Record number of rookie spies headed into the field

WASHINGTON - The CIA, looking to double its ranks of clandestine operatives, recently graduated the largest class of new officers in the agency's history, officials said.

They are, on average, 29 years old. One-third are women. About 12 percent are ethnic minorities. Three-quarters speak a foreign language with considerable fluency and 70 percent had never worked for the government or military, according to agency recruiting officials.

These rookie spies number in the dozens, but the CIA says providing a more specific total would give other countries and groups too much information.

Some recruits gave up more lucrative jobs in the private sector, and one took a pay cut of close to $100,000, agency officials said. Their starting salaries are between $45,000 and $60,000 a year.

They are members of the first class enrolled after the Sept. 11 attacks. These men and women have completed background checks and training at the "farm," the officially unacknowledged site outside Williamsburg, Va., where recruits are taught the craft of intelligence work.

They graduated in June; many are assuming fake identities and heading overseas. Their job will be to steal secrets.

It is difficult work, says Steven Aftergood, a longtime observer of the CIA with the Federation of American Scientists.

"Basically, what you're trying to do ... is to persuade the other fellow to betray his country, to commit a crime, and to run the risk of severe penalty," Aftergood said.

With the fight against terrorism and new interest in tracking weapons proliferation, the CIA is flush with new money and jobs to fill. But it takes a certain kind of mind to be a spy, agency officials say.

"Intelligence problems don't tend to have sharp edges. They're fuzzy, and they're gray. That's where we work," said Bob Rebelo, the CIA's chief of human resources.

Beyond the basics, the CIA always is in need of people proficient in foreign languages. The congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks concluded the U.S. intelligence community had a critical shortfall of linguists.

"If you walked into this room with 100 native Arabic speakers, I'd give them all offers this afternoon, if they had the other qualifications we need," Rebelo said. "Same with Chinese. Same with Persian. Same with Urdu. Same with Pashto."

The CIA this year began ad campaigns aimed at recruiting Chinese-Americans and Arab-Americans.

About 3,000 people claiming the ability to speak Chinese have applied this year, Rebelo said, and one-third say they are native speakers. Many are still being tested to verify this. An additional 2,400 people said they spoke Arabic, including 900 native speakers.

It is such native speakers who are prized by recruiters. Most grew up familiar with their native culture and may know regional dialects. Also, a U.S. citizen - which all CIA operatives must be - with Arab parents can blend in better in Cairo, Iraq or Saudi Arabia than a junior spy who is white and grew up in Ohio.

All told, one in four of all new agency hires are from ethnic minorities. But only 12 percent of the new spies are.

That is not enough, CIA officials acknowledge.

"We're not focusing very, very hard on diversity to be politically correct," Rebelo said. "We're doing it because it's an imperative in this business."

Harold Tate, chief of the CIA's recruitment center, said many of the minority candidates seeking positions at the CIA have degrees in the hard sciences, making them better suited for positions in the agency's scientific or analytical corps.

Interest in working for the CIA rose after the Sept. 11 attacks. Between October 2001 and October 2002, the agency received 170,000 resumes, Rebelo said. An additional 100,000 have arrived since.

Criticism has increased, as well. Rebelo recalled some pointed questions from the audience at a recent career fair he attended.

"The first question I got: "9/11 happened. You can't find the weapons of mass destruction. You can't find Osama bin Laden. You're a secretive organization. You can't tell us sources and methods. You can't talk about much. ... How should I, as an American, feel about investing in such an organization?"'

Rebelo said he answered: "What you don't know, and what we can't talk about for obvious reasons, is everything that's gone right." Terrorist attacks have been stopped; weapons smuggling has been disrupted. But those successes remain secret, in part to prevent the other side from learning how it was caught.

"Are we ahead of the game? We think we're more ahead of the game than we were," Rebelo said. "Are we winning? Hell, no. Get over it. It's a difficult, complex world out there."

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