Title: David Gornoski Archives
Show: David Gornoski
Date: 2019-08-08
URL: https://youtu.be/pFotqzActGI
Duration: 23:00

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[00:01] has the um increase of poppy production in Afghanistan uh severely decrease the price of the Opium that makes its way to America good question yeah Afghan poppy has flooded the the heroin market and so the price of heroin is incredibly low it's lower in in most cases even than meth and crack I mean heroin has just pushed crack out of business because it's so incredibly cheap now a terrible

[00:33] side effect of this is as crazy as this might sound until the late 1970s Afghanistan was a net food exporter they actually grew enough food to export to Iran and to Pakistan and now they have to import virtually all of their food they don't produce any rice anymore all those tomatoes and strawberries everything that that you see in the market when you're in Cabo for example it all comes from Pakistan because

[01:05] everybody's growing heroin poppy so did you spend very little time in Afghanistan most of it was in Pakistan in the CIA almost all my time uh in that region was in Pakistan I was only in Afghanistan for brief periods so again did you did you have any um life lessons or wisdom learned from the Pakistani experience the people you the friends you made so to speak the acquaintances you made yeah I hate to say it it's going to sound Grim but

[01:36] don't trust anybody my closest contact the guy that I was in touch with day in and day out the one who had a going away party for me at his house where his wife cooked a a dinner and baked a cake he ended up flipping and joining Al-Qaeda and um when Al-Qaeda realized that he was Major khed the guy who was working with the CIA they beheaded him

[02:07] and they videotaped his beheading and now it's for sale in the souk in paser what's the souk the souk is the market okay yeah yeah so you know I guess but you kind of wouldn't you expect that stuff to happen I mean why why did you get into the CIA did you want to be James Bond when you were a kid I mean did you yeah I kind of did yeah I I did like you know asking my parents for walkie-talkies when I was nine and I would keep logs of what the neighbor kids were doing yeah I I I loved the whole the whole idea of being

[02:40] a spy so you were a little bit of a busy body then you were watching The Neighbors yeah I kind of was what were you worried about were you worried about uh what they were doing or they're up to plots I don't even really remember I I remember I remember accusing one of the neighbor kids of stealing my dad's tomatoes so I did surveillance on the Tomato patch right but yeah all through my child childhood I I wanted to be in the CIA and then I kind of put it out of my head and then when I was in graduate school It's Kind of a Funny Story and

[03:10] this can't happen anymore because we have the Equal Employment Opportunity Act which made this illegal but there really was an old boy Network you couldn't just apply to the CIA you had to be spotted and recruited so I was taking a class at George Washington University called uh the psychology of leadership fascinating class on why foreign leaders do what they do as an example the Yalta Conference everybody knows the Yalta Conference at the end of

[03:42] the second world war why was that Conference held in Yalta Eisenhower I mean uh I'm sorry Roosevelt had to go all the way around the war he had to go through North Africa to Iran and then up to Crimea and talta it took you know more than 24 hours to do that the man was was dying he was sick that's why it was in yala because Stalin knew he was sick and he wanted to exhaust him and so when Roosevelt

[04:15] finally arrived in yala Churchill was already there and Stalin insisted on the meetings beginning immediately all Roosevelt wanted to do was to go to sleep and so he gave up Poland just to be able to get to bed yeah smart guy so I'm taking this class and the the professor um gave us an assignment to Shadow our bosses for a week and write a psychological profile on of our bosses I was working uh as an

[04:48] intern at the time at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union major labor union here on K Street in Washington second largest Union in America and um I was a little bit afraid of my boss he was one of these oldtime tough guy Union organizers he had had his back broken during a riot once and you know scabs had beaten him and just a tough guy so we were um halfway through the week it

[05:18] was Wednesday and we got into an argument and I called him a racist which he was he got so angry he took a stance and he put up his fists and I remember recoiling like oh now I've done it and I I was waiting for the blow to come and he looks at me and he says my penis is bigger than yours and I said what I said I quit you're nuts and I quit and I walked out I went back home I wrote my

[05:50] paper that sounds like The Unofficial slogan of Washington DC basically it is yeah this was a learning experience for me this I mean hey that's what the that's the Washington Monument there yeah that's what they're saying there you go he was just reading the slogan he's just speaking it so this was late 1988 early 1989 and uh I I wrote that I believed I told the story and I said I believed that he was a sociopath with Psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies I get the paperb a week later

[06:21] and I got an A and the professor wrote in the margin uh please see me so I went to see him after class come to my office I go to his office shuts the door he says listen I'm not really a professor here I'm a CIA officer under cover as a professor here and I'm looking for people who might fit into the cia's culture would you like to work for the CIA I said why not I was getting married right after graduation I didn't have a a

[06:53] job lined up I'd always wanted to work for the CIA anyway and so nine months later I'm sitting at my desk at CIA headquarters so why did they why did what was the tell was it that you were interested in sociopaths because I guess you got to deal with sociopaths CIA everybody at the CIA is a sociopath I mean does that mean does that mean you were too or are or what no I'm glad you asked that a CIA psychiatrist once told me that the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have what they call sociopathic

[07:23] tendencies not sociopaths sociopaths have no conscience and so they can just wanly violate the law and not have any remorse but those people are impossible to control because they don't respond to polygraphs right if you have no conscience you don't feel guilty so you don't respond with guilt on the polygraph exam people who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience they do Express guilt but in the name of the country and National Security they're

[07:55] happy to violate the law I can't tell you how many houses I've broken into over the years to plant bugs or cameras or to steal documents or weapons or whatever I can't I I've lost count in Pakistan in 25 different countries but it's because my country needed me did you ever run into like a weird dog or a parrot in the middle of a house no you you have all that stuff planned out in advance you can take where where you put the dog and make him go to sleep and the

[08:27] parrot you just we never had any problems with parents I don't I I remember one bird once but it didn't what did you do to the bird we just let him go is that classified what you do bir no we just ignore the bird you never want those birds to say Jesus Jesus you know or something like that when whenever you're walking through right that's right so did you ever have like a home alone experience where you actually walked into a booby trap and like fell on something and broke the glass or something close what was it I was I was in a I was in a friendly country working with my counterparts

[08:59] from that country's uh intelligence service and uh we were I was tasked with breaking into an apartment so I went with what's called a locks and picks officer who's an expert Lo uh lock picker and this woman whose apartment we were breaking into the building it was an eight floor building and each floor had two apartments side by side and opposite the apartments was the elevator we couldn't take the elevator CU it made too much noise so we walked up the flights of

[09:33] stairs went to the sixth floor still remember and my counterparts had done surveillance on the building and they said the targets apartment's on the left on the right is a married couple he's a loyer she's a school teacher they're both at work I said great so we go up there and the locks and pick officer is working on the lock with his little tools and I'm standing right behind him and I hear a voice come from the next door apartment it turned out the woman

[10:05] had just had a baby the day before so she's home she's not at work and the husband's on paternity leave so he's there with her too and I hear her say I think somebody's in the hall and I told the guy stop and we're silent and then the husband says I don't hear anything I told him go he starts doing it again and she says no I'm pretty sure I hear something something out there I said stop this was in a foreign language that I happened to speak so we're waiting the

[10:37] husband says I think you're imagining things I told him go he starts going again and then she says I hear somebody out there and she comes and opens the door and just as she opens the door I turn to block him so she can't see him and she says who are you and I said oh hello uh I'm sorry I said I I think I must be lost I'm looking for my aunt's apartment and I gave her a name and she said there's nobody there's nobody in this building by that name and I said oh is this number you know 1205 whatever

[11:10] street and she says no this is 1207 and I said oh I'm so sorry I must have the wrong building and she gives me a funny look but she closes the door and I told him go and and then we hear click and the door opens and we went in and did our thing but we came that close to getting caught but you've never had like a booby trap like a string that's on the ground that trips you over or somebody knowing you no than goodness um although in Afghanistan that happened frequently Al-Qaeda would booby trap pretty much

[11:42] everything that they were forced to evacuate like did they have like Indiana Jones style traps with like little spikes come out not nothing arcan like that a lot of trip wires is what it was yeah and they would do things like they would take I have actually some photos on my phone um they took um Christmas cards and in the Christmas card they would put a Detonator so Detonator is relatively flat right it's like two quarters on top of each other or three quarters on top of each

[12:12] other and then close the Christmas card so you'd open up the Christmas card and it would blow your hands off oh man yeah so yeah they they be trapped a lot of stuff wow sound like something out of Looney Tunes you open up a Christmas card and blow your hands off yeah I can't believe that so um did you ever see any weird animals in your experience strange you know like at a yeah I must have seen two dozen desert foxes once in one night in the Sinai Peninsula I had never seen a desert fox before and they only come out at night

[12:42] were you out in the desert yeah what were you doing camping no camping I'm going to Camp the lodge star Lodge yeah Mischief um so where they just came out in the middle of the night they come out of their Burrows in the middle of the night because it's cooler and they hunt for I don't know mice I guess I don't know um saw a giraffe once off in the distance Oh I thought you said someone's living room maybe some of those people you have to go after you know they have they keep wild pets I remember the the stories of Holly salasi you'd have a

[13:14] whole train of baboons and lions and everything scream they do they scream yeah that's why have and where did you see baboons at no no no I'm saying highly Cass um peacock scream we saw peacocks a lot yeah both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan wow yeah they're very uh they don't like when people come around them and so they just start shrieking so they're good uh like guard dogs right do you ever had did you ever have problems with dreams like night terrors because of the work you did I

[13:44] left Pakistan 17 years ago and I still dream about it every single night do you have a recurring dream yeah I do what is it it's mostly that Satan's after me and he's chasing me from H to H really yeah like a literal Satan yeah like with horns and spiky tail and everything what color does it it I mean you see it visibly in the dream and is it in the same like a same location a building or room yeah I'm I'm running around filad Pakistan like trying to take cover from

[14:17] Satan I know he's after me I know he's nearby and I these places are all dumps and they're all like one room mud Huts or made out of concrete block and I'm like I can't hide here Satan's going to find me for sure so you never or have dreams of like people you've met or weird it's just this entity yeah do you believe in Supernatural stuff or do you just is it because you're raised in Orthodox Church yeah I believe in God and the devil right yeah so that's interesting so you have this to this day that dream oh yeah yeah yeah anything

[14:48] the Veterans Administration was developing a blood pressure medication um starts with a P but the Name Escapes Me Now and so they were giving it to to patients at the VA hospitals and it didn't do anything at all to help their blood pressure but it had an odd side side effect of making them uh forget what they had dreamt the night before and so now it's used for PTSD it's quite effective do you use that every night you have PTSD oh still

[15:21] years from your experience in Pakistan what was worse now you went to prison you told me how what was that was a piece of cake prison was oh yeah wow so just the fear of of being you were like you know in the undercover state kind of all the time oh yeah so you'd be a better actor than most people in Hollywood then really I like to think I would because your life depended on you getting the lines righta you're like a method actor like Daniel de Lewis or something I wish I had Daniel Lewis's money yeah but you could probably perform better than him in some of those

[15:51] roles you know maybe I'll tell you I was very very concerned about my personal safety in Pakistan very concerned and one day you know I would I would leave I I stayed in a small 16 room Guest House rather than at the Marriott cuz what are they going to blow up first they're going to blow up the Marriott and what did they do four weeks after I got there they blew up the Marriott and killed 56 people so I stayed in this little guest house where nobody would know and nobody would recognize me and um I would leave every day at a different time and take a

[16:23] different route to work just for my own safety one day I leave I'm driving to the m Embassy and I see a guy on a motorcycle wearing a red helmet and he's trying really hard to stay in my blind spot now the reason I even paid any attention to this guy was that he had to be the only person in Pakistan wearing a motorcycle helmet I don't even know where you'd buy a motorcycle helmet in Pakistan so I'd slow down he'd slow down I speed

[16:53] up he speeds up I said oh this isn't good so I made my way to the Embassy and when I got to the entrance to the Diplomatic quarter he he broke off I worked a long day 12 13 14 hours so it was night time by the time I left and again I took a different route home every night sure enough there he is he's on me again well that's the definition of surveillance it's multiple sightings at time and distance so I've seen him in different places at different times and

[17:24] at different distances from both home and work so I'm positive I'm under surveillance the next morning I woke up at 5:00 in the morning I went outside I looked around I didn't see anybody on the street I took we had these mirrors on you know sticks and I looked under the car I don't see any bombs or anything I get in the car I start driving around again he's on me 5 o' in the morning I get to the Embassy I waited until the security guy came to work and

[17:55] I said listen I am under surveillance I'm 100% sure and I told him now three sightings over the course of two days and he said okay well we have to wait till the chief comes in so we waited another hour or two till the Chief came in went and told him explained everything gave him all the details and he said okay he goes you know what you have to do and I said I know so I signed out a a 9mm and all day long I I couldn't focus

[18:26] on work all day long because I'm thinking I have to kill this guy this afternoon and I really didn't want to cuz I had never killed anybody at the CIA it just wasn't my thing I was always doing other things right and the guys were kind of like you know there was there was seven guys who were working for me they were come on don't worry about it don't worry it's all going to be worth it it's all for your own safety we're going to have two other cars out there on you don't worry about anything midday I went to a joint safe house that we were running with the Pakistani

[18:56] intelligence service that's where we used to inter prisoners and I finished my interrogation I started walking out and then I stopped and I turned and I said I saiden Muhammad are you following me and he said no why and I said because I'm under surveillance I'm positive I'm under surveillance and if I see this guy one more time I'm gonna kill him and I never saw him again later on a penetration

[19:29] of a friendly service told me that they had been talking about me amongst themselves and they said that nobody could be as nice as I am that has to be fake right that I was just being that nice to them so that they would drop their guard because I must be spying on them and so they put this guy on me just to see what am I doing when I'm not with them well I I

[19:59] wasn't doing anything I was doing my work but I was going to kill their guy because he was a really bad surveillance did you ever have to kill anybody no you've never in your life no thank God not only never killed anybody no animals never even ran over squirrel have you dodged a squirrel and almost lost your life in the process no I dodged a deer and almost lost my life in the process did you come eye to eye with a deer as you're swerving in training oh wow totally Amica a new car

[20:30] so why don't they fire you then if you wouldn't take a deer's life how you you know how many cars we go through oh no I'm talking about the fact that they saw that you wouldn't kill a deer that's not going to be a good agent right now you know some guys their job is to go out and kill people and mine wasn't mine was to recruit people mine was to be the they saw you as a Salesman as a cheerleader yeah so you could either let me take you to dinner and agree to be my paid agent or that other guy back there who's not not saying anything he's going to shoot you in the head you have a

[21:01] choice so you were the nice guy you were the option A mhm always did you ever encounter any Good Samaritans that got you out of a bad spot in your career in the in the agency no how about the People You Meet overseas any Good Samaritans in Pakistan yeah not in Pakistan but in other places any story that comes to mind of someone coming out do going the extra mile or doing something that you know what it's still classified and I probably shouldn't say but yeah there were some really really

[21:33] good-hearted people out there yes what do you think makes a good Samaritan you know do those kind of things when they don't have to you know I asked that question of a psychologist and he told me that Good Samaritans whistleblowers people of that ilk have an unusually clearly defined sense of right and wrong and it's because they usually come from from very tightly knit um churchgoing synagogue going

[22:04] whatever families you know this is an interesting thing about the CIA there is no ethics training none zero you either go into the CIA with your own personal moral code or you don't have a moral code because it's not going to be taught to you and so for a lot of people they're never really sure where that moral line is that they shouldn't cross when I lecture at universities I always ask the same question as a as an example of this let's say you're a CIA case

[22:36] officer and you've recruited a penetration of a foreign intelligence service um or no even better of a foreign terrorist group right so this guy's the real deal he's giv you information that is allowing you to save American lives and disrupt attacks and everything he's told you has been true so you go to meet with him you're somewhere in the Middle East somewhere let's say you're in Cairo or Aman or whatever and he says to you listen I've

[23:07] given you everything you've wanted everything I've told you is true now you're going to do something for me I want you to go get me a prostitute and if you don't get me a prostitute I'm not going to give you any more information do you get him the prostitute yes or no what would you do
