The CIA Tried to Bury It | Rachel Cuda | Ep. 451

Rachel Cuda grew up the daughter of a Navy SEAL, raised on Coronado around the teams. She speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and German. She studied at the University of Tennessee, earned a master's from Georgetown, and wrote software at a startup before moving into defense contracting. At the Pentagon she led the data modeling and analytics line for the military's COVID task force. She married a SEAL officer whose grandfather gave the CIA thirty years as a case officer. In February 2022, Rachel Cuda joined the agency's Directorate of Operations. It was the job she'd wanted her whole life.

Two weeks after she started, Russia invaded Ukraine, and her languages put her in the middle of it. Six months in, a colleague strangled her with a scarf in a stairwell at headquarters.

Then the agency went to work on her. They told her she couldn't go to the police. They told her she couldn't tell her husband. They warned her that reporting it could put her in prison. So she went to Congress instead. We get into the assault, the run-around, the predators the agency shielded for years, and how one trainee forced the CIA to rewrite its laws in eleven months.

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Timestamps:

[00:00:00] Growing up with a SEAL dad

[00:08:40] Dating life and marrying a SEAL

[00:19:18] Husband’s SEAL career and officer path

[00:31:00] CIA recruitment and screening process

[00:43:05] Joining CIA and entering operations

[00:50:43] Russian and Ukrainian language differences

[00:59:01] Expectations versus reality at CIA

[01:03:46] Assault at CIA headquarters

[01:09:02] CIA sexual assault reporting failures

[01:17:03] Lawyers, police, and going outside CIA

[01:28:26] Taking the case to Congress

[01:33:46] Investigations and fast-moving legislation

[01:41:43] Attacker’s conviction and agency response

[01:55:42] CIA today and return to contracting

[02:03:21] Wider sexual violence discussion

[02:13:08] Reporting systems and survivor advocacy

[02:19:45] Husband’s post-service life

[02:28:05] Social media and reaching out