what is a case officer cia

How much do CIA case officers get paid? A look at life as a spook

A look inside the life of a CIA case officer according to someone who lived the life.

By Joshua Skovlund | Published Nov 27, 2023 5:15 PM EST

CIA case officers have an exciting job. Tradecraft, foreign language, and expertise in using breaking-edge technology are hallmarks of a CIA case officer, leading to assignments all over the world. But not much is known about the day-to-day lives of the men and women working for the Agency. 

When you think of spy, you typically think of James Bond or someone or maybe Jason Bourne. But, the real spies are the case officers of the Agency, commonly called CIA agents in pop culture. But, the CIA only calls foreign recruits agents, so a case officer is not a ‘CIA agent.’ Because of the clandestine, sometimes covert nature of their work, they’re known simply as a ‘spook’ to many in the world of intelligence. 

Doug Patteson worked for the CIA as a case officer for ten years . From high-risk to low-risk scenarios, Patteson told Task & Purpose that case officers work in a constantly changing environment and that how Hollywood has depicted them is not always accurate . 

What is a case officer?

Patteson said ‘case officer’ is a blanket term and isn’t necessarily accurate anymore. The case officer term actually covers two different roles at the Agency: paramilitary operations officer and an operations officer. 

A paramilitary operations officer will lead and manage the Agency’s covert action programs and collect foreign intelligence. The operations officer focuses primarily on the foreign intelligence collection effort.

Patteson said either role falls under case officer. The work they do is often critical to U.S. interests throughout the world. 

“At the end of the day, the thing about being a case officer is that it’s about human interaction and human relationship building,” Patteson said. “Ultimately, to get somebody to steal secrets on our behalf to serve U.S. policymakers and their interests, particularly the president.”

Patteson said people who served in the U.S. military’s so-called tier-one units generally staff the paramilitary operations officer positions at the Agency, but it’s not impossible for someone outside of that background to land a job. He further explained that operations officers come from various backgrounds, and the Agency emphasizes recruiting for various life experiences.

Case officer hiring standards

A bachelor’s degree is the bare minimum standard for getting hired as a case officer . It doesn’t matter what the degree is, either. Patteson said diversity in backgrounds and degrees is valued because it helps the CIA’s mission. 

“Don’t think you have to go get an intelligence studies degree. We need people with economics degrees. We need people with English degrees, history degrees, like all of that works,” Patteson said. “People tend to lock themselves in a box when pursuing intelligence-related degrees, and it’s not always the case.”

Patteson is an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire, teaching within the university’s intelligence studies program. He’s a perfect example of the type of person the Agency looks at as a potential case officer. 

Patteson has an MBA in finance and entrepreneurial management and a BBA in finance and international business. But he’s also a certified firearms and ALICE active shooter prevention instructor .

In addition to a degree, candidates must agree to relocate to Washington, D.C., if hired, must be 18 or older, and must be able to pass an in-depth background check. Having some experience in intelligence, foreign language, or military service in special operations are examples of what can give you a better chance of getting hired. 

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Fitness standards fall under ‘big boy rules.’ It’s not like the military, where physical training is mandatory every morning, but like the military, a certain fitness standard is necessary for paramilitary operations officers to uphold. The nature of the work can require solo freefall insertion into unfriendly countries, nighttime evasion, or even underwater insertion, so candidates need to be in top physical shape . 

Once hired, the Agency incentivizes fitness through top-of-the-line fitness centers and paid time to workout. 

“For the most part, it’s big boy rules. If you’re an analyst back at headquarters, there really aren’t any fitness requirements. But the agency has recognized that it’s important to have people stay in shape overall for their morale, etcetera,” Patteson said. “So, the agency provides paid time for fitness. You’re given a certain amount of hours per week to use for fitness, specifically to stay in shape.”

A day in the life of a CIA case officer

Hollywood has commonly depicted case officers immersed in treacherous warzones, constantly outsmarting foreign intelligence and military assets. Though that has happened, it’s not always the case. 

“So it’s all about people skills, languages, cultural understanding, and being able to convince people to do things that may inherently be against their own self-interests,” Patteson said. “Which we believe supports U.S. policy goals and ostensibly makes for a better, safer world.”

So you may end up collecting human intelligence from a desk located in Washington, D.C., or be involved in a clandestine insertion into North Korea to find and turn key players in the North Korean government against their own country. The danger level fluctuates depending on your assignment. 

“I would say it’s low to very low in general, but it all depends on where you are, the nature of the targets you’re working against, etc. So, if you’re a case officer working in Northern Europe,  working on NATO-related things, the danger level is very low,” Patteson said. “If you’re a case officer who’s working in Pakistan, on al-Qaeda, it can be very high.”

Patteson cannot discuss his most dangerous mission but said he’s been in a few “high stakes” situations.

“I would meet with very high priority targets that were actively working against our interests but who had agreed clandestinely to support us,” Patteson said. “To know that I’ve been able to get somebody to agree to do that with the risk of — in these cases — death. They would face death if we were caught. It was a big holy crap moment.”

Temporary duty travel, commonly known as TDY, and 2 to 4-year-long permanent change of station (PCS) assignments are all a part of the job. Patteson had three PCS tours with a lot of time spent in East Asia, but would often travel to other parts of the world to meet potential sources. 

So, if you are stationed in Germany, there’s a chance you may be sent on a TDY to China to recruit a source, or you may end up in Afghanistan chasing down leads. A commonality of case officers’ work is that many “it depends” situations arise, so there’s no clear-cut template for a case officer’s day-to-day life. 

Traveling while working and post-retirement

Working against foreign countries’ interests can lead to suspicion and spying accusations or, even worse, getting nabbed by said country’s foreign intelligence and used in a geopolitical game of chess against the U.S. 

While Patteson worked for the Agency, he didn’t worry about too many countries while traveling internationally. But, he said certain countries are inherently dangerous to travel to as a case officer. 

“I would not travel to Russia right now because I believe most former CIA officers would be afraid of getting harassed or hustled their entire time there,” Patteson said. “Or even getting arrested on trumped-up charges to be used as a pawn in a broader game.”

The same rules apply to Patteson in retirement. He’d be comfortable traveling to almost all the countries he’s worked in but wouldn’t risk entering Russia or North Korea. Generally speaking, the countries that are unsafe for current or former case officers are generally unsafe for the average American. 

Family life as a case officer

Patteson has a unique take on family life while working for the CIA. Though it didn’t start this way, Patteson’s wife worked as a staff operations officer and one of his kids worked as an analyst. But, for those without that unique arrangement, Patteson said divorce rates are high for case officers because they often can’t tell their spouse what they do. Even more difficult is finding a date in the first place.  

“It’s challenging to meet people,” Patteson said. “If you are working for the agency and you’re undercover, every relationship you have starts off with that lie.”

Case officers will often have cover stories with connected cover jobs they work in tandem with their job as case officers. So when you first meet someone, you can’t tell them what you really do or who you actually are. But, before Patteson’s wife started working for the Agency, the two experienced issues due to the nature of his work. 

“I had a cover job that I was able to tell her about, and then eventually, as we were falling in love, realized that I needed to tell her what I really did,” Patteson said. “Which led to the ‘what else are you lying about’ question.”

Patteson said that even beyond that, the nature of the work can be problematic and lead to poor choices. Case officers often have to meet “​​sleazy people in sleazier places” and when you tell your spouse you have to go out for the night, they don’t get to ask what you’re going out to do or who you are meeting with. That can erode trust in a relationship and is a prime culprit of why marriages struggle. 

But, when your spouse starts working for the Agency, it helps with the understanding part, Patteson said. Still, Patteson and his wife have experiences and nuggets of knowledge they can’t tell each other. Even more interesting, one of their kids also worked for the Agency. So, the three of them may have a lot in common, but they are not allowed to discuss much about their work with each other. 

Rank, pay, and bonuses

Your starting pay in the CIA is like anywhere else. It depends on a multitude of factors and your previous experience. The Agency lists the starting salary of a case officer as a range from $67,122 to $102,166. 

Patteson said the deciding factors that play into a starting salary depend on your skills and previous experience like foreign language as an example of what can get your salary bumped up as a new hire.

Hazardous duty pay is a factor but is related to the location of and the nature of a case officer’s assignments. But there are exceptional performance awards, which can come with cash awards ranging from high hundreds to low thousands of dollars.

But, Patteson said the Agency’s more prestigious awards, like the Intelligence Star, can come with even bigger cash rewards.

The rank system falls under the GS employee scale . The hierarchy of the CIA breaks down into four branches: intelligence, national clandestine service, science and technology, and support. Like most things with the Agency, your initial GS pay grade depends on your skills and previous experience. 

A GS-15 is the highest middle management pay grade someone can obtain, but it’s not the highest pay in the agency. Patteson explained that flag-rank officers rank higher and are a part of the Senior Intelligence Service , which is similar to the federal government’s Senior Executive Service.

And once you are in and deployed, you will gain access to overtime pay. There is a lot of “it depends” when it comes to overtime, so just know it’s a potential option for bumping up your total compensation. 

The job of a case officer, or more specifically, a paramilitary operations officer or operations officer, can lead to beefy paychecks but working for the CIA purely for money will likely keep you from landing a job. 

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Joshua Skovlund is a staff writer for Task & Purpose and a former U.S. Army forward observer. He has been covering the military, veterans, and first responders for over three years, reporting on assignment from Ukraine during the opening salvo of the Russian invasion, multinational military exercises in Germany, and during the 2020 civil unrest in Minneapolis. His previous bylines include Coffee or Die Magazine and Outdoor Life .             Contact the author here.

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Difference Between a Field Agent & a Case Officer

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We all see and hear bits and pieces that, on the surface, mean nothing. Bits of data, unrelated in themselves, come together to make up a picture we know as intelligence. To gather these bits and pieces, the case officers of the CIA rely on field agents – foreign nationals who live and work as part of the indigenous backdrop of the country about which intelligence is sought.

CIA Case Officer Basics

A case officer should have no greater loyalty than his loyalty to the United States. After a stringent vetting process, a case officer is assigned to a U.S. embassy or other U.S. delegation overseas. According to Special Agents , a case officer's job requires that he blend easily with the diplomatic backdrop while he reaches out to members of the native population, who ultimately act as his eyes and ears to gather the information that will coalesce into intelligence.

Officer Vs. Agent 101

In contrast to CIA officers, a CIA field agent is a native of the country about which the case officer wants intelligence. A field agent may know only that he has an American friend who works at the U.S. embassy, and who asks about his life and work. He may gather and pass on information himself, or pass along information gathered for him by his friends. According to the New York Times , he may meet with the case offer in public places, or by clandestine means in order to pass along information to the American spy agency.

Work Related Interactions

Perhaps a field agent meets a case officer only once, such as while on vacation. When meeting with a field agent, a case officer may take on a "cover for action" to avoid surveillance – perhaps a disguise, an alias, or the cover of darkness. He may use a "dead-drop," and leave instructions or a payoff where the field agent can pick them up when comfortable. He may even communicate by a clandestinely delivered satellite phone, or a coded messages on a computer bulletin board.

Common Intelligence Processes

Bits of data, when grouped together, reveal trends and a "big picture" of a corner of the world. The requested data are delivered by a field agent to the case officer. A case officer sometimes has a network of field agents who do his legwork, giving him small bits of information from various sources. An example might be production numbers for several units of a business that's owned by U.S. interests, but operated by the native population in different locations throughout the country. The case officer assembles these bits of information and either performs his own analysis or sends them to the U.S., where other analysts collate them with more data from other case officers.

Field Agents: Patriotic Traitors

A field agent passes the requested information on to his American friend – who may call him a "true patriot" – without hesitation. Motivated in some way to make these small betrayals, field agents effectively spy on their own country. Perhaps they mention a shortage of a favorite food while talking to their American friend, the case officer, who might make arrangements to solve the problem. Each of these small bits of data eventually find their way into an intelligence assessment.

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The Life of a Case Officer

I have been wanting to write on this topic for a while and have had a few false starts. The problem is there really isn’t a typical day for a case officer. To remind folks, a case officer is the individual who is tasked with recruiting sources to provide classified information, HUMINT. It is the core of what the CIA does, in addition to analysis. How a case officer operates depends on the environment they are in, the particular duties they are asked to perform, the circumstances of the particular day. That having been said, there are some common elements of day-to-day operations and some overarching characteristics of the job.

Someone at the CIA once told me that being a case officer is not a job, it is a calling. It is more than a career, it is a life commitment requiring sacrifice, discipline, and putting the needs of the service above your own needs. For example, you can expect to be sent overseas with little to no warning. I was once called into the office in the middle of the night, handed an airline ticket, and told I was going off to a small invasion the following morning. I had to link up with Agency personnel in a country I had never been to, taken to a secret part of an airport, and flown to the invasion in an Agency aircraft in the dead of night. I had no idea when I would be back home, and neither did my family. This was in the days before cellphones so I had no way to contact anyone once the invasion commenced. The same is true if an agent you handle shows up somewhere on the planet and triggers an emergency meeting. You have to drop everything and get to that meeting even if it is halfway around the globe. There are a lot of missed birthdays, anniversaries, funerals, holidays. Military personnel will be familiar with all this.

Another aspect of the job, yes, I know, I just said it was not a job, but using “job” makes things easier, is that you will likely spend most of your time overseas (gladly). The CIA is a foreign intelligence organization. We collect intelligence on foreign nations. That is best done overseas. You, and your family, will move to another nation, live there for several years, learn the language, culture, adapt to the environment. You will get to deal with some unpleasant things, as will your family. With the exception of more stable and advanced countries, you will face big struggles: coups, wars, terrorism, high crime, people targeting you and your family. I lost track of how many coups and attempted coups I have experienced. There will be small inconveniences: You can’t drink the water unless you want to sit on the toilet for the next week. You won’t be able to buy things you normally get in the U.S. Medical facilities can be less than you expect.

It's not all bad. The government will pay for your housing, sometimes very nice housing, sometimes not so much. You or your family will be evacuated should you fall seriously ill, and if political instability leads to open conflict (but kiss your possessions goodbye in that scenario).

Another source of stress is that a case office needs to become accustomed to leading a double life. You are a CIA officer but you also have a cover job so that people don’t know you are with the CIA. Sometimes you have to work your cover job during the day and your actual job at off-hours. Two jobs, one salary. Imagine doing a full-time job, then trying to do your real job at night, weekends, lunch break, etc. It can be exhausting. 12-hour days and 6-7 day work weeks are not uncommon. If you are in a war zone, 24/7 is pretty much the norm. In that regard, the Agency has no sympathy. You are there to do a job and your cover job is there to protect you and your operations. You are expected to work harder and longer. All this will take a toll on you and your personal life. Some succeed in juggling all this, others don’t.

Even things you take for granted in the U.S. can be problematic overseas. For example, You are always aware of not setting patterns. Patterns can be used against you. Terrorists love when a potential target leaves the house at the same time every day, using the same route every day. It makes it easy for them to determine the best time to kill you. You are always trying to avoid patterns, leaving the house at different times, using different routes, and the same going home. Lunch should never be at the same time or place every day. You need to avoid routines such as leaving the house or the office at the same time because terrorists can use that information to lay an ambush against you. I remember an assignment where I had to give my car a quick inspection every day to make sure someone had not planted a bomb on the car.

All this work is done while trying to avoid the attention of the local security service that is trying to stop you from doing your job. You always have to be careful what you say on the phone and face to face. You can’t give away your true affiliation or the security service will be all over you in an attempt to compromise your operations. This goes for your family as well. They need to be part of the team since they share the risks.

Nothing you do is simple and straightforward. Everything must be seen through the prism of whether you are creating a security problem or compromising an operation. A simple phone call to your family back home might reveal personal information about you that a security service, listening on your phone call, can use against you. You have to do everything right throughout a two- or three-year tour. In a very active, overseas station you might commit 150 operational acts of one type or another, such as meeting a source or finding a location for a dead drop of quick meeting, surveillance detection, etc. Some minor, some major. You have to do these acts right each and every time. Sometimes you don’t, but maybe you are lucky and get away with it. The opposition, the enemy, has to get lucky just once to catch you. At that point, you are thrown out of the country after being arrested. Your agent might spend years or life in prison, or face execution. The stress on a case officer is real.

One positive is that this builds camaraderie. You can’t really talk to anyone about what you do or how your day has been except other CIA officers. There is no coming home to your spouse who asks how your day was and you getting to unburden yourself. You tend to rely on other CIA officers to help you because only they are cleared and trained for this type of work. Yes, you will get an asshole or two every now and then, but in general, these are the people you rely on and who rely on you.

Despite the hardships and risks inherent in the job, being a case officer offers many positives as well. To many, the idea of living overseas, learning a new language and culture is exciting. It is intellectually challenging. It broadens your horizons. It appeals to the Lawrence of Arabia in some of us. While there are long moments of boredom and bureaucratic requirements, there is also adventure. Imagine yourself in the Khyber Pass supporting Afghan insurgents against the Soviet Union. If that doesn’t send chills up your spine, then this is not the job for you.

There are challenges. Conducting espionage activities under the very noses of an opposition security service is a dramatic challenge and when you succeed, there is a major feeling of accomplishment.

There is impact. Many CIA officers lose the sense of impact while in the field because they send their intelligence reports back home but are seldom aware of how significant an impact they have had. The reports are graded and judged on how much importance they had in addressing intelligence gaps, but that is not really tangible for a case officer in the field. When I was in Washington D.C., I attended a meeting with the Vice President of the United States. During the meeting, he pulled out several intelligence reports on which he had written commentary and we began to discuss them. It really hit me right then and there. A senior U.S. policy official had read the reports, commented on them, and was basing policy on those reports. There was impact. We were making history, for good or bad.

Finally, there is uncertainty. Yes, uncertainty is a positive aspect of the job. Once upon a time, I was involved in training newly recruited case officers in the skills they needed to succeed. A friend and I walked out of our hotel early one morning to conduct some training exercises in a large and busy city. We were on our way to act the role of agent and evaluate how our trainees were performing. It was morning rush hour and I noticed a crowd of people exiting the subway station. I turned to my friend and said, “Those people probably came out of that very same exit at that very same time yesterday, the day before, and will do so again tomorrow. They will go to the same desk and perform the same job day in and day out. You and I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. We might still be here training students, we might get called away to a different assignment or be flying overseas for some operation that suddenly reared its head.”

That, to me, is a major positive aspect of the job. It is hard to get bored being a case officer, at least overseas. Every day is a different challenge.

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How to Get a Job at the CIA and What It's Like to Work There

According to movies such as 2001's "Spy Game," if the CIA wants you, a field officer will approach you toward the end of your military enlistment and offer you a job as a field officer. If film and television have taught me anything, this is how covert intelligence officers are made.

Right after that, you learn languages, codebreaking and how to use a Russian radio, all to a soundtrack mixed by the Dust Brothers. After that kind of training, there's no government you can't take down and no terrorist you can't take out. The agency would probably get a lot more recruits if that were the case.

It's not, but it would be super cool.

In reality, most military personnel who get to work for the CIA through a process called "sheep dipping." This is where the military pretends to separate you, but you secretly still work for it and the CIA.

But if you aren't a Marine Corps scout sniper and the CIA isn't interested in borrowing your military occupational specialty, that doesn't mean you can't go work for America's most storied intelligence service. It just means it isn't necessarily seeking you out.

Once you leave the military, your clandestine service career may still await you, but getting in is a lot more ... ho-hum. Anyone (well, any U.S. citizen) can apply to work at the CIA as an operations officer by applying on the website , just like any other government job.

I was disappointed too.

Read: How to Join the FBI After Leaving the Military

After a thorough background check (this is the CIA, man), applicants take a medical exam and a polygraph examination to get a security clearance, which will be at least secret but, depending on what you're applying for, could be Top Secret-SSBI.

A few things to know and do:

• You must be a U.S. citizen.
• You must be physically in the United States.
• Don't do drugs for at least 12 months before you apply.
• You will have to move to the Washington, D.C., area.
• You need at least a four-year degree with a 3.0 GPA.
• They’re pretty serious about the drugs thing.
• Don't follow the CIA on social media.
• Don't tell anyone you applied.
• Really, stop doing drugs.

Once you choose the job you want to apply for, you will have three days to finish the application and submit the required documents, which often include writing samples and qualification justifications.

If the CIA is interested in you, someone will call, email or send you a letter (yes, a letter) within 45 days. If the agency isn't interested, it's not an oversight. You've been rejected. If you feel slighted by this, you can apply again after one year.

No matter what, don't call the CIA. You don't need that kind of attention.

What the CIA won't do is surprise you at a party or a bar to recruit you and start training. Anyone who approaches you in a public place and says they're a CIA agent and has a job for you is probably a liar (CIA personnel don't call themselves "agents"). Unlike other jobs, the application process for the CIA could take a year or more, which includes a live interview.

You know, like a regular job. But unlike regular jobs, you will then undergo aptitude and personality tests. Those who go the Directorate of Operations route -- what used to be called the clandestine service -- have an entirely different set of circumstances to work under.

From the CIA Directorate of Operations (DO) website :

"All new DO officers joining the elite team are required to live and work under cover. Training provides you with the skills needed to live and work under cover, but only you can decide if hiding the truth from others (including many family members, friends, and close acquaintances) is a commitment you can accept."

Be advised that most CIA careers are not clandestine, not fieldwork and do not look cool even with a Dust Brothers soundtrack. Successful applicants might find themselves working inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) -- essentially a secret vault of classified documents -- for eight hours a day, instead of scoping out Eastern Europeans from a cafe in Prague, like they always imagined.

One Quora user who was once a CIA officer said the job was less like "Homeland" and more like "The Office," with officers and analysts complaining about computer crashes in line at the CIA Starbucks. He writes that he spent a lot of time doing things most people do at other agencies and companies, including managing schedules, editing reports and coordinating other offices.

The difference is in the dedication CIA officers and analysts have to their jobs, knowing that their commitment could prevent the next 9/11 attacks. This feeling, of course, also leads to a stressful work environment, knowing what might be at stake if you happened to go home early one day.

"There's also definitely a "Holy S---" moment everyone has early in their career where something happens, and it hits you that you're actually working at the CIA," he writes. "It's a pretty cool feeling and I had plenty of those moments, but if I told you about them I'd have to kill you."

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at [email protected] . He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook .

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Case Officer

Case Officers clandestinely spot, assess, develop, recruit, and handle non-U.S. citizens with access to foreign intelligence vital to U.S. foreign policy and national security decision-makers.

• Accepting applications

Open & closing dates

10/01/2023 to 09/30/2024

$67,122 - $102,166 per year

Pay scale & grade

• Washington DC, DC

Telework eligible

Travel required.

50% or less - You may be expected to travel for this position.

Relocation expenses reimbursed

Yes—You may qualify for reimbursement of relocation expenses in accordance with agency policy.

Appointment type

Work schedule, promotion potential, job family (series).

0132 Intelligence

Supervisory status

Security clearance.

Sensitive Compartmented Information

Position sensitivity and risk

Special-Sensitive (SS)/High Risk

Trust determination process

National security

Announcement number

24-12182703-7023/CSHD

Control number

This job is open to, federal employees - competitive service.

Current or former competitive service federal employees.

Federal employees - Excepted service

Current excepted service federal employees.

U.S. Citizens, Nationals or those who owe allegiance to the U.S.

• Operate a motor vehicle without second-party assistance in daytime and nighttime conditions;
• Traverse uneven terrain, to include climbing and descending­­­ staircases, over fixed minimum distances and in varying weather conditions;
• Work non-traditional or erratic schedules;
• Make reasoned decisions under time constraints.

Requirements

Conditions of employment.

• You must be physically in the United States or one of its territories when you submit your resume via MyLINK.
• You must be registered for the Selective Service, if applicable.
• You must be a U.S. citizen and at least 18 years of age (dual-national US citizens are eligible).
• You must be willing to move to the Washington, DC area.
• You must successfully complete a thorough medical and psychological exam, a polygraph interview, and a comprehensive background investigation.
• For further information, please visit: https://www.cia.gov/careers/how-we-hire/

Qualifications

• Personal integrity
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills (verbal and written)
• Action- and results-oriented
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team and independently
• Flexibility, adaptability, and commitment to the mission of the CIA and the Directorate of Operations
• Ability to meet the minimum requirements for joining CIA , including U.S. citizenship and a background investigation
• Willingness and ability to establish strong personal relationships
• Ability to "think on your feet" and develop creative yet practical solutions to anticipated and unanticipated problems
• Interest in seeking answers, learning foreign languages, and studying other cultures
• Cross-cultural sensitivity and the ability to deal with individuals from all cultures and backgrounds
• Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution (applicants within one year of earning a four-year degree will be considered); there is no preferred major or program of study (degrees from foreign academic institutions are accepted, but you are responsible for obtaining and providing CIA with a credential evaluation from an accredited firm confirming that the foreign degree is the equivalent of a BA/BS and/or MA/MS degree conferred by a U.S. college or university)
• At least a 3.0 GPA on a 4-point scale is preferred

A career with the U.S. government provides employees with a comprehensive benefits package. As a federal employee, you and your family will have access to a range of benefits that are designed to make your federal career very rewarding. Opens in a new window Learn more about federal benefits .

Review our benefits

Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold and whether your position is full-time, part-time or intermittent. Contact the hiring agency for more information on the specific benefits offered.

How You Will Be Evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

For more information, please visit: https://www.cia.gov/careers/jobs/case-officer/ . .

As a new or existing federal employee, you and your family may have access to a range of benefits. Your benefits depend on the type of position you have - whether you're a permanent, part-time, temporary or an intermittent employee. You may be eligible for the following benefits, however, check with your agency to make sure you're eligible under their policies.

For further information, please visit: https://www.cia.gov/careers/jobs/case-officer/ .

If you are relying on your education to meet qualification requirements:

Education must be accredited by an accrediting institution recognized by the U.S. Department of Education in order for it to be credited towards qualifications. Therefore, provide only the attendance and/or degrees from schools accredited by accrediting institutions recognized by the U.S. Department of Education .

Failure to provide all of the required information as stated in this vacancy announcement may result in an ineligible rating or may affect the overall rating.

This post is for viewing purposes only. To get started, please visit https://www.cia.gov/careers/jobs/case-officer/ , where you can read more about this position and express your interest in up to four jobs. Upon expressing your interest, you will be taken to MyLINK , which allows you to submit your resume and job rankings and provide basic information about yourself.

Agency contact information

Central intelligence agency.

https://cia.gov/careers

After you express interest for up to four positions on cia.gov/careers , a CIA recruiter may contact you for further discussion if your qualifications meet our needs. See the MyLINK FAQs on our website for more information.

The Federal hiring process is set up to be fair and transparent. Please read the following guidance.

• Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy
• Criminal history inquiries
• Reasonable accommodation policy
• Financial suitability
• Selective Service
• New employee probationary period
• Signature and false statements
• Privacy Act
• Social security number request

Required Documents

How to apply, fair & transparent.

This job originated on www.usajobs.gov . For the full announcement and to apply, visit www.usajobs.gov/job/756734700 . Only resumes submitted according to the instructions on the job announcement listed at www.usajobs.gov will be considered.

Learn more about

We are the Nation's first line of defense, and we have a mission for you. Join us as we leverage the power of information to keep our Nation safe by collecting foreign intelligence, producing objective all-source analysis, conducting covert action at the president's direction, and safeguarding secrets that protect the United States. Because we recognize our Nation's strength comes from the diversity of its people, CIA is dedicated to building a workforce that reflects the world in which we live and a workplace where all voices are heard, respected, and valued. Read more about life at CIA here: https://www.cia.gov/careers/working-at-cia/

Visit our careers page

Learn more about what it's like to work at Central Intelligence Agency, what the agency does, and about the types of careers this agency offers.

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How to Train for CIA Jobs and Become a CIA Officer

No particular college major is required in order to become a CIA employee doing top-secret work.

How to Prepare for CIA Careers

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The CIA has five areas called directorates, each focusing on a specific aspect of the agency's mission, such as science and technology. The agency is led by a director who is nominated by a president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Americans with a strong sense of a patriotism, a desire for adventure and an interest in foreign policy often seek public-facing jobs within the U.S. military or the U.S. State Department, where it is possible to win fame and glory.

However, there are some civic-minded U.S. citizens who choose to do essential government work that they can never discuss with family or friends.

Employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, commonly known as the CIA, regularly conduct top-secret missions whose details they typically must not share with anyone outside the agency. A career with the CIA is typically characterized by a combination of discretion and humility.

Further, although many CIA employees may state their affiliation with the agency as long as they refrain from revealing classified information, individuals who covertly work for the CIA are forbidden from revealing their true identity to strangers while employed by the CIA. Undercover CIA operatives are sometimes required to deceive, albeit for noble purposes such as thwarting terrorist attacks or rescuing hostages.

On its website, the CIA outlines and debunks many popular misconceptions about the agency's mission and the type of work it does.

According to CIA spokesperson Chelsea Robinson, even the terminology that most outsiders use when talking about the CIA is wrong. CIA employees are called officers rather than agents, Robinson says. Within the CIA, the term agent is reserved for an informant outside the agency, usually a foreign national abroad who spies and provides information to the CIA, according to the CIA website.

"The mission of the Central Intelligence Agency is to help protect US national security by collecting foreign intelligence, informing policymakers with intelligence assessments, and conducting covert action at the behest of the President," Robinson wrote in an email.

How to Qualify for a Job at the CIA

The CIA has several concrete eligibility requirements. Job candidates must apply for CIA positions online while inside of the U.S. through the CIA's Career Application Center and be at least 18 years old and a U.S. citizen. Potential CIA employees need to confirm that they are willing to move to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area if they aren't based there already, and they must pass medical and security screenings.

Emily Brandwin, a former CIA employee who earned a theater degree before joining the CIA, says the hiring process is "super-competitive." She suggests that applicants rejected by the CIA can still do valuable public service work for a different government agency.

"It's like auditioning for a play," says Brandwin, who was an operations officer with the CIA's clandestine service and initially worked as a disguise specialist for the agency. "The casting director or hiring person may say, 'I need this instead of that.' It's not necessarily you or your background," she says, adding that flexibility, an ability to follow orders and respect for chain of command are vital within the CIA.

Robinson stresses that many forms of knowledge are valuable within the CIA. "Our global mission demands that we hire a wide variety of occupations and skill sets," she explains, noting that there are many kinds of CIA jobs, including various roles that involve collecting or interpreting intelligence information.

"We look for candidates with intellectual curiosity, interest in international affairs , foreign languages, and experience overseas," Robinson says. "We have a strong mission for those who are looking for more meaningful work, toward a higher ideal, with interesting problems."

Certain skills are required for any position at the CIA, according to Robinson. "All of our positions require strong leadership, communication, and organizational skills."

Aki J. Peritz, an adjunct faculty member at American University in the District of Columbia and a former CIA analyst, notes that it is common for aspiring CIA officers to pursue degrees in political science or international relations. But he suggests that no specific academic pedigree is expected at the CIA, adding that he knew a prominent CIA official with a forestry degree.

Graphic designers and geologists occasionally work for the CIA, so there are CIA roles for all kinds of people, says Peritz, an author who has written extensively about counterterrorism efforts and whose book "Disruption: Inside the Largest Counterterrorism Investigation in History" is scheduled to be released later this year.

What the CIA Is Like and What CIA Officers Do

The CIA has five areas called directorates, each focusing on a specific aspect of the agency's mission, such as science and technology. CIA personnel with differing areas of expertise can collaborate on projects via one of the agency's multiple mission centers, which are designed to address threats to national security in an interdisciplinary way. The agency is led by a director who is nominated by a president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

"Officers who work within the Directorate of Analysis are excellent puzzle-solvers who take information, often with missing pieces, and make sense of it," Robinson explains. "Then, they deliver written reports, including products such as the President’s Daily Briefing, and brief policymakers to help them make informed decisions."

As an analyst, Peritz combined insights from human intelligence with intercepted foreign communications plus publicly accessible information, such as media reports. "The idea is that you're trying to get the truth to the decision-maker," he says, noting that sometimes it is hard to differentiate fact from fiction.

Peritz, who was tasked with watching and assessing terrorist beheading videos for the CIA at one point in his agency career and has written about it, warns that CIA jobs sometimes involve confronting "gruesome, awful" realities.

"It's really, really awful to watch a person die over and over and over again," Peritz says, but he notes that there was a humane purpose behind it: to identify the people on camera and figure out how to prevent such tragedies. "The best-case scenario is that you are actually protecting the United States and protecting American lives," he says, adding that he once assisted with a life-saving CIA hostage rescue effort.

CIA Salaries

Compensation for CIA professionals is often less than what they might earn if they pursued a private sector career, Peritz says, noting that CIA tech workers are often capable of securing extremely lucrative employment in Silicon Valley.

However, many CIA officers earn six-figure salaries. Pay within the CIA is highly dependent on where someone falls within the agency hierarchy. CIA job postings typically include salary ranges.

How to Decide if You Should Work for the CIA

An interest in exploring the world is a must for a potential CIA officer, as is a passion for public service, Brandwin says. Because she had a covert CIA position, one of the challenges of her job was living with "duality" and not being able to be upfront with others about who she was, she explains.

But there was also something gratifying about the act of pretending, Brandwin says. "We're secret stealers and so that's what was fun and intriguing to me as an actor – getting to play a role and getting to basically get trained to lie, and so it's a very different kind of government job in that sense."

The hours of covert assignments are extremely demanding, she adds. "With a job at the agency, especially if you're in the clandestine service, it carries over," Brandwin says. "You may do your cover job during the day and at night you're doing your espionage work."

Successes at the CIA are often extremely meaningful, even though those achievements are often hidden, Brandwin says.

Peritz suggests that even the CIA's declassified accomplishments are sometimes undervalued. He says the CIA played a key role in stopping a major al-Qaida plot that likely would have resulted in the deaths of thousands of airline passengers only a few years after 9/11, but very few Americans are aware of this.

Potential CIA officers need to evaluate their motivations for pursuing a job at the CIA, Brandwin says.

"Make sure you're applying to the CIA, not because it's something you saw in the movies, but because you really want to serve," she emphasizes. "Know that it's not a traditional job. It's not even a traditional government job. It's long hours, it's hard hours, it's hard work, but it can be some of the most rewarding work that you'll ever do."

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Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants

Counterintelligence officials said in a top secret cable to all stations and bases around the world that too many of the people it recruits from other countries to spy for the U.S. are being lost.

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By Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman

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WASHINGTON — Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia , China , Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the C.I.A. ’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.

Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft; being too trusting of sources; underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of C.I.A. officers in order to discover their sources.

While the C.I.A. has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing.

Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the C.I.A.’s case officers — its frontline spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country.

The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers, both great and small, is once again a centerpiece of the C.I.A.’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.

The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood.

The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded C.I.A. case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources, but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services.

Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod C.I.A. case officers to think about steps they can take on their own to do a better job managing informants.

Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and frontline personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which C.I.A. officers call agents.

“No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect and people in senior positions are never held responsible.”

Mr. London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” argues that the C.I.A.’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents.

World wide messages to C.I.A. stations and bases that note troubling trends or problems, or even warnings about counterintelligence problems, are not unheard-of, according to former officials. Still, the memo outlining a specific number of informants arrested or killed by adversarial powers is an unusual level of detail, one that signals the importance of the current problems. Former officials said that counterintelligence officials typically like to keep such details secret even from the broad C.I.A. work force.

Asked about the memo, a C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the C.I.A.’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission center, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the C.I.A. community of current and former officers.

In January, Ms. Patel sent a letter to retired C.I.A. officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.)

Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing C.I.A. officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.

The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the U.S. are also skilled at hunting down informants.

Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks.

While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested, but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the C.I.A., which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said.

The collapse of the American-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the C.I.A. to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks.

Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia have meant that building up spy networks, and protecting those sources, is more important than ever.

In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult.

A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the C.I.A. helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.

In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Tehran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former C.I.A. officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government.

Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases a turned agent can have deadly consequences.

The 2009 bombing at a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, Mr. London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the C.I.A. thought it had convinced to penetrate Al Qaeda had in fact been turned against the United States.

“We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” Mr. London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.”

He added it is important to remind the C.I.A.’s work force of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses.

“Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”

Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. More about Julian E. Barnes

Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. and national security from Washington, D.C., and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He is the coauthor of “Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America.”  More about Adam Goldman

Former CIA Agent Reveals What It's Really Like to Be a Spy

Rule #1: Learn to live a lie.

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us?

Names, places, and timelines are redacted, but that doesn't lessen the impact of his words, as it's easy to assume his involvement in a number of covert operations that have shaped our recent history based on the information he can share. H is answers are often sprinkled with humor and compassion that you don't feel from any military mouthpiece. 

Here's a bit on his background.

I was a Central Intelligence Agency Case Officer who served in the Directorate of Operations (DO) with multiple tours in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East. I was in Afghanistan throughout President Obama's 2010 Afghan Surge, during which time I worked on eliminating the most deadly improvised explosive device (IED) network in the world; as well as the removal of numerous al-Qaeda and Taliban High Value Targets from the battlefield.I was in Kandahar, Afghanistan during Operation Neptune Spear which resulted in the death of UBL in Abbottabad, Pakistan. My final assignment was with a top secret task force operating amidst the Syrian Civil War.

We've pulled our favorite exchanges from this AMA, which is filled with enough acronyms to make your head spin. He hid his identity for 10 years from everyone except his brother. It probably helps that he's single with no kids, but any relationship starts with a lie which must have been gut-wrenching.

So for context, since you asked about family - I classify that as solely my mom and dad. And I kept it from them by telling them I was a low level sales guy - which I also told everyone else - and since that's pretty boring, their truthfully weren't a whole lot of other follow up questions. I just told my mom and dad last week. It's also a gigantic weight off my chest that I have been carrying for the past ten years.

Spies can come from all walks of life.

There are no skills that you can learn per se prior to joining the Agency that will make you a stronger candidate. Yes, the military would help to a degree but in order to be a case officer, which is what I did, you really can't prepare for it ahead of time. Which is a good thing. That way everyone is starting on a level playing field. Which, for me especially, was a good thing given that I was just an average guy from the Midwest.

Danger comes in many forms.

Well I was a warzone Case Officer (C/O) so you can imagine that it is already dangerous by proxy of being in a warzone. Then you add in the idea that you are CIA and that puts a tremendous target on your back. Which is why it is so important to maintain sound tradecraft and stay off the radar. Add to that the fact that Afghanistan in and of itself is trying to kill you every chance it gets. Whether that be via the terrain or a virus (which I got and almost killed me) that is not common for a midwest guy like me.

What is tougher? The mental or physical toll?

Mentally. Because I kept it turned up to 11 the entire time I was there. I was generally pretty safe physically during my time there with a few exceptions but nothing that left me debilitated or maimed. That said, I have an entire chapter in my book called The Downward Spiral which talks about my trying to cope with the stress through drugs and alcohol. Not my best stuff but it happened and I thought it was integral to share because lots of guys come back and have a hard time adjusting.It is hard to replace that adrenaline and its also hard to deal with petty shit not being so petty back home. But I have come around.

Do you really track your targets, like in the movies? How about avoiding being trailed and losing those trailing you? 

Great question. Let me answer your first question by referring you to Zero Dark Thirty. That is highly authentic movie, and as we learned yesterday via Vice.com, it is because the Agency helped them along the way to ensure its authenticity. As for the second question, I refer you to the Billion Dollar Spy by Bruce Hoffman which lays out the tradecraft involved with surveillance and counter-surveillance. 

The tough man culture is strong.

Silliest thing I ever did was take a huge dip of Redman chewing tobacco trying to fit in with some of the hard core door kickers we employ. I turned green, puked in the trash can, drank a coke, then took another even bigger dip to prove to the guys I wasn't a pussy. Turns out, I am. Puked again. Went home early. Sleep tight America.

Do you use a fake name?

That is 100% true. Most of my friends still call me by my fake name even though they know my true name. Wild huh?

Was it all worth it?

I ask myself the same question every goddamn day. Was any of it worth it? Will the Taliban retake Afghanistan? They very well might. Will ISIS continue to grow? I think they are starting to decline but, will someone else readily take their place depending on the raison d'etre of the day? Absolutely.

Continue reading the this on Reddit .  You can buy his book  Left of Boom: How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda  on Amazon.

Timothy is a lifelong DIY enthusiast who is fixated on smart home tech, beautiful tools, and wrenching on his FJ62 Land Cruiser.  He’s the DIY editor at Popular Mechanics and also the founder of the home improvement site, Charles & Hudson , the Webby-nominated family site, Built by Kids , and Tool Crave. When not working, you’ll find him on his board or bike enjoying the LA weather with his family and friends. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter .

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CIA "Agent" Myth

The media and public constantly refer to members of the Central Intelligence Agency as "CIA Agents."  This is grossly misleading, amateurish and a source of annoyance for those in the profession. 

Typically, when people think of the CIA, they are referring to the " Case Officers " of the Clandestine Service.  These officers are primarily tasked with the identification & recruitment of foreign sources of information.  These CIA " Officers " run clandestine operations to manage confidential sources and obtain valuable information in furtherance of national security objectives.  In intelligence parlance, foreign sources of information are called " Agents ." 

For obvious reasons highlighted in the aforementioned paragraph, it is highly insulting to call a CIA "Officer" an "Agent."  By doing so, you are relegating the government civil service to the status of a foreign confidential informant. 

Conversely, the federal law enforcement community ( which is very different than the intelligence apparatus ) is composed of Criminal Investigators that are titled "Special Agents," which at times is shortened to "Agent" in common usage. Referring to a "Special Agent" as an "Officer" is similarly not correct since officers in the federal law enforcement world are a completely different job series (i.e. CBP OFO, ERO, Uniform Division, etc.). 

Relatedly, the CIA does indeed have an Office of Inspector General (OIG) that is comprised of a small number of criminal investigators called Special Agents. They have a limited counterintelligence mission and are indeed 1811 Special Agents. However, these agents are NOT involved in covert source operations.  The CIA also has uniformed law enforcement positions in the Security Protective Service as a Police Officer. These are uniformed positions that according to the CIA "protect Agency personnel, facilities, and information through the enforcement of Federal laws and Agency Regulations, including making arrests and enforcing traffic laws."

When applying to hiring announcements in these career fields it is very important to understand the differences. Even though there are some similarities in the type of training and experience that is desired, the intelligence community is very different from the law enforcement community. Understanding these differences and knowing what you want out of your career will help you craft your resume and prepare yourself for the right job.

Knowing the different between these terms and their proper usage will serve you well during your interactions with potential employers. Do not be the applicant who makes this "fashion" mistake!

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In-Depth A Former CIA Case Officer Reveals The Surprising Connection Between Watches and Espionage

Luxury timepieces play a significant role in the murky world of spycraft – just not the way they're portrayed in hollywood..

[Editors’ Note: The author of this story, a former undercover officer for the CIA, has asked to remain anonymous.]

It’s pouring and I’m standing in a dark alley in a North African capital at the height of an ongoing military coup, waiting for my source.

I nervously glance down at my titanium Panerai Luminor Marina 8 Day. The still-glowing hands indicate it is 2:01:15 AM. If the asset, a foreign intelligence officer who is taking great risk to spy for the United States, does not arrive in the next 45 seconds, I’ll have to disappear into the night, missing a crucial opportunity to collect intelligence of strategic importance to the United States government.

As a CIA Case Officer operating undercover for almost a decade, my job was to recruit spies and steal secrets. At the core of this trade was clandestinely handling assets, or “spies,” to securely collect information to further United States’ interests. This generally occurred late at night in less-than-ideal locations, including dark alleys and the types of hotels that charge by the hour.

The scene in this story was a relatively routine night and something I spent years training for, rehearsing and perfecting throughout the Middle East and Africa. While the location and the mission changed over the years, the one thing that remained the same was the presence of a reliable timepiece on my wrist. 

Senses heightened, I scan the alley and again check the time on my Luminor Marina 8 Days Titanio PAM 564. Panerai originally developed the watch in partnership with Rolex for the use of the Italian Frogmen – the elite maritime special operations unit that served in World War II. The large, luminescent numerals ensured legibility in murky water, and they’re proving legitimately useful all these years later in the muddy alleyway.

15 seconds to go.

Mentally running through the contingency plan, I ready myself for my long Surveillance Detection Route to my bed-down location. I’m calm, but the inevitable second-guessing sets in. Is this a setup? Is the asset in trouble? Will I be swarmed by police as I leave the alley? Will my cover story hold up under intense interrogation?

Finally, a dark figure enters the alley with a smile on his face.

Just in the nick of time.

In the world of espionage, time matters. During an intelligence operation, mere seconds can mean the difference between life and death, imprisonment or (potentially worse) failing to collect strategic intelligence. So, it’s no surprise that the intelligence business – foreign intelligence collection, covert action and counterintelligence – is inextricably linked to reliable, even luxury, timepieces.

James Bond makes being a spy look easy. It isn’t. 

When I started Watches of Espionage , an Instagram page dedicated to the intersection of timepieces and spycraft, I wanted to challenge the popular notions of James Bond driving an Aston Martin DB5, a Rolex Submariner reference 6538 on his wrist. Or of Jason Bourne scaling the U.S. Embassy in Zurich wearing a TAG Heuer Link Chronograph. In reality, the utility of watches in the intelligence business is more mundane. Watches are tools. They are used to accomplish clandestine missions, build relationships, and complete operational tasks. In a world where GPS-enabled electronic devices pose an operational security risk, analog watches are even used for their original purpose: To tell time.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Watches.of.Espionage (@watchesofespionage)

In the halls of “Langley” – the colloquial term for CIA Headquarters – the ties of watches to the Intelligence Community are evident. The CIA is composed of tribes, and timepieces are subtle indications of an officer’s tribe or identity. Burly paramilitary officers with beards are seen wearing Panerai, Sangin Instruments, and Bremont. European officers are drawn to dressier Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC pieces to match fine tailored suits, while officers who serve in the Middle East and Africa may wear Breitling or Rolex, with the most fortunate ones showing the crest of a Middle Eastern nation.

The CIA seal is visible in the lobby at Langley. It features the eagle, a symbol of strength, a 16-point compass to signify the convergence of intelligence collection from all over the world, and a shield, as a symbol of defense. 

There’s also the so-called “war zone watch.” While a government salary does not support an extensive watch collection, when officers deploy to war zones for an extended period, their pay can almost double while their personal expenses are minimal. After returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, or one of the undeclared expeditionary locations, many officers take a portion of their savings and purchase a watch to discreetly commemorate the accomplishment, often the ubiquitous Rolex Submariner or Omega Seamaster, no doubt a subtle nod to Bond.

The author’s “war zone” watch, in another war zone. 

When collecting Human Intelligence (HUMINT), it is the job of a Case Officer to build a relationship with a foreign government official or member of a terrorist group and manipulate them to spy against their own organization or country. It takes time to build this level of trust, and operational gifts can go a long way toward earning it. A luxury timepiece is an ideal gift; it’s immediately recognizable and it’s something that the agent can wear as a constant reminder of the friendship with the Case Officer and thus the greater relationship with the US Government.

Further, the soon-to-be agent’s acceptance of an expensive gift from an American official is a strong indication that the individual is willing to move in the direction of a clandestine relationship. If he or she accepts the watch, the Case Officer must work with the target to develop an appropriate cover story regarding the watch’s origin.

The utility of luxury watches in clandestine tradecraft is a common theme throughout the history of espionage.

• In 1943, Ilia Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan, both members of the CIA’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), presented the Dalai Lama with a Patek Philippe reference 658 on behalf of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Reportedly, the purpose of the gift was to win the Dalai Lama’s support for a potential road through Tibet into China to assist the Chinese in fighting the Japanese.

The Dalai Lama is a known watch enthusiast. 

• FBI Special Agent turned Russian spy Robert Hanssen received at least two Rolex watches from his Russian handlers as forms of payment.

• Cuban President Fidel Castro gave two Rolexes to Argentine socialist revolutionary Che Guevara, including a Rolex GMT-Master 1675 that was “liberated” by CIA paramilitary officer Felix Rodriguez after Guevara’s October 1967 death in La Higuera, Bolivia.

On one of my first days at CIA as a junior trainee, I was provided $20,000 in cash and sent to Liljenquist & Beckstead , an authorized dealer in McLean, Virginia, to purchase a timepiece for the Director of CIA to give as a gift to the visiting head of a Middle Eastern intelligence service. The gift was used to build rapport and solidify a personal relationship between the CIA Director and the visiting dignitary. This personal touch would prove useful given the sometimes-tenuous relationship between the two intelligence services.

CIA Director George Tenet served from July 1997 to July 2004, serving both the Clinton and Bush administrations. 

The human intelligence business is built on relationships and trust. While a Case Officer continually assesses a potential unwitting asset – spy – for recruitment, the asset is also assessing the Case Officer to determine if he or she can trust this official with their life.  Just as blue button-down dress shirts and yellow ties can project authority and smarts, a recognizable timepiece like a Rolex Submariner can be a subtle demonstration of confidence and dependability. A fine watch is a message that’s understood by scrappy rebel leaders in Africa or polished diplomats in Geneva.

The seal of the CIA Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T)

In a modern context, the Hollywood version of the CIA Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T) issuing luxury watches for operational purposes beyond building trust is largely a fantasy. But Hollywood doesn’t have it all wrong. There’s some historical precedent for spy gadgets embedded in watches.

In July 1977, CIA Case Officer Martha Peterson was arrested by the KGB in Moscow while servicing a dead drop for Russian asset Alexsandr Ogorodnik, code-named Trigon. When her supervisor arrived at the notorious Lubyanka Prison to assist with Peterson’s release, he was reportedly wearing a watch that contained a covert microphone. The watch was likely a version of the German manufactured Protona produced by Minifon during the Cold War. The so-called Internet of Things has rendered obsolete the need for secret microphones or cameras embedded in watches.

A Minifon Protona that contained a microphone. 

CIA Operations Officers view watches as another tool that can be leveraged to accomplish a mission or extract yourself from a particularly hairy situation. A watch like a Rolex GMT-Master has a perceived inherent value and is recognized worldwide in both the rural mountains of the Hindu Kush and the back alleys of Bangkok’s seedy Patpong district.

The Hindu Kush isn’t as unlikely an environment for a a luxury watch as you might think. 

Should you find yourself in need of immediate help, the watch can be utilized as a form of currency that can be traded for a few hours of shelter in a basement, a ride to the nearest international border, or even a seat on the next plane out of a war-torn nation. A Rolex is easier to carry and less likely to be misplaced than eight ounces of gold or $15,000 in cash. CIA finance officers will not reimburse a personal watch if used for this purpose, but ultimately it was a financial risk I was willing to take in my overseas operations. I have a Rolex GMT-Master, myself.

On May 1st, 1960, USAF pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet airspace, causing the infamous 1960 U-2 incident that had significant diplomatic implications during the height of the Cold War. Powers carried an escape and evasion (E&E) kit containing maps, a compass, gold coins, Soviet Rubles, and four gold watches. These watches were to be leveraged to barter his way to the border or some other place of safe harbor. Powers was immediately apprehended and was unable to utilize the watches for their intended purpose, as tools of espionage.

USAF pilot Gary Powers holds a model of the U-2, a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.

On the practical side, mechanical watches can offer an added layer of security simply by telling time. An intelligence operation is a carefully choreographed dance where accurate timekeeping is mission-critical. Missing a clandestine operational meeting, a surveillance detection cover stop, or a dead drop signal by seconds can mean the difference between operational success and high-stakes failure.

Smart devices are certainly not a spy’s best friend. When wading through a Middle Eastern souk trying to detect and avoid hostile intelligence services, wearing a beacon that tracks your every move, on your wrist or in your pocket, simply is not acceptable. In late 2017, open-source fitness tracker data was used to reveal the location of sensitive military locations in countries including Syria, Niger, and Afghanistan. A reliable timepiece is a necessity to ensure you conduct your operational act (agent meeting) at the exact time and place without leaving behind a digital footprint that can be pieced together by a competent hostile intelligence service. Sometimes it’s best to do things the old-fashioned way.

A paramilitary operations officer

Timepieces and espionage will continue to be intertwined for decades to come. While the Hollywood version will be perpetuated in pop culture, in reality Case Officers, Paramilitary Officers, and Intelligence Analysts will stroll into watch stores in Dubai, Tokyo, and Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, during R&Rs and operational trips, looking for the perfect timepiece to commemorate a specific overseas tour or classified operational accomplishment.

Young Case Officers on their first overseas assignment will utilize an individual’s watch to strike up a conversation with foreign intelligence officers in hopes of building a lasting relationship. Intelligence Analysts will scrutinize images of foreign leaders’ watch collections, looking for subtle clues to inform their leadership assessments and psychological profiles. The provenance of the Rolex Submariners at CIA Headquarters, Bremonts at SIS Building in London, and Cartiers in DGSE headquarters in Paris rival those auctioned at Christie’s.

But most of those stories will never be told.

This article has been reviewed by the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

In lieu of payment for this article, @watchesofespionage has elected to donate to Third Option Foundation. The name refers to the motto of the CIA’s Special Activities Center: Tertia Optio, the President of the United States’ third option when military force is inappropriate and diplomacy is inadequate. Third Option Foundation is dedicated to providing comprehensive family resiliency programs, working behind the scenes to quietly help those who quietly serve.

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• Our Mission

ESSENTIAL THINGS TO KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE A CIA OPERATIONS OFFICER

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On the Strike Source staff are multiple former CIA Operations Officers (OOs) with decades of experience in the Directorate of Operations (DO).  As noted on the CIA website, OOs “focus on clandestinely spotting, assessing, developing, recruiting, and handling non-US citizens with access to foreign intelligence vital to US foreign policy and national security decisionmakers.”  Serving as an OO is demanding but intriguing and rewarding, allowing one to contribute to our national security, work with exceptional people, and engage the world.

PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS AND SKILLS

While some are extroverts and some are introverts, successful OOs share a range of personality characteristics. Chief among them is the ability to deal with ambiguity on an ongoing basis, a reality captured in the unofficial motto of the DO: “It depends.” In addition, since Murphy’s Law is the first rule of intelligence operations, OOs have to be able to think on their feet, often in complex, high-pressure situations fraught with risk. OOs also have to be comfortable navigating issues and situations that are gray, rather than black or white. Managing ambiguity with an understanding that human behavior is not binary is something that OOs do every day.

OOs are self-starters. The best ones are ambitious and driven to make a difference. They do not wait at their desks for things to happen; they go out and make things happen. They are creative. They can work alone or as part of a team. They are excited by new challenges and are intellectually curious – they want to learn and understand why people make certain decisions and undertake various actions.

In the course of a career, a typical OO will have field tours in multiple countries, as well as occasional assignments in CIA Headquarters, and shorter field assignments lasting days, weeks or months. As a result, OOs must be adaptable and culturally sensitive, able to conduct espionage in a variety of foreign environments and then, switching gears, retool themselves to find a way to be effective within a large bureaucracy.

OOs have to have a thick skin, as operating in different cultures can involve criticisms of American culture and personal, physical and social attributes, while working in the large bureaucracy presents its own challenges, such as dealing with an assignments and promotion system that is not always straightforward. It also helps to have a good sense of humor and irony. Given some of the hard issues with which OOs have to grapple, dark or gallows humor is not unusual in the DO.

Again per the CIA website, OOs are “expected to build relationships based on rapport and trust using sound judgment, integrity, and the ability to assess character and motivation.” As a result, OOs must have strong interpersonal skills, the most important of which are related to emotional intelligence and empathy. Successful OOs are able to put themselves in the shoes of those they are recruiting and handling, to understand each individual’s perspective, why they are working with the U.S. Government, what they want out of the relationship, and how to guide them to do what it is they need to do.

OOs also need strong communication skills. In that regard, when conducting operations, although it is important to be a good conversationalist, it is even more important to be a good listener. After an operation is complete, or during stints at Headquarters, how well an OO writes will be a key indicator of their success. Indeed, for all the sexy work that draws one to the OO career, there are more hours of writing than one can imagine.

In addition, given the infinite range of problems an OO might encounter, planning, while important, will only get one so far. Therefore, strong critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as the ability to innovate, are indispensable. An OO must be able to fall back on the core of a plan and remember what the goals of it were, while being able to let go of the specifics and find alternate routes or means to achieve those goals.

FOREIGN TRAVEL AND FOREIGN-LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY

Previous foreign travel is a plus. If one has lived, worked and/or studied overseas, that is even better. Such experiences not only allow an applicant to acquire and demonstrate some of the personality characteristics and skills cited above, but will also give the successful applicant a head start when they go abroad on their first field assignment.

In addition, extended time spent in a country or region can result in expertise in one or both, which might come in handy during one’s career. Proficiency in a foreign language will serve to enhance any such expertise, since language is key to understanding culture.

While OOs, like other Agency officers, will have opportunities to learn foreign languages, proficiency in one or more of them will make an applicant more competitive. While any foreign language is good, so-called ‘hard languages’ (e.g. Chinese, Russian, and Arabic) that are relevant to our country’s highest national security priorities are better.

Beyond the merits of the foreign language itself, those who acquired their proficiency outside the home will have shown an ability to learn a language. In addition, since, for one’s first foreign language, one learns both the language and how they learn a language, they will be better prepared to learn more languages after entering on duty.

MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL PREPARATION

OOs must be dedicated to our national security and committed to the Agency’s mission. Applicants should understand these are not just words and the commitment is significant. OOs agree to be worldwide available in accordance with the needs of the service and are therefore expected to take difficult assignments in hard places. Days are often – and, in some jobs and/or places, always – long and intense. One can expect to miss many birthdays and anniversaries, and possibly to have to cut short vacations during their precious time off to return to work due to a short-fused requirement. For any OO, it can be hard not to bring one’s work home with them figuratively, even if they are unable to do so literally. This adds to the stress of the job, as well as to the long hours.

As can happen with any project or relationship, those that OOs have, respectively, undertaken or built can become quite personal, especially if the OO has been engaged in the effort for a long time. Nevertheless, when it is time to transfer to a new post or position, the OO has to let go and hand over responsibility to the new arrival or other staff. The OO has to trust in the training and abilities of their peers to do just as good a job – if not better – than he or she did. Based on the assignments cycle, this hand-over process can happen months or years into a project or relationship. Thus, assuming responsibility for and handing off are a common occurrence that can be emotionally taxing, depending on the circumstances.

These are only some of the demands that make the job and work-life balance for OOs challenging. Applicants should consider whether they, and anyone who depends on them, are prepared in principle to deal with these realities and accept the sacrifices the job will require.

R ick and Tom would like to thank their colleague who, though unable to be named in the byline, co-wrote this article with them. Rick Hotchner contributed to this report with Tom Billard.

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Former CIA officer pleads guilty to spying for China, DOJ says

A former CIA officer targeted in an FBI undercover operation pleaded guilty Friday to providing national defense information to the People’s Republic of China, the Justice Department said .

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, of Honolulu, who served as a CIA officer over a seven-year period in the 1980s, worked with an unnamed co-conspirator in 2001 to provide Chinese intelligence “with a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information” in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars, DOJ said, citing the plea agreement.

CNN has reached out to attorneys for Ma for comment on the guilty plea.

Ma later applied as a linguist with the FBI’s Honolulu Field Office, where he served from 2004 to 2012.

“The FBI, aware of Ma’s ties to PRC (People’s Republic of China) intelligence, hired Ma, as part of an investigative plan, to work at an off-site location where his activities could be monitored and his contacts with the PRC investigated,” according to the DOJ release.

As CNN  previously reported , during the course of his monitored employment with the FBI, Ma allegedly took a digital camera into the FBI office to photograph sensitive documents that he would then take to his handlers in China.

Referencing one particular set of classified documents provided to Chinese intelligence officers, “Ma confessed that he knew that this information, and the information communicated in March 2001, would be used to injure the United States or to benefit the PRC,” the Justice Department said Friday.

“Under the terms of the parties’ plea agreement, Ma must cooperate with the United States, including by submitting to debriefings by U.S. government agencies,” according to DOJ.

Should the court accept Ma’s plea, he faces a sentence of 10 years in federal prison at a hearing scheduled for September 11.

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Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Commit Espionage

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, of Honolulu, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to gather and deliver national defense information to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

According to court documents, Ma and a blood relative of his (identified as co-conspirator #1 or CC #1) were naturalized U.S. citizens who were born in Hong Kong and Shanghai, respectively. Both Ma and CC #1 worked for the CIA ­­­­— CC #1 from 1967 until 1983, Ma from 1982 until 1989. As CIA officers, both men held top secret security clearances that granted them access to sensitive and classified CIA information, and signed non-disclosure agreements that required them to maintain the secrecy of that information.

As Ma admitted in the plea agreement, in March 2001, when he no longer worked for the CIA, at the request of intelligence officers employed by the PRC’s Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB), Ma convinced CC #1 to meet with SSSB intelligence officers in a Hong Kong hotel room. Over the course of three days, Ma and CC #1 provided the SSSB with a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information. At the conclusion of the third day, the SSSB intelligence officers provided CC #1 with $50,000 in cash, which Ma counted. Ma and CC #1 also agreed at that time to continue to assist the SSSB.

As detailed in the plea agreement, in March 2003, while living in Hawaii, Ma applied for a job as a contract linguist in the FBI Honolulu Field Office. The FBI, aware of Ma’s ties to PRC intelligence, hired Ma, as part of an investigative plan, to work at an off-site location where his activities could be monitored and his contacts with the PRC investigated. Ma worked for the FBI from August 2004 until October 2012.

Ma further admitted that in February 2006, during this monitored employment by the FBI in Honolulu, Ma convinced CC #1 to provide the identities of at least two individuals depicted in photographs that were provided to Ma by SSSB intelligence officers. The individuals’ identities were and remain classified U.S. national defense information. Ma confessed that he knew that this information, and the information communicated in March 2001, would be used to injure the United States or to benefit the PRC, and he deliberately engaged in the criminal conspiracy with CC #1 and the SSSB anyway.

Under the terms of the parties’ plea agreement, Ma must cooperate with the United States, including by submitting to debriefings by U.S. government agencies. The plea agreement, if accepted by the Court, calls for an agreed-upon sentence of 10 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Sept. 11.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors for the District of Hawaii, Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Kevin Vorndran of the FBI, and Special Agent in Charge Steven Merrill of the FBI Honolulu Field Office made the announcement after Chief U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson conducted the change of the plea hearing.

The FBI Honolulu and Los Angeles Field Offices investigated the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ken Sorenson and Craig Nolan for the District of Hawaii, and Trial Attorneys Scott Claffee and Leslie Esbrook of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

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The Justice Department unsealed charges, seizures, and other court-authorized actions to disrupt the illicit revenue generation efforts of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea).

If Trump wins, he could weaponize U.S. spy services against his domestic political enemies, former intel officers warn

Donald Trump could turn America’s spy services into weapons of “retribution” against domestic political opponents, skew intelligence findings in favor of authoritarian leaders and undermine information sharing with U.S. allies if he wins a second term, more than a dozen former intelligence officers, Western officials and lawmakers tell NBC News.

Given Trump’s track record during and after his first term, including his public remarks lambasting the intelligence services, his alleged mishandling of classified information , his vows to seek vengeance against his political opponents, and plans by his allies to purge large numbers of career civil servants deemed to be members of a “deep state” cabal, former intelligence officers worry that the spy agencies could suffer irreparable damage.

“I’m very concerned. And I think almost every one of my former colleagues and current colleagues in the intelligence community is very concerned,” said a former national security official who served under Trump. “I haven’t talked to a single senior person who said, ‘Oh, it’s overblown. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.’”

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen former intelligence officers — many of whom worked in the Trump administration and had face-to-face meetings with the then-president — as well as Western officials and members of Congress.

There are few legal parameters defining the president’s power over the intelligence agencies, and Trump would have tremendous leeway if he chose to expand the number of political appointees at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and other agencies, according to Glenn Gerstell, who worked as general counsel for the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020.

When it comes to the president’s authority over the intelligence community, “the law allows for a hell of a lot of discretion” and Trump would have “a pretty free hand,” he said.

“If a determined president, supported by a group of senior aides who will both support and enable him and not object, wishes to do his bidding throughout the entire executive branch, there are few practical limits on his ability to do so, unless Congress has the political will to step in,” Gerstell said. “The law is going to be pushed pretty far before it’s actually going to produce a counterreaction.”

Supporters of Trump say dire warnings about the future of the intelligence community in a possible second term are hysterical and overblown, and that his record at the White House shows that he strengthened the spy agencies.

Brian Hughes, senior adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, said it was President Joe Biden and his administration that had injected partisan politics into the intelligence agencies, not Trump.

“There is rich irony in hearing some of the deepest, deep-state voices sudden concern for the institution of legitimate national security intelligence,” Hughes said in an email. “These are some of the same people who routinely worked to undermine American democracy and push the ‘Russia hoax’ to disrupt an American election. Now to hear them criticize a meaningful discussion focused on ensuring a Constitutionally-based national security pathway, and yet again push patently political lies for the corrupt administration they serve is outrageous.”

The biggest question looming over a possible second Trump administration is whether the president or his team would attempt to turn the intelligence agencies against his domestic political opponents, which would violate laws that expressly forbid using the spy services against Americans.

Perhaps the most notorious example of a president crossing that line is Richard Nixon, whose administration had the CIA gather intelligence on domestic protesters against the Vietnam War. Nixon also tried unsuccessfully to enlist the help of the CIA to quash an FBI investigation into the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

Trump and some of his former deputies have fueled speculation about drastic actions with talk of vengeance against those who they say pose a threat to America’s democracy. Trump said at a rally last year that “for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” And the former president also has pledged to name a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.

Kash Patel, who worked at the Justice and Defense departments during the Trump administration and who at one point was considered for the post of deputy director of the CIA, said in December that a second Trump administration would “go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media” over the 2020 election. Trump lost the election to Biden, but Patel and Trump insist without evidence that the election was “stolen.”

Trump’s campaign has distanced itself from Patel’s remarks.

Fears among allies

Foreign allies, anxious about keeping their intelligence sources safe, already are worried about the implications of a second Trump term and could discreetly scale back how much information they share with their U.S. counterparts about intelligence gathering methods, former officials and lawmakers said.

The cooperation and trust between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies have been forged over decades. Washington relies heavily on its foreign intelligence partners to help track terrorist threats, navigate international crises and prepare for possible conflicts. But Trump’s return to the White House could jeopardize those relationships, former officials said.

“I think some of our allies may withhold intelligence information on subjects such as Russia,” said a former career CIA officer who oversaw clandestine operations in Europe. “And they would do it very carefully. They would ratchet it back so it doesn’t look so obvious, for fear of retribution.”

Trump has been accused of having a cavalier attitude to sensitive or secret information, and is facing federal charges that he mishandled classified documents he kept after leaving the White House and then allegedly obstructed the government’s attempt to reclaim them. Prosecutors say Trump took more than 300 classified files to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The former president has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and called the case an attempt to undermine his re-election bid.

The allegations about Trump’s mishandling of classified information, and his consistent praise and refusal to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin, would cause U.S. partners to think twice about relaying intelligence related to Russia, former officials said.

Protecting sources is a bedrock principle for all intelligence work, and no government would be ready to jeopardize that, the former CIA officer said.

“The one thing any intelligence community cares about most is source protection,“ the former officer said. “No ally is ever going to come out and say we’re going to turn off intel sharing, but a friendly service would be remiss if such source protection concerns are not of paramount concern, given Trump’s affinity for Putin.”

James Clapper, former director of national intelligence and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said U.S. allies will be “apprehensive about sharing intelligence revelatory of their sources and methods, particularly if you have somebody that’s obviously pretty careless about protecting security information."

No more ‘adults’

When Trump entered office in 2017, he arrived without having served in the military or any branch of government.

“As a result, he had no experience handling classified information or working with military, diplomatic, or intelligence programs and operations. Trump had traveled abroad but, by his own account, did not often read,” reads a history of presidential briefings published by the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence.

Having publicly disparaged the intelligence agencies even before he was sworn in, Trump’s relations with the spy services have always been difficult. At times, intelligence officials who delivered analyses that did not fit the White House’s agenda were berated by angry aides, according to two former intelligence officers.

But during Trump’s time at the White House, senior figures in his Cabinet, military and in the intelligence community — dubbed the “adults in the room” — managed to steer him away from what they believed were ill-informed or risky ideas, sometimes by persuading him otherwise or delaying decisions.

One of them was Gina Haspel, a career intelligence officer who served as CIA director in the tumultuous second half of Trump’s presidential term, from 2018-2021. She helped insulate the spy agency’s workforce from political pressure, according to former intelligence officials.

“She knew how to manage Trump, how to flatter him and how to call in her chips when the moment called for it,” said one former colleague.

Clapper called Haspel “one of the most impactful directors in the history of the agency simply because of how she protected it.”

But a career intelligence officer will likely not get the nod for the director’s job at the CIA in a second Trump presidential term, as Trump has signaled he wants deputies who have demonstrated strong political allegiance to him.

Trump’s supporters at the Heritage Foundation think tank and elsewhere are advocating that he shake up the federal bureaucracy by replacing tens of thousands of civil servants with political appointees in government agencies, which would include the 18 federal intelligence agencies. In the closing months of the Trump administration, the White House attempted such an effort with a new executive order but the Biden administration quickly reversed it.

“I think there will be more political appointees, but I don’t know how many more,” said one former official who served in the Trump administration and who is in close contact with Trump’s team.

The former official said it would be reasonable for Trump to assert control over the intelligence community in a second term through political appointees, to ensure the intelligence agencies carry out the president’s policies without bureaucratic subterfuge.

“No matter what side you’re on politically, you should want political control because we don’t want this country to become a security state,” the former official said.

The Heritage Foundation’s proposed outline for action if Trump is elected, titled “Project 2025,” calls for the president-elect to promptly choose a deputy director of the CIA, who would not need Senate confirmation, and could “immediately begin to implement the President’s agenda.”

“Additional appointees should be placed within the agency as needed to assist the Director in supervising its functioning,” the report states.

The document also calls for breaking “the cabal of bureaucrats in D.C.” by moving some directorates in the CIA outside of northern Virginia, where the headquarters is located.

Robert Litt, who served as general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2009 to 2017, said inserting political appointees into the management of the spy agencies in unprecedented numbers could distort the way intelligence is analyzed and lead to illegal or ill-advised decisions.

“I think it would be a very, very bad thing for the intelligence community and for the nation if the intelligence community was dominated by a group of political loyalists,” he said.

“One is the risk that intelligence analysis will not be called down the middle,” Litt said. “And the other is the risk that the intelligence agencies will be directed to do things that are either unlawful or inappropriate.”

Worst-case scenarios

In a second Trump White House, China would remain the top priority for the intelligence agencies, as it was for the last Trump administration and the current Biden administration, said the former official close to Trump’s team. A mission center at the CIA dedicated to Iran likely would be restored, and a Trump White House would look to cut back on in-house analytical teams within ODNI, the former official said.

The Heritage document, echoing an argument often employed by Trump and his supporters, asserts that former intelligence officials have injected politics into the work of the spy agencies in an attempt to promote the idea that Trump’s campaign in 2016 allegedly colluded with Russia and to play down allegations of possible corruption against Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

The Heritage policy blueprint calls for security clearances to be revoked for any former intelligence officials who “discuss their work in the press or on social media without prior clearance” from the director of national intelligence. It also calls for an “audit” of all cases of “past politicization and abuses of intelligence information.”

Former intelligence officials are divided over whether a worst-case scenario — with the spy services targeting domestic political opponents — could take place, and if it did, how the intelligence workforce and courts would respond. Much will depend on whom Trump names as the leaders of the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department. Former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a staunch supporter of Trump who was an outspoken critic of the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, is seen as a possible candidate for CIA director. John Ratcliffe, the former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence under Trump, could be asked to return to the DNI’s job.

One former senior intelligence official said for all its shortcomings, the intelligence community would not be easily converted into a domestic spying service, and that many of the career officers would refuse to follow unlawful orders.

“They would be pretty resistant to turning it on the American people,” the ex-official said.

A more likely scenario could be a steady degradation of the intelligence agencies, in which experienced staff resign or are sacked and morale declines, with unpredictable consequences for intelligence gathering and the country’s national security, the former official said.

Other former officials say Trump has never respected the norms and guardrails meant to safeguard America’s democracy, and that there is no guarantee he won’t venture into Nixonian territory.

“I would not say anything is off the table when it comes to Donald Trump, including the most potentially damaging and egregious violations of practice, if not law itself,” said John Brennan, who served as CIA director under President Barack Obama and is an outspoken critic of Trump.

Former officials point out that Trump sent his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to Ukraine in a bid to dig up dirt on Biden, his political opponent. Next time, the former officials said, perhaps a similar mission would be handed to the CIA, though presented under the guise of legitimate intelligence gathering.

Miles Taylor, who worked as a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration, said the secrecy that underpins intelligence work could also enable an administration to hide the true purpose of a particular order and make it extremely difficult for an employee to blow the whistle if they deem it inappropriate.

“A number of people at senior levels are very concerned that they will get asked to do things they consider unethical but not illegal,” Taylor said.

But unlike other parts of the government, there would be “few remedies to sound the alarm” because so much relevant information is classified, said Taylor, who has warned publicly of the risks of a second Trump presidency.

Contemplating a possible second Trump term, many intelligence officers are looking at securing assignments abroad or leaving for the private sector, Taylor said.

“A lot of them are thinking if Trump wins, it’s a really good time to move on,” he said.

Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. 

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Ex-CIA officer accused of spying for China pleads guilty in a Honolulu courtroom

This image contained in the criminal complaint against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma shows a screenshot made from a video by an FBI undercover employee taken of Ma in January 2019 during a meeting. Ma, the former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI accused of giving China classified information, must remain detained because the trained spy is an “extreme flight risk,” U.S. prosecutors said. (U.S. Justice Department via AP)

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HONOLULU (AP) — A former CIA officer and contract linguist for the FBI accused of spying for China for at least a decade pleaded guilty Friday in a federal courtroom in Honolulu.

Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 72, has been in custody since his arrest in August 2020. The U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing it amassed “a war chest of damning evidence” against him, including an hourlong video of Ma and an older relative — also a former CIA officer — providing classified information to intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security in 2001.

The video shows Ma counting the $50,000 received from the Chinese agents for his service, prosecutors said.

During a sting operation, he accepted thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for past espionage activities, and he told an undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer that he wanted to see the “motherland” succeed, prosecutors said.

The secrets he was accused of providing included information about CIA sources and assets, international operations, secure communication practices and operational tradecraft, charging documents said.

As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Ma pleaded guilty Friday to a count of conspiracy to gather or deliver national defense information to a foreign government. The deal calls for a 10-year sentence, but a judge will have the final say at Ma’s sentencing scheduled for Sept. 11. Without the deal, he faced life in prison.

Ma was born in Hong Kong, moved to Honolulu in 1968 and became a U.S. citizen in 1975. He joined the CIA in 1982, was assigned overseas the following year, and resigned in 1989. He held a top secret security clearance, according to court documents.

Ma lived and worked in Shanghai, China, before returning to Hawaii in 2001. He was hired as a contract linguist in the FBI’s Honolulu field office in 2004, and prosecutors say that over the following six years, he regularly copied, photographed and stole classified documents. He often took them on trips to China, returning with thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts, such as a new set of golf clubs, prosecutors said.

In court Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson revealed that Ma’s hiring as a part-time contract linguist was a “ruse” to monitor his contact with Chinese intelligence officers.

The FBI had been aware of Ma’s ties with the intelligence officers and “made the determination to notionally hire the defendant to work at an FBI off-site location in Honolulu,” the plea agreement said.

In 2006, while Ma was living in Hawaii, Chinese intelligence officers sent him photos of people they were interested in, Sorenson said, and Ma contacted the co-conspirator relative and convinced him to reveal at least two of the identities.

Ma, in pleading guilty, said everything Sorenson described is true. Ma said he had signed non-disclosure agreements that he knew would be in effect even after leaving the CIA and that he knew the information he was providing to the Chinese intelligence officials could harm the United States or help a foreign nation.

In 2021, Ma’s former defense attorney told a judge Ma believed he was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and was having trouble remembering things.

A defense motion noted that Ma’s older brother developed Alzheimer’s 10 years prior and was completely disabled by the disease. The brother is referred to as the co-conspirator in the indictment against Ma, but prosecutors didn’t charge him because of his incompetency due to Alzheimer’s, the motion said.

The co-conspirator is now dead, Sorenson said in court Friday.

Last year a judge found Ma competent and to not be suffering from a major mental disease, disorder or defect.

Ma’s plea agreement with prosecutors also says he will “provide more detailed facts relating to this case during debriefings with Government representatives,” and submit to polygraph examinations.

“The defendant understands and agrees that his cooperation obligation represents a lifetime commitment by the defendant to the United States to cooperate as described in this agreement,” the court document said.

More From Forbes

The rise of the chief ai officer.

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Several prominent companies across different sectors have appointed individuals to AI executive ... [+] leadership roles, including GE HealthCare, UnitedHealth Group, Deloitte, Mayo Clinic, Dell Technologies, Intel Corporation and IBM Automation

Companies implementing a Chief AI Officer to spearhead their artificial intelligence initiatives is becoming a rapidly emerging trend. According to LinkedIn, 13% more organizations have created AI executive leadership roles since December 2022.

Additionally, 65% of executives say they are in a role that has existed at their company for less than five years , according to a survey by executive search and management consulting firm Heidrick & Struggles. The respondents are responsible for a wide array of functions reporting to them, which include data science, engineering and machine learning.

The presence of these positions not only signifies the paramount importance of AI in various industries, but also heralds a focus on optimizing AI strategies and fostering innovation in organizations. The trend indicates an increasing integration of AI technologies into the overall business strategies of companies and underlines the critical role that AI plays in their operations.

Several prominent companies across different sectors have appointed individuals to AI executive leadership roles, including GE HealthCare, UnitedHealth Group, Deloitte, Mayo Clinic, Dell Technologies, Intel Corporation and IBM Automation.

Salary Data For AI Leaders

In the race to adopt generative AI and other tech-based innovations, technology leaders are becoming ever-critical to organizations’ strategy and execution, which reflects in the compensation packages of these professionals.

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In 2023, the reported average total compensation, including any annualized equity grants, for data analytics and AI executives in the United States was $1.134 million, the Heidrick & Struggles survey revealed. The highest-earners amongst this group reported earning $2.6 million.

AI leaders within financial services saw the highest base compensation, while those in the technology sector saw the highest total compensation, due to their increased annual equity or long-term incentives.

The Role Of AI Leaders

CAIOs play a critical role in setting the strategic direction for the integration and utilization of AI technologies within the organization. This involves developing an AI roadmap, aligning AI initiatives with business objectives and ensuring that AI efforts contribute to the overall strategic goals of the company. Moreover, they are responsible for overseeing the planning and execution of AI projects, ensuring their alignment with the organization's vision and mission.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Another key responsibility of the CAIO is to foster cross-functional collaboration by working closely with various departments, such as research and development, engineering, marketing and data science. This collaborative effort aims to identify AI opportunities across different business functions, facilitate knowledge sharing and integrate AI solutions into diverse areas of the organization. They also play a pivotal role in promoting a culture of AI-driven innovation and knowledge dissemination.

Ethical and Regulatory Compliance

The CAIO is tasked with ensuring that all AI initiatives and deployments comply with ethical guidelines, data privacy regulations and industry-specific standards. This involves establishing and enforcing ethical AI practices, maintaining transparency in AI decision-making processes and mitigating potential risks related to data bias, privacy and algorithmic accountability. They are also responsible for staying abreast of evolving regulatory requirements and adapting AI strategies accordingly.

They facilitate employee training programs and awareness initiatives to educate staff about ethical guidelines and data privacy regulations relevant to AI. By fostering a culture of ethical awareness and compliance, they empower employees to understand their responsibilities in relation to ethical practices, thereby bolstering the organization's overall adherence to ethical and regulatory standards.

Talent Management and Development

An essential aspect of their role involves talent management and development, including recruiting top AI talent, nurturing a high-performing team and providing professional development opportunities for these professionals. This encompasses identifying skill gaps, creating training programs and fostering a culture of continuous learning to ensure that the organization has the expertise required to drive AI innovation and implementation. Additionally, they are accountable for building a diverse and inclusive AI workforce.

Technology Evaluation and Innovation

The CAIO is responsible for evaluating emerging AI technologies, assessing their potential impact on the organization and guiding investment decisions in AI tools and platforms. They lead the exploration of innovative AI applications, identify opportunities for technological advancement and drive the adoption of cutting-edge solutions to enhance the organization's competitive advantage. This includes overseeing the development and deployment of AI solutions that deliver tangible business value.

Performance Measurement and Optimization

In their capacity as AI leaders, the CAIO oversees the measurement of AI performance and the optimization of AI systems. This involves defining key performance indicators for AI initiatives, monitoring their performance against established benchmarks and implementing iterative improvements to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of AI applications. They are also accountable for evaluating the return on investment for AI projects and adjusting strategies based on performance metrics.

External Engagement and Thought Leadership

These positions involve representing the organization in external forums and industry events related to AI. The CAIO serves as the company's ambassador in AI communities, contributes to industry discussions and builds strategic partnerships with external stakeholders, such as academic institutions, research organizations and other AI industry leaders. They are also responsible for shaping the organization's public image in the context of AI innovation and thought leadership.

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