The CIA has a kid’s page. So does the CIA, for that matter, but I find the former much more disturbing. The kids’ page of the Central Intelligence Agency includes a “Bird’s Eye View of CIA History,” narrated by “Aerial, the ace photography pigeon.” There are links to the CIA “Hall of Fame,” which–disappointingly–includes only non-classified information (I know about Harry Truman and George H.W. Bush! Tell me cool secret things).
Interested in a job at the CIA? For all those 6th-12 graders who might be eager to join, the agency says “Seriously, Just Say ‘No’“:
For those of you who can pledge to stay away from illegally and improperly using drugs and alcohol, there are student opportunities immediately available at the CIA for the best and brightest.
Finally, there are games. There are puzzles, word finds, and “break the code.” “Break the code” includes a challenge involving the “Enigma Code” which I’m pretty sure requires an invasion of Poland to solve. Additional games include the “Aerial Analysis Challenge,” and the “Photo Analysis Challenge,” which involve skills useful later for those interested in a career in Bomb Damage Assessment.
There are also resources for parents and teachers, including lesson plans. “Adaptable for students of any age,” these include “Examples of Problem Solving, Myths about the CIA vs. Reality, Intelligence’s Role in War, Code and Code Breaking, the Importance of Accurate Communications,” and my personal favorite “Gathering and Analyzing Information,” which includes the following:
To begin the lesson, the teacher will hand out the “Intelligence Cycle” print out and discuss its five steps: Planning & Direction, Collection, Processing, Analysis & Production, and Dissemination.
After the students understand the “Intelligence Cycle,” the teacher should write the following on the blackboard: “Back in my day….” Begin a discussion by asking students how many of them have heard their parents or grandparents use that phrase in conversation and what they learned about their family’s past from those reminiscences.
Next, the teacher should ask students to pick a parent or grandparent they can interview before the next class and write three paragraphs comparing the student’s current day-to-day life to their subject’s life at the same age. Discuss what kind of questions to ask to see the differences in the student’s life compared to their subject’s life at the same point.
Whether the child is allowed to use enhanced interview techniques on the chosen grandparent is not specified.
The Edge of the American West 
14 comments
May 14, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Buster
Yeah, this is a little freaky, but it pales in comparison to the NYT story on the militarization of the Boy Scouts Explorers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14explorers.html
Here’s the lede:
May 14, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Kieran
I think all federal agencies are required to have a kiddie page and for whatever reason they all choose to take the dumb mascot approach.
Here is Aerial the pigeon placing a small animal in a stress position. Here is Aerial shredding the video tape. And so on.
May 14, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Michael Turner
Gotta love that “excellent communication ability.” Those who merely speak and write very well need not apply for membership in Our Family.
May 15, 2009 at 4:36 am
dave
Buster, there’s nothing wrong with a militarised republic. It just depends on what *kind* of militarised republic it is. If all children were taught that they will grow up to have a duty to defend universal human rights, if necessary up to the sacrifice of their own life, why would that be bad?
Of course, the odds on that happening are pretty long, whereas the odds on proto-fascist nationalist indoctrination are pretty short, but you have to distinguish structure and content.
May 15, 2009 at 4:39 am
rea
Boy Scouts have always been a paramilitary organization–that’s their whole point. That’s why Gen. Baden-Powell founded them during the siege of Mafeking during the Boer War . . .
May 15, 2009 at 6:43 am
Buster
Dave, I hear you on your second point, though the particular rendering of the Explorers program in the NYT article was disheartening, no?
Rea, It’s a long and bumpy road from Lord Baden-Powell to today. On an anecdotal level, I can attest to a significant degree of variation by place. As a boy, I participated in scouting activities in a medium-sized town in the South, a small town in the Western desert dominated by a nearby AFB and a medium-sized coastal city where other scouts were mainly the sons of R & D engineers. In each location, the “feel” of scouting was quite different, though the badges, guides and oaths were the same. In the South, the focus was on camping and outdoors life–fishing, hiking, etc. Near the AFB, the emphasis was on patriotic duty–learning about the Constitution, being a good citizen, doing good works in the community (trash pick-up, for instance). Then, on the coast, scouting was just pre-A/V club nerding out with ham radios and other tech gadgetry. In none of these instances, however, was I instructed in how to properly apply my knee to another human’s neck.
May 15, 2009 at 7:27 am
Stephen
Buster, are you talking about Alamogordo? Although it’s not very hard to find small towns in the Western desert dominated by an AFB. Clovis, maybe? If you’re old enough, it could be Roswell. . .
Re: dave’s comment, all Swiss adults are members of their national militia, receiving weapons and training. They’ve got way more gun saturation than the USA, yet they don’t suffer from as much gun-related violence. And of course they don’t have a particularly belligerent foreign policy, to put it mildly, even though their military is composed of everybody in the country.
To tie it in to Buster’s comments, it’s about culture.
May 15, 2009 at 8:39 am
Buster
Stephen, Nope, that patch of time was spent in Victorville before the closing of George AFB–so I’m dated but not that dated, thank you.
Back to the original post, in my enduring indulgence of writer’s block, I did the photo challenges over at the CIA site. I don’t know if the kids’ section of cia.gov will recruit better agents in the future, but it may well produce some highly-skilled Megatouch players at your local dive bars.
May 15, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Stephen
Well, I didn’t want to assume either way.
May 16, 2009 at 7:11 am
tf smith
The Explorer’s program is not bread and butter scouting; Explorer’s posts are A) coed; B) separate organizations from Scout troops, and C) are chartered (usually by public agencies) involved in aviation, SAR, medicine, and various other careers – including law enforcement – and focus on those careers.
Scout troops (Boys and Girls) and in fact both the entirety of the traditional BSA and GSA are gender-segregated, are usually chartered by churches, synangogues, schools, community/service clubs, etc., and focus on what amounts to education, citizenship, and leisure activities.
The Explorer post in the NYT article is a law enforcement post; given the militarization of law enforcement in this country (and the paramilitary role of the Border Patrol historically) it is not really surprising that is their emphasis.
It says a lot more about the Border Patrol than it does the Boy Scouts, honestly.
May 18, 2009 at 2:22 am
ajay
“Boy Scouts have always been a paramilitary organization–that’s their whole point”
See, for example, “The Swoop”, an early (1909) Wodehouse in which a simultaneous invasion of England – by the Russians, the Prussians, the Algerians, the Chinese and five others who have slipped my memory – is defeated entirely by the Boy Scouts.
May 18, 2009 at 12:45 pm
fromlaurelstreet
here’s a link to “the swoop” at gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7050
May 18, 2009 at 1:04 pm
kid bitzer
speakin a wodehouse and paramilitary orgs, i have to say that one of the best things in the laurie & fry series is the guy who plays spode. (john turner, imdb informs me).
at first i found him appalling and loathsome, until i realized he was *acting*. then i started digging him more and more. hail spode!
May 18, 2009 at 4:59 pm
davenoon
No one will believe me when I tell you I first got to the CIA kids’ site about a month ago through Michele Bachmann’s web page — when I realized it was a genuine CIA page and not something MB had cooked up, the whole thing seemed significantly less insane than it does now….