See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism Read Online Free PDF

the other hand, run the Directorate of Operations, or the DO. They are called case officers. Working mostly overseas, they gather information from their sources - agents, as the DO calls them - and pass it to the DI, where it becomes grist for the analysts.
    Scott opened up the manila folder. ‘I see you’ve applied to Berkeley’s graduate school in East Asian studies. It seems like you might be a possible match for the DI.’
    In fact, I had applied to the University of California at Berkeley after making a cursory survey of San Francisco’s job market and deciding the best thing to do was punt and go back to school. I’d even started a Mandarin Chinese course and found a part-time job as a night teller at the Bank of America in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. It didn’t pay much, but the hours would be perfect if Berkeley accepted me.
    ‘You’d love the DI,’ Scott went on in his even, soothing, friendly voice. He was a good recruiter. I didn’t realize it at the time, but our meeting was my first lesson in how it was done. ‘It runs very much like a university. An analyst reads the same books as a graduate student or a university professor. He keeps current in his specialty by reading periodicals and newspapers. And being in Washington, D. C. is a special advantage. He can walk in and take out books from the best library in the world, the Library of Congress.’ What’s more, he told me, DI analysts get to travel a lot, learn new languages, and go to conferences. They go on sabbaticals, too.
    ‘If you were to go to work for the DI, you could even continue to study Chinese,’ Scott said. ‘But the DI is a lot better than a university. Do you know why?’
    I had a feeling Scott was setting the hook, but I didn’t care. The DI was starting to sound better and better, maybe even a place I might really want to work. It was like getting paid to go to school.
    ‘DI analysts not only have access to libraries, magazines, and newspapers, but also to a lot of information not available to universities - like reports from embassies, from CIA offices overseas, and from other agencies that have access to ‘indispensable’ information unavailable to a university. DI analysts have access to the Truth, and not just part of it. You can’t claim to be an expert on a subject unless you have all available information.’
    Scott paused a second to let it all sink in. ‘But that’s not all. There’s something else unique about the DI. The DI has a very special reader. Do you know who that is?’
    Scott didn’t bother waiting for an answer.
    ‘The President of the United States.’
    He paused again to make sure I completely understood what he’d just told me.
    ‘The president,’ Scott went on,’ more than anyone else, needs to know the truth about the world. But it isn’t possible for him to be an expert on every country in the world or every subject. And that’s where the analysts come in. They are his fact book, reference, and adviser. How can you do better than the president sitting at your elbow, listening to you explain a complicated problem?’
    It was, as I would find out one day, the purest sort of baloney. Pigs will fly before the president sits down for a cozy one-on-one with a DI analyst. Intelligence passes from Langley to the White House through a tight political screen. But, as I said, Jim Scott was a good pitchman, and at the tender age of twenty-two, I was a perfect mark. As he talked, I pictured myself walking the president through some knotty international crisis. I would do my best not to sound too pedantic, maybe even introduce a bit of humor. Who knows, maybe the president would take a liking to me and bring me over to the White House permanently.
    Scott interrupted my thoughts: ‘Would an analyst’s job interest you?’
    ‘Absolutely’ I shot back.
    Scott picked up my application again and silently leafed through it. He looked back at me and cleared his throat.
    ‘Frankly, it’s a