Ex-CIA Agent Rates All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies | How Real Is It? | Insider

Alien, could someone scale a building and infiltrate it using, you know, something that cuts glass with a laser? Yes, it could be done, but no survey would do that in broad daylight. My name is Andrew Bustamante and I am a former undercover CIA intelligence officer. I served in the CIA for seven years. years in the National Clandestine Service and now I am the founder of Everyday Spy, where I teach spy skills to everyday people, today we will look at the Mission Impossible

movies

and determine how

real

they are, so I think this is very timely for the moment because that was how we used to protect information, they are downloading this NOC list, the takedown list, it means unofficial coverage, which means it is a list of assets and

agent

s around the world that are not protected by any kind of The backing up government coverage would have it on a separate server on a separate computer overseas, so you both have matching gloves and that's not how it works in the

real

world.

In the real world, each individual part of a team has a completely different set of Kit, if they are captured separately from the operation, you don't want them to have a matching kit; Otherwise, that will give police or local law enforcement the opportunity to bring the two together. Also, you'll see that Ethan is wearing a pair of glasses. and they are just normal glasses that clip over your ears in the real world, when you are on any type of field operation you leave nothing to chance, your lenses would be custom made to fit your eyes but then they would actually be strapped on close to his face when it comes to this specific activity where Ethan is lowered into a room from above, we learn how to belay each other, we learn how to work as counterweights and how to use some of these rope and pulley systems.

In different types of Arenas, the other thing you see happening here is that there are several people who are supporting Ethan. You have one person supporting it in the technical truck and then you have another person who is actually securing it from above, now support elements. They are very realistic in spy operations, some of the silly little nuances are removed. I mean, this is a pretty realistic representation of a field officer's capabilities. I'd actually give this about a seven on a scale of 10. Rock climbing abroad is 100. something CIA officers get into because being alone is where we gather our energy, clear our minds, relax.

We get creative, we might find ourselves in a position where we would have to do this to escape a dangerous scenario, so for those reasons we do it. We have advanced schools to teach our officers how to do some pretty amazing things, even Ethan laughs a little. Watch it, so first keep in mind that in the Mission Impossible

movies

, Ethan Hunt works for an organization called the IMF, the Mission Impossible Force, and the IMF is actually. A contractor under the CIA, if he were a full-fledged CIA officer, would not receive a secret or classified briefing anywhere except within a facility that houses what is known as a secure compartmentalized information facility and certainly not delivery through a shoulder. - Rocket held by a strange guy in a helicopter which in our terminology is called live launch.

You can select two team members, but it is essential that the third team member, Naya Nordorfall, takes into account the fact that she is being assigned a team that is very real. Also the fact that part of her team includes a professional thief, not a professional intelligence officer, which is also pretty accurate. We often work with convicted criminals because criminals and spies are really not that different, the difference is that a spy is trained and given cover and authority. break laws where a thief learns through the School of Hard Knocks to self-destruct in five seconds no one can think of Mission Impossible without also thinking about that line that says this message will self-destruct now in real life nothing self-destructs because you have to be what you are This is known as an audit trail so the government can show that they are spending those tax dollars in a sensible and legitimate way.

I would give this about a seven in terms of accuracy of how a true field operations officer will basically go through resetting before going on a new

mission

. Spy cameras are something that has been well known about spying for a long time, but what people don't understand is that the value of a spy camera is not necessarily in how it is hidden. As much as it is about the power and precision of the camera itself, the fact that in this clip we see a camera hidden inside a beauty mirror, but when you actually see the image quality of the camera is relatively low, It's actually the opposite of what you'd expect to see in the real world, so you'll most likely see a very high-quality camera inside something heavier.

Yes, my God, we all joined the CIA so we could do what Ethan Hunt does. Let's be honest, it's true. A prosthetic can be created from 3D modeling, but it's not really true that that 3D modeling is produced through some type of custom-made photography equipment, like the powder kit the

agent

was using in this. You need to have all the right angles and all the proper depth of field from each of those angles so that you can create a suitable strange model that is called a principle or the personification of a principle that is dangerous for many reasons voice Tonality of behavior that never We personify a principle what we are trying to do is try to personify someone who is within the circle of trust of a principle that way the only person we are really trying to fool is the principle itself who has a full face prosthesis to be That principle the risk worsens.

I'm going to have to give this one a three out of 10 for accuracy. Don't do this, just let it go. I mean, everything in this clip is wrong according to CIA training during this entire negotiation. Ethan is begging which one. reinforces that the principle is the one in control control is something incredibly important in an intelligence operation you always want to be the one in control this is called hostile negotiation they actually give us a very specific script we will repeat our name we will repeat our insurance number social, we will repeat our cover, we will repeat whatever fundamental truth is relevant to us in that operation, which is actually what happens when you threaten someone, what they actually do, many times they fall into this basic level of repetition.

I did not do it. do it, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I didn't do it, so we are trained to imitate that repetitive pattern so that it protects us from revealing information. None of that is being used here by Ethan in this For example, the only way to get what you want is the trick to any negotiation is to always cause as much stress as possible to the other person because the person under stress will make bad strategic decisions during the negotiation process. that negotiation and unfortunately as I watch this clip I'm rooting for the bad guy because he's the one doing this right, it's not what I would expect from a trained intelligence agent but in terms of reality I mean I'm going to give this an eight in terms of how It would look like a real hostile negotiation between violent people, I actually like the costume a lot more than some of the other costume jobs we've seen, a simple prosthetic nose and mustache is exactly what we would wear and I prefer to wear it because it reduces the amount of What can go wrong, unlike a full head prosthetic, he doesn't talk, which is very clever and is actually very accurate when you wear prosthetics or when you're trying to appear like someone in an advanced costume you're not going to talk because there's no reason. to add that extra layer of potential risk to your overseas operation that type of technology is extremely difficult to make it's just not realistic the cost at the time the risk is too great to create technology like that and surprisingly what Holding back most technology in the field is really just the availability of battery power, the larger a piece of technology the more battery it requires, as well as to fold everything into a briefcase, the battery that would be needed to running that thing would be a second like a Wheeling suitcase.

Now what you see Ethan do is he takes off his costume, rips parts of the costume off of him and essentially now looks like a tourist instead of looking like a tourist. a Russian general that technique is called breach act now the difference between how Ethan did it and how we do it in the field is that Ethan did it in plain sight, that is a very high risk place to transform into the real world, you would find a place where you have 15 to 30 seconds without anyone watching you, you wouldn't just discard your hat and fake nose in the corner like you saw, he would just rip it off and throw it aside because that leaves evidence in its place . your kit would include everything is reversible including a reversible bag so it doesn't leave any trace that it ever changed in the first place episode 20 Vision A2 Delta Echo requesting immediate evacuation a lot of really interesting things, pick up that phone and call the number that number is what is known as a backup number when you hear the phone get up and say such and such insurance company which is also what is known as verbal probation this is how Ethan knows he is talking to the correct phone number that his probation or what's known as good faith, which makes sure the person on the other line knows they're talking to the right person and then throws the phone here in this little sewer where no one can get it back. the elimination is very precise the first half of the clip with all the technology and disguise at the beginning.

I'd give it more of a 3 out of 10 in terms of reality, but the later part of the clip is much more realistic. He'd give that closer to a six or seven in terms of reality, fifty percent of his technology fails him and he still has to figure it out anyway. That's incredibly real now as he takes off his glove and throws it over her shoulder. We've talked about this Tom again, we don't discard our equipment in the field because he leaves a trail of evidence when the technology fails, what he would actually do is keep it on his belt if someone scaled a building and infiltrated.

Using, you know, laser cutting glass, yes, it could be done, but no pole would do it. In broad daylight, a spy's best friend is Night's concealment and the fact that he is running this operation in broad daylight in the United Arab Emi

rates

is simply not the case. Exactly, it is really important to understand that all espionage is illegal, what happens is that his government sanctions him for carrying out illegal acts. Ethan could be prosecuted by an Emirati judge or any neighboring allied country if he were caught engaging in the act of Espionage on behalf of the United States, what you see Ethan doing here is he is breaking into a server room, most likely because he is sabotaging the server.

This is an example of what we call a human-enabled technical operation, so here Ethan is using human skills to enable a technical operation that would otherwise have been much more difficult or potentially not feasible at all without a human element, so I'll give this a 5 out of 10 for overall accuracy. Oh, action sequence here, okay, one of the things I love. The most important thing about car scenes is to have been trained in how to drive a car tactically and offensively. At the agency we are taught to use our vehicle as a weapon as much as we use it as a defensive tool when it comes to any type of vehicle.

You're never using the front of the vehicle when Ethan runs over the motorcycle directly in front of him. A real Combat driver would have moved to one side of the alley or the other in the hopes of being able to push Nick or shove him. The rear tire of the motorcycle is out of position, so the motorcycle would spin without blocking the car. There are a series of unnatural movements of the vehicle. Handbrake turns are real and handbrake turns are very useful things; However, to make a turn with the handbrake it is necessary to be moving.

On gravel terrain or on loose ground or with worn tires, you have to loosen the grip of the entire car with the ground, not only that, but you also need to have compression on one side of the car or the other so that you really get the The twisting motion you see them have there when driving in reverse is a super powerful way to drive because it protects your front engine and turns the entire space behind you into essentially armored space; However, there's only one gear when you're driving in reverse, so you really max out at about 25 miles per hour, wait, you see them collapse onto their trunk and that's when their airbags go off, which is not how it would work.

There are high speed chases in overseas operations, in reality they would have been driving much slower. that that, the highSpeed ​​is actually more like 25 to 30 miles per hour. Vehicles around the world are basically built so that those front airbags deploy when there is a collision between 12 and 25 miles per hour, so when that motorcycle is rear-ended, that would have been the end of the scene. because the airbags would have deployed, that wasn't very accurate, so I'd probably give it a two or three out of 10. Foreigner, this is out there, oh my god, could a murder be scheduled at an opera?

It wouldn't be the way it's depicted in this scene: you have this weird kind of shooter triangle, so you generally don't try to smuggle multiple guns into a controlled access area because if one of them gets caught, then security increases. For everyone else, you would usually just try to have one person there or, better yet, pre-place a weapon and leave one person there in charge of capturing or releasing that pre-placed weapon, the fact that each of these weapons was individually designed to look like something else, that's completely unrealistic when you create a weapon, especially a high precision weapon, even just by lining up your aiming elements with the real barrel.

Using the weapon is extremely difficult, which is why we would prefer to smuggle a fully functional weapon. I would also say that the CIA experimented with these weapons in the '60s and '50s, the umbrellas of the Cold War era that were made to shoot. bullets, pens, lipsticks, which are supposed to be carried in a natural course, like an umbrella, is something that you would naturally point out along the way, you know, unfold it or open it, you can see that they are trying to cover some of the noise what is it. Starting with these silenced rifles, it is now possible to suppress rifles up to a certain caliber, but then it becomes such a high caliber that it is simply not feasible to suppress it.

There is an incredible amount of complexity here that is far outside the norm. It's probably the worst clip of all the ones we've seen so far. I'm going to give this one a generous one out of ten. iocia owes me an eternal debt of gratitude for teaching me how much it honestly hurts to be punched in a vulnerable area. We are trained in them and even in mixed martial arts we are not really trained in a very simple kinetic fighting system that is designed so that we don't get captured, so one of the things that I really enjoyed about this scene is that we highlighted those vulnerable points we saw. a punch to the throat we saw using a briefcase to hit someone in the temple we saw punches to the solar plexus we saw kicks to the solar plexus now some of the places where it didn't really work how quickly people recover it really just takes one or two key hits before finishing, the other thing I really didn't like was that both Ethan and his fighting partner were taking turns, they were specifically trained not to take turns when you're two on one, one opponent, that's something.

That happens in the movies, they both attack at the same time to overwhelm their opponent. Ethan just grabs the guy and pushes him against a wall. There is a fight for the gun at the end and there is resistance. We are taught that every time there is a moment of resistance like that you change tactics correctly you move the cannon away from yourself you use it as an opportunity to escape those blocked moments so you can return to a place of tactical mastery. I would probably give this a 4 out of 10 for Actually this is an interesting scene if Ethan is undercover and the police officer is not associated with his undercover operation, he won't save her when he is undercover, his

mission

takes priority over everything, so there are a couple of things here when the scene starts: many weapons are pointed at Ethan, none of them would do a quick draw and then go in order of the other weapons drawn to shoot the knight that was near him, he would shoot the guy the right and the guy on the left. and then the guy with his hand on his waist not only that, but when Ethan actually attacks, he does something very bad because he keeps shooting one, two, three, all without moving, is the first thing we are taught. of a counterattack situation, so Ethan would have actually moved more like four or five feet, so he would have shot again, continued moving, shot again, shot again, so the fact that Ethan waited so long to shoot and then shot the four people from the same Basically the one foot area shows how this was done for a camera and not for reality, a really solid seven in terms of reality and that's why no one talks about Mission Impossible, you know Tom Cruise did that trick and he didn't just do it. he once he did it several times to get everything right.

The CIA teaches us how to drive different types of vehicles, from four-wheelers, two-wheelers, motorized vehicles, and the idea that you know you would drive a perfectly good motorcycle. a cliff that we're not trained for and then being able to deploy a parachute and essentially base jump off a motorcycle, the battery is just thick and it's amazing. I would give this a 10. That's a real man riding a real motorcycle off a real ramp into the air in the real world there is no Ethan Hunt for the most part a lucky career in the CIA will have a moment of excitement that even zooms in on what ethan does an explosion a high speed car chase a border crossing where your disguise works my favorite spy show is actually the first season of americans because the first season of americans was really a great example of how you see the real espionage.

They kind of built that foundation around real business relationships. Deep coverage if you liked it. this video be sure to click the link above to get the next