The CIA

It was around 3:00 AM on Saturday September 22, 2001, My oldest brother, Phil, and I were sitting in his living room waiting for the cancer to take him.

He was 56.

There was no drama.  He got diagnosed 10 months earlier and knew what was coming.  His wife and daughter were resting upstairs.  No one called our mother or any of our seven siblings.  That was Phil’s choice and a classic Smith move.  All our tombstones should read, “Don’t bother. I’m fine.”

I gave him morphine when he asked.  He sat in a recliner nodding off on occasion.  While I thought about his life.

I  would never get another chance to ask this question.

So I went for it….

“Hey Phil, what did you do when you worked for a year in the CIA?”

In 1967 he graduated college and faced the draft like every other young man hitting the streets that year.  Some went to Canada. Bill Clinton got deferments by attending graduate school.   George W. Bush protected the Texas borders after joining the Air National Guard. Donald Trump received a convenient bone spurs diagnosis from a shady podiatrist who rented shabby office space from Fred Trump. Thank God the  foot problem didn’t affect Donald’s golf game.

Guys like Phil did not have these options.

So he got creative and took a government test before graduating.  The CIA saw his scores and scooped him up.

After a thorough background check he moved to Washington in May of ‘67 and joined The Company.  He agreed to never say what he did there, and he had kept his promise so far.

But in his living room that morning, I asked about it.

He said, “Not much.  I edited and rewrote reports from the field.”

“What kinds of reports?”

“Field operatives and analysts would write their findings and before they went any further,  I tuned them up. Many times they were unreadable.”

“What was the most interesting situation?”

“Remember the Pueblo incident in January of ‘68?”

The  North Koreans had captured our spy ship in international waters.  It was a huge deal.

“Well, the guys who analyzed the satellite pictures handed in reports.  I rewrote and summarized them.  It was the only time that I knew for sure that LBJ read my stuff.”

I thought not bad for a 22 year old with a friggin sociology degree from Holy Cross.

I asked. “It was ’68; how did they get pictures from a satellite before digital communication?  Did they use film?”

“Yep.  The satellites ejected canisters of exposed film. Once they hit 60,000 feet, a parachute opened, and planes would grab them out of the air with hooks attached to long cables.”

“No.  Really?”

“That’s how they did it, and sometimes they missed.”

“Unbelievable.  I heard that right after you moved to Washington you found a gorgeous strange young woman in your apartment. She started making out with you.”

“That happened.  It’s called a ‘honey trap’.  Someone wanted to see if I could be flipped; it didn’t work.”

“Was it the CIA or the Russians?”

“I never found out.”

Then he slipped off to sleep, and that was the end of the CIA talk.

He passed away a couple hours later.

Around 2010, thanks to Google, I confirmed that they did grab pictures falling from satellites with planes that dragged hooks on cables.  It reminded me of the Spy versus Spy cartoons in Mad Magazine.

Phil left the CIA in the spring of ’68 after serving for a year.  He knew the army would grab him immediately.  I never asked why he bailed.  Although I’ve  read the history of the CIA, and it was often the gang who couldn’t shoot straight.  They launched coups in third world countries and propped up ruthless dictators.  I like to think that Phil didn’t want any part of that.

Right after quitting he avoided the draft by enlisting  so he could go to Officers Candidate School.  He became a second lieutenant and spent a year in Vietnam starting in August of ‘68 – the height of the war.  He did not see combat, but he was willing to.

Now in the third decade of the 21st century I think about what he’s missed since he died.  Including how that brave young man from the Texas Air National Guard lied his way into a discretionary war in Iraq – wasting hundreds of thousand lives, and the election of the failed New York real estate goof with the debilitating bone spurs, then January 6th, a global pandemic, and so much more.

I miss Phil, but sometimes I’m glad he didn’t witness much of what’s happened since 2001.  He didn’t serve in the CIA and risk his life in Vietnam for that shit.