Pass around. And the signing will be in the folding table beside me. Books are available for purchase. Today our guest is investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen. She has written several books. And most recently the secret hit of the cia. Which creates a pageturning narrative on the in department narrative. It was called a wellsourced, wellpaced and full of surprise. Mess hem me become Annie Jacobsen to politics and prose at the wharf. [applause] how is my sound . First of all, politic and prose, thank you for having me. Always wonderful to be here. And thanks everybody for coming. Im here tonight to talk to you about the surprise, kill, vanish about the cias paramilitary capacity, which is something that many people arent even aware exists. Im often asked how i get the idea for the books, and this one began for me ten years nothing 2009 so i had a source visiting me at my house, his name is brett, and he was on his way back from the middle east and he brought back with him a challenge coin. I dont know if you know that it, a bar drinking coin, and on one side of ited says cab gull, afghanistan, and then other side it said u. S. Department of state, and my source, brett, has nothing to do with diplomacy, he is weapons trained so i hadn idea, while he constant say what he was dog in the middle east, it was clear itself was some kind of an Intelligence Organization operation. My two boys at the time were young, and i had a number of we rad junior yesterday all over the garden from the revolutioner in war to the they had little weapons and messed them all up, and brett said to the boys, let me show you how this works and he was explaining to them, they were fascinated. They were five and ten at the time. And afterwards he said, listen, if its okay with your mom and dad, i will show you a real weapon. Now, i know brett is a licensed safety weapons instructor so i said that was fine. And he opens up this case and inside of it puts together this rifle with a scope and i live up and hollywood in a canyon, and he set it up on the dining room table and through that scope i could see across the canyon, and i could see the veins on a life. Leaf and i thought myself now i know what brett does in afghanistan. The boys went off and the was another case the. That he never opened. A couple of different weapons he showed them but the one he didnt open, i was very curious about. Im a journalist. So when we were alone i said, whats in that case . And he opened it up, and inside there was a large knife with a serrated edge, and i said, whats that for . And immediately realizing noaa and she says system its my job required quiet. I wanted to write this book not as much what operator does overseas but as much about my reaction to it. In other words, i could accept brett or anyone were if the clinical idea of a sniper rifle but the idea of using a knife, slitting someones threat or sticking it in their ribs gave me pause. And i was interested in that idea. I was interested in why we as citizens differentiate between different forms of killing, pass judgments on what others are doing about that, from the president to theground pounder. The ground pounder and i tried for a long time to write about the cias paramilitary. I heard from another source that brett was with, very elite, very specialized wing of the cias special Activities Division, which is called Ground Branch, and almost no one knows about it or talks about it and took me a very long time as a journalist to find sources who were willing to speak with me about Ground Branch and the special Activities Division, and that is how i came to write this book. Now, surprise, kill, vanish. So, the story begins in world war ii, in the motto of the oss edburg the precursor organization to the cia, was surprise, kill, vanish. And it is involved operators jumping out of aircraft into nazi occupied france and elsewhere. They would land on the ground, they would team up with indigenous force partners so the jedburgs worked in france and team if one French Partners and surprise their way in kill nazi with a knife, they had a specialized knife to do so, and then they wouldish would vanish and thats book us about that idea is war a gentlemans game or is it something that one must do the dirtiest, as they call it back in world war to, most dastardly things possible to win. And when we think of the nazis, i think many of us are we find it easier to imagine throatslitting because theyre nazis, but if you move forward to today we ask yourselves, why is little that we are making those judgments. My main character is a guy called billy wa, the longest serving cia operative in its history that is known. So there may be someone thatting long he but we dont know about it. And his story is interesting because he was a young soldier in the korean war, and and he was ground pounder and he havent it and thought war was dreadful and boring, and after that he learned about this secret unit inside the army that wag being started and that would become the green berets and so through his story, i demonstrate that most of the operators who work in this world theyre called operators north not soldiers theyre military train so they become what are called tier one operators, delta, green berets, seals, all in the present tense. Pjs, and they retire and they go over and work for the agency. So, many of the individuals who work in this world are older, and i found that very interesting and im jumping ahead to the end of the book, because i write history, i write chronology so i take you through the different wars and the different transformations of the crys Paramilitary Army but when i land in the present day i found it fascinating and i want you to think but this particularly if when we have a discussion about this, the second half, which is that most of the kids ive also interviewed soldiers who are working for the military and theyre much young examiner theres that idea when it comes to morality and what is at stake and why are we doing what were doing issue was constantly confronted with at the idea that young soldiers are heading into war at 18, 19, often really not knowing what they are in for, and the operators at the agency who are working for the special Activities Division, are veterans of decades, and they are the ones who are saying, in essence, send me. And they are willing to surprise, kill and vanish. What were talking about here with this paramilitary capacity is calledte rtia, opti, means third option. So up until right after world war 2 the president had two options. There was diplomacy, the fitter option. Trying to work things out with our foreign partners or our foreign adversaries from a diplomatic standpoint, and the second option is when that doesnt work, war. So the third option is the cia. And that idea is really that once diplomacy failed and war is unwise you rely on the third option. Its also called the president s hidden hand. Everything done by the cias paramilitary is meant to be applause by denied. Also called covert action , and for this reason, we as the citizenry learn about a lot of the cias mistakes because they become public, and so one of the extraordinary things for me as a journalist and as an author is piecing together what is on the record so what we for example, many people in this room may know about guatemala, the cias meddlings in guatemala or iran or the by a of pigs, the failed paramilitary operation, but what you dont know is the operations that were successful because they are meant to be applause plausibly denied. I weave together this story of how and why the president s guerrilla warfare corps came to be am fast facing thing happened during vietnam irlearned, and that is that so, the pentagon operates under what is called title x and there are rules of engagement that soldiers must adhere. To the cia operates under title 50 and both are elements of the National Security code that came out of the creation of the pentagon and the National Security apparatus in 1947. But title 50 and title 10 are very, very different. And what i learned in looking through jfks archives, was that the bay of pig impacted the president so greatly. I mean, he was humiliated in his first 100 days as president , after having won the election on a very specific position that communism must be defeated, and sort of cuba and vietnam were at the top of his target list. And to be to have that failure at the bay of pigs infuriated president kennedy and he did something which in my opinion has not really been looked at or reported before, what he did was he switched the authority of the covert operations from the cia, working under title 50, to the Defense Department, working under title 10, and it got very messy there in terms of these covert paramilitary operations that were happening in the very, very early dives vietnam. Long before war was declared by president johnson or Congress Declared war. That was very interesting from 0 historical opinion of view because you see that same thing today, or should i say do you see that same thing today . And of course i let readers decide are i try to let rathers decide and come the their open concludes but bigger, sweeping issues that affect us as citizens. After the vietnam war, the any kind of paramilitary or military force was so looked down upon, the special forces was gutted. The cias paramilitary was essentially reduced to nil. The Church Committee took the cia almost down, and this idea was no one wants anything to do with the guerrilla war fey, paramilitary, dark, dirty, no a gentlemans game, not a gentlemans warfare game, and really the citizens of the United States didnt want anything to do with war, period. But it was a very, very important point in the cias history because you had a whole bunch of operators without work, and i write about that in the become, about this moment where sort of theyre not needed and theres this lull in a lot of activity until reagan attacked reagan takes office. Im going to interrupt myself and tell you, the tip of you often hear the tip of the spear, special forces. The tip of the tip of the spear is assassination, and it is the ultimate guerrilla warfare capacity thats cia has and has existed since 1947, since title 50 was created. Lots of mythology around it. I explain very clearly through declassified documents and first interviews firsthand interview with sources how this has evolved over time, but to give you an indication of how specific it is, president eisenhower called his assassination capacity the health Alteration Committee. So you can i have located documents in National Archive that refer to this is a mission for the health Alteration Committee. President kennedy called it executive action. Jumping forward to reagan, he called it preemptive neutralization, bush called it lethal direct action. And obama called it targeted killing. So, going back now to after the vietnam war, you had president reagan developing a capacity for preemptive neutralization because we saw the first rise of terrorism. What i also found very interesting, and i interview a gentleman name lewis for this book, and he is he was the 189th director of the secret service. He went on the record in this back to explain to us how the capacity to protect the president of the United States is kind of the flip side of the coin of this executive action capacity, or preemptive neutralization capacity, if you will and that comes from the fact the cia director richmond helms if you have the capacity to take out someone elses leaders, why wouldnt they take out yours . Im paraphrase but thats what he said. You begin to understand how serious this all gets behind the scenes. President reagan develops preemptive neutralization with a cia director who is a fascinating man named bill casey, and where did bill caseys experience come from . He was with the oss. So one of the reasons why i love writing history we begin to see how all of these threads pull together toward the present tense because you have individuals running the show, not the cia in particular is a organization really run by individuals, as opposed to the pentagon which is really an organization that functions like a bureaucracy. Lou explained for the back about a very interesting, unreported, largely unreported Organization Called the counterassault team. Cat team, and what i found fascinating about this, lashly unknown, is that starting after president reagan was almost killed by an asass sunshine 1981 assassin in 1981, the cat team shadowed the president 24 7 and still do and all of the cat Team Operators are tier one trained so some of them would would go over to cry crays paramilitary instead going to cat team, lou being one of them, like billy wa he was a green beret in vietnam, and he went on to work to protect the president and wa is moving forward working offensive operations for cia. The period of time what i also find interesting is that we as citizens tend to think that republican president s act one way and democratic president s act another way. And i found in reporting this book that was not true. The cias Paramilitary Army work at the president s behest. So there is no such thing as a rogue cia operation that as far as i know. They are directed, the order comes from the president , through the cia director on down. And there was one exception and that was president clinton, who really opposed executive action, preemptive neutralization, health alteration, call it what you will. Is a report in the become based on the cias attorney who was writing up these memos and a number of the operators working on the operations for the president , whenever they would request that an individual be preemptively neutralized it would go up the chin of command to president and president clinton would reject that, and why i found this interesting is ones own morality, going back to that initial spark that made by want to write this book. One of the people that billy august was my main character was targeting for the cia in sudan was Osama Bin Laden, and this was in 1992. And there are couple of different versions of the story that i report in the become, but waugh took the first severallance photographs of bin laden to and requested to kill Osama Bin Laden and this went up the chain of command to president clinton who was very against preemptive neutralization and he said, please dont ever ask me anything like that again. So, it really makes you think about these different consequences that come out of this shadow world of hidden hand operations. In conclusion, sort of as i get to the end of the back, what really just sort of sent things off interest a completely other direction, knowing all this history as i had learned through the research and reporting, was seeing what hand after 9 11. The paramilitary capacity of the cia had been reduced dramatically in the clinton era, and in bush administration, on september 17th, theres a very famous memorandum, parts of which are now declassified. I spoke to the mother who wrote the memorandum, and it gave the cia capacity like it had never had before, and this is where we are now. The special Activities Division has transformed from a smaller element of the agency with a lot of people who they themselves call knuckle draggers, to now being what is called a the special activities center, an Interdisciplinary Center and its bigger than it has ever been. We operate as far as i understood, we, the cryies paramilitary capacity operates in 134 countries around the glen. The hallmark of that guerrilla warfare capacity is the able to work with the indigenous force partners. What we did in as i told new any beginning with did with the oss in france and elsewhere, in vietnam, all over the globe. And so that is a primary driver, working with partners, and is a report in the become this where is it gets very dark and disturbing the partners we have in the current wars in iraq and afghanistan are very difficult and troublesome partners. And while i expected in reporting it to see a lot of sort of darkness and complexity in the early years russian really found it was in the latter years because i also found a sense from some of the operators working multiple tours for the agency, this sense that they almost can no longer work with their partners. I get interest the detail into the detail in the become but has to do if fundamentally different ways of life and also has to do with a lot of drug because, for example, thal partners and becomes incredibly complex for cia, paramilitary operators who are highly trained. One thing that all everyone i interviewed and i interviewed 42 guys from the special Activities Division who are working the current wars, and one thing they must do is take polygraph test regularly. They cannot lie and must maintain a physical capacity where they can do things like halo jump into behind enemy lines or interest the war theater, halo being High Altitude low opening. Thats the surprise. They must kill and then they must vanish without being caught the degree of training they have up against the degree of training and commitment that our indigenous force partners have is a great paradox and a difficult conundrum. So ill leave you we this last thought. That first time that the source came to me in 2009 and i saw that stiletto knife and i realize third way in which the paramilitary capacity works, that one has to be willing to do a job that requires quiet, very close up. And method me ask, is it miss own self, is this uncomfortable in die think its right or glock and what it left me with is a real desire to know, is it necessary . And for that reason i traveled with billy waugh, my main source, to two of the last communist countries in world bus this all began during the cold war, the guerrilla warfare the president s guerrilla warfare corps, the president s military army, was created to beat back the russians to defend against communism. So billy waugh and i traveled to cube pa and vietnam and the reason we went to both places was in cuba we met with the son of che geoff vara he was killed by the a cia mission so it was bolivian rangers no when i would che, but t