EverydaySpy Podcast - CIA Spies Caught in China: This Real Spy Story Will HAUNT You

Episode Date: July 11, 2026

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There's a pretty... Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year. Someone else said that last year, too. A round of Jameson, Ginger, and Lime arrives at the table. Smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time.

New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball. Cheers rising like a roar around the room. Because match days are about the shared moments. How did Jameson to your match day lineup? Jameson, it's what you bring. Please enjoy our products responsibly. famous case out there about two Americans in the 1950s who were captured by China.

Their names were Downey and Factor. And these two officers went into China to help evacuate an asset out of China. But if you remember, 1950s China was the very beginning of the Maoist revolution, right? They had just become communist. And there was still a large nationalist component in the country that was allies with the United States from the end of World War II. So you can imagine how different that China is or was from the China that. is now. Downey and Factow were captured in mainland China in like 1952. They were not released

from China until 1974. Wow. They were there for over 20 years. They both had children. They both had marriages. They were both legally announced as dead after about three years. They had funerals. Their families didn't know they existed. Did the CIA know that they were there? The CIA knew that they were there, but they had no plan for getting them out. They had no way of getting them out and they did not want them to become chips in a geopolitical game. So anytime they're brought up, they just go keep them. Yeah, we don't. Yeah, we don't. So yeah. They just deny that they were ever CIA to begin with. That's what plausible deny. Deniability is, right? Plausible deniability means that you can plausibly to the public deny that

person is CIA. It does not mean that you can plausibly deny to a foreign government. Okay. It means that you can plausibly deny it to the American people, right? So these guys ended up being there for like 22 years until China released them in the early 1970s after Nixon made peace with China and there was all this cooperation with China. And then these two guys come back and they get 22 years of back pay and they get medals and then they get reunited with their families and their daughter who like one of the guys' daughters was like seven when he left and she was 29 when he came back and like there's no relationship there. So so how were they treated? They were treated poorly. They were they were systematically tortured, systematically interrogated. They were kept like one breath from death

until the Chinese government transformed to the place where they realized like, oh, we might be able to use these guys as political chips with the U.S. government. So then they were treated a little bit better. Plus, after two or three years of like torture and interrogation, there's such a thing as your information becoming obsolete. Right. The way that CIA was running operations in 1958 is not the same way they were running at 1952. So what's the point in torturing these guys? You're not going to get any new information. So that was, that's just one example, right? And then you got other places like, there was a major flap in Paris, France in 1998, where two CIA officers were captured by the French DGSE. And France is a place where there's flaps more often than people realize, because the French are

actually very astute at intelligence. Most people don't realize that. But they're also allies to a degree, right? So why are we spying on them? Right. Well, because- And everybody spies on us, right? There are no real allies in this world. Right. So there's a flap in 98. These two guys get captured by the French DGSE. They go into a French prison. But they're treated very, very well, right? Because the French are like, oh, mon ami, we spy on you, you spy on us. So we don't want to cause a big international incident. Right. So we're going to make just let you keep spying. But we can't let you keep spying. So we're we're going to put you under house arrest in a nice hotel and we're going to take care of you for three, six, eight weeks while the U.S. and French figured out. And then we're going to extradite you

and we're going to get French spies back. in our prisoner swap. So it absolutely depends on the country and the geopolitics at the time. Okay. But it's not always a death sentence and that's, it's very rarely a death sentence

because a spy is a very valuable asset when a foreign country detains them, right? You got access to names, places, people, organizational hierarchy, modus operandi, the way the things are actually done. Not to mention your assets and your tools and any technology that you developed and that you've used in the field like this, it's a treasure trope of information.

So it's much more valuable to keep them alive and then interrogate them. And then after you think that you've reached the end of your secrets, then you move into like the more aggressive, you know, torture and detainment type of techniques. And that's what foreign countries do to us, which is part of the reason why I don't understand why we got so offended when we started torturing terrorists. Oh, yeah. The waterboarding. Yeah, waterboarding. Like, they're not going to die. It's insane.

It's all right. We put a big roach in with a guy in a thing like, well, he hates butt. Like, really, he's not going to kill him. And going back to our conversation about judges, a secret court said it was legal. Right. A public court said it wasn't. Right. Does that really mean that it wasn't legal?

Not anymore than it means that it was before, right? It's just subjective to the judge. I just don't know that you're going to get, like, if the person doesn't actually have, my problem is that people, if you don't have the information, you'll say anything at that point. I don't have the information this person wants. So that's the problem I think I have with torture. like, not that it's not necessarily the torture. It's that if they don't have the information, then they start giving anything they can think of until you don't know whether it's reliable.

Well, that's why you have information and intelligence best practices, right? You don't take single source information. So when you're waterboarding somebody and they're like, the bomb is under the bridge in Central Park. Right. Okay. Well, now that's just a piece of information. Can we corroborate it with any other piece of information anywhere else? Because if we're torturing two terrorists and one of them is like, it's under the bridge at Central Park. And the other one says, it's under the the bridge of Central Park. Now we can corroborate that information, right? One, would they both come up with the same wild story under the same circumstances? Very unlikely. I was going to say, listen, like these guys are like in, I want to say Saudi Arabia. I think it's Saudi Arabia. I could be wrong.

Where they lure the, the journalist into the, into their embassy, and then they grab them, and fly them guys and chop them up and get them out. Like, and then I think, what is it, the end? Indians that killed Canada. Yeah, in Canada. Was it a Sikh? Yes, a Sikh dissident. Yeah, and this is what you know what's interesting about that. I've watched several videos on that.

Some of the videos say that he had applied to become a Canadian citizen. And some are saying that that he had applied him and turned down. He wasn't a Canadian citizen. And then other ones were saying he was a Canadian citizen. So I'm still not sure. I don't know the details there. I think what that's highlighting, though, is the fact that it was in their country. Right.

Yeah. And Canada is one of those countries that America doesn't want to become. Right. Where simply by being present in the country, you fall under protections of the country, right? The socialist law that exists up there. So there's a certain level of responsibility that Trudeau takes just because it happened in his territory. Right. The most interesting thing about the Sikhs death, and for anybody who doesn't know that there was an assassination on Canadian soil of a Sikh dissident by the Indians. Yeah.

The really important things understand there are one, India is, is, is, considered and has long been considered, an ally to the West. What kind of an ally comes in and kills somebody on their allied soil? It shows you how differently India thinks about an allied partnership versus what Canada and the United States think of as an allied partnership. The second thing is that India kills people that it disagrees with. Nobody realizes that, right? The difference between India and Pakistan isn't nearly as big as people think it is.

Not to mention the fact that Pakistan, as fucked up as it is, is also an ally of the United States. So how is the United States an ally to both India and Pakistan when India and Pakistan are basically out to wipe each other off the map? Right. That's just a little bit of interesting geopolitics there for you. But I thought it was mildly entertaining and wildly interesting to see how Canada and how some of the world reacted to this idea that the Indians came in and killed somebody on Canadian soil. Like, there's still the Indians. Yeah. I mean, the problem is, it goes back to our original conversation where it's, you know, what a, what U.S. citizens think of the United States and what the truth is.

And then it's even like saying, hey, we, we're our allies are doing horrible things. They're horrible people. They shouldn't be our allies. Wait a second. Yeah. Wait a second. Time out. There's no, there's no innocent people out there that we, if we were only dealing with.

countries that were like-minded, then we'd have, we, it would just be us. Yeah. Like, who else are we going to be, you know, allies with? Yep. So exactly. You've got to have to, some of your allies are going to be monsters. Yeah. And then, and you know what? There's a fantastic book out there called a case for psychopaths. And there's a strong case for why the world needs psychopaths. As much as the average, what I call bobblehead, your, your typical cog, the average bobblehead out there is going and bobble their head with whatever the current trend is in media and say, oh, psychopaths are bad. No. You know who make up our tier one forces?

Psychopaths. You know who can make it through seal training and not give up? Psychopaths. Right. Right. Like the system that we've created in the United States has made it so that we can identify them young at 18, 19 years old, 20 years old, and then cultivate them so their psychopathy becomes a sort of perverted loyalty to a nationalistic sentiment instead of a loyalty to themselves

and their own ambitions, right? ambitions, right? But that also then leads to problems when your tier one Navy seal is 50 years old and not a seal anymore. Because now they're like, now he's on a gun tower, taken out college student somewhere. Well, yeah, because they become a person. They become a person who's capable of great skill. Yeah. But they're almost like a samurai who lost their master. Right. That's not a good situation. Yeah, it's not a good situation. That's why you end up having so much PTSD and so many issues with veterans, especially well-trained veterans. And I know that you're, I mean, good luck parsing

through all the negative comments now from people who are saying, I talk shit about tier one operators. Yeah, but either way, it's accessible. They'll agree, right? There are some of them who then go on to, like, write books and start businesses and do whatever they can because they've been told for 20 years

that they're God's gift to the earth. Right. And then after 50 seals, write 50 different books, and people are like, oh, seal's just a seal. You're like, you know, they don't know how to handle that. Not to mention the Delta operators who simply can't ever had, that they were Delta operators or the Marsock Raiders who can't admit that they were ever

Marsock Raiders. I'm going to knock my head like I know with both those. Exactly. Exactly. Colby and I were talking about the Marsaul guys the other day. But yeah, there's this, there's intense, intensely trained people out there who are on the spectrum of psychopathy. And we need them because who else is going to answer the phone call when somebody says,

hey, you guys have 10 days and then you need to raid this house in this desert and kill everybody there. And then you need to take blood samples. of all of them and bring back some piece of DNA from this one guy who we think is the leader. And then they're like, okay, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Cut off an ear. Stick it in a bag. Stick in my pocket. Catch the helicopter back. Pizza for dinner. It's a special kind of person, man. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I was, I was just thinking, like, it's the same thing with the, with CEOs or con men or whatever because they have to do not,

they're not cut people's ears off, typically, hopefully. But they have to, you know, sometimes, sometimes is that guy at the boardroom, you know, at the boardroom. You know, at the boardroom. who said where they're trying to get a deal that will save their company and make everybody millions and the company saying you're telling me absolutely 100% you can do that absolutely we can do that we've got right now we're already tooling up this will be done within 30 days I give you my word and the two guys sit next to him who are just normal guys who you know graduated college and are just your average you know average citizen are sitting there thinking oh my god what did jim just say he just he haven't talked to anybody there's been being tooled up 30 days I don't think so

You know, and they're sitting there like, and saying nothing, the guy's like, all right, well, we're ready to go. All right, well, we're going to need the deposit at this time and this time. Walks out with 100% confidence. The other guys walk out and go, oh my God, what do you? Doesn't matter when we get close to 30 days. We'll get a two-week extension by that time. They've already invested in us. They can't pull back.

We spent their $50 million. So, you know, they're like, oh, my God, you're lying. You're this. You're that. That's fraud. That's this. Doesn't matter. They'll be too deep in by that point to change their mind.

And listen, the people that build our soul. submarines and our boats and our and our plane, you know, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Yeah, they do the same, like, but the projects they're taking on are immense. And that you need somebody to do those types of things to get things moving. Otherwise, they never get out of committee. Correct. And you never get those things built. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement.

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for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. There's so much complexity of how those big deals are closed on the government sector and in the private sector. There's so much complexity that your average person can't comprehend it. Right. The idea, the idea of saying yes to something that you're not totally sure of. I mean, everything about a bobblehead's cog upbringing and public school, private school and college tells them that you don't, you don't over promise and under deliver. You never let yourself do that. But then what actually happens is at the highest scales, you're exactly right. You end up having to

put on this fake bravado. You have to put on this air of confidence that you've got it all figured out because if you don't give them that peace of mind, then you don't get the investment that's critical to what you actually need to have in order to start the project. And you're totally right. That's how, you know, the joint strike fighter was delayed for five years before it actually hit the skies. And that's how the, you know, the new stealth bomber was delayed. That's how silent engine submarines were delivered. None of them were delivered on time. None of them were delivered within budget. None of them were even, many of them were actually delivered by a different provider because they had to change contracts after five years because they were like, you know what? You've missed the deadline twice.

So now we're just going to take all of your IP and give it to Boeing or give it to North of Grumman or give it to somebody else, right? Yeah. I was just thinking a little, the Kennedy speech when he says, we're going to go to the moon and do the other things that, you know, the other hard things and it and turns around. And the next day, people that scientists are getting phone calls saying, so, how are we going to do this? He's like, what are you talking about? It sounded like he had it all wrapped up. No, no, you're in charge. I'm in charge or what?

I don't even know how we're going to do that. Doesn't matter. He just promised it. It's going to happen. You know, wow. So, yeah, it's insanity. But that's also part of another superpower that we have with our government is that oftentimes the first adopter of technology is the federal government.

As much as we're having consternations about AI right now, the first time I touched AI, I was at CIA. People didn't even know AI. I didn't even know AI existed. I thought it was, I watched like the Terminator movie on Monday. And then on Wednesday, they put me behind a console. And they were like, oh, yeah, there's an AI on. the other than this console.

You're like, there's a what? Like, you're going to have a conversation. Yeah, it's insane, right? And it wasn't a very good conversation. It wasn't nearly as good as what you get right now talking to Bard or chat GPT. Right. But you were able to basically be like, you know, find me this person. And it was like, okay, Andrew, here's this person.

Here's what we understand about this person. Here's where we leave they're going next. And you're like, this is crazy. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do? Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad-free? Don't worry, we get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life

and supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your payday for life ticket today. Raffle number 155-2194. Please play responsibly. And somebody made a fortune. I can't tell you who, and I can't tell you what company, but Wikipedia will. Somebody made a fortune building that AI for CIA, right?

It's insane. Yeah, I, uh, it, I was going to say it's funny because we used to joke about having Facebook friends, right? Like you never meet, but my wife's daughter, Mary Shelley, spent all day chatting with like, you know, chat GPT. I mean, all day, like they have like a whatever, a friend feature or whatever it is and just joking and telling her jokes. I mean, literally giggling and laughing like you or she's talking with a friend on the couch. And you're going, it's like, what are you doing? Oh my God, I just, I just this, and they just told me a joke, and it's so funny.

And I'm just asking questions. And it was like, like, this isn't even, now it's not even a Facebook friend. Yeah. Who's at least a real person on the other end. Like, this isn't even a real person. You can have a pretend girlfriend. You can have a, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's such a vastly different world that it was when. And it's going to continue changing, right?

And if anything, it's that changing face of the world that makes me so much more comfortable dealing with people who were already outcasts of the normal world anyways. Right. The criminals, the spies, the folks like us who kind of who refuse to be stepped on, those are the people who are taking control of their own future, their own destiny. So in the future, as much change is coming, as scary as it is, we've been fighting for ourselves already. So we'll just keep scrapping all the way to the end.

It's all the cogs in the middle. It's all the quiet future entrepreneurs. It's all the quiet future podcasters. It's all the ambitious people who refuse to pursue their ambition. They're the ones I feel sorry for because they're the ones that are literally going to get stepped on and left behind as they continue to wonder if they should take a chance, if they should take a risk. I was going to say, it's like, did you ever read? There was a book called, I think it was called Syrup by, I think it was Max Berry wrote it. I could be wrong, but I feel like I'm pretty right on that where he was talking about how there were certain people, like almost everybody, he said, has a multi-million dollar idea within their lifetime.

the difference is is that most people just don't act on it. Like how many times has somebody been like, bro, I was talking to my buddy about that right there. And they're watching a commercial or something came out on, you know, Google or there's some new thing. And they're talking about it. They're like, 10 years ago, me and my buddy that, but you didn't do anything. Yeah.

Like that's my idea. No, it's not. Yep. Like it may be your idea, but it's his company and he did something. And so those are the people that make, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars because someone like, you know, Elon Musk says, yeah, we're going to deal an electric. And yeah, there have been people have tried and we're going to do it.

Yeah, but you need, you need, yeah, but that's not good. They'll only get two or three hundred miles. I know. Yeah, but you know what I'm, what if we're going to go ahead. We're also going to build all these, all these electrical chargers. And we're going to, you're insane. Yeah. Like, what are you talking about?

It's true. But those are the guys that make tons of money.