[00:00] I want you to go back to China and you're going to take with you a bedroom set that I give you and the dresser is going to have a transmitting device embedded in the back of it. I've already identified your vulnerability. Maybe your kid is sick and needs medical treatment in the United States. So, you're not an idiot. You know what's happening here. And so, you do it very gently. And I say, "Dalton, listen. You know how I feel about you. You're my best friend. I love you. I love your wife. Our kids are friends. We're going to be friends forever. But I haven't
[00:31] been 100% honest with you and I hope you're not going to be upset. >> Let's say you recruit me as an asset. I work in, you know, the Iranian embassy somewhere and you meet me at a cocktail party and I say, "Oh, John, this this guy is he's he's a wonderful guy. I'm going to get to know him a little bit." >> Yeah. >> And we become best friends, as you say, over 6, nine months, whatever the period is. Yep. >> And you pitched me one day. >> Mhm. >> And
[01:02] what I'm getting at is what is the psychological process that an asset goes through? Like what kind of crisis goes on as this happens? Yeah, that's a great question. There's a there's a little dance that's happening here. I I asked one of my instructors when I first went into the operational training, what percentage of people that you have pitched in your career said yes. He said 100. 100%. He said, 'If you are not 100% certain that
[01:33] this guy's going to say yes, run for the hills because he's going to out you, you're going to get arrested, you're going to get expelled from the country, he's going to report you to his own intelligence service, and then you're not going to be able to travel to half the countries in the world. That happened to a colleague of mine where, you know, we we all read each other's cables and we're like, "Dude, keep up the good work, man. You're going to get them. next meeting you're going to get him right. So I'm reading my colleagues cables and it's it couldn't be going any
[02:04] better and he asks headquarters permission. You have to get permission to make the actual pitch. It's very paperworkheavy. So headquarters says go for it. Go with God. And he makes the pitch. And the guy literally runs screaming from the room and next thing you know his ambassador calls our ambassador and his government lodges a formal diplomatic complaint with our government. What are you going to do? You're going to say, "Yeah, my guy's an undercover CIA guy." So, you
[02:35] can't say that. So, you say, "No, no, no, no, no. This is just a misunderstanding. It was a language thing. Our guy doesn't really speak your language very well and your guy doesn't speak English very well. This was just an innocent misunderstanding, but we understand if you're upset, so we're going to instruct our guy not to ever talk to your guy again. That's uncomfortable. Besides the fact that you look like an idiot at headquarters because you've been telling us for nine months how well
[03:05] things are going and in fact the guy never had any intention of allowing you to recruit him. Like, what have you been doing all this time? You're supposed to be whining him and dining him and showing him the better, finer things in life so that he says, "Hey, you know, I'm kind of liking I make $500 a month. This guy's ordering $200 bottles of wine and he paid for us to go on vacation and he bought me a Rolex. I'm going to say yes to this." And in fact, he says, "Not just no," but oh, hell no.
[03:36] So, what you're looking for is a vulnerability. This is this is a very important word in the what's called the the asset acquisition cycle. The asset acquisition cycle is spot, assess, develop, recruit. I spot you at a diplomatic cocktail party. I assess that you have access to information that I that I want. I develop you by creating this friendship and then I recruit you. Now, by the time I recruit you, you know
[04:08] exactly what's going on. You're not an idiot. And why am I spending all this money on you? You know, where am I getting all this money? Rolexes and, you know, fancy vacations and what's up? So, you're not an idiot. You know what's happening here. And so, you do it very gently. And I say, "Dalton, listen. You know how I feel about you. You're my best friend.
[04:38] I love you. I love your wife. My wife loves you. My wife loves your wife. Our kids are friends. We're going to be friends forever. But I haven't been 100% honest with you. And I hope you're not going to be upset. But I'm actually a CIA officer undercover. That's called breaking cover. And I I hope you're okay with that. I know you're going to be okay with that because you know exactly where this is
[05:09] going. I've already identified your vulnerability. Maybe your kid is sick and needs medical treatment in the United States. Maybe your kid wants to go to school in the United States. I can get your kid accepted to literally any university in America and I'll pay for it. any university in America 100% paid so long as you keep giving me and my you know colleagues who replace
[05:40] me and replace each other what they ask for. Um so I take you off to the side and I say listen just for your protection we can't be seen as friends anymore. our relationship has to become clandestine from this point on. >> And so we're gonna meet once a month at a predetermined site at a predetermined time and date and then we'll carry on
[06:13] from there. Now, if you're from an enemy country, I don't want you to defect. That's the last thing I want because if you defect, your value ends today because you lose your access. Well, I don't care what was happening yesterday. I want to know what your country's going to do tomorrow. Right? So, the goal is let's say you and I are stationed in uh you know, Bogotaa.
[06:43] I want you to go back to Iran or Russia or China or Cuba and you're going to take with you a bedroom a bedroom set that I give you, right? And the dresser is going to have a a transmitting device embedded in the back of it. And so
[07:14] you're going to type your reports onto a chip. You put the chip in the device. You hit a button that's hidden in the back of the drawer and it does a burst transmission that lasts about a half of a second or a tenth of a second and it's going to send your report back to CIA headquarters. And because the burst only lasts for a tenth of a second, nobody's going to be able to intercept it. They're going to say, "Oh, there was just a transmission. It lasted a tenth of a second. We have no idea where it
[07:46] came from." Because once you get back to Iran or Cuba or Russia or China or whatever, I want you to tell me what's going on every single day in your office. And then I want you to try to get a promotion and then get transferred to the Office of American Affairs. And I want the names of everybody in that office. I want to know the names of their sources inside the United States so the FBI can start arresting them. And
[08:17] then we take it from there. And then I can pay you in any way you want. You know, we can open an account at the CIA credit union, which we're very happy to do, or we can give it to you in gold or diamonds or Bitcoin or, you know, however you want to handle it. We'll give it to you. How many of them h Okay, so I'm just thinking like an asset they a lot of them are probably very prideful, right? I know a big a big vulnerability is I'm
[08:50] the smartest guy in the room. I'm >> I got passed over for promotion and I'm going to show them. >> So they fancy themselves as smart people. Oh yeah. Shrewd perceptive >> very much so. >> And yet they didn't see this coming. >> Yeah. So internalizing that, how many of them want to know if it was a setup from the start and like do they ask you for like a face saving thing? You know what I mean? >> None of them want to know that that they were duped into this or that they walked right into it, right? So what you do in
[09:22] every single meeting is you tell them how important they are. your information is so important, it's going directly to the president of the United States. I made a a guy cry once in a meeting. So, he gave me some information. It was good. It was the the analysts were happy with it. It helped fill in a couple of gaps. He thought it was the greatest information that's ever been passed to the American government. So I said, "Listen," I go, "Buddy, your information
[09:53] went directly to the president of the United States." He said, "You're kidding me." I said, "No, directly to the president." I said, "I wrote the report. I sent it to the White House." He looked at the report. What did he say? I said, "The president read the report and he said, "You're kidding me." He goes like this. Oh my god. So I I write this up. I said, "Oh, I told him it went to the president." My boss says, "You want to have some fun?" He goes, "Dummy up a uh an award
[10:26] certificate, put the CIA seal on it." So, I said, "Oh, that would be fun." So, I did a I did a in in just in word, you know, and clip art. So, I did this, you know, Central Intelligence Agency, United States of America. I had the guy's name, uh, certificate of whatever. You put the CIA seal on it, and then I just forged the director's name because how's he going to know what the director's signature looks like? So,
[10:57] I go to the meeting the next month, and I said, "I told you last month that your information went directly to the president of the United States." And he said, "Yes." He said, "I have something for you from the director of the Central Intelligence Agency." And I give him this phony certificate. He looks at it and he bursts into tears and I said, "Congratulations, my friend." I said, "But listen, you know, I have to take this back and keep it in the safe because you can't be seen with
[11:29] this. You'll be killed." He goes, "Of course, of course." I can't believe it. Oh my god. Oh man. I had him hooked. He was ready to name his kids after me. That's how successful it was. But you just play on their egos and they eat it up. They eat it up cuz they're all narcissists anyway. Not all, but you know, most of them are narcissists. They need to be stroked. What's up, guys? Thank you so much for
[11:59] taking the time to watch the interview. If you got anything out of this video at all, please like the video, leave me a comment, tell me what you thought of the video, uh, tell me who you'd like to see on the show. I really appreciate the support. It goes a long way on these platforms as you guys know. Most importantly, I have some excellent interviews coming up in the future that I'm really, really excited about. So, please subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of them. But that's it. Thank you for your support. I really appreciate it and hope to see you again