CIA GO AWAY!
SECRETARY: Here’s Mr. Fink, sir.
STUDENTS (chanting):
WE WON’T SELL OUR SOULS TO THE DEVIL!
OUR MOM DIDN’T RAISE US TO BE SPIES!
THE HELL WITH YOUR DOUBLETHINK REVEL!
YOU WHORES WITH YOUR WHORE-HIRING LIES!
RECRUIT ER (excitedly): Obscenity! Obscenity! Go tell the cops to arrest them. All of them! Public obscenity. . .
SECRETARY (softly, wearily): I don’t think we should do that, sir. We'd only have to supply the money to bail them out and we’re over our budget now.
STUDENTS (chanting):
SEND US TO SAIGON, SEND US TO DIE!
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!
WHOSE NU ORDER? WHOSE BAD GUESS?
CIA! CIA!
MESS! MESS! MESS!
RECRUIT ER (sadly): They sure know how to hurt a fellow. Close that door, will you?
SECRETARY: Yes, sir. I’ll be right outside if you want me.
RECRUITER: Hello, Mr. Fink. A pleasure to meet you. Now sir, I understand you’re interested in the career opportunities afforded by the CIA.
FINK (a little cagey): Well, interested enough to want to find out more about your program.
RECRUITER (enthusiastically): I see. Now, suppose I just point out some of the many advantages to you.
FINK: All right.
RECRUITER: You’ve read Ian Fleming, have you?
FINK: Yes. But what’s that got to do with the CIA? His hero’s an English secret agent.
RECRUITER (voice filled with innuendo): A spy is a spy, my boy. Irresistible to women by nature of his profession. Sex is one of the greatest fringe benefits we have to offer.
FINK: I don’t know. I tire easily. I have an allergic condition and sometimes women make me break out in hives.
RECRUITER: Well, of course there are all sorts of other benefits. We don’t insist that our agents make love to every woman they meet in the course of their work. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to encourage you if I thought you’d give the CIA a bad name. You’re not queer or anything, are you?
FINK: I am not!
RECRUITER: You’re sure? I mean, we have a personnel arrangement with the State Department. Exchanges can be worked out.
FINK: I am not fruity!
RECRUITER: All right. No offense intended. As I was saying there are many other advantages to a CIA career. Travel—
FINK: I don’t know. My mother doesn’t like me to go too far from home. I’d have to talk it over with her.
RECRUITER: Security—
FINK: Security?
RECRUIT ER: Yes, nobody is as secure as a CIA agent. No matter where he is, he knows he’s never alone. There’s someone watching over him all the time. The NKVD, The Chinese, the FBI, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence, and, of course, always another CIA agent.
FINK: That certainly does sound like it should give a fellow a secure feeling.
RECRUITER: We-e-elll, we don’t believe in taking risks. Except sometimes—
FINK: Gee, I don’t know.
RECRUITER: And then there's our mental health program. That’s very important.
FINK: Mental health program?
RECRUITER: Yes. There is no single group in America today which can boast of such a high degree of mental health as CIA personnel.
FINK: Why is that?
RECRUIT ER (warming to his subject): Why? I’ll tell you why. What is mental health anyway? Mental health is adjustment to society. Now, I ask you, who is better ad- justed to the world as it is today than the CIA? We are never torn psychologically by a conflict of interests. When such a conflict arises, we side with both sides. We finance the agrarian revolutionists—until they begin to win and show signs of Communist leanings, of course-—and we support the existing power structure--until it topples and is replaced by another power structure which we also support. It’s better to give than to receive; that’s a psychological truism. We give freely to both sides, which fills us with a sense of euphoric philanthropy, and yet there is no depression in the giving because it is the taxpayers’ money that we are dispensing. This euphoria extends into the realm where mind and morality meet. Again the result is mental health. Not only is God always on our side, but also we are always on the side of Right; this has to be so just because we are always on both sides. The dedicated CIA man has made the perfect adjustment to his environment. In a paranoid world there can be no such thing as paranoia; the true paranoid in such a world is the embodiment of the ideal mental adjustment. Where schizophrenia is a way of life, the so-called “normal” person is the real deviant. To side with labor and management at the same time, with Bircher and Trotskyite, with the Muslims and the Klan, with the university administration and the rebelling student groups, with the Torys and the anarchists, and so on, and to take pride in the duplicity, to have banished any feeling of guilt about it, that is the hallmark of the truly brain-scrubbed, mind-adapting man of our times. Such a man is never confused by political paradox, never disturbed by the juggling of opposites, never alarmed at the double faces—like his own—worn by the people around him. Such a man has found mental health. And the only place for such a man is the CIA. It is the womb from which the seeds of mental health are being delivered. In the CIA, we are all -- all of us! -- examples of true freedom from neurosis, real mental health!
FINK: Have you had that tic long?‘
RECRUITER: No. It just comes on me when I get overemotional.
FINK: I see.
RECRUITER: And, of course, there’s the added psychological reward of helping one’s country fight the Russian conspiracy, the Chinese conspiracy, the Cuban conspiracy, the Cambodian conspiracy, the Lebanese conspiracy, the-— Um . . .
FINK: The GOP conspiracy? You know, like Barry and Ronnie, say.
RECRUITER: You betcha! And the Democratic Party conspiracy. They spotted that one down in Dixie all right.
FINK (voice quivering): All the anti-American American conspiracies. They’ve got to be stopped!
RECRUITER: And only the CIA can stop them. What do you say now? Will you join us?
FINK: To fight conspiracy? Yes, I will!
RECRUITER: Then raise your right hand and prepare to take the CIA oath.
FINK: Like this?
RECRUITER: Not quite. Bend the elbow a little more. We used to hold it that way until someone pointed out it was a little too close to the old fascist salute. Now we bend the elbow more. That’s it. Now bend your thumb and pinky ’til they're joined and stick the three fingers straight up.
FINK: All three? I thought it was only one finger.
RECRUIT ER: No. That might be misunderstood. That’s it. All three straight up. Now repeat the pledge after me.
FINK: I’m ready.
RECRUITER: On my honor I will do my best . .
FINK: On my honor I will do my best . . .