Original subtitles

There was no CIA website when I applied.

I really didn't have a good concept of what I would be doing.

Then all of a sudden I find myself in a situation that felt like it was straight

out of a movie.

They take me to a perfect interrogation cell.

I'm in the cell.

They're with me.

I start fighting.

She wanted me dead.

She tried three times, anything to stop me from getting a look at those hacked

documents. I don't know if it's well known, but the carry of Homeland is

on the carry of this story. And the carry of this story is as aggressive, as

focused as portrayed in that show.

My job was to recruit spies and steal secrets.

In a war zone, there are lives on the line. So there's a time clock.

You could get the information that helps somebody live tomorrow.

You feel a lot of pressure because if you get it wrong, there is a possibility

that it could be life or death.

So when I arrive in my second assignment, It is in the Middle East

Frank, my colleague, and I, they're going to go out and meet an asset.

As far as we can tell, no one sees us.

And we go up this back flight of stairs up to the floor where the asset lives.

An asset is a person who has agreed to work with the CIA in order to provide

information.

My name is Carrie Omelung.

The CIA's mission is to get the hard stuff, get information, and the very

hardest things to get are the plans and intentions of world leaders.

So I'm hoping that our asset has the best information and the secrets that we

need that will keep our country safe.

And, you know, protect people's lives.

In most countries, if an asset gets caught, they, at a minimum, would go to

for the rest of their life. At a maximum, they will be executed for

And about at the point where I get the camera set up, I hear like thud.

And like the sound of feet and people yelling, they bash the door in.

About six guys come in and they start yelling, you're spies, what are you

in our country?

But wait, let me start from the beginning of this story.

I'm standing in this country I've never been.

surrounded by people that speak a language that I have just learned, and

was when it hit. You know, this is for real.

In a lot of ways, I was prepared through training, quite well prepared, and

sometimes even I didn't understand how good that training was until I needed

The training can be very valuable.

One of the most important things is situational awareness. Every city in the

world, every country in the world where we conduct operations is different.

My name is Glenn Korn.

I am a retired CIA officer, and I was an instructor at the CIA's training

facility. Many people know it as the farm.

Officers go there to learn in the operations side of the agency.

What is espionage? What is counterintelligence? What is

How do you identify it?

And by the way, when you finish that training, you have a high school diploma

espionage. It takes years of being in the field and actually running

before you get your bachelor's degree, your master's degree.

Despite how good the training is, there's nothing like actually doing it

real life.

Carrie is an exceptionally gifted officer.

I developed a level of trust in her capabilities before she even showed up

the station.

My name's Robert Richer.

I was deputy chief of station, the number two in the station, in the

where Carrie was posted.

We were in French training together, so we used to go running at one of our

training locations.

And we had great conversations about operations, getting to know each other.

I'd also done my homework.

I'd seen where her prior assignment was.

I'd saw what she'd done in her prior assignment.

My first assignment, it was the end of the Cold War.

I'm 23 years old. The learning curve was like this. You don't know if your home

is bugged, your car.

You really have to be...

Always aware of, you know, where you are, what you're saying, who might be

listening.

But there was also the advantage of, you know, being young, female, American.

I could crash any diplomatic reception that I wanted to. I just put on nice

clothes, look the part, be confident, you just show up. And if you can draft

somebody, hey, how you doing, and start talking to someone, walk in with them,

then it looks like you're their date.

And then you can work the crowd.

In espionage, you have to live a double life. You have to lie.

You have to deceive people sometimes.

You have to manipulate. You have to build relationships and networks.

I would befriend somebody who looked like their kind of big man on campus and

the diplomatic crowd, draft on them to meet the person that I wanted to meet.

And that was actually better because then you were sharking sort of with

somebody in front of you.

hiding you a little bit.

I had quite a bit of success that way.

For me, a journeyman officer is someone who's learned the craft, they've

executed their craft, and they're able to do it without supervision.

So I knew I had almost a journeyman officer, and usually we won't consider

someone a journeyperson officer until they've had a couple more tours. No, she

was there already.

So when I arrived on my second assignment, I was all of about 25 years

I felt like I walked out of my first assignment with skill.

So I'm feeling a little nervous, but at the same time, I'm feeling prepared.

She was working in the agency at a time when female case officers had to work

twice as hard to prove themselves as anyone else.

And remember, this is at a time when Desert Storm is picking up.

Iraq invaded and took over its tiny neighbor Kuwait today. That set off

worldwide protest and drew sanctions from the United States, Great Britain

the Soviet Union.

So in the wake of Saddam's Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

The U .S. stood up to defend the area from further expansion of that

by Saddam. There was concern that they may go from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia or

somewhere else, and at the same time to come up with a coalition to push him out

of Kuwait.

So it was very tense.

While the coalition included Arab countries that were allies, there were

Arab countries that were less inclined to support Desert Storm and to

our work against Iraq.

So we still had to collect information on the host country's intentions and

they're doing against us.

The whole station was kind of in a turnover, you know, because assignments

two to three years in a lot of places.

And so in this case, when I arrived within days, the new chief of station

in. And I was, I'm pretty sure the first female ops officer that had been in

this country.

And she for sure, was the first female chief of station that had been in this

part of the world.

So the chief of station is generally more experienced, has had multiple

comes in to give guidance and leadership, but also to meet with the

intelligence services.

And the host country's intelligence services did not like meeting with her.

She's a woman.

So she came into a boiling pot.

were not particularly welcome in that country at that time.

So that compounded things. It was a different kind of challenge.

In this case, you know, the biggest American presence was at the U .S.

in this country.

And so that was often the center of protests.

For example, people took the yolk out of an egg and they filled it with acid

and they would throw it at your car.

And people might follow you for not reasons of espionage, but for reasons of

harassment.

I would walk down the street and people would, you know, intentionally bump into

me, try to elbow me in the chest.

It wasn't particularly safe for a Western woman alone.

And the nature of my work, of course, was to be alone at night on the streets

in my vehicle.

So you had to manage that as well.

At one point, Rob pulls me in and says, Pat, the chief of station, wants you to

take this asset.

Because I learned Frank, the guy who's handling the case now, is departing in

two months.

So we talked to Carrie and we talked to the other officer, and they arranged to

make a turnover.

And a turnover is when one case officer... Handles the other agent to

case officer. And turnovers are actually when you cement a relationship with an

asset.

Frank tells the asset, look, I'm leaving the country, but I'm going to introduce

you to a very experienced female officer.

So the guy isn't surprised when a woman walks in in this part of the world which

he hasn't seen before in this context.

This asset had been a long -term asset, and he had access to a lot of documents

from his government that were of interest. And at that point, countries

area of the world were kind of picking sides. Like, you were either, you know,

with the Kuwaitis and us, or you were with the Iraqis.

It's always really good if you can get an asset who can provide you documentary

information, like official documents.

You can have assets that can tell you things, and that's great too, but to

the proof of like, okay, I can see this document with an official stamp, and it

looks like others that we've seen, it helps to validate that this is good

information.

Hopefully, the intelligence will help us understand what the government was

thinking, and particularly at this time, were they helping Saddam Hussein?

So I probably spent two to three weeks preparing for this first meeting.

And as I'm doing this, I noticed something really strange about this case

where they were holding the meetings.

I think they're meeting this guy in his apartment.

How can that be? You know, that's not what we were trained to do.

I'm thinking this is weird.

Generally, you don't want to meet an agent in their residence.

Because there are other people that can see you.

The neighbors, the doorman, the taxi driver on the street outside. They can

that activity. They can see you arrive, so they may see a foreigner arrive, and

they say, why is a foreigner going to that person's apartment?

It can be life or death for them.

In this country, an asset being caught working for us, especially with... The

amount of documents that was involved and his position.

He was looking at, if not life imprisonment, execution.

Safety of that asset is the most important thing that you're worried

I mean, we took every precaution. If you make a mistake, real consequences are

going to happen.

Finally, before we went out, I took a tiny little paper and then I...

encrypted a phone number for another asset who they'd lost contact with.

Maybe after we do this meeting, I can hit a pay phone and try to call this

I'm going to make sure that I'm not being followed because I'm new.

I'm still learning what it looks like here.

I plan my surveillance detection route and Frank, the departing officer who was

introducing me to this asset.

Plans his.

And, of course, a flashback to training.

Surveillance detection is designed to make sure that the officer is confident

when they go to meet an agent or to do a clandestine operation that they are not

being followed.

They're not being trailed. They're not being tracked.

We park the car.

We get out several blocks away from where the meeting is going to be.

And we get out of the car.

There's no one around.

You want to make sure that no one's following you.

Because, you know, maybe in that country they have a suspicion of who you are

and what your real job is.

It's a very complicated issue, by the way. It's one of the hardest stresses in

my experience that you have as an officer.

Because a good surveillance team can be sometimes very hard to detect.

As far as we can tell, no one sees us.

And we go up this back flight of stairs.

We emerge out of the stairwell.

Look around. No one's there.

Walk quickly down to where the apartment is.

Push on the door. It's ajar, like it's supposed to be.

We walk in.

And it turns out I did not know really what I was signing up for.

In many countries, if somebody is caught meeting with a CIA officer, they can be

executed. And unfortunately, there is a history of that.

When you run an agent, you are responsible for that person's life, and

better take it seriously.

At that time, it was the original Gulf War, and this asset had been working for

us for years.

He had access to a lot of documents.

from his government.

So I have all of these things that I have brought along inside a black

purse -looking thing. So from the outside, it looks like I just have kind

like a big tote bag or purse. And it's typical of what you might see someone

carrying there.

One of the most important things that I needed was the guy's salary, which was

cash. It was definitely solid intelligence that he had been providing.

paid for that.

And all of a sudden, I hear like thud.

And like the sound of feet and people yelling.

So I take the money.

I shove it in my bag. I take the camera.

I shove it in my bag. I'm trying to do all this because I'm taking the

documents, everything that is incriminating. I'm trying to get in the

because I don't know what's going on, but it is not a good sound.

As I'm doing this, they bash the door in.

About six guys come in.

One of them has a camera.

And he's like...

Snapping pictures and they start yelling and they're saying, you know, you're

you're spies.

What do you do in our country?

And I look at Frank. He looks as surprised and confused as I am.

It's all happening really fast.

I'm really thinking about, OK, what is going on exactly?

And how do I make sure I don't do anything that makes the situation worse?

Eventually, they sort of grab a hold of us and start marching us down out of the

building.

to the cars.

Where are they taking us?

I don't know the city that well yet.

I go back to my training and a strategy for survival in this kind of a

situation.

In any stressful situation, your adrenaline is going to kick in. You have

maintain control. There are places I was where I was walking around, but we knew

that the opposition was looking to find an American to behead them.

You've got to maintain control of yourself. You can't freak out.

We pull up in front of this big brick installation, and we drive

down a ramp.

They park, and they grab a hold of us and march us into this building.

Frank is somewhere else.

They put him somewhere else. I don't know where he is. I can't hear him. I

know what's happening to him. I don't know if he's being treated worse than I

am. I don't know if they're torturing him and going to get him to say

I'm trying like 100 miles an hour trying to think about, you know, what is the

best thing for me to do in this situation?

And pulling from anything that you know from the past.

I grew up in a tiny town in the middle of Illinois.

There were 1 ,500 people and one stoplight.

I was lucky in that my mom was always really encouraging of me of any interest

that I did have.

She was a young mom.

But she was kind of a hero to me because she constantly went back to school.

Her goal was to get her undergraduate degree by the time I got mine.

And then she got her master's, and then she went for her Ph .D. So she was a

strong figure for me and someone that I never wanted to disappoint.

My mom, for sure, fought hard.

And so I tried to always be like that.

I am clutching this bag like it is my firstborn child. My fingers are, you

I'm on it.

This bag and what's inside could be life and death to the asset.

And they take me to a perfect, like out of a movie, interrogation cell.

I'm in the cell.

They're with me.

The guy with the gun points at me.

What happens if you are detained?

What happens if there is, like, an unfortunate incident?

We've had officers detained. We've had officers killed.

That's a very real concern that you have to have.

It's like the quote from Churchill, there's no safe battle.

And now they come after the bag.

I start fighting when I say, I am a diplomat. You can't do this to me under

laws of the Geneva Convention. And this bag is my property and it's covered

under those same laws, which is probably not true.

And I'd like to think that, you know, I was winning until another guy comes up

and starts peeling my fingers one by one.

And finally they get the bag.

So I'm feeling a little bit defeated at that point.

But one of the things that they taught us in training is if you're in a

situation where you are taken prisoner.

One of the most important things to do is just to sort of sit and think about

what do you know?

What are the things that you know?

What are the things that you're learning? What are their actions telling

So the first thing was I gave them every reason to clock me pretty hard upside

the head, and they didn't.

That was really kind of powerful information because I knew that threat

person wasn't their main objective.

Then I have to think about, okay, what is my strategy while in here?

I still don't know why they've done this and what they're going to do to our

asset.

And so anything I say, I'm just afraid that they will use against him.

There is training designed to teach you what to do if you're interrogated. How

do you respond?

You should never admit that you're doing something illegal.

Your cover is important.

It's explaining why are you in this place? What are you doing there?

So you have to look like what you say your job is.

Right now, in my bag, they have an official document that says I work in

embassy. So I'm going to stick to that cover.

And I'm going to stick to it as long as I can.

The CIA told me when I joined that, you know, you can't tell this to anybody,

that you really work for the CIA. For your own safety, for the effectiveness

your career.

So I told no one, except my mom, for years.

Once you profess to being a spy, you've broadened what they can ask you, and

you've put yourself in a different situation.

Critical to your survival is living your cover.

And critical to your mission is living your cover.

And critical to the lives of your agents is living your cover.

So I say, I am a diplomat, and I want to speak to my ambassador. Under the

Geneva Convention, you can't hold me prisoner without a chance to speak to my

government or my representative.

And they just keep telling me, you have no rights in this country.

Sit down and shut up.

And that was sort of the conversations that we were having.

Until somebody comes in, and I think of him now as the interrogator, and he

comes in, and he starts asking me questions. And one of the questions is,

your name?

Which I found really weird because they have my bag and in my bag is my official

ID. So they know that I'm affiliated with the embassy. So they know my name.

So why are they asking me this? So I found that was sort of weird. But OK,

maybe this is just their standard, like how they interrogate people. Like, we'll

start with your name. But that seems a little weird.

And they kept after it. And I'm like, I'm not answering any of your questions

until you let me call the U .S. ambassador.

And so that's how it goes for hours.

I don't know where Frank is.

I don't know how they're treating him.

I don't know if he said anything, what our asset has said. I don't know any of

these things. So it makes absolutely no sense in my mind for me to say a word.

And finally, you know, they get tired, they go out.

And then I remember I have this little piece of paper in my pocket.

A tiny little piece of water -soluble paper, so it's paper that dissolves when

it hits water with a phone number.

One of the other cases that I was given was an asset who they'd lost contact

with.

Earlier that day, I was thinking, okay, maybe after we do this meeting, I will

try to call this guy.

So I have this little piece of paper in my pocket.

But the fact that I've possessed water -soluble paper, you know, old -school

tools, not many people do that, you know, and people who do are usually, you

know, spies.

And that thing is like the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I think,

like, oh, God, I've got to get rid of this thing. They haven't searched my

person yet, but they could at any moment.

So if they find this paper...

What do I do?

We learn in training, everybody eventually breaks under hospital

Eventually, you know, there's a certain amount of pain and things that you just,

that threshold you cross and you'll start talking.

And so I'm thinking, how can I get rid of this encrypted phone number that

dissolves when it hits the water?

I might have stuck it in my mouth.

I can tell you something, though.

My mouth was dry.

There was a lot of adrenaline. And when you're that sort of amped up, at least

for me, my mouth goes dry. So I wasn't sure I could actually even choke the

thing down.

And the guard is really close to where I am. So there was a chance me, you know,

digging around in my back pocket, trying to pull out. He could even see that.

So I think, ah, guard, I need to go to the bathroom.

And the guard ignores me.

I really need to go to the bathroom.

So the guy, you know, grabs me by the arm, and we march out into the hallway.

And I'm thinking that I will go into the bathroom, I will pull this thing out, I

will drop it in the toilet water, and poof, it's gone.

And of course...

In this place, they do not have a women's restroom.

They have kind of a closet.

And so he takes me into this room. It's gross.

And he wants to come in with me.

Of course, that doesn't suit my plan, nor do I really want him watching me go

the bathroom. So I make a thought.

I say, no, you cannot possibly be in here.

Just leave the door open, you know, whatever. And they decide, okay, fine,

leave the door a little bit open.

But then when I go into the bathroom, it's one of the old school kind of on

floor toilets that don't have water.

Quick, quick, quick, what do I do?

Unfortunate things happen.

Bad luck strikes.

And so you need to be prepared all the time for that adversity.

My husband likes to joke that he doesn't think I have the fear gene, but I think

it also comes from that's just how you're wired.

You know, I watched my mom be strong and, you know, and she worked full time.

And so a lot of stuff I had to handle on my own.

It wasn't necessarily the most traditional upbringing.

So I suppose I had to figure out my place in the world and how to blend in

think on my feet a little bit growing up.

I'm sure there are things that I'm afraid of, but I don't dwell in that.

It's for me more like the motivation.

How do I get through this thing? How do I beat this thing?

How do I outsmart it?

I can say that in the situations where I was under a lot of stress, there was a

point in each of these situations where the training, something I learned,

snapped. And as stressed as I was and as nervous and as scared as I was,

something would say, like, this is what you were taught.

Nut up and get out there and go do the job.

Thankfully, I'm shielded enough that I'm able to

pull out the water -sol paper.

There's no water in the toilet, except the next best thing.

I pee on it.

And it worked, thank God.

I was so relieved.

I can confirm that urine works just as well as water. And that was a small

victory, but huge in my mind. And one of the other things that they taught you

in these kind of situations, or if you're being held, is Get a small

something that helps you feel like you have gotten back some of your power.

And so while I still berate myself for having that little piece of paper in my

pocket, even when I think about it now, you know, I feel like it was a little

bit of an embarrassing, unprofessional moment that I had that with me. It ended

up being empowering in that circumstance because I was able to get rid of it and

get away with it.

And so that was my first small victory.

Early morning, I get a phone call from a distraught station officer's wife

noting her husband frankly hasn't come home.

Now, could he have been out having a beer somewhere in town?

A personal relationship he hadn't disclosed?

That's possible, but it wasn't that officer's character.

At that point, we knew that our officers, at least one officer, had a

So that was a concern.

So after I get rid of the water stall, they take me back into the cell, and I'm

sitting there, and I'm thinking, okay, relief.

I've solved a problem. That is good.

I've made my little victory.

I get to start thinking.

Think about what's happening.

Are there clues?

Are there things I can learn from this?

I'm pulling back again from my training.

Okay, I'm going to replay everything in my head that happened.

So I go back over how they came into the apartment.

I go back over to the guy with the camera.

I feel very confident that we did not bring the surveillance to this meeting.

wasn't something that we did.

And then I remember what was happening to the asset.

At some point when they were coming into the apartment, I look up at the asset,

and I look at his eyes, and he doesn't look as scared as I would imagine him to

look.

It's kind of weird. Like, it just hit me wrong. Like, this guy doesn't look

surprised, even.

If anything, he might even look a little bit guilty in the eyes. I mean, this is

all, like, happening in a second, so, I mean, I could be wrong.

But it just didn't feel right.

It starts to really come through that, yeah, this was a setup. This was all

planned. They knew that meeting was going to happen, and they were there

waiting.

They knew that we were spying and very unhappy about it.

All of a sudden, the guard that's in the room with me kind of snaps to

attention, and I hear some voices in the hallway.

And this man in a suit, like a proper suit.

Kind of stomps into the room, looks at me, comes up and he kind of grabs my

face.

And he says, who the hell are you?

He touched my face and pinched it. I mean, I didn't understand why.

Possibly he thought I had some sort of mask or disguise on, but he

was clearly expecting something different than what.

She found with me.

Looks at the guard. The guard looks kind of scared. He looks as surprised and

confused as I am.

And the guy thumps out.

Okay, that's weird.

It was early morning hours.

Not long after, gotten a phone call from the station officer's wife. Phone rings

again. It's the deputy chief of the internal service of that particular

saying, I need you to come to the...

Building, no, and bring your chief.

And then I hear a commotion again.

This time, everybody starts moving, and I hear voices, and I hear more voices,

and they grab me by the arm, one on each side of me, and march me out into the

hallway.

We're walking forward, and out from one of these other rooms in the hallway

comes Frank with his guy.

The room that he emerged from looked like an office room.

Like, not like the dirty -caught naked lightbulb room that I was in, but he

seemed to be in somebody's office.

Okay. They gave me a different reception than they gave him.

We all kind of form in a group, and we march out, and we go out into the dead

night.

The chief and I walk in, and the...

The liaison chief starts lecturing me about what an embarrassment. They were

upset. Why would you do this? We will tell you anything. They went out of

way to express their displeasure with us.

And I keep looking to the chief.

She understood it exactly and tried to engage. He wouldn't even talk to her.

He wouldn't even talk to her.

It was very disrespectful.

He finally looks to me and he says, you are the chief of this old dog.

We are done with her.

I'm trying my best to sort of see where they're taking us because I have no

idea.

We go into this courtyard area.

It's just kind of grassy and devoid of anyone.

And we're walking across it.

And in one of the most inappropriately funny moments of my career, Frank says,

well, I hope they at least give us a cigarette before the firing squad comes.

They march us across the rest of the courtyard and into the building. And at

this point, the lights are, you know, like super bright and we're going

and into this beautiful conference room, which is not what I expected at all.

And at the head of the table is the guy in the suit who had come in and was so

displeased to see me.

I know that he's important in this organization, which I assume is their

equivalent intelligence service. And then I look to his right.

And there's Rob, my deputy chief of station.

Rob looks over at me and says, are you OK?

And I'm like, I'm fine.

And the guy at the head of the station was like, oh, it does speak.

First, we had to have a very long and strident lecture about.

how terrible we were and what we were doing and how dare we, and this is their

country, and how can we be like this? And, you know, we had to hear a very

sort of lecture about everything.

Carrie was almost belligerent. I was watching her face, and she's just, like,

ready to take them on.

But she never broke cover.

Never broke cover.

I was given 24 hours to leave the country.

And Frank was given a couple of days.

We were lucky because many times they'll PNG the whole station.

Persona non grata means basically get out of my country now.

They said these officers need to leave the country.

We are not going to make it a big public event.

However, this has been embarrassing. This is going to hurt relations.

And your ambassador will be told about it by the foreign minister.

Afterwards, they're released.

We then go into a deep breach in the secure space to help us understand

what happened.

Frank and I were worried that people would think that we had made the mistake

and that's why this happened.

And we start piecing together a little bit.

You know, I have little bits that I recall. Frank has little bits that he

recalls. We put it together. And then also Rob had some really interesting

perspective because he's been dealing with the head of the service and the one

called in.

So we start, you know, talking about it. Both of us are sure that we didn't

bring surveillance, that this was all planned, that was borne out by the way

that they came in.

How many of them, the camera, the charges of espionage immediately, and

disappearance of the guy.

And then the big question, why did they call Rob and not Pat, the chief of

station?

Why were they so surprised to see me?

The man coming in, tugging on my face.

Frank being put in what looked like kind of an office, and I was in a jail cell.

Rob was like, okay, Frank, what did you tell the asset about the new officer?

Well, I told him it was a female officer because I didn't want him to be shocked

and that she was very experienced.

Carrie and the chief of station are tall women, relatively tall women, and about

the same size.

They would not believe that we would have two female officers, and they

they had the chief.

They thought they caught her, and they're going to get her out of the

We're going to get that woman out of here.

You know, if you want to embarrass the CIA in your country and maybe get them

out, what a better way to catch the chief of station red handed. It would

been a big win for them.

But I'm still really concerned, you know, about what happened to the asset.

It turns out that the asset had earlier in his marriage been stepping out

on his wife.

And, you know, once.

Hell Hath No Fury, she watched that guy like a hawk. And one

day, apparently, she was talking to some of her extended family and griped about

him and meeting these Americans. And it was the wrong person to say that to

because that got back to the country intelligence service.

And they started watching him.

They apparently caught him taking documents out.

And then we're able to coerce him into working for them to catch us.

After that, he went to jail. I mean, they did not forgive him for the

for sure.

My gut feeling is that they would have let this asset run against us and feed

information, because it's always in the other side's interest to give you false

information and to see what you're interested in. But when that asset was

and reported, hey, it's going to be a woman.

They said, we got the chief.

She was doomed from the day she got there.

When I came back to Washington, walking into that building, it was

probably almost as scary as the event itself.

You don't know how it's going to land on people in Washington. And if there were

political ramifications that reached to the White House.

were they going to give me another overseas assignment?

Do I have a career left?

So I go in to meet the chief of the division.

He was like, I understand, I've read, you know, and I've talked to Rob, and

just go, you take care of yourself, you take a little bit of time, and we'll

talk to you about what's next.

So it wasn't really definitive.

Later on, I found out that Rob, first thing in the morning that morning, he

on the secure line, called Washington and explained what had happened.

And he had already shaped the narrative of what had happened. And so it didn't

have a chance to land the wrong way.

I was not going to let Washington hold them accountable for anything that they

did not do.

But for the most part, if an op was compromised and you had nothing to do

it, and the review shows that, we move on.

We all expect something bad to happen in our careers. The object is how you

mitigate it and how you handle it.

I mean, I already had a lot of respect for Rob.

But this is when it really grew.

He was like, you're fine.

We're going to sort everything out. Don't you worry.

You know, it's going to be okay.

That was, I mean, you can see I'm emotional about it.

After that incident, the chief and I had to vote.

Put down long reports, talk about it, what we knew and what we did beforehand.

The chief was sent out not long after that.

And I was recalled by the Marine Corps for Desert Storm.

And like everything else, station continued.

New manager was brought in.

New athletes were probably recruited.

After that meeting, I saw in the hallway one of the people that I'd worked for

during training. And he saw me and said, hey, I heard what happened to you.

Come see me. I think I got a job for you.

And that was, you know, that was the best thing to hear, and it did.

You know, somebody who stepped up and had my back.

I had a long agency career after that, and I was able to pay it back.

I was able to go on, and I was able to be chief of station several times.

And those lessons stayed with me, and I always tried to be that kind of leader

to my people.

I retired from the CIA after 33 1⁄2 years of service.

People have to understand it's a hard life, but it's very rewarding.

Because there's no better feeling than stopping a terrorist attack, than having

a source and a network that can warn you they're going to kill the U .S.

ambassador in this country. They made the decision last night, and this is how

they're going to do it. And then being able to disrupt that threat.

This job is about risk. It's about managing risk. It's about walking up to

line.

But we have a job to do.

And for me, it was all about always trying to make the world a safer place.

I'm proud of that.