Stony Brook professor Lester Paldy unveils secret life in the CIA

Lester Paldy is a family man, a veteran and a Stony Brook University professor.

He also happened to work for the CIA.

From helping to negotiate arms control with foreign countries, to making connections between foreign scientists and agency officers, Paldy, 92, of South Setauket, has led a storied life. He shares it — albeit with a few redactions — at library programs across Long Island and in his memoir, "No Cloak, No Dagger: A Professor's Secret Life Inside the CIA" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024).

As he explained during a July presentation at the Hauppauge Public Library, Central Intelligence Agency officers work differently than how the media portrays them; they don’t carry guns or badges and instead rely on manipulation and persuasion to recruit spies. While his life as a professor fostered a culture of sharing and openness, for his simultaneous work at the CIA, "You have no idea what your colleague in the next cubicle is working on, and you don’t ask," he explained.

Fake passports and other subterfuge

Brian Jack, 62, of Central Islip, said Paldy’s talk last month highlighted several jaw-dropping moments, among them descriptions of people leaving embassies in disguise and the unspeakable torture the KGB allegedly doled out to those accused of being double agents.

Jack said he was amused by Paldy’s fake passport from a country that does not exist — British Honduras. Paldy and his colleagues would carry faux documents while traveling so that in the event a plane was hijacked, the terrorists would not discover they were American.

“He is an amazing man who led an amazing life,” said Jack, a graphic designer and printer. “He put his life in their [the CIA’s] hands.”

Queens to Korea to Stony Brook

Born in Manhattan in 1932, Paldy lived in Long Island City during World War II when his father served in the Navy. After the war, his family moved to Corona, Queens, where Paldy would hang out at his local library, which "opened the world" to him.

"I would read anything," he said, enjoying a combination of fiction and non-fiction. "I just liked having access to all of these books and all the information."

After graduating from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan in 1952, Paldy was admitted to multiple colleges, but was not sure how to pay for it until he heard about the GI Bill, which helps veterans pay for higher education and training.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps in July 1952, and while he originally planned on serving for three years, Paldy was sent to Officer’s Candidate School, which meant another three-year commitment.

Returning home, Paldy learned of a new university being established in Oyster Bay, and in 1957, he began attending State University College on Long Island, which would eventually become Stony Brook University.

He graduated in 1962, and after attending grad school in Maryland, he began teaching high school physics in Cold Spring Harbor, before being offered a physics instructor job at Stony Brook in 1967.

Developing Nuclear Treaties

Twenty-one years later, after Paldy became interested in nuclear arms control and started to write and give talks on the subject, he said a member of the CIA approached him at a conference and invited him to work for the agency to study arms control issues.

He described the slow and lengthy application process, which involved a physical exam and interviews with acquaintances.

"They interview all your neighbors and ask, ‘is he an alcoholic, a drug user, an abuser,’ " Paldy said.

Once he started with the agency in January 1989, Paldy would fly down to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on Sunday evenings and return Friday evenings.

During this time, he said he worked on a treaty the United States was negotiating with the Russian government aimed at limiting the explosive yield of underground nuclear tests.

"We wanted to be sure that the treaty made provisions that would [ensure] that we would know the Russians weren’t cheating," Paldy said, explaining how it included U.S. inspection rights.

The team he was on to develop this treaty included laboratory experts and weapons experts, and they worked cooperatively with State Department experts and Russian linguists.

"And it was eventually signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and [George H. W.] Bush" in 1990, he said.

While Paldy described this time in his life as "very intense," he said the pressure didn't get to him.

"I was working with a team with great people. I learned a lot from them, and so I didn’t regard it as stressful," he said.

Making Connections

After the treaty was signed, Paldy returned to Long Island, where he lived with his wife Judy, but he soon got a call from the agency asking him to work as a contract officer when he was not teaching.

His job was no longer focused around drafting nuclear arms treaties, but rather to supplement the work of agency officers in the Directorate of Operations.

"They’re the spy recruiters, but they ... for the most part are not scientists and engineers, but they have to recruit scientists and engineers in Russia and other adversarial countries," he explained.

Paldy would travel to scientific conferences with the recruiters, where he would find experts in the sciences who could be  of interest to the United States, which he would relay back to the recruiters.

"And then it would be up to [the recruiters] to develop the relationship, which might take months, or even longer, and ultimately recruit the person to become a spy for the United States," he explained.

Part of the recruiters’ jobs was to assess what may make the person of interest want to become a spy, and also ferret out any possible vices they had.

"Does this person like money? Is he an alcoholic? Does he hate [his] government? What can we use to reel this person in?" Paldy said, explaining the different tactics the CIA officers could take.

Being a spy for the United States is dangerous territory; while CIA officers who are spying in adversarial countries will sometimes be diplomatically protected, meaning they would be declared persona non grata and sent back to the United States without facing jail time, the same cannot be said for spies, who can face prison, torture or even execution.

Former CIA Case Officer James Lawler, 72, of McLean, Virginia, worked with Paldy to help train CIA officers on how to recruit foreign scientists. According to Lawler, Paldy’s background as a professor made him an excellent instructor.

"Les, being a very gifted teacher, having taught for so many years at Stony Brook, he could explain the scientific principles to our students, and then say ‘This is where you need to engage them, this is why a scientist would want to talk to a non-scientist,’ " Lawler said.

Despite Paldy’s intelligence, Lawler said "he was never an arrogant professor," and he could convey complex scientific ideas in ways that made everyone able to understand them.

"He’s just got a way about him that is very engaging, he’s got a good sense of humor, sometimes a good self-deprecating sense of humor," Lawler said.

No Cloak, No Dagger

Although Paldy was technically not prohibited from telling people he worked for the CIA, he erred on the side of caution, telling only his wife and children.

"If it came out that I was associated with the CIA, then a Russian whom I might have met would be linked to me, and then that person would be threatened," he said.

Paldy finally felt comfortable sharing his experiences, and he asked the CIA how long he should wait before talking about what he did.

"They said ‘oh, about 25 years,’ " he said.

Paldy’s book, "No Cloak, No Dagger: A Professor's Secret Life Inside the CIA," was published in 2024, and chronicles how he started at the agency, and his experiences working for them.

"It was about a 400 page manuscript, and you’ll see the book isn’t 400 pages long," he said. "The book is 300 pages long, roughly because [the CIA] redacted [a quarter] of it."

During his library talks, Paldy clears up common misconceptions about how the CIA operates, making it clear there is no "Brad Pitt, car chases, explosions, gun fights."

While there is still danger, especially in war zones where CIA officers have been killed or held for ransom, "if I’m going to a conference in Belgium or some friendly conference, and there are foreign nationals coming into it, I’m really not at risk," he said.

"You’re people sitting at desks and computers, and going to conferences, meeting people, trying to understand what makes them tick and then trying to recruit them," Paldy said.

He described the agency as "morally ambiguous," as the officers’ work included manipulation and deception, but he felt the agency’s mission was important.

"There are people out to do us harm," he said, "and if I could be part of a team that would stop that, I felt an obligation to do that."