Inside The Mind Of A CIA Operative with James Lawler

In this episode, host Francis Gorman interviews James Lawler, a former CIA operations officer with 25 years of experience in espionage. James shares his journey into the CIA, the motivations behind espionage, and his role in dismantling the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring. He discusses current nuclear threats, the evolution of espionage in the digital age, and the importance of understanding the human element in insider threats. James also reflects on his transition from intelligence operations to becoming a published author, highlighting the storytelling aspect of his novels.

Takeaways

• James Lawler's journey into the CIA began unexpectedly during law school.
• The role of a CIA operations officer involves manipulating individuals for espionage.
• Motivations for espionage often include personal grievances and financial needs.
• The A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring was dismantled through strategic operations.
• Current nuclear threats are significant, particularly concerning Iran's potential capabilities.
• AI and social media have transformed the landscape of espionage and targeting.
• Understanding the human element is crucial in identifying insider threats.
• Compassion and support in organizations can prevent insider threats.
• Lawler's novels are inspired by his real-life experiences in espionage.
• Writing serves as a creative outlet for Lawler post-CIA career.

Sound Bites

• "I enjoyed the hell out of it."
• "Revenge is absolutely one of the purest motivations for espionage."
• "AI makes targeting much easier."
• "I was looking for people going through divorce."
• "I can create books where I live vicariously through my characters."
• "I call that my psychological dividends."
• "It's a way to keep the neurons firing in the brain."
• "You're a great interviewer and a great host."

Transcript

Francis Gorman (00:01.531)
Welcome to the Entropy podcast. I'm your host, Francis Gorman. If you're enjoying our content, please take a moment to like and follow the show wherever it is you get your podcasts from. It really does help us out. Our guest today has spent 25 high stakes years deep undercover unraveling some of the world's most dangerous secrets. He played a key role in dismantling one of history's most notorious nuclear smuggling rings and has witnessed the covert world of espionage from the inside. From secret CIA missions to navigating global nuclear threats, his career reads like a thriller.

because it has inspired a few. He's the author of the gripping espionage novels including The Traitor's Tale, Living Lies and In the Twinkle of an Eye. An accomplished author, consultant and intelligence expert, I'm honored to welcome the legendary James Lawler to the show. James, how are you keeping today?

Jim Lawler (00:46.03)
I'm doing fine, Francis, and it's a real honor to be on your show.

Francis Gorman (00:50.097)
And it's a real honor to have you, James. And when I first came across your story, I was taken back in awe. You started out your journey through a normal pad, college, et cetera, and then a turn of events and a couple of years, a seed was planted and you decided to join the CIA. Can you give the listeners a little bit of background into how you got to where you are today and how you ended up in the CIA for so many, years?

Jim Lawler (01:14.168)
Well, I really kind of backed into this very peculiar career. I was a third year law student at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas. And like anybody who's in their last year of college or graduate school or law school, you only have one thing on your mind and that's, I need a job. And so I saw that the CIA was coming to the law school's campus to interview for attorneys for our office of general counsel.

because the CIA, like any large bureaucratic organization, either needs attorneys to keep us out of trouble or more often than not get us out of trouble. And so I went to this interview thinking, okay, I don't know much about the CIA, but I'll go interview. And this gentleman named Mr. Bill Wood, he and I started talking and we got about two minutes or so into this interview. And he looked at me and he said, Jim, have you ever thought about the clandestine service?

And I said, no, and I'm not even sure what the clandestine service is. And he said, well, I can't tell you much about it, but he said, I think you'd be good at this. So here he was trying to hire attorneys, but instead he's looking at somebody who could become an operations officer for the CIA and the clandestine service. And I was intrigued by that and I took the application home with me. But then reality hit me that night because my wife, we had just been married about a year, my wife's mother,

was very ill and there was no chance that we were going to move away from our hometown of Houston, Texas to Washington, D.C. and then thousands of miles overseas. I knew that wasn't going to happen. So the next day I returned Mr. Wood's application and instead of going to work for the CIA or for a law firm, I went into a family business. And for the next three and half years, I was in this family business with my two brothers and my dad.

And I love them dearly, but it was just boring the hell out of me. And I was very frustrated. I actually tripled sales for the company, but I've learned at an early age that making money is not one of the best things in life. It's not the only thing in life. And I would come home at night and complain. And my dear wife, Ellen, she finally had it up to here. And she said, look, Jim, either do something about it or stop your bitching and moaning.

Jim Lawler (03:39.414)
And so I thought, well, that's good advice. Now, sadly, by this time her mom had passed away, so we had nothing keeping us in Houston. And so I wrote a letter to Mr. Wood, who had interviewed me a year and a half earlier and told her three and a half years earlier, actually. And I told him, I said, you know, I wasn't ready for that opportunity you mentioned back in 1976. But here today in the spring of 1979. Yeah, I would like to pursue that. And about three days later.

I received a phone call at my desk at my office and a young woman, she never used the initials CIA. All she said was, Mr. Wood received your letter and he was wondering if you could meet him at the Holiday Inn on the Gulf Freeway next Thursday at three o'clock. And I said, yeah, I, yes, I could, I could do that. So I went to this interview, spent about an hour and a half with him.

He said he'd like to fly me to Washington. And about two weeks later, I flew to Washington for three days of testing. I came back and about three months later, I was invited back for more testing, including what we call a polygraph test. Some people mistakenly call that a lie detector test, but it's not. It's a stress detection. I do not have great confidence in polygraph tests, but I went through it, passed it. And a few weeks after that, I got a phone call.

And this young woman said, Mr. Lawler, we'd like to offer you a job as a CIA operations officer starting in February of 1980. And I had no idea, Francis, what an operations officer in the CIA did, but I was so desperate to just get out of Houston, get away from the family business and to do something more meaningful in my life. so

My wife, who was pregnant with our first child, she and I packed up the car and we moved to Washington. And I know it sounds insane to take a job where you have no idea what they expect you to do, but I did. And then I found out exactly what they wanted me to do. And I'll be very blunt about this. A CIA operations officer is trained to basically exploit people, manipulate people, subvert people.

Jim Lawler (06:01.772)
suborned people to convince them to commit espionage against their countries, to become traitors, to commit treason. And I found out that not only was I pretty good at it, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. And I did that for the next 25 years.

Francis Gorman (06:20.293)
It's a fascinating story, James, and I want to put myself in the shoes of your pregnant wife, and you're telling her you're going to join the CIA. How did that go down?

Jim Lawler (06:29.526)
She actually was, I mean, by then her mom had passed away about a year and a half earlier and she loves me. We, in fact, we're having our 50th wedding anniversary this June. She loves me and she wanted me to be happy and she knew I was not happy. And she was the one who said either do something about it or stop your belly aching, stop complaining. And that's actually impeccable logic because you don't have a right to complain if you're not willing to do something about it. I, yeah, really. And so we had.

Francis Gorman (06:55.845)
very very true.

Jim Lawler (06:59.086)
A wonderful, a wonderful career in the CIA. had five overseas tours and we, we got to meet a lot of very interesting people and I enjoyed it.

Francis Gorman (07:11.313)
What level of danger you're under? had official cover, you weren't in a knocker item, so you had the diplomatic cover, but I assume when you're going to different countries to try to get individuals to commit treason or to turn to be a traitor, that's not safe work.

Jim Lawler (07:30.368)
Yeah, it's, well, you become a good analyst of risk. You become, essence, a risk analyst. Yes, I was under State Department cover. You my first tour, I was the third secretary of the embassy. And, you know, you meet people and sometimes you get a message from Washington, from CIA headquarters. And like on my first tour, I was there.

for three years on my first tour. And my first year was a complete waste of time. At least I was, I was wasting the taxpayers' money. I didn't know what I was doing, even though I'd been through training. My boss was a real sweet guy, but pretty incompetent. And the number two man was also rather reclusive. And so I had to basically teach myself what to do. And one day I got a classified cable from CIA headquarters.

telling everybody in the world, all the CIA officers, that we were going to engage in some very high level, very sensitive negotiations with a certain foreign country. And we had absolutely, we the United States, we the CIA, had no idea what this other side was going to want or what their negotiating positions were. So the agency, the CIA headquarters said, if you are in touch with

anybody who meets the following description from this particular country, please engage with that person, develop the relationship, see if you can find out some lever that we can pull to convince that person to become a spy for the United States and give us a peek at their negotiating positions. And as luck would have it, I had just met a guy who met that description exactly a few weeks earlier.

In fact, it was in a ski class, just pure serendipity. And so I began deepening the relationship with this man, going to lunches and dinners and things like that. And finally, I got it into my naive head that I could pitch this man to commit espionage. I could recruit him to betray his country. Now, I had no real measure of what made this guy tick.

Jim Lawler (09:56.162)
This was an incredibly naive thing for this young first tour intelligence officer to think that I could persuade this man based solely on our friendship to commit espionage against his country. But I wrote this up, proposal up, sent it to Washington. And I guess it was a measure of how desperate Washington was because they approved this stupid proposal of mine. And so I took the guy to dinner and I pitched him.

to share those positions with me. And he looked at me and he said, Jim, you know, you and I are friends, but that would be morally wrong. Now, Francis, I've pitched maybe 60 people in my CIA career, and he's the only person who ever posed a moral objection. And you ask yourself, or I'll ask you, Francis, why do you think most people would turn you down? If it's not on morals, what do you think?

the big reason why somebody would turn you down.

Francis Gorman (10:59.857)
It's not in their best interest, not financial gain, it's their ego.

Jim Lawler (11:05.537)
The risk, basically. Yeah, it's risky. As one guy I pitched told me one time, said, Jim, they hang people in my country for doing things like that. Of course, then he surprised me by saying, could I have a rain check? I said, a rain check? He said, yeah. He said, right now, I don't need you, but in 15 years, my young son will be university age and I might need you then. Well, I wrote that down.

Francis Gorman (11:07.355)
this year.

Jim Lawler (11:32.698)
And 15 years later, this gentleman was posted to Washington and headquarters asked me if I thought he meant it. And I said, yeah. And so we cashed that rain check in 15 years later. But to go back to my first big pitch, which has gone down in flames, I've been turned down. And we have a saying in the directorate of operations and the clandestine service that it's okay to get turned down, but not to get turned in.

Because what if this man goes and tells his boss, the ambassador, the young Mr. James Lawler, third secretary of the American embassy, just tried to convince him to become a spy and to commit treason. And I didn't mention this earlier, but the man I just pitched was the number two guy, very senior in his embassy. And I'm thinking, man, if he goes to that ambassador and complains,

I can just see the ambassador, that foreign ambassador storming into our ambassador's office and lodging a very, very loud and vociferous complaint. And it's possible that I might be recalled back to the United States because headquarters, even though they approved this, they're going to be in a full cover year, you know what stage and they're going to wonder how did Lawler screw this up? So I was sweating that for a couple of days.

thinking, God, I hope he doesn't mention this to anybody. And finally, I got my courage up and I called him. And I was pleased that he didn't hang up in my ear. And all I said to him was, you know, we had so much fun the other night, I was thinking it would be good to go out again this coming Friday and have dinner again. And to my great relief, he said, you know, Jim, I was thinking the same thing. So I thought, okay.

So my only goal at this next meeting, one week after the time I pitched him to commit espionage, my only goal is to smooth any turbulent waters. Maybe I can tell him, you know, I think my words were taken out of context. I want to apologize. I mistook some things and I really don't mean to insult you. I was going to go into full abject, you know, apology mode. And that was what I was prepared to do.

Jim Lawler (13:55.31)
So we get to the restaurant, the waiter drops the menus off. First words out of my friend's mouth, Jim, that offer you made me last Friday, is that still good? And I said, yeah, I did make that because you and I are friends. And he said, well, what you don't know is a couple of days after that, my wife announced that she wants a divorce and I can't afford to pay her alimony to which she's entitled.

and put my two high school age boys in private schools when we go home to our country next year. And they need to go to a private school because in my country, if you don't go to a private school, you don't get a good education. I can't do that unless I take your offer. I'd made him a nice financial offer as a consulting fee for this to commit espionage. And anyways, I started to say something, but then I remembered a...

lesson that we learned in law school fairly early, and that's if the judge rules in your favor, shut up and get out of court quickly. And so I shook his hand and the very next time we met, he brought me a stack of classified paper from his embassy. And as he handed it to me, he said, Jim, let me tell you why I'm really doing this. It's because I hate my ambassador. That guy

is just a loud mouthed jackass and he goes around taking credit for everything I do and everything everybody else in the embassy does. And he goes around this country we're in as if he's God's gift to the foreign service. He is such a jerk. As I hand you this classified material, it's as if I'm kicking that son of a bitch in the face. And I said to him, I said, look, you're and I, you were on the same team. Bring me some more of that. Let's kick that son of a bitch again.

And so revenge is absolutely one of the purest motivations for espionage because you ask yourself, why would anybody who's not a pure sociopath or a pure narcissistic person do something like this? It's when they feel like they've been betrayed first.

Jim Lawler (16:12.692)
And that's, in fact, the Jesuits even have an expression for that. It's called covert compensation. And so they feel like they've been betrayed first. They're not committing treason. And that's how they frequently rationalize it. you know, I mean, that's why if I want to penetrate an organization, I'm looking for the people under stress, the people who are unhappy. I never recruited a happy person. You recruit unhappy people.

And if they perceive that the employer has mistreated them, it makes my job very, very easy. I also found out that there are typically a whole mosaic of motivations that basically cause someone to commit espionage. It's rarely a single motivation. Okay, yeah, he owed his wife the alimony. He wanted a good education for his kids. He loved his children. But ultimately the anger.

towards his ambassador was the thing that really was stoking his fire and made it so much easier for him to commit espionage. We were going to put him through this polygraph test because he was going to go back to his home country and be handled by one of my deep cover knock officers, a non-official cover officer who did not have diplomatic protection. I at least had a diplomatic passport. If I get caught and if the host country wants to, they can expel me.

from the country declare me persona non grata and they give me anywhere from 24 to 72 hours to get out of their country. But if a knock officer gets caught, he can go to prison or worse. And it's a very delicate, very delicate thing. He or she does not have that kind of protection. And so my friend was going to be working with a knock officer and we wanted to make, we headquarters wanted to make doubly sure that

His cooperation with us was legitimate and bona fide. And so we were going to put him through a counterintelligence polygraph test with three very simple questions. Number one, have you told anyone about your secret relationship with CIA? Yes or no. Number two, are you working with any intelligence organization other than CIA? And number three, have you told, has anybody told you to volunteer to Mr. Lawler at that last meeting?

Jim Lawler (18:40.216)
In other words, we wanted to make sure he wasn't a double agent. And so the polygrapher, the operator, he is supposed to stick strictly to those questions unless the person that he's testing gives him some reason to pursue a different line of questioning. But as luck would have it, I had a very young, inexperienced polygraph operator. And the first question out of his mouth was, golly gee, I'm just wondering why you're doing this.

And I thought, my God, suddenly we're going to have the moral epiphany and he's going to storm out of here. But that's not what happened. He started laughing and he said, because I think this is going to be a lot of fun. He was a thrill seeker and that was another motivation to commit espionage was going to be fun for him. So he passed, he went back to his home country and he was able to give us not only their negotiating positions, but all of their fallback positions.

Meaning, how would you like to, if you were buying a car or a house, know the bottom dollar that the seller would accept before they tell you to go to hell? And that's exactly what he told us. And it was estimated that he saved the United States tens of billions of dollars in this high level national security negotiation. So that was my first exposure to basically pitching somebody from another country to commit espionage.

Francis Gorman (20:06.809)
it really does bring the insider threat lens to life at a far more grander level. And I think when you asked me the question of what's the...

what's there got to lose and the risk piece, you when you said, you know, you can get hung in my country, that really does bring it to life. It's you might be seeking trills, but there is definitely a risk to the human. I came across an acronym that the CIA use, Jim, when they're examining potential targets and it's the MICE one, the money ideology, compromise and the ego. Are they kind of the four key pressure points to push on an individual?

Jim Lawler (20:46.243)
Yes, and I'll discuss each one of those. Number one, nobody, hardly anybody. In fact, I don't think anybody ever does it just for money. Yeah, my friend, needed the money. He owed his wife the alimony. He loved his two children, needed the money for their education. Money by itself, it's a factor, but it is not the sole motivation. There's all these other things. The second one, ideology, the eye of mice, ideology.

I did have people that I recruited that would claim, you know, well, I hate communism or I, you know, I love democracy or I want to defeat weapons of mass destruction. And I think I'm pretty sure they believe that. But sometimes, Francis, I believe that that may be a window dressing. It sounds noble. You know, I can't stand the Communist Party or I can't stand this or that. Then that's fine. They believe in democracy. And I hope they do.

But sometimes I do think that that may be more lip service. Now the C in mice is coercion. I will not deny that the CIA has tried that at times. And I don't personally like coercion because I don't want to be driving down the street with a rattlesnake in the back seat. I want people to be positively motivated to help me, to trust me, and then I can trust them. And if somebody's operating under coercion,

There's no trust there. The final one, E, ego. I think that's probably the most important of the four letters of MICE, M-I-C-E. Again, ego plays into people for revenge, somebody who doesn't get any respect, somebody who's been dissed by somebody or mistreated by somebody. And it goes back to ego. And we all have egos. And so if I play to somebody's ego,

To me, that's the most effective of those four of the M-I-C-E acronym.

Francis Gorman (22:49.137)
That's a detailed description Jim and it does bring it to life. When I was doing a bit of research in the background, I was reading a lot about the AQ Can, New Clear Smuggling Ring. You played a key role in helping to dismantle that organisation. Are you able to tell me a little bit about your approach and how that materialised?

Jim Lawler (23:10.648)
Well, we started this operation way back in 1996. I I was involved in this project for almost 10 years. And we originally started it against another nuclear weapons or potential nuclear weapons state. And we created some entities overseas, commercial entities that looked like factories or plants and things like that.

And there's a saying about, know, create the field and the people will come. And so we, looked at, you know, what somebody in the, in the nuclear field would want. And we created things that looked like that. In fact, I, I talk about how back in 1917, Lenin got, Felix Zhezhinski, who was a Polish aristocrat, but he was a Bolshevik.

to create the Soviet intelligence service, the Cheka. And Zyrczynski was faced with an existential challenge to the Bolshevik party back in the 1917 to 1920 timeframe. And that was the counter-revolutionary forces that would like to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. And they were being financed by the United Kingdom and by ourselves. And so Zyrczynski said, if I want to defeat the counter-revolutionaries,

I have to become a counter-revolutionary myself. And so his Czech agents, his Soviet secret police agents fanned out across the Soviet Union, pretending to be counter-revolutionaries. And they were able to penetrate all of their supply lines, their financing lines, everything. And they systematically rolled them up and annihilated them. And so when I was faced with the problem of nuclear proliferation, I decided the way to defeat proliferators is to become a proliferator.

And so we created these entities that looked like they were in the proliferation business overseas. And sure enough, we were able to put ourselves in the path of people in the AQCon network and it worked out. And then I ultimately had to recruit some key sources. You you can do so much by collection of signals intelligence, computer intelligence and things like that. But ultimately what you really need is a human source.

Jim Lawler (25:38.1)
And so I recruited several human sources inside of the network, and then we were quickly able to bring it down.

Francis Gorman (25:47.333)
That is, when I think about the aspects and we talk a bit about nuclear now, we haven't heard much about nuclear since the Cold War, but it seems to be present in today's media again with what's going on with Russia, what's going on with North Korea. In the political landscape or in the landscape we see globally at the moment, what you see is the most pressing nuclear threats or do you believe it's all posturing at the moment?

Jim Lawler (26:15.022)
Well, I'm always concerned about Iran. You know, I mean, it's been estimated that they may be anywhere from three to six months away if they wanted to, to having a nuclear weapon. My real concern about Iran having a nuclear weapon, however, is not so much the threat that that would pose to Israel or some of our allies in the Middle East, because the Iranians realize that the Israelis probably have

I don't know, I'm just going to take a wild estimate, but I bet you they have at least 150 nuclear weapons. And the mullahs, I may not like them, but they're not stupid. And so they're not going to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, in my opinion. But what this will cause, once Iran has a demonstrable nuclear weapons capability, it's going to be like a massive infection.

that it's going to set off a arms race with the Egyptians, the Saudis, Emiratis, the Turks. All of these countries in that region are going to think, well, damn, we've got to have our own nuclear weapons program. In fact, the Saudis have said that much, that if Iran has nuclear weapons, they're going to. And I'm sure that the Turks and the Egyptians and some others in the region will feel obliged to have nuclear weapons as well. So if you have that many states in the Middle East, a very volatile region,

with nuclear weapons capabilities. In my opinion, the chances of either an accidental or intentional nuclear explosion goes up logarithmically, not just geometrically, but logarithmically. And we're going to have one hell of a mess. You've seen within the last week or two, India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed states coming very close to an exchange of nuclear weapons. They're horrible.

I it's just, I'm not for unilateral disarmament, I'm not, but I'm also conscious of the fact that what A.Q. Khan was trying to sell to the Libyans, a very unstable place in the world, Muammar Gaddafi, he wanted that nuclear weapon and he was going to have a weapon that was equivalent to the one that destroyed Hiroshima and killed 140,000 people, a 14 kiloton weapon. To put that in perspective,

Jim Lawler (28:33.174)
We had a terrorist attack on the Oklahoma federal building back in 1996. And the explosive yield that brought that federal building down and killed those people was maybe one and a half or two tons equivalent to dynamite. But the bomb that Gaddafi wanted from the AQCon network was 10,000 times more powerful. So it's an entire, you can't get your mind around that. It's just, it's just horrible.

Francis Gorman (29:02.137)
It's horrifying when you break it down like that in terms of scale. It is absolutely frightening. What role, James, do you think we've moved on now from the human aspects of espionage? We're now in a very digital landscape, artificial intelligence, social media networks. Are people volunteering a lot of this information without even knowing it at the moment? How has the human intelligence gathering changed over the years?

Jim Lawler (29:30.094)
Well, I think as far as artificial intelligence is concerned, it makes what we call targeting much easier. I want to, for instance, Francis, if I wanted to target you, I mean, you're a senior officer in the Bank of Ireland, as I recall. So say, let's say I wanted to target your institution. Well, with AI, you know, it might narrow down who among your colleagues are the most vulnerable. And we're always, again, looking for people under stress.

The people who are not the high performers, because it's very rare what a high performer want to work for us. But we're looking for the people who may be on probation, maybe have letters of reprimand in their file, maybe have frequent absentee things. People that have a boss who's a real jerk and they're just itching to get even with the boss. artificial intelligence probably, if it looks at your social media,

It looks at your LinkedIn, your Facebook, everything else that you've got out there in public. And it probably could narrow down, here's the most vulnerable targets, for example, in the Bank of Ireland, if that's what we were looking at. So AI, artificial intelligence, and all of the social networking that we have nowadays on the internet, I think that's made that targeting much easier. When I was a case officer,

And if I was going after somebody, I didn't have the internet. That was in its infancy at that time. Instead, we would recruit somebody who we called an access agent, meaning I'd recruit somebody who's a friend of you, yours, say, well, know, Francis is going through a nasty divorce. Francis has got all kinds of problems going on. and, you know, and Francis, by the way, he likes to play golf, he plays tennis and guess who shows up at the golf course or at the tennis court and befriends you innocently.

And knowing in the back of my mind, you've got some vulnerabilities. So AI and the internet has certainly changed that, but ultimately AI can't recruit people. That's what I do. That's what the human part does.

Francis Gorman (31:39.141)
And all of these things play in that when you look at private enterprises now and the makeup of them and you've got hybrid working, you've got remote working, the human aspect can almost be invisible to an organization. Have you any tips or tricks for organizations to kind of identify those insider threats or risks based on your experience?

Jim Lawler (32:00.344)
Well, again, look at the low performers, I guess. And not that every low performer is going to betray the company or betray the bank or betray their government, but people who have a lot of stress in their lives. I recruited, I don't mean to harp on this, but in a short time period, I recruited several people going through divorce.

because divorce is one of the most financially, emotional, and psychologically tumultuous times in anybody's life. And if I'm your friend or say I'm your friend and know that you need me not only to talk to, but you may need money because of the stress that's putting you through. I mean, I've recruited it. In fact, at CIA headquarters, they jokingly called me Dr. Divorce because I was looking for people going through divorce that were very vulnerable.

It's a very horrible time in people's lives. But people who get into either alcohol use, drug use, anything that puts a stress on their job performance, and they become desperate. I'm looking for desperate people. I guess the best thing, the best defense is you can't give your employees everything, but I tell you what, if you listen to them, or at least

compassionate and help them through times of trouble. That builds a lot of loyalty. And it basically, it maybe won't insulate you 100 % from people like me or 100 % from people just betraying the company or the trust. But it certainly raises the barriers quite a bit. To show compassion, we used to target, say, maybe a Russian embassy and we'd have an observation post.

And we'd see several of the Russians come out at five o'clock and they'd be hitting each other on the back and they're going off to a bar. We leave those people alone. But if about three or four minutes later, there's a one guy coming out all by himself and he doesn't feel like he's part of the team. That's the person we want to talk to. So if you can create a team spirit in your company, in your organization, in your bank, whatever, to where people won't

Jim Lawler (34:21.56)
feel desperate and go out and do something like volunteering to someone like me. That's your best preventative measure that I can recommend.

Francis Gorman (34:31.185)
solid advice there James and it is all about the human element I suppose it is the compassion, the ear to listen to the problem and to understand and then break down how can we support and help moving forward. When I was listening to a couple of the podcasts you're on it's you know the tagline usually uses the mad dog lauler and I was found it quite humorous and I had all sorts of ideas in my head why that nickname came but the story

itself is not as ferocious as the nickname sounds. Do you want to, if you can, give me a little bit about how you got that tag in the outside world?

Jim Lawler (35:10.508)
Yeah. I was, I was posted to Paris at the time and I'm a long distance runner. And in the mornings I would go running in the huge park there in Paris, the Bois de Boulogne. And one morning I was running through the park and I ran past a German shepherd and no growling, no barking or anything. But I got about 10 yards past that dog when suddenly I felt the most ferocious pain in my right leg.

And I turned and this dog had my basically his jaws around my, my leg. And so I jerked my leg out of his jaws and I tried running, but of course you can't outrun a dog. And so finally I picked up a large limb on the ground and beat the dog over the head and then ran off bleeding to the, the house, to my apartment in Paris. And I mean, I was bleeding and just really just felt terrible.

So I got cleaned up and I went into the embassy and they gave me tetanus shots. But then they said, you know, Jim, the way that dog was acting so, so irrationally, I think it's, we think it's rabid and you need to go to the Pasteur Institute across town because they have the vaccine against rabies. So I went over to that afternoon to the Pasteur Institute, a very kind French doctor said, yeah, you really need to get this.

And told me that in the entire history of man, I think maybe one person has survived rabies, maybe. And it's like 99.999 % lethal. And he says, if you get these shots today, one in each arm, and you come back and you get another shot, one arm, and then a week after that, another shot, you'll have, as long as you do that within 30 days of being bitten, you'll be fine. But if you don't get those shots,

and you basically get rabies, you'll basically go progressively mad and you will die a horrible, absolutely atrocious death. So I said, yeah, well, that's an easy decision. So I got the shots. But at the time I was having some difficulties with people back at CIA headquarters. And so as a precaution, I made a list of all the people I was going to bite if I got rabies. And so that's how I got my nickname.

Jim Lawler (37:37.063)
And anyhow, but yeah.

Francis Gorman (37:41.433)
Yeah, I found out a very enjoyable story. It's the sole word of the problem. If I'm going down, I'm bringing all these guys with me that are...

Jim Lawler (37:50.124)
Exactly. That was exactly it, Francis.

Francis Gorman (37:55.163)
Brilliant, brilliant. James, I have to ask Nick, with a second name like Lawler, there's Irish descent there. There's a...

Jim Lawler (38:03.052)
Yes, my great grandfather, Michael Kelly Lawler came from County Kildare. And when he was like two years old and about the year 1816 or so, and moved eventually to Illinois. And during the Mexican War, he served with Zachary Taylor down in Mexico. And then during the Civil War, at first he was a Colonel and then he became a Brigadier General under General Grant and led a very

famous charge north of Vicksburg at the, it's called the Charge at Big Black River Bridge. And so my great grandfather, Michael Kelly Lawler, yes, did come from County Kildare. And I've never been to County Kildare, but I've got it on my list of things to go do at some point. So yes, sir.

Francis Gorman (38:52.933)
Well, when you're when you're coming to County Gilear, hit me up. I live in County Gilear and I know a few people who have accommodation. So we'll get you sorted. We'll get you sorted, James, if you're ever coming up. To wrap up, James, you've written a number of books. How do you transition from CIA career, you know, studying human intelligence to then, you know, distilling that into something tangible for people to read and

Jim Lawler (39:02.882)
That sounds like a deal, Francis.

Francis Gorman (39:20.881)
I've had a flick of a number of pages in the first few. on my bookshelf beside a couple of others to get through. you know, they're quite gripping. You're quite descriptive in some of the aspects of the books. How did you make that transition to become an author? And that must give you great joy then to see that ideology and that comes onto the page and get published and get out there. Do you want to tell me a little bit about the novel you've out there at the moment and how you made that transition?

Jim Lawler (39:50.594)
Well, I retired in the year 2005 and ever since I was a young man, I've always wanted to write a novel, a story. And I can no longer run intelligence operations in person, but I can create books where I live vicariously through some of my characters. And so all of my books, starting with Living Lies that I wrote in the year 2021, involve a lot of operations I was involved in, but they're thinly disguised.

with characters that I create. Some of the characters are based on friends of mine. so I just find it a very enjoyable use of my time. I like storytelling anyways. And so I tell stories with my books. The first book, Living Lies, is about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The second one, In the Twinkling of an Eye, is about a North Korean and Russian

conspiracy develop a biological weapon. And the last one, The Traitor's Tale is just about sheer treachery and treason inside of the CIA. And it's an escape for me to write these books. I enjoy, especially if somebody reads a book that I wrote and they say, Jim, I really like that. I call that my psychological dividends. And that's so important to me that somebody has found some entertainment in a book that I've written.

And I'm working on a fourth and I've got a fifth one in mind as well. It's a way to somehow try and keep the neurons firing in the brain and gives me an outlet. You know, some people they take up other hobbies. Well, my hobby now has become writing.

Francis Gorman (41:33.367)
fantastic. I definitely have a book in me somewhere I want to get out on paper at some stage so it's inspirational to see that you've churned out so many and have two more potentially in the hopper that you're working on. Jim it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, really inspirational, lots of insights there and I've really enjoyed our conversation today.

Jim Lawler (41:54.7)
And I've enjoyed it too, Francis. You're a great interviewer and a great host.

Francis Gorman (41:58.811)
Thanks very much and when you get that next book out, we might come back on and have a chat about it.

Jim Lawler (42:04.216)
Sounds great.