How to Stay Safe (and Impress Your Colleagues), According to a Former CIA Agent
Every year, the federal government spends approximately $3 billion of your taxes on the Central Intelligence Agency. Beyond the supposed protection that a complex international secret spy network provides to the nation’s citizens, what do we actually get for our share of the CIA budget? Nothing!
To get something back for my taxes, and because I think spying is cool, I asked former CIA agent Jason Hanson to share the best hacks his CIA training can provide.
According to his biography, Hanson worked for the CIA for seven years as an agent with top secret clearance. After leaving the agency in 2005, he founded the Utah School of Tactical Espionage , received $150,000 in funding for Shark Tank , and wrote several best-selling books ( “Spy Secrets That Could Save Your Life ” and “Influence Agent: How to Use”). Spy skills to convince anyone, sell anything, and build a successful business , all to “help good, honest Americans stay safer and more prepared in the crazy, unpredictable world we live in.”
Get away from the phone
While Hanson teaches his Spy School students safe driving, escaping duct tape and handcuffs, and other cool movie stunts, his most important personal safety tip is so practical that your mom probably told it to you: Stop watching all the time. in phone.
“You have to pay attention to your surroundings,” Hanson said. “Twenty or 25 years ago we were walking and looking [where we were going].” This is what we need to be. I use a flip phone and have never sent a text message in my life.”
Establish the basis of any situation
After turning off your phone, look around to determine your location. Hanson isn’t advising the hypervigilant lifestyle of spies in war zones—he’s advising just basic situational awareness. “Everything has a base level,” Hanson explained. “If you go to Starbucks every day, you know the basic level of Starbucks.”
So take a moment to assess the metaphorical temperature of any new situation you find yourself in; If something seems out of place or out of place, trust your instincts and either proceed with caution or back off.
“I almost got kidnapped once,” Hanson said. “In the morning I was in a place that I can’t name, and I saw two guys walking in my direction. They did not meet the baseline; they dressed differently there than everyone else; they basically stuck out like a sore thumb. They look at me. I look at them. And these two guys look at each other and step aside, trying to get me to walk between them. Well, as soon as I saw it, I turned the other way and ran. If I had buried my head in my phone, I would have run straight into these two guys.”
In case of danger, retreat or run
Like anyone with practical experience of real-life violence, Hanson advises avoiding or running away from danger, rather than using the ninja moves you learned in aikido class at the Y. “Look, you don’t want to fight,” Hanson. said. “Fighting is the last resort. If you see this creeper ahead, go in a different direction and avoid [them].”
Should you carry a gun?
Hanson says his personal daily arsenal includes a firearm, but the dude lives in Utah, where it’s possible, and is a self-defense guy. If you can’t or don’t want to carry a gun, Hanson recommends a tactical pen. “I carry it with me every day, it’s a regular writing pen. But it is made of a much harder metal. So I can break windows, break things, and you can carry it around the world. It’s completely legal.”
How CIA Training Can Help You on the Job
Personal security is one thing, but CIA knowledge can help you professionally as well. “Someone I worked with had a great saying: CIA officers are the best salesmen in the world. The only difference is that you sell vacuum cleaners and we sell treason,” Hanson said.
Hanson’s supposedly CIA-approved advice for getting ahead at work isn’t too far removed from his advice for ensuring personal safety: “Shut up, watch and pay attention to what’s going on,” he said. “Observing and paying attention to your colleagues, that is, spying one on one, is very easy. Julie loves Diet Coke, and one day you brought her Diet Coke. Phil loves baseball, so you gave him a Red Sox cap for his birthday. This allows you to really get to know your colleagues, but also gives you a nice step up. So hopefully you’ll get to where most people don’t care because they’re only looking out for themselves.”
Lie detection with the CIA
You don’t need a polygraph to detect dishonesty, whether at work or in a relationship. Hanson has an easy-to-use method, supposedly developed by the CIA, to turn yourself into a lie detector. The key, according to Hanson, is to establish a baseline of how your subject responds to simple questions, and then ask him a tough, confrontational question. If you’re interviewing a potential job candidate, you might ask a few general questions and then stare at him and say, “When was the last time you stole something?”
“Ask someone a question and pay attention to the first three to five seconds of the answer,” Hanson advised. “As humans, we’re just not born to lie… To be honest, I don’t lie. I’ll even have to really think about the answer, because I’m telling the truth. But if I’m lying to you, I can ask, “Can you repeat the question?” Or I may start to stutter or freeze because I’m trying to buy time for my brain to come up with a lie.”
Using CIA versus CIA tactics
If you’re thinking, “Steve, how do you even know this guy worked for the CIA?” I had the same anxiety. He looks the part and speaks well, but he can also be a phony. The CIA is reluctant to give out information about its members—I couldn’t call them to check—so I used Hanson’s own CIA methods against him. After I established his baseline behavior by asking easy-to-answer questions and observing him closely, I turned the situation around and hit him: “Are you lying about being with the CIA?”
Unfortunately, he didn’t prove that I was actually the chief investigator by freezing and starting to stutter. Instead, Hanson told me it was a good question and acknowledged that it would be difficult to check his background. But he suggested that one way to tell the difference between a CIA guy and a fraud is to find someone you know works for the CIA and set up a three-way conversation so that a real company employee can quickly expose the impostor.
How to get into the CIA?
If you’re hoping that secret agents will come to you in the middle of the night because they’re keeping an eye on how well you’re doing in Call of Duty, that’s not the case. Most people get into the CIA by applying online . However, make sure you are clear: criminal charges, recent marijuana use, and any use of harder drugs will disqualify you.