WE CHAT WITH RETIRED SPY DOUG PATTESON ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ESPIONAGE AND SPY RECRUITMENT

0:04 Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and death spy stories and the amazing devices and operations that made them possible. Now let's get started.

0:29 Welcome back everyone. Well, today we have a great guest, Doug Patterson P A T. T. E. S O. N. You can you can find them. You can find them on Instagram and Texas Spy Dan. It's Texas Spy Dan. You can find them on Instagram. Who is he, Well, he was ten years as a CIA officer. Now he also does consulting for the military, heigh networth individuals, and Hollywood.

0:52 In addition to that, he's wrote a great book called Security Tips for New and Infrequent Travelers. On top of all that, you can find more information about his operations over in Glory not operations, but his information about him and some of the other things. He's part of Inglorious Amateurs dot com. They have some great apparel over there and stuff. Go check it out Inglorious Amateurs dot com.

1:13 But he's also on the board of James Foleyfoundation dot org. It's a great foundation. Check it out. And if you remember him, he was the journalist that was beheaded years back by Isis a tragic, tragic event. So we'll talk a little bit about that in the show as well. We're gonna be talking about the psychology of espion I, situational awareness, you name it, We're gonna be talking about it.

1:36 So I can't wait before we get started. Share, subscribe, hit that like button. Hey, if you're on Apple, give us five stars. We appreciate it. Let's not waste any more time. Welcome to the show, mister Pattison. Welcome sir.

1:46 Thank you. I appreciate you have me on. Nice to meet you.

1:50 Nice meeting you. Thank you so much for doing this. First and foremost I forgot to mention before the show is thank you for your service as well.

1:58 Oh thanks, it was.

2:00 I like to tell people some of the most fun years of my life. I was proud to do it and would do it all over again.

2:06 That's the funny thing. Sometimes it's hard for me to say it to former CIA or FBI because they have so much fun right that it's always like, Okay, maybe I shouldn't say it, but I don't think I let people see the work behind the scenes. You folks do, and especially with the CIA, you know, there's so many rumors out there. So it's always great to have former CIO officers come on and kind of straighten things out for us. I know you're not going to tell us who JFK killed or any of that nature, but still, yeah, bring some clarity to everything, right.

2:33 Sure, And that's part of the reason for doing stuff like this is in order to demystify it a little bit without giving away the farm, so to speak exactly.

2:43 You know, what's actually funny you mentioned that because I just Sawever I read the other day for the first time I think ever that the French intelligence surface actually got their website. Yeah, so that was kind of the French are getting into this interesting. So we'll see how that goes. So first thing first is what got you involved in the How did that happen? They choose you, did you choose them?

3:03 It was a happy meeting of coincidences where basically I didn't have a clue what I was doing and met a recruiter on a college campus who told me I really didn't have a chance to even get in, but if I was serious about applying, he'd make the right connection for me, and did, and somehow I managed to impress the right people at the right times and continued that that interview process to get in and by all rights, I never should have.

3:35 I just I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

3:37 But somebody saw a glimmer of hope in there and helped kind of shepherd me through that process, and I'm eternally grateful for it.

3:46 Awesome. Now, I guess you can tell us whatever you can share with us. Obviously a lot of stuff is going to be classified. Well, what it's it like for going to the academy there. I've talked to the individuals from FBI. We heard about Holgan's Alley and things of that nature. What does see I do?

4:01 Yeah, so we have our similar kind of training rotations, and it depends on the role that you're going to fill inside CI A right, So, CIA has just about any job you can imagine. There's there's doctors and dentists, there's lawyers and travel agents.

4:18 And and all a whole host of roles.

4:21 But the two primary roles that the agency hires folks for are analysts and case officers, which was the role that I filled as a case officer, and my job was to go, you know, recruit and run spies overseas. So we have to go through a training several training iterations in order to be able to do that, and like the FBI going to their academy, we have training facilities that we get sent to multiple times in order to complete our our training, and we at least part of it. We called it Outward Bound with Guns. It was, you know, sort of a paramilitary uh trade craft course where we you know, learned how to drive boats and learned how to fast rope out of helicopters and you know, learn how to do rock marches and land navigation and

5:09 all those sorts of things that ultimately I never ended up needing.

5:12 To use much overseas.

5:14 But but we built a lot of teamwork and camaraderie in the process of doing it. And in addition to going through a long train rotation about how to actually recruit spies and how to actually run them securely in order to make sure that you're keeping them alive overseas.

5:31 Fascinating stuff. Now, again, of course I don't know what you can share not but was there anything that really stood out for you? It was the most fun of the training was that the physical part is the learning parts. That they have spy gadgets like Bond was the most.

5:49 We had a lot of that. I think for me, the most exciting parts were probably there were certain training scenarios where you could win or lose in essence, and you know, you might be in a scenario where there were other people following you and you were trying to do something without them seeing you, are catching you, you doing it, and so in order to be able to successfully do those things and pull it off and get away with it usually gave you a pretty good boost that Okay, I can do this, I'm learning how to do this, I'm able to pull it off because when I go overseas, I'm going to be doing this for real and it's going to matter and it could mean life or death for these individuals. So for me, those

6:33 moments where you were successful at pulling it off were pretty you know.

6:38 Pretty rewarding, fascinating stuff. Fascinating again, folks, Doug Passon, you can find a Texas Spy Dad, Texas spy dad. So, now that we've talked a little bit about the training and some of the stuff that you enjoyed, Okay, we can't get into too deep of that stuff. You were sent out, Now, what did you do Now, you said you went to recruiting, and we talked a little bit before the show about the psychology of espionage. So what are you looking for in recruits?

7:08 Yeah, so you know, there's you're looking for folks that have access to information that is helpful to the United States, and you're you're looking to find the folks without access, but then also have the inclination to support what we're trying to accomplish. And so you've got to find the right individual with access and motivations, and you've got to be able to learn enough about that person and build enough of a relationship with them that ultimately you can make a recruitment pitch to them to do something that ultimately could cost them, you know, their their liberty or their life because largely everything I'm asking them to do is against the law of the nation that they live in or are from. And so I need to make

7:56 sure that I understand this individual, know this person very very well and under and their motivations. And it might be money, right, money that can be a significant motivator. It might be ideology. They're they're heavily aligned with what we're trying to accomplish the United States. Another motivation talked about but rarely used by us as coercion, and we can talk about why it's not a very effective motivation.

8:19 And then ego and.

8:20 So those those four primary motivations are often discussed in the context of the acronym mice, money, ideology, coercion, and ego and and in a real sense, there's rarely just one motivation that gets somebody willing to do this, to commit treason against their own nation.

8:40 But usually it's a combination of things.

8:42 They may have been slighted by a former boss, passed over for a promotion.

8:46 They may be very strongly pro America.

8:49 They and they may need money for some other you know thing, and so, you know, some combination of motivations is generally ultimately what you are connecting with and connecting with that individual and getting them to agree to spy fascinating.

9:06 This is going to be sounds a little weird, but it has a purpose. It's a two part question. So the first party then go back to the academy for a second. Then they'll lead me up to this. I should have started it this way, folks. Do I'm assuming you guys learned the history of the CIA and the OSS and all that we do. Yeah, okay.

9:23 In fact, many of our instructors, you know, at the time I first joined, some of our instructor Caedre were actual OSS veterans, and so we got to kind of see some of those folks wandering the hallways and sit at their feet and learn from them. And then certainly you know the early days of CIA. My particular mentor, who passed away about eighteen months ago, served in the CIA from the fifties up until the twenty ten. So, yeah, we absolutely focus on sharing the both the history and the lessons learned throughout my condolences.

9:57 Do you know James Bregenridge.

9:59 I don't I know the name, but I don't know James because.

10:02 I think he was an old school guy too, doing a lot of the gadget work with the Mendez.

10:06 Is sure, I mean I worked with Tony for sure.

10:10 Yeah, Tony A yeah, I mean okay, So I guess the reason I asked is because reading a lot of spy stories and they're always fascinating to me. One of the things I saw with double agents, and we see China doing it a lot here, right, they go after professors and things of that nature. It doesn't even have to be China. I mean drug car tills do the same thing in Russia. But is that something you're worried about too, or is your way for you to try to protect yourself where somebody's going to say, who's going to act like they're pro America, right, They're going to do the right things, but they're really trying to set you up to get into the CIA. Has that ever happened?

10:45 Maybe I'm overthinking things.

10:47 No, you're not overthinking things at all.

10:48 I mean, so in the in the recruitment process, we have some tools and techniques that we can use to vet the individuals that we want to recruit to ensure that ultimately they are working for us and not against us. But you know, we've we've seen some very public instances of that not being the case. And I you know, refer to the Camp Chapman attack where we lost so many c I A officers. At the end of the day, we were we had recruited or thought we had recruited a source that would get us close to Bin Laden and in fact he was being run against us UH and and and done successfully so UH in order to initiate an I D attack against our ci A team there and killing multiple state killing multiple officers, and wounding

11:38 even more. And so so that is a real threat, and there are ways to to kind of ferret that out and understand it.

11:45 But it's absolutely something we have to be aware of and consider.

11:50 That's incredible how important it is to make the right choices. And of course it's not one hundred percent perfect, is it it is?

11:56 It is absolutely not, and some of it so so you learn to be a pretty significant student of human nature. And I think it really gets to the importance of learning how to read people and build.

12:11 Connections with them over time.

12:13 When you get tossed into a super high pressure, high pace environment like supporting a war effort, sometimes we don't we're not able to take the time necessary to work all of that through as much as we might like to or need to, and so that can increase risk in those situations.

12:34 Interesting, some of the CI guys that have met, I just say, guys, I think I've only met one gal so far. I think she had a really brief stint. But some of the guys that have met incredibly sharp at at being able to size up an individual. You know, my world's criminal psychology, so I understand human be here it pretty well in the criminal mind. But it was amazing somebody who I did see my profession just coming up, and there was one gentleman that stands out, Glenn Carl for familiar.

13:00 Sure, no, I know who Glenn is.

13:01 Yeah, super sharp guy and really just interesting to converse with him. Same thing with you. You can tell that people know other people really well, and you have to what are some of the things that well, let's see, how am I to phrases? There's two parts of this question. Can you share a story of your career, anything that you can share, and of course our generalizations are perfectly fine to keep the anonymity. And what are some of the things you're looking for? Either tells that this is not going to be the right person, or this could be the right person. I know you use the acronym mice and you're looking for those things, but there's something really that stands out for you.

13:41 I mean, I guess the thing I would point to is well, let me back up.

13:47 So when I talk about this to college student audiences, and I teach a class on intelligence collection at the University of New Hampshire, one of the things I talked to them about, is that that process of developing and recruiting an asset is not very It's not dissimilar from going through a dating process.

14:09 Right. You're you're learning.

14:10 About an individual, You're trying to align interests, You're you're ultimately deepening or building the relationship, and then you know, you generally are moving towards a goal of some level of exclusivity or other you know, nature of the relationship, and you tend to be able to tell all along the way is this moving forward or not?

14:31 Right?

14:33 If you have good self awareness, and I think that's one of the keys to this being able to read other people well, is you better have pretty good self awareness and pretty good transparency with yourself and and maybe some others h in order to be.

14:45 Able to do that.

14:46 But I think at the end of the day, most of the time, when we get to that recruitment pitch, we already know what the answer is going to be. It's just formalizing that we've already in essence made this this known. And so comparing that to for a colleague kid to uh, you know, burgeoning relationship with somebody of the opposite sex, they immediately get it they understand that connection because by the time you, you know, make it official on social media that you're together with this person, you guys have already you know, you knew that was that was likely the direction of you were moving before you ever got there. And so you know, we we we pay attention to that throughout.

15:22 Excellent stuff, excellent any stories or anything that you remember from their past that stood out to you or ope, so made a mistake, or this is the best recruit I've ever gotten, anything of that nature that you could share.

15:33 Yeah, I mean I think about some of the uh, the stories where my intuition was right. I was following a lead and following a particular person I was spending time with, and my ability to sell it back to headquarters as valuable.

15:54 Was not as strong.

15:56 And so trying to trying to get headquarters on board with an operation that that I needed them just say, hey, give me some time and I'll demonstrate the value to it. H wasn't able to pull that off with headquarters, And yet circumstances that developed over time about three or four years later proved this particular individual, but it would have been an incredibly valuable person to have on board and so I always lament that I wasn't able to to kind of convey the importance of this back to our folks at headquarters in order to be able to push forward on it. And you know that that responsibility sits with me, and and uh, you know, should have should have been able to pull that off.

16:38 So it sounds like it's almost a psychology of negotiation is really important as well.

16:43 Sure, absolutely, but but not just with the subject you're recruiting, but inside because you're fighting for resources and attention as well, uh, to make sure that that you can move things forward. And at the end of the day, because there's risk in making these approaches right to you know, headquarters wants to mitigate the potential for blowback of one of these going south, and so you know there there needs to be value in the relationship that supports the risk as well.

17:11 And if that's not immediately apparent to them, it's you know, it's tough to argue that it's worth continuing to spend time and money on developing when it could harm other operations that are out there.

17:23 Potentially, you got an idea for your Doug, Maybe you can create a romance book. Spy tips from romance going. Yeah, because every since you've started with that analogy, now I can't get it out of my.

17:37 Head right, but I think it. I think it's a pretty apt analogy anyway.

17:44 It really does work. And then think about honeytraps too.

17:48 Well, then I'll add to it.

17:49 In the process, we often build deep emotional connections with the folks that we're doing this right.

17:54 They they are.

17:55 They're placing a tremendous amount of trust in me or officers like me to keep them safe. I'm placing a lot of trust in them that they're going to do what they said they would do and support the goals that we're working towards. And you do build very very strong connections, and those connections may last for decades. I know officers who have reconnected long after they've left the organization and long after their assets no longer have any access of value, and rekindle those relationships much later in certain circumstances because of the depth of the relationship that was built. And anytime you're in a pressure cooker environment like that with folks, you can build strong ties that last for a long time.

18:37 I guess psychologically, you must be also looking to see how would I phrase this their ability to cope with high pressure situations as you mentioned, so I guess you're also trying to how would you say, analyze that potential because this person's going to break under pressure is just too much for them to handle. Are you also looking at that aspect?

18:58 Yeah, absolutely we are. We are looking at that.

19:01 You know, some of the there's been some some cases that have been talked about in the press in Russia where you've got officers from the GRU or KGB back in the fifties, sixty seventies, eighties, so on, so forth, who volunteered to spy for the West and who would willingly put themselves back into their own pressure cooker, knowing that people were going to be looking at them, looking at everybody on a daily basis, trying to figure out who was a potential trader, and understanding their strength, like the well that they would go to to get through a difficult time, What were their motivations for doing this, and was it strong enough that would carry them through this.

19:43 Those are absolutely things that we're working on and discussing with them to understand.

19:49 I think I can imagine. So it's got to be sometimes tough. Sometimes people have a misconception of psychopaths in my world. They think that oh, we drop a cycle path here and they'll wipe out at the community or a serial killer, and they don't work that way to their own drum, So they wouldn't work really well as a spy I don't think.

20:08 Right, although I would argue there are some folks that have had psychopathic tendencies in some of what they've they've done, but yeah.

20:17 Yeah, there you go. I'm going to switch gears folks. By the way, if you're listening to this on Spycraft, this part is for those in situational awareness tactics podcasts, And if you're listening to a situational awareness podcasts, this is on a spycraft as well, So it's a two different podcasts. If you're not following one, you might be interested to follow the other. Again, we're talking to Texas Spy Dad on Instagram. Check them out there. We'll talk a little bit more later about his membership at James Foley Foundation dot org. He's on the board, so we're going to be talking about that now. We're going to be nexting a little bit about situational awareness. Doug's got a book called security tips for new and infrequent travelers.

20:52 So we're going to learn a little bit about some tipsy has for us about traveling overseas and whatnot. So Doug tell us you mentioned something about, I forget what it was now, stupid something or dumb or.

21:06 The rule of the stupids. Right.

21:09 It was something I developed with my kids probably fifteen years ago, to talk about how they might consider evaluating the choices they would have to make in friendships and risk management and.

21:25 Situational awareness.

21:26 And so at its shortest form, it's don't do stupid stuff with stupid people at stupid times in stupid places.

21:35 And you know, elaborateing on it a little bit.

21:38 You you know, you might do something that arguably somebody would say is stupid or risky. Right, So, you know, jumping into a rock quarry using a rope swing is a higher than normal risk activity, but you know you can there.

21:53 Are ways to do it safely. And then there are ways.

21:55 That that may increase the risk of something catastrophic happening if you start to inject friends who have poor judgment and maybe take a super high risk or high pressure risk approach to doing things. Add to that, doing that same jump at night. Add to that injecting alcohol or other substances that reduce your ability to process, All of a sudden, your risk of a catastrophic event happening has gone through the roof, And so you can get away with violating a rule of the stupids, But as you add more violations of each of those rules, you start to increase the risk of something catastrophic happening.

22:39 And so you know, walking through.

22:40 A neighborhood maybe fine in the afternoon, but doing it as a woman alone after twelve o'clock at night may all of a sudden have just added enough of those other pieces of that that it increases the risk to.

22:54 An intolerable point.

22:57 And so spend a lot of time talking about that, especially for travelers overseas, because they're now in an environment that is not their own, and it's not what they're familiar with, and so all of a sudden, they're at a different level of thinking through this stuff.

23:13 Anything any more common stupids that you've seen. In regards to traveling, usually I recommend people to look at the local news and see what's going on and wherever you're going, especially if it's a high risk environment or it's known to be close to those higher risk environments, and Google Maps I like to or Google Earth to kind of check out to see what's happening around, what's some of the things you can see people make mistakes repeatedly or have.

23:39 You Yeah, so absolutely.

23:42 One of the biggest things I see today is that they don't learn the area they're going to before they get there, and so they end up spending much of their time walking around with their face down in their phone trying to figure out where they're trying to go. And in very real sense, before we were deployed to a location overseas, we spent a lot of time looking at maps and learning.

24:05 The area we were going to be operating in.

24:07 Now, I'm not expecting somebody who's not going overseas to recruit and run spies to take the same level of approach. By the principle there of earning the environment and you're going to be in is incredibly important and valuable. And like the biggest example I use of this and talking about situational awareness is if you come to a crosswalk in Britain, right, and if you look down at the crosswalk, the very first thing you will see written in front of you on the crosswalk is look right. And the reason it's written there is because the traffic comes from the opposite direction, as it does in the United States, and they've had plenty of tourists who have looked left and stepped in the crosswalk only to be.

24:50 Hit by a car.

24:54 Interesting, and you're not in your environment anymore, and you need to think of out how and what do I need to change, not because I'm afraid, but so that I can better be prepared to enjoy and understand my environment. And so learning your area. It's more fun to not have to have your phone in your face and your phone looking at Google Maps while you're traveling, because you're missing all the sites that are around you, which increases your risk but also reduces your enjoyment. So learn the route you're going to follow, and then then figure out, based on the visual clues around you, how to stay on your route to get from your hotel to the restaurant you want to go to, or things like that.

25:37 Rather than you know, just hold your phone out in front of you and follow the little blue line that it's telling you to follow, and you're missing everything around you.

25:44 Hey, Doug, I know when we do the podcast Situation Awareness, we have a lot of either retire law enforcement or law enforcement or military or executive protection. Is it overkill for civilians who are not involved in any of that, they're just whatever, whatever they do for a living, is overkilled to look at choke points, to look at points of agress or ingress. When you're looking at these kind of maps they're going into like restaurants, should you pay attention to the exits and see where they are or not just being paranoid?

26:13 I don't think it's paranoid. You know.

26:15 The best example I like to use on that is the Station Nightclub fire in Rhode Island, right, And I don't I won't get.

26:25 The year right.

26:26 But there was a metal band that was playing in a nightclub in Rhode Island called the Station Nightclub, and they they were using a pyrotechnic display.

26:36 It wasn't safe.

26:37 The building caught on fire and a lot of people died in that building. People died because they had, in at least some of those cases, because they hadn't paid.

26:50 Attention to where the exits were in the building.

26:53 They were creatures of habit and so they had come in through the front entrance where they were ticketed.

26:59 And so they that was the only entrance they knew.

27:03 People died stacked one on another in that entrance trying to exit it, while there were other exits from the building that went unused. And so I don't think it's overkilled to pay attention to egress and ingress points, because nobody went to that rock show thinking they were going to die. Nobody was attacked at that event, right. It wasn't like it was a criminal or terrorist attack. It was a terrible accident that happened. And here's the other thing.

27:29 The entire front of that building was glass windows that had been painted They had been painted black to prevent light from coming in. Nobody knew that they could break the windows with chairs or tables to get out. They hadn't paid attention to what was there in their environment, and it killed them.

27:50 Wow.

27:50 Right, And so no, it's not overkill to think about those things. You can easily cross into overkill by allowing it to drive your life.

28:01 Right.

28:01 But again, I really and that's why I like using that example, because it wasn't a criminal attack or a terrorist attack, right. It was people going out to enjoy themselves. And a terrible accident happened, but situational awareness could have saved their lives.

28:14 That's a great example, And I was hoping you would say that because I think sometimes people think, oh, you know, you're getting paranoid. There's a huge distinction between paranoia, especially the clinical term, and just being situationally aware and being vigilants.

28:29 Now do I think everybody needs to have dad sitting at the table with his back to the wall so he's got a full view of the place around him. You know, that can get kind of ridiculous, But I think learning where the ingress points and egress points are, and learning and having the occasional conversation with your family about, hey, if something bad were to happen here, where would we go, how would we reconnect, how would we meet? You know, those sorts of things. I think there's enough risk in this world that having thought through that, it definitely is worth the mental energy to do.

29:05 And I promise you.

29:06 You can't do it when the thing happens, right, You have no capacity to do it when that thing when you're in the middle of it, And so you're gonna you will rise to the level of your training, right, you know, a lot of people think, well, when when it really matters, I'm going to step up and do the right thing. But if you if you make the wrong choices every day as you're going about your daily work, well you're just building the habit of making the wrong choices.

29:32 And so when it comes you're going to fall back to that level of training and habit when the pressures on you, because it's what you know. And most folks are not going to rise, they're actually going to fall to the level of their training.

29:46 Absolutely, that's some really great step tug. It's really important for people to understand understand their environment. I understand what's going on. And again, there's so much overlap between the spy world and situational awareness because you folks have to be aware of what's happening. And it's interesting too as I read spy stories the connection sometimes when a person sees somebody also situationally aware, there's this kind of unspoken connection that happens, like either you're good or you're bad.

30:23 I'm not sure I'm going to figure this out because we're both looking at each other, so we're both focusing on something and does that happen in the spy world. Oh.

30:31 Absolutely.

30:32 In fact, it's most of us that are operating overseas are operating in a role where we're not acknowledged to be intelligence officers.

30:39 And so.

30:41 The risk there is that we can give away the fact that we're an intelligence officer by being situational aware. So we have to and we spend time training to be situationally aware without giving away that we're being situationally aware. I need to be able to determine whether I'm being followed or not without the folks following me knowing that I'm looking for somebody to be following me. And so it's it's absolutely a skill set that we leverage, uh and and strengthen and build upon over time. A chess game, it is a yeah, it's a mental chess game. And in fact, it's kind of funny. We you know, we used to talk about playing this game of spot to spook, where you you would go to some form of event where you knew there would be other intelligence officers from

31:32 other nations there and and it was always a game to see who could figure out who was what, and you know, down to you know, one of the in the in the nineties, one of the big telltales was, Hey, the KGB officer would actually talk to you, and so whereas the best the rest of the Russian diplomats were terrified to talk to any Americans and so like that was.

31:54 That was a telltale.

31:55 Or there's you know, shoes was one of the you know, shoes that were comfortable for spending lots of time walking long distances as opposed to a traditional diplomat from uh, you know, a European country might wear very expensive calf skin with leather soles that would be miserable, you know, walking for four hours down you know, cobblestone streets and so little things like that.

32:17 But you but you couldn't give away that you were.

32:19 Looking for things like that either, because then you know, people would figure you out.

32:24 So you didn't wear the cargo pants obviously.

32:27 Yeah, you know, the the tacticalal stuff.

32:32 And I think you know so one of I'm on Twitter as gray Man actual, and the reason I use gray Man is because there is that concept of we needed to blend in and not be noticed, right, we really did need to be gray. It's one of the things that the spy movies always get wrong is that you know, most most spies don't look like movie stars.

32:55 Most intelligence officers don't look like movie stars, because the last thing you want to do is haveverybody's ted turn when you walk in the room. And so you know, Jennifer Garner may be beautiful in you know, in her roles, but you know, she wouldn't want everybody to immediately put all their attention on her when she walked into her room.

33:12 And uh, in the real world. And so yeah, it's it's interesting.

33:18 We're going to get the movies at the end of this interview as well. I wanted to get your take on a couple of movies and what you thought about them. And and maybe this stot was already crossed your mind, but if not, you know, I want to get at least some name recognition. But Spot the Spook could be a great TV show, right, That'd be a great reality show.

33:36 A lot of people would have fun with her help. Absolutely, I could imagine. Then the CIA is even easier for recruitment.

33:42 Right right, right, Spot the Spook.

33:45 I like that Gray Man. Actually, that's actually another concept that the thing people seem to have a misunderstanding about in some aspects. And I guess it's the people who don't have anything to do with anything, who think they have to go gray. It's like, like, well, you're not a profession that matters to most people. I'm not really sure necessarily, and it's kind of hard to go gray.

34:09 I'm keeping background, so if I go to to Ireland to stand out a little bit more than anybody else. So sometimes there's more challenging to go gray that aspect. I guess you can try to stand out and make that a gray right, be the what do they call it, sometimes the obnoxious US tourists or something like that. I guess you can do it.

34:30 Yeah, but what you really want to do is you want to you want to win, possible be a zebra among zebras. Right, you know, it's gray, might be the wrong thing to be given an environment that you're in, And so I think it's understanding the environment you're going to be in and then fit into that environment is really you know what I try to talk about. You don't want to stand out, you don't want to get left behind. You know, A corollary to it is you don't have to outrun the barr you just have to outrun your friend. And so from a personal security perspective.

35:03 Being gray for most people means making yourself a less attractive target for opportunistic criminals than other.

35:11 People, and.

35:13 So, and that's really not that hard to do because plenty of people are very lazy.

35:17 Most criminals are fairly lazy.

35:19 And so if you do even the slightest bit of stuff to kind of harden your your environment and your lifestyle without going overboard, you can make yourself attractive, and you know, unattractive enough as a target that people are going to go past.

35:31 You and go do pick an easier target.

35:35 That's great, great stuff, great advice. I lose the easier that's becoming it's unattractive target. Very true. I'm let me ask you this in our last few minutes together. Movies. I know you work in consulting as well in Hollywood and things of that nature. So I'm trying to phrase us right, so we don't piss off Hollywood. What movie is the how would you say the most realistic you think in the world, those spies and the least. I'll give you one hint. I think one spy we had on a couple of weeks ago. He thought French connection was pretty accurate in the sense of some stuff that they were doing the old Gene Hackman version. I'm not sure there's anything now, uh Liam Taken was, but I'll let you decide. Forers and those two, what do you think?

36:23 Yeah, I mean when I tell people what I'd like them to watch, I tell them to watch A Most Wanted Man.

36:31 So you know.

36:33 It was a Lacreze book. The movie started Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was actually I think his last role, our last feature role before he passed. And I think it does an outstanding job. Most of his books did anyway, but I think it does an outstanding job of kind of conveying so much of the depth of what of human interaction in the intelligence world, both connection with the folks you're running, but also the disconnection from kind of the rest of many of the folks around.

37:05 You that it builds into you.

37:08 The tough part with Hollywood getting the Spy World right is that when you really get it right, it's an intensely personal connection, largely between two people that nobody ever knows about, but stop something really bad from happening.

37:28 And it's really hard to make that a movie realistically right.

37:31 You need to heighten so much other stuff you need to make things go wrong that haven't necessarily gone wrong in the real world in order for it to you know, kind of be dramatic enough for folks to want to watch it. There's a lot of drudgery and boredom inherent in the espionage world. There's lots of report writing and hours upon hours spent preparing for a three minute interaction, and that makes for bad TVs and movies.

38:01 That's right. I'm an outfielder, right.

38:04 I literally might spend days prepping for and ultimately getting to a point in time where I'm gonna spend three minutes with one person in order for him to hand me something, and and so that you can't make a movie out of the three minutes. And nobody wants to watch the days of paperwork and preparation, so so you've got to figure out other way. But anyway, so I most wanted, man, is I think an outstanding film to have folks watch and get at least a sense of it.

38:34 You know, it's interesting, as you were talking about throughout this interview, we talked to your analogies with Romance and now the Intimacy. There's a movie that comes to mind that it wasn't really designed I don't think as a spy movies per se necessarily, but they really had a lot of I thought character of Spies, which was a tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelia and Lee.

38:55 Yeah, absolutely, no, I think I think. I think that's an excellent example. And in fact, a lot of the projects that I might work on are not inherently a spy project, but are they want to delve into some of the things that makes folks like this tick in order to accomplish what might be it. So I work on heist movies a lot because some of the tools but also personalities may resonate in those worlds, and so so we do that a lot.

39:27 Those are fun. I think it was the highest actually at least their own. It's one of them, right, and Noceans eleven. I think something like that exactly.

39:34 And there are some very interesting similarities in some of the motivations and folks that supporter get involved in those, and I think it does allow you to convey some of that.

39:44 So I think Jason Bourne and Taken have given a different perspective to the spy world and a real different look at it. What do you think about those two. Yeah.

39:55 I mean, so I enjoy them on their face for what they are. But at the end of the and it's interesting, right, because you've got a pre nine to eleven intelligence community, you've got a post nine eleven intelligence community, and you know, the agency's involvement in direct kinetic action of the type that a Jason born Er, a Liam Neeson you know, portrays in some of that changed radically post nine to eleven.

40:23 Right, you now have you now have.

40:25 CIA officers leading direct action lethal missions overseas under the right legal authorities, et cetera, in ways that you just did.

40:34 Not have prior to nine to eleven. And so that the agencies mandate.

40:40 Which has been primarily focused on intelligence collection, shifted pretty significantly into or into a stronger emphasis on covert action.

40:50 And so so there is a sense.

40:52 Of that kind of being a little bit more true, but not even it's still not even even close to it. But I'll tell you a funny story, Uh, what was the the old spy TV show in.

41:11 In the sixties.

41:15 Or Man from Uncle, Man from Uncle, After after Man from Uncle episodes would come out. The CIA's Technical Services Department would get calls from case officers saying I saw this gadget.

41:30 You on the show. We need something like that.

41:36 And so the you know, the the fictional intelligence world actually drove some of the technical development of of products used in intelligence collection through you know, the this into the into and through the seventies, which is kind of an interesting uh uh concept. So I think there is some some relationship there that you know, is do we have Jason Bourne because post nine eleven we started doing more of that? Or did we start doing more of that because we had Jason Bourne movies and people expect us to do more of that.

42:11 And I'm not sure which is which?

42:14 Did you give Hollywood too much credit? What did you think about Bond? It's a little different, I guess.

42:22 But he's a horrible spy. Pod He's a great action hero, but he's a horrible spy.

42:34 Right.

42:35 You never see him collect any intelligence. He tells everybody who he is. He's not discreet about anything. He clearly has a drinking problem, right, He's hyper sexualized and probably has multiple you know, sexually transmitted diseases. Like everything about him makes him a massive security risk with no value delivered to his organization, you know, except when he has to get himself out of the trouble he got himself into to begin with.

42:58 I thought he was a Romeo, wasn't he Like it was the male version of the honey Trap?

43:04 Yeah, Raven or whatever they the Russians call him. Yeah, it's I think he may love to take advantage of that reputation.

43:13 But no, I think he's again. I think he is a great action hero.

43:18 And everybody likes the idea that you got this unaccounted for asset that's at the president or the Prime minister or the queen's disposal in.

43:26 Order to go right the wrongs.

43:29 But the world is just way more complex than that, and few of us have actually had presidents or prime ministers or kings who'd want to have that authority unchecked anyway, And so it makes for good fiction and bad real life.

43:43 I love to bring it back and continue the conversation. I mean, I could keep you here all day, and I wanted to break your brain a little bit about different types of spies. I know I interviewed James Olsen. Not sure if you're familiar with him.

43:55 Oh, yeah, no, I know who James Elson. Yeah, super nice guy, brilliant counterintelligence guy.

44:00 Yeah, we were talking about the different types of spies, because I know China and their espionage world is very different than Russia's in some aspects. And I don't know who knows about North Korea, but Cubans are also really high ranked. I was surprised to hear that, and we can bring it back to have more of a discussion about those different things and the different aspects.

44:21 And it's interesting seeing how the talking through how the different countries do different things.

44:25 You know, the Chinese willingness are actually legal requirement to recruit within the Chinese diaspora, you know, gives them some tools in their toolkit that other nations either.

44:37 Don't have or are willing to wield. So yeah, there's stuff.

44:40 Wow. Yeah, definitely got to bring it back for that conversation. I think it'd be really really interesting, especially now everything that's going on in Cuba and Russia and China and here again folks. His name is Texas Spied was not his name, but you can find him at Texas Spy Dad on Instagram. And before we let go, the last thing I wanted to talk about I almost forgot was James Foley Fan Foundation. To tell us a little bit about your work there.

45:02 Sure. Yeah.

45:03 So the James Foley Foundation was founded after the death of Jim Folly. Jim was an independent conflict journalist, a freelancer who was operating in the Middle East when he was captured and ultimately brutally murdered on YouTube by ISIS. And after his death, his mother stood up the foundation with a couple of primary goals, the first being to protect freelance journalists in order to prevent somebody like James being captured again. But added to that, and really kind of the focus point now is to ensure that all American hostages are brought home. So twofold approach, right, protecting conflict journalists and bringing American hostages or as we also refer to the unjustly detained, because not not necessarily a

46:02 hostage through a hostile group like ISIS, but you may be unjustly detained, as is the case of several Americans in Russia right now or Iran, where they are in essence being held hostage under the false color of law by a state actor. And so our goal is to make sure we bring it as many of those folks home as we can, as quickly as we can. And we do that by working closely with our government. They're also holding them accountable to what their role is and what their responsibilities are to do that and get those folks home. And so we track those cases, we work with the families, and we work with our government to try and do that so that, you know, hopefully fewer people in the future have to go through the experience

46:44 that the Fully family did when Jimmy was captured and then killed.

46:50 Absolutely, it's a great cause, great cause, folks. Check it out James Fully Foundation dot org. It's interesting too, folks, if you want. We did podcast a few days ago. I think a mutual friend of ours, Doug Fred Burton. Sure he wrote his book Bay Rules and about his trying to help this hostage as well, and it just didn't turn out. But it's a powerful story that you can listen to on the podcast and obviously read his book Bayroot Rules as well.

47:17 It's a great book.

47:18 Fred's Fred's a very bright guy who's got some just tremendous experience in this world we've got. The Fully Foundation has our annual Freedom Awards gaily coming up on August nineteenth, and so for those in the DC area, you know, there are tickets available and for folks that are remote, it is going to be simulcast.

47:36 President Obama is going to open us up.

47:39 We've got some great folks lined up to help us raise the funds we need to do to bring Americans home.

47:45 Excellent stuff. Thank you so much again, Doug for doing this. We truly appreciate it.

47:49 I appreciate the opportunity to do it, and I look forward to connecting with you again.

47:53 Absolutely again, it's Texas spy dan As. We can get more information about him on Instagram. Also gray Man actual over on Twitter, Inglorious Amateurs dot com check it out over there, and then of course James Folly Foundation dot org. Folks, thanks for listening, share, subscribe, hit that five stars. Truly appreciate it.