Erik Kleinsmith - Commanding Spies and Muddy Boots Collection #spyvsspy

 Erik Kleinsmith - Commanding Spies and Muddy Boots Collection #spyvsspy - Our guest, Erik Kleinsmith, was Pete A Turner's commander during their deployment to Bosnia while they served in the 165th MI Bn. Pete and Erik go #spyvsspy as they discuss muddy boots collection and how one leads a bunch of spies who run around the battlefield. 
Also, Erik worked with Thomas Colbert's team that uncovered DB Cooper-we covered that in an episode during operators week. If that's not enough Erik also worked on the team that identified Al Qaeda BEFORE!!! 9/11 happened.  This one is action-packed.
#spies #espionage #alqaeda #dbcooper #linkanalysis #puzzlemaker #collection #165thMI #Army #counterintelligence
Haiku
You can’t command spies
Secrets are found off the camp
That’s where the work is
Similar episodes:
Thomas J Colbert
Jeff Gum
​John Murphy

Transcription

Jon Leon Guerrero  0:00  
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is Eric kleinsmith. If that name sounds familiar to you, he was the chief of the intelligence branch of the US Army. Prior to that he was the commander of the company hundred and 65th military intelligence Battalion, which is to say he commanded our own Pete a Turner in Bosnia. Eric earned a BA in political science from Purdue, Boilermakers, and a master's in intelligence studies from the American Military University. And he's currently the Associate Vice President for strategic relations in intelligence, national, homeland and cyber security for AMU.

Jon Leon Guerrero  0:00  
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is Eric kleinsmith. If that name sounds familiar to you, he was the chief of the intelligence branch of the US Army. Prior to that he was the commander of the company hundred and 65th military intelligence Battalion, which is to say he commanded our own Pete a Turner in Bosnia. Eric earned a BA in political science from Purdue, Boilermakers, and a master's in intelligence studies from the American Military University. And he's currently the Associate Vice President for strategic relations in intelligence, national, homeland and cyber security for AMU. His experience in intelligence and security related training and analysis is as extensive as it comes. And it includes counter intelligence, information operations, and asymmetric threats and tactical military operations. He's been a leader in the intelligence community in conducting intelligence operations, and in the future development of operations and analysis. Eric pioneered the development of asymmetric threat analysis, using cutting edge data mining technology, and he gained national notoriety related to his involvement in the ABLE danger program, as the military lead of a team of analysts profiling and mapping al Qaeda prior to 911. His intelligence training courses and programs as a contractor are delivered by 150 instructors today, and his work has been featured on several national media outlets. Most recently, Eric has been a member of a private investigative team in the ongoing case of identifying the true identity of the notorious criminal known as DB Cooper. And he gave us the inside details of that story about two weeks ago, right here on the breaking down showed during special operators week down on the subject of special operators and until folk they are among the team at our favorite cause, save the brave, you can read about them and save the brave.org and this week, they're hosting the Simon are Liedtke Memorial golf tournament. It's at the Temecula Creek in golf course. this coming Friday, October 4. Save the brave is a certified 501 c three nonprofit organization in the tournament will help fund their ongoing mission to help veterans cope with post traumatic stress. You can register for the tournament at save the brave.org slash event and that link will be on our website. I urge you to do it fast. The tournament slots are almost full and the tournament is this Friday. We also urge you to help us out by rating and reviewing the break it down show especially if you like us on iTunes, Google Play Spotify, I Heart Radio, or wherever you listen to find podcasts like ours. Every positive review helps more listeners find out about us. And we always like to grow them the tribe. So register for the tournament radar show. And you can do those things while you listen in on one of the most fascinating guys at the forefront of Defense Intelligence. He's our special guest today. Here is Eric client Smith.

Joel Manzer  3:16  
lions rock productions

Jay Mohr  3:21  
This is Jay Mohr.

Unknown Speaker  3:23  
This is Jordan. Dexter from the

Unknown Speaker  3:25  
naked Sebastian youngsters Rick Marotta, Stewart Copeland. Skunk Baxter,

Unknown Speaker  3:31  
Gabby Reese, Rob LE,

Jon Leon Guerrero  3:32  
This is Jon Leon Guerrero

Pete Turner  3:33  
And this is Pete a Turner.

Erik Kleinsmith  3:50  
Hi, this is Erik Kleinsmith from American Military University and you're listening to the breakdown show

Niko Leon Guerrero  3:55  
And now the breakdown show with john Leon Guerrero and Pete a Turner.

Pete Turner  3:56  
from a MU to Gosh, where am I at Santa nella California recording live at a Starbucks outside. So because here's some sideways noise that's just because I'm on the road, but it's time to get shows in and and ultimately, that's what that's what, that's what the spy like me does. And this is one of those Spy vs spy episodes. Eric was my commander in Bosnia, way back in the 1990s. And I love doing these shows Eric because we get a chance to talk about the actual practical job, the tactical job of collection. And you know, I say the word spy because you know, that's what people identify with. But just all of the different ways we do our job, all the different things like you commanded spies, you've done all kinds of other, you know, intelligence, espionage related missions. I just I think it's great to explore these things with real tech, real technicians who know what they're doing.

Erik Kleinsmith  4:49  
Right, right. Well, some days you feel like a spy Master, and some days you just feel like I cater, depending on who you're working for. So it was all good.

Pete Turner  4:58  
Yes. So I don't want to despairs Paul Norwich name, although he deserves it. But he was not the commander that you were. But ultimately, you were barely my commander, we were at a remote camp. And what you did day to day really, largely didn't directly affect me, because of how, you know how we all were spread out trying to do our job in Bosnia. And that's not to say that you weren't a good command or anything else. But your job is different. And a lot of military commit, shoot, I would say 99% of military commands don't involve having most of your team scattered to the winds going outside of the camp, and having special rules that allow them to do things like hand people money and drink. Right,

Erik Kleinsmith  5:39  
right. Well, it's a it's a, you know, it's difficult to me and I didn't know Paul very well.

Pete Turner  5:45  
I just want to let you guys know, he was proud to announce our official support of the ranks and react on Twitter, we gotta go.To break com.My reputation is this is a struggle that I had.

Erik Kleinsmith  6:04  
When you've got subscribe, we had to turn that out. I think we both think we were seven teams at one point. And it didn't dawn on me until we were done with the deployment that we got everybody together to rehearse movement out to Croatia and Hungary and then back to Germany, where I didn't realize it till we got everybody together. And a lot of the folks are introducing themselves to each other. That means that these these guys and gals have been away have been apart from each other for so long that, you know, a lot of people didn't even know each other. And you know, with the people coming in, as well as all the temporary folks the linguist that we brought in and interrogators that would there be a lot of people don't know, but we had an a linguist company that was brought to us from California. And they had Russian linguist but they took them through a turbo turbo class just to give them some serb cerebral coloration and allow Laurin the function well was you know, then try to integrate those folks in your company. It's just, you know, everyday It was a struggle like that.

Pete Turner  7:06  
Yeah, we had searched Cypriot Oh, and Sergeant Nick Marlin joined us. We were mid flow, we already had our our source network bill me, you know, a lot and a lot of ways we'd already mapped it so well, that there wasn't a lot of work specifically for us to do at that point. I mean, we were, we had a good sense of what was going on. And at that, when they got there was at least for we were the the bigger threat had kind of waned, and we realized that the agreement was holding. Did you guys get a sense for that at the company level? Like, is that what you guys sort of got?

Erik Kleinsmith  7:40  
Yes, or no, I mean, part of it was, you know, you saw this agreement of holding while we were there, but then you always had the feeling that no, we're just here for halftime. And as soon as if we pull out, persist precipitously, or if we just do it, you know, you know, capricious, Paul for political reason, or something rather, that they're just going to go back at it. And it that's the problem in understanding peacekeeping operations, it is not just a one and done, you know, run, we were there for over a decade. I still remember that. The amount of time and investment we had to put it in there, just so we always were wondering, is this going to matter? It was until you got near the end? You said, Yeah, I think this might.

Pete Turner  8:20  
So as a commander, when you take over this unit that's deployed. It's a it's a Combat Command. And as an officer, I mean, that's what you're waiting for, right? Is command time, did you get out of the experience what you wanted, or because of the nature of our mission? Was it something different than what you expected?

Erik Kleinsmith  8:38  
It was actually a culture shock, because before, up until that time, the only units that I had been in have been infantry and armor units, and just the mentality and everything else, you know why that was in command. And it wasn't command for 15 months, I never gave out a single instance of non judicial punishment. I never had to know about nobody who is an agent or an interrogator gets in trouble. Meanwhile, the company that's you know, the other company, the last company that's in our same Battalion, all infantry guys and light infantry at that, they would keep a goldfish jar full of rank that was taken from soldiers from this the dump things that these guys would do. And it was just filled up with with, you know, PB two wings and specialist rank and NCO rank, and things like that, that their soldiers had lost because of drunk and disorderly or whatever they did, I think they one of them got caught keeping a goat and the bears that mean, just things like that, but I, you know, that was the, you know, the, the environment that I came from, but at the same time that the the other culture shock was, you know, it was really up at the, at the leadership or at the officer level was, you know, it was not used to the culture of so many Warren officers and so many other company, great officers trying to work together, you know, we had 21 officers in this in our company. And, you know, that's, that, by itself is a whole nother you know, it's a whole nother animal somebody's trying to manage and lead and direct from a day to day basis.

Pete Turner  10:12  
Is, is it hard? I mean, I've worked with infantry units to is it harder to manage a bunch of egos and smart people and high ranking people? I mean, look, if there's someone who doesn't give a fuck about, you know, what you think as a captain, it's a warrant officer, you know, as

Erik Kleinsmith  10:27  
well, right. I don't care. I mean, it's just a totally different approach. I mean, just as I was an M one tank platoon leader before and then I was a scout recon leader. I mean, we had you know, generally, you know, it's a just a different mentality all together, even though it's all you know, an army unit. It's, it's completely different. I remember, when I first got deployed to Germany, there was an instance and folder, where a soldier cap soldier had was upset that his squad leader was sleeping with his wife. And so he killed him in front of the dining facility and beheaded the guy he's known as the butcher of folder. I know this because I was friends with his defense attorney, who since passed away, but the, you know, you tell the story to to combat soldiers about the guy, you know, behead this guy with a machete takes his head, puts it in a bag, takes it to the hospital, where his pregnant wife is suffering from complications. And apparently, he goes into the wrong room and the head rolls out of the bag. And he's got to put the head back in the bag and take it to his wife's room and put it on her head, Stan, and you tell this story. And as gruesome as you know, without even going into the details. gruesome is a story is when you tell the story to an infantry men or not, or an armor soldier. The first question that I got back was, you know, it came like, you know, what I really want to know is when the head rolled out of the bag, had they pick it up? Did they pick it up by his nose, his ears? And that's, you know, that was the mentality of what they want to know, not just the whole Oh, my gosh, that was horrible. somebody's life and that that was their money tower? You don't get that in an Intel unit? No, whatsoever.

Pete Turner  12:04  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember that was such a sensational case, I was in the chow hall doing a you know, they basically shut that that post down at the point that I was there. And it was just like, an empty space where you could go put a whole bunch of people for an exercise. And so someone showed me like, that's the that's the phone booth where he grabbed and who knows if that's true thing, but, you know, right. That's where he chopped his head off. And he walked away with just like, what?

Erik Kleinsmith  12:30  
Yeah, you know, right. You know, and that's why I mean, it's like, if you respect the, you know, the biggest tragedy if somebody tells you before you take command that 10% of your soldiers are going to call you 90% of your problems. That, I mean, everybody has I had 10% of the folks called me 90% of my problems, but there was nothing compared to things like this. When I was a brigade, I was a brigade, Intel officer for third brigade three ID and I got a call from a German telephone company says, Hey, we're going disconnect the payphone and the infantryman's barracks, and as IY so I'll be there in a second show you so we get there, we go to the payphone. And somebody had run 28 lines out the back of the payphone, so that everybody had free calls back home. Oh, wow. to the US, they broke in and basically hacked the system broken to the phone where they racked up $6,000 worth of long distance phone calls inside of one weekend. I mean, that's, there's different problems that you know, if we had things like this, you you know, I generally assume that for either counterintelligence agent or interrogator, you know, your careers over at that point, if you have something like that, yeah. No, your clearance is gone. All of it.

Pete Turner  13:38  
I was the two at the three or ninth. So first, for the audience's sake, the three online was the, with the spy training battalion where everybody went, and that's an enormous RMB people, it's actually it's actually five companies that are all battalion size. So really, because it's training, there are just thousands of people, and you're not staffed up for it. And as the two, even as a low ranking guy for being a two for a giant battalion. I got to see the bladder, and it was always the prior service line unit dudes that would fight in a pool hall, and just give their give their careers away. You know,

Erik Kleinsmith  14:14  
right. My best one was this and we're in Vilsack, Germany, which is close to nurenberg, and we had one where there's a bar fight between an entire squad of infantry men and the rest of this entire German bar. And then the and then the blotter that the military police right up is talked about how the, you know, the injuries sustained and all the guys that were in for treatment had cuts on their hands and wrists, and that one had a broken, a broken arm, things like that. But then all the injuries on the Germans were lacerated faces, and noses and you know, missing teeth and things like that. So you know, who won that fight just by reading the writing the border, the injuries, and that's just, you know, that's, that's the entertainment that you've got on the weekend of, you know, gosh, who did something this weekend, but I mean, that's, that's just, you got a bunch of single guys in a foreign land with, you know, a lot of time on their hands and not a lot of freedoms and it gets tough once. Yeah,

Pete Turner  15:08  
yeah. Okay, so the time with the 160 fifth, okay, let me ask you this question. What are the costs that co host with us a lot of bestselling authors, Scott Husing, and he's a marine. And they have the two four Association. You know, like second Brigade, fourth Battalion, basically. Right? Those guys are like family. We are not. Why Why is there not like a big two Oh, fifth 160 fifth federation of people who all kind of stick together. And there's a lot of other, you know, the guys from the USS Indianapolis To this day, 70 years later still get together. But the right but for the most part, the army doesn't do that.

Erik Kleinsmith  15:48  
Well, you know, we I'm still very close to everyone. I was within the first Battalion, six infantry. That was my first first unit and I'm still friends with guys from when I was in our battalion and Colorado Springs, but the one six infantry group because we were in Germany, you know, it was again, a very closed base closed group of folks. My I was the battalion Intel officer for it was extra time. But the tank commander was a guy named Carter ham, who just recently retired as a four star general he was the AFRICOM commander before retirement, and now he is the president of a USA. He was such a Down to Earth commander that he you know, he recently threw a, a retirement party for heart for our chaplain who finally retired. And this was just back in March or April, at his house, in Northern Virginia. And we had guys showing up from Kentucky and Michigan and Ohio, and I think Boston and Philadelphia to just to come to this one afternoon, to spend time with their brothers and arms in the cemetery. But I think the differences again, is, like we talked about earlier is that in the 160, fifth, everybody operated it independent teams. And so guys hardly knew each other while we were downrange, because we're in for eight man teams split up amongst all the other units. And then once we went back to Germany, we split up again into the field offices. And so we had, you know, folks, they're all over in different areas, guys just didn't know each other the same way that a band of brothers Right.

Pete Turner  17:21  
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. When knowing that, you know, now, I mean, because being a captain, the chargers and people in Bosnia is totally different thing as as a fully grown and matured, seasoned, you know, adult espionage person. What, uh, what do you want to tell that that young guy who's trying to run this team with people all over the place? What What, what does he not know, that he needs to know?

Erik Kleinsmith  17:44  
You know, part of it is is, is you have to build up worry about your team. First, don't don't worry about the things you know, don't worry about the company, don't worry about the, you know, the higher the higher headquarters in terms of the very start is you have to get to know that everybody on your team so that you're working, you know, that part of the machine is working, like clockwork, and that's the big area concentration. A lot of times we got, you know, each of these teams are they're not led by, you know, they're led by Warren officers. And Warrant Officers are generally either came came from the ranks, and you had some Warren officers that were CEOs before they were Warrant Officers, and they act like NCO. But then you had some warrant officers that were privates and specialist before and guess what they acted like privates and special. So you had some, you know, great, fantastic guys. He had some guys that needed work. And I had, I had to spend more attention to them, to make sure they're spending more time with their teams treat, treat their folks, right. What killed me about Intel more than anything else was? How often I had to ask myself when dealing with somebody, like, Where did you learn it was okay to treat somebody else like that. And that, to me, was one of the toughest parts from just from a moral standpoint of having to exert leadership. Well, I didn't think it was necessary before, but I just see just how poorly we can treat each other on a day to day basis. Not and that

Pete Turner  19:08  
was not acceptable to me. When you got to the unit that command before was was not very good at treating people. Well. There was a lot of mistrust. I know, I have a lifelong significant beef with with the guy was a command before you. What do you do you have a sense of that? do you how do you reckon with that? How do you take these people that have an extremely complicated and dangerous job with a lot of legal ramifications? If they get it wrong? How do you how do you lead that then, what do you what do you do to manage this, this, this unit that's likely overtaxed and independent as hell, but also doesn't have a lot of respect for the command in general, because of

Erik Kleinsmith  19:50  
the guy before you? Well, Part Part of it is, and I saw in, and especially with the 160, fifth and showing up there just as addictive and this was my own Intel unit was ever I was a Combat Arms and then doing special missions after that. But what I learned was, you can't do everything. And so I i prioritized, and there was just a lot of stuff that I didn't do. And it was stuff that I had to wait and say, You know what, this really is important. I'm not going to do it. And I'm going to take the hit for it. If we don't, because it's just it's just not the priority. And I even got into a discussion with the with the commander, where he was trying to do doesn't think since we're going to do this, we're gonna do this, we're going to do this. And I finally said, How about we sort of half ass and 12 things? How about we do six things, right? Yeah, and do it to the letter. And I even had a call. I won't say colleague but appear of mine. And in the same in a different unit that said, you know, hey, I work until eight o'clock every night to get this whole list of all these things that the commandments done? How why is it that you're able to leave at 6pm? And again, we're working 12 hour days, every day? Yeah, he's like, how are you able to leave work at 6pm? Because I don't do everything. He says he said, YSI they're stuff that they're that is just on is just not important, according to priorities, and I'm not going to burn everybody out just to get, you know, whatever, Apple carts set up the right way, you know, just that kind of thing.

Pete Turner  21:12  
Yeah. Well, that's, that's a, I found that to be true to what I was left alone to do my own thing, once again, independent. But, you know, if I needed a nap, I took a nap. And when people would say, Hey, you know, why are you going to take a nap? Because there's plenty of war in 90 minutes when I go back, like, it's not going to be over. And it's not that you're not working. I said it sometimes the commander says I wonder. And that's the indirect tasking to all of us to answer that question. But not really, like, as long as you stick to the roots of what was going on. Some of those wonders are things that you can go Yeah, I wonder that too. Let's, let's keep on task,

Erik Kleinsmith  21:52  
you know, right. Right. And that's the thing is we can we can lose sight of the greater You mean, you always have to take a step back, you can lose sight of the greater, you know, what the greater challenges I mean, I had a commander as a as a, when I was a tanker, he was got so exhausted in the field that he fell asleep mid sentence, while he was trying to brief us and it ultimately got to the point where he had a nervous breakdown, he had asked himself to be removed from command. And we weren't even in you know, any any stressful situation other than you'll be it, you know, had a stationed at Fort Carson and going downrange there and doing Uber's for training. That was too much for this guy to handle. But part of it is because they take so much on the chin and you know, how can you trust somebody that you're going to go into combat with if they're unable to handle the stress of that, of that environment?

Pete Turner  22:42  
Yeah, I've seen that quite a bit with with different units and people just trying to work past the point of exhaustion. And I mean, I've hallucinated I've been so tired. And I've always thought, how good of a decision can I make right now if I had to in a moment here, maybe I wake up, but I'm literally seeing things that aren't. They're good, because I've been up for so long. Right? I definitely. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's, it's fantastic that we're seeing the same things from different angles throughout our careers.

Erik Kleinsmith  23:11  
Right. Right. And that's the thing is like, I don't, I mean, I learned I learned how to sleep standing up in the turret of the one tank and, and I got to I got it down. So I knew how to do that. So and, you know, the rest of your life as you go through different areas, you Somebody said, Well, you know, you'll be in a situation so well, this doesn't this stinks. It's It's cold. It's doing you know what, I'm not. I'm not trying to sleep standing up anymore. I'm not waking up with with rain, you know, in the rain. No, I'm not eating in the rain. Yes, this. That kind of thing just puts everything in perspective.

Pete Turner  23:44  
Yeah, I often say no one's looking at some iron sights at me deciding yes, no,

Unknown Speaker  23:49  
exactly.

Pete Turner  23:51  
No one's put a bomb and rubbing their hands together going any moment now, you know, easier after that, though. So as someone who went through the collection school and you know, did a lot of work to self develop, I really have no idea how I built my toolset. It's powerful. But I couldn't say that any specific army thing? Got me there here? Because training is sort of just the baseline, you have to figure a lot of it out. What are your thoughts on that? How does? How does one develop into a good feel operator?

Erik Kleinsmith  24:22  
You know, it's what's interesting is I ran training for the army. After I got out as a defense contractor, I ran a training for the Army Intelligence Security Command for years, it was over a decade. And we started with seven instructors and got up to 156. By the time again, I'd reach or reach burned out stage and in 2015, and part of one of the classes I designed and developed and taught was counterterrorism analysis, and this was right after 911. And they drew from, and I realized that like, you know, how am I going to be able to put this class together, but then I realized, like, I had that tool bag, because I was doing counterterrorism analysis before 911, when we were tracking out kind of prior to it. And as we start started pulling different things out. And it wasn't until I was talking to a retired colonel who was a friend of our family, we, I was mentioning different things, we finally stopped, he was caught up on a lot of stuff. And I, that's when it hits us, like you know what all those pieces of experience are things that you're bringing together, that the key is to be able to then articulate it and apply it so that it can be turned into a lesson learned sort of some anecdotal reference.

Pete Turner  25:36  
Yeah, I had the crazy fortune, and I want to get back into the al Qaeda stuff in a second. But as I you know, so you go through training, and went to the 160. Fifth, sort of had an in between job, but I was always, you know, one of the role players for training. So we would go to a shop and Berg and drink hot chocolate. And I didn't get to see all of the Warren officers, all the people with experience come through, and try to run me as a source. And so I started got to watch everybody else did it. And I'm a natural talker in person, people connector. So I was able to gather these things. So the training worked for me, but but not in the way it was designed to work. And then, when we deployed, you know, as goofy as a leader, as Bart dacha was, he did insist that we do the work and go out and we got to cut our teeth on asking questions, and I got excellent at that. I did my next job after running sources was to go teach source operations at the schoolhouse, and again, higher level people, people that outrank me, people that I've worked with would come through, and they would say, Hi, how did you get here? How did anybody know to put you here? You know, so it's a, it's a funny accident, does it? Are you when you were coming command of us? Were you able to pick out like, Oh, these guys collect? Well, I mean, are you reading the reports, because, you know, on our end, we send stuff up and largely never hear anything again, except for like, we had this Russian rocket launcher, that was dead, we'd gone in, and I cut a bunch of wires so that it wouldn't work. And that thing constantly got reported on, we were constantly tasked out to verify that it wasn't dangerous. And understandably, but apart from that, we didn't really have a lot of feedback on on what we reported.

Erik Kleinsmith  27:18  
Right? That you know, this was the best feedback that you can get is when you receive a strategic report that comes down from, you know, Washington or somewhere back in Germany, and it's your own stuff that's in there. And they're trying to tell you what's going on, based on your own reports that that was what we were finding and Tuzla going back to the ops guys and sick do their reporting well enough that that's the primary source for the entire nation. Is our guys that are doing money boots collection out in the field.

Pete Turner  27:47  
Yeah. So that's,

man, I like that. You said that. Because one of my key performance indicators for me when I would go work at a battalion or brigade is, did I hear my reports coming out of others people's mouths, as as I was in the staff, right? Where they quoting my work. And if they weren't right, then then I wasn't on the mark. Either. They weren't reading my stuff, because it wasn't valuable to them. Or I wasn't getting the right, the right things that are driving their mission. It was such a, because it's easy as an Intel guy to think, oh, I've got the best Intel in the world. But unless you have those KPIs, unless the commander is like, Hey, Pete, come over here, I want to talk to you. And you know, he's not yelling at you. Unless you have those kinds of things. You're really you're largely, especially as an Intel guy with access to the field, you're largely irrelevant, but you have to allow yourself to be so you can get better.

Erik Kleinsmith  28:35  
Right? I mean, I sent several of my instructors when I was doing training for the army, I said them to Fort Huachuca to do some coordination with their instructors, and somebody decided to give them a class and analysis. And they started showing them that my slides. Oh, wow. And and it was and my instructors came back and it's just said some some major had ripped off your stuff, and was briefing it at their own, we had to correct them insane. Not only is this our bosses work, you're not even doing it right. And they had to show them exactly the right way to teach this particular block on either was a Cameron whether it was threat profiling, or center grabbing analysis, something like that. So that to me was I mean, I was flattered by that. That's that's where I finally got to the ideas like you know, this is I have enough here now that I I want to be able to put together and start working on a book of it. So

Pete Turner  29:27  
yeah, yeah, let's talk about some of that work in a second. Can we get back to al Qaeda, though pre 911. And before you tell us about that work?

Erik Kleinsmith  29:36  
Oh, that was that was an operation i was i was the last job I was on active duty was at the place then called the land information warfare activity, which is a new army unit that was specializing in deception, psyops, operational security, you know, all the things they had with information warfare, and a very nascent stage, this again, this is 99 98, to 2000 2001. Sorry. And as we started working, as is also the first operation that were data mining occurred in the department defense. And so we were doing these fantastic pieces of analysis that again, we had to write the book on ourselves, because the engineer through the tools, and they were just that I could go to work. And so we were, we were doing some great things were getting notice, because it was this information dominance center this that the guy from Disney, who designed the Starship Enterprise, for next generation, he designed this center look just like it to with it with the wishing doors and everything. But we got enough recognition that we finally were approached by folks in Special Operations Command said, Hey, we want to involve you in a mission. Or in a program, we don't really want to talk about it too much. But then this is what it is. And that was really turned out was the ABLE danger program. And we became involved in and track trying to map out where al Qaeda was worldwide. And that was that was that was the RFID find out how to worldwide go. And that was it. And so we started getting hits from all you know, all over the world, but really four major areas that North Africa, the the Far East, the Philippines, where the ties there, obviously the Middle East, but then also think, the Balkans back into Bosnia, there was a heavy presence of Hamas and some of the other cells working there. And it got to the point where our data mining program was becoming so successful that DOD lawyers were, then you know, noticing that, hey, these guys are doing collection, and they're collecting so much information. They're probably violating intelligence oversight rules, which is we're not allowed to collect on us persons or retain that information for more than 90 days. And, you know, the whole deal, Emma was centered around what does account if if a person does a collection, or if a data mining tool does the collection? And nobody has read it? Does that count? And it's still the lawyers could figure that out, they shut our whole program down.

Pete Turner  32:14  
That's a moment defining that. So what you're saying is sure, Pete can't go to an American camp and start collecting and trying to run or, you know, develop a dossier on Eric, that that's against the law, that there's some limitations where you are able to do it, but it's short term. And so what he's talking about is, if if Pete can't do it, could a robot in theory, do it? Especially it's not intelligent till it's disseminated? So if it's in there and not being nothing done, is it? Is it actually Intel? Have we actually broken the law? Just want to explain that a little bit to the audience. Go ahead and go from there.

Erik Kleinsmith  32:50  
Yeah, no, no problem. I mean, and that's that, again, this is all these constraints were put on the US military at the end of the Vietnam War with different than, you know, the different congressional investigations, the pike in the church committees. And that's really where the intelligence oversight came from, where we're just not allowed to spy, you know, military, unless you're in a law enforcement or counter intelligence capacity, you're just not allowed to spy on other Americans, which is, you know, understandable, very straightforward. But then what, again, what happens when a tool does it, and we were getting some extremely wild hits from our tools that we had one tool say that the Michigan militia was being armed by the KGB to take over and create an independent Northern Michigan, I mean, it just, you know, crack ice site sites like that. But the same sites that would also pinpoint an Al Qaeda cell operating a car dealership in North Africa, and using that to funnel money through and for whatever reason the guy was right. And we're able to corroborate that. That's the kind of stuff that you have to sift through when a data mining tool does doesn't do that filtering for you. And so the entire operation was shut down by DOD lawyers. It was that point where 911 occurred, you know, a year after that, and we realized after that we had that entire Sally

Pete Turner  34:10  
Turner fake lions. And

Unknown Speaker  34:17  
we had just trying to

Pete Turner  34:18  
give you the advice here in

Unknown Speaker  34:23  
Michigan for you.

Unknown Speaker  34:25  
As you know, what did they do with their brick? Let me help

Erik Kleinsmith  34:30  
dig in there just because that's where I grew up. And that's when it really hit me home that this war that is about to come of money Americans don't know about when 911 did happen. The first thing we talked about on the phone with the other members of our team was so it begins now. It's what we were talking about a year and a half ago, it is finally started.

Pete Turner  34:53  
Wow.

Unknown Speaker  34:55  
So

Pete Turner  34:57  
yeah, day that's, that's so crazy. Let me back up a little bit. When you're getting all these Intel hits, you guys are trying to process and put the puzzle together? Did you guys have the ability to put out RFID or task kings to the units that held certain assets? Were guys with top siders and English braid belts and a Docker showing up and taking my source for me? Were you guys able to put any any emphasis on what you guys were seeing to to open the clamshell a little more? it?

Erik Kleinsmith  35:27  
It wasn't so much as that because you know, the places that we were looking, we just didn't have collection

Pete Turner  35:33  
assets not

Erik Kleinsmith  35:34  
not on the ground asset to me, we're looking all over the world. Were where we were having trouble and frustration as we were, you know, we were not an intelligence agency. And so a lot of the other large three letter agencies and I want to mention them by names, initials are CIA, CIA, FBI, they did not look see they thought this, these are just so much upstarts working in the second floor subterranean basement of this headquarters. These guys, there's no way these guys could match the accuracy and the power that we had for analysis. And so we the cooperation from those folks were at the time again, was was not exist. So, you know, that's just the way it goes. So is that, you know, after 911, when we knew we had these guys, you know, we didn't talk about it much because we were it was a very, you know, secure. I'll say a deep program. But it was until after one of our guys one of our liaison officer to DI a guy named Tony Shaffer step finally stepped forward and blew the whistle. Next, next thing you know, I'm getting phone calls from 60 minutes, news crews and my own my own congressman and tie in the world of Intel when 60 minutes college was not a sign of success. That you know that you did that you're doing a good thing. 

Pete Turner  36:55  
So yeah. Okay, so many questions. Yeah, so 911 happens, you guys say? So it begins. But I mean, so what, like you guys know so much more about what you're looking into, because you've been into it. You know, no one knew how to speak Arabic. No one knew about the Quran. no one understood, you know, jihad in any kind of real. And I'm saying no one at the institutional level, we just weren't prepared for this kind of, we're still trying to sort out what we were going to do Heck, right before you took over our unit, we were going to get rid of interrogators, because that was never going to be part of our mission again. So what does that look like to you guys? Knowing what you knew being so far ahead of the fight? Did you? What did you guys think?

Erik Kleinsmith  37:40  
Are you know, the best the best? I guess the best comparison I could make is it from from a modern standpoint, you can look at our team is really the the listening post that was positioned on the north coast of Hawaii that was seeing the Japanese fighters come in before. Number 719 41. That's really what we were we were the warning beacon that nobody hurt. And it wasn't till afterwards. And they dragged me and I got up in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And then the next year, I was in front of the house armed Service Committee. And it was really all the testify Why did the 911 Commission pass you guys up? And part of it is because we didn't talk about what we did. I mean, we didn't, you know, really volunteer the information the guys that did, it was really kind of embarrassing that to say that, well, you know, the army had these had these guys identified and there was a unit that was that was, you know, trying to sound the warning that said, Look, something's coming. You guys are already here. So that mean, from a historical standpoint, that's not the best enough anomaly that I can make or I'm sorry, I'm analogy sorry that I can make that what we did,

Pete Turner  38:52  
and when when these bad things happen, and you guys have your finger on the pulse, even if it's threatening, you're not quite sure what you got. Lot of times so just for example, my team was operating on the camp that got blown up in Iraq in the chow hall in 2004. The one of the first reactions was what did you know what did Pete and those guys What did they get wrong? Why did they miss this? Right? And you know what happened yet? You know? Did you guys get the that heat at all? where it's like, what did you guys screw up?

Erik Kleinsmith  39:24  
Yeah, I mean, a little bit, lots of it was I was no longer on active duty when when the, you know, when somebody finally blew the whistle and came forward. So God really touched me in that way. But what was what was sickening to me was the first time I had to go testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I the whole room was packed, there was a line out the door. Hundreds of people waiting to get in and I was a maze. I'm talking to the Senate staffer, it's like Who are these folks, he as well. A third of them are other senate staffers at the senators or congressmen have sent here to find out what's going on. About a third of them are meeting or meeting. But then the other third, our families of the victims of 911. And that's when it kind of hit me that just it just sank right into my stomach that I felt horrible that I had to go in there and explain to these folks how we had the answers, but their family members dead because we were not able to get the word out.

Pete Turner  40:20  
I you know, I'm a tactical guy. So I don't have a sense for this, but to two questions that I'll give you. And I think you can handle these in order. Whatever makes sense. Have you won? The army isn't typically the perp the team that sounds the domestic alarm, like, hey, there's something coming? No, normally when somebody else, at least terms of how I understand it to work. And the other thing is, is someone's always sounding the alarm, there's always you know, it, a lot of what we do, especially on the analysis side, and briefing is a sales job, you know, and my thread is greater than your threat. So how much of that is like just Are we just, we all I get why the President's like, I'm tired of hearing your guys's Intel briefs, you guys are just selling me a bunch of crap, I kind of get breakfast. I've seen Intel people sell something that just wasn't even real. You know, it was like their theory they, they would become passionate about it.

Erik Kleinsmith  41:12  
Right? I mean, part of it is, you're right that, you know, an army unit again. And it was it was we were a sub team of an organization. We're an Intel branch within an operational group within an Intel headquarters, and it was just, who are these guys? is we really didn't rate I mean, yeah, and I understand that. The other thing, though, is like we I think that all the peacekeeping stuff that we did in the 90s, we learned some, you know, we learned how to do peacekeeping operations, we were not ready for this next fights. And so. And you can see that when at the beginning of the Iraq War, that the forces first moved in, everybody moved on to their base camp, and everything was great in the base camp, all hell was breaking. So we learned that in the Balkans, where we stayed in our base camp didn't bother anybody. And everybody and the watchword success of a commander going there was his unit was to make sure that he took everybody and he brought everybody home. Yeah. You know, there was no issues, no incidents, no, I mean, but we got down to the point where there was nobody doing, you know, incidental misfires into the barrels in front of the base camps and check your weapons for ammo and things like that, that that became a huge issue. That's to me is not important when that's, you know, when I finally saw that we understand, you know, we have some leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, understood that we needed to get back house into the villages and into the streets, and take those risks that was the greater good for the success of the overall mission.

Pete Turner  42:39  
Yeah, funny. I

Erik Kleinsmith  42:41  
didn't answer what you're asking. But

Pete Turner  42:43  
I think that's great. I mean, it's because it is complex. And there are people that sell things that are threats, and it is hard to transition, especially when we don't know what our job is, you know, a lot of times in Bosnia, especially, we were doing good work. But a lot of times, you're just not near the thing that happens, you know, there's a whole lot of people that are just people, and, and it can be really mundane, even as you go out to this dangerous area. And you're right, you can, the command can wander, I heard, let me say this. I heard a general in Iraq when we first got there in 2004, for sure, influenced by this era, and they said the number one goal is forest protection. Well, that's easy, sir. Let's go back to Kansas right in the middle and never leave. No, but that's not how you find, you know, and our peers, but I had to do was I had to go make friends with the worst people on the earth, or at least the worst people in the county that I've worked in, you know, the people that had nefarious intent towards anybody, the evil people, and you just cannot reliably find them on the camp. I mean, I want them on the camp, I want to give them jobs. So I can I can do what I do. But they don't they don't offer that up on the camp.

Erik Kleinsmith  43:56  
Right, exactly. So I mean, that's just, you know, we there's leads for learning lessons now. I mean, I don't even know if you know, from from a lot of professional reading that the things that are now going on in Iraq, it's it's caused the army to stop and go back to say, you know, we created the army had to create four interrogation battalions, and then create an entire enemy or persons of interest, or detainee or prisoner of war camp, whatever you want to call it. They created several of them in Texas to train interrogated how to work a prisoner of war, or detention facility. You know, especially after what happened at Auburn, great. We haven't had to run anything like that for decades before that. Yeah. And now they think that we're going to get everything right. Well, in the in the age of instant, you know, instant photography, and folks going things going viral that one, you know, one stupid mistake, or several stupid mistakes from the folks that were there lead toward a national, you know, tragedy. Yeah. You know, that that's how he things can get screwed up, you know, just you're going viral for all the wrong reasons, but it just still happens.

Pete Turner  45:06  
If If we had if we had to put together a unit and go work in a, let's say, a county sized government in in Afghanistan or Iraq, you know, just not Baghdad itself, a Baghdad products, you're going to go out and work? How many people do you need to go out and have a pretty good sense a 65% solution as to what's going on? And what dangerous?

Erik Kleinsmith  45:30  
You know, you know, who you know, the best way to to get the answer and I just couldn't answer OFF TOP your head just because you know, every place is going to be different, right? It's it's astounded me how now Intel has escaped the intel community? And the guys that went go go to find that answer would be I go to a go to a municipality here in the US and talk to talk to them, because they have Intel folks working, you know, now for County Sheriff's Office for this, you know, the New York City or work or whatever, I've trained some of these guys. Yeah, you know, so New York has a camera, how many police 80,000 police, well, they got an Intel unit, over 100 strong, and they need those guys to do the predictive analysis to understand, you know, the changes in graffiti, the gang patterns, organized crime, you know, there's got to be somebody looking at that, from a from a, you know, a back perspective, and it can't be the guy that's has to go out on the street, and manage everything out there. And so that's those guys, law enforcement is making huge strides in analysis and enforce protection in those particular areas. Because they've really, they've they've identified, you know, years ago that this this was an important piece, it's just taken, you know, it's just taken them, you know, they're behind God about eight years in terms of look, we need to create an actual team and set and have these guys focus on this particular area, or,

Pete Turner  46:50  
or this particular event, the one of the good things that I got to do is I got to stay in regions and units would rip over the top of me and I would stay so their boots on the ground knowledge is pretty good. They had a lot of familiarity with day to day operations. But they didn't grow past that point, because they get ripped out, come back, as you know, one time you're a two, then you're a four, then you're a commander, then you're up at division. And so you don't get to build on your ground knowledge you build on your organizational knowledge. And you know, the organization struggles to get out of its own way a lot. Is it is it that we need to have people that just focus on. I mean, I was able to outperform a brigade in terms of their vision, and get them to come around a lot faster. Me and another guy, two guys, three guys, get the entire brigade to change its focus to the focus that the last unit had left with. What is it? Does that make sense to have people that are just dedicated to a region and they just, they live a hard life? They work for five years and then come back and then someone else rotates in somewhere through or what do you how do we get by all the challenges that we have? The Taleban ultimately is going to be able to claim victory over us even though we've got so many any more assets.

Erik Kleinsmith  48:01  
You know that, you know, what you just said was, it was a topic of a paper that a guy named Michael Flynn wrote was either before or dirt when he I think it was just before he became the director of DA, where he talked about how you needed to have teams that specialize in geographic areas, but then overlapping them you need, you also need a teams that would would that would take on more strategic aspects like we're just going to have you guys focus on the entire, you know, theatre, opium trade, because that, you know, we have to have somebody who can stand back and and check those areas because they're going to interlace, you know, GU to all with all the geographic teams. But one geographic team can explain that entire phenomenon, because he's only looking at one area. And so that's really, my focus would be to build something like that, where you have inner left inner lapping areas of concentration for different assets.

Pete Turner  48:55  
When I think about operations, in terms of military, we talked about full spectrum, I like to think of spiritual spectrum, because you're trying to develop capacity in the government, the security forces, and we all have our partners, the best partner, but the guy below us and above us is an asshole. And that's, of course, right? But it doesn't work. Like you should be able to say, hey, let's test the system, this guy here at this Platoon, they need ammo, they've put a request in, you know, I've watched them put the request in and and I lose track of it. Because there's not like a reliable way to track where the request goes, where it stops or if it actually exists or not. Right, but but you can't move things vertically up and down a chain or an American would be mad at American because, you know, there, we were told at one point that the governor of this area was a basket case. And so, you know, we were the Hey, rich and Pete, go talk to that kind of see what happens. And we talked to him. He was anything but a basket case. It was just a bunch of bad American perceptions that are polluted this guy right here. Like he doesn't know anything like actually he's not available right now be because it's their fiscal year, and he's working on his budget. Does that sound familiar to you army guys? I know like he's a good one. Right? And they couldn't even believe they had such a bad opinion of this guy. He wasn't even allowed to be good. Even if he was doing great things. It wouldn't have mattered.

Erik Kleinsmith  50:18  
Right? Well, and that's a, you know, what you're describing is, is a bias. And everybody when everybody thinks about a bias or mindset, they think of it only in terms of politics, which politics ruins everything and gets involved with, I mean, that's great. But there's other biases that you run into an intelligence, you know, one is just personality bias, you just may not like somebody because he's a jerk. So everything you read about that guy, or if he's a, he's a, he's somebody who's in a next neighboring unit, you know, the guy, you're not going to read it just because you don't like the guy who wrote it. I mean, that's a bias. Yeah, you also have a technical bias. Whereas, you know, we'd pay attention to some sources, but we knew that it was heavy in segment, and he lent and, you know, other forms of technical collection. But, you know, we'd have to go check other sources to be able to corroborate that and that, you know, different, you know, they'd have a technical bias and how they were related. You know, even some of the open sources we looked at, I mean, we did a heavy collection and lots of different news sources, we took us a little while to figure out that Reuters obviously, was a very heavy European focus. So when we're data mining, we're seeing we'd see more hits that had a European perspective, that that's not the that's not the ground truth compared to everything else.

Pete Turner  51:30  
Oh, the ground truth. That's my thing. I love that stuff. ground truth happens below boots on the ground, right? Like, it's hard to see ground. Truth is that absolutely. When I go on a patrol, and I've got enablers, and we're all they're all through, but the infantry unit, and I come back with a completely different story, that's factual. But I can go back three days later, you know, we all had these operations. And I go back and I go, Hey, what happened three days ago? And if I can't find that report, if I can't find the goat inoculation program, or the NGO that's going to have a lady selling blankets, if I can't find them, the ground truth says, your boots on the ground are wrong without the reporting commanders really thrive on that stuff.

Erik Kleinsmith  52:12  
Right, exactly. I mean, that's the thing is, you know, we, we even at the task level, you're going to get different sources, or you're just going to get a guy like, I don't like that guy. Why? Cuz I think he's a jerk. Yeah. Well, that that changes your perspective on everything. It's just the biggest thing you really got to worry about is, is this report trying to inform me? Or is this report trying to persuade me? Yeah, and if it's doing the, you're facing indicator that it's trying to persuade us persuade you, and you get that everywhere, but that that, you know, all of a sudden, you got to look at that more skeptically. That's really all it is.

Pete Turner  52:43  
You guys can find Eric, his work on LinkedIn, you can find our clients with on LinkedIn. You can also see when he publishes things in public safety. com, and also, you've got an article in Homeland Security magazine. What, um, let's talk about your book, because I don't want to spend the whole hour just talking shop, let's play outdoors.

Erik Kleinsmith  53:03  
Well, the world the book is shot. I mean, if that's what it is, well, the the actual, the book I wrote is, is comes out December 2, we just, I just finished final edits this week with the publisher, Cagno and they're out of San Diego, they came to me because I was writing articles for school blog that got picked up by a couple of different pieces. And there's all based on, I got an article, one of the most popular ones is how to do analysis when you find a female within a terrorist group, and why feet when, uh, what's the difference of having a female why they're drawn differently in terms of their motivations are and then and then the actions of the group, there's all these different indicators that a female get, that's just one of the articles that I put together. I had the publisher was was looking at these and they just approached me and said, Hey, do you want to put this together into a book and it's like, I've actually already written part of it, I'd be absolutely happy to work with you. But really, what the book is about is the can all the considerations that you have to have to put together an intelligence operation and basic, well, I don't need this, I'm not in the military. But when you look at it, at the we do Intel, and we do the same steps of collecting, analyzing, and doing making decisions, the same things that we do, whether we're a legal firm, or we're a sports team, you know, sports teams collect on other sports teams and watch their videos, they check their their injury rosters, they see who's bought by who they see who's been arrested, you know, whatever, that all of that factors into their gameplay. That's all of it, it's the same process that we do for intelligence. And so I mean, it's, it's a huge industry, outside of God. And it wasn't I didn't really realize this until we were, I was doing training again, for the for the army. But then we were doing some of some training courses on analysis and things like that outside publicly available courses. And the first people we got in was somebody from Disney. And, you know, as somebody who's working out of their Burbank studios that wanted to know about force protection, and how to analyze threats to the theme parks. And if you think about Disney as a company, you're supposed to go to their theme parks and then all the cares of the real world, they're supposed to float just melt away. Yeah. And, and the attention to detail that they put into their parks and, you know, with, from the music to the food and everything else. Well think about if one person with the with the vehicle born truck bomb shows up in front of Magic Kingdom and blows themselves up, yeah, entire business model, Disney is wiped out in a single, you know, single incident. So it's extremely important for their physical security of the parks, the the, I call it, the you know, protecting the secret sauce, the recipe for whatever company it is. So you know, all of that is the same thing that that that the US government and the military has done in the past. Now, the rest of this, our society is figured out that they're doing the same thing. And so that's really what it you know, the book is based around building all the considerations of running an Intel operation and the data that you have to consider the tools you want to put in place, and then the people in the processes. And if you don't, if you don't have all four of those things in place up and running, then your operation is going to fail. And that's really what it is. It's a it's a textbook, but it's not really written for, you know, straight college graduates or things like that. It's meant for practitioners in the field.

Pete Turner  56:38  
I love it. Practitioners always need more help. And you're right, understanding what you need. Back in your subset of your subset, that side group, you know, gives me an idea of how to what I need. That's important, because I'm having all of these conversations, you know, and I come upon a farmer, I've got an idea of the question set that I want to ask, but I I'm fishing the whole time, and maybe I'm going to change my question set right in the middle of it. Because I know that you're looking for, you know, this variable. And if I can find that, then then I know, but I have to know that you're looking for it, you know, right. And it's so hard to link those things. Because, again, I get tasked with things that I know are dumb. And so I I honestly typically ignore those things like the commander's IRS, all of them are typically written in a vacuum. Yeah, I know, where's the bomb? I'm not going to go ask that every day. Whereas Bowe Bergdahl great, I'm not asking that every day. But I am going to go out and have conversations and try to find out what's really going on in the area. Because if I walk around a battlefield, asking where the bombs and where's Bowe Bergdahl? I'm going to get shocked.

Erik Kleinsmith  57:43  
Right, right. You know, this is a Brad Nina Bradley, now Chelsea Manning, I trained I trained him or her in counterterrorism analysis before, before he started all those secrets. He went through our he went through to one of our courses. Yeah, we're going to put this picture up in the classroom. Some of this was our undergraduate, but we got the leadership. And the goal was to

Pete Turner  58:07  
actually, I've got a Bradley Chelsea Manning story to he was, what he was doing that he was at a unit that I was supporting. I, you know, as the crow flies can't because building but he was less than 100 feet for me. I was saying he at the time, because that's he was Bradley that. And when he had that crisis of conscious, you know, whether whether he's a horrible person or not, I'm not really here to say anything about that. But knowing what I knew about the State Department and and the nonsense that was going on. I don't know that I could have given him good counsel, like, I understand. I don't condone what he did. But I understand why he did. Because there was there was a lot of arrogance continues to be a lot of arrogance, especially in the State Department. And that stuff was putting me in harm's way unnecessarily. Just Just the ignorance in the area minutes.

Erik Kleinsmith  59:01  
Yeah, it becomes tough, because you're going to have a unique perspective that a lot of folks that a lot of folks don't have. Yeah, I mean, not even myself. So there's, you know, I, to me, it's anybody who does it, there's a right way of doing it. I mean, there's whistle blowing protections in laws, and you can do it internally. But, again, it's sacrificing national security is acceptable.

Pete Turner  59:24  
Yeah. And yeah, I mean, definitely, there was a better path. Of course, you know, huh.

Erik Kleinsmith  59:32  
Yeah, he could have gone to somebody. I mean, that's thing.

Pete Turner  59:34  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. Well, listen, we never even got to dB Cooper. But I want to respect your time. So can we come back? When the

Erik Kleinsmith  59:44  
book comes out? I want to do we'll do another one. No problem. And that's awesome. Okay.

Pete Turner  59:49  
Thanks for coming on the show. Man. I appreciate you.

Erik Kleinsmith  59:51  
Oh, sure. It's great to great to hear from you. All these years I I have always have tremendous respect and admiration for all the guys or gals I worked with. I mean, I think about everybody often, especially as we get older, and, you know, you we see that the things that we did, and you just look back to God, I can't believe I did that and thought that was a smart what some cases I can't believe I did, and thought that was a good idea. But again, it was just, you know, that's, we did what we needed to do, and I appreciate that you're out there with me.

Pete Turner  1:00:22  
Hey, I always offer this, I forgot to say this. Do you want to ask me a question or five?

Erik Kleinsmith  1:00:28  
Yeah, I mean, I'm really, you know, I think I might have asked you earlier, it's just like, how, how did you get from doing what you did to what you're doing now? And that's the biggest I see that a lot with folks. I you know, I asked I get folks asked me all the time, how do you get an Intel? My my number one answer is go do something else first. Yeah. But then again, you know, you run into guys like yourself, or you're, you're, you know, you're doing money boot stuff, and you're out there as an agent or whatever. And next thing you know, it's you're hosting your radio show. Fantastic leap. But you know, you really is. My question is, what's your thought process and the risks that you you knew you had to take when you're leaving the military, because that's, a lot of folks who leave the military have a very myopic view of what they think they can do. Once they leave, and it's not once they get out, then they realize, Oh, my gosh, there's all this other stuff that I'm qualified for?

Pete Turner  1:01:22  
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. The transition almost killed me. I had done a lot of stuff, I was very, very, very influential. At the brigade level, I could, I could tell the commander, what they were going to be saying to me in three months, because they are all the same person, I had figured them out, I cracked the code, I had a system that worked wonderfully. And then I came back, and I'm like, I know how to do culture. I know, I know, all these things, I can gather information from all these areas I could, I can really help a lot of companies and I would apply for things that I was completely qualified for, and never get a call back. And I instantly, you know, my relationship was over, because I was always going and my girlfriend at the time had, you know, addiction problems. My money soon ran out. Professionally, I had no guide wire anymore, because I couldn't find any work from anybody. And I was completely on board. And so it was it's terrifying. It turns out the podcast is exactly what I do. It's still muddy boots work, I go out every day. I don't know who I'm going to encounter. But I want to talk to him. And each one of these shows is a field report. And then I, I synthesize things as a field guy, not at the high level and analysis guy. But as a field guy, I get a sense for things that kind of guides me towards the next person I talked to. And so and I've always sort of recently realized this, but I went back to my roots, I go out, I work hard. I put out reports and I listened for what you know, the boss is saying the bosses, the audience, the bosses, humanity, the more I hear the political argument back and forth, I'm I go, okay, there's too much of that. And as too much of that what's going on here in the middle. And so it's really largely the same discipline. And obviously, the interview part is exactly the same, just slightly different. But that's, that's the transition of that. And I'm not going to say it was easy because like I said, it damn near killed me and market act like I make a bunch of money. But there's a lot of opportunity and doing what I do. And, and the network of people that I get to help out, I just keep putting value is the difference between combat and the radio and the podcast, is I continue to put value into people's lives and into my show. And then I get a return, I get something back from it that uplifts me doesn't burn me out. I don't use up years of my life. Right?

Erik Kleinsmith  1:03:39  
You know, you know, when you're active duty, you get that question. You ask yourself that every day, it's like, what good are you doing for the country today? Yeah. And then once you leave active duty, then you know, it's, you know, I, I ran this question as a defense contractor, but it's more of how much money are you making us today? And, you know, you're still doing great things for the country as a defense contractor. But after a while, you know, years, you start to take a look and say, What am I doing for my family? What am I doing for myself? You know, and then a lot of cases, depending on how religious you are, like, what am I doing for my God, right. And those things become, you know, as you get older, you change your priorities on those things that you want to service and support. And that's, you know, I think it's hats off to you for being able to do that there are a lot of folks that leave the military every day that need, you know, that still need that guide to find out, you know, what's, what's my purpose in life?

Pete Turner  1:04:29  
Yeah, yeah. And God bless the civilian community, they want to help. But when Google puts out an MLS search thing that links you to jobs, and they can stump by 97. Bravo. Yeah, like, Oh, man. Right, right. I don't know if there's a job. So it's talking to someone the other day, who was a special offer, he's like, why do you seem like a guy who could be a seal? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, that might have been a thing. But my job was so good, I got to do it so much, there really wasn't a, it would be like a lateral move at best. And that's if I, if I made it, you know, we're so fortunate to have this incredible job, but it is hard to explain to the rest of the world what it is that we do, especially like, you did something completely different than what I did.

Erik Kleinsmith  1:05:15  
Right? Exactly. You know, and that's one of the, one of the dilemmas I run into, and a lot of the folks in the military run into is after the longer you're in it, the less and less you get to do the things that you might really like. And so that's, you know, as I got to the point where that's one of the reasons why I got out is my choices were very limited. And I'll became manager this and commander this and but you're, you know, you're you're, you're really more, more generic in your position, the higher you get, you're going to be doing the same thing is dealing with budget and personnel and everything else. And it's like, wait a minute, all that stuff I like to do with for the analysis piece, all the stuff I like to do for the, you know, for the covert ops pieces, I don't get to do that anymore. That's it, you got to realize that that's for the younger bloods. And, you know, you got to figure out okay, then how can I transition to keep keep the fires burning inside my own motivation? Yeah, I gotta find something else. And again, it's like you said, You found it. And that's, that's hats off to you for doing that.

Pete Turner  1:06:16  
One of the best pieces of advice I got with someone from the 160. Fifth, Nancy Richards, she happened to be my boss, also at Fort Huachuca. Oh, great, real nice. And actually, we were in a bunch of new, the three or four, three will not be kept, you know, what you because we're at how she's like, hey, let's get you promoted, because that was hard to do in my era. And I'd like you know, I'm not worried about e6, it's not that big of a deal to me, I'd rather someone who's going to stay in get it. So I started a bypass that and she's like, yeah, let's get you a master's degree and get out. Go do something else, just like you said, go do something else. And it turns out, it was great advice, because I was better being with the military. And I was great. And being in the field doing that muddy boots work. No one's cannot do that with me. They can be my peer, but no one's going to arise. And it gives me an opportunity. You know, it doesn't make sense in terms of water, retirement, all that kind of life hardly ever makes sense. But the fact that I got to come back, and be independent, but learn how to work within the system, I had to learn how to speak commander, I had to learn how to get Sergeant Majors tonight hate me when I showed up in a mixed form all the time and a beard and play, you know, right. That's stuff that you could only do if you have that money boot sky. And so I was lucky enough to get that path. But again, that path nearly killed me several times.

Erik Kleinsmith  1:07:36  
Right? I understand completely. I mean, I had my branch call me before I left the service. And they said, Hey, we need to find your replacement. You're the first guy in the army that has been in that position. We don't really know who to put in your place. I said, Well, you need a strategic guy that has spent time at the tactical level. Yeah, we don't have anybody like that. He's got a arm. He's got a big problem then done, because that's what you gotta have. Yeah. And they ended up they said, well, they'll pick one or the other because you don't you don't get guys that can do both levels. Yeah. I said, then pick a tactical guy said, of course, the guy that came in had trouble, but you know, adjusting to the new climate. But once he got it, he was he was fine. I mean, it just took that that learning curve. So

Pete Turner  1:08:17  
yeah, I learned a minister the same thing, we keep talking about the same thing. And I know we're going kind of over. That's fine. Part of what made me valuable is that I knew the spaceship, you know, that tactical that? I mean, sorry, the strategic or the theoretical level things, those guys can't see what I see. They just see the continent of Africa, you know, like, but go there and figure it out. So I would have to make a lot of trips to the spaceship so I can explain ground reality to right, because the commander needed that ground truth, but I couldn't I couldn't bypass the staff. Because they would knife me in the back when I wasn't around or even right there in front of my face. Like I've been killed in the staff room way more than I was ever in threat. You know, in battle, you know that, you know, that's

Erik Kleinsmith  1:09:00  
true. Oh, no, understandable. No, that's the way it is.

Pete Turner  1:09:03  
Yeah. It's funny. Well, listen again. Thanks so much. It's a faster show. I know people are going to love it and I can't wait to get it out and, and just do this again. And Heck, I want to get Joe garlin on the show, that would be fantastic. And I'm just going to keep on doing the Spy vs spy episodes because I just love the fuck out of them.

Erik Kleinsmith  1:09:19  
Oh, sure. That's great. I can I can I can hook up a lot of lot of folks that I kept in touch with just again because they're all great guys and gals though.