“The first book about what it’s really like to work at the CIA… warts and all. Have you ever wondered what Agency officers actually do every day? Want to know what it’s really like to live and work overseas, to recruit and handle agents, to spy for your country? CIA 101 is an honest account of a Case Officer’s career at the Agency. From application, interviews, and onboarding, to training, overseas assignments, and finally departure… The author takes you on the full roller coaster ride – the ups and downs, good sides and bad, the fun, funny, and absurd moments. What you need to know and what’s neat to know.” – Amazon Kindle Page

Professor Millick begins his short (136pgs.) but absolutely fun to read book with a bit about how he came to fulfill his lifetime desire to work for the CIA: When I got older, I wanted a job that was just as exciting. What were some other possibilities? Mob boss, movie star . . . international explorer. And spy. A hero who lives and works in exotic foreign countries, conducts espionage, and sews intrigue at the highest levels of power. The Central Intelligence Agency— specifically. His tone is perfect throughout the book as he teaches us from an insider’s point of view about one of the most famous secret organizations in the world. From the beginning he knew that he wanted to be a case officer. I completed six tours, spent twenty years overseas, served in a dozen different countries, visited fifty more, and worked in every major war zone. I recruited agents in strange lands, late at night, on dark, dusty roads. I handled terrorists and criminals and foreign officials in high-threat scenarios. I went after Taliban and al-Qa’ida fighters on their home fields in Africa and South Asia, contributed to their eliminations and arrests, and interrogated them in prison after capture. I was shot at by all kinds of weapons. I jumped out of airplanes. I carried a pistol stuck in my pants and a rifle on my back. I raced cars and smashed through barricades. I shot nearly every type of rifle and machine gun. I threw grenades and Molotov cocktails and worked with plastic explosives.

Feel the excitement?

It is there in the book. Really. The CIA gave me everything. It provided extraordinary training and momentous experiences. It granted me a chance to serve my country, to meet unique people and playmakers around the world, to not only see but take part in history. It allowed me to do things others only dream about. In short, the Agency gave me a monumental life. To me, the CIA, its history and heritage, its founders and traditions, its ongoing mission, are essentially sacred. But believe me it is NOT just an “in praise of the CIA” book, but an honest assessment of the daily work – from application (tough), training (tougher), to life after certification (toughest). There is the assessment, not always good but always honest, of fellow agents and bosses. This book is a bunch of Jackson Pollack-type splotches thrown at a canvas. It’s a collection of impressions in essay-form about a little-known place and a few of its employees, written by someone who worked there for twenty years. The book is an intimate look at Case Officers— what they do and what they’re like— and what it’s really like to work at the Agency. And that is just what it is!

Why? So why did I write this book? To have a little fun, to laugh at silly events and a sometimes kooky career, to expose the profession through a lens of honesty and humor, rather than Hollywood melodrama. Perhaps, after endless CIA evaluations, I want to turn the tables for a change. And I am glad he wrote it! As a former military man myself I could respond knowingly to the stories, the people, the events.

Among many other things we learn: Unfortunately, the reality is that the CIA produces pretty insignificant stuff. It uncovers few deep revelations (at least revelations that turn out to be true) and even fewer grand truths about the world and its inner workings. Still, our imaginations are more powerful than reality. It is the inside story told with humour and insight. The flavour of the book? Sample this: CIA Headquarters— where zombies are real, and hope goes to die.. . . The senior officers are even deader wood. Many of their classmates left the Agency years ago. But these officers stayed on, often because they had no other place to go. In the early days, these folks may have been free-spirited, adventurous, interested in foreign cultures and languages. But these qualities have been slowly burned out of them by the suffocating bureaucracy, mindless meetings, and pointless rules and regulations of the Agency. Forced to wear figurative masks and muzzles for years, they become pods, bureaucrats, different people altogether. By now, they’re bitter, broken, exhausted shells, fragile wrecks in need of deep psychological help.

I do not want to reproduce the entire book in this review, but I do want to give you a taste for the tone, the sometimes cynical tone that is the book. 

Finally: In short, I am immensely grateful to have been part of such an organization. It offered me an extraordinary life. Like any relationship, I look back occasionally and remember the good times. Half of me would love to be with her again. Meanwhile, my other half doesn’t miss her, celebrates that the relationship is over, and would be happy to never set eyes on her again— especially these days since she’s really let herself go. So I return to who I am. I look to myself and love my life, like everyone should. And that’s all you really need to know. Class dismissed.

Trust me. You will learn and enjoy this book! Class dismissed.

Categories: General

Keywords: CIA