Xavier Crettiez, a university lecturer, acknowledges that many of his pupils’ actual names are unknown to him. Although Prof. Crettiez’s work is far from typical, this is a very unique situation in the academic world. Instead, he assists in the training of French spies. When intelligence agents are sent on the course, I seldom know their backgrounds, and I don’t think the names they give me are real nonetheless,” he says.
The Sciences Po Saint-Germain campus in the suburbs of Paris seems like an excellent place to set up a spy school. It has a very secretive atmosphere, with enormous, forbidding metal gates and bustling, boring highways encircling dour, even gloomy-looking early 20th-century buildings.
It was created by the university in collaboration with the French secret services’ training division, the Academie du Renseignement. Ten years ago, French authorities made a request that led to this. The government launched a massive recruitment campaign within the French intelligence services following the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015.
It requested that Sciences Po, one of the top colleges in France, develop a new course to train aspiring spies as well as give existing operatives ongoing training. Big French businesses were also quick to express interest in enrolling their security personnel in the program and hiring a large number of the younger graduates.
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