Jim Lawler (00:00.931)
Hello, you’re listening to the Steady State Sentinel from the Steady State. I’m Jim Lawler, a former senior CIA operations officer. I’ve worked some of the most sensitive counter-proliferation and espionage cases in the agency’s history. And today I’m joined by my good friend and former CIA colleague, Professor Les Pauly. Les Pauly is a distinguished service professor emeritus at Stonebrook University. He is a decorated former intelligence officer.
Who served on teams in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and the FBI Counterintelligence Training Center at Quantico, Virginia? He’s a frequent speaker on intelligence and national security issues, a former Marine Infantry Officer, and he’s the author of a wonderful book, No Cloak, No Dagger, A Professor’s Secret Life Inside the CIA. I read it just a few weeks ago. I loved it. It’s available on Amazon, and I highly recommend it to all of our listeners.
Les had a very unusual career, unlike almost anyone else. For 25 years, he balanced two identities: university professor by day and CIA operations officer in service to the United States. He experienced the open exchange of ideas that defines academia, while also working in one of the world’s most secretive organizations. Today we’re going to explore how those two worlds intersected, where they clashed.
lester Paldy (01:01.742)
I’m back.
lester Paldy (01:09.282)
Not at the c camera.
Jim Lawler (01:26.935)
and what each can learn from the other. So Les, tell us how did the agency first become interested in you?
lester Paldy (01:34.03)
Well, I had been teaching arms control courses and I had organized back in the early nineteen eighties a lecture series bringing in visitors from the Department of Defense, from the Soviet UN mission in New York City, and other academics, to talk about the problem posed by the existence of nuclear weapons and and the magnitude of of the stockpiles. So we had a bunch of lectures and I suspect
That perhaps someone at the agency had heard about them and heard about me teaching nuclear arms control courses. And Arthur Holnick, who was a former agency officer at the time, came to me and said, How would you like to spend a year at the agency as a scholar in residence? He came up to me after I was giving a talk at one of the conferences I was attending. And I said, I thought that would be an interesting idea. I’d certainly consider it.
So tha that’s how I got involved. Some someone had spotted me from the agency and asked me to sign on.
Jim Lawler (02:37.539)
So a classic recruitment operation, so to speak.
lester Paldy (02:40.38)
in that in that sense, yes. Although I was coming in, t I wasn’t coming into DO, I was going to be invited, I didn’t know it at the time, but to join the arms control intelligence staff that was then headed by Doug McKackin. that was a branch of the DCI and it supported negotiations in Geneva, for example, where we were negotiating the threshold test band treaty verification protocol with the Soviets.
So that that’s how I got started. I I said yes, I’d like to be considered. And he said it’ll take some time. And then I think I went through the the standard vetting process. people came and asked my neighbors whether I was a a wife beater or drug abuser or an alcoholic and the like. I got invited, asked to come down to Washington for a psychological exam. I took the polygraph.
took a physical exam and then ra went back and waited. And in December of nineteen eighty eight, they called and said, Well, we’d like you to start in January. So we’d like you to come down and meet the people you’re going to be working with. And that’s how it all began. And again, that was with the Arms Control Intelligence staff, having nothing to do with DO at that time. No no direct connections that I was aware of anyway. So that’s how it started.
Jim Lawler (04:04.247)
So how did you how did you how did you transition then over to the Directorate of Operations? Because that’s where I knew you in that context. when did that start?
lester Paldy (04:13.867)
Well, the Soviet Union collapsed in December of nineteen ninety one. By that time I’d been with the agency for eighteen months, with thirteen months full time living in Washington and about five months commuting on weekends and h school holidays and the like. And in December of nineteen ninety one, ACES saw the light on the you know saw what was happening, and they said, Well, we’re not gonna be able to use you much anymore because the work that we’re doing will be ended now with the
collapse of the Soviet Union. But he said, I know somebody, this is Doug McKackin. He said, I know someone in the in DO who might like to talk to you. So I went up and and met a DO officer and he said, Well, we think maybe you can do something with us. And I said, Well, I has said I have no experience in operations. I’ve been doing essentially analytic work here with ACIS.
I I said I’d met a Russian once in New York, but he was a sleazy guy. I didn’t much care for him. And he smiled and said, That’s our kind of guy. So I began to get some insights into what they do. And he he went on to say, he said, Look, there’s a sign down at the lob there’s a a an inscription on the lobby wall saying, We go where others cannot. We think you might be able to go where we cannot, using your scientific credentials to get into laboratories.
to assess what’s going on and to meet people. So it all sounded pretty exciting to me, and I said, sure, sign me on. So at that point I became a contractor and working at first with Russia House. And then I somehow the word got around that I was I existed and I wound up spending time with EA in China operations and also with NR.
Down in the basement working for Eldor Kelly. So that’s how I got involved with the DO after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Jim Lawler (06:17.411)
Maybe we should tell our listeners what some of these acronyms stand for. I know Russia House is not an acronym, but explain what Russia House is and then East Asia Division and China Ops for the those listeners who are not intelligence officers or not familiar with these terms.
lester Paldy (06:34.657)
Well, Russia House was a group in a European division that focused on operational activities in the Soviet Union. And my j my job there was to work with young case officers, most of whom had no scientific or technical backgrounds, but who had been charged with meeting Rush in this case Russian scientists and engineers and the the usual problem they would come to me was w would be something like this.
Well, my I I d I haven’t had a science course since I was in high school. What am I going to talk to this person about? So w I would work with him or her to try to explain how you can develop some reproachment with the with the Russian. What could you talk about with with a person whose field you really don’t understand? What kinds of questions can you ask that will make him think you’re a sympathetic and interesting person?
So that that’s that’s a lot of what I did in Russia House. And again, the experience there had a a few people who had some actual experience in Eastern Europe, but most of them did not. And of course they coordinated the the traffic between headquarters and or overseas branches, called stations. And they I would often get involved in cable writing, for example. I I would help draft cables,
with that had to do with technical matters to make sure they made sense to people. So that that was Russia House. And the same thing was true in in China operations. There the focus was on organizing operations and monitoring operations in China. And once again we had very few officers in in in that group in East Asia that had any real experience in Asia, much less China.
So I and they were not scientists. So once again I would help to it interpret what they were seeing out in the field. For example, a typical case officer who was not a scientist would think that any physicist would necessarily be a good target because they’d be involved with nuclear weapons or some other military activity. So I I would explain that most physicists don’t have anything to do with military or weapon activities. They’re doing basic
lester Paldy (08:59.435)
basic research and I would help screen potential targets to indicate that these are people who are worth the time and effort to pursue them. And
Jim Lawler (09:10.135)
I believe we referred to that what you were doing as being a spotter. You would spot people and assess
lester Paldy (09:15.669)
I was a s exactly. I would go to conferences in China and in Eastern Europe and I would have a I typically scientific conferences. I would circulate and try to look at people’s badges. They had names and institutions on them, and try to identify people who I thought might be of interest. And then I would let the case officer or officers that I was partnering with
These are these could be large conferences. So I would say, Well look, instead of just b blindly wandering around hoping to meet someone, look look for Professor X from Institute Y and get chat him up and try to understand what he’s doing and decide whether he’s approachable enough for you to warrant the recruitment effort. So that’s a lot of what I did and in the NR divis in the then the National Resources Division.
which has very limited res limited scope of authority in the United States, about all the NR division can do in the US is interview foreigners. They have no th unlike the FBI, they don’t have badges, they don’t have g weapons. They are interested in foreigners who are in the United States. So once again, an NR officer would report back that he’d met a certain person at a conference in Chicago is
that here’s what the person said he does, is this likely to be of interest to the agency? So I would help once again and s assess the person as best I could with the information that had been given to me.
Jim Lawler (10:55.24)
So this is keeping you pretty busy. How did you manage to do this and still be a professor at Stony Brook University?
lester Paldy (11:03.424)
Well, I had a lot of freedom at at the university. I would but I arranged my classes so I would have a c a day or two available in the middle of the week where I could travel to Washington. So I commuted to Washington every once a week, basically for about twenty five years. And of course during the summers and school breaks, I had more time. And one of the things about being a r university professor is no one pays much attention. If you meet your classes
and f fulfill your committee obligations. No one really cares how you spend the rest of your time. And it was somewhat chastening for me to realize when I came back after when I finished my first tour of duty, which was full time with ACIS, it wasn’t clear that anyone knew I’d been gone. I you know so I I was I was at a star player at the university whose whose presence was missed for that year when I was away.
year and half when I was there pretty much full time. So you you ha I had the flexibility to do that. And I would just
Jim Lawler (12:07.853)
So who who who Tony Brook knew that you were working part time or at least fairly vigorously for the CIA? Who in who in the university structure was aware of this?
lester Paldy (12:17.962)
Well, w when I first got the invitation, I went to my university president, d now deceased, and I told him I’d been in invited to come and I was planning on if if if accepted, I would I plan to do it. And he said, Fine. He said, You’re not doing anything on the on campus with the agency. I said, No, absolutely not. I’m go going to be in Washington and the focus will be on stuff, you know, this research analysis and the like with this arms control unit. And
there’ll be no feedback to the campus. yes, I’m a professor, but I won’t be doing any agency work on campus or with people. So he knew about it. After that 18 months, though, when I joined DO, then I c I I guess the office of general counsel said, you have we don’t have to declare your your work in any way, shape or form. So I didn’t tell anybody about the contract work.
I had one colleague who knew because I thought he’d be a valuable person for the agency to talk to. I brought him down to the agency once to meet with the NR division to talk about it it had to do with the biological weapons project. He was a biologist. But aside from him and my immediate family, my my wife and two sons, I didn’t talk about what I did with Dio at all. And I didn’t talk with them about the details. They just knew.
Jim Lawler (13:44.462)
Okay.
lester Paldy (13:47.188)
I was doing something with CIA.
Jim Lawler (13:49.879)
All right, and then so who in your family, besides your wife, did your children know what you were doing?
lester Paldy (13:55.221)
Two sons, yes. I would take them occasionally on my expense to some of the conferences that I went to overseas. and that I thought added to the cover. typical case officers didn’t bring their children along to conferences. They’d never seen these parts of the world. So I not often, I guess I took them each of them once to China and each of them once to Eastern Europe. And that that was the extent of it. And
They they didn’t know exactly what I did, did they? They just knew I was working with the CIA.
Jim Lawler (14:30.073)
So how difficult did you find it to maintain the secrecy that was required of what you were doing for the CIA?
lester Paldy (14:36.78)
not difficult really, because I I understood th the need for it and of course the b that’s that’s one of the big differences between the university and the agency. At the university you pretty much know what ever all of your colleagues are doing, if if not in great detail, at least in in in fairly general terms. If if if the physicist who was at two offices down from me was doing something, I had a pretty good idea of what he or she was working on.
That was certainly not the case at the agency. I had a small cubicle in DO. I couldn’t have told you what the person at the next cubicle was doing. I it would have to do with Asia or Russia, respectively. But beyond that I would have no idea, nor did I ask. I realized early on that you don’t go around asking your colleagues at the agency what they’re what they’re doing. So it so it wasn’t hard to maintain secrecy. And s
I never ha since I wasn’t involved in recruiting, e when I was overseas I wasn’t making cr pitches, I I wasn’t I didn’t have to do surveillance detection runs or anything. I just tried to look like a b an a a middle aged professor. So I didn’t have to worry about I I never felt under threat. I never felt that I was being surveilled, particularly. I just tried to be my natural self.
I I never ask probing questions either. I remember going once to a conference in China and one of my Chinese colleagues who I’d gotten to know said, D’Cee guy over there? We think he’s CIA. He’s always asking probing questions. So I made it a point, never to ask questions. I I did the usual conference thing. I would give a paper on usually on arms control, since by the by these years my physics is pretty much obsolete. But I I knew
the arms control field pretty well. And as a younger professor, I had a chance to hear Robert Oppenheimer. I met Hans Bethe from Los Alamos. I was a friend of Dick Garwin, the person who created the first thermonuclear explosion. So arms control issues were easy for me to talk about. And that that’s what my focus was. And I think for the most part that’s how I was perceived as an arms control expert.
Jim Lawler (16:59.961)
Did you usually get a pretty good welcome from your director of operations, colleagues, the case officers that you were working with? What was what was your your relation with them? How did they get along with you or you get along with them?
lester Paldy (17:12.203)
Well, when I went to the f to the first office, my first assignment, they they was s they were surprised. They said, Well, where are you went like this? Where are you from? a professor? Have then they said, have you been polygraphed? You know, they wanted to know that. So it took a while. I was at least thirty years, twenty-five or thirty years older than most of them. I was I was what, fifty-five or fifty-six or fifty-seven thereabouts.
And they were typically in their early thirties. So I made it a point not to expect professorial privileges or anything like that. I I tried to blend in with the troops. I w I tried to work hard. I asked a lot of questions. I yeah, I said, explain to me how to do this, explain to me how to do that. And I I think they like the idea, actually. I I remember one of the groups once said, Well, he told somebody in another division how
pleased they were that they had a professor working for them in their group. So I I I r I recognized that I would be I would have to adapt to the culture and be accepted as a member of the team. And I think that happened pretty quickly because I I was basically low maintenance. I never made demands. My supervi as a contractor, my supervisors never had to do performance reviews. I didn’t spend much money on travel.
Jim Lawler (18:36.023)
Yeah.
lester Paldy (18:38.811)
I remember once I submitted a b a dinner bill for two dollars and I got called from the accounting office and said, There must be a mistake here, surely you met twenty dollars. I said, No, I just had a McDonald’s Fishburger for two dollars, that was it. So I got I so I got along pretty well. One of my first bosses was a woman with a prosthetic org. I don’t remember her name now, but she was active in the agency back in the early and bit late eighties.
Jim Lawler (18:53.28)
Ha ha ha.
lester Paldy (19:07.591)
In suing the agency saying that women weren’t being paid comparably to their male colleagues doing the same job. So at first I thought she was sort of guarded. Who is this just another beltway contractor coming in? And I pointed out to her that the university went through an evolution like this as well. That my female colleagues at the university had sued the state of New York, saying that they weren’t being adequately paid in comparison with their colleagues.
And they won. So I established a bond with her and we she appreciated what I could and couldn’t do, and we got along famously after that. And the
Jim Lawler (19:51.734)
How but less, how would you compare the different cultures though between CIA and academia, things like decision making authority, incentives, rewards, things like that? It must have been kind of a shock to you to see the different culture that CIA has.
lester Paldy (20:05.77)
It it it it was it was very different, but of course I’d had six years in the Marine Corps, so I understood how orders tended to be top down, and that was certainly the case at the agency. there weren’t many of my bosses that would start off meetings by saying, Here’s our problem. What how do you think we should approach it? Often the bosses had definite ideas about what should be done, and they would issue directives to staff members to do this or do that.
And of course that’s very different. At a university, the faculty can elect their department chairman, for example. Chairman serve two or three year terms, there’s an election, then a new person is appointed. d contrary to what many people might think. Most people don’t want to be chairman because of the administrative work involved. They’d rather just do their teach and do research. So that was different. And of course the secrecy, the the fact that
things were compartmentalized very much at the university and that was that was quite different from the experience you have at a typical university where people pretty much know what’s going on in their immediate vicinity and often outside in other departments as well. W when, for example, if I was working in in in Russia House or one of the other units, I would have no idea what was going on in some division or that I had no contact with.
And I e you accept that. You understand the need for c compartmentation and the secrecy.
Jim Lawler (21:40.932)
Which is totally opposite in a university where the ideal is to share knowledge and to discuss with your scientific colleagues or other professors the latest advances to try and stimulate more thought, more more advances. And yet, in the CIA it’s much more compartmented. So that must have been a bit of a of a culture shock.
lester Paldy (22:02.151)
It it was, to be sure. On the other hand, you’re you both organizations in some sense are seeking the truth. Right? You’re try if you’re doing research in s in physics or another discipline, you’re trying to get to the bottom of things. You’re trying to understand the fundamental principles and and processes and the like. At the agency, you’re seeking the truth, right? Or or at least you’re trying to reduce uncertainty. So in that sense,
There’s a bond. Many of many of the analysts I do, who impressed me a great deal, who would have been perfectly fine as professors in any any university department, because they had that same drive to understand what the information that was being collected and passed on to them. So that that that w that was certainly the case.
Jim Lawler (22:50.5)
So
So you worked very closely with a lot of operations officers, many of whom I know. maybe you could tell our audience exactly what a CIA operations officer does.
lester Paldy (23:04.838)
well and the primary task i I’m sure I’m talking to a a star operators officer, but the f the primary task is to collect information from contacts overseas who you think have information of value, the secret information. We we have open source people who of course who are not ops officers who digest open source material, but a case officer
has to meet a foreign national, assess him or her, develop a working relations a personal relationship in a way, and eventually get to the point where you can pitch the foreign national saying, you you may be doing this under you may not identify yourself as a CIA officer initially, but you then say, You have information that we would like. We’re we’re going to establish a relationship with you. There’s a contract involved.
you’ll sign a secrecy agreement, perhaps, and we in turn will provide something that you value. It might be money, it might be your medical care for a sick family member or something that you value. And the task of the ops officer is to one, spot the identify the person, develop that relationship, which may take time. It doesn’t not something you do at a single lunch or a dinner. Take may take months.
and several meetings, determine that this person is vulnerable to an approach, and then tailor your offer to that person’s vulnerability. And then once the establishment once the connection is made, that person has to provide information to you, which you in turn relay and get back to headquarters. In in brief. So so it it it’s that’s the recruitment process.
In some ways, I’ve I’ve heard it characterized as seduction of sorts. You’re establishing a person, you’re getting insights into what really makes the person tick. Right. And then exploiting that. It’s a frankly exploited process. Exploiting that, getting the person involved agreeing to work with you, and then provide that information back. And of course, the person doing that is a great risk.
Jim Lawler (25:25.687)
You know
Right. one advantage you had, Les, over the regular operations officer is you were a professor at a very prestigious American university. And I know I’ve heard you give talks where you said a lot of our Asian targets, our Chinese targets, very much valued education for their children or grandchildren. And these people would actually, rather than you chasing them, they would chase you to see if you could help get those kids into college. and it is a big advantage.
lester Paldy (25:52.906)
Yeah.
Yeah, that was certainly true. I would I would often go to d I would be invited to go to a dinner by a Chinese in Beijing, for example, and who would show up at dinner? Not just the person I’d met at the conference, but his his spouse and a daughter, right? And the daughter expressed interest in coming to Stony Brook or or some other comparable university. And and of course I I would just give them general advice about how to do it. I I would
really try to I I had no special authority to to offer admission or to or to get to the admissions office and say, get this person in I wouldn’t have done that. So I we just give general advice about how to apply to a university. Particularly if you yeah
Jim Lawler (26:44.771)
So how d yeah, I’m sorry, how did your CIA experience so affect your teaching back at Stony Brook? Did it affect it at all?
lester Paldy (26:53.822)
Yeah, but t well well one, of course it was wonderful to be exposed to information that was part of the initial attraction. I I relied for information on the newspapers, on r journal re articles and the like. And now I would find myself in a place where I would be reading real time information about weapon systems and foreign activity that I would never have had access to.
So that that was very stimulating, and it was not hard to work from that base and develop case studies and other things that would interest students. I t I tried not to be a lecturer. I tried to organize my classes into groups, teams of four. They would work on case studies and then present their results. And that was very effective. I learned since I learned how to do r to write cables at the agency, I taught them essentially.
How to write a concise report and how to say something in a page or two that otherwise they would stretch out into a ten page essay. So action memos, I taught you know, I I taught them what a State Department action memo would look like, and I talked them how you w want to try to distill your material in a way that’s immediately accessible. So so that was of of of great value to me. And every now and then yes, sorry.
Jim Lawler (28:15.064)
Yeah.
Jim Lawler (28:18.66)
In your opinion go go I’m sorry, go ahead, Les.
lester Paldy (28:22.127)
And and every now and then a student would say, Well, they they didn’t know where I’d where I’d been working, but they’d say, Well, well, what do you have to do if I wanted to work in the State Department or or the CIA? And I would say, Well, you go online and and apply, and there’s a process. I said, These are great organizations, and you should do it. And I remember once at headquarters I was walking down the main lobby, past out of the cafe, and I heard someone shout from behind
Professor Pauling, what are you doing here? It was one of my former students who was working in the general counsel’s office. So
Jim Lawler (28:57.507)
Well, clearly you had a positive you had a positive impact on him. So in essence you were maybe not de facto recruiting some employees for us. What did you find out that the biggest myth about the CIA, something you thought was true, but it turned out it wasn’t true when you got to the CIA?
lester Paldy (29:01.289)
Ha ha ha.
lester Paldy (29:15.141)
Well, th most people don’t about understand what they what little they know about the CIA for movies with car chases, gunfights, explosions and the like. They have no idea that the there’s a massive analytic effort. They have no idea that case officers are not in unless they’re in a war zone or not carrying weapons. so th that’s that’s certainly the public perception.
But I remember Bob Gates, back when he was director, said once, We have to preserve the mystique, said Bob Gates. And and I think by and large it’s been preserved. Most Americans I think have a very favorable view of the agency, even though most of the information they get is from movies and novels and other things. I very rarely meet people now who talk about the the evil agency and things that it has done.
Right. I I I just don’t encounter peop most people appreciate the fact that it’s composed of patriotic, hard working men and women who are totally focused on the task. And I and now that I’m out of it and people know that I’m sort of s I’m not a retiree technically, but if I give a talk I point out I I didn’t know whether my colleagues were Democrats or Republicans, and I it never occurred to me to ask.
It didn’t matter. We were focused solely on the mission. And and in that way I thought it was a tremendous organization to work with.
Jim Lawler (30:51.309)
Yeah, I I agree with you Les. You know, prior to about twenty sixteen I neither knew nor cared what the political affiliation of any of my colleagues were. But sadly in the last ten years it’s been not just drifting but flowing rapidly the other way. And I find that very harmful to national security. Do you do you find that too, that it’s had an im a negative impact?
lester Paldy (31:12.805)
Yeah. Well, in particular, I think the current politics that ex as as I’m sure you know, for a while they they actually took that small office at the agency that focused on diversity and equity and the like and they they ended it. They they closed the office. I think they have since retired re r rehired the people who were going to be fired. But I I thought that diversity is essential.
at at a place like CIA. You want people who have experience with different cultures. You want men and women. You want you certainly want blacks, for example, who can go into black Africa and not stand out like light bulbs. So that I guess echoes the current administration’s position on DEI where they’re attacking it in every format, in every arena they can. But to the extent that that’s that administrative attitude has been picked up.
by the agency. I think that’s a unfortunate. Now, since I’ve had no direct contact with the agency anymore, I don’t know what the internal morale is like. That I I can’t be sure of. But you want to avoid politicizing, it seems to me. The agency should be permitted to do what it does without political interference.
Jim Lawler (32:31.691)
I have two final questions for you, Les. First question is looking back at where what you did for the agency and stuff, would you do it again?
lester Paldy (32:41.733)
Absolutely. If if I I’m getting to be pretty old now, but if I were invited to come back and do it again, I’d probably I k find it hard to make the trips, but I would surely do it. It was a wonderful ex a life changing experience for me. As I look back at my life, I’d say th it it it was the Marine Corps for six years, that was an important part of my life. The university it was a big thing for me for fifty years, but surely that
agency experience is so remarkable, so wonderful, that I I will be perpetually grateful for the chance to have contributed to that effort.
Jim Lawler (33:19.609)
Do you have any advice for young people who are considering careers in the intelligence community?
lester Paldy (33:25.521)
They should certainly apply. They should certainly read about it. There’s a tremendous amount of information. You could there s re read a book, for example, w one of the nonfiction books describing agency issues and and the like. Look at the website, read the try to keep up with the press, learn a foreign language that’s likely to be of particular value, try to do some foreign travel and you’ll be at least
will be able to attract the initial attention of the agency recruiters looking for talent in young men and women.
Jim Lawler (34:02.179)
I have a I I agree with you a hundred percent. I have a lot of young people that I mentor about agency careers and I always ask them, I said, How would you like a a job where nineteen mornings out of twenty you can’t wait to get to work? And I said, That was that was my job. When in fact, when I was interviewing for the agency in nineteen seventy nine, a gentleman who later became our deputy director of operations, Ted Price, he took me to the CIA cafeteria and he bought me a Coke.
lester Paldy (34:14.604)
Ha ha ha.
Jim Lawler (34:31.479)
And he said, Jim, let me tell you how much fun this job is. Every two weeks I’m shocked that they pay me to do this. And I thought that’s wonderful.
lester Paldy (34:38.921)
Well, are you I I remember in my first assignment at HCIS since I was away from home and I had weekends free, I would often come in and work on weekends. And I came in one afternoon and a an an experienced officer was there drinking beer. And I said, I thought you you weren’t supposed to be drinking alcohol in a government building. He said, On Sunday I could drink beer. I often work on Sunday, he said, and I
We’ll have a beer. I he didn’t mind working six days a week. Not a problem for him.
Jim Lawler (35:13.859)
Well in fact a lot of my case officer friends and I would joke and say, Isn’t it nice that we never had to work for a living? Because it was so much fun. It was it was fascinating. It’s just fascinating. Well, it’s been a fascinating time having you on today, Les. you have
lester Paldy (35:21.533)
Ha ha ha.
Jim Lawler (35:29.371)
really provided invaluable assistance to our national security. I know you and I have worked together for at least 15 years teaching young case officers and special agents how to pursue foreign scientists involved in weapons of mass destruction programs. And I’ve had feedback from some of those students who told me that they would not have pursued those targets.
That they would not have recruited these foreign nuclear scientists or biological scientists had it not been for what you and our team did teaching them the way and the way you would teach, you know, asking the right questions and being aware of the stresses in an academic’s life. That was so valuable. So thank you so much, Les, for being on our program today. And I’m going to tell everybody goodbye. This is Jim Lawler for the Steady State Sentinel podcast.
And if you like our broadcast, please give us five stars and come back again next week. So this is Jim Lawler, still standing watch.
lester Paldy (36:32.733)
Thanks, Jim.