A Guide for the Aspiring Spy (The Anonymous Spy Series) (10 page)

The spouse can handle many roles in the agent recruitment cycle; especially valued is the second set of ears. It is always of value to get a second opinion from the opposite sex on what the agent candidate may have meant by a certain phrase. It is also of value to have a second person vetting the agent candidate with questions that you may not have thought about. If you are so fortunate to have a couples gathering where the agent candidate and his or her spouse are together, you and your spouse may split them off for separate conversations for insight into the motivations and vulnerabilities of both partners. Thus, your spouse may play an equally important role with the NOC in assessment of the couple.

The NOC’s spouse can gain an appreciation of the NOC’s role in the agenda of the Company, which may strengthen the NOC-spouse marital relationship. Further, the NOC’s spouse may feel a genuine part of the Company team, which may help ensure more tolerance for the NOC’s heavy workload that may keep him away from the family for long periods of time. On the whole, having a spouse who is a participant with the NOC is seen within the Company as a definite plus and to that end the Company will provide ample opportunity for training. I knew a NOC couple in the 1980s where the supporting wife was so active and valuable that she was eventually hired as a NOC herself.

Support for the NOC’s Family If the Agent Is Caught

The NOC case officer is, after all, a legitimate full-fledged CIA employee with all the rights and privileges of all other CIA employees. The support given to the family of a captured NOC officer, of course, must remain covert. Above the table, the US government will afford the NOC officer all the support that is provided to any US citizen arrested by a foreign government. This may be liaising with the arresting authority to see that the captive is being treated well, assisting with family visitations, providing medical assistance, etc. Under the table, depending on the relationship between the foreign country and the US government, talks may be undertaken to secure the release of the captive.

But let’s not forget the US company providing cover for the NOC. The cover company has legitimate business interests and equities at stake in the country. It is vital that the cover company continue to support the NOC as a member of its staff and to provide, with the covert cooperation of the CIA, legal support to the NOC. It is vital that the cover be maintained even though the NOC may have been caught red-handed in the act of spying. After all, industrial espionage is a possible explanation for the NOC’s actions, and the cover company, to protect its own interests, could claim its management had no knowledge of the over-zealous activities of its NOC employee.

It may be in the interest of the NOC that his family initially stays in country rather than immediately returning to the US. Depending on the country, the family may be allowed to maintain contact with NOC. While they remain in the country, they will continue to receive financial support channeled through the cover company. If the NOC should be tried, convicted, and imprisoned, of course, at some point the family will probably return to the US and will continue to receive full financial, psychological, and logistical support from the CIA.

Personality Traits of Successful Case Officers

The most important qualities you will need to advance your career in the CIA are verbal dexterity and flexibility, or put another way, to be a good actor who can quickly adjust or adapt to evolving situations and to portray a varied portfolio of personality traits.

Throughout your career with the CIA, you will be called on to perform or act. The successful handling of agents depends on your mastery of the art of acting so well that it is not perceived as acting at all. You will constantly adjust your character in order to harmonize with that of your target. If your agent perceives that you are putting on an act, you will likely lose his respect and certainly lose control of your asset. So your need to master the craft of acting requires more skills than that of the paid professional actor.

Your interpersonal relationships with other CIA officers, especially those above you in the hierarchy, depend on your ability to give a convincing act or argument. Regardless of position ( junior case officers, senior case officers, operations officers, Station chiefs, or Division chiefs), the ability to put on a convincing “act” or to present a convincing argument is an absolute must to a successful career. Of course, it is most important that your accomplishments as a case officer have actual substance to use as a basis in your acting. You will see more about this later concerning agent handling.

Another important quality is trainability. The CIA will take you after coming “on board” and, for OC case officers, send you for training at the Farm for anywhere from four to six months and for some as long as one year.. The young case officer trainee is monitored and graded through every step of the training process, and those who do not pass muster are often given less responsible positions within the CIA or are sometimes farmed out to other government agencies. When the Drug Enforcement Agency was formed and grew in number in the early 1970s, many CIA trainees who washed out of their training cycles were offered and accepted positions there.

As you advance through your career with the Company, you will be trained in more advanced and new techniques of espionage. For those officers who switch from operations to administration, more specialized training is required. The bottom line is that the CIA does teach old dogs new tricks. Even senior CIA officers nearing retirement still receive training, and when you finally retire you are once again trained on how to integrate back into normal, civilian life in the good old USA.

NOC case officers, those officers under deep commercial cover outside the physical confines of the CIA Station, are trained in the same tradecraft techniques as their inside counterparts and, in addition, they are given more intensive training in areas unique to the NOC operational environment. These include the use of clandestine communications systems such as radio communications, secret writing techniques, and false subtraction code encryption. NOC officer training in planning and execution of SDRs is also more intensive than that given to inside officers. NOC officer cover maintenance is also greatly emphasized since their vulnerability to cover compromise is much greater than for inside officers.

On the negative side, young NOC officers who have never had the opportunity of serving inside the CIA at the headquarters level do not have the advantage of first-hand knowledge and exposure to the peculiarities of office politics. This lack of exposure can be a disadvantage since the NOC officer has little understanding of nor patience with the bureaucratic process inside the CIA, particularly at the headquarters level. I have seen many young NOC officers quit the program in their first overseas tour simply because of frustration with the bureaucracy or inability to adapt to living in a foreign environment. I was very fortunate to have served a year as a bureaucrat at CIA headquarters between my assignment as a paramilitary case officer and my first NOC assignment, since this provided me an intimate knowledge of how the bureaucracy worked.

By their nature and training, NOC officers are very proactive, no-holds-barred, can-do people. They follow the path of least resistance to get the job done and done well. With little appreciation and understanding of the bureaucratic process at CIA headquarters, the NOC officer must have a high tolerance for frustration and the ability to work around obstacles to keep his operations on course.

Perhaps part and partial to trainability is the ability to learn one or more foreign languages and to learn it sufficiently well as to be able to handle non-English-speaking agents in their native language. If you have not already mastered a foreign language, do not worry. The CIA will test your linguistic capabilities, select the language best suited to your abilities and the needs of the CIA, and then send you to its own language school in Alexandria, Virginia.

Another important quality for the intelligence operative is to have the same high frustration tolerance level mentioned previously for NOC officers. If you expect to receive immediate personal reward from your career as a case officer, then you will be disappointed. If you expect a high degree of excitement in your career, you might get more excitement as a security guard at a monastery. During your Company training, you will be subjected to many very frustrating training situations and your responses will be judged.

When you finally make it overseas, you will find pressure and frustration on a daily basis, and much of the frustration is actually generated by the CIA bureaucracy that theoretically is there to help you. The view of the bureaucrat sitting at a headquarters desk is most often quite different from the view of the case officer in the field who has his finger on the pulse of his or her operations. Interoffice politics and field operations often butt heads. The field case officer must have the ability to manipulate the bureaucratic process to keep the operation from suffering.

The case officer will also have a better feel and concern for his own and his agents’ personal security than the bureaucrat at headquarters, who frequently second-guesses every operational decision made in the field. This often heavy-handed bureaucracy is a constant source of frustration for the field case officer and it is vital to one’s career to learn how to deal with this particular type of frustration in a manner that is perceived as constructive, even though it actually may not be.

The case officer’s own agents often cause frustration when they fail to follow instructions and thus create more work. More frustration is caused by the average man on the street, or casual, in his daily activities, whom, on occasion, the case officer may suspect to be hostile surveillance following his activities, thereby causing him to curtail his clandestine work only to have to do it again the next day. There is still more frustration with long hours of waiting for a target or agent who may never show for a meeting.

The reporting process may bring more frustration when the Station or CIA headquarters wants clarification on your reports. This causes the case officer to have to initiate more unscheduled meetings with agents. Then there is family frustration when you have to rearrange personal plans with your family to conduct unscheduled meetings and activities for the Company. The job of a case officer has much more than any normal amount of occupational frustration. Because of the nature of the job, you must hide this frustration from those who have no knowledge of your true CIA affiliation. Sometimes you must also hide this frustration from your immediate family. So I emphasize if you want the job of a case officer, make sure your frustration tolerance level is high.

Also highly desired is the ability to communicate effectively through the written word. The agency is not looking for prolific authors. Instead, the CIA wants people who can cut to the chase and communicate the who, what, when, where, why, and how from an agent debriefing session in as few words as possible without losing significant content.

Verbal communication skills are equally valued. You must be able to use persuasive skills to convince your assets and agents to often do things that are not in their best interest. Further, you must be able to convince your superiors to accept your divergent points of views on how your operations should be handled.

As a NOC case officer, you must have a high degree of self-confidence and trust in your own ability to make good decisions and to make them quickly without the immediate input of your supervisors. You must be a highly motivated self-starter because you will be working alone most of the time, with minimal direct supervision and infrequent personal contact with other CIA officers. Normally a NOC case officer may meet with an inside supervisor for detailed discussions only about once a month, usually for only two or three hours. So you can see why it is important for the NOC case officer to have good operational judgment and to trust his own operational instincts.

A NOC case officer goes about the majority of his working day in silence. He works alone. Thus, it is important that the NOC officer have the personality traits that enable him to thrive in such isolation. He is alone with his own thoughts as he runs his SDRs to and from his secret agent meetings. He is alone as he reads the many operational cables and intelligence reports sent to him by CIA headquarters to use to prepare for debriefing of his agents. He is alone as he waits, often for hours, for his agents to show up for debriefing, and when debriefing his agents he lets them do most of the talking while he listens and asks a few questions and gives some direction. Next, he is alone as he writes the many operational cables, intelligence reports, and contact reports for CIA headquarters. It is a solitary existence on a daily basis with no one around to talk with or confide in. So the NOC case officer does a lot of thinking and little talking.

The last, but by no means the least, important quality, which is directly connected to decision-making, is a good dose of common sense. Perhaps this is why the agency does not try to recruit highly intellectual people as case officers. I say this not to degrade the intellectuals by any means. But there are times when over-thinking (intellectualizing) a problem only leads to more problems. What is needed is the ability to quickly pull together the essence of a problem, assess the alternatives, and quickly decide on the best avenue to resolve it, all without thinking about it too much. The case officer in the field often does not have the luxury of time to go into a matter in detail. He must make quick on-the-spot decisions alone based on experience. The many personality tests you will take during the pre-employment process will look for all of these qualities.