The Mind Of A CIA Spy
What types of mental training exercises do CIA officers receive?
CIA officers, the Directorate of Operations and the spy element of the agency receive what is called trade craft training. This is a several months long course that we do at the farm where a complete alternative reality is created. You are taught specifically how to spot people who might be potential recruits and how to assess their personality to determine whether or not they might be a good foreign spy. Also, how to seek out their weaknesses to see what the weaknesses they have are, that you can prey upon in order to convince them to spy on behalf of the United States. It's several months long courses in how to become a manipulative person if you weren't beforehand, and how to use those skills to hire foreigners to give secrets to the United States.
Why are the mental training exercises important to the CIA?
How are mental training exercises conducted?
One of the things that the CIA instructors try to do at the farm is to put as much pressure as humanly possible on the trainees. We all hated it at that time, but we came to appreciate that later. It's almost like being hazed for a fraternity or sorority. They try to ensure that you have as little sleep as possible, that you're working 24/7. The reasoning behind this is that the agency wants to see what you can handle when you are state side and what you can handle when training, because this will be an indication of what you can handle when you're overseas. An example is, during our paramilitary training, they made a fake prison camp situation where we weren't tortured, but we were really put under a tremendous deal of stress. The point of that was to see who would break and who wouldn't break. It was a gruelling exercise and an emotionally exhausting exercise, but afterwards we all felt good about it because we were able to see what it would actually be like when we were overseas and captured, and asked to defend our cover story.
What types of trainees fail during the mental training exercises at the CIA farm?
How do the mental training exercises help in the field?
