Ex-CIA Agent Rates 11 CIA Spy Scenes In Movies And TV | How Real Is It?

Now, we know you're a pretty good liar, but what if the enemy catches you and you face a lie detector test? Michele Rigby Assad: Well, if you get a polygraph, it's too late. Hello, I'm Michele Rigby Assad, former CIA intelligence officer. I spent most of my career in the Middle East doing counterterrorism and counterintelligence work. And today we are going to go over TV clips and

movies

to watch, are they

real

or not? Sydney: Do you see anything? Dixon: Come closer, I can't tell if he has the card on him. Sydney: Anything? Dixon: Yes, the key card is in the breast pocket.

Michele: The idea of ​​having a headset where you have immediate support and focused assistance while you carry out your operation, no, that doesn't happen. I have never worn multiple wigs during an operation or different sets of clothing. I have changed my appearance. I've put my hair in a ponytail, put on a hat, changed shirts, or taken off a shirt. It's very rare in your career to require a big change in appearance like you would see here in this clip. Dixon: Hold that for 30 seconds. The duplicate key card is being printed. Michele: The high-tech nature of that piece, being able to read the key card and then create a new one based on it, I'd never heard of that before.

Wonderful man. Yes, yes, of course, getting financing is very difficult, especially in the current situation... Michele: It's something very strange. You can be on the edge of the earth, in a place that is not well known, and you may even recognize a companion or colleague from the CIA, but you do not cross paths. They do not recognize each other, because both could be in the middle of an operation. And we work hard to eliminate conflicts in operations, so you don't want to greet them by the wrong name. So they just wink at each other and keep walking.

So, I would rate this clip as one. Not

real

istic. Kittridge: I know how much Jim, in particular, meant to you, Ethan. Ethan: Yes. Michele: It's not unusual to have an operational meeting in a restaurant. They are sitting right next to the glass facade of the building. You would never sit there, because probably anyone passing by on the street will have a clear view of this operational meeting. At high-end restaurants, servers and servers will be incredibly attentive to your needs as a diner, and that's not what you want. You want to explore the restaurant and get a seat perhaps in the back or side of a restaurant.

You don't want it to be too loud. You don't want it too quiet. And you also want to know where the back entrance is. Therefore, you want to be able to enter and exit from separate entrances and exits after encountering a clandestine source. So this whole scenario would never have happened in real life. Ethan: Why was there another team? Kittridge: What? Ethan: From the IMF

agent

s at the embassy tonight. Michele: Absolutely not. That would never happen, and the reason is that you have to have complete knowledge of everyone involved in the operation. Everything he has done is completely planned and without conflicts with the people of the area.

So if you noticed the other team, you would have announced the operation from the beginning. Kittridge: I can understand that you are very upset. Ethan: Kittridge, you've never seen me very upset. Michele: That part is accurate. The feeling that, no matter what happens, you have to keep your head straight. You have to focus and think, OK, what's next? They certainly make intelligence officers look incredibly cool, and who doesn't want exploding gum? I love that. I'd give it a two out of 10 for realism, which doesn't mean I absolutely dislike this movie. I do it, but it's not realistic at all.

Patrick: Elaine gave me specific instructions for adapting these devices to your needs. Michele: There's nothing on that table, we wouldn't use anything of that nature. The things we are assigned when we go to a war zone are things like your Glock, your helmet, or your Kevlar vest. When you perform an operation that requires a piece of technology, you will go through a very lengthy process to determine what the best technology is for that scenario. It is not issued to you until you request it, until you require it. Patrick: This antifungal spray can freeze and disable any security system.

Michele: What I love about the silly items he gives her are things she can throw in his purse and suitcase and no one will think twice about. The idea is not to stand out. He succeeds in this movie because he is the unexpected spy. You don't want people to notice you. We talk about lulling people to sleep. Backing up, like you're creating a persona and the persona is that you're just a regular person, and you even need things like this. I give it a three. But of course, for fun I give it a 10. Bourne: I can tell you the license plate numbers of the six cars outside.

I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting at the counter is 215 pounds and knows how to handle himself. Michele: Now, your ability to remember is quite incredible and unrealistic. Basically, you are trained to remember people's profiles when they stand out, when they do something unusual or different. You are performing a surveillance detection route. This way you make sure that no one follows you to your clandestine meeting. You want to make sure you don't see the same cars twice, so one technique we are taught is to say out loud a description of the different vehicles you are looking at.

That's why it's called feedback driving. This whole scenario would never have happened in real life. We learn to use our car as a weapon in case we are ambushed. We learn to drive a car. Really push it to the limit. How to avoid hitting casuals on the field. I mean, it's the best. It's the most interesting part of our training, but you hope to never use any of it. So I was driving alone in my car and I was in the process of possibly having my car stolen. I had to use my vehicle to hit someone a couple of times to get them to move so I could get away from danger, and I didn't think much about what I was doing because I was in the middle of this scenario. but my training kicked in, thank God, and I was able to escape, and luckily I didn't hurt that person either.

I would give it a two out of 10 for realism. The idea that we shoot people or have black belts in martial arts and knock people down with a kick, the psychology of espionage is very low and not direct action-packed sequences. We got some physical training, and most of it was, you know, what you do if things go really bad. We qualified with a Glock and felt pretty comfortable with a Glock after that training. So I would rate this clip as one. Jack: The game. When we were in Paris, we discovered correspondence between Suleiman and his brother Ali.

Michele: So the way the scene is set up, with a room full of intelligence officers from very, very senior levels down to junior-type officers, is quite unusual. It might remind you of something you've seen in the press: President Obama sitting with his closest security and intelligence advisers as the operation against Osama bin Laden unraveled. They were there on the way, they heard the communications and you see them sitting together in the room. So, most of the time that doesn't happen. It would have to be an incredibly high-level operation, but there would always be people in the room who were experts in the field.

You could speak like a junior officer, because you may be the only one in the room who really has substance or knowledge about your target. Jack: They were using a video game system's online messaging app to communicate. Michele: So terrorists and other criminals have used the chat feature in games to communicate with each other. They have used it as a form of covert communication. We have the risk versus gain calculation. So, would we try to insert ourselves into a relationship between two really close brothers? You would probably get to that point understanding that you wouldn't be able to have the proper verbal liberties to make the connection.

Jack: Who has this? Agent: Come on guys! Get on, get on. Michele: Most of our operations are not developing as fast or fast as this one. The CIA is largely a bureaucracy, like any American government agency, and it takes us a long time to plan, implement, and execute operations. There are very, very few cases in your career where something like that would happen, where you're jumping through hoops and looking for information quickly. I mean, we do that, but it's not, it's not as common as this clip would have you think. Agent: It's still online, Jack. Michele: I love the authenticity of showing how a terrorist ope

rates

, especially using the in-game chat.

Although, you know, Hollywood amps it up a bit, but for all that, I'd give it about a seven. This clip makes me sweat, because it's so realistic in terms of what we face when we cross borders or prepare to board a flight or enter or leave a country. It can be incredibly risky. I feel all sweaty and my heart is racing even thinking about it right now. You have to be very confident to keep your cover and maintain your legend. Even if you feel like your insides are literally exploding, you can't show it on your face.

You have to remember who you are, what your name is, what you are doing, what your purpose was in the country, when you entered, when you left. In terms of your cover story, you want to keep it as close to the truth as possible because you have to memorize it and remember it easily and you have to remember it under stress. This film is based on a real life situation, just after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Some Americans managed to escape from the embassy and with the help of the Canadian government this operation was devised to get them out.

So not only is it realistic, but it really happened. In fact, they had college students piece together those photographs to try to discover the identities of all the U.S. embassy staff. Guard: What was the purpose of your visit? Bob: We're looking for locations for a movie. Michele: Airport authorities don't even need to have a good reason to detain you or prevent you from boarding a flight. If they don't like the way you look, don't trust you, or say something wrong, it could change the course of your entire life. Technology has changed a lot since 1979, when this happened, and it's making it harder for intelligence officers and others to cross borders covertly, because now we have all kinds of fingerprint and eye scanners and all kinds of equipment that's used to establish your identity.

I give this one a nine because it is very accurate. Lynne: I really don't want to do this anymore, and I mean it, Carrie. I feel like I can't even breathe now. Carrie: All you have to do now is keep your eyes and ears open for the rest of your contract with the prince. Michele: I love this clip, because it really shows the bread and butter of what it is to be an intelligence officer. The way you handle your source is not ideal. He basically said, “You have to do this.” Oh my God! You would never say that to a real source.

They are there because they want to be there. They are there because they understand the risk and are willing to take it. Now, what you have to do is, if they are nervous, if they are worried about moving forward or feel that their life is in danger, you have to talk to them about it. You have to train them. And so the idea of ​​saying something like, "You have to do this" is the worst way to treat a source. Every time you have a meeting with the source, if the stakes are high with the source, it's almost like you have to re-recruit them every time.

Carrie: You're the only agency asset to have set eyes on Nazir in seven years. Lynne: Active? Michele: We actually call our sources assets, but we would never do it to their faces, because it's a very inhuman way of referring to them, and they are human beings. Lynne: I'm just a girl from Sandusky, Ohio, you spoke out to help her country. Carrie: And I won't let anything happen to you. Michele: We are not God so we can protect our sources. There are certain things in certain situations that we can do to help our sources, but at the end of the day, they are the ones on the front lines.

They are the ones who are in difficult situations and they are the ones who have to make a decision. Therefore, you need to help them think through scenarios and ways to ensure that they stay safe and do not take unnecessary risks. Your sources may not intuitively know what is too risky, what they can do, and if, at the end of the day, they don't feel comfortable, they can walk away at any time. But the part of this that seems inaccurate to me is the fact that a Western woman who is the girlfriend of a sheikh would be remotely close to a wanted terrorist.

That wouldn't happen. She has not been tested or tested. Basically, she is a Western woman. So that whole scenario is extremely unlikely. I'd give this clip an eight, only because it's the closest thing to a real-life covert encounter with a source that I've seen in

movies

or on TV. JJ: Now, we know you're a pretty good liar, but what happens if the enemy catches you and you face a lie detector test? Michele: Well, if they take the polygraph, it's too late. If you are arrested or detained by a foreign government and subjected to a polygraph,ready.

You are finished. You don't even want to get to that point. JJ: The key is to focus on your breathing. The slightest increase in your blood pressure is an indicator that you are not telling the truth. Michele: So, no, we're not trained to beat the polygraph, because, you know, once that happens, you're probably already incarcerated. So that's not entirely accurate. The agency uses the polygraph as part of its background and security investigation. Basically, if you train someone to defeat it, you are training your employees to defeat one of the methods you use to keep them honest.

So they would never want to do something like that. Nathan: I can probably arrange for you to finish your tour of duty in San Diego, in which case I assume you'll forget we ever had this conversation. Michele: Being personally recruited that way, although I know a couple of people who have had that happen to them, the vast majority of us actually applied to the CIA online or through someone we know. Nathan: The next day, we started his craft. Michele: Wow. No, it could take a whole year for the CIA to examine you, and you have to go through a lot of polygraphs and interviews and very long psychological exams, so you have to go through a battery of tests before you get to the part where you're actually in. training.

Now, in terms of business training, that takes about a year and is very, very intense, and it's not one-on-one like you see here. You have time in class and then you have role play in the field, go out in public and practice your skills. So that part is accurate. Nathan: Always carry cigarettes and also a lighter. Great icebreaker. Michele: Now, that whole "cigarettes and a lighter" thing can be very useful, especially in parts of the world where smoking is a big deal. So I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and a lot of people smoked.

They were quite useful when you were serving in really dangerous places, where there are a lot of military or criminal checkpoints. A pack of cigarettes or a box of cigarettes could potentially save your life. It is very valuable in certain parts of the world, so you would keep it in the glove compartment. Nathan: The suit in the kitchen. Threat? Tom: Wait, how did you see that? Michele: Any time we can use a mirror or a glass door or a glass window to see a reflection, oh, that's the best. Intelligence officers love reflections. Nathan: Request information from someone.

Tom: With pleasure. Michele: Elicitation is one of the most important skills you have as an intelligence officer. Therefore, you would need to be able to convince people to do things for you. You need to have the emotional intelligence that allows you to make a connection to ultimately recruit and source, or just get through the day, maintain your coverage and your, you know, your lifestyle abroad, whatever that may be. . But those are really critical skills. I give it a seven. It's... there are some inauthentic pieces, but I like it as a whole. Roger: Mr. Al-Masri? Mr. Omar Sadiki.

Sadiki: As-salamu alaikum. Al-Masri: Wa alaikum assalaam. Michele: So what I find inauthentic about this scene is that you have your target and then an operator almost crossing each other. That would never happen in real life. So of course what is happening here is that the target is being photographed with another individual. In an operation like this, it would have been coordinated well in advance and not in the actual office where it is going to happen. This is what's called the operational bubble, and you have to get out of that operational bubble to do something like photograph these two.

And you saw this huge lens he's using. That's going to attract a lot of attention. So it's very likely that someone had seen him in the car with this huge lens. If there had been another car on the other side of it, possibly, but it wouldn't even need that big of a lens, because it's really not that far away. We definitely would have created a scenario where you take your lens to a specific location, but you want to protect the technical asset that is taking the photo. So you want them to be outside the operating bubble.

So that's the part that's not authentic here. I'd probably give it about a six, it's a bit authentic, but there are a lot of problems here, as we've noted. Who doesn't love Melissa McCarthy in "Spy"? I laugh out loud at this movie. She is so brilliant.