How Does Amazon's 'Jack Ryan' Compare to Real Life at the CIA?

Netflix is spending upward to $8 billion on original content in 2022, but video-streaming rivals like Amazon and Hulu are also making huge investments in new shows, from Amazon's billion-dollar Lord of the Rings project to Hulu's Emmy-winning Handmaid'south Tale.

But before the hobbits make their debut on Amazon Video, the company'southward next large outing volition exist Tom Clancy'due south Jack Ryan, a CIA thriller starring John Krasinski as the title character, which debuts on Aug. 31.

Clancy, who died in 2022, wrote 17 books, iv of which were made into movies. In this latest installment, Krasinski plays Ryan in his geekier analyst days. Subsequently a troubling tour of duty in Afghanistan with the Marines, he's now glued to a screen, boring his colleagues with detailed coding knowledge. At home, he eats takeout on the couch and knows all the answers to Jeopardy. Not that there's anyone else around to exist impressed.

No spoilers hither, but Jack Ryan isn't desk for long. All in all, it'southward a thrilling ride; the producers put their $8 million-per-episode budget to good use. Look for some nice nerd military technology moments, like drone links between Nevada and Yemen, facial-recognition databases, and a nail-biting remote rescue attempt.

The first series did and so well in sneak previews that Amazon already ordered a second, which is shooting now in South America, presided over by showrunners Carlton Cuse and Graham Roland, who previously collaborated on Lost. Here'southward what they told PCMag via electronic mail about getting it right on-screen.

How did you lot ensure your CIA references on counter-terrorism rang true?
[GR] Research. We had a couple of consultants who had worked for the CIA. We relied most heavily on our consultant, David Chasteen, who had been with the CIA as recently every bit a year and a half [ago] when nosotros start began working with him. His experience is very emblematic of today's CIA, how information technology'due south been restructured, how the culture has inverse post nine/xi and post Iraq and Afghanistan.

[CC] The CIA asked to read the scripts before giving us permission to shoot on their campus, but they did not give us any notes or ask for any changes. The story we are telling is ours and was not shaped or edited in whatsoever mode by the agency.

Did yous recruit directorate from the agency?
[GR] Nosotros had a liaison named Kali Caldwell who, at the time, was working for the CIA in their public relations department, but she had as well been an analyst and worked on operations and targets all over the globe. She gave us a tour of the Langley campus, and introduced united states of america to several analysts and case officers whose names we cannot mention that gave us and our two chief actors—John Krasinski and Wendell Pierce—insight into what it's like to work for the CIA and the "culture of sacrifice" that has been fostered amongst those who piece of work in intelligence, etc.

What were their top tips when they first read the script?
[GR] No cell phones within CIA HQ. Information technology'south not allowed and every testify or movie gets this wrong. And people who work for the CIA are Not called agents. Agents work at the FBI. CIA employees are analysts, case officers, assets, or operators, but NEVER agents.

A Old CIA Intelligence Officer Weighs In

Curious to run across what a erstwhile CIA intelligence officer thinks almost Amazon's take on the agency, I spoke with Lisa Ruth, who has 20+ years of service, to find out what the prove gets right (and oh so wrong) almost being a CIA operative. Ruth is now the CEO of CTC International Group, a global business intelligence corporation that employs a number of espionage experts. Here are edited and condensed excerpts from our conversation.

Lisa, when and how did y'all join the CIA?
I was recruited while at the University of Virginia, studying for my masters in international relations. The agency already knew me because my begetter, a nuclear physicist, was a CIA officer for 25 years.

And then you were carrying on a family tradition?
Really, I'd planned to join the Peace Corps. But yous know how it is. Of a sudden you're in grad school and wondering what you lot're going to practice with your life. The agency then tapped me on the shoulder, and that was that.

What does the CIA look for?
The bureau pre-selects people with the right "way of thinking." It's innate; a style of seeing the globe and interpreting it. 1 of my CIA instructors said, "Nosotros recruited you because you think in a certain way." When you're recruited there'south a bombardment of testing, including a deep psychological assessment and training, earlier you get assigned to your offset mail service.

Tin you tell united states of america, in broad strokes, what you did during your 20 years+ in the CIA?
Just similar Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, I started as an intelligence analyst in Washington. Afterward that, I was posted overseas, including stints in the Middle East and Central and Latin America.

What was your field of expertise?
I can't give specifics but nigh of my career was in counterterrorism, arms trafficking, counter-narcotics and—specially in Latin America during the autumn of communism—counterinsurgency.

Exercise analyze what being an intelligence analyst involves. We've seen it on screen, but it's probably very different IRL.
[Laughs]. Yes, it is. What all intelligence officers do is focus on collecting and analyzing information to collate "intel" from various sources including: SIGINT (signals, communications, telemetry), HUMINT (man, espionage), GEOINT (GPS), MASINT (machine), OSINT (open source), TECHINT (technical) and CYBINT (cyber). In that location are others but those are the main ones. We don't fix policy, or implement policy, we're only trying to notice out what's going on to suggest the people who do [set and implement policy], or collaborate with those in law enforcement.

In Jack Ryan, the major plot point for serial ane is counter-terrorism. The CIA officers on-screen signal out that it'southward a very different game today.
Agreed. Nosotros knew who "the players" were back then, during communism. But with terrorism it's really a cross-edge, global problem. Put it this way, we were used to recruiting foreign spies at embassy parties, but terrorists don't hang out at strange embassy parties.

The rules of date take inverse?
Aye. Terrorism is admittedly the hardest target for the agency because those involved are doing it for some vast overarching ideological purpose. In contrast, when I worked in counter-narcotics, we knew they were in it for the money, information technology's very different.

How did the strategy change?
We had to change the way nosotros worked in intelligence gathering. Nosotros started our information collection—telemetry, SIGINT—in the same way, but, on the homo side [HUMINT] we had to practise what we call a "daisy chain," working backward and around to get to the source.

For case, if I heard that you lot might be a terrorist, I'd start looking for people in your network that we could infiltrate—in that location's e'er a wife, a messenger, someone 1 stride removed. That'southward our source and we kickoff from there. Only it's much more complicated because you're now analyzing the reliability of multiple sources in order to go information on the target, while we go along to monitor anybody concerned.

Can y'all give usa a case example?
I tin't go into details on my last [CIA] instance, only it concerned a terrorist cell and, through the daisy chain we constructed, nosotros were able to empathize how they were recruiting, what their methods were and when they were probable to carry out the set on, and in what class it would take. In the end, we were able to plow all the intel over to the armed services, in this example, who could make the decisions on what to do next. Information technology was painstaking, operational work.

Was it ultimately a success?
Aye, it was.

Let's cut to what you're doing today at CTC International Group. Tin yous explain how y'all continue to use intelligence and the skills you learned in the CIA?
Nosotros do a lot of investigation and intelligence, by and large for corporate clients who are setting upward in foreign countries, or suspect fraud is taking place; the amount of coin that is stolen from companies internally is horrifying. Sometimes nosotros work for security officers who recognize that their budgets accept been slashed so they need to outsource intelligence gathering. We also do some surveillance work, but that's not my favorite, to be honest. Our job slate is very varied. Every day...is different. I beloved it.

Can you talk about a example you lot're working on now?
We're looking into a pipeline fraud in Kazakhstan and also investigating potential espionage confronting a corporate customer in China who is involved in a non-compete battle. We've got GPS monitoring in the suspect'south car—because it'southward a company automobile—but that won't tell you who he's coming together, what he's doing, or why. So we're constructing a daisy chain and will recruit sources from there or do a "bump" in a bar.

A "crash-land in a bar"?
We recruit someone to go the suspect talking as if they, literally, merely "bumped into them at a bar." It's astonishing what people volition say to strangers.

That'due south the premise behind journalism, likewise.
[Laughs] So I've heard.

Accept you always been approached by Hollywood to propose on spy tales? I've interviewed Tom Cruise'south military adviser and Jason Matthews, former CIA station primary who wrote Scarlet Sparrow.
I have not, as all the same. Initially, when Homeland came out, a friend said someone wanted to talk to me, but zilch came of it in the end. To be honest it's difficult for intelligence officers to go comfortable with that level of self-promotion.

What are your favorite Hollywood movies or Television set series featuring the intelligence services?
Well, my absolute favorite was Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. I especially loved the scene with the umbrellas. All of the movies and Television set serial I've seen practise a actually good job of carrying the level of danger and intrigue we had to contend with. CIA intelligence officers are super smart, nimble, and creative, and I recollect they get that profile totally right.

Just what do they get wrong?
I understand they take to portray the CIA officer in action, because people sitting around a table combing through information would be irksome. But the big thing they go wrong is thinking CIA officers are spies; we're not. Nosotros recruit spies to give united states information. For example, I wasn't sneaking into the Minister of Defense'southward office to gain admission to a locked drawer. I had recruited someone who had admission to that information and my task was to convince them that they desire to give it to the CIA. Or, if we were running a "simulated flags" op, whomever we said we were. Information technology makes our hair stand upward when they call us spies.

So Jack Ryan suddenly getting upward from his desk and landing in Syria, armed and fix to go, is a fiction too far for y'all?
Pretty much, yes. Once an intelligence officer has gathered intel, someone else goes in. In the case of the Bin Laden raid, that was the Navy Seals. At the Bay of Pigs, it was mercenaries.

Were you e'er armed?
Rarely. If I wanted to get my gun out of the embassy condom during my embrace chore, I had to become upward the concatenation of command and send a cable to HQ.

You lot had a encompass chore at an embassy?
Yes, most intelligence officers take cover jobs, ofttimes consular related, at embassies in the country where they're posted. You work at that place during the solar day and recruit spies at night.

I haven't seen enough of the Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series to know if this happens, so this isn't a spoiler. Only, in Hollywood/Television, intelligence officers often "go rogue."
[Sighs] Yeah, Hollywood loves the idea of rogue agents just it'south rare. Going rogue is a treasonable offense and yous'd face criminal prosecutions, without a doubt. Within the CIA there's a tightly enforced, non-negotiable, chain of command. In real life, they don't go the James Bond handling with a slap on the wrist and a holiday in Bali. But having said that, I do savour watching the intelligence profession as portrayed on screen.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/amazon-prime-video/29070/how-does-amazons-jack-ryan-compare-to-real-life-at-the-cia

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