Julian Dorey Podcast - #290 - CIA “Criminal” Spy: How I Infiltrated Most RUTHLESS Cartel | Matthew Hedger & Shawnee Delaney

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

SPONSORS: 1) Download ACORNS: https://www.acorns.com/julian (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Matthew Hedger is a former "NOC" Spy for CIA. His program was Top-Secret and completely off-books. By the end of his run, he had successfully infiltrated the Mexican Cartels as one of their chief money launderers. Shawnee Delaney is an Ex-DIA clandestine ops officer, expert on cybersecurity, insider threat program development, surveillance, & investigation. She took part in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/ INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey GUEST LINKS - MATT LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-hedger-692a30324/ - SHAWNEE Website: https://www.vaillancegroup.com - SHAWNEE LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/spyex/ ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - CIA Noc Spy, Matt leaked on Dark Web, USAID 15:50 - "Going Black", Money Laundering for CIA inside Cartels, CIA Disguises 24:35 - Matt & Shawnee on how to play deep cover role 24/7 33:35 - How CIA "uses" young officers 38:21 - CIA-Mossad Joint Operation 43:34 - How Matt initially connected with Mexican Cartels 50:25 - Old School Spy Comms 53:15 - Foreign Intel Data Breaches 57:53 - CIA operations in America, Data Privacy, Corporate Data Security 1:08:15 - CIA & DARPA Tech 1:13:45 - Shawnee breaks down AI Threats 1:30:55 - Matt pulls a fast one story, "Politeness & Familiarity" Theory 1:41:02 - Paranoia in Spying 1:42:15 - Matt infiltrates Cartel 1:49:38 - Types of targets Matt wanted 1:53:05 - How Matt psychology moves targets 1:55:20 - Using Banks to launder money 2:00:29 - Fent Problems 2:04:25 - Steering undercover criminal work into CIA work 2:08:39 - Matt turns a Top-10 Bank C-Suite Exec Story 2:25:31 - Matt becomes cartels' "guy" 2:33:25 - Matt's day-to-day cover while working cartels, Addiction to Danger 2:40:05 - Matt's bar-killing story 2:44:05 - The Cartel torture scene Matt witnessed 2:46:25 - Meetings w/ senior cartel leaders 2:49:30 - The Moral repercussions of Matt's spy work 2:54:25 - CIA & The Murder of Kiki Camarena 2:57:15 - Cartels designated terrorist groups 3:01:32 - The strange capture of Cartel Leader "El Mayo" 3:05:38 - Matt remembers undercover situations where he was terrified 3:08:32 - Matt gives more details on how foreign intel doxxed him on Dark Web 3:12:45 - Matt "left" CIA 3:17:27 - Matt & Shawnee love the comments CREDITS: - Host & Producer: Julian Dorey - Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 290 - Matthew Hedger & Shawnee Delaney Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This was an extremely high-level person in a very well-known international bank. His bank had already been being used by some of the people I knew in the money laundering world, the criminal side of it at this point. This was early on in your time infiltrating the cartel? Yes. How did you make contact with him? It goes to creating that, what I call, perceived serendipitous encounter. Walked up to him in a hotel lobby bar.

So let's say I knew his favorite book. I might walk in having just started. I hope that he starts the conversation with me, not the other way around. Did you know after that first one that you had him? I knew he was the type that we could get there. What made him the type? He was very able to be influenced and he was very quick to, whoa. That was the more significant part. I knew when the big ass came, it would be a yes. You have to be, because you're dropping cover. You're not dropping cover. I work for CIA. You're dropping cover that I'm not just this corporate guy. I want him to come to the conclusion

I'm a money launderer eventually. I'm going to say like, no, I'm a regular businessman. I do this, but I'm going to keep dropping stuff to where he's like, I think Matthew might be up to some shady shit. And what types of psychological tactics are you using to push him over the edge?

The meeting where you do the big pitch. I wanted him to, he was like, oh, I can do so much more. That's one thing that can be done. The next is what we call it. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. Jesus Christ. That's Jason Bourne. Welcome back, man. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. We got cut off halfway last time so it made sense we had to bring you right back in yeah i'm happy to be back it was actually funny a couple days

after i shot with you i was having a dinner with jim lawler who's been on and shawnee and it was kind of like a cast members reunion i get i get real scared because like random shit will happen. I'll be on – like I never go on Facebook, for example. And I opened it up like, I don't know, two, three weeks ago. And it says, you have one new friend request. James Lawler. I'm like, oh, God.

Arrest me now, please. I didn't do anything wrong. He's watching. He's scary. He watches on Instagram too. That gets a little scary. But we also have Jessica Chastain back in the building. I wish.

Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. So we did episode 239 together. It's amazing you remember the numbers. Yeah, I got that photograph. That's amazing. Very, very helpful.

But we went through your whole story last time you were here, Shawnee. You obviously were someone who was in DIA, which when we got to refill in some blanks today for people who haven't heard episodes, we'll definitely do that. But within DIA, you were doing a whole bunch of different things, including but not limited to being involved on the periphery of hunting Osama bin Laden. Trying my hardest. And now the two of you work together, right? We do. That's right. And what's the company called, Artemis?

Artemis is the company that Iemis uh artemis is the company that i'm primarily at but we also partner with shawnee's company got it okay finance yeah and you you work for me now oh she just pulled that on happy to do it well it's actually great to have you in here shawnee because when we did the last episode matt like i, we got cut off halfway. And I should have thought of this before, but there were people hearing your story as a CIA knock, which we'll redefine what that is again today. They're like, yeah, I'll take shit that never happened for 500, Alex. And naturally, that's going to be the reaction.

But to be clear, you work with Shawnee. You were co-signed by Shawnee. Mad Dog Jim Lawler co-signed you to come in here. That guy is definitely still in the CIA. Sorry, Jim. And I love how he says probably. There was no denial there whatsoever. When he told me he was still going to like the CIA like Langley happy hours on Fridays, I'm like – Everybody, they all do that. That's not helping. That's not helping.

That's not helping. Don't tell people that. The free hooch, though. Right? There's a lot of places to get good hooch. I bet he could get free liquor anywhere. You're going to give me that free liquor from behind? He'll just hit you with that.

But anyway, so he co-signed you and everything. But I don't want to bury the lead here and I'd love for you to just explain this so that we can put this to bed all for once. The only reason someone like you was able to come talk on my platform is because you are out. And even if you were out, you might not be able to do it, but you can, because the way I understand it, you were your identity along with perhaps some other people who were involved in a similar program was leaked on the dark web about a year and a half ago. So what, what happened there? Yeah, that's correct. And even sometimes when people are outed, they don't,

can't talk about it and things like that. But it just turns out that at this moment, or before we started talking, the enemies of our country knew everything about it in the you know people here didn't but um what happened was we actually had an insider threat we had a counter-intelligence issue in the program uh one of the people that was involved in our cover program was actually divulged information to a country that we're not super cool with. Are you allowed to say what country? No. But after – But A-plus for trying.

Right. All right. So after that, what the country did was they took all the information that they were given and they compiled it and they leaked it on the dark web. I think most of this has been tidied up by now. But just so that every other country that hated people from here could know about it as well. And so it became almost impossible to travel during that time period without getting flagged with the biometrics at airports and things like that. So it just went from one day being on the job to getting a notice that, hey, you got to get back here as fast as possible. And this is over.

Everybody knows. All right. We're going to put a pin in that and we'll come to that at that part in the story where you can give more detail. I just want to make sure out front like people knew why you were talking. So last time you were in here, and this will be great to have you here, Shawnee, as well today to kind of give the other perspective on guys like Matt and how you guys see them and what you were doing. But last time you were in here, we went through you initially going into NSA at a desk job working counterintel when you were 19, right? Right. I joined the Navy, and they poached me from the Navy on an NSA billet essentially.

Right, and you had like some CIA uncle psychiatrist, you know? Yeah. Before I joined. They were tracking you for the Illuminati for sure. Got it. So you do that. And then when you're 22, 23, they have this conversation with you where they pull you in and they ask you in a bar, some guy asks you if you want to be a NOC. So for people that did not see episode 275 with you, can you just re-explain what a NOC is? Sure. The NOC is the umbrella for essentially anything that is not diplomatic cover. So it's non-official. We're not officially disguising someone as the third secretary of economic affairs at an embassy overseas. They don't have a diplomatic passport. And so there can be different versions of that, boop. I call up Donald Trump. I say, listen, motherfucker, we got one of your knocks. It's this guy, Hedger. Trump basically has to say, you want me to push him for you?

Right. Yeah. Right? So it's like totally off books. It would be up to the administration how they handled that situation. Yeah. They'd probably push though. Got to be deniable. I don't know. yeah they'd probably push though gotta be deniable okay so you get into this program and to put the second layer on it that you laid out last time you did probably like and i've had a lot of people talk to me about this one of the most insane training like stories i've ever heard like

i'm jealous yeah he did what nine months at some mansion with some fucking mafia billionaire learning how to like cook and dress nicely i was in dorm, like in a barracks with a bunch of, you know, other people getting pretend blown up and, you know, yeah, very different. There was no culinary expertise. There was nothing like that. So you essentially, you had one guy and then there would be teams that come in to train you for these fucking 10,000 things you got to be trained on. Everything from lock picking to becoming an expert money launderer to all this different stuff. And then you get put out in the field and your job is to infiltrate criminal organizations, international criminal organizations.

Not to stop them, but to help them and do it for national security purposes. Well, so the job isn't to infiltrate the organization. The job was primarily to do covert finance operations, which is us moving our money into other places without people knowing it's the U.S. government's money, and then also to purchase restricted technology or weapon systems from the adversary that we needed to get a hold of to test. The cover that's typically used for something like that in a commercial way can be enhanced by the people you're dealing with thinking, oh, he's a criminal. And so if you're dealing with and being seen to deal with these very well-known international criminal groups, it adds some legitimacy to, well, that guy can't be like an Interpol agent.

He's not an undercover or whatever. How would he also be hanging out with these cartel dudes over here? I would, you know, and I think the same reason that, you know, people are like, man, that's, you know, I'm skeptical. Like, why would it work like that? I mean, that's what we're hoping the adversary thinks when they look at this situation. So, so you look at it as a trade-off, you look at it as, all right, these organizations exist. We don't like them. We don't like what they do. But if we – if they're going to exist and we can use them to do what we deem to be higher value shit in the tradeoff of life, then we'll do it. And it's a fadeoff, right? It's a shade like the magician's hot assistant. If people are looking at that, they're not seeing what is actually going on. Now, what was that first part you said? Not about getting weapons programs and trying to

uncover that stuff, but the part about moving money for the US government. Can you explain that some more? Sure. Let's say that, look at what Shawnee used to do, recruiting people. We have to pay them money. We have to buy stuff. We have to finance operations in war zones and theaters that are non-permissive as well. You can't just whip out your US government visa and say, hey, here you go. Or that person is going to be in a lot of danger if – let's say that they're spying on a foreign security service, for example, giving us classified information, and we want to get them money. We can't just wire them money from the US government to their bank account because their counterintelligence people will see that and know they're up to no good. It would expose them very quickly so we have to have money for that or to

purchase things um that doesn't have the taint of having come from the u.s system so you put it through usa to fund condoms and mosaics i understand yeah you already you already know yeah it's crazy yeah you're notuh. Yeah. You're not helping. You're not helping the brand today. Mad Dog's not going to be happy with you. But that's what I'm here to do. I'm here to expose the CIA spooky people in front of us. But anyway, in all seriousness.

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View important disclosures at acorns.com slash Julian. Where this has been taken advantage of with the things like what John Kiriakou talked about on my podcast. I didn't even know this, but he was like blowing the whistle on this five months ago when he was here before this even happened. And I was just oblivious to it. But like financing poppy fields in Afghanistan so that we can drug up Iran and Russia, that doesn't sit well with people and I understand that. Now, the poison pill there is that they do it to us. So it's like I see why people in the back rooms want to do that. Now, the poison pill there is that they do it to us. So it's like I see why people in the back rooms want to do that. I don't want to live in a world where we're doing that to each other.

It kind of is what it is. Where people see the absolute waste though, we've already read out these lists. Everyone can pull up all the memes. A lot of them are real. Some of them are taken out of context but others are 100% real. When you're paying like fucking 50 grand here and 5 million there for like DEI and like Somalia, probably not the best – Not a priority. Right. Not the best use of money.

So like if you see whether it be Elon Musk or whoever the hell is going to go in and clean this up, do you think that that could be a positive to be able to get that a little bit back on track so that it's used, I don't know, correctly? I mean, I think anytime you – if you truly eliminate waste, it's positive. When I was in Afghanistan, I know probably when you were downrange, we would joke about the $50,000 gold toilets that are on the list somewhere. And so I think the more efficiently you can either fight a war or do what we were just talking about, that's common sense. For sure. All right. So we covered the whole knock thing again. So people have that.

Now, we'd said you were in NSA. In NSA, you did these nine months training with the guy. Then you get put in the field and your job is to at least be among these organizations so that you can do what you do. And the way I understood it is that essentially, you know, the last time we covered your whole time, that three and a half years in the biker gang. So when you're there, you're a part of, you're not going to say which one, but part of one of the big four international biker gangs. You're doing things like money laundering, sometimes narcotics trafficking, stuff like that. And what it does is you live this life as a criminal, as an actor all the time, doing this, but for real. And then it gives you an excuse to go to, I'm going to make up a country, Hungary, with these guys.

And then when you're in Hungary, you say, hey, guys, I'm going to go for a run real fast. But you don't go for a run. You go steal some nuclear secrets off some Russian fucking agent who's there. And now you're working for CIA and you just have a cover to be in that country. Right. That's referred to as going black. Right. When you pop off, people think you're doing something and you conduct an operational act unaware for them.

Got it. act unaware for them got it now you said you had you had like the skinhead thing going the long goatee and everything wasn't the best look for you no no it didn't help my game very much at the time but like when you go black did you ever put on like any of those john amandes masks or something like quick change or something like that sometimes sure so did you ever like run around like a spaniard or something i wish there would have been a lot better anybody that's listened to uh to jana um has probably heard the phrase you're gonna leave looking different not better yeah always um yeah that's because you know with disguise and we don't really have to go down this trail, but it's additive, right? So you can get taller.

You can't get shorter. You can get fatter. You can't get skinnier. You know, your nose can get bigger. You can't get smaller. Right. So maybe sometimes you did that. Sometimes, yeah.

That's pretty cool. But you're never like, wait, I'm going to, you know, go do my quick change here and then I'll suddenly be sexier. That's not how that be sexier that's not how that goes so it's it's not as fun as you might think still badass though were you ever nerd like hypothetically if you were using some of those were you ever nervous like they're gonna know like my nose is latex or oh constantly um whenever you're doing something like that you become very hyper focused on yourself and you think everybody else in the world is also. And they're just looking at you under a microscope and all they think about is you when you're involved in something like that. Would you agree?

It's like when you have a zit and you're like, everybody is staring at the zit, right? And nobody cares. Nobody can see it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of my favorite quotes is, you know, you'll stop caring as much about what people think when you realize how little they do. How do you how do you like this for both of you to answer? But how do you center

yourself when you're in a situation like that? Forget let's go to the more extreme one. Forget all the regular ones. But like if you're in a mask or something and you're in the middle of a crowded place and you have to remind yourself that these people really aren't looking at me i gotta calm down i have a job to do whatever the fuck that job is like how do you mentally i don't know become the actor get yourself there you start doing like the mcconaughey like you know how did you know i feel like he was watching now I think he's you want to go

well for me I didn't wear masks I just wigs and mustaches did we not talk about this last time you wore a mustache no you were a dude yeah I was a dude you definitely weren't a good looking dude thank you I was the ugliest dude definitely weren't a good looking dude.

Thank you. I was the ugliest dude you've ever met in your entire life. Right. But yeah, it's just kind of like a centered, a breathing, a visualizing. I'm from California, right? We're hippies. We believe in energy and all that stuff. So positive visualization is going to go well. No one's going to know that I am a chick underneath these 10 layers of clothes and this horrible porn stash. Like it just –

I've shown him actually. I still have it. Do you have a picture? No. Oh, you still have the stash. I have the whole disguise. Now what's your voice sound like? You don't want to know.

I do want to know. That's why you're here. I cannot reproduce. The hardest part, it was the walk. The walk. Where I was in the world, it really mattered. And the walk into the building that I was going in really mattered. And I don't know how you guys walk.

I probably looked really special. I didn't know how you guys walk. I probably looked really special. I didn't fool anyone. Well, you didn't die, so you fooled a lot of people. Yeah, evidently it worked. But you have to laugh at yourself sometimes, too. Even in that moment, you're still like, this is funny. Yeah, because I had to go through security places, security things where I was. And it was just kind of like a, you know, a glance and a trying to avoid eye contact, but not looking like you're avoiding eye contact.

And actually when my asset at the time, when he got in the car and saw me, he straight out started laughing at me. Oh my God. It was bad. They do much better work. It was pretty bad. All right. What about you? When you're in those situations, how do you center yourself? So same, but I'll add a couple of things. One, I always looked at it like being very compartmented.

As soon as this change happens, it's a completely different person. You're not carrying those thoughts over. There's a hard break between who I just was and who I am now mentally. And that person typically is trying to blend in somewhere. And so one of the best things that you can do is observe the crowd and try to go with the crowd. Like let's say a walking pace, for example. You're walking through an airport or whatever. You don't want to be the one – the crowd is here and you're you're zooming down the road here right

and so one of the techniques that i used was to mimic the behavior of the people that were around me in the crowd as much as possible did you ever because you guys are constantly doing like surveillance detection things and stuff like this especially when you're in a moment like this. Was there ever a time where you were certain in that type of scenario where you were burned and you had to get out of there? No. Not in disguise. Not in disguise. Not in disguise.

Yeah, because we talked about in real life you had that before, but never in disguise. Not in disguise, no. That's so fascinating. Like did they teach you guys how to method act? Is that like a part of it? Did they really teach that? He had better training. So yeah, he got that.

I used to do acting when I was younger. Of course you did. But you got training in it with CIA. Correct. And actually, back in the day during the Cold War, they brought in some method actors to the farm, right? And they would have actors help teach, you know, that method that person. Like people have talked about it before. Jack Nicholson warned Heath Ledger before he played the Joker because he knew Heath. He knew how legit he took it. He's like, dude, you might go to a real dark place.

And, you know, we can sit here and speculate, but you wonder about that kind of thing because you really do. Like if anyone's ever read Dream of Passion by Strasberg or any of the Stella Adler stuff, like you really do become that thing. I mean, he had to live it. Yes. Constantly.

I think the duration of it, you know, helps. It's really hard to do that when you're flipping a light switch, right? Like if on Monday I'm this and then on Tuesday I'm that. Which is how I was. Yeah. He was long term. I was short snippets. The short snippets to me is the more challenging side of it.

And I think it's the opposite. Did you, like, because as you're saying, you're playing the same guy. So you wake up every day as the same guy, and then you end up where you end up but you're playing the same character was how quickly did you literally become him and on and two questions here how quickly did you literally become that guy approximately and before you literally became him did you have like a process when you woke up in the morning to get your mind into that space? Yeah, I would say it took maybe the first three months to really like get fully into it after I started working. And, you know, like I mentioned the first time that we talked during training, like from day one, we were already working towards like what that persona would be so you know three months in on the job i've essentially had a year you know working on this

and so it there's a lot of time to prep up for it and you're also getting things like the backstopping for your cover right where they're showing that 10 years ago you had a gym membership here to reinforce that that was your true name and credit scores from back in the day. So when people look into you and they peel back that onion, what you're saying is consistent with what their private eye or their security service has researched on you. How many pages was your legend? Well, so it's not necessarily just like in a file like that that is put together.

But I had a book that I would write in during training for it. And it was about that thick. That thick? Oh, yeah. Hold that bad boy up to the camera. Yeah. Wow. Journaling is a huge part of doing that, doing that mental process.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was what we refer to as memory embedding. Memory embedding. Yes. So if you're not familiar with this, what it is is a process to where you can recall made-up events instead of creating them in the moment, right? So people that are into, let's say, micro facial expressions to determine deception, which I'm not a huge believer in, but there are indicators of deception that are based on recall versus creativity in the moment when you're telling a story.

And so one of the things that we would do is if I planned on, let's say, telling a story that, you know, I was with Shawnee in Paris two months ago and I was really doing something else. And, you know, we went to the, this cafe and whatever, what we would do is rehearse it and actually go to Paris, go to the cafe, run through the scene that you would have to recall. And then when you send it, it is much more believable than if you're making it up on the spot. And it has more detail because if someone says, okay, you're at the cafe, what did you eat?

Or what was the weather? Yeah. Yeah. Anything. Little things. Right. Because when you're making things up, you leave out the detail enough. You paint too broad, almost like a dream, right?

Where if you could actually play your dream back, it would be absent what color shirt he was wearing or something like that. Yeah. So you talk about the creativity of at least that's where the memory embedding comes in because you can picture it, can see exactly where it was, so you don't have to get creative. Right. Because you're avoiding being creative in the moment or else people will think that you're lying. Okay. And then the other end of it is like the deception indicators, which you said you're not a huge believer in. Why is that? Well, and just believing in like micro facial expressions of, Oh, they looked up into the right. It means this, or they looked

over to the left. It means this, means this right um one of my very close friends uh was involved in like what we call an interviewer you know he did seer school um he was an instructor at seer school she had trained people in psychological elicitation and interviewing and if you ask him about this he'll say the same thing every time. What you're looking for is clusters, right, that are based on a stimulus, right? So if we're talking for an hour and you keep looking up and to the right randomly, that doesn't mean anything. It might mean something's going on with your eyes. Or if you, you know, go like this, you know, that doesn't mean you're being defensive. You could be self-soothing.

That's a hug also to yourself. The Shaw be self-soothing. It's a hug also to yourself. Shawnee is self-soothing. I love that. And so – but if over a long period of time, you do a cluster of five different indicators three times and it's only when we're talking about one topic. Yes. times and it's only when we're talking about one topic yes every time that comes up over this long period of time that's much more indicative of deception than trying to say oh nope i saw his eyes go like that yeah you call that a pattern right someone's pattern of behavior that's what you're looking for and it's hard when you don't know someone you don't know their baseline you

don't know their pattern of behavior so when people teach this stuff and they're like, you can tell if anyone's lying, you kind of know someone's baseline first. Sure. Yeah. I think in doing this job, obviously I don't have any kind of stakes like you guys have doing yours or interrogating people, but you know, people are talking for three, six hours in here. Sometimes you like to see where maybe they're holding something back or not. I tend to agree with you though, that like those, the system where you're like, oh, they look left. That's a problem. They look down. I don't think that that is trackable.

It's not to say it's not ever right. It's just if you're going to go off that, I think it's more like trying to make it a science when in my interpretation, as best as I can do it, it's more of an art. It's more of a feel where the science part could be what you're saying, which is if there's a specific thing you keep coming around on and they change their answer. Or do things like that. You're like, ah, gotcha. Yeah. Right? And, you know, correct me if you think something, but I think the art is different when you're doing it live. You know, you're having a conversation with somebody that you're working in a bar and trying to do it like that. Or if it's, you know, an interrogation and they can go back and look at the video the whole time, they can slow it down. They can, that way the interviewer isn't the one trying to simultaneously do it. Then they, you know, the interviewer doesn't have to multitask as much as if you're just sitting

with somebody trying to do it live. I'm not going to lie, though. There are times when I was debriefing people where I had a system where I'd have my notebook if I'm taking notes. And in the margin, I would always make notes to come back around like, hmm, he blushed really hard here. Or he started sweating profusely. Or she suddenly leaned back and her whole demeanor

changed and those things as i put them in the notes when i would go back through later to write the reports i would be i could sometimes put things together like okay i feel like maybe there's an issue here and not always deception but sometimes like i just need to dig more for a motivation maybe here stuff like that also like not for nothing, I mean this dead seriously, but like women are naturally way better at this and way more adept just because of biology. I studied that some years ago. It has to do with like when you were an infant, you guys are way better at eye contact and watching facial expressions and stuff like that so you can register some of the smallest things.

So I kind of wonder if there's at least a little more science on your end than there might be on ours. Possibly. Possibly. I completely agree with you. If I was in an interrogation and they switched the guy out for a woman, I'd be like, fuck. Fuck. Damn it. That's why there's no secrets from you guys.

You just dig, dig, dig. We know everything. Dig, dig, dig. Everything up. But if you are – like you were saying, it could be live versus like an interrogation. These are entirely different scenarios. So back to like you being out in the field, we started this off by talking about the creative part of it versus like the scientific part of it you know when when you are becoming that method actor or whatever and and you said it took about 90 days or so once you got out there to

start feeling that guy until i felt completely confident that the transition had been made yeah this part i didn't dig into as much last time i'd love to dig into this because you i remember you mentioned that it can get a little scary because one, you're kind of a rock star in that world. So there's like a power that comes with it. And two, you said you never lost the idea of who you were in the sense that you're working on behalf of the CIA and you got these missions and you're going to take care of that. But you kind of may lose your compass a little bit in the day-to-day of that because you are this guy, right? Yeah, it's interesting you bring it up. Just a couple of days ago, I was having this conversation with Dr. Ken Deklova, who knows the spy whisperer.

He's awesome. He's amazing. Great, another spooky person. We'll introduce you. You know what? I'm good. Great, great guy um uh psychiatrist worked for for many years in this field and uh we were talking about the exact same thing it is astonishing the amount of responsibility that can be put on a extremely young officer during their first tour um with how much money how much uh you know how

little oversight they might have at the time was just blew my mind um but a lot of times you know we use i don't say rookie officers but younger officers to do some of the most aggressive things. Why is that? It's because it is less likely that the adversary has made what we call book on you, that they have determined that you are a U.S. intelligence officer at this point. The more you do, the more likely you get caught. And in our world, spies don't always get arrested. We like to know somebody is somebody and just watch them forever. It's the devil that you know. We don't want to take them off the board and then they get replaced with somebody.

We have no idea who it is. So the longer you go, the more you assume somebody probably knows, even if they haven't done anything about it. Yeah. I mean, you want to watch and see who they're meeting with. Yeah. Right. What about like some more totalitarian foreign governments though? There's got to be a line with that, right? If such and such spy is – I'm not going to make up things right now, but if they're doing some pretty damaging shit, there has to be a point where MBS is like, take them. It doesn't even have to be damaging. I mean, do I need propaganda right now? Do I need to do a trade?

How handy will this person be? Yeah. I feel like Vlad does that a lot. A little bit. Well, you could say that he's almost turned it into an art form. Yeah. Where, you know, can I – who can I take to get somebody I really, really want? You know, going back to Victor Boot.

I mean, it's – but that's the thing like we're talking about these things like their nba trade deadline trades it's like oh you know you get one warlord i give you one arms dealer like all right bet well just imagine in that uh in that frame you just said if you're one of the people trying to get picked you know you're sitting in a cell somewhere waiting for the draft you know please pick me please pick me the only thing worse is if they'd have like the panel like the draft panel like and they did not pick paul he's got another five years in the slammer suzy culber back to you god damn it yeah whoa yeah how does that like in that kind of scenario though, is that all back diplomatic channels? Like is that done or is there spycraft also involved to get leverage for trades like that? Both.

Both? Yeah. Yeah. What kind of spycraft hypothetically might be available – might be used in something like that? Like how would you go about doing it? Well, sometimes the – we have relationships with intelligence officers from countries that we're not friends with. We do talk on that level outside of like a State Department engagement. And so that can be, as you say, like a back channel to avoiding a diplomatic embarrassment by not handling it above the table essentially is one way.

How do you develop any level of slight trust with someone who they're talking with you off the record I guess in this way but they are a part of some government that's not necessarily friends with yours? You don't. You don't, yeah. You don't trust them. You trust them to act in their own best interest. Right. trust them you trust them to act in their own best interest right and you try to determine what that is and then you can predict their behavior but that's not you know trusting them to be honest that's just trusting them to do what's best for themselves right there who they represent so i recorded with john kiriaco again since you were last year like a couple weeks after you i think

and one thing that he said that was actually different than almost anyone else has said including you matt in the last podcast i'd love your thoughts on this as well shawnee is that he actually did feel like the five eyes for example actually are somewhat friendly he wasn't saying like they're never gonna lie to you or never not gonna give you information but i kind of came at it more from your lens matt which was that there's really no such thing as true friends in espionage world but would you know shawn knee would you say that maybe that exists a little bit a little bit towards like what john was saying yeah i've worked with five eyes and we had incredible relationships but you always in the back of your mind are like, not American. You know, like, yeah, I'm going to tell you what I can tell you, but there's five things

I'm not going to tell you. So, and they do the same thing to us. It's, that's how you do it. Yeah. And there can be a lot of successes from it. You know, there's been a recent documentary exposed about the joint operation with Mossad to go after Amogh Mugnea. That's a good case.

What was it? Can you fill us in on that case? So you might know more about this than me. I haven't seen the documentary. We did a joint operation with Mossad? To do a – to target a terrorist. Does that ever happen these days? No. But go ahead i mean we've we've partnered with countries that we are not friendly with in any

other way except for counterterrorism you know we've done joint counterterrorism operations in china that are you know well known but um this ibagmunia at the time was probably the most significant terrorist in the world and almost no one knew who he was publicly. Like everybody. It just wasn't, you know, something that was shared with the media. But also the stuff like he would, he bombed like the cultural center in Buenos Aires and things like it didn't affect Americans so much. And so when you're doing stuff in Latin America,ica you know it's not on the front page of

the news so a lot of people didn't know him okay but he was he was major major uh he owned a mall in the tri-border area which last time i said incorrectly because i was not thinking but it's paraguay brazil and argentina i actually went there and i went to the mall that's when i was getting my master's in counterterrorism because you can't be an expert if you don't see it firsthand, right? But they had- Here's a wild card. They had all kinds of smuggling operations. And when I was in one of the shops in the mall that he owned, I went into a camera store and photography was one of my covers a lot of the time. And so, and I was not, but I was not working.

I was a student. This was before I even got hired. And I went in and I was looking at the cameras and they were rock bottom prices. And when I was looking around on the TV in the store was Hassan Nasrallah, right? Head of Hezbollah. And he's talking and I was like,

ooh, okay, all right, evidence, right? And started talking to the shop owner. And I was like, how do you get these cameras so cheap? And he's like, they fall off ships coming from my house. You're like, gotcha. Yeah. So what was the mission to take him down? How did that happen? I'm not familiar.

It was a joint operation. I forget where he was. I think they put an explosive device in the hubcap of a car that they knew he would be walking by when they eventually got him and detonated him. Wait, what year is this? 2008. I was in the farm. I remember I was telling Matthew I was in class at the farm when they came in and said, hey, we got him. Can you explain that again? So they put it in the hubcap and then when he was walking by, they had someone up at like in a window to click it kind of thing.

They had a remote detonator for it and timed it to where as he was passing that it would go off, but they tried to do this multiple, multiple times. But you know, if there's somebody else walking by, that would be collateral damage. You got to call it off, you know, predicting he's going to be walking right there on that street at this time is incredibly difficult. But it's a great documentary. Douglas London, who is an agency case officer, is featured in it. They did a really good job. What's it called? It's Ghosts of Beirut. Okay. You have to check that out. I'm unfamiliar. It's similar though. Like if you look at the case of that when they went to track down – I have a picture from the movie Munich over there in the studio.

Operation Wrath of God. Yeah. But when – like a lot – I love how at the beginning of that movie they're like, this is a fictional movie. No, the fuck it's not. This is very, very real. Like down to almost every single detail. But I forget the main guy, the main plotter of the 72 Munich attacks. I forget his name.

But they failed to get him in the movie. But they did later get him I think maybe in like 1980 or whatever. And that's how they did it. They did it in like they had a remote up in the window. Yeah, like 1980. And either he was driving by or walking by one of them. That was that. It wasn't Salome, was it? I think that's it. like 1980 and I, either he was driving by or walking by one of them. Yeah. That was that.

It wasn't Salome. Was it? I think that's it. I think that's it. Yeah. It is Salome. That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. It was like kind of like a movie star. He was. Yep. Yeah. They got him. They had some guy like join his sauna or something like that. Like the bath house and become friends with them

yeah yeah maybe he swung both ways unintended yeah that's right little male honey trap but yeah i don't know but they did they joined something like that became friends with them and then had the information they knew where it was going to be and they go i'll tell you what that's always how it goes you know you grow up watching movies about all the cool things you're gonna get to do and they tell you to join a bathhouse why didn't i get to do anything like that damn it that's one of the things bruce de monte always jokes about he's like he's like you always think you go into it and it's gonna be like james bond and every chick you work with is hot and then it's like a 400 pound trans lady and you're like fuck damn it every time i asked him once if he had to get in on the action and he didn't give me a good look

so i was like he just did a you know what i wouldn't want to trade places with you no thanks but back to your story matt so you become this. What we covered last time is after about a year, you somehow end up going to this bar that was frequented by organized crime members. On a kind of like whim, you end up making friends with a guy who's high up in the biker gang, initially with a guy who's lower. But you knew the high up guy would literally come and clean out the bar because his girlfriend was the bartender. That's right. Right? And so then you get into the biker gang. You're a money launderer.

So you kind of rise up. You're doing some narcotics trafficking and stuff. Three and a half years goes by. You eventually get arrested for aggravated assault, of which you said you were guilty. Correct? I mean technically, yeah yeah so guilty as charged anyway so you get a deal to go on probation this is what kind of blew my mind you literally went to the biker gang and you're like yeah fam i'm out and they were just good with that yeah i mean if this isn't like you know it was back in the day this isn't

like some blood in blood out you We've really lost our standards. Yeah. So especially because what I expressed was that I had been approached by law enforcement during my arrest and that I thought that me being around going through this was going to bring undue attention to the club and that I wanted to step away for a while while I was going through the legal process of it. And they weren't arguing to say like, no, bring us, you know, give us some more trouble. Yeah. So. And so you effectively leave and you don't deal with those guys again. Right. Now you had said, this is where we're picking up. You had said that while you were in the biker gang, you made some connections with the cartel. And that's basically where we got cut off. So what happened there? Yeah.

So the person that I was introduced to is what's referred to as a bulk cash smuggler. Sounds legit. Put that on your resume. Yeah. It's his LinkedIn profile. Yeah. So essentially what his job was is that every time something's sold on the street, right, you get a $20 bill, $100 bill.

This all gets compiled and collected. And then once it reaches a certain amount, that person needs to smuggle the cash somewhere. And so that was his role. He had some funny instances of trying to do this. Luckily, I wasn't in the car with him at the time when he would do it but uh he told me right when i met him that he had recently been arrested with a bunch of the cash in the back seat and so you know if if that's exposed right if you see a certain dollar amount law enforcement that's you know the right to search red flag yeah yeah so they can search your car if they see like you

know a box full of but he got away like they they let him go obviously well so what happened is they arrest him they find all this bulk cash on him he says that he's delivering it for a casino which is perhaps the dumbest were there any casinos in the area uh probably not um he's basically like running it you know instead of like an armored truck or something he's trying to explain that that was him it's terrible and so they arrest him at this point they have i believe it's 48 hours to prove that the confiscated money was you know in connection to a crime to hold it and to hold him and this didn't happen and so 48 hours or however long the the statute

was he gets out the cash back but here's what's interesting they didn't just give him his duffel bags full of cash back they wrote him a check from a government check for the refund of his money and they laundered his money for him you know unknowingly so he's just bragging you know about this like one of the first times i met him what a good break yeah so he's good yeah he was good they let him go and you meet him and you still decide to work with this guy who's driving around with cash in his backseat like a fucking moron i mean sometimes you don't get to pick the people that you're rolling with but but he was kind of like the first entree. But did you call up base like, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, this guy's kind of retarded. We got to mark that. Sorry. Like, do we work with them? And they're like, yeah, fuck it. Is that what happens? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, so you're constantly making what we call contact reports, right?

So I'm writing everything up. Maybe the most laborious part of the job. I liked them. You liked what? Writing contact reports. Of course you did. You can have them. I mean especially you're hanging out with somebody until 2 in the morning drinking and after you're done they get to go

pass out and you got to try to write a coherent you know novel about everything that just happened yeah i'm sure some of mine were not i would pay money to read those right now yeah you get like one level of drunk more and then you're like oh it makes sense like the da vinci code just right it's all there now you're not putting this in like a microsoft word doc i take it right no no what about google drive probably these days they might do it these days i'm joking we can hack them oh you got to collaborate you know but imagine that like oh it turned out the cia was using google docs You got to collaborate. Imagine that. Like, oh, it turned out the CIA was using Google Docs this whole time.

So is there – I guess you can't go into classified stuff. And departments of like radio transmissions or stuff like that without saying specifically is – are there ways where that's literally how you're putting these reports through or is that more just for communication? Sure. I mean so you're talking about what we call COVCOM or covert communication techniques. COVCOM. I can't talk about any of the modern ones, but if you look at the Spy Museum or look during the Cold War, they had some amazingly innovative ways back then to do this. Even from taking something that looks like a normal device and you take it apart in these ways and you put it back together in this funny way and suddenly it can communicate securely with who you're supposed to. The people that work in those shops. They're brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant.

Yeah. That's a job I always wanted to do, actually. Yeah. There's some fun stuff. Yeah. That actually does sound pretty fun. Yeah. If you ever saw like the story of Ellie Cohen, they made like a Netflix miniseries on that.

Yeah. Obviously a pretty famous one, but that was like 1958, 59, 60. Yeah. And he was using like a Morse code kind of like transmitter or whatever honestly a lot of a lot of the old stuff like the micro dots and stuff i think would be brilliant to be used now we're now so reliant on technology there's rf signals and everything you know wi-fi Now all the threat actors are basically hiding in plain sight because right now four of us are in this room. We all have devices. There's ones and zeros flying around us at all times. So you inject something that's just hiding in plain sight, you can't see it. But putting an old school physical micro dot on something,

no one's going to see that. No one's going to detect that. I say we go back old school. Well, you know, it used to be, what was it, the number stations that they called them back during the Cold War. There were these outposts that served the function of passing along these types of transmissions. And some of those are still in use. I don't know who's using it. I think that this would be one thing where we'd want to go technologically backwards on for a lot of the points you're making, Shania, because there are so many vulnerabilities in every little thing that so much as nicks the Wi-Fi. Yep. Or, you know, whatever, the LTE. Yep.

All that stuff. Like, I always think about it and I, you know, I try not to get too worried about it because my life's not that serious. I'm a fucking podcast host. But it's like, are all the drones listening to us? Well, they were a couple of months ago around here. Low blow. Too soon. Table.

We'll table that. But I'm just saying like the regular drones, like are they listening to us? Is this thing marking down everything I say? Yes. And probably thinks I'm fucking crazy based on the people I talk with. Yes. You know? Like is there someone back at like Langley like, God damn this you know like does that kind of i don't like how you're

breathing right i was gonna say i wonder what his i wonder what his code name is yeah i don't like this you should find out um i i will i will say that there's a huge difference between information that is collected and information that is analyzed right and so is if you think about all the information that's you know grabbed from everywhere in the world from every type of means the percentage that it actually like that somebody is going to put eyes on that is oh my gosh minusule. And so you would have to be elevated to a certain level to get that attention, which in my old profession, that's part of the goal, right? If I'm in another country, I know they're collecting on me. I just don't want to be so important that they actually go through it and try to break it down.

You don't want to be so important or squirrely. What do you mean squirrely? Why is that person acting that way? Right. Right? When you're doing your surveillance detection routes in another country or you're doing your cover stops, you want to blend in like he was saying earlier. If you are doing things strangely, you're raising your profile, then they're going to start – they're going to put bigger teams on you. They're going to put teams that pull away so you don't know you have a team behind you.

You want to lull them into a sense of complacency. And if you break that, you're screwed. All right. First question, and then I'll bring it back to First Amendment stuff, reminding that on America. But like any of us, anyone listening right now, if we travel to certain countries that are high octane, not friendly countries, every time we go to their airport, are they sucking up all our data? Yeah. Don't bring your personal devices, number one, period, full stop. Wish you told me that. That's why so many companies nowadays, the smart ones, have travel policies where you bring what's

called like a clean laptop or a clean cell phone. You're not bringing your personal device. You're nodding over here, Brian. Yeah, write that down. Do you do that at work? I do. I do, yeah. I have two separate laptops, you know. Let's see.

Just one that's clean, like without company data, and then one that I, you know, use my client stuff with. Yeah, you have to. And also a lot of people think that when they're going to another country, well, they're not going to know who I am. I'm not important. You're filling out a customs form with your name and your address and where you work and where you're staying. Like, come on, people. Yeah. Just based on content, there's a couple

countries I, you know, I wasn't that interested in going there. Right. It's not going to ruin your holiday plan. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, on the other side of that coin is seeding information when you're in cover. Seeding. Right. So if I'm going to take a device through an airport when I was working, right, when I was an intelligence officer, and I know they're going to look at it, this is an opportunity for me to reinforce my cover. So I'm going to put a bunch of documents that they will find that say the exact same things that the story I'm going to put a bunch of documents that they will find that say the exact same things that the story I'm going to tell everybody the whole time are. And that makes it seem more legit than if I just show up with a device that's got one phone number on it and no documents. And then I say, you know, I'm a businessman here.

It doesn't work that way. Physically, you would call it pocket litter. Like what's in your pocket? Do you have a receipt from the coffee shop that you allegedly go to all the time? Do you have your ID? Like it's pocket litter. Like what's in your pocket? Do you have a receipt from the coffee shop that you allegedly go to all the time? Do you have your ID? Like it's pocket litter. But now you need digital pocket litter is basically what he's talking about. Got it.

Yeah. The old school pocket litter always reminds me of the story when they sent that GRU officer to London to do the script pull up and he actually had a taxi receipt still on him from their like government headquarters he never got seen again that's bad call that bad trade that was the one that they failed right the guy didn't die it wasn't litvinenko they got him but the other guy you're talking about he didn't die right he got really sick from the polonium right yeah he's like with his daughter they did the um they sprayed the perfume on the door knob thing yeah they are brazen man the fucking gru and fsb like they're just like well fuck you we'll come on we don't care we'll come on your territory and whack somebody and like no they get caught and don't care. They're aggressive.

Are they the most aggressive? I think, yeah, I think it depends on what you're talking about. Yeah. The type you're at the top type of operation is different. You know, you could say that massage is a pretty forward leaning. That's what that would have been my vote. Yeah. As far as, you know, their willingness to accept risk of exposure for their operators. And think outside the box. What do you mean think outside the box?

Outside the pager, if you will. That was pretty impressive, I do have to say. I'd like to meet the person that came up with that idea. Yeah. They're sitting in some back room. So we take the pagers. They blow up. That's it. I we take the pagers. They blow up. That's it.

I think that was a Russian accent, but we'll let it pass. That's a good – oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. It's a great example of the covert financing I was trying to explain earlier. Those companies that they had set up all over the world to do this, that money is going to come from somewhere. And so moving it through those companies is one example of what that would look like. Yeah. Oh, I was just going back to the op thing.

You know, when you're talking what type of ops, like there are nation states who are looking at foreign espionage and they're stealing information on our companies, right? Our trade secrets, our intellectual property, and they're very brazen. Yes. And they don't care about rules and they don't care about laws and they will do whatever it takes. They'll attack a company in 50 different ways from cyber to in-person human and they take no prisoners. Yeah, I don't want to repeat the whole thing. You and I talked about it last time. You know what I'm going to talk about that story I brought up where my guy was asked to come in and mediate between a CIA person who was told to go to the

CEO of a major company and say, I'm in the CIA. And it got weird because essentially, Shawnee, without going through the whole thing, they were told by CIA, they had been inside this major league company that people would know who it was. And they were told to go to this high level person, told to go to the CEO and expose themselves and say, Hey, I'm here as CIA. And it gets weird because you're not supposed to operate on American soil, but it actually, like constitutionally, it was freaking me out. And then I also saw like how they made the argument to say, we should do this. Cause they didn't go to the company and say like, Oh, you guys are in trouble or anything. They're like, you guys are gotta do everything right we keep doing what you're doing we want to help protect because you're a multinational organization and there's a lot of

shit that you don't see that's going on that if we're here we can take care of that you don't have to worry about it gets it gets very gray area but i see where those arguments are made to want to have access to something like that i don't envy uh the lawyers back there they have to figure all this stuff out all the time. No, thanks. Well, they just – they go to the judge and they say, do you like your dog? Do you like your wife?

Do you like them? And then when they say no, they're like, do you like your guma? And then they say, okay, you're going to hit this little FISA, whatever, and be good. But I said we would table the First Amendment part about like sucking data and everything because I hear where you're coming from when you're like there's what was it there's a difference between collection and analyzing correct okay exactly i hear you the fact that the government

though could collect on everyone even if they're not going to analyze it this is where snowden's argument comes in and i hear him it's like do you see why people would be like this is the road paved to hell with good intentions and the slippery slope because technically you do have access to everyone's stuff even if you're like listen you know we don't care about you and your 10 million dollar a year business doing fucking paving but like like you have my shit. And if I pissed off the wrong person one time and the wrong person in government decides, you know what, fuck this guy. And they can go access that information and do whatever they're going to do with it. Like that does freak people out. Do you understand why, why like I I'm freaked out by that. I was going to say, what you're talking about is insider threat, really.

People, when you describe it like that, allowing one person to have access to stuff like that without checks and balances, that's all insider threat. That's someone who has malicious intent, who is abusing their access, who is doing something stupid, right? The problem is in every company and in every government, you have humans running them and humans with access to things that are high level and sensitive and that's a very real threat no matter what we're talking about yeah i have this belief that like when you look at world history i think this will be backed up good wins over time like look where we are now versus 2000 years ago like light years of progress and i still got our problems, but like we invented new problems. That said, in the short term, it's easier for evil to win. And the way I say that is if I have a room filled with 100 people, 99 of them are evil and one of them is good, we're fucked.

If I – unless it's Jesus. If I have a room filled with 100 people, 99 of them are good and one of them is evil, we might still be fucked. Yes. All it takes is one, depending on their level of access or motivation. Look at Joshua Schulte. He was a cia software engineer he worked in a very small office um they worked on very sensitive things that you know rf and hacking into people's tvs and cool cool stuff like that hacking into people's tvs this is paraphrasing read the new york times but the problem was is the culture within his little office was like a rowdy frat house, right? People threw things at each other.

They had Nerf guns. They, you know, swore all the time. This didn't sit well with him. And so they actually gave him a nickname, a nuclear option. That was his office nickname, which is not really flattering. No. Right? So the problem is is that nobody intervened to say okay clearly we

have a problem right this person is getting disgruntled or is disgruntled we need to address it in some way shape or form he left he left the office everyone's like fuck him a couple months later the largest leak of cia documents in history was published on WikiLeaks. Now, he was prosecuted. It was pretty clear who did it, right? But what was interesting to me is the prosecution's theory was that the reason he did it, his motivation, was spite. So one person, a lot of access, he just wanted to fuck everybody. That's what I'm saying. There's 2.4 million government employees.

How many now, though? What are your metrics? We might saying there's 2.4 million government employees how many now though what are your metrics accurate we might be down to 2.2 either way you know we'll see we'll see how far elon goes with this but yeah i for one i could i could live with some people at the dmv going yeah they're so nice i could also live with with some of the bureaucracy going for sure i like i think this is such a great opportunity for Elon. I just hope he does it right and doesn't fuck it up because he's a little bit wild. But I think the Doge thing is pretty cool. That said, it does come back to the tragedy of the one.

And you are – to be fair, you're actually making my point for me right here that it can cost you when there's you know you got one leak in the ship somewhere so you know i do come down on this side more like i've always we've talked about this before but like with snowden i understand why some of you guys in intelligence don't like him i get it but you know i think he had a slippery slope on both sides it was like the slippery slope of breaking the chain of command and technically breaking the paper that I signed or the slippery slope of this anti-constitutionalism being thrown through secret courts is going to keep on paving the road to hell and no one has done anything about it in a decade. So I'm going to do something. And it comes back to this exact point, which is that, yeah, like Matt, I think you're a good guy. I don't think you'd give a fuck about my data or do anything with that.

But like fucking Rob in the back office over there who was working on your case with you, you know, guy's a scumbag. And I don't see Rob and I don't know what Rob's going to do to me. Maybe Rob's going to WikiLeaks me. I don't know what he would do with me. But you understand what I mean. There are people out there. There could be someone listening right now who actually like is an important person, like they run a multinational company. I'd be worried if I were in their seat with stuff like this. But – and I know this is – this is something – there's stuff people can do to mitigate this, like substantially.

Like what? From technology to employee lifecycle management, to training and awareness, to insider threat programs. There's a whole metric list of things that companies and organizations can do to substantially reduce the human risk that they have. And everybody has human risk. I don't care what industry, I don't care what company, I don't care what you do, do you employ humans? Because if you do, you have human risk. Now, human risk is different than human, you know, insider threat, right? Insider risk is the fact that you employ humans. We make mistakes, we take shortcuts, we fall asleep on the job, what have you. Insider threat is when

someone unintentionally clicks that phishing link and screws the whole company. Right. Or maliciously is like, I'm going to leak everything to WikiLeaks, right? Or they're compromised. They have a really shitty password and someone hacks that and the whole company gets thrown out, you know, systems down. That's insider threat. And both of those categories, risk and threat, there's a metric ton of stuff people can do to mitigate those. They're just not doing them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, from, you know, being somebody that went to other countries and stole information for a living, you know, you always want it to be on the lighter side, right? So what I mean is that, let's say somebody works in an office that has access to information that, you know, somebody is trying to get a hold of, it would be, and let's say

it's you, right? It would be a lot easier to switch out your thumb drive when you weren't looking that you would take back and plug into your computer at work than to talk you all the way into like, Hey, why don't you like risk your job here? Right. So good. No, sorry. I get excited about this stuff.

You can't tell so you're always looking for the lightest way um to where the person is either unwitting completely unwitting or semi winning before you're just like hey can you you know give me the keys to the kingdom here the least amount of noise yep yeah think about conferences all these conferences that all these people go to every year in Vegas or wherever, right? Aren't you doing one in Madison Square Garden tomorrow? I am. Talking in front of the whole stadium?

In Vegas later this month. Wow. Julian Dory podcast blowing people up. But these conferences, a lot of the companies that are the vendors that are there, they have giveaways. Everyone loves a giveaway, right? They have tote bags so you can fill it with your giveaways. But people are doing like USB connected, you know, a mouse or speakers or a watch or pick something, right?

Even just a thumb drive. Those are all threat vectors. Like to anyone listening, do not take those. Do not plug them in. Do not, do not, do not. There were cases where, I don't remember if we talked about this, where like US military were getting like watches in the mail. No, we did not talk about this. And this is not too long ago. They started wearing the watches. They plugged them into their computers. Now their whole wifi network is compromised. Like it goes on and on and on.

But because people inherently are trusting, when someone gives you something, you're like, oh, thank you. That was so thoughtful. And then you're going to go use it. So again, awareness and making sure your employees understand just how vulnerable they are to dumb stuff like that. I had an op where I had a person who I gave them a very special thumb drive and they plugged it in and the U.S. intelligence community still owns that network. They own it? We can see everything going on in it.

How far ahead is your technology back there at CIA, DIA, NSA? I wasn't in the shop. I'd like to be in the shop. I don't know specifically. It's probably like tech by tech. But I heard back during the Cold war that they were saying it essentially takes about 10 years at that time for it to leak out yep i think because of you know silicon valley now and and it's probably quicker i don't think it's a full 10 years yeah because they work for

you guys but well we definitely compete for the same people coming out of you know college to to work for us um competing, competing for that talent. But I think it's a little quicker now, but I had heard the 10 year quote. It's gotta be a lot easier though, to just let the talent get hired by them and put a little fucking tracking device on them. And then, you know, you got everything. Why go through the interview process? You're talking to less, the least amount of noise, right? Yeah. Yeah.

It's not make this harder than it needs to be here. And then while we're on that topic, by the the way because i always ask all you guys about this i don't know if we talked about this on either of your podcasts but did you guys ever have any look through the darpa and stuff they were doing did you ever hear anything about that no no no there's cool stuff yeah yeah i heard they were fucking talking to dolphins telepathically in 92. Yeah, ask Lawler about that. Yeah, we've had talks about that. Why do I feel like he's working there? He was a dolphin trainer.

Yeah, he scares me. He's awesome. I do know a lady who was a 06 in the Navy that was a dolphin trainer for her last assignment. It's like that movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Do you remember that movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy, Colonel Alexander. I worked with a guy who was her last assignment. It's like that movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Do you remember that movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy, Colonel Alexander. I worked with a guy who was in that program.

Yeah, what? That stuff was real. Like they really did that stuff. Remind me in the movie though, did they actually talk about, was that involving the remote viewing stuff? It's like the metaphysics. Like Stargate? Remote viewing, yeah.

Yeah, Project Stargate and all that. Yeah. My friend Jesse just talked with Joe McMcmonacle who was a part of that some of that i could see like some of it it's it sounds hard it sounds like no fucking way and then you're like well we did figure this out how the fuck did we do that you know like did you guys ever come across some people that could just do some crazy shit and you're like, that can't be explained. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't look at me. What did you come across? She can do stuff like that. You know, Lawler, he's one of those guys that is very in touch with that. Lawler's remote viewing? Oh, no, no. Not remote viewing. No. He was in my parents' house.

I mean, it's just like – Having that psychological connection with people. But during the remote viewing stuff, they've done tests where somebody would sit in a room, right? There would be another room where they would flip a quarter or something like that. And they would get good enough to where it's not mathematically possible with how random numbers work to be that accurate. There have been tests that have been published outside of the intelligence community that have shown stuff like that. It's super interesting. Yeah.

You guys seen the podcast or heard the podcast, the telepathy tapes? No. So it went really, really viral in the fall. This lady, Kai Dickens, looked into this phenomenon where there's been a lot of parents around the world who are parents of nonverbal autistic kids who are like, yo, my kids can read minds. Which, you know, we're wired to be like, well, that sounds fucking crazy. She went and took a scientist and a psychiatrist and went and did double blind tests with these kids and actually had the father of one of the kids in here scott sherwood he was in here recently for episode 280 and you know i i listened to the podcast and i'm like holy shit i don't know if it's telepathy but there's something there this is not like you know they're not dragging kids fingers or anything it's like how did they know this and

you kind of wonder not to get like way too meta here but you know if we're living in this multi-dimensional reality and all these the things the physicists who come in here talk to me about it's like is there some like glitch in the matrix no pun intended where there's just certain people that you know have something i mean she was saying in the podcast like kai dickens was we just accept scientifically that savants exist. It's like, oh yeah, scientifically proven kid can fucking come out and sound like Beethoven. Oh, we can do math like Einstein. Yeah, yeah, no, that, that makes sense. But then it's like, yo, I think autistic kids can talk to each other. Shut the fuck up. No, they can't. Yeah. It's like, well, you know, we got to question this stuff

a little. And when you look at guys like Joe McMonagall, who allegedly have been able to do things like this and some of the tests you're talking about it's like you know what does the cia know that i don't if they do they didn't tell me i think it might have been the next year that i didn't make it to right it was a different cool kids club yeah damn it ccp why'd you have to dodge the guy how many countries can't you go to now? I mean there's a difference between can't and I'm smart enough to not. I wouldn't go anywhere that isn't currently having a great relationship with the United States.

I wouldn't go anywhere that had a better relationship with an adversary country than us. I try to schedule a little tight for the near future. Yeah, I can imagine that for sure. Quickly though on – I didn't want to lose this in the point you were making, Shawnee, about the insider risk and stuff like that. One of the things you're working on a lot – we were talking very briefly off camera, so I didn't really get any information. But you said you're dealing with a lot of like AI- related threats with some of the companies that you're working with. What does that look like now? Yeah.

So with AI changing every freaking second of the day, company – well, it's individuals. It's families and companies, right? You have to look at each piece, each component. But AI is being used in such creative, unusual ways to target people for fraud, for insider threat, for corporate espionage, et cetera, when we're talking companies. But just looking at individuals and families, right, you've got deepfakes and voice cloning who are duping grandparents into thinking their kid was in a car accident and they need to send money, or deepfakes and voice cloning being used against CEO, you know, against people who think the CEO is calling to transfer money and they're transferring $25 million.

I mean, the threats, I mean, there's a long, long list of things that AI has caused. It's lowered the barrier to entry for threat actors. It's made everything so easy, right? And so these organizations, any company out there needs to recognize that this is a massive threat. In fact, I think it's 51% of C-suite leadership don't think AI has caused them any additional risk. Yeah. If you know anybody, please tell them to contact me. Yeah, they should all be fired immediately.

Stupid. But the thing is, so we've got all of these new threats and all these new threat vectors, but there are tons of inventions with AI now that help organizations battle AI to AI, right? Battle AI to AI? Yeah, so using AI to detect AI, to detect deep fakes, or to detect when Matthew's on the critical pathway to do something stupid within the organization. There are platforms that have been invented where AI can basically assess his normal pattern of behavior like we were talking about earlier. And it can read all of his communications on the corporate systems.

Everyone's monitored anyway on every system. Everyone knows that. There's usually a banner when you log in. I don't like you nodding your head over there. He's like doing it right now. Fucking Deloitte. But it can detect – you know what? Matthew is sad and he has a flight risk oh the aura ring it reads into that it reads in not the aura ring but

then i'm fucked um it reads into everything and it can basically alert security teams that this person is going to do something stupid and become an insider threat so So the company can then act ahead of left of boom, if you will, ahead of the person doing the dumb thing. They can say, hey, here's some EAP support. Here's some time off, whatever the situation calls for. They can use AI to detect when malware has been deployed, that, you know, AI invented malware that gets smarter and figures things out as it's moving around your systems. They can use AI to malware that gets smarter and figures things out as it's moving around your system,

they can use AI to battle that. There's basically, you know, it's this fire now, AI against AI, but so many companies, A, don't recognize the risk, truly, and B, they don't invest in the security tools or the processes or the insider threat programs to actually combat what's going on. It's super interesting stuff. I'll give you an example of both sides of the coin where it's helping and where it hurts for my old role. So we, you know, had, they still have what we refer to as targeting officers that will put together information on somebody that someone in my role is going to go approach, right? So if I'm going to go talk to this person, we know they're going to be in that bar at this

time. They will put a ton of information together after analyzing their phone, after looking through emails. But this is a person at the time, right, doing this. Sometimes they'll have a psychologist look at the information first and seed someone like me with the hints of how to gain compliance from this person socially. Well, AI is just ramped that, you know, through the roof because it can look at, you know, your pornography history. It can look at every single thing all put together and say this is the exact type of person, like, looks-wise that would be the best approach to come after you. This is, you know, the, if they should be a man or a woman will work better against you. And it can do this so quickly.

Yeah. So it's like, get me a Khalifa in here right now. Yeah. It's, I mean, even just looking, not even businesses, but individuals, right? There's AI now that threat actors are using to basically pull all the data from your social media platforms to do exactly what he's talking about. Not only can they do that to create or craft a phishing email that is super specific and unique to you that they know you would click on, but they can also use it for these scams. So that's how they harvest your voice, for example. So you call grandma and say you were in a car accident, like I'd mentioned, they're getting your voice from some social media

posts that you posted or from, you know what I mean? So it's all AI generated. Let's say I was in another country and I'm trying to create an insider threat at this company that I'm trying to steal something from and I'm moving that insider threat right and to doing more and more naughty things for me right so if I start the relationship off I just want to know that they'll break a rule like have a beer during the workday when they're not supposed to right and then we're going to move them down this path we call the primrose path in this profession towards doing a big action of stealing something. Well, like she just said, if somebody like her was advising this company at the time and they're using the AI she talked about, it might detect that I'm changing that person's life and their pattern of behavior because they're taking longer lunch breaks.

And they seem different when they're coming back because I just got the guy drunk and so that makes it harder in that way yeah now if we're not talking to governmental level where y'all access to everything apparently i wish if i'm in the private sector trying to do like massive scams on fortune 100 ceos utilizing ai and obviously we're using all the tools like voice faking and stuff like that but before we get there let me paint a scenario let's say a fortune 100 ceo is being smart he's using a vpn on his home wi-fi like not even his office wi-fi and you want to try to find if he's done anything compromising on there maybe been on ashley madison or something like that is the ai in the private sector powerful enough i might sound really dumb asking this question but i really don't know is it powerful enough that it could read the isp

address read the vpn and get to the end user and who it was right there provably that that could then be used against him oh i don I don't doubt it, quite frankly. Same. But not even that. You're talking about the CEO being smart. Let me back you up for a second. Yeah. That CEO has a wife and kids.

Well, let's say that CEO has a husband and kids, right? Could be a woman CEO, right? Yeah, there's a few of them. So what that CEO doesn't realize is that those family members or the visitors that they have that connect to their Wi-Fi, their family when grandma visits or whatever, those people are all walking vulnerabilities too. Those are all walking human risk, right? So when that kid clicks on some cheat code for Roblox, that network is compromised. Brian, get off my Wi-Fi. I don't mean to give that to you.

I don't know this person. The kid thing you mentioned reminds me of the toy op. It's more of an analog version of it, I guess. This is years ago, maybe five or six years ago. Wait, why do I know this? Tell the story. So I'm going to say it kind of broad

in case most of this isn't out. But we wanted to go after somebody who was a very high-ranking official in a country that hates us very, very, very much. Right. And they were having a very difficult time figuring out how to do it. And in that country, certain types of Western toys you can't buy there. So this high-ranking official wanted to get his granddaughter a toy that you couldn't buy locally and was going to send his security detail to do this purchase. Well, at the time, it was like you'd get one of those little CD-ROMs that came with it so you could interact with the toy back then. And so during this operation, they knew where the store was that they were going to buy from.

And so they switched the CD out of each one of the toys. Was the store outside of Iran, obviously? The store was outside of the target country, yes. I feel like I got it. And so they bring the toy back. And not only does the granddaughter play with this, but he plugged the CD into his work laptop. Gotcha. His government laptop. And as she said with the other one, we owned that for a while.

Granddaughter's insider threat. Yeah. Unintentional. Can you imagine being at NSA like, gotcha, bitch. Popping champagne. I always wonder what the dude at NSA must have felt like every time he blew up their nuclear reactor with the Stuxnet. He's like, ah, they think they're getting it.

No, the fuck you're not. That's a good day on the job. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of guys like. Had some drinks. Meanwhile, they're all going to get lined up and shot outside because they just failed the experiment. But, you know, collateral damage.

That's how we look at it. But, yeah, AI scares me. Yeah. Now, here's the one maybe bright side scenario. If some organization like DARPA is 30 to 50 years ahead, that would mean they're far beyond in AI and have been for a while, which means we already could have been living in a dystopian AI reality. And things are OK. I got a YouTube channel. I feel like I have some freedom. Maybe that's dwindling away.

But maybe it will be all right because I do try to look at this not from the lens of like Doomer with it. You know, it's not to say you don't look at threats. But in my old studio, I used to have two pictures on top of each other. The top picture was the nuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll in like 46 or 47 or 48, where you just see the whole place is blown up. And the bottom picture was a redoing of the picture of the hand of God and Adam. But instead of the hand of Adam or the hand of God, it was a robot hand. And the idea was like, all right, the threat had been nuclear, which always still is a threat. But now it's AI potentially.

But here we are, 80 plus years into having a nuclear bomb. We haven't done it to each other yet despite all the hatred that does exist between countries. So it's like maybe we figured out enough. The difference is with AI, it can get out of control because it's another entity. It's not – the nuclear bomb can't – the bombs can't talk to each other. Well, AI might make them do that but like i don't like that you right away like the fuck they can but like you know what i mean it's it's a different stratosphere because you're creating something that even if it's not

sentient like that's scary but even before then like even facebook had that famous story in 2016 where 15 or something where they quietly invented an AI and suddenly – or two AIs and they started inventing their own language and talking to each other. And Zuckerberg just like pulled the plug. It was Google, I think. One of them. Yeah. But I mean with AI now, like it needs human intervention, right? There are so many case studies, actually a lot of really funny stories that just kind of prove that it's

not taken off on its own yet, right? There was a security robot in Washington, D.C. that was used in some like security complex. And it was supposed to just, you know, monitor and keep track and stuff. This thing drowned itself in a fountain within a week. And employees were joking like that it had like committed suicide, you know, for the job. But it just proves that – They wanted to feel something. Right. Right. You need human interaction and interventions.

What was the one with the broken finger? Oh, there was a – I think it was in 2022. There was an international chess tournament and people playing against AI. And this seven-year-old kid made a move on the board so rapidly that the computer didn't know what to do and basically grabbed him and broke his finger. A seven-year-old? Yeah, a seven-year-old boy.

Because it didn't – it does not compute. I'd love to be that lawyer. That's a good day. Yeah. We got precedent, Your Honor. Right? We're setting precedent, I should say. Yeah.

I've been enrolling in chess tournaments ever since. Come on. No, it's scary. I'd love to pick your brain on that more off camera just to see. I'm sure you're looking at some crazy shit because you deal with some big companies. Yeah, the biggest companies in the country. And you're dealing – without giving specifics, I also know just based on what we've talked about, you're dealing with private entities that are huge as well and private individuals that are huge in different places. And I would imagine this is top of their list, the smart ones.

That's not good. It should be. But over half of companies have not trained their employees in how to detect a deepfake. So I think, and God, I hope I'm not right or wrong. I hope I'm right. I think it was Ferrari. There was an executive at Ferrari, and I'm sorry if I have the company wrong, who got a phone call from someone that he thought was CEO or some C-suite who wanted him to move some money, right?

It was voice cloning. He did not know that, but he had like a gut feeling. So if organizations, again, training and awareness, like you have to listen to your gut and your training. But the guy thought something maybe was off and was smart enough to say, what was that book that you were reading that we were talking about last week?

And was able to detect that it was not the real person claiming it would be. What did the AI do when he saw that? I don't know. Probably was like just exploded. But who knows to do that? Who knows from a family standpoint, do you have safe words or passwords with your family? So I've told my kids, you can see me on YouTube. You can see me on videos.

You can see me on stage. If I ever call you voice or video and I ask you or tell you to do something that you didn't expect or that sounds a little weird, you need to ask me what the password is. And it's only something we know, right? People need to do that. And companies need to do that. When I was a kid, that was, you know, some van pulls up and says, hey, your mom said to pick you up. We would have a password.

It's kind of back to that now. All right. Now, if your kid said on like Xbox Live, the password, though, now I'm giving you advice. You need to have a backup password. That's why my kids don't do online gaming. I'm a mean, mean mom. Right. Even when you're not looking.

Oh, yeah. They don't have phones? they have nothing they got nothing they have ipads that are in my bedroom i can i control it all but even once if they go in there and around that ipad they say you know shawnee that's the password yeah it wouldn't be that they know plus i've scared the hell out of them they know that it's a that it's a secret. God, that might be child abuse. Scaring your kids with international espionage. You will listen to what mommy says about AI. I'm training them. You know, you'd be surprised.

I think a lot of people would be surprised how many multinational corporations are lagging behind and defending against these types of things. Well, you were saying in defense of what you just put up, like 51% of CEOs haven't even looked at this or whatever. I would have thought that some of, when I was talking with you a second ago, I would have thought that some of the private guys, like the major high influence guys who aren't operating in the corporate structure, would be a little more in tune with that. The fact that some of them aren't is surprising to me. The corporate part, that's not surprising to me. I found that it's typically, not always, typically it's regulated industries that get it a little bit more. So like financial sector,

right? They see how bad it is and the attacks that they're suffering and the attacks that their customers are suffering. So they're trying to do something and trying to combat. Healthcare, they are behind, but they are trying as well, little by little. But other companies, other industries, it's still like, it can't happen to me attitude, right? Yeah, or they get too dependent on the cybersecurity side of it and not enough on the people, right? So finance as an industry is a perfect example because of you know how regulated it is but when i was posing as a money launderer i recruited bankers constantly yeah that would just circumvent the security wickets right they only the thing

only works if the people tell the story for the dude that gave you the the inside baseball in the system oh yeah so i'm working this one guy and he is a salesman right he's a salesman in this company and uh he's like emails me every once in a while say like hey how's it going you bought some stuff from us before well we wanted to make a large technology purchase from this company let's just say hypothetically it was laptops there wasn't and he's like it wasn't it was anything but laptops and uh so it was like a 500 piece of equipment order, it flagged the system. And I get a phone call from this company security department saying, Hey, our security officers need to talk to you. You represent this company. What's going on here. And I'm thinking like we talked about with the disguise, I'm like,

they found me, you know, I got to, you know, hit the lamb. I'm going to be hiding. You're going downstairs, grabbing passports and cash and cocaine. Yeah, somebody better start getting excited, you know, just throwing things against the wall, freaking out. And so I'm trying to maintain my cool on this phone call and elicit, you know, what's going on, what flagged the system. And what turned out was everything that we ordered was on sale. And this was actually picked to save a little money by the government when we were doing this disorder. And so what the security department was afraid of is that whoever was purchasing it was going to buy up all the stock that was on sale and then sell it at actual price somewhere

instead of actually using it. And so I throw a big fit about this to the security team and I'm going to walk. I get a phone call from the salesman after that saying, Hey, I can fix it. I smoothed it over with them. Oh, by the way, in the future, if you ever need anything, just let me know and I'll handle it with security for you. And then over the course of the next year, not only would he take care of it, but he would also tell me, Hey, make sure if you're ever doing this, don't do that. I would trip our security. And so we're just taking notes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Did you ever have moments like a lot of them? This is obviously one

of them, but where they added up enough of these moments added up where you're like god we're so fucked like i should not be able to do all this absolutely yeah yeah the success rate you know was what and i'm i'm not the best person that's ever done this you know like and i know this from other officers as well i thought maybe we'll get like 50 50 like 20 of the time it's gonna work i'm talking almost every single time we try it works i've told you guys both this quote before but my buddy jim diorio politeness and familiarity breeds access it truest phrase i've ever heard yeah i always tell him it's mine with my kid is kill him with kindness did i tell you his red ball drill story did you ever

hear this it's hilarious it's funnier when he tells it of course because he's like a funny northersey thai guy but jim was like very high up fbi he was undercover there for 11 years and then was international case officer a little bit so after his career he starts getting all these contracts from these guys because he graduated west point in in 86. So all his buddies are like CEO of this company, CEO of that company. And one unnamed company, his buddy is like, yeah, I think our security is great. Can you just check it out? And Jim is like, yeah, I'll be the judge of that. So he's like – he does it so simply.

Wherever the company's headquarters are in some city somewhere, he literally goes to like the Starbucks next to there. And he's like gets his coffee he's drinking it like this gonna be so easy walks outside he's like checking to make sure his gun's unloaded and shit you know not advisable but walks into the walks into the first floor this is all about three minute process maybe walks into the first floor goes up to the front desk and and uh i forget what he said but he's like he's's like, hey, I'm just headed back up there again. Thanks again for yesterday, by the way.

And the lady goes, oh, yeah. And if I'm getting the story slightly wrong, you can see it in episode 48. He explained it like two hours in. But, you know, then he goes up to the elevator, goes up to the guy's floor, which, you know, he's all the way back there. But he goes to the front and he goes, hey, what's up, guys? Did you guys get the donuts I sent through yesterday? They were supposed to come at like 11 a.m., but I never got to come. And they're like, oh, my God, we didn't.

And he's like, oh, that's so my bad. I'm so sorry. You know what? I'm going to send you a make-up one tomorrow. By the way, he's in right now, right? Yeah. Walks by. The guy's on the phone.

Walks through the floor all the way back to his glass office, opens up the door, sits down, puts the gun in his face and says, you're dead. We need to talk. And it's like he didn't do anything like you or I could technically. I don't know if I'd be able to pull it off, but like you could technically do it because a lot of these places that seem like, oh, it's behind some big building, all the security. No, the fuck it's not. And even that just, you know, aids to a sense of, for the employees and the employees that somebody else has taken care of it, you know, and humans. So we talk about this a lot. The way that con men fraudsters or what we did for a living there, the approaches are very similar.

You know, it's what you're doing it for, but it's, it's a very similar approach. And so if you take something like change blindness, which magic use constant blindness right and so if let's say you're walking down the street somebody walks up to you with a map right and they're like hey can you show me like where this is they've demonstrated that they could have like a construction crew carrying a big wall walk between us and then somebody else could take my place right and it's i think 50 of the time at least people don't notice the gorilla yeah yeah so you know the gorilla psychology thing so there's a video remind me that they can show um where it basketball, like five on five. And some people are in black t-shirts.

Some people are in white t-shirts. And there's like three balls in it. And they say, okay, over the next 20 seconds, I want you to count how many times white passes a basketball. So you're so focused, right, because the brain cannot multitask well on doing it. They can have an actor in a gorilla costume come stand in the middle, go like this, and walk off. And over 50% of the time, people do not notice that there is a gorilla in the video that they watched.

And so when you take a concept like that and add it to the story you were just talking about, it's very hard for people to notice things that they think they're not supposed to be focused on. And I'll add what social engineers leverage in addition to all that is natural human trust. Humans are trusting. And when you tell me something is blue, I'm going to believe you that it's blue without questioning that. Yes. Or the bias that once you've bought into somebody, you want them to continue to be right, even if they're they're scamming you down the road. Right. So.

Yeah, there's vulnerabilities everywhere, man. And like, that's the thing. I always live my life like I'm susceptible to everything. Like you watch these documentaries on cults and you think, oh, I'm above that. No, the fuck you're not. Everyone there. There's something in our hard wiring, wiring you know in the computer system that can be hacked if we're not fully even maybe if we are observant but not fully observant or whatever

there's some human weakness that exists there not even just that actually jim lawler and i talk about this uh we have for years everybody at some point in their life is vulnerable we all have had our personal rock bottom and if you haven't yet you're fucked because it's coming. But it's people like us in the past. Not now, we're very nice. It's social engineers, it's fraudsters, it's all the malicious actors who prey on that. AI, for example, we're talking about. AI is looking for disgruntled employees. There are private insurance firms, private security companies, private law firms that are actively looking for whistleblowers, for example. So based on what you're posting on social media, I can tell if you're pissed off or not, that is a great target,

right? And then pulling all the data so I can see what you like and what you don't like and are you married, are you not married, all all these things and there's your targeting package in seconds versus weeks and months that it used to take it's frightening yeah especially like from that corporate espionage standpoint if you think about the targeting package that we we discussed if ai is helping to say here are the 10 people at that company that have access to the information that you want to steal. And here is what's going on in all of their lives. Here's what's vulnerable. And then you take somebody who's trained to do this and you create what we would call a perceived serendipitous encounter, right, where we bump into each other. What a term.

And you just think. I just say bump. That's fake. That's fate, right? It's just happenstance. Chance encounter. Right. Yeah. It's. That's fate, right? You know, it's just happenstance. Chance encounter. Right, yeah. It's very hard to see,

right? And so an example of that could be, let's say you're sitting, waiting for the bus. If somebody walks up after you to get on the bus with you, you're more suspicious than if they were sitting there before you even showed up. Like baby reindeer. Yeah. Wait, baby reindeer? She sat in the bus stop, watching them.

I'm not in on that joke, I'm sorry. You didn't see it? No. Oh, baby reindeer? She sat in the bus stop watching them. I'm not in on that joke. I'm sorry. You didn't see it? No. Oh, you got to watch it. Okay. I'll watch it another time. Or an elevator is another example.

If you're in a hotel and you're going to go up to your room, if you've already punched floor nine and I get on and I'm like, oh, same floor. It's more suspicious. You're here for the gangbang? Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's exactly where this is headed i can be but if i'm already standing on there and floor nine is pressed you don't think that i'm in there to come after you necessarily you just think that i already know where the gangbang is without you having had to tell me well i mean we all know that's right yeah there's the shit you like how paranoid are you

guys all the time just in regular life i mean you've already kind of outlined it your fucking kids got safe i mean i would say compared to most people, pretty paranoid. But, you know, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Yeah. So, but not to like an unhealthy way, but I also have a pretty high risk tolerance, you know, in my personal life, clearly. But like she said, if you're taking the steps to mitigate the risk that's out there, then, you know, that adds the comfort for me. Like I'm not just going blindly through life saying, I hope it doesn't happen to me because then it probably will. Like I'm actively making sure that these things don't, don't happen.

Are you ever worried about people coming to kill you? I'm not even talking about people you worked with in the criminal organizations. If they happen to recognize you, which you said last time would be hard based on how you looked, but like people who are related to foreign intelligence services who just don't like what you did. Sure, yeah. It crosses my mind from time to time for sure. But you still got to live life. You do have to live life. You do what you can do and hope for the best.

All right, let's get back in your story. We put a bookmark on that. So where we were was you met this guy who was dealing with the – when you get all the cash together, the dude who was caught with the money in the back of his car. The bulk cash smuggler guy. Bulk cash guy. Was he an American guy or was he Mexican? He was a Mexican. He was a Mexican.ican okay did you meet him

in america no oh so he got picked up in another country all right yeah the cops down there aren't too good that's that's a lot i'm not saying it was that country but yeah where he got picked up they helped him okay so you start you go back to base you're like all right i think should we work with this guy they give you the green light to work with him is this on the timeline you were meeting him while you were still in the biker gang right towards the end yeah towards the end yeah so you keep that you develop that contact did you develop any relationships with cartel through him while you're still at the biker gang? Not to any significant extent, no. And so, you know, one of the things in our world that we always try to do is you keep a bunch of doors open, right? You never know when you need to go down that path. And so you check in with people once every few months, you make sure that the

relationship is still there and then maybe things change for you and you start pressing that harder. And that's what happened in this instance. Because of his access to major money launderers globally, that was his network. He was a money guy, so he knew that. And we wanted to pivot significantly into that being the only focus. And so he provided that opportunity. Meaning you wanted to get away from anything that wasn't money laundering, like the narcotics stuff. You're like, let's just deal with money.

Right. Because you don't, nobody does everything in those worlds, right? You're not like the guy that smuggles the dope. And then you're the guy that's also laundering the money. Like you want to be compartmentalized. And specifically that's the one that we were looking for, for a lot of reasons. You know, not to mention that it's a safer position to be in around them. You know, I don't have to do as many egregious things. Like if you're an enforcer for organized crime, like you're going to, that's a bad position for one of us to, to try to end up in. Right. You didn't like the brass knuckles it's just not built for me you know i'm just not that guy but it cuts to like a video feed of matt back in the day yeah i mean i might have had a tattoo on my palm that said fuck you pay me

but that had nothing to do with it hey look that was a dare i will i will say that like even on camera that last time when i got you to role play for a minute like i felt it when we were in here but you always wonder how much you can see it on camera i watched that part back on camera last time that was like two hours and 20 minutes in that episode but like that was like you turned it on like that like i for a minute felt like you were gonna be uncomfortable to do it and then suddenly we got into mode and you did the whole psychological thing where you made a problem that was bigger than the one we were talking about i'm like fuck he got me it was impressive so you can turn into

someone else being like you know you don't want to have to do that stuff but if duty called toss on those brass knuckles you'll be good yeah you're right you want to give that vibe right it's not a world where you want to be seen as a pushover you know you don't want to have to prove yourself all the time you know you want to get that out of the way and you want to give the impression you know i'm not the one for that right so that you don't have to be constantly all right so timeline wise so that we can all picture this obviously you're meeting these guys while you're still in the tail end of being in the biker gang. The shit goes down, aggravated assault. You pull out of the biker gang. That time period after that, are you making contact with the cartel?

Through this person. I'm developing this person at the time. Yeah. And so, and what does that look like so i'm creating a friendship and a business relationship with that bulk cash smuggler specifically now during that courtship period um you never know who you're exposed to right and this is this one thing when people ask me about the cartels i always say like if you don't show up and show like an ID card, it's like, hey, you know, I'm with this one. So sometimes you don't know. Right. You can get a vibe off of people or specifically the way that people are shown respect by other people. You can try to assume rank, you know, because of that. Or somebody is wearing, you know, $70,000 bespoke trace outlaw boots.

You know, they probably, you know, have a certain type of job to have that lifestyle, but at, in the beginning you don't know. And so what you're trying to do is feel that, you know, access agent essentially out and then see who does he know that I want to know. And that can be a long process. Yeah. What's that seduction like? That's what you're doing. You're seducing them. Like if, if how long a period would you say it was where you had to develop this relationship? That's the first question. A year. A year.

Is this like the kind of thing where you call them up once every two weeks and then if he invites you to do something half the time you say yes, half the time you say no, like take me there. No. So with this individual, I moved very, very quickly. Like we were hanging out together constantly. I met this person's family. I knew this person's kids. We would spend, you know, five days a week together at one point in this development. You weren't worried about shooting your load too fast and being too excited about it? Not from the feedback I was getting off of him. The feedback I got from him is that he had been desperate for this type of connection for a very long time. And that because I was filling that

psychological role for him, that he would essentially, like we just talked about with the, the magic trick, he would forgive like his brain, his subconscious brain is going to forgive a lot of my mistakes because he wants this to be real. He wants that to keep happening. And when you have that cover with somebody, you push it. You don't wait for them to change their mind or, you know, wise up and think about it. You don't want them to think about it. You want them to be focused on you, not thinking about what just happened the last time you were together. And he knows you as the guy who was in the biker gang, right?

Yep. Like you gave him that information while you were there. Yeah, the people that introduced us were in that world. so okay what's that like when you're starting to get to know this guy like did you see him because you you talked about it last time like and i believe you you you have this unbelievable trait of empathy which is something that a lot of times you know other types of spies they they kind of they'll have like a false empathy but you really do have it so you start feeling what these people are about like what was what was he like and did minus what he did did did he have redeeming qualities that you were actually very attracted

to as a friend tons of them um you know if you didn't know that this guy is moving money, you know, based on selling something that kills people every single day, you'd be one of the nicest guys you ever met. He didn't have any of that vibe. He wasn't a fake tough guy. He wasn't. He was just he was hilarious. You know, so that's easy when you're hanging out with somebody that long when they're that funny. But you wouldn't know, you know, and you'd be surprised the type of piece maybe not you because you interviewed a lot of people but others would be surprised at the type of people that are in that world you know these very average joe type

people yeah that are doing this under the table and he he was a normal like clark griswold kind of character well that's also the tragedy of hollywood in the sense that when we see the movies or the tv shows even we're looking at the main players you know they got a cast of you know there's 10 main people you're following around these organizations are tens of thousands of people there's a lot of regular schmoes that have a more normal story and maybe even a more normal personality and a lower threshold of violence and evil and shit like that but they have access and you're able to get through with people like this because they're trying to put food on the table too they just decide to do it illegally yeah and that's that's those are the ones you want you know

if i could pick five different people to give me access i don't want the one that's going to give me a shot and a bona fide because you know i want the one that's going to be the safest and the easiest. Agreed? Totally. Totally agree. I mean, these are humans, right? When you have empathy, it's really easy to find something in common with whoever it is. I mean, we talked about it when I was on your show last time. Yeah.

So you developed a relationship over a year. You're going to dinner at this guy's house all the time? Sometimes, yeah. You like his kids? Are they cool? I watched his kids when he wasn't at home yeah you don't talk to them today i take it no we're not writing college recommendations now maybe an anonymous christmas card or something one day might send a little something yeah the kids i think we talked about this last time they were always a really difficult angle for me because... You didn't get into this too deeply.

Well, you know, to me, children, you know, represent maybe the only form of true innocence, you know, in the world. And so to know how close they are to this dangerous situation, often how bad they're being treated by, you know, their parents that are involved in that world, it's very hard to look and see that and have what most people would have, wanting to help them, wanting to rescue them from that situation and to turn a blind eye to it because that's not what you're there for. That was, for me, one of the most difficult psychological aspects of it was people's children.

But you got to act like everything's normal. That's the job. Even with them. That's the job with them that's the job all right so this guy becomes your access dude after a year how did you like obviously you develop a relationship with him quickly he knows your expertise he knows who you are he knows you're kind of like good in that world but what's the conversation like and how did you know it was time to do it where you make the ask or make the suggestion that like hey do you guys need help with this thing because i can do that right so you're you don't plan it ahead of time you're constantly leaking little nuggets of it right so that

he's putting this picture together in his head and it's his idea one day. So as I'm watching him during this time period, he was having more and more trouble at home. And his job was taken away from that because he would be running these cash loads and stuff and away from home. And so once you identify something like that, that's what I want to pray on. I want to demonstrate that I can alleviate what's burdening him, not by directly saying it, but just mentioning something to where he goes, you know, if I offloaded some of this responsibility to you and you just gave me a cut of it, my life would probably get a lot easier. Would you be interested in helping me out with it? Now you're doing him a favor. I there for you brother yeah like you know yeah you give the slow yes to it slow yes what does that look like well so you're not like yep yep i was hoping you would you know do that right and so for me it was always the you know okay well you just offered me 20 you know to help

out with this that's not really what's important to me here. And you're trying to convey that if this was a different situation, I'd probably, you know, no offense, I'd probably just walk. But because, you know, we have a relationship, that's the reason that that's what's important about saying yes to me is because we're friends, not really like the money. So psychologically, you move into the, I like you enough that I'm doing you a favor kind of thing. So he starts to feel like he's getting something he shouldn't be getting. Bingo. And then he feels like he needs to thank me for ending up where we wanted to be all along.

It's a similar psychology to like when you loan someone 10 grand and they say they're going to pay you next week. And then a month goes by, they don't answer calls and then suddenly you start tracking them down. And then suddenly it's like, they're doing you a favor by paying you like 50 bucks. It's like, fuck, wait, how did we, how do we switch this year? Get the baseball bat. Yeah, exactly. That fuck you pay me. So what did he want you to do? What was the first thing where you did, you did him this favor? It was perfect. He wanted me to travel for him him he wanted to spend more time at home and he wanted me to take some of his trips so he with cash yeah

yeah and he would have to introduce me to the people that i would be giving it to or dealing with he introduced me to people in banking internationally he introduced me to all kinds of people how did those handoffs happen? Does he go with you the first time or is it like, now you're going to meet this guy at this place and give him this signal and you're going to fucking hand him the bag? It can go both ways. Sometimes it was a handoff, it was an introduction like that.

And sometimes it was just, hey, I'll call ahead and say like, hey, I got a guy coming. This is how you'll know that it's him. But putting the cash into the banking system which is what he was in charge of doing this just happened in the td america td bank scandal right where they just got fined like three billion dollars for helping what happened here again yeah so they were helping um of the employees, these insider threats. Up to the top. Yeah.

The head of their division to catch this happening was complicit in it. But they had banks where there would be a branch manager that was taking up to $1 million in cash a day and depositing it into the bank. Isn't it like $6,000 or above $10,000 you got to support or you got to report? Yeah, it's a suspicious activity report. Right. For – Hey, listen. Cartels are people too.

Yeah, exactly. They have feelings. You know, they have feelings. They have rights as well. Well, so there's two types. There's the suspicious activity report, which can be based on any amount of money if they think you're up to no good. And then there's the currency transaction report, which is the above $10,000. So they're legally obligated to file this, which obviously this branch manager was just not doing.

How do you get away? This isn't like $15,000 versus $10,000. You're talking like a million versus $10,000. How the fuck do you even get away with that for so long? You know the system. That's it. The people that are supposed to catch you are the ones helping you get away with it. But then you also technically have over-send out that they're like that, whatever.

But you're supposed to have the FDIC and stuff, I would imagine, looking at this. It's been a while since I was in banking, so I don't know. Sure, it takes a while. It's a lot of paperwork. But who watches the watchers? If he's the one watching to make sure the processes are followed. Right. How did they catch him?

I don't know how they caught him, actually. I know that, I think it was the branch in Toronto. There was a branch there. God damn Canadians. Eh? It was so rampant that during the investigation they had you know employees joking about it like the teller level like the tellers are like you know there comes mark with his million dollars yeah there's a million dollars in cartel cash it's it's so flagrant and rampant and one indicator of how rampant it is is that they didn't

think they needed a more sophisticated system to beat it they're like no it'll work this way and it did for a while right I think it was about 50 million that they caught specifically just from one just from one one one branch you had moved 50 million dollars through one one POC like the guy I'm describing to you. How many branches does he have? Tons. Not my local branch. What?

Tons. Oh, my God. Yeah. You can really break through it. So that was one of the ways they were moving around cash. Did you ever do one of those? At TD? Not at TD.

You didn't? No. I won't name the banks i won't name the banks you know maybe uh you know when they hire us down the road to fix this for them oh so you did do it at a bank though oh at tons of banks yeah i've taken cash to what's the bit most you ever took and got away with it in like one load to a bank a little little over $4 million. This is an average day. $4 million on a $10,000 limit.

And how did you get them not to report it? They were complicit. Yeah. Same exact situation. Slide that under the table. Take $100,000 for yourself. Is that what you did? Even less.

Like, I think in the TD Bank thing, somebody, I think they spent like, is it $50,000 worth of gift cards they gave out was what – Half those things don't even work. Right. You're not scratching it off. Yeah. It never ceased to amaze me how little money it took to corrupt people when you try the right way. Maybe because a part of it is psychologically they're like, well, it's enough that I'm happy but not enough to like spread an alarm. So I'll just keep, you know, like a little IV drip.

I'll keep taking a little bit. Yeah, you're right. And they rationalize in their head that they're just not being greedy about it, right? They're being really responsible about how they approach this. That's right. Which is hilarious. I agree with them. right? They're being really responsible about how they approach this, which is hilarious. I agree with them. They are being responsible.

Gift cards, you can hide that. Yeah, don't be egregious. That's right. That's right. I don't need $100,000. Twist my arm. My kid's got to eat. And of course it's all cryptocurrency stuff now that they're – that method is becoming antiquated. For cartels.

Yeah. So almost all of the cartel – the Mexican cartels, bulk cash is handled by Chinese now. Almost all of it. In crypto. Well, so they'll take the – Like transferred to crypto. It can be. One of the things that the Chinese will do is they'll either spend the cash on stuff and then they'll export those items to China and sell them at a higher price. They'll spend it on real estate.

Artwork. Or they'll work a lot of times with individuals in Russia, cyber criminals in Russia that take over the Bitcoin side of it once the conversion has been made. What does that look like? Like why do they have to bring in Russia to do that? Because they're better at the Russian criminal organizations that are better at the crypto laundering than the Chinese criminals. But the Chinese, you know, one of the reasons that the Chinese criminals or the Chinese intelligence officers that are involved in this are so good at getting this job is they can do it for a very very low percentage right so they're involved in the fentanyl like the precursor materials or even fully manufactured fentanyl leaving china and coming to mexico right like almost all the precursor chemicals for fentanyl start in china and so the people in mexico owe them money for this.

And so what this allows you to do when they're involved at both the up and downstream portion of the operation is instead of trying to send money through bank accounts that can be traced and all of that, they just balance the books. And so now you're not following money moving around the world. It's just a balance the books and it's all good. I got you. So that allows, you know, some of these Chinese criminals to pay out quickly. You know, that's another thing in money laundering. If I'm going to launder somebody's money, they want to know how long it's going to take before they can use it somewhere. They can do same day.

Same day. Yeah. Hand me the cash and I will release the funds in Guadalajara to you same day. Same day. Yeah, hand me the cash and I will release the funds in Guadalajara to you same day. That's useful. Yeah, at 1%, half a percent. Half a percent. Sometimes zero. Reverse opium warship.

Yeah, and you mentioned that earlier, right? Like what this is like over there. The Chinese intelligence services are most definitely involved in this happening to us oh for sure right now i think i i don't know if i told you on your podcast i've said on a bunch of podcasts before i'm actually gonna get this guy to come in but this dude ben westoff wrote a book called fentanyl ink you know five six years ago i think in like 2018 2019 and he did a great podcast with joe rogan back in the day where he told a story of how this happened he was like a music cultural reporter and he wrote

about like tupac and stuff and so he gets assigned a story seven eight years ago on something in that and one of the dudes he was interviewing made some offhand comment about fentanyl i think ben had known like a little bit about it but he started asking him about it and suddenly he was like holy shit it was like this whole story so savage that he is he get he's an author he starts like writing a story about this like i'm gonna make this a book says you know what fuck it i'll go to china let's see how easy this is goes to china and like they take him to the lab they're like all right do you want the deluxe order do you want the triple deluxe Supreme? You let me know. And he could – he saw how easy it was to get it back.

So for an American just doing that la-di-da-di-da on a regular day, see how easy you got it. Imagine what the actual intel guys are doing with fucking the heads of the cartels. Yeah, absolutely. And they had these networks set up back when they were doing the methamphetamine precursors. So these relationships, you know, the pipeline for these precursor chemicals to come here were already in place. And now you have the second generation of people that have both a Chinese and Mexican connection. And these are like the ideal people for them to facilitate as the middlemen for this. For sure. All right. So we're going to get to some of the high level, like where cartel stands right now. Obviously, they were just designated like terrorist organizations.

You're going to have some thoughts there, but I want to get through like to show people how deeply ingrained you were in this world. So you start doing these drops for this guy. They were all random things. Could be at banks, could be meeting a random person in some other country, could, you know, whatever. You start developing relationships, though, on the other end. Sometimes these were just regular people in suits.

I would imagine other times you're like, oh, this is a serious player in the cartel itself. Right. Yeah. What does that look like? What was your goal? Like, are you like, I want to meet a person at this level in the cartel and then become friends with them? Or was it more kind of same thing? Like, let's see what we fall into where the chips fall. So the level that, um, I was trying to be at was more of the layering level. So not the,

that would be the integration level, trying to put cash into the banking system. I wanted to be more at the level where I'm distancing it from the original account through corporations all over the world or through trade deals or whatever, so that the money could be usable, right? Because I can't really influence the things that my organization was interested in, like that we talked about in the beginning while I'm mulling this cash around. And so I needed to move more into the layering once again where you're in these within these organizations like the cartels so that you then have access to have to go to other places right so i'm just trying because this is such a hard world for me to picture not being in it but like

are they giving you they're like all right we right, we're going to need you – I'm going to paint a hypothetical here. We're going to need you to uncover some secret arms deals happening in fucking Serbia. So we need to figure out how to get you to Serbia, meaning we've identified this group of people within the cartels that deals in that area. And by the way, you're currently dropping off money to this group of people who knows those guys. So you're going to get through this guy to that guy. That's actually pretty close. So if you think of the money laundering world, it's all jurisdictionally dynamic, right? Like offshore banking. Yeah.

You have places that are good jurisdictions for trusts. You have places that are good jurisdictions for the banking, right? So like let's say Nevis and Belize, which are, you know, close, you want to do a trust in Nevis, you want to do the bank account Belize just because of their laws. But there are places like this, you know, Channel Islands, Luxembourg, you know, all over the world, Hong Kong, right? So you're trying to steer it in that direction by saying, well, there's a reason that I want to use Luxembourg, you know, because I've got a hookup there.

Like you don't get asked a lot of questions like that, especially when it's a technical job. So what I mean is if I'm having this discussion with say somebody in a cartel and they are not a finance person, I'm going to so overload them with like finance and tech jargon that they just don't want to listen to me anymore they don't want to ask questions they're just bored yeah so you're trying to prey on on that to to keep them from looking you know what's happening kind of like it's a similar psychology to like the charlatan angle hit him with a lot of terms bore him to tears or make him believe that you know what the fuck you're talking about and just be like i don't

want to deal with it anymore yep yep all right so how long before you actually got somewhere where you're like well now i got the access i need so maybe like a the year with him another six months after that it was pretty close so yeah what happened just because of the connections that he had provided in places where you know you're almost taking these people and leapfrogging over them a little bit you know like you're friends with this person and you get really close and they introduce you to somebody who's more helpful and then this starts to go down and the new one and you're just jumping ahead pretty quickly through these, these relationships. And as long as you circle back around to each person

and say like, I'm taking care of you. I still thinking about you. I'm just traveling a lot. You know, yeah. Send him a postcard. Yeah. Yeah. You're the only one for me. I wish i was with you yeah and what like was there i know you can't like say exactly who or necessarily the exact place or everything but was there a guy you got to where you're like bingo yes we're there yes what did that look like this was an extremely high level person in a very well-known international bank. And what was the context of you getting him? I mean, one of the top ten employees at the bank in the world. And he was on the take, knowingly.

Yeah, he eventually became on the take, yes. Oh, he wasn't when you got to him? No. Were you the guy that convinced him to go on the take? Yes. All right. How did you get to this guy? So this – it was actually a parallel operation that – I'll try to say as little about this as possible.

He came up – It's just you and me. Don't worry about it. Yeah, right. Yeah. So he came up as a person of interest to the US.S. intelligence community at one point to be developed for something completely different than this. And that didn't work out, but we knew of this individual. And so this person got promoted fairly quickly in their bank. And so we decided to take a run at them as like a secondary, like, well, we couldn't

use them for what we wanted, but maybe Matthew can use them for the money stuff. And he was amenable to it and eventually started doing what he – he didn't think he was working for the US government. He thought that he was enabling money laundering. All right. Take me there. I want to know like first of all, you – so that I understand. When they're making this whole thing about him where they're like we think that's a targetable guy, you have not made contact with him yet, have you? Okay.

So now they're like, well, Matthew is in a place where he actually can make contact with the guy because of other people he knows so without revealing the bank or the place or the guy or the exact job he had we just know he was high up that's important enough how did you make contact with him you just like walk into his office and be like hey what's up bro so his bank had already been being used by some of the people i knew in the money laundering world the criminal side of it at this point. And so the branch specifically, we didn't know if he knew that it was working that way, but I already had a reason to go there. And so we just started focusing on that branch and that location more and more and more.

And so eventually it goes to creating that, what I call that bumper, that perceived serendipitous encounter. And I walked up to him in a hotel lobby bar and struck up a conversation and then eventually made a friendship. One of the things that pisses me off in the movies about these types of conversations is that they're limited by time. So they have to – the scene's going to be three minutes. Right. From walking into the bar to suddenly getting the ask and getting it done and suddenly, boom, and then it cuts to a new scene. But I always think to myself, I'm like,

those motherfuckers had to be in the bar for another three hours. What did they talk about? And how'd they get there that fast? You're obviously not moving that fast. So you, I just want you to kind of show us how you would do this. Like you walk into that bar. Is it 5 o'clock, like happy hour type deal? This was in the evening, maybe around 7.

All right. You don't have a goal of like, well, I want to get him by 8 o'clock. But how does the conversation start and what types of psychological tactics are you using to get him towards that area where you might be able to push him over the edge? Sure. Step one is I hope that he starts a conversation with me, not the other way around. And so I'm going to do things that essentially force that to happen. This gives him the illusion of free choice. So let's say I knew his favorite book, you know, hypothetically from this research or something like that. And it was something that almost nobody ever reads, right?

Just super unique to him. I might walk in like having just started it, something like that. Whoa. And then he's going to ask and I can say like, well, I don't know much, you know, about it. I just started it. You know, is it good? Like you explain it to me, right? And I was just talking about something he loves to talk about at that point and so that's that's one thing that can be done the next is what we

call a venue change right so people feel that they are more connected with somebody if they've been in multiple locations with them so if we went out and we spent six hours at one bar just talking to each other i would rather spend two hours two hours and two hours at three different bars because your brain will make it seem like we've known each other longer and then we're closer it's true so things like that. All right. So how did you – hypothetically, if you used his favorite book here, how did you steer the conversation? Did it then naturally kind of get to, so what do you do kind of thing? And then that's where – Yeah, the what do you do for a living comes up pretty quickly in almost any conversation like this.

And so you don't want to leak, you know, Oh, I even the cover of, right. Like I I'm a money launderer, you know, he probably guess, you know, what was happening at that point. And so the approach that I usually try to take was being bad at whatever my supposed cover I was telling him was right. So if I want him to come to the conclusion, I'm a money launderer eventually. And I'm going to come to the conclusion, I'm a money launderer eventually. And I'm going to say like, no, I'm a regular businessman. I do this, but I'm going to keep dropping stuff. Cause he's in banking to where he's like, you know what? I think Matthew might be up to some shady shit. And he's just not telling me yet. Cause we're not that close yet.

Right. So now it's again, it's that role reversal of he's trying to get it out of me i eventually accidentally you know leaked this stuff and then he feels validated he was right he knew it all along and do you plan that kind of thing ahead of time though exactly what those loose droppings are going to look like absolutely yeah so you you it's kind of without knowing what he's going to say because it's a live conversation it's rehears's going to say, cause it's a live conversation. It's rehearsed, like how you'll do it. Yeah.

So you, it would almost just be like talking points of at some point in the conversation, when I feel it's right, I want to get these three things out and maybe the conversation has a different direction. I'm like, I'm not going to drop any of this. This is not the night. This isn't, you know know we'll just do it another time maybe I'm getting all grain lights and I'm you know let's let's just get him out there but that is amazingly dependent on the feedback that you're

getting from the person that you're working now are you like kind of lightly drinking this time and trying to get him to drink more i'm going with it yeah yeah and sometimes even dragging him into like a faster pace right because people will try to keep up with yes you know so if i'm not getting him if he's not going enough i'm going to try to rush him with it and you trust yourself drunk yeah pretty good job it. It takes me quite a while. I have a physical lag to it compared to most people. But I'm also somebody who's experienced in trying to do these things while consuming alcohol at the same time.

They used to do, like in the Cold War, they did these weird tricks like eating butter or something, cut the line in your stomach. Like that's all. I was going to ask like to see, I have like a secret pill you can take before that suddenly like combats alcohol as it goes into your system. I wish. No,

but one thing to always remember about this is in this situation, I'm the magician, right? And so I know what to pay attention for. And this person just thinks this is just something that happened to me on a Wednesday. So they are already at a significant cognitive disadvantage in this exchange. Did you change venues on them? Yes. How long into the conversation did that happen? It was actually really, really quick the first night because the opening was there.

It was too crowded and loud to speak to. And so I just kept acting like I couldn't hear what he was saying when he was trying to tell me about something that he was very passionate about. You said, let's get out of here? No, he asked. He said, yeah, we can go. Like, buy me dinner first. So we went up to his room.

Oh, you did go up to his room? No, no, no. The gangbang wasn't until way later. He's getting aggressive. So he changed. Would you suck a dick for the U.S. government? Absolutely not. No.

I don't believe you. I'll never do that again. I was going to. I was going to. You don't get paid enough for that. Pause. Anyway, yeah. so uh he suggested a venue change and it was only two in the evening but um yeah it went very well and that was like a quieter bar or something this is quieter place yeah and were you able to get i forget if you said this at the beginning were you able to get to the initial kind of ask or proposal on this first one?

No. No, not even close. All right. So you had to lay the foundation. So how do you leave it with them? Like, oh, give me a call tomorrow. I really enjoyed myself. Thank you.

Yeah, you always – Shani knows all about this. You're always trying to set the stage for the next meeting. You always want to set that up. It's like dating. That's what I'm saying, though. You have an advantage here. No. You're like, I'll see you tomorrow.

No, the whole human intelligence recruitment cycle, it's like dating. The whole thing, spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, terminate. Each step is a different step in making a relationship with someone. Yeah. So you're always trying to get, you like them, they're checking the boxes. Just like you're swiping on an app, you're spotting someone, he spotted who he wanted, he's moving it to assessment. He's assessing, does he have the suitability and the access? Is he willing?

Is he vulnerable? He's checking those boxes. Then he wants to move it to the monogamous relationship, right? And then he ultimately is going to move it into, you know, so that's development. Then he's going to move it into recruitment, which is like popping the question. Yeah. Or into where all my relationships had having to pay the other person eventually. That's right. How do you leave it with him after that first night? And like, how do you get the second date? Yeah. So it really is dependent on the person and what happens.

But, you know, coming up with commonalities, which I already had, I knew what the hobbies of this person were. And so I suggested at the end of the first night an event that I knew was already like a hobby of his, said I would be in town a little bit longer because he had paid for the bill on this specific interaction. And so I said, you know, would you let me return you the favor? If you're free, you could come to this event with me. Where'd you take him? Golfing? No, not golfing.

I would have embarrassed the heck out of myself if it was golfing so that's okay though because then they feel bad for you that's a good way to pull them in like i gotta play with this guy i gotta play with this guy again the fourth thing it's like you hang out with spies fucking suck yeah you people won't get away from me it's not helping me i'll tell you that it does make me like i don't have to think like you do because my life's not that serious but i do me like – I don't have to think like you do because my life is not that serious. But I do like think about how you guys have to think sometimes. I'm like, damn, I'm glad I'm not that because that would – like I would be very, very hardwired to be very paranoid.

Like if I were in your seat, something like that, I don't know what I would do. I think for me seeing – Xanax actually. Xanax milkshake. Yeah, let's keep the bars flowing. Um, if, uh, to me seeing how easily people can be manipulated, manipulated, um, was a little unnerving. And now I take that, that with me just for the stuff that like we were talking about is I'm constantly checking my interactions with other people for indicators that they are attempting to manipulate me right um so it can

be a little overwhelming when you're actually just trying to you know be bros with somebody that's not trying to hurt you but did you know after that first one that you had him you didn't have him yet but you knew you were gonna get him I knew he was the type that we could get there, most likely. What made him the type? He was very able to be influenced, and he was very quick to express being disgruntled against people that he should have had more loyalty to than me, having met me in one night. So if I can get somebody on the first time I'm talking to them to talk shit about their best friend at 10 years, I can manipulate that person. Okay. You said it took a while longer though to develop it, right? So it wasn't like at the next event.

You're just making friends with the guy for a while. How long did it take before it started to get to the – I don't know exactly, but months. Months. Yeah. Sometimes this one was was quick these things can take years and years and years so this one was very quick but it was a matter of months and what did the what was the moment like where you're like boom let's go i'm

gonna have to be careful about how i answer that because i don't want this to be a recognized thing but um once so there's two stages to it once when i knew that the person would compromise their work you know security requirements for anything for any amount of money for any amount of reciprocity, it's going to happen eventually at that point. Like at that point, even though it was very small, I knew when the big ass came, it would be a yes. So that was the more significant part. And, you know, chime in here for me, the meeting where you do the big pitch, it's, you want to almost be at a foregone conclusion. Like you know how this is

going to go ahead of time you have to be because you're dropping cover you have to be if you're going to propose marriage you know the answer is yes otherwise you're dumb when you say drop and cover though not you're not dropping cover i work for cia you're dropping cover of that i'm not just this corporate guy you kind of already knew that yeah i laundered dirty money right and you're a banker because you know and in the way that she's describing it, maybe the security service comes after you, the counterintelligence service. He could have called the cops on me though. That's right. At this point and said, oh, you got me wrong.

That's not my bag. And that would have been very bad. Oh, so you gave him a bag. Small bills, cash. Large bills, cash. And what was the, without revealing it for the operational purposes of people figuring out, were you trying to make him,

were you at this point confidently or with prior permission, speaking on behalf of a given cartel operation where you are trying to get this guy to be your cover, to be able to do illegal activities at this banking institution? So never be exposed to him at that level, right? Like I would never use the C word, the cartel word with him. People like to feel like they have this blanket of security because you've only indirectly said stuff. You hint at it. You never said something that they're like, oh, my goodness, if the about with the computers, I wanted him to facilitate a very small thing. And then once I pitched him essentially on helping out, he was like, oh, I can do so much more than that in my position. Let me help you. Did he have a severe like personal life vulnerability? Yes.

Financially? Not financially. He was extremely wealthy, but he had some other very nasty habits as well like black mailable type stuff absolutely yeah did you utilize that no it because he didn't I didn't need to threaten him into you know I'm going to go behind your back and expose this if you don't help he thought that being around me was going to facilitate him being able to indulge in his nasty habits more. My imagination. I don't want to get too specific because if you put all this together, it can be.

I could Google it. Eventually, yeah. So this is some years ago now because this was early on in your time infiltrating the cartels. First two, three years. Yeah, so I think we're up to late 2010s. Okay. Yeah. All right.

So you get in with this guy. Is that now the moment where your buddies back at the cartels go yo this this hombre is a bad motherfucker he can stay and they start to really pull you in right so it's not as much like pulling in as like be a made member of our organization it's not like they wanted to patch me in or i'm gonna you know burn a saint in my hand and become a member. They don't look at it like that. They look at it more of who we're going to do business with. And so the modern cartels, they operate like I always imagine Walmart with a paramilitary wing to it.

They're very business-minded. And so they didn't want me to become a Walmart employee. They wanted me to become an affiliate company because I was getting things done efficiently for them. I was able to bring down the percentages that I was charging because it was becoming more efficient. And so they give you more and more responsibility. So they're not hiring an accounting department. They're bringing in Deloitte.

That's right. All right. I got you. These things are very compartmentalized. It all comes back. I got you. These things are very compartmentalized. It all comes back. I told you. By the way, shout out to Brian today, filling in unless he's out of town for the week. So thank you for doing this, my man.

Of course. All right. I didn't have your mic on. Can you say that again? Of course. All right. Cool. But doing a great job, by the way.

But anyway, so you get in with this guy. You are now brought in as a subsidiary, partner, consultant, whatever, of the cartels. Who, what, without revealing exact cartel or exact people, what types of people do you start running with now? And do the outlines of your responsibilities or things you're asked to do start to increase slash change? It does change and it changed in a way that was beneficial that we were hoping for. And that is the more responsibility you have with this, the less you hang out with like the cartel guys themselves. They want distance from this.

Right. And so I'm not like moving into the, this is just hypothetical to use something everybody knows, like hanging out with swiss bankers and then like popping off to guadalajara at the same time i'm moving into a safer world where my access is better and trying to get away from that situation that you know is more negative but was there a point where you started to feel i don't want to say this like now that you're there and you're trying to get that you actually do have that distance built in you now can essentially travel alone to a lot of places and have an excuse to do it be it switzerland or i don't know, Hungary or something like that. So now, like, I guess the question is before this point, had you not been able to do as much of the actual

like CIA stuff because you were trying to now establish a big cover again? You're exactly right. All right. So now you're able to do that, right? The more they're minding you, the more that they're trying to vet you and make sure that you, you know, can handle responsibility on your own. When you're going through that phase, it's very hard to break away, right? Once I ended up in a point where I have no boss, no supervision, now we've got some flexibility to work with. And then all you need to do is make sure that you can answer the questions of what happened to you every single day when you were away, when you come back, which is where that memory embedding approach. So you would do that kind of thing. You'd go to Paris with Shawnee or something and go to a restaurant and be like, okay, we're here in La Boucher.

All right, great. Got it. Picture on the wall. Yep. Noting things, the tablecloth is this color. They were serving this dish and you're paying attention to those things so that you can recall it later. Now you had said last time that over the course of your whatever, 15 give or take years doing this kind of thing, you didn't have a lot of access with your family. And your family even thought maybe you abandoned them because you couldn't tell them like what you were really doing. But I'm almost now surprised because it would seem like now you've got yourself in a position where you kind of could

step out and do that back in your personal life. Did you stay away from doing that? Because you didn't want to get, you know, creative vulnerability or something like that. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You thought you could be being watched all the time. Yeah, there were two different sides to it one i think i said last time it was easier for me to stay in my persona than it was to hop in and out and try to have that other that other side of it just it was easier for me but also you never you always think when you're leaving that bubble that operational bubble am i dragging something bad you know with me and when it comes

to stuff like family and the people that i was dealing with it's just better not to not to try but when you were in the biker gang you were like a rock star or whatever because it was more like you're constantly with the group you're with the organization you're at the strip clubs you know a whole different vibe whole different vibe now you're kind of like your own one cell man subsidiary in a way. Sometimes you go and meet with people, but the whole point is very similarly to intelligence. The job is having people not know who you are at all times. So you're not really, you're not walking around with like the big dick you did in the previous career with the biker gang at all. No, it transitions completely. I mean, there still is some of that because of the level of money, you know, that I was dealing with. And so when you are living at that level, you know, I was moving quite a bit of money at this time and I wasn't, you know, doing that and then staying at the Holiday Inn Express, you know, when I was done, I was living the life of an extremely wealthy person at the

time. And so you get a little of the rock star from wealth, obviously, but in a very different way. It's not the respect way that was the same as before where people are afraid of you or want to be with you. It was more of just what came with the money at that point. How would they pay you? Cash and then you got to launder it? It depends. Now so much of it could be like the Bitcoin, which became huge, huge, huge, huge. And your bank account that you put that in that was under your name, it's like CIA owns that bank account essentially.

Sure. Anything that was like an operational use, something the US government has. So when I stole it, you don't get to keep it. No. I wish. So they get extra taxpayer money i wouldn't have taken you gotta stay i wouldn't have been taking the train up here if i'd kept all the money from that hey listen you changed my flight so i did give him a flight in here yeah

that kind of sucks they should kind of let you keep some of that i got used to the lifestyle you know it's like when you go to divorce a woman, she got used to the lifestyle and she gets 50%. I love the way you think. I think we should reopen this can of worms with them. Mad dog. Come on, buddy. Yeah. I mean, there's stuff I got to take from it. I had a six-figure wardrobe.

You know, I got to... Alright, so you got to keep that. Oh, yeah. What are you wearing right now? This is bespoke. Everything's custom on this one. Okay. Alright. So were you wearing this now? This is bespoke. Everything's custom on this one. Okay. So were you wearing this when you were making deals with the cartels? Not this one, no. Not that one?

No. The bloodstained one outside. Right. By the way, I don't know what's in your bag. There has to be a body in there. That thing's fucking 100 pounds. They didn't let you on a flight with that. Yeah.

Who'd you pay off? I mean, we've been talking about this for a while there are ways around these things what is in that it's just clothes you sure yeah it's beauty products clothes wrapped up with bricks of cocaine maybe yeah various accoutrement you know all right so you live in this lifestyle like because again it's different you're kind of on your own island in a way you still have the corporate cover right all right so you go into an office you're going on the road for business right for actual legit stuff right which is now what the banker thinks my cover is yeah so he thinks i'm hiding the cartel stuff and everybody

else thing you know and i'm hiding this over here very much like a magic trick you're so layered it's like dating a bunch of women at the same time like how do you keep your story straight it's amazing it's fucking exhausting and you don't keep you were saying you don't keep long-term relationships or anything you're a hit it and quit it kind of guy. You got to be. Right? These days. Yeah. These days. These days.

I told you we're going to get an education. But like I don't know. I'm just trying to picture it. Like do you live pretty much like they talk about with spying? It's not the exciting movies or anything. It's like you're boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boom, boring, boring, boring, boring, and so on. So is that your life in the sense that, you know, you get up,

you work out like everyone else, you fucking go to the office, you say hi to Candace at the front. All right, ask her if she got your coffee ready, start doing the actual real work, make some calls like you're important around the world, get the bills paid, go home, and then, you know, make sure you make the call to the cartel to check in. Absolutely.

That's your day. You're trying to be as normal as possible, even in ways that are purposely mundane at times, just to look as normal as you possibly can. And one of the things I was talking to Dr. Ken, the guy I called the spy whisperer about, is in the knock world, one of the traits that you have to have is the ability to endure long periods of loneliness or it will drive you completely crazy did it bother you yeah yeah i mean we're social social creatures you know i like being around people part of why i'm good at what i did is that i enjoy interacting with people um and so when those relationships have to go away,

you feel that for sure. Forgetting your real relationships, now moving to all the relationships you are making, being social, doing this at a corporate level and an illegal level, and then even with your back office people at CIA who you're talking to. It's not real.

You know the social interaction is fake it's not i would imagine you're even though you're in character you're not getting the same true i don't know oxytocin release or whatever that we would normally get when you're making real relationships like with your family or your actual friends right i have to disagree with that um i got the same emotional response from doing this that i have with anybody else in my life so you really lived it you have to it has to be real or people can tell that you're faking it but you still go home to your own place at night right no my i mean my persona at this time that that is my place. There is Boardwalk Empire for the first time.

But I think he was quoting someone. Like someone else said it. The hardest thing for a man to do is sit alone in a room with nothing but his thoughts and be okay. I could not agree more with that. And especially having since left it it that's something that i struggle with now like having after leaving the work like to just sit in a quiet room by myself is not my happy place like i'd rather like go out somewhere where i've got the energy of people around me and stuff um that has definitely carried with me after that job is it because of all the shit you know essentially like how the

world really works no i think it's more just where my brain feels comfortable after having done it for so very long like my brain's natural resting happy place is not to just sit by myself anymore right constantly plotting thinking and now you don't have that right you have it at like a consulting level but you know that's like going from nascar to fucking driving on the back road so it's actually the work like doing the consulting work and stuff is when you know i'm dealing with these topics again is when like now my brain's back in the happy yeah you feel something but it's not the same it's not the same it's's not the same. It's not life and death. You can't fake that feeling. Right, yeah.

You're trading heroin for a smoking habit. Right. That's a good way to put it. It's not the same. It doesn't feel the same. And the brain is going to try to compensate for that. And you've got to fight that off, right? Or else it's going to subconsciously put you in situations

that you don't need to be in. And I saw when I first got out that that was a potential downfall for me is, you know, searching out similar type rushes like a drug and, um, got to be cognizant of that and fight it off. Were there potential temptations that came in that were totally illegal that you wanted to fill that void with? You don't have to say what they were, but if so. No, not really. No. Then is it like what kinds of things, if you don't mind saying? I think that getting to the point of having that level of interaction with people can be addictive. Also, being around danger became addictive for me as well. So you just feel like, ah, it's boring. I can't really hype up to pay attention to it unless there's some element of that to it. It's almost like venturing into fetishes and stuff, you know, like you're getting away from the vanilla side of it. And, you know, you can't go from, you know, partying at the Playboy mansion to,

to as vanilla as possible right after that, you're going to say like, I don't like this anymore. I'm used to something else. Yeah. You were saying last time you were given examples of like, you'd kind of feel a place like, Oh, that place feels cool. And in the back of your mind you know it's dangerous you go into that bar and then shit's going down and you're like fuck here we go yeah yeah yeah there was uh an instance right i mean this is maybe a month or two after i'd gotten out i think i told you this off camera story yeah um i don't know if i said it on camera

was that in the patreon episode you might have told that one in the Patreon episode. You listened to this one, Brian. Did he tell a story about being in a bar with – where there was a fight that broke out? I think that was in the Patreon is behind me I can't even see the door to come in and there's somebody sitting here next to me who I'm talking to and then there's the well and I'm sitting there talking to this it was a as a female and all of a sudden this older lady walks by and she just interrupts our conversation and she goes wow you are looking fucking fine tonight to me in front of this girl and this girl just buries her head in her hands like just embarrassed and mom yeah that's right and so uh we're sitting there talking and she's all embarrassed and all of a sudden the guy standing in the well is looking at the front door and his face just goes this look of fear on his face.

I'm like, what is going on? So I turn around and over my shoulder there's this guy standing there raising up the front of his track suit and pulling a Glock out of his pants. And they're screaming at each other like, you know, you're not going to do me like that. You're like, I'll take another. I'm here for this yeah yeah it's so um you know it's about to be the okay corral between these two guys standing right i mean right over here so the first thing i think is this guy you know he's pulling it out of his waistband and this way he's right-handed not a good place for your gun yeah he's gonna ascend around early and it's gonna shoot me in the ass because he's you know like coming around this way i don't want that and so this girl's freaking out i grab her i put her behind me i go up against the wall and i'm trying to do

like the walk like an egyptian pose to get out of the out of the bar and as soon as we get out she's like oh my gosh my cousin's still in there you know you can't leave her in there i was like who the fuck is your cousin she's like describes you know her physically to me and i go back in and both of the guys look at me coming back in and i gave like a quick like i don't know why i just went like that for a second and you should have seen the look on this dude's face he's like who the fuck is this guy and luckily she was right in the door i just grabbed her and you know left it ended up that that guy one of the two guys um he got shot to death that same night after i left yeah so you know how to pick them right yeah i think it's an energy thing and you know it can pull you to it if you're not

watching out for it the brain it's a it's a crazy thing so that was subconscious rather than conscious that's my opinion of it yeah is that i subconsciously put myself in a situation that i was more familiar with but not necessarily should have been in how did you deal with the loneliness you were talking about while you were still in? Like late at night, sitting alone in the room yourself, you know, you're living this crazy life. Everyone you're lying to, you can't talk to your real family. You can't talk to your real friends. You're in the middle of something that you know is bigger than yourself, but it is your life ticking away right here in the years that you're building up doing this.

Psychologically, how do you deal with that? I just leaned into it more. You know, if I was lonely, I spent more time with the people that I're building up doing this? Psychologically, how do you deal with that? I just leaned into it more. You know, if I was lonely, I spent more time with the people that I was supposed to be developing. You know, those relationships had a fulfilling angle to them as well. And so to me, if I was like, man, what should I be doing right now? I feel lonely. Well, you know, go back to work. Now you told the story last time about the wildest situation the worst situation you were in

which was you know and taking to some warehouse yeah yeah yeah and there was i mean it's horrible but you know a bunch of cartel guys around a little kid yeah taking a carrot peeler to his face for 10 minutes while his dad's sitting there watching because his dad had done stolen money or something and they wanted to punish him and it was a money issue yeah you told the story last time about how you have to stand there and and watch this like what where in the timeline was that was that shortly after you were now sucked in after turning the banker this was no this was even earlier than that towards like a whole cash smuggler timeline. That was part of them vetting me,

seeing who I was and stuff like that. That's one of the reasons that leaving that as quickly as possible and going over to the, I'm your guy over in Switzerland doing the banking thing, keep me the fuck away from all of that was that I was running away from that into how fast can I make that transition? But yeah, that was part of, you know, them trying to vet if I was the type of person that they could do business with. When you're doing that, are you purposely therefore looking

directly at it, making yourself watch it directly? No, no. And they weren't like, you know, holding my head, trying to make me. What I'm trying to do in that instance is respond like I'm normal, but not a problem for them. Right. And so you've got a million things going through your head at a time like that. But if you're focusing on doing the work, right, working your way through it, you're not, it's almost a way to not experience

it as viscerally, you know, you're focused on, on the job. Are you, I don't know, like how, cause you've been in character for years at this point when we're talking about that. So you're used to that, but that's such an extreme situation in all the worst ways. Yeah. How much are you purpose? This is a weird question, but how much are you purposely aware of your facial expressions when that's happening versus being on autopilot of like, all right, exactly what you just said. I don't want to act like I like it. I don't want to act like I'm overpaying attention. Uh, but I also don't want to act like I'm going to be a problem. Like what, what's, what are the thoughts that are going through your head? Cause I can imagine that's the longest 10 minutes of your life. Yeah. So I'll steer back to

the method acting thing. I was so in the persona that I was that you trust it, right? So you trust the cover, you trust your persona, you trust what you've built. So it'd be like, you know, a method actor that's been on a project for a very long time. If you would have taken them to a situation that didn't have to do with the movie and shown them something, their facial reaction might be completely different than a year before that, before they started the project. But what I and a lot of smart people put time into building was going to look right and just completely trust falling into that. Sound about right? My situations were totally different. Yeah, I don't envy that. I think about that one a lot because I can see you felt that big time. But you have a job to do, which is just like crazy.

But as you get these big responsibilities now and they're keeping you separate, you still like – you have some interaction. There's times you go and meet with these guys. Like what types of people are you meeting with and are you down in Mexico with them? Sometimes. Yeah, but usually it would be like meeting at a hotel to have almost like a business meeting would be in a hotel or to go out to dinner at that point. And these are, at this level, much higher ranking individuals. What kinds of things are you talking about? Just like specifically your job and stuff you're doing or are they also sharing some secrets of the kingdom it's like go if you went over to the steakhouse over here and overheard a conversation it's probably exactly the same like the amount of normalcy that these people could master was quite shocking to me they're just people you know like she mentioned

earlier they're people too they also have these other very unique things about them that other people don't share but the you know if that's 10 of who they are the other 90 is just like everybody else they're talking about sports they're talking about horse racing they're talking about their spouses they're you know all the normal stuff did you ever deal with anyone who was a number one or number two no approximately area how high up did you get dealing top 25 okay that's pretty high how big how big was the organization you worked with do you know i don't know how many members or you know people they're connected to they would have but they're a global organization tens of thousands probably yeah that's wild but people that are actually in it at that level you

know and that's one thing that using money as an angle is very efficient for in the intelligence world because people don't delegate the money to down the chain right right if if they're the ones dealing with tens of millions of dollars you're much more likely for them to interject themselves personally into it just because that's how people are with money yeah they want to watch where's my money that's it yeah so it forces that up right money's easier to trace as well so there's a lot of benefits to running an intelligence operation from the finance angle so there are a lot of people sitting at home right now thinking about the moral question here. And they're right to think about it. I think about

it too, which is that here you are someone working on behalf of the United States government using our tax dollars purposely in an organization where you are not trying to take it down at all. In fact, you are helping them do their work at the highest level that you can strictly under the guise of, well, for national security reasons, which is why you're doing it, because you want to get access to things to be able to help with what you view is more important. Okay, we've got to sell some drugs, make some guys hundred millionaires versus like a nuclear bomb doesn't go off and take out, you know, 10 million of our people. I can see where that deal is a trade-off, but looking back on it now, not while you're in it, you're doing your job then, but could you see why people at

home have an issue with our organizations actively trying to help organizations like this to get their job done and where people might think there's gotta be a better way? Yeah, sure. I can see where somebody would approach it from that angle. I think that's fair. The world that I worked in is often so much of a trade-off in that way. And it's impossible not to do business with bad people to get what we need done out there. It's not a bunch of good people out there that are doing these things. We're going to have to intersect with them. And if every single time something came up that was like, oh, that's illegal. We said, we got to interject right now and cut this off and stop it. We would never get to a high enough level to do things. And so I understand that there are moral dilemmas in that, uh, profession.

Um, I think that's fair and I think we should be held accountable to, to do things the best way that we can. Um, but for me, it was always, there is a specific focus and a bigger picture here. And that's, you know, I'm not in my, I wasn't the decision maker, you know, at the time. And so I just focused on the job. I think it's how big the picture is though. It's like, you know, I don't want to treat this so callously, but just for the sake of example, you know, all right.

One person gets taken out innocently in the middle of something. All right, that's one casualty. But when you're talking about a situation where you're working with an organization that is actively working with a foreign adversary as well, that you may want to keep an eye on, by the way, to get intelligence on that, I can understand that. But you're working with an organization that has graduated over the years to sending worse and worse stuff in here. You know, people blame the CIA all the time for the crack epidemic in california and like and in the inner cities it's hard to argue with that and now you look at like i think about all these moms who are losing their kids to accidental fentanyl not even the ones that we should also very much include in this who get addicted to

fentanyl and stuff but the ones who you know want to go buy coke because they're an idiot 17 year old won't have a good time and had fentanyl in it yeah and it's like we're weed and then they're dead and it's not one or two or three or four i mean i know people i have friends who have died from this yeah i lost my brother to exactly you are someone who are who is literally in the middle of that like yeah how do you how rectify that? Well, so let me be clear. Just because I was not there to take down that organization does not mean that there were not tons of U.S. resources aimed at taking down that same organization. That just wasn't my job.

But, you know, now that they've been designated as terrorist groups, and it's not like where I used to work, their whole perspective on this cartel was what i was doing this that was just like tangential they were still actively trying to stop what you're you're talking about i just wasn't at it from that angle so you think it can be we can live in a world where there's a mix like okay they're gonna they're gonna do their thing we're gonna do ours where we, and let's just not overlap. Well, I think you're asking what my headspace was then at the time and now,

and that's that this is a race car team, and my job was to change the tires. Somebody else was driving. It wasn't my job to do every single. And so that's what I focused on is I'm doing the tasks that I was given. And I know there are a lot of brave women and men that are smart people that are doing these other tasks that I'm watching I hope get stopped as well that they're on it. And that's a team and somebody else has that ball. One of the ones I always think about with this is the Kiki Camarena thing, which is now being talked about more because we just extradited Carol Quintero here, who we know was involved. And I want to put a pin in the cartel terrorist organization thing because we should all talk about that and what that could look like. But on Kiki Camarena, a lot of people out there know the story, but he was the DEA agent.

He was murdered in 1986. He had been a very successful DEA agent in Mexico, got in with the cartels and eventually they kidnapped him. They tortured him for days. Then he was left dead. And there is, there's a lot of controversy about, I don't know why I said it like that, a lot of controversy about whether or not CIA was involved and specifically whether or not Felix Rodriguez, who that's one guy who's been floated out there, was the actual guy who killed him as an undercover in the situation within the cartel organization. And this is one I've struggled with a lot because I've always said like, OK, let's say that's true. Let's say that's what it was. Let's say you're the CIA because this is now your literal territory. It's the same kind of thing.

And you have been doing some long-term 10-year mission for some crazy national security shit. And some DEA agent accidentally was really good at his job and got into the worst situation where it is you either keep your cover and allow this mission to continue or this guy's a casualty of the situation. And I always wonder if that's what happened there. Do you think something like that is possible? If that's could have been what happened? I have no inside knowledge of the Kiki Camarena situation, I can tell you that during the time that I was there, if I would have been involved in something that we thought a U.S. federal agent's life was in danger, they would have pulled the plug right then and there. That's reassuring to hear.

For sure. You sound very confident saying that too. I like that. Well, it was something that was gone over with me. Like there are situations where we're, we're yanking the ripcord here, and that definitely would fall into that category. Does that sound similar in your world, Shawnee? Yeah. A lot of rules. Yeah.

I'm not surprised. Okay. Now, what about the cartel terrorist organization thing? Because I hear this, obviously, we all know what the term is, but what does this mean from a diplomatic standpoint? It's – in fairness, comparing it to Afghanistan, Afghanistan had a fake government that we set up and they were just on the take and whatever. Mexico does – they're definitely on the take, but they have this real full government, a way bigger GDP. They're literally our neighbors down there. What does it look like when we've declared these organizations, which I do think are terrorist organizations, but now we've actually officially done it? How can we now act on this and is there going to be a lot of ramifications from that?

I think the biggest tool it gives you is the authorities that fall under the counterterrorism laws for us to go after them. So that's the plus. I think where it gets challenging is their physical proximity to the United States, their proximity embedded inside the United States. So that means if they want to retaliate, I think that they have a significantly better chance of being able to pull that off than some of the terrorist groups in other parts of the world, just because of how embedded they are. But one of the dynamics I find the most interesting is that they're the only terrorist groups that almost all of their funding is essentially coming from our population, right? So we're the biggest

narcotics consumer by far of any country in the world. And so if we're going to treat them like terrorist groups that could do things back here, we also have to contend with the fact that a lot of their money is coming from the people that we're trying to defend buying their product. And that's a dynamic that I don't think has existed in my recent memory to that extent that it's going to be extremely complicated to work with. How do you treat something – like how do you carry out counterterrorism missions though in a sovereign nation that's on your border as well. Like if you're, it's all, it reminds me of like,

in some ways, the Obama red line comment on Syria, like, well, don't use those chemical weapons or we're coming in. And then he couldn't back it up. All right. We just named these guys terrorist groups.

Are we actually like, I know Trump is going to want to back it up, but how much ability is he going to be able to have to actually from a counterterrorism standpoint back that up? I can't speak to that too much myself because I was almost dealt with counterterrorism zero. But I do agree with you saying that there's a complexity that's going to get added to it. What do you think, Shalini? This is outside of my expertise, but from the CT side, my studies and my work was more focused on Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

I think the question is how are you going to address it? Are you going to address it any differently than you did in the past? Because I don't know how successful we were truly with counterterrorism efforts, you know, with a lot of these Middle Eastern groups. Right. I don't know. It's an interesting dynamic that Matt brings up that like we're funding it, but they got us addicted to it too. Yeah. So it's not like this perfect like we're buying it because we all want to enjoy the product.

We have a lot of people who have been addicted to the product, sometimes unknowingly because they spiked it and stuff. A lot of times unknowingly. So I don't know how much that factors into it. think more factors in is not to you know delegitimize a lot of these countries but like Iraq and and Afghanistan were literal war zones I would argue that parts of Mexico are literal war zones but there are a lot of areas that aren't and also it's a little bit of like a controlled corruption I don't want to understate this like I don I don't want to mask the problem. The cartels are a huge, huge problem. But like, you're not going in somewhere where they don't have governors and, you know, their form of senators and who are all bought off, by the way, you know, and an actual president who's elected by their people technically. Whereas it's not like Hamid Karzai's in there with a bag of cash.

You know what I mean? Right. there with a bag of cash right you know what i mean right but but even like what he was saying with it being so embedded within our nation within our society how do you do ct operations here in the united states also are we only going to do it in other countries are we going to are we targeting things here because we do have laws and rules about targeting people targeting americans so how how does that work i don't know yeah i hadn't even considered it from that angle but it's it's just amazingly complicated yeah i'll be curious to see how this plays out we should probably talk about this more in the future as well because obviously like it's early days right now but what was also the thing that

was really creepy to me i don't know how much insight you could have on this, was the whole El Mayo thing when he got brought here. It's not like you were involved with that, but what did that look like to you? This has happened several times when El Chapo was coming. There's a lot of – and again, I wasn't directly involved in that obviously. But – and what was it? I think El Chapo's wife at one point got picked up at LAX too. I think so, yeah. She was thrown in prison for coming here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know what's all behind that. But I do think the way that that's going down is interesting. Yeah, it seemed a little bit coordinated and like he landed and they were all there ready to go. It's like was he – he was obviously kidnapped to do it and you do have El Chapo's sons who were here in prison and could have intelligence, but they were like warring with him too. So why would – I don't know. It was a little spooky. I did a YouTube live on it back then and I'm still like very confused by it.

Yeah, it is confusing and some of it might come from the infighting, right? Because it's in a little split and there's been instances where a top three member has been given up by the other members to try to, to appease something right. Specifically with when the ice agent, you know, was shot, you know, so sometimes, and I'm not saying this is what happened, but sometimes these organizations try to police themselves a little bit or regain some kind of footing. It's, it's funny to think of it that way, but to regain some footing if they think things are going badly for them.

I know he recently, I think just in the past week, said that he would plead guilty if he got life or something, right? Oh, Mayo did? Yeah. Inter Sante. Yeah. So I think that's the deal that's on the table because he's here in New York, right? I think so's the deal that's on the table because he's here in New York, right?

I think so. Yeah, so I think what they're going for now is he'll say he's guilty of I think 17 felony counts if he doesn't get the worst possible outcome. Yeah, that one's strange. That one's really strange. It just doesn't sit with me right. Because he was the ghost. He was the guy who just quietly operated. He wasn't like El Chapo. He wasn't as loud. He quietly operated.

He wasn't fucking meeting with Sean Penn to take a picture. And then suddenly, like, here he is. Same deal. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what's behind that, but I'm really interested to see how that plays out. How many years did you spend with the cartels maybe four or five i guess total okay yeah i mean and this is again not concentrated like that's how long i knew or had access to somebody in that world let's say right okay at the height of what you were doing, how much money were you moving?

Over 10 million a year, for sure. Those are rookie numbers. It's got to be more than that. I didn't want to say exactly how much it was, but it's worth the 10 million a year. Okay. And did you work with other guys like you who weren't necessarily undercover agents, but they were literal criminals, but they were like Americans like you who just came in through some backdoor corporate type deal? Yeah, I met a lot of professional money launderers along the way. Sometimes it's not like the movies where it's like one guy that does everything. He's like in Belize signing, you know, shell company stuff. And so there are networks of this, you know, specifically in Central Europe.

There are like boutique shops that, you know, have people that are almost like employees of it, right? And they run like little companies that facilitate money laundering. But yeah, it's not the way it is in the movies for sure like that outside the situation we talked about with the carrot peeler and all that were you ever in a situation where you were genuinely terrified multiple times yeah like what what take me there um you know i was in one that just strikes me off the top of my head is I was in somebody's home. I was one of these, these cartel people and, or at least tangentially connected enough. And this person was doing narcotics and was extremely drunk and got really mad and was like waving a pistol around and like screaming. And like, you know, this starts getting mad at me like all of a sudden. Like I don't know what brought me into the crosshairs. And so there were at least that and maybe a couple others that are just like that.

Did you have a piece on you? No. Oh, shit. No. Did you ever carry a piece around? Very rarely. Very rarely. Spies carry guns a lot less often than people think.

That doesn't surprise me. Only in war zones. Yeah. And, I mean, aside from some obvious reasons, one thing you don't want to do is react with one, right? So, like, indicators of training, right? So I'm supposed to be no military training guy, like, no nothing to these people. And if something happens and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm doing like a perfect pull and you know, people are going to think, where do you learn how to, how to do that? Like you look like you've been trained to use that

gun before. Right. So you're always avoiding things that could get you trapped in that way. He just does this everywhere he goes. Yeah. Yeah. That works. Maybe I misunderstood this or I'm misremembering this but didn't last time i thought you said that like your military background being in the navy was something you might discuss with somebody maybe that was in the biker world sure but you know somebody that's just let's say like a conventional sailor in the navy wouldn't like have the same mechanism you know like reaction to a pistol that a tier, like a SMU operator would. Right. So if somebody was like in the Navy and they could do that,

I might have a guess at what unit I thought they were. That's right. Right. Were you in those nine months, was that one of the things you were trained in to be able to do that at a, you know, tier two level or something? I've done uh the glock course with somebody who taught it for um task force grains uh so you're pretty good with a glock not too bad not as good as they are not by miles but i know what you're supposed to do with it i know which end you're supposed to point out now you weren't carrying around much but did you ever have to pull it on anybody no that's good no no if you end up in a situation where you have to pull out a gun and in my world you have failed right miles you know before you got to that point now how did this we we started off the conversation with you being leaked on the dark web by a foreign intel service

how did that go down like what happened and it wasn't just you it was multiple different people who were i guess like a part of your program right yeah so you know there are i'm gonna be general again not every version of me is put in the same program in the intelligence community right there are pots there are programs that are managed by people that are more aggressive than others or compartmentalized for this reason and so essentially the pot that i was involved in like i said there was a counter intelligence issue where someone told an adversary hey here's people that are involved in this program once they were able to identify that they put a list together of who they thought everybody was whether they were correct or not i won't i won't say but um and then that was i was on that list and then after they had a little bit of time with it to do what they wanted they decided to share it with a lot of people that uh also don't like us so

now it's on the dark web and i don't know if you insinuated this earlier, if I misunderstood this, but a lot of this has now been ripped back, but it was too late because it was put out there. Well, yeah, I'm sure you're aware. Once something's out there, it's never fully not out there. But if it's on a specific site, you can get sites taken down and things like that. But I'm sure it's out there forever. I've never been on the dark web

i wouldn't even know how to find it i don't want to try to go into the dark web so i didn't look before we got here but i went to regular google yeah to try to find i'm like well that's not where it got leaked you can't find anything there maybe you can on fucking page 78 and i missed that but you know like it is to your point if even if it goes out on the dark web, like you can't ever be safely in that type of position ever again. Never. Never. What was that – how did you find out that it happened? So I didn't know exactly what had happened.

I was traveling at the time and I got essentially what we refer to as a recall message. So I was told to drop what you're doing and come home. Did you shit yourself when you got that? Not really because it can be for – it could have been they wanted to brief me on something or something I had just been working on became really significant and so they want to have us sit down and talk with me. I didn't assume what it was. And then when I got back and I was told, even though I was in a position of safety, I was like, though I was in a position of safety I was like oh holy shit

are you in like a bar where they tell you that or do they bring you to an actual office it was in an office space and is it your handler telling you this directly he's in the room so did they tell you you gotta retire now

so it's not like what happens at that exact moment. You have to think there's a huge counterintelligence investigation that would have been happening. Right. And so they're not really going to explain the whole situation to you. I was just told that this is over and here's what you're going to be doing for the next few weeks. And we'll talk about it later. But that's done.

You're not going to travel anymore. Without going into classified specifics, like when they say, here's the things you're going to be doing, is that just like? Like, here's your new boring office here. Wait until we tell you what to do. Don't go back to work. You're just chilling. Yeah. You're on the beach.

Yeah. So at your corporate job somewhere, they're like, what the fuck happened to Jim? Well, that's when these things, you know, when the balloon goes up on these types of operations, you know, you just – Disappear. Yeah, it's over. There's no going back. There's no – it's just a ripcord. Someone's watching this podcast right now and they're the Leo meme.

Like, oh, oh, here he is. There he is. We found him. Son of a bitch. I knew it. Yeah, I thought it was because he didn't like me. He never gave it back. Damn it.

They're like calling HR. Yo, he's not missing. Remove the APB. I've been looking because you didn't like me. You never came back. Like calling HR, yo, he's not missing. Remove the APB. I've been looking for you forever, man. I hope that happens. Yeah. I think. Would that be bad if that happened?

It would be horrible if that happened. Okay, I don't hope that happens. You're going to come back here with a new face sometime. You're like, yeah, I've never been on this show before. Fuck. I'll come back all messed up. I was like, I think coming back here with a new face sometime. You're like, yeah, I've never been on this show before. Fuck. I'll come back all messed up. And I was like, I think coming on here was a mistake. Wow.

So you like what's, you know, people always joke once in CIA, never not in CIA. But are you gone? Can you look in that camera and say you're gone? I'm as out as you are. That's not nice of you to say it like that. That's not as you are i that's not nice to say that's not helping yeah yeah um no i have absolutely no official employment with that organization whatsoever i have no connection more than anybody else off the street would not spoken like a true way a lawyer would write it here read it from memory perfectly here okay i think the only

connection i have is i still have my security clearance right and i still do like consulting for the government that's cleared work but it's not like that you know it's not like crazy high up no no it wouldn't involve me going you know in any cover platform or anything like that or you've been out for like a year and a half something like that would you say you're adjusted no no not at all fully i mean i sometimes i'll think you know i am and i'll ask somebody like a friend of mine or something they're like are you very fucking crazy like you are not out of you know out of that mindset at all but you know so that nip tuck method right you're trying to work on a little bit of time and reach an ultimate goal. It took me a while to get into it.

It's going to take a while to get completely mentally out of it, I'm sure. How long after being recalled from the field did you reconnect with your family and your close friends? Hmm. I think about that. It was still a few months what was that like um i mean as you could imagine you know being away that long being estranged from it i don't really have a close you know connection with a lot of that still but um you know now that things like this are coming out i'm interested to see like how that affects it, you know, because they'll be hearing more of my story through this medium than they have, you know, face to face.

Really? Yeah. And maybe this facilitates opening some of those doors up a little bit again. Well, you said you were close with your mom growing up. Growing up. So are you saying you're not right now? We're still in contact. Yeah. Is she mad at you? I mean, I don't want to go too deeply into the personal side of it,

but, you know, any time there's this separation, you work on building the relationship back, whether there's anger or there's anything else, but you work at it just like any other relationship out there. You know, I hope the best for all of those. I'd like to repair as much of the ties that I've had with my family in the past as possible. Well, if something like this actually does help with that, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, it would be.

Because you're doing something – I don't know. I can't imagine being in either one of your positions. It's very hard for me to have any concept of what that would look like but you know it's now there's an explanation it's not like you just went away and abandoned them so i gotta think if if the explanation is there it's a lot to you know oh fucking matt was around being an international criminal with the cartels and people for like 13 years but we're proud of him you know but right there's a little more of that rather than the straight up oh he abandoned us and now he's coming back yeah i mean maybe not

an excuse but uh some dialogue to to inform it at least, my decision-making process. All right. Dude, I think we got through the rest of your story at least. Cool, man. We'd be here all night if we started going through all the geopolitics of everything. This was really cool to have both of you here today to kind of get different angles on stuff. A lot of fun. Yeah, surprise.

Yeah, Shawnee calls me last night and she's like or i think we texted and first you did but then i was like all right see you tomorrow and she's like i really don't have to come on i'm like you're not coming here i'm not coming on like i know how this works and i told you it'd be good it's very free-flowing you know you get different perspectives call it a day yeah thanks to her being here so the views will go a lot more up than if it was just me for sure. I didn't say that. You said that. But yeah, people liked you last time.

Oh, thank you. They liked you too, except the comment section. Don't read the comments. Don't read the comments. You really don't read the comments. It's like celebrities. I keep telling them. Celebrity.

I know you actually read them. I do read them. Don't read them. Yes. People just need to be nice. They're not. Don't read them. Yeah.

I promise you. That's not the real world. Look at look at the like button right there's a lot of likes there so i had some friends send me a i don't read them but i had some friends send some screenshots and it was almost like there was a celebrity mean to read mean tweets you know that kind of thing some of them were just downright hilarious one somebody asked what my hand workout regiment was for some reason. I must have missed that one. People come up with some creative things down there. I'll give them that. You got to give them that.

But you just can't take it that seriously. And we cleared up some of your background today for sure. But thank you guys both for doing it. I'm sure you'll find your way here again on behalf of the United States government to illustrate my podcast. But Brian, also, thanks for filling in. Fucking great job today. And everybody else, you know what it is.

Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help. And if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.