NOC out.

I have often complained about how few real spies the CIA has. Called NOCs for "non-official cover," the real spies operate outside the comfort and protection of U.S. embassies enjoyed by case officers. James Bamford, whose recent book, A Pretext for War, reveals that the CIA failed "to recruit a single source within bin Laden's growing Afghanistan operation," supplies a more precise definition of what 1 meant by the word "few." At their highest point during the 1990s, according to Bamford, there were only about 150 NOCs compared to about 2,500 case officers.

Why were there so few? The CIAs excuse is that NOCs cost too much and are too likely to be caught, with the danger of an embarrassing diplomatic dust-up for the government and of death for the agent. I suspect that an understandable fear of being caught and shot was the main reason, followed closely by a preference among agents for the comforts and perks of embassy life. Even many of the real NOCs--Bamford says most--use a business cover which permits them to live well. Living well is no sin, and one can understand how sometimes doing so would not be inconsistent with spying. Arriving at an al Qaeda camp at the wheel of a Jaguar, however, seems unlikely to be an effective technique for clandestine penetration.