Summer Job with the CIA - Or Not? Part I of II

This two-part article is perhaps the closest you will ever get to a peek inside the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) hiring practices for undercover operatives. Or, maybe, what this article describes has nothing whatsoever to do with the CIA. Read it and decide for yourself. For the truth is, neither I nor you will probably ever know exactly what was happening on 4 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the summer of 1978.

It started with my roommate Christine and an ad for a summer job. The employer, "Multinational Business Guides," was trolling the Boston area college community for summer workers with rather impressive qualifications: knowledge of multiple foreign languages, interest in and knowledge of international affairs, willingness to travel abroad, and solid business skills. In return, it promised an entry level position with room for growth.

Christine, fluent in French and Portuguese, but stretching her international affairs qualifications, applied and got this summer job. The job? Typing envelopes. Or was that the job? Did someone really need all those skills to type envelopes?

Multinational Business Guides, also known as Guides to Multinational Business, presented itself as a publisher of guides identifying the contact information for government officials with a role in business development throughout the world for the use of international businessmen. Straightforward enough. Christine passed a typing test and interview and was deemed qualified to type the names and addresses on the envelopes in which the guides allegedly would be mailed. Standard business envelopes those were. How small were the guides anyway?

And more pointedly, where were the guides? From the day of her interview Christine asked repeatedly to see a copy of the guide but the office manager deflected her requests. Odd, you think? As Christine and the two other girls in the office typed envelopes, the envelopes were put in boxes and set aside.

The harder the girls worked, the harder the office manager pressured them to stop working and play "the game." Not just any game, mind you, one very specific game she called a guessing game. But before we get into the game, let's introduce me, the next player, into the story. During the course of her first week at work, Christine became fond of the office manager, a woman barely older than us. This woman shared little about herself yet was interested in every detail of what we did on campus. Almost immediately Christine began sharing our mischievous escapades- sneaking glassware home from local bars for dorm use, painting green a sidewalk through an area of campus known as "the Dustbowl" in the hours before dawn on St. Patrick's Day, and even swiping from the campus mail room signs that threatened Federal penalties for "malicious mischief," mischief being our avowed birthright. This adult wholeheartedly applauded our juvenile participation in a certain notorious prank outside the home of the college president, a prank which almost placed us in the direct clutches of the campus police. And when she heard that Christine and I frequently borrowed one another's clothes and that people mistook us for one another, her interest intensified. The office manager suggested that I would be a great addition to the office. Did I happen to need a job? Because Multinational Business Guides just happened to need one more employee.

I was skeptical and worried about Christine's revelations... what kind of employer would find stealth operations to swipe bar glassware and transformation campus property intriguing job qualifications for a typist? Suspicious though I was, I was also desperate for a job. This job required 60 w.p.m. typing. I could type maybe 45 on a good day. Christine shared my worry about my typing ability when she told the office manager that I would call for an interview. When I came in for that interview, the electric typewriter on which I was to take a typing test conveniently broke down. Instead of bringing in another typewriter from the next room, the office manager, with the approval of the boss, provisionally hired me.

Like the others, I was assigned to type envelopes. Envelopes that did not get used. Looking around the room, I saw an office manager and three other typists all 5'5"-5'7" with dirty blond hair, hazel brown eyes, thin.. .just like me. Not only could Christine and I be easily mistaken for one another, anyone in this office could have passed for anyone else. And, remember the game? The game was initiated by the office manager. She encouraged, even pressured, us to stop typing and play it. It required us to guess the names of esoteric world political leaders- the Minister of Economic Development for a small African nation, or the Deputy Prime Minister of some obscure Pacific Island. As we played this game, I recognized that this was no guessing game at all- for what college student would know this information? Or have any basis upon which to guess it? No, this was a learning game. We were being prepared for something. The question was what.

Visit this page soon to read Part II for the riveting, if unexplained, events that kept us wondering, was Multinational Business Guides a front for the CIA or a ring of international jewel thieves?