Licensed to Kill by Robert Young Pelton Page B

operator—someone that if he is caught they can say was not part of the U.S. government. These days the CIA has plenty of money, so it’s easier just to hire us than train new people. There are the soldier-of-fortune, beer-bellied, raucous, ring-wearing guys you see in town, and then there are us—guys into fitness, in their late twenties to late forties. They have inside and outside guys. Inside are guys who never admit they work for the CIA; outside guys are the ones who for some reason got outed. One guy was outed because the CIA sent him a W-2 with ‘CIA’ in the space under ‘employer.’”
    Most of the operators are “sheep dipped,” he says, serving in some official capacity to provide a plausible military or civilian cover but actually working “black ops,” top-secret CIA operations that are never revealed in their military CV. He tells me, “Most of the paramilitaries come from Delta Force, and I only met one SEAL…. They typically are recruited from the serving military and then seamlessly join the Agency as contractors. They get out and are directly flipped. They get recruited with enough time to do the background process early enough so they can go straight in. Guys in the military usually have a clean record, no financial problems, no gaps, no legal problems. By watching them and flowing them into the Agency, there is no explanation time in between. There is no shortage of volunteers…. People make fun of the Agency, but all the SF guys are trying to work there. You get whatever you need, you don’t get dicked with, you have your own chain of command, and you don’t answer to the local military commander. You are not in the federal system, or in the military system.
    â€œWorking in Afghanistan is pretty easy,” he continues. “You sign up, train up, and fly in. Most of the operators go into Tashkent [in neighboring Uzbekistan] via commercial and then to Kabul on a military flight. You land there, and they pick you up in a truck and check you in at the hotel. Nobody asks any questions…. You check in, get a couple days in town, and then talk to the chief of base. You get your walking papers and fly out to Khost, Ghazni, Kandahar, or wherever you’re going.” The going wage, he says, is $1,000 to $1,250 a day for a contractor with security clearance, slightly better than in Iraq. Three months is the usual tour of duty. “People get freaky if you leave them out here more than ninety days.”
    Our driver and my translator, Doc, stare straight ahead, looking for freshly disturbed potholes, a place the Taliban like to hide remote-detonated mines. I’ve told them that the Contractor is my cameraman, and he is enjoying his undercover role as sidekick. He uses his GPS to mark checkpoints and track the road as we travel up into higher altitudes. The checkpoints, manned by Taliban and warlords’ foot soldiers, are simply speed bumps guarded by armed men who stare into the front of the taxi. My driver boldly waves them off and keeps going. I try to look as Pashtun as a blue-eyed
feringhi,
or foreigner, can. With his heavy beard, the Contractor looks more like an Afghan than I ever will. I tuck my glasses in my pocket, pull my dirty brown blanket tightly around my face, and stare impassively out the front window as we go through the checkpoints. We somehow easily pass through four more where both trucks and passenger vehicles are being stopped and emptied.
    The first base the Contractor was assigned to, he tells me, was set up in the most remote area that could be resupplied by helicopter. “They flew us in after dark on a nighttime resupply mission on a CIA Russian helo—a bird that wouldn’t say ‘Here come the Americans.’” A four-truck convoy came out to meet them. The new crew hopped off, the old crew hopped on, and the helicopter took off.
    â€œWhen I first saw the terrain through the NVGs