Jim And they described Well, good fortune that I'd had was that I'd met someone just with that type of access from that country about a month earlier in a ski ski school, a ski class where I was posted. So, I asked him to start going out to lunch and dinner and uh over time we became, you know, maybe after a couple of months, we were pretty good friends. Met his family, things like that. He met mine. So, I decided I'm going to pitch this guy. Now, I didn't have a clue as to what his real needs were, but I thought I could convince him to commit espionage based just on the strength of our friendship and maybe my personality. I don't know. I was very naive.
Sergey This is really stupid. Are these people living in uh the US or these are folks? No, no, no. This was this was when I was abroad. I was in Europe.
Jim Okay. Okay. Right. Okay. Mhm. Yeah. All right. No, I was in Europe. I was posted abroad. He was posted abroad. And so I wrote a I wrote a message to CIA headquarters saying that I thought I could recruit this guy. And as naive as my proposal was, they were so desperate they approved it. So So the next time I Well, there was a shortage of spies at the time. a shortage of spies with his access. Yes. Oh, okay. Like we had none. We had none. Can you disclose his nationality? No, I can't. I have to protect my sources. But anyways, we had nobody that had his type of access, you know, that could give us privileged insights into what his country planned on doing at the negotiating table. So when CIA headquarters received my message saying that I found a guy who matches exactly what we need, for whatever reason, they approved my pretty naive proposal that I could recruit this guy based on the strength of our friendship and basically my power of persuasion. So I took him to dinner. I pitched him. And when I pitch somebody, it's pretty obvious what I want. You know, I said, "Look, if you will give me these privileged insights into your positions, you know, uh I will give you a certain amount of money as a monthly consulting fee." And and so, you know, he looked at me. Now, this is my first pitch. He looks at me and he says, "Jim, you and I are friends, but what you're proposing, that would be morally wrong." Now, Sergey, I've pitched maybe 60 people in my career, and he's the only person to ever pose a moral objection. Why do you think most people would turn you down?
Sergey Not enough money or just just is just too dangerous. That's Wow, that's too dangerous.
Jim Yes. Exactly. Fear. Fear that most people if they turn you down, it's fear that they're going to be caught. Yes. Okay. In fact, I I pitched an African intelligence officer who said, "Jim, they hang people in my country for doing things like that." He's right. He's right. They would. But then he surprised me when this African intelligence officer, he said, "But could I have a rain check?" And I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, a rain check. I mean, you know, my son, he's only three years old now, but in 15 years he'll be college age and I might need you then." Well, I wrote that down and guess what? 15 years later, he was in Washington and uh headquarters asked me if I thought that he had been sincere. I said, 'Yep, and we cashed that rain check in 15 years later. But now here, flashback to my first pitch and I've been turned down. And we have a saying in the CIA that it's okay to get turned down, but not turned in. What if he goes to his ambassador and says, "You know, Mr. Lawler at the American embassy just pitched me to become a traitor to to commit espionage and his ambassador had this horrible reputation for being a real loudmouth and obnoxious person. And I in my mind's eye, I could see this this gentleman, this ambassador storming into our ambassador's office with righteous indignation and saying, "This is outrageous. your employee James Lawler just pitched my employee and by the way the guy I pitched was his deputy number in other words number two in his embassy and I mean outrage and I was thinking you know they could they could send me back to Washington make me go home this is bad. So after two or three days I finally worked up the courage to call the guy that I had pitched just to take his temperature and see if he and I were still friends. And I was relieved that he didn't hang up in my ear. And I said, "You know, last Friday we had such a good time at dinner. I was thinking maybe we'd go out again this next Friday." And he said, "Jim, I think that'd be a great idea." So my objective at the next meeting was simply to make peace, to apologize if I was insulting, to say that I had totally misread the signals that, you know, I'm just a a naive young officer and I I'm so sorry. I was ready to really, you know, be apologetic. We get to the restaurant. The waiter drops the menus off. And the first words out of my friend's mouth, "Jim, that offer you made me last week, is that still good?" And I said, "Yeah, of course it is. I made it cuz we're friends." And he said, 'Well, what you don't know is that 2 days after that dinner, my wife announced that she wants a divorce, and I can't afford to pay her the alimony to which she's entitled or put my high school age boys in private schools when we go home next summer. And if they don't go to a private school, they won't get a good education. I can't afford to do that unless I accept your offer. And even though I know it's morally wrong, well, we have a saying in law school that if the judge rules in your favor, shut up and get out of court quickly. And so I shut up and the next meeting he brought out about 6 in, you know, probably about oh, probably seven or eight centimeters thick of classified material from his embassy. Wow. And and as he was handing it to me, he said, "Now, Jim, let me tell you why I'm really doing this." He says it's because I He said it's because I hate my ambassador. He goes around bragging about everything he does. He takes credit for everything I do and everything everybody else in the embassy does. So as I hand you this material, it's as if I'm kicking that son of a in the face. Yeah. And I I I smiled and I said, "Okay, bring me some more and let's kick the son of a again." And he did. He was wonderful. Um and ultimately he went back to his home country and during those negotiations he provided us not only their negotiating positions but all of their fallback positions and if you've ever bought a car or a house or an apartment. How would you like to know the bottom dollar you could offer before the seller says no? And that's exactly what he did. And it was estimated that he saved the United States. his information saved the United States many tens of billions of dollars.