A Guide for the Aspiring Spy (The Anonymous Spy Series) Read Free

program was classified as a staff agent. In those early days the NOC program was essentially run between the Station and the corresponding Headquarters desk, and the treatment, training, and benefits of NOCs varied greatly. There was no centralized handling of NOC officers. Finding corporate cover was also sometimes a problem. This was the responsibility of the CIA’s Central Cover staff but it was a difficult process especially where the Stations made certain demands of the cover that was often hard to fulfill.
     
    This all changed with the creation of the OED in the early 1980s. All recruiting and training of NOC officers as well as the development of commercial cover was centralized in the OED. As a result, while the bureaucracy and budget of the program grew, so did its effectiveness. Standards for NOC recruitment were established, as was the vetting process for NOC applicants. The CIA stopped the transfer of inside staff officers into the NOC program and all new NOCs were recruited clean without any hint of CIA or government affiliation. New standards resulted in recruitment of NOCs with real-world business experience, but at the same time it led to an elite group that was results-oriented with a disdain for bureaucracy.
     
    The program grew rapidly, doubling the deployment of NOC officers worldwide between 1975 and 1986. By 1993, NOC overseas deployment grew another 50 percent, with the US Congress still pressing for an increase in the program. After the September 11th terrorist attacks, the US Congress provided additional funding and mandates for the CIA to continue expansion of the NOC program. Clearly, the strain on the CIA’s resources for recruitment, training, and management of such a significant increase and the lack of available commercial covers for these positions has reached a saturation point.
     
    Actually, by the mid-1990s the NOC case officer pool awaiting cover arrangements for deployment overseas had exhausted available covers. Many US corporations had become reluctant to provide positions to the CIA; thus, the agency began to look toward smaller US businesses for cover. Often, however, these smaller businesses lacked the resources to serve the needs of the NOC officers in the field. Many lacked the financial foundation in terms of overall cash flow or profitability to truly justify the expense of placing an employee overseas. Such institutional problems create internal problems in smaller businesses where unwitting employees do not realize that the CIA is actually footing the bill to cover the NOC case officer’s expenses. Usually, in a business, large or small, only a handful of people, perhaps two or three people, are actually witting of the clandestine relationship with the CIA.
     
    With changing priorities following the fall of the Soviet Union, the CIA began to seek covers to provide a higher degree of access by the NOC case officer to new targets of interest. As the CIA’s priorities changed as a result of new directions from US government policy makers, the CIA began to seek covers with access to terrorist targets, drug-related targets, money laundering, high-technology, and commercial competitiveness issues. The CIA has found it to be a significant challenge to obtain and to maintain commercial cover arrangements that provides such access.
     
     
    Paramilitary Case Officer
     
    The CIA maintains a cadre of very specialized personnel called Special Operations and Programs Officers (SOPO), or paramilitary case officers as we were called during the Vietnam War era. Fondly called “knuckle draggers” by insiders, the SOPO are largely recruited among the ranks of present and former US military personnel, mainly personnel with prior combat experience and military intelligence experience such as the Army Special Forces or Navy Seals.
     
    The SOPO receive the same Basic Operations training at the Farm as other OC case officers. In addition, they receive six to eight months of specialized