Agencies like the CIA and MI6 are tasked with collecting and processing data deemed

potentially vital to their respective countries' national interests, and then in an ideal

world, making sure those who need to know this information to inform their decisions

and plans know it.

In order to do this, they need people on the ground, so to speak.

So how do these agencies actually recruit those who work for them, both domestically

and in more clandestine roles abroad?

To begin with, perhaps the most colourful way such agencies have ever recruited was found

with legendary Spiremaster Captain Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, one of the founders of the

equally legendary MI6, originally called the Secret Service Bureau. As a fun side fact, Captain

Coming was the partial inspiration behind the eccentric quartermaster M in the James Bond series.

And to say Captain Cummins was himself eccentric, well, that's a bit of an understatement.

On this note, in the beginning, MI6 was less James Bond and more a sort of Monty Python caricature of spying, bumbling buffoonery,

and gathering false intelligence and presenting it as fact, became a staple of MI6's early

dates. For example, prior to World War I, Cummings' foremost weapons expert disappeared for a time

while abroad. Perhaps captured by some foreign power? Layne low because of imminent threat of

capture? No, no, the agent couldn't find anyone who could give him directions in English,

and channeling his inner Marcus Brody ultimately became thoroughly lost in the foreign country.

On another occasion, Captain Cumming was reportedly fooled by a phony document stating that

German spies had extra rows of teeth.

He also once spent a considerable answer for the agency's

scant resources searching Britain for a hidden cache of German weapons that simply did not exist.

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