At CIA, we work around the clock and across the globe to help keep Americans and others around the world safe. Secrecy is often vital to our work. But we're committed to sharing what we can, when we can. So let us be your guides around the halls of Langley as we open our files and speak with those who have dedicated themselves to this mission. These are their stories. This is the Langley Files. As listeners of The Langley Files know, gathering the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe means CIA officers have to work in every environment imaginable, from major cities to remote, austere environments to active war zones. But think for a moment about what it takes to make all of that possible. On previous episodes of this podcast, we've talked about disguises. We've talked about travel safety. We've talked about advanced CIA survival training. But zoom out, and you might ask an even more fundamental question. If CIA officers need a secure facility to work out of or live in, who builds that and how? If they need vehicles, who procures them? Who maintains them? If they need food, water, or emergency medical supplies in remote or dangerous locations, who supplies it? How does it get there? In short, how does CIA build, transport, and maintain everything necessary to keep its global presence running 24 hours a day? And most incredibly, how does it do it all in secret, under cover of darkness, even when operating in broad daylight? It has a world-class cadre of in-house logistics and other support officers. That's how. And on today's episode of The Langley Files, we'll be sitting down with a veteran support leader here at CIA. So stay tuned. Because from stories about setting up CIA's presence in Afghanistan after 9-11, to sharing details about the range of support jobs here at Langley, to discussing the private sector logistics skills that have a natural home here at CIA, this is a glimpse into the secret world of global CIA logistics and other critical support functions that you don't want to miss. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Walter. And I'm Dee. Carrie, thank you very much for coming back to Langley to talk to us today. You're one of those folks that we know who walks down the hall even like post-retirement and people know who you are. So we're really excited to hear about your career and hoping that you can share about what it means to work in the directorate of support here at the agency. But maybe we just start off the conversation talking about you and your career and what you can share with us. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, I love coming back for a variety of reasons. And the egotistical side of me loves coming back because there are so many people I still know in the hallways. I walk down the streets and nobody gets excited when I walk by. So this does a lot of good for my self-esteem. Well, for a CIA person, that's probably how you want it. You know, out in public, people don't. That's a good point. I love the CIA, and I had a wonderful career here. I was very lucky in that I got to do a lot of very different things. I've had an almost 35-year career. The first 10 years not with a director to support, and then the last sort of 24, 25 years within the director to support. What made you want to apply to CIA? So my father was an operations officer with us, and I had spent my childhood moving around overseas. The summer between my junior and senior year of college, I worked here. This was back in the days where you just filed papers because computers were just starting up, right? I spent my summer sort of filing papers. But I'd always, you know, I'm always sort of inquisitive and would ask questions. And, you know, and I talked to a bunch of people. And the lady who was sort of the big boss in the office, I was talking to her one day. And she said, what are you going to do when you graduate? I said, I don't know, probably go to grad school. She said, do you like school? I'm like, you know. She goes, well, then don't go to grad school if you don't like school. I was like, OK, maybe I should work. Do you like working here? I said, I do like working here. Well, then you should just work here. She was so practical about it. You know, those first 10 years, I really grew up as an officer. I came in through a training program that really taught you about the entire organization. And so I got to meet people from across the different directorates. And I think that was a wonderful base to help me on later on in my career. And so I think that was a wonderful experience. I spent then the next, I've lost track, eight years, whatever it was, with the open source center, which is really when you think about intelligence work, you think a lot about we're going to be like Tom Cruise and we're going to drop down to the middle of a computer room and we're going to put a widget and another widget. But intelligence work is so much more than that. And open source plays a big role in what we do. And it was then after I did those those tours that I then joined the directorate of support. And I sort of feel like the minute I came into support, I just sort of all of a sudden I relaxed and I said, I'm home. This is it. This is me. And so I came in and spent a year within a training program, and then I did a lot of temporary duty assignments around the world, which is sort of a wonderful way to get your skills up. You know, I mean, I'd been an agency officer for, at that point, almost 10 years, so I knew what we did as an organization, but it was sort of just the sort of the practical stuff of support that I needed to learn. So, Kara, you talked about having a great understanding of everything the CIA does when you joined the Directorate of Support and started managing critical logistics here at CIA. That seems entirely fitting because the Directorate of Support is involved in critical to really everything that CIA does, full stop. We've talked in previous episodes about some of the functions and some of the occupations in the Directorate of Support. We previously interviewed one of our CIA security protective officers, our friend David. We've talked to our well-being chief. We've done travel safety tips with another one of our security experts. All of those functions fall under CIA's Directorate of Support, or DS, as we say here. So maybe we could set the stage for listeners by speaking a bit about the range of things the Directorate of Support, or DS, does. Right. So CIA's director of support is responsible for everything from logistics to security to finance to human resources and medical services. So it encompasses really a wide range of jobs. So to illustrate this for people, let's perhaps talk about setting up a CIA presence overseas somewhere. How are we going to do it, right? Exactly. And all of the ways in which DS is essential to that. You think about what do we need from the director of support? Well, we're going to need money. And so you've got to sit down with the Office of Finance and with the plans officers. You're also going to be dealing with facilities. If you're looking to build a facility, we have a whole Office of Facilities here, right? And the Office of Facilities has architects and engineers and plumbers and electricians, and it's anything you need to build a secure building. And I hit the word secure. I'm going to hit a little bit harder. Secure building, because that's how we operate. And so we don't have the luxury of going in and just, you know, renting an office building. If we're going to rent an office building, we're going to have to, you know, practically gut the thing and make it secure. And so facilities plays a huge role, especially when you go into somewhere new. Logistics, moving, you know, moving stuff from point A to point B and doing it in a secure manner. And so I think that really plays a huge role. Security. It the security of our people That number one And security of our facilities is number two but those are you know one and two are pretty close together You retired as what we call a support integration officer Is that correct? That's correct. And that function is kind of like the hub of a wheel, right? You're kind of keeping all of the day-to-day operations up and running for a particular location. Can you chat a little bit about that particular occupation and how that touches some of these other occupations you were just talking about? Oh, certainly. One of the reasons I love being an integrator is you do get your fingers into everything. You're not expected to be an expert necessarily on logistics or HR or finance or security, but you need to have a good understanding of it. And you need to know, okay, when do I need the expert, right? If somebody comes to me with a small security question, I can answer it. Somebody comes to me with a big security question, I'm going to say, hang on, I'll be right back and I'm going to go find a security professional to come in and discuss it. I think the key to being an integrator is understanding, okay, where are we going? What is our goal? And having enough understanding of the directorate of support to know who you need to bring in. One of the other functions we have here is medical doctors, psychologists, nurses, all on staff, both here at Langley and as part of our overseas cadre. So yeah, all together, that clearly shows the wide range of functions that the directorate of support encompasses here at CIA. And something you said struck me, Cara. You mentioned moving stuff from point A to point B securely. It occurs to me that at CIA, just shipping a box has to be done in a very unique, careful way. Absolutely. Given all of the security and counterintelligence considerations. You have to keep security in the back of your mind at all times. So we just talked about a hypothetical general example. But your first job at the Directorate of Support found you in the middle of some of the most trying and historic events in the agency's history. and really our country's history. Could you tell us about that time? There was a job for somebody who had my skills in the Osama bin Laden branch of CIA's counterterrorism center. And I wrote a friend of mine and I said, I know I still have two months, but this is the type of thing that I think I would be interested in doing when I come back to Washington. And she said, actually, we need somebody to fill that position right now. So we're going to cancel your next assignment. You're going to come back and you're going to start this job. So that was in October of 2000. I started working in the Osama bin Laden branch of Counterterrorism Center, CTC. And then within a year, 9-11 happened. And so as I'm driving to work one day, and I was on the phone with a friend of mine, and she said, I'm surprised that you're calling me. And I said, why? She goes, haven't you seen the news? I said, no, I'm late to work. She's like, a plane just hit a building. I was like, oh my gosh, how horrible. And then my friend said, oh my God, another one just hit. And I said, I need to hang up and I need to hit the gas pedal, right? And as I'm walking into work, people are starting to come out and I go to my desk and everybody's like, this is definitely a terrorist attack. We spoke on an earlier episode with Kevin, who was in one of the Pentagon spaces, struck on 9-11, nearly lost his life, but recovered, and went on to join a later iteration of CIA's Osama bin Laden team and was a part of that team when CIA, working with interagency partners like NSA and NGA, found bin Laden. So he was there at the tail end of that team, its final iteration, so to speak. And you were there for one of its first iterations preceding 9-11 and on the day itself. What was it like working that day? We just started working and nobody in CTC left that day. People came in, they stayed. People were there for 24 hours more, right? But nobody left. The boss walked around and said, if you need to leave, if you need to go be with your children, leave, leave, leave. And everybody said, no, we're staying here. And that group of people had been doing the Osama bin Laden target for so long that they were really vested in it and committed to it. And you could just see the passion and the drive and the, oh, heck no, we're not going. We need to stay here and we need to do this. So you're there as a director of support officer managing incredibly critical logistics. We spoke in the introduction of this episode in a hypothetical sense about how logistics enables CIA's intelligence mission. Now you lived in an incredibly historic example of that in real life, which was basically enabling CIA's response to 9-11. CIA officers were the first on the ground in Afghanistan after those attacks. But first, I'd actually like to ask you about your work in the year preceding 9-11, because those initial CIA operations in response to the attacks were made possible by the contingency planning your team did, putting options in place in the event CIA was called upon by the president to go into Afghanistan. So what was that planning like? We were looking at, you know, OK, if we decide to go into Afghanistan, what type of aircraft do we need? And do we need helicopters or airplanes? We decided that the best kind of aircraft to go in was these old Russian helicopters. And one of them sits on our compound today. And so I will modestly say, I think I bought that. Right. I think I bought that aircraft pre 9-11 while we were still sort of like one day, what should we do? Where should we position it? Having everybody at the table and having that expertise. So you had somebody who understood the terrain. You had somebody who understood, OK, what is our goal going to be if we ever go in? You had me who said, Ben, you need a helicopter? Let me go figure that out, right? And that's where you start working with the U.S. military, with different contractors, in some cases with our counterparts in foreign countries. It's also interesting, Carrie, because it sounds like you're planning not just for what you need, but for what you might need. You're imagining a ton of contingencies and trying to come up with plans for if you have to act on any of those. Yes. And I think that's something that the DS does very well. It works because you're sitting side by side with the operations people and the technology people, right? Like we're all working as a true team, a sort of an integrated CIA team. And I think that's really when it works best. If you have DS sitting on the first floor speculating what we might need, and you've got the ops people on the fifth floor speculating what, you know, it's not going to work. But as we look at the rest of the world, what we did successfully in Afghanistan is not going to succeed in other parts of the world, right? It's so important to not only know what are CIA capabilities, what is our goal, what is our focus, how are we going to get there? Let's come up with one, two, three, four contingency plans, right? What is the environment we're going into? And so that's why it's also important to have that expertise at the table. And then when the attacks of 9-11 did happen and CIA was tasked with going into Afghanistan as part of the U.S. response against al-Qaeda. You, as a key support officer, were at the center of helping CIA establish a presence in Afghanistan. What was that like? It was just, yeah, it's incredible. You know, people always say, what was your favorite tour? And I'll always say my favorite work tour, hands down, setting up our presence in Afghanistan. You know, we were one of the first ones in. We were there before Thanksgiving. The man who had been my boss in Washington went out and he was the first boss out there in Afghanistan. And in early December, he reached back and he said, I need you out here. And so I went to my immediate boss. I had a lot of bosses at the time. So I went to my immediate boss and I said, hey, I just got this email. They want me to come out. And the guy said, you can't go. You're a woman. And I said, what? What? I mean, I understood where he was coming from. You know, Afghanistan was a culture that under the Taliban did not have respect for women. We also had no idea what the operational conditions were. And, you know, is it just a bunch of men? and Carrie, where are you going to sleep and what are you going to do? I sort of explained to my immediate boss, he knows me and he knows that what I'm capable of. And if he didn't think I would succeed there he not going to ask me to come And so I went to training the week before Christmas and then I went out right after New Year So I was out there first in January of 2002 And so when we went in we took over an older building where everybody had a bed, a lot of shared bathroom living conditions. I think maybe there were two washers, two dryers. It even had a dining hall with a kitchen. And so the cooks who had worked there stayed on, and every night they would make us dinner. We would all sit down at the table, and they would make us dinner. And I'll never forget the person who was number two in our organization who was out there. The deputy came to me one day and he said, I don't understand why you always get a better piece of meat than me and you always get served before me. And these guys would come out and he was right. And they would serve the chief first and then they would serve me and then they would serve the number two. And I said, I'll tell you why. They know, you know, he's the boss. They know that I pay them and they know that you're important, but they're not really sure how. So I spent six weeks there trying to sort of put things in order because I was more junior at the time. I was working with a more senior support officer and he did a wonderful job developing the relations with the U.S. military. So when we needed something, the military would be able to respond. It was a very congenial relationship and also one sort of built on necessity. They sort of needed us as well. And I'll never forget, all of a sudden, pilots just stood up and started racing out one night, and we all said, what happened? And they said, we just heard a military aircraft went down. We're just going. We're going to go do what we can. And that's, to me, that's CIA. We're much more agile. You want it to get done? We're going to get it done. And Carrie, how long was your initial assignment out there for? So I was out there for six weeks on sort of a temporary assignment. First, it was time to come back to Washington. And I, you know, sort of got off the plane feeling like a proud American. I'd served my country. My country was at war. I raised my hand. I went out. And I sort of half-joked this lady was on the tarmac trying to push me back onto the airplane saying, we need you to go back out for another year. I said, I've been out there and it's a huge job. And that was just at the very beginning. It's only going to get bigger and bigger. And I'm not as experienced as other people that you have. And she said, you're right. You don't have the experiences that other people have. but what I need is somebody with a good attitude and you have the right attitude. So big scope, you're out there for that year or did you say longer? So I did the six weeks. I came back and then I went back out and I, you know, it's been a while, but I want to say it was sort of July to July. It was 12 to 13 months. So was that kind of your day to day out there? I mean, you're talking about paying chefs and you're talking about buying helicopters. So was that kind of like your function out there? I always say I had this sort of quintessential day where in the morning I put on whatever like my nice shirt was. And I went to meet with the U.S. ambassador at the embassy to explain why we needed to bring out another handful of people. I can't remember how many. Right. But we need another X number of positions. And then that afternoon being in jeans and a T-shirt and test driving pickup trucks. But it was it was buying cars locally that could get around the terrain. It was also bringing in armored vehicles from the United States or wherever we could find them around the world and having them come in because sometimes you're going to need to do something with an armored vehicle. It was the helicopters. It was making sure we were staffed appropriately. But I remember chatting with my boss and he said, listen, we need more people out here and they're going to need a place to sleep and I need you to help me with that. And so I worked with the facilities officers back here in Washington, and they identified a company that could come out and who could basically create a housing farm for us. And it was these old containers that they had remodeled into sort of living containers. And then we modernized the kitchen. When we first got there, it was wood-burning stoves. And then we replaced them with gas stoves. It was, yeah, just incredible. If I could ask very quickly, Carrie, you talked about airplanes and helicopters and armored vehicles and housing units. What did you guys do for water while you were out there? Was it just huge pallets of bottled water? That's a good question. As I sit here sipping my bottle of water, yeah, I think it was pallets and pallets of water. And then I think that was something that we eventually transitioned to the contractor that we had doing the cooking to have them responsible for the water. It's a huge lift. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's everything you need to live, right? You're going in starting from scratch. And Afghanistan had some things. So all that time you've gone from procuring this old building to making a station out of it, right? Yes. How gargantuan is that effort? I mean, you're talking about logistically moving things across the world in a very quick manner, procuring things at a local level as quickly and efficiently as you can as well. How does something like that work? So when we went out, we were a handful of people who were going to be assigned there full time for the year. And from the director to support, it was me and it was a finance officer because Afghanistan didn't have credit card machines, right? So everything we did within the country was going to be on a cash basis. So she had a footlocker full of cash. Oh, my God. Then all of the other help, you know, the other DS disciplines would come in on a temporary basis for either four to six weeks. So logistics officers, we usually had two or three at a time. Security, we always had one. When I talk about security, that was somebody who was working in the office. I'm not talking about the perimeter security, but I sort of talk about a security generalist. And so those people would switch every four to six weeks. And so, you know, whereas I try to be a very accommodating supervisor and we're all in this together and I want to hear your ideas, I want to hear your ideas. It pained me because I could not do that because every four to six weeks I had a different team. We had to stay focused. And so it was really a matter of coming up with what the plan is and sticking with the plan. You know, everybody understood and we just kept marching toward what we were going to do. CIA has wonderful relationships around not only with the military that we certainly talked about, with the Department of State, right? And they were a huge player as well in what we did. But it's a matter of trying to stay focused on, okay, but what is our mission, right? And what are we there for? And so everything that the director of support did was, okay, what do we need to do to help catch UBL, right? And if that means we've got to buy backpacks for the guys who are going to go climbing around the caves, we buy backpacks. And so at the very beginning, it really was a lot of sort of tactical supply stuff. And then as we continued our presence there, we're not going to be living on cots anymore. Okay, how about we buy everybody a nice, comfortable twin bed? It doesn't need to be what was sort of leftover that we found in the back room. And so trying to make at least people's living as pleasant as possible. Pleasant is probably a little bit of a stretch, but what else can we do not only to forward the mission, but also to help the people who are forwarding that mission? And so it's just trying to think of everything and bringing it all together. So I'm going to pick up on that in terms of traits or abilities of somebody in a role like yours. We're sending you out kind of as a junior DS at least level, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. What type of skills or abilities did you think were innate of you that maybe mirror something that other DS officers reflect as well? I was very comfortable saying, I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Let me find out. Let me ask, right? I'm not going to go. I was not an expert, but I think it comes back to, I know where to go to get the answers. And if I don't know it, I could reach back to Washington. You go in and you've got to trust the experts and you have to trust your team. Everybody was so motivated. We were all so passionate about what we were doing. There was no question about what we were doing or why we were doing And if we had to sleep on the floor that night you slept on the floor that night If I could ask quickly Carrie extrapolating from that what skills do you think make a great DS officer here at the agency? What do you think the cadre needs and is looking for in potential applicants? You've got to be smart. You've got to be able to learn. You know, it goes back to you have to understand why are we here and what are we doing? And I think to be a DS officer, flexibility, absolutely. Today, I'm going to be somebody who's walking the director around. Today, I'm going to be somebody who's going down to meet with our counterparts in another intelligence organization. We talk about technology a lot here on The Langley Files and how CIA is harnessing it and adapting to it and hiring the world-class talent that it needs to do just that. Have you seen technology changing how CIA does logistics and other work to support its presence around the world? We talked about sort of, I think earlier, a little bit about supply chain. How do you get something from point A to point B? And it just gets more and more difficult, right? CCTV footage is everywhere. You can't walk into a 7-Eleven and buy a phone card anonymously anymore. What are we going to do now that everything is becoming, more and more societies are becoming cashless? How do you hide? You know, I mean, in the old days, you know, when I was growing up, you just threw $100 bills around and that's and you could stay hidden. You can't do that in so many different places. So that's where you need people who can think to themselves. How do we get around that? Cars with their GPS systems, right? What are you supposed to do? Remove the GPS system when you buy a car and then go do your whatever little secret squirrel stuff? Well, then it's weird because who takes their GPS system out of their car, you know? So the world is just continuing to change. And that's why we need to continue hiring people who can think differently, right? And people who can say, okay, here's a problem today and I know how to solve it, but what's tomorrow's problem going to be? And let's get out ahead of it. But being able to think to yourself, where are we going to be a year from now, two years from now, is really critical. And that's why those specialists are also so important. I mentioned our human resource officers earlier. one of the things they have to do is figure out how do we keep our people hidden and in the noise. So you're saying, Carrie, that if you're listening to this right now and interested in applying to the Directorate of Support here at CIA, you have the chance to work on an entirely new set of challenges in the intelligence world of the 21st century. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, that's why I retired, to make room for somebody else to figure that out. our world's going to continue changing. We talk about 9-11 was our Pearl Harbor and just think how the world changed in not that many years, right? And I still believe, you know, we're the greatest country in the world and we just need to be one step ahead of sort of everybody else in a positive way. So Carrie, you finished your time out in Afghanistan. Do you do any more tours overseas or what does that make your time after look like? I did after Afghanistan, I did a tour in Western Europe. I then came back to Washington and I did talent management, which I absolutely loved. And then after that, I moved to do support for the East Asia region, but working out of Washington. And that was one of my favorite jobs. And then I had an opportunity to go overseas again to Western Europe to a location where personally I had always wanted to go. And so I was very lucky and that worked out. I was sitting in a meeting one day and the director of our Office of Medical Services came up and said, I need a new deputy. What are you doing? So I applied and was selected for the position to be deputy of the Office of Medical Services. And then I had the opportunity to be the deputy of basically my home office, which is the Office of Mission Integration, OMI. And I talked about being a support integration officer. So OMI has that cadre of officers. And then they also, they support staffs that support the work that we do in the foreign field. So it was really the sort of the perfect culmination, you know, having grown up that way for the last 20, 25 years to be able to sort of, you know, run that office. I was thinking about a tagline that I've heard logistics officers reference, but really it's kind of universal to all of the skill sets needed within the DS tradecraft. And the tagline is logistics officers get what we need to get to where we need to get it when we need it to get there. And I think that could really be the mantra for all of DS. I think that's absolutely true. I would probably argue a little bit. Sometimes we need to be there before we need to be there. Right. Again, it goes back to if you have the right relationships and we have, you know, wonderful analysts here who are always looking. That's their job. They take all of the intelligence from the operations people and whatever we've gained from technology, open source, and they're sort of put together, okay, this is where we think we're going to be. And that's why I think the relationship that a lot of people don't think about is that relationship between the analysts and support. Where do we need to perhaps stage an aircraft? What's the next thing coming? Thanks, Carrie. Yeah, it was wonderful chatting with you. It was wonderful. We appreciate you coming in. Oh, absolutely. Like I said, I'm really proud of not only CIA, but very proud of DS and what DS can accomplish. You should also be very proud of yourself. Well, thank you very much. You had a very well-known career here. Go do something fun in your retirement. I know you already have been, but go do what you couldn't do for those decades here. Yes, thank you. We thank Carrie for making the trek back here to CIA headquarters to talk to us today. And speaking of headquarters, Walter, on our last episode, our trivia question was about just that. In our last episode, we heard CIA's Deputy Director Cohen and FBI's Deputy Director Abate describe the locations of the respective agency's headquarters. And while CIA's headquarters is currently found surrounded by wooded terrain here in Langley, it wasn't always located here. So our question was, where was the official first location of CIA's headquarters? The answer lies across the Potomac in downtown Washington, D.C., on E Street. This street had been home to CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS. For several years, once home to the newly founded CIA, this location had no signage at its entrance, indicating that it was the Central Intelligence Agency. But after President Eisenhower's driver had difficulty finding the entrance, a sign was eventually added. This E Street sign can now be found in CIA's museum, and you can check it out for yourself on our YouTube channel. So for our next trivia question, Kerry just spoke about procuring the very first helicopter that CIA used in its operations against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan after the attacks of 9-11. Our question to you all is, what type of helicopter did Kerry procure? It's a good question. And that helicopter does actually sit here right at CIA headquarters. Drive past it every day. So tune in next time to hear the answer or this one I also believe might be on our YouTube channel if you want to go over there and check it out. I think it is. All right, everybody. Thank you very much for tuning in. From all of us here at Langley. We'll be seeing you. Do you think Carrie helped procure the hot dog machine we discussed on a previous episode? Oh my God. Was she involved in that? Things that make you go, hmm. Maybe. We could ask. Maybe it's sitting in her basement right now.
