
The unique challenges of the CIA’s recreational activity leagues - danso
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/mar/27/cia-employee-activity-association/
======
danso
I can kind of understand the CIA's anal-retentiveness here, regarding mundane
company-sponsored activities. The NSA got its first dose of massive
journalistic exposure partly because James Bamford, who wrote "The Puzzle
Palace" in 1982, got his hands on internal NSA newsletters, which were
apparently like any company's newsletters in that they were meant to be read
by employees and family members. He was able to FOIA all of these newsletters,
get some inside information about the NSA, and eventually use it as leverage
to get the NSA to give him more access:

[http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.de/2008/11/interv...](http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.de/2008/11/interview-
with-national-security-agency.html)

> _Among the documents was an NSA newsletter. These are things the NSA puts
> out once a month. They 're fairly chatty, but if you read them closely
> enough you can pick up some pretty good information about the agency. . . .
> When I was reading one of the newsletters, there was a paragraph that said,
> "The contents of this newsletter must be kept within the small circle of NSA
> employees and their families." And I thought about it for a little bit, and
> I thought, hmm, they just waived their protections on that newsletter--if
> that's on every single newsletter then I've got a pretty good case against
> them. If you're going to open it up to family members, with no clearance,
> who don't work for the agency, then I have every right to it. That was a
> long battle, but I won it, and they gave me over 5,000 pages' worth of NSA
> newsletters going back to the very beginning. That was the first time anyone
> ever got a lot of information out of NSA._

------
kabdib
... You wouldn't know, by looking at us in our sunglasses, our somber dark
suits, and carrying our concealed pistols and compact machine guns ... that we
were sitting in the privileged sanctum of the White House planning a
clandestine baseball game. We weren't supposed to be planning one. Agent-in-
Charge Doltmeer was opposed to it, but that only meant that we wouldn't let
him play.

Without explanation, which frequently was how our lives progressed, someone
put this flyer on the bulletin board at work:

    
    
        First Annual Baseball Game between the CIA and the Secret Service
        Date: July 14
        Time: Classified
        Location: Classified
    

It seemed juvenile and a little stupid, so most of us liked it immediately...
Doltmeer didn't think any of it was funny.

"Who put this crap here?" he asked, as he looked at the flyer.

"I'll start an investigation immediately. Plus we'll need some uniforms and
gloves," I said.

\-- John Welter, Night of the Avenging Blowfish

~~~
teh_klev
Thanks for posting this. Just ordered myself a copy :)

------
Theodores
As a child/teenager delivering newspapers in Gloucestershire every day I knew
who worked for GCHQ and who worked for other military/aerospace concerns that
had security clearances. I had no interest, this was just standard knowledge
needed for my 'performance targets' of getting to their houses before they
drove to work. I would know all village gossip and know the business of every
house in the village, a very detailed profile based on daily routine
inspection, twice daily when delivering evening newspapers too.

I would also know all about holidays, if the newspaper had to be stopped for a
while then I would know where they were going and when they would be back. I
did put two and two together - 'Cyprus again...' \- and I also saw the subtle
differences in dress code and lifestyle that goes with these civil servants.

I do wonder if the CIA thought to recruit paperboys to do some intelligence
gathering for them, perfect 'cover'!!!

~~~
throwanem
Probably. It's not novel even in my experience to see an example of children
making remarkably effective spies, and I'm just some goober who reads a lot.

~~~
fapjacks
On every tour I ever went on (except the first, which was to a very nice
European country), children were absolutely considered two-way sources of
fairly true information. Small children don't lie when they're confronted by
men with guns, regardless of who those men are working for. That was a
blessing and a curse. Incidentally, we usually knew when the enemy was going
to attack on a particular day, because there wouldn't be any children around.
That being said, some of the worst people in those places use children in
their attacks.

------
PeterisP
It seems quite reasonable. Let's assume that it's known to the public that
Alice and Bob work for CIA. If their colleague Charlie would openly go bowling
with Alice and Bob, then it would lead outsiders to understand that Charlie
works in CIA, which is very, very undesirable in many cases.

If Charlie wants to keep his CIA ties secret, then bowling with colleagues is
either simply prohibited (as for "Employee Group C" in the document) or
possible only if an appropriate cover story is arranged for the miraculous
coincidence that Charlie happens to be bowling in the same time and place as
Alice and Bob.

------
pnathan
Seems perfectly reasonable to control this sort of thing. Loose lips sink
ships; operational security is a big deal for a spy agency.

I would be entirely unsurprised to learn that the security agencies provide
secured bars for after-work drinking as well; drunk lips talk too much. I'd
also be highly unsurprised to learn that background investigations are par for
employees getting married or living with someone - just as a matter of keeping
information leakage to a minimum.

Foreign policy and operations is a very grim and tedious business, and it can
be deadly serious. So you should be taking serious precautions.

------
nebabyte
> Depending on a member’s current assignment and cover concerns, the EAA would
> evaluate which tiers they could participate in

EAA Sports: It's in the game. "It" being operational security concerns

------
jorasta
This is the second puff piece about the CIA I've read recently (non-American).
Any particular reason for these or is it random?

~~~
danso
Are you asking if there's a particular reason the CIA caused you to read HN
today and click on a CIA-related headline?

Edit: Worth noting that this particular item was discovered from the recently
released CIA CREST database, which contains 13 million pages of CIA records.
So it's likely that your random chances of seeing a "Isn't this CIA document
weird?" story will be a lot higher this year as people go through the records
and discover things:
[https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jan/19/three-
yea...](https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jan/19/three-year-saga-
behind-CIA-release/)

~~~
jorasta
Ah I see (in edit) -- thank you.

~~~
tempodox
OTOH, it is perfectly possible you were a victim of mind control:

[https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/mar/23/dia-
worri...](https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/mar/23/dia-worried-
soviets-might-try-incept-them/)

------
captainmuon
I can't help but think, if you have to be so paranoid, then maybe you are
doing something wrong.

