by Bart King
As the lanterns floated happily across the river, Liang had his archers get their bows and arrows ready. And as the lanterns landed on the enemy camp and set everything on fire, soldiers rushed to the river to escape the flames and get water!
And that’s when Liang’s archers let loose a hailstorm of arrows that decimated the enemy. The survivors fled, leaving their supplies behind, and Liang won the first battle ever decided by paper lanterns. (Just imagine what he could have done with a bunch of flashlights!)
Kookiest Dead Spy Agency
There were a lot of spies in East Germany between 1945 and 1989. I’ll bet you couldn’t throw a schnitzel in that country without hitting a secret agent. (But why are you throwing schnitzels?)
After World War II ended in 1945, Germany was divided into two parts. West Germany was under the watch of the Allies (France, England, and the United States), while East Germany was taken over by Russia and turned into a Communist country.
The East German spy agency that was created was called the Stasi (1950–1989). It is possible that no spy agency in history ever spent more energy keeping an eye on its people than Stasi agents did. The following story shows the kooky lengths they would go to:
In the 1970s, the president of East Germany, Walter Ulbricht, kept getting hate mail. Specifically, every time Ulbricht’s photo was in the paper, someone would cut it out, write “Big fat pig” across it, and mail it to him. How mean!
This bothered the president, so he asked the Stasi to look into it. Their solution:
The agents checked the postmark of these letters and saw that they came from Dresden, which was in East Germany.
The agents planted a story about Ulbricht in the country’s biggest newspaper.
The agents stopped all newspapers delivered to Dresden. Then the agents used invisible ink to print a different number on the BACK of the newspaper page where Ulbricht’s photo was. (This number was different for every newspaper subscriber!) How many newspapers did they have to do this to? Well, over 500,000 people lived in the city!
The agents waited.
Sure enough, Ulbricht got another “Big fat pig” letter. The Stasi agents analyzed the invisible ink. Then they went through their files and identified a matching newspaper subscriber. He was the guilty one!
Sure, the mission was a success. But think of all the work and money that it cost the East Germans to identify someone who was sending silly messages in the mail!
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[30] You could call this a “false flag deception”.
Becoming a Pro
You know what makes me mad? I keep asking the CIA to be my Facebook friend, and I keep getting denied! What a rip-off. But despite this injustice, it’s possible that you—like me—want to pursue a career in intelligence.[31]
So what are the steps to becoming a real spy? Here are some things that couldn’t hurt:
Play a lot of the board game Stratego. It’s pretty fun, especially when you use the “Spy” piece to assassinate your opponent’s leader.
Avoid growing too much. The MI5 once listed the perfect height for a male spy as 5 feet 8 inches. Any taller, and the agent might stick out. Any shorter, and the agent wouldn’t be able to see over a crowd!
Don’t post insulting or dumb material online. This includes publishing mean YouTube comments and posting photos on Facebook of you bungee jumping without a bungee cord. When people check up on you, the LESS online information they can find, the better.
Of course, even big-shot spies make these kinds of mistakes. In 2009, John Sawers was getting ready to become head of Britain’s MI6 (a.k.a. the Secret Intelligence Service). Then his wife posted items about their family on her Facebook page—things like where they lived and worked, who their friends were, and where the family went on vacation. AND she even posted a picture of Sawers wearing a Speedo.
Talk about blowing someone’s cover!
Bonus “Oops!”: The MI6 is also in charge of Great Britain’s cyber-security.
Work on being ambidextrous. Think of how impressed the other spy wannabes will be when they find out you can shoot poison darts equally well with either hand![32]
Get good grades. Do you know how many spies didn’t go to college? Me neither, but I don’t think there are very many. And while you’re in college, take at least a few international studies courses.
Learn a foreign language (or three!). No pressure, but Sir Richard Burton (1821–1890) was one of the most brilliant spies ever. Part of his success came from the fact that he learned 35 languages.
Stay out of trouble. If you have a gambling problem or a criminal background, you probably won’t be hired. My best advice is to hang out exclusively with other people who have read this book.
As a future agent, you should also know the different categories of secrecy. American agencies break it down this way:
Confidential: Whatever you’re looking at is kind of, sort of, secret.
Secret: Anything labeled “secret” is definitely secret.
Top Secret: This is so secret, it couldn’t be any MORE secret!
Cosmic: I lied. Things CAN be more secret! Cosmic secrets are the tip-top secret level of secrecy used by NATO (an alliance of countries including the United States).
Other countries have their own classifications of secrecy. British material could once be classified Most Secret. And as if that wasn’t good enough, the most sensitive level was Hush Most Secret.
I hope you agree with me that it’s not very impressive when spies use the word “hush.” And there’s another category for secrets that can only be whispered:
Ears Only: This must be the most secret of them all! The category of Ears Only is given to any information that is so TOTALLY outrageously secret, it must not be written down. Ears Only has to be said, and then, only in super-safe areas that have been debugged.
Your Application
Okay, so now you’re ready to apply to an intelligence agency. Good luck! Your hiring process will go like this:
Paperwork! You’ll have to turn in LOTS of forms. The spy agency will especially want to know if you’re an honest person who is loyal to your country. In addition to the usual questions about your past, they’ll REALLY want to know if you’ve ever gotten in trouble for hacking. (And hopefully, you haven’t...or if you have, you’re so good that it’s a plus!)
Take psychological tests! The agency wants to know if you are a stable, organized person. You will also be scored in personality categories like
Are you outgoing? A show-off? Really shy? Insane?
Are you open to new experiences? Are you closed to old experiences? Insane?
Are you a trusting and agreeable person? Paranoid? Gullible? Insane?
3. Take a lie-detector test! Obviously, the idea is to find out how honest you are. But just as important is how you deal with pressure. One of the favorite tricks that polygraph questioners love to play is this: during the exam, the questioner will say, “And now, this is the MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION on the exam!”
The background investigation. This is where your friends, relatives, former co-workers and fellow students will get asked things like
Does she have any “issues”?
Would you consider her trustworthy?
Does she know any foreigners? Who? How often does she see them?
Has she read any books by Bart King? She has? Don’t you love that guy? You don’t!? Are you insane?
You’re Hired! (Now you’re a moron.)
Let’s say you got the job. Congratulations! Now you get to start learning some SECRETS. But being a spy with top secret clearance has its dangers! When an intelligence expert named Daniel Ellsberg received his top security clearance, another agent warned him about the stages he would go through:
You’re excited by all of the top secret things you’re learning. Being a spy RULES!
You feel like a fool for the times you criticized leaders like the president. They had top secret info and you didn’t...and you thought
you knew better?
After about two weeks, you think anyone who doesn’t have a top secret clearance like yours is an idiot. After two more years of this, you can’t learn from anybody who doesn’t have top secret clearance. That’s because you’re always thinking, “He doesn’t know what I know.” So no matter how smart the experts are, you ignore them!
You are now a moron.
Of course, if you know you might become a moron, you can prevent it from happening! And another good way to avoid becoming a moron is to travel to secret spots where you can study intelligence with the best spies out there.
One place you might be able to get into is Disneyland’s super-secret Club 33. It’s in the New Orleans Square part of Disneyland. Just go to the Blue Bayou Restaurant and look for the “33 Royal Street” address. You’ll only see a door there—but if you’re a club member, that door will open! “Normal” people have to pay as much as $30,000 to join the club and there’s a 14-year waiting list! But with your security clearance, you should be able to go in and enjoy Club 33’s amazing [description deleted by Disney security].
Secret Research
In Rome is a place called the Vatican Secret Archives. That’s its real name! It has 52 miles of shelving and documents and stuff that dates back thousands of years![33]
Consolation Prize
If you can’t get a job as a spy, but you like badges and dangerous work, move to Texas. With about 75,000 law officers, Texas has one of the highest ratios of police to population in the world. In addition to sheriffs and police, Texas also has armed law officers working for school districts, the State Insurance Department, the Lottery Commission, the Pharmacy Board, the State Board of Dental Examiners, and even a bunch of water districts.
It wasn’t until Texas foot doctors requested their own law-enforcement officer that something had to give. Thankfully, someone pointed out that foot doctors don’t really need their own police agency...unless criminal hangnails are a bigger problem than anyone realizes!
Hang on. I just got an email...and yes! Who’s got two thumbs and is the CIA’s new Facebook friend?
* * *
[31] Either that, or you’re making a Doomsday Device as revenge for having read this far.
[32] And that way, if one hand is injured, you’re still dangerous.
[33] Despite the name, anyone can visit the Vatican Secret Archives and request material.
Agencies!
Hey, maybe you’re not sure what spy agency you want to work for. It’s smart to be careful! After all, you don’t want to get stuck with a mean boss. Like a candy maker! They can be the most ruthless spymasters around. You know, like in Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? In it, Grandpa Joe explains why Willy Wonka shut down his first chocolate factory. It was because of all the dirty, stinking spies!
“All of the other chocolate makers, you see, had begun to grow jealous of the wonderful candies that Mr. Wonka was making, and they started sending in spies to steal his secret recipes.” (More on Roald Dahl.)
To solve his problem, Willy Wonka hires Oompa-Loompas to run his candy factories. Wonka had rescued these little people from the vicious beasts of Loompaland. In return, the Oompa-Loompas were grateful, loyal, and could keep a secret. Plus, they could sing!
But real candy companies like Nestlé and Mars[34] don’t have that option. And since these candy companies are bitter competitors, they always want to know what the OTHER one is doing. What new candies are coming out? What ad campaigns will they have? What will the recipes be?
Without Oompa-Loompas to help, Nestlé and Mars choose another path. They hire ex-CIA agents to snag secret documents, keep an eye on rival leaders, and rip the lid off of their archenemy’s hidden operations. It’s a huge chocolate war out there!
Part of the appeal of trying to learn a competitor’s candy recipe is that it’s impossible to patent the ingredients for a chocolate bar. In other words, if you figured out the perfect way to make the most delicious candy bar in the world, someone could copy it and legally make it themselves.
For example, the Hershey Company makes the coconut candy bar called Mounds. And way back in the 1950s, the Mars company “borrowed” the recipe. Then Mars made a coconut bar they called “Bounty,” and they started selling it in Great Britain. Can you believe it? And that’s why Hershey’s doesn’t sell Mounds in Great Britain.
But what about the chocolate spies? Don’t they feel a little silly? Maybe, but the pay is sweet! It turns out that a government spy makes good money. But a spy working for a private company can make TWICE as much or more. MUCH more! So there is a huge temptation for agents to get intelligence training from a government, work for a few years, and then quit and work for private spy agencies.
In Washington, D.C., alone, there are dozens of spy firms that employ thousands of ex-FBI, ex-CIA, ex-Secret Service, and ex-MI5 agents. There is even a private agency that specializes only in Russian agents! And these private agencies then get hired by big corporations.
What kind of big corporation hires spies? ALL big corporations. I’ve only been using candy companies as an example because I like candy. But pretty much EVERY company on the planet has competitors. So if they can gain an edge by spying, then they will!
Look, I’m not saying that every single company hires spies. Just the ones that can afford to! But enough about private spy agencies. Let’s look at the different U.S. spy agencies!
Too Many Spies Are in the Kitchen
When the Revolutionary War was fought in 1776, the United States had no organized spy network. And by the War of 1812 began, it STILL didn’t have one! It wasn’t until 1885 that an actual U.S. military intelligence department was set up.
The department consisted of one officer and one clerk. These two agents gathered most of their information by reading newspapers—which was actually a pretty good approach!
Although it got off to a slow start, the United States made up for lost time. The country spends well over $50 billion a year gathering intelligence. And all that cash is spread out over SEVENTEEN different intelligence agencies in the federal government. Yep, there are 17 of them, and they’re all competing for money as well as the honor of being the president’s “go to” spy group.
Because there are so many, no one has ever been able to name all of them. So here—for the first time ever!—are all of the American intelligence agencies.
National Security Agency (NSA): This is the BIGGEST American intelligence agency! The NSA is in charge of breaking and making codes and waging “information warfare.” The NSA is so secret, its nickname is No Such Agency. And it’s so big, the NSA measures its computer space in acres. ACRES!
NSA headquarters are in Maryland, and if you’re trying to drive there, you’ll know when you get close. That’s because the NSA jams electronic signals. So your car’s GPS will trap you into a bunch of U-turns!
The people at NSA are usually very good at math and are often shy. Shy people are sometimes called “shoe-gazers” because they don’t make eye contact. Instead they look down at their shoes! So here is an NSA joke:
Q. How can you tell the extrovert at NSA?
A. He’s the one looking at someone else’s shoes.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): This organization is in charge of general intelligence outside the United States. (Its motto: “Human intelligence on foreign targets.”) Nobody knows how many employees the CIA has, but there may be around 20,000. The CIA has only been around since 1947. But if it had existed before World War II, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor might have been foiled. It turns out that the U.S. government had plenty of information ABOUT the upcoming attack, but there wasn’t anyone around to pull the different sources together!
But its agents have learned a lot since 1947. Here’s how tricky today’s CIA is: to send fan mail to it, you address your letter to “Langley, Virginia.” But there is NO town or village in Virginia known as Langley! Pretty sly, huh? Ha! Nobody will ever find the CIA headq
uarters!
Unless, of course, you happen to be driving on the Washington Parkway in Virginia. If you are, you’ll see highway signs marking the exit for the secret spy agency.
What’s weird is that the CIA has no law enforcement powers. So while a CIA agent can spy, commit espionage, and even assassinate people, he has no authority to make an arrest. And if a CIA spymaster suspects one of his own agents is a traitor, he has to call in the FBI to investigate him!
