James "Jim" Lawler served for 25 years as a CIA operations officer in various international posts and as Chief of the Counterproliferation Division's Special Activities Unit. He was a member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service from 1998 to 2005. Lawler was a specialist in the recruitment of foreign spies, and he spent over half of his CIA career battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including serving as chief of the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Takedown Team, which resulted in the disruption of the most dangerous nuclear weapons network in history.

Jim serves as a national security consultant and is the senior partner at MDO Group, which provides HUMINT training to the intelligence community and the commercial sector focused on WMD, CI, technical and cyber issues. Jim is a noted speaker on insider threats in government and industry.

He has completed two espionage novels, Living Lies, an espionage story of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and In the Twinkling of an Eye about recruiting a spy at the heart of a devastating covert Russian-North Korean genetic bioweapons program. He is currently writing his third espionage novel The Traitor’s Tale, which is about treachery and treason deep within the CIA.