CONFESSIONS OF A WANNABE SPY
As I came face to face with my recruiter, I was overcome with the urge to confess.
The apartment full of stolen office supplies, my father-inlaw’s cache of illegal fireworks, that time I cheated on my Grade 10 math exam but still failed. If I wanted to become a spy, I would need a clean slate.
But when given the chance to come clean to the nice woman from Canadian Security and Intelligence Services, I choked.
“Can I ask why you might want to become a spy?” she said.
The words came tumbling out. “Because I want to ... I’m loyal to this country,” I said, trying my best to picture Don Cherry’s pink face and a box of half-eaten Timbits with a genuine sense of longing.
In truth, I was doing a little sleuthing of my own — going undercover at CSIS’s Montreal recruitment fair Wednesday where hundreds gathered to apply for a handful of jobs at the service.
They packed us into the basement of the downtown Sheraton, where I stood behind a tall, fit young man who looked like an Abercrombie & Fitch model. He showed me the job description for “intelligence officer,” and I could already see the red flags.
“It says here that from the moment you apply, you can’t take illegal drugs,” I said. “Does that mean, like, they can’t be in your system? And what exactly do they mean by ‘illegal’ and ‘take’ and ‘can’t?’ ”
He laughed.
The description also said you had to show good judgment. When I worked in construction, I once set my steel-toe boots on fire to see what would happen. My pants also caught fire.
The budding fashion model — we’ll call him Jake — took a six-hour train ride from Toronto to apply for the job. Jake is a mortgage officer and fitness freak, who says he wants to ride his bicycle from Ontario to Texas one day. He speaks four languages, doesn’t eat pork, drink or do drugs and wants to “make the world a better, safer place.”
Given that James Bond — the world’s most famous fictional spy — is perhaps best remembered for his line about how he best enjoys his martinis, Jake isn’t what you might picture in an international man of mystery.
Jake’s chiselled physique and flat-top haircut suggest he’s ready to be shot out of a cannon and into deep space for love of country. Jake is so keen on spying that when he arrived downtown at lunch hour Tuesday, he sat in the park watching office workers on their lunch hour.
“I don’t exactly know why, but I followed them into their building and then I just started visiting different floors of the building,” he said. “I wound up taking some brochures and business cards.”
I liked Jake, so I confessed that I was a reporter on assignment. Blowing your own cover, I’m told, is not the sort of thing that will get you a foot in the door at Canada’s spy agency.
Before we could get within striking distance of a CSIS brochure, security guards had us empty our pockets so they could scan our bodies with a hand-held metal detector. After that, we lined up to talk to a recruiter and watch a video about becoming a spy.
We sat in the drab, neon-lit room and a man leaned into me.
“Hey, I heard you’re a reporter. That’s really cool,” he said.
I’m a terrible CSIS recruit. The first thing you need to know about CSIS, I’m told, is that you’ll be working on a team. And everyone at the office — from the guy who fixes your spam email to the woman cultivating human sources in the Islamic State — is a part of that team.
There’s even an intramural softball league. “Work hard, play hard,” our recruiter says.
If we were to apply to become one of the service’s 3,200 employees today, we’d undergo a process that lasts between four and 12 months. It involves a lie-detector test, a background check that looks into the last decade of your life, an essay about why you would be a good spy, a written exam, at least one psychiatric evaluation and a battery of interviews.
We’re also told — repeatedly — that while this job is “no nine to five,” it’s also nothing like a James Bond movie. “There’s no womanizing,” our recruiter says.
I wanted to ask if I’d ever get the chance to hang off the side of a helicopter as a chemical weapons facility explodes under my feet but thought better of it.
“You’re on the front lines, protecting our country from terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and cyber attacks,” the recruiter says. “Do you have what it takes?”
Suddenly, I remembered the time I ordered a chicken salad and they forgot to put dressing on it, but I was too afraid of offending the kitchen staff to ask the waiter to return my plate.
Do I have what it takes? No, no I don’t.