The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in Langley, Virginia.
Larry Downing | Reuters
At the CIA’s covert training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia, commonly called “The Farm,” recruits are trained in the world of espionage and the many ways to get people to provide secret information.
Jim Olson, the former Chief of Counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency who served as a CIA officer for 31 years including a stint in Moscow during the Cold War — where he tried to recruit Russians to betray their country — told CNBC Senior Washington Correspondent Eamon Javers that “the heart of espionage is the human source.”
“We are in the head-hunting business, as we call it,” Olson said. “We have to find individuals that we can induce to cooperate equally with us to give us their secrets.”
In CNBC’s new original podcast series “The Crimes of Putin’s Trader,” Javers has been retracing the mission to put Russian entrepreneur Vladislav Klyushin, accused of running a massive hacking operation that was stealing corporate earnings reports from U.S. companies and trading on that information, behind bars.
After Klyushin was arrested in Switzerland by U.S. authorities, one of the claims his lawyer made was that American intelligence officers had attempted to recruit Klyushin as a spy for the U.S. upon meeting him for the first time.
However, as Olson explained to Javers, the way that intelligence officials approach that process is far different, something that he called “the recruitment cycle.”
Vladislav Klyushin, an owner of an information technology company with ties to the Russian government, is seen in an undated photograph attached to a U.S. Department of Justice filing.
U.s. Department Of Justice | Via Reuters
“It’s a seven-step process, it’s very systematic,” Olson said. “The starting point is that every human being has needs. It sounds cynical, but it is true. And our job is to find those foreigners who have access to secrets that we need and want for our own security, and who are willing to give us those secrets in return for something we offer. And our job is to identify what their needs are and hope that those needs are compelling enough, that they will commit treason against their country, they will risk their life if we satisfy that need.”
That can require several meetings, getting to know that person in more depth and leaning into their interests, whether that’s running into them at the gym, hosting them at a dinner party or sharing a drink at a bar, Olson said.
While that leads to a personal relationship, it’s what Olson calls a “false friendship, because I have an ulterior motive from the beginning.”
The latest episode of the original podcast series takes listeners through the intricate dance of spycraft and how intelligence officers, whether from the U.S., China or Russia, obtain critical information.
“I serve my country. Our country needs intelligence. I serve the American people. And I serve them by collecting intelligence. And to do that, I have to be manipulative, I have to be living a lie, I have to deceive. It just goes with the territory. You can’t do it any other way,” Olson said.
Listen to “The Crimes of Putin’s Trader” now.
