Obtaining Foreign Government Secrets For The CIA

How does a CIA officer obtain foreign government secrets?

Typically, the way that a CIA officer obtains foreign government secrets is we recruit a foreigner who has access to those secrets. It might be a government official, it might be a journalist, it might be a military officer. Someone who, by virtue of their job or their family or their status within the society, is in a position to have access to information that we otherwise wouldn't get. Someone who works in a top secret facility will probably have access to information that the United States government cannot get through diplomatic channels, and so that's exactly the kind of person that we might want to recruit to sell us the information.

What is a CIA agent?

A lot of people think that a CIA agent is a person who has been hired by the CIA, such as myself. But at the CIA, we would refer to ourselves as CIA officers. The reason that we did this is that the term "agent" was what we used to describe the foreigner who we recruited to sell us secrets.

Is recruiting CIA agents an effective way to obtain foreign government secrets?

Recruiting foreign agents is an effective but not flawless way to obtain foreign government secrets. It's all part of what we call 'human intelligence'. You're recruiting a human to give you information, and it goes without saying that sometimes that person might lie, sometimes they might exagerate, sometimes they might have their own interests at heart or the interests of their own government, so while it's an effective way to get information it's not always fool proof, it's not always an effective way to get really valid information, and we end up with a lot of intelligence that doesn't have a value because we might be relying on someone who's reliable in and of itself.

What other ways are foreign government secrets obtained?

Other ways foreign government secrets are obtained is through the work of the national security agency, which taps phone lines and monitors email, and this is a whole other way of conducting intelligences what we called ‘signal intelligence'. This happens whereby rather befriending foreigners and trying to convene them to sell us their secrets, the National Security Agency (NSA) is actually monitoring their conversations to their correspondences of foreign nationals and in that way discovering their secrets.

How much will a recruited CIA agent earn for giving the CIA foreign government secrets?

The amount of money that a foreign agent will earn really varies from agent to agent. And it depends on the quality of information they're providing, the reliability, if we've been able to vet the information. And there's no set number or dollar amount to say that you'll start at this price and move up. It really depends on how much we want the information and perhaps how much of a risk the foreign agent has taken and also if we've been able to prove their information reliable. And that all determines their monetary value in the eyes of the CIA.

What do CIA officers look for when recruiting a CIA agent?

When recruiting an agent, CIA officers typically first look for whether or not that person has access to secrets. That's a given. You need to have someone who has got access to information, because if they don't they're not worth anything to us. You also want to look for certain characteristics that are common to people who are willing to be foreign agents, and a lot of times these are their weaknesses. Do they need the money? That is probably the foremost. Are they having problems at work or problems with their family? Do they have a child that is sick? As a CIA officer, they might be able to provide healthcare to that child or at least the financial resources to provide healthcare for that child. As a CIA officer you're looking for either weaknesses or circumstances that you can exploit so that that person will want to work with you, so that that person will come to rely on his or her relationship with you as the CIA officer to better his life. It's a very cold and calculating way of doing things, but it's the way that the CIA does things.