A Guide for the Aspiring Spy (The Anonymous Spy Series) (3 page)

While the SOPO are an action arm of the CIA at the grass roots level, they also attempt to collect and report to CIA headquarters intelligence information to help CIA analysts understand what is going on at the local level. Thus, they must write operational cables and FIRs (Field Information Reports) just like any other CIA case officer. SOPO also run agent operations just like their Official Cover counterparts. Some operations may be in conjunction with local liaison services and some may be “unilateral” operations.

Paramilitary operations run by the CIA have a mixed history. On the high side was the successful operation to hunt down Cuban communist revolutionary Che Guevara in Bolivia in the 1960s before he could develop a successful communist insurgency. On the low side was the Phoenix Program in Vietnam—the so-called assassination program to neutralize the Viet Cong infrastructure. While the Phoenix Program was, indeed, a success in many provinces in Vietnam, it was tainted by the CIA’s intimate involvement with the program’s action element, the Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PUR) that conducted the ambush operations that killed many Viet Cong agents. Whatever the track record, however, the CIA is involved in paramilitary operations for the long haul. The SOPO are here to stay if you are interested in this program.

Testing Doesn’t End After College

Whether you want to be an inside case officer, outside case officer, or paramilitary case officer, you have to pass a battery of test before you are considered for employment for any position.

The testing process described in this section can differ based on a number of factors. For example, if you are a former or active military officer or enlisted man with a security clearance or you already have a position with another federal government agency and seek a transfer to the CIA, then the application and vetting process may be a matter of months. If, however, you are fresh out of college or in the civilian job arena, the process may take up to a year.

This will basically be the same whether you are seeking an OC or a NOC position. Once you submit your resume and application, for example, via the CIA website for an “operations officer” position, it will be up to the CIA to decide whether or not you may receive an OC or NOC position.

Whether you are going to be an OC officer or a NOC is decided right at the beginning of the hiring process since the vetting process is so compartmented. NOC candidates are never allowed on overtly CIA installations as are OC candidates.

It is not a matter of your choosing. You may voice your preference, of course, but the needs of the Company are of paramount consideration, not your personal preference. The various psychological and other batteries of tests may help the CIA decide in which area you may be most useful. Not all candidates have the unique type of personality required for the often lonely lifestyle of a NOC case officer. Also, not all candidates are able to function in close contact with the CIA bureaucracy that OC case officers find themselves exposed to on a daily basis.

What qualities should you have to be of interest to the CIA for a case officer position? You might think that the ability to keep a secret, to keep your mouth shut, would be an asset. During the investigation process, the agency will determine that you can, indeed, keep a secret. Surprisingly, however, this is not one of the qualities required once you are inside the Company.

The good-old-boy network inside the CIA is one of the most vocally prolific inside the US government, as case officers brag with pride about their agents and their exploits. Officially, when you go through a pre-employment background investigation, the agency attempts to determine your suitability for employment based on what is known in the counterintelligence community as LIDMC (pronounced Lid Mac), which stands for Loyalty, Integrity, Discretion, Morals, and Character.

To determine whether you possess such qualities, the agency will investigate your personal, academic, and professional history by interviewing teachers, employers, co-workers, friends, and foe, virtually anyone with the exception of former spouses who most probably will have nothing good to say about you anyway.

LIDMC are the personal qualities that get you qualified, but these qualities alone are not enough to get you employed and ensure you have a bright career with the agency.

The Company will also conduct a National Agency Check with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal and local law enforcement agencies to determine if you have even so little as a parking ticket.

All this is done without exposing to those interviewed that you are interested in joining the CIA.

This investigative process may take four to six months, during which time you will also be put through a battery of tests and interviews and finally a polygraph examination before a position is offered. For OC and NOC positions alike, the candidate will be flown to the Washington, DC, area for testing. The OC candidate may go into some government building for the testing, and the NOC candidate will be tested at some off-site location such as a safehouse. Initial testing is the same for both covers. You will be told not to tell any of your friends and relatives about your candidacy or the fact that you are undergoing testing for any government position.

It is these other tests and interviews that will establish that you have the other qualities the CIA desires in its case officers.

You will be given academic tests much like the Scholastic Aptitude Tests you took in high school. The questions will cover basic math, history, geography, and English grammar. You may also take a language learning test where you will be given the basic grammar rules of a made-up language to test your language reasoning and learning skills since the CIA will want you to learn at least one foreign language.

There will also be at least one multiple-choice test that will develop your psychological profile.

This is a particularly important test to ensure the CIA is able to weed out undesirables from a well-tested psychological profile. This testing process is unique to the CIA. The same question will be repeated in several different methods and references to make sure you are not trying to second guess the system to manage your profile.

You will also be asked to write something based on a given theme or to just write something about yourself or about someone in your life. This may be used to assess your writing abilities. It may also be used to augment the psychological testing process since the CIA does employ handwriting analysis as a psychological profile tool. However, because of the large backlog in this department due to shortage of trained personnel, it is a higher priority to use handwriting in agent operations rather than personnel recruitment. If, however, your psychological profile tests leave any questions about your suitability in question, the handwriting analysis can be employed.

There will also be a series of personal interviews by one or more of the Directorates that may have an interest in hiring you. When you get to this level, the process of getting on board with the Company is nearly complete. The interview process is multi-functional. First, it helps the interviewer get an understanding of your vocal skills in casual conversations. How is your spoken grammar, for example? It also gives an indication of how well you respond to pressure, as in when the interviewer asks some perhaps embarrassing or challenging questions that may be a bit personal in nature. Also your physical response—body language—will be noted to determine your honesty in responding to personal questions. This interview is usually conducted at CIA headquarters for OC candidates and at a DC-area safehouse for NOC candidates. Attire is casual.

Once you get to the phase where you are given a medical examination, you may feel more comfortable that the investigative process has gone well thus far. The medical examination is an in-depth physical examination. It starts with a detailed medical questionnaire to document your family history. You will have to sign a release form to give the CIA—through a covered outside medical facility—access to your medical files. The medical examination will take place at a DC-area medical facility cleared by the CIA. Pre-existing conditions will not necessarily disqualify you from employment but may limit your qualifications for certain positions.

Toward the end of the investigative process you will be required to take a polygraph examination. This is at the final stage just before you will officially be offered a position.

The polygraph will focus on any unresolved areas of your background investigation and you may be asked about your sexual history, your drug history, and financial history. The test takes about one hour in a small room about 12 feet by 12 feet with only you and the polygraph operator present. For OC candidates it will be held at CIA HQ and for NOC candidates at a DC-area safehouse.

If you have a past history of drug use that has not been made a part of any police record but you are no longer a user, it is best to lay the facts on the table before you come to the polygraph stage. Concern over drug use is a major reason to disqualify a candidate from consideration for employment by the CIA.

Once you have gotten past all this, you’ll be invited “on board,” as they say in the CIA. Now the real work begins.

What Happens At the Farm?

Okay, you’ve been hired. Now what? Training and lots of it. The CIA’s premier training facility for its Clandestine Service Operations Officers is the Farm. Also called “Isolation” because of the location and nature of the facility and “Camp Swampy” because of the nature of the topography there, the Farm is a small facility known as Camp Perry near Williamsburg, Virginia. On paper, it is a a US Army base. If there is a Spy University then this is it. A wide variety of training takes place here.

The campus at the Farm is much like a small college setting with student dormitories, classrooms, administration buildings, gymnasium, recreation center with a bar, shooting ranges, hiking, biking, and running trails, and more. Instructors have their own individual homes with their spouses and children. The rural setting is in the wild Virginia countryside with literally hundreds of deer roaming the roads and yards.

This setting, however, can be quite deceptive since the backwoods areas of the Farm often house secret off-limits areas where highly classified individual or small group training may take place. Students generally roam free except in areas marked off-limits. Accidentally roam into an off-limits area and somehow you will be discovered and given a stern warning or worse, an official reprimand.

The atmosphere at the Farm is informal but intense. The student to teacher ratio is around 15:1 for classroom instructions and as low as 1:1 for practical training exercises.

Basic Operations Training

The Basic Operations course is the first real training in clandestine tradecraft that all new Operations Officers must receive. You will be given a training alias while you are at the Farm and be told not to use your true name or to use your credit cards frequently at local area stores should you decide to go off base for dining or shopping. Actually, the Farm is a complete community so it should not be necessary to go off base except for official training exercises. It is up to you to devise a personal cover to tell your family and friends why you are away, but you should not tell anyone exactly where you are.

All instructors are experienced field operatives on temporary assignment with the CIA’s Office of Training. The degree and depth of their actual field experience working with agents is high. They are able to accurately duplicate real field problems during the training cycle. A single instructor may be assigned three or four students to monitor during the approximate four- to six-month training cycle. There is close scrutiny given to each student.

The first component of the Basic Operations course is an introduction to the internal workings of the agency. This includes a history of the CIA and its origin as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an overview of the entire US intelligence community and the CIA’s function within it, how each Directorate relates to the other Directorates, and the Intelligence Cycle. This cycle follows the collection, dissemination, evaluation, and collation of intelligence works from the agent all the way through to a final product for US government policy makers. Training includes the Homeland Security Act, the organization and structure of the Department of Homeland Security, and how all the intelligence services relate to it.

The second component of the Basic Operations course teaches the required tradecraft techniques for mastery of the art of espionage. These techniques include a heavy dose of what is known as the Recruitment Cycle—spotting, assessing, vetting, developing, recruiting, and handling agents with a heavy emphasis on hands-on practical exercises with instructors playing the role of agent.