My (Very Short) Time at the CIA

The CIA Repeatedly Fails at its Mission

As my taxi eased under the Jetsons-style portico of CIA headquarters in Langley, the driver turned to me and asked, "Back from overseas?" I quipped back, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

In reality, I wanted to say, “I’m just here to interview for an analyst gig.” But then I thought: What if this driver is a plant, a clever test from the agency to see if I can keep my mouth shut? So, I dodged with a joke that disclosed no information, confident that if the Agency were observing, they’d be dazzled by my savoir-faire.

“Good luck,” the driver laughed as I stepped out. Hmm, how did he know I was interviewing? Maybe he was a plant.

As I took the elevator up to the inner sanctum, I heard two employees casually discussing clandestine sources—dropping actual names. My escort quickly pointed at my glaring red “Visitor” badge, silencing the blabbermouths like an annoyed schoolteacher. That set the pattern for my CIA encounters. Throughout my visits, I wondered: are these guys feigning incompetence to test me, or are they actual idiots?

I interviewed with two different departments at the agency. The Near East/ North Africa (NENA) section was recruiting me because I was a Near Eastern Studies PhD candidate with knowledge of several regional languages. An economic research department also wanted to interview me for reasons that weren’t initially clear.

Actual Idiots

I was led through a coded door and a labyrinth of desks crowned with bins marked “BURN,” which lent a James Bond, MI5-like feeling to the whole scene. This must be where important national security work happens. That feeling was dispelled when I went to the section chief’s corner office. She beamed with pride as she described a recent mission:

“Last week, President Bush was giving a speech and wanted to quote a phrase that he thought was in the Quran about turning swords into plowshares. So everyone here was tasked with searching Qurans all day long.”

I stared at her, incredulous. “I bet you didn’t find it,” I said, fighting the urge to add, “Seriously? You wasted hundreds of man-hours on that? I could’ve told you in three seconds that there’s no such phrase in the Quran.”

This was before the era of Internet search engines, but excellent Quranic concordances have been around since the 1940s; decent ones have been around for centuries. I was flabbergasted that the CIA, whose job is literally understanding this stuff, apparently had no one who could instantly say, “Yeah, that’s not in the Quran. Try the Bible. Now let’s devote ourselves to, um, thwarting terrorists.”

The real issue isn’t just about some quote. It’s about the fact that America’s deadliest enemies live, kill, and die by the Quran. Leaders in Iran might decide whether or not to use nuclear weapons based on their interpretation of it. Shouldn’t we have at least one person in the building who knows a little bit about it?

If the CIA analysts had cracked open a concordance, they’d have quickly realized neither "sword" nor "plow" appears in the Quran. There is a verse that Orientalists have dubbed “The Sword Verse,” but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what Bush had in mind. It proclaims:

“When the sacred months have passed, kill the infidels wherever you find them….” (Quran 9:5).

Fast-forward to 2001, when Bin Laden released a statement:

"What America is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our Islamic nation has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years."

Initially, the folks at Langley were flummoxed by the reference: “Eighty years ago? What could he be referring to?” Eventually, someone figured out that Bin Laden was talking about the end of the last Islamic Caliphate (the Ottoman Caliphate). You know, that minor event in Islamic history.

When 9/11 occurred, I wasn’t a bit surprised that the CIA was utterly clueless about it.

You Don’t Know How to Use a Spreadsheet?

I was curious why the CIA’s economics division was interviewing me. Sure, I had a background in economics, but my focus was on Near Eastern Studies. It turns out they were really into the graphs in my writing sample. (Actual excerpt below, because yes, it gets that ridiculous.)

It quickly became apparent that they didn’t know how to use graphing software or spreadsheets—more than a decade after Lotus 1-2-3 had hit the scene. They thought I was the genius who could swoop in and transform their reports into eye candy for the CIA bosses.

There was something about all the CIA folks I met that was a lot more DMV than James Bond. For several of them, lunchtime seemed to be the highlight of their day. Years later, I had flashbacks when I watched Office Space. The CIA people sounded, and even looked, like some of the Office Space characters.

Is There a Wizard Behind the Curtain?

I didn’t end up working at the CIA. As I left, I couldn’t shake the feeling—no, the hope—that everyone I met was part of an elaborate front. The real CIA must be full of brilliant operatives lurking behind this front, right? Because the alternative, that our national security rests in the hands of the imbeciles I met, was far too disturbing.

My experience was only a handful of visits, long ago. So, I wouldn’t stake much on it by itself. But since then, the CIA’s track record has aligned with what I observed: misreading the Soviet collapse, missing 9/11, botching the Iraq WMD reports, bombing the Chinese embassy, the Plame Affair, Aldrich Ames, Harold Nicholson… the hits just keep coming.

CIA malfeasance continues to this day. Previously, the CIA embarrassed America with its ham-fisted political interference in Iran, Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua. More recently, former employees—the famous “51 former intelligence officials”—interfered in U.S. politics by falsely claiming the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” At least a couple of these officials were still employed as contractors, and many had security clearances. They either knew they were wrong or chose to avoid information that would have refuted their claims. Much worse, the highest levels of the CIA knew about the statement but didn’t deign to correct it. The statement ultimately gave Joe Biden an advantage in the presidential debate and obviated one of his biggest potential election liabilities.

So there are only two options: either a slew of current and former top intelligence officials were deceitful and chose to interfere in domestic politics, or they are a bunch of idiots. Both options point to a very serious problem at the CIA. An institution that should be protecting democracy, and has long done a lousy job at that, has a long record of undermining democracy.

The Way It Was…and Ought to Be

In my undergrad years, I was lucky enough to have a class with Jacob Getzels, a pioneering researcher in creativity and intelligence. Getzels acquired a very valuable art collection because he was so adept at detecting nascent genius that he managed to buy works from talented but unknown painters before they became famous. He was also the guy who orchestrated psychological testing for the OSS, the CIA’s predecessor. I talked with him about his OSS experience. Perhaps, in part because of his efforts, the OSS was staffed with the best and brightest—incredible individuals like Moe Berg (star MLB player and lawyer), Arthur Goldberg (U.N. Ambassador and Supreme Court Justice), and Aaron Bank (U.S. Special Forces founder).

Fast-forward to today and the CIA is run by mediocrities like John Brennan, a guy who once voted for the Communist Party and famously had his email hacked by teenagers (Brennan was also part of the illustrious Near East group that missed 9/11, so at least the CIA can claim to be an equal opportunity employer of incompetents).

Incredibly, we don’t even know how much of our tax money is funneled into the CIA’s black hole of incompetence. The budget? Classified. That needs to end. We should at least know how much we’re paying for their screw-ups. Then, we should overhaul the agency from the ground up.