What happened in this episode?
Mike Ritland interviews former CIA officer Jason Hanson about training and field tradecraft, with Hanson placing his CIA service between 2003 and 2010. Hanson says training at “the farm” drew on contractors including former Navy SEALs and Delta Force personnel, and describes the physical combatives emphasis as aggressive striking rather than sport grappling (framed as his experience at the time).
He describes the CIA as highly compartmentalised, citing changes after spy Aldrich Ames and arguing that redundancy across multiple sources is used to verify intelligence reporting. Hanson outlines surveillance detection routes (SDRs) as purposeful, “logical” movements between everyday locations to check for hostile surveillance without signalling tradecraft, and he recommends establishing predictable routines to appear boring.
In a detailed anecdote, Hanson claims he was approached by two men overseas who “didn’t match the baseline” and appeared to attempt to force him between them; he says he ran to a “hunker down” location. He also discusses selecting such sites by casing an area and cultivating local relationships.
On his departure, Hanson says he resigned in 2010 partly to prioritise family life after observing colleagues’ personal toll. He claims managers tried to retain him on a classified project, including an offer to work part-time, and later says a former colleague asked him to help reopen a compromised CIA site in Asia—an account offered without verifiable details.
