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CIA Interns Help Guard Nation's Secrets
Behind closed doors at the Central Intelligence Agency, an elite team of intelligence officers guards the nation's secrets.
A few of them aren't old enough to drink.
"This is one of the few internships where every day, you could be making decisions that affect the national security of our nation," said Michael. "You're the next intelligence officer for the United States. You're not treated like a typical intern here."
Interns as young as 18 and in high school can join the CIA with undergraduate and graduate students. Students can work in fields ranging from cybersecurity to cartography to graphic design.
Although Michael and fellow interns Samantha, Sierra and Nicole specialize in fields that might sound mundane — architecture, finance, human resources and supply chains — everything is more exciting in the national security context, they say. (The interns are identified only by first names to protect their identities.)
"I've been able to attend high-level meetings involving major players both outside the continental United States and within the continental United States," said Michael.
Although designing bathrooms might not seem critical, they are planned to withstand terrorist attacks. His work has brought him to the table with high-ranking officials.
"I've been able to meet with two presidents of two different foreign nations," he said.
"I was lucky enough to get to go to the Pentagon," Samantha said. "You see it on TV, but to be there in person on official business is really cool."
Although the interns said the agency values diversity of experience, most of the intelligence officers, interns included, fit a leadership profile.
"I think that the CIA likes the Type A, organized, motivated type individual, and that's exactly who they attract. I find it funny how similar we all are," Sierra said.
"It's like you've found a ton of people who are exactly like you," said Michael. When he's back at school, a day doesn't go by that he isn't thinking about the agency, he added.
Numerous perks
A close-knit community is not the only benefit of interning at the CIA. The agency offers scholarships to financially qualified undergraduates that include tuition assistance up to $18,000 per calendar year; mandatory fees and books; meal allowances during summer tours; transportation reimbursement; health and life insurance; federal retirement plans; and paid time off, both holiday and sick.
Not to mention starting salaries between $29,715 and $49,036 annually, depending on the program.
The interns gush about a sense of togetherness and belonging that makes for an inclusive and invigorating work environment.
"I found everyone to be incredibly warm and friendly," Samantha said. "Everyone wants you to learn because they want you to know as much as you can in the short period that you have."
The interns describe an atmosphere of supportive colleagues eager to teach and support new officers.
"It's very much an atmosphere where they expect you to think on your feet and where they expect you to eventually get the right answer," Sierra said. "They really throw you in."
And with everyone working for the same mission, "it's a very collaborative place to work," Michael added. "In an intelligence setting, in a secret setting, we have to rely on other people's knowledge to be able to do everything that we do."
Veil of secrecy
The cover of opacity under which the CIA operates extends to its interns. They can only tell close friends and family that they work for the agency and must redirect anyone else who asks where they work.
"I try to bore them with finance," Samantha said. "I say that I do accounting, I balance, and then you start to lose them at that point."
Nicole deflects the conversation back to the person with whom she's speaking.
"I've found that if you get someone talking about themselves — 'Oh, what's your internship this summer? What are you doing? How was your vacation?' — it's easy."
The secrecy is necessary because many interns return summer after summer and eventually become full-time intelligence officers.
"When coming to this internship, they described it as a three-month-long interview, and I agree with that," Nicole explained. "They're really trying to shape you for that next step while you're here for your internship."
Most of the interns said that after they applied, they did not expect an offer.
"I put in my application not thinking I would hear anything back, kind of laughing at myself," Nicole said, "and somehow, I ended up here."
Samantha thought because she did not speak a foreign language, she wouldn't be a good candidate. But language skills are not a strict prerequisite at the agency.
"I think a lot of people think they need a language," Sierra said. "You don't have to have it, but maybe a desire to want to learn would be something that would help."
Key qualities of interns
Instead, the agency emphasizes strength of character. Because interns — who can be dual citizens — are trusted with the nation's secrets, they must be trustworthy.
"When they go to hire interns, integrity is probably one of the highest skill sets that they're looking for," said Michael.
Applicants must successfully complete a medical and psychological exam, a polygraph interview and a comprehensive background investigation. Hiding things in the application is a "non-starter," he continued. (They'll find out anyway, he said, so save yourself the trouble).
Applicants must be patient, as well as honest. Even after an offer of employment is extended, each intern must be granted a security clearance. The process usually takes at least a year, sometimes more. Samantha's processing, for example, took two years.
She said watching movies about national security helped keep her motivation up. "Seeing what we've done as a nation and seeing why we're doing what we're doing gives you that little motivation to keep going with the process," she said.
"I think people's fear of being rejected keeps them from applying," Samantha added. "But this is a great opportunity. Take a chance, send in the application. You might end up as one of us."
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
