[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.