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SUMMARY - INTRODUCTION
Soon after 9/11, guy (moi) gets all patriotic, what with the flags, the "I am an American" ad, and just being an all around naive idealist. You know the kind: do-gooder, public interest activist, liberal lawyer who had been a Nader Raider. When 9/11 came around, he was a newbie public interest lawyer, plugging away at an organization called Trial Lawyers for Public Justice on consumer rights issues.
Guy was happy with his legal career, but after that terrible day, there were all those stories in the news about how the intelligence services had dropped the ball big time because they didn't have people who knew jack about the Middle East, or who even knew how to speak Arabic.
Anyhow, there on MSNBC and CNN, day in and day out, are George Tenet and Robert Mueller appealing to Americans who can speak the lingo and know something about the region to step up to the plate, help the country in her hour of need, etc.
Guy's fluent in Arabic, and had actually been born in the Middle East, so he looks up the CIA website, checks out a subdivision called the "Directorate of Operations" that does all the movie type CIA stuff, and sees a job called an "Operations Officer". That one seemed like the very tip of the intelligence gathering spearhead, and also the one that promised the most adventure and excitement. Sounded like a patriotic and fun thing to do - run around Central Asia for a couple of years playing James Bond, catch Bin Laden, then come back home and write a book with a tile like "Taking Out the Terror," "On Osama's Ass," or something alliterative like that. Then go back to lawyering and live happily ever after. Seemed pretty simple in theory.
So guy sends out a resume with a cover letter, applying for an Operations Officer job.
What Guy didn't know was that Tenet, Mueller, and the CIA website forgot to qualify their appeal with relevant information like: "but if you're not caucasian, we hope you're an obsequious minority who doesn't mind an environment where white separatist types extol the virtues of apartheid South Africa, refer to African Americans as 'niggers,' and think that immigration should be limited to Europeans. Also hope you don't have a thing against hazing - think of it as a bonding thing, no matter how sick or abusive it seems. Let's see... what else... did we mention that you must be willing to sleep and continue to sleep with your assigned Directorate of Operations recruiters/ mentors as a condition for advancement in this business? Sleeping with newbies is seen as a job perk around here, and well... it's a tradition we don't like messing with. Recruiters' feelings get hurt if you dump them, and unlike most jilted lovers, these ones have the clout of the US government at their beck and call, and so can reeeeeeally get back at you. That whole hell-hath-no-fury thing? We bring it to life. What else... oh, and we certainly hope you don't have a thing against reaching into your pocket and paying Directorate of Operations recruiters as another condition for advancement - Uncle Sam's check only goes so far, you know, and sometimes our recruiters have unexpected expenditures like a newborn kid, a porch that needs fixing, or a Caribbean vacation, sooooo... you might be called on to subsidize them a bit. Think of it as another job perk or tradition. Oh, and you don't have a thing against cults, brainwashing, and that kind of thing - do you? Good. And biggest thing - if you ever see something that is not kosher or just plain illegal, like that bribery thing we just mentioned, you'd better keep your trap shut or else we'll give you a crash course on how the resources, clout and connections of the CIA can be put to use against would-be whistleblowers."
Guy finds out about those qualifiers the hard way. Talk about bait-and-switch.
Anyhow, a week or so after 9/11, I applied for an Operations Officer job in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. I did pretty good in the various rounds of job interviews and on the various tests, so my application got placed on a fast/ expedited track. Soon thereafter, I was offered the job on an expedited basis. I subsequently came across some iffy practices and iffier people in the Directorate of Operations, had second thoughts about a career in that kind of environment and with that kind of company, changed my mind, and withdrew my application.
You'd think that would be the end the story - somebody was interested in a job for a while, then changed his mind. This being the CIA though, many things went haywire: one part of the Agency, the DO folk, ignored the withdrawal of my application and figured they had some use for me - whether I was willing or not.
Another part, the security folk, did some mental jujitsu and concluded that I was too highly qualified to want to work for the CIA, so I must have a hidden agenda. To add insult to injury, part of the reasoning leading to that conclusion had to do with a worldview, founded upon racist stereotyping and unfortunately widespread within the Directorate of Operations I dealt with, that assumes Blacks and/or minorities are supposed to be happy-go-lucky types, ala a Martin Lawrence character, but are otherwise kinda slooooow.
Definitely not the kinds of folk who are supposed to ace the convoluted Directorate of Operations interviews and related tests, or who otherwise do well enough to get their job applications marked with notations like "EXPEDITE"
So acting from those premises, the good people of the CIA decided to put through what they called an "acid test" that was as unpleasant as the term implies.
The mix includes a CIA recruiter/ mentor who got royally ticked off when I broke up a relationship with her (perhaps I should've predicted she'd react inappropriately - I mean, what kind of self-respecting mentor sleeps with a mentee anyway?) and decided to retaliate as only those with access to the resources and connections of the CIA can retaliate.
Add an induction process that boils down to sick and bizarre hazing rituals as a prerequisite for joining what amounts to an unsupervised and corrupt juvenile fraternity - which is bad enough, but is a lot worse when applied to somebody who doesn't even want to join the fraternity.
Add Directorate of Operations recruiters extorting and shaking down newbies for money and sex; a breathtakingly cavalier attitude by CIA folk re the use and abuse of official powers and governmental resources.
Add a sick sense of humor that can be found nowhere outside the CIA's Directorate of Operations (example of what passes for hillarious in the Directorate of Operations: take a prospective recruit, subject him to all kinds of iffy behavioral modification and conditioning techniques, plus disorienting tactics [yes, the CIA actually does that kind of sick stuff - they got busted in the 1970's running a creepy program codenamed MKULTRA, and swore to Congress that they were out of that business for good. They lied], teach him marksmanship, then hand him a scope-mounted assault rifle and point him at the President of these United States - that one wasn't deemed too funny by the Secret Service when they heard about it, and it led to then CIA Director Tenet's sudden "resignation." This website is where the details of that story will get posted for the first time - media analysts speculated about the reasons, but never could have guessed the tawdry details of how that actually came about).
Add outright criminal retaliation by Agency officials intended to intimidate a would-be whistleblower (moi) into keeping his trap shut about all the preceding; an amazingly lax or nonexistent chain of command that enables CIA personnel to engage in the preceding with little fear of accountability or adverse consequences, and more.
When the intimidation tactics didn't pan out, the good folk of the CIA told me that all the iffy things referenced above and described in this website were not what they seem at first sight - a series of malfeasances and screwups by some corrupt officials followed by attempts at coverup that made things worse. Instead, according to the Agency, all of those things were components of an esoteric induction process or test - but one that is supposed to remain shrouded in mystery or some such, so it can never be explained to me.
Like I said, the CIA probably needs to do something about the racial stereotyping within the Agency that assumes Blacks and other minorities are dim and kinda sloooooow.
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