Village people are subtle. They never come at you wielding machetes or as fearsome masquerades. No, they are far more cultured. They afflict you in secret. In the comfort of your office. While eating creamy cheese Alfredo pasta. Your sudden perishment will flummox people. An autopsy may reveal the cause of death as myocardial infarction. But it is 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 gallivanting around the globe. But I reckon that since they too are frequent fliers, my trifling peregrinations should provoke no envy in them. Sadly, they remembered me one fine afternoon in June 2024. They afflicted me with the type of idleness that the devil relishes. For out of nowhere, I had the sudden curiosity 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 is how it unfolded.
A week earlier, I’d listened to an enjoyable ACQUIRED podcast. It was about the much-maligned US “military-industrial complex.” The focus was on Lockheed Martin, the largest defence contractor to the US government.
I love espionage and war literature and I love military and spook movies. In secondary school, I suckled at the breasts of great spy novelists like John le Carré, Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. It was thus delightful to listen to the well-researched podcast. It wove the CIA, the Cold War, the DoD and Lockheed Martin into one fine tapestry.
Lockheed Martin makes killing machines. Like the F-22 and F-35 Raptors. Like the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters. Those bad boys knocked out 90% of Baghdad’s military infrastructure on the first night of the Gulf War. Then there is the Aegis Combat System. And the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles. And Hellfire missiles. And JASSM cruise missiles. And…you get the picture. Lockheed Martin may well have made the lightsaber and Mjolnir.
Now, though Lockheed is the biggest defence contractor to the DoD, it is not the only notable member of the military-industrial complex. There is Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics and BAE Systems.
And all these companies, laden with US weaponry secrets, are all on LinkedIn. I wondered if the CIA might be on there too.
I wasn’t expecting an institution of spooks to be on LinkedIn. I mean, these guys unalive people. Why would they be on LinkedIn? But we live in a woke era; you never know what you might find online. Carlos the Jackal may well be advertising on Instagram; pay for one assassination, get two assassinations.
Anyway, I fired up LinkedIn and typed in C-I-A.
And lo, there it is! The Central Intelligence Agency. With over 330 thousand followers!
Scores of CIA employees were on LinkedIn: “Recruiter.” “Intelligence Officer.” “Director, Field Operations.” “Chief Well-Being Officer.” “Director, HUMINT” (HUMINT = Human Intelligence).
It would be interesting to know if some of these folks were “Open to Work.”
But it was intriguing. 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.
These organisations had no trace on LinkedIn.
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 Kinkajou, I’m afraid we are putting you on a PIP – Performance Improvement Plan. That guy you were supposed to put the kibosh on in Novosibirsk? He’s still alive.
Kinkajou: What! How can that be? I drowned him in a barrel of Stolichnaya!
HR Business Partner: (Rolls eyes) He is Russian. You can’t drown a Russian in vodka…
But 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!
Can’t somebody play with you people? It is ordinary checking I was checking na!
Spooked, I closed my laptop.
Too late, fool. They’ve logged your IP and seen your picture. They’ve also probably dispatched an asset to Lagos.
At that moment, I saw some scary visions. A SEAL Team Six packing for Lagos. The USS Gerald R. Ford changing course for Lagos. And an Ohio-class submarine steaming towards West Africa. I went outside my office to look at the sky. There was an unusual glint in the firmament – definitely an MQ-9 Reaper drone with Hellfire missiles.
Oh, my village people!
I imagined that my name must have been run through many databases. They may even have checked with the US Embassy in Nigeria.
Wait!
That explains it!
That was why the US consulate in Lagos invited me for an interview last year! It all makes sense now!
The missus and I had submitted our B1/B2 visa renewal through the Interview Waiver Programme – “Dropbox.” We were frequent travellers to the US and took the renewal for granted. Yet, the visas were not issued eight weeks after we submitted our passports. When we tracked the application online, the status read “Refused.”
“Refused” on the application status portal does not mean “Denied.” This only means the consular officer did not have all the information required to approve or deny the visa. It’s a quirky DoS procedure. But it is not the same as your application in “administrative processing.” You don’t want your application in that black hole. So, if your status reads “Refused,” you can expect the Embassy to contact you for an interview or bring specific documents.
And that was what happened. In the ninth week, the embassy wrote to us to invite us for an interview.
The invitation was not a good feeling. It felt like a demotion. What might be wrong? What horrific truth have they discovered about me? Maybe they know about that time I bought a pizza with pineapples in it?
We went for the interview.
It turned out the consular officer wanted to know about our trip to Cuba two years earlier. Almost all the questions she asked were about Cuba.
In retrospect, I do not blame her. Who flies 9, 283 km from Lagos to Havana Banana?
Me, of course.
Now, El Cocodrilo, Mojito Mecca, or The Cha-Cha Chateau, otherwise known as the Republic of Cuba, is no friend of the United States. It hasn’t been since 1959 when Fidel Castro took power and expropriated US economic assets in the country. America imposed sanctions on Cuba and fixed to topple the Castro administration. The CIA secretly trained and funded exiled counter-revolutionaries to invade Cuba and topple Castro. The invasion failed spectacularly. Castro was pissed. He declared Cuba a socialist state and befriended the Soviet Union, the US’ Cold War adversary. Kennedy was pissed and severed diplomatic ties with Havana.
The beef between the US and Cuba would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. This was when America and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of thermonuclear war.
Castro had allowed the Soviet Union to build missile bases in Cuba. To America, Russian missiles in Cuba meant Russian thermonuclear missiles in Cuba. Which meant no more America. Because much of the Eastern United States could be hit within minutes if a nuclear missile was launched from Cuba. Florida is only 90 miles from Havana.
Nope, Comrade Khrushchev. The Western Hemisphere is our sphere of influence. We spelt that out in the Monroe Doctrine.
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. To the Soviet Union, it was a reciprocal gesture to America placing Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey the year before. What’s good for Goosey is good for Ganders. So, Soviet vessels disregarded the blockade and inched towards Cuba.
America moved its military preparedness from DEFCON 3.
Still, Soviet vessels pressed on towards Cuba, inching ever so close to the blockade line.
Uncle Sam moved to DEFCON 2.
At DEFCON 2, it meant over 90% of the US Strategic Air Command weapons systems were ready to launch within one hour. That was 1,479 strike aircraft, 182 Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman missiles; 2,962 total nuclear weapons and 1,003 refuelling tankers.
Yup, it was hair-raising. It was the first and only time that the world came close to a nuclear war.
It was a 12-day standoff. Eventually, sane heads prevailed in the US and the Soviet Union and a war was averted. The Soviet Union dismantled its missile sites in Cuba. In return, the US removed its Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
Castro was furious at the retreat of the Soviet Union. He left holding the bag. And how Uncle Sam doubled down on Havana with crippling sanctions! Those sanctions persist to date.
One of such sanctions prohibited Americans and others from travelling to Cuba for tourism. The intention was to starve the Cuban socialist regime of money.
For instance, citizens of most European countries do not need a visa to travel to the United States. They fill out the ESTA form online and are off. But Donald Trump had it in for Cuba. Close to the end of his first term in 2021, he made travel to Cuba harder. Any European who travelled to Cuba after 12 January 2021 loses the privilege of visa-free travel to the US.
Imagine Frau Koch or Lord Cutler Beckett queuing outside the US Embassy for a visa interview. They now have to appear before a consular officer and convince him/her that they are not intending immigrants. How demeaning!
The same year, the US also included Cuba on the list of “State Sponsor of Terrorism,” in the eminent companies of Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Travelling to Cuba simply wasn’t worth the hassle.
Yet, that was the same country I dragged my wife to in 2022. As you can guess, I’m not blessed with much sense.
But back to the US consulate in Lagos.
We had stated in our visa applications that we’d been to Cuba. But the consular officer wanted to know why we went there and what we did while there. I’d answer and she’d probe further. She asked other questions too but kept circling back to Cuba.
And stupid me. I’d written a blog post about the trip titled Our Man in Havana. I ticked Cuba off my bucket list. It is an innocuous headline. 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 was raining brains, I used an umbrella.
In the end, she issued the visas. But I remained suspicious. The CIA is full of tradecraft. Maybe they wanted me to travel to the US so they could abduct me and take me to a black site. I can’t be sure, but I thought the CBP officer who let me in at Dulles last November had a twinkle in his eyes. I was flying into the US through Virginia. The CIA headquarters is in Virginia. Perfect.
Ah, I watch too many B-rate spy movies!
Of course, the CIA is on LinkedIn. Why wouldn’t they? They are still a public company. Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan aren’t the only guys who work there. Every day people work there too. Clerks, accountants, HR folks, PR folks, canteen people, IT; any function you might find in a big corporation. I suspect hundreds of people check them out on LinkedIn too looking for opportunities. I hear the 401K with the federal government isn’t too shabby. Plus, you know, there is the respect that comes with working with the number one cloak-and-dagger agency in the world.
Especially from your high school bully.
Happy New Year, folks!