Officers even create elaborate stories to use to practice lying when their fellow officers ask them personal questions.

This starts from day one, as friends and family are kept in the dark. Not only do they have to be good at lying, but they must be able to spot when someone else is. The world of secrecy includes a lot of lying and officers better be good at it. They need to know how to lie - and to tell when someone else is lying. 'Because this is the information you will use to manipulate them to get what you want - which is secret information.' 'You also have to figure out what motivates people, and what their vulnerabilities are,' former CIA officer Lindsay Moran revealed in an interview with Pursuit Magazine. By the end of the rendezvous, the officer had accomplished her mission while the lord had fallen in love. In the Focus report, one intelligence officer was given the location of a visiting lord and after 90 minutes, the young woman had learned the lord's marital status, occupation, career, hobbies, and daughter's college exam grades. The bread and butter of a spy is acquiring secret information from sources.

Spies need to learn their most important skill: how to recruit sources to give up secrets. We picked out the five most interesting skills new recruits learn at Germany's version of the CIA, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). While intelligence officers continue to operate in the shadows, a fantastic article by Josef Hufelschulte of Focus Magazine gives a rare look inside their secret training regimen.

Become spy agent