A Sitting CIA Director Spent the Night Tied to a Chair for a Trainee Rescue Drill

Just after 3 in the morning, in the woods of Virginia, William J. Burns was tied to a chair and wondering whether he had made a mistake.

Burns, the career diplomat who was then leading the agency, had volunteered for it. Early in his tenure, he had signed up for the final overnight test for rookie case officers, a grueling exercise known as the Special Operations Training Course.

The exercise takes place at the agency's sprawling Virginia training ground known as The Farm. It starts at about 8 in the evening and runs until 6 the next morning, and it puts trainees through paramilitary-style scenarios in the dark.

What struck Burns that night was not the tactics but the people. There were about 60 officers in the group, from all kinds of backgrounds. Some had military service, and the scenarios felt familiar to them. One was a woman in her early 40s, a mother of four with no military experience, and Burns recalled, "I watched her make just as significant contribution" as anyone else as the group worked through each problem.

The point, he realized, was not only learning the tools of the trade. Burns said the lesson was "learning to look out for one another because it was that sense of teamwork that mattered."

Then came the payoff. Around dawn, an elite Army commando team flew up from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to stage a hostage rescue. The commandos had been told a group of agency officers had been seized by an enemy regime and they were arriving to free them, guided by someone pretending to be a senior CIA officer.

Burns said, "it was worth the price of admission to see the look on the face of the young, burly and present Delta Force major coming up the stairs to see a real live CIA director tied to a chair."

For Burns, it became one of the highlights of his time at the agency, and a lesson in hiring. Success depended on talent and experience, but also on chemistry and a willingness, learned early, to take care of each other.