The following stories are probably true
or at least partially true.
When I worked at the RAND Corporation
we were managed with a system called "matrix management",
which meant that you had two orthogonal types of managers. One type
was formal and respectable, these are the people who approved your
pay raises and did your formal reviews. The other type was creative
and project oriented, these were the people for whom you did actual
work on projects and they did not have to be so respectable. I have
read that this system has problems sometimes, but it worked very well
for me when I was at RAND.
One of my project leaders was a person
we will call Gary. That may or may not be his real name, for
reasons that will be clear shortly. Gary was very colorful and
ultimately he did not come to a good end as RAND has politics and
Gary was not very adept at such things, practically asking for
trouble it seemed to me.
Be that as it may be, I enjoyed working
with Gary and it bothered me when he would do something self
destructive. Gary did not manage his time all that well and liked to
tell stories. Those of you who know me know that I also like to tell
stories, but hopefully I am not as self-destructive as Gary.
Gary was all-but-dissertation in
computational linguistics and before he got (or almost got) his PhD
he had been, so he tells me, covert in the CIA. So we have two
stories from that period, one of modest interest to help explain how
such things work, and the other which is very amusing, I think, and
therefore less likely to be completely accurate.
The first story is how he got
recruited. Gary attended one of those famous catholic universities
in upstate NY, apparently there are a few of them. This would have
been the late 50s or the early 60s and Gary was a serious
anti-communist and completely ready to dedicate his life to the noble cause of killing commies. The way covert at the CIA works is that, to
be effective, it has to be that you have never publicly worked for
the CIA, or, for example, have been seen coming to CIA headquarters
at Langley and so forth. There are many other employees of the CIA
who are analysts for whom these kinds of restrictions do not apply: they can drive to CIA headquarters, park in the parking lot and go to
work like normal people.
But covert is different. So Gary was
recruited by one of his professors at college and went to an
interview, I believe, where there was no formal CIA sign on the door.
And they told him, if he was interested in this, what he should do
is apply for postgraduate work at Georgetown University near
Washington, DC in one of several topics, such as "Russian
Studies". If he applied, they said, he would be accepted, and
he would receive a fellowship so he could afford to attend. And
they, the CIA, would be in touch.
I believe that this might describe one
of the processes by which young people out of college are recruited,
so lets accept this for the purposes of this post. Now we get to the
more amusing story, which is much more colorful and therefore
probably less true.
We segueway a few years later and Gary
is covert in the Belgian Congo as a low-level runner for the CIA.
Here is a topic sentence from Wikipedia
on the topic of the "Congo Crisis":
The Congo Crisis (1960–1966) was a period of turmoil in the First Republic of the Congo that began with national independence from Belgium and ended with the seizing of power by Joseph Mobutu. At various points, it had the characteristics of anti-colonial struggle, a secessionist war with the province of Katanga, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, and a Cold War proxy battle between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Gary told the following story.
One day he was on his motorcycle
carrying something from one part of the city to another for his employer, the CIA. But he had
not been careful, and he ran out of gas in a very bad part of town.
The native people had set up sentries at various places in the city,
and one of them, in full native war dress and with a spear, saw him
and came running over. Gary then realized that he had fucked up
again, he had also forgotten to bring his revolver, so he was
defenseless. My guess is that Gary also had a massive hangover and
had not gotten much sleep the night before but that is speculation on
my part. He realized that he was probably dead or that his fate was
in the hands of this african sentry.
The native warrior motioned to Gary to
get off the bike. Gary did so. The native put his spear down, got
on the bike, flipped the switch to the reserve tank that apparently
everyone who rides a motorcycle knows about other than my friend
Gary, started the motorcycle, got off the bike, picked up his spear,
and motioned for Gary to go about his business.
Proving once and for all time that no good
deed goes unpunished.
What I love about this story is two
things. First, the implied cultural racism. It was the stupid white
man who did not know about the reserve tank, it was the native
warrior in full paint and with a spear who did, and got the
motorcycle going again. Second, what we have here is basically a
local who helps a stranded tourist, who shows a human kindness to a
visitor he doesn't know when he gets into trouble in a bad time and a
bad part of town.
Knowing my friend Gary, I believe that
there are elements of the above story that are true, but that it has
been slightly elaborated and/or restructured for entertainment value.
Gary had other qualities that qualified
him for a career in the CIA, he was a dedicated alcoholic for periods
of his life and died in his late 50s of cancer of the esophagus.
Those of us who knew him miss him terribly.
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