{"id":12389,"date":"2020-08-05T12:56:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T16:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=12389"},"modified":"2022-07-27T09:27:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T13:27:41","slug":"cia-training-edward-snowden-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/cia-training-edward-snowden-geneva\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Snowden’s CIA Training: Breaking the Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What did Edward Snowden do<\/a> after CIA Training? What happens at training to be a telecommunications information systems officer (TISO)? How did complaints secure Edward Snowden Geneva instead of his preferred post?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CIA training is conducted at a placed called the Hill. The training program for TISOs Ed Snowden went to included work with a variety of older technologies. Read more about CIA training, Edward Snowden, Geneva offices, and what Ed took away from all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

CIA Training<\/strong>: Poor Conditions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ed went to the Hill for CIA training to be a TISO. Ed, like other students, lived in a dilapidated Comfort Inn hotel during the six-month training period.
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Ed\u2019s classes were about all things technology. For example, he once had to haul an eighty-pound suitcase of Cold War-era communications gear up the roof of a building. Then, using only a sheet of coordinates and a compass, he had to find CIA stealth satellites and send CIA headquarters a radio message. He also learned about Van Eck phreaking (mirroring someone else\u2019s monitor), how to service cables (physical cables connecting agency sites underground and underwater), and terminals (computers). Ed\u2019s was the last year that TISOs studied these older technologies.
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One day, the stairs at the Comfort Inn collapsed. This was a turning point\u2014many of Ed\u2019s classmates had been concerned about how the school\u2019s administration was violating federal labor laws by requiring unpaid overtime, refusing to honor family benefits, or denying leave. Ed wasn\u2019t too bothered because he was used to this kind of exploitation in the industry, but some of his older classmates weren\u2019t having it. Ed\u2019s classmates approached him and asked him to talk to the school\u2019s head about their concerns because he was well-liked. <\/strong>
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Ed agreed, partly because he valued justice, partly because it sounded fun. He wrote an email to the school\u2019s head, who told him that the class would have to just suck it up for the remaining 12 weeks of the program. At this point, his classmates gave up. They were used to broken management and didn\u2019t have the time to keep making a fuss. Ed, however, was now fueled by justice, and wrote an email to the school head\u2019s boss, and then his boss. 
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Ed\u2019s emails improved conditions at CIA training a lot; however, he\u2019d violated the chain of command<\/strong> and caused his superiors to question his loyalty to the mission. Instead of posting him to the Special Requirements Division, where he\u2019d hoped to work, they sent him to Geneva.
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CIA Training and Edward Snowden: Geneva Was Not the Only Result<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Other lasting impacts of CIA training include the experience of indoctrination and learning to blend in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indoctrination<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

On their first day, contract technologist employees go to a session called Indoc, short for indoctrination. The session has a few goals:<\/p>\n\n\n\n