As one who has met with CIA personnel in Southeast Asia, and a Cold War veteran, I agree that the men and women that serve in that agency ARE heroes, occupying and moving in the shadows.
One idiot poster, whom i forgot the name of, decried the entire agency about some fool air disaster. Obviously, that poster has never had the opportunity to give back to his nation, what he has sucked out of it.
when there WAS a Soviet Union, and the connective tissue called The Warsaw Pact, the world was a very different place, then today. People died, just so that we, the people of America, could go on with our lives. And they died, in the shadows, in the dark, and some times, alone.
Full marks to the CIA whose officers serve in some of the rattiest posts in the world, under the rattiest of conditions. Let’s don’t forget the intel folks from other agencies who serve alongside them in embassies and consulates under the same conditions. CIA officers face more dangers than some of their brethren of course.