The unique challenges of the CIA’s recreational activity leagues

I can kind of understand the CIA's anal-retentiveness here, regarding mundane company-sponsored activities. The NSA got its first dose of massive journalistic exposure partly because James Bamford, who wrote "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, got his hands on internal NSA newsletters, which were apparently like any company's newsletters in that they were meant to be read by employees and family members. He was able to FOIA all of these newsletters, get some inside information about the NSA, and eventually use it as leverage to get the NSA to give him more access:

http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.de/2008/11/interv...

> Among the documents was an NSA newsletter. These are things the NSA puts out once a month. They're fairly chatty, but if you read them closely enough you can pick up some pretty good information about the agency. . . . When I was reading one of the newsletters, there was a paragraph that said, "The contents of this newsletter must be kept within the small circle of NSA employees and their families." And I thought about it for a little bit, and I thought, hmm, they just waived their protections on that newsletter--if that's on every single newsletter then I've got a pretty good case against them. If you're going to open it up to family members, with no clearance, who don't work for the agency, then I have every right to it. That was a long battle, but I won it, and they gave me over 5,000 pages' worth of NSA newsletters going back to the very beginning. That was the first time anyone ever got a lot of information out of NSA.

... You wouldn't know, by looking at us in our sunglasses, our somber dark suits, and carrying our concealed pistols and compact machine guns ... that we were sitting in the privileged sanctum of the White House planning a clandestine baseball game. We weren't supposed to be planning one. Agent-in-Charge Doltmeer was opposed to it, but that only meant that we wouldn't let him play.

Without explanation, which frequently was how our lives progressed, someone put this flyer on the bulletin board at work:

    First Annual Baseball Game between the CIA and the Secret Service
    Date: July 14
    Time: Classified
    Location: Classified

It seemed juvenile and a little stupid, so most of us liked it immediately... Doltmeer didn't think any of it was funny.

"Who put this crap here?" he asked, as he looked at the flyer.

"I'll start an investigation immediately. Plus we'll need some uniforms and gloves," I said.

-- John Welter, Night of the Avenging Blowfish

It seems quite reasonable. Let's assume that it's known to the public that Alice and Bob work for CIA. If their colleague Charlie would openly go bowling with Alice and Bob, then it would lead outsiders to understand that Charlie works in CIA, which is very, very undesirable in many cases.

If Charlie wants to keep his CIA ties secret, then bowling with colleagues is either simply prohibited (as for "Employee Group C" in the document) or possible only if an appropriate cover story is arranged for the miraculous coincidence that Charlie happens to be bowling in the same time and place as Alice and Bob.

This is the second puff piece about the CIA I've read recently (non-American). Any particular reason for these or is it random?

Ah I see (in edit) -- thank you.