9 11 terrorist attack. She also discusses her decision to leave the cia to become an fbi special agent, focusing on chinese counterintelligence. The International Spine is ian recorded this event in. February good evening everyone and thank you for coming out to the International Spy did. Because im crisscrossed an executive director of the International Spy museum. Tracy joined the cia officers officer, fbi special agent, now author, tracy walder. Tracy joined the cia straight out of college and served as a staff Operations Officer the counterterrorism center, where she was responsible for tracking down terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. She went on to become an fbi special agent at the l. A. Field office, where she specialized in chinese counterintelligence operations. Tracy lives with her husband and four and a halfyearold daughter in dallas, texas. This evening, tracy will discuss her memoir, the unexpected supply unexpected spy. Taking down some of the worlds most notorious terrorist. Tracy will be interviewed by our very own historian and curator. After the discussion, they will open the floor to audience questions. Everyone will have an opportunity to ask their questions this evening. We are also going to ask that if you are trapped in the middle of a row, please put your hand up and we will ensure you have a mic to answer your questions but there will be two mics on each side of the out auditorium you can use to answer your question again if you cant get out. Stay where you rotten raise your hand. One other administration of administrative notice. If you have a cell phone, please silence it. I will lead by example and make sure mine is silenced. I will kick it over to vince and tracy. I think you will enjoy this evenings discussion. Thank you. The first time we were introduced to tracy was when our Educational Team discovered the amazing work she was doing. , now as a teacher to hug a teacher in maryland well talk about this later but it is extraordinary what she decided to do, to challenge young people. I have taught at every level, from Elementary School all the way through college. The gumption and challenge is extraordinary. I would not have had College Students doing it so it is interesting. She is also on the board of directors for a Nonprofit Organization called girl security, which we will talk about as well, another way she has decided to give back to not only her community but her country. We will hear more about those later but i want to jump right in. We had a long conversation, if anyone listens to spy cast. Youre gonna get a chance to hear a much longer version of. This on tuesday we record a podcast. We had a chance to try out some of these questions before we put it in front of a live studio audience, some of them worked better than others but one that was interesting to me, certainly as an author myself and as someone who has dealt with redaction and classification, whats the process you had to go through to get this book cleared through the cias publication review board, in particular because they can be somewhat problematic and they can be somewhat difficult. Anyone who has looked at the book already, there are lines that were redacted that were left inside. There was a whole lot more they didnt want you to put out. How much difficulty was it, getting this through the prb . First, everyone, thank you for coming. I see a lot of my former students in the audience thank you for being here i want to recognize one. In terms of the publications review board, there were two women that came before me. Sarah crawl some and. Both of them took about two years to get their books through the prb and i credit them with the easier time that i had. Getting my book through the prb was externally important to me. I signed a nondisclosure agreement when i left and i wanted to honor that. I sent it off to them, just hoping it would not be what we called denied in full, which means you cannot publish this period. It was not. It came back about four months after my initial submission with four complete chapters just flatlined. The cia was actually really great. You can email the pr be theres a lot of place in the cia you cannot you can email them back and forth. They will not tell you exactly why. You have to play a game of guesswork. I resubmitted it and it came back with two chapters redacted completely and then a chapter and a half and finally, after i took up one word, which was the name of a statue, they let that whole chapter through and then publishers and i decided the way it was was intelligible enough for people to be able to read. It is tricky because, yes, they do not want you to give away what cities that the cia is operating in if it is not widely known, but you kind of allow the leeway to describe the cities pretty well. Like there is a modern headquarters for their intelligence right on a river and this is near where a famous serial killer killed five people in the victorian era. Oh, victorian, i should not have said that out loud. I am not talking about london at all. I will never understand why they redacted some of the things that they did. I was just talking to someone about this. Why they redacted some things and did not redact others, i do not understand the process. Some of them, in my opinion, it is extremely easy to figure out where i am. Maybe they want people to take that extra step of googling for about 10 minutes. I do not know. Lets talk about your origin story because it is a somewhat different than others. It has nothing to do with you being in a sorority in Southern California. It is the fact that a lot of people who join cia or National Security institutions wanted to do it from a very early age. You did not really set out to think about being a cia officer in middle school or high school, although subconsciously i guess maybe you did a little bit because of what you studied. When other people were playing, you are reading about the middle east. You are looking at maps when other people were doing normal middle school things. What eventually led you to want to join the agency . I think to back up just a little bit, this would have been, you know, when i was recruited in kind of the mid1990s. Popular culture looks really different today than it did then. I did not grow up with quantico or criminal minds or sort of any of those things, so i had no preconceived notions about this is what the cia is and this is where i want to work, and im not sure a whole lot of people did either necessarily. But i do know that i had a really large interest in the middle east and in counterterrorism. So i would say that was really cultivated sort of when i watched the peter bergen interview when he interviewed Osama Bin Laden in 1997. That was a huge turning point for me and sort of when i decided i wanted to i guess do something about him. So when i applied at that career fair in college, that was really the impetus. Most of us in here, unless you are really young, maybe some of your former students, remember exactly where we were on 9 11. It is kind of a turning point in a lot of our lives. For many people, it is the turning point in their careers, the decision to go in a direction. You are already working at the cia. You are at langley the morning of 9 11. This is a question that popped in my head. We talked about how that really has me thought about that much. I sat on my couch on 9 11. I had been out of the army for about a month, just pissed off that there is nothing i could do about it. I could go back in the army, but my knee stunk. A lot of us had this feeling of we have been attacked what a way to know theres really nothing i can do. To a degree, you had an advantage because you could not wallow in selfpity about our country being attacked because you had a second to do that and then it was time to get to work. You made me think about that question differently. Everyone always asks how i was feeling and thinking. Its not that i was happy that people had died in the World Trade Center but you have to compartmentalize those thoughts so you can get on with the mission and work you need to do and stop the next attack work gather the evidence you need to stop the next attack. Having a sense of purpose to do something about it, even though maybe you are not stopping the next attack but you can try in a way that helps us all keep going. You move into the vault, which is ground zero for the war against al qaeda, the war that was created because of 9 11. When i say ground zero, you are working in a small group. You turn around and george birch a standing behind you asking you what is going on. Or Condoleezza Rice this is the epicenter. This is the nerve center of the cia response. How daunting was that . You were 23 at the time. 21. 21 at the time. George town unstinting behind you in and saying who are we killing today . You are not allowed to say that. Who are we looking at today . It had to have been a surreal experience. That was a chapter i was surprised the cia approved. I submitted it and i thought the whole thing would come back redacted. It didnt. For me i was read into that program on september 10, 2001. I was naive and said, we will never need to use this. Obviously, we did. It was intense. You working long hours. You are not really thinking about the people in the room. If you think about people in the room, youre not focusing on what you are doing. Then youre not focusing on what youre doing, which is trying to get people, trying to talk around it. I think you really cannot process who is in there and so i think, what they are doing other you really cant process who isnt there, other than lieutenant whose either in the intent on who is their everyday, who in their almost every day sat with us and hung out with us. And sat with us. He came in he was like a normal picture, a normal he brought Us Thanksgiving dinner, fixture. He brought us donuts, and thanksgiving dinner and doughnuts and bagels all the bagels all the time. He was really great to time. He work with in that environment. Was really great other than tenant, he was to work within that environment. Other than the only one we were super aware of at the time. Tenant, he was the only one we were super aware of all the time. Let me ask you this, the concept behind this let me ask you room, the space this. And im not gonna make you the concept behind this world and space, and im not going to make you say anything you cant say, but say anything you cant this is where you have you say. But this is where are a Southern California girl. I dont want to outyour politics, your Southern California girl. You mentioned you are very overt in the book about what direction you lean politically. You mentioned you are im not very overtly in the a fan book necessarily, of certain administrations, but that really didnt matter. At that point it didnt matter, about what direction you lean politically. I am not a fan necessarily of certain administrations, but in that room i did not matter. We are so used to today. Were so used this is not just because of this current today, and this administration. Is not just because of this current administration. But even under so used to obama ended Bush Administration politicizing foreign paul we are inslee and National Security. It didnt matter where you came from, whether so used to politicizing Foreign Policy and national texas, or southern security. These were moments where california. It did not matter where you came from. Everyone was working together without politics. Nebraska is texas for Southern California that was actually what was so great about the everyone was working together. That was what was great about the cia when i was cia when i was there. I grew up in southern there. I california in a liberal obviously grew up in southern household, but i am california, and a liberal house registered independent. Sword, but to be honest im a registered independent. The the cia sort of helped move me to the middle in a cia, sort of helped weird way. Me move to they did not purposely do that. The middle, in a weird way. They didnt it just told me think purposely do that. They just more about issues not in a help me think more about the issues, not blackandwhite way. As black and it was sort of a gray. White way, what i liked about my it was sort of time there i served under a gray. What i really liked clinton and bush. About my time there, i served clinton and bush, and i was there under both of tennant was them. There under both of them what was so great about that experience, which was really great. What was so great about i that experience is i felt at least people around me, it felt at least was very apolitical. The people politics were taken out of the situation. Around me where political. Politics were some people are taken out of the situation. Frustrated that i had nice before it came up that i had some things to say about bush and nice things to say they did not understand that, about bush, but it was not about and he didnt understand that. But it wasnt, about servicing someones political agenda. Someone it is about what mys political observations were at that time in that moment. Agenda, it was about what my obligations were in that that helped me gain this time in that moment. Apolitical insight when it that really sort of helped me came to Foreign Policy. Gain apolitical insights when it while you were there, came to Foreign Policy. While there was an event people do you were there, there was an not talk about much today and event that people dont talk about all that much today. , and certainly, as its become less unless the key moment in the timeline less a key moment in the timeline of the early global of the war on terror. Surely after 9 11, that is shortly after 9 11, when the United States when the United States had this is an outpost in the bin laden pin dont. Middle of nowhere. And, this was an outpost in the middle of. Nowhere. And you have to talk about a first person call tora bora. Hubert was going on you had a firstperson there, i want view of what was going on you to talk a little there. Talk a little about how bit more about that that panned out and the frustrations perhaps he hanging out in the hiring mustve felt having a chance the end of it. The frustrations to get the guy who kind of who perhaps most of caused 9 11 but having him felt, having a chance to get the slip through your fingers. Guy that caused 9 11. But having him, slip through your fingers. So that night, what was really interesting about that was, i was reading what was interesting about that was i was reading another book at the time i another book at the time that was writing that chapter i was writing the about someone in the ground chapter about forces there. Someone in the ground it was easy to use what i forces that were there. So was actually really easy to was doing and marry it with footnote sort of what he was doing and i think use, what that is one way i got the i was doing with chapter approved. What he was doing. I do not know. And i think thats one way i it was frustrating. Got the chapter approved. We were working seven it was extremely frustrating, we minutes on, seven minutes off because it was so intense, working kind of seven minutes on, what we were doing. Seven minutes off because it was so intense. What we were, doing. I think, people people would have thought would have thought that, once we lost him, that that, once it would have been screaming, yelling. We lost him, that there wouldve been cursing, screaming, yelling. And that that really really didnt happen. It was like the air hug sort of just didnt happen. It was like the air had gone out of the room. Gone out of the room. What people did what they what people did went into their offices i will never know. When they went to their offices i will never know. But in that room, in the room, it was like it was like this sales completely went out and we just carried on the doing what we were wind went out of the supposed to be doing. This will be a theme that will sales and investigate again we carried on doing what we were supposed to be doing. And again throughout this conversation. When i think this will be a theme we will investigate again and about your work, again. Your when i think about your work, your operating in operating eastern time in the united in here, in states in langley, virginia, eastern time in the United States, in langley, whereas the action is taking virginia. Whereas the actual action is taking place sometimes, five, five and a half, six hours ahead of where you play sometimes five or are. Maybe five have even sometimes more than six hours ahead of where you that. So this is not are sometimes a normal nine to five, job this is not something where you get more than that. A scratch done and drive this is not a normal and then get off in 9to5 job where you drive to work and then get off in time for dinner. Time for dinner. Youre working shifts that start in the middle of youre working the night, that do not allow shifts that start in the you to be in normal human middle of the night, shows that really dont allow you to be a normal human being. How draining was that . This is nonstop. We talked to the brief or president bush, i asked him, when did your day start prior to 9 11 . He said i usually woke up around 4 30. What happened on how draining was that . It was nonstop. We talked to the briefer of president bush. 9 12 . I woke i asked him when did your day start prior to 9 11 . He usually woke up around 4 30. Up around midnight to what happened on nine 12 some gender 12 start my day. September 12 . It seems like i woke up around midnight. Almost impossible to keep up over a long period of time. I think it is i think its one of the reasons i it is one of the reasons i alternately im a morning ultimately, person, so that schedule was different difficult for me left. Just an anecdote, to keep up. I am not a night person, im a morning person. So that i would have my best friend come over and wake me schedule is very because it was hard difficult for me to keep sometimes. Up with. I always have my best friend you have to change your whole body clock. Come over to my apartment, and wake me up. Because it was really hard for me sometimes, you just have to i agree with mike. Change your whole body clock. I completely agree with mike, i guess your proverbial nine to five kind of