0:15

Pushkin. I

0:18

have a theory that the most interesting autobiographies

0:21

are the ones written by second tier people.

0:24

I'm not using second tier in a derogatory

0:26

sense like second rate. I

0:29

mean it in a sense of hierarchy. When

0:34

the people on the top tier tell their story,

0:36

it's invariably boring. They

0:39

have too much to lose by being honest. Their

0:41

public statue works against them on the page

0:44

because they know. Anything they write that's even

0:47

vaguely controversial or opinionated, in

0:49

other words, anything interesting, it's

0:51

going to get dissected and distorted by

0:53

the media. But the

0:56

memoir of the person under the general or

0:58

the president or the CEO, the

1:00

person you've never heard of, that

1:02

person has a lot less to lose, and

1:04

their memoirs are where the gold lies.

1:11

Not long ago, I picked up a book

1:13

called Company Man, Thirty Years

1:15

of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA.

1:18

It was by a man named John Rizzo. I

1:21

checked the book Flap for Rizzo's bio. He

1:24

wasn't the director of the CIA,

1:26

or the deputy director, or even

1:28

the Head of Operations, which is the person

1:30

who runs all the spies. No. Rizzo

1:33

was an attorney in the agency's legal

1:35

Department, eventually rising

1:37

to acting General counsel. When

1:40

I saw Rizzo's book, I thought, BINGO,

1:44

I have to read this. I

1:46

was not disappointed. My

1:52

name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to

1:54

Revisionist History, my podcast

1:56

about Things Overlooked and Misunderstood.

2:00

This episode is about a story John Rizzotel's

2:02

on page one forty eight of his autobiography.

2:05

It's a story about a spy, a very

2:07

good one, and what happened to him.

2:13

Right after I read it, I got in touch with Rizzo.

2:16

I asked him if I could interview him about the

2:18

story of the spy. He said, of course.

2:21

Then in his email he added a PostScript,

2:24

PS, interesting that you focused

2:27

on that episode. When

2:29

I finished the manuscript, I figured

2:31

that if any single anecdote in the book would

2:33

garner a public attention, that would be the

2:35

one. As it turned out, I

2:38

don't remember anyone ever asking

2:40

me or otherwise talking about it, which

2:43

I found puzzling. Yes,

2:48

it's puzzling. I

2:51

mean it's probably forty maybe. As

2:54

I say, I saw pictures of him, photos of

2:56

them. At the time. I'm sitting at Rizzo's

2:58

kitchen table at his house in Washington,

3:01

DC, he's telling me about

3:03

the spy he mentioned in his autobiography.

3:06

And he looked like al Pacino ne

3:08

circa godfather too. He was

3:10

at Europe, I mean, he was European looking.

3:12

He's still a young man, and

3:15

I think he reached sort of, you know, a stage

3:17

in his life that he

3:20

felt remorse guilt about

3:23

what he had done in his youth and his

3:25

formative years. You know, simple

3:28

and confounding as that. I

3:30

mean, I don't, honestly, I don't recall

3:32

another instance of an

3:34

asset coming to us under those

3:37

kinds of circumstances. An asset

3:40

is CIA speak for a source, someone

3:43

on the inside. This asset,

3:45

the man who looked like al Pacino was

3:47

a terrorist. Do you know the

3:49

details of his how he

3:52

approached the CIA

3:54

to say, I've had a change of heart. I

3:58

you know, I believed he just fall and

4:00

carried his services. And I think he just

4:03

walked into an embassy and what was

4:05

what do we know about the quality

4:08

of the information he was providing. It

4:10

was very good. You know. He was considered

4:12

the highly reliable and

4:15

he didn't want much money. That was

4:18

the other interesting thing. He didn't want money.

4:21

I mean, it wasn't you know, most assets

4:23

and want money. Why

4:25

didn't he want money because he

4:28

said that he was doing

4:30

this for his conscience, to

4:32

make up and it was an active expiation,

4:36

an act of expiation. You

4:39

will want to take sides when you finish this story.

4:42

My advice to you is don't.

4:50

If you make a list of the greatest investigative

4:52

reporters of a last generation, There's

4:55

Bob Woodward at the time, There's

4:57

Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down,

5:00

Seymour Hirsch who wrote for the New York

5:02

Times for many years, and then The New Yorker, Steve

5:05

Cole, Jane Mayer. There's

5:08

a guy who I set next two when I first started

5:10

my career at the Washington Post many years ago,

5:12

Mike Issakoff, who was a bulldog.

5:15

And somewhere in that top cluster of investigative

5:18

reporters is Tim Weiner. He's

5:21

one of the few journalists ever to have won

5:23

both a Pulitzer Prize and a National

5:26

Book Award. In the nineteen eighties,

5:28

Weiner worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and

5:31

his first foreign assignment was covering

5:33

the overthrow of the Filipino dictator

5:35

Ferdinand Marcus. When

5:37

Weiner came back he convinced his editor

5:40

to send him to Afghanistan, where

5:42

the CIA was then secretly funding the

5:44

Mujahadeen in their battle against the Soviet

5:46

occupation. I called up the CIA,

5:49

which had an always has had a

5:52

public information office,

5:55

and I said, hey, I'm going to Afghanistan. I understand

5:57

you people do country briefings from

6:00

time to time for foreign correspondence.

6:03

How about it? And he said absolutely

6:05

not and hung up the phone. So

6:09

off I went to Afghanistan. I had a jolly old

6:11

time. Came back and I hadn't been back in Washington

6:13

for more than a day when my phone rang. It

6:16

was a public information officer from the CIA.

6:19

This time he was friendly. He

6:21

said, why don't you come by for that briefing.

6:25

So off I went through the CIA, which

6:27

is in the woods, about eight miles outside of

6:29

the White House, checkpoint

6:32

one, checkpoint two, checkpoint three,

6:35

into the lobby of the CIA, and up

6:37

on the left hand wall, in great gold letters,

6:39

it says, from the Gospel of John

6:41

and ye shall know the Truth, and the truth

6:44

will make you free. So I'm hooked already. I

6:48

go up to the seventh floor, which is where the executive

6:50

suites were, and there are four

6:52

CIA officers sitting around

6:54

a table for my quote briefing unquote,

6:58

But they really only wanted to know one thing

7:00

from me, which

7:03

was what's it like? These

7:06

were supposed to be the four top CIX

7:09

It's on Afghanistan. They'd

7:12

never been to Afghanistan. So

7:15

I walked out of their thinking, I'm going to devote

7:18

the rest of my life to making a study

7:20

of this agency.

7:23

I was completely

7:26

fascinated. Winner

7:28

went to The New York Times in nineteen ninety three

7:31

continued covering the agency all

7:33

throughout the nineteen nineties. He was

7:35

very, very good at it. Wyno

7:38

was covering the CIA during the Aldrich Ames

7:40

affair. You may remember that Ames

7:43

was a senior CIA officer who worked

7:45

there for more than thirty years, and he

7:47

ended up telling the KGB everything

7:49

he knew, including the names of

7:51

the agency's assets inside the Soviet

7:53

Union. It was one of the most damaging

7:56

cases of espionage in American

7:58

history. Ames is under arrest,

8:01

and I'm thinking I should go interview

8:03

Ames. I wonder where Ames is right

8:05

now, and as it turned out, he

8:07

was in a county jail. So

8:10

I go to the county jail and

8:12

I say I'd like to talk to prisoner Alter James.

8:16

I walked into the interview room and

8:18

there was Alter James. We

8:20

talked, how

8:23

long do you talk to him? For about an hour? Wait?

8:26

You stopped after an hour? Did they

8:28

stopped? Well, you know, it's a

8:30

visiting hour. This

8:32

is the greatest scoop of your it's

8:35

a school. And I

8:38

gave my phone number and

8:41

he called me collect you know, on

8:43

a regular basis. And

8:46

I did a number of stories

8:48

based on firsthand interviews where he essentially

8:50

confessed to everything he'd done and

8:53

gave me some rather vivid descriptions of life

8:55

inside the CIA, most of which were true

8:58

and demonstrably true. Maybe

9:00

you have to have been a reporter to understand

9:02

how fantastic that story is. I

9:05

was a reporter at the Washington Post for ten years.

9:08

I would have assumed that the worst spy in American

9:10

history was under triple lockdown, somewhere,

9:13

whisked away by helicopter to a black side.

9:15

I would have waited for the press release. But

9:18

Weiner is a kind of person who would assume

9:20

that if the intelligence establishment was

9:23

naive and disorganized enough to have its

9:25

clock cleaned by a KGB mole, then

9:28

it was probably naive and disorganized

9:30

enough to park that same mole unattended

9:32

in the county jail. And I covered

9:35

them like you would cover a courthouse or

9:37

the cops, or Congress or

9:39

the White House. They're an arm of the government,

9:42

like the Internal Revenue Service or the

9:44

post Office. They happened

9:46

to be a secret arm of government. Weiner

9:53

would later write a book called Legacy of Ashes.

9:56

That's how he won his National Book Award. It's

9:59

an amazing book, easily

10:01

the best history of the CIA ever written. Some

10:07

people within the agency thought that was

10:09

biased against them, that in his reporting,

10:12

and particularly in Legacy of Ashes, he

10:14

went on too long about what the agency had

10:16

done wrong, and that he said too

10:19

little about what the agency did right.

10:22

I understand why they think that way, but

10:24

I'm not sure that assessment is fair. Weiner

10:27

is not biased. He's aggressive.

10:31

You only have to meet him to understand that he

10:33

has one of those big, square, impressive

10:35

heads, barrel chest, the

10:37

kind of self confidence that you have to have

10:40

if you're in his line of work. He's

10:42

a kind of relentlessness about him.

10:45

I can't remember how many times we talked

10:48

on the phone and went back and forth

10:50

in emails before he agreed to sit down with

10:52

me. He kept it up for weeks, clarifying,

10:55

probing, why do you want to do this

10:57

story? What are your intentions?

11:00

Weiner is aggressive because over the

11:03

course of his career, he needed to

11:05

be aggressive. It's not like the CIA

11:07

puts out colorful brochures highlighting

11:09

its latest initiatives. It's a secret

11:11

agency. There's

11:16

a man named Jeffrey Smith who will figure

11:18

in this story as well. Smith used

11:21

to be the general counsel for the CIA.

11:23

He's very much a member of the intelligence establishment,

11:26

genteel, bookish.

11:28

He's now in private practice that one of the most

11:30

prestigious of DC law firms, Arnold

11:32

and Porter. And one of the things

11:34

that Smith says is it's a good

11:36

thing for the agency that reporters like

11:39

Tim Weiner are aggressive. The agency

11:41

needs a free press. It

11:43

keeps you honest. It's

11:46

not unlike congressional oversight. If

11:49

any government agency is

11:51

asked to do something or is considering

11:54

something, the CIA,

11:56

you have to think, this is probably

11:59

something that's going to have to be reported to our two

12:01

oversight committees. How are they

12:03

going to react and

12:05

what happens if it leaks? How do we

12:08

explain doing And

12:11

that question comes up all the time, and

12:14

without a press it wouldn't come up. So

12:20

you need CIA needs Yes,

12:23

Does the CIA always remember that? In

12:27

the ranks,

12:29

some people don't don't see it

12:32

that way. As you get more senior,

12:34

you do see it that way. And

12:37

the senior people have to explain to the

12:39

younger people as are coming up through the ranks

12:41

why that's necessary. Why

12:47

do we put up with a hugely powerful agency

12:49

like the CIA, with a budget in

12:51

the tens of billions, doing

12:54

things we know very little about, because

12:56

we're confident that if the CIA

12:59

does something truly evil or stupid,

13:01

the press will find out and let us know.

13:05

Weiner lives by this idea.

13:07

He devoted his career to it. What

13:10

does the CIA look like in

13:12

the absence of free press, It

13:14

looks like the KGB. We

13:17

have a uniquely American problem

13:19

here, Malcolm. We're trying to run

13:21

a secret intelligence service in an open,

13:24

democratic society. The Russians don't

13:26

do that, the Chinese don't

13:28

do that, not even the British do

13:30

that. We

13:33

need to have a constant tug

13:35

of war between a free

13:37

press, a cantankerous press,

13:40

a skeptical press,

13:43

and the powerful institutions

13:45

of our government. But they are

13:48

going to be arguments. Believe

13:50

me, they were arguments. He's

13:54

the world's most wanted man, the son of a

13:56

wealthy Venezuelan lawyer. His profession

13:58

is spreading terror worldwide. He has

14:00

links with groups like The most notorious

14:03

terrorist of the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties

14:05

was a man named Ilia Ramirez Sanchez,

14:08

also known as Carlos the Jackal. He

14:11

was born in Venezuela, but worked closely

14:13

with a radical group called the Popular Front

14:16

for the Liberation of Palestine, setting

14:18

bombs assassinating people. He

14:21

was thought to be responsible for the deaths of more

14:23

than eighty people. He played

14:25

a role in the massacre of Israeli athletes at

14:27

the Munich Olympic Games in nineteen seventy

14:29

two. Carlos the Jackal

14:31

was almost as notorious in his day as

14:34

a Samoa Ben Lauden was in ours. He

14:36

was a subject of a massive international

14:39

manhunt that went on for years. Finally,

14:42

in nineteen ninety four, he was captured

14:44

in Sudan by French intelligence. How

14:47

did they find him because of a

14:49

tip from the CIA? Where did

14:51

the CIA get its information from

14:53

a man who was once high up in the same world

14:55

as the Jackal. The guy John Rizzo

14:58

wrote about the asset who looked

15:00

like Alpuccino. His Rizzo

15:02

again, Yeah, easily, your work case

15:05

offers a work potential, sources

15:07

and assets for month years before

15:10

even pitching them to help. This

15:12

guy just walked I mean just

15:15

just walked in. So yeah, I mean,

15:17

at the time his recruitment, there was a great

15:19

excitement, eagerness that this is one of the few

15:21

guys, the best guy we have inside the terrorist

15:24

organization. So you never met him,

15:27

but you saw a picture of him,

15:29

um, and you say, you describe him

15:31

as looking like Alpaccino. There was something kind of

15:33

glamorous about him, is that Yeah? Yeah,

15:36

sleek, dark hair, European

15:39

looking. I mean he was not you

15:42

know, he was not your jihadi. I mean

15:44

he was he was Westernized.

15:50

Alpaccino helped the CIA find

15:53

Carlos the Jackal, but by

15:55

the following year, the summer of nineteen

15:57

ninety five, the CIA found itself

15:59

in crisis. The Aldrich

16:01

Aims scandal had devastated the agency's

16:04

reputation. What's more, the

16:06

Cold War was over, and

16:08

since the CIA was essentially created

16:10

to fight the Cold War. Lots of

16:12

people in Washington, serious people

16:15

wondered if the United States even needed

16:17

the agency anymore. Then

16:19

all kinds of stories broke about shady characters

16:22

the agency was mixed up with in Central America,

16:25

murderers, drug dealers. It

16:27

was the last straw. President

16:29

Clinton brought in a new director, John

16:32

Deutsch, with the mandate to clean

16:34

house. Deutsch ordered

16:36

what's called an asset scrub, a

16:38

review of every spy, informant, an

16:40

asset on the CIA payroll, with

16:42

a specific emphasis on ethical

16:45

considerations. As

16:48

the CIA's General Counsel, Jeff

16:50

Smith was in the middle of it, Were

16:52

there assets who

16:54

had committed major

16:57

felonies, human rights violations, or had

16:59

attacked Americans? And

17:01

so we added that dimension

17:04

to the asset scrub that was currently underway.

17:06

And one of the files the agency reviewed

17:09

was that of al Pacino. John Rizzo

17:11

was Jeff Smith's deputy. He was in the

17:13

middle of it as well. It was discovered

17:16

that it actually committed terrorist

17:18

acts against Americans, bombings

17:22

in Europe, and that

17:24

he had wounded some with

17:26

his bombs. I mean, obviously the intent was

17:28

to kill them. Now that was somehow

17:31

missed. Now

17:34

I don't know how it was, manister, whether

17:37

frankly it was just overlooked,

17:39

but it should have been

17:41

a red flag. You can imagine

17:43

what some people inside the CIA

17:45

thought of the asset scrub. The function

17:48

of a spy service is to find out

17:50

what the bad guys are doing, and

17:52

the best way you find out what the bad guys are doing

17:55

is to have another bad guy. I tell you right, So

17:58

why would you have a rule saying the CIA

18:00

needs to be extra careful about hiring

18:02

bad guys, But at the

18:04

same time as a group that says, look, the

18:07

agency is a mess. We might

18:09

not have a future unless we clean up our act.

18:12

We have to play by the rules. So

18:14

what that meant was, we've belatedly discovered

18:16

that we should have reviewed

18:18

his record before

18:21

entering into a relationship with him, and

18:24

we should have actually gone to the law

18:28

enforcement, the FBI, the Partment of Justice

18:30

at the outset before we even began

18:33

a relationship. And I

18:35

would have been the guy to do it was to go to justice the

18:37

outset. We did not do that. In

18:39

the middle of all that handwringing, someone

18:41

calls Tim Weiner, So

18:44

when do you first get wind

18:46

of the retired terrorist. As

18:49

I recall, in the late spring or

18:51

early summer of

18:54

nineteen ninety five, I

18:57

get word from inside the CI that we

18:59

have a problem here, and

19:03

I begin to make inquiries. So

19:07

somebody from the

19:09

CIA, what is their motivation for

19:13

telling you this? The CIA has

19:15

screwed up. It

19:17

has failed to inform the Justice Department

19:20

that they have an asset on their

19:22

books, a foreign agent

19:25

who has again euphemistically

19:28

American blood on his hands. So

19:30

why do they want to call the New York Times to

19:36

write a wrong because

19:40

sometimes public disclosure

19:45

is the only way to write wrong. Do

19:47

you think it's eat? Did they think it

19:49

would be easier for them

19:53

to fulfill their obligation to

19:55

inform the Justice Department

19:57

if they was a kind of leak

20:00

of this fact. First, there

20:02

was a battle royal going on inside

20:05

the CIA over the scrub,

20:09

So Deutsch is pushing that, and within

20:11

the agency is a considerable amount

20:13

of pushback, So they're anticipating

20:15

this is going to be a struggle. A considerable

20:18

amount of pushback is an understatement.

20:20

There was fierce opposition.

20:24

So I'm guessing the people who call

20:26

you are the ones who are in favor of the scrub. The

20:31

people who call me are

20:36

patriots who love their country

20:39

and who are sworn to uphold

20:42

Let me rephrase that the

20:45

people who called me, I

20:47

believe are patriots

20:49

who love their country and are motivated

20:53

to live by their

20:55

oath to uphold the Constitution and

20:57

obey the laws of the United States.

21:01

Win or Waits continues to

21:04

ask around. Then, late in

21:06

the summer of nineteen ninety five, the

21:08

CIA sides to take its medicine.

21:11

Rizzo goes to the Department of Justice and

21:13

tells them good, bad

21:15

and ugly about their alpaccino. They're

21:18

upset, you know, basically, why are you just telling

21:21

us this now? You know, why

21:23

didn't you tell us before

21:25

you got in bed with this guy? So

21:27

yeah, they were upset, as I knew they would be. You

21:30

have to wait, this

21:33

guy is you know, gold against

21:35

the fact that well, you know, he's

21:38

got he's got attempted murder of Americans

21:40

on his resume. At

21:42

the same time Rizzo's having that conversation,

21:45

the head of the CIA's counter Terrorism

21:47

Center went to Capitol Hill and briefed

21:50

members of Congress about the asset scrub.

21:53

They weren't happy either. People

21:56

all over Washington now knew about

21:58

Alpaccino, people in the Department

22:00

of Justice, people in the White House,

22:03

people on the Hill, representatives,

22:05

senators, staffers, and

22:07

Winer's phone rings. Again, my

22:13

rule of thumb on a story

22:15

like this is and I want to have three sources,

22:18

and I want to make sure that the second

22:20

source is not the first source, in which case

22:22

I have one source. Right, So

22:26

I had two sources. I

22:30

did get a call. The

22:35

call was

22:38

a call to have a

22:40

conversation outside

22:43

of the normal circuits

22:45

of the telephone lines. The

22:49

conversation was with a

22:51

member of Congress. At

22:54

this point, I have three sources. Subsequently,

22:59

there was a fourth who is an

23:01

American diplomat. Was an American

23:03

diplomat at the time. Winder

23:05

calls the CIA Press office and

23:07

talks to the agency's FOLKSMI at the time,

23:10

Dennis Box. I met

23:12

Box in a restaurant in northern Virginia,

23:15

and it was at that point where they said, this

23:18

is not good, Um, this

23:21

is this is really gonna put somebody

23:23

at risk. And I said,

23:26

said, well, let's invite him in and

23:28

try to lay out

23:30

for him. You know

23:32

what's gonna what the risk is. He

23:35

said, he said, in my office with the head

23:37

of account Terrorism Center. Yeah,

23:40

and what was do you remember much? What was

23:42

the what was the nature of the conversation. Well,

23:45

it was pretty straightforward. It was he's

23:47

got a fairly mild demeanor. He's

23:49

not at least with us. He you know, he wasn't

23:52

aggressive or abrasive. I mean, he was

23:54

just kind of laying out,

23:56

here's here's what I have,

23:59

here's what I've been told. But it

24:01

was the detail. It was the details of

24:03

this particular asset that got

24:06

our folks worked up. This

24:09

particular asset meaning Alpaccino,

24:12

Bach says, the head of the counter Terrorism

24:14

Center explained all the specific

24:16

things that if published, would put Alpaccino

24:19

in danger. He tried to interest

24:21

Weiner instead in a broader story about

24:23

the asset scrub, which wasn't really a

24:25

secret at that point. These

24:29

kinds of conversations between reporters

24:32

and government officials are not unusual.

24:35

This is how Washington works. In

24:38

the United Kingdom, there is something commonly

24:40

known as a d notice, which

24:42

is a government order issued to a media organization

24:45

saying you shouldn't publish what you want

24:47

to publish because it endangers national

24:50

security. If

24:52

this story we're taking place in the United

24:54

Kingdom. The minute winer called to say,

24:57

I know about Alpaccino. The British

24:59

government would have slapped a D notice on him,

25:01

end of story. But the United

25:03

States doesn't have dnotices. It

25:06

has a constitutional right to freedom of the press.

25:09

So what happens instead is in negotiation,

25:12

the reporter comes in, he or

25:14

she gets briefed. Maybe

25:16

the head of the CIA calls the editor of the Washington

25:19

Post or the New York Times and says,

25:21

look, we're really uncomfortable with this. Here's

25:24

why. Just

25:28

as I was writing this episode, the Washington

25:30

Post reported that in a meeting with Russian

25:33

officials, President Trump let slip

25:35

some very sensitive intelligence

25:37

from an ally. It was about

25:39

the intention of Middle EA's terrorists to

25:41

use laptops as bombs. Huge

25:44

story, but if you read

25:46

the initial news accounts closely, it's

25:48

obvious that the reporters held some information

25:51

back. They didn't tell us

25:53

which American ally gave us that information.

25:57

It seems like they knew the location of the spy,

26:00

but they didn't tell us that either. This

26:03

is what I'm talking about. Somewhere along

26:05

the line, there was clearly a conversation

26:08

between those report and the CIA

26:10

and the reporters listened and then said, we're

26:13

going to disclose what we think is necessary

26:15

to make the point about the recklessness of the

26:17

president, but we're willing to withhold

26:20

details that you tell us might damage

26:22

national security. Jeff

26:25

Smith says he's been involved in lots

26:27

of these conversations, both on the

26:29

government end and now on the media end,

26:31

because he has media organizations among his clients.

26:34

One of the things I fought the government is

26:37

too frequently the government just says, well, harm

26:39

could result, let

26:41

them leaves my clients, while on the

26:43

client side in the terrible dilemma

26:45

of saying, well, what's the harm, we

26:48

can't tell you. But Smith,

26:50

as you can imagine, can see the government's

26:52

side as well. If you're the CIA

26:55

trying to convince a reporter or an editor

26:57

not to spill a secret, you have to

26:59

tell them enough about the secret so that they

27:01

understand what's at stake. What you don't

27:04

want to do is reveal even more the secret

27:06

than what has already been revealed. And all

27:08

of this wi respecting the fact that

27:10

the press in America can,

27:12

at least in principle, do pretty much whatever

27:14

it wants. What the government

27:17

tries to do is indicate

27:19

gradations of harm. You know

27:21

this is really bad, this

27:24

is less bad, and leaving

27:27

the editorial judgments to

27:29

the press. But

27:31

the government should not be in the business of saying,

27:35

we agree, you can print this. It's

27:37

tricky from the national security

27:39

side. You have to trust

27:41

the editors of the

27:44

publishers or whomever you're talking to, and

27:48

tell them why, as

27:50

specific as you can what the harm would be,

27:53

so that they can make a judgment. It's

27:55

then incumbent upon the editors to

27:59

take that seriously. This

28:01

is exactly the kind of elaborate dance

28:04

Weiner and the head of the counter Terrorism

28:06

Center are having in the summer of nineteen ninety

28:08

five. In Rizzo's book, he

28:11

says that some of the things the counter terrorism

28:13

chief tolb Winer, left him bug

28:15

eyed with shock. Winer

28:17

says, that's nonsense. But the point

28:19

is this the conversation. Wasn't the CIA

28:22

giving instructions to the New York Times.

28:25

That's not how the balance between a free press

28:27

and a clandestine service works. Did

28:30

the counter terrorism chief

28:34

say to you, don't mention this guy at all. It

28:39

was a strong preference of

28:43

the counter terrorism chief that

28:47

certain identifying details

28:50

that were known to me stay

28:53

out of the public realm, and

28:57

I agreed with that. I

29:01

mean, what is the point

29:03

of publishing the guy's country of origin,

29:05

the intelligence service he worked for, the

29:08

specific time and date and place of the

29:10

attacks. Does

29:12

the reader need to know that? No, the

29:15

story is about the balancing test. I

29:18

knew who we worked for, I

29:20

knew the specific time and place of the

29:22

attacks, and I knew how grievous

29:25

the attacks had been. Every

29:28

detail of that was scrubbed of

29:30

my own free will and volition

29:33

from that story, based on

29:35

my principle that I do not

29:37

want to publish anything that can get anybody

29:40

hurt. But

29:45

Winer made it clear to the CIA

29:48

that he wasn't going to leave al Pacino out of

29:50

the story entirely. He

29:52

was going to reveal that al Pacino was

29:54

the source who helped find Carlos the jackal

29:57

that Paccino had and I'm quoting from the

29:59

story. Winer eventually wrote a brutal

30:02

resume. He had been involved

30:04

in two bombings in Western Europe in the mid

30:06

nineteen eighties that had injured Americans,

30:09

and he had only broken with his terrorist group in

30:11

nineteen eighty seven. Four

30:14

separate people someone inside

30:16

the CIA, a congressman, a

30:18

diplomat, and someone else in the know

30:21

had told Winer about Alpuccino.

30:23

Al Pacino was the person about whom

30:25

the agency had failed to tell Congress

30:27

and the Justice Department. From Winer's

30:30

perspective, al Pacino was

30:32

the story. Jeff

30:36

Smith says that when he realized

30:39

what Winer intended to publish,

30:41

his heart sank. What

30:43

was that? In general? The feeling within

30:45

the agency about the possibility

30:48

of this story being

30:50

written, anger,

30:54

anger that it had leaked so quickly, and

30:58

then a real desire

31:01

it that we do all we're good to

31:03

not have the details of what this individual

31:06

had told us and what happened

31:09

to come out. When you say what happened,

31:11

do you mean are you talking specifically about this individual's

31:13

involvement with fingering

31:16

or how did define comments check to your

31:18

mind? That was the identifying Yes. Yes.

31:21

The agency scrambled to get in touch with

31:23

al Paccino. They had to warn

31:25

him, here's the rizzo again. You

31:28

can't just call up an assent and said made me, You

31:30

made me in the cafe around the corner of an hour,

31:33

I mean, locate

31:36

him. A signal emergency

31:38

meeting was necessary. I

31:41

think the meeting actually took place, either

31:44

it just immediately before the story came

31:46

out, or on the day the story came out. And

31:49

what did the assets say during the meeting when told

31:51

this, Well,

31:55

I was told that he was flabbergast, felt

31:59

absolutely betrayed. How could this happen? How

32:02

could you do this to me? I'm

32:04

a dead man, you

32:06

know. And our case officer broken

32:09

news to him, offered a mediate evacuation,

32:12

safe haven, get him the hell out

32:14

of there, and he refused.

32:18

He just walked away. You've

32:21

betrayed me, and that

32:23

was it. He just walked. The

32:31

story ran on August twenty first, nineteen

32:33

ninety five, on the front page of the New York Times

32:36

CIA re examines hiring of

32:38

X terrorists as agent. He

32:40

was also translated and ran in

32:43

newspapers around the world. Alpaccino's

32:46

case officer put a copy of the Greek

32:48

version on his wall, and when the case

32:50

officer was asked why, I'm told,

32:52

he said, I do this because

32:54

it is a reminder to all of us in this division

32:57

about the consequences of breaking faith

32:59

with your asset. One

33:05

of the most famous of all New Testament stories

33:08

is what happened to Aul of Tarsus

33:10

on the road to Damascus.

33:13

Saul was a strong opponent of the early

33:15

Christian Church. He persecuted

33:18

the early Christians, the Bible says

33:20

beyond measure. He stood

33:22

by and watched as one of the earliest of

33:24

Jesus's followers, Stephen, was

33:27

stone to death. And then

33:29

one day, on the road to Damascus,

33:32

Saul had a vision of the resurrected Jesus

33:35

and converted to Christianity. Saul

33:38

became Paul, cornerstone

33:41

of the early Christian Church. Saul

33:43

was allowed to become Paul. That's

33:46

the point of the story of Paul's epiphany.

33:48

He had been the sworn enemy of the early Church,

33:51

and then he said that he had changed his mind,

33:54

that he regretted his previous acts, and

33:56

he was forgiven. That

33:59

idea that we are allowed to transform

34:01

ourselves has been central to

34:03

our culture ever since. The

34:06

man we've been calling al Pacino was

34:09

a sworn enemy of the West. He

34:11

helped plant bombs in Western Europe

34:14

that killed and injured innocent people.

34:17

And then he had an epiphany. He

34:19

walked into an American embassy. He said,

34:22

I don't want money, I just want

34:24

to atone for the evil that I have done.

34:28

But in Alpacino's case, we

34:30

did not allow him to transform himself. The

34:33

CIA went to Congress and the Department

34:36

of Justice to confess they had hired

34:38

an ex terrorist with a terrible past,

34:41

even though he was an ex terrorist who

34:43

only came to us because he had

34:45

repudiated his terrible past. The

34:48

Justice Department says, why

34:51

didn't you tell us before you got in bed with this

34:53

guy? As if he were still

34:55

the guy you would never want to get in bed with.

34:58

The headline to Winer's story says,

35:01

CIA re examines hiring

35:03

of ex terrorist as agent as

35:05

if the central fact about al Pacino

35:08

was his pas past associations,

35:10

his brutal resume. As Weiner put it,

35:13

a resume is a list of accomplishments.

35:16

But Alpaccino did not consider his past

35:18

record an accomplishment. He wanted

35:21

to repudiate it. That

35:23

was the whole point of him walking into an embassy

35:25

and offering us everything he knew. Remember

35:28

what Rizzo said about why Alpaccino

35:30

did not want money. He said

35:33

he was doing this for his conscience.

35:35

It was an act of expiation. Expiation

35:39

is the act of making amends

35:41

or reparation for guilt or wrongdoing,

35:44

atonement. He

35:47

asked for atonement, We pretended

35:50

to give it to him, then we took

35:52

it away. What's wrong with

35:54

us? So

35:58

what happened to Alpuccino? I

36:01

think you can guess. Very

36:03

soon after the New York Times story ran, he

36:05

was killed by his former terrorist

36:08

colleagues. They identified him,

36:10

they tracked him down. When

36:16

I said at the beginning that you would

36:18

feel the urge to take sides, and

36:20

that you shouldn't, I was talking

36:22

about this moment. We

36:26

can argue all day about what is and

36:28

is not an appropriate leak, or

36:31

about who's to blame when negotiations break

36:33

down between the government and the press

36:35

over a sensitive story. But

36:38

if you get too lost in picking aside in

36:40

that argument, you lose track of Alpuccino,

36:43

whoever he was, this man

36:46

who risked his life for a country other

36:48

than his own, asking only

36:50

in return that he be granted absolution.

36:57

I never found out anything more about Alpaccino.

37:01

There is apparently a long story about

37:03

what happened to him and how he was killed,

37:06

but it's still classified. The

37:09

CIA people were only free to talk about

37:11

Tim Winer. Tim Winer only

37:13

wanted to talk about the CIA.

37:15

I think there's

37:18

a problem with that story as Rizzo

37:20

tells it, just as he thinks there's

37:22

a problem with my story is published.

37:25

I respect his right to his opinion

37:29

to winer Rizzo was just

37:31

blaming him for a problem of the CIA's

37:33

own creation. They were the ones

37:35

who opened up al Pacino's file. If

37:38

they hadn't screwed up their own procedures and

37:40

arguably violated a presidential

37:42

directive on how you handle a problem

37:45

like this, then they wouldn't

37:47

have had to go to the FBI and Capitol

37:49

Hill, and I wouldn't have gotten my third and eventually

37:52

my fourth source on this story. Where's

37:55

the leak? Here? The

37:57

leak is because the CIA violated

38:00

its own guidelines and practices, And

38:04

mister Rizzo, who is a good lawyer and

38:07

a capable lawyer, you

38:10

know, has made a false and arguably defamatory

38:13

argument here, which is the New

38:15

York Times got an asset killed.

38:22

False and defamatory. One

38:25

side puts the front page of The New York Times up

38:27

on the wall. The other side says,

38:29

don't blame me, I'm just the messenger. Can

38:33

we at least agree that we should have forgiven Alpaccino

38:36

his sins, and that, however

38:38

it happened, he was wronged.

38:41

And maybe if you run a front page story

38:43

about a man one day and right after he

38:45

gets killed, even if you don't think it was

38:47

your fault exactly, maybe you should run

38:49

a little explanation of what happened, or

38:52

even just have a moment of silence, a

38:54

little bit of remorse. What

38:57

was the reaction in house of the New York Times

38:59

the story? Do you remember the reaction

39:02

in house at the New York Times. There

39:05

were a lot of page one stories about the CIA

39:08

in that era, and

39:14

I don't think that there was a major reaction.

39:17

Law what

39:21

happens after the story runs? Life

39:24

goes on. Revisionist

39:41

History is produced by mil La Belle and

39:43

Jacob Smith, with Camille Baptista,

39:45

Stephanie Daniel, and Cilmara Martinez

39:48

wife. Our editor is Julia

39:50

Barton. Flawn Williams is our

39:52

engineer. Original music by Luis

39:54

Guera. Special thanks to Andy

39:56

Bowers and Jacob Weisberger Panoplin. I'm

39:59

Malcolm Gladwell,