AI Summary
5 min readMy Unredacted Interview with The Leah Files
Leah, an economist and corporate intelligence consultant who spent more than two decades supporting U.S. intelligence agencies including the NGA, DIA, NSA, and CIA, describes her childhood as nearly erased from memory. She recalls only a handful of moments before age 14 — calling 911 at age four or five to save her mother from her father's beatings, being dropped off at the end of a long driveway after her mother went to rehab, and mining opals with her grandparents one summer. The first clear memory she holds is sitting in a freshman English class at 9:10 in the morning, feeling something was wrong, then coming home to find her mother in the ICU after a beating with a 20-pound bag of dog food and a vacuum cleaner. That was the day her mother finally left. "I didn't know people had memories until I talked to normal people," she says.
From Defense Contractor to Corporate Intelligence
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:37) **Guest Introduction & Background** - Shawn introduces Leah as an economist, financial analyst, and corporate intelligence consultant with 20+ years supporting the U.S. intelligence community (NGA, DIA, NSA, CIA).
- 2 (02:55) **The Work: Due Diligence & Asset Tracing** - Leah explains how she exposes the gap between the story a company sells and its actual financial reality, and how she finds hidden assets.
- 3 (08:21) **A Childhood of Survival** - Leah describes growing up in a small North Carolina town with a one-stoplight, but reveals she has almost no memories before age 14 due to a severely abusive and toxic home environment.
- 4 (13:46) **The First Real Memory** - At age 14, Leah has a distinct feeling in English class and comes home to find her father beat her mother into the ICU with a bag of dog food and a vacuum cleaner, which was the day her mother finally left him.
- 5 (16:57) **Forgiveness and Survival Mindset** - Leah explains she forgave her parents easily, never absorbing the insults because she knew they came from a place of pain, and that her parents are now both dead.
- 6 (20:37) **Entering the Intelligence Community** - After college, Leah lands a job at Northrop Grumman building cost models for satellites, which led to a Top Secret clearance and work on special access programs.
- 7 (24:44) **The CIA & Following the Money** - At the CIA, Leah built models to justify their budget to Congress, uncovering how tax dollars don't align with the actual mission.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Leah, I chose not to release your episode because I personally had serious concerns about the truthfulness of your statements. I take what I put out on my platform seriously for myself and for my listeners. For the sake of transparency, here's the full interview so everyone can watch and draw their own conclusions.
As for my investments, I've intentionally made them public, as you see on my LinkedIn. I invest in Shield AI and Anduril for no other reason than I believe in their ability to develop technology that equips and protects the American warfighter. That's something deeply personal to me that I believe in.
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