Speaker 1: Pushkin. I have a theory that the most interesting autobiographies
Speaker 1: are the ones written by second tier people. I'm not
Speaker 1: using second tier in a derogatory sense like second rate.
Speaker 1: I mean it in a sense of hierarchy. When the
Speaker 1: people on the top tier tell their story, it's invariably boring.
Speaker 1: They have too much to lose by being honest. Their
Speaker 1: public statue works against them on the page because they know.
Speaker 1: Anything they write that's even vaguely controversial or opinionated, in
Speaker 1: other words, anything interesting, it's going to get dissected and
Speaker 1: distorted by the media. But the memoir of the person
Speaker 1: under the general or the president or the CEO, the
Speaker 1: person you've never heard of, that person has a lot
Speaker 1: less to lose, and their memoirs are where the gold lies.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, I picked up a book called Company Man,
Speaker 1: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA. It
Speaker 1: was by a man named John Rizzo. I checked the
Speaker 1: book Flap for Rizzo's bio. He wasn't the director of
Speaker 1: the CIA, or the deputy director, or even the Head
Speaker 1: of Operations, which is the person who runs all the spies. No.
Speaker 1: Rizzo was an attorney in the agency's legal Department, eventually
Speaker 1: rising to acting General counsel. When I saw Rizzo's book,
Speaker 1: I thought, BINGO, I have to read this. I was
Speaker 1: not disappointed. My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Revisionist History, my podcast about Things Overlooked and Misunderstood. This
Speaker 1: episode is about a story John Rizzotel's on page one
Speaker 1: forty eight of his autobiography. It's a story about a spy,
Speaker 1: a very good one, and what happened to him. Right
Speaker 1: after I read it, I got in touch with Rizzo.
Speaker 1: I asked him if I could interview him about the
Speaker 1: story of the spy. He said, of course. Then in
Speaker 1: his email he added a PostScript, PS, interesting that you
Speaker 1: focused on that episode. When I finished the manuscript, I
Speaker 1: figured that if any single anecdote in the book would
Speaker 1: garner a public attention, that would be the one. As
Speaker 1: it turned out, I don't remember anyone ever asking me
Speaker 1: or otherwise talking about it, which I found puzzling. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's puzzling. I mean it's probably forty maybe. As I say,
Speaker 1: I saw pictures of him, photos of them. At the time.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting at Rizzo's kitchen table at his house in Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: he's telling me about the spy he mentioned in his autobiography.
Speaker 1: And he looked like al Pacino ne circa godfather too.
Speaker 1: He was at Europe, I mean, he was European looking.
Speaker 1: He's still a young man, and I think he reached
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, a stage in his life that
Speaker 1: he felt remorse guilt about what he had done in
Speaker 1: his youth and his formative years. You know, simple and
Speaker 1: confounding as that. I mean, I don't, honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: recall another instance of an asset coming to us under
Speaker 1: those kinds of circumstances. An asset is CIA speak for
Speaker 1: a source, someone on the inside. This asset, the man
Speaker 1: who looked like al Pacino was a terrorist. Do you
Speaker 1: know the details of his how he approached the CIA
Speaker 1: to say, I've had a change of heart. I you know,
Speaker 1: I believed he just fall and carried his services. And
Speaker 1: I think he just walked into an embassy and what
Speaker 1: was what do we know about the quality of the
Speaker 1: information he was providing. It was very good. You know.
Speaker 1: He was considered the highly reliable and he didn't want
Speaker 1: much money. That was the other interesting thing. He didn't
Speaker 1: want money. I mean, it wasn't you know, most assets
Speaker 1: and want money. Why didn't he want money because he
Speaker 1: said that he was doing this for his conscience, to
Speaker 1: make up and it was an active expiation, an act
Speaker 1: of expiation. You will want to take sides when you
Speaker 1: finish this story. My advice to you is don't. If
Speaker 1: you make a list of the greatest investigative reporters of
Speaker 1: a last generation, There's Bob Woodward at the time, There's
Speaker 1: Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down, Seymour Hirsch who
Speaker 1: wrote for the New York Times for many years, and
Speaker 1: then The New Yorker, Steve Cole, Jane Mayer. There's a
Speaker 1: guy who I set next two when I first started
Speaker 1: my career at the Washington Post many years ago, Mike Issakoff,
Speaker 1: who was a bulldog. And somewhere in that top cluster
Speaker 1: of investigative reporters is Tim Weiner. He's one of the
Speaker 1: few journalists ever to have won both a Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: and a National Book Award. In the nineteen eighties, Weiner
Speaker 1: worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and his first foreign assignment
Speaker 1: was covering the overthrow of the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcus.
Speaker 1: When Weiner came back he convinced his editor to send
Speaker 1: him to Afghanistan, where the CIA was then secretly funding
Speaker 1: the Mujahadeen in their battle against the Soviet occupation. I
Speaker 1: called up the CIA, which had an always has had
Speaker 1: a public information office, and I said, hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan. I understand you people do country briefings from
Speaker 1: time to time for foreign correspondence. How about it? And
Speaker 1: he said absolutely not and hung up the phone. So
Speaker 1: off I went to Afghanistan. I had a jolly old time.
Speaker 1: Came back and I hadn't been back in Washington for
Speaker 1: more than a day when my phone rang. It was
Speaker 1: a public information officer from the CIA. This time he
Speaker 1: was friendly. He said, why don't you come by for
Speaker 1: that briefing. So off I went through the CIA, which
Speaker 1: is in the woods, about eight miles outside of the
Speaker 1: White House, checkpoint one, checkpoint two, checkpoint three, into the
Speaker 1: lobby of the CIA, and up on the left hand wall,
Speaker 1: in great gold letters, it says, from the Gospel of
Speaker 1: John and ye shall know the Truth, and the truth
Speaker 1: will make you free. So I'm hooked already. I go
Speaker 1: up to the seventh floor, which is where the executive
Speaker 1: suites were, and there are four CIA officers sitting around
Speaker 1: a table for my quote briefing unquote, But they really
Speaker 1: only wanted to know one thing from me, which was
Speaker 1: what's it like? These were supposed to be the four
Speaker 1: top CIX It's on Afghanistan. They'd never been to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So I walked out of their thinking, I'm going to
Speaker 1: devote the rest of my life to making a study
Speaker 1: of this agency. I was completely fascinated. Winner went to
Speaker 1: The New York Times in nineteen ninety three continued covering
Speaker 1: the agency all throughout the nineteen nineties. He was very,
Speaker 1: very good at it. Wyno was covering the CIA during
Speaker 1: the Aldrich Ames affair. You may remember that Ames was
Speaker 1: a senior CIA officer who worked there for more than
Speaker 1: thirty years, and he ended up telling the KGB everything
Speaker 1: he knew, including the names of the agency's assets inside
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. It was one of the most damaging
Speaker 1: cases of espionage in American history. Ames is under arrest,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking I should go interview Ames. I wonder
Speaker 1: where Ames is right now, and as it turned out,
Speaker 1: he was in a county jail. So I go to
Speaker 1: the county jail and I say I'd like to talk
Speaker 1: to prisoner Alter James. I walked into the interview room
Speaker 1: and there was Alter James. We talked, how long do
Speaker 1: you talk to him? For about an hour? Wait? You
Speaker 1: stopped after an hour? Did they stopped? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a visiting hour. This is the greatest scoop of
Speaker 1: your it's a school. And I gave my phone number
Speaker 1: and he called me collect you know, on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: And I did a number of stories based on firsthand
Speaker 1: interviews where he essentially confessed to everything he'd done and
Speaker 1: gave me some rather vivid descriptions of life inside the CIA,
Speaker 1: most of which were true and demonstrably true. Maybe you
Speaker 1: have to have been a reporter to understand how fantastic
Speaker 1: that story is. I was a reporter at the Washington
Speaker 1: Post for ten years. I would have assumed that the
Speaker 1: worst spy in American history was under triple lockdown, somewhere,
Speaker 1: whisked away by helicopter to a black side. I would
Speaker 1: have waited for the press release. But Weiner is a
Speaker 1: kind of person who would assume that if the intelligence
Speaker 1: establishment was naive and disorganized enough to have its clock
Speaker 1: cleaned by a KGB mole, then it was probably naive
Speaker 1: and disorganized enough to park that same mole unattended in
Speaker 1: the county jail. And I covered them like you would
Speaker 1: cover a courthouse or the cops, or Congress or the
Speaker 1: White House. They're an arm of the government, like the
Speaker 1: Internal Revenue Service or the post Office. They happened to
Speaker 1: be a secret arm of government. Weiner would later write
Speaker 1: a book called Legacy of Ashes. That's how he won
Speaker 1: his National Book Award. It's an amazing book, easily the
Speaker 1: best history of the CIA ever written. Some people within
Speaker 1: the agency thought that was biased against them, that in
Speaker 1: his reporting, and particularly in Legacy of Ashes, he went
Speaker 1: on too long about what the agency had done wrong,
Speaker 1: and that he said too little about what the agency
Speaker 1: did right. I understand why they think that way, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that assessment is fair. Weiner is not biased.
Speaker 1: He's aggressive. You only have to meet him to understand
Speaker 1: that he has one of those big, square, impressive heads,
Speaker 1: barrel chest, the kind of self confidence that you have
Speaker 1: to have if you're in his line of work. He's
Speaker 1: a kind of relentlessness about him. I can't remember how
Speaker 1: many times we talked on the phone and went back
Speaker 1: and forth in emails before he agreed to sit down
Speaker 1: with me. He kept it up for weeks, clarifying, probing,
Speaker 1: why do you want to do this story? What are
Speaker 1: your intentions? Weiner is aggressive because over the course of
Speaker 1: his career, he needed to be aggressive. It's not like
Speaker 1: the CIA puts out colorful brochures highlighting its latest initiatives.
Speaker 1: It's a secret agency. There's a man named Jeffrey Smith
Speaker 1: who will figure in this story as well. Smith used
Speaker 1: to be the general counsel for the CIA. He's very
Speaker 1: much a member of the intelligence establishment, genteel, bookish. He's
Speaker 1: now in private practice that one of the most prestigious
Speaker 1: of DC law firms, Arnold and Porter. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that Smith says is it's a good thing
Speaker 1: for the agency that reporters like Tim Weiner are aggressive.
Speaker 1: The agency needs a free press. It keeps you honest.
Speaker 1: It's not unlike congressional oversight. If any government agency is
Speaker 1: asked to do something or is considering something, the CIA,
Speaker 1: you have to think, this is probably something that's going
Speaker 1: to have to be reported to our two oversight committees.
Speaker 1: How are they going to react and what happens if
Speaker 1: it leaks? How do we explain doing And that question
Speaker 1: comes up all the time, and without a press it
Speaker 1: wouldn't come up. So you need CIA needs Yes, Does
Speaker 1: the CIA always remember that? In the ranks, some people
Speaker 1: don't don't see it that way. As you get more senior,
Speaker 1: you do see it that way. And the senior people
Speaker 1: have to explain to the younger people as are coming
Speaker 1: up through the ranks why that's necessary. Why do we
Speaker 1: put up with a hugely powerful agency like the CIA,
Speaker 1: with a budget in the tens of billions, doing things
Speaker 1: we know very little about, because we're confident that if
Speaker 1: the CIA does something truly evil or stupid, the press
Speaker 1: will find out and let us know. Weiner lives by
Speaker 1: this idea. He devoted his career to it. What does
Speaker 1: the CIA look like in the absence of free press,
Speaker 1: It looks like the KGB. We have a uniquely American
Speaker 1: problem here, Malcolm. We're trying to run a secret intelligence
Speaker 1: service in an open, democratic society. The Russians don't do that,
Speaker 1: the Chinese don't do that, not even the British do that.
Speaker 1: We need to have a constant tug of war between
Speaker 1: a free press, a cantankerous press, a skeptical press, and
Speaker 1: the powerful institutions of our government. But they are going
Speaker 1: to be arguments. Believe me, they were arguments. He's the
Speaker 1: world's most wanted man, the son of a wealthy Venezuelan lawyer.
Speaker 1: His profession is spreading terror worldwide. He has links with
Speaker 1: groups like The most notorious terrorist of the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighties was a man named Ilia Ramirez Sanchez,
Speaker 1: also known as Carlos the Jackal. He was born in Venezuela,
Speaker 1: but worked closely with a radical group called the Popular
Speaker 1: Front for the Liberation of Palestine, setting bombs assassinating people.
Speaker 1: He was thought to be responsible for the deaths of
Speaker 1: more than eighty people. He played a role in the
Speaker 1: massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Carlos the Jackal was almost as notorious
Speaker 1: in his day as a Samoa Ben Lauden was in ours.
Speaker 1: He was a subject of a massive international manhunt that
Speaker 1: went on for years. Finally, in nineteen ninety four, he
Speaker 1: was captured in Sudan by French intelligence. How did they
Speaker 1: find him because of a tip from the CIA? Where
Speaker 1: did the CIA get its information from a man who
Speaker 1: was once high up in the same world as the Jackal.
Speaker 1: The guy John Rizzo wrote about the asset who looked
Speaker 1: like Alpuccino. His Rizzo again, Yeah, easily, your work case
Speaker 1: offers a work potential, sources and assets for month years
Speaker 1: before even pitching them to help. This guy just walked
Speaker 1: I mean just just walked in. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: at the time his recruitment, there was a great excitement,
Speaker 1: eagerness that this is one of the few guys, the
Speaker 1: best guy we have inside the terrorist organization. So you
Speaker 1: never met him, but you saw a picture of him, um,
Speaker 1: and you say, you describe him as looking like Alpaccino.
Speaker 1: There was something kind of glamorous about him, is that Yeah? Yeah, sleek,
Speaker 1: dark hair, European looking. I mean he was not you know,
Speaker 1: he was not your jihadi. I mean he was he
Speaker 1: was Westernized. Alpaccino helped the CIA find Carlos the Jackal,
Speaker 1: but by the following year, the summer of nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: the CIA found itself in crisis. The Aldrich Aims scandal
Speaker 1: had devastated the agency's reputation. What's more, the Cold War
Speaker 1: was over, and since the CIA was essentially created to
Speaker 1: fight the Cold War. Lots of people in Washington, serious
Speaker 1: people wondered if the United States even needed the agency anymore.
Speaker 1: Then all kinds of stories broke about shady characters the
Speaker 1: agency was mixed up with in Central America, murderers, drug dealers.
Speaker 1: It was the last straw. President Clinton brought in a
Speaker 1: new director, John Deutsch, with the mandate to clean house.
Speaker 1: Deutsch ordered what's called an asset scrub, a review of
Speaker 1: every spy, informant, an asset on the CIA payroll, with
Speaker 1: a specific emphasis on ethical considerations. As the CIA's General Counsel,
Speaker 1: Jeff Smith was in the middle of it, Were there
Speaker 1: assets who had committed major felonies, human rights violations, or
Speaker 1: had attacked Americans? And so we added that dimension to
Speaker 1: the asset scrub that was currently underway. And one of
Speaker 1: the files the agency reviewed was that of al Pacino.
Speaker 1: John Rizzo was Jeff Smith's deputy. He was in the
Speaker 1: middle of it as well. It was discovered that it
Speaker 1: actually committed terrorist acts against Americans, bombings in Europe, and
Speaker 1: that he had wounded some with his bombs. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously the intent was to kill them. Now that was
Speaker 1: somehow missed. Now I don't know how it was, manister,
Speaker 1: whether frankly it was just overlooked, but it should have
Speaker 1: been a red flag. You can imagine what some people
Speaker 1: inside the CIA thought of the asset scrub. The function
Speaker 1: of a spy service is to find out what the
Speaker 1: bad guys are doing, and the best way you find
Speaker 1: out what the bad guys are doing is to have
Speaker 1: another bad guy. I tell you right, So why would
Speaker 1: you have a rule saying the CIA needs to be
Speaker 1: extra careful about hiring bad guys, But at the same
Speaker 1: time as a group that says, look, the agency is
Speaker 1: a mess. We might not have a future unless we
Speaker 1: clean up our act. We have to play by the rules.
Speaker 1: So what that meant was, we've belatedly discovered that we
Speaker 1: should have reviewed his record before entering into a relationship
Speaker 1: with him, and we should have actually gone to the
Speaker 1: law enforcement, the FBI, the Partment of Justice at the
Speaker 1: outset before we even began a relationship. And I would
Speaker 1: have been the guy to do it was to go
Speaker 1: to justice the outset. We did not do that. In
Speaker 1: the middle of all that handwringing, someone calls Tim Weiner,
Speaker 1: So when do you first get wind of the retired terrorist.
Speaker 1: As I recall, in the late spring or early summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety five, I get word from inside the
Speaker 1: CI that we have a problem here, and I begin
Speaker 1: to make inquiries. So somebody from the CIA, what is
Speaker 1: their motivation for telling you this? The CIA has screwed up.
Speaker 1: It has failed to inform the Justice Department that they
Speaker 1: have an asset on their books, a foreign agent who
Speaker 1: has again euphemistically American blood on his hands. So why
Speaker 1: do they want to call the New York Times to
Speaker 1: write a wrong because sometimes public disclosure is the only
Speaker 1: way to write wrong. Do you think it's eat? Did
Speaker 1: they think it would be easier for them to fulfill
Speaker 1: their obligation to inform the Justice Department if they was
Speaker 1: a kind of leak of this fact. First, there was
Speaker 1: a battle royal going on inside the CIA over the scrub,
Speaker 1: So Deutsch is pushing that, and within the agency is
Speaker 1: a considerable amount of pushback, So they're anticipating this is
Speaker 1: going to be a struggle. A considerable amount of pushback
Speaker 1: is an understatement. There was fierce opposition. So I'm guessing
Speaker 1: the people who call you are the ones who are
Speaker 1: in favor of the scrub. The people who call me
Speaker 1: are patriots who love their country and who are sworn
Speaker 1: to uphold Let me rephrase that the people who called me,
Speaker 1: I believe are patriots who love their country and are
Speaker 1: motivated to live by their oath to uphold the Constitution
Speaker 1: and obey the laws of the United States. Win or
Speaker 1: Waits continues to ask around. Then, late in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety five, the CIA sides to take its medicine.
Speaker 1: Rizzo goes to the Department of Justice and tells them good,
Speaker 1: bad and ugly about their alpaccino. They're upset, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: why are you just telling us this now? You know,
Speaker 1: why didn't you tell us before you got in bed
Speaker 1: with this guy? So yeah, they were upset, as I
Speaker 1: knew they would be. You have to wait, this guy
Speaker 1: is you know, gold against the fact that well, you know,
Speaker 1: he's got he's got attempted murder of Americans on his resume.
Speaker 1: At the same time Rizzo's having that conversation, the head
Speaker 1: of the CIA's counter Terrorism Center went to Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: and briefed members of Congress about the asset scrub. They
Speaker 1: weren't happy either. People all over Washington now knew about Alpaccino,
Speaker 1: people in the Department of Justice, people in the White House,
Speaker 1: people on the Hill, representatives, senators, staffers, and Winer's phone rings. Again,
Speaker 1: my rule of thumb on a story like this is
Speaker 1: and I want to have three sources, and I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that the second source is not the
Speaker 1: first source, in which case I have one source. Right,
Speaker 1: So I had two sources. I did get a call.
Speaker 1: The call was a call to have a conversation outside
Speaker 1: of the normal circuits of the telephone lines. The conversation
Speaker 1: was with a member of Congress. At this point, I
Speaker 1: have three sources. Subsequently, there was a fourth who is
Speaker 1: an American diplomat. Was an American diplomat at the time.
Speaker 1: Winder calls the CIA Press office and talks to the
Speaker 1: agency's FOLKSMI at the time, Dennis Box. I met Box
Speaker 1: in a restaurant in northern Virginia, and it was at
Speaker 1: that point where they said, this is not good, Um,
Speaker 1: this is this is really gonna put somebody at risk.
Speaker 1: And I said, said, well, let's invite him in and
Speaker 1: try to lay out for him. You know what's gonna
Speaker 1: what the risk is. He said, he said, in my
Speaker 1: office with the head of account Terrorism Center. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what was do you remember much? What was the what
Speaker 1: was the nature of the conversation. Well, it was pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: It was he's got a fairly mild demeanor. He's not
Speaker 1: at least with us. He you know, he wasn't aggressive
Speaker 1: or abrasive. I mean, he was just kind of laying out,
Speaker 1: here's here's what I have, here's what I've been told.
Speaker 1: But it was the detail. It was the details of
Speaker 1: this particular asset that got our folks worked up. This
Speaker 1: particular asset meaning Alpaccino, Bach says, the head of the
Speaker 1: counter Terrorism Center explained all the specific things that if published,
Speaker 1: would put Alpaccino in danger. He tried to interest Weiner
Speaker 1: instead in a broader story about the asset scrub, which
Speaker 1: wasn't really a secret at that point. These kinds of
Speaker 1: conversations between reporters and government officials are not unusual. This
Speaker 1: is how Washington works. In the United Kingdom, there is
Speaker 1: something commonly known as a d notice, which is a
Speaker 1: government order issued to a media organization saying you shouldn't
Speaker 1: publish what you want to publish because it endangers national security.
Speaker 1: If this story we're taking place in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: The minute winer called to say, I know about Alpaccino.
Speaker 1: The British government would have slapped a D notice on him,
Speaker 1: end of story. But the United States doesn't have dnotices.
Speaker 1: It has a constitutional right to freedom of the press.
Speaker 1: So what happens instead is in negotiation, the reporter comes in,
Speaker 1: he or she gets briefed. Maybe the head of the
Speaker 1: CIA calls the editor of the Washington Post or the
Speaker 1: New York Times and says, look, we're really uncomfortable with this.
Speaker 1: Here's why. Just as I was writing this episode, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post reported that in a meeting with Russian officials,
Speaker 1: President Trump let slip some very sensitive intelligence from an ally.
Speaker 1: It was about the intention of Middle EA's terrorists to
Speaker 1: use laptops as bombs. Huge story, but if you read
Speaker 1: the initial news accounts closely, it's obvious that the reporters
Speaker 1: held some information back. They didn't tell us which American
Speaker 1: ally gave us that information. It seems like they knew
Speaker 1: the location of the spy, but they didn't tell us
Speaker 1: that either. This is what I'm talking about. Somewhere along
Speaker 1: the line, there was clearly a conversation between those report
Speaker 1: and the CIA and the reporters listened and then said,
Speaker 1: we're going to disclose what we think is necessary to
Speaker 1: make the point about the recklessness of the president, but
Speaker 1: we're willing to withhold details that you tell us might
Speaker 1: damage national security. Jeff Smith says he's been involved in
Speaker 1: lots of these conversations, both on the government end and
Speaker 1: now on the media end, because he has media organizations
Speaker 1: among his clients. One of the things I fought the
Speaker 1: government is too frequently the government just says, well, harm
Speaker 1: could result, let them leaves my clients, while on the
Speaker 1: client side in the terrible dilemma of saying, well, what's
Speaker 1: the harm, we can't tell you. But Smith, as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, can see the government's side as well. If
Speaker 1: you're the CIA trying to convince a reporter or an
Speaker 1: editor not to spill a secret, you have to tell
Speaker 1: them enough about the secret so that they understand what's
Speaker 1: at stake. What you don't want to do is reveal
Speaker 1: even more the secret than what has already been revealed.
Speaker 1: And all of this wi respecting the fact that the
Speaker 1: press in America can, at least in principle, do pretty
Speaker 1: much whatever it wants. What the government tries to do
Speaker 1: is indicate gradations of harm. You know this is really bad,
Speaker 1: this is less bad, and leaving the editorial judgments to
Speaker 1: the press. But the government should not be in the
Speaker 1: business of saying, we agree, you can print this. It's
Speaker 1: tricky from the national security side. You have to trust
Speaker 1: the editors of the publishers or whomever you're talking to,
Speaker 1: and tell them why, as specific as you can what
Speaker 1: the harm would be, so that they can make a judgment.
Speaker 1: It's then incumbent upon the editors to take that seriously.
Speaker 1: This is exactly the kind of elaborate dance Weiner and
Speaker 1: the head of the counter Terrorism Center are having in
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen ninety five. In Rizzo's book, he
Speaker 1: says that some of the things the counter terrorism chief
Speaker 1: tolb Winer, left him bug eyed with shock. Winer says,
Speaker 1: that's nonsense. But the point is this the conversation. Wasn't
Speaker 1: the CIA giving instructions to the New York Times. That's
Speaker 1: not how the balance between a free press and a
Speaker 1: clandestine service works. Did the counter terrorism chief say to you,
Speaker 1: don't mention this guy at all. It was a strong
Speaker 1: preference of the counter terrorism chief that certain identifying details
Speaker 1: that were known to me stay out of the public realm,
Speaker 1: and I agreed with that. I mean, what is the
Speaker 1: point of publishing the guy's country of origin, the intelligence
Speaker 1: service he worked for, the specific time and date and
Speaker 1: place of the attacks. Does the reader need to know that? No,
Speaker 1: the story is about the balancing test. I knew who
Speaker 1: we worked for, I knew the specific time and place
Speaker 1: of the attacks, and I knew how grievous the attacks
Speaker 1: had been. Every detail of that was scrubbed of my
Speaker 1: own free will and volition from that story, based on
Speaker 1: my principle that I do not want to publish anything
Speaker 1: that can get anybody hurt. But Winer made it clear
Speaker 1: to the CIA that he wasn't going to leave al
Speaker 1: Pacino out of the story entirely. He was going to
Speaker 1: reveal that al Pacino was the source who helped find
Speaker 1: Carlos the jackal that Paccino had and I'm quoting from
Speaker 1: the story. Winer eventually wrote a brutal resume. He had
Speaker 1: been involved in two bombings in Western Europe in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties that had injured Americans, and he had
Speaker 1: only broken with his terrorist group in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Four separate people someone inside the CIA, a congressman, a diplomat,
Speaker 1: and someone else in the know had told Winer about Alpuccino.
Speaker 1: Al Pacino was the person about whom the agency had
Speaker 1: failed to tell Congress and the Justice Department. From Winer's perspective,
Speaker 1: al Pacino was the story. Jeff Smith says that when
Speaker 1: he realized what Winer intended to publish, his heart sank.
Speaker 1: What was that? In general? The feeling within the agency
Speaker 1: about the possibility of this story being written, anger, anger
Speaker 1: that it had leaked so quickly, and then a real
Speaker 1: desire it that we do all we're good to not
Speaker 1: have the details of what this individual had told us
Speaker 1: and what happened to come out. When you say what happened,
Speaker 1: do you mean are you talking specifically about this individual's
Speaker 1: involvement with fingering or how did define comments check to
Speaker 1: your mind? That was the identifying Yes. Yes. The agency
Speaker 1: scrambled to get in touch with al Paccino. They had
Speaker 1: to warn him, here's the rizzo again. You can't just
Speaker 1: call up an assent and said made me, You made
Speaker 1: me in the cafe around the corner of an hour,
Speaker 1: I mean, locate him. A signal emergency meeting was necessary.
Speaker 1: I think the meeting actually took place, either it just
Speaker 1: immediately before the story came out, or on the day
Speaker 1: the story came out. And what did the assets say
Speaker 1: during the meeting when told this, Well, I was told
Speaker 1: that he was flabbergast, felt absolutely betrayed. How could this happen?
Speaker 1: How could you do this to me? I'm a dead man,
Speaker 1: you know. And our case officer broken news to him,
Speaker 1: offered a mediate evacuation, safe haven, get him the hell
Speaker 1: out of there, and he refused. He just walked away.
Speaker 1: You've betrayed me, and that was it. He just walked.
Speaker 1: The story ran on August twenty first, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: on the front page of the New York Times CIA
Speaker 1: re examines hiring of X terrorists as agent. He was
Speaker 1: also translated and ran in newspapers around the world. Alpaccino's
Speaker 1: case officer put a copy of the Greek version on
Speaker 1: his wall, and when the case officer was asked why,
Speaker 1: I'm told, he said, I do this because it is
Speaker 1: a reminder to all of us in this division about
Speaker 1: the consequences of breaking faith with your asset. One of
Speaker 1: the most famous of all New Testament stories is what
Speaker 1: happened to Aul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.
Speaker 1: Saul was a strong opponent of the early Christian Church.
Speaker 1: He persecuted the early Christians, the Bible says beyond measure.
Speaker 1: He stood by and watched as one of the earliest
Speaker 1: of Jesus's followers, Stephen, was stone to death. And then
Speaker 1: one day, on the road to Damascus, Saul had a
Speaker 1: vision of the resurrected Jesus and converted to Christianity. Saul
Speaker 1: became Paul, cornerstone of the early Christian Church. Saul was
Speaker 1: allowed to become Paul. That's the point of the story
Speaker 1: of Paul's epiphany. He had been the sworn enemy of
Speaker 1: the early Church, and then he said that he had
Speaker 1: changed his mind, that he regretted his previous acts, and
Speaker 1: he was forgiven. That idea that we are allowed to
Speaker 1: transform ourselves has been central to our culture ever since.
Speaker 1: The man we've been calling al Pacino was a sworn
Speaker 1: enemy of the West. He helped plant bombs in Western
Speaker 1: Europe that killed and injured innocent people. And then he
Speaker 1: had an epiphany. He walked into an American embassy. He said,
Speaker 1: I don't want money, I just want to atone for
Speaker 1: the evil that I have done. But in Alpacino's case,
Speaker 1: we did not allow him to transform himself. The CIA
Speaker 1: went to Congress and the Department of Justice to confess
Speaker 1: they had hired an ex terrorist with a terrible past,
Speaker 1: even though he was an ex terrorist who only came
Speaker 1: to us because he had repudiated his terrible past. The
Speaker 1: Justice Department says, why didn't you tell us before you
Speaker 1: got in bed with this guy? As if he were
Speaker 1: still the guy you would never want to get in
Speaker 1: bed with. The headline to Winer's story says, CIA re
Speaker 1: examines hiring of ex terrorist as agent as if the
Speaker 1: central fact about al Pacino was his pas past associations,
Speaker 1: his brutal resume. As Weiner put it, a resume is
Speaker 1: a list of accomplishments. But Alpaccino did not consider his
Speaker 1: past record an accomplishment. He wanted to repudiate it. That
Speaker 1: was the whole point of him walking into an embassy
Speaker 1: and offering us everything he knew. Remember what Rizzo said
Speaker 1: about why Alpaccino did not want money. He said he
Speaker 1: was doing this for his conscience. It was an act
Speaker 1: of expiation. Expiation is the act of making amends or
Speaker 1: reparation for guilt or wrongdoing, atonement. He asked for atonement,
Speaker 1: We pretended to give it to him, then we took
Speaker 1: it away. What's wrong with us? So what happened to Alpuccino?
Speaker 1: I think you can guess. Very soon after the New
Speaker 1: York Times story ran, he was killed by his former
Speaker 1: terrorist colleagues. They identified him, they tracked him down. When
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning that you would feel the
Speaker 1: urge to take sides, and that you shouldn't, I was
Speaker 1: talking about this moment. We can argue all day about
Speaker 1: what is and is not an appropriate leak, or about
Speaker 1: who's to blame when negotiations break down between the government
Speaker 1: and the press over a sensitive story. But if you
Speaker 1: get too lost in picking aside in that argument, you
Speaker 1: lose track of Alpuccino, whoever he was, this man who
Speaker 1: risked his life for a country other than his own,
Speaker 1: asking only in return that he be granted absolution. I
Speaker 1: never found out anything more about Alpaccino. There is apparently
Speaker 1: a long story about what happened to him and how
Speaker 1: he was killed, but it's still classified. The CIA people
Speaker 1: were only free to talk about Tim Winer. Tim Winer
Speaker 1: only wanted to talk about the CIA. I think there's
Speaker 1: a problem with that story as Rizzo tells it, just
Speaker 1: as he thinks there's a problem with my story is published.
Speaker 1: I respect his right to his opinion to winer Rizzo
Speaker 1: was just blaming him for a problem of the CIA's
Speaker 1: own creation. They were the ones who opened up al
Speaker 1: Pacino's file. If they hadn't screwed up their own procedures
Speaker 1: and arguably violated a presidential directive on how you handle
Speaker 1: a problem like this, then they wouldn't have had to
Speaker 1: go to the FBI and Capitol Hill, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have gotten my third and eventually my fourth source on
Speaker 1: this story. Where's the leak? Here? The leak is because
Speaker 1: the CIA violated its own guidelines and practices, And mister Rizzo,
Speaker 1: who is a good lawyer and a capable lawyer, you know,
Speaker 1: has made a false and arguably defamatory argument here, which
Speaker 1: is the New York Times got an asset killed. False
Speaker 1: and defamatory. One side puts the front page of The
Speaker 1: New York Times up on the wall. The other side says,
Speaker 1: don't blame me, I'm just the messenger. Can we at
Speaker 1: least agree that we should have forgiven Alpaccino his sins,
Speaker 1: and that, however it happened, he was wronged. And maybe
Speaker 1: if you run a front page story about a man
Speaker 1: one day and right after he gets killed, even if
Speaker 1: you don't think it was your fault exactly, maybe you
Speaker 1: should run a little explanation of what happened, or even
Speaker 1: just have a moment of silence, a little bit of remorse.
Speaker 1: What was the reaction in house of the New York
Speaker 1: Times the story? Do you remember the reaction in house
Speaker 1: at the New York Times. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: page one stories about the CIA in that era, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that there was a major reaction. Law
Speaker 1: what happens after the story runs? Life goes on. Revisionist
Speaker 1: History is produced by mil La Belle and Jacob Smith,
Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Cilmara Martinez wife. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams is our engineer. Original
Speaker 1: music by Luis Guera. Special thanks to Andy Bowers and
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberger Panoplin. I'm Malcolm Gladwell,