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APPLICATION
Shortly after 9/11, I had to figure out the right thing to do. On the one hand, there was my budding (second year) legal career, which represented a major investment of time and effort. Didn’t come from a trust fund background, so getting there meant 50-60 hour workweeks on anything from bar bouncing to tow truck driving to graveyard shift clerking at a 7-11, juggling that with 15 credit semester, doing well enough in spite of that to get into a top ten law school, followed by three years of legal study, bar exam, etc. Folk who take the tough route don’t tend to be flighty when it comes to giving up what they’d wrested for an unknown.
Add to that the fact that I liked lawyering, or at least the kind of public interest lawyering I did - being a Nader Raider gadfly, duking it out against Big Biz on behalf of the little guy with consumer class actions day in and day out, getting that whole David vs Goliath going on, etc. On the other hand, reason I’d gotten into public interest law in the first place was idealism, and between idealism and the post 9/11 surge of patriotism, I figured I could probably help more people by stopping somebody from setting off a nuke in downtown DC (this was before the WMD intelligence fiasco), than I could by protecting their consumer rights via class actions.
Besides, the Operations Officer job description sounded like it might be fun, so I figured I could do it for a few years, and if I didn't like it, well, I still had my licenses to practice law.
If I knew then what I know now, I probably would've done what most did and expressed my patriotism by buying a flag pin, and maybe slapping a red white and blue ribbon on the back of my truck.
Young, dumb, idealistic and naive though, I mailed out a resume and cover letter to the CIA's Clandestine Service Training division, in Reston, VA, and applied for an Operations Officer position in the CIA's Directorate of Operations.
At the time, I didn't think much would come of it - in the aftermath of 9/11, there were probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of applications winging their way to the Agency. I realized mine would probably stand out, but still, it was a long shot. I figured if nothing came of it, at least my conscience would be clear in that I'd volunteered to do what I could.
A week or so later, I get a form response letter, acknowledging reciept of my application, and adding something to the effect that if you don't hear from us again in 30 days, it means your application wasn't selected for further review, thank you for your interest, best wishes, etc. Within a few weeks, I was up to my elbows in consumer protection class actions, legal briefs, responses, motions, etc.
A month passed without hearing from the CIA, so I figured that's it, and went on doing what I had been doing. Another month passed, by which point I'd forgotten that I'd applied for a job with the CIA. Out of the blue, three months later, I get a message from a "Mr. Arnold", asking me to call him back at an 800 number. I thought Mr. Arnold was a telemarketer at first, but that was soon cleared up. So I call Mr. Arnold, and I find out it's about the CIA application - he wants to do an initial telephonic interview - screening or first cut or something like that. No prob. So we shoot the breeze for maybe an hour or so, chit chatting mainly about geo politics, emergence of China as a global power, the Saudi royal family, the Middle East, etc.
Aside from being a major bookworm, my daily routine at the time included devouring the front section of the Washington Post on the subway en route to work, and surfing through the CNN and MSNBC websites while waiting for the coffee to kick in once I got to my office. I also subscribed to a couple of newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek, and the people I hung out with when I did hang out were the political activist types, so geopolitics was normal conversational fare for me. Point is that I was pretty up on current events, so Mr. Arnold's questions seemed like gimmes, and I ended up hitting a few intended curve balls out the park. Anyhow, at the end of the phone call, he says I did pretty good (here's a part of his notes - thanks to a very belated FOIA release), and asks if I'd be interested in attending a CIA employment seminar a month down the road. Sure thing. So he gives me the time, January 20something, 2002, at the ballroom of a Hilton in Northern Virginia. I jot down some notes about his instructions - what to prepare for, one or two recommended books, his advice that I make a habit of reading The Economist (found out down the road that it's the CIA's preferred newsweekly), and directed me to prepare a short essay.
I showboat a bit, and do an essay based on my translation of an article from the al-Jazeera website. Figure that'll hit two birds with one stone - both the writing and Arabic language skills (hyperlink). A a few days later I get a confirmation letter re the when and where.
Next: CIA Employment Seminar
