In an effort to broaden its pool of potential recruits the Central Intelligence Agency has been giving presentations on college campuses. The Indiana Daily Student reported Monday that CIA agents identified only as "Henry," "Jamal," "Greg" and "Joe" gave a presentation last week before interested students at the Indiana University Career Development Center.
The four agents prior to their presentation handed out a "myth-dispelling" pamphlet to alleviate Hollywood misperceptions and most people's beliefs about the CIA's work. Two myths dispelled by the literature included that "everyone drives a sports car with machine guns on the tailpipes" and "you have to be a super human in every way."
Myths dispelled by the presenters emphasized that recruiting students for national security positions was serious business, underlined when the men required everyone present to turn off their cell phones since they could be considered two-way radios.
Christopher Mullins, a student who has studied Arabic for five years said, "I'm just going to listen and see what comes of it."
Indiana University is particularly interesting for the CIA because of its decades-old Altaic languages program, which includes the Central Asian languages Pashto, Tajik, Mongolian and Uzbek.
"Jamal," who repeatedly referred to parts of Central Asia as "take-your-pick-istan" said, "There are significant financial incentives for language proficiency."
