Recruitment Is a Lot Like Seduction

In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell speaks with former CIA operations officer Jim Lawler about his years of work on counterproliferation matters and his post-CIA pursuit of writing fictional novels, including “Living Lies: A Novel of the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program.” Lawler and Morell discuss the similarities between recruiting spies and developing literary plots, as well as why a keen sense of empathy is necessary to be accomplished in each. Lawler tells Morell why he believes the most successful operations officers may have a particular neurological capability for convincing spies to steal secrets, which he calls the “metaphysics of recruitment.”  

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