How do people become spies…
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gael-lancelot — 20 years ago(July 07, 2005 06:16 AM)
There's some amount of headhunting, too, as far as I know. Out of college and the like. Historians are prized for their document analysis capacities, and of course, people with a good knowledge of languages are always useful.
Wearer of the Red Straightjacket -
Ace_In_The_Hole — 20 years ago(July 16, 2005 06:30 PM)
Especially languages nowadays.
If you can speak Arabic well and fancy some adventure and/or interrogating in Gitmo. The CIA is right for you.
I read it in a news article a few days back, I'm not kidding. The CIA is in need for Arabic speakers nowadays. -
szisoman — 18 years ago(September 24, 2007 02:21 PM)
Ace, what moron would do that? getting into the CIA isnt flashy or hip, its dangerous, not just looking out for enemies everywhere, but also over your back, like that agent, whats her name..Plame, her identity was leaked so easily as if it was nothing & your dear president pardoned the fall guy.i would not just work in any intelligence agency, they all stink.
" I am talking about..ethics " -
marlin-21 — 18 years ago(November 02, 2007 08:03 AM)
It helps if you have a military background. A few years ago I was in the army when the government threatened to withdraw important overseas service cash allowances to troops serving abroad. My C.O. and several from other battalions/regiments strongly opposed this and sought the support of others.
A petition was drafted that i signed. This equated to a mutiny so I was arrested and charged both with mutiny and sedition. The army wanted to keep this quiet so I was offered the opportunity of resigning subject to being screened for a possible military intelligence role elsewhere. I accepted and was passed as suitable but told that it would be covert intelligence work abroad ( I speak Hindi/Pushtu and Arabic ). I hadn't the nerve to do this so I resigned, but was threatened with a Court Martial. Fortunately this threat never came to anything since the officers I served with refused to testify against one another. -
bogwart-1 — 18 years ago(October 18, 2007 07:14 AM)
'The Great Game' does not mean field intelligence work. It is a specific reference to the mainly covert struggle between Britain and Czarist Russia for control of Central Asia before World War 1. It is rather an insult to compare the ham-fisted nonsense perpetrated by the CIA to the events of a hundred years ago.
In fact it's rather redundant even to suggest that the CIA is an 'intelligence' agency. If you compare them to SIS (now MI6), the KGB (now mainly subsumed into the FSB) and the Mossad/Shin Beth/Aman you find that CIA is prone to far more blunders and mistakes than the others, mainly because of turf wars withh DIA and other agencies, and their close involvement with politics. -
joeriderxtreme — 17 years ago(July 23, 2008 05:33 PM)
Wrong the KGB is now known as the SVR. FSB is like the American FBI/NSA and MI5. Their CIA version is the SVR. It stands for Sluzhba veneshnostoi raboti. Litterally translated as the Service for Foreign Work.
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bikebryan — 20 years ago(September 08, 2005 01:11 PM)
Most of what you post I agree with, but do you really think the CIA doesn't retain foreign non-citizens? Come on, be real. They make not "officially" work for the Agency, but if the CIA is paying them for the HUMINT they provide, then they are at least contracted by the Agency thus they are employed by the CIA. They just, in general, don't work in the CIA offices either in the States or abroad.
I don't doubt for one second the CIA has paid killers on it's payroll either. However, I don't for one second think that ANY of them are ex-convicts. An assassin generally has to know why they are sent out to kill somebody, AND agree with the reason, or they won't be assigned to retire the mark. -
rocked-by-rape — 20 years ago(September 11, 2005 12:03 PM)
They have a position on the CIA.gov website that sounds like you do some killing because it requires that you have combat experience or military SF training to be considered. I think its a Specialized Skills Operations Officer if I remember reading it correctly. That might count as a hired killer or someone trained to kill.
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californiacotton — 18 years ago(February 23, 2008 01:35 AM)
They hire citizens (field ops officers) who thus "recruit" (ie. hire $$) foreign operatives to conduct surveillance and feed information to Washington through the operatives. These foreign recruits most often times are found in positions of some power in the home country.
Read Kessler's "Inside the CIA" for a good portrait of the operations of the CIA. One thing is for sure, US tax dollars are generously distributed to obtain information. -
jchamberlain-2 — 12 years ago(November 29, 2013 04:09 PM)
You are confusing some of your terms. The CIA uses case officers that are US citizens employed by the federal government to identify, recruit, and run assets which are typically local to the country where the I telligence activity is happening.
Now the CIA will recruit Americans to work for the agency in much the same way any other group does, through its web site, job boards, career fairs etc. the vetting process can be relatively complex depending on your background, work history etc. -
nitejrny282 — 14 years ago(September 26, 2011 11:03 AM)
When President Roosevelt established the OSS (now the CIA) in 1942, he expressly wanted it to be a non-military agency. And the man he put in charge of creating the agency, Major "Wild Bill" Donovan, was a bit of a snob, and focused on Ivy League schools. Professors, coaches, members of faculty were used to recruit students straight out of class and into the Agency. That's why the CIA had a rep - until the 70's or 80's - for being very WASPY. Especially compared to Hoover's FBI, which Donovan saw as a bunch of glorified cops. Blue collar agents to his white collar agents. If you watch MUNICH you'll notice the CIA men are all blond. Very good casting on Spielberg's part. As for today, it's probably more of a mix between college and military recruiting. For more, check out what's probably the best historical-fiction novel ever written on the CIA, "The Company" by Robert Littell. They made a mini-series, but it didn't even come close to the book.
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popdog011 — 20 years ago(September 19, 2005 11:00 PM)
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Thrillhouse8 — 20 years ago(September 20, 2005 02:59 PM)
Most CIA OPERATIVES are recruited out of the military. These are the jobs that we see in the movies (usually depicted inaccurately). However, many people are recruited into the CIA or other intelligence agencies out of college. They too can sometimes have assignments that take them overseas. But generally the intelligence community seeks people with skills in political and computer science, accounting (to track the financial status of terrorists), foreign languages (not the usual romance or germanic languages like spanish, french, german, italian, etc. but what they call "low-density" foreign languages like Arabic, Farsi, Uzbeki, Mandarin and so on). Unfortunately, competition for these jobs is extremely high. People have been romanced by these movies thinking that they can lead fascinating lives similar to James Bond or Jason Bourne. For the most part, careers in the intelligence community are very similar to those of a corporate nature.
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leobourne — 12 years ago(April 04, 2013 01:49 PM)
I was looking for someone like Thrillhouse8 to make a statement about Bond and Bourne. Everyone is swept away with movies and how glorious it looks to be swimming around the world in posh cars and jets. It's like the 'lowest rung' of everything. Just like how a driver or secretary can be the biggest leak, because they are the only ones who know minute details of a scheduleI'd have to make an argument with 'corporate nature'The lowest funded Governments and the poorest Governments bank on spies for everything, because they simply don't have the money to wage warsAnd what they do is this - Use them, hang them out to dry, make them beg in some circumstances (like even for food)And care two hoots if one dies because they're too busy with money and powerThe game is disgusting, the politicians worse and plenty of other unethical things they do just for the name of 'saving the country', whatever that means. It means nothing. Each soldier has to save their own life.
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Razar_C-1 — 11 years ago(December 10, 2014 10:23 AM)
Actually, most of the worlds intelligence agencies do the very same thing:
They all list an ad in the 'employment' section of the newspaper. Sorry to burst your bubble, but "scouting for talent' and such would make up a very small minority of admissions.
If you're genuinely interested in intelligence agency work then you should know that the reality of it is far different from the sensationalised version. Most intelligence work is actually just listening to and analysing gathered intelligence. The Pitt/ Redford/ Bond/ Etc type of spies just aren't very common any more.
If that doesn't dissuade you, then keep a sharp eye on the newspapers, because they only list their employment ads once a year or once every two years. If you're lucky enough to find their ads and you're lucky enough to have your application accepted, then get prepared to join a LOT of people who want to prove that they are better candidates than you. Also, be prepared for multiple different phases of aptitude testing where undesirables are weeded out. Things like physical testing/ psychological screening/ various types of intelligence/ common-sense tests (sometimes called idiot-tests)/ etc
If at any point, you either fail to live up to what they expect, or you are outperformed by other applicants, then say goodbye to what you hoped would be your new career, for up to two years, because they won't allow you to apply again for -usually- that long.
Of course, the easy way to get in, would be to transfer in. Either join the army/ police force, and then work very hard to get into military intelligence/ whatever the police equivalent of M.I. is, and then request a transfer. You still have to wait for an actual intake-period, but you start out ahead of the curve of most of the applicants.
Peace
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most