American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [2]
Down there in the bowels of the building, some “fledgling” CIA operatives sat waiting for me in a conference room. There were 23 in all; I counted heads. They ranged in age from right out of college to what looked like retired people, both men and women, a very diverse group. Your average middle-class neighborhood types—except all of them were with the CIA, which was kind of chilling when you think about it. I was placed in the middle of a big circle of chairs, and they all sat there staring at me, with notebooks on their laps.
Well, before they could start asking me questions, I said I had a few for them. First of all, what were they doing here, in the FBI’s territory? Nobody seemed to want to say. Then I started going around the room, asking for their names and their job descriptions. Maybe three or four answered, but the others dummied up. Either they’d describe what they did without identifying who they were, or neither. Considering that I’m an elected governor, I thought this was not only rude, but rather brash. So I told the group, “Well, being that you’re not being too cooperative with me, it’s going to be difficult for me to cooperate with you.”
They asked their questions anyway, and it was interesting. They all focused on how we campaigned, how we achieved what we did, and did I think we truly could win when we went into the campaign? Basically, how had the independent wrestler candidate pulled this off? Sometimes I answered and other times I didn’t, just to mess with them a little. They remained very cordial and proper. Nobody raised their voice or made me feel I was being interrogated. But I’ve got to say, it was one of the strangest experiences of my life. I was baffled by the whole experience.
When I got home that day, I called my friend Dick Marcinko. He wrote all the Rogue Warrior books, created the anti-terrorist SEAL Team Six, and I figured he’d probably know more about how the CIA operates than anybody else I knew. Dick started laughing as I told him the scenario of what had happened. I asked why he thought this was so funny.
“Well, I’m not privy to exactly why they were there,” he said, “but I could give you my educated guess.” He went on, “They didn’t see you coming. You were not on the radar screen. And all of a sudden, you won a major election in the United States of America. The election caught them with their pants down, and their job is to gather intelligence and make predictions. Now, next to Bill Clinton, you’re probably the most famous politician in America.”
Then Dick added this: “I think they’re trying to see if there are any more of you on the horizon.”
So were they trying to gather information to insure this would never happen again? I wondered: Was I that much of a threat?
Not too long after that meeting, I found out something else and it stunned me. I revealed this for the first time in my memoir, Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me!, and it raised a lot of eyebrows. It just so happens there is a CIA operative inside every state government. They are not in executive positions—in other words, not appointed by the governor—but permanent state employees. While governors come and go, they keep working, holding down legitimate jobs but with a dual identity. In Minnesota, this person was fairly high up, serving at the deputy commissioner level.
I wasn’t sworn to secrecy about