SPY

[align=center]COULD YOU BE A SPY?

SPY recruited 8 ordinary people and give them the
extraordinary opportunity to train to be spies.[/align]

SPY - Contestants

It’s a grey day in early March and eight people, who have only just met one another, are waiting nervously in a café in West London. One by one they are given the number of a flat on a housing estate and given just ten minutes to talk their way into the property. There’s a lot of nervous laughter, and anxiety about the best way to approach the job. They’re reminded that they’re only to use persuasion, and that they must under no circumstances use any threatening language or physical intimidation. They’re not door to door salespeople, they’re trainees on a two month crash course in espionage, and it’s their first day on the job. The task they’ve been set is not just to talk their way into the property, they also have to gain access to the balcony at the rear of the property and be seen there drinking a glass of water with the owner.

Sounds tricky? It’s a allegedly exactly how Mossad (the Israeli Intelligence Service) sizes up their raw recruits on their first day before they’ve received any formal training at all. What they and their counterparts in other intelligence services are looking for, is the right mixture of nerve, charm and the ability to think on your feet that no amount of classroom training can give.

Intelligence and its failings are so much in the spotlight at the moment but for most of us knowledge of what makes a good spy begins and ends with the need for a well cut tuxedo and a penchant for vodka martinis shaken, not stirred. With MI5 and the CIA talking publicly about the need for more and better intelligence officers, what qualities do they require and what training do the raw recruits get?

SPY - Contestants in London

Over 5000 people responded to a series of adverts placed in the press at the end of 2003, to be given the opportunity of a crash course in espionage to see if they really have what it takes. The applicants knew that they wouldn’t really be defending Queen and country but that the course was designed to be as close as possible to the sort of training that a real intelligence officer would go through, but in a much shorter timescale of two months. The experts, who’d be training the final eight are all experts in their field.

With discretion being a vital quality needed for the job the candidates were only able to tell one other person what they were really doing. For everyone else they had to invent plausible reasons to explain their absence from home and work for a period of two months. One claimed that he was going on safari to Africa, several that they were doing a career development course and two claimed that they were going to be in New York for the period, a plan which nearly came unstuck when friends and family promised to visit!

The recruits quickly learned that charm could only get them so far, attention to detail, planning and hard graft were also a vital part of their training. When travelling undercover a real spy can have nothing that links him to his old life and family or he risks placing not only himself and his mission but also those he loves at risk. On their first day several of the recruits were caught out letting their real names slip, or having items in their position that could easily link them to their former lives, but they were quick learners and burning confidential documents, and committing details to memory soon became second nature to most of them. They learned about surveillance, and how to spot if you’re being watched, they learned how to “go grey” and blend into a crowd, how to plant bugs and tracking devices, and how to cultivate unsuspecting people and get them to do what they wanted.

SPY - BBC 2

But did any of them get out onto the balconies on that very first day and at the end of the training would any of them want to do the job for real? For some the answer to both questions is a resounding yes, but for others the reality of their experience was not something they’d want to repeat.

BBC2 - Monday 11th October - at 6.45pm

(and continues at 6.45pm for 9 consecutive days)

For more information visit the SPY Website.

Also Starting 11th October 2004 on BBC One

Spooks - BBC One © BBC

Spooks Third Series - MI5 not 9 to 5.
Visit the Spooks website for more information.

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