If you could be a spook, would you?

originally posted by: SprocketUK
Biologists are probably more fun at parties, though. Swings and roundabouts.

Well HR had to ban open bars at my last company

originally posted by: buddah6

You can always start in the military where I was paid about $12K per year 45 years ago.

I did. Made a bit more than 12K, but it was about 10 years later.

The sad/amusing/frustrating thing was, the year after I ETSd, I was approached to do a series of short term contract jobs for the same group I had worked for when I was in. Sort of. At any rate, they were in the command chain.

For three months work, I got paid about 3-4 x what I was making a year as an NCO. And I wasn't sleeping on the ground or being shot at. The work sort of fell under this topic though, as far as you could tell from the peripheral indications.

a reply to: tadaman

No doubt a one sided story, but when you play with the big boys......
youtu.be...

a reply to: tadaman

Since WW2 most CIA spies come from Yale. Yale has a more scientific reputation as opposed to law or commerce. And Yale has Skull and Bones.

Spies have to work two full time jobs, one for cover and the other for the agency.

In the 80's it was said that spies had to be gay, in order to communicate with their handlers or assets in public under surveillance.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

Damn,

I could be gay for people and country. LOL That puts an extra spin on this. Could you sleep with a man /woman, have a full relationship with the same sex for years as part of a deep cover assignment? Cuddle, think in that mindset, have genuine emotions arise so as to complete the illusion and the persona you create?

I imagine that eventually the persona can take over, it must. You must forget you are who you were and become who you must. I imagine many lose themselves and need deprogramming, like hypnotherapy to fully recover who they were.

Like that SNL skit where Will Ferrell is playing himself and the fellow cast members are trying to get him to stop acting like his characters and he breaks down and cant remember who he is......

Or the Tropic thunder scene with Robert Downey JR= I am a dude who plays a dude ....yata yata...



Thats a great question...could you lose yourself enough to make it REAL, and then recover who you were? Or does it all just stay with you, eventually making you useless from the inability to further adapt into the next role you must play?

It cant all be about infiltrating a tea party meeting, or a radical religious sect, or an anti government youth movement. Some of it must be pretending to be a child molester, a rapist, a thug, a cop killer, a neo Nazi, etcetera

freaking wow, I hadnt considered that. Ask yourselves THAT! Could you, have you ever had a real identity? Is your personality built on adaptation and fluid mindsets that can evolve or change? Can you BECOME different people in mind and SOUL?

Thanks for the input!

EDIT TO ADD:
Yale huh? Do they just want the exact same type of person? Why not recruit from general population? You only just have every race, creed, and background in the US to choose from...its seems dumb to waste that. Other countries would kill for a pool of possible candidates to choose from as far as population like ours.

Try finding an african looking guy in Russia who can look walk and talk like a Kenyan, no find 50 to choose one from..... or an ethnic Russian in the Uk to look like and take over an identity of a man you got rid of in Russia like he was born and raised there.

You can find a few everywhere, but being able to choose from tens of thousands of the exact type of people you may need no matter where you need them one earth? Only the US really has that. Why not take advantage of that? !!

a reply to: tadaman

The spy milieu is the only one with state-of-the-art technology designed for use by one individual. That part is the best. The James Bond Tech.

Sort of like Dungeons and Dragons magic stuff.

a reply to: tadaman

CSPAN did a poll or study that showed most successful college degree holders are at least second generation college graduates. Most of the first-of-the-family-to-go-to-college success stories are engineers. The engineer's children can go on to become successful psychologists or economists or biologists. I suspect this is the result of nuanced tastes and behaviors acquired in childhood that allow better interaction with the establishment during the education process and later during the professional career.

Humans learn a lot of values and behaviors from their parents. The best spies, or perhaps more importantly, the spies that fit into the system the best, are raised by spies.

The intelligence field of endeavor began as socializing and technological detection. The high social quality of the Ivy League selection process plus the scientific reputation of Yale in particular makes Yale the default supplier of spy leadership.

a reply to: tadaman

One must be incredibly dedicated to their work and able to really master the art of roleplaying to be able to shapeshift under such dramatic social conditions as a decades-long phony love life or second career. I think people best applicable for the real-world spy craft would be tailor-made from a very young age. Essentially born into a program and conditioned mentally, physically and even spiritually. I am not sure how that could be done, but if I were to try to imagine it, it would be something like covert operations which have their own personnel who do not even necessarily have birth certificates or are part of the civilian population. Or at the very least, they should not have immediate and extended families and able to "drop off" the map and also able to tweak their passports and have multiple I.D.s

The modern-day James Bond technology must be very appealing and perhaps beyond comprehension. I fantasize about it as being sort of similar to Cerebro from the X-Men movies, with the ability to influence targeted people's thoughts (and actions) throughout the world, to achieve various desired effects.