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How Does the CIA Recruit Russian Spies?

Two years ago, the Agency tried a new approach. Is it working?

A seal inside the CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia. File photo from 3/3/2005. (Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images)

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING — As any good intelligence officer will tell you, recruiting spies is a tough business. Not only do you have to identify - and then attempt to recruit - people who have access to information you want, but you sometimes have to do it at great personal risk to the undercover officer who accepts the mission. Russia is a particularly hard target because of its reputation for harassing CIA and Embassy personnel (often with teams of professionals they assign to follow their every move). You see the problem. 

That may be one of the reasons why two years ago, enthusiasm began bubbling up inside CIA headquarters over a tech-savvy idea to supplement traditional operations inside Russia that – if successful – could provide a new way to recruit spies - sometimes without having to set foot in the country.  

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