YouSaid · the spoken record

John O. Brennan

lines on the record: 69
first: 2020-12-16
most recent: 2020-12-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Wanted to, we were always very punctual, but I think sometimes the policymakers would look at the clock as not as carefully as we would”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, some certainly are, and many of them need to be, because if you're going to have a rendezvous, a clandestine rendezvous with a spy from overseas, one of your assets or agents, and you have worked for hours to get clean so that you make sure that the local security services are not onto you and surveilling you. And your agent has done the same thing so that when you meet at the designated place at a designated hour, you can quickly then have either a brush pass or a quick meeting or whatever. And if you're not punctual, you can put that agent's life in danger. And so I think it's instilled in CIA certainly case officers that time is of the essence and you need to be able to follow the clock. Also, I remember when I was CIA director and I would go down to the White House for a NASA security council meeting or a principal's committee meeting, Jim Clapper, the director of national intelligence and myself, would always be the first ones there because we...”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't agree with your characterization that I considered in my book I portrayed as very reliable. I thought that my Catholic guilt was going to just totally undermine any effort if I hadn't won to try to deceive the polygrapher and the polygraph machine. So I was not going to take that chance because I wanted to be hired by the agency. And so again, I think that it can be a very reliable indicator, but people have perfected some techniques to defeat polygraph machines. And it says much dependent on not just the polygraph machine, but the polygrapher. The polygraphers go through extensive training, and a lot of their assessment is done by looking at the individual and how they react and how they shift and how they move and the way they respond to certain questions and they come back to questions later on and whether or not this consistency and the answers that are provided. So again, the polygraph, it's a process and is designed to try to uncover anything that”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a good question. I think just because someone tests in a certain way doesn't mean that they're going to actually follow through and be that way. It depends, I think, on the rigor and the strength of the test, but I'm not going to stand behind any particular test and say that it is a clear, clear indicator. I think there are some tests that are better indicators than others. And so, for example, in the agency, we use the polygraph. The polygraph itself can be accurate or not, but we have found that in the polygraph sessions, a lot of things come out from a person because they are concerned that the polygraph machine will register a falsehood if they tell it. So again, it is used as a tool. It needs to be a part of a group of things that are going to be used in order to determine whether or not somebody is worthy of employment or telling the truth or not.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Accurate it is one of the tools all these types of tools are useful but none of them should be seen as dispositive in any way that's going to discount all the other sort of factors that are brought into bear. But when people are hired in the agency or in their security reviews as well as people who want to work for the agency overseas, who offer their services, you need to go through a series of vetting and tests that try to give you a better sense of where the truth might lie.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there are certainly benefits to it CI officers leave the phones in their car, whatever, so they can go out and be able to talk to a family or whatever else. And there are ways to communicate outside. But yeah, I think that there are a lot of distractions that come with phones. You know, you go off on a pursuit of various tangents as you get more and more curious about certain things. Now, agency officers have access to computers and the internet. But even there, we've had to take steps to make sure that people don't go down wrong paths.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a relatively recent technological development as far as smartphones and Fitbits and other types of things that I just, even though I grew up in an era when we didn't have all of this technology at our fingertips, I have come to understand just the power of technology and how it can be used to advance one's objectives, but also could be used by adversaries to exploit, to gain access in certain areas to certain types of environments or conversations or whatever that can really defeat physical security obstacles and perimeters. And so I fully understand why certain types of technologies could compromise the secrecy or the needed protection of source and methods in certain environments. Now you can do things to defeat those types of exploitations, but again, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and others are always mindful.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, supernatural in the eye of the beholder. Again, I'm not going to discount things. That's why I'm agnostic as opposed to an atheist. I just want to leave my mind open as to what something might be, but who knows what these things might be.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. You know, when people talk about, you know, their life, other life besides what's in the United States, in the world, the globe. Life is defined in many different ways. And I think it's a bit presumptuous not harring for us to believe that there's no other form of life anywhere in the entire universe. What that might be is, I think, subject to a lot of different views. But I think some of the phenomena we will be seeing continues to be unexplained and might in fact be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don't yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“X, Y, or Z. You really have to approach it with an open mind, but get as much data as possible and get as much expertise as possible brought to bear.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've seen some of those videos from Navy pilots, and I must tell you that they are quite eyebrow raising when you look at them. And you try to ensure that you have as much data as possible in terms of visuals, also different types of maybe technical collection of sensors that you have at the time. But then you also, I believe it's important to reach out into other environments and find out, well, were there any type of weather phenomena at that time that might have, in fact, created the appearance of a phenomenon that you're looking at? Were there some things that were happening sort of on the ground or other types of phenomena that again could help explain what seems to be quite a mystery as far as what it is there? I think the important thing for analysts to do is not to go into this type of challenge, either discounting certain types of possibilities or believing in advance that it is likely”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, Chris engages in hyperbole there. CIA has a lot of people who are just so, so skilled in that. They started out in the operations side of CIA and had a real feel, I think, for clandestinely acquired intelligence, both human intelligence as well as technical intelligence, and then also had a good sense of the different types of other sources of information that come into the agency for the analyst to go through. I served as a State Department political officer in Saudi Arabia early in my career. And so I was quite familiar with Department of State capabilities and cables, also open source information. So I think it was my exposure to a lot of these areas of sources and acquisition that I think allowed me to”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what I think are the ethics of life that although I have quite frankly lost my Catholic faith over the years, I'm practicing agnostic now, I guess, I never lost, though, that deeply rooted and instilled sense of right and wrong that was taught to me by my parents, by my teachers, and by the clergy.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I was raised in a very religious household in Catholic faith, we would go to church certainly every Sunday and I would go serve as an altar boy throughout the week. But there was a real emphasis on doing what is right and understanding the distinction between right and wrong and a premium put on honesty. And when you go into the intelligence profession, there also is a premium put on honesty. It sounds a bit maybe ironic to some given that CI officers sometimes have to adopt false personas when they go overseas to recruit spies. But inside of the CIA family, there is a real need to make sure that people don't stray from the truth because national security really hangs in the balance. So I just found that my early religious upbringing gave me a good grounding in morality and values and those principles.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So CI employees, there are similarities between those who decide to go into the priesthood and those who decide to go into the work of the intelligence community. And as I said in my book, I was planning to become a priest and the first American pope, but then decided to go on a different path. But I met a number of people throughout my CI career who had similar types of at least early ambitions and goals.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, CIA agents, first of all, refers to those foreign citizens who are recruited by CIA case officers to spy against their countries. And so it's referred to as CIA officers or CIA case officers.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jobs just to make sure that there was money for my mother and father to be able to buy groceries for us to eat. So I just, I felt as though it really gave me a good perspective on what life for, quite frankly for most Americans is like.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are a number of things about my upbringing in Hudson County, the son of an immigrant. My father emigrated from Ireland in 1948 when he was twenty eight years old and always impressed upon my siblings and myself just how special it was to be an American citizen and never to take for granted the fact that we were by dint of our birth, as my father used to complain that it was usually the people who were born here that took it for granted, not those who struggle for their good part of their lives to get here. But growing up in a blue-collar working class neighborhood really allowed me to appreciate some of the challenges, difficulties that average Americans face on a daily basis and how a lot of people are just struggling to make sure that their families are fed, that their children are educated, and that they can again enjoy what life has to offer here in the United States. So I didn't grow up in a privileged environment by any means. A lot of times that sometimes my father was out of work and he had to pick up part-time.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess those who were involved in the conduct of espionage really understand that individuals will have vulnerabilities as well as areas of particular interest that they want to either pursue or protect. And so again, case officers in the CIA parlance, the ones that go out and actually recruit spies to conduct espionage against their countries. I think really seek out those areas that could be, in fact, exploited vulnerabilities or otherwise. or people have again certain lifelong ambitions, goals. And for a lot of people who live overseas, it's getting to the United States and bringing their families to the United States. And so I think when you're in CIA and you have a lot of interactions with people overseas, I think you appreciate some of those similarities as well as those, I guess, unique qualities that people bring to the fore.”
2020-12-16 · Conversations with Tyler · John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source