Looking Out for the CIA

What's a philosophy major and Quaker pacifist doing in a place like the CIA? After 19 years with the agency, Marjorie "Midge" Walton Holmes '63 has no doubts. "The CIA is keeping us out of war," she said.
Holmes, who is deputy of strategic planning in the CIA's Office of Public Affairs, has been with the agency since 1977 and recently was honored as one of the 1996 Outstanding Women of the Central Intelligence Agency. Until three years ago Holmes was head of the CIA library, helping analysts "put pieces of puzzles together" and informing policy makers about what's going on at borders or hot spots all over the world. "This is important stuff for policy makers," said Holmes. "You've got to get it right. If something breaks in Bosnia, we'd better be on top. This job has a lot riding on it."
The questions brought to the CIA are different from those at a public library, says Holmes, who earned a master's in library science in 1967 and worked as a reference librarian for nine years in Fairfax County, Va. At the agency, she said, "It's `Are the cattle dying of anthrax or is it biological war?'" The CIA library, for employees only, contains vast amounts of material on economics, science and technology, she says, and no fiction.
In her public affairs position Holmes says she deals with the broadcast media and Hollywood. She's aware that a public affairs office in a clandestine agency is an oxymoron but says that what she does is "not just infomercials."
After a call from Disney Adventures, a magazine for kids, for instance, she set up CIA training for the writer, "Mr. Adventure." Two pieces on the agency appeared on the Discovery Channel and another on ABC's Good Morning America with Joan Lunden. Holmes says she's most pleased with helping a Make-A-Wish Foundation child's dream come true when the 9-year-old boy was ushered in to the CIA's inner sanctum to do spy stuff like wear night-vision goggles, take clandestine photos and learn the craft of disguise. She also arranged the filming at the CIA's front door of a scene in the movie Mission: Impossible.
The agency encourages job rotation, says Holmes, who won a competitive position in 1989-90 with Maine Senator William Cohen. ("I wasn't supposed to supply him with information," she explained. "I was a legislative assistant on health care.") That led to a post in the CIA's Office of Congressional Affairs providing new members of Congress with information about the agency.
With three grown children, she and her husband, Chris, a senior CIA official, are "a tandem couple, overt, not covert." Both, that is, could go abroad openly and with no attempt at concealment.
Nevertheless, she still can't talk about some things--the number of CIA employees, the number of women, not even the specific language of the award the agency presented her, although she says it was given for "mentoring, leadership, networking, helping junior people progress through their careers."
Holmes admits that "you give up a lot of privacy to come here" but says she's never regretted working for the CIA. "It's a great way to prevent wars," she said. "And every day was interesting."