CIA in recruitment pitch to Arab-Americans

Steven Stanek, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 20. 2009 11:31PM UAE / November 20. 2009 7:31PM GMT

WASHINGTON // A new television advertisement to be broadcast nationwide in the United States shows an Arab-American family preparing for dinner in a sleek apartment. Middle Eastern tapestries decorate the walls, platters of food are spread out across a large table – it has all the trappings of a modern-day iftar.

It is not until the end of the 30-second spot that you know what is being sold: “Your nation, your world. They are worth protecting,” says a narrator, speaking English with a Middle Eastern accent. “Careers at the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The advertisement is part of an unprecedented push by the CIA to recruit Arab-Americans to its ranks. It was unveiled this week – along with another spot targeting Farsi-speaking Iranian-Americans – at a screening in Dearborn, Michigan, a community outside Detroit with the highest concentration of Arabs in the United States.

A CIA spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said the advertisements were designed to fill “a need” at the agency.

Although the CIA does not release statistics of the ethnicity of its agents, it has said that only about a third of analysts and 40 per cent of overseas operatives are proficient in a foreign language.

Ms Harf did not provide specifics on how many new officers the agency is seeking, though she said the plan was to make the CIA “reflect the world it covers”.

“We are actively looking for people who are from first and second-generation American communities, people who know the cultures that we need to operate in, know the language,” she said, adding that CIA receives 160,000 “competitive” applications a year. “Those things are intangibles that are much harder to teach.”

But if the CIA hopes to attract more Arabic and Farsi speakers, it must overcome the stigma attached to it by many who populate the ethnic Arab and Persian communities in the United States.

The agency, which is deeply involved in the fight by the US against al Qa’eda, is viewed with scepticism for its alleged role in harsh interrogations and the extraordinary rendition programme, where terror suspects are secretly transferred for questioning to foreign countries with less stringent torture laws.

It also suffers from the negative views many have of its sister agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which oversees highly controversial programmes, such as domestic wiretapping and the surveillance of mosques and Islamic charities, which have greatly increased since the September 11 attacks.

“There definitely is an image problem,” said Khalil AlHajal, community editor at the Dearborn-based Arab American News newspaper. “For many people, just because of the record of torture and extraordinary rendition, the CIA will never be able to get in with them.”

This is not the first time the CIA has reached out to US citizens of Arab and Iranian descent. In fact the agency has been recruiting in Dearborn, home to more than 30,000 Arab-Americans according to the latest census, since 2002.

The CIA has sponsored dinners of local Arab organisations in an effort to improve its reputation, and it has bought advertisements in online and local print media, including the Arab American News. “They’re making an effort and it’s clear,” said Mr Al Hajal said.

CIA recruiters, for their part, say their efforts have been greeted warmly in Dearborn and elsewhere.

“There are people in this community who are such patriotic Americans, who look at the CIA and say ‘that’s a place I want my kids to work’,” Ms Harf said of Dearborn.

Christina Petrosian, chief of advertising and marketing for CIA’s recruitment and retention centre, added: "“They are very receptive to us here.”

Ms Petrosian said the commercial’s production team consulted with focus groups and current Arab-American CIA employees as they sought ideas for the new television commercials. Efforts were made, she said, to use themes that would appeal to Arab and Iranian sensibilities.

The commercial featuring the Arab family dinner, for example, tries to capture the Arab emphasis on family and friends, Ms Petrosian said. She said that wall hangings and dinner settings were chosen as “connectors to the Arab world”.

“It’s the overall Arab style in a contemporary way,” she said. “This is one way where we can show them, through a different medium, that we understand their culture and they are welcome to come here and join the CIA family.”

The other advertisement, which targets Farsi speakers, features an array of Iranian-American professionals: a female scientist, lawyer, economist and a man who appears to be holding a Quran. “We are the CIA,” the characters say at the end of the 30-second advertisement.

That commercial was designed to resonate with the “Persian heritage of intellectuals and innovators that have been respected for thousands of years”, Ms Petrosian said.

Both advertisements, which are expected to air on TV and websites in the next few months, are also trying to pitch the idea that Arab-Americans and Iranian-Americans can retain their culture and faith and still be patriotic.

But recruiting Iranian-Americans may prove particularly difficult, community leaders say.

Many Iranians here still view the CIA with wariness for its involvement in the coup d’état in 1953 that deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq.

“They are very sceptical of the CIA,” Michelle Moghtader, the director of community outreach for the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, said, characterising the agency’s recruitment effort as “an uphill battle”.

“I know many Iranians willing to serve their country in other ways, but the CIA is that one sort of entity that is somewhat taboo.”

Ms Moghtader said Iranian Americans who work for the CIA tend to keep quiet about their occupations, fearing a backlash from the community. “It is a very sensitive subject,” she said.

sstanek@thenational.ae