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Welcome to Spycast. My name is Dr. Andrew Harmon, historian and curator here at the International

Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. Every week, Spycast explores a world of intelligence and

espionage by bringing you in-depth conversations, spies, spymasters, intelligence officers and

authors. We explore the stories, secrets, tradecraft and technology of a world that looms

beneath the surface of everyday life. The greatest analyst we ever had, truthfully.

That is how this week's guest, Marty Peterson, was described to me by a distinguished former

senior intelligence officer. By all accounts, Marty is a CIA analytic legend, who went

from an NCO in the Vietnam War to hold the number three and number four leadership positions

at this CIA. He has had one to ones with four presidents,

headed up major analytic units and helped train a whole generation of those folks who

tried to piece together the Jigsaw puzzle that is intelligence analysis. Marty is also

a China expert, a country that has fascinated him since he was a kid playing with his Asian

American friends in Phoenix, Arizona. We discuss Asia, China, intelligence analysis and

here, Marty's take and some important topical issues. This interview was so interesting

and just so much fun. Marty's got a planet-sized brain and is an absolute blast. Enjoy.

I want to dig into your career a little bit more and see what we can uncover. So I think

I think an interesting place to start maybe is I know that you're an Asia expert. So tell

us how did you first get interested in this huge and important region of the world?

I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. Believe it or not, there was a sliceable Asian American community

there, especially Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans. I went to school with these kids

and I played at their houses and I go over there and they have these kind of strange pictures

...