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0:00- One of the most famous spy series
of all time actually gets it wrong,
0:04and that's the James Bond series. He's always
attractive. He's always well-spoken. He's
0:09always an amazing driver, an amazing fighter,
an amazing shot. He's great with the women,
0:14and somehow, he's able to operate all over
the world by calling himself by his true name.
0:19- The name's Bond, James Bond.
0:21- James Bond. This is not what espionage is like.
Real espionage is about people who blend in,
0:28people who aren't attractive, people who don't get
a second look, people who are terrible with women,
0:33people who never drive a fancy car, people
who never have to pull out their gun because
0:38they're so good at keeping a secret,
they can get in and get out without
0:42ever even being noticed in the first
place. My name is Andrew Bustamante,
0:46and I'm a former covert CIA intelligence
officer and the founder of EverydaySpy.com.
0:58The public really doesn't realize that they
are much closer to CIA spies than they think
1:03they are. International espionage requires a wide
range of different types of look and appearance.
1:10There's a place for the very young and the very
old. There's a place for the very fit and the
1:14very unfit. There's a place for tall people,
short people. There's even room for people who
1:18have different religious beliefs that require
them to wear different types of physical dress.
1:24But when it comes to the one type of person
that has the most operational utility,
1:28you're looking for somebody who is brown but not
too dark; somebody who is thin but not too thin;
1:35somebody who is middle-aged; because that's
exactly the kind of person that disappears no
1:39matter where they go. Whether they're in Asia
or Latin America, whether they're in Canada or
1:44Australia, they're overlooked. They're not the
kind of person you remember bumping into when
1:49you're standing in line at a local coffee
shop. And that's exactly the kind of "gray
1:53man" that CIA, MI6, and Mossad really look
for when they develop a new high-performance
2:01field operative. A good covert operator is
born with a certain series of skills. They
2:07are very good at thinking on their feet. They're
creative, they're adaptable, they're resilient,
2:11and resourceful. They're also able to blend in and
disappear. These are not people who want to be the
2:16center of attention. They're the wallflowers at
your school prom. They're the kids who sit in
2:22the second-to-last row because if they sat in the
last row of the school bus, they would be noticed.
2:27The people who turn into very good spies are the
people who enjoy the comfort of anonymity. Now,
2:35when an intelligence service gets ahold of this
person who values anonymity, then they have this
2:40rich, fertile soil to teach them a whole slew of
skills, from hacking skills to tradecraft skills,
2:47to disguise, to foreign language, and they can put
and invest these skills into somebody knowing that
2:53that person will never show off or brag about
their skills. Instead, they're gonna use those
2:58advanced skills to make themselves even more
invisible in front of everybody else. I often
3:05joke that I was the accidental recruit to CIA
because I was not a great high school student.
3:10I was not a great college student. I came from
the military, but I was not a good soldier. I was
3:16leaving the U.S. Air Force and trying to find
a job that was the exact opposite of working
3:21for the Air Force because, as an Air Force
officer, I was in command of nuclear missiles,
3:26knowing that if I turned my key, I would end human
life in some place. So when the time came for me
3:33to leave the Air Force, I wanted to do something
that was the polar opposite of nuclear missiles,
3:38so I found myself applying to the U.S. Peace
Corps. And in the middle of my application to
3:42Peace Corps, I actually had a screen pop up on
my computer that said, based on my answers to
3:48date in my application, I might qualify for other
jobs in the national security sector. Would I be
3:54willing to put my application on pause? And like
any other 27-year-old, when I heard that there
3:59might be an opportunity for me to do something
else, I hit yes. And I said, "Yes, I am willing
4:04to put my application on hold for 72 hours to see
what comes of this." And that's when I got a phone
4:09call one day later from a woman who didn't tell
me her last name and came from an unlisted phone
4:14number with a 703 area code, which is Langley,
Virginia. And she invited me to Washington, D.C.,
4:19to go through an application process that would
vet me for a possible role in national security. I
4:25didn't know at the time that I was being vetted
for CIA. I got a set of plane tickets in the
4:30mail. I had a rental car sent to me. I was only
given enough information to make it another day:
4:36where my next hotel would be, where my next
appointment would be. And that's kind of how I was
4:40carried along for the better part of 10 months as
I went through test after test and interview after
4:46interview where I was applying for and escalating
through the process of becoming a CIA operative.
4:57When you think about the process for applying
and interviewing to CIA, you have to take
5:02every application you've ever made, from the
military to a job, and throw it out the window
5:07because the average application and interview
process for CIA takes about 18 months. In fact,
5:12if you're a very qualified, high-performing
candidate, the best you can do is about nine
5:17months. My own application process took about 11
months. And over the course of that time, you are
5:23exposed to more and more intrusive, personal,
and high-stakes interview styles. Sometimes
5:30you're doing role plays, sometimes you're taking
psychological batteries, sometimes you're doing
5:35group or panelist interviews where you're being
peppered by a panel of people that you've never
5:39talked to before. And that's not counting all the
things they're doing behind the scenes: pulling
5:43your digital footprint, looking at your police
background, looking at your personal finances,
5:47looking and reviewing your health history, and
your family history. The reason CIA uses this
5:52escalation of intrusive interview styles is for
two reasons. One, they're looking to identify
5:58the specific soft skills that exist in the right
candidate, but then simultaneously they're also
6:03looking for the person who's unwilling to share
certain secrets about themselves. Where's the
6:08person that's too private to share secrets about
the affair they had with their spouse? Or where's
6:13the person that's afraid to talk about the fact
that they're broke? Where's the person who's
6:16unwilling to share a secret about cheating on an
exam in college? Because if somebody's willing to
6:21keep one secret during the interview process,
you know you can't really trust that person
6:26to become loyal to the organization when they
have to collect secrets of different types that
6:31relate to national security and national security
policy. CIA trains with a very specific model that
6:40really doesn't exist anywhere else. They call it
a three-step model. First, you educate, then you
6:46exercise, and then you experience. They start with
classroom education, and it really is that. It's
6:53just like being in a college setting. You have an
instructor or two at the front of the classroom,
6:57and you have a room of anywhere from 30 to 100
new recruits who learn a skill or a concept.
7:03Immediately after that class is over, you take a
short break, and then you come back for a series
7:07of exercises or role plays. Maybe you role-play
with another student; maybe you role-play with an
7:12instructor. Immediately following that exercise,
everyone is kicked out into the real world to go
7:18actually exercise the skill that they learned and
the skill that was demonstrated in the field. And
7:24what happens is, you will either fail or you
will succeed during the process of applying
7:29that skill in the real world. And what's really
powerful is, because you operate alone, you are
7:34the only one who knows if you succeeded or failed
with that skill. So then, when you come back to
7:39the classroom the next day, you're carrying this
knowledge in your own head. And it's up to you
7:44whether or not you seek additional help from a
peer or from a teacher, whether you admit to your
7:49failure or whether you celebrate your success,
which is part of the psychological game that must
7:54happen in order for you to develop both a loyalty
to the organization but also a sense of confidence
7:59that you can operate single-handedly in the field.
And CIA invests a great deal in your training
8:06specifically because they do not want to invest in
your therapy. They look for people who are capable
8:12of doing both wonderful and terrible things and
still be able to sleep at night because they know
8:17that, if for some reason you're overwhelmed,
if for some reason you crack under pressure,
8:21if for some reason you break during an operation,
there is much more at stake than just your life.
8:29When I actually started training with CIA, I
started to have a series of self-discoveries.
8:34First, I started to discover that many of
the things that I suspected my whole life,
8:39many of the things that caused me frustration and
disappointment with society, were actually very
8:45viable things that CIA taught me to understand
later on. It taught me to understand that there
8:50really isn't a sense of fairness or transparency
or honesty that human beings carry from place to
8:57place. It doesn't exist in church. It doesn't
exist in the professional workplace. It doesn't
9:01exist in the military. So for me, growing up,
it was always very challenging whenever I saw
9:06hypocrisy or whenever I saw people go against
their word or people not fulfill their promises,
9:11I never understood how it was acceptable. How is
it that President Clinton could lie on the stand-
9:16- I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
9:21- And yet somehow still become a popular
president? Even though everyone tries to say
9:27that there are standards of behavior, and there
are codes of conduct, and there are social norms,
9:31in reality, all of those things are flexible.
So, for example, ethics and morals are not the
9:38same thing. And that's something that the average
person doesn't really think about or understand.
9:42Ethics are actually something that's defined
by your profession. It's something that comes
9:46from outside, an external source. If you're an
attorney, there's a code of ethics for attorneys.
9:52If you're a doctor, there's a code of ethics for
doctors. If you're a teacher, there's a code of
9:55ethics for teachers. It's defined outside of
you, whereas morals are actually something
10:01that's defined internal to you. It's something
that you believe to be true, something that you
10:05believe to be important. Maybe that's something
that was taught to you as a child, or something
10:09that you developed on your own. So, when you
join CIA, they teach you that they, CIA, have
10:15their own code of ethics. And that code of ethics
is really quite short because we are what's known
10:21as an organization of last resort. Meaning, if CIA
gets a mission, it's because nobody else in the
10:27American government can do it. But morally, what
it means is that you have to be flexible with your
10:33own personal morals. And a big part of what makes
a CIA officer successful is what's known as moral
10:38flexibility, or the ability to believe one thing
today as moral and something else tomorrow as
10:45equally just as moral. Because sometimes you have
to hurt a bad guy to save a good guy. Sometimes,
10:52you have to steal from a criminal in order to
get what you need to protect someone else. And
10:58you have to be able to sleep with yourself at
night no matter what you do. One of the most
11:03interesting questions I get from people is, what
is the one most important character trait to be
11:09a good spy? And I find this question to be really
interesting because it's a shocking answer, in my
11:15opinion. The most important thing CIA or Mossad or
MI6 looks for when they make a possible new spy is
11:23somebody who seeks validation from an external
source. They're looking for somebody who is so
11:30loyal and so dependent on external validation
that they will lie, steal, cheat, commit crimes,
11:38cross borders, change their name, do anything
they have to do in order to get validation and
11:43approval from that one focused external source.
And when CIA finds a person like that, they can
11:50train that person to become dependent on CIA.
And then the loyalty of that individual becomes
11:56so focused on the institution that they don't need
any other attention from anywhere else as long as
12:03they serve the one organization that validates
and appreciates their work. So, any rational
12:09person would have to ask the question whether or
not CIA's behavior is in line with the behavior
12:13of a cult. And the answer is yes, absolutely,
because the loyalty that you have to have to
12:20the Central Intelligence Agency has to come above
your loyalty to anything else. Higher than your
12:26loyalty to your parents, higher than your loyalty
to your spouse, higher than the loyalty you have
12:30to your own children. Because when you sacrifice
everything at the behest of a mission to keep
12:37people safe by stealing secrets, you can't let
anything else come before that. And I was one of
12:42those people who absolutely welcomed an excuse
to terminate all of my old military friends,
12:48to jump off of social media, to stop answering
email, to change my phone number, to change my
12:53address, and not even tell my parents where I was
moving to. What we say to ourselves at CIA is,
12:59"Mission first, family always," which is still
mission first. And that is absolutely in line with
13:06the way that cults cultivate their own followers.
They make people absolutely dependent on the cult,
13:12the organization, the foundation, the principle
first. So, you have to consider the fact that,
13:17based on objective reality, yes, there are
many behaviors at CIA that are in line with
13:22the behaviors of a religious cult. Use yourself as
a test case here. If you're still listening to me
13:30talk right now, if you've heard me explain what
it's like to go through the recruitment process,
13:34you've heard me talk about what it's like to
be a spy, you've heard me talk about what the
13:38realities of spy life are like versus
the movies, and you are still watching,
13:43that's a good sign that you actually have what
it takes to consider being an actual undercover
13:49operative because thousands of other people have
already stopped watching this video. Thousands
13:54of people saw the headline and never even clicked
on the video. But the fact that you are not only
13:59still watching but excited to hear what comes next
goes to show that you already have some of that
14:05psychological foundation, that moral flexibility,
that resilience, that courage, that independence,
14:12that willingness to cut off all of your old life
in order to pursue a new life. You have that risk
14:18tolerance already inside you. Whether you've
ever known it or not, it's there. And that's
14:24what's so powerful about CIA. It doesn't care
about the majority of people. It's there to
14:30preserve national security. And if you have that
level of pragmatic thought, if you're willing to
14:36accept that there's a difference between people
and institutions, then that shows that you are
14:40the kind of person that could potentially
fit into the category of covert operatives.
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