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# Covert Contact 81: From CIA Case Officer to Rookie Cop
- URL: https://johnwlittle.com/from-cia-case-officer-to-rookie-cop/
- Published: 2017-10-23T12:13:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T00:56:33.000Z
- Description: Patrick Skinner joins me to discuss becoming a rookie cop after a CIA career, the human skills that carry across, and what working in his own community is teaching him about counterterrorism.
- Author: John Little
- Tags: Covert Contact, Interviews, Patrick Skinner, Intelligence, Counterterrorism, Terrorism, Law Enforcement, Fred Burton, Veterans

Patrick Skinner returns to explain an unusual career change: becoming a rookie local police officer at 46 after working as a CIA case officer and counterterrorism consultant. We discuss what drew him away from a comfortable consulting role and toward the problems in his own neighborhood, where he realized he knew less about nearby crime than he did about armed groups overseas.

The transition involved a fresh background investigation, academy training, a substantial pay cut, and the demands of starting over on patrol. Patrick describes the satisfaction of seeing the immediate results of his work, while remaining clear about how much he still has to learn. His previous experience gives him useful tools, but it does not remove the need to understand local procedures, individual situations, and the community he serves.

We spend much of the conversation on the human skills shared by intelligence work and policing. Building genuine rapport, understanding someone's motivation, remaining curious, and slowing an encounter down can matter more than projecting authority. Patrick also describes lessons from the street that he wishes he had understood as a case officer, making this a discussion about learning in both directions.

His experience brings poverty, limited opportunity, and the role of luck into focus. We discuss the importance of distinguishing people who need help, people who have violated a rule, and people who pose a serious threat. That distinction shapes how he uses discretion and how he thinks about treating everyone with respect, including those he arrests.

The larger question is what these encounters can teach us about counterterrorism policy. Patrick connects familiar arguments about building trust and avoiding alienation with the daily work of answering calls and talking to neighbors. He is not claiming to solve crime or remake his city. He is making a case for understanding a small part of a difficult problem well enough to do something useful about it.