US universities turn schools for spies and more

WASHINGTON (AFP) — That young American exchange student who stayed with you last summer to do a language immersion course could be part of a new program to educate the next generation of US intelligence agents.

But don't worry: even if she does end up working for the CIA, the likelihood of her becoming an undercover operative is slim.

"Intelligence doesn't just mean spying, skulking around in a trench coat," said Jim Robbins, director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at Trinity University in Washington, one of nine programs aimed at revamping the US intelligence community.

"The CIA is the best known part of it, but the intelligence community writ large involves all the agencies throughout the government that are involved in the collection and analysis of information about threats," he said.

Trinity opened the doors to the pilot course for the Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence three years ago.

The program is funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the umbrella agency which oversees the 16 intelligence agencies in the United States, some of which -- such as the Treasury or Department of the Environment -- would not be linked automatically to intelligence activities.

Since 2005, the center has swelled, with eight more universities across the United States signing on to the program that wants to revamp the way young Americans perceive intelligence -- it isn't just spying -- and are trained to work in the very diverse field.

The program aims to "bring in groups to the intelligence community -- women, minorities, what have you -- who were previously under-represented," said Robbins.

Schools which are selected to be part of the program -- and there is not an Ivy League university, the formerly all-male schools which used to be the preferred hunting ground for intelligence recruiters, on the radar screen -- receive a grant from the ODNI, and set up their own, unique curriculum.

"We don't want a cookie cutter approach," said Dr Lenora Peters Gant, the ODNI official who oversees the CAE program.

"We want the curriculum to be interdisciplinary.

"Think about this: wouldn't it be nice to have an engineer who knows something about world religions, world cultures and can speak Farsi or Urdu?" she said.

The ODNI grant is used to send students abroad to study a language and learn about another culture.

Tanjier Belton went to France in 2006 from Trinity to study French. She aims to study law and then go on to work for the CIA.

Jesmeen Khan got a stipend to go to Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary last year. Her tentative ambition is to work for the State Department.

"Every university that has a grant has to identify students to become IC CAE scholars," Gant explained.

"Those students are required to go abroad and study a language or study culture and they get a stipend to go abroad," she said.

Florida International University (FIU) sent 16 students abroad last year as part of its IC CAE program.

"People want to go to China, to Brazil to study Portuguese, to Spain. They want to study Arabic, which is a critical language need. So far we have had people go to Morocco, Jordan and Egypt," David Twigg, associate director of the Gordon Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship Studies at FIU, told AFP.

"They're not going there as spies; they're going there as people who are trying to understand what's going on."

When the students return to the United States and complete their studies, they are under no obligation to work for one of the agencies under the umbrella of the ODNI.

"We do go out and recruit them, but we don't make them work for us," said Gant.

But many of the more than 400 scholars who have been in the program "want to come and work for us because of the mission," she said, slipping momentarily into the kind of spy-speak you hear in a James Bond film.

The lapse didn't last long.

"They want to do something that's altruistic for the world and America. They want to do something that will make a difference in everyday lives," Gant said.