How To Read Behaviour Like An FBI Agent | Robin Dreeke

Robin Dreeke is the Ex-Head of the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Program and an author. Robin worked as a counterintelligence agent for the FBI recruiting spies, assets and gathering intelligence for 21 years. From being in the New York Field Office in Manhattan on the day of 9/11 to creating the FBI's elite Counterintelligence Behavioural Analysis Program, he's had a fascinating career. Expect to learn the verbal and non-verbal cues which you can use to help earn trust and make your communication more effective with others. We'll also learn to be able to detect deception in others and hear some amazing stories from Robin's time in the most advanced intelligence agency on the planet. Extra Stuff: Robin's Website - http://www.peopleformula.com/ It's Not All About Me (book) - https://amzn.to/2Z39wWY Follow Robin on Twitter - https://twitter.com/rdreeke - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:05Chris Williamson?

  Hi friends. Today, my guest is Robin Dreek, and he is the ex-head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Division. Now, that sounds like an incredibly secretive and exciting job to have, and it really is. Today's discussion takes us through Robin's 21-year in-field career, including when he was in Manhattan on 9/11. He was out for coffee with his friend as the first plane struck the North Tower, and then back on the 25th floor of his department when the second plane hit. Apart from that, we're also going to learn the verbal and non-verbal cues that both

• 0:48Chris Williamson?

  you can use to help encourage trust and make your communication with others more effective, and also to be able to detect deception in other people. Robin really is the real deal. It's evident that he has a very terrifying and wide-ranging skillset of personal and interpersonal communication. I'm super happy to have him on. I'm not going to pontificate anymore. Please welcome, Robin Dreek. Oh yeah. P.S. We did have some connection issues during this episode. I promise that any of the cuts I made weren't due to Robin giving away national secrets, and also the irony of a podcast about communication being beset with communication problems is

• 1:33Chris Williamson?

  not lost. But there may be a couple of jumps here and there, so just bear that in mind.

• 1:55Chris Williamson?

  So Robin, is this the moment where the FBI burst in through the door of my bedroom and tell me that we need to stop this interview? Is that what this happens?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  No, because I duck and weave really well.

• 2:07Chris Williamson?

  And you're on the other side of the screen, so you're going to be fine. Well, anyway, thank you very much for coming on. Welcome to Modern Wisdom. It's a pleasure to have you here.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited about it as well.

• 2:17Chris Williamson?

  It's going to be a great, great conversation. So can you tell the listeners at home what your job roles were, please?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Sure. So I'll kind of give you a chronology from the beginning to the end without taking a million, a million, million minutes to do this, just because it's not boring. But it's good to frame the background of where I came from to where I arrived and where I'm still going to. And that is so my background is I graduated from the United States Naval Academy here in Annapolis, Maryland. And from there, I went on to become a Marine Corps officer. And from there, I joined the FBI and I joined the FBI in 1997 and worked counterintelligence for my entire career. So I was assigned to the New York Field Office in Manhattan. From there, I went to Norfolk, Virginia. From Norfolk, Virginia, I went into management. So I went up to the J. Edgar Hoover Building here in Washington DC. Also, during my entire career,

• 3:09Speaker 01

  I worked Russians. So that's kind of the nouveau thing these days, although for 21 years, no one was listening to me. And so, and so when I started running the behavioral now, you know, the, the program at headquarters, during my time in New York, before I got there, I got on our behavioral analysis program for counterintelligence. And what the behavioral analysis program is, and a lot of people know about the profilers and the behavioral analysis units from things like Criminal Minds and movies like that. Those are the criminal guys, the guys that work on criminal cases. My team, we work nothing but counterintelligence cases. And my team's whole strategy all the time was how we're going to create a good, healthy engagement with another human being. Whether you're trying to recruit a spy, talk

• 3:53Speaker 01

  to someone, interview someone, whatever it is, is we're always strategizing engagements. And so From FBI headquarters, I eventually escaped, thank God, because I'm not a headquarters guy, I realized. And they asked me to go down to Quantico, where I taught counterintelligence, interviewing and source recruiting and things like that. And then I took over our behavioral team as the head of it back in 2010-ish. And I ran it for three, four years until sequestration, which was a big budget thing we had, eliminated my team and a bunch of things. And so I went back down to the street and I worked as an agent on the street, working counterintelligence for the last couple of years before I retired. So yeah, my entire career has been nothing about trying to recruit spies, catching spies, talking to

• 4:36Speaker 01

  sources, all, nothing but intel all the time.

• 4:39Chris Williamson?

  Right. I mean, that sounds like the stuff that novels are made of, right? There's a lot of kind of the typical spy stuff. That sounds like the proper James Bond shit.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  It is. It is. You know, it's pretty funny. And I actually, you know, you being in the UK is really great. I have a saying, especially when I was in New York, I love working with the Queen. Because we worked with MI5 and MI6 a lot. And I love them a lot because their funding was always better than ours. And they're great hosts. Very, very great hosts.

• 5:10Chris Williamson?

  That's awesome. Well, I, you know, I think the Brits are pretty well renowned for the fact we have good tea and, you know, the weather's not so good, but everything else.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  That wasn't what we, that wasn't what we were drinking.

• 5:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I bet it wasn't. So you've mentioned there's some, you know, New York field office in Manhattan and the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Those are places that I really only know as references from movies. But that sounds like a sort of place where there's an awful lot going on, a pretty big hub of activity, I'm gonna guess.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, you know, I always, you know, I'm always, I mean, just think about this. People are generally under impressed with their own jobs. It's, you know, because it's always, it's always the outside optic, you know. For me, it was my job. Basically, my job was to build relationships, to build trust.

• 5:56Chris Williamson?

  I got you.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And so what was interesting was, you know, a lot of people, so, you know, I wound up writing a bunch of articles and wrote a couple of books. I've got another one coming out this year. And my, my intro to whatever I'm doing, a speech, a talk, a podcast, or even in my writing, it always starts out with me kind of laying out that background of mine, which says, wow, this guy is a type A hard charging guy.

• 6:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  And I'd say absolutely right. The problem is, if you want to recruit spies, you're going to fail majestically with that, with that kind of behavior profile.

• 6:30Chris Williamson?

  Wow, okay. So take us, take us through what that means and why that's the case?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, and this is how I've really related to business with all the companies I work with, because I called my job the most challenging one in sales, because it was literally the toughest sales job I think anyone could have. And that's what I have always, when I transition and I talk to a lot of groups outside the FBI, and obviously that's all I talk to now. This is how I line it out. Because when I was in New York, and my job is to recruit spies, here's what that meant. First of all, you know, I'm selling a concept to someone from a foreign country. And the concept I'm selling is that helping the United States is really a good idea. And even though it might not be in your best interest for your country, it's in the best interest of my country. So first of all, I'm

• 7:18Speaker 01

  selling a concept, an idea, that helping and cooperating with me is a great idea. So that's, that's, so that's my product. The second most challenging thing now is, it's actually illegal for me as FBI to walk up and talk to a foreign diplomat, because all the spies are foreign diplomats under diplomatic cover. And by treaty, it's actually illegal for me to approach them. So if my client that I'm trying to sell this product to, one, doesn't really care for my product, two, it's illegal for me to actually contact him about my product. That's your first challenge.

• 7:50Chris Williamson?

  There's a couple of, couple of big barriers there.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, really are. And, and the other thing, so if you can't talk to them directly, you're gonna maybe try to sell through third parties, you know, some of their contacts. And, you know, in law enforcement, I love to say, you know, this, this analogy, because most people that work in law enforcement, there's a reason why people have to talk to them. They've done something illegal. So there's a compulsion. Well, when you work in the world of counterintelligence, very rarely have people done something illegal. You know, take spies for instance, you know, it doesn't matter what country they're in. All they're doing is collecting intelligence. And what generally is intelligence? Well, it's actually reading things in the newspaper, hearing things on the news, or, or looking at a blog or something like this. And so you get in information.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And now your next job is, is to source that information to people in the know. So say they read something in the newspaper, they read a blog, they see a posting. Well, now they're gonna go to like the president of a clear defense contractor, another diplomat, someone from a think tank, that they can say, what do you think about this? Now they get their opinion on it. Well, now that opinion has sourcing, now sourcing becomes intelligence. And none of that's illegal. And so there's no compulsion for them to wanna talk to me because they've done nothing illegal. It's illegal for me to talk to them. They don't wanna buy my product. And now I wanna talk to people that are around them. And the people around them that are talking to, they're not doing anything illegal either.

• 9:14Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, so what I quickly realized, you know, when you're in your late twenties and you have this hardcore type A personality, is if you approach people with that kind of personality that don't have any reason why they should wanna talk to you, you're going to get shut down really fast. And, and so that was my background. So luckily for me, though, I was on a squad of people um, that were my Jedi masters, you know, one in particular, his name's John. You know, he had this art form down. And, and just giving an example. You know, in my line of work, or my previous line of work, getting, you know, actually recruiting a spy from another country to cooperate with us and give us all the jewels of a kingdom, it's, it's like hitting Lotto. It's that rare and it's that beneficial when it does, you know, or, or winning, you know, winning the sweepstakes.

• 10:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  And when you do, it's, it's extremely beneficial. So I always viewed my job every day as like buying a Lotto ticket. I create operations that give me opportunity to, to hit Lotto.

• 10:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Or, or hit that sweepstakes. And, you know, unbeknownst to me, one of the guys on, on that I was working with that became my mentor guide and, and really my best friend, uh, he had hit Lotto fourteen times in his career.

• 10:21Chris Williamson?

  Oh my god.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no kidding. And, and it was really dumbfounded because I never knew that for years, just because, uh, one of the, one of his great tenants of life is he lived with great humility and humbleness. He never made it about him. His desk at work had no I love me trophies or posters on it. Uh, um, it was always about everyone else but himself. And that was really the key. You know, I started modeling my behavior. I tried to after him. And then when I started, when people started asking me to teach this, that was the first time I actually had to take my friend John's art form of interpersonal communication and make it a paint by number so it could be replicated.

• 10:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  And that's, and that's where all this started getting born.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  That's so fascinating. I mean, it, it very quickly goes away from being luck and goes on to skill when you win the lottery fourteen times, right?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 11:11Chris Williamson?

  Um, so.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  There's no luck involved with this.

• 11:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And, and it's so funny too. Go ahead.

• 11:16Chris Williamson?

  Did you have a background?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  No, go ahead.

• 11:18Chris Williamson?

  In psychology or in, um, uh, uh, any sort of behavioral sciences before you went to the FBI?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  No, um, actually, you know, my background was leadership from the Marine Corps. Um, without realizing I was getting this art form better by the time I'd gotten out, um, came in the FBI. And actually, it was very helpful because I had all these, I probably had about fifteen, fifteen, seventeen years of field experience doing this before actually worked on my graduate work in organizational psychology. And so I started seeing the science behind why everything I was doing in the field was working. So instead of learning, so instead of having the education first and then trying to apply it in limited situations, I had, you know, over twenty-one years of experience of, of, of living this, and now I was learning the.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  What I call leans behind these actions behind it. So it actually was more reinforcing to me. A hell of a lot more sense to me afterwards. And so it was a combining of two. Matter of fact, when I would assemble a team to do a consultation for someone in the country, typically I put three, at least two or three case agents that had operational experience like I did. And I put them with, you know, and one of my organizational psychologists that actually could just validate the science is solid by what it is we're trying to do.

• 12:36Chris Williamson?

  So the collaboration of brains and brawn kind of to a degree, I suppose.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  It's always, you know, and at the root of everything that we're always trying to do is, and someone else asked me too, you know, so how do you recruit a spy? I said, well, first of all, you don't. And it's like with any individual, and this is sales as well, you know, while you're trying, all human beings are trying to do is they're trying to be affiliated and validated by people. And ultimately, human beings are exceptionally predictable. And here's how they're predictable. I can always take at face value that everyone will always act in their own best interests. We're genetically coded for it. We're biologically coded for it. And now my job is to figure out what you think your best interests are. And one way we do that is, and this is what we do all the time, is I have to figure out what your priorities are, your needs, wants, dreams, aspirations,

• 13:25Speaker 01

  personal, professional, long term, short term. And now, once I figure out what your priorities are, and I have resources that'll serve those priorities, we're going to align. And that's, and that's where sales comes in. And that's where collaboration comes in. That's where relationships build. And so what you're doing is when, you know, whether you're talking to a new potential client, or you're trying to recruit a spy, all I'm trying to figure out is what are your priorities? What are your goals and objectives? And what resources do I have to get you to that point?

• 13:53Chris Williamson?

  So what do you want? And what can I give you?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, with, with, with full transparency, you know, the biggest thing too is, you know, I'm, I am 100% anti manipulation or deception or pretext or any of these things. Because people can pick up on manipulation or attempts on manipulation or coercion very rapidly. You know, that gives you that creepy feeling, you know, when you meet someone, you know, bad sales guy trying to sell you something, you pick up on it immediately. And so the best thing you can do is don't have deception. I refuse to lie to you or deceive or use subterfuge in any way, because it'll blow trust. And once trust is blown, Just give up.

• 14:32Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. So take us through the basics of the behavioral science as you were applying it in the field, if you would.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Sure. So my, my five steps that I realized that I was doing it, and here's, well, here's where it came from. I was asked to do an article right before I got out and it was on, you know, what do you, what, what does counterintelligence do? What does your team do? And I'd never really thought about it before. And I, because again, when you live something, you just kind of do and act. And so I took that step back and I, I gave myself that optic of what am I actually doing in all these behavioral assessments? What I was actually doing in all these cases throughout my career, you know, whether it was a recruitment operation, an interview, a double agent operation, false flags, I mean, all the fun, hooky spooky spy stuff.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  And what I, and what I quickly realized was all I was ever doing was strategizing trust. Because I was always trying to get and hopefully have someone from move from point A to point B. Hopefully, point B would be a place that we could collaborate. And the only way someone is going to move from A to B and collaborate with you is through trust. And so when I took that step back and realized, wow, and everything I'd ever done in my entire career, and then for the larger optic in my entire life, and it's what we do as human beings, we're always strategizing trust in relationships. And so I broke it down to five really simple steps. It's what I call the elusive obvious. You know, so as you said, so here's, here's the process. It's really simple. First, what's your goal? What is it you're trying to achieve?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  And then the second part of that, so, so why should they want to? You know, why should they want to be interviewed by you? Why should they want to cooperate with you? You know, why should they want to do anything? And at first, you know, as it surfaces, I got with it, thinking to myself, oh, it's a very short term goal. But then I asked myself, well, why do I want to do that goal? Where am I trying to go with this? And ultimately, in my work, I was trying to protect national security. And ultimately, I came out with what I call the ends goals and means goals. And interviewing someone, or recruiting someone, or selling a product, that's really a means to the end. And at the end goal, whether you're trying to sell a product, you're trying to honor the mission statement of the company. Me, I was trying to honor protecting national security of my country.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  And what was really fascinating was so many people and things have input on those means goals. You know, there's a lot of relationships that go into, if someone willing to cooperate, trust you. So what I started focusing was on the end goals first. So I reversed it. And the end goals for me are very, very simple and easy. My number one goal in every single engagement one is a healthy professional relationship. Because without a healthy professional relationship, everything else will fall apart. I have become so adamant about focusing on relationships above all else that I preach it at every opportunity I get. Because, you know, the greatest analogy I always have with a group of a thousand people or two people. I can always say, I can guarantee you, not one person is sitting in this room as successful as you are

• 17:36Speaker 01

  without a relationship with at least one, two, 10 people. Because nothing can happen from that. So I always focus on the relationships first. Second, under that, my next goal is open, honest communication and transparency. Because you cannot have a healthy relationship without that open, honest communication transparency. And my third anchor, my third end goal I always focus on is I make myself an available resource for the prosperity of others with no expectation of reciprocity. And here's how that breaks down. Available resource for others. I once offered someone help and he thought it was condescending that I was offering help. He thought I was better than he was, and so he took offense to it. So that's why I have available resources. And because human beings do not like being looked down upon, they want to be treated as equal.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  They want to be affiliated and valued. So I offer resources for their prosperity. Prosperity is a very open term. Prosperity according to what they think prosperity is. And the last part of this is no expectation of reciprocity. In other words, I am being willing to give my resources to you without an expectation of reciprocity. In other words, I'm not trying to do this to get something. Again, as soon as you do that, you start going into the realm of manipulation. Shields go up and trust goes out the window. So those, so those are my three anchors and that's step one. As long as I get set on those and I move forward, them are great. So step two, this is easy. Discover their priorities. Their needs, wants, dreams and aspirations, short term, long term, personal, professional. How do they see prosperity and success from their point of view?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Because if you don't talk in terms of their priorities, you're wasting your voice because everyone will listen to you if you're talking in terms of what's important to them. So step two is about them. Step three, understand their context. How do they see the world to their particular optic without judging it? In other words, what's their age, their demographic, their ethnicity, their gender, socioeconomic status, you know, all these things play into how people see world to their particular optic. And to, that's generally also where we find places of affiliation and that we can build upon. One of my favorite questions when dealing with lots of folks internationally is, you know, would you mind sharing a favorite family holiday you had growing up? And again, you don't have to have the same favorite family holiday, but what you have is a favorite family holiday.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Everyone has something they remember from their childhood. And when you share those kinds of things, well, look, I had a childhood just like yours. We had something we enjoyed. We had a tradition. We had a meal. We have taste. We have flavors. We have music. All these things are where we build those affiliations and we build that tribe. Because ancient tribal man, you know, tribe of thirty, forty, fifty, it was the first form of survival. If you were not part of a tribe, the likelihood of you passing on your genetic coding to others was slim to none. And so we're constantly seeking to be affiliated with meaningful people in our lives and be valued by them. So this is the process by which we're doing that. So that's the third step. Fourth step, it's actually, this is where you gotta make sure you're talking in terms of them. I wanna suspend your ego. And that is, you know, you gotta put your own thoughts and opinions aside.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  You gotta talk in terms of them and theirs and never argue context. In other words, if they have a certain point of view that you don't agree with, what's it going to cost you to not argue it? Second, be nonjudgmental. You know, because people, here's another guarantee in life. If you start judging them verbally or nonverbally, I guarantee you their shields are going up because you're basically saying, hey, You're not part of my tribe, and so people get defensive and they'll get shields up. Honoring reason and honoring reasons really where you want to make sure that everything you're saying and doing is congruent with what it is you're trying to achieve. Keep that thoughtful mind engaged. Don't get emotionally hijacked where you're going to let your emotions interrupt what's going on between your brain and your mouth.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And so honoring reasons, I'm always asking myself is what I'm about to do or say going to help or hinder, what is I'm trying to do? And ultimately, remember what I'm trying to do is create a healthy relationship. Fourth is validate others, you know, validation. This is just seeking to understand that a deep level is possible. It's not saying you necessarily agree with them, although agreeing with them can be validating, but just seek to understand, especially if you have a different political point of view. On religion, go anything it is, you know, it's not that you're seeking, it's not that you're placating them or pacifying them. No, you're seeking to understand how it is they have a certain point of view. The key here is you have to be congruent with, you know, what's in your heart and what's coming out of your mouth.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Because if your, if your body language and your verbals are incongruent, you just look like you're, you know, you're full of it. So you have to actually be honest internally about trying to understand them. And finally, the fifth step of step four is be generous, be generous with your time and be generous with your resources. And then finally, fifth step is craftness engagement. You know, how are you going to put all this together to have a great, meaningful, you know, genuine, sincere conversation and dialogue? And so to do that, the first thing I always do is I'm going to state a very specific validation of a strength attribute or action that I've witnessed. In other words, I'm going to always be seeking the greatness in others where their strengths are. So I can always start out with a conversation about, hey, when you did this last week, it had such a great result in this situation.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Would you mind sharing with me how you came up with that? Would you be willing to share it with others? And from there, we just have a great dialogue and conversation. There's many other steps to that, but those are the five basic, you know, steps I used, what I call the elusive obvious. Like, how do you form a relationship of trust and health? That's it.

• 22:57Chris Williamson?

  I get it. So it sounds like steps one through four are setting the scene and coming up with what you're going to say. And then five is delivery. Is that fair to say?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:09Chris Williamson?

  Okay. And it seems like, I think.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Oh, go on, sorry, go on.

• 23:14Chris Williamson?

  Based on what I thought about behavioral analysis, I thought that it would be all step five. That's probably my, um, romanticizing a little bit of the, of the spy industry and then a lack of understanding of just how much stuff probably goes on behind the scenes with counterintelligence and that the, the tip of the spear is exactly just that. It's the, it's the tiny little bit at the end that delivers the, the message or the blow or whatever it might be, as opposed to all of the work that's gone be- before it.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  You know, you did a great job summarizing it and you couldn't be more right. I mean, it really comes down to, you have to know people and how do you know people? And, and this is, this goes back to a lesson I learned really early on in my career in the Marine Corps. I remember I got ranked last out of all these other officers and very humbling moment. And I go up to the, the guy that's rating me and I said, all right, what am I doing wrong? He goes, well, you just need to make it about everyone else but yourself and, and be a better leader. And I was like, well, I thought I was doing that. What the hell are you talking about? Make it about everyone but myself. How do you do that? What's, what's the methodology? How do you make a conversation about everyone else but yourself? I didn't understand it. This process, this is exactly this. This is how you make

• 24:29Speaker 01

  it about the other person. You're finding out their priorities. You're finding out their context. And then how do you put all these things together to talk in terms of them? And, you know, you add these four things I love to throw into every statement I make is one, I seek their thoughts and opinions. I talk in terms of their priorities. I validate them non-judgmentally and I give them choices. When I do one of those four things and everything I say or write, that entire conversation is completely about them.

• 24:52Chris Williamson?

  I understand. And I'm going to guess that the science will say that that plays into a sense of trust and safety and focus on them as an individual, which I'll presume will probably lower barriers and stuff like that.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So here's the science behind it. Um, we know this anecdotally because when you, you know, when, when you say, hey, when someone's talking about things that are important to me, I love listening to it. Um, and we will experience those moments where we've had these conversations where you said you had to go in five minutes, but you're like, you're there for 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes longer because you loved the conversation. Well, it's because they're validating you. So that's behind it. They did a great study at Harvard back in the spring of 2012, where they actually wired people's brains up and what they found was on average, people spend about 40% of their day sharing their own thoughts, opinions and ideas that they have. And what they're doing is they're testing the environment around them, saying, hey, here's what I think, and here's what I think, here's what I think, here's what I think.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Cause we're seeking constantly to see if we can affiliate with tribes and affiliate with people. And what they found is when people were sharing their thoughts and opinions, ideas, and those thoughts and opinions and ideas are being validated by others, dopamine was being released in the brain. So the pleasure centers, you know, we're firing serotonin, oxytocin in the bloodstream. Our pleasure centers are constantly firing when we're being accepted non-judgmentally for those thoughts, opinions and ideas that we have, because we want to be affiliated with meaningful groups and organizations for survival. So that's the science behind why when you structure a conversation, dialogue and relationship like this, it's magic. And it's, and the greatest thing too, it's totally genuine. There's no, you know, I'm, I'm anti-verbal judo and how to win an argument.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  I, I just, there's no strategy on how to do that. It's just how do you get to understand a person and make it about them? Piece of cake.

• 26:43Chris Williamson?

  I get it. I, I get it. So the, the first four steps that are quite conceptual, I think, must require a lot of research about the person, but to me just seem like spending time under tension. Like work out what it is that the person wants and how you can speak their language and give them choices and, and, and don't judge. But the fifth one, I imagine requires a little bit more skillfulness.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Well, here's how I put it together. Here's how I generally structure my, and this again, I don't have my notes in front of me going off the top of my head. What I generally do is again, step one is I make a very specific statement of validation of a strength attribute or action. Now, that's if I know what one of those strengths are. If I don't, I'm gonna be talked to a stranger, do a call. The first thing I'm gonna validate is their time, because human beings do not have to give me their time. So I'm gonna be extremely deferential and gracious for the time that they can give me. And also willing to walk away if they don't wanna engage me, because in order to make this conversation about them, you have to be willing to accept their denials of your time. So I start out with that. Next, I'm gonna seek their thoughts and opinions about their priorities. That's step two of how I strategize.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Now, if I don't know what their priorities happen to be at this point, because again, I haven't had any research, because I do lot. I mean, we do this in Salem all the time, we do lots of cold calls. But if you don't know what their priorities are, here's a general priority of every single human being on this planet. Safety, security, and prosperity for them themselves and their families, because that's survival. And so, public safety is one that I'll always go to for the things I was doing. But safety, security, and prosperity, I work with financial companies all the time that sell insurance. Well, safety, security, and prosperity for them and their families, that's a priority. So again, if I don't know what one specific of their priorities are yet, one that I can ask them about and see and seek their thoughts and opinions on is is safety, security, and prosperity for you and your family, an important thing to you. And so that's step two.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Now, steps, the third way I do this next is I'm gonna validate those thoughts, opinions, ideas that they just shared with me. And validation again, if I don't understand exactly what they're saying, I'll dive a little deeper, so I can get a better understanding. And now, most of the time, what we're trying to do is we're trying to inspire people to listen to our thoughts and opinions, ideas. In other words, what we're trying to impart on them. And I use that word inspire, because that's really critical. Something I realized a number of years ago is that there's a big difference between trying to convince someone of some wanna listen. Because really, you really can't convince anyone of anything, because that's about you imparting what you want them to listen to. Rather, I think of how can I inspire them to wanna listen to me? Because if I'm thinking of inspiring you to action, if I'm thinking of inspiring you to listen.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Or do something in order to inspire you to do it, it's got to be completely about you and your idea. So how do I inspire you to listen to my idea? This is easy. I'm going to ask you your thoughts and opinions and ideas about my thoughts and opinions and ideas. In other words, in other words, you know, say someone has a certain political point of view and I say, no, no, no, I don't agree with that. Here's what I think. That's me trying to convince you of my point of view and you're not going to listen. As opposed to I, they say the same thing. I said, wow, I never heard it really quite put that way before. Help me understand. How did you come up with that? And they share the thoughts and opinions and ideas and I say, wow, I appreciate that. I was curious, what do you think about this? And now I'm seeking their thoughts, opinions about my thoughts and opinions. Everyone always wants to plant seeds with people by, you know, giving them thoughts. You don't plant seeds with people by telling them what you think. You plant seeds with people by asking them what they think.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  And so that's where, that's where this part of the process is. I ask them their thoughts and opinions about my ideas.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Finally, well, not finally, next I now ask them, hey, I understand their priorities. So I've talked in terms of my priorities. Now I offer them choices of overlapping priorities. You know, I heard you say this, this and this, and I thought this and this and this. Do you think we might be able to work on maybe X, Y and Z? And now you're empowering them a choice. And then finally, if appropriate, I empower them a choice about remaining in contact or of assistance. That's it. That's, that's, that's the fifth step. That's how I, that's how I line it out. And so when I'm talking to someone live, I do it that way. Or if I'm going written, I just make sure that at least every one of those things is in every single statement I make.

• 30:52Chris Williamson?

  And now you've got yourself a spy. Now you've caught a spy and they're giving up all of the state secrets and you've got the wifi password and everything.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Only, only if it's in their best interest to do so.

• 31:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, fair point. So I wanted to ask about specific techniques that you guys use in the field when time is of the essence. So obviously when we're talking about this kind of a situation, it's a.

• 31:20Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna guess there'll be a word for it, like a long, a longer game, um, where you have time to prep, but there must be time, you know, you were, you were in the service, I don't know what particular, um, department you would have been in at, uh, at nine eleven, but you know, there's periods of time where you

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was right in New York City during it, yeah.

• 31:39Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow. So, I mean, well, first off, can you tell us, can you tell us about that? What, what, what it was like in the Secret Service when, when, when that was, that was happening?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was pretty interesting. Matter of fact, uh, that my next book starts out with my, my being right there during it. So our office in Manhattan was about five blocks away from the World Trade Center.

• 31:57Chris Williamson?

  Oh, my God.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And, and, uh, I heard, I was on the street with a friend of mine grabbing a cup of coffee, and we heard the first plane hit the North Tower. We looked up and it looked so small compared to the size of the building. We thought it was a small plane that hit. And immediately, I, my mind and thoughts were going to, boy, there's no fog in the air. There's, the guy must have had a heart attack. And I, and I went up, uh, my, my floor where I worked in the building was on the 25th floor. And so I was up in, you know, in our office, looking at the North Tower, again, like five, six blocks away. The smoke kept getting larger and larger and spread out more. And finally started seeing what you thought was debris, you know, coming down from the floors in the North Tower. And it was actually people jumping because you started seeing legs and arms flailing on the way down. And that's, and that's when the South Tower was hit by the jet

• 32:42Speaker 01

  coming, uh, from the south. And that, that fireball coming through is, I, I was like you're watching a, uh, you know, a movie and you're right there. So, yeah, we, because again, I worked counterintelligence at the time. And back then, we were all in the same division with the terrorism division. And the entire office, we worked nothing but then terrorism from, you know, probably about, boy, it was from right from September, straight through to December. I think, I think it wasn't till December of 2001, when we actually had our first day off. We were on, uh, we were on shifts of 12 hours on, 12 hours off, uh, seven days a week for that entire time. And it, it was, it was, it was like, it was a war zone, you know, that kind of exhaustion.

• 33:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Because again, that's 12 hours on, 12 off. That didn't, that didn't count, count your commute time. Um, and it was, it was exhausting. But what, what experience, matter of fact, the, the first night, you know, I, you know, on nine 11, I go down to get my car to go home and I had an engine from the plane that hit the South Tower about 30 feet in front of me, uh, because I'd have flown that far north before it hit the ground.

• 33:42Chris Williamson?

  Shit, that is crazy.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  It was, and so our entire time then was talking to absolutely everyone. You know, you just, you know, there's so, so many leads coming in and you just talk to everyone that might know something. Uh, I, I was, I got involved in so many different interviews, so many different things during a time for, timeframe. Cause every day was a different day. You never knew what you're going to be doing. I was out at the Fresh Kills landfill with a rake, raking for fingers and toes and body parts to try to give back to family members. One day and another day, I'm out at John F. Kennedy Airport, pulling someone off a British Airways flight. That was a name hit coming in from India that they thought was a terrorist. I mean, you had no idea what you're gonna do every day.

• 34:24Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow. That is, that's like a, the equivalent, the secret service equivalent of being a dog's body, I suppose. That like, you know, only you washing the country one day and then you delivering the drinks and then the serving the queen and then doing everything.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a jack of all trades for a while, no doubt.

• 34:40Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, yeah. So, um, with regards to needing to gain trust or be effective rapidly, yes.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Um, so one caveat I'll put to it, anytime you put a time constraint on having to do something and you're not having full disclosure of your time constraint, you will be manipulation. Um, and again, that's, that's just naming the game, you know, I, I think having awareness of what you're about to do um, will keep things good for you. So you don't start rationalizing what the relationship is. Cause if you start using manipulative tactics, you don't have a healthy relationship. You have a very short term, you know, manipulation relationship. And so I, it's healthy for me to do that. And now, and I also caveat 99.99% of my time, I never had to do that, thankfully. Um, but when doing so, yeah, you can't, they're, you know, using the same methodologies that I lined out.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  They're exactly the same. Human beings will, will do exactly the same thing. Um, now, when you're gaining information, there's, you know, people ask me all the time about elicitation. How do you elicit information from people? Um, one, you can't do anything without some semblance of trust. And so you will have to develop some semblance of trust. Now, it's not going to be, it's going to be one-sided trust because they're going to be trusting you. And even though you're actually viewing them not in the same view of, you know, not in the same relationship, but they're uh, human beings have this incentive need to be correct and be correct. Um, I think one of the easiest elicitation techniques there are that people use pretty frequently is what I call an intentional misstatement. Um. So what that is, say something that you aren't quite sure of, blurt it out loud.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Ask them, you know, make a statement and they will correct you. It's a guarantee, you know, um, whether you're trying to gain a date of birth of someone, you know, just say, hey, I'm pretty good at this. What are you born in June ago? No, July. Oh, the fifteenth or the twenty second. I mean, and so right there I got their date of birth without even asking a question. I made a statement.

• 36:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I can play that through my mind as well. And my desire to correct you is like coming up.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, you know, by doing that, you get a lot of people's, you know, priorities. You start understanding their intentions, you know, so whatever tidbits of intelligence you've been um tasked with getting. You create a strategy about how you're gonna ask, make an intentional misstep and about that specific type of intelligence. Cause most of the time when you're are trying to gather information and whether you're trying to do, you know, gather corporate information, you know, for, you know, for takeovers or, you know, to outbid a client. You know, or whether you're trying to, you know, crude crude information for spies, you don't want anyone else to be alerted to the things that you're looking for. Cause the I said, as I said it earlier, if you ask them a question, I guarantee you they're gonna think about that question forever. It'll rattle around in their brain. So the the trick is, don't ask questions about the things that you care most of the finding out about.

• 37:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's planting a flag in the ground to identify what your priorities are, which is not not necessarily what you were after. You wanted theirs.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Right. Right. So, but I'll tell you, I, my earlier years, I was more into understanding and exercising that. And what I came to find out was, was I got better and better at getting that, the stronger the relationship and the trust was. So I will, I go for the rapid, as fast as possible trust with full transparency, which which gets that trust at that point. And then I just come right out and ask them what I want and ask and tell them why I need it. And you'd be amazed at how much easier that is.

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  Can you, can you give us, can you give us an example?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  So, I mean, just probably my last couple of years before I retired, you know, we came up, and I won't give you exact details, but we came up with a situation where we identified an emerging threat, you know, to public safety. And they said, we need to find a source in this area. And I didn't know anyone, but I went to some of my guys that, you know, are my sources of information. I said, hey, we need someone in this area. They said, I don't know, but because I have healthy relationships with them and they have healthy relationships with others, about two weeks later, one of my contacts brings me a potential guy, you know, doesn't introduce me, but gives me his website, gives me an email address. And I was like, ah, this guy might be right up to, you know, right what we're looking for.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  And so what I did was, I looked at his industry, I looked at, you know, his background, and I strategized my, and I actually sent him an email. And in the email, I validated his time. Like I said before, I sought his thoughts and opinions regarding this specific industry and the threat that might have the public safety, but at the same time wanting to protect his industry from being shut down if something from public safety went wrong. In other words, I talked in terms of his priorities. I sought those thoughts and opinions. And I said, here's why it's important to public safety, you know, because we want to prevent X, Y, and Z. And I said, would you be willing to have a conversation about this? If not, please let me know and I'll leave you completely alone.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Well, he called me about, I think, fifteen minutes and I said, hey, Mr. So-and-so, you know, if you wouldn't mind, he goes, I'd love to help out because of what you said, it makes a lot of sense. I said, great, would you mind if I signed you up as one of our sources and put you in the intelligence system and so that people can benefit from your thoughts and ideas and we can might protect these people? He goes, okay. And there you go. That's as easy as it is. It wasn't using any spy craft subterfuge. It was like, hey, here's how you can be a source and here's how you can help, you know, protect people. Again, what are people's general priorities? Safety, protection of themselves or families and their well-being.

• 40:11Chris Williamson?

  What I like about the approach that you're describing here is that it does come from a place of virtue. For the listeners who are regular, they'll know that we're big fans and as far as I'm concerned, truth is a superpower. One of the main reasons that I like trying to tell the truth as much as I can, although I'm not always perfect at it, is that by telling the truth, you never have to remember what you said.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I went through undercover certification course years ago. And they said the same thing, you know, you have only so many lies you can tell. And then you got to keep, the more lies you tell about who you are, the more you got to keep track of. Because once they're out of the bucket, you can't bring them back again. And so I just got in the habit of not lying. And it was so much easier. I just don't lie. Now, if I can't share something with you, there's a big difference between lying and not sharing something. And if I can't share something with you that you want to know, I apologize and tell you why I can't share. Because again, I have transparency.

• 41:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's a difference between, as Sam Harris describes it in his book, Lying. He says, there's a difference between lies of omission and lies of commission. And I think that's identified quite nicely there. So we've talked about being on broadcast. What about when you're on receive? Are there some strategies that people can use to identify? People that are untrustworthy or people that have an alternative agenda? And you know, you watch these stories, these programs like Lie to Me and stuff like that, where you've got these incredibly proficient guys. For anyone who hasn't seen it, the main protagonist is able to detect a modicum of disgust at his stepmother's death. And that means that he did it because his eyes flicked up and to the left and all of this kind of crazy stuff.

• 41:48Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to guess that the level of fidelity is not quite that high, but that there must be some sort of guys in the service who do have some pretty crazy skills like that.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  So I'm very good friends with a few of them. One of my best friends is Joe Navarro, world renowned body language expert. And he will be the first to tell you as well, you, the best people in the world, including Joe, can only detect deception 50% of the time. 50% accuracy using nonverbal detection alone, because it simply doesn't work. Because what you do is if you're going to use nonverbals, and I do, and what you're looking for is you're not looking for deceptive indicators. You're looking for stress indicators, because lying is stressful. But also remembering negative thoughts and events can be stressful as all. And so our nonverbals will indicate comfort from stress. And so I'm looking for, am I causing comfort? I'm causing stress. But again, that's a whole separate topic to get into.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  But so basically, as I heard you ask the question, I get the sense a lot too. How do I, how do I make sure I'm not being taken advantage of or I'm not being manipulated or attempt to be manipulated, correct?

• 42:52Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  This is, this one is really easy because I get this a lot. So I, someone will say to me, so Robin, what do you do if someone's trying to manipulate you? And my first response when someone asked me that the first time, it kind of befuddled me because I said to myself, wow, it's never happened. And they said, well, how does it never happen? I said, well, this is easy because if I'm always looking for a healthy relationship and healthy relationships are based on open, honest communication, transparency. If you're actually communicating something to me that I don't understand because there's omission or there's blank spaces and I ask you a question for clarification, transparency, and you don't give it, I just stop engaging you because you're obviously not looking for a healthy relationship and it's okay with me. Again, I don't hold resentment against it. I just understand that, all right, your agenda is different than mine.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  And if I'm looking for transparency, you're not willing to give it, then I'm not willing to keep engaging with you. And so my only advice to people is, don't be afraid to ask clarifying questions. If you don't understand something, if people are talking fast or they're using verbs and terms or situations you don't quite understand, ask for clarification. Apologize, you know, self-deprecating humor and ask for that clarification. If they can't give it to you, I become skeptical of the priorities that they have, you know, and the goals that they have. I don't think they're going to be really congruent with what came out of their mouth. Especially if someone gives you that creepy car salesman, you know, feeling. It's because they're incongruent with the words that are coming out of their mouths and what they're actually feeling toward you.

• 44:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I guess that's, that's kind of like the canary in the coal mine for all of this, right? If you, if there's just something that you don't understand, that's a byproduct of omission on their side or a lack of some sort of disjointedness within the conversation. And then that can be counteracted by you asking. And then if the follow-up, it's like the,

• 44:44Chris Williamson?

  little hurdle that you're asking them to step over. And if they can't get over that hurdle. It's probably because they don't want to, I suppose.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Right. You stated it perfectly. Absolutely. So I just don't engage with, because again, in that situation, I take people very specific. You know, doesn't mean I can't trust them in another situation, but in this specific situation, the things that we're talking about, no, we're not going to have a healthy engagement here. So I'll just disengage.

• 45:09Chris Williamson?

  It sounds an awful lot like being quite frank and quite upfront, that almost not blasé, but certainly, certainly very upfront and as transparent as you can be, both in terms of what you are trying to, what you're trying to convey and what you do and don't understand, is forming quite a big basis here. And I suppose that the foundation for a relationship of trust is truth in two directions, right?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  And openness. Yeah. You know, and because you said, you know, very frank and it is, it can be very frank, but same time though, it's very extremely cordial because it's always about them. You know, there's never me, and it's never me inflicting my thoughts and opinions on you about you. I don't judge you. I don't say, hey, I'm just being honest. Here's what, you're an ass. You know, that's, that's, that's not the thing you do. It's, it's about being, being frank and open about what my intentions are and trying to understand yours. Because that's, that's it.

• 46:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. So I wanted to pick your brains as far as the classified broadcaster will allow us to just get some, some stories from your time while you're in the service. And the first thing that's come to mind for me is, who do you think on the planet has the best behavioral agents? Would you say that the US is really good? Or do the Russians happen to be fantastic at it?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Boy, everyone's, you know, I wouldn't put it down with service because services and services across all countries have greatness and have and have inside each of those services that has the patience and the focus of trust on and put the and put the broader need of the country ahead of their personal need for self gratification and glory. And I've seen that in every service. I've worked with, I've seen some fantastic Russian officers. I've seen some hard Russian officers. I've seen some fantastic American CIA and FBI agents and some horrible ones. And age doesn't matter. It comes down to, does this person put in the mission of the country ahead of themselves? And do they have the patience to develop healthy,

• 47:23Speaker 01

  trusting relationships? The people that can do that, I don't care where you're from, those are the ones that win. Because they're winning for a greater cause. That's it. I've seen it everywhere.

• 47:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I totally get that. So how about when

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Although, I'll give you one group that I most I was really, really impressed with.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  They were the United States Army Green Berets. I worked with them a couple of years back. And the most different thing about them is that they were very much like my career. My career was what it was, not because of any, anything except just chance. It really was chance. I was, I worked operations for 21 years. I did the same type of operations for 21 years. You're going to either get good or get out. And, you know, and a lot of times in all these other organizations, you'll do it for a couple of years on a street, then you promote it to management and up and up and up. And so you, you're no longer doing the actual craft on the ground and you, and you're

• 48:25Speaker 01

  going to lose it because one, you never mastered it to begin with, and two, you don't do it anymore. I was very fortunate that I did it for a number of years. Then I was on the team and ran the team for a couple of years, still doing it. And then I went back and did it for five more years before I retired. I mean, it was nonstop, constantly strategizing and strategizing, learning about what, and that's why I'm so altruistic about this, because ultimately it came down to, people just want healthy relationships so they can survive. That's it. Now, how do I foster that? And so, and when I mentioned the Green Berets, they spend, this one particular group spent their entire career doing exactly the same thing.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  That's, that's, you're gonna get mad skills at anything you do if you do it for that long.

• 49:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just, so, so services that allow their people to continually hone, practice, refine, and get best at their craft over years, they're gonna be the best.

• 49:17Chris Williamson?

  You end up with some, some real beasts at the end of that, I suppose.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you really do. And, and the greatest thing is, as you call them, the real beasts, these are the ones that are actually the genuinely good people in life, because they know the cause and effect of behaviors, they know that it all comes down to relationships and trust, and there's no, these are the ones that aren't playing games with people anymore. I like, I, I know people every now and then will say, "Hey, when we're going out to dinner, why don't you, you know, talk to that waitress to get her date of birth and her PIN number?" And I'm like, it's like, it's like, it's like, I, I was like, dude, you understand, I don't, I don't play with people. I, I just refuse to play with people. I, I, I honor people too much, and I, and I honor relationships and, and health, and, and being a good human being too much to play with people.

• 49:57Chris Williamson?

  Are there some, are there some agents that you've met who are sufficiently talented to be able to, like, if, if they decided to put their foot to the floor, so to speak, would be able to, um, be able to do some things like that and really, uh, kind of use, use these to get some surprising results out of people?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yeah. I mean, I, so I got a friend of mine, Chris Hagnaggy, social engineer, and actually, I'm a board member on the Innocent Lives Foundation with him. He uses all his, uh, technical and cyber skills to protect companies, and then we took it to the next level, and we're protecting human trafficking with children around the world. And, um, years ago, we put together a, a social engineering course where he certified people as social engineers. In other words, can these people go in and, and hack information from human beings and get these, these, the type of information that can compromise coun- companies, so that we can educate that company on protecting themselves against morons like us, you know, that are, that are actually have nefarious things in their minds, because, yeah, if, if-

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, these these skills used by the bad guys, that's why that's why there are hackers. That's why there are, you know, data mines that get, you know, stolen all the time because it comes down to human beings and these techniques. And the difference is, is that those people are manipulating and have an agenda and generally agendas are on timelines. And so that's why my empowerment with choice about maintaining contact or assistance is always one of my fail safes, um, that make sure this isn't manipulative. Also, no expectation reciprocity, that's my also one. But these people, the bad guys, they're doing exactly the same thing. They just have an agenda. The good thing is though, people with agendas tend to be much more impatient than people that are actually going for healthy relationships.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  So impatience, you can see through impatience very rapidly.

• 51:44Chris Williamson?

  That's so cool. I love the term social engineer as well. It it really does sound like a hacker, um, taken off the computer and into the real world.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  That's what they do. I mean, these guys are phenomena. Chris and his team, you know, are phenomenal at this and they have, they have competitions, you know, and when they go to Black Hat every year, it's just pretty fascinating. When we had the classes out there and Chris about to have another class now down in Florida, you know, we send people, you know, teams out, you know, to engage people, elicit information and practice how to do this. Again, no, you know, no, no personal, you know, personal identifying information or anything to be compromised or anything like that. Just how do you practice engaging with a stranger and developing rapid trust?

• 52:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I I guess watching those guys at work must be pretty fascinating and terrifying in equal measure.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  It it it becomes, you know, when you, when you're, because what it's come down to, you're watching the elusive obvious, what are they doing? They're making it all about the other person. It's really pretty, it's really pretty simple if you know how to get out of yourself and out of your own ego.

• 52:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so one, one thing that keeps on coming to mind for me as well is, obviously, you will have been a, a part of the agency through, not quite through a digital revolution, but certainly through a, a digital resurgence, I suppose. Um, did that and has that made a new body of information? Obviously, how much, how much work is now done online and electronically versus face to face?

• 53:14Speaker 01

  That was huge. You know, government organizations are generally light years behind everyone else and ours was definitely one of them.

• 53:22Chris Williamson?

  But they're big and slow. They're hard to get moving, right? Like when you've got thousands and thousands of people that you need to drag along with you, it's going to take some time to get them up to speed.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  So we went over to a paperless system, 2011 to 2013 ish, maybe 2010 ish. And I thought this would never work. I mean, we were so entrenched with putting a hard piece of paper into a supervisor's inbox, to wait for a signature, to get it back, to put it in a file. We were nothing but a big fat thing of paper in a wall. And I said, this is not really going to work. And I'll tell you what, by the time, you know, within a couple of years, I mean, by the time I left, I'd never touched a piece of paper for years. Everything was electronic.

• 54:06Chris Williamson?

  Man, it sounds so fucking prehistoric.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  I know.

• 54:11Chris Williamson?

  That you've got, here's a thing that's going to happen and there's a guy with a pen and he's going to sign it. Like, he probably couldn't even find a pen now.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  I always carry one. The other thing too was funny too. We moved on to, believe it or not, when I first came in, we used to sign time sheets and we used to have different colored pencils for the different kinds of hours we worked. And so we had to have the right colored pencil when we're filling in our time sheet for the day.

• 54:38Chris Williamson?

  That's cute. That's quite cute. Especially, especially for the FBI. I wouldn't have thought that they would have had something like that.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, time sheets. Yeah, time sheets are big. And they finally got rid of that. And that one electronic too. Yeah, that was, that was pretty funny.

• 54:49Chris Williamson?

  That's hilarious. So before we wrap up, Robin, I wondered if there were any stories that you have that come to mind that you think might interest the listeners? Anything that you've been thinking about recently or any situations with either friends or with past experiences for yourself?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Huh, yeah, I think the world's a pretty interesting place right now. That's, that's, that's one thing.

• 55:14Chris Williamson?

  Moving forward, you think, what do you think the role of uh intelligence officers will be as we, as we go forward?

• 55:22Speaker 01

  It, oh, it's definitely continuing. Um, it has to be, you know. You know, you can only do so many things through a computer, although using the same communication strategies through computers and emails, I do it all the time and it's very effective. The

• 55:37Chris Williamson?

  You're always gonna need someone that's that tip of the spear, though, do you think? We're, we're never gonna be able to just rely on guys that are

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 55:44Chris Williamson?

  Monsters behind the screen.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  You know, we have, we have hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that say we developed trust in one way. It's not gonna get wiped out, you know, in a generation that went cyber. It's, it's genetically, you can't have it happen. That's why, you know, you think about Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of these, you know, social media platforms. People are looking for likes. Well, why are they looking for likes? They're looking for followers because that's validation. So my, my anecdote is it probably takes you about a thousand likes equal one person saying good job in life, um, in life presence. So again, these things are great. I gotta tell you, they're fantastic tools and I love them to death. Um, but still, one-on-one dialogue, communication and trust and, and having a healthy relationship that way.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Um, because you're able to look at everything that's coming at you, able to hear the words, the visual cues, the nonver, the nonverbal cues. All these things become very congruent with, and might form in a healthy relationship. Is this, is this genuine? And you can, you can do an awful lot without that, um, but you're never gonna take it over an edge with, with it. Um, so.

• 56:50Chris Williamson?

  That must be quite, that must be quite reassuring, I suppose, to a degree that there's this kind of, there's kind of like an upper ceiling. And I, I remember uh, listening to uh Sam Harris talk about the impact, the upcoming impact that virtual reality will have. And he talked about this uh kind of cognitive ceiling. You could, you could argue as you've kind of alluded to there where There's only so far in terms of persuasion that a flat screen in your hand or in front of you on a computer will be able to take you. However, the more immersive you make that experience, the higher that ceiling is going to become raised. So with things like VR and

• 57:30Chris Williamson?

  now these these new programs where they can take like five minutes of you or me speaking and then completely recreate whatever they want with the words and the and the phrases and the cadence that we've been speaking in. That's that's a pretty scary thought.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  It is. You know, I I'm not one of these guys that says, oh, it's always better to back this way, or it was much, you know, the good old days kind of guys. I love I love watching the advances of things. But every time you have a new breakthrough in something, it confused things. Society will be confused because of our coding, our genetic and biological coding. They'll they'll jump to it. They'll they'll seeking an immediate gratification, you know, intellectually from it in some way whatsoever. And then and then the brain's going to get confused for a while until they figure out how to actually make it a functional tool that actually aids life. Because it takes a while. Every time, every time there's a new jump forward in anything, there's always a stumbling period with trying to figure out how how does actually interact with with this miraculous thing between our

• 58:33Speaker 01

  two ears that is is really the most advanced advanced thing we'll ever see in our lifetime is this brain. It's it's pretty remarkable.

• 58:41Chris Williamson?

  It's crazy, isn't it? And I guess the pace of change as well. The fact is that society is able to move so much more quickly than our brains are. And the most stupid thing is that even if our brains were able to catch up, even if you gave it like a decade to catch up, it'd still be so far behind. It would be almost pointless. Like, I don't need you. Like, 10 years ago, I didn't need my brain to be able to use a file of fax. I needed it to be able to use a BlackBerry. And in 10 years' time, I won't need it to use Instagram. I'll need it to use whatever whatever's coming next in a decade.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  I still can't understand how I could get anything done twenty years ago. You know, with nothing but a pad of paper and a, and a paper calendar on my desk. I have no idea how I live without a Google Calendar or scheduling or, or constant communication with the world. I have no idea how I got anything done before. And then, then you bring it up to now, I have no idea how I get so much done now because how do I, because I, I could never, I could not have possibly done all this kind of stuff twenty years ago. You know, what the hell did I do with all my time? It was, it's really, it's fascinating to think about.

• 59:40Chris Williamson?

  It must feel like, or it must have felt like I'm looking back on your career now. And like I say, having seen the, uh, both sides of this kind of digital surgeons to a degree, it, it must almost feel like two different jobs.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  It's interesting, uh, it does, and, and I'll give you an analogy. It's, it's like a, it's like a sense, you know, like one of our five senses. I remember I did a trip and I won't say what country I went to, um, cause I don't want to disparage anyone. But we did this overseas trip and, you know, we went into their command center where they have all their analysts sitting inside this command center. And they had so much technological capabilities, um, with, with following people in their own country, like the spies in their own country. That they, I, I remember one of them, uh, said that, yeah, it was a bad day if we only have ninety-five percent of this person's day covered. Or we knew what they were doing. Ninety-five, they knew what this guy was doing ninety-five percent of the time because their technological coverage.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  And they asked, and they asked us, and I was like, and I was like, maybe ten percent of the day we know what they're doing? And, but you know what their challenge was? They couldn't recruit sources. They had a very, very hard time using interpersonal skills to actually get human bodies recruited. And so they were massively behind in a lot of areas because one of their senses was enhanced, the technological sense. But their other sense of interpersonal skills was completely thrown out because they relied too heavily on the other.

• 1:01:05Chris Williamson?

  There was a compensatory, uh, mechanism.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right. And us, our, our, our interpersonal skills tend to be higher because our constitution keeps us from doing anything like that.

• 1:01:16Chris Williamson?

  Well, when you're skinned, when you're skinned, you need to rely on your skills, don't you? You can't be, you can't be spending lots of money on things. Um, interesting statistic, I was watching a, a Amazon documentary recently. And they said that if you took the data that was collected on everybody on the earth and you printed it on, um, an A four piece of paper, double sided A four piece of paper. Every day's worth of data that gets collected would go from here to the sun and back four times. So the stack of paper of data that is collected on a daily basis and most of it's just garbage, gobbledygook to do with like location data and how many bytes

• 1:02:00Chris Williamson?

  of this and what address was it sent to, so on and so forth. But that's the volume of data that's to the sun and back four times. I just thought that was unbelievable. Yeah. And the another statistic that they dropped was that the maddest thing to do with how efficient it is, and you were talking earlier on about having the paper going in and out and all this sort of stuff. If you were to remove all of the hardware and just have the electrons, so the the actual atoms that are containing the information that the internet and all of all of the collective human knowledge electronically is held on, it would be about the size and the weight of an orange. So you think you've got everything,

• 1:02:44Chris Williamson?

  everything and all of the banks and banks of computers and the servers at Google and all of this, even the hard drive in your house. And it's like just an orange. That's all you've got.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yep, humbling, innit?

• 1:02:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, really. And then you compare that with to the sun and back four times a day. And yeah, you know, I think it's probably a pretty big credit to yourself and also the guys that you worked with that you were able to survive and adapt through that particular period because it must have been super turbulent.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Um, and you know, it's like anything, you either get on board or you get out and it really, I really kept it, I really tried to keep things as basic as possible. And they did, there was every day, there was always, they're always, man, I'm so sick of that systems getting updated. And it usually, you know, I've got a credo in life. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, hell, nothing was broken. They fixed it every day anyway. Drove me up a wall.

• 1:03:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I bet it was. So Robin, can you tell the listeners about your books, please, and where they can find you online?

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Um, so first, let's do find me online. That's easy. My website is www dot people formula dot com, all one word, people formula. I'm on LinkedIn, obviously. Twitter is at R D R E K E. Follow me there. I don't post a whole lot and I don't take. Here's the other thing, too. I never take sides. I just take science and human and human interactions, because here's another guarantee in life. Take a side, half the world will line up against you. Um, I don't like that. Um, and then so my books, I have one, my first book came out years ago called It's Not All About Me, The Top 10 Techniques for Quick Report and Get on Amazon in any country. Um, that's a short read, about 20,000 words.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  My last book that came out is called Go to Trust, An American Counterintelligence Expert's Five Steps to Lead and Succeed. Uh, that's also all over the place. That was with St. Martin's Press, great publisher I worked with there. And then my next book coming out, actually, um, it's, it's on behavioral analysis and it's, it's the six signs that you can actually judge whether you can trust someone or not. Actually, more likely, it's predict their behavior. And we're still working on a title right now. Uh, it was, uh, what's, what's our current working title? Um, uh, just slipped my mind. We've had about three or four.

• 1:04:57Chris Williamson?

  I love, I love working titles. I love the, the journey that things go through, like when we were coming up with the, with the title for this podcast and I went through like this six month period while I was like pre-recording shows and doing things. When I look back, I went back through my notes not so long ago, and I'm going through and I was thinking, what the fuck were you thinking? Like, just looking at all of these crazy names. And it's, because after a while, it's kind of like the name of a pet, right? Like, the book, your, your book names will roll off your tongue as if it was, as if it was a child's name. But during the process, you look at the words with such like high fidelity,

• 1:05:40Chris Williamson?

  like, is that even a word anymore? Does it, it doesn't sound like a word. It doesn't look like a word.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Actually, I just remembered it's called sizing people up is what it's called right now. It probably will be too. It's probably what's going to want to be sizing people up.

• 1:05:53Chris Williamson?

  Nice. Well, if it changes, we'll know. We'll know that you've had a you've had a creative wobble.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Another creative wobble. That's a good description of it, too. I create wobbles every day.

• 1:06:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, back and forth. Robin, man, it's been absolutely fascinating. I'd love to get you back on again soon. I'm sure that the listeners will be will be very interested to to see what comes out with the next book. And good luck finishing it off.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for that. Appreciate it, Chris, and thanks for all your time.

• 1:06:20Chris Williamson?

  Awesome.