![\"Moments](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/05\/190514_Find_The_Mole_9809-1.jpg\")
<\/a>In her Short Term course on intelligence and national security, Elly Rostoum \u201907 walks students through a \u201cfind the mole\u201d simulation, in which they have to find out which fictional MI6 agent is leaking information to a foreign government. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
Rostoum, currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Boston, majored in politics at Bates and worked in management consulting in the oil and gas sector before serving on the National Security Council at the White House.<\/p>\n
The Short Term course includes learning about world geography, transforming disparate data into insights you can act on, and a series of simulations ranging from a doomsday planning scenario to today\u2019s mole hunt.<\/p>\n
It’s all very hands-on, said Arianna Fano \u201919 of Lincolnshire, Ill., a politics major. \u201cWe get to do lots of different things we wouldn\u2019t normally get to do during the school year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Fano was perhaps the best able to think like a mole, having been one herself. At the beginning of the term, she found a note in her bag telling her to figure out the hometown of one of her classmates; as a sort of pre-simulation mole hunt, her classmates had to guess who was the spy among them.<\/p>\n
(Because Fano could simply look up her classmate’s hometown on a student directory and act natural otherwise, she stayed well-hidden.)<\/p>\n
The instructional note was anonymous, so Fano had to verify that it was indeed from Rostoum. \u201cI had to match the handwriting on the note to the handwriting she was writing on the board,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I got to embody at least a little bit of what a spy does just in this small exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, she and her classmates had a much bigger exercise ahead of them. Rostoum handed out pictures and biographical profiles of (entirely fictional) MI6 agents and their spouses, the suspects\u2019 phone records and purchase receipts, and financial irregularities that the agency flagged.<\/p>\n
In addition to identifying the mole, the students had to discern how the mole gathered information and use the documents to construct a narrative. Rostoum divided the students into three groups \u2014 such separations are common in intelligence work in order to avoid mutually reinforcing similar ideas, she said.<\/p>\n
Settled in different rooms in Hathorn Hall, the students got to work.<\/p>\n
One group quickly zeroed in on \u201cZubida,\u201d a British-born schoolteacher pictured wearing a niqab. She was married to \u201cJohn,\u201d the head of the MI6 Syria desk. Every few weeks, she\u2019d get a call from an unknown number; the next day, she would go to a particular London hotel.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Elly Rostoum \u201807 helps a group of students think through their mole hunt. What patterns could they see in phone records? In purchase receipts? (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
The husband, John, had recently been flagged for opening lines of credit without reporting them to MI6. The purchases? Thousands of dollars of lingerie, jewelry, vintage cars, and expensive boarding schools. Had Zubida opened credit cards in John\u2019s name without telling him?<\/p>\n
A student scanned the taxi receipts of \u201cArchie,\u201d John\u2019s boss at MI6. He, it appeared, was going to the same hotel as Zubida on the same days. An affair?<\/p>\n
Archie\u2019s movements were unusual in other ways. One day he took a cab ride to a district of government buildings that, based on the distance traveled, shouldn\u2019t have cost the $50 he paid for it. Then, according to GIS data, he went to another hotel that Zubida also frequented and bought two Scotches there.<\/p>\n
Suspicious, all. But why, the group wondered, would Zubida pass along state secrets? How would she even know them? Was she a conservative Muslim, since she wore a niqab?<\/p>\n
And what about information they hadn\u2019t yet considered: several hours-long phone calls to Zubida from Syria, other calls from European and Middle Eastern countries, a police report that suggested spousal abuse?<\/p>\n
As theories swirled, Rostoum circulated among the groups, dropping hints. Think about why Zubida\u2019s \u201cunknown\u201d phone calls lasted less than a minute, she told the first group. And focus on the receipts: taxi rides, expensive Scotch.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Though the Bates students\u2019 mole hunt was a pared-down version of similar simulations in graduate-level courses, they still had to sift through a mountain of phone records, pictures, bios, receipts, and satellite images. (Theophil Syslo\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
The records the students were given might seem overwhelming, Rostoum said, but it was a pared-down version of what you might find in a graduate-school simulation: months of phone records, reams of receipts, sifted through over the course of a semester.<\/p>\n
The class period wound down; the group had a possible narrative but not a good idea of who the mole was. They got their information together just as their classmates reentered.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas it hard?\u201d Rostoum asked the class. They nodded. \u201cWas it confusing? Do you have a greater appreciation for the work intelligence officers do?\u201d They did.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon’t fall too much into the stereotypes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The first group\u2019s best guess: John was the mole, using Zubida to pump information from his boss, Archie, through an affair, and passing on the information to \u2014 Syria? Russia?<\/p>\n
The second group inferred that Archie was the mole. John was clearly abusing Zubida, so out of revenge she passed information to Archie from John; Archie and Zubida were possibly planning to frame John.<\/p>\n
The third group said Zubida and Archie were having an affair, but not of the heart. Zubida, the niqab-wearing schoolteacher wife of a secret agent, was moonlighting as a high-end escort without her husband\u2019s knowledge. Archie was one of her clients.<\/p>\n