Foreign affairs. Prospective employees are required to list the names and addresses of every foreign person with whom they have a close or continuing relationship. Someone who speaks Arabic with native fluency almost certainly has friends and relatives in the Middle East. If he has too many of either, it is unlikely that he will receive a security clearance. He’ll be required to return for polygraph after polygraph, during which time he will be abused and insulted. His application will sit for years; he will be given no information about its status, and will be treated dismissively when he calls for information. After the seventh polygraph and the second year of waiting for a clearance, he will give up. The clever candidate with fluent Arabic and a degree from Harvard will probably take a job with Shell, where he’ll be paid six times what he would be paid by the CIA, and treated with at least that much more respect. In one case, security investigators became exercised because an employee was discovered to have visited the embassies of several Middle Eastern countries years prior to his entry on duty – not surprisingly, since he had worked for six years as an oil industry executive. Rather than joyously celebrating their good fortune in finding this espionage gem, they fired him. As a consequence, the case officer cadre tends to be full of Mormons and big, blond, beefy Pentecostals from the South, men as out of place in the bazaars as Chandler’s tarantula on angel food. [/quote] Yes, I believe this report to be mostly accurate . My profile fits the description above (though I must say I'm not at Ivy League graduate), and I was initially denied an Agency clearance for similar reasons. I speak, read and write a ME language (not Arabic) and was repeatedly humiliated and screamed at during my poly. In fact, as the article mentions, I remember there being three mormons from rather provincial areas just in the small group alone that I was placed in during the med/poly office visit. With regards to foreign languages, the hiring manager that offered me the COE specifically remarked that knowing a foreign language is really not necessary (this was for a Middle Eastern position mind you) Also, I can honestly say that at no time while at Agency HQ did I see an ethnic minority in a professional/analytical postion. The only place I saw African Americans, Hispanics (absolutely no Middle Easterners anywhere) were in clerical, support, janitorial positions. I guess this is how Agency spokesman Hartlow justifies that the Agency is not racist in its hiring practices. I think if most decent Americans knew the truth, the Agency would indeed be forced to restructure. I highly doubt that Intel Agencies of other developed countries are so incompetent and poorly run.
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