Theodore W. Weaver: Our Unfinished Business

tww Theodore W. Weaver: Our Unfinished BusinessTheodore W. Weaver is a former Intelligence Officer within the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and the Directorate of Science and Technology. He has close to a decade working as a Special Agent with several Federal agencies and has worked against counter proliferation, human trafficking/smuggling, child exploitation, Intellectual Property Rights violations and narcotics. You can follow him on Twitter or via the nascent Inglorious Amateurs website.

It might seem odd that someone who worked at the CIA would offer up an opinion piece not related to Osama Bin Laden, on this, the 2nd anniversary of his ending. I actually think that now is the perfect day to talk about more important issues. I can think of no more important issue than the repatriotisation of captive American citizens abroad. That objective is complete….Levinson isn’t.

Levinson

The receptionist had a bowl of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on her desk. I remember that much. The large conference room where the asset validation / recruitment pitch security reviews were held for the Iran Operations Division was located in the main Iran Operations Division (IOD) Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). It was through a short maze of cubes filled with an operational targeting group and support staff. At the top of a raised section of the SCIF were a row of offices, and a few large sections of ceiling high glass that made up one wall of the conference room. Like most of the conference rooms I had been in at the Agency (and come to think of it, the other government jobs I’ve had) this one was mostly crammed full of a much too large conference table surrounded by an unwieldy amount of swivel chairs. To make matters worse, the outer edges of the room were encased with more chairs for overflow. It gave you a good sense of what goldfish must wake up to every day. Minus the reception desk with candy, and no I didn’t eat any.

I didn’t have access to this wing yet, having just moved to IOD, even though it had been over a month. I was in a SCIF across the hall and found this all out while on my way to the late morning meeting. Moments before I had grabbed my files and notes, headed out the SCIF I was in, and across the hall to the main door.

Beep

My blue badge just coughed at me; the obvious clunking of the magnetic lock suspiciously missing from my attempt at getting into my meetings. Nothing but silence, so I tried again.

Beep

Nope, not a fluke, I couldn’t get in. Just then the door burst open and a few people walked out, most likely on the way for a mid morning Starbucks break down the hall. In I went; ‘tail gating’ my way into the SCIF.

My first stop was down a long row of cubes straight ahead of me. My first office-mate from initial training was working as a Targeter somewhere along these rows. I had been bugging her for a few weeks to meet up and talk shop about IOD. She’d been there longer than me, and I wanted info on the Division. She’s also extremely focused and not surprisingly kept putting off meeting because she’d had too much she wanted to get done. Also no surprise, her cube was empty as she was in another meeting. Oh well, off to the conference room I went.

I was the second Staff Operations Officer (SOO) presenting a case at that mornings meeting. As this was my first, I was a little nervous. I knew the case, but felt like I had a vested interest given my previous line of work. These meetings were used to present potential agents, or HUMINT sources, for further development, recruitment, some sort of operation, handling issue or termination in a peer review setting. The peers in this case were more senior officers from the given division or operation group, as well as referents from the Counter Intelligence Center, Office of Security, the appropriate Directorate of Science and Technology officer and the ever present legal representative. The meetings were a clinical affair, at least based on my experience. I had written up my briefing packet and had pretty much gotten is signed off by the relevant officers already the day before via email. I figured this would be a formality.

I started my Federal career as a Special Agent with what was the US Customs Service / Immigration and Naturalization Service Post 9/11 Bush era mash-up formerly known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (now Homeland Security Investigations). After a half decade of working a spectrum of customs and immigration cases I decided I needed a change and went through recruitment and hiring for the National Clandestine Service at the CIA. During that time, on March 9th, 2007 retired FBI Special Agent Robert Levinson was kidnapped while working a post retirement private sector investigations job that took him to Kish Island, a resort spot and free trade zone in the Persian Gulf, in Iran.

I have never been a traditional “cop” type of investigator. Though I respect and honor the “thin blue line”, I think I’ve always done a pretty good job at maintaining my old friendships and not being “that guy” who looks like a cop and only hangs out with other cops. That said, I did and do take law enforcement very seriously and one thing that has always been a constant for me is looking out for my brothers and sisters on the job. I never knew Robert Levinson, and wasn’t a Bureau agent (worked with plenty), this event really made me take notice however. A part of me filed it away and though I probably wasn’t fully conscious of it at the time, I assumed that the Bureau would do right by their former agent and move heaven and earth to get him back.

Now over two years later, everyone is filing into the IOD conference room, and Robert Levinson is fresh on my mind. I had been working the desk of my particular IOD branch for a number of months and felt good to be finally making some headway on a developmental asset, especially when that asset was saying they had information about Robert Levinson. I’d like to think that anyone sitting on the desk at that time would have been interested like me, but most likely it was my previous Special Agent background that made me push the officer in the field on this case.

The officer in question was a bit of an oddity. Not only was he based in National Resources; he was also a Staff Operations Officer (SOO) like myself. This meant he had been a SOO for a while before heading to Ops Certification at the Farm, so he could then officially recruit his own agents. This was also one of his first developmental assets, so it was our own special “big deal”, not that any of the more seasoned officers around seemed to care.

National Resources (NR) seems to be one of those misunderstood offices within the NCS. A few previous CIA officers, Henry Crumpton and “Ishmael Jones” for example, have detailed a bit about NR in their recent books. I had exposure to NR while working for the agency formerly known as ICE (or HSI as its called now), and later worked in NR for a time once inside the CIA. I find that most people I speak with see some kind of nefarious purpose for having what are supposed to be overseas “Spies” working within the United States. For clarity sake, NR is charged with a few very important functions that make operating within the US essential and beneficial to the Agency and our nations citizens.

NR officers handle communications and debriefings with US citizens who willingly cooperate with the Agency. These would be people traveling to countries of interest, or working with specific people of interest to the Agency. There are some other mechanisms here I won’t detail, but they pertain to agreements with companies in the US for similar activities.

Officers from NR also work to spot, assess, develop and recruit foreign individuals who are traveling inside the US. These might be people who live within the US continually with some form of permanent immigration status (green card, etc) or with a visa. Their access may involve them traveling back to their country of origin and then returning to the US. At that point they’d be met and debriefed by the NR officer. The scenarios vary quite a bit, but most NR spots are quite busy, and I’ve assisted in some very interesting recruitments based on NR cases. One such recruitment was facilitated by utilizing my previous years working immigration cases as a Special Agent with ICE to dig through hundreds of files in a targeting assignment to find a good lead for an officer to approach. In the end, the officer used my targeting package to successfully recruit and run this individual. I only know all this because my supervisor in that office was nice enough to keep me updated on the cases after I moved to DS&T.

My specific case on this day centered on an individual within the Iranian security apparatus. As things panned out they claimed to have access to a wide variety of information, some of which was related to Kish Island activities as well as the kidnapping of Robert Levinson. His motivation was purely financial, and our hope was to get some kind of good validating info about his access from an upcoming meeting. I felt the review was a moot point, so when it was my turn I quickly presented the case and led with what I thought was the most crucial bit of information we wanted to know more about: Levinson.

“I don’t want to hear fucking Kish Island mentioned again!”

It was blurted out with such a bureaucratically laced snide plop that I was caught a bit off guard. Factor in that it was one of the Deputy Chiefs of Operations for IOD who threw it down at me in the middle of my brief, well, let’s just say I wasn’t used to being talked to that way. I took a quick breath, sat on the comment for a second, suppressing my initially reaction that I won’t detail here, and then continued explaining why I thought the issue was important.

He wasn’t having any of it. He said he didn’t care to hear more, and that he had been led to believe there was more to this potential asset than anything to do with Kish Island. I quickly made my case and roped in one of the referents that had given me the unofficial sign off to present the case that morning. The Deputy Chief then seemed to sputter out, as if it had been some sort of compulsory obligation, not unlike the Brooks Brothers he was sporting that day. The operation was given an initial approval, so basically the officer could meet the potential asset and potentially recruit them. It all seemed really a strange and unnecessary way of recruiting people. When I’ve worked confidential informants in the past, well, I had done it differently, but I don’t own a nice suit, so what do I know?

Now, at this point I should say that I really wish I had some miraculous breakthrough with the Levinson case. It’s obvious that I did not, and had no other real part in this. I don’t know much of what happened after I rotated out of the office for a training course. After my certification course I jumped Directorates and moved to the Directorate of Science and Technology. I didn’t get any other updates from that office. This was, and absolutely still is, common for officers moving around to different offices in their careers at the Agency. As much as Agency HRS folks like to talk about “Hall Files” (your reputation at the Agency, as whispered in the halls), I found out early that just about every officer is as good as their most current assignment or operation. You might have things keep you in the spotlight throughout your career, but as soon as your flame goes dim, the giant information pit that is the Agency swallows you up. Much like Iran swallowed up Robert Levinson.

I have spoken with a former colleague and friend of Levinson, as well as exchanged messages with members of his family. I’m no expert on the man, by any stretch, but its clear that he is highly respected by his friends and loved by his family. In January of this year the Levinson family started a White House online petition that requested the government focus their energy on finding and freeing Levinson. The shocking result was that way more people turned out in favor of the creation of a “Death Star”

I found out more recently that several offices did get spotty information about Levinson during my time at the Agency. It seems like those cases and experiences were kind of like mine. Some initial interest, then nothing. Not like an effort not to do anything about Levinson, more a general uncertainty or inaction with regards to the information that was coming in. For instance, one officer I spoke with had been asked to review a video that was believed to be of Levinson while working in another IOD office. There was no follow up that he knew of, however.

I started out writing this piece before March of 2013, hoping to have this completed in time with Robert Levinson’s 7th anniversary in captivity. That obviously did not happen. I noticed that several organizations made statements about Levinson’s plight, including various former and current FBI Special Agent Associations, to include a moment of silence marking the dubious anniversary. While the attention and respect for their own is to be respected and honored, I can’t help but wonder what exactly has changed?

Robert Levinson is not the only American in captivity, not even the only being held by Iran. How many other anniversaries have gone by without much notice? How many other junior intelligence officers have pitched access agents who are said to have knowledge of Americans being held overseas? Were those cases given more attention by management?

Now that I am out of that direct stream of knowledge, I really could not even guess. As a country we seem to have a very short memory when it comes to critical events, so I would not be surprised if the Robert Levinson’s captivity, and that of former US Marine Amir Hekmati or pastor Saeed Abedini are not garnering the kind of attention that should really be given to those of our citizens being held captive by another nation.

Popular culture has educated people with the common US Military motto of “No Man Left Behind”. Though not always a reality, the spirit of the motto is something we could all do better at.

Cia memorial wall Theodore W. Weaver: Our Unfinished BusinessThis is the point where I reach back to new officer training at the Agency and try to tie in history with the present day. As part of new officer training we all were encouraged to read “The Book of Honor” by Ted Gupp. His book details a number of the fallen Agency officers that have stars appearing on the Wall of Honor in the Original Headquarters Building (OHB) , and appear in the Book of Honor at the base of the wall. I bring this up because I think its very relevant to this discussion of our citizens in captivity around the globe.

I also bring it up because I just recently listened to the audiobook (I drive a lot for my current job and listen to quite a few audiobooks). Upon hearing these stories again, all the while thinking of Robert Levinson’s case, I see a definite pattern emerge. While the “Book of Honor” details CIA officers who perished in the line of duty, the lack of positive action, or downright inaction of our most senior officials in doing everything possible within their power to help US Citizens in harms way or captivity is shocking. If you are not familiar with these people I urge you to read or listen to Ted Gupp’s excellent book. In it you will learn about the likes of legendary Hugh Francis Redmond who spent 19 years as a captive in China, or John J. Merriman who though not a captive, was seemingly denied much needed medical aid after a plane crash in the Congo in 1964.

It seems to me as if government officials don’t care about what happens to Levinson. My feeling is that the issue is so far out of hand, that unless a direct and easy solution presents itself, the predominant risk adverse nature of our current intelligence apparatus will drag its feet until that “sure thing” comes along. This I believe needs to change. We as citizens should demand that our government takes immediate action to secure the release of our fellow citizens being held captive overseas. Its time to stand up and fight for people like Robert Levinson. We can choose to spend our precious time foaming about previously authorized interrogation programs, the stock market or movie stars, or we can take a stand for something more lasting and meaningful. People like Robert Levinson spent a career in service to our country. I don’t know his career trajectory, but it is safe to say from my first hand experience as a Special Agent, he gave more than he got to the citizens of this nation. He doesn’t deserve to sit locked up by a sworn enemy like the Iranian regime.

You might be asking yourself what you can do to help. If so, I’m glad to hear it. I’m not sure what good it actually does, but Internet access makes it very easy now to contact your representative. Why not check out http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/Twitter, retweet it. Then follow @HelpBobLevinson and show your support.

You can find that information on the Levinson family’s website as well as on the Wikipedia page devoted to him.

Scriven L. King On Security Conceptualization

sk Scriven L. King On Security Conceptualization

Scriven King is a security professional who has worked for the federal government for ten years and now enjoys a life in both the private and public sector. His previous positions have included law enforcement and security operations, physical security manager, crime prevention officer, and personal security officer. He is also the editor of The Security Dialogue, a blog where he enjoys talking about new security technologies, strategies, and techniques. You can follow him on Twitter at @scrivenlking.

I’ve been a security professional for over a decade and worked in a variety of areas in this field to include everything from major event security, dignitary protection, security operations, armed patrols, bike patrols, security management, physical security, personnel security, and program management. In each field, I have come to the realization that most people have no clue what “security” really is. That’s right. I’m not just talking about customers either. Security professionals also have a flawed concept of what constitutes “security”. And you know what? You do as well probably. So why is it that so many of us have no clue what we’re talking about or asking for?

Let’s first examine what security is. Security is a psychological construct. In other words, security is something we humans feel because it helps us prioritize the other survival needs we have. Think about it. Ancient cave dwellers faced a number of survival issues daily – food, water, shelter, etc. Security was a primary concern, given they had to ward off dangerous predators and rival humans. Certainly, hunting and gathering can’t be done if you’re preoccupied with having to worry about keeping your stuff (and you) from harm’s way. So they did whatever they needed to in order to protect against would-be threats. Over time, those defenses were tested by these threats and what worked against them stayed and what didn’t they rid themselves of. As those threats became less frequent, less real-time evidence was needed to establish security. We no longer needed to see a threat to feel as though we had deterred them. A great illustration I use to make this point is locked doors. Why locked doors? Think about it. Every time you lock a door and leave for the day, you do so feeling very secure. When you lock the doors at night, you sleep easy because you feel have adequate security. Most often than not, you have never been burglarized. You have zero experience with actual criminals. Yet, you believe the lock keeps the threat away.

Why is this bad? When we forget the differences between security and actual protection, we tend to be more concentrated on the mental assurance we have evaded attack rather than actual data to substantiate it with. Would you rather get a vaccine that was tested in a lab with real viruses or one scientists feel will work? All security measures should be evaluated on how well they stop actual attackers and should be implemented with the understanding an attack will occur rather than if. Too often, we fashion security after the least likely scenario in which the threat will attack or on the presumption he has come but was thwarted by something we did that can’t be corroborated. How many times have security professionals sold a piece of equipment to counter a threat that will likely never show up? It’s like buying an operating table for your home. Some would argue that’s how we got the Transportation Security Administration and countless other security bodies. It’s been the leading cause as to why intelligence reform will never be sufficient. In that light, the misnomers about security are no more apparent than they are in national politics where various threats, real or imagined, compete for our government’s attention and money.

So how do we fix this? There’s no easy road unfortunately. We have to begin by formulating a national risk analysis based on realistic threat scenarios from across the security spectrum. This discussion should focus on criminal and national security threats. We shouldn’t shy away from the various socioeconomic or geopolitical ingredients that feed them. From there, we should discuss how likely we are to see the attackers and evaluated what has worked against them in the past. We should be wary of adopting someone else’s security solution to our problems. What works in Tel Aviv sounds really cool but may not work in the modern American security landscape. Finally, we need to develop attainable goals and projections. We will never be rid of terrorism. Never. So let’s stop making that goal. Instead, let’s create an environment that mitigates the threat the minute it’s known preferably before an attack occurs. A lack of clear and specific attainable goals has been the biggest threat to our security. Remember it’s not about feeling secure because the threat is not present. It’s about what defeats an attacker when he/she chooses to attack that should constitute security.

Guest Post: A Case of the Intelligence Officer “Mondays” by Sean P. Sullivan

Sean P. Sullivan has over 15 years of Federal and Military experience in the US Navy and within the CIA’s Special Activities Division of the National Clandestine Service. Mr. Sullivan is now an intelligence, security, and surveillance systems consultant. You can follow him on Twitter or via the nascent Inglorious Amateurs website. You can follow him on Twitter @haplesspursuer.

This is about “a day” at the Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters Building. In the following piece, I will attempt to shed light on what an average day might look like for someone who is on rotation at Headquarters. Before you become disappointed, this isn’t about the Jason Bourne’s, James Bond’s or Jack Ryan’s of the intelligence world. The Central Intelligence Agency is housed on a compound in the Washington Metropolitan Area (WMA) located in the middle of some of the worst traffic areas (it gives the 405 in Los Angeles a run for its money) and most diverse populations in the country. If you are interested in a career in the National Clandestine Service, expect to spend a few years at Headquarters, which will include very long days, a never ending cycle of priorities and the joy of everyone in the area intent on playing “spot the spook” with everyone they encounter. Mix that in with a career destined to stress the family out from the inevitable home time interruptions and limited days off.

I was a Paramilitary Officer in Special Activities Division (SAD) of the National Clandestine Service (NCS). I spent all of my time in the NCS and my experience with other Directorates comes from my many interactions and projects with them. I spent some time in the Iran Operations Division, Information Operations Center, and National Resources Division but the majority of it was in SAD. Special Activities Division is an amazing place to work because, not only is it full of professional and mission focused Officers, those Officers exude the same code of ethics and camaraderie (but on a higher level since these Officers, with few exceptions, are picked from the best this country has to offer) that I missed since departing the Military. My time there was a blur of hard work, great people, constant internal/external pressure, and far more travel than I did while in the military.

The Agency houses some of the most intelligent and hard-working people, but even those premier Officers can’t escape a case of the “Mondays”. These Intel Officers attempt to protect US citizens and national interests (often times in spite of the bureaucracy that pretends to guide it) at a great personal sacrifice of personal time, social life, and public acknowledgement of their service. The truly amazing work of the CIA is as humbling as it is frustrating since you are constantly battling between effective mission completion, the Teamster style legal team that constantly looks over your shoulder, management, the ever evolving interests and focus of Congress and Senate (oversight and funding), and finance who dash your hopes of ever getting your operation off the ground if the decimal places don’t line up. The paramount responsibility is always the safety of your fellow Officers as well as that of the agents who risk their lives (and many times that of their families) to provide HUMINT in order to fill the intelligence gaps designated by the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

On any given day the random Intelligence Officer wakes up before the club crowd gets to bed so he/she can get to the office before traffic and the Agency parking lot tempts them to request a mental health day. The awe of passing through the gates of the George Bush Center of Intelligence (a unique government building and living history museum rolled into one) quickly fades when one looks for one of the few remaining parking spots in the back 40 of the immense Agency compound. After the cross country trek to your office in the bowels of the Agency’s Old (or new) Headquarters Building and finally sitting at your desk in one of the endless cube farms, a sinking feeling, that your emails and morning meetings will result in 18 to 20 hours of work that needs to be crammed into the next 8-10 hours, quickly settles in. All of this happens while prepping for your upcoming TDY. You open your email and find that while you were spending the precious few hours with your family, others were diligently typing more than 50 priority emails that require your immediate attention (aside from those patronizing – you’re a good kid – ones from the ODNI). While deep in your latest mental rant about being tasked with something that is actually handled by another office, you mentally calculate which would take longer: explaining the actual process to the one tasking you AND the office that should do it, or just doing it yourself. The meeting results in task changes to many of the items you completed yesterday and adds a few management fires which easily puts your day at about 22-24 hours of actual work, including the paperwork, constant emails and instant messages needed to clarify and re-clarify your tasks, requests, responses, trip plans, and remaining meetings. After your seventh meeting and 63rd email, you realize that you missed your window to eat lunch by 2 hours and the resultant hunger delusions make you rationalize with yourself “its ok, you can just leave early since you didn’t spend your mandated 30 minute lunch time eating”.

After grabbing something from one of the many vending machines that adorn every floor of the building, you rush off to meet with someone from another office that may have some vetting info for one of your cases. On the way there you run into an Officer from another office who needs to ask you a few questions regarding one of his cases and get your thoughts on a request he needs to route for some resources your office controls. You finally finish and get to the intended office only to see your “contact” leaving. Chasing him down is the only option so off you go until you catch up and lay out your needs. A colleague from your office catches up to you and indicates that something has come up and a meeting has been called which you need to attend. An hour later you appear with new tasking to head a planning group which in two days, can have an effective rough draft of a plan that can be briefed to senior management in case the new potential hotspot becomes an actual. This involves pulling other Officers from their schedules, requesting information on resources, planning logistics and searching for assets in a location that hasn’t been dealt with in quite some time due to its low key, low priority status from the NIE and congressional funding. It is now 5 o’clock and you realize that if you leave now, you might be able to sit down and eat while your family sits in front of their already cleared places at the dinner table but that won’t happen because your boss calls your office in for a “quick” meeting to brief the results of his meeting with the Group and Branch Chiefs.

The quick meeting lasts about 45 minutes and concludes with immediate taskers for you to reach out to the field and other Divisions in order to coordinate some changing priorities. A renewed sense of urgency drives you to jump right in because these changes relate to a case you have been working on for several months which, until now, looked to be stagnating. You finally conclude your last instant message conversation and send your last email. You log off with a sigh, a stretch and begin to walk out when you hear “have a good night” from your boss’ office. When you peek around the corner he is typing emails and checking off items on what looks to be a very long list. You then realize he is going to be there for a few more hours. You say good night and walk out the door, then past security and out into the dark. It is then that you realize it is after 8pm. Cell phones are not authorized in the building and because you were either on the phone or away from your desk basically the entire day, you have had no contact with home. As you begin the drive home, you are sure that all you will get when you try to explain why is the all too familiar rolling eyes.

Cheer up though… its only Wednesday!!!

Theodore W. Weaver: Remembering Khost, Three Years Later

Theodore W. Weaver is a former Intelligence Officer within the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and the Directorate of Science and Technology. He has close to a decade working as a Special Agent with several Federal agencies and has worked against counter proliferation, human trafficking/smuggling, child exploitation, Intellectual Property Rights violations and narcotics. You can follow him on Twitter or via the nascent Inglorious Amateurs website.

tww Theodore W. Weaver: Remembering Khost, Three Years Later
Just to start, no I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even in DC on 30 December 2009 when Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi blew himself up taking the reported 7 Americans and 1 Jordanian and 1 Afghan with him.

I was in San Diego for the holidays, visiting family. I remember getting up and coming downstairs to make coffee for myself. Then I must have checked my phone and saw the news.

My mind raced, as I’m sure anyone whose life has been directly tied to the last 10 plus years of war does anytime news like this comes out. Who do I know OCONUS? Who can I call or text? Where can I get the most recent info? Can I get back to Langley to help in any way?

I have known of fellow agents getting injured or killed on duty. The hard part for me was this was a different kind of experience at that time. I never served in the military, so I missed that terrible experience of being just that close to something you can’t directly help or affect change upon.

I felt, and quite literally was, useless at that time. I can’t begin to imagine what those on the ground, in country and back at Langley actually felt. A few hours after I first read the news I was able to get a cryptic SMS back from a colleague who let me know that no one close had been injured or killed in the attack.

A lot has been written, mostly by fellow former Intelligence Officers who likely have years of experience on me, and as equally should know better, about what led to Balawi’s successful suicide attack that day in Khost. You can search online to see the various run downs of who was or was not following tradecraft, or who should or should not have been Chief of Station. My goal is not to try and armchair quarterback anything. Swept up in the craziness that must have been a surging tide of “what if” the Officers on the ground and back at Headquarters pushed to make that meeting happen. Sometimes you push too hard, and chances are those are the times some crazy person will try to blow you up. The term “perfect storm” comes to mind.

This being the 3rd anniversary of this terrible event, I just wanted to share what I took away from everything.

I only knew one Officer killed at Khost, very peripherally. Elizabeth Hanson was a Targeting Officer (officially titled Specialized Skills Officer – Targeting). Very simply, her job was to look for leads to piece together detailed information related to HUMINT targets of interest. I always thought of it as looking for that one piece of thread to pull, that when pulled it unraveled the whole sweater. Balawi was that piece of thread; at least that was the idea.

I went through recruitment at the Agency at a time of flux for Headquarters based officers (HBOs). In fact, I was hired as a Targeting Officer (SSO-­T), but by the time I entered on duty and drove to the back reaches of the Purple lot, I was a Headquarters Based Trainee (HBT).

Like most things in a huge bureaucracy, titles matter. Networking is hugely important in an Agency career and although it seems counter intuitive, its even more important as a headquarters based officer. I found that conversations with new acquaintances usually began with a short bio. What did you do before coming to the Agency? Where are you from? Then always ended up with: What are you? Meaning, what sort of Officer are you. Imagine the fun that could be had by knuckle-­dragging Paramilitary Officers when they ask that last question and were given the response of, “I’m an HBT”…which was followed by a quick deafened response of “HVT!” (high value target). Laughter ensued.

By now quite a few former Agency Officers have detailed recruitment and training, and have even spoken of the rotations that new officers do within headquarters. For the HBT’s, soon to be HBO’s, we did similar rotations, with a certification course related to our final job selection coming right before being home-based in an office.

As part of networking and building a so called “Hall File”, or reputation, the National Clandestine Service’s HR department (HRS) advised us to attend sponsored “brown bag” lunches. These were usually informal (if your idea of informal is crowding into a conference room, in a bad suit eating your Subway sandwich purchased at the Agency Subway counter all the while sitting next to a Group Chief who is talking about how great their office is) events that were used to introduce prospective home-­basing officers to an office, as well as share general information about an office or operation that was being talked about at length.

HRS also pushed the idea of more seasoned HBO’s creating individual mentoring groups for the Staff Operations Officers, Targeting Officers and Collection Management Officers. These were a rotating peer mentoring group that had the goal of helping new HBO’s find their way through the bureaucracy. Sometimes they helped calm nerves, or make introductions to offices of interest, or just shared stories about their jobs. From my memory, I met Elizabeth Hanson at one of these peer meetings for Targeting Officers. I only put it together after meeting one of her former certification instructors during my SOO certification. For whatever reason the Targeting Officers had the more active peer-­?mentoring group at Langley.

Elizabeth Hanson kept a small plaque with a meaningful quote on it at her desk. I know this because I had the same head instructor as her during my certification phase as a SOO. At graduation this instructor related Elizabeth’s story to us, and then tearfully gave us all the same small desk plaque with quote. She asked us to think on the quote and what it meant to us, and to live our lives and careers the way Elizabeth did hers. Its funny, the quote itself is less meaningful than the gesture through someone’s grief at losing a friend.

When onboarding with the Agency, going through initial orientation, class instructors like to try and demystify the Agency for new employees. It would seem obvious that most of us, even when approaching the job with open eyes, have bought into at least some of the romanticism and mystique that surrounds life at the CIA, especially life working under some sort of cover. Maybe it’s for that reason, romanticism, that I’ve held onto my memory of that day at graduation. I find meaning in remembering our fallen colleagues, who right or wrong, gave of their lives in pursuit of something bigger than themselves.

I’ve taken to trying to honor those fallen in some meaningful way. At this point in my Federal career, there isn’t much I can do directly. Instead I choose to think about other fallen colleagues, even those I never worked with directly. I also try and get out and do something meaningful to me. Today I’ll be out honoring the fallen nine by pushing myself through the Crossfit Hero WOD “The Seven”. I do it every year, and the plaque still sits on my desk at work. Always there to remind me what I would attempt if I had no fear of failure. Egging me on to push through the fear.

  • Jennifer Lynne Matthews CIA officer, chief of base (Age 45)
  • Harold Brown Jr CIA officer (Age 37)
  • Elizabeth Hanson CIA officer (Age 30)
  • Darren LaBonte CIA officer (Age 35)
  • Scott Michael Roberson CIA officer (Age 39)
  • Dane Clark Paresi Blackwater Worldwide (Xe) (Age 46)
  • Jeremy Wise Blackwater Worldwide (Xe) (Age 35)
  • Al Shareef Ali bin Zeid Jordanian intelligence official (Age Undisclosed)
  • Arghawan Security director at the base (Age Undisclosed)

Guest Post: Zero Dark Reality

Theodore W. Weaver is a former Intelligence Officer within the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and the Directorate of Science and Technology. He has close to a decade working as a Special Agent with several Federal agencies and has worked against counter proliferation, human trafficking/smuggling, child exploitation, Intellectual Property Rights violations and narcotics. You can follow him on Twitter or via the nascent Inglorious Amateurs website.

tww Guest Post: Zero Dark Reality
For the country’s premier intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency sure seems to be airing copious amounts of laundry (fresh and dirty alike) as of late. According to press reports it’s drones, Bin Laden movies, and DCIA affairs, Oh My!

As a former Officer of both the National Clandestine Service and Directorate of Science and Technology, I cringe every time I read an article about the Agency. Usually it’s for a variety of reasons, however, lately it is over minor easily corrected journalistic errors.

Employees of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service (formerly the Directorate of Operations or Human Intelligence side of the Agency) are Officers of one sort or another. They are not agents, or operatives. They can be Operations Officers (Core Collectors is another name), the main recruiters and handlers of the actual agents. In that category are a small number of Paramilitary Operations Officers (PMOO’s), Air Operations Officers (AOO’s) and likely a few others I’ve forgot now. Alongside the deployed OO’s there are Collection Management Officers (CMO’s), also called Reports Officers.

Within the NCS there are also another group, and I admit it becomes even more confusing as the Agency itself seems to change these names on an intermittent basis. This group is the Headquarters Based Officers (HBO’s), which break down into Staff Operations Officers (SOO’s), to the variety of Specialized Skills Officers, Specialized Skills Officers – Targeting (or Targeters) and headquarters based CMO’s.

While the above may seem confusing it would seem that journalists, who’s careers are based on detailed research and analysis should be able to avoid inaccuracies by looking at a few places online. First, the CIA.gov website provides career opportunities to include a description of each and how to apply. A second option is any of the major beltway contractors that supply security clearance wielding talent to the Agency. In fact, I’ve seen more detailed descriptions of my previous positions on contractor websites than on the Agency itself (ah um).

Keep in mind that just covers a small section of the Agency. I haven’t touched on the DS&T who have Technical Operations Officers (now called Technical Intelligence Officers), Technical Targeting Officers, Engineers and a whole host of others and I won’t even begin with the Directorate of Intelligence. I guess I could wing it like so many reporters but I am not an idiot so I won’t.

To learn more about the host of job titles, responsibilities and levels of management at the agency one simply needs to check out the infamous Ishmael Jones’ memoir “The Human Factor” for that fun bit of government service. Although I take a lot of it with a grain of salt, and am not overly fond of the manner in which it was published, Jones gives a depressingly accurate portrayal of the Rubix Cube that is Agency management. This would have been an excellent primer for reference in light of the recent coverage that I’ve been reading regarding a mysterious Agency heroine that seems to have had a major role in the final tracking and removing of Osama Bin Laden.

Washington Post contributor Greg Miller writes about this Agency officer (see, its so easy! I called her what she is, an Officer. You can too yah hacks, I mean journalists!) in a December 10, 2012 article on the upcoming Zero Dark Thirty film. The main thrust of Miller’s article is about a seemingly combative Officer who followed through on a hunch about Bin Laden’s courier network, leading to his ultimate face shooting by US forces on May 2nd, 2011. Along the way it appears other Agency Officers disagreed with her insistence on couriers being the in to Bin Laden.

First, after having worked in the same Agency I find it completely plausible that this Officer was blocked and sidelined by more senior (in pay grade and likely age) Officers. Secondly, but as important as the first, I find it extremely unlikely that she was the only person that thought tracking the communication networks was a good idea. I can recall, quite clearly, this theory being referenced during recruitment and training: Tracking communication networks just makes sense.

I can’t help but smile at the Targeting Officer’s response to seeing the others named on the mass internal email about their Agency awards. Like any other office environment, the “reply all” is a common equivalent to storming out of a meeting with middle fingers raised high. Nothing says, “shove it!” like blasting everyone and their Security Officer (another group of Officers I forgot! Directorate of Support/Office of Security and hey, the CIA does actually have Agents, of the protective variety. The CIA Office of Inspector General also has agents, except their agents are “special”) with a reply all on some of the most secure (and archived) intranet servers in the nation (nothing made me laugh more than calling out with a confused “What does Conficker mean?” every time I logged onto my computer) . I would have to intuit that this was also a response to her not receiving her GS-­?14 promotion.

Yes, promotions. This is a truly secretive and mysterious bit of Agency business. It is not too often that you’ll read about CIA salaries and pay grades. Why is that? This Targeting Officer was apparently passed over for her promotion panel, which would have bumped her from a GS-­?13 to a GS-­?14. Though it seems like a minor detail, my time in the NCS showed me how an Officer’s promotion potential was directly attributed to the title next to their name. Most specifically, those Officers with anything other than OO (or CO) in their job description had one hell of a time busting through the GS-­?13 ceiling. According to another “Inglorious Amateur”, this ceiling is doubly vexing if the Officer is female. Suzanne Kelly of CNN did an interesting article related to the challenges female Officers face, serving in the Intelligence Community. This issue seems to be heating up even more in the news, thanks to a new found interest, positive or negative, in Agency based fiction.

As an example, shortly before leaving the NCS I took part in a specialty certification course which entailed a lot of writing, reporting, guiding, spooky agency stuff and practicing lock picking while listening to lectures in a conference room (it was either the lock picking or play with the toys they had on the tables to keep from dozing off) for hours. It just so happens that a 2 to 4 hour block (seemed like an eternity) of instruction on the promotion potential of a Headquarters Based Officer career track took place shortly before graduation. According to the instructor, the Director of NCS (D/NCS) detailed him to conduct a study of how many SOO’s the Agency had, and how they were being promoted through the NCS. Needless to say, the results were hysterically abysmal so much so that I distinctly remember wondering why the D/NCS would actually let this Officer give a lecture based on his findings. From the looks on my groups’ faces, it was definitely not good for morale.

Basically, he results of the study seemed to indicate that NCS SOO’s (one could extrapolate that it could incorporate all HBO’s) seemed to top out at the GS-­?13 level. Most reached this level after 5 to 7 years on the job, which the vast majority hanging out in the GS-­?12, which was reached at 2 to 3 years after onboarding. Of course the female officers seemed to have a bit of a harder time promoting to that same ceiling. The Officer told us that the best it seemed we could hope for would be to aspire to become a Deputy Branch Chief. It is hard to express exactly what this means without going into detail on the structure of the Divisions and Centers in the NCS, but let’s just say it’s a bit like telling Dwight Schrute (of The Office TV show) that he will never move past his position of Assistant to the Branch Chief (hell its almost the same thing, actually!).

We also learned that no HBO’s had made Group Chief, Chief of Station, and there were no HBO’s represented in the Senior Intelligence Service (SIS, executive level employees, or, the Mandarins that Ishmael Jones refers to in his book).

The NCS is an organization run primarily by Operations Officers. It’s apparent, from day one that OO’s are held in higher regard. If for no other reason than the vast majority of those running the NCS are OO’s, or some other Officer that has been through “The Farm” or otherwise “Ops Certified”. They hold themselves in higher regard because of their title; it seems, regardless of their production or work product under said title. The NCS has also created the HBO type positions based on an antiquated need to find jobs for Operations Officers who would not or could not return to the field. These HBO positions appear to have also come into being because of a need to find jobs for Agency spouses. There were at least two spouses turned Targeting Officers in my orientation class when I started. I also got a nice lecture from an Agency spouse turned HRS (or Human Resources) Officer about finding my wife a suitable job doing administrative work when I went looking for advice on how to make our recent move to DC work. Pay no mind to the fact that my wife had a very successful job in the tech industry, making more money than I did as an Agency HBO!

All that said, I give a big thumbs up to this Targeting Officer. A big thumbs down to lazy journalists and film directors (yes, I’m talking to you Katheryn Bigelow! I saw the preview for the movie referring to the heroine as an Analyst). I find it sad that so much is made over this movie when, as Agency Officers we drudge on knowing we face a disingenuous society and a media that shows nothing but contempt for those that attempt to ensure their right to free speech. At least care enough to get our job titles right when you are trying to expose our identities and drag our patriotism through the mud.