Elitism, education, and high school drop outs

[FarCenter]

6. The psychology of secret agents is quite interesting --

I'm reading "The Art of Betrayal -- The Secret History of MI6".

What made someone like Penkovsky take such crazy risks? The unbalanced nature of such spies, the CIA officer argued, was reflected in his own experince of agents.

All of them have been lonely people .. [who] have manifested some serious behaiour problem - such as alcoholism, satyriasis, morbid depression, a psychopathic pattern of one type or another, an evasion of adult responsibility... It is only mild hyperbole to say that no one can consider himself a Soviet operation officer until he has gon through the sordid experience of holding his Soviet 'friend's' head while he vomits five days of drinking into the sink.

A retire MI6 man agrees. 'Most agents wer unattractive people. Half were nasty characters who you wouldn't want to spend much time with. It was a very strange relationship when you meet them in some woods and he hands you som Minox and begins telling you about his life'.

"Normal people aren't Traitors, Dick White once declared.

Dick White rose to become head of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service.