What Happens At The Farm?

OK, you’ve been hired. Now what? Training and lots of it! The CIA’s premier training facility for its Clandestine Service Operations Officers is The Farm. Also called “Isolation” because of the location and nature of the facility and “Camp Swampy” because of the nature of the topography there, The Farm is a small “US Army” base known as Camp Perry near Williamsburg, Virginia. If there is a Spy University then this is it! A wide variety of training takes place here.

The Basic Operations course is the first real training in clandestine tradecraft that all new Operations Officers must receive.

The atmosphere at The Farm is informal but intense. The student to teacher ratio is around 15:1 for classroom instructions and as low as 1:1 for practical training exercises.

All instructors are experienced field operatives on temporary assignment with the CIA’s Office of Training. The degree and depth of their actual field experience working with agents is high. They are able to accurately duplicate real field problems during the training cycle. A single instructor may be assigned three or four students to monitor during the approximate four to six month training cycle. There is close scrutiny given to each student.

The first component of the Basic Operations course is an introduction to the internal workings of the agency. This includes a history of the CIA and its origin as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), an overview of the entire US intelligence community and the CIA's function within it, how each Directorate relates to the other Directorates, and the Intelligence Cycle. This cycle follows the collection, dissemination, evaluation and collation of intelligence works from the agent all the way through to a final product for US government policy makers.

The second component of the Basic Operations course teaches the required tradecraft techniques for mastery of the art of espionage. These techniques include a heavy dose of what is known as the Recruitment Cycle - spotting, assessing, vetting, developing, recruiting and handling agents with a heavy emphasis on hands-on practical exercises with instructors playing the role of agent.
The role-playing done during training at the Farm is often conducted in a highly competitive environment where individual students or small groups of students are pitted against each other. This prepares the students well for the real world inside the CIA where one’s ability as an actor is an important element in agent handling as well as in interpersonal relationships with fellow CIA officers. See more about this in the next chapter.

A crucial component of the training is personal security. Surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques are taught and practiced in practical field exercises over and over again. Other measures of personal security include weapons training, escape and evasion, compass navigation, terrorist and counter-terrorist tactics and more.

Since the Case Officer is expected to train agents once in the field, a dose of special training in such areas as document photography, invisible writing, and agent communications is also provided. Some special training is quite detailed while other training is cursory just to educate the Case Officer as to what can be made available to him or her in the field to enhance operations.

Reports writing is a vital component in the Basic Operations course. What use is the information you get from an agent if it is not communicated adequately and in a proper format to CIA Headquarters? So the information that the student obtains from debriefing sessions with the instructors role-playing as agents is written into intelligence reports, operational cables and contact reports. This process is played over and over again in various agent-debriefing scenarios until the process becomes second nature to the student.

The campus at the Farm is much like a small college setting with student dormitories, classrooms, administration buildings, gymnasium, recreation center with a bar, of course, shooting ranges, hiking, biking and running trails and more. Instructors have their own individual homes with their spouses and children. The rural setting is in the wild Virginia countryside with literally hundreds of deer roaming the roads and yards.

This background, however, can be quite deceptive since the back woods areas of The Farm often house secret off-limits areas where highly classified individual or small group training may take place. Students generally roam free except in areas marked off-limits. Accidentally roam into an off-limits area and somehow you will be discovered and given a stern warning or worse, an official reprimand.

After completion of Basic Operations training many students are selected for intensive language training at the CIA’S language school in northern Virginia. A wide variety of priority languages are taught in courses lasting from six months to a year. Classes are small and intensive. There are usually four or five students per instructor and classes last eight hours per day with an hour of homework and dialogue to memorize each night.

After completion of the language course, a few students are selected to go directly overseas as advanced language students for even more intensive studies. While studying abroad these students do not have any official operational assignments but they are expected to keep their “eyes open” for people in whom the CIA may have an interest and to report these potential targets to their inside contact.

Upon successful completion of the Basic Operations course some students can expect to be assigned to CIA headquarters where they may work on a country desk or a special staff. Other students may be assigned to one of the CIA’s 30 domestic Stations as a Junior Case Officer for more on-the-job training. The student should expect one or two tours at a domestic Station or Headquarters before being assigned to an overseas Station as a first tour operational Case Officer.

Other courses taught later in one’s career includes the Advanced Operations Course and the Mid Career Course. A portion of the CIA’s Special Operations Course for Paramilitary or Special Operations and Program Officers (SOPO) is taught at The Farm, as well. These officers receive training in paramilitary small unit tactics, ambush techniques, detailed weapons training, parachute training, survival and escape and evasion training, and more. Isolated areas of The Farm may occasionally host specialized training courses for CIA officers or foreign agents who are secretly infiltrated into the facility for training and then dispatched overseas for operations.

If you intend to become a Non-Official Cover (NOC) Case Officer you will miss the entire experience at the Farm. NOC officers no longer receive training there. Since Case Officers under NOC cover are the deepest of all the CIA cover positions, they are highly compartmented and isolated from anything that hints at being connected to the CIA or US government. They do receive the same Basic Operations training as the other CIA officers and even more. But for the most part all their training is done on a 1:1 or 2:1 student to teacher basis at safehouses in the northern Virginia area.

NOC training in surveillance and counter-surveillance and personal security is even more intense than their fellow Case Officers who work on the “inside”. NOC officers also receive training in secret writing techniques, code encryption for reports writing, document photography and much more. Because the personal security of the NOC Case Officer is only as good as the cover provided to him, there is a big dose of training in cover care and maintenance. Part of this process includes integrating the NOC officer into the commercial cover company or institution that is providing a cover position for the NOC officer overseas.

What is the downside of living an undercover life?

You know I have never really given any personal thought about the downside of undercover life. The best cover is one that you live in a normal manner. Live your cover is what all deep cover operatives are taught and if you do it well there is not much on the downside to worry about. Your personal security depends on how well you adopt your cover to your normal life. As a Non-Official Cover (NOC) Case Officer living under commercial cover as the foreign representative of a real commercial company you have a responsibility to yourself, the Company (CIA) and the company providing the cover to live your cover so well that even when you conduct intelligence operations they are not perceived as suspicious or out of the norm for your daily life. Falter and you may raise suspicion of the local security services and wind up under surveillance or worst yet caught in the act of espionage and arrested without diplomatic immunity. The downside, obviously, is that you lose your freedom, your commercial employer becomes embarrassed at least and perhaps suffers financial or even worse loss because of your "inappropriate" spying activities and the US Government disavows your actions.

On a less serious side, perhaps the downside of a life under cover is that you always have to keep up your guard to live your cover. Watch what you say and do and how you live your daily life. Cover maintenance is a subject all NOC's are taught and refers to doing those things that real employees of your cover company actually do on a daily basis. Blend in to the background, do not stand out from the crowd. Furthermore, you must use appropriate techniques - called tradecraft - to always insure your personal security and the security of the operations for which you are responsible. You can never let your guard down!

Your commercial cover as a NOC Case Officer is seldom actually used to perform agent handling operations. It is used to do such things as spotting, assessment, vetting and development of potential agents but not for recruitment or handling. For agent recruitment and handling you will be provided with a devised cover and an alias. Often Case Officers have several active devised covers and aliases that they use for numerous operational activities. When going from your true name NOC cover to conduct an intelligence activity under the devised cover and alias, you must ensure that you property clean yourself - such as going through a surveillance detection route (SDR) to make sure you are not being followed. The same applies going from the devised cover back to your true name and NOC cover position. So again, part of the downside is having to undertake several hours of trains, buses, subways, planes, walking, taxis, etc for the SDR. You may use two or three hours of SDR just for a short agent meeting, brushpass or deaddrop.

There is an aspect of deep cover life that some may see as a downside and this is the long hours you have to work. As a NOC you have two jobs, one for the cover company and the other for the CIA and both will want a piece of you. You can expect to work 60 plus hours a week to fulfill the needs of both organizations. If you are not up to the long hours, then don't become a NOC officer.

Another potential downside of NOC positions is that you are working on the "outside" of the CIA Station. You do not have access on a daily basis to other Station personnel or the services that "inside" officers receive. If your personality is such that you need to have a close association with others in the business, then a NOC position is not for you. If you have no problems working alone without close supervision, if you are a self-starter, highly self-motivated, then this aspect of the NOC position should not be a downside for you.

Getting On Board

What qualities should you have to be of interest to the CIA for a Case Officer position? You might think that the ability to keep a secret, to keep your mouth shut, would be an asset. During the investigation process, the agency will determine that you can, indeed, keep a secret. Surprisingly, however, this is not one of the qualities demanded once you are inside The Company. The good-old-boy network inside the CIA is one of the most vocally prolific inside the US government as Case Officers brag with pride about their agents and their exploits.

Officially, when you go through a pre-employment background investigation, the agency attempts to determine your suitability for employment based on what is known in the counterintelligence community as LIDMC (pronounced Lid Mac). This acronym stands for Loyalty, Integrity, Discretion, Morals and Character. To determine whether you possess such qualities, the agency will investigate your personal, academic and professional history interviewing teachers, employers, co-workers, friend and foe, alike, virtually anyone with the exception of former spouses who most probably will have nothing good to say about you anyway. LIDMC are the personal qualities that get you qualified, but these qualities alone are not enough to get you employed and ensure you have a bright career with the agency. They will also conduct a National Agency Check with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal and local law enforcement agencies to determine if you have so little as a parking ticket. All this is done without exposing to those interviewed that you are interested in joining the CIA.

This investigative process may take four to six months during which time you will also be put through a battery of tests and interviews and finally a polygraph examination before a position is offered. It is these other tests and interviews that will establish that you have the other qualities the CIA desires in its Case Officers. Your battery of tests will include academic tests much like the Scholastic Aptitude Tests you took in high school. There will also be at least one multiple-choice test that will develop your psychological profile. This is a particularly important test to insure the CIA is able to weed out undesirables from a well-tested psychological profile.

You will also be asked to write something based on a given theme. This may be used to assess your writing abilities. There will also be a series of personal interviews by one or more of the Directorates that may have an interest in hiring you.

Once you get to the phase where you are given a medical examination you may feel more comfortable that the investigative process has gone well thus far. Toward the end of the investigative process you will be required to take a polygraph examination. This is at the final stage just before you will officially be offered a position.

The polygraph will focus on any unresolved areas of your background investigation and you may be asked about your sexual preference which may reveal any unusual deviancies and, of course, your drug history. If you have a past history of drug use that has not been made a part of any police record but you are no longer a user, it is best to lay the facts on the table before you come to the polygraph stage. Concern over drug use is a major reason to disqualify a candidate from consideration for employment by the CIA. Well, once you have gotten past all this, you’ll be invited “on board” as they say in the CIA. Now the real work begins.