Top Ten Reason To NOT Apply To the C.I.A.

In another post I mentioned that in 1986 that I had been invited by the C.I.A. to apply to their "Career Training Program," and thereby become a Field Officer. I recieved some messages from people wanting to know how they could apply, or improve their chances of acceptance.

The reason I was invited was because I was a grad student at an Ivy League school, and was already working as an agent under a case officer, who was himself not a CIA employee, but was working with the then Director of CIA, who was William Casey. My case officer was a Professor at UT who spotted me there and then made sure I was accepted at the Graduate school I went to in Cambridge, MA.

Without these circumstances I would never have been invited. I was a good student in an international studies program at UT and met my spotter by total chance in the Presidential Papers Reading Room at the LBJ Library...I was just a sophomore.

If anyone wants to become a Field Officer they sort of need to be spotted, so you have to put yourself in a place where that might possibly maybe happen [not a high-confidence venture].

But the CIA hires all kinds of other people, everyone from cooks and secretaries to brainiac analysts, technicians who are experts in recording and computer skills, etc. Field Officers are only maybe 3,000 out of maybe 16,000 employees.

But my exprience as an agent working with case officers was interesting though really terrible in the end, and I cannot recommend that anyone seek to become a Field Officer or agent. There is no swashbuckle at all, just de-humanizing bureaucratic small-minded obscessions over what this or that may do to someone's puny career. They are very underpaid and have little authority of action in any situation. They salute and take their orders and soldier ahead whether they believe in what they are doing or not. It's a grind...it's a job.

Top ten reasons to JUST SAY NO if C.I.A. comes calling:

10.You will be functioning as an Embassy staff member by day, doing all the things that job requires, and only have time to fulfill your CIA spy duties when all that work is finished, and do so at night, which means you will have no free time at all and hardly ever get any sleep.

9.Spiders, snakes, and venomous lizards frequent the jungles, parks and other remote places where your recruited spies/agents will be leaving documents for you to find in the dark in so-called "dead drops" [meaning you will drop dead from your enemies killing you there if the snakes and lizards don't get you].

8.If you are stationed in a war zone you will be encouraged to cope with the stress by taking large amounts of Benzodiazapim, which will leave you addicted for the rest of your life, but at least there's no way you will suffer from PTSD because you will be sedated the whole time you are there.

7.The mandatory 500 foot parachute leap from an airplane at night during Career Training is so terrifying that you will suffer from air-phobia forever, and all your subsequent airline flights will be horrfying events.

6.If you are ordered to kill anyone, even by Presidential order, a few years later when public opinion changes, you will face prosecution.

5.The secreataries at headquarters are so underpaid [GS-9] that they have to share apartments with each other, so if you wind up back at one's place for some booty you might be hearing your boss banging her roommate in the next room, and your boss is married. You will also run into him in the bathroom later. He will send you to Equatorial Guinea later so you won't be able to tell anyone he knows what happened.

4.The countries you will be assigned to are so disease-ridden that after a few tours your colon and intestines will be leaking from all the parasites you've been unknowingly carrying around.

3.Most CIA Field Officers are alchoholics, and if you are not also they will drink you under the table so often that you will be reported as drunk for staggering around when you've had only half of what they've had to drink.

2.Chances are someone else back at headquarters is selling information to your enemies in the field for money to pay his mortgage, and you or your friends will be tortured and killed because of it.

1.Even if you are a Harvard Grad school genius, the absolute highest pay grade you can start out with as a Field Officer is GS-11, which in 1986 was less than $38,000. a year. As MARINA would say...Blah!

Really...

Let's see....the average household income in Austin TX in 2010 is $65000-$70000 per year. That's HOUSEHOLD income! $38K in 1986 wasn't bad dough.

For a master's from an Ivy League school?

For a master's from an Ivy League school? Originally Posted by 78704

Think about it. In 1986 the country was just begining to recover from a recession (remember the crash that we had here in Austin in the mid 80's?)
Many teachers and college professors have doctorates. What is their entry or starting salary.
In 1980 the average starting salary for an attorney (doctorate of jurisprudence) was around $40000. Some mad lot's more, but some made lot's less.
Many social workers have masters degrees. what does the average social worker make.
Many in foreign service have masters degrees and their starting salaries are not much more in today's world.
From my point of view, $38000 was a pretty good entry level salary to go to work for an autonomous agency of the US govt and start your own business on the side like many CIA field personel did in the 60's, 70's and 80's!

First, I mistakenly typed that secretaries at headquarters are GS-9. They are usually GS-7, and if they're not married [usually to another CIA employee] they live two or more to an apartment, often in Arlington.

As far as starting businesses "on the side," in my time such a thing was definitley forbidden for employees. For an "agent", as I was, it was almost expected because you are not a government employee, but for a CIA Field Officer, Station Chief, Task Force Chief, Technician, or anyone else to dabble in free enterprise in the field is strickly off-limits.

Sometimes when opportunitie arise an employee will retire to pursue something however. The current Lt. Governor, David Dewhurst, is said to have been a Case Officer in Bolivia in 1981 and shortly thereafter resigned, then founded a multi-million dollar company and wound up very shortly thereafter with a multi-hundred million dollar personal fortune.

Then there's the case of Edwin Wilson. After resigning from CIA he sold twenty tons of C-4 explosive to Libya: TWENTY TONS! That was the entire available amount of C-4 everywhere in the world. Traces of those lots have turned up everywhere, including in the Lockerbee Scottland crash of a 747 in 1986. He was sentenced to prison for that in Federal court in Houston in 1981 and was released about 4 years ago. After twenty years his conviction was reversed due to evidence that he was actually working for CIA even in retirement and sold the C-4 to Libya on orders from CIA. I believe this is true. No one would ever think they could get away with doing something like that without such approval. But even though he had such approval it didn't keep him from conviction anyway and spending decades in prison. This is why no CIA employee should ever be talked into breaking serious laws by their handlers. They always sell you out later.

NOW AS FOR THE INCOME OF 1986....

This is a sore point with me because in 1986 it cost as much to live on the east coast as it does in Austin today. That's why I'm here. In 1986 this is what my expenses were:

1. 2/2 apartment in Boston at 150 Huntington Ave. $1,500.
2. monthly payments 1985 BMW 325e $320.
3. average heating and utility monthly bill $350.
4. MANI label suits from Jordan Marsh Dept. Store $600. each

After taxes the $38k would be used up pretty fast. And if you think you can get by living cheaply then think again because you're expected to live like a gentleman and keep up appearances. Therefore as an agent they fed me whatever money I could justify I needed to live properly, and that was about $70,000. a year before taxes and saving absolutely nothing [in fact racked up personal debt on credit cards].

That same year CIA supergrade GS-17 employee Aldrich Ames was GROSSING before taxes only $73,000. Because he couldn't buy the house and car his new Bolivian wife wanted he started selling to the Russians the names of EVERY US SPY IN RUSSIA, who they systemmatically killed. I think they killed eleven and two escaped if I remember. That was every single agent the US had recruited there. For merely accepting the American's offer they were betrayed by someone at US headquarters and murdered all because that employee was underpaid and didn't give a shit about anything.

The year before I was asked to apply another student in my program, a black woman, joined up. In order to get her to do so they offered her GS-11, but that wasn't enough for her, so she held out for a $900. sign on bonus. She made the fateful decision to change her whole life and career based solely on a single $900. check. I don't know how long she stayed.

If that isn't telling about the mentality of CIA employees then nothing is.

When you applied for the job and went through the training, you were supposed to sign a non disclosure statement, meaning you don't speak of your employment with the CIA. Although that is the common practice for a pereson under employment rather than one that is removed from the post, I don't understand why you are compelled to speak about your former employer and the mentality of an organization whose focus is to provide national security intelligence to senior US policymakers. Quite frankly I don't care what the mentality is over there as long as they keep Mohammed from reaking havoc on our country.

Now in regards to your spending habits in 1986, you could have cut back your expenses by forgoing the BMW for a VW, and shopped at Mens Warehouse for suits over designer labels, but then again that was the typical east coast mentality of the Yuppie in the 80's.

As I stated I declined to accept the offer to apply to become an employee for all the reasons I stated above. By not being an employee but remaining as someone working for an employee I was able to at least pay most of my bills.

I also stated that it was a requirement of my function that I dress, speak, act, etc. like an educated person, and that would not fly if I were the only one in the parking garage pulling in every day in a VW, next to all the Mercedes and Jaguars.

But the bigger point is this. In the acedemic program I was in every one upon graduation left for jobs where they had no problem buying a small BMW or wearing an off-the-rack department store suit. In fact, most of them didn't have to buy off-the-rack any more. Why should the CIA think they can attract someone with such credentials and accomplishment and only pay them what a mail carrier makes?

Here's the reason though. Unlike every other spy service in the world the CIA was invented by a military officer, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith to be specific. He knew no other way of managing, motivating, compensating or controlling people other than the ways he was familiar with in the military. He was not a spy and knew absolutely nothing about how spies live, work, or think. This situation was so absurd that until the 1970s all CIA Case Officers actually had to be military officers, either active duty or reserve. If you were not a military officer you couldn't join the CIA.
Unfortunately military personnell are a very different creature than spies.
Spies are exposed to all the things money and high living can bring....military officers are not. Spies are intimately exposed to all different kinds of political philosophies and ideas.....military officers are not. Spies are not wind-up soldiers that can be counted on to forgoe remuneration, safety and self-expression all out of "patriotism" the way military officers are expected to do.

Spies are involved with the political motives for how policy is formed, not just it's implimentation. When they see that it's a useless, stupid process they lose their motivation and either leave or become alchoholics.

Gen. Walter Bedell Smith is the reason why the U.S. has never had a real, professional spy agency like the British, Israelis, or others possess.

Don't forget that many job offers are made to people with the total idea of plausible deniability.

If you ever change jobs from govt service, your resume will need to be scrubbed / blacklined, forget foreign travel, and not to mention periodic debriefings for the next 20 years, depending on what you were doing.

I don't know exactly what you mean by plausible deniability in that context. In terms of the agency they could care less if I had become an employee or remained a contractor. Having been a contractor already, when I was finishing my acedemic program their Boston office had to go through the process of making the offer because I qualified for it. It was sort of a formality. But they handed me a huge file of glossy brochers and lists of "approved" books I could read about the agency. They explained about the tests they give all applicants, including the "battery" which is like taking the SAT or something the way they described it. And then there was the psychological testing. In particular I was informed that one of the questions on that would likely be the question, "Do you like tall women?" I thought that was a hoot. What do they hope to learn from that? Then there was a disturbing remark by the recruiter, who by the way didn't appear to be all that bright of a guy. He shared with me his opinion that the Soviet space shuttle must necessarily have been based on stolen technology because it appeared to be similar in design. He threw that out as though it was obvious, and could not be challenged. That was really superficial, and arrogant, because in the program I was in we did a lot of work on "convergent" technologies, and how different countries can arrive at similar solutions to the same problems without communicating with each other. His remark was just plain ignorant, and it was a forshadowing of what was to come.

Regarding resumes, the people I know who were employees usually do include their agency employment on their resumes.

I used to include on mine the history I had with the agency-run PR firm I functioned in, as well as a statement that during that time I was working for CIA. There is no requirement of concealing prior employment after you have left. When people conceal their affiliation with CIA it's because they are still working with them UC.

Things that have come to my mind while reading this thread:
1) Are these the qualifications to run an Escort Agency?
2) The movie "Risky Business".
3) James Bond girls.
4) laws protecting the identity of spies and agents.
5) Female agents with sex appeal are very good at getting information.

I don't know if anyone's qualified to run an escort agency. God knows I've made my share of mistakes, and this has been a trial and error experiment for me.

The basic fact is this though. What the escort agency world and the spy world have in common are that both are a de-humanizing grind that is packaged and sold to the public as glamorous.

It takes someone willing to do unconventional things that others find risky to dabble in either.

A friend of my family from here in Austin joined the C.I.A. His name was John Stockwell, and his father was my family's Pastor at one of the larger churches in the 1950s. He was the head of the C.I.A.'s secret war in Angola in the 1970s. He quit after that and wrote a book about it. He was very bitter. Is it possible that he was asked to join by the same Professor who asked you?

John's book was In Search of Enemies,
and I wish I would have read it before
I agreed to work for CIA. It was not on the 'approved list' they gave me.

John was a Plan II student, Marine officer, and was recruited in the early sixties because his father was also a missionary in Katanga so John lived there growing up. CIA had few officers who were 'Africa bodies' in those days.

The person who spotted me was Walt Rostow, and he didn't arrive in Austin until after Johnson left office in 1969. After his role in Vietnam as Johnson's NSC Advisor he was an outcast, and no one else would take him...ever. His wife, who was the first female to attain tenure at MIT became the Dean, and he lived in her shadow acedemically until their deaths a few years ago. Walt was an exceptional student when younger, but was only a shallow scholar, and was denied tenure at MIT. He served in the OSS with William Casey, and then joined CIA as a life-long agent. He established the Center for International Studies at MIT with CIA funds as a propaganda tool, but by the time I got there they were free of CIA influence. In fact, while I was taking a course from a Professor at Harvard, Nadav Safran, the Harvard Chrimson broke the story that he was on the CIA payroll, and it ruined him. The people I met in Cambridge who remembered Rostow were ambivolent about him at best. People have to remember that his first career was as a journalist and speech-writer for Eisenhower and Kennedy. He was a propagandist and polemicsit, not an honest scholar. One reason why he became interested in me was because I was majoring in Communications as well as taking another degree in International Relations, and that's extremely rare. His generation of CIA officers were largely from journalism and public relations backgrounds. They considered that pyschological warfare and communications were the high ground of the struggle.

Most people today consider him a villian, and I think they are correct.

I always though you might have used hypnosis and government mind-control techniques in your recruiting....