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Invisible Ink: At the CIA's Creative Writing Group
- RheingoldRiver 3y ago> (Which suggests CIA lawyers are more nuanced literary critics than half of Goodreads.) This was a good line
- acheron 3y agoI once talked to a guy who worked at the CIA who said "when people ask me what movie most accurately reflects working at the CIA, I say Office Space".
- user982 3y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 3y agoThere are over 21,000 people working there, so I assume the overwhelming majority of the work must be pretty boring.
- JohnFen 3y agoYes, this. Large bureaucracies tend to resemble each other for pretty understandable reasons. It doesn't much matter what the name of the organization is, nor whether it's governmental or private.
- laserstrahl 3y agoi need that muffin recipe.
- jll29 3y agoWhat if that muffin recipe, if read backwards, was a report in Russian about foreign policy plans? (And would a _lawyer_ be the right person to review/decide?)
- ynac 3y agoIf you aren't married to the specifc acronym expansion, here's a great CIA Muffin Recipe! https://www.ciafoodies.com/blueberry-muffins/ https://www.ciafoodies.com/blueberry-muffins/
- laserstrahl 3y agolmao
- phendrenad2 3y agoThe part about the parking snafu is just hilarious. Government bureaucracy's true genius is in crafting catch-22s within its own rules. Also this reminds me of a similar article from shortly after 9/11: https://www.wired.com/2002/10/i-fought-the-future-for-the-cia/ https://www.wired.com/2002/10/i-fought-the-future-for-the-ci...
- pphysch 3y ago> The CIA officer seated next to me asked if I thought it was worth getting a literary agent. I said yes, and she seemed skeptical. > “In my other work,” she explained, “I can get movie people attached.” Is she implying that getting an agent is a possibly waste of time because she is the agent, so to speak, with direct access to industry insiders/plants/assets (albeit in the movie industry)?
- ynac 3y agoThat was my first impression as well - "attaching" is a term I've heard used in the film industry to not only say a star / asset is involved, but also a verb to be used as shorthand for "I can make it happen".
- l33t7332273 3y agoIt’s only after reading this comment that I realized that Invisible Ink is a group of CIA agents who formed a writing club, and not a dedicated CIA creative writing task force.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoIsn't the creative writing task force the remote viewing program?
- ynac 3y agoI had two interesting lists to compile after reading this article: First is books written by former diplomats / intel opporatives. SO many greats! Second, the intelligence officer's book shelf. In other words, book lists for people studying the various arts of intelligence. Fascinating stuff.
- mdhb 3y agoI feel like most people maybe aren’t aware that this is a thing but here are hundreds of book reviews by the CIA https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/book-reviews-by-title/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/book-reviews-by-title/
- mesofile 3y agoSounded interesting, but 1) the titles don't link to reviews as I expected, am I missing something? and 2) it appears to be an inactive project – I've only clicked through a sample of the full list but the majority of titles reviewed date from the 1960s & 70s, and I haven't found any more recently published than 1995.
- scrlk 3y ago> I haven't found any more recently published than 1995. See the text above the filter - "486 Declassified Book Reviews". I assume anything newer than 1995 is still classified.
- ynac 3y agohttps://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/an-intelligence-professional’s-reading-list https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/an-intelligence-profes... The magazine was a new discovery for me as well as the annual reading list.
- max2 3y agoCould you share your list please?
- bozhark 3y ago
- slim 3y agothis is hilarious because the author antagonistically made sure to write about every detail he can remember in this cold report about the secret agency
- paxys 3y agoThe story is supposed to be about a crazy visitor experience at the CIA HQ (and the author does a great job of writing it), but reading through it I couldn't help but think the whole time that if you replaced "CIA" with "generic big corporation" all of it would still make perfect sense. Random employee social group organizing a talk, no budget for speaking fee, "must be escorted at all times", full parking lots, confused officials/security people, getting multiple visitor badges, impossible to find conference rooms, employee gift shop, complex rules about what employees can publish on their own time, long-tenured employee who has no idea how many people work at the company...yep you are at Google.
- harry8 3y agoWhat’s the current status if the “conspiracy theory” that Google is largely run by cia “alumn” influencing in favor of current factions in charge of the cia? Crazy talk?
- kevindamm 3y agoHow does one go about identifying the CIA operatives attempting to hide in your interview pool?
- krapp 3y agoOne doesn't.
- ganoushoreilly 3y agoUnless one has rollback and wishes to share they worked there, you won’t know. That said, having worked for “agencies myself”, if people knew home many former 3 letter peeps were running around in high levels and influential positions they would be surprised. Most of them know each other on the tech side (some of us even have get togethers anually) and many of us have relationships with people high up in media and banking…. Crap now I sound conspiratorial. Truth is most are just employees that did a job and have moved on.
- bordercases 3y ago
- Duanemclemore 3y agoI'm about to read this because it looks fun but first... The Paris Review? Are they kidding? Do they mention that in the early years the PR was Mathiesson's cover as a CIA agent and a lot of funding came from them, at least indirectly but with full knowledge? I'm not trying to knock it down - it's a fine publication. But that's just funny. This is part of one of my favorite historical footnotes. There was theoretical debate between the US and USSR about which system fostered the flowering of culture, each side saying theirs was better not just for the economy and government, but under (capitalism / socialism) culture was better because of (the free market of ideas / state support) and so forth. So to have something to point to, the CIA just went out and covertly funded a bunch of cultural outlets. Make of it what you may that the government was secretly subsidizing these and just how capitalist that is or isn't... Or a footnote to the footnote, Timothy Leary wound up friends with G Gordon Liddy of all people. Many years after they met when Liddy was an FBI agent in the raid on Leary's compound, Leary had faded as a countercultural figure and Liddy had done his time after Watergate. They were apparently chatting and Liddy asked "Tim, you know I always wondered. Were you working with the CIA? That had always been the rumor, but I thought to myself at the time 'you know if that's true it would really destroy any legitimacy he has with the left.' So Tim, is it true? Did you work with the CIA?" To which Leary's reply was just "...well Gordon who did you expect me to work with? The KGB!?!"
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago> Do they mention that in the early years the PR was Mathiesson's cover as a CIA agent and a lot of funding came from them, at least indirectly but with full knowledge? They do mention that in passing indeed.
- raccoonDivider 3y ago> So to have something to point to, the CIA just went out and covertly funded a bunch of cultural outlets. Make of it what you may that the government was secretly subsidizing these and just how capitalist that is or isn't... Was the argument ever about a planned economy versus a government that does nothing but foreign policy? Subsidies in a capitalist system don't make it non-capitalist.
- Duanemclemore 3y ago>"George Bush Center for Intelligence exit" This has massively different meanings depending on if there are two middle initials missing or one... >"Google Maps isn’t much use at Langley." >“If you see a helicopter, you’ve gone too far,” This is pretty solid advice in a lot of things. >"I asked Vivian how many people worked at the CIA. “Maybe two million?” " This might, low key, be the best joke in the whole thing. >"There was also a Pride Month display" Did they have anything in lavender? Maybe a Carmel Offie challenge coin? That was a fun little read.
- leemailll 3y ago>I pulled up to the gate, and an aggressive police officer questioned me about why I had two badges. >“Didn’t it seem strange to you to get a second badge when you’d just got your first one?” >“I’ve never been here before,” I said. “Everything seems strange to me.” >A different cop told him to give it a rest, handed me a third badge We all love bureaucracy if it didn't happen to ourselves
- waiwai933 3y agoAn article on the CIA gift shop: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/meet-the-man-behind-the-cia-gift-shop-the-nations-most-secretive-swag-shop/2019/11/27/5eb27776-e39a-4fa8-a127-7fa987acbc3a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/meet-the-m...
- jrflowers 3y agoI want a CIA coffee mug so bad
- Animats 3y agoSummary: "I visited CIA Langley, parking was a pain, security was a pain, and the food isn't very good." OK, whatever. Everybody who's worked with DoD or the three-letter agencies has that experience. How could a Washington-based writer not know this? Both CIA and NSA have classified in-house periodicals of general interest. Eventually they get declassified and published openly. Some of those are amusing. CIA: https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/ NSA: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2018-12-04/cyber-brief-nsas-cryptolog https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2018-12-...
- ziddoap 3y ago>Summary: "I visited CIA Langley, parking was a pain, security was a pain, and the food isn't very good." OK, whatever. Everybody who's worked with DoD or the three-letter agencies has that experience. While this summary is perhaps accurate, it isn't always just about what was written, but how it was written. While I enjoyed reading the article, laughing a few times, I can't say the same about your summary.
- mrangle 3y agoI enjoyed the summary but not the lame styling of the article nor your response. See how this useless tack works?
- ziddoap 3y agoI don't get your point, but, if you enjoyed the summary that's great. In fact, it seems like you actually agree with me: how something is written is important, not just what was written. We're like-minded with that!
- mrangle 3y ago>How could a Washington-based writer not know this They know this. The obvious point is the mundane and folksey.
- 0x3444ac53 3y agoThis was a wonderful read. Before working at a large company with a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, I probably would have found a lot of this surprising. That said, it's nice to know the CIA isn't anymore put together than the rest of us.
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoFun read. The author, as expected, did an excellent job writing it. This line stood out: > The dining room was long and mostly empty—apparently a security thing. That might be a really good idea. If you have a whole lot of money and want to increase security, making it so that lunch groups eat with a lot space between each other is probably a lot of security bang for the buck.
- jhbadger 3y agoThe "CIA Creative Writing Group" reminds me of a book I read recently called "The Stasi Poetry Circle" which tells the true story of how East Germany's intelligence agency/secret police had a club for budding poets among their agents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stasi_Poetry_Circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stasi_Poetry_Circle