I was looking to see if embassies are highly populated by the CIA, and came across this really quirky article about academics being recruited by the 'Agency'.
POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Friday, November 22, 2019 00:18
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According to a person familiar with this encounter, which took place about a decade ago, the agency had been preparing it for months. Through a business front, it had funded and staged the conference at an unsuspecting foreign centre of scientific research, invited speakers and guests, and planted operatives among the kitchen workers and other staff ... “Every intelligence service in the world works conferences, sponsors conferences, and looks for ways to get people to conferences,” said one former CIA operative. Scientific conferences have become such a draw for intelligence agents that one of the biggest concerns for CIA operatives is interference from agency colleagues trapping the same academic prey.
Quote:
The science of spying: how the CIA secretly recruits academics
In order to tempt nuclear scientists from countries such as Iran or North Korea to defect, US spy agencies routinely send agents to academic conferences – or even host their own fake ones. By Daniel Golden
The CIA agent tapped softly on the hotel room door. After the keynote speeches, panel discussions and dinner, the conference attendees had retired for the night. Audio and visual surveillance of the room showed that the nuclear scientist’s minders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were sleeping, but he was still awake. Sure enough, he opened the door, alone.
According to a person familiar with this encounter, which took place about a decade ago, the agency had been preparing it for months. Through a business front, it had funded and staged the conference at an unsuspecting foreign centre of scientific research, invited speakers and guests, and planted operatives among the kitchen workers and other staff, just so it could entice the nuclear expert out of Iran, separate him for a few minutes from his guards, and pitch him one-to-one. A last-minute snag had almost derailed the plans: the target switched hotels because the conference’s preferred hotel cost $75 more than his superiors in Iran were willing to spend.
To show his sincerity and goodwill, the agent put his hand over his heart. “Salam habibi,” he said. “I’m from the CIA, and I want you to board a plane with me to the United States.” The agent could read the Iranian’s reactions on his face: a mix of shock, fear and curiosity. From prior experience with defectors, he knew the thousand questions flooding the scientist’s mind: What about my family? How will you protect me? Where will I live? How will I support myself? How do I get a visa? Do I have time to pack? What happens if I say no?
The scientist started to ask one, but the agent interrupted him. “First, get the ice bucket,” he said.
“Why?”
“If any of your guards wake up, you can tell them you’re going to get some ice.”
In perhaps its most audacious and elaborate incursion into academia, the CIA has secretly spent millions of dollars staging scientific conferences around the world. ...
More than any other academic arena, conferences lend themselves to espionage. Assisted by globalisation, these social and intellectual rituals have become ubiquitous. Like stops on the world golf or tennis circuits, they sprout up wherever the climate is favourable, and draw a jet-setting crowd. What they lack in prize money, they make up for in prestige. Although researchers chat electronically all the time, virtual meetings are no substitute for getting together with peers, networking for jobs, checking out the latest gadgets and delivering papers that will later be published in volumes of conference proceedings. “The attraction of the conference circuit,” English novelist David Lodge wrote in Small World, his 1984 send-up of academic life, is that “it’s a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else’s expense. Write a paper and see the world!”
The importance of a confereNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Thank Buddha the CIA is trying to bring smarter people here...I mean, we let in Chumps' horrid dumbass family, gotta adjust the intelligence curve SOMEHOW 
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Remember when Democrats hated the CIA before Anderson Cooper brainwashed them?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Curiously, I stumbled across a reference to a report written by a DIA peerson whose name was suspiciously like one of my former HS almost-classmates (he was a year behind me). It was kinda weird but his name didn't show up in any of the usual internet haunts, had been scrubbed clean of all references including HS. It as only after birdogging extensively thru the inet that I found a reference (via his brother) that confirmed that was indeed him. He was considered a "genuis" by most of the school, only one other person in the 4-year cohort was considered brighter than him.
I also found out that one of my classmates who I greatly admired ... a football player who could type better than anyone in my typing class, and who used to tell this hilarious story about how he started cartwheeling down and hill and couldn't stop, had moved to W Virginia and passed away a number of years ago, greatly loved by his family and his many friends. Sad to hear of Al's passing; if he had stayed the same as in HS the world became a lesser place with him gone.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
You idiots have been oppressing the entire sexual spectrum as long as you have existed. I can't wait for the day your kind is dead - WISHIMAY
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Having gone to a few (probably not very interesting to the CIA) conferences, and knowing people who've traveled extensively to China ... I find the thoroughness and depth of CIA intrusion into academics and scientific travel a revelation. I had no idea such a thing existed, let alone how vast and enmeshed it was. And here I was thinking it was just a bunch of isolated science wonks getting together to vacation and trade arcane information.
As to being scrubbed from the internet - one of the people I know who applied to the FBI got to the point of being scrubbed from the internet. He mentioned that he had been and explained how in-depth it was. And indeed, there was only one anonymous crowd picture with someone who looked like him that I stumbled across. Being scrubbed - it's a real thing.
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