Burns, associate director for CIA talent, took place in the Office of Public Affairs conference room, a windowless space that, hilariously, is decorated with framed posters of spy movies and TV shows: John Krasinski as Jack Ryan, Daniel Craig as James Bond, a black-and-white photo of The Americans cast doing a panel, alongside CIA formers, called “Reel Life vs. So I made it through the visitor center (leaving my phone behind in a locker), drove past what I’m told is a very contentious parking situation where lots of spots are so far from the office that a shuttle has to transport employees from their cars to their desks (a spy’s supposedly glamorous life actually laced with drudgery and inconvenience-how very John le Carré), up to the Original Headquarters Building, with its bright, imposing marble lobby (the one you’ve seen on TV, with the CIA seal in floor tile and the memorial stars carved into the wall), down a hall lined with photos and well-wishes from past Presidents (Trump’s thick Sharpie scrawl, visible from afar, shouts in all-caps, “I’M VERY PROUD OF YOU! YOU ARE THE WORLD’S BEST!”), and through a museum, where items on display include a gun swiped during the bin Laden raid and the gym bag of a young woman who died on Flight 93, her luggage tags from 9/11/01 still attached. If the whole point of being a spy is that nobody knows who you really are and no one can ever find out, how exactly are you supposed to achieve this level of anonymity when you’ve flung untold reams of identifiable content across the digital world? I intended to find out. The youngest of this bunch of young people have spent their entire lives online, some since their parents blasted out their first ultrasound picture as a pregnancy announcement, before they’d even gained sentience. One would think it’s basically impossible to get millennials and zoomers into covert jobs. But I am willing to do what it takes to get the inside story of how the CIA is recruiting and working with the next generation of spies. Much like the Union that the Agency was formed to protect, the system, it seems, could be more perfect. When you pull up to the CIA headquarters in Langley, you have to shout your Social Security number out the window into a speaker, like when you’re ordering fries at a drive-through.
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