Read Online See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism by Robert Baer - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert Baer
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continuing’ meant. A one-night stand? Writing sonnets to a platonic lover? Security wouldn’t say. Eight years later, my boss in Khartoum, Milt Bearden, came up with the most sensible definition: If you keep a pair of slippers under your friend’s bed, it’s close and continuing.
Every six months CIA employees assigned overseas would send in what was known as an XXXXXX - a cable enumerating your close and continuing contacts or a certification that you had none. It was always a tense time. You knew that if some security puke was having a bad day and decided your close and continuing contact was a threat to national security, he could yank you back to Washington, lash you up to a polygraph, and consign you to years in security limbo. On the other hand, if you didn’t report a contact and security stumbled onto it, things would be a lot worse.
One of the odder cases I ever heard about involved a Hindu employee who was sleeping with his mother and sister. It was discovered during a routine polygraph. The hatchet man was about to fire him when the employee invoked his First Amendment rights. He argued that it was a caste thing: He couldn’t find a wife from his caste in the Washington area. That threw the case into the general counsel’s office, which eventually decided to fire him anyway. An extreme case, but those are the kinds of issues the CIA had to delve into to preserve its cult of secrecy.
After two weeks imprisoned in the safe house, signing forms and listening to headquarters officers drone on about what they did for a living, I was overjoyed to head down to the Farm for the operations course. I knew I would be exchanging one prison for another, but this one was more in the nature of a country club, and at least I would be getting some exercise again.
Although the Farm has been described in numerous books and shown from the air in television documentaries, the CIA has asked me not to reveal its location or cover name. All I can tell you is that it is situated in Virginia’s Tidewater, on a XXXXXXX. It’s supposed to be a restricted military base, which is just what the guards will tell you if you should ever stumble upon the front gates with their flashing yellow lights and draw barriers.
Inside the gates, the Farm did resemble a country club, at least in part. There were tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool, fishing boats you could take out on the river, and several bars. There were even recreational skeet and trap ranges. The students were assigned individual rooms in dormitories. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, either. The instructors lived on base in white clapboard houses.
The Farm liked to project the image of a small, rural college, but it was a very peculiar college indeed. As soon as we had checked in, it was announced there would be a XXXXXX that evening, hosted by an imaginary foreign government. I can’t remember the name of the country they used, but the capital was called Wilton. The instructors played the roles of local officials, and the students American visitors. Our job was to devise a cover for our presence in the country. The purpose was to teach us how to work a social event and elicit information from people - the CIA’s version of cotillion.
I picked out a short, bald, sagging, and myopic instructor who looked as if he should have retired a few decades back. Add in the martini he was sipping, and I figured he was an easy touch.
I stuck my hand out. ‘How’s it going?’
He kept his hand in his pocket and just looked at me.
‘I’m an American, and I’ve just arrived in town,’ I said, still grinning like a monkey.
‘That’s curious,’ he said in a not particularly friendly voice. ‘We don’t see many Americans here. What do you do?’
‘I work for an American gas company. We’re hoping to drill some fields in your country.’
‘Are you a geologist?’
‘No.’
‘Well, perhaps that explains why you don’t know we have no gas reserves
Every six months CIA employees assigned overseas would send in what was known as an XXXXXX - a cable enumerating your close and continuing contacts or a certification that you had none. It was always a tense time. You knew that if some security puke was having a bad day and decided your close and continuing contact was a threat to national security, he could yank you back to Washington, lash you up to a polygraph, and consign you to years in security limbo. On the other hand, if you didn’t report a contact and security stumbled onto it, things would be a lot worse.
One of the odder cases I ever heard about involved a Hindu employee who was sleeping with his mother and sister. It was discovered during a routine polygraph. The hatchet man was about to fire him when the employee invoked his First Amendment rights. He argued that it was a caste thing: He couldn’t find a wife from his caste in the Washington area. That threw the case into the general counsel’s office, which eventually decided to fire him anyway. An extreme case, but those are the kinds of issues the CIA had to delve into to preserve its cult of secrecy.
After two weeks imprisoned in the safe house, signing forms and listening to headquarters officers drone on about what they did for a living, I was overjoyed to head down to the Farm for the operations course. I knew I would be exchanging one prison for another, but this one was more in the nature of a country club, and at least I would be getting some exercise again.
Although the Farm has been described in numerous books and shown from the air in television documentaries, the CIA has asked me not to reveal its location or cover name. All I can tell you is that it is situated in Virginia’s Tidewater, on a XXXXXXX. It’s supposed to be a restricted military base, which is just what the guards will tell you if you should ever stumble upon the front gates with their flashing yellow lights and draw barriers.
Inside the gates, the Farm did resemble a country club, at least in part. There were tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool, fishing boats you could take out on the river, and several bars. There were even recreational skeet and trap ranges. The students were assigned individual rooms in dormitories. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, either. The instructors lived on base in white clapboard houses.
The Farm liked to project the image of a small, rural college, but it was a very peculiar college indeed. As soon as we had checked in, it was announced there would be a XXXXXX that evening, hosted by an imaginary foreign government. I can’t remember the name of the country they used, but the capital was called Wilton. The instructors played the roles of local officials, and the students American visitors. Our job was to devise a cover for our presence in the country. The purpose was to teach us how to work a social event and elicit information from people - the CIA’s version of cotillion.
I picked out a short, bald, sagging, and myopic instructor who looked as if he should have retired a few decades back. Add in the martini he was sipping, and I figured he was an easy touch.
I stuck my hand out. ‘How’s it going?’
He kept his hand in his pocket and just looked at me.
‘I’m an American, and I’ve just arrived in town,’ I said, still grinning like a monkey.
‘That’s curious,’ he said in a not particularly friendly voice. ‘We don’t see many Americans here. What do you do?’
‘I work for an American gas company. We’re hoping to drill some fields in your country.’
‘Are you a geologist?’
‘No.’
‘Well, perhaps that explains why you don’t know we have no gas reserves
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