The Agency

The way a Case Officer turns out an Agent ( or Informer or Confidential Informant), is through the use of the acronym MICE, which stands for:

• Money
• Ideology
• Compromise (aka Blackmail)
• Ego

During dialog from Martian in a discussion with Dr. Blake, the acronym "OBE" is incorrectly explained as "Overtaken By Events". In US Government agencies, including those in the Intelligence Community and Department Of Defense, the correct/official explanation of the acronym "OBE" is "Overcome By Events".

The opening credits presents the characters and scenes from the series interspersed with mirror panes. The former Director of Counterintelligence at the CIA, James Jesus Angleton, also known as the "poet-spy", described the Intelligence game as the "Wilderness of Mirrors", which was a phrase borrowed from a poem by T.S. Eliot called Gerontion (The title is Greek for "little old man," and the poem is an interior monologue relating the opinions and impressions of an elderly man, which describes Europe after World War I through the eyes of a man who has lived most of his life in the 19th century). In the world of Intelligence, in the the search for truth, it is hard to tell the difference between reality and a reflection thereof, an illusion if you will, as if one were in a "Hall of Mirrors".

Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Cher/Keira Knightley/Michael Fassbender/Josh Brolin/Jalen Ngonda (2024)