In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[106] IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
who twenty years before spent sweltering nights with you in a Chinese
embassy installing "bugs"? Or who was the godfather of your
children twenty-five years ago in Rome? Or whose wife was now your
wife, the exchange having taken place long ago in Bangkok? In an
open, competitive environment one might do the necessary thing, but
in the closed fraternity of the CIA it was impossible.
Jerry Jacobson's cover as the ambassador's assistant was about as
well protected as the agency is able to manage as he was more fully
integrated into the State Department personnel system. Nevertheless,
any State employee in Washington could ascertain the truth
with a simple inquiry in the right place, and at least every American
in the Kinshasa embassy would be fully aware of Jerry's real work.
Inside the State Department, a separate personnel office handles CIA
paperwork and travel arrangements. The dozens of various forms in
each file bear special indicators which ensure segregation. The CIA
has never been as successful in putting officers in deep cover as the
Russian GRU and KGB. Deep cover requires patience and Americans
are not patient. After a couple of years in one place they begin
to demand promotions, reassignments. No one wants to be a career
private, or even a career captain. They want to be in the mainstream,
to advance up the chain of command. Recognizing this, when the
agency finds someone with deep cover potential, it makes them contract
or career agents. The connotation is ominous-agents are not
insiders; agents are to be used, and discarded when their usefulness
is finished.*
The agency has attempted to cope with this disability in many
ways over the years, initiating and dropping one deep-cover program
after the other. The latest strategy is a parallel recruitment and
training program. Young officer candidates are kept outside the
headquarters building and away from the historic training and processing
centers in the Commerce building on Glebe Road in Arlington
Virginia** and the "Farm" at Camp Perry. Some of these deep-cover
officers will take State Department Foreign Service Institute courses
in Washington and then go to the field as embassy economic or
*CIA staff officers are called case officers and their sources or spies are called
"agents.'' This is the opposite of the FBI where "agents" are the inside officers.
**Formerly this was the "blue building," across the street from the present Commerce
building. CIA shuttle buses and limousines make hourly runs between all the
principle CIA buildings in the Washington area.