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Welcome to Spycast. My name is Dr. Andrew Hammond, 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 with spies, spy masters, intelligence officers

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

looms beneath the surface of everyday life.

Welcome to this week's edition of Spycast. This week's guest is C.I. legend Jack Devine.

Jack was in Chile when Salvador Aenda was overthrown in 1973. He oversaw the covert action

to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He found himself in the Iran branch

during the Iran Contra controversy and he knew American traitor Aldrich Ames from way

back when. Oh, almost forgot. He helped hunt down Pablo Escobar. So as you can see, he

has had a totally uneventful career. Jack and I sat down to talk about countering Russian

aggression, the subject of his new book, Spymaster's Prism. We also spoke covert action and what

he has been up to since he left the agency as Acting Director of Operations. I hope

you enjoy this week's installment of Overachievers, Design to Make You Feel In Secure.

I just wanted to start off with your new book. Could you tell us why you wrote Spymaster's

Prism and what it's all about? Andrew's great to be on the show getting right to the

point. I wrote a book good hunting a couple of years ago and I started writing another

one about the Cold War predecessors of mine and they were interesting characters. I started

the writing was going to be a nice little book. Then the elections came in 2016 and it

just flashed back to me, the Cold War and the Russians and this new environment we're in,

which is operating inside the United States in the action part and I thought that weren't

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