Jim Lawler spent 25 years at the CIA. During that time, he recruited spies and handled NOCs, spies with non-official cover. They don’t have the same protections as spies with official, or diplomatic, cover.
If their cover is blown, they don’t get declared persona non grata and given a day or two to leave a foreign country. Instead, they may end up imprisoned or executed.
Jim described the NOCs he worked with over the years, the characteristics that made them good at their jobs, and their psychological isolation.
He said that the CIA’s NOC program changed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The agency rushed to bring in younger, well-intentioned officers. “It was frankly pretty much a disaster,” he told me. “I had a bad feeling that a lot of these operations were going to go bad and a lot did.”
We also talked about the future. Jim says he meets with two or three young people a week these days. They still want jobs in the CIA, FBI, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
This is the first in a two-part series on deep-cover spies.
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