78 AMERICAN SPYspective American spies. Run by former US military personnel with CIA
experience, SOTC gave us a real taste of military life, without having to
actually join the military. The purpose of SOTC was not to mold Amer-
ica’s future spies into Special Forces soldiers, although the focus of our
training was indeed on Special Forces / guerrilla tactics and operations.
We learned the fundamentals of asymmetric or unconventional warfare,
from the insurgent’s point of view. We conducted hit-and-run ambushes
and made (and detonated) IEDs and plastic explosive shape charges. We
saw how deadly det cord could be. We blew the hell out of semitrucks and
anything else they’d let us blow up. I loved it. Looking back, I realize that
SOTC was not unlike ISIS training, but without the messy distractions of
Facebook and decapitation.
Unlike al-Qaeda trainees, we were not subjected to the dreaded monkey
bars. I always wondered why al-Qaeda broadcast propaganda images of its
recruits swinging on monkey bars. Were these comical video clips meant
to terrify us? Or did bin Laden secretly harbor a twisted sense of humor?
My five-year-old daughter, upon observing the terror group’s monkey-bar
antics on TV one day, rolled her eyes and said, “I could do that,” before
returning to her coloring book.
The purpose of our “basic training” was team and confidence building,
as well as familiarization with a host of military and special warfare con-
cepts. We were not required to have “high and tight” haircuts (although
they were advisable), but we lived in Quonset hut barracks, ran PT, ate in
a mess hall, wore camouflage fatigues, and spent days on end in the woods.
After three years of city life, law school, and the DC bar exam, I found
that SOTC was a very welcome change of pace. The fact that our CIA
training was taking place near historic American battlefields, including the
site of a seminal battle for America’s independence, made it all the more
meaningful.
We received intensive training and conducted day and night exercises
in land navigation, amphibious (small boat) operations, conventional and
specialized weapons, guerrilla warfare, and explosives and demolition.
Besides the usual array of US small arms and assault rifles, we threw hand
grenades and fired M60 machine guns, M79 grenade launchers, AK-47s,
Uzis, WWII-era M3 Grease Guns, and, my personal favorite, a Czecho-
slovak Škorpion 7.65 mm machine pistol. I’d never shot trap or skeet