The Double Life Of A CIA Spy - Andrew Bustamante

1. 0:00 – 0:48

   Intro

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante0:00

      Presidential candidates on the campaign trail make all these promises that they know nothing about because they don't have the clearance to get a top secret SCI clearance. So, they're just promising what they're going to do against Iran and, "We're not going to take any more crap from, you know, people crossing the border," and, "There's no threat from the Middle East," whatever, whatever they're saying. They have no idea until they basically get to the last four people. The last four actually get an intelligence briefing. (whoosh)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:27

      For the people who aren't familiar with you and what you do, what's your background?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante0:31

      Yeah. Uh, I'm an ex-CIA, uh, covert intelligence officer. I spent seven years undercover and I left CIA to start a family, start a business, and that's what brings me to where I am today, teaching spy skills to people for, uh, for everything from business to personal life.

2. 0:48 – 4:48

   The Two Types of CIA Officers

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante0:48

   2. CWChris Williamson0:48

      What's a covert intelligence officer?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante0:51

      Yeah. So, people don't realize that CIA actually has two types of intelligence officers. So, CIA has overt, O-V-E-R-T, overt officers, and covert, C-O-V-E-R-T, covert officers. Overt officers make up about 90% of CIA. They're all the people who work for CIA. Their tax return says CIA, they go to their, you know, parties on Friday night and they say, "Hey, I work for the CIA." You know, they do disguise stuff, they do, uh, accounting, they do, uh, financial investigations. They do, you know, you name it, analysis. But then you have covert CIA. Covert officers are actually undercover. They, their IRS, uh, receipts, their tax does not say they work at CIA. None of their footprint says they work at CIA. CIA takes a great deal of effort to kind of erase them from the internet and make sure they don't have a footprint that is affiliated with CIA or Washington DC or the US federal government. So, uh, about 10% of all of CIA officers are covert, and that was, that was my 10%.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:56

      When it comes to a vector for infiltration, are those equally used? I'm going to guess the 90% must be significantly more visible, they must be the ones that are easier for some nasty foreign actor to try and get into?

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante2:10

      Yeah. You know, what's interesting is there's actually a third vector that we haven't even talked about, um, because inside the federal government, the softest underbelly is actually in what's known as private intelligence contractors. So, private intelligence contractors work for a different company altogether. They work for Raytheon or Booz Allen or CACI! and, but they actually work at CIA headquarters. So, that vector is the, uh, is the most susceptible vector for foreign intelligence because those are just commercial employees. Uh, those are, you know, they have a clearance but they don't necessarily make a career at CIA, and, uh, and your overt officers are very paranoid about being approached by foreign actors. Your covert officers are also highly paranoid about being approached by a foreigner. But in the middle, you've got this entire, this huge base of contractors that support everything from tech operations to covert action. Uh, and they're not paranoid about being approached because they're just normal everyday contractors and they're always looking for the next big contract that they can sign to.

   6. CWChris Williamson3:13

      What sort of tasks will the contractors do?

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante3:16

      They'll do everything that your staff will do with the exception of, uh, field collection, actual operational core collecting of intelligence in the field. Um, if you remember Blackwater or if you remember any of the private military contractors, I mean, oftentimes those contractors are called in to do some of the most harrowing, most dangerous work because it's very easy for the government to spend money and hire contractors to get them operational quickly. It's a much slower process to take a staff officer, train them in a new language, get all of the administrative paperwork signed to get them kind of transitioned to a different, uh, a different operation. So, there's a great need for the contracting base, but at the same time, there's been vulnerability in that base that we've identified.

   8. CWChris Williamson4:00

      Yeah. The, uh, ability to expedite bringing them on board, it also comes with a similar level of increased risk.

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante4:09

      Exactly right. Yeah, we talk a lot, in the, in the intelligence world, we talk about convenience and security. And convenience and security sit at opposite ends of a spectrum. The more secure you are, the less convenient life is. If you're... Um, I'm married to, uh... I love my wife. I'm married to a wonderful woman. She's also ex-CIA. But she wants to lock every door all the time. So, I get locked out of my own house. It's extremely secure, but it's just really inconvenient.

   10. CWChris Williamson4:36

       She might just be sick of you. She might just want a little bit of room for one afternoon, you know?

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante4:40

       And yeah, she just uses the security as a convenient excuse. She's, she's also a very smart, a smart girl. I didn't, I didn't say she wasn't.

   12. CWChris Williamson4:47

       Talk to me

3. 4:48 – 13:50

   Levels of Seniority in the CIA

   1. CWChris Williamson4:48

      about how the levels of seniority work within the CIA. I have a very low level understanding that you have the officers that are higher than the infantry that are higher than, you know, the lieut- How does it work when you get into CIA?

   2. ABAndrew Bustamante5:03

      Yeah. So, there's, there's definitely a hierarchy but the hierarchy is largely classified, so I don't want to get into how that works. But I can still give you a sense, right? So, everyone at CIA is, all of the staff CIA employees, your overt and your covert employees, they're all called officers. Your contract folks are called contractors, so we'll leave them out, right? But everybody else is an officer. There's tech officers, field officers, analytical officers. You know, there's open source officers. They're all called officers. But inside the ranks, there's different levels. So, it's kind of like if you're, if you're familiar with the US military or many militaries, uh, they'll categorize things based on a number, like an O1 or an E1, which means enlisted level one or officer level one. And you'll have E2 and E3 and et cetera, et cetera. And as you go up in rank, you go up in number. The CIA has something very similar, right? So, you could call it almost like a CIA1 or a CIA2. It, it defines everything from your authority to your pay grade. It speaks to your level of experience. Um, and as you do more operations and have more years in service, as you take on larger operations that have a larger budget, uh, you train in different categories, your kind of, your CIA level will go up. Uh, now-... the hierarchy is a hierarchy because there's not enough space at the top for everybody to become a level 15, right, or whatever it might be. So, what ends up happening is you naturally have a very large amount of, you know, first, second, and third tour officers, and then attrition or career progression just stalls, and then you end up having very few people who find their way into the senior ranks of whatever the senior number might be. Uh, ultimately to the place where you have a few internal officers who might become large-scale leaders, leaders of the Directorate of Operations, leaders of the Directorate of Intelligence, leaders of the Directorate of Science and Technology. Um, but there's only one person who can do that, right? So, many, many people either find their way out or are terminated at a lower level of th- with their career.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:11

      So, you go from this relatively clandestine, or at least, um, non-public, uh, degree of hierarchy, and then eventually you get to the top and you pop back out again, and you're now the director of some sort of operations, and perhaps you have to give press interviews, and you're now responsible for answering to questions from different people, and you get drawn into meetings and suchlike.

   4. ABAndrew Bustamante7:34

      Yeah. You're exactly right. You'll get drawn into meetings, and you might even speak to senators or congresspeople when you're still inside that, uh, that zone that nobody knows. Uh, so that might still happen. But you're, you're exactly correct. You'll, you'll disappear into the ether until 15, 20 years into your career, you pop out the other side, and now you are, you know, a reliable source for them to put on CNN or to defend the president's decisions in s- in Afghanistan or whatever else it might be.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:02

      I imagine that being in the position where you perhaps have to defend the president's decision to do something, even if secretly behind the scenes you didn't agree with it, but it is your patriotic and, uh, employment duty to ensure that the agency is still looked on in the right light, that it seems like a cohesive, well-oiled machine as opposed to one that's filled with discord and chaos and strife, I imagine that that must be a difficult pill to swallow for somebody that's probably incredibly conscientious, probably a little bit disagreeable, very, very smart, spent a long time doing this thing, he suggested a particular course of action, something else happened that wasn't his choice, and now he's gotta go on and actually defend it.

   6. ABAndrew Bustamante8:45

      Yeah. So, you're not wrong. For sure, there's a little bit of that. And then keep in mind, too, that the CIA reports directly to the executive office. Like, the president is the head of the CIA, not in terms of the director of CIA, but CIA doesn't, they don't go to Congress, they don't go to the, the Justice Department. They go to the president. They, they're there to serve at the behest of the president. Um, and the president changes every four years or eight years. It's been relatively frequent that we've changed every four years recently. So, it's almost guaranteed that throughout the course of your 30-year CIA career, half of the presidents that you serve, you're not gonna agree with. Um, and then to your point about, you know, becoming, and we are all very disagreeable people at CIA. We're not hired because we're agreeable. We're h- hired because we can keep our mouth shut when we need to, but we're all very, you know, fire-and-brimstone kind of, we believe in a cause and we're gonna execute on that cause, but we are still, you know, loyal and obedient to the hierarchy. Um, but those, what ends up happening is when you get to that senior level, uh, those that can kind of s- swallow the pill, bite their tongue and put on a smile for the public, they'll get more press attention than those who, who don't. And that's why you see, frankly, that's why you see so many anonymous CIA sources in the press, because everybody has an opinion, but they don't have the courage to put their name behind it.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:07

      Yes. That does make sense. I wonder how the agency feels about having somebody who hasn't gone through any of the training, who hasn't gone through the psychometric evaluation, who's had security clearance and has been, had the finger wagged at them that, "You need to not talk about this," but basically has none of the fundamental skills that you were recruited for, or the skills that have continued to be assessed as somebody has r- risen up through the ranks to get to some high-faluting position. It must be probably worrying, I would imagine, to know that your, the, the, the actions that you take within the agency, perhaps that would affect history, that would go down in the history books, that would make press headlines or would potentially put your officers in danger, are at the mercy of someone who wasn't selected by your agency, who was selected for completely different... Or when we think, here's an interesting thought experiment. When you consider the role of the president, yes, you think about commander-in-chief, but mostly you think about someone that's going to deal with political infighting and what's he gonna do about taxes and inflation and m- the rolling back of Roe versus Wade and blah, blah. You don't think about the military nous. And it definitely seems like, um, is it Tulsi Gabbard? She served, right? Uh, increasingly people who... Is it Tulsi? Or have I made that up?

   8. ABAndrew Bustamante11:33

      I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:34

      Okay. There's somebody, there's somebody in, uh, Congress that did s- spend a little bit of time serving. Dan Crenshaw would be another example, right?

   10. ABAndrew Bustamante11:40

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson11:40

       My-

   12. ABAndrew Bustamante11:40

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson11:41

       My point being that there are not massive amounts of people with military or intelligence experience that are rising up through the ranks, and yet that's a pretty important element of their job.

   14. ABAndrew Bustamante11:51

       Yeah. You know, one of the things that we often joke about, well, we, we joke, our jokes are different on the inside, obviously. We're not as funny as actual jokes. We're probably more like, you know, academic jokes. But still, one of the things we often comment on is how presidents on, presidential candidates on the campaign trail make all these promises that they know nothing about because they don't have the clearance to get a top secret SCI clearance, a Special Compartment In- uh, Information Clearance. So, they're just promising what they're gonna do against Iran, and, "We're not gonna take any more crap from, you know, people crossing the border," and, "There's no threat from the Middle East," and whatever, th- whatever they're saying, they have no idea until they basically get...... to the last four people. The last four actually get an intelligence briefing. They actually, you know, are proven to have the need to know so that they can start making reasonable promises or reasonable plans to the American people. So it's really interesting because, you know, w- the American public, even the, the, the two, the two, um, (smacks lips) the Democrats and the Republicans and as they go through their national conventions and as they hear all of their debates with eight to 12 candidates on each side, none of those candidates know what the hell they're talking about. They're just talking. They're, they're making whatever promise they truly believe will resonate with their constituency, not recognizing that their entire foreign policy promise might be underwritten. It's like it could be undermined the day they get that briefing. And what is difficult is that's why there's so much, so much frustration with the president on foreign policy because they don't change their campaign speech. They make their promises, they get their briefing, they keep their promise even if they know they can't fulfill it, they keep the promise, they keep saying the same promise, and then they get to the White House, and then they don't do what they promised. Because the truth is, once you're actually the executive, you have to do what's in the best interest of the nation. And the best interest of the nation isn't always the thing that got you elected to office. It's a tricky, it's a tricky game that they have to play.

4. 13:50 – 22:37

   Different Security Clearances

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante13:50

   2. CWChris Williamson13:50

      How much can you explain to me about the way that security clearance levels work? Because I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole a while ago and couldn't really work out... And then there's Q-level and the... Uh, tell me what you can about how that works.

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante14:04

      Yeah. So, it's a very complicated mess. So I'll tell you what I understand and, and fully recognize that there's a thousand people out there who are gonna disagree with me because they know something else, and that's totally cool with me. So, in large part, secret, secret clearance is the foundation of it all. It's the lowest level of clearance. Um, sometimes you'll see things as confidential or for official use only or, um, different, different other subcategories, but those categories aren't really a clearance. Like, you don't walk around with a, you know, for your eyes only level of clearance. You either walk around with no security clearance or you walk around with a secret level clearance. Secret level clearances are actually so common that there's something called a provisional secret, which means just by applying for a secret level clearance, you get a secret level clearance, and it's called a provisional secret clearance. And you have it until you're proven to be somebody that can't be trusted. So, once you have that, then all the other clearances stack on top of that. So the first most logical one is top secret. Top secret goes on top of secret, and top secret usually has to do with, uh, with an, an area or an element of, of sensitive information. There's definitions for all of them. Um, s- if... You can google them to find out the specific definitions for a level of clearance, right? I think secret is it could, could potentially do damage to national security. Top secret is could do grave damage to national security, right? And then, uh, uh, inside of your top secret, top secret becomes a bucket with multiple different verticals. Sometimes when I was in the military, there's, uh, a special compartmented information, SCI, TS/SCI, that has different categories. When I was in nuclear weapons with the military, those nuclear weapon specific categories were CAT VI and CAT XII. The other 10 categories related to different things, aircraft, mari- uh, nuclear submarines, uh, movements of troops, you know, tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, whatever it might be. Inside CIA, we have s- further subcategories that have to do with human intelligence. So, you might have a human intelligence security, uh, category that is specific to counter-narcotics or specific to counter-proliferation or specific to, uh, Russian operations inside of Russia, Russian operations outside of Russia. It gets super compartmentalized and the more, th- the deeper into the rabbit hole you go, the more you get that compartments, uh, compartmentalization. All of your... Like, I've also heard of Q-clearances. Q-clearances, I think are specific to the military. I think they have to do with, with the people who actually create codes that become the foundation for communication and for nuclear codes and nuclear launch sequences. Um, I'm very likely wrong, but I do know that a Q-code, a Q-clearance is a real clearance. It's not just from the X-Files.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:58

      Wow. And so, (clears throat) we kind of have the same thing again that we talked about, that almost hourglass shape with regards to, um, your level of public exposure also must happen here in that you start off with a very low, but incredibly broad type of clearance. You can see everything that is secret, that's not much in terms of the height, but that's everything in terms of the breadth.

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante17:19

      Right.

   6. CWChris Williamson17:19

      You get through top secret, and then you begin to compartmentalize and you have the different numbers or you have the different subcategories. But then presumably, the director and the president... The president has the most high level of clearance that's possible because he has to be able to see everything across all levels cl- of clearance. Now, I imagine that even the president must be compartmentalized against certain things that he doesn't need to know perhaps right now. Um...

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante17:42

      Yes, g- yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead, Chris.

   8. CWChris Williamson17:45

      Just that it's this same situation again, right? That you-

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante17:49

      Yeah, it's a-

   10. CWChris Williamson17:49

       ... compartmentalize in and then you broa- uh, broaden back out again.

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante17:52

       Yeah. You know, it's interesting, uh, when you, when you use that example, it's a very interesting example. Um, there are two things that kind of, that add context to it, right? The first is that the higher... The, the tighter the compartmentalization goes, the stricter the, um, archive and data management process becomes. So, you know, a secret piece of information might literally be written on a piece of paper and might just get handed from person to person with a little rubber stamp that says secret on it, and that's pretty much all the, all the positive control you have. And somebody might accidentally drop it in the trash can or light it on fire or, you know, whisk it away and give it to the Russians. Who knows? But when you're getting to those super compartmentalized pieces of information like you're talking about with the president, every piece of that...... data is archived, it's strictly monitored, there's, you know, backup against contingency, against secondary and tertiary monitoring so that if any of those pieces of information are ever leaked, they can be reverse-engineered to find out where the leak is. Because for example, we would never suspect the president of being the person who leaks information. I know there are some conspiracy theorists out there who suspect exactly that. But they, we, could actually, uh, track back the data points to see was it the president, was it the briefer? 'Cause every piece of information the president gets comes from a briefer. Was it the person who wrote the article that went into the, the President Daily Brief? 'Cause everybody, there's a human being who writes that. There's a human being who carries the President's Daily Brief to the Oval Office every day. That person just, that person could open that book and start flipping away pages and taking pictures on their, on their cell phone for all we know, right? So, all of that information is really heavily guarded and monitored so that they can reverse engineer and find out where the leak is, if a leak is ever identified.

   12. CWChris Williamson19:40

       Is this a combination of physical and digital security then? Because presumably the p- I know the President's Daily Briefing is this binder-type scenario that gets handed to him. That's something physical, right?

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante19:50

       Correct.

   14. CWChris Williamson19:50

       Those are pieces of paper with words printed on them.

   15. ABAndrew Bustamante19:54

       Correct.

   16. CWChris Williamson19:54

       Going further back from that, there will be different types of encryption, there will be tracking on the encryption, there will be ways to work out, has this... I'm gonna guess that it maybe tied in with the NSA or something. You may even be able to have a way to search for, uh, like plagiarism at university. Uh, does this appear on the web anywhere, web scraping to see if something matches, something that was in the Daily Briefing? "Okay, where's this come from?" So there must be a, a very complex, um, combination of security protocols going on here.

   17. ABAndrew Bustamante20:22

       Yeah, for sure. And I don't think any of us are really... Again, when it comes to level of clearance, there's no need to know. I had no need to know how they protect the President's Daily Brief. But somebody out there does have that need to know, and that person would know exactly how it's protected. Um, but you are correct in, in your assessment that there's both a mix of digital and physical securities. On the physical side, we call it positive control. Positive control means you don't only have one person in control of something, you actually have two people in control of something. So, if you or I are carrying a briefcase with something sensitive in it, positive control does not mean you have the briefcase. Positive control means you and I together have the briefcase. Maybe you're the one that has it in your hands, but I'm right beside you at all times. Maybe I'm the one that has it in my hands, but you're right beside me at all times. So at the end of the day, two people can vouch for every step that that document or that that code may have taken. That's positive control on the physical side. And then you've got all the digital controls because your clearance and your role, uh, dictate what you actually have access to within a digital system. It's not that different from corporate America. You can't be a salesperson and log in to the accounting side of the software. You can't be an accountant and log in to the sales customer management tool. So there's, there's digital and physical elements that go into protecting everything from the documents, uh, all the way to, you know, who the primary top 10 terrorist targets are that are gonna get neutralized this week.

   18. CWChris Williamson21:48

       I'm gonna guess as well that makes any infiltration or turning of assets going to be much harder because you don't just need to get the one person, you need to get the second person too.

   19. ABAndrew Bustamante21:56

       Correct, yeah. Everything's there because when we talk about, you know, positive control and physical security, what we're really protecting against is, it's, it's espionage. We're protecting against an internal insider threat, uh, a mole, uh, an officer that gets turned over. We've seen that and we've seen how devastating it can be. Uh, so now, you know, everything we're doing is excessive security, again, on the security and convenience, very secure, not very convenient. It can seem archaic that in the modern day you're still carrying around a printed binder, right? Remember when, uh, when, uh, President Obama insisted on having a PalmPilot that got, that had security on it? Um, there's just, there's really funny stuff that we just never think of.

5. 22:37 – 31:55

   What is the Nuclear Football?

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante22:37

   2. CWChris Williamson22:37

      Talking about something that's with the president at all times, you were in charge of a lot of nuclear weapons, inter ballistic, intercontinental ballistic missiles and stuff. What can you tell us about the nuclear football, the president's briefcase thing? What do you know about that?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante22:52

      Yeah, you know, that's another one of those areas that we don't... It's kind of a mystery in a lot of ways. But what we do know for sure is that inside the football is a, is a code, a code that authenticates that it is in fact a code that was dictated by the president. And it's really hard. Let me see. There's a... The way that the codes are carried, I've got, this is just a small piece of cardboard from my, for my desk, right? The cards are actually, um, pla- cardboard like this. They're pretty thick, and they're encased in plastic. So if you've ever had like a glow stick that you party at a rave with, right? You know how you have to crack the plastic and then shake it up to get the, the glow? So inside the k- the suitcase is a piece of plastic that's opaque wrapped around a card. And on the card will be 6, 10, 12 code, the digits, the alphanumerics that show that it's an authentic code. So the president would have to open the case, take this out with somebody, with whoever's holding the case for positive control, the president would crack the plastic, take off the two sides of plastic, and then actually have the authentication code in front of him. And then he would have to dial that into the briefcase, which would send the signal, uh, nationwide to multiple intercontinen- intercontinental ballistic missile bases, as well as the standing nuclear forces that exist with the naval arsenal and the air arsenal all simultaneously. Um, again, it can seem archaic that it's all in a physical card inside of a briefcase, but that is the only way we can make sure that nobody can pretend or artificially hack into the system and trigger a nuclear response.

   4. CWChris Williamson24:29

      Am I right in thinking that there's some sort of machine in there as well with something that you would turn, or is that just in the movies? Two keys that you turn, "Mr. President, can you please make sure..." and then press the button?

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante24:39

      That doesn't exist in the suitcase, the, uh, the briefcase. The briefcase is there just to send a signal. It's a one-way transmitter, right? He puts in the code, it transmits it out. The keys, the two keys that you're talking about, those actually exist with the nuclear officers who are sitting underground in charge of launching the nuclear missiles themselves. So, if you continue the same story, after the code puts in the authentication ... After the president puts in the authentication code, that authentication code is then digitally sent via something known as an emergency action message, an EAM, and it hits all the nuclear bases in the US simultaneously. Red lights go off in every bunker, every, every-

   6. CWChris Williamson25:18

      Even, even if you're not one of the, uh, bases that would need to be able to fire? Oh, God. So does that mean that some alarm's going to go off, and you don't know if your particular base is the one that's going to have to press the, to turn the keys and press the button? That is making all hell break loose for, I don't know, 300 operatives across the US or something.

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante25:40

      Yeah. So, and, w- I, we can expand on this too, because you're exactly, you have it exactly right. 300 people, there are, there's, uh, there's ... Each base has, uh, 10 silos. Each silo has two officers, and each officer is in charge of approximately 10 warheads. So, whatever that comes out to, uh-

   8. CWChris Williamson25:58

      Lots.

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante25:59

      Yeah, lots, right? 250, 300 or so individuals will have this red light go off, and they'll pull up on their screen a, a code, 10, 12, 15 alphanumeric digits. They'll type in their code. The screen will say, "This is an authentic code." And then they'll follow a checklist that says, "You have to turn your keys." And eventually, they'll s- they'll go through the whole process of check, check, check, check, check, take off your key, insert it, count down three, two, one. And then the person on the left will turn at the same time as the person on the right, who turns. But here's the thing, nobody knows if their missiles are the missiles who are going to launch, because the code tells the system which missiles are going to which target. The actual operators themselves have no idea.

   10. CWChris Williamson26:46

       No way. So this is-

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante26:47

       So I might have, I might have my missiles might be aiming at some place in the Middle East, and the guy, uh, you know, the next base over, some of his missiles are aiming at whatever, Asia. We're all turning, but the code is what tells the system which ones to actually launch.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:02

       That's like a nuclear game of Russian roulette.

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante27:05

       (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson27:06

       You just don't know which one ... But presumably, if you guys are on site, uh, how close are the nukes to the guys in the bunker?

   15. ABAndrew Bustamante27:13

       Pretty far actually. S- yeah-

   16. CWChris Williamson27:15

       Oh, so you wouldn't hear a rumbling, a distant rumbling or anything like that?

   17. ABAndrew Bustamante27:18

       S- if, if you're, if you happen to be the one launching, and you happen to be launching from the closest launch bay, you might hear the rumbling. You might also hear the rumbling from somebody else who turned the key and actually had it, but their missile is closer to you than your own missile.

   18. CWChris Williamson27:31

       Ah, I understand.

   19. ABAndrew Bustamante27:32

       See? So, it's-

   20. CWChris Williamson27:33

       Yes. Yeah, yeah. I just ... That would be the, uh, foolproof way of turning the key, "Is it me?"

   21. ABAndrew Bustamante27:38

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson27:38

       "No, it's not. I don't, I don't need to worry. It's not me."

   23. ABAndrew Bustamante27:40

       Yeah. It's interesting. So, uh, the reason we do it that way in the United States, to get exactly to your point, and I know you're, you're kind of joking about it, but the seriousness is, we don't know ... The last thing you want is to have a conscientious objector at the moment where you need to launch a nuclear weapon. So, the way that they kind of keep the human safety element, instead of making it something that could be hacked, the way they keep the element of having it be human-based, but prevent against the conscientious objector, is they make it so that everybody has to turn, you know, every time. And then the system determines whether or not the targeted, uh, who the target is. Now, to further add to that chaos, we get those emergency action messages about every 45 minutes. So, they're not ... Like, on a, on a shift of 8 or 12 hours, you're not sitting there quiet for 12 hours. Once every hour, you're getting an EAM, a red light, a siren that goes off that comes in and it gives you a code. You pull out a checklist, you go through everything, you find out whether it's an authenticated code or not, and then you do whatever the authenticated code tells you to do. It's a constant drill, because-

   24. CWChris Williamson28:48

       Oh. Oh, no way. So-

   25. ABAndrew Bustamante28:51

       So you never know ...

   26. CWChris Williamson28:53

       So they are constantly sending you decoy codes to put into the system (laughs) . Oh my God.

   27. ABAndrew Bustamante29:00

       It's a, it's a very, very hard job. And for anybody out there who's listening who's ever been a nuclear missile officer, or who plans to be a nuclear missile officer, or who currently is, I understand the pain that you go through. The world doesn't know that they're, their pain, but I understand their pain, and I appreciate their pain. And the whole world does too, we just don't know it yet.

   28. CWChris Williamson29:21

       There was that story I learned about the, uh, Russian operative who decided not to turn his key, even though he'd had the instructions passed down. And I suppose that's the conscientious objector situation you were talking about.

   29. ABAndrew Bustamante29:37

       Yeah. It's funny, there, there's a, there's a significant difference between how the United States structures their nuclear, uh, professionals and how Russia structures their nuclear professionals. So, in the United States, we don't really have a say. Here's the other thing that's kind of crazy, right? If you're in one silo with your partner, Chris, and I'm in a different silo with my partner, if me and my partner, like, high-five each other and we're saying, "Nope, we're not turning any keys. We're done. We're not playing this game. It doesn't matter." If you turn your keys, our missiles will still launch, because the system controls everything. It's just looking for one authenticated pair out of the hundreds of pairs that are out there. It only needs one, and then they're gone.

   30. CWChris Williamson30:14

       So, even though it's not the base that your missiles are aiming at, and the code is actually for another set of missiles, because you in your particular silo turn the keys, that sends the network a signal. Oh, so this is distributed as hell. You have-
6. 31:55 – 45:45

   Andrew’s Thoughts on Edward Snowden

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante31:55

   2. CWChris Williamson31:55

      Speaking of Putin, Edward Snowden just got given Russian citizenship.

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante32:00

      Congratulations. Congratulations, Snowden. I'm sure that you've worked long and hard for that. (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson32:05

      What do you think? What's, what's your thoughts there?

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante32:08

      Yeah, so I feel like there's a lot of... I understand the debate out there about whether or not Snowden's decision was good for America or bad for America, whether it was legal or illegal, whether he's a criminal or a hero, but there's also a certain element that you are who your friends are. And right now, Russia just granted him citizenship, which shows that he is, he is serving the Russian interests. You don't give citizenship to somebody who isn't serving your own national interests. So we know for sure that Snowden is serving the Russian interests. Now, does that mean that, that Russian interests were to give away all of his insight at NSA? Maybe. Or are Russian interests simply to create, uh, ongoing frustration in the Ukraine-Russia co- front crisis right now by making a, a very public figure now a hero of the Russian people? Maybe. But regardless, what we have here is we have an American citizen who, whether he intended to or not, he is now, you know, a representation of, of the greatness of Russia, uh, and, and he himself continues to be this controversial character for the United States itself. And I'll go one step further to say, Chris, that, that what Snowden did by, by whistleblowing on the, the Patriot Act and the collection against US citizens, what he did there is largely without question. There's, there's not many people in the intelligence community who criticize him for that specific act. It's the fact that he stole a bunch of other compartmented secrets that had nothing to do with that, and he kept those as like a just-in-case insurance policy, and then he also compromised those secrets that had nothing to do with collection. Again-

   6. CWChris Williamson33:55

      What were, what were those? What were the second sets that he stole?

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante33:58

      So a lot of those remain classified, but those were, it was, uh, secret, it was missions and operations that we were doing outside of the realm of counter-terrorism collection within the United States. And the, the fact that he, um, stole those and downloaded those and carried them on a thumb drive and, and continued to use those as chips. If you go back and you look at Snowden's history, he moved from place to place, from, uh, Hong Kong to Ecuador to Russia, and every time, he just gave a little bit more, right? He kind of bought his next, he bought his next airplane ticket, if you will, with a new secret. And that's the piece that makes people so upset. That's what is technically makes, makes him a wanted man in the United States. Not that he whistleblow on a, on a program that was later determined to be illegal, but that he took this insurance policy with him that actually made him, uh, uh, you know, in violation of the Espionage Act.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:49

      And presumably, maybe the agency knows what he has. But also, I guess, maybe not, depending on the ability to track what he pulls off on a thumb drive. Maybe the digital security would be sufficient to know what it is.

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante35:05

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson35:05

       But he could have given back 10% and still have 90%.

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante35:09

       Correct. And nobody knows what he's given, but they do know what he's taken. And then it's, to your point, it's the, it's the, it's the digital, the digital piece. He only had access to certain programs, according to his clearance and according to his, you know, rights. He only had download rights to certain programs. So we, you know, that's, that's something that the NSA gets to deal with on their own to decide exactly what those programs were and what the damage was. Um, but nobody, nobody who is in, who is satisfied with solely being a whistleblower takes the extra just in case. Nobody else, you know, premeditates how they're going to continue to flee custody when they think they're doing the right thing, and, and I think that's the piece that gets overlooked oftentimes, because everybody focuses on the program to collect under the Patriot Act. Nobody thinks about the secondary and tertiary programs that he also took, um, to help pay his way to protection for the last decade.

   12. CWChris Williamson36:07

       I guess he foresaw the incoming shit storm that he was gonna have to deal with, and this was his... Yeah, I suppose that that turns the situation... I, I hadn't heard about this before, but it, it changes the situation from being a single, noble patriot who is doing his duty for the country to someone that, that feels a little bit more selfish. It feels a little bit more like he has an agenda, he's looking out for himself. And I, I understand the motivation. We're all looking to preserve our own life and freedom and liberty, and who am I say that I wouldn't do the same thing in his situation as well? But-... I would agree. I didn't know about that, but I think that you're right. Had he have been the completely selfless actor doing something to call the powerful to account, maybe he would have got Epsteined, maybe not, but he wouldn't be the same type of, um, uh, distasteful actor I think that he's seen now.

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante37:12

       Yeah, and it's very interesting because it, it just shows how, you know, the lens of history, especially in the world of espionage, the lens of history is short. It's, uh, it's, it, we remember the big things and we forget the small things. And in the first w- weeks and months and the first two or three big moves that Snowden made, uh, it, all of this was very public knowledge. It was very publicly, you know, we were all publicly aware that he stole the, the, you know, this specific program and others. But then over time, the "and others" became something nobody talked about. And then now, there's this, you know, huge movement about, you know, Snowden is a hero because he, you know, the, the court system later found that this one program was in fact illegal. Nobody doubt, nobody debates that, right? I, even I don't debate that. I just, I've always said, "He did the right thing the wrong way." And I know I'll get criticized saying that that's a cop-out answer, but I don't know of a better answer than that. You don't end up a Russian citizen by doing the right thing the right way. You end up a Russian citizen by doing something, something wrong along the way.

   14. CWChris Williamson38:20

       How much do you think Russia could have given him citizenship to get access to some of the information that he's got? And if he was to start to reveal the stuff that he hasn't yet rescinded, does that... I mean, he's already quite a high public enemy or at least a private enemy, uh, an agency enemy, I suppose. That would, I'm going to guess, make him even more of a, a concern, even more of a worry.

   15. ABAndrew Bustamante38:46

       Yeah, what's hard now is, um, Snowden has always, he's always been seen by the American government as a fugitive. But now, he runs the risk of becoming a combatant because now that he's a Russian citizen, if he participates in some sort of, uh, cyber warfare or digital warfare, or if he as- if he assists their intelligence services operating against American citizens, now he's become a com- a, a, a foreign actor. Now he's become, uh, a combatant in a large-scale conflict that's actively happening in Europe. That, to me, the fact that he was granted citizenship so close to the mobilization of 300 troops, so close to the threat of nuclear, uh, retaliation out of Russia against Ukraine, you know, on the heels, uh, or, or on the, the, the, the front toe tips of, of an- a midterm election in the United States, this is very much an information warfare kind of move. It's not that he gave something new, it's not that he did something new. Maybe they've been looking at granting him citizenship for months, they were just waiting for the right time. But the danger that he has now is he goes from being an exiled fugitive to potentially being an actual target because it's har-, you know, I, it depends on whether or not the, he rescinded his American citizenship or if he retains his American citizenship. But we know that terrorists who were also American citizens became targets for kinetic strikes. If, if he steps into that combative role or that combatant role, he may very well end up on the same list.

   16. CWChris Williamson40:18

       How do you think the agencies who his evidence or his, um, confidential material relates to will have reacted? Presumably when he took this stuff, a lot of, maybe it's about people that are in the fields that they will have had covers changed or maybe been pulled from the field or whatever. And I mean, when did he, when did this happen? 10 years ago now? Maybe more?

   17. ABAndrew Bustamante40:42

       Yeah, I think it was more. I don't, I don't know the specific year even. But, uh, but what I would imagine, and this is me being very honest, I'm, I'm guessing that most professionals, most intel professionals at this point in time, they just laugh when they hear the name Snowden. He's not a serious threat anymore. He's, uh, the first reaction is probably laughter, people scoffing and laughing at this guy who did everything wrong. Even though he did change the program, like the court system, the, the whistleblowing that he did actually changed the direction of American policy, he's not seen as a hero in any kind of professional circle because of the way he did it. So, the first reaction is laughter. And then shortly on the heels of that laughter, if there's somebody in the group who's kind of more somber, the next feeling that we have is pity because the guy's outcasted. He's never gonna have, he's never gonna live the American dream. He's never going to be welcomed back in the United States. He's, he's al- he's gonna... If you've ever been to Russia, have you, have you dealt with a Russian person?

   18. CWChris Williamson41:42

       Uh, Lex Fridman and Michael Malice, but I don't think that either of them are representative of all Russians.

   19. ABAndrew Bustamante41:48

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson41:48

       Or maybe they are, maybe they are.

   21. ABAndrew Bustamante41:50

       So, when Lex is in serious mode, he's relatively, he's, he's pretty true to form. But Russian people are very stoic. They're very cold and distant. They're not warm. Uh, they're not, like, friendly or polite or hospitable. Like, not at first glance at least. So, that's his l- that's his culture now for the rest of his life. He's, he's... There's no, you know, getting drunk in vodka is great, but it's not like he's gonna be going to margarita nights and nobody's gonna be bringing over homemade guacamole and there's not gonna be, you know, the, the ball game, um, tailgate that he's gonna be invited to anymore. So he's gotta... It's kind of sad. He's missing out on all the best parts of America, even though he at some point did what he believed was in the best interest of America. And that's, that's kind of something that's sad when you consider it.

   22. CWChris Williamson42:38

       Presumably, all of the stuff that he had evidence that related to has now, uh, access codes and maybe even the way that the NSA works in terms of hierarchy, how information moves around, I guess that that very quickly just got retroactively and proactively changed so that all the information that he had was basically useless. So, that does make me think that...... the Russian citizenship in exchange for him giving hi- them information kind of becomes a moot point, because you have to-

   23. ABAndrew Bustamante43:08

       Right.

   24. CWChris Williamson43:08

       ... be pretty thick to, to believe that the US wouldn't have changed things in ord- in order to basically compartmentalize all of that information to now be, um, obsolete.

   25. ABAndrew Bustamante43:17

       So, yeah. And to go a step further than that, it's, you know, let's ... And I, I apologize in advance if I'm boring anybody with this level of detail, right? But when you give somebody access to a, an NSA program, it's not like you're giving them, you know, a PDF two-page write-up about, "Oh, we have a program that collects on ... you name it ... Iranian, uh, generals, you know, traveling to Yemen," who knows? You don't give them, like ... You know, you don't even give them a 30-page PDF. You're actually giving them the source code. You're giving them the specific, uh, ports of entry, the, the, the file and, uh, and data infrastructure of how we built it. So, if you can imagine giving someone the blueprints to a house, yes, they get to see the house. Yes, they get to see how the house is built. Yes, they know where all of the doors and entrances and all of the, the vents are. But they also know how you build a house. They know exactly what your measurements are. They know exactly what the fl- you know, what kind of wood you use. They have all those details. So if you could, you know, apply that to the world of, of, uh, cyber technology, if you could apply that to the world of, of offensive cyber warfare, now with the source code that NSA actually uses to create a program, you know, the Russians, the Chinese, the, the, any, the Cubans can reverse engineer exactly how we create a program, exactly how we create a Trojan horse or, or a false flag or whatever else that might be. So when NSA has to fix that, they don't fix that quickly. That's not the kind of thing that, like, we very quickly and efficiently and rapidly ch- change everything. You're talking about, we know that, that because they understand the blueprint, they're going to be able to break into five or seven other programs that they've been targeting anyways. So we have to go through this huge transformation to change the way that we build programs.

   26. CWChris Williamson45:09

       Wow. So the downstream implications of him getting that information and taking it off-site is huge in terms of the workload?

   27. ABAndrew Bustamante45:17

       Correct. It's not just a ... You know, it's not like somebody takes your, the cipher code to your front door lock and you change it from one, two, three, four to four, three, two, one, and now you're safe again. It's more like they understand every nook and cranny about your house. They know which windows are th- are single-plated glass and which door jams are loose and they know that ... They know everything. So you've got to basically have to m- leave that house, sell it to somebody else, and go to a whole new house. And that doesn't happen quickly.

7. 45:45 – 50:10

   What Skills do the CIA Look For?

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante45:45

   2. CWChris Williamson45:45

      Going back to the CIA, what sort of recruits do they ... Or what sort of, um, talents, traits, uh, skill sets are they looking for in the role that you had particularly?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante45:58

      Yeah, there's ... You know, it's interesting. I get this question fairly frequently because, you know, we like to think that CIA officers are kind of homogeneous, that they all have certain core character traits in common. And you're not wrong. A, a high tolerance for risk, a thirst for adventure, uh, a certain level of, of extrovertedness, you know, curiosity, uh, natural memory, whether it's short term or long term. There are certain skills that are relevant to, you know, a field officer or a, a national clandestine officer or a core collector, whatever you might want to call them. But then far more than that are these nuanced, very nuanced skills, because CIA is ... CIA knows that at any given time anybody could be a spy, right? You could get tapped on the shoulder tomorrow, Chris, and you could go through the camp, you could go through the farm, go through the training pipeline and come out a spy, and you'd probably be very good at it. Most people would probably be very good at it. The only question is who they give that training to. So the reason it's hard to get the training isn't because it's hard for people to learn it, it's because CIA is looking for very specific, uh, skills at a specific time. So right now, if you speak Chinese or if you understand the nuances between Thailand and China or Taiwan and China, if you speak Ukrainian or if you speak Russian or if you speak, uh, Belarush- Belarusian, if you s- if you are familiar with that area, you're going to be in high demand right now. If you know anything about nuclear weapons, you're going to be in very high demand right now. If you understand Iranian drones or drone technology or if you have a f- a way of traveling to and from Iran safely, you're going to be in high demand right now. Y- two, two years ago, we were very interested in what was happening in Africa. So maybe if you spoke Yemeni, you'd be interesting. Maybe if you spoke Libyan, right, you'd be in- Or if you had Arabic that was, that was relevant in Yemen or Arabic that was re- relevant in, uh, in Libya or in Syria, then you'd be, uh, of interest. Now, those same people aren't of interest. So it's, it's like a ... It's the, it's the flavors that get you recruited. The core skills are actually not that hard to find in people.

   4. CWChris Williamson48:07

      Interesting. I've heard you say that your profile and your wife's profile are kind of different, in fact, maybe polar opposites. So yeah, there has to be some core competencies or core elements that make you both usable. But then also you have these different flavors, and presumably you then get siphoned into different roles based on those.

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante48:27

      Yeah. Exactly right. And, uh, you know, my, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm more extroverted, so I was better suited to go out in the field. My wife is very, very introverted. She was perfect for, uh, doing deep research. Um, my wi- But the places where we're both very similar is we're both extremely loyal. The agency is able to test for your loyalty. We're both extre-

   6. CWChris Williamson48:45

      How do they, how do they test for loyalty?

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante48:47

      Yeah. So they, they do a lot of, uh, psychological evaluation, they do a lot of testing of how your, how your, how your brain handles cognitive information. So you go through a significant amount of psychological testing, and then you also go through a direct interview with a psychologist themselves.... so they can actually measure your, your, uh, threshold for where you would withhold information from somebody who you are, uh, subordinate to. And they can also measure how comfortable you are in a subordinate position. So, there are some people who don't like bosses at all. I have a problem with authority. But I don't have a problem with authority that I believe in. So, if I think that I have a good boss or a good manager, man, I am super loyal to that person. If I think my manager's a dipshit, I'm gonna do everything in my power to undermine them, right? But that's a, that's a nuance that in the corporate world nobody likes, right? In the corporate world we're like, "Oh, that's not really, that's not really professional." But when it comes to who are you gonna give secrets to, the person who's loyal to a cause that they believe in, all of a sudden you're very willing to take a gamble on that person. Whereas the person who, you know, they always think they're right and they never wanna believe anybody's better than them, that's not gonna make a good officer. So, my wife and I are both very subservient to the person that ... to the authority that we decide to subvert ourselves to. And some people are like that, and other

8. 50:10 – 54:24

   Would Lex Fridman Make a Good Agent?

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante50:10

      people are not.

   2. CWChris Williamson50:11

      Is there anyone well-known that you think would make a good intelligence agent? Obviously they would have to start again and, and not be famous, but would you have Lex as a, an agent?

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante50:22

      Yeah, so it's interesting. There ... You know, I have come across a number of people who I would say would make good intelligence officers. So, Lex is awesome. I really enjoyed talking to Lex. Uh, I do think there would be a good spot for Lex in the intelligence world. I don't know that it would be in field operations. Only because Lex really believes in the goodness of people. When you believe in-

   4. CWChris Williamson50:44

      What a flaw.

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante50:45

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson50:45

      What a, what, what, what a flaw.

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante50:47

      When you believe in the goodness of people, you can't be out there lying to people's faces. It doesn't work, right? Like, you, you have to see people as tools, as commodities, as ones and zeros. Like, you have to take a very cold, hard stance to all people if you're gonna go out there and steal information from them, lie to them, and trick them into false relationships. That's essentially what a spy does. And then you get that person to exchange information for liquor or booze or women or money, or whatever else it might be, right? That's not a job for somebody who really believes in the goodness of people. But you know, on the, as an analyst, taking information and being, being able to make sense out of, out of disparate, conflicting information and coming to a meaningful, probabilistically relevant conclusion? I mean, that's what Lex does all day long with robotics and with mathematics, right? Not to mention what value he could bring in the world of technology, in the technol- in the science and tech part of CIA. He could be the guy that creates the next SR-71. So there's, that's what I'm saying. There's a space for everybody at CIA. We don't realize it. We're all much closer than we really think. It's just a matter of, of the psychological evaluation and then of course being, being identified, being seen, being discovered. That's the hardest part.

   8. CWChris Williamson52:04

      Who else did you meet that you've looked at and thought, "You, you should really consider doing a little change of career here"?

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante52:12

      (laughs) Um, I'm trying to think of who else I would know that other people would know too. So when I look at celebrities, right? Dennis Rodman would not make a good spy.

   10. CWChris Williamson52:24

       (laughs)

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante52:25

       He just ... It'd be really, really hard to put that guy in disguise. It'd be really hard. Between the piercings and the tattoos, and it's hard to make that guy not look like Dennis Rodman.

   12. CWChris Williamson52:35

       And the six foot eight or whatever he is as well.

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante52:37

       Yeah. That's, that's tough, right? Um, but then you have folks like Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is like your perfect spy. Like, not only is the guy a great actor, but he is incredibly forgettable. He's just a forgettable white guy. Even as I say Tom Hanks, people might have a picture of one character in their brain, probably the guy from Forrest Gump. Does that guy look like a threat? Nope. If Daniel Craig walked into a room, would you notice him right away? Fuck, yes you would notice him right away. You'd either be jealous of his good looks, or you'd be excited by his good looks, or you'd be immediately intimidated by his gigantic frame. That guy's not gonna be a good spy, right? Same thing with Pierce Brosnan. Like, most of the guys out there who would, who are playing spies would not actually make good spies. Um, it's not until you get to, like, like Black Widow in Marvel Universe. She's ... You ... Everybody-

   14. CWChris Williamson53:26

       Way too hot.

   15. ABAndrew Bustamante53:27

       ... is gonna notice that girl.

   16. CWChris Williamson53:27

       Stop it. Yeah.

   17. ABAndrew Bustamante53:29

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson53:30

       So you have ... You'll be familiar with something called the halo effect, or pretty privilege basically, that good-looking people seem to have better outcomes as they go through life. But not if you want to be a covert infield intelligence officer.

   19. ABAndrew Bustamante53:43

       Correct, yeah. If you were to actually walk through the hallways of CIA, you would be severely disappointed by the lack of attractive people.

   20. CWChris Williamson53:51

       (laughs)

   21. ABAndrew Bustamante53:52

       I'm just throwing it out there. Like, whether you think I'm good-looking or not, uh, it's kind of irrelevant. I know objectively I am not a good-looking guy in American culture. I know objectively I'm not even a good-looking guy in foreign cultures, because I'm the ambiguously brown guy that nobody remembers. It's, it's ... It was a curse in high school. It was a blessing for my career, right? There's a power to ugly. So call it whatever. Call it the corona effect, right? The opposite of the halo effect. When all things go dark, there's a benefit there too.

9. 54:24 – 1:03:50

   The Reality of Cover Legends

   1. ABAndrew Bustamante54:24

   2. CWChris Williamson54:24

      Talk to me about cover legends, uh, what they are, who comes up with it, and stuff like that.

   3. ABAndrew Bustamante54:30

      So, uh, cover legends come, they come a couple different ways. So some cover is assigned, like no shit. It's a very true story. My first day at CIA, I walked into the briefing room. I was given an envelope. Inside my envelope was a strip of paper, and on that strip of paper was my new name. That is exactly how it works. It's super cool sounding, but the name was the worst possible name you could ever imagine. Think of like a name like Herbert Milkovich or something like that, right? Like, it was a horrible name. And that was basically the case for all of us. We open our little thing, because they're not just American names. Some of us get foreign names. Some of us get names we can't even pronounce.... right? And you get these names and you're like, "This is my new CIA name and this is how everybody's gonna refer to me from now on." Like Andrew Bustamante was not the name. It was, it was some crazy ... I felt like I was a white guy out of a Western movie, uh, from somewhere in, like, New Mexico. That was my name. You just put, put together the worst Caucasian names you can imagine, and that was mine. So, that's one way that cover legends are created. They hand it to you. Another way is they, they tell you what you're going to be doing, and then they ask you to create your own legend and then communicate it to the people who actually create your alias documents, your alias documentation. We call them alias docs. So, in that case, they might say, "Hey, we need you to go to," whatever. "You're gonna be in Pakistan. You're gonna be, uh, in the mountains for three months. You come up with why you're there and how it works." Now, it's not gonna make, it doesn't make a lot of sense for you to be like, "I'm a famous mountain climber and I'm there on behalf of National Geographic," and that's not, that's, that's gonna draw attention to you. So, you've got to come up with something obscure like, "Oh, I'm a rock scientist looking for, you know, a specific type of mineral that only exists in this one rock chain." Nobody is gonna remember you. Nobody's gonna talk to you.

   4. CWChris Williamson56:28

      So, are you optimizing for purposefully boring, purposefully forgettable in the face, purposefully forgettable in the personality, purposefully forgettable in the story?

   5. ABAndrew Bustamante56:37

      Exactly right. You want to be the kind of person that walks into a room, nobody notices you, you have a couple of conversations because you have to, you're trying to get information, and then you leave and nobody even remembers that you were there. That's what clandestine is. Clandestine means so secret that people don't even realize you are a threat when you're in front of them. That's a true clandestine professional.

   6. CWChris Williamson57:01

      If somebody is in deep cover, whatever it is, deep infiltration, presumably they're going to spend more and more time around the people that they're trying to infiltrate. How do officers avoid losing themselves if they've spent a long time with other people, Stockholm Syndrome or the equivalent? It's, it, every drug gang movie where you don't know if the agent is actually still working for the police or if he's completely gone undercover 'cause now he's got a mohawk and a lot of tattoos. And that's the point of entry, right? That's the vector, the, uh, for the interesting drama. How do officers stop that from happening to themselves?

   7. ABAndrew Bustamante57:44

      Yeah. There's, there's a couple of ways. And, and, and to be honest, we know that you can't really stop it. Uh, it, the longer you're in deep cover, the higher your risk, your risk quotient is for losing track and becoming un- insecure. Now, we're not necessarily worrying, we're not worried about, like, your mental health. Yes, your mental health matters, that's fine. But remember, this is still intelligence operations. The biggest risk is the risk to national security. So, there's lots of documented cases at CIA where deep cover officers stay in too long and then they start to forget who their true master is, and then they turn. Either they turn against CIA or they turn in favor of their, their cover business, which isn't even a real business, or whatever they might be, right? They, they, they literally lose track of what is reality because they've been lying so long that they're now lying to themselves. The trick that CIA gives us is that we're taught to compartmentalize stuff in our brain. So, we're taught to, to take a certain series of actions to go into a role and then a certain series of actions to come out of a role, so we always remember who we are in our head. It's the opposite of method acting. Method acting, the actor's job is to go so deep into the character, they lose themselves in the character. And you've seen the results of method actors. A lot of times they'll end up self-destructing at some point, right? CIA doesn't want that to happen, so they teach us to put this compartment in our, in our head, in our cognition, that reminds us, "You are actually Chris Williamson. You are actually collecting information about this. You are actually on task for that. You know, these are the five objectives you're trying to achieve, and when you object- when you achieve those five objectives, you're gonna exfiltrate yourself from the situation." So, that's... And then there's this process for you to keep checking in with yourself daily, hourly, you know, uh, every, every day at lunchtime, whatever it might be, so you keep that constant guideline going. But over time, you start to waver. And when you waver, when you try to come back and walk yourself back, uh, it can be a very damaging thing. Then you start seeing mental health issues. Then you start seeing PTSD, you know, pop up. Um, it's very hard for some people to go undercover as a multimillionaire, you know, oil tycoon for two years, and then they come back and they're a government employee making $90,000 a year again. It's not an easy transition. All in the name of American freedom, but you have lost your freedom as from what you were to what you are now.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:00:22

      I suppose as well that there is a, a very difficult balance to strike with those officers because the longer that they've been undercover, the better the cover is, the deeper their connections are, but the greater the risk is.

   9. ABAndrew Bustamante1:00:33

      Correct.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:00:33

       So, a solution would be to just cycle people out every three months. Like, you're in and you're out. But that reduces the amount of penetration that you get.

   11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:00:42

       Exactly. We are back to that security and convenience piece again, right? And you've got, uh, their, the built-in system to prevent that from happening is kind of twofold. One, your most active field operational years are your first maybe five or six years in the agency. Just like a pilot, your first half of a decade, you're very active in operations. But after that decade is, after that, you know, five to seven years is over, you're in management roles. You're largely confined to, you know, h- either headquarters buildings or foreign buildings as a leader. You're not out there on the leading edge of operations anymore. So, even if you do have a very strong, very effective cover, and if you do run an operation for three, four, six years, that's, that's all well and good, but then they're going to bring you back and break that system.... and make sure that you are reminded of your actual role in the larger organization. So, they, they don't let you have subsequent operations in the same alias identity, except in rare situations, and they also don't let you have subsequent operations, uh, that force you to radically change your alias persona. Uh, those are very high-risk operations to do and there's no net benefit, because like you were saying, the risk-to-reward ratio is skewed with every year that you are in deep cover.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:02:01

       You were in the agency for about seven years. Is that right?

   13. ABAndrew Bustamante1:02:03

       Correct.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:02:03

       Yeah. Does, does this play into that at all? I know that you made the decision for the family and so on and so forth, but do you think that a contributing factor of that was you knowing that your most exciting years were perhaps behind you?

   15. ABAndrew Bustamante1:02:15

       Absolutely. Yeah, that- that- that's kind of what made it an easy decision. It- leaving CIA is never an easy decision, and there's a lot of folks out there who know exactly what it feels like to leave CIA. The first few years that you're in, everything's exciting. Especially for me. I, I wasn't married, I had no kids, I was young and single. I was leaving the military, so, like, it was, it was pretty spectacular to leave the military and go into CIA and be the, you know, the guy that goes and does all the stuff that's in the movies. Uh, that was wonderful. But then your- your assignments go by and each different assignment comes with more responsibility in the next assignment, and then all of a sudden that increase in responsibility starts turning into increased paperwork and admit- you know, increased administrivia and increased documentation, and you actually start to see the, the point, the point in your career where it's going to turn. And you know it's going to turn. It- it's the same thing that happens with- with military pilots. They can see exactly where it's gonna change, where they're gonna go from fl- being in the cockpit to sitting behind a desk scheduling the guy who's gonna be in the cockpit. And that made it easy to leave, 'cause it- it happens right in that seven to 10-year mark. And for my wife and I, we had just come back from a very successful operation together, and the agency had told us, "Now we need you to sit here and train the next generation of people who are going out." Um, and, uh, we had no problem with that in concept, but in application, they wanted us to basically choose training others over raising our own children, and that was where, that was where we had conflict.

10. 1:03:50 – 1:08:06

    Dating Rules within the CIA

    1. ABAndrew Bustamante1:03:51

    2. CWChris Williamson1:03:51

       You met your wife in the CIA and you had this, after a while, this sort of Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing-

    3. ABAndrew Bustamante1:03:56

       (laughs)

    4. CWChris Williamson1:03:57

       ... going on. What are the rules about dating intelligence officers within the agency? I thought this would have been a huge no-no.

    5. ABAndrew Bustamante1:04:05

       Yeah, it's actually much more common than people think. Uh, again, our not-so-funny jokes that we tell on the inside, we often joke that the CIA is, like, the best dating service in the world. Because you basically have to lie to everybody else, but be honest with the people inside the building. You cut off ties with everybody else. So all those, all those, like, clingy ex-boyfriends and those, you know, booty calls and those hookups that you keep around just in case, when you go into the agency, you- you have to cut off ties to all of those people, 'cause every one of them is a security concern for you. So, you just- you kind of start fresh. So then, you end up, you know, meeting these people inside the agency. They're all very smart, they're all very, uh, interesting, they've all got great backgrounds. Nobody is distractingly attractive, like I was telling you before, right? So you end up having these very genuine relationships inside and then you're like, "Oh, wait a second. Like, we can work on the same case, and then we can have dinner in the cafeteria together, and then we can go home and we can do whatever we want to do at home too, and all we have to do is not talk about work at home. Well, that seems easy enough." So there's actually a great deal of intramural dating that happens. There's a large number of people who end up getting married to other agency officers because your whole life becomes the world of intelligence and if you have to, like- you don't want to go out and have, you know, happy hour with strangers because strangers are a risk, so you just stay in the building and have happy hour with friends in the building, and whatever else it might be. So there's quite a bit of that that happens internally.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:05:40

       I suppose as well that if, uh, although you can't speak about work when you get home, you can be more liberal than you would be with somebody who has zero security clearance and isn't a part of anything, and you can talk to your s- you can speak to them in the cafeteria, presumably, about the jobs that you're doing or if you're undercover or whatever. So, yeah, I- I- it totally didn't make sense that it would be potentially an adaptive benefit to allow officers to get into a relationship together because it's actually going to... I would imagine that you will have a higher churn rate or a, uh, at- at least more conflict within a relationship if you do have to not only compartmentalize at work, but then there's another one for the person that you're supposed to be your all and everything for the rest of time, in sickness and in health, but not outside of the office.

    7. ABAndrew Bustamante1:06:31

       Yeah. (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson1:06:31

       It seems like an odd way, or a difficult way, to run a relationship.

    9. ABAndrew Bustamante1:06:36

       Yeah. It is, it is interesting. It's- it's- there's no, there's no convenience one way or the other. If you're inside, if you're undercover and you work at CIA, there's no convenient relationship to be had because if you are- if you're dating someone or married to someone who's not on the inside, they don't get you. They don't, they don't get the stress, they don't get the risk, they don't get the debriefing, they don't get to know what you're actually doing. Like, it's- it's literally, "How was your day today?" "My day was fine." "What did you do?" "Paperwork." You can't tell them any details, and you can't take them into the building into a SCIF where you can tell them all the details. It doesn't exist, right? But when you're dating somebody who's inside, now all of a sudden you at least know the same people, you have the same policies, you know the same structural changes, you have the same vocabulary. So where I may not be able to tell you the name of the North Korean who I'm stealing these secrets from, I can tell you, "I'm working on that North Korean case and it's driving me crazy," and you get me. You understand what I'm saying, right? You can actually give me a true platform to commiserate or you can give me real encouragement, uh, and that means a lot. The agency likes that because dating couples spend more time at work....dating couples. You know, they, they become two resources on the same case and they're always culpable for what information they share.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:07:55

        Ah.

    11. ABAndrew Bustamante1:07:55

        So, if they break the rules, then they're in trouble. If they adhere to the rules, then they're supporting each other through the case. That's a win-win for CIA.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:08:04

        Very interesting. Going back

11. 1:08:06 – 1:15:16

    Who is to Blame for Polarisation in the West?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:08:06

       to the conversation we had about Russia earlier on, how much of the discord that we see in the West at the moment do you think is self-generated by polarization because social media and echo chambers and blah, blah? And how much do you think are seeds that are sown by foreign actors, China and Russia and suchlike?

    2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:08:24

       Yeah. So I, I mean, I can confidently say from experience that most of the noise that we hear is internally generated. The whole idea that foreign actors create narratives that cause discord is proven false in, in many ways. It's, it's in case studies, it's in books that people just don't read. Um, but it's also, it, it violates the core... The core strategy in covert influence isn't to create a new narrative. It's very hard to create a narrative that anybody hears. The, the way that you actually cause discord or s- or, or sow miscontent is by just adding fuel to an existing fire. So, whether you're Russia or China or Iran or whoever, when you want to cause conflict in the United States, all you do is add fuel to the existing fire. There's no lack of fires that people can add issue to, right? Whether it's the Snowden debate or whether it's the WikiLeaks debate or whether it's gender or whether it's woke or whether it's sex or whether it's, you know, whatever. I just found out about something called Incel recently. There's a thousand different things that you can just pay a marketing company to put a few extra ads out there that say, "Incel is the worst thing ever and women should adhere to men." And then you pay the same marketing agency to send a second message that says, you know, "Women are equals and, you know, men who complain about women are dogs." And then boom, all you're doing is just pouring fire, p- pouring fuel on an existing fire.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:53

       I had a conversation a couple of months ago with a, a friend, Gwenda Bogle, and he's got an idea around firehosing that in the modern age, it's so difficult to convince anybody of any particular one narrative. So, the goal is to bombard people with so many narratives that they become despondent and nihilistic and give up, because at that point they are the most easy to sway into one particular... You have two responses basically. It's the, you know, kick a dog, does the dog bite or does it give up?

    4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:10:23

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:10:24

       Well, either of those. When you don't deal with the biting, that's, that's fantastic, that's going to be looting and riots and issues and whatnot. And then the despondency as well is going to make for an easier country to roll over to.

    6. ABAndrew Bustamante1:10:39

       Yeah, it's interesting because the, uh, the strategic benefit of it overall is still kind of in the theoretical stages. We've never seen, we've never seen in history a country that's able to just roll over another country by just devastating them culturally. Like, cultural subversion is a, a theory with lots of real world evidence, but no real world proof of, of, of execution, right? So, I agree with you. But then there's also the element of the fact that we just... We're also all still, as much as we hate to admit it, we're all still adapting to a digital era. We're all still getting used to what it's like to have smartphones and smart TVs and, you know, you name it, smartwatches. So, we're being, we are choosing to get our... to let ourselves be bombarded with information. But we're also choosing what information bombards us. So yes, we could put out a thousand different narratives, but the algorithms in YouTube and s- and social media and whatever else are only gonna feed you the narratives that you engage with the most. So then, you're going to become the most engaged with the narratives that you see the most frequently, which are the narratives that you already believe in the most. So that's, that's exactly the problem with America. It's that once you have... once you've told YouTube what kind of content you like, they don't give you any other content. They only give you what you like. Once you tell Twitter what hashtags you like, that's what they keep feeding you whenever they wanna suggest someone you might like. Nobody ever suggests the o- the counterpoint of view, you know? So, it, it just drives this continued, uh, wedge between everyone.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:19

       One of my friends says that if you want to see into somebody's soul and work out who they truly are, look at their YouTube suggested videos.

    8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:12:27

       (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:27

       That... And I don't think that it's too far wrong. The algorithm on YouTube is the most accurate, a- as far as I can see, of serving me content. There is... Every time I go on YouTube there is five videos that I add to my Watch Later playlist, because I think, "Oh, that's perfect." And that's, "Oh, brilliant. World War II in numbers. How Hitler defeated the..." whatever, whatever. Yeah, that, that's perfect for me. And then there's something about MMA and whatever. Um, one of the things that I find is, uh, kind of an interesting, uh, contribution here is that when we think about our relationship to technology and the difficulty that we have around marrying all of this together, I think not having a common enemy causes us to have nothing to band together about as well, especially when the enemy is internal. Because the tribalism... You see tribes relatively all the time, they're, they're splitting off, fracturing. This group was against that group, but now this part of that first group is part of another part of that same first group. And that seems to be a, a very good way to waste the time of a country in not making progress towards anything meaningful culturally by constantly just repeating similar cycles and fighting against itself.

    10. ABAndrew Bustamante1:13:42

        Or just letting a country distract itself, right? So, I don't know if you have kids, I don't know if you've got nieces or nephews or anything, but anybody with children knows that sometimes the best way to give yourself a break from the kids is to just let them distract themselves-... just give them ... If you give a six-year-old an iPad and you tell them they can watch whatever they want to on YouTube, they will distract themselves and you won't hear from them for hours, right? If you give them a ... If you give any kid in- under the age of nine, if you give them a bucket of toys, even if it's just the toys from the neighbor's house next door, if you give them a bucket of toys they've never played with before, they'll distract themselves. Essentially, that's what ... that's all a country really has to do, is just give the tools to one country to distract itself. And in that process, they kind of, uh, they're, they're free. If you're hearing background noise, I'm in DC so there's all these ... I mean, it's like helicopter central. You got the president and the congresspeople flying all over the place all the time, so it's just helicopter city.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:14:44

        Very ni- ... I was in, uh, Long Island? Is that the one in New York?

    12. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:49

        Mm-hmm. Yep.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:14:50

        Yes. I was in Long Island, uh, start of the year. I cannot believe the volume of planes.

    14. ABAndrew Bustamante1:14:57

        (laughs)

    15. CWChris Williamson1:14:57

        Yeah. <|agent|><|en|> It's every 90 seconds, pretty much 24 hours a day.

    16. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:01

        (laughs)

    17. CWChris Williamson1:15:01

        Pretty much 365 days a year.

    18. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:04

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:15:04

        I ... Why the fuck do you live here? What ... And apparently it's really, really nice and it, it was beautiful and I enjoyed my time there, but that's intense.

    20. ABAndrew Bustamante1:15:13

        Yeah, yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:15:13

        That is an intense flight path. So

12. 1:15:16 – 1:25:11

    The Anatomy of Conspiracy

    1. CWChris Williamson1:15:16

       something else that I, I was thinking about, and I ... This really came up to me when last year, the 20th anniversary of 9/11, uh, and I'm a Brit, you know, I was 12, I think, when 9/11 happened, um ... It hit home to me the way that it must have had such an impact on the lives of America, um, with some of the documentaries that were done. You know, some of the, the video footage that I'd never seen before, some of the testimony, uh, of the, um, FDNY, uh, guys that had been going in and, "I was on one side of a door and I got down this set of stairs and my best friend who I'd worked with for 20 years was on the other side of a door and he's not with us anymore."

    2. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:01

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:16:01

       Uh, uh, just, d- d- so many ... It was really, really moving. I thought it was an amazing way to sort of show tribute and, and, and reeducate people about what had happened, especially people perhaps that hadn't even been around, you know. And something that I found pretty interesting is the modern confusion around the word conspiracy.

    4. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:19

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:16:19

       Every time that somebody brings up the term conspiracy online, there is a whole bunch of comments that will say something like, "Well, you know, uh, yesterday's conspiracy is today's top news headline." Uh, and it, it does seem like i- i- the word conspiracy can be used to discredit genuine stories that powerful groups don't want to gain steam. It can be used to create stories that misdirect people away from things that genuinely are true. That, that just fascinated me, thinking about that, especially looking back, uh, last year.

    6. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:48

       Yeah. I have a whole ... I mean, I have a YouTube video out there that teaches people the anatomy of a conspiracy.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:16:53

       Teach us, tell us.

    8. ABAndrew Bustamante1:16:54

       Um, well, yeah. There's, there's, there's a lot that goes into it, but there's essentially just a few core ingredients, right? So first, there has to be something that happens. There, there has to be some factual event, something that's, that's evidentiary. Something you can see, you can, you can touch, you can hear, whatever it might be.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:17:11

       Has to be a kernel of truth somewhere.

    10. ABAndrew Bustamante1:17:12

        R- yeah. It's how, ho- how it's how every con- con- uh, everything has to start, with a kernel of truth. But then what happens is immediately after that, there has to be a lack of information. So there has to be an element of truth that's immediately followed by a lack of information. Now, what happens cognitively is the human brain wants closure. The human brain always wants to close every open loop of reasoning. So when you hear something that's truthful, right, "There's an unidentified object in the sky," right? Then there's a gap of information. Well, what was it? Was it a c- a plane? We don't know. Was it a helicopter? We don't know. There's no information about what it was. Now, the human brain doesn't like that, so the human brain starts to seek possibilities. So the third ingredient in a conspiracy has to be a series of potential explanations. Now, in that series of potential explanations, here's what ends up happening. We forget, we forget that we're just going through a series of potentialities and we start to think instead that the potentialities are in fact the explanation. And then we start to enforce the explanation that we believe explains the original kernel of truth. That's how a conspiracy is born. So, uh, the, the Twin Towers are destroyed in 9/11, two airplanes crash into them. That's, there's all sorts of kernels of truth out there that let us know it's real. But then there's this break in information. How did the pilots get training and when and how did they organize this whole thing and how did the police not find out and how did CIA and FBI not find out? And, and then even when there's an explanation about how CIA and FBI didn't communicate effectively, there's still lots of information that people don't get. We wanna know what intels were out there, we wanna know what sources were out there, but they don't get that information. So then they start saying, "Well, why is nobody sharing?" What could be in that information? Oh, it was an inside job. They don't wanna admit that there was a, there was an element inside the US government that wanted this to happen, or, or there, you know, whatever else. "It, it was the Israelis." And they don't wanna let the Is- you know, they don't wanna tell anybody that it's the Israelis. So these crazy, I call them crazy, but these conclusions, these, these estimations pop up in the, in the absence of information, and then people are like, "If it was an inside job, they would have been able to keep it secret because they control all their own information." Right? And then all the if-thens start, and the if-thens on their own are valid, right? If you wanted to cover something up, here's how you would do it. If it was, if, if it was the Mormons that did it, then this is how they would cover it up. Whatever it is, it would all be in there. So because this reasoning is sound and this fact is sound, the conspiracy exists even though nobody is accounting for the fact that there's, there's nothing connecting the two sides that are reasoned and well thought out. And without something to connect the two, there's no foundation in truth.

Episode duration: 1:52:54