Intel gathering

From Hooking Up To Honey Trapping: What It’s Really Like To Date As A CIA Operative

Emily Brandwin was a theater major living in her childhood bedroom in St. Louis, Missouri, when her life sharply veered toward the extraordinary. At the urging of her "spy nut" of a mother, Brandwin applied for a mysterious posting at the CIA — and got it. After a brief stint in the disguise department of the CIA (where her theater major came in handy), Brandwin became an operations officer, the official term for the job more commonly known as “spy."

Like Justin Theroux's character in The Spy Who Dumped Me, out Friday, August 3, Brandwin and her fellow operation officers hid their identities from their loved ones outside of the agency. But unlike Theroux, they wouldn't involve their significant others in European shootouts. “That would never happen,” Brandwin said, laughing. “If that happened, the American spy would get thrown into prison and sent back to the U.S., where they’d lose their job — or work in the basement of the CIA on the Canada branch.”