FOIA Project

As part of my New Year’s resolutions, I have decided to post more on this blog as a way to continue to strengthen my writing skills, as well as give me an outlet for some projects I have been meaning to do. My goal is to produce at least one post a month, hopefully more. Not incredibly ambitious, but it’s better than what I have done so far.

For this month, I’ve decided to start a project that gets me more familiar with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process, as potentially getting me access to some interesting data that could serve as the basis for some future projects. More specifically, I’ve submitted 3 FOIA requests to the CIA regarding their application numbers. I am interested in finding out how CIA applications have changed since 2000, with a particular emphasis on how major events like the 2016 election, the Great Recession, and 9/11 changed application numbers.

Political scientists often talk about “state reputation” structuring the way in which states interact on the national stage. While I am not totally versed in this literature, the general landscape of it seems to be a debate between individuals who sympathize with Harry Truman’s statement that failing to intervene in Korea “would be an open invitation to new acts of aggression elsewhere,” and those who feel that notions of state reputation are largely overblown, and play little role in shaping behavior. (See Weisiger and Yarhi-Milo (2015) for an overview of this debate as well as their own compelling addition to the literature. I also stole that Truman quote from them.)

Something that seems to be missing from that political science debate is the notion that state reputation may have significant impacts on how states are able to muster strength at home. Within popular culture, the role of state reputation in shaping the power of a state is pretty clearly realized, with constant discussion of how inspirational power of the United States is able to bring the “best and brightest” to serve under its banner. (The validity of that notion is, of course, debatable.)

I think it would be fairly interesting to examine the relationship between CIA applications as the reputation of the United States in the international sphere. What happened to applications to the CIA in the mid-2000s, when the horrors of Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib and various other U.S. government atrocities entered the public eye, or when CIA crimes were being revealed by the Church commission in the early 1970s? Do applications largely stay stable, with the CIA recruitment pool largely unfazed by these events? Or does the pool shrink, potentially forcing the CIA to turn to those with potentially lesser qualifications and fewer moral qualms? In the long-term, I’d like to see how CIA application numbers track with domestic and international attitudes towards the American government, while controlling for domestic economic conditions and other factors.

My hunch is that applications tend to decrease during these periods, at least relative to periods with similar economic conditions, and that the application pool may change as well, altering the make-up of the CIA for years to come. (This would mirror the statistics we’ve seen coming out of the State Department over the past year, but the CIA hasn’t been subject to the same kind of mismanagement and chaos we’ve seen at State, and therefore gives a slightly cleaner reputation-to-application correlation.) These dynamics could potentially speak explain why we have developed what James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, has characterized as an excessively secretive and compartmentalized culture within the Intelligence Community. When morally abrasive facts may harm the recruiting (and retention) of quality personnel, there are certain incentives to keep communication channels closed. More importantly, however, it could point to the national security imperatives of pursuing a moral and ethical foreign policy when failing to do so may degrade your capabilities to operate effectively in the international sphere.

To get this information from the CIA, I’ve filed 3 FOIA requests centered on CIA application numbers. Ideally I would have liked to file FOIA requests about the retention of personnel as well, particularly minority personnel, but those numbers remain classified for national security purposes. (My requests for application numbers may also be determined to be essential to national security by the agency, but they aren’t covered explicitly from the start in the same way that employment numbers are.) Public reports from the CIA itself, however, does suggest it has difficulty retaining and providing a hospitable environment for minority employees. All expenditures are also classified as well, otherwise I would have filed requests for their recruiting expenditures during this time period.

The three FOIA requests I filed were for: 1. Formal memos produced by the CIA Recruitment Center between January 1st, 2000 and January 10th 2018 regarding employment numbers. 2. All documents discussing the recruitment of minority applicants to the CIA between the dates Tuesday 8, 2016 to January 12, 2018. 3. All documents detailing notable changes in CIA recruiting numbers between 2000 and 2018.

My fear is that these requests were way too general. I don’t have a good sense of how the CIA Recruitment Center would report its findings up the ladder. Quarterly reports? Yearly? Without that kind of information, I had to cast a rather wide net. The hope though, is that through this experience I can also get a much better sense of what does and doesn’t work as part of the FOIA process as it’s something I’d like to get a better handle of as research tool.

Hopefully I’ll get some numbers out of CIA and maybe put together some sort of model looking at stuff like GDP and public attitudes towards the government to potentially see what kind of reputation has on their recruiting.

For your perusal, here is a lightly edited version of one of the FOIA requests I filed:

Dear Freedom of Information Act Officer,

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I request that a copy of the documents containing the following information be provided to me: All documents detailing notable changes in applications for employment at the Central Intelligence Agency between the dates January 1st, 2000 and January 10th, 2018. This would include the post-9/11 bump in applications noted by Agency spokesman Tom Crispell to ABC News in 2001, the Great Recession-era bump in applications noted by Agency spokeswoman Marie E. Harf to the Harvard Crimson in 2009, and any other shifts in CIA application numbers.

In order to help to determine my status to assess fees, you should know that I am an individual seeking information for personal use and not for a commercial use.

I am willing to pay fees for this request up to a maximum of $50. If you estimate that the fees will exceed this limit, please inform me first.

For Reference:

Dizikes, Peter. “Job Hunt: Thousands Apply to CIA.” ABC News. October 9, 2001. Accessed January 10, 2018. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=87654&page=1.

Pignatelli, Margherita. “Harvard CIA App Numbers Steady | News.” The Harvard Crimson. April 1, 2009. Accessed January 10, 2018. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/4/1/harvard-cia-app-numbers-steady-a/.