CIA to Critics: We Get Off Our Tails to Spy
By James Gordon Meek
Hillary Clinton loves to tout her foreign policy creds, which amounts to being a former first lady who made a lot of overseas trips - often with first daughter Chelsea in tow to share the occasional elephant ride. As a Senate Armed Services Committee member, she also has parachuted into hotspots like Iraq and Afghanistan. Apparently Clinton thinks America's spies ought to follow her example and get off their tushes. She took a jab at the CIA for being risk-averse in a bizarre non sequitur buried in her Foreign Affairs magazine op-ed published last month, which left many scratching their heads.
"Combating terrorism around the world will require better intelligence and a clandestine service that is out on the street, not sitting behind desks," Clinton wrote.
So was it just coincidence that CIA Director Mike Hayden, in a recent pep talk for newly-hired spies, addressed the "desk" question? Newly minted clandestine operatives will soon get to "penetrate today's high priority targets," Hayden promised in a speech to 300 rookies and their spouses at a Langley meet-and-greet he hosted earlier this month.
Even intelligence analysts, the classic CIA desk jockeys, "are more likely than at any other time in our agency's history to be working in the field instead of behind a desk," Hayden boasted to his spies, according to my spies.
A running theme in Hayden's speeches is that lack of experience is no obstacle to going into harm's way. Spy work is "as demanding as it is fascinating," he said, adding, "We're all happy to have you aboard." He also invited the new hires to mingle with top CIA brass at the party and do something they'll likely never be asked to do again for their country: "Feel free to introduce yourself."
When the New York Daily News Asked about Hayden's remarks, his spokesman Mark Mansfield only allowed that the new crop of recruits who partied with the boss are joining a massive workforce with an attrition rate below 5%, a 15-year low, and half of today's spooks signed up after the 9/11 attacks. A lot of them will learn key foreign languages spoken in target countries, including Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Korean and Arabic, Mansfield said.