Leaving the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Future of Israel & Gaza

 A conversation with Harrison Mann, a Jewish army major who decided to resign from the Defense Intelligence Agency over the Biden administration's handling of Gaza. Mann takes us through his background in joining the military, his career in intelligence, his trips to the region, and his resignation. 

★ Support this podcast ★

Creators & Guests

Host

Abdullah Najjar

What is In The East Wing?

Stories of espionage, war, and politics, with a primary focus on the Middle East. This podcast will bring together individuals who were involved in the region in different capacities and lived long enough to tell their stories. This will be raw, balanced, and undeniably suspenseful. Join Abdullah Najjar, as he takes you through a journey to a different world. A podcast by WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2.

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
All right, so this is Abdullah Najjar, and welcome everybody to another episode of in the east wing. today I'm talking to Harrison man who recently resigned from the Defense Intelligence Agency, and I'm interested in exploring a variety of subjects with him, and so I'm very happy to have him on the show with me today, Harrison, or I should probably say major Harrison Mann, welcome.

Harrison Mann 0:28
Happy to be here. And Harrison is fine,

Abdullah Najjar 0:30
absolutely. So Harrison, I think one of the things that I guess some of my viewers, or people who have been keeping up with what's been happening with Israel and Gaza. One of the things that there they might be familiar with is that you recently decided to sort of pull the plug and issue your resignation from the Defense Intelligence Agency. And I think that's one thing I'd love to explore today with you. But, but at the same time, I'm also interested in learning more about your the early days, you know, looking back, went through when you first joined the army. Can you maybe tell us a little bit more about the sort of motivation that drove you to pursue this sort of path in life, and what were some of the variables that helped you make that decision to join us army?

Harrison Mann 1:35
Sure. So it's a decision I made largely when I was in high school and undergrad in college. So this was 2007 2008 2009 and that was a time in the United States where we were still in in the thick, I'd say, of the global war on terror. And it was, it was near the end of the surge in Iraq, and it was a little bit before we started intensifying our efforts in Afghanistan, and it was a time before the the narrative around those wars changed. Now, even within the military or the government, we look at them quite critically, and it's understood that those were failed projects that should not be repeated. But back then that was uncritically, you know, agreed that that was kind of the big the big quest and struggle of our age was those wars. And so I grew up around that, understanding that that was the big venture that America was engaged in, and that it was important, and I felt like I should do my duty to be part of that without really thinking much harder about what that would actually mean, or what the strategic thinking or lack of thinking was behind those wars. And I also came from a pretty liberal upper middle class community in Atlanta, where joining the military was was unheard of, so it was also a little bit of a rebellious or contrarian act for me back then. And so I went to West Point for a couple months, and really did not like it. So I always give big kudos to my friends who stayed and graduated, but we ended up reuniting later, because I went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia and decided to do ROTC there for the same reasons, and stuck with it and really enjoy the experience and the training, and thought that that was a worthwhile thing to do again without really delving much deeper into the, you know, the purpose or the validity of the war, which was at that point, Afghanistan that we were all very excited to participate in.

Abdullah Najjar 3:55
Yeah, and do you recall maybe the time or first year, or maybe first couple of years after he graduated. I mean, what was your What was your level of patriotism? What was that level of excitement at the time? What was going on in your head during that time

Harrison Mann 4:14
I was I was actually very frustrated because at the time, like I said, all you know, I volunteered to be an infantry officer, which is meant to be the, the toughest, most dangerous job, and I, me and all the other guys. And back then it was, it was only men. They finally opened it to women. Me and all the other guys were all very excited. We all thought, we go to Afghanistan and have this big, dramatic experience, and about half of us did and the other half did not. So I was very frustrated that I did not end up in Afghanistan and did not have what was supposed to be this both formative and validating and, you know, quintessential experience that we'd all signed up for. And of course, I. Now in the army, it's quite normal that people would not have combat deployments, but back then, after a decade of Iraq and Afghanistan, it was really unusual not to and all of us had joined the expectation we had that experience. And so when you didn't, even though now I'm quite fortunate that nothing bad happened to me. But at the time that you know that I ended up in Korea and then Kuwait, instead of Afghanistan, was felt a little frustrating and embarrassing.

Abdullah Najjar 5:33
Oh, gosh. And

Harrison Mann 5:36
otherwise, I think I had the same experience that everybody has in the the army, which is, you do a few cool things and a lot of silly things. And there were a number of times where I thought, Okay, let me just finish my initial contract. But then more interesting, and what I thought, more impactful opportunities got presented to me, and that that got me to stay in, you know, got me to re up multiple times.

Abdullah Najjar 6:03
You know, you mentioned 2000 what? 2009 and 2010 I mean, wasn't that during the, I mean, Afghanistan in particular. I think that was during the, I think the Battle of the Korengal, right, there was, like a big, one of the biggest operations, you know, in coral Valley, or otherwise known as Death Valley. I mean, that's that. I mean, I don't know if you were aspiring to go there during that time, it would have been a very serious situation to put yourself into. Yeah,

Harrison Mann 6:34
and we all were looking forward to that, to be honest. And that being said, I don't think any of us signed up expecting to die, and especially Afghanistan there. There are, unfortunately, you know, too many people who were were wounded or killed, but the odds were still pretty good, and that if you went in with a platoon of people, you would all, you would all come back, just in terms of the the experience that most people ended up having, and our our expectation of it was not that we were, we didn't feel like the guys fighting in Ukraine or something, or, you know, in American wars, in previous American wars, where we we thought we might all died. It was kind of you would go. And this is not everyone's experience, but it was a lot of my friends experience. You go, you get shot at a few times. Everybody comes home, you get a new badge. And I think that is what a lot of us expected. And it's some people had a better time of that, and some people certainly had a worse time of it, but that that was what we thought was ahead,

Abdullah Najjar 7:40
yeah, you mentioned Kuwait, and that's uh, and that, that kind of got me thinking. And I mean, Kuwait, Was that your first experience in the Middle East, or did you have a prior experience? Yeah,

Harrison Mann 7:56
so, so to my earlier point about Global War on Terror being the feeling like the important, the important adventure of our generation that drove me and many other people to start taking Arabic, and that was the hot language back then. Used to be Russia, and now it's Chinese, but in the arts, it was Arabic. So I took Arabic For that purpose, but I ended up really enjoying it, and that took me around the region, even while I was still in college, to a few places, namely Beirut and then the West Bank right which I had chosen both purely to study Arabic and my my decision to go to Bethlehem and stay with the family there was really done with, with with no ideology and a large degree of ignorance about what was about the the intricacies of Israeli and Palestinian history. But I, I did get a good taste of the region, and against my will, ended up learning quite a lot about that conflict as well from that experience.

Abdullah Najjar 9:11
Did you feel like, Man, I want to go back, you know. Did that sensation start kicking in after you finished that trip? Or you're like, maybe I'll try something different, you know, different region. Perhaps

Harrison Mann 9:25
I think, no, I mean, I liked it. I really liked I liked studying Arabic. I liked the region. I always had a really positive experience. And everyone was, you know, I met was, was wonderful, and treated me wonderfully and and I had in my head that this would be my specialty, and that I would specialize in the region, which is what ended up happening.

Abdullah Najjar 9:50
Yeah, yeah. So then, so, when would you say that that trip occurred around what you. Year to Kuwait and to, you know, to reach Kuwait was 2014

Harrison Mann 10:04
or 2015 I recall was because we were there right when ISIS started taking over all of Iraq. That was all six by frustrating, and I was sitting there, and I was with a Combined Arms Battalion, which meant Bradley's and tanks. My company was on Bradley's Bradley Fighting Vehicles and

Abdullah Najjar 10:27
and by the way, those are cumbersome experiences, right? The Bradley, I think, is very hard to

Harrison Mann 10:31
I honestly, I hated being on them. I was, I was in two different units where we had them, and I thought they were the most annoying and worthless devices in the world. But I haven't proven wrong, because we gave them to the Ukrainians. Them to the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians have been using them to great effect to kill Russian tanks, which I think is the first time that has ever actually had it in history. But yes, they are, they are cumbersome, indeed. And I was, I remember, I was consistently annoyed that a Bradley platoon does not have enough Bradleys to actually fit all the soldiers in the back. And I could never get over that, that you get four Bradleys which can can fit six guys in the back each, but you have more than 24 infantrymen who you need to drive around. And I, I won't go off on that red now. But yeah, we had, we had Bradley's in tanks in Kuwait. And I recall we were all sitting there, and I was like, What are we doing in Kuwait? ISIS storming through halfpen. Actually, that's what I was in Kuwait. Was it the launch of ISIS?

Abdullah Najjar 11:35
Gosh, what an interesting time to be in the region. I mean, that was, I remember, gosh, during that time I was, I think I was in middle school, and there was this one guy who was with me in different classes, and his mom actually taught us mathematics. Is it like a middle school teacher? And then there was this time, I think, I think it was in January of 2014 or January 2015 I don't recall exactly the month or the year, but he just, um, he just disappeared, and no one heard about his where he went. I mean, no one knew about his whereabouts. And then a few days afterward, we get, we get this piece of news that he actually joined an ISIS cell and decided to bomb himself. Yeah, no, seriously, that was a major, major event.

Harrison Mann 12:37
Were you living in Libya at this point? Was in the States? Oh, I was in

Abdullah Najjar 12:41
Libya. I was in middle school. The guy was, was literally classmate, yeah, no, it was a very interesting time to be alive, during those days that that period, yeah, so, so, gosh, so after, after your the journey to the Middle East, you went back to the US. You joined the Defense Intelligence Agency. Or how did that?

Harrison Mann 13:06
Yeah, so I was, I stayed in the army until this summer, and so my final assignment at DIA was still as a as an Army officer. So I was there in uniform. And there's a number of military personnel who are posted there while they're still in the military. Oh, gosh.

Abdullah Najjar 13:26
So I think it'd be interesting to move into the the decision that you ultimately made to end a what, 13 year long career in the army. Yeah. So that would have been, you submitted your letter, I think after, after October 7, but I think that was in November, right? That's when you submit your letter, yeah. So

Harrison Mann 13:54
I began, I began my resignation to drawn out administrative process if you're in the military. I started that in November, I didn't actually share the reasons for it, even with with my office internally, until April, and then in May, I decided to publicly share it.

Abdullah Najjar 14:16
And do you recall what was, what it is that you perhaps had Okay, seen, but also heard of that made you realize that this is the right decision to make to leave. What can you? Can you take us back to those that period? Yeah, I

Harrison Mann 14:38
think ultimately, it was a mounting feeling of hopelessness, and once I became entirely hopeless, to say hopeless that both US policy was going to change, or that our own role, like my office's own role, and my own role, it was going to change, I felt like I didn't really have any other. Options, because we saw from October 8 on the scale and brutality, really, of the even before the the ground operation, the Israeli bombing campaign in response to the October 7 attacks. And even while it was just, I don't say just bombing, but I said just bombing. And since that was the very earliest phase of the war, before they'd even entered Gaza on foot, it was really clear, both on the inside and on the outside. I think it was clear of the entire world that it was going to be a very indiscriminate campaign of mass punishment, and it was not letting up. And that's, I think, what everybody expected the Israelis were going to do, and how we expected them to respond. And what I did not expect, and what I think a lot of other people didn't expect, was that the US response would be so accommodating for so long, like I said, we knew the Israelis were going to do some kind of awful vengeance bloodletting, because they were very angry. But in that first month after October 7, I was able to see that the both publicly the Biden administration was not going to put its foot down and not going to try to moderate their behavior. And then you could see that policy filter down the chain of command, from the President to the NSC, down to the intel community, down to my agency. That that nowhere, at no Echelon was anybody really willing to to inquire if we should, if we should moderate our support, or to suggest putting their foot down. And at at no Echelon was Was anybody really even acknowledging, just acknowledging the fact that the support that we were providing was contributing to the the killing and destruction in Gaza much, you know, we were not, we were not even connecting that very, those very obvious dots, not which is not even demanding that we stop our support. We were not even really saying, Hey, we're kind of contributing to this, yeah, and I was able to to understand that those questions were not really going to be asked or brought up. And the people who did bring up some general concerns about making sure that our support would not cause legal problems in the future, because we might be, you know, people concerned that, given that the Israelis were, were killing lots of innocent people and discriminately, you know, they want to, they were worried, okay, are we going to be implicated in this in the legal sense, in the future, right? But those discussions did not, not really go beyond posing the question, and I was able to see those discussions concluded without, without the decision that, okay, we need to moderate our support because we're worried about this legal implications. And you know that that was one of many, many signals or indications I saw that our, yeah, our support was not going to, you know, let up in any way. And so once I understood that, I knew that every day that I kept going to the office, I'd be contributing to it, because there was not going to be a moment where somebody was like, Hey, okay, everybody, we talked it over. We're stopped. We're going to stop we're going to stop helping the Israelis so much because of what they're doing. And you know, that's the moment that I was really hoping for. But, yeah, I I had enough signals and indications to understand that that was never

Abdullah Najjar 19:12
going to come when you when you were able to reach these conclusions, or actually, before you were able to reach these conclusions, was there a way for you to maybe. Did you have conversations about this outside of your of the professional life, I mean, conversations with friends or family or people that you knew, or was that something that you never voiced to anyone until you actually realized that you're no longer going to be part of that i

Harrison Mann 19:46
i did not voice it in detail for a long time. I spoke, I think, in broad terms, to some friends who work in related feelings, not not in my agency. But who are in the larger business, especially, you know, the first month when I was so frustrated and I was just trying to see because i Nobody at work was talking about it, and so there's a while we're going into the office, I felt crazy. I was like, am I the only one who who is upset that we are supporting the Israelis while they are bombing, you know every hospital in in Gaza, but talking to some of my friends outside of the office who work in the natsec foreign policy government space, and doing a temperature check with them to see how they felt. But I did not, I didn't talk about it in depth with a lot of people, in part and because there's there's classification concerns are one thing. And if you ever watch any of my interviews, especially my earlier ones, where I'm speaking extremely slowly and carefully, it's mainly because I'm afraid I'm going to say something I'm not supposed to, which was always one of my big concerns in publicizing my resignation, you know, this is a, this is a, everything in the Intel world is classified, or a lot of it is and everything specifically about this specific bilateral relationship is not made public, Right? And but I also, you know, it was, I um, it was also difficult to to even vocalize the reasons that I felt guilty, because that was a very hard thing to say out loud and to admit to myself, another reason that I did not talk with the people about it for a while.

Abdullah Najjar 21:36
And also because, maybe, maybe because your background as a Jewish individual, maybe that played a role right in terms of how you even voice it, or how you even talk about it to family members, or even those that you visited into West Bank or Bethlehem, I think,

Harrison Mann 21:55
yeah, I was fortunate that my I was never worried about how My family was going to react to this and that they are unfortunate. They are very well informed people, for the most part, who did not. I wouldn't say there before all this, there was, we were, I was totally eye to eye with everybody about Israel, but I also was never concerned that I was going to get like, disowned, or there'd be really violent reaction, which is, it's not the case for for other people in my life, and I have other Jewish friends who this has become a massive wedge between them and their family, but I was very fortunate that I did not cover about that.

Abdullah Najjar 22:42
You mentioned earlier that oftentimes you're gonna have to speak a little bit slowly. I think there are times when you have to speak too fast because a segment's gonna end. We gotta, we gotta run things, you know. But no, no, I totally understand how oftentimes one has to be really careful not to say things that that might be might jeopardize, I guess, national security or other individuals that are primarily in that world and some stuff are sensitive. So we'll definitely try not to, maybe we'll try to make sure that you know you're careful here.

Harrison Mann 23:19
I'm not gonna say, I would never say anything or come close to saying anything that actually jeopardizes national security. I would only possibly say something that would, that could very slightly incriminate myself, but I'd never be anything shocking that would, that would give anybody an advantage. Okay?

Abdullah Najjar 23:36
Well, let's be careful not to

Harrison Mann 23:38
just you just, we're worrying about me. We're not, I'm not going to, you know, accidentally say the nuclear codes on your show. Good. No,

Abdullah Najjar 23:45
I really, I'm glad to hear that. So Harrison, I mean, now you're, you've been, you've been quite, you've been public about this for two months now, I think, right? I mean, since June, if I'm not mistaken, yeah, what are some of the maybe key concerns you've heard from people who are still in the inside that you might have communication with? And we'll obviously, I'm sure you're going to try to avoid any names or anything too specific, but maybe something that stand, that stands out, and we think is worth maybe highlighting here.

Harrison Mann 24:25
Well, I'll just say my none of my concerns are, are unique or the result of my own analytic genius, and they're, they're pretty generic and widely held and were identified a long time ago by by everybody who follows this issue. So I'm not texting my friends at the agency back and forth for updates. I would never do that. I update them about me sometimes, but I think my own concerns that I have been vocalizing since I got out are the concerns that. That everybody has in the in the government who follows this issue. And there is the humanitarian concern, which is the reason that I quit, which is what really depressed and angered me to the extent that I was willing to take some what I at the time, what I felt were significant risks and life changes to speak out about. And then there are the strategic concerns, which I used to work with the people who were paid to identify and assess these. And I've been especially vocal about those recently, and that's namely the enduring risk that the What started as the Gaza war is now going to turn into a giant war between Israel and Hezbollah that Netanyahu launches with an invasion into Lebanon, and we saw just this weekend, the latest bout of fortunately contained, back and forth reprisals with his ball responding for the target of killing that Israel carried out in Beirut a couple weeks ago. And that that concern in some form or another, has has been there for for months and months and months since long before I quit and i i the Biden administration has clearly never been taking ending the war in Gaza seriously, which is to say, using pressure to force Israel, to force Netanyahu to actually entertain a ceasefire. And that's kind of been a given for a while. And I, I am also I'm even more surprised that they are not. They don't seem to be taking seriously the threat of this war kicking off. And I, I have criticized others for describing it in passive terms, and I need to not do it myself, because it's not like escalation happens or the war will start. It's the only way this war can start is by Israel starting it by either launching a ground operation to Lebanon and or doing doing mass bombing of Beirut, an attempt to punish Hezbollah. And that risk is still there. Our government continues to increase that risk by basically rewarding Israel every time they they escalate. And we again, just saw that over the past months, which is right after he visits Congress Netanyahu green lights these these assassinations in Tehran and Beirut, and our first reaction is to send an unprecedented number of aircraft carriers, I think, into, I don't know if they're in the Red Sea, to to protect him from the consequences of his actions. And the result of that is that it validates his behavior, and it means he knows he can do even more provocative assassinations or strikes in the future, because he has, he he has proof of concept that he will get instant personal security detail from the US Navy if he does that, and so he will do something again. And Hezbollah and Iran have been clear in every way possible, including in their responses or lack of responses to the killings I'm talking about, that they don't want more war. And I don't think that's going to change, but each time they do a little reprisal to save face, even if it's just like a couple 100 rockets with advanced notice, which is basically what Hezbollah did this weekend, that that's not a risk free proposition, and the each time that happens, there's no way to guarantee that they won't get a lucky hit, or some Israeli air defense system won't fail, or the rocket's going to fall short and hit a civilian target, or, you know, land on a daycare or something, and that that risks it's just going to exist as long as the back and forth kind of normal attacks and the reprisals for the high profile attacks, as long as that continues and there's no way to control that, other than getting both sides to actually cease fire, and the fact that we keep rolling the dice with This risk is really frightening and disappointing to me. And of course, on top of that, right inter in terms of all the accidents that could happen that make that could make Netanyahu feel like he has no choice but to start this war, we also know he does have all sorts of perverse incentives, as do some of his political allies, to actually start this war. And I don't know if he's just waiting for the right pretense or if he genuinely does not want the war, but his hand could, he could feel like his hands forced if his boa hits the right thing. But either way, the risk is there, and it continues to it grows as long as we let this go on. Yeah, and that has been a concern. But. Everybody, it's concerned that the Biden administration recognizes, and everyone's recognized for 10 months, or especially, I think, in since, since the new year, and we are not taking it seriously.

Abdullah Najjar 30:13
Did you expect this sort of back and forth where you know, you have, you have this deal on the table. Then you expect, and then you hear, I think, wasn't it, I guess Secretary Blinken saying that, Oh, the ball is in Hamas' quarter or a corner. And then, you know, you the deal is, you know, you get these mixed messages that you know, that you know, I remember attending these press conferences, and every time they say, you know, oh, there are, there are things that can be changed or worked around, but we can't guarantee that they will be. And then every single time, it's just, it's like a very it's a process that just doesn't seem to have, doesn't reach, eventually, a goal, right? And then you hear this piece of news coming out that, oh, Netanyahu stalling. It's just like, I mean, I'd be interested to get your your your perspective on this. So you just take the expected to to, you know, take this long to reach a deal, or you don't think the deal will be reached. I mean, what's the Where do you? Where do you? Yeah, you, maybe,

Harrison Mann 31:29
you maybe heard the expression the purpose of a system is what it does. I don't think we can realistically call this ceasefire process a process that's actually intended to end the war, at least from the perspective of both the Biden administration and certainly from the Netanyahu government, it has only served to buy time for the Israelis, for them to and whether it's buying time for them to fully cleanse Gaza or do whatever Netanyahu thinks he needs to do to clear victory there, or it's buying time for him to wait for Trump to get elected, if that happens, or it's buying time for him to start his next war. It's all it has served to do is buy time. And I do not accept the idea that Anthony Blinken is so clueless that he has been continually shocked for months on end and repeated cycles of of so called ceasefire negotiations that it's it's a surprise to him that the the effect of all of these rounds of negotiations has just been buying time and has not, has not been a good faith effort by Netanyahu to actually reach a ceasefire. And you know, I think you could play that game the first time the talks broke down. But you you can't feign ignorance when everybody you know Israeli press every day is saying Netanyahu does not want to deal. People from his government are saying he's sabotaging the deal. The hostages family are saying he's sabotaging the deal. And and the President himself, occasionally has indicated that he acknowledges that as well, and the the idea that there will be a and Netanyahu every time after, the Secretary announces that Netanyahu has agreed to a deal, Netanyahu goes on Israeli TV the next day and announces we're going to Fight Hamas to the last man, and there's never any indication that he has actually agreed to a deal. And so again, this we can only see this process for what it act the expected outcome that it continues to produce, which is buying time for the Israelis. And what was true six months ago is true now, which is that there will not be a ceasefire deal without actual us pressure both, both to force Netanyahu to to agree to the deal and as a guarantor of the deal for Hamas, because Israel has no credibility. That's Part. Part of the issue right is that they keep saying, Okay, we might do a ceasefire deal, but we reserve the right to attack Hamas whenever we want, which is not really a ceasefire. So I think it's tough to expect Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal that involves them giving up their most important leverage, which is their their Israeli hostages they have, without them thinking that there's some kind of enforcement mechanism in place that they know, that you know they need to know that Israel will be punished in some way if Israel breaks its terms of the deal, and that can't happen until we, we the United States, demonstrates that we're willing to leverage military support to enforce the deal.

Abdullah Najjar 34:34
One of the things I notice about your letter is that, or maybe it's not in the letter, I think it was in one of your interviews mixing things up here, you mentioned that some, some, I think members of the Defense Intelligence Agency, indicated that we can still do the same work that we're doing, but maybe switch me to a different portfolio and have. Someone else do this type of work or something like that, right?

Harrison Mann 35:03
Yeah. I mean, people, people in the government, have done that, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 35:07
yeah. So that, um, if someone were to, you know, someone who's very maybe, I should probably say, for lack of a better word, very patriotic, wants to serve, wants to do some sort of public service, and maybe join the Defense Intelligence Agency or another government organization. And there may be grappling with this idea, right? Maybe I would be assigned to do something that I maybe disagree with, or policy advance something that I disagree with, and it's something you mentioned in your letter, right? The idea that you might have to do something you do not necessarily agree with, but you know, broadly speaking, you are trying to maybe make a difference, maybe with, not with every policy you agree with, but you know, you're trying to make a difference. Let's say someone joins and they're assigned to do something that is similar to maybe they would occupy the shoes that you had on before you decided to resign. What would you say to that person you know? How would you advise them or what you know if, assuming you know, they have concerns as well prior to joining.

Harrison Mann 36:25
I think you know, when you're in that role, you don't have to do exactly what I did, but you do have an obligation. And if you feel bad about the work that you're doing, there's a reason for that. And I, I it's important for people to know that there's, there's a spectrum of action you can take between being quiet and doing nothing and publicly quitting like I did. And because that, I think sometimes that that is the right solution for some people, but it's not an option available to everybody, especially for material reasons, which is, unfortunately, one of the reasons that we have a lot of people who know what they're doing is wrong and are continuing to support, you know, our policy in this conflict. But like you mentioned, you know, short, I think you can ask to transfer, which people have done elsewhere, or otherwise ask to stop working on this project. And I know elsewhere, there's also people who have who didn't transfer, but just told their boss, hey, I'm doing the I'm going to keep doing the 80% of my job that I've been doing. I'm not doing the 20% that's Israel support. Oh, wow, that's not available to everybody. But people have done that. People have transferred. I something that I have also encouraged people to do is get it in writing from your supervisor or from their supervisor that they are they're asserting, or they're affirming, that what you're being asked to do is within the legal and ethical standards of your organization. Because a lot of what happened and what I witnessed and what I was a part of myself I was I was both receiving and giving orders or tasks. We were doing all this, and nobody was saying out loud, we were doing all this. We were all feeling a little uneasy about it. Nobody said out loud, hey, I think for sure, what we're doing is legal and ethical, and it's the right thing when, when we were asking people to continue their support in one way or another. And I, if I'd done this again, I would have wanted to create a forcing function that my superiors and their superiors had to take responsibility and some level of accountability for what they were asking people to do, and instead of just treating it like business as usual, you know, I wish I would have challenged them and They They, in turn of challenge their superiors, saying, We here's the concerns that we have. You are asking me to do this support or do this project every day. Can you please confirm that you think the thing that you're asking me to do is not just consistent with US law and international law, but also the ethical standards of our organization, and making somebody put their name on that statement or on on that affirmation. And you know, I don't know if that really would have changed policy, but I think it would have made it would have given some people pause, and force them to acknowledge what what we were actually doing. And because we didn't, we didn't really have to. We treated the whole thing like the way we treated the Ukraine response, like the way we treated, you know, our response to the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War, businesses as usual in in the the agency. So those are all options that people have, and also, if you feel like you can't do any of that, I think everybody has the ability to at least talk, even if it's just to their their person the cubicle next to them, because one of the things that I experienced was nobody, even in an informal. Was acknowledging the reality of the work that we were doing and its connection to what was happening in Gaza. And that was one of the reasons that I felt really hopeless, and I felt like nothing was going to change, was that nobody, nobody was even saying out loud the very obvious things that I was thinking. And so there are a lot of institutions, like the one where I came from, where people are not even at that level yet. So I think those are all options for people who understand that they're supporting in the moral policy

Abdullah Najjar 40:32
and Harris and now that you're on the outside. I mean, what's what's life has? What's life been like after, after resignation, and what's what sort of, maybe clarity that you've had in recent months, if any, I think you're muted. Harris,

Harrison Mann 40:53
it's been it's been busier than I thought. The long vacation that I was looking forward to has still not materialized, but for a good reason, I did not understand how much opportunity there would be for me to speak or for people to maintain interest in hearing from me, and I have tried to take every opportunity that I thought was worthwhile and available to not just explain my decision, but to try and inform people and be be one of the many voices and growing course of voices that's both calling, you know, not just calling for a ceasefire, but explaining why our policy is dangerous and wrong, and helping people understand that and don't need pressure. And you know, with that, also continuing to raise the alarm bells about the the outside of Gaza escalation that we continue to see, and that even even that it's, I think, current, quote, unquote, contained phase, we still, we still should be worried about, not unacceptable. So that has been a lot of talking to the press, talking to enterprising podcasters, uh, writing op eds and doing intermittent engagement on the hill with members of Congress and their staffs.

Abdullah Najjar 42:21
Well, Harrison, I want to thank you for your time and this conversation we've had. It was a pleasure having you here and hearing more about your story and your background. It was really insightful. So thank you. Yeah.

Harrison Mann 42:32
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to meet you. Great to talk. Abdullah,

Abdullah Najjar 42:36
absolutely.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai