One night years ago, Heather Williams was out at a restaurant with friends.

We were actually getting seated at a table to sit down for dinner probably with about

seven or eight of my friends.

She says she doesn't remember quite why, but and I need to warn what is coming is graphic.

For some reason in the conversation I brought up the fact that suicide bombers, when they

use a suicide vest, it tends to separate the head from the body and the head is still intact.

Williams worked in the US intelligence community.

She had deployed overseas more than once.

She says for her and her work friends, the decapitation detail was a fact, something

they had all seen, either in videos or in person.

But at this dinner, she was with her non-work friends.

I definitely remember suddenly hearing that there was no other sounds.

I had stopped the buzz of conversation and everyone was looking at me awkwardly.

This awkward moment was the collision of two parts of Williams' life that she normally

kept cordoned off from one another.

She says people in the intelligence community do this all the time.

They have one personality with or one set of experiences that they talk about openly

with, let's say, normal or everyday people, those that they don't work with, and then

a whole other set of experiences that they can share, which they otherwise would sort

of have to censor themselves constantly with people that they've worked with.

Often they're legally barred from talking about their work experiences with friends, even

family.

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