This is Deep State Radio, coming to you direct from our super secret studio in the

third sub-basement of the Ministry of Snark in Washington DC and from other undisclosed locations

across America and around the world. Hello and welcome to the podcast. It's that time of the

week again for us to talk about what's going on in the intelligence community with our spy show

that I host each and every week with our friend Mark Polymeropoulos. How are you doing this morning, Mark?

I'm doing great as I was mentioning you before I went to the VNN last night. My favorite

watering hole on the planet and actually and this is actually it was quite an honor. They have a

photo there of Equalizer 3 in which there is actually a cameo appearance of a VNN baseball hat

which the station chief in Rome is wearing. So I'm doing my part to spread the love of the VNN

around the planet. Equalizer 3 is the number one movie in the world right now. So I'm pretty excited.

Well we're going to have to change the name of this podcast to Tales from the VNN or something

like that because we mentioned it so often. We are really fortunate today to have a guest who has

a perspective on the intelligence community that is unparalleled. That is Michael Morrell who is

the former acting director and deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency is one of the

nation's leading national security professionals with extensive experience in intelligence and

foreign policy including his 33 year career with the CIA. Welcome. How are you? I'm fantastic David.

Thanks for having me on the show. It's good to be here. Well it's good to have you here. You have

led the way in many things including good podcasts on the intelligence community. We are let's

start at a level we don't normally get to. We're normally on these podcasts. We get pretty

granular pretty quickly. But you have had such a perspective over the course of your career you

watched as the mission of the intelligence community has changed and the means of collecting

intelligence, the challenges before the community have changed and morphed from the Cold War era

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