In The East Wing

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
Okay, so this is your host, Abdullah Najjar, and in this episode, I want to focus on giving closure to this podcast that I have hosted for approximately one academic year. It's certainly been an interesting journey so far. I mean, I've definitely enjoyed having these conversations with the different guests that I that I've had on the show. A lot of them have served with with the US military. Some have been deployed to the region Middle East. Others have reported from the region for from some of the most dangerous areas and had a lot of interesting stories to share. Other guests, as you might have noticed, were involved with the intelligence community. A number of them, actually, that I've hosted on the show, have been involved in some capacity with either the CIA Central Intelligence Agency or the DIA the Defense Intelligence Agency. So there's been a lot of interesting, I guess, stories and conversations the that have been recorded throughout the past academic year as part of the East Wing. So I just want to take this opportunity to first off, thank my wonderful advisor here at the station, Jamie Gilbert, for her encouragement throughout throughout the process of making this podcast happen, and for her trust, obviously, in for her trust in me, and for her belief, for believing in me, actually. You know, these conversations can be truly sensitive. Some things can be quite tricky to perhaps navigate, some some controversial topics, but I think, I think we did a good job. I also want to thank primarily my guests, really, for for showing up to this, to this podcast and and for having these, these conversations with me. I truly value their time and their openness and transparency, and I certainly appreciate their, you know, their candor and for for recording, sometimes more than an hour long worth of conversation, these things, I truly appreciate, you know, the time and the the availability of these guests to actually talk to me on the show about their their lives and things that they've done, and some of the stories that they've experienced throughout the years, whether it be in the CIA military or otherwise there. There are a couple of things here that I do want to I'd love to maybe highlight to my audience, especially since you know these, especially since I have not really talked much about my myself, or even some of the some of the lore behind The the guests, or that my guests stories, right? So I figured maybe I could talk a little bit about my background here, just to highlight who it is that who's the person behind the mic, and talk a little bit about some of the, some of the things that go on in the background before we press that that record button. You know, a few things about the about my guests, and obviously, a few things about the process, right? So let me, let me start off here by perhaps highlighting a few things about myself that may not have been emphasized throughout the process of making these podcasts. So I grew up in Libya. I lived in that country for approximately 17 years of my life. I taught myself the English language I was primarily studying in in in public schools, from elementary school all the way up to high school. And it was during that time that the mode of education, or the main language, that was used. Used in the in the schools was actually Arabic, so I didn't really get a chance to learn English through the schools that I attended. So I just taught myself the language. And then after, after my time in Libya, I was 17, I ended up in Lebanon. I was pursuing my undergrad in that country. A few years went by, spent approximately four years in that country, and then after I graduated, I left Lebanon and spent approximately a year in Libya, I was doing journalism stuff, and at the same time, I was hosting a podcast which sort of revolved around similar themes as the ones that we have, similar themes to the ones that we have discussed in his podcast. And after, after my time in Libya, I came here to the United States, to North Carolina to pursue my master's degree. And this is when I decided to sort of re launch the podcast that I hosted back in Libya, and add maybe sort of a twist to it, in a way, but, but before I actually started hosting this podcast, I was hosting a different podcast that had that it focused on international students and their stories, essentially what what brought them to this country, and some of the lessons that they have learned throughout their time. Here it was during the recording of that podcast that actually got to meet a lot of interesting folks, one one of, one of which became a very, very close friend of mine. Shout out to our good friend, Veronica, student from Germany, who's been quite supportive as well. And so I want to also take this opportunity to thank her. But then I ended up hosting this podcast. I had a very you know, had a desire to continue doing what I was doing back home in Libya, and I had access to the studio here at NC, state, obviously, with the guidance of our wonderful advisor, Jamie, I managed to kick start it. And it's interesting, because had this, this sort of idea, in mind, you know, you know, had had a name for it, and I didn't have a, I guess, a logo, right? I just had, I was brainstorming different titles, different names. I ended up with this one, you know, in the East Wing, right? But I didn't know what sort of logo I should be using, or what sort of picture that I should be putting on this play to kind of maybe get a feel of what my audience could expect from this podcast. So I remember one day I was in the Library of Congress. This was during my last week in the sea in the summer of 2024 at the time, I was working with an Arabic news organization called a shark, and I was doing an internship with them, and by the time I was almost done with that internship, I made a short trip to the Library of Congress, and I was exploring that library, and then at one point, I ended up in this one spot inside this library that had,

it was a sort of a, it was an office, but with, with with limited access to the public. So the the picture that you see of a logo is actually a picture of that office, but the tricky thing was actually capturing that picture. So what I ended up doing was that I grabbed my my phone. I loved that office, and at the time, I had no intention of using that image as a logo for my podcast, right? I just, I just love this. This, this office. I wanted to take a picture of it, but there was, you know, it was, it was difficult to capture a picture of that because of the, again, the limited access that I had to the office. So what I ended up doing was I was leaning to my left, like as if I was trying to go over the barricade. It wasn't barricade, but it was something that sort of prevented the access, so sort of leaning to my left, trying everything I can to just capture the perfect, what I would consider a perfect image that is, and I ended up capturing it. Added a few filters here and there. Error, and I looked at it again, and I realized that this is exactly what I was looking for. This was the picture that I needed, and is the picture that I am currently using for for my podcast. So I go back to state, or I come back to NC State. Rather, I launched my podcast, and the first conversation I have on the show was with a veteran war journalist who has been to different parts of the world, covering different conflicts in some of the most dangerous areas. And I truly, truly enjoyed this conversation I had with, with, with Kathy. Her name is Kathy, this world journalist. And Kathy is, again, a very interesting person who is nice enough to accept my invitation to be on, on my show. And what was interesting about this conversation that a lot of you might not be aware of is that when her and I were recording this, this, this, this podcast, I was shocked to see that her her arm was undergoing a certain set of treatment, and what I saw was this sort of mechanical, sort of structure that surrounded her arm. And I asked, I asked Kathy about that, right? I was curious to know what had happened, and she told me, this is, this was a this was the truth. She was, she was she was her arm was being treated post a bad episode that she encountered with an Afghan fighter who opened fire on her and her friend, shooting Kathy five times and ultimately killing Kathy's friend. So this was a very unfortunate story that Kathy and her friend went through. Unfortunately, the friend did not survive, but Kathy was lucky enough to survive and and share, share her story. This was at a time when, when she was still in Afghanistan and covering some of what was going on over there. So this is just a little bit about, you know, my first episode, some of the things that the audience, maybe some of the listeners might not have been aware of. Then, if you if you listen to my second episode, it was with a Air Force veteran who had resigned from the US military in opposition to us support to Israel's war on Gaza. So we had a conversation together, and he was quite an interesting person. He was introduced to me through Josh Paul. And Josh Paul was the first person from the US government to publicly resign after Israel's war in Gaza in opposition to us support. And Josh was someone that I had also interviewed in collaboration with the radio station, but but our conversation together is not listed on this podcast, although you can find it at the YouTube channel of WKNC. In any case, Josh and I had conversation together on a podcast and over this past summer, him and I sat down together for some coffee. And it was through him that I got introduced to, or connected, rather, to my guest from the Air Force, Riley Livermore, and it was also through Josh that I managed to talk to or host Harrison Mann, a Jewish dia officer, an officer from the Defense Intelligence Agency who also resigned in opposition to us support to Israel's war on Gaza. So these two episodes were quite interesting, and it was through a conversation with a with the first guy to publicly resign that I actually managed to gain access to these two individuals. And then if you look at my episode. With that's titled shadow wars and Black Ops. You will find yourself listening to Rick Prato, one of the one of the CIA's well known officers who had been deployed to a number of places around the world, and Rick and I had a very, very interesting conversation together, and it was one of my favorite conversations on the show. In addition, you can find other episodes where I've had, you know, other conversations with with people from the CIA, one of them being Jim Lawler. Her episode together is titled The trader stale and the recruitment of foreign spies. And Jim has been on my podcast couple of times. Actually, first hosted him when I was in Libya, it was an online conversation. And then over the summer, when I was up in DC, we got together a couple of times, and we got a chance to record another episode here at NC State. And I got to attend his third book launch, the launch of his third novel in Middleburg, Virginia. That was a very, very interesting event, another conversation that I really enjoyed was with Angelica rigozzi. The title of our conversation together is from the USSR to war journalism, and I came across Kathy, a rather Angelica profile on LinkedIn, and I read a few things about her, and decided to reach out, and lo and behold, we we ended up having a conversation together, and it was certainly overwhelming. There were many stories that were quite sad and very, very heavy. But I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed that conversation together. And fun fact, I may or may not have been hung over when I was recording that podcast, although it might be very difficult to notice, I'm just kidding. So there, you know, there you know, there are a number of episodes here that I really enjoyed recording. I might not be able to go over all of them, but I, I certainly, I certainly enjoyed the conversations I had. There's one that I would love to emphasize also, which was with the which is titled being a female intelligence officer and leaving the Clandestine Service. And it was recorded with Lindsey Morin. Lindsay was just a phenomenal guest, and I really enjoyed the flow of the conversation that her and I had together. And I think she's got some very interesting stories to share. And I truly enjoyed the conversation we had. And I did record another episode with another female, CIA officer, Sarah Adams, one of my very good friends who's been quite supportive throughout my time here at NC State, and this was the second time we recorded a conversation together. And she's she's just great. Our conversation primarily revolved around Hamas, al Qaeda, Afghanistan and a few other small topics, but I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation together, and I enjoyed, I should say that I enjoyed all of these conversations I've had on a show. A lot of them, a lot of them are quite memorable, and some of my favorite are the ones that I've highlighted here. So again, I do want to take the time to thank all the listeners and thank you all for your tremendous support. I thoroughly enjoyed this journey of podcasting. I It's sad that I have to give it a level of closure, at least for now, but it's, it's, you know, I think it's part of the journey at the end. So thank you all for listening. I. I, you know, the process from the from the beginning to the end, the process of making podcasts is really, really enjoyable. I've, I've poured my heart and soul into this, and I thoroughly enjoyed the these conversations, and the overall journey. So thank you all for listening. I hope, I hope you had a great time hearing some of these stories from a variety of guests that I've had on the show. And, yeah, I just want to really, really appreciate the support and keep on listening. You know, I'm sure, sure there are some episodes that I've recorded that you may not have had a chance to listen to. So maybe check those out. And thank you for being a lawyer, loyal member of the audience. Goodbye, you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai