A Guide for the Aspiring Spy (The Anonymous Spy Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Guide for the Aspiring Spy

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  You Want to Join the CIA?

  Types of Officers

  Testing Doesn’t End After College

  What Happens At the Farm?

  Agent Recruitment Cycle

  Agent Authentication

  Motivation and Vulnerability: The Heart of Agent Recruitment

  Communication Tools

  Other Tools

  Case Officer Productivity

  Mixing Your Personal and Professional Life

  Personality Traits of Successful Case Officers

  How to Have a Long Career with the CIA

  Where Do You Go from Here?

  About the Author

  Further Reading

  Guide for the Aspiring Spy

  The Anonymous Spy Series

  Copyright © 2012

  by The Anonymous Spy

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written consent from the author/publisher.

  Author’s Note

  Nonfiction materials in The Anonymous Spy series have been submitted to the Central Intelligence Agency’s editorial review board for censoring. After five years of revisions and seventy pages of content rejected as “too factual and detailed as to how the CIA actually works” in the field, the remaining materials stand as a comprehensive guide to American spy craft without compromising the modus operandi of the CIA case officer in the field.

  Out of concern for the fate of the many US corporations as well as ordinary citizens in foreign countries who have wittingly and unwittingly assisted CIA case officers in their clandestine work, no true names or locations are used in this series.

  We owe a great debt of gratitude to the companies and individuals who risk their reputations, fortunes, and lives to provide a selfless service to this country. This series is dedicated to those heroes on the CIA’s Wall of Honor who made the ultimate sacrifice so that the rest of us can live in the freedom we sometimes take for granted.

  Introduction

  If you are expecting a spy thriller, you will be disappointed. This is the real world. This book is intended for men and women who desire a career in the National Clandestine Service or Operations Directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency—the Clandestine Service—as a case officer.

  The case officer is the foot soldier in the never-ending war of espionage—the world’s second oldest profession. It is the men and women of the Clandestine Service garbed in the cloak of secrecy who are at the forefront of the worldwide war on terror.

  For the sake of simplicity, I’ve often deferred to male gender identification in the use of definitions and examples, even though case officers and agents alike can easily be female.

  Please remember: the Central Intelligence Agency is an organization composed of people. Men and women just like you, your children, your friends, and your neighbors. The composition of the CIA is more of a cross section of mainstream America today than at any other time in its history. These citizens serve with pride in the history of this organization and its contributions to America’s security while acknowledging and understanding its past shortcomings, weaknesses, and failures. The CIA perhaps reflects the combined totality of the humanity of which it is composed.

  Just as we are not perfect, neither is the CIA, precisely because it is composed of people with all our imperfections and failures. We make very human mistakes that may carry forward in our work and adversely affect public perception of the CIA.

  This book is meant to honor those men and women who have served within the CIA, especially the foot soldier in the quiet war of espionage that was the front line of the Cold War period—the case officer. Those who serve incognito without public recognition of their services comprise the very heart of the CIA’s Clandestine Service.

  You Want to Join the CIA?

  This isn’t a far-fetched idea. The Company employs approximately 20,000 personnel from all walks of American life and every aspect of academic or professional endeavor. Because of the very nature of its charter, the CIA must be prepared with a reserve of talents and disciplines to meet every contingency. In addition to professional CIA personnel, the agency has a nearly countless reserve of assets, agents, contacts, independent contractors, and volunteers at its disposal worldwide.

  The majority of CIA professionals work at the Company’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. They perform a multitude of tasks from security guards, secretaries, desk officers, analysts, administrators, technical support, linguists, translators, computer and IT engineers, computer programmers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, scientists, psychologists, mechanical and electrical engineers, and more. Most work in one of the four “directorates” of the CIA.

  These directorates include the National Clandestine Service or Directorate of Operations (DO), which is what it was called when I left service. It has responsibility for collection of intelligence. The Directorate of Science and Technology (DST) collects intelligence from satellite and other high-tech means. The Directorate of Intelligence (DI) takes and collates the intelligence collected from the DO and DST and prepares intelligence estimates and other “products” for government policy makers. And the Directorate of Support (DS) is the personnel and management arm of the CIA.

  In addition to those working at CIA headquarters, other officers work at domestic CIA offices. These offices, called Stations, are strategically located in major metropolitan areas. They are staffed by case officers who deal mainly with helpful US assets who assist the Company to target foreign nationals inside the US for recruitment as agents to “spy” or inform on their governments, organizations, or companies when they return to their native countries. Contrary to subculture opinion, the CIA does not spy on US citizens from these domestic Stations.

  The bread and butter of the Company’s components are the CIA Stations located within the many US government facilities in other countries. These Stations provide the very foundation for CIA espionage operations within a country.

  Many people who seek employment with the CIA hope to be selected for an Operations Officer position, specifically the elite case officer. The case officer is a professional staff officer for the National Clandestine Service of the CIA. It is the case officer who is intimately involved in the conduct of espionage against foreign countries by spotting, assessing, vetting, developing, recruiting, and handling covert agents, or as laypersons like to call them “spies.” Approximately half of the CIA’s available case officers are deployed overseas or at domestic Stations at any given time. The other half are either working at CIA headquarters or one of the domestic CIA offices or are in training pending deployment overseas.

  The case officer is the CIA’s point man or woman in the worldwide war on terror. If you are looking for a forty-hour workweek, this is not the job for you. If you are looking for job that doesn’t follow you home, you better not apply for this one. If you expect immediate gratification for a job well done, go somewhere else. If, however, you are interested in knowing what is not supposed to be known and are willing to endure days or weeks of stark boredom interspersed with moments of terror merely to learn a few tidbits of information, then read on.

  Types of Officers

  There are two
categories of cover used by the agency for field operatives. One is Official Cover (OC) and the other Non-Official Cover (NOC). Official Cover simply means placing a case officer into a position overseas under the guise of an officer for another agency of the US government. The OC case officer, sometimes called the “inside officer,” may be given “light” cover duties to perform for two or three hours per day to establish his cover credentials. Often, however, the officer will devote his full time to his agency duties. Non-Official Cover means placing the case officer under deep cover as the employee of a real commercial company or Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). He is sometimes referred to as an “outside officer.”

  Because the careers of OC officers and NOC officers are so different, they do not compete against each other for promotions. OC officers only compete against other OC officers of the same grade for promotions and the same applies for NOC officers. Other aspects of the careers of OC and NOC officers is so different that even that division of the CIA which administers the NOC program is located separate from the CIA compound. Called the Office of External Development by some and the Organization External Division by others, the name that everyone agrees on is just simply OED. The OED is located in the northern Virginia area in a private office building and gives the appearance of being a legitimate company. Personnel from CIA headquarters are not allowed to visit the OED office. They must meet NOC and OED personnel at safehouses scattered around the northern Virginia area.

  While there are two cover categories (Official and Non-Official) there are three case officer categories: OC officers, NOC officers, and paramilitary officers. The CIA case officer we call the inside officer works officially as a US government employee under cover of another governmental agency. The NOC case officer works under deep cover as an employee of a corporation or NGO. The paramilitary case officer works in a hostile military or quasi-military environment also as a US government official under military cover.

  Throughout your career with the CIA, you will be told to “live your cover.” Your cover becomes an integral part of your daily life. Live your cover and you are secure. Break cover and you jeopardize yourself, your family, and the agents and assets entrusted to you. A successful cover is one that is so integrally woven into the fabric of your daily life that you do not need to give it a second thought, just routine maintenance. It becomes natural. See the chapter on Mixing your Personal and Professional Life for more information on living your cover.

  Official Cover Case Officer

  Usually, Official Cover implies some degree of diplomatic immunity that protects the CIA officer in the event he is caught in the act of espionage. About 95 percent of CIA officers assigned abroad have some form of Official Cover. The normal assignment abroad for an OC officer is two years, four at the most since the CIA prefers to rotate officers from headquarters to the field or to another Station on a fairly frequent basis.

  The Department of State (DOS) is one agency of the US government that provides cover for CIA officers under Official Cover. Basically there are two levels of cover provided by the DOS: integrated cover and non-integrated cover. A CIA officer under integrated DOS cover is, as the name implies, integrated as an employee into the DOS as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) and is trained as most other real FSOs are trained by the DOS. This level of cover is deep diplomatic cover and is long-term cover. The CIA officer so covered may go his entire CIA career under FSO cover and he will have real DOS duties to perform as well as CIA work.

  Non-integrated cover is a much lighter level of cover, and the CIA officer so covered has the grade status of Foreign Service Reserve (FSR). He receives only light cover training and light to no cover duties. Most CIA officers under DOS cover are FSRs since the DOS closely and jealously guards FSO positions. All CIA officers under FSO and FSR cover work out of US diplomatic missions such as embassies and consulates. All such officers have diplomatic immunity. It is somewhat of an inside joke that if you are an FSR working in an embassy abroad, then you are CIA; especially if you are in the restricted area of the embassy.

  Working in a US embassy is like working and living in a fish bowl. It is a small, closed community where everyone knows everyone else’s business, which makes it fairly easy to guess who is probably a part of the CIA. This makes it vitally important for CIA officers to employ discreet security measures and tradecraft to perform their CIA duties under the very noses of other US officials not to mention the host country security services responsible for exposing them.

  Other CIA official covers employing Department of Defense (DOD) and military covers are light-level covers providing cover for status. CIA officers so covered are not truly integrated into the cover organization. The CIA basically “creates” a unit and provides the officer with appropriate identification documentation. The unit may be physically located on a US military base with the CIA officers so covered physically working from that facility. Some CIA officers under these covers may also work out of diplomatic missions.

  Now, some CIA officers under official cover are “declared.” This means that the CIA has told the host country security services that they are CIA officers. Usually these CIA officers are working in liaison with the host country security services against hostile foreign countries, organizations, or terrorists. In rare cases, a Non-Official Cover officer may be “declared” to a host country security service as well.

  Non-Official Cover Case Officer

  Then there is Non-Official Cover, or NOC (pronounced “knock”). Since I was a NOC officer most of my career, I will spend more time covering this category. Non-Official Cover is provided by corporations or institutions at the request of the CIA. The most common type is corporate cover where the CIA officer is integrated into the staff of a US corporation with the full knowledge and consent of the company’s CEO and other select corporate officers. He is trained by the cover company and assigned overseas as a corporate representative. NOC officers have no diplomatic immunity; therefore, attention to cover maintenance and personal security must be exacting and detailed.

  Until the early 1990s, the CIA maintained a stable of several hundred NOC officers, of which about one-half were assigned abroad under deep cover at any time. The rest were usually in the US in training or training other young NOC officers preparing for assignment abroad. Of NOC officers assigned abroad at any one time, less than two dozen may be considered senior NOC officers—those who have achieved a high level of intelligence production and agent recruitment. Because of the high cost and magnitude of support required by NOC officers, the CIA requires a minimum of a four-year assignment abroad and actually prefers that NOC officers remain in the field for their full twenty-plus-year careers.

  Starting around 1993, the CIA began to expand the NOC program due in part to the perceived success of the earlier NOC program by Congress and by the ever changing nature of the targets of espionage in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR. The CIA began to experiment with “platforming” many NOCs together into a unit responsive to a geographical unit with several or even all the NOC case officers under the same commercial cover. The problem with this approach is that should one NOC officer become compromised, then all other NOC officers with the same cover are potentially exposed as well.

  Prior to the NOC platform approach, many of the larger CIA Stations had already developed successful programs of NOC clusters. NOC clusters were teams of NOC officers working together under the supervision of a senior NOC officer but with each NOC officer having a separate commercial cover arrangement. They maintained separate commercial covers and worked together in secret, usually against some specific target within the CIA Station. For example, the China cluster would target Chinese targets such as the Chinese Embassy, Chinese organizations in the host country such as China Airlines, Chinese corporations abroad, and even Chinese students abroad. The Internal cluster would target the host country government organizations and host government political parties. The High-Tech cluster would target government and research insti
tutions and foreign high-tech corporations.

  The more traditional approach to NOC management in the field has been to have one NOC case officer in direct contact with one inside officer contact. This has been the traditional trend especially in Stations with fewer than five or six NOC case officers. This type of compartmentation more securely protects the other NOC officers in the event that one NOC officer and his inside contact should become exposed to a foreign security service. Clearly, the weakest link here is the inside contact who is more likely to be under hostile surveillance by the local security service.

  With the growth in recent years of terrorism worldwide as a major collection target of the CIA, Special Operations and Programs Officers (SOPO) have joined the ranks of the NOC program for deployment in foreign theaters where they could not otherwise openly operate as Special Operations officers. The report card on the effectiveness of this approach is still out, but initial reports are encouraging.

  Often within the CIA you will hear people talk about “cover for action,” “cover for access,” and “cover for status.” These refer to the particular utility that a cover provides. For example, a NOC officer under corporate cover as a salesman for semiconductor equipment will have access to corporate engineers and buyers of Japanese or South Korean semiconductor manufacturers. In such a position he will be able to assess and develop foreign engineers and administrators for potential motivation and vulnerabilities that may subject them to recruitment by the CIA as agents inside their companies. Semiconductor trade is a competitiveness issue between the US and these countries that requires frequent adjustment of trade agreements. Such a NOC cover position will provide the CIA officer with cover for access as well as cover for action.