The unique challenges of the CIA’s recreational activity leagues(muckrock.com)

86 pointsby dansovor 9 Jahren16 comments

The unique challenges of the CIA’s recreational activity leagues

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/mar/27/cia-employee-activity-association/

18 comments

dansovor 9 Jahren

I can kind of understand the CIA's anal-retentiveness here, regarding mundane company-sponsored activities. The NSA got its first dose of massive journalistic exposure partly because James Bamford, who wrote "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, got his hands on internal NSA newsletters, which were apparently like any company's newsletters in that they were meant to be read by employees and family members. He was able to FOIA all of these newsletters, get some inside information about the NSA, and eventually use it as leverage to get the NSA to give him more access:

http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.de/2008/11/interv...

> Among the documents was an NSA newsletter. These are things the NSA puts out once a month. They're fairly chatty, but if you read them closely enough you can pick up some pretty good information about the agency. . . . When I was reading one of the newsletters, there was a paragraph that said, "The contents of this newsletter must be kept within the small circle of NSA employees and their families." And I thought about it for a little bit, and I thought, hmm, they just waived their protections on that newsletter--if that's on every single newsletter then I've got a pretty good case against them. If you're going to open it up to family members, with no clearance, who don't work for the agency, then I have every right to it. That was a long battle, but I won it, and they gave me over 5,000 pages' worth of NSA newsletters going back to the very beginning. That was the first time anyone ever got a lot of information out of NSA.

kabdibvor 9 Jahren

... You wouldn't know, by looking at us in our sunglasses, our somber dark suits, and carrying our concealed pistols and compact machine guns ... that we were sitting in the privileged sanctum of the White House planning a clandestine baseball game. We weren't supposed to be planning one. Agent-in-Charge Doltmeer was opposed to it, but that only meant that we wouldn't let him play.

Without explanation, which frequently was how our lives progressed, someone put this flyer on the bulletin board at work:

    First Annual Baseball Game between the CIA and the Secret Service
    Date: July 14
    Time: Classified
    Location: Classified

It seemed juvenile and a little stupid, so most of us liked it immediately... Doltmeer didn't think any of it was funny.

"Who put this crap here?" he asked, as he looked at the flyer.

"I'll start an investigation immediately. Plus we'll need some uniforms and gloves," I said.

-- John Welter, Night of the Avenging Blowfish

teh_klevvor 9 Jahren

Thanks for posting this. Just ordered myself a copy :)

Theodoresvor 9 Jahren

As a child/teenager delivering newspapers in Gloucestershire every day I knew who worked for GCHQ and who worked for other military/aerospace concerns that had security clearances. I had no interest, this was just standard knowledge needed for my 'performance targets' of getting to their houses before they drove to work. I would know all village gossip and know the business of every house in the village, a very detailed profile based on daily routine inspection, twice daily when delivering evening newspapers too.

I would also know all about holidays, if the newspaper had to be stopped for a while then I would know where they were going and when they would be back. I did put two and two together - 'Cyprus again...' - and I also saw the subtle differences in dress code and lifestyle that goes with these civil servants.

I do wonder if the CIA thought to recruit paperboys to do some intelligence gathering for them, perfect 'cover'!!!

walshemjvor 9 Jahren

That is the downside of having GCHQ in a small county town its hard to hide in plain sight.

Its easy to come up with a cover story in London for a math geek not so much in Cheltenham

throwanemvor 9 Jahren

Probably. It's not novel even in my experience to see an example of children making remarkably effective spies, and I'm just some goober who reads a lot.

fapjacksvor 9 Jahren

On every tour I ever went on (except the first, which was to a very nice European country), children were absolutely considered two-way sources of fairly true information. Small children don't lie when they're confronted by men with guns, regardless of who those men are working for. That was a blessing and a curse. Incidentally, we usually knew when the enemy was going to attack on a particular day, because there wouldn't be any children around. That being said, some of the worst people in those places use children in their attacks.

[deleted]vor 9 Jahren

PeterisPvor 9 Jahren

It seems quite reasonable. Let's assume that it's known to the public that Alice and Bob work for CIA. If their colleague Charlie would openly go bowling with Alice and Bob, then it would lead outsiders to understand that Charlie works in CIA, which is very, very undesirable in many cases.

If Charlie wants to keep his CIA ties secret, then bowling with colleagues is either simply prohibited (as for "Employee Group C" in the document) or possible only if an appropriate cover story is arranged for the miraculous coincidence that Charlie happens to be bowling in the same time and place as Alice and Bob.

pnathanvor 9 Jahren

Seems perfectly reasonable to control this sort of thing. Loose lips sink ships; operational security is a big deal for a spy agency.

I would be entirely unsurprised to learn that the security agencies provide secured bars for after-work drinking as well; drunk lips talk too much. I'd also be highly unsurprised to learn that background investigations are par for employees getting married or living with someone - just as a matter of keeping information leakage to a minimum.

Foreign policy and operations is a very grim and tedious business, and it can be deadly serious. So you should be taking serious precautions.

nebabytevor 9 Jahren

> Depending on a member’s current assignment and cover concerns, the EAA would evaluate which tiers they could participate in

EAA Sports: It's in the game. "It" being operational security concerns

jorastavor 9 Jahren

This is the second puff piece about the CIA I've read recently (non-American). Any particular reason for these or is it random?

dansovor 9 Jahren

Are you asking if there's a particular reason the CIA caused you to read HN today and click on a CIA-related headline?

Edit: Worth noting that this particular item was discovered from the recently released CIA CREST database, which contains 13 million pages of CIA records. So it's likely that your random chances of seeing a "Isn't this CIA document weird?" story will be a lot higher this year as people go through the records and discover things: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jan/19/three-yea...

jorastavor 9 Jahren

Ah I see (in edit) -- thank you.

tempodoxvor 9 Jahren

OTOH, it is perfectly possible you were a victim of mind control:

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/mar/23/dia-worri...

[deleted]vor 9 Jahren

rurbanvor 9 Jahren

The CIA just lost a huge election, many seniors got fired by Trump, and the battle is still ongoing. You read about it everyday in big media.

captainmuonvor 9 Jahren

I can't help but think, if you have to be so paranoid, then maybe you are doing something wrong.