Secret Service
How to recruit a spook
Britain is to hire an extra 2,000 recruits at MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Recruiting the right people is obviously key. The excerpts below,
all from books published this year, reveal the roundabout ways spies
were hired in the past and today’s more direct methods
A US magazine editor recalls his
LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY
selection interview in 1957 with three
CIA operatives, all graduates of Yale, his
own alma mater
I had spent the days prior to the interview
reading about Lenin’s train and Stalin’s
prisons, the width of the Fulda Gap and the
depth of the Black Sea … None of the study
was called for. I was asked three questions
on my social qualifications for admission
into what the young men at the far end of
the table clearly regarded as the best fra-
ternity on the campus of the free world:
1 When standing on the 13th tee at the
national Golf Links in Southampton, which
club does one take from the bag?
2 On final approach under sail into Hay
harbour on Fishers Island, what is the
direction (at dusk in late August) of the
prevailing wind?
3 Does Muffy Hamilton [a glamorous
socialite] wear a slip?
The first and second questions I
answered correctly, but Muffy Hamilton I
knew only at a distance. The three ques-
tions put an end to my interest in the CIA.
The smug complacence of my examiners
was as smooth as their matching silk hand-
kerchiefs and ties. When I excused myself
from the interview, I remember being
frightened by so much self-glorifying cer-
tainty and primogeniture crowded in so
small a room ... Even at the age of 22, I was
old enough to recognize the attitude as not
well positioned for intelligence gathering.
Lewis Lapham, ‘Age of Folly: America
Abandons its Democracy’ (Verso)
SPIES Recruitment 08.indd 41
How Smiley started A soldier working under cover in
In those days you couldn’t apply, and you Northern Ireland short-circuits the
weren’t meant to. You couldn’t just Goog- MI5 graduate recruitment selection
le MI5 or MI6 or GCHQ. There were no At that time, applications for the Security
advertisements on the front page of the Service/MI5 were close to 100,000 a year,
Guardian telling you that if you are able to so they really had no need to tap people on
talk three people in a room into doing what the shoulder any more. My handler, a sen-
you want them to do, then maybe spying is ior intelligence officer who’d been with
for you. You had to be spotted. If you ap- MI5 for over 10 years, brought me in for a
plied you could be enemy, debrief while I was in the gun cage reload-
whereas if you were spotted, ing magazines for my Sig Sauer P228 pis-
you couldn’t possibly be. tol. As I placed my weapon on his desk, he
And we all know how spoke in quieter than normal tones, aware
well that worked. And of the other intelligence officers and admin
to be spotted you had to support who shared the same open-plan
be born lucky. You had to office.
have gone to a good school, ‘What you do for me on the ground is
preferably a private one, perfect, but I need more from you. I
and to a university, pref- want you to officially join the service,’
erably Oxbridge. Ideally, he said.
there should already be Poker face on, I let him continue.
spies in your family ‘The Islamic extremists are out of
background, or at control on the UK mainland, we
least a soldier or two. have the Russians and Chinese do
Failing that, at some whatever they want, and the
point unknown to recruitment teams are hell-bent on
you, you had to catch bringing in posh c**** with
the eye of a head- degrees. We need you on the
master, tutor or ground. You’re comfortable on the
dean who, having streets.’
judged you a suita- As I desperately tried to conceal a
ble candidate for smile, he hit me with more good
recruitment, sum- news, ‘And obviously while the pay
moned you to his isn’t huge, you’ll make more
rooms, closed the than you do with the army
door and offered here. Sound good?’
you a glass of sherry ‘Roger that, boss. When do
and an opportunity I start?’
to meet interesting
friends in London. Tom Marcus, ‘Soldier Spy’
(Michael Joseph)
John Le Carre, ‘The
Pigeon Tunnel: Stories
from My Life’ (Viking)
THE WORLD TODAY | DECEMBER 2016 & JANUARY 2017 | 41
05/12/2016 22:17