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Welcome to Spycast. My name is Dr. Andrew Hammond, the historian and curator here at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

Every week, Spycast explores a world of intelligence and espionage by bringing you in-depth conversations, spies, spy masters, intelligence officers and authors.

We explore the stories, secrets, tradecraft and technology of a world that looms beneath the surface of everyday life.

This week's guest is Frank Figglesy, former Assistant Director of Counter Intelligence at the FBI.

Frank oversaw all espionage investigations across the US government. Now that's some serious pressure.

He served for 25 years as a special agent, which included countering economic espionage and Silicon Valley, being appointed the FBI's Chief Inspector and heading up the Cleveland Division.

He is the recent author of the FBI Way and a current National Security Correspondent for NBC News.

In this week's episode, we talk about a sitting member of Congress and a presidential candidate who were just a little too close to foreign intelligence services.

We hear some of his thoughts and former FBI directors Bob Mueller and James Comey.

Unfun fact, Frank's first unit chief at FBI headquarters was at the center of and I quote,

possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history.

I understand that you have a new book out, Frank, the FBI Way. I was just wondering if you could give our listeners a brief distillation of what that book is about.

Sure, I took 25 years to learn something that I would like to share and tell people they don't need to spend 25 years learning.

My takeaway from my FBI career is that the bureau operates at an exceptionally high level of excellence when the stakes are the highest, when the stress is the strongest.

And so I over 25 years not only observed that process, but absorbed how it's done in a way that we call values based leadership.

And so the takeaway here is you don't have to spend those 25 years. I've distilled it down to what I call the seven seas. I call the book the FBI way and the book says you can apply high stress leadership values based leadership the way the FBI does.

So you take a read and apply the seven seas of the FBI way.

So this is the book that you wish someone had given you a 25 years ago.

You know, the story, much of the story of my effect training was sadly on the job that most of the folks who worked for me.

And I do wish that someone had handed me this book, but the reality is that even after I left the bureau joined the corporate big time corporate security world.

And now I've been in media for three years. I'm finding that the life lessons, the leadership lessons of the bureau apply an any endeavor.

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