18 Things You Learn About The CIA From Watching Spy Movies
There seems to be a department of people who know how to zoom in and enhance photos and surveillance footage to an impossible degree of clarity.
By 
Katie Mather
1. There’s always a hacker with a headset who types nonsense on his computer and then says “I’m in.”
2. There seems to be a department of people who know how to zoom in and enhance photos and surveillance footage to an impossible degree of clarity.
3. There are always like 2-3 guys that wear glasses and carry around clipboards. Their actual job description is unknown.
4. One guy just does a bunch of explosion experiments in an underground, soundproof room somewhere.
5. There’s a HBIC who is super serious and austere and her office is made entirely out of glass.
6. There is a room just filled with people on computers. At least once a day, someone from this room is chosen to grab their boss and say the line: “you’re gonna want to see this.”
7. Everyone has access to hologram technology.
8. Protocols or laws don’t really apply to the agents in the field—as long as he or she is conventionally attractive and in possession of a high-speed luxury car.
9. Like, it’s totally cool to just grab a random stranger and temporarily steal their identity in order to go undercover in a moment’s notice.
10. There is always a double agent. It’s always the guy who has a pretty prominent role but you don’t really think much about until it’s revealed that someone is leaking government secrets. Kinda a dick move.
11. There are literally a bazillion black-tie events happening all the time that require FBI spies to infiltrate in sexy clothing so that it’s higher stakes when they have to maneuver around the hidden lasers.
12. The CIA has the capability to make hundreds of self-destructing messages.
13. It’s weirdly ok and approved for them to do experiments on people. It’s also weird that they keep doing them because everyone they experiment on seems to end up escaping and becoming a threat.
14. There is always an ominous black van.
15. Every spy organization in the world has a super hot lady spy who eventually has to tell the CIA agent dealing with her “I never told you my name.”
16. There’s always a fucking mole.
17. A lot of missions require CIA agents to run through busy train station platforms.
18. Agents often have a difficult time recognizing that the person in the driver’s seat of their car is not their usual driver, until it’s too late. 
