EverydaySpy Podcast - Learn This CIA Spy Skill Before 2026… Or Stay Powerless | Andrew Bustamante

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

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Focus features in Blumhouse present. Obsession. When I have a crush on a guy, no one knows. Be careful. I wish to keep loving more than anyone in the entire world. Who you wish for. Obsession is 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I love you so, so, so, so much.

It's blood-soaked nightmare fuel. Brokawkspudge and put on her. You have been warned. Obsession, rated R. Under 17, 90-a-without parent. Only theaters May 15th, with special engagements in Dolby. What is it that is the secret to being able to profile somebody well such that you can get from them ultimately what you need? Well, so the way it works.

So targeting is the career field. And it began with the military during the war on terror. And their targeting was more capture kill. But the CIA started utilizing it for more traditional targets. And the key is really just understanding human beings. So understanding their pattern of life, understanding. their loved ones in their inner circle, understanding the things that they are interested in

where somebody else, a case officer, can connect with them on a personal level. Okay. And when you say understand it, like what are you looking for? So you say pattern of life, is that like the rhythms, the things that we pursue?

Like what hooks are you looking for? So part of it is the nuts and bolts of how do I get somebody in front of them? So when I say pattern of life, what coffee shop do they go to? What time do they leave for work every day? So the logistics of your life. Yes, the logistics of your life where somebody can just casually bump into you and, you know, comment on your earrings.

I mean, obviously, not your earrings. Mine are gorgeous. What are you saying, Jehe? I say, you know, oh, I love your shirt. Have you been to Japan before? And start, shake up a conversation. By the way, boys and girls at home, I mentioned earlier that I was into Japan. Okay, I'm being clocked.

Sorry, fair enough. Yeah, and then picking up. So through the various data streams that we can collect at the CIA, which are all classified, but there's a variety of information that can be collected on individuals. And using what information you have on a person, you can gather what their interests are. You can gather what their relationships are like, with their family. Are they devoted to a spouse?

Are they, do they cheat on their spouse? Do they have children, but, you know, do they have a lot of children and they love them? Do they have no children but they want children? There are these little things. What's the way to get people to start bringing that stuff out? Do you try to remain like no matter what this person says, are you neutral? Or is it no matter what they say you're positive? Like, how do you ingratiate yourself into that world?

So the targeter works all behind the desk. So everything I'm looking at is data that comes in. So it's like looking at somebody's just building a profile. But I mean, people put so much on the internet. And then there's all these other data sources. So there's all these open sources that people are very open about their lives. And then there's all these other data sources that are proprietary and classified that give you a broader picture of a human being. And then you just start thinking about culturally, how do those things apply to that person?

How important is culture? Culture is hugely important, hugely important. So I have a hypothesis that everybody can be understood based on three things. Their biology, so just we are chemical processing plants, but also male, female, going to make a huge difference. Their values and their beliefs. Their values and their beliefs are, for me, basically, the way of being specific about culture and how it manifests. Does that pick it all up? Is there something else?

So I think, so I 100% Andy and I have talked about this before. I 100% agree on biology. And I don't think, I think people have to be careful not to think of biology as the cultural norm that we've been taught because biology is not, you know, men are better at this and women are better at this. Biology is, you know, there are functions that drive, there are chemicals that drive us to do certain things. So I definitely think that. I think I'm the other two also, but then the, the, The other thing I would add is that as human beings, we have basic needs. So one of those is the need for connection, right? One of those is the need for security. All of us as human beings, no matter what culture you're from, we require the sensation of being connected to other human beings and feeling secure in our lives. And so that, those things definitely play into how can I create an approach for another,

for a case officer, to bump into this. somebody and make that human connection with them despite cultural differences, despite possible language barriers. And those are really the things that you have to focus on when you're thinking about how do I bump this person and make friends. One of the things that hasn't come up is that targeters also direct the actions of case officers in many ways. Are targeters more frequently female?

No, but I would say they are more frequently introverted. Interesting. Okay. We're nerds. to put it in the word. But they can direct because if they've scrubbed everything, they've scrubbed classified databases, they've scrubbed social media,

they've scrubbed academic databases, they've scrubbed historical records. They know everything there is to know, and that also means they know what they don't know. So then they can tell a case officer, hey, on the next meeting with that person, dig into family, dig into how they liked college,

dig into favorite alcoholic drink if they drink. Because they want a more well-rounded profile. Because they want more in their profile. And they can direct the activity that drives the collection of intelligence because every one of those elements is a new way into whatever secret information you're also trying to get. Okay. So in Shadow Cell, you guys do a really good job of walking people through the journey of what it was actually like to be there on the ground, which makes it an incredible read. P.S. However, you're having to create a layer of bullshit lies.

Like, you're not, I'm assuming your name wasn't actually Alex Hernandez. Like that's a code name for what it was. Obviously, though I worked with multiple AIs to try to figure out what Falcon really was. It comes up with an answer, by the way. I don't know if it's true or not, but it has a strong hypothesis. So when you're doing all of that stuff and you're trying to build the sense of who this person is, how does that translate into something that's like really grounded? What are you, what was an example from the actual thing that you guys?

live through where it was like, okay, get me this piece of information because when I know that, then I'm going to be able to advise you to do and like, how did that actually work? Because to skip to the chase for people, you guys end up being very successful, end up helping to define a totally new way of doing espionage that's still being used. So obviously we learn something in these interactions. So with as I know it'll be abstracted, but as specific as you can be something that you said, okay, I need this piece of information. And it became a very specific. specific action. Right. So, so an example from the book, which we is a person that we were pursuing through tech means. So we were listening in on conversations. So we never, by the end of the

book, we had met that person. But gathering the information, we were having all these conversations. And so, but we couldn't, we couldn't figure out what they were talking about exactly until another source brought us a piece of information about medication that the person had been, had been acquiring under the table. The target's code name is Zephrum from the book. And just like G, he's saying, Zephrum was a priority target that we couldn't get close to. We couldn't physically get close to him because he had protected his pattern of life. So he had drivers to take him from point to point. He knew how to protect his information so we never knew when to expect him to go from point A to point B. He would leave for work at a different.

time in a different car with a different driver on a different day. So there was all this because he knew he was a target. He knew he was a target. So he protected himself. CIA believes that all people are born with a spy secret superpower. For some people that means they can win deals for others. They can spot liars. Some can even seduce lovers. I built a free three-minute test to help reveal to you exactly what your secret hidden superpower is. All you have to do is click on the link in the description below. Take the test and start using your spy superpower to stay ahead of 99% of people. And just like Ji saying, it took multiple different types of information,

tech information, interpretative information, surveillance information, before we put it all together. And even then, the kind of coup d'etat was another asset who didn't even know we were looking at Zephram, who gave us information about the person who was codenamed Zephrum. And that made it all click. Yeah. And then suddenly we knew that he was, you know, at first we thought, well, maybe he's a drug addict and that's a vulnerability.

And then we only later on that, oh, no, his child's sick, which is unfortunate, but also a huge vulnerability. So that really connected a lot of really important dots for us so that one day when we did meet him, we had this piece of information in the back of our minds that we could work towards helping him with. How did not play that card too fast? So that's really the beauty of what a case officer does. The case officers, you know, they are trained to build these relationships in a way where over time they create a genuine friendship. They create genuine trust so that when they uncover... Are you using the word genuine the way that I think about it?

Yeah. Like it's a real relationship. A real relationship. Do you have to do that as a way to like... So I don't have to remember what lie told basically. I'm just actually going to build a friendship with this person? Yes and no. I would say that first of all, it's kind of a uniquely American quasi uniquely Western strategy, the genuine relationship piece.

And part of that is because Americans, we culturally like to have real friends. We don't culturally like to have a bunch of fake relationships. It's very exhausting to have fake relationships. So we try to build real relationships. But we build those real relationships inside the confines of our cover persona. How the fuck does this not get blurry? It does get blurry. And that's a big part of why there's so much mental health support, psychological support.

That's also why assignments last as long as they do. Have you guys been studied? There's got to be something here about the integrity of like self-identification that like as it begins to break down, this is problematic. And so like what are they helping you do? CIA has an entire office of medical services, OMS. And inside OMS, not only are there nurses and doctors. for your physical body, but also for your mental health.

And everything about us is recorded and documented and retained by illness. What do you have to be most worried about? What's the most common mental injury? I guess it would be a full like a mental break, like mental. Because you're losing sight of who you really are? And everything collapses around you. When your personal relationships with your family, your marriage, your relationship with your children, your sense of personal values,

all of those things start to crumble when you've lived so many different roles or when you've done things that violate your values and beliefs as an individual in pursuit of a larger mission. And then you look back at that through age. It's a difficult thing. Like you sacrifice more and more.

So at the time maybe it didn't bother you. Correct. But it's an exponential sacrifice. Oof, that's, you just gave me the chills. Okay, so you talk about in the book, like the moral, gray is the thing that has to be dealt with in real time. Like, we've got to figure this out. Given that you guys get married reasonably early on in your journey together, how do you deal

with that? Like, are you, is Alex Hernandez married? And so it's easy for you to stay true to that. Or do you, are you sitting there, like, literally advising him on how to get close to women and using flirtation might actually be one of the tools. And so you guys, as a married couple, are like, all right, this is how you cozy up to this lady? Like, are we there? Or are we just saying it's icky to use a guy's kid being sick as a way to get information. So, I mean, there's so many areas where you can be working in the gray. And one of those is, I mean, we are trained in and well aware of honeypots where sex is used, you know, to basically either blackmail somebody for information or sex is used to, you know,

develop that sexual relationship and then get information out of them. So, and Andy likes women, quite a bit. So we always had the conversation where I was like, you know, like outside of our marriage, just for the mission, like just be careful. Be careful not to get trapped by a beautiful woman because it's stressful out there. You're by yourself. You're under a lot of stress. Maybe you have a really bad day.

And some beautiful woman comes and offers you a massage and then maybe the massage starts to become more and you're like in a vulnerable position. And so we're well aware of our own vulnerabilities because our job. was to tap into other people's vulnerabilities. That's wild. Yeah, the Alex Hernandez alias was built like all professional aliases, which is not that far from truth, right? We talk about having whatever is your truth is kind of like you're due north,

and then you want a good alias to be about 10 degrees off of truth. So Alex Hernandez wasn't married, but he was engaged, and Alex Hernandez is a name that looks like a brown guy with black hair, or whatever else it might be right. So there's a lot of elements of truth. Alex Hernandez studied the same thing I studied, but from a different school. And Alex Hernandez was only five years older or younger

than me in real life. And we could make all of the documentation align with the physical person because that's how true undercover operations are executed. So, gee, he didn't have to worry about me being too different than my real self, but I also didn't have to worry about me being too different from my real self.

I could still be a Star Trek nerd. I could still, you know, have traveled throughout the Far East. I could still have familiarity with Japanese language and Thai language without being too weird. Like I had all these elements that were still very much me, even though they were under this other person. Okay. So going back to the gray area, as a married couple, how do you guys deal with that? Is it that by nature you're just like not jealous or is it that, okay, I'll take that as a a misread on my part.

So if you're having to draw too stark of a line, is it just, okay, we, like, let's just say that you're like, yo, like, sex, obviously. You don't have to worry about the, the Kestrel government or the Falcon government. You got to worry about me. So, like, clear, but like, I don't even want you to, like, be alone in a car with a woman. Like, do you then just have to adopt that in the persona of Alex Hernandez?

And so it just becomes easy from that perspective? To a certain extent, yes, Ghee is a very jealous person. But she's also very specifically jealous. Okay. She's very specifically jealous of skinny bitches. I love it. So if I had to like flirt with a fat chick, she was not absurd. If I had to flirt with a tranny, she was not concerned.

If anything, she kind of cheered me on for all those missions where I had to go like, I had to go. America thanks you. Pander to some dude's weird sexual obsession. with whatever, you know, dominatrixes or something else. She's like, go have fun, take pictures, tell me about it when you come back, because that's not something we're ever going to do together. Okay, respect. Yeah, and I think when you're setting, I think when you're working in the gray

and you're setting kind of like lines in this, you know, writing lines in the sand for your partner, they still have to be fairly generalized. And so the way our... And they're still in sand. Right. And the way, exactly. The way our marriage works is that I trust and, more than I trust anybody else.

I keep saying I trust Andy 100%. And then everybody is like, you definitely don't trust him 100%, which is probably true. But I trust him more than I trust anybody else. Even though he's a former CIA spy. Yes. And what I...

That doesn't enter your thinking or you're like, listen, I know what that's like from the inside. You guys get a headline. You think one thing. But when you're in it, it's like... So there's the... What I really trust is two things. I trust him to make the best decision

in the moment that he can. That's the first thing. The second thing is I trust him to tell me what's happened. So if the best decision in the moment is, babe, I was going to get the keys to the kingdom and all I had to do was go down on this beautiful woman. I'd be like, okay, because you told me, right? It's for the mission and you told me. Sorry, where do you sign up for this?

Exactly. I never got that medal. I never got that metal. That never actually happened. But I mean, those are that when I say trust, that's what I mean. I trust him to make the best decision at the time that he can. And I trust him to always tell me. So there is no 10 years later being remember on that mission.

Well, you know, this thing happened and I'm sorry to tell you. Like, no. You come home and you tell me. She also trusts her own ability to set all the traps in place to catch you. Yes. She's not going to volunteer that. So there's traps all over our house. There's traps all over my computer.

There's traps all over my phone. That's why I trust you to tell me. I know, I'm going to know. I know that I'm being verified a lot. That is amazing. Okay, I want to go back to something very distressing. So honeypots. We're recording this in the middle of the Epstein scandal,

which is still going. And the thing that freaks me out is it always seems to be about young girls. Is it just known in the CIA that, first of all, men are easy to trap? I make the base assumption, please tell. me and the listening audience if this isn't true, that it's like a honeypot is basically 98% for men. And that you're probably not going to trap women with sex. Maybe relations, but not sex.

And is it true that some distressing percentage of men are going to be trapped like with a very unnervingly young woman? So I think men, I think it's a disproportionate amount of men. And I think part of that is historically, they have been the breadwinners and then the high stress positions. And it's just when people are under stress, they are vulnerable. And what do you want when you're under a lot of stress as a man?

You want somebody to make you feel good to take care of you. It's a 60-40 split among men between homosexual and heterosexual. What? Yeah. So the vast majority of 60-40? What is happening right now? The majority of Honeypot operations are targeted. targeting men with homosexual activity.

Because that is the vulnerability. Okay, I'm reading this in some way that maybe I shouldn't. I'm hearing that out of 100 men, 60 or straight and 40 are gay. No. What I'm saying is out of 100 honeypot operations against men. Okay. So basically, 60% are men. Of the guys that are ultra sexually motivated and are going to be easy to trap, 40% are gay.

Other way right. But 60% are guests. 60% are being targeted by sexual activity from another man. Gay men are easier to trap than straight men. With sex. And they're not necessarily gay. Interesting. What do you mean?

Well, there's a spectrum. Okay. There's a sexual spectrum, right? This is so interesting. Say more words. Heterosexual on one end, homosexual on one end. And a lot of space in between. But most of us, I would say, fall fairly somewhere in between.

Interesting. Colour in the space in between. What does that look like for you two as CIA spies? It's so cool. You guys are former, former CIA spies that are married. This is utterly fascinating. Okay, so yeah, walk me through the gray area. So you would have, you'd have an operation.

Or it's rare that the U.S. engages in sexual exploitation operations. Correct. Because it's just. I feel like I'm being spun right now. It's too sticky. Really? It's too expensive. high risk. We actually do follow

laws. We have a giant office of attorneys that we have to run operations through. Really? Now those attorneys have layers. So wait. There's always a way around something but the first level has to be There's a huge percentage of humanity that believes that Epstein

was an intelligence agent that asset asset. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Most people immediately go to Mossad. Some go to CIA. Some are Like, who knows. But are you saying that the U.S. would not do honeypots involving children? Yes.

Oh, yes. That is exactly what we're saying. If that were to have made it. Yeah. If that were to have made it through where some U.S. signature from an attorney said, we condone this operation. You're talking about a fraction of a percent of all operations. It's never been even remotely feasible in our mind that Epstein was a,

secured U.S. asset participating in honey-trad operations with children. Not for the U.S. Not for the U.S. Interesting. So you guys assume it's France? I got beef with the French right now.

I've always had beef with the French, so I get it. Okay. But Massad makes sense. Yeah. So do a lot of the... Because Massad just unhinged, no matter what. It's because their calculus is defense of the Jewish state.

that is there. And they're like, there's no laws. There's nothing that is worth risking the loss of the Jewish state. So everybody else is disposable. Yo, that's direct. I like it. Let's go. Spade to spade.

Okay, so back to the gray area. When we're thinking about honey pots, just to get everybody back, when we're thinking about honey pots, mostly men, 6040, it's men that you're targeting with men. but we hesitate to say that they're gay men. Right. But why? So if they're in the gray, why does 60% of the time we're like,

oh, this would be easier with a guy? It's not that the 60% of the time it's easier. It's that when we do the dossier work, what we find is that the vulnerability is tied in some way to a desire for sexual activity with another man. Because they're hiding it. They could be hiding it.

So it's just a little more illicit. It could be a curiosity. So if we can get them to do it here, Then it's like, I can use it against them. In a way, I wouldn't be able to use a woman against them. Everything about espionage is about getting people to take actions that they're trying to hide. Because if they do an action that they're trying to hide and they hide it well, guess what that means? It means when you tell them to do a dead drop two years from now or when you tell them to fly under a fake alias two years from now, they'll do it better because they're naturally good at keeping secrets.

Whereas if you hooks, if somebody has sex with a prostitute who's a male and then run, runs home and calls their preacher and talks to their wife and calls their mom, you're like, this person is never going to be equipped to carry real secrets in the future. Okay. So if I am recruiting for the CIA, am I preferentially going after people that are in the gray that are not necessarily straight or gay, but a little more flexible? Like, is that valuable? Do you get bonus points for that?

I wouldn't say they're bonus points, but the gray is what you're looking for. Because I'm assuming, like, if I'm stepping. into a honey pot and I don't maybe I'm just too suspicious but if I'm stepping into a honeypot somebody's like do a bump of cocaine I'm like you first right if somebody's taking me and there's like a guy involved I'd be like you jerk him off first like what the fuck you're talking about like I'm not going to do anything that's going to be used again I need to see you do some shit like but if that guy's like oh I can't either then like clearly it feels like it would dead end there so you're you're very right and that's where the pre work comes in

You don't meet somebody the first time and then take them to a location where you do a bump of cocaine You meet someone five, seven, 12 times and then over the course of that you explore What's the right setting? What's the right time? What's the right Compromise to introduce to them first and then it's like a domino set after that if you get them to do a small compromise And then another one after that another one after that they just start to build momentum and here's the thing you've you've probably had a friend in your life who kept all your secrets for you. And you knew, if you had a bad idea, that was the friend you were going to talk to first.

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