Dismissal by Xerox and unauthorized history
What's a spy to do when he gets fired? Some 200 CIA secret agents who have received pink slips in the first wave of a planned two-year cutback in covert personnel have been hitting the streets in search of jobs. But who really needs experts on secret information gathering, conspiracy and political subversion? "Hell, we are simply unemployable," complains one such agent. "No one will have us."
A number of the fired intelligence officers are fluent in difficult languages—Hindustani, Arabic, Japanese, and so forth—but colleges are reluctant to hire CIA veterans as teachers. Some of the agents have hopes of selling their services to industrial-security companies that offer protection for multinational executives and their plants. The CIA is trying to help its cashiered officers, instructing them in how to write a résumé without explaining in detail that a previous job, for example, was to lead airborne missions that used infrared devices to spot the cooking pots of Che Guevara's guerrillas in Bolivia. Concludes one angry agent: "A lot of guys will wind up selling real estate."
The agency is in turmoil because at least 800 of its employees are to be "terminated." All are members of the CIA's 4,500-man Directorate of Operations, the clandestine branch whose activities, such as trying to overthrow governments and spying on U.S. citizens, have damaged the reputation of the CIA. But only a small minority of agents were involved in such skulduggery, and a far larger part of the directorate's job has been the basic covert gathering of intelligence about potential enemies. Among those being fired are veteran officers with distinguished careers as undercover agents abroad.
CIA Director Stansfield Turner and his top aides have been jolted by the intensity of the protests from the fired spies. Yet the outcry is partly Turner's fault. He had William Wells, his deputy director for operations, send out brusque photocopied dismissal slips that began "Subject: Notice of Intent to Recommend Separation." The typical reaction of one recipient: "All there was in that goddamn piece of Xerox was my notice of termination. Nothing about what I had done, not even a 'Thank you and go to hell.' "
Four successive CIA directors—James Schlesinger, William Colby, George Bush and Turner—have considered the Operations branch to be bloated and in need of paring. In a post-Viet Nam retrenchment ordered by President Nixon, Schlesinger chopped 750 Operations employees. Colby and Bush passed on to Turner a plan to cut another 1,400—roughly 30% of the branch—over five years. Turner reduced that cutback to 820, but is trying to win a reputation for efficient management by carrying it out in just two years. Insiders in the agency insist that the dismissal list has now surpassed 820, and is likely to reach at least 1,000.