EP 2 - An Orgin Story*

Here's something no one tells you when you're trying to get to the bottom of your grandfather's involvement with the CIA.

There's no handbook, no, "So your grandpa might've been a spy" starter kit.

You just wake up one day with a couple of cryptic stories, a stack of half-burned documents, and a family member saying, "Huh, I guess he did travel a lot." So you start digging.

Google, newspapers, government archives with websites that look like they were built on a Dell computer in 1997.

You email agencies who send back replies that basically say, "We can neither confirm nor deny that we're ignoring you."

I don't know what level of I'm supposed to ask questions here or what, but, like, can you go to, like, an archive and see all the...

Like, in DC or something, like the National Archive, and look up your grandfather and see what the missions he did was or what?

So without getting anyone in trouble, I have talked to people in the government that have pretty much confirmed that our grandpa's in their system.

Marco Rubio.

Yep.

[laughs]

Big ups.

Every lead you chase opens five more questions.

Every story you think you've cracked suddenly doesn't add up, and every time you think you've hit the bottom of it, you realize there is no bottom.

Just more silence, more shadows, more things he never said.

I mean, my grandpa avoided being found out the way my dad avoids saying, "I'm proud of you." It's confusing.

It's messy.

It's like trying to solve a puzzle when half the pieces are still classified.

But that's the thing about secrets.

Eventually, something breaks loose, a document, a slip, a story he didn't mean to share.

We didn't know where to start, so we figured we'd just start with the last time we saw him, his funeral.