TSA Intelligence Operations: Inside National Security Screening

Brian Drake: This episode of the Unredacted Podcast is brought to you by Dragon Forge Consulting. Dragon Forge provides boutique consulting services for federal and commercial clients looking to expand their business in a turbulent time. Learn more by visiting their website at www.dragon-forge.net. That's www.dragon-forge.net. in. What's going on, man? First off, I want to say thank you so much for ⁓ stepping in. Lindy, course, is on vacation this week. so having a guest host is always ⁓ not an easy thing to grab. And so I was happy you were available this week and that we were able to make this work. you know, this is a ⁓ extrovert's dream. Somebody says you want to listen to me talk? ⁓ my god, please more. please, please more. So absolutely no problem. It's my pleasure. Well, how have you been doing? ⁓ Since the last time I was on the show and you know, it's always interesting to be on the other side of the mic. But since the last time I'm on the show, I'm fortunate to join ⁓ the staff of Bowie State University helping with external relationships. So strategic external partnerships. And so that's really cool. ⁓ I recently joined the Griffiths Institute. up in New York. They are doing a retained EIR. The Griffiths has been doing a lot of work with AFRL. Our folks would know who that is, Air Force Research Lab. And so they're trying to build out a venture fund as well as a venture studio, which is something I'm really interested in. think venture studios are proving to be or will prove to be the next wave in venture capital deployment. where instead of just, we just throw money over the transom, actually, a venture studio will actually support organizations transitioning from a really good idea to actually exiting. The data would show that in traditional venture studio, it's like a seven year to exit. I'm sorry, in a regular venture, it's a seven year to exit. In a venture studio, it's two to three years. So, for the work that we do in the national security space, it really becomes a placeholder. So companies can just work on the good idea while somebody else is helping with the back end and ministrivia stuff. Every time I talk you, I learn something new. I had never heard of this concept at all. This is really, really interesting. There's a lot of defense tech. I wouldn't say a lot, but I think the defense tech space is starting to shift more towards the venture studio because ⁓ you get to control the money is not quite right. but you have a better impact on what get executed. And so when you're starting to build stuff, you build stuff that has, instead of chasing money, which ends up with a lot of the venture capital, people that jump into venture capital, they chase the money and it's almost to the detriment of the product. This allows you to manage all the backend stuff. You have capital, you have a co-founder and it's an institutional co-founder like the studio. It's institutional co-founded allows you to kind of just go out and just do really good work and work with customers. So it's, it's a very interesting ⁓ concept. And so I've been doing that and a bunch of other things, helping out some, some companies. So good stuff. That's really interesting. Yeah. And, and never a better time than now. think, you know, as we watch this ⁓ play out in the straight to four moves, we're seeing not only strategic innovation on the side of the adversary, but we're seeing technical innovation on their end. And here we are where largest, most well-funded military in the world, we're playing catch up, right? They have already thought through some things that we, you and I, deliberated on many years ago about, know, a trittable systems and denied access areas. And here we are, we're living it. Yeah, it's interesting how this conversation harkens back to our our conversation talking about innovation systems like ecosystems and, and the processes. And I think we're starting to see, ⁓ particularly with removes and and the ⁓ drone technology and how this stuff happens and, and the speed I mean, not notwithstanding artificial intelligence and the speed at which things are happening there looking at what happened with Claude anthropic and all those things that you can't ⁓ You can't continue down the path of what you used to do. It's just too slow. It's just too slow. But I also think that while slowness is going to be a hindrance, I also am erring on the side, and maybe it's not the right word, but erring on the side of are we doing it and you end up replacing ⁓ the human versus the system. So in my head, this is how I think about it. there's a difference between the human in the loop and the AI in the loop. And so if the human's in the loop, it seems to me in my mind, the architecture is the human is outside of the decision making process. It jumps in every once in a while. The human jumps in every once in a while. But the system kind of runs autonomously. But what happens if you put the human in the loop, the things that the humans are specifically and hopefully will ever be the creative side, the one that looks at ⁓ that judges ethics, thinks ethically about what that might mean and how do you do you actually shoot? No shoot. Do you do this? Do you do that? I think then you have these artificial intelligence systems that inform, that help the human think about that. I think that's going to be a hard and a laborious but useful conversation that we're all going to have to have. I was reading, I don't know if you know IDEO, these were like the IDEO team. I was reading an article last night that I just found on LinkedIn, my favorite social media space, that was talking about historically what happens in the shifts and industrials, right? So you go from agricultural, industrial, steam, and blah, blah, and what happens with the residual ⁓ human capacity. So when a machine takes over what a human would normally do, separating cotton, we don't need a cotton, we have a cotton gin in it. You need hands to do that. So you then have the surplus laborer that now has the opportunity to do something different. And the argument I think IDEO is making is so it is not, but not much different what's happening with AI. really now allows the humans to do more creative things. The machine heretofore won't be able to do for a while. Right. And unless there's some kind of super AI, AGI that takes over that becomes Hal from 2001 Space Odyssey that can start to make these decisions. Humans are the ones that will help the machine or will be assisted by the machine in their creativity. What does that look like and how do you push it forward? I don't know, it'll be interesting. That's what I'm working on. It's a very dynamic space and we're going to learn a lot. Absolutely. In the warfare space and we're going to learn a lot. you know, experiment and things like a venture capital lab, which I learned about today. I, so now I have a personal question for you, Ty. Please. When you think about the travel experience through an airport, view, positive, negative, neutral of the transportation security administration and going through the dreaded security check line. So, interestingly enough, just was, I flew to, I had to fly a couple of times in the last three weeks. I flew to Arkansas for a piece of work through Baltimore, BWI. And then I flew to Austin through BWI. And both times I showed up in the morning and I have the pre-check, right? We decided to invest in the pre-check as a family. And so all four of us, my wife and my two boys, we decided to do that. And I think the most I waited was, and this is post, you know, the shutdown and TSA. I think I waited for like 10 minutes, maybe at the most. And it wasn't, it wasn't very long at all. And I just walked through. Um, did not take my shoes off. Did it take my laptop out of the bag? I just put it on the machine. I had take my belt off cause I knew it was going to cause I had one of those like Military kind of cinch belts and I knew that was gonna go off and I take my watch I said watch him lady take my hat keep your hat on just walk through I didn't have an issue. I didn't see any of the ice ice officers I didn't see not one in BWI. I didn't see one in Austin I didn't see one in Charlotte. Although I didn't have to walk No, I did have to come back to Charlotte because I got delayed because something happened. So I spent the night in Charlotte I didn't see anything and it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad My wife had to fly through Atlanta a couple of weeks ago and there was an ICE officer there. like, man, were you a US citizen? Like took their passport card, as I am and kept on walking. Just kind of blew past him. And so I did not have an issue. ⁓ And so I know that you wanted to have this conversation and I've been thinking about it. I think the only thing that I, and those. as I was preparing in the last hour or so about this, the thing that I thought about was my picture. So they take my biometrics on my eyes. So I kind of pay attention to it, were they taking the whole frame, the eyeballs, although you don't see the eyeballs. And they have a statement that says, we're going to erase it after you have to reconfirm that that is you and you. But where does that data get stored? ⁓ I was thinking about this, my youngest son is he's a critical he's a he's a scientist is a computer scientist first of all but he's a beautiful soul who thinks and he writes and he wrote about there's this concept in postmodernism called the panopticon and the panopticon you know is this is this uh this notion that in a prison system that it's in the round and there's this post in the middle that has purview against everything around it that you as a prisoner can never tell who's observing you at any one point. ⁓ the postmodernists would argue that we are living in a panoptic state, that there's a surveillance that happens all the time. And what does that mean? And what does that mean for human agency and the control of who you are and how you show up in the world and how you are observed in the world? And so it's ⁓ interesting. only thing that I think about ⁓ as a result. But I mean, you and I both spent, I spent two decades, you spent three plus decades in the intelligence community. You know, so I'm like, do you gonna have everything you have on me? So to tip it out for our audience, our guest today is just the past director of the intelligence unit for the TSA, which I you know, of course this is Mary Quinn, who I go back with a DIA for quite a while. ⁓ And I didn't know that that unit existed until I found out that's what she was running. And so it was kind of interesting to learn from her and listen to what she had to say. ⁓ But I think what's interesting about what you just kind of laid out was this is the common experience of the American public. And I would argue that aside from the postal service, the TSA is probably the thing that most American citizens have contact with as the government. Like it is a government entity. It's a part of their life. And yeah, the allegory you're talking about the Panopticon, like that is about, ⁓ you described it quite well, but I think the governing principle of I'm being observed, what do I do under surveillance versus what do I do when I'm not being surveilled? And what does that mean for human freedom is an interesting question. And Mary, I think, was perfect for this job, and it'll come out in the interview when we share it with the audience, but ⁓ she was very sensitive to that. These are folks that have, for the majority, have not done anything wrong. And so the percentage of folks that actually get caught up into the law enforcement cycle, yeah, they're on a list. And usually a very, bad list, a terrorism list or a... ⁓ human trafficking or some sort of criminal element. But the tail that comes behind that to push to the TSA so that that particular gate, I guess not gate agents, that officer sitting at that machine knows I have to stop this person and I have to be ready to push them into a law enforcement cycle, whether that's interrogation, arrest or something like that. And when she goes to the description of all that, It's a huge enterprise. No, I never it's interesting. I may have told you but for the sake of the audience, if I had stayed in the in the service of what I'm about to describe, this would have been my 4040th year. So in 1986, somebody in their inimical wisdom gave Tye Smith an 18 year old a gun a badge and handcuffs and told me to go and patrol my little tiny town of 2,500 people. ⁓ and, ⁓ I was a police officer and I did it on and off for four years. And so what you just described, interestingly enough, I never thought about like this TSA agent. I see them as the, as a, I don't even see them as, law enforcement. And that's just me. Right. But I know that they have a law, then LEO like the first vanguard of the LEO experience. So, you come to the gate and something's wrong, go, well, could you stand over there, sir? And then, you know, or you've been, oh, I did get patted down for the first, I got chosen for a pat down for the first time in Arkansas. I'm like, I'm in the middle of Little Rock, Arkansas. There's literally no, Brian, it took me longer to get through TSA than it took me to get to the gate. Right? And it was literally nobody there when I got there. And I got chosen for a screening, a pat down screening. what the world and it never really dawned on me because I have this you know the the fast pass the you know Disneyland pass you as best the pre check yeah the pre check right and so I I don't think of them as law enforcement but I understand they have a law enforcement function or they have a national security function and that their job is to be that first vanguard of the screen which we both know that that is a relic of the shoe bomber. know, what's damn near what 30 years ago now it feels like. Yeah. Right. Richard Reed. Yep. Yeah. That that was their job is to screen so bad things don't get past the Right. So interesting. I never thought I didn't. Yeah. Well, and post 9-11, so prior to 9-11 screeners were not government employees. They were private security hired by the airport. And so it was very uneven as to what they would detect and how. And the decision was made after 9-11 to create the TSA, along with the Homeland Security apparatus for the department. And in creating that, it normalized and said, okay, so training is gonna be the same, these are things we're gonna look for, policies are the same across all airports, and that helps out. And I think what was, again, interesting about the interview with Mary was those... regularities, like having that regularity and saying, this is what we are looking for. And I don't want to say this is what looks normal because what does that mean? like, ⁓ this is the policy, you're not in compliance, it's A or B, it's that simple, yes or no. And then it's something you can act upon. think the other part, and Mary didn't mention this, but I will share this because I have another very good close friend who's in the TSA and now is a trainer over there. And ⁓ one of the things that ⁓ they like to recruit from is like to recruit high school graduates. You don't find a lot of college graduates as TSA officers. ⁓ that's a good thing, right? Because it's now creating a ⁓ division in the economy and getting folks who are coming out of school a good job. ⁓ But that is also who is in front of you. You can't make it super complicated. What Mary's unit was doing, was simplifying a whole lot of complicated information for that person that's gonna make that A or B decision, yes or no. And I think there's a certain elegance in that. So in my world where I sit now with the, ⁓ in venture capital and startups, we would call that human centered design. You're solving a problem for the humans that help them get a job done. There literally is, and I would encourage, if you ever wanna read a really good book that is very simple and elegant in the way that describes some of the stuff. The gentleman's name, he's since passed, his is Clay Christensen. Clay was like the innovator's dilemma. Some of you may have heard of that, but he has a book called competing against luck and it's a really good audio book too. It's like, so he talks about, what's the job people are trying to do? Not the requirement, but what are you asking them? What are they actually trying to get done? And I can't wait to hear how she describes how she went and and created a space for the job to be done of a TS agent who has to have 10 seconds to make a good decision and can't over complicate it. Where I thought you were going about high school versus college is I heard, remember I used to be a police officer. I have a master's degree. started a PhD program. Wasn't right. You know, I still think like that. My friends are going like, so what do get in yours? Okay, let me write something first. But, but I remember I had just finished graduate school. probably circa 1998 and I was driving in, I was listening to NPR and they were telling a story about a guy who sued his police department because he, police, a police department, not his, a police department because they wouldn't hire him because he was too smart. He had a college degree. It was in West Virginia, not that West Virginia wasn't, because we think it wasn't West Virginia, but it was really because He would think he might think too much about how to make a decision. He's looking for the gray. It's not this or that. Right. And so if you put a high schooler in who doesn't have have the the training that it takes to start to do critical thinking like what's really going on that if I start to think in that 10 seconds do I do this or not that 15 20 seconds now you have a a logarithmic backlog in your getting people through the TSA gate. ⁓ Yep, nope, go over there. Go over here, go do this, do that. And so it's not just the job to be done of the TSA agent, but it's also the job to be done of the process. And so how do you infuse and bake in human capacities or incapacities, humans into the process of what you're trying to do? ⁓ Wouldn't have thought about that unless I knew that's where you were going about it. But that's what makes sense to me, that you have high schoolers that do not have a college degree, that have not taken, have the training to think, so what else might there be? I just need you to make a decision and go. And go. This is so awesome. We could do this all day. We're gonna do it again. We're gonna have you back on as a regular guest. Hey, invite me man, invite me. It's all good. I really do appreciate you stepping in here Ty. So thank you for being our first guest host. no problem. Really much appreciated and Lindy, hope you're having a good time on your vacation. She's gonna come back fully rested and she's funky self I'm sure. And so here's our interview with Mary Quinn. Will you tell him that you had more important things to do? We just did his podcast and I got a lot of very positive feedback I think You know he gave us a window into You know, didn't occur to me until after we were done like there are if in a given presidency there are fewer than You know eight people eight people are Maybe a couple more, but not many for an eight year term because each briefer only has a year. Right. getting into that role is pretty rare. Thanks for braving the vicious streets of old town Alexandria. What I liked about it was going from Arlington to Alexandria that I thought I was sort of like the defensive driving or when you're trying to evade. Detection by the the the Soviet agents because I was like this back road this back road It's very exciting. Well very very much easier than trying to brave 495 on a Thursday morning. So yes. Well, thanks for making time for us always a pleasure to talk to you ⁓ you know, I feel the same way I it's nice to hear someone else say that because I don't know if people actually enjoy speaking They tolerate speaking to me I don't know if they actually enjoy it. ⁓ So, you know, you and I have known each other and been friends for a nice long time, you know, nobody, I would think our listeners would like to know who you are. So tell us a little about Mary Quinn. I will do that. I, my first job in the intelligence field was as an army intelligence officer because I went to college on an ROTC scholarship. ⁓ I paid back my scholarship, stayed in the reserves, but I decided that I wanted to try something different. So I taught high school for four years, ⁓ which I enjoyed. I did not enjoy the paycheck for teaching at a high school. So I went back to work. I came back to work at DIA as a civilian and continued coaching. And that was, that's sort of a through line for me with my views on leadership and it was also a good balance. So I was, I was coaching at the high school, working at DIA as an analyst, started as an analyst, had a collection manager who told me that I would never be able to understand collection management because it was too complicated. So that immediately was the red flag that I became a collection manager. ⁓ And another through line was ⁓ what I, I spent a lot of time helping analysts understand how collection management can help them and helping collection managers understand that analysts weren't being divas somewhere. But most of them weren't being divas, they needed to understand what exactly. So doing the simultaneous translation. So did that for a while. Give us a time frame, what kind of years? This would have been about around September 11th, I know I was working in DIA's collection management office September 11th. ⁓ So you rejoined the agency about? ⁓ nineties yeah and ⁓ Yeah, one of the other interesting jobs that was very unusual. One of the things that I do like about DIA, that it's one of the sort of, you know, like the yin and yang that people like it, they want it to do everything. I said, but that also has the plus side of that there's a lot of different things that you can do in the job. So I was in a special office that it was, we had to make determination that the Vietnamese government. was making progress on a couple of different areas before the United States restored relations. Right, normalization. Right. And one of them was accounting for ⁓ POWs, MIAs from the war. And so that was the office that was in DIA. that was... core mission in DIA. Yeah. And it was... And I got that job because I had, ⁓ in college, worked in a refugee camp in Thailand. So I had... regional expertise and so and that was a lot of the that in the in the job at DIA I got to go in one of the investigations and it was important to sort of have the cultural understanding of when you're talking to we'd be interviewing these villagers and the people and the government officials and the villagers to try to figure out could we get resolution on what happened to ⁓ either people that were held captive or were down in proximity to ⁓ enemy forces. So it was a really interesting job, but it was really very forward-facing because we needed to every all of our analysis on cases was presented to families and to Congress. And so we needed to and that was another lesson that was very good for me coming out of that was the importance of precision, precise language, because this was making determinations of you know, do we have a presumptive finding of death? Do we know enough about the family? Do we continue to investigate? So you had to be very precise in your language about what we knew and what we didn't know. And I think that that was a very good lesson for me for all intelligence jobs afterwards that, you know, the sort of the, the wrap on Intel people is that they're always a weasel wording. And I was like, no, you need to be precise. And if you're not precise and if you don't know it, you need to say that you don't know. ⁓ So that consequences right in your face, you're sitting across the table from a family ⁓ about their loved one. And it was one of the, one of the most ⁓ profound experiences that I had in addition to the families was there was a case that I had, it was a ⁓ air force pilot who was ⁓ shot down proximity to enemy forces and ⁓ they were never able to, and he was on the radio saying, I'm down, I'm okay, but I know that I can hear gunfire around me. And then we were never able to recover him. And one of the person who had been the paramedic rescue person went down to try to find him. ⁓ He, it was sort of, he, he'd had a lot of difficulties. And so I got a call from a VA hospital and it was a psychiatrist in a VA hospital who said, ⁓ I have a patient he's 100 % disabled because of PTSD, because he feels horrible guilt that he's the reason why this happened to this pilot. And he said, could you talk to him? I've tried to tell them that that's not the case. But what happened was, The guy came back said I couldn't find the pilot. ⁓ And some knucklehead told him, he's like, well, we found him later. He was skinned alive and it's because of you. mean, just horrible, horrible stuff. He tells this guy that, it was because of him that all of these horrible things that the guy was tortured and what, and so now he's just, he's completely just shattered. So I, I walked through, ⁓ I walked through everything that we had, everything we had investigated, everything we found in Vietnamese records and told him everything we had done on the case. And to, to reassure him, which I could say that was not, that did not happen. We've talked to the Vietnamese units that were in the area. That did not happen. But, he just kept saying, goes, but, it was an officer who told me and I was like, well, he didn't tell you the truth. And it was, but you know, for some, for some people that, know, that we live in our nice little bubble and put all of our classification markings and just. other people that are in the club see it to have this like be so personal and profound. It was an interesting, ⁓ challenging, but rewarding in some ways job, but it was very different from normal ⁓ Intel work. Yeah. Strategic long range. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you did that for a while. I did that for a while and then did the collection management and did a bunch of the initiatives. was a congressionally directed activity to say, We are funding all of these different collection programs. What's the return on investment? What do analysts actually use? And it was a great project. And one of the things that I also liked about it was that I was a 14, but I had a pretty large responsibility to go to the combatant commands and all of DIA and the service production centers to ask analysts, what do you use to do your job? And then ⁓ if you don't use something, why is that? Right. And one of the interesting factoids that I always liked from this was they'd say, you know, we use this at DIA and it's really important, but we don't use this other overhead system. It doesn't do anything for us. And I said, I think you need to. I, so I had, and it was one of my data points. It was actually very compelling because I said, I looked at a Korea analyst in USFK. a Korea analyst at NACIC, a Korea analyst at, ⁓ at the time, PACOM, and a Korea analyst at DIA. Said, what do you all use? You're all Korea analysts. What do you use? And there were a couple things that were consistent, but then after like the top three, it was all very different because it was, what is your mission focus? Where are you? And, and it was, it was to say that you can't make a decision on things like that sitting at headquarters because there's things that, yes, that the national customers want, but there's things that the forces forward need. And we actually now had data to show that. So that was a really, and again, that was a good project because for future assignments that I had in DIA, whether it was at a combatant command where I was the DIA senior representative, this was before the DIA took the positions as the deputy J2. So senior representative there and then the Chief of Operations for the Defense Intelligence Operation Coordination Center. think that's how the The DIAC. Yes, the DIAC over the DIAC, which is a lot of the functions that now the Deputy Director for Global Integration has at DIA. then as the head of the collection management enterprise, those experiences, understanding who uses what resources and the importance of having somebody as an advocate for them ⁓ were very helpful. ⁓ going into discussions, I remember having some very animated discussions at USDINS and ODNI on what capabilities we want to fund and sort of hearing the same thing about, nobody uses that. And I said, yes, you do use it if you're at PACAF or wherever that you do need those resources. ⁓ Anyway, that's sort of a meandering, but it was was a collection management representative to Southcom throw in a little Naval War College in there. And then collection management enterprise. And then my last job in DIA was as the chief of plans, production and programs at National Media Exploitation Center. And that was again, sort of What does that center do? That center, it's sort of adjusting. It stood up during ⁓ the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. it started out being the exploiting the captured media. And then it grew because it was being able to, ⁓ using it for... ⁓ targeting ISIS and having the data to identify ⁓ places to go after. But the capabilities there, the technical capabilities to exploit ⁓ phones that have bullets through them. ⁓ Or the other thing which I always loved was in our lab, we would have what we call the Franken phones that would look like an iPhone and then you open it up, you're like, ⁓ that's not an iPhone. I don't know what that is, but. ⁓ So the technical capabilities and then being able to extract it. And the other thing that was interesting there, which they were, that they've been able to be very helpful to more recent conflicts is the linguist capability. So having the linguists on hand to can understand what they're, what they're listening to. And particularly when linguists would switch into different languages. So, you know, that we would refer to as, as Spanglish or this other stuff, but it would be languages that would be, you know, start in, ⁓ Arabic of the Maghreb, add some French words, then add some other words or... So they have a lot of capability there with the linguists. one of the... And the other thing which is interesting about NMIC was at the time, so this would have been 2016, 2017, it was about a 600 person organization and 50 of them were government and the rest were all contractors with specific... niche skills as far as a lot of the technical capabilities, the linguistic capabilities. So it was a different model for running an organization, but it was very important and very clearly one team, fight. wasn't you're the green badge, we're the blue badge. It was like we are all working for this common purpose and we cease to function if we don't all work together collaboratively. And you need that contractor cadre because they had unique skills that were probably pretty narrow. Absolutely. Given some of this, I found that mission incredibly cool. ⁓ They won an award for the bin Laden capture because they got all the stuff off of that off the compound, hard drives, mean, amazing amount of stuff that they were able to turn around in a very short period of time. And one of the other things that was really interesting was the ⁓ being able and this, I mean, it's a, it's an unfortunate period for the But when they had the ISIS and the ⁓ holding the people captive and being able to tell, you know, is this accurate or have they falsified these videos to be able to tell that, you know, which was important as far as the prosecutions and for, and for advising, ⁓ other countries and partner nations who had their, that we had the capability that we could help. And that was it. We had a lot of capabilities sharing with partner nations, some of the traditional partner nations, but additional partners who had, ⁓ you know, journalists and people working in NGOs and their citizens being held and being able to give them, here's what this, I know what you see, but here's, we've done the analysis and we've done enough of this to be able to tell that this is legitimate. This has been falsified. So, right. So you could prosecute in case law if you needed to. Right. Interesting. All right. So that was the last gig you went into the private sector for a short bit. Yes. It's where I guess we, our friendship kind of blossomed. Yes. We spent quality time there. So working at Deloitte and again, this is, as I mentioned earlier, the cross pollination of being able to say to Deloitte when the government says they need this skill, this is how they define it, which is not necessarily how Deloitte will define it in terms of, and that was a lot of discussion about analysis. It was like the analysis they're looking for. is defined this way. And then to the government, to my colleagues, former colleagues, to say, here's some capability that Deloitte has that I think could help us with, help you with this particular ⁓ problem. And it was interesting, always the us, them, you, us, we, whatever. it's like, make sure you have the pronouns correct there. But it was helpful because to say, I know this is a great capability that you Deloitte have, that is not something that necessarily resonates with this office. However, you may want to go talk to, and that's from doing enough work across the intelligence community, you know, DOD, and just saying, it's not necessarily what this office is looking for. However, I'd recommend that you contact so-and-so at other agency or service. So that was a, it was a It was an interesting and it was also a good perspective because I... One of the things that I'd done sort of as a side hustle, but also because I thought it was important and it started with the NMEC job was that I was on INSA's Acquisition Management Council to make sure that people, again, are you articulating what you actually need and are you saying that you are not telling me, government, what you need? You need to be clearer because then you can't come back and say, didn't give me what I needed, did you tell me what I Yeah, you did actually say it. it was, it was a very good to get some perspective, to understand it. Cause I think that's one of the challenges in life, but particularly in our field is people talking past one another rather than talking to one another. And, and I think that it was all of those endeavors were very helpful for me to understand why this matters. And it helps when you're responding to a statement of work. What are we actually saying we're going to do and have we made that clear or do we get so into our own ⁓ jargon that we were not using the words that are clearly understood by the other party, whether it's the government or whether or not it's industry that you need to make sure that you are using clear words. And again, going back to if I'm communicating something to a family member about their loved one in a POW case. Am I using words that are generally understandable or am falling back into military speak? Yeah, government talk, ⁓ acronyms and shorthand. ⁓ You said something that made me think, gosh, this is an additional cultural layer the IC has that other places don't in government. It's this tension between we're going to put out a public solicitation for services or products, whatever it is, but we know that's not just being read by Americans. We know that's being read by foreign adversaries. how much can we say here, how much should we say, and that push and pull of, well, we want to get this stuff, but we don't want to be fully transparent, because we don't want to tip off our bad people, our adversaries. ⁓ But if we don't get what we need, like that interchange, and then, of course, now we cut through that by saying, well, it's going be a classified proposal. Okay, that helps, but that means that... ⁓ only very large incumbents that have all the clearances and have been in the community for a while. They get to see that they're the only ones able to bid. They win the work. That's a real conundrum. Yeah. And I think that that's where, uh, yes, I do have sort of have a, uh, a dog in this fight, but I do think that's where it's important that you need to have people that have actually done the work so they can have the conversation saying, Brian, I know that's what you think. That's what they're saying. This is what they're actually saying. That's right. And that's where you need to have ⁓ that, that bit, those relationship, those relationships, and that experience becomes incredibly important because it's, you know, you don't want to waste anybody's time on any side of it, but you need to make sure that we are ⁓ protecting information that needs to be protected, not wasting people's time. and having productive conversations. So you need to have somebody who can do that cross talk and understands and knows I have somebody trusted who can say, I know what your company can do. It's not going to be a good match here. It'll probably be a good match. Right over here. There's always a way to get to yes. Yeah, absolutely. Right. So you surprise me all the time because you're incredibly kind person. You're obviously very, very smart, but, ⁓ you took a job. very recently that you just departed that totally took me by surprise because I was like, I know that's a mission, I know that's a thing, I have no idea what they do, really, in the intelligence space. And I guarantee you very few of our listeners know what it is. So let's talk about the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. So I had done the work for Deloitte for a while and I was looking for, I missed, and I know that it was one of those things that many people said, you will come to eat your words. I said, probably. said, but I miss leading an organization, leading people. So I had been looking around for some options and I had a couple of people send me the job and it was for the executive director for intelligence at TSA. And to your point, I Googled everything that I could Google and went to every website on government to find out what exactly do they do. ⁓ And it was not immediately clear. However, I went in with that brave take charge situation and was like, well, if it's an intelligence organization, I'll figure it out when I get there. Now, when I got there, I said, that's very interesting. ⁓ I didn't know that you did that. So to our listeners, let me say that within TSA, ⁓ so it is not a member of the intelligence community. It gets its badges and authorities through DHS INA. So this is, had to learn very quickly. One of the first, I had a long list of acronyms on my whiteboard. was like, I knew Intel. acronyms. I knew military acronyms, like the whole DHS and the transportation ones. I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And everybody kept saying, what's your NT 50 status? What's your NT 50? And I was like, my NT 50? And I fancy, what is NT 50? And they're like, not Title 50. And I was like, uh, ooh. Not Title 50. So I did do, so just, you know, into the weeds stuff. So the Title 50 are the, are the core organizations that are part of the intelligence community and that So that not Title 50 are people who have a need to know access. And so we would have to do, that became one of my relaxing things to do was to review and approve people's requests for Intel Community Badges saying, do you give me a good justification why you need this? Yes. No. But it was, so it was how they got the authority. now, okay, so I now know what NT 50 is. Let me understand what my organization that I'm now in charge of. The way that it was structured was it was the intelligence and analysis assistant administrator. And then it had two executive directors led by two senior executives. One was the executive director for intelligence, which was me. And the other was my counterpart, who was the executive director for vetting. The vetting was very much the straightforward, you know, your TSA pre-check. Sure. And, and it would also do the commercial driver's license to see if you had any, because if we want to make sure that you're going onto ports and carrying, getting to railroads that you, we've, we've done a check on you. So they're doing that vetting. They're doing it 24 hours a day, three or 65 days a week and had a couple of different watch centers. My office had a watch center because it was looking at if there is an incident ⁓ at an airport or near an airfield overseas where we have US carriers, we need to know about that. Right. So we had, and other, but that's one of the primary areas. ⁓ we had the 24 hour watch center. I had an analytic office. I had a field intelligence officer. So ⁓ intelligence officers who were at most of the major airports in the United States, and then the threat intelligence sharing branch. And so Because it's Homeland Security, we had the Intel mission. did support to law enforcement. Those I was, you know, familiar with because I had also done enough support to counter narcotics that I, that I understood some of those relationships, the law enforcement and, and Intel. The third ring of that I was not familiar with, which is the regulatory. So TSA regulates, industry, it regulates the airlines, regulates some of the commercial rail and has responsibilities as far as when we say that you need to make these provisions, you cannot bring your big bottle of Coke through the TSA screening. Those types of regulations are managed by TSA policy. Interesting. So this threat intelligence sharing branch had a surface ⁓ team and an aviation team and they worked extensively. with industry and they had, we had a certain number of industry partners who had some clearances, but a lot of it was unclassified. So we needed to provide regular updates to them as far as this is what we're seeing. This is some things you should be aware of. We would do quarterly ⁓ classified briefings where they would come in and there, and it would be presentations from the Intel community. And then they would have the policy discussions, but they, their view was we need to know sort of the background about why you are telling us that we need to increase our screening as far as what we allow on to the aircraft. So it was a big learning curve for me, but one of the things that how I sort of maneuvered this is that I came in and I said to my leadership team, said, I understand how to run an intelligence organization, but I'm going to rely on all of you to help get me smart on how how it presents in the transportation sector and understanding the, that cyber is a big issue because it's going to shut down airports and it's going to affect the pipelines. And these are all things that we care about for the infrastructure. So it was, it was a really interesting, from that point of view to learn something new. And, and what I would always say to people, they said, no, you're not going to be the ones that are going to make the decision about, know, which weapon system China is developing. said, but you do have some particular niche capabilities that you are the experts on. Right. And, and there are going to be times when you need when you are the you are the expert that ⁓ and I can't, there was one, you sort of don't know when it's going to pop up, but then it pops up and all of a sudden, ⁓ I guess we need to have a little bit better idea of, of how ⁓ you know, if somebody's trying to send bad things, how do we track that? What's the system? And so we spent a lot of times, worked, have a TSA as an organization has representatives that are part of country teams and a lot of our key allies and to advise them as far as, one of the, very ongoing, very emotional discussion is the... liquids, aerosols and gases, like whether, what you can bring onto a plane. How many ounces. Right, how many ounces and then, and the detection methods. So that was another thing that I I went down, I'd been to Huntsville a number of times going to Missick, but I'd never been to the big FBI. The lab has moved down there now. Yeah, and the lab was just amazing, some of the capabilities. So it was, it was really interesting to learn. a whole different section of work that's going on that we sort of just sort of, ⁓ I have my pre-check and I go through. And another thing which I liked about the office was there were, we had a number of very strong ⁓ intelligence officers who had started out as screeners. ⁓ okay. So actually on the front lines. were actually the screeners and they either, were intrigued by, you know, I get these briefings, shift briefings about here's the things to watch out for, I want to learn more about this. ⁓ they were excellent and they also gave the good perspective. And this is, you know, I think it helps you avoid, is very important across the board, the group thing. It's that I don't understand, this doesn't seem like it matters. And they would explain, this is why this matters. because here's this particular screening system, here's what it can detect. So we needed to understand why we are concerned about this. ⁓ probably what it can't detect. Exactly. And so it was a good mix of people who had come from, ⁓ they were Title 50 intel organizations and they liked either the mission or they liked some of the field intelligence officers. They liked to be out ⁓ at the you know, to be in the field, which is an appeal to a lot of people. And this was, and again, this is in the field at Dallas, as opposed to being in Helman province. Little safer. So they, so we had people out in the field and they, but to have that blend of, of experience with traditional Intel and the particular niche that TSA had. So it was a, It was an interesting blend and my job as the leader was to make sure we're hearing the different voices and that we have a collaborative project that we don't let the loudest voice in the room that's like, no, we need to listen to so and so because they were there and they understand why this is an issue in terms of like airport operations and what we need to, what we can and can't do. So it was a very interesting ⁓ job and It was, ⁓ I have a very different perspective now when I'm traveling. Just say like, ⁓ I see you're using this screening machine. That's top of the line. Okay, nerd. Well you just shared a piece of information I don't think people commonly know. So you just don't have aviation on that mission. ⁓ no. What do you have in that whole The Coast Guard still has a primacy for the ports but A lot of times, clearly, the rails and the pipelines, ⁓ surface roads will go into the ports. So that's where we have to work collaboratively. yeah, so it is definitely the surface transportation. So the railroads, ⁓ commercial trucking, ⁓ the pipelines that support all of that. And then ⁓ the cyber network that's underpinning all of these different things. So you had to worry about threats to pipelines? Wow. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's significant. Like there's, there are so people don't think about this commonly, above ground, underground, know, elevated, they're all over this country. Exactly. And you guys had purview over all of that threat collection? Well, particularly there's, yes. And, ⁓ the regulatory guidance. regulatory piece, Yes. Okay. Yeah. Water is different than oil, different than gas. Right. And there's some communities within ⁓ sector risk management authorities that go into my acronym thing, but that was run out of, at the time, out of ODNI as far as sort of the different agencies that had... responsibility for different ⁓ of the critical infrastructure pieces we had t s a had a responsibility within the and obviously with aviation and and and sort of everybody had a dog in the fight as far as the cyber mission but but making sure that we're talking to one another and so collaborating across that community it's it's so complex ⁓ And you had, so DIA, you had some contact with the public, but small groups. Now you're talking about a job with contact to the public that's very visible and makes people very upset. So how were you fitting into that puzzle piece? Well, it was, it was, it was interesting. The, and, and I always had to just like take a step back. Because some of the industry partners have a lot of clout. If you are the aviation industry, you have a lot of clout. And they would say, we don't want to do this. You need to tell us why this is a threat. And we would say. So they can call Congress any point in time. Yeah, we can call Congress, and did. we would, whereas in the Intel community and with DoD, they sort of got used to. Intel people telling them they didn't have a need to know. Industry, that line of reasoning was a little less compelling. So trying to get to a informing them while still being a good member of the ⁓ good being an Intel professional as far as I can tell you this. And it was it was just very my my my team used to laugh at me because they could see me sometimes in meetings when people were trying to dodge and weave and I'd just be like sitting there like, ⁓ please, this is making me very uncomfortable. ⁓ But yeah, it's now, you know, from, from industry's point of view, this is people's jobs, their profits, they're maintaining the services to, so one of the things that, that I think that TSA was doing well was helping that helping industry sort of see this, this is, this is the capabilities that we're developing in order to get you the type of information that you need so that we can make sure that the operations and people aren't backed up at airports by having to do the owner's screening, but we also need to make sure that we are protecting the safety of the traveling public. Right. And also the, you know, the critical infrastructure things. Right. So they, they were, they had a good capability as far as ⁓ being as forward leaning as they could just help people understand this is why we're doing this. not doing this just because, you know, I don't happen to like country acts. It's like, no, here's what we're looking at. But it was, it was a, and this is, this is, this is a little down Intel nerd rabbit hole, but there were no foreign disclosure officers assigned to TSA. There was an international operations, but there's no foreign disclosure because that authority came through DHS. What's a, what's a foreign disclosure officer? foreign disclosure officer can look at a, ⁓ a piece of analysis and say, I, this, if we, if we work on this, we can get this releasable, ⁓ to another government entity. So in a foreign government, in a foreign government and in a foreign government and, and So some of that stuff has become a lot more normalized and a process that's a repeatable process. If you're going national security organization to national security organization for Homeland Security, because not a lot of governments have something equivalent, finding the right entry point with that partner and then working with their a lot of times it'll be their Department of Transportation. So in the United States, it's separated into Department of Transportation and then Transportation Security. trying to... different department entirely. Exactly. So trying to find the right entry point was a lot of discovery learning for us. ⁓ But we got there and then ⁓ also for the US companies, what can we disclose and to get them the key information. And in that, it's sort of similar to... If you're, if you're advising a military commander, you don't need to know all of the nuts and bolts. can, you know, for, for those in those situations, we can give them, but we can basically say, you don't want to go here. Yeah. You don't need to know all of this sausage making. Yeah. And that, and that, and that became, it was a credibility issue that we wanted to say, we are only going to give you this recommendation based on some solid analysis and some solid Intel. and you're going to have to, we have a relationship of trust that you know that we are not sending you off because we understand that it's an impact on a bunch of different areas. So we're only going to give you this recommendation if we're pretty sure of what we're saying. That's a lot of trust. It is. You're really brokering. That's pretty heavy. Wow. So it was, was, it was a lot more complicated than I anticipated when I first saw it was like, And you know, it is a cliche, but it is very true as far as like punching above their weight, as far as the, the, what they were able to do. And so I felt like one of my other jobs was as a cheerleader because they sometimes feel like, I was like, no, no. I said, you are the only people who know this, who know this and have these relationships with industry. That's important. And that's unique. I'm going to say this because I can say it. I'm not saying you're saying it, but being a part of the big five intel components right d h ⁓ d i a f b i c i a n s a n r o n g those big components have established cultures and intelligence ways of knowing each other ways of working together mostly military so it's all kinda commonly focused and here comes d h s after nine eleven they were going to relook at all this the eyes not happy about that and then TSA the TSA Intel component was was that from birth of intelligence analysis and ⁓ just for that come later, honestly ⁓ You've stumped the band. ⁓ I I believe it was it's it's later. Yeah, and I think that yes Yes, because it the the initial first Responsibility was that was the screening system. So and then it was building up saying well, we need to have something that provides our backup to why we're doing these processes and the regulations that we're giving. We need to have the background analysis on that. And discovering TTPs of the enemy trying to slip stuff through and figuring that stuff out too. And for the cyber thing, which again, ⁓ is this bad actor? Is this ⁓ hacktivist? What's sort of the... the origin of this and to the end of that. So, yeah. So he just opened up another piece of it is that, most people think of TSA terrorism, that's terrorism, but yeah, you're dealing with criminals, human trafficking, hacktivists. just gave a good example, eco-terrorists. There's all sorts of bad actors that can come through the port of entry in that regard. And so you guys had all that stuff. And, and you know, that if you, if you have, uh, if you have pipelines that are in, uh, particularly, and I, I don't know of a specific instance, but I think that this was always a discussion point. If you are out in the far west and big open lands and you've got some critical infrastructure running through there and a particular hacktivist group doesn't like that, then how do we make sure that we protect? Because that's huge expanses. And how do we protect that? And so, and then that's working with industry as far as we recommend that you do an investment here to have the capability to detect. if something has happened to your infrastructure. Right, which they might do or might not. Right. ⁓ my goodness, tough mission. So you did that for two years? Two years, yes. All right. Well, how do you feel coming out of that? Well, I'm looking forward to, I am enjoying doing, A, cleaning my house, which has been sort of a train wreck for many years, ⁓ but also doing some volunteer work and then just sort of being able to take a step back and reflect on what are the things that have been consistent and important and what have I learned and where can I contribute going forward. So you've said this a couple of times so I want to drill into it a little bit. When you think about your time across this full spectrum of experiences and you think back about who made a really good leader, And what lessons did you take away from that person and how did you apply that into your day to day as you went through the TSA experience or the DIA Yeah, I had, I was fortunate that I had a couple of leaders and I, you know, sort of getting the mental picture of them who were, they were very supportive of me and they, and they, but they also challenged me that, ⁓ to do better. I think that those leaders, and then some of my own experience as a teacher and a coach, that I feel really strongly ⁓ that you don't do anybody any favors by telling everybody, like everybody gets a prize, you're all winners and whatever. You're gonna have to help people to say, ⁓ push yourself into a job that you might think that sounds hard. I, this is probably inappropriate, but it is sort of funny because when I was, when I was leaving Southcom, I was looking for a new assignment and I contacted Tish Long, who's the deputy director at DIA at the time. And I said, I think, I don't think that I'm as effective as I can because I've been here too long. And I said, so I need a new job. So she said, okay. So she came back and she's like, I'd like you to take over as chief of operations, and in the dioc. And I didn't say anything. said, what do you think? said, I said, there's a lot of testosterone running around in that office. And she said, and that's why I want you to go there. Yeah. Because it was, it was a bunch of very, very, very alpha males, all alpha mailing all the time. And so I said, okay, and I took the job and it was a culture change for a lot of the people and some people didn't care for it. wanted to, and I was like, okay, good luck with you and your career. But other people, and one of the things I was able to do is that I was able to say, because we were supporting all of the combatant commands and all of my peers who were the representatives, and I just said, when we do this at headquarters, It's not helpful. This is what they need. you're fresh off that rotation. And so I could, and I could bring that insight and it was, but it was, but it was an interesting job. And I think that, and you know, another, I had a, uh, the first boss that I worked for in the army, uh, major Miller, he was, uh, uh, Don Miller, who became a state department officer. He was, um, very much wanted to mentor me and get me to that push yourself. try something different and ⁓ and he wanted this is sounds a little bizarre but but it was very much stuck in my head he said as a leader you need to come in and be the leader present for this office and he said and I know that we all have things that ⁓ are there are the problems that are frustrating us with our family with what other seven he's like you need to be the leader and he said you know you Eddie said, you can't be Mary, you need to be Lieutenant Quinn. And to sort of make sure that you're always presenting yourself as somebody who they can talk to and trust, but that I'm not so wrapped up in my own stuff. Because I think that one of the things that was always ⁓ frustrating is when you sometimes work for a knucklehead and they're like, well, they've got a lot of anger issues. said, We all do, but most of us are able to be present for our jobs rather than being consumed by whatever is the drama that we're having that day. And I think that, and another thing that was important, and I'd gotten this from Don Miller, Melinda Cook, Tish Long, Chris Bourdine, just a bunch of just really solid leaders. And I apologize to anybody that I left off that list, but. was ⁓ be yourself. You don't need to be like everything that's going on in your life, but be yourself and push yourself and create an environment where people feel like it's okay for them to try. And they may not be successful, but encourage them to try. I kept coaching because I loved coaching and I did it because I thought it was important and working with the young athletes. And I had a number of people come to me afterwards. said, that was really important for us to see a senior executive who said, these are my hours during field hockey season. I will be here if you need me, I'll stay, but otherwise I'm going because this is my other priority. And it sort of gave them the freedom to create a better balance. It's never actually balanced, but to give them a little more freedom to do things that were important to them. And I think that that's really important. And I wasn't doing it intentionally for that, if it had that effect, that's good. So, yeah. So you and I both have common, you know, friendships with Suzanne White and you know, my personality was walking out of the building one day and she was walking out too. And it was, it was a reasonable time, five or six. wasn't crazy. And I said something like, Hey, And I just come off a rotation working for her in the command element so I can do this. Say, hey, what are you doing going home? We got work to do in here. And she laughed off and she says, well, you know, this is kind of the point is that your work is not your life. It's an important part of our lives. But if you can't make time for your family, you can't make time for yourself, you can't make time for your house, Like what what is fulfilling in your life work is a piece of that, but you've got to have the rest. That's very profound. So you took that on as to be the example for us. So you, you have permission, not explicitly implicitly to leave the building and live your life. Right. That's, that's powerful. it, it, and I think that it's, it's, it's so important because it's, and to, to also say you take your job very seriously. But you have got to take care of yourself because grinding yourself into the dirt is just not productive or helpful for anybody. It's not helpful for you, it's not helpful for the organization. Yeah, you're not helping. If you come to work sick, if you come to work exhausted, you're not helping you, you're not helping us, you're not a productive teammate. So you need to be a productive teammate, whatever that takes. That's what I need you to do to show up. That's awesome. Do you have a funny TSA story you could tell us? Oh my God, you've got to a good one. I mean, we get all sorts of characters in the American public. ⁓ well, I remember it does sort of like not well on me, but I did learn right before I started the job. I was going through the old terminal at national. So they're like the, and I had a very bad interaction with a TSO person. And I was saying to myself, like, boy, I'm going to show them because I'm to be really important, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I start the job and I say to my boss at the time, I was like, yeah. And she was so nasty to me, blah, blah. And she just said, stop. She said, we have many former TSOs that work for us. They are great. And she said, wait until you see what they put up with. ⁓ On a daily basis. She said, That person might've been unpleasant, but, and so we'd get the updates. We'd get the updates every day. I was like, oh my God, people are animals. And I remember asking one of our in-house council, said, when we see these incidents that get reported about travel or misbehavior, I said, do you see any patterns in terms of like, roots that they're on or like is it a lot everything coming out of Cancun or you know. And you said I can neither confirm nor deny. That's funny. So we we were to relax with like what what were you thinking that nobody would notice when you were you know carrying your the live snake in your pants you know that might get detected when you go through this the screening. You're making that up. Hand to God. Well, I guess wildlife trafficking or whatever that person is doing is a thing. Exactly. That's a way to go. Like I didn't know that it was frowned upon. like, do you use a George Costanza? I didn't know it was frowned upon. It's more than frowned upon. That's very illegal. Just so we're clear. There was a Washington Post article. Now it's probably a couple of years from now, but it was all the stuff that's sitting out just in Dulles that's been confiscated. It's like, crazy huge guns, lots of guns. like, has anyone learned anything since the 80s? You don't bring a gun to the airport. But they've got guns and knives, ⁓ and not just like little blades, but like swords. Like the old crocodile dundee. Yeah, machetes and chainsaws. Who are these people? Yeah, so you've got some wild stuff. Yes. All right, Mary. Hey, thanks again. Thank you. I'm Lindy Kaiser. And I'm Brain Drink. And this has been the Unredacted Podcast.