Ex-CIA Officer: How To Beat A Polygraph, Recover Like A Spy & Read Anyone, With Andrew Bustamante

Andrew Bustamante (0:00)

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Boundless Life Podcast, you can learn how to defeat a polygraph, but the actual way that you defeat a polygraph isn't about defeating the machine, it's about defeating the polygrapher, the actual trained technician. Big part of the reason that we drink water before starting the meditation is to prep the body with hydration because it's coming off of essentially an eight to 12 hour hydration fast. One of the best things that the agency taught me to do was exercise something called perspective. Perspective is different than perception because perception is related to your five senses and how you interact with the world. That is your perception. Nobody thinks about what somebody else cares about because we're too busy thinking about what we ourselves care about.

Ben Greenfield (0:47)

Welcome to the Boundless Life with me, your host, Ben Greenfield. I'm a personal trainer, exercise physiologist and nutritionist and I'm passionate about helping you discover unparalleled levels of health, fitness, longevity and beyond.

Today's episode, we're throwing back to a conversation I had with Andrew Bustamante, former covert CIA intelligence officer. A buddy of mine texted me an intro to him and said, this guy's really good at marriage and homeschooling and biohacking. Oh, and by the way, he used to be a spy. So obviously, Andrew is an interesting dude. We talked about what the agency actually does to get officers back to full capacity after an operation.

Ben Greenfield (1:30)

Turns out they've got scientists building programs on your hormones, your biology.

Ben Greenfield (1:34)

If you take too long to recover, you stop being useful as a spy, apparently. We also get into what a polygraph is actually measuring, a CIA morning routine, how they profile a complete stranger, how he handles porn with his 11-year-old son. Obviously, we span the gamut here. So all the show notes are going to be at bengreenfieldlife.com/spysecrets.

That's bengreenfieldlife.com/spysecrets. Let's dive in.

Ben Greenfield (1:58)

So I want to talk about you. How do you even become a CIA officer? What's the recruitment process? What does that look like?

Andrew Bustamante (2:06)

Yeah. I mean, it's actually a little bit different for everybody. But for me specifically, I was leaving the Air Force and I was looking to go into a government role that was more in the humanitarian sector. And in that transition process, I was kind of scooped up and invited to interview with CIA.

Ben Greenfield (2:26)

Okay. So you go in, you interview with CIA, and do you know what you're getting into? Like, had you thought in the past, whether when you were a little kid or in the Air Force or whatever, that you wanted to be a spy?

Andrew Bustamante (2:37)

I mean, everybody, I assume that every little kid at some point thinks to themselves, I want to be a spy, I want to be a fireman, I want to be a police officer, something like that.

Ben Greenfield (2:46)

Or the president. For me, I was the president, I think short time police officer.

Andrew Bustamante (2:51)

Yeah, right. We've all been there, but that doesn't mean that it's a realistic thought.

It's really funny because I had a brief, when I went to a military academy, I went to the Air Force Academy for college, and there was a brief time when I was at the academy where I thought, maybe I'd want to be an intelligence officer. But the Air Force is the military, so they decide where you go. To a certain extent, you start to believe that maybe they know you better than you know yourself. So when the Air Force decided that I was not going to be an intelligence officer, I saw that as a hint that maybe I shouldn't do that kind of thing. So I was really surprised when six years later, CIA tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, you might actually be a very good fit for clandestine intelligence or what some people call covert intelligence. That's where it went from there. There's a whole series of interviews. It's not like a one-time interview.

The first round of interviews is an interview typical to a normal job search. But then there's a second and a third and a fourth round of interviews. One of those is nothing but psychological tests and intelligence tests. Another one of those is scenario tests and briefings or interviews by a board. So by the time they actually say yes to hiring you, they know exactly where they want to put you. So you don't really find out what they're thinking of you to do until much later in the process.