The Double Life Of A CIA Spy - Andrew Bustamante

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)

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

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.

What's a covert intelligence officer?

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%.

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?

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.