WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:14.000 Guys, I want to, just before we get to the house, can we just do a little where, where, why, for here? 00:14.000 --> 00:14.560 Of course. 00:15.480 --> 00:17.760 I don't know, whoever wants to start that off. 00:20.360 --> 00:26.580 Well, this is, I mean, we're on a, you're on a highway, of course, which is what all of Florida seems to be. 00:26.580 --> 00:30.300 There's almost as many electrical poles as there are royal palms. 00:31.100 --> 00:33.340 And there's, of course, there's a strip mall to our right. 00:33.980 --> 00:36.140 And maybe, is that a former swamp over to our left? 00:36.660 --> 00:38.940 Anyway, this is Naples, Florida. 00:40.600 --> 00:41.540 Can I make a right on red? 00:41.960 --> 00:42.680 I think you can. 00:42.820 --> 00:46.600 This being Florida, you could do whatever you want. 00:47.000 --> 00:49.540 You can shoot a gun while you're making a right on red. 00:49.560 --> 00:50.640 Hey, there's another skillet. 00:50.640 --> 00:56.780 We're about 200 miles from Havana, Cuba, in Naples, the ritzy town along the Gulf Coast of Florida. 00:57.360 --> 01:01.020 Wealthy, golf-style retirement homes. 01:01.300 --> 01:07.480 John Lee, our producer, Julia Nutter, and I are here to meet someone I've been talking to on Signal for a couple months now. 01:08.240 --> 01:10.980 Just, Adam, maybe you've been speaking to him. 01:11.080 --> 01:12.320 What are we calling him? 01:12.320 --> 01:15.620 Um, you know, I mean, his real name is ******. 01:16.220 --> 01:16.460 Yeah. 01:16.840 --> 01:19.020 We just don't want to have that used in the podcast. 01:19.300 --> 01:19.440 Yeah. 01:19.440 --> 01:21.420 So I think we can call him ******. 01:21.880 --> 01:24.180 You know, he's going to, you know, I don't know. 01:24.260 --> 01:25.380 He's going to give us an alias? 01:25.620 --> 01:26.680 Well, I mean, he wants it to be... 01:26.680 --> 01:30.000 I'd had to negotiate a ton behind the scenes to get this interview. 01:30.560 --> 01:32.000 I mean, this was weeks of work. 01:32.580 --> 01:36.220 CIA officers rarely speak to reporters, much less on the record. 01:36.920 --> 01:38.740 They don't want their identities revealed. 01:38.740 --> 01:42.080 They don't want to put themselves or anyone else at risk. 01:42.400 --> 01:47.020 There's a pride among CIA officers to keep things secret and protect each other. 01:47.360 --> 01:48.000 Oh, God. 01:48.440 --> 01:49.300 They probably win. 01:49.500 --> 01:49.640 No. 01:50.300 --> 01:52.020 All right, so the gate is open. 01:52.400 --> 01:52.700 Yeah. 01:52.880 --> 01:53.320 Great. 01:54.440 --> 01:54.760 Okay. 01:56.840 --> 01:58.000 I'm just going to get next to you. 01:58.980 --> 01:59.660 The scheme. 01:59.960 --> 02:00.840 Hey, man. 02:00.960 --> 02:01.540 Great to meet you. 02:01.640 --> 02:02.880 Yes, nice to meet you. 02:03.220 --> 02:03.820 Come along here. 02:03.860 --> 02:04.200 This is John. 02:04.200 --> 02:04.980 Hey, how are you? 02:05.120 --> 02:05.980 It's great to meet you. 02:06.500 --> 02:07.020 Hello there. 02:07.580 --> 02:08.220 Shoes on? 02:08.740 --> 02:09.840 Uh, no, you can leave mine. 02:10.020 --> 02:10.820 Yeah, seriously. 02:11.120 --> 02:13.480 Adam Source is tall, mid-30s. 02:13.720 --> 02:14.840 He's built and good-looking. 02:15.520 --> 02:17.960 Leonardo DiCaprio could play him in the movie of his life. 02:18.500 --> 02:22.940 He's casual in a black baseball cap, plaid button-down and gym shorts. 02:23.300 --> 02:27.100 He offers to seat us poolside, but our producer, Julia, says no, 02:27.560 --> 02:31.360 and insists that we move back into a small, stuffy room on the inside of the house. 02:32.120 --> 02:34.440 There, we huddle with our Source and his older brother. 02:34.440 --> 02:39.080 He's been his closest confidant for years, and especially since his time in Havana. 02:39.500 --> 02:43.100 I think there will be times that there's going to be quite a bit that I can't say. 02:43.320 --> 02:45.540 I'm prepared that this might be an awkward interview. 02:46.040 --> 02:51.060 While I know that he used to work for the CIA, he can't actually tell me that. 02:51.920 --> 02:53.240 The CIA won't allow it. 02:53.240 --> 02:55.760 So my understanding is that he can't say much. 02:56.320 --> 02:58.540 But his brother can help fill in some of the blanks. 02:59.500 --> 03:03.800 His service dog is also there, quietly lying at our feet the whole time. 03:04.480 --> 03:05.060 Good dog. 03:10.160 --> 03:11.860 We would normally start an interview with like, 03:12.040 --> 03:14.020 all right, can you introduce yourself to our audience? 03:14.120 --> 03:14.760 Yeah, that's it. 03:16.040 --> 03:17.660 Maybe that's actually part of this. 03:18.460 --> 03:20.720 So can you please introduce yourself to us? 03:20.720 --> 03:25.460 Sure. My name is, I guess, whatever you'd like it to be at this point. 03:25.740 --> 03:30.400 He wanted us to identify him as Adam, which is confusing for obvious reasons. 03:30.640 --> 03:32.280 So we've decided to call him Tony. 03:32.580 --> 03:38.440 I was a U.S. government employee that was affectionately referred to as patient zero. 03:38.720 --> 03:42.580 And I was down in Havana in 2016 when all the attacks started happening. 03:42.580 --> 03:53.920 His path to Havana is not what you might expect. 03:54.480 --> 03:59.460 Just five years earlier, he'd been a part-time cop in Maine, moonlighting as a wedding photographer. 04:00.080 --> 04:05.240 Kind of spent, you know, the weeks being a police officer and sometimes arresting the bride. 04:05.320 --> 04:07.780 And then on the weekends, we'd go and photograph different brides. 04:07.900 --> 04:10.160 So it was a real, it was kind of an interesting dichotomy. 04:10.160 --> 04:11.720 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 04:12.160 --> 04:14.720 The bridal parties, they get a little rambunctious. 04:14.860 --> 04:15.280 Drunken disorderly. 04:15.440 --> 04:15.700 Yeah. 04:15.940 --> 04:20.880 But after a few years, Tony thought he needed a new challenge and decided to make a change. 04:21.520 --> 04:23.700 In my core, I wanted to branch out. 04:23.820 --> 04:25.480 I wanted to do something a little bigger. 04:25.720 --> 04:31.540 And so I just started applying to every federal application that I could find online. 04:32.040 --> 04:34.100 You name the acronyms, I applied to it. 04:34.100 --> 04:38.680 From NASA to DEA to U.S. Marshals to all of them. 04:39.200 --> 04:42.200 It can take years for these agencies to vet all these applications. 04:42.920 --> 04:48.420 But in December 2011, Tony finally receives word while he's staying with his family over the holidays. 04:48.660 --> 04:50.360 It was like day two of being there. 04:50.420 --> 04:51.480 We were there for a week and a half. 04:51.480 --> 05:00.000 When I got the message from FedEx, and I knew that this FedEx package was sitting at the house with either an offer or a rejection. 05:00.560 --> 05:05.840 In that simple FedEx envelope is his invitation to become a spy for the U.S. government. 05:06.220 --> 05:10.160 So, and I knew, you know, he was going to be moving away to D.C. 05:10.160 --> 05:12.080 That's Tony's brother. 05:13.120 --> 05:19.740 Before long, Tony heads to what they call the farm, the CIA's secret training facility outside of Washington, D.C. 05:20.400 --> 05:26.660 He confides in his dad, but tells the rest of his family he'll be working at the State Department, not the CIA. 05:27.240 --> 05:34.280 And they believe him, so much so that his mom does all this research to try to advise him on ways to grow his diplomatic career. 05:35.080 --> 05:38.060 But at a Thanksgiving dinner, he breaks the news. 05:38.060 --> 05:44.060 I remember when he told us, and he just kind of blurted it out after dinner. 05:44.960 --> 05:48.940 Like, I think we were sitting in the family room watching TV, talking about something, and he's just like, 05:49.520 --> 05:52.940 So, I really work for, you know, the CIA. 05:54.180 --> 05:55.580 So, I was like, oh, okay. 05:55.660 --> 05:58.940 But, you know, like I said, I was, I thought it was fun. 05:59.160 --> 05:59.700 You know what I mean? 05:59.740 --> 06:00.780 I mean, that's a cool job to have. 06:06.500 --> 06:07.480 Not many, you can't. 06:07.480 --> 06:09.380 Did you ask him whether he'd get to kill people? 06:10.420 --> 06:11.420 Uh, no. 06:11.620 --> 06:11.900 Probably. 06:12.300 --> 06:12.580 No. 06:14.180 --> 06:15.120 I'm Adam Entis. 06:15.380 --> 06:16.540 And I'm John Lee Anderson. 06:16.900 --> 06:20.040 From Vice World News, this is Havana Syndrome. 06:20.040 --> 06:50.020 Episode 2, The Diplomat and the Specialist. 06:50.020 --> 06:59.840 In 2013, around the same time that Tony is entering spy training, another young man in Washington, D.C. 06:59.840 --> 07:02.840 has just begun his own assignment of a lifetime. 07:03.560 --> 07:07.520 Without knowing it, their worlds are about to collide in the most bizarre way. 07:07.520 --> 07:09.880 My name is Ben Rhodes. 07:10.200 --> 07:15.540 I was a Deputy National Security Advisor for President Obama from 2009 to 2017. 07:16.340 --> 07:19.120 Now I'm an itinerant writer and podcaster. 07:19.680 --> 07:26.360 And, yeah, I negotiated the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. 07:26.360 --> 07:37.820 I was somewhat dissatisfied in a way in that as we moved into the second term, a lot of my peers were getting their promotions. 07:38.260 --> 07:43.100 You know, so my friend Samantha Power is becoming the Ambassador to the United Nations. 07:43.540 --> 07:46.200 My friend Susan Rice is going to become the National Security Advisor. 07:47.080 --> 07:50.860 And what everybody's telling me is, oh, Obama needs you where you are. 07:51.040 --> 07:54.900 You know, Obama's very comfortable with you playing this role where you write his speeches 07:54.900 --> 07:59.340 and you help make sure that the government's statements reflect what he thinks about things. 07:59.800 --> 08:01.400 So you can't really go anywhere. 08:01.400 --> 08:06.160 And my pushback to that was, that's not fair. 08:06.420 --> 08:08.180 I should be able to do something different. 08:08.860 --> 08:14.180 That something different for Ben would come in the form of a long-shot gambit for President Obama. 08:14.680 --> 08:23.920 After the election, we had a meeting during which we kind of did this thing that I guess you can only really do 08:23.920 --> 08:27.840 if you're re-elected as President of the United States, which is we were like, 08:27.840 --> 08:31.020 what do we want to do in the whole world in the second term? 08:31.880 --> 08:37.220 And I remember Obama saying, well, look, I want us to explore what we can do to change things in Cuba. 08:38.760 --> 08:40.960 And it wasn't much more specific than that. 08:41.020 --> 08:44.160 It was like, well, we know that we have to get Alan Gross out of prison, 08:44.460 --> 08:47.380 but kind of come back to me with a game plan. 08:48.180 --> 08:52.880 Obama was talking about a former USAID contract employee named Alan Gross. 08:52.880 --> 08:56.940 Alan Gross is living a nightmare that's lasted more than two years. 08:57.320 --> 09:00.880 He and a number of other American citizens were being held in Cuba on charges of espionage. 09:01.400 --> 09:07.020 At this point, the U.S. was also holding on to a number of people it believed were spying for Cuba. 09:07.500 --> 09:12.380 The imprisonment of these alleged spies was just one of a long list of unresolved issues 09:12.380 --> 09:15.940 that had yet to be untangled by this point in Obama's presidency. 09:15.940 --> 09:23.940 For decades, the United States has maintained that Cuba is a dictatorship with little concern for human rights, 09:24.280 --> 09:29.360 while Cuba has railed against the U.S. as an imperialist power set on toppling its socialist government. 09:30.300 --> 09:34.520 Throughout the Cold War, Cuba was also closely allied with the Soviet Union. 09:34.520 --> 09:39.720 And still to this day, there are strong ties between the island and the Russian government. 09:40.500 --> 09:42.380 And then, of course, there's the embargo. 09:42.960 --> 09:47.280 The U.S. has made it near impossible for American companies to do business with Cuba, 09:47.660 --> 09:53.640 which has choked the island, made it hard to import even basic goods like medicine and construction materials, 09:54.140 --> 09:56.680 which has not helped the American image in Latin America. 09:56.680 --> 10:04.820 You know, Obama would get frustrated when he'd go to Latin America and have to defend this Cuba policy. 10:05.780 --> 10:09.600 I remember him saying something to me that always stuck with me. 10:09.700 --> 10:14.720 When he had to defend the embargo and U.S.-Cuba policy, particularly in Latin America, 10:15.260 --> 10:19.320 he had the same kind of reaction against having to do that internally 10:19.320 --> 10:22.840 that he had started to feel on gay marriage. 10:22.840 --> 10:26.860 Basically, that he was not being honest about what he actually believed. 10:27.640 --> 10:32.900 And I saw my role, to some extent, as trying to make him be himself, you know. 10:33.960 --> 10:38.380 One day, Ben is chatting with Dennis McDonough, the deputy national security advisor. 10:38.880 --> 10:41.280 And I remember I went for a walk with Dennis, and I said, 10:41.380 --> 10:45.300 hey, I'd like to take on this Cuba project, and I can work with Ricardo 10:45.300 --> 10:49.780 to kind of run the policy on opening up to Cuba. 10:49.780 --> 10:53.440 Ricardo Zuniga, the State Department's top Cuba expert. 10:53.840 --> 10:57.480 And Dennis said, why don't you just do it yourself? 10:58.700 --> 10:59.660 And I was, what do you mean? 10:59.720 --> 11:04.660 And he said, well, this is going to require, like, a secret channel of communication with the Cubans. 11:05.260 --> 11:07.060 Why don't you actually do the diplomacy? 11:07.840 --> 11:09.500 I said, sure, I'll do that. 11:10.140 --> 11:11.880 If Ricardo, obviously, will do it with me. 11:15.180 --> 11:16.320 How did you feel? 11:16.320 --> 11:21.860 That's our producer, Jesse Alejandro Cuttrell, who is always asking how people feel. 11:22.060 --> 11:25.020 In that moment when, like, this thing you're asking for, 11:25.220 --> 11:28.060 it seems like you actually might get this huge responsibility. 11:28.500 --> 11:29.560 Like, how did that make you feel? 11:29.640 --> 11:31.900 I felt, I'll be honest, I felt nervous. 11:32.200 --> 11:33.960 I felt somewhat inadequate. 11:35.240 --> 11:38.980 What I was told by Dennis was, like, Ricardo knows Cuba inside out. 11:40.080 --> 11:41.260 You know the president. 11:41.260 --> 11:45.600 And that combination is what's going to be necessary to get something done. 11:45.920 --> 11:53.300 Now, I did come back from that walk and acquired several books about Cuba, 11:53.400 --> 11:55.980 including John Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara. 11:56.900 --> 11:59.480 I really did a crash course on it. 12:00.040 --> 12:04.380 I was desperate to try to do something that felt like it was going to make a positive difference 12:04.380 --> 12:05.580 on some piece of the world. 12:05.580 --> 12:12.460 Ben meets up with his team, and they come up with a plan to tactfully and secretly reach 12:12.460 --> 12:14.300 out to their counterparts in the Cuban government. 12:14.620 --> 12:19.660 About the negotiations on the Cuban side, you know, at what point do you realize that it's serious? 12:20.440 --> 12:25.080 They have to be discreet, because if anyone finds out about this historic attempt to reconcile 12:25.080 --> 12:29.700 before it's public, the anti-Cuba community, particularly in the politically important 12:29.700 --> 12:35.020 swing state of Florida, and their supporters in Congress, will likely go ballistic and attempt 12:35.020 --> 12:35.940 to sabotage it. 12:36.300 --> 12:38.200 So we initiated that contact. 12:38.300 --> 12:41.440 We do it through, let's say, security channels, you know. 12:42.800 --> 12:47.540 The two governments set up a meeting in Canada, which is friendly to both Cuba and the U.S. 12:47.540 --> 12:50.160 We land in their Ottawa airport. 12:51.000 --> 12:57.020 I walk off the plane, and there's a very polite, kind of beefy Canadian guy who says, 12:57.100 --> 12:57.760 hey, how you doing? 12:57.840 --> 12:58.260 Come with me. 12:58.840 --> 13:01.720 So this guy drives us about 45 minutes outside of Ottawa. 13:02.020 --> 13:02.580 I get out. 13:02.640 --> 13:09.580 It's a gorgeous lake-side property, and you feel like nobody can see you where you are. 13:10.200 --> 13:14.960 Ben is waiting for his Cuban counterpart to come in, the person the Cubans have handpicked 13:14.960 --> 13:16.240 to meet with the U.S. team. 13:16.240 --> 13:18.360 And then you could hear him come in. 13:18.480 --> 13:23.480 So I hear, like, shouts in Spanish and kind of, you know, gregarious laughter. 13:24.020 --> 13:30.160 And so this kind of, you know, force of nature comes up, and it's Alejandro with two guys. 13:30.660 --> 13:35.120 Ben understands that Alejandro Castro is the head of the Cuban government's counterintelligence 13:35.120 --> 13:38.640 service, and that he's the son of Cuba's president, Raul Castro. 13:38.980 --> 13:41.640 And of course, he's also Fidel Castro's nephew. 13:41.640 --> 13:46.340 But other than that, Ben has just a few biographical details. 13:46.940 --> 13:51.300 One of the few things I've been briefed on is that he had lost an eye, or an eye had been 13:51.300 --> 13:54.020 badly damaged in Angola, which I thought was such a... 13:54.020 --> 13:57.880 They start out talking about political prisoners and the potential of doing a swap. 13:58.440 --> 14:04.400 The Americans want Alan Gross, who was convicted of spying, that former USAID contractor we 14:04.400 --> 14:04.760 mentioned. 14:05.300 --> 14:10.620 And the Cubans want the members of the so-called Cuban Five, a group of Cubans convicted in 14:10.620 --> 14:17.120 1998, of spying on Cuban exile groups in Miami and secretly funneling information on them 14:17.120 --> 14:18.300 back to Cuba. 14:18.780 --> 14:24.120 If we can make progress on this issue of prisoners, it can open up space for a new kind of relationship. 14:24.720 --> 14:25.800 It felt positive. 14:27.120 --> 14:31.740 If you don't already know who the Cuban Five are, they're incredibly important on the 14:31.740 --> 14:33.640 island, where they're considered heroes. 14:34.140 --> 14:36.880 Two had already been released, but the rest were still in jail. 14:36.880 --> 14:40.540 For years, their return has been a top priority for the Cuban leadership. 14:41.840 --> 14:46.360 And then he did the history lesson. 14:47.320 --> 14:50.960 Turns out, Alejandro wants to discuss more than just the Cuban Five. 14:51.560 --> 14:53.020 He wants to go way back. 14:53.280 --> 14:56.520 The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. 14:56.860 --> 15:00.600 To one of the most consequential acts of American aggression against the Cubans. 15:00.940 --> 15:05.700 Cuban army pilots opened the first phase of organized revolt with bombing raids on three 15:05.700 --> 15:09.860 military bases, the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. 15:10.200 --> 15:15.360 Meanwhile, at the United Nations, Cuban foreign minister Roa accused the United States of unleashing 15:15.360 --> 15:16.380 a war of invasion. 15:17.000 --> 15:19.380 Roa says the invading soldiers trained in Florida. 15:21.380 --> 15:26.880 When the CIA trained and armed a group of 1,400 Cubans to try and overthrow the Castro government. 15:26.880 --> 15:34.700 And so for hours, I got Bay of Pigs and the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. 15:35.700 --> 15:39.540 Of which there are many, because the CIA kept trying to kill Fidel. 15:40.200 --> 15:42.600 They once tried to get him to smoke a poisoned cigar. 15:43.480 --> 15:47.320 And another time, they tried to get his girlfriend to serve him a laced milkshake. 15:48.860 --> 15:50.700 Neither attempt work, of course. 15:50.700 --> 15:58.020 So Alejandro is reminding his counterparts of all this shady history of American spies actively 15:58.020 --> 16:01.060 trying to assassinate and to overthrow the Cuban government. 16:02.320 --> 16:04.620 More than that, though, I got Posada Carriles. 16:04.620 --> 16:11.160 ...cubano de pasajeros en 1976 es el delito más serio que presuntamente cometió Posada Carriles. 16:11.840 --> 16:17.940 Posada Carriles was a Cuban exile suspected of organizing the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. 16:17.940 --> 16:24.080 It was, at the time, the worst airline passenger disaster in the history of aviation. 16:24.480 --> 16:33.820 It killed 73 innocent people, including 24 members of the juvenile fencing team from Cuba. 16:35.740 --> 16:40.100 This was an unprecedented act of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. 16:40.500 --> 16:44.320 The first time a commercial airliner was blown up in flight. 16:44.320 --> 16:53.460 Before he allegedly helped down that plane in the 70s, Posada Carriles had been trained by and was working for the CIA. 16:54.560 --> 16:58.840 The suspicion is that the U.S. government protected him because he'd worked with them for years. 16:59.260 --> 17:02.200 He was able to evade justice until his dying days. 17:02.200 --> 17:07.700 How many hours did he think he was talking about? 17:07.700 --> 17:10.800 I think it was like two, three hours. 17:11.300 --> 17:16.820 If you're a state official, you kind of have to rebut some of the points and debate them 17:16.820 --> 17:21.020 because you're not really authorized to agree with that. 17:22.180 --> 17:24.320 I was basically like, look, I understand all that. 17:24.560 --> 17:26.420 I understand that history. I think it's really important. 17:26.420 --> 17:28.800 And I respect that it's really important to you. 17:29.520 --> 17:31.660 And if I were you, I might feel that way. 17:32.360 --> 17:35.940 But, like, I wasn't even born when the Bay of Pigs invasion happened. 17:37.000 --> 17:42.560 Ben tells Alejandro that President Obama wants to move forward to get past this history. 17:42.980 --> 17:46.640 And that's when things, surprisingly, start to look up. 17:46.640 --> 17:51.860 We broke for lunch, and instead of kind of going into our corners and huddling, 17:52.540 --> 17:54.500 we're just standing in like a sandwich tray. 17:54.720 --> 17:57.100 Alejandro's a very demonstrative eater, you know. 17:57.140 --> 18:00.020 So he's like shoveling in sandwiches, and we're chatting. 18:00.020 --> 18:05.780 And then they start talking about fishing, and then I start talking about how I'd love to visit Cuba. 18:06.120 --> 18:08.280 And it's so close. You know, what a shame. 18:08.280 --> 18:13.940 And he seemed genuinely shocked that we were being nice, basically, 18:14.460 --> 18:17.080 and that we felt comfortable being friendly with him. 18:17.680 --> 18:18.560 And he said that. 18:18.680 --> 18:21.420 I mean, Alejandro never failed to share a feeling. 18:21.580 --> 18:23.400 You know, he's just like, I can't believe we're standing here, 18:23.420 --> 18:24.520 and you guys were just chatting. 18:24.660 --> 18:25.260 Like, this is great. 18:25.400 --> 18:27.280 You know, like, it's not what I expected. 18:29.900 --> 18:32.680 After a full day's work, both sides wrap up. 18:33.300 --> 18:36.960 As they head back to the airport, Ricardo turns to Bannon and says, 18:36.960 --> 18:38.580 I think maybe there's something here. 18:39.000 --> 18:41.320 Like, even though we made no progress on anything, 18:42.080 --> 18:45.520 just there was some trust building that was happening that was going to take time, 18:45.600 --> 18:46.840 but it felt like it could lead someplace. 18:53.740 --> 18:58.640 Over the next few months, the U.S. and Cuban delegations continue their secret meetings in Canada. 18:59.280 --> 19:04.000 Though at one point, Ben starts to worry that maybe their meetings aren't as secret as they thought. 19:04.460 --> 19:06.820 We did one meeting in Toronto at a hotel. 19:06.960 --> 19:11.560 And I remember walking into this hotel to check in, 19:12.280 --> 19:17.760 and I'd noticed when I'd come in two very conspicuous people who were a couple, 19:18.280 --> 19:24.600 full of tattoos and piercings, and just they stood out. 19:25.660 --> 19:29.440 And so I check into the hotel, and I turn around, 19:29.440 --> 19:33.200 and these two people walked up right in front of me. 19:33.400 --> 19:38.000 And they're standing, you know, as close as I am to you now, a few feet away. 19:38.560 --> 19:45.100 And they just take out an iPhone and just take a picture of me and then walk away. 19:45.100 --> 19:50.420 And my negotiating partner, Ricardo Zuniga, just says, 19:50.420 --> 19:55.320 I mean, we don't know for sure they were Russian, 19:55.660 --> 20:02.440 but somebody wanted us to know that they knew that we were meeting Cubans in secret in Toronto. 20:02.740 --> 20:04.380 There's no other explanation for that. 20:05.380 --> 20:08.400 Well, there are other potential explanations. 20:09.260 --> 20:11.820 Maybe they're tourists taking a picture of something else. 20:11.820 --> 20:17.140 But the reason they suspect Russian spies is because Russia would not be happy to learn 20:17.140 --> 20:19.300 that the U.S. and Cuba are mending fences. 20:20.260 --> 20:26.160 For decades, the Soviet Union used the island more or less as a listening post to keep an eye on the U.S. 20:26.940 --> 20:30.580 Even after the Cold War, Cuban and Russian intelligence remained close. 20:31.060 --> 20:33.680 We reached out to the Russian embassy in Washington 20:33.680 --> 20:38.280 to ask whether Russian intelligence officers were involved in the events Ben described. 20:38.280 --> 20:40.300 But they didn't get back to us. 20:43.700 --> 20:47.460 Ben and Ricardo take the Toronto incident in stride and keep going. 20:48.180 --> 20:50.020 Because when it comes to the negotiations, 20:50.580 --> 20:53.360 they're encouraging signs that each side wants a deal. 20:59.600 --> 21:04.580 In February 2014, the U.S. even allows one of the Cuban Five to go home. 21:04.580 --> 21:09.920 And then we get to December 17th, it goes kind of miraculously well. 21:10.300 --> 21:16.660 It was the best kept secret in the world until President Obama went on national television today to reveal it. 21:16.740 --> 21:17.460 Doesn't leak. 21:17.720 --> 21:22.280 Today, the United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. 21:22.540 --> 21:23.780 Obama announces it. 21:23.780 --> 21:30.060 Nearly 54 years after President Eisenhower severed diplomatic ties with the communist dictatorship, 21:30.540 --> 21:33.100 President Obama said it is time to restore them. 21:33.660 --> 21:38.620 Today, the president said it is time to cut loose the shackles of the past. 21:41.120 --> 21:43.120 Each country has agreed to a number of things. 21:43.580 --> 21:46.580 Cuba is going to release some of the political prisoners that the Americans want. 21:46.580 --> 21:52.020 And the U.S. is going to ease up on that embargo and allow them to bring in more tourists and cash. 21:53.120 --> 21:56.360 Cuba will expand Internet access on the island for its people. 21:57.020 --> 22:01.680 The Americans will reopen a full-fledged embassy in Havana for the first time in over five decades. 22:02.380 --> 22:04.500 And Cuba would do the same in D.C. 22:04.500 --> 22:16.980 I don't know how much you guys give a shit about me and this whole story, but, like, you know, it was the high point of my life. 22:17.880 --> 22:22.840 My daughter was born on December 11th, and this was December 17th. 22:23.260 --> 22:25.200 So that was the best week of my life. 22:25.200 --> 22:39.560 So while Ben is leading historic talks, Tony is preparing to start his assignment on the island. 22:40.360 --> 22:46.380 Cuba hadn't been a CIA priority for a long time, but that had already started to change. 22:47.880 --> 22:51.240 Yeah, it felt exciting to me. I was pretty pumped. 22:51.240 --> 22:56.360 These two guys don't know each other, but Tony is aware of the secret negotiations. 22:57.840 --> 23:00.920 So what were you told your job would be? 23:02.700 --> 23:03.920 I can't discuss that. 23:06.560 --> 23:08.580 Okay, so it wasn't a diplomatic job. 23:10.400 --> 23:14.760 You know, and this is hard for me because I have to walk a line. 23:14.760 --> 23:21.840 So I was a U.S. government employee stationed in Havana. 23:22.400 --> 23:26.560 At a time when the U.S. and Cuba had restored diplomatic relations. 23:26.600 --> 23:26.840 Correct. 23:28.720 --> 23:31.760 But Ben and Tony have very different priorities. 23:34.980 --> 23:36.340 That's after the break. 23:44.760 --> 23:55.100 Hey, I'm Trisha Hershberger, gamer, streamer, and Amazon Live host. 23:55.100 --> 24:00.280 I stream about tech, gaming, and the stuff I actually buy right here with my community. 24:00.680 --> 24:02.280 And Amazon Live makes it easy. 24:02.600 --> 24:07.340 Streaming gameplay, scouting new gear, chatting, and shopping all at the same time? 24:07.580 --> 24:09.380 That's my kind of multitasking. 24:09.640 --> 24:11.920 And it all happens on Amazon Live. 24:11.920 --> 24:16.580 Shop on Amazon Live by searching Amazon Live in the Amazon Shopping app. 24:16.680 --> 24:18.680 And follow your favorite creators today. 24:19.200 --> 24:21.620 This back-to-school season, one thing is clear. 24:21.900 --> 24:23.540 Kids need a way to stay connected. 24:23.860 --> 24:28.280 Between pickups, practices, and after-school activities, having a phone is a must. 24:28.520 --> 24:31.280 But it shouldn't come at the cost of their mental health. 24:31.440 --> 24:35.320 The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver. 24:35.600 --> 24:38.040 Teens are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, 24:38.040 --> 24:42.880 and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. 24:43.140 --> 24:44.480 That's where Gab comes in. 24:44.720 --> 24:49.040 Gab offers kid-safe phones and watches with no internet or social media apps 24:49.040 --> 24:51.180 and just the right features for their age. 24:51.360 --> 24:56.020 From GPS-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-approved apps for teens, 24:56.360 --> 24:59.660 Gab's tech-in-steps approach grows with your child. 24:59.880 --> 25:01.940 So this school year, skip the adult phone. 25:02.120 --> 25:04.860 Get them Gab, social connection, without the risks. 25:04.860 --> 25:11.040 Visit Gab.com slash GetGab and use the code GetGab for a special back-to-school offer. 25:11.260 --> 25:14.920 That's G-A-B-B dot com slash GetGab. 25:15.120 --> 25:19.020 Gab, tech-in-steps, independence for them, peace of mind for parents. 25:19.420 --> 25:22.700 Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. 25:22.880 --> 25:23.980 What do we mean by almost? 25:24.140 --> 25:27.580 You can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered, but you can get chicken parmesan delivered. 25:27.820 --> 25:28.580 Sunshine? 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See app for details. 25:34.860 --> 25:45.160 Once the announcement is made that U.S.-Cuban relations are being restored, things start to move pretty fast. 25:45.600 --> 25:47.500 Christ, even Obama visits. 25:47.860 --> 25:48.420 Muchas gracias. 25:50.000 --> 25:51.020 Thank you so much. 25:51.840 --> 25:55.320 He makes an extraordinary public speech at Havana's Grand Teatro. 25:55.820 --> 25:59.320 As president of the United States, I've called on our Congress to lift the embargo. 25:59.320 --> 26:10.820 I was there, and it was quite a moving speech, soaring rhetoric about the promise of a new friendship between the two countries, and about bearing the last sword of the Cold War. 26:10.820 --> 26:15.360 But Obama also makes a point of saying Cuba's still got work to do. 26:15.360 --> 26:23.620 But even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba. 26:23.620 --> 26:39.080 Within the U.S. intelligence community, the conversations were less about lofty ideals and more about the nitty-gritty business of spying, especially because you're dealing with some of the best spies in the world. 26:39.080 --> 26:46.920 I had served in a number of positions at the CIA, which afforded me access to counterintelligence matters. 26:47.340 --> 26:49.840 John Brennan, CIA director under Obama. 26:49.980 --> 26:56.800 And I knew that the Cubans had been quite successful over the years to suborn individuals to work on their behalf. 26:57.180 --> 26:58.800 We talked to Brennan in 2021. 26:59.200 --> 27:05.020 The Cuban intelligence service, which has been trained by the Russians, is a very competent and a professional one. 27:05.020 --> 27:12.800 During the Cold War, Russia had spent a lot of time and energy working with Cuban officials to improve their tradecraft as spies. 27:13.300 --> 27:18.040 But since then, Cuban intelligence was said to become so good that they had outgrown their KGB trainers. 27:18.800 --> 27:27.060 Now, the Cuban intelligence service was amongst the most talented in the world, and had spent decades focusing its efforts squarely on the United States. 27:27.580 --> 27:34.280 A lot of folks were skeptical that the Cubans were ever really going to cooperate with the United States, that they were not going to change their stripes. 27:34.280 --> 27:41.600 But on the U.S. side, for those skeptical of diplomatic efforts, the opening could offer a Trojan horse of sorts. 27:42.260 --> 27:55.460 Just the way the CIA wants to get close to a lot of our adversaries around the globe, because once you have that up-close and personal access, it affords you new opportunities as far as your intelligence objectives are concerned. 27:55.460 --> 28:07.660 What he means is, the opening could help the CIA with what they call the recruitment cycle, spotting future assets, assessing their value, developing them as informants, and recruiting them as spies. 28:08.060 --> 28:11.220 So I think that certainly was a prevailing view within Langley. 28:11.220 --> 28:22.220 We met on Monday with Ben Rhodes, and so just based on what you're saying, like Ben was, I mean, I think he himself would probably say he was maybe a little naive, 28:22.700 --> 28:30.300 because he was looking at it purely from an opportunity to increase engagement between people to people, improve the lives of Cubans. 28:30.300 --> 28:42.600 And the flip side that you're describing, the taking advantage of the opening to gain additional accesses, was sort of something that he wasn't really thinking about when he was going through the process. 28:42.980 --> 28:51.380 You know, I don't know if I'm picking up on something there where, you know, because you've been in the business, the intelligence business for so long, you know, initially, 28:51.380 --> 28:58.700 maybe didn't really understand the side that you're referring to of taking advantage of the opening for accesses. 28:59.660 --> 29:12.800 Well, yeah, I don't know what Ben assumed or not, but an intelligence officer's objective is try to gain as much insight as they can into what's happening in other countries. 29:12.800 --> 29:27.080 And if you have liaison relationships with foreign services, you try to exploit that in order to develop relationships that you can then cultivate into some type of recruitment effort. 29:27.440 --> 29:36.220 CIA will try to leverage any increased access with adversaries to see whether or not there's a way to recruit individuals. 29:36.220 --> 29:43.720 This is actually kind of shocking for me to hear, because I would have expected a no comment from Brennan. 29:44.100 --> 29:53.220 But instead, he revealed what we thought was going on behind the scenes, that the CIA wanted to exploit a flip side to the opening. 29:57.960 --> 30:04.460 Meanwhile, even critics of the opening with Cuba are starting to see it as a chance to push their own objectives. 30:04.460 --> 30:10.600 Florida Senator Marco Rubio actually told me that he had to make lemonade out of lemons. 30:11.400 --> 30:12.660 I asked Ben about this. 30:12.800 --> 30:15.700 It served for him as the silver lining, right? 30:15.820 --> 30:22.360 This is the idea that by expanding our presence, our relationship, it's more of an opportunity for us to expand our collection. 30:22.660 --> 30:28.440 He was very seized with this idea that, you know, yeah, there was a possibility of expanding the relationship, 30:28.440 --> 30:30.560 and China might be trying to get in there. 30:31.440 --> 30:33.800 And we therefore needed to do something about that. 30:34.460 --> 30:41.560 For at least the past 10 or 12 years, China's been looking for ways to expand its presence in the Western Hemisphere. 30:42.340 --> 30:46.460 It has significantly increased its commercial and diplomatic presence in the region. 30:47.020 --> 30:49.600 Trade is up 10, if not 20-fold in Latin America. 30:50.160 --> 30:53.340 And in some cases, it's a senior partner edging out the U.S. 30:53.340 --> 30:58.460 In fact, all the CCTV cameras in Havana were provided by the Chinese government. 30:59.080 --> 31:02.200 And according to U.S. officials, they have access to that footage. 31:03.400 --> 31:05.380 So China's been very involved. 31:05.380 --> 31:12.320 My logic proposition is, if you don't want China and Russia 90 miles from Florida to have this massive outpost, 31:12.540 --> 31:18.120 then why don't you flood the place with American tourists and business and Internet? 31:18.920 --> 31:22.580 And his was like, no, we've got to beat them at the spy game, you know. 31:23.680 --> 31:25.280 And I think he's wrong. 31:25.280 --> 31:31.880 I think on both sides, there are people who love the game, the spy game. 31:31.880 --> 31:45.140 At this point, for CIA officers like Tony, regardless of what's happening at the policy level or diplomatically, 31:45.600 --> 31:47.640 the spy game in Havana is on. 31:48.520 --> 31:52.020 I spent a lot of time having drinks with CIA contacts, and I know the routine. 31:52.620 --> 31:56.500 After finishing his training at the farm, Tony would start taking Spanish classes, 31:56.880 --> 32:00.740 and also what the CIA calls its hostile environment tradecraft course. 32:00.740 --> 32:05.100 That's to prepare him to work in places where the foreign intelligence services 32:05.100 --> 32:07.500 are the most aggressive against their American counterparts, 32:08.020 --> 32:11.480 places like Iran, Russia, China, and Cuba. 32:12.240 --> 32:13.680 For me, I was gung-ho. 32:13.820 --> 32:18.140 I wanted to take the most challenging thing I could take, and those were up there, for sure. 32:18.640 --> 32:23.320 His training would have focused in part on how best to evade the detection of Cuban intelligence services 32:23.320 --> 32:28.360 while doing his job of collecting intelligence and carrying out other operations while on the island. 32:28.360 --> 32:31.820 He also needs to train for his cover job at the U.S. Embassy. 32:32.500 --> 32:35.820 Because once he arrives in Havana, it needs to appear to everybody, 32:36.160 --> 32:38.420 including the Cubans and his own colleagues at the embassy, 32:39.000 --> 32:43.120 that he is genuinely a State Department employee and not working for the CIA. 32:43.720 --> 32:45.540 On the higher level, sure, they were talking. 32:45.820 --> 32:50.900 There were all of those, you know, law enforcement, terrorism, the Coast Guard agreements. 32:50.900 --> 32:53.800 All those things were happening at a higher level, and it looked great. 32:55.020 --> 32:57.780 But on the ground, on the day-to-day, nothing changed. 33:00.380 --> 33:02.900 The Cuba office, which Tony was part of, 33:03.220 --> 33:08.000 has been something of a backwater within the CIA for years, a very low priority. 33:08.840 --> 33:14.500 Partly because Cuban intelligence was so good, it made it hard for the CIA to do its job. 33:14.500 --> 33:20.240 But that's changing just as Tony is getting ready for his assignment on the island. 33:20.980 --> 33:23.780 The office is part of the Western Hemisphere Mission Center, 33:24.040 --> 33:26.480 which recently got a new chief of operations. 33:27.080 --> 33:29.920 He's a tough-talking veteran of Russia House, 33:30.280 --> 33:33.400 the CIA office that runs covert operations in Russia. 33:33.840 --> 33:39.300 And he wants the CIA to be more aggressive across Latin America, including in Cuba. 33:39.300 --> 33:42.220 He tells case officers things like, 33:42.600 --> 33:46.600 if you aren't getting surveillance 24-7, you aren't doing the job right. 33:47.380 --> 33:50.240 He wants the CIA to take the gloves off in Havana. 33:51.400 --> 33:54.980 We asked the CIA for official comment on this, but they declined. 33:56.080 --> 34:00.460 In many ways, Tony is a perfect candidate for a job like this. 34:00.780 --> 34:05.940 He's totally green, which you'd think in any other job disqualifies him. 34:05.940 --> 34:11.880 But green CIA officers are often the best, because this is their first deployment. 34:12.660 --> 34:14.960 Foreign adversaries haven't tagged them yet. 34:15.500 --> 34:17.140 And they have something to prove. 34:17.460 --> 34:20.880 So they go in Hungary, and they are willing to take risks. 34:21.740 --> 34:27.580 And you can expect that if the CIA is now going hard on Cuba after not doing so for so long, 34:28.200 --> 34:29.940 Cuban spies aren't going to like it. 34:30.600 --> 34:32.280 We were still getting harassed. 34:32.340 --> 34:33.360 We were still getting surveillance. 34:33.360 --> 34:40.820 So as someone stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, what does that mean exactly? 34:40.900 --> 34:44.440 When you talk about surveillance and harassment, I mean, that's not in the papers every day. 34:45.780 --> 34:51.460 That's kind of an understanding in some of these places that are a difficult environment to operate in. 34:52.780 --> 34:58.680 Havana has long been known to be a difficult place to live and serve, 34:58.880 --> 35:01.400 because the government is hostile towards us. 35:01.400 --> 35:03.760 Day one, you're prepared. 35:03.980 --> 35:05.040 You know you're going to have surveillance. 35:05.300 --> 35:06.660 You know they're going to break into your house. 35:07.220 --> 35:08.940 It's just part of the game, really. 35:11.240 --> 35:16.060 But usually there's a window where people, you get to know the area, you get used to it. 35:16.680 --> 35:22.160 Tony says he knows that when he moves to Havana, for example, that the walls in his house are definitely bugged. 35:22.820 --> 35:25.020 Did you check for mics? 35:25.020 --> 35:28.560 You know, there's no point. 35:28.880 --> 35:31.840 You can have tech folks come and sweep the houses, right? 35:32.040 --> 35:35.900 And A, they see them coming, so they just deactivate everything. 35:36.420 --> 35:40.380 And B, the sweep is only as good as until your house is left alone again. 35:40.600 --> 35:43.380 So they can sweep your house, then you go, all right, let's go grab a beer. 35:43.720 --> 35:49.100 Now your house is no longer secured to be free of things, because they would have gone in there when you were gone. 35:49.100 --> 35:50.900 So there was really no point. 35:50.980 --> 35:53.140 You just lived knowing that that was the case. 35:54.060 --> 36:01.980 But Tony said he felt like they had it out for him from the start, which was bizarre, because he was supposed to be the green officer, the one they didn't know about. 36:02.400 --> 36:05.340 I was hit pretty hard and pretty heavy right off the bat. 36:05.660 --> 36:09.000 There was a guy that sat outside my driveway in a plastic chair 24-7. 36:09.180 --> 36:10.280 They rotated with a radio. 36:11.740 --> 36:16.380 Cuban counterintelligence officers would literally follow Tony and other Americans around the island. 36:16.380 --> 36:23.460 But if Tony managed to lose them, to get in the black, as they say in the business, the Cubans could track their cell phones and find them. 36:24.100 --> 36:25.640 They'd use your phone as beacons. 36:26.060 --> 36:32.260 So any time I came and left from my house, they'd radio me and then car surveillance would pick up, or they'd use camera surveillance and do point-to-point. 36:33.000 --> 36:38.600 Cuban intelligence would do other things to just mess with suspected spies and diplomats who they saw as a threat. 36:39.140 --> 36:41.940 They'd defecate in your house, cut your internet lines. 36:42.500 --> 36:43.880 They'd drain your water cisterns. 36:43.880 --> 36:45.500 You only had water every couple of days. 36:46.800 --> 36:48.900 I've been hearing stories like this for years. 36:49.580 --> 36:54.120 Spies go to crazy lengths to tell their adversaries, we've got our eyes on you. 36:54.860 --> 36:57.200 Before my time, they've killed people's dogs. 36:57.320 --> 36:58.840 They've urinated in mouthwash. 36:59.240 --> 37:02.520 They put feces under your door handles so you'd come and grab them. 37:02.720 --> 37:05.680 They'd flatten your tires, or they'd do some sort of damage to your car. 37:05.680 --> 37:13.380 This was just part of this long game of them always letting you know that they're there, letting you know that they can get to you. 37:13.620 --> 37:17.640 But also, they want to find what gets under your skin, and they exploit it. 37:17.640 --> 37:25.660 These particular details are new to me, but I'm not surprised. 37:26.000 --> 37:30.040 The Cuban government has trained one of the most effective spy forces in the world. 37:30.040 --> 37:40.660 But part of why they've been so fixated on the U.S. is because the Americans, and the CIA specifically, have a long history of trying to overthrow the Cuban government. 37:40.660 --> 37:47.620 You know, with brothers, right, you find the one thing that's going to annoy each other, and then you just keep doing it until they lose their mind. 37:47.760 --> 37:50.020 And, you know, we used to do that to each other. 37:50.080 --> 37:52.220 So it's very, like, very sibling-esque. 37:52.220 --> 38:00.000 Like, that kind of behavior, I would have a much harder time tolerating than he had. 38:00.300 --> 38:02.560 That's Tony's brother sitting next to him. 38:02.900 --> 38:04.260 They've got to be able to take this. 38:04.420 --> 38:08.740 You know, it can be explained to you that, okay, this is going to happen to you probably when you're down there. 38:08.840 --> 38:15.560 But being there week after week after week after week, and it's happening on a daily basis, like, I would be burning something down probably. 38:16.280 --> 38:17.360 You know what I mean? 38:17.420 --> 38:19.800 And relations with Cuba would be back to square one. 38:19.800 --> 38:25.900 So, you know, it takes a certain kind of person to deal with it or get used to it. 38:27.220 --> 38:31.260 Let's just remember here that Tony isn't on the island doing humanitarian work. 38:31.780 --> 38:39.840 He's there to do spy work, which is against the law in Cuba, something that the government there obviously wants to prevent him from doing. 38:40.800 --> 38:46.000 For someone like me, that level of harassment was awesome. 38:46.000 --> 38:52.920 It made me happy because I felt like I had joined a club, they hated me, they knew that I was being good at my job. 38:53.420 --> 38:58.840 Like, they would use the harassment and the surveillance to send you a message that they were upset with you. 38:58.840 --> 39:03.560 If you played by their rules, they kind of left you alone and you got to do things. 39:03.660 --> 39:09.440 If you weren't playing by their rules or you were pulling stuff and they weren't happy with it, they would let you know. 39:09.440 --> 39:38.540 Tony's there for about two months when he experiences something new and frankly terrifying on December 29th, 2016. 39:38.540 --> 39:44.920 We were on a skeleton crew at the embassy as a whole because everyone had cleared off for the holidays or for New Year's. 39:45.620 --> 39:48.820 And I'd come home and my pattern was to come home and then go to the gym. 39:49.240 --> 39:53.460 And I would usually come home and watch a few episodes of a downloaded show or something. 39:53.680 --> 39:56.020 I'd sit on my bed and then I would go to the gym and work out. 39:56.100 --> 39:56.440 What show? 39:56.960 --> 39:58.020 Always sunny in Philadelphia. 39:58.020 --> 40:03.200 No, it's so good. 40:03.560 --> 40:03.920 It's very zany. 40:04.180 --> 40:04.420 Yeah. 40:05.940 --> 40:10.720 I'm just laying on my bed with my laptop, you know, like I'm, you know, next to me and I'm watching the show. 40:10.980 --> 40:14.340 I'm in my dress clothes, you know, I'm in a shirt and my suit. 40:15.520 --> 40:18.460 And then all of the dogs in the neighborhood started barking. 40:18.460 --> 40:24.660 You know, they would bark periodically, you know, but that, I'd never heard them all go off at once. 40:25.300 --> 40:28.300 And I think that struck me immediately as unusual. 40:29.400 --> 40:35.540 And then this loud sound just blasted into my bedroom. 40:35.540 --> 40:41.340 I guess my gut reaction was that it was LRAD. 40:41.880 --> 40:44.080 Long-range acoustic devices. 40:44.540 --> 40:46.900 Ships sometimes use them to ward off pirates. 40:47.580 --> 40:51.440 These days, police officers in the U.S. use them to ward off protesters. 40:52.080 --> 40:56.000 They can blast loud sounds at distance that make it very uncomfortable for you 40:56.000 --> 40:59.360 to the point that you just have to get out of the beam of what it is. 40:59.360 --> 41:04.640 But he doesn't move because he thinks this is someone, perhaps the Cuban intelligence officers, 41:04.640 --> 41:06.200 who are trying to fuck with him. 41:06.920 --> 41:11.060 And so my assumption was that this was just the next iteration of harassment, right? 41:11.120 --> 41:15.740 So it seemed like they were trying, in my mind, to get me annoyed. 41:16.300 --> 41:17.900 And I'm incredibly stubborn. 41:18.260 --> 41:22.020 And so my whole plan was to not do anything. 41:22.480 --> 41:25.400 He doesn't want them to think that whatever they're doing is working. 41:26.060 --> 41:28.700 So he's pretending that he's not affected by it. 41:29.180 --> 41:30.140 But he is. 41:30.760 --> 41:34.060 And it just ratcheted up and it got really uncomfortable. 41:34.060 --> 41:37.200 It started very, very loud, like ear-piercingly loud. 41:37.360 --> 41:42.240 And then I thought, OK, well, this is obnoxious because you can't hear, you know, the show anymore. 41:42.320 --> 41:43.320 So you put captions on. 41:43.480 --> 41:48.820 And you don't want to show any sign of discomfort because if there is video in the room, they're watching that. 41:49.820 --> 41:51.640 This goes on for about 20 minutes. 41:52.400 --> 41:54.160 But then there was the physiological pain. 41:54.340 --> 41:58.200 And so the pressure started in the head and then the discomfort in the ear. 41:58.200 --> 42:03.480 You know, I just picture those old wood vices in, you know, shop class in high school, right? 42:03.520 --> 42:05.760 It just felt like someone was just turning that and my head was in it. 42:06.580 --> 42:08.980 Then the severe, severe ear pain started. 42:10.180 --> 42:15.180 So I liken it to, like, if you take a Q-tip and you bounce it off your ear, you know, like, you get that jarring, like, ah. 42:15.180 --> 42:20.460 Well, imagine taking, like, a sharpened pencil and then poking that off the eardrum. 42:21.280 --> 42:25.680 And so at that point, I then took a pillow and wrapped it over and around my head. 42:25.920 --> 42:30.340 So my left arm had the bulk of the pillow up against my left side. 42:30.440 --> 42:34.020 And then I was using my right hand over the top to kind of block the pillow on the right side of my ear. 42:34.800 --> 42:35.820 And frankly, it did nothing. 42:35.980 --> 42:38.360 Like, it didn't even start to mitigate anything. 42:38.480 --> 42:39.180 Did you move from the bed? 42:39.760 --> 42:40.400 So no. 42:40.700 --> 42:41.800 Because you're thinking. 42:41.940 --> 42:43.340 That would have been the smart thing to do. 42:44.340 --> 42:46.220 And you didn't go to the window and look out either. 42:46.220 --> 42:47.140 No, no. 42:47.460 --> 42:48.760 I assume they're watching. 42:48.880 --> 42:49.600 If not, they're listening. 43:00.040 --> 43:05.840 And so I sat there and just stuck it out. 43:05.920 --> 43:08.400 And I'm talking to my brother and by a text. 43:08.400 --> 43:12.360 I've seen the texts from that day between Tony and his brother. 43:12.900 --> 43:16.600 They show Tony explaining his experience in real time. 43:17.180 --> 43:21.600 Kind of walking through it because I'm on my bed going, if this ratchets up and I die, 43:22.600 --> 43:25.560 they're going to write this off as a heart attack or an aneurysm. 43:25.560 --> 43:36.940 This is a recording of the sound that Tony heard. 43:37.460 --> 43:40.800 He thinks maybe this will help the CIA figure out what's going on. 43:41.480 --> 43:46.220 Tangible evidence that the Cubans have escalated the harassment to an unprecedented level. 43:46.220 --> 43:56.640 Next time on Havana Syndrome. 43:57.100 --> 44:01.340 I was at the top physical, psychological, emotional place I could have ever been in my life. 44:01.860 --> 44:06.540 I mean, I was just a force to be reckoned with and I was gung-ho to do my job. 44:06.540 --> 44:10.780 And within six months, I was a zombie and non-functional as a human being. 44:10.780 --> 44:28.840 Havana Syndrome is hosted and reported by Adam Entous and me, John Lee Anderson. 44:29.320 --> 44:34.920 It's produced and reported by Julia Nutter, Jesse Alejandra Cottrell, and Ramon Campos-Iriarte. 44:34.920 --> 44:39.660 And edited and executive produced by Annie Aviles and Kate Osborne. 44:39.920 --> 44:43.160 With original composition and sound design by Steve Bone.