The story is supposed to be about a crazy visitor experience at the CIA HQ (and the author does a great job of writing it), but reading through it I couldn't help but think the whole time that if you replaced "CIA" with "generic big corporation" all of it would still make perfect sense.<p>Random employee social group organizing a talk, no budget for speaking fee, "must be escorted at all times", full parking lots, confused officials/security people, getting multiple visitor badges, impossible to find conference rooms, employee gift shop, complex rules about what employees can publish on their own time, long-tenured employee who has no idea how many people work at the company...yep you are at Google.
I once talked to a guy who worked at the CIA who said "when people ask me what movie most accurately reflects working at the CIA, I say <i>Office Space</i>".
>I pulled up to the gate, and an aggressive police officer questioned me about why I had two badges.<p>>“Didn’t it seem strange to you to get a second badge when you’d just got your first one?”<p>>“I’ve never been here before,” I said. “Everything seems strange to me.”<p>>A different cop told him to give it a rest, handed me a third badge<p>We all love bureaucracy if it didn't happen to ourselves
>"George Bush Center for Intelligence exit"<p>This has massively different meanings depending on if there are two middle initials missing or one...<p>>"Google Maps isn’t much use at Langley."<p>>“If you see a helicopter, you’ve gone too far,”<p>This is pretty solid advice in a lot of things.<p>>"I asked Vivian how many people worked at the CIA. “Maybe two million?” "<p>This might, low key, be the best joke in the whole thing.<p>>"There was also a Pride Month display"<p>Did they have anything in lavender? Maybe a Carmel Offie challenge coin?<p>That was a fun little read.
> The CIA officer seated next to me asked if I thought it was worth getting a literary agent. I said yes, and she seemed skeptical.<p>> “In my other work,” she explained, “I can get movie people attached.”<p>Is she implying that getting an agent is a possibly waste of time because she <i>is</i> the agent, so to speak, with direct access to industry insiders/plants/assets (albeit in the movie industry)?
I'm about to read this because it looks fun but first...<p>The Paris Review? Are they kidding? Do they mention that in the early years the PR was Mathiesson's cover as a CIA agent and a lot of funding came from them, at least indirectly but with full knowledge? I'm not trying to knock it down - it's a fine publication. But that's just funny.<p>This is part of one of my favorite historical footnotes. There was theoretical debate between the US and USSR about which system fostered the flowering of culture, each side saying theirs was better not just for the economy and government, but under (capitalism / socialism) culture was better because of (the free market of ideas / state support) and so forth. So to have something to point to, the CIA just went out and covertly funded a bunch of cultural outlets. Make of it what you may that the government was secretly subsidizing these and just how capitalist that is or isn't...<p>Or a footnote to the footnote, Timothy Leary wound up friends with G Gordon Liddy of all people. Many years after they met when Liddy was an FBI agent in the raid on Leary's compound, Leary had faded as a countercultural figure and Liddy had done his time after Watergate. They were apparently chatting and Liddy asked "Tim, you know I always wondered. Were you working with the CIA? That had always been the rumor, but I thought to myself at the time 'you know if that's true it would really destroy any legitimacy he has with the left.' So Tim, is it true? Did you work with the CIA?"<p>To which Leary's reply was just "...well Gordon who did you expect me to work with? The KGB!?!"
I had two interesting lists to compile after reading this article:<p>First is books written by former diplomats / intel opporatives. SO many greats!<p>Second, the intelligence officer's book shelf. In other words, book lists for people studying the various arts of intelligence. Fascinating stuff.
this is hilarious because the author antagonistically made sure to write about every detail he can remember in this cold report about the secret agency
This was a wonderful read.<p>Before working at a large company with a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, I probably would have found a lot of this surprising. That said, it's nice to know the CIA isn't anymore put together than the rest of us.
The "CIA Creative Writing Group" reminds me of a book I read recently called "The Stasi Poetry Circle" which tells the true story of how East Germany's intelligence agency/secret police had a club for budding poets among their agents.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stasi_Poetry_Circle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stasi_Poetry_Circle</a>
The part about the parking snafu is just hilarious. Government bureaucracy's true genius is in crafting catch-22s within its own rules.<p>Also this reminds me of a similar article from shortly after 9/11: <a href="https://www.wired.com/2002/10/i-fought-the-future-for-the-cia/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2002/10/i-fought-the-future-for-the-ci...</a>
An article on the CIA gift shop: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/meet-the-man-behind-the-cia-gift-shop-the-nations-most-secretive-swag-shop/2019/11/27/5eb27776-e39a-4fa8-a127-7fa987acbc3a_story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/meet-the-m...</a>
Fun read. The author, as expected, did an excellent job writing it. This line stood out:<p>> The dining room was long and mostly empty—apparently a security thing.<p>That might be a really good idea. If you have a whole lot of money and want to increase security, making it so that lunch groups eat with a lot space between each other is probably a lot of security bang for the buck.
Summary: "I visited CIA Langley, parking was a pain, security was a pain, and the food isn't very good." OK, whatever. Everybody who's worked with DoD or the three-letter agencies has that experience. How could a Washington-based writer not know this?<p>Both CIA and NSA have classified in-house periodicals of general interest. Eventually they get declassified and published openly. Some of those are amusing.<p>CIA: <a href="https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/</a><p>NSA: <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2018-12-04/cyber-brief-nsas-cryptolog" rel="nofollow">https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2018-12-...</a>