Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [90]
Jim Roth has since left BIA and recently was working at his own consulting firm, doing the same kind of work for hedge funds. He is secretive about his new operation, called the Langley Group, in a nod to the site of the CIA’s headquarters. Roth’s firm’s Web site at www.thelangleygroup.net betrays no other hint of the intelligence background of its founder. The firm has an unlisted phone number. The Web site registration is privacy protected. E-mails sent to the address listed on the site bounce back.
That’s OK, though. The well-networked hedge funds know how to get in touch.
CLIENTS WHO HAVE BIA on a retainer of as much as $400,000 to $800,000 per year are entitled to another service: undercover operations. For its highest-paying clients, BIA sends its CIA-trained interrogators to investors’ conferences or meetings under the guise of traditional business consultants or simply as unidentified “colleagues” traveling with a client.
On one occasion, a team of BIA’s deception-detection experts traveled to Palo Alto, where they went with a client to an investors’ conference sponsored by the investment bank Morgan Stanley. At these events, start-up companies make pitches to an audience packed with potential investors. The companies need money, and the investors are looking to pick winners that will generate returns on their capital. The executives who make presentations at these gatherings put the best spin on their companies—what they do, how they make money, and what their prospects are. Because the pressure is on to dazzle the moneymen in the room, the temptation to exaggerate or even lie is enormous. Why not paper over that bad quarter? No need to bring up the big customer who just canceled his contract. But the unflattering details are the ones that can make or break a wealthy investor’s decision to place his money in a company. If the start-up company’s executives are lying, investors need to know it immediately so they don’t waste their time and money.
As they sat through the series of presentations by hopeful corporate executives, BIA’s team of analysts watched all the presenters for signs of deception. Were they using red flag terms like “frankly” and “honestly”? What were their hands doing while they were presenting the financials? Did they rock on the balls of their feet as they detailed new customer acquisitions? Each time BIA spotted a cluster of telltale signs, one of its analysts would nod subtly to the client. Instantly, the client could home in on the touchiest issues for each company. If the executives were lying about material issues, BIA’s client knew not to invest.
For the executives making presentations at a conference like Morgan Stanley’s, it can be stressful enough to run through the financial details with the fate of the company on the line. Imagine how stressed they’d be if they knew that they were being scrutinized by the CIA’s best human lie detectors. But they never knew.
Spies who’ve spent the best years of their careers grilling suspected members of Al Qaeda might not seem like people who’d be interested in spending their time in hotel conference rooms watching corporate suits sweat out a pitch meeting. But it’s steady work, and safe. Also, it can pay much better than government work.
Generally, CIA officers work at the same government pay scale as employees of the Department of Transportation or the Department of Education. Known as the General Scale (GS), the system has fifteen grades of seniority, each of which is divided into ten “steps.” In 2008, entry-level government employees made just over $17,000 per year. The most senior GS-15 employees earned $124,010.13 Even for elite CIA leaders, pay tops out at around the highest level for the government’s so-called Senior Executive Service (SES), $172,200 in 2008. The government