In 1992, F.W. Rustmann founded CTC International Group.  This initiative, he reports, represented "an effort to fill the growing need for U.S. corporations to collect business intelligence and to protect their proprietary information.  CTC is a pioneer in the field of business intelligence and a recognized leader in the industry."  For 24 years, Rustmann was an operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S.  In that capacity he amassed a vast body of experience in collecting, analyzing, authenticating and reporting intelligence.  From his firsthand knowledge of the principles involved, he suggests the methods practiced by the CIA may be applied beneficially, within the law, to the business world.

   Rustmann was recruited into the CIA from the campus of Oklahoma State University.  "There was no mystique.  It was a simple thing.  The recruiter came onto the campus," he said.  Rustmann underwent training.  "My experience in the agency reflected the waning years of the Cold War," he said.  "In 1966 the doors were being thrown open in order to rebuild a larger agency to cope with the Vietnam conflict."  He heard that "if you want to be promoted, go where the action is."  After a year, and with six months on French language study, he volunteered to go to Vietnam.

   Rustmann speaks and writes very freely of his work.  He says the title of case officer is given to the intelligence officer responsible for human clandestine collection.  "The case officer typically is a college graduate, fluent in one or more foreign languages, and always a fully trusted American citizen with a top secret security clearance.  He or she is an individual of exceptional intelligence, integrity and initiative.  The officer recruits and directs foreign indigenous spies, who are known as agents.  The case officer is trained in the use of cover."  He might have added, as in his own case, someone with conviction in the rightness of what he was doing, and a marked taste for the theatrical.  During his career, Rustmann says, he often assumed other identities and used disguises and accouterments to support his different personas.  He can tell you all you may want to know about double agents, defectors and terrorism; bugging and telephone taps; safe houses; and significant details such as eye contact.

   He describes his recruitment of "legal travelers" to North Vietnam.  "Potential traveler agent candidates included third-country diplomats, businessmen and others who had the ability to travel freely in and out of North Vietnam."  He emphasizes that ''information is evaluated information, with weight given to its source."

   From Saigon, Rustmann was sent to Paris at the time of the Paris Peace Talks.  The information he collected during four years in Paris was widely disseminated at the highest levels, and some of it is still classified.  Rustmann draws a clear distinction between the stories that he may tell, and the secrets that still need to be kept untold.

   He went to Washington, then to Hong Kong, where I was again working against the Vietnam target."  Toward the end of the war there, Rustmann went on temporary duty to Siem Reap "to head up operations to penetrate the Khmer Rouge."  He recounts graphic tales of the end of the war in Cambodia, ending with:  "It was awful. I cried."

   He shifted to coordinating information on China, "recruiting 'legal travelers' who were Hong Kong Chinese, giving them questions to ask to elicit information when they met friends and relatives."  He went to Thailand, and to Tokyo.  "Some of the best people I have ever worked with in my career were in the Japanese Police Special Branch, with whom we liaised.  But special police are not enough.  You need to have a CIA to collect information that is valuable to you."

   Rustmann worked in Addis Ababa before returning to America, where he instructed at The Farm, the CIA's covert training facility.  As a member of the elite Senior Intelligence Service with the equivalent rank of major general, lie retired in 1990.

   He is now offering his expertise for business application, giving how-to advice that he sees as critical for success:  "gathering information about the strength of your competitors, being able to anticipate their next move, and preventing them from stealing your secrets."  He has published his book "CIA, Inc.:  Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence," and a translation in Japanese.