Intelligence and Negotiation Strategies

I pitched an African intelligence officer

who said, "Jim, they hang people in my country for doing

things like that."

Oh my God.

He's right. They would.

But then he surprised me when this African intelligence officer

said, "But could I

have a rain check?" And I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, a rain check.

I mean, you know my son, he's only three years old now, but in

15 years he'll be college age and I might need you then."

Well, I wrote that down and guess what?

15 years later he was in Washington

and headquarters asked me if I thought that he had been sincere.

I said, "Yep." And we cashed that rain check 15 years later.

But now here, flashback to my first pitch, and I've been turned

down.

And we have a saying in the CIA that it's okay to get

turned down,

but not turned in. We get to the restaurant, the waiter

drops the menus off,

and the first words out of my friend's mouth, "Jim,

that offer you made me last week, is that still good?"

And I said, "Yeah, of course it is. I made it because we're friends."

And he said, "Well, what you don't know

is that two days after

that dinner, my wife announced that she wants a divorce and I can't

afford to pay her the alimony to which she's entitled or

put my high school age boys in private schools when we go home next

summer.

And if they don't go to a private school, they won't get a good education.

I can't afford to do that unless I accept your offer.

And even though I know it's morally wrong." Well, we have a saying in law

school that if the judge rules in your favor, shut up and get out of

court quickly.

And so I shut up and the next meeting he brought out probably seven or eight

centimeters thick of classified material from his

embassy. He said, "It's because I hate my ambassador.

He goes around bragging about everything he does.

He takes credit for everything I do and everything everybody else in the

embassy

does. So as I hand you this material,

it's as if I'm kicking that son of a bitch in the face."

Ultimately, he

went back to his home country

and during those negotiations, he provided us not

only their negotiating positions, but all of their fallback positions.

And if you've ever bought a car or a house or an apartment, how would you

like to know the bottom dollar you could offer before the seller

says no? And it was estimated that he saved the United States, his

information saved the United States many tens of billions of

dollars.