Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life: A Former CIA Officer Reveals Safety and Survival Techniques to Keep You and YourFamily Protected

by Jason Hanson

I can tell you that the toughest, most highly skilled guys I met while in the CIA were also the quietest. They were confident in their abilities and didn’t need to go around boasting about their skills.

those who move are the ones who survive. This is also known as getting off of the X.

Being aware of baselines, or what’s normal, is a key concept in most intelligence work. You simply can’t know if you’re about to walk into an unsafe situation unless you’re familiar with what’s normal for a particular place.

Establishing a baseline is key to knowing whether a situation is potentially dangerous. Establishing a baseline requires that you note significant or subtle changes occurring in a particular place or in a person’s behavior.

A baseline is an informal measure that determines what is normal and what is not.

Cognitive biases are basically errors in our thinking that occur while we’re trying to process information. Humans need to sort through lots of information, sometimes quickly, to make a decision. Our cognitive biases are a shortcut our brains take to help us get there faster.