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It's no secret: CIA scouting for recruits
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| ogvh5150 |
OK you wanna-be spooks send your resume to:
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Va
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It's no secret: CIA scouting for recruits
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
LANGLEY, Va. — The CIA has launched a crash program to clear a backlog of job applicants and hire recruits who can speak Arabic, Korean and other languages critical to national security priorities.
As recently as five months ago, CIA applicants with sought-after skills such as fluency in Arabic or Korean faced long delays in hiring if they had relatives living overseas, CIA Director Porter Goss says.
To fill the shortage of experts in key languages and meet a presidential order for a 50% increase in analysts and overseas operatives, Goss started an end-to-end overhaul of the recruiting system.
Today, security issues that once took 18 months to overcome are being handled in a matter of weeks, according to Betsy Davis, the agency's No. 2 recruiting official.
Last year, the commission created to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks criticized the agency's lack of language experts and the delays in obtaining security clearances.
CIA security officers have long worried that job candidates with foreign ties could leak sensitive information. That meant those candidates would have to endure long waits as the agency investigated their families and friends.
While he's concerned about possible security breaches, Goss says those lengthy checks were costing the agency valuable recruits.
Goss says he's more worried about terrorists killing people than "I am about (a) terrorist reading a top-secret report."
Even with the changes, an applicant still takes about nine months to become an officer, Davis says.
Such a time-consuming process didn't deter the candidates who lined up five deep recently at the CIA's recruiting desk at a job fair a few blocks from the University of Virginia's main campus in Charlottesville.
When asked how many of the day's roughly 100 applicants will become spies, Davis says, "As many as I can get through."
It's a big change from a decade ago, when the post-Cold War agency was cutting jobs and hiring hardly anyone for its clandestine service.
While the agency is hiring new operatives, its new challenges are apparent in conversations with some of the students.
"I'd like to do something different for a few years — about two years — then law school," says Anna Lee, a fourth-year marketing and business major. She speaks Korean, a critical language skill given the concern about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. But after two years at the CIA she'd only just be getting started as an analyst. If she chose to be a clandestine officer, she might not be ready for her first foreign posting after two years. The CIA wants people like Lee not for two years but for 20.
The agency's hiring campaign includes slick ads, more than 800 recruiting events per year and about 200 staffers devoted full time to recruiting. The campaign walks the line between pitching an exciting career and making sure recruits don't confuse the agency with what they see in the movies.
"One of the things frankly we have to do is demystify (the CIA) a little bit," Goss says. "You are not going to be James Bond if you sign up and five years later you're going to be driving an Aston Martin with a beautiful young lady at your side on the Riviera. You might be, but I'm not aware of that program yet."
Several of the students say they're too busy with their studies to follow the CIA in the news. They get their information about the agency from movies and television shows such as Alias and 24.
"It seems exciting," says Eaming Wu, a fourth-year comparative literature major at Virginia. "I would like to know the secrets behind what goes on and to experience the power that goes with knowing those secrets."
Complicating matters for recruiters is the need to find operatives who can speak languages such as Arabic or those spoken in many Asian nations.
"Census data tells us that 1.6% of Americans speak critical languages at home," Davis says. "And how many of those have academic degrees? It's frighteningly small." About 27% of applicants claim proficiency in at least one foreign language, Davis says, though seldom in the languages essential to the war on terrorism.
Stephanie Danes Smith, the CIA's chief administrator, says that as a result of a just-completed "end-to-end review" of hiring and training procedures, a CIA administrator can, with the stroke of a computer key, locate every fluent Arabic or Pashto speaker anywhere in the agency at home or abroad.
The CIA still needs more analysts and operatives fluent in key foreign languages, says former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who regularly consults the White House on national security issues.
"Less than 10% of our analysts of North Korea are fluent in Korean," says Gingrich. He said he believes 40% of intelligence analysis should be contracted out.
Goss has also ordered a shake-up of time-honored assignment schedules that often had field officers rotating out of regions just when they were becoming effective. He can also approve higher pay for people with key language skills and keep officers on assignment longer.
Goss says he was "horrified" to hear that potential applicants waited months, even years, for a reply from the agency.
"I've got to tell you, it was a broken system," Goss says. "It was one of the things I found most stunning when I got here."
Members of the 9/11 Commission said they were stunned to hear from Goss and his predecessor, George Tenet, that getting the right number of spies with the right skills in the clandestine service will take five years. In some areas, Goss says, the agency is ahead of schedule. In other specialties, particularly those involving obscure foreign languages, "we are maybe at the 5 or 10% level."
The CIA is getting better, Goss says, but "there are some very hard aspects of this that take longer. We are an overseas organization. We are an organization that requires what I would call sacrifice of quality of life. ... We are looking for specific people that we think will fit our needs. And that means an aggressive recruiting effort."
Agency hiring data are classified, but Steven Aftergood, an intelligence expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says his analysis of public statements by agency officials and other information shows that CIA hiring may exceed 2,000 people a year.
Surveying her prospects at the job fair, Davis points to Johanna Peet, who is writing a senior thesis on the assimilation of Islamic immigrants in the Netherlands, where she studied for a year. Davis had already spoken with her and predicted she would join the agency.
While she is considering career options at international organizations such as the United Nations, Peet says, "I'm very conscious of being an American."
She knows that the CIA has been criticized for lapses prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war but says those lapses are not necessarily negatives for her. "It has potential," Peet says. "There's a lot of work cut out for this agency in terms of picking up the pieces after 9/11. I have a lot of faith in the agency. I don't see it as broken."
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| Trancer-X |
Yeah, they tried to make it sound all sexy and alluring by saying that you could pick up chicks by telling them that you're in the CIA. I said, but if you're really a CIA operative, you're not really even going to be able to tell anyone about it, are you? I didn't get an answer, just a moment of silence.
The dude then proceeded to tell me that the clubs in Russia and the former Soviet, Eastern Bloc countries are nice, and that the legal age of consent there is only 16 years old. I guess I'm lucky that I'm not turned on by adolescent girls. As I told him, it doesn't matter how exhilarating the work would be - I just couldn't get excited about being a pawn in someone elses game (or more like an expendible asset.)
He asked me if I knew Russian, so I replied, "dosvidanya." :D
That's pretty much the way it went when I talked to one of their clandestine recruiting officers about two years ago. |
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| josh4 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Yeah, they tried to make it sound all sexy and alluring by saying that you could pick up chicks by telling them that you're in the CIA. I said, but if you're really a CIA operative, you're not really even going to be able to tell anyone about it, are you? I didn't get an answer, just a moment of silence.
The dude then proceeded to tell me that the clubs in Russia and the former Soviet, Eastern Bloc countries are nice, and that the legal age of consent there is only 16 years old. I guess I'm lucky that I'm not turned on by adolescent girls. As I told him, it doesn't matter how exhilarating the work would be - I just couldn't get excited about being a pawn in someone elses game (or more like an expendible asset.)
He asked me if I knew Russian, so I replied, "dosvidanya." :D
That's pretty much the way it went when I talked to one of their clandestine recruiting officers about two years ago. |
and then your head finally swelled so big it burst. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
and then your head finally swelled so big it burst. |
Or maybe I just have a life and don't really find it necessary to make disparaging remarks about other people in order to make myself feel adequate. ;) |
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| Lepanto |
| Ofcourse the recruiters sat there and told you that you'll get more than a toilet seat right. I didn't even get that sorta pitch when i went to talk to a USMC recruiters. |
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| ogvh5150 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
He asked me if I knew Russian, so I replied, "dosvidanya." :D |
You've just told the guy goodbye.
You've should have said nyet.
As a field operative what good are you? JK ;)
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
and then your head finally swelled so big it burst. |
It swelled so much he couldn't go past the exit door. JK ;) |
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| Lepanto |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
You've just told the guy goodbye.
You've should have said nyet.
As a field operative what good are you? ;) |
perhaps he should've also said, pashol nahuj and/or sasi moj huj, while we're at it :p |
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| josh4 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Or maybe I just have a life and don't really find it necessary to make disparaging remarks about other people in order to make myself feel adequate. ;) |
Adequate? I was refering to your need to flaunt your self importance. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
Adequate? I was refering to your need to flaunt your self importance. |
When did I ever say anything about being important? I was simply recalling an event that seemed relevant to this thread.
So, instead of always being that with the mindlessly belittling comments, when are YOU actually going to post something of substance?
I guess it's just too easy to sit back and be a lounge chair critic, especially when nothing you've ever posted on this board is worthy of any intellectual or even revelatory merit. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by ogvh5150
You've just told the guy goodbye.
You've should have said nyet.
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Well, it was either that or one of my two favorite Russian phrases, ya ne ponimayu and vy govorite po English :p |
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| josh4 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
When did I ever say anything about being important? |
You didn't, not verbatim, which was the point.
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I was simply recalling an event that seemed relevant to this thread.
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Somebody get this guy a ing medal!
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So, instead of always being that with the mindlessly belittling comments, when are YOU actually going to post something of substance?
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I do all the time, the mindlessly belittling comments are just the spoils for my trouble.
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I guess it's just too easy to sit back and be a lounge chair critic, especially when nothing you've ever posted on this board is worthy of any intellectual or even revelatory merit. |
Says you! Maybe I should start coloring my text to better get noticed. I'm thinking sort of a Caribbean Green, what do you think? |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
You didn't, not verbatim, which was the point.
Somebody get this guy a ing medal!
I do all the time, the mindlessly belittling comments are just the spoils for my trouble.
Says you! Maybe I should start coloring my text to better get noticed. I'm thinking sort of a Caribbean Green, what do you think? |
Grow up, kid. Maybe you should take a short break from this board (or maybe just get banned again) so you can try to figure out whether it's your apparent inferiority complex, or your misplaced anger that is getting the better of you. Either way, you seem to be in need of some soul-searching. |
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