I agree, however I think Rice, who I don't believe has a lot of operational expertise, was talking more about HQ buildings inside the beltway with her "pale and Yale" comments. Maybe some of the guys that know way more about it than me can weigh in, but I don't know that we don't already choose operatives, whether inserted by us or local assets, that don't blend in to their environments. That wouldn't be very bright.
Sigh. Yes and no.
Official cover side:
First thing to understand is that overseas, CIA is essentially nearly a sub-division of the State Department. The overwhelming number of spooks are run out of the embassy. They buy or cultivate local sources to do dirty work so our hands remain clean and give us deniability. Or more realistically, they're trying to cover their rear ends because that's how government works. CYA trumps intel gathering, every day of the week. Technically, these people are undercover. Really? Bwahahaha, they may as well wear CIA blazers.
Second group. You have the non-cover CIA folks that are in said foreign countries officially on official acknowledged missions. Sometimes they do actually wear CIA insignia. Joint missions with foreign allied countries. Sometimes weirdly in countries were the government is hostile to us but the intelligence agencies are our allies. Syria used to be in this category. There's rarely a correlation between a country and their intelligence agencies. Israel (country) is an ally of the US, but their intel folks are our enemy. Ditto Pakistan, maybe India too. Argentina after WW2. Prior to their fall, Syria's intel organizations were allies of the US, but not their government. Sometimes because the government wants to be our ally but can't openly for PR reasons. Common in Islamic countries and Africa. Diversity is nice because most of the world isn't diverse, and you want the foreign nationals to like you and things to go smoothly. Technically you would think diversity wouldn't matter here, but it does. In a lot of countries, relationship dynamics far exceed the importance of results. But it's a dual edged sword. Yeah, you'd want at least one ethnic Turk in a task force to work with Turkish intelligence, but if you toss a Kurd on the team, congrads, you just did the opposite of your mission before saying a word. Problem is also that sometimes people with ethnic matchup is that the person forgets which team they're supposed to be working on. This is known and vastly overblown. The Halloween HR massacre at the CIA was one of the worst blows to America, and arguably our greatest intelligence failure even surpassing 9/11. Thanks Admiral Turner, you colossal moron.
Unofficial or nonofficial cover side:
There's been a push since 9/11 for actual undercover agents or contractors (lots of field agents are technically contractors now). Lot of them are 'employees' of well known international corporations. A couple even raised my eyebrows as admittedly not being companies I would have expected to agree to be cover organizations for CIA operatives. They're technically NOCs, but use US companies and US laws for quasi official cover, if that makes sense. Snowden was in this category. Read Snowden's wikipedia entry for a lot of surprisingly accurate information. Diversity is nice here, but let's be honest, it's not a huge deal. Sales people or computer dorks for international companies don't need to fit diversity criteria.
James Bond style NOCs without even quasi official cover are rare. Very rare. You'd sleep better at night if you didn't know how few of them are in the wild. They require boatloads of forged documents, elaborate covers, expensive in other words. Too much work for government employees, so low numbers. But they're the only way to get human intel in countries were we do not have an embassy or commercial ties. Yes, this does actually require absolute diversity. Skin tone, language skills, technical skills. They need to be able to get a clearance. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, that's not how it shakes out. So we're perpetually short of qualified people. And the CIA often mistreats them because they're odd ducks in a large organization. Any large organization hates people that don't stamp out widgets or shuffle papers. So you have very high turnover in a job that requires almost as rare skillsets as astronauts. So often times, congrads, you don't HAVE Coptic Egyptian NOCs on hand. Or left handed Azerbaijani NOC. Or whatever. You have to make due with what you have.
