Secret students major in spying with CIA

by **proldic** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:01 pm

Secret students major in spying with CIA by Rick Montgomery / Knight Ridder Newspapers July 27, 2005 KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The young woman on the phone says she is proud to have won $50,000 in scholarships from the CIA. The spy agency has arranged this conference call so “Lauren,” her middle name, can speak firsthand about the benefits of the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholarship, named for the U.S. senator from Kansas. “I’m just beginning my career with the agency,” says Lauren, 20. “I feel honored. The recruiting process is very competitive.” The CIA says publishing her full name, or the names of 25 other Pat Roberts scholars it has supported during the school year that just ended, could hamper their vocations and make work overseas difficult or even dangerous. But the agency will allow Lauren to disclose that she is studying economics at a “historically black college,” and that the college and many classmates know about her internship this summer at the Langley, Va. headquarters. Lauren plans to be an economics analyst, “not involved in the collection side, doing any of the fun stuff.” She is an exception among Roberts scholars, which could be why the CIA even let her speak. The scholarships come gift-wrapped in secrecy. Unless an agent-to-be wants to go public, nobody outside the national security sphere or maybe university admissions offices knows who these students are, where they are enrolled, or what classes they are taking. Instead of using the publicly funded grants to recruit undergraduates such as Lauren, many intelligence agencies send their analysts back to graduate school and immerse them in Arabic, Korean, Farsi, or Urdu. More than a dozen employees of the Defense Intelligence Agency are using the scholarships to study overseas at places unaware of their government affiliation. Credit Felix Moos, a University of Kansas anthropologist, with conceiving the program. Aroused by the intelligence blunders of the 2001 terrorist attacks and Iraq’s elusive weapons of mass destruction, Moos stands celebrated and scorned as champion of the little-known federal initiative, designed, he says, to build a better American spy. “I’m the inventor of it!” boasted Moos, a 75-year-old German immigrant. “People ask, ‘Why not call it the Felix Moos Intelligence Scholarship Program?’ Well, that’s because I’m a KU professor and he [Roberts] is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.” Some other people ask, “Why not call it the return of spies to college campuses?” In the last two years, 15 U.S. intelligence agencies have awarded the scholarships to as many as 150 unidentified Americans, mostly agency employees and new hires, to enroll in classes and master critical languages and skills. The pilot program pays scholars up to $25,000 a year. In pitching his idea to Roberts, Moos never argued for secrecy. The resulting legislation did not dictate secrecy. But the professor hardly is shocked that anonymity would factor into grants issued through intelligence agencies in an age of terror. “Hello? We’re at war,” said Moos. “Anytime the United States is part of a war, you would hope, minimally, that we have good spies.” The program’s most vocal critic is David H. Price, an anthropologist in Washington state. He has written the dark history of government snitches infiltrating colleges to collect dirt on professors and campus radicals up until the 1970s, when Congress exposed the tactic, then banned it. “Academic freedom is certainly being decreased with this kind of program,” said Price, author of “Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists.” “There’s a whole new level of government secrecy coming to campuses, and it’s real damaging.” Today’s analysts do need to learn new skills. Congressional testimony and reports since Sept. 11, 2001, revealed the spy network’s shaky grasp of obscure languages and cultures sprinkled throughout Asia, Africa, and the Arab world. To Roberts, the $4 million program is “a modest investment that I hope pays big dividends down the road.” The scholarships, all of which have been taken, will continue through the next academic year while Congress considers making the program permanent. “Every think tank, every hearing, every investigation of intelligence breakdowns cite the crucial need for better analysis. That’s the bottom line,” said the Kansas Republican. “We still have what I call ‘Oh my God hearings’ . . . The whole WMD inquiry found that the intelligence provided was faulty.” But Price and other academics say intelligence failings are best corrected in the open, with the sharpest, most diverse university minds in on the mission, and not by agencies keeping spies-in-training under wraps.

by **glubglubglub** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:20 pm

I know a lot of people who did this; the NSA does it also. The FBI doesn't b/c they want people w. real-world experience, not newly minted college kids. Never trusted them much but mostly seemed like nice kids -- a bit idealistc. Obviously I don't know whether or how much they also had infiltration as a task, but the NSA at least has had a similar program going way back.

by **Starman** » Thu Jul 28, 2005 8:04 pm

What a specious con. I could bloody-damn scream; “Every think tank, every hearing, every investigation of intelligence breakdowns cite the crucial need for better analysis. That’s the bottom line,” said the Kansas Republican. “We still have what I call ‘Oh my God hearings’ . . . The whole WMD inquiry found that the intelligence provided was faulty.” It WASN'T a failure of Intel, but an abuse of power and a completely illegal policy by an administration that was utterly committed to manufacturing the pretext to war by any means possible -- God-DAMN but assholes like Pat Roberts who keep pushing bullshit on the public as if they do it enough it'll stick, are the biggest problem with an unaccountable Government -- Makes me wonder how many Americans haven't heard of the Office of Special Plans who cherry-picked and fabricated 'information' justifying war. The US's invasion of Iraq was every bit as despicable and unjustifiable as Germany's invasion of Poland -- with the caveat that the US had been at-war with Iraq for at least the last 12 years, having devastated Iraq's civil infrastructure and killed perhaps a million or more people. Until key US officials are held responsible and made to answer for their horrendous crimes going back decades, 'investing' in student journeymen spies is merely perpetuating a long legacy of belligerant idiocy -- the TRUE face of American wannabe Imperialism. I don't think the CIA or NSA are even capable of doing anything 'good' anymore -- they've become a poison and a blot on humanity, invaluable in facilitating fascist totalitariansim. I have nothing but contempt for institutions that sanction the murder and torture of citizens for abstract object-lesson benefit. Damn them to Hell. Starman ('scuse my rant pleeze). IMO: There's hardly one Guatamalan or Honduran or El Salvadoran or Nicaraguan peasant who hasn't got more integrity and dignity and decency than a whole roomful of arrogant, self-righteous, self-important strutting spooks.

Secret students major in spying with CIA

Secret students major in spying with CIA

This is old old news

'Faulty intelligence' my Ass ...

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