#220 Simone Ledeen - Fmr. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy

Simone Ledeen is a national security expert and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy, where she oversaw U. S. defense strategies for countries including Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and others. With an MBA and finance background, she served as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and later as Executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank, leading the launch of its multi-national financial crime compliance program. Ledeen has held roles at the U. S. Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis and is a Senior Fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Her expertise spans technology, special operations, intelligence, and geopolitical issues, as seen in her 2025 discussions on Israel-Iran conflicts. The daughter of historian Michael Ledeen, she advocates for innovative defense solutions and public-private partnerships to address global threats. Based in Austin, Texas, Ledeen consults through Maven Defense Solutions and Vantage ROI, focusing on strategic advisory in defense and finance. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://tryarmra.com/srs https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://shawnlikesgold.com https://ketone.com/srs Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order https://lumen.me/srs https://patriotmobile.com/srs https://rocketmoney.com/srs https://ROKA.com – USE CODE SRS https://USCCA.com/srs https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://drinkhoist.com – USE CODE SRS Simone Ledeen Links:X - ⁠https://x.com/SimoneLedeen⁠ LI - ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-ledeen⁠ Website - ⁠www.simoneledeen.com⁠ Maven Defense - ⁠www.mavendefense.com⁠ Strauss Center Profile - ⁠https://www.strausscenter.org/person/simone-ledeen 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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• 0:34Shawn Ryan?

  Simone Ladine, welcome to the show.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Thank you. Great to be here.

• 0:38Shawn Ryan?

  It's good to have you here. I've been wanting to have you on for quite a while, but I think right now is the perfect time. So, thank you for coming.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 0:49Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. But, um, yeah, lots of things going on in the news right now. I saw a tweet talking about intel analysts and stuff that I'll read off here in a minute that really caught our attention. And so I really, I want to dive into that. Um, because

• 1:07Shawn Ryan?

  just a lot to talk about. And that, that tweet was, it, it, it caught me. So, I'm going to start you off with an introduction here real quick. Simone Ladine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, national security, counterterrorism, and intelligence expert with a career spanning decades across the Pentagon, Treasury, and global battlefields. Iraq and Afghanistan war vet. You led efforts to follow the money fueling insurgencies. A former senior civilian leader in the Pentagon during pivotal moments like the Abraham Accords and operations targeting Baghdadi and Soleimani. A pioneer in counter-threat finance,

• 1:50Shawn Ryan?

  coordinating the SWIFT program at the Treasury and exposing terrorist financial networks. Testified before Congress on the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and managing director at Maven Defense Solutions. A senior fellow at UT's Strauss Center and an advisor shaping the future of defense technology. Am I missing anything?

• 2:13Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 2:14Shawn Ryan?

  It's quite the resume there. That's quite the resume.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:17Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, so a couple of things real quick here.

• 2:22Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody gets a gift.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:28Shawn Ryan?

  Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears. Legal in all 50 states. You still passed your drug test. So, but um, yeah, so getting into this tweet that caught my attention from you. At a fundamental level, a lot of our analytic corps need to be completely destroyed and rebuilt. A lot of these people are coming from you know which schools. So they're totally indoctrinated and they don't know what they're what they're talking about because they're not properly educated anyways. That really caught my attention and um, so I wanted to, I know we're going to dive into this more in a little bit, but I just, what was?

• 3:14Shawn Ryan?

  What was the premise of that?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Well, I said that in the aftermath of the leaked

• 3:24Speaker 02

  intelligence assessment right after our strike against Fordale and the seemed like there was this intelligence product, this assessment that was leaked. That said, and it was like within 24 hours or within 12 hours of the strike occurring.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  That there was no significant damage. And now I understood later after that tweet that they did, the analysts did characterize it as low, that they had low confidence in their assessment. And that was not included in the original, I think it was CNN that originally published that. They left that out, but be that as it may.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  You know, if you're looking at a satellite image of a bunker buster, you just see the entry point for the bunker buster. You don't see down, down, down where it actually exploded and you, you don't see what the damage is. Um, so there's no possible way of knowing within that time period what the damage was or was not. Um, so that was kind of the context of, of the, of my tweet. But I also I also wanted to make the point more broadly because it's, it's a problem that I've seen. For a few years now, and I'm, and I don't, you know, I don't look at, I'm just a normal person now.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  I don't look at, at our intelligence assessments anymore on a regular basis. But I do know these schools, these universities are institutions of higher learning, where, you know, people go, it's very hard to get in still, they get a brand, right? You're like stamped with a, a brand of one of these schools. And you're, that means you're supposed to know something. That, that means that people are supposed to listen to you. And that's been, you know, one of the pillars of our, you know, of our society really has been, um, we've have our different institutions, right? That we have all bowed down to and have all said, um, yes, we, you know,

• 5:39Speaker 02

  these are the people who are, who are our leaders. That these people become our presidents and our senators and our titans of business. But we've also seen in the past few years that they're, they're completely indoctrinated by, I always say Marxist. And, um, they're, they come out saying these like political platitudes without actually understanding anything that's behind what they're saying.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Um, because they're not learning how to think critically. This is really the point. Universities are meant to build critical thinkers. People who can look at a topic from many different points of view and then come to a conclusion. Instead of only being taught one way because all the other ways are offensive or all the other ways are, you know, put a label on it. Um, the professors that used to teach a lot of those different points of view have been driven out of these universities and, um, What are you left with? You're left with this one perspective. That's what these students are taught.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  And then they are released out into the wild. Some of them become intelligence analysts. And what we're left with is intelligence analysis from people who have not been taught how to think critically. Now, I'm not, I don't want to cast aspersions on like our entire intelligence community. All analysts in the community, because I have some good friends who are absolutely brilliant and please, you know, don't ever leave. But, but there are a lot of, a lot of others, unfortunately, and it's a struggle. And the, the more you have decision makers, this is also how the problem plays out.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  You have all these decision makers who come from different backgrounds, who don't understand these nuances that, you know, nerds like me and the, and these intel analysts know. So they look at a piece of analysis and they're like, oh, well, the intelligence community says this. They don't understand the nuance of we assess with low confidence. That doesn't matter to them because they don't know how to, how to read that. And everyone knows that. So everyone who's writing for them knows that. So it's, that, that really was the motivation behind my writing that.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  And there's a lot more, there's a lot more to it. And I'm actually grateful to have this conversation because a lot of people know this is true. I'm not the only one.

• 8:21Shawn Ryan?

  I know it's true.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 8:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you know, I, I don't think it's just the universe. I think it's, it's, I don't think it's just Ivy League universities are doing this. I mean, I think this is, this is a broader problem. This is, I mean, everybody wants to live in their own echo chamber and they only want the perspective that.

• 8:44Shawn Ryan?

  Fills whatever there there are wants and and maybe not needs, but you know what I'm saying?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:50Shawn Ryan?

  It's it's. Man, it's become just like such a problem, man. I mean, I just I just had Gavin Newsom on my show last week and I got blasted for it. And I knew I would get blasted for it, but I mean, I'm just so tired of being it's just everywhere. I mean, there's you're either right or you're left, you're either mega or you're not. You're, I mean, the the algorithms of the social media platforms, X, Instagram, Facebook, all of them. I mean, it it you only get one perspective because the algorithms are so good at, you know,

• 9:29Shawn Ryan?

  segregating those two camps and and and so, you know, I wanted to

• 9:36Shawn Ryan?

  wanted to talk to the other side and just ask some questions and and people are outraged about it. It's crazy to me. It's like,

• 9:47Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know how to get through this. I mean, nobody's doing it. Nobody's talking to the other side on either side. It in in it. I mean, how are we supposed to have any civil discussions? You know what I mean? When it's that tribal?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  We don't. I mean, we don't have. And then we don't have civil discussions right now. I mean, as you see the way you're being attacked, then, you know, with I mean, with respect to to Gavin Newsom, I mean, he just my my perspective is he just says whatever. And he's, you know, trying to build a larger platform for himself outside of California. It's probably why people are mad at you because they would might feel like you're giving him that opportunity. But also, why are people not critical thinkers anymore? Can you not hear? Like, can you not hear him? Saying what he's saying and understand what's behind that.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Um, that's, that's pretty shocking, to be honest with you. I, I agree that it's, there should be a plurality of voices out there. And, um, I mean, just for going back to intelligence analysts for a minute. Their entire job is to ingest lots of different types of data perspectives. And come to a conclusion based on all of the data and, and all of, you know, these different reflections. And, um, it's, it's quite, uh, it's, it's quite alarming. I mean, I, you know, I served in the first Trump administration and I still don't understand. What a lot of people believe MAGA to be.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Um, I, I like ask three people what they think MAGA is and you'll get five opinions. But the person who started MAGA was Donald Trump. And so does he get to kind of say what MAGA is and not? I'm not like deep into the US politics. For a good reason, which is I don't want to be attacked like you've been attacked. But I mean, it's, it's like, it's weird. I don't get it. I, um, yeah, it's, it's a mystery to me too. I campaigned for, for him and everything, but I, I don't know. I, I'm certainly grateful that, uh, that he won and Kamala Harris lost.

• 12:15Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how, how do you, how do you fix this within the intelligence agencies? I mean, is it a total gut job?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Well, that was.

• 12:24Shawn Ryan?

  And then where would the new ones come from?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  This is the problem. I mean, we, we can't, what are we?

• 12:34Speaker 02

  What are we going to do? We do need a new generation of critical thinkers. And I'm grateful there are different institutions out there now that are, that offer alternatives to some of these woke schools. But also, what's great is the government is now going after some of these schools and saying, if you're only going to, to teach, and this isn't only Ivy Leagues, but the problem is especially bad in Ivy Leagues, is if you're going to discriminate based on, you know, X, Y, Z categories, like, that's against the law. You will not get federal funding for that. And that has, that is going to cause change.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  That will, they must change because the amount of government funding to some of these schools is, like, they can't survive without it. So, that's really motivating. That's how you start to change this. But also, I mean, people that are reading intelligence, you can grade what you're seeing and say, like, this is not useful because X, Y, Z. But again, a lot of people who, who ingest that, who are the, what they call the customers, don't actually always understand that they're seeing something that's filtered through this, like, woke mind virus. And so, yeah, so it's, it's a problem. But that's why also you're supposed, you have these senior analysts, you have the leaders

• 14:01Speaker 02

  who are seasoned, but they're also captured in many cases. They're also captured. And, and it's hard to, to fight against a system that only wants you to put out certain things. And you will get in trouble if you say other things. And I've seen people fired for making truthful, publishing truthful assessments that were very unpopular.

• 14:28Shawn Ryan?

  Could you give me, could you just give a, a specific example of, of that? Just so, I, I want the audience to understand with examples of how, how this could affect intelligence.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Sure. Back in the day...

• 14:44Speaker 02

  You were not allowed to say that Al Qaeda leadership was living in Iran. You could not say it.

• 14:51Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Because we might have had to do something about that. We were in the global war on terror at the time and we were going after Al Qaeda everywhere it was. We didn't want to, I believe, our leadership did not want to acknowledge that Al Qaeda leadership was in Iran because then perhaps we would have had to do something about it. So, yeah, I saw reporting on that that was like highest level of classification. So only very few people could actually ever see it. And so also because it couldn't be published in like broader assessments that were going out to more people at lower classification levels.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  And then, you know, fast forward couple of years, like I got out of government, went and did other things, came back in and it was, it was like just a thing that everyone acknowledged. Oh yeah, Al Qaeda's in Iran. Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda senior leadership's living in Iran. They've been there for a long time. It blew my mind. I'm like, oh, we're, we're just saying that now? Like, that's crazy to me. There's someone I know got fired for writing that.

• 16:05Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. So, so basically what you're saying is when hard intelligence facts are gathered, if it doesn't fit whatever narrative that is in play at the time, then that will, that will never get reported to who it needs to go to.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say that in like so broadly, but yes, there are, there are definitely times when things are purposely not promulgated out there. Maybe it's like point to point, you know, only a few people know about it because it's so dangerous for that information to get shared more broadly. That's one of the problems that we have. People are working off of.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Sometimes misinformation or not all the information, even though we have it. It's just very, very tightly held for, for a variety of reasons. You know, sometimes, to be fair, it's not because it's like politically damaging potentially, or puts the United States in a uncomfortable position, but because the source, you know, we want to protect the source, or how we collected the information in the first place. So it's, it's not always that way. I, I want to be fair, but it's not, it's not always just to protect sources and methods either.

• 17:31Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, talking about Al Qaeda camping out in Iran, I mean, Iran just got bombed. Lot, a lot of controversy over Israel right now and what's going on over there. So I wanted to unpack a couple of things that are going on and, and, and, and so let's start with, I mean, I woke up this morning, pulled up X, first thing I saw, Israel bombed Syria. So Israel's bombing Syria, Israel's bombing Iran, Israel is killing lots of people in Gaza. I mean, what, what is going on over there? Let's start with Syria, with latest.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Okay, um, I, I would just contextualize all the things that you've, that you've, like that list that you just ran down, contextualize that with October 7th, which is really was the gen, like, this is where all this started and where Israel was like, right, we're done. Um, we're, we're done with kind of the way we were doing things before, kicking the can down the road, kind of like trying to deal with situations rather than just completely, you know.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Turn Gaza into a parking lot. But it changed their perspective. And by the way, if you look at internal polling, Israeli internal polling, they're very pro what's going on now because they suffered tremendously. I mean, it was horrific. October 7th was terrible. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of context for this.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  So Syria, Syria, this is not a short answer, Sean.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Syria has been, there are so many players. Syria is not just about Syria.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Over the past, since the quote unquote Arab Spring, which was, as we know, not a spring at all. There have been a lot of different forces in Syria fighting each other, plotting external attacks. Some of them, Iran had a very serious foothold in Syria through Hezbollah. And they had like cut a deal with Assad, who was threatened. I mean, Assad wouldn't have survived the Arab Spring if it hadn't been for Russia and Iran. And so he became beholden to them. Where is he today? Moscow. So he became beholden to them.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  He became like their puppet. So also, if you consider the geography, like where Israel and Syria meet, there's only a small area, the Golan Heights, where they share a border. But Israel's been concerned about this for many years. First, there was Hezbollah kind of massing there, getting ready to do something, who knows? There's ISIS, there's all this, all these different forces in play that ultimately threaten the state of Israel. And again, after October 7th,

• 21:03Speaker 02

  this became like, we're going to have to do something eventually.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  I don't think that Israel ever thought they would have the opportunity to address these Iranian proxies one by one. Mm-hmm. I think they always, their plan was always, how are we going to fight everyone at the same time? So it's worked out well for them and they, they've been incredibly masterful at how they've kind of addressed each one of these Iranian proxies. But, you know, now there's a new, there's a new manager in town, formerly a guest of ours at Camp Bukha, the new leader of Syria, Jelani. He has turned a new leaf as he is portraying to the world.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  He's no longer wearing his jihadi garb. He wears a suit. He's been welcomed into the international community. And our own government really, you know, we want a new Abraham Accords with Syria, joining the Abraham Accords. We've lifted a lot of sanctions. We want to do business there. And I hope, personally, I hope for that. I hope that that happens. However, you've got Jelani in Damascus and then you have kind of his lieutenants or loosely-aligned groups that are still sort of running things outside of Damascus. And he needs to get better control over that.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Now, there's a debate about, was he responsible for what's happened over the past few days, which is horrific, horrific attacks against the Druze community. The what community? Druze. What is that? Their minority, their minority group. And they're, they're not just in Syria, they're in Israel as well. They're actually very active in the Israeli, like, security services. They serve in the IDF. And they play an important role in, in Israel and Israeli national security. So they were attacked in a pretty horrific way.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  There's videos all over social media about, like...

• 23:27Speaker 02

  You know, murders of hundreds of people that were filmed, the humiliations that were forced on the Druze before they were murdered, including some of their, you know, some of their religious leaders. It's like, bad. It's not, it's, it's very bad.

• 23:45Shawn Ryan?

  So these are, these are basically, the Druze is basically Muslim Israelis?

• 23:50Speaker 02

  No, they're not.

• 23:51Shawn Ryan?

  Is that correct?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  They're, they're Druze. So they're, they live in Israel, they live in Syria. They're, they're spread out. Like, if you consider, you know, Kurds who kind of live in a bunch of different countries, they're, the kind of their own tribal network, that's the Druze. They have their own tribal network, they're, they're spread across Syria, Israel, and, and maybe more than that. I cannot say I'm like a deep, deep Syria expert, but what I do know is that they have, they were attacked pretty badly, and there were attacks against

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Christians prior to that, you know, in, inside of churches, murders, rapes. And this was the second attack against the Druze under this kind of new Jelani government. And I don't, actually, I don't want to, it is a Jelani government that, that's, they've been acknowledged into, you know, by, by our leadership. So, anyway, all that to say, Israel acted in defense of the Druze.

• 25:06Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And that's, that was what they did this morning. They, apparently, they'd been messaging for a while, like, cut this shit out, this is really bad, we don't like to see this. But it didn't stop. And they had a problem too, which was...

• 25:23Speaker 02

  I read a report that that said over a thousand Druze from Israel like knocked down the fence between Israel and Syria and just like went into Syria to fight with their Druze brothers. And Israel was like, whoa, we don't want our citizens to get killed in Syria. They didn't want, they don't want any bigger problems. Do you know what I mean? Everyone wants us to calm down, quiet down. We're going in a good direction. Please stop killing each other. And that was the point of this attack, the Israeli attack today.

• 26:00Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  I really, I hope that's the end.

• 26:05Shawn Ryan?

  What would you think if US got involved in that? Do you think it's our place?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  No, definitely not.

• 26:11Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think it was our place with the Iran stuff?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  I think specifically targeting for Dow, nobody else could have done it but us. And President Trump had said for so many years, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon, that he had his own credibility riding on that. And he had to. But yes, I do also think it was the right thing to do. I never thought that this would turn into American boots on the ground. It won't. It can't. We're not doing that.

• 26:39Shawn Ryan?

  You don't think so?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  No.

• 26:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's good to hear because that's, that was my worry is, you know, and look, I'm not an Israel expert. I'm not an Iran, I'm not a Middle East expert. But, you know, I mean, Trump ran his campaign, we're not going to get into any more forever wars. And that seems to be kicking the hornet's nest in my book. And, you know, and the thing is, I'm not saying Israel was right or wrong in having, in doing what they did, you know, with Iran. But

• 27:15Shawn Ryan?

  You just mentioned it. I know we're gonna dive in a lot more. I mean, Iran has used terrorist organizations as proxies. From what I know, throughout the entire twenty whatever year war.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 27:28Shawn Ryan?

  Right?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:28Shawn Ryan?

  And we never did a damn thing about it. Nothing. My fucking friends were getting killed out there by this shit. Nobody gave a fuck. You know, now Israel gets involved and all of a sudden, it's like at the snap of a finger, fuck it, we're bombing them. And that to me is like a slap in the face. That's like, so when it's, when it's Americans that are getting killed, we don't do shit. But when Israel's involved, then we're gonna step in and do something. I don't understand that at all. And I did, I'm not, you know, I'm not getting into the conspiracy stuff about all the shit that you read online, but that's just, that's just, that's just how I feel and that, and that's how a, a

• 28:11Shawn Ryan?

  very large percentage of the veteran population feels.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:15Shawn Ryan?

  Is, what's going on? Like, why weren't you there for us?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I mean, I could not agree more in the sense that.

• 28:24Shawn Ryan?

  And that goes through Trump's last administration and Obama administration and the Bush administration. That's all of them.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:32Shawn Ryan?

  And the Biden administration.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  I mean, we, I was tracking, like, we saw Iranian money moving through, like, in early days of Iraq. We were just watching it and, and there were a few things that happened where

• 28:53Speaker 02

  um, just a deep sigh because of all of the, the, the terrible loss and missed opportunities. Um, but, you know, I was, I was there during the Bush administration and, um, yeah, I mean, there was a policy decision. Even though we knew what was happening, what they were building, who they were dealing with, we let them. And then they started killing us and essentially we let them, um, with very few exceptions and, um.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  I agree with you. That is messed up. And I mean, we should all be incredibly angry about that.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  I will also say that, I mean, I'm not making excuses for anybody. Like, I demand accountability like everybody else. You know, we have had none, and we deserve it. And our dead friends deserve it, and their families. But I will say, this is like, this is not the same thing. Like, you want this regime that creates these terror proxies that we know have killed Americans, aggressively gone after us? You want them to have a nuke? You want them to give that nuclear weapon technology to the freaking Houthis?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  And whoever else? I don't. And so, just because one thing was wrong, doesn't mean this is right. Or this isn't right. I just, like, having Iran have a nuclear weapon, like, their ballistic missile technology, it's worth saying this to you. Their ballistic missile technology is so, was so sophisticated. They were building missiles that could go farther and farther and farther. Not just to hit Israel. What were they gonna do with those ballistic missiles that could travel so, so far? They were targeting us, or eventually.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  So, it was in our national interest to make sure that they never got a nuclear weapon. And I think if Israel had had the technology to do it themselves, I think we would have let them, and we wouldn't have gotten involved. But unfortunately, we are the only ones that have that technology. We have the B2, we have these bunker busters. Maybe we'll start selling those to Israel. Great. But it's in our interest too. Like, they are coming for us too.

• 31:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I know they're coming for us. You know, I'm not saying that at all. But, you know, there was a couple other things that came out. I mean, I know you have a lot of friends and acquaintances still in intelligence, and probably a lot more than I do. I still have a couple. But, you know, I talked to one person. They said not one of our 18 intelligence agencies reported that... Iran had nuclear capabilities. In fact, you know, March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, this is her, the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. And Supreme Leader Khomeini, I'm sorry, I butchered his name, has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he is, that he suspended in 2003.

• 32:13Shawn Ryan?

  And then in June of 25, quoted, "America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months. If they decide to finalize the assembly, President Trump has been clear, that can't happen, and I agree." And so, I mean, how does that, how did this all change just within a couple of months? They had no capability. Now all this, I mean, after years and years of intel.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:43Shawn Ryan?

  All of a sudden, in a couple of months, oh shit, they've got nuclear capabilities. We need to take care of this. That didn't come from us. That came from Mossad. Why wouldn't we trust our 18 intelligence agencies more than we trust a foreign government's?

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Well, that foreign government had completely penetrated Iran, and we hadn't. We, we see their operations potentially ongoing even now. Um, so targeted, so, uh, specific. They, we weren't where they were, and they saw things that we didn't. And, um, I love a good conspiracy as much as the next person.

• 33:24Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  But like, they have to get this right. I mean, we, we did not have, we did not have, in my opinion, um, based on what I saw previously, we did not have that level of penetration that they did. And, uh, and that's, that was a game changer.

• 33:45Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Well, that's good to know. It's just things that I don't understand because I don't have a full picture and, and, you know, with, with a lot of the stuff that you could read on the internet, it just gets you real.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  No, but it's like, it's tough, Sean, because people hear that and they're like, oh, the Israelis told us, so we just believe them and then we're gonna go take out their biggest enemy. You know, I get that, and it like, it sucks. Um, it also happens to be true, so I don't know, uh, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, it, it is, um. I wish that we had better collection inside of Iran, that we had had better collection. Now, uh, things are changing, but not in terms of us, but what's gonna happen with the regime? I don't know anymore because they're, they're totally defenseless right now.

• 34:38Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, do you, just going back on our earlier conversation when we were talking about analysts and, and intelligence folks, I mean, not knowing what they're doing because of where they came from, from the Ivy League schools. I mean, do you think that played into why we didn't have that type of intelligence?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  I think that's part of it. Yeah. I think that's part of it. I think just our general risk aversion is overwhelming. And you, you know, you were in the CIA, you saw like institutionally, they're risk averse. Hopefully now things are changing there. But I don't know. And I know I was extremely frustrated by how little, how little was going on. I'm like, we, four years ago, you know, we could see the trajectory of this whole thing with Iran, right? With them building the nukes, whether you want to parse that they're this close or that close, the intelligence community started playing these games where they're like, well, they can make a, if they decided to make a nuclear weapon, they could

• 35:40Speaker 02

  do it within, you know, a very short period of time. It's like with medium, I think at the time it was like medium, um, um, what do you call it? Sorry. That, um, they, they had medium confidence of that assessment. I'm like, so you don't know anything, basically? Like, I'm supposed to make decisions off of this? Or I'm supposed to advise my boss's boss about, like, based on that? That's not that helpful. Um, and of course, having been an intelligence analyst before, I know, like, I, I, I get it. And, and I don't want to, like, beat the dead horse too much. I mean, sometimes you have what you have to work

• 36:23Speaker 02

  with, unfortunately. And, and, um, but I think at the end of the day,

• 36:29Speaker 02

  The president in his first term, President Trump made it clear, no new wars. He didn't want to go to war with Iran. He wanted a deal. There were things that we could have done back then, like beneath the level of armed conflict, we have authorities that we can use to do certain things that are, you know, in the gray zone, Sean, you know, you know about all of that. We could have done that. And I didn't really see anyone who could have done it do it. And unfortunately, it led to a scenario where there was no other option. The only option

• 37:14Speaker 02

  was this big kinetic public thing. Could we have potentially avoided that earlier with a little more risk-taking? I think so. And again, no accountability for any of that at all.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  You're smart, right? You should get paid up to two days early. With Ally's early direct deposit, you can better manage your funds and have money for when life is actually happening. So go ahead. Make Wednesday the new Friday. Level up Thursday's date night and be ready when those tickets go on sale Friday. Ally. Banking built for life today. Ally Bank, Member FDIC.

• 37:54Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Is it, is it?

• 38:00Shawn Ryan?

  Is it true that in Trump's first term, he took the inspectors of the nuclear facilities out?

• 38:08Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know about that.

• 38:09Shawn Ryan?

  In Iran?

• 38:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 38:13Shawn Ryan?

  That's something I've been wanting to dive into. But anyways, let's move on. So I want to do, we have a lot of stuff to discuss, and I really am excited to get into the Iraq War with you, but I thought it would be good to do somewhat of a life story, and then we can go down rabbit holes along the way.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Great.

• 38:30Shawn Ryan?

  So where did you grow up?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Uh, well, I, um, my parents are American, but they met and married in Italy. So, uh, I spent my, or I was born in the US, but I spent my early years in Rome. And actually Italians are my first language.

• 38:48Shawn Ryan?

  Is it really?

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:50Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  It's, um, beautiful, but not, not that helpful and, and outside of like restaurants and, you know, going on, on nice trips, but, um, but yeah, I, uh, so we moved to DC when I was, when I was like four.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  My father was a, uh, a university professor at the time. Um, and he started getting death threats from the, uh, communists. There was a, the Red Brigades, very active in, uh, left wing terrorists, communist terrorists, very active in Italy, and they had killed a bunch of people there. And, um, he got, he got a death threat. And, uh, I was very young and he was like, we out. So, uh, so we, we came to the US. He got a job at, uh, at a think tank at Georgetown University. And, um, and so I, I grew up in, in DC, in the DC area, swamp creature.

• 39:53Shawn Ryan?

  Swamp creature.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  I, um, yeah, I, my mother worked, my parents ended up both working in the Reagan administration. My father was, went to the state, the state department and eventually to, uh, the National Security Council. And my mother was working at the Pentagon doing, uh, technology transfer, like trying to keep the Soviets from getting our, uh, you know, our, our best technology.

• 40:18Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Um, so yeah, that's, that's why I grew up. And then I ended up, uh, my father, unfortunately, a, at the National Security Council, ended up, uh, working in the same office with Oliver North and Bud McFarlane. Um, and was, uh, swept up in the Iran contra affair. I was 12 when all that happened and I had a pretty uncomfortable exchange with the principal of the school that I was in, who asked me if my father was guilty. And I went home that day and told my mother and she was like, well, you don't have to go back to that school ever again. And so kind of mid-year, I switched to a new school, very bougie, all-girls school,

• 41:04Speaker 02

  where like everyone's dad was way more important than mine and no one cared. So, and I only learned later, you know, how, how much of a struggle that was for my parents to be able to pay that tuition. Cause it was like one of those borderline things where they didn't qualify for, for any kind of scholarship. But, and frankly, I wasn't a good enough student to get any kind of scholarship, anything. But they, uh, yeah, they had to, they sacrificed a lot to pay for my education and I'm very grateful. But anyway, yeah, so I, I went through high school there and, um, and then, yeah, off, off to college.

• 41:49Shawn Ryan?

  Where'd you go?

• 41:50Speaker 02

  I went to a school called Brandeis University in Massachusetts. And, um, I, I did not, I did not do particularly well in school, uh, in high school. But when I got to college, I realized that I knew more than a lot of other people just because my school was so good. And, um, and it all started to make sense, like, why did I have to go there, um, and not just public school? So, yeah, I remained very grateful for that. But yeah, I went to Brandeis University.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Majored in European Cultural Studies, just so that I could get credit for a full year overseas. Pretty much always wanted to travel, live overseas, had the wanderlust. And, um, so I went to Italy and, uh, did like,

• 42:45Speaker 02

  In my mind, I had this eat, pray, love thing. You know, I went to Florence and thought it would be this great adventure, but I made a a critical mistake, which was I actually did a program at the University of Florence, which was like hard as shit. So I had to do it. It was in Italian and you go to like, the way they do it there is like you go to lectures, you read this whole pile of books, they give you the reading list. And like you have one exam at the end of the year and it's it's an oral exam in front of a panel of professors and it's like half an hour and they can ask you anything. And that sucked. I had no eat, pray, love situation.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  I had like study, study, study and but I learned a lot and Florence was beautiful. And I got out of Brandeis, which already was like crazy left, crazy left. Coming from DC, I wanted nothing to do with politics. I just wanted to be like normal kid, normal experiences.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  I mean, when I was young, I remember in DC, we had like Jean Kirkpatrick over for dinner one night and she, um, my father was like delayed at work. So it was like me and my mom with Jean Kirkpatrick, the ambassador to the United Nations. I mean, if you ever look her up on YouTube, she was like a serious person. Okay, a serious person. And I guess our oven broke. My mom was putting some like frozen hors d'oeuvres or whatever in the oven to warm up and the oven was broken. So she sent me next door, like to use the next door neighbor's oven. And I got stopped by the Secret Service because I'm running back and forth with food.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  They're like, what are you doing with the food? And that was my, you know, I had a weird childhood. It was not like a lot of other kids. So when I went to college, I just wanted to be normal. And but instead, it was just all this craziness already. And like we had.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  I forget what year it was, maybe my sophomore year. We had a big student event, which was Angela Davis was invited as a speaker. Angela Davis, former vice presidential candidate under the Communist Party. She was briefly on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for like busting her boyfriend out of court. I think some, I think a judge was killed in the process. Wow. So she was invited to speak at my school and she was being paid out of student funds. And, and I was like, absolutely not.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  And that was also, I ended up kind of speaking out about that a little bit because I'm like, this is crazy and you're not even telling the students who this person is. Like, she is bad news. And anyway, it was, it was, even back then, it was a problem. And I'm, you know, I'm 50 years old, so this was a few years ago. But yeah, so I, I just, I went overseas for a year, just kind of did that thing and came back. I wrote an honors thesis and got out of there. And I don't think I've ever been back to Boston since then. It's like way too cold for me and just not, not great memories.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  But, but I got through it and I finished, which was my goal. And then, and then I came back to DC, got a job briefly, like for a tech company. Just kind of feeling my way around, didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. And I, I got this job working for a guy who had invented something that was acquired by a company called Lucent Technologies, which doesn't exist anymore. But he, he made like over a billion dollars off of it.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  And he decided that he was going to stand, start up all these related tech companies that would like be each other's customers. And, and I, I worked for him. I mean, I was like basically one level above intern, but it was cool. And

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Anyway, from there, I went to business school. And I went, I went to business school in Italy. But that was, that was right when nine eleven happened. It kind of changed my life.

• 47:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I saw that. How did it change your life?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Well, one of my mother's, like, best friends was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. And we, at the time, I was, I was like a few blocks away. I was in Pentagon City. And so we, you know, you could feel the, the apartment building shake when the plane hit. And we already knew, we'd already heard about what had happened in New York City.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  And I didn't know till later that day that Barbara was on that plane. Barbara Olson was her name. And she, it turned out that she had switched her flight at the last minute. She was supposed to, she was like a political commentator. She wrote, her last book was about Hillary Clinton, not a fan. And she, she was on her way, I think she was supposed to go to Bill Maher show. That's why she was on that flight. It was going to Los Angeles. And her husband's birthday was September 11th. So she, at the last minute, she changed her flight so that she could be with her husband on his, on the morning of his birthday.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  And when he got to bed that night, he found that she had left him a note as well. But yeah, that, that, that changed my life. It changed the life of our entire family, my, my two younger brothers as well. So I, I was already about to leave. I was about to leave for business school in Milan. And everything was grounded and I had time to.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  You know, think about everything, go to Barbara's memorial service and just kind of be with her, her widower, with Ted, and just think about like, do I even give a shit about any of this anymore? Like, I had all these plans to go, whatever, have more European adventures or whatever, and, and I'm like, I don't care about any of that anymore.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  I, I came from, I was, I've been so lucky, you know, I, I came from a great family, I have a great education. I need to serve my country now. And, and I didn't know how, but I, kind of the seed was planted, and as I thought about it, I realized, like, what is school? You go to school to learn a certain set of tools that you can use however you want. So, that's when I started to get the idea, like, there's gonna be somebody tracking terrorist money. So, I'm gonna go to a business school, I'm gonna learn about international finance, and then I'm gonna figure out how to help do that. And that's what I, that's what I ended up doing.

• 50:15Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. And you deployed to, you deployed to Iraq?

• 50:19Speaker 02

  I did, 2003, yep.

• 50:21Shawn Ryan?

  How was that?

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Early days.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Well, it was a shit show.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  It was, it was-

• 50:31Shawn Ryan?

  You were there for the invasion?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 50:33Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  They, they trucked us into Kuwait in September, and we were, we were in Kuwait, or was it late August? I can't remember. We were in Kuwait for like a week, and they had started up this, like bizarre, week-long training in a classroom for civilians, who had never done anything like this before. And it was kind of like-

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Mob gear, it's important, but you're not gonna have any. Flak vest, also important, yours doesn't have any plates. Um, so it's like, cool. Uh, but at the time when we got there, um, I think it was sometime in September, um, that we, that we got to Baghdad. Uh, it was still, it was before, right before, uh, things started blowing up, like right before the UN, uh, the UN thing was like a big turning point when the, the head of the UN mission there got blown up. Um, so when I first got there, you could still, they had like government suburbans at the forehead's palace is what, what they called it, cause it had four heads of Saddam Hussein

• 51:45Speaker 02

  on top of the palace, the presidential palace, as it's now known. Um, we could just sign out a, a car and like drive into the city, like go buy some pistachios and, um, that, it was like that for about five minutes, um, after I got there and then things started going boom pretty fast.

• 52:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Um, but we, you know, we were housed in the palace. They just put cots in, I don't know if it was like a ballroom, so it's one of the huge rooms. They just put all these cots out and the lights were on 24/7. Um, I saw a baby being made, um, right there in front of like a lot of people. They eventually, the mother and father eventually got married, but it was, it was a lot going on there. Um, lot going on. Um, yeah. So, um, but we, you know, we worked, we were trying to do the work that we were given. So I was an advisor in the Coalition Provisional Authority.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  I was an advisor to the Ministry of Finance.

• 52:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  What does that mean? They basically, what they told me my job was gonna be was Excel spreadsheets. And like, having just finished my MBA, I was like, I know how to do that. Um. They, at the time, there were a lot of countries that were, that wanted to donate to the rebuilding, rebuilding of Iraq. And a lot of people forget this now, but in the early days, there were also a lot of other countries that were there, not in combat, but in like, they wanted to show up and give, and lend support. Now, this, like, fast forward to Afghanistan, and you see all these, there were foreign nations that were there who fought with us, and bled with us, and died with us.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  In Iraq, people showed up, but then, pretty quickly, this war became very unpopular in their countries, and we were kind of on our own.

• 53:44Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  And I saw a lot of these foreign troops kind of, you know, piece out. But, um, yeah, so we were, we were, we were specifically, my team was on a, what they called a budget execution team, which was basically, like, executing the budget, paying out the money. In an environment like that, it's really hard, because everything was cash, and the, they also decided, the powers that be decided, the old DNRs that had Saddam's face on them had to be, you know, they needed to be phased out, and there needed to be new DNRs made,

• 54:28Speaker 02

  and they were being made in England, and this was after a few months, they were trucked in, and we had to, you know, trade out the old ones for the new ones. And we had to make sure, like, the teachers got paid, but, you know, I remember when, I mean, there's so many things to say about this, I don't, I really don't even know where to begin, but I remember when Bremer announced that they were disbanding the Iraqi army. And at the time, they said that the Iraqi army soldiers were going to be given three months' pay, and that's it, like, go figure out your new life.

• 55:13Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I've read books where people tracked like, when did the insurgency really start? And I remember there were riots. I mean, when they would show up to get their payments, and people, like CPA people, not me, but others, had to tell them, like, we're done. You're not getting paid anymore. They would riot. And then they started making threats. And then they started following through with those threats. It wasn't hard to see. It's just, you know, there was a very concerted political effort to ignore it.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  So, for example, I learned later that, going back to our intelligence assessment discussion, intelligence analysts were not allowed to use the term insurgency until Donald Rumsfeld left as Secretary of Defense. What?

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Unrest. They had to call it unrest. They couldn't call it insurgency. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, that happened. There were new ministers for all the different Iraqi ministries that were installed. And, you know, there was this idea of like, trying to be fair, because obviously, the Ba'ath Party was all Sunni, and they wanted to put in Shia and kind of make it fair. Well, a lot of the Shia were turned out to either become problematic, or Iran-related, or just weak, and not popular with the people. So, they didn't hang around

• 56:57Speaker 02

  for that long. But, I mean, I remember working with Iraqi Minister of Finance. So, our team, we were out of the green zone like, every day. We would travel to the Ministry of Finance. For anyone who knows about security, let me paint this insane picture for you. So, we were in a soft vehicle in a suburban with a Humvee of soldiers in front of us and behind us.

• 57:28Shawn Ryan?

  You were in a soft armored vehicle?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:30Shawn Ryan?

  No armor vehicle?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Uh, for many, many, many months, there were no armored vehicles available for us because we were like GS9.

• 57:38Shawn Ryan?

  What year is this?

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Oh, four. Oh, oh, three, oh, four.

• 57:41Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And no, no, uh, we had flak vests with no plates in them.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  So, and we, but we were out like every day. And, um, I felt badly personally, and we, we felt badly. I know my, my teammates did. Because these soldiers were, were there like protecting us. I'm like, my life isn't worth more than his life. Like, why? The kids just, it didn't make sense to me. How, why are we doing this? Like, why can't we all just get in like a Toyota? You know, and drive over there? No one will know who we are. Like, why are we doing this? It just seemed crazy. And then we'd be stuck in traffic. And there'd be all these like apartment buildings all around us and, you know.

• 58:25Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  So, um, oh, none of that, nothing ever, none of that ever made sense to me. Um, but we would have, we would have, uh, over time, the decision was made. Because these, uh, these ministers, the Iraqi ministers would, they requested security. They'd say, I'm unsafe. Our ministry is not safe. There's no Iraqi army anymore. The American military is not guarding, you know, had no interest in guarding ministry of whatever. Um, so they wanted their own security. So the decision was made by the CPA Bremer, I assume, to provide them with their own, um, security force. They could pick their own security force.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  And in many cases, like, so we could train them, we could equip them, give them firearms. Um, and, I mean, imagine this, like, new Shia, I mean, these were like, they, some of them became Shia militias. And we started them. Um, when I left Iraq in 2004, one of the people that I worked with, he was an advisor in the Ministry of Interior. He was working with this. It was called the Facilities Protection Service, FPS. He, he gave me an armband from the FPS. Um, and I still have it. I have it in my office at home, just to remind me, like.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  We are a big part of what is wrong. We did it. And a lot of what we're seeing today is like second and third order effects of the very poor decisions that we made and the fact that we refused to acknowledge them at the time and try to address them and try to find some accountability.

• 1:00:16Shawn Ryan?

  Could you elaborate on how we created that problem a little bit more?

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like I was saying, the FPS, in this specific case,

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  the FPS became like militias, like they grew. The security forces around these different ministries grew. And there were some ministers, the Shia ones, that some of them were, it turned out, talking to Qassem Soleimani. Qassem Soleimani was already the head of the IRGC Quds Force, was already like running networks inside of Iraq. And he influenced networks. And this was like a point that he picked up on, an opportunity.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  But it also came out, I think it's important also to talk about Ahmad Chalabi. So Ahmad Chalabi-

• 1:01:15Shawn Ryan?

  Who's that?

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  He was, he was a big figure in the run-up to the invasion. He was someone, he was the head of something called the Iraqi National Congress and was one of the main people saying, when you invade Iraq, like, the people will embrace you and throw flowers on you. And he was really embraced by, you know, group, like, American, like neocons. And of which, my father was one. My father was, you know, friends with some of those people and some of the big kind of pro-Iraq invasion people. And I grew up around them.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  And so, when I got to Iraq, you know, there were people who worked for him who were like, "Oh, Simone, hello."

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  And this was a really big like pivot point for me personally when I just started to see what was going on and he had, he had this car scheme at the Ministry of Finance where it was basically like a money laundering scheme of like getting cars from the coalition and then selling them and making money off of it and which is money laundering. Wow. And the Iraqi Minister of Finance, one day when I was there working, called me into his office and he had like, turned out Chalabi had like someone outside of his office just sitting there watching who came in and out all day. And he called me into his office

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  and shut the door and he was like, "You have to help me. They're gonna kill me." And I'm like, "Who?" You know, I'm 28 years old. Again, I told you my background. I'm like, "What are you talking about? Who?" And he, he wouldn't say the name, but he's like, "You see this guy outside? Like, they're, they're trying to make me do all kinds of things. Help me." So I didn't know what to do. I mean, I went back to my leadership and I was like, wrote my little report and, you know, that guy wasn't Finance Minister for, for very much longer. But I started to see what was going on and what Chalabi in particular was doing. And, and I, I told my father, I was like, "This is not a good

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  guy. This guy is not one of us. He's not doing pro-America stuff." And in fact, he's doing a lot of really shady, a lot of really shady things. And my father from day one believed me and, but a lot of his friends who I'm sure are gonna see this, like, they never, they always argued with me and they said he was misunderstood. But now, a lot has come out and I think it's clear that he was an Iranian asset from the beginning. And I think Soleimani was, was his handler. He traveled to Iran so many times and always tried to explain it away, like, "Of course I have to deal with them to you." Bullshit.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  So, again, we, like, this is our own willful blindness and there's been no accountability for that either. But so many people know about it. So many people are angry. You know, we've been betrayed and, like...

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  We're just sitting here with our anger, you know what I mean? And, and yet, the, the region, and, and Iraq is not our friend. Syria's doing Syria. I, I mean, it's still a cauldron. Although, things have changed, but not because of us.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Not, not really.

• 1:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think we should have been in Iraq to begin with?

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:05:09Shawn Ryan?

  Why, what makes you say that? I agree with you, I'm just curious.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  I think Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. And I was, I was totally radicalized by 9/11. We lost Barbara. I was like, let's go. I recently actually went to the, um, the Bush, George W. Bush Museum at SMU in Dallas. I don't know if you've ever been. I actually, um, I don't know if I would recommend it to like GWOT veterans. It's strange. It made me really angry, um, because there's a whole like GWOT, uh, exhibition there, whatever. And it has all these speeches, all the speeches that they gave, like, leading up to the invasion. And I, I got so angry.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  I'm like, I was, but I was mad at myself. I'm like, how did I ever believe this? How did I ever believe there was any connection between 9/11 and Iraq? There was none. What were we even doing?

• 1:06:11Shawn Ryan?

  KBR.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  You know, uh...

• 1:06:16Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that's what it was? Dick Cheney's?

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  I think it was bigger than that.

• 1:06:21Shawn Ryan?

  You think it was bigger than that? What do you think it was?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  I think it was, I think that might have been part of it. Because the years of like waste, fraud, and abuse through KBR was just like so egregious. And no one really ever did anything about that. Maybe that was part of it. But, you know, I also think, like...

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  There was this, you know, hanging, like, George Bush Senior didn't really finish the job in Iraq. Like, you know, he, fine, he got Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. He launched the Gulf War to get Iraq out of Kuwait, which was successful. But a lot of people wanted him to go the step further and regime change Saddam Hussein, and he didn't. But a lot of people in the George W. Bush administration thought now's the opportunity where we can finish that, where we can right that wrong. I think that's very

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  real. And so I think both of those reasons. But it's also important to say that there was a belief that Saddam was trying to, was building-

• 1:07:41Shawn Ryan?

  Weapons of mass destruction.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Weapons of mass destruction. I don't think, I think a lot of people did believe that. And like, in retrospect, kind of good for him because there had been this long, you know, Iran-Iraq war, they were mortal enemies, and he wanted the Iranian regime to think that he was holding on to this, like, huge store of weapons of mass destruction. You know, it got him in the end. But there, at least it was enough of a thread to pull that they built this whole narrative around it. And I know, I mean, of course, he didn't have weapons of mass destruction. He had a large amount of yellowcake uranium that

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  they eventually put on a ship and sent to Canada. But that was not weapons of mass destruction.

• 1:08:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you talk about some of the waste, fraud, and abuse of KBR, what are you talking about?

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  I mean, I saw this in a lot more detail in Afghanistan than I did in Iraq. But just like, I remember the, just because I was in Iraq in the early days and all that stuff was just getting going, where, like I said, initially, we were housed in the, in the presidential palace. And then eventually, they started, you know, bringing in these, um, these trailers. And the first trailers didn't have bathrooms. So then, those trailers were moved out and they got the new trailers that had bathrooms. And then, I personally knew a couple of soldiers that were, somehow had gotten vehicles

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  through KBR and were like, sending them back to CONUS. Yeah, I mean, obviously, breaking the law.

• 1:09:34Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Um, and, um, um, I didn't, like, I found out about it much later when I didn't even know where anybody was. But it was like, it was stuff like that. There was a lot of deal making, a lot of, like, people kind of, I, I, I don't even know. I mean, and then-

• 1:09:53Shawn Ryan?

  Can you, can you talk about the connection between Dick Cheney and KBR?

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  Well, he, he was the CEO.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Before he was Vice President. Well, he was the CEO of Halliburton, of which, uh, KBR was part of Halliburton. And then they spun it off because it looked really bad, didn't it?

• 1:10:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it looked bad.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Shawn Ryan?

  I mean,

• 1:10:18Shawn Ryan?

  it's, it's so hard to paint a picture of how much money was wasted. I mean, when you're talking about the trailers, you're, you're talking about basically a mobile home, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands-

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:33Shawn Ryan?

  -of mobile homes that were put out with no bathroom. And then, all of a sudden, they're replaced with ones that have a bathroom. I mean, we're, it, the amount of money.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  That was just-

• 1:10:46Shawn Ryan?

  And, and it's the biggest, I mean, they ran, from what I know, they ran all logistics, all logistics in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

• 1:10:59Shawn Ryan?

  And he was the fucking CEO of it, who's now the vice president, who obviously has major poll.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah, correct. I mean, I, I remember at a buy up, Baghdad International Airport, we used to go, um, we used to go there once a week on Fridays when we didn't work. And, um, we used to literally, insane to think about today, risk our lives to go there to get like Burger King so we wouldn't have to eat whatever, just to get out and, and try to feel like we were doing something normal. But yeah, there was a Burger King there. There was, uh, they were building all kinds of stuff there. Um, and there was still also the, uh, duty free.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  So, uh, we were not or under general order one. We were civilians assigned to the CPA, which was like basically, it was a DOD entity, but anyway, whatever. People bought booze at the, um, at the airport. But even just in the eight months that I was there, I mean, there was such a huge change, um, in terms of like building things out. And the only thing that I saw during that time that was completely egregious was the trailers. And of course they weren't like, we started getting mortared and rocketed pretty quickly after I got there. And so there was no protection for that at all. Like over time, they started putting sandbags.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  Um, so at least like if someone got hit, the shrapnel wouldn't hit someone else. But I mean, it was, um, that's, that's how it was in those early days. Um, pretty crazy to think about today.

• 1:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  When I, when I finally got home from that deployment, um, I didn't realize that I was a little rattled, but I remember I was at my parents' house for dinner one night and there was like a window that was up and it kind of fell down behind me and I was like under the table and I didn't even, but I was like, where's Simone? Uh, I, uh, so it, you know, being, going through all that, I, it wasn't like I was in combat or anything like that, but we got, we got a lot of incoming over time. It could just kept getting worse and worse. And, um, a couple of my friends.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  We had a couple of terrible experiences. We had, we worked very closely with awesome translators. And we had these two girls who were, we became good friends of ours. And I remember one day, they were coming on base for work. And there was, the security was so bad, like, no one really cared about the local nationals that were working with us. It was really sad. And there was a huge line of cars, of their cars, waiting to get in through security into the green zone every morning. So one day, some terrorist, like, you know, in an S U B bid, just placed himself in the middle of that line of cars and detonated himself.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  And all the cars caught on fire and people were burned to death, including one of our interpreters. And, and her friend, who was in the car with her, like, made it out. We tried to go to the hospital later to just, like, pay our respects and visit. And the families were like, "Get out of here. Like, we don't want to see you here. Get out of here." And that was like, you know, that was a pretty low, pretty low moment. We had, we had, oh, I know, this is kind of a, this is another kind of sad story, I guess, but when I was leaving, I'm, I'm not always a rules follower.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  And you were, when we were, in order to leave Iraq as a CPA person, you're supposed to take the rotator out to Kuwait and then back home. But I knew this guy who, also an American, who was working on the kind of political side of CPA. And he had lived in the Kurdish region for a long time before the war and had friends up there and was leaving around the same time that I was. So he's, he offered me to go with him. And basically, his buddies were just going to come pick him up outside the green zone. And he was gonna, they were gonna drive around, you know, spend like a week in Iraqi Kurdistan

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  and then, like, leave through Turkey, you know, on the border, like, just by, by foot. So I thought that sounded awesome. Um, idiot. And, uh, and so I did that and we got stopped. Oh shit. First of all, I got in so much trouble for that because, um, it was actually really sad. This woman Fern Holland, who was doing, uh, she was doing, she was, she was trying to help Iraqi women, um, who were victims of domestic violence.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  That's, that's a lot to unpack there. Okay. But she was there doing that and God bless her. Um, she was killed, uh, and she was killed right when I kind of like wasn't, when I had left. And so for a while, there was this marine colonel who was kind of in charge of me. He had, he didn't know, he thought that might've been me, basically. I didn't give him a lot of information. I think I just left. I'm very sorry about that. Um, but yeah, we drove. So we get to Bakuba and we got pulled over by police, maybe, or just random criminals

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  wearing Iraqi police uniforms. And, um, we had to, they asked us for our IDs. And, uh, my friend just gave them his, like, library card from the school that he had gone to because we were not going to show them our CPA or any US stuff. And they got really mad. Anyway, long story short, I think the Kurds who were our kind of driver shooters kind of passed them some money and, and we, we went on our way. But it was, um, we went all over. Erbil, um, Dehuk, we went to, um, Sulamania and, uh, just had an amazing, did picnics with some of his Kurdish friends

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  and, uh, met a lot of people. I actually learned a lot on that trip. And then as we were exiting, we were going into Turkey, um, I forgot that I had had one spent round in my, in my bag. It was a shell casing that fell into my trailer the night that everyone was celebrating in Baghdad when we caught, when we caught Saddam.

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  And, you know, what goes out must come down. A lot, some of it came down into our housing. And, and when I, I was sleeping in the palace that night, when I came back, there was this like one spent round and, and so I thought it was cool, I'll keep it. And the Turks at the border crossing were like not stoked about that. And I had, I had a little bit of a problem getting in. But anyway, that was, that was my Iraq experience. And I will say, I did not, it, it's taken me years to, to, I think, properly understand my role, but also what I witnessed.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  There were some really also just sad things that happened there, like in addition to what I said, there was a Colonel that I had worked with a lot. He was getting ready to rip out. And his last day, he brought this woman, this Iraqi woman, beautiful, beautiful young woman. And I understood pretty quickly that they, they had had something going on. And he was trying to find a job for her because he was leaving, he was abandoning her. And, you know, it was just, it was a terrible, he's like, well, maybe, you know, you guys have space for an interpreter or something. And I'm like, no, we don't. You know, piece of shit. And this woman, probably her whole family knows what you've been up to.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  And now what's her life gonna be? You know, stuff like that just made me really angry because I'm like, we're leaving, you know, we're not gonna stay here. And anyway, yeah.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Shawn Ryan?

  What are some lessons that you think, what are some lessons you learned from that war?

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  I think I'm still learning lessons from that war. But the important, the most important one for me was

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  how, how easily, like how you can get your blood heated, how I can, and how easily, in a way, I was,

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  I believed something so strongly that was wrong. And

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  that, that is something that I hope, like, has guided me in the rest of my life. Because I so believed that was the right thing, and it's so clear now that it wasn't.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  And

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  I'm, I also want to help to teach people that, about that. Because it's not just, we have so many bad feelings about the specifics of, of what happened and how it happened, but in the broader strategic context, what a huge mistake it was for us, and, and we're living with the consequences. Today, we're suffering from what that did to us as a country today.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Would we be where we are with China?

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  If we, you know, if we, we, we knew what the threat from China was going to be back then even.

• 1:21:21Shawn Ryan?

  We did.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  But, but maybe not to this extent, but there were people, there were smart people who understood where China was headed. Maybe it wasn't clear that they would achieve their goals, but it was clear where they wanted to go. But yeah, this was, this, that was the most important lesson of all of that, but there are many, like, micro lessons, too.

• 1:21:45Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that war was all for nothing?

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  I wanna say no. I wanna say no.

• 1:21:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'm with you.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Um, and I'm sure, maybe if we sit here long enough, we can come up with, um, reasons why it might not have been.

• 1:22:06Shawn Ryan?

  Can you think of any positives?

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's, it's always, I don't like being totally negative about anything. Uh, I think there's always good in everything. You can always find it if you look hard enough. Uh, but this was so bad. It was so bad. And, um, and I'm thinking in particular of a, a friend of mine who, um, died by suicide last year. Who is a two-time Iraq veteran. And I was in his wedding, um, and he was a mentor to my brothers. Both of my brothers served in the Marine Corps. Um, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. And, um, you know, that, um,

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  he, I, I know that he was very angry about everything, uh, and about the war and I think in his later years, he actually, he was a Naval Academy graduate. I think he, um, regretted joining the Naval Academy, regretted his entire military career.

• 1:23:13Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, that, that was really, that was really tough.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  He was struggling for a long time. Um, and I know there are a lot of other people who are going through that too. Unfortunately, he was also an addict. Um, and I think that addiction really got a hold of him. Um, and he wasn't someone who, um, who really sought help easily. So, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, um, we have a lot of, and my brother who served in Iraq, he went through a lot too. Um, and thank God he, he got help. He's doing amazing now. Um, but he lost Marines.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  And I, you know, I just, I have a lot of like compassion and love for veterans and I kind of feel like all of you are my brothers and um I, that's why I love uh kind of staying in the mix, you know, and why, when I had the opportunity to go back into government in a role where I could potentially take these lessons that I've learned and like maybe try to turn it into something good, uh that was what I wanted to do. I don't know if I did, if I managed to, but that was kind of my thought process. Um and that's, that's uh, it kind of guides me today. So I don't know. I mean, everything bad we go

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  through, we're supposed to learn from it, right? If it doesn't kill you. Um so hopefully it's made us wiser as a nation. I love to see so all these, I love to see all these people commenting now about like, no, no war, no. Um and I like, I agree, but I also think not every military action is a full-blown war. Um I think it's important to make that, that um, I think that that difference is important. And I also think uh, we live, like, the United States is in the world. You know, we can't just totally bury our heads in the sand. And when we do, things get worse. And then in the end, we end up

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  having to do something. Like I was telling you with the Iran stuff, then we end up being trapped into actually having to take some action if we're not kind of like managing things early on.

• 1:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, Simone, let's take a quick break.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:25:40Shawn Ryan?

  When we come back, we'll get into Afghanistan.

• 1:25:46Speaker 00

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• 1:26:15Speaker 03

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• 1:26:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Simone, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into some Afghanistan stuff. So, so you get home from Iraq and then you've rolled, you've rolled back to Afghanistan.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, a little bit of a funny story. So I, when I was in Iraq, I met,

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  I met the Assistant Secretary for Defense for Special Operations, ASD Solik, who was Tom O'Connell at the time. And he was like, just a legendary guy in all respects and became a mentor of mine. But anyway, he, he asked me what I was doing after Iraq and I had no idea. And so he offered me a job at the Pentagon. And so that's what I did when I came back. But funny story, you know, it takes a long time to get a security clearance if you've never had one before. And, and I'd spent some time in, you know, in Europe and whatever.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  So I was not able to do any work in that office until I got like a high TS clearance and I only had a secret clearance. So they put me in another office, which was the Office of Iraq Reconstruction or something like that. And I ended up getting stuck.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, that job was so bad. I ended up getting stuck responding to congressional inquiries about like, just hostile congressional inquiries. I was like, you lost $8 billion of Iraqi money. Where did it go? And, and so I just spent my entire day, every day, responding to really aggressive congressional inquiries. So I volunteered to go to Afghanistan. I was like, that's gotta be better than this.

• 1:28:37Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, I've never heard that comparison. Afghanistan's gotta be better than this.

• 1:28:43Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting state, was it?

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:28:45Shawn Ryan?

  Good. Good.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so, um, so I, I went, uh, in 2004 to Afghanistan. I was there almost the entire year, uh, working with, at the time, the US Command was, um, CFC Alpha, um, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan. And, um, the commander was Carl Eichenberry, who later became our, our ambassador to Afghanistan. He was a three-star at the time. And so I went there, uh, I was embedded

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  in the plans shop and our, the reason I was there was because, um, there was someone, it might have been Doug Fith, I don't know who, someone in the Pentagon, uh, who was important, had this idea about, so they were, at the time, trying to solve this problem, which never got solved. Um, how does, how do we leave Afghanistan with some money? Like, what's their revenue gonna be? Because with Iraq, that wasn't gonna be a problem. Their revenue was oil. But what does Afghanistan have? They have, like, heroin. Yeah, they have, they have opium. Um, so what's in,

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  what are the alternatives? And

• 1:30:11Shawn Ryan?

  Lithium.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Well, at the time, that's right. But at the time, the thought was customs revenue. Afghanistan is kind of the waypoint between east and west historically, like the old Silk Route. And what if we could actually, so there was no real customs revenue being collected at the border for the country. It was just like all the Afghan border police, you know, taking bribes and, um, baxiashan, like putting it in their own pockets. But what if, what if we were able to change that up and actually collect revenue for the country? Could that work? Could that cover the budget of the country? So, um, the plan shop built this pilot project and I

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  got embedded into that to basically, um,

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  Do the numbers and kind of see like, what were we collecting before? What were they collecting before? What are they collecting now? And I was working with, you know, some military guys from the plan shop, Marines and a Ranger, who had a whole, they did a whole thing. I mean, they picked a border crossing point, which was Islamabad, which is at the border in the West with Iran, near Harat. And they replaced the border police commander with a border police commander from the East. So he wasn't part of the Western Tribal Network. So it was harder for him to be corrupt, was the whole idea behind it.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  And then, you know, he brought a new force with him that was also from the East. They were better trained, they were better equipped, they had more fuel, they had, you know, more money for food and stuff. And so the idea was, like, let's see if we do all this, will they bring back customs revenue in a meaningful way? And so I was the one who kind of like documented it and did all the numbers and the budgets and everything. And the answer after three months was yes. And then General Ikenberri, and by the way, like, it took a long time to get this up and running, but we did get it up and running three months later.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of stories to tell in between, like, the trip that the guys took. I didn't go on that trip for obvious reasons, but they drove from Kabul to Harat on the Ring Road with these Afghans, the Afghan Border Police. And it was kind of, you know, they like to talk about, well, there are a lot of stories from that, but they, you know, they were really part of...

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  I mean, they, they, uh, I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Anyway, um, the bottom line is it worked.

• 1:33:03Shawn Ryan?

  So you, so basically what you were doing is you, you were replacing Afghanistan's income with, with borders, with, uh, with customs issues.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  We were.

• 1:33:14Shawn Ryan?

  You're, you're replacing the opium trade with customs.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  The opium trade, the, the revenue from the opium trade went to like the drug traffickers.

• 1:33:24Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  And the problem that we were trying to solve was like, how is the government of Afghanistan going to make money that's not ours? That's not like the US taxpayer money.

• 1:33:35Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  You know, like, they need to be self-sufficient, like, fast. So how are we gonna, somehow that became our problem? That's a, a different conversation. I would, I just got there when someone was trying to figure out the answer to that question. So, um, you know, again, I was like, geez, whatever. But, but that was, that was the job. So trying to document, um, how much money did, did the government collect at the border crossing points when they were, you know, when things, we were really focused on them and we trained them

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  and all, all this stuff. Um, and so, uh, within a three-month period, which was the period of the pilot project, uh, it seemed like at least, you know, the initial numbers were pretty good. Um, and the old guys had been moved away. They'd been fired and kind of moved off, uh, the border because they, they weren't effective. They were just corrupt, like everybody else.

• 1:34:38Shawn Ryan?

  And that was, that, that worked?

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  It did.

• 1:34:41Shawn Ryan?

  How many people are coming in and out of there?

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  I mean, so many. It was unbelievable. So many. Um.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  Day and night, mostly day. I mean, we also would have people come up to us because the Marines that I was with, obviously, they took off their jackets that had their name tape on it and stuff. And these people would come up to us and be like, are you guys going to invade Iran? And probably Iranian collectors, for all I know. And they're like, yeah, tomorrow, get ready. Marines. But yeah, I mean, it was, there was a lot of money. And it was, it was, you know, was, for that period of time, we made an effort

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  to actually capture the amounts and look over their shoulders a bit. And I think, at least the concept was proven. But one of many kind of tragic things that happened was that the commander, we briefed him on the program and how it was successful. And he was like, is this Doug Fith? Is this Doug Fith's idea? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know, you know, we didn't know whose idea it was. It was like, we were told to do this, so we're doing it. But he immediately got political, which was, to me, kind of like a red flag. I'm like, so what? It works. And then, you know, he decided that this

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  wasn't a security mission, that it was, it was a, well, it was customs. And therefore, it was a, we needed to transition it over to the embassy. This was not appropriate for the military command to be, to be doing. Even though border security, I don't know, classic, I mean, security is literally in the name. But, okay. So, so we had to transition it to the embassy, which meant that the guy that was assigned to it, nice guy, I guess, like, older gentleman, not part of having trained this guy, the commander, whose name was General Ayub.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  Wasn't part of that, you know, they, they pulled all of the, all of our military assets that we kind of had, just as a show of force, kind of around the border, police facility. All of that was gone. His, um, his partner, like, uh, this guy, Tony, who was his kind of trainer and partner, also pulled back. So, uh, predictably, within a pretty short period of time, he was killed. Um, the commander was killed. And, you know, over, there was reporting that he was, like, he'd started to take a little on the side and do all that. But it's like, man, we abandoned him. We totally abandoned him. And all of the people

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  that, from that region and the drug traffickers that he was going after, they did some really significant drug busts during that time. They, I mean, they, everyone knew what was going on. They all knew. And, and that was, that was the end for him. And, um, and really, I went back, I went back to, so I, I came home, like, in November of oh four, and I, I went back to Herat in, like, twenty, two thousand nine, my, my next deployment. I, I just went out there. I was based in Kabul. I was at ISF headquarters at that time. You couldn't travel outside the base without an MRAP. Like, you had to be in an MRAP then,

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  because the security situation had changed so much. But in two thousand four, you know, we would, we had our, like, Hiluxes. We'd just drive into Herat. We did, like, tourism one day. We saw Alexander the Great had a, there were still remnants of-

• 1:38:36Shawn Ryan?

  The wall.

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, we, we went and visited that. We did, like, some carpet shopping, um, you know, drank, had some tea. And, um, it was just a totally different experience. And I, I do think the two are related. Um, I, I don't think, of course, that, when I got back there, the Iranians had built all this. They, they built electricity. They built a lot of new Shia mosques.

• 1:39:04Shawn Ryan?

  In Herat?

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  Herat was beautiful, by far the most, like, outside of Kabul. And it might have been even more beautiful than Kabul.

• 1:39:13Shawn Ryan?

  You think Kabul, you think Kabul was beautiful?

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  Compared to the rest of the country, was built up. Let me put it that way. It was built, but parts of Kabul were beautiful, yes.

• 1:39:26Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't see those parts. I spent a lot of time in Kabul.

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess it is what you make it in a way, but I just, there were so, the things that I thought were beautiful there were,

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I liked, they have all these fruit trees and, you know, there was a lot of flowering things there that I thought were, made it, made it nice. But obviously, you know, I'm sure you did too. We were testing the air quality. When we were living there and it was like.

• 1:40:02Shawn Ryan?

  It was.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  Thirty percent fecal matter or something, wasn't it?

• 1:40:05Shawn Ryan?

  I remember, I remember the year, especially in the wintertime, whenever it was burning tires and shit.

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  Literal shit, they're building, burning shit.

• 1:40:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I remember spitting in the sink and my spit was gray and I could barely open my eyes if I went outside, especially at night in the winter. Cause that's, you know.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm probably romanticizing it a little bit.

• 1:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe just a tad.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

• 1:40:34Shawn Ryan?

  But so what were you doing? How does this fit in with special ops? What you were doing?

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Um, well, that was, um,

• 1:40:48Speaker 02

  here's how it fits in with special ops. Great question. So I traveled around the country to as many border crossing points as I could, doing my assessment. Um, and I went with teammates when they could go, but a lot of times it was just me. And, um, and so a lot of the border crossings around the country at the time were like, I had to go meet up with like, ODA, ODB, whatever. They were the ones that were controlling that territory. So, um,

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  They, I was not allowed to go south. They would, they would not, they said it was too dangerous and I never, I never got to see, um, I never got to see the border crossing points in the south. Um, but yeah, I went out east in particular. Um, I spent some time with our, our special forces out there, uh, Green Braves. And, um, there's one, one instance I remember, um, I think it was Assadabad, um, not Abbottabad, um, which was Pakistan, but Assadabad. I went out there and had the opportunity to meet up with, um, this ODA

• 1:42:07Speaker 02

  and the ODB commander as well, the major. Um, and they took me to, we went to the AfPAC border, just, um, pretty barren, pretty, pretty crazy. I don't really know why I was, I probably shouldn't have been out there, um, in retrospect.

• 1:42:25Shawn Ryan?

  I was gonna say, that's a pretty dangerous area.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  It was, it was. And we, um, we drove through, we drove across this road that was, um, it was not paved. It was like pebbles. And they, one of the, they were telling me the story about how they lost their buddy, um, First Sergeant Jeremy Wright. Um, he had been blown up by an IED, um, there. And that, like, there's no way, just because of the way the road was, there was really no way to, to tell if there was like, you couldn't tell if the, if it had been disturbed or not. Um, and they were, I mean, I could see they were still in mourning and that he had been like a great dude and it was awful. And the

• 1:43:09Speaker 02

  thing that was really bothering them, aside from just losing their friend, was that That road was a USAID project. Paving that road was a project that had already been like approved and paid for by USAID. But the contractor was a Turkish company and they hadn't, uh, they hadn't showed up yet to do the work. And so these guys, like every time they wanted to go to the border, which they had to go there a lot, had to drive over this same like patch of earth. So, um, I feel like this might've been the only actual good thing that I did my entire deployment.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  But when I got back to Kabul, uh, one of my, one of my friends there, she was a USAID, uh, rep or whatever. And I told her about it and I, I actually truly don't know if there was a connection, but I heard from them like pretty soon after that the construction company came and paved the road.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  But I was like, why, why aren't they here? Like, why haven't they done this? We, someone got killed here already. Like, why wasn't this moved up in the priority?

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  And they're like, oh, everyone's late on everything. It's all late. Everything's late. Um, and then I came to find out, one of my trips to Herat, the USAID guy, uh, who was, he was the USAID rep in, in Herat. He, um, someone showed me some reporting that he had accepted like gifts of 40 carpets from these, um, from these, uh, fuel, where are they? Like oil and gas traffickers. Basically they built like a underground pipeline, which was not legal and not approved.

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  So they could move, uh, fuel from Iran into Afghanistan. And this guy just let it happen.

• 1:45:09Shawn Ryan?

  No, I had no idea that was going on.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  And so that, I mean, it was small. It wasn't like a huge operation, but it was still, anyway. All that, I mean, we, I saw that, but that was, the work that I did with, with special operations was, they supported me when I was, you know, when I was going to do my assessments and collection for this border crossing project and trying to understand like, so if someone comes across, like, how do you assess a customs duty? Like, who is the one who assesses that?

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  No one who's literate, like, no one who's, I mean, obviously, you know, the kind of people they had manning those border crossing points was like, anyone who would agree to put on a uniform and, and his try boy. So, like, yeah, I mean, that was, that was, that was my experience, but, you know, I, I had met some of their, their colleagues in Iraq, because in Iraq, we started getting calls from military units that, you know, the money, the money movement, like, we were moving in US dollars as well as these new dinars,

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  and they were finding pallets of US dollars that were still shrink wrapped from the Fed in insurgent raids. And the different military units would call us at the CPA and be like, what do we do with this? We found this, says it's like half a million USD, like, what should we do with it? And, yeah, it's like, we, we have no idea what we're doing. We have no idea.

• 1:46:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  Where, what was this, where was this money supposed to go? It had a barcode on it, too. They, they, all of those, those things that came from the Fed, those pallets of cash, they all had barcodes on them. But anyway.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, you know, I ran into some of the people that I knew from those days. I ran into some of them in Afghanistan and, and then just kind of kicking around like there's not a lot of me is out in places like that. And, um, you know, Firebase Torcum, I remember that place. Um, that was on the old Silk Route, actually, kind of a cool place because like off in the distance, you could see an old English outpost. And again, I'm like, here we are again, you know, we hope it's going to go better this time, I guess. Uh, but there was so much traffic coming, I mean, so much traffic and learning about,

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  we basically had no idea, um, who was coming. There could have been like WMD for all we knew being trucked in and, uh, the roads were just, were, were completely packed all the time. So, but my focus at the time again was like, how do we, how can, how can, how can attacks be collected against this? It's, it's absurd to think about today that we were actually trying to do that. Absolutely absurd, but that was, that was the mission.

• 1:48:26Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So you left Afghanistan, was this 2004?

• 1:48:31Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:31Shawn Ryan?

  And then went back again in 2009?

• 1:48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:34Shawn Ryan?

  What, what did you do in between there?

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  So I did, my clearance did finally come through. So then I did go to, uh, to Solik, ASC Solik. And that was when, um, I, I started working on counter threat finance. So the, Tom O'Connell, um, he, he was ASC Solik at the time. Um, former Green Beret Vietnam veteran, served in, uh, CIA, uh, as well, just a, a legend. And he, he believed strongly that, um, you know, Clausewitz and his centers of gravity, you know, his enemy centers of gravity. He felt strongly that money was an enemy center of gravity and we should be focusing

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  on disrupting their financial flows. Um, and that was like, I'd always wanted to do that, right? That was my original, this is what I'm going to figure out how to do. So. Very cool opportunity. And when I finally got cleared to know everything, I learned that it was a big interagency effort that had already gotten started. And there was an Iraq threat finance cell that was underway, that was like a Treasury Department thing. But there were a lot of Rice Bowl issues because the commander on the ground was like, no, I'm not going to have the Treasury Department leading an effort in my battlefield. Like, I'm in charge.

• 1:50:00Speaker 02

  It's like, cool, you don't actually know anything about how to do this, but like, awesome. Good, good job.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  So there was a lot of, there was just a lot of drama over those kind of things. But it was really amazing effort, both you had not just like Treasury and DOD, but you had like intel people, you had law enforcement people. There was, you know, when things really got going, they had like FBI and IRS criminal investigators like going inside the booth, like interrogation booth, when military units would roll up, like financial people, they would help with interrogation and really get amazing information. Turned out that the money guys didn't get the same kind of training to withstand interrogation

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  that the operational guys did.

• 1:50:56Speaker 03

  No kidding.

• 1:50:56Speaker 02

  And so they, they talked. And it turned out a lot of them kept two sets of books too, because they were also skimming. And, and so then we had leverage. And so it was, it was a really cool and very successful effort. The, I would say the kind of pinnacle of that in, in Iraq was

• 1:51:21Speaker 02

  This operation, it led to this big operation in the, at the Beji Oil Refinery, where months of work determined that AQI was making a ton of money off of fuel smuggling from the Beji Oil Refinery, which is like the big oil refinery in Iraq. And they were like, the trucking company was AQI, and like, this dude and that dude were being paid off by AQI. And anyway, you know, the, the team did a phenomenal job of doing a whole network analysis and being like, here are the key nodes.

• 1:52:02Speaker 02

  And, and the military came and rolled them up and stopped it. It was amazing.

• 1:52:08Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  Of course, they, AQI, you know, being AQI, they, they found new and exciting ways to, to get money, but that was...

• 1:52:17Shawn Ryan?

  What were some of those ways?

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  Kidnapping for ransom, drug smuggling. I mean, that's just a few. I mean, anything you can think of, anything and everything. But fuel smuggling was by far, for them, like, that was the real winner. They, that was when they were making big money. But they still, like, they would tap into the pipeline, you know, break, break open the pipeline and just siphon, siphon off some gas and sell that. So, yeah, I mean, they're incredibly, incredibly creative. Basically, all kinds of criminal activities that you could imagine, that's what they did. And that's what most of these terrorist groups do.

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  They're criminals, but they have this ideological component. They're engaging in criminal activity, for some of them, for ideological purposes, although a lot of them are just straight up criminals and they're just like, acting as if they're some kind of religious, you know, some, some type of like, high, highly moral religious figure. But... So we, yeah, so, so I started working on that and that was, that was amazing. Um, I was doing that out of the Pentagon, but I got to go back to Iraq and kind of see what everyone was doing and just advocate for it. Um, and at the time, there was, the ASD wanted to kind of codify it because it, it seemed

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  like such an important part of the effort and everyone was so complimentary and the commanders were really happy about what we were turning out. So, um, yeah, I got tasked with, with, uh, this is going to be boring for a lot of people, but writing the counter threat finance policy for the DOD. So that took forever, um, because the DOD is such a huge bureaucratic monster. And when you're writing a new policy, you have to get everything coordinated with everyone. He changes every word and everyone gets in fights and, um, it was a huge, it was a huge thing and it took a couple of years. Um, but there were so many successes behind it. It was undeniable.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  So in the end, um, I think today it's been through a lot of revisions since my time, but I think there still is a, a counter threat finance policy. And we called it that because originally it was just, it was going to be counterterrorism, uh, finance, but the terrorism, like the legal definition, um, like basically requires, like you're talking about designated terrorist groups and in Iraq, there were all kinds of different terrorist groups, but also insurgent groups that hadn't necessarily been named and designated in that way, but they were also included, um, because they were still killing people and killing Americans in some cases and definitely the enemy.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  So counter threat finance was, was the term that we, uh, we ended up with.

• 1:55:19Shawn Ryan?

  Did you, did you work directly with General McChrystal and General Flynn?

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:55:24Shawn Ryan?

  How was that experience?

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  Um, I worked, uh, I worked for them in, in Afghanistan, um, 2009, 2010. That was, uh, spicy, spicy.

• 1:55:39Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you say that?

• 1:55:41Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, I loved working for General McChrystal and, um, and I, I learned a lot working from General Flynn, working for General Flynn. I learned a lot from him as well.

• 1:55:57Speaker 02

  But I'll tell you, you know, it was, uh, there was a lot of drama always, um, with Flynn. I mean, he was, he was a great boss to me. He understood what I was doing. He supported me. Um, and, you know, I'm not like, just understanding what we were trying to do myself and, and like our whole team of kind of counter threat finance people. He was very much on board with that and, and so was McChrystal. But, you know, there were, there are things that like either you're comfortable with or you're not. So these are guys that, you know, from JSOC, like they operated in a certain

• 1:56:40Speaker 02

  way and you either had to be comfortable with that or not. Personally, I was. The, um, the, the thing that I remember Flynn always saying was like, this is war. Like we're in a war. So we have to do everything that we can to win the war. And that included sometimes sharing information, sharing intelligence that was like real, a, a very small group or sometimes not even real, sharing that with a foreign partner on the battlefield. And by the way, that's a, like legally, that's a decision that they're entitled to make. Like they're legally allowed to do that. Um, but there were some people, um, on the J2 staff who were uncomfortable with that. And I remember one of them actually going home. And I-

• 1:57:25Shawn Ryan?

  Who were you guys sharing intelligence with?

• 1:57:27Speaker 02

  Other, other like countries that were fighting with us.

• 1:57:31Shawn Ryan?

  Why would they be opposed to that?

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Because it was like, you know, not, oh, it's not real their country. So we shouldn't be sharing it with them. Like, well, they're going down range with us tomorrow. So they should probably know that this thing is happening.

• 1:57:47Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Was it, was it major pushback about, I mean, I guess so, they sent somebody homo.

• 1:57:52Speaker 02

  No, someone like voluntarily asked to leave. He asked to leave.

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  But so it was kind of like, this is how we're prosecuting this war. Either you're on board or you're not. It was very clear from the beginning that like this was, this was what I believed. And again, I was wrong because we, we were, we were still there 10 years later. But I felt at the time like this is either going to change the tide and work or like we're done here.

• 1:58:24Speaker 02

  And, and I felt that was kind of the sense that I got from the command was like, we got to turn the ship around right away. But then

• 1:58:38Speaker 02

  things started happening like that email. And I regret, I don't remember his name now, but there was an email like halfway through

• 1:58:48Speaker 02

  that year from,

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  from a soldier to General McChrystal. So McChrystal and Flynn and the, um, the J three, the CJ three, uh, they would, they would do like battlefield circulation all the time. They would travel to different parts of the country, um, to kind of talk to people and see what was going on. And this was after the whole counter insurgency strategy was implemented, which meant a change to the, um, LOE, the ROE, excuse me. And, um, that change to the ROE was like, meant that our people were taking more risk.

• 1:59:32Speaker 02

  And, um, in some cases getting killed because they couldn't respond to something unless, you know, all of these conditions were met.

• 1:59:40Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:41Speaker 02

  And, um, I know a lot of people were very, I had nothing to do with that. A lot of people were very concerned about that, very angry and felt it was the wrong thing to do.

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  And I don't know enough about combat to be like, I wouldn't presume to have an opinion, but I'm sympathetic to that point of view, just because of what I saw. So I remember there was an email that came through to like everyone on in the McChrystal's team who saw his email saw this note and it made its way around. I think it got leaked in the media somewhere where there was a soldier who was like, you know, your ROE is a piece of shit, basically. And like here, here's like the 50 reasons why, like this is terrible. You know, we can't win like this.

• 2:00:31Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember what the ROE was? I think it was in country when this came out, but.

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  I would have to, I would have to look at it specifically, but.

• 2:00:41Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I remember this is, if I remember correctly, this is when there was going to be a major push in Marja. Am I correct? Do you remember that?

• 2:00:50Speaker 02

  I do remember that.

• 2:00:51Shawn Ryan?

  Lashkar Gaham and Province was really hot at the time. And I remember, and it was right after the coast bombing at the CIA base.

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  And the ROE suddenly changed to basically you can kill an enemy combatant to if you're shot at and the enemy drops his weapon, then you're not allowed to fire. And that came out right before the Marines were going to do that big offensive push.

• 2:01:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:20Shawn Ryan?

  Into Marja, I believe it was Marja.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:23Shawn Ryan?

  And, and they said that that would be the second biggest offensive that the military had done since Fallujah.

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  Huge.

• 2:01:32Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, detrimental. And not only that, I mean, demoralizing your troops.

• 2:01:38Speaker 02

  Was demoralizing.

• 2:01:38Shawn Ryan?

  Demoralizing them. Like, we don't have your back. We don't care what happens. They drop that weapon, you can't shoot.

• 2:01:49Shawn Ryan?

  So to have that going on playing in your head.

• 2:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:52Shawn Ryan?

  You know, if I take this shot, am I going to prison for the rest of my life? On top of all the other decisions that you have to make in combat. I mean, it was.

• 2:02:02Speaker 02

  And that.

• 2:02:03Shawn Ryan?

  I was so pissed off about that. And I wasn't even in the military anymore. I was contracted for CIA, so it didn't really affect me, but.

• 2:02:11Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I fell for those guys when that shit came out.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I didn't truly understand until I read that email what it meant.

• 2:02:25Speaker 02

  And I, I also felt for, I felt for them and I, I didn't understand why.

• 2:02:36Speaker 02

  That feedback was received loud and clear. It was discussed and it was,

• 2:02:43Speaker 02

  it didn't change anything, didn't change anything. We're, they were gonna proceed.

• 2:02:49Speaker 02

  But one-

• 2:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  That didn't come from McChrystal and Flynn, correct? That ROE?

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  I think it came from McChrystal.

• 2:02:58Shawn Ryan?

  I thought that came straight down from Obama.

• 2:03:00Speaker 02

  It might have, it might have come from Obama. He absolutely micromanaged every aspect of that war.

• 2:03:06Shawn Ryan?

  He did.

• 2:03:06Speaker 02

  He absolutely did. Yes. Through the NSC, which grew to like an astronomical size because they were micromanaging everything.

• 2:03:18Speaker 02

  I mean, I, you know, I was working in counterterrorism in the Pentagon before I, before I went, I went back to Afghanistan. And so I started to, to understand, because I was, like, part of my job was just like briefing all my seniors every week about new things. And this was like at the height of, we were designating terrorists and we were targeting terrorists based on financial intelligence. And so there was, you know, these weekly briefings to the joint staff and, and our political bosses. I was in the room for all those things and I heard, and so I learned a lot about how the chain of command is supposed to work.

• 2:04:01Speaker 02

  And when Obama came in, they just added so many layers. And it was like commanders couldn't make decisions anymore. They had to ask permission from the White House. And it screwed up a lot of things. It made, it made a lot of operations impossible. Just ended them before they started and just made them so much more dangerous as well because-

• 2:04:28Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, like, sometimes you're dealing with a fleeting target. You gotta take the, you gotta take the opportunity when you have it. Um, and, uh, there was just no appreciation for that. But, but I, I will say something that happened that, um, might be interesting. So while I was there, uh, during that tour, General McChrystal was at a certain point very interested. There'd been a lot of rumors about, uh, someone named Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was the brother of, uh, President Karzai. And there was a lot of rumors, um, pretty factually based that he was a narcotics trafficker, um, and was involved in a lot of really bad things

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  and also tied to the Taliban. And, um, so McChrystal set us on a deep dive, like, the entire, like, all of his kind of intel team. You guys go out into, you know, go out into the wild and see who has what on AWK. And, you know, come back, I think, I forget how much time we were given, like, a month or something. And, like, let's, everyone get together and let's figure out, like, is this guy, is, is he really bad? What are we gonna do about it? Let's do this deep dive.

• 2:05:50Speaker 02

  So, no one, there was nothing, like, no smoking gun tying AWK to anything. Um, but also, I will say, there was so much circumstantial evidence that it was obvious that he was all of those things. But because the, um, the ceiling, like, you had to meet an impossible level of certainty.

• 2:06:21Speaker 02

  That we weren't able to meet, we weren't able, like, no, he never got up on a call and said, "I'm gonna traffic some drugs today. Hello, my Taliban friends." Like, yeah, I mean, that, that never happened. And he did, I mean, all of his activities were through lieutenants and, and sub commanders and stuff. So, um, so I remember a huge effort to, to get everything together. And then it just like, and he was assassinated shortly after that. Uh, so the problem went away anyway. But, um, that was, at the time, really disappointing because I'm like, it's obvious this is a super bad dude. And it's a problem for the United States. Um,

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  and he might have also been working with us in some way. I don't know. Um, but the other,

• 2:07:11Shawn Ryan?

  Who assassinated him?

• 2:07:13Speaker 02

  One of his rivals, I guess.

• 2:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think it was us?

• 2:07:22Speaker 02

  I, I, I have no information that it was us. Yeah, I don't know. Um,

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  I don't know. Um, but I think, I think that, well,

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  yeah, I, I have no, I have no information on that one way or the other, but I know it solved a problem. Uh, with respect to, you mentioned Marja. So, one of the other things that I, I really, that I remember from that deployment was, um, another kind of directive that came down from McChrystal where he wanted, he wanted a deep dive on Taliban finance. And he said, "Look, there are all these rumors that people have been saying for years, you know, Gulf, like they're getting all their money from the Gulf."

• 2:08:12Speaker 02

  And there's a whole, I mean, there's a whole, a whole rabbit hole that we can dive down in that, but it's interesting to like 10 people. But like, he wanted a deep dive on Taliban finance. He's like, is there money still really coming from the Gulf? Or are there other sources of?

• 2:08:31Shawn Ryan?

  How would it become? How's it coming from the Gulf?

• 2:08:34Speaker 02

  Well, they would go to the Gulf. The Taliban and Al Qaeda would go, and other terrorist organizations as well, go, would go to the Gulf, different Gulf countries and individuals who supported what they were doing. And they would go specifically during Ramadan was like a big fundraising period, where Muslims are, you know, encouraged to give to charity. And, and so they would collect, they would raise a lot of money as a charity towards these, like, towards their terrorist causes. And, you know, they frame it as they're advancing, you know, radical Islam, and they're, they're fighting, you know, the great Satan or whatever.

• 2:09:16Speaker 02

  And, and so, yeah, they raised a lot of money that way. They also, I mean, there were, in the early days, there were, these were groups that were later designated by the Treasury Department, the State Department, but they were like humanitarian, they were, they were masquerading as humanitarian, like Islamic relief or stuff like that. But, but they were, they were terrorist fronts. And they were raising money that through the, through those avenues. And they raised a lot of money. And it also became a political hot potato

• 2:09:54Speaker 02

  because, you know, the US government's designating Islamic relief, like, oh, are you Islamophobic? Like, no, I'm terroristophobic. But that's, you know, that's

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  There was not a lot, there was enough political will for a period of time to do that, and then it went away. But, fast forward, so, you know, as JSOC commander, obviously McChrystal was focused elsewhere, but I'm sure, like, he had enough information to know that when he was JSOC commander, a lot of this, a lot of these funds were coming in that way. So he wanted to know, like, here I am, commander at ISAF, how is the Taliban today making its money? And, so, we got, and there were some colleagues of mine from the Treasury Department, and by that point, there was an Afghanistan threat finance cell, and so there were all these

• 2:10:52Speaker 02

  interagency folks that were there, doing amazing things, and put together a really compelling assessment that the Taliban is actually getting its money from us. They're making its money, they are making their money from us. If you consider our logistic supply chain into Afghanistan, they were extorting money on every single link in that supply chain. So we were paying the Taliban.

• 2:11:18Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  Can you be a little more descriptive how that was happening?

• 2:11:23Speaker 02

  So, you have supply trucks coming in for Supreme, for the, you know, our food, our fuel, our sustainment, anything for sustainment. It all went through Pakistan, because it couldn't go, I mean, if you look at a map, there are only a few ways that that stuff can enter into Afghanistan. So it all came in through Pakistan, and the Taliban are in Pakistan, and they were not just there, but also in Afghanistan. They had locked down these trucking companies, and also in, not just the trucking companies, but also the individual drivers.

• 2:12:04Speaker 02

  And sometimes the, like, subcontractors to big American primes that were, like, not necessarily American, they were also being extorted.

• 2:12:17Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:12:17Speaker 02

  All this came to light in 2010.

• 2:12:20Shawn Ryan?

  And you uncovered that?

• 2:12:22Speaker 02

  I, not me personally, like, I was part of a team. But yes, we did, we did uncover that. Yes.

• 2:12:29Shawn Ryan?

  What happened after that?

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  Well, um, not relatedly, McChrystal got fired. So, um, he did, oh, his other question, by the way, that I failed to mention was, is the Taliban making its money off of the narcotics trade? Is that, is that like a key part of, of their finance? And we did find that it was a lot less than everyone thought. That this extortion racket was really, that was the key, uh, method of how the Taliban was raising its money. And, uh, but he did, it did give him, this whole analysis and like link chart that the team did,

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  really gave him a lot of insight into like where the, the key narcotics trafficking nodes were. And so those were included in this Marge operation. It was part of it. So to disrupt Taliban financing, that was part of the end goal of the, that operation.

• 2:13:29Shawn Ryan?

  How did they, I mean, how did they, how did they act when you got the information to them?

• 2:13:35Speaker 02

  I mean, I was in the room when he was briefed on it and he was shocked.

• 2:13:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did they take action?

• 2:13:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. He, um, so in addition to this, you know, kinetic targeting, there was also, like, he put his, um, his logistics chief, the CJ four, he put him like in charge of doing this whole, you know, deep dive into the subcontractors? And how do we, how do we do a better job of vetting and, and all that? And, um, I'm sure, like, I helped him with it for a bit, but then McChrystal got fired and I went home. And, um, I know when Petraeus came on board, he, he brought General McMaster,

• 2:14:23Speaker 02

  who stood up like a very public anti-corruption task force. That was because of what we had found.

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  But I will say that when, uh, and I'm grateful to him, when McChrystal got fired, General Flynn kind of took me aside and he, and he was like, you should go home now. And he was like, nothing good's gonna happen now. You should just, just get out of here, just go home. And I heard later that, you know, it wasn't pleasant for the, all the McChrystal, you know, those who remained.

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  I think Petraeus had a not good view of, of that team and made sure everyone knew it. So I was kind of grateful that I got rescued from that. But I was, I was so like, I just felt when, when McChrystal got fired, I was like, well, it's over. You know, it's over. I mean, I knew Petraeus from Iraq days and I was like, what, what are we gonna do in this country anymore? Like, it's the only, to me, the only hope was McChrystal because he also was dealing with Pakistan. And you can't, you, there was no hope in really changing anything in Afghanistan without

• 2:15:46Speaker 02

  addressing the real problem, which it seemed to me was Pakistan. So, and the ISI specifically. So, anyway, I, I was pretty, I was, I never at that time would have imagined that we would have been there another 10 years after that. And we never really addressed any of those problems. And we kept paying, like, in a way, secondarily, the Taliban, who kept killing us 10 years after that. And we knew. This is the thing that astounds me and I'm like, we still have no accountability. Like, all these people knew and did nothing.

• 2:16:30Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. Every time I dive into this, I just start getting more and more angry. So, I mean, especially, we were just talking offline about the 40 to 87 million dollars in cash that we would send Taliban every single week. Thank God Tim Burchett got it passed through the House.

• 2:16:48Speaker 02

  Thank God.

• 2:16:48Shawn Ryan?

  And Senator Sheehy's supposed to be introducing it to the Senate. Hopefully that happens soon. But, oh, man, I just.

• 2:16:59Shawn Ryan?

  I don't even know what to think anymore.

• 2:17:02Speaker 02

  It's hard to know what to think because at a certain point, you you have to ask like, this is all like too many coincidences of us helping our sworn enemy. Like, are we are we really? Are we trying to do that?

• 2:17:24Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think it was? That's actually what I was just gonna ask.

• 2:17:29Speaker 02

  Not then.

• 2:17:30Shawn Ryan?

  Are we trying to prolong the war? I mean, what?

• 2:17:34Shawn Ryan?

  What was that?

• 2:17:35Speaker 02

  I wonder too. I wonder too. I don't. I wish I had answers. I don't.

• 2:17:42Speaker 02

  But you have to ask yourself when you see what I saw.

• 2:17:48Speaker 02

  And everything just kept going like it was like nothing. What else do you need to know?

• 2:17:55Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I just putting things together because this is all in the 2009 timeframe, you know?

• 2:18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:01Shawn Ryan?

  Slash the ROEs. Cut our troops' legs out from under them. Continue to finance them. I mean, it's just then everything that happens later. I mean, it's.

• 2:18:13Speaker 02

  And this was Obama years. And so Obama,

• 2:18:19Speaker 02

  you know, was very publicly like trying, you know, should should we surge or should we just, you know, leave? And this was very public and and obviously decided wanted the public to know that he decided that he was gonna surge.

• 2:18:39Speaker 02

  And this, the whole catastrophic withdrawal under Biden was Biden being like, you know, finally getting his. He always wanted us to pull out. This was again, the narrative. He had always wanted us to pull out. And now that he was president, it was gonna happen. And regardless of, you know, we had all the things that happened that could have been prevented. Didn't matter. We're out and that's a victory because that's what he had always wanted. But yeah, that's that's been the whole narrative that that we that's been provided to us.

• 2:19:18Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't have any more insight than that. I have the same questions that you do.

• 2:19:23Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move into the SWIFT program. What was the SWIFT program?

• 2:19:29Speaker 02

  Well, uh, SWIFT is a, um,

• 2:19:34Speaker 02

  SWIFT is a, uh, it's a way to move, to move money, to move funds and, and banks use it today all the time. Um, you're basically making electronically transferring funds from one bank to another. Um, and it's, you know, it's, it's an international system that's used by many, many countries. Um,

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  this was a, a very highly classified program, uh, for many years. That was part of the Patriot Act, but part of the classified part of the Patriot Act. And, um, it got blown, uh, in the New York Times years ago. Um, it was very successful, um, because you could track, you know, if you knew who had which bank account number and which bank, you could see who was doing what, who was sending, what, what they were sending, where they were sending it. Uh, but it was specifically only for counterterrorism, could not be used for anything else.

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  And once the program got blown, a lot of our international partners, um, especially in Europe were, you know, they have very different privacy laws in Europe than we do in the United States. And, uh, they were very upset and, uh, but, you know, we, over the years, it's been a very successful program. Like when I was, when I was at Treasury managing this program, we were able to, I don't know if you remember this, um, horrible child killer in Norway, this guy Anders Breivik, who just like went to,

• 2:21:24Speaker 02

  Just psycho, you know, went to an island of like a kid's summer camp.

• 2:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I do remember.

• 2:21:29Speaker 02

  Just like murdered all these kids.

• 2:21:30Shawn Ryan?

  I do remember that.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  And there was a big question about like, is this a lone wolf guy? Like, what's his motivation?

• 2:21:40Speaker 02

  And we were able to look at his bank accounts and tell the Norwegians for sure. This man was saved money for 10 years to be able to fund this operation. There was no one else involved. It was just him. But so that program is, is like, again, purely for counterterrorism purposes, very misunderstood.

• 2:22:04Speaker 02

  But, you know, but.

• 2:22:06Shawn Ryan?

  How is it misunderstood?

• 2:22:07Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of, a lot of, because it was secret and then it got blown and like, it's not like our, it's not like our government is gonna come out and explain everything that it was doing.

• 2:22:22Speaker 02

  I think people assign kind of their own.

• 2:22:28Speaker 02

  They make up stories and obviously a lot of people are, are, are like to think of the United States as kind of this big bad entity. And sometimes I feel, I feel the same, but no.

• 2:22:42Shawn Ryan?

  Sometimes I feel the same.

• 2:22:43Speaker 02

  Sometimes I wonder, no, but, but the reality is, you know, in, in Europe in particular, if, like, if you're European and you, you've never been here, you don't really understand America. You know, you just read the news, you could think that, like, someone accused us, for example, from a European government of, like, trying to track who is gay in Europe. And I'm like, I can promise you, first of all, when you fill out your form to open a bank account, that's not part of it. So that information doesn't exist, number one, tied to a bank account. And two, like, this is for counterterrorism purposes only.

• 2:23:22Speaker 02

  And the, the company, um, the SWIFT, the company, um, you know, has very strict controls over that. And they actually oversee a lot of that as well to make sure that every request is for, meets a, meets a threshold.

• 2:23:40Shawn Ryan?

  How does, how does it work?

• 2:23:42Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know how much I'm allowed to go into that anymore, but um, but I think that it's, it's very safe to say there's a very um, formal coordination process where there are multiple layers of approval and oversight. Um, and again, you can't, you can't uh, introduce other targets that are don't relate, that don't have a direct connection to counterterrorism. But when you see new entities designated as terrorists, for example, the cartels.

• 2:24:21Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:24:21Speaker 02

  That's one of the authorities that is now available.

• 2:24:26Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So basically, you use the SWIFT code, correct?

• 2:24:33Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:24:34Shawn Ryan?

  And you, you can breach into any bank account, see where money's coming, where it's going to. Is that it? Is that, am I on here?

• 2:24:43Speaker 02

  It's way more specific than that. Like you basically, if you have a target, um, you need to figure out what bank account they're attached to.

• 2:24:52Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  And then you do, you request any SWIFT transactions from that bank account, and then you see what comes up.

• 2:25:01Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:25:02Speaker 02

  So you can't just say like, I want to look at all transactions from Iraq to Iran, or vice versa. No. You have to, you have, and then, and you have to write a whole, and again, my information's very, very old now. This is many, many years ago that I was doing this, but you had to write a whole justification for like, why. Um, and you had to include, you know, reporting as part of your justification. This is who this person is, this is what their bank account is, here's why I know this, this is why they're terrorists, here's the, here's the justification for that. I'm trying to find out this. This is why I'm trying to find this out. Do you have anything?

• 2:25:46Shawn Ryan?

  Got you.

• 2:25:47Speaker 02

  It's very, very controlled.

• 2:25:50Shawn Ryan?

  You know, while we're on the the subject of Afghanistan, I've got a Patreon. It's a subscription account and we've turned it into quite the community here. And one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

• 2:26:09Shawn Ryan?

  And so this is from Jim Harmon. Why does it appear that our government intel agencies appear to ignore obvious threats to national security? For instance, the fact that Hamza bin Laden is alive is disputed by officials. So we wanted to go into this and, you know, we were talking off camera about my friend Sarah Adams, who says that Hamza bin Laden is still alive, that he is the leader, he's basically over all of these terrorist organizations, which have united. Then she went on to say that the, I believe it was the UK government, also reported through their intel agencies that he was alive.

• 2:26:54Shawn Ryan?

  Now, I know you have a different opinion on this.

• 2:26:56Speaker 02

  Yes. I, I, Hamza bin Laden actual is not alive. He is dead. However, I do not dispute the fact that someone calling himself Hamza bin Laden, perhaps even a bin Laden cousin, is doing all of that. But Hamza actual is not alive.

• 2:27:28Shawn Ryan?

  How do you know that?

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  He is dead. Because I have asked multiple people who would know that I trust, and they have told me unequivocally, he is dead.

• 2:27:39Shawn Ryan?

  Did they tell you where he was killed?

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  Yes, and I don't remember right now. I know that's a cop out, but it's real.

• 2:27:45Shawn Ryan?

  When was he killed?

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  Uh, man, 2019, is that right?

• 2:27:52Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think the UK government is saying that he's alive?

• 2:27:57Speaker 02

  I mean, there's clearly someone calling himself Hamza bin Laden that is like organizing a lot of bad stuff. And I don't, I don't dispute that. I just think, like, do you remember in that, the Princess Bride, the Dread Pirate Roberts? That there were like multiple, when one guy would retire, there'd be another guy that came up and now he was the Dread Pirate Roberts? And you're just kind of like living off of that infamy. That name is so powerful and is a brand in and of itself. And, and, and therefore, uh, someone's using it to rally, you know, rally the terrorist troops.

• 2:28:40Speaker 02

  But, no, I, I, I will say, like, he's dead. But, yes, there, there are serious concerns about a person calling himself Hamza bin Laden who's organizing some, some very problematic and troubling things.

• 2:28:59Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that's an interesting twist that seems like a very realistic scenario.

• 2:29:04Speaker 02

  I mean, both things could be right.

• 2:29:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. How do you think the Afghan withdrawal went?

• 2:29:12Speaker 02

  Uh, not well, not well. It was a, it was a catastrophe and we are still living with the repercussions of that today, very much so.

• 2:29:27Speaker 02

  I, uh, I got pulled into one of these kind of civilian groups, like veterans and former DOD civilians. And, and I found out later also active duty, um, folks, um, in special operations who were coordinating with us when they were not supposed to be, but God bless them. You know? I, someone reached out to me right when things started to get chaotic. And a lawyer friend of mine, and she had a client who was just trying to, you know, trying to get into the airport, trying to get out. Could I help?

• 2:30:08Speaker 02

  So I, I don't even remember who I reached out to, someone and someone I thought might know something. And they added me to the Signal Chat group that took over my life for weeks. And I know a lot of people had those kind of experiences where all of a sudden I just dropped everything that I was doing. And I do, I do know people and I have my own network and actually was able to help a couple of families that, um, DIA families actually, Afghans that were working for DIA, that had worked for DIA for a long time. And, um,

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  and were being abandoned. And amazingly, because of the people on the ground and their, what they, their heroic efforts, their willingness to work with us, uh, they saved a lot of lives. So, but the things, even sitting in my living room, you know, on Signal, just being part of this, I mean, it was so weird because you do, I did feel like I was there sometimes. There was one, one, one family we were trying to help. I want to be careful because I don't know what happened to them, but they didn't make it out. I know that. Uh, it was a father

• 2:31:29Speaker 02

  and some kids. And, um, they were, you know, it was so hot those days and people were waiting outside for days and days, like passing out, babies dying. Um, and this, there was this particular man who had worked for us and was trying to get out with his kids and, um,

• 2:31:52Speaker 02

  There was someone on the wall, like a PJ on the wall, looking for him. And we had already, you know, given everyone, you say this, he'll say this, you know, hold up, he had a sign that had a word on it, he was holding up the sign and, and he was right outside, they were right outside of Abbey Gate. And I have a picture of the man and his two beautiful children, right before the explosion happened and, and we found out later, one of the, one of the boys was killed. Oh, man. And that wrecked me, that wrecked me like for a while.

• 2:32:34Speaker 02

  Just looking at that little boy's face, you know, and, and like, it was so close, they were so close. And we couldn't get anyone to open the gates, you know, there were all these, like, oh, send them to the black gate, oh, send them to this gate. And they would get there and there was no gate open, there was no one there to open the gate. So much chaos. And, and then the civilians, there were Americans trying to get out, they were also being given this bad information. No one was, people were supposed to help them and they, they weren't. So they were getting information from, you know, people in my group. And they were getting beaten by the Taliban badly, they were getting their US like blue

• 2:33:19Speaker 02

  passports taken from them. And, you know, I was so, I thought your interview of Sergeant Tyler Vargas Andrews was so powerful and I want to thank you for, for that and to thank him because there are so many of us who were like at home that day, just trying to, trying to help and that feeling when that explosion went off and that guy clacked himself off and. Thirteen Marines, or thirteen service members, like it breaks my heart to this day. You know, I had the opportunity to meet some of the family members. And I can't imagine, you know, I have, again, my two, my, my two brothers served in the Marine Corps.

• 2:34:01Speaker 02

  And there but for the grace of God, like, I just, uh, it was so pointless, it was so unnecessary. And that's how we, that was how we left. And that's how the world saw us leave after twenty years of blood and treasure. And, um, and so it also was, was such an encouragement to, like, global jihadists, jihadis globally, like, we lost the GWAT, and they, they know it. And we just haven't admitted it to ourselves. That's the accountability that we still need. Uh, we need to be able to say that we lost, and we need to understand why.

• 2:34:45Speaker 02

  But the, it's just, like, there's still, I think in the early, like, the year or two after the withdrawal, there were still some people who were, you know, a lot of us know a lot of Afghans, um, who, like, really competent, um, really competent fighters who served in the Afghan military, like, either the SOF units, or like the ZIRI units. I mean, they're just incredible, incredibly competent. And some of them, um, really wanted to organize and go back. I mean, I don't really see that happening anymore.

• 2:35:26Speaker 02

  And especially when our own relationship with the Taliban is, is, uh, is sort of unclear. But I just want to point out that we gave up Bagram. Like, we could have pulled out and kept Bagram, but Bagram we needed for China. And China knows it. And for China to have, people talk about China and Afghanistan, like, they get control over all these rare earth minerals and stuff. That's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the geography. And how are we, look at a map, like, how are we going to do this when we don't have Bagram? Bagram was, would be a great, Bagram would have been the, the place. And, um, it just-

• 2:36:12Speaker 02

  It just, again, makes no sense. It makes no sense. And, and all of the after-action stuff where, like, people at the embassy were drunk and not wanting to leave, I don't know if you saw that, there was a, one of the interviews that was done later, one of our, I think one of our service members was like just knocking on doors at the embassy at the end, just like making sure everyone was evacuating to H. Kaia. And someone opened the door, it's an account, it's, you can find it online. Someone opened the door and was like wasted off their ass. Like,

• 2:36:53Speaker 02

  this is, okay, you know, and, and when you learn more about kind of the, the who had, who was in control or who was in charge of that effort? It was the State Department. It was the civilians, not the military.

• 2:37:12Speaker 02

  So, anyway, I have a lot of questions. There's a lot of blame to go around. And, you know, I, I'm complaining about a lot. I, someone, someone said to me a while ago, a response to one of the, one of these like op-eds that I wrote was like, well, what about you? You know, what about your own involvement in this stuff? You know, I, I think we can all stand to, to, to look at what we were part of and what we were, what our activities were, and I think accountability should be spread far and wide. And I'm not afraid of it, but at the same time, like, I, I don't, I wasn't part of that.

• 2:37:58Speaker 02

  What I do know is, at the end of the Trump adminis-, the first term, the first Trump administration, We were in a very different place and we were not, Trump did not order withdrawal. Trump was comfortable with a small force there. That was really doing like advise and assist and we were doing intel support for the Afghan special operations units who were extremely capable and were conducting operations very successfully. So if we had just, you know, part of me feels if we had just continued that, I mean, if you look at when was the last casualty prior to Abbey Gate? It was like a couple of years because we weren't doing what we were doing before.

• 2:38:43Speaker 02

  We were transitioning.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the whole thing is just like, you know, mental health crisis, really.

• 2:38:53Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's just so many, I just, man, it just seemed like no thought at all went into that. I mean, we have all these jihadist groups that want to kill us. We have zero intelligence on the ground over there anymore. We gave up a strategic airbase, which not only for China, but also Iran, you know, because they did use or still do, you know, use terrorist organizations as proxies.

• 2:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  The rare minerals, I mean, the fact that we abandoned another ally, or I guess I can't say an ally, but abandoned another, just like Vietnam. We just, we trained them up, we were turning it over, they fought alongside us for what, 20, 21 years? 21 years. And then we're just, mic drop, we're out, done, that's it. I mean.

• 2:39:50Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:39:51Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 2:39:52Speaker 02

  To add insult to injury, we trucked all these random Afghans here, some of whom turned out to be like watch listed and people who actually like earned the right to be here, who worked with us, worked for us, were abandoned. And we have, we still have a lot of people here that we don't even know who they are.

• 2:40:17Shawn Ryan?

  How do you think that should have gone?

• 2:40:21Speaker 02

  They knew, this is where I start to get, you know, they knew months in advance that they were gonna leave. They knew, they are government. They knew that we were gonna leave through H Kaya and not through Bagram. So in that moment, like, they knew we weren't gonna bring anyone out except for us. You know, they hadn't, they never had any intention of rescue, of like, saving our partners. Even though they said they did. I mean, those factors, like, look at the, H Kaya is in the middle of the city, you know, and in order to have airlifts for the number of people who needed to be brought out, and

• 2:41:06Speaker 02

  then also the, like, the immigration kind of requirements, like, all of the paperwork and stuff, and vetting and all that, should have begun months and months and months before. The fact that they didn't do that meant that they never, they were never gonna save anybody. And no one ever, I mean, there were lies during the entire six months, from when they announced the withdrawal to when it happened, just lie after lie. And, yeah, that's just, no one's, you can point it out, and it doesn't matter, doesn't change a thing.

• 2:41:47Shawn Ryan?

  Simmeraging.

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:41:51Shawn Ryan?

  You know, back to the, the swift thing. Were you able, I mean, was that instrumental in, in, in changing how we target these guys and?

• 2:42:03Speaker 02

  In some cases, uh, by the time I was working on it, it had already been, it had already been blown. So I think the enemy had, like, they'd already changed their TTPs a lot. But, you know, for example, bank accounts are one, were one way to move money, but they have this whole underground system. It's not underground, but we don't, it's not part of our Western culture called Hualoa, where it's a value transfer system. It's like, the easiest way to explain it. And, like, you can, you can go to...

• 2:42:46Speaker 02

  A Hawala is not a, not a bank and not even necessarily, uh, it's not a licensed financial institution in many countries, but if you, you can go to like a corner store somewhere and the guy's a Hawala, a Hawaladar, and you can say, well, I want to send, you know, $5,000 to my boy in Islamabad. So that guy will call up like some Hawala in Islamabad and they basically arrange between the two of them, because I, I pay the guy here $5,000. They arrange between the two of them, how the money is going to be transferred. But again, it's not necessarily money. It can be carpets,

• 2:43:31Speaker 02

  it can be gemstones, it can be other items of value. And, um, and then my buddy in Islamabad will go to the place in Islamabad and get $5,000. So you can't track that through like the formal financial system.

• 2:43:52Shawn Ryan?

  So it's like a Western Union of commodities?

• 2:43:55Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Um, exactly. So that's, that's been a challenge for the intelligence community for many years and law enforcement, um, to try to understand, uh, the Hawala network, global Hawala network, how it works. Um, I was, I was working in banking in UAE for several years and I worked for a big bank. Um, and we had a relationship with several Hawalas that were like banks. They were huge and they had their own, um, they had their own, uh, compliance people that were working on doing stuff that bankers all know KYC, know your

• 2:44:39Speaker 02

  customer, kind of trying to understand like, oh, you're

• 2:44:45Speaker 02

  This is your name. Your name, it does not come up on any watch list. This is your address. Your address doesn't come up on, on any, as any like known bad person on the OFAC list. Um, I mean, there's a whole process. It's very involved. But the bottom line is, uh, some of these hualas are very big. And, uh, they're, they're used like they're across the Middle East and the Islamic world. So they're used very, they're in places where banks don't really operate because, for a variety of reasons. Um, and from a, from an enforcement perspective, it's, it's a challenge to figure out like, well, these guys are clearly running

• 2:45:30Speaker 02

  like bad money through their huala. But that's also the only way that this entire region, you know, of this country can, can get access to money. So, um.

• 2:45:41Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. I did not know that.

• 2:45:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:45Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Well, Simone, let's take, let's take a quick break.

• 2:45:49Speaker 02

  Great.

• 2:45:49Shawn Ryan?

  And when we come back, we'll get into DIA.

• 2:45:52Speaker 02

  Great.

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• 2:46:52Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Simone, we're back from the break. We're going to move into your career over at Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA. So how did you fall into that?

• 2:47:06Speaker 02

  Well, I moved over there. Basically, General Flynn became the director of DIA. And I went over there with him. I had been at Treasury, obviously, before that, on the intel side, the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. And General Flynn was standing up. A lot of commanders have their kind of director's advisory group, or whatever they call it. And so he was standing his up. And I had the opportunity to go and be part of that.

• 2:47:46Speaker 02

  So, yeah, that's how I got over to DIA.

• 2:47:52Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. What kind of stuff were you doing?

• 2:47:55Speaker 02

  Well, his big push was, when he got over there, was the reorganization of DIA. But I think it's not a surprise to anyone who knew him to say that he was on a kind of revenge tour after his experience in Afghanistan. He wrote "Fixing Intel," talking about how the intelligence assessments that were being produced, or the information that was being collected even, and shared, was not helpful to the people on the battlefield.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  That, you know, it was, they weren't collecting things that we needed to fight the war and to win the war. And he wrote this very controversial, I mean, everyone agreed with it, but the way that it was released, I think Gates, Secretary Gates, he was the SecDef at the time, and others were critical of how it was released. I.e., it was released publicly, through a think tank.

• 2:49:07Speaker 02

  And but that was that was how General Flynn operated. So he didn't really care. I think he wanted to just get it to the widest audience possible because he wanted to make sure that people understood how broken it was. It was really like he could only jump up and down for so long yelling about the same problem. So, um, you know, people have a variety of opinions on that. And I don't know if it was the right thing to do or not, but it certainly got a lot of attention. And it did get things to change. So when he came back and took over DIA, he wanted to move a lot of people out who had

• 2:49:48Speaker 02

  kind of stood in his way and was and were really were not helpful in prosecuting the war. So there were these announcements that would come out pretty regularly about like senior DIA employees who were like moving to different jobs in other agencies kind of thing like, oh, they're going to be the liaison at DHS and things like that. And it was, um, I mean, he was moving people out that he did not view as kind of teammates, people who were going to be helpful in what he wanted to do with DIA.

• 2:50:30Speaker 02

  So so there was a lot of kind of like rearranging personnel stuff. But the really big effort during that time was reorganizing the agency and putting the collectors and the analysts together in one, so like the collection operations for, let's say, Russia. And the analysts for Russia were not like they didn't even know each other. They were in different parts of of bowling, they were different parts of the world sometimes, and they they weren't working together in a coordinated way.

• 2:51:14Speaker 02

  So he reorganized DIA to have like Russia house, to have like China house. And so

• 2:51:25Speaker 02

  The, you know, the Americas was another one where you have, again, the people working together so that they can coordinate effectively. So collectors are actually, you know, going after intelligence that, that is, that the analysts really need to answer the key questions. So, I mean, for, for people who don't know, it's the, you know, our senior leadership in our government puts out the collection priorities. They put out like, here are the main things that we want to know. And then the intelligence community kind of does an assessment of like, well, what, what can we answer and what, where are the gaps? And

• 2:52:08Speaker 02

  the gaps are really what the intelligence collectors, you know, go after. And they need to be working closely with the analysts to, who are gonna really fill those gaps with that information and that intelligence. So it was pretty revolutionary at the time. No one had ever thought about it like that before. CIA reorganized itself in a similar manner not long after that. So I think it was clearly a great idea. And, and so, but to be part of that, you know, DIA is kind of notoriously bureaucratic and a lot of people

• 2:52:49Speaker 02

  have a lot of bad things to say about DIA. And, but I worked with a lot of people who spent a long time deployed and who really are patriots and, you know, put everything out there, like left it all on the field, did their best. So I was there for pretty, not for that long, like two years. But I, I learned a lot during my time there. I worked with some great analysts. I finished out my time. So I did, I did that, was working on the reorg for a while, under, under General Flynn. And then I moved to running a small

• 2:53:34Speaker 02

  Uh, like a small unit of analysts, really, we were focused on something that no one at the time cared about at all, transnational organized crime, um, in the Americas, um, cartels, and no one paid attention to us, no one cared, had a great group of analysts who knew a lot about the subject matter and...

• 2:53:55Shawn Ryan?

  Nobody paid any attention to that or cared?

• 2:53:58Speaker 02

  No, no, not at that time. No, not at that time. I mean, it was like checking the box, you know, but we were all focused, everyone was focused on, uh, on the Middle East. And we had, I was there, thi- this is really what led me to, to quit government completely was, um, Syria, the Obama's Syria red line. So first I was, after all my experiences, Iraq, Afghanistan, I was, I was pretty disgusted by everything, but, you know, I still wanted to serve and I, I loved what I was doing, like on a micro level.

• 2:54:39Speaker 02

  I loved the people I got to work with, I thought we were working on important things. The fact that I had this kind of financial intelligence background, uh, made me a little bit unusual, which I like to, kind of niche, uh, but, you know, I remember, I mean, I don't think I'll ever forget it. Obama gave that famous speech about red lines and Assad not, you know, if Assad uses chemical weapons against his own people, like, that's a red line and we will act. So, I think it was on a Friday when Assad, for the first time, used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. He did it many, many times after, but the first was, I think, on a Friday because we

• 2:55:24Speaker 02

  all showed up to work on Saturday. Like, no one, no one said, you know, "Come in." But we just showed up because that's, you know, you know how it is, that's like what you do. Okay, it's gonna kick off, we'll just be here to be helpful. And we sat there for hours and finally, one of the bosses came out of his office and was like, "Y'all should just go home, nothing's gonna happen." And I really had a, like, a crisis, uh, at that time and just realized I was, I was like nearing forty. And I just thought, what am I doing with my life? You know, I've been so focused. It wasn't just a job for me.

• 2:56:09Speaker 02

  It was like a life. It was my life.

• 2:56:11Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:56:11Speaker 02

  And I just felt like, what am I doing? I don't know. What, what am I doing this for? This is crazy. Uh, and I, I, I just, I knew I had to leave. I knew, uh, I started paying attention to, I don't know if they still do this, but at the time, DIA would have these like email announcements when someone dies. And they tell you, like so and so passed away. People were, I don't know if this is true. It seemed like people were dying at their desks. And I was like, no way, no way.

• 2:56:52Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean? People were dying at their desks?

• 2:56:54Speaker 02

  Like, you know how it is in, in the bureaucracy where people just like, they're gonna hang on till retirement, no matter what. Like, gotta get those last years in before you hit retirement. Like, that's such a thing. So you get all your benefits. People were dying at their desks, waiting to hit that retirement. It's not funny, but it's not funny, but it's real. And, um, when I, I remember telling people that I was out, I was leaving, and no one could believe it. Cause I had, I had all my tickets, you know, I had like, you know, polygraphs and everything. I had it all. And, um, and they're like, you know, your clearance is worth over $200,000. And I'm like, there's more to life. There's just more to life.

• 2:57:38Speaker 02

  I, I'm not gonna do this anymore. So, um, yeah, that was.

• 2:57:42Shawn Ryan?

  So you, you didn't believe in the mission anymore? And your values weren't aligned with what was happening?

• 2:57:48Speaker 02

  There, what was the mission, Sean?

• 2:57:52Shawn Ryan?

  You're asking the wrong person that.

• 2:57:55Shawn Ryan?

  I'm still trying to figure that one out.

• 2:57:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I didn't see it. I didn't see it. And, um, you know, I just felt I've given years of my life to this and, you know, I wasn't married, didn't have kids and I was like, there's more to life. So, uh, yeah, so I had, I had no job to go to, but I just, uh, I did have, they were offering early outs. You know, they called it Vera Visip, basically the, they pay you a lump sum for your retirement. And that's it. You're done and the, and your billet is gone. So I was expensive. By that time I was like a GS 15 step five,

• 2:58:43Speaker 02

  which in the DC area is a lot of money. Relatively for the government, it was like a hundred something, like a hundred, I don't remember. Maybe in the 190s. Yeah. So I just, uh, but the Vera Visip was like, um, a lump sum payment.

• 2:59:03Speaker 02

  And I just, after tax, took the money and left. I went to Italy. Um, I had a friend that I had reconnected with. One of my brothers got married in Italy. And I had reconnected with this friend of mine there. And he, he was a friend from, from business school days. I went to business school in Milan. And, um, he had this like luxury villa on the Amalfi Coast. And, uh, he's like, do you want to help me? And, uh, and I just thought, I mean, are you serious? Because I seriously, I, yes, I would. Um, so I ended up doing that. I just went, I went to Sorrento, Italy.

• 2:59:46Speaker 02

  And, uh, it was funny in retrospect, but it was really what I needed. And I just helped him run his, like, luxury villa. We started this boat tour company where we would take like guests to Capri on day trips. And I was like the first mate on the boat and, uh, worked for tips. It was

• 3:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:00:07Speaker 02

  It was awesome.

• 3:00:08Shawn Ryan?

  Quite the change, huh?

• 3:00:09Speaker 02

  I needed it. Yeah. Needed like swim in the ocean every day, be outside the skiff, just be, experience life. You know what I mean? So it was good until I ran out of money around later in the year and I got had to had to actually go back to real job in real life. But yeah, it was it was amazing. And I think in retrospect, seeing how a lot of my friends kind of have flamed out when they've had the kind of similar realization that I had.

• 3:00:42Shawn Ryan?

  Were a lot of people leaving? Like you?

• 3:00:48Speaker 02

  In different ways, yeah, in different ways.

• 3:00:50Shawn Ryan?

  What were the discussions like?

• 3:00:54Speaker 02

  I mean, when I was telling my friends in the intelligence community that I was leaving and why, I mean, maybe people I worked with didn't fully, like on my team, didn't understand, but my friends understood 100%. And some of them had already left. Yeah, people, people got it. I mean, if you look back now at our, like, on the analytic side, the analysts, like senior analysts that we have who served in GWOT, very, very few.

• 3:01:38Speaker 02

  Most everyone's, everyone's gone. Like, there was on Iraq specifically, everyone cleared out, everyone.

• 3:01:45Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 3:01:46Speaker 02

  There's no, but how sad is that to you? Because there's very, very limited institutional memory of so many things, things that are important for the institution to remember. That's, you know, one of the big, one of the big challenges, I think. And sure, the Army did, you know, Iraq, like the after action, kind of deep dive into Iraq, what went wrong. And I've heard there's one on Afghanistan, but it's classified.

• 3:02:15Shawn Ryan?

  Go figure.

• 3:02:17Speaker 02

  But like.

• 3:02:20Speaker 02

  That's still, it's still, you know, that's great for the army, but who's gonna, it's so specific to the military and there's a lot more to it than that. I mean, there've been, so many people have written books and, and they've covered different, different sides of this and, but yeah, no, the, the basic fact is the people who are like mentally healthy enough, and I, I feel like I was borderline at that point and I don't, I don't, I was not mentally healthy at that point. I knew it enough to not even try to find another job, just to like, clear my head, you know, and, and try to just get myself back a little

• 3:03:04Speaker 02

  bit and then, also, the reality was, I was doing really well. I would have advanced to an SIS, but I had to do another deployment, probably to Djibouti, and I just had zero, I was like, I'm gonna burn my sleeping bag. I am not doing that again. It was done.

• 3:03:25Shawn Ryan?

  Want to burn my sleeping bag?

• 3:03:27Speaker 02

  I was, that thing smelled so bad, but it was, it was just time, you know, it was just enough. It was enough. You, you and I both know people who, that's all they can do now with their lives. They can only exist in, in places and situations like that and they can't live in the normal world. And I, I kind of recognized that I was, I was like slapping up against that and I didn't want to become that. So, and, and, and talking to other people that I had served with, everyone kind of understood that because the adrenaline is real and the, the feeling that you're working on something important and you're,

• 3:04:09Speaker 02

  you know, the mission and all that. And so, it had to get really bad for me to understand that I had to just pull the ripcord and save myself and, and that's why I did.

• 3:04:23Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you go from Italy?

• 3:04:25Speaker 02

  I went to the UAE and I got a job working for a big bank that had gotten itself in trouble violating Iran sanctions and it was, I mean, they egregiously violated Iran sanctions.

• 3:04:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, so?

• 3:04:44Speaker 02

  They created a manual for their clients on how to like hide details about transactions like.

• 3:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:04:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:04:55Shawn Ryan?

  And you were working for that bank?

• 3:04:57Speaker 02

  Afterwards. So I guess they forgot about the NSA couldn't like find that sort of thing. And so, so they got in, they got in very serious trouble with OFAC and the DOJ. So they, they had to pay over a billion dollars in fines. They almost lost their US dollar access and they had to create a whole new compliance program focused on our laws, the Bank Secrecy Act. And so how to like the controls around US dollars, US dollar transactions.

• 3:05:39Speaker 02

  And so my job, I covered Africa, Middle East and Pakistan from Dubai. I was based in Dubai and so I, I was like all over the region for years doing my job, which was basically conducting investigations, doing train, like training thousands and thousands of bank employees and then interacting a lot with our regulators as well. Just kind of like letting them know what was going on, answering questions, stuff like that.

• 3:06:09Shawn Ryan?

  So you're living in Dubai?

• 3:06:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. How was that? We just went there about a month ago, I think, ish.

• 3:06:18Shawn Ryan?

  I've been there several times.

• 3:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:20Shawn Ryan?

  All the, it's like all expats.

• 3:06:22Speaker 02

  It is. It is. Did you, what did you think? Did you like it?

• 3:06:27Shawn Ryan?

  I love it there.

• 3:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:06:29Shawn Ryan?

  I think the architecture is amazing. It's, it's, I think it's one of the most impressive cities in the world. Um, I don't know what I would do there if I lived there, other than shop. But uh, cause I got some great shopping.

• 3:06:43Speaker 02

  They do.

• 3:06:43Shawn Ryan?

  But, but yeah, I'm, what's it like living there?

• 3:06:47Speaker 02

  I mean, I loved it. Oh, it, it was, I was on the road a lot. So I can see what you're saying. But um, but I like, I just, I loved it. I just thought the people were so nice. I made a lot of friends. Um, it was beautiful. It's safe. Um, and it's just incredibly impressive. The first time that I was there was like early days, like maybe two thousand and four.

• 3:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:07:19Speaker 02

  And so to see what it became so quick quickly, what they built there, what they made is just really, it's, it's like got a vibe, you know, it's, and it's, um, now that I'm older, you know, I kinda like Abu Dhabi. It's a little more chill. Um, you know, I'm like a in, in bed at nine o'clock person now. So Dubai's can be a lot, but it's, it's amazing. It truly is amazing. And um, I, I really enjoyed my time there. Um, I, my job was super interesting too. I mean, I got to do, we were in Zimbabwe when the Mugabe regime was falling. Like, we were there,

• 3:08:01Speaker 02

  myself and some of my colleagues from New York City, because at the time, we were the only bank that were, that was still, still had access to US dollars. But because Mugabe, the Mugabe regime was sanctioned by the, by OFAC, by the Treasury Department, we had to like wall off, wall them off from any US dollar, anything. So we were just, anyway, we were there during like kind of a crazy time for the country. And um, I had never been there before. And so it was, it was really interesting. We found out, I think the secret police were like on the two floors above us in our hotel and um,

• 3:08:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just, um, I thank God, you know, nothing bad happened to anybody, but it definitely could have. It was, you could tell it was one of those situations where things could pop off in a second. Um, and I was the only one that had my sort of background there. So, uh, I brought a ton of cash with me, also because I, I knew, I, I saw that, you know, there were lines for the ATMs and like, you can't rely on an ATM in a situation like that. So I brought a significant amount of cash and it turned out that all my, all my banker colleagues from New York City had like zero cash, so.

• 3:09:24Speaker 02

  But, um.

• 3:09:25Shawn Ryan?

  How do you wall, how do you wall a bank off from US dollars?

• 3:09:29Speaker 02

  Um, well, you know, there's, it's all electronic, um, but. So the bank itself wasn't, uh, uh, obviously our bank was not walled off, but like a certain set of, of bank customers who could have access to other, uh, denomination, not denominations, but other currencies, uh, but just not US dollars. So you can mark like it's, it's, you know, inside the system. I haven't been in the, in the bank system in a long time, but you can say like, this account is for this currency and that currency. And this account is for that currency and that currency. And then these accounts are US dollar accounts.

• 3:10:13Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 3:10:14Speaker 02

  So you can, for example, have multiple accounts in the same bank for different currencies or one account that has multiple currencies.

• 3:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. And then you get appointed to the Pentagon.

• 3:10:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:10:31Shawn Ryan?

  In 2019.

• 3:10:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:10:33Shawn Ryan?

  How did that happen?

• 3:10:35Speaker 02

  Uh, well, General Flynn called me. Um, and, you know, we had been in touch since I, since I left. I mean, kind of the big communication that he and I had had was when I was in Italy, I got contacted by a reporter friend, one of the few, um, who called me to, to tell me that Flynn was going to Russia and, uh, going to this RT dinner. And I should talk to him about that because it was a bad idea. And, uh, and I was like, no, he's not, there's no way he's doing that, like, shut up.

• 3:11:15Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, he did that. And I did call him and or text him. I don't remember anymore. And he, um, he told me that it was, "Thank you very much for your concern. I know what I'm doing. It's all under control."

• 3:11:31Speaker 02

  So, um, and I, I really pleaded with him and I just said, you know, you're, you're retired. You know, I know you're probably excited to, you're free and you can do what you want. But like, you're a retired three star. Like, you still have those three stars, like, mean something. And like, by the way, don't F all the rest of us that, you know, had in some way, like, were tied to you. I mean, I worked for him for like five years, um, in different capacities. So, um, I was kind of like trying to save myself at the same time. But, um, yeah, he did him and, uh, and he, he did that.

• 3:12:12Speaker 02

  And, uh, but anyway, fast forward, he put me up for an assistant secretary job at Treasury at the time. He, here's what happened. He called me. I was in Dubai. And he's like, "I need you. Like, what jobs do you want?" And, uh, in the past, I'd been like, you know, salute, like, yes, sir. But this time, the way that banking, you know, salaries and stuff work is you get your salary payment, but then you get a bonus. And the bonus, if you're lucky, is like a lot of money. And because I was living overseas, you know, tax, your taxes aren't like taken out automatically

• 3:12:54Speaker 02

  like they are here. So my bonus was going to pay for all my taxes. Um, and the bonus is paid out in March. So the election was in November. And, um, so I was like, can I, can I come a little later this time? Like, I'm not going to be there day one. Thank God. And, um, and so that's what happened. Um, so the Treasury job went away because Flynn went away. And all the Treasury deciding people were like, I, I basically was, um,

• 3:13:32Speaker 02

  You know, I was, I was like stray, kind of stray voltage on the Flynn thing, which was fine, which was fine. So I, I just continued on doing what I was doing.

• 3:13:46Speaker 02

  About a year later, I got this opportunity at the Pentagon. I guess my name was kind of still on lists, still, my resume was still in there. So I got contacted by the, the DOD liaison to the White House. And he said this opportunity, they were looking for someone for the office where I had started back in Solik, in ASD Solik, that they needed a deputy, like, under the DASD to run that special operations and combating terrorism. So I thought, how cool. And I didn't, you know, I had been overseas during the whole election. So I didn't really, I didn't know anything really about Trump.

• 3:14:31Speaker 02

  I, I got my information from, you know, overseas news and I just assumed that Hillary would win. And when she didn't win, I was like, whoa, great. Now what?

• 3:14:47Speaker 02

  Like, cool. But yeah, so, and then when, when, you know, everything got crazy really fast, obviously.

• 3:14:57Shawn Ryan?

  That's a pretty damn important position.

• 3:15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. At SOCT. Yeah, it was, I got there, there was, the DASD was still there. He, he moved on a little bit later. But yeah, we, we were in the thick of it. And it was really, it was the greatest privilege of my life to work with that, that group of warriors.

• 3:15:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what kind of stuff were you doing? So SOCT, Special Operations in Combating Terrorism, during Baghdadi and Soleimani operations. I mean, that's like...

• 3:15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, um, all impressive to the men and women who executed those operations. You know, I, I got to see the video of Baghdadi, the Baghdadi op, like afterwards, you know, they had this whole, they're, they're, those guys are very good at, you know, their marketing, marketing themselves to the right people. So they, they made a video of their operation. It's classified, but, um, you know, you get to go down, they even had really cool music. And so, um, that was, but, but being part of it really meant-

• 3:16:18Shawn Ryan?

  So you were in the planning process of losing it?

• 3:16:19Speaker 02

  No, no, I wasn't, I wasn't, that's all the military. The military does the planning. You know, if there's any like approvals that sometimes there's ancillary things that need to be approved, like they need to go up a chain. But the big thing that I had to do with the Baghdadi operation was briefing Congress after the fact and briefing, um, members and, and, um, the staffs. And what was really awesome, I mean, this was my favorite part of it, and I sound like a fangirl because I am, was, you know, going, it was myself, my joint staff counterpart, um, he's a, you know, a very highly decorated, uh, ranger

• 3:17:04Speaker 02

  and the director of CTC at the agency. And, um, it was really, for the most part, the two of them explaining in detail what happened. So, um, I really can't say very much, but the, the CTC guy, that, this is CIA counterterrorism centers director, I mean, that's some movie shit, what happened there. And, um, the first time that I learned it, just being real, was like when I heard him briefing, uh, on the Hill. And, and that's right, I, I, I had zero need to know about how they got to Baghdadi and how they figured out it was him and, um,

• 3:17:46Speaker 02

  how they, how they, uh, got eyes on and, um, but I did-

• 3:17:51Shawn Ryan?

  Did you share any of that or is that all sealed up?

• 3:17:55Speaker 02

  I mean, I wouldn't want to be the one to tell that story. That's someone else's story.

• 3:18:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:18:03Speaker 02

  But, uh, but God bless them. And, uh, and what was amazing, one of the many, many amazing things about that operation was, they had,

• 3:18:16Speaker 02

  I mean, it was boots on the ground and no one was even injured. The dog, uh, oh, super funny story about the dog. Okay, I can tell that. So, uh, Conan, Conan, the dog.

• 3:18:32Speaker 02

  So there's a huge public interest in Conan, the dog. That was part of the operation, got injured in the operation, but was fine mostly.

• 3:18:43Speaker 02

  So when the time came to give the unit an award, there was some kind of, there was something, I don't even remember what exactly, but there was some type of ceremony at the White House. But, you know, that, that unit, that's a special mission unit. So none of those guys can be identified. So, oh, but they, they wanted to showcase the dog. So the dog had a different handler for that event because the real handler, you know, couldn't be on camera. And we were watching in the office and he was standing, the dog was, the vice president was standing next to the dog.

• 3:19:27Speaker 02

  And the vice president started moving his hand, like to pet this thing. This is not a dog that you pet. Do you know what I'm saying? This dog has titanium teeth and is like, uh, like probably like definitely ripped like many throats out. And the vice president's like, we just watched his hand like,

• 3:19:53Speaker 02

  we were all like, no.

• 3:19:56Speaker 02

  But, and, and not with his regular handler either. So like, oh my God, but it all worked out. And Pence has both his hands still. But, um, but that was, that was, uh, just to be, just to be part of that in a small way. And help like tell this, the story of what these guys did was truly amazing. And, and, um, you know,

• 3:20:22Speaker 02

  We all knew the story of Kayla Mueller and what she had endured and what he had done to her, turning her into just not, let's not even say it, but just so horrific, was so meaningful to be able to, you know, we couldn't save her, but we did like bring justice for her family at the end of the day. And like, I believe in that. I was really proud to be, even just be the explainer at the, like, at the end of that, explain to our lawmakers what happened. That was awesome. And then Soleimani, well, I'll just say, there were

• 3:21:04Speaker 02

  a lot of people in the first Trump administration who said a lot of things about being involved, and they're on a lot of lists now. And, you know, I was not involved, other than that, I was in that office when it, when it happened. And so, like, yeah, we knew, we knew about it. I knew about it. My, I don't think my team did until I told them, but, you know, it was, it was a task force operation. And so, like, you know, we were, we were prized of it, and we, we had to deal with a lot of stuff after the fact. But I remember this,

• 3:21:49Speaker 02

  like, how stressful it was with all the different operational details as we were learning them. Like, there was just so many, so many things that could have gone wrong, as usual, on an operation like that. And to see at the end, his hand on social media, his hand with his famous ring. And knowing

• 3:22:16Speaker 02

  Knowing the story of Qassem Soleimani and how much American blood he had on his hands, how many Americans he'd been involved in killing over the years, and of him really being like this evil mastermind and removing him from the battlefield was really profound. And I had nothing to do with it, other than to be in that job at that time, but was very, very proud. And I just, I know a lot of the folks who were involved and will never take credit or talk about it. And they're amazing. Yeah. But yeah, that also, not my story to

• 3:22:57Speaker 02

  tell, but just an amazing, amazing operation. And we got a bonus, too. We got, I'm sorry, I'm blanking on his name. He also was responsible for a lot of them. Mahandis, Mahandis was in the vehicle with Soleimani, which wasn't, we didn't know in advance, but, you know, that was his day, too.

• 3:23:21Shawn Ryan?

  Who was he?

• 3:23:22Speaker 02

  He was, he was a terrorist leader, an Iraqi. So, you know, Qassem Soleimani basically ruled Iraq after we left in 2011. From the politicians really answered to him in many ways. But he also had stood up. So there were a lot of different Shia militia groups. Some were directly like Quds Force affiliated. And then there were some that were more like Iraqi Shia, but still funded and aligned with Iran and the Quds Force.

• 3:24:02Speaker 02

  And they became the PMF, the Popular Military Front, which still to this day, I believe, gets paid through the Iraqi budget. They're part of Iraq's

• 3:24:15Speaker 02

  Military force now.

• 3:24:19Speaker 02

  Iraq became a satellite of Iran. After we pulled out, I don't know if you know that, but after we pulled out in 2011, that's what happened. And that was really in large part thanks to Qassem Soleimani. But he, he was the mastermind from the beginning. These EFPs, the explosively.

• 3:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I remember those.

• 3:24:38Speaker 02

  Form projectiles that killed a lot of people, a lot of our people. That was like, that was his, you know, that was his mastermind. So, and Mohandes was one of his lieutenants in Iraq. And so to see them both taken out was just.

• 3:24:58Shawn Ryan?

  Felt good.

• 3:24:58Speaker 02

  You know, yeah, it felt great. And, and knowing everything that they had done to, to so many, so many of our friends, you know, it's just, it felt good.

• 3:25:07Shawn Ryan?

  There was a lot of backlash over that, if I remember correctly, wasn't there?

• 3:25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, people freaked out and were like, World War III.

• 3:25:14Shawn Ryan?

  It's like 2020?

• 3:25:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, 2020, 2020. They freaked out and said, it's going to be World War III.

• 3:25:24Speaker 02

  It was definitely a ballsy move. And it definitely, look, the president, when the president asked for options, there are a lot of options that are provided to the president. But on that particular day, that was the option that he picked. And like, was everyone shocked? Pretty much, yeah. And because, yeah, because no one had ever.

• 3:25:52Speaker 02

  I mean, no president before Trump would have made a decision like that.

• 3:25:57Shawn Ryan?

  How, how would that have?

• 3:26:02Shawn Ryan?

  Back then, I kind of lived in an echo chamber, so I didn't really, uh, explore any of the other ideas. How, how would that have triggered World War III?

• 3:26:12Speaker 02

  I, uh, in my mind, it wasn't going to. But there are a lot of, a lot of people, a lot of people in Washington who are always advocating for a diplomatic approach. Which, by the way, I don't, don't discount the, the.

• 3:26:34Speaker 02

  Efficacy of diplomacy in the right situation. But, you know, Iran had just killed an American. That was the, that was the backdrop for this. Like, right, there was, I think it was a US contractor that was killed on a, on a base that Iran, a US base in Iraq that Iran attacked. If I, if I recall correctly, drone? I don't know, I'm sorry, my memory is not great. But, but what I do remember is an American contractor was killed. And President Trump was going to do something about it because enough was enough. And you can't just get away with killing Americans. Which is right, by the way.

• 3:27:20Speaker 02

  Thank you. So, he's presented with, you know, a list of different options. The military puts, puts that together. At the time, it was, I guess, Milley and

• 3:27:32Speaker 02

  we went through a bunch of sects at that time.

• 3:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  Esper.

• 3:27:35Speaker 02

  But, yeah, I believe it was Esper. So they put together these options, probably mostly Milley. And, but together presented them to the president. And the president decided to go with a strike on Soleimani. Not all of them, by the way, are necessarily like individual, you know, take this guy out or take that guy out. Some of them are like more strategic. But, yeah, that was, that, he want, he went with that one. And for, you know, there were people in our government who had been tracking Soleimani for years, like many, many years. And the Israelis were tracking him for many, many years as well.

• 3:28:21Speaker 02

  And shared a lot of really vital intelligence with us at that time. So, they did not take, they did not, to my knowledge, take, take part in that strike, other than perhaps providing some intelligence. But, but we can see today how deeply they penetrated into, into Iran, into Quds Force, into their multiple terror proxies. It's pretty extraordinary. I'm super jealous. I just like, I'm I wish that we were, you know, that could really.

• 3:28:59Shawn Ryan?

  How many terrorist organizations are, is Iran using as proxies? Do you have any idea?

• 3:29:05Speaker 02

  Well, there's Iraq. I mean, you want to call these little groups in Iraq like one. There's a couple like kind of key ones, but they've, they've changed, merged, et cetera, over time. But you've got the Houthis in Yemen, you've got Hezbollah in Lebanon, you've got Gaza, you've got Hamas. Which is funny because, not funny, but a lot of people were saying, oh, well, they're Muslim Brotherhood, i.e. Sunni, so therefore they're, they can't be aligned with Iran.

• 3:29:45Speaker 02

  They can't be accepting like money and training and stuff from Iran because they're Sunni. Well, go back to what we were talking about, Al Qaeda leadership being in Iran. Like, those guys work with each other. And, and this was another example where Hamas was clearly taking, they were clearly partners with Iran and Iran was clearly providing funding and training and equipment. So, anyway, those are, those are like the main ones. But, you know, Hezbollah is a global organization. Obviously, they're based in Lebanon, but you have Hezbollah operating Venezuela.

• 3:30:32Speaker 02

  They're operating in the, in that tri-border region. And, and historically, they have been for a long time. And then, of course, you have the Quds Force, which is the only Iranian Iranian one. And they're, oh, and I'm sorry, Hezbollah also operating in Syria. They had a big operation in Syria. So, yeah, I mean, they're, they've been wreaking havoc globally for such a long time. And this is the same organization Hezbollah killed Marines in Beirut in the eighties. You know, held a station chief hostage and tortured him and murdered him.

• 3:31:14Speaker 02

  I mean, this is the same, anyway, all that to say, they built, and Qassem Soleimani was the mastermind behind this. They had Israel essentially surrounded. They built this huge terror network, but it wasn't only for Israel, because they used it to attack us a lot. And there was no real successor to him. There was no, there was no one else like him. So, taking him out was quite significant. But yeah, a lot of people, a lot of people freaked out and said it was going to be World War III. And, and that never happened.

• 3:31:55Speaker 02

  And there's like, very little reflection I've seen from those people who said that, about why that didn't happen, and what does that mean about their own assumptions? And maybe I should revise what I think. Because when we attacked Firdaus recently, it was like the same thing all over again. Ah, World War III, ah. I mean, obviously.

• 3:32:17Shawn Ryan?

  Who we attacked? Who? Sorry.

• 3:32:18Speaker 02

  Firdaus, the Iranian nuclear program. When we bombed their nuclear, when we bombed Firdaus. That was, there was like another round of people freaking out about World War III and.

• 3:32:33Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, I can, so I can, if you don't mind, I'd like to share my opinion on that. But, I mean, I think, I think it was just a different, you know, the Soleimani days. Geopolitics was a lot different. And, you know, today, we have, I think, I think a lot of people know about BRICS. You know about BRICS, you know, throwing the US dollar off the world reserve currency. And we have Russia, Ukraine going on, we have China, we have the China problem, also China, Taiwan, then we have all the shit going on in the Middle East. And if you look at the BRICS alliance, I mean, it's Russia, it's Brazil, Russia, India,

• 3:33:17Shawn Ryan?

  China, South Africa, and the last time I checked, there were like 22 other countries that had joined that. And, you know, and so right there, Russia, China, Iran, I believe is part of that, you know what I mean? So China, Russia, Iran. It's, I think the, at least for me, you know, when I look at it, I'm like, oh shit. Like, we're not just messing with Iran right now. We're also messing with China, with Russia, with India, with all these other players, you know, that are also nuclear powers.

• 3:33:56Shawn Ryan?

  And, and, and so it's not just, but I wasn't as tuned in back then either with Soleimani as I am, as I am now. And so that's my fear is, it's, maybe a little bit of a bold statement here, but I mean, it seems like the counter to NATO, you know what I mean? And, and what do you think? How close are we to World War III?

• 3:34:26Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I don't know. I mean, hopefully very far away. What do I think of BRICS? I mean, I think they're trying to make BRICS a thing.

• 3:34:38Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:34:39Speaker 02

  I don't think it's yet still developing.

• 3:34:47Speaker 02

  I think there are a few, if I recall correctly, there are a couple of countries that have actually pulled out of BRICS recently.

• 3:34:53Shawn Ryan?

  I haven't heard that.

• 3:34:55Speaker 02

  I think they have, uh, which is great. So BRICS is TBD. I mean, we're still the United States. We're definitely weaker. We're definitely in a, we've been headed in a bad direction. But when an American president says this country cannot ever have a nuclear weapon. You kind of put yourself in a situation where the American president has to, if they're about to get that, the country is about to get a nuclear weapon and the American president has said they can't get a nuclear weapon. You kind of put yourself in a box. And again, I'm glad he did for all the reasons that we discussed.

• 3:35:40Speaker 02

  But BRICS doesn't mean that any one of those countries is going to be like, how dare you attack our great partner? They don't have a, it's a economic partnership right now. There's no real like military alliance behind it like there is with Article Five in NATO. Where like if you attack, if anyone attacks a NATO partner, then all NATO partners are supposed to like come to their aid, which in my opinion, I don't actually know if that would ever happen. Sorry.

• 3:36:11Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you, I'm not going to disagree with you there, but do you think that China, Russia could have used, let's say that, I'm kind of alluding the fact that Iran would have blown up a little bigger than a, you know, that that situation would have blown up a little bit bigger than it would. I mean, do you think that China and Russia would have used Iran as a proxy to get, you know, to smuggle weapons in there, to aid them, to train them, outfit them? You know, if that would have turned into something bigger than than what actually happened?

• 3:36:46Speaker 02

  I mean, they're, they have proven themselves to not be allies. They just, they're like, it's a cynical partnership.

• 3:36:57Shawn Ryan?

  How have they proven not to be allies?

• 3:36:59Speaker 02

  Well, they didn't come to their aid, did they? Israel was hammering them for like months and months. And achieved air superiority over a period of days. And like China and Russia didn't come and help Iran. So if they were real allies, then, then they would, then they would have come to their aid, right? That's what an ally does. So I think it also showed that the fear that a lot of people have of this, like, they signed this 100-year agreement or something, didn't they, Iran and China and Russia? I believe they signed 50 years, maybe?

• 3:37:42Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know about that.

• 3:37:43Speaker 02

  They signed, they signed, they signed an agreement, they made, it was like very public, that they were going to cooperate on all kinds of things and they were, now they're real partners. But it's, it's turned out so far to be economic in nature and nothing else. I mean, even China, so China, what does China get from a partnership with Iran? It gets...

• 3:38:07Shawn Ryan?

  A proxy against us.

• 3:38:09Speaker 02

  It gets a proxy against us, yes. But it gets like directly, it gets energy, it gets like, you know, oil. But it doesn't get the majority of it from Iran. I mean, China has enormous energy needs. It gets the majority, it gets its energy from Iran, but mostly Saudi Arabia. So even if they lost completely Iran's, like, access to Iran's oil and gas, they still would be okay. So that's also a calculation for them. It's like, is it worth it for you to go into like a full-on kinetic situation with the United States right now?

• 3:38:54Speaker 02

  Like, they want to do that at a time and place of their choosing and like, this ain't it. They, they have their grand plans and so, but they would love to see us dragged down into the Middle East again, because that was so beneficial for them the last time. That's why we can never do that again.

• 3:39:13Shawn Ryan?

  How was it beneficial for them?

• 3:39:16Speaker 02

  We drained our blood and treasure, we're very demoralized. The, a lot of the infighting that were, that is occurring here in the US is, is all beneficial to them. We're fighting ourselves, you know? Like, have you noticed that X is so crazy recently?

• 3:39:35Shawn Ryan?

  Have I noticed?

• 3:39:36Speaker 02

  It's so crazy, but how many, there's so many foreign bot operations and they're focused on like dividing us and I wish like Elon, please put like, I, I think there's a way of identifying, even if they use VPN, like of identifying where these accounts are coming from. It would be so helpful if they could start being flagged and at least we would know like MAGA America, American flag, American flag is actually based in China, you know, super helpful. But anyway, I, I think it's not, I'm not saying that these countries are

• 3:40:20Speaker 02

  not in a real partnership, but so far it hasn't extended to anything military. And they're certainly not going to risk their own positions for Iran. You know, also very helpful to highlight the fact that Russia's air defense system completely failed against our stuff, which the Israelis have. And I mean, the Israelis obviously have their own stuff, but against like our F-35, we won. Good to know.

• 3:40:56Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I don't know, did you, I'm not even saying a kinetic operation, but I mean, you know, China sends all the precursors to Fentanyl into Mexico and that comes up. I think all of this stuff plays into some type of a, you know, some type of a master plan.

• 3:41:17Speaker 02

  I, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. I mean, China is really focused on these gray zone operations and they're killing, I mean, I guess bad analogy, appropriate analogy, they're killing it. I mean, look at all of these people folded over all over our cities, you know, that's, that's China.

• 3:41:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:41:37Speaker 02

  And they're, they're very effective at what they do and they've been partnering with the cartels and they're, not only are they providing precursor chemicals, but they're also the money launderers for the cartels.

• 3:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  How so?

• 3:41:53Speaker 02

  Cartels launder their money through these Chinese gangs.

• 3:41:58Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't know that.

• 3:41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And sanctioned by the CCP.

• 3:42:04Speaker 02

  Yep. And now-

• 3:42:06Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know, um, you, you had mentioned you were, um, was it DIA you were doing the Americas?

• 3:42:12Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:42:13Shawn Ryan?

  Is that, did you know this all the way back then?

• 3:42:16Speaker 02

  I didn't. No, I've learned that in the last couple of years.

• 3:42:21Speaker 02

  I don't know if they were doing that back then, honestly, but they are now, big time.

• 3:42:25Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. I mean, it's, it, it, I don't, it's hard to think like them because we're so reactionary and immediate and they're appear to be very good at a longer game.

• 3:42:39Speaker 02

  What, what they've been doing is very deliberate. And, um, that's why it's important, that's another reason why I'm, I really support what Israel's been doing against Iran. Because we need to not have to worry about that anymore. Um, and just, like, willing it away doesn't change the fact that there is a real threat there and they have been killing Americans. And we can't take our eye off the ball, but we have another bigger problem. And I, um, I don't disagree. I mean, I, there's so many, especially like veterans of our era are like, enough, no more, like, no more Middle East.

• 3:43:19Speaker 02

  I feel you, you know, I, um, and I, I would like, I would like for this to be resolved and I see a way that it can be resolved. So, uh, hopefully soon, hopefully soon. Um, but yes, we need to be as deliberate as, as China's being. Um, but there's a number of things that we still have to do that we, we're not doing yet, unfortunately.

• 3:43:45Shawn Ryan?

  You know, Beck, I'm sorry, I'm switching gears. I just have all these things popping in my head, but you, we talk about with Sarah, you know, she says that there are at least a thousand sleeper cells, terrorist organizations within the US borders right now. Do you have any insight into that? Or opinions or?

• 3:44:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know. I, anything's possible. But even in, at their height, Al Qaeda and ISIS didn't have those numbers. Um, so-

• 3:44:17Speaker 02

  I'm skeptical.

• 3:44:18Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think they're strengthening again?

• 3:44:20Speaker 02

  They, they absolutely are. They absolutely are.

• 3:44:23Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think so many GWOT veterans are, are, they don't want to go back to war? They don't want to go back over there. They're done with the Middle East. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because of all the shit that we just talked about with Iraq? It was all for nothing in Afghanistan, which was a loss?

• 3:44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. A hundred percent.

• 3:44:46Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think, I think that the GWOT generation is just so frustrated with, you know, we talked about stricter ROEs. We, we talked about all kinds of stuff. And then when you do that, it's like, now you want me to go over there and do this fucking?

• 3:45:02Speaker 02

  We funded the Taliban.

• 3:45:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:45:05Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah. And apparently we still are. I don't know. But I, I think.

• 3:45:09Shawn Ryan?

  No, I think Rubio stopped it, but it's temporary. But it has to get through the Senate. So Tim Sheehy, please.

• 3:45:17Speaker 02

  Please.

• 3:45:18Shawn Ryan?

  Hurry up and get that damn thing pushed through.

• 3:45:20Speaker 02

  Amen. Amen. But yeah, I, I do think ultimately that, um, that

• 3:45:31Speaker 02

  they're not wrong. I mean, I agree with that sentiment that we, we can't do that again. Um, and it was

• 3:45:42Speaker 02

  in many ways, a huge waste and created bigger problems. Um, but that doesn't mean that we can't address,

• 3:45:53Speaker 02

  like, we can't, we, we now should stop addressing any threat. You know, there's a balance and we just can't, we can't send big armies to do, to address threats. It doesn't, first of all, it doesn't work. We're not good at it. And, uh, and second of all, um, we have bigger, you know, we have bigger fish to fry. But again, I, maybe I'm like trying to thread the needle too much. But what I'm trying to say is, um, we.

• 3:46:20Speaker 02

  We, I'm not isolationist. Um, I'm just, I look at where we've come from, what we've done, all the things that I personally saw and learned. I agree, um, I agree with you and with everyone else who's, who's been speaking out about, um, no new wars, but I, I don't think that's what this is. I think taking like a targeted strike is different from that. And the fact that Israel is doing all of this other, like, that's what partners are for. Like, they're helping us. Like, let's let them finish what they're doing. Now,

• 3:47:01Speaker 02

  doing that in the most humanitarian way possible is, means finishing it as quickly as possible. The more this drags on, the more people suffer, the more people die. You know, you have this, uh, horrible, tragic situation unfolding, um, in Gaza. People are doing their best. Um, we have, you know, US humanitarian workers there now, which, um, you know, it's, it's hard to see the way things are organized right now, how that's gonna be successful and not like a PR disaster ultimately for us. But I, I hope for the best. You know what I mean? Like, I'm rooting for us.

• 3:47:44Shawn Ryan?

  It's just, it's just fucking crazy, man. I mean, here we, I mean, I'm, all these other terrorist organizations have ties to Iran. I'm sure the Taliban has ties to Iran some, one way or another as well. We're funding them, who are funded probably by Iran, but we're bombing Iran. And it's like, dude, pick, what, what fucking, what are we doing here? Like, we're fucking funding the people that killed us for 20 fucking years. Like, who are, who are tied to Iran, and then we go and bomb, it's, it's, I, I just-

• 3:48:21Speaker 02

  You said it.

• 3:48:22Shawn Ryan?

  Like, what, what the fuck are we doing? Like, what the fuck are we doing, man? It's just, it just makes no sense. Like, how, how about you stop the fucking funding? And, like-

• 3:48:38Speaker 02

  Or if not-

• 3:48:39Shawn Ryan?

  It's just asinine.

• 3:48:40Speaker 02

  Why don't you tell the American people why you're continuing it? Why don't you justify it? You know? That's the other thing. Like, I would love to hear from people like, "We're doing X, here's why." No one does that anymore. Remember when we used to have like, the, you know, our leaders address the American people and explain, "I'm doing this. Here's why." I would love for that to, not that anyone would probably believe in anymore, because we all have like zero, we have problems with authority now, given everything that's happened to us. But, you know, I still think, at least give it a try. It's hard to know who to believe these days, it really is. Um, I'm challenged by that as well.

• 3:49:25Speaker 02

  Um, I, I just, we gotta keep going and, and this, this, it's still worth fighting for. As messed up as things have gotten, you know, our way of life is, is really important to continue. And we're still a beacon. That doesn't mean we're defending everyone or paying for everything. But we have to, we have to, you know, retain that.

• 3:49:48Shawn Ryan?

  We are the beacon.

• 3:49:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:49:50Shawn Ryan?

  We are the beacon.

• 3:49:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:49:51Shawn Ryan?

  The only fucking beacon.

• 3:49:53Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 3:49:54Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 3:49:55Speaker 02

  Doesn't mean everyone can move here, though.

• 3:50:01Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. So then you got promoted.

• 3:50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:50:05Shawn Ryan?

  To DADSTY.

• 3:50:06Speaker 02

  I did.

• 3:50:07Shawn Ryan?

  What is that?

• 3:50:09Speaker 02

  Uh, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East. Um, so it's just, like what it sounds like, basically the DOD's kind of policy lead for the region, for the Middle East. So, um, in reality, just a staff officer job at a higher level. But I still, I had many, many people in my chain of command that I had to prep for meetings and I had to send them memos explaining things and ask them to do things. So, um, there was a lot of that in that job. And, but it was, it was amazing job, amazing opportunity, amazing time to be there during the Abraham Accords. Uh, so, uh, yeah, but I was there during COVID,

• 3:50:54Speaker 02

  so it was also a little bit crazy. Um- You know, we had, coming from, from special operations where COVID didn't change anything. You know, we all went to work every day. Everyone showed up. No one wore masks. We just, it was the same. But when I moved over to like the traditional policy world, I had many, most of my office was not there. Oh, and they started this campaign. I, I, I ended up kind of, I think, making peace with a lot of the staff. But, um, you know, they're like traditional government bureaucrats and a lot of them had gone to these schools that I referred to.

• 3:51:36Speaker 02

  And were very concerned about me coming to be their boss. And so they actually, there was a story in Politico about me before I even got into the job. And it was, it was kind of sad because it wasn't even about me. It was about my parents. And, um, and it was just like, oh, you know, we're just really scared about what this means. Okay. Uh, so I show up there. There was a guy wearing this mat, literally like, uh, I think it was a rebreather mask or something. Like just a most insane.

• 3:52:18Speaker 02

  Okay. Hi. Um, and he, I think he wrote me up at one point because I had my own office. And I would go in my office. I would not wear a mask and, um, and I would just do my work. And that apparently was like an unsafe, unsafe work environment thing. And I, even though I was alone in my office, I had to wear a mask. No. Um, and also I had a buddy on the COVID task force who told me like, early days, masks are bullshit. Like they don't do anything. Um, so I'm like, this whole thing is, is a, it's like a performance. It's not real. Um, so I did my best to kind of like refuse to take part in it, but it was impossible.

• 3:53:04Speaker 02

  You know, because people, they'll tell you like, you have to, where's your mask? Put your mask on. And, um, you know, it was, it was, it was tough. Maybe I should have pushed back more. I have a lot of respect for people. Who did in that environment, it was really, really hard. Um, but you know, I.

• 3:53:23Speaker 02

  Uh, so it it limited what I was able to do. You know, the travel, usually a lot of travel in that job. My travel was limited and when I did travel, it was, there was like, you know, tests every minute and quarantine.

• 3:53:40Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 3:53:40Speaker 02

  So it was a huge pain in the butt. But the job itself was amazing. We still had a lot of visitors and, um, you know, was there during the Abraham Accords.

• 3:53:49Shawn Ryan?

  How was that? I mean, and then some, my understanding of the Abraham Accords is it's, it's some type of a treaty in between Middle Eastern countries and Israel, basically a peace deal, correct? Can you elaborate on that a little bit for people that don't know?

• 3:54:03Speaker 02

  Sure. So essentially, they don't, um,

• 3:54:10Speaker 02

  since the formation and the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948,

• 3:54:16Speaker 02

  the, all the countries in the Arab League never, uh, recognized that the State of Israel. Um, it was never formally recognized. And in fact, there are two different wars where Israel's neighbors attacked it, um, and Israel won. And, um, but there's never been peace. The only, there's been individual peace with like Egypt and Jordan, um, who have benefited, like, they benefited greatly from, uh, Jordan in particular, from Israel's kind of like security, uh, assurances, whatever. They share a lot of intelligence with Jordan. They do a lot, quietly, a lot of stuff together.

• 3:55:02Speaker 02

  And, um, in Egypt, um,

• 3:55:06Speaker 02

  I don't wanna, I think things have gotten a little more challenged since October 7th and since it was revealed that the number and size of tunnels going between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, where Egypt was supposed to be maintaining, uh, security, uh, there. Anyway, um, but

• 3:55:31Speaker 02

  the Abraham Accords were, um, when several countries, uh,

• 3:55:40Speaker 02

  UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, I think Sudan, all formally acknowledged the state of Israel. And as such, established diplomatic relations, economic ties, military ties. So it was such a huge, momentous, like, earth-shattering event, truly. We, we had the opportunity after that to move Israel into CENTCOM. Israel, because its neighbors

• 3:56:21Speaker 02

  were always like either fighting it or at minimum hated it and wouldn't acknowledge its existence, Israel was always part of UCOM. But during the first Trump administration, after the Abraham Accords, Israel joined CENTCOM. And so that's also been a huge change that a lot of people don't realize, where they're doing so many joint exercises now that they were never able to do before. And Israel hopefully can become like the premier security guarantor in the region. And that is a great thing for us.

• 3:57:02Shawn Ryan?

  You were a part of that.

• 3:57:05Speaker 02

  I was, I was part of the, so I just want to be careful. This was another thing where like many people have written books and have claimed that they've, you know, I'm not, I was part of the arms deal afterwards. So, yes, I definitely was involved in the like second and third order things that happened after the agreement was signed. But no, I wasn't part of the diplomatic effort. That was, there were only really a few people who were. And just a, just a monumental game-changing thing. It's truly extraordinary to, to see the changes in the region even since, even since then, just a few years ago. Really

• 3:57:50Speaker 02

  amazing and, and hopeful. And I'm hoping, you know, things are a little crazy right now, but. We were on track, I think Syria was on track to joining the Abraham Accords. And I know Israel bombed it this morning, but I'm, I know this sounds weird to say, but I'm still kind of hopeful that they will.

• 3:58:14Speaker 02

  Jelani has condemned what his people ostensibly did. So, and, and they've made some kind of ceasefire, so I hope it holds. And I hope, long term, that, I mean, that's, that's how this is solved. Like, there, there needs to be a broader peace. A lot of people have questions about what happened in the last few days against the Druze, and if it was somehow orchestrated by Iran. I've seen people on X kind of raise that as, as a potential,

• 3:58:53Speaker 02

  you know, something that could potentially be the case.

• 3:58:56Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 3:58:57Speaker 02

  Iran is known for doing stuff like that, so it's possible. They, they don't have a lot of cards at this time, so instigating this kind of unrest, like, obviously, Abraham Accords is the worst possible thing that could happen to them. And October 7th was a direct result of Saudi Arabia being very, very close to joining the Abraham Accords. And Iran obviously scuttled that with the Hamas attack against Israel. So, we'll see what happens. But, man, these people have been in war for so long, and there's just so much suffering.

• 3:59:37Speaker 02

  But we need to keep a very clear-eyed view into, like, what is in our US interests? Where do our interests lie? What do we want to influence? And how? While, while understanding that at a base level, it's not going to involve troops on the ground. Like, that's off the table. That's just not, that's not real. What I do think is possible, though, is, you know, we have authorities for other things. You know, we have surrogates, we have partner units, like, maybe, not in this case, but maybe in the future in other instances, that's something that our government could think about, but I don't really see that playing out right now.

• 4:00:20Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I hope you're right. Um, but Simone, we're wrapping up the interview. I know you got a flight to catch, so I don't want to keep you too long. So, one last question.

• 4:00:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:00:30Shawn Ryan?

  There's three people you could see on this show. Who would they be?

• 4:00:36Speaker 02

  Great question. Um...

• 4:00:42Speaker 02

  I need to think about that. I don't have an immediate answer. Do you need one right now?

• 4:00:46Shawn Ryan?

  Rattle one off.

• 4:00:48Speaker 02

  Um...

• 4:00:54Speaker 02

  Mm.

• 4:00:58Speaker 02

  I really, I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank.

• 4:01:01Shawn Ryan?

  Alright.

• 4:01:01Speaker 02

  I apologize. I left it all on the field, Sean.

• 4:01:04Shawn Ryan?

  That was the toughest question of the interview for you. Well, Simone, I'm... I just really appreciate you coming here and, uh, I loved chatting with you and getting to know you and going down all those different rabbit holes and...

• 4:01:18Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:01:19Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think you give yourself enough credit, but... Very impressive career.

• 4:01:24Speaker 02

  I... I want to be careful because you and I both know that community and, you know, God forbid, I would never want to take any... Like, they did the real work, you know what I mean? Um, I think it's important to acknowledge that. But thank you very much.

• 4:01:41Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:01:41Speaker 02

  This has been fun.

• 4:01:42Shawn Ryan?

  Alright. Cheers.

• 4:01:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cheers.