Does Anyone know what Jason Hanson's (former CIA) "Mystery knife" is ?

Nebuchadnezzar said:
Yall better not dig too deep into this, or you'll end up winning the CIA excellence in journalism award.
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Nothing so obvious.

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sadmin said:
Good friend of mine was Green Beret, now CIA. He spends his day behind a desk pushing pencils, his knife when he was deployed in any capacity was trash bc he never used a knife.
CIA action men are rarer than tatas on a bull, its far from MACV SOG days from what I know...so listening to some ex-spook dude espouse on which blade cuts men in half is about as useful as listening to Nutnfancy gun reviews.
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Funny you mention that.

My step dad was MACV-SOG. I didn't know until he passed and found an ID card. He definitely had some opinions on guns and knives, all very pragmatic. He was particularly fond of bolos.
 
NapalmCheese said:
Funny you mention that.

My step dad was MACV-SOG. I didn't know until he passed and found an ID card. He definitely had some opinions on guns and knives, all very pragmatic. He was particularly fond of bolos.
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Legend! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is one of my favorite reads, and pretty much anything of that period, those dudes were cut from a different cloth; including the dudes from the Rhodesian bush wars era.
 
I work with a ton of prior military folks and reservists, and one of the collateral duties I had for a few years was reintegrating returning service members back into fire department life. After a deployment or activation they would spend a week or so with me catching up with whatever changes/updates they may have missed, but also letting them run through some training drills to rebuild their confidence in their FD skillset. So I got to know a bunch pretty well that way. (We have 1,000 or so career firefighters and I'd guess 100 or so that had prior service. A number of them continued to serve in reserve/guard units after active duty.)

Generally speaking, the more elite/intense their service the less they advertised about it. Several very high speed guys looked like your average suburban dad, though tended not to get visibly rattled/excited regardless of what we were dealing with. Because we give veteran preference we see their DD-214. So we knew who actually were Army SF guys with 18 series MOS, guys who were 75th Ranger Regiment, etc. and there were enough other veterans to sniff out the few fakes we had that tried to claim more/different service than they actually had. A few carried nice Benchmades they acquired in their past life, but Gerbers, Kershaws and Spydercos were also popular with a lot of them. Basically what they were either issued or had picked up at a discount at a PX, etc. One of the former SF guys did turn me on to Spartan Blades knowing I like nice knives, but he considered them a but too close to gun money to buy for himself.
 
When I was doing my compulsory service in the army, we all carried a kind of rambo knife that the army had bought by tender method. This knife couldn't even cut fruit. We couldn't get rid of that damn piece of metal because it was registered on us. I don't know how things work in the Cia, but if you're not in a some kind special unit, you won't find guys in the military who understand that much of the equipment. It's more about personal interest.
 
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POCEH KOCEB said:
Trying to be pragmatic and not commenting on the quality and so many entertaining posts (thanks, good reading 😂 ),
from SD standpoint, the recurve of the blade in those phone pictures, and the fingerchoil of the handle makes some sense to me.
But R.J. Martin thought about it, I think long before this guy... :cool: Much better design for stabbing and pressing down or up IMO.
If I was able to get another one of this particular model, I'd wave it and will live in my pockets permanently, so much I love the design...
It's unbelievable how great knifemakers can put few simple and well thought elements together, in order to achieve a special purpose of a knife
even when we talk about production and not the real, custom pieces...

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That’s a cool knife.. before my time tho… it reminds me of the ZT 0400, which has a very similar drop point, recurve tanto blade shape. 👍
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NapalmCheese said:
Funny you mention that.

My step dad was MACV-SOG. I didn't know until he passed and found an ID card. He definitely had some opinions on guns and knives, all very pragmatic. He was particularly fond of bolos.
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Many former military members don't mention their experience or that they were even in the service. I knew my cousin in law was in the 173rd airborne brigade because of his license plate frame. He never talks about it. I later learned from his wife (my cousin) he later went on to be an army ranger and the reason he never talks about it is that he doesn't like to think of the crazy stuff he saw in the middle east. Guys is brilliant, first in his class at West Point, two masters from Harvard.

My grandfather never talked about his experience until one month before he died, and only told me. He was a purple heart fighting on the Siegfried line in WWII.

I feel like being former military and writing books, selling stuff has become a trend.

I like Jack Carr though, he is unpretentious in his books, and points out in each book who helped with any military info he didn't know, so the books can be as accurate as possible.

When it comes to standard kit, both cousins told me they rarely had more than a Gerber multi tool. Both said keeping weight down was important, especially the one who was a captain in the marine radio command unit. M4, M9, and multi tool.
 
Delgadonine said:
0. Zero.

No time is wasted on such things.

Consumers of a different kind are sought.
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Well I can't say for sure but here is a bit about Jason Hanson - he has been on a number of TV talk shows and Shark Tank. He often is introduced as former CIA and often shows some tricks to escape various ways people are tied up in kidnappings etc. He was a former LEO and on his site shows his CIA certificate. He specializes in training security and defense for high end clients and also teaches at his 320 acre 'spy ranch' to regular folk that are interested in training in firearms, defensive driving and escape techniques. He does seem to have a lot of knowledge of how the CIA and clandestine operations work and has a lot of stories of situations he has been in and they were not office pencil pushing. Everyone has a different way of dealing with past work and I get the feeling he got out of the CIA because of the dangerous work he was having to do and that he wanted to focus on his family. Last I checked he now has 6 kids. He lives in Utah but keeps his actual home address very obscure.

Like I said though I have never been interested in any knives he sells or anything other than some interesting books he has available and was just curious if anyone had seen this 'mystery knife'.
 
Spy Escape and Evasion One of his websites

His book titled : Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life: A Former CIA Officer Reveals Safety and Survival Techniques to Keep You and Your Family Protected
Amazon link to book

Seems like he's the real deal but with all the misleading stuff on the Internet I guess you never know.
 
tony281sc2 tony281sc2 (sorry for the late response) and DocJD DocJD , yes those are the one I like too, as you noted - Ken Onion design.
There is also another one, I believe also KO design, made for Daniel Defense by Kershaw, very similar blade/handle profile that I was looking at
but the Groove showed up on the radar first and I'm happy for now.

Here is the DD model, I think the handle is identical to the ZT400 :

Picture: DD and two other Kershaws

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One of the emails for Jason Hanson I got would seem to show he is real CIA. Take it for what it is:

Later today, I have a call with a reporter from a big Salt Lake City news station…

Apparently, there’s some guy going around claiming to be a CIA operative and this reporter wants to know how to tell if this guy is legit.

So, here’s what I’m going to tell this reporter…

(By the way, the information toward the end can help you weed out con men and criminals, no matter who they are claiming to be.)

First, I’m going to tell this reporter to ask the guy what color his badge was.

Was he a blue badger or a green badger?

A blue badger is someone who is an actual employee of the CIA. (I was a blue badger.)

A green badger is someone who’s a contractor.

(They work for the many defense contractors like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or Northrop Grumman.)

Next, I’m going to tell this reporter to ask the guy what his badge number was.

Badge numbers start with 2 letters and then follow with 3 numbers.

For instance, a sample badge number could be AB123.

If the guy tells the reporter that his badge number was 1234567, then obviously, he has no idea what he’s talking about since they contain letters and numbers.

But do you want to know the simplest way for this reporter or for you to spot a con man?

I told this reporter to tell the person he’s investigating…

“Hey, a friend of mine is former CIA, can he do a 5-minute call with you to verify you were also CIA?”

If you say that to an honest person, they won’t care and they’ll be like “sure thing” or “okay.”

But a dishonest person might get angry or they will try to make a bunch of excuses to avoid the phone call.

I told this reporter, even if he didn’t know someone who could help him, still bluff, and the person’s reaction is all you need to know.

Because, if I was pretending to be a brain surgeon or an airline pilot, I sure as heck wouldn’t want to get on a phone call with a real surgeon or pilot…

It would take them just a few seconds to figure out I don’t speak the lingo and have no idea about being a pilot and especially no idea about being a brain surgeon.

So, there you have it…

A simple way to find out if someone’s being honest or not.

If you want to get more lie detection tips, you can grab a free copy of my New York Times bestselling book below.

Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life.
 
bladeshaman said:
One of the emails for Jason Hanson I got would seem to show he is real CIA. Take it for what it is:

Later today, I have a call with a reporter from a big Salt Lake City news station…

Apparently, there’s some guy going around claiming to be a CIA operative and this reporter wants to know how to tell if this guy is legit.

So, here’s what I’m going to tell this reporter…

(By the way, the information toward the end can help you weed out con men and criminals, no matter who they are claiming to be.)

First, I’m going to tell this reporter to ask the guy what color his badge was.

Was he a blue badger or a green badger?

A blue badger is someone who is an actual employee of the CIA. (I was a blue badger.)

A green badger is someone who’s a contractor.

(They work for the many defense contractors like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or Northrop Grumman.)

Next, I’m going to tell this reporter to ask the guy what his badge number was.

Badge numbers start with 2 letters and then follow with 3 numbers.

For instance, a sample badge number could be AB123.

If the guy tells the reporter that his badge number was 1234567, then obviously, he has no idea what he’s talking about since they contain letters and numbers.

But do you want to know the simplest way for this reporter or for you to spot a con man?

I told this reporter to tell the person he’s investigating…

“Hey, a friend of mine is former CIA, can he do a 5-minute call with you to verify you were also CIA?”

If you say that to an honest person, they won’t care and they’ll be like “sure thing” or “okay.”

But a dishonest person might get angry or they will try to make a bunch of excuses to avoid the phone call.

I told this reporter, even if he didn’t know someone who could help him, still bluff, and the person’s reaction is all you need to know.

Because, if I was pretending to be a brain surgeon or an airline pilot, I sure as heck wouldn’t want to get on a phone call with a real surgeon or pilot…

It would take them just a few seconds to figure out I don’t speak the lingo and have no idea about being a pilot and especially no idea about being a brain surgeon.

So, there you have it…

A simple way to find out if someone’s being honest or not.

If you want to get more lie detection tips, you can grab a free copy of my New York Times bestselling book below.

Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life.
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People who are/were in Don't readily talk.

A. It's probably impossible to get OUT.
B. Probably illegal to speak
C. Jeopardizing their buddies lives, people who are still in, by giving away trade secrets

Most likely a Phoney
 
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