Spycraft - Melton [210]
• Assessment
• Cover and disguise
• Concealments
• Clandestine surveillance
• Covert communications
Depending on the stage of an operation, one of these disciplines will assume dominance, and every effort will be made to execute it flawlessly. For the Central Intelligence Agency, OTS had the responsibility to develop and support technical tools for each pillar that would provide U.S. officers and agents with a comparative advantage over their adversaries.
Assessment is the first step in recruiting a spy. Selecting the right target from among the thousands of individuals who could potentially help an intelligence service requires identifying the one or two with the motivation and ability to sustain the double life required by espionage. Sound tradecraft demands more than guesswork.1 Based on the experience OSS had with assessment and testing procedures, the CIA employed a small group of professionally credentialed psychologists to assist operations officers in winnowing the prospective recruitment pool and identifying the most “vulnerable” targets. Like their OSS predecessors, the psychologists of OTS employed a variety of assessment techniques and tests to gain insight into a target’s dominant personality traits and potential behavioral responses to specific situations.
Recruitment often encompassed months of patient cultivation by the case officer of a target before moving the contact into a clandestine “handler-agent” relationship. Infrequently, however, recruitment could occur during a five-minute pitch in which an unsuspecting foreign official would be asked, “Would you work with the CIA?” Operational circumstances determined whether an individual was the subject of extended development or a cold pitch, but in either case, the assessment conducted before the question was asked loaded the dice in favor of the case officer.2
Assessments provide the CIA with a good sense of the target’s likely reaction to a pitch and their long-term value to the CIA. However, under the best of conditions, acceptance of a pitch can never be assumed and sound assessments will anticipate the possibility of an angry and hostile response. If the pitch goes well, an agent is recruited. If the recruitment offer is rejected, assessment will have provided information to minimize blowback and operational compromise.
Motivations to become a spy are as complex and varied as human nature itself. Because of unpredictable individual differences and cultural variations among foreign officials identified for recruitment, identifying a target’s dominant motivator to conduct espionage became the primary function of the operational psychologists. One grouping of motivations became known as “the MICE model.” MICE, the easy-to-remember acronym of money, ideology, coercion, and ego, describes crosscultural characteristics that often translate into vulnerabilities that become a basis for recruitment.
Money holds particular attraction to targets from countries whose culture places high social value on achievement, status, and material possessions.
Ideology becomes a powerful incentive for individuals who hate the political or economic system, which they cannot otherwise escape or oppose.
Coercion represents a negative motivator that could be effective only in selective circumstances with particular personalities.
Ego frequently motivates acts of espionage by individuals who believe their talents, capabilities, and importance go unrewarded by their employers or unrecognized by professional colleagues.
CIA psychologists found three of the most significant indicators of a willingness to spy were split loyalties (potentially evidenced by extramarital affairs or intense dislike of a supervisor), narcissism (when seen as excessively self-absorbed, arrogant, and vain), and dissidence in parental relationships. Added to these were contributing circumstances such as failed careers, marriage problems, infidelity, and substance