the fermi king bucks and these which have devoted my entire youth and adult life. when i started firmly new and believe that i wouldn't become a kick boxing coach, likes raise children. i like to help them grow. i think that with the such a character as our children have with the difficulties they're going through, that's how future champions on board, through hardship, they have good mentors to help them. so will the children seem to enjoy the workouts, but any off energy with smiles on their faces? they work out with punch and bags and also training the power and then on the go, we can do pushups here, have arrives to know, so play volleyball. sometimes. i've been doing good books and for 4 years now, i trained to protect my parents, my loved ones, and my future children, today's event wonderful joy and happiness to all those who took part. some will be inspired to take up this fault. for others is a wall. kimberly, from the horrors of war, the children, hey, will peace and,

and to conflict instead of the constant flow of home. so you, craig, this is these, we, me in the don't, yes, republic, faulty. what are you? thanks for joining us. hey, on the international web, back with more at the top of the out of the coming up next is don't care. we all came with the latest episode of the west of loans, the the over the course of my career at the c i a, i had occasion to work with lots of military officers assigned to the defense intelligence agency. these military diplomats were well represented in us embassies abroad, and their job was to liaise with host country military officers. is that the culture

inside d, i a can sometimes be toxic, and that toxicity if left unchecked, can severely damaged the national security nickel. i'm john kerry onto welcome to the whistle blowers the . 2 2 virtually any oregon, his industry has had to deal with issues of waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality. but when the dysfunction is at the top among the earth organizations, leadership, what's an employee to do? in the case of our next guest, his only consideration was to blow the whistle. lieutenant colonel ryan sweets. he said that they were quote, alienating and disenfranchising our intelligence personnel, while disrupting and degrading operations and quote, those are serious charges. so what exactly was happening? a d i a, according to our next guest, a colleague at the defense that to shay office in room was secretly reporting

negative information about the performance of co workers to superiors. the practice turned managers in western europe against their subordinates, creating a hostile work environment and disrupting their efforts to gather intelligence. in another incident, d, i, a officers private medical condition was exposed and used against that officer. add to that back biting evidence of retaliation. and you have an intelligence agency that is simply not able to function the way that it should to our guest today is that d i a whistleblower lieutenant colonel ryan squeezy. thank so much for being with us. we're glad to have you. thanks for having me. john. i appreciate the opportunity out of the pleasure is all mine. thank you. a kernel. let's start with your career. tell us about your history in the military. how you got involved in intelligence? i a and then the defense. that's a shape program. yeah. so i was a 1999 graduate of the air force academy after graduation went to pilot training,

where i then flew as sixteens for the better part of my 22 year career in the air force. my pen ultimate assignment was selected from swath of air force officers to become an aircraft ashtray. eventually landing myself position is air attache to italy in switzerland. i that's pinched by the defense intelligence agency, which brought me to that organization. i served there for 3 years and after that assignments went on to serve as a staff officer for about a year before my retirement last february c. and you are the kind of officer with that background that the pentagon wants in these positions in all the years that i was in the c i a working overseas. i thought that d i a was a well oiled machine. the d i a officers with whom i worked regardless of what country was in, were substantive experts in their fields. they had close and friendly relationships

in the host ministries of defense. and they were all personally popular. everybody was, it never even occurred to me there, there might be internal problems. tell us about what you saw, the either bothered you. when did you begin and, and what was your reaction initially as well? it is a dichotomy because what struck me 1st about the ad tashay service was walking into class the 1st day and meeting my would be colleagues, ashate, colleagues. and when you spoke to them and read their sieves and rather bios, it was a military. you had harvard graduates, you had olmstead. scholars, you had was special operators, you had pilots, it was the chrome de la crown of the united states military. and rightfully so, you, i, in terms of the officer core representation in the nation's abroad, that they're serving. and then on the other hand,

the flip side of that coins i dichotomous coined was the management of the defense attache service. the thing that struck bluntly right off the gate was my 1st interaction with management of the, the defense actually service or das. and they purported this montrose of high production, low drama, and course i wasn't sure what that meant. exactly, but i came out to find out very well with that mag, which is don't rock the boat because we will make your life difficult. you just so our viewers can understand that you are in a position like that you're an intelligence collector. much of what you collect is either unclassified or it's collected by observation. you're not out there meeting with sources in the middle of the night behind the garbage dumpster. you're there

as an official representative of the united states department of defense. you're liaising with, with military senior military officials of the host country. what kind of information is it that, that you're out there trying to collect without rocking that boat defense ashes throughout the world. so whether it be from our country or others fall under that vienna convention last right. that it is. it is covered the international convention that we're in the country, observing and reporting it. and also our, our dual role really is to advocate in that house nation and vice versa, advocate for our hosts, interests as they pertain to the united states. so our interlocutors range from anything from the mid level capturing all the way up to the shooting in between. that's right. like so many whistle blowers, whom we've had on this show. you went through your chain of command when you saw

evidence of wrongdoing the old trained to do. but going through the chain of command didn't work. so 1st, what was the wrong doing that you reported? and 2nd, what was the response from your chain of command? when you did that reporting to do it really snowball from what i thought was going to be a relatively easily resolved. and that was we had 2 colleagues within the office who were under performing in the mission and as oper that everyone was so feeling their, their role as well as their potential and country really were not doing that, but they were impeding others carrying out that mission whether it be with their toxicity cost to city or just so over the course of about a year, i tried to resolve that at the lowest level, meaning within the office chain of command tool and gradual approach in with,

in which i addressed it to the eventual failure, it does and eventually restroom use for other avenues to include the intelligence agency as well as the office is chain of command at headquarters. we get to the inspector general, which is very important. i want to ask you about the initial stages of these. what really were making, what was it exactly that you were reporting? what was it that you were seeing that waste fraud abuse and illegality as well. the 1st thing is that as an ad tashay e d sources into your training and then into your assignment itself, we were very well resource to execute the mission. the training program is very well refill out on station and then have the veritable commanding officer say, no one ever got sent home for not writing is not only dereliction of duty,

st. of government resources that are invested into the attache and into that operation. to do exactly that, which is to right. so i like and did as a pilot training showing up at your 1st operational unit and being told, you know, why you, you need not fly here, which was astounding to me. wow. yeah, that's shocking. after you major complaints through the chain of committees that a moment ago, again, that's exactly what we're trained to do. if you don't get satisfaction in that chain of command, you go to the inspector general. in my case, you know, i, i objected to the torture program, it was my chain of command that had created the torture program. so you want to go to the inspector general. but just like in your chain of command there what happened with the inspector general's office? what was that experience like? so i, i took on an instrumental approach 1st. obviously, like we talked about within the office, the, my commander's commander and said,

look, here's what i'm seeing, here's what's happening within the office. before i go to the inspector general, i'd like the opportunity for you to come out and vet the issues to which she did. however, instead of as this is where the reprisals took place, which you took the form of her coming out to the local, moving my assignment, my follow on assignments, removing the assignments for 2 others and my colleagues and sending one back to dc . after only about 10 months on station. so that were right, that was the real genesis of the i g, cause dereliction of duty, toxic work environment that contributed to the headquarters management coming out and committing reprisals on all of us who had that's where title 10 the letter of the law was wrong. and you know, that's an important point,

i'm glad you raised it because what you're talking about, the retribution that you're talking about is very clearly and specifically a violates action law that we have in the federal government. right? they just can't do things like that. at what point did you say the system is just simply not working for me? i'm radical. something that i never expected to have to do like hire an attorney for example. yeah, that you read my mind, john, because it got to that point where i took actions that i never thought i knew. and maybe that surprised me even more. i having been growing up so to speak in the operational air force and then seeing the cd under value of the united states military that i never thought i would do about 9 months into the i g investigation . so for the recap and the timeline of events, the headquarters had come out,

committed were being myself. shortly thereafter, i filed an inspector general complaint, signing multiple counts of reprisal. that investigation then languished on for the better part of 9 months and ultimately. but at that and my 9 month march is when i surmised something was a mess. i felt that the d i as inspector general, was not carrying out the investigation with due diligence. and i say that as a former i juice and i felt they were not actively pursuing. and it was at that point where i email former defense, i attached a service colleagues and i said, i'm ryan. so easy. here's what i saw occurring. i the fraud raising abuse toxic work environment followed by, carried out by the leadership of the agency follow place it in, allowing it to all play out. who else out there is seeing when i'm seeing that for

me, what was the turning point in it? and at which i said, i never thought it would come to this, but i am being stonewall clearly after being the victor. while we are speaking with defense intelligence agency, whistleblower lieutenant colonel ryan squeezy, we're going to take a short for more of this conversation. stay tuned. 2 2 the look forward to talking to you all that technology should work for people. a robot must obey the orders given by human beings accept. we're such orders at conflict with the 1st law show your personal intelligence. the point obviously is to create a trust rather than to the various john payments, the

most protect this phone existence was on the the, the a hi, i'm actually i have to have and i'm here to plan with you whatever you do. do not watch my new show. seriously. why watch something that's so different anywhere else

. welcome to planes or do they have the state department, the c i a weapons, bankers, multi $1000000000.00 corporations. choose your fax for you. go ahead. change and whatever you do. don't want, i'm probably going to make you uncomfortable. my show is called stretching. but again, you probably don't want to watch it because it might just change the waiting for the welcome back to the with the blows i'm john kerry onto. we're speaking with defense intelligence agency. it was a blower, lieutenant colonel ryan's ways the about problems inside that agency. colonel, thanks again, john. appreciate it. just before the break, we were talking about you going to the office of inspector general to report now seasons in d, i a not only do the inspector general say that it was unable to do it, but the i g also told you that it had concluded that there was insufficient evidence that you were a victim of reprisal. it's pretty easy to see what the reprisal is,

even from an outsider's perspective. so 1st, tell us about what, why do you think the inspector general failed to act? who was the inspector general covering for yes, of the elements of reprisal? simply port, are you the victim had a report of a wrong doing to the chain of command inspector general congress. and then there has to be an on favorable personnel action taken as a result of that protected communication. so in my case, in the case of my colleagues, we raise concerns of fraud, waste and abuse, dereliction of duty and, and as a result in a direct result of those reports, our file on assignments. i was subsequently given a sub par annual performance report, which all but ended my professional air force career. there was the was that the chaise service workforce survey conducted in 2020,

found almost half of responded and said that they had witnessed hostile behavior in the workplace, including harassment, intimidation, and bullying. 30 percent so that they had bull gender or other discrimination. to me, these are crazy numbers. has this been your experience to these number sound right to are the result of a freedom of information act request i put forth after i had queried the 170 former colleagues, i actually received an anonymous tip about the climb and assessment and not only being storm and tell me about the assessment. they told me about the leaderships attempt to cover up that assessments when they receive the results narrowly ignored and dismissed. the foreign results that you just briefed. and so to your previous question, and the question that's back now is why, why would the agency be so apt to not address that?

i asked to instead punish or red tribute against the people who raise concern of the problem, but never attacked the problem themselves. and i think it just comes down to protecting the institution. there is a curve ball in place within the defense intelligence agency that has inserted themselves in defacto power, drawing many benefits there of whether it be employment, whether it be career progression, whether it be power data arrive that from allowing remain in place. so for a whistle blower such as myself, to have an allegation substantiated for, for this climate assessment to see the light of day is seen as an existential threats to that institution. and when that institution is threatened,

the reaction there is no no bounce. as we seen careers were up ended personal lives up ended as well. of careers were ended, as i saw with my case and others. and it is all because, and really for the sake of the continued existence of this institution, after the survey that was published, defense that test a service director and promised to address all of the issues that respondents had raised. has that happened. have things improved with the best of your knowledge or not to my knowledge. and i would say that because of the timing of the climate assessments and then the timing of my report to congress that estimate that you mention was done in september of 2020. when all a sudden done by the time i had collected and coal laid at approximately 70 witness statements from the defense intelligence agency and sent that report to congress 22

. wow. so at least a year and a half later. and so if there were any substantive actions taken, then i think logic would say that i would not have had the number of respondents is to boot. by that point, one of the things consistently disappointing to me is the failure of the congressional oversight committees to actually oversee agencies appropriately and to address these kinds of problems. have the senate or house to arms or arms services committees. done anything at all to fix these problems? have you been in touch at all with the oversight committees? yes. are engaged to primary oversight committees, both the house armed services, committee hat, committee, unintelligence, or hips, the commonly referred to as a house and tele committee from the hast i received nothing. substantive was carried out however, from the hip. and i think one of the issues that i brought to light,

which we haven't to file a sions of executive order. 12, triple 3 year 1233. and that is the explicit prohibition with exceptions, of course, of collecting. there were multiple. busy allegations in that report to congress about violations of the 12th triple 3. but validations that as intelligence agency brought to collect. and reuben, i, i surmise that is what really caught the attention of the house and talk committee because they did act on it in fact. and they passed into law via the fiscal year 2023 intelligence authorization act, several remedial measures that the i is to carry out. and of course, the i, a into authorization act becomes part of the larger national defense authorization act was december. and,

and had it states that d a must conduct 360 degree feedback. marcus must report the results of climate surveys now to congressional oversight entities. and it said in black and white d, i a has failed up to this point to curb an environment which is right for management of uses. and in that they were spot us big news. actually when i was at the c, i a, we practically had to tie to the text of executive order. 12333 on our arms so that we didn't forget it. it's arguably one of the most and signed by any press that. and i hope that i hope that d, i hey, is able to clean up its act in, in the light of these, these revelations. one more question for you all important with of lower groups here in the washington area. the biggest one being and w. c. the national whistleblower center, they have very close relations with pro whistleblower legislators on capitol hill,

especially people like senator chuck have they reached out to you to discuss these issues and have they if they have reached out to you, have they offered congress who may not be sitting on the oversight committees, but would be sympathetic to the information that you have. yes, and i think the biggest benefit that we've garnered from the relationship between myself and the end of you see and in some champions in congress is looking at it through a villian whistleblower law, especially in the uh, in securities regime, fcc wise and so with uh, is it frank got the name eludes me now, but there is, there is a um, incentive advisors in a way whistle blowers to come forward in the financial sector right to the tune of if there are sanctions that whistleblower is by law required to receive at least 10

percent in some fashion. that's right. and the take away from that, in contrast with the military and especially in, in the intelligence community, is that there exists no incentive and no reward for whistle blowers and by relation yes, when you are a whistleblower in the i see in the intelligence community it is 11 personal risk not only to your personal life but to your career and the government affords no offset. not only are you likely to be the victim of subsequent retribution, but you're also incurring a lot of personal risk for a relatively low likelihood that you're going to insight in the fcc world that's different there. they're authorized not only to authorize their mandated to receive some kind of compensation, should there be findings. and so the project we're working on and we're trying to get momentum, is that you have to somehow offer some kind of incentive,

some kind of risk. well, unfortunately, that's all we have time for today. i want to thank our guest, lieutenant colonel ryans ways you for joining us and things to our viewers for watching president abraham lincoln. once said, nearly all men can stand adversity. but if you want to test a man's character, give him worse. it's all too common for power to corrupt, absolute power to corrupt. absolutely. that's why we need whistle blowers. the road for them is alt heidi is better because of them. i'm john kerry, aka and you've been watching the whistle blowers until next time. the ocean civilians that's on law scouts will suffice. they will. so the nation phone tag thing off his editor in chief margarita simon young journalists continues to try a to boost new delays. ties with the oil which gulf country by

signing an agreement on trade international power and c.