The Spy Who Recruited Me w/ Jim Lawler
- Chad Sowash
- Apr 28
- 27 min read
HR’s Most Dangerous Podcast: Now With 100% More Treason!
Ever felt like your talent acquisition strategy was missing a little... extortion? This week, The Chad & Cheese Podcast - the only HR show your legal department actually fears —sits down with Jim Lawler, a man who spent 25 years convincing people to betray their homelands for Uncle Sam.
If you think your hiring manager is demanding, try being a GS-11 Case Officer where the "onboarding" process involves suborning foreign officials and making them feel like their brain is in a "warm water bed".
Inside This Episode of "Spy Games & Side Hustles":
The Ultimate "Work From Home" Pivot
MICE in the Office
The 10 Qualities of a Top-Tier Spook
The Billion-Dollar Swiss Humblebrag
"I never recruited a happy person," Lawler admits. So, if you're miserable, under-promoted, or just really hate your boss, Jim might have a "consulting fee" and a "warm water bed" waiting for you.
Tune in to learn why it's okay to get turned down, but never turned in.
Jim's novels: Living Lies, In the Twinkling of An Eye, and The Traitor's Tale.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Joel Cheesman (00:24.764)
yeah. It's the podcast your HR department warned you about. What's up, kids? It's the Chad and Chiefs podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Cheeseman. Joined as always, Chad Sewash is writing Shotgun as we welcome Jim Lawler to the show. He's a national security consultant and a noted speaker on the insider threat in government, academia, and industry. He's also an author of multiple books focusing on the spy game and how recruiting plays an important
Chad Sowash (00:30.51)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (00:35.576)
Hello.
Joel Cheesman (00:52.956)
Jim, welcome to HR's Most Dangerous Podcast.
Jim Lawler (00:56.854)
Thank you, Joel, and thank you, Chad.
Chad Sowash (00:59.64)
So excited about this one, my friend. Let's hear a little bit more about you. What did Joel miss? What can you cover?
Joel Cheesman (01:06.104)
And can you tell us anything about you and is it real or not?
Jim Lawler (01:11.552)
Or is it just a cover story? No, can... Right, you're showing your age there, Joel. I use that line sometimes and tell about these commercials. Is it live or is it Memorex? And they had Ella Fitzgerald break a crystal goblet. I don't know if you remember that, but it was...
Joel Cheesman (01:13.178)
Is it live or Memorex,
Chad Sowash (01:13.304)
could be a cover story. A legend, is that what they call them? Legends?
Joel Cheesman (01:19.216)
Thank you.
Chad Sowash (01:24.366)
Yeah, yeah
Joel Cheesman (01:27.292)
We are proud aging men on this show, Jim. Don't you worry. You're in good company, my friend.
Chad Sowash (01:34.453)
Axers, baby.
Jim Lawler (01:34.466)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, I grew up in Texas and I was in my last year of law school in 1976 when the CIA came recruiting attorneys at campus. you know, when you're ever in your last year of law school or undergraduate school or whatever, you're only interested in finding a job. And I went to this interview and the interviewer, Mr. Bill Wood, he and I talked about the office of general counsel at the CIA.
Chad Sowash (01:46.52)
Hello.
Jim Lawler (02:03.923)
And then about a minute and a half into this interview, he said, Jim, have you ever thought about the clandestine service? I said, what? He said, the clandestine service. And he said, and I said, well, I don't know what that is. He said, well, I can't tell you much about it right now, but I think you'd be good at this. So I was in, I was intrigued and I took the application home, but sadly my wife's mother, we'd been married a year. My wife's mother was very ill.
Chad Sowash (02:11.256)
Hello?
Chad Sowash (02:16.366)
Ha
reeling you in.
Jim Lawler (02:31.061)
There was absolutely no way we were going to move away from Houston, Texas to Washington, DC, and then thousands of miles overseas. So instead of going to work for the CIA, I went to work for a family business. And I don't know how many of your listeners out there have ever been in family businesses, but I bet you I can guess why they're no longer in family businesses. It's an F word. It's family. And
Chad Sowash (02:51.33)
Yeah
Chad Sowash (02:55.342)
Yeah.
Jim Lawler (02:57.253)
I was making a lot of money, more money than I'd ever make the rest of my life. And I was more miserable than I would ever be the rest of my life because it was so unfulfilling. And I came home constantly in the next three and half years saying what absolutely a horrible day I'd had. It was just terrible. And my wife got very tired of it. And after a while, after that three and a half months, she said, Jim, either do something about it or stop your belly aching.
Chad Sowash (03:01.23)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (03:26.207)
So I'd kept Mr. Wood's card and my wife's mother had passed away by now, so I no longer had that anchor around me. And I decided, okay, so I wrote him a letter and said, you and I had talked three and a half years ago. I couldn't take that opportunity then, but now I'm interested. And it was about three days later that I received a phone call from a young woman and she never used the initials CIA. All she said was, Mr. Wood received your letter.
Joel Cheesman (03:33.616)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (03:51.48)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (03:55.596)
Could you meet him next Thursday at 3 p.m. at the Holiday Inn on the Gulf Freeway?" And I said, yes ma'am. That conversation took 20 seconds or less. I went to the meeting. He and I spoke for a couple hours and he said, I want to fly you to Washington and have some tests. So two weeks later, I went for three days of testing. I came back. I went back about two or three months later for more testing, including the polygraph, which some people mistakenly characterize as a lie detector.
Joel Cheesman (04:12.284)
Hmm.
Jim Lawler (04:25.057)
It is not. It's a stress detector. But a few weeks after that, I got a phone call and they said, Mr. Lawler, we would like to offer you a job as a GS-11, that's a government-grade, case officer. Now that meant nothing to me. I had no idea what a case officer at the CIA does. But I found out. So on February 28, 1980, I started my job, about which I knew nothing, and I found out what their expectations were.
Chad Sowash (04:25.198)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (04:36.918)
Okay. Yeah.
Jim Lawler (04:55.433)
And to be blunt about this, because I don't like to sugarcoat it or whitewash it. What a case officer does is manipulate people, exploit people, extort people, subvert people, suborn people, and convince them to betray their countries, to become intelligence sources, to commit treason. And I found out, Joel and Chad, I found out that not only was I good at this, I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Chad Sowash (05:06.446)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (05:18.288)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (05:22.19)
So what did you enjoy most about it?
Joel Cheesman (05:23.473)
I can't what? And did you and did your wife? Did your wife agree with the assessment or say who did I marry?
Jim Lawler (05:25.653)
Being in control of people, persuading, persuading, persuading, no, persuading people to do something that is criminal in their country. And yet I was breaking other countries laws. There's something sociopathic, something about it that I enjoyed. And yeah, it was for national security reasons. And I could tell any number of spy stories about some of the people I recruited and how they helped, helped the United States. But
Chad Sowash (05:34.072)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (05:39.838)
huh.
Jim Lawler (05:53.735)
I enjoyed it a lot. It's addictive. It's like an adrenaline junkie. You're an adrenaline junkie. You get a rush from this. And it was fun. I was breaking laws in other people's countries.
Joel Cheesman (06:05.916)
want to go back to the beginning, Jim. And by the way, I think I know that holiday and it's right next to a water burger, Chad, in case you know in Texas.
Chad Sowash (06:06.626)
and pay to do it.
Chad Sowash (06:12.334)
you
Jim Lawler (06:12.769)
Probably, yeah, I'm sure it is. You whenever we go to Texas, I always have to have my Whataburger quotes.
Chad Sowash (06:16.482)
Especially now.
Joel Cheesman (06:18.84)
don't, don't tease me with some water burger talk, Jim. I'll throw some, throw in some papacitos and some other stuff. you, this was the seventies and you filled out an application for the CIA. That was the first thing that caught my attention. What does the application for the CIA like encompass? I assume this isn't like a one page application.
Jim Lawler (06:40.179)
It's multiple pages. And by the way, it's much different now. I mean, now you do the application online at cia.gov, I'm sure. And so it's totally different from when I filled it out. I actually found a copy of my application a few months ago. I've still got a copy of it. And you list all your accomplishments, why you want to be in the CIA. You talk about different things. They want a writing sample.
Chad Sowash (06:43.48)
I bet.
Joel Cheesman (07:09.391)
huh.
Jim Lawler (07:10.143)
A lot of what we do in the CIA is communication. You have to be able to speak well, you have to be able to write well. so, anyways, that's it.
Joel Cheesman (07:17.882)
Are there, were there, were there job postings for the job back then? Was there sort of not come work for the CIA, but sort of a covert, if you're good at this and this, you might, so the advertising for the CIA is not, find people, they source and find you, right?
Jim Lawler (07:22.717)
No.
Jim Lawler (07:26.731)
No.
Chad Sowash (07:33.432)
So why attorneys? Yeah, I mean.
Jim Lawler (07:35.637)
Well, they, okay, that's a good question, Chad. Why attorneys? Well, they have an office of general counsel to either keep us out of trouble or get us out of trouble. Just like, just like any large organization. I mean, we're constantly under legal scrutiny. And, my being an attorney actually was a big advantage in my career as a case officer, even though I was not practicing law for several reasons. For one, for one thing, sometimes I posed as an international attorney. I don't have to pretend I am an attorney.
Chad Sowash (07:39.118)
Yeah. Uh huh.
Jim Lawler (08:05.714)
And so I was able to use that as a cover, which is very flexible, you know, being an attorney. Okay, number two, I was able to recruit foreign attorneys because they trusted me as a colleague and they would share things with me. Number three, I had the trust and the confidence of the real CIA attorneys.
Chad Sowash (08:18.542)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (08:26.558)
who are always a little concerned, a little nervous about how some idiot case officer is going to get us into a lot of trouble. Well, they knew that I knew the law and that I would only go so far. So I was able to basically have their confidence on some very risky operations that might brush up close to the law, but not across the line.
Chad Sowash (08:48.792)
So from 82 to 94, I believe it was, you had five different overseas, calm deployments per se, were those in different countries and did you get burnt in any of them?
Jim Lawler (09:04.64)
Okay, so.
Joel Cheesman (09:06.78)
Do you mean that literally or metaphorically, Chad, get burnt? What's the actual torture? Okay, he'll tell us.
Chad Sowash (09:09.12)
No, he'll tell, yeah, he'll say.
Jim Lawler (09:12.576)
So yeah, was in five deployments. Okay. So I was in, I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about this much, but it's well known. I was in Switzerland on my first tour and that was about three years long. And then we had two two-year tours in Paris, France. And then I was in Norway and Oslo. And then finally ended back in Switzerland as the chief of base in Zurich.
Chad Sowash (09:31.637)
Okay, nice.
Jim Lawler (09:41.572)
And so they were consecutive, you know, basically 12 straight years we were gone. Two of our children were born overseas and we loved it. was wonderful. I enjoyed all my tours.
Chad Sowash (09:48.27)
Sounds nice.
Joel Cheesman (09:54.524)
Sounds like a pretty posh tour.
Chad Sowash (09:54.831)
yeah, so like Switzerland and France, mean, were those in, have to help us dummies out here, were those targeting individuals from France or were they other individuals from other countries that were more susceptible because they were in a different country?
Joel Cheesman (09:59.9)
France, Norway.
Jim Lawler (10:17.248)
Well, I'm going to be a little vague about this because I can't talk about specific targets, but it's true that a lot of times we have third world or third country people. I for instance, you might wonder why we have a lot of CIA officers in either Latin America or Africa. Well, it turns out there's a lot of Chinese and Russians in those countries. And we may not be interested per se in somebody from Namibia or from
Chad Sowash (10:19.48)
Okay.
Chad Sowash (10:27.886)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (10:37.944)
There it is.
Jim Lawler (10:46.004)
whatever country, Argentina or something, but we're very interested in the Russians or the, know, the SVR, the Russian intelligence officers or the Chinese intelligence officers. And they feel more, you know, more willing to chat with us because they're in a country that's not theirs.
Joel Cheesman (11:04.764)
I want to take a step back, Jim, because our audience isn't necessarily in the spy game or know a lot about this. Talk about what the CIA is, the history of it, the allegiance or the connection to the president, and then we can dig into more specifics. But I think it's important to just lay out what the organization is and what it does.
Jim Lawler (11:25.248)
So during World War II, we created an intelligence service called the OSS. And after World War II, the OSS was disbanded. Well, this was a mistake because as you may recall, this was during the Cold War. And by 1947, the CIA was created out of remains of the OSS and some earlier organizations. So we trace our origins back to 1947 and we were created.
to prevent another Pearl Harbor surprise. When Pearl Harbor happened on December 7th, 1941, we had no central intelligence. We had no national intelligence service. And it was an intelligence failure that we were able to, you know, we were the victims of a surprise attack from Japan. So we were created to prevent that and also to confront the very aggressive behavior of the Soviet Union.
Chad Sowash (12:12.174)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (12:22.228)
that was engulfing all of Eastern Europe and threatened to engulf all of Europe. So that's what we were created back then. And a lot of the OSS veterans went into the CIA.
Joel Cheesman (12:35.964)
And you were there for quite an interesting period of time. So you started, I guess, under Reagan, the beginning of the Reagan administration and leaving and Clinton. you, you saw sort of the height of the cold war, the, the, the, the upscale and weapons, and then you saw the fall of the Soviet empire is the Soviet union. What kind of what, what I assume the interest level in joining had has ebbs and ebbs and flows talk us through sort of.
Jim Lawler (12:56.778)
That's correct.
Joel Cheesman (13:04.984)
the eighties and the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union. What was recruiting like? Was it easier when the Cold War was in? Was it hot? you do recruiting slow down when the Soviet Union fell apart? Just talk about that period because it's such a fascinating time in geopolitics.
Jim Lawler (13:21.856)
Well, certainly during the Cold War, had a primary target was the Soviet Union and all of the Eastern Bloc countries that were under the Soviet Empire. But then, in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s, the wall came down in Germany and suddenly we thought, well, we've conquered communism, which we had. However, what was left was a lot of snakes in the garden.
And you saw what Vladimir Putin, you know, he is now the new czar. Basically, he wants to be the czar of all the Russians. We have a very persistent threat from China. In fact, sometimes people ask me, which is the greater threat, China or Russia? And I'd say probably in the long term, it's going to be China. In fact, some of my friends once said that, you know, what Russia is, is like upper Volta with nuclear weapons.
Chad Sowash (13:56.291)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (14:17.981)
They have nuclear weapons and that's about the only thing they've really got. There you go. Yeah, basically a gas station with nuclear weapons. China though, China is a real threat. know, our focus, my focus changed. mean, I was initially known as what we call a generalist case officer. I would chase Russians, I'd chase Chinese, I'd chase whomever, but
Joel Cheesman (14:21.86)
A gas station with nuclear weapons.
Chad Sowash (14:24.366)
Yeah.
Jim Lawler (14:46.813)
Then on my one of my last overseas tours, I found a new target that I was really concerned about, and that's basically stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And that to me is a very righteous cause to prevent countries like Iran or Libya or other Syria from getting nuclear weapons that we feel like they would use those either on their own people or their enemies or on us. And so I switched my focus to counter proliferation.
Chad Sowash (15:01.418)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (15:16.863)
And I had the pleasure of leading a team which took down Dr. A.Q. Khan, who had the most dangerous nuclear weapons network in history. And so we took that down. We disarmed Libya. Muammar Gaddafi, at the time, he was acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, but we were able to penetrate his organization and Dr. Khan's organization and basically disarmed Libya, which made me feel good. In fact, a few years later, after
Gaddafi was overthrown, I think it was in the year 2012. One of the analysts at CIA said, Jim, you know, if you had not stopped him and taken away those nuclear weapons, he would have used them either on his own people or on neighboring countries, maybe on European countries. And the weapon he was going to use would have been equivalent to the same little boy weapon that destroyed Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people.
Joel Cheesman (16:03.066)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (16:13.639)
It was a 15 kiloton device. To put that in perspective, if you guys remember the Oklahoma Federal Building explosion back in 1996, that killed about 165 people. The fuel air explosive that Timothy McVeigh used was equivalent to one and a half tons of dynamite. I'm talking about a bomb that would be 10,000 times more powerful, 15,000 tons of dynamite. And that's what Qaddafi would have had.
Chad Sowash (16:21.154)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (16:21.244)
Sure.
Chad Sowash (16:43.726)
So how do you recruit? So from a CIA standpoint, you've got two different areas of recruiting that's happening here. You've got from a CIA standpoint, you're recruiting within the United States, I would assume, for individuals who are working under the CIA. And then you have to actually go recruit assets when you're in country.
Jim Lawler (17:05.193)
Well, recruiting people to work for the CIA is not particularly difficult. mean, a lot of people, we get tons of applications. In fact, they jokingly say, and maybe it's not a joke, that it's easier to get into Harvard than it is to get into the CIA. I don't know.
Chad Sowash (17:09.324)
Okay.
Chad Sowash (17:16.75)
Well, it sounds like with all the assessments that you had to go through, for God's sake.
Jim Lawler (17:21.661)
Yeah. So, but we have lots of patriotic Americans, know, well-intentioned Americans. In fact, I counsel a lot of young people who are interested in careers, either at CIA or FBI or DIA or NSA. And if any of your listeners are curious about that, you know, you can give them my email address. recruiting a spy is basically you're trying to convince that person to commit treason. So that's a...
Chad Sowash (17:48.142)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (17:50.058)
whole order of magnitude different recruiting. I mean, it really is. You're convincing them not just to break the law, but to commit treason. And on my first tour, I learned a valuable lesson about how to recruit somebody to do that. I'd gotten a classified message from CIA headquarters, which laid out the fact that we were going to be engaged in some very high-stake negotiations concerning national security with a certain foreign country.
Chad Sowash (17:55.19)
I bet.
Joel Cheesman (17:58.395)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (18:19.985)
and about the next year and we had no sources on the other side that could give us what their negotiating positions were. We wanted to peek at their cards to see how we could bring these negotiations to a successful conclusion and by that we wanted to know what's their negotiating positions. And so they put out a message, a cable we call it, to everybody in the world and said, we're going to be doing this. We need you to go and find
people from this country that have the following access and recruit them. And I had met someone just like that who had that access at a ski class. And so I started what we call the developmental phase, increasing the trust, the friendship, and trying to find out what is it about this person that makes me think I could recruit them? What are the vulnerabilities? What are the stresses? That's technically how you're supposed to do it. Find somebody who needs
Chad Sowash (19:12.184)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (19:17.679)
us. Well, I was naive first tour officer, desperate to get a recruitment. So I wrote this proposal to CIA headquarters outlining why I thought I could recruit this gentleman that I'd met a a couple of months earlier. And they were, it was, it was terrible. I mean, all I was saying was basically based on my personality and on my friendship, I can convince this guy to become a spy. Well, that's, that's, that's ludicrous. So
Joel Cheesman (19:44.412)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (19:47.049)
But CIA headquarters was so damn desperate, they approved my plan. And so I pitched the guy, meaning I said, if you will provide me privileged insights into your negotiating positions, I can give you a consulting fee of so much money a month. And the guy looked at me and he said, Jim, you and I are friends, but what you're proposing, that's morally wrong. Now I've pitched maybe 60 people in my career.
Chad Sowash (19:52.632)
watch.
Chad Sowash (20:14.776)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (20:15.154)
He's the only person that ever posed a moral objection. Typically, the objection is much simpler. It's fear. And I had an African intelligence officer who said, Jim, they hang people in my country for doing things like that. He's right. They would. But then he surprised me when he said, but could I have a rain check? And I said, what? He said, yeah, a rain check. My son's only three years old, but in 15 years, he'll be college age and I might need you then.
Well, Africa division came to me 15 years later and said that this gentleman was now in Washington and they wondered if he meant what he said. Well, I'll tell you this, the rain check was cashed in. But now go back to my initial pitch. I have just pitched this guy and he has turned me down. Now we have a saying in the clandestine service that it's okay to get turned down, but not turned in.
Joel Cheesman (21:03.142)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (21:10.496)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (21:11.1)
Ha ha.
Jim Lawler (21:12.71)
If he goes to his ambassador and says, young Mr. James Lawler, third secretary, just propositioned me to become a spy, a traitor. And his, his, his ambassador had a very hot temper and a bad reputation for being a loud mouth. And I could just see him storming into our ambassador's office and complaining loudly about how outrageous it was that I would pitch a member of his staff. In fact, it was his deputy. It was the number two guy in his embassy. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (21:20.398)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (21:41.401)
wow.
Jim Lawler (21:42.557)
Right. I'm not going after small fruit on the ground. I was going after a guy that had access. Well, I could envision that. And so after a couple of days, I worked my courage up and I called the guy and all I said was, you know, we had such a good time at dinner the other night. I was wondering if we could go out this Friday and kind of repeat that. And my only intention was to smooth any turbulent waters, to throw myself on the mercy of the court and say, you know, I misread some
Chad Sowash (21:45.358)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (21:45.85)
Yeah.
Jim Lawler (22:11.524)
you know, all the signals, I want to beg your forgiveness. That was my intention. But I get to the dinner. Five seconds after we sit down, he looks at me and he says, Jim, that offer you made me last Friday, is that still good? And I said, well, yeah, of course it is. And he said, well, two days after our dinner, my wife announced that she wants a divorce and I can't afford to pay her the alimony to which she's entitled and put my two high school age boys
Chad Sowash (22:36.642)
Wow.
Jim Lawler (22:38.884)
in private schools when we go home next summer, because otherwise they wouldn't get a good education. I can't afford to do that unless I accept your offer, even though I know it's morally wrong. Well, in law school, they teach you when the judge rules in your favor, shut up and get out of court quickly. So the next day I met with him and he brought out a stack of about five inches of classified material from his embassy. And
Joel Cheesman (22:54.044)
Shut up.
Chad Sowash (22:55.586)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (23:02.924)
shit.
Jim Lawler (23:05.906)
He said to me, he said, now, Jim, I want to really tell you why I'm doing this. He said, I hate my ambassador. He claims credit for everything I do and everything everybody else in the embassy does. So as I'm handing you this material, it's as if I'm kicking that son of a bitch in the face. And I told him, said, you know, you and I are on the same team now. So bring me some more of that. Let's kick that son of a bitch again.
Chad Sowash (23:24.846)
Hahaha
Joel Cheesman (23:33.722)
Interesting. So let's talk incentives. You already mentioned that fear is sort of the main hurdle of joining the CIA. I would guess that most companies in the private sector would kill to have tons of people apply in a position like that. So what is the appeal to people outside of, know, kicking their old boss in the nuts? What's the appeal of what's the employer brand? What brings people in?
Chad Sowash (23:38.402)
Money?
Jim Lawler (24:00.146)
You mean how people are motivated to commit espionage?
Joel Cheesman (24:05.468)
why do people wanna work for the CIA? I mean, as an outsider.
Jim Lawler (24:08.989)
Well, if they want, like me, like me, if I wanted to work for the CIA for reasons of patriotism, for reasons that it sounds sexy, you know, all of those reasons, it's, it's, then frankly, once you get into it, it's, you know, if you're like me, you're an adrenaline junkie and there's a risk, a certain amount of risk involved. In fact, if there were no risk involved, I wouldn't be interested in the job. A lot of my fellow case officers are like me.
Chad Sowash (24:15.63)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (24:19.554)
sexy part.
Chad Sowash (24:28.654)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (24:38.374)
We are probably have a certain amount of attention deficit disorder. You know, we get bored easily, but if you're in the CIA, you don't get bored. 19 mornings out of 20, I can't wait to get to work. That was my mantra. You know, I wanted to go in, things were different. I was doing, multiple operations. They're not predictable necessarily. There's a certain amount of risk involved.
Chad Sowash (24:43.352)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (25:00.568)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (25:05.948)
And I loved it. I ate and breathed that stuff. But it's a totally different calculus if you're looking at what motivates the people that decided to become spies for me, the spies whom I recruited. And we have an acronym in the agency called MICE, M-I-C-E. And supposedly those are the four primary motivations for why people become spies. is for money. But in my firm opinion, nobody ever
Chad Sowash (25:15.243)
yeah.
Jim Lawler (25:35.582)
commits espionage just for money. That's an enabler. It might enable something. My friend who agreed to do that, he was going through a divorce. Nothing is worse psychologically, financially, emotionally than going through a divorce. And he wanted a good education for his boys. Okay, he needed the money to do that, but he wasn't doing it just for the money. You don't do it just for the money. I stands for ideology. That means like, I hate communism or I hate nuclear weapons.
Chad Sowash (25:40.504)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (26:05.518)
or I hate my government which is fascist. Okay, a lot of times they will say that and it's true to an extent but it's like a thin veneer over the real motivations. Now the C in mice stands for coercion and I won't deny that occasionally the CIA has used that but I don't like it because it's like having a rattlesnake in the backseat of my car
You can't, I would rather have this person, much rather have them motivated positively. Now the Russians and the Chinese, they use coercion all the time. Blackmail, honey traps, things like that. I just don't, I don't like it. But the most powerful of those letters is the E for ego. People get irritated, you know, with their, this guy, he hated his boss. Why would somebody betray their country if they feel like they've been betrayed first?
And he felt like he had been betrayed first and he was just evening score. The Jesuits call it covert compensation. And, you know, and the Sicilians say, you know, revenge is that dish best eaten cold. You're, you're enjoying that. And so they, they, become part of a new team, my team. And so they don't feel like they're betraying anything. They've just joined a different team.
Chad Sowash (27:23.554)
So on the military side of the house, let's take a look at that CIA getting all these all these these applications. But the military is again, patriotic. That's why a lot of people go to serve. That's why we saw a big mad rush after 911. But after that, we've had problems trying to keep up with with recruitment numbers. So you see the CIA governmental
It's more sexy, but there are some sexy, you know, there's some sexiness in some of the military as well, the Navy SEALs, but know, any special operations, right? So why do you think that is? Is it just because they're a much larger organization or that the CIA has many more sexy parts about it?
Jim Lawler (28:12.561)
Well, I think military recruitment efforts probably go up and down depending on how our national economy is. If jobs get tight, people say, well, I can always go into military. It also depends on the geopolitical situation you just named. After 9-11, a lot of people join the military or join the CIA out of patriotic reasons. And that's great. That's wonderful. I would hope that I never served in the military. In fact, my CIA service was my effort
Chad Sowash (28:19.565)
Hmm, yes.
Jim Lawler (28:41.735)
to serve my country. The draft had ended by the time I was out of law school. And so I thought, okay, I kind of regret that. think it would probably, four years, five years in the military would have done me good. I have a lot of colleagues in the CIA who are veterans. My son is a Marine who was an Iraq War veteran. So I have absolutely the deepest respect in the world for that, for those people.
why the recruiting efforts are off. I don't know. I think recruiting and efforts at the agency are still pretty strong.
Chad Sowash (29:21.314)
But it's interesting that you say that though because you did serve your country. were overseas, you did deployments, much like you're in the military, and you were doing some dangerous shit. So, I mean, it is interesting that you see it that way because as an individual who did 20 years in the military, I look at you as somebody who definitely served. just putting that out there.
Jim Lawler (29:43.325)
Well, it's funny you say that, Chad, when my son graduated from Marine boot camp at Parris Island, we were in the bar down there and I had my oldest daughter with me and a couple of the veterans were there at the bar. And so one of them asked me, so what service were you in? My daughter just looked at him and said, he served his country.
Joel Cheesman (30:09.084)
Interesting.
Chad Sowash (30:10.968)
Yeah, well, if you said CIA, they probably would have went, okay. I mean, again.
Joel Cheesman (30:15.219)
Hahaha
Jim Lawler (30:15.645)
Yeah, but she didn't even have to say that. She just said he served his country.
Chad Sowash (30:19.598)
The company,
Joel Cheesman (30:20.516)
Yeah. Jim, I want to go back to your mice. Money, think is obvious. Ego, maybe a little bit. You've done time in the private sector as well as at the CIA. What sort of strategies or tactics can you take from the CIA and be a more effective private sector recruitment or employer? What kind of things, what kind of tips would you give a private sector employer to recruit?
Jim Lawler (30:25.021)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (30:42.842)
Okay.
Jim Lawler (30:46.631)
All right. I've got a, I've got a list of 10 qualities that I find will make you, will make you a top class CIA case officer recruiter. The first quality is having a strong sense of curiosity. I'm a naturally curious person. I want to know all about you. Okay. I mean, I don't do that just profess, I just naturally, I'm interested in what you do. Why you, why you're there in Indianapolis, how you ended up doing podcasts.
Chad Sowash (30:50.83)
There you go.
Chad Sowash (31:11.043)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (31:15.675)
the two t-shirts you guys have got on. I mean, I'm curious about that. So I'm a curious person. The second quality, keen listening ability. You do not recruit people when you're talking. You recruit people when you're listening and you find out what it is that makes them tick. The third quality is empathy, being empathic. In order to recruit you, you need to get inside your head and find out what makes you hurt. What do you need?
I never recruited a happy person. You don't recruit happy people. I want to get inside and find out what makes you tick. You know, what are your fears? What are your concerns? Fourth one is patience. In one case, it took me almost 10 years to recruit a source. The first nine and a half years, he didn't have a care in the world. He was on top. And then he went through a terrible divorce.
And then he went back to his home country and his ethnic group was no longer in charge. And he wrote me one day and he said, Jim, I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I'll never be promoted again. How can I give allegiance to a country which treats its people like that? So I had him come to another country where I met him. I dropped cover and I said, I'd like you to join my team. And he said, now I've got something to believe in.
And you know, that man, he went back to his home country, 9-11 happened, and he was at his foreign ministry when those twin towers collapsed in New York. And he told me later that he became very emotional. He was basically crying. And his colleagues looked at him and said, why, why are you so upset? You know, you're not an American. And he said to me later, said, Jim, what they don't know is now I'm part of your team. He had transferred allegiance to us from that country.
Then the next quality is persistence. You know, basically not quitting, being resilient. Then creativity. We all could use more creativity. Don't just go by the rule book. Invent your own rules, invent your own game. You probably are familiar with that Star Trek episode about the Kobayashi Maru. You know, basically where the rules are so constraining, then you go outside the rules. You invent new rules.
Jim Lawler (33:36.006)
quality is the careful observation of stressors in people's lives. I used to be a rock climber and in order to climb rock you look for crack systems where you can put your fingers and toes. And so my talent was I look at people as the psychological crack systems where if you study a person long enough you find out what those cracks are. Then the eighth quality is what I call ruthlessness. Never ever forgetting why you're doing this.
Chad Sowash (33:47.8)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (34:04.997)
It's not just to make a friend, it's to recruit a spy for the United States. And the mediocre to poor case officer is one who fears rejection. And I tell my students, if you've never had a recruitment pitch turned down, you haven't pitched enough people. You need to keep going, you know, and not fear that you would offend the person by pitching them. Okay, that's part of the risk. Okay, yeah, don't worry about it.
Chad Sowash (34:19.95)
Mm-hmm.
Jim Lawler (34:30.618)
The next quality is having a powerful or persuasive personality, and I have a fairly persuasive personality. And then finally, the most mysterious of all the qualities is what I call a mastery of the metaphysics, which is an imaginary or maybe more than imaginary invisible neural link that I put between my brain and yours. And suddenly you and I are no longer just here in this dimension. We're on a different plane of existence.
And some people say it's hypnotic. I think it's more than hypnotic. It's like an invisible neural link linking you up to where you and I are in syncopation and you want to do what I want you to do. I know some of my assets basically look upon me as a therapist. My voice is soothing. One of my assets told me, Jim, when you're talking to me, it's as if my brain is in a warm water bed. That's what I want them to feel. I want them to have complete trust in me.
Chad Sowash (35:30.094)
That is awesome. That is awesome. Okay, Jim, last question. Not recruiting specific at all, but I have a picture of you sitting on $1 billion in gold bullion deep inside a Swiss bank vault in the mountains. There's gotta be a story behind that. I gotta hear the story behind that.
Joel Cheesman (35:44.988)
It's not AI. It's not an AI picture.
Jim Lawler (35:51.559)
So one of my close contacts was a very, very, very senior Swiss banker. And when I was about to leave Switzerland on my last tour, he said, is there anything that you haven't done yet that you'd like to do? And I said, yeah, I'd like to sit on a fortune of gold with a big cigar. And the caption would be, hell, I own this town. he said, I can erase started laughing. He said, I can arrange that. So two days later, my assistant and I went
Chad Sowash (35:57.675)
huh.
Jim Lawler (36:21.446)
to this vault and the vault door was at least three foot thick and we go in there and there was not just billions but trillions of dollars worth of gold, platinum, other fine metals from not only from high net worth individuals but from countries around the world. And so I was able to sit on that $1 billion in gold and the only thing I couldn't do is I couldn't light the cigar because of the smoke alarms.
Chad Sowash (36:27.598)
Holy shit.
Chad Sowash (36:39.202)
yeah.
Chad Sowash (36:48.587)
UUHAHAHA
Joel Cheesman (36:53.308)
Thanks for hanging out with us, Jim. That is Jim Lawler, everybody. Jim, for our listeners and viewers that want to connect with you, buy your books, learn more about the CIA, where would you send them?
Chad Sowash (37:03.225)
yeah.
Jim Lawler (37:06.15)
So look under my name, James Lawler on amazon.com for any of my three spy thrillers. I've got a fourth one in the works and hope to have this out by the end of this year. I also have an author website that I hope Joel and Chad will post under this podcast. people can feel free to, you
Joel Cheesman (37:24.572)
Show notes.
Chad Sowash (37:25.56)
Will do, will do.
Jim Lawler (37:29.316)
Either email me or look on my bio, look, see where my books are. They're all available on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble. You can order them. Or if you send me an email and you want a signed copy, I charge the same price as Amazon, which is like $20. Plus I have to charge for postage. So if you want a signed copy, feel free to write me and just you can, you can. Yep.
Chad Sowash (37:50.817)
You know you do.
Joel Cheesman (37:52.058)
You got it, Jim. Thanks for your time, and thanks for your service. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.
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