Welcome to Making Sense of the Madness. I am Jason Burmiss in for Sean Morgan. Today we have a very special guest.

San Fattis, a former U.S. military and CIA operations officer, is going to join us not only to break down the current state of the Central Intelligence Agency

and America, but much more. We'll be back after this the Decline and Fall, of the CIA, a former U.S. Army officer and CIA operations officer, Sam Fattis, is here to make sense of the madness with us.

Sam, thank you so much for joining us.

Great to be here. I will do my best to make sense of the madness with us. Sam, thank you so much for joining us. Great to be here. I will do my best to make sense of the madness if that's possible. If that's possible indeed. So take us back.

How do you start in your military service and then eventually become a CIA operations officer?

Well, I guess I grew up in a military family, so ending up in the military was kind of a natural thing. And I was in the United States Army

and got out and reached a point where I think I was, I don't know if this makes any sense,

I was trying to figure out what to do next and how I felt like I could make a contribution.

And this is back in the days when the Internet really didn't exist.

So I literally ran across a hard copy solicitation for the clandestine service

of the Central Intelligence Agency and read their ad and thought, you know what? That sounds like

exactly what I'm looking for, which is a way to sort of bring together all the skills that I think

I have and make a difference. And I just applied.

So what year was this?

And how many years had you served in the military prior to thinking the CIA was for you?

So I've been on active duty for four years and altogether, I guess, another four years in the reserves, depending on how you count. I joined the agency, actually entered on duty, if you will, in the fall of 1988.

The process to get into the CIA takes horrendously long. Back in the days of snail mail,

it took a long time. Now it's all electronic and it takes even longer.

I'm not sure why that is.

So I spent, you know, whatever, eight years in the military and then another 20 years undercover at CIA.

And then after I left CIA, I spent roughly another decade working with other parts of the intelligence community.

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