For the past few weeks, the Central Intelligence Agency has been airing commercials on the Discovery Channel and other channels in an effort to recruit more scientists and engineers, and the commercial is terribly lame.
Like much of the government, the CIA is about to suffer from a brain drain as many of its personnel reach retirement eligibility in the next few years. As much as half the rank and file, and 70 percent of managers, could retire as early as 2011, and agencies across the government are scrambling to bring people on board in an attempt to preserve institutional memory.
The cartoonish 30-second spot features a bug flying around images of various technology and people working in laboratories, and the voiceover, which is about as lame as the animation, reads as follows:
Some of our bugs have been, well, real bugs. At the CIA, our scientists and engineers create and apply innovative technology to meet intelligence needs. Care to join them?
Technology so advanced it’s classified. (U.S. citizenship required.) — Central Intelligence Agency
I have to wonder exactly what quality of “scientists and engineers” the CIA will get from this horribly bad commercial. One thing’s for sure, they got government quality work from their public relations contract with whoever produced this ad. Unfortunately, I don’t know who, as CIA contracts are classified. Worse is the possibility that CIA might have produced this ad themselves, which doesn’t say much for their ability to produce propaganda…
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Paul Mitchell
Sep 16, 2006
Amusing ad.
“(U.S. citizenship required.)”
That’s so unfair! I can’t join MI5 either due to their drugs policy.
I’d *love* to work for a national security service, which probably bars me for life from ever doing so. C’est la vie, c’est la guerre.
Q
Sep 19, 2006
these are the people “the future of the free world” depends on? we’re doomed!
however; this does explain alot about guantanamo bay though, they are high school bullies with top secret security clearance, and the same IQ obviously, no wonder so many prisoners get abused.
Aristobulus
Sep 22, 2006
I mean…. CIa is full of 5h17? so what should the fly seek? I’m angry, oh lord you know I’m angry … wow coul the one who made this ad got the right to call themselves human beings…. Oh! Man I think I just got drepressed.. how I hope an inmigrant insurrection to reduce this country to ashes….
Oct 26, 2006
Bits of homeland stupidity - Homeland Stupidity
Eddie
Nov 26, 2006
The Ads were produced by TMP Worldwide (The ad agency, not the human resources firm). Not only are their contracts not generally classified, it’s not even complicated to find this sort of thing out.
david
Dec 12, 2006
Dis the CIA all you want but you arent getting in without a genius IQ and an impeccable school and background record.
BORIS S. KORCZAK
Nov 19, 2009
ONLY IN AMERICA
Boris S. Korczak
In January 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, but slavery in its new form exists in the United States to this day and anyone complaining to the courts risks his case to be thrown out and status quo prevails.
If you think of serving this country in a capacity of an access agent for the CIA, you can quote Dante Alighieri and put a big sign on your door saying: “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate. (All hope abandon, ye who enter in). In the other terms – Don’t be stupid and don’t work for the CIA.
There is something in the judiciary system called Totten Doctrine, which like a fig leaf covers the tool of rape done to the former agents by the CIA. The agents, are usually foreign born individuals who risked their lives for the country that is supposed to be a “land of opportunity”.
Totten Doctrine bars these types of cases from even going to trial. The Totten doctrine is based on the 1876 Supreme Court case of Totten versus United States. The case involved the estate of an individual who performed secret services for President Lincoln during the Civil War. The court dismissed the plaintiff’s postwar suit for breach of contract, stating, in part:
“The service stipulated by the contract was a secret service; the information sought was to be obtained clandestinely, and was to be communicated privately; the employment and the service were to be equally concealed.
Both employer and agent must have understood that the lips of the other were to be for ever sealed respecting the relation of either to the matter . . . It may be stated as a general principle, that public policy forbids the maintenance of any suit in a court of justice, the trial of which would inevitably lead to the disclosure of matters which the law itself regards as confidential, and respecting which it will not allow the confidence to be violated.”
It was 133 years ago and perhaps the decision of the court was right at this time. We are now in a year 2009 and the world has changed. Or has it?
What a perfect setup for a dishonest agency not to meet its obligations put on the contract that an access agent is not permitted to have a copy of, and sue the agency for breach of contract in the Federal Court of Claims.
Does that mean that the CIA has secrets that the Federal Court of Claims may not hear? God forbid it might make the mighty agency to meet its obligations?
Is the Federal Court of Claims not a part of the US government or is the CIA and independent entity that can do what it wants without the US government supervision?
Doesn’t the Totten Doctrine create a master – slave relationship between the CIA and the agent?
How does this doctrine improve our HUMINT, (human intelligence), once it comes out in the open that the agents can be lied to, abused, cheated and may not seek justice?
The recent years proved that HUMINT was inadequate in the unhappy years of Bush administration and our satellites could not hear what Muslim rebels were planning against the mighty USA.
I, a former access agent, want my money now, so I can purchase a health insurance I don’t have, buy Christmas presents for my family and put gas in my car.
I am now American citizen and I have earned this money risking my life and I am not a slave, even if the CIA thinks so.
You could follow up by going to my website: