The CIA Tried to Bury It | Rachel Cuda | Ep. 451

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Cleared Hot

Society & Culture

4.9 • 11.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 157 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rachel Cuda grew up the daughter of a Navy SEAL, raised on Coronado around the teams. She speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and German. She studied at the University of Tennessee, earned a master's from Georgetown, and wrote software at a startup before moving into defense contracting. At the Pentagon she led the data modeling and analytics line for the military's COVID task force. She married a SEAL officer whose grandfather gave the CIA thirty years as a case officer. In February 2022, Rachel Cuda joined the agency's Directorate of Operations. It was the job she'd wanted her whole life.

Two weeks after she started, Russia invaded Ukraine, and her languages put her in the middle of it. Six months in, a colleague strangled her with a scarf in a stairwell at headquarters.

Then the agency went to work on her. They told her she couldn't go to the police. They told her she couldn't tell her husband. They warned her that reporting it could put her in prison. So she went to Congress instead. We get into the assault, the run-around, the predators the agency shielded for years, and how one trainee forced the CIA to rewrite its laws in eleven months.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, got the red smoke.
0:21.1	Gun runs. North and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winter, baby. Give it to me. I need it. You're cleared hot. Copy, cleared hot. You ready, Ms. Rachel? Yeah, let's do this.
0:22.2	You know, I was thinking about this.
0:28.0	I have a question for you that I don't know if I've ever been able to ask this to somebody on the podcast.
0:31.9	What was it like growing up the daughter of a team guy?
0:39.3	Because I can't really ask my own daughter that because I'm going to get the question I'm going to get the answer from like the daughter to father answer what was it actually like
0:45.3	it was awesome right I mean team guys are pretty awesome but and I'll say this like I think people
0:53.8	I get this question a lot, actually, what it's like to grow up around the teams, grow up with a team guy. And I didn't really understand how different my upbringing was, probably until college, when you start reflecting back on your childhood. And then you start
1:12.6	to realize, you mean your dad didn't show up to your daycare and neoprene every day? Like,
1:17.8	what are you talking about? And so, like, I have these memories. So my dad was a 90s, team guy. And so
1:24.6	he was at SDV-1s, well, and they were still in San Diego.
1:28.1	Yeah.
1:29.5	And so... If I was given the choice between SDVs and suicide, I'm going to be honest.
1:35.0	I'm going to be honest.
1:36.3	I don't know which one I would choose.
1:38.4	I can't fathom being underwater as long as they are.
1:42.3	Yeah.
1:42.8	Full, like, 12-hour days. Those Yeah, full like 12 hour days.
1:45.0	Those boys like earned the title Frogman for sure.
1:50.0	The amphibious nature of what they do in the water is just gnarly to me.
1:54.0	And I think people wonder like, why didn't your dad stand for a full 20?
1:57.2	It's like if you knew what they did and SDVs, like that's not a dry vehicle.
	...

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