Announcer this week on q a, former counterterrorism and Intelligence Officer malcolm nance talks about his career and his most recent book the plot to hack america how Putin Cyberspies and wikileaks tried to steal the 2016 election. And hacking isis how to destroy the cyber jihad. Brian former senior chief petty officer malcolm nance, what is the story of the nance family in the military . Malcolm i love being called senior chief. Long while very since i served in the navy. I come from a very old u. S. Military family. For African Americans, it is sort of an achievement. My family started it. My first person to serve was my greatgreatgrandfather. His brother also joined the 111 u. S. Color troops. They guarded the Tennessee Valley during the offensive and he got bored with it, so he joined the u. S. Navy. He transitioned from the u. S. Army to the u. S. Navy and became a landsman aboard a rivering warfare craft on the tennessee river. Predominantly navy, but we accept the army a little. Brian where did they live in those days . Malcolm they came from a slave family in northern alabama. It is interesting because the original nances started in south carolina. But my fathers side came from western georgia. There is a small place called nanceville. At the time of the civil war, that is where virtually all africanamerican nances originated. Brian when did you decide to become a navy man . Malcolm my father was a master chief in the navy and i was born in a naval hospital, Philadelphia Naval hospital. You know, it was destined that i was going to go into the Family Business and his father had served in the army, world war i and world war ii. His father had served in the indian wars, and his father had served in the civil war. And him and so it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that i would join not only my father, but my five other brothers who also served in the u. S. Navy. Brian why did you go to school to learn arabic . Malcolm you know, it is funny, because from a very earliest age, i had studied, you know, i was fascinated with the middle east and the arabisraeli war. I must have7 been seven years old at that time. And then, when the war came up in the munich olympics, i was at that age where these things became fascinating to me, so it is interesting because i did not come into the military to study arabic. I studied spanish, french, chinese, and russian. When i got recruited, the recruiter said you speak russian, we will send you to the defense language institute, so i did not speak that much russian. When i got there, they said you are going to arabic. We think that is better suited for you. And when i went in to arabic, i tried to quit in my first couple of months, but you know, the middle east is a very different place from russia. The russian instructors would drop you in a heartbeat. The arabic instructors said listen, you want to quit, no problem. But come back in six weeks. I forgot to come back in six weeks. I went on to start my career includes a logic intelligence. Brian what was the first year you were in the navy . Malcolm the first year i was in the navy was 1981. Brian when did you get out . Malcolm 2001. Brian when you turn on television, most of the time you see former Lieutenant Colonel in the u. S. Army, former admiral in the u. S. Navy. It is rare that you see former chief petty officer. [laughter] brian how is it that you disagree with me if you want but how is it that being a former chief, senior chief petty officer, got to be in this intellectual world . Thats not a putdown, i just want to know how it happened. Malcolm john mccain says the greatest event that ever happened in his life was being educated by a navy chief. He has Great Respect for navy chiefs. We are the lifeblood and backbone. Leadership of the United States navy. I am not unique. There are many, many people who are involved in government and in the Intelligence Community, who are senior enlisted. I can point out that our two National Mission forces, delta force and Seal Team Six, everyone of them is a navy chief petty officer. There are very few officers. Same thing with delta force. They are all Master Sergeant and above. We are the people who actually do the work. We do not have to sign off on it. That gives me a very deep grounding and many different parts of the Intelligence Community, not just cryptology and, you know, Foreign Language operations. I got to work on many different platforms, but it also showed me a very broad view of how military power and intelligence power is used throughout government. Brian so what is a chief petty officer and how does that relate to an admiral . Malcolm well, he is god. [laughter] malcolm the u. S. Navy is the only one of the three services that has three different branches of the service. You know, the army, air force, marine corps, have officer and enlisted. The navy is the only one with officer enlisted and chiefs. Chiefs are the middle management, and when you become a chief petty officer, you go through an elaborate ceremony to discard yourself from your junior enlisted ways and to take on the leadership of actually running things. That is opposed to managing things. But to run things correctly, you had to actually have done that job. And the navy, back in the days when they formed the chiefs, it was highly mechanized. It was a lot more sophisticated, so they created a core country core cadre of experts. Since then, they have gone on to create war officers, which are people who are senior listed, who came on and became junior officers, but i had a chance to do that. There had already been one master chief nance in the navy, and i would retire and move on to other parts of the Intelligence Community. Brian your father was one more. Malcolm i literally turned that down. I did not want to become the second master chief nance. Brian why . Malcolm because he had already made his mark. He was one of the first African Americans in the ships engineering, one of the first black instructors in the United States navy. Very proud of his legacy. Brian where do you live today . Malcolm between philadelphia, pennsylvania, and upstate new york. Today, i do many Different Things besides speak on msnbc. I run a think tank on Strategy Tactics and radical ideologies. It is a very small group of former Intelligence Officers who have a minimum of 10 years field experience, and one of the things we noted in a lot of academic groups and think tanks is they have academics, but they do not have anyone with field experience. So we have former cia, military Intelligence Officers, who all have direct field and operational experiences and speak from that perspective. Brian here you are testifying in 2007 at the u. S. Helsinki hearing. [begin video clip] malcolm waterboarding is a professional process when done in the hands of a confident team. It is an inhumane, cruel, degrading torture that was used by the most evil people including nazis and north vietnamese. Eo clip]o himere you wa terboarded . Malcolm i was waterboarded as part of the on boarding process as a new instructor coming into the school. That was in 1996, if i am not mistaken. As a new instructor, and worse, the senior enlisted amongst a group of trainees in that course, i got maximum everything. It was a great experience, because soon i would be doing this same thing. There are techniques used. People without any belief in human rights, who see the human spirit as something to be broken, we had to be subjected to that to the maximum, and there were written maximums. They do not do it anymore. Brian why not . Malcolm after the cia program became public, the department of defense decided that they were not going to be validating some of the techniques that were being considered now globally as torture. Brian when you were waterboarded in training, explain what it felt like. Malcolm it was a unique experience, because as an old chief, we go through chief initiation. There was a fake simulation where they put you through a series of stresses and test, and when i got strapped to the waterboard, thinking that this is part of my on boarding process, i thought it would be a joke to it i thought it was just going to be a short simulation, and boom, get off and insult me, but it was not at all. It was an extremely professional, highly regimented process, where i was strapped down in a matter of seconds, i was systems tested. They talk to you, say breathe. We are going to ask you questions and you are going to give us answers. Before i knew it, water was being poured onto my face, flowing into my nostrils, and then you can feel it. You can feel it well up at the bottom of your throat and start forcing its way down in the esophagus, and it is a horrible feeling. My first thought it was very clear was i am being tortured. Nothing more. And then i started to kick and thrash and try to force myself off it, but there was no way. And there are actually other techniques they can do to make it worse. But you know, they had to give me the maximum amount of water that a person is required to take at the school so that i understood just met the enemy does have a way to make you talk, but our program is designed to show you what to say, and the first thing you should say is i was tortured, and that way you spoil the enemys ability to exploit you. We do not and do not teach or condone torture. We gave a demonstrator tool to show that the enemy does far worse, far worse examples. John mccain went through the ropes, which is where they tie your elbows behind you and pop your shoulders out of the shoulder blade. Then, drag you up onto the ceiling. Youre going to Say Something to the question is, how to say it, when to say it, the demise the damage, and defeat the enemy, and force them to have to work harder. Brian what is the most difficult situation you ever found yourself in in the navy . Danger, not personal interaction. [laughter] malcolm i have a career reputation of being a bullet magnet. I started off in beirut in 1983, which was horrific. But personal danger, i think when i was in kuwait in 1991, during the first gulf war and i was helping eod mobile unit 16 explosive Ordnance Disposal mobile unit 16. I went ashore as head of the guy who was in charge of intelligence ashore, and they were clearing sea mines that had been floated into the ocean. To get there, you had to go through a firing pit that was along the kuwaiti coast and had to go through a mixed minefield and you got to the barbed wire, and there were lgm sea mines with the big spiky ones would float and the eod had to go out and defuse those for one day, they asked me and said could you check out these markings . I said, sure. I will check out those markings. I went out, and while i was looking at the markings, one of the explosive Ordnance Disposal men said chief, do not move. I said why . He said i think your foot is on a mine. It was near a bounding line. He said im going to go back to the pit. He gave me instructions to move my legs. He said move back to the firing pit. And then he said how you feeling . I said ok. He said do you have to pee . I said i do. [laughter] malcolm it is a can about this big, four spikes on the top. If i had actually stepped on the mine, it would have shot out of the ground and exploded like a shotgun shell. Brian two questions. You can take them both. Have you ever seen a person killed . Malcolm yeah. Brian secondly, have you ever killed a person . Malcolm i have seen a person killed. I was in beirut in 1983. I was in the subsequent naval combat and took part in the libyan air raid and many other operations. The first gulf war, i was on a ship when we hit a sea mine. Ast wasnt half as bad being near a mine. I guided drones to shell iraqi positions. Once i went ashore with eod and the saudi forces, there were a lot of dead. That is just up to the first gulf war. And then after that, you know, i have been in iraq and afghanistan as well, so theres lots and lots of death there. I had a friends with a six man Security Team that i had built together and sent to the airport. It took three weeks to separate them all. War is not a game, not a funny thing. Have i directly fired on individuals . Yes, i have. Now, there is a big difference between what you use a rifle in a defensive purpose, half the time you are not aiming. You are trying not to, but the enemy moves about, and i was doing mainly suppressive fires in the first gulf war. But you know, many times, i put my fingers on a map in bosnia. We did an airstrike where we were working with intelligence staff. We knew we would kill 56 people. I was on the uss wainwright when we were in a naval missile battle, the battle of ciri island. Anwent toetotoe with and thatissile boat killed 60 people. Everyone in the Intelligence Community is an intelligence warrior. Some guys are further on the spear tip. We have guys on seal platoons. We have people in the rear who, like the famous captain rochefort of world war ii, who broke the japanese codes and won the battle of midway, that man killed more japanese than anyone any one individual in the world just by doing that. We have a different perspective on how people are harmed by what we do. Brian when you said vaporized, explain what that means and how does it happen . Malcolm at that time, i was the head of security for a Coalition Group that was operating out of the Republican Palace in baghdad. I have solid rules on how to get from camp victory, the airport, to the green zone. Those rules were very simple. Minimum speed was 100 Miles Per Hour in a Straight Line for our twoman security vehicle. It is about five miles, not far. Not far from the green zone, but the most dangerous part is that there is this sort of figure eight area called Spaghetti Junction, and Spaghetti Junction is where isis or al qaeda was doing all of their suicide bombing attacks. They would look for a team, offramp, and do that for hours until a u. S. Convoy or security detail would come by, and they would blow up. And i had a team who broke that rule, and they went behind a u. S. Army convoy, got slowed down to 30 Miles Per Hour, and then once they got up to Spaghetti Junction, a suicide bomber came literally on side of them and vaporized them. They were blown to pieces and blown off the overpass, and just turned into, you know, a seating steaming pile of burning humanity. It affected me greatly because i knew that there is a place and time for having strict, strict rules, and that was one place that those rules should not have been violated. If they had not, granted, the u. S. Army convoy might have been attached, but we would have kept seven people alive. Brian how much of what you have done in your career is top secret and cannot be talked about . Malcolm 100 . I started out in cryptologic intelligence as signals intelligence. That was the overwhelming amount of what i have done. I was seconded to other agencies. I am not allowed to discuss those operations. But for the bulk of that, until i became a survival instruction, it was 100 . Brian what would the american whate think if they knew you know . Malcolm there are thousands of people right now, my brothers and sisters, in the Intelligence Community, who every day, i am just surprised at how little the American Public appreciated how and what they do. You know, there is a statue of nathan hale at the cia. They live by that. They really regret that they have but one life to live for their country. I have friends on the wall. They really enjoy being the spear tip. It hurts when we have failures like 9 11. I am retired, but i am still in the community and i speak for the community. That is the best thing i do publicly at all is that i can help people understand that this is not like it is in the movies. Some technological behemoth. These are thousands upon thousands of individuals who only want to serve in silence and make sure that we stay safe. Brian you have got quite a story about 9 11. Where were you . Malcolm that was horrible. At that time, i had an office in georgetown. I started a Consulting Company where i was supporting special operations command. And we were preparing, interestingly enough, for a very large antiship terrorism exercise in san diego. And that morning, i had a new office worker, a new chief of staff, and i took her to capitol hill and i was going to show her around where the House Intelligence Committee officers were, and we stopped behind capitol hill and pennsylvania avenue. There used to be a coffee house there. They had a tv camera of course, because of the vote calls. When i came in, we got coffee and someone said something about the television. I look at the television and the first fire was burning up the world trade center. And it struck me as all wrong. The air was clear. I thought about that be 25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in the 1940s, and they said it might have been a small airplane. We watched until the second airplane flew right into it, and then i knew completely who it was, what it was, why it was. It was al qaeda, it was then them using aircraft as cruise missiles in retaliation for our attack on the Training Center where we killed several dozen al qaeda members and tried to kill bin laden. They used our own laws and technology against us. I jumped into a car. I started jotting down driving down independence avenue, i think it was independence avenue. To the left of the lincoln memorial, i stopped at the light and was l