#31 Marc Polymeropoulos - CIA Senior Intelligence Officer

Marc Polymeropoulos gives great insight of what a career from start to finish at CIA would be like. We discuss how he was recruited, his training at the farm, and his deployments killing bad guys. Marc then discusses his trauma from Havana syndrome. Believed to be caused by microwave weapons. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:30Shawn Ryan?

  I want to take a minute to tell you about Vigilance Elite Patreon. Patron support is what makes this show possible and gives me the ability to bring these one-of-a-kind stories to the public. Go to patreon.com/vigilanceelite and support The Sean Ryan Show today. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This episode is broken up into basically two different portions. First portion being all about CIA. How he got recruited, what it was like in the training pipeline over at the farm, and what it's like being an operative. Second portion is all about Havana syndrome. Havana syndrome is basically a severe traumatic brain injury believed to be caused by microwave

• 2:15Shawn Ryan?

  weapons. Pretty interesting stuff. Anyways, I just want to thank you guys for being here. I love you all. Thank you for the support. Please like and subscribe to the channel and if you're feeling extra generous, head over to iTunes or Spotify and leave us a review. Links are in the description. Love you guys. Enjoy the show.

• 2:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  These people would gut your sister. You put them on the streets of America, they would kill every American. Scary is the wrong word. They're just fucking evil.

• 2:48Shawn Ryan?

  They would do it.

• 2:49Marc Polymeropoulos?

  They would.

• 2:52Shawn Ryan?

  There's not a doubt in my mind that you're directly responsible for the deaths of several bad guys.

• 3:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And the night where a Hellfire missile, you know, ended the life of a really bad guy because it's not only responsible for killing two of our officers, but he was plotting additional attacks. I have the phone number back in Fort Bragg of the widow of one of these officers. We should call her. And we called her and we said, "We avenge the death of your husband." And she just said, "Thank you."

• 3:24Speaker 06

  Since 2016, US government officials overseas and their families have reported sudden, unexplained brain injuries. These officials were injured by an unseen weapon.

• 3:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But look, in 2016 in Havana, Cuba, the US Embassy there, there was a rash of these, you know, kind of mysterious injuries in which US intelligence officers and diplomats, as well as the Canadian Embassy staff, you know, heard this kind of high pitched sound, but really suffered debilitating injuries.

• 4:11Shawn Ryan?

  Many of you probably know by now, earlier this year, I did a psychedelic healing journey, and that changed many aspects of my life for the better. Two of them being, I haven't had any alcohol or coffee in over six months. Another aspect that changed of mine is my morning ritual, and I want to tell you guys about my new addition to my morning ritual, Mudwater. It's a coffee replacement. In my opinion, the best thing about Mudwater is every single ingredient was added for a very specific purpose. Cacao and chai for mood and a microdose of caffeine. Lion's mane for alertness. Cordyceps to help support physical performance.

• 4:53Shawn Ryan?

  Chaga and reshi to support your immune system. Turmeric for soreness and cinnamon for antioxidants. Not only is Mudwater good for you, it also tastes incredible. My favorite ingredient is the lion's mane because it keeps my brain alert all hours of the day. Some people like to mix their Mudwater with milk, some people like to put some honey in it. Personally, myself, I just dump it in a glass of water, stir it up, and throw it down the hatch. Mudwater is Whole30 approved, 100% USDA organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, and kosher certified. Mudwater also donates monthly to the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, as

• 5:38Shawn Ryan?

  Mudwater believes the country is in a mental health epidemic, and so do I. Go to mudwater.com/shawn to support the show and use code Shawn for 15% off. That's mudwater.com/shawn, use code Shawn for 15% off.

• 6:01Shawn Ryan?

  Mark Polymeropoulos.

• 6:04Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Nailed my name, you got it.

• 6:06Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I had to say that like 20 times. But, um, hey, welcome to the show. I really appreciate you coming out.

• 6:12Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Thanks for having me. It's good to be in Tennessee. It's hot.

• 6:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it is. We got a heat wave going right now. But, um, 26 years CIA intel officer. The author of Clarity in Crisis and victim of Havana Syndrome. So we got a lot we're gonna dive into today. I did quite a bit of research on Havana Syndrome and I had no idea how many different places that was happening and, uh, I can't wait to dive into your experience and where you think that's coming from. But, um, and we also want to cover a lot of your

• 6:49Shawn Ryan?

  agency career and, um, and then we'll get into what you're doing today. But every guest starts off with a gift.

• 6:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  All right. Thank you. Do I open it now?

• 7:01Shawn Ryan?

  Absolutely. You gotta open it now.

• 7:05Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Well, you pronounced my name correctly, so I can get this right.

• 7:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I'm tearing this thing apart.

• 7:15Shawn Ryan?

  Just rip into it.

• 7:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Jesus. All right, gummy bears. I love it. Thank you.

• 7:21Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 7:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And a t-shirt too. I love it. Hope it's a extra large in my, in my, in my retirement.

• 7:27Shawn Ryan?

  Anybody's.

• 7:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I gotta start hitting the, hitting the gym a little more. Thank you very much.

• 7:31Shawn Ryan?

  You just throw it wherever. Yeah, I, I thought anybody who's deployed with CIA knows that agency personnel love a good candy aisle.

• 7:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That's right.

• 7:40Shawn Ryan?

  Right?

• 7:41Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Gotta have a lot of swag and candy aisle for sure. But, but let me just say, Sean, I gotta, gotta say one thing. You pronounced my name correctly. And that's it. That you, so we're gonna have a great interview and I always tell the story. Um, back when I was in the Middle East, maybe 2005, 2006, I was a deputy station chief and there was a crisis. And the president's briefer has called me. I was a, uh, I was sitting in an embassy. And they said, we gotta go down and see George W. Bush. You know, gotta see W. Um, I gave my take on the crisis, pretty excited about it, waited by the secure phone. Hours later, they called back and I said, how was it? Pretty pumped, you know, junior officer, you know, like the president's gonna hear what I had to say. And they came back and they said, the entire time in the Oval Office, W was trying to pronounce your last name. That's it.

• 8:23Shawn Ryan?

  I can relate.

• 8:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You are, you are one up on him.

• 8:25Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, hey, I practiced it before he got here.

• 8:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That's right.

• 8:28Shawn Ryan?

  But um, just before we dive in, just off the wall question.

• 8:32Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure, sure.

• 8:33Shawn Ryan?

  All this UAP UFO stuff's going on in the news right now. Congress just had their first congressional hearing on it in what 50 years?

• 8:42Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Shawn Ryan?

  What do you, what do you think is going on here?

• 8:45Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, I think that when you, you know, I've gotten at 53 years old now, you know, smart enough to know that I don't know everything. Um, and so while, you know, I think probably 20 years ago, I would have dismissed all this as nonsense. I don't know. I'm kind of open minded now.

• 9:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, and, and so I think that clearly, you know, the American people deserve to know if this is, if there is something to this or not. I will tell you, I've talked to pilots who've seen weird stuff. You know, you and I have had a lot of, you know, time, um, dealing probably with Air Force and Navy, uh, you know, naval aviators. They see stuff. And one of my buddies, the B one pilot, um, at the Air Force and, and the Air Force still is now. And I said, what do you think about this? And he's like, I don't know. So I'd be open minded. I think that as you get older, it's probably the right thing to do.

• 9:31Shawn Ryan?

  I'm open minded.

• 9:32Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 9:32Shawn Ryan?

  I always used to just write it off as testing, you know?

• 9:36Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 9:36Shawn Ryan?

  Military's testing stuff, agencies testing stuff.

• 9:38Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Drone stuff, who knows, you know, all the experimental stuff. I mean, so much, I think so many of these cases, you know, happened out in the, in the West and Nevada, obviously testing grounds everywhere. Um, it's funny, I, I've actually been to Roswell, New Mexico.

• 9:52Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 9:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, I have been because before a deployment, um, to Afghanistan, uh, we, we went out there, um, because the terrain is so similar. Um, and so there's, you know, there was, there were took some, did some, did some shooting, did some blowing stuff up, um, out in New Mexico. So I don't know. I went to Roswell. I saw the little crazy UFO things, T-shirts everywhere. I don't know. Who knows? I, I don't dismiss stuff. There's, there's, you know, there, there might be an explanation one day. We'll see.

• 10:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I hope so.

• 10:18Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting.

• 10:19Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 10:19Shawn Ryan?

  It's interesting stuff.

• 10:20Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That's not an off the wall question, by the way.

• 10:23Shawn Ryan?

  You never know what you're gonna get, you know, but, um. Well, let's dive into when when did you first realize you wanted to go into intelligence community?

• 10:33Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So, you know, everyone has their kind of their origin story, you know, the journey that you have. I think for me, you know, I was a kind of a product of an odd, you know, marriage, my mom and dad. So my mom was a nice Jewish girl from Long Island and my dad was a true Greek off the boat going to university in the States. And so they meet and, you know, it's a it's a marriage which, you know, both sides of the family totally objected to, different cultures, religions, everything. Um, but they left after they both finished university and they went to Greece. And so I was born in Greece. Um, and my dad came back. He was a college professor at Rutgers for his whole career. Um, but because of that, we would go back every summer. So automatically here I am, you know, as a kid growing up every two months or so, uh, or every year I'd go for two months to the Greek islands. Not bad.

• 11:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, even though I was a middle class kid from New Jersey, we didn't have much money. We always kind of saved to do that. And so I was able to travel. I was able to see the world. And then kind of the seminal event for me, it's amazing. I think about it, you know, even today, I have a picture of this even in my house back in Vienna, Virginia is my dad took a sabbatical teaching, um, in Algeria, you know, North African country. This is before it was racked by an Islamic, you know, insurgency. And, uh, at 10 years old, he's gone for a year. Uh, my mom and who do this now, I mean, I have two kids in college, you know, we're always worried about, I know, you know, you each had a kid, right? So you got to see it, you know, how are you going to raise them? What are you going to let them experience? But my mom put me on an airplane when I was 10 by myself, flying through Paris off to, uh, you know, uh, uh, Algiers, the capital.

• 11:58Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And my dad and I for, um, for a solid month, drove 2,000 miles in the Sahara Desert in an old Volkswagen minibus with one of my dad's buddies. And I thought I was Lawrence of Arabia. And so at 10, I'm thinking like, I want to do this, like this is unbelievable. Um, and I fell in love with the Middle East. And so, you know, I probably read, you know, a lot of Tom Clancy books over the years and, um, but I always knew I wanted to do public service and it was, it was either going to be the CIA. I was, uh, thinking about DEA, I was thinking about FBI, um, like everyone else, I, you know, uh, I wanted to be a Navy pilot, but my eyes went bad. I got Lasix, you know, a couple of years ago, but I had glasses. So, but, but CIA seemed like the right thing to do. And I was at up at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Um, uh, and, uh, and CIA recruiter was there and I walked in and, uh, only job I ever had.

• 12:44Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Really? Yep, never did anything else in my life, until now. So, did you go to the recruiter? Um, he was, you know, he was at the career office, you know? And I, I made an appointment and I had an initial interview and I said I wanted to join the CIA and they said, okay. And then, of course, it took, you know, eighteen months. Um, I had so much of a background in terms of, you know, obviously, family overseas and, and just getting the security clearances. Plus, I think my fraternity brothers in college didn't make it easier. Um, you know, and they come and, and I think, a classic case, I think they wrote this all off. Um, I did have to sign something about, you know, alcohol and drug use and what they alleged I had done in college. But they went to, they went to see my, all my college buddies who, after we graduated, um, were living out in Breckenridge, Colorado, so just go think about.

• 13:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And they walked in, I think there was a mattress on the floor, a bong and beer cans everywhere. And they said, you know, have you ever seen Mark do any of this stuff? And they said, never. It's, it's surrounded by this. So, it took me, it took me eighteen months to get cleared. But really, that, that was it. So, you know, off I go into, into, into CIA. Really is the only job I really ever had. I mean, I had summer jobs, painting houses and doing, you know, work to make money in college. Um, but pretty amazing. It's a, it's, you know, and I think that's unusual now. What were they, did they steer you in a direction? Yeah. So, I went in, so I'd, I'd undergradged in a master's degree, um, in, in, you know, in public policy, but focused on, on the Middle East. So, I went into the Director of Intelligence first as an analyst. Um, uh, and, you know, it was a way in the door. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, if I wanted to be an operations officer, you know, which is, you know, handling,

• 14:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  spotting assessing handling, um, spies and, of course, recruiting, you know, spies. Those are foreigners who, obviously, um, provide us information. Um, uh, but I started off as an analyst and it was actually really interesting for me. For the first two years I did that. Um, I went off on a temporary duty assignment to the Middle East. Um, uh, uh, you know, maybe two or, maybe two or three years after, after I, I joined. And I knew right then I wanted to go on the operations side of it. But, um, what being an analyst taught me how to do was to kind of brief, but to write, which is, which is critical. Because in our job, and, you know, we'll talk about it later, the job of a, of a case officer, um, you can have, you know, you know, if you go to an agent meeting, you collect information. If you don't write it down in the cable, um, didn't happen. Um, but one of the-

• 14:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  One of the really interesting things I did, my first job was on the Afghan desk. And I was with some senior analysts there, but this was a paper, this was written in 1994. About the Mujahideen, the Afghan Arabs who were fighting in Afghanistan and a young financier, you know where this is going, named Osama bin Laden. 1994 is one of the first papers written. No kidding. At CIA and friends of mine who were involved in this, I think people have tried to, you know, submit FOIA requests for this, but you know, the agency was tracking this back then, not a lot of people, but bin Laden was on the radar screen and the Afghan Arabs, there was 10,000. Who came and fought, you know, in the, you know, with the Mujahideen. Against the Soviet Union until obviously the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, but

• 15:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  they were radicalized and they were going to be a problem and we knew it back then. Wow, wow, so you were an analyst for two years? About two years, yeah. And then I decided, look, I want to be, so I went off for a three month assignment to, obviously, a location I can't talk about in the Middle East. And I said, look, I gotta be, you know, it's my personality, I wanted to live overseas. And so I wanted to be a case officer and I came back and just, you know, whether, whether you like him or not, I'll mention the name, certainly controversial, but I went into my boss at the time, his name was John Brennan. And I said, I said, look, I think I want to become a case officer, I'm going to leave. And he said, sure, no problem. And he actually, he didn't fight me on this at all. So I probably was the world's crappiest analyst. You know, I was pretty shitty at it, so. You know, later on, when he was CIA director, I would, I would, you know, mention this story to him and he didn't remember it.

• 16:23Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But it, but it was funny, but, but on, you know, on a good note, the agency didn't want me to leave. You know, they recognized something about me and so instead of, you know, I could have quit, but I said, I want to become case officer, so I kind of switched over to the operations side, went down the farm, which is our training facility, which is the worst kept secret on the planet. And then off I went, you know, with, I think, seven operational tours, almost three years in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of tough times, a lot of great times, you know, it's a, it's a journey that's filled with a lot of, a lot of incredible successes, a lot of humility, I had friends who were killed. You know, I'd lost agents. And so a lot of good, a lot of bad, and it's, you kind of sit back at the end of your career and. Scratch your head and you wonder if it was worth it or not. Um, and of course, and we'll talk about it later, kind of the end of my career was when I had the fateful

• 17:08Marc Polymeropoulos?

  trip to Moscow, but save that for later.

• 17:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's talk about the farm a little bit. What was that? How long is that training pipeline?

• 17:15Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So, you know, I, I think it's changed over the years. Um, and it's not terribly difficult. So it's anywhere from six months to a year, at least, you know, my recollection. Um, they change this over time, just in terms of, you know, kind of adding training evolutions or, or maybe doing them up north. Um, you know, it's CIA headquarters, but it's obviously it's at a, you know, secret sort of mill, uh, uh, base in, uh, in Virginia. Um, but the idea is to teach you tradecraft. And so it's, it's the, again, it's the concept of, um, well, first and foremost, you know, the basic, the basic fundamental trait that you need to learn as a case officer is surveillance detection. Um, so you basically have people follow you, you know, for, for, you know, weeks and months on end. And, and it's the idea of getting to it from one location to another, doing things such

• 17:59Marc Polymeropoulos?

  as, um, you know, taking certain turns, putting on disguises, you know, changing modes of transportation. But if you're going to meet an agent securely, you know, you can't bring surveillance with you. So it's like, you know, in your old job in the teams, like if you can't shoot, you're not going to be a Navy SEAL.

• 18:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:14Marc Polymeropoulos?

  A CIA case officer, you can't, if you can't run a successful surveillance detection, it's a basic, basic process. Um, and so that's, you know, they, they teach you that. And then it's the other part of the tradecraft pieces is how to handle and recruit agents. So it's the idea of how do you get an individual, um, you know, who, and you have to find their, their motivations, their vulnerabilities, um, and get them to kind of switch over, switch over, come on our side. And one of the things that I found about the training class, um, and this doesn't, this is not for everything that we do, or we did it at CIA, but it's pretty realistic. Um, and one of the things that I found was, was inspiring, and I heard this over and over again, from even from when I, you know, when I was managing in the field and young case officers would come out of the farm is, you know, they'd go to assignment and they say, actually, this is kind of like the farm. It's real.

• 18:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But the beauty of it is, is America does offer something. Um, and I, and I, you know, no matter what happens in our country, I'll always, I'll always feel this way that, you know, I, I do believe in American exceptionalism, but the, you know, recruiting agents is not particularly difficult because of what America has to offer, which is both, you know, political freedoms, but economic freedoms. And so, you know, so, so a prospective candidate who's going to be a spy, an agent candidate. Remember CIA, we're not agents. Um, we're your intelligence officer. An agent is someone we recruit, um, a foreigner, a Russian, a Chinese, an Iranian. But ultimately, they want something that they don't have, or they have something that they need. And a lot of times, it could be, you know, they want their kids to get educated in the United States, or maybe there's someone has a medical issue in their family.

• 19:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Or maybe they need money, or maybe they've hit a glass ceiling because their country doesn't have the same kind of, kind of, just justness and fairness that we do, and that you can make something yourself. So, we find those vulnerabilities, and then eventually you meet them and bring them along to get them to spy on their country. But, but I think that just fundamentally, as an American, we have a, we have an advantage. And I'll tell you, I recruited agents, everything from, you know, again, you know, a tangible need, maybe someone needed, you know, medical assistance from a sick relative, to, literally, they were fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers. They loved American football. They were living in some, you know, godforsaken country and were able to watch some TV, and, and, you know, through our contacts, I'd get them a, a signed football helmet from the Steelers. So, so ultimately, but that's what they teach you down the farm, is how to, you know, what's

• 20:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  the process of, of recruiting and handling a spy? And, you know, it's a, it's not a, it's not, you know, mentally challenging, certainly not like, you know, what you went through with Bud's in terms of physically challenging. It's a lot of time management, and that's the key. And the weeding out process really is surveillance detection skills, and again, just the ability to, to kind of crunch your time and have this kind of information overload. And ultimately, you know, they, they produce officers who, who, you know, well, the last piece, I think, was critical, is the ability to operate on your own. Unlike, you know, the military, CIA is actually kind of a different beast, and where, you know, a case officer is out on their own, whether they're handling an agent, meeting an agent, recruiting someone, you're never, you know, usually you're not with someone

• 21:09Marc Polymeropoulos?

  else. And so, it's that ability to think on your own, which is, was really critical, as they kind of weed out folks going through the, going through the class. What is the attrition rate? I don't know if it's particularly large. I mean, my class, it's funny, so, you know, the classes were huge after 9/11 in the hundreds. My class was tiny. They only had thirty plus and there was only a couple of them that year and that was pre nine eleven so everything changed. But the attrition rate I think is is small in a sense that maybe maybe ten or so out of that out of our thirty didn't make it. But what is more important is how you're just getting in in the first place. I mean, I think the attrition is more in the screening processes. Where you go through tons of stuff even to get to that point. But it's it's not like it's not like, you know, selection for for, you know, your old your old life.

• 21:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I think it's a they do a lot of that in advance rather than through the course itself. And then really, people drop out, people don't make it because they can't detect surveillance and some people can't. I mean, you know, it's just the idea of have, you know, having street awareness.

• 22:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And street smarts. And the other is just kind of that information overload and how to deal and time management. Because that and that's why at the end of the day, the class is actually realistic to what you what you see in the field.

• 22:16Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So when you show up, they they actually want everybody to make it.

• 22:20Marc Polymeropoulos?

  They really do. It's it's different, you know, and it's funny, there's, you know, there are, you know, interesting folks who come through. It's not all, you know, it's not all going to be kind of type A personality, you know, former military, first former special operations. There's them, there are some introverts, there's some true kind of academics. But they got to have those those street skills. But the end, at the end, they want you to get through. And I think that the idea is the selection has occurred almost in advance and but but again, you know, the it's it's months and months of of basically, you know, just as as I think, you know, you're familiar with, having people stare at you, you know, twenty hours a day. And in particularly, you know, when when you get to the end of the training cycles,

• 23:03Marc Polymeropoulos?

  and again, very similar to the special operations world where you have these kind of real world training scenarios, kind of final final exam over a week or two weeks, that's where they turn up the heat. And I'll tell you that that you do lose people and and that's that's a pretty, you know, awful feeling seeing some some people you've spent, you know, almost a year with, you know, not make it the last two weeks. But there's a reason for it because in real world, you want them want to be ready.

• 23:25Shawn Ryan?

  Where do they go if if you don't make it?

• 23:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That's a great question.

• 23:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you got the clearance.

• 23:30Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep. So they will give you an opportunity, they used to, to to go somewhere else in the organization. You know, CIA is made up of, obviously, the operational side we're talking about here, but there's obviously an analytic side, we talked about it before, there's a, you know, there's a science and technology side. So there's other places. I think they'll give you some time to. To uh to find another job and some people take it. I think a lot of them don't. Um, and again, it's it's it's the kind of thing where you know that that I there's and. I don't know. Some people I think should have made it. Who didn't and just you probably can identify this. Some people who made it. You're like.

• 24:03Shawn Ryan?

  That's with every outfit.

• 24:04Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep, every outfit.

• 24:05Shawn Ryan?

  That's with every outfit.

• 24:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But it's a it was a it was a really good. Um, you know, uh, uh, course which taught you a lot about yourself. Um, and it really is realistic. And like, look, there's a thousand things about the US government, about the agency that we can, you know, all be. Critical of. I'm sure you agree. Um, but the this training evolution for becoming a case officer is pretty damn good.

• 24:26Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I've seen I've worked with you guys a lot about nine years.

• 24:31Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure.

• 24:31Shawn Ryan?

  And uh. I can't remember how many deployments. And I've always the majority I've seen. With you guys developing assets and spies is is in recruiting. Recruiting people. I see a lot of turnover. You know, I see a new case officer come in. They take over. Uh, the management of the asset. I've I've only seen a few times where. We actually are. Going after somebody new and uh and trying to turn them, but. But what I've never. Discussed, to be honest with you is is. You show up to a brand new base. Nobody's been there. And you're recruiting. Where where do you even begin?

• 25:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, I mean, so like area fam is is, you know, is the number one thing. So for a variety of reasons. So you you gotta get there. So. You know, first of all, you know, hopefully you're taking turnover from someone, but if it's a new base, you know, you gotta get the lay of the land. Um, you know, one of the things that CI is really good about and and we kind of it it went away a bit with the war zone deployments, only because. It was such a mad rush to get a lot of people out there that they didn't have kind of proper language skills. But if but if you know, if we prepared properly before you go out and assignment, you you know, the local language, you know, the culture, you know, the religion. Um, and then you kind of get there and you hit the streets and then so you know, one of the things for me is one of the the differences, I think, between. You know, uh, uh, CI operations officer. And and someone from perhaps the State Department, um, or even even.

• 25:56Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Someone in the US military who's used to being on a bases, you know, I would, I would look around like when I was managing in the field, if, if I see my guys and gals there, what are you doing here? You better be out in the street, you better be on every street corner, you better be talking to everybody. Um, you know, one of the things that you want your officers to do is be the smartest person, you know, uh, in that area, you know, for the US government, period. Um, and, and I, I remember, uh, I was in the Middle East one time and, uh, and there was a senior congressional delegation and, and I was the deputy station chief and, you know, whether you like her or not, I'm gonna, you know, maybe some of your listeners or viewers won't, but Nancy Pelosi came out, I mean, she had, she at the time was the, the majority leader, speaker of the house, whatever it was, the number two or three person, you know, one of the most powerful people in the US government.

• 26:38Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, uh, the ambassador actually told her, ambassador had just gotten there, told her, hey, go talk to Mark, he's the smartest person on this country. Um, and I was really proud of that and it's, it doesn't matter, it's irrelevant on which political, you know, American political figure came. Um, but ultimately, you know, that's what you want to be because I, you spend no time uh, in the embassy or the base. Um, your, your whole job is to be on the street and so you develop, you know, so you, you kind of, you can go, you know, step by step. So you gotta know, um, you know, who are the powerful people in that area. So maybe if it's Iraq, you know, Iraq or Afghanistan, obviously we have local contacts, who are the warlords, you know, who are the power brokers and you just had to kind of go from there and, and in the end, you know, you're, you're throwing a net out. Um, got to overturn rocks and, and there's people out there with information that we need, we find them.

• 27:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, it's not particularly hard, uh, uh, to, to recruit, what it does do, it's, it's just, it's, you know, shoe leather, it's, it's hitting the streets. Um, cause ultimately again, we have a, we have a, uh, you know, uh, kind of the best, um, you know, when I say product to sell, but ultimately it's the United States and whether it's, you know, it's, whether it's a war zone, if Iraq or Afghanistan, it was, it was not difficult to recruit agents because, um, you know, we paid well and we were gonna win. Now whether, we can have a long discussion on whether that was successful or not, but, um, but, but I, I remember in Afghanistan, you know, one of the most interesting things, getting to a base one time and I, and I talked to, we had a local, um, contact, he wasn't, he wasn't even a recruited agent, but, but ultimately I said, you know, what's your story?

• 28:05Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And he said, well, you know, I was, I was a member of the, um, communists under the Najibullah regime in Afghanistan, you know, this is decades ago. And then the Soviets invaded and I became a mujahideen and then the Taliban took over and I became a Taliban, then you guys came, I'm with you all now. And so that's just, you gotta find people who are willing to help.

• 28:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  What are you guys using as a cover? You know, I know it's always different, but... It depends where, and this is where, you know, you, the, the, obviously, you know, there's different elements of the United States government that can provide cover for us. I can't tell you which, um, uh, you know, and sometimes, or, you know, whether it's the, you know, the military or other, other places, or you're there as a, as a declared representative. And so, you know, the more senior, you know, individuals at a, at a station or base, um, you know, might be declared to the host government. Um, so it just depends. And then we have non-official cover officers who pose as businessmen and business women. Do you think they know? Um, a lot of times, yes. So, so if you're doing your job successfully by the end of your tour, um, they're gonna know. Because who else, you know, it's, cause, you know, US military officers, um, or, or, you

• 29:09Marc Polymeropoulos?

  know, a State Department political officer, an economic officer, maybe they're not, you know, out eight, you know, eight nights a week, seven nights a week. I'm joking, but you know, so it's, you know, our job is just to know, know the streets. So you look a little bit different, but, uh, but that's okay, because what is gonna beat the adversary in the end, that's your tradecraft. So let's say I'm in a certain location and, and my cover is, is kind of shredded at that time. Um, well, I still have to go meet an agent. Well, my tradecraft, how I run that surveillance detection route is gonna beat the adversary. Um, but at some point, it's time to go as well, and you know that. Yeah. Uh, and you try, I remember one, one tour I had, um, there was a, it was a US television network came out and they were asking around, um, kind of locals, and I had a lot of local contacts.

• 29:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, uh, and, and I remember the, the, uh, some of the local contacts told me, I said, you know, what, who are they, who are they asking for? And they said, well, you know, this, this, this US, um, uh, journalist was asking, like, you know, who's the smartest person in this country? And they said, and my local contact said, was said the word around town was go ask the CIA guy around, you know, it's Mark. And I was like, ah, that's not good. That's, you know, that's, maybe I've been here too long. And then, then that's, and that's why we have, you know, a two or three year assignment in a place, because it, you know, it's sometimes, um, it's time to go. And the other part too is, you know, being a CIA officer, there's, there's some risk involved. And depending where you are, you know, um, uh, you know, risk, risk gets elevated if you're, uh, you know, if you're in a country too long, so. Yeah, we've, we've both seen that play out in bad ways.

• 30:38Shawn Ryan?

  Just another question.

• 30:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Shawn Ryan?

  It is, a lot of times it's a two or three year assignment. I've seen a lot of you guys get attached to the asset.

• 30:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Oh.

• 30:48Shawn Ryan?

  And, but I've always wondered, does it bother you when, I mean, if you're working on something for two or three years and then you switch stations and you go to another part of the world? I mean, I would think that you can't help but wonder what's, what's happening at the old station, how it's developing. Do you, do you get any insight on that?

• 31:09Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Man, I, I, I love that question. So, so I was, I was a, a pretty good recruiter.

• 31:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And one of the reasons why I was good is because I, in the recruitment process and the development, I became really close to the target. And you do this in different manners. So you can, you know, you spend a lot of time with them, but perhaps, you know, you introduce your families together. You know their kids. And so, so I was able to recruit them, but oftentimes, and this, this made it really hard for what we call turnover, oftentimes when it was time for me to leave, the agent would say, or the asset interchangeable would say, well, wait a second. I, I've been spying for the US. I know that, but I really did it for you, Mark. And I don't want to take the turnover. And, and I, I kind of sucked at that part. And I, and I lost, and so, and there were some, some agents who did not take turnover

• 31:59Marc Polymeropoulos?

  because I just was really good at getting them on board. Information was totally legit. They'd be willing to meet other people. Maybe we brought an analyst in from back home. And so it's all, it's all going great. But they're like, yeah, you know what? I did this for you. I don't want to do this anymore. And so that was, that was one of my Achilles' heels. You know, you, as in this job, you know, and it's, it's, it's, it's kind of like everything we do in the intel and special operations world. Like, you know, you, you know, your talents are out there for everyone to see and, and kind of your, your faults too. And that was one of the things I really wasn't great at. And I struggled with that my whole career is that, is that period of turnover. But, but here, here's the, you know, Sean, the amazing point is running an agent, to me, it's like, it's like a romance. It's,

• 32:41Marc Polymeropoulos?

  it's this incredible relationship. And so, you know, I'll never forget, we had, I had taken turnover of it. He was a, he was a, I gotta be careful in saying he was a member of an Arab government. And he, I was training him on communication techniques and tradecraft in Europe, on the streets of Europe before he went back to the Middle East. And I was gonna handle him inside. And we're doing kind of really sophisticated communications protocols and this and that. And one night, he took me aside and he said, I spent a lot of time there. I'm there for a couple of weeks, having dinner with him, getting to know him even more. And he said, he goes, Mark, you know, I know you're gonna go, you know, we're gonna be in the same country. And, and, you know, we're gonna meet maybe once, only once or twice a month, using all these established protocols. And you have the rest, you know, you have, you have your life there. Your family's gonna be with you.

• 33:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And this guy knew America, he goes, I know you're gonna be watching Armed Forces Network, watching football at the middle of the night on Sundays, like all the Americans do. And so you're gonna think about me every now and then, he goes, he goes, but make no mistake, I'm gonna think about you every single day, because if you make one mistake, I'm dead. And not only am I gonna die, my family, my whole tribe's gonna die. So you have to be perfect. And I was shocked at that. But then, but you think about it, I mean, that's the essence of handling someone, because, you know, their life is in your hands. And I love that story. And I told that story to a lot of, you know, the younger officers when I was managing them later on. Because that's what the essence of becoming a case, of being a case officer is, is, you know, it's an individual relationship with someone who, if you screw up, they can die. And you better be damn good.

• 34:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And so, and so I tell that story, because then when it's time to, for turnover, I've had this two or three year period of doing this with someone. And it's, it's, you know, it's an emotional attachment. And you gotta be pretty cynical not to, because, because then when we, when we turn an agent over, that's it, you're done, no more contact. You know, this is, this is considered an institutional relationship with the CIA. And so you're gone. And, you know, the agent is struggling with this. And you gotta kind of secure the turnover to another, but what about, what about the case officer? That's only human nature. And, and, you know, I just, I just, you know, thinking about, you know, your old career too, at the agency, I mean, you supported a hell of a lot of agent meetings. And you probably saw some of the agents we had who did some damn heroic things.

• 34:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Uh huh. For the US government. And then when you, you know, and, and you know, whatever, whatever's happening in that country, they're risking their life. And so, you know, you end up, I, I remember, you know, some of your former colleagues being super, you know, super tight. Um, with some of the really kind of superstar agents we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's just human nature. Yeah. But I always, I always, the turnover part, I, I sucked at. That was, that was really hard. That's just an Achilles heel. I had, I was known for that. Uh, they're like, oh crap. This is gonna, this is gonna suck. Mark's gonna fuck up this turnover. Um, but just, it is what it is. I still get phone calls today at my house. In Northern Virginia from, from agents overseas that I, that are long, you know, past their time with the agency. Um, somehow they tracked me down because probably I'm too stupid to hide my phone number.

• 35:35Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, but pretty wild because they just, if you, if you agree to spy for the United States, god damn, that's a pretty big decision. Yeah. You know, as someone who's gonna make when the sanction is death. Think about that. Have you ever lost an agent? Yeah. Yeah, it was a, um, it, it was early on in my career in Iraq. Um, you know, in, in late 2002, um, before the war, uh, I went up into, into Northern Iraq with a team of agency and special forces. Um, uh, uh, uh, uh, operators and, and we're kind of, we're kind of, you know, setting the, setting the stage for the invasion. Didn't know if it was gonna happen. Our job was to collect, you know, obviously intelligence on Saddam Hussein's military. So, um, just kind of classic order of battle stuff, which made sense because, you know, this is what the Pentagon needed.

• 36:20Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, and we had recruited an Iraqi, um, who, uh, was eager to help. And he was providing kind of order of battle. Um, and, and everyone was loving it. And I was the handling officer. And, you know, it's up to me to determine the meeting cycle. That means how much, how many times is he gonna cross, you know, from, from Iraqi lines, um, into the Kurdish territories, which was dangerous. Uh, and, and I, I, a combination of him being too eager and me pushing him too far. Um, even in, as DC was, you know, loving this information, um, he was caught and executed. And I'll never forget that. And, you know, one of the strange things, I, I felt that I was, you know, I was responsible, um.

• 37:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But it just, I hate to say it, it's just, you know, it is what it is. It happened. And so it's a combination of I pushed him too hard. Really? He took too many risks and because because the agent's always saying I'm fine. Because he also wants to get paid.

• 37:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, and so, but ultimately I never forgot that because I felt that was on me and that was, that was really, really personal. Um, to me. And so that was a really shitty time.

• 37:21Shawn Ryan?

  How did you find out?

• 37:23Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Never showed up.

• 37:24Shawn Ryan?

  He just didn't show up?

• 37:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Stop showing up. You have, you have a meeting cycle.

• 37:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep. And then, and then, you know, you, you know, essentially receive reports from other, other, other assets or, you know, um, or perhaps, you know, I, I can't even remember if our Kurdish partners told us that, that he wasn't, but, but ultimately never showed up again. And I just, and I, I, you know, for a long time, I remember what the guy's face looked like.

• 37:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, now, you know, that, the, the pace there was so intense and then I got pulled from, from being up in the north to go kind of link up with some of your old boys from Naval Special Warfare from with Dev Group and went in for the HVT hunt into Baghdad. And so I did a crazy two months after that. So it was only really, you know, I started process, processing kind of that loss, you know, when I got back after six months. Um, uh, in Iraq, but that, that stuff stays with you. I mean, it's a, it's a human being and they, you know, this person put their trust in me and, and ultimately I failed them. I mean, that's, that's, you know, so I, I look back at my career. Um, and I have all sorts of, you know, I'll, I'll invite you to Vienna, you know, Virginia, if you ever want to come up north.

• 38:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, you know, I have a, a place similar, not as nice as the studio here, but I have my little room where I have my intel metals and all the shit from all the, the tours overseas and I'll sit around, we'll have a, have a Scotch or bourbon, but, but ultimately, you know, there's a lot of failure that went along with a lot of successes.

• 38:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, and there's a, there's a lot of kind of, you know, mental and emotional baggage. Um, and for me, some physical baggage too, that came with all these things. So it's not, it's, it hasn't always been great. And you know, there's even, even to my times in, in, you know, in Afghanistan, when I ran at one of our paramilitary bases, you know, we lost a whole bunch of indig soldiers. These are, these are the Afghans are, are our own, um, you know, surrogate forces as, as well as the, the, the commander of the Afghan, uh, unit was killed when I was there. You don't forget that stuff.

• 39:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, you're dealing with two, two different aspects. You're dealing with the emotional aspect that you've gotten close with the asset and now he's dead.

• 39:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 39:17Shawn Ryan?

  And then also what I've always wondered, and I've seen, I've seen, I've been in country when this has happened several times. Uh, when the asset dies, I mean, all that work seems to.

• 39:30Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you got it all the way up to a certain point and then just like that, it's back to square one. And so.

• 39:37Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And it, you know, in wars and then later on in war zones, when I was, when I was running the, you know, one of our bases in eastern Afghanistan, we lost a couple of assets were caught and killed too. And, you know, it's, it's not to say you get used to it. It's, it certainly is part of the business. You know, this is not without risk. But, you know, I think that, you know, and we all, and both of us have experienced losing colleagues as well, and that's horrific. But, but I look back and, and that is the worst possible outcome of any operation. And I experienced that and that was kind of catastrophic for me. But I also don't forget the agents. And again, these are, these are the people that we recruit. And so, you know, that's, and that's, that's one thing about CIA officers. I think they're a little bit, it's perhaps a little bit different is that, you know,

• 40:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  our job is to deal with foreigners. You know, that's what we do. You know, I joke, you know, I do a lot of talks to colleges all over the country because I really want to advocate for, for, you know, people to join, you know, public service, to join the national security sphere. And so I would say, you know, if you want to, you want to protect Americans, you want to live in the United States and deal with a lot of Americans, join the FBI or become a DEA agent. If you want to, you know, if you want to, you know, see the world, eat funny food, learn languages and, and deal with other cultures and deal with foreigners, you know, the agency is a good place for you, but, but our foreign partners are really important. And, and I was, you know, I was, I was shaken up, not as much admittedly, as losing a colleague, but losing an agent, you know, losing a, maybe a partner from a liaison service, you

• 41:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  know, someone we're working with at a host country. That's tough.

• 41:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's take a quick break and when we get back, let's get into some operations that you did after nine 11.

• 41:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure.

• 41:20Shawn Ryan?

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• 41:48Shawn Ryan?

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• 43:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 43:50Shawn Ryan?

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• 44:15Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mark, we're back from the break and we're getting ready to get into some of your operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, post 9/11.

• 44:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure.

• 44:24Shawn Ryan?

  Or pre if you want.

• 44:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 44:26Shawn Ryan?

  Pre if you want, if you were there, but...

• 44:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So, you know, I mean, well, everything changed after 9/11. Let me just, let me go back to actually 9/11 that, that day. It's an interesting story just for me because I think for all of us, our whole world changed. You know, CIA changed. I mean CIA was a, not a sleepy little outfit, but we went from, you know, an organization that, you know, had a mission to one that had almost an obsession afterwards, which is to, to track down, you know, capture and kill everyone involved in this. But, but on 9/11 that day, my, my whole family, we were in, we were in the Greek islands. Why it's relevant is I actually was assigned, I was, I was in New York City at the time. You know, there's something called the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is where, you know, in select cities around, around the United States, this is out in the open kind

• 45:14Marc Polymeropoulos?

  of press. It's kind of a multi-agency effort to, to, you know, track down and of course deter terrorist attacks on, on America. Ironically, I was there, I was assigned to that, that unit in New York as a, as an agency officer, but we were gone that day. And why it's relevant is my daughter's daycare center was in World Trade Center 5.

• 45:35Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 45:36Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And just, you know, and, and, you know, the, the legend's the wrong word, just know the, you know, what we had heard afterwards, there's some, some kids were orphaned from, from that daycare center. We just, just by, by dumb luck, just weren't there that day. And about five days later, I was able to talk our way on to, you know, the first, some of the first flights coming back in, or maybe it was a week later in the, in the United States. And I immediately went to work and I was, you know, working with the Bureau in New York City. But what kind of changed certainly my life and my, my career was walking through the wreckage in Ground Zero. And just absolutely surreal, it's still smoldering. I mean, it was, it was, it was smoldering, it was on fire for, for weeks and months, but it was, this was, this was pretty intense. And I'll never forget walking through.

• 46:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And this was, I mean, it was surreal and there was, I don't know if it was a New York City firefighter or a policeman, but he was in full kind of Scottish garb, playing the bagpipes, walking through the wreckage. Just, I get chills even thinking about it now. And we all knew, like, all right, this is, you know, every day is September 12th now. And probably not for the rest of my career, because I did some other stuff, you know, afterwards on Russia, we can get to later, but, you know, the majority of the rest of my kind of professional life was going after Al Qaeda and going after terrorist groups. And, you know, that feeling that we had was extraordinary. I mean, I was, you know, in New York City and, you know, we knew who Al Qaeda was, certainly knew who Bin Laden

• 47:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  was. But there's a feeling at the agency that we failed. You know, and, you know, perhaps it's not fair. It's almost like, you know, being a soccer goalie. Yeah. You know, one's gonna get by ya. Well, the pretty goddamn big one got by. But the rest of us, you know, then kind of dedicated ourselves to the rest of our lives and obviously you did as well, Sean, to, you know, tracking down those responsible for this and made it our mission. It's something that, you know, there's so many, you know, kind of retrospectives on certainly on Afghanistan. But ultimately, I'm really proud of what we did. Because no matter what, you know, there's so much controversy. There's some great things that we did, obviously, you know, degrading and destroying Al Qaeda, including

• 47:48Marc Polymeropoulos?

  killing Bin Laden. And there's some things which are super controversial, you know, enhanced interrogation techniques and Gitmo and other things like that. But I tell you, no matter, when I go around the country talking to folks, you know, and they will raise these things, and I'll say, were we hit again? And the answer is no. And that's because of the work of special operations community, the intelligence community, and what we did at CIA, and I'm super proud of that. But boy, that day changed everything.

• 48:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  How long was it before you went over to the Middle East after nine eleven? Uh, pretty soon. I was, I was, I was raising my hand and throwing a bit of a fit. Um, and so I, I then made it to a, a North, North African country. Okay. Which was a close partner of ours. And so we ran counterterrorism operations from there. And then I first made it to Afghanistan, I believe, February of oh two. Um, so not one of the first teams, uh, that went in. I think that was October of two thousand and one. But by February of oh two, I was in Kandahar, um, which was absolute Wild West. Yeah. Um, really extraordinary time. It taught me a hell of a lot about myself. Um, also taught me some things about the agency that were, that are, that, that I think we've gotten away from a bit. But which, which were good was just get there and we'll figure it out.

• 49:02Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, you know, I mean, so, you know, I, you know, so, so as, as a regular case officer, you know, not, you know, with what you're doing. Um, uh, uh, in your line of work for the agency, but, you know, so we'll go through some weapons training before we go out there. So you got a couple of weeks on, on kind of the Glock and the M four. And then you get out to the real world and where the fuck are the M fours? Well, no, grab an AK forty seven. Figure this shit out. There's no fucking, you know, scope on it or anything like that. It's a, just a, um, you know, steel sight right there. And so it's, you know, it, but it was, it was exciting. You know, that, that was, that to me is what made the agency really great. You know, exfil plans, well, sort of, you know, someone will come get us here or there. There's a couple of people. Um, you know, it was, it was such a wild time in Afghanistan in the beginning.

• 49:45Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, kind of, you know, hunting down high value targets. Um, and, uh, and so it was just kind of pretty, pretty amazing. And then that's really where, um, I saw, uh, uh, kind of the extraordinary cooperation, um, between, uh, the special operations community and the military. I'm sorry, and the agency, um, really start, which is really interesting because those first, and, and, and it was Iraq and Afghanistan. Um, you know, in the, in the oh two, oh three timeframe, but then all the way up to when I left, those relationships all stayed. Um, so that, you know, the junior, you know, uh, guys from fifth group. Um, and I remember, you know, Chris Miller, who ended up being the act, you know, the, uh, the acting secretary of defense. Remember the end of Trump administration. I remember him as a fifth group guy I met in two thousand and two. And so it's, those are really important relationships that are built over time.

• 50:30Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But, um, but, uh, but getting Afghanistan was important. I wasn't there for long. It was, it was probably under a month. Well, I mean, Kandahar, I mean, that had to be.

• 50:40Shawn Ryan?

  They had to be insane.

• 50:41Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I'll tell you, again, a story that just, this is the way we do things. And I was actually fine with it. I remember getting there and someone said, hey, you know, you know, you got, you got about a four hours of sleep, then you got guard duty on the roof. I'm like, okay. So I jumped up on there. There's an AT4 up there. And some, and some, I'm coming off and the guy gives it to me, says, you know, here, take this. And I'm like, I have not been trained on this. You know, weapons system, like, what the fuck? He was actually, he was a Blackwater guy from, he was a former SEAL. It was up there. And I'm like, can you fucking wait five minutes and show me which way this thing fucking shoots? And he's laughing. And it wasn't that hard. But it was just, and I'm sitting, sitting up there thinking, and I'll never forget this. You know, I'm a CIA case officer, I

• 51:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  speak Arabic. So that's why I'm there. Because we're chasing down, you know, the Al Qaeda, the Arabs. Obviously, the majority of Al Qaeda were, were from the Arab world. They're not, they weren't, you know, this wasn't going after Taliban, going after the Afghans. But I'm sitting on the roof, listening to the call to prayer. There's, you know, there's some, there's some, you know, automatic, you know, weapons fire in the, in the background. We had the, the day before we got there, we had, someone had shot a rocket and kind of zinged off another roof and almost took out the base, but we're fine. But I'm like, what a fucking opportunity this is. This is cool as shit that I'm here. Now, there's some things I'm really good at. So, you know, we're going to recruit agents, we're going to catch some bad guys. Some things I don't know a goddamn thing about, which is how

• 52:04Marc Polymeropoulos?

  to fire an AT4. But you know what? We're just gonna make it work. And we had a great team, we're co-located with an ODA. It was a, it was a 19th, I think it was a 19th group teams, that makes sense, from Colorado. So these were really experienced, you know, operators from special forces, you know, most of them who were, I guess it's, I think it's out of Colorado. But, but ultimately, a great bunch. And, and, you know, Cobble Station might have been a billion miles away. They're just like, go. I had money, I had agents on the ground, supposed to go find some, you know, some, some, you know, we had, obviously had lists of, of, you know, high value targets. And um uh this is this is there are so many incredible times from that, but but I don't

• 52:49Marc Polymeropoulos?

  know if you recall, you know, before the invasion in Afghanistan, um there's a famous scene in Kandahar of the Taliban hanging a whole bunch of what they called agents. Um and it's in a soccer stadium and this is this was, you know, this is this was broadcast worldwide. One of the really amazing things was, as I got there, we actually found the widow and one of them was an agent of ours, someone who worked for the agency. Um we found the widow and I kind of made it my priority to to give her what, you know, kind of the the death benefit, the payments that we will give. You know, when an agent is killed in the line of duty, um a foreigner, you know, we will always take care of the family. That's just something that that the agency does. And that's, you know, it's one of the, again, we talked about the relationships before.

• 53:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:30Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Between the agent and and the case officer or just or the organization. Um so I tracked her down and and this wasn't a kind of a sexy operation. It wasn't written about anywhere, but I got some money that the agent was was owed owed and and I went into some dingy little, you know, you know, mud hut in uh in Kandahar city. Um I couldn't talk to the the wife directly because it was in Afghanistan, such a traditional culture. And so, you know, it's it's it literally is like a like a curtain hang between us and she, of course, is is fully covered. Um and I made some kind of silly speech, which I thought was kind of, you know, very, very relevant, um about his sacrifice because it was all over, you know, every every media outlet in the entire planet that this person had

• 54:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  been executed. Um and we gave the gave the payment and that was something that was really important. Now, you know, how this ends, who knows? Did she ever ever get this? She probably had a whole bunch of male relatives who stole the money, but it was just, you know, it was night after night of just doing these things. Um I just having, you know, feeling um that, you know, what a what an opportunity this was and I was honored to be able to do um this kind of stuff. And again, different time of Afghanistan. This was this was only months after nine eleven. We were eager to kind of track down, track down, uh, uh, you know, those those responsible. So.

• 54:44Shawn Ryan?

  What were you? Had you gone overseas prior? I know you earlier you said you were in New York.

• 54:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, so before that I had done, I gotta be careful saying this, I had my, you know, my wife was in a business as well. She was on her first tour in a, in a country in the Levant, in, in, in the Middle East, and I went to learn Arabic. So I, I, I actually, you know, took that time. It's, you know, we do, one of the things the agency does really well is these tandem assignments. So, um, you know, if, if, you know, the, uh, two officers are married, they'll try to get people both jobs. And so she had a great job there and I, and I needed to learn, you know, Arabic. So I did my time there.

• 55:21Shawn Ryan?

  Reason I'm asking is, is, uh, you know, when I, when I worked there and I assisted you guys with a lot of operations, I always, it was always kind of talk around, uh, the outfit that I was in is you guys are coming from working in permissive environments. Then you show up to just a straight war zone, Kandahar and O2.

• 55:43Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 55:43Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and, and your guys' adaptability is phenomenal. But a lot of times you show up and, and, and you'll be like, well, you, you might not want to go out there, you know, by yourself and you might want to carry a little extra stuff and

• 56:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No, you're right.

• 56:01Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, but I was just wondering, what is that? Cause that's just a completely different world to go from, uh, you know, just Moscow to, to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

• 56:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  There are those who can do, to make that transition and those who can't. I'll, I'll never, when I left there, so I, I, I followed a case officer who had been in special forces and he was certainly more, um, uh, you know, had, had, you know, in terms of, you know, his, uh, uh, his background was, was more conducive to being where he was. But then I showed up and I spoke Arabic and I was comfortable in that environment. So I, I offered, you know, he had some things that he offered, then I had some things that I offered. I remember when I left, I, I, the, the officer coming in was not, shouldn't have been there. And sometimes you see that, but, um, you know, but, but what's interesting, why this matters is the management in the base or

• 56:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  the station. And so, um, you know, uh, so for example, with I, you know, if, if, when I, cause I did both. I, I ran stations in, in permissive environments and I ran, you know, a base in a paramilitary, uh, uh, environment. It was in Eastern Afghanistan. We got rocketed every day for the entire year. It was insane. So someone who didn't have military experience or hadn't been in that kind of environment before, I would say, okay, here you are and you're gonna go do your agent meetings. You're gonna have your security personnel like yourself, Sean. Ordinarily, we tell case officers, you make all the decisions. When it comes to that op and safety, you're gonna listen to someone else today. You know, so if we got shooters with us, you know, they're gonna be the ones. Just rely on them.

• 57:35Marc Polymeropoulos?

  At the same time, sometimes I would get officers who came from a war zone, had a spectacular career to a permissive environment. And they're like, hey, man, I did a tour. And I'm like, well, sort of. Because what you did do is you served your country for a year in a really shitty place and risked your life. But you know what? You never ran a surveillance detection route because Sean, you guys ran it for him. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so you gotta be able to adapt. And you know, the case officer has to have some humility. One of the things, I worked really well with your old outfit. Because number one, I respected what you all brought to the table in a tremendous fashion. But it was also, you know, I was like, okay, if the hair starts going up in the back of your neck, get us out of this. I'm not gonna question that. I might have an agent meeting.

• 58:19Marc Polymeropoulos?

  This agent might have information we desperately need. But Sean, if you come to me and said, Mark, we gotta get out of here. We're getting out of here. And you know, you just kind of have that kind of back and forth with your security folks. And to me, that was always, because you gotta have some humility. I don't know certain things, parts of, you know, what are required in the security side. And perhaps you all don't know what's required for the agent handling as much. But you kind of have that kind of mind meld together and it can work. It doesn't always. There's some tensions sometimes. Yeah. And I would have to talk sometimes to the security personnel or to our case officers saying just, you know, get your shit together. We all gotta work together. But at the end of the day, you know, when you run operations, there's a fallback.

• 59:03Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Which means if you gotta get off the X, get off the X. Yeah. And because, you know, there's no, you can't, you can't, you know, bullets, bullets gonna come at you and can't turn that around. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah. And I think after some terrible instances in the war zones where we lost people, I think people got smarter. Yeah. How many deployments did you do in war zones? So I did, I gotta be careful on saying this, so it was, it was, you know, probably almost three years altogether, off and on, but it was a solid year. 2011 to 2012, I was chief in eastern Afghanistan, in Patika Province.

• 59:44Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And then before that, it was my time in Afghanistan, then half a year in Iraq, and then some other places. Can't always talk about, but it was enough where I became really comfortable in that environment. And it's important for a couple of reasons, you know, I was, I'm not former military. So I was very cognizant of that. And, and so, you know, if I was a base chief in a, in a, in a, in a paramilitary base, I would have a, someone from our special activities center as a kind of the chief paramilitary advisor, and I would have, you know, some security folks from, from your old outfit there as well, and maybe some other, other, other folks too. And so, man, it's a team effort. And so, you know, if we're taking incoming rocket fire,

• 1:00:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  and we have the ability and, and the authority to return fire, I'm going to rely on people who know how to do that. So, you know, I might give the final okay, or I might just say, don't even ask me. You know, we have the point of origin site, we're getting shot at by Al Qaeda across the border in Pakistan, return fire with our mortars. That's, I'm good with that. And you kind of, that's, but you, so you know what you know? Yeah. And, and so it was, but I became really comfortable in those environments. And that's what I was kind of known for. And I think that, not everyone can do that. But it's just, it's a place where I, where I thrive, because I also brought that kind of the operational side of things. So again, I was a good recruiter. I mean, and I, and I was also singularly focused.

• 1:01:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I think that, I remember when I got to Afghanistan, even much later on, 2011 or 2012, and for, for a variety of reasons, you know, I really was super aggressive. This is coming off a kind of a terrible tragedy, what happened in one of our sister bases in coast in December 30th, 2009. So a lot of us wanted a lot of, you know, vengeance is the wrong word. We're not really supposed to, you know, taking vengeance out on our enemies. It's a very kind of calculated process and how we go after high value targets. I mean, it's got to be based on kind of continuing ongoing threats to US personnel. But the idea of, of killing, you know, killing Al Qaeda members or collecting intelligence to do so. And I'll tell, you know, the proudest story I had in a war zone.

• 1:01:50Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It was for my time in 2011. You know, I got to the base. I'll never forget flying in. It was a, I was replacing a great friend of mine, ironically, who I'd been up in northern Iraq with in 2002. His name is Mick Mulroy. He's out now and he talks. He's a former ground branch officer in special activities center. Then he went on to be a station chief in Africa. Super great friend of mine again, and we'd spent, you know, months together in Iraq. And I'm flying into Afghanistan. If you recall, you know, our helo inflows are always at night. And we're flying in and this base took incoming, you know, 107 millimeter rocket fire, you know, constantly. And so we're hovering until kind of the IDF finished and we go down there and, you know, security folks, someone picked me up and we get to

• 1:02:32Marc Polymeropoulos?

  a kind of the hardened shelter, the base. And I'm, I'm, but I'm there for a year. This is my base. And I'm like, what the fuck have I got myself into? Which, which is, it's the right, it's the right attitude. Yeah. And, and Mick's there with a big smile on his face. He's like, hey, man, welcome. And he couldn't wait to get out of there, too. So we do a quick turn over and he's on the bird and he's gone. But one of the things about that particular location is a couple of years earlier, two CIA officers had been killed from our special activities center. And, and we knew who did it. And so, you know, there's a lot of things you can do, you know, so we're there trying to win hearts and minds. We have all of our kind of humanitarian projects. And we also have our, the HVT mission. And I gather everyone

• 1:03:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  in the base and I said, if we do anything in this next year, we're going to get, we're going to kill the dude who's responsible for the death of two of our colleagues. And we did. You did? Yep. And the night where a Hellfire missile, you know, ended the life of a really bad guy because it's not only responsible for killing two of our officers, but he was plotting additional attacks and responsible for additional attacks against American forces. And that's really important, too. But, you know, that night, sitting around the fire pit, which is, as you remember, you know, it's caveman TV. Mm-hmm. The single greatest moments I've had in war zones or places like that, you know, the camaraderie, the, if you, if you ask me, what do I miss about CIA? It's not the bureaucracy. There's a whole bunch of bad shit that happened to me in the end. But it's that camaraderie

• 1:04:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  around the fire pit in a war zone. But one of the Um, uh, one of the guys with me there, um, was like, hey, man, I, I have the, I have the phone number back in Fort Bragg of the widow of one of these officers. We should call her. That's fucking unheard of.

• 1:04:15Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:04:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And I said, fuck it, get the sat phone and we called her. And we said, we, we avenged the death, uh, uh, of your husband. And she just said, thank you.

• 1:04:24Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:04:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No cable, you know, I just, and, and that to me, we sat around, had a toast of bourbon. And, uh, and that was, that was relatively early on in my year, but I was like, that was good, man. That felt good. And, and, you know, I've talked about this story before and some people have criticized me as saying, you know, you, you know, you know, that's, that's just, you know, getting, you know, kind of getting vengeance for something that happened in the past, but not, not, you know, the code is, you know, these people, you know, this, this individual took out two of our guys and we got them in the end. And I, I fricking love that story.

• 1:04:55Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting that you say that. And, uh, cause that's one of my next questions is, since we're on the topic of killing.

• 1:05:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Shawn Ryan?

  One thing that I noticed is, is killing is a lot more.

• 1:05:12Shawn Ryan?

  People don't get so emotional about it when I was in the SEAL teams.

• 1:05:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:05:16Shawn Ryan?

  It was. Whenever we killed somebody or took out a group of bad guys or whatever, it was more of a, it, it felt more like an accomplishment.

• 1:05:26Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Shawn Ryan?

  When I jumped over to the agency, what I noticed is there's a lot more emotion, uh, within agency personnel when it comes to, when it comes to killing bad guys.

• 1:05:37Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Shawn Ryan?

  What was that like? And, and I know where you were at in Afghanistan.

• 1:05:42Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Shawn Ryan?

  You know, Kandahar, extremely dangerous place. We were talking about in east, east Afghanistan, probably even worse.

• 1:05:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Uh, Time Magazine called my, my old base, the most dangerous place on the planet.

• 1:05:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That's fun. When you go home to your wife and you say, hey, I gotta go to Afghanistan for a year. And she's like, are you going to Kabul? I'm like, yeah, maybe not.

• 1:06:02Shawn Ryan?

  But I guess what I'm getting at is because of the areas that you were hanging out in, there's not a doubt in my mind that you're directly responsible for the deaths of

• 1:06:12Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Shawn Ryan?

  several bad guys. What was that like for you emotionally, mentally? The first time that you were directly responsible?

• 1:06:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's, I was flat. There wa- it wasn't anything. You know, it, it happened actually first in Iraq and I'll never forget this because as I was, uh, um, uh, this was, this was probably March or April of oh three. And I'm running around with, you know, uh, some of your old, your old buddies. Um, this is with, with Dev Group and because we were doing the HVT hunt, but occasionally and then, then I would work with some of the other, uh, uh, NSW, um, units there, um, which actually, you know, for probably a variety of reasons, where actually it was, was a lot. Uh, it was, it was easier to work with them because they were really eager to kind of jump on board. Um, and, and we were doing some other things, but I remember collecting intelligence, um, on the location of a, uh, you know, remember the old Fatain Saddam?

• 1:07:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  These are the Iraqi regulars. Um, and, uh, and so I had, I had the geocords and, you know, we're, we're somewhere in Baghdad and I fricking knock on a fucking Bradley fighting vehicle that was nearby. And I was like, here, take this and they're like fucking game on. And then you hear that fucking, that whir.

• 1:07:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Of the, uh, uh, of, uh, whatever, I don't know what caliber weapon comes out of a, uh, uh, out of the Bradley, but, um, goddamn. And afterwards I was just like, that was fucking crazy. Uh, so we, you know, some bad guys we killed. Um, that was, that was a little weird. Uh, I think I, I think that it was, it was, that was different from me because I then saw on the ground. I mean, there's, there's, you know, this is, this is the, you know, we're, we're the infill into, into Baghdad. There's a lot of dead bodies around. That stuff fucked me up when I came back. I had some PTS after that.

• 1:07:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Different than doing the CT mission in Afghanistan where where where just 100%, you know, it's it's kind of clinical. You're collecting intelligence, passing it to certain, you know, either, you know, certain US government entities that can kind of do the finish. And then and then they're gone. And but I didn't see it up close. Did you ever watch it happen? Yeah, all the time. How did that feel? And and in person, too, watching airstrikes.

• 1:08:38Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I don't it just be, you know, I became, this is, this is maybe it's a dig on me. I became almost obsessive with it. You know, there's remember the old that old still around the Long War Journal? Yeah. That's it. So Long War Journal kind of covered the HVT fight in Afghanistan. And when they'd run an article that said, you know, senior Taliban or senior Al Qaeda member killed by drone strike. I'd fucking cut that thing out and put it up in the base. Nice. And we had that shit covered everywhere. Nice. And that's what that's what motivated me. But it wasn't, it was, there was never high fives. It was kind of a feeling of calm. Yeah. Weird. You know, so years later, and you know, when I was at Walter Reed, kind of getting, you know,

• 1:09:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  getting treatment for for my traumatic brain injury, I remember I met a, this is a great story, a grizzled, the the one person who helped me the best there was a grizzled old Marine Corps chaplain, Chappy. And I'd seen all sorts of psychiatrists and psychologists just asking me about how I was doing. And so he sat and I was with one dev group guy, one Navy EOD guy and one Air Force CCT. And he said, OK, let me just, let's just talk about moral injury. And he said, is anyone here feel any regret for any of the killing you've done? And everyone kind of said, no. And he goes, all right, let's move on. And so it was the same kind of thing. It wasn't that that I was I was not traumatized by that. I was OK with it.

• 1:10:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I don't know. You know, and and kind of the the issues I've had afterwards were not really, didn't really surround that. I'll tell you what doesn't happen. There's no high fives. Yeah. There's no cheering involved. I never saw any of that. Um, you know, and uh, uh, it's just, it's just become because it just because it's, it's again, everyone had to remember every day was September 12th.

• 1:10:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I've seen, I've seen both. I've seen people be devastated because of it. I've seen people get really excited about it. And then the people that do it all the time, it's kind of like, all right, let's go get some dinner.

• 1:10:35Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, that was it.

• 1:10:36Shawn Ryan?

  You know, let's go get some chow, get ready for tomorrow.

• 1:10:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, I mean, I just, I, I, I, I think that, you know, and then, and I was involved in some other uh, types of activities like that. Um, uh, over the years outside of the war zones. And so, you know, ultimately just something that, that we did. Now, some people don't like that. I mean, you know, there, and the, the agency is, is, is a, is an interesting place because there, there are people um, to this day who don't, you know, didn't support kind of the, what do you, what do you want to call it? The targeted killing program. Um, which was a hundred percent legal and lawful, or they get very upset about things like, you know, the, the enhanced interrogation techniques and this and that. I, I, you know, for whatever reason, just with me, it really doesn't bother me. It just doesn't. I understand, you know, uh, for, for moral reasons, why, why, uh, you know, some people get upset by it, but you know what? Then,

• 1:11:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  don't get involved in, in counterterrorism operations. I mean, it's, there's an ugly side to this.

• 1:11:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, and, uh, and, and, you know, the men and women I know who were involved in this kind of stuff, I mean, you'd go to your local, I don't know, what do you, what do you got here in Tennessee? Safeway, Publix, Giant Grocery Store. They look like normal people. They're not supermen or superwomen. Um, but they were comfortable in doing what we had to do.

• 1:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, uh, and to me that was, uh, I, I, I have no regrets on any of that. Um, and even when it, you know, people really get upset about the whole issue about torture, and I get it. And, and probably we shouldn't have done some of those things, but I don't lose sleep over it. It's weird. I just, I'm being super honest in this, you know, in this interview. It just doesn't, doesn't bother me. Maybe it should.

• 1:12:01Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever sat in with a, uh, advanced interrogation?

• 1:12:05Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I, I was not, I, I was, I was once in an interrogation, not with a, with a, uh, an Arab intelligence service where they, they started, they started abusing the titanium. We told them to stop.

• 1:12:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they play by another set of rules.

• 1:12:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, and, and it was just, they were stupid. And it actually, it caused a bit of a, bit of a stink, but, but I, I'd never, it's, and, and then so, you know, again, I, I talk about this stuff to, to groups all the time. They're like, well, you know, first of all, they don't believe me. Um, like, how are you not involved in any of the, the EIT stuff with all this, your counterterrorism experience? I just wasn't. Maybe it's luck. I certainly, you know, in, in, when I was in Kandahar in 02, I remember going to some of the initial, you know, doing debriefs in prisons with, with some of the initial Al Qaeda members who were caught, but this was, this was basically, what do you, it's a battlefield interrogation, it was nothing. And I'll tell you one thing, and this, this, and my wife and I talk about this all the time, we're like, are we bad people for not caring about

• 1:13:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  this? Because I really, it doesn't bother me. And maybe that's something that's wrong with me is, I, you know, this is, this is in February and March of 2002, these are Al Qaeda, these are Arab Al Qaeda fighters taken off the battlefield who were in some shitty tents somewhere being guarded. And I, and I would look at them and I was like, these people would, would gut your sister. You put them on the streets of America, they would kill every American possible. I mean, I sound, you know, it's scary, scary is the wrong word. They're just fucking evil. They would do it. They would. And so when it comes, you know, so, so my, I guess my view on some of these things, whether enhanced interrogation techniques are, it's, for me, it's not the moral side of things, more is it effective or not? That's where, that's, you know, that's

• 1:13:43Marc Polymeropoulos?

  where I come out. And, and a lot of people say it's not. A lot of people say it is. But after seeing the, the AQ folks up close and personal, and, and, and there's a lot of people who are very active in defending, you know, folks at Gitmo, defending some of the, the senior AQ folks who were subject to enhanced interrogation, I got no time for that. Yeah. Because these are evil motherfuckers. And I, and I'm telling, and I remember having this, you know, so I, you know, I grew up in, in, again, my dad was a college professor and, and, you know, I'm pretty center of the road politically, he's super, you know, on the left. And I remember coming back from Afghanistan when I saw him one time and I said, I said, Dad, man, I saw these people, like, they've got black in their eyes. And,

• 1:14:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  and I'll never forget, my, my dad and my stepmom are just like, I'd fucking kill all of them.

• 1:14:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 1:14:36Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I don't know, it's a really weird, personal thing for a lot of us who did counterterrorism operations, but it just, I don't lose any sleep over it. And the other part too is, I don't think it's ever gonna happen again. You know, we're not gonna do those kind of things. You know, the targeted killing, which is really regimented and lawful, the agency, you know, under COVID action authorities will, you know, probably continue to, I imagine, you know, be involved in this. In terms of enhanced interrogation, it's so controversial, we're never gonna go near that again. And so, you know, people, remember when, I think, former President Trump in the campaign said something about he was for, like, that's not even a relevant issue. No CIA officer is gonna go near something like that for a billion years, you know, for a billion years.

• 1:15:18Shawn Ryan?

  How does this even get into the public?

• 1:15:20Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:15:20Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I wanna know. Is how does that even get into the public?

• 1:15:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Shawn Ryan?

  Is it leaked?

• 1:15:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Well, about the, you know, there was obviously, the black sites got leaked. But again, I, again, I just, it's, I don't think we're ever gonna do it again. It's not, it's, it's a dumb debate to have. It is interesting, you know, how we got there. But to me, what is not really, you know, known, you know, I hear, you know, former acting director of CIA, Mike Morell, talked very passionately saying, "This shit worked."

• 1:15:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's effective.

• 1:15:55Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It's effective. I don't know. You know, if there's a ticking time bomb, what do you do?

• 1:16:02Shawn Ryan?

  If you were director of CIA right now?

• 1:16:04Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Shawn Ryan?

  Would we be doing that?

• 1:16:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No, no, just cuz it's too controversial.

• 1:16:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:09Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It ain't worth it. It's just, you know, it is, that's what I, that's what I say, it's, you know, now, now, I, should, should the CIA, you know, conduct, you know, lethal operations, kinetic operations? Absolutely. Cuz we're fucking good at it. I mean, but one of the things that, that I found amazing... And I was, you know, later on in my career, I was, I was involved in some of these kind of unique programs. I'll kind of leave it at that, is our ability to do man hunting is extraordinary. And that's when you marry up, you know, human intelligence, spies on the ground with ISR, which is obviously view from the sky, whether it's aircraft, drones, and then signals intelligence,

• 1:16:50Marc Polymeropoulos?

  SIGINT. Our ability to track someone anywhere around the world is unmatched. And we're really good at it. And, you know, Americans didn't die because of that. So, you know, we had, we had decades under multiple administrations, whether it's George W. Bush, whether it's Barack Obama, whether it's President Trump, and now with Biden, that, you know, we have a unique ability to track someone globally. And, and we're really good at it. And thank God we are. And I got no problem with that. Because, you know, again, when it comes to Al Qaeda, going back to that time in February, March 02, I'm looking at an Al Qaeda detainee, like, these people will gut your sister.

• 1:17:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  There's, there's no rehabilitation. And sometimes you gotta go kill these people. I, I learned a lot of, a lot of lessons, I think, over the years from working with the Israelis, who kind of have that attitude.

• 1:17:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, they're chopping our reporters' heads off on national television.

• 1:17:43Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That's right. And I think Americans forget that.

• 1:17:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:17:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, the, when you think back, do you remember a couple of years ago when, when a drone strike killed Gassim Soleimani?

• 1:17:53Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Again, you know, what did that tell you? We, we have an amazing ability to do this. Now, you, you know, that's, and that's something that, that has been honed over two decades.

• 1:18:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sound like a crazy person saying this, but I'm pretty damn proud of, of our ability to do that, because it's protected Americans, period.

• 1:18:13Shawn Ryan?

  Does it, so speaking of tracking people.

• 1:18:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:17Shawn Ryan?

  Do you get, especially with the SIGINT stuff?

• 1:18:19Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Shawn Ryan?

  Because I remember when I came on and I started seeing some of the capabilities that we had, and that was... I mean shit, that was ten, fifteen years ago now. So I can't even imagine what we have now, but it, when I left, it made me very paranoid, knowing how effective we are. Do you, do you have any paranoia?

• 1:18:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Well, I mean, it's, it's paranoid is the wrong word. I mean, it's, you know, it's all self inflicted. So, you know, what do you want to do every day? I'm an idiot. I'm on Twitter and, you know, and, and, you know, all family members on Facebook, Instagram. So, you know, how do you think we do this stuff?

• 1:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So, so in American, Americans have this incredible, uh, uh, uh, willingness to put their whole life on social media. Well, guess what? That's a targeting package for someone. You can choose not to do that. Now, I'm, I'm probably not disciplined enough and I, you know, tweet about too many stupid things like my love of the Red Sox and, you know, all this kind of stuff, but, but ultimately I'm, I'm, I'm here in Nashville now. So I, you know, we went out to Bourbon Steak last night. Well, I was tweeting about it today. It's the best damn steak I ever had. I told you about my hundred and twelve dollar steak. For my wife and I's twenty fifth wedding anniversary, but, but ultimately is, is we, you know, there's so much out there. And so that is sort of when you talk about SIG, and I'm talking about open source.

• 1:19:32Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, but, but you know, so, so an adversary and just as we can track everything about you, what are your, you know, like, so, so Sean, I, I don't know your social media profile, but, but if you're just kind of like the average American, um, uh, we could probably tell, you know, where you're going twenty four hours a day.

• 1:19:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, and that means our adversaries can do this to us as well. And so, and so there is, there is, but, but a lot of it is what we would decide. We elect to put, um, you know, some, some of my friend, one of my, one of my, uh, uh, friends, you know, lives out in Montana now. And he's like off the grid. For this reason.

• 1:20:05Shawn Ryan?

  I get, I get, I get super paranoid sometimes and, and I do the whole, I mean, I do the whole turn the phone off, throw it in the other room, go outside, you know, and, and I still do that.

• 1:20:19Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:20:20Shawn Ryan?

  And, um,

• 1:20:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But you're right, but it, but it, because I mean, it's, so it's not, I mean, you can be paranoid about our own government. You can be paranoid about our adversaries, but, but the, but I mean, I don't know, probably a private detective. Yeah. Be tracking you. Um, again, it's everything we have. Your entire life is on your cell phone, your computer. Um, uh, you know, I mean, so I don't know. What did I do the other day? I was, I was looking at, you know, my wife and I are now obsessed about buying an RV. So I was on, just on the internet Googling RVs, you know, these, I saw them here, these like, these little small Winnebago Revel, it's pretty cool. They're too expensive. Well, goddamn, every time I jump on my, my social media now, boom. There's some algorithm, RVs pop up everywhere.

• 1:21:02Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, you know, and so it's just a, it's, it's a kind of thing where, uh, yeah, you can be a little paranoid, but, but again, you know, the, the, that's how, you know, what, how adversaries can track us. Um, that's how we track them and it's just, that's the, that's the world. So, uh, I mean, that's, it's a whole other conversation, but imagine trying to run espionage operations, trying to become a case, as a case officer. You gotta go run a surveillance detection route, but you have that, you know, with the, the kind of the advent of, of social media and how people can track you and you gotta go black.

• 1:21:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It's tough.

• 1:21:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, I can, I can imagine.

• 1:21:38Shawn Ryan?

  Earlier offline, we were talking and you had mentioned, I believe it was one of my colleagues saved your life.

• 1:21:44Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:44Shawn Ryan?

  And got a agency star.

• 1:21:46Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Agency star, sure.

• 1:21:46Shawn Ryan?

  Can we go into that?

• 1:21:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Absolutely. So this was a, it was a, it was a raid in Baghdad. We're going after a high value target with Dev Group and one of your, your colleagues, security guys, um, former SEAL as well. Um, I can't say his name, but, um, we, uh, uh, we had, uh, we caught someone who we had to do a quick kind of battlefield interrogation on. Um, who we thought would have knowledge of where the HVT was and the initial search, um, uh, failed to find a giant kind of machete, it's huge knife on him. As that, and I'm in this small vehicle afterwards, um, and, and as you remember, how you position yourself in these is really important.

• 1:22:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So one of your old colleagues, we, you know, we put the guy in the back here, your old colleague is here, so he could have kind of a, a, a view just across the seat. And this guy goes down and pulls this giant knife out and lunges at me. And, and, uh, uh, uh, can we say the old outfit where you were at? Do we say that or not? Yeah. Gee, this is, you know, from the, the GRS staff, security staff, uh, uh, he pulled out his Glock, put it right to his head and didn't shoot him. Um, but that was it. I was, that guy would have just jammed that knife right in me. Um, so, so after, so it was, it was, so obviously I was quite indebted afterwards. Uh, the GRS, um, uh, officer received the intelligence star, which is the, which was one of the agency's highest awards for bravery.

• 1:23:10Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, certainly a hundred percent warranted, of course, with, as you know, with your old outfit, it turned into, it wasn't really a giant knife, giant machete. It was a little bread, plastic, uh, you know, bread knife. So, so all your colleagues gave, gave, uh, gave him shit for years and years, but, but I'll tell you one thing, that was, uh, that was pretty crazy. So, you know, I have all the, all the times in my, I mean, that was, that was close. Yeah. And afterwards I was just like, and it, it happened so quickly afterwards. I was like, what the fuck just happened? And I turned to the seals. I was like, you didn't fucking search the guy well enough. They're like, hey, sorry about that. I was like, My bad. Um, but you know what? Uh, afterwards that guy talked and later that night we caught a huge HVT. Really?

• 1:23:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And actually, you know, it was, uh, so just, uh, that was the, you know, it was, it was the pace of operations there where, um, you know, we were, we were, I was joking before, as we were talking, I don't think I took a shower. We didn't, you know, I had no running water. I didn't shower for six weeks. It was, it was, it was wild, but we were running every night trying to, trying to catch, um, this, this, remember the Saddam Hussein's deck of 55? Yeah. The old regime, uh, figures, but we, we had some enormous, huge successes there. Um, yeah, it was, I almost, I almost bought the farm on that one. And so, and again, it was, uh, you know, the, the, uh, the, the GRS officer saved my, saved my butt. Turned out to becoming a dear friend of ours. Um, and talk, you know, talk about loyalty and camaraderie. I remember years later,

• 1:24:32Marc Polymeropoulos?

  and it's probably from his time in the teams, but also from, from us. I remember calling him one time and I don't know, my, this was a couple, couple of years after that. My kid was like, Ten or eleven, got into a fight at school. And I'm going to accidentally say his name, I shouldn't. He was living down in Virginia Beach, he's like, I'll be there in three hours. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, he's like, he's eleven. He's like, I got it. That was the loyalty. I'm like, no, you're not coming.

• 1:24:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 1:24:58Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, so, but, you know, that's, that's, you know, when you go back to the, you know, those, so whether it was, you know, in the streets of Baghdad with this, you know, with, with the, with GRS, or again with my team in eastern Afghanistan, you know, and, and think about all the deployments you did, that kind of camaraderie you can't miss. I mean, I'm sorry, you can't replicate. That's what I miss from, from being in, in, in the organization. Because it's, you know, you look to the left and your right and see your brothers and sisters, and that's it. And a lot of times, we're not thinking big picture on stuff. You know, this is, you know, we have a job at hand, there's an operation at hand. I'm not thinking about the geostrategic value of Afghanistan or Iraq. But it's going through those times and just those kind of, those intense moments.

• 1:25:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Even, I mean, again, that, that, you know, I've been getting rocketed every day for a year. I didn't have alarm clock in Afghanistan for that whole year, it was hilarious. Al Qaeda, every day for a year. 6:00 AM, 107 millimeter rockets coming down.

• 1:25:54Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:25:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Don't go, don't go running then. Every day, it was, it was, you know, it was a, it, they were stupid, they were too predictable, because then, you know, it, it sometimes didn't happen at night. Sometimes it happened when the helos would come in.

• 1:26:08Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But that's, that's where you kind of, you forge these relationships. And, you know, one of the things that, that I, I still do is, you know, there's a great little dive bar in northern Virginia called the Vienna Inn. It's a famous agency hangout. But, you know, from the, from the people I serve with, whether it's in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or other places, you know, we still meet up there. Because those are the relationships that are, that are really important to me. It has nothing to do with what they became later, how high they, you know, they got in life, they don't give a shit about my career in terms of, I was very senior at the end of my career. It's just remembering those times. You know, I just, I, story after story, I mean, I, I just, we just did a reunion there recently and we're talking about, there was, there was a...

• 1:26:49Marc Polymeropoulos?

  He was a, he was a, a ground brands contractor, um, former, former Dev Group guy who loved animals. And we had, we were co-located with a special forces team. And they fucking shot, and we had a dog, Curly the dog. I mean, I sent pictures of Curly back to my kids, like, you know, fourth grade class. And these fuckers across the way shot our dog. They claimed, um, uh, he had, uh, he tried to bite one of the SF guys. And I remember going to the captain there and we, both of us were like, fuck. I said, first of all, you killed our dog. Second of all, we got a crazy person back at our base, um, who was a former sniper for Dev Group, who's now gonna come after your guys. And he's like, seriously, for killing a dog? He's like, yep, he loves animals. You guys are in deep shit. And he's like, what are we gonna do? Just crazy stuff like that.

• 1:27:32Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. I've been, uh, yeah, I've seen that happen many a times. Cats, dogs.

• 1:27:38Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep. Love that damn dog. Curly the dog.

• 1:27:41Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, let's take a quick break. When we come back, let's get into Moscow and Havana.

• 1:27:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure, sure. Absolutely.

• 1:27:50Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:29:36Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:30:20Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:30:45Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mark, we're back from the break and we're moving into your service in Moscow now. Right before you got Havana Syndrome.

• 1:30:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure.

• 1:30:55Shawn Ryan?

  What were you doing over there?

• 1:30:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So, you know, after, after all my times running counterterrorism operations, I think, you know, this was in about... 2015 or so, the DDO, the Deputy Director of Operations, the kind of the lead head spy at CI, called me up and said, you know, enough of your, enough, enough counterterrorism work. And we need you to get back to doing some kind of more traditional, kind of headquarters management assignments for, I can't remember why, for one reason or another, probably my kids, I, you know, I was, I was gonna stay in the DC area for a bit. So, I was kind of moving up the ranks. And so first I was the Deputy Ops Chief for the whole Middle East. And then I became the Deputy Operations Chief for what we call Europe and Eurasia,

• 1:31:42Marc Polymeropoulos?

  which is overseeing about, I don't know, 50 or so countries from, you know, from Ireland to the, you know, the most, what, eastern time zone in Russia. And it was kind of interesting. And so I was, I was promoted to the Senior Intelligence Service, which is kind of a big deal for, you know, for someone in their, I think only 4% of CI officers kind of rise that ranks. That's like the general officer category in the military. So you're a one-star general or admiral. So, really big deal for me. I didn't, for other reasons, didn't always feel like I deserved it. You know, great operational successes, some terrible failures too. But I was promoted and I was sent to oversee operations essentially across Europe and Eurasia, but really focused on Russia. I was not a Russia expert. I'd never been

• 1:32:23Marc Polymeropoulos?

  there. So I did what, you know, even going back to our first part of our conversation, you know, you need some area fam. So I was like, I gotta take a trip to Moscow to see what Russia's like. And to see, the ambassador there was a guy by the name of John Huntsman, really, you know, an elder statesman in the, in the US government, been, I think he'd been governor of Utah, and he was ambassador in Beijing, ambassador in Moscow. But I wanted to get the lay of the land. And also amazingly enough, as a senior officer, I was, I was supposed to meet my Russian counterparts. You know, even in the darkest days of the, of the Cold War, the CIA and the KGB would meet. And, and to this day, we still have kind of liaison relationship, which is just having an open channel. We do this with our adversaries. That's, that's okay. That's actually pretty smart to have that, that

• 1:33:07Marc Polymeropoulos?

  ability to talk kind of under the table. So I decided to take a trip to Moscow in December of 2017. It was 10 days. It was actually to Moscow and to St. Petersburg. And again, area fam and to and to meet my my counterparts in the Russian security services. And it was obviously a trip that changed my life. I wish I had never taken it. It was the irony is that after all the kind of craziness I talked to you about in my years in the Middle East and South Asia, getting shot at and rocketed and all the, you know, stuff, you know, escaping, you know, the harm. I go on a trip where I'm wearing a, you know, a business suit, staying at a five-star hotel in Moscow, but it changed my life.

• 1:33:50Shawn Ryan?

  What did you so Havana syndrome, they've, this is, I thought this was in one spot, Cuba.

• 1:33:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:33:57Shawn Ryan?

  And then we talked.

• 1:33:58Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:33:59Shawn Ryan?

  I found out it was in Russia, and it's also been documented in Germany, China, England, Austria, India, Russia, Latin America, Cuba, United States, inside the United States, Philadelphia, Washington DC, to include inside the White House grounds.

• 1:34:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So it's a, it's a, this is a, it's one of these stories that's a mystery. And I think to to kind of put this in perspective, you know, because there's no doubt something happened. I mean, and I'll tell you what what what I faced and kind of the the initial attack, because it was pretty awful. But but keep that to put this in perspective, think about, you know, Agent Orange from the Vietnam era. Think about Gulf War Syndrome from the first Gulf War. Think about burn pits, you know, something that's really prevalent now in the news, you know, Jon Stewart, the comedians, has been in incredible, you know, you know, support for for veterans who have been, you know, sickened by the burn pits in Afghanistan

• 1:34:56Marc Polymeropoulos?

  and Iraq. And so and that's where this this lies. These are medical mysteries that happen to kind of our national security professionals where eventually, you know, people are really harmed by it. Eventually, we find out what it is. So just kind of keep that in mind. But but look, in 2016, in Havana, Cuba, at the US Embassy there, there was a rash of these, you know, kind of mysterious injuries in which US intelligence officers and diplomats, as well as a Canadian embassy staff, you know, heard this kind of high pitched sound, but really suffered debilitating injuries. You know, one of my colleagues there, a good friend of mine now, and he's, I mean, it's incredible what's happened to him. I mean, he's, you know, he was subject to an attack like this and he lost, he, he, he lost eyesight. He's blind in one eye. He

• 1:35:41Marc Polymeropoulos?

  walks with a weighted vest as a service dog. This is someone who is, you know, serving in Havana, which is tip of the spear stuff. Cuban intelligence service is no joke. And so, you know, we're, we're going to send people there who are at the top of their game. But this happened in 2016 and I really didn't think much of it. There was always a suspicion, obviously the Cubans were involved, but that perhaps the Russians were, were as well. And kind of a big investigation that went nowhere. But we had, we had, you know, dozens of US government officials who were, you know, really, you know, suffered debilitating injuries. Some had to be medically retired. And so that's the context when I go to Moscow in December 2017. And so, you know, I'm at the, at the, at a five-star

• 1:36:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  hotel about two blocks from the US Embassy. Again, a routine trip. Didn't expect anything. It was, it was, I mean, wearing a business suit, something I had to do to kind of, I thought for my credibility as a senior operations manager at our headquarters overseeing Russia. I gotta go visit Russia. But I woke up in the middle of the night with a, with, and I didn't hear anything, but it was the stunning case of vertigo. The room is spinning. I had terrible tinnitus, which is, you know, ringing in my ears. Probably you're familiar with that from kind of exposures to blasts and, and, but it was tinnitus. I was splitting headache and I was, I was, you know, felt physically sick. But it was the, just this incredible case of vertigo, which was frankly terrifying. And again, I told you about all

• 1:37:03Marc Polymeropoulos?

  the kind of the crazy moments in my life before, my career. Something really had happened. By the next morning, I went, you know, to a pharmacy with the US Embassy officer. It was some kind of medication to kind of control the vertigo. It got a little bit better. Went to St. Petersburg for the night, came back and then I got, I suffered another spell. I remember at a Moscow restaurant and almost passed out. But the room's spinning and then I spent the next 36 hours in my hotel room before I kind of crawled home. But something awful happened to me. And I was with a colleague as well, someone who worked for me, traveling from headquarters. He was hit by this as well. He has lost hearing in one of his ears. And, and so something awful happened that time. I get back to our headquarters immediately,

• 1:37:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  you know, and, and my condition is actually getting worse. I go to our medical staff. And I said, hey, something really bad happened in Moscow. I'd heard of things like this to our folks in Havana. Can you just check me out? And they kind of ran through some Havana, the protocols that they had developed for officers who had been hit by this, you know, unknown ailment in Havana. But they said they didn't see him that I kind of qualified for whatever. I didn't hear anything. They were very focused that I didn't actually hear anything. But my condition was getting worse. And again, this was, I was in the senior intelligence service. I was the deputy and I became the acting chief of Europe and Eurasia. This is a, this is a job which, you know, a huge stepping stone

• 1:38:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  to the really most senior ranks. But I couldn't even go to work. I mean, I was having debilitating headaches every day. At one point by March of 2018, I lost the ability for long distance vision. I couldn't drive. I had suffered terrible cognitive difficulties, brain fog. And I was, I was fucked up. Something really bad had happened. And I started going to every doctor under the sun. Meanwhile, I'm asking the staff at CIA. And this is, this is where kind of my whole kind of life journey and story gets sad. I've given you my whole journey about this incredible career at the agency with highs and lows, but with always the underlying assumption about the camaraderie and kind of the greatness of the people there. So this is where this derails because I'm going to the medical staff and they're just

• 1:39:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  totally dismissing me. So I'm off on my own. I went to every doctor under the sun, whether it's neurologists, infectious disease doctors, allergists. I think I had about six or seven MRIs. No one could figure out what was going on, but I was really suffering. And at that point, I was going to work two or three hours a day. But it just wasn't getting any better. And I was, I was going through our operations director at pleading for them to actually send me to the University of Pennsylvania where they had sent some of the Havana victims. And our Office of Medical Services kept rejecting me. Really? And it just, you know, it's really, this is, this is a really terrible tale of incompetence. Because one of the things for me is, you know, as a leader at CIA, by this point, again,

• 1:39:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I'm, you know, I have, when I, when I left in that, that last job, I'm telling you about, I probably managed one or 2,000 people. But the whole point as a leader is if someone's hurting under your command, get them care. You don't have to argue with what happened. You know, it's just a fundamental, a tenet of leadership. If something's wrong with someone, just get them help. You don't have to argue with them how it happened. But they, but they, you know, I was, I was trying to get to University of Pennsylvania and they kind of rejected me outright. And so by July of, or by actually early spring of 2019, when I was turning 50, I was eligible to retire. I, I had to retire. I couldn't go to work anymore. I remember going into, you know, the, the Deputy Director of Operations, the DDO, and, and telling her I had to kind of hang it up. And she said, will you please

• 1:40:38Marc Polymeropoulos?

  reconsider? I want to make you one of the ADDOs. This is, this is the number two or three, you know, operations officer in the entire organization. That's what they were offering me. And the only reason why, I don't say that bragging at all, because as I, as I mentioned before, I had a lot of success and a lot of failures too. And I, you know, one of the things I haven't mentioned, I think, I think the biggest character trait for an intelligence officer is to have some humility, and I have a lot of that. But you, but you know, the story I have now is, is I'm not the story of a disgruntled employee. I was, I was a really well-regarded officer who again was offered this incredibly senior job, but I had to retire. So in July of 2019, I kind of call it quits, but I'm a mess.

• 1:41:20Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, and things actually get worse. So I retire. At the very end, the agency agreed to send me to the National Institute of Health. So they did relent a little bit to a research, it's a five-year research study, which was useless. They were good folks there at NIH, the world-renowned facility. I remember the, you know, the highlight. So it's just testing. It's not designed to make me feel better, and that matters later on when I end up going to Walter Reed. But one of the things that, that is, I was so pissed at the end, and I wasn't getting better, and I wasn't getting the treatment. The agency said, whatever you do, when you go to NIH, don't tell them you're, you're coming from CIA, because we want to keep that secret. So I remember going to our, our store at CIA headquarters and buying about 30 CIA golf balls, and the next day handing them out to all the staff at NIH.

• 1:42:05Marc Polymeropoulos?

  That was my victory.

• 1:42:08Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So what the fuck, you know, whatever. But but ultimately I had to retire because of this. Um, but that's really where kind of the medical, the kind of the the medical journey begins because my condition really worsened. Um, uh, in in retirement and my my pleadings to the agency, you know, formally and informally in retirement to send me to Walter Reed's um traumatic brain injury center. Um, where some some other officers actually started going to because they'd been getting. So what happened to me in Moscow started happening. As I'm retiring, it's happening to some of my colleagues also doing Russia operations. Really fucking weird. And they are starting to get to Walter Reed because they're they're TBI centers. They they actually Walter Reed actually believes something bad is happening. So I start asking informally to get there as well.

• 1:42:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And again, the answer was always no. Um, and it caused me to take a decision, uh, which certainly changed my life, um, which is to go public.

• 1:43:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So in October, um, of uh, two thousand, um, uh, twenty, uh, I, uh, uh, I I contacted a journalist named Julie Yaffe, who writes for GQ. She at that time is writing for GQ. She's a Russia expert. She's a rock star. Um, and I chose her very clearly and I had a talk with her. I said, I don't want you to tell my story, but I can't come out across as a crazy person. Um, but I just need you to tell the story because the story is designed to get to force the agency to send me to Walter Reed. They're sending other people there. They're saying no to sending me there and I need to go public with this. And just imagine, Sean, the idea of, you know, someone 26 years at the agency. Uh, my whole life was in the shadows. I did all this crazy CT shit. And now I'm actually going to go and start, which is in essence, a public fight with CIA. Um, which is what I did.

• 1:43:46Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, uh, and the blowback was severe and, um, caused a lot of, a lot of fucking heartache for me.

• 1:43:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, this, this seems to be extremely targeted. It looks, in my research, everybody, everybody that's kind of come out has been a government official and I believe it said, I found half, half of the victims have been CIA personnel. One family was hit in China and then hit again in Philadelphia.

• 1:44:18Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:44:19Shawn Ryan?

  Then two different, there's two different reports of um personnel being hit on a staircase outside the White House. And there's only three countries on record that have kind of dabbled in microwave weapons.

• 1:44:35Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep.

• 1:44:35Shawn Ryan?

  US, China, Russia.

• 1:44:37Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Russia. Well, so let me, let me say first and foremost on this, on this issue, so there's no doubt to me that something is happening. Um, uh, and what's interesting is, is in, so after I went public, you know, the reaction was, I'll talk about that in a second because that's more of a personal story, but you know, we know the Russians have this. Uh, it, it, it is, it is an open source information. The Russians have dabbled in this, in this technology and in these weapons and they've admitted it. Um, you know, as I've, as I've come along, you know, whether it's when, you know, in the Trump administration or the Biden administration, people across the aisle believe this is happening. So, you know, when I personally sat next to, you know, John Bolton, former national security advisor, he said, "Absa-fucking-lutely," because two of his people under his tutelage, under

• 1:45:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  his command, were, were hit by this. Um, I had a beer with, again, Chris Miller, the former, you know, acting secretary of defense in the Trump administration, former fifth group guy who I'd, I'd met, you know, years earlier in, in Iraq. Um, and he said, "Absolutely, because there are US military members who have been hit by this, who've come back," and he met them. Um, uh, and then of course, just, you know, in, in dealing with kind of the, you know, with, with Bill Burns and kind of the current crop of national security officials, but, um, you know, Russia has the expertise in this and certainly I, I would say they, they would have the, the intent because it's taking, you know, Americans off the, off the playing field, but there's, there's, there's a couple of stories on this. There's three bins I put this story in. One is, um, how the US government has, has, has treated us so poorly who have come forward

• 1:46:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  on this and not getting healthcare. The second bin, uh, so there's an accountability piece because they screwed this up. Um, the second bin is the healthcare piece and, and they're better at that. And then the last is who's doing it, you know, culpability and what does that mean? And so, and it's, it's all kind of interwoven and, but it's, it's been, you know, such a, such a, you know, uh, for, for the victims of this. Again, you know, I've met these people, I, I know these people, I've served with them in the field. A whole bunch of them have done Russian operations in the past, so it's it's pretty suspicious to me that they they're being kind of hit right now. The bad part about it is, you know, and and this is why when I when I finally made it to Walter Reed, to the Traumatic Brain Injury Center, I identified so much with the with the, you know, with the, whether it's the SEALs or the C, the Air Force Combat Controllers

• 1:46:49Marc Polymeropoulos?

  or others who are going through their own TBIs, it's it's the silent injury, nobody believes you.

• 1:46:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:53Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So if you're a team guy and your fucking head's killing you, and and, you know, and you're having depression and suicidal thoughts, but nothing looks bad on you, you know, i- if you say I gotta take a knee, everyone's gonna look at you a little weird. Same thing with this, with with kind of with the what happened with the Havana Syndrome stuff is, I mean, I wish I wish I'd been shot. But in the meantime, I have a splitting headache that never goes away. You know, I have it now, it's it's I'm I I do got some kind of cool new experimental treatment, that's that's made it a lot better for me, but but ultimately, it's that kind of that that, you know, that, you know, unseen silent silent wound, and so, you know, it's it's just i- i- it's one of those things that that that we have to kind of get to

• 1:47:33Marc Polymeropoulos?

  the bottom of, because there are really outstanding US national security professionals who have done incredible things for the for the US government, who are now kind of taken off the off the battlefield, and and, you know, colleagues of mine have to, you know, just I I retire, but they're having to retire as well. If you talk to CI Director Bill Burns privately, he says absolutely this is happening. The investigation, I don't know, you know, I don't know what they're uncovering or not, and I and I and I do get a sense that there's concerns about liability within the US government on this, just because, you know, the so many of us, you know, so ultimately, it took me four years to get to Walter Reed. When I finally got to Walter Reed's Traumatic Brain Injury Center, which, you know, it's called NICO, the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, it's the it's the world's

• 1:48:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  leading center, which has treated thousands of of of veterans after 20 years of of, you know, sustained combat in in Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, they have no doubt that something has happened to us. There's kind of unanimity in the in the kind of the medical field, that you've been subject to something. And so, the idea that that, you know, it took so long for me to get there. You know, when, you know, Bill Burns went there, CI Director, so did Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, and my doctors told them, um, you know, TBI doesn't get better over time. It took them, it took you four years for Mark to get here. That's unconscionable. And one of the things that was amazing, and they also said, if you keep doing this, you know, if you keep delaying care, you're gonna have a rash of suicides on your hands.

• 1:49:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Of agency officers who have been subject to this, who can't get care. And so, they've gotten better at it, um, but damn, we gotta get to the bottom of this. And, and, you know, I mean, you ask, the opening, the opening question you had in the whole interview today was about UFOs, like, that's not what I wanna be associated with.

• 1:49:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:15Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, so I'm not, I'm not one of those folks with the, you know, think this is tinfoil out of my, wearing a helmet outside of CI headquarters are always, you know.

• 1:49:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Protesting, this is something real and serious. Um, uh, uh, but, you know, uh, it's not been handled well, and a lot of people have suffered, including myself.

• 1:49:32Shawn Ryan?

  Well, all the, all the victims that I watched their interviews all say pretty much the exact same thing. They hear something.

• 1:49:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:49:39Shawn Ryan?

  The vertigo, traumatic brain injury. One male said that he was in a hotel and a van pulled up.

• 1:49:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Shawn Ryan?

  And right after the van pulled up, he felt it.

• 1:49:50Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 1:49:50Shawn Ryan?

  And then the van pulled up again, I believe it was the next night, felt it again.

• 1:49:55Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Let me tell you, so this is, this is something from your old world. So, you know, you know, it's, it's interesting, so much you can, as you, as you did your research, you can find out through open source. But, maybe two years ago, um, there was a bid for body worn, kind of detectors for, uh, for, uh, kind of for, um, this kind of attack. And it was, it was a bid, it was from SOCOM. But they, they wanted, they wanted their, the operators to start wearing these things. So, that doesn't happen.

• 1:50:23Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  If, if people don't think this is real. And so, you know, again, when I, when I talk to, when I talk to Chris Miller, when I talk to others, I mean, it's, this is something that is of, of, of serious concern. Um, you know, one of our officers, uh, let me clarify that, a USG officer, uh, uh, official, um, was stricken in Hanoi, uh, hours before Vice President Harris was supposed to arrive. Um, I think it was last year or the year before. That scared the crap out of everybody. This officer was severely injured.

• 1:50:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But what does that say to me, and I think to others, there's a message that even our VIPs are vulnerable. And again, I think the Secret Service is taking this seriously as anyone in kind of executive protection. Because there, you know, there is, there is, you know, someone is doing this to us.

• 1:51:12Shawn Ryan?

  Are they 100% sure it's microwaves?

• 1:51:15Marc Polymeropoulos?

  They're not 100% sure of anything. And I gotta be careful on this because I don't know. I've been out of government since 2019, so it's everything from people inside kind of quietly telling me to talking to tons of doctors. I mean, there's, you know, there's a, there's a really interesting panel. They put together an experts panel, the director, the DNI did on this. Which is really interesting because they came out with their executive summary just a couple of months ago. And they said, yeah, this is likely a directed energy attack. And I think that, you know, that's the, that's the, that the world's leading experts on this, saying that this is happening to us.

• 1:51:48Shawn Ryan?

  This is scary shit.

• 1:51:49Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:50Shawn Ryan?

  This goes through glass, goes through walls, goes through buildings. Pretty much goes through everything.

• 1:51:56Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And one of the things that's happened in some of our officers, and I know these officers, there's no doubt on these. Their family members have been affected. And so in one case, you know, a young child who has a permanent traumatic brain injury diagnosed by doctors in DC. There's no doubt about this. So, you know, so one of the things that you see a lot in the, in the media on this is, well, maybe it's psychosomatic. You know, maybe it's a directed energy attack. To the actual doctors who have treated us, there is no doubt. It's not if you were, if you were, if you were subject to something is, is that, you know, it is, you were subject to something. We're still not exactly sure what it is. It's most likely a directed energy weapon. And that's pretty fucking scary.

• 1:52:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:39Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And again, you know, what a weird, for me, on a personal note, what a weird way to end my career.

• 1:52:44Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:45Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, and look, I'm still, you know, I'm still suffering from this for sure. But after all those years in shitty places, fuck.

• 1:52:51Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:52:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  This happens and it's, you know, it's been, you know, there is a, it's gets a more of a personal level. There's a mental health aspect of this too. So, you know, I finally make it to, so, so I go public in October 2020 on this. The, the blowback from, you know, my best friends and my colleagues at the agency was severe. You know, because I did something that you're not supposed to do. Is uh is is go now to their credit, three former CI directors immediately called our seventh floor and said, what the fuck? And they meet they they then kind of, you know, uh, uh, relented and and got me into Walter Reed. So I arrived at Walter Reed in January of two thousand twenty one, and I'm a mess. Not only because of the physical pain I'm in with my headaches and and and occasional bouts of vertigo, but uh some cognitive decline.

• 1:53:37Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, but it's also the there there's a there's a moral injury here where I've been totally shunned by all my colleagues. I had friends calling me or sending me a message on encrypted apps saying, we've been telling we we've been told by the seventh floor not to speak with you. The lawyer and first of all, that's bullshit. The lawyers are telling us we can't talk to you. Well, how about what they can say is don't talk to Mark about this issue. But for fuck's sake, I worked for two and a half decades in the field with them. Yeah. And so and so I arrived at Walter Reed. Um, uh, you know, my mental health was it was all fucked up with anxiety and everything. I I mean, there were I I had heard they were threatening, uh, you know, come after me in terms of, you know, crimes reports that I was because I've spoken to the press. Now, I was very cognizant in in not violating my secrecy agreement. I told my medical story.

• 1:54:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  The journalist, Julia Yaffe, did a huge piece on this whole thing, so I don't even know the sources she had, but, you know, um, my piece, I'm still very comfortable in that I did. I never violated any part of my secrecy agreement, but but there were that there were rumors that they were going to try to come after me. And so I was a frickin' mess. When I got to Walter Reed, they were like, OK, you you got a bad headache all the time and you're a little, you know, you got some cognitive decline, we're going to try to fix on this, but we hope you don't kill yourself. And that that my anxiety level was out of control and and that's where they helped me um kind of the most. They have eighteen people who kind of swarm over you for a month. Um, uh, and and again, this old Marine Corps chaplain was the guy, and I I joked about before his when we talked about um when he talked about, you know, any kind of regrets

• 1:55:03Marc Polymeropoulos?

  on on kind of war zone duty and and and uh and and lethal operations. But what he taught me was forgiveness because I was so angry at the agency and all my friends. Um, and and his, you know, his kind of his story of just kind of talking about empathy and compassion and forgiveness was not like. These motherfuckers wronged you and they always will and you don't ever have to be friends with them, but just, just kind of release the anger against them.

• 1:55:27Shawn Ryan?

  It's for you, it's for your health.

• 1:55:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep. Totally. And, and I, I, I saw psychiatrists, psychologists, I've had, Walter Reed is, is famous. This, this, this program, NICO is famous and the special operations community has embraced it. I had this incredible kind of cocktail of, of, of these, these acupuncture treatments. It's, it's really famous for it. They really know about traumatic, and I, by the way, I was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. So this, the Walter Reed doctors are like, yep, Mark got fucked up by something. So I have that piece of paper, I remember when I first got that, man, I had tears in my eyes. So these fucking agency doctors said no for a couple of years and now the world's leading TBI center said, yep. And they said, you got a TBI from an external exposure event. So that was really groundbreaking, but, but back to the, uh, the, the Marine Corps chaplain,

• 1:56:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  was it kind of releasing that, that anger and my anxiety really, he actually saved me. I, I didn't, it wasn't, I didn't go, you know, try the pharmaceutical option and, and, you know, uh, uh, I don't kind of respond well to, to, to drugs. I do respond well to gummy bears.

• 1:56:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  A little something in them, which Walter Reed was totally for, but, but ultimately that, that Marine Corps chaplain taught me about forgiveness and that helped me a lot. And so now, as I still go there, I'm still trying to kind of battle, um, just some of the, the, the pain I have, um, which kind of flares up, uh, now and again. There, you know, the, the, one of the things they do is this art therapy program. It's famous, they're famous for these masks. So it was on the front cover of National Geographic, I think back in 2015, but everyone who goes there in the program, and again, it's this intensive outpatient program, you're there for 10 hours every day. So I think probably, you know, half a dev group and, and Delta has been there, tons of SF. I mean, just it got, you know, there's, there's, there's huge walls inside of NICO where each unit, and the CIA has got a big wall now too, from all of the Havana syndrome victims.

• 1:57:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But it's, it's, you know, it's the SEALs, it's, it's, uh, uh, Army, then they have the, the CCTs and, uh, from, from Air Force. And you design a mask and it's just mask and you paint it and you put, you know, it's, it's a, it's a creation of art, but it's how you express yourself. And, uh, and I'm not an artist at all, but it was, what I did was, was kind of this cathartic experience for me where I, where I took a mask and I painted Superman on it, because that's what I, I thought my kids thought of me. You know, here, I was the guy, the dad who was gone all the time, which sucked. But I was defending them and defending America and, and my kids were proud of me. But it was, it was Superman mask and then in it was a, an ice pick. Which signified my headaches and then I overlaid this mask on top of a piece of wood, which I carved the CIA seal, CIA seal, which was cracked in half.

• 1:57:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Because that was the betrayal of the organization. And it's hanging in NICA right now and I just talked to the art therapist. She said, everybody comes and sees that. That's kind of the signature piece for the CIA portion for the Havana syndrome victims. But again, it's Bill Burns has seen it. Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor saw it. It's important they see this. Because this is the way we've been, we've been treated. But making that mask has been really cathartic. But it's, you know, again, it's the idea of, you know, people that I, that I served with for years and years really abandoned me. It was really sad. And to me, to this day, you know, I think anyone who goes public, decides in our old world to be out in the media or do something like this probably has experience with that. I don't know if you feel that same way.

• 1:58:36Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:37Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Some of your guests too. I obviously watched Rob O'Neill's interview, which was fantastic, but really interesting piece where you asked him, you know, about, about what he thought about if people didn't, you know, kind of, you know, weren't so positive about him going and talking about his role in the bin Laden raid. And he said, yeah, it doesn't bother me anymore. There was something to that. And because all of it, because it does matter to all of us, because we're a member of this kind of elite fraternity. And, and, you know, when you, when you get ostracized by that, it can be pretty painful.

• 1:59:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it sucks. You know, moving away from it though, it's, it's, it's like.

• 1:59:17Shawn Ryan?

  Because, yeah, I've dealt with it a lot. And, and once you move past it, it's just like.

• 1:59:24Shawn Ryan?

  Freedom.

• 1:59:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I agree with you.

• 1:59:25Shawn Ryan?

  It really is.

• 1:59:26Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, and but it's, but there's a process in that.

• 1:59:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And it's not easy. And what's interesting to me is as I, as, as I have been vocal about this issue and then that ultimately Congress passes legislations called the Havana Act, which is going to provide compensation for not necessarily people like me. I don't care. I'm, I'm senior and I'm fine financially. But what about the GS 11 or GS 12, who's medically retired? Um, you know, and so, so there's going to be some, some liability from the US government. And so, so it's, and you know, President signed this, it's, I mean, I sat, you know, I keep, I keep saying we're not talking about politics, we won't, but I sat in a room with Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff, who hate each other. You know, this is, they were on, this is the, the, the ranking minority and majority member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

• 2:00:14Marc Polymeropoulos?

  They hate each other on every issue, except this one, where they totally agree. President signs the law, there's, you know, there, there's going to be some financial relief for folks.

• 2:00:23Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Uh, and so, all of a sudden, people from the agency, you know, who abandoned me for a long time are calling me again. Um, and I've had to kind of process that, but I go back to what that Marine Corps chaplain said, just, you know, uh, I'm polite to everyone, but I, I, I won't forget the people who abandoned me and, and ultimately, you're right, because that's what I've tried to do, and I, you know, I wrote a book on leadership. That, that, you know, I, I, and I, I do a lot of kind of leadership talks to sports teams now. I'm on, you know, baseball's a passion, so I talk to a lot of high school and, and college, uh, uh, baseball teams. The more I get away from, you know, uh, you know, my old world, probably the better. Um, because that, that was, that was a, that, the end was really unhealthy. Both physically, but also, also mentally too, and, and again, you sit, you're sitting, you talk about like, you know, scratch your head, you're sitting, having a,

• 2:01:09Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I'm not supposed to, but if I have a Scotch or two, um, like, you know, what did I do the last 30 years? And there's a lot of good, a lot of bad, it ended really in a shitty manner, and, you know, I'm 53 years old now, or turning 53 soon, there's gotta be another kind of chapter in my, in my journey, I got, I got some time left, I hope.

• 2:01:26Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go into that chapter,

• 2:01:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:28Shawn Ryan?

  let's just rewind a little bit. So, knowing that the US, China, and Russia are the only three people,

• 2:01:34Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 2:01:34Shawn Ryan?

  or the only three, excuse me, governments that have come out and said that they've dabbled in, in, in microwave weapons. I mean, you have to have sat at home and thought about who is responsible, who targeted you, because it's very obvious they're targeting specific individuals.

• 2:01:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 2:01:53Shawn Ryan?

  What's going through your head?

• 2:01:54Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Well, so for me, it's easy. So I was, you know, I had known, you know, I obviously, you know, as a, as a CIA officer, I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and, and the Russians knew who I, who I was always. When I, interestingly, when I went to Moscow, they didn't want me to, to make the trip. The Russian Embassy in, in DC tried to cancel the trip. They said they accused me of trying to come for an operational matter. I'm like, I'm fricking senior intelligence service officer known to half the planet. I'm coming, you know, coming here to meet with your officials. There's no operational reason for my trip, but they, but it's, I don't think they liked me very much, but it was, to me, as they had, my thought on this is the Russians have targeted CIA officials who have been involved in Russian operations because it's, it's part of their hybrid warfare strategy.

• 2:02:36Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I mean, if you look at, and China does this too, but it's, these are, this is, you know, this is a step below kinetic events. And so if they're able to take, you know, some of our most experienced officers, you know, off the battlefield in a non-attributable way, it's perfect.

• 2:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:53Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And so it makes sense to me. It also makes sense, you know, obviously Vladimir Putin is someone of, you know, zero morals or ethics. It's right and long with his, his, his, you know, you know, war crimes and atrocities and assassinations that, that Russians have, you know, the Russian state has committed over the last, you know, decade plus. But it, but it does make some sense. And again, it's a part of their hybrid warfare strategy and ultimately it's been successful because not only has it really taken, you know, really quality intelligence officers, you know, out of the intelligence game, it's also caused this huge kind of dissension. I mean, think of, so, so when you say Havana syndrome, some people roll their eyes, some people don't believe this. It's, it's, this is exactly what the Russians want.

• 2:03:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:35Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It's to, it's to kind of cause chaos. So it's, so in my view, it's been wildly successful. But that's why we got to find out who's doing this. And, you know, my contention and I, and I was, again, I was heartened to see, you know, I think it was Senator Collins, who's been a big advocate of this. There's, there's certain representatives and senators who are really good on this across the political spectrum because they have constituents who have been affected by this. So, you know, for Senator Collins, there's, there's CIA officers who, you know, who are, um, you know, from her state and just like, you know, you have, you know, Marco Rubio, um, uh, has been, has been a huge proponent of, of really pushing the US government on this.

• 2:04:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, cause obviously he cares a lot about, about Cuba. So, um, but Senator Collins said, said, look, we have to get to the bottom of this because this is a, this is a, uh, uh, in essence, a war crime. Uh, or she said it's an act of war, not a war crime. Excuse me. She said it's an act of war against our personnel. And she's right.

• 2:04:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think there's any possibility it could have come from within?

• 2:04:33Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No.

• 2:04:34Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 2:04:34Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No, I don't. Um, uh, you know, that, that, that, that I, I don't, I don't, you know, for, um, it just, just to me, there's, there's been, I gotta say this carefully. I'm going to quote the GQ article. That's why I stay safe on this. Um, there was a, there has been, uh, uh, investigations by the US intelligence community. And again, this is, this is from the article in GQ and it's been repeated other times as well. In which there has been correlation of travel of Russian intelligence officers to the locations where our officers were hit.

• 2:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:05:06Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So now that is a pretty damn strong circumstantial case. What does that mean? I would say, keep fucking investigating, keep looking at it.

• 2:05:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:14Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, so, you know, that's, that's where, that's where I kinda, uh, come out on this. And, and, you know, again, it, it took us 10 years to find Bin Laden. Um, you know, right now with, um, with, if you remember Gulf War Syndrome from the first Gulf War, uh, uh, I think they've concluded, and this is decades later, that it was exposure to sarin gas. It was from US military strikes on the sarin stockpiles that, that the Iraqis had, um, is what sickened, you know, hundreds and not thousands of, of thousands of, uh, uh, of, of US military personnel. It's going to take a while to find out what this is.

• 2:05:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:48Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, but I, I would be, I would be amazed if it's not the Russians, or it also, it also could be a combination of adversaries. It could be the Cubans at first. It could be the Russians and the Chinese.

• 2:05:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Uh, uh, so that's really where I, I come down on that. But just, you know, I mean, have the, have the fortitude to keep going. Just because we don't know right now, shouldn't stop us.

• 2:06:06Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any foreign intelligence officers that you're aware of that have been hit?

• 2:06:10Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No, that's the, that's the mystery.

• 2:06:11Shawn Ryan?

  All been US?

• 2:06:12Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It's weird. Canadian diplomats.

• 2:06:14Shawn Ryan?

  Canadians.

• 2:06:15Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah, but, uh, but right. So, so I think that, you know, when you talk to the Brits, there's the, you know, there, there's a question of why isn't it happening to them? I can't answer that. I mean, there's, it, it, there's, there's no, you know, there's, there's a lot of holes in this.

• 2:06:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:27Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Because you would think that our allies would be hit by this too. Um, but again, as, as I, you know, when I, when I sit with individuals who have been struck by this, um, they have suffered severe injuries. Uh, I'm one of the fortunate ones and still friends of mine are like, Mark, you, you seem fine. I'm like, well, compared to others, yeah, I have a fucking headache all the time.

• 2:06:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:45Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Still, um, but, but ultimately something really bad happened and we got to find out what it is. Um, just cause again, it's, it's a, this is one of those, one of those total mysteries and, and I, and I don't want it to be treated like fricking UFOs. You know, I mean, it's, um, and cause sometimes it gets put in that same bin. Um, but this is a little bit different. This is a lot different.

• 2:07:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Are you still, are you still looking for ways to, to manage the pain or, or to improve?

• 2:07:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure. So, so one of, so, you know, again, there's been, it, it, it's really interesting. There's been an outpouring, you know, from just, you know, so many people and, um, there is a, there's a, a, a new therapy that they're, that, that Havana syndrome victims are using. Originally it was designed for, and it still is for, um, autistic kids. Um, it's called M E R T. It's taking a little, it's taking a little magnet and just kind of they tap it against the side of your head. For whatever reason, they started, uh, uh, it was a, it was a, there's an incredible company. It's, there's, there's some former, in fact, uh, uh, slab, Brett Slabinski is involved. Um, out in, uh, in California that has, um, that has kind of pioneered this for, for autistic kids, but they came to us, some of the Havana syndrome victims and, and offered us some treatment.

• 2:07:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, so it's a, it's a, for me, it was kind of life changing. It was five weeks. There was an anonymous donor. Don't know who it was. It's fucking expensive, but but some great Americans decided to try to help us. And it's changed my life in the sense of my headaches are drastically diminished. And it makes some sense. And so, you know, and I went to Walter Reed after that and I said, what do you think of this? It's called TMS treatment, but it's, but again, it's usually designed for artistic patients or for or for PTS. But they want to use it for Ivana syndrome victims and the Walter Reed doctors who are pretty amazingly enough from military. They're pretty kind of new age and they're thinking, I mean, these Walter Reed is they're pioneering use of psychedelics and all sorts of stuff, which I fricking love. And I think you talk about this a lot, too.

• 2:08:39Shawn Ryan?

  I was gonna ask that. Are you? Have you looked into psychedelic treatments?

• 2:08:43Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, I got, I got, I am interested. I gotta see how I'm doing. But ultimately Walter Reed was like, yeah, that makes sense what what's, you know, because it's all about your, it's all about your, your, it's your brainwaves. You know, there's, you know, so something has happened to our brains with this thing.

• 2:08:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I did that. I did that treatment.

• 2:09:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You did?

• 2:09:02Shawn Ryan?

  And a lot of the people that have been on the show have done that treatment. And everybody is having these profound

• 2:09:10Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:11Shawn Ryan?

  results.

• 2:09:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yep.

• 2:09:12Shawn Ryan?

  I'd love to connect you.

• 2:09:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:13Shawn Ryan?

  You know, if you're interested.

• 2:09:14Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I am. Trust me because, you know, there's been a lot of suffering involved. And so I have my good days and bad days. I'm on a good day right here, probably because I'm enjoying the good, the good life in Nashville, the good food here.

• 2:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But but there's still some shitty times. And and again, it's, you know, when you get to a point where you'll try anything. And the last thing, you know, you know, the, what is, it is interesting to me seeing how much I've suffered. I mean, I've had, I've been in pain for four years and I know that you can relate to that. And people in the in the special operations community, just after two decades of war and all the the trauma that people have faced. But, you know, the easiest thing to do is it's not even hitting the bottle. Because having a drink will help, but I but it's it's good that I'm, I could, I can see how people get addicted to opioids. Now, because you're sitting around and you're in pain all the time.

• 2:10:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And you you will do anything to get rid of that pain. I don't have that addictive personality, I guess, enough with that. I'm worried about that. Certainly drinking is not great. And and the more I can cut down on that, the better, because if I have a bad headache, you have a Scotch or two, you feel better. But that's not the healthy or the right answer. Um, but I'm always looking for new, for new things to do because again, it's this kind of this lifelong um, search of how to, how not be in pain all the time.

• 2:10:27Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'm, I'm gonna connect to that, you know, it's, I did it and it changed.

• 2:10:34Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:34Shawn Ryan?

  My whole life. It's the most profound experience I've ever.

• 2:10:38Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Well, please do. I, you know, Sean, one of the interesting things is, so I, so I, I go to Niko, I go to, I go to the, to Walter Reed. And after that time, half a dozen folks that I, really good friends of mine from your old community, from the, from the SOF community came out and these are folks from, from Dev Group or from Delta or, or from, you know, White Seals or, or from Special Forces. Um, and they all said they'd been there too. They just hadn't talked about it. And so, you know, there is, it, it, it was, this was, it was a really amazing experience for me. Um, not only because they, they know they care about you and they, they try to help you, but also for, I mean, this is two decades. And I'm, I'm a little different because the Havana syndrome stuff, there's a whole cohort of, of us being treated there, but just to see what the last two decades have done

• 2:11:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  to, to, to men and women, um, in the intelligence, special operations world, it's extraordinary. And these are, you know, the toughest people I've ever met in my life and they are in real bad straits.

• 2:11:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:35Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, and it's, it's sad. Uh, uh, but it is, it is, it is a hundred percent real and it's, it's, it's, it's pretty profound because these, you know, brain injury is something that's, again, in this, in these art therapy sessions, I remember, uh, uh, myself and one other person, he, he gets more credit than, than I do. Um, but it was, he painted this giant black canvas, you know, something that would be on here and what it like the, the size of that flag. It's all black, but then he, he, he took a can of red paint and he threw it on there and there was kind of splotches of red paint. Um, and he called it the gunshot and everyone was like, you know, what the hell is that? And he's like, I wish I was shot. This signifies because, you know, a brain injury is. Don't show up on anything. Sometimes in MRIs, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

• 2:12:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Um, but he goes, I wish I was shot because ultimately then people would believe me. They know how to treat me. Um, so it's pretty scary.

• 2:12:23Shawn Ryan?

  It's humiliating.

• 2:12:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah. Totally. But I tell you, but, but being, again, it was, you know, being with the, uh, with the, some of the, the SEALs and, and, uh, and the CCTs and these are, these are tough son of a bitches and they were, they were wonderful kind of part of the cohort to go through. Um, uh, but just, you know, and, and I mean, this is going to sound, and not to see them vulnerable, but just to see that other people are suffering is actually really important.

• 2:12:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:48Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Uh, and, and you know, it's, it's, and so, you know, uh, the, the last, I'm going to, I'm going to throw my last plug into this charity that I'm doing. Can I, can I talk about Sound Off?

• 2:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, let's, uh, let's take a quick break.

• 2:12:58Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Sure.

• 2:12:58Shawn Ryan?

  And then we'll come back and talk about that.

• 2:13:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Cool.

• 2:13:09Shawn Ryan?

  All right. So we're back from the break. We're going to just talk about what you got going on now. You got the book, Clarity in Crisis. And Sound Off, the nonprofit that you're involved in. So let's, let's start with the book.

• 2:13:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So this, this hopefully is kind of the, not, not wanting to say the positive part of the story, but, you know, I've just been talking about kind of some of the troubles I had with, with, you know, my health, with physical and mental. So, you know, there's always, you know, hopefully the end of the journey is a, uh, is, is, is a good part of one's life. And so, you know, when I retired, I, I decided to write a book on leadership and that's, it's clarity and crisis right here. And it was, what, what I had realized was that, you know, in my career at, at the agency I started off, you know, so great leaders are not, are not born, they're made. And CIA does a really shitty job in leadership training. The military is great at it. You know, if you, if you're going to, if you're an officer in the military, um, you're going to go probably two entire years at, at two separate leadership schools. CIA doesn't do that at all.

• 2:14:04Marc Polymeropoulos?

  We go through, you know, a week or two of leadership training and also your job as a case officer, which you're working alone, has nothing to do with when all of a sudden you gotta lead 20 or 30 or 40 men or women in a station. So but by the end of my career, probably based a lot on the war zone time, I developed some leadership principles. And I was always thinking about this and again, I was considered, you know, no one's ever gonna say, "Hey, Mark, you know, you're a great Arabic language linguist," because I wasn't, my Arabic was always crappy. And I told you before about, you know, my recruiting and handling agents, I was really good at recruiting and handling and I could never turn them over well, because I, you know, I was always fall in love with the agents. And so I had my kind of, it's certainly kinks in my armor, but I was always considered a really good leader at the end of my career.

• 2:14:48Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And I was trying to figure out why and it was, and it was just, it was based on a lot of experience and so I came up with kind of these kind of core principles. And I put them down on paper, along with just a little bit about myself and about explaining what CIA does, because, you know, I think that, I believe strongly in my heart, CIA is an indispensable institution for the United States government, and so people have to understand that. Whatever you think about alleged abuses in the past or anything like that, doesn't matter, because the country has to have a functioning and proficient intelligence service. And so it is one of those kind of fundamental things that we have to get right. And so I like talking about, you know, just the agency and the intelligence community and then, and then leadership principles, which are, which served me really well and

• 2:15:31Marc Polymeropoulos?

  served me in times of crisis, you know, it's obviously called clarity in crisis, but it's the idea of, you know, how do you lead in times, you know, that are, what is it, it's in the gray. You know, you wanna raise your hand and say, "Send me," when the shit has hit the fan, but, but at times like this, I found at the end of my career, when I got really good, I was really comfortable. And so, you know, there's a lack of situational awareness, you know, comms are down, ISR is not working, you know, you've lost contact with some team members, whatever it is, but you're like, "We got this," because, you know, I formed a team over the last several months that was really strong in terms of its values together, that I trained really well together, that got down the processes that were right. So I put it on paper, wrote a book on it, and it turns out, it's been really fun, because it, you know, I think it's applicable in all walks of life, but particularly in the sports world.

• 2:16:16Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And I'm a baseball nut, my son's playing college baseball now, and so... I love going around talking to different baseball teams, particularly college teams. Because again, how do you react as a team if you're down 3-1 in the 7th inning in a playoff game? What have you done to get there? And then the other big group I deal with and talk with are cops. Not just first, but really with police officers. I've been going back and forth to Philadelphia Police Department, teaching them principles from this book. Because again, policing, what is it? It's an indispensable institution that is much maligned all the time. We have to have a functioning law enforcement community.

• 2:16:57Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Failures are thrown all over the front page of every paper, just like the CIA, but successes are never seen. And morale is down in a lot of these police departments. And so going and talking to them about leadership principles, on how to lead under fire, and how to have that kind of intestinal fortitude. One of the principles in the book, which I love, and it gets in trouble when I talk to sports team, I call it adversity is the performance-enhancing drug to success. And it's not complicated, but it's the idea of you've got to hit rock bottom for an elite team to then really perform well in the future. And I mean, I always joke around, like, what happened to Michael Jordan as a sophomore in high school? He was cut from his basketball team. Did he quit? No. I mean, really simple principles like this. But because this is what happened with me, is going through a lot of adversity in my career,

• 2:17:42Marc Polymeropoulos?

  but then being able to kind of learn from that.

• 2:17:46Shawn Ryan?

  Do you find that you're, looking back, because it sounds like you kind of revisited your entire career right in that book. Did you find that...

• 2:17:58Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel like you're a stronger leader in times of crisis than you are on the everyday?

• 2:18:04Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Oh yeah, totally.

• 2:18:05Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that is?

• 2:18:07Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You get more narrowly focused. You kind of zero in. On what's important and it's also just the idea of just building these teams. So it's building the correct type of team that can then thrive in that environment. And so again, what I talk about in the book is identify processes. I call it the process monkey, one of the leadership principles. Identify key processes that your team needs to succeed at. So when the shit hits the fan, you're going to feel as a leader, my guys and gals got this. So what is it? You know, if you're a CI case officer, it's running surveillance detection route. If you're a Navy SEAL, you gotta be able to shoot. I mean, so if you're a baseball team, you better have taken batting practice. Or you better hit the weights all in the off season. So when times are really tough, you're like, my guys and gals got this.

• 2:18:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  What's interesting to me, that sounds really simple and basic, right? You're talking about mastering fundamentals of your craft. Mastering fundamentals. So, but you go and you talk to, when I say the regular world, people don't, people, not only do they not do that, they haven't even identified those. So I'll go to a client, let's say, and I say, what are the five fundamentals? And they're saying, well, I'm not really sure. Well, what are the five things you have to be able to do? So when COVID hits and the economy's in tatters and you got a late, and you're in a state of near panic, actually, maybe you step back and say, you know, we've done a couple of things right, we're gonna be fine. So that's why I've had so much fun with this book. You know, one of the other principles I talk about is family values.

• 2:19:36Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It sounds kind of silly and basic, but it's building that teamwork, that camaraderie. Where you know that everything you've done, that the men and women you have under your command, I use the word love a lot, and it's not really love, but it's that just have that, you know, the absolute loyalty to each other. And that to me was always, was absolutely critical. So, so again, it's the idea of leading in times of crisis. It's been a blast doing that. I love talking about, I've, I've talked to so many different groups. I go talk to Google, Google loves to have me go talk to their folks. But then, then I live in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County, public teachers had a conference. They said, can you come talk to us on this? I'm like, well shit, there's a lot of stuff about like killing people in there. So I'll sanitize that part. They're like, no, just give us everything.

• 2:20:20Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 2:20:21Marc Polymeropoulos?

  So, and they frickin' loved it because, you know, one of the principles I talk about is the glue guy. So, so again, in every high-performance team, you have glue guys. They're not your superstars. These are the people that that are fundamental to success. So I, so I went to the teachers conference. I said, all right, so you have your, you know, you have all your teachers, your administrators. Who's your glue guy? Someone raised their hand. They said, it's the IT administrator. I'm like, spot on. If you, if your computers aren't working, nothing's happening. But the, the key, the key part of this, I said, so, so in your successes, celebrate them and your planning, also include them in your planning, because I learned that at CIA as well. So, perfect thing. It's CIA, Special Operations Intelligence, same thing. If you have a, we're gonna run an operation, what do we need? Obviously, we need the case officer, the tip of the spear.

• 2:21:07Marc Polymeropoulos?

  We gotta have, um, uh, kind of an operational plan, but what do you need? How about some logistics? How about your finance guy? Guess what? Do we have enough money to pay for this damn thing? Like little stuff like that. And when you have this huge success, celebrate them all. But again, it's the planning part of it too. When I was, at the end of my career, I remember when I was, you know, managing stations or bases, I used to, in the, in the beginning, uh, when I first was a manager, I would say, let's have an ops meeting every morning, right? Ops meeting would be the case officers. At the end of my career, let's have an ops meeting every morning. Chief of support, chief of finance, chief of logistics, security chief, everybody's there. That's it. Cause, cause you kind of get, you get it, that, that it takes everybody to do. So these are the principles that I, I, I've really enjoyed talking about. So it's, so it's fun. I hope there, you know,

• 2:21:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I hope folks kind of, kind of pick up the book. It's, as, as I, you know, as I've gone to travel throughout the country, it's fun when I go to an airport and I see it there. It's a perfect, it's a, it's a perfect airplane, airplane book.

• 2:21:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:00Marc Polymeropoulos?

  It's 200 pages, you know, just, just read that thing. And so it's, uh, it's, it's wild just seeing that. Um, but I think it, it's resonated. I'm having fun doing it and I think it's, it's gonna, and it, and again, it's, talk about something, whereas we were talking before about, um, uh, kind of mental and physical health. You wanna expose yourself, write a book or do a, do a show YouTube, uh, or a podcast, like man, cause you can have some critics and your whole life's out there.

• 2:22:26Shawn Ryan?

  You get a lot more respect for doing it than you do critics.

• 2:22:29Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:29Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it's hard to see because we, we focus, especially.

• 2:22:32Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:34Shawn Ryan?

  People who've come from a background like yours or myself, we we've we tend to focus on because I think a lot of us are perfectionists.

• 2:22:41Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Right.

• 2:22:41Shawn Ryan?

  And we focus on the negative.

• 2:22:43Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:43Shawn Ryan?

  Shit, but you what you don't see is all the positivity that's around it.

• 2:22:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  But it's been fun. The the response has been great, so it's it's exciting. I I think I'm on my own worst critic, you know, I'm such a type A personality. So I'm like, why isn't this number one in the New York Times bestsellers right now?

• 2:22:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:59Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Like after this show, I'm expecting next week.

• 2:23:02Shawn Ryan?

  No pressure.

• 2:23:02Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Big numbers.

• 2:23:03Shawn Ryan?

  No pressure.

• 2:23:03Marc Polymeropoulos?

  No, but it's a but it's it's been fun, but it's, you know, it's you you expose yourself, man. It's raw out there. And just like, you know, some of your other guests who, you know, if you go out in the media and you talk, I don't care if you're you're, you know, you're giving your, you know, I I remember um with the Afghan withdrawal, I was super critical of that of of of, and because again, I thought about all of our indig personnel. Um, uh, but not everyone's gonna like what you got to say you're saying in public.

• 2:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And just like you write a book, you expose yourself. And then, you know, then you're looking like sneak peek on Amazon reviews, like, fuck, why is it four and a half stars?

• 2:23:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:33Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Who gave me a shitty review? I'm gonna track that person.

• 2:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll link it in the description and uh and we'll put it on our newsletter as well and spread it across social media.

• 2:23:45Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Appreciate it.

• 2:23:45Shawn Ryan?

  But um, did when you wrote it, did you have a particular audience in mind? And then it just expanded to?

• 2:23:51Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:52Shawn Ryan?

  Everyone?

• 2:23:52Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I you know, I I I thought when I was when I was first writing it, um, you almost it it's weird because first of all, it's a cathartic experience to write a book. Um, and I was suffering. So this is this is right when I retired. So I had these terrible headaches. And so I wrote for about two hours every day um for a couple of months. Uh, and then the editing process is, you know, kind of miserable, but it it it actually it it turned out fine. Um, uh, but at first, you're almost writing it for our peer group. But then something clicks and you're like, well, wait a second. First of all, all my friends are gonna read this and say, what the fuck?

• 2:24:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:26Marc Polymeropoulos?

  You know, uh, uh, but then I started writing it for kind of the layperson. And so I thought about cops and firefighters that my my stepbrother's a ER doc. And I talked to him about this. He's like, this is perfect for an emergency room. Really? Yeah, because what about nurses? Like, so who's who are the unsung heroes in the, you know, are there processes we have to follow? Who are the unsung heroes? What about teamwork, camaraderie? What about mentoring? I mean, so everything I talk about in this book, owning mistakes. I mean, the huge part of this is about adversity and humility. They see that every day and he works in New York City. It's a New York City emergency room. So I was like, well, well, that's going to work. And then I had a great, great feedback from an editor once and like, and this is, this is, you'll love this. He goes, you're gonna have to write this for a librarian. And I'm like, what? And they're like, yep, that's right. Librarians gonna have to be able to look at this.

• 2:25:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Completely opposite of who you are. Introverted, you know, buried in the stacks. And so, so I thought of that when I did that, that, you know, that, that talk with the, with the school teachers in Fairfax County. So the more it resonates with people totally unlike us, the better. And so, and, and again, it's just kind of universal principles and, and, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, you know, this, this came out in the time of COVID, where a lot of businesses were struggling. I'll never forget, this one guy is a, he's a CEO of a healthcare company. One of the principles in there, I talk about winning an Oscar, which is when you get up in front, you know, within a crisis situation, it matters on how you react. So you got to tell the truth. You can be empathetic, but, but everyone's looking at you. You are the leader. And so, you know, you, you, you can't fail in that time, in

• 2:25:56Marc Polymeropoulos?

  that moment. He said, he goes, you know, Mark, that was incredible to me because I couldn't make payroll last week. So my, our, our business is cratered under, under COVID and I had to get up and figure out a way to tell the people who was, you know, their livelihoods depend on me. I'm the CEO. I can't pay them this week. And he goes, I thought of you. And I, and I use some of those principles and the principle is, is telling the truth, but also, you know, not, not being, you know, you know, not being false. I mean, obviously, you know, having that, having that, that, that air of authority, air of assurance, things are going to be okay. But you know what? We're going to face some tough times. And there's, you know, because I, because I look back at my career on, on some of the, and I'll never forget, no, I was in an embassy in the Middle East. There was, there was an attack by Al Qaeda.

• 2:26:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And the first, the first wave of attackers hit us in the, the front gate of the embassy with automatic weapons fire and then a car bomb hit the back gate, didn't detonate. But me and my, I was the deputy station chief and the, the station chief was there, him and I, he's a former SEAL. Um, uh, uh, we'd been in Iraq together and now we're in the Middle East at, at an embassy and we looked at each other and we're like, this ain't good. Our wives were there, but things were looking grim. There was, it was, it was a mess with the, the Marine Corps, the, the detachment there. The gunny had just come back from Iraq. He was all fucked up from PTS. They fucking collapsed. Um, the, the whole comm system in the embassy went down and so, you know, so the station chief looked at me, he's, he's writing a flash message, uh, uh, to, to headquarters to try to get some assistance too. And I'm trying to open the weapon safe.

• 2:27:25Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And I'm sitting there and it's a fricking dial. Yeah. And my heart rate went from zero to about a billion. And we opened the safe, I'm handing out weapons, we're putting people in the right places in the station, giving out, putting out, you know, uh, uh, having them don their body armor. Um, and I'm, I'm admittedly later, later on, I'm fucking terrified. I thought we're gonna, I'm gonna die today with my wife and this fucking shitty way to go. Uh, with these assholes attacking this embassy and the, you know, the Marine debt has, has fallen apart. Um, uh, and I got up and I, as, as I'm trying to put people in position and, and kind of, you know, and we're, and we're going through a full burn down too. We gotta burn the station down. We got shit in there, gotta get in the shredder. Um, afterwards, uh, when we kinda did the AAR, people said to me, Mark, that was awesome. You were great.

• 2:28:10Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And I'm like, what are you talking about? I was scared out of my mind. Um, they said, no, you actually portrayed a really sense of calm that, that really reassured us. You also said, hey, you know, this isn't good. We're, we're getting, I mean, there's, there's, you know, there's grenades hitting the, the top of the station and we're getting, you know, there's AK-47 fire in the, at, at the front gate. There's some, you know, there's, um, uh, really good chances it doesn't go well for us, but, but you kind of, you, you actually reassured us and kind of got us into place and we did things. There's nothing like, you know, this bad, this bad shit's happening, we're going through a burn down. Well, that was smart. Gives, give people something to do. Um, but afterwards, I, so I thought about that after all and like, that's when I came up with this, this kind of notion of it's how you kind of portray yourself in time of crisis, um, is really important, so. Well, how'd you get out of it?

• 2:28:55Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Uh, luck. The, the, the car bomb didn't detonate and the local guard force killed the attackers. Oh shit. Dumb fucking luck. Uh, you know, I remember, uh, and, and, um, I gotta be careful in what I say here. And a, uh, a TDY JSOC operator took over. Security duties at post one. And saved us.

• 2:29:17Marc Polymeropoulos?

  We tried to get him a, uh, uh, a big, uh, big intelligence medal for it, but, uh, state department denied it because their guys had fucked up so much. Shit. It was, that was a shitty day, but here, here's a great, again, talk about the dedication. And so I, I go home, you know, my, my kids were, um, about a mile from the embassy, um, watching it, you know, watching smoke, obviously, you know, the, and the school, this international school went into lockdown. Um, they think their parents are dead. Four or five hours later, we reunite, go back home. Sitting around there, I'm like, all right, what are we doing tonight? My kids are upset and crying. I'm like, let's order a pizza. Get a pizza and I'm like, all right, guys, gotta go out. And my, my, my, my wife knew it was coming. My kids looked at me like, what are you talking about? Like you guys almost died today. I'm like, it's my job. Yeah.

• 2:30:02Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I, I, I, we had to, you know, go out and start contacting agents. Like what the fuck just happened? That's just what you do. Yeah. Um, anyway, there's, you know, that's, and so that there's, there's a, I think stories, and when I tell stories like that, and a lot of those stories, there's great operational stories in the book. Just to make a point. So everyone loves these stories from the spec ops or, or intel world. To, to just kind of make key points, but that key point was kind of winning an Oscar that day, meaning that, you know, how you act in, in times of crisis. Um, telling the truth, but, but having kind of that, that, that kind of feel of authority is really important. It's contagious. Yeah, it is. And just, you know, and there's, there's some other, other stories there too. So, yeah, so that's the book. So off I am going around the country, talking to different groups and, you know, whether it's, school teachers or cops or, or sports teams. It's been fun. Quite the variety. Yeah.

• 2:30:48Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Well, let's talk about the nonprofit. So this is something I'm super passionate and again, it goes back to my time at Walter Reed. So, so Sound Off is a, is a nonprofit. It's based in San Antonio, Texas. Um, and ultimately it is an app for your phone, which provides anonymous mental health care um, for veterans and because, and there's, there's kind of two conflicting numbers, both of them are awful. It's either 17 or 22 veterans every day kill themselves. So veteran suicide is a horrendous issue. Um, and, and this, what, where I, I got interested in this is, you know, after I went to Walter Reed, um, for a month and, and I learned much more about this. Um, but, but concurrently I was contacted by the, the CEO of this, um, of this, of this nonprofit and because his brother-in-law was Bill Mulder.

• 2:31:33Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Bill Mulder was a SEAL Team Six operator who in, uh, after separating from the Navy in 2017, killed himself. This is his brother-in-law. And he's telling me this story and I'm like, I know Bill Mulder. Bill Mulder worked for me at CTC on a rotation. So just bizarre, weird, um, coincidence, but the more I went to Walter Reed, the more I kind of got into this whole concept of, of mental health and the stigma of mental health. And so this, this, you know, nonprofit and this app on a phone, um, absolutely, you know, tackles that problem because it is a, in a way, and for anonymously for a veteran or frankly, current member um, of special operations world, and that's who this is targeting right now, um, to get care that they need because of the stigma.

• 2:32:13Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And in talking to Sidney Mulder, who's Bill's widow, um, and I've gotten to know the family really well, is, uh, it's, it's incredible. I mean, she, you know, she had conversations with, with Bill, who, who literally said, if I, if I tell people what I'm going through, you know, I'll lose my status. I'll lose, you know, I, I, you know, I mean, his life was as an operator. Um, he was a badass, but he goes, I, I, you know, if I actually tell people what I'm going through and the kind of the demons that I'm going through now, um, I'm going to be taken offline. And so there's, there's that stigma. And so this, you know, it, this is, this is not, you know, the VA hotline. This is for people who don't want to go that route, but who need to get that care. And it's, the response has been unbelievable. So, right now, we have, so I'm on the board. I don't get paid anything for this.

• 2:32:56Marc Polymeropoulos?

  I'm obviously passionate about it because of my own mental health struggles. But, but at this point, every special operations foundation, from, you know, from the Navy SEAL Foundation, to the UNIT Foundation, which is from Delta, to across the board, Green Berets, you know, TF-160 Aviation Regiment, everybody has signed on to this. No kidding. And it's, and the MOU is that they are spreading the word to their, to their personnel. And, and so, you know, our, my job now is to kind of, to talk about this and frankly, to raise money for it. It costs, I mean, you know, to run, to run something like this, just the, just the processes and the engineering is, you know, one to two million a year.

• 2:33:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And so, doing a whole bunch of fundraisers, you know, across the country for it, but the response has been astounding. And so, you know, not only, not only is the Navy SEAL Foundation endorses, NSW has, you know, as well. And so, you know, I just got a note that, you know, people are saying that there's, it's all, you know, out in Coronado, there's stuff all over the walls of, of kind of the buildings there. And so, that's what, you know, you want to see, down at Fort Bragg as well. And so, it's been huge. That's amazing. It just, it just, it just really resonated with me. We're gonna, the agency is slowly getting on board. No shit. Slowly. Hasn't been easy. There's some agency officers who have reached out and are using it anyhow, which is critical.

• 2:34:24Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, and we, you know, the US Coast Guard just came to us and said, can we play? Wow. And then, and then the, you know, the police, the first responder community, both, you know, police and, you know, firefighter paramedics. I mean, there's, because it's the, it's the idea of getting anonymous care. There's so much, so many resources out there for folks who will do it overtly, but it's the ones who, and by the way, this is not a suicide prevention hotline. It's someone who's, who's obviously, you know, because if you're there, that's, that's a whole different scenario. This is someone who's having some trouble right now and which wants to talk to a mental health care provider in an anonymous fashion. And so, I just believe in this deeply. I don't make a penny off of it. It's, you know, but I've become pretty passionate. And it's all goes back to that just weird confluence of.

• 2:35:08Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Of, you know, Bill Mulder worked for me.

• 2:35:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:11Marc Polymeropoulos?

  At CIA, and I remember, and in talking to his widow, Sidney, who again is a hero in this, with her kids, and she asked me, she said, "What was Bill like?" So, you know, what do I say? Do I tell her the truth or not? Because when Bill was on rotation at CIA, he was a son of a bitch. Because you know why? Because he was really struggling.

• 2:35:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:30Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And I told her the truth. I said, "You know, I think we had some problems with him." And she said, "It makes sense, because he was going through some really dark times there."

• 2:35:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:36Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And, you know, there's, and the story of this is so horrific in that it was over a video call that he killed himself in front of his wife.

• 2:35:46Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:35:47Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And so, you know, it's soul-crushing when you hear this. And Sidney has really dedicated her life too to really help. And just, again, it's raising, you know, money and funds and awareness. And, you know, just like, you know, last week I got a call from the Philadelphia Police Department, a cop there committed suicide. And, you know, with, I gotta, the different, well, your audience will know. You know, there's, I think last year, two TF Orange operatives killed themselves. And there was a former dev group operator who I think a month ago did. So, this is a terrible problem.

• 2:36:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:22Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And again, and I get it, because I was at Walter Reed and I saw how people were suffering. And I have friends from the community who, you know, would call me and say they were in really dark. Two, you know, one former dev group operator and one former Delta operator told me if they hadn't gone to Walter Reed, they wouldn't be here.

• 2:36:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:40Marc Polymeropoulos?

  And so, just put it all together, sound off really helps. And so, that's why, you know, that's why this, what a perfect, you know, audience that you have. I'm not asking for money, raising funds, I'm asking to spread the word. If you're a veteran, you know, from the Spec Ops community, there is a outlet for you to talk to someone, and that just is huge.

• 2:36:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we'll link that below as well.

• 2:37:01Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Appreciate it. Thanks.

• 2:37:02Shawn Ryan?

  But, yeah, thank you for sharing all that. And thank you for coming down to Nashville.

• 2:37:07Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Great.

• 2:37:08Shawn Ryan?

  I just wish you the best of luck.

• 2:37:10Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Thanks, appreciate it. Great chat today, Sean. Thanks for having me.

• 2:37:13Shawn Ryan?

  Cheers.

• 2:37:14Marc Polymeropoulos?

  Thanks.

• 2:37:16Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you.

• 2:37:44Speaker 07

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