DD20: The iScreamery Story with Trisha Zamora and Justin Laserna

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They're pointed at different targets, because the assumption is that if there is an all-out nuclear war, everybody's going to blow up everybody else. So we might have, let's say there's 300 missiles, pointed at 70 different targets, once the dials turn, everything goes. Everywhere else in the world, the assumption is, when they turn the dials, everything goes. So it really is like the 1980s Doomsday situation. We talked about this on the show with Annie Jacobson, and she said as much, essentially like the the ones that are in the ground, like the ones you were controlling, they use it or lose it, right? So they launch, just as soon as it launches, detected against us, because those are probably going to get destroyed by whatever is coming in in a few minutes, whether it's detected or not. When a ballistic missile is launched at the United States, the Department of Defense is very technically advanced satellite systems, detect that launch within a few, within a fraction of a second initially. We have a policy that you're asking about launch on warning. So those get launched, I guess maybe the submarine ones are later in the game, because they can survive pretty much anything. And then you have air launched as well. So those are, how are those launched? They're from airplanes? Correct. So you have, there's what's called a nuclear triad. And the nuclear triad is air-based nuclear weapons, sea-based nuclear weapons, and then ground-based nuclear weapons. Okay. The underground nuclear warheads, the ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, those are your ground-based of the nuclear triad. But then you have B-52 bombers and other stealth bombers and large-scale bombers that are waiting all times on alert, so that if a launch is detected, they can quickly be scrambled, loaded up with nuclear warheads that are live, a pin gets pulled and now they're, they're weaponized, and then they take off. And their whole job is just to loiter, which means kind of fly circles in the sky, until all the fallout is done, and we see what targets were destroyed and what targets weren't destroyed, and then they could be directly those targets. That makes sense. I was wondering if everybody's launching at everybody else, and you're like, oh, well, this one's going to Pyongyang. Pyongyang has been gone for 45 minutes. There's, why would we launch anything else at that? Hit Novo Sabirsk instead, or whatever. I don't know. That's exactly right. I mean, hopefully none of this happens. Like, it's just, it's nightmare. I mean, everybody, you want to die early if there's nuclear holocaust. That's, that's what I've learned from Anna Jacobson. And she's, I mean, that's the exact conclusion that I reached when I was in that field. I mean, in that career field, just for the men and women who are sitting underground right now, put yourself in their shoes and think about a career in their discipline. They're going to, they're going to live underground for about two to four years on assignment, and then they're going to rotate to another assignment for two to four years. And then they're going to come right back to a missile assignment again, where they go underground again. They rotate out again, and they rotate back again. And that is their career for 20 years of military service. Brutal. And they make a whole career out of it, right? That's when they're away from their family, they're not doing God's work. They're just waiting for the hopeful, yeah, never end of, of the planet Earth, right? What do you do to kill time down there? Do you bring a book and read? There's a lot of correspondence, education, there's a lot of reading, there's a lot of learning how to make friends with people you don't get along with. Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah. There's actually a lot of sleeping, but it's not in one long stints, because you can't sleep in one long stint, because every 15 to 30 minutes, there's an emergency action message that comes through in EAM and alarm that like blares. So that's the drill. So what ends up happening is you as either the junior or the senior or missile command officer, you'll try to rest, being interrupted every four or so hours. This is literal torture. And then you'll work together, and then the other person will rest for about four hours, and then you'll work together, and then that's kind of how the shift goes for 24 to 72 hours, but you're always being interrupted. So that's why you never get quality sleep, so you try to get as much low quality sleep as you can. So are these drills to make sure you're not just like screwing around? There's two reasons. There's two reasons. One, the drills are there because they need to desensitize you to potentially launching nuclear weapons. So when the order comes in to launch a nuclear, a nuclear war, I don't want you going, oh my god, should I do this? I've never had to think about this before. They want you to be like, Jesus Christ, damn the thing, and then you slam the thing down and go back, and you lay in your cot, and then you hear a rumbling sound as the world is destroyed around you. Correct, because essentially it's all ones and zeros. So you don't actually know if this EAM is an EAM is really going to launch missiles, or if this EAM is just a drill, because you're doing it every 15 or 20 minutes. So it's like one, boop, boop, boop, beep, beep, turn, and you're going back to sleep. Boop, boop, beep, beep, beep, turn, and go back to sleep. One of those times, you're exactly right. It's going to be boop, boop, boop, beep, beep, turn, rumble, rumble, rumble. Right. Oh, shit. That was real. Right. I just launched a real weapon. So there's a system there that says, this is a drill, and there's a system there that says, this is not a drill, and you just have no idea whether or not. Correct. The system's behind the actual, the software of the system. So that's reason number one. Reason number one is so that the crews can't become conscientious objectors. Reason number two is because we assume that our adversaries are tapped into our EAM system. So the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians are listening to every emergency action message. And what they see are ones and zeros, beep, beep, beep, boop, boop, boop. Well, we also have to send a message every 20 minutes. So they don't know what the hell they're seeing either. Right. So there's some guy whose job it is to monitor you guys doing your boring as job, and he's going emergency action message. Yeah. What else does he do? And he goes back to playing can whatever Chinese version of candy crushes on his phone. And it's just like whatever. And then one day he hears a rumble and there's a bright flash in everything is over. Yep. That is just crazy. And that's your career. So I mean, this is why I have such incredible respect for the men and women who do that job. Because that is their reality. Just like you and I get to like tune into Netflix every now and then or we get to veg out to like a long fantasy book. We get to take a 25 minute poop if we want to. They don't get that option. Man, you can't even poop underground. You can't take that long. Okay. Because if you just can't come in, you just run it out. That's surely that's happened over seven years. I mean, people get food poisoning down there. People show up with the flu down. Like some nasty stuff happens underground. Oh yeah. And you're just the guy comes in and goes, "Sorry, man. I'm sick." And you go, "Well, I'm definitely getting that." Yeah. That's, I mean, and so is the next guy that comes in after we're done because you're going to be touching all his buttons. Oh, man, man. You all need Purell. Probably a regulation against spraying that on the nuclear launch computer. But you know, some rules are meant to be broken. So let's let's talk about what a spy actually is because that's one of those terms that Spide probably never use. And also, people don't know the difference between handlers, analysts, assets, et cetera. So it can we just do like a quick over there? I mean, there's a huge index, a huge glossary we could get into. But I'll keep it simple, and I'll let you tell me where you want to go from there. So you are exactly right. Spide is a term that professional intelligence officers don't use. It doesn't exist because what's the definition of a spy? What's in reality, what we have are agents and officers. Agents are the people who officers recruit to sell secrets about their own country. So you don't have an American agent. What you have is an agent of some foreign country that's giving the US secrets. That's what an agent is. It's very different than FBI. An FBI agent is in fact an officer of the country. But in CIA and intelligence terms, an agent is a foreign intelligence source. CIA believes that all people are born with a spy secret superpower. For some people, that means they can win deals for others. They can spot liars. Some can even seduce lovers. I built a free three minute test to help reveal to you exactly what your secret hidden superpower is. All you have to do is click on the link in the description below. Take the test and start using your spy superpower to stay ahead of 99% of people. But then you have intelligence officers, intelligence officers, other people who are charged by the government of the United States to collect secrets from agents. And the reason that they're called officers is because they come with a certain level of information handling, security handling, information management. They come with real skills that would qualify them as officer cadre. Okay. And so what was it that you did that you can talk about? I was an intelligence officer. And then inside the intelligence officer cadre, there are many types of officers. There are analysts. There are technical officers. There are field or case officers. There are staff officers. There are paramilitary officers, linguistic officers. I mean, the list is quite significant, open source analysts. I mean, our disguise people are officers. Our alias doc people who make our documentation are officers. And there's all these different skill sets within. So I was what's known as a staff officer. operations officer, which means an officer who is what's, there's different categories of blue badge and green badge, whether you're a contractor or hired on behalf of the federal government, but I was a federal government staff operations officer of CIA employee who was not disclosed to the public whose job was to manage operations and those operations were intelligence collection operations. - Yeah, okay, that makes sense, 'cause I, of course, have been tricked a few times so I was like, all right, is this guy real? So I called my friend, Darrell Blocker. I don't know if he's right. - Yeah, I used to work for Darrell. - Okay, so he was like, I can infer me, definitely worked here, like he says he did. I was like, oh, okay, cool, cool. 'Cause there's a lot of people, I'm sure you've come across, oh, like, do you know this person? And you're like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah, there's a few of those. - Well, there's dozens, what's fascinating is, you know, especially in social media right now, you will hear lots of people come out and say that this was a, I worked for the agency or I was an agency officer, and they're not necessarily lying because the way that the CIA works, it does a lot of different types of blended operations. So it will reach out to the military, like it'll reach out to the Navy SEALs and it will secund a Navy SEAL into CIA for an operation. So for the course of these three months, they're still a Navy SEAL, but they're granted CIA status. But then when they're done with their operation, they go right back to the Navy SEALs and their CIA status is withdrawn. Same thing is true about contractors. That's what happened with Edward Snowden. People thought Snowden was a CIA officer, he was not. He was a contractor hired by CIA for a short period of time to carry out a task before he was then sent back to his contract company. - He was a Hamilton. - Yeah. - Is that right? - Yeah. - Booz Allen, I think Booz Allen. - Booz Allen, yeah. Where is it? Booz Allen, Hamilton. We'll figure that out after the show when I get 100 emails about it. Yeah, it was something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. There's a lot, there's this trend, I'm sure you've seen where somebody who was an analyst, respectable job will say, yeah, I'm a CIA officer and people go, oh my gosh. And then they do the rounds of media or they write a book or something like that. But you put two whiskeys in them and they're like, yeah, I was in charge of looking at a lot of documents in a desk and I never really left the desk and I know a lot about Egypt. And you're just like, oh, have you ever been there? - No. - Yeah. - Okay, well that's not what I thought this was. There's a whole lot of that. My friends who are all DO guys like where you were, they were all like, don't join, they don't do it. But I'm curious what your opinion. - Well, what year was it, too? - I'm curious. - These guys were in the DO pre-slash put like through 9/11. So they must have been joined in the '90s 'cause my law school career ended in 2006. So unless their career was only like a year or two long, which I doubt they were there through September 11th and everything. And one guy was like, I can never go to Egypt and I never even saw the frickin' pyramids and I was there for a long time because he got PNG. So Persona non-Gradis basically banned from a country. - Right. - So he's banned from a country. I don't know if they found out. - He was there illegally, I guess that's probably why. - Well, that's what's funny about PNG status is, I mean, it is a punitive measure against the federal government more than a person. So he could have not even been discovered. He could have been totally an upstanding citizen in Egypt, but Egypt wanted to send a message to the United States. So it would PNG 10 people on a list and he could have been one of those people. - I see, okay, so maybe they didn't know anything. - But I think there's a couple things that are important here. So one, you were getting, you were being considered potentially for recruitment at a critical time, 2006 to 2007. I was recruited in 2007. That means the post 9/11, or the pre 9/11 cadre were still in charge. But the reason 9/11 happened, frankly, I mean, I'm sorry to say this about your friends, was because the pre 9/11 people didn't keep us safe on 9/11. - Sure, the CIA pre 9/11 was focused on cold war stuff. It was staffed with, for the most part, Caucasian, Ivy League educated. - That's what the student was. He told me, he's like, the agency's so broken, you can't get anything done, you can't even do your own job. I mean, that's why he told me not to join. - So that was because it was boring or something. - And that led to the September 11th attacks. That led us failing to prevent the September 11 attacks. Well, then September 11th happened. Two years after September 11th, the 9/11 commission came out. That was when the federal government, especially the Congress and the House, all came together, the House and the Senate came together and said, CIA, you're broken, FBI, you're broken. You guys caused this whole thing. So now we, as the federal legislature, are gonna come in and force you to change. That was 2003. That turned into a ton of money coming into the federal government, all focused on counterterrorism operations, which had been overlooked prior to 2003. And then this massive surge of new hiring. And the new hiring was not Ivy League Caucasian people anymore. It was people of diversity, people who had world travel, people who had foreign languages, people of a certain age group. So it was like 25. - I was 27. - Yeah. - Right, that's what they were looking for. Was mixed, ethnic people with strong educational histories, but not necessarily from predictable schools. A huge variance from what the pre 9/11 days look like. - Yeah, that's interesting. When I was in the 90s, I remember asking a guy who's former Intel officer, how to become, how to join. And he was like, join a church and or the Freemasons. And he's like, what ethnicity are you? 'Cause this was not a, this was not a in-person conversation. And I was like, I white dude from Michigan. He's like, okay, he told me this very totally antiquated way that they were crew, which was, go to the best, go to go to an Ivy League school. That was one of the things. Join a church and or the Freemasons and rise up in the ranks of whatever you can because they look for, I don't know, just like really wasp people. - Probably. And then because they were looking for people loyal to the body, not loyal to the organization. - I see. - Loyal to the body means loyal to the other CIA officers. Because pre 9/11, it was kind of the wild west. There was not a lot of oversight. There was a big black budget that officers could just do whatever they wanted to do. The term, a term was coined that is unfortunately still present at CIA now, where you were looking for people who will play nicely in the sandbox. So you're basically looking for other kids that you want to let into your sandbox. So they'll all play nicely with each other. But if you're the kind of kid that comes in and is like, well, why are we playing in a sandbox? Or if you throw sand in somebody else's face or if you take someone else's truck, they don't want you in their sandbox. That was all pre 9/11. There are still cultural vestiges of that that have carried through because the senior officers there right now were the junior officers before 9/11. - Sure, okay. - So that cultural carryover is still there. But in about 10 more years, they'll be gone. - Right, it'll be interesting. Yeah, I've never been to CIA headquarters or anything, but I'm guessing in the '90s, it was a bunch, like you said, a bunch of white dudes. And now it's like, men, women, different colors, different hairstyles. Soon, did you have that hair at the scene? - No, I tried. - I tried having long hair and it turned into a big deal for the trainers there. Because the people training us were vestiges of the critical work. You've never been to CIA headquarters, do you want to go? - Yeah. - I will take you. - Yeah, that would be awesome. That would be real. - They'll only let us on the first floor. - Well, it's the coolest floor, to be honest. - Okay, yeah. - The one with the stars and the flags and everything. - Yeah, the other busts and all the art and all the museums. - Sweet. - Yeah, no, the other floors I can only imagine look like, it's like an embassy, right? You're like, whoa, this place is amazing. And then the rest of it's an office and it's like, oh shit. - So true. - So I. - So cubicles and cream colored walls. - Yeah, I ended up, I was working at the embassy in Panama in 2002. But it took forever to get my security clearance because of September 11th. And I remember I had a meeting with one of the security guys and he was like, let me expedite this for you. I know you want to start your career. And I said, here's my stuff. He's like, I don't know why it's taking so long. I mean, September 11th, we're really busy, but like how hard can it be to clear a guy? And he looked and it was like, lived in Germany, but the former East Germany and then it was like, Israel. And it was like, how long did you spend in Egypt? And he's like, this is going to take years. So I ended up working in a part of the embassy that didn't require any security clearance. And I couldn't go on the other floors, but my friends could. And I was like, just tell me what's on the other floors. And he's like, it looks like the second floor, except in the corner, there's a box where you can light shit on fire. And I was like, that's it. That's all you have like an incinerator and they thought like, that's all. And there's no USB ports to put in your music or whatever. And I'm like, that sucks. 'Cause I was just making travel arrangements for like NARCO officers in Panama and the military. And basically sending guys to Vegas on the US taxpayers dime, sorry folks. And that was it. And they were like, yeah, I'm looking at a bunch of. I actually ended up with one of the better jobs. With like minimal responsibility, actual stuff that I was doing. And those guys were just doing intern work, but in a secured area, which is awful. It's the equivalent of being in an underground tank for three days at a time, not quite. - Well, I mean, I think that's the thing that's again, we were talking about how media gets it all wrong. What you just described, that's clandestine operations. What you see on James Bond and Jason Bourne and what you see in Alias and what you see in most of that, that's not how it works. It works like it's a plane building with a secure floor. There's a big heavy bolt on the front door. And once you go past that door, there's no iPods, there's no cell phones, there's no music, there's no this, there's no freedom. There's just secure messaging systems. And guess what, secure messaging systems. Don't carry gifts and you can't handle PDFs. So it's all tippity tabs, no emojis, yeah. I mean, back then, cell phones, if you then had one, were like, head snake on it, you know. But yeah, I could bring my phone, nobody cared. Those guys had to leave theirs in a box. I've heard you talk a bit about your upbringing on other shows and how you started keeping secrets kind of urgent. And I wonder, well, one, what happened and also did that make compartmentalization in your life easy when you got to CIA? - Yeah, and it's, you know, I love these conversations because, like with most people, what's my childhood? I tend to think of it as normal for everybody. - Yeah, same. - Of course. Like we all think that whatever our childhood would must have been the average for everybody else. And it's surprising to me when it's not. So I didn't trust my parents growing up. And it was because my father died before I was really born. I think technically he died when I was a few months old. But he was out of my life before I was ever born. So I always just kind of summarized and say he died before I was born. My mom remarried a Caucasian guy who became my stepdad when I was five. And apparently we had a good relationship until I was five. But once I hit like 12 or 13 and once I had half sisters, which were his biological children and mother, our relationship kind of got shaky. - That's too bad. - Well, I mean, I think, again, that's the plan of a stepparent as an adult and a dad now. I kind of sympathized with my stepdad for what he must have had to go through. But regardless, I'm seven years old and I'm learning I can't trust my dad. That there's favorites. He clearly shows favoritism towards my sisters. He clearly trusts what they say more than what I say. So I'm learning I can't trust him. And then my biological mother, who's trying to make a marriage work. Again, 44 years old looking back, it makes sense. But seven years old, eight years old, nine years old. It didn't make sense. All I picked up was, mom doesn't believe me, she believes him. He doesn't believe me. He believes my sisters who are just making shit up because they're four years old, right? So I can't trust either of them. So once that started to take hold, I learned through the School of Hard Knocks how to lie more effectively, how to lie to survive. I also started learning that there's no reason to be honest first. There's a reason to be cagey and kind of distant and aloof first. And then over time decide if somebody has earned your trust or not earned your trust. So I started understanding that secrets were valuable. And I started understanding that I had the ability to control secrets. And then as I got into like my teenage years in public school, you start realizing that other people, they don't keep secrets at all. Other people are very transparent and they're very open. And then I started realizing like if you, if you keep good secrets and you're around somebody who can't keep a secret, then you are of like, you have tons of information that you can use for whatever you want to use it for. Whether you want to use it to get laid, or whether you want to use it to get a head on a test, or whether you want to use it to get a teacher in your pocket, like whatever you want to do. So you saw the advantage of being able to keep your mouth shut kind of early on and not trusting people. But man, that is a rough way to grow up. And I'm wondering, surely you're taking steps to make sure you don't wire your own kids the same way. Correct, yeah. And that's again something else that I think all parents do. We all, well, I'll be honest. I don't think all parents are aware. No. Of how their childhood impacts them as adults. So then oftentimes what happens is parents will replicate the same way they were parented with their own children. My wife and I were benefited because my wife grew up in a similar household to mine, where she also learned early she couldn't trust what her parents said, because what they did was different than what they said. Interesting. The big difference between she and I is that she didn't trust her parents and what they said, but she did trust that they loved her. Whereas for me, I didn't trust what they said, and I didn't actually trust that they loved me. I kind of still wonder if my mom could have changed her decision in 1980, would she have changed her decision in 1980? Have you asked her that? My mom doesn't tell the truth. So what's the point? So I have asked her. I have made the suggestion that maybe she would have chosen not to have me. She's always like, "No, baby, I would have had you. I would have had you." But at the same time, there are pictures of her taking me to abortion rallies when I'm three, four, and five years old. Oh, that's interesting. So I don't know what, like, I'm glad that she was there, you know, sponsoring women's power and women's rights, but it's got to be a little f***ed up to be like, "Here's my three-year-old, and I think you should be able to take your baby's life if you want to." That's interesting. That's her choice. But it is really interesting to me when she tries to tell me that, of course, she would have had me at 19 years old with no husband and all that other stuff. Like, that's tough. That is tough. And what she, what it seems like what she's saying is, "No, I really love you, and I'm so glad you're in my life." But if you were able to go back in time and say, "You can turn this pregnancy off with a light switch." You would probably go, "Oh, my God, I'm a kid. What am I doing?" Right. Like, it's a hard call. And that's whenever the topic of abortion comes up, like for me, I'm very sensitive to it, not like in an emotional way, but this is why whatever your politics are, I believe women should have a choice because my mom had a choice. At whatever level, she had a choice. And she chose to give me a chance. And I was not an easy child. Like, I was a sickly child when I was born. And I really had some like. Look like you're in your shape now. Because I was able to recover. Because my mom had me, and there was a hospital that took care of me, and there was, you know, modern-day medicine, and that was in the United States. So, but it's tough, man. It's a sticky situation. That's interesting. It's interesting you grew up not trusting your parents. Because I can't. Most people listen. Well, many people listening, just can't relate to that at all. You trusted your parents? Yeah, trusted my parents. Even my dad, it's funny, because my dad and I, we have a good relationship, I want everybody to know. I just talked to them. You know, he's like a really terrible communicator. It's comical. It is. So, I trusted him in so far that we all understood what the hell he was even talking about at any point in time, or like. But he wasn't a guy who was going to lie. Yeah, my parents were. You could rely on them as well. I trusted. Being able to trust somebody and rely on them are two totally different things, I guess, as well. But, yeah, I trusted my parents. And, yeah, our relationship is really good as a result. I mean. That's awesome, man. That's a beautiful thing. And that's what I'm hoping will happen with my kids. I'm sure it will. If you're actively cultivating it, you know, how old are your kids now? I have an 11-year-old son, and I have a six-year-old. You would have screwed this up already. I'm pretty sure. Right. Come on. I mean, mine are younger, so who knows? But you still have time to screw it up if you try. It's true. But I think if you're focused on this and you haven't already messed it up, you're probably doing okay. My poor children. I mean, I have to give them credit. And one day, hoping they'll be adults listening to this interview, right? Like, they're raised by two spies. Their mom and their dad are two professionally trained liars. We're not only trained to tell lies, but we're trained to identify when we're being lied to. Yeah, yeah, sucks for them. Well, it's wild as like, it sucks for them because it's tough for them to come up with a fabrication. Right. But they're also essentially modeling us. So they're going to be like, really good. That's true. You've got to be careful. They don't misuse that. You know, with great power comes great responsibility and all that. Yeah. So I'm very fortunate because we have, like, our son does not even like to try to lie because he's been caught so many times. But our daughter is fearless and she really is hard to read sometimes. Sometimes you're like, "Alright, think you're lying, but I don't know." Yeah, go hook yourself up to the machine. I'll be in in a few minutes. Yeah. You get free nights every night all year long plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with free nights in Cool Summer. TXU Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information rep #100004.