I was wondering through the forum and saw this post and I have thought about the same thing. What would spies like Kelly and Scotty do as intelligence agents in our current time?
Part of what made I Spy so fun with the other spy shows is that is had the allure of credibility. Real spy work is dull. But this was set at the Cold War where propaganda ploys were considered important ans stealing secrets.
In reality most of the spies good and bad were simply being in a position to pass information through dead drops and such. Most of the secrets stolen have always been from the US.
Hanson in FBI counterintelligence was a perfect spy. He past all the polygraphs and kept a steady stream of information to the Soviets and Russians. He sid it for the money but really more for the thrill of getting one over his coworkers and winning. It was the challenge that he liked.
We never had the spies like Kelly and Scotty traveling the world. Really most are like a spy who was a dockworker. A person in a menial job that tells of ship movements.
There are people who still do that though they may not be government agents. Trying to figure out the Russian Navy and army movements to the Georgia conflict were done by a bunch of reporters and amateurs who just had a network of sources and putting the pieces together.
The Russian invasion of Georgia was a surprise in that it happened on the first day of the Olympics but the actual intent was figured out about 4 months before and was foretold.
I know that the American Embassy in the USSR was riddled with taps and that we had to abandon the new building because it was so compromised. My father told me about the globe that was given to US Ambassador and was in his office that has a Russian bug.
The best I was told about was the twig that was bug in the garden of the Chinese Embassy used to gather intelligence.
Real spies never carried guns and shot people. That would get you known and arrested fast.
The current humint are in Pakistan giving locations for the Predators to hit the Taliban. They are locals. Americans tend to stand out.
I heard of one operation about 2 years back at the Khyber Pass where a set up for the supplies trucks to Afghanistan was set for ambush and then ambush in return and that was an intelligence win.
The agents that were in Afghanistan after 9/11 were set up with a donkey, horse or camel, laptop, cash and a sat phone. They made the deals with the local warlords to fight against the Taliban and it worked mostly.
I heard that in Afghanistan the agents trying to get cooperation have to figure what the tribal leaders really want. Most tribal leaders want things that are not easily seen as American.
GPS units were hot. Batteries are a hot item for trade.
Most troops movements are detected with satellites with verification from locals on the ground that call it in or use email.
The Church committee destroyed the humint ability of the CIA and we have used more fancy money schemes at Treasury to disrupt networks and detect AQ operations.
Kelly and Scotty may work in Hong Kong to disrupt the Chinese intergration. They may work in Azerbaijan to get the pipeline deals for the US and mess up the Russian deals.
I could see them setting up an embarassing sting on the Russian to screw up their image in the Caucasus states.
Working with Israeli agents to run agents in Iran and Counter Intelligence by setting up stings passing bad programming that screws uo the missile launches. Making sure that hardware that allows US control it or screws up a launch. I know that we had many software with back doors that were taken by the Russians. Regrettably that software was only used to run Russian subways.
The current CIA is in hunker down mode and the field is keeping quiet. They have to be to be safe from political ill winds from the US and problems against our enemies.