spies are everywhere – especially on TV. Thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Apple TV+, these are boom times for fans of spy thrillers. But it’s not just fans who are tuning in: viewers also include real secret agents whose duties range from gathering information to recruiting spies for a living. And sometimes what they see on the screen gives them goosebumps.
The key figures in a new installment of spy shows range from losers and lawyers to real-life spies. On Apple TV+’s Slow Horses, secret agents are idiots banished to MI5’s administrative purgatory. In the ITVX drama A Spy Among Friends, the intelligence officers are Cambridge-educated liars in tailored suits. And in Prime Video’s Jack Ryan, CIA employees include pot-bellied survivors and Jason Bourne clones.
All of these roles are ones that US national security and intelligence veterans consistently criticize. “I have a very hard time,” laments former CIA analyst Gail Helt, “creating a program that comes down to the ballpark in terms of what CIA officers do.”
If these shows really let us in, she and other insiders emphasize, they’d also ensure that viewers understand the unglamorous side of the job — just how mind-numbingly prosaic it can be.
“My relationship with law enforcement-centric programs and intelligence agencies is a love/hate relationship,” says former FBI Special Agent Jeff Cortese. “I love it when they get it right and I hate it when they get it wrong. I mean right and wrong in terms of being authentic, not realistic. Realistic would be to spend 90-95% of the show watching agency workers handle paperwork. Nobody wants to see that. I want to see the other 5-10% of the work that is exciting.”
These aren’t general criticisms for the entire genre, especially considering that new releases span everything from big-budget action adventures (Netflix’s The Recruit) to headline-grabbing dramatizations of real-life events (Litvinenko and A Spy Among Friends). ). ) that imply a higher degree of likelihood. Some programs can get it completely wrong, while others get it… well, less wrong. That is the assessment of John Sipher, who retired in 2014 after a 28-year career with the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. Only a few shows get their stamp of approval. “While no movie or show gets everything right, The Bureau captures the give and take between headquarters and the field, and both The Americans and The Spy give a good glimpse into high street trading and the hidden life,” he says.
For Cortese, it’s particularly annoying when the protagonists can’t handle firearms correctly – one of the most common complaints. “Characters often make the mistake of keeping their finger on the trigger while cleaning a room, or even just holding the gun,” he says. “In real life, your finger is along the barrel and you don’t touch the trigger until you plan to squeeze it. This is probably the most annoying thing for us in the business. We always notice that.”
Other common complaints from those in the know include: too much sex, too many shootings, and the skills of agents and officers being often overplayed. They also point out that real-life cases take a lot more time than TV show creators squeeze into a half-hour or hour-long show.
For this reason, some veterans avoid the genre altogether. Tracy Walder is a former FBI special agent and a five-year veteran of covert operations at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center – where she assumed aliases and visited black sites to interrogate captured terrorists. “I watched one episode of Homeland and I couldn’t watch any more,” she says. “What is misleading is that our capabilities are seen as omniscient. They certainly aren’t. Things take time. It could mean years.
She adds that while the work can be “sexy” and exciting, much of it is the mundane, cubicle-report-writing type. This is also usually an undercover job, so an agent who is frequently involved in shootouts – the kind seen on TV – is doing something wrong.
“We carry weapons in certain areas of operation, but that’s not the norm,” says Walder. “We are not law enforcement; so it’s actually not part of the job. Yes, we have weapons training and I’ve carried in some countries I’ve served, but that’s about it. Obviously, as an FBI agent, I carried it all the time.
That said, there are some former intelligence professionals, like former CIA analyst turned novelist David McCloskey and Christina Hillsberg (a veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations), who choose to watch spy shows the same way they do. the unsuspecting public. Sometimes, even shadow warriors don’t mind watching something stupid and fun – or something that hits close to the mark.
“The Bureau,” says McCloskey, “does a wonderful job of capturing the human element and the idiosyncrasies of the intelligence sector, particularly the bureaucracy and frequent tension between field and headquarters.
“The Little Drummer Girl excels at showing the long, slow burn of intelligence gathering operations. It also nails the frustrating lack of operational and moral clarity that can characterize the business.”
Hillsberg, whose CIA career included writing intelligence assessments for the White House, adds: “In any spy thriller, there is often an element of suspension of disbelief, especially if you’ve worked in espionage. After all, even we like to be entertained.”
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