In September 1995, John Deutch, the director of Central
Intelligence, bowed to congressional pressure and fired two CIA
officials because they had recruited Guatemalan military assets who had
been involved in political assassinations.
Inside the agency’s amphitheater, known as the
“Bubble,”
Deutch then told CIA employees that despite the firings, they should
continue to take risks in the service of their country. That brought
snickers from many of the clandestine officers in the audience.
Deutch laid down the law that recruitment of assets or
spies
with so-called human rights violations would require high-level
approval. Yet who else would know about terrorists and our enemies
except those who were themselves involved in treachery?
The message was clear: Stay away from informants who are
not politically correct.
Deutch’s effort to recruit Boy Scouts as spies was
chilling.
“People retired in place or left,” says William
Lofgren, who
headed the Central Eurasian Division, which included Russia. “Our
spirit was broken. At the CIA, you have to be able to inspire people to
take outrageous risks.”
That risk-averse atmosphere, in turn, contributed to
the
failure to detect the 9/11 plot that killed 3,000 Americans and sent
the economy reeling.
Now, President Obama’s release of memos on harsh
interrogation
tactics and his condemnation of those tactics — though approved by
President Bush, the Justice Department, and key members of Congress —
is sending an even greater shudder through the intelligence community.
By their very nature, intelligence officers who obtain
secrets
of other countries or of terrorist organizations are at risk. This is
no amusement park.
They meet with terrorists in dark alleys to try to
enlist them
to spy for the agency. They break into foreign embassies to steal
secret codes and install listening devices in homes of terrorists. They
pick up top secret military plans from clandestine hiding places. They
recruit arms dealers to report on efforts to steal nuclear weapons.
If their work is uncovered, they may be arrested by a
foreign power or murdered by a terrorist.
Back when the forerunner of the CIA started in 1942,
its first
director, William J. Donovan, called it an “unusual experiment.” For
his Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the best and the brightest were
recruited to embark on a dangerous mission: to penetrate the enemy,
learn its secrets, and disrupt its operations through covert means,
including sabotage and assassination.
The enemy then was Nazi Germany and Japan, and the
nascent
intelligence agency was charged with preventing another Pearl Harbor.
Indications of imminent war, properly pieced together,
would
have compelled President Roosevelt to place the U.S. military on alert
and disperse ships at Pearl Harbor. But the strike caught the military
by surprise. The attack killed 2,388 people.
In the parlance adopted after Sept. 11, there was a
failure to
connect the dots. Still, that may not be enough to thwart an attack.
What is needed is penetration of the enemy. Such a
penetration
usually entails inserting spies into the heart of an organization or
government so that its innermost plans and secrets are passed along.
That is the job of the CIA.
When George Tenet became director of Central
Intelligence in
July 1997, he tried to overcome what Deutch had done to the agency. If
employees “don’t believe that you believe in them and the mission, you
can articulate all the strategy you want and nothing will happen. You
can’t do it by yourself: They have to implement it,” Tenet would say.
Within two months of taking over, Tenet established
himself
as a champion of the agency and a leader who appreciated what is now
called the National Clandestine Service. But it would take time to
change the culture. Since 9/11, and especially under CIA Director
Michael Hayden, the CIA has been operating on all cylinders.
Now Obama has demonized CIA officers for following
instructions from the highest levels of the U.S. government. He has
raised the specter of prosecutions, saying it would be up to Attorney
General Eric Holder whether to charge those who gave legal opinions
authorizing the tactics.
Contrary to conservative wisdom, the situation is quite
different from what happened when the Church Committee investigated the
CIA and held public hearings beginning in 1976. The committee exposed
real abuses and a lack of focus, and it ultimately improved the agency.
Back then, the CIA spied on Vietnam protesters,
foolishly
enlisted the Mafia to try to kill Fidel Castro, embarked on the
disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, and engaged in silly plots like an
effort to humiliate Castro with his own people by trying to get his
beard to fall off.
In contrast, the CIA’s coercive interrogations were
focused,
approved by members of Congress, and successful. During initial
interrogations, Abu Zubaydah was reluctant to give up individuals who
were close to him. After he was waterboarded — which is inflicted on
our own special forces during training — he gave up Ramzi bin al-Shibh,
a member of Osama bin Laden’s inner circle. In turn, that led to the
capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 plot, and
the uncovering of a plot to target the West Coast in a second wave of
attacks.
If Obama were genuinely interested in “transparency” and
spreading goodwill, he would have released CIA reports detailing those
successes.
Obama’s message to the intelligence community was
clear: Even
if techniques have been approved by the country’s elected leaders, you
take your career in your hands if you engage in any operation that
could be considered close to the edge. That same message would be sent
to the military if the president and Congress declared war and a
subsequent administration conducted witch hunts and threatened
prosecutions of soldiers who killed the enemy in battle.
As former CIA Director Michael Hayden has said, the
effect of
the release is to “invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear
of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and
that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.”
As Hayden points out, releasing the memos discourages
foreign
intelligence services from cooperating with the CIA for fear their
cooperation will be exposed.
No wonder Leon Panetta, the current CIA director, four
of his
predecessors, and Obama’s counterterrorism advisor John Brennan opposed
releasing the memos.
By disclosing the techniques, Obama made it impossible
for him
or his successors to authorize their use in the future in the event of
an imminent future attack. That’s because, as in waterboarding, many of
them were intended to create fear but not actually hurt detainees.
Despite failures and gaffes, Donovan’s “unusual
experiment”
has paid off. Through the most terrifying moments of the Cold War, the
CIA penetrated Soviet secrecy, warned of most threats, and allowed
policymakers to orchestrate a measured response that eventually led to
the collapse of the Soviet Union.
While the CIA failed to uncover the plots of 9/11 and
was
wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as outlined in my book
“The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next
Attack,” it has scored a dazzling success in the war on terror.
[Editor's Note: Get Ron Kessler's book.
Go here now.]
The fact we have not been attacked in more than seven
years is
evidence that the CIA — along with the FBI — has been successful at
penetrating and rolling up plots.
Just as Deutch did, Obama spoke to CIA employees after
releasing the memos. As if talking to a kindergarten class, Obama said,
“Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve
made some mistakes. That’s how we learn.”
At the same time, he claimed he fully supports CIA
officers.
CIA officers feel betrayed by Obama and Congress. Even
though
they were briefed on the techniques — and some asked why the CIA was
not doing even more — members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi are
claiming they had no clue about the information they in fact received.
As a result, CIA officers are “slow rolling,” something
they
may do with politically sensitive assignments: They go through the
motions, stall, and ask for lawyer approval at every turn.
“The lesson officers are learning is when you are asked
to do
anything that entails risk — whether it has to do with the reputation
of the agency, the risk of personal failure, or the possibility of
criminal liability because people will revisit all the assurances they
gave you up front — the lesson is, Don’t take those risks to protect
America,” says a former CIA officer who was involved in the
interrogations. “Find a way not to do it, or you’ll be sorry.”
“After Sept. 11, the general outcry was, ‘Why don’t we
have
better overseas capabilities?’” says Porter Goss, who was briefed on
the interrogation methods in Congress and later headed the CIA. “I fear
that in the years to come, this refrain will be heard again . . . It is
certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are
told one day ‘I have your back,’ only to learn a day later that a knife
is being held to it.”
At a time when al-Qaida is plotting to wipe out America
with
nuclear weapons, the president has paralyzed our first line of defense.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of
Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to
you free via
e-mail. Go here now.
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