(Cumming apparently found the reactions he sometimes got from doing this so amusing that he reportedly also used to do it during regular state meetings and events.) If they kept their composure, he’d reveal the true nature of the interview. (Akin to the old “two for flinching tactic”…) The flinchers clearly weren’t secret agent material. If the person flinched even a little, the interview was over and the individual was asked to leave. With the process moving along at a slothful and monotone pace, in true Monty Python-skit fashion, without warning, he’d suddenly violently stab himself in his covered wooden leg mid-conversation. In any event, Cumming would interview potential agents pretending he worked for a more mundane facet of the government. After the accident, Cumming mostly got around with the aid of a wooden leg and a sword (hidden inside of a cane) At other times, he’d say he lost it in a fight with a wild animal. While hospital reports indicate that his leg was amputated the day after the accident, Cumming himself liked to claim that he cut it off himself with a pen-knife in order to be able to get to his dying son. You see, in 1914 Cumming lost his leg during a traffic collision in France which tragically claimed the life of his son. Keeping with the Monty Python-esk theme, in short, a key facet of the selection process was the gold monocled director stabbing himself in the leg… When potential new agents were identified, Captain Cumming had a novel way of interviewing them without giving away that he worked for a shadowy government agency. Going back to recruitment, as you might imagine, the agency’s very existence in its early days being a complete secret publicly made it hard to get really any applicants. All Cumming did was have it translated from German to English this report was hailed as a major victory for the fledgling British intelligence agency. Apparently none of his superiors realized that all the information was publicly available at the time. One notable “victory” Captain Cumming achieved in these early days was a comprehensive file he compiled on Zeppelins. 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 amount of the Agency’s scant resources searching Britain for a hidden cache of German weapons that simply didn’t exist. Perhaps captured by some foreign power? Laying low because of imminent threat of capture? Nope- 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. For example, prior to World War 1, Cumming’s foremost weapon’s expert disappeared for a time while abroad. 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 days. And to say Captain Cumming was himself eccentric, well, this is an understatement. As a fun side fact, Captain Cumming was the partial inspiration for the eccentric quartermaster M in the James Bond series. To begin with, perhaps the most colorful way such agencies have ever recruited was found with legendary spymaster Captain Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, one of the founders of the equally legendary MI6, originally called the Secret Service Bureau. So how do these agencies actually recruit those who work for them both domestically and in more clandestine roles abroad? In order to do this, they need people on the ground, so to speak. Agencies like the CIA and MI6 are tasked with collecting and processing data deemed potentially vital to their respective counties’ 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.
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