The pickup was one of a dozen or so the Agency had flown in for use by CIA personnel. Unlike the Pentagon, whose employees went around in armored carriers, and the State Department and USAID, whose diplomats were transported in caravans of fortified Chevy Suburbans, the CIA wanted its employees to operate anonymously. To blend in. So we drove this fleet of well-used trucks.
The Toyota Hilux — known to Americans as the Tacoma — is arguably the AK-47 of trucks.
“Unlike the Pentagon” Lol, no. Military does humint too.
This creature…
I swear to God, the crap spewing off its fingertips. You want to know why everything went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan? Things like this, running the show and making the decisions.
First off, everybody knew who the CIA people were outside the wire. It’s not too hard to figure out, when you need to. Most of the “operatives” were made before they left the airport, and kept under surveillance by the various groups. Wonder why we kept getting rolled up? Stuff like that–”Oh, we’ll drive around anonymously in brand-new Toyota Hiluxes we’ll have flown in from Dubai or Kuwait…”, when those things stood out like sore thumbs among Iraqi civilian vehicles. If you were going to be blending in, you’d have had to be driving something brought into Iraq when they were under sanctions and that meant something decidedly lower on the food chain than a Toyota Hilux or Land Cruiser, maybe a very used Hyundai van or something. Iraq under Saddam was not a very prosperous country, and a new or even somewhat used Toyota was going to stand out like a sore thumb.
Of course, the idiots who were stupid enough to sign up as CIA personnel that were going to “go native” weren’t really bright enough to figure that out, which led to no end of entertainment.
There were switched-on people with the CIA over there, but this bint wasn’t one of them. There were people who I think the real “operatives” were using as colorful distractions, while they did their thing well into the shadows. They didn’t fly into Iraq through BIAP, either–They infiltrated in from Turkey or Jordan, and just sort of appeared in your AO with no notice and no real drama. The sort that showed up from BIAP were generally useless, while when you got intel that meant something, it came in from the second, far less noticeable sort.
TBH, I’m not even sure who a lot of those folks worked for. They sure as hell aren’t writing tell-all memoirs where they’re making themselves out to be heroes the way this twatwaffle is. I would not be surprised at all to find out that the reality is that she and her fellows of the same sort were on the books as “distractions”, rather than anything anyone expected anything productive from.
If someone tells you they were CIA? Or, for that matter, any other intelligence agency? Odds are pretty good that you’re dealing with a Walter Mitty-esque poseur that likely was only ever involved peripherally or not at all. The real deal don’t talk, just like the real deal SF types don’t go all Richard Marcinko–That crap is solely a Navy SEAL vice, and not often encountered anywhere outside their circles. Not sure why, either–Some SEAL folks are legit badasses, but there are an awful lot of Marcinko-esque types that seem to be more sizzle than steak. The number of SEAL operations that have gone seriously south kinda speak for themselves, ya know?
Likewise, the intel agencies–If they’re talking about themselves as working for any of ‘em, they’re probably not, or are merely there as protective coloration and/or support. The real-deal types will tell you they’re there as something really innocuous and very pedestrian–”Oh, yeah… Our team is here to do maintenance on the satellite dishes…”. Not to be mentioned is that there are 30 of them, six trailers, and the satellite dishes all belong to them and are aimed about where the microwave relays going into Syria are all at…
And, they’re not going to be writing any memoirs or tell-all books about their work, either.
The CIA are just jealous of us legitimate Hilux owners. They’re just LARPing. And, no, despite Isegoria’s comment ten years I still haven’t mounted a .50 cal on the back. I can’t get the ammunition in rural France.