Most Replayed Moment: Ex-CIA Reveals What Spies Know About Human Nature

What do spies understand about people that most of us miss? John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, whistleblower, and intelligence expert who spent years working inside the world of espionage and national security. In this Moment, John Kiriakou reveals the lessons the intelligence world teaches about human behaviour, how people can be read through subtle signals, and what years of studying others taught him about trust, deception, and understanding those around you. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/9k4pMiF564b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/eAG8tCJ564b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

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

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  John, como llegaste a ser un espion de la CIA?

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Cuando tenía nueve años, le dije a mis padres que quería ser un espion cuando crecí. Llegó el momento de solicitar para la universidad y solicité solo en una universidad, la Universidad de George Washington en Washington, porque era a dos cuadras de la Casa Blanca y era una de las tres escuelas en América que ofrecía un programa de estudios de Medio Oriente. Fui una de las cuatro personas en ese programa nuevo de estudios de Medio Oriente. Fui a la universidad con un doctorado en asuntos legislativos con un enfoque en la política exterior. Estaba dando clase en ese programa llamado "La psicología de la liderazgo". Se enseñó por un psiquiatra eminentemente llamado Dr. Gerald Post.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Y nos dio una tarea un día en la que teníamos que esconder a nuestros jefes. Teníamos que seguir a nuestros jefes durante una semana.

• 1:00Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Tus jefes?

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Sí, trabajé en una unión de trabajadores llamada la Unión de Trabajadores de Alimentos y Trabajadores Comerciales. Así que solo teníamos que seguir a nuestro jefe durante una semana y luego escribir un perfil psicológico. Usé decenas de notas de textos de psicología y terminé diciendo que él era un sociópata con tendencias psicopáticas y tal vez violentas y tenía estas citaciones. Pasé el documento. Dr. Post me lo regaló una semana después, me dio un A y luego escribió: "Por favor, ve a mi oficina después de la clase". Así que me acercé a él después de la clase y le dije: "Dr. Post, querías verme". Él dijo: "Ven a mi oficina". Así que fuimos allí, cerró la puerta y dijo: "Escucha,

• 1:46Speaker 01

  realmente no soy profesor aquí. Soy un oficial de la CIA, bajo la sombra de la sombra como profesor aquí, y estoy buscando a personas que se ajusten a la cultura de la CIA. Creo que tú te ajustarías a la cultura de la CIA. ¿Te gustaría ser un espion?" Y dije: "Sí, lo haría". Luego tomó el teléfono y llamó el número y dijo: "Bob, este es Jerry. Tengo una buena para ti. ¿Tienes algún tiempo?" Y dijo: "Claro". Escribe una dirección en un trozo de papel y dice: "Está en esta dirección en 20 minutos". Estaba solo a una parada de metro, así que salté en el metro, fui a Roslin, Virginia, justo a través del río.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Tenía que hacer un viaje para entrar y una mujer abre la puerta y dice: "¿Estás aquí para Bob?" Y dije: "Sí". Ella dice: "Ven".

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Estaba sentado allí por un momento y luego este gigante de 6 metros y 6, 350 libras salía de su oficina y dice: "John, Bob, ¿cómo te va? Quiero que estés en la Universidad Medical de George Washington, el sábado por la mañana a las 8. Tenemos algunos pruebas para ti". Dije: "OK". Y luego abrimos las manos y me fui. Así que el sábado por la mañana fui al auditorio de la Universidad Medical de GW. Había como, no sé, 200 personas allí y nos dieron una prueba. Mi esposa me levantó y me dijo: "¿Cómo te va?" Dije: "No tengo idea".

• 3:16Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Su esposa en este punto sabe que estás solicitando para la CIA?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Sí, y eso iba a ser casi el extremo de lo que finalmente supo, porque una vez entré...

• 3:27Steven Bartlett?

  Pero no se lo daba a decirle.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  No se lo daba a decirle, no.

• 3:31Steven Bartlett?

  Así que lo dijo de todos modos.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Sí. Cuando solicité por primera vez, dijeron: "Escucha, no se lo diga a nadie porque puede que estés bajo la sombra de la sombra, puede que estés bajo la sombra profunda y no podemos tener gente que sepa que eres un oficial de la CIA".

• 3:45Steven Bartlett?

  Presumiblemente la CIA es inteligente lo suficiente como para poder ver si le has dicho.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Sí, y te preguntan en el poligrafo: "¿Lo dijiste?"

• 3:52Steven Bartlett?

  ¿En serio?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Y dije: "Sí, lo dije". Ella es mi esposa. ¿Qué voy a hacer? Pero llegó al punto en que me volví a casa de un día en el que entré a la casa de alguien y planté una cámara en un insecto y me volví a casa y ella decía: "¿Cómo estuvo tu día?" Dije: "Genial. ¿Qué hiciste?" No hizo nada. Y luego mi teléfono sonrían a medianoche y alguien diría: "La lluvia en España cae principalmente en el planeta". Y yo diría: "Los mares cosechan azúcar y los cerdos cosechan azúcar y los cerdos cosechan yavía". Y eso significa: "Conviértete en el estacionamiento del Club de Yacht en tres horas". Y luego me fui. Ella decía: "¿A dónde vas? Es medianoche". Tengo que trabajar. Así que me fui, hice mi reunión, volví a casa a las 6 de la mañana, justo en el momento para darme un baño

• 4:38Speaker 01

  y limpiar y vestir para ir a trabajar y ella decía: "¿Cuál fue su nombre?"

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Y recuerdo esta terrible vez, eso es lo que me dijo: "¿Cuál fue su nombre?" La verdad es que estaba sentado en un basurito de basura esperando a que alguien se acercara a la calle y tirara una bolsa de documentos. Y me quedé lleno de basura y le dije: "¿Siento seriamente que te siento como si hubiera estado con una mujer? ¿Seriamente?"

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Así que terminamos obteniendo un divorcio.

• 5:15Steven Bartlett?

  Así que hace la evaluación, presumiblemente entran, y luego hace el entrenamiento.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Sí, llamó a mí dos semanas después, a Bob sí, y dijo: "¡Hizo que las puertas se deshagan de esas pruebas!" Dije: "Oh, genial, OK". Así que un mes después me invitaron a la sede de la headquarter y fui entrevistado por la Oficina de Operaciones de Medio Oriente, la Oficina de Análisis de Medio Oriente y la Oficina de Análisis de la Liderazgo. Me ofrecieron el trabajo de análisis en el escritorio de la Irak.

• 5:46Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Y cuál es el total sumario de entrenamiento que te dieron en la variedad de roles diferentes que tenías? ¿Cómo entrenan a un espion?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Esa es una buena pregunta y la respuesta es muy diferente dependiendo de dónde empiezas tu carrera. Así que porque empecé mi trabajo en el análisis, el entrenamiento inmediato era en dominar el estilo de escritura de la CIA. Así que el producto más importante que la CIA escribe todos los días es el PDB, el Briefe diario del Presidente.

• 6:17Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Y le dice al Presidente qué?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Lo que crees que necesita saber.

• 6:21Steven Bartlett?

  OK.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Así que, por ejemplo, cuando los iraquíes comenzaron a moverse a la frontera con Kuwait, tuvimos este gran debate: ¿Van a cruzar la frontera? ¿Sí o no? Así que dije: "Escucha, ¿por qué no llamo al Atache de Defensa Americana en Bagdad y le pido que se acerque y mire y nos diga lo que ve?" Se acerca y se vuelve a dar, me llama y dice: "Literalmente, el ejército iraquí está en camino a la frontera con Kuwait". Así que escribimos algo para el Presidente diciendo que Irak va a invadir Kuwait y probablemente sucederá en los próximos 48 horas.

• 7:01Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Cuándo vio el Presidente ese Briefe en particular?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  A las 7 de la mañana del día siguiente.

• 7:05Steven Bartlett?

  OK, ¿y hay otras situaciones en las que el Presidente lo obtuviera en medio de la noche?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Sí, sí.

• 7:10Steven Bartlett?

  Y se lo diera en medio de la noche.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Sí, hay estos niveles de inmediato. Hay rutina, que es como, ¿qué importa? Y luego hay prioridad, que significa, eh, lo haré algún día hoy. Luego hay inmediato, que significa que probablemente deberías leerlo primero. Pero luego hay flash, que significa, oh, Dios mío, algo terrible acaba de suceder. Probablemente deberías despertar al Presidente. Y luego hay critic, que significa que están viniendo por las paredes de la embajada. Estamos en guerra, despertar al Presidente, arruinar los aviones.

• 7:48Steven Bartlett?

  El 9/11.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  El 9/11, eso es un critic.

• 7:53Steven Bartlett?

  Así que volviendo a esta pregunta de tu entrenamiento.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Sí.

• 7:57Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Qué es lo que la CIA te enseña sobre la naturaleza humana y cómo usar la naturaleza humana para tu ventaja? Que podría ser transferible a otras disciplinas en la vida como el negocio o...

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Bueno, esto va a sonar menos bueno, pero es vida real, es vida cotidiana, especialmente en el negocio. La CIA activamente busca contratar a personas que tienen lo que llaman tendencias sociopáticas. No sociopatas. Los sociopatas no tienen conciencia. Solo explotarán en un examen de poligrafía, pero son imposibles de corralar, son imposibles de mantener bajo la sombra. Y es porque no son capaces, sus cerebros no les permitirán sentir resentimiento o remordimiento.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Ahora, en el negocio, la mayoría de los CEOs son sociopatas, la mayoría, no todos, pero la mayoría, especialmente en grandes empresas, porque se esfuerzan para llegar al top, generalmente en la espalda de la gente que los rodea. No se sienten mal arruinando al siguiente para obtener esa próxima promoción. La CIA quiere personas como esa, porque son las personas que van a entrar en una embajada exterior. Una persona normal no abogaría por entrar en una embajada exterior que es territorio soberano de un país exterior. Yo lo haría. Me encantaría hacerlo.

• 9:28Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Por qué?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Porque somos los buenos.

• 9:31Steven Bartlett?

  Así que, ¿tienes tendencias sociopáticas?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Absolutamente.

• 9:35Steven Bartlett?

  ¿Y cuáles son tus tendencias sociopáticas?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Mi tendencia sociopática era operar en áreas legales, morales y éticas.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Specifically, that's what it was.

• 9:50Steven Bartlett?

  I'm really curious about what we can learn about human nature from someone whose job was to meet strangers and to get them to basically sometimes to turn against their own country. I'm really interested in, and I think, I think it's informative because so many of us, you know, when we think about what good leadership is or what good salesman or womanship is, it seems like there's transferables. I guess for some people it's family. I guess for some people it's something else, that, that, that hook that you're talking about, that thing that gets them.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  And the word that they use at the CIA for the hook is a vulnerability. And it's not really a vulnerability in every case. Now, ninety five percent, studies have been done about this internally at the CIA. Ninety five percent of the people who agree to become spies for us do it for the money. Right? It's, it's a simple cash transaction. You give me money, I'll give you secrets. Ninety five percent.

• 10:51Steven Bartlett?

  So you're telling me that you think human motivation is ninety five percent driven by money?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:56Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yes. The rest was love and family, ideology, revenge and excitement.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  You're going to get a handful of people who are hooked on James Bond movies and they will do it, I mean, you're going to pay them anyway, but they will do it just for the adrenaline rush.

• 11:18Steven Bartlett?

  It's interesting because when I look at this list of things and I compare it to business, it, I would say it's slightly different from my experience of hiring people, specifically of hiring people. I tend to think that, you know, you could, one would ask themselves, like, why would someone leave a company right now, like, I don't know, OpenAI and go work at a startup? They're going to get paid way more at OpenAI. You've got these equity and these grants, but people are on mass doing that. And even when I think about the early days of Google, people left with the big conglomerates that would pay them more and they went and worked for Larry and Sergey, getting paid way less.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:56Steven Bartlett?

  But to be involved in something small, exciting. And, and so I, and this is what, what I think about when I sit, you know, probably, I've had thousands of people in my life now across my businesses. And money is a factor, but it doesn't tend to be the biggest factor. It tends to be, in my experience, there's a particular hero's journey in their mind that they want to be seen through, they want to complete. You know, there's a particular way that they see themselves and they want to fulfill that.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I could get that. I, I work with a, with a very, very tiny startup right now called Ivy Cyber and it, it focuses on privacy software, you know, things like, you know, scrambling your data so it can't be intercepted, that, that sort of thing. And I've participated in a couple of pitches to, to angel investors. And they all say exactly the same thing that you did.

• 12:55Steven Bartlett?

  And this is why I was confused when I had that money was ninety five percent because I just think, especially in the work that you, I don't know, especially in the work that you do, I would assume.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  But look at it this way, and I think this would explain the discrepancy. You're comparing people who are making a life versus people who are betraying their country.

• 13:17Steven Bartlett?

  Sure. And what's interesting as well is in those examples that you've given, money is actually a proxy to be able to take care of my family and to be able to, you know, fulfill my ideology and maybe to get excitement and revenge. Do you know what I'm saying? So even that guy that wanted the plane ticket so he could fly home, yeah, he could, he could have, the money could have got him home if you'd just given him, but the reason why he wanted to go home was because his family.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  His family, that was it.

• 13:47Steven Bartlett?

  What's the extent of the things that the CIA can get as a incentive for someone to turn against their nation to give secrets?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Quite literally anything you can imagine.

• 13:58Steven Bartlett?

  Even if it's against the law?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Well, like, they're not going to get like drugs or, you know, child prostitutes or, no, not stuff like that.

• 14:08Steven Bartlett?

  What if someone said, I want you to, um, get me a, a green card?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 14:17Steven Bartlett?

  What if they said?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  If the information is good enough, not a problem.

• 14:21Steven Bartlett?

  What if they said, I want you to, I've got this tax bill, I want you to make the tax bill go away?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Okay, give me, give me the plans to that Russian tank, we'll make it happen.

• 14:31Steven Bartlett?

  What if it was an American, would they speak to the IRS here and just get rid of it?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Oh, if it was an American citizen, you mean?

• 14:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:40Steven Bartlett?

  But they, why?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  We normally don't recruit American citizens. By law, the CIA can't operate domestically, although they have offices all over the country. Those offices are generally to, to debrief business leaders, C-suite officers who travel to denied areas. For example, if, if you take a trip to North Korea, let's say, I'm going to call you and I'm going to say, you don't know me, but I'm from the CIA and I understand you just went to North Korea and I was wondering if I could come over to your office for an hour and just ask you about your trip. Ninety nine point nine nine percent are going to say yes because they're patriots. So I go to your office, I give you my business card and we just chat about, you know, your

• 15:28Speaker 01

  impressions of the place and that kind of thing.

• 15:33Steven Bartlett?

  Just to close off on this point, are there any skills that the CIA taught you or trained you in that you think are transferable for business that we haven't talked about?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  They, they trained us also in lying and lie detection. That was actually quite important. You know, you, at the CIA, you're, you're a trained liar. And this is why the divorce rate's so high. It's the highest divorce rate of any entity in, in the US government. It's, it's upwards of eighty percent.

• 16:03Steven Bartlett?

  Trained to lie? How do they train you to lie?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. I work for an import export company.

• 16:11Steven Bartlett?

  But do they teach you the art of lying?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:13Steven Bartlett?

  And what is the art?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's hard to, like, it's hard to pin down. You just sort of have to have it. You have to have that ability, but the hard part is you have to keep the lies straight. I'll give you another example. I've never told this story before.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  I was asked by headquarters, I was overseas in the Middle East, and I was asked by headquarters to target one specific officer of this foreign country.

• 16:41Steven Bartlett?

  Tonk it.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hi, how are you? Oh, we've never met. I'm John. So nice to meet you. Let me take you to lunch. He had access to, to information that we really needed. So they told me to accidentally bump into him. So I surveilled him for a week and he was single and on Saturday morning he went to a coffee shop. So I go into the coffee shop and I'm looking at him and he's looking at me and I said, I know you. Ministry of Foreign Affairs? He said, yes. Do I know you? I said, I am John from the American Embassy. Oh, nice to, nice to see you. I said, hey, good to see you too. Do you live in the area? Yes, I do. I said, oh, so do I. I didn't, I lived like across town. Oh, fancy meeting you here at this coffee shop. I come here all the time.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Do you? Yeah, he says, I come here all the time. Why don't you have a seat? He says. So I sit down. At the end of the conversation, I go back to the embassy and I read a cable and I said, he's gay. I'm a hundred percent sure he's gay. So then we started this conversation, headquarters and I, how can we use that to our benefit?

• 17:45Steven Bartlett?

  Did he have a wife?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:47Steven Bartlett?

  He was single?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Which was unusual at his age.

• 17:50Steven Bartlett?

  How did you know he was gay?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I just, it was a vibe.

• 17:55Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  So headquarters says, we want you to pretend that you're gay. I said, oh, come on, you guys. No, we really need the information. You got to pretend that you're gay. I said, okay, I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle Sam. So I call him and I said, hey, I have two tickets to this show and I was hoping maybe you'd be free, maybe we'll grab some sushi afterwards.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  He said, "Yeah, I'd love to." So we go to the show. He thoroughly enjoyed it. And we go for sushi afterwards. And then we go out again and he says, "Why don't you go over to my place some night and I'll make dinner?" I said, "Great." So I go over to his place. He made a lovely dinner. And then I thought, "Well, I have to invite him to my place." So I told my wife, "You're gonna have to, like, get out." So she left. I made dinner. I removed all the pictures of us together. And we had just gotten married. So we had, like, our wedding picture up and everything. At the dinner, he leaned in to kiss me. And I instinctively backed off. And he said, "Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I thought you're gay." And I said, "Oh, no, I am gay.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  I'm not into hairy guys." And he's like, "Oh, okay." I said, "I'm sorry. I think you're great, but I'm not feeling it."

• 19:24Steven Bartlett?

  You didn't kiss him?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  No. So we remained friends. And in the end, he gave me the information. Because we were friends. And then he opened up. He's like, "I can't tell anybody I'm gay. They suspect I am, and they passed me over for promotion. And my boss asked me, 'Is there something in your personal life that you're not telling me? He knows I'm gay.'" I said, "Listen, your culture's backwards. Don't tell them you're gay. Just say that you've just never met the right woman and, inshallah, the right woman is coming, you know, in your life at some point." I actually Googled him a couple of years ago, and he did become an ambassador, finally.

• 20:03Steven Bartlett?

  And he's still working in that country now? Does that kind of still happen a lot in the CIA where you have to take one for the team?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:11Steven Bartlett?

  Have you ever taken one for the team?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 20:14Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not sure you're telling the truth.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Well, it came close.

• 20:17Steven Bartlett?

  When did it come close?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  So I was overseas. I was a brand-new operations officer. And there was a woman in this foreign intelligence service who was the ugliest woman I've ever seen in my life. Like, you want to avert your eyes. Like, she came off the side of Notre Dame. She was a, you know, a stone gargoyle with a giant mole right here with a giant hair coming out of it. That kind of ugly. So... So I took her to lunch. And she was very nice. And then I thought, I did something kind of gutsy by CIA standards. Because it was early on in our relationship. I invited her to go to lunch on a Saturday.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Now, as a rule, the people in this country were not allowed to socialize with us privately. It had to be, like, their whole office, you know, or several of them together. So I asked her just to meet me privately for lunch on Saturday. Don't tell anybody.

• 21:21Steven Bartlett?

  So she was someone from the Middle East?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yes. And she agreed. And I was like, "Oh, my God, she said yes." And I ran back to the office. I was like, "She said yes to a lunch on Saturday alone." And my boss says, "Okay. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to fuck her." And I said, "What?" I said, "Have you ever seen her?" And he said, "I know. But we're the good guys, and you're gonna have to take one for the team." And I go, "Oh, my God," I said. I go, "Okay, I'll do it." And he says, "No, you're not gonna fuck her. We don't do that." I said, "I don't know. I just started this. I've never been an operations guy before. How am I supposed to know?" He said, "Come on."

• 22:08Speaker 01

  He said, "Just develop her like a normal person. You don't have to fuck her." I said, "Oh, my God, you almost gave me a heart attack."

• 22:14Steven Bartlett?

  But they might not be mad if you did.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  So long as I reported it and I got the recruitment out of it.

• 22:21Steven Bartlett?

  It wasn't illegal to, you know, sleep with assets?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with assets. It has happened to a couple of people I know. And they end up being pulled back to the United States. You have to sit in the penalty box if you do that. You're not supposed to do that. But yeah, it happens sometimes.

• 22:37Steven Bartlett?

  So extortion isn't a real thing?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  It can be. We don't... When I first got hired, one of the old timers told me the story of, about an ayatollah that they were trying to recruit. And they set this ayatollah up with a prostitute. And it was, he had sex with this prostitute in a room where they had cameras everywhere. And so they bumped him afterwards. They bumped into him and said, "Hey, we have all these pictures." And they laid out the pictures of him, you know, butt naked with this prostitute. And he said, "Yeah? Give me that one in eight by 10? Give me two five by sevens of that one? How about some wallet size for this?" He's like, "Get out of here." And he said, you know, "After that,

• 23:23Speaker 01

  we just stop doing that. It doesn't work." When you recruit somebody, you really do need the relationship to be based on mutual trust.

• 23:30Steven Bartlett?

  Not coercion or pressure or threats?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Threatening somebody, it's not gonna result in a productive relationship. The Russians do it. The Israelis do it. But most intelligence services around the world don't.

• 23:43Steven Bartlett?

  Because you've been in this world, what is it that you know about the nature of the reality that we all live in that the average person really has no idea about? Do you know what I mean?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:57Steven Bartlett?

  Because, you know, going back to what I said earlier, three years ago, before I started doing all this podcast stuff and started interviewing people that had been involved in spy work and CIA and all this, I was kind of like naive to the way that the world worked. I thought, "I thought if I have a password on my device, my device is secure." And I thought that, you know?

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:16Steven Bartlett?

  All these kind of just simple things. But what is it that you know about the nature of reality that most people don't?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Well, I guess it's a couple of things. You know, John Kennedy called the CIA the best and the brightest. And we're not. We're just average people. And we're not as smart as we think we are. We're not as worldly as we think we are. We've pretty much missed every major global development since 1947. From the, you know, the rise of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the Soviet Union to the Suez Crisis and the Iran hostage crisis and 9/11 and everything else. We missed it. We're really good at day-to-day, you know, updates for the president. We're really good at recruiting minor hangers-on around terrorist groups.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  But the big-picture items, we're just not good at it, number one. Number two, until 9/11, it was against the law, like in stone, to spy on Americans. And now billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans. Whether it's NSA or CIA or FBI or intelligence community contractors. Nothing is secret. Nothing. And to make matters worse, let's say maybe you did do something that law enforcement might be interested in. They don't need a warrant anymore.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  They don't need to go to a judge and say, "Well, we have reason to believe, you know, blah, blah, blah." All they have to do is just buy your metadata, because it's for sale. Just go to the carrier. Just buy it. They don't need a judge's order to do that. It's all out there. We've made ourselves vulnerable. All of our lives are out there. Whether it's on Facebook or X or Insta or whatever. If they really want to get you, they're gonna get you. Which reminds me of a book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate. He's a professor of law at Harvard, and it's called Three Felonies a Day. And he argues in this book that we are so over-criminalized, so over-regulated in this country

• 26:32Speaker 01

  that the average American, on the average day, going about his or her normal business, commits three felonies. Every day. You may not mean to, but you do. Every day. So if they decide they want you, they don't like your politics, they can get your metadata, they can go through that metadata, find crimes that they can charge you with, and ruin your life. And there's nothing you can do to protect yourself.

• 27:02Steven Bartlett?

  To some extent, they did that to you?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they did. They did that to me.

• 27:06Steven Bartlett?

  Because you spoke out about a torture program that was happening in the CIA?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, John Brennan wrote a letter to Eric Holder and said, "Charge him with espionage." And Holder wrote back. Eric Holder was the Attorney General. Holder wrote back and said, "My people don't think he committed espionage." And John Brennan wrote back to Holder and said, "Charge him anyway and make him defend himself." So they arrested me and charged me with five felonies, including three counts of espionage. Espionage can be a death penalty case. Charged me with espionage. They waited until I went bankrupt 10 months later with $2 million in legal fees. And then they dropped the espionage charges. And they said, "We can re-add the espionage charges,

• 27:53Speaker 01

  or you can take a plea to this lesser charge." What are you gonna do? Roll the dice, knowing that the government wins 98.2% of its cases, according to ProPublica? Or do you just take the deal and make it go away? And that's what I did.

• 28:08Steven Bartlett?

  And you got roughly two years in jail?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ended up doing 23 months.

• 28:14Steven Bartlett?

  And for anyone that doesn't know, this was because at some point in your career, you spoke out about torture programs that were happening in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and at secret prisons that the CIA had set up around the world, right?

• 28:29Steven Bartlett?

  And going back up to the top of my question here, I'm really trying to speak to Jane, Dave, who's listening to this right now.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 28:36Steven Bartlett?

  They have a normal life.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:38Steven Bartlett?

  They're not really aware that spies exist in the extent of the work they do. They kind of assume that everything they see and people they interact with are normal, and they think their devices and everything else is secure. What message do you have for them, a word of warning or caution about the reality?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question. Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, when he was Attorney General of New York, he said, "Don't nod when you can motion. Don't speak when you can nod. And don't ever put anything in a text message." At the CIA, on our very first day, they told us not to ever say or do anything that we would be ashamed to see on the front page of The Washington Post. I took that seriously. The truth of the matter is, because of technology, the way it is today,

• 29:35Speaker 01

  our whole lives are out there, potentially, for someone to see, for someone to use against us. So be careful what you say, be careful what you write, even in jest, because it can be taken out of context to target you.

• 29:55Steven Bartlett?

  And what about digital security? You talked about the fact that it's possible for these forces and not just the US, but other countries to be able to hack and crack your devices and see anything on your devices. I think we will go around assuming that our devices are secure.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  They're not secure at all, at all. It's not just NSA, CIA, FBI that you have to worry about. It's the British, the French, the Germans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians. I mean, everybody has these capabilities, everybody. So you've got to be very, very careful.

• 30:34Steven Bartlett?

  Capabilities to do what?

• 30:35Speaker 01

  To intercept communications.

• 30:37Steven Bartlett?

  I've heard you say that they can hack car systems, so they could theoretically hack into my car?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yes, we know that from WikiLeaks. There was something in 2017 called the Vault 7 revelations. There was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled. And instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese, he went to WikiLeaks and he downloaded thousands, tens of thousands of pages of documents classified above top secret. And they became what WikiLeaks called the Vault 7 documents. So they included things like, the CIA, for example, will hack into, let's say, the Iranian Ministry of Interior computer system. But they'll

• 31:28Speaker 01

  leave little electronic clues, all written in Cyrillic.

• 31:33Steven Bartlett?

  Cyrillic as what?

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Cyrillic is the alphabet, the Russian alphabet.

• 31:36Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yep. Or they can take control of your smart TV remotely, and they can make the speaker turn into a microphone. So even though the TV is off, it can still hear everything that's being said in the room and broadcast back to the CIA.

• 31:57Steven Bartlett?

  Can they do that with devices?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Oh, they could do that. When I first got hired, they were able to do that.

• 32:04Steven Bartlett?

  So they could be doing that right now with my?

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Totally. Absolutely, yes. That's old technology. And then the thing about the car, this was revelatory. They can take control, again remotely, of a car's computer system in order to, well, I mean, in order to kill you.

• 32:25Steven Bartlett?

  Crash the car?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Crash the car, take it off a bridge, take it into a tree, sure.

• 32:32Steven Bartlett?

  What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode. If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.