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00:11Most of us, when we're young, are idealistic.
00:14Well, I was idealistic.
00:16And I was sort of a guy that liked to push against authority.
00:21I liked to do the unexpected.
00:24I enjoy chaos.
00:28Different people are drawn to different jobs.
00:30I was drawn to special things in the military.
00:35The CIA was not on my radar when I grew up.
00:39Well, one day, something happened to me that changed my outlook to my life
00:45and how I viewed my sense of purpose.
00:51If there was a situation where it's uncertain,
00:56what do you do when you encounter bad guys?
00:59When do you talk to people and negotiate?
01:02When do you shoot people?
01:04When do you run?
01:05When do you fight?
01:06I'm willing to gamble my life.
01:08And I don't mind gambling my life.
01:25In espionage, there's a hierarchy of sources when you're recruiting sources.
01:30You know, everybody wants to recruit the code clerk from the enemy country that works in their embassy
01:36or all the secret codes, right?
01:37That's the gold standard that everybody wants.
01:40Well, that actually very, very rarely happens.
01:45My name is Gary Harrington.
01:49I joined the CIA in 2004.
01:53Before that, I was in Army Special Forces
01:56and assigned to 5th Special Forces Group, which focuses on the Middle East.
02:02I actually retired from the Army on a Friday
02:05and then went to work at Langley as a CIA officer on Monday.
02:11For me, by that point, my military career involved decades of training
02:17and being in foreign countries and being in Afghanistan and being in Iraq.
02:24And at that time, I had no idea I would be back in Afghanistan
02:29trying to track down al-Qaeda and Taliban.
02:38On the ground in Afghanistan, it's apparent the ongoing U.S. air attacks have damaged the Taliban's ability to wage
02:45war.
02:46During the Afghanistan war, the CIA had multiple missions in Afghanistan.
02:53We deployed because of 9-11, so number one was destroying al-Qaeda, getting Osama bin Laden.
02:59And so we had to get as close to the enemy as we could to collect intelligence
03:04and to conduct our operations against terrorists.
03:09As these strikes continue, reports are trickling in that Taliban commanders are beginning to defect.
03:15We need to get those sources. We need the intelligence.
03:20And we need the impact that having those guys secretly working for us can provide.
03:31My name is Chris. I was a CIA lifer, worked for them over 30 years,
03:37and most of my time was spent on counterterrorism in the Middle East.
03:41Gary struck me right from the outset as somebody that had good instincts and good judgment.
03:47You know, he wasn't a kid. He was an older Special Forces soldier.
03:51He'd been in third world countries before.
03:53He'd worked with indigenous forces before.
03:56So right off the bat, I could see that he brought something special to the table.
04:03In 2006 and 7, I was in my second year as an operations officer for the CIA.
04:10I served in sort of a quasi-position where I did some paramilitary things at night time.
04:18And then the rest of the day, I worked undercover in an embassy.
04:25And about that time, I had had some success at establishing contact with some members of the Taliban in Pakistan.
04:35I started learning some habits and traditions of how you interact with people that might provide information.
04:43Now, learning that was almost like the secret code.
04:46Like, I might offer money to a Taliban mullah who can't take money or can't take a gift.
04:53But I knew how to do it in a way that would not offend him and would give him cover
05:00to take it.
05:02You know, I would give them just a traditional gift that one of their tribesmen might give them.
05:07But then somewhere in that, I made sure there might be some money in that.
05:13And then I would never speak of it.
05:15But then the next time I asked, would you meet me?
05:19I rarely got to know.
05:22I got word that someone that was on the top 10 wanted list, a Taliban mullah, might be willing to
05:32come and meet with me and perhaps work with me.
05:39Gary's effort to recruit a senior Taliban leader was of high interest to me and others.
05:46Bringing high level Taliban commander over to our side could be of tremendous importance.
05:51A top 10 mullah in the Taliban would know more about the organization of strategic plans, maybe finances, avenues of
06:02resupply.
06:03Perhaps as a senior person, they knew someone even higher on the list.
06:10Maybe they were any of the Taliban that had contact with Al Qaeda.
06:18You know, of course, I had no proof of that.
06:21And the proof would be, let's try to get him to come across.
06:25And that would be, you know, our proof.
06:29When you consider an operation such as to meet this mullah, there are a lot of things you have to
06:36take into mind.
06:38The first face that Taliban mullah sees shouldn't be an American face.
06:43So an Afghan general was assigned by the minister of defense to work with me and we developed this operation.
06:51The only place he could meet was in a very remote, dangerous place where there had been no U.S.
06:58presence.
06:59And it was far from any type of support.
07:05The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is a lengthy one, some 1,500 miles with varied terrain, some very mountainous, some more
07:13desert.
07:13It stretches from Pakistan's border with Iran all the way up to the far north of Pakistan.
07:21My name is Mike Vickers. I'm a former CIA operations officer and former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
07:31The border region is quite dangerous.
07:35Areas that, for instance, I could operate in as a CIA officer in the 1980s had become no-go terrain.
07:43After 9-11, the environment had gotten a lot more hostile threats of bombs or assassinations.
07:54You know, every environment is different and sometimes that's a scary thing.
07:59Having physical courage is a big part of being a CIA officer, especially a case officer in the field.
08:05And so having somebody like Gary in his Special Forces pedigree, that meant that you had that physical courage quality
08:11that you need to go far out away from safe areas in the hope of making a hugely important achievement.
08:22So we were told this guy would come out of Pakistan at this really remote place and we were going
08:32to meet him
08:33and get him in our control and then move him to somewhere where we could sit down and have a
08:39conversation about what we might be able to do together.
08:45Fortunately, trying to figure out how you would get somewhere like that undetected fits right in with my experience and
08:53training as a Special Forces soldier.
08:55So I worked with the SAD guys in the Special Activities Division, which later became known as the Special Activities
09:04Center,
09:05to devise a plan.
09:07To devise a plan.
09:07Well, how would we do this?
09:10All these areas out by the border of Pakistan are essentially hostile.
09:17My name is Nick Mulroy.
09:19I was a Marine.
09:20I still am, we're always Marines.
09:22From there, I was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency into a component that's called Special Activities Center.
09:30Once you leave the bases, you go into harm's way and you have to be ready from that moment on.
09:35Sometimes you go heavy with a lot of very overt force, but you can't do that on most intelligence operations
09:43because you defeat the purpose of clandestinity.
09:46So you have to plan for all of that.
09:49With the SAD guys doing a lot of the planning, we figured that, okay, the Vanguard or the initial group
09:57of us would get three thin-skinned vehicles.
10:00And when I say thin-skinned, I meant unarmored, non-U.S. looking cars or little SUVs or pickups that
10:09fit in with that remote village,
10:11which was located on the Pakistan border between Anangahar Province and Nuristan.
10:20That area in particular is the wild west of Pakistan.
10:24You have different ethnic groups.
10:26The Pakistani intelligence service has informants, but it's also the insurgent groups or terrorist groups that make it very dangerous.
10:35You know, so it does make it a challenging operational environment.
10:39If it's a high-threat environment, then the ideal is you have a three-inch thick window, but then they're
10:46going to know who you are.
10:47If you're going out in a thin-skinned vehicle, if there's a confrontation, then you're going to be very vulnerable
10:53because the bullets can go completely through it.
10:56So you have to balance your ability to obviously protect yourself with your ability to blend in.
11:02It's very rare that the CIA allowed somebody to move in an unarmored vehicle, particularly an operations officer as I
11:14was.
11:16But it was deemed essential for this mission.
11:24And so at like 3.30, 4 o'clock in the morning, we kicked off to go on this mission.
11:32And in our group was probably four or five SAD guys, myself, and I had that Afghan general wearing civilian
11:42clothes and his driver.
11:44They were in a separate pickup truck than the U.S. guys.
11:52These operations are usually seen as long shots.
11:56You operate on the assumption that this could all be a provocation, could be a trick.
12:02The goal could be to harm us, to harm the case officer, harm others.
12:07I was concerned that we could be being set up.
12:17We knew that it's not common for cars to be traveling in the middle of the night.
12:24And if we have headlights on, well, that's going to give us away really early.
12:30So we want to drive with headlights off, which means we have to have night vision goggles on.
12:38But who can drive at night without lights?
12:41So we had a plan that if we ended up coming right by a house, we would turn on the
12:47lights right before we got there.
12:48So they might assume that we were a local or somebody trying to travel to the border.
12:57Operations conducted close to the Pakistan border could be especially dangerous.
13:02You had enemy across the border using Pakistan territory for sanctuary.
13:07And so the enemy had more opportunities, more potential to make a move against us at the border.
13:14And they did. They did so routinely.
13:21The Special Activities Division had a group of Afghans that they trained militarily.
13:28We had two pickup trucks with those in and each of those trucks had a machine gun mounted in the
13:35back.
13:36And they would stay behind us like a 30 minute delay between us and them.
13:41And of course, guns tend to draw guns.
13:43So you want them not necessarily with you, but you want them to be able to react.
13:48So if something happens, either you're ambushed or this whole thing is a setup, you can strong point in a
13:54location long enough for these other folks to show up.
13:58So that was our security thing.
14:01We didn't have a predator flying overhead to provide surveillance in advance.
14:07We had no idea to call for air support.
14:10So we drove outside of Zolalabad on paved roads for a while and then started getting on trails and gravel
14:20roads.
14:21It was dark. You had to drive really slow.
14:25That was our job to be masters of chaos.
14:28And in many ways that typifies Gary Harrington because he can find himself amidst chaos and find a, not just
14:38a good solution, but a great solution.
14:40To, to whatever that challenge may be.
14:43So I'm John Mulhall.
14:44I was a colonel commanding the 5th Special Forces Group when I met then Sergeant First Class Gary Harrington the
14:51same day I took command of it.
14:53Gary became my, my go-to guy when I had some hairy, thorny problem that I really needed someone to
15:01take ownership of now.
15:03And he was also a man with the moral courage to do the right thing.
15:12The operation of Tora Bora were aimed at pinpointing the, the, the number one high value target, which was Osama
15:18bin Laden.
15:19In the fiercest fighting yet of the Tora Bora campaign, U.S. Special Forces joined Afghan guerrillas in attacking Al
15:27Qaeda positions.
15:29There was intelligence that pinpointed bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains.
15:33So I was asked for, to help support that. And Gary was one of the first guys I sent out
15:38there to do that.
15:39We didn't really have many U.S. troops on the ground at that time. So we're going to try to
15:45use local untrained Afghan warlords to try to go against Al Qaeda.
15:53There's that tension that's always at play with your indigenous counterpart. But that trust and rapport, everything begins with trust
15:58and rapport.
15:59And I would say Gary was masterful at doing that. In war zones like Afghanistan, it's littered with hidden caches
16:06of weapons.
16:07And these things aren't necessarily safeguarded like in an American ammunition bunker. When they move these things, it's not unheard
16:14of that a mistake's made and there's a terrible explosion and, and they'd lose people.
16:20I mean, done, vaporized. So in some cases, it's the more junior local guys who get told, hey, you're driving
16:31the truck that's full of a lot of big bang in the back.
16:35And Gary felt it was important for him to show that, hey, look, I trust you guys and I'm, I'm
16:41willing to accept the same amount of risk as you guys.
16:43So one day on his own, Gary just jumped in the front of the truck with so many young guys
16:48driving one of those dicey explosives filled trucks just to send that message that, hey, I'm, I'm here with you
16:54guys.
16:55We're, we're all part of that. That selflessness of Gary, willing to accept that risk, took him to a whole
17:00nother level of respect with those indigenous fighters in that group.
17:03So that's the kind of guy Gary was.
17:10Finally, just before dawn, we rolled into the outskirts of the town.
17:17We wanted to get there before people were moving around a lot because any little village, people have to get
17:24up and go get water from a communal water pump.
17:28So you wanted to be there before that activity got too heavy.
17:33When it comes to conducting risky operations in the war zone, we've got to maintain clandestinity and we've got to
17:40have a low profile.
17:42There's probably bad guys living right there in the village.
17:46But if not, they're sure going to tell them and it's going to be found out very soon.
17:50And then, of course, the reaction would be, and they did this often, they would set out on the radio,
17:56there's Americans here, they're in this location.
18:00The only way out of here is these two routes.
18:03And then they would try to start setting in ambushes.
18:07As it was getting dawn, we were trying to figure out, OK, we have three vehicles, the two thin skinned
18:14ones that we were in.
18:16And then the Afghan general had his truck.
18:19These are strange vehicles that don't belong here.
18:22So how are we going to get them out of sight?
18:24We found one house that had, you know, it was a compound with the big mud wall around it that
18:31had enough room that we could get the vehicles in it and out of sight.
18:35But to choose someone at random like this certainly has the chance that they could turn you over to the
18:42bad guys.
18:44With all assets, whether they're intelligence assets or action oriented assets, it is difficult to fully trust individuals out there,
18:52but we do everything we can.
18:54But ultimately, it is a judgment call.
18:58So I had the general who spoke the language go up and ask the guy that lived there.
19:06It was a man and his family.
19:08You know, I don't think we were threatening.
19:10Matter of fact, we always try to be nice to the people and help out where we can, be extremely
19:16polite.
19:17We paid them a little bit of money to open the gates.
19:20We backed our vehicles in there and enclosed the gates.
19:24And we stayed inside there as we tried to use our cell phone to make contact with this mullah that
19:33we hoped was coming out of Pakistan.
19:36We tried repeatedly to make contact with this person at the phone number we had.
19:44We were unable to get a good signal.
19:47So because we couldn't get a signal and the time is going and now the village is waking up.
19:53I'm hearing villagers move around.
19:55You hear chatter, laughter.
19:58Life is going on.
19:59Now, I know that by now this family that we're keeping sequestered in there where we are is going to
20:06be missed.
20:07First, it'll start and then word will start spreading.
20:10You know, I always say it's sort of like when you go in a place like that, it's like lighting
20:16a fuse.
20:17Picture dynamite.
20:18The problem is you don't, A, know how long the fuse is and, B, you don't know how big the
20:25explosive is on the other end.
20:29All I know is the fuse is burning and very soon the bad guys will know that we're there and
20:36that we are a ripe target for them.
20:53Cell coverage was non-existent in that area.
20:57The villagers told us that there was a place further forward from where we were that you could sometimes get
21:05a cell signal.
21:06Then the Afghan general turned to me and said, hey, I blend in.
21:11Let me go forward to that place and try to make phone contact.
21:15To go forward from where we were kind of meant you were stepping on Pakistani territory.
21:22And none of us had permission to be in Pakistan and the general surely shouldn't have been there either.
21:28But in the end, I decided that the mission was going to be a bust and let me give him
21:35one shot to try to go forward and make contact.
21:40Meeting with members of the enemy in the war zone may be more drawn out than some other operations, but
21:46the potential payoff is huge.
21:48And so if we could find a way forward that we were comfortable with, we were going to try it.
21:55So I need to put some guidelines and protection anytime you let somebody go out.
22:00And I told him that, hey, I can give you 30 to 45 minutes, but we have to be out
22:07of here because now it's past 8.30, 9 o'clock.
22:11Word is out.
22:12That fuse is burning.
22:14The fuse is burning.
22:15The fuse is burning.
22:16But, you know, off he went with the promise he'd be back in 45 minutes.
22:2730 minutes passes by.
22:30I extend that to 45.
22:32No general.
22:37Now we're all getting quite hyper.
22:39What has happened to him?
22:41Were the Taliban or Al Qaeda waiting outside?
22:43Did they grab him when he came out?
22:46Are they getting ready to attack us?
22:49Now, almost another hour has passed.
22:52Even more people are aware we're here.
22:54The attack may be in progress.
22:56So everybody's getting more and more amped up.
23:02And the SAD guys are starting to ask me, hey, what are we going to do?
23:06And I was honored, to be honest, that they asked me because a lot of SAD, or former Special Forces,
23:13Marine Reads,
23:13recon, SEALs, that normally would be one of their calls.
23:18I think the CIA Special Operations people that were supporting him, that he was working with,
23:26had more trust in Gary than they might have had in somebody else because they knew that Gary had a
23:32great Special Forces background.
23:34He's not all starry-eyed.
23:36He's got a good grip on the situation.
23:40I thought back several years before, in 2002, when I had been the tactical leader on a team.
23:48I was assigned as a Special Forces soldier on an intelligence mission, and there was the CIA team leader.
23:57His main job was to keep us hooked up with this Afghan warlord.
24:03And it was out in the middle of this valley in the Taliban and Al Qaeda territory.
24:09So we just roll into this vulnerable location.
24:13There were probably a total of five or six Americans.
24:18And I noticed the person we were supposed to meet didn't show up.
24:23And then I noticed that what few locals had been around disappeared.
24:31You're thinking, is this an ambush?
24:34You know, it kind of made my spine tingle.
24:39So as the tactical leader, I turned to the CIA team leader and said,
24:45I think we're in a bad place.
24:47People are disappearing.
24:49We're really vulnerable here.
24:51And I think we've been set up.
24:53And, you know, he said, well, we're supposed to meet this person here.
24:57And I remember saying, hey, 10 minutes more, but then we got to get, you know,
25:03I used to read stories about the Special Forces guys in Vietnam.
25:07And they didn't really care about authority.
25:09They did things their way.
25:12And that, I admit that that appealed to that part of my personality.
25:19And so, yeah, I was like, it was time to get out.
25:24You know, it's like that thing you see in a movie where they suddenly notice
25:29that there are no birds and no animals and it's definitely quiet.
25:32That, that was the feeling in that moment, that pregnant moment just before an ambush.
25:41So we were kind of sitting ducks in the middle of this big boat.
25:48And the CIA team leader happened to be Chris.
25:58I was blissfully unaware about how dangerous things were getting.
26:06I think the first time or two, I probably pushed back and wanted to do a little more,
26:11collect some more intelligence, make some more contacts.
26:14The operations officer, you know, he's focused on doing his meeting and running the intelligence aspects of that.
26:22And it's my job to pay attention to the safety.
26:25And so, I was like, yeah, you know, this seems like that moment just before an ambush.
26:33I realized that if Gary, this experienced special forces soldier is getting nervous,
26:42then maybe I should be nervous too.
26:47Ultimately, Chris followed my recommendation and we left.
26:54After we got back, we found out that the signals intelligence had overheard Al Qaeda on the radio
27:02saying that they had an ambush against us, but we left before they could get everybody in place.
27:10Had we stayed, we'd have been ambushed and there weren't really many of us to, to be able to fight
27:18that off.
27:20Gary Harrington did an awful lot for that team, probably saved me from myself,
27:25probably saved the other team members more than once.
27:27I look back to how we avoided that ambush.
27:31Some of it was instinct, but that instinct is born on decades of training, being in foreign countries,
27:40and, you know, all combined to help make that instinct or that feeling an informed one.
27:52So I started discussing options with the SAD team leader.
27:57And at that point, our options were, A, forget the general, we leave,
28:01and he and his driver will have to make their own way back,
28:05or B, stay there longer and try to give the general more time.
28:10He also happened to have a letter on him that was signed by the Minister of Defense.
28:16If he were stopped and captured by Taliban or Al Qaeda, that letter would give him away as a member
28:23of the government.
28:23So that would be instant death for him.
28:26And then what if he were stopped by Pakistani officials?
28:30Relations aren't that great between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
28:34Now you have a senior officer here illegally in another country.
28:41And he's got a letter that he's doing some kind of secret mission or whatever for the Minister of Defense.
28:46So that would be a huge international incident.
28:51The other alternative that the SAD guy came up with was we make one attempt to try to recover the
28:59general.
29:00Maybe he's a little bit further forward trying to make phone contact.
29:04Maybe he's made contact and the guy says he'll be there in a minute.
29:09But now to do so, it's broad daylight.
29:12And we're going to be seeing when we come out.
29:15And we're going forward further in the Taliban and Al Qaeda territory.
29:20What are we going to do? How are we going to be protected?
29:28Up to that point, the mission had been to get the mullah that we came for.
29:35With the general gone and our time essentially run out, the mission shifted.
29:40I had to shift my mind.
29:42Either you adapt or you die.
29:45That is the key to any military operations is the ability to adjust based on not what you planned.
29:51Right. But what is actually unfolding in front of you?
29:56To try to go get him meant that we were certainly going into more dangerous Taliban Al Qaeda territory.
30:04But the smart thing to do, what the agency would want me to do is leave now.
30:09Get your people out of here. Save the Americans.
30:12It's tough about the Afghan, but he's going to have to make it on his own.
30:16But then there's that warrior ethos of never leave a teammate behind.
30:22And the Afghan was with us and trusting us.
30:25So I didn't want to leave him behind.
30:29And that gets back to that whole ethos of working with your indigenous counterparts.
30:33They're part of your team.
30:36The SAD guy said, well, we can call up those two trucks of Afghans, the machine guns on the trucks,
30:42cause the secrecy is over.
30:44And then at least when we move out, we'll be a force to be reckoned with.
30:48And yeah, I debated that, but it was kind of like one of those moments where I think we kind
30:55of looked at each other like, yeah, we're following the warrior's code.
30:59We're not leaving. We're gone.
31:01So the warrior code is beyond just being a good soldier.
31:05It is more of an ethical moral code than any of that.
31:10It is wisdom.
31:11It is justice.
31:12It is courage.
31:14It is honor.
31:14It is your honor.
31:15That's what matters more in some cases, not to be dramatic than life itself.
31:24So sure enough, we left the compound.
31:27The trucks came.
31:28We all left in our little convoy.
31:31So now it's good.
31:33If it's my career, it's my career.
31:34If we have to fight our way out, you know, we get in a gunfight, then that's what it is.
31:38But we're doing it.
31:40Fortune favors the bold.
31:42And that was something special about Gary is he wasn't put off by the long shot nature of something.
31:49Long ago in my military career, I made the decision, I'm willing to gamble my life.
31:55And I don't mind gambling my life.
32:01When I was 17, I had a religious experience that was a seminal moment.
32:08I grew up around Charlotte, North Carolina.
32:11My parents were children of subsistence farming families.
32:16I was one of those people bullied a lot in school.
32:20And in high school, I started getting panic attacks.
32:24Once in a while, I'd start to go into a class and suddenly waves of panic would hit me.
32:28So I'd started skipping school.
32:30Unfortunately, I did that enough times where I failed the 11th grade.
32:36I was distraught.
32:37It was nighttime.
32:38I was at, I walked outside.
32:41In the woods there, I walked to a dark place.
32:44Just needed time alone, thinking about having to face the realities that I was.
32:50And while I'm there, I see, but off in the corner over here, what I think is like a little
32:56bubble, gas light.
32:59I'm a rational thinking person.
33:02So I, oh, it must be, I've heard of swamp gas or something.
33:05And then it sort of slowly went this way.
33:09And then it started getting bigger.
33:12Then at one point, essentially touched the ground.
33:15Then I heard a voice come out of there.
33:20I was terrified.
33:22And the voice said, do not be afraid.
33:24I have a purpose for you.
33:27And I, I didn't know what to think.
33:31I was pretty shaken by it.
33:33And then I wondered, well, what does that mean?
33:35I have to go be a preacher now?
33:38And I was, that's not who I am.
33:41So then when I became exposed to the Marine Corps and the possibility that, hey, you're going to serve.
33:48From that moment forward, I felt I had a purpose.
33:51I'm going to serve my country and be in battle.
33:53After that, I pushed every opportunity I had to get involved in whatever was the most dangerous thing, the most
34:02elite.
34:02Who's facing combat?
34:04I'll go there.
34:05High probability you're going to get killed.
34:08It dovetailed with what I said, hey, my purpose, because I thought that's what my role was.
34:16So that sense of purpose was essential for this mission.
34:21One of the first things we hit and like a kilometer or two down the road is a tiny little
34:27rock and mud hut.
34:29And it was two Afghan border guys.
34:34Then they were the final outposts looking over Pakistan.
34:39Our operations were limited to the country of Afghanistan.
34:42In terms of conducting operations into Pakistan, as a matter of normal course, that was not going to happen.
34:50And as we rolled up, they said, you can't come here.
34:53And we said, where are you going?
34:55We're going forward.
34:56They, well, you can't do that.
34:58You can't cross here.
34:59And we're like, yeah, we're going.
35:02So off we went.
35:07So we'd probably now gone a couple of kilometers past that checkpoint.
35:12And suddenly from behind us, you see a plume of dirt.
35:17It looks like smoke flying up.
35:19And there's some vehicle racing down this dirt road as fast as it can, trying to get to us.
35:26Is this that ambush that we've been expecting?
35:30Now we all go on alert.
35:34Is this a car going to hit us from this side and then somebody else from somewhere else?
35:39So as this car starts approaching closer and closer, we stop, got our weapons ready, pointing towards the car, ready
35:47to fight it out.
35:50Part of being a professional when it comes to either a military or paramilitary is not just shooting straight.
35:56It's also knowing when to shoot, when not to shoot.
35:58And taking that level of discipline that you don't end up, you know, harming somebody that either isn't innocent or
36:05obviously on your own team.
36:09Everybody had their weapons ready to start firing at the car.
36:17And then it stops like 50 yards behind us.
36:25And the door opens.
36:31And out jumps the general.
36:38And he's, he's, hey, hey.
36:41And he's all happy.
36:42And he comes running up, grabs me and starts hugging me.
36:46He almost has tears in his eyes.
36:48And he was so, so happy.
36:51Even with the speeding car, even knowing that this could be, you know, somebody coming to do harm to them,
36:57they held fire as they should.
36:59And it turned out to be the exact person they were trying to recover.
37:02And I was like, hey, where's your vehicle?
37:05What happened?
37:06And he explained to us that he and his driver had driven forward and they saw a Pakistani border outpost.
37:15And the people in the outpost saw them, so they pulled their vehicle over on a hill before that and
37:22parked it and turned it off.
37:23And then the general said he told his driver, get us out of here.
37:28But he went to turn it and they, this was a dilapidated old pickup truck and his battery was dead.
37:34And by now the Pakistanis are coming towards them.
37:38He realized that he had that letter on him from the minister of defense and that he could not be
37:45stopped with that on him without causing an international incident.
37:50So he told his driver that, hey, you stay here with the vehicle because the driver had a Afghan refugee
37:57card issued by Pakistan.
37:59So he had some credibility there and just tell him that I'm some guy you gave a ride to.
38:06And then the general jumped out of the truck and started running.
38:10He claims that the Pakistanis fired twice, but he ran for his life back towards where we were.
38:18And when he got back part way, somebody told him that, hey, those Americans went that way.
38:24So he commandeered a vehicle and had the person drive him to where we were.
38:31He was so thrilled that we came after him.
38:35I'm not sure if he expected that.
38:37And it really, really sort of cemented the bond between he and I from that point forward.
38:44One of CIA's most important assets is the sacred bond we have with the foreigners that help us.
38:53I think a lot of the foreigners that work with us feel it.
38:57Some of them certainly have experienced it.
38:59There's something in us and especially guys like Gary that, no, we're not going to leave, you know, that foreigner
39:06who's part of our team.
39:07We're not leaving them behind.
39:12Once we had the general, that portion of the mission is over.
39:16And while I had a great sense of relief, OK, we've got the general.
39:21Then it was, let's get the hell out of here and turn the vehicles around and start going.
39:29But it was still going to be a perilous trip out.
39:32And I was pretty nervous.
39:36In the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, roads that run along the bottoms of valleys are sometimes the only thoroughfare.
39:43There was a lot of times where our folks had no choice but to go to a certain location traveling
39:49a certain road in and coming out on the same road.
39:53Generally, you don't want to do that because if you've come in by that route, if they want to try
39:58to ambush you on your way out, they might set up there.
40:02And so that was kind of another thing that made this even more dangerous.
40:08And they could mount a pretty sizable force pretty quickly.
40:12So a platoon size, 30 individuals, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades, pretty complex ambushes.
40:22They've been doing it forever.
40:24While we certainly could run into IEDs or an ambush, we were emboldened and felt strengthened by the fact that
40:35we'd just recovered the general.
40:37So we drove until we started getting on trails.
40:41And once we got off the secondary roads and the dirt roads and hit Jalalabad, we knew that the danger
40:52was over.
40:53And it was with, you know, a great sense of relief that we had, I felt, gone into the belly
40:59of the beast and come out.
41:03To my knowledge, that mullah was never captured.
41:09I always have doubt now, did the guy that we had contact with, did he get cold feet?
41:15Or was it all a lie to lure us somewhere where we could be attacked?
41:23One of the things you learn as a CIA case officer is that you only have a couple of successes
41:29for many, many attempts.
41:31You know, I've heard people throw out the numbers of, you know, one or two out of, out of a
41:35hundred.
41:35But one of the things you develop early on is an attitude that there's a lot of value in making
41:42the good attempt.
41:44The only way we're going to achieve anything is to, is to try.
41:48To have a career as long as mine was, which between the military and the agency was 35 years, I
41:57had a sense of purpose.
41:58For a lot of that time, my sense of purpose may have been warped.
42:02I felt that my role in life was to serve, and I didn't really expect to survive it.
42:09As I neared the end of my military career then, and, and started looking at the agency, is when I
42:16first started thinking that, okay, maybe your job's to just keep serving.
42:21Maybe this whole thing of getting killed is not, not you.
42:26I think that Gary's time early in the war and the time that he spent working alongside CIA officers, I
42:34think that very much helped him in that next career inside the CIA.
42:38I think it was a natural evolution for him to, to continue doing what he'd done so well in, in
42:45Afghanistan and other parts of the world.
42:47A lot of people say, particularly with the CIA, would you go back and do that all again?
42:52Hell yeah, I'd, I'd go back and do it again, every bit of it again, to feel like I'm serving
42:59my country and have the adventure of a lifetime while doing it.
43:04Being a case officer is a job that, it's gonna take everything you've got.
43:08It's gonna take every class you've ever taken, every job you've ever had, every bit of work experience, every book
43:15you've ever read, every movie you've ever watched.
43:18It's gonna take everything you've got to come up with the best set of security measures that allow us to
43:24do something that's really, really dangerous, get it done, come back alive,
43:29and then go back the next day and do it again and not have anybody know.
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