Speaker 1: It's hard to explain, but when you look in somebody's
Speaker 1: eyes and their pupils are you know it. It's like they're
Speaker 1: afraid and they're not afraid of me. This is a
Speaker 1: good meeting, right because they're afraid they're going to get caught.
Speaker 2: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'she. I served in
Speaker 2: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
Speaker 2: all around the.
Speaker 1: World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
Speaker 1: I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 2: created conspiracies.
Speaker 1: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 1: weren't true.
Speaker 2: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 2: news almost every day.
Speaker 1: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 1: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission implausible.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mission Implausible. I'm Adam Davidson. I'm here with
Speaker 3: CIA officer veterans Legends. That's Jerry O'sha and John Seifer
Speaker 3: for so we always jump into the conspiracy theories and
Speaker 3: I love that, But I just realize I was just
Speaker 3: talking to my son. I'm like, I talked to these two.
Speaker 3: You guys together have about four hundred and seventy three
Speaker 3: years of experience as intelligence officers, and I never ask
Speaker 3: you questions about what it's like to be an intelligence officer,
Speaker 3: and so I wanted to. Can I ask you a
Speaker 3: few questions.
Speaker 2: As long as you don't mind as lying to sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, great, Well no, that wouldn't be the first time.
Speaker 3: That wouldn't be the novel thing.
Speaker 1: This is like the anti conspiracy theory episode, because this
Speaker 1: is what is really not what like Hollywood or the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory say that.
Speaker 3: Yes, No, I've gotten to know you guys, so I
Speaker 3: know there's no like impressive physical feats or like sudden
Speaker 3: moments of profound insight or anything like that. It's more
Speaker 3: basic than that, all right. One thing that I've heard about,
Speaker 3: I've read about, I feel like I've seen in movies,
Speaker 3: but I don't fundamentally understand surveillance detection routes. What do
Speaker 3: you call DSR?
Speaker 2: Where you SDR surveillance detection route or run or whatever?
Speaker 3: How does that work? And explain what it is? What
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 2: Essentially for us? Obviously, the thing that's most important to
Speaker 2: us in the Clandestine Service part of the CIA that
Speaker 2: oversees running spies outside the CIA is cool if you
Speaker 2: have someone who's willing to risk their life to provide
Speaker 2: you the secrets that the US government needs. If they're
Speaker 2: seen with you even once by the local police and
Speaker 2: local security services anybody, they can be arrested, they can
Speaker 2: be killed, their family can be arrested. And so for us,
Speaker 2: that period of time is you cannot be seen together
Speaker 2: with your source. So everything we do is to try
Speaker 2: to find a way to communicate with the source or
Speaker 2: meeting personally so that it's completely hidden, so nobody sees
Speaker 2: what's happening, even if they were trying to disguise it,
Speaker 2: and someone sees it and reports it, even if we
Speaker 2: think we've done something clever that can get that person
Speaker 2: arrested or killed. And a lot of it depends on
Speaker 2: the kind of country we're in and the house the
Speaker 2: security services as So what we do is when we're
Speaker 2: on our way to me a source physically somewhere in
Speaker 2: a hotel room, in a safe house, in an alleyway
Speaker 2: even or just exchange money for information or what have you,
Speaker 2: we have to be sure that there's nobody following us.
Speaker 2: That the security service who tracks us. Oftentimes they put
Speaker 2: cars on us, they follow us around town, they listen
Speaker 2: to our phones to see where we are, those type
Speaker 2: of things, and so essentially a surveillance detection, which is
Speaker 2: just the means by which you become sure that you're
Speaker 2: what we call black you don't have surveillance, so that
Speaker 2: when it's time to meet that person, you're one hundred
Speaker 2: percent confident.
Speaker 3: And do you get to one hundred percent, like, isn't
Speaker 3: there always a chance that someone.
Speaker 2: Well, there's always a chance that somebody could come in
Speaker 2: at the end, but you need to be confident that
Speaker 2: no one has tracked you to that meeting. Now there's
Speaker 2: a chance that you're meeting someone and by happenstance, you're
Speaker 2: in the wrong place or what have you. But you
Speaker 2: still you need to do that. And so it's just
Speaker 2: a process of knowing your environment, knowing the city, knowing
Speaker 2: how to move around that city, knowing how the other
Speaker 2: security services were, how do they surveil, how many people
Speaker 2: do they have on the streets, do they have cameras
Speaker 2: in places? And so you're sort of moving through space
Speaker 2: and time, maybe stopping the shop or do something that
Speaker 2: looks natural, so that even if you are followed, that
Speaker 2: people are following you don't know that you're on your
Speaker 2: way to meet a secret source.
Speaker 3: So you have to be doing this without it obvious
Speaker 3: that you're doing this.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: That's what the movies always get wrong.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, because they need to be sort of
Speaker 2: lulled to sleep. Or if you decide you're under surveillance
Speaker 2: and you can't meet this person, you can break off
Speaker 2: and not meet them, and the other side, the security
Speaker 2: service wants to say, oh my god, he was on
Speaker 2: his way to meet someone. We need to put more
Speaker 2: resources on him next time. But over time you sort
Speaker 2: of move along through this way, and the more confident
Speaker 2: that you are you don't have surveillance, maybe the more
Speaker 2: aggressive or provocative you are to try to move and
Speaker 2: make sure that there's nobody following you. So by the end,
Speaker 2: when you're about to meet someone, you might be doing
Speaker 2: things to try to pull somebody out. So if there's
Speaker 2: a surveillance, you might go into an apartment building and
Speaker 2: wait in there to see if somebody comes in to
Speaker 2: see what's happening, or those type of things. It's just
Speaker 2: a means to meet someone securely.
Speaker 3: And it's not surveillance escape, Like you're not trying to
Speaker 3: lose them, you're just trying to see if they're there.
Speaker 1: Yes, because if you lose them, they're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: guy is clearly a spy, and then they'll just put
Speaker 1: more on you. And this is what John said is
Speaker 1: this is the most simple form of fans. It's this
Speaker 1: is one oh one. But it gets exponentially more complicated
Speaker 1: and difficult as you go along, as you get to
Speaker 1: technical questions, and they have different rings of surveillance, and
Speaker 1: are you going to see this source to like have
Speaker 1: a discussion.
Speaker 4: Are you going to do.
Speaker 1: Like a bump where you just like bump into each
Speaker 1: other and exchange something. Are you going to not see
Speaker 1: a source but do a dead drop where you place
Speaker 1: a package and you're going to go pick it up.
Speaker 1: It gets really more complicated than that. But and it's
Speaker 1: basics at what it is. But Jenn if you could
Speaker 1: briefly tell the story of the shoes, that's a really
Speaker 1: good one. They how they you've got to make surveillance
Speaker 1: feel as though they're in command.
Speaker 2: Right, So, when I was in Moscow, as I've probably
Speaker 2: said on that podcast, before you know, in Moscow, the KGB,
Speaker 2: the local security services are paranoid. They don't want any
Speaker 2: Americans or any foreigners to be meeting Russians that they're
Speaker 2: not unaware of. And so the surveillance is stifling, right.
Speaker 2: There's people who follow you everywhere you go. It's not
Speaker 2: hyperbole for me to say I was there two years.
Speaker 2: I had surveillance tam I mean the entire time, twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day. If you got up in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, left my apartment, there would be
Speaker 2: surveillance teams following me. My house was bugged with audio.
Speaker 2: We had that bugged with video. Everybody I met was questioned,
Speaker 2: and so you're trying to understand their capability and figure
Speaker 2: out how to meet someone securely even in that environment.
Speaker 2: But just to give a sense of the kind of
Speaker 2: surveillance a place, as one of my colleagues in the
Speaker 2: embassy was a runner, and as you can imagine, long nasty,
Speaker 2: cold winters in the middle of this big city, and
Speaker 2: it was starting to get springtime and he was going
Speaker 2: to start running again. He hadn't run through the whole winter,
Speaker 2: and so he got home from work on what was
Speaker 2: finally a decent enough day, and we live in these big,
Speaker 2: nasty apartment buildings. And he made his way down the
Speaker 2: apartment building in his running gear and took off and
Speaker 2: went across the street and to a tunnel to the
Speaker 2: other side, made his way to Gorky Park where he
Speaker 2: ran through the park along the river and then back home.
Speaker 2: And he just went for a run. And so the
Speaker 2: next day he went to work, and he came back
Speaker 2: and went to go to sneakers to go for a
Speaker 2: run again, and one of his shoes was gone, and
Speaker 2: he's pretty meticulous. Everything is together, and he's, okay, I
Speaker 2: don't know. So I went to work the next day
Speaker 2: and during work he got some time off, and it
Speaker 2: was it's hard to move around Moscow. It's just so
Speaker 2: much traffic and stuff. But he found a place to
Speaker 2: go get a new pair of running shoes. So he
Speaker 2: went home that night, same thing, down the elevator, out
Speaker 2: through town to Gorky Park to go for a run,
Speaker 2: went to work the next day, came back that night
Speaker 2: and one of his shoes has gone again. So he says, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: I know what's going on. Surreilles is upset and they're
Speaker 2: coming in and they're taking the shoe to send a
Speaker 2: signal to me. So he said, but I know my
Speaker 2: house is bugged. So he went to the living room
Speaker 2: and he stood and he looked at his ceiling and said, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's the deal. I'm going to run and I'm going
Speaker 2: to keep buying shoes every time i need to run.
Speaker 2: And here's my route. I'm going to go down the
Speaker 2: escalator or elevator and I'm going to go out this door,
Speaker 2: through this place, under this tunnel to this gates, said
Speaker 2: Geky Park, going to run along the river here, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to come back out loud in his apartment building.
Speaker 2: And so, because the work the next day comes back
Speaker 2: and both sets of shoes are back in his house
Speaker 2: and he goes for a run. And so he does
Speaker 2: exactly what he says, and he's going for a run,
Speaker 2: and when he gets to the gates to go into
Speaker 2: Gorky Park, he sees the surveillance car pull up and
Speaker 2: they opened the trunk of the car and they had
Speaker 2: these little foldable bicycles where they can follow him through
Speaker 2: the park when he's running. So essentially what happened is
Speaker 2: surveillance wasn't ready. They probably tracked him. They followed him.
Speaker 2: They go back to their bosses every day. Okay, he
Speaker 2: did this, he did that, and all of a sudden
Speaker 2: he went for a run and they were like, and
Speaker 2: they couldn't follow him, and so they had to go
Speaker 2: back to their bosses and say, oh, we lost them.
Speaker 2: And that's in a bureaucracy, that's the worst thing. And
Speaker 2: so they were sending a signal to him, like you
Speaker 2: need to stop running, and so he sent a signal.
Speaker 3: Back and negotiated.
Speaker 5: Awesome, Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just
Speaker 5: for a minute or two.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 3: How long does it take to do a surveillance detection run?
Speaker 2: What's interesting, It takes as long as necessary, depending on
Speaker 2: what the service does, how hard they are, how much
Speaker 2: resources they put on you. I've done surveillance detection roots
Speaker 2: that took a week, and I've done some that took
Speaker 2: an hour or two. Usually a little more than that.
Speaker 3: But and go to other countries. I feel like you
Speaker 3: mentioned once, like you're going to somewhere, let's say Greece
Speaker 3: or whatever, and it's a bunch of trains and buses
Speaker 3: and moving around to different countries.
Speaker 2: That's part of the process of yeah, making sure that
Speaker 2: you're meeting someone securely. You might use alias documentation or something,
Speaker 2: but yeah, the goal is you have to if you're
Speaker 2: going to meet that source, you need to be confident
Speaker 2: that they're one hundred percent secure when you do so,
Speaker 2: there's nothing to keep.
Speaker 3: Saying a undred percent that feels like overcompeted.
Speaker 2: Well, that's you have to Everybody talks about sometimes, oh
Speaker 2: what you did, it must have been dangerous and scary.
Speaker 2: It's not dangerous so much for us. It is in
Speaker 2: places like we talked about Bagdad and Afghanistan, it can
Speaker 2: be certainly dangerous. But the biggest concern you have is
Speaker 2: for your source. That person is put their life in
Speaker 2: your hands, and you need to be confident that you're
Speaker 2: you are not leading them to be arrested. And so
Speaker 2: if you're on your way to meet someone and you're
Speaker 2: about five minutes out and all you realize, oh my god,
Speaker 2: do I am I really confident? I'm like sure that
Speaker 2: I've done everything that I need to do. Am I
Speaker 2: walking this person into their death? So it's a pretty
Speaker 2: heady thing, pretty much nerve wrecking.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I was reading a spy novel, so obviously factual, and
Speaker 3: there's a line there. You can never beat static surveillance,
Speaker 3: Like if they really want you, they could just have
Speaker 3: people positioned all over the city and just.
Speaker 1: Be like they have to know where you're going to
Speaker 1: have the static surveillance in place. The static surveillance can
Speaker 1: catch you. And what we're discussing too is we retire
Speaker 1: a bit ago is basic stuff once you introduce technology.
Speaker 1: So in the old days you had static surveillance in Russia,
Speaker 1: you might have Babushka sitting in an apartment like looking
Speaker 1: out the window or a policeman. Today, like in London,
Speaker 1: static surveillance is everywhere. It's a m CCTV cameras, right,
Speaker 1: they can go and trace it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's drones with like well.
Speaker 2: We used to have airplanes that would be up when
Speaker 2: we go out to try to so that was part
Speaker 2: of them, is like making sure that goods are right.
Speaker 1: Maybe the biggest problem now is our phones that we
Speaker 1: carry around with us. They tell us where we're going,
Speaker 1: and if you turn it off, that's a tell that
Speaker 1: you're up to no good. They're like, oh, he turned
Speaker 1: his telephone off. Why and so let's swarm and yeah,
Speaker 1: so like we need to like, really look at this guy.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: That's a game on their side too in some of
Speaker 2: these places, is we want to catch Jerry, meet his source.
Speaker 2: We know he's a CIA guy. What we'll do is
Speaker 2: we'll follow with three four cars every day and then
Speaker 2: on holidays, what we'll do is make it look to
Speaker 2: him like we're not there. And we'll do that by
Speaker 2: instead of three four cars, we're going to put two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty people on them. And no car is
Speaker 2: ever going to turn the corner with him. I'm just
Speaker 2: going to call it to someone else who's going through.
Speaker 2: And so his ability to then say, oh, I've seen
Speaker 2: that car before and the other part of town therefore
Speaker 2: might be surveillance is going to be harder. So their
Speaker 2: goal is to make you think that you're clear and
Speaker 2: clean and make a thing so it can be a
Speaker 2: difficult and time consuming.
Speaker 3: And now some of the FBI is doing this in
Speaker 3: DC and other places as well.
Speaker 4: Or I'll talk about their sources and methods, but they
Speaker 4: not too.
Speaker 2: But that is their job, though, to make sure that
Speaker 2: foreign intelligence officers are either thwarted or stopped or caught.
Speaker 1: The best way to beat espionage, though, is with espionage
Speaker 1: if you recruit somebody who is a surveillance or is
Speaker 1: in charge of surveillance or in that program, they can
Speaker 1: tell you even in advance, ah, today we're going to
Speaker 1: put five cars on you, and this is what we
Speaker 1: be and this is who they are. Right, And people
Speaker 1: who are surveillance often they're not always pay real well,
Speaker 1: it's not like a great job, and they must know
Speaker 1: that we'll pay a lot for that. So you've got
Speaker 1: to be pretty sure your surveillance aren't being turned and
Speaker 1: your surveillance can probably meet you, or somebody in the
Speaker 1: surveillance program running it could meet you easily because they
Speaker 1: know where to do it. So there's there's always okay,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? And you can always tell
Speaker 1: surveillance by their shoes. They'll change maybe their code, or
Speaker 1: they'll put on a scarf if they're a woman. But
Speaker 1: if you've got to walk for like eight to ten
Speaker 1: hours a day, you're never sure whether you're going to
Speaker 1: be in a store or in a park. You've got
Speaker 1: to have sensible shoes. If somebody's wearing If a woman
Speaker 1: is wearing like high heels, like she's not a surveillance, right.
Speaker 3: So we were talking about what are good jobs for
Speaker 3: XCIA officers, and we've talked about people becoming heads of
Speaker 3: security for corporations or whatever, but it sounds like shoe
Speaker 3: manufacturer might be like, that might be the one job
Speaker 3: you're actually qualified for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen a number of spy novels. Now this
Speaker 2: piece of true information has now made its way, so
Speaker 2: it's now showing up in spine novels. For a period
Speaker 2: of time, in Moscow, one of the ways that we
Speaker 2: could tell surveillance cars was there was a small, little
Speaker 2: sort of diamond shaped piece of dirt on the front
Speaker 2: of the car. So clearly what happened is the the
Speaker 2: surveillance has a car wash somewhere at the KGB and
Speaker 2: they would wash the car from time to time, but
Speaker 2: the brushes or whatever missed this small little place, and
Speaker 2: you couldn't just rely on that. But you'd be driving
Speaker 2: and you'd see this little diamond of dirt. You'd like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I bet you that's a surveillance car. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: them before, but I'm going to keep an eye on
Speaker 2: that car. And some of them had license plates, so
Speaker 2: you'd be watching and you look for this license plate
Speaker 2: and you'd want what you'd want to do is later
Speaker 2: that night to see if you see that license plate again.
Speaker 2: They had license plate that could turn. I remember one
Speaker 2: time having one of those cars that obviously they tried
Speaker 2: to turn the light. They had a little button that
Speaker 2: they could push. They would turn and put a new
Speaker 2: license plate, but it got stuck and so it was
Speaker 2: like pointed at me. So you could see two of the.
Speaker 3: Different license plates, and you are literally walking down the
Speaker 3: street memorizing every license plate that seems impossible.
Speaker 2: Not every license plate, but one's that looked like they
Speaker 2: could be in a moving with you or what have you.
Speaker 1: Know. There's a friend of ours who his dad was
Speaker 1: in the agency and then he later joined it, and
Speaker 1: he's he and his dad served behind there and curtain
Speaker 1: and he was like twelve or thirteen, and they played
Speaker 1: this game where he would write down license plate numbers.
Speaker 1: But he didn't know his dad was CIA and he
Speaker 1: didn't know this was surveillance. And when he came back
Speaker 1: to the States, he's like with his friends in high
Speaker 1: school and like you know that game when like you're
Speaker 1: with your dad and you're copying license plate numbers down
Speaker 1: and they're like, no, I thought everybody did that because
Speaker 1: mom did it.
Speaker 4: Let's play the license plate game. There was one one country.
Speaker 4: There was one. I'm not going to I gotta be
Speaker 4: careful on this, but there was one country.
Speaker 1: To save money, they didn't gas up their surveillance cars
Speaker 1: at any service station they had.
Speaker 4: It was the government.
Speaker 1: They had a special deal at this one sort of
Speaker 1: quasi government gas station, and all the surveillance cars had
Speaker 1: to gas up there. So all you needed to do
Speaker 1: was get a static surveillance or put a hitting camera up,
Speaker 1: and you could just see all their cars going in
Speaker 1: getting gassed up. And it's like you didn't need to
Speaker 1: know they were catch them all as they were doing it.
Speaker 4: You could just like.
Speaker 1: You could just you could just look at the feed
Speaker 1: and they're all lining up for gas along with the guys.
Speaker 3: So that's really funny. Now I'm imagining in my mind
Speaker 3: the first time or two or three, it's exciting. It's wow,
Speaker 3: I'm really like I'm doing it. I'm an intelligence officer.
Speaker 3: And then it becomes unbelievably boring and annoying.
Speaker 4: Is that well?
Speaker 2: I felt actually liberated. So if you're in a place
Speaker 2: like Moscow or some other place, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: survellans and you have surveillance and a track you all
Speaker 2: the time, and they're listening to you at your house
Speaker 2: and everybody you question if you've done it right, and
Speaker 2: you've gotten away from surveillance, and now you are out
Speaker 2: somewhere in the city. You know it so well, how
Speaker 2: they might try to cover you, where they would be,
Speaker 2: where they would set up, and you know you're black,
Speaker 2: you don't have survillance. It's like, ah, I'm like.
Speaker 3: You just feel free.
Speaker 2: They don't know where I am. And you'd be sitting
Speaker 2: there and hiding the park. You'd be looking long distance,
Speaker 2: maybe some binoculars or something to make sure. They just
Speaker 2: felt it's crazy, but it just felt like I beat them.
Speaker 2: I can do whatever I want right now.
Speaker 1: There was one one famous story and it's declassified, but
Speaker 1: this is really more for John to teb but I'll
Speaker 1: do it anyway.
Speaker 4: But there was this.
Speaker 1: Really years ago, but this really high speed, really important
Speaker 1: technical operation we had going on and behind Thearon curtain,
Speaker 1: and I think we can even say it was Rushi
Speaker 1: at the time, but it was basically they would get black,
Speaker 1: take hours and hours and hours and finally get so
Speaker 1: that they didn't have surveillance on them, and then what
Speaker 1: they did is they like slipped into some overalls and
Speaker 1: went down a manhole. So basically you get free and
Speaker 1: then you basically got to jump into a pit full
Speaker 1: of shit. It's like into a drainage pipe to go
Speaker 1: do something because there's your reward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mozeltov, all right, we're going to get right back
Speaker 3: into that, but first let's hear this.
Speaker 1: All right, back to the show.
Speaker 3: Can you turn it off, like when you're back home
Speaker 3: on vacation or something, are you still walking around Virginia
Speaker 3: looking for surveillance.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I can turn it off pretty easily. Like I don't
Speaker 2: get paranoid. I don't think people are following me. I
Speaker 2: don't try to when I'm back home.
Speaker 3: No, Because I found in Iraq, I felt fairly safe.
Speaker 3: But then when I was back in Brooklyn was when
Speaker 3: I really I started looking for snipers and I started
Speaker 3: feeling like people are looking at me weird. That might
Speaker 3: just be PTSD or just the way you look, or
Speaker 3: just maybe I looked weird and there were snipers trying
Speaker 3: to kill me. That's possible.
Speaker 4: But there's a difference though.
Speaker 1: So you're describing two different things, and I've bumped into
Speaker 1: them both.
Speaker 4: One is.
Speaker 1: If you've been in the agency and you've been under surveillance,
Speaker 1: you also know what it's like to try to organize surveillance.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: It's hard getting five or ten guys together a meeting beforehand,
Speaker 1: and like paying them, and there's surveillances. Oh I can't
Speaker 1: come in today, my wife is sick. I got to
Speaker 1: watch the kid. And you got to organize this team
Speaker 1: of five to ten people. It's like a full time
Speaker 1: friggin job. And then of course when they watch you,
Speaker 1: they got to write it up. You got to get
Speaker 1: these people, they got to sit down and they're going
Speaker 1: to have to get on a typewriter a computer. So
Speaker 1: as far as being followed, I never have that feeling
Speaker 1: because I know how much work it goes into it,
Speaker 1: and I also know I'm not worth it, you know.
Speaker 1: It's like we do this podcast, like no one gives
Speaker 1: a hoot about me. However, when you're in a place
Speaker 1: like Bagdad or Afghanistan, you get something called a hyper
Speaker 1: vigilance where you're just really vigilant because you're afraid you're
Speaker 1: gonna go over an idea, a mind, or you're going
Speaker 1: to get shot. And that is visceral. That's not mental
Speaker 1: where you're thinking about it. That's just a gut feel.
Speaker 1: And when you leave Afghanistan after being hyper vigilant for
Speaker 1: two or three months, that is really hard to turn
Speaker 1: off because it's not a thought process, it's something that
Speaker 1: it's just a it's an amigdal of response that's hard.
Speaker 4: To turn off.
Speaker 3: And also we don't have the training that you guys have,
Speaker 3: and we don't have we don't really talk about this
Speaker 3: as journalists that much. We're just basically sent to a
Speaker 3: war zone and sometimes you get like a two day
Speaker 3: training that's like try to stand behind the car engine,
Speaker 3: not the car door or something. But it's but not
Speaker 3: like we're not going to the farm for a few
Speaker 3: months and living in a culture where everybody's talking about
Speaker 3: this stuff. We're mostly talking about what stories are you getting?
Speaker 3: But you are constantly you're hypervigilant. Both the actual vigilance
Speaker 3: like you're worried that, oh is that car following me?
Speaker 4: Physical thing, but.
Speaker 3: You're also like, I do think it's extra exhausting when
Speaker 3: you don't know what doing it well is. Nobody's taught
Speaker 3: you that, so you're also like, do I even know
Speaker 3: what the hell I'm doing? Am I varying my path
Speaker 3: and my times.
Speaker 1: Enough.
Speaker 3: This is the first time in my entire life I've
Speaker 3: ever talked to anyone professional about how do you do
Speaker 3: surveillance detection? And I'm now realizing, like I was doing
Speaker 3: amateur surveillance detection, I don't know that. I'm sure I
Speaker 3: was surveilled and I'm sure I didn't detect it so well.
Speaker 2: There's different kinds of surveillance too. You almost have to
Speaker 2: know whether it's it's a danger of being killed or
Speaker 2: whether it's so many tracking. Even your car can have
Speaker 2: beacons on it, so you drive around and you don't
Speaker 2: see anything. Oh, I'm fine, but that doesn't mean you're
Speaker 2: fine necessary and.
Speaker 1: You can do the best surveillance run in the world,
Speaker 1: but if you're the person you're meeting, is bad. So
Speaker 1: you call them up and say let's meet, and that
Speaker 1: that call is intercepted, and they want to be your source, Adam,
Speaker 1: and they want to give you a story and they
Speaker 1: really mean it. But then like you've called them and
Speaker 1: suddenly the security service kicks their door in and says, okay,
Speaker 1: we want you to go meet at them, but here's
Speaker 1: the story. We want you to give them a false one,
Speaker 1: whether you love the government or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: So you could do the greatest surveillance in the world.
Speaker 4: But if your agent, the.
Speaker 1: Person you're talking to, has been turned or is bad,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter that.
Speaker 3: The one thing I did once based on someone's recommendation.
Speaker 3: I don't think there was any reason to do it.
Speaker 3: But I went to a Central Asian country that has
Speaker 3: I was told twenty year old KGB style surveillance was
Speaker 3: the way it was described to me, And the recommendation
Speaker 3: was get a cell phone at the airport, make it
Speaker 3: clear your use your passport and everything. Then get a
Speaker 3: local to get you a second cell phone, and just
Speaker 3: give the first cell phone to somebody and have them
Speaker 3: just walk around the city and then use the second
Speaker 3: cell phone. But then I talked to a telecom expert
Speaker 3: who he was basically like, cute, that was cute. But
Speaker 3: if they want to know where you are, they know
Speaker 3: where you are.
Speaker 2: That's the thing is is are you worth a serious target?
Speaker 2: Right any government? You know, if the United States or
Speaker 2: the FBI has somebody coming to the United States and
Speaker 2: they are concerned that person is really really important to hear,
Speaker 2: there is no way that person's going to get themselves
Speaker 2: away from that survanser what's happening, and it's the same
Speaker 2: and what you want to do. That's why you want
Speaker 2: to act in a way that they don't think you're
Speaker 2: constantly you know, if you act Joe spy out there
Speaker 2: and trying to break away and hide from them, they're
Speaker 2: going to put more read more resources. And there is
Speaker 2: a point at which if you're public enemy number one,
Speaker 2: there's nothing you can do right, and so you're trying
Speaker 2: to avoid.
Speaker 1: But that they have resource problems just like everybody else.
Speaker 1: John and I have set in on these meetings where
Speaker 1: it's Okay, our bandwidth is only so much, we've only
Speaker 1: got so many people working so many hours. Like in Baggdad,
Speaker 1: which isis guys, are we going to follow? Technically it's
Speaker 1: a I got a five pound bag and there's one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of pooh? Which five pounds am I going
Speaker 1: to put in there? And the biggest questions were basically,
Speaker 1: who aren't we going to do right? If we do
Speaker 1: this guy, then we can't do that guy, and or
Speaker 1: we'll do them both but not do them well.
Speaker 2: It became a thing with the FBI after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: when all of a sudden. They were going to run
Speaker 2: down any potential threat. So some jerk would call in
Speaker 2: and say I'm going to blow up the seven eleven.
Speaker 2: They would have to go out and use their surveillance
Speaker 2: resources to make sure that didn't happen. So they were
Speaker 2: spread so thin that if there is stuff that came
Speaker 2: up that maybe oh there's a rushing in time, like
Speaker 2: we can't we're still busy run out to make sure
Speaker 2: there's not another bomb that goes off that we just
Speaker 2: don't have the resources to. Yeah, everything.
Speaker 3: That's why that Dick Cheney one percent idea that if
Speaker 3: there's a one percent chance this could happen, we must
Speaker 3: treat it like one hundred percent chance. But then there's
Speaker 3: a lot of one percent chances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how many people do you want to hire for this?
Speaker 1: But there's one other thing and maybe you get a
Speaker 1: sense of this. So you've done your SDR and you're
Speaker 1: sure you're black, and you meet your source, you know,
Speaker 1: either for ESPIONAGI for journalism and this fingerspits and CAFU.
Speaker 1: You look at the guy and if he is like
Speaker 1: really confident, be wary, be careful. If they're taking a
Speaker 1: big chance. They're human beings, you know, I meet with
Speaker 1: a source. Even when they met him like dozens of times,
Speaker 1: you can look in their eyes and you can see
Speaker 1: are they scared? And then there's also you can smell
Speaker 1: fear sometimes in sweat. I can remember this one guy
Speaker 1: and I got into the car and I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: he was like valid or not? Is he good or
Speaker 1: is he bad? Has even turned? And I opened the
Speaker 1: car door and this smell of sweat and year came out,
Speaker 1: and it was like, yeah, he's he's.
Speaker 3: For real good because he's he is shit scared.
Speaker 1: And if he had been turned by his own government,
Speaker 1: he would have been like, hey, you know, get it.
Speaker 4: It's hard to explain.
Speaker 1: But when you look in somebody's eyes and their pupils
Speaker 1: are you know, and it's like they're afraid, and they're
Speaker 1: not afraid of me. This is a good meeting, right
Speaker 1: because they're afraid they're going to get caught.
Speaker 3: All right, guys. SDRs was going to be like one
Speaker 3: little it's I have a long list, so we'll get
Speaker 3: back to some we'll do some other stuff later. I
Speaker 3: am hearing from our listeners, by which I mean my wife,
Speaker 3: that they have our audience that's not our audience. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure she hears every episode, but that
Speaker 3: they actually really love when you guys just talk about
Speaker 3: what life was like in CIA. It's a rare opportunity.
Speaker 3: So I do want to revisit this and ask more questions.
Speaker 3: If people have questions themselves, let us know. All right,
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much. I love that. I want
Speaker 3: to do that more often. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: With some real conspiracies and some very not real conspiracy,
Speaker 3: aies on Mission Implausible.
Speaker 6: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Seipher,
Speaker 6: and Jonathan Sterner.
Speaker 4: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 6: Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable
Speaker 6: Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.