What do CIA officers look for when recruiting a CIA agent?
When recruiting an agent, CIA officers typically first look for whether or not that person has access to secrets. That's a given. You need to have someone who has got access to information, because if they don't they're not worth anything to us. You also want to look for certain characteristics that are common to people who are willing to be foreign agents, and a lot of times these are their weaknesses. Do they need the money? That is probably the foremost. Are they having problems at work or problems with their family? Do they have a child that is sick? As a CIA officer, they might be able to provide healthcare to that child or at least the financial resources to provide healthcare for that child. As a CIA officer you're looking for either weaknesses or circumstances that you can exploit so that that person will want to work with you, so that that person will come to rely on his or her relationship with you as the CIA officer to better his life. It's a very cold and calculating way of doing things, but it's the way that the CIA does things.
