When I got ready to retire, I invited my family to have lunch with me in my office at the agency and the first thing is I took my boy that was born, that I was supposed to come to the birth for, and I showed him in the book, the name of the officer and the date, and I said, that's why I was not on your birth because of this officer that died here, and that meant a lot.

Welcome to Combat Story. I'm Ryan Fugid, and I serve Warzone Tourers as an Army Attack Helicopter Pilot and CIA Officer over a 15-year career. I'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat.

On this show, I interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines. This is Combat Story.

Today we hear a unique combat story from the former director of the CIA's Directorate of Operations and Longtime Case Officer, Jose Rodriguez.

Jose's level at the CIA was equivalent to a general officer in the military to give you just a brief idea of his responsibility and impact.

Jose was a case officer and chief of station in several Latin American countries, and would eventually lead Latin America Division at the CIA before transitioning over to the Counterterrorism Center, immediately following 9-11,

reserved as the Division's Chief Operating Officer, a title he made up in true agency fashion, and then was tapped to lead CTC just months after the invasion of Afghanistan.

Jose has a fantastic book titled Hard Measures, How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9-11 Saved American Lives, to recounts not only some of the innovative human ops that he ran as a CO, like its ability to use horses to gain access, but also some of the incredibly challenging decisions he made,

at the highest levels of the CIA and US government, including the creation of the Enhanced Interrogation Program.

This was a really special episode for me, given Jose's role in history at the agency that I love so much, and I hope you enjoy glimpse behind the curtain of one of the most secretive organizations from someone who went from the very bottom to the very top, as much as I did.

I just wanted to start out saying thank you so much for taking your time here, sharing your story with us.

My pleasure, Ryan, my pleasure.

And to me, just as we come out of the gates here, to me, I'm interviewing a legend in the community that I held so dear, so it's really special to just be sitting down and talking with someone of your background and what you did, and we're not getting any politics, and I would just say thank you for everything you did.

I know you took a lot of pain along the way, and people can read your book, hard measures. They can see what you went through.

You're very transparent about it, but just from one agency professional, I speak on behalf of a lot of them, and I just say thanks for the challenges you took on for us.

Well, it's a pleasure, and I thank you for that, you know, and I get a lot, I get a lot from people coming up to me and thanking me for the decisions that I made, which means tremendously to me more than anything else.

So all good, no regrets whatsoever of anything.

So good.

And I was just wondering, I think a lot of people who watch this show are very familiar with the military and its right structure, they're not familiar with the senior intelligence service structure.

So if you wouldn't mind just sharing kind of the level of responsibility as you wrapped up your career, kind of the level that you exited at, I think people don't understand how high that is.

But it's interesting because you know, when I got in in November of 1976, you don't know how far this career is going to take you.

All you want is to get through training, and then all you want is to get through your first, first and second assignment, and then you become a chief of station and you wonder, I mean, you want to do well.

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