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20 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS
applied only in this capacity, which entailed a five-year employment
agreement, the minimum requirement for an intelligence technol-
ogy job was an associate’s degree awarded by a two-year community
college in electronics and communications, engineering technology,
computer network systems, or electronics engineering technology.
Candidates had to have had a final GPA of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale
from a fully accredited technical school or university. Snowden, as
we've seen, did not meet these standards. If a candidate lacks these
qualifications, the CIA can make an exception only if he or she has
at least two years’ civilian or military work experience in the tele-
communications and/or automated information systems field that is
comparable to one of the requisite degree fields. Snowden in no way
qualified in this way either.
Under extraordinary circumstances, even the minimum require-
ments might be waived if the applicant had a distinguished mili-
tary career and an honorable discharge. Snowden, however, did not
complete his military training at Fort Benning and received only an
administrative discharge.
© The CIA, to be sure, had needed computer-savvy recruits to ser- ©
vice its expanding array of computer systems since 1990. By 2006,
however, there was no shortage of fully qualified applicants for IT
jobs who met the CIA’s minimum standards. Most of them had uni-
versity course records, work experience at IT companies, computer
science training certificates from technical schools, and other such
credentials. The CIA, like the NSA, also obtained technicians with
special skills for IT jobs from outside contractors. So it had no need
for employing a twenty-two-year-old dropout who did not meet its
requisites. According to Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA station chief
in Europe, the only plausible way that Snowden, with no qualifica-
tions, was allowed to jump the queue was that “he had some pull.”
In 2006, Snowden’s grandfather, who had attained the rank of
rear admiral, was certainly well connected in the intelligence world.
After twenty years’ service in the Coast Guard, Barrett had joined
an interagency task force in 1998, which included top executives
from the CIA, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
It had been set up to monitor any gaps in the U.S. embargo on Cuba,
and Barrett, as one of its leaders, was in constant liaison with the
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