To run spies you need to coax targets to reveal their insecurities and innermost desires - to manipulate, exploit, and subvert. It is a high-risk dance of power and persuasion that often plays out in a most unlikely setting: a restaurant, where espionage is the plat du jour.

When SPYEX's James Lawler was a rookie agent handler, he learned how to recruit spies the hard way. He propositioned a target who bolted after hearing the letters C-I-A. James’ chief of station was unimpressed and ordered him to close the deal. With his job on the line, the wily law school graduate decided to work on his powers of persuasion over an expensive meal at one of Europe’s top restaurants - spectacular cuisine, a glorious wine list, and fabulous mountain scenery.

James feigned a casual voice as he picked up the phone: “Look, I'm going to be coming back through your city in about three days and I thought maybe we'd have a little farewell dinner.” This time, his prey was delighted. She’d already said ‘no’ to the CIA. She’d made her position clear, so what harm could one last supper do? James began scheming immediately.

“Okay, now I've got three days to figure out how to persuade this woman to change her mind and become a spy for the United States, in a country where they execute people for doing things like this,” James told the True Spies podcast.

That is exactly what James did over a cozy meal with an unmarried woman who appeared to be in need of male attention. James even brought a gift, a delicate vase, a memento of what might have been. He knew she would make an excellent spy, but he only wanted her to volunteer for the job if she really wanted it. “I could see tears coming down and I thought: ‘What did I say to upset her?’ And I heard her say something. I leaned in close and I said: ‘What did you say?’ And she said: ‘I can do this.’” 

And she really could. So could James. She was the first of many assets he’d run over the next 25 years.

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Restaurants and spies

Restaurants are so essential to spy tradecraft the CIA has used them to train field operatives at the legendary spy school known as ‘the Farm’.

Amaryllis Fox, a former CIA officer who worked undercover in Karachi and Myanmar, described the coaching in her memoir Life Undercover and her SPYSCAPE podcast The Spying Game. Fox’s first operational assessment involved a ‘bump’ with a fictitious Kazakh civil servant. Her test involved ‘coincidentally’ bumping into him at a restaurant and conjuring up a reason for a second meeting to build a relationship for future intelligence-gathering.

The crucial second meeting allows agent handlers to have one-on-one time with their target. “And then, you can really take the relationship off from there,” said former CIA case officer Ryan Hillsberg. Ryan even joined a scuba club to get close to one of his targets. Once the ‘bromance’ was established, Ryan invited his new bestie to lunch at a local restaurant - one that had enough space between tables to speak openly without being overheard.

“That first meeting was actually really special because I was able to get him talking about work right off the bat and getting him to open up about some of the struggles that he was having there, which - as part of the developmental relationship and that developmental phase - that's what you want,” Ryan told True Spies. 

Restaurants aren't all about recruiting. Dr. Kenneth Dekleva, a former US State Department psychiatrist, used food to get himself out of a sticky situation in Central Asia when eight police officers surrounded him, demanding his passport and papers. To ease the tension, Dekleva asked for recommendations, "Guys since you’ve stopped me and you know the culture, can you help me out? Where can I go to get the best kabob tonight for dinner?” The police were soon caught up in a delicious debate, assessing the options.

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Hooters, Burgers & Spies‍

FBI Special Agent Naveed Jamali was so keen to join the Bureau he volunteered to investigate suspected Russian spies as an FBI undercover operative in the early 2000s. Naveed started identifying suspicious customers at his parent’s bookshop - the type of place that sells military manuals - and the FBI realized Naveed was uniquely placed for the operation.

Over the next three years, Naveed exchanged technical data on thumb drives for envelopes of cash handed over by Russian operatives in US restaurants. Unfortunately, there were no clinking champagne glasses or Michelin stars, Naveed told Trues Spies: “They would choose these BBQ chain restaurants, one of which was Hooters where there are scantily clad young women wearing tight orange pants and tight white shirts, and that seems to be a favorite place.”

Naveed decided his Russian handler's choice of restaurant was meant to send a clear, unspoken signal to the young spy: ‘Russia has the upper hand.’

“It was just amazing what you can discuss over a crappy burger and sh** beer,” Naveed recalled. “It was very much a way to make me understand my place in the totem pole, my place on the ladder of importance. Which is to say, they wanted me to think I had no importance to them.”

At the end of each meeting, Naveed was expected to hand over the location of the next rendezvous point by giving his handler the menu of another restaurant. 

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Dining and Deception

Double agents savor the art of betrayal between bites as well. 

Ana Montes, the US Defense Intelligence Agency senior analyst who served 20 years in prison for espionage, met her Cuban handler right under the nose of Washington’s finest intelligence operatives. She liked a Chinese restaurant located a stone's throw from the D.C. metro. Easy to get to, easy to leave.

“Every two or three weeks she would meet in person at a restaurant and they would sit down and have lunch one-on-one for two or three hours in broad daylight, really hiding in plain view,” said former FBI Special Agent Peter J. Lapp, author of Queen of Cuba. “It really shocked us when we found out from her that she was meeting in person with the Cubans and committing espionage literally over the course of lunch.”

Victor Manuel Rocha, the former US ambassador accused of being a Cuban spy for 40 years, met an undercover FBI agent several times before Rocha’s arrest in 2023 - including at a food court in the shopping mall, because there was "no possibility for anyone to see me" there, Rocha said, according to court documents.
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Eating like a Wiseguy

FBI Special Agent Jack Garcia, a Cuban by birth, knew that if he wanted to go undercover and rub shoulders with New York’s mafia, he’d need an encyclopedic knowledge of Italian food to convince the mob of his bona fides. So, Jack went to mafia school. His tutor? Another FBI agent who taught Jack how to order like an Italian and eat like a goodfella.

“So, we went over to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, which is all Italian. And there we go. That's where I found my love of Italian food. We ate everything - you name it.” Eating and learning the right pronunciations because if you are a Cuban FBI agent posing as an Italian wiseguy, you better know how to order Veal Scallopini and pronounce ‘Mozzarella’.

Once Jack Garcia’s legend was in place, he became wanna-be mafioso Jack Falcone - big, boisterous, and looking for trouble. Jack’s crash course in Italian food solidified the trust he built with the wiseguys - it may have even helped save his life one day when a mob contact asked him to show up at a restaurant to discuss why Petey ‘Chops’ Vicini was not paying dues to his capo. But that’s all in the past now.

Today, Jack’s happily retired from the Bureau. He helped bring down 32 criminals and still misses the food. “I don't go back to the restaurants that I used to love going to eat. I can't go back there. I don't go driving the same way. I'm always looking in my rearview mirror. I take precautions,” Jack said, but he’s not overly worried. “If they come after me, they better be ready because I got the firepower.”