Inside the CIA (31 page)

The introduction to the Career Training Program takes place several times a year in Washington and other cities. In Washington, the session is held in the Ames Building at 1820 North Fort Meyer Drive in Rosslyn, Virginia. There is no sign on the building, and visitors must have an appointment to get in. CIA guards check identification.

After receiving their visitor’s badges, candidates go to a gray-carpeted room on the first floor at the rear of the building. Beige curtains cover the floor-length windows. School desks, in rows of six across, fill the room. The applicants, thirty-nine in this case, sit expectantly at the desks, most appearing nervous as they clutch the yellow notebooks they have been given.

Serious, well-groomed, and well-dressed, the applicants could all pass for prep-school students. Most of them are in their early twenties, although a few are as old as thirty. The men wear blue suits with white shirts. For the most part, the women also wear conservative suits. A third of the class is women, and there is one black man. This is a homogeneous group, intent on projecting a wholesome image.

Some 22 percent of the agency’s new hires are minorities, according to Eugene J. Horan, the CIA’s director of employment. Overall, 15 percent of the CIA’s employees are minorities and 44 percent are women.
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Bob, wearing a gray suit, a white shirt, and paisley tie, introduces himself. He is from the Directorate of Administration, the side of the CIA that supports the rest of the agency by providing supplies, security, computers, and other necessities.

“The agency has four directorates,” Bob says. “The Directorate of Operations tries to recruit people. It’s a little like a marketing job.”
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The applicants are listening intently. Most of them have no idea what spying is all about, their conceptions shaped by movies and novels.

“The first thing a case officer has to do is answer a question,” he says. “Someone wants to know how much wheat the Soviets produced. It starts with a collection requirement.”

The example is not particularly apt. In the Soviet Union, CIA officers are usually after more sensitive classified material than harvesting techniques. It is left to State or Agriculture Department employees to obtain this sort of detail.

Bob says most case officers or operations officers—spies who are staff members of an intelligence organization—work under cover, pretending to work for another agency of the U.S. government. They may meet potential sources of information at diplomatic receptions, for example.

“You start tasking with information collection. ‘I need to know about your harvesting techniques.’ You use tradecraft, microfilm. You watch for surveillance,” he says. “It’s received in Washington. It goes to the policymakers. It’s a continuing cycle.

“It’s not a nine-to-five job,” Bob says. “Mostly they do agency work evenings and weekends. So it’s a very strenuous career, but a very rewarding one.”

Bob says the Directorate of Science and Technology determines military capabilities through satellites, radar, and other sensors. The Directorate of Intelligence analyzes information collected by the other directorates.

“The analysts have to be extremely careful they do not cross into policymaking,” he says. “You have to have a thick skin to be an analyst. The paper comes back with red marks on it.”

Then there is the Directorate of Administration.

“That’s my directorate,” he says. “It arranges cars, ships air freight for the DO [Directorate of Operations]. We make sure they get their pencils. We arrange S and T [Science and Technology] contracts.”

Bob introduces Cecil, a black man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a blue suit. He ticks off the requirements to join the Career Training Program: applicants must be U.S. citizens, twenty-one to thirty-five years old, and have a college grade point average of 3.0 or better.

“However, other circumstances like supporting yourself are
taken into consideration,” he says. “Exceptional oral and written communication skills are needed. A track record in extracurricular activities. A stable work record. Military experience is good.

“We look for brains, smarts. Charisma is always good. We want impeccable character and integrity. You are asking people to be spies—to commit espionage. At the same time, we expect you to obey U.S. laws.”

The Career Training Program takes a year, Cecil says, including internships of eight to ten weeks in two or three of the directorates.

“Here is a profile of a CT,” he says. “They come from all over the country, average age is twenty-seven. Forty percent are female, sixty percent male. One-half have advanced degrees, two-thirds have traveled overseas, twenty percent have good foreign-language skills, fifteen percent are from the military.

“As for salary, I’m sure most of you are interested in that. Or are you that patriotic that you don’t care?” Cecil asks rhetorically. A few applicants chuckle.

“You start as a GS-8, step 5. It starts at $26,000,” he says. Foreign languages, military experience, and/or living overseas for an extended period qualify a new employee for a higher salary.

“Any questions?”

An intense young man asks about the organizational chart in a CIA brochure distributed when they arrived. He observes that no detail is shown for the Directorate of Operations.

Cecil explains that the organization of the clandestine side of the agency is classified.

“Is training nine to five?” someone asks.

“You have a little night hiking,” Cecil says with a laugh, referring to paramilitary training.

It is now nine-fifty
A.M
., and Cecil introduces the next speaker, Shirley, from the Directorate of Operations. Shirley is pregnant and wears a gray maternity dress and polka-dot blouse. She has short, graying hair.

Whatever preconceptions the applicants have had about
what spies look like, Shirley probably does not resemble any of them.

“I have been in the CIA eighteen years,” Shirley says. “We like to think we recruit responsible people. We are the clandestine service. We recruit human sources.”

If you are going to be a spy, she says, “you have to be certain how you feel on the moral issue.”

She does not spell this out, but the issue is of more than passing concern. To be a spy, a CIA officer must spend much of his or her life living a lie, pretending to be someone he or she is not, persuading others to turn against their own countries to commit espionage and become traitors. Not a job for everyone.

Shirley says another part of working as a spy is carrying out covert action.

“Covert action is undertaken when diplomacy doesn’t work,” she says. “It’s designed to conceal the hand of the U.S.

“We put a high premium on social skills. You have to write well—to answer the standard journalistic questions of who, why, where, what, when, how. It makes a difference.

“You are not going to get recognition,” she warns. “You will not be in the newspapers. You have to have a passion for anonymity. Otherwise there are other kinds of careers—military or what have you, for you.”

She does not say so, but the State Department is usually cited by CIA officers as the place where those who seek glory should go—and good riddance.

Working as a spy “can be a lot of fun,” she says. She catches herself. “Maybe I shouldn’t use that word.” She quotes an introduction written by former CIA director William Colby to a book about how to apply to the CIA.

“Colby said that looking back over twenty-five years, he had good times. We want people who want to do something for their country. . . . You have to have a strong desire to do something for the security of the U.S.”

“Is your spouse required to be a DO [Directorate of Operations] officer as well?” an applicant asks.

“Absolutely not,” Shirley says.

In the old days, she says, the CIA showed new employees a training film depicting a wife chastising herself for asking her CIA husband where he was going. This was silly, she says. CIA employees can give their spouses a general idea of what they are doing or where they are going without revealing “sources and methods,” the mantra of security-conscious CIA employees.

On the other hand, “you really ought to make sure your spouse does not have a jealous bone in his or her body.”

“Is it extremely dangerous? Let’s say you try to recruit the wrong person,” an applicant asks.

Shirley says there is a distinction between CIA officers, who generally operate under official government cover and therefore have diplomatic immunity, and the foreign agents they recruit to give them information.

“If you are going to pitch a Cuban, you might wait until the end of your tour [in a country],” she says. But a recruited agent does not have diplomatic immunity. “Your agent may be hanged. You try not to pitch someone unless he is going to say yes.”

“Do you recruit a friend?”

“Yes,” she says.

“What if I look American?” someone asks.

“You can have a disguise. You can blend in. You don’t have to swagger.”

What about paramilitary operations?

“We place a low priority on paramilitary,” she says. “We are not really recruiting paramilitary [personnel].”

“What if your mother or father is foreign?”

“That’s America,” Shirley says. “It’s a big melting pot. We’ll check them out. We give polygraphs.”

Now Mark from the Directorate of Science and Technology takes over.

“Is there anyone who is not familiar with James Bond?” he asks.

Mark says Q hands devices to the fictional spy so he can do his job—install bugs in a meeting room, for example, or put on disguises.

“I could change my appearance to a Michael Jackson look,” says Mark, who is black.

Mark lists the components of his directorate—the Office of SIGINT Operations, which deploys sensors and intercepts communications; the Office of Technical Service, which develops spy equipment; the Office of Special Projects, which determines locations of nuclear devices and facilities and does other special collection of intelligence; the National Photographic Interpretation Center, which analyzes satellite photos; and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which transcribes and translates foreign broadcasts.

The SR-71 Blackbird, a follow-on to the U-2 reconnaissance plane that flies more than three times the speed of sound, is an example of the work of his directorate, Mark says. The plane is no longer in use, supplanted by spy satellites.

Mark introduces Christina from the Directorate of Intelligence. Christina wears a forest-green suit. Her graying hair is swept back. She refers to notes written on white index cards.

“I work in Soviet analysis,” she says, peering over her reading glasses. “We have the task of taking information, analyzing it, and addressing national security problems and bringing them to the policymakers.

“We take considerable pride in doing unbiased analysis—to say it the way we see it. We take all source information and write products and we give briefings. There is a premium on getting information current and in an easily readable form.

“Every day,” she says, “we provide briefings to the president, vice president, cabinet members.

“There are six offices on areas of the world—Soviet/East Europe, Europe, Near East, East Asia, Africa, Latin America. There are functional offices—economic, technical, geographic, nuclear weapons, leadership analysis on players.

“We are looking for people with strong analytical skills—research skills, the ability to think through problems, and people with good judgment.

“You are working with a team of smart people. There is high esprit. It is tough, hard work. Short deadlines cause stress, tensions. It is very fast paced and competitive.”

“It seems to me it would be impossible to work on the Soviet economy without going there,” an applicant says.

“We have an embassy there. We read the papers and reports here. We have clandestine collection. A lot of Soviet economists now come here. We don’t rule out travel,” she says.

It is eleven-fifty
A.M
., and Bob draws the meeting to a close. Each individual who is still interested will be interviewed separately. At the end of the interview, those applicants who are right for the agency will be handed an application.

A look of shock passes over some of the faces.

“If we don’t receive an application, we’re not being considered for employment?” an applicant asks.

“Right,” Bob says.

The application is thirty-four pages long, Bob says. But not to worry—some of the pages contain instructions or certifications. The application asks for a listing of residences for the past fifteen years, employment history back to age seventeen, brothers’ and sisters’ employers. Even birth dates and places of birth of mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law are required.

Applicants will also be asked to take a psychological and aptitude test. They will be asked to provide a sample of how they write.

“Tell us who you are as a person. What do your best friends think about you?”

It will take six to twelve months before security checks are completed and jobs offered to those who have passed all the hurdles.

A young man wants to know the extent of the background investigation.

“If I had dinner with friends in a summer in Yugoslavia, will you talk to them?” he asks.

“Probably not. But we develop our own leads,” Bob says. Bob raises the subject of drugs.

“There are no problems with a six-pack on a weekend in college. We look at drug use. If you inject something, that will cause a lot of strong concern. If it stopped a year earlier and can be explained by peer pressure, it might not be a
problem. What also concerns us is having three to four credit cards, and you don’t have a job or have declared bankruptcy.”

Another applicant asks if every foreign national he has ever met must be listed. What if he cannot remember them all?

“If you can’t, say you can’t remember,” Bob says.

It is just before noon, and the session is over. The applicants line up expectantly for their interviews near the front of the building.

Understandably, the session did not explain what it really means to be a spy for the CIA. That would give away too many secrets. Nor did the session touch on the office of the director of Central Intelligence, which constitutes the CIA’s fifth and most powerful component.