Stunningly Simple Secrets for Success & What Really Goes On at the CIA

Maybe you’ve noticed that simply having friends has gotten expensive. Meeting for lunch, drinks after work, dinner at a restaurant can cost a lot! Interestingly, the cost of friendship is affecting the quality and quantity of friendships in a significant way. Listen as I explain. https://www.badcredit.org/studies/friendship-spending-statistics/ What are some of the traits, behaviors or practices that truly successful people do? That is a question that has been tackled by William Vanderbloemen, founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group. He conducted surveys and research into the behaviors of successful people – and they are things anyone can do. Listen as he reveals what you can do starting today to stand out in a crowd. He is author of the book Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest (https://amzn.to/3CD1MD5). The website he references is www.vanderindex.com What does the CIA do exactly? From watching movies and TV, it all looks very exciting, intriguing and dangerous. Is it really? You are about to find out as you listen to my guest David McCloskey. He is a former CIA analyst who wrote regularly for the President’s Daily Brief, delivered classified testimony to Congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty. He also worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East. David is the author of a book called The Seventh Floor (https://amzn.to/3CBqx2t) which is a novel – about spies. If you are intrigued by the world of spies, you, you should check it out. But first listen to our conversation. It’s fascinating. Perhaps you have heard that chewing gum can improve your cognitive ability and help you do better on tests. Is it true? Sort of. It kinda depends on how you chew the gum. Listen and discover what I mean. https://www.livescience.com/17520-chewing-gum-test-performance.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING Support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms & conditions apply. SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business – no matter what stage you’re in! MINT MOBILE: Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at https://MintMobile.com/something! $45 upfront payment required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customers on first 3 month plan only. Additional taxes, fees, & restrictions apply. HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk DELL: Dell Technologies’ Early Holiday Savings event is live and if you’ve been waiting for an AI-ready PC, this is their biggest sale of the year! Tech enthusiasts love this sale because it’s all the newest hits plus all the greatest hits all on sale at once. Shop Now at https://Dell.com/deals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

  If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream. It's a delicious nighttime drink formulated to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. It contains ingredients like reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, epigenin, and melatonin. They have lots of great flavors. I tried the cinnamon cocoa flavor, and I love the idea of having something warm and delicious as part of winding down at night.

• 0:45Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:29Mike Carruthers?

  So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk.

• 1:40Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, having friends is getting so expensive that for many of us, it's affecting the friendships. Then, proven habits that will propel your success. Here's just one.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  The habit is called the curious. The top performers are always more interested in others than they are in themselves. Here's the quick life hack. If you want to be interesting to people, then start being interested in those people.

• 2:09Mike Carruthers?

  Also, can chewing gum really improve your test scores? Depends on how you chew. And what really goes on at the CIA? From a true insider.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  The day-to-day work of the CIA is breaking foreign laws. It very rarely involves shooting and car crashes and all the stuff you see on TV, but at its most basic level, it's an organization committed to convincing other people to commit treason.

• 2:35Mike Carruthers?

  All this today, on Something You Should Know. I imagine most of us shop for clothes online, at least some of the time. And there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures, but when they arrived, eh, not so beautiful. Cheap-looking, disappointing. And that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good. And the prices are surprisingly reasonable.

• 3:19Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:59Mike Carruthers?

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:36Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, welcome. Something I've noticed, perhaps you've noticed this too, but I don't hear people talking about it much, is about the high cost of going out. Going out with friends for drinks or to eat or going to a sporting event. It can all get very pricey. And I came across this survey article on a website called badcredit.org that talks about how people are coming to terms with the fact that having and maintaining friendships is really expensive. So expensive that it affects the friendships. According to the survey, Americans spend an average of $5,184 per year on time with friends.

• 5:18Mike Carruthers?

  More than half of the survey respondents, 52%, say they consider friendship to be expensive. Not only that, but inflation is affecting social lives as well. 37% of respondents said they are neglecting their friends due to the high cost of living. And that percentage jumps to 44% for Gen Z. Friendship can also take a back burner to other major expenses such as buying a house or alleviating debt. 65%, that's 2 out of 3 people surveyed, confess to reducing social activities to focus on saving money and cutting spending. I guess the point of all this is if you've had similar thoughts that going out with

• 6:02Mike Carruthers?

  your friends is taking a financial toll and maybe it's affecting your friendships, there are a lot of other people who agree with you. And that is something you should know.

• 6:16Mike Carruthers?

  You don't have to look very hard to find advice on how to be successful. Many people have become very successful selling advice on how to be successful. Today, though, I'd like you to listen to some really good advice that is backed up by data, real solid data, rather than opinion or just someone's personal story. William Vanderbloemen is founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, an executive search firm, and he has conducted some great research into the traits of the people who become successful. They're not traits you're born with, but rather traits you can acquire and put into action today.

• 6:58Mike Carruthers?

  William is author of a book called Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits That Separate the Best Leaders From the Rest. Hi, William. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on.

• 7:11Mike Carruthers?

  So everyone, it seems, has advice for what it takes to thrive and be successful. But as someone who has studied this, if you can boil it down, what does it boil down to? What is the essence of all of this?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Mike, what a good question. You said everybody's got advice and opinion. I don't know that you want to hear my advice or opinion. However, I do have data. And we have studied, we're an executive search firm, so we help people, we help companies find their top talent. And we interviewed the very best, we've interviewed lots and lots and lots of people, but we found the very best, the top 1% of everybody we've interviewed, and that's for all kinds of jobs. And that's 30,000 people in that 1%. And we just asked the question, do these people have anything in common? And the answer was yes. And so we did like empirical research to say, well, then what do they have in common?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And the answer was exactly not what I thought it would be. But it does, it did give us a roadmap for saying, oh, here's how people can get ahead, how they can stand out in a really crowded world, how they can be that exception to the rule in whatever they do, whether they're a student, or a custodian, or a leader, or whatever they're spending their day doing.

• 8:32Mike Carruthers?

  And what is that? And what is that?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, we found, so I thought, Mike, that, you know, what are the best of the best have in common? I figured it would be they're all over six feet tall and have fabulous hair and teeth and, you know, super high IQs and went to all the right schools. It was none of that. It was 12 habits that they had in common and all of those habits are really fundamentally how these people are treating other humans. I mean, this was a selfish research project, Mike. We, we started this saying, could we find a way to identify top talent faster so we get our job done faster and better?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And what we stumbled upon was these 12 habits can all be learned. And, and we were looking for a way to identify talent. What we discovered was a roadmap for becoming that talent or becoming that standout or get ahead person. Anybody who wants to get ahead, if you study these 12 habits and apply them to your life, you will get ahead.

• 9:37Mike Carruthers?

  So let's start with one that you call the fast. And that is basically getting back to people quickly is really important. And it's something I don't think people think that much about. You know, you get back to people when you can get back to people. But you say there's a real opportunity here.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  And what I mean by that is, you know, you get, you send a message to somebody and you never hear back from them. This, this happens in, people fill out forms, I'd like to buy your product, please have someone contact me. Well, it's staggering how uncommon it is for companies to actually get back to somebody that fills out that form. And when they do, they usually wait a day or two. But studies have shown that if you get back to people within 60 seconds of that form coming in, and you do it not in a way a chatbot would or an AI, you know, program. If you do it in a really intentional human way, really quickly, you're almost certain to talk to that person again and maybe make whatever sale it is you're trying to make.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  So unicorns get back to people really quickly and with intention, not like a chatbot.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  The rest of us just don't. And if you want to get ahead and stand out in the crowd in a way that is really remarkable, just get back to people quickly and with intention. Like, mention something about their world or what they're doing, not just a, "How can I help you today?"

• 11:03Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that, I mean, that's perfect, because, think about it, when somebody does get back to you fast, how, like, you noticed that, it's, "Well, that's impressive, they got right back to me." And, and, yet, I've never heard that advice before. So, talk about the, the problem I think a lot of us have, or, or maybe we think we have, is, you know, standing out from the crowd, getting noticed, without being, without being a jerk about it.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I think people are always like, like, I go to a party and I'm like, "I don't know if anyone's gonna remember me, I'm not very memorable or interesting, like, how do I stand out in a way that, whether it's a, a relationship with a family member, or a coworker, or trying to get the next job, how do I stand out in a room that's really crowded?" Well, here's, here's one thing, and I'll say it this simply, the, the habit is called the curious, okay? The, the top performers are always more interested in others than they are in themselves. They're curious, they're asking questions. So, here's, here's the quick life hack, okay? If you want to be interesting to people,

• 12:14Speaker 01

  then start being interested in those people. So, so, I used to work, um, at a church, where the people that went there were, almost all of them were literally the best in the world at what they did during the week. And I would try and ask them about themselves, and invariably, the best leaders I met really never wanted to talk about themselves, and they deflected the conversation back to me, which made me like them even more. So, there's a, there's a, a life hack here for people trying to get ahead. If you'll just be curious about the people you're interacting with, if you're interested in them... You'll be interesting to them. Does that make sense?

• 12:53Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, and not only that, but but the the urge is to tell people how great you are and tell them all about you. When in fact, what you just said is the better way.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Well, and it's not brown nosing the people. It's not like uh like the super old black and white show Leave It To Beaver. You had Eddie Haskell telling Beaver's mom, oh, what a nice dress you have on, Mrs. Cleaver. It's not that. It's just, how many kids do you have? Oh, what do you like to do? Oh, what do you really love about your job? It's it's being interested in them and people like to talk about themselves. So you've just opened the door to their favorite subject in a way that's not, you know, false compliments or that sort of thing. It will open the door to further conversation and you will stand out in the crowd.

• 13:37Mike Carruthers?

  I think in all the episodes of this podcast, you are the first person to bring up Eddie Haskell or Mrs. Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver ever. But talk about the self-awareness, because I think that is so. I mean, how many people have we all met that and thought later, but that guy, that that woman has no self-awareness?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  I think all of us could work on self-awareness and it's a pretty major blind spot. Self-aware was one of those 12 habits. And what's interesting is the unicorns are incredibly interested in learning more about what they're good at and what they're not. How the world perceives them and, you know, they're very good at this. So when we surveyed all 30,000 of the unicorns, we asked them to force rank, what are you best at? What are you worst at of these 12? Right? The list, the the rankings were very different because everybody's wired differently, like some had this at the top. There wasn't a clear winner for most popular. The only clear winner was last place.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And that was self-awareness.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  So the unicorns, the 1%, the people who are best at self-awareness, said that it was their worst of the 12. Like, I really gotta work on this. Now, if you flip the script, we also surveyed 250,000 people just randomly, like, normal people like you and me. 91% of all those 250,000 said they were above average at self-awareness. Like, I'm not a statistician, but I'm pretty sure there's not a group where 91% is above average. 50% is above, 50% is... Like, we all think we're... It's a major human blind spot. And, and people would say, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean?" Let me ask you this.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Mike, do you remember, back in your radio days, the first time you heard your voice recorded?

• 15:35Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, of course.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and what was that like?

• 15:39Mike Carruthers?

  It was horrible, and nobody likes to hear their voice recorded the first time.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  No, I hated it. I was like, "Who is this person? I don't want it... Put me back on. I don't want to listen to this. This is all... It's cringey, right?" That's the perfect example of how we see ourselves one way, but the world perceives us another. And the unicorns just get really determined at figuring out, "How is it people are seeing me? What am I good at? Where do I need to get better?" While most of the rest of us just float along, thinking, "I'm, I'm pretty good at all this."

• 16:12Mike Carruthers?

  The problem, though, is if you lack self-awareness, you lack the ability to know you need to fix your self-awareness.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  It's a bit of a chicken and an egg, right? Yeah, I, I think, though, Mike, we're living in maybe the best season ever for people who want to develop self-awareness. There, you know, there are literally hundreds of personality profiles you can take to discover what your strengths are, or what gives you energy, or where you're good with other people. Like, the Enneagram is super helpful, the DISC inventory. We, we actually built one around these 12 habits and tested it against the 250,000 and the 30,000, like...

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Where am I in these 12 habits against the general population and against the unicorns? And that gives me a map for knowing how I am perceived and how I'm going to get better. So I, I think there's a, it's, it's by the way, sorry, shameless plug. If you go to vanderindex.com, you'll, you'll see that profile. But there's a, so much that people can just take a first step.

• 17:19Mike Carruthers?

  We are talking about 12 habits that are supported by a lot of data. 12 habits that will propel your success. And my guest is William Vanderbloemen, author of the book, Be the Unicorn. 12 data-driven habits that separate the best leaders from the rest. Well, here's something you should know about your bones. We all hear about calcium and vitamin D, and they're important. But there's another ingredient in healthy bones that hardly anybody talks about. Collagen. Think of your bones like a building, right? Collagen provides the framework while minerals like calcium help give it strength. Here's the problem though. As we get older, our bodies naturally produce less collagen.

• 18:04Mike Carruthers?

  That's why I was interested in Native Path Bone Health Collagen. It's not just ordinary collagen. It contains a specialized form called Fortabone. And there's some interesting research behind it. In a study of 131 post-menopausal women, researchers saw improvements in bone mineral density after 12 months, up to 7.7% in an important part of the hip. Native Path gives you the same five grams of Fortabone used in that research in an easy-to-mix daily formula. I just got mine because bone health is something I'd rather pay attention to now than wish I had later.

• 18:46Mike Carruthers?

  And here's a great reason to try Native Path Bone Health Collagen right now. You can save up to 48%, get free shipping, and it's backed by a 365-day money-back guarantee. Now that's a pretty compelling offer if you've been thinking about doing something to support your bone health. Go to getbetterbones.com/sysk. That's G E T betterbones.com/sysk.

• 19:18Mike Carruthers?

  This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years, and yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing, you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money.

• 20:01Mike Carruthers?

  Listing on Vinted is so quick and simple. And when something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And here's what I really like. Vinted charges no seller fees. So whatever you earn from selling your clothes, you keep. Think about that. Clothes that you aren't wearing, taking up space, could be putting money back in your pocket. So here's my suggestion. Take five minutes, go look at the far ends of your closet and see what's hanging there. You might be surprised. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D.

• 20:45Mike Carruthers?

  So William, talk about being authentic. That's a phrase I've always struggled with because I'm not really sure what it means. But in terms of success, in terms of your own personal success, what do you mean by being authentic?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So one of the 12 habits is the unicorns, the very best of the best.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Are incredibly authentic and they're perceived as incredibly authentic. You know, Mike, in a world where we are dealing with more and more automated, AI-driven phone calls that are robo calls, robo texts, robo... Anything that's truly humanly authentic is a higher value maybe than it's ever before. So how do I develop authenticity? I'm going to give you one life hack. Look people in the eye. Now, I'm saying that both generally and very intentionally. When I say look people in the eye, if you're younger right now, if you're Gen Z and you're

• 21:51Speaker 01

  listening to this, the number one complaint recruiters at companies have with the interviews that Gen Z is giving them is that Gen Z doesn't look them in the eye.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Isn't that interesting? They just don't look up. We've got seven kids and so our kids that don't use the phone but FaceTime us all the time, they'll FaceTime us and then all I see is their nostrils because they're holding the phone and walking around. They're not actually looking at us. There's something lost in eye contact. So simply looking at people is first step toward authenticity. But here's the real meat of the life hack.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  We have two eyes. One is dominant, one is peripheral. In other words, you see the world through one eye. The other eye just gives you perspective. Okay, depth perception, that sort of thing. Ninety percent of all humans on the planet are right eye dominant. It's how scopes are built on rifles. It's how lots of things are built around the fact that most of us are right eye dominant. So what that means is when you sit down with somebody to interface with them, if you will look not at the center of their nose, you can't look there, you can't look in both eyes at the same time. If you will look people in the eye, the right eye, directly, you've got a 90% chance of being right. And what it produces is this. Have you ever sat in a room with somebody and talked to them and you go?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  They made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Chances are, they were looking you dead in the eye. And I, I think that will convey a level of authenticity that makes people go, this person's different. They authentically care about me. They're authentically interested in me. And, and that one little life hack, I mean, just that one twitch, just look right at their right eye. It could make all the difference in getting ahead at whatever it is you're trying to get ahead at.

• 23:44Mike Carruthers?

  So lastly, let's talk about productivity because that's, it's such a big buzzword now and people are always, you hear it all the time. And, and so what does the, your data say about it?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that unicorns get stuff done the very first chance they get. It's kind of like responding the very first chance you get. There's, there's a, the, the top performers, the people who stand out in any crowd are the ones who actually go to bed saying, I got something done. And that can sound pretty overwhelming. But I think that, uh, you know, maybe the best advice I've heard is some old management advice. And, and if you've got time for a quick story, uh, years and years ago, I had a really successful business guy mentoring me and a very generous, successful business guy mentoring me. And he, he called me and said, he owned a bank and he called me and said, uh, come to my office, I want to give you a Christmas present.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I'm like, cool. And this is kind of embarrassing, but the whole way there, I'm like, I wonder what he got me. I bet it's pretty cool. Oh man, I wonder if it's this, I wonder if that, very selfish thoughts, sorry, but that's, that's where I was. And I got there and he handed me a little like, oh, two by three inch day timer, really small with the bank's logo on it. Like he gives this to kids when they open a checking account. And he said, no, no, no, no. The, the calendar is not the gift. Here's the gift. I want you for the next year, you can do it the night before or the morning you wake up, I want you to write six objectives down. They're going to help you move forward in wherever you're trying to move forward. And that's just six things you want to get done this day, no more, no less.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I said, why? He said, well, it's the oldest management consulting ever given. It was one of the first management consultants ever went to JP Morgan, the guy before, you know, Chase, and said, if you'll do this with your team, you'll get more productive. And they skyrocketed. And I was like, wow. And he said, yeah. And he said, if you'll do it consistently, you'll be amazed how much you get done. I said, well, what do you mean? And so he opened the credenza behind his desk. And there were 30 years of those little day timers. He said, ask me what I got done on any day in the last 30 years. And I picked a date and he pulled it out and he showed me do this, this, this, this, and this. And I just was like, wow, okay. And, and what really brought this home for me is you can feel overwhelmed, feeling I've got to get everything done.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  I've got to get everything right now, right now. But if you'll do small, so six tasks each day, that might be as a parent. How am I going to get six things done for my kids? As a student, what am I going to do to build my college resume as a, how do I get the promotion at work? Six objectives every day and catalog them. I've graduated from the tiny little bank issued day timer to Apple notes. And I just date them so I can see everything. It's amazing what happens and it reminds me of, there's a quote that's gone around many times. But a good friend of mine said one time, you know, William, people overestimate what they can get done in a year. But they always underestimate what they can get done in a decade. And that's that sort of small deposits every day of here are six things I'm going to get done.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  And, and our research showed most people love talking about getting something done. Very few people actually take action. So one quick way to not get overwhelmed by, I got to get more done is to just say, could you, could you go to Apple notes and write down six things you want to get done? Apple notes even has a little checkbox function, which I love. And you can just check the box when you get it done and look back and say, I got everything done today that I planned to get done. That creates momentum, a flywheel starts to turn. And before you know it, you stand out.

• 27:31Mike Carruthers?

  And so what do you do? Because I've tried similar things before and sometimes you don't get all six things done. You just can't and then the momentum starts to wane.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  If you're consistently not hitting them, maybe you're making them too big. You know, my objective for today is to achieve world peace. Well, that box isn't going to get checked.

• 27:51Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, that's going to be tough. Good luck.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  So are you making these something that can actually get done? And if it make them really small, make them so you could get it done by 10 a.m. And and build your momentum that momentum is the best friend of anyone trying to get ahead.

• 28:07Mike Carruthers?

  You know, when people ask me who haven't heard this podcast, like, well, what do you do on your podcast? I said, well, one of the things we like to do is give people really good information, solid information that they can use in their lives. And you've just done that, hit it out of the park. William Vanderbloemen has been my guest. He is founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group. And he's author of the book Be The Unicorn 12 Data Driven Habits That Separate The Best Leaders From The Rest. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes if you would like to read it. Thank you for coming on and sharing this, William.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate being on your podcast. It's amazing how many hours and interviews you've done and you're really good at your job. I appreciate you having me.

• 28:52Mike Carruthers?

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• 29:34Mike Carruthers?

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• 29:40Mike Carruthers?

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• 30:17Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:03Mike Carruthers?

  If you watch movies or TV shows, you have, or think you have, a pretty good understanding of what the CIA does. The image, anyway, is that the CIA is a spy agency. They do things in other countries to gather information, disrupt things, maybe overthrow governments. There's an element of rogueness to it, that they do things that maybe we shouldn't, or we don't want to know about, all in the name of national security. But is that really what the CIA does? Or does that just make good fiction? Well, let's find out, shall we? My guest is David McCloskey.

• 32:43Mike Carruthers?

  He is a former CIA analyst who wrote regularly for the President's Daily Brief. He delivered classified testimony to congressional oversight committees, and briefed senior White House officials, ambassadors, military officials, and Arab royalty. And he has worked in CIA field stations across the Middle East. He is also author of a book called The Seventh Floor, which is a novel about spies, and I suspect it has a lot in there that is based on his knowledge and experience in the CIA. Hi, David, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Hey, Mike, thanks for having me on.

• 33:20Mike Carruthers?

  So I guess first, I guess what I'd like to know, because I think everybody has this idea in their head, but what is the CIA? What is it supposed to be doing? What does it do? What is it?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  I actually think the best way to think about it is to think about the CIA, or sort of the work of the CIA, as clandestine journalism. So if you think about the work that a investigative journalist does, you know, they scope out a story, they go and recruit sources who have information, they put the story together with a whole bunch of disparate, you know, sources, facts, pieces of analysis, and they try to put it together into something that is coherent, that's objective, that's not value-driven or laden, you know, in the best cases of investigative journalism, and then they report the kind of what, why, and so what. To their readers, and I think the CIA actually is trying to do something very similar.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  The CIA is out there writing about stories that the president and other American policymakers care about, what's going on in the world. We're trying to find sources in the world who will give us that information, sell us that information, and we're trying to put it all together into a picture for the people in our country that make the most important national security decisions.

• 34:40Mike Carruthers?

  So it's an information gathering organization?

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Information gathering and analysis is really what it is. And at its core, the agency, as we call it, exists to provide us and our elected officials with an information advantage. That is why the CIA exists. So we have more information or better information about what's going on in the world than other countries do.

• 35:10Mike Carruthers?

  Is that all they do?

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Well, we do other things, but that's the primary objective.

• 35:16Mike Carruthers?

  Because on TV, that's not all they do.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  It is, you know, and well, and it's not, it's not as, it's not as entertaining, is it? You know, obviously, there are what we call covert action pieces of the work, which is when the president decides that they want something done in the world and they want it to be deniable, they'll turn to the CIA. That stuff tends to be more fodder for fiction, more fodder for, you know, spy entertainment or spy tainment, as it's sometimes called. You know, it's, it's hard to make, there's a reason why Jack Ryan is an analyst, you know, sort of had to have a gun and, you know, talk about how this isn't what an analyst

• 36:00Speaker 02

  was supposed to do because the actual work of an analyst is not car chases and guns and, you know, shooting bad guys. It's, um, it's finding the truth. But yeah, you're right. The agency does other things. The agency has covert action work that it does. The agency has something that's called a special activities center, which does some of the paramilitary work of, of the agency. But I will stress that although those are very sort of sexy components from a, if you were talking about this, like, A business, those would be the pieces of the business that get all the press attention, but really, you know, are a small part of the overall operation.

• 36:40Mike Carruthers?

  Because when I think of the CIA doing what they do, I know for, for one thing, they say on TV all the time, you know, that the CIA is not allowed to operate on US soil, that what they do is somewhere else, gotta be somewhere else. And what they do is they spy on people. They gather information by spying on guys that are doing things and that they mess things up and that, you know, Mission Impossible, they kind of sabotage things. And from what I hear you saying, that's theater.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Well, let's get down to the brass tacks of what we're talking about. When, you know, I mentioned the investigative journalism example, right? So recruiting a source, what does that actually mean? That actually means, and I'll just make up a hypothetical here, that actually means that maybe you're going and finding a Russian who has access to somebody in the Kremlin. And that Russian, you know, hates his boss and has, is in debt, right? We're paying, we might pay that person if we can get in, you know, in front of them and sort of convince them that this could be done securely. We're paying that person

• 37:54Speaker 02

  to commit treason, to tell us things they shouldn't tell us. So in effect, the day-to-day work of the CIA is breaking foreign laws. I mean, that is the sort of the definition of what we're doing. It very rarely involves shooting and car crashes and all the stuff you see on TV, but at its most basic level, we are, you know, it's an organization committed to convincing other people to commit treason in many respects. Sometimes for reasons we would consider noble, sometimes for reasons that are more mundane, or even kind of gross in some cases. But that is the core of the work, is, is stealing secrets.

• 38:40Mike Carruthers?

  Okay, well, but the CIA, and what's the difference between the CIA and the NSA and the other spy agencies that we hear about, like, do they work together, do they not work together, do they have different jobs, what's that all about?

• 38:55Speaker 02

  The US intelligence community, I think technically has like 16 or 17 entities inside it formally. And if that sounds like a ridiculous number, it's because it probably is, it can be overall very bloated, I think there's probably too much overlap and redundancy between many of these groups, but, you know, for simplicity's sake, take a couple of the bigger organizations. So the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency is our sort of premier foreign intelligence agency, meaning we are working abroad to steal secrets from foreign

• 39:36Speaker 02

  countries and groups, right? The National Security Agency is our primary signals intelligence arm, meaning they're doing a lot of the intercepts of phone communications, emails, et cetera, sort of manipulating electronic communication. You know, obviously you have the State Department, which is our diplomatic arm overseas. I mean, there's intelligence agencies or entities inside the State Department, inside the FBI, inside the military, you know, various services of the military. So if you kind of put all this on a couple pages, it's a bit overwhelming.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  But all of these groups, in theory, work together and in most cases actually do relatively well, but of course, there are different cultures and all of that that sort of prevent, you know, clean cooperation at all times. And so there does, there can be sort of competition over turf and dropped handoffs between the two. I mean, it's all the things you'd expect with a massive, probably too large, group of agencies that are all sort of distinct, but have overlapping mission sets.

• 40:50Mike Carruthers?

  So this all sounds very mundane. This, I mean, not mundane so much, but, but it doesn't sound as it's all that exciting, frankly. It just, it's not what I was hoping to hear. I was hoping to hear about the guns and the, and the car chases, but.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Well, well, look, I'll, I'll tell you this, that there are really, I mean, the, the mission of CIA is an exceptional one. And although it's not, you know, martinis and tuxedos and car chases, the agency is out there stopping and disrupting terrorist attacks. The agency is sending people into denied environments all the time, under very exotic forms of cover. The agency is fielding, you know, incredible sort of next gen technology. And it is producing really what I call the most, you know, sort of highly classified

• 41:46Speaker 02

  reports that our president reads and what's called the president's daily brief or PDB. So I see the, the work of the CIA as being highly exceptional, but it's also this sort of big organization at the same time that in many respects would resemble, you know, a Fortune 500 company. So I like to think of the place as being kind of a, a uniquely bipolar organization. On the one hand, it has this exceptional mission, which I don't think actually has a lot of parallels elsewhere or analogs elsewhere. And on the other side, you know, it's, it's a big place that's run by people. And so you get a lot of the foibles and quirks that go along with that.

• 42:28Mike Carruthers?

  But so, but the CIA is only spying on gathering information at working in other countries. Is that correct?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  So the agency does have domestic field stations, but those are, those are for like basically liaising with FBI and targeting foreign nationals who are in the States. The CIA is, is prevented from targeting Americans. The CIA does not recruit Americans. And the CIA is a foreign externally facing organization designed to collect on foreign nationals and foreign governments.

• 43:07Mike Carruthers?

  And every country, I imagine, sophisticated country has some sort of CIA, right?

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 43:16Mike Carruthers?

  And are they all friends? Do they all have lunch together? Or do they?

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 43:21Mike Carruthers?

  What's the relationship?

• 43:23Speaker 02

  You know, we have liaison relationships with friendly services. So we're sharing information, right? So, you know, we're sharing information with the Brits.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  You know, we're sharing information with the Israelis. They're sharing information with us. You know, you could rattle off a long list of foreign intelligence services, which I probably shouldn't, that were, you know, engaged in business with. I think the, you know, the sort of key thing there is a lot of these relationships can be quite warm. They can be quite productive, but intelligence services, they don't sort of generously give. It's an exchange with the expectation that, you know, we give something here, you give something back. This is sort of commerce happening at the, at the secret level.

• 44:08Mike Carruthers?

  So there's no military component to the CIA? Or is there?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  There's a paramilitary component. Yeah.

• 44:17Mike Carruthers?

  Who's that?

• 44:18Speaker 02

  It's called the, it's called the Special Activities Center.

• 44:20Mike Carruthers?

  Ooh.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I know. Isn't that a good, that's a good name.

• 44:23Mike Carruthers?

  I like that.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Special Activities Center. That is for, so if you, you recall, let's say, some of the first teams that went into Afghanistan after nine 11. You know, you had a mix on those teams of sort of form, like kind of typical CIA case officers. But then you also had paramilitary officers who had typically come out of Army Special Forces or Delta Force or the Marines or something like that. They had a military background. And then they're, they're working at CIA. And the CIA has that group because sometimes you want to be able to deploy those types of assets in a, in a deniable way, under the auspices of what we call a covert action finding,

• 45:09Speaker 02

  which is when the president wants something done and they, they don't want, you know, US fingerprints on it. So that's, that's kind of why the CIA has those, has those groups.

• 45:18Mike Carruthers?

  So talk a little bit about what you did at the CIA. What was your title?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  So I was an analyst.

• 45:24Mike Carruthers?

  What does that mean? Yeah, like Jack Ryan.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you realize after about two days, it's not really like Jack Ryan. What I did was, as I worked on primarily Syria and on the broader Middle East, and I did a lot of my work from Langley, I did a lot of my work from the region. Most of what I was doing was taking, basically looking at all of this information that's coming in, and right, and that could be, that's the human intelligence we gathered, that's just stuff from press, that's stuff from academics, that's stuff from our embassy, it's the signals intelligence we talked about from the National Security Agency, intercepted phone calls, intercepted emails, et cetera. You're looking at all this, and you're answering a question, really, that a policymaker might have. And so, the example I like to give is, you know, I was working on Syria in the open days

• 46:10Speaker 02

  of its unrest, which eventually became a civil war. This was in early 2011. And the big question that, you know, President Obama was asking was, okay, what are the scenarios for how this goes down, right? How long can Assad hold on to power? And so, you know, I was writing essentially an answer to that question in like two or three pages, that's sourced and, you know, structured well, and gives the president the ability to sort of bound reality, you know, what might happen, what could happen, what would it mean for us in different scenarios?

• 46:51Speaker 02

  So, that's an example of something that I wrote, and then briefed downtown to, you know, to the White House, to the National Security Council, and analysts who work on Russia, you know, analysts who are working on all these different regions and countries, you know, or sort of topics today are answering similar questions, depending on what might be going on.

• 47:14Mike Carruthers?

  So, when you go to work as an analyst for the CIA, does it just feel like you're going to work as an analyst for any other company? Or does it feel different? Does it feel special? Does it feel dangerous? Does it feel like, is there any sense of, ooh, I'm a spy?

• 47:32Speaker 02

  It feels, now, after having, you know, done analysis for other companies since I've left, what I will say is, it does feel special. And the reason it feels special is because you are dealing with stolen information and you're dealing with information as a result that other people cannot access. And one of the fundamental, I think, highs of the place is that you are, or you can, you know, you can be sort of led to believe, and oftentimes, I think, with reason, that you are kind of in the inner reign. You have access to stuff other people don't, which is a, which is a thrill.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  So I think for me, as I look back on it, I think, yeah, that's, it is a special place because it has a very special mission and it's got access to very special stuff. And there's something inherently, even though, you know, I, I feel bad, Mike, I deflated you a little bit by saying, you know, it's not, it's not explosions and car chases and Jack Ryan. I think there's something very special about the place. You know, even now, me as an alum, I still feel, I think I feel a fondness for that work because I felt like I was contributing to something that was bigger than myself and doing something that frankly was, was really cool.

• 48:58Mike Carruthers?

  But in lore, not just in movies, but, but in real life, you know, there are people out there claiming that the CIA overthrew a government, that the CIA meddled in this and meddled in that. Is there a lot of meddling going on or that's people's propaganda?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  I do think you have to separate, or at least, at least acknowledge that the CIA of the 50s and 60s and even early 70s is not the CIA of today. Right? The CIA that, that- Really helped kind of overthrow governments in Iran in fifty-three or in Syria later that decade in fifty-six, I think, and in Guatemala and the CIA that was actually, you know, in some cases spying on Americans in the sixties, the CIA that was experimenting

• 49:57Speaker 02

  with psychedelic, you know, drugs on people. Like, this organization doesn't, that organization doesn't exist anymore. That was a far less institutionalized that was finding its way at the height of the Cold War and essentially operated as the president's black bag outfit with sort of a wink and a nod from the president at the time. And it is not how the CIA operates today. When the CIA does something today with basically no exceptions, it is doing that with the full support and frankly, like, formal authority of the president, more so

• 50:38Speaker 02

  than just the CIA kind of going rogue or anything like that. I think that the mental model of the CIA is some kind of like unconstrained bad actor that does its own thing is just simply false. The CIA operates as part of an interagency process in Washington that's driven by the White House and by the president, and it does the president's bidding. And the president, as, you know, an elected official, is entitled to do so. So I think it's important that we kind of understand the CIA not as some rogue actor, but as a piece of, you know, sort of the fabric, frankly, of our government and society.

• 51:21Mike Carruthers?

  So I think about, though, I think about those, I guess, what are they, stars or something in the lobby of, you know, unnamed people. Well, if they're just gathering information, why do your identities have to be protected? Why, what's so secret about the people doing the work if they're just gathering information, reading the newspaper and talking to people?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Look, we talked about the sort of covert action side of things and the paramilitary side of things, and I don't have a...

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Direct number for you, I don't, I don't know it. My, my wager would be that a disproportionate number of the stars on that wall come from that sort of thing. So it's not just pure information gathering, to be, to be clear. But the, in either case, the reason why many of those stars are not named, and by the way, many of them are, I mean, if you go into the original headquarters building lobby and, you know, there's a book that's actually kind of in a case by that, by that wall. And there are names attached to many of the stars, if not, if not most. Some of them do not have names.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  And the reason for that, although I certainly couldn't speak to any, whether any of this on an individual basis is still justified, is because the details around that operation, be they sources, be they methods, remain classified. And so the names cannot be made public.

• 52:50Mike Carruthers?

  Is it like on TV that when you're an analyst or some other, you know, frontline kind of CIA person, that you can't tell your wife what you're doing, that you can't tell your wife where you're going, that everything is confidential?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  For the most part, yes. You know, it depends a little bit on, on your role. So, you know, and I was an analyst, like, my wife knew where I worked, my W2 said Central Intelligence Agency. And yet, you know, sometimes I, I could almost always be open with her about where I was going, but I couldn't really say much about what I was actually doing.

• 53:31Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this answers a lot of questions I think people have about the CIA, what really goes on. It's really, it's kind of fun to hear, but it's also, I think, important for people to understand what happens. I've been speaking with David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst. He has written three novels. His most recent is called The Seventh Floor, which is about spies, and you can read it and hear more about the CIA. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, David. Thanks for explaining all this.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks, Mike, for having me. Really enjoyed our conversation.

• 54:07Mike Carruthers?

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• 54:50Mike Carruthers?

  Those who chewed gum through the entire test didn't get the benefits because all that chewing gets tiresome and can actually sap brain power after a few minutes. And that is something you should know. Could you do me a favor and just tell one or two people that you know about this podcast and suggest that they listen to it? Because like every podcast, we always need new listeners. It's how the audience grows, it's how the podcast grows. It really helps us out, and it doesn't take much. Just share this podcast with someone you know and help our audience grow. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.