1064: Andrew Bustamante | The Psychology of Espionage Part One

1063: Andrew Bustamante | Part One

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Special thanks to Brooks running shoes for sponsoring this episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show...

[00:00:04] Andrew Bustamante: Normal honesty makes you sweat. It changes your heart rate. It makes you uncomfortable. Like real, genuine honesty makes them have to work. Actual dishonesty comes much easier than honesty.

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Man, we went for a long time. My friend Andrew Bustamante stopped by, I've known him for a minute. You've seen him all over YouTube. Probably. He was in the CIA directorate of operations, so in the field for seven years. Was seven years in the military before that. This is a, again, a huge two part episode. We almost had four parts.

He's gotta come back and finish his whole thing. We covered a lot from CIA, recruiting and training to geopolitics, lie detection, sex espionage, how the CIA operates abroad, the Middle East, Ukraine, China, and more. So much to cover. Really great conversation. Really enjoyed it. I think you will as well.

Alright, here we go with Andrew Busante.

So you were in the CIA for seven years approximately. Correct. My wife was like. Where was he? I'm like, I don't think you can ask that,

[00:02:04] Andrew Bustamante: but I don't know. Here we are. The where are you? The where, where did you operate? Question actually is a question that we can't answer. Yeah, I figured there's actually not many, but that is one of the few that we are hard pressed not to answer,

[00:02:13] Jordan Harbinger: right?

Because otherwise you have to admit like we were spying on Saudi Arabia or wherever you were, like we were spying on, and the answer is everyone except for the five eyes, right? Uh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Except in big air quotes, the five eyes. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Because otherwise, right, you have to admit you were spying on somebody and we spy everywhere except for the five eyes.

And although didn't we, have we gotten in trouble for flying on the five eyes? Or has that just been sort of a non-public stuff? I

[00:02:45] Andrew Bustamante: actually don't know if there's ever been any public flap or public faux pa in the five eyes, but what's important to understand is that American military and intelligence doctrine, I.

Assumes that every country in the world is an enemy. There's just some enemies that have aligned interests that are so strong that we share more with them than with others. So that's where a lot of where the five eyes comes from is the idea that there are these four other countries, New Zealand, the uk, uh, the Australians, and Canada.

There's these four other countries that together make a team of Allied Democratic Free peoples who will share more. I. Than anybody else. But that does not mean we will share all man.

[00:03:27] Jordan Harbinger: I do wonder, what do they not know? Right? What do they not know? Do you have any idea what's off limits? I mean, I'm sure there's nothing public, but they surely they know like our nuclear program and things like that.

Or you think

[00:03:38] Andrew Bustamante: that's over that, that line We have a saying inside the agency that there are keys to the kingdom.

[00:03:43] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:03:43] Andrew Bustamante: And nuclear codes are one of those things that we consider keys to a kingdom. Mm-Hmm. Understanding the health of the president, the health of the world, of the chief executive. Those are something that we consider keys to the kingdom.

So if I had to make an, an informed guess, I would guess that no, we do not share secrets about our nuclear operational platforms. We do not share secrets about the health of our chief executive uhhuh as basic, basic things. But I'm guessing there's also probably, you know, beyond that too, we we're not gonna share secrets that we know about how we were cyber hacked or cyber violated.

We're not gonna share secrets that give us an advantage over a close trading partner of an allied partner. So for example. China is a main trading partner for both Australia and the uk. So that means it's gonna be in our best interest to really protect what we know about China, even from our UK and and Australian peers because we don't wanna run the risk of something we know about China leaking back to China through one of the five I peers.

[00:04:38] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That, that's what makes the most sense to me. Right, because let's say that you have a Aldrich Ames situation who is a trader inside the, the agency, right. Who, who sold nuclear secrets. We don't want the Australian version of that to go, oh well I have all these secrets not only about Australia, but about the United States.

And the leak just becomes even more problematic for everybody. Correct.

[00:04:59] Andrew Bustamante: Involved. Correct. And that's, you're thinking exactly like an intelligence agency thinks you've gotta have. Backups of backups. Of backups. Mm-Hmm. Layered security is what we call, call it like, call a lavalier situation. Yeah, exactly Right.

We have two mics to make sure in case one fails. That's aside from the secret mics I have hidden around my,

[00:05:15] Jordan Harbinger: my studio kitchen. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, I always was curious about that before that you're in the military. Yeah. Yes. So I was in the Air Force. Okay. Flying planes. Uh, I learned how to fly, but I actually Did you really?

I did. I was kidding actually.

[00:05:28] Andrew Bustamante: Oh yeah. No, the Air Force taught me how to fly, which is pretty cool. What's funny is this, for me at least, and for many people who are pilots, once you learn how to fly, that's when you fall out of love with flying. Really? Because flying is a pain in the ass. Imagine driving in the sky, and that's essentially what flying is.

But you don't have LA traffic. That is true. Uh, but you do have more damaging effects if you run outta gas. That's that's true. That's true. Right? Like you, the air conditioner not working is the least of your concerns at that point. Right. Yeah. It's just a pain. I mean, you've gotta worry about air speed.

You gotta worry about like, yeah. One of the things that it's really hard for me to shake. Is how much you smell jet fuel and it's such a pain in the ass once you fall out of love with flying, smelling the fuel smell in an airline is a total turnoff. But to answer your question, I learned how to fly learned.

I didn't love flying. And then the Air Force cross trained me into something called space and missiles, and it was in space and missiles that I learned about satellite operations and nuclear missile operations and ultimately ended up being a nuclear missile officer.

[00:06:26] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:06:26] Andrew Bustamante: So And is that when you fell out of love with nuclear missiles?

I mean, I fell outta nuclear. I fell outta love with nuclear weapons a long time ago, but it was a pragmatic solution to having to serve my time for the United States. And I, I mean, I had a fantastic military career even though I was doing something underground with like a key around my neck that could destroy the world.

[00:06:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:06:47] Andrew Bustamante: And it's kinda one of those best of bad situations. I wasn't as bad off as some people.

[00:06:52] Jordan Harbinger: Tell me about that job, because when you hear about those NORAD guy, were you one of those NORAD guys? It's like looking at the, or is that a different

[00:06:58] Andrew Bustamante: job? It is. I mean. This is what's funny about how people perceive nuclear weapons and how people perceive the federal government really, and all the military and federal government jobs.

Media does it wrong. Mm-Hmm. Because media has to make it look dramatic. But what the government actually wants of its military and its intelligence services is the exact opposite. They want no drama. So what you see in TV is about as far from the truth as you can get. So the NORAD that you see in tv, this giant underground base in Cheyenne Mountain, where like there's futuristic displays and everybody sits in one room and everybody's having sex with everybody else, and the bosses don't get along.

None of that's the way it actually works.

[00:07:38] Jordan Harbinger: They get like underground and then some gas tank sized That's exactly right. Bullshit thing with no cell phone service and like, no. Just a book and a crappy light that turns off every 20 minutes. Yep. And

[00:07:48] Andrew Bustamante: your no shit, your, your food is basically the same quality of food that you had in high school or middle school, like tater tots and like shrink wrapped egg McMuffins.

Like that's, that is literally what life looks like. And you're down there with just one other person. And who I'm sure you get along with at re no matter what. And they make sure of that. And then you're spread out like two to three driving hours from each other. So you're like super remote, super alone in the most remote, austere places in the United States, babysitting nuclear missiles.

It's super boring, super low drama.

[00:08:19] Jordan Harbinger: Especially with the idea that we are hopefully never going to use those nuclear missiles. Although I've heard, and this is I guess a pro for that particular job, if there's a nuclear war, those get launched

[00:08:30] Andrew Bustamante: first because they can't move around. It's interesting. We are a redundancy.

Mm-Hmm. And you don't realize that the human beings in the missile silos are a redundancy of a redundancy. We are not critical personnel. Mm-Hmm. Even though we are called critical personnel, but yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, if true nuclear war were to break out true, true nuclear war, which is the nuclear war that most people are afraid of.

Mm-Hmm. Everything would be launched all at once from all nuclear bases to all programmed targets. This is something most people don't understand. Every nuclear missile is pointed at a target. Mm-Hmm. The target can change every few hours, or it can change every few days, but they're not all pointed at the same target.

They're pointed at different targets. Because the assumption is that if there is an all out nuclear war, everybody's gonna have a blow up everybody else. Mm-Hmm. So we might have, let's say there's 300 missiles pointed at 70 different targets. Once the dials turn, everything goes right. Okay. And everywhere else in the world, the assumption is when they turn the dials, everything goes.

So it really is like the 1980s doomsday situation.

[00:09:32] Jordan Harbinger: We talked about this on the show with Annie Jacobson and she said as much essentially like the ground, the ones that are in the ground, like the ones you were controlling, they're use it or lose it, right? So they launch. Just as soon as the launch is detected against us, because those are probably gonna get destroyed by whatever's coming in in a few minutes, whether it's detected or not.

So those get launched. I guess maybe the submarine ones are later in the game 'cause they can survive pretty much anything. And then you have air launched as well. Mm-Hmm. So

[00:09:58] Andrew Bustamante: those are, how are those launched then? From airplanes? Correct? Yeah. Okay. So you have this, what's called the nuclear triad. And the nuclear triad is airbase nuclear weapons, sea-based nuclear weapons, and then ground-based nuclear weapons.

Okay. The underground nuclear warheads, the ICBMs intercontinental ballistic missiles, those are your ground-based of the nuclear triad. But then you have B 52 bombers and other stealth bombers and large scale bombers would that are waiting on all times on alert so that if a launch is detected. They can quickly be scrambled, loaded up with nuclear warheads that are live.

A pin gets pulled and now they're, they're weaponized and then they take off and their whole job is just to loiter. Mm-Hmm. Which means kind of fly circles in the sky Mm-Hmm. Until all the fallout is done and we see what targets were destroyed and what targets weren't destroyed, and then they can be directed at those targets.

[00:10:44] Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense because I was wondering if everybody's launching at everybody else and you're like, oh, well this one's going to Yeon Yang. Well, Yeon Yang was, has been gone for 45 minutes. There's, why would we launch anything else at that hit novo severe instead, or whatever. I don't know. That's exactly, I mean, hopefully none of this happens like it is nightmare.

I mean, everybody, you wanna die early if there's nuclear Holocaust. That's what I learned from Annie Jacobson.

[00:11:06] Andrew Bustamante: I mean, that's the exact conclusion that I reached when I was in that field. I mean, in that career field. Just for the men and women who are sitting underground right now, put yourself in their shoes and think about a career in their discipline.

Mm-Hmm. They're gonna live underground. For about two to four years on assignment. And then they're gonna rotate to another assignment for two to four years. And then they're gonna come right back to a missile assignment again. Where they go underground again. They rotate out again and they rotate back again.

And that is their career for 20 years of military service. Brutal. And they make a whole career out of it. Right? When they're away from their family, they're not doing God's work, they're just waiting for the hopeful. Yeah. Never end of the planet earth. Right? What, what do you do to kill time down there? Do you just bring a book and read?

There's a lot of correspondence. Education, there's a lot of reading. There's a lot of learning how to make friends with people you don't get along with. Yeah, man. There's actually a lot of sleeping, but it's not in one long stint. 'cause you can't sleep in one long stint. 'cause every 15 to 30 minutes there's an emergency action message that comes through an EAM.

[00:12:11] Jordan Harbinger: I know

[00:12:11] Andrew Bustamante: an alarm that like blares. So that's the drill. So what ends up happening is you as either the junior or the senior missile command officer, you'll try to rest Mm-Hmm. Being interrupted every four or so hours. This is literal torture. And then you'll work together and then the other person will rest for about four hours and then you'll work together.

And then that's kind of how the shift goes for 24 to 72 hours. But you're always being interrupted, so that's why you never get quality sleep. So you try to get as much low quality sleep as you can. So are these drills to make sure you're not just like screwing around? Why there's two, why Two reasons.

There's two reasons. Uh, one, the drills are there because they need to desensitize you. Okay. Two, potentially launching nuclear weapons. So you like when the order comes in to launch a nuclear, well, go ahead. I don't want

[00:12:55] Jordan Harbinger: you going, oh my God, should I do this? I've never had to think about this before. They want you to be like.

Jesus cry, turn the thing, and then just you slam the thing down and go back and you lay in your cot and then you hear a rumbling sound as the world is destroyed around you. Correct. 'cause it's all, it's,

[00:13:09] Andrew Bustamante: I mean, essentially it's all ones and zeros. So you don't actually know if this EAM is an EAM that's really gonna launch missiles, right?

Or if this EAM is just a drill, Jesus, because you're doing it every 15 or 20 minutes. So it's like boop, boop, boop, beep, beep, beep turn. Yeah. And you're going back to sleep, you know, boop, boop, boop, beep, beep, beep, turn, and go back to sleep. One of those times, you're exactly right, it's gonna be boop, boop, boop, beep, beep, beep, turn, rumble, rumble, rumble, right?

[00:13:32] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, shit,

[00:13:33] Andrew Bustamante: I just launched, that was real,

[00:13:34] Jordan Harbinger: right? I just launched a real weapon. So there's a system there that says this is a drill, and then there's a system there that says this is not a drill, and you just have no idea whether the system's

[00:13:42] Andrew Bustamante: behind the actual, the software of the system. So that's reason number one.

Reason number one, is so that the crews can't become conscientious objectors. Mm-hmm. Reason number two is because we assume that our adversaries are tapped into our EM system. So the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Iranians are listening to every emergency action message. And what they see are ones and zeros.

BPP, poop. Poop, poop. Well, we also have to send a message every 20 minutes so they don't know what the hell they're seeing either. Right. So there's some guy whose job

[00:14:11] Jordan Harbinger: it is to monitor you guys doing your boring as job and he's going Emergency action message. Yeah. What else is new? And he goes back to playing can whatever the Chinese version of Candy Crush is on his phone.

Yeah. And it was just like, whatever. And then he, one day he hears a rumble and there's a bright flash and everything is over. Yep.

[00:14:26] Andrew Bustamante: That

[00:14:26] Jordan Harbinger: is just

[00:14:26] Andrew Bustamante: crazy. And that's your career. I mean, this is why I have such incredible respect for the men and women who do that job because that is their reality. Just like you and I get to like tune into Netflix every now and then, or we get to veg out to like a long fantasy book, we get to.

Take a 25 minute poop if we want to. Yeah, they don't get that option, man. You can't even poop underground. Come man. But you can't take that long. Okay? Because you can't escape comes in, you're just running out. That's surely That's happened over seven years. I mean, people get food poisoning down there.

People show up with the flu down, like some nasty stuff happens underground. Oh yeah. And you're just, the guy comes in and goes, sorry man, I'm sick. And you go, well, I'm definitely getting that. Yeah, that's, I mean, and so is the next guy that comes in after we're done, because you're gonna be touching all of his buttons.

Oh man, y'all need

[00:15:10] Jordan Harbinger: PRL. Probably a regulation against spraying that on the nuclear launch computer. But you know, some rules are meant to be broken. Um, so let's talk about what a spy actually is, because that's one of those terms that Spys probably never use. And also people don't know the difference between handlers.

Analysts, assets, et cetera. So can we just do like a quick

[00:15:33] Andrew Bustamante: overview? Sure. For sure. I mean, there's a huge index, a huge glossary we could get into. Yeah. But I'll, I'll keep it simple and I'll let you tell me where you wanna go from there. So you are exactly right. Spy is a term that professional intelligence officers don't use.

It doesn't exist because what's the definition of a spy? In reality, what we have are agents and officers. Agents are the people who officers recruit to sell secrets about their own country. Mm-Hmm. So you don't have an American agent. What you have is an agent of some foreign country that's giving the US secrets.

That's what an agent is. It's very different than FBI. An FBI agent is in fact an officer of the country. But in CIA, in intelligence terms, an agent is a foreign intelligence source. But then you have intelligence officers. Intelligence officers are the people who are charged by the government of the United States to collect secrets from agents.

And the reason that they're called officers is because they come with a certain level of information handling, security, handling, um, information management. They come with real skills that would qualify them as officer Cadre. Okay. And so what, what was it that you did and that you can talk about? I was CIA, yeah.

I was an intelligence officer. Mm-Hmm. And then inside the intelligence officer cadre, there are many types of officers. There are analysts, there are technical officers, there are, uh, field or case officers, there are staff officers, there are paramilitary officers, uh, linguistic officers. I mean, the list is quite significant.

Open source analysts, I mean, our disguised people are officers. Our alias doc people who make our documentation are officers. And there's all these different skill sets within. So I was a, what's known as a staff operations officer. Which means an officer who is, there's different categories of blue badge and green badge, whether you're a contractor or hired on behalf of the federal government.

But I was a federal government staff operations officer, a CIA employee who was not disclosed to the public whose job was to manage operations. And those operations were intelligence collection operations.

[00:17:32] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay. That, that makes sense. 'cause I, I had been tricked a few times, so I was like, all right, is this guy real?

So I called my friend Daryl Blocker. I don't know if you know him. Yeah. Some, I know. I used to work for Daryl. Okay. That's, so, he was like, I can confirm he definitely worked here and did what he says he did. And I was like, oh, okay. Cool, cool. Because there's a lot of people I, I'm sure you've come across, oh, like, do you know this person?

And you're like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah. There's a few of those

[00:17:56] Andrew Bustamante: around. Well, there's dozens. What's fascinating is, you know, especially in social media right now, you will hear lots of people come out and say that this was a, I worked for the agency, or I was an agency officer, and they're not necessarily.

Lying because the way that the CIA works, it does a lot of different types of blended operations. So it will reach out to the military, like it'll reach out to the Navy Seals. Mm-Hmm. And it will second a Navy seal into CIA for an operation. So for the course of these three months, they're still a Navy seal.

Right. But they're granted CIA status, but then when they're done with their operation, they go right back to the Navy Seals and their CIA status is withdrawn. Same thing is true about contractors. That's what happened with Edward Snowden. People thought Snowden was a CIA officer. He was not. He was a contractor hired by CIA for a short period of time.

Right. To carry out a task before he was then sent back to his contract company who was Hamilton.

[00:18:50] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Is that right?

[00:18:52] Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. Booz Allen.

[00:18:53] Jordan Harbinger: I think that Booz Allen, right? Booz Allen, yeah. Booz, or is it Booz Allen Hamilton. We'll look, we'll figure that out after the show when I get a hundred emails about it.

Yeah. Um, um, it was something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. There's, there's a lot, there's this trend that I'm sure you've seen where somebody who was an analyst respectable job will say, yeah, I'm a CIA officer. And people go, oh my gosh. And then they do the rounds of media or they write a book or something like that and it's then, but you put two whiskeys in 'em and they're like, yeah, I was in charge of looking at a lot of documents in a desk and I never really left the desk and I know a lot about Egypt and you're just like, oh, have you ever been there?

No. Yeah. Okay. Well that's not what I thought this was. You know, so there's a whole lot of that. My friends who are all do guys like where you were, they were all like, don't join. They don't do it. I don't know. Do you share that opinion? A lot of people just really, a lot of people told me not to do it.

'cause I was pretty close. I mean, I went to a career fair and they were like recruiting for probably like not do stuff. I was talking with a recruiter and she found out that I lived in all these different countries and spoke these languages, and she's like, Hey, she gave me a pin and she goes, give me the pin back.

And I was like, dang, what did I do? She's like, we don't want guys like you to have the pin. We want guys like you to come in and do further interviews. And I was like, oh. She's like, yeah, you, you. And so they, I got the idea that they were like, you can't give pins out if you're gonna go undercover in Dubai or whatever.

So I got the idea, but then a couple of my friends were former do, 'cause I was in law school, so a lot of people had careers before that and they were like, do not join. But I'm curious what your opinion, well, what year was it too? I'm curious. These guys were in the do pre slash po, like through nine 11.

So they must have been joined in the nineties. 'cause my law school career ended in 2006. So, unless their career was only like a year or two long, which I doubt they were there through September 11th and everything. And I remember one guy was like, I can never go to Egypt. And I never even saw the fricking pyramids.

And I was there for a long time because he's, he got PNG. So persona non grata is basically banned from a country. Right. So he's banned from a country. I don't know if they found out he was there illegally. I guess that's probably why. Well,

[00:20:59] Andrew Bustamante: that's what's funny about PNG status is it is a punitive measure against the federal government.

Mm-Hmm. For more than a person. So he could have not even been discovered. I see. He could've been totally an upstanding citizen in Egypt, but Egypt wanted to send a message to the United States so it would PNG 10 people on a list and he could have been one of those people.

[00:21:15] Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay. So maybe they didn't know anything about it, but I

[00:21:17] Andrew Bustamante: think there's a couple things that are important here.

So one, you were getting, you were being considered potentially for recruitment? Mm-Hmm. At a critical time. 2006 to 2007. I was recruited in 2007. That means the post nine 11 or the pre nine 11 cadre were still in charge. But the reason nine 11 happened, frankly, I mean, I'm sorry to say this about your friends, was because the pre nine 11 people didn't keep us safe on nine 11.

Sure. The CIA pre nine 11 was focused on Cold War stuff. It was staffed with, for the most part, Caucasian Ivy League educated people. That's what

[00:21:49] Jordan Harbinger: this dude was. He told me, he is like, the agency is so broken, you can't get anything done. You can't even do your own job. I mean, that's why he told me not to join, not because it was boring or something.

[00:21:57] Andrew Bustamante: And, and that led to the September 11th attacks that led to us failing to prevent the September 11th attacks. Well, then September 11th happened two years after September 11th, the nine 11 Commission came out. That was when the federal government, especially the Congress and the House all came together.

The, the House and the Senate came together and said, CIA, you're broken. FBI, you're broken. You guys caused this whole thing. So now we, as the federal legislature are gonna come in and force you to change. Mm-Hmm. That was 2003. That turned into a ton of money coming into the federal government, all focused on counter-terrorism operations, which had been overlooked prior to 2003, and then this massive surge of new hiring.

Mm-Hmm. And the new hiring was not Ivy League Caucasian people anymore. Right. It was people of diversity, people who had world travel, people who had foreign languages, people of a certain age group. So when like Yeah, I was like 25, I was 27. Yeah. Right. That's what they were looking for was mixed ethnical people with strong educational histories, but not necessarily from predictable schools.

Yeah. A huge variance from what the pre nine 11 days look like.

[00:23:04] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's interesting. It, when I was in the, in the nineties, I remember asking a guy who was a former Intel officer how to join, and he was like. Join a church and or the Freemasons. And he is like, what ethnicity are you? 'cause this is not a in-person conversation.

And I was like a white dude from Michigan. He is like, okay. And he told me this very totally antiquated way that they recruit, which was go to an Ivy League school. That was one of the things. Join a church and or the Freemasons and like rise up in the ranks of whatever you can because they look for, I don't know.

Yeah. Just like really waspy people probably. And then, yeah, because they were looking

[00:23:36] Andrew Bustamante: for people loyal to the body. Mm. Not loyal to the organization. I see. Right. Loyal to the body means loyal to the other CIA officers because pre nine 11 it was kind of the wild west. There was not a lot of oversight.

There was a big black budget that officers could just do whatever they wanted to do. A term was coined that is unfortunately still present at CIA now where you were looking for people who will play nicely in the sandbox. Okay. So you're basically looking for other kids that you wanna let into your sandbox.

So they'll all play nicely with each other. But if you're the kind of kid that comes in and is like. Why are we playing in a sandbox or if you throw sand in somebody else's face or if you take someone else's truck, they don't want you in their sandbox. Yeah. That was all pre nine 11. There are still cultural vestiges of that.

Mm-Hmm. That have carried through because the senior officers there right now were the junior officers before nine 11. Sure. Okay. So that cultural carryover is still there, but in about 10 more years they'll be

[00:24:31] Jordan Harbinger: gone. Right. It'll be interesting. Yeah. I, I'd never been to ccia, a headquarters or anything, but I'm guessing in the nineties it was a bunch, like you said, a bunch of white dudes and now it's like men, women, different colors, different hairstyles I assume.

Did you have that hair at the C? No, I tried,

[00:24:46] Andrew Bustamante: I tried having long hair and it turned into a big deal for the trainers there. 'cause the people training us were vestiges of the, of the free Cold War. You've never been to C headquarters. Do you wanna go? Yeah. I will take you. Yeah, that would be awesome. That would be really cool.

They'll only lettuce on the first floor, but it's the coolest floor to be honest. Okay. Yeah. The

[00:25:02] Jordan Harbinger: one with

[00:25:02] Andrew Bustamante: the

[00:25:02] Jordan Harbinger: stars and the flags and everything. The other, and all the busts and all the art and all the museums. Sweet. Yeah. No, the other floors I can only imagine look like, it's like an embassy, right? You're like, whoa, this place is amazing.

And then the rest of it's an office and it's like, well,

[00:25:15] Andrew Bustamante: so true.

[00:25:16] Jordan Harbinger: So I, it's all cubicles and cream colored walls. Yeah. I ended up, uh, I was working at the embassy in Panama in 2002, but it took forever to get my security clearance because of September 11th. And I remember I had a meeting with one of the security guys and he was like, let me expedite this for you.

I know you wanna start your career. And I said, here's my stuff. He's like, I don't know why it's taking so long. I mean, September 11th we're really busy, but like, how hard can it be to clear a guy? And he looked and it was like lived in Germany, but the former East Germany. And then it was like Israel. And he is, how long did you spend in Egypt?

And he's like, I, this is gonna take years. So I ended up working in a part of the embassy that didn't require any security clearance and I couldn't go on the other floors, but my friends could. And I was like, just tell me what's on the other floors. And he is like, it looks like the second floor except in the corner there's a box where you can light shit on fire.

And I was like, that's it, that's all you have like an incinerator. And they're like, that's all. And there's no USB ports to put in your music or whatever. And I'm like, that sucks. 'cause I was just making travel arrangements for like, uh, narco officers in Panama in the military and basically sending guys to Vegas on the US taxpayers dime.

Sorry folks. And that was it. And they were like, yeah, I'm looking at a bunch of cra like my, I actually ended up with one of the better jobs with like minimal responsibility. Actual stuff that I was doing, and those guys were just doing intern work, but in a secured area, which is awful. It's the equivalent of being in an underground tank for three days at a time.

Not

[00:26:42] Andrew Bustamante: quite well, I mean, I think that's the thing. That's, again, we were talking about how media gets it all wrong. Mm-Hmm. What you just described. That's clandestine operations. What you see on James Bond and Jason Bourne, and what you see in Alias and what you see in most of that, that's not how it works.

It works like it's a plain building with a secure floor. There's a big heavy bolt on the front door. Mm-Hmm. And once you go past that door, there's no iPods, there's no cell phones, there's no music, there's no this, there's no freedom. Yeah. There's just secure messaging systems. And guess what? Secure messaging systems don't carry gifs and can't handle PDFs.

Yeah. So it's all Tippety

[00:27:17] Jordan Harbinger: tap, right? No emojis. Yeah. No, I mean, back then cell phones, if you even had one, were like, it had snake on it, you know? But yeah, I could bring my phone. Nobody cared. Those guys had to leave theirs in a box. I've heard you talk a bit about your upbringing on other shows and how you started keeping secrets kind of early-ish.

And I wonder, well, one, what happened? And also did that make compartmentalization in your life easy when you got to ccia a?

[00:27:41] Andrew Bustamante: Yeah, and it's, you know, I love, I love these conversations because like with most people, what's my childhood, I tend to think of as normal for everybody's childhood. Yeah, same of course.

Like we all think that if, whatever, our childhood, what must've been the average for everybody else and surprising me when it's not. So I didn't trust my parents growing up and it was because I, my father died before I was really born. I think technically he died when I was a few months old, but he was out my life before I was ever born.

So I always just kind of summarize and say he died before I was born. My mom remarried a Caucasian guy who became my stepdad when I was five mm-Hmm. And apparently we had a good relationship until I was five, but once I hit like 12 or 13 and once I had half sisters, which were his biological children with my mother.

Okay. Our relationship kind of got shaky. That's too bad. Well, I mean, I, I think again, that's the plight of a stepparent as an adult and a dad. Now I kind of sympathize with my stepdad for what he must have had to go through really. But regardless, I'm seven years old and I'm learning. I can't trust my dad that there's favorites.

Yeah. He clearly shows favoritism towards my sisters. He clearly trusts what they say more than what I say. So I'm learning. I can't trust him. And then my biological mother, who's trying to make a marriage work again, 44 years old, looking back, it makes sense, but seven years old, eight years old, nine years old, it didn't make sense.

All I picked up was mom doesn't believe me. She believes him. He doesn't believe me. He believes my sisters who are just making shit up because they're four years old. Right? So I can't trust either of them. So once that started to take hold, I learned through the school of hard knocks how to lie more effectively.

Mm-Hmm. How to lie to survive. I also started learning that there's no reason to be honest, first. There's a reason to be cagey and kind of distant and aloof first. Mm-hmm. And then over time, decide if somebody has earned your trust or not earned your trust. So I started understanding that secrets were valuable and I started understanding that I had the ability to control secrets.

And then as I got into like my teenage years and public school, you start realizing that other people, they don't keep secrets at all. Yeah. Other people are very transparent and they're very open. And then I started realizing like if you keep good secrets and you're around somebody who can't keep a secret, then you are of like, you have tons of information that you can use for whatever you wanna use it for, whether you want to use it to get laid, or whether you want to use it to get head on a test or whether you want to use it to get a teacher in your pocket.

Like whatever you wanna do. So you saw the advantage

[00:29:57] Jordan Harbinger: of being able to keep your mouth shut kind of early on and not trusting people. But man, that is a rough way to grow up. And I'm wondering. Surely you're taking steps to make sure you don't wire your own kids the same way.

[00:30:08] Andrew Bustamante: Correct. Yeah. Okay. And that's just again, something else that I think all parents do.

We all, well, I'll be honest, I don't think all parents are aware now of how their childhood impacts them as adults. So then oftentimes what happens is parents will replicate the same way they were parented with their own children. My wife and I were benefited 'cause my wife grew up in a similar household to mine, where she also learned early.

She couldn't trust what her parents said because what they did was different than what they said. Interesting. The big difference between she and I is that she didn't trust her parents and what they said, but she did trust. That they loved her. Whereas for me, I didn't trust what they said and I didn't actually trust that they loved me.

I kind of still wonder if my mom could have changed her decision in 1980 mm-Hmm. Would she have changed her decision in 1980? Have you

[00:30:55] Jordan Harbinger: asked her that?

[00:30:55] Andrew Bustamante: My mom doesn't tell the truth, so. Oh, right. So what's the point? So I have asked her, I have made the suggestions, okay. That maybe she would've like chosen not to have me.

Mm-Hmm. She's always like, no baby, I would've had you, I would've had you. But at the same time, there are pictures of her taking me to abortion rallies when I'm three, four, and five years old. Oh, that's interesting. So I don't know what, like I'm glad that she was there, you know, sponsoring women's power and women's rights, but it's gotta be a little fucked up to be like, here's my 3-year-old and I think you should be able to take your baby's life if you want to.

Like, that's interesting. That's an interesting perspective. It's her choice. But it is really interesting to me when she tries to tell me that, of course she would've had me. At 19 years old with no husband and all that other

[00:31:32] Jordan Harbinger: stuff.

[00:31:33] Andrew Bustamante: Like,

[00:31:33] Jordan Harbinger: that's

[00:31:33] Andrew Bustamante: tough.

[00:31:33] Jordan Harbinger: That is tough. What it seems like what she's saying is, no, I really love you and I'm so glad you're in my life.

But if you were able to go back in time and say, you can turn this pregnancy off with a light switch, she would probably go, oh my God, I'm a kid. What am I doing? Right? Like it's, it's

[00:31:47] Andrew Bustamante: a hard call. And that's whenever the topic of abortion comes up. Like for me, I'm very sensitive to it. Not like in an emotional way, but this is why whatever your politics are, I believe women should have a choice.

Mm-Hmm. Because my mom had a choice at whatever level. She had a choice and she chose to give me a chance. And I was not an easy child. Like I was a sickly child when I was born. Oh, really? I had some like issues look in good shape now because I was able to, I was able to recover because my mom had me and there was a hospital that took care of me.

Wow. And there was, you know, modern day medicine and I was in the United States. But it's tough, man. It's, it's a sticky situation.

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[00:34:39] Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like and trust.

I've actually taught this six minute networking course that I'm offering you here. It's free. It is something I have taught to the, well, I think to the CIA, I've definitely taught it to MI six other intelligence agencies around the world and law enforcement agencies, foreign and domestic. This stuff might seem really simple.

You might think you're already good at it. I, I love the people who say, all right, you know this stuff already. And I'm thinking, you know, I got flown out to teach this to MI six, but of course, you know all about it. 23-year-old who works at a, in a cubicle somewhere, of course, you know these skills already.

Uh, it's just, you know, sometimes we don't know what we don't know. This stuff is simple, but it's powerful. It takes a few minutes a day. That's all it really takes, and many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart Company where you belong. Again, the course is free@sixminutenetworking.com.

Now back to Andrew Bustamante. It's interesting you grew up not trusting your parents. I, 'cause I can't, many people listening just can't relate to that at all. Mm, yeah. You trust

[00:35:43] Andrew Bustamante: really? You trusted your parents.

[00:35:45] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Trusted my parents. Even my dad. It's funny 'cause my dad and I, we have a good relationship.

I want everybody to know. I just talked with him, but you know, he's like a really terrible communicator. It's comical. It is. So I trusted him in so far that we all understood what the hell he was even talking about at any point in time or like, yeah, my parents were, you could rely on them as well. Being able to trust somebody and rely on them are two totally different things, I guess, as well.

But yeah, I trusted my parents. Yeah, and our relationship is really good. As a result, I won. It's awesome, man. Yeah, that's a beautiful

[00:36:13] Andrew Bustamante: thing and that's what I'm hoping will happen with my kids.

[00:36:15] Jordan Harbinger: I'm sure it will if you're actively cultivating it. How old are your kids now? I have an 11-year-old son and I have a 6-year-old girl.

You would've screwed this up already, I'm pretty sure, right? Come on. I'm not, I mean, mine are younger so who knows. But. You still have time to screw it up if you try. That's true. But I think if you're focused on this

[00:36:31] Andrew Bustamante: and you haven't already messed it up, you're probably, you're probably doing okay. My poor children, I mean, I have to give them credit and one day I'm hoping there'll be adults listening to this interview, right?

Mm-Hmm. They're raised by two spies. Their mom and their dad are two professionally trained liars. We're not only trained to tell lies, but we're trained to identify when we're being lied to. Yeah, yeah. Sucks for them. Well, it's, well, what's wild is like, it sucks for them. 'cause it's tough for them to come up with a, a fabrication.

Right. But they're also essentially modeling us, so they're gonna be like, really fucking good. That's true. You gotta be careful. They don't misuse that, you know, with great power comes great responsibility and all that. Yeah. So I'm, I'm very fortunate because we have, like, our son does not even like to try to lie because he is been caught so many times.

But our daughter. Is fearless and she really is hard to read sometimes. And sometimes you're like, oh, I think you're lying, but I don't know. Yeah. Go hook yourself up to the

[00:37:19] Jordan Harbinger: machine. I'll be in in a few minutes. Sit on the pad. Yeah, sit on the pad. No, I know you're, I know you have a thumbtack in your shoe.

Take, take the shoe off. That doesn't work anyway, from what I understand. No, it's a, well, I mean, it's a baseline thing. But you're with, I'm with you. Yeah. I did a, an episode a long time ago on polygraph, and I had to remove it because the guy was an expert circa 1975, and a guy from the State Department was like, yeah, the beginning of my career, we didn't even have that anymore.

Like that guy was an expert on the polygraph when they invented it, 1965 or whatever. But now it's like. He's like, I'd love it if somebody puts a thumbtack in their shoe. We see it immediately on the graph, and then we know that they're trying to beat the test and then we know that they're like, they can't be trusted.

Immediately fail. So he is like, those are the quick, that's an early lunch for me. Yeah. So he is, meanwhile,

[00:38:07] Andrew Bustamante: it's like this other guy wrote a whole book on it. Well, I love, I mean, I'm just, I'm sorry to, I don't wanna dwell forever on that, but I think that's so interesting, right? There's so much interest in how to beat a polygraph.

Yeah. And what's fascinating to me is like the polygraph is the exact right time to just lay it all out there. Mm-Hmm. Like if you want something so bad that it requires a polygraph to get there, you want to just go in and comply. Mm-Hmm. Because if you comply, it's hard for the polygrapher. To determine whether you're being honest or not, because normal honesty makes you sweat.

It changes your heart rate, it makes you uncomfortable. Like real genuine honesty makes them have to work. Actual dishonesty comes much easier than honesty. So polygraphers don't have to work as

[00:38:53] Jordan Harbinger: hard. That's interesting. So if, if somebody's like, have you ever looked at joining a organization that tousled to the United States?

You're like, so in high school? Yes, exactly. This is awkward. Yes. But I was just curious. And they're like, crap, I was hoping you would lie about that, because then I can see the thing go like that. And you're like, exactly. You're just like, this is the dumbest thing. What's the dumbest thing you've ever done?

You're like,

[00:39:11] Andrew Bustamante: Ugh, really? All right, here we go. So a big deal. So I, I had to set the polygraph. There's the way that they execute the polygraph, or at least the way they did when I was being recruited, it was multi-day. So day one you would come in, but they would make you reserve a second day just in case you needed to come back for a second day.

To me, I was like, oh, if I'm honest on day one, I won't have to come back on day two. They'll see that I'm being honest. Well then I learned long after I was recruited, long after I was a successful officer. Oh. The second day is really there for the people who are honest. The second day is not there for the people who are dishonest.

'cause dishonest people get identified quickly and boom, they're out the door. Huh,

[00:39:44] Jordan Harbinger: okay.

[00:39:45] Andrew Bustamante: But honest people are the ones that have all the variation from baseline because that shit is uncomfortable. For me, the thing that got me hooked, like the thing that that was my second day clause was they asked me if I'd ever taken controlled substances.

Now I've never taken a drug. I've never taken a narcotic, I've never smoked marijuana. I can't wait until I get the chance to do it. But I married, I married a woman. I married a woman who did drugs and in high school and college, and she was like, now that we're married, I'm not letting you do that until we're like 75 years old.

And yeah, I would say you're not missing a whole lot. And that's what a lot of people tell me these days, but I'm, I don't know what I'm missing, so I'm kind of jealous. My point is, when I was in the military and I was sitting underground at the missile silos, I. It was considered under U-C-M-J-A controlled substance, even if it was over the counter, if it had a sleep aid or if it had a painkiller.

Oh man. Because they don't want somebody on a sleep aid underground, so that makes sense. You up for the drill. Correct. So they drilled that into us in the military. Well then when I go to do my polygraph for i a, they're like, have you ever taken a controlled substance? And I'm just like, what you just said, I wanna be honest.

I'm like, well technically I used to take Tylenol PM with me on Alert Underground, even though I knew I shouldn't have it because I didn't wanna be the guy that called in sick and sent somebody else underground. So just in case I needed it, I would take it with me and I would share it with the person that I was underground with.

And once or twice I took it myself. But I don't know if that counts. Well, the polygrapher was like, you just ruined my fucking day. Right, right, right. Because now I don't know if that's controlled or not. And then I turned into a whole second day of deeper. Digging into like, have you taken cocaine? Have you taken heroin?

Have you done this? Have you done that? How many times have you seen marijuana? And I remember being like sweating in my seat, being like, well, there was this one time at band camp. Yeah. Right. Where my friend who plays the baritone was smoking a joint and he was offering it to me. And I thought maybe I should take it.

Like, it was the most humiliating, like, I feel like a, I feel like a bad guy. Talking about it was oregano in the first place. Wasn't even weed. He was 13. How do you think he got weed? It was bullshit. So, so it was just so funny. That's funny. Funny. That's what a real polygraph looks like. Sticking a fucking thumbtack in your shoes.

Not gonna change that, right? No. You're just sitting there talking about how much of

[00:41:57] Jordan Harbinger: a loser you were in high school. No, the biggest, the biggest bender was a Tylenol PM bender in 1998. God. Um, that's that, that qualifies you for CIA. That's really funny. That's really funny. So you said, uh, when you were getting recruited, how did you get recruited?

You went to the Air Force, did they pluck you from the. High performing ranks of those that dwell underground? Or was it like a career shift after you got out? It

[00:42:20] Andrew Bustamante: was a career shift for sure. Okay. So I, I was a mediocre officer. Like in my opinion, I was a mediocre Air force officer. Well, that's why they put you in an a bin underground for real.

Right. They don't, they're not sending their best. And the, uh, when the time came Yeah. To leave the Air Force, I started looking for a job. Okay. And one of the things that I wanted to do was get as far away from nuclear weapons as possible. Plus at 27 years old, I was really into having sex. Oh, that's surprising.

I was like, how do I find a career field that's also like easy to find women? So I looked at going to the Peace Corps. Oh, you know, I've really wanted to join. I regret not having done that. So just knowing that you went to law school and knowing that you were recorded by ccia a I am not surprised at all to hear, is there a, like a Venn diagram overlap of, oh, huge overlap because should I

[00:43:05] Jordan Harbinger: spy and ruin other people's lives or should I.

Be in the Peace Corps and help other people's lives. I mean, think about it, it's a coin flip.

[00:43:11] Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. If you're gonna live, if you're willing to put yourself in car Mm-Hmm. Living in a tent, helping people with microfinance, think about all the things that you're willing to give up.

[00:43:21] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. I would've loved to have lived in Central African Republic, Congo, like just some crazy

[00:43:28] Andrew Bustamante: place.

Yep. Well, guess what CIA is looking for? Yeah. Right. The same, the same person. People who are willing to give it all up, only instead of helping people with microfinance, you're gonna steal secrets about how the Russians are helping people with microfinance. You know what I mean? That's essentially, it's the, it's the same person.

It's just ideologically, there's some nuance there between the two of them. Yeah. If they're pragmatic enough to be like, oh, you're gonna put me in a tuxedo and possibly also send me to like Albania and do all I'm gonna have like a chance to, to steal. Mm-Hmm.

[00:43:56] Jordan Harbinger: I,

[00:43:56] Andrew Bustamante: I'm open to the idea of stealing where a true Peace Corps person would never steal.

Yeah. Ideologically they would never even take you seriously if you were like, how would you feel about stealing secrets? They're gonna be like, that's wrong.

[00:44:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. No, I definitely fall on the other side of this Venn diagram. As long as I won't get in trouble for it, I will steal for it. That secrets all day long.

Yeah, man. It's worth it

[00:44:17] Andrew Bustamante: because America, because America, yes, because of freedom. Freedom said I, freedom for me means I can take freedom from them. Freedom says I'm supposed to blackmail you. I'm sorry. That's just how it is. That's what makes a good CR officer. So I was leaving the Air Force trying to go the exact opposite direction.

I tell people all the time, all I wanted, I. Was to have tent sex with hippie chicks. Mm-hmm. While helping children that were starving. That's what I was, and instead

[00:44:39] Jordan Harbinger: you

[00:44:39] Andrew Bustamante: got

[00:44:40] Jordan Harbinger: air conditioned sex with God know. Yeah. Can't, can't talk about it.

Yeah,

[00:44:45] Andrew Bustamante: exactly. But at least you had air conditioning. But it's important to highlight, like, because of the overlap in the Venn diagram, CIA has a strict policy where it does not recruit or accept applicants who have ever served in the Peace Corps Well.

And the Peace Corps has the same strict rules about never accepting applicants who have served with CIA. So, CIA

[00:45:04] Jordan Harbinger: definitely disqualifies you from the Peace Corps for life. However, CIA will recruit after the Peace Corps if enough time is elapsed under certain circumstances. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

I looked it up before you came over. That's not just something that's in the back of my brain. I looked that up because I thought, oh, I wonder if you can still Yeah. Join the Peace Corps. The answer is no. But if you join the Peace Corps first. Then maybe 10 years later you join the CCIA A and you end up back there.

But you, I, I would imagine they would. That's a sticky one, man. It's a sticky one. Because if they put you in as an aid worker, they endanger every aid worker. Correct. Which is I think why they typically don't do that. Correct. It's not a complete, uh, I mean, the CCIA will just do whatever the hell they need to do

[00:45:45] Andrew Bustamante: when it comes down to it.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, I I love that you have that rationale. Yeah. Like when it comes down to it, the CIA is an agency of last resort. Mm-Hmm. If it can be done by anybody else, somebody else should do it. Yeah. But only when nobody else can do it. The CIA get called in. I would imagine the Peace Corps

[00:46:00] Jordan Harbinger: folks are not fans No.

Because your existence and dangers their lives Yeah. Every single day basically.

[00:46:08] Andrew Bustamante: Really outside of CIA, nobody's a fan of CIA, which is why that's true. I mean, even the American people don't trust CIA. Yeah. So for sure. DIA doesn't like us. FBI doesn't like US State Department doesn't like us. Health and Human Services don't like us.

IRS doesn't like us. Nobody likes us because anytime we do anything, just like you said. We are causing people to question the purpose of anyone else's role. The diplomats in the embassy in Panama

[00:46:33] Jordan Harbinger: were split on this. Us younger guys were like, whoa, that's the ccia A one of the CIA guys. And then we're like, he's really normal and kind of boring, eh?

But then, but then there were other older guys were like, yeah, not impressed. Because when they go to a meeting and everyone's like, you're a spy, I don't trust. You're like, God, I've been here for 20 years. I am not a spy. I am the commercial at attache. Can we please just get this done? Can we go faster? Go.

You're a spy. And it's just like, thanks a lot, CIA for

[00:47:03] Andrew Bustamante: existing. Yeah, there was a little bit of that. And it's a problem. Yeah. It's a, it's a problem. And it's a problem that was, that existed long before there was media. Mm-Hmm. And it's a problem that will exist long into the future because the concept here is that once you give someone a reason not to trust you.

It's impossible to earn that trust back. Right? That's the real lesson here. So what CIA is, it's a constant thorn reminding people around the world not to trust the United States. So they always come to a meeting with anybody and they're like, that could be a spy. Even when I lived

[00:47:34] Jordan Harbinger: in, well, especially when I lived in Serbia, everybody, even my closest friends were like, we would be super, super drunk.

And they'd go, okay, you gotta, dude, tell me. You're a spy, right? No. Come on man. Why would you come live here? Of all places? It doesn't make any sense. They would just get so frustrated. It was very good natured, but they were like, come on, just tell me. Yeah, I won't tell anyone. I gotta know. I, as we all, and I'm like, does our whole circle assume that I'm a spy?

And they're like, yeah, of course. And I'm like, then why am I not getting more women? Because that's supposed to be a thing. They're like, yeah, hey look, we're also equally mystified by your lack of success. Maybe you should tell us that you're a spy and it'll work. Yeah, there was a bit of that. So what is the CIA training like for the directorate of operations?

I mean, I know you can't say much. Let's just, other people that I can't mention here have told me about the existence of the farm, which is maybe the place that you go to learn some of this stuff. But what's the environment like? I do have to be a little bit careful here, obviously.

[00:48:31] Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. But I, there's a lot that we can still talk about, so I.

Uh, I love that you called it the director of Operations. Mm-Hmm. Because its name changes. Essentially the, what is currently the director of operations when I was recruited, was called the National Clandestine Service, the NCS. I see. But that name changes depending on who needs a promotion at any given time.

'cause it's still a giant bureaucracy. That's weird. 'cause I remember the document they gave me said Do on it. Yep. It was do until, I think it was like 2004, 2005 I wanna say. Oh, I see. So it was, it's called that Under, under Porter Goss maybe. Gotcha. It changed to NCS and then it changed back to do again under Brennan in 2000, maybe 16 ish.

That was after my flirtations with his the age agency. But you see, I mean, it goes back and forth. Yeah. Either way. National Clandestine Service Director of Operations is the operational arm of clandestine operations around the world. Clandestine operations are what we technically call what the media calls undercover operations.

Mm-Hmm. Or alias operations or whatever else. We, it's for us, they're all clandestine secret. When you go through training for that operational cadre. You're taken to a location that's physically segregated from the rest of society. Mm-Hmm. And they do that to control your entire experience during the training agenda, they essentially simulate what it's like to deploy to a foreign country.

And then in that controlled environment, they teach you everything from the basics, basics of social engineering. Like how to introduce yourself and remember someone's name.

[00:49:51] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:49:52] Andrew Bustamante: How to read body language, how to identify a baseline or create human assessment. How to build a, a relationship that we call is a fictionalized or a fabricated relationship.

Meaning, you know, it's artificial but they feel like it's real. So all of those, like social skills are taught in addition to field triage, offensive and defensive and tactical driving weapons handling, you know, surveillance, detection, you name it. Do you know Jon Mendez? Yeah, Jon Mendez. Yeah.

[00:50:19] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. She told me about learning how to ram through barricades of the car.

And she mentioned this and tell me if we have to edit this out, 'cause I'm not a hundred percent sure. If this is something that she, I mean I guess she was allowed to tell me, but basically they drop you into like a fake town where everybody speaks another language and they tell them that they'll pay, they will pay you if you can catch our guys.

And she told me how they have to like sneak through this whole thing and people are out there looking 'cause they get paid

[00:50:45] Andrew Bustamante: if they find you. So I mean, she's dated, obviously what she went through was a, was a different time period than what I went through. Sure. This is Cold War, like this is probably in the sixties or seventies.

Right, right, right. But it's not that dissimilar. Now, the main thing that we do now is since nine 11, they find as many ways that the Congress has made it very important for CIA and FBI and DIA and et cetera, et cetera, to all work together. So even in our training at the farm and even in our initial training months, they force us to work together.

So instead of being dropped into a foreign country or dropped into a place where strangers are trying to catch you, they'll drop us into a place where FBI trainees are trying to catch us. I see. So now you've got trained FBI surveillance teams who are trying to surveil trained. Yeah, but it's trainee against Train.

[00:51:28] Jordan Harbinger: Israel does this too. Yeah. The

[00:51:29] Andrew Bustamante: Shin

[00:51:29] Jordan Harbinger: Bat does it with Mossad. Yeah. There's a really good book, I think called The Way of Deception or something like that, and they talk about. The police, not the regular police, but some sort of like domestic police in Israel. And then she and bed and then Mossad are all out trying to find each other and there's like this little sort of whiteboard tally going on and it's like, it seems good-ish natured, but it's serious business because if they get caught anywhere around Israel, they get shot for it.

Or if they're lucky. Oh, right. Well that's, oh, I

[00:51:58] Andrew Bustamante: mean, not with each other. No, no. If they do

[00:52:01] Jordan Harbinger: Lebanon and they screw up, they get hugged a lamppost or something. So they're, they're always trying to sharpen each other's axes.

[00:52:08] Andrew Bustamante: And that's exactly what I mean. Everybody refers back to biblical principles, right.

Iron sharpening iron. That's exactly what it is at a trainee level. Well, the other thing it does is it makes it so that I meet my surveillance teams at the end of training and their FBI trainees. Well then 10 years later when I'm in charge of an office and they're in charge of an office and we are on a joint task force, it's like, oh, hey, I remember you.

Mm-Hmm. You and I worked together in x, y, z city where you caught me or where I escaped you, or whatever else. It might be interesting.

[00:52:32] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I, I know one of the things I do to confirm people who say they work for an agency is show them a picture because y'all don't know each other's names. He wasn't here.

So I'll ask a friend, I'll say, do you know this guy? And she'll go, once again, I have no idea. And I'm like, this guy, and I have to like, pull up a picture on the phone. And she's like. Ah, let me send this to somebody else because he probably was deployed in this region and then it's like, like Darryl Blocker?

Yep. Oh yeah. Yeah. I know this guy, uh, is, didn't have the same name back then, but now. Oh, his name is Andrew. He doesn't look like an Andrew. Like, there's a few of those that happened over, of course, over time, which I think is kind of funny. Like, oh, her name is Erin. Man. I really, I should never would've, I had a lot of guesses, but it was never Erin.

Yeah, we all

[00:53:13] Andrew Bustamante: had different names inside. Yeah, we have names upon names upon names, and it's difficult. It's, it's, I mean, my actual official record of performance at the farm isn't in my name, so like even official government documentation about my performance is not in my name. So when they're looking

[00:53:30] Jordan Harbinger: for people who they're gonna recruit, I, you ever seen men in Black?

Remember when Will Smith goes in and it's all like the Air Force graduate and the Army graduate and the, and then Tommy Lee Jones is like, trust me, I've seen him in action. And Will Smith is like writing an uncomfortable and he just takes the table and he goes. And moves it closer and everyone's staring at him 'cause he's like this.

The whole point of the scene is to show that he's this outside of the box thinker. Like, there are rules in this room, but I'm not gonna follow them. I'm gonna talk with people even though everyone's serious and silent and move the table and change the environment to fit me. Is that remotely what they're looking for?

Or they kinda like, no thanks. We don't need independent thinkers.

[00:54:06] Andrew Bustamante: You know, it's, they do want independent thinkers. Only in certain job categories though. They see, so remember how I told you there's a whole list of job categories? Well, what ends up happening is during your first round of interviews, it's fairly routine people who are up for the, and there's also a huge pool of people who go to first interviews.

You will. I mean, if you really ask your peer network, to be honest, you'd be surprised. Most people are probably one or two people away from someone who did go to a first round interview with an intelligence service. It's not super rare. But the whole purpose of that first round interview is really just to see whether or not you'd be a good fit for Intel.

Mm-Hmm. And then what category you might fit into. I see. So during that first round interview, you've got analysts and tech officers and linguists who are all sitting in the same room, and they're all going through the same 25 questions. But then if they fit the behavior model of a CIA officer, then the person interviewing them will basically say, this person might be a good analyst.

This person might be a good case officer. This person might be a good linguist. Mm-Hmm. Then the second round of interviews, and this is dated 2007 ish, right? The second round of interviews is when you actually go through the personality battery, which is two full days of personality testing and assessment.

What that does is it identifies, would you actually be good? A case officer or a Sue or a, a targeting officer or a tech officer, would you actually, personality wise be good at that job? What about an ENTJ asking for a friend? Yeah. So ENT JS actually make fantastic mission planners Okay. And really effective, uh, tech officers because the j means that you follow a system.

Mm-Hmm. But without a system, JS get lost a lot of the time. Oh, interesting. Where ent ps they're very comfortable without a system, so they end up making very good case officers. Right. But the js I mean, even if you think about, just look at the metrics. EN TJs carte blanche by a long margin are the most successful people in America.

Oh. Because they follow a system. Once they find a system that works, they just repeat that system over and over again where CPS do not CPS find a working system and they still try something different.

[00:56:09] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I'm my son talking about this with my wife in the car. He does this really interesting thing.

That shows me how his brain works. 'cause he is four, he doesn't have a lot of, like, he hasn't been beaten down by public education yet. So he'll play a game on the iPad. Right. And it's a what game where you build things outta Legos or something like that. And he is, he's doing this and I go, why are you dragging all the pieces in different parts of the screen instead of building?

He goes, I just wanna see what's gonna happen. And then whenever we play with things, he's like, what happens if I do this instead? I'm like, well that would, that would break the thing. And he goes, well how then what happens? And then how do you fix it? And I'm just like, oh, like he sees the edges boundary.

It is. And then he's, I wanna pop that bubble and see if there's room around the, it's very interesting to watch because my daughter. It's very much like, this is how you do this game. And she's two, so it's a little early, but she's like, this is how you play the game. You build the thing. That's it. You don't try to test the outsides of the boundaries.

You don't try, she's like, you push the right answer. You don't push all the wrong answers to see if the colors change. Yep. Which is what my son does. And then we go, you know this answer, why did you push that? I just wanna see what would happen. She's like, I don't know the answer, I'm gonna hit it. So it's interesting to see how

[00:57:16] Andrew Bustamante: different their brains are.

And that's, that's more in line with answering your original question. Right. So do they put analysts and case officers and tech officers all in the same room? Mm-Hmm. And then make their behavior in the room part of the test? No, they'll test to see what you fit into and then they'll put a bunch of tech officers, a bunch of case officers, a bunch of analysts, they'll all go into the same room.

And then inside that room, everybody just behaves the same way. In the tech officer's room, you're gonna have people who studiously do whatever and who show up in like T-shirts and shorts because they're kind of socially awkward for the most part because they're so heavily focused on engineering. Yeah.

I feel seen, but in inside the case officer room, those were all the people who were like super jocks and they're all wearing shirts unbuttoned to the third button, and they're like sitting back and whatever else, and they're pulling tables and Mm-Hmm. But they're all doing it, so it makes them all feel like they're all winning because they're all with each other and they feel like, oh, I must be elevated into a group of peers.

Yeah. Interesting. They don't realize that what actually matters is not their behavior in the room, but the results of the task they're being given. Yeah.

[00:58:16] Jordan Harbinger: That's sort of status jocking stuff. I let those guys play that game. I, I, maybe I'm too old for it, but I'm like, you know what, you guys can dick measure over there and I can't handle that.

Maybe I wouldn't have fit in after all. I've heard that the parking at the cia a headquarters is horrible. Atrocious. It's so funny because. You get these people with insane stories, but since they can't talk about 99% of it, they just bitch about the parking. They just about the parking lot. Yeah.

[00:58:38] Andrew Bustamante: And I mean, there's a lot of stupid, stupid stuff that we, that America doesn't realize.

Mm-Hmm. About CIA that shows it is a government institution. Yeah. Just like the DMV. Just like the IRS. Yeah. Right. Just like the va. It's just as broken and flawed. And the parking situation is one of the, I'm sure you've heard a million times in the past, but just to summarize it, parking lot's, gigantic.

Yeah. It wraps around both the old and the new headquarters building. Mm-Hmm. And depending on what time you show up. Or the level of of authority that you carry, you end up parking very far away. And then for people like me, I learned to come in. I, I hacked the system because when I started dating my wife, who was also a CIA officer, it only takes two people before you're considered a carpool.

And there's very specific carpool parking that's right. By the front entrance. Sure. So now when I started dating my wife, we would carpool in together and park right by the front entrance and save ourselves 15 minutes of walking. Yeah. But when you walk, when you drive in alone and you get there after 8:00 AM you're basically in like the nosebleed seats.

That's funny. Yeah.

[00:59:36] Jordan Harbinger: So like, I can just see you guys dating, you're like, you know what? I'm not crazy about you, but this parking is unbeatable. Sweet.

[00:59:41] Andrew Bustamante: Yes. We should just get married and make a thing out of it. There's in the basement of the new headquarters building. Yeah, there's a hot dog machine. I don't know, have you heard that before?

No. I love this because people don't realize it. My wife adores the story 'cause it's so gross. It is a hot dog machine, which means, what is that? Yeah, it's a vending machine that is gross. So you walk in, it's already gross. Yes. You put in like your dollar 50 or whatever and no shit a cold. Wiener comes out, goes onto like a little rapid microwaves, it basically on a roller, and then out nowhere comes like a singularly wrapped bun.

And the two things are like dropped into each other and then spit out the bottom on like a little paper tray. You

[01:00:18] Jordan Harbinger: know, it's probably not worse than any other hot dog you eat, honestly,

[01:00:21] Andrew Bustamante: except that it's a ccia, a hotdog machine. Yeah. And And the fact that it's in the basement just makes it that much funnier because now you realize who must be using that machine.

It's all the poor bastards who have to work in the basement after the cafeteria area closes. Oh right. Which closes at like five o'clock in the afternoon. So all those poor assholes that are working at like one o'clock in the morning and hungry, they only have a hotdog machine. Vending machine. So are

[01:00:39] Jordan Harbinger: National def defense, like people analyzing it.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS communications are like, guess I'm gonna go eat another hot dog. Yeah. Until I get a new job. Yep. And then that

[01:00:48] Andrew Bustamante: also means that the operation center must just smell like hot dog fart. Yeah, all the time. Hot, constant hot

[01:00:54] Jordan Harbinger: dog farts, nonstop. Now for a quick word from our sponsors. Better Than Being Poisoned by Vladimir Putin, we'll be right back.

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Jordan harbinger.com/ai. Let me know how that works out for you. Uh, we're always trying to improve that thing. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Andrew Bustamante, the the lie detection stuff. I've heard, you know, Joe Navarro is, he's a, I've the name former FB, he, he is former FBI wrote a lot of books on deception, but he told me he was on this show, I can't remember the episode number, but he told me he is like all these people that think they can detect lies, especially the YouTube crowd.

It's just bs. I agree. You

[01:03:40] Andrew Bustamante: agree? I completely agree. I completely agree because the whole I So micro expressions and the mastery of micro expression. Mm-Hmm. It's real. But the problem is that it takes a very specific environment for that stuff to work. And I'm so glad you're bringing this up. Right. And I'm, I'm so glad to know that Joe's out there telling the truth about this.

'cause it is such bullshit when you hear certain experts talk about micro expressions in reading someone's face, they are assuming it's happening in an interrogation setting. In an interrogation setting. Yeah. You control the environment and the poor bastard sitting across from you cannot leave. They're a captive audience.

They have to have this conversation and you control what they eat, what they drink, the temperature in the room, the smell. You control everything long before. Sure. I won't ask how they control the smell long before you ever start having an actual interrogation, where there's two people usually in the interrogation, sweep swapping store like questions so that both can watch the micro expressions because it's very hard to identify someone's blink rate or you know, someone's eyebrow movements or someone that's, it's hard.

It's just hard to do. If you're having an engaged conversation, field operations and the kind of shit that 90%, 99% of people do, you're not in a captive audience. That person can leave. You don't control the temperature of the room. You don't control what they ate in the morning or when they showed up for the, like, you don't control it.

So they could be looking up to the upper left hand corner just because they saw a bird flying by.

[01:05:03] Jordan Harbinger: Right. They could be, oh, the eye thing is always such bs. Every time I'm on a YouTube video, there's a comment like he looked up into the right, he must be lying. And I'm like, dude, there's a fricking camera.

Yeah. Up there. Or there's an audience with an upper row. I'm looking at the person who sneezed like, yeah, you're not

[01:05:20] Andrew Bustamante: reading my body

[01:05:21] Jordan Harbinger: language. Exactly. Numb

[01:05:22] Andrew Bustamante: skull furrowing. An eyebrow could be because they were confused or because they felt a breeze on their head or, yeah. Any number of things that you can't control.

So the whole idea of mastering this lie detection through visual identification of behaviors. Mm-hmm. Only applies if you're in a controlled environment. The second place where it applies is if you have a standing relationship, what's known as a baseline, right. With the person. This is why your mom knows,

[01:05:49] Jordan Harbinger: well, except for you and your kids.

'cause they're kid spy progeny. But like most people, you kind of know when your kid's lying because you have a 30, 20, 10, whatever, year long baseline. Yep. On them. So you know that there's, that they're being kind of weird. They're not looking at me, it's looking at the ground. My husbands know when their wives are lying.

Even when their wives say Vice versa. I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. Well, that's also not that code today. That's not that They're not trying to hide shit, by the way. Pro tip. She's not fine. Um, yeah, but Jen will be like, if she's like, Hey, do you like that? I'm like, yeah. She's like, no, you don't because you're not talking baseline.

And when you don't talk while you're eating means you don't like the food stuff. I don't even notice about myself. She's like, no, I know. I know you don't. I know you don't like that. I can tell.

[01:06:31] Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. I mean, if, if I could turn all that shit off with like a light switch, it would be awesome because all it's doing is it's dumbing Americans down.

It's distracting them from actual skills. Yeah. Like knowing when you're being lied to is such a useful skill and you can actually master that skill. You will not master that skill if you're worried about micro expressions in the face or blink rates. It's just not gonna happen. What does it take to master that type of skill?

Like learning how to essentially interrogate somebody? You, well, it's not interrogation because they're not a captive audience. Right. What you have to do is you have to learn how to assess verbal and nonverbal cues. Okay. And that's something that we teach, my company teaches that. I teach that to people all the time.

Okay, cool. It's just a matter of understanding how people work, how the brain works, and how people respond to different types of questions. And then you just kind of set up a system of asking certain types of questions and seeing what the response is and how that response varies from the baseline. That was set the last time you asked that kind of question.

[01:07:24] Jordan Harbinger: Ah, it's interesting. I, I would love to get into more of that in the future episode for sure. There's one, Dr. Daniel Lieberman. Do you know who he is? I've, I've heard that name too. Man, he's so good at this. And one of the tricks that I remember from his episode, I, I should re-listen to my own episode. One of the tricks I remember was he said, when you think somebody's lying to you, fill in the reason that they did the thing.

So if it's like your teenager was late. Why were you late coming home? Was it because of the water main break? Right? Instead of why were you late coming home? And they're like, oh, um, you no reason you, you say, was it because of the water main break? And then what a liar will do is hesitate. 'cause they're like, shit, should I agree with that or should I disagree with that?

And that hesitation shows you they're lying. But if they go, if they're not lying, you go, were you late? Were you late? 'cause of the water main break, I don't know. There was just a shitload of traffic. That's all I is there, is there a water main break? Is that why there was tra They're probably not lying, but the hesitation, which you really cannot turn off manually unless you are extremely skilled.

That's the killer. And that's the indicator. Tell. I mean, a,

[01:08:21] Andrew Bustamante: a similar example to that is asking people what we call emotional questions. Ask someone how they feel. Yeah. Because you know what happens is when you ask someone how they feel. They recall the feeling, right? Like, how did you feel when your son was born?

Mm mm-Hmm. You know exactly how you felt. Sure it's not, it's on your face that you can remember exactly how I'm true. You're trying

[01:08:38] Jordan Harbinger: really hard not to smile when they're in this part of the conversation. I was like, I'm gonna throw him a curve ball and not do anything. Like,

[01:08:43] Andrew Bustamante: dang, this guy's a cold bastard doesn't even care when his son was born.

But what ends up happening is when somebody, when you ask an emotional question, the first response is always the true response. Like I see. You can see it in their face that they're remembering the real feeling. But then the hesitation is when they assess, should I tell them the real feeling or should I make a different feeling up?

And then you can see that transition too. 'cause you can see from the relaxed face to the thoughtful face to then they make a decision and then they actually say something.

[01:09:09] Jordan Harbinger: You know, it's interesting that it's also hesitation based. I mean, maybe you just, maybe this just happens to be, because it's also hesitation, the example I gave you

[01:09:17] Andrew Bustamante: That's, that's what made me realize, oh, I see.

That's what made me come up with the example. Interesting. That

[01:09:19] Jordan Harbinger: hesitation is a true tell. It's really hard to break it. Right. That's so It's a true tell. Yeah. That does make sense. That's an interesting point. Even if you are, 'cause I've tried to, I, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get tricky with this Lieberman thing, this little technique.

It is very difficult. You have to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse that lie and think of all these different things they might ask you. Or you have to decide, I'm gonna say this no matter what, but if it doesn't make sense, then it's weird as hell. And that's what you're looking for. Right? And you're looking for that too, if you're smart.

Yeah. That's fascinating. I watched that video where you were analyzing Mission Impossible. Oh my gosh. There's one part where they show, I can't remember if this is also mission impossible, but they show him working on a team and it's like, you'll be working with this woman. She's a, a cat burglar, a thief, and I expected you to go, yeah, we don't pair them up with random folks, but apparently that's not correct.

Apparently. That is something that happens. Yeah. Tell me about that. I mean, they'll, they'll,

[01:10:17] Andrew Bustamante: well, they'll pair you up with random people who are vetted by them because they want the team to work together. You gotta understand that when CIA builds a team, they're not looking for teamwork. What they're looking for is a mix of skill sets and personality fit.

'cause they already know if you're gonna work or not based on your personality and your behaviors. And they also know that a high performance team has conflict baked in. So when they build a team, like it doesn't matter what you think you want because they know what will biologically work. So that's why they pair you up with somebody who's like a complete stranger to you, but vetted by them because they know under pressure the two of you are gonna jive.

Or they know that under pressure, the two of you are gonna have conflict, but then there's this third person or fourth person on the team that's gonna resolve that conflict and that makes you a high performance team. That's interesting. The big mistake that most people make is they build teams of people who will get along.

If you build a team of people who will get along, that's how all the bad ideas get elevated to the top. Oof. Because it's like, I like you and I don't wanna disagree with you, so I'm gonna say yes to your bad idea, even though I have a better idea. I'll keep quiet about it.

[01:11:22] Jordan Harbinger: I'm gonna butcher this analogy here, but I, do you ever see that movie about Queen?

I haven't seen, forget what it's called. I think it's called Bohemian Rhapsody or something. I haven't seen that one. Now it's pretty good. I'm not a huge music guy or whatever, but there's a part where Remy Malik, he goes off and he does his own thing because they're not getting along right? And then he goes back to them, I don't know, however many years later, and he goes, the problem is not that what those guy, what the new band didn't do what I wanted him to do.

The problem is they just did whatever I wanted them to do. Whereas the old band, they were like, no, we're gonna do this riff. And he would get so mad 'cause he is like, it's my idea. But the music was crap. Ish, I guess. Mm-Hmm. Uh, people are gonna email me about how that was the best era. I don't care. You're ruining my metaphor.

You're ruining my analogy. The idea was when the bassist or the guitarist or what the drummer was like, I wanna do this, this is the right thing to do in this situation. That was like where the gold came out. That was the magic. It wasn't just about what he wanted, but when he got whatever he wanted, it just wasn't that good.

It's very similar to what you're saying about the team.

[01:12:23] Andrew Bustamante: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, and the difference is that, you know, CIA is pulling from decades of industry secrets in the intelligence world and an unlimited budget that they use to hire the most modern day current psychology and education that's out there.

Yeah. They're pulling from both to make sure that their team always has an edge over their adversaries. That's the way it works. So when CIA builds a team and they build a team for conflict Mm-Hmm. And then you're put on the team you already know to expect I'm not gonna get along with everybody on the team, but I don't have to, my job is not to get along.

My job is to make sure that in this a OR or in this technical expertise or in this planning piece, I stand my ground and then everybody has to work together. And then there's usually somebody who's kind of what we call the lion of the group. There's some lion who ultimately has to make the final decision.

It would be so fun

[01:13:15] Jordan Harbinger: to be one of the psychologists or psychiatrists who's like these two people. They are going to really not get along. And this is gonna be a fun read, folks. This is gonna be a fun watch, whatever, however they're monitoring you because it's like Andrew and her. Nails meet chalkboard.

Right? And you're just, they're just like waiting for you. You're going, and they're like, I got this. And it's just like, Nope. This person is gonna push every single one of your buttons and then put more buttons in that you didn't know were there. And push those even harder. It's like, oh,

[01:13:42] Andrew Bustamante: that would be so fun.

Yeah, I would, you're not wrong, except that we are all under a time constraint, right? So if we actually had space and time to enjoy watching the show, we probably would. But instead, we're all thrown in there and we're like, we've got 72 hours to make this thing happen. No one's gonna sleep. We're all gonna argue.

But at the end of 72 hours, the OP will either be successful and we'll all fist bump each other and be happy to meet each other. Or the op will be a failure and we're all gonna be like, we all failed. Yeah. It, it wasn't, it wasn't Susan's fault, it was all of us. Well,

[01:14:11] Jordan Harbinger: there's a lab certainly where they test these things.

So that's the fun part, right? 'cause the stakes are lower. You're just trying to see if you can piss people off enough that they do their best work. Um, teach me how to be a better liar. I am a freaking terrible liar. I can't, there's probably not a situation, actually, that's a lie too. Um, there's probably a situation in which I should become a better one.

I'm curious, and a lot of people reading and or listening and watch, lemme retake that. No one's reading this. People watching and listening, they're for sure, everybody wants to know how to be a better liar. Like, oh, it takes a lot of work to detect lies. Uh, okay, how do I just lie better?

[01:14:44] Andrew Bustamante: Yeah. Yeah.

Certainly. That's easier. Yeah, it is. And, and that's a, that's a great point. Learning how to lie is much easier than learning how to detect Mm-hmm. Liars. And honestly, learning how to lie is really just a matter of aligning your rational and your emotional brain, your left and right hemispheres. The thing that most people do wrong with lying is they don't preplan the lie.

And then if they do preplan the lie, they don't rehearse the lie. So what I mean by that is if you don't know the lie that you're telling, you just lie spontaneously. It's hard to remember that. It's hard to keep the facts straight when you have to recreate or recall the lie that you made in the moment, right?

So trained liars do not spontaneously lie, because when you spontaneously lie, you don't know what your body's doing. You don't know what your face is doing. You don't know what your, you're going to say next. If it's gonna be congruent with the lie that you just made, you don't know that in seven days you're gonna remember the lie that you just had.

So it's very dangerous and amateur to lie spontaneously. I see. Instead you plan your lie in advance. Well, the next mistake people make is they don't practice the lie. So if you plan a lie, like if I'm in my head in the shower and I'm like, I'm gonna tell my wife that I didn't spend $500 on furniture.

Mm-Hmm. Right? I'm gonna lie to her. I'm not gonna admit that I spend that money. I'm not gonna do it. I'm just not gonna do it. But you've never practiced saying the words, I didn't buy new furniture. You never practiced saying the words, oh, I did buy that couch, but it only cost 150 bucks. Mm-Hmm. And because you haven't practiced saying it, there's a body brain disconnect.

So then when you actually go to say it, you stumble over your own words. You I,

[01:16:18] Jordan Harbinger: well, actually, the thing that well to Yes, it was $500,

[01:16:24] Andrew Bustamante: right? Yeah. And that's so you have to premeditate your lie. You have to rehearse and actually build the muscle memory to state the lie. Those are the two fastest ways to become a very good liar.

That makes

[01:16:35] Jordan Harbinger: sense. You see it with kids, man, they don't think about it ahead of time. Hopefully they don't think about it too much ahead of time. They don't rehearse the lie. That stuff in the

[01:16:43] Andrew Bustamante: moment will get you every time. And parents lie to their kids all the time. Right. We lie to our kids all the time.

We, we tell them that gum is gonna rot their teeth. Yeah. Or that, that TBA screens are gonna rot their eyes or whatever. And you know what we do? We say the exact same thing over and over again. I bet you can recall five or seven things that your parents said to you wrote memory. Yeah. They said this all the time.

They said don't do this or this would happen, don't do this or this would happen. They pro like that's them lying. Don't make funny faces. It'll stay that way. That was one of the OG kind of cliches, right? Yeah. But it becomes, muscle memory is built. So even though they know it's a lie, and even though you know it's a lie, they can't stop the brain body connection from the muscle memory of just saying it over and over again.

That's perfect. When you're trying to actually lie, when you're trying to actually say, I got that couch at a discount. It costs 150 bucks. Like you wanna say that exact same phrase every single time anybody ever asks you about that couch bold of you to

[01:17:36] Jordan Harbinger: assume she's never gonna check the credit card statement.

Yes. Or whatever. Yes. But that's what you do, right? Man? Manipulation and motivation are two sides of the same coin. I've heard you say this in other interviews. What do you mean by that?

[01:17:47] Andrew Bustamante: So when it comes to CIA, when it comes to human operations, human intelligence, operations, people love to throw around the word manipulate.

Yeah. And manipulation has such a negative connotation all over the world. Yeah. People are like, oh, don't manipulate me. It's wrong to manipulate him. Don't manipulate her. Don't manipulate your kids. So manipulation has this strong negative connotation. Okay. But in reality, all manipulation is, is directing human behavior.

Mm-Hmm. Well, when you look and you consider motivation, what is motivation? Motivation is just directing human behavior. So they're both going for the same outcome. But motivation has this fantastic connotation, right? Like, oh, you're a motivator. You're a motivational speaker. Right? No, you're not a manipulator speaker.

Nobody's hiring that guy. You're not a manipulation speaker. Exactly. Right. But they, they both do the same thing. It's all about getting people to do something, getting people to take some action. The thing that really makes motivation, and even at CIA, what we're taught is that motivation and manipulation are both useful tools to getting information.

Mm-Hmm. You just have to decide whether or not you want to use motivation or manipulation in any given moment because the outcome is the same. The skills to apply it are the same. The only thing that's different is the actual way that you leverage those skills. I see. Manipulation is defined as getting people to take an action that's not in their best interest, that's manipulation.

Oh, so you just make it in their best interest to do something, and then it's motivation. Yeah. When I get you to do something that's good for me and bad for you. I manipulate you when I get you to do something that's good for you and good for me. I just motivated you. Right, right. I motivated you because you get something out of it.

It seems like the carrot is probably more powerful than the stick. In most cases. We start with motivation. In fact, that is one of the core tenets of intelligence doctrine is start with motivation. Mm-Hmm. Right. Try to get people to do what's in their best interest first, because once you connect, doing this task is in your best interest.

Every time you ask them to do it again, it's that much easier. Right, right, right. But when you, yeah, if you gotta put a gun to someone's head, you gotta put a gun to someone's head every single time, and the gun has to get bigger and the bullets and like it. You can't just use the same nine millimeter every time.

'cause they're like, you've done this to me before. Right? Yeah. Now it's like, oh, I've got a two gunman. Now I've got you in a private room with a sack over your head now. Like it just gets worse and worse. That makes sense. What, there's an acronym

[01:20:14] Jordan Harbinger: for people who, I can't remember exactly what it is, but when you're talking about counterintelligence.

The motivators are like money, ideology, coercion, coercion, and ego. E Uh, okay. Yeah. I knew it was

[01:20:26] Andrew Bustamante: mice rice. So this, why do I think it's rice? So rice is what I teach. I see. Rice is the most modern version of it. Okay. Mice is the pre nine 11 Cold war version of it. Got it. Okay. It basically stands for the same thing, right?

These are the four core motivations that make any of us do anything, motivation or manipulation. And those four core motivations are Reward. Have reward, yeah. Ideology, coercion, and ego. Like at any given time, if she offered you a special ice cream dessert, that might be enough to get you to cut the interview off early and go out to ice cream with your wife.

Mm-Hmm. Right? That's reward. You are trying to do the best possible interview you can. That's why you have backup microphones. That's an example of ideology. Coercion is putting a bullet to someone's head, right? Yeah. Like you have to stay here or else I'm going to Right. Fine. You, whatever it is. Okay.

That's coercion. Ego. You want to have the public. See you a certain way. That's your public persona. That is ego. Not the same as egotistical. Egotistical means you have to be powerful and correct all the time, but you also have an ego. I mean, we just edited a part outta this interview because you accidentally said the word read and you were like, no one's actually gonna read this.

Right? That's part of your ego where you're like, I'm very particular and I want people to see that. I want to deliver a product that is a particular type of product. Leave that in just to screw up,

[01:21:46] Jordan Harbinger: Jace. Leave it in. Leave in me telling you to leave it in so I then it's back on me. That's how this works.

You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with Joe Navarro.

[01:21:59] Clip: There is no pill that cures malignant narcissism. There just isn't. You can't take a pill for it. Character flaws are fixed and rigid, and they remain with us, and it would take heroic efforts on the part of the person to overcome these things.

Only they can fix themselves.

[01:22:20] Jordan Harbinger: The point is things will not get better. So document everything. The person with the best set of records, of events wins.

[01:22:29] Clip: I have to be honest and say, look, as you said, Jordan, it's not gonna get better. Things will get worse. And unfortunately, it usually does. And the person that pays the price are those that are closest.

To the malignant narcissist. Once I teach you to look for these behaviors, you'll never forget them. You'll be more aware and you will be able to notice them. And when we begin to accumulate these behaviors and we aggregate them, and they go into that checklist, you know, there's 130 something items on the predator checklist, and you say, wow, this person tops 50, this individual will put you at risk.

They will victimize you. It doesn't matter where you're at. There is no safe place. There is no safe church. All it takes is one predator to undo all of that.

[01:23:32] Jordan Harbinger: For more on dangerous personality types and how to spot them before they can do damage to you or those you love. Check out episode 1 35 with Joe Navarro here on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

That's the end of part one, part two. Coming up in just a few days. All things Andrew Busa Monte will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, and ways to support this show. All at Jordan harbinger.com/deals, please consider supporting those who support this show. Also, our newsletter wee bit wiser is fantastic, even if I do say so myself.

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