Anonymous asked about a NOCs moral dilemma!

Q. How does a NOC resolves the moral dilemma that on one hand, the NOC must display total loyalty and honesty to the Company, while the very nature of a NOC's role is shrouded in mystery and deep cover - in order to perform his/her assigned task - assuming their moral compass is well-balanced? Your thoughts on this issue are well appreciated.

A. I really had to chuckle at this question with the ending “assuming their moral compass is well-balanced”! Anonymous, you have no idea how close you were to hitting the nail on the head! To start with the Company takes some of the dilemma out of the equation from the start with the screening process. If you look back earlier in the blog you will see the acronym LIDMC (pronounced Lid Mac) which stands for Loyalty, Integrity, Discretion, Morals and Character. These are the traits that the Company seeks to establish in prospective officer candidates for the Clandestine Service, both NOCs and inside officers. During the vetting process, all candidates are put through a thorough background investigation that focuses to turn up things in the background of the candidate that reflect both positively and negatively on these areas.

After the candidate comes on board as a trainee, he/she goes through an intensive high pressure training process that not only gives you the case officer tradecraft skills to operate in the field, but the training process itself is designed to weed out those that may have been missed in the vetting process above. During my class of some 25 trainees when I came on board, six were washed out before the training was complete. If there are any lingering doubts about your LIDMC at the end of the training cycle, you will probably be placed in a desk job at headquarters for some time while you are further observed by superiors to determine your fitness to become a field operative.

Now once you have been in the field for several years, you may be subject to reinvestigation or to periodic polygraph examinations to make sure you are staying on the straight and narrow! I underwent a total of three periodic polygraph examinations and I have heard of others undergoing even more in a 20 plus year career. Now if this is not enough to firm up your moral fiber and instill loyalty and dedication, you may be beyond hope. But still, there have been some who have slipped through the system for many years before being caught.

Now there is another level of built-in safeguards and this is the Company’s bureaucracy. How the NOC officer deals with the bureaucracy was covered earlier in the blog. With bureaucrats both at headquarters and at the CIA Station closely monitoring how the Case Officer deals with his pool of assets, it is difficult to deviate from the direction the moral compass points, so to speak.

By and large, however, the dilemma is not a personal one, it is a systemic one and the safeguards in place to check on operatives, both NOC and inside officers, are pretty good though I am not saying by any means they are good enough! There is always room for improvement.

But your question addressed the “personal dilemma”. I assume you meant how does the NOC justify to his own moral conscience the lying, deception, trickery, etc that is a part of the deep cover lifestyle! Let’s just say you get used to it! It is a necessary part of the lifestyle and you had better learn to do it well, otherwise, you may blow your cover and end up not only compromising yourself but also compromising your agents. If it’s a choice between a little moral dilemma and 20 years in a foreign prison, well morals be damned. But the trickery, lying and deception side is directed at protecting yourself, your family, the interests of your cover company, your agents, etc. It is not a part of your relationship with the Company.