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HOW TO BE PLEASED BY PEOPLE - SPY TIPS.
Intelligence officer Andrey Bezrukov worked in the USA, Canada and France for over 20 years. He had to find the key to any person, acquire connections and break into the most elite circles. He told us how to get to the right people, win them over and achieve your goals with their help.
Contents:
Scout:
And an intelligence officer is not at all like in the movies, where someone runs around with a gun and fights. An intelligence officer who starts running and fighting – that’s it, intelligence is over. Intelligence is a fairly invisible process that is constantly ongoing. It is difficult, because in intelligence work you constantly overcome problems. But there is no other experience.
Interviewer:
Andrei Bezrukov is a Soviet and Russian illegal intelligence officer. Married. His wife, Elena Vavilova, is also an intelligence officer. Together they worked in the USA, Canada and France under the names of Donald Heathfield and Tracy Foley. As a result of betrayal, arrest and prisoner exchange, they returned to Russia. You can learn their detailed story from an interview with Elena Stanislavovna on our channel. And today we will talk with Andrei Olegovich about the main work of an intelligence officer.
How to make useful connections, develop relationships and raise your status in society.
Who is taken into intelligence.
Scout:
It is impossible to just teach a person to communicate. You can give him some details, you can point out his character flaws, and there are always some. Especially with young people, because the people who go into intelligence are mostly smart and, of course, ambitious, because without ambition, without self-confidence, it is impossible in such work, it is too difficult, it is too labor-intensive to put an unmotivated person there.
We were pushed first of all on the path of self-improvement. An illegal intelligence officer always works three jobs at the same time. His first job is intelligence work.
What information do intelligence officers obtain?
Scout:
He must find people who are bearers of secrets or some other important information, not all information needed to make a decision is classified.
There is simple information that is very necessary, but even the enemy does not understand that it is very important for us and it is not classified. Well, for example, the personal qualities of some decision-makers, well, let's say, at the moment, American representatives of the highest elite. This is not classified information, but if you know about these personal qualities, maybe personal vulnerabilities, some inclinations, their biographical details.
You can use this to build relationships with them. This is his first job. He collects information, sends it to the center, but since he lives in an environment of normal people, he must look like a normal person, he has a second job.
The second job, the so-called cover job, and the neighbors must understand where he works, what money he lives on, otherwise they will ask, who is this anyway? They will call the police. And this means that the intelligence officer must have a business or he must have a job, and a real one, and preferably one that allows him to earn enough to live, at least not only to live, but also to work, because, naturally,
the state can help the intelligence officer with money, but constantly feeding him is a dangerous track, that is, any transaction, any transfer of money is a dangerous undertaking. That is, if the intelligence officer himself earns the money that he needs for intelligence work, and not just for living, that is great, that is usually how it works.
The third job is, as I said, self-improvement, it is a constant rise from the bottom of society, where he finds himself, to the very top, where people live who are precisely the bearers of secrets. Imagine that an intelligence officer, an illegal, and in particular my wife and I, arrived in the country of our combat work, the first one, in Canada, with one suitcase.
Naturally, we didn’t know anyone, no one knew us, we had no status. And those people who have secrets are people who are in the upper strata of society. These are people, mostly rich, very well educated, who have gone through a long life of communication with people like them or above them.
That is, these are very complex, interesting people, with a lot of life experience, and they are only interested in those who can bring them something else. At least, they live in their society like them. And if you want to work with them, you must be on their level – human, educational, level of interests, and so on.
That is, you must, when you come to them, bring them either some knowledge that they don’t have, or contacts that they don’t have. Or you must be a very interesting person in yourself, who would attract their attention.
"Through him, the Union received up to half of NATO's secret documents."
Scout:
I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago, one of the famous Russian intelligence officers, Yuri Shevchenko, died. He worked for many years in Europe under the cover of an artist.
And this status of a Person engaged in art allowed him to work with people in the appropriate position in society, who accepted him as one of their own, because he was a unique person.
And, as far as I understand, through him at a certain time, in the 80s, the Soviet Union then received up to half of all NATO secret documents. The career of an illegal intelligence officer is built over a long period. Of course, there are the first stages, when he is just settling in, getting used to this situation, and then the rise, rise, rise begins.
And I had to, at least, get three higher educations abroad. The first education as an economist in Canada, then an MBA in Paris and then the Harvard School of Public Administration. In order to fit in and reach out to those people who are important to us.
How to enter elite circles.
Scout:
At the university, you communicate with people who have great potential for growth in society.
They come there to learn something. These are people who are already charged with growth. These are interesting people in themselves. These are people who want to make a career. And, for example, at Harvard, these were people in the program, for example, public administration, these were people who had already worked.
It was a program, what is called a mid-career. People who had a certain life experience, they were already at least 35-40, if not more, and for them this was either a career leap or a transition to another job. There were a lot of very rich businessmen there who said, okay, I made my money, now I want to do something interesting.
Well, there were military personnel there, there were many foreigners who are attracted by the Americans under programs in order, on the one hand, to educate them in the American understanding of the world, and on the other hand, specifically to establish contacts with them so that they would later become conductors of American policy. And so we specifically prepared, well, how we prepared, we tried to enter such educational circles that would allow us to ensure this growth.
Any person, not only an intelligence officer, setting himself a task, a life task, who I want to be in 5 years, what I would like to do, should set a task, okay, if I want such a career in 5 years, and who should be around me, who will help me do this.
And, accordingly, set a task of communicating with those people, getting to know those people who would meet this task. The same is true for an intelligence officer. He understands what task is facing him, and he may have a very long-term task. Well, for example, tracking changes in the political system of the country, for example, changes in the platforms of political parties that influence decision-making.
And situational ones, well, for example, there will be a meeting of the top officials of the state. And you need to understand with what agenda, for example, the American or other side is going to these negotiations. What it wants, what it wants to achieve, who will participate there, how they perceive our side, and so on.
That is, these are things that are done for the situation. You need to work it out quickly, by a certain date, and so on. Well, naturally, in order to do this, you need to prepare positions in advance. You cannot do this from scratch.
And so if you specifically understand your task or tasks, you can determine who you need, who you can reach, how to get there, whether there are intermediate links, whether there are people who will lead you to a certain person. That is, this is a planning task, a task of setting goals and then planning the work.
How to acquire connections.
Scout:
What are the ways of creating around you, that is, the number of people attracting acquaintances to yourself, there are 3 ways, 3 types of people we can rely on.
The first type of people are such super communicators, we call them connectors. These are people by their character, by their charisma, who attract people to themselves. If you look around you, and in your organization, and at school, and at the university, there were a few such people, around whom everyone revolved. Well, usually in a class there are a couple of boys, a couple of girls, who are the center of attention of everyone else.
And our task is to find these super communicative people, who have great connections, a large circle of connections, and become their friends. Thus, the people who revolve around them will start to revolve around you too. That is, you will get to know them one way or another. This is the first type of people.
The second type of people are the so-called capacitors. These are people who have information, resources, experience, and so on, which are important to others. And since any relationship is an exchange of something, asking yourself the question, what will I exchange, because I can exchange what I already have, or I can exchange what I will take from someone and give to another.
That is, I am a broker. So if you find such people who know a lot, have some resource, and become their friends, you can use their connections, their resource, their knowledge in order to give this knowledge or something else to others.
And thus receive something for yourself for someone else's knowledge. And the third type of people are people who can either help you with something, with contacts mainly, of course, or, on the contrary, prevent you from going somewhere, prevent you from meeting someone, prevent you, for example, from meeting the secretary of
some boss, she can help you meet this person if you have a good relationship, or she can do everything possible to prevent this contact from happening. Ivan Ivanovich is on a business trip again, he is busy and so on, to be a barrier between you on the way to this person. And you need to see who around you is either a bridge or a barrier.
What kind of people do intelligence officers avoid.
Scout:
And, accordingly, build relationships with them in order to remove these barriers or, on the contrary, build bridges. And here a normal professional has three questions. When a new person appears in front of him, he asks himself three questions. First. Is this person dangerous for me if I suddenly met him? Dangerous or not?
That is, it is clear to an intelligence officer that people working in the special services of an unfriendly country, in the police, can be dangerous. These can be people connected with crime. You will be seen together with these people, and then an investigation will begin, why are you with these people, and why suddenly, what do you have in common with, so to speak, a person who is registered with the police.
The next question that the intelligence officer asks himself is the question of how interesting this person is. He may be interesting, he may not be. He may be interesting as a stepping stone to another person. You simply do not need him personally, but this is a person who knows someone you need. And therefore he can bring you there. And the third question that the intelligence officer adds to himself.
How difficult will it be to build a relationship with this person? If you see that there is no chemistry in the relationship with such a person, it is very difficult, you can ask yourself the question: Listen, well, if I kill so much time to build a relationship, and it does not work out, I will not get a result, because I know from experience that it is difficult for me with such people. Well, why should I waste time? I will refuse.
How to win people over.
And then the process of building relationships begins. And for this person you need to study, you need to ask questions, you need to meet with him, you need to spend time with him. And this is a very expensive process, this is a very emotional process. An intelligence officer touches on a huge number of emotions in this work. Because every meeting, human exchange, it requires investment from you.
You cannot be hypocritical, you cannot be cold inside, because the person will immediately feel it. You must really want good for this person. You must really be interested in his inner world. So that he feels that you are interested in him, that you are not just spending time with him for the sake of it.
Then he will treat you the same way, he will open up, he will be honest with you. And in order to build relationships between people, imagine two completely different people, working at different jobs, with different characters, with different experiences. There are a lot of barriers between them, natural barriers that separate them.
So building human relationships is a constant cutting of these barriers that exist between people when they begin to feel each other. There is an open space between them. You must be a good listener, you must create an atmosphere of appropriate communication.
You must seek out and create interesting events so that a person, having met you, would have a good time, he would like it. You manage this process.
You will make mistakes along the way, and you need to carefully monitor yourself, monitor your behavior, ask yourself questions - how successful was the meeting, how well did what you planned, the questions you wanted to ask, receive some kind of answer, both emotional and factual, and so on.
How to make first contact.
Interviewer:
First contact - how to make it, how, in general, to get to a person?
Scout:
Well, look, in order to get to a person, first of all, you need to set a task. If you want to get to know someone, you need to understand with whom and why. You need to study the person. The task of the first contact, the only task of the first contact is to then have a second contact. There is no other. And if there is no second contact, then your first contact is of no use to anything. In the first contact, you must simultaneously do two things - try to understand the person in order to offer a basis for the second contact, that is, you need to ask him some questions.
And the more you know about him, the easier it is. And build a first impression so that the person likes you, so that there is no rejection. If there is rejection, even if there is some basis for continuing contact, the person most likely will not go for it, if he... he does not like you. When you go for the first contact, you are, of course, afraid that it will not happen, that it will simply not work out.
The person will not like you, he will reject you. And many people are simply afraid to go for the first contact. This is a completely normal fear, this is a normal state of a person in the face of uncertainty. It is exactly like a parachute jump. That is, you just need to believe, move forward and that's it.
And over time, this fear of the first contact, it becomes less. It does not erase completely, never. Well, just like you ask actors when they go on stage for the thousandth time, they are still worried, they still think about how today's performance will be, like me? This is normal. This is a state of slight stress, it mobilizes, this is good.
How to manage stress.
Scout:
A state of great stress demobilizes, and in order to manage this stress, you just need to manage it, you need to train. That is, simple things. Try talking to people in any similar situation, you are standing in line for coffee. Say something to people, look at their reaction, how they... Many will move away, they will say, well, what idiots.
And many will start talking to you, smile. And, for example, if you go on the list and smile at people, well, not everyone will smile back at you, they are just not ready for it. But you deliberately go on the list and smile, and look at their reaction, and then after a while you will not care, and then your stress level will be at a controlled level.
That is, you should not care a little.
Interviewer:
Is it possible to somehow train a smile so that it multiplies?
Scout:
Of course, you can train a smile. You can train a smile as much as you like. Just smile.
Interviewer:
Is there anything that a person might consider insincere?
Scout:
No. You put sincerity into a smile. Tell the person in front of you, even if you don’t know him, that you like him. Just smile as if he likes you and you like him. This is self-conviction. That is, of course, as in many professions where you need to communicate with people, an intelligence officer needs to convince himself, you need to support yourself. I mean, emotionally, because when you are emotionally charged with something good, you usually do it well.
And when you are afraid of something, well, then it’s understandable. You can control your facial expressions, you can control your body. You understand that in a difficult situation, maybe you are crossing the border with a fake passport or something like that, that you will be watched.
There are cameras that are watching you. That is, you must show everyone with your body that you are fine, that you are not worried. If you ask yourself as a person, how should I behave? You will behave like that. Usually, people who do not think about it, do not prepare for it, stress is visible on them. And an intelligence officer, he is a professional in this, he understands that they are watching him.
An intelligence officer should generally live as if a camera is constantly watching him. This is such a good experience. Try it just like that every day, well, not necessarily every day, take one day and try to live as if you are being filmed all the time, and you will begin to adjust your behavior.
Then you can control your reactions. And the intelligence officer develops such a professional delay, a second delay, that he does not react to something right away. He gives himself a little time to think, to realize what it was. Well, for example, if you were walking through New York, and suddenly, God forbid, I was called by my Russian name.
You never know, some friend who went to the United States, suddenly, whom I had already forgotten, and it turns out he lives there. This will allow me not to turn around. This will allow me to first think about who it could be and what it could be, control my behavior, and from the point of view of a professional, especially a professional who, in general, has surveillance skills, he
understands that the entire situation around him can be filmed on camera, there are different people looking at him, he, accordingly, behaves as if he is in plain sight all the time. Sometimes people make mistakes, it is completely normal.
Why do intelligence officers forget their past.
Scout:
The question is how to cover it up later, why someone suddenly recognized you or made a mistake, of course, but from the point of view of this purely linguistic transition to Russian after many years of working in English, you will no longer react like that, it sits in your subcortex, and you forget your Russian past. My wife and I have caught ourselves many times remembering things that did not happen, we remember our legend from the point of view of our childhood memories and so on, and do not remember what really happened.
It’s just like in the theater, you get used to this role, and it fills your entire brain, and something that really happened there goes under the cortex and lives there. As long as you don’t touch it, you don’t even remember it. A person is a very flexible thing. Human psychology allows for great flexibility for survival, for adaptation.
If you work purposefully with a person, you can get very interesting results from the point of view of the psyche. What legend did you and your wife have? Well, we are Canadian citizens, born in Canada, to Canadian parents. So, basically, what connections could there be with Russia? None.
Interviewer:
And the business that you were involved in, the one that you built this up?
Scout:
We had several businesses. That is, our first business was a delivery business. We sold that business to a Chinese guy in 1995. And it’s still operating in Canada. At the end of our careers, my main business was strategic planning, working with corporate government clients to study issues of the future, issues of planning their corporate activities, and so on.
Well, and besides that, I also had to work in consulting companies. In general, the life of an illegal intelligence officer, it doesn’t work, it’s fate. It’s entirely dedicated to one thing. And all your everyday things, one way or another, they somehow fit into what you do in parallel.
Even if you go somewhere on vacation, if you go somewhere, you still think, who can you meet there, who can you get to know there, how can I use the time that I have for something, like, connected with intelligence work. It takes up your whole brain, it takes up all your time, because you have to work with people who are much higher in status than you.
It is sometimes risky in terms of... Not in the sense of some kind of combat risk, but the risk that it will not work out because the difference in status is very big, you worry more than you should.
How to get in touch with people of high status.
Scout:
Well, I can't use names, but I had to get in touch with a person who worked in the previous government quite high up, not directly.
First, go to his organization, his circle, then to him. Direct access to such a person without understanding what he is interested in, without being able to rely on the people he already knows in a relationship. He is very complex. There is nothing in common between you, neither in age, nor in status, nor in business.
I, in general, represented business, although quite innovative, nevertheless, but he was a civil servant. That is, in principle, there is also no direct connection. This means that you must find some streak in them, when they become interested in either helping you, or suggesting something to you from the point of view of advice, coming for advice.
But, again, when you come to them for advice, you need to make it so that they are pleased to give this advice, so that they, their internal status is satisfied, so to speak, that I have achieved such positions, people come to me with questions, how am I, I can give something.
After all, from the point of view of age, people who have already gone through a career and, in general, so to speak, lived, are often more interested in giving than taking from someone. It is a pleasant feeling when you have helped someone, done something for another, in any culture. In youth, you want it for yourself, and then everything is different.
And you need to use this, their experience, their generosity of soul, sometimes very often. These are people who feel good and confident in society.
Interviewer:
Are you able to immediately, from the first conversation, determine, aha, this person is such and such, and this one is such and such, this approach to him, this one is such and such? - In general, this is true.
What types of people are there and how to behave with them.
Scout:
That is, a person, one way or another, his character is expressed in external signs, and when you start talking to him, exactly in how he behaves, well, for example, a person of such a narcissistic disposition, who wants to create an image of himself, you will see it both in positioning among others, and in posture, and in clothes, that he wants to be in sight.
Naturally, in order to work with this person, it will be difficult for you to work if you do not somehow support this status, give compliments, in no case try to be more, how to say, fashionable than this person and so on, entering into competition with him.
So he wants to create such an image around him, but he will not need competitors who are brighter than him. These are people who want to be bright. There are people of the opposite plan, who withdraw into themselves, they are anxious, for them the main thing is that nothing happens that will ruin their life, that will create some problems.
With these people you need patience, you need to do it in such a way that they are not afraid of you, so that they get used to you. You know, if I say who this person was, I probably have to be wrong. But this person is from a very closed ethnic organization. And the person, in general, is in conflict with the state.
That is, this person already suspects everyone around him that they pose a danger to him. But this person was very smart and well-read.
And in order to at least start communicating with this person, to somehow start a conversation, I had to just spend a few days next to him in the library, so that he would get used to it, so that he would see what I do, that I am normal, I am not an agent of the state, that I do not carry any... I am just a person, like him, exactly the same, working in the library as a student.
Interviewer:
It turns out that the first are such egocentric people, the second are closed.
Scout:
There are people who are very, how can I put it, well, let's say, very self-confident, for whom there is the world that they have, and there is no other. So they constantly live by their own rules of the game and impose their rules of the game on everyone else. These are people whom you cannot contradict.
Again, do you understand what the matter is? If you just constantly adjust to them, you will seem weak and uninteresting to them, if you constantly say "yes, yes, yes". But you must show your character and your value not right away, but later, so that they perceive you as a person with your own opinion, but accepting that they have their own opinion, and not trying to somehow direct them to a different path.
This is such a line when if you simply accept everything that they impose on you, you lose values for them, they are not interested in you. You are such a dependent person for them. You are not satisfied with such a position, because this will be an unequal relationship.
Right away, right? But you must accept their values at the first stages, without losing yours. And the fourth type, how can I say this, as far as I see it for myself, These are people, on the contrary, very soft, very ready, very dependent on emotions, mutual emotions, that is, who must be constantly kept in conversation somehow.
They are even constantly chatty in many ways, you understand? Because they absolutely need to have this environment around them, which makes the situation around them comfortable.
They need to constantly communicate with someone, but communicate emotionally, so that they have some kind of emotional environment.
Interviewer:
Of these four types, which one is closer to you?
Scout:
This is a very good question, but there will be a very good answer to it. The thing is that an intelligence officer must be in the middle of all these types. We were specially selected in such a way that we would not be too much like any one. Because if you are too much like one of these types, it will be difficult for you to work with all the others.
And people with flexible psyches are selected, who, in general, are in the center. They have a little bit of quality from all four. Professionally, I must be there. I must be balanced.
Interviewer:
Yeah. And were there people, when you were an intelligence officer, with whom you managed to build such a warm, good, pleasant relationship, they became really close friends? And that was a blow?
"Intelligence is not a happiness factory, relationships suffer."
Scout:
Yes, of course, yes. That was a blow. Moreover, some time ago, already during Covid, one person called me, he, however, is not an American. He found me on the Internet, called and said, "Listen, well, we were friends, it's true, right?
That is, you... This is not fake? We really were friends?" I say, yes, of course. In fact, we were friends, yes. But I can't go back to that person, because then the question will immediately arise, why did you resume relations with a Russian intelligence officer, the special service will come for him.
Interviewer:
And why ruin his life? And what emotions did you have after that conversation? Well, what emotions, listen, we really were friends.
Scout:
That is, of course, it is a pity that the situation is such that the person is very good, very smart, pleasant. The costs of the profession are called when you have to, in general, be in such situations when human relationships suffer.
They suffer. Intelligence is, as I have already said, not a happiness factory. And you, first of all, have a difficult job, super interesting. I have never regretted and will never regret that I worked in intelligence, especially in illegal intelligence. This is the most interesting job, you can even call it romantic. Along with this, you create a difficult life for both your parents and your children.
And this is a serious test for parents who have not seen their grandchildren, who missed us. Some passed away while we were working there.
Interviewer:
Children, when they found out that your name was different, and on the other hand, how did they react to it, how did they survive, how long was the adaptation period. There was a lot of stress, a breakdown,
Scout:
Because their lives were turned upside down, not through their fault. And they were adults, they were 16-20. Thank God, things got better. But in any case, it was a big blow to them. They were thrown out of universities, thrown out of the country and not allowed to finish their studies, then they plotted all sorts of things for many years. And they ended up in Russia without the language, without understanding what was next, in an environment completely alien to them, with a broken career.
That is, well, there must have been years, years passed before they adapted normally.
But, thank God, they adapted, because we had and still have very good human relationships, and this helped, they trusted us, they eventually understood why we were doing this, it did not make their lives easier, but at least.
Interviewer:
They understand our motivation, when you returned to your homeland, you and your wife communicated only in English, in essence, yes, of course, it's an old habit. Was it hard to get used to Russian or does it still slip through a little?
Scout:
Not only does English slip through a lot, it slips through even after so much time has passed, but most of our communication is still in English. Partially in French a little, but mostly in English. And all communication with children is more or less Russian-English. It's strange how the words are sometimes one way, sometimes another. It's a habit, just a habit.
Is it hard to switch back to Russian?
Scout:
Switching back to Russian is not so much difficult as it is somehow strange. Your words have faded, you can't find them in your memory, they'll fit in. French, English words, Russian words are forgotten. At first there was an accent, then it went away. Well, it's just a transition from a fairly deep immersion in one language to another.
Well, of course, it is easier to switch to your native language than to any other, naturally. Because it lives in your head anyway.
Interviewer:
And are you still in the intelligence officer mode now in Russia?
Scout:
No, of course, I am not, no. But some principles, approaches, of course, when you are formed by this work, you cannot change, you cannot forget it, you cannot behave differently, because your character has already developed this way, your experience has developed this way, you somehow fit all your previous experience into what you do.
"There are no former intelligence officers."
They say that there are no former intelligence officers. Not that there are none, but that personal qualities and habits and approaches are formed, which you, naturally, transfer to another life.
When you go from active work to retirement, you still live while working, you understand that you are excluded from this game, because for secrecy reasons you have no right, so to speak, to go back there to spoil who knows what, it is none of your business anymore, but such emotional various things exist.
This is normal, these are the costs of the profession, but if you have chosen this profession, then get it.
Intelligence officer Andrey Bezrukov worked in the USA, Canada and France for over 20 years. He had to find the key to any person, acquire connections and break into the most elite circles. He told us how to get to the right people, win them over and achieve your goals with their help.
Contents:
- Who is recruited as a scout?
- What information do intelligence officers obtain?
- “Through it, the Union received up to half of NATO’s secret documents”
- How to enter the elite circles
- How to make connections
- What kind of people do intelligence officers avoid?
- How to Win People Over
- How to make first contact
- How to manage stress
- Why do intelligence officers forget their past?
- How to reach high-status people
- What types of people are there and how to behave with them
- "Intelligence is not a happiness factory, relationships suffer"
- Is it difficult to switch back to Russian?
- "There are no former intelligence officers"
Scout:
And an intelligence officer is not at all like in the movies, where someone runs around with a gun and fights. An intelligence officer who starts running and fighting – that’s it, intelligence is over. Intelligence is a fairly invisible process that is constantly ongoing. It is difficult, because in intelligence work you constantly overcome problems. But there is no other experience.
Interviewer:
Andrei Bezrukov is a Soviet and Russian illegal intelligence officer. Married. His wife, Elena Vavilova, is also an intelligence officer. Together they worked in the USA, Canada and France under the names of Donald Heathfield and Tracy Foley. As a result of betrayal, arrest and prisoner exchange, they returned to Russia. You can learn their detailed story from an interview with Elena Stanislavovna on our channel. And today we will talk with Andrei Olegovich about the main work of an intelligence officer.
How to make useful connections, develop relationships and raise your status in society.
Who is taken into intelligence.
Scout:
It is impossible to just teach a person to communicate. You can give him some details, you can point out his character flaws, and there are always some. Especially with young people, because the people who go into intelligence are mostly smart and, of course, ambitious, because without ambition, without self-confidence, it is impossible in such work, it is too difficult, it is too labor-intensive to put an unmotivated person there.
We were pushed first of all on the path of self-improvement. An illegal intelligence officer always works three jobs at the same time. His first job is intelligence work.
What information do intelligence officers obtain?
Scout:
He must find people who are bearers of secrets or some other important information, not all information needed to make a decision is classified.
There is simple information that is very necessary, but even the enemy does not understand that it is very important for us and it is not classified. Well, for example, the personal qualities of some decision-makers, well, let's say, at the moment, American representatives of the highest elite. This is not classified information, but if you know about these personal qualities, maybe personal vulnerabilities, some inclinations, their biographical details.
You can use this to build relationships with them. This is his first job. He collects information, sends it to the center, but since he lives in an environment of normal people, he must look like a normal person, he has a second job.
The second job, the so-called cover job, and the neighbors must understand where he works, what money he lives on, otherwise they will ask, who is this anyway? They will call the police. And this means that the intelligence officer must have a business or he must have a job, and a real one, and preferably one that allows him to earn enough to live, at least not only to live, but also to work, because, naturally,
the state can help the intelligence officer with money, but constantly feeding him is a dangerous track, that is, any transaction, any transfer of money is a dangerous undertaking. That is, if the intelligence officer himself earns the money that he needs for intelligence work, and not just for living, that is great, that is usually how it works.
The third job is, as I said, self-improvement, it is a constant rise from the bottom of society, where he finds himself, to the very top, where people live who are precisely the bearers of secrets. Imagine that an intelligence officer, an illegal, and in particular my wife and I, arrived in the country of our combat work, the first one, in Canada, with one suitcase.
Naturally, we didn’t know anyone, no one knew us, we had no status. And those people who have secrets are people who are in the upper strata of society. These are people, mostly rich, very well educated, who have gone through a long life of communication with people like them or above them.
That is, these are very complex, interesting people, with a lot of life experience, and they are only interested in those who can bring them something else. At least, they live in their society like them. And if you want to work with them, you must be on their level – human, educational, level of interests, and so on.
That is, you must, when you come to them, bring them either some knowledge that they don’t have, or contacts that they don’t have. Or you must be a very interesting person in yourself, who would attract their attention.
"Through him, the Union received up to half of NATO's secret documents."
Scout:
I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago, one of the famous Russian intelligence officers, Yuri Shevchenko, died. He worked for many years in Europe under the cover of an artist.
And this status of a Person engaged in art allowed him to work with people in the appropriate position in society, who accepted him as one of their own, because he was a unique person.
And, as far as I understand, through him at a certain time, in the 80s, the Soviet Union then received up to half of all NATO secret documents. The career of an illegal intelligence officer is built over a long period. Of course, there are the first stages, when he is just settling in, getting used to this situation, and then the rise, rise, rise begins.
And I had to, at least, get three higher educations abroad. The first education as an economist in Canada, then an MBA in Paris and then the Harvard School of Public Administration. In order to fit in and reach out to those people who are important to us.
How to enter elite circles.
Scout:
At the university, you communicate with people who have great potential for growth in society.
They come there to learn something. These are people who are already charged with growth. These are interesting people in themselves. These are people who want to make a career. And, for example, at Harvard, these were people in the program, for example, public administration, these were people who had already worked.
It was a program, what is called a mid-career. People who had a certain life experience, they were already at least 35-40, if not more, and for them this was either a career leap or a transition to another job. There were a lot of very rich businessmen there who said, okay, I made my money, now I want to do something interesting.
Well, there were military personnel there, there were many foreigners who are attracted by the Americans under programs in order, on the one hand, to educate them in the American understanding of the world, and on the other hand, specifically to establish contacts with them so that they would later become conductors of American policy. And so we specifically prepared, well, how we prepared, we tried to enter such educational circles that would allow us to ensure this growth.
Any person, not only an intelligence officer, setting himself a task, a life task, who I want to be in 5 years, what I would like to do, should set a task, okay, if I want such a career in 5 years, and who should be around me, who will help me do this.
And, accordingly, set a task of communicating with those people, getting to know those people who would meet this task. The same is true for an intelligence officer. He understands what task is facing him, and he may have a very long-term task. Well, for example, tracking changes in the political system of the country, for example, changes in the platforms of political parties that influence decision-making.
And situational ones, well, for example, there will be a meeting of the top officials of the state. And you need to understand with what agenda, for example, the American or other side is going to these negotiations. What it wants, what it wants to achieve, who will participate there, how they perceive our side, and so on.
That is, these are things that are done for the situation. You need to work it out quickly, by a certain date, and so on. Well, naturally, in order to do this, you need to prepare positions in advance. You cannot do this from scratch.
And so if you specifically understand your task or tasks, you can determine who you need, who you can reach, how to get there, whether there are intermediate links, whether there are people who will lead you to a certain person. That is, this is a planning task, a task of setting goals and then planning the work.
How to acquire connections.
Scout:
What are the ways of creating around you, that is, the number of people attracting acquaintances to yourself, there are 3 ways, 3 types of people we can rely on.
The first type of people are such super communicators, we call them connectors. These are people by their character, by their charisma, who attract people to themselves. If you look around you, and in your organization, and at school, and at the university, there were a few such people, around whom everyone revolved. Well, usually in a class there are a couple of boys, a couple of girls, who are the center of attention of everyone else.
And our task is to find these super communicative people, who have great connections, a large circle of connections, and become their friends. Thus, the people who revolve around them will start to revolve around you too. That is, you will get to know them one way or another. This is the first type of people.
The second type of people are the so-called capacitors. These are people who have information, resources, experience, and so on, which are important to others. And since any relationship is an exchange of something, asking yourself the question, what will I exchange, because I can exchange what I already have, or I can exchange what I will take from someone and give to another.
That is, I am a broker. So if you find such people who know a lot, have some resource, and become their friends, you can use their connections, their resource, their knowledge in order to give this knowledge or something else to others.
And thus receive something for yourself for someone else's knowledge. And the third type of people are people who can either help you with something, with contacts mainly, of course, or, on the contrary, prevent you from going somewhere, prevent you from meeting someone, prevent you, for example, from meeting the secretary of
some boss, she can help you meet this person if you have a good relationship, or she can do everything possible to prevent this contact from happening. Ivan Ivanovich is on a business trip again, he is busy and so on, to be a barrier between you on the way to this person. And you need to see who around you is either a bridge or a barrier.
What kind of people do intelligence officers avoid.
Scout:
And, accordingly, build relationships with them in order to remove these barriers or, on the contrary, build bridges. And here a normal professional has three questions. When a new person appears in front of him, he asks himself three questions. First. Is this person dangerous for me if I suddenly met him? Dangerous or not?
That is, it is clear to an intelligence officer that people working in the special services of an unfriendly country, in the police, can be dangerous. These can be people connected with crime. You will be seen together with these people, and then an investigation will begin, why are you with these people, and why suddenly, what do you have in common with, so to speak, a person who is registered with the police.
The next question that the intelligence officer asks himself is the question of how interesting this person is. He may be interesting, he may not be. He may be interesting as a stepping stone to another person. You simply do not need him personally, but this is a person who knows someone you need. And therefore he can bring you there. And the third question that the intelligence officer adds to himself.
How difficult will it be to build a relationship with this person? If you see that there is no chemistry in the relationship with such a person, it is very difficult, you can ask yourself the question: Listen, well, if I kill so much time to build a relationship, and it does not work out, I will not get a result, because I know from experience that it is difficult for me with such people. Well, why should I waste time? I will refuse.
How to win people over.
And then the process of building relationships begins. And for this person you need to study, you need to ask questions, you need to meet with him, you need to spend time with him. And this is a very expensive process, this is a very emotional process. An intelligence officer touches on a huge number of emotions in this work. Because every meeting, human exchange, it requires investment from you.
You cannot be hypocritical, you cannot be cold inside, because the person will immediately feel it. You must really want good for this person. You must really be interested in his inner world. So that he feels that you are interested in him, that you are not just spending time with him for the sake of it.
Then he will treat you the same way, he will open up, he will be honest with you. And in order to build relationships between people, imagine two completely different people, working at different jobs, with different characters, with different experiences. There are a lot of barriers between them, natural barriers that separate them.
So building human relationships is a constant cutting of these barriers that exist between people when they begin to feel each other. There is an open space between them. You must be a good listener, you must create an atmosphere of appropriate communication.
You must seek out and create interesting events so that a person, having met you, would have a good time, he would like it. You manage this process.
You will make mistakes along the way, and you need to carefully monitor yourself, monitor your behavior, ask yourself questions - how successful was the meeting, how well did what you planned, the questions you wanted to ask, receive some kind of answer, both emotional and factual, and so on.
How to make first contact.
Interviewer:
First contact - how to make it, how, in general, to get to a person?
Scout:
Well, look, in order to get to a person, first of all, you need to set a task. If you want to get to know someone, you need to understand with whom and why. You need to study the person. The task of the first contact, the only task of the first contact is to then have a second contact. There is no other. And if there is no second contact, then your first contact is of no use to anything. In the first contact, you must simultaneously do two things - try to understand the person in order to offer a basis for the second contact, that is, you need to ask him some questions.
And the more you know about him, the easier it is. And build a first impression so that the person likes you, so that there is no rejection. If there is rejection, even if there is some basis for continuing contact, the person most likely will not go for it, if he... he does not like you. When you go for the first contact, you are, of course, afraid that it will not happen, that it will simply not work out.
The person will not like you, he will reject you. And many people are simply afraid to go for the first contact. This is a completely normal fear, this is a normal state of a person in the face of uncertainty. It is exactly like a parachute jump. That is, you just need to believe, move forward and that's it.
And over time, this fear of the first contact, it becomes less. It does not erase completely, never. Well, just like you ask actors when they go on stage for the thousandth time, they are still worried, they still think about how today's performance will be, like me? This is normal. This is a state of slight stress, it mobilizes, this is good.
How to manage stress.
Scout:
A state of great stress demobilizes, and in order to manage this stress, you just need to manage it, you need to train. That is, simple things. Try talking to people in any similar situation, you are standing in line for coffee. Say something to people, look at their reaction, how they... Many will move away, they will say, well, what idiots.
And many will start talking to you, smile. And, for example, if you go on the list and smile at people, well, not everyone will smile back at you, they are just not ready for it. But you deliberately go on the list and smile, and look at their reaction, and then after a while you will not care, and then your stress level will be at a controlled level.
That is, you should not care a little.
Interviewer:
Is it possible to somehow train a smile so that it multiplies?
Scout:
Of course, you can train a smile. You can train a smile as much as you like. Just smile.
Interviewer:
Is there anything that a person might consider insincere?
Scout:
No. You put sincerity into a smile. Tell the person in front of you, even if you don’t know him, that you like him. Just smile as if he likes you and you like him. This is self-conviction. That is, of course, as in many professions where you need to communicate with people, an intelligence officer needs to convince himself, you need to support yourself. I mean, emotionally, because when you are emotionally charged with something good, you usually do it well.
And when you are afraid of something, well, then it’s understandable. You can control your facial expressions, you can control your body. You understand that in a difficult situation, maybe you are crossing the border with a fake passport or something like that, that you will be watched.
There are cameras that are watching you. That is, you must show everyone with your body that you are fine, that you are not worried. If you ask yourself as a person, how should I behave? You will behave like that. Usually, people who do not think about it, do not prepare for it, stress is visible on them. And an intelligence officer, he is a professional in this, he understands that they are watching him.
An intelligence officer should generally live as if a camera is constantly watching him. This is such a good experience. Try it just like that every day, well, not necessarily every day, take one day and try to live as if you are being filmed all the time, and you will begin to adjust your behavior.
Then you can control your reactions. And the intelligence officer develops such a professional delay, a second delay, that he does not react to something right away. He gives himself a little time to think, to realize what it was. Well, for example, if you were walking through New York, and suddenly, God forbid, I was called by my Russian name.
You never know, some friend who went to the United States, suddenly, whom I had already forgotten, and it turns out he lives there. This will allow me not to turn around. This will allow me to first think about who it could be and what it could be, control my behavior, and from the point of view of a professional, especially a professional who, in general, has surveillance skills, he
understands that the entire situation around him can be filmed on camera, there are different people looking at him, he, accordingly, behaves as if he is in plain sight all the time. Sometimes people make mistakes, it is completely normal.
Why do intelligence officers forget their past.
Scout:
The question is how to cover it up later, why someone suddenly recognized you or made a mistake, of course, but from the point of view of this purely linguistic transition to Russian after many years of working in English, you will no longer react like that, it sits in your subcortex, and you forget your Russian past. My wife and I have caught ourselves many times remembering things that did not happen, we remember our legend from the point of view of our childhood memories and so on, and do not remember what really happened.
It’s just like in the theater, you get used to this role, and it fills your entire brain, and something that really happened there goes under the cortex and lives there. As long as you don’t touch it, you don’t even remember it. A person is a very flexible thing. Human psychology allows for great flexibility for survival, for adaptation.
If you work purposefully with a person, you can get very interesting results from the point of view of the psyche. What legend did you and your wife have? Well, we are Canadian citizens, born in Canada, to Canadian parents. So, basically, what connections could there be with Russia? None.
Interviewer:
And the business that you were involved in, the one that you built this up?
Scout:
We had several businesses. That is, our first business was a delivery business. We sold that business to a Chinese guy in 1995. And it’s still operating in Canada. At the end of our careers, my main business was strategic planning, working with corporate government clients to study issues of the future, issues of planning their corporate activities, and so on.
Well, and besides that, I also had to work in consulting companies. In general, the life of an illegal intelligence officer, it doesn’t work, it’s fate. It’s entirely dedicated to one thing. And all your everyday things, one way or another, they somehow fit into what you do in parallel.
Even if you go somewhere on vacation, if you go somewhere, you still think, who can you meet there, who can you get to know there, how can I use the time that I have for something, like, connected with intelligence work. It takes up your whole brain, it takes up all your time, because you have to work with people who are much higher in status than you.
It is sometimes risky in terms of... Not in the sense of some kind of combat risk, but the risk that it will not work out because the difference in status is very big, you worry more than you should.
How to get in touch with people of high status.
Scout:
Well, I can't use names, but I had to get in touch with a person who worked in the previous government quite high up, not directly.
First, go to his organization, his circle, then to him. Direct access to such a person without understanding what he is interested in, without being able to rely on the people he already knows in a relationship. He is very complex. There is nothing in common between you, neither in age, nor in status, nor in business.
I, in general, represented business, although quite innovative, nevertheless, but he was a civil servant. That is, in principle, there is also no direct connection. This means that you must find some streak in them, when they become interested in either helping you, or suggesting something to you from the point of view of advice, coming for advice.
But, again, when you come to them for advice, you need to make it so that they are pleased to give this advice, so that they, their internal status is satisfied, so to speak, that I have achieved such positions, people come to me with questions, how am I, I can give something.
After all, from the point of view of age, people who have already gone through a career and, in general, so to speak, lived, are often more interested in giving than taking from someone. It is a pleasant feeling when you have helped someone, done something for another, in any culture. In youth, you want it for yourself, and then everything is different.
And you need to use this, their experience, their generosity of soul, sometimes very often. These are people who feel good and confident in society.
Interviewer:
Are you able to immediately, from the first conversation, determine, aha, this person is such and such, and this one is such and such, this approach to him, this one is such and such? - In general, this is true.
What types of people are there and how to behave with them.
Scout:
That is, a person, one way or another, his character is expressed in external signs, and when you start talking to him, exactly in how he behaves, well, for example, a person of such a narcissistic disposition, who wants to create an image of himself, you will see it both in positioning among others, and in posture, and in clothes, that he wants to be in sight.
Naturally, in order to work with this person, it will be difficult for you to work if you do not somehow support this status, give compliments, in no case try to be more, how to say, fashionable than this person and so on, entering into competition with him.
So he wants to create such an image around him, but he will not need competitors who are brighter than him. These are people who want to be bright. There are people of the opposite plan, who withdraw into themselves, they are anxious, for them the main thing is that nothing happens that will ruin their life, that will create some problems.
With these people you need patience, you need to do it in such a way that they are not afraid of you, so that they get used to you. You know, if I say who this person was, I probably have to be wrong. But this person is from a very closed ethnic organization. And the person, in general, is in conflict with the state.
That is, this person already suspects everyone around him that they pose a danger to him. But this person was very smart and well-read.
And in order to at least start communicating with this person, to somehow start a conversation, I had to just spend a few days next to him in the library, so that he would get used to it, so that he would see what I do, that I am normal, I am not an agent of the state, that I do not carry any... I am just a person, like him, exactly the same, working in the library as a student.
Interviewer:
It turns out that the first are such egocentric people, the second are closed.
Scout:
There are people who are very, how can I put it, well, let's say, very self-confident, for whom there is the world that they have, and there is no other. So they constantly live by their own rules of the game and impose their rules of the game on everyone else. These are people whom you cannot contradict.
Again, do you understand what the matter is? If you just constantly adjust to them, you will seem weak and uninteresting to them, if you constantly say "yes, yes, yes". But you must show your character and your value not right away, but later, so that they perceive you as a person with your own opinion, but accepting that they have their own opinion, and not trying to somehow direct them to a different path.
This is such a line when if you simply accept everything that they impose on you, you lose values for them, they are not interested in you. You are such a dependent person for them. You are not satisfied with such a position, because this will be an unequal relationship.
Right away, right? But you must accept their values at the first stages, without losing yours. And the fourth type, how can I say this, as far as I see it for myself, These are people, on the contrary, very soft, very ready, very dependent on emotions, mutual emotions, that is, who must be constantly kept in conversation somehow.
They are even constantly chatty in many ways, you understand? Because they absolutely need to have this environment around them, which makes the situation around them comfortable.
They need to constantly communicate with someone, but communicate emotionally, so that they have some kind of emotional environment.
Interviewer:
Of these four types, which one is closer to you?
Scout:
This is a very good question, but there will be a very good answer to it. The thing is that an intelligence officer must be in the middle of all these types. We were specially selected in such a way that we would not be too much like any one. Because if you are too much like one of these types, it will be difficult for you to work with all the others.
And people with flexible psyches are selected, who, in general, are in the center. They have a little bit of quality from all four. Professionally, I must be there. I must be balanced.
Interviewer:
Yeah. And were there people, when you were an intelligence officer, with whom you managed to build such a warm, good, pleasant relationship, they became really close friends? And that was a blow?
"Intelligence is not a happiness factory, relationships suffer."
Scout:
Yes, of course, yes. That was a blow. Moreover, some time ago, already during Covid, one person called me, he, however, is not an American. He found me on the Internet, called and said, "Listen, well, we were friends, it's true, right?
That is, you... This is not fake? We really were friends?" I say, yes, of course. In fact, we were friends, yes. But I can't go back to that person, because then the question will immediately arise, why did you resume relations with a Russian intelligence officer, the special service will come for him.
Interviewer:
And why ruin his life? And what emotions did you have after that conversation? Well, what emotions, listen, we really were friends.
Scout:
That is, of course, it is a pity that the situation is such that the person is very good, very smart, pleasant. The costs of the profession are called when you have to, in general, be in such situations when human relationships suffer.
They suffer. Intelligence is, as I have already said, not a happiness factory. And you, first of all, have a difficult job, super interesting. I have never regretted and will never regret that I worked in intelligence, especially in illegal intelligence. This is the most interesting job, you can even call it romantic. Along with this, you create a difficult life for both your parents and your children.
And this is a serious test for parents who have not seen their grandchildren, who missed us. Some passed away while we were working there.
Interviewer:
Children, when they found out that your name was different, and on the other hand, how did they react to it, how did they survive, how long was the adaptation period. There was a lot of stress, a breakdown,
Scout:
Because their lives were turned upside down, not through their fault. And they were adults, they were 16-20. Thank God, things got better. But in any case, it was a big blow to them. They were thrown out of universities, thrown out of the country and not allowed to finish their studies, then they plotted all sorts of things for many years. And they ended up in Russia without the language, without understanding what was next, in an environment completely alien to them, with a broken career.
That is, well, there must have been years, years passed before they adapted normally.
But, thank God, they adapted, because we had and still have very good human relationships, and this helped, they trusted us, they eventually understood why we were doing this, it did not make their lives easier, but at least.
Interviewer:
They understand our motivation, when you returned to your homeland, you and your wife communicated only in English, in essence, yes, of course, it's an old habit. Was it hard to get used to Russian or does it still slip through a little?
Scout:
Not only does English slip through a lot, it slips through even after so much time has passed, but most of our communication is still in English. Partially in French a little, but mostly in English. And all communication with children is more or less Russian-English. It's strange how the words are sometimes one way, sometimes another. It's a habit, just a habit.
Is it hard to switch back to Russian?
Scout:
Switching back to Russian is not so much difficult as it is somehow strange. Your words have faded, you can't find them in your memory, they'll fit in. French, English words, Russian words are forgotten. At first there was an accent, then it went away. Well, it's just a transition from a fairly deep immersion in one language to another.
Well, of course, it is easier to switch to your native language than to any other, naturally. Because it lives in your head anyway.
Interviewer:
And are you still in the intelligence officer mode now in Russia?
Scout:
No, of course, I am not, no. But some principles, approaches, of course, when you are formed by this work, you cannot change, you cannot forget it, you cannot behave differently, because your character has already developed this way, your experience has developed this way, you somehow fit all your previous experience into what you do.
"There are no former intelligence officers."
They say that there are no former intelligence officers. Not that there are none, but that personal qualities and habits and approaches are formed, which you, naturally, transfer to another life.
When you go from active work to retirement, you still live while working, you understand that you are excluded from this game, because for secrecy reasons you have no right, so to speak, to go back there to spoil who knows what, it is none of your business anymore, but such emotional various things exist.
This is normal, these are the costs of the profession, but if you have chosen this profession, then get it.
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