The Mel Robbins PodcastFormer CIA Spy: How to Eliminate Self-Doubt, Build Confidence, and Protect Yourself in Today’s World
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
50 min read · 10,417 words- 0:00 – 5:21
Meet the Guest
- MRMel Robbins
Today, on The Mel Robbins Podcast, a former CIA spy shares the secret life she lived working undercover for 30 years.
- JMJonna Mendez
I went to the White House and briefed the president, and he didn't know.
- MRMel Robbins
Hold on. You tricked the President of the United States?
- JMJonna Mendez
And the Secret Service.
- MRMel Robbins
She'll teach you the tactics and strategies to read anyone and spot a liar. Powerful wisdom to help you find courage and overcome life's hardest moments.
- JMJonna Mendez
There's something I've never really talked about publicly. He got out of the car, and he opened his vest, and he was a human bomb.
- MRMel Robbins
And the former Chief of Disguise for the CIA also has a profound warning on the state of the world today. Please help me welcome former CIA Chief of Disguise, Jonna Mendez, to The Mel Robbins Podcast.
- JMJonna Mendez
Thank you so much.
- MRMel Robbins
I am so excited to talk to you. The office has been abuzz waiting for you to arrive. And you have the coolest life and the most interesting job of anybody I think I have ever met, the Chief of Disguise at the CIA. If somebody who's listening right now takes everything to heart that you're about to share with us from your extraordinary life, what might they change about how they see themselves or the world at large?
- JMJonna Mendez
It's hard to sum it up, but I came out of Wichita, Kansas. Um, my expectation of what my life was gonna look like was very much like all my friends. We were gonna get married. We were gonna have kids. Our husbands were probably gonna work at Boeing because Boeing was a big part of Wichita, Kansas back then. We kinda thought it was cast in stone a little bit. I always knew I would get a job, but I always thought that my work was gonna be something to do with books, either teaching or librarian. And then bam, everything blew up. My friend went to Europe. I went to Europe with her, um, and I basically never went home.
- MRMel Robbins
It's interesting that you say you thought your life was cast in stone.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
I think a lot of us do.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
But your remarkable story, and a lot of the wisdom that you're about to share, is gonna say, "Whatever it is that you think is set about your life could change, almost in an instant."
- JMJonna Mendez
It's your life. Nobody else is gonna do it but you. You get to live it how you want.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I'm excited to unpack some of these stories and lessons from your remarkable life. You were the Chief of Disguise for the CIA. What did that job entail?
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, you know, I didn't start out as Chief of Disguise at the CIA. It was, um, uh, it was an interesting story of how I ended up in that position.
- MRMel Robbins
How did you end up at the CIA?
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, I came out of Wichita, Kansas. I had a sister 13 months older than me. She fled to Aspen, which I thought was brilliant. [laughs] And then two years later, my best friend told me she was gonna get married in Germany to a military, an American military guy, and would I come be in the wedding? I said yes. I was in college, paying my own tuition. I stepped out of college so fast, you'd think it was my mother's money. I went to Germany, I was in the wedding, and then they went to Italy, and I was, I was there, so I didn't wanna go home. So instead, I took a train to Frankfurt, Germany, and they had phone books back then in the Bahnhof, and I started calling American banks, 'cause this is a, a big banking town. I made four phone calls, and they all said the same thing, "Oh, you're looking for a job. Do you speak German?" "No." "Have you ever worked in a bank?" "No." "Um, do you have a work permit?" "No." [laughs] And three of them said, "Well, thank you very much," and the fourth one said, "Well, why don't you just come on down and talk to us?" That was Chase Manhattan Bank, and they hired me. So I got my toehold there. I had a job, then I got an apartment, and then I got a boyfriend, who it turns out was CIA. But he couldn't tell me that he was CIA, 'cause he was undercover, and the way the CIA rules were written [laughs] he proposed to me on the, the subway in Vienna, Austria, and I said yes, and it was all very romantic. Then he told me he worked for CIA. He said, "You're gonna love it." And, uh, when we w- were assigned to another foreign posting, I went looking for a job with CIA, and they hired me as a secretary, because that's what CIA did always. That was what
- 5:21 – 6:42
What the Chief of Disguise At The CIA Really Does
- JMJonna Mendez
they did.
- MRMel Robbins
What was it like working in the CIA as a woman?
- JMJonna Mendez
Initially, I was a secretary, and I was a very, very good secretary, so I became the boss's secretary, 1,000 people. He was the director, I was his secretary. And the joke was on me, because that's a dead end. There's nowhere to go. It was the highest level you could get to. There was no up.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
So I told him that I thought I'd go to work for the Smithsonian, I'd go talk to them. He said, "Well, you know, that would be interesting," but he said, "Why don't you, um, consider taking some of our photography classes? I know you're an avid photographer, and I'll get you in those classes, and maybe you can, you know, explore that." Um, and I ended up back in Europe working for the CIA in the dark rooms
- MRMel Robbins
Huh
- JMJonna Mendez
And they discovered that I was really good at it. I, I used to say, you know, to myself, "You cannot be excellence. I am excellent at this job. I am good, and they know it."
- MRMel Robbins
I'm starting to read between the lines, 'cause you said he said, "Take a photography class," and now I'm realizing, wait a minute, he didn't mean go down to the local community college and take a photography class. You got trained to do something.
- 6:42 – 9:55
Incredible Spy Gadgets Used At The CIA
- MRMel Robbins
So what specifically does being a photographer s- for the CIA entail?
- JMJonna Mendez
When, when you say photography at CIA, you're talking stuff you never dreamed of. You're talking fake pregnancy bellies with a camera in it for women, camera in the bra, camera in men's tie, camera in purse, cameras everywhere, um, big cameras, small cameras. We had cameras that looked a lot like this. It was a Montblanc pen. A Montblanc would take 100 pictures, the size of a pen. If you were standing in front of Putin's desk and he looked over towards Lavrov, who he was talking to, you could just take your pen, 'cause you're making notes, you just take it and go and take a picture of plans and intentions of the Soviet Union. You wanted the agenda for the meeting. You wanted the minutes of the meeting. We had satellites up there doing today. We knew where everything was that day, but that's not what we wanted to know. We wanted to know what are they gonna do, like their nuclear program, what are they gonna do? That little camera was amazing, and that was very much my account. When that film came in, I developed... That was one of the hardest things I ever did, developing that film. But in addition to using pens and cameras in strange places, um, um, we made microdots, and I brought one in today. A mic-
- MRMel Robbins
A microdot? What is that?
- JMJonna Mendez
A microdot is a photograph of a page of text.
- MRMel Robbins
It looks like a stamp.
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, that's 'cause it, the dot is hidden in it. It's a picture of that reduced 800 times-
- MRMel Robbins
Whoa
- JMJonna Mendez
... photographically, and you end up with... There are two here.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, my gosh, it's on the back. It literally looks like a pin prick.
- JMJonna Mendez
It does. It looks like the period at-
- MRMel Robbins
That is-
- JMJonna Mendez
... the end of a sentence
- MRMel Robbins
... that document?
- JMJonna Mendez
Yep. So you can, um, mail it to your foreign agent, maybe in China, let's say China. He already has a lens, looks like a grain of rice, and then he'd get some spit, and he'd pick up the dot, and he'd put it on the end of that lens, hold it up to the sun, and read an eight-and-a-half by 10 page of text.
- MRMel Robbins
That's incredible.
- JMJonna Mendez
It was incredible.
- MRMel Robbins
It's amazing to me that human beings can be this innovative and come up with such extraordinary solutions.
- JMJonna Mendez
Agree. But photography at CIA was, was not like photography anywhere else. It was really exciting. I started traveling, training foreign agents to use some of our very small, interesting, um, useful cameras. So I developed a, a, a, a skill with photography, and the guys, it was always guys, would, would let me do it because they knew I could do it. Again, it's excellence. If you can do the work in an excellent manner, they will let you do the work.
- 9:55 – 14:07
How To Change Careers Without Starting Over
- MRMel Robbins
There's a couple things about your story that I think are really interesting, and they provide a lot of wisdom and advice, one being that you found yourself in this job as a secretary, and you were excellent at it, and it had a ceiling. And for somebody who feels like they've hit the ceiling of their potential or their role, what would your advice be?
- JMJonna Mendez
Make a change. I changed more than once. I went in and did the photo thing, and I loved it. But, um, I, I did a, um, a trip out to India along the way, filling in for somebody doing photo work in India. I fell in love with India, just adored it. So I came back to Washington, found my career person. I said, "I, I would like an assignment there." He said, "There is no photo job coming up. The only thing coming up is disguise." And this was a turning point in my career, but I didn't know it then. It's like, "Well, how badly do you wanna go to India?" And this is, this is probably not a smart thing to do, to change your career track in the middle of your career, but it was a smart thing to do. I ended up being a person who could do all this photography stuff. I could also do all of this disguise stuff and a little bit of counterfeiting, forging over here, and, um, that's how I ended up with the, um, with the disguise piece of it.
- MRMel Robbins
For the person who's listening who's afraid to make a change, what would you say?
- JMJonna Mendez
Some changes are really, really hard. I mean, if it's gonna cost you a salary and you have to start again, or if you have to move, or if, if... Some changes involve more than just changing your workday. They change other things. But I think change is, um, is the most refreshing thing any of us can do. You get good at what you do. You love what you do. You do it well. Okay, and you could keep doing it for the rest of your life, and a lot of people do, and there's not a thing wrong with that. But you could say, "Let me take a look around. Is it... What else is there? Is there, is there something as interesting, something I'd like to fool around with?"
- MRMel Robbins
Well, what's interesting about your story is it illustrates something that I've always found to be true, which is, yes, the change feels scary, and yes, it can be hard, and yes, it can feel overwhelming 'cause you think you're starting over. But your story proves a truth, which is you took absolutely everything with you. You're never starting over. You're building on that experience. You took your excellence as the right-hand person to the, the chief, then you took all this skill from photography, and then you ended up in this role in India, and it was all the experience and the pivots that positioned you to become the Chief of Disguise. But we don't think about that fact when we're making the change, that we're, we're starting over, so to speak, but we're actually not, 'cause we're doing it with experience.
- JMJonna Mendez
True.
- MRMel Robbins
What do you say to a woman who, who's really feeling underestimated?
- JMJonna Mendez
I say aim high.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- JMJonna Mendez
Aim high. Don't underestimate yourself. You know, the others, the others might do that. You know yourself better than anyone else. Aim higher even than you think you might, you might be able to accomplish. But that's how, that's how you climb. One step at a time, reaching, maybe, maybe you can do it, maybe you can't, but, but try it. There's something I've never really talked about publicly. In the middle of my career, when I was 46,
- 14:07 – 24:22
The Incredible True Story Behind Argo
- JMJonna Mendez
I got married again, to Tony Mendez. We wanna talk about change. And when I was 47, I had my one and only child when I was 47. Changed my life. [laughs] Changed a couple of other lives, too. Um, my husband, Tony Mendez, a lot of people know about him from Argo. A lot of people saw the movie Argo.
- MRMel Robbins
For the person who's listening or watching who hasn't, it's extraordinary, and you co-wrote the book that led to the movie.
- JMJonna Mendez
Right.
- MRMel Robbins
Could you share for the person listening who doesn't know the story a little bit of the background about you and your husband-
- JMJonna Mendez
Well-
- MRMel Robbins
... and what led to that?
- JMJonna Mendez
How much time do we have? [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
Whatever you got to give us.
- JMJonna Mendez
I had known Tony for years and years. I never knew about Argo. And he never talked about Argo. It was something that he had done in the past, and we all moved on and were doing other things. And then George Tenet, a very popular, uh, head of CIA, he slipped a, there was a memo under our screened door. We live 40 miles outside of DC, down a one-mile dirt road, and the CIA delivers a memo under our door. [laughs] And it said, "We've been thinking. Uh, it's a very quiet moment in America. There, things are settled. Uh, I've been thinking this would be a good time to tell America one good story about the CIA, because no one has ever done that. All they ever hear are suspicions of this or maybe somebody did misbehave over a year. There's never been a good story out there. I want to do that. I want you to do that. I want you to tell the story of Argo." And this was like 19 years after it happened. And Tony said, "It's classified." And George Tenet said, "Not anymore." There was a purpose to it, and I think it was very clever of George Tenet to do that, to show them that there's a human side and that, that there's a lot of goodwill at the CIA. So, um, so Tony told the story. And then, and then Wired Magazine picked it up, and George Clooney saw it. So we're asleep in bed one night, pitch black dark, out in the country, and the phone rang, and it was our agent, um, somebody out in LA, said, "George Clooney wants to buy the rights to your story." And Tony says, "Sell it to him." And then the phone rang again, same person, who said, "Brad Pitt is interested in it, too." Tony said, "Raise the price."
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
Hung up, and the next morning, George Clooney bought it.
- MRMel Robbins
And for the person who hasn't seen the movie, what is the story?
- JMJonna Mendez
It was about the American Embassy in Tehran. It was when the Isla- Ayatollah Khomeini came back from Paris. Um, the shah had left the country. The shah was in Washington, DC, in the White House, uh, with Jimmy Carter, uh, looking for treatment for his cancer. And, um, the Iranian population went out of their minds that, that the shah was in the United States. And it was a revolution. Up until that point, Iran had been kind of a docile, interesting place, and, and the people I knew that were assigned there, they loved it. They loved the people, they loved the country, they loved everything about it. Well, all of a sudden, it's a revolution. And, um, they came over the walls, and they went into all the buildings. This was a huge compound.
- MRMel Robbins
The American Embassy.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah, the American Embassy, multiple buildings. And they took everybody prisoner except for one small building. It was the only one that had an exit door onto the street, in the back of this huge piece of land. So six of them got away. Six Americans got away. And they ended up, uh, at the Canadian ambassador's residence. Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador, said, "We will protect you. You're practically Canadian. We're practically American. Come on in." And, um, you have to give the Canadians, um, great credit. We did. Never enough, but we did. So there they were. They were trapped inside of Iran, a landlocked country. Um, the airports, everything was, everything was full of Revolutionary Guards. The borders was all Revolutionary Guards. And there were all these efforts to get them out. Um, they tried flying, Jimmy Carter sent helicopters to land in the desert. We disguised trucks to carry fake Iranian troops. We made Iranian military uniforms to put on our soldiers so they could go in. What happened was those six people ended up stuck in the Canadian ambassador's house with no way out. So Tony went to Canada and did the obvious. You have to get passports for these people. Tony was kind of, um, a specialist in exfiltrating people that were in trouble-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- JMJonna Mendez
... that needed to leave the country. So he went to Canada. He said, "We, we need genuine passports for this one. We could make them, but we'd really like to have real ones." And the Canadians said yes. I would point out that America would never give another country our blank passports, ever, but the Canadians did. Um, Tony put in new pictures, gave them fake names, um, stamped the passports so that it showed them leaving Canada. They stopped in LA, they went to Hong Kong, they went b- and they ended up in Tehran. They were supposed to be, the six people, a location scouting party looking for a place to do a movie. That was the backstory. So Tony went out to LA, where we had worked for years with the makeup people, also with the magic community, the magic builders. Tony had lunch with, um, one of them and said, um, "How many people are in a location scouting party?" And John said, "About six." And Tony said, "What would their titles be?" And he went down the list. You know, a location manager, a finance guy, the, the logistics guy, the scriptwriter, the photographer. And Tony put a program. He named the fake movie that they were supposed to be going to make. He named it Argo.
- MRMel Robbins
As part of a disguise-
- JMJonna Mendez
It-
- MRMel Robbins
... of the whole thing, to be able to extract these American hostages.
- JMJonna Mendez
The whole thing was a disguise. Tony had set up an office out in LA. He, it was staffed. He had taken out advertisements in The Hollywood Reporter and, um, Variety, full-page ads, Argo, A Cosmic Conflagration. It's gonna be a great movie. It turns out when it was, when it was all over, th- the Iranians wanted to check, there were phone numbers, they could call that office, that fake office, and some fake employee would answer and say in a fake voice, "Oh, no, they're on a location scout." They had to understand that no matter how the Iranians came at this, they would, they would find a genuine, bona fide office with posters up and people at the phones and, you know. And they even carried some of those magazines with the, with the, uh... What Tony did with Argo was he created this fake reality. We had never done like that before. He, he created a whole fake world, a universe, where everybody was doing their thing and, and, and in front of the professionals out in Hollywood, and it was, it was just so brilliant.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, it's fascinating just to hear about your world because part of me is sitting here thinking, "Wait, this is actually happening? This is crazy." Given that I'm not in the CIA, although I could be lying to you, but [laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
That's true
- MRMel Robbins
... I don't think coming right out and saying something that you're not is probably an effective way of disguising yourself, although maybe it is. I'm on the outside, so I can only imagine, okay, what does the Chief of Disguise do? Is this like Mission Impossible, Bourne Identity, I'm running into an apartment and there's, you know, five passports and money? Is that what this is?
- JMJonna Mendez
The passports and money would be my husband's. [laughs] I would be the mustache and the beard in the, in what, in the little vault in the bank that he opens up and he goes slipping through. Um, we, we gave James whatever he needed. We called them all James. It was not very kind of us. W- we were at, we were the Office of Technical Service. We were the, the technical people supporting operations. James and his friends, they had a job that I couldn't have done, which was to be so charming and so well-spoken and so, um, that they could convince people to betray their government. I mean, that's, that's a tall order. Sometimes, we, we were looking for charisma when we hired James. We wanted him to be the guy you meet at the bar, and when you walk out, oh, my God, you're like his best friend, and y- you've got each other's numbers and you're gonna stay in touch and all of that. That's the James that we wanted. But we discovered somewhere along the line that that James wasn't going to flourish in our environment because that James needed attention, and he needed praise, and he needed applause, and he needed feedback constantly. And, and in the real CIA, none of that happened. There, there were no, there were no attaboys. There were no stars put on paper for you. There was no thank you. There was, uh, "Okay, the next job now, we're gonna go and do this." There was no applause.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, wow.
- 24:22 – 29:28
How Are Secret Agents Recruited For The CIA?
- MRMel Robbins
What does it take to be a good spy? Or James, if you will? [laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, if you're gonna be James-
- MRMel Robbins
That's the code word for a spy 'cause you don't wanna call him by their first name?
- JMJonna Mendez
That's James Bond.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- JMJonna Mendez
That's, that's the operational guy.
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- JMJonna Mendez
The way it works is CIA says, "Uh, here's our program for next year in descending order. Maybe the top of the list we wanna know about somebody's nuclear program. That's the thing we wanna know the most."
- MRMel Robbins
Okay.
- JMJonna Mendez
So around the world we all go, "Does anybody know anybody in that, in that program?" If they don't, we go find someone, and our, our Jameses, their job, which I could never do, is to find those people, meet those people, and convince those people that they wanna work for us. So I always ask new friends, I say, "What would it take for someone to come up to you, I don't know, at a friend's house and say, 'You know, I used to live in Russia and, and I have friends there who are really interested in, uh, oil production figures out of this particular field here in America, and I know you work closely with them. What d- could you...'" Um, and all of us would say, "Get outta here. We're not gonna do that." James' job was to walk up to a Russian and, and make the same kinda pitch, but James had to find a, a niche first. He had to fi- he had to find a flaw. He had to find something, something that would engage them. So around the world, the reasons that people will betray their government, it boils down to four things, and it spells the word mice, M-I-C-E. The M is for money, and Americans will do it for money. If you pay us enough, it makes me so mad, but it's true. Pay us enough, we will betray our country. The Russians will do it for ideology. Typically, and this may not still apply, but typically the people we, we recruited, they had families that were, that were taken apart by Stalin. They had families that were, that were imprisoned by the, by the Russian government. They had all these terrible things that happened to people they knew, and they wanted to pay 'em back, and for those reasons, they would work for us. M-I. C is compromise. Maybe they had a secret, and they didn't want anyone to know the secret, and maybe we knew the secret, so we could use that as a... But we didn't actually do that too much because it didn't really work very well, but it was always there as a possibility. And then E is for ego, and that's, like, the big one. People that are passed over at work for promotions, people that think their boss is stupider than anybody, people that just have these grudges. They walk around with them. Life is not fair. They're not, they're not making their way forward. Oh, when we could find those people, we could talk them into spying for us.
- MRMel Robbins
So when you look at mice, money, ideology, compromised, or ego-
- JMJonna Mendez
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... are those all present in terms of how you convince most people to do anything?
- JMJonna Mendez
You know, you, y- usually when you see a spy case and you read, you read the, the, the, the history of it, you find those things are in there very, very frequently. People don't just randomly say, "I think I'm gonna take all the secrets I know and give them to another government." They need a reason, and, and they, they filter down into those reasons, uh, most of the time.
- MRMel Robbins
What are your biggest takeaways and life lessons after spending 30-plus years in the CIA?
- JMJonna Mendez
Wow. Well, one of the first ones would be that you don't do anything by yourself. You don't do anything alone. You, you form teams. You form loose-knit groups. You are always working with others. It's not, it's never a one-off. You're always part of something bigger than yourself if you're going to accomplish anything.
- MRMel Robbins
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- 29:28 – 35:06
How To Completely Change Your Identity
- MRMel Robbins
You said earlier that, you know, when I mentioned, "Okay, is this really like Mission Impossible and Bourne Identity?" And you said, "Well, my husband Tony does the passports, but I do the wigs." So how do you transform someone into someone else?
- JMJonna Mendez
[sighs] It's all very specific to a person, a place, a time, what they need, w- what would actually solve the problem. A lot of the time we wanted people to be less seen.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
And so we would, um, we would make them older. Nobody looks at old people too much.
- MRMel Robbins
Do you use wigs? Do you... Like, do, are those masks real? 'Cause you always see somebody pulling off a mask, and they're not, and you're like, "Whoa, was that actually a mask?" Is that... I mean, is that how you do it?
- JMJonna Mendez
Where we ended up was they were so real That I could be sitting here wearing it right now, and you just, you wouldn't know.
- MRMel Robbins
No way.
- JMJonna Mendez
I went to the White House and briefed the president, and he didn't know.
- MRMel Robbins
Hold on. You tricked the President of the United States?
- JMJonna Mendez
And the Secret Service.
- MRMel Robbins
What was your disguise?
- JMJonna Mendez
A full-face mask with hair attached. It was actually a girl that worked with me, her name was Becky, but I wore her face very nicely, and I-
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
... dropped 20, dropped 20 years in a heartbeat, and, uh, I thought I looked really good. Anyway, went in and briefed the president. Now, the president back then was George H.W. Bush, who had been director of CIA at one point, and, um, and we had done some disguises for him, mostly f- for entertainment, not... He wasn't out on the streets doing work, but mostly, I don't know, for a conference or something. He had a couple of disguises. So I took him some 8x10 glossies of himself in disguise, 'cause now I'm in my salesperson mode. I'm softening him up because I want him to love this thing I'm gonna show him next, and it's gonna be a really expensive program, and I want his support for that program.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
So he's looking at the pictures of himself, and he's laughing. I had never seen George H.W. Bush laugh before. I was impressed. And I said, "Well, I'm here today to show you the best new thing we've got. You're gonna love it." And he's behind the Resolute desk, and he's, he's saying, "Well, where is it?" He's looking, you know, are there bags down o- on the floor by me? No, there's nothing. I said, "Well, I'm wearing it, and what I'm gonna do is just take it off and show it to you." And he said, "No, no." And he got up, and he walked to my chair and walked around my chair. Now, he didn't know it was a full-face mask. I don't know what he was looking for, but he knew that I had on a disguise, and he's... He couldn't find it, so he sat down and he said, "Okay, take it off." And I did that Tom Cruise thing, which, this was before Tom Cruise got famous for it. I did that. Bush loved it. Everybody loved it. I, it's, it's, it's a great new capability.
- MRMel Robbins
Can you show me the photos? I think you have photos here from this.
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, I, I don't go far without these photos because this, this was a moment.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, so that's you.
- JMJonna Mendez
That's me, um, on the far right. That's Bush looking at the pictures of himself. Everybody is very calm.
- MRMel Robbins
That's you in that disguise?
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah. Totally animates.
- MRMel Robbins
The mask animates?
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah. That was the hard thing. It's not hard to make it look like you, but to get it to move where you can... I mean, I got through the Secret Service with it.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow.
- JMJonna Mendez
I know.
- MRMel Robbins
All right, let's see this one.
- JMJonna Mendez
This one, I'm holding it up in the air, it now lives, um, lives in the basement of the CIA. Every once in a while they bring it up.
- MRMel Robbins
The mask?
- JMJonna Mendez
Mm-hmm, and there's a big exhibit about this mask in the International Spy Museum, so the mask has gotten its own, its own little bit of fame.
- 35:06 – 38:55
How To Disguise Yourself Like a Spy
- MRMel Robbins
Can you show me the other disguise items that you brought with you?
- JMJonna Mendez
Uh, just a, a few of the things that we would do. This is, this is a store-bought wig. W- for our own officers, we usually didn't use store-bought wig. We had the ability to hand-make, um, exquisite wigs one hair at a time. They didn't look like wigs at all. So this is kind of a stand-in. Um, a mustache if you ever wondered what a good fake mustache looks like. I don't know what these cost, but-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh. Yeah
- JMJonna Mendez
... they, they were good.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, 'cause they, they, they had almost a mesh underneath them, so it looked a little bit more-
- JMJonna Mendez
It's, it's all about that mesh. These things are like feathers. Um, if you had terrible teeth, we would take a, a mouth impression, uh, and we would, we would make your teeth pearly whites.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow.
- JMJonna Mendez
If you had pearly whites, we could make them all messed up. We could change your teeth. When we changed your teeth, we would change your gumline. When we changed your gumline, we would change your profile. If you look from the side, it's quite different. Um, we could do all of these things. We'd throw some glasses on you. If we needed to change the color of your eyes, we'd put some contact lenses in. If I met you, Mel, and had to go back to my people and say, "I met a woman named Mel, and this is what she looked like. She's, you know, she's got long, beautiful blonde hair. She wears..." ... uh, striking glasses. She doesn't wear a lot of makeup. She's not wearing a lot of jewelry. Um, she doesn't seem to have on, um, a wedding ring. She wears a watch like this. I would just describe you in, in such fine detail. Then for the disguise, we would change every piece of that that we could.
- MRMel Robbins
Wow.
- JMJonna Mendez
You would end up with short, a little pixie wig, dark wig, lots of makeup, no glasses. We just go on and on and on. Pretty soon, you're, you're not there anymore, and this other person is there. We wanted everything that we could change. With men, it was harder.
- MRMel Robbins
Why was it harder?
- JMJonna Mendez
It's harder because men don't fool around with all that stuff so much. Uh, we'd, we'd put cologne on a man who would never wear cologne. It would be noticeable. A woman would notice it, and she probably wouldn't like it. We'd put a gold chain on a man who would never wear a gold chain. We'd unbutton his shirt one too many. So it, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, that guy is taking a turn here. He's a different guy. We, if he had a wedding ring, we'd take it off. Uh, usually you'd be able to see the, kind of the impression-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, yeah
- JMJonna Mendez
... like, oh, he's married, but he took his ring... Hey, look at that. We'd change his watch out. We, we just, you know, I'm not even talking about wigs and hair, the stuff there. I'm talking about all the little things, and pretty soon, it's another guy. It's just another guy. Uh, we would tell our men when we were, we're doing them, we said, "You know, I, someone in your family gave you a shirt in the last 10 years that you just hate."
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
"It's in the back of your closet. That's your shirt for your disguise." And we'd write up a little character sketch of this guy. This is your guy. This is you in disguise. Everything about him. Does he smoke? What does he smoke? Does he drink? What does he like? We'd just make a new character so that when you had to wear your disguise, in your mind, you had the whole thing. And after we did that, then we'd send you to the CIA cafeteria for lunch, where all your friends were, everybody, your boss, your boss's boss. Everybody who knows you is down there having lunch, and we'd send you into the storm. And they'd come back and say, "Oh my God, I was sitting next to them. Nobody knew." And then you thought, okay, yeah, he'll use it.
- MRMel Robbins
That's really cool.
- 38:55 – 42:26
How To Stay Calm Under Pressure
- MRMel Robbins
What did 30 years in the CIA teach you about body language and projecting confidence?
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, it kinda depends on who you're projecting it to-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- JMJonna Mendez
... and, and what the occasion is. If you're talking to the foreigners who were our, that was our whole goal, is to make them comfortable, to make them, um, believe in what we could do to kinda lessen some of their fear. We would be as positive as we could be. We would praise what they were doing. We would encourage them to do even more of it. We would take pictures and show them, "Look how good you look. Look how good this is." It's like in Argo, we built that whole backstory, and then we said to them, "Look at that. Who's gonna challenge that? Nobody's gonna challenge that." Um, it depend on what you were trying to do. If you were trying to sneak somebody across the border, that was really hard. And, um, you start role-playing with people who'd, who have never role-played before. I'm thinking of one, one, uh, one event where we took somebody out over a border. It was a, a man, a really important man, and his wife and their five-year-old daughter.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, boy.
- JMJonna Mendez
And they were going across the border. We hadn't done that before. This was a very controlled border. And we hired a smuggler, a guy who was back and forth all the time. That was his job. We hired him. We modified his car. We modified the backseat, so you could put somebody underneath it, a husband and a kid, and we did. That's where they were. In the front seat, it had like a bench seat, old style, and the, the woman had the girlfriend position, which is not by the door, but it's in the middle, you know?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- JMJonna Mendez
And, uh, the smuggler was back and forth across that border all the time. This was really important. Getting this man out was really important, and so this was such a funny story. They pulled up to the, uh, they pulled up to the, the gate with the arms down, and, and there's the guy in the uniform, and he's got the clipboard, and he's, he's like... And they know each other. "Oh, hey, good to see you," you know. Uh, "When will you be back? What, what's going on?" Blah, blah, blah. And, um, there was a tape playing. It was Billy Joel. This is the part of the story that I just couldn't believe. It was the latest Billy Joel tape that was not available over there. And the guard says, "Oh, I like that. What is that?" The driver says, "Uh, it's Billy Joel." And the, the guard says, "Oh, my girlfriend loves him, loves him. Where'd you get that?" And the driver says, "Oh, I have a, I have a connection." He's... The driver says, "I'll tell you what. Next time, next time I come through, I'll bring one, I'll bring you one. I'll give you one." And the guard says, "I'll tell you what. You give me this one, and you keep the, the one you get next time for yourself. But I want this for my girlfriend." So he takes the tape out, gives it to the guard, and they drive through the border.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh.
- JMJonna Mendez
So this i- this idea, it's every one, every one of them is different. Every time you do one of these things, it's different, and it's scary.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- 42:26 – 49:40
CIA Spy Tells The Craziest Story About Crossing a Border
- MRMel Robbins
What was the scariest moment in your 30 years in the CIA?
- JMJonna Mendez
Uh, it was in, um- Latin America, down where the cartels were working, still are working. It's still all going on. I was down there doing some work at the embassy, and they said, "We'll pick you up in the morning." They put me in a hotel and they said, "We'll be here in the morning. We'll be here at, like, 9:03." I said, "Okay." They said, "We'll wait for two minutes and we'll leave. Uh, and, and, uh, if that doesn't work out, we'll, you know, we'll get in touch in the afternoon." So I was, I was out there, 9:03. I wasn't gonna be left behind. They said, "You have to be very, very careful in this country. It's dangerous here, just randomly dangerous because of drugs." Um, so I did the work in the embassy that I went down to do, and I went back to the hotel and I discovered, oh, I'm out of cigarettes. This is back when I used to smoke almost two at a time. I had to go get cigarettes, so I went out down the street, around the corner to a kiosk and got some cigarettes, and then I'm walking back to the hotel and I see there's a shortcut. This is stupid. So I took the shortcut, and I come around kind of a corner, and there's, like, 20 young, drunk local guys, armed. You could just smell the beer. And I, I look wrong. I look wrong. The women down there in that part of the world dress like a million bucks and red lipstick and I- they just look fabulous, and I was not looking fabulous. I, and I wasn't looking like them, and you could just see that. They all turned and they were like... And I figured later, I said, I, I think, I don't think they thought I was CIA. I bet they thought I was narcotics person, American narcotics down there checking on them. I really thought that they might shoot me. That's one of the few times that I just held my breath, and I'd had all this training, and my training said to me, "You cannot turn around and go back. You have to walk through these guys."
- MRMel Robbins
Really? Why walk through them?
- JMJonna Mendez
Because to turn around and go back would reaffirm that th- something was, something was wrong here. You just had to show confidence and keep going. So I did, and they kinda separated, and I walked through them. And then I had to keep going to get out of that alley, and I couldn't turn around and look at them. And I just, I, I just, I thought maybe, maybe someone's gonna shoot me, and they didn't. So I went in the lobby of the hotel and opened that package and got a cigarette. I couldn't even smoke it. I was just like this.
- MRMel Robbins
I'm sitting here thinking, like, I c- I am not built for this. Like, I'm holding my breath when you're telling the story about the Billy Joel tape. Like, I'm ev- I'm just sitting here listening, and I'm not even breathing. I recognize that I wasn't breathing as you were in the alley telling me the story. How do you... How did you learn to do that, and how can I and the person listening learn to tap into some bravery when life is scary or challenging?
- JMJonna Mendez
You know, I think it's preparation.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
I think it's, it's a confidence that comes out of thinking it through, knowing what you should do, knowing how to do what you should do, and then you kind of, in these kinds of moments, you kinda have to forget you, and you have to go through these motions. It's not bravery. It, this is, this is born out of experience and out of, um, training.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
We train for this stuff all the time. If you read my book, you'll say, "My God, were you ever not in training?" Because they trained us all the time. They put me through a hostile interrogation course at the CIA's farm. It was one of the worst things that ever happened to me in my life, and in the middle of it, I know it's just a training exercise. I mean, I know that I'm not gonna get hurt. I know that nobody's gonna let anything happen to me, but I was scared to death. I'm claustrophobic. So they, they put me in boxes. They put me in a box that I thought of as a mattress box, 'cause you could only go in sideways-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh
- JMJonna Mendez
... and you couldn't, you couldn't turn your shoulders. You could barely turn your head. And standing in there for some long time, and I thought, "Hmm, I don't think I... I mean, I know this is just a training course, but, and I was supposed to be learning something here, but I don't think I can do this any longer." And I remembered I learned something. I remembered that we had talked to some POWs from Vietnam, and the POWs had said, "We got through years of this stuff, and y- you get through it in your mind. You have to find y- your happy place. You have to build a car, re- rewire your engine, your whatever. You need a project."
- MRMel Robbins
Where did you go in your mind?
- JMJonna Mendez
That's the funniest thing. There's a, there's a place back in Kansas called the Flint Hills. It's a tall grass area. It's just beautiful. And I went there, and it was like I had on infrared goggles, so everything was green. And it was just gorgeous, and it was kinda moving, and I was just so happy. [laughs] And I did that. I didn't think that would ever work for me, but that's how I got through it.
- MRMel Robbins
Do you have any advice for how the person listening could find a place like that for themselves, like where their happy place to go to in their mind if their current reality is really scary or challenging?
- JMJonna Mendez
I think anybody could do that.
- MRMel Robbins
I-
- JMJonna Mendez
I don't think you have to be scared to death or, you know, in a really bad place. I think sometimes just the day-to-day You need an escape hatch, a place that gives you that kinda warm gr- rosy glow. We all have those places. I know at one point in that box, I thought, "Okay, we'll do, we'll do, we'll do a sandy beach, and there'll be some waves, and, uh, I'll be walking barefoot and the, and the sand will be really warm," so I'm... It didn't happen.
- MRMel Robbins
You couldn't go there.
- JMJonna Mendez
Couldn't go there. It didn't work.
- MRMel Robbins
Huh.
- JMJonna Mendez
But I tried.
- MRMel Robbins
How long were you in the box?
- JMJonna Mendez
I don't know. You, you... I was in that course for three days and three nights. And, and they, they fed us a half a cup of rice and a cup of water each day. We were imprisoned and learned, you know, wanna know what it's like to be really miserable? Well, here, we're gonna show you.
- 49:40 – 53:26
How To Tell If Someone Is Lying
- MRMel Robbins
What are verbal cues that someone is lying?
- JMJonna Mendez
Hmm, hmm. I think in general, people fall apart a little bit when they're lying. They get nervous because they know they're lying. They want you to believe it, so they're trying a little too hard.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
I think direct eye contact is one of the first things that kind of falls apart.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
I think watching their facial expression, the people who are bouncing around in their story, who are nervous, who are uneasy, who are trying to convince you of this thing, and who sometimes won't let it go, that's what I would look for.
- MRMel Robbins
I would imagine after 30 years in the CIA, you have a pretty keen intuition. How do you decipher those moments when it's your intuition warning you versus just anxiety and fear?
- JMJonna Mendez
Your intuition, I, for me, it, it kinda has a beginning and it sorta has an ending.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
When I have an intuition about something, I s- I stick with it. I follow it.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
I track it like it's a newspaper story, see if I was right-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- JMJonna Mendez
... especially if it's about people.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, w- what's interesting is if your intuition is kinda saying, "Do this" or, "Believe this," the fear and the questioning comes right after it. "But what if this happen?" Like, that, that's the fear and the anxiety that stops you from trusting it, but the direction that your instincts are telling you is pretty clear.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah. I think over time, over time you go through enough scenarios like that that you develop a trust in your intuition.
- MRMel Robbins
Here's the way that I think about it. So if I get, if I start having a feeling, if it's my deep intuition, it's a pretty clear statement. If it's fear or anxiety, there's a lot of questioning, or what if, or just noise this way.
- JMJonna Mendez
Scattered.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, it's like a statement. It pulls you, intuition does. And for me anyway, if the alarm that's going off is what if this, and what if that, and what if the other thing, I know that the questioning is more fear and anxiety, and if it is a very clear direction, move away, speak up-
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... that's intuition.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah. You're right.
- MRMel Robbins
You've given us a story that illustrates intuition versus fear. When you were in that alley, your fear told you to turn around and get out of there-
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... and your intuition said, "Walk."
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah. And I think it was right.
- MRMel Robbins
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- 53:26 – 54:35
How To Reinvent Yourself at Any Age
- MRMel Robbins
What did being in the CIA, especially as the Chief of Disguise, teach you about reinvention and ch- even just changing who you are-
- JMJonna Mendez
Hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... personally?
- JMJonna Mendez
It was just huge. When I was in school, when I was in college, I, I was introverted and, and, uh, quite the reader, and I really thought that my career and my life was gonna be spent, um, as a librarian or an English teacher, and that sounded good to me. I thought, "That'll be, that'll be an, an interesting place to park myself." That was the beginning, and, and then I couldn't, I could not have stepped further away from it unless I joined the circus and become an acrobat.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- JMJonna Mendez
You develop confidence in yourself. You develop confidence in your own ideas. You follow them, and there's no map. There's nothing saying you, you should end up here, you should end up there. You end up, I think, where you're supposed
- 54:35 – 59:21
What To Do When The Future Feels Scary
- JMJonna Mendez
to end up.
- MRMel Robbins
Jonna, given the fact that you were a leader at the CIA for almost 30 years, you have so many colleagues that were killed in the line of service, you have built friendship and allies with people that are citizens of other countries around the world, what are your thoughts on the state of things right now?
- JMJonna Mendez
I'm not sure that this planet is, is in a good place. Not politics, just this planet. And, and, and I, I worry about the next generation and what it is, um, they're gonna be facing.
- MRMel Robbins
In terms of the health of the planet and global warming and just-
- JMJonna Mendez
All of that
- MRMel Robbins
... the fact that we're not taking care of the planet?
- JMJonna Mendez
I think we've wrecked it, and I don't know how you fix a planet. I mean, I don't know.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, here's what I know. I know that if, uh, decades ago you could figure out how to use a pen to take a photo and then shrink it down to a pin prick-
- JMJonna Mendez
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
... and then create a lens the size of a grain of rice to be able to magnify that back up 800 times, if we were to put our attention on it, I would bet in human ingenuity and the imagination to figure it out.
- JMJonna Mendez
The ingenuity is there, and the imagination is there, but the will, the will is not there. As a matter of fact, the will is pushing things the other direction. It's cutting off what I used to think of as lifelines. We're not funding those lifelines anymore.
- MRMel Robbins
Um, I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed and scared and sad. What is one thing you would recommend that somebody do?
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, I'm thinking of, of them and of me. Take a breath is the first thing-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm
- JMJonna Mendez
... that's probably in order. Secondly is, um, taking small steps to fix what you can. Can't fix it all, but if enough people take small steps, you can fix big pieces of it.
- MRMel Robbins
What do you think the biggest threat that people aren't paying enough f- attention to is right now?
- JMJonna Mendez
There are so many. There are so many. It's the political tension. It's not just here. It's around the world, the nature of these states and what they're doing and how they're doing it, and an individual can't keep track of it. We used to rely on our government to keep track of it for us. We've lost that. There is nobody calling balls and strikes right now. Nobody, uh, cares about doing that. So I guess we have to call our own. So you have to pick the piece, probably pick your fight. What is it you wanna support?
- MRMel Robbins
One of the things that's interesting about listening to your story is I keep thinking about the knock on the Canadian ambassador's door and the relationships that it seems like we used to have and the allies that we prioritized. And both on a global scale and an individual scale, one of the things that I worry about, because I remember a time, I'm only 57, when there wasn't this divisiveness, there wasn't this othering. There was a lot more working together and collaborating even if we didn't see eye to eye, and I worry a lot that we have lost our ability to do that-
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... to me.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah. Now, I don't know how you get that back, but it'd be worth working on it.
- MRMel Robbins
I innately believe in the endless potential for change and in people's capacity to grow and learn from their mistakes and to become better versions of themselves. And whether you're thinking about it on an individual scale or you're thinking about it on a global scale, I still think as dark as things can feel, there is so much more light out there, and there is, there are more people that believe what you believe and that want what you want than not. I believe that the vast majority of people are good, and they want the best for themselves and their families and their neighbors, and that we all miss being able to work together to solve our problems because we can.
- JMJonna Mendez
That's a wonderful way of
- 59:21 – 1:03:05
How To Become More Courageous
- JMJonna Mendez
summing it up.
- MRMel Robbins
So if there's one skill, if you think back through your remarkable career at the CIA, that myself and the person who's listening really needs in order to navigate the world today, what is it?
- JMJonna Mendez
I think the idea of courage is misunderstood. I think a lot of people think that courage is something that you, that you walk around with, um, uh, that it's inherent in us, and I think it is not. I think courage comes from confidence. Confidence comes from knowledge, from knowing what you're doing, understanding how you can impact a thing. Um, I think that's the important... You don't just become courageous. You don't come around the corner and there's a bear. It's not like that at all. You know, you don't come around that corner at all. There could always be a bear waiting for you there, but courage is, um, is a lot more complicated than, than a lot of people think, but it's something that everyone can develop, everyone can have. If I can have courage, anyone can have courage.
- MRMel Robbins
How could the person who doesn't feel like they have a lot of courage, how could you start practicing that in your everyday life?
- JMJonna Mendez
You could start confronting things that are on your list, things that scare you. It, it might even be people. You might start having a conversation with someone that you weren't sure you could have that conversation with them. You, you, you have to approach it. You have to exercise it. You have to, um- You have to learn courage
- MRMel Robbins
There was a story near the end of the book that was really hard to read
- JMJonna Mendez
I'm describing, um, this operational base out in Afghanistan. At the end of my book, I was talking about women, I was kinda summing up about women in the workplace and, and how, how, what, what wonderful strides we, they have been making, and then I called out this, this operational base that the chief of the base was a CIA woman, the deputy was a woman. There were, like, six people there, and, um, and a car pulled in, and they were bringing in, um, um, a- an Afghan who, oh, they were so excited that they, they could bring him in because he was gonna tell them everything, and he got out of the car, and he opened his vest, and he was a human bomb, and he pulled the cord, and he blew everybody up, the women, the men. The chief of the base had three kids. The other woman had two. Blew them up, and I said, "Is this the definition that I- I've always talked about women working the same as men, living the same as men, having careers the same of men, as men. Is this the proof that now we're dying the same as men?" It's really sad.
- MRMel Robbins
It's really sad.
- JMJonna Mendez
Yeah, but it speaks volumes. There they were, two gals. They are now stars carved in the marble at the CIA.
- 1:03:05 – 1:05:33
It’s Never Too Late, Jonna’s Message at 81
- MRMel Robbins
Jonna Mendez, what are your parting words?
- JMJonna Mendez
I loved coming here and talking to you. [laughs] I, I liked very much having this conversation. You make me think through things that, some of them I know viscerally, but I don't talk about, maybe some things that I didn't really even know.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- JMJonna Mendez
So I've been learning while I've been talking to you. It's always a wonderful experience.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I've been learning as I've been talking to you.
- JMJonna Mendez
There you go. We're so smart.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs] We're smarter now.
- JMJonna Mendez
[laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
Um, I just wanna say, first of all, thank you for your decades of service.
- JMJonna Mendez
Thank you. Thank you for that.
- MRMel Robbins
And, um, thank you for coming and sharing stories and wisdom from your remarkable life, and I know, and I'm sure as you're listening, you know, that Jonna Mendez is far [laughs] from done, that whether you like it or not, there is another chapter to be written.
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, I kinda hope you're right. I'm ready for one. One, one, one, one final crescendo. My son is watching, and his girlfriend. They're like, "Mom, aren't you done with this yet?"
- MRMel Robbins
Well, you did work for the CIA, so I don't expect you to tell me everything.
- JMJonna Mendez
Well, this is, this is true. Um, some things have to remain undercover.
- MRMel Robbins
Jonna, you are a national treasure. [laughs] Oh, man, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for your service, and thank you for being here. And thank you. Thank you for spending this time with us. Wasn't she amazing? I loved every minute of it, and I loved being here together with you, and in case no one else tells you this today, as your friend, I wanna tell you that I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life, and I also believe in our ability to do what we can where we are to start to create a better world together. Alrighty, I'll see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. Alrighty, and thank you for watching all the way to the end here on YouTube, and thank you for sharing this episode with the people in your life. I know you wanna watch another episode, and you are gonna love this one. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.
Episode duration: 1:05:38
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Transcript of episode duWUa9Md_tU
