Transcript of Former CIA Spy on Putin’s Secret War Against the West | Sean Wiswesser | EP. 406 New

Hey guys, welcome to episode 406 of The Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with tonight's guest, Sean Wieswesser. He is the author of Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War. I just finished reading this book myself this morning. Off the top here, Sean, when is the book coming out? It's a couple weeks, right?

Oh, it's out? Yeah, just 2 weeks. It's out 21 April officially.

Awesome. And people can go find this on Amazon or Barnes Noble?

Yeah, so Naval Institute's actually shipping it already. Amazon should have it on your doorstep 21 April if you order it. And yep, so thanks for having me on, Jack. It's an honor to be with you.

So Sean is a 20-year CIA veteran, served all over the world, Eurasia. He's fluent in Russian, so a Russian expert at the CIA. And that's, of course, what led him into writing this book. So we'll talk about as much of it as the CIA will let you.

That's right.

So Sean, let's start off. Tell us a little bit about your origin story, kind of how you grew up and that path towards the intelligence community.

Yeah, sure. So I am from Reading, Pennsylvania, grew up very, very, very much a working-class family. 4 kids and, uh, living in a 2.5-bedroom old 100-year-old townhouse in Reading. Um, and, uh, had a life-changing event after 8th grade, decided I wanted to try to do something different. I wasn't really necessarily doing great in public school, just was kind of in the wrong crowd. So I wanted to change my life, got an opportunity to go on almost a full scholarship to an outstanding boys' prep school in Pottstown, PA called the Hill School. and, uh, it really changed my life. Had awesome opportunities there. Among other things, they had Russian language, and they had great language programs there. So studied Russian language for 4 years there with an excellent instructor named Rick Borger, um, and I placed into third year Russian. I went to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. I was a Morehead Scholar there on a full ride. And, um, so because I had 4 years for free, I could have graduated in 3 years. I had a lot of AP credits, but I got a a second BA in Russian. So I was a history major and Russian major and continued on Russian.

So between high school and college, 8 years. And between my junior and senior years in college, that was my first exposure to Russia. I went over to Russia in the former Soviet Union 4 different times in my junior and senior year, studying, then doing an internship with the State Department in Belarus, traveling the whole country. And it really opened my eyes, Jack. It was my first experience seeing that darker side of Russian society, their security services, their intelligence services, how much even after the fall of the Soviet Union— this was the early '90s— they were still dominating society.

Isn't, uh, is the intelligence service in Belarus still called the KGB?

Yeah, they're the— yeah, BKGB. I don't think they've ever changed it. They were there when I was there in the mid-'90s, BKGB, and they stayed that way. A lot of those countries have, you know, in Kazakhstan they call themselves the KNB. It's like, hey, wouldn't you want to disassociate yourself from one of the most monstrous organizations in the history of mankind? But in that part of the world, unfortunately, that legacy is with a lot of countries, not just Russia, but some of the other countries of the former Soviet Union where the autocracy still has a hold. They like to, I think, intimidate the people with the name of their security service.

And so you mentioned this is the '90s, so the Soviet Union has collapsed. As you begin making these trips to places like Minsk, Is it as Wild West as you hear about in the documentaries?

Yeah, so it was, you know what, in many ways, so the Russians will never believe this, but of course I was a student then. That was all I was, was a student. I think I had later on in my career, I had some liaison with Russians on occasion. I remember one FSB officer, he was just digging really hard. This is in a liaison meeting. We were officially meeting and this FSB officer, it was obvious his tasking was about one of my student time. And he just couldn't, you know, understand that I was really just a student. But it was Wild Wild East then in Russia, Jack. It was, it was pretty dangerous, honestly. I remember traveling. I traveled on the trains a lot. Now Russians are always— you see a lot of my affection and respect for the Russian people come through in the book because I say we're not at war with them, we're at war with their intelligence services and government, a war they declared on us. I love the Russian people, but it was a difficult time, you know. A lot of criminality, uh, Russian organized crime was sort of rampant in the early '90s, mid-'90s, and then security services were kind of embedded with them.

So this was a time, and it continues to this day, where Russian OC and the intelligence services have a mutually beneficial relationship. So I think the good Lord was watching out for me. I think I traveled over there a lot, a lot of trains into really remote areas on student adventures where fortunately nothing bad happened to me, but I look back on it sometimes now, it was good It was good training and preparation for some of my later travels as a case officer around the world with CIA.

Yeah, those are trips that today, unfortunately, are kind of impossible to even imagine.

You know— Oh yeah, I crossed the— Jack, I'll give you one quick highlight. This has never come up before, and it's good on you as a host to ask, but one of your viewers might enjoy. I, as a student, the difficulty back then, the borders between Ukraine and Russia, for instance, they were really loosey-goosey. So I was on a train from St. Petersburg and nobody told me the train goes through Ukraine. So I was supposed to have a Ukrainian visa. I don't have the visa. So we get through the first border checkpoint, Russia into Ukraine. They didn't even do any checks. This was again, wild, wild, wild east, early '90s. Imagine that today there's a war going on. So the Pravodnik who's in charge of kind of the wagon, he feels bad for me. He says, I'm going to hide you because otherwise you're going to get wrapped up by the Russian border guards. So he puts me up in this luggage compartment and you see where this is going. This did not go very well for me. So I'm tucked away behind some suitcases and most of the time Russian border guards probably would never do their jobs well.

They don't care. But on that day, guess what? I'm tucked up. I'm kind of hiding in there and this— and I hear this border guard open up what was supposed to be an empty compartment and he busts the luggage apart. He draws his gun on me. You know, he's totally freaked out. He thinks I'm a drug dealer or something. I start talking to him. And when I talk, then he can detect an accent. He still doesn't think I'm an American because my Russian was still pretty good back then. So he's like, what the hell are you trying to pull? What's going on? He's cussing me out in Russian. I'm like, hey, hey, this is a big misunderstanding. But I was no kidding arrested by the SBU, the security service on the border there. And they took me in, took me into the train station. I was just fortunate they were nice to me. They deported me back to Russia. and then I got back on a train to Moscow, a lot longer journey. But, um, so that's the good security service Ukraine. Thank you for being nice to a young student back then. But I say in many ways it was preparation for my later career.

Yeah, yeah, I, I hope that wasn't, uh, part of the tradecraft that the CIA teaches, like, go hide in the luggage compartment, bro.

Yeah, no, like, listen, I believe I have my eyes closed and everything. I remember this day, I was so It's like, please do not come into this compartment right now. But hey, anyway, the things we do as students traveling the world on low budgets, you know, didn't have time, didn't get the Ukrainian visa. But again, Ukrainians were very kind to me. Thank you. You guys didn't jack me up. They could have. They did.

So you're making some like study abroad trips over to Russia and the Soviet, former Soviet Union. When does it come into play that you think you want to apply for the CIA? How did that come about?

Well, I think a big part of the whole interest in government that I always had since I was a kid, Jack, my mom found something once later, I think I was in high school or college, that when I was like 6 years old, I had written in— we kept journals and diaries as kids, I always enjoyed writing, it's kind of come out back to that midlife with the book— I'd said at 6 years old I'd like to be a G-man when I grew up. You know, I didn't really know what a G-man was, but I thought I want to be a G-man. But the really, the first experience really cementing my interest in the Foreign Service was definitely the internship in Belarus, in Minsk, for the summer. I was there for about 3 months. I maxed out that opportunity. I still to this day recommend any young listeners or viewers that are interested in intelligence community jobs, I always say go look, there's awesome programs. State Department, FBI has a program called Honors Internship. So I applied and was accepted to the State Department internship program. They didn't pay you, but they give you free housing, and I maxed out the summer.

I spent almost 3 months in Minsk, and it was a time of transition. You know, Lukashenko had not become the complete autocrat that he would be within a few years. They gave up their SS-25 missiles, so there was a lot to be grateful for in terms of the relationship with the United States and Belarus. So I was able to do a fair amount as an intern there, and they give you a temporary clearance and all. But what I found from it, Jack, is I was like, you know what, I'm really interested in this lifestyle, Foreign Service. And so that's how I started my career. Then within a couple years, you know, within a year and a half, I'd entered State Department and for about 7 years was Foreign Service officer, and then the other 21 years, of course, with CIA.

Um, did, uh, let's see, where do we want to go with this? Okay, so tell us what you're allowed to say about those early years at the CIA.

Yeah, so they don't like us to get into particular countries, where, why, how. You sort of heard me say broadly, but I served in the Central Eurasia region, Russian-speaking Russian-speaking countries and non-Russian-speaking. I did 12 years overseas and many more dozens of what we call TDYs around the world, served one tour in the Pacific region, which was also— it was a lot of fun and worked with friendly governments and not-so-friendly governments in various capacities. But the highlight of my career, Jack, was what I touch on in the book, which was going out and meeting Russians, handling Russian agents, It was a great pride and privilege of my career to be able to be trusted to do that and go meet especially Russian intelligence officers. To me, it was the pinnacle of espionage work when two professionals of rival services are going out to meet, commit espionage, and we have somebody willing to risk their life to help us. And so that was a focus for a very large amount of my career, was doing that no matter where I was posted, was also working with and handling Russians.

What kind of, you know, special training? I know you can't talk about specifics, but I mean, what sort of like specialized training is required to do this? Like you mentioned in the book, handling assets that are actual Russian intelligence officers. Like, I imagine your tradecraft has to be super dialed in because one mistake, it's gonna get one or both of you killed.

Yeah, good question, Jack. So CIA takes great pride in the development of what we call denied area tradecraft. Took place during the Cold War, and I became not just a practitioner of that, I was also an instructor of that. CIA let me share a little blurb, if you remember in chapter 5, that I was an instructor of this craft, denied area tradecraft, and it was passed down to me from others that I have a tremendous respect for. One of them was an old instructor of mine who's passed away named John Conrattis. He's a Vietnam veteran buried at Arlington Cemetery, and I had a tremendous respect for John, taught me a lot about this craft, and the way he put it to me Jack is John Konrads and Jack Platt and DeHavilland Smith. These are legends at CIA that developed this tradecraft. How are we going to operate in the toughest of the capitals of the Cold War, places like Prague, Warsaw, Moscow, Beijing? So what he said was, you got to be a little bit screwy in the head. He told me as a young officer when he was training me, he said, Sean, you got to be a little bit screwy in the head.

And I think he's right. As an instructor later, I kind of saw the same thing because You have to be comfortable alone out on the streets late at night, the middle of the night, super early in the morning, whatever time of day it is, alone by yourself and making extremely difficult and risky judgments about your safety and the safety of the person who's risking their life with you. And then to be able to do that potentially around the world. So it's a very specialized skill set. Other than saying that, generally, I don't usually comment on a lot. Of course, as you know, in the book, I focus on the Russian tradecraft. There's two books that I recommend. In the book I talk about these, and I recommended these to CIA officers I taught at our training academies in the intelligence community. So for your listeners, the two very, very best books on this that talk about it is a book called A Secret Life, uh, by Ben Wiser. Talks about the Kuklinski case, which was a Polish colonel who risked his life during the Cold War to help, help the West. And it talks about the development in that, in that book of something called the Internal Ops Course.

So that's the course I later taught later in my career, and CIA let me mention very briefly in the book. So that's a great book. And then the other one, A Billion Dollar Spy, is about the Polpachev case. And I mentioned in the book John Gilsher, who was a case officer that helped me as a young officer. He was a native Russian who had immigrated with his family from, uh, after the revolution. And John Gilsher was a legendary case officer. Well, it relates in the book how Gilsher and others developed this tradecraft in Moscow to handle Polpachev and others. So those are two really great books, Jack, I commend to your viewers and listeners to check out.

So I'm just trying to think of how to speak around some of these things. I mean, are you— did you do any tours at the embassy in Moscow? Are you allowed to say that?

CIA doesn't want us to name which countries we served at. We're not allowed to do that.

Gotcha. Okay, so let's, uh, we don't need to go into like a full-blown history lesson, but I think the next question I'd like to ask you is, what is it about Russian intelligence that we as Americans or Westerners don't really get? What is it that we don't understand? And what has your experience taught you about them?

Yeah, great, great question, Jack. So this is why I wrote the book, you know, to me, the reason I wrote the book was continuation of kind of my mission. Of trying to counter the Russian intelligence services from my career. So I believe that there is an undeclared war that's been going on for decades. That's Putin's Secret War, the subtitle of my book, and that Americans haven't really been paying attention to it. And it's not because we're, you know, not because we were just distracted, but, Jack, you know, we were engaged. You know, you deployed in a conflict zone. I know many times I did as well. Many CIA intelligence community veterans or military colleagues like you. So we had 20 years of war, 2 decades of the global war on terror and the Iraq War. So we were engaged, but for the Russians, they never took their eye off of us. You know, I relate in the book, Jack, they call us the glavny protivnik, the main adversary, the main enemy. And that's never changed for them. As that Russian intelligence officer, you know, I quote in the book, he said to me, I was working with a Russian intelligence agent, an officer that was helping us, one of our assets, and early in my career.

And he said to me, I said, well, hey, aren't we now, aren't we going to work together though, CIA and your services? We're not adversaries. Remember Putin and Bush shook hands and he looked into the soul of Putin. What about all that? And he just laughed at me and said, hey, listen, you guys were the main enemy. You are the main enemy. You always will be the main enemy. America comes first for Russia and not in a good way. You're our number one resource. To put all of our efforts into. We're going to counter you first, and then your NATO allies 2, 3, and 4. So even though I was a trained IO at that point, Jack, that was an education for me early in my career. Oh, look, they've never taken their eyes off of us. We're still the main focus. And so whenever we're trying to counter terrorism, or we're concerned about China, or we're concerned about proliferation for Russia, just like that officer said, the United States comes first, and they're devoting all of their bulk of their resources against countering the U.S. in a zero-sum game. And this is where all the 10 chapters of the book come in, Jack, of their various methods and modus operandi, including meddling in our elections as they did in 2016 and what they call active measures.

Now, the campaign of sabotage that they're wreaking all across Europe in a very reckless, reckless way. This all falls under their undeclared hybrid war against the United States.

There's something else I feel like with the Russians that I understand why they see us as a geopolitical rival and we see them that way. And we came to the brink of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War a few times. I totally understand that. But like today, even as dicey as things are sometimes, I don't feel like most Americans see Russia as like some geopolitical threat or rival. But the Russians have this internal paranoia about, what did they call it on their television? The Dulles Plan, that we're coming to take over their country and steal their natural resources and all this bizarre stuff. No one in America is really thinking about that.

No, Jack, listen, you nailed it, man. They have a deep set, I mentioned this some in the book, there's this historic deep set insecurity that Russia has always had. This predated the Soviet Union. Peter the Great built St. Petersburg, on the Baltic Sea because he wanted a famous sea, he wanted a window to the west, he wanted a chance to engage Europe. At that time, of course, he was concerned about Sweden more than anything, more than maybe, you know, Europe in terms of Germany or France, but it was all the west to him. And so I mentioned the point, you know, the Russians, you look at, you watch Russian news in the 1990s when I was there as a student, or now, the United States is in the headlines every single night on Russian news, every single night. First lead-off is what the heck's going on in the United States, what are they up to now, they're trying to come at Russia this way or that way. It's a constant paranoia, Jack. It's a constant insecurity about the US and what we're accomplishing or not accomplishing. And so that, of course, that same insecurity bled directly into the Ukraine war because Putin is constantly obsessed with, you know, having a buffer against the West and claiming that he was leading a preventative war, which was complete nonsense.

But he fed into the insecurity of the Russian people. We need to remember, too, Jack, it's not just paranoia. The Russians lost 25 million of their people. and the Soviets, you know, the other Soviet peoples in World War II. And so for them, this fear of the West, this goes back really deep. You know, their country was almost wiped out. They came really close to losing Moscow. Three-quarters of all architecture west of the Volga River was destroyed. That's hospitals, schools, homes, apartments. I'll give an example what that means. My, uh, my wife's dad first few years of his life, they lived in a tent in a park, in the city park. They lived in huge communal tents. Then they were really fortunate when they got in a giant communal apartment. That's what I mean when the Soviet Union was, was just leveled by the Germans in World War II, just everything destroyed. And so they remember that. They haven't forgotten. And it's part of Putin's fascism narrative about, about the Ukraine war. So yeah, there's insecurity, there's paranoia, but then there's also history does play a role. And Putin's very part in his security services on playing on those insecurities of the Russian people.

Yeah, the Krauts got like within 24 kilometers or something of Moscow, didn't they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, I'm a big World War II buff, you can probably tell, but I heard the stories. Both my, my wife's— she's part Lithuanian, and then on the other side she's half Ukrainian and Russian. Her Ukrainian grandfather was an artillery officer, her grandmother was a battlefield nurse on the front. Wow. You know, and those stories in Russia Everybody has stories like that. Their grandparents, you know, World War II is still alive. It's still alive for them, Jack. And that plays into, again, the Ukraine narrative. You know, in 2014, there's this famous complete myth story. It got a lot of play in Russia that a boy was crucified by Ukrainian fascists. It was complete fabrication, 100%. It got huge play within Russia when they kicked off the first Ukrainian war in 2014. So That's how the security services play information operations, information warfare, active measures like that, plant a story, and they're very good at it. You know, they know that there's always a little bit of truth and insecurity that they're playing on. We can talk about our own later on if you like, our own election meddling, how they place narratives.

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The other thing that you touch upon throughout the book in different places that I think is worth highlighting for a moment, you know, sometimes you hear people refer to the FSB as like Russia's version of the CIA, or the SVR is Russia's CIA. It's not really that though.

No.

The CIA is accountable to Congress. There's all these laws. And as you point out in the book, in Russia, there's no separation between church and state. Like, they can operate domestically, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Yeah. Hey, Jack, excellent point. Thank you so much. It's really critical. People like to make that analogy. So they're like, oh, FSB, the Federal Security Service. Oh, that's kind of like the FBI, right? No. First of all, much, much larger than the FBI. We're talking about a huge chunk of what is our intelligence and security apparatus is the FSB.

And, and they do in sanctioned regimes like Syria or Iran. They do this a lot, you know. They'll, they'll buy a tanker of gasoline for the embassy. Hey, we got to fill up. They tell the Russian government, hey, we got to fill up our cars, so we're going to buy a whole tanker of gasoline. Then they would drive the tanker across the Syrian border and they would sell it under the market cost. I had an early reader of the book, he said, no, you meant above the market cost to make a profit. I said, no, no, you're missing the point. Yeah, the whole tanker is profit. The whole damn thing is profit. Right. They don't care what they sell it for. They're going to sell it lower than the rate so they can unload it quickly because the entire tanker is all profit. My friend said, oh, you're right, we're thinking like Americans, right? We don't think like Russians. Yeah. And so those are the kind of schemes, constant. How can I make money? How can I rip off the government? How can I rip off the embassy, rip off the service? As long as, as long as I'm getting ahead as a Russian IO, and then my patronage network, which is really important, Jack, you know, I relate It's a mafia-style structure.

You got to pay up to the boss above you and his boss. It's very much a mafia feudal-type system.

There's one former case officer I've spoken to, and you probably know this guy. He was in the Balkans, as I recall, in the, I guess, mid to late 1990s, and the local SVR or GRU guy poisoned him, for one thing. But beyond that, the guy, the Russian, was also running a human trafficking network. Just to make some— that's the skim on the side.

Yeah, yeah. There's always some type of scheme, scam. I related in the book to, you know, it's like the intelligence electronics, you know, all services around the world, Jack, we need electronics. Well, the Russians are famous, the SVR in particular, foreign service, They're famous for— and we find out about this for the Russians that help us, the intelligence officers I would debrief. I would always ask them, hey, what's the, what's the scam going on in your resident tour? What do you mean? Oh no, no, so I'd say, oh, with the special technical gear, he's like, oh, okay, yeah, well, we're buying iPhones and then we buy 40 and then like we say the cost was for 20 and then we sent the other 20 back to our buddies in Moscow to sell. Is that what you're talking about? I'm like, yeah, that's it, that's the scam, that's what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, no, we do that all the time. We're doing that with laptops too. We're doing it. I mean, they just, it's just business as usual for them, Jack.

And you know, this kind of gets into like the ideological component and I suppose it's still there, but it also has to do with, you know, the corruption has to do with poverty as well. That's a part of it. But does that make, does that give you as a CIA officer kind of a leg up to try to recruit these guys? That they exist in such a corrupt system and you can show them, and perhaps they've seen firsthand because they're an intelligence officer assigned here, how Americans live.

Yeah, so, you know, yeah, so there is the corruption that makes them vulnerable, but it goes beyond that, Jack, though, because I think the best Russian agents— it was my privilege to work with, and I pay tribute to some at the end of the book. I'll save it for some of the readers. Uh, it was one of the most emotional chapters for me to write, was the epilog. Talking about what I consider hero spies that I had the privilege to work with, or other CIA cases that we've had over the years. Most Russian agents do spy for money. Most agents around the world— I don't care what service— people talk about, oh, MICE, you know, it's money, ideology, compromise, ego. Most spies do it for money, some variation of money, because money solves the other issues. Money solves, you know, a lot of other concerns. And for the most part, anybody that has children wants their family and their kids to live a better life than them. What I always was privileged as a CIA officer is I didn't believe I ever had to lie to an agent in the sense of if they wanted to earn the living to, to, to earn financially and otherwise to relocate to the United States.

And I had the privilege, as I mentioned in the book, to work with defectors like Sergei Tretiakov, a very important SVR defector that I name in the book. I was able to work with and debrief Jack. I never felt like I was lying to him. I was telling the God's honest truth. You have a great life waiting for you and your children. And these defectors that I worked with later, they thanked us. It was hard for a lot of them to let go of Russia and let go of culture and people, but, but they were emotional. And I got Sergei Tretikov— the last time I ever saw him after debriefing him, he's a huge man, he was a giant human being in many ways, giant personality, you know, lift me up off the ground, giving me a bear hug the last time. He had so much love for CIA, FBI, all of us that worked with him, that he was able to set up a new life for his family. And so I never felt like we had to lie to them. We're telling the truth. The American ideal is still the best thing that we're selling, Jack.

And the best part about it is it's the truth. You know, we live in a free and fair society where kids can— told you, I grew up very modest means, but I was able to serve my country for 3 decades in the intelligence community, make a great living, proud to have done so. Not so in Russia. We can talk about how officers get in their service if you like, but it's all who you know. You better know somebody. Some connection got to get you in the door. You know, that's what it's about over there.

Yeah, the, the government job, you know, the real salary is what you're able to make on the side, right?

Exactly. Yeah, most cops in Russia, you know, there's an initial bribe. Historically, it's always been between $10,000, $20,000 or more. Today it may be upwards of $50,000. You want to be a cop in Russia, you got to pay the entry bribe because it's understood that you're going to make that money back over several years. You're going to make way more than $20,000 or $50,000 on all the bribes you're going to take. So it's understood you better— you got to pay your bribe, right? That's the entry fee.

Got to pay.

It's that way still across, yeah, a lot of, a lot of the former Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltics that are functioning democracies in, in the EU. Um, but a lot of countries, you know, Georgia struggled with this for many years until they fired their entire police force back in the aught years, the early 2000s. You know, this was a legacy of the Soviet Union. There was a saying in the Soviet Union I mentioned in the book: you're not stealing from the state, you're stealing from your own family. So you got to steal from the state because that's what we do in the Soviet Union. You know, it was a broken society. That's why the irony, Jack, when Putin always says, oh, the KGB were the elite of Soviet society, I don't know what the hell is he talking about. Nothing worked in that country. I can tell you for a fact. Ask my wife and her entire family that, you know, we've been married 25 years. I know her family very well. I lived over there as a student right after the fall of the Soviet Union. You talk to your average Russian, nothing worked in the Soviet Union, and the KGB was the elite.

They were the ones that made it work, but it didn't work. Vladimir Putin, it didn't work. So it's a myth. It's a carefully cultivated myth.

I think, you know, you talk in the book a bit too about, I'm kind of jumping all over the place, I understand. Yeah, no problem. Assassination operations and some of the like open source stuff

Here in Germany.

The GRU is trying to kill a CEO of a German company. I mean, we're, we're in a different space now. Yeah, this is a different level of recklessness and escalation that we never saw during the Cold War. And, um, I think the only way that's ever going to end too, Jack, is if we provide a credible deterrent. And thus far, we, the U.S., and our allies have not. Yeah, you know, the UK and the EU and the U.S., we all kind of— Litvinenko was killed in 2005 with polonium. That had to be a state assassination. Nobody else can get polonium. There weren't really any repercussions at all. Then in 2018, finally the UK responded after 2 years. They did an investigation, finally responded with some sanctions and some PNGs, but it's not forceful enough. The only way the Russians will ever stop is when the deterrent is credible enough that they realize, hey, you stop effing around with this stuff. You don't target civilians, you don't target members of corporations, you don't even target dissidents who aren't your citizens anymore. And we make them pay for it with sanctions that are really, you know, we go after those assets that have been seized.

But even now the EU says, hey, I know we want to help Ukraine at war, but we don't want to touch the golden assets in Belgium. So that's part of the problem, Jack.

I think we don't provide a credible enough deterrent and they continue with this, with this, uh, you know, uh, you know, the, the epitome of that in some ways, um, and this pisses me off to no end, is, uh, Havana syndrome. And I'm just a journalist. But if I was the president, if I'm on the National Security Council and I find out that some foreign intelligence service is doing that to my people, there are some dudes getting pushed into car trunks over that shit. I'm not fucking with that at all.

Well, listen, brother, you said it and you have the training to pull that off. I'm a case officer. I'm not an operator. But the fact is, that's the language they speak. Yeah, that's the language they speak. Like, and so I personally believe— I should say, we didn't state already, my opinions are mine alone, don't represent CIA or any other government agencies. I believe AHI is real, Jack. I have too many examples from colleagues that suffered horrible, horrible injuries. Now, it was mishandled by not only CIA— again, my personal opinion, but one that's been shared in unclassified releases, the government's talking about reports— it was not handled properly within the intelligence community broadly. It was not investigated immediately the way that it should have been, and we all know that.

The New York Times quoted me. Adam Goldman had a great piece on the GRU and some of its sabotage operations about 2 months ago. And what all of these have in common is, is you're right, there's kind of a level of recklessness and lack of professionalism where they are sending out— in some cases, they're, they're more professional teams. Well, you know, the Skripal case, they were still caught, but there were 2 definite GRU officers. In other cases, these are criminals. These The Bulgarian network that was wrapped up in the UK was a bunch of prostitutes and Bulgarian pimps that they were using to target Bellingcat. You know, some of this just looks like they're doing it on the cheap. But this is, again, a lack of accountability. Remember, Jack, like you said, in the United States we carry out under the law of COVID action. We have to have authorities. We have to have findings. We follow the law. No Americans want to go to jail. Not so for the Russian intelligence services. They don't have any of that accountability. So that's part of why you see that recklessness. You see them paying off teenagers.

They're recruiting on the internet. They're recruiting hackers, misfits, miscreants of society of every type now that they're recruiting in Europe to carry out some of these sabotage actions.

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In the book, you talk about how the GRU, SVR, and FSB all have their kind of COVID action component, their Spetsnaz units. Is there any organization somewhere in there that you would pinpoint as being particularly professional and effective, like these are the guys that we really need to be concerned about?

Well, I guess the one that is hardest to put a nail on To hit the nail on the head, Jack, it's a very good question. I mentioned in the book the GRU is the one that's reorganizing constantly, so they're the ones that's maybe toughest. And again, I'm speaking as a private citizen here, just what's available on the open source. You know, there's some great reporting out there, Bellingcat, Insider, others. So the GRU though is constantly reorganizing. You have this new element they stood up called the SSD. It looks like a wartime reconfiguration. to deal with the Ukraine war. But that's, that's allegedly one of the units that's carrying out a lot of these sabotage actions. And then right on the heels of that, you know, the GRU has this unit 29155 that carried out assassination attempts like against Kripal. But again, allegedly there's some dissatisfaction in the Russian government that they're not doing the job well, so they stood up a new center. I think it's called 798 or 795 is allegedly reporting So the toughest thing sometimes, Jack, is when they're reorganizing and they're reconfiguring. If you can't— if you don't know where to— which nail to hit the head on, then you don't know sort of who's doing what.

I think the GRU might be the toughest of the three to really pin down sometimes who's doing what, because they're constantly reconfiguring themselves. They're the service that since the Soviet Union collapsed, the GRU's undergone the most reorganization constantly. Uh, Kevin Reilly has written an excellent book on the FSB A Concise History. Oh, I have out of Georgetown. And yeah, yeah, Kevin's a, Kevin's a friend, and he said let me read as, as an advance reader on his book on the GRU that's coming out. Well, one of the things he relates in the book, it's really hard to give a concise history of the GRU because they're constantly reorganizing. So, so that's one of the, that's one of the challenges, I think, Jack, is, you know, they're constantly changing.

Um, you know, can we talk a little bit about like what anecdotes or personal experiences the agency cleared you to talk about, like as far as actually handling these assets and what it's like working in denied areas?

Yeah, so in the book, you'll see where I have stories where I will share anecdotes that are nonspecific, and that's for a reason. We're not gonna share, it's all true, it's all truthful, true-based. I had a lot of advanced readers, including our former DDO, Mike Sully, who was very well respected. He wrote the foreword to the book. I was very honored. He and others read it, but CIA had the authority to clear it, make sure there's no classified in it. One of the things I did is I didn't talk about countries where I did what I did, but I would talk about anecdotes and experiences that Russians related. Some of them were defectors, and in some cases I named a defector. So the agency let me name Sergei Tretikov, who I had the honor to debrief, um, not for the, not for the whole case. I debriefed him for a time period in the United States, he had already defected. Of course, they let me name him because tragically he died about 15 years ago. And so, so with the exception of a case like that, we don't want to give away the name of an individual.

Sure. We don't want to give away specifics, but you know, there are some cases that I'm able to relate in the book from different time periods that I particularly enjoyed talking about. Talked about one Russian that related his experiences at the Training Academy, if you remember that story, Jack, um, in the, uh, in the book, Some Experiences from the SVR Training Academy. What comes across from those type of experiences is, again, corrupt to the core. You know, he related those experiences that at the academy they couldn't be honest with their students about their grades, weren't allowed to use their vehicles assigned to the students because the instructors stole them away on weekends to use with their girlfriends. So those are the kind of anecdotes that a lot of people told me they really enjoy because they're first of their type that nobody's ever talked about before. One of the compliments paid to me, uh, just had a review come out, AFIO, the CIA retiree organization, and Charles Jones wrote a very nice review and he mentioned, hey, if you want to know what it's like, the mindset of a Russian intelligence officer, how they have to live and operate in their services, this is what the book's about.

And that was a very high compliment because that was one of my I don't know if you'd agree with that, Jack, but that was one of my goals, was kind of to relate that kind of experience, what it's like for them.

I remember you had a story in there too about like the hazing that goes on with the junior officers.

Yeah, happy to relate that if you like. I'll share that story because that's a telling one. This is a defector. This is somebody that took extreme risks to help us. Very talented, one of the smartest Russian intelligence officers I ever worked with. Very smart guy. But he was brutalized as a young officer. He was traumatized by hazing. Now, hazing is something I have to relate for the audience. In the Russian military, for instance, they have a system they call dyatlovshchina. It's institutionalized hazing in the Russian military. And I'm not talking about a code red like in A Few Good Men. I'm talking about beating recruits until they die in the Russian military. And this has happened for generations. You know, not talking about beating somebody with a bar of soap. This is horrible, horrible hazing. Well, in the intelligence services too, there's hazing of a different sort. There's mental hazing, and there's driving people out of sort of residencies when they don't go along with the corruption. So this young officer was very talented, related to me a story that he was at a party. The residencies will often have drinking parties, Jack, and you remember this story in the book.

They're drinking. It's probably Dzerzhinsky Day, 20 December. They celebrate that bloodthirsty, horrible, you know, terrorist who was a revolutionary named Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky, founded the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB. So on 20 December, God knows what reason, they still celebrate his birthday even though he killed millions of Russians. So they were having one of those kind of parties, and this young officer, he's standing with the crowd, and one of the older officers, the counterintelligence chief, what they call the line care chief. He looked at him, he said, hey, didn't I tell you to get in the kitchen, clean up the kitchen like I told you before? And this is a junior officer, but this is no— this isn't housekeeping. Yeah, this is a trained SVR intelligence officer. And he says, no, I'm not going to go clean the kitchen. What am I— what do I look like? He says, hey, did you hear what I told you? And now he's getting loud and everybody's starting to pay attention. Listen. And remember, Jack, this officer was relating this to me many, many years later. And as he was relating the story, I could see the emotion.

He's seething with rage. He said, he told me, he said, didn't you hear what I said? And everybody in the room started laughing and giggling at me. And his teeth are kind of grinding as he's telling me. And I'm listening. He says, then the resident says, he looks over at the resident, the line KR, the counterintelligence chief. And I'm hoping the resident's going to say, hey, leave him alone. What are you talking about? Instead, the resident points at me and says, get in there. And the counterintelligence chief says to him, hey, like I said, kitchen boy, go clean the kitchen. And everybody giggles and laughs at him. You know, Jack, that's just a level of public humiliation that this officer— that was one of many things he said. You know, this is too much. These old corrupt bastards hate me because I try to do my job. I'm trying to serve my country. I won't go along with all the corruption. Now he's going to publicly humiliate me in front of everybody. Remember what I related in the book, Jack? He said, well, I guess I showed him who Kitchen Boy was, didn't I? I said, yeah, when the CIA came a-calling.

Yeah, and he showed him. And I don't mind relating that story, and I think the agency doesn't too, because you know what? Yeah, he found a life for him and his family with a service that can appreciate him and all of his talents because you dumb sons of bitches, you know, abused him and terrorized him and hazed him. So any other Russians that are out there, you know, it's in the book for that reason. We'll appreciate you for your intellect. We'll appreciate you that you wanted to serve your country. You can come serve our country and serve a democracy. 'Cause their system's broken, Jack. That's the problem. You can't fix that system.

Do you wanna relate the story about how you realized, I mean, it's a stereotype or a trope, but there's obviously some truth to it about drinking culture amongst the Russians.

Yeah, yeah, so, and there's a lot of stories. Hopefully your readers will go buy the book and they'll enjoy some of the other ones. But sure, we'll relate another one. So this is where, again, my colleague Charles Jones that wrote the review on Afio, he said there's some general moments of humor in this book too. One of them is me as a younger officer, the story you related, I was meeting with a Russian intelligence officer. You know, I've got all my, we talk about having your CI flags up, same thing for you all in Special Forces community, Jack. You know, you got your flags up, you're paying attention. It's a dangerous job meeting with a Russian intelligence officer in a third country. I can't trust him necessarily, he can't trust me, so I'm all alert, I'm concerned. And he's really nervous, he's really edgy. So I'm getting nervous and edgy, and I don't understand, like, what's the deal? I'm getting more paranoid. Well, we're sitting at it, we're having a hotel meeting, and I say, you know, are you hungry? He says, no, no, not hungry. He's looking around, he's very agitated, very nervous, and this just continues constantly.

And I don't know what it is. I'm trying to put him at ease. And finally, I just said to him, finally, the last thing I sort of thought of, I said, Would you like a drink? Would you like something from the minibar? And then he got animated. He's, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's open up the minibar. And then he said something I'll never forget. My wife and I still laugh about this phrase. He said, you know, he said, we can't have appetizers without vodka, right? So now let's order the appetizers. Let's have some food. And I was like, oh, okay. And then he was fine. You know, we had a great debrief, covered a lot of really good intelligence. But yeah, listen, Jack, drinking is a part of Russian culture. On the positive side, if you've ever been welcomed into Russians' homes, and I have been, and they lay out a full spread for you of awesome food and vodka and, and the stories get flowing, the toasts get flowing, it's a rich part of the culture. But in their intelligence culture, it's led to a lot of problems for them over the years.

I bet it has. Did you start bringing a bottle of vodka in your briefcase to these meetings?

Well, yeah, you live and learn, right? No, I just realized that like sometimes that puts— hey, they're taking tremendous risks too, you know. Um, so sometimes they need to be a little more relaxed. Now that guy was a, you know, like a lot of Russians and a lot of Russian IOs, he was a fully functioning alcoholic. Like he could walk and talk and you wouldn't know it, but put down a huge amount of alcohol. And Russians are that way, you know, they can, they can do it. Um, I've heard, uh, in the—

I believe it's in the FSB actually, cognac is the preferred drink?

I would, you know, my drinking days were far behind me, but that was one of my favorites. I preferred— Churchill loved Armenian cognac. Like, you're smoking a cigar now, Jack. There was a time I used to smoke cigars, and I loved Armenian cognac like Churchill did. Story was that Joe Stalin always used to provide Churchill during all the summits. He had a case of Armenian cognac for Churchill ready whenever they met. So it's currently good stuff. The Armenians know how to make their cognac.

That sounds awesome. Well, so here's another one, and I hope you're able to say something about it, but is there a source meet where you were going to it and you were like, this is the diciest stuff I've ever encountered in my career because of counterintelligence on you or high threat environment where you're really kind of like sweating this one?

Yeah, it's a good question. I'm trying to think of one that's in the book because the ones in the book are easy because CIA cleared them already. And what I can say is, you know, towards the end of the book, Jack, there's that epilog. I talk about, you know, CIA let me say, you know, I met Russians all around the world, and that won't be a surprise to the Russian intelligence services. They do the same thing. What I do talk about in the book is, you know, Aims was met abroad. Rick Ames, who betrayed CIA, they used to meet him in Latin America. You don't want to meet them— a high-profile penetration of a service, you don't want to meet them generally in their home country. Excuse me, forget about some of the reporting you're reading right now out of Europe. There's a lot of focus. Politico did a story last week, it's a good story, talking about really crappy tradecraft being used by the FSB and GRU handling some of these misfits of Well, I wrote a column piece for Cipher Brief last week, Jack, entitled "The Chalk Mark Still Matters." And my point is, the Russians, just like us, if you have a penetration of a government, as you say up there in New York, I know you're in New York, forget about it.

If you have a penetration of a government, they're going to take really good care about that source. They're not going to use that junk tradecraft like is being reported on in Europe now. They're going to use sticks and bricks, what we call it. They're going to use signal sites. They're going to use dead drops, or they're going to meet them in a third country like they did with Rick Ames, like they did with Jim Nicholson. And so the Russians know how to handle cases of their penetrations of governments, and they do it very, very well. Well, we do as well. We have the highest standards of tradecraft. CIA prides ourselves on what we call the gold standard, and that's across the U.S. intelligence community. I think, as I related in the final chapter of the epilog, Jack, to me it's the epitome of the great game, the espionage game. Is when you have two intelligence officers from rival services that are meeting to commit espionage. That to me is the highest, the highest standard of craft of the trade. I was honored to engage in it in my career. I was honored to have that privilege.

I always took it very, very seriously. I knew Russians were risking their lives. And to, to be honest with you, only one, one other interview I've done so far has this come up. One other interviewer from CIA, actually a retired CIA head of AFIO, he asked me a question, you know, how was it for you and your wife talking about these experiences, writing the book? Um, those were hard years for my wife and I when I did a lot of those travels, and I did it all through my career. The hardest thing I ever did, Jack— I served in a war zone, I was a chief of base in one of the war zones. That was hard, but I always had my ODA brothers around me, my Special Forces guys that were helping keep us safe, uh, in the intelligence community. When I was alone out there, that was the hardest thing I ever did. And my wife hated that for good reason, because I would go off to meet a Russian, and she, and she knows their culture. She's, she's Lithuanian. She grew up in that part of the world. So I will say that, um, yeah, it can be harrowing.

It can be, uh, it can be thrilling, exhilarating, but it's a very serious risk, and one that we take seriously, and they do as well. Sorry I can't be more specific, but hopefully that gives a flavor. Okay.

Uh, something else that you talk about in the book that I think there's a mystique around and that people will be interested is the, uh, Russians' use of so-called swallows, uh, oh yeah, and getting kompromat on people. Can you tell us a little bit about the reality of that?

Yeah, so this comes, stems from the fact, Jack, like you said, in chapter 6 of the book I talk about dirty tricks, and this is fundamental to Russian intelligence tradecraft. They believe in compromising what they call compromising or material compromising operations, or going back to KGB days and even before that. The Russians believe in the stick approach. You know, Jack, as you all know, our intelligence community and those of our allies, we tend to believe in the benefits approach. I just touched on it tonight. I mentioned in the book quite a bit. Our ideal is one that sells. People want to live a better life in the United States, and we'll pay, and we'll pay very well for important intelligence information. Well, the Russians tend to rely on extortion a lot more. They rely on the old stick approach. I won't name which country, but I work with liaison services from that part of the world. I'll never forget one of them telling me once, saying, uh, I said, hey, why do you guys still rely on the compromise? You know, why are you still relying all the time on compromise? You know, that only really works as long as that person is under your control.

But when he's not under your control, he's going to hate your guts. He's going to try to get back to you. And this guy said to me, you know, in Russian, he's like, oh no, Sean, believe me, they, they give it up when we When we use kompromat and we got them, they give it up. So it's fundamental to everything they do, Jack. And so sexpionage is a really big part of that. Swallows, or what the FSB or GRU, SVR, they call lastochki— they use them around the world, not just in Russia. They'll use prostitutes, and then they'll use professional intelligence prostitutes, which are a higher level of prostitute, believe it or not. President Putin himself has commented on this publicly. He has a quote from about two decades ago Putin himself said, oh, Russia, we have the highest level prostitutes in the whole world. He's not hiding it. He knows it from his intelligence days that they train these swallows at special training schools. I mentioned in the book allegedly where some of them are and some of the things that I talk about, some of the citations I mentioned allegedly, but it is a real thing.

Jason Matthews, our deceased colleague who wrote the great Red Spiral series of books, he did a very good job detailing some of their culture of swallows. So the famous case, one of them I use as a template to talk about, was of course the Lone Tree spy case, uh, uh, the Marine, the Marine Corporal that was at the Embassy of Moscow, and he was recruited by a Russian swallow named Violetta, and she introduced her famous Uncle Sasha, as he was known in the case and in the story. So, uh, but those bonds of affection that she built with Lone Tree, they were real, you know. Lone Tree felt horrible remorse. I talk about in the book, I knew a CIA officer that helped debrief him, and he said, you know, Lontria felt horrible remorse for what he did. He paid for his crime. He's released from prison eventually. But she was, uh, you know, she had absolutely no morals whatsoever. She entrapped this young Marine. She used him. She destroyed his life. And, uh, and then she was on TV, as I mentioned in the book. So I hope your, your listeners will enjoy the book.

I have a lot of citations. I give them references, like there's an A&E series that I mentioned that they can go watch her being interviewed. So I tried to offer a lot of references in the book for folks that want more information later. But yeah, it's a fundamental part of their intelligence practice they use to this day, Jack. They used it throughout the Cold War. They're still using it. And why do they use it? It works. Unfortunately, I wish it wouldn't work, but it still works. They get a lot of spies that way. If not government personnel, I'd like to think our government personnel are more savvy than that. We always use the rule, hey, if the genetic disparity between you and the opposite sex or the person you're interested in, it's like a huge genetic disparity, probably the game is up. But businessmen, NGO workers, journalists, it works. It still works for the Russians.

Yeah, we had a counterintelligence guy on here one time who used the phrase, know your number. So like if you're like a 3 and Natasha snuggles up to you at a bar and she's like a 10, you might wanna ask ask yourself what's going on here.

Yeah, exactly. That's right. But yeah, no, so that's a big part of the chapter on dirty tricks is detail, that kind of stuff. They use it, it's compromising operations part of it. By the way, they use gambling too, Jack, same, same vein. Casinos all over Moscow are wired to get people in trouble, and then Uncle Sasha shows up to casino boss and, hey man, look, hey, come on to the back, we're going to try to work out a payment 'Let's see what we can do here.' So it's not just prostitution and women or men, whatever target may be interested in. It's also gambling. It's businesses in Russia that don't go well. They get jacked up by organized crime that are in bed with the FSB. It's compromising operations, as they call them.

I had this weird experience myself, and I'm almost kind of reticent to tell this story because, well, a couple of reasons, but one of them being, you know, there's always that doubt in your mind, like, Did this really happen? Is this what I think it was? But I went out on a date with a young woman once here in Manhattan. She told me she— What were the numbers, Jack?

You gotta give the numbers. What number were you?

Well, viewers can deem what my number is, but this girl was cool.

You got a high number.

She was cute. She was, you know, blonde hair, green eyes, very flirtatious, very nice person. And, you know, I sit down and very quickly she takes the conversation into telling me about this orgy she went to and detailing it. And she didn't participate, she says, but she was there. And she's like asking me, is that something you'd be interested in? And I'm like, I kind of laughed it off.

But then she's— And Jack, you're like, notepad. You're like— No, no.

The answer is no, I was not interested, but I kind of laughed it off because I think this is a date and I think she's trying to be like kind of like edgy or get my attention or whatever, you know. And but she came back to the same topic 3 different times until I finally gave her a hard no, like, no, I'm not interested in that. And at that point, she lost total interest. She was just like the date was over and she was just like, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. And as I left, I was like, this girl's recruiting. For, you know, some sexual activities. But then when I think about it some more—

yeah, Jack, kidding aside, you have a high profile. Listen, kidding aside, there's been reporting— what about what's going on in Silicon Valley right now? I'm sure it's happening. Yeah, yeah, you have these real— you have really high-level sophisticated Chinese prostitutes that they don't have to be— I don't mean that they're ethnically Chinese, I'm talking about Chinese intelligence-sponsored assets. Yeah, that this is happening now in Silicon Valley, and I'm sure it's happening in New York. So they're targeting High-profile businessmen, people in government. And listen, you have a very high profile, Jack.

So kidding aside— Well, that's why, yeah, when you say that they target journalists in your book, I was like, because the girl told me she's from Ukraine, but I'm not like you. I'm not a Russia expert. I can't tell the difference between a Ukrainian and a Russian accent.

Yeah, well, remember what the— so the case in the UK that these— they were finally sentenced, these Bulgarian prostitutes and the pimps and You know, they had all these SIM cards provided by Russian intelligence. Their goal was to use the women to target, uh, Grozev was one of them, the Bellingcat investigator that's gone after the FSB with such zeal. So yeah, they're doing it. Um, so, you know, it's, uh, you know, it's the source sometimes of humor because in, in the West, for us, you know, it sort of seems comical, but for them it's a deadly serious game and they do it and they do it well.

So I'm not being totally paranoid No, Jack.

Yeah, Jack, I'm sorry. I made— I'm sorry, you had me giggling for a second, but it's serious. I laughed too telling the story because it's so absurd. Yeah, you should let the FBI know. I'll track her down.

No, I didn't actually. The other thing that's interesting too in the book is you talk about how prevalent it is for Russian intelligence officers to basically fabricate intelligence. Oh yeah. Because they're trying to tell their superiors what they want to hear and maybe they can't drum up their own intelligence, so they start making it up. And that kind of, I think that sort of thing leads into the fiasco that they've experienced in Ukraine, that they thought the government was going to collapse in 2 days and obviously that didn't happen. Yeah, Jack.

Yeah, thank you for drawing us into that. This is a really important issue. I say in the book, I'm a really big believer of studying Russian intelligence, 3 decades now, my career and experience with them. They just can't be honest with themselves, Jack. Fundamentally, they can't be honest with themselves. This is where you get young intelligence officers when they're serving in residencies, like Sergei Tretyakov related to me in New York. He would have to ask his young officers now, is this a case, is this a real case, or is this a case just for the reporting? And the distinction he explained to me was they had cases that just were newspaper articles that they would fabricate a case because they needed to make themselves in the residency look good for the SVR Center. And then they had real cases of what they called developmentals, just like we use the term developmentals or meeting an academic or journalist or whatever. But the very fact that they have the term is that this is just for the reporting. I mean, what does that say about their culture? You know, they have, they have agents that are for the reporting, meaning it's a completely fabricated case, and that's normal.

And that's not a new thing. Back to the days of the Cold War, there was a, there was a book, uh, written, uh, I cited in my book. I forgot the name of the defector now. No, I've forgotten his name. It's about the, uh, the KGB. Uh, he served in Washington. He talks about this, that they would fabricate cases out of the Washington Post. They would make up a case and claim they have a new source developing. Um, so it's an old tactic, and that corruption bleeds in then, Jack, at the highest levels. We talk about one of the largest chapters in the book, Chapter 10, the Ukraine War. I talk about the prognostication failures of the FSB in particular, because the FSB, its fifth service, had the role of operational intelligence reporting of the fifth service, the FSB, for the president. And so they had the job of telling the president Putin here's what we think, here's our analysis. And they failed miserably. They said they could win, and they said they'd win in a very short war quickly. They were so convinced they'd win that the FSB generals were picking out apartment spaces, not just one apartment, entire buildings they had picked out in Kyiv, saying, yeah, I want this one, you're going to take that one.

That's the level of arrogance. And that latter point, by the way, Jack, that was reported on by Russian military bloggers early in the war. One of the only freedoms I see in the press right now in Russia is I read them in Russian. Go look at the Russian military bloggers. There's a lot of reporting coming out of them because they get upset about it. They're ticked off that they're losing the war. Yeah, yeah, they're pissed they're losing the war, and they report on a lot of this. So yeah, that's the corruption at every level.

Uh, another thing you spent quite a bit of time talking about is, uh, the Russians' use of illegals, or what we call non-official cover. Could you talk a little bit about how they employ illegals?

Yeah, so good, good point, Jack, and so terminology is important. So the closest term we have, you're right, is non-official cover, except in the case of a Russian, an illegal, it would be a non-officially covered foreign documented officer. So they actually have a passport of another country, and the way that they usually do it with illegals, and they've historically done it, is they'll transit a third country on the way to their target country. They'll use something, a tradecraft, like what they call a dead double. So typically a lot of the Russians— the ghost stories case that I mentioned in the book that I had the privilege to work on for a short period, uh, 8 of those 12 were illegals that, that, that transited via Canada, picked up for the most part dead doubles, meaning babies died in infancy but they didn't have a death certificate. They had birth certificates, but there was no death certificate. This happened in the United States and in Canada. So what they would do is they'd use some other type of paper certificates, whatever, school report that was falsified by the Russians and their services, and then they'd go get another birth certificate, a duplicate birth certificate.

Now, if you have a birth certificate, of course, Jack, now what can you do? Now you can get a passport, among other things. And once you have the passport, you're golden. So illegals are designed to embed themselves into society for a long term. Traditionally, illegals going back to the start and before the Cold War even in Soviet revolutionary times, the tradition came out of the fact that Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, all of these revolutionaries were illegals as well. They had traveled under false passports. They were enemies of the czarist regime. And so they were familiar with what the Russians called the rules of conspiracy. Sean Walker talks about this in his excellent book, uh, Illegals: 100 Years of the Russian Intelligence History. Uh, Walker's book gets into really good detail. But so in my chapter, I try to encompass all this tradecraft of the illegals. I tell some of the stories of the better-known illegals cases. And then of course there's modern variation on the illegals, Jack, like the 3 different types of illegals that we saw with the ghost stories case in others. And you may talk something about that.

Yeah, sure, go, go for it.

Yeah, so the Russians are evolving their tradecraft too. This is a sign that they are sophisticated services, and despite their flaws, they're a formidable adversary. So what the SVR started doing about 20 years ago is they said, hey, you know, this timeline to train and deploy these illegals, this takes a long time, the better part of a decade. Yuri Drozdov was the head of directorate S of the KGB in the 1980s. He really he really built the modern timeline. They had deployed illegals all through the Cold War with mixed success, and I talk about examples in the book. I talk about Vasily Mitrokhin, the KGB archivist who did studies on it and found they had mixed success. So though Drozdov said, hey, this is going to take a while, well, around the 1990s, 2000s, the SVR started to say, hey, you know what, maybe we can do this on the cheap. After all, they're government agencies, right? They're always trying to save money. And remember, they've got all their corrupt causes to feed. So they started using a new category of what they called special agent illegals. This was an old concept with a new birth.

I won't get into all the details of, of, of this, this, the, the roots in the old KGB. Well, what the SVR meant was to take Russians that were studying abroad or had the chance to deploy as students, or in the case of Anna Chapman, She married a Brit, she's got dual citizenship, she's got a British passport. So the SVR said, hey, why don't we take advantage of some of these folks? We don't need to train them as illegals and give them necessarily a whole new identity, and maybe they can still collect intelligence. Well, it turns out a lot of them have done it really badly. So Anna Chapman did it, she did it really poorly, she was caught. Her father was a KGB officer, by the way, and so a lot of these special agent illegals Owing to those patronage networks we talked about before, Jack, they will be relatives of earlier KGB or GRU or other officers. And so another example of a special agent-style illegal was this Maria Butina, who was the alleged Russian, uh, guns rights activist, which I always thought never made any sense to me because Russians don't have the right to bear arms like we do.

But remember that case? She was like claiming she was the equivalent of the NRA activists in Russia. And she cozied up to some politicians, or tried to, and the FBI rightfully did a great job wrapping her up. Well, that's the kind of poor tradecraft, like not a fully trained illegal. She was sending messages back, some encrypted, some not, to the center saying, I'm ready for my next zadanya, give me my next assignment, in like commercially encrypted emails. Like, this is pretty bogus stuff, you know. But so this is when they're trying to do illegals on the cheap, Jack, they end up getting caught. We should not fool ourselves though, because again, for the highest level penetrations, the most important cases, they're going to use the very best illegals. And, uh, you've seen examples of some of these cases of illegals still being wrapped up, like in 2024 chapter of Illegals. I start with that 2024 spy swap. There were two illegals arrested in Slovenia, and they were traditional sort of dead double style illegals. So the Russians can do it both ways. They can do it very good, and they can try to do it on the cheap where they get caught.

You mentioned in the book too, which I think is interesting because we've had this conversation on the podcast about this idea, are there Iranian sleeper cells in the United States? And you talk about Russian sleeper cells, so to speak, in the United States, these illegals, and how they get very comfortable living in America and their handlers have to push them like, hey, you're not there just to work a job, make money, and have kids. You're supposed to be collecting.

Yeah, well, that was the irony of the case, Jack, you know, and I'll, I'll save it for the listeners to hopefully read the book. I became convinced, like a lot of my colleagues with FBI, that most of those illegals wrapped up in 2010, they didn't want to go home. Yeah, they weren't working very hard. They were lazy, unmotivated, lackadaisical, and, and their work— there were instances where they should have known better. They should have known they were being surveilled by the FBI, and those That's not new information. That's why CIA let me write about it. It's out there, the FBI archives. There's an FBI site called The Vault. You can go look at the video footage. They had those illegals dead to rights. The FBI did a masterful job. The FBI Special Surveillance Group, some of the very best in the world, and I love the SSGs. Um, my respect to those guys and gals, those brothers and sisters in the intelligence. We, uh, did a masterful job with that case.

We had that dude on the show, uh, the FBI agent that helped wrap up Hanson. What was that guy's name? It's slipping my mind off the top of my head. He was a cool guy though. Hell of an interesting story.

Well, you remember, Jack, it gives me a chance to mention, I dedicate the book to my parents, my wife, my kids, but then at the end, I dedicate it to my colleagues from the intelligence community, CIA, FBI, and the other agencies I worked with throughout my career, those still in the fight. I always believed operations like that, ghost stories, it was a great Team America operation. CIA let me fortunately mention in the book, I think it's one of the first times it's been mentioned, it was a joint case. FBI had primacy on that case in many ways, and they deserve a ton of the credit for doing a masterful job, but it was a Team America operation. DOJ had a huge role. You had lawyers involved, you had analysts, you had surveillance, you had case officers like myself. I had a very minor role. I mentioned what it was in Chapter 3. I'll leave it for your listeners to go read. One of the things I was able to do on the case, which was fun. Um, but yeah, it was a great Team America operation, a great success, and, uh, one we should be legitimately proud of.

I still think there's a lot of that story that needs to be told. I told a very small part of it. There's others that know it much better and had much more prominent roles. I'm cheering for some of them to still— Jack, you're coming to my book launch, you're going to meet one of them in New York. I'll leave it at that. You'll meet one of the guys that had a great role in that case.

So, um, yeah, a lot of friends from FBI that I worked that case Um, are there any other, uh, subjects that you want to touch upon in this interview, um, that I haven't really asked about yet?

Yeah, so I was asked by a journalist recently, what's the most important part of the book? If you were to brief the president, what would you send? Mr. President, this is what you need to know. And that's the, um, threat of active measures, Jack. I often— I say that I think the most important 3 chapters of my book are the final 3 chapters on active measures, Russian special operations and sabotage, and then the Ukraine war. These are the 3 things that I think are the most critical national security threats to the United States and the ones that need the attention of our president and administration. Active measures, Jack, I think is the one that's least understood still. It's talked about a lot in the press, but the jargon's mixed up. I hear people talk about— they say active measures and they'll talk about assassinations. Well, no, those two distinct things. Active measures for the Russians are information operations. Assassinations is, you know, Jack, you know this from your work in the military intelligence, that's direct action. That's "promoyadez," the Russians call it. So we're talking about, you know, active measures though are the threat to our society that Americans, I think, appreciate the least because we don't operate that way.

We're a free and fair society. It's against the law for CIA to go mess with journalists. And people say, oh no, I know CIA does that anyway. No, we don't actually. I don't know a single CIA officer that's going to risk going to jail with Department of Justice because they're going to break the law and meddle with journalists or mess with journalists around the world. We're not allowed to do it, and we don't do it. So for the Russians, they attack our information space, they attack social media. And you know, the most fundamental point, Jack, and I'll leave it with this, we can talk about it more, any other questions you want to talk about. Active measures were used to undermine our democracy. The fundamental point wasn't for or one, any individual candidate. It was about destroying and undermining our democracy. They are out to destroy us, and they're playing big game hunting because back in 2016 when they did it, Prigozhin's Internet Research Agency, which everybody in the intelligence community agreed this happened, their social media trolls were active. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, was on the Senate Committee. The SSCI report was bipartisan on this aspect.

We know they were meddling using social media trolls. What they did back then, Jack, with 100 or 200 actual, uh, officers, intelligence officers and proxies, today they can amplify that 10,000 or 100,000 over with AI. Jack, they're not the only ones doing it. The Chinese are doing the same damn thing. And so when you think about the fact that we have with the, the, the, the reach of cognitive warfare, when upwards of half the content they're saying right now on social media is AI generated, upwards of half right now, just how much influence can they have compared to 10 years ago when they were meddling in our election? That's the scariest threat and the one that we're not focused on enough. Jack, people ask me if I had the book to write over again, what would I do different? I would've doubled the chapter on active measures and doubled the actor on sabotage. I did the best I could. I wrote the book almost a year ago. You know, books take a long time, but those are the threats that continue to evolve, and they're more prescient than ever.

On that, I mean, what do you think we should do as Americans to defend against these types of measures? Because actually, I was having a conversation with Dee tonight that, you know, our efforts as a society to teach media literacy, critical thinking, those efforts seem to have failed. Um, this propaganda goes around people's intellect and, and attacks them on an emotional level.

Well, I'll tell you what I try to do, Jack, in my own small way. I go— I do a lot of speaking now. On my way to a conference now, let's talk to some state, local, and fed leaders I'm privileged to be invited to speak with. I talked to a university two weeks ago, and I'm not going to say which one, but it's really cool intelligence club at a major university. They invited me to come give a talk, and I always do it for free for universities these students, really engaging, smart. This is what gives me hope, Jack, is the young generation. They're so smart. But they asked me this question too, what are we going to do? And here was my advice I told these students. I said, hey, listen, how do the Russians target us? What did they do in 2016? What do they do today? I know this from lived experience. This is 100% truth. They target the most emotional issues in our society. They're coming at us over the issues we fight about the most as Americans, and we have a right to fight about in a free and open society.

Guns rights, LGBTQ, Black Lives Matter— wherever you are on those issues, that's where their social media trolls and their cog warfare are attacking with fake personalities, ginning up fake debates. And so what I told the students was, fight the emotion. When you read something or see something, pause for 20 seconds and just say, hey, why am I so upset reading that? Right? I'm really worked up. And then secondly, ask yourself, do I have any evidence this is actually a real person or a cause? You know, Jack, there was an incident, I think it was in Oklahoma last year, the FBI verified 100% this is an example of information warfare. There was a flash mob set up, I forget what the issue was, it may have been guns rights, in Oklahoma. The cops showed up, two groups were angry, fighting and shouting at each other, and the cops couldn't for the life of them find any leaders on either side. They said, hey, we got to tone this down. 'Who's in charge over here?' Nobody was in charge. 'Who's in charge over here?' And people said, 'It's here on my phone. This is why I showed up.

I was told to be here, to come out because they're taking away our guns.' Or the other side said, 'They're trying to use guns and take guns into schools, and I'm not going to let it happen.' The point being, we as a population have to be more savvy about the fact that our adversaries are out there attacking us every day, Jack. We're all Americans. We're in it together. Um, and, uh, if we're at least aware of the threat— I try to do my part by laying out how the SVR does it, how the Russians out there attacking us. Maybe, maybe we can tone down the emotion. It's not an easy thing to do. I'll say one final thing, Jack. I've been reading a lot of Civil War history lately, and it really worries me that the level of rhetoric—official studies have been done—the level of rhetoric in the United States has never been this divisive since the United States Civil War. We should remember how horrible calamity that was for our society, a disaster for our society. The slaves were freed. I believe in that. I believe that there was a part of America it needed to happen, but what I'm talking about is divisiveness and the calamity it was.

More Americans lost in the Civil War than at any point in all the wars in our history. So it bothers me when Americans are talking about things like, oh, maybe we need another civil war, or maybe there's a movie made about it. That bothers me, Jack. This is scary stuff, you know?

Yeah. And I remember the case that you're talking about because both sides of that protests were being manipulated by the Russian propaganda. Yeah, exactly.

Scary stuff. Yeah. Are they going to— are they able to get us violent against each other? That's the really scary thing. Again, please don't want your listeners to misunderstand everything I said. I believe that the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were realized through the greatness of Lincoln and other leaders in the Civil War that eventually freed the slaves and And that's what made the Civil War and all the suffering worth it. But I believe fundamentally our Chinese and Russian adversaries, they're attacking democracy because democracy is a moral threat to their societies. Putin can't have democracies functioning on his borders. He can't have Ukraine be a democracy because if Russia had democracy, he's not in power and none of his siloviki are. Same thing for Xi Jinping in China. So that's really why they're after us. It's not paranoia. It's not a hoax that they're attacking us. They're attacking us every day. They're out to get us and destroy our society.

You know, on kind of the question that you were asked before about, you know, what's the most important chapter, I would like to ask you for some conclusions, if you have anything further about how, whether it's us as a society or the intelligence community in particular, can fight back against the things you wrote about in this book. If you have any kind of like concluding thoughts on like what should be kind of our way forward as a country. Thank you.

Yeah, Jack, I think so. So part of it is you're helping with that. Appreciate the chance you've given me, the venue to come on here. I wrote the book, you know, authors, you know this, Jack, you've written books. We authors, we don't make a whole lot of money on books. You write a book really because it's a mission and you're something you want to relate a story and you've written some great fiction. I look forward to your book coming out in June. You write a book because you have a mission, you have, you have something you want to share, you have a story you want to share. For me, it was the mission of awareness of Russian intelligence. So I think there's 3 things. There's that awareness of we are under attack. Putin has declared a secret war against us. We haven't recognized it for decades. Jack, what are we going to do about it as a society, as Americans? To me, if we know we're under attack— when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, what did FDR famously say? A date which will live in infamy. So I hope by raising awareness, telling Americans we're under attack every day, they're screwing with our elections, they're trying to make sure that we don't trust our systems, even though the systems are fundamentally sound.

What did Attorney General Barr say? They didn't compromise any voting machines in the end, but the Russians got us thinking they did, right? They've got all sorts of myths out there getting Americans to distrust whether states can carry off elections. I believe they can. So we as Americans, if we have an awareness we're under attack, how are we going to respond? And there's that final step then, Jack. I believe we've got to present credible deterrent to the Russians. And you touched on this earlier. You're going to target our officers? You're going to hurt our people? You're going to attack our allies? You're going to try to kill a German CEO? There has to be real repercussions. There has to be sanctions that matter. Why don't we give the Ukrainians Tomahawks? There's a lot of talk in the military, oh, well, it's not the right missile. We don't have launchers for it. For it. I know something about some of those systems, you know, I've done my homework. Then give them another system that can target their long-range energy resources, and this war will end in a week. Putin will come to the negotiating table. We don't present credible deterrence.

We in the West, the United States and our allies, still don't present credible deterrence enough to the Russians that it matters. And when we do, Jack, we'll have peace in Ukraine, and we'll have them knock off some of this, this, this, uh, uh, escalation and this, uh, reckless sabotage that they're carrying out. And the United States is next. I believe they're targeting our systems just like they're doing it in Europe, just like they're attacking rail lines in Poland. How long is it going to be until they're doing it right here on our soil, or already doing it?

Sean, I think we have some, uh, questions for you.

Oh great, okay, sure. From V, uh, how can allied countries in Europe counter the use of criminal organizations to enact gray zone war?

Yeah, excellent question. That, that, uh, listener's been, uh, doing their, doing their research. So right now in Europe, uh, CEPA, Center for European Policy Analysis, put out a great report. I highly recommend to your listeners check it out. Uh, I think it was the title of something like War Without End. It's about the fact non-state actors— and there's a bunch of these reports out right now, a bunch of really good ones, um, Non-state actors, proxies, this is the danger right now with gray zone warfare, hybrid warfare. You know, ironically, the Russians are using a lot of Ukrainian refugees that fled Ukraine because of the war. Financially, they're hard off. They're not maybe ingratiated very well in the societies they're living in, in Poland or elsewhere, so they need money. And the Russian intelligence services are targeting these and other vulnerable parts of the population. There's a few things we can do. I gave a talk in Finland in the fall. I was in Helsinki and I talked about some of this. Again, awareness. We need a greater awareness of what the threat looks like. So one of the forms of sabotage takes is these cable cuts in the Baltic Sea.

When I was there in Finland in October, they released the crew of a tanker. The Finns had arrested them and then the judge let them go, said, hey, the captain said it was an innocent mistake. They towed the anchor for 100 kilometers by accident. They pulled it over two major cyber, uh, two major fiber lines. Tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage potential. Excuse me, that's not, that is not a mistake. Yeah, that is hybrid gray warfare at its, at its most obvious, most blatant. But that crew was let go because I think largely that judge was not informed. He didn't understand it. He's like, wait a second, how could this— was a Georgian captain from the country of Georgia He's not ethnically Russian. Well, so they paid him off. They paid him $50 or $100 grand for him to drag his anchor. This is a great, this is a great return on investment. So we need greater awareness. We need greater collaboration among our allies. We need greater education of judges, police forces, security services in all our countries, because we don't think that way. You know, Jack, fundamentally, I think we just don't do it that way.

You know, we follow the laws. You know how hard it is in the military to carry out covert action. You need your lawyers at the Battalion level, you're at the intelligence level, higher up the chain of command, you got to get them to contact DOJ or others depending on what you're trying to do. You need authorities. The Russians have no such inhibitions. It's just largely, I think, sometimes a mafia-like culture. I've talked about in my column, some other writings, they're just looking to impress the boss. They want to come up with new innovative ways to tell Putin, hey, we're punching back at Europe for their support to Ukraine. So they're just getting more and more reckless. So I hope that helps. That's some of my thoughts in terms of what we need to do. Better collaboration, better intel sharing, better education and awareness among our judicial elements in all of these countries.

Yeah, not make the mistake of thinking that they think the same way we do.

Exactly, yeah, we make that mistake a lot.

Anything else, Steve? All good. Okay, so folks, the book is gonna be out in a couple weeks as of the publication of this podcast, but I'm sure you can go and preorder it on Amazon or Barnes Noble, wherever. Naval Institute Press is the publisher. Again, the title is Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence in Putin's Secret War by Sean Wieswesser. Really appreciate you coming on the show, Sean. Any final thoughts before we get going? Anything else that you wanted to touch upon?

Yeah, yeah, Jack, just appreciation for having me on. I've been a admirer of your content for years. I was really honored when you and I were in touch. You do great work. You highlight the excellent service of our military intelligence community veterans from across the— and we are brothers and sisters, you know, many of us served together in war zones, conflict zones, and elsewhere. I believe it's the pride and strength of our U.S. government is that we have professionals like yourself, like colleagues that I'm honored to serve with. You and I before the show were talking about some of them we both know together. That is what we have. That's our advantage on our adversaries, the Russians and Chinese. They don't have that. They don't have a generation of Americans, and many generations now, that are looking to serve, willing to put their lives on the line to serve their country, and are doing the very best they can. So it's really an honor to be on your, uh, your show, Jack. You do such great work. Thanks for having me. Hope your listeners will check out the book. I put a lot of work into it, so thank you so much.

Yeah, it was great. Thank you, Sean. I really enjoyed it. Um, hope people will check it out, and, uh, I'll see you in a few weeks at the book opening.

See you at the book launch. Thank you, Jack.

Thanks, everyone. Hey everyone, I want to tell you about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a novel about a regimental reconnaissance company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on a mission to West Africa. And when he wakes up, he finds that he is now being hunted for for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a, a century-old short story, The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and relevant resonate with audiences today. Thank you, and please check it out.