Throwing curveballs at the spies

[Agemegos]

G'day

Now as you may have read in another thread, I am planning to start up an espionage campaign set in 1979, with the PCs working their way up to "00" rank in the British Secret Service. The premise of the campaign is that the SIS (MI6) has been going through a bad patch of scandals and lack of success, and that Margaret Thatcher has appointed Sir James Bond the new M with a brief to rebuild the Service.

So we suppose that Bond hands over SIGINT to GCHQ, and makes a radical return to HUMINT. We also suppose that he recruits a lot of new people from sources that the KGB will not have thought to infilitrate. This is going to have to involve recruiting people of ability from areas of endeavour that have not traditionally been thought of as fertile breeding grounds for spies, and hoping that their special professional abilities will give them capacities that will turn out completely unexpected to the professional spies. What are likely places for Bond to recruit from?

- The medical profession?

- RADA graduates?

- The film and television industry?

- Fleet Street?

- Professional sports?

Brainstorm!

Regards,


Brett Evill

[Agemegos]

FWIW: One of the inspirations I have in mind is the Bryan Brown movie FX: Murder by Illusion in which a movie special effects specialist ran rings around crooked FBI agents and the Mafia using his professional skills.

[Steve Long]

Law schools: the FBI already recruits there.

[freakboy6117]

media and computer technicians
refrigeration and enviromental system technicians{lots of british workers go out to the middle east to install systems like that, having someone who can plant bugs in a targest air conditioning systems all over the world would be handy}. have you checked out the MI5 recruitment website?

oh donforget linguists there really important.

others specialities meterologists{essential for ops planning}
biological, chemist and nuclear scientists for WMD analysis
finally what you really want in an agent is some one who has proffesional skills[or can fake them] that will make it easy to create a Legend[fake id] that will allow them to travel aroudn the world photogrphers fashion designers etc might well have good reason to travel.

[Agemegos]

Law schools: the FBI already recruits there.

Indeed. The British secret service has been recruiting from the universities as a matter of habit since at least the 1930s. That's where they picked up Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt. The universities, navy, army, Foreign Office, and banking industry are the 'business a usual' recruiting grounds that I think Bond might try to broaden away from.

And of course you have to be aware that vocational training in Britain and the Commonwealth are organised differently than in the US and Germany. In England Law and Medicine and so forth are (generally) undergraduate (bachelors) degrees, taught at universities rather than at specialist graduate schools. This is an irritating mistake in Victory Games' Q Manual: the brief personal history listed for one of the characters has her doing a quadruple (!) degree at Cambridge as a qualifying course to enter medical school, which is not the way things are done in Commonwealth countries (or at least wasn't in period: some Australian universities have recently introduced four-year medical courses for university graduates alongside the standard six-year undergraduate medical degrees).

[Agemegos]

How about circus performers?

Wildlife photographers?

[Turin]

One that I know most people overlook is missionaries that have served in a foreign country or worked with a foreign language.

Here in Utah there are a large number of them and that is one of the reasons that perhaps the largest collection of military linguists in the world is located just south of Salt Lake.

As for spies instead of just translators, most missionaries are fluent (with native accent), have lived in the country (2 years) and know the culture and local customs. They usually don't have relatives or partisan affiliations that can complicate things. And lots have an ideological influence that is typically more difficult to turn then say money, romance or power.

Just a thought.

[oroborous]

most missionaries are fluent (with native accent), have lived in the country (2 years) and know the culture and local customs. They usually don't have relatives or partisan affiliations that can complicate things.

Are you speaking of LDS missionaries? Most Mormons I know are conservative and family-oriented. However, they are patriotic, so if the government approached them with something that didn't clash with their religious beliefs, then I think they would be apt to say yes.

MY TWO CENTS

As far as non-traditional places to recruit people, think like the movie XXX. Athletes and petty criminals could be a useful resource. Perhaps MI6 could also troll through hobby shops and find gamers and rescue them from their parent's basements. They could be used for their creative thinking skills.

[Turin]

Are you speaking of LDS missionaries? Most Mormons I know are conservative and family-oriented. However, they are patriotic, so if the government approached them with something that didn't clash with their religious beliefs, then I think they would be apt to say yes.

For the most part yes I am talking about LDS missionaries. I met a former FBI Deputy Director that said the reason they recruit from BYU so actively is that to Mormons "it's not just being patriotic it is being religious".

Another source could be from fringe elements of organized crime, that have a stake in the cold war. I saw a documentary a while back about how much help the Mafia provided the (US) Army and Navy especially with the invasion of Italy during WW2.

edited - Added US for clarity.

[freakboy6117]

dont froget concvicted criminals with sepcialist skills con artists and hackers especially but catburglers forgers and others coudl all be offered an early realses and employment on certain conditions like in 'catch me if you can'

[TheImperialKhan]

dont froget concvicted criminals with sepcialist skills con artists and hackers especially but catburglers forgers and others coudl all be offered an early realses and employment on certain conditions like in 'catch me if you can'

I believe you're thinking of It takes a Thief the TV series with Robert Wagner and Malachi Throne. A very good possibility too, another might by professional gamblers who if nothing else will have nerves of steel.

[freakboy6117]

actually I was thinking of the one with Ice T working for the Eff Bee AIII

[Basil]

Sorry if I duplicate what someone's already said.

Are you doing this more like the movies, or more realisitically?

Movie-like:
Models, photographers (both of models and of nature), travel writers, some kinds of athletes, professional gamblers, casino workers/croupiers (spelling?), pilots, stewards/stewardesses, ship captains, cruise-ship workers, train engineers and such (tho' not in the US), the independantly wealthy (esp. if they travel a lot).

more realistic:
small time hoods (esp. if adept at making connections with local gangs), thieves (if good at breaking into places), con men, secretaries, wait staff, laborers, street bums, anyone most people don't notice, minor workers at embassies/consulates/etc., long-term visitors (tourists, specialty workers, etc.).

[BobGreenwade]

How about circus performers?

I was just about to post this (having not visited the thread in a while). Just imagine a spy using the skills of a circus clown....

[Starwolf]

Along the lines of the FX show, I used to enjoy a series called The Magician starring Bill Bixby as a stage magician that used his magical abilities to fight crime, solve myteries, and such...