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Intelligence. SSCI was responsible for providing congressional oversight of the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, NSA, and an alphabet’s worth of other agencies. In this capacity, SSCI had the right to conduct whatever investigations it deemed appropriate in order to ensure the CIA was doing its job properly. The man was reading one such file: a top secret analysis of a CIA operative who some believed had gone “off the rails.” The two documents were actually different versions of the same document. One was heavily redacted; the other was the clean, unredacted version, obtained surreptitiously by the man through a contact on the staff of the committee.
    Most CIA agents, when on assignment in foreign land, assumed a position at an embassy or other benign department of government, giving them official diplomatic immunity, or cover, thus protecting them from the harsh punishments typically handed down to captured spies. An official agent, if captured, was usually escorted to the border and kicked out of the country.
    There also were those agents who ventured into enemy lands without diplomatic immunity, unprotected. It was called non-official cover. If captured, these agents faced severe criminal punishment, up to and including execution. They operated alone, across enemy lines, without a safety net. Inside Langley, they were nicknamed illegals. Officially, they were known as NOCs (pronounced “knocks”).
    If infiltrated correctly, a NOC had more freedom to roam because he or she would not necessarily be on any government’s watch list, as embassy workers were. But the value in being unsuspected by enemy governments was only part of it. NOCs were the most lethal combatants America’s intelligence and military were capable of producing. NOCs were culled exclusively from CIA paramilitary, Delta, and Navy SEALs. The NOC was Langley’s most effective and most dangerous human weapon. Some had been trained to be NOCs. Others migrated there because there was nowhere else to go.
    Unfortunately, NOCs were also the most likely agents to develop severe psychological problems, and when this did occur, the results were unpredictable, and sometimes catastrophic. NOCs had the highest suicide rate of any federal employees, by a wide margin. They had the second-highest divorce rate, trailing only members of Congress. Alcoholism, domestic abuse, and a variety of other lesser travails plagued NOCs. The problems tended to occur when they were nonoperational.
    Much more worrisome was the threat of a NOC being recruited into an enemy intelligence service. In the past decade, it had occurred six times. In each case, Langley was faced with a hard dilemma: kill the NOC, or let him sell whatever secrets he could—usually tactical operation design parameters—to America’s enemies. In each case, the decision had been made to terminate.
    The subject of the SSCI investigation was a NOC.
    The man scanned the two documents for the umpteenth time, beginning with the redacted version:
    U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
    Washington, D.C. 20510
FOCUS:
  
****** ****** ***
  
******* **** *****
SANCTION:
  
SSCI RK667P
  
AS PER ASSIGNEE: US SEN. FURR
  
**** ********
  
NOVEMBER 19
FIELD VISIT:
  
JANUARY 24–25
  
FEBRUARY 7–10
ASSIGN:
  
COVER BLACK WIDOW
  
****** *************** ************* ********
SITUATION:
 
**** **** IS A ****** *** MALE SUSPECTED OF EXHIBITING TRAITS ASSOCIATED WITH POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD). TRIGGERING EVENTS INCLUDE **** ******** ******* U.S. INTELLIGENCE OPERATION. ************* *********** **************** ************** ************** ************ *********** ****************** ********** ************ ************** ************ ************** ****************
CONCLUSION:
  
ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE
  
HUMINT INSUFFICIENT
REC:
  
WITHOUT PROPER THERAPIST/SUBJECT COMMUNICATION, SANCTION MUST BE DEEMED INCONCLUSIVE. ********* *********** *********************