How Bad Intelligence Helped Sell the Iraq War | Luis Rueda (throwback episode)

original air date - 01/19/24
Former CIA officer Luis Rueda reflects on a career that took him from fleeing Castro’s Cuba to covert operations in Central America, Grenada, the drug war, Iraq, and eventually serving as Chief of Station in New Delhi. He also breaks down the failures behind the Iraq War, the reality of intelligence work, and what decades in the CIA taught him about power, policy, and counterintelligence.

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00:00 - Start
01:07 - Growing Up in Cuba and Fleeing After the Bay of Pigs
03:50 - Being Recruited by the CIA
07:07 - Training at the CIA’s Farm
13:28 - The CIA and the Invasion of Grenada
24:39 - CIA Operations in Central America
39:44 - The CIA’s War on Drug Cartels
50:17 - Cuban Intelligence Tries to Recruit Him
55:14 - Eastern European Intelligence Operations After the Cold War
1:01:23 - Running CIA Operations Against Iraq
1:09:00 - Rumsfeld, General Franks and the Iraq War Plan
1:18:09 - The Intelligence Behind Iraq’s WMD Claims
1:28:51 - Chief of Station in New Delhi
1:37:07 - India, China and the Fight for the Indian Ocean
1:52:12 - Counterintelligence and Becoming Permanently Paranoid

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