help them understand what obstacles are, provide feedback. I said, sir, that's not the sole purview of the military or CIA. That's called Leadership 101. So I had a two hour conversation with this guy and he said he was very gracious and he was very patient and he's very understanding of my plodding discussion, academic though it may have been, about the issue of leadership. And finally at the end, he said, he said, hey, look, Doug, I really got to admire you. You gave it your best shot. He said, but you know, and I understand what you said, a lot of it makes sense. He says, but in the end, I need somebody that's led in CIA before. Now I'm thinking back of my mind, you know, well, if leading in CIA for the first time requires you to have led before, then that wasn't the first time. So how are you going to ever lead if you got to have led before you? So I couldn't figure out the logic that he was applying, right? And so I finally. I said, sir, look, you've been very gracious with your time. I've taken way more time than I had asked for. You know, you listened to me, you gave me my opportunity to speak, and I respect your decision, and I'll just go away. And he goes, well, thank you very much. I appreciate. I did learn something. And I said, well, I'm glad. And I start to go. And I go, but, sir, can I. Can I just make one more point? And he goes, yeah, what's your final point? I goes, there's only one officer in this branch, and I'm. And that's the branch chief. It's a branch of one officer. It'd be me working for me. I said, take the risk. And he sits back and he goes, yeah, that's a good point. So anyway, the point of my long story is this is all predicated in this somehow, you know, somehow the perception of what the military was, right? And as you all know, if there is a critical, not just necessary, but essential strategic partner for CIA among the many strategic partnerships, certainly within the ic, but outside the ic, it's certainly CIA, regardless. Doesn't have to be sac. Sad in my day, paramilitary. The strategic partnership is with the special operations community of the United States military. And if America has a machine that is paramount and preeminent in the world of clandestine operations, it's because of the intimacy between those two communities, Right? Extraordinary. Extraordinary. We could not have done what we did without our special operations partners, whether they were white SOF or black sof. And I'm convinced that our SOF partners, if they were on this. I mean, don't get me wrong, CIA is an acquired taste. I get it. I get it. We're an acquired taste. We're kind of like caviar. Very expensive, and we're not very flavorful, but, you know, we are nutritious. But the fact of the matter is that the partnership between our two communities was what has brought us success in the counterterrorism domain. Yes. It's from the skills, the talent, the experience and the application, the leveraging of that and the dedication and commitment of the women and men who have given up years, their lives to become experts on terrorism and how to defeat it, how to mitigate it. Yes, I get that in both communities. But the reality is that that intersection, that power that is more powerful than the arithmetic sum of our two halves. And it is, I can say now, and I know you degree and all of our colleagues who on this podcast who have had similar experiences would agree. You know, the collaboration and the cooperation between the two communities was not only mission success, but it was also life saving at the same time. And I can say that today, but back in the early days, it was really hard. It was really hard. And it wasn't all anti CIA attitude out of the special operations community, who in and of itself has a reason to be prideful and self sufficient, you know, and highly skilled and highly committed and courageous, very capable. But you know, we learned an awful lot of lessons and some of them hard won by blood and sand, by learning how to work together. But you know, we began with baby steps and those baby steps eventually got us to be, you know, 100 meter sprinters, world class sprinters by working together.
- [59:11]
Jack Murphy
That relationship is now formalized under its the Defense Sensitive Support System.
- [59:15]
Douglas Wise
Right.
- [59:16]
Jack Murphy
Isn't that the bureaucratic mechanism that allows the two organizations to support one another.
- [59:22]
Douglas Wise
Essentially for our audience, it's a highly classified process to essentially share capability. It's bureaucratic, but it's very crisp. And it really allows essentially, you know, special operations community to go to special operations Amazon and order up some CIA stuff and allows us to go to CIA Amazon and order up some soft stuff, you know, when we need it. And blending of authorities and blending of funding and yeah, consistent with American.
- [59:57]
Jack Murphy
I'll give a very public example for the audience out there. The Bin Laden raid is alleged to be or not alleged. I think Obama said so in his memoir. That was a CIA operation executed by jsoc.
- [60:10]
Douglas Wise
Yeah. And we actually did something similar to that when I was the chief of station in Iraq. It certainly wasn't of the import by any means, but we did test this process where under my authority, we did something in a sovereign nation, a non allied sovereign nation that that sovereign nation was unwilling to do at our request. So under our authority, you know, we positioned our special operations colleagues to go do something. And so, you know, learning how to work together in that very unique way right through the Defense Sensitive support system is was, you know, again, this was all pioneering, right? Yeah, we were all pioneers. You know, there's no, there was no book. You know, you go chapter nine, how to work with JSON. There was no such a thing when and so go ahead.
- [61:06]
David Park
No, I'm sorry. But, you know, could you talk about this with like, the ct, like CTC sort of this sniff test that went on between the CIA and the military, you know, initially because there was distrust on both sides. Was it similar. I mean, did you have that same experience with the FBI, with the rendition program when you needed their. Like, did. Did they look at you like you guys are all assassins and you're looking at them like you all have sticks up to your asses?
- [61:32]
Douglas Wise
No. It's a good question. You know, where there are similar challenges with other strategic partners in the early days. And quite frankly, my. My experience was no, with. With. With the FBI, because the lanes in the road were quite clear. We were the fight. We were the find and fix guys. And the FBI were the finish guys. Yeah, we were part of the finishing process because we had presence overseas, we could deploy overseas. We had. We had point A to point B capabilities that the FBI didn't possess. This was before there were legal attaches in every embassy in the world. And so the FBI was pioneering and having extraterritorial squads in the FBI and getting involved in mitigating the criminal and terrorist threat before it got to inside the United States was pioneering for the FBI. I didn't find as much attitudinal collision between counterterrorism center. Others may have a different view. I was in the rendition business. The agents we worked with were just extraordinary.
- [62:40]
David Park
So your marriage then was not one of political necessity to bring two kingdoms together?
- [62:46]
Douglas Wise
I'm just kidding. We both realize that, you know, that they can't do what needs to be done by themselves. And we certainly realize that, you know, we can't acquire evidence, acquire, you know, transport fugitives back to federal custody and mount a prosecution. That's. Nobody wants CIA to do law enforcement Constitution doesn't like that. Right. You know, so stick to your lanes. We were able to do that. The friction comes in generally when. When you have overlapping capabilities and overlapping authorities. And then you get into the, you know, I won't do it on the podcast, but I could show you the title 50, title 10 scars I have in the head when the MLE. You know, the military liaison element wars in the early years and. But it's really where you had. You were operating separately, but you had overlapping authorities. And sometimes you had undisclosed overlapping presence in each other's. I use the term battle space because I think it's probably best descriptive. And then we learned that actually that's a prescription for disaster. Right. And so over Time we learned through exchange of hostages and through just brute force training and educating and beating the drum that, you know, the military, you know, And I. And I said all the time, I said, we need to identify opportunities to help our soft brothers, you know, succeed. And I like to think that they're doing the same thing. When we observe behaviors that are not consistent with CIA normative behaviors. I urged all my officers take a deep breath, impute evil, because what they're doing may be very consistent with their mission, their organization, and their own culture and authorities. And so doing a little investigative work before you enter into judgment mode is the most helpful thing. And I told my officers every day, talk to any of the officers served with me. And I said, it's been a good day when you can say that you helped another officer, CIA or not, succeed. That, by definition is a good day, you know. And so we learned an awful lot. And I think the. Probably the classroom where we learned that was Nabosnian theater of operations. And I don't know whether you might be interested in.
- [65:35]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, was your. Those early assignments before you got into the Balkans? I mean, you were branch chief of one, I think you said, and what were some of those early jobs before you got sent to the Balkans?
- [65:48]
Douglas Wise
I was a branch chief multiple times. I was what was called a group chief, which was, you know, one up. Think of a branch chief as being an infantry squad. Think of a group chief as kind of being a little more than a platoon leader because you had more than just, you know, 20 people. But I was also, you know, I was base chief a couple times throughout the entirety of this process. I was a station chief four times. And I might say as an aside for your audience, you gentlemen know this. Many, many in the audience do, but some might not. You know, a typical CIA station is quite small and modest indeed, and we have broad range of obligations and requirements, and a lot of that's very sensitive, and we can't talk about it here, but for the most part, they're quite modest. I mean, these are not like Treadstone class, CIA presence. If I could use the Jason Bourne analogy, Treadstone was evil. We're not evil. But the fact of the matter is that to your question, I had really escalatory and graduating leadership experiences both at Starfleet Command and in the field, which helped prepare me to be my first chief of station job, which was in the Balkans. I was another chief of station in the Balkans as well, and I supported a number of programs in the Balkans. I was a base chief. The Balkans. You Know, and that experience, you know, was where, quite frankly, you know, as all the people in the audience know, you know, America invested heavily in creating order out of chaos. You know, you had the Dayton Accords, which I think a lot of us who experienced and who benefited from that, you know, it's a great way to end a war and end genocide, but it's a real crappy way to, to birth a country, you know, and try to imbue it with Jeffersonian, pluralistic, democratic tendencies, you know, with all the trauma that comes from genocide, you know. And so America's investment, which was quite controversial at the time, and I wasn't a policymaker, so I'm not, I'm not facile in the intimate policy history and all the bloodletting that probably came from making this decision to deploy US military forces. Nobody wanted to put US soldiers in harm's way. Nobody did. Nobody wanted to put US forces into a situation eerily similar to Vietnam. What was the US interest in Vietnam? There was no domino theory at play here in the Balkans, so rationalizers didn't even have that. There was no Gulf of Tonkin analogy. Even though that was fake. If you read the Pentagon Papers, you know, none of that exists. This was an unforced initiative by the United States government on both the military side and on the non military side, particularly in diplomatic and CIA. This was unforced. We weren't required. And by doing what we did, it did incur risk. We had no risk. And by putting Americans into that environment, you automatically, whether they're 10 Special Forces Group colleagues, whether they're for, you know, Dave Grange's division's colleagues, whether they're in multinational forces, because we're part of S4, Uncifor I4 and then S4. I was there for all of that. And this was America at its finest. This was a story that should make America as proud. It's going to get lost in the very necessary chaos. Discussion on Ukraine. But this was America at its finest. We didn't have to do this. No Americans were harmed by this genocide, weren't even injured. No Americans. The big debate, no American equities. And the reason why we made this investment is because of what makes America great. American core values, American. That's why we were there. We were the power projection of American core values into an environment that was absent of anything similar to American core values. You were having women and children that had just been slaughtered, hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks slaughtered on the battlefields and in the towns and the villages and when you go. And part of your job is to find mass graves, which wasn't hard because you could see body parts sticking up out of the ground. That was the easiest part of what we were there to do. And CIA's presence was traditional CIA presence to be able to provide actionable intelligence to a wide variety of customers and to be able to inform the policymakers. Because again, America was pioneering its way through this very ambiguous, ill defined environment, highly politically charged, post genocide trauma and anger and need for revenge. And Americans were there to kind of be the cadmium rod in this geopolitical reactor. And America did amazing work. They did American work. Just extraordinary. And I'm exempting myself from that. But in the, in that battle space with, with CIA were our special operations colleagues.
- [71:23]
Jack Murphy
And I think a number point, I'll point out we've had a bunch of them on the show. George Hand was one of the recce guys with Delta over there. Ron Molar was there with the agency. H.K. roy, pen name. I don't know if you knew him or not, but he, I think he opened the first CIA station in Sarajevo. He was obviously there, investigated Sebrenica for the agency. They sent him over there. Jeez. Who else have we talked to that was in the Balkans? I mean, quite a few people on the show in the past.
- [71:52]
Douglas Wise
Well, I worked very intimately with a young army captain named Scotty Miller. Yeah. Who some on the podcast may know the future, you know, future Delta commander, future JSI commander, future ISOF commander, you know, just a legendary iconic American in his own right. But he was just a young captain, you know, sitting up there in a special mission unit in Tuzla. And so that was our. We learned very quickly that their culture and their ethos, you know, both with 10 special forces as well as special mission unit, their ethos mirrored our own. And as your guests that have preceded me have told you, we learned a lot. We learned how to respect each other's capabilities. We learned how to, without judgment, to understand shortcomings in capabilities, understand strengths. We understood how to respect each other, how to not be caught up in mythology and misperception. We were sharing the mission, we were sharing the risk, such as it was. And our success was very dependent upon mutually supporting each other. And it was a way for us to really. Carvana is so easy. Just a click and we've got ourselves a car. See so many cars. That's a clicktastic inventory. And check out the financing options, payments to fit our budget. I mean, that's Clickonomics 101 delivery to our door. Just a hop, skip and a click away. And bought. No better feeling than when everything just clicks. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply at the UPS store. We know being a small business owner means holiday time is still go time, still get those orders, ship time and still re up on stamps and supplies time. That's why this upcoming holiday, while others close up shop will be open and happy to help you keep being unstoppable. Come into your local store today. Most locations are independently owned. Product services, pricing and hours of operation may vary. See center for details. The UPS store be unstoppable. We understand that you know how you know, for us to learn the hard, difficult to learn lessons on how to cooperate, collaborate, how to share and how to disagree in a respectful way that doesn't affect each other's mission or the relationship. You know, we learned that as young. I wasn't chronologically young because you know, I had a job before CIA that wasn't working for dad. And so I was chronologically order older and so, but all of us, I was experientially young, you know, GS15 and which was young, you know, in CIA speak. And so, you know, the opportunity to undertake this exciting mission to represent the ideal of America to an environment that is absent of any concept of American idealism and to be able to save lives, to be able to bring order out of chaos, to help United States foreign policy to bring genocide to an end and to do something about that genocide. And in many cases to bring the perpetuators and the perpetrators of that genocide to justice. The American presence in the Balkans was all of that, was all of that. And all of us that were part of there, Ron Moller and the other gang, we're all proud to be part of that because it's one of the reasons why we signed up for this. Me, granted, as a draftee to the Agency, but I could have left, I could have retired and not signed on to the Agency. But the opportunity to spend decades with extraordinary people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary places is not an opportunity you want to ever turn down. And so I was smart enough at the time to be able to say no, you know what? I'm not interested in making money. My time when I took an appointment with CIA, I forfeited my military retirement. It wasn't put in escrow and they pay me when I leave federal service. There was a dual compensation offset statute which lasted for eight years in my CIA, CIA service that I forfeited my military retirement in exchange for. Yeah, it was all. All civil service back. They eventually. What do they call it, not revoked Legislation. They did whatever they do to laws. Yeah, yeah, yeah, repeal. That's right, repeal. They repealed that because they realized they were, you know, they were, you know, essentially disincentivizing some incredibly talented, you know, military officers from joining CIA.
- [77:01]
David Park
It's almost. It's almost punitive in a way to say you can't. You don't get your military retirement because now you. Because now you're doing this.
- [77:08]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the bottom line of my. My long oration and my. My aboviation. And I apologize to you gentlemen and to all the participants of the podcast, but you can tell I'm kind of passionate about what we did there. And we couldn't have done it alone. This was a whole of government and a spectacular accomplishment by the United States of America at a very difficult time. Political turmoil in America, coming out of the Vietnam experience. It was the first time that the modern army, the reformed army, CIA, came through its own reformation. The Church and Pike Committee hearings, all in the crown jewels and all of that. You can go back, study that. We were a totally different agency than we were back then. The United States Army Special Forces to come from my day, you know, whereas an alternate specialty, you're a shitty SF officer and a shitty traditional officer at the same time. Worse yet, you're a shitty aviator and you were a shitty tanker. You know, you weren't good at both. That was great. You always tapped a guy on a helmet and said, how long have you been flying? Well, I just came out of the tank armor company commander. You're going, oh, wow. How about having that warrant officer take the controls? You know, it's that kind of thing. And so this was a professional army. This was a professionalized intelligence community that had learned a lot of lessons, had a lot to learn. And out of that came a lot of incredible connective tissue that ultimately that we all who went to Afghanistan, you know, benefited from and saved lives and accomplished missions.
- [78:47]
David Park
Douglas, that's really.
- [78:49]
Douglas Wise
I.
- [78:49]
David Park
That's really interesting because I feel like that's a story that doesn't really get told. First off, Bosnian is kind of. Bosnia is kind of a forgotten endeavor, you know, across. I mean, I was. I was in the military when Bosnia was going on, but. But to me, it was just something that a few people.
- [79:06]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. Wasn't huge.
- [79:07]
David Park
Yeah, A few people went to, you know, is this random thing. But I think that at least for me, a lot of times the perception is 9 11, Afghanistan, Iraq. Like 9 was. Was that. Was that formative moment for, you know, special operations and.
- [79:25]
Douglas Wise
Yes, the.
- [79:26]
David Park
The CIA.
- [79:27]
Douglas Wise
But.
- [79:28]
David Park
But you're saying that it goes. It goes back to actually Bosnia, where those. Where those roots are first. Are first laid, you know, and. And it grew from there.
- [79:39]
Douglas Wise
You bet. And I believe that neither CIA nor our Special Forces, both white and black, special operators, both white and black, would have been able to be as responsive and as flexible, and us included, if we hadn't had that experience in the Balkans. Yep. There's still a lot of lessons to be learned. Yeah. There's some latency, you know, and that's very understandable.
- [80:12]
David Park
Sure.
- [80:13]
Douglas Wise
But we shortened the timeline from orders to. To. To action. Right. By what we. What we all experienced out of. Out of the Bosnian theater.
- [80:23]
David Park
Yeah. That's fascinating. And, you know, like, we appreciate you sort of pointing that out, because, again, that is like, Bosnia doesn't get much attention.
- [80:32]
Jack Murphy
They were pioneering the manhole. One thing that came to dominate what we were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- [80:38]
David Park
Right. Which really is the fine fix, finish cycle.
- [80:42]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah. And we. And we didn't do. We didn't call it that. We didn't have Stan McChrystal creating that definition of F3EA. Right, right, right. But we were functionally developing that kind of process, I guess, you know, in addition to national intelligence collection and provision to policymakers and ambassadors, because there's a lot of political interest in making this work. I'm under no illusion the impact of the United States from 911 dwarfed what we did in Bosnia. And so I'm not offended at all that it has kind of fallen beneath American consciousness. But for those of us that have experienced that, I think anybody on this podcast and anybody who anybody talks to and carries some of my remarks will find a deep resonance between what we all experience. I'm exempting the conventional unit because we didn't have a lot to do with, you know, the big armored divisions and mechanized divisions that rotated out in and out of Bosnia. But I'm talking about, you know, our Special Forces and Special Mission Unit. You know, we learned a lot, and we became fast friends, tight colleagues through that experience, and it saved us a lot of time and a lot of lives on the future battlefield that we could not possibly imagine.
- [82:04]
Jack Murphy
What was the next assignment then, after your Balkan years, Doug?
- [82:08]
Douglas Wise
Let's see. In Sarajevo, my third time in Sarajevo, I was promoted to the Senior Intelligence service unexpectedly, given the fact that most of my background was, you know, I didn't go to George Washington University. Mom and dad didn't work for CIA. You know, I didn't speak five languages. I hadn't, you know, spent an extraordinary amount of time overseas outside the military context. And so I considered, and it's very true, and I know it sounds very begging for compliments, but I considered myself part of the blue collar of the Directorate of Operations. I didn't come with that kind of Washington Education and Development kind of. Kind of background. And so I figured I was the military equivalent of, you know, in the Navy, you'd say a Mustang. Right, right. And I was the. I was the CIA equivalent of kind of the, you know, the E6 who went to OCS, became a commission officer, you know. But having said that, the unexpected, totally unexpected. I think a lot of women and men who get promoted to the senior service are grateful, but they don't expect it. But I think they probably know whether they're made of the right stuff. And so the promotion isn't a surprise. And they get enough feedback on what they have to do to improve, to make themselves more competitive. They get a lot of interaction by their senior mentors and chain of command. And, you know, I guess I got some of that. I don't remember. But I didn't take any offense if I didn't, because I didn't think I was worthy of it, quite frankly, you know, And I appealed to my boss. I appealed passionately to my boss, please don't bring me back at the end of my command tour from. To Starfleet Command, you know, I don't have my lightsaber is just not going to work back there. My Jedi Knight, you know, fire, passion. They will go, disappear. Look, send me to any crappy place you want where you need a good, solid field leader. I'll go lead myself again. As I did my first leadership, I made every argument I possibly could, and it seemed to fall on deaf ears. And the next thing I know is I get a call from a guy you may know, Jose Rodriguez, who was the DDO at the time, who said, I got some good news and I got some bad news. The good news is we've selected you for promotion to the Senior Intelligence Service. The bad news is you're in a GS15 position. You're coming back to Starfleet Command. And he said, so you're coming back to the Counterterrorism Center. I was the deputy for the Director of Ops for ctc, and I did that. When I came back, that was my first SIS job. And I had a couple. I had a couple assignments I think I was in what's now known as the center for Cyber Intelligence. I think I dabbled in that a bit. Somebody said, well, you got a graduate degree in an arcane science, you're perfect for this. Oh yeah, well, maybe I don't remember any of that. I can't even read my dissertation and understand what I wrote. And so I did that for a little bit and I had another assignment in there. Memory escapes me. It was a highly classified project that I worked which was known to very, very few. And it was quite an exciting thing. The cool thing is you can apply the cult of secrecy and you can emanate that. You can exude the cult of secrecy and that makes you very special. The bad news is you can't cooperate and collaborate with anybody because you can't tell anybody what you're doing. So you got to do all the work yourself. And that sucks. I'm just telling you. So team building, how you get a team of one. Okay, this is great. This is great. But if memory serves me correctly, I went from there back to Iraq. We didn't talk about my formative Iraq 2003 and 4. Yeah.
- [86:36]
Jack Murphy
Before we jump to Iraq, I want to ask you because you told me after 9 11, like two days later.
- [86:41]
Douglas Wise
You were, you were gone. You were like out there. I was gone.
- [86:43]
Jack Murphy
You tell us what happened on 911 for you.
- [86:45]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah. And so on 9 11, you know, I kind of, I've kind of skipped over some history here. And I attribute that to my age. You know, I'm 72 years old, so I'm becoming a little mentally infirm here. I don't impute that to all 72 year olds, but to me. So I was in Bosnia as part of, as I said, you know, as I gave you more than you ever wanted to hear about America's presence in Bosnia. So 9 11, we're sitting there and the first aircraft that hit the tower and we all rushed in to scramble to watch tv. And I remember to myself it was just shocking. And I remember the way I rationalized and dealt with that sickening feeling in my stomach was I said, oh, this is a navigation error. This is some pilot. Pilot had a heart attack. Never occurred to me. Even though I had done counterterrorism for 10 years. You know, the fact of the matter, I was just sitting there, you know, mystified, shocked, mystified, sickened by that. And it wasn't. But you know, after, you know, America's policymakers really digested what had happened, you know, from the attacks on 9 11, the two aircraft, Flight 93, and the attack on the Pentagon. And ironically, one of the officers of my cross agency, large cross agency team that I had in the field from dod, from uniformed military, multiple civilian agencies, and yet some of our Special Forces colleagues. So we had a pretty powerful team. One of my team members who happened to be named Mike Spann, who left immediately because SAD called him back immediately with SAD officer in Mike Courses all the snow was the first American to die in the line of duty, you know, and the expulsion of Al Qaeda and Taliban from Afghanistan. Mike was really just a spectacular guy. He was everything you'd ever want in any kind of officer. A gentleman warrior, you know, just extraordinary gracious, courteous. And yet Steelheart, you know, of course, he was a former Marine, right? And so I lost him immediately. It was like hours, if I recall correctly. Boom. He was summoned back. We sent him back a couple days later after they made a decision to mount the US response. Of course, you had Jawbreaker, which you've covered extensively. And my job. I was immediately summoned up to US EUCOM to work with. Then to me, a very unknown C01 star who some of you may have heard named Bill McRaven, who was the commander of Sakur. And we were trying to figure out what it was that the US European Command in Sakur needed to do in response, because the attack on the homeland was not going to be the only attack. And it certainly hadn't because there have been three embassies hammered hard. The USS Cole, Khobar Towers. We had all kinds of explosive history in the business of terrorism up to this point. And the other thing that my job was to be able to work with soc your to prepare the support, the special operations support requirements because of the emerging SOF contribution to America's response. Then I went back to Washington D.C. to, you know, to equip myself, to gun up and get ready to go to Afghanistan myself. And I remember one of your guests, I can't remember who, Mick, maybe who said who talked a little bit about it. I think you asked him the question. Tell us about the time that you were preparing to go to Afghanistan. Mine was spending hours in rei. I remember going in there and the place was stripped.
- [90:43]
Jack Murphy
I think Justin Snapp was talking about.
- [90:49]
Douglas Wise
I remember going in there and one of the REI sales, sales ladies comes up to me and says, sir, can I help you? And I go, yeah, I got this list. I need to get all this stuff. I'll pay cash. I need all this stuff and I need it right now. And she goes, you're like the 50th guy that's been in here. I think all this stuff, I think they bought all that stuff. So I had to run around and others like me that were in the latency part of the response, the month after sort of thing. And so, you know, you're buying sleeping bags and all kinds of stuff because again, you know, as I, as I think a number of your guests have, you know, CIA was not, you know, paramilitary things was not de rigueur for CIA, right. It is today. But back then it was, it was an aberration, it was an afterthought. Those were the officers that would get you in trouble because those retired special forces E8s were now GS12s and 13s. There's no good that's going to come a Ground Branch team. I've been a cos a couple times for Ground Branch guys. I know the mythology. Having come from a community, I wasn't as fearful. But no good could come from having Ground Branch guys in your country. You know, you know, your family aren't safe, the animals aren't safe, food's not safe, there's going to be no alcohol left, you know, all of that kind of bizarre thing, you know. So there was paramount. So CIA was not prepared to go. When I had my team in Afghanistan, we had a Sony VAIO laptop through an encryptor to an Inmarsat. We were creating cable traffic in Microsoft Word. You know, we had Satcom. And that was just to tell the gang back in Starfleet that we had a couple files for them and perhaps maybe in another episode sometime, you know, if you ever want me back, I can tell you a little more about, you know, that kind of pioneering that was done by many who did way more than I did in way more dangerous places. You know, my gang was in Assadabad, you know, way up in the southern end of the Konar Valley, north of Jalalabad. But, you know, we were learning how to, how to do this. We were, you know, creating capability on the fly, you know, and I was just a cog in that machine. I wasn't a driver. I wasn't, you know, a pioneer leader. I wasn't taking the decisional risks, you know, I was just excited and happy, you know, coming out of that Bosnian experience flush with pride, you know, wanting to, you know, be part of America's response, you know, to bring justice and righteous revenge to those that had, you know, killed our citizens and those of other nations who had despoiled our country, you know, forever. And so, you know, I, like all of us, you know, who served there, proud to be part of that, whether in the early days or in even more dangerous, quite frankly, you know, days that most of you served in in Afghanistan, where we could even go downtown and have dinner in an Afghan restaurant, you know, without getting blown up and shot and stabbed, you know, where many of you weren't able to do that, but, you know, it was. And we immediately began to apply the experiences that I just discussed at length, you know, and the lessons that we learned, you know, and that, you know, what turned out to be a much more pacific battle space known as the Balkans. But, you know, who do you find in places like Afghanistan, you know, no longer Captain Scotty Miller. I think he was Major Scotty Miller, maybe even lieutenant colonel. So you found it was, you know, as. I think we all use the expression same dudes, different places. Right, right. You know, and now I obviously don't. Don't mean by using the term dude that it's just all men, because number of courageous female officers and operators have served as well and were part of our growth. But, you know, we benefited from, I think, what we learned, you know, Without a doubt.
- [95:06]
David Park
Yeah.
- [95:07]
Jack Murphy
What was the trajectory like for you when you got into theater? And you make it sound like, were you in the background kind of running logistics for these guys or what? What was your role?
- [95:15]
Douglas Wise
No, no, I was. I was. I was part of the operational presence there. So my. My engaging with soc. You're on. On the support side. That ended when I left and I went back and I became part of the operational CIA operational package. I want to say initially we had, you know, probably the sum total. I think the guy you should have on here was Hank. Hank Crumpton's deputy, a guy named John Massey, an amazing American in his own right. He has a little blemish because he's a Naval Academy graduate. And he's a nuclear guy, too. You know, he's a nuke.
- [95:54]
David Park
He can overlook things like that.
- [95:55]
Douglas Wise
Who is that guy, Rickover, or was that a German pilot in World War I? I don't remember. Who was the guy who started a nuclear Navy? I don't know. The Navy is irrelevant to me. But the. But you know, the total numbers. But I think we only had, like. I think it was only like 28 in the initial presence there. But we had a huge force multiplier in the GS and SWCC speak, the GS from the Northern Alliance. And so the picture that you so kindly put on the advertisement for this was my leadership team of my team. It was myself, a Ground branch guy, and we had 100 Northern alliance colleagues that were there to take the fight to the enemy. And that was not unique at all. And so there were very few in the beginning. So I was in Afghanistan as an operator.
- [96:50]
Jack Murphy
Which team were you guys on?
- [96:52]
Douglas Wise
It was called Team Mike, and it was in, like I said, it was in the Sadabad, the southern end of the Konar Valley. What was interesting is we occupied a totally shredded Soviet military, Russian military installation. I could motorized artillery was at a Mujahideen. It like literally just eradicated it off the face of the earth. But I plowed through a bunch of rubble and I found. Because thank you for the climate there, which is absent of rain. I found a real Russian military map with hand drawn military symbols. Whoa. To show where they positioned, you know, rifle companies and infantry platoons in the mountains around, around Asadabad. And so I have that framed, you know, on the wall of my I love me and I love you wall here in New Mexico, in our New Mexico home. But I was an operator to your question. And I came back and I was reacting because we didn't have a permanent station. I was the acting Deputy Chief of station, my second go around. And so that took me through the end of 2002. I became a Chief of station after that for a year. And then Iraq happened, and then I got a call from the Deputy Director of Operations who said, have your wife pack you out. I want you, I want you in Kuwait in 24 hours. So that's how things are done.
- [98:29]
David Park
Isn't that great? You know, I know that like, like bases like Asadabad and then going into Iraq when it first started, like, those were very unique circumstances. But you talk about going back to Starfleet Command with your lightsaber. And I, I love the, I love the collision of the two worlds. But, but you know, when you talk about Starfleet Command, obviously you're talking about Langley. What was it like being at Langley that was different than being at a base or a station somewhere else in the world?
- [99:03]
Douglas Wise
Well, I, I suppose it's kind of. You all are military veterans, so you'll understand them as well. The vast majority of your audience, it's the same thing. When they go, okay, you're going to the Pentagon. What? You know, your first reaction is this, you want to go vomit, you want to go, you want to go puke in the street. You know, what did I do wrong? You know, and then what happens is you end up serving. And I jokingly am very critical, as are many officers, you know, who are operators. You know, there's life forms in CIA that love Starfleet Command, right. You know, they like to commute and they like to live and they don't want to be overseas. Vast majority of them are, you know, hunger for the core business of what CIA does. Whether you're an operator or an analyst, board officer, a tech ops officer or something in between. But there are many officers who don't need to go overseas and make a seminal and existential contribution to what we're trying to do overseas. And they're very necessary and just like service in the Pentagon. And granted, I was in the pentagon as an 05. And for those of you that have never served in the pentagon as in 05, there is no lower life form in the Pentagon. In an army Lieutenant Colonel. A colonel.
- [100:18]
David Park
It's like being a private, right? It's like being private.
- [100:21]
Douglas Wise
Yeah. You don't even, you don't even get donuts for generals. You got donuts for, for 06s, right? You know, hey, you go over there and attract the insects away from those of us who are making, you know, doing some real work. You go over there, Colonel, you go sit there in a corner. Go get me a donut. Yeah, sprinkly. I like to want sprinkles on my donut and cream in the coffee and let me know when it comes back because I don't want to cold. And so there's no lower, you know, you know, in, you know, just insignificant life form than a Lieutenant colonel in the Pentagon. But what you do see is the same thing that I found out in my service and I began life at Starfleet Command. So I understood and it made me a better field leader. I understand the culture of headquarters. I understood the challenges that they were facing. I understood the sludge in a machine and why. The sludge is not capricious sludge. It is inexorable, just necessary slowness, glacial times. That's just part of large bureaucracies. Even crisp bureaucracies like CIA, which is probably the crispest of them all, without question. You know, you have 16 days after 9, 11. You have Gary Schrone and Jawbreaker on the ground. Right. No other institution, the, the Agency has.
- [101:41]
Jack Murphy
Correct me if I'm wrong, Doug, but I mean the only political appointees you guys really deal with is like the Director and maybe a Chief of Staff.
- [101:48]
Douglas Wise
And yeah, Director and the Deputy Director are political appointees.
- [101:52]
Jack Murphy
And then when I Had someone tell me once about when you guys deployed for that first FDA Afghanistan trip. Like the very short fuse on the chain of command like from the President to the Director to maybe like the head of SAD or something like that. I mean, you tell me Doug, but I mean it was a very short fuse going from point A to point B.
- [102:12]
Douglas Wise
You hit it right on the head. And that short interval between the most senior decision makers in our government and the plebeian operator base chief like me on the ground that was built and with great risk because all of a sudden you had a guy like me talking to a guy like George Tenet and you could only imagine that George taking Advice from a GS15 versus taking advice from SIS 4, 5 and 6. Advice that is well formed, well studied, well run out, well red teamed and all you got is, you know, opinions from a Wellspring of opinion. GS15, you know, who thinks that he knows everything or is to know that's useful for the director, you know, kind of thing. And the same thing happened when I was chief of station in Iraq. Conversations with Leon Panetta for example, when he was the Director and Leon and Leon's deputy, you know, and so that shortening of the, of the chain of information and the chain, I guess what was it, you know that that Air Force colonel created that OODA loop thing. Right. I don't even know what those stand for. But you know, at least one of.
- [103:39]
Jack Murphy
Those O's is like operating orient decide and act.
- [103:43]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For us it, it was act and then engage sometimes and other times it was where you know, the Director understood the competence and he had trust and confidence at all levels of his chain of command. And so you know, being able to take a phone call from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency whose par ratter is the President of the United States, the pre dni, you know, that shows that the agency has a trust and confidence because they didn't have that, they wouldn't have been able to shorten that decision making timeline. Right. Because nobody would have allowed a guy like me to talk and provide advice and recommendations to senior to officers on the seventh floor of CIA or directly to the DDO or to the, to the director of the Counterterrorism Center.
- [104:39]
Jack Murphy
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- [105:18]
David Park
Where is that?
- [105:19]
Jack Murphy
Or tempered glass.
- [105:20]
Douglas Wise
Oh, is it?
- [105:21]
David Park
Oh, I mean we have the wristband. I mean they have some nice gloves, the little operator gloves that are way better than the Nomex stuff we used to wear. They've got this badass little information blocker when you're charging. Like if you have to charge your cell phone when you're an Uber or someplace or public place, you know, people can steal your information when you plug that data cable, data slash power cable into your phone. So you can get this great little blocker from them. Like check out SAP gear. They have some amazing stuff on there. All kinds of like counterintelligence, you know, a lot of great gear.
- [105:57]
Douglas Wise
And they have like. Do they have a Jedi knight life lightsabers? Can I get a new lightsaber?
- [106:02]
David Park
They, they, they might because they have some amazing stuff there.
- [106:07]
Douglas Wise
Yeah.
- [106:08]
Jack Murphy
So sapgear.com it's sapgear.com and you use the promo code team to get 15 off. So sapgear.com and the promo code team to get.
- [106:18]
David Park
Check out their stuff. I guarantee you, you. It's like, it's like the fun James Bond stuff. It's the fun James Bond stuff. What are those Not Sharper, not. What are those stores that I'm thinking of that like the Sharper Image or Brooks and whatever. These are like, these are like the cool guy stuff where you know, is a lot of fun stuff, a lot of very practical and useful stuff.
- [106:40]
Jack Murphy
And, and then the other thing I want to tell you guys about real quick before we get back to Doug is our Patreon page. You guys are interested in supporting the show. If you want to get access to bonus episodes and segments and get access to all of our episodes ad free, there's a link down in the description of this video or podcast to our Patreon page and you can jump on there right now. And we really appreciate all the people who support the stream.
- [107:04]
David Park
Absolutely.
- [107:05]
Jack Murphy
So Doug, back to you. Tell us about. You told us that you got pulled into Iraq on about a 24 hour notice. Tell us about that experience.
- [107:18]
Douglas Wise
Well, again, you know, I need, I need to full disclosure. I'm on the record of having Said in public, on tv, an in print. In print that I thought the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision in modern American history. It opened geopolitical tectonic plates that we had no idea what we were creating because we had no plan. And the notion that we could create pluralistic Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq with all the sectarian, vicious, sectarian fighting. And anytime you remove a brutal dictator, how do dictators rule? Very brutally. And you ask, hey, you're a dictator. Why do you got to be so brutal? Because I'd be dead if I didn't. Because I got to keep my hands on the pressure cooker. That lid's going to fly right off. So anyway, I was. At the time, I wasn't quite as. I didn't have that insight, but I was proud again to be part of the next grand American experiment to move American foreign policy and to kind of be part of a cog in the new CIA machine in the next big thing that we were doing, which was Iraq and CIA played. And I don't go through the details, but there's probably some people that probably give you a good description of what we faced. But we accomplished an awful lot. We were lean, main CIA machine in Iraq. And it was a bad time in the beginning because apparently there were a lot of people there that didn't like Americans. You know, there are a lot of Kurds and a number of Shia in the beginning who are appreciative that we remove this brutal dictator. But there are apparently a lot of Sunnis who took great offense at our removal of Saddam and our destruction of the entire Sunni socialist, socialist state system of power and wealth and support that existed. And of course, the Ba'ath party we were taking. I have. It's a video, but it's audio because it's at night. We would take, when we were first there, 76 indirect fire shots at night at what was the American presence inside the Green. What would ultimately become the Green Zone. It was just a gigantic impact area. 76. You could count them all from artillery to rockets to mortars. And it was just a very, very difficult time. And we were getting hit every. Every night. And then, of course, as the American military presence went from, you know, from, you know, invaders to. And I say that in a very positive way, not in a negative way. And as they consolidated their gains and as they were able to really start to deal with some of these threats, then life strangely and bizarrely turned to normal, where you could actually go downtown along the river and actually have some mos. Goof in a restaurant. Now, the last time we ate in this restaurant, you know, 30 days later, it was totally blown up by a suicide bomber. And that was late in 2004, I want to say. But I considered Iraq to be, you know, again, you know, just an opportunity to do a lot. And we were sort of missionary, like, I guess at the time, myself included, bringing some kind of better outcome for the Iraqi people. Maybe that's naive. I believe that was naive in myself at the time. But, you know, the American soldiers, tremendous courage under very adverse circumstances. And particularly as the years went on, you know, 2007, hard year in Iraq. Hard year. But we were there again in the early days, you know, our natural partners. We were there with our natural partners Special Mission Unit. And of course, it was Stan McChrystal and who was himself transforming a JSOC, which was the national mission force, into the premier counterterrorism force that we now know and love today. You know, find, fix and finish. And he and his staff battle engineered, you know, the shortening that information circle from intel to actioning, that intel where you pull guys off the objective. Many of you know this far better than me, and many of you participated in this, you know, where you'd be pulling a guy off an objective and you'd be interrogating them in the air. On the way back, another assault force is waiting to action that before they're even back. And so you all of a sudden have one force coming back, another force going in. And that requires a professional, competent, lethal choreography that is unparalleled in military experience, in my view. And it showcases just some extraordinary capabilities. And so in the end, you know, that was intelligence driven. You know, you needed intelligence to make that happen. That was to fuel that started that process. And it was the fuel that kept it going. And JSOC pioneered a huge amount of that. And CIA, through our natural partnership, we were feeding into that as well. And the CIA presence. And I'm not going to talk about numbers, but the CIA presence expanded dramatically in Iraq. And eventually we became the size of what you could argue is an IFTRA brigade, which isn't much for the army, but for CIA, is an extraordinary investment.
- [113:29]
Jack Murphy
You were the ops chief over there early on.
- [113:31]
Douglas Wise
I was the ops chief in the beginning, and then I was chief of station in 89 and 10. Got an opportunity to see liberation to transition of sovereignty. And so it was interesting to see, you know, kind of those bookend experiences, you know, and, you know, challenging, to say the least. Largest US Embassy in the History of diplomacy and as my cv, my bio rip at the time, at the time was the largest station in the agency's history.
- [114:05]
Jack Murphy
I have, I have a ton of questions for you, Doug. Some of them you may even be able to answer.
- [114:10]
Douglas Wise
I'll try.
- [114:14]
Jack Murphy
I think you said you're chief of Station four times throughout your career. What were the unique challenges of running intel, running case officers out into a war zone like Baghdad? How did that differ than some of your previous assignments?
- [114:29]
Douglas Wise
Well, if, for example, if you were a case officer in Geneva, you know one you weren't likely to get killed on your way to an agent meeting, your agent was not likely to be killed while you were meeting him along with yourself, and you weren't likely to be killed coming back. And that's not meant to disparage traditional espionage by any means. It is hard. It's more than just meeting a dude. And you could talk about, I could talk about that at length, which would be digressive for what you're trying to accomplish here. But the reality is we had to take the traditional elements of espionage, the tradecraft that worked for CIA for generations since 1947, and we had to carefully adapt that, tailor it and modify it so that we could still do the business of meeting human beings and extracting intelligence through that meeting without bringing extraordinary risk to that individual that is working on behalf of the United States objectives and our own officers. How do you do that? Because inherently that has to be a non public, very secret enterprise. And in a non lethal environment, in the Geneva's, in the Paris Berlins of the world, extraordinary counterintelligence pressure, don't get me wrong, Moscow, impossible to work there, you know, takes an incredibly special officer to do that. I would never be able to do that. I was never able, I would never been good enough. So I, I wouldn't have done well in the traditional espionage business. But because of my military background, because of my counterterrorism experience in CIA, I think I was well experienced enough to be a constructive part of the adaptive process to figure out how does CIA do business without getting people killed and still providing, you know, valuable and intelligence for the policymaker and actionable intelligence, you know, for the war fighter. And so we had to do a lot of, a lot of adaptation, a lot of modification and kudos to the officers who took those risks when we were trying new stuff for the first time, you know, you had no idea. I don't say you implying that I was part of that. They had no idea that they were going to come Back from that. Right.
- [117:11]
Jack Murphy
You know, did you feel that your mission over there was shifting from the agency's traditional strategic intelligence mission to now collecting more like tactical level intelligence?
- [117:23]
Douglas Wise
Oh, without a doubt. And that caused. And that was very necessary, quite frankly, as I told my officers all the time, and I reinforced it with our colleagues, whether it was in Afghanistan, whether it was in Bosnia for that matter, or in Afghanistan or in Iraq or in Syria. Later I said, job one is force protection. Keeping American soldiers alive is job one. Everything else is totally subordinate to that top priority. We will spare no effort to keep American women and men alive. That is a sacred obligation, and we must do that. That is job one. Nothing else can be done. The second priority ends up being providing the intelligence so that our military partners could smoke on the battlefield. Those that are creating the force protection issues that we were trying to mitigate. And so job one, force protection, job two, actionable intelligence to the warframe. Then, of course, CIA, unlike our military colleagues that are very focused on ct, very focused on coin, we had the broader. We had to worry about the stability of Iraq, we had to worry about Iran, we had to worry about Saudi Arabia, we had to worry about the Gulf Arab states, we had to worry about the third country presence there. And even though Baghdad was an incredibly challenging environment, there were still other embassies that were there and other diplomats. And they all played a role in either helping us or impeding us. And so we had to pay attention to them and how do we engage them. And so the broad, incredibly complex and diverse mission that CIA has everywhere, in every place that it is, was complicated and made more existential by job one and job two. And that required a very special structure, a very special culture, and more importantly, some just extraordinary women and men who were really who volunteered to come out to that kind of environment, you know, thrived in most cases in that kind of environment. And it really says a lot about, you know, those young and often inexperienced CIA officers who I hold in the highest of regard because they volunteered to get involved in something that they have absolutely, absolutely no idea. Right. What the personal consequences were. I think, as soldiers kind of recognize.
- [120:02]
David Park
You expect that.
- [120:02]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, you kind of expect that. Right. But in CIA, because, you know, we didn't train for war. Right? We didn't train for war. And not, you know, not a major portion of CIA, you know, got the Afghan experience. So there were officers who rogered up to leave families, single moms, single parents, single officers, married officers, huge families, small families, elder care issues, all of the obligations of Life. And these remarkable officers, investors, were willing to set that aside to undertake a task and put themselves into an environment that they had absolutely no conscious appreciation for. And it was such a dynamic and unpredictable environment that you could think that this neighborhood of Baghdad was actually pretty safe. And then you find out that you assessed wrong because it changed literally last. And so I sit and just hold in the highest regard, I obviously hold my military colleagues in extraordinary high regard. And it goes without saying, but you know, our CIA officers and what's interesting, I mean, you'd think you had an iftry brigade size investment in Iraq, okay? And I had a, I had like the 12th largest Air Force in the world. I had everything from, shall we say, traditional CIA authorities and what else say euphemistically as non traditional military authorities, shall we say, aggressive authorities, which we used in times when our military colleagues by policy were precluded from exercising their own aggressive authorities, shall we say. And you know, that was a large number of officers that were there that, you know, that adapted and they learned and they worked together and they were sharing the mission with their own colleagues and they were sharing the mission with their military counterparts and they were committed to each other's success. And I know I sound like I'm a Pollyannish guy and I'm over exaggerating and, and for those that haven't had that experience yet, I understand why you'd probably think I'm being a little traumatic, but I can't begin to tell you that I don't think I'm exaggerating very much. If I am, it's not by intent, but it's just, I don't know.
- [122:46]
David Park
I'm curious about your. Because, and this is sort of fast forwarding a bit to ask you to reflect on something that you may have thought while you were there at a future date, but you did eventually become the deputy director of the dia. The DIA was very active, but also the DIA doesn't get much credit for anything at all really. But they were very active there in Baghdad, particularly in those early years and everything being at the station and being, being the big dog of the intelligence world, as you know, as the CIA is. What did you have an impression, awareness and knowledge, opinions of the DIA presence there?
- [123:29]
Douglas Wise
The dia, I mean, obviously there wasn't. The answer was strangely, yes, I had a positive view of the military, irrespective of what part of the Defense department you came from. So I was predisposed to look for the positive. And maybe that maybe didn't make me unique but put me in a select part of, I think, the CIA workforce. Second was, you know, I had found in my formative experience with the power and majesty of the DOD was in Bosnia, where I had a major defense human, defense case officer operator presence there, all of whom had gone through the formative, same formative experience, operational certification experience that we CIA officers went through in the same location, actually, with a shared category of trainers and educators and in the same environment against the same tasks. So we were virtually identical life forms. And so we were now serving together. So I had an extraordinary positive plus. There was significant defense human separate presence there. There was a strategic base that they had, and then there was this thing, I think, called Eskimo base that was there, that was doing their thing. And the intimacy and cooperation was absolutely important. And I think any of those base chiefs would tell you that CIA was, was a really good partner because we really respected their capabilities and what we did. I carried that. And so, yes, there was a DIA presence in Iraq. It was right across the street at FOB Union 3, if I recall correctly. And I would go all there all the time as a CIA station chief with a major amount of press, a massive diversity of responsibilities, investing my time was an expression of what I thought was valuable. Right, right. I went over to that little detachment almost every day. Wow. And I developed as close partnership. And interestingly enough, that detachment was not just what you and I now call Defense Clandestine Service, Defense human. At that time, they were actually, you know, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, you know, agents that were in there. There were agents from other federal law enforcement who themselves do source operations. Right. Maybe they don't use the same tradecraft in the same kind of environment, but they were also out there, you know, putting themselves at risk to provide intelligence. And of course, being the, quote, the DNI rep, you know, the Defense. The Director of National Intelligence Rep. The senior Intelligence Officer in Iraq. My job was to integrate and coordinate. So, yeah, I had an obligation to make sure I, I gathered all the intel guys, you know, under my warm embrace. But the reality is I did that whether I, I was required to do that or not. Right. Because I really thought that those, those women and men over there were, were bringing some significant value to what we're trying to accomplish in our. Our compound. Yeah. So, yeah, I. DIA was there in spades. And you're right, DIA doesn't get the credit. Part of that's due its positioning in the political battle space of the IC in Washington, D.C. part of that's due because of just the Necessary obligations of secrecy. And part of that's because they just don't have the prominent infrastructure for collection. I think everybody's probably heard of military attaches. Every one of them works for the director of dia. They're all DIA officers. Okay. So the Defense attach Service works for the director of di. You know, some people know that, some people don't. But everybody's heard of military attaches. Probably very few people have heard of the Defense Clandestine Source. Fewer still because they toil away and anonymity to a degree which is imposed on them, but it's very necessary part so they can be effective. So, yeah, they don't get the credit they deserve. And there are remarkable officers. And DIA is inherently an all source analytic agency. And that's what the culture in DIA is. It's designed to support the analytic machine and the purity of the analytic process within dia. So it does have a very analytic. You can smell, you know, it's very analytic. Yeah. Smell it when you enter the bill. I'm joking. But you can smell it when you get out of the building.
- [128:17]
Jack Murphy
So I know we're kind of just hitting the wave tops here, Doug, and I know we're probably going to have to have you back again on sometime because we're glossing over so much. But what came after Iraq for you after, you know, 2010?
- [128:32]
Douglas Wise
Well, after Iraq, the Director of Operations thought that the best place to. For me to take my multiple years as a cos. Multiple times cos. And I should say for your audience that may not be as familiar with CIA structures as some of us are. In the Director, first thing is in the Directorate of Operations, I would guess probably less than a quarter. Operators get to be a cos one time. And with me having the privilege and the honor to be at four times. Extraordinary. It says more about the agency's risk taking than it does about my competency. But I think the Deputy Director of Operations time a guy named Mike Sulek, who is a consultant for the Americans and wrote a book about the Russian intel operations in the United States. A great guy, former Marine is the only thing I could say bad about him. Harvard graduate, Vietnamese linguist, if you can believe that Marine. Interesting. Mike is an amazing guy.
- [129:42]
David Park
What flavors crayons do the Vietnamese have?
- [129:45]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah. So Mike decided that, you know, whatever it is that I represented, that he needed that as part of the, you know, the training machine. So, you know, the agency has not allowed me to use the F word. And I'm not talking about. Oh, oh, you didn't know the Other.
- [130:09]
Jack Murphy
F word training the next generation of spies.
- [130:13]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, training. Yeah, training. I was in charge of all operational training for at an undisclosed location. But you know, Mike thought that I had a contribution to making growing the next generation of me. And to be able to do that at our facility was a singular honor. And given my blue collar perception, I was kind of a fish out of water. I felt very out of water while I was there, because I just didn't. Still here I am at SIS 3 or 4 with Mal. You know, what was that, 2010? You know, I'm now from 1987 to 2010, I had that much time in the Agency and I'm still, you know, I wasn't acting like it, but I certainly believed it. You know, I still wasn't worthy of this kind of opportunity. I really didn't think I was worthy. And maybe there are others who probably agree with that as well. But, you know, that was a wonderful opportunity to kind of go back and see how, you know, the big machine, the big training machine worked and you know, to be an advocate, to be a champion, to be able to take credit for, you know, the training cadre of both former officers as well as current officers, military, accomplished military officers, and I should say other non military, non CIA members of the leadership and training cadre as well, who themselves were graduates of that program. So it was a wonderful opportunity for me to really reconnect with the basics of espionage and really realize a. How much I failed to learn and how much I had learned but forgotten. Yeah. And so it, for me, it really, as I think anybody who was an instructor, you know, at that location will tell you they came out of that as a much better operator than they did going into that assignment.
- [132:23]
David Park
Have there been many changes from the time you went through to the time that you, you worked there, or did they really hold on to that core?
- [132:38]
Douglas Wise
The certification for case officers is predominantly unchanged because quite frankly, it's all about the fundamentals. And so even if your instructor was a retired officer who spent his or her career in Eastern Europe or in Moscow and had no exposure to Afghanistan, Iraq, coin, ctc, none of that. Fundamentally, you can't be a good CTC officer unless you understand the basics of espionage, and that's where you learn it. And yes, there are adaptations there. There are always improvements to the course, as you would expect, you know, interjection of modern technology, because that was critical and important for officers to understand the benefits and the risk of technology. And what you found is down in those locations you found Directorate of Science and technology presence and training and graduate level courses. You found a record of analysis. So all of a sudden you find in that environment, in close geographic proximity, all of a sudden you find the other tribes that are there. And then after I left that location and became the Grand Poobah, I was the, you know, the Emperor Palpatine of the entire training machine. You know, we try, we built a greater integration from a visionary standpoint, you know, to even more integrate and better integrate and develop better appreciation for the different life forms within the do, some of which you mentioned, you know, targeters, CMOs, you know, support officers, all of that. And I only, you know, kind of kicked that rock down the hill. I fought the visionary battle. But it was, you know, guys like, you know, Darrell Blocker who's an overt officer, Mike Lacombe who has multiple COs in Iraq, who had been my DCOs when I was there. There were guys like Lacombe who really, really made the transformation of that entire operational training enterprise to be a modern one, to reflect the demands of the environment in which modern CIA officers refine in the knows. And so, you know, my role was minor, Doug, and it was interesting. If I can go back to something else I said is, you know, what I did was created a vision where you come in entry on duty and you go to graduated leadership and operational development process until you ended up as a, as a proto wretched pensioner at the end of the ride. And there were some CIA officers who were quite impervious to an insoluble and new ideas, fortunately minority. I had conversations like this, which is where that's not going to work. And I go, why not? And they go, well because it's not, it's just not going to work. We don't have time, we don't need any of that and it's not going to work. And I said what's the fundamental objection? And they would go, well, let me not object. Let me just say this, let me go. You're a military guy, right? Isn't that where you came from? I go yes sir. And they go, yeah, that's a military thing. That whole thing from basic course to advanced course to Leavenworth to the war college, you know, all of that stuff, that's a military thing, that's not us. So going back to my conversation in 1992 on this non existent process of military leadership versus CIA leadership, now I'm facing that as a very senior officer in the directorate of operations, I thought it was very ironic. The good news is that their vision didn't take the day. It was guys like Blocker and Mike Lacombe and others who followed them that really made it happen and created a fully integrated program that, you know, is still under improvement every day that that thing exists.
- [137:13]
Jack Murphy
Doug, this is a little spicy, but you were also a senior guy during a time where the Agency had some pretty spectacular public successes and failures. You had the. The bin Laden raid, you had Benghazi happen. You had the director step down. I was just curious if you're, from your perspective, if you had any insights into sort of the internal dynamics of what was happening in the Agency as those events kind of unfolded in a very public way.
- [137:45]
Douglas Wise
Any institution is going to be buffeted around by anomalous behavior by the environment, outside forces, and certainly by behaviors of individual officers, whether they're junior officers or senior officers. But the Agency's got a resilience that is just another example of why it's such a remarkable institution. When you have a number of very public incidents like the one you mentioned. One you didn't mention was the, you know, the leaking of the IG investigation on a detention program.
- [138:23]
Jack Murphy
Oh, the RDI that leaked out.
- [138:26]
Douglas Wise
Rdi, yeah, that was quite controversial. Quite controversial.
- [138:31]
Jack Murphy
And I remember Diane Feinstein was publicly saying that the CIA was going to be disbanded over that.
- [138:41]
Douglas Wise
Californian. What can you say? You know, no disrespect to the fine people of California. We need California for various reasons, but the liberal thought just happens to be one. And Hollywood might be another Silicon Valley, but the politicians, Devin Nunez, others not so helpful. But I don't want to get political here, but it really is because of the strength of the agency workforce, the commitment to not only American core values, but also the agency ethos of being right when nobody's looking at you, whether you are being right, you're doing the right thing when nobody's looking kind of thing, you know, that stuff's going to happen. You can't plan for it. You just plan for an existence of some negative thing. And, you know, you just get beyond that. You got to get through all that. And because the agency officers, you know, the women and men, regardless of the tribe, you know, and the Agency are just so remarkably resilient. You know, there are remarkable people throughout Federal service who are. Who are remarkable. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the only remarkable stuff that exists in federal service is in CIA. You know, personal side of me wants to say that, professional side of me wants to say that. But the reality is it's the strength and the caliber, the quality of the people and the leaders in CIA that make it so resilient. And we get through that stuff. Whether it's Durham investigating guys like me and others, whether it's, you know, all the things that you mentioned, whether it's rdi, whether it's, you know, traitorous behavior by respected colleagues. You know, Jim Nicholson was a branch chief in CTC when I was there, you know, and he of course was recruited by the kgb. And you know, it's just to answer your question, it's the strength of the agency's officers and the strength of the culture and the commitment to do what's right. You know, we get beyond that, we just say, okay, this happened. Let's fix the agency and let's move forward.
- [141:16]
David Park
Well, the agency is also sort of in this unique position where, where if there is somebody, if something goes wrong or if somebody does something wrong that like the agency, their failures, whether it's organizational or individual or, or mistakes or whatever get broadcast. But none of this successes ever really get recognized. So it's easy for the public, it's easy to, to paint this very dark picture of this shadow organization when all you hear about it is the things that don't go right, you know, and.
- [141:55]
Douglas Wise
I think that's an excellent comment that that is, that's the most important thing actually this, that that's been said during this podcast today is that question. And the reason, and it really gets to the heart of why you and your platform exists, right, why the Team House exists, because all of the professionals that you have as speakers, we all come from that underappreciated, under understood community. And so you give us an opportunity to appropriately explore and help, to educate and help to dispel mythology and erode misperception. And that's why I'm telling you, a lot of my very traditional minded CIA colleagues, probably a number of current officers who may be part of your listen to this or watch it on YouTube might sit and go, I can't believe that guy's out there just blabbering away, just yakking yak and yak and about stuff. And I think I have, because I can't, because I'm not undercover and because my career represents a decent part of the agency, you know, and, and so I, I can do my part, right, in taking advantage of your kind invitation and the risk and be able to speak and be part of this incredibly respected enterprise known as Team House Podcast. And so being able to, you know, be a little More transparent with the American people. Willie Road. What you said, Dave, you know, and current officers can't do that, you know, because they, because their stuff's too secret. Right. You know.
- [143:42]
David Park
Right.
- [143:42]
Douglas Wise
But former officers like me can give our opinions and our perceptions and to talk about, you know, the, you know, in very general terms, you know, the magic that makes CIA so remarkable. And in the end, as I've said multiple times ad nauseam, look, the magic is because of the magicians in CIA, you know, and all of those women and men, all those officers, you know, are magicians in every way, shape or form.
- [144:12]
Jack Murphy
You make it sound like Disneyland, Doug.
- [144:14]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, well, we have a couple goofies in there. You know, he retired to, he retired to New Mexico. So.
- [144:23]
David Park
You know, did you, did you see a shift in agency culture where the PRB where, where, where, where it started to become okay for guys once their covers were rolled back to, to publicly speak because, you know, that it, I don't know if it was ever a rule, but it sort of wasn't acceptable for a very long period of time.
- [144:49]
Douglas Wise
That. Yeah, early on, you know, we, we, as you well know, and you missed from. We sign on entry on duty, a lifetime obligation for pre publication review of any prepared remarks, any document, any publication, or if in fact you had rendered to me all of the questions you were going to ask me, I would have had to write up an answer, sent that in. Okay, we all sign up for that. It's burdensome. It's real pain in the butt. And where the frustration came from is because the Agency didn't live up to its side of the obligation. And the Agency would sludge it up. They found something that was unappealing and they had amateurs that were doing it. They didn't have a system. And I'm not denigrating the earlier generations of those suffering officers that served in the prb, but the reality is nobody had ever put any serious systemic any time and attention into creating a system that allowed the Agency to live up to its side of that obligation. And then what would happen inexorably when the Agency didn't. They should have guys and gals who would just say, you know, screw it, I'm going to publish it anyway. What are they going to do? I'm out of the agency, they're going to fire me. I don't have a clearance. You know, what can they do? I don't know. I don't work for the Agency. I'm not a green badger, you know, what leverage do they have over me? You know, Some federal prosecutor going to prosecute me for publishing a document in the cipher brief, you know, that I didn't clear with the prb. No. The agency has very little options when it comes to those of us on the outside that don't live up to our obligation. But the agency, agency had to do its part to keep us on task because it had to create a realistic response. The response was pathetic in the early days. Horrible pathetic. Now it is very crisp. The other thing that the agency made a dramatic change is in the early days of the previous presidential administration, if an officer was to say something that was politically unappealing to the White House, the agency would try to wrap that up in terms of redacting that as a contingent contingency for approval of your document. In the early days, the agency's PRB was known as the Pre Publication Review Board. Now it's known as the pcrb, the Pre Publication Classification Review Board, because its mandate is to, to review for classified information, not for political, not for inconvenient facts and truths and opinions that a certain White House administration found to be unappealing and was pressuring the agency to stifle those of us that were exercising our First Amendment rights. But again, back to my point about how resilient the agency is and how transformative it can be, it immediately responded when that criticism was levied. Boom, got it right. You sent something to the prb. In some cases they will turn it around within hours. Wow, they've got a crisp machine now. Now, if you're writing a book and it is a turgid tome of immense number of pages and consists of every boring fact about your agency existence from all the EPA's exceptional performance awards you got, all the meetings you attended. Everything that happened, you don't know. And so, yeah, they got to shop that out to people that actually understand where the secrets reside and who are the custodians of secrets. So there is a little latency in there that is very reasonable and very realistic. But if you're writing an article for Political Magazine or for the Cipher Brief, which I think a great outlet too, and if you guys publish documents as part of your podcast, which I wouldn't recommend you do, I'd stick with your business model. You know, you'd find that the PRB was, was very, very responsive. Now, they've made some dramatic improvements.
- [149:11]
Jack Murphy
I mean, I know, you know, some former colleagues of yours have had to file lawsuits against the agency to get there.
- [149:17]
Douglas Wise
Mark Zaid, a well known attorney in.
- [149:19]
Jack Murphy
Washington D.C. but at the Same time. I mean, just from our own experience interviewing people here on the show who have had their books put through prb. I mean, there is a. Quite a bit of material that they do let you know, former agency employees say publicly, which is, as you mentioned at the beginning of the show, you will probably Never find an MI6 officer from Modern era on this show talking because they, they can't.
- [149:44]
David Park
They can't by law.
- [149:45]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah. Well, you could get them on, but he or she would be a foreign and commonwealth officer.
- [149:51]
David Park
Yeah.
- [149:52]
Douglas Wise
Now, I mean, would that be a very thin veil? I think so. But, you know, you're right. Absolutely right. And you got to give credit where credit's due. That's a tough job. That's a tough job. Suppose I'm writing. Suppose I'm making stuff up, you know, I'm writing a book about my agency experience and I talk about, you know, the agencies, you know, development of cold fusion reactors that could power the. Meet the entire global energy needs. You know, and I'm. And the PRB sits and says, all right, could that be compartment. Could that be real? This guy, you know, I'm making it up, you know, so, you know, when you, when you weave fiction into very closely mirror.
- [150:42]
Jack Murphy
Right, right.
- [150:43]
Douglas Wise
The real world. And even in, in the most naive cases where you make up some bit of trait crafter, you make up some technical widget, you know, wizard that only Q could love, you may, you may not even know that there is. It's a real case similar to that. Yeah. All of a sudden there's some saps someplace. Right. You know, and then all of a sudden you find, I, I've seen it.
- [151:07]
Jack Murphy
On the, on the military side where there were things, you know, factual inaccuracies in the book American Sniper that were called out and the authors of the book said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up. This book went through DoD review. So DoD said all of this is true. It's like, no, they didn't. DOD reviewed your book for clear, classified information. They're not a fact check. That's not, that's not what they're doing, and that's not what a DoD review represents of your book.
- [151:36]
Douglas Wise
And when the PRB gives you their response, you know, that little caveat is, is explicit as part of the prb, right? You know, where they sit and go, hey, all we reviewed was for, for, you know, embargoed content. We're not, we're not validating this. We're not verifying. We're not to going corroborating, you know, at All. And it'd be impossible for them to do that, quite frankly.
- [152:00]
David Park
Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, like, we've talked about this before when, when some of.
- [152:05]
Douglas Wise
These.
- [152:08]
David Park
LARPers, you know, some of these people who claim to have been in the CIA but never were.
- [152:13]
Jack Murphy
Our boy Wayne Simmons, you know, and.
- [152:16]
David Park
They get to a certain point, people like, well, how come the CIA doesn't call him out? It's like, because that's how they retain to die in ability with. With people who were. If they were to sit there, if they call out somebody who wasn't, but then they don't call out somebody who says they were, then what does that tell you?
- [152:32]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, right. Yeah.
- [152:34]
David Park
They can't get in that business.
- [152:37]
Douglas Wise
Yeah. The PRB can't be the truth police. Right. Got to be declassification police. Right. And their remit ends there. But, you know, bottom line is, I think the PRB's come a long way and it's meeting the needs of those of us that want to get stuff in the public domain as part of the. Providing appropriate insight so that the American people could be more informed citizens. And that's what you're all about. That's what you guys provide this remarkable platform for dudes like me and others that have done far more. Doug, I'd be able to explain.
- [153:14]
Jack Murphy
I would love to have you back on the show again because we've. We've run two and a half hours here and we still, we still haven't talked about Ukraine, we haven't talked about Syria, we haven't talked about your time at dia. We haven't talked about your life after the Agency and, and becoming a wretched pensioner as you. As you refer to. So I would love to have you on again to kind of talk a little bit more, but I really appreciate your time tonight and kind of illuminating all of us to some of these issues, some really unique insights, I think.
- [153:46]
Douglas Wise
Well, to me, who needs to give you gentlemen thanks as well as the participants in the podcast, you know, both this podcast and the many others, several hundred digits you've already produced. Again, you know, there's no other, you know, thing that is like this. And so it was a singular honor for you to reach out to me and ask me to come on.
- [154:10]
David Park
Wait, it's. It's our honor. Like, we're just, like I said, we're a couple of shows who, like, have some cameras and, and a YouTube channel basement in Brooklyn. Yeah, exactly. Like, we, we deeply, deeply appreciate, you know, you and, and everybody else who, who agrees to Come on and spend a Friday night with us. We appreciate all of our viewers, you know, people who make this show happen. We appreciate our Patreon supporters a little bit more than just our regular viewers, but not much. Not much because they pay the rent. We have a couple of questions from. From our viewers, speaking of money that we. That we want to get to Jackson. Thank you very much. He says, what was your experience with the paramilitary, the PMOs, like, and how much has the organization transformed over the course of the gy?
- [155:05]
Douglas Wise
Well, I mean, you know, that. That's a whole other episode right there, right, that we could. We could discuss that. And. And I think what would be useful to have more than just one dude on. I think we have a little panel discussion that would be amazing, I think, to get it. To get other, you know, other perspectives on that, you know, because you want to get a broad view rather than just, you know, my narrow, myopic view. One, the paramilitary PMOs, paramilitary operations officers, which are, you know, certified to be case officers, to handle, to develop and handle spies, recruit spies and handle them, and to also be able to continue to maintain their military skills, because every one of them had a military background. Whether it was, you know, 10 years or whether it was a full career, whether you are a traditional military officer or whether you come from a special mission unit. Paramilitary officers bring a unique capability to the agency. You combine that with the extraordinary authorities, operational authorities, and financial authorities of the agency, and you got a tool, a foreign policy tool that is second to none for the President of the United States. So those women and men that are currently serving in the Special Activities center, who are not all of whom are PMOs, many of them are just paramilitary experts, if I could use that term. I don't know what the term of art is.
- [156:34]
Jack Murphy
I think paramilitary specialists, I think, is a term for the green badgers at this point.
- [156:40]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, the combination of all that expertise is extraordinary. The challenge with PMOs is you got to maintain your military, your paramilitary skills, and yet you got to maintain your case officer skills. And both of those sets of skills are quite perishable. So it is a very tough, tough job to maintain that because, you know, the two years that you're the deputy chief of station in some station someplace, you know, that's two years somebody else is carrying your rucksack in sac. I have always been well served by every paramilitary officer, whether they're PM specialists or whether they're PMOs. I have always well served. They are an extraordinary Enabler. They are an extraordinary capability. I have found them to be consummate professionals in every way. Yeah, Sometimes they wear oak lease inside an embassy and they got firearms and pants on. But we just, if somebody comments on that, we just tell them they're from this 5th Special Forces Group. Yeah, don't know any better.
- [157:54]
David Park
They chew with their mouths open, they put their elbows on the table and they eat.
- [157:57]
Douglas Wise
And I'm obvious, I'm obviously kidding. But you know, paramilitary officers have been, been extreme, have been. I've had an exceptionally positive, uniformly positive experience with them in terms of the transformation of the agency. It is, I mean, first thing is we have a totally re engineered and restructured agency. Controversial to some degree. I am one of the critics of that, but then again, I never served under that. So I don't openly criticize it because who am I to criticize something I never experienced? But the agency is physically restructured to meet the modern demands on the senior agency leadership and on the intelligence requirements of its customer base. The agency's created another directorate, the Directorate of Digital Innovation, that's to reflect, you know, the impact of digital based technology in terms of capabilities and threats. So you have the Directorate of Digital Innovation, which in and of itself has evolved since its birthing some years ago. So that's all changing. And so, you know, and the Director of Support has mutated in a positive way over time. And the Directorate of Analysis is always so well plugged into the customer community and the collecting community. That kind of, they're the connective tissue and the bridge. And they have evolved and restructured and their training program has kept pace with that, with modern demands. The agency of the Central Intelligence Agency that I served in is not the Central Intelligence Agency today. If I went back and I don't, I've been back four times. One time to do a personal meeting with Gina Hasbrouck, who I know and admire very well. And it was at the end of her ride. The other was for promotion and a medal ceremony. And so it is an agency that in some respects I wouldn't recognize. But the commitment, patriotism, the capability, competency, the energy, the passion to patriotism, you know, it's the same, but the agency is totally different. And that's the way it needs to be. It needs to be a different agency. And three years from now, the kids that are serving in the agency today, I shouldn't use the word kid, but those 72 now everybody's a kid. You guys are kids. It won't be the agency that they recognize either. Right. There'll be elements they recognize.
- [160:44]
David Park
Right.
- [160:44]
Douglas Wise
The core values of the agency are immutable and haven't changed. Right. And that's, that's the most important thing.
- [160:50]
David Park
At its core, it's still the same OSS that it was like. It's, it's still the same people with the same desire to serve the country, no matter how that service changes.
- [161:06]
Douglas Wise
Yeah. The way you serve the nation and the American people, if you. That's dramatically changed. But you're absolutely right. The commitment and the focus on the safety and security and the well being of the American people is paramount in CIA. That'll never change. Right. Yeah.
- [161:23]
David Park
And then I think last comment even isn't a question. Thank you, Love Star. We really appreciate it. And no questions. Thank you three for your services and sacrifice selflessly given when called upon by your tribe.
- [161:39]
Jack Murphy
Guys. We will see all of you next Friday with Fred Galvin, one of the first MARSOC officers. He has a book out about their MARSOC's first deployment to Afghanistan, some of the controversies around it.
- [161:53]
David Park
So we'll be talking about big controversies.
- [161:55]
Douglas Wise
That's right, yeah.
- [161:55]
Jack Murphy
Big time.
- [161:56]
David Park
Massive.
- [161:58]
Jack Murphy
So we'll talk to Fred next Friday. Doug, again, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Taking, you know, thanks. Two and a half hours out of your Friday evening to speak with us. And I'll be in touch. I mean, if it's cool with you, I'd love to reschedule you again maybe sometime over the summer.
- [162:13]
Douglas Wise
Yeah, absolutely. I would let the trauma of what I had to say, your audience, it.
- [162:21]
David Park
Was such an honor. It was such an honor for us to have you on and really we deeply, deeply appreciate it.
- [162:28]
Douglas Wise
Look, you guys are remarkable. I appreciate it very much. I look forward to coming back and we ought to do that panel things sometime in the future. That would have been. That doesn't have to include me, but I can help you build a panel.
- [162:39]
David Park
No, that would be amazing and you would. Absolutely. Thank you, Tickles. Thank you everybody and have a great night. We appreciate.