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How to Recruit a Spy
1.9k Plays1 year ago
On this episode, we speak to former CIA operative Marc Polymeropoulos on how to recruit a spy. Marc retired from the Senior Intelligence Service ranks in 2019 after serving for 26 years in the Intelligence Community in operational field and leadership assignments. He is an expert in counterterrorism, covert action, and human intelligence collection. Marc is one of the IC's most highly decorated field officers and has honed a unique leadership style based on decision making under pressure, inclusivity, camaraderie, and competition. His book "Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA" was published in June 2021 by Harper Collins. Marc is a sought after speaker, and travels the world providing leadership guidance to both public and private sector clients. He also is an intelligence and foreign policy contributor for MSNBC and appears frequently on “Morning Joe,” and also is a non resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Most recently, Marc served as the technical advisor for the movie “Equalizer 3” starring Denzel Washington.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to How to Get on a Watchlist, the new podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica. In each episode, we'll sit down with leading experts to discuss dangerous activities. From assassinations and airliner shootdowns through to kidnappings and coups, we'll examine each of these threats through the lenses of both the Dangerous Act to seek and to conduct these operations, and the agencies around the world seeking to stop them. In the interest of operational security, certain tactical details will be omitted from these discussions.
00:00:34
Speaker
However, the cases and threats which we discuss here are very real.
00:01:05
Speaker
I'm Louis H. Prisant, the founder and co-editor of Encyclopedia Geopolitica. I'm a researcher in the field of intelligence and espionage with a PhD in intelligence studies from Loughborough University. I'm an adjunct professor in intelligence at Science Pro Paris and in my day job I provide geopolitical analysis and security focused intelligence to private sector corporations.
00:01:26
Speaker
My name is Colin Reed. I am a former US intelligence professional now working in the private sector to bring geopolitical insights and risk analysis to business leaders. Today we're discussing how to recruit a spy. Joining us for this is Mark Polymeropoulos. Mark retired from the Senior Intelligence Service ranks in 2019 after serving 26 years in the intelligence community in operational field and leadership assignments. He's an expert in counterterrorism, covert action, and human intelligence collection.
00:01:56
Speaker
Mark is one of the intelligence community's most highly decorated field officers and has honed a unique leadership style based on decision-making under pressure, inclusivity, camaraderie, and competition.
Mark Polymeropoulos' Background and CIA Journey
00:02:07
Speaker
His book, Clarity in a Crisis, Leadership Lessons from the CIA, was published in June 2021 by HarperCollins, and we'll make sure we leave a link to that in our show notes. Mark is a sought-after speaker and travels the world providing leadership guidance to both public and private sector clients.
00:02:22
Speaker
He's also an intelligence and foreign policy contributor for MSNBC and appears frequently on Morning Joe. He's also a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Most recently, Mark served as the technical advisor for the movie Equalizer 3, starring Denzel Washington. Mark, thank you very much for joining us.
00:02:41
Speaker
Well, it's great to be here. And I smiled because out of all the things I have done, not professionally, but after I retired, I think the last piece, what you talked about, the technical advisor role was so much fun. And I just saw the movie and my name is in the credits. And look, I had a heck of a career, a lot of ups and downs, but I'll tell you, we were sitting at the movie theater and my wife stood up in the theater in Tyson's Corner and took a picture in front of everyone there. And we're just laughing. And so, you know, what a ride it's been.
00:03:11
Speaker
Absolutely fantastic. So I've got to ask, we like to ask, I guess, this question, but I think in your case, it's such a fascinating career. How did you get into your line of work? Sure. And let me get to that one second. I just want to actually say you did a great job in pronouncing my last name. So whenever I do these kind of engagements, I always have to talk about that. That's not always easy. And I get a sense you actually didn't even practice it. So well done there. OK, how did I get to CIA?
00:03:39
Speaker
question. And look, I just got back. I was down in Blacksburg, Virginia, at Virginia Tech, talking to students. I go around the country a lot, just giving guest lectures on intelligence, because I want to try to pass the torch to the next generation. And so a lot of people ask me, how did you get into that? And I was, look, I was a middle class kid from New Jersey.
00:03:55
Speaker
You know, my dad was a college professor and he went and so this is this is exactly how how it all happened in 1980 when I was 10 years old. He went on sabbatical to Algeria. You know, obviously at the time it was it was a country in North Africa. It was before the country was kind of racked.
00:04:13
Speaker
with his terrible Islamic insurgency. So he went off for a year to a sabbatical. So at 10, and imagine, you know, any of you all or any of your listeners who have kids, my mom put me on a plane by myself at JFK Airport.
00:04:27
Speaker
going via Paris all the way to Algiers alone to see my dad and him and I spent one month driving 2000 miles to the Sahara Desert, kind of living in a Volkswagen, you know, minibus, a camper van, you know, famous if you're a surfer. But, you know, I fell in love with the Middle East. I fell in love with kind of the exotic and wanted to do something different. And I look back at that time and that was really a seminal moment. So every time my dad has complained to me about joining the CIA, I say, see, it's your fault.
The Importance of Human Intelligence
00:04:57
Speaker
So today we're going to be talking about how to recruit a spy. And the first question I want to ask, you know, I watched Skyfall the other night and this was a real theme of that film. In an era of cyber espionage, of sophisticated digital surveillance tools, do spies, do human intelligence sources still have any value?
00:05:16
Speaker
Well, they have incredible value. And so I think that the real premise of the question is how do we recruit in this, what we call, it's called a ubiquitous technical surveillance environment. That's the kind of the name, the UTS, the acronym used in the community. And that's the notion of, you know, there's digital dust, there's smart cities.
00:05:36
Speaker
you can't really hide your identity anymore, go in things like using aliases, crossing borders with biometrics is hard. And so my contention always, in fact, I remember a member of Congress asked me that before I retired in July 2019, can we still do this? And I say, yes, we have to. It's harder. But there is nothing like being in front of an agent. And of course, just for all of your listeners, I know they know that when we talk about agent, that's not an American.
00:06:01
Speaker
An agent is someone from, in this case, if you're an American, it's a foreigner, it's an Iranian, Chinese, Russian, North Korean, what, intel officer or nuclear scientist or military officer. But there's nothing like getting in front of someone because, again, it's a human interaction. I have to be able to assess what makes this person tick. How are they doing?
00:06:23
Speaker
In the recruitment phase, it's critical as well. So it is absolutely critical that we still have the ability to get in front of a human. Because guess what? You can have a signals intelligent operation, and we're listening. But you know what? You can't ask questions there. And so getting in front of another human being is always key. And I always talk about this as people ask me all the time, what was it like? And I said, well, it's a psychology 501 class. It's just there's an extraordinary amount that goes into this kind of human relationship between a case officer and asset can't be replicated.
00:06:52
Speaker
So Mark, let's follow on from that because I know you said you've retired in 2019. So that's right before the COVID pandemic. And one of the things that kind of happened to the human collection community during COVID was you weren't allowed to drive around in the desert in Algeria anymore or for a period of time. So can you talk to us a little bit about what's, I guess some people are calling the cyber enabled human, right? The ability to sort of recruit and run your source sort of in a virtually environment or a mostly virtual environment. Talk to us about that, what you see, the challenges being there.
00:07:22
Speaker
So you're right in the sense, you know, can you do a car meeting during COVID? I know probably not in a lot of places or what about how do you, how do you go out on a surveillance detection route? What we call an SDR in a city that has no cars in the street, you know, because there's a lockdown. So, you know, these were huge challenges. And so I think there are certainly, we have technical abilities to have in essence, a secure conversation with an agent.
00:07:45
Speaker
And so that's a tool in the toolbox. Now, I think where it gets problematic and if that's the only way. So what you do in the intelligence world is you might have to actually have impersonal communications. It could be this, it could be something else, it could be via some kind of system in which there's just text going back and forth, written communications, or it could be virtual. But you know what you still need every once in a while that personal meeting, maybe it's just once a year.
00:08:12
Speaker
Because again, for me as an intelligence officer, I go about my daily business and if I'm posted overseas at a US government facility. But you know what? I don't think every day what happens if I get wrapped up. And so it is critical to have that personal reaction because the agent who has decided to spy, not betraying his country, I would argue, betraying his government or her government,
00:08:36
Speaker
you know that's it that's an enormous kind of emotional weight that's put on them they need an outlet and they need to see someone in person so i would say that you know that you know virtual communications is important we can do it. But it's a it's still you still have to kind of intersperse that with with a personal meeting and you gotta make it happen i mean i don't know the answer all the time is it's hard yep.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I still will make the contention that we can run an agent, a human agent, anywhere in the world via variety of means. But it will include at some point personal meetings, maybe once a year. And a lot of these people can't travel. But when they do get out, we've got to see them.
Spy Recruitment Strategies and Motivations
00:09:13
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit more about that psychological side. So how do you recruit a spy? Is there a particular method that's used to win someone over? You talked about psychology 501. What is it that goes into that formula of recruiting someone?
00:09:28
Speaker
So you know what, it's not my wily ways. I was a pretty good recruiter, but a lot of times what you're doing as an intelligence officer is you're identifying vulnerabilities. You have to find out what makes someone essentially tick. During the Cold War, some agents, some spies were motivated based on ideology. Maybe they came from the Soviet Union or the East Bloc. Other agents are motivated by financial means. Another thing could be they've hit the glass ceiling. Maybe they're a member of a minority.
00:09:56
Speaker
in their country and they're never going to make it to a certain rank in the foreign ministry, but you as a case officer have to get time on target or you know, you build targeting packages and you look for vulnerabilities. You look what would motivate them. Now, when I say, you know, it's not my wily ways, everybody is not recruitable. You know, and some people make that contention and I think that's a load of crap, frankly, excuse my language, because that's just not true.
00:10:20
Speaker
So what you're trying to do is to identify vulnerabilities and over time and over a great deal of personal interaction with someone, you're going to see if those are enough to allow them to betray their government. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. But the best recruitments that I had, the final recruitment meeting, which could have been after several months, is not as glamorous as you'd think. The agent knows what they're doing already because what you would have done
00:10:48
Speaker
as you have talked to them, maybe they had some financial concerns. And so you're talking to them over time, you become very close to them. Maybe you ask them, a classic example would be you're at an embassy, and you say, you know, you're, hey, your foreign minister is going to come visit my, you know, the United States, and I've been tasked by our ambassador to write a paper. And it's not really a big deal. It's unclassified even, but maybe just help me out with this.
00:11:10
Speaker
And you know what? Because the reason why it's important, because the State Department has a little reward mechanism. And maybe I'm going to get a reward for it.
00:11:18
Speaker
Then later on, maybe the agent candidate helps you with that, but you say it's unclassified, no big deal. Then because you've talked to them in the past, you know that they're in need of money, you say to them, hey, I wrote this paper for the ambassador, I received this little extra stipend, I'm going to give you $500. I know it's not a lot. Of course, in the back of our mind, what do we know? They're not allowed to take that, but the agent candidate takes it.
00:11:43
Speaker
So then you get your hook in them. You understand money is the motivation. Then you have to get them to start talking about classified information. So it's a long kind of drawn out process. You're trying to identify what's going to make them tick. And that's why I say it's a psych 501 class. That's what I miss the most, I think, about my own line of work.
00:12:02
Speaker
is just that time on a target. And kind of the last piece, and I'll just as a personal anecdote, I'm Greek, my last name, Pauli Maropoulos. I served in the Arab world. Greeks and Arabs are very close in so many different aspects of history and culture. And I clearly remember being in a certain Middle Eastern country and official of that country where I was posted, who I was cultivating, said to me, said, Mark, I know you're at the US Embassy and stuff like that, but you're Greek. You're kind of one of us.
00:12:31
Speaker
you know, all of a sudden, that that's a really good sign for me that I'm kind of accepted. And I use that to my advantage. And so so ultimately, I think just my background was actually quite helpful as well. So you're kind of giving us a master class here on an agent motivation, something that I think is really close to the counterintelligence community, but also I think to the private sector world with, you know, insider threats and so on.
00:12:55
Speaker
these acronyms. So mice is the one that everybody knows, but there's been this push, right? Should it be more complex? Should it be rascals or whatever the acronym is that you like best? Can you give us a little your thoughts about sort of which of those you think is the most fitting? Do these acronyms make sense? Is it more sort of nuanced than this? What are your thoughts on these things?
00:13:15
Speaker
It's funny, so in preparation for this, and I go back and look, I went through our case officer training a long time ago. So the last time I heard the acronym MICE was when I was at a not so secret agency base doing my training back in, I don't know, a long time ago, decades ago. And so I was like, what does MICE even stand for again? But of course, it's money, ideology, compromise, and ego. And I was thinking about this in preparation for this, because to me, of course, all this is intuitive.
00:13:43
Speaker
And then you think about, all right, how do I actually talk about it? But I think, you know, one of the things that I found to be the most powerful out of all of this was ego. And because when in the process of kind of going after a target, cultivating a target, particularly when it's going to be a foreign government official, so likely they have
00:14:01
Speaker
come from maybe more of the elite part of their societies. Ego means something. But if they're talking to me, that means something is lost in their career. And so what do I do? And I tell them, well, thank you so much for the information you provided. I was able to send it back to Washington. As a matter of fact, that report was read by the president. What you said last week to me in our meeting, I wrote up in the President of the United States,
00:14:27
Speaker
just read that. And so the target, the agent candidate, you see their reaction to this. Because all of a sudden, they're satisfying their ego that they're doing something special. They're not getting that same level of reward from their own country. And so ego, to me, is actually something it's hard to grasp. Money's easy. How much money do you need?
00:14:47
Speaker
ideology is easy. You're a communist and in the past, or you're a member of perhaps a terrorist group or something like that, but ego to me is really powerful. The compromise part, though, that's something that it's a little bit different. I don't know. I mean, when I say Western intelligence, the United States intelligence community doesn't really blackmail
00:15:10
Speaker
agent candidates. That's not something that's really going to work over the long term. Certainly the Russians do. But again, ego goes back to that whole notion of psych 501. How to keep someone motivated. You keep someone motivated by saying what you're doing is important. The fact that you are providing us with the order of battle for the Russian military prior to the invasion of Ukraine is going to be incredibly important. Not only is the president going to read it, but you're going to save lives.
00:15:38
Speaker
And, you know, use a little bit of bravado and exaggeration from my end as the intelligence officer, but, you know, ego is a really powerful tool, I think. How do you go about sort of choosing and identifying valuable targets to recruit?
Building Targeting Packages for Recruitment
00:15:52
Speaker
Is there a kind of, you know, CIA shopping list of who they're after? How, as a follow-up question, how do you build a targeting package for that person? You know, do you have psychologists on staff who look at someone and say, hey, we think that, you know, ideology is going to motivate this person?
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, kind of yes to all of that. I mean, yeah, of course. I mean, for sure that, you know, you want to have the most robust targeting package possible. When I first started my career, that's kind of going to a diplomatic reception and finding the Russians and Chinese and North Koreans were actually willing to talk to you. And maybe you have some book, there's, you know, you do some name traces, you have file reviews on what other officers who have had contact with that target in the past. But here's how things are different now. And it's really good from the offensive
00:16:38
Speaker
operational capability. It's really scary, and we'll talk about it later, from the defensive. It's called your footprint. And so everybody's life. I don't care if you're an Al Qaeda terrorist in Yemen,
00:16:49
Speaker
to a Russian military attaché in Germany. But everybody has a social media profile. Everybody shops on Amazon. Everybody surfs the internet every night. And so what all intelligence services do is have an ability in some fashion to monitor that. So ultimately, while in the past, I would perhaps approach a target with a little bit of information, I can now approach a target in this new, in the year 2023,
00:17:15
Speaker
knowing your favorite, I don't know, do you take sugar or equal in your coffee? Do you like your cheeseburgers with pickles or onions? And I'm being serious because so much of your life is online. And so for me, that makes my life really easy because I'll give you a perfect example. There's a female Chinese MSS officer posted at a Chinese embassy in Europe.
00:17:40
Speaker
We know from our targeting package, this female officer is single, is a little lonely. So, you know, okay, so that's, you know, it doesn't have a family. That's kind of interesting. So, and is a huge fan of Liverpool.
00:17:54
Speaker
Huge fan of English Premier League soccer. So as I'm sitting back in the CIA station, I'm going to be like, who's the best officer to approach this? Well, guess what? I'm going to probably use someone who's single as well because they can kind of hang out together. And you know what? One of my officers just happened to have played Division I soccer for Duke, let's say. And I also know that she
00:18:15
Speaker
is a fan of uh and it's pretty knowledgeable so i'm going to choose the right officer to do a bump of this individual and guess where the bump may be maybe it's a it's a local soccer club that the chinese officer you see what i'm saying so their their profile that we have all the things they've done and are all over social media we can choose the right case officer to actually go up against them and so so in that sense that that has made our targeting packages
00:18:40
Speaker
kind of really effective and much easier. And again, it's also pretty scary because guess what? We're all humans too. So if you all want to see, you know, what I like, go read, you know, follow me what I buy on Amazon to the chagrin of my wife.
00:18:53
Speaker
It's really good that you mentioned the approaches that the US does and doesn't use. So you said the US does not use blackmail when conducting these bumps. That's not a method that they use. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the different approaches to human worldwide.
Comparison of Recruitment Approaches
00:19:07
Speaker
Can you describe how the Western US, UK, Five Eyes approach might be different than what the Russians and the Chinese do in this field?
00:19:16
Speaker
Sure. And I think it has to do with, so it's not necessarily ethics. Let's just kind of get that out of the way. I'm not being, you know, I'm not going to give any kind of morals reasons why it's not good to do that. I think it has to do with just the validity, the longevity of a potential case. If you recruit someone based on compromise, you know, that's just a single hook. And so that's why, you know, Western intelligence doesn't use that.
00:19:42
Speaker
just because by definition, these cases are not gonna turn over. They're not gonna be long standing. You're not gonna institutionalize them. And because frankly, the target's gonna be a little pissed.
00:19:51
Speaker
So if a Russian intel officer gets caught in a New York City hotel room with a prostitute and we try to make an approach on this based on us trying to blackmail that Russian, we're going to go tell the wife. First of all, this individual is going to be angry, so not doing it for the right reasons. Are they going to be trustworthy? Are they going to be loyal? No. So you actually have a very superficial, in a sense, hook into them.
00:20:14
Speaker
What we want to do is to not only have the case recruited now, but what if it's a low-level employee and we want to seed them into their organization for years to come? So you want to institutionalize it. You want to make it longstanding. Compromise is not the way to do that. Now, unlike, and again, this is not based on morals, in my view. This is based on the idea of having long-running deep penetration agents. Now, the Russians, or the Chinese, for example, don't agree to that, and they will use compromise.
00:20:42
Speaker
I just think that in terms of the efficacy is the argument that we always would go by now. Can this change? I don't know. I'm not in the IC anymore. Maybe the Western intelligence services will one day go down the line. I just don't think it's as effective as those other key motivations. We talk about money, ideology, ego, much more powerful and long-lasting.
00:21:08
Speaker
So maybe a bit of a subjective follow-up then, in your sort of unprofessional opinion, speaking just as someone who has observed these things for a long time, who would you say is best at this? Is there a class leader in human operations, a national approach that is the best?
00:21:26
Speaker
Well, I obviously have to say the United States. Now, I mean, look, the fact of the matter is there's really good intelligence officers all over the world. I've encountered both friendly liaison and hostile intel officers who are really impressed and who understood that idea of recruitment operations.
00:21:44
Speaker
You know, I mean, I think that, you know, the best services, you know, the United States, Israel, the UK, France, these are really solid professional services. Going throughout your, you know, the Germans are not known to be all that effective and the Russians are going to be very mixed. You're going to have some very good Russian officers who obviously, and we say this because we have been penetrated ourselves, but also Russia is a, the Russian intelligence community is really, and we've seen this because, you know, based on what's happened with the war in Ukraine is really kind of rife with
00:22:12
Speaker
inefficiency and corruption. You know, as we talk about these things, though, you know, we could have this, there could be a same type of podcast in several different languages and several different services, intelligence services actually really do the same thing. So when I'm talking about this now, you know, all this stuff, everything I'm saying has been cleared by CIA, nothing's a secret. I mean, you know, other countries recruit other countries have impersonal communications, other countries run surveillance detection routes, it's kind of what they do. But
00:22:38
Speaker
I still think that the CIA is the gold standard for intelligence operations worldwide. And that's also because we screw up sometimes. There's been plenty of failures. And you hope you go through these after action reviews and you learn from it.
00:22:53
Speaker
If you're in this game, in the espionage game, there's a lot of risk involved and sometimes we're gonna do some things we wish we hadn't, either we get caught or we make trade cafeterias. And the real key is to have accountability and kind of adjust and move on.
Trust and Responsibility in Agent-Officer Relationships
00:23:05
Speaker
Because again, it comes down to the, what I miss about the business is that actual human contact with an agent who's decided to put their life in your hands. And if we have to get that right, that's a sacrosanct relationship, that pledge you make,
00:23:21
Speaker
Can I tell you a quick story? I have a great story on this. All right, so I was in Europe training and penetration of an Arab government. Again, this has been cleared by CIA, so I'm not revealing any state secrets. But I'm in Europe. We're on the streets of Europe. I'm teaching this individual communication techniques, surveillance detection techniques. How, when we go back in their country,
00:23:42
Speaker
They are going to operate really important several weeks of tradecraft training And so this individual takes me aside one time. He said hey mark, you know, I just want you to understand something You know, you might not think about me every day because I know you're busy But I'm gonna think about you every day because if you make one mistake Not only am I gonna die but my family is gonna be killed my whole tribe is gonna be killed So he said you have to be perfect
00:24:06
Speaker
I was 26 years old when he said this to me. And so that responsibility for a 26-year-old is extraordinary. I have someone else's life in my hands. If you don't think that personal tie between myself and this individual is not like, I don't know, a marriage or relationship, something pretty extraordinary. I mean, so that is the essence of running agents. At the end of the day, my obligation, obviously I'm gonna collect the intelligence from this individual. I gotta keep them alive.
00:24:34
Speaker
Because a lot of time the sanction is pretty severe. And to me, that's kind of the absolute basis of what we do. Are there any ethical red lines that would put a potential spy out of bounds for recruitment? I'm thinking about how the CIA never recruits from the Peace Corps, for example. I think that's by law or US code or something like that. I mean, probably for reasons that were evident in the past, we don't use journalists.
00:25:02
Speaker
But when you talk about ethical bounds, so that's the cover for a US intelligence officer. I think that what's most interesting is if you look at a potential target, how much blood can they have on their hands for the CIA to enter in a secret relationship? Pretty interesting. Obviously, we have an army of lawyers. There are all sorts of rules and regulations on this, but just fundamentally, for example, if there's someone who we know has killed Americans,
00:25:29
Speaker
but has then walked into an embassy and say, I'm going to now I want to I will be your penetration of Al Qaeda. And this person we know is legit. What do we do? This individual has American blood on their hands. So these are kind of and there are sorts of all sorts of waivers that we can get. But generally,
00:25:45
Speaker
It's frowned upon to take some really kind of terrible individuals and put them on our payroll. Now, sometimes we'll have to. That's kind of the ethical red lines. What if an agent candidate has done some terrible things, domestic abuse, rape, which would be abhorrent to us even as the officers? Is that someone who we can then enter into that secret relationship?
00:26:09
Speaker
you know, what could they provide? And I think there's, you know, there's certainly been times where I know we have shied away from targets with kind of past like that. But again, it's a little different than if someone kind of pops up in your doorstep. Yeah, I was a member of Hezbollah or Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Yeah, I have 20 or 30 Americans I have killed personally. But you know what, I'm going to help you break our organization. What do we do? It's a great question. There's no right or wrong answer. As I'm sure you've heard this on this podcast from others. It's the famous it depends.
00:26:40
Speaker
So let's transition a little bit. We're talking about a, you know, hypothetical walk-in scenarios
Double Agents and Ethical Boundaries
00:26:44
Speaker
right now. And I think that's a good time to transition to talking about double agents. Can you tell us what is a double agent and is it ever beneficial in your opinion to run one knowingly?
00:26:54
Speaker
Well, it's different in the sense of a double agent is someone that's been recruited and they're working for the other side. And so the agent's obviously gone bad or is bad all along. So that's if we recruit someone, for example, a penetration of the Russian government, but the Russians actually had kind of walked them into us.
00:27:11
Speaker
And that's difficult to discern sometimes where that hostile service is going to actually allow this agent to provide legitimate information for a while. But all along, the end goal is to kind of steer us in a different direction. And so that means that from our side, you have to kind of always test the agent. Every operational meeting, in my view, you should always kind of consider that to be a possibility. So it's what information you're checking on information that they have provided. You're kind of vetting it or cross-checking it with other sources.
00:27:41
Speaker
On the other hand, of course, should the United States be running double agent operations at our adversaries? In general, it becomes a little more difficult because at times, we are loathe to give up anything. So again, that would be if, let's say, we had a US military officer, and we direct them to walk into a Russian embassy to volunteer to work for the Russians, but in fact, they're still working for us. Maybe the
00:28:05
Speaker
Naval Criminal Investigative Service and NCIS is running this operation. But at some point, they're going to have to give something to that hostile service. And I think the US at times is more loathe to do that.
00:28:17
Speaker
provide that what's called feed material, which is actually accurate. Other services, and again, this is not my experience, it's just what's floating around the back of my head. I think the Russians and the Chinese have been very willing to provide their double agents with a lot of valid information to give to us. I think it's a little harder for us to do it, but I think the bottom line in your question on this is, what is the goal?
00:28:43
Speaker
it's enormously time consuming. And so is that something that we generally should be doing? There's a finite number of US intelligence officers and things we have to do. And so what is the goal? Is it to obviously distract our opposition? Is it to provide them something to have them go in a different direction? So the problem with double agent operations, just if the US is running them, in my view, is that there's not a goal
00:29:06
Speaker
insight, which running a regular app would be trying to steal secrets from another country. Double agent operations are a little bit different. It may be designed to sow some chaos, sow some discord, but harder to kind of quantify what the end goal is. And I do I do get the sense that other countries do this to us more than we do it. And maybe maybe that's a mistake. Maybe we should be more creative. The US intelligence community is not a place where there's a lot of creativity involved. And so perhaps perhaps we should.
00:29:34
Speaker
So point of order, just since you're a technical advisor on movies now. Is there such a thing as a triple agent? Is this, you know, because I know this can be quite triggering for some folks. Is there a triple agent?
00:29:46
Speaker
It gets too confusing. The one thing that you kind of point out in this is all these kind of, you know, phrases, everyone gets this wrong all the time, whether it's a double agent, triple agent, you kind of scratch your head. And I think, you know, there was a book that was written kind of the worst, you know, when you talk about double agents, the worst in my career was, of course, the events that happened around the coast of Afghanistan.
00:30:08
Speaker
Tragically, on December 30, 2009, a double agent ended up a suicide bomber, ended up killing himself and seven of my colleagues in Afghanistan. And this is someone who threw a friendly service. The friendly service actually thought they had recruited someone, but this individual was actually working for, in essence, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And so that's kind of the classic, the horrible tale of this.
00:30:31
Speaker
I think there was a book written about it by Joby Warrick, who's a great reporter, but he actually titled it The Triple Agent. I remember looking at that scratch in my head, trying to figure that out. If we can pivot briefly to the private sector, it's a topic close to my own heart.
Corporate Espionage Threats and Defense
00:30:47
Speaker
How significant is the threat of foreign espionage against corporations in the West? Has this changed over time? Are we taking this seriously enough?
00:30:57
Speaker
So great question, I think we're not. And I think that if you look at the explosion of Chinese espionage activity in the US, Chris Ray, FBI director said what every 12 hours they open a new counterintelligence investigation against China.
00:31:09
Speaker
I get the sense most of that is about industrial espionage, about China kind of trying to steal our industrial military secrets. And so I think that's a huge concern. Now, if you're kind of getting old like me, you remember back when French espionage was a huge concern and kind of the French were eating our lunch. And so this is what countries do.
00:31:29
Speaker
When you think about it, particularly in the military scientific field, or let me just say, if you look at every drone flown right now that's on sale in the International Arms Bazaar, they all look eerily familiar to an MQ-9 Reaper. They look exactly the same because why? People stole these plans.
00:31:51
Speaker
And so think about from kind of industrial espionage what that would mean, private sector. So again, it can be in military scientific fields, certainly in kind of cyber. Silicon Valley is a massive target. And so ultimately this can save other countries, not millions, but billions in their own research and development. So this is really kind of lucrative targets. And if you think about it as well,
00:32:13
Speaker
The private sector, and I know there's a lot of efforts, obviously, we're talking to folks here, a lot of efforts made for kind of defensive counterintelligence, but just by definition, a private sector of say private sector American is going to be much less kind of CI counterintelligence savvy than a US government official who's briefed on this stuff constantly.
00:32:32
Speaker
The joke i'll always have and it doesn't matter i can say this for male female any perspective if you're you know if you're at a bar somewhere and some you know if you're a man woman someone beautiful comes up next to you and starts chatting. You kinda look at yourself in the mirror you know maybe that's not in your in your usual wheelhouse well that's because you know this these are the kind of things that we're kind of ingrained.
00:32:52
Speaker
to be on the lookout for, I think in the private sector, it's a little different. And then think about conferences. Any kind of private sector conferences, the idea is to what is exchange information?
00:33:03
Speaker
And so just by definition, there is that willingness to get what? Second meetings. That's what you always want in the operational field. And so I don't know the exact amount of money, perhaps you all do, but I would imagine the cost of economic or industrial espionage that costs to the United States must be staggering.
00:33:23
Speaker
You mentioned France there. I'm recording this episode from Paris, so it's certainly piqued my interest there. I did hear at some point Air France, every Air France business class seats for a period, I believe during the late 80s, pretty much bugged by DGSE in order to spy on traveling US executives. When called out about this, the French spy chief, whose name I believe was Pierre Marion,
00:33:48
Speaker
He said, it's a fundamental mistake to think we're allies because in business, of course, it's war, which I think is really telling of the mindset. Are there other countries over time that we in the Five Eyes community have a sensibly friendly relationship with that have also potentially been spying on us?
00:34:09
Speaker
The Israelis have been caught, of course, Jonathan Pollard being the most famous case several years ago. The Israelis have had a very robust espionage capability in the US.
00:34:22
Speaker
Let me just add to this, whatever I'm going to say after. The Israelis are a close intelligence partner. I've worked with them over the years. They are a very capable service, and we definitely have mutual interests, mutual targets in mind, whether it's counterterrorism or Iran, Hezbollah, other things. But when it comes to counterintelligence, we also treat the Israelis as a hostile intelligence organization because they are very interested always in trying to penetrate the US government.
00:34:48
Speaker
And so that's just something that is almost fundamental, the notion that of course we have allies, but every country has interests. And so what other countries will do is they'll take kind of cost benefit on running these operations. But the one thing that I'll say is that when a spy scandal breaks out somewhere, the organizations that don't really get upset
00:35:11
Speaker
Morally horrified or the intelligence services, you know the Israelis and the French spy on us Okay, and when they're successful, you know, I think the reaction that we will have is, you know How'd they get how'd that happen rather than? Oh my god. These were our friends
00:35:26
Speaker
And I'll tell you that just in terms of what happens in the reality of this, it will go something like this. This is just a hypothetical. So let's say a semi or an allied country has caught one of our officers. That head of the service will call in our station chief and they'll say,
00:35:43
Speaker
Look, we found something that's a little bit disturbing. We understand that one of your officers provided some money to one of my officers, and you really shouldn't have done that. We're supposed to be friends. And the CIA station chief is going to say, well, that's terrible. We would never do that to you. It must have been a misunderstanding. Your officer said that they needed a loan, and they're just friends.
00:36:02
Speaker
And so we're just trying to help them out. This is terrible. And the foreign intel chief will say, OK, I understand that your officer should probably go home now. And we'll say, of course. And then this is all, of course, this giant charade. We got caught. They caught us. This is the way it kind of goes at the end of the day. Because again, it's the intelligence. What is it? Espionage is the second oldest profession.
00:36:28
Speaker
You're listening to Mark Polymeropoulos, who's talking to us about how to recruit a spy. After the break, we'll discuss how to defend against spies and infiltration. You have been listening to How to Get on a Watch List, the podcast series from Encyclopedia Geopolitica.
00:36:52
Speaker
If you like this show, don't forget to check out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica, which you can find at howtogettontowatchlist.com, where you can find our analysis on various geopolitical issues, as well as reading lists covering topics like those discussed in the podcast. Please also consider subscribing to the podcast on your streaming platform of choice, giving us a rating, and joining our Patreon.
00:37:27
Speaker
So Mark, speaking about these insider threats, are there steps that organizations can take to make themselves more resilient against infiltration or recruitment from foreign spies?
00:37:37
Speaker
So the answer to that, of course, is yes. It's a little bit different, of course, than the US government. So when you sign on the dotted line, when you take your oath to the Constitution of the US government, you're also giving away some of your civil liberties. So that's the notion that I'm going to have to provide all my financial background, my financial disclosure forms. There's going to be background investigators who look into
00:37:59
Speaker
into what I do, my social media accounts, they can monitor that. So you give up some civil liberties. Of course, in the private sector, you don't have that. When I say luxury, from a counterintelligence point, that's what it would be. So you don't have that ability. So what my answer would be for the private sector is to have kind of very robust defensive counterintelligence awareness programs. And what does that mean? It means your security personnel providing kind of not only regular briefings, but also training to the private sector employees
00:38:28
Speaker
Number one that this can occur it can it can occur in multiple ways Whether it's someone hitting you up on your LinkedIn account or when someone you're sitting at a bar on a business trip to Paris I'm picking on the French a little here
00:38:43
Speaker
there are parts of your organization that will be of interest to other countries and you have to have that, certainly that awareness. And I think that the other big part of this, and this is really important, is that if something happens, if someone approaches you, there's got to be a reporting mechanism in your country, I'm sorry, in your company, in your organization, and there can be no kind of sanction for reporting this. So by the way, if all of a sudden a friend from China hits you up on LinkedIn, a quote, friend,
00:39:12
Speaker
you want to be able to report that and understand that the security personnel or your company, you didn't do anything wrong. And so to me, what always has been the case, and we face that sometimes in the intelligence community, but definitely in the private sector, is that reporting and reporting right away, it ain't like fine line.
00:39:31
Speaker
don't get better over time. You better report stuff right away. And there almost has to be a reward for doing so rather than, oh my God, I did something wrong. As I was sitting in the bar in Paris, someone came up to me, what did I do? Well, no, you actually did everything right because you reported it to your security officer or appropriate people in the company right away. So it's just having kind of that overall kind of security program in place.
00:39:53
Speaker
And for a company, for an organization, that takes time, money, resources, and sometimes almost a cultural mindset change. But I think that's really important.
00:40:04
Speaker
Does this concept of a no sanctions reporting system, is that something that's going to inherently work better in freer, more law abiding democratic states? I'm imagining if you're a KGB officer going to tell your boss that you've been spotted and recruited, I feel like that would be more of a mark on your career than doing so in the CIA.
00:40:25
Speaker
Well, for sure. And so because, you know, in a country, an authoritarian country, you know, where they, of course, they don't trust their their people just fundamentally. Right. They're going to say, you know, what did you do to have the CIA approach you now? A great example of this that we can use to our advantage is let's say I had met a Russian on the diplomatic circuit and we knew in that country. Oh, let's let's let's change. Let's have it in North Korean, who we know are not allowed to go out one on one with an American.
00:40:53
Speaker
And I invite that person to dinner or to lunch and we go. And he tells me during this lunch, you know what? I didn't report this. And then we find out from our own means, maybe technical coverage, maybe from other agents, actually he did not report it. It's a pretty good sign. So, so you kind of, you see what I mean? We're using that to our advantage. So, um, the proclivity and authoritarian states to, to actually penalize someone for reporting. Maybe that's something that we can, uh, we can use to our advantage, but you got to make sure. And again, and from your own organization that you
00:41:23
Speaker
that does not occur because then, is it a stigma or is it gonna be rewarded? And you hope that being honest and reporting things right off the bat is something that's gonna be much more acceptable.
00:41:36
Speaker
So thinking about the things that might be the most valuable to you in your company, right, this hypothetical corporation that we're building here, is there a way to identify not only sort of what sorts of intelligence foreign spies might be trying to get out of your hypothetical corporation, but also sort of, is there a way to identify, are they actively trying to recruit spies within your organization, you know, actively right now? Is this just more of an opportunistic thing? Is there a way to kind of parse those things? And how would you go about sort of leading that effort?
Recognizing and Addressing Recruitment Patterns
00:42:07
Speaker
Well, I think the key on that is to keep records of this. And so one of the great things about the intelligence world is we keep kind of meticulous records. So what you want to do is you're looking for patterns. So perhaps there's approaches at a single hotel in Paris all the time.
00:42:25
Speaker
OK, we know that somehow, you know, the Russians know that, you know, we're going to this hotel and every time we send people there, they get approached. And so so you're looking for that kind of historical patterns. I think that's that's right. And then, of course, you adjust from that. So, you know, maybe maybe we're not going to use that hotel. Maybe we're not going to send people to that to that conference as well. But I think kind of that that records keeping, that institutional memory is going to be absolutely critical. You know, one of the things that we've found so many times is that when something bad would happen,
00:42:54
Speaker
And the employee would say, well, I didn't know I was supposed to report that. You never told me. Now, of course, it is quite apparent they should have reported it. But as a matter of fact, for whatever reason, they weren't given that guidance. And so, again, it goes back to having those kind of security programs where you give strong guidance, there's got to be reporting mechanisms, and then you have
00:43:14
Speaker
kind of a historical record on what works and what doesn't. I mean, think about it. The worst thing that you can do in a private sector organization is having your employees just establish the same patterns over and over again. So they will fly the same airline. Well, why do they do that? Well, maybe you have a deal with them. Well, don't do that.
00:43:33
Speaker
either they're taking the same routes, your conferences are in the same place or in the same timeframe every year. So it's varying those as best as possible because you'd want the hostile intelligence organization to look at XYZ company and they said, they seem pretty security conscious. And by the way, also they've given their employees defensive briefings. So it's not working, but let's move on somewhere else. That's what you want them to do. Get your company off the X would be the, and when we say the X, get it off the target list would be kind of the smartest advice I'd give.
00:44:02
Speaker
Let's say you've identified a potential recruitment operation already underway. It's taking place, the individual hasn't come forward, but something's picked up on it. Maybe you've picked something up on their email traffic. What can you do to stop it?
00:44:17
Speaker
So there's a couple of things. So obviously, if we know that a US government employee is being targeted, you have a couple of different options. One is you can shut it down right away, which is kind of the safest. And that's designed, of course, to make it so it's not successful. What is interesting sometimes, however, is you let, and again, this has to be done very smartly because you're having, if it's an intelligence
00:44:39
Speaker
official, they're going to be more savvy. Maybe if it's a US diplomat or US military official, maybe they won't. But maybe you want this to go to mature a little bit. Now, why is that? So the questions, let's say, a Chinese MSS officer is asking of a US official, well, that's what we call their requirements. These are what the Chinese want to know. Those questions tell us what the Chinese don't know.
00:45:02
Speaker
It's kind of interesting. And so we're gaining some useful information. The other thing to let it kind of mature is we'll see what kind of tradecraft will be used. And so, for example, what communications methods? Maybe you let it go to a point where you actually allow almost for a recruitment pitch to occur against our official, and then the hostile service will give a piece of technical gear.
00:45:25
Speaker
So what are we doing? We're gaining knowledge on their tradecraft. And so I think a lot of it has to do ultimately, of course, with what is being asked of the U.S. government official. Again, are we going to allow them to pass anything of value? And so
00:45:39
Speaker
It's all a crapshoot. You have a burden hand, shut it down, let it mature a little bit. This, of course, is a lot different, I think, in the private sector, where really these people are going to be untrained on this. And the smart thing, of course, would be to shut it down, but of course, also to bring in US authorities, bring in the FBI on this, and then let them take the lead on what they're going to allow or not allow.
00:46:02
Speaker
Sometimes you want to, you want to let things play out and you want kind of, you know, build your understanding because everything a hostile service is looking for is, it gives us an idea of what they don't know. So speaking to that point, you know, what is the burden of proof needed to really catch a spy?
Challenges in Proving and Handling Espionage Cases
00:46:20
Speaker
At what point would you sort of confront them after sort of letting this thing play out to, to build a preponderance of evidence, right? That would, might help you actually get a conviction.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's much better suited for the FBI, of course. I think a lot of times I've got to be careful on what I say here, but ultimately, there's going to be a desire to catch someone in the act, to get enough for a conviction. But maybe there's some things. And then the problem is when you go to trial on things like this, and this is obviously from what I read in the press and talking to FBI colleagues, you don't want in that kind of discovery phase to have classified information. It makes things much harder.
00:46:58
Speaker
And so what you see a lot of times in some of these espionage cases is people actually end up going to jail for what looks like much more minor offenses. And that's probably because the government doesn't want to go forward and put into public record on what actually has happened. But look, it's the idea of catching someone in the act. I mean, you saw, I would have to kind of rack my brain on this. But
00:47:20
Speaker
I live in Northern Virginia and there's some famous dead drop sites that I think it was Robert Hanson, a famous FBI spy, infamous FBI spy used in communicating with the Russians. And of course, if the federal law enforcement catches someone doing that, that's pretty good in the sense of having pretty clear evidence on what has occurred. And then there's, again, there are some times where perhaps if there are suspicions, maybe the Bureau will let this kind of run forward or maybe they'll want to shut it down.
00:47:51
Speaker
One of the things that you'll see, of course, that the Russians had, the Soviets did does, there has been some celebrated or infamous videos of CIA case officers or alleged case officers, let me say, getting caught somewhere in a park in Moscow, putting down a dead drop and then getting arrested. And so, again, in this age of video surveillance, I think that's what you'll see in the future. There'll be some video evidence too. But that's the risk of running these operations.
00:48:21
Speaker
Are there any downsides to counterintelligence work? I imagine infiltration cases being exposed probably harms morale and trust within the teams that have been through this. Can you mitigate that? Is there anything you can do to do counterintelligence without it harming the team?
00:48:38
Speaker
No, I mean, look, when you're young in your career and you join the intelligence community, obviously you take this oath to the Constitution, you sign your life away with secrecy agreements, you have a top secret security clearance and you take these things very seriously. And then so what happens is when, and it's happened to all of us in the community, when colleagues have betrayed that trust, have been arrested, there's of course, there's a morale hit. And then when you get kind of more seasoned in your career, you certainly understand that this is a human endeavor.
00:49:07
Speaker
We would be silly to think that there's not spies in our midst. There are Americans who are betraying our country right now, almost certainly working for the Russians and the Chinese and others. And so you understand that's the kind of human condition. And so it's not as much of shock and horror when it occurs. It's much more of what went wrong in our
00:49:29
Speaker
security processing that this individual got through. And inevitably, there's something that there are glaring signals all over where there's finance, you know, someone all of a sudden is, you know, running around driving a Jaguar, or there's some other kind of signals that would have tripped people off. And frankly, you know, it's not the kind of the old dreaded polygraph. Many spies who have successfully, unfortunately, you know, from the American government who've worked against us, they passed their polygraphs.
00:49:56
Speaker
But I think it's a really good question. Now, the counterintelligence profession, sure. I mean, if you're working in a counterintelligence mission center at CIA, I mean, that's kind of some dark stuff.
00:50:09
Speaker
I mean, it's like the internal affairs unit of a police department. I mean, these are requisite pieces of the organization, but you really are dealing with some pretty depressing stuff because these are individuals who did take the oath to the Constitution and their colleagues had trust in them, and they betray that.
00:50:31
Speaker
But we again going back we'd be silly to think that this doesn't occur that's pretty naive and when you're when you become kind of a, you know, old and gray season intelligence professional, you know, these things are going to happen.
Reflections on Intelligence Work and Counterterrorism
00:50:41
Speaker
So for example, Bill Burns become CI director. Bill Burns, I think has been a very good director, but in his tenure, he's probably seen some things that he wish he hadn't about kind of the frailty of the human condition and, you know, take the good with the bad. These things do happen.
00:50:56
Speaker
So speaking about that, the human endeavor, the last question for me is, do people recruit as spies ever just sort of break and turn themselves in because of the guilt or the pressure? Is that something you've ever seen? And what's the motivation there?
00:51:09
Speaker
So I haven't seen that because often it's a death sentence, but what you do see sometimes, and it's just in this, again, this goes to we're dealing with human beings is, you know, we will run an agent. The agent will have proved spectacularly successful. We will then resettle them in the United States.
00:51:27
Speaker
in their new lives for whatever reason. Maybe they wanted to come, maybe they had to come, they were under suspicion. And they come to the US after living perhaps in an authoritarian country and they realize they don't like it and they miss home. Now they know if they go home, they're in big trouble. We've told them a million times, they're on some kind of death list back home. And yet what do they do? They miss home enough, they convince themselves that it's gonna be okay and they go back. And often they pay the ultimate sacrifice to me.
00:51:56
Speaker
people are mystified by this, except for the fact that it does make some sense. And they've convinced themselves that they're gonna be okay. Clearly, it doesn't ever work out that way. In terms of an admission,
00:52:10
Speaker
if they're working in place, I mean, that's kind of a pure death sentence. So I have not seen that happen. But I certainly have seen individuals who we have resettled decide to go back. And that's always hard, too, because guess what? They can. So when someone comes, if someone worked for us for a long time, they come to the United States. There's something called Public Law 110, PL 110. They're paroled into the country. They can eventually become US citizens. Guess what?
00:52:34
Speaker
We can give them all the advice we want. They want to jump on a plane and go back to Tehran or Beijing or Moscow or Pyongyang. They can do it. And it just doesn't end up well. Staying on that theme then, you've had an absolutely incredible career. I imagine you've seen a lot of things. What keeps you up at nine about this? So I think for me, the comparison is always, I can use either soccer,
00:53:01
Speaker
here in the States, football in Europe, but it's the notion that it's tough to be a football goalie. And what do I mean? So in the counterterrorism world, they have to be perfect, but that's not reality. So if you're playing, you know, goalie for Liverpool or for
00:53:16
Speaker
you know, Manchester City, you're not gonna have a clean sheet every time. There's just no way that doesn't, but you know what we have to. And so what keeps me up at night always has is the notion, not that we're really good, not that we're trying really hard, but you know what? You know, some terrorist attacks are going to happen. It's almost impossible.
00:53:32
Speaker
And so my concern still is Americans being targeted and killed. I think that we did an amazing job after 9-11 in ensuring there was no kind of spectacular attack afterwards. But frankly, what worries me is we have no boots on the ground in Afghanistan. There's no Afghan intelligence service.
00:53:48
Speaker
There's no American intelligence officers there. And so, you know, these areas of ungoverned spaces, and you can say the same thing for the Sahel in Africa, but places where terrorist groups kind of have kind of free rein, I worry that there'll be, you know, future attacks against Americans. And that again, we are just not not nobody is good enough to stop that. So to me, it's still kind of that old school terrorism that that concerns me. Mark, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks.
00:54:18
Speaker
You've been listening to How to Get on a Watchlist. Our guest for this episode was Mark Polymeropoulos. A link to his book, Clarity in a Crisis, Leadership Lessons from the CIA, can be found in our show notes for the episode. Our producer for this episode was Edwin Tran. Our researcher was Alex Smith, with anonymous contributions from other members of the Encyclopedia Geopolitica team. To our audience, thank you very much for listening.
00:54:42
Speaker
If you enjoyed this show, please consider checking out our other content at Encyclopedia Geopolitica. We'd also appreciate it if you could subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, or support us on Patreon. Thanks for listening.