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>> good morning everyone. good morning, good morning, good morningni and welcome to the kentucky book festival mainstage. my name is mya barber. our firstt guest from edgewood kentucky a female marine toom fy combat mission in her childhood was shaped her love of country from the age of 12 the fascination with fighter jets. please welcome amy mcgrath. [applause] our next guest more than 26 years as special agent with the gefbi and today she recalls the experiences that shaped her life. please welcome kathy stearman. [applause]

you can hear me. so amy is going to let me ask the first question. first of all i want to say to you amy thank you for everything you have done for our country and your service and for all that you have done for young women who follow you and all those little girls who can look at amy and not ask the question, will i be able to do that? will i be able to fly back f-18? those little girls can say i can do that and that's because of amy soaked givee her a big hand for that. [applause] my first question is this. for me and for i would say most people in this room we are never going to fly in fa 18, right? the closest we will ever come is watching the new tom cruise movie where he's not really flying the plane.

so i've really want to know and amy touched on this in her book about flying in fa 18 but i want to know. i want to know how it feelsow is early. did it feel like you just want to scream and you want to bomb and does your stomach does want to come out of your throat? tell us what it's like want to know. >> first of all thank you for that kind introduction introduction and they forget into telling everybody about what like to fly an f-18 or to say something briefly about kathy who a life of service to our country as well in the fbi went all around the world did some very dangerous things for us and also was a trailblazer for me because women in the 1980s and early 90s the

women in this field were not necessarily accepted and kathy when you read her book you will see just how hard it was for her and it was people like kathy that literally opened the doors for people like me. so i appreciate you and thank you and it's an honor to be standing next to you today. so what it's like to fly in f-18? i always tell people number one you don't have a lot of time to stop and smell the roses, okay? it's not like you are up there and you are just like the cowboy stuff. you are very intense. you are constantly thinking and in your constantly working i tell people it's like imagine a cyber match and help is a kleeb difficult that is while doing math problems in your head and doing a radio interview at the

same time. all at the same time. when you get out of the jet you literally opened the hatch of the cockpit and you walk out and you are completely drenched. if you've ever walked out of an s.a.t. or the a.c.t. in your brain is just fried that's what it's like after you fly a combat mission. that and her body is completely it's like walking off the soccer field or basketball court after playing a game. it's exhilarating. it's wonderful. i always saves the best best job on the face of the earth because it's so challenging i in your md and your body and the best part of it is when you're doing a training training mission new training mission you find the las vegas international airport and you pull up u next to matthw mcconaughey's private jet and he walks out of his jet and it pops the cockpit in your liking

yeah man, mine is better than yours. that's the best part. that's always after you've done g your mission when you are training or in the cockpit and it's extremely intense and there isn'tth much time. >> were the most awesome things that you said is the fact that you can look at matthew mcconaughey and say i am way cooler than you will ever be. kathy and i have a lot in common because we both grew up in kentucky we both left home and went into male-dominated environments and careers in national security and we have lived in some of the same places alexandria virginia. i went through training at quantico but we both had this dream of a young age and i wanted to ask you because you talk about it a little bit in your book how did that come about? you sort of knew like kentucky

you knew deep down you wanted something else. can you talk about that? >> i have to say as a little girl i grew up on a farm, but i discovered the rest of the world through books and to me books are everything. i learned through books that there is something else. there's a lot more out there and i was determined to see it. so stories that took me to other places and i think that's really what gave me the adventurous tug and for some reason probably my mom, watching her and the fact that she didn't have many choices. she grew up in a time when there were no choices and i wanted to have choices in my life. i was determined that i was going to do something that other women didn't get to do, that other women didn't really want to do and i ended up applying to

the fbi and the secret service and the cia and i was going tot apply to the state department but i just missed the testing date. i had been told that working for government and i did grow up very patriotic, because my father was in world war ii. h' didn't talk about it but i distinctly remember my father saying this, long before it became a catchphrase in the last few years. freedom is not free. there's another thing my father did they really made you think and i always think about it when i watch the tv series one of the best tv series ever and the main character is standing at night and it's just been a day and he says i want to find myself a quiet little farm and just watch things grow. it hit me so hard because my father said that same thing once

and i said daddy why didn't you stay in hawaii after the war which was i where he was statiod but he goes, one defined to find a quiet place where i could watch things grow r and that really hit me. i knew that was patriotism talking. at the same time it's what he wanted so i grew up with that feeling of being a patriot which is why i ended up with a government agency. and that's it. >> when you read your book she has so many amazing stories from her training, from being allro around the world india and china and the stories are so detailed. my question to you is, the do you have a journal? how did you remember all that stuff? >> no actually most of the work i did was classified so i could keep notes and they did write down notes and phrases. like don't forget the story and

things like that but i had a pretty good memory. i had a word or phrase to jog my memory and that's how i ended up writing the book. which brings me to the chapter in my book, the very first one. in the foot i'm talking about being in sri lanka and working on a suicide bomber case and a suicide bomber was a woman. my thought was what did she believe in so much that she was willing to die for it and that they and i asked the question, what is it that i, what is it that each one of us believes in so much that we would die for it? in a recent interview someone said are you advocating suicide bombers? no, that's not what i'm asking. what i'm saying is what do you believe in? all the people who went out and marched for the rights for women

to vote and all the people who marched for civil rights. when they looked out their doors they did know that they were going toa come back to than it hit me this we ask our military to go to through the same thing. we ask our soldiers to walk out the door and go fight for something that they believe in or we believe in. my question foris you amy is how did you resolve that within yourself when you knew you were going on a combat mission? did you think about them i going to come back or did you just go inknowing you had to go fight fr something that you believe dan? >> i think for me to fly fighter jets and to be an aviation, aviation and the military is a terribly dangerous job whether you are at war or whether you are not. if you are the kind of person

that wants to go into that field, you have to sort of make peace with that in training. i have lost friends and most of myng friends whom i have lost along the way folks were not lost in combat. only a couple, two or three. of the 10 friends of mine who are no longer with us most of them are killed in aviation mishaps. and when you look at that, you realize some of that, none of it was their fault. they were just in the wrong place at thero wrong time and te machine didn't work and we are doing really dangerous stuff. it's something you recognize in the very beginning. not everybody wants to do this. our country needs people to do

it and i'm willing to do it. if i'm going to lose my life in the process then you know, i did it for the right reason. and i feel like i look back on that time in my life and that's what i have always felt. obviously you never want that to happen but it's something he'd make peace with early on. i wanted to ask you a little bit about your training because they alluded to it at the beginning when we first spoke that you were going through training in a very male-dominated environment in the 1980s, and there were people when you read your book you will realize there were people that literally tried to sabotage her training because she was a woman. i never experienced that. i knew it even in the marine

corps there were lots of people that didn't want me there but i can't ever say that somebody actually tried to sabotage my training, actually tried to make me fail. i was wondering if you could talk about that. the reason i bring that up is because i feel there's a difference in one decade. i went through training in the 1990s. kathy went through training in the 1980s and we had one decade more integration of women into some of these fields, i believe in you may disagree. has changed some of how our federal agencies have worked. things were better and i actually think things are better now for women than they were in the 80s and 90s. so i just wondered if you could reflect on that? >> the chapter that amy's talking about is my first experience in fbi was my instructor quantico change the size of my gun so they couldn't

hit the target and i knew what he had done. i kept telling him it was often he said no you just can't shoot. being from kentucky and to help of the west virginia state trooper who told me where my shots were going i was able to get through it. but that was my first experience in the fbi and i think over the years the fbi has evolved to a b certain extent. unfortunately one of the things that made me realize when i was writing this book i was on the right path and when i saw "the new york times" there are 15 or 16 women they filed a lawsuit in 2019. i filed the lawsuit against the fbi because their instructors at quantico were trying to sabotage their training.

2019, so i thought to myself has it changed, really? i mean, has it? yes there are there are more women in leadership positions but i think in fbi is still male-dominated. i i think unfortunately a lot of the negative media that the fbi is w getting is warranted especially when it comes to those young women who went to the fbi talk about sexual assault than they were ignored. i personally think and this is just my opinion and not the opinion of the fbi they were ignored because they were young women. so what i doo now, i have gotten so many e-mails from young women who wanted to join the fbi and this is what i say to them. you go into the fbi, you do not let it change you. you change it. and the more women and minorities that go into the fbi the more it's going to change

because as you said in the book, amy, he said it so well. let me find it. he basically said when men see women in these organizations and in the position that they are in they will basically realize that women aren't minorities and women can do the job and i'm paraphrasing here. he said it so much better. what amy said was so true and what i tell young women is the truth. more women andil minorities need to be in the military need to be in fbi and as more women bring their influence into the organization they will change. it will stop being such a misogynist male oriented organization. i say all young women if you want to do this, go for it and if you want to be a marine and a few want to fly a jet, go for it and don't let it change you. you change the narrative.

>> one of the things we both talked about in her books is our mothers and the influence that our mothers had on us. you knew really early on the influence that your mother had on you and a you saw her every y and you are awed by her. i ended up their hand didn't really understand everything that my mother had given me until i was an adult. i'm really fortunate in the last several years of her life i got to spend time with her and i got to know who she was as a person. not just my mom, somebody expected to be there when i walked in the door. that was my mom but i got to what her dreams were. i would like to ask you, tell me about that influence that your mother had on you and part of that question is you have a

daughter. she is five, right? do you want to tell her everything that you have done and everything you have accomplishedli or do you want te influence of her to have it organically like with your mother rex >> probably organically. my mother was a physician and went to medical school at the university of kentucky in the 1960s one of the firstoo woman to graduate from medical school at the university of kentucky at that time so i knew that about my mother growing up. hi was very proud of her but i didn't really know how much of an implied she had on other people until she got in -- an award. i was 11 or 12 years old and this is in the city of cincinnati. we went across the river and she accepted an award that she got up in front of a group which is four or five times as five times as i did this grouping gave an acceptance speech in here i am a

preteen. i went to the very back and buy myself and just watch. this woman came up next to me and said to me, you are dr. mckee graph's.org aren't you? she was probably late 30s, early 40s and i looked at her and i said yeah and she said i want you to know something. your mother saved my life. and you ought to be really proud of your mom. she's really special and you are special to be her daughter. that to me was the first time i izever really realized wow and o growing up my mother had a big influence on me and later on when i went into the marine corps and t did these things i usually was the only woman in my unit and certain things would happen.

i would call mom you know like this happened, mom. what do i do about it? and should i be worried and how do we get through this and my mome would like they did the sae thing to me back in the 60s. just forget about it and move on. so my mother helped me all along the way even as an adult because she hadha been through going in that the mailed dominated environment in the medical profession i was able to plow through some things that may have stopped others because mom was just like, no big deal. move on. and today with my daughter one of the things i love about both my parents if they never made fun of me. i went to catholic school and

did certain things and didn't do other things. they never said to me that's a dream that is not for you. that's the way io want to be for my boys and girls no matter what they decide to do. >> i want to get into some good hard questions about a couple technical ones. if you guys are like me when i read kathy's book the first thing i thought was the fbi? why is he at the eye oversees? aren't they domestic? so i wanted to know if you could touch on why the fbi is oversees and then it occurred to me do i evenen know what counter espione isn't all this stuff? i was wondering if you could define net for people and then also talk about in your book a

process that the fbi did taking certain things out ofk your. i had to go through a similar process you should know with mine to the department of defense were they look at it and they say okay you have revealed classified information so you can't say this. they didn't strike anything out of my book which was great but he must have gone through something similar because you have black lines in there. can you talk about that? >> to answer that first there are some reductions in my book and because i wrote a nonfiction book the fbi publication unit test to read it. after they read everything and then if they have questions they have to send it to a certain unit because it's classified and mine had to do count -- good counterintelligence and counter espionage. the things market my book are classified. they said it's not classified.

the general public doesn't necessarily need to know it. some of it i thought like cia director david petraeus they mark of cia and i said why your doing that? the letters he iowa are everywhere and they said well if you have the letters he iowaur n your look the cia will have to re-your book and i could take months longer for publication so i said -- i'll make this quick because of the much longer answer. the fbi oversees over 70 offices throughout the world and most people don't don't know that we are received in what the fbi does if there's a nexus to an investigation here in united states and has a nexus to china which is one of the places i was stationed i'm a person who works with the chinese government to get that information evidence or whatever they need and get that

back to the united states so the united states a week into do our investigation and vice versa. if the chinese have an investigation i help them with that. the fbi is the head of the office and that's generally what you are doing. you are morbidly a gene -- liaison. if there is a case or a terrorist bombing which happened in one of the cases like covered if the government wants the fbi to help with the investigation they make a formal request of me and i'd love toec the director f the fbi and if it's warranted we send people over to that country and we help them with their investigation. also if there's a terrorist attack overseas and americans are killed that is the fbi's jurisdiction. that's pretty much what the fbi

does overseas. counterintelligence and counter espionage we look for spies in the united states and i like to save the fbi looks for spies and we hunt down the spies and the cia get the a spies. that's pretty much it. one of the things in your book you talk about training surviving invasion and resistance. amy went through that training which by comparison the fbi academy training is like a cakewalk. but you say in your book on page 167 the goal when you get captured, you become a p.o.w. so the goal is only to resist after you can't resist any longer. instruct others were adamant that we were to come home alive

with honor.st my question is have you thought about this and especially in the last few years, john mccain had been called a as he was captured because he was a p.o.w. and sometimes the public looks at soldiers who were captured in and they are forced to read a statement in front of the camera and its a i lie. we all know its a lie. sometimes when our soldiers come home they may be looked at like a like john mccain which he obviously was not or they are. could you speak to that? does the public misunderstand this concept as to what the soldier is meant to do if they are captured? >> first of all if it's unfortunate enough that you are captured and shot down that's not necessarily yourec fault.

you are probably somebody who was just doing their job and you wereng in the wrong place at the wrong time. sto call anybody just for being shot down or captured a is absolutely. one of the things they train you to do and survival school as an american is it doesn't help our country once you are captured to die in captivity. it doesn't help us. it doesn't help the war effort if you come back in aa body bag. so the goal is to survive. guess you don't want to give awaycr state secrets. uncle sam doesn't want you to die. they wanted to survive but you aren't helping the war effort anymore if you are captured so do what you can to survive.h do it with honor and that means

you are not doing everything the enemy wants you to do that if the anime is torturing you to the point where you will die than survive. our country will be okay with that. that's'she what training does ad they do it in a really hard survival school which is one of the hardest things i have ever done because it involves lack of food and lack of sleep and physical contact and a lot of different types of abuses. when i went through survival training i was the senior officer going through in a talk about that a mite look. nia senior officer going through the do not get treated the best. they get treated the and it was definitely an eye-opening experience. one of the things that i loved about john mccain and one of his last talks that he gave with the u.s. naval academy before he

passed away when somebody asked him about honor and what that meant you know he was a prisoner of war for many years in a north vietnamese offered to get him out early because his dad was an admiral. they said you know we can get you out months or years before and you will cut the line of all the other prisoners. you'll cut the line and get in front. and he said no. that is honor. that is on her right there. he stayed as a prisoner of war for many many years to cause the rule was the other prisoners who were there longer got out first. and he said when asked why did you doy that he said i may have died in captivity. if i had gotten out early how would i have been able to live the rest of my life?

i would have lived the rest of my life with no honor. and that is what they teach you their end that is what i learned. it's something that was ingrained and one of the reasons i ran for political office. because i felt like i had to do something. i had to try. >> you want to read amy's book because you actually show people you are p.o.w. and you do what you need to do to survive. that's a sign of strength. it's not a weakness and i really hope that more people get that messagee from you and i don't know how we can make that more prevalent in public. right now we are so divided that opinion, that connection is still out i there.

kathy and amy if you don't mind would like to give the audiencea a chance to ask a few questions for five or 10 minutes if that's all, right. if you will raise your hand i will bring the microphone to you. if anybody has a question don't be shy. it's all good. >> i will start by asking amy what's the most common question people ask you that you think they know already that surprises you every time when i ask? >> the most common question the people ask meop now? are you going to run again? and i'm in a supporting role at this point so i want to help others to help our country. i guess it's not surprising but i don't know. what's the most surprising

question the people ask you? >> why did you write your book? that's the question i get asked the most. it's not tell me what's in the book it's why did you write it and i think that's because if you look at these bookshelves of the all kinds of books written by cia agents and there's only one other female agent retired as an agent and that was over 20 years ago. for me that's why. we have a question right here. >> amy my daughter is an rotc with where she goes to school and if he could give herve some advice what would you tell her? amy -- army or navy? that's great. i would tell her there will be good days and there will be bad days and she'll look back and never regret it. that's what i would tell her.

>> icu. i am coming. stand up please. >> i read your book kathy and of course i love the type of question. and this is -- it sounds like you have to be a lawyer. can you explain that a little bit? >> that is the question that people have asked fbi since the legal attaché offices open. the department of justice since attaches and they are called goodo dio j. at 10 xi or something like that. the fbi said we will send an act to xi over but they have never different name so they came up with legal attaché which makes no sense whatsoever because it still sounds like, and we are

from the doj but we are from the same unit asas the others and a lot of those with two headquarters and said can we change the name it confuses everybody and then it was like it's too much trouble. you have to change this and change that is too much trouble too much time too much money and it will takes years. it's government efficiency at its best. >> this next question comes from everybody who enjoys books. what is your next project in terms of books and india both have one in the works? >> i doo plan to write books, some more books but i would like to write about women in history and women that we don't know about. i want especially women to know about. i've a shortlist of women that i've discovered in my travels

and in my work and i think i've never heard about her. i want to write about those women because i want people to realize our history was built by women and not just men. writing about me is one thing and writing about another woman is another. it's literally another story. i want to create a nonfiction so i can learn the craft of writing nonfiction about other people. it's totally different than writing about yourself. >> so, i don't have any projects as far as the book this year or next but i do like to write and i write a lot of off. i write when i have a chance of the january 6 i actually wrote not only an op-ed that i took my manuscript and they rewrote the

last chapter. i had it all in to the publisher and the january 6 happened and i said nope i've got to rewrite it. when i see a spark that's when i go out there and i've written three or four off that have been published nationally. "usa today" "newsweek" etc. this year and usually it's about currentt events aren't trying to tie some of my experience and credibility into talking about certain things happening in our country. i do like to write. as far as a new book project, i have to think about that. i have these three little kids that are taking up all of my time and they are amazing. i've been focused on soccer and baseball. >> we have a couple more questions right here. >> hello. i'd like to ask you what do you

all think we can do to stop the division in the united states? >> i think that what we can do individually number one weekend and inoculate ourselves a little bit againstti disinformation and try to help others that we know get inoculated from misinformation. i look at it very met as a national security concern. our enemies are looking at what's happening in our country and the disinformation that is dividing us is exactly what they are trying to push. and it's working. never in my lifetime what i have ever thought our capitol wouldal be breached and it hasn't been since 1814. we did it to ourselves. so i feel that something we can do.

that and you know everybody sort of want to look at politics and sometimes i do too and i want to raise my hand and say i'm watching the news and it's all but there is something you can do and that is to not give up. is more than just voting. if you love our country right now you have to do more than just vote. you have to and whether it's supporting a candidate that you like that believes in the values that you have and maybe it's supporting somebody that is not here in this state. maybe it's supportingg someone else. why is that so important? because it's about our country. i always try to tell people you can't just sit this one out. if you're a patriotic american you got to stay involved and support in any way you can. that's what i would say. >> i would like to add what amy said.

it's a national security issue. having lived and worked in china and china is my area of expertise from most 30 years while we are ourselves within and division and the chinese are going around the world and getting allies and buying raw materials and they are loving the fact that we are destroying ourselves from within.' that's what we have to stop. it's a national security issue instead of fighting with each other and not trying toin understand how the other person thinks across the aisle we need to start understanding each other better and coming toto soe way that we can work together as ath country again. if we don't china is circling and that to me is our biggest threat. >> amy and kathy we have time for one more question.

>> actually i have a two-part question. the first part is what was an example of your trailblazing in your particular organization in the fbi and those who respect you as a result in the second part of the question is what can we do to better understand and be able to connect with trailblazers in their organizations who are female or from other cultures? >> can you repeat the first question again for us? >> yes what is an example of

where males were able to recognize and perhaps better respond to females in perhaps other cultures as a result of your trailblazing? >> okay, so the question was give some examples of when males were able to accept and respond to you and your career? i can tell you that and this is an true for all women in the military, okay? my experience in the military, there were some. there is no doubt but i am large what i found was how men respected you and what i loved about the military was performance mattered. can you put the balm on the target in time? e that target is gone.

take a look, it's gone. can you land the $70 million jet on the back of an aircraft carrier at night in bad weather? i did it. can you do it? nobody else in the cockpit o could. so what you have done can you make it to survival school is a senior rep porting office or the senior officer the one that gets beaten up the most? hey man i did it. can you do it? so when you have done these things happen and who are your peers are like yeah man she is career. the man who are your superiors are harder to change because they have never hadd women peer. it's not that they are bad people and it's not -- it's just that they have never trained with a woman. they have never had that experience of going on a 20-mile

hike right next to you. their whole careers they have been with men so they are always in the back of their mind not quite sure. your peers that trained with you, they get it. when you rise into leadership positions you can change the dynamic of the culture. when i first went into my first fighter squadron and i talk about this in the book there was a lot of antics a lot of locker room stuff. you can read' about it. interesting. when i came back at a higher gurank guess what? none of that stuff happened. i wonder why. now i'm the one inan charge. what we found out about that is guess what, the jets didn't turn pink. we still did our jobs and we did our job without all of that and we did it better.

so that's my lesson to folks integrating women in corporations and businesses and agencies, is that you can still be very professional without all the antics and performance matters. agree. in my career as i progressed up the ladder with a couple of exceptions with my peers when i progressed up the ladder that's 19 countered man who didn't want me to be there. so like she said in her book when more women are in those positions than men will start to look at women and go okay well now we are used to seeing women inir these positions than they n do their job and they do it well and all that other nonsense will go away. i do have to say i'm pretty -- because that's where the

russians and the chinese are. >> thank you everybody. thanks for coming and thanks for ksreading books. it's awesome and thank you for being kentuckians. >> i want everybody to read this book. this is how many questions i wanted to ask amy today and they knew i would never get to them. i'm telling you this book is awesome. read it and i'm sure there's a way they can get in touch with you to ask their own questions. >> thank you all for joining us this morning and thank you for ms. amy and ms. kathy. coming up nextex join us on this stage at the kentucky book festival. have a great day.