I WAS A HOOKER FOR THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100210005-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: September 3, 1977
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/18: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100210005-5
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NEW REPUBLIC
3 SEPTEMBER 1977
The story of a brief career in scientific research.
I V'Vasi~HookerfortheCIA
by Maggie 'Scarf
His name was Arp. I'd questioned him about the
ethnicity of that name but he would say nothing, even
though I'd assured him that I had no prejudices of any
kind and to me sex was strictly a business proposition.
But he only smiled mysteriously, saying: "I'm not here
for sex exactly." He'd stripped the sheets from my vast
kingsized bed, however, and remade the whole thing
carefully, using Boy Scout corners. There wasn't a
wrinkle upon the entire surface when he bid me into his
arms. He was a future-oriented person, as I realized a
moment later when the sexual act was completed. "And
now," he said brusquely, leaping from. the bed, "1 must
set myself to rights again."
I looked at him. Nothing had happened, I wanted to
remark, that could have disarrayed him in the slightest.
But I said nothing, fearing that his male pride might be
at stake. He went into the bathroom and soon I heard
the sound of water running in the shower. After a brief
interval he called to me asking if I had any extra Comet
cleanser. ..
When he came out he looked healthy and spotless. He
was fully dressed in his dark suit, diagonally striped tie
and white buttoned-down shirt. I was glad, for he had a
large and ugly scar that ran down the middle of his
entire torso. When I'd asked him about this Arp would
only say that it had to do with an unsuccessful attempt
to open him up. As far as I could see the attempt had
been successful-but he wasn't the kind of person one
dared to prod too far.
I'd donned a negligee during his absence and was
lying upon the bed reading Erik Erikson's Childhood and
Society. This book fascinated me at the time because I'd
reached an impasse in my own Adult Development. I
was 25, one of the highest priced in the business, but-
was feeling increasingly alienated, empty and alone. I
was in'the stage Erikson defines as "Intimacy versus
Isolation"-and yet who, I debated, would ever want to
maintain an intimate involvement with someone in my
own line of business? I had painted myself into one of
life's corners. There seemed to be no clear way back into
the society at large. I had an Identity, or perhaps a
pseudo-Identity. And whichever it was it paid awfully
well.
But I was in mental pain, and Arp's sudden question
came to me as particularly apt. :Have you ever," he
demanded, "considered going into scientific research?"
I admitted that I once had, but then shrugged
younger sister suffering from dyslexia. I'd had to start
my present career at the bottom, in a massage parlor-
"Are you an orphan?"asked Arp, his strangely pale eves
narrowing with interest. I explained that I wasn't, and
that my parents were quite wealthy. "They never liked f
me or my younger sister, though ... and my mother
took the position that if she could choose her own i
friends she should also be able to choose her family."
Arp made no comment. He'd opened a luxurious
leather briefcase while I'd been speaking, and now he
took out a military-style hairbrush with an amber
handle. He ran it over his short-clipped blond head, but
there wasn't a hair there long enough to be affected. He
put the brush away and took out a matching amber
comb. He combed quickly through his eyebrows, which
were bushy and flecked with grey. . .
I'd formed the suspicion that he might be a spy.
A few days later Arp asked me to meet him at the
Grand Central end of the Times Square Shuttle at 11
pm. "Never," I replied. I was suffering from existential
grief and angst and did consider life meaningless but
hadn't, as I told him on the telephone, completely lost
my marbles. "Don't worry, you'll be perfectly safe," he
replied shortly. I could almost see the joyless smile on
his face. "I am armed," he added, and then hung up. I'd
have called him back if he'd given me any number-but
he hadn't. I never would have gone if I weren't still
tantalized by the possibility he d mentioned at our last
meeting-a career in scientific research.
I knew that I'd come to a place in my life in which all.
Adult Developmental Growth had ceased. I had to stop
and remake some of the foolish decisions I'd made in the
last phase ("Identity versus Role Confusion'). It was
there that I'd screwed up, and thus rendered myself
unable to move on and into the "Intimacy versus
Isolation" stage and to traverse this one successfully.
And so, against my own better judgment, I went down
into the subway station at 11 pm.
e was there. On the trip to Times Square he
revealed that he was an agent of the Central In-
telligence Agency, and that he wanted to enlist my
services in a special research project which had been
given the name MK-ultra. "What does the MK stand
.for?" I asked. He would answer only that it was a code-
name, and that I must not pursue this question further.
"I only wondered," I explained, "because as it happens
those were the initials of someone I knew, before she
got married, that is." He looked around the half-empty
subway car nervously. No one was sitting within
earshot except for an old wino muttering TV commer-
cials to himself. But of course, that couldhave.been a-1
cover for an operative on the Other Side.
helplessly.. I'd - -- -I--- -- --- ---4. , I --- - -
1e, l Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/18: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100210005-5 ,1,,I