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The Recruit has been winning plaudits and enthralling viewers on Netflix, with its knotty tangle of international espionage, high-octane action, and witty legal drama, but viewers may not be aware that the narrative is loosely based on the experiences of one of the show’s producers, Adam Ciralsky. Much like the show’s protagonist, Ciralsky was recruited as a rookie lawyer by the CIA, and much of The Recruit’s drama stems from Adam’s experiences as a newcomer to an institution driven by suspicion and paranoia, and as a lawyer trying to prevent - or justify - state actions that often go beyond the bounds of international law. As well as being hugely entertaining, the insights of this Secret Superhero provide a rare glimpse behind the scenes of the Agency.

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THE ORIGINAL RECRUIT

Adam was born in 1971, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before moving to Washington D.C. to study international affairs, and then a law degree in Illinois. While studying in Washington he began working for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, helping to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery. In his last year of law school,, he was recruited by the CIA to join its Legal Honors Program, an initiative that brings “superior entry-level attorneys” into the Agency, and trains them up for the highly specialised legal challenges that are posed by the CIA’s work. 

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That experience of being a new recruit in an unfamiliar institution is one that has clearly stayed with Ciralsky, as it is also the overarching concept of The Recruit, which pitches Owen Hendricks - a fresh-faced lawyer who’s just joined the Agency, played by Noah Centineo  - into a dizzying web of intrigue. Within moments of settling in behind his desk, Hendricks finds himself tasked with the seemingly mundane job of reviewing threats made against the Agency by the general public; letters written in red ink, promising to reveal state secrets unless certain demands are met. Unfortunately for Owen, in amongst the fantasists he discovers a very real threat from a former CIA asset, and his enthusiasm for espionage quickly dissipates as he becomes a pawn in the gambits of the many players in this farrago, all of whom seem to know far more about what’s happening than he does. 

OFFICE POLITICS

The threat to leak state secrets - a blackmail variant known in the trade as graymail - is not one that most of us have professional experience of, but many of The Recruit’s themes are more universal. Owen Hendricks isn’t just trying to navigate a world of hostile spies, assets and assassins, but also a paranoid workplace filled with cliques, gossip, office romances and mundane, everyday treachery. As Ciralsky has told interviewers: “People may not know what it’s like to work for the CIA, they do know exactly what it’s like to go into that first job and feel like you’re in over your head, you don’t understand the office politics.”

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Adam understands the office politics of the CIA very well. The Recruit is fiction, but it has been both carefully researched, and heavily informed by Adam’s own experiences in the Agency. Ciralsky was a rising star who was honored with an Exceptional Performance Award by former CIA Director George Tenet, but his career at the agency ran into trouble soon after he was recruited. He had been scheduled for a rotation at the National Security Council, but learned it  had been blocked internally by top Agency officials who questioned his loyalty because of “Jewish roots.” Ciralsky sued for discrimination, which sparked a lengthy legal battle that even saw Director Tenet called to provide videotaped testimony, an extremely rare turn of events in CIA history. Ultimately the matter was resolved, and Ciralsky withdrew the case. He described his recent visit to CIA Headquarters – in connection with The Recruit – as a “homecoming,” telling an interviewer, “It was that weird feeling of life imitating art imitating life. It had all the trappings of the CIA that I remember, but it’s a totally different institution.”

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AWARD-WINNING JOURNALISM

In 2000, Adam left the CIA for CBS where he was hired by the legendary newsmagazine 60 Minutes. His first story won a Peabody Award, and he received three Emmy nominations over the next five years. He then transferred to NBC News, where he won his first Emmy for his coverage of the 2006 Lebanon war, and two further Emmys for exposing Pentagon procurement scandals. In more recent years he’s moved into print journalism, conducting a wide variety of investigations for Vanity Fair on subjects as a diverse as fabulists in the fields of finance and medicine, diverse as US military procurement, Peter Thiel’s involvement with national security issues, and the downfall of Harvey Weinstein. 

He has also set up a production company, P3 Media, through which he has conducted much of his journalistic work, and is now branching out into fictional entertainment, but with The Recruit he’s been careful to stick to familiar subject matters. Owen Hendricks’ challenges in doing the CIA’s clandestine work while also trying to stay on the right side of the law, are all but impossible, and those challenges are ones that Ciralsky has plenty of experience of and knows make for a fascinating narrative. As he told interviewers:  “As a lawyer, your job is obviously to make sure that people are compliant with the law. At the CIA, you work for an organization that, by its very charter, is breaking the law in every country in which it operates. And what you’re trying to do in the course of doing that [is ensure that] they’re adhering or abiding by U.S. law”. That tension underpins much of the narrative of The Recruit, and helps elevate it above the level of the average spy procedural. It’s not just a sharply written and entertaining yarn, but one that carries an unusually authentic tone that roots the fight scenes and car chases in something much more believable, and that’s largely down to the experience and guidance of this Secret Superhero.