The course on ”How To Be An Intelligence Officer” rocketed in popularity after Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North saluted the flag and
passionately defended his covert operations before millions watching this summer`s televised Iran-contra hearings.
The two-hour course, taught by former CIA agent David Atlee Phillips, was in its third year at a downtown ”open” university in Washington, D.C. ”Then Ollie North happened,” he says. ”The number of students doubled. At the last session attendance had to be limited to 25.”
What also intrigued Phillips, a retired veteran of 25 years in clandestine service, was that the class ”was almost totally filled with people sympathetic to intelligence operations.” They included a good proportion of students in their 40s and 50s.
In early seminars, attendance had been modest, averaging about 10 students ranging in age from the early 20s to the 50s.
”About 20 percent were Walter Mittys and 20 percent interested in new careers,” Phillips said. ”The others were just interested in what they thought was an interesting subject.”
”Now, the difference since Ollie North has been a very large number of gung ho young people who, for the first time, heard about covert operations and decided they wanted a piece of the action. But there`s still that 20 percent age 40 to 50, with the rest in the middle.” Members of the older group think about changing careers or are fascinated by the subject and have the time to look into it.
Students frequently ask Phillips` view of North.
”I point out that there is a split in the intelligence community-as there is everywhere else,” Phillips says. ”About half think he is a national hero, the other half admire his zeal but are concerned this kind of operation is not very good for intelligence in the long run.”
SECOND CAREERS
Phillips, 64, teaches the class six times a year and has another session scheduled for October. The idea evolved from a book he wrote several years ago, ”Careers In Secret Operations,” subtitled ”How To Be A Federal Intelligence Officer” (Stone Trail Press). Second careers in intelligence are rare, but the older professional has the best chance of being accepted, he says.
Most older students in his class are bored with their jobs.
”They are in careers in which they wonder whether they can make a late-life switch,” Phillips says. ”Generally, however, they`re disappointed in looking for intelligence jobs unless they are engineers, scientists, chemists or have some professional skill. And then they can be hired despite their age.”
Cloak-and-dagger operations make up only a tiny segment of intelligence activities. More often the job involves painstaking analysis, pulling bits of information together in a meaningful way.
The CIA is not the only agency in what is referred to as the
”intelligence community.” Also involved are the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department`s Bureau of Intelligence, the Secret Service, the code-busting National Security Agency, FBI counterintelligence, and intelligence branches of the armed forces, the Treasury Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and even the Bureau of Customs.
Phillips retired from the CIA in 1975 but hardly stayed idle. He promptly formed the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers (ARIO) to defend the CIA from public attack and to explain the vital role of intelligence in the defense and security of the United States.
Phillips served as first president of ARIO, which has since changed its name to the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and now boasts more than 3,500 members from all the intelligence groups.
RISKS, STRESS
Despite the stress involved in the work, Phillips says divorce and alcoholism rates of those in intelligence are only slightly higher than those of the general public.
There are risks, he says, for those working undercover ”without any diplomatic protection in a job that doesn`t have an official passport. If you`re apprehended, you are subject to local courts. And obviously the government can`t come to help because they would confirm what you were doing.”
Phillips was regarded as one of the CIA`s top agents during his career and rose to become chief of Latin American operations.
He was working undercover as a ”businessman” in Mexico City when the CIA obtained pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald visiting the Soviet Embassy there before assassinating President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. That prompted sensational allegations, but subsequent investigations failed to turn up either a Soviet or CIA connection to the assassination. –
