Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I never once recruited a happy person in my career. You recruit unhappy people, people who are under stress. I mean, admittedly, I'm probably sociopathic and that not much stops me when I'm going after somebody. I have a list of 10 qualities of what makes a top class recruiter and certainly empathy. Extreme empathy is high on the list. And by that I mean being able to get inside somebody's head and feel what they're feeling, feel their pain, especially. People love to talk about themselves. You don't recruit people when you're talking, you recruit people when you're listen. I'm addicted to it, I confess. And then finally, the most controversial of these qualities is what I call them.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: He spent 25 years recruiting spies for the CIA, and the first thing he'll tell you, he never recruited a happy person. They call him Mad Dog after he beat a rabid dog off his own leg with a stick, then made a list of the people he'd bite next.
This is Jim Lawler, but I didn't bring him on to retell stories you've already heard. I've been under myself, so I took him somewhere. Other shows don't typically go. The empathy, the sociopathy in the same man, and the invisible thing he calls metaphysics. Stay with me. You've never heard him like this.
[00:01:14] Speaker C: I appreciate you being here and out of respect for your time too, I'm not going to do the typical, hey, walk through your where you were born and all this kind of stuff. I think you've been on enough shows where people are kind of familiar. Although I have an audience that you may be new to. But I thought I would jump into some of the things, just assuming that we know some things about you. And then we'll kind of dig in and out throughout this thing that if you can fill in blanks, great.
But we won't necessarily just follow a slow trajectory up the leading to a career that's already been passed.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: All right, sure, that's fine. Just if you think I need to say something that's not clear, then circle back and ask me to clarify, to add in. That's fine. Sure.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Do you. Are you still a runner, by the way?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: You know, I gave, I gave that up a year and a half ago when I discovered that I could walk almost as fast as I could run. But I did it for 40, 49 years and I miss it. But now I try and walk a minimum of 30 miles a week and usually hit that.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: So do you still do your 364 days?
Yes, okay, that's impressive. You must live in a place where climate doesn't deter you at all either. Or do you do a treadmill or something?
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Well, no, I mean in the winter I have spikes on my shoes and so I go out, you know, with layers and then in the summer I just go early. You know, it's been miserable here in Northern Virginia for at least now it's not, but it was a week or so ago. So I'd get up and get out at like 7 or 7:30 and try and get my walk done before it got just totally unbearable.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I hear you from Texas. It's like 104 here. With the heat index at 112 I feel like I'm in Vegas. But I can't gamble.
What. So what is, what is Christmas morning gym going to do if you're not going to walk? Do you have like a. Something special that you do on those days? That seems like a crazy thing to almost breaking the. The record almost seems like a stress point.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: I, I guess that's the one morning I semi sleep in. Although at my age anymore you don't sleep in. I almost get up at the same time every morning it's regardless.
So we get up and we have our kids and grandkids there and so we have our Christmas morning.
So that's the one morning really unless I'm just dreadfully ill, which I rarely am. So otherwise it's 364 days a year including if I'm on an early flight, I get up extra early and go do it. It gets the blood pumping and gets to me thinking about stuff during the day.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: That's impressive and that is a great thing too. I get ideas too just out just being in the, in the quiet sometimes there's no room for quiet anymore these days. But yeah, one of your stories I'd heard, I'd love for you to recount too about you were out on a walk and ended up accumulating a new little moniker, Mad Dog.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Well that was actually, that was a run in Paris. I was in Paris for four years and I used to. We live very close to the Eiffel Tower. And so in the mornings I would go running in the huge park there, the Bois Bologna, and did that virtually every morning. In fact did every morning.
And one day I was running along and I passed a German shepherd and about 15, 20ft later I suddenly felt the most excruciating pain in my left leg. And that was because it was in his jaws and I jerked my leg by the way if you ever look up, a German shepherd has probably the most vicious bite of any dog. So many thousands of pounds per square inch. Well, I pulled the leg, my leg out of the jaws of the dog and thought, you know, I could run, but you can't outrun a dog. So I picked up a big stick and beat him over the head with it. And then I limped home, went into the embassy, and they gave me tetanus shots, a tetanus shot. But then they said, you know, Mr. Lawlor, that dog is probably rabid. The way it didn't bark at you or growl or anything. It just attacked you. And fortunately, here in Paris, we have the Pasteur Institute, which has developed the vaccine against rabies. So you need to go there and get the rabies shots.
So I went, and the French physician was very kind and he said, look, I'm going to give you a shot in each arm today and in a week from now will give you one shot in your left arm and then a week later, one shot in your right arm.
And if we do that within 30 days of your having been bitten, you'll be fine. But if you don't get the shot, the track record basically is rabies is 99.9999% lethal and you will die a horrible death.
So I went back to the embassy and I'd been having some problems with some folks at headquarters, so I made up a list of all the people that I was going to bite if I developed rabies, and that's. That's how I got my nickname.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: I'm wondering if you are willing to disclose now that everything's passed, who was on the top of that list.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: It was people at headquarters that were just, you know, weak willed, no backbone, didn't want to do things, and were irritating me. So that's, that's how my mad dog moniker arose.
But that was way back in 1989, so I've had it now. Well, let's see, that's 37 years. So.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Well, we all have those lists. I just didn't know if there was one kind of remarkable person or something on that list that we could all.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Well, there were multiple.
[00:06:54] Speaker C: Recognize.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: There were several names.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: We'll probably get into some of those people on the other end of that spectrum as well into this thing. One of the things about you that I can kind of relate to as well as quite appreciate but can never quite explain is your natural empathy and is it truly an advantage when you're, when you're trying to recruit someone or is it something that you have to purposely suppress in certain instances in order to accomplish a goal?
[00:07:33] Speaker A: So that's an excellent question. I mean, I have a list of 10 qualities of what makes a wonderful top class recruiter. And certainly empathy, extreme empathy is high on the list. And by that I mean being able to get inside somebody's head and feel what they're feeling, feel their pain. Especially because I never once recruited a happy person in my career. You recruit unhappy people, people who are under stress, and if you can take some of that stress into yourself and offer them almost like a therapist relief, it's a thing that just gives you a real edge. So yeah, being empathic is really good. Now the downside of that, as you alluded to, is you need to be able to compartment that off and not let it totally take you down as well.
And that takes some training too.
Don't let this person take you down into the depths as well.
But being empathic is certainly high on my list of 10 qualities of a top class recruiter.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: So is it, is it easy to assume that you've become attached to someone who you might be trying to recruit? And did you ever have second thoughts about how you want to proceed with that?
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Not too much. I mean, there have been people I've pursued that I thought, I don't want to go any further. It may have been that I thought it was unfair, I just didn't. Or they weren't worth the game. I mean, there's only one reason I'm recruiting people is that that's because they have access to intelligence that we want. And if I determine that the intelligence gain is just not there or it's maybe not worth pursuing, then I will back off or I'll put it on the back burner sometimes. Because as I've noted before in my career, there have been people who are not recruitable now, but then a week later they're recruitable. And so you put that on the back burner.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: So, but you, but you mentioned something, I mean, that makes sense that if you, if you say a cost versus gain or the amount of value and everything, but when you say it, maybe it's not fair. Is that your way of saying maybe I kind of feel bad for this person and that's the level of value that they think it might lower that value to where you let them off a little bit or.
[00:09:50] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Does that happen? I mean, admittedly I'm, I'm probably sociopathic and it not much stops me when I'm going after somebody. You Know, it's. In fact, I had one of our psychologists who said, lawler, you're nothing but a sociopath, but one within lanes. Those lanes are US Laws.
But, you know, everything else, I mean, I, I don't think I've really.
Now, occasionally I haven't taken it to a successful recruitment because I myself was not persistent enough.
I remember one Eastern European intelligence officer I was pursuing and I had him, I know I had him, but I was about to move to the next post and I just dropped the ball and didn't do it. You know, he was. He never said yes, but he never said no. And of course that's always a good sign because he didn't say no. Like you're supposed to. Like, if we get pitched by a foreign intelligence officer, our instructions are to say categorically no and I'm going to report this. Well, he didn't say that.
So, you know, you're always hoping that they don't report it. And they may have reasons why they're not reporting the pitch. They may be considering it, or they may have a really draconian security service that will look at them and say, well, now, Tegan, why do you think they pitched you? What do they know about you that we don't? And then they have pull out the thumb screws and they're going to ask, find out why we thought you were vulnerable. You know, we weren't going after you because we thought you weren't vulnerable. We were going after you because we knew we could get you. And of course, some security services, such as the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians, would apply extreme pressure to see what was it that made you attractive to someone like me and why I thought you were vulnerable.
But occasionally I would drop the ball.
And in fact, I give a talk sometimes to some of my students and the title is my favorite Failures, because I contend that you learn more from failure than you do from success. And I'll outline what the operation was and the pitch and then why I thought it failed. And, and so from retro, in retrospect, I think that can be more valuable than success. You get comfortable with success. You get, you know, for all you know, you may have been lucky.
And so you, you know, you just get spoiled sometimes with success, so you learn more from failure.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: I totally agree. What was one of your, your bigger failures? I mean, obviously kind of drop on the ball on that one dude was maybe complacency or just getting ready to move. But what was a. A true failure story? You're willing to tell.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Well, not a failure of, say, not reading signals. I was. There was another Eastern European communist country. And the most. Probably the most valuable penetration of any embassy is what we used to call the code clerk or the cipher clerk. That means that's the person in charge of the information technology, the all of the communications, including the encrypted communications.
And that person is typically the most vulnerable person and the most valuable person you can get. Because if you can recruit a code clerk, a cipher clerk, that means you can read all of the communications that are coming in before they're encrypted or after they're decrypted. Very valuable. Well, I went after this one person who she came. It was a woman, a very attractive Eastern European woman who worked for this embassy as the code clerk. And she came in and applied for a visa to the United States. She had saved her money, and she was going to go for two weeks to America and have a good time. And so I came up with a scheme to have her contact one of my colleagues in New York City.
And I convinced her that she needed to take a picture of me to give to my good friend in New York City.
Now, you should never take anything from somebody on an airplane that you don't know who that person is. And she hesitated. But she also knew that I had complete control of whether I was going to give to her a visa or not. I mean, a consul has absolute power, like God to either give a visa or not give a visa. And I had not yet signed the visa. And so she kind of reluctantly took this photograph of me that she was going to pass to this female colleague of mine in New York City as a favor to me.
Well, she took it. I signed the visa, she went off. She had her two weeks, a wonderful time, from all reports that my colleague reported back.
So the woman comes back, and about two or three days after she'd returned, I thought, okay, I'm going to take her out and advance the development of her and see if maybe there's some way I can recruit her.
So I called her up and asked her if she'd like to join me for a beer the next. The coming Friday at a certain pub. And she said, yes, of course. And then I made a fatal mistake.
I always like to have an edge, but sometimes the edge is too much.
And I decided to send her a dozen red roses.
Well, that was the wrong signal.
I showed up, and she showed up. And she showed up dressed in what looked like, in retrospect, a very expensive evening gown.
And so we sat down and we were chatting for a good 45 minutes or so. And I looked down at my watch and I said, well, I better be going. And she said, what? Where are you going? And then it suddenly hit me. This is a date.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: That was you? Yep.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: That was a stupid, stupid thing.
So I thought, well, there's some things I'll do for my country, but this isn't one of them. And so I left.
I begged her forgiveness and I left. And a few days later, the communist system fell. And I didn't pursue her. But I mean, I was totally. I was reading signals one way, she was reading signals another way. But it was stupid for me to send red roses. And of course, every time I tell this story, all the women that hear this thing, what an idiot Lawler is.
[00:16:09] Speaker C: Well, you're not an idiot. If you were actually pursuing her romantically, it makes perfect sense. Well, I would.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: It was. It was a home run. I mean, she. I mean, she was. She was gorgeous. She was dressed to the nines, you know, and I thought that was kind of just to be in a pub. I thought this is kind of extreme. But, you know, you know, dumb, dumb here.
[00:16:28] Speaker C: And I assume you were married at the time.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, happily married. Still am.
[00:16:33] Speaker C: You ever find yourself in any other precarious positions like that, where you feel like the job is asking you to do something extraordinary, ordinary, that would have. That would have otherwise consequences in your relationships?
[00:16:45] Speaker A: There was another female target that earlier in my career, and I could tell that she was reading signals wrong, differently for me. So what I did is I introduced her to a female colleague and they. She carried on the relationship. Now, I have recruited women. That's not a problem. But sometimes, you know, you're on a different wavelength and they're looking at something differently than you are.
[00:17:10] Speaker C: So what about women that are working from the other side? I know you've mentioned that a select few CIA officers are actually making the historic recruitments because they have a specific skill set. Do you mind kind of distinguishing what the great CIA officers have over the good CIA officers? And then maybe compare and contrast to how women can leverage themselves in that arena?
[00:17:39] Speaker A: Well, I know a lot of top class female case officers. One person you should consider having on your show is a former DIA case officer named Shawnee Delaney. She is. Absolutely. I've taught thousands, by the way, of CIA, DIA and FBI officers how to recruit people, and she's in the top three.
So she's just, she's charismatic, she's got great interpersonal skills, but I'd say, you know, the. The qualities that I'm looking for. Number one, if you just have a high degree of curiosity, like right now, I'm curious about you, Tegan. I've. You know, I'll confess I'd never heard of the given name Tegan until a few months ago when one of your associates contacted me. And I was thinking, that's a wonderful name. And if you and I were just sitting on a park bench, I'd be asking you why your mother named you Teagan.
And. And, you know, it's. It's a. It's a fabulous name. And I'll confess I may use it in one of my novels for one of my characters.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Hey, bring it.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: I think just put.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Just put the. Put the trademark on there, though, of course, you know, because I got that.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: But anyways, curiosity. I'm a naturally curious person. I. If I wasn't a case officer, I probably would have loved to have been a psychologist or a psychiatrist. And I like to talk to people. And the thing is, is people love to talk about themselves.
And so I would get them talking and get them telling me all about themselves. And then corollary to that, of course, is a keen listening ability. You don't recruit people when you're talking. You recruit people when you're listening, and they'll tell you things that they won't tell their spouse or their best friend, but they'll tell you if you listen.
And we covered empathy. The next quality is patience.
One time, it took me almost 10 years to recruit one target.
He was not recruitable in the first nine and a half years, but by year 10, he'd had a series of personal issues and professional issues, and he was not being treated well by his government.
And he wrote me an email, and he said, you know, he could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and he would never be promoted again because he did not belong to a specific ethnic group in his country.
And he wrote, how can a person give allegiance to a country which treats its citizens like that?
I thought, okay, I'll give you someone to be faithful to. And I did.
[00:20:05] Speaker C: And that's. That's a. That's a rarity, too, in law enforcement in general is. Is being patient. I mean, actually, so is empathy. But the patients, too.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: There's a version of this that doesn't make it here. The part I only send to the mailing list community early before it goes anywhere else. Free links in the description for those who want to be on the inside
[00:20:28] Speaker C: without interrupting completely and going out on a, on a tangent completely from the list, which I want to hear the rest of.
Do you ever find the agency pushing you in, in times like that where you're trying to fight them to be patient?
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Oh yeah, they want, they want results. Now it's just like corporate America. Corporate America wants end of the year results. So does CIA, so does FBI. They want, they want statistics, they want these damn metrics. You know, I feel like sometimes if I have to have a, give you another metric, I'll take a meter stick and hit you over the head with it.
I mean, oh, you know, they all want numbers and of course you can have a lot of numbers and most of those numbers are probably worthless because they're low quality, you know, fruit that's fallen on the ground, not the high hanging fruit that you really ought to be going after.
And so, you know, law enforcement, I'm sure is like the intelligence community. You're going after the quick wins. Something to show the chief of police, something so the chief police can show the mayor, so the mayor can show the governor, you know, and statistics how we've reduced crime and we've busted all these criminals and all this other stuff so that our budgets will increase. It's always gets back to the budgets. Yeah, it's the same way. But I had enough going on to where I could have a few quick wins. It's always good to have quick wins to keep the wolves at bay.
But I did have those that were simmering on the back burner, that were the high quality people that I really wanted to get. And those are the ones that, you know, you, you focus on and try and put most channel most of your efforts after. And I, you know, I assume in law enforcement it can be like that too. You're going after maybe a criminal gang and you know, taking out a few of the capos isn't going to do much. But if you can take out the don, that's something else.
[00:22:16] Speaker C: Right, right.
So it's going to take patience and it's going to take patience by the department or the agency to allow you to do that work. So.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: That kind of ties into what I'll talk about later. But patience was a big one. I was thinking that'd be great if, if, if you're patient. But your agency has to cooperate. Right.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Well, you have to give them a certain amount, you know, of the, like some of the quick wins and that's, that's good, you know, front, I used to call it front loading for success. If you can front load some quick wins. You keep your boss off your back and you keep your team inspired because the team, they're going to psychologically benefit from the fact that you guys are scoring some quick wins that you can show and keep some of the jealous people away.
And by the jealous people, I mean fellow case officers or in your profession, fellow police officers who are jealous of the fact that you've been doing well.
They want to maybe trash you behind your back.
But so patience. And then the next one we've already talked about, which is persistence.
The next quality is creativity. We could always use more creativity. The next quality is being a careful observer of stressors in people's lives. I mentioned earlier, I don't recruit happy people. You don't. The happy people don't need you. It's the unhappy people, the people that are feeling that they've been basically trashed, that they've been betrayed first.
And so we offer them what the Jesuits describe as covert compensation so they get back. That's one of the most powerful motivators of espionage is the ego and the revenge factor. So by observing stressors in people's lives and then offering them to come over and join my team where they're going to be treated with respect and dignity, that's a powerful motivator.
Then the next quality is rather controversial because I call it ruthlessness.
And by that I mean never forgetting why you're doing this, being focused and going after it and not fearing failure. A mediocre case officer fears rejection. And I tell my students, if you've never had a recruitment pitch turned down, you have not pitched enough people, you have to keep testing the limits. You have to be keeping your eye on the ball and not think, well, I'm taking this guy out. We've got this great developmental relationship. Yeah, you're spending a lot of the government's money on nice meals and maybe you're making a friend, but that's not the point. That's not why you're doing this.
So I guess calling it clear headed but keeping your eye on the ball, the next quality is having a powerful or persuasive personality.
I think I have a fairly persuasive personality and my voice is fairly low and modulated. I had one asset once. Tell me, Jim, when you're talking it's like my brain is in a warm waterbed. I want them to relax and to tell me everything and not fear that I would ever betray them. I'm not going to be judgmental, I'm not going to Betray them. I will always be there for them. And then finally, the most controversial of these qualities is what I call a mastery of the metaphysics. And the metaphysics is a term I use for this absolutely invisible neural link between the recruiter and the target.
And when that link is set, it is like the two people, you and the target are on another plane of existence. And you could have bombs going off and fires going off, and neither one of you would notice it because we're now in a different dimension.
And I've used that quite a few times. It only comes under stress. But under stress, I can get people to basically do what I want them to do.
[00:26:06] Speaker C: And that metafix is a kind of an incredible intangible. And how much of that is teachable? And is that. Is that kind of what distinguishes the good from the great is that many of the great ones have a natural inclination toward a lot of those positive aspects you just mentioned.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: So we have a saying at CIA, one of our operational psychologists who is instrumental in hiring people, he said, selection beats training every time.
So you're right, Tegan. Selecting somebody who already has most of these talents, we can refine them, but a lot of times we can't give them to people that simply are not good at interpersonal communications or are not sensitive. They don't have the qualities we're looking for. How can I teach somebody to be curious?
You know, when somebody's faking it? Whereas I'm naturally curious, I was just born that way. I ask questions, you know, I. I'm looking at you and I see these guitars in the background. I'd love to ask you all about your guitars, maybe get, get you to get up and play, play some songs for me. But I mean, I mean, that's. Why wouldn't I ask that? You've got. I see 1, 2, 3, at least 3 in the background. There's. And I see big speakers, Marshall speakers, which are very nice speakers. And so I know that you are probably performing in a rock band or a folk band or something.
And so to me, that's interesting. And a lot of people that wouldn't even. Wouldn't even. They wouldn't even notice that stuff. But me, I'm curious.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: So with those, do you also feel like you can pick up being recruited as well? I know obviously, you being out in that, in that field, you've bound to have been pitched before yourself. Is it.
The common, common little thread is that anybody can be pitched or recruited into, into something, but it depends on the mindset or whatever. But I think you have a more depth of knowledge in that case. Have you ever been in that situation?
[00:28:10] Speaker A: I've never been pitched, but at least not blatantly pitched, Although sometimes I wonder why not. Was I. Am I chopped. Deliver.
But. But, you know, it's natural if. If we have liaison with certain intelligence services, you know, the British, the Australians, the Canadians, the New Zealanders. And I admit we have liaison relations with the Israelis, the Mossad. And it feels good when a fellow intelligence officer, a foreign intelligence officer, says something nice about you. Now, hopefully it's not just sheer flattery, but if. If a fellow professional says something about a operation that you did and how much they respect that, naturally, you know, that makes your. You feel all warm and cozy. And that's, of course, something you got to be careful about. You know, you. That there. It's not just sheer flattery. They're trying to cajole you or convince you to do something. And part of our job and part of their job is to get the other service to do stuff for us, you know, so that's natural. I wouldn't call it a pitch, but it's kind of on the road to a pitch, right?
[00:29:16] Speaker C: I mean, yeah, because everybody kind of likes to get that. It kind of takes your guard down a little bit. You feel like you're part of the same tribe or whatever, you know, whack.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: When you were a police officer, I assume maybe occasionally you worked with the federal government, either DEA or FBI or some of those. And if they said to you, you know, Tegan, that was a smart. That was great what you guys did, you're gonna want to talk and work with that guy again.
[00:29:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I worked with the FBI for a few years. I was assigned there as a tfo, so I got at least a relatively reasonable inside look over there. But when you talk about the recruitable people who are never happy and your ability to manipulate, do you ever create the stress that you need in order to pitch them, or do you always have to wait for it to occur organically elsewhere?
[00:30:11] Speaker A: I never, to my knowledge, I never created it. But although sometimes I do mention the fact, the rock and the windshield. You've probably been driving a new car, and suddenly there's a car ahead of you or truck ahead of you, and it tosses up a little rock and there's a little crack in the windshield.
And so over time, that little crack and spider web out, and you have to get the windshield replaced. That's probably happened to you and a lot of your listeners before. Well, Sometimes I can plant a suggestion which is like that little pebble, you know, just a little rock and. And then over time, then. I'm not creating the circumstances, but frankly, life happens.
I know life happens. So my first big recruitment was a guy that had no.
No cracks that I could see. But I thought I could recruit this guy based just on our friendship and on the strength of my personality and persuasiveness. And. And headquarters was so darn desperate, they approved my stupid plan to just pitch this guy again. No, no stresses that I could see. And I pitched him, and he looked at me and he said, jim, you and I are friends, but what you're proposing, that would be morally wrong.
Now, I've pitched well over 50 or 60 people in my career, and he's the only one who ever posed a moral objection.
They will say that fear. Fear is the one that. Why they usually turn you down.
In fact, one African intelligence officer said, jim, they hang people in my country for doing things like that. He's right. They would. But then he surprised me because he said, how about if I could have a rain check? And I said, what? He said, yeah, you know, my son is only three years old now, and I don't need you, but in 15 years, he'll be old enough to go to college and I might need you then. So I wrote that down. Fifteen years later, Africa Division asked me if I thought he meant it, and I said, yep. And so that rain check was cashed in 15 years later.
But here I am on my first crucial pitch, and I've been turned down. And we have this saying in the Directorate of Operations at CIA that it's okay to get turned down but not turned in.
And that means if he goes to his ambassador. And by the way, I didn't tell you, but the man I pitched was number two in the embassy. He was the deputy chief of mission, the ambassador's deputy. If he goes and tells the ambassador, and the ambassador, who had a terrible reputation for being a hothead, goes screaming into our ambassador and says what an outrageous insult this is to his Nation. That young Mr. Jim Lawlor just pitched his deputy to become a traitor, that's not going to go over well. And there's a good chance Jim might get yanked home. And so I was worried that this could go sideways really badly.
So I thought, okay, I've got to call this guy up and take his temperature and see if I can get him to come to another dinner. And so I called him up, and I was relieved that he didn't hang up in my ear. And I said, look, I had such a good time the other night, I thought maybe we could go out again this Friday. He said, jim, I was thinking the same thing.
So I go off to the second dinner one week later. My only goal was to, if I needed to, I was going to grovel and apologize for misreading signals and for being insulting and my words taken out of context. Whatever excuse I could come up with sat there, the waiter brought the menus, and the first words out of my friend's mouth was, jim, that offer you made me last Friday, is that still good? And I said, well, yeah, of course it is. We're friends. He said, well, what you don't know is two days after that dinner, my wife announced that she wants a divorce and I can't afford to pay her the alimony to which she's entitled and put my two high school age boys in private schools when we go home next summer because if they don't go to a private school, they won't get a good education. I can't do that unless I take your offer, even though I know it's morally wrong.
Well, in law school they teach you if the judge rules in your favor, shut up and get out of court quickly. And so I shut up and we shook on it. And a few days later, he brought me a stack of classified material from his embassy.
And then he told me, now I'm going to tell you why I'm really doing this. It's because I hate my ambassador. He steals the credit for everything I do and everything everybody else does in the embassy. And as I hand you this classified material, it's as if I'm kicking that son of a in the face while I took the material. And I said, we're on the same team now. Bring me some more of this and let's kick that son of a bitch again.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Yes. So play it.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: So I planted. I planted the seed.
And fortunately, events happened. I didn't have. I didn't cause his wife to ask for a divorce. I didn't, you know, I didn't know he needed the money for his boys in private schools.
But, you know, I was, I was fortunate. That was just lucky.
[00:35:16] Speaker C: Yeah, but it was. You were still being patient and trying to kind of come back around and cover your tracks. It makes me ask, what kind of backstops do you have? Because that seems like one of the more significant risks once you actually pitch somebody is that that you're not going to know who they've gone back and Told, well, I.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: In the closing days of the Cold War, I pitched a couple of foreign and Eastern European intelligence officers, and at least one of them did report me to his headquarters. I was not serving in that country, so big deal. But, you know, he actually, he did the right thing as far as his service was concerned. He reported that Mr. Lawler had pitched him, you know, to commit espionage. And we got that through some penetration of their signals, the fact that he'd reported me. And I thought, well, okay, fine, you know, I'm not. I'm not traveling in that country. I'm not living in that country.
So, you know, the repercussions, you know, you're not doing this. Clearly, I wasn't traveling to Russia or to Iran or China and pitching people in countries like that. Now, I would pitch Russians and Chinese and folks like that, but when they're outside of their home countries. Absolutely.
[00:36:25] Speaker C: Okay. So that was part of the preservation also was being in a place where you weren't going to be the one getting hung when they latch onto you for trying to pitch somebody.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: Well, okay, so let me put a caveat on that. There are some targets where I was in their home country, and I did pitch them, but it wasn't Russia or Iran or China. I won't say which countries it was. But, yes, I've been in countries where, had my actions been discovered, I would have probably been declared Persona non grata, which means I would be expelled from the country within 24 to 48 hours.
And so. But that's a risk I took quite a. Quite frequently, but I was not doing that Again, I wasn't doing it in Russia or China or Iran, but in some other countries, yes.
[00:37:15] Speaker C: Understood.
So when you, when you actually pitch, are you ever getting to the point where you're spilling the.
The. The acronym out and saying it, or are you trying to be kind of general and inquisitive to where I see what you're saying?
[00:37:33] Speaker A: You know, do I actually say, this is CIA? Sometimes, yeah. I work for CIA and I see that. I want you on my team. Yes, occasionally. Other times I will simply allude to my organization and they already know kind of what it is, but they don't want to have their nose rubbed in it. I have also occasionally used what we call commercial cover. I would be posing as a, maybe a commodities broker or something like that, and, and try and quote, unquote, hire them under a commercial contract, but one which I could steer then into a much more sensitive relationship.
I, I did a little bit of that. Our we have a cadre of officers that are known as NOCs. NOC. Non official cover.
I was under official cover, meaning State Department cover.
Some of my colleagues were under maybe military cover. But we have another small group of officers that are under non official cover, business cover. You know, they're posing as a representative of some company overseas and when in fact their real job is working for the CIA.
And they would tend to use more commercial pitches, you know, getting somebody on a consulting relationship, coming up with some plausible reason why a company would be interested in a certain target. And there are a lot of reasons why.
And a lot of, you know, the, the knocks can be very creative. Now, they might eventually steer this to where it's an official person. The person knows they're working for the US Government, or even more so, they may even know or highly suspect that they're working for the CIA.
It really depends on the person and how you think they'll react to that. Some people, that's what they really want because they know the CIA is a very powerful and elite organization and they want to be part of it.
So if you, if you, you know, talk to somebody and you feel like this is, this is what would really appeal to them, that it's a CIA relationship, then that's, that's what you do in your NOCs.
[00:39:30] Speaker C: They're like kind of paid informants, so to speak. And they have no, they're full.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: They're full CIA employees. They're staff officers just like me.
Now, our paid informants are what we call agents. That's the mistake people make. I was not a CIA agent. I was a CIA officer. I had agents who worked for me who are not part of the organization, but who I recruited to be sources or to act in some capacity. The NOCs are just like me, except they don't have official cover. They typically would not come into the US Embassy. They might even be traveling in a foreign passport. You know, we sometimes would hire people that have foreign citizenships so that they have, you know, they can travel on a European or, you know, a Latin American or an Asian passport.
And then they speak English, you know, maybe with an accent, but they speak a native language from some other country. And in fact, that person is a deep cover CIA officer. That's a knockout. But they're, they're employees of the CIA, just like I am the voice reading
[00:40:35] Speaker B: my articles to you. It's mine, but I never recorded it. Eleven labs cloned it flawlessly. Try your own voice links right below. Okay, right back to it.
[00:40:44] Speaker C: And they're still covered too in certain circumstances. Right. If. Should they be made or whatnot?
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Yep. But they are at the, they're at the pointy end of the spear. They do not have diplomatic immunity like I did. And we've had some close calls. In fact, two of the more famous cases were two men working in the early 50s in the Korean War for Air America, which was one of our proprietaries. And the plane was shot down. They were captured and I think they were held for 20 years in Chinese prisons before we could get them out.
Yeah, I mean these people, very courageous people.
I have a number of friends who are noxious and in fact my newest novel is about a retired noc. I have nothing but respect for nox.
[00:41:30] Speaker C: So once you recruit somebody, it seems now that you have someone who, I mean you have all this training you have at certain, at a certain point you have all this experience and working people getting the information that you want, you understand how things work, but you just recruit someone who is essentially now a novice in spycraft.
So what types of training do you put them through?
Is there any, any kind of particular program? Is it boutique based on who's who or how do you actually. Because they're essentially your reputation and, or safety as well as their lives are on the line at that point.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Good question. We, we train them to the extent we think they need it. For instance, if they're doing certain things, activities for us, we may give them pretty intense surveillance detection training so that they know if they're under surveillance or not or if we're, if we are going to give them a covert communication system which allows them to communicate from some other country or maybe even their home country. Then we have technicians come in and train them on the, on the equipment.
We'll put them through training like how to elicit information from people. If we don't think they have enough common sense to do that on their own or enough natural ability but still show promise, we'll caution them not to take unnecessary risks. The worst, I mean what we want is we want to protect these people. The CIA will go to hell and back to protect its sources. And we don't want these people caught.
So that's our top priority, is protecting our sources. So you don't want to ask them to go and steal documents. If informed fact, that's a risky thing to do. You know, you go through, how did you obtain this? You know, what are you doing? Don't do this again.
Or you know, you're, you're their coach, you're the. But you are the coach. You're the guy that's the head of the team. And you've got to remind them that they may be a brilliant scientist or a brilliant official and expert in a certain area, but you're an expert in personal security. And so yes, we will give them the training we think they need.
[00:43:40] Speaker C: Okay, so you, I mean even CIA, not necessarily you personally, but. But the agency itself would provide certain training if they needed it.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Well, right. And I may not be a specialist in some of the training. For instance, if they're training them on a covert communication system, we bring in a tech who in a safe house somewhere would train the asset on the specialized equipment. Now if I know a lot about it and I know how to do it, fine. No sense exposing a tech officer to any kind of risk. I would do it myself and I would be in the room when they're being trained. Maybe on surveillance detection I'm good at it. But am I good enough to be a trainer? Probably not.
So I would want to get the best type of, you know, trainer possible. And we have people that are absolute experts at surveillance detection and they would train that person. There may be other things, maybe how to use a concealed camera or something like that. Again, if I think I can do it, fine. But if I think I need a tech here to give this person the best training possible, then that's what we do.
[00:44:39] Speaker C: Sure.
So you, you'd mentioned earlier some of the buffoonery which any large organization is going to have NA team and they're going to have the rest of the people and there's also going to be that bottom tier of nitwits.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:44:54] Speaker C: So knowing that you have to send in deconfliction notices or permission to pitch or whatever.
I know in my experience I've.
I'm always nervous to expose some of the things that I'm working on or was working on when I was in the industry because I'm just worried now my information that I've taken such good care of is going to be put in somebody else's hands and I don't know who that person is necessarily.
You ever been screwed over by the D.C. folks that you have to go through a deconfliccent or whatever?
[00:45:31] Speaker A: Yeah, one memorable occasion I had a. Of well placed source in a certain government who had privileged access to an even more senior government minister.
And I would get information about this senior government minister from my source.
Sometimes some very sensitive information. Well, one time the source heard from the senior government minister that the senior government minister was kind of looking around for a job.
Now that's very sensitive. You know, Tegan, if you were working for the FBI or the police department and you really were looking for a job, you might not want your boss to know that you're out looking for a job.
So my source. My source, he heard that from the senior government minister. He reported it, and I wrote it out in an intelligence report.
But the intelligence report was then passed to a senior US Government official who then asked the senior foreign official, oh, I hear you're looking for a job.
I mean, a heart attack, you know.
[00:46:38] Speaker C: And they know where that came from too?
[00:46:40] Speaker A: Well, yeah, there's like maybe three or four people who knew that he knew that he had mentioned it to. And so, I mean. Oh, well, anyways, Washington, fortunately, Washington chastised the US Government official, said this could, you know, lead to blowing our source and everything. And after that we. We would change things. I had another time. I had a U.S. ambassador. I was in a country that. Through which enormous amount of the world's gold goes, you know, for. To the gold market. I mean, an enormous amount. And I was report. I had this very sensitive source who reported on gold movements.
And the American ambassador in this particular country, my ambassador, he came to me very interested in these reports.
And I'm thinking, why are you so interested in this? Until it dawned on me. It's because if you've got heads up that so much gold is coming through this thing, that could affect the price of gold tremendously. And so I was pretty convinced that the ambassador was basically using that information for improper purposes. It's like insider trading.
[00:47:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:47] Speaker A: You know, he had a peak at what was going on. So after that, I would cut distribution of any of my intelligence reports in that capacity to this guy. He was a real skunk. He was a US Ambassador, but the worst one I ever served under.
Just terrible, terrible person.
[00:48:03] Speaker C: It happens. So were you able to actually hoard information in certain instances where you're. You're maybe circumventing policy a little bit, but no. At risk of salvaging somebody?
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Okay. We have collection management officers who would disguise maybe where the report was acquired, or they would strictly limit, you know, to maybe a couple of dozen individuals that needed to have this information, but nobody else gets it? I mean, again, we are extremely protective of our sources. And if we think this, this could run a risk for the source, they would put all kinds of restrictions on that reporting and. And you would never know that it was coming from me or from the country I was posted in. And it would further limit it, very limited distribution.
[00:48:50] Speaker C: Okay, so you, you have a successful career and a successful marriage, which is quite admirable. Beating the odds in every way.
What, what did the, so you did a full career with 25 or 20,
[00:49:05] Speaker A: 25 years and then 25. So another almost 20 years of teaching. Yeah.
[00:49:12] Speaker C: So what did, in retrospect, what did the career years kind of take away from you without you noticing?
[00:49:22] Speaker A: Well, it's like any career that you devote a lot of time to, it takes you away from your family. And especially if you're addicted to the career, Most of us who are ops officers or adrenaline junkies, we get addicted to this and it's just can't get enough of it.
And so that takes you away from your family, you travel a lot, things like that.
So you could say the same thing about corporate America, people that are really career minded. And I wasn't doing this for a career so much as it fascinated me. I enjoyed doing this. And I asked young people sometimes who are interested in a career at the CIA. I said, how would you like a career where 19 mornings out of 20 you can't wait to get to work?
And I thought that's exactly the career I had when I was interviewing in 1979 for the agency. A very mid level officer who later became head of our clandestine service. But he was only a GS13 at the time. He took me to the cafeteria and he bought me a Coke. And then he said, Jim, you want to know how much fun this job is? Every two weeks I'm stunned that they pay me to do this.
I thought I want a job like that.
And so yeah, I mean it would take away, I mean I, I at times was maybe focusing too much on work and not enough on my family.
But you know, I love the job so much and you know, the agency can be a harsh mistress.
[00:50:50] Speaker C: I'm sure it can. And not everybody would be so endeared to it as you. Right. I mean you're talking about all of your natural curiosity and, and all those other aspects that you have built into your personality. Much like the person who recruited you into the Agency.
Do you feel like that's there's a limited number of people who would actually appreciate how great it is?
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Well, I, hopefully we winnow out the ones that are not going to work out, but you know, I don't know. A lot of my colleagues that, that I've worked with, I highly respect and I think they were just as, as addicted to it as I am. Occasionally you get somebody in training who they find out they're just not cut out for this and they would. What we call self select out. I remember one individual, he was in my class, my training class, and he decided that he really wasn't cut out to be an operations officer at the CIA and maybe he ought to pursue a career really and truly at the State Department. You know, we were under state cover. Well, that's what he did. And he ended up becoming an ambassador, I think, in three different locations. Very senior, very successful man in the State Department. So Clint Eastwood has a famous saying that a man has to know his limitations. And sometimes it's healthy. If you know your limitations and you know it's not going to work out, then it's good if you change career tracks. The sad ones are the ones that think they, as a matter of ego or pride, that they can do it when in fact they're not very good at it.
[00:52:23] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. That is sad. Those are the American Idol contestants. In the first week, what do you. What do you. If you sat across from a potential recruit, what would you pick out in the first five minutes? What is usually the. The easiest tell when somebody doesn't have what it takes?
[00:52:45] Speaker A: So I. I mean, if I'm. Oh, you mean if somebody who I think is going to work for the
[00:52:49] Speaker C: CIA, right, yeah, I'm sorry. Not. Not recruit somebody, but a recruit for the CIA.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Good interpersonal skills, good eye contact. I don't want people that are looking around or looking over here that are distracted.
I like people that ask good questions.
I contend that asking the right question is a lot more important than knowing the right answer, because you'll never be able to get the right answer if you don't ask the right questions. So asking questions that are absolutely vital, knowing that they want to do this. And also I can tell if they're addicted to, say, Jason Bourne movies and they think it's going to be like that. Well, it's not going to be like that.
And, you know, you've got a.
You're not going to be issued an Aston Martin and, oh, man, a bunch of silenced weapons.
It's not going to happen.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Dang it.
[00:53:41] Speaker A: I mean, we have exciting careers, but that's not it. I give these talks sometimes in high schools and stuff. And what's amazing, Tegan, is that I go into all this about the ways to manipulate people, exploit people, subvert people, and how to use human nature doing all this stuff. And afterwards, I'd say 95% of the students who come forward are the women who come forward. They're interested in that. The guys are all bored out of their minds because I didn't mention about my sports car or about my, you know, the guns I was using or anything like that.
[00:54:16] Speaker C: Right.
All right. Do you practice headshots?
[00:54:19] Speaker B: I mean.
[00:54:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. Guys are idiots.
Freaking knuckle draggers.
[00:54:23] Speaker A: Yeah, they really. That's what they were expecting me to talk about. You know,
[00:54:29] Speaker C: there's a lot of industries like that. I have a, you know, a private security firm. We do a private protection for, you know, private wealth folks or whatever. And everybody thinks it's the same thing. You're wearing a suit with an earpiece and a long gun.
But. Yeah, no, that's movies also. Yeah. So I. I feel your pain there.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: I can't help but think of that. That old line of Barney Fife when he said, my whole body's a weapon.
[00:54:58] Speaker C: Only we would remember that. Hopefully, our audience will have to go research a little Barney Fife. Everybody needs to know who Barney Fife is.
So you mentioned before also that you. Even when somebody is. Is evil or a complete scumbag, that you can find some social redeeming value or a redeeming quality in them.
What. What types of. First of all, I think that's also a talent, and I don't know if that's. That's teachable or not. That's for you to tell us. But is there a life lesson in there that could be carried forward and maybe even a lesson for the criminal justice system in. In the United States and some experiences that you've had there?
[00:55:40] Speaker A: Well, we've got to remember that typically neither you nor I would recruit boy Scouts or nuns. These people. There's a reason we're interested in them. There was a reason why law enforcement was interested in them, and it wasn't because they were upstanding citizens. They were doing something that was either highly illegal, highly dishonest, something that, you know, you and I would call them scumbags. But, you know, frequently the reason that person is like that is, you know, they had a childhood, something. Something went wrong, they slid down the slippery slope. Like in Breaking Bad, one of my favorite TV series. There's a reason why they do that. And so as a recruiter, as a, you know, ops recruiter, I've got to be able to say, okay, I got to put that aside and remember, there's a reason why I'm recruiting this person. And then I try and focus on the fact that maybe they're good to their children. Or maybe they do something else that I can focus on that's good, and then bring them into my team. In which case, if they're part of my team, basically their previous sins are forgiven.
As I said, we don't recruit nuns and Boy Scouts. We're recruiting people who are maybe weapons proliferators or foreign intelligence officers who are hostile to the United States.
But I want to make them part of my team.
So that's how we get sources, you know, and people. I lose patience with, folks who say, yeah, but that guy did all this stuff. I said, well, right, but now he's on our side. And so you've got to forgive all the other things that that person did. I mean, look at what I mean. The FBI does that all the time. If they can turn a member of the mob or a member of a gang, that guy, he's not lily white. There's no reason, you know, there's no way that guy could, you know, pass a polygraph or anything else because he's done some heinous things. But if he's willing to give us the greater good, something that we need, you know, then. Then you have to turn a blind eye or at least minimize what that person. Now you try and control them so they don't do any more of that.
Obviously, it's a. It's a fine balance.
[00:57:46] Speaker C: Yeah, they don't have, you know, the. You're right. The Boy Scout doesn't have access to that kind of access that we need.
How. And what kind of checks and balances do you put on the folks that you recruit that are a little wacko here and there, that have had some. Some run ins or have a. A tendency to. To get into nefarious type things that you can't afford for them to get into once you recruit them?
[00:58:10] Speaker A: Well, we. I mean, we. We give them, you know, I can't. I can't afford to have a relationship with you if you're doing this or that. I mean, clearly we're not. We're not going to have as our assets people who are out killing other folks. That's. That just. That's way over the line. But if what they're doing is. I don't know if. I mean, I'm asking them already to break their law, break their country's laws, to commit espionage, to become traitors to their country. So.
And if at the same time, you know, they. Occasionally there's a little lie, like maybe they told me they were late to the meeting because there was traffic, when in fact I knew they were spending an extra hour and a half with their mistress.
I'm not. I don't care. That's fine. I've got it. You know, there's a difference between a little lie and a lie that counts.
And so I'm, you know, I've got to be able to trust this person, and they have to be able to trust me. And I want total transparency. I want to be able to. I want to be able to trust you. And you need to trust me because basically your career and frequently your life is in my hands.
[00:59:10] Speaker C: Yeah, that sounds like some of the sociopathy on your part, too.
Being able to say, look, this lies. Okay, this lies not. And being able to discern what serves the true purpose. Right, Right.
[00:59:23] Speaker A: What's important, really, what's, you know, what nightmare, what is that could go wrong with this operation that would cause you to have nightmares and think, this is a. What am I doing? You know, this is total failure. And then how do you mitigate? How do you. How do you prevent that?
[00:59:38] Speaker B: There's a version of this that doesn't make it here. The part I only send to the mailing list community early before it goes anywhere else. Free links in the description for those who want to be on the inside.
[00:59:50] Speaker C: So with, with a lot of the extremism that we see here, certainly in the United States, but I think around the world, we're seeing a lot more of it with, with so much disinformation and, and everything getting politicized. Do you find that more, I mean, with your ear to the ground, obviously, today versus when you were there? Do you think there are more disaffected people that are willing to cooperate and be recruited than before?
[01:00:18] Speaker A: I think it's a major mistake when the administration, be it at the FBI or the CIA, fires a bunch of employees. You're creating unhappy people. And if I'm a foreign intelligence officer, I'm seeing a lot of people ripe for recruitment out there. Like I say, we don't recruit happy people. Now, do I think that most CIA or FBI employees will work for a foreign government? No, probably not. But all you need is one or two.
And, and if you, if you're stupid and firing a lot of people for no cause, then you're, you're just shooting yourself in the foot because you're creating a lot of unhappy people and a lot of targeting opportunities for the Russians and the Chinese and the Iranians and everybody else. And that's, that's just, that's suicidal for a government to do that. And I've been, I've been watching that happen in the last couple of years.
[01:01:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that is scary. And just percentage wise, you're right, you just up, up the percentage that it can happen. So even to my question, I guess you even feel like just your sentiment is that possibly we have even more people that have been recruited inside the United States than before, potentially.
[01:01:27] Speaker A: I would, I would think that would be correct. I mean, actuary, one of my CIA colleagues, Paul Redmond, he was instrumental in the Aldridge Ames case and some others. He's really a counterintelligence genius. And he used to say it's an actuarial certainty that we're penetrated because if you have 30 or 40,000 people with security clearances and if you have only 100ths of 1% of those people who are spies, that's still a fair number of people. Now if you go out and you just create a lot more unhappy people, then you're raising that actuarial certainty.
[01:02:03] Speaker C: Yeah. And so along those same lines, without getting political, of course, I'm not trying to go down a slippery slope here either. But you see a lot of young people today dissatisfied with how things are and even voicing positive in lieu of capitalism for socialism or even communism.
And being somebody who's traveled the world and seen its guts, what is your sentiment on that?
[01:02:38] Speaker A: So my wife and I about two months ago took a wonderful river cruise down the Danube, starting in Vienna and going through all of Eastern Europe. And I expected to see a lot of grim, gray structures, you know, well, it's no longer grim and gray. It has come back with a bound. You know, capitalism has flourished and the people in Eastern Europe have thrown off the communist yoke and they're, you know, it's now been what, almost 40 years, four decades since the fall of communism. And so once again, capitalism is causing these countries to flourish. And so I think anybody who, you know, tries to pursue either communism or socialism is making a big mistake. In fact, I'll tell you this, I respect communists more than I do socialists, because communists don't pretend to tell you, they tell you exactly what they're going to do to you. Whereas the socialists would like to candy code it and it's going to be candy coated failure.
[01:03:40] Speaker C: That's, that's fascinating. Although it makes sense to, to me it just seems like that's why I think it's younger people who have not yet seen a lot of these things for what they were and, or are versus just having their cocoon here. And I know there's there's disparate wealth in the US and it's not a perfect system. But I was just curious if that was your sentiment as well. That's helpful.
[01:04:04] Speaker A: Well, a lot of young people are naive, but this goes back for decades. I can't remember if it was Winston Churchill or somebody else who observed that. Anybody who's not a Communist in their early 20s is a fool, but anybody who's still a Communist in their late twenties is a damn fool.
[01:04:23] Speaker C: Yeah, it makes sense.
So I also understand you still have.
Of course, you're still teaching actively, and you're doing interviews like this, so I know it's still on point of mind, but you're. I've heard you still have dreams of recruiting people and different things. Is there parts of you that are never going to retire, or is there any part that you just can't turn off?
[01:04:47] Speaker A: I'm addicted to it, I confess. That's why I write spy novels. I can no longer run operations, but I live vicariously through my characters.
And, you know, I'm on my fourth one now, and I. I'm literally. It's like writing or living a movie in my head, and I can create a situation, and then I have to figure out operationally how I get my characters, my heroes, from one point to another point, what happens.
It's. It's. Yeah, I love doing that. I.
I'm addicted to it, I confess. And it's. I don't know if I'll ever retire. People sometimes say, are you retired? And I say, well, kind of. But, I mean, I don't. One thing that retirement affords me is I don't do anything I don't want to do.
And, you know, I. I don't need the money. So I. You know, I write not for money, but I write for enjoyment and what I call my psychological dividends. When I have a fellow intelligence officer tell me how much they enjoy my book, that makes my day. I had former CIA director George Tenet write me after my first book was released, and he said, Jim, I've bought 40 copies. They ought to have this as a training manual at the Farm. That made me feel good. I mean, that's worth far more than its weight in gold or platinum.
Of course, you know, that. You know, just getting praise from somebody for my books, that's. That's. That's meaningful. Or doing a podcast like this and somebody says, you know, I listen to your podcast with Tegan, and I really enjoyed that. Well, that. That's. I like that, too. Thank you. I Appreciate that. And you know, they say maybe if they say I can communicate. Well, I give talks. This late September, I'm going to be at Valerie Plains Spies, Lies and Nukes conference for the fourth time. This will be our fourth conference in late September in Tucson, Arizona. And I give a talk on how I recruit sources. And I enjoy doing things like that.
[01:06:43] Speaker C: Well, and I would know too, writing a book is no small undertaking. So it's quite an accomplishment. First of all, that you have four of them. And I find it fascinating that you mentioned, do you always structure your book in a way where you create a conundrum and work your way through it naturally, or do you actually have the story mapped out before you start writing?
[01:07:06] Speaker A: So there's two philosophies on writing novels. There's outliners, and I do that sometimes to an extent. And then there's another group called the Pantsers. In other words, by the seat of your pants.
I'm somewhere in between.
I like to have what I call the entire story arc from start to where I know I want to go at the end. But how to get there. Sometimes I may change it as we go along and as I come up with new thoughts. I mean, you can't come up with an entire plot, you know, from the, from the get go. So you may have a good idea, but then fleshing it out, creating the characters. And then sometimes the characters take on a life of their own. They don't obey what you want them to do, but they go off in a different direction. I enjoy that. That's fine.
I can live with that. Or I come up. Like I said earlier, I'm no longer a runner, but I'm a walker. I walk 30 miles plus a week while I'm walking. Frequently I'm constructing dialogue in my head or I'm constructing how to get this person from point A to point B and somewhere maybe in between. And the challenges that they will have.
[01:08:10] Speaker C: I love it. And that's fascinating. And that's very creative of you too. That again, it's not for everybody. I mean, there are people that always try to write books, but it's. They're not necessarily good ones either, so. So it says a lot about you. You have some good stuff. I've. I've gotten through some of your first one and. And we'll be working through some of your others too. I have a great appreciation for that. Do you think writing fiction is a way for you to keep doing this job or to make peace with not doing this job?
[01:08:41] Speaker A: It can be. I Think it's cathartic, you know. To my first book, Living Lies about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. I worked for probably 15 or more years against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. And a lot of what I write is thinly disguised fiction, fiction that, that's actually actual incidents in my books or things that I experienced.
And so I have to, as a former CIA officer, I have to submit anything concerning intelligence, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, to our pre publication clearance review board. And they will judge on whether something's classified or not. And then you have, and you have a right to appeal if you disagree with them, but they have the last word on that. And if you, if you go ahead and publish without their permission, they can confiscate all the proceeds from your book sales.
So I have to submit, I've submitted all three of my books. The first one, the one that you're reading right now, took a year for them to clear and they came back with five redactions, none of which I thought were classified, which is supposed to be the criteria. But none of those five redactions affected the storyline. So I thought, do I really want to take. Drag this out and appeal it? So I thought no. So I just basically took it out. My second book, in the twinkling of an eye, only took a month to clear with no redactions, plus a request for a copy for the CIA library. And my last book, the Traitor's Tale. The Traitor's Tale only took two weeks to clear with no redactions. So I think the fact that I wasn't difficult with the first book really maybe shows to them they can trust that I'm not going to write something that'll compromise some of our intelligence sources and methods.
[01:10:27] Speaker C: Right. You're, you're getting good at it. And certainly though the methods have to mirror, like you said, kind of what happens. But there's, there's only so many secrets and as soon as you learn one secret, then you create another method in order to get in. There was some of the, for the criticism that I received when in my book we tell how I got in to do this, that or the other. And I'm like, I mean, it's just a matter of time till people figure this out and figure out another way around it. I'm not, I'm not giving away something that is, is a map that everybody and their mother can use anyway. Do you. What is your sentiment on that in terms of actual tactics?
[01:11:07] Speaker A: All of the methodology and tactics in my books are as old as the Bible. I Mean, you know, they were running spies in the Bible and it's just human nature. If I talk about recruiting somebody, that's the same thing the Russians and the Chinese use. I'm not revealing any big secrets. Now, it would be different if I was talking about some sensitive technology or if I actually mentioned a source or something like that. But I don't, I disguise all of the sources. I, you know, whatever, I make them some other nationality and make it some other time.
And it's, it's, you know, I think the fact that they've approved all three of my books says I'm not revealing classified information, nor would I want to reveal classified information. If I thought I was going to hurt the United States, I wouldn't, I wouldn't write that.
[01:11:56] Speaker C: Right, right, of course.
So manipulating, exploiting and suborning are your words. Right? This is kind of what you essentially do, do you. Without an actual perfect system, is there anything that you will allow yourself to regret in retrospect, leveraging those tactics?
[01:12:18] Speaker A: I can't think of anything.
The people I recruited, it was clearly to the credit of the United States. The man I mentioned earlier in this podcast that I recruited, who changed his mind after his wife announced a divorce, well, in fact, he had access to some very sensitive high level national security security negotiations where we had no sources on the other side.
But now we had him and he had incredible access and he was able to tell us the other country's negotiating positions as well as their fallback positions.
This meant that if you have ever bought a car or a house, how would you like to know the bottom dollar you could offer the seller before they walk away?
And it was estimated that he saved the United States tens of billions of dollars because he gave us exactly that. And then in my Aq Khan operation, where we disarmed the nuclear weapons network of Dr. Khan, he was giving Libya a nuclear weapon that was worth 15 kilotons, the same yield as the one that blew up hiroshima and killed 140,000 people.
So what's that worth?
Libya has that Gaddafi had that, he would have used it on his own people in 2012 when he was overthrown. He would have killed thousands of people.
So that was very satisfying to me that we were able to disarm Libya, that we were able to have Dr. Khan arrested by the Pakistanis and to prevent him from further proliferating weapons of mass destruction.
[01:13:50] Speaker C: I'll agree with you that I think the success there is you've got to make sacrifices of certain things in order to get to the end goal. And the end goal just has to be your North Star the whole way. I just didn't know certain parts of the process along there where you might have lost a friendship or something that was regrettable that you would maybe change about the policy or the tactics that you use or something like that within the process. Not necessarily something that you regret career wise.
[01:14:18] Speaker A: I think the only thing I might regret is maybe I should have charged harder sometimes.
Really? Yeah. I mean, sometimes I backed off and didn't. Wasn't as focused as I should have been, but.
But other to know I don't really have any major regrets.
[01:14:36] Speaker C: What do you miss most? That civilian life Can't.
Can't give back?
[01:14:40] Speaker A: Well, actually running operations and recruiting people, I still, like I said, you know, you mentioned it earlier, I dream sometimes that I'm recruiting Iranian IRGC officials or something like that. And then I put it into my books.
[01:14:55] Speaker C: Awesome. Do you recruit people on accident sometimes that are just friendlies?
[01:15:00] Speaker A: I'm not quite sure if I understand.
[01:15:02] Speaker C: I mean, do you find yourself just trying to practice your manipulation tactics or leveraging it on somebody?
[01:15:09] Speaker A: No, no, that would be unfair. That would be unfair.
No, I don't do that. I mean, in my entire life, have I done it? Yeah, I probably have, but I don't. In fact, we have a saying at the Agency. If, if you perceive that a colleague is doing that to you, you say, don't case officer me. Okay, But I.
[01:15:28] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:15:29] Speaker A: I don't case officer my friends or family. And now that would be unfair tactics. And I won't deny that I've used it before in some senses, but I try to make it a habit of not doing that.
[01:15:43] Speaker B: Now real talk. If you create anything, your voice is your time. 11Labs reads your articles aloud in your voice, flawlessly, in seconds.
[01:15:53] Speaker D: Stop.
[01:15:53] Speaker B: Re recording links below. Go give it a shot.
[01:15:57] Speaker C: Any kind of question that usually gets missed that you would like to share.
[01:16:04] Speaker A: Well, I think that one thing people have got to realize that whatever the CIA does, it does at the direction of the White House and the National Security Council.
So, for instance, take a glaring example, the Bay of pigs in 1961, which was a terrible fiasco, but it was at the orders of the President.
And so we didn't decide to just go invade Cuba or some of the other things that we've done in the past. You know, we, we didn't. We don't just go out there and do that. You do it from the directions of the White House and the National Security
[01:16:36] Speaker C: Council and with all the, the Crazy things that you've seen and the places you've been and things you survived. What. What kind of lesson do you want people to take away from your story when they hear you talk and. And all the different things that you've experienced? What ultimately would you like their takeaway to be?
[01:16:57] Speaker A: I think the takeaway should be that I. I truly love our country and try to serve it well.
[01:17:05] Speaker C: That's short and sweet. I love it. I mean, it's. It's been an actual honor. I've been, you know, been trying to recruit you for the show for damn near a year. So this has been.
[01:17:16] Speaker A: I know it's been a great experience last year when your friend Hannah was. Was in touch with me.
[01:17:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:17:22] Speaker A: We had a number of correspondence before we could finally find a mutually convenient date. And I'm glad we did.
[01:17:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I thought for sure I was gonna make it to Virginia, but I just thought, man, time is a ticking. And I thought my window of opportunity is shrinking, so it's not as good as meeting you in person, but perhaps the next time I'm in the D.C. virginia area, I could stop in and buy you lunch or something.
[01:17:43] Speaker A: Well, we just bought a house, a second house in New Braunfels, and I know you know where New Braunfels is.
[01:17:48] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, of course.
[01:17:49] Speaker A: We were going to spend our winter months there. We're going to spend mid October to mid November there this year, and then probably January through March because it's miserably cold here then. And so I thought New Braunfels would be a lot better choice.
[01:18:02] Speaker C: Probably so. But I don't know, it. It's so erratic here, and you would know because you're a UT guy. But, you know, all of a sudden you just get the weirdest winters here where you're still driving on ice instead of snow, and then nobody understands what to do. And who knows?
[01:18:16] Speaker A: Well, you remember that deep freeze in Texas about two or three years ago? That was terrible. A lot of power failures.
[01:18:22] Speaker C: Snowmageddon. We had. I think we. We had three little elderly dogs at the time. So we. We sat in our living room under blankets for a day, almost two full days with no heat. And in a. Inside of our living room was like 32 degrees.
So it was. It was a hell of an experience. But that's Texas weather for you. Then, you know, a week later, it's 50, so it's just weird.
[01:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. But we will be able to leave McLean, Virginia, Northern Virginia, and come to Texas and kind of revitalize our roots. We still have family. Our son lives only about 15 minutes from where we bought and three of our children, so. So we.
[01:19:07] Speaker C: Oh, that's great.
[01:19:07] Speaker A: Coming back and being Texans for a while.
[01:19:10] Speaker C: That's great. Well, you're always welcome. I. I really appreciate it. And, you know, like I said, if. Even if you're in Texas and coming through, let me know.
Love to buy you a meal. Meet your. Meet your wife, who's got to be the real rock star behind the story.
[01:19:23] Speaker A: She is indeed.
[01:19:26] Speaker C: Thank you, my friend. Appreciate you being on.
[01:19:28] Speaker A: All right, Tegan, thank you. You're a great interviewer.
[01:19:39] Speaker D: Second grade rules?
A confident feel to make you do what they want when they won't be the fool?
A diplomatic base is the one to see it through?
Don't let those bigger take you off your game? Or just let him loose? Sit here in the front seat? Baby, ain't that sweet? Take a little honey from the money? Be me but don't be the fool?
An apolitical magical potion? A missing piece at the end of the game A slow roll? See the truth in soul motion I never found in 60 frames like.
