SpyCast

Andrew Hammond shares an encore episode From the Vault. From counternarcotics to counterterrorism, from Latin America to the Middle East, and from the back streets of a warzone to the center of events in Washington DC – Karen Schaefer has had, how should we say, an “eventful” career as an intelligence officer. Charming, smart, thoughtful, and you haven’t even met Karen yet…but seriously, it was a pleasure to talk to this week’s guest who had all of those qualities, and more; so enjoyable it will be released as a double-header. This week, Part I focuses on her time as an operator; while Part II focuses on her time as a “serial collaborator” who worked with Special Operations, the FBI, and the NSC. Stay tuned…

Eric Escobar (Twitter; LinkedIn) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss compromising networks and information security. He has a coveted DEFCON Black Badge. 

Eric Escobar commits several thousand felonies on any given day, if he didn’t have permission to do what he was doing. 

A Principal Security Consultant with SecureWorks, Eric has compromised pretty much everything out there: from healthcare and banking to technology and critical infrastructure, through to amusement parks and next generation military aircraft. 

“From my perspective, it’s the coolest job in the entire world.” 

His team consecutively won first place in the Wireless CTF category at DEF CON 23, 24, and 25, snagging a Black Badge along the way. He has a BS and MS in Civil Engineering.  

And… 

The links between computing, hacking and the 60’s counterculture are FASCINATING. Learn more by dipping your toes here and here, or dive deeper with What the Dormouse Said (2005) by John Markoff and From Counterculture to Cyberculture (2006) by Fred Turner.   

"Watching any critical infrastructure get compromised is really the thing that keeps me up at night because lives are in the balance…and we do a lot of testing for critical infrastructure, and I've seen computers and machines that have been online and not been taken offline, longer than I've been alive…So really interesting to see those types of things because they interact with really big, expensive hardware…there's a catch 22 that happens where you can't really take the machine offline to do maintenance on it because it's critical infrastructure. So then how do you test it to make sure that a hacker can't take it offline, or maintenance can't be done on it? " – Eric Escobar.

Eric Escobar (Twitter; LinkedIn) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss compromising networks and information security. He has a coveted DEFCON Black Badge. 

Eric Escobar commits several thousand felonies on any given day, if he didn’t have permission to do what he was doing. 

A Principal Security Consultant with SecureWorks, Eric has compromised pretty much everything out there: from healthcare and banking to technology and critical infrastructure, through to amusement parks and next generation military aircraft. 

“From my perspective, it’s the coolest job in the entire world.” 

His team consecutively won first place in the Wireless CTF category at DEF CON 23, 24, and 25, snagging a Black Badge along the way. He has a BS and MS in Civil Engineering.  

And… 

The links between computing, hacking and the 60’s counterculture are FASCINATING. Learn more by dipping your toes here and here, or dive deeper with What the Dormouse Said (2005) by John Markoff and From Counterculture to Cyberculture (2006) by Fred Turner.   

"Watching any critical infrastructure get compromised is really the thing that keeps me up at night because lives are in the balance…and we do a lot of testing for critical infrastructure, and I've seen computers and machines that have been online and not been taken offline, longer than I've been alive…So really interesting to see those types of things because they interact with really big, expensive hardware…there's a catch 22 that happens where you can't really take the machine offline to do maintenance on it because it's critical infrastructure. So then how do you test it to make sure that a hacker can't take it offline, or maintenance can't be done on it? " – Eric Escobar.

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones (Website; Wikipedia) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss his book. He has studied American intelligence for 50 years.

This week’s guest, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, is Emeritus Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh. He has been studying American intelligence for half a century and has written a history of the CIA to coincide with its 75th anniversary, entitled: A Question of Standing.   

This episode with Rhodri is a counterpoint to last week’s episode with Robert Gates: a career historian and a career intelligence officer; a European and an American; a 70,000 feet view and a 30,000 feet one. Interestingly, they were born continents apart within almost a year of each other.  

Rhodri is the author of over a dozen books, has a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and grew up in Harlech, Wales.  

And…

Harlech, Wales, where Rhodri grew up, has the steepest street in the Northern Hemisphere. The steepest street in the Southern Hemisphere, and the world according to Guinness Records, is in Dunedin, New Zealand (Dunedin is Gaelic for Edinburgh). The steepest street in the continental United States is Canton Avenue in Pittsburgh (to celebrate its Welsh heritage the Steel City has a St. David’s Society). Espionage in Welsh is ysbïo.

"CIA can't afford to rest on its laurels and continue with systems it has. It has to change all the time." – Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

• “Documents on Origins of CIA,” Truman Library [pdf]

• Tom Paine (Common Sense, 1776), Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1835) and Mork from Ork (Mork & Mindy, 1978-82) are all outsiders, like Rhodri, looking in. What can each of them tell us about the United States? What can they tell us that people born within an ecosystem can’t?

Robert Gates (Website; Website) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to reflect on the 75th Anniversary of the CIA. He served 8 U.S. presidents. 

Robert M. Gates is the first career officer in the CIA’s history to rise from entry level employee to Director. He spent 27 years at CIA, nine of those at the NSC. More recently, he was the first Secretary of Defense to be asked to remain in office by a newly elected president. In all, he served 8 presidents. 

Wouldn’t you love to know his take on the CIA at 75? Well, we’ve made that happen for you!

He was born in Wichita, Kansas, served in the U.S.A.F. and he received his undergraduate education at William & Mary, his masters from Indiana University, and his doctorate from Georgetown University. He was formerly the President of Texas A&M University and the current Chancellor of William & Mary. 

And…

The academic institutions Dr. Gates has been associated with all have quite different capacities of football stadium: Georgetown University’s Cooper Field can hold 3,750; William & Mary’s Zable Stadium can hold 12,259; Indiana University’s Memorial Stadium can hold 52,626; and Texas A&M’s Kyle Stadium can hold a whopping 102,733. What could we infer about Dr. Gates, college sports, or the United States from this information? Well, that would be thinking like an intelligence analyst.

"I've led four very big, very different institutions and like all of them I always saw where places where CIA could be better. But I always loved the place, and I always was proud to work there and proud of the people that I knew…they were probably the smartest, most honest people I've ever met and worked with." – Robert Gates.

Alex Finley (Twitter; Website) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss life as a CIA Reports Officer turned author. She lives in Barcelona.

Alex Finley spent 6 years in the CIA as a Reports Officer - whom she describes as a bridge between the case officers and analysts. She is author of a trilogy of novels on the exploits of fictional CIA officer Victor Caro. Her most recent book, Victor in Trouble, completes the series (…or does it?) by looking at Russian influence operations and the contemporary intelligence landscape through a satirical lens. 

She now lives in Barcelona, Spain - and yes, apparently it’s as awesome as it sounds! – and she is the voice behind #YachtWatch, which tracks and exposes the activities of Russian oligarchs and their superyachts. 

And…

Satire is often described as fitting into three categories: Horatian, which offers light comedy and social commentary (e.g., Pride & Prejudice, Parks & Rec, The Colbert Report); Juvenalian, a darker and more abrasive take that can often take the form of speaking truth to power (e.g., Animal Farm, American Psycho, South Park) and Menippean, which casts moral judgement on beliefs or generic character flaws (e.g., Alice in Wonderland, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Saturday Night Live). Which one does Alex use? 

"There, there were points where I found myself in the middle of nowhere, West Africa. And there are these moments where…how did I end up here? This makes zero sense. And then there were the bureaucratic Catch-22s." – Alex Finley.

Dexter Ingram (LinkedIn; Website) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss his varied career. He has a very cool private collection of spy gadgets.

Dexter Ingram is the Acting Director at the Office of the Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and in his spare time a passionate collector of intelligence artifacts and gadgets.

He has performed a variety of roles at the Department of State – he was on a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan, he was a Counterterrorism Coordinator at Interpol in Lyon, France, and has a deep interest in counterterrorism, counterproliferation and WMD. He was formerly a Naval Flight Officer and White House Intern with the US Navy and has studied at Hampton University, University of Oklahoma, and the National Defense University.

In part of our ongoing effort to look at consumers of intelligence as well as producers - i.e., who eats the sausages as well as who makes them - we touch on the various parts of Dexter’s career that intersect with intelligence. 

And…

Hampton University, where Dexter studied for his undergrad, is one of over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) in the United States. It sits near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay (incidentally on the same peninsula as “The Farm,” a covert training facility for CIA operations officers). Many leaders of the black community have attended HBCU’s, such as Booker T. Washington (Hampton), W.E.B. Du Bois (Fisk), Martin Luther King (Morehouse), Jesse Jackson (North Carolina A&T), and Kamala Harris (Howard). 

"It's about real people. These are real gadgets better than the movies. It gets my blood pumping." – Dexter Ingram on collecting artifacts.

• Historical Documents, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)

James Brundage (LinkedIn; Twitter) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss prisoners-of-war and intelligence. He is the Curator at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago. 

What intelligence questions are generated when we discuss “prisoners of war”? The prisoner’s side asks: what happened? Are they alive? If so, where? What did they know? Can they compromise operations? Can we get them out? The other side asks: what do they know? Can they tell us anything we don’t know? Are they misleading us? The prisoner asks: where are we? Are there any friendlies? Can we share information to escape? 

To answer these questions, this week’s guest is James Brundage who curated the May 22-Apr 23 exhibit, “Life Behind the Wire: POW” which explores life in captivity. He is a public historian who has also worked at the Obama Presidential Library, the Chicago History Museum & the James Garfield Historic Site. 

And…

Jeremiah Denton Jr. was shot down while leading an attack over North Vietnam in 1965 and the title of his memoir, When Hell Was in Session, gives you an idea of what he endured during his captivity. As part of a propaganda campaign, the North Vietnamese arranged for him to be interviewed by a Japanese reporter. Hi blinked T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code. Needless to say, the intelligence community took great interest in the video footage. He passed away in 2014. 

"So roughly 1% of the POW population perished in Europe at the hands of the Germans versus in Japan…the death rate was almost 40%. A lot of that was the conditions of the camp…in Vietnam, of the more than 700 American POWs, there were 73 who perished in POW camps in North Vietnam, which is roughly 10%." – James Brundage

• Interestingly, philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Paul Sartre, Paul Riceour, Emmanuel Levinas and Louis Althusser were all POWs – now, the impact this had on their thinking would be one hell of a rabbit hole to go down!

Summary

Seth Abramovitch (Twitter; LinkedIn) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss the British war-hero who spied on behalf of the Japanese during Hollywood’s Golden Age. This is a story-and-a-half, by jingo! 

Sqn. Ldr. Frederick Rutland, AM, DSC and Bar, was the first person to fly a seaplane from a ship in history. He was also the first man to spot the German fleet from his seaplane, thereby precipitating the largest naval battle of the First World War, the Battle of Jutland. 

After leaving the military because of indiscretions with a fellow officer’s wife, he tries to live an ordinary vanilla life, but still craves his action-packed days of old…ultimately, he is approached by the Japanese to spy on their behalf, which leads him to relocate to LA during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

To discuss this doozy of a story, I am joined by Seth Abramovitch from The Hollywood Reporter – i.e., the definitive interpretive voice of the entertainment industry – where he has worked for ten years. 

And…

There are some incredible Hollywood movies from the interwar period, capturing some of the tension and suspicion of the era, as well as the faint drumbeat of approaching war. Hitchcock alone had, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), and Foreign Correspondent (1940). Major stars of the era such as Marlene Dietrich, Great Garbo, and Madelaine Carroll helped solidify the spy genre with movies such as Dishonored (1931), Mata Hari (1931), and I Was a Spy (1933). Don’t forget Fritz Lang’s Spione (1928), which has been called a, “marvel of narrative economy in montage.” 

"At the very bottom of the list, it would be any kind of allegiance to any flag, because he's quick to offer to turn on Japan when push comes to shove at the very end of the whole story. I don't think he was doing it for any kind of nationalism or political, viewpoint. I think if anything he was apolitical." – Seth Abramovitch.

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Bill Parquette (LinkedIn; Website) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss Denial and Deception. They discuss examples such as D-Day, the Yom Kippur War, and the Persian Gulf War.

Sun Tzu said, “all warfare is based on deception” and so much of the natural world is also based on denial and deception: camouflage, feigning, mimicry, distraction. It is also a feature of our daily 21st century lives: spyware, trojan horses, catfishing, and spear phishing.

With this week’s guest we look at the Denial and Deception Committee, which aimed to discover and mitigate foreign denial and deception operations against the U.S. by coordinating efforts throughout the IC.

Bill Parquette was a former Chair of the Committee. He joined the Committee in 2002 and left in 2015. He was formerly a Lt. Col. In the U.S. Army, starting his career with 10 years in the 82nd Airborne, and is currently Professor of Practice at Penn State University. 

And…

The episode looks at deceiving others but the human capacity for self-deception and denial is VAST – from head in the sand, plugging your ears, living in denial, willful ignorance, and cognitive dissonance through to doublethink. 

"If I have an audience of one or 100, I ask does anyone have children? And the hands get raised. And then I said, okay, did you teach your child deception or denial? And of course not. Do they conduct denial or deception? And they all said yeah, it's throughout nature, it's throughout society…it's a natural thing to deny. I didn't mom I didn't take that cookie." – Bill Parquette

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• Movies to explore on deception include Deception (1946), The Sting (1973), The Usual Suspects (1995), Donnie Brasco (1997), Female Agents (2008) and Operation Mincemeat (2021),