Jason Hanson lends CIA expertise in new book Agent of Influence

Jason Hanson spent years in the CIA and is now using his experience to improve everyday situations in Agent of Influence, now available on Amazon.

Everyone wants to be a spy, but not everyone realizes how those cool espionage skills can also be applied to normal life. Former CIA agent Jason Hanson is explaining how in his new book, Agent of Influence: How to Use Spy Skills to Persuade Anyone, Sell Anything, and Build A Successful Business.

In the book, Jason applies his years of experience in the intelligence world to some of the common situations and biggest goals we face. He spoke to Amazon Adviser about the intriguing process of putting the book together, some of the things readers can take away from it, and which Hollywood projects he feels portray the spy game better than others.

Learn more about Jason Hanson in our interview below, then order your copy of Agent of Influence on Amazon here.

Amazon Adviser: What interested you in writing a book using your CIA experiences?

Jason Hanson: I was with the CIA from 2003 to 2010, and when I left the agency I started my own security consulting and survival business. The training you do with the CIA—spotting, accessing, developing and recruiting—[is called] the SADR cycle.

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The CIA’s goal is to gather information, so someone may go over to Russia [and] you’re trying to recruit a Russian asset to spy for you, to give you secrets that will help the U.S. government, and that is the SADR cycle. In the business world, there’s not much difference.

In the CIA the stakes are much higher than if you blow a business deal, but it’s still a lot of work. It’s still spotting, accessing, developing and recruiting. It’s not a Russian asset but it may be customers, it may be joint venture partners, maybe people you want to work with, you want to hire. So you can take this same exact formula and apply it to the business world, and that’s why I wanted to write the book because it is a very formulaic process.

AA: There are a lot of business and leadership books from people who are former military, or government agents. What makes Agent of Influence different from other books?

JH: This is a story that’s never been told before. I obviously didn’t invent the SADR cycle, I didn’t invent the top-secret intelligence gathering, but there are a lot of books out there that are [about] leadership. This is the CIA version of hey, here’s how it really goes down. If you really want to know what it takes to build a business [or] recruit an asset, here’s the process you can follow. Here’s the hard work it takes. Here’s how to tell someone’s lying. It really takes a deep dive.

AA: What was your writing process? How did you translate all of your experience into what we read in Agent of Influence?

JH: I’m not a real writer. What I mean by that is I write a bunch of novels, but I’m not trained in it. I didn’t go to school for journalism. When I sit down, I’m literally just opening up a Word document and saying what do I want to teach? What do I want people to know, to help them [to] be more successful or keep themselves safe?

I outline that and then because I don’t want to bore you, I want to keep your attention I say what stories apply to each thing. If I’m teaching you about spotting, here’s a story from true intelligence about spotting. Or here’s a story about the actual pitch to recruit somebody overseas to spy on behalf of the U.S. government. Here’s a great true story to have with that.

What I have to do too is once I have everything, I have to send it to the CIA for review. There’s something called the Publications Review Board, and since I’m telling true stories they can say yea or nay. They get to redact it. and I have to go back and say well, can I change this word or this line? It can be a very sensitive process to get one of my books through to publication.

AA: What’s one of Jason Hanson’s favorite stories that made it into this book?

JH: The recruiting story. We had to change names for the book, but a real-life story about how this guy was recruited to spy on behalf of the U.S. and the process that intelligence officers go through to befriend somebody, to make them comfortable with you. We talk about the “hourglass conversation,” which is a fancy way of when you first meet somebody, you can’t straight out ask them hey, do you have access to this classified Russian document that we want?

You have to use the “hourglass conversation,” which is going broad at the beginning—maybe talking about the weather or the food of the restaurant. This very general, broad topic that everybody’s comfortable talking with. Then you go narrow and ask them about something like where do you work? Something that’s more deep.

Then you go broad again and go to talking about your kids or your weekend because as human beings, we remember the beginning of the conversation and the end but we don’t remember the middle. That’s why the hourglass is broad, narrow, broad—that way somebody walking away isn’t like, why did that guy ask me about my work? It’s a very useful technique.

AA: I do want to talk about your business and whether or not we’ll see more books from you on Amazon. Because if people want to learn more, you’ve written other books before this one, and you also teach.

JH: My main business is called Spy Escape & Evasion. We have 320 acres out in Utah called Spy Ranch, and I am very fortunate to be able to train people from all walks of life—celebrities, high network individuals, to everyday Americans. I love it; hopefully, I’ll be able to do it for the rest of my life.

I do enjoy writing, so I’m sure there’ll be more books coming out of me. But [also] to continue to train as many people as possible, because my mission in life is to teach spy skills to keep you safe. There’s too much crime and bad stuff going on in the world that I don’t want you to be a victim.

AA: Spy stories are a popular genre in film and TV. Are there any portrayals of your line of work that you feel get it right? What gets the Jason Hanson seal of approval?

JH: Most of the time, it’s not very accurate—because you have to sell movie tickets, you have to get people to watch TV shows, so it needs to be very sexy and exciting. What I always tell people is if you really saw the hard work behind the scenes, nobody would want to buy a movie ticket. It’s not like James Bond, it’s not like Jason Bourne, it’s a lot of hard work behind the scenes.

But I had people tell me about The Americans, and they said whoever did the consulting on that did a good job. That was legit…Then there was a show on TV called Quantico, and I don’t even remember what season it was because I saw bits and pieces, but I saw a season where the FBI was at The Farm. Whoever did the consulting on that had some good accuracy, and it was more lifelike than a lot of other TV shows.

Purchase your copy of Jason Hanson’s Agent of Influence at Amazon here. Discover other books on Amazon through the Books category at Amazon Adviser.