Transcriber: Eunice Tan
Reviewer: Tanya Cushman I spent 27 years at CIA, undercover, as a technical operations officer, traveling all over the world, training foreign agents of ours
in the use of really small cameras, and at the end of my career,
in the use of disguise. When we were working with disguise, we were using it
very extensively in Moscow. Moscow, as you might imagine, was one of the most difficult places
that we had to work. And we had a set of rules
for when we worked there: it was worst-case scenario. How do you operate when you're in
the most difficult city for us to work in? The Moscow Rules were our rules, but I was looking at them
a couple of months ago, thinking it's sort of like
Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." You could take our rules
for working in Moscow and take them out
into a civilian population, and they continue to make some sense. So, what I'm going to talk to you
about a little bit today is what we interpreted them to be,
and how we used them, and maybe a suggestion or two
for how you might use them. And by the way, that's just the picture
that was in the paper two days ago. They blew my cover when I came to town,
so I thought I'd throw it back at them. (Laughter) We can talk about The Moscow Rules. We'll go one by one
because the rules are so dead simple. But it turns out that the interpretation
is where it gets kind of interesting. In our world, when we were working on the streets,
out in the open with our agents, we had 24-hour-a-day,
7-day-a-week surveillance. We had so much surveillance
that we couldn't move. We couldn't go in a car,
we couldn't go on foot. Even in our houses,
we had bugs in the walls. And at the American Embassy,
where we worked, the foreign nationals working around us
were KGB informants. We were in this smothering
embrace of the KGB. Their only goal
was to keep us from working; our only goal was to work. So it was game on. This idea, though, is an overriding idea
of doing that kind of work. When we talk about using your gut,
we're talking about using your intuition and kind of comparing it to the analytical
approach to any given problem. Nothing against analysis -
it's very useful - where you can measure, you can weigh, you can intellectually
consider your options. But when we were working
on the streets of Moscow, we wanted instantaneous, quick feedback. There was no room for mistakes. If we were going to meet an agent,
and they were with us, and we led them to the agent, they would arrest the agent,
the foreign agent, and they would kill him. It was life or death. And intuitive decisions - about go or no go? Is this right, is this wrong? Is this going to work,
is this not going to work? - was always uppermost in our mind. I point this out at the beginning,
this idea of using your gut, because there's sort of been a witch hunt
against intuition and using your gut. Everyone is sort of more on the side of "Let's really do the analytical
approach to this thing." You should never disregard your gut. It is your personal armor. It is a part of the protective system that you carry around
with you all the time. And it will save you, if you will let it. Rule number two in Moscow - don't look back;
you're never completely alone. You were never completely alone,
so there was never any reason to look. You simply started out each day
knowing that they were back there. They were behind you, they were with you, but you still had a job to do. The job consisted of putting down
dead drops, putting up signals, all kinds of communicating -
impersonal communication with your agent. It was too dangerous there
to meet face-to-face with your agent. If you did that, they might arrest him,
they might kill him. And so you were in this conundrum, where you wouldn't look back
and you knew they were around you, but you still had to do some work. So, what we came up with was a way
to manipulate our surveillance teams by being predictable, by being boring, by being so normal that we probably
didn't even really look like spies - that was the whole point. We were just trying to get them to relax,
the people in the cars behind us: relax, we're just out for a drive. And if you did it right,
they give you a little bit of space. We needed five seconds. We needed to be able to go around a corner and have five seconds
before they came around behind us. That was called "a gap." And what we were doing
is what we called "working in the gap" and figuring out how to construct, how to put something down, how to pick something up, how to maybe do a car escape in that space, in that gap. We had some great success, and we'll talk in a bit
about what we did with that time. But looking back over our shoulder? No, we didn't bother doing that. In the private life,
in your personal world, how does that translate: don't look back? It probably, in my mind, tells you
that, of course, you have competition, and, of course, in your private life,
you may have some competitors there too. But instead of spending your energy looking behind you
and trying to calibrate - are they getting closer? you know, are they
going to catch up with me? - your energy is probably
better spent looking forward, trying to figure out how you can succeed rather than what they
are getting ready to try and do. Staying consistent over time at the CIA meant not breaking your cover, even if the local newspaper
decides to do it for you. It means that you
never, never break cover. You stay consistent. If you have a story
that you're going to tell, you tell that story over and over again. We had a case officer
come out to Moscow, who was a woman. And we had her run
one of the most important cases that we ever ran in Moscow. We chose her - first of all, she was
a first-rate operations officer - but we chose her
because of her feminine attire. The Russians would never use a woman
to do that work; they never did. And they always assumed
that we wouldn't use women either. But the CIA was a little more evolved,
and so we brought her out. She ran this really,
really important operation. She was completely above suspicion: she never talked to the CIA people, she never had a drink with the CIA people, she was never seen
with any of the CIA people. Totally, totally above suspicion. And she had just a really
amazingly successful operation that she ran with that man. It was an important case -
the code name was TRIGON. And some of these cases I talk about,
you can actually google them - they're in Wikipedia; they're out there. So you can see what you think. The idea in your personal life,
when you're doing whatever you're doing, of staying consistent
is pretty self-evident. It's what leads to success. Stability, dedication to your job,
being predictably - you're going to be there and do the job. Staying consistent over time
is across the board, whether you're a spy, or whether you're working
in private industry, or even whether you're retired - it's a good life rule. A lot of these are good life rules. Knowing the opposition
and their terrain intimately was a big deal. Our officers that were going to Moscow started studying the street maps of Moscow
a year before they showed up. And the fact is there were very few
good street maps of Moscow. It seemed that they didn't want us
to learn their city all that well. We learned - we taught them the language; we taught them the geography. And they were planning their operations before they ever got
on the airplane to go to Moscow. Because knowing
where the points were in the city where you could do a dead drop - it's a very specific kind of geography. Where you can put up a signal, where you can put down something
for your agent to pick up - you had to plan these things so carefully. To put a fake brick down
in a place in Moscow, with some material in it for your agent, would maybe take you two months
of planning and practice and driving by and photographing and sketching. Then you have to give
that information to the agent. It's just this big loop;
it's enormously complicated. But what you're doing in that planning is you're protecting the people
that are working for us. And it's worst-case scenario:
if they're caught, they're dead. That's all there is to it. Knowing the opposition
and their terrain intimately also works if you're in business
or if you're in your personal life. If your opposition is your competitor
in the business world, you want more than anything to know what their plans
and intentions are. That's what we were collecting
for our policymakers in Washington: the plans and intentions
of Vladimir Putin, the plans and intentions of Kim Jong-un. Wouldn't you love to know what he's going to do
with his nuclear missiles? Wouldn't you love to know what Putin's going to try and do
to our next election? Well, we would certainly like to know, and we are working on it at the moment. So knowing the opposition
and what they're going to do is important. And the opposition may be something
going on in your community; it may be something about to happen
to your environment. I mean, these are broad areas
and these are broad rules, and they apply. Pick the time and the place. This is - I was trying to decide
how to tell you about this - I think what I'll do
is I'll tell you a story. I don't know if any of you
saw the movie "Argo," which was about my husband. Ben Affleck was trying to be
as good-looking as my husband in that movie. (Laughter) You might get the sense
from watching the movie "Argo" that my husband had
a really interesting imagination. He was an artist who was hired by the CIA, and he went through an entire career of putting together
some very unusual operations. Pick the time and the place. We knew that we had to be
at a manhole in Moscow on a certain day, at a certain time. We had to be able
to take the lid off of it and drop down into that manhole because there was something down there
that was worth its weight in gold. Tony, my husband, figured out
how we were going to do it, and he and I set up a demonstration for our office director
in Washington, D.C. We put him in a chair
at the end of a long hallway, and Tony was at the other end
of the hallway, standing with a briefcase,
wearing an overcoat and a suit and tie. And my boss, and his boss,
was way at the end of the hall. Tony had 43 seconds and 43 steps to demonstrate to the office director
"disguise on the run." And what he did in the 43 steps is what he could do
in the middle of Washington, D.C. and did it many times. He changed from a businessman to an old woman in a dirty pink coat
with a shawl over her head, gray hair coming down, mask on her face,
black Mary Janes, black stockings, and the briefcase
turned into the grocery cart, and he's pushing it up
to the office director, who said, "Okay, yeah, let's do that." That was the beginning of one of the best
operations we ever ran, ever. It was called CKTAW. I was looking at it today
on "The Daily Beast." (Applause) So that's when I figured out
that my husband was a genius, but I wasn't married to him yet. Pick the time and the place. I was noticing - when I was thinking about how does this
apply in your everyday life, I was thinking to, you know,
how Steve Jobs used this rule when he presented his new electronic toys
to the public at large. I was thinking of how Elon Musk uses it
when he's talking about Tesla or some of the other ideas
that he has that he wants to do. All the attention
in the world goes to them. And I was also reminded of the recent marriage
of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and how they picked a time and a place and presented the world
with this spectacular wedding, that all the blowback from that wedding was nothing but amazement
for the royal family and a warm embrace from the world. Picking the time and the place
to do what it is you're going to do is a good thing. Keeping your options open
is a life rule you should all use - we certainly used it. You always have to have a plan B. When we planned an operation, we had to write up
a very formal piece of paper - it wasn't a piece, it was like 10 pages. But the very last part of it
was what if this all goes wrong? What if it goes to hell? What if they come through the door? What if security is there? What if you get arrested? What are you going to do? You need a plan B;
you always need a plan B. When I would meet with these foreign men in foreign countries, in foreign hotel rooms, just me and them -
I never knew them in my life - the first thing we did,
the first minute of the meeting: Did you have any security problems? When's our next meeting? Do you have any intelligence for me,
a threat to the United States? And what's our cover for being here? What if they come through the door -
what are we going to say we're doing? The fact that I was a woman gave all kinds of options
that the guys never had. (Laughter) But you always had to keep
your options open. And it's common sense in business: What if the market crashes? What if the economy's no good? What if the technology doesn't work? In your plan or in your life,
keep your options open. I'm always telling my son that one. Here's the grand finale of my talk. As chief of disguise, I got to be there when we finally refined the process
for making full-face masks. Not just masks that looked good
but that worked; they actually animated. You could have a conversation
in one of these masks. You could brief the President
of the United States in one of these masks. And therein is the heading: a human being's ability to rationalize. No one in that Oval Office - and it was Judge Webster,
it was Brent Scowcroft, Bob Gates was there,
John Sununu was there - not one of them ever dreamed that somebody would walk
in the Oval Office in a fake face and brief the President
of the United States. He loved it. He thought it was very, very cool. He had been head of CIA,
he had worn some disguises. This was the latest and the greatest. I set out to do the - to take it off. I'm wearing it on the one side, you can
see what it looks like on the other - I got ready to do what we now call
the "Tom Cruise peel." (Laughter) He said, "No, no, no, wait,
don't take it off yet; it looks really -" and then he was - he loved this. Every time I ever saw him afterwards, he'd see me through a crowd
at some big ballroom in a hotel, and he'd see me, and he'd go, (Laughter) "I remember what you did." This was sort of the culmination
of my career as the chief of disguise. I know that once we did this,
once we could create these, think of what we could do. We could change you into anything. We could change your gender: A man into a woman - that's a little hard,
men didn't like to do that; a woman into a man - that was easier. We could change your ethnicity. We could change your nationality. And the most fun thing we could do
is we could make another you - we could make your twin
so there could be two of you. We needed to find a donor who would kind of match you -
height, weight - but we could make
a second you, and we did. And we had some good times with that. Now, I know that some of you
in this audience are already thinking: Are they going to arrest her? (Laughter) Is she in trouble
for telling these secrets? And you have to know that these secrets
have all been published. We've written four books;
they've all gone through CIA review. The CIA has looked at them, including
this last one with all these Moscow Rules. CIA says they're okay,
so I want you to relax. I want you to know
that I don't have to kill you. (Laughter) That makes me so happy. Thank you very much. (Applause) (Laughter) (Applause) Sophie got called out, so she sent me, Marie Antoinette Belgenie, to say thank you. Thank you very much, Jonna.
