Former double agent Naveed Jamali rates 12 spy scenes in movies and TV, such as "Casino Royale," for realism.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Being able to drive fast and all that, the answer is yes.
00:09What I would do is go really, really fast, right before an exit, slam on the brakes,
00:13pull to the shoulder, wait to see if anyone zipped by, then do it again.
00:17My name is Naveed Jamali, and I was a double agent.
00:19For three years, I worked for the Russian military intelligence, the GRU.
00:24In fact, I was working for the FBI to work against them.
00:27Today we'll be looking at double agent spy scenes in movies and TV, and judge how real
00:32they are.
00:33What's your name, lady?
00:34Rushman, Natalie Rushman.
00:35Front and center, coming to the church.
00:37That's exactly how I got my job.
00:39So actually, it is kind of believable that someone would be directed to sort of infiltrate
00:43a network or a government agency by getting a job there.
00:49My primary goal was to convince the Russians that I wanted to be a spy and to let them
00:54recruit me, to essentially impact the ability of Russian intelligence to collect the United
01:00States.
01:01How do I spell your name, Natalie?
01:02R-U-S-H-N-A-M.
01:03What, are you going to Google her now?
01:07So in this movie, Scarlett Johansson's character has a pseudonym.
01:11Might be good short term, very, very short term, but in terms of like building a cover
01:16and all that, it's pretty hard.
01:18Just as you saw Tony Stark doing, they were going to do records check.
01:21Listen, things have gotten better, but it's pretty easy to sniff someone out who isn't
01:27real because there's no electronic footprint that they create.
01:31In my case, I did not have a pseudonym when dealing with the Russians.
01:34I was, in fact, Naveed Jamali.
01:36However, the one distinctive distinction with that is to protect my identity with the U.S.
01:42In fact, what I was given was a codename by the FBI, and that was Green Kryptonite, ironically
01:47when we're talking about Tony Stark.
01:48Never take your eye off your opponent.
01:54No, unfortunately no martial arts.
01:58I can make mean French toast though.
02:00So I was an amateur.
02:04There was no formal training, and actually the Russians were constantly looking for any
02:08signs that you were working for the FBI, and one of the clearest signs is if you have some
02:13sense of training.
02:14The only direction I ever got from the FBI was, if you were a real spy, how would you
02:18do it?
02:19So, in fact, everything I did was basically created in my own head, and that sort of escaped
02:27the Russians.
02:28Obviously, the whole premise of the movie is fantastical, but let's give it again a
02:33seven here.
02:34To be a successful double agent, do you have to know the language and customs of the agency
02:47you're working for, the country that they're a part of?
02:50And the answer is no.
02:51You know how much Russian I know?
02:52Yet.
02:53That's about it.
02:54I mean, when the FBI, we're talking about this, I said, look, I can just get along with
02:58my English, and that's actually what they want.
03:01You're there to essentially understand U.S. customs and society.
03:06So the idea that you can, you know, speak different languages, I'm sure it's beneficial,
03:10but accents and to pretend, it's a pretty big lie that you've got to keep up consistently
03:15for a long time.
03:16It's hard.
03:17I mean, the Russians did try to search me at a certain point.
03:25What would be the excuse for me to say I had a gun?
03:27So no, I was never armed.
03:29It's actually a question that I asked a lot of the FBI in terms of trying to understand
03:33if, oh, like my Russian GRU case officer was armed.
03:37And I still never got a clear-cut answer.
03:38You have to sort of suspend sort of logic to walk into places alone and unafraid and
03:46unarmed.
03:53So are disguises necessary?
03:54It's very different from like if you're traveling internationally and you don't want a host
03:59country to know that you're passing through that airport or passing through that country,
04:02you might mask your identity.
04:04That's very different than like a long-term relationship with someone.
04:09Disguises can work, you know, up to a point, but to sit down and have a conversation over
04:14a period of time closely, I just feel like you're going to be found out.
04:25So the idea that Charlize Theron's character is going to essentially throw off the scent
04:32of who the actual sort of mole or who the target is, which is her in fact to someone
04:38else, is completely believable.
04:42One of the biggest things that a double agent has to do is gain trust of whoever they're
04:49allegedly working for.
04:52And once they gain trust, there's a lot of things that you can do in terms of manipulation.
04:55You can pass disinformation, you can do redirection.
05:04In this scene we see that Charlize Theron's character is a triple agent for the KGB, MI6
05:10and the CIA.
05:11That's a lot.
05:12Triple agents are not something terribly common, namely because you would have to believe that
05:19the host agency in that country that they're working for would have serious questions about
05:24whether that person really had an allegiance to that country.
05:28I'm going to give that a nine, and I'll tell you why.
05:31The ending, all of Spy World is about f***ing with the enemy.
05:37And this idea that Charlize Theron is in a plane and she just screwed over the Brits
05:44and the Russians is like the chef's kiss of what any intelligence service is looking to do.
05:59With Henry Cavill's character, the idea that the IMF would try to trip him up and get him
06:03to admit is completely believable.
06:06So that is something actually that intelligence services seek to do, to find someone to admit
06:11their motivation and to do it so in an honest, sort of voluntary manner.
06:16So when it came to the Russians and Oleg, it wasn't like he ever admitted to me he was a spy.
06:22The big sort of pivotal moment in our relationship is when he started giving me taskings.
06:28That's when it was like, okay, you know, this is real.
06:32He's tasking me to spy for Russia.
06:34What?
06:39So using a device to record clandestinely a meeting?
06:44Absolutely.
06:45In my case, I actually used a watch.
06:48That's how I recorded the meetings with Oleg.
06:49What the recording is important for is for the agents or the officers to validate what you're telling them.
07:02It's just the job.
07:03So we just saw in Mission Impossible Fallout that Benji's character was wearing essentially
07:08a prosthetic, a mask.
07:10Are prosthetics real?
07:11Well, the answer is yes when it comes to facial recognition software, but it's used primarily
07:16not to sort of convince someone in a sit-down meeting, but rather to counter facial recognition software.
07:24We see Henry Cavill's character is essentially arrested.
07:37That, in fact, did happen with me, that the target that I was working against, Oleg Kulikov,
07:43was essentially a Russian diplomat assigned to the United Nations.
07:47But in fact, he was a military attache who was a GRU officer.
07:51So the ability to arrest him, the FBI didn't possess that.
07:55So again, what they wanted to do was let the Russians know that the operation had been compromised,
08:02but to do so in a manner that would leave doubt as to where the compromise occurred.
08:06And so the last meeting I had with Oleg, I was essentially arrested in front of him.
08:12And it was a sort of very final moment where sort of like badges and guns came out.
08:22Obviously, Mission Impossible, Fallout, and all the series is, you know, it's fun.
08:27There's got to be action.
08:28I was never involved in a foot chase.
08:30I was never involved in, you know, a shootout.
08:32And the reason for that for a lot of them, but the primary one, is that if you get to that level,
08:37sort of the jig is up, right?
08:38People are going to know that there's something going on.
08:41Normal people don't chase other people.
08:43I'm going to go with Mission Impossible, Fallout, with a seven.
08:47Espionage is far more cerebral than it is physical.
08:59Such a great car.
09:00I can't believe they're about to wreck it.
09:01So when you're working undercover, your job is to build a caricature.
09:06And part of that caricature is going to be based on physical things.
09:10What you wear. Do you wear a tux versus jeans?
09:13Do you drive an F-150 pickup truck or do you drive a Corvette or an Aston Martin?
09:16In my case, working undercover, the GRU thought that I was a young person who was interested in money.
09:23So being able to show something flashy and being able to show that that aligned with my motivation to spy
09:30and sort of build this character that I played essentially in front of the Russians,
09:35I literally lifted dialogue from movies like Casino Royale.
09:39It was really helpful because there was no training school for this.
09:44Insofar as being able to drive fast and all that, the answer is yes.
09:50You want to do things that aren't going to attract attention,
09:52but there are defensive maneuvers that you want to do to make sure that someone's not following them.
09:58What I would do is go really, really fast right before an exit, slam on the brakes, pull to the shoulder,
10:03wait to see if anyone zipped by, then do it again.
10:06And it was just a way of making sure that no one was following you.
10:09I'll see you back here in half an hour.
10:12Right now I have a lovely man from the treasury here, wondering if you're ever going to deposit the winnings.
10:18This is something that does actually happen.
10:20Unknown to Bond, she was working to help save the life of her boyfriend.
10:25And then once she got attached to Bond, she then flipped again and worked to help save his life.
10:32I can't!
10:33Credibility and the capability of the person to spy, it's all about motivation.
10:38And generally speaking, there is this term MICE, which is understood to explain all the motivations.
10:44It stands for money, ideology, coercion, and ego.
10:47Coercion can be a pretty good way to get people to do very specific things.
10:53But again, it's probably one of the least usable things.
10:56So when I was sort of building this character, my real motivation to work against the Russians was to help the FBI
11:03because they were in turn writing a letter of recommendation so I could join the Navy as an intelligence officer.
11:08So I couldn't really go to Oleg, my Russian case officer, and say,
11:12I'm really here because I'm working for the FBI.
11:14So it came down to money and ego.
11:16The two easiest things to get people to do.
11:20Is it all you have to offer?
11:21I don't believe you're in a position to negotiate.
11:24Fine then. Kill me.
11:26Everything, everything is a negotiation.
11:29I negotiated with the FBI, I negotiated with the Russians.
11:31So insofar as Anna sort of pushing back, that's completely believable, right?
11:37You want to, you don't want to just sit there and do nothing.
11:39You want to do something.
11:40You want to do something.
11:41You want to do something.
11:42You want to do something.
11:43You want to do something.
11:44You want to do something.
11:45You want to do something.
11:47That's completely believable, right?
11:48You want to, you don't want to just say, sure.
11:50Because then they're going to say, why is she doing this so easily?
11:53So when I was sitting down with Oleg, my Russian GRU case officer,
11:56I pushed really hard for money.
11:59And that was a constant source of negotiation.
12:02The Russians, for their part, are exceedingly cheap.
12:05And also they don't want to validate you.
12:08Just like Anna said, I would, you know, I'd say, hey man, I'm done.
12:12If you're not going to pay me, I'm not going to do this.
12:13Here it goes.
12:14You work for us for three years, then we make you disappear.
12:16You ever been to Arizona?
12:17Hawaii.
12:18Hawaii.
12:19All right, Hawaii it is.
12:23Yeah, they'd probably send her to New Jersey or something.
12:26There's no way that he had approval that he's going to relocate her to Hawaii.
12:30This is, as you can imagine, a lot of paperwork.
12:32A lot of people have to sign off on it.
12:34So you would never, ever say that if you hadn't already gotten approval.
12:39So, Oleg and the FBI alike, they would demur.
12:43They were given certain parameters of what they could negotiate with me,
12:47but they could not exceed those parameters.
12:49And so, maddeningly, some of the things that would happen with me
12:53was that they would just say, we can't, we have to check or we can't, we'll try.
12:58Say things very non-committal.
13:01Would the U.S. intelligence community offer someone relocation the ability to defect?
13:06Absolutely, if they deemed it important.
13:08I'm going to say it's about a five.
13:11There's just so much there that's, like, overly dramatic.
13:16Once the word was found, I'd make note of the page.
13:21The coded numbers would reveal themselves with a brush of iodine solution.
13:25Their portrayal of tradecraft, I think, is spot on.
13:29So, first of all, it's important to understand that the spy
13:33is most likely going to be working in hostile territory,
13:37whereas his or her case officer may not be.
13:41So you have to find another manner to communicate to both pass intelligence
13:45or pass messages, but also to receive directions.
13:48The intelligence service may tell you how they do it,
13:50but part of it is also just, again, like, how you want to do it.
13:55So the selection of the book that he liked, that he felt the most comfortable with,
14:00it makes sense.
14:01Even in my case, which is probably outdated now,
14:04I communicated with the Russians by posting something on Craigslist.
14:08So we had agreed upon, like, a city,
14:12and I would post a message, a predetermined message,
14:14that didn't require them to respond.
14:16I knew I could smell the blood in the air.
14:19He wanted me to.
14:20You want to avoid detection.
14:22So completely plausible.
14:23In The Sympathizer, they'd be meeting in a bar to essentially discuss.
14:27Both the FBI and the Russians met with me both in public
14:32and then in private to have much more intense debriefings.
14:36But insofar as the Russians, they had a penchant for taking me to Hooters,
14:41which was so uncomfortable.
14:43The comments that Oleg would make about the waitresses, it was just weird.
14:46It was like being with a gross uncle.
14:48We were, like, trading state secrets over sh** like chicken wings.
14:53It absolutely does happen.
14:55For the revolution, I infiltrated the secret police and sent intelligence back to Hanoi.
14:59Take yourself out of commission or give us a chance to talk at leisure.
15:02So much of that is believable.
15:04I mean, what you're watching here is the captain essentially admitting that,
15:10first of all, disclosing how he's passing communications back to Hanoi,
15:15and then secondly, getting essentially unmasked by the CIA.
15:21Those are both very believable things in terms of the tradecraft.
15:24You see coercion used here, but the goal of coercion is to get him to confess.
15:28It's not to sort of flip him necessarily.
15:31So to use coercion in that manner is absolutely an appropriate use of the tool.
15:35I'm going to give this a 9.
15:36I feel like everything about this is believable.
15:40The tradecraft, the approach, the motivation, it all tracks.
15:48Central Intelligence. Train you as an agent.
15:51You'll be working for me mostly undercover.
15:53The idea that recruitment or the process of recruitment could happen in public, absolutely.
15:59Hell yes.
16:00If you're not going to bring someone into a place where they could be identified by other people
16:04as someone working for you, that could, you know, essentially blow their cover.
16:09For the FBI, in my case, my first meeting with them was in a Dunkin' Donuts in Midtown.
16:15So spy game doesn't necessarily involve the double agent.
16:18I think spy game is probably one of the better ways that a movie shows the relationship
16:24between case officer and operative.
16:27And for me, spy game was like a one-to-one ratio of what it was like to work for the FBI.
16:33You just gave her four pieces of personal information.
16:35What if she were an asset?
16:37You told her four lies that now have to be true.
16:40This is the most important rule.
16:42You just heard Robert Redford.
16:44He says you now told her four things that have to be true.
16:47What if she was an asset?
16:49And that is absolutely true is that even the most mundane thing, you can't lie about it.
16:55One of the biggest misnomers that people have about double agent or espionage or being a spy
17:01is that you're a liar.
17:03You can omit the truth.
17:05That's very, very different.
17:07You cannot volunteer it.
17:09But actively lying, well, that becomes a lie that you have to commit to forevermore.
17:14So I love that movie.
17:15I'm going to give it a 10.
17:17I think everything about it in terms of the relationship in spy game
17:22between Brad Pitt, who's the operative, and Robert Redford, who's the case officer, is perfect.
17:28The Russian agent is Salt.
17:31My name is Evelyn Salt.
17:34Then you are a Russian spy.
17:37So when we see Salt essentially having a walk-in say that she is a Russian agent,
17:43which in fact does turn out to be some level of truth because she's a double agent,
17:47actually there are instances historically where the allegiance of certain assets or case officers
17:57has been questioned both correctly and incorrectly.
18:01So it is not outside of the realm of possibility that a hostile intelligence service
18:06would shoot essentially disinformation to try to confuse the allegiance
18:11and tie up that intelligence service.
18:23So in the scene we just saw with Salt where her husband is executed in front of her,
18:27it's an extreme test of loyalty.
18:30And while I don't know that violence is always something that's used,
18:34loyalty is constantly tested.
18:36It wasn't so much about what you said in terms of believability, like to being loyal,
18:43but rather answering questions consistently.
18:45Actually, I'm going to give it an 8.
18:47I think that the concept of testing loyalty is important
18:51and that is something that is continuously done for as long as you're working.
18:55Do you have anything to sell?
18:57I have the first set of discs with me.
18:59$250,000 per delivery as agreed.
19:02The price of $250,000 is believable because it's important to understand
19:07that when it comes to an intelligence service, like $250,000 is not a big thing for them.
19:14However, the question of what you charge is something that I struggled with quite a bit,
19:22and I think in many cases there's no – it's not like you can go to Indeed.com
19:25and look at what the comps are.
19:27So you have to come up with your own framework of money.
19:32I just have to wait for them to load.
19:40This idea of swapping out information, I suppose it's plausible.
19:44Certainly it would lead to the potential of the double agent being exposed.
19:50It is absolutely realistic to look at Sparrow and to see someone sort of ad-libbing it.
19:57That was certainly the case with me.
20:00There was one point where I met with Oleg and we were showing him a database
20:07that I had access to in real time, and at one point he just pointed to a document
20:11and said, can I have this?
20:12He's like, well, I have a thumb drive. Can you just put it on this?
20:14And that brief second I had to make a decision.
20:18What would be my reason to say no?
20:20So I'm going to give this – I'm going to give it an eight.
20:23That scene I think is appropriate in terms of Jennifer Lawrence and how she handles herself.
20:30The Hungarian general wants to come over.
20:33He has the name of the mole the Russians have planted in the British intelligence service.
20:39So I think Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy really nails one of the biggest threats to an intelligence service.
20:47The fundamental main plot of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy is that British intelligence believes there's a mole.
20:54So this idea that you don't know if your service has been penetrated.
21:01Counterintelligence, which is the focus on that defensive move, is a very, very real thing.
21:07Look, in terms of the US, there's plenty of historical examples, whether it's Aldrich Ames or Robert Hansen,
21:15all these senior people that had huge impacts in the national security of this country,
21:21in our ability to collect intelligence because they essentially turned over spies.
21:35How the operations very, very quickly from the Soviet side go south where they try to shoot them and end up killing a woman.
21:43Actually, it is, I think, very, very believable that, look, there is always a chance for violence.
21:50And if it does occur, it's not sort of this flashy way that you might see in other movies.
21:55It is sort of this unintended sort of consequence.
21:59And it is something that is a clear sign of failing an operation.
22:05It's hard to give us anything less than 10.
22:07I mean, it is as—the movie is as good as a movie as it was a book.
22:12And again, it's written by someone who actually walked the walk and can talk the talk.
22:17I mean, Carre, the author of the book, was in British intelligence.
22:22He understands intimately sort of how these relationships and how these operations work.
22:26Do you want to stop this nuclear bomb or not?
22:29I'll tell you where the bomb is in exchange for immunity.
22:34There's this idea that she could be given immunity for essentially helping.
22:38That concept is not alien.
22:40Things like immunity make sense when you start talking about, you know, a CI,
22:46someone who is cooperating with federal investigators from a law enforcement activity.
22:51That is very different from something that is an intelligence activity or national security.
22:56So in my world, probably not that likely.
23:01So in your assessment, Nina Myers is our best chance to stop this bomb?
23:07Sir, she may be our only chance.
23:09There's this idea that there's this single source of information.
23:14That is very, very dangerous.
23:16In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and this idea that there were weapons of mass destruction,
23:20that from the Brits in the U.S. was traced back to one person
23:24who was essentially shown later on to have been fabricating that sort of stuff.
23:28So again, a level of in the post-911 world that an intelligence service
23:34hopefully would not rely on one single source of intelligence
23:39for something so grave as nuclear weapons.
23:42I'm going to give 24 a 4 just because it is, I think, a little bit of a bridge too far in terms of fantasy.
23:51What are you doing?
23:53You want to be an agent or don't you?
23:56Breach is based on a very true event, true story, I should say.
24:01It's based on Robert Hansen who was actually an FBI counterintelligence agent,
24:07actually stationed here in New York,
24:10and he has been described as one of the worst spies against the United States in our history.
24:22I mean, personally, I think he's a son of a bitch.
24:24There was that moment where people like him caused people like us to literally die.
24:30You're not burned.
24:32No, I'm not burned.
24:34Okay, we're on him.
24:36The FBI is the lead agency when it comes to counterintelligence in most cases.
24:41Counterintelligence is so important because the intelligence activities of foreign countries
24:47in the United States has, I believe, become even more pronounced.
24:52The change that I have seen versus my time doing this,
24:57so what has shifted with the Russian and places like China is that they're relying more on people
25:04that are less easily identifiable as intelligence officers essentially
25:10or in some cases coming here as what's known as NOX, non-official cover,
25:15so they're coming here integrating and collecting intelligence.
25:20It's much harder to identify them, let alone do anything against it legally.
25:25I think what the FBI desperately needs is young people who have enthusiasm and an interest in innovation.
25:35I'm going to give this a nine because I think that they – it's a factual story.
25:40I think they get the emotion right.
25:42My favorite double agent spy movie is actually not a double agent movie necessarily,
25:47and it's Spy Game.
25:49It really showcases what I spent most of my time with, which was not the Russians but the FBI,
25:55and I think Spy Game really kind of captures that dynamic.
26:00Hey, thanks for watching.
26:01If you like this, I hope you'll check out the next episode in this series.