As You Waterboard the Detainee, Set Your Intention and Remember to Breathe

If you think your job is stressful, think about how bad the CIA officers—whose daily tasks involve anything from ordering foreign drone strikes to a little bit of domestic surveillance—must have it!!!! Thankfully, the CIA’s top brass seems to be sympathetic to these demands, and want the world to know that they encourage agency officers to indulge in a weekly dose of self-care. Over the past few months, the CIA’s Twitter account has published a baffling series of tweets, hashtagged #ThrivingatCIA. The posts offer basic health tips and quaint insights into what #WellnessWednesday looks like for the country’s top-dog cops.

This is maybe the most—or only?—charming thing the CIA has ever done; it’s mom-level use of the platform, they freakin’ hashtagged the word #run!! It’s almost cute that not even the country’s foremost intelligence agency can resist the siren song of corporate wellness.

After all, CIA staffers should make it a high priority to take time to breathe and center themselves after all the hard work they do torturing innocent people at black sites, denying it for years at a time, and providing weapons and military training to politically expedient allies. Apropos of nothing, wow, what a lengthy and comprehensive Wikipedia page.

The CIA reportedly struggles to recruit new employees, so trumpeting about self-care is likely a gesture that the process of compromising one’s integrity, moral compass, and dignity while working for the government won’t be all bad. Perhaps the agency’s greatest op of all is convincing the country it’s a great place to work.

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