[Marxism] Obama steps up CIA recruitment on campus

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/19/AR2009061903501.html

Obama Administration Looks to Colleges for Future Spies

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 20, 2009

To the list of collegiate types -- nerds, jocks, Greeks -- add one more: 
spies in training. The government is hoping they'll be hard to spot.

The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence 
officer training program in colleges and universities that would 
function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps run by the 
military services. The idea is to create a stream "of first- and 
second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and 
cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence 
agencies," according to a description sent to Congress by Director of 
National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

In recent years, the CIA and other intelligence agencies have struggled 
to find qualified recruits who can work the streets of the Middle East 
and South Asia to penetrate terrorist groups and criminal enterprises. 
The proposed program is an effort to cultivate and educate a new 
generation of career intelligence officers from ethnically and 
culturally diverse backgrounds.

Under the proposal, part of the administration's 2010 intelligence 
authorization bill, colleges and universities would apply for grants 
that would be used to expand or introduce courses of study to "meet the 
emerging needs of the intelligence community." Those courses would 
include certain foreign languages, analysis and specific scientific and 
technical fields.

The students' participation in the program would probably be kept secret 
to prevent them from being identified by foreign intelligence services, 
according to an official familiar with the proposal.

Students attending participating colleges and universities who agree to 
take the specialized courses would apply to the national intelligence 
director for admittance to the program, whose administrators would 
select individuals "competitively" for financial assistance. Much like 
the support provided to those in the military programs, the financial 
assistance could include "a monthly stipend, tuition assistance, book 
allowances and travel expenses," according to the proposal. It also 
would involve paid summer internships at one or more intelligence agencies.

Applicants to the intelligence training program would have to pass a 
security background investigation, although it is unclear when they 
would have to do so. Students who receive a certain amount of financial 
assistance would be obligated to serve in an intelligence agency for the 
same length of time as they received their subsidy.

Students in the military programs typically participate for all four 
years of college, but the intelligence program would seek to recruit 
sophomores and juniors.

Through grants to colleges and universities, intelligence agencies have 
been building partnerships with academia and specific professors, some 
of whom in past decades served as channels for recommending applicants 
to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The intelligence community 
already has a Centers of Academic Excellence Program that funds programs 
in national security studies at more than 14 colleges and universities, 
with a goal of having 20 participating schools by 2015. The programs 
receive between $500,000 and $750,000 a year.

The intelligence officer training program would build on two earlier 
efforts. One was a pilot program, first authorized in 2004, for as many 
as 400 students who took cryptologic training and agreed to work for the 
National Security Agency or another intelligence agency for each year 
they received financial assistance. That program will be replaced by the 
new one because cryptology is not as needed as it once was.

A second program provided financial assistance to selected intelligence 
community employees who agreed to study in specialized academic areas in 
which officials believed there were analytic deficiencies.

Named the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, after the Kansas 
Republican who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, over 
the past four years it has provided funds to some 800 students and 
current employees.

The director of national intelligence would make the Roberts program 
permanent under the new proposal and expand it beyond analysts to 
include personnel in acquisition, science and technology. It also could 
be used to help recruit employees by reimbursing them for prior 
education in critical areas.

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu