Episode 234 - Lindsay Moran

Cleared Hot

Society & Culture

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2022

⏱️ 159 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lindsay Moran is a former clandestine officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. She is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. In 2005, she published her memoir Blowing My Cover, My Life As A Spy, in which she wrote about her experiences as a case officer from 1998 to 2003.

After graduating from Harvard and submitting an application that included her language skills and her time living in Eastern Europe as a Fulbright scholar, Moran was recruited to work for the CIA.

She began her orientation in the Directorate of Operations (DO), the clandestine branch of the Agency, after which she was sent to "The Farm", the field academy for clandestine officers. at a base Her year of training included paramilitary exercises, mock ambushes, parachute jumps, car crashes, and driving powerboats. She completed the training course in December 1999, a year after the CIA's director George Tenet declared war on Al-Qaeda.

After graduating from "The Farm", Moran was deployed under the official cover of a foreign diplomat. As a case officer for the CIA, Moran's primary job was to spot, assess, develop, and recruit foreigners willing to sell secrets, as well as maintaining the agents who were already under her control.

Her interest in spy work gradually diminished because of the pressure her career had put on her personal life, and her growing disillusionment with the CIA's bureaucracy, especially after the September 11th attacks. She was also disappointed with the agency itself since she felt that her career advancement as a case officer, in general, depended not so much on the quality of agents that she recruited, but rather on the quantity. The more recruits they had, the better. Disapproving of the war in Iraq, she worked on the Iraq desk at headquarters during the Iraq invasion and resigned from the CIA after five years there.

Transcript

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0:50.6	I don't really know other than the fact the only place you can find it is on the cleared hot
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1:00.4	about a year because I'm a dumb dumb. But I was able to figure out. So go to shop.clear.podcast.com
1:04.9	and click, click on the coffee bag that you're going to see there. If you want to try it out in my
1:10.7	completely biased opinion, it is the best coffee that they bake. Now let's move along. My guest today
1:17.5	is Lindsay Moran. She is a former clandestine officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
1:25.7	Another word for that is she was a spy. She's also a freelance writer and she has articles that
1:31.6	appeared at have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today. She also
1:37.2	wrote a book, which is how her and I cross paths called blowing my cover, my life as a CIA spy.
1:44.2	And we get into that and her career in the episode. And she's now working for one of my favorite
1:49.1	organizations, deliver fund. We talk about that as well. So let's get into the episode, shall we?
1:54.4	Episode number 234 with Lindsay Moran. Enjoy. I think the best way to start this podcast,
2:19.9	let's talk about Nick's ability to be late. So you were dropped off. Actually, we were connected
	...

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