Read A Guide for the Aspiring Spy (The Anonymous Spy Series) for Free Online Page B

tests, you must document the results in your contact reports and operational cables in order to create a history of the authentication process that may later be used to validate the agent’s reporting and enhance the agent’s credibility so that the information the agent provides is given a higher credibility.
     
    The CIA also teaches numerous psychological assessment techniques—direct and indirect—that the case officer may employ during the authentication process. These various techniques are so sensitive that there will be no further disclosure in this publication. However, as a case officer trainee you will be made aware of some of these techniques and, in fact, you may volunteer yourself to be the subject of these testing techniques. You will find them quite interesting and you will learn a lot about yourself that you did not know.
     
    I prefer to keep it simple myself and employ basic “honesty” testing, such as “accidentally” overpaying the agent to see if he will give the extra money back. Having the agent “hold” a document for you in a “trapped” envelope and later see if he tried to open it. When meeting the agent, leave the room for a few minutes (go to the bathroom) leaving behind a file in a precise position to see if he looks into the file. Trap a place or item with touch sensitive chemicals and tell the agent about it but tell him to leave it alone, and then later check his hands with fluorescent light to see if he touched it.
     
    Somewhere during the detailed testing and validation cycle—usually toward the end before you write your authentication report—your asset must undergo a polygraph examination. The Box, as it is affectionately called by case officers, is a useful investigative tool but it is by no means a panacea or substitute for other authentication techniques. It best serves your needs if you use it to validate what you already know about your agent. It may also be helpful to clarify any unresolved areas of the operation or areas about which you have some suspicions but no direct evidence to prove your suspicions.
     
    The polygraph is only as good as the reliability of the polygrapher, and they range from great to terrible. Unfortunately, the individual case officer has no say as to which polygrapher he or she may draw to work on his asset. So before you meet with the polygrapher, do your homework on your asset and prepare some questions you want to have asked. The polygrapher will read the case file and prepare some questions he believes should be addressed on the examination, but it is you, the case officer, who has the final say. Make sure that some of the questions asked of the agent are ones where you know beyond any doubt the correct answer. The polygrapher will ask some routine questions to establish baseline positive and negative responses before he gets into the real questions to determine whether or not your agent is being truthful about his access, reporting reliability, hostile control, etc.
     
    Remember: the Box is not a lie detector. It merely measures physiological (emotional) responses to questions. These responses are breathing, respiration, and heart rate. The art of interpreting the meaning of these responses is where you determine if the agent is trying to deceive you. This is where the reliability of the polygrapher is so important.
     
    The CIA bureaucracy has a tendency to judge the polygraph results as pass or fail. A pass means you can authenticate your agent. A fail means that your agent may be a fabricator or perhaps worse, a double agent. Do not view the failure of an agent to pass the Box as a personal failure on your part. In fact, view it as a win because you may have just prevented a double agent from penetrating the ranks of the CIA or prevented a fabricator from providing false information that may have been used by policy makers to establish policy.

Motivation and Vulnerability: The Heart of Agent Recruitment
     
    Throughout your career