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Under Western Eyes, for

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details. Hello,

0:57

true spies listeners. You

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might notice that things are a little different

1:01

this week. In over 200

1:04

episodes of True Spies, we've heard

1:06

from some amazing people. And

1:09

we wanted to hear more. So

1:11

did our subscribers. So with

1:13

that in mind, you're about to embark

1:15

on our first ever True

1:17

Spies debrief. Here

1:20

on the debrief, we catch up with

1:22

some of our favorite guests from the

1:24

True Spies archive for a deeper look

1:26

at the themes, events, and insights

1:28

that fascinate them. If

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you like what you hear,

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subscribe to Spyscape Plus for

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more exclusive debriefs at plus.spyscape.com.

1:39

That's plus.spyscape.com.

1:43

In this debrief, Morgan Childs, one

1:45

of the producers of True Spies,

1:48

speaks with Douglas London. You

1:50

might remember Douglas from the True

1:53

Spies episode Allied with Al-Qaeda, which

1:55

premiered back in November of 2021. Hey,

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happy place for a

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happy price. Go

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to your happy price, Priceline. their

20:00

wife has recovered from whatever the medical

20:02

issue. They've gotten their revenge against the

20:04

organization which did them wrong, and now

20:06

they just wanna move on. So to

20:09

really evaluate the agent, and part of that

20:11

whole clerical analogy

20:13

I gave you, it was so

20:15

that you as a handler can

20:17

best protect them, test them, understand

20:19

what's going on, so you could

20:22

orchestrate the kind of trade craft and

20:25

sometimes countermeasures when you think they're under

20:27

suspicion, that's required for the case. So

20:29

the case officer has to be the

20:31

very first one to identify any warts

20:33

in the case, to challenge any anomalies,

20:35

to go ahead and look for things

20:38

that just don't make sense. So

20:40

the difference is you're

20:42

always empathizing in order to do that, but

20:44

you gotta be careful not to overly sympathize.

20:46

And as we say fall in love with

20:49

your case where you start becoming blind to

20:51

faults, where you start

20:53

writing off things that should be warning

20:55

signs, that something's wrong, that maybe the

20:57

agent has been caught, maybe the agent

20:59

has been doubled, maybe the agent lost

21:01

their access, got fired, and have been

21:03

making up all this information they've been

21:05

giving you. And you can't do that

21:07

if you fundamentally love your agent. You

21:10

can like them, enjoy their company, but

21:12

never love them. And that's why we're

21:14

constantly testing our agents in ways hopefully

21:16

they don't realize. But

21:18

generally to make sure that they are being

21:20

truthful to us, they are being accurate in

21:22

what they're describing, because we have to stand

21:24

behind their intelligence, we have to depict their

21:27

information to our consumers in terms of how

21:29

we rate a source for veracity and reliability

21:31

and authenticity. And you can't do that if

21:33

you've so fallen in love with your agent

21:36

that you're no longer able to see the

21:38

good from the bad. What

21:40

do those tests look like? Well,

21:43

I can't get into details of the

21:45

operational tests. Some of them are obviously

21:47

really rather passive and inane, but an

21:50

agent claims a certain access, an

21:53

agent claims to work in a

21:55

certain job or have certain connections.

21:57

So there are ways that one

21:59

can...