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Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

I'm Peter Ernest, the Executive Director of the Museum. I served for some

36 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, largely as what is called an operations officer

or a case officer.

Every month will be bringing you interesting talks with visitors,

with authors, with others who have something to do

with the world of intelligence and Espionage.

My guest today is Tyler Drumheller.

Tyler is a, we are former colleagues.

He had a 26 year career in CIA and served in a variety of countries, served for some time in Africa as I recall Tyler, and came up through the

ranks to the point that he was chief of e-r European division at the time of the of the Iraq of the

Iraq war. That is one of the key positions in the clandestine service of the CIA.

He is one of several barons, as they sometimes call them, or division chiefs,

who literally oversee everything in their area,

whether it's covert action, intelligence collection operations,

advising State Department on all manner of things that come up.

It's a very, very key position. During that period,

Tyler saw up close and personal, as they say, the run-up to the war, the run-up to the

decision to go to war and actually going to war. He saw how the

intelligence such as it was was handled within CIA and the interface between CIA, in this case, and the interface between CIA in this case and the administration.

He was sufficiently, and I'll use the word outraged by what he saw that he chose to do something that really very few intelligence officers do,

...