Are the rules of the CIA outdated?
The rules of the CIA are not outdated in the sense that the agency always has to be on its toes. It has to always be wary of foreigners because we've been burned before, and we had CIA officers who had been recruited by foreign intelligence officers. One of the things that the CIA rules don't take into account is that the agency, and in particular the spies, tend to be a dynamic group of people who like to interact with foreigners, and inevitably they end up having close and continuous relationships with foreigners, many of which turn into romances or marriages. The CIA has thus adapted the rules a little bit. It used to be completely forbidden to have a romantic relationship with foreigners. As the CIA developed and the clandestine service developed, they realized that it was going to happen all the time. You have young, single people living overseas who are going to end up dating other young single people, and they might be foreign. They've adapted in that sense but they're still extremely distrustful of foreigners. One reason that's a shame is that we could use a lot of first generation Americans in our fight against terrorism. The CIA is still very distrustful for those people, and most of them are not going to be able to be hired by the CIA.
