USA Today recently reported that the CIA has seen a boost in its minority hiring in the last few years. Ordinarily this might be great news, however, the Agency may not be recruiting the “right type” of minorities to come down to their Farm for training:
More than one in four recruits offered jobs as undercover spies by the CIA this year are members of racial or ethnic minorities — a record high percentage, the agency’s top spy says.
But the CIA continues to lag in fielding spies from the Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds deemed most critical to the war on terrorism, said Jose Rodriguez, the outgoing director of clandestine intelligence gathering, in an interview with USA TODAY. Only about 5% of the agency’s current undercover spy force is from an Asian background. [Link]
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I know plenty of South Asian Americans who would be a perfect fit at the CIA. Almost all of these folks would say “no way” to the idea, however. The problem is glaringly obvious. How is the CIA supposed to recruit from a pool of much needed, patriotic South Asian Americans (or anyone else for that matter) when that pool of recruits is worried that they will be asked to de-humanize (potentially innocent) suspects by order of the Executive Branch. From today’s NYTimes:
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. [Link]
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p>I would think that the agents best suited to infiltrate Al Qaeda’s network are those that would have the most (or could best exhibit) sympathy for the myriad of underlings and middle-men near the bottom of a terrorist group’s hierarchy. These potential agents would not take a job that would require breaking innocent lives, lives they could possibly relate to, in order to satisfy the whims of chicken hawks and neocons. If the CIA continues to be associated with extraordinary rendition and torture, its going to keep hurting their recruiting efforts, not to mention “The War on Terror.”
CIA critic Tim Roemer, a former Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee who sat on the 9/11 Commission, said Rodriguez’s comments show the CIA has “more work to do,” especially in recruiting speakers of Middle Eastern and South Asian languages. “Our target has radically changed,” said Roemer, president of the Center for National Policy, a Washington group that researches intelligence issues. “We need people who can tell us the potential threat posed by four guys in a cave in Afghanistan…” [Link]
hah, sorry if i come off like i’m attacking anyone, but my problem is not with ABD-DBD as much as it is with the classism among South Asians, which is just so unbelievable to me sometimes. (FWIW, i’m 1.5-gen myself, and i own up to my class privilege relative to most of america…maybe not compared to most american browns, but compared to most people in the world, hell yes)
and i guess you could say i have an identity crisis of my own 🙂 what i meant by that, btw, was that taxi drivers are more likely to be at least somewhat familiar with the south asian political world, and are more likely to speak a south asian language (especially vernacular forms) than white suburbia-raised browns who think that india = bollywood + bhangra. (people on SM know their shit, but a lot of people i’ve met from these backgrounds really don’t, and they’re the ones who go on to become engineers or doctors or whatever).
oh and even some of the ones raised in areas with large asian and brown populations still seem to think that india basically means bollywood + bhangra. it’s just a peeve of mine i guess.
Lighten up people. I was being sarcastic both ways here with the Dunkin Donuts comment. It seemed like the impression was that somehow Indian parents would not find a CIA appointment good enough. Not every Indian in the US grows up in the Bay Area or Boston. A lot of Indians, even among regular upper middle class families, have good but not spectacular jobs.
My comment went both ways in the sense that hey, there are families who run Dunkin Donuts who won’t see CIA as a step down. Of course, some of those families will try to overcompensate by trying to make their kids aspire to some conventional prestigious positions. And the other way, was that it is not just your engineers who are considered for the CIA.
Also notice what comment my Dunkin Donuts comment followed. it was lighthearted, but not false.
I think there have been cases of Indians in India recruited to spy on their country for foreign countries. Wasn’t there a news report of some folks on the payroll of KGB?
Regardless of what the CIA actually does, they appear to have a problem with how they are perceived, perhaps their marketing department needs some new ideas … make the job sound cool enough so potential recruits don’t mind the hideous pay and perhaps detract away from their well publicised, unsavoury side.
Maybe it’s time the CIA latched onto a television programme or film to help them recruit, or better still create their own … Secret Asian Man seems to have a nice ring to it …
Secret Asian Man
Kush…
“ex-female CIA agents?”
@16, [I do not think CIA needs PIO card etc – they have thousands of covers – from embassies, ngos, hippies, mncs ]
And not to mention that many desis resemble middle-easterners, hispanics,spanish etc. 🙂
reg. some comments abt cia weeding out desi with strong foreign connections – an excerpt from pg. 47 of a recent article in fp ( will need subscription for full acces ) http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3935
\\”…the agency has long been incapable of dispatching an asian-american into north korea without him identified as some kid who just walked out of kansas….its fear for its own security long prohibited hiring first-generation americans with clsoe relatives living overseas…\\”
“ex-female CIA agents?”
female ex-CIA agents
\\”…the agency has long been incapable of dispatching an asian-american into north korea without him identified as some kid who just walked out of kansas….its fear for its own security long prohibited hiring first-generation americans with clsoe relatives living overseas…\\”
More than often, the agent is fully local (somebody other than local will never have access to anything worth spying on) – they are coordinated by someone else who would would work for an embassy, ngo, etc as under cover.
However, East Germans used to put sleepers (sometimes pretending as defectors, sometimes secretly crossing the wall) in West Germany who would become operational in 10 years or so – time taken for them to be somewhere where they can be an asset.
\\”…the agency has long been incapable of dispatching an asian-american into north korea without him identified as some kid who just walked out of kansas….its fear for its own security long prohibited hiring first-generation americans with clsoe relatives living overseas…\\”
That was from comment #.60
Do they sponsor H1 Visa and file for your Green Card ?
its true, we’re a crazy evil cabal of baby eaters who actually don’t care about our fellow human beings because we’re in an endless quest to line our pockets with mcchimpybu$hhaliburton money
and while a lot of your south asian friends might not be interested in working with the cia because of their political views, you’ll be surprised at how many desi’s would (not to mention, this insipidly simplistic and flame baiting post ignores the general cultural perceptions of Desi’s versus what i imagine is your run of the mill CIA member as well as the tendencies of desi’s to choose occupations at a higher rate which simply might not fit with the CIA)
Too bad you don’t have an ignore function SM. I love some of your posts (and even political ones–well thoughtful ones–have a place) but political flamewars/demonizing are best kept to a kos/freeper esque blog
I got a good laugh from what you wrote: “The problem is glaringly obvious. How is the CIA supposed to recruit from a pool of much needed, patriotic South Asian Americans (or anyone else for that matter) when that pool of recruits is worried that they will be asked to de-humanize (potentially innocent) suspects by order of the Executive Branch”
You have got to be kidding me! I especially love the part about “de-humanizing”, it’s so full of pomposity!!!! Nice one!