EverydaySpy Podcast - The Spy Mistake in Paris

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Spying is a game as old as mankind. But the way to win isn't always about being the best and what you do. Sometimes the best way to win is to be the one who makes the fewest mistakes. In this episode, join Andrew as he shares one mistake in Paris that forever changed the course of history between two world powers. And learn how you can use mistakes to win in your own everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. In the spy business, we call espionage the gentleman's game. Soldiers fight and thieves steal, but spies have to do both in a way that makes it look like we are doing neither. And covert operations have been around as long as human history, right? Ancient tribes used to sneak into areas controlled by other tribes to steal tools, food, even women and children, Egyptian hieroglyphs actually tell stories of spies working for and against pharaohs and priests hunting for traitors or sabotaging empires from the inside. And every major war from the Napoleonic War to current conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Libya, have all relied on

intelligence operations to help ensure success. But where traditional military operations are direct, And visible, covert operations must be indirect and remain undetected. And it is really, really hard to change history and shape international events without getting caught. And so that's why we call espionage a gentleman's game. It's a game played with smiles and secrets instead of bullets and tanks. Because when you win the espionage game, no one has to shoot and no one has to die. No one even has to know that you won. One thing every CIA officer has in common is our intensely competitive nature.

We just don't like to lose. It doesn't matter whether you're an analyst, an operative, an accountant, or a nurse. The idea of losing just makes your skin crawl. So CIA gives us all the skills we need to win, skills that I've been sharing with you for the past five seasons. But they also give us some really interesting, insight into how people lose. And one of the fastest ways to lose in the field is to become task saturated. Task saturation happens when the number of tasks that you must complete is more than the number

of tasks you are able to immediately prioritize. Now, everyone has a different threshold for task saturation. Some people prefer to do only one task at a time. And as soon as they have two tasks, they begin to panic. Other folks might pride themselves on being multitaskers. They may not hit task saturation until they have 10 or 12 immediate needs that they have to juggle. But in both cases, once the threshold is met, both individuals are saturated with competing tasks that they have to complete. Now, CIA trains its officers to cope with task saturation for a number of reasons,

but the most important reason ties back to the gentleman's game. that we were just discussing. Because the winner in the spy game isn't actually the person who makes the best moves. It's the person who makes the fewest mistakes. And task saturation is the number one reason that you, me, and all the spies in the world make mistakes. Let's look at two examples. One from everyday life and one from spy life. On any given day, you're going to go to work. and when you get to work, you'll have a general idea of what you have to do on that day. You might check email, send a few messages, and start checking off your to-do list. But let's say that around 11 a.m., some new important project pops up, something that the boss wants done right away.

This is your standard corporate fire drill. You've seen it happen before. I've seen it happen before. By 12 o'clock, every supervisor on the floor is flush with panic because they have to be. to coordinate this new project with marketing, with sales teams, with the print vendor, with call centers. The boss's deadline is too tight. It's too unrealistic. It's impossible if they expect any kind of quality delivery. This is exactly what task saturation looks like in the everyday workplace.

And it leads to mistakes. There are fulfillment errors, pricing errors, typos that get printed 10,000 times. And while every one of these errors costs time and money and stress, they don't have much long-term impact. But in the gentleman's game, in the spy game, task saturation looks almost the same, but the outcome is very different. In 1995, a CIA employee in Paris, France,

picked up a tail and didn't realize it. The employee was in the middle of a rough day. Relationships and intel reports and cover work had all melted down at the same time. And now they had to execute an operation. This is the exact situation CIA wants to avoid. Task saturation. But on this day, it didn't work.

The partially covered employee had to meet with a fully covered CIA officer as part of the op. And when they met together, the surveillance team, the French surveillance team, saw and heard the whole meeting, including details of a new economic operation being business. against the French. The French surveillance team was immediately expanded, and they started following both the partially covered and the newly identified undercover CIA officer. In less than 48 hours, three other fully covered covert CIA operatives had all been identified by DGSE, the French Intelligence Service, in Paris. Now, needless to say, the French, who were U.S. allies in every sense of the word at the time were outraged, and they chose to expose the entire CIA network very publicly. Now, if you fast forward to today, 25-ish years later, you still see

the blowback from what CIA insiders call the Paris flap. French DGSE still distrusts CIA. They are one of the most aggressive and highly funded spy agencies operating against us. They are in the top five countries executing economic and industrial espionage against the United States. And how did it all start with a single CIA resource that made a mistake when they became task saturated? Now, if you've been through military basic training or pilot training, the police academy, or even CIA's training at the farm, I know you've experienced task saturation. If you haven't been through any of those trainings and you're looking to test yourself at an elite level, join me for my next Streetcraft course. You can find the details at Everydayspy.com forward slash spy.

Everydayspy.com forward slash SPY. Now, I've seen students shake, stare, and even fall asleep during Streetcraft when they come face to face with intense task saturation. I would accuse myself of being a bad teacher, except I've seen all. all the same things happen at CIA itself. There is no reason, there is no way that you can fight task saturation until you first understand that it is happening to you. And once you know what it looks like and what it feels like, then you can fight its effects. So my goal today was just to introduce you to task saturation and then share a little bit of

history with the Paris flap. But I'll be back next time on this podcast to tell you how CIA taught me to fight task saturation and win because when you can do more in less time with fewer mistakes, that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy.

or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.