How are mental training exercises conducted?
One of the things that the CIA instructors try to do at the farm is to put as much pressure as humanly possible on the trainees. We all hated it at that time, but we came to appreciate that later. It’s almost like being hazed for a fraternity or sorority. They try to ensure that you have as little sleep as possible, that you’re working 24/7. The reasoning behind this is that the agency wants to see what you can handle when you are state side and what you can handle when training, because this will be an indication of what you can handle when you’re overseas. An example is, during our paramilitary training, they made a fake prison camp situation where we weren’t tortured, but we were really put under a tremendous deal of stress. The point of that was to see who would break and who wouldn’t break. It was a gruelling exercise and an emotionally exhausting exercise, but afterwards we all felt good about it because we were able to see what it would actually be like when we were overseas and
