A 16-year veteran of the Agency who specialized in covert operations, Baker cofounded Washington D.C.-based Diligence
LLC in 2000. Having started with just his business partner and a dog, he now employs 40 staffers and deals with a clientele that ranges from Fortune 100 companies to law firms and major investment banks.
You know I'm taping you. I would have guessed - plus I have a little red light that just told me as much.
If I need some digging on my enemies, how much will it set me back? Our projects range from a couple thousand dollars to six figures. Depends on the difficulty involved.
Difficulty? Do you mean danger? Not really. Take an emerging market. We'll look into what the competition is doing there, the government impact on the local companies, the influence of organized crime, and regulatory concerns.
Do you ever go undercover? That makes it sound better than it is. There are ways to make discreet inquiries. A lot of times when you identify the right people to contact, they're happy to talk. But you can't do anything illegal. I couldn't call someone and say, "I'm from a Catholic charity organization." Whenever we take on a client and devise a strategy for that client, we have to take a smell test: Would we be happy to have it discussed in The Washington Post tomorrow?
What's your most frequently requested task? Most of our work is due diligence. That includes everything from pre- acquisition research to asset tracing to background reviews. And there's also competitive research: looking at a playing field, looking for potential partners. We've also dealt with theft of intellectual property, theft of information within a company for a competitor, defections of key personnel to a rival company, and people who were recruited specifically because they'd promised to bring intellectual property with them.
How can you tell if a CEO is lying? You have to be prepared. Whether it's an interview for a fraud investigation or due diligence, you're not going to get much out of it unless you've prepared yourself for the interview. In the case of a fraud investigation, there's a huge amount of information you have to be aware of before you sit down with the person. That's your best defense. Then there's tripping people up, and body language.
If someone's lying, what body language would give him away? There are studies that show that if the guy touches his face - he's rubbing his nose, for instance - there's a possibility that he's being less than truthful. I also look at the way a subject reacts when he's asked a question - where his eyes go.
Do a wayward spouse and a candidate CEO each require a different interrogation technique? No difference, really. With a CEO, you may need more information in your back pocket. Being a good interviewer is different from being a good interrogator - to assess whether there's any element of truth in what someone is saying. The person you're interrogating usually can tell within five to 10 minutes whether you're adept or not, and whether you've done your homework. If you're dealing with someone who's clever and may be hiding information, you will have a significant advantage if you're well prepared. If I go in and interview a CEO in the Czech Republic for a pre-acquisition, and he's got some offshore assets that he's been stripping from his company, his business is to figure out what I know. My business is to figure out everything that's wrong with this company. If I'm not good, I'll just blunder in there and be charmed by the man.
Do these people know your role when you interview them? It depends on the project. A client may want to identify a few potential investments in a market, but he doesn't want us to show our hand. So we may have to do a discreet review. Other times, we'll have already done the due diligence. Then we'll identify ourselves.
What aspect of your CIA training helped you the most with your new job? How to make a decision and get on with it. There is a danger in wanting to analyze and examine and overthink. In the Agency you realize that you're never going to have all the information you need and that there's risk. You'll want to minimize the risk. But then you get on with it. From an operational standpoint, you learn how to be flexible. You don't know exactly what you'll be facing, but you learn how to adapt. And you also learn the ability to distill information to its essence. It's easy to become overwhelmed with information. Investigative journalists do well in this industry because they can quickly say, "These are the top three points, and this is what the clients should be concerned with." We have several of them working for us.
What happens when your company gets too close to the truth? Is there any danger? No. That sounds a lot like what people's impressions are about the Agency. You just laugh when you hear what people think the Agency is up to. Once you spend some real time in there, you quickly realize that it's not like what you read about in the beach books.
Yeah? What's the biggest misconception about the Agency? That it has some nefarious goal in mind - a world government. If you meet most of the people inside, they are incredibly dedicated and patriotic. We have to work in a reputable, appropriate, professional manner. There's much at stake. There's our reputation, our clients' reputations. We've got [former CIA and FBI chief] Judge William Webster sitting on our board.
How did you get a kick-ass spook like Webster to enlist? Some of the individuals associated with our company have dealt with Judge Webster in a number of capacities. We met with him several times and talked to him about what we were doing, and he's been very generous with his time.
How have clients changed since the corporate scandals? They're going in with their eyes wide open. Companies now realize that it's not enough to accept whatever information is handed over. It's easier to explain to companies why they need to take those extra measures, because they realize how easy it is to be duped.
