Michael Westen appears to be superhuman, combining the skill-sets of a mater criminal, a police detective, and a special forces soldier.
Are spies like that in real life?
There are all sorts of spies, ranging from dudes who sit in an office and clip newspaper stories (in Russian, or whatever) to undercover foreign based agents. They do have to be pretty good at a lot of things to survive. But TV shows like Burn Notice (which has been off the air for a while, right?) of course exaggerate. Not as much as films do, of course.
Almost invariably not, for a bunch of reasons. There are a very small number of operatives in certain 3 letter agencies who blur the lines a little between special forces and intelligence collection. Most of the time when those skills are called for, actual special forces are used. The vast majority of people in the intelligence community are analysts and never do field work. Most of those who do field work handle assets, which are usully adversaries who are working for us.
Also, “spies” is what we call adversaries working against us. And what our adversaries call our assets.
Unless you are one of the She-Spies, of course.
They wish.