THE LANGLEY FILES: CIA'S PODCASTHOSTED BYCENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
You might have heard a thing or two about the CIA, but have you ever heard from the CIA? In the Central Intelligence Agency's first public podcast, you will. Let us be your guides around the corridors of CIA Headquarters in Langley, as you step beyond the Hollywood scripts and shadowed whispers to hear directly from the people serving each day as America's first line of defense. These are their stories. This is The Langley Files.
You here. You are CIA's deputy director for digital innovation, head of CIA's directorate of digital innovation. What does that role entail and what does digital innovation look here at CIA. Okay. Well, I should start by explaining a little bit about the directorate. We were established in 2015, so we're the youngest of the director so far. It was created really to seize the best of technology and integrate it into human intelligence and all source analysis, which is another mission of ours. So the DDI includes functions like data, data science, cyber, all kinds of cyber, cyber operations, cyber intelligence, cyber defense, as well as IT and application development or for development and on and on, open source intelligence as well. And actually, one quick follow-up question for the intelligence wants out there. You mentioned cyber operations with be CCI? That's exactly right. The cyber center for intelligence. So people who are listening might wonder, what binds all of those things together? And for us, really, it's the people. It's the skills that our people bring to all of those functions because if you think about it, you need to have some technical background or an understanding of the digital landscape to succeed in those functions. And we bring that to the rest of the agency Now for me, on a daily basis, what it feels like to be the DDI is problem solving, and it's just absolutely brilliant. To be with this cadre of officers because they have an appetite for solving really hard problems. They're really good at it, and it's huge variety. And, Lakshmi, one of those cyber efforts that, Julian was gracious enough to to kind of explain to us is the agencies were concerning artificial intelligence. You are CIA's chief artificial intelligence officer. Can you maybe explain what that job entails? Sure. So, essentially, what my role is is leading the CIA's AI strategy and driving our
The d o. I grew up as the, son of a state department foreign service officer and had the experience of going to junior high school in North Norway, 100 of miles north of the Arctic Circle, landing in Beijing the week, Mao Zedong died in 1976 to transitioning to see all the splendors of, Bordeaux, France was a real sort of interesting insight since really prepared me, in some ways to give me the curiosity and inquisitiveness of what's happening around me that's been such a part of who I am now. I had the incredible privilege to serve in, Navy SEAL teams. And it was a great experience for me. It was the sense of having a very, very clear mission and a sense of impact, which was just intriguing. And as I sought ways to continue my sort of personal and professional growth, I was deeply intrigued by the possibilities of serving in CIA. I had several foreign languages. I had grown up overseas. I sought to have sort of, you know, impact in the international arena. I saw that as just a really exciting and a welcome opportunity. And then the, years I've been with the CIA, serving in many, many different locations, you know, across the Middle East where I had the opportunity to learn Arabic and serve with some incredibly talented officers to increasingly positions of, greater seniority into filing arriving here. So it's been, in some ways, an amazing journey. I think, ultimately, all of us are seeking to have meaning in our life, seeking to have impact. And I have been truly blessed from that perspective of being able to be involved.
The false, the stamps and the caches and so forth to make it look as though the houseguests had arrived at a different time as part of this film crew and that kind of thing. They do final touch ups on their passports that had arrived in the diplomatic pouch from Ottawa. All that kind of work, that these guys were pros at and so that's what they did. Tony told a great story about how one of the things that was sent out to them was an ink pad that they would use for stamps and that the ink pad had gone dry. And so he looks around the room and he sees the ambassadors liquor cabinet and he grabs the highest alcohol content liquor that he can find, which was a Scotch whiskey of probably a decent age. And he splashes a little in the ink pad and doesn't miss a beat. What it does is it activates the ink and so he's able to then use the stamp. So let's listen to Ed discuss some of those last minute challenges they face as they work to get every last detail of those false documents correct. We're doing so much. Leave. When we got arrived in country, I had picked up a couple of those yellow sheets. Yeah. Because we had to have them for each passport. And, it was a long sheet like, yay. Mhmm. So when I filled those, when I filled those sheets out, it was a difficult job and I I think I messed up 4 or 4 or 5 of them. So I said, hey, would you mind going on back to the airport getting some work? And the Canadians just out there. And this moment is in fact the scene depicted in that painting we mentioned in part 1, hanging in a hall here at CIA headquarters. Tony and the previously unknown second CIA officer sitting at a table in Tehran, making the final preparations to bring these 6 Americans home. Can you speak a little bit about this particular painting and the history behind it, Rob? This painting is a
In the film, Affleck plays Tony Mendez, the real life CIA master of disguise and false documentation who spearheaded the operation and snuck into Iran to carry it out. Those listeners will remember that in the movie version of these events, Affleck's character sneaks into Iran alone. But here, in a hallway of the real life CIA headquarters, there's a painting commemorating the operation. In it, Tony sits at a table in Tehran, hard at work on the final preparations for the exfiltration of the 6 Americans. And in that painting, there's someone else working alongside him, someone whose face isn't visible and whose name the plaque beneath the painting doesn't reveal, even here in CIA headquarters. And that's because in real life, Tony Mendez didn't sneak into Iran alone. In real life, there was a second CIA officer there with him, someone who undertook this daring operation alongside Tony, someone whose identity has remained a secret for the ensuing years, until now. Because today on the Langley files, you're gonna meet this previously undisclosed hero of the Argo operation. You'll learn his name So stay tuned, because whether you've seen the movie, studied these events, or are just coming in from the cold, this is a spy history like you've never heard it before. So let's start by turning back the clock. The year is 1979, and the place is Tehran, Iran, where protests are forming outside the US Embassy. To help us understand how we got here and what's about to happen next, we're turning to one of CIA's in house historians, Brent. Brent, thanks for being with us here today. Sure. Happy to do it.
We always used disguises? Disguise itself goes back, you know, as far back as history pretty much. As long as there's been spycraft, there's been the need for disguise. Our office itself actually has its roots in the OSS and, we were talking a little bit about some of the artifacts you can see at the museum that actually talk about the different disguise techniques that they're using back then for, you know, World War 2 support, parachuting behind enemy lines and having entire kits to, like, help them make insignias and paraphernalia to blend in as German officers. So that's pretty wild to me that we've been doing this kind of stuff, like, from the get go. Right. Yeah. And for our listeners that haven't tuned in to some of the previous episodes, the OSS is the Office of Strategic Services. Services. That was our predecessor, before CIA became CIA. So you're talking, you know, over 75 years ago that this tradecraft has been kind of embedded into what we do in our day to day operations overseas. We're actually one of the oldest surviving disciplines from the OSS days. Oh, that's cool. And it's really cool. There's an old disguise manual from the OSS days. Really? I think we have like a copy floating around the office somewhere and and it talks about like okay after you've jumped out of the plane and landed with your team like make sure you have like your kit to like make German officer insignias to fit on a uniform that you can steal from someone nearby where they're stationed like all kinds of wild stuff is the handbook still good The root of it is good. So, like, you know, the basics are always solid. I wouldn't use lead, metal anymore and you know some of that lead based paint that they were talking about to make some of their little things. But our materials have definitely evolved, and we're always looking to incorporate new technology whenever it's viable and, trying to scale to meet, you know, critical mission need. And the fact that disguise is still one of the oldest technical skill sets used in the agency successfully. So it's one of those things that will probably never go away just because it's been around for so long and it's always been successful. So
