No Cloak, No Dagger: A Professor’s Secret Life Inside the CIA

Host Jim Lawler sits down with his former CIA colleague Dr. Les Paldy, a distinguished service Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook University who spent 25 years balancing two identities: university professor by day and CIA operations officer in service to the United States. Paldy shares how he was first recruited — a classic spotting operation by a former Agency officer who approached him after a conference talk. He explains how his scientific credentials allowed him to “go where others could not,” attending conferences in China and Eastern Europe to spot and assess foreign scientists as potential recruitment targets. He describes the cultural differences between academia and the CIA — the openness and shared inquiry of the university versus the compartmentation and top-down directives of the Agency. He reveals how he kept his secret life hidden from colleagues for decades, with only his wife and two sons knowing he was “doing something with the CIA.” He reflects on what people get wrong about the Agency, why diversity is essential to its mission, and why he’d do it all over again. The episode closes with advice for young people considering intelligence careers.

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Guest info: Lester Paldy is a distinguished service professor emeritus at Stony Brook University and a decorated former intelligence officer. He served on teams in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and the FBI Counterintelligence Training Center at Quantico, Virginia. He is a former Marine Infantry Officer and the author of No Cloak, No Dagger: A Professor’s Secret Life Inside the CIA. He spent 25 years balancing a career in academia with service as with the CIA , using his scientific credentials to spot and assess foreign scientists at conferences around the world.

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