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CIA Spy Reveals the Science of Lying Without a Single Tell

October 22, 20260 comments♥ 0
00:00Got PC optimum points.Visit Shopper's Drug Mart for the bonus redemption event and get more for your points.Friday, October 23rd to Wednesday, October 28th.Valid in store and online.Everything we have ever done in our life is lying unprofessionally.Right.Lying without training.Lying as an amateur.
00:23Not lying as a pro.So how do you lie as a pro?There's a lot to lying professionally.Controlling your body language, making sure your body language and your verbaland nonverbal communication align is an important part of it.Knowing that professional liars actually talk very little,amateur liars talk a great deal.Because professional liars know the more you talk,
00:45the more difficult it is to remember the details of the lie that you're explaining,and then it also starts to make some misalignment between verbal and nonverbal cues.Right.So professional liars tend to be quieter.They also tend to be simpler in their lies.and most importantly, professional liars only lie as little as possible in terms of how far theydeviate from the truth. My name is Andy, but when I lie at a Starbucks, I tell them my name isAlex. Because it doesn't make sense to call myself David. Right. Because if I forget my name,
01:20that's going to be awkward. And similarly, if somebody calls the name Andy out at the front deskand I perk up and look, the person sitting next to me is going to be like, why did you raise your eyeswhen they called the name Andy.But if somebody says, Alex, and I perk up,the same question could come up and I'm like,oh, I just thought they said Andywhen they actually said Alex.Right.
01:40So they, did you know that instinctually, though,or did that it was through the trainingand how they kind of like prodded you a little bit?Yeah, so I didn't know any of that instinctively.I think I thought I was a good liar,but I don't think I, I think I felt like a good liar as a kidand as a young adult, but I wasn't.I just was overconfident.
01:58Right.And it wasn't until I said,started to learn the actual process for fabrication that I really understood, oh, this is how you do it forreal. It was the fact that I was mentally acceptable, like mentally I could accept that lying wasuseful. So I had no problem learning the skill, whereas sometimes people have a moral issue with lying.So as they learn how to do it better, it causes them anxiety or causes them guilt.But it didn't cause you any, and they knew it. Yeah. And like, so would you consider yourself a niceperson or just someone who's like pleasant, which means like you can sit in this interview and be
02:32nice and smile and be pleasant, but you're not really like a nice person, like kind. Are you a kindperson? No, I'm not a kind person. I don't know that I would define myself as a nice person either.Yeah. I'm a very pragmatic person. Yeah. So there's there's people, a very small group of peoplethat I genuinely care about. Right. And then everybody else is kind of. You don't care.No, it's not that I don't care. It's that they land on different levels of utility. Yeah.We have a term that we're taught at the agency called operational utility.Operational utility means how useful is something to whatever outcome you're trying to achieve.I've always looked at people, at tasks as through a lens of operational utility, but I never had the term.
03:19Right.So when I was trying to do well on a math test, it wasn't because I wanted to prove to the teacher I was good at math.It wasn't because I wanted mom and dad to be proud of me.It wasn't because I was excited to test myself.It was because getting a good gradegot me closer to the outcome that I wanted.That's operational utility.There are plenty of people out there who take the same test
03:38and they're just trying to challenge themselves.And there's people out there who are trying to make mom proud.And there's people out there who are trying to really impress the teacher.I bet there are even people who take a math testand want to get a good score because they want the teacher to feel good.I don't understand those people as an individual.all I wanted to do was get the good grade to move on to the next phase so that I could keep getting what I wanted.So isn't that just called an opportunist?
04:03And if you want to boil it down to some terms, right?It's an opportunist.It just, it has to be something that is a benefit to you, not just the general opportunity.No, but isn't the term opportunist?Like, if I'm an opportunist, because I'm, I like, I seek out opportunity that would benefit me,then that's the same thing as the operational utility, basically.Here's how I was kind of taught to see the two differently.Okay.
04:29People who are true opportunists pursue the path of least resistance.So let's just say that you're single, you're at a bar, and you've got two guys who are both hitting on you.One's fat and lazy, like one's fat and ugly.One's dashing and debonair, right?The one that's fat and lazy is going to be a much easier mark for you.The one who's dashing and debonair is going to be a little bit more.more difficult of a mark for you. The true opportunist picks the fat guy because it's less work.It's the path of least resistance. They get what they want, the man, the company, the money,
05:09the whatever, with less effort, whereas somebody who's operationally utilitarian in naturewill take the other person because the more debonair person is going to be arguably more usefulbecause now they look better in public and you're less embarrassed when you're seen with them and maybeyou have a continuing relationship.But it's not the path of least resistance.If you haven't discovered your secrets by superpower, then somebody else might be using theirs against you.CIA teaches us that there are only three types of people in the world, those who motivate, those who are being controlled by one of the other two.I created a three-minute CIA-style quiz to help you unlock your secret psychological.
05:54advantage and identify your hidden blind spot all you have to do is click on thefirst link in the description below or scan the QR code on your screen and you'll betaken directly to your private quiz this test was developed to help you weaponizeyour natural born gifts and use them to get ahead of 99% of people in powerwealth and purpose it was also designed to make sure that you can protectyourself against those who would use their skills against you I want you todiscover your secrets by superpower and use it for good before somebody elseuses their power against you.
06:26Right. Okay. That's an interesting way of perspective to look at it.Yeah, operational utility is about the outcome, not the effort.Whereas true opportunism is about the effort.This is fascinating. I love it. So then they put you into the covert right away then.You got the job as the, what do you call that job?Yeah, so I was a clandestine service trainee. What does that mean?It means that you're a trainee going into clandestine operations. They do avery important at CIA that they differentiate between operators and trainees because most of the
07:02training is actually on the job training. There's no school that teaches you how to be a CIA officer.There's training programs along the way that are trained by operators, but it's not likethere's a formal degree that you can get. So after you go through all the interviews, you're basicallyoffered a job and then you show up on the first day of the job and no shit, it is on the job.training. So they take you and they put you in an office and they tell you who your supervisor is andthen boom. That's it. And you start learning how to find cable traffic, which is the way that wecommunicate with with officers all around the world, how to read it, how to write it. They put youthrough training programs so that you learn how to use certain systems, how to, like for things as
07:46boring as how you request leave, all the way to things as sexy as how you launder money. So youthrough all these different kind of training programs that are between one and five days at a time.But essentially, you learn by doing the work every day.How do you do the work?So you show up to your job, your office, day one.Did they teach you how to launder money?Like, what were the most interesting things that you were taught on this job as a covert CIA agent?The most interesting things were few and far between, to be honest.
08:20The vast majority of the training that you get has to do with administrative,administrative requirements, organizational requirements, documentation, because it's all overseenby senior leadership, but also by the Senate Intelligence Committee and by other governmentorganizations that make sure that you're doing things a certain way.So what, okay, so like give me the ones that were the most interesting.Don't tell me what the administrative nonsense.I'm going to fall asleep.I want to know the stuff that was like so, like, intriguing.
08:48So there's a process called procurement.procurement is the way that you get your hands on something that you're not supposed to haveand that can't be affiliated with CIA or the United States.So, for example, if I have a case in Columbia that I want to pay with gold bullion thatcomes from India, I have to procure the gold bullion from India and then get it to Columbiawithout having any affiliation with CIA of the United States.So that's called a procurement process.So we are taught how to handle clandestine procurement
09:28so that we can make that whole transaction happenwhere essentially the gold disappears from Indiaand appears in Colombiaand nobody has any records of it on either side.And when you look at the transaction in between,there's no footprint that has America or the United States.So without going into too many details,the way that you might make that happen
09:49is you might have a shipping agentthat's from Sri Lanka,which is neighbors India,but is not part of the country,that shipping agent actually facilitatesthe movement between continents.And then you might have a third country organization,something in Ecuador,
10:05that claims responsibilityfor the gold from Sri Lanka.And then all you do is you take itfrom the Ecuadorian handling agentand smuggle it into Colombia,just like you smuggled it out of India to Sri Lanka.Where are you doing all this in an office?Like, where are you,
10:19like, are you on, are you, or in the fielddoing things. Like, I know you're not like a James Bond at the casino, but where are you kind ofdoing all these like covert operations? So what happens with most clandestine operations is theperson assigned the operation stays with the operation. So anywhere the operation goes, the primarymission planner or operator also goes. So make no mistake, 85 to 90 percent of every operationhappens in an office in something called a secure compartmentalized information facility,S-C-I-F, what we call a skiff.A skiff has, there's no cellular signals in or out.
10:57There's no way for people to plant a bug.Like, it's a secure area.Usually it's a secure room inside of another secure room, inside of a secure building.That's what a skiff is.So when I say in office, you're working inside of a skiff.Do you remember a little while ago when those guys from the government were on signaland they were like talking about these, like, you know, this huge government operation?And they're like talking basically on WhatsApp or Signal.
11:23Was that shocking to you given the fact of how things you know go down normally, like in the skiffwhere people have to have so much protection?How can they just willy-nilly be like doing this whole thing on Signal?It was absolutely willy-nilly.It was not shocking to me because there was a trend that started with the Obama administrationthat didn't exist prior to Obama.If you recall, Obama kind of made the first big splash in the information security spacebecause he insisted on having a Palm pilot, a Blackberry, that went with him everywhere.
11:53He wanted an encrypted Blackberry. Do you remember that?I don't.It was huge news for his first term, the first maybe year and a half of his first term.He wanted to have instant access to his secure systems through his Blackberry.Well, that started a trend where now senior officers, new presidents, senators, Congresspeople,everybody was like, well, if the president can have a mobile secure device, I want to have a mobile secure device.And that just continued to kind of digress and devolve into what we have now, which is basically Pete Hedceth, who's the Department of War Secretary, just using his personal cell phone and Signal.And Signal is something that we know is hacked by other intelligence services.
12:34So now they're just communicating on a commercial encrypted app accepting the risks associated with it.And that's okay by the government.I guess because this whole government's different than probably even.as you said, everything kind of digress, digress, digress.Yeah, it's not acceptable. It's not okay.But at the same time, this is what makes government so difficult.Administrations all have their own rules and their unspoken rules.It's not like there's a rulebook that the president has to follow.
13:04There's not a rule book that the cabinet has to follow.It's defined every time there's a new president, and every time there's a new election cycle,and every time there's a new technology, it's kind of rewritten.I don't think it should be that way, but at the same time, who's going to make the rulebookthat is going to evolve at the pace of technology?No, exactly.So that was like, but that's just like a stupid move anyway.I mean.
13:29Yeah, it was not a wise move.But I can see how it happened because it's just so much easier to do it on your phone, right?Like, I mean, how much safer signal than like what's up?Yeah, it's just who owns the data is really.They're pretty much the same in terms of.security. We're taught at CIA that there's a spectrum, and that spectrum goes between security andconvenience. So when you want something to be more convenient, it moves away from being more secure.And when you want something to be more secure, it obviously is less convenient, because everything
14:02has to land somewhere on that spectrum. So what you saw with the current administration is thatthey wanted something convenient. Well, the convenience solution wasn't that secure. And likewise,if they want something secure, they're going to have to literally meetin a skiff, a room in a room in a building to have a detailed conversation. They can't justtext message each other while they're on the golf course. No, it's just, it's absurd to me that that'slike, but that's, I mean, that's what's actually kind of interesting. I'm going to tell you a reallyrandom story. Many, many years ago, I got nominated to do a job in the government for theWhite House without giving all these crazy details. I didn't do it. However, I guess I was on some kind of
14:45like, because I was on an email chain with the people, the White House that's like, there's like aliaison in the White House who was emailing me. And they forgot to take me off of the like email,like chains. So even though I wasn't involved, for over a year, I was getting all of theseemails. It was so crazy to me that like there's like, people assume a lot, right? People assumethat because you're in this like particular position in a particular place that has a lot of likestatus or prestige or you'd think a lot of like things around it to to guard rails I guess you wouldsay it's actually not true that's what's really like it's like the it's like the emperor has noclothes or the wizard of Oz like it's like kind of like the bigger it is the actually the worse it is
15:32in a way and it goes to show I think a big part of what we were talking about earlier with the theactual discrepancy between what reality is right and what we think it is and they're not the same thingAnd our thinking is conditioned into us from the time that we're very young, very little.We're conditioned to believe that our parents are authorities, which means that we're conditionedto believe that anybody older than us is an authority.And then we're conditioned to believe that we have to obey authority to be successful.And all of this becomes ingrained in us in our formative years.So then by the time that you are actually able to think independently, you can't.
16:10Because you've been conditioned to think in a,in a way that's reliance on others.The irony with you is you're someone who doesn't like it, from what you said,like you're like, you don't talk to your mom or your dad, you can break off relationships,or whatever it is.But that would say to me that you are someone who is not a conformist.But then usually you would think that a governmental job would go after somebody who likes conformity.Conformity.
16:38Yeah, which means like you're the, I would think you'd be the antithesis in a lot of waysto what they would go after.And that's what I thought, too, until I actually got there,what CIA does differently than most organizations, right?Apple, Microsoft, SpaceX, they're looking for people who are proud of the business,people who want to wear the swag.Hey, I'm, you know, SpaceX Dragon LaunchPad.Like, they want people who want to belong to something.
17:09CIA doesn't want people who want to be CIA.CIA is looking for people who have a psychological need for external validation.And then CIA can become the single source for that external validation, right?They can become the secret organization that knows what you did in secret that can then tell you secretly, you know, you're changing the world.Yeah.You know you're the one who just changed the whole trajectory of history.You just transformed the future.And that's the kind of validation that keeps a CIA officer going.
17:42going on for the next mission and the next mission.We have a saying inside CA that we're too dumb to quit because you find yourself in thesereally shitty situations and you know it's a shitty situation.You're like, how the fuck did I get here?Yeah.How am I here?I'm sick to my stomach.I can't hold down water.
18:00I don't speak the local language and I can't call for help.I don't have anybody that's a local contact.And in three days time, I have to do a dead drop.Like, how did I get here?But then at the same time, you're like, how fucking cool I get to do this.Yes.It's so twisted, but that's how we think.Yeah.
18:18That keeps us motivated until we come back and get off the plane and somebody's like, he just changed the world.It's so true.It's so true, though.That is exactly true.But then, again, here you are.Okay, so you did it for seven years.So it didn't pay very well.I would imagine it.
18:38I mean, it pays better than any other government job, but it doesn't pay well enough.Okay, and then your wife was also a CIA agent, right?Did you mean, I guess you met her on the job?Yeah.Yeah.She also covert or was she overt?She was also covert.Okay.
18:51But what I was going to say is what did your other friends and family think you did?Did they, if you couldn't tell them you were working for the CIA, what did they thinkyou were doing?Well, I mean, I stopped talking to my family for the most part.I saw them maybe once every other year.Okay.They just thought I was doing something for the military on the civilian side because that wasmore or less what I told them.
19:12I was like, oh, yeah, I'm leaving the Air Force,but I'm going to go be a civilian in Washington, D.C.,and still help the military.Okay, so, but most people, where'd your wife's family think?My wife's family thought that she was,the CIA gave us cover organizations that we did work for.Within the CIA?No, no, no.
19:28Okay, so where'd they say,you're working at Vons or you're working at Whole Foods?Like, what were you doing?The kind of your imagination is the limit,and the specific cover providers are still clandestine.So I can't talk about the specific...Government organizations or commercial organizations that give us cover.Well, you know, in Mission Impossible, you know, what's his name in Mission Impossible?
19:50God, please help me.It's one of my favorite movies of all time.But he had talked about his character.Anyway, Ethan Hunt, yeah.Ethan Hunt was like he like would count on the road, you know, certain things.A really boring job that nobody would ever want to talk about or think about.Was it similar?Like they'd give you the most boring jobs in the world?
20:10Correct. Like to do that. Like also, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, were they CIA? Were they Delta?Yes, they were CIA. Mr. Mrs. Smith, the movie was CIA. And Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the TV show currently, is like this ambiguous secret organization.Oh, okay. Now, I don't know if you know this, but when people are like recruiting for like Delta, do they look for the same things or they look for CIA?They look for different things. And I am almost certain that 100% of Delta recruitment comes from the army. You have to be active, aren't.me before you can get pulled into Delta.And one of the things that that is important, too, is what Delta operators do is far moretechnical than what CIA officers do.In fact, just to give you an idea of how impressive Delta really is, they learn from us
20:59how to do human operations, human intelligence operations, and then they use our skill setto do all the other stuff that they do.So if you had to kind of rack and stack, I would put tier one operators much, much higher than I put CIA operators.CIA operators have a simple fundamental skill of intelligence collection, whereas your Navy SEAL Black Squadron or your Delta operators, these individuals have all of the other things they have to do, of which our skill is this one.