[craigc]

I’m glad people are finally catching on to this. The CIA has their tentacles in pretty much all aspects of society, and it has been that way for years. They have even admitted this openly:

https://twitter.com/CIA/status/1034866941587087360

> CIA officers work as scientists, support staff, engineers, economists, linguists, mathematicians, secretaries, accountants, inventors, cartographers, architects, psychologists, police officers, editors, graphic designers, auto mechanics, historians, museum curators, & more!

Curiously absent from that list is journalists…

[dragonwriter]

That tweet isn't an admission of the type you are claiming. (it's a list of things people on the overt CIA payroll do as their overt jobs at CIA, not a list of industries into which CIA employees work surreptitiously or in which the CIA recruits assets.)

[craigc]

Or maybe it is a mixture of both? Are you sure they don’t have covert people in all the very same positions? Does the CIA have its own internal museums, mapmaking companies, architecture firms? What buildings do their architects design?

Employing an internal economist might be able to give you an idea of financial things going on in the world, but employing an economist who writes for a prominent media company or is on TV allows you to shape how the public THINKS about economics and financial markets which is much more powerful.

Perhaps the tweet is not an open admission of this, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to connect the dots.

[dragonwriter]

> Or maybe it is a mixture of both?

No.

> Are you sure they don’t have covert people in all the very same positions?

I’m sure they have covert assets in a much wider array of positions, but I know what “officer” means in the intelligence context, and even of I didn't have that preexisting knowledge there is only one thing that tweet can mean on the context of the thread, and it's not an admission of anything outside of the overt employment opportunities at CIA.

> Does the CIA have its own internal museums, mapmaking companies, architecture firms?

It has its own museum; the cartographers and architects it employs don't work in internal “companies” or “firms”, the same way software developers working for (say) the Department of Health and Human Services don't work for an internal software company.

> What buildings do their architects design?

They don't, they analyze information about the design of buildings on which the CIA has information (public plans, photographs, etc.) to help determine what is or may be true about them that isn't directly revealed by that information to non-experts. There’s a very wide range of experts the CIA employs for the purpose of analyzing intelligence, open-source and otherwise.

> Employing an internal economist

Which the CIA does, and not just one.

> might be able to give you an idea of financial things going on in the world

Which is more than a little important.

> but employing an economist who writes for a prominent media company or is on TV allows you to shape how the public THINKS about economics and financial markets which is much more powerful.

Sure, but that's a pretty unlikely role for a CIA officer; if the CIA was doing something outside like that (which would be absolutely unsurprising; in fact that it has in the past done so is well known [0]) it would be through outside assets.

> Perhaps the tweet is not an open admission of this

Its not, and it takes a total failure of reading comprehension to think it might be.

> but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to connect the dots.

There are literally no dots to connect.

[0] Look up the “Propaganda Assets Inventory”, aka Wisner’s Wurlitzer.

[adamiscool8]

Is there any reason to believe the CIA wouldn't have covert assets surreptitiously working in all those same roles, either domestically or abroad?

[jjtheblunt]

i'm glad you said that because i read the parent comment and thought how could that list have been so miscontrued.

[aerostable_slug]

The Clandestine Service has had prohibitions against working under journalistic cover in the past. This is because it's thought that free access by journalists to trouble spots beats the possibility of tainting the profession in the eyes of the world (in other words: press access is a bigger net win).

It has been violated from time to time, but at least it's talked about. To my knowledge, the only absolute bar is anything at all to do with the Peace Corps. It would be a Very Bad Thing if people start to think those nice kids digging wells and handing out rice might be intelligence officers.

[anextio]

This logic didn't stop them from running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan to try to find Osama. It directly led to a significant rise in vaccine refusal in the region.

https://www.vox.com/first-person/22256595/vaccine-covid-paki...

So I find it unlikely that they internally enforce prohibitions against meddling with anything at all.

[RF_Savage]

They did not stop either. They have used being vaccination workers as cover in Kenya.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-08-28-revealed-...

[mhh__]

The CIA employs linguists!?

All of the things you've listed sound pretty reasonable for basically any huge gov agency

[gpm]

> The CIA employs linguists!?

Not sure why this is a surprise? They're in the business of understanding information from all over the world, in all languages... and are undoubtedly interested in things like "this accent means this person came from this part of the country" too.

[jessaustin]

It could be a surprise because they always blame translation difficulties whenever they fail to predict important events e.g. fall of USSR, 9/11, no WMDs, 12-hour Taliban flash-takeover of Afghanistan, etc. One almost suspects that they don't particularly care to get "intelligence" right since they have other priorities.

[mhh__]

Sarcasm. I hoped it was obvious from the second paragraph.

[gpm]

Oops, sorry.

I read it as "well this one is surprisingly, but the list is generally reasonable". My bad.