Hello,
I am not CIA and never have been but I turned down a contract offer last
month. But judging on friends and associates many contract employees are
long term "permanent" workers who are on a different remuneration package. A
contract employee may work with full timers and do the same job. Contract
employees have more flexibility. At least one fellow seemed to floated back
and forth between the Peace Corps and working as a CIA contract employee. It
was had to tell which of his two masters he served. Contract employees can
do things that employees can not.

Another fellow was Don Wilber who had the big write up in the New York Times
in the last year. Don was a contract employee for 20 to 30 years. Don
maintained non agency pursuits including other Non Government consulting
clients, numerous book deals, teaching, an interest in a magazine, and other
things that would have been more difficult if he was a full timer. He was
certainly a career contract employee.

I suspect contract employees number in the thousands but certainly not all
fit into the role of "spy". As for full timers going back in I suspect it is
on contract I can not imagine how else they could but someone else will have
to answer.

By the way when did we start calling the Drug Interdiction guys CIA? Last I
heard I thought they were under INR at State.
Best wishes,
Barry O'Connell

John Macartney wrote:

> QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS:
>
> CIA OFFICERS, CONTRACTORS, ASSETS & AGENTS?  The Peruvian AF shootdown
> of an American missionary plane using radar info (intelligence) provided
> by the US Government brings to the fore a question I have always puzzled
> over.  Perhaps some ex-CIA types out there can help on this.
>
> OFFICERS & AGENTS.  As most of us know, the CIA has thousands of
> regular, full time career employees -- both overt and in clandestine
> service.  Case officers of the DO, the CIA's clandestine service, are
> generally career employees, and they recruit and handle "agents," or
> "assets," the foreign informants (or spies) who are giving or selling
> information to the US Govt.  The relationship between case officers and
> their agents, as I understand it, is akin to the relationship between
> investigative reporters and the their "confidential sources."
> The terms "agent" and "asset," I believe, are essentially
> interchangeable.  (I know that other US intelligence services also have
> case officers and that career FBI officers are "agents," but let's stick
> to the CIA here so as not to get too confused.)
>
> CONTRACT EMPLOYEES?  The aircrew of the (USAF owned?) jet, a Cessna
> Citation, that provided radar information that led to the AT-37B
> to the missionaries' float plane were, according to all press reports,
> "CIA contract employees."
> Likewise, according to press, the individual that made the initial
> misidentification of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 as the
> Yugoslavian Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement that led to
> infamous bombing of that embassy was also a "CIA contract employee."  In
> that case, an analyst (and retired US Army officer) who worked in a CIA
> non-proliferation office.  (NY Times, 11Apr99)
> There have been many other reference in press to CIA contract employees
> -- some serving at Langley, others, like the aircrew, abroad.  Also, in
> some press reports, CIA contract employees are foreigners.  That
> "contract" category is what really prompts this post.
>
> SO WHAT IS THE STATUS OF CIA CONTRACT EMPLOYEES?  We can all understand
> contractors who manufacture and sell sensors, or maintain exotic
> software for the Agency, or fix a leaky roof.  But in many cases these
> "CIA contract employees" seem to be doing the real business of
> collecting or analyzing intelligence.
>  SO MY QUESTIONS?
> - What is the status of CIA contract employees?
> - Do many of them work full time?
> - Do some stay on for 10 years or more, for a career?
> - Do they number in the hundreds, or the thousands?
> - Do contract employees sometimes move into career positions?
> - Also, I am aware that many retired CIA acquaintances of mine,
> including former case officers, still work for the Agency from time to
> time as, I suppose, retired annuitants.  Is their status then "CIA
> contract employees"?
>
>     John Macartney