Lessons in Trust from an Espionage Expert

The secret to good espionage isn’t the fancy gadgets or epic heroics you might see in a James Bond movie. Instead, it’s understanding people’s motivations, using empathy, gaining trust, and applying the right tactics to persuade or influence them. Learning these secrets can help you understand human interaction better.

See The Art of Espionage with Jim Lawler for a complete transcript of the Easy Prey podcast episode.

James “Jim” Lawler was a CIA Operations officer for 25 years. His job was recruiting foreign spies – convincing people to betray their countries, commit treason, and become spies for the CIA. Most of his career, he specifically worked against weapons of mass destruction like nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. His specialty was humint, or human intelligence, and recruiting spies was the backbone of that. He retired from the CIA in 2005, and since then he has taught the art of recruiting spies to other people in the intelligence community and given talks to businesses about corporate espionage. His latest endeavor has been authorship, and he has written three spy novels – Living Lies, In the Twinkling of an Eye, and The Traitor’s Tale – loosely based on his own experiences.

Why People Become Traitors

There are a lot of reasons people turn on their company or country. In training, Jim was taught the acronym MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion (or blackmail), and Ego. Personally, he doesn’t think anyone does espionage for the money alone. There is often money involved, but that’s rarely the only reason. In fact, there rarely is a single reason. It’s usually a combination of things that gets people to betray someone.

There’s not a single reason, but it’s a whole mosaic of reasons why people betray a trust.

Jim Lawler

Jim learned this lesson on his first major recruitment. CIA headquarters had advised all their field agents that there were some high-stakes, sensitive negotiations with a certain country coming up, so agents should be on the lookout for people from this country with certain responsibilities or access. Jim happened to have met a man from that embassy at a ski lesson and they’d had a nice conversation. So Jim reached out to him and started developing friendship and trust. It’s ironic, since the goal is to get the person to break trust with their government, but trust is the basis of espionage.

After a few weeks of friendship, Jim had the idea that he could persuade this man to turn traitor based only on their friendship and the power of his ability to persuade. Headquarters gave him the go-ahead. So he invited this man to dinner and pitched him. The man responded, “Jim, you and I are friends, but what you’re suggesting is morally wrong.” Jim was flabbergasted. Throughout the rest of his career, he heard all sorts of objections, but this man remains the only one who had a moral objection. Jim also started to get worried. If this man told his ambassador, things could go very badly.

Agreeing to Espionage

Jim had a nightmarish feeling that this was going to go very bad. A few days later, he called the man again, and was relieved when he didn’t hang up immediately. Jim’s goal was to ask him to go to dinner again and back out, apologize, and try to smooth things over so he wouldn’t tell his ambassador. When the man suggested they go out again, Jim took it as a good sign that they were still friends.

A week later, they went to dinner again, and after the waiter dropped off the menus, the man shocked Jim by asking if the offer was still on the table. It turned out that a few days after Jim’s initial pitch, the man’s wife had asked for a divorce. She would be entitled to alimony, and the only way his two sons would get a good education in his country was if he paid for private education. He couldn’t afford all that without accepting Jim’s offer, even though he still thought it was morally wrong. Jim learned in law school that if the judge rules in your favor, shut up and get out of the court quickly – so he didn’t argue, and the man became a CIA spy.

At their first clandestine meeting, he brought a six-inch stack of classified documents. As he handed them over, he revealed another motive. The ambassador he worked under stole credit for everything other people at the embassy did, and the man felt like handing Jim that material was like kicking that ambassador in the face. In that moment, Jim found out that revenge can be a big motive for espionage. In fact, unless you’re a total sociopath, it’s often very hard to justify betrayal unless you feel like you’ve been betrayed first.

Finding the Cracks

It wasn’t just one reason that convinced this man to hand over stacks of his government’s classified documents to a foreign intelligence agent. It was a variety of issues. He loved his sons and wanted them to get a good education, he had financial issues because of alimony payments, he hated his boss. He told Jim at one point that he was a fair-skinned, blue-eyed man in a country where most people were mixed race and thought he was a victim of reverse discrimination. Whether that was true or just how he justified it to himself didn’t matter. Jim was able to pitch him at the right time, and he was willing to engage in espionage.

There’s a lot of motivation that goes into committing espionage. It’s hardly ever just money, or even just one motive. Over the next several years, Jim recruited three more people going through divorces. He learned that divorce is one of the most psychologically tumultuous times in a person’s life. It’s emotionally, psychologically, financially, and socially stressful. If Jim is in their orbit and they have something he needs, he can easily become their best friend.

Jim always says that he’s never once recruited a happy person. He recruits people under stress. In rock climbing, in order to climb, you have to look for a crack system where you can put your fingers and toes. You can’t climb a smooth surface. You also can’t see a crack system from a long way away. People are like that, too. They have a crack system, and if you get close, you can study them and know what they need to relieve their stress. The secret to Jim’s success in a lot of his espionage recruitment is just that he’s a good listener.

Patience is Key to Espionage

To successfully recruit someone to espionage, you need to be able to get inside their head and know what makes them tick. You also need to be patient. Jim once had one target ask for a “rain check” on the recruitment pitch. He said, “Jim, right now my son is three years old, and I don’t need you. But in fifteen years, he’ll be in college, and I might need you then.” Jim made a note in his file, and sure enough, fifteen years later, that man reached back out and became a spy for the CIA.

Jim once spent ten years to recruit one source because for the first nine and a half, he didn’t need Jim. They were good friends, and Jim was even the best man at his wedding. He didn’t have any cracks that Jim could see for a long time. But when his wife decided she didn’t want to live 10,000 miles from home and moved back to their home country with their baby, he was devastated. And when he finally returned to their home country as well, he found that his ethnic group was no longer in power. At one point, he said to Jim, “I could work 24/7 and never get promoted again. How can I show allegiance to a country that threats its citizens like that?” After almost a decade of building trust and friendship, circumstances lined up and he was ready to be recruited.

Unsuccessful Espionage Pitches

The vast majority of pitches Jim made were successful. He estimates over 90% of people he pitched became CIA assets, and that number got higher as he got better. Persuasion is a skill, and practice and focus improve it just like any skill. Jim recruited spies for twenty-five years, and for the last fifteen his average was probably closer to 100%.

[Persuasion] is a skill like anything else in life; if you really are focusing, you become better at it.

Jim Lawler

Sometimes people ask if he ever pitched somebody he thought would say no. And his answer is always, why would he do that? Proposing espionage to someone is not a single-conversation process. Even describing it as a recruitment meeting is inaccurate because it’s a series of meetings. Jim gets to know the person, finds their cracks, does little tests and hypotheticals to see if the person is willing to do what he wants.

There is a process called a cold pitch, where Jim has never met you but you have information he needs. But even then, he doesn’t go in blind – there are CIA people looking at your online presence at the very least, and probably some deep cover agents who are in contact with you and feeding information back to Jim. If you’re going through a divorce, have a problem with substance abuse or gambling, are taking care of an elderly person, or have a kid with special needs and Jim knows this, it’s much easier to tailor his pitch to something you’d accept. The more he knows, the more likely the pitch will be successful. And often, the most successful cold pitches are primarily money-related.

Protect Yourself from Espionage Persuasion Tactics

Persuasion tactics aren’t inherently moral or immoral. Jim was once asked at a conference if he considers himself a moral person. It’s something he’s thought about a lot. He persuaded people to commit espionage. He manipulated, exploited, subverted, and suborned people. As long as he did it for national security, he considered it morally purposefully. But these tools can be used for evil as much as good.

If you want to avoid being manipulated by people trying to persuade you with malicious intentions, Jim has one piece of advice: If something is too good to be true, it is. End of story. Jim’s an older guy. If he walks into a bar and a sexy woman twenty years younger than him comes up to him, that’s suspicious. He’s not George Clooney, and he didn’t suddenly become a 10 when he walked in. Something’s off. Especially if you want it to be true, be extremely cautious.

If something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.

Jim Lawler

Jim’s persuasion tactics are the opposite of what happens with most scams and fraud. Scammers are often abusive, mean, cruel, and try to rush and pressure you. Jim always did the opposite. He’s a big believer in the golden rule and wants to use whatever persuasive powers he has for good. Whether it’s fear or desire, always be a little cautious when someone makes you feel a strong emotion. There’s a good chance they’re trying to persuade you somehow.

You can find Jim Lawler’s books, Living Lies, In the Twinkling of an Eye, and The Traitor’s Tale, on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Authors always appreciate reviews, even brief ones. You can also check out his profile on spyex.com for more about Jim and his books.