Village people are subtle. They don’t come at you wielding machetes nor appear as fearsome masquerades. No, they are far too cultured. They afflict you in secret. In the comfort of your office. While eating creamy cheese Alfredo pasta. When you finally cash in your chips, your sudden perishment will flummox people. An autopsy may reveal the cause of death as myocardial infarction. But it is, in fact, your village people who bewitched you to eat a half-pounder cheeseburger every day.
I have always flown under the radar of my village people. I do nothing to pique their interest. Sometimes I write about my jaunts. But since they are also ‘frequent fliers’, my peregrinations should provoke no envy in them.
I was wrong.
They remembered me one fine afternoon in June 2024. They afflicted me with the sort of idleness the devil relishes. For I had the sudden urge to check if the CIA was on LinkedIn.
Yes, that’s right. I saw a big red button marked ‘immolation’ and I pressed it.
Here was how it unfolded
A few weeks earlier, I’d listened to an ACQUIRED podcast about the US ‘military-industrial complex.’ The focus was on Lockheed Martin, the largest defence contractor to the US government. $50 billion of taxpayers’ money goes into funding Lockheed Martin yearly.
Lockheed Martin does not make the Aston Martin. It makes killing machines. The F-22 and F-35 Raptors. The F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. Those bad boys knocked out 90% of Baghdad’s military infrastructure on the first night of the Gulf War. Then there is the Black Hawk. And the Aegis Combat System. And the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles. And…you get the picture. Lockheed Martin probably made Thor’s Mjolnir.
As you can guess, I like military and espionage literature and movies. In secondary school, you’d find me poring over Osei Yaw Ababio during the day. At night, I suckled at the breasts of John le Carré, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.
It is seldom the case that a movie does justice to the novel that sired it. Not Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. That flick is absolute bees knees. The ensemble is stellar: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy.
But I digress.
So, yes, I like war and spook stories. I thus enjoyed the well-researched podcast about Lockheed Martin. It wove the Cold War, the DoD, Lockheed Martin and the CIA into one fine tapestry.
I wasn’t expecting an institution of spooks to be on LinkedIn. I mean, why would Jason Bourne be on LinkedIn? But we live in a woke era. Carlos the Jackal may well advertise on Instagram: ‘pay for one assassination, get two.’
Anyway, I fired up LinkedIn and typed in C-I-A.
And lo, there it is! The Central Intelligence Agency. With over 330K followers!
Scores of CIA employees were on LinkedIn: Recruiter. Intelligence Officer. Director, Field Operations. Director, HUMINT (Human Intelligence). It was intriguing.
Well, are there other spook agencies on LinkedIn?
So I searched for the Mossad, Russia’s SVR and FSB, MI6 and China’s MSS.
Nil. Nada. Not a dicky bird.
Yet here was the CIA, in its full covert glory, conspicuous on LinkedIn.
One of the profiles I found interesting was ‘HR Business Partner.’
I imagined a conversation between an HR Business Partner and an ‘asset.’
HR Business Partner: Hey Barry, I’m afraid we are putting you on a PIP – Performance Improvement Plan. You’ve been slipping. The mark in Novosibirsk? He’s still alive.
Barry: What? That can’t be! I drowned him in a barrel of Stolichnaya.
HR Business Partner: (Rolls eyes) Barry, he is Russian. You can’t drown a Russian in vodka…
Again, I digress.
So, the CIA is on LinkedIn. I decided to check on specific profiles.
I checked three profiles.
And the weirdest thing happened.
Within three minutes, those three people checked me out too!
Oh, Jide, you are so dead now!
Spooked, I closed my laptop.
Too late, fool. They’ve logged your IP and seen you. An asset is on his way to Lagos.
At that moment, I entertained some scary visions.
A SEAL Team Six packing.
The USS Gerald R. Ford changing course for Lagos.
An Ohio-class submarine lurking in the Bight of Bonny.
I went outside my office to look at the sky. There was an unusual glint in the firmament. Definitely an MQ-9 Reaper with Hellfire missiles.
Oh, my village people!
My name may have been run through many databases, including those at the US Embassy in Nigeria.
Wait!
That explains it!
That was why the US Consulate in Lagos invited me for an interview last year!
Let me fill you in.
The missus and I had submitted our passports for visa renewal through ‘Dropbox.’ We were frequent travellers to the US and took the renewal for granted. Yet, eight weeks after we submitted our passports, the visas weren’t issued. When we tracked the application online, the status read ‘Refused.’
‘Refused’ on the application status portal does not mean ‘Denied.’ ‘Refused’ only means the consular officer did not have all the information to approve or deny the visa. So, if your status reads ‘Refused,’ do not fret. Expect the embassy to contact you for an interview or to bring specific documents.
Which was what happened. The consulate wrote to us to attend an interview.
We went for the interview. Thoughts of Jamal Khashoggi flashed through my mind. He’d also gone to an embassy with his wife.
Well, it turned out the consular officer wanted to know about our trip to Cuba two years earlier.
Phew!
In retrospect, I do not blame the Consulate. Cuba is one of the four countries on the US list of ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism.’ Donald Trump added them to the list in 2021. In the eminent company of Iran, Syria and North Korea. And it is not like a Nigerian hadn’t tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane before. You can read about my Cuba trip here.
A quick history of US-Cuba beef.
Cuba, or El Cocodrilo, Mojito Mecca, or The Cha-Cha Chateau, is no friend of the United States. Not since 1959, when Fidel Castro took power and seized US economic assets in the country.
America imposed sanctions on Havana and aimed to topple the Castro administration. The CIA secretly trained and funded exiled counter-revolutionaries to invade Cuba and topple Castro. The invasion, dubbed the Bay of Pigs Invasion, failed spectacularly.
Incensed, Castro befriended the Soviet Union and declared Cuba a communist state. In turn, JFK was pissed and severed diplomatic ties with Cuba. At this point in history, the US and the Soviet Union were embroiled in a Cold War. America considered communism a cancer to be expunged.
This beef would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was when the US and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of thermonuclear exchange.
Castro had allowed the Soviet Union to start constructing missile bases in Cuba. The distance between Miami and Havana is only 466km. Much of the Eastern United States could be hit within minutes. America can’t have that.
Missile bases on America’s doorstep were no doubt a reciprocal gesture by the Soviet Union. In 1961, the US had placed Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey, a hair’s breadth from Russia.
America imposed a blockade or ‘quarantine’ of Cuba. This was to prevent Soviet vessels from delivering missile equipment to Cuba.
Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, flipped Uncle Sam the bird. Soviet vessels disregarded the blockade and inched towards Cuba.
America moved its military preparedness to DEFCON 3.
DEFCON means ‘Defence Readiness Condition’ or just ‘Defence Condition.’ It is a US military ranking system set up in 1959 for readiness against a potential nuclear exchange. It was an offshoot of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union.
There are five DEFCON levels: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. DEFCON 1 is ‘Cocked Pistol.’ America is ready to embark on a war within six hours.
Still, Soviet vessels pressed towards Cuba, inching ever closer to the blockade line.
Uncle Sam moved to DEFCON 2.
At DEFCON 2, 90% of the US Strategic Air Command weapons systems were ready to launch within one hour. That included 1,479 strike aircraft and 182 Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman missiles. 2,962 nuclear weapons were hot.
Yup, it was hair-raising. It was the first and only time the world came close to a nuclear war.
At the last moment, sane heads prevailed. Nikita Khrushchev ordered Soviet ships to turn back from the blockade line. Civilisation is saved.
Within a few weeks, the Soviet Union dismantled its missile sites in Cuba. In return, the US removed its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.
Castro blew a gasket at the Russian retreat. He was left holding the bag.
The US then doubled down on Havana with crippling sanctions. Those sanctions persist to date.
One of such sanctions made it challenging to travel to Cuba for tourism. American citizens were flat-out prohibited from travelling to Cuba for pleasure. The goal was to deny the communist government in Havana much-needed tourist dollars.
It is the same for Europeans. If a European travels to Cuba after 12 January 2021, s/he loses the privilege of visa-free travel to the US. To visit the US, s/he now needs to apply for a US visa. These challenges made travelling to Cuba not worth the hassle.
Yet, that was the country I dragged my mamasita to in 2022. As you can guess, I’m not blessed with much sense.
Back to the US consulate in Lagos.
We had stated in our visa applications that we’d been to Cuba. The consular officer wanted to know why we went there and what we did there. I’d answer and she’d probe further. She asked other questions too but kept circling back to Cuba.
I was beginning to regret the decision to go to Cuba.
And stupid me. My blog post on Medium was titled “Our Man in Havana. I ticked Cuba off my bucket list.” It is an innocuous headline. Cool even. Until you realise that Graham Greene, a former MI6 agent, wrote a spy novel about Cuba titled…Our Man in Havana.
Yup, the day it rained brains, I used an umbrella.
In the end, the consular officer renewed the visas. But I remained suspicious. Spooks are full of tradecraft. Maybe they want me to travel to the US so they can abduct me and take me to a black site. It may have been paranoia, but I thought the CBP officer who let me in at Dulles last November had a twinkle in his eyes.
Dulles is in Virginia. The CIA headquarters is in Virginia.
Ah, I watch too many spy movies!
Of course, the CIA is on LinkedIn. Why wouldn’t it? It is a public company. Every day people work there. Clerks, accountants, HR folks, PR folks, canteen people, IT; any function you might find in a big corporation. Not everyone at the CIA is Jason Bourne or Natasha Romanoff.
I suspect hundreds of people check the CIA out on job portals looking for opportunities. The 401K with the federal government isn’t too shabby. And there is the respect that comes with working for the foremost cloak-and-dagger agency in the world.
Especially from your high school bully.
Happy New Year, folks!