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00:00It's 1908, and you've just been recruited into a nameless unit.
00:03Its founder, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, has devised the most brutal selection method imaginable.
00:10Have the candidates shoot each other and keep whoever's left standing.
00:13There are 34 of you.
00:15Strictly speaking, the FBI should never have existed.
00:19Bonaparte created it without asking anyone's permission.
00:22By the time Congress finds out, it's done.
00:25The Bureau exists, and you're part of it.
00:28The early years are a joke.
00:30Mail fraud, stolen land in Oklahoma.
00:33Laws nobody bothered to write properly.
00:35Then prohibition hits, and everything changes.
00:38Suddenly there are bodies on Chicago sidewalks.
00:41Liquor shipments crossing the country.
00:43And names that are starting to frighten people.
00:46Capone, Dillinger, Babyface Nelson.
00:49That's when your office stops being an experiment and starts making the front page every week.
00:54In 1935, it gets its permanent name.
00:56The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
00:58The FBI.
01:00And at that very moment, on the other side of the country, another president has just received the worst briefing
01:05of his life.
01:06It's December 1941.
01:08And your country has just failed.
01:11Not you personally.
01:12Your entire country.
01:14Japanese aircraft tear through Pearl Harbor and kill more than 2,000 people, while the intelligence pieces that could have
01:20prevented it were sitting scattered across the Navy, the Army, and half a dozen offices that weren't talking to each
01:26other.
01:27Someone knew one piece.
01:28Someone else knew another.
01:30Nobody put them together.
01:32During World War II, a makeshift solution is born.
01:35The OSS.
01:36The Office of Strategic Services.
01:38A mix of spies, saboteurs, and analysts operating behind enemy lines in Europe and Asia.
01:44When the war ends, they shut it down.
01:46And Harry Truman, the new president, almost immediately starts to regret that call.
01:50The Soviet Union is no longer an ally.
01:53It's a threat.
01:54And the United States is flying blind again.
01:57On July 26, 1947, Truman signs the National Security Act.
02:02In one stroke, it creates the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and a civilian agency tasked with collecting,
02:08analyzing, and acting on secret intelligence anywhere in the world.
02:12It's called the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
02:16Truman signs it thinking he's creating an analysis service.
02:19What he actually creates is something else entirely.
02:22And he'll find out too late.
02:24Because back in Washington, one man has been sitting in the same office for over 20 years and isn't going
02:30anywhere.
02:3148 years old.
02:32That's how long J. Edgar Hoover spends running first the Bureau of Investigation and then the FBI.
02:38From 1924 until his death in 1972.
02:43Eight different presidents come and go from the White House.
02:46Hoover stays put, and not one of them dares fire him.
02:50Because they all know that Hoover has a folder with their name on it somewhere in a locked filing cabinet.
02:55In the early days, the work is spectacular.
02:58The agency hunts down Bonnie and Clyde in a 1934 Louisiana ambush after a year on the run.
03:05It takes out John Dillinger outside a Chicago movie theater.
03:09Federal agents become cover story heroes.
03:12In magazines, radio serials, even children's toys.
03:16If you wear a dark suit and fedora in the 30s, people on the street respect you.
03:21But Hoover's obsession goes beyond gangsters.
03:24He's worried about communists, union organizers, pacifists.
03:28Anyone with unconventional ideas during the Depression.
03:32And even more so in the 50s and 60s, when folders start landing on your desk with photographs of union
03:38leaders, Hollywood actors, writers, and civil rights activists.
03:42Your job, if you're inside the Bureau, is to tap phones, open mail, and tail citizens who haven't committed any
03:48crime.
03:49All of this has an internal name, COINTELPRO, a counterintelligence program designed to discredit, divide, and destroy organizations deemed subversive.
03:59Anonymous letters are sent to blow up marriages.
04:02Fabricated stories are leaked to the press.
04:05Employers are pressured into firing targeted workers.
04:08One of Hoover's favorite targets is Martin Luther King, who receives an anonymous letter suggesting he take his own life
04:14before accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
04:17When Hoover dies, it comes out that he kept personal files on senators, cabinet members, and presidents in his private
04:24office.
04:25Intimate details, affairs, embarrassing secrets.
04:29Nobody knows what was destroyed in the hours after his death or what ended up in other hands.
04:34What is clear is that for nearly half a century, part of this country lived under the watch of a
04:39single man.
04:40And while you, inside the FBI, are working cases on American soil, your counterpart at the CIA is walking into
04:47a country most of your neighbors couldn't find on a map.
04:50It's 1953, and you're in Tehran.
04:53In your pocket is cash to pay protesters, and in your head is a plan approved in Washington and London
04:58to overthrow Iran's Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.
05:01His crime, nationalizing the country's oil.
05:04The operation is called Ajax.
05:07It takes a few days of orchestrated chaos, manufactured protests, a bought-off press, and military officers nudged toward the
05:14right side.
05:15When the dust settles, the Shah is back in power, and Iranian oil is back in friendly hands.
05:20And you realize something.
05:22It worked.
05:23It worked almost too well.
05:24From that point on, the CIA learns it can do this again.
05:28In 1954, it topples the Guatemalan government.
05:31In the late 50s, it tries a military coup in Indonesia against Sukarno.
05:36It goes badly and ends with an American pilot captured, a pilot who was never supposed to exist.
05:42In 1961 comes the Bay of Pigs disaster.
05:45A brigade of CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched against Fidel Castro, with the promised air support pulled at the last
05:51minute.
05:52Hundreds are captured on the beach.
05:54The operation is so visible that no denial sticks.
05:56Then comes Vietnam, the Congo, Chile, Nicaragua.
06:01In the 80s, the agency arms the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to bleed the Soviet army dry.
06:07Many of those rifles, that training, and those networks are still in circulation two decades later,
06:13when some of those fighters are no longer battling Moscow, but New York.
06:17And that's where the next problem comes in.
06:20As an agent, you start to suspect that the phrase national security has been stretched so wide that almost anything
06:26fits inside it.
06:27Coups, targeted killings, funding for death squads.
06:31Nobody asks if you agree.
06:33They only ask if you're available.
06:35Back home, the other agency keeps growing on its own terms, and the way it grows is far more visible.
06:41You're in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington,
06:46and the people around you don't match the classic agent profile at all.
06:50A chemist in a lab coat is analyzing fiber traces.
06:53A linguist is translating wire taps, recorded in Pashto.
06:57A computer engineer is reconstructing files wiped from a hard drive.
07:01The modern FBI has around 35,000 employees, and only a fraction of them carry a gun.
07:06The structure is built to cover every corner of the country.
07:09Fifty-six field offices in major cities.
07:13More than 350 smaller outposts, resident agencies, in towns where the agent knows the local sheriff by name.
07:20And roughly 60 legates, liaison officers inside U.S. embassies abroad,
07:26coordinating with foreign police forces on terrorism, trafficking, and organized crime cases.
07:32One thing catches you off guard at first.
07:35In the movies, the FBI rolls into town, waves the sheriff aside, and takes over.
07:40In reality, it doesn't work that way.
07:43The FBI has no authority to push local police out of an investigation.
07:47It works alongside them.
07:49Most major operations run through joint task forces,
07:52where federal agents, state police, and city detectives all share the same table.
07:57And you learn all of that by living through cases.
08:00Bonnie and Clyde are ancient history,
08:03but the archive of files your generation inherits is staggering.
08:08The three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964,
08:12whose bodies turned up buried inside an earthen dam after weeks of searching.
08:17Watergate in 1972, where an agent who went by deep throat,
08:22fed two Washington Post reporters the information that ultimately brought down a president.
08:28Enron in the early 2000s, with accountants frantically shredding documents,
08:33while an energy company valued at tens of billions collapsed in a matter of weeks.
08:38Your supervisor, a 20-year veteran named Diane, drills it into you on day one.
08:44You're not a cowboy here.
08:46You're one link in a chain of custody.
08:48One mistake with a piece of evidence, and the trial falls apart.
08:52One reckless tweet, and the prosecutor loses the case.
08:56And while you're learning to sign every evidence bag,
08:59your old college roommate has just crossed a river in Virginia
09:02and walked into a building he officially can't talk about.
09:06His name is Mark, and when you ask what he does,
09:08he says he works for the State Department.
09:10That's a lie.
09:12Mark joined the CIA, and his office is in Langley, across the Potomac.
09:17The lobby has a floor with the agency's seal and a wall covered in carved stars.
09:22Each star is an employee killed in the line of duty.
09:25Some have a name beneath them.
09:27In a leather-bound volume called The Book of Honor, many do not.
09:31Those stars are anonymous, revealing who they were, where they died,
09:35or which operation they ran could endanger others still alive.
09:39The total number of employees is classified.
09:42What is known is the range.
09:44Analysts who've spent years studying the internal politics of one specific country.
09:49Mathematicians decoding communication patterns.
09:52Economists tracking suspicious money flows.
09:55Psychologists building profiles of foreign leaders.
09:57And, of course, officers of the clandestine service.
10:01The ones people picture when they hear the word spy.
10:03The official rule is clear-cut.
10:06The CIA does not surveil American citizens on American soil.
10:10On paper, that's the FBI's job.
10:13But the agency itself qualifies the statement.
10:16It can step in when there's reason to believe a person is involved in espionage or international terrorist activity.
10:22That small loophole has fueled the agency's biggest controversies for decades.
10:27Every so often the CIA declassifies batches of documents.
10:30Millions of pages released 15, 20, 30 years after the fact.
10:35That's where the ugly details surface.
10:38Interrogations in secret prisons.
10:40Drug experiments in the 50s.
10:42Plans to assassinate Fidel Castro using poisoned cigars or contaminated diving suits.
10:48None of it gets debated while it's happening.
10:50Only once no one's going to prison for it.
10:53In practice, Mark can tell you almost none of this.
10:56But one day, over coffee, something slips out.
10:59We had intel on a guy.
11:01Our office and yours spent a year elbowing each other over who'd take the lead.
11:06Nobody did.
11:06Nobody did, because you both work for agencies that officially coordinate, but have been competing since the CIA was born.
11:14It's September 10, 2001, and there's a reporter on your desk.
11:18A name, Osama bin Laden.
11:21An organization, Al-Qaeda.
11:23The agency has been warning for years this man wants to strike inside the United States.
11:28You know it.
11:29So does your counterpart at the other agency.
11:32And yet, tomorrow morning, four planes will slam into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
11:40The joint congressional report published after is damning.
11:43There were concrete leads.
11:45There were names of future hijackers already inside the country.
11:48There were red flags about flight school students who only wanted to learn to fly the aircraft, not take off
11:54or land.
11:55The problem wasn't a lack of intelligence, but that it existed in separate pieces, in separate hands, and nobody connected
12:03the dots.
12:03The CIA had two future hijackers on file.
12:07It knew they had entered the United States.
12:10It didn't pass that information to the FBI in time.
12:13The FBI had agents who had raised alarms about suspicious students at aviation schools.
12:19Those alarms got stuck in middle management.
12:21The information walls, built with good intentions in the 70s to protect citizens' privacy, had become a trench between agencies.
12:29And here is the dilemma that's going to tear you in two.
12:32You have a source, an informant who has spent months embedded near a cell and is handing you invaluable intelligence
12:39on money flows.
12:40At the same time, you know the CIA is tracking and oversees contact of the same network.
12:46And if your information reaches Langley, your colleague Mark's operation gets compromised.
12:51If you share, you burn the source.
12:53If you don't, that intel sits in your folder and maybe tomorrow a nightclub in Bali blows up.
12:59Diane, your supervisor, lays it out over coffee.
13:02Share it. Let the brass decide.
13:04If the next attack bears the fingerprint of intel you held back, you'll never forgive yourself.
13:10So you tell Mark.
13:11His source disappears that same week.
13:13Mark doesn't say it outright, but he stops returning your messages for months.
13:17When he finally talks to you again, he's not the same person.
13:20And neither are you.
13:23After 9-11, new structures appear to patch the hole.
13:26A director of national intelligence.
13:28A national counterterrorism center.
13:30Where analysts from both agencies share screens.
13:34On paper, the turf war ends there.
13:37In practice, doors still get closed and they're not going to be able to do it.
13:40The files still arrive late.
13:41But now, when that happens, someone writes it down.
13:45And here comes the part almost nobody knows.
13:48Who can actually put handcuffs on whom?
13:50The rule is simple.
13:52The CIA cannot arrest anyone.
13:55No arrest authority on U.S. soil.
13:57It doesn't bring citizens before a judge or run courtrooms.
14:01It's job ends at the intelligence.
14:04If that intelligence needs to become an arrest, it goes to the FBI.
14:09And the FBI has full authority to investigate and arrest a CIA officer who breaks federal law.
14:15And it has done exactly that.
14:18In 1994, the FBI arrested Aldrich Ames.
14:21Ames was a senior Soviet counterintelligence chief inside the CIA.
14:25Someone whose job, in theory, was to hunt moles.
14:29In practice, his job was to be won.
14:31For nearly a decade, he had been selling Moscow the names of dozens of CIA sources inside the Soviet bloc.
14:38At least ten of those sources were executed.
14:41Ames was paid in cash, bought a Jaguar, and a house way beyond his salary.
14:46And his bosses took years to connect the dots.
14:49It was the FBI that finally cuffed him outside his Virginia home.
14:53Then the mirror turned seven years later, inside the bureau itself.
14:57In 2001, the FBI arrests one of its own.
15:00Robert Hansen, counterintelligence agent, devoted family man.
15:04He had been selling Moscow, for over 20 years, intelligence,
15:07as sensitive as the list of U.S. sources inside the Soviet Union
15:11and the U.S. government's continuity plan in the event of nuclear war.
15:15They caught him leaving a drop bag in a Virginia park.
15:19He never collected large sums of money, and no one ever fully understood why he did it.
15:24Diane sums it up in one line.
15:26We watch the street, and sometimes we watch ourselves.
15:30Because the worst enemy almost always carries the same badge as you do.
15:34And if, after knowing all of this, you still think you can handle it,
15:38the way in has a very specific lock.
15:41To join the FBI as a special agent,
15:43you have to be between 23 and 37 years old.
15:47You need a four-year degree, about three years of work experience,
15:50and a valid driver's license.
15:52Reasonable enough until you see the priority profiles.
15:56Rare languages, law, forensic accounting, computer science,
16:00hard sciences, engineering, and a catch-all category called diversified,
16:05meant to recruit military historians, former analysts,
16:09or people with unusual backgrounds that don't fit any standard box.
16:13Of the thousands of applications that arrive each year,
16:16very few make it through,
16:18and the ones that do face a brutal filter.
16:20A physical fitness test covering sit-ups, push-ups,
16:24a 300-meter sprint,
16:25and a timed one-and-a-half-mile run.
16:28A full medical exam, including vision and hearing.
16:32A background investigation that can take months,
16:34and includes interviews with ex-partners, neighbors, and former employers,
16:39plus a polygraph, where they ask you about drug use,
16:42debts, foreign contacts, and where your loyalties lie.
16:46If you clear all of that,
16:48you're headed to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
16:51Around 20 weeks of intensive training,
16:53law, tactics, firearms, ethics, interviewing,
16:57crime scene analysis.
16:59You come out with a badge, a weapon, and an assigned posting,
17:03sometimes across the country, far from everything you knew.
17:06From there, your career can branch in very different directions.
17:09You might end up in the behavioral analysis unit,
17:12profiling serial killers' minds.
17:14You might become a sniper on the hostage rescue team,
17:17or a crisis negotiator,
17:19or a counterintelligence agent tracking suspicious diplomats.
17:23As for pay, a new agent starts around $47,000 a year,
17:27while a senior agent can clear well over $130,000.
17:31Nobody joins for the money, though it does come eventually.
17:35At the CIA, the door opens differently,
17:37and sometimes you don't even realize you've walked through it.
17:40Not everyone there is a spy.
17:42The agency hires mathematicians, economists, biologists,
17:47engineers, and cultural experts from around the world.
17:50Many will spend their entire career in a cubicle at Langley,
17:53never going abroad,
17:55their name ending up on a plaque outside an office.
17:58Others, those in the clandestine service,
18:01take a very different path.
18:02The typical entry age runs from 26 to 35.
18:07The agency values prior experience,
18:10international travel,
18:11language skills,
18:13the ability to talk to strangers,
18:15stress tolerance,
18:16negotiation,
18:17discretion.
18:18A doctorate helps.
18:19A childhood spent between cultures helps more.
18:23As with the FBI,
18:24you go through a polygraph,
18:25a medical exam,
18:26and a thorough background investigation.
18:28And there's one sentence the CIA puts on its own website,
18:32in capital letters,
18:33in bold,
18:34like a warning.
18:35Important.
18:36Friends,
18:37family,
18:38individuals,
18:39or organizations
18:39may want to know you've applied to
18:41or work for the CIA.
18:44The official advice that follows,
18:46don't tell anyone.
18:48That sounds like a formality.
18:49It isn't.
18:50It's page one of an invisible manual
18:53you'll carry for the rest of your life.
18:55There's also a side entrance,
18:57internships,
18:58programs lasting around 90 days,
19:00in which university students work on real tasks at Langley
19:03under supervision.
19:05If you stand out,
19:06the agency remembers.
19:07And when you finish your degree,
19:09a phone number that doesn't appear in any directory might ring.
19:12And it's there,
19:13with your badge,
19:14freshly issued,
19:15that the part no job listing ever describes begins.
19:18The cost.
19:19Diane told you one night in her office,
19:22door shut.
19:23Working for the FBI means accepting
19:25there are days you won't be there.
19:27Birthdays,
19:27funerals,
19:28school plays.
19:29You'll come home smelling like whatever you've seen,
19:32and sometimes you won't talk about it.
19:34The advantage over the other agency is that you could,
19:37almost all of it.
19:39There's a small,
19:40specific area that stores in the file.
19:42The rest,
19:43if you have someone to talk to,
19:45you can share.
19:46The FBI's wall of honor in headquarters
19:48bears the names of agents killed in the line of duty.
19:51And there are many.
19:53Ambushes,
19:54shootings,
19:54accidents,
19:55attacks.
19:56You work alongside violent criminals,
19:58and sometimes you're first through the door at a scene that'll end up on the evening news.
20:03A former agent summed up the toll in a business insider interview by saying the hardest part
20:08wasn't witnessing the destruction.
20:09It was the family life the badge takes away.
20:13Recitals missed,
20:14anniversaries forgotten.
20:16A daughter who looks at you and takes a beat too long to recognize you because you've been gone for
20:20weeks.
20:21At the CIA,
20:22the cost has a different name.
20:24Silence.
20:25Mark had been with the agency for years when you asked,
20:28half-joking what he'd done that summer.
20:31He named a country he'd never been to.
20:33His wife of ten years thought he worked in consular affairs.
20:37His mother believed he was a trade analyst.
20:40His kids told classmates their dad traveled a lot for work and couldn't say what he did.
20:45A former clandestine officer was asked one simple question in an interview.
20:49Was it worth it?
20:50His answer?
20:51I ask myself that same damn question every single day.
20:56Sometimes you see things that go against your conscience.
20:59Sometimes you know things you can't tell anyone,
21:01not even your therapist,
21:03because they don't have clearance.
21:04You live with a public version of yourself and a private one,
21:08and over time you stop being sure which one is real.
21:11As for the money,
21:12the range is wide.
21:14An intelligence officer can earn anywhere from $74,000 to $137,000 a year.
21:20A clandestine officer with years overseas can collect bonuses for location,
21:25danger,
21:26and cover maintenance.
21:27No amount of money makes up for what you can't say at the Christmas table,
21:31and there's one final level.
21:33One almost nobody talks about openly.
21:36Where the work stops feeling like a job and starts feeling like something else.
21:40You're sitting in a cafe in a city you won't be naming,
21:44holding a passport that doesn't carry your real name,
21:47speaking a language that isn't yours,
21:49with someone who believes you're a consultant for an energy company.
21:52On the table there's a phone.
21:55In your pocket below the table,
21:56there's a second phone that you only power on in specific alleyways.
22:00At specific times,
22:02following a route you've rehearsed for weeks,
22:04you're a CIA clandestine officer working abroad under non-official cover.
22:09No embassy,
22:11no diplomatic immunity.
22:13If the host country's counterintelligence finds out who you are,
22:18your own government can,
22:19and sometimes must,
22:21deny you ever existed.
22:23No statement,
22:24no public diplomacy,
22:25no exchange.
22:27Your life is now a surveillance detection routine.
22:30Before every meeting with a source,
22:32you spend hours walking,
22:34switching transit lines,
22:36entering shops through one door and out another,
22:38checking reflections in windows,
22:40scanning for repeated faces,
22:43idling cars,
22:44extra antennas in the buildings across the street.
22:47Any detail out of place could mean you've been made.
22:51Tonight's source is an official at this country's Ministry of Defense.
22:54He's terrified.
22:56Every time he sits across from you,
22:58he knows that what he's about to share,
23:00if it comes out,
23:02will destroy him and his family.
23:04And he knows that if things go sideways,
23:07you'll be on a plane home to a life
23:09where no one will ever know
23:11what the two of you did together in this city.
23:13He stays.
23:14You leave.
23:16Your job is to convince him,
23:18month after month,
23:19year after year,
23:20that talking to you is worth it.
23:22Sometimes with money.
23:23Sometimes with the promise of getting him out
23:25if everything falls apart.
23:28Sometimes with just the certainty
23:29that someone on the other side of the world is listening.
23:32You live with a half-packed bag next to your bed.
23:35You live with a cover story you've repeated so many times
23:38that you sometimes catch yourself
23:40remembering things that never actually happened to you.
23:43You live with the possibility that one day,
23:45a traffic cop pulls you over at a routine checkpoint,
23:48and when your false name runs through their system,
23:51something comes back wrong.
23:53Safe houses are apartments rented under shell companies
23:55with two exit routes
23:57and a go-bag always ready in the closet.
24:00Dead drops are gaps behind a loose brick in a cemetery,
24:04chalk marks on a specific wall,
24:05an empty soda can placed upside down.
24:09Communication with Langley runs through encrypted channels,
24:12through friendly embassies,
24:13and sometimes through a seemingly innocent message
24:16posted on a social media account
24:18nobody would ever look at twice.
24:20Every spring,
24:22new stars get added to the wall at Langley.
24:24Some have names.
24:26Others don't.
24:27The nameless ones tend to belong to people like you.
24:31Clandestine officers
24:32whose families get a folded flag
24:34and a story that doesn't quite match
24:36what really happened.
24:37A car accident in a country
24:39you'd never said you'd be in.
24:41A sudden illness in a city
24:42that wasn't on your official itinerary.
24:45A heart attack at 38.
24:47Tonight your source arrives 15 minutes late.
24:50In this line of work,
24:5115 minutes is an eternity.
24:53You check your watch,
24:54you watch the door,
24:55you mentally rehearse the exit route.
24:57Through the kitchen,
24:58the alley,
24:592nd Street on the right,
25:00the subway two blocks down.
25:02When he finally walks in,
25:04he's breathing hard,
25:05sits without taking off his coat.
25:07In a low voice,
25:09he tells you he thinks
25:10he's been followed this week.
25:11You nod,
25:12pull out your cover phone,
25:14order two coffees
25:15like you're wrapping up
25:16a routine business meeting.
25:18And behind the smile you give the waiter,
25:20you start calculating
25:21how much time you have
25:23before someone pushes
25:24that door open behind you.
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