by Dan Emmett
A few months after arriving back on PPD, however, I was presented with a major decision that would have long-range effects on both my family and me. One year earlier, in 2003, when I had reached the twenty-year mark of service, thus making me eligible for retirement, I began looking for a post–Secret Service retirement position within the federal government. Obtaining a new job within the government can be a long process, and although I was not yet ready to retire, it was time to at least begin looking.
While many retired Secret Service agents were heading over to the newly formed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) or the Treasury Department, these jobs held no interest for me. Friends had gone to these agencies and reported that the jobs presented no real challenge or interest but merely represented a paycheck and another retirement. I could not accept the idea of going to work just for the money and easy lifestyle most retirement jobs represented. Always the hopeless idealist, I was only happy if what I was doing seemed relevant to me. What now seemed relevant to me was contributing directly to the war effort.
Since 9/11 I had wanted to contribute in an active manner to the war on terror. Age was a problem, however, or so I first thought. Even though I was in good physical condition, by 2001 I was still forty-six, which is a bit long in the tooth for any meaningful fieldwork. Still with the goal in mind of somehow playing a direct part in the war, my thoughts turned to America’s main intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency, which from all reports was very active in this war that had been forced upon us. This is where I felt I could best serve.
While the CIA was in many respects a gigantic bureaucracy like all other government agencies, its heritage, which dates back to World War II, is quite colorful. Thankfully, some of that color can still be seen in many of its young operatives.
Prior to World War II the United States had no intelligence service per se. The FBI and the Department of State were the only entities that handled such matters as espionage and counterespionage, and then only as needed. With the onset of the war, these agencies had no presence in areas held by the Axis powers, and it was decided that America needed an agency devoted fully to the espionage business.
In order to fill this void, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942 authorized the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA. He appointed his old Colombia law school friend William “Wild Bill” Donovan as its director. Donovan had been a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor in World War I and had been a successful attorney prior to his appointment as head of OSS. In his role as director of the OSS, Donovan answered only to the president and had his full backing, which insulated the OSS from the prying eyes of J. Edgar Hoover, who had lobbied aggressively yet unsuccessfully for the FBI to be given complete autonomy over both foreign and domestic counterespionage.
The OSS would operate largely under military cover, with its agents wearing the uniforms of the three branches of service. In this way they could operate without attracting notice from the many enemy agents who operated in and around US military facilities.
The first American spies would train in the United States at what is now Congressional Country Club, in Potomac, Maryland, as well as areas in Thurmont, Maryland, and overseas in Great Britain. Today, few realize that the now pristine fairways of Congressional Country Club, which each year hosts the PGA, were once occupied by firing ranges, obstacle courses, demolitions training areas, and parachute drop zones. The clubhouse, bar, and dining areas were converted into barracks, and one wing was devoted to creating devices and hardware for the graduates to employ against Hitler and Hirohito’s forces.
The main function of the OSS was to train, equip, and aid resistance fighters in enemy-occupied territories throughout Europe and the Pacific. In addition they worked to disrupt Axis communications, assassinated top-level enemy officers, and hindered the enemy’s ability to make war in general. Agents of the OSS were a bold lot, known for their intelligence, bravery, and willingness to take risks. Many were Ivy League–educated, hailing from universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. This was due in part to the fact that Donovan was a Harvard man and selected his people from that pool. In turn, they selected their subordinates from those institutions.
Only the best and brightest were selected for the OSS, and one did not apply to become a member. The OSS targeted and selected the people it wanted, and they were a very eclectic lot. The great actor Sterling Hayden, for example, was recruited by the OSS straight from Marine OCS in Quantico. His OSS exploits included parachuting into occupied Croatia where he blew up German railroads and aided the Resistance in its covert war against the Germans. Had he been caught, he would have been tortured and then executed by the Gestapo, a fate that was met by many brave members of the OSS, men and women alike.
The OSS, while colorful, was very short-lived. After World War II had ended, and following the death of President Roosevelt, the new president, Harry Truman, was not comfortable having a spy agency within his government and abolished the OSS. Wild Bill and his OSS agents were thanked for their service, presented with OSS lapel pins, and sent home. For decades they discussed their exploits with no one except each other.
With the onset of the cold war against America’s old ally the Soviet Union, Truman reconsidered the need for a spy agency. In his view, it would be much like the OSS, yet more sophisticated—this was a cold, not a shooting, war with Russia. In order to keep it from becoming a shooting war, intelligence gathering was needed in order to better prepare America against any aggression by the Soviets.
On July 26, 1947, President Truman, seated in his presidential aircraft at National Airport, signed the National Security Act of 1947. Part of this act created the Central Intelligence Agency, which was the object of my new career ambitions.
CIA, THE APPLICATION PROCESS
In my home office on a Saturday evening in 2003, scanning the CIA website, I completed my initial online application. Hours later I sent the application hurtling through cyberspace. I felt it would probably never be seen by a human. Joining the CIA seemed so improbable that I felt that my life’s last career ambition would remain just a wish.
Because the CIA is part of the intelligence service, not the law enforcement community, earning a slot there would require going through a full application process, not simply retiring from the Secret Service on a Friday and beginning at TSA or at the Department of the Treasury on a Monday. It would essentially require starting over in almost every respect.
While I was forty-eight years old when I applied, I was to discover that the CIA had no age limits for practically any job. Their only concern was attracting the best people for a myriad of jobs. As long as a person was physically qualified for the position he was were applying for, all was good to go. 9/11 had occurred two years earlier, and the CIA was in full hiring mode, attracting a large group of people with wide and varied backgrounds. In appearance the applicants ran the gamut from biker to Wall Street executive. Each applicant had his or her own set of skills, talents, and specialties.
Three weeks after I submitted my application, I had a message on my answering machine from a CIA recruiting officer. The following week I was sitting in a nondescript CIA building somewhere in Virginia taking a written examination designed to determine my suitability to serve as an intelligence officer. Over the course of the next several months I underwent a battery of additional testing, as well as interviews, psychological examinations, and a very brutal full-scope polygraph exam.
The CIA vetting process for new employees and the continuing security process maintained throughout an officer’s career are both crucial to keeping the CIA safe from the penetration of hostile intelligence services. For this and other reasons the process is by necessity long and painful. If one is to join the agency, however, it is a pain that must be endured.
From the first day on the job, almost everyone at the CIA has access to classified information that, if compromised, could damage national secur
ity. Anyone who has access to the CIA information systems, which is almost everyone in the CIA, has the keys to the kingdom, as the office of security constantly points out. Even the cleaning crews who vacuum CIA office spaces have to undergo a thorough background investigation, as they are frequently in close proximity to classified information and privy to conversations that should not be repeated.
Of all the steps in the vetting process, the polygraph is the most daunting for almost everyone. The CIA is concerned that people with questionable motives will try to infiltrate the agency. One set of questions asked during the polygraph deals with counterespionage issues. The other set deals with lifestyle issues. The CIA believes so completely in the polygraph that all officers are subject to random retesting over their entire careers.
The fact that I was an active Secret Service agent assigned to the president was of no help in getting me through the process. I was treated as a twenty-two-year-old straight out of college would have been.
On a Monday morning in March 2004, I sat in the polygraph waiting room. I had every expectation that this obstacle would be cleared in short order. For the past twenty-one years I had held the highest security clearance the government could bestow, with updates conducted every five years. Other than enjoying good scotch and an occasional cigar, my life was pretty boring, and my only concern was simply getting the test over with. The young examiner who was assigned my case, around twenty-three years old and fresh from polygraph school, had other ideas.
I suppose we got off on the wrong foot when the young man approached me in the waiting room, introduced himself, and—asked by what name I wished to be addressed. Apparently he was asking about my first name—was it to be Danny or Dan? He looked so much like my former SATC students that I told him that people his age normally addressed me as Mr. Emmett. He took this as an affront to his authority and position and was noticeably unhappy; from this point on, things went largely downhill.
For the next four hours this young man ran several series of polygraph tests. He raked me over the coals, practically accusing me of being a Russian spy attempting to infiltrate the CIA. He was obviously going by the polygraph school playbook, hoping to obtain some reportable information. At one point he rolled his chair inside my personal space and asked, “Are you Dan, or are you Ivan?” I laughed out loud, convinced he could not possibly be serious, but the look on his reddening young face told me that he was. He then asked what I would do if I failed the test and did not get into the CIA. I answered that I would remain at the Secret Service as a supervisor in the Presidential Protective Division. A bit flustered over this response, he terminated the session and directed me to return the following day for more polygraph adventures.
In all likelihood he had been given my case because it should have been easy and provided good experience, as my adult history was a matter of record he had in front of him. I already held a Top Secret clearance. He was probably instructed that I be given no special consideration because of my position at the Secret Service. Overcompensating, he came on as a hardass. I understood the necessity for a thorough vetting, although it was difficult to take seriously someone twenty-six years my junior who was only five years old when I entered the Secret Service and not yet born when I became a marine officer. I felt that I at least rated an experienced examiner closer to my own age, of which the CIA had many. Nonetheless, I tried to straighten up and do my best to respect the position he held. I reminded myself that I was starting over in this new world of intelligence and had to play the game if I wanted in.
After two aspirin and a beer at home, I contemplated not going back for the second session, but my wife talked me into returning. “What do you have to lose?” she asked. She was correct, as usual, and the next morning I returned to the polygraph arena ready for another marathon round of questions designed to lay bare a man’s soul and determine his trustworthiness to safeguard classified information, something I had already been doing for over twenty-five years, including my Marine Corps time.
The calamity of the first session had apparently persuaded the CIA that I needed a more experienced polygraph officer to handle my case. The following day I had a different examiner, in his midthirties, mature, and, as it turned out, a former street cop. I was in and out of the seat in less than an hour. I passed the polygraph from hell with no issues and had proven myself to be worthy of trust and confidence, at least on paper.
The same day I took the second polygraph, I was given a thorough mental exam by an agency psychiatrist whose job it was to determine if I was sane, or perhaps insane enough to be a CIA officer. The doctor was at least in his late eighties. He had been with the agency in one capacity or another since 1947. Among other legendary stories attributed to him, he had once played a round of golf with some other US personnel while serving in an overseas station. That is not unusual. What is unusual was the doctor’s method of arriving at the golf course. As the remainder of his foursome awaited their colleague, they heard the drone of an airplane engine over the golf course. They looked up to see the doctor—dressed in golfing attire, complete with the proper shoes, and with golf clubs packed in a weapons container—slowly descending under a parachute canopy. At the time of my application, the agency still had a number of geriatric legends within its ranks some still from the days of the OSS during World War II. One had to love a culture that rewarded risk taking and coloring outside of the lines.
One afternoon as I was sitting in my office, the phone rang. It was the CIA recruiting officer who had been assigned my case months ago, calling to inform me that I had been accepted for the position. It was déjà vu all over again. He informed me that I had up to six months to either accept or decline the appointment. I thanked him and sat at my desk with much the same feeling of anticipation I’d had two decades earlier when the SAIC of Atlanta had called to inform me I had been accepted into the Secret Service.
Now, with twenty-one years as a Secret Service agent, and a career poised for further advancement, I had a very big decision to make. Stay with the Secret Service and enjoy the soft life of management, taking long lunches while underlings did much of the work? Or retire and move to the CIA, where I would be back in the game, albeit as the world’s oldest rookie?
A large part of the decision was what my wife thought about the venture. After all, my leaving the Secret Service for the CIA was not only a career risk but a real one as well. The first American killed in Afghanistan was a CIA officer and former Marine Corps captain, Johnny Spann. As a husband and father I was not certain I had the right to take this kind of risk so late in life. Donnelle’s attitude, however, was the same as it had always been throughout my career. If becoming a part of the CIA was what I wanted, she would support it. If she was against it, she never said so.
In my den late that evening, attired in a Marine Corps sweatshirt and PT shorts, the last fire of the season burned as I sat with my thoughts and, yes, a twelve-year-old scotch. Staring into the flames, I played back my entire career, from when I first dreamed of becoming a Secret Service agent through to the present. I thought also of the fact that a Secret Service agent was what I had been for the past twenty-one years, and that once I pulled the pin to retire, there was no putting it back in. I thought about these and many other things until very late, then went to bed. Sleep did not come easily, but when morning arrived, the feeling from the night before was still very firmly in place. As illogical as it all seemed, I was going to retire from the Secret Service as soon as practical and join the CIA.
Through the years, I had heard others say that when it is time to retire, an agent just knows. I always wondered if it were true, and on this morning in late April 2004, as the old sages said it would be, I just knew. With the winds of social change inside the Secret Service now raging at full force and this wonderful, almost too-good-to-be-true offer from the CIA on the table, it was time to move on.
I had acquired a skill set some at the Central Intelligence Agency thought could be useful, and the possi
bility of contributing even a small part to the war effort as a CIA officer was very enticing. My feeling was that I had been given certain talents and aptitude for this type of work, honed into skills with a sharp edge by the marines and the Secret Service. If America could now use my skills against our enemies, I felt it was my duty to step up. I called my recruiter and accepted the position.
The toughest part of retiring was breaking the news to the SAIC of PPD, a good friend of many years. As I walked across the waxed tiles of the Old Executive Office Building through the corridors of the PPD offices on my way to meet with him, I saw many old colleagues. I was a bit sad that this was perhaps one of the last times I would see some of them. (In fact, I would see more than one former Secret Service agent in the halls of CIA headquarters. It seems that I was not the only Secret Service agent who wanted to play a more active role in the war.)
I came to a door with a sign reading SAIC/PPD and walked into the waiting area, where the boss immediately greeted me. I sat down and told him of my plans to retire and where I was going. Although this was against CIA regulations regarding cover, I felt I owed him an explanation as to my departure, and I knew he could be trusted to keep the secret. He said he was sorry to see me retire, asked if I was sure this was what I wanted to do, and added that he and the Service would miss me. Although he outranked me by two grades I always considered him a friend first and a boss second. He was understanding and wished me luck at the CIA. We shook hands and I went home.